Film Budgeting Quotes

What's interesting as a director, and even studio executives don't understand this, is that if you're directing a $200 million movie with six million people, it's the same as directing a $25,000 movie with three people. The director's job is, "You stand there and do that," or "This is the shot I want." The logistics change, but the job remains the same. And I enjoy the job.

I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'

If you're producing a movie you're involved in every aspect of the movie and that can be daunting and then going and doing a movie where you're just an actor for hire, and you can kind of sit back and giggle where you can see somebody sitting over there wasting time and wasting money.

If you ask me whether I can direct, I can. In fact, I have shot several songs, scenes and stunts. When certain directors of my movies were not able to be there for some reason and had asked me to help out, I have directed. But to helm an entire movie is a different art altogether.

I try not to shoot unnecessarily or spend on extra expenses that normally happen on a film set - like actors' fees.

God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money.

I'm talking a lot on financing in the Masterclass and I know what it means to because I had to finance my first films, all of them, and I earned my money as a welder in a steel factory doing night shifts while I was still in high school during the day.

A film like 'Good Night And Good Luck,' you make that for $7 million because you know it's a black-and-white film, and it's not an easy sell. If you make it for $7 million, then everybody can have a chance to make a little bit of money, and you get to make the film you want to make.

A lot of independent films try to pull off a 14-day shooting schedule, which I think is ridiculous. No matter how big or small you are, it really kills whatever sort of time you get to allow the actors to find their characters, and to spend time to think about what they're doing.

It was really a means-of-production problem. It costs so much to make films. With a novel, you can write the whole thing on a ream of paper from Staples for $4.

With the film, you have a bunch of executive producers, directors, writers, scripts. There's, management, lighting, the union and etc. There are so many components a part of that game, so naturally it isn't my world.

Television is an excellent training ground for a director. If you work consistently in television, as I did, you have to come in on time and on budget. What you are allowed in feature films are, fortunately, more time and a larger budget.

I don't spend unnecessarily. The problem with the industry is we don't budget our films. Plus, we spend bizarre amounts on marketing. If you have a good film and a good trailer, you don't need to spend so much.

Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job.

If something works for you, you continue to do it. I did a bunch of pictures for 20th Century Fox when Alan Ladd was over there, but I set the budgets so low that they'd approve and I'd deliver the film. They would have no say in it, which is the kind of arrangement I liked.

Producing a film is more unfamiliar territory. Although producing an album and overseeing artists is a task within itself. But film is unfamiliar territory so, here and now, that's more difficult.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

I will do a film if there is a good scope for acting. I am looking for good scripts.

After I script the movie, I have to storyboard it out, I have to budget it, and I have to understand if I can afford all those visual effects or not.

I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways.

There's no great technical expertise in being a movie producer.

As soon as you start making a film that's expensive then the studio wants total control over all elements of it because they want to get all their money back. If you make a smaller film you can try a lot more things because you can have control over it and not just be a hired director. The lower the budget the more freedom you have.

Sometimes little things can prolong an experience in a way that you run over budget. It's very scientific; a lot of people don't understand the science that goes behind making a film.

When you make a movie for a really low budget, it makes you really strict. You have to plan things down to the tiniest detail.