What does creating a project budget involve?
Creating a project budget means answering one question in detail: what will it take to make this? The answer is a document that lists every phase of the project, the people and days each needs, the hard costs (crew, equipment, locations, talent, travel, post), the agency's fee, a contingency and the total. It is built by the producer, checked by the creative lead and approved by the client, and from that point it is the plan the money follows.
It is different from a general budget in one important way: it is tied to a specific scope. Change the scope and the budget has to be recreated, which is why the two are usually written together.
Why it matters
Why creating a project budget matters
A project without a budget is a project where every decision is made twice: once creatively and once again when the bill arrives. Building the budget forces the real questions early. How many shoot days does this idea actually need? Is the location worth what it costs? Can the deliverables list be shorter? Those are cheap questions in pre-production and expensive ones on set. For the client, the budget is the basis for approval and for every later conversation about scope; for the agency, it is the only way to know whether the job will make money.
In practice
How creating a project budget works in practice
- 01
Start from the scope and the creative plan, then break the project into phases: development, pre-production, production, post-production, delivery. Within each phase list the roles and the days or hours they need, then the hard costs with real quotes wherever possible rather than guesses. Add the agency fee, a contingency sized to the risk of the job, and any taxes or insurance. Write down the assumptions: shoot days, locations, rounds of review, what the client supplies.
- 02
Review it twice before it goes anywhere. The creative lead checks that the plan described is the plan they mean to make. The agency checks the margin. Then it goes to the client as part of the proposal, questions come back, lines move, and the agreed version is attached to the purchase order. During the job the producer logs spend against it and revises it whenever the scope changes.
At RIOT
Creating a project budget at RIOT
We build the budget from the scope, and we build it fast: a plan and a number within a couple of business days of understanding the brief. The budget lives in Krova, our production software, which handles bids, budgets and delivery, so the lines the client approved are the lines the production is tracked against from the first call sheet to the final files.
Watch out
What people get wrong about creating a project budget
Starting from the number. A budget reverse-engineered from the figure the client mentioned will describe a project that cannot be made for it, and everyone finds out on set. The other common mistake is leaving out the agency's own time: the days of producing, directing and creative direction that make the hard costs worth spending. A budget that only prices the crew prices half the job.
