Your budget is an educated hypothesis, assembled well in advance of the shoot and with varying degrees of optimism and foreboding. Its sequels are the cost reports, which are generated more or less weekly from the start of production. The account numbers are the same as in the original budget, but the all-important column is the last: “Variance.” This is how much you spent in relation to what you thought (or hoped) you’d spend. A zero in Variance means you estimated right, a positive number means you’ve underspent and have a surplus (which you can put somewhere else), and a number with a minus after it means you’re over budget. The object of the game is to add those pluses and minuses, factor in the ten percent of the budget earmarked as contingency, and end up with a nice, round zero.
What follows is the Summary Page of Cost Report #16 of Jacked. (The actual breakdown runs to ten dense pages.) This report comes halfway through postproduction, at the tail end of the picture edit and before the sound work.
The first thing to notice is a huge surplus in the above-the-line total, with $33,700 saved on Cast (line 1400). What happened? Because some of the actors were regulars in an LA-based TV series, their time on set was fiercely limited. In the short term, that meant tense days. But the savings in overtime pay and other expenses was substantial.
The troubles start below the line. Production Staff (2000) is $39,187 over estimates, with Extras (2100) coming in at minus $10,631. These and other below-the-line variances have to do with shooting longer—and more—days than anticipated. Few of the overruns are enormous, but they add up. The biggest single overrun in the breakdown (not shown) is Scouts, which is $16,730 over budget. This was nobody’s fault. Some crucial locations fell through at the last minute (as they are wont to do), and extra scouts had to be hired during the first and second week of shooting. (The location manager needed to be on set.) The overrun in Set Operation includes the employment of watchmen, after the producers decided that it would save time (and cost less) to have security people guarding locations and equipment so that the crew didn’t have to pack and unpack the trucks every day. A lot of overages, you’ll discover, are to save time.
Set Dressing (2700) and Property (Props, 2800) also run over by $10,000 apiece. In the first case, the producers realized that because the movie was threatening to go way over schedule, it would be cheaper to combine locations. Say you’re shooting three days in an office building and plan to move to another building to film a different kind of office. If time is short, you can stay where you are and spend money to re-dress an office at the existing location. That can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, but compared to packing up and moving the cast, crew, and equipment, it might still represent a savings.
The overrun for props is a bit more frustrating. In this case, the director, Jason, didn’t communicate his vision clearly to the set decorators. He’d come on set and say, “I thought Vinnie was going to have a big stuffed giraffe,” and they’d say, “Er, Jason, you didn’t ask for a big stuffed giraffe,” and he’d say, “Oh. I thought I did.” The only solution at that point is either to forgo the stuffed giraffe (which Jason was loath to do) or to throw money at the problem: send someone out to the nearest store to find a big stuffed giraffe. In those situations, you can’t borrow or cost-compare; you dash out, see what you need, and grab it, whatever the price.
There’s a fairly big overage in Electricals (3200), which once again had to do with saving time. The Director of Photography said, “If I light this exterior with my package it will take five hours. If you rent me two more big lights it will take two.” The producers rented the lights. Overages in Transportation (3500) had to do with the extra cars rented for all those location scouts. It also included the three fender-benders that one PA had in two days.
The Location (3600) overrun is a hair-raising $52,079. That cost represents a lot of things, though. It includes unanticipated second meals (the result of so many late nights), as well as $7,739 spent on carpeted holding areas for the actress who showed up with her infant daughter. Nearly $10,000 was spent on cellular phone calls (ouch). Location Restoration is also in here, because one of the apartments got damaged. One of the gaffers pulled up some tape and ruined the hand-rubbed bleached and white-washed finish on someone’s pickled floor. Stripping and refinishing came to $950.
Most bloodcurdling of all is the $61,212 overage on film stock and lab work. Budgeted at $147,973, the actual cost is estimated at $209,185, more than 40 percent higher. Jason did more and longer takes than anyone had estimated, and his partners didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.
Postproduction (which is still in flux) has some whopping overruns but also some whopping savings. Editorial Labor (5000) and Editing Equipment (5100) are over budget by $17,495. This is because Jacked didn’t turn out quite the way anyone expected. Rough Cut #1 was viewed by a test audience with shock and disgust, and a heavily revised #2 with disdain bordering on tolerance. By the time of Cut #4, however, segments of the audience were starting to like the film a lot. But that extra time in the editing room took a toll on the postproduction budget.
The big savings is in the next line, Post Production Sound (5200). Roughly $125,000 was budgeted, but an up-and-coming sound house decided it really wanted this project and offered an attractive rate. The $16,001 savings nearly offsets the additional picture-editing costs. Flush with this savings, the producers decided to give Jason $2972 more for titles and opticals (5300), including jazzier credits and a split-screen effect. They also gave $3000 more to their music supervisor (5400). It’s important to remember that sometimes you spend more because you make the decision to. It’s not always a runaway train.
So where are we, as of Cost Report #16? Not so bad. True, the sound edit and the mix haven’t started yet, but Jacked is in surprisingly good shape. The total overrun is $178,992, but the contingency (6700) is $225,439. Assuming that the sound edit stays pretty much on track, this allows a bit of a cushion—an extra mix day, or maybe a case of decent champagne.