Rami Rank's Lounge Discussions

Hi Rami - Good to have you aboard, and thank you for sharing your talents with the community. Will definitely keep you in mind for future line production needs!

Thanks PJ!

Episode 1 hour budget

Very welcome Xochi!

Nikhil - yes, in session 3 we'll discuss the process but it's going to focus less on the actual breakdown of the script and more on what steps you go through to get all of the data points to turn the pattern budget into an individual episodic budget

Ankur - thanks so much! I'm glad you enjoyed!

Arlene

Yes, I have done budgets for Canada, but they were for features, and not series.

As far as the differences go, if the company financing the Canadian production is non-Canadian, then the big thing you're going to be dealing with is a fluctuating exchange rate which change your investing entity costs. This will also affect you if your post production is being done outside of Canada. Additionally for Canadian productions you're going to be dealing with different positions receiving different names, rates and in some cases being covered by different unions - i.e. a POC in the US is covered by the IA, but in Canada, it's covered by the DGC. If you're dealing with DGA directors on a Canadian project there's a daily fee that you have to pay to the DGC to permit them to work out there. If you've got equipment coming from the US you have to account for Carnet costs. Oh yes, and batteries are way more expensive there :) Short answer there's a lot of differences in a Canadian budget from an American budget but the overall concepts are the same.

If it were just doing an initial budget for a 1 hour series, I could probably generate one in 2-3 weeks depending on how much information was available at the time. This would just be a first pass version. That budget, once the show is greenlit will continue to get worked on usually until the studio forces you to lock it. The later you can lock, the better - the more information you have early on the more accurate your pattern and amort will be and the less likely you will be to experience massive swings one way or the other.