Now that the film is in its final editing process, and all expenses have been paid for, I wanted to do a review of the final budget. Initially, we wanted to try and keep the budget very low of around £500-600, this was the first figure that we came up with. After the casting process had been finalised, we chose the talent over the expense and chose to cast 3 actors that were not local and would be expensive to cover for travel. We knew that the budget would need to be increased, and accepted this as part of the process.
Paying Expenses
In terms of travel expenses, we covered these from the rehearsal until the shoot dates. I worked out an average mileage of 25p per mile and checked that this was ok for the actors. Once the shoot days were finalised, I worked out the total mileage for each actor and asked the crew members to send me their travel receipts or mileage so I could work out their expenses. The travel expenses were our biggest expense at £347 for all cast and crew members.
Food
As well as travel expenses, we covered food from the audition day onwards also. This included a buffet for the auditions, lunch on rehearsal day and meals across the shoot days. As Producer, I went out to source all of the food. I made sure that I bought all of the value items to save money, whilst ensuring that I was purchasing enough to keep all of the cast and crew happy and contented on the shoot days. I wanted there to be options at both lunchtime and dinner time as I was catering for a large group and I didn't want there to not be enough of what people liked. For the second shoot day, we ordered pizza for the group. In hindsight, this was a drain on the budget at £40 but it was very popular with the cast and crew. I totalled all of the food expenses up at £170 which was the second biggest expenditure.
Hotel
I had advertised optional accommodation for the cast members during the casting process. As Sophie was travelling over 80 miles to get to the location, I booked her a hotel over the first weekend of filming which was a 2 day shoot. I shopped around for some quotes before booking the Mercure in Maidstone, as Sophie had a membership there. The cost of this expense was £125.
Props/Set Dressing and Costumes
The props and costumes weren't a huge expense as I was able to source a lot of them from home or purchase them at affordable prices. The only costume item, I needed to purchase was the pair of white trainers for Clive which I got from Pound land for £9. The biggest prop expenditure was the apples, of which I sourced almost 150 of for the shoot. The overall expenditure for props/set dressing and costumes was £95.
Composer
The last expenditure was the composer for the credits track. He was really keen to contribute to the project and was happy to work for an agreed £50 as he wanted to gain some more contacts and build his portfolio. We were very lucky to find someone who was very interested in the project and willing to work to a student budget.
Overall, I am pleased with my management of the budget and although the travel expenses in particular were rather expensive, I think that the decision to have the right cast was absolutely worth the extra expense. The other expenses were as expected and fairly minimal which helped to keep the budget down. As the Producer, it was mr job to organise all of the receipts which I kept together in a folder along with any cash for the budget. The receipts were very useful for keeping track of how much we were spending and for totalling up at the end. The final budget outcome was £787 which I think was a suitable figure, and not much over our ideal budget.
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