Low vs High Budget
Differences between low budget and high budget are the number of people involved in the production. In a low budget film, because you do not have the money to pay specialists, you would have to think of creative ways to get a certain effect. Unlike a high budget film, there would be enough money to hire specialists specifically in each department for the film. They will have more knowledge into what is available with the given budget to create the looks that the Director wants.
For example, Mamá (2008) was originally a short film produced by Barbara Muschietti which was later found by Guillermo del Toro who financed the film to turn it into a feature length film in 2013.
Mamá (2008) Mama (2013)
Mamá (2008) Crew List with a budget of $40,000
Compared to Mama (2013) Crew List with a budget of $20,000,000
Immediately for the same film with a bigger budget and a longer film we can see that there are more crew members in each departments. More people for special effects, art and make-up departments, there is even a transportation department whereas the smaller budget did not have. In the smaller budget there are less departments and less crew compared to the bigger budget. They have added a stunt department, transportation department, the effects department and make-up department has dramatically expanded.
In the shorter film there were 3 casts whereas the feature had more because they were able to afford more actors.
For our series, the writers original story had many characters, and due to the lack of finance in our budget I as the producer asked the writer to keep the stories down to 3 characters maximum. This is so it is feasible to pay actors for their work. Also as the projects are shorts, I felt it would be a great idea to re-use the same 3 actors but play different characters for each episode.
Our project is classed as no budget. If a production is under £1million it is classed as low budget and as our film is under £5,000 it is no budget.
We have very little crew members so this production will mean the Director and I will be taking up more roles than if we were with a bigger budget. For example, I have to location scout for locations, but if we had a bigger production we would have a location manager to do this. If we did have a location manager it would free up some of my time to focus on other aspects of production for example marketing the kickstarter campaign to raise the money to fund the project.
In order to control the budget costume designer and make-up artist will spend their own money and be reconciled once they have filled out a petty cash form. A petty cash form includes all the payment details the person has paid for and attached with it would be copies of the receipts. This will usually be given to the accountant on a bigger budget, but as the producer who also controls the finance, I will be taking on the role. On our production, the receipts will act as proof of what they have bought and once checked they get their money back. In a bigger production, the accountant will usually give petty cash upfront rather than the crew paying out of their own money, but as we have low budget we do not have the money upfront.
An example of a petty cash form looks like this:
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