Film Budgeting That Follows Your Schedule

In this episode, we will build the production budget for Dead Tired using budget templates, set up global variables, import our cast and elements, and watch our budget update live as the schedule changes.

---

Step 1: Start from a Blank Budget & Apply a Budget Template

1. Click Budget in the top navigation bar.

2. Select Detailed Budget in the left sidebar.

3. Because this is a new project, the budget starts blank. Click Templates in the top toolbar to open the Budget Templates dialog.

4. In the left folder tree, open the Film folder and select the Short Film template inside it.

5. Preview the account structure in the right panel before you commit to it. Film budgets are numbered so anyone reading them finds the same thing in the same place, and this template runs:

   Code	Category	Code	Category
   1000	Story & Script	2200	Art & Wardrobe
   1100	Producers	2300	Locations
   1200	Direction	2400	Transport & Catering
   1300	Cast	3000	Post Production
   2000	Crew	4000	Insurance
   2100	Equipment	4100	Contingency

For the wider picture of what FilmBase’s film budgeting software does, start there.

A template carries more than the account structure. It brings its fringes and its globals with it, which are the two things doing the arithmetic underneath the budget, and Episode 7 covers both.

6. Click Use Template, and when prompted to append or replace, select Replace.

FilmBase populates your budget with those categories and a starter line item under each, already named, so all you have to do is give them rates. You can also click Save as Template in the toolbar anytime to save your customized budget for future productions.

How the budget is structured

Categories at the top, accounts inside them, and line items inside those, so the totals roll up the way a financier or a funding body expects to read them.

Traditional budgeting software uses a drilldown view, where you open a category to see its accounts, then an account to see its items, one level at a time. FilmBase has that — it is in the view selector in the toolbar if it is what you are used to. There is also a tree view, showing the whole budget as one expandable list so you can see everything at once. We will stay in tree view.

---

Step 2: Price a Crew Line

FilmBase maintains a global variable called Total Shoot Days for you, valued straight from the Shoot Schedule you built in Episode 2. It is read-only, because the schedule owns it.

1. Expand Category 2000 Crew and click the Gaffer / Grip line the template supplied.
2. In the Rate field, enter 600.

Leave the Multiplier alone for now. A gaffer is paid per shoot day, so that multiplier wants to be your shoot day count, and typing 5 in by hand would be right today and wrong the moment the schedule moves. So point it at the shoot day count instead of copying it.

3. Right-click the Gaffer / Grip line, choose Apply Global Variable, and pick Block 1 Shoot Days.

The line reads $600 × 5 = $3,000.

That is a global: one number, kept in one place, that any line can point at. FilmBase makes a shoot-days global for every block on its own, which is why this one is named after Block 1. Add a sixth shoot day to the board and the gaffer goes to $3,600, along with every other line pointing at the same global. Episode 8 goes properly into globals, including writing your own.

---

Step 3: Add Cast Contracts to the Budget

1. Expand Category 1300 Cast and locate the Lead Cast line.
2. Right-click the line and select Add Cast….
3. Select Wanda Maximoff (Maya) and confirm.

FilmBase pulls her rates from her contact card and multiplies them by the day counts on the Day out of Days.

Expand her line and you get one child per rate you filled in:

Line	Calculation	Total
Shoot days	2 × $2,500	$5,000
Hold days	2 × $1,250	$2,500
		$7,500

You typed none of that. The rates came from her contact card, the day counts from the Day out of Days.

---

Step 4: Import Converted Production Elements into the Budget

The drone is rented equipment, so it belongs under Equipment rather than with the art department’s props.

1. Expand Category 2100 Equipment.
2. Right-click a line and select Import Elements….
3. Select the drone element card and click Import.

Notice you are not asked for a rate. It already has one, because you gave it $400 on the Elements page in Episode 4. It arrives as its own budget line at $400 × 2 usage days = $800, using the Usage Days figure FilmBase worked out from your schedule. You are budgeting days the drone is on set, not scenes it appears in.

---

Step 5: Live Schedule-to-Budget Sync & Exporting

1. Click Schedule in top navigation, select Stripboards, and drag Scene 14 (EXT. WOODS - LATER) off its shared day and onto a shoot day of its own. The drone is now needed on three separate days instead of two.
2. Switch back to Detailed Budget.
3. Without touching a single number, the drone line has already moved from $800 to $1,200 ($400 × 3 usage days).

This is the payoff for everything you set up before this. In a spreadsheet workflow, that is a change somebody has to notice, work out, and retype, and it is exactly the kind of change that goes unnoticed until wrap.

4. Click Export in the toolbar. The export dialog opens on a preview of the document, with a PDF / Excel toggle at the top: PDF gives you a formal topsheet and detailed budget report, Excel gives you an editable spreadsheet.
5. Pick one, click Export, and save it into your Dead Tired project folder.