Major Project: Budgeting And Scheduling

Major Project: Budgeting And Scheduling

To properly fulfil my role as producer on this project, I knew the importance of creating a schedule and managing a budget. So early on in this project I went through the script and pulled out each of our key sequences and verified the details of each one. I collated what they were, how long they would take, who/what they involved and where the shoots would take place. I then also estimated how long each one would take to edit. 

With this information collated I was able to put together a full production schedule for this project. The best way to do this I found was to create it in a shared space online so that everyone could access it and it could be easily edited if any changes occurred. Overall this process was time-consuming but relatively simple. 

Having a clearly written out plan for the entire production and post-production process really helped our team to stay organised. This somewhat small task I had as a producer, had perhaps some of the biggest impacts. As such, I made sure to regularly update it and inform the team of any changes so we always had plans for shoots ready in advance. 

Budgeting was also one of my biggest responsibilities as a producer on this project. I was in charge of collating, managing and distributing the money throughout the documentary. To successfully handle this aspect, I took multiple steps. Firstly I set up a group bank account that we could all deposit money in to, and arranged for the budget of this project to be paid in three manageable instalments. 

I then helped Alex to set up our groups fundraiser (Kickstarter page) so that friends, family, and external people could contribute money to our project and help make it more manageable. 

The final step I took was to create a digital budget sheet. I sat with Alex and worked out how much everything was going to cost on this project. Collating this information on to a clear online spreadsheet so we could all see the breakdown. 

On this spreadsheet, I also created a table that showed all the withdrawals and spendings made on this project. It detailed how much was spent, by who and on what. And I kept this up to date regularly. Looking back in hindsight though, we still needed a clearer line of communication about when the money could be taken out of the account and what exactly it was spent on (as there were a few small changes to what was purchased). There were occasions where items cost more than anticipated and this wasn't effectively communicated or written down. Leading to rounding errors, some payments being late, and us going a tiny bit over budget. 

This was really my fault for not taking enough control and initiative over this area. But fortunately, we were able to resolve the issue.

Below you can see the full production schedule and budget I created.