Budgets!

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a seminar for work with Richard Guay, an expert on EP budgeting software. At the beginning of his talk, he showed us a page of screenplay, and broke it down in terms of the budget process. It really made me look at scripts in a new light.

For example, if I write "INT. HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY - DAY" followed by "GREG, 16, slams his locker shut. It's the end of the last day of school," I'm just thinking about the fact that I wrote two sentences. But a budgeter would see that and think:

"Okay, I need to secure a school. Probably on a Saturday? Should we cast someone actually 16 to play Greg? If so, we'll need to think about minor restrictions, and we'll need a tutor on set...Okay, it's the end of the last day of school. What does that look like? Lots of kids running out, being wild. How many is "lots of?" 100? 50? How can we stretch the extras? So if these are high school students, maybe we can secure a deal with the high school to use their students? What would that entail? If we have 100 high school kids waiting around set, it could get rowdy -- maybe it would be good to have a few extra PAs on hand that day to keep them in line. How much do we pay these PAs?"

Stressful, right? If two lines could cause this much trouble, imagine what 120 pages does!

BUT

And this is a big but. Hence the caps. It's not your job as a writer to think about budget. Even if you're a writer/director working on your own indie -- get someone else whose entire job is worrying about the budget. As daunting a task as budgeting is -- as overwhelming as a screenplay can be -- it's your job as a writer to tell a good story. a page turning, engaging, relatable story that moves an audience. And you can't move an audience if you're panicking about money at each line.

I attended a seminar during Tribeca with writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien, entitled "Writing Big and Small." The intended topic was how a big or small budget affects the writing of the film. Both writers started off by saying, quite simply, "It doesn't." They went on to explain that a good director (for them, this was Steven Soderbergh) can stretch a dollar. And sure, maybe in the filming process some things will need to be cut or adjusted -- but if the script is solid and its story shines through the pages, the director, producer, and budgeter will see what's necessary to tell the story and what isn't.

Bottom line: concentrate on writing a great script. That's hard enough. Leave the math to someone else.

(most writers I know were never any good at math anyway...)