- Movie magic scheduling and budgeting how to#
- Movie magic scheduling and budgeting software#
- Movie magic scheduling and budgeting Pc#
It's just my opinion, but I don't look at it as complicated. I've tried other software, but to me they're all complicated to an extent.
Movie magic scheduling and budgeting software#
This software is all about the anized, simplified and presentable for others to see. Myself personally, I've taken the approach that Producer/Director requires two very different hats. You can't have one without the other.IF you want to be successful.
Movie magic scheduling and budgeting how to#
In my opinion, learning this software is just as important as learning how to shoot. It's a great piece of the "puzzle" to have in your toolbox. Hey Brad, I can't do the work for you.sorry. (or video).īecause once you start shooting, it's going to need adjusting, and you should know WHERE you can cut corners and where you can't. You need to have these numbers nailed down as tight as you can get them, and the schedule as smooth as you can manage, before you shoot a frame of film. This point in pre-production is CRUCIAL to the success of your production. You need a line producer who can get the job done, if you are not willing or capable of doing it yourself. THEN, with those figures in hand, he/she will plug them into the software and begin to generate the cost breakdowns, call sheets, etc. There is no software that can read your script, look at your zip code, go to the phone book and make the calls to get the numbers, talk to your cast and crew and find out when they are available and what they will work for, talk to the location owners and determine availability, call an insurance company and price your insurance, call the local restaraunts and caterers and work out a deal, call the city and get permits, etc. You really have to do the legwork to grasp what your script calls for and plug the numbers into the templates. Sure, an indy film won't use as many categories as a big studio production, but it might or MIGHT NOT, require ANY single category that a big budget film relies on. So the software template, if it's worth anything at all, will include all the "usual" categories that ANY film requires. The software does not know what your script requires. A studio already knows the standard union and rental rates. "hustle" than studio filmaking for budget breakdowns. "Guerilla" filmmaking requires more resourcefullness and, well. Word 2000 and Excel 2000 are, at the moment, the only sufficiently ubiquitous programs to be trusted for such a job, particularly in the stress of a production environment, in which the failure to inform even a lowly PA of an important reschedule can lead to a nightmare scenario.
Movie magic scheduling and budgeting Pc#
It seems to me that if I have a vital budgeting or scheduling change, I want it to propagate through the path of least resistance, and not worry about whether all the folks lower down on the chain of command have some expensive, relatively arcane program installed on their computers, and whether they have the Mac or PC edition, and what version, and so on. I've never used them, but I've been on productions on which the producers have used them, and while it may have helped the producers, during production the fact that all the production data was locked up in proprietary file formats hindered the transmission of plans and instructions from the producers to the direction department, viz., the 1st AD.