Financing / Crowdfunding : Film Finance Plan vs. Film Budget by Karen "Kay" Ross

What could be so different from a Film budget to your home budget?? Ha ha

A lot- lol ;-)

Brandon Blake is a Film attorney and is seems like a really sharp guy, from the emails I received from him here at Stage 32.

There are a lot of wonderful information at his side below; hopefully it’ll help.

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Kerry Kennard

https://www.filmtvlaw.com

Hello Kay! Thank you for reaching out and always a pleasure connecting with yourself and likewise fellow filmmakers here @Stage32! Great question!

A film finance plan is a critical document which enables a filmmaker to convey to a potential investor, financier, studio, etc. the business and financial aspects of the production. It advises that the filmmakers have an understanding on the avenues to finance, production, and distribution. Elements include an executive summary, team members, potential cast, finance sources anticipated and amounts, revenue projections, recoupment, etc.

Here is an outline of Film Finance Plan elements: https://filmbudget.com/film-finance-plans/

A film budget is a breakdown of the costs of the production. This document details every category of expenditure, above the line, below the line, actors, director, writers, equipment, film crew, administration (legal, insurance, etc.) in a high level of detail.

The film budget is commonly referred in coordination with a shooting schedule, as a film budget and schedule. This is due to the fact that a shooting schedule from a producer's breakdown of the screenplay is fundamental to determining how much of everything for the production is needed, and for how long. This advises the answer to the ultimate question: how much will it cost to create this production?

Here is an outline of the Film Budget and Schedule elements: https://filmbudget.com/film-budget-services/

Lastly, here is a link to my article on Film Budgeting, which goes into more detail about the process of film budgeting; what is required to be considered, and how it is executed by a producer, line producer, or unit production manager. https://filmbudget.com/film-budgeting/

I hope this is helpful! I can be reached via: https://filmbudget.com/contact and my profile here, and I offer complimentary consultations for filmmaker's productions. My Producer Credits & Biography are at: https://filmbudget.com/about

Thank you for the question. Wishing all @Stage32 Members best of luck in filmmaking!

-Jack

Hi Kay! It's a great question and you've already had excellent explanations and resources from Jack. I want to share something that came up recently within the lab I recently finished for our Stage 32 community. In a one on one a Producer said "I need to finish my FP to put into the investor doc don't I?" and my answer was no. The purpose behind a FP is to share with investors of course and it's also to plan finances. Your finance plan should be a working document in conjunction to your budget. You can use it to model your options and see the impact to the recoupment schedule. For example, say you want to decide if you take a media production loan (debt financing) to cashflow production you want to see the impact interest will have and what would happen if timelines extended.

If you use the headings of Soft Equity (grants, crowdfunding, tax credits, co-producers for example) and Hard Equity (private investors for example) it may help you to order things and in turn help communicate to investors how this will all come together and ultimately, be able to pay out them back when taken in consideration with sales estimates and the distribution strategy. Hope that helps to picture what a FP is.

Thank you Emma Louise Smith for sharing the additional insights and highly valuable information with the lounge. Very helpful for expanding knowledge of the business side of the industry.

Emma Louise Smith and Jack, we're so lucky to have both of you as a part of this community to share your insights. Thank you both!