Budget

The Budget.

I've made the budget as easy to navigate as I can whilst including as much detail as needed to keep on top of expenses.
I have managed the budget from the start of the project and we all donated an equal amount to one bank account (that I had access to) so that I could track incoming and outgoing funds.
I did write a small amount about the budget here during the last project but I wanted to expand on this and look into post-production costs.
We decided to use my Monzo account because Monzo has very good budgeting features. It shows your spending over the period of a month, and also predicts if your spending will last you to the end of the month or not. Opening a current account and savings account is all free, it's entirely run off of the app, and you get the card sent to you within 3 days of downloading the app and inputting your information. It's secure and verified with ID, and has been rated from 4.5-5 stars out of 5 on Trustpilot, finder.com and moneysavingexpert.com. I had used the account personally for a few months previous to the project so I was aware of how it worked and started the account off on £0 so that we could start entirely fresh with the budget. I put all of the budget into a 'Savings Pot' and put £100 at a time into the current account so that I could be sure I was carefully tracking how much we were using at a time.

Spreadsheet

This is the spreadsheet I used to track the budget and all of the in and outgoings.

Included Information

Keeping the spreadsheet simple, I broke it down into sections that included 'Money In', 'Money Out', and pending transactions as well. Using the features on Google Spreadsheet I formatted the table to do the maths for me, adding up what we had and removing the amount when I wrote a figure into the 'Out' section.
The 'pending' sections are now left empty because I keep the file updated in real time and we currently aren't using the budget. However, as an example, I used this section for when I had made online orders (through Amazon), and the money was waiting to leave the account, or when Harvey had a payment plan to pay money into the account each month for his portion of the budget.
To the right I've broken down the amount that we have per week coming up to the shoot, how much we have once the pending transactions have gone through. This way I was able to track how much we were roughly going to have for during production and post-production.

Redistributing the budget

Due to the COVID-19 virus the film couldn't be made in time for the deadline so the budget had to be redistributed around the crew. I broke down all of the expenses on the account and laid the process out on a spreadsheet so that everyone could see how I did it in case there was any queries or problems, but luckily there wasn't.

Theoretical Expenses

We also would have to prepare for unexpected expenses during production and post production. I want to look into this so that I know what we might need money for and predict ahead. In the pre production stage, I knew we would be paying for locations, props, and travel, but didn't really consider what would come after, which is why I need to look into it now.
We put a lot more into it than we thought we would use just so that we could have this buffer. We planned to have a budget of £2000, with the idea of using £1500 and having the £500 as a buffer for unexpected costs. We even prepared to have an additional £500 that we wouldn't put in but be prepared to pay in case of emergencies, so in total, we were prepared to have an overall budget of £2500.

Production

During production, there are expenses that we may not plan for but could occur. As producer, it's important that I plan for outcomes like this. As mentioned, we had extra money in the budget to account for any unexpected expenses.
I planned for expenses in the following areas:

• Food and drink for crew and cast
• During pre-production location recces, I had taken note of a couple of restaurants that we could use as a base for meeting with cast and also places to go for food whilst on location, checking the prices on their menus to be sure that they were within the range that we could pay. For example, Makcari's was on the seafront and was not even a 2 minute walk from the flat, so if we were out of food in the flat we knew we could use that. On the fishing mark, there was the Hampton Inn which was a modest pub right by the fishing mark, so I knew we could use this as a place for rest, meetings, and food. The fishing mark was particularly cold and open to the elements so it was important to have a place for hot drinks close to here. We as a crew planned to visit Sainsbury's on the day of arrival to buy food supplies for the flat that we could prepare for everyone. Esme's sister, Fern, was going to also stay with us and do our behind the scenes photography and some videography, and also offered to cook during the days at the flat, so we planned on going with easy food like pasta that we could make big batches of, and was also a cheap way of feeding a lot of people.
• Travel expenses (train tickets and petrol) and parking fees
• I planned on knowing the cost for the travel of all of the actors prior to the shoot, which is why I had their postcodes on the casting sheet that I was filling in. I also gave them car park addresses so that they could go to ones that were more affordable. One that was a 5 minute walk from the flat was £5 for a whole day of parking which added up to be £30 for the actor that was driving. All of the other extras had said they would be travelling by train. There was a potential for there to be problems with parking, as parking around Herne Bay was restricted to people with residence proof. We could only get this for the one car for the crew as it was registered to the flat that we were going to be staying at. There was a chance that a cast member could get a parking fine if they accidentally parked where they shouldn't, and this was the kind of occasion that I planned for with the excess in the budget. Although it was obviously to be avoided, it was something we had to be prepared for.
• Location fees
• All of the locations that we had planned were free to use as they were privately owned, and the owners had agreed to let us use the locations without charge. The only location in which there was a charge was The Diver's Arms (pub), where they asked us to make a donation to the charity that they were representing, which at the time was the ABC Fund, a charity that supports disadvantaged children. In case any locations had charges that we weren't aware of even after asking, this was also what the buffer fund was for.
• Prop hire
• During production, the only prop that we wouldn't have until the day of was the fishing rods which we were hiring from Bay Angling and Aquatics. This was also a shop we were filming at and so in return to have their shop name displayed in the film, they said that we could have 2 fishing rods (unused) for the day for £20. This was agreed over the phone with the shop owner

Festivals

In post-production, we would be looking at where the film is going to go after it's been completed. We can look into festivals and where we could potentially show it.

• London Independent Film Festival
• The LIFF is devoted to first and second time filmmakers with limited budgets. It's been running for 18 years and is held at Mile End Road, London. Films that have previously been screened aren't eligible for the competition, but could be screened outside of the competition so depending on the rules of the other festivals, we would have to screen at this festival first (if we won). They have a few different competitions for short films under different categories such as best UK short film, best experimental short, and best short screenplay, among many others.
• Entry costs £37.94 for films and £29.51 for a short screenplay.
• London Short Film Festival
• LSFF has awards in best british short and best lo-budget short among others. It's held around various flagship cinematic venues such as the BFI and IoCA. The films must be under 45 minutes, but they're open to all genres.
• Entry costs £29.51 for the most of the festival and £10.12 for the lo-budget section.
• Leeds International Film Festival
• LIFF is one of the best Film Festivals in the UK, described by director Ken Loach as "every city should have a film festival like Leeds". They have an award for best british short, of which entry costs £37.94. They have no premier policy for shorts.
• Aesthetica
• ASFF is focused on short films and hosts over 100 industry events. They also pride themselves on supporting filmmakers at all stages in their career. It is held in various cinema venues around York. Awards that we could apply for include Best drama and the Youth award. They have no premier policy.
• Entrance costs £27.40 for best drama.

In all, we have a few possible options that High Tide could be entered into, starting with LIFF and followed by the rest due to the premier policy. We would be more likely to be shown in one of the smaller festivals, but it would be worth applying for as many as we could if we felt like the film woul be worthy enough.

In all we definitely would have enough budget to cover the festivals in the post production stage if everything with the shoot went to plan. We managed to save a lot of money in terms of locations not charging us, so we would most likely have enough at the end to make sure the film gets as far as it deserves.