Revealing your Budget: why and why not?

K

Kholi

Section Moderator
Kay, so I do get both sides of the coin, why some say never to reveal and others do.

In one hand, you could seriously cripple any chance at an advance. On the other hand, advances are so rare at our level and the exposure of conquering on minimal funds could help boost you into a better budget later.

So, if the chances of getting your money back are slim anyway, why would one not ride the waves of press recieved from the no money label?

See MONSTERs and TINY FURNITURE for examples of budget revelations in relation to press generated.

Thoughts?
 
I assume some filmmakers may not want to be embarassed that they sold their film for far less than they made it.
 
Well, Kholi, let me ask you this -- if you were at a festival and you saw a film whose marketing material said "plus, this film was shot for only $3,000!" -- would that make you more, or less, inclined to go see it?

I'd say the number itself, can never really do anything to help your cause. There are too many films being made for $500 or $1000 or $2000 that it's lost all relevance and meaning, and in fact it's gone the other way now -- hearing a film cost $3,000 is more likely to turn me away from bothering. If that's all the filmmakers can say about their film is that they couldn't get any money to make it, then ... yeah, that's an indictment.

Now, put another way, let's turn the story on its head -- let's say that the marketing story mentions the number but only ancillarily, as part of a larger story. For example, I don't really care (anymore) that El Mariachi was made for $7,000. Big whoop. But what I *do* care about, is that he was so dedicated to making this, that he sold his body to a drug-testing lab and underwent a clinical trial of an experimental drug, in order to raise the money to make the film.

Tell a story with the budget, and maybe the audience will listen and/or care. Saying "after losing everything but his camera in Hurricane Katrina, Jack lived on shrubs and cactus juice until one day the insurance company came through with a $4,000 check. It was more money than Jack had ever seen, and all the money Jack thought he would ever see again. And he decided to use it all to make this film." Okay, see, that I'd go see.

But if someone's like "well, I've got a few hundred thousand in my savings account but, you know, this was my first film and I knew it was gonna suck, so I didn't spend any more than $3k on it. I got everyone to work for free, but I wanted to keep the expense really low because, well, you know, I didn't really believe all that much in it" -- whether spoken aloud or just left as subtext, without anything else to go on, that's what I'd think and I bet that's what a lot of folks would think.

Finally, consider the economic times we live in. To folks today, fifty thousand dollars sounds like an absolute fortune. If someone tells me they spent $50k on a film, I'd want to know that it was really pretty darn good, because if someone takes $50k and torches it on making the typical go-nowhere microcinema crapola, well, that's pretty much a crime right now.

And doubly finally -- consider who your audience is. Who are you marketing to? Are you marketing to distributors? Or are you marketing to end ticket buyers? If you're four-walling it yourself, and you're gonna tour the country and rent out theaters and live out of your car and sell tickets yourself, then yeah, telling the end customer the budget might help your cause. If I met you and saw how you were living and saw the passion and knew that as far as your life goes, this is your one shot, and you're giving it your everything, and you spent $20k to make this, and here you are asking me for ten bucks for a ticket -- sure I'd give it to you. You bet. We all love success stories and I'd definitely want to see you succeed. And I bet a ton of folks would respond the same way. But on the other hand, if you're trying to sell it to a distributor and you made it on a micro-budget, then telling them what the real budget was is nothing more than slitting your own throat.

Think long and hard about it, because once you say the number, you can never un-say it. Make sure that you have good reasons for revealing it, and that it'll help you more than it hurts you.
 
Very thoughtful post, Barry, as usual. Put like that, only in the circumstances you mention would the amount helmed for be something I'm interested in.

Isaac also mentioned that the only time the number becomes interesting is after distribution has been found and it's part of getting the filmmaker noticed. Otherwise, it's not a big deal at all.

I didn't get to see how THE SIGNAL guys (Bush, Gentry and Bruckner) did their dealings before the prospect of Magnolia even came into play, but I do remember the budget was openly stated at 60K.

Either way, I can't see any clear benefit to stating a budget unless it's after distribution has been acquired, festival circuits, etc.
 
For me, I don't see any benefit in ever revealing my budget. It's hard for me to see it helping with press in my case. And as we know now, all of the numbers for Monsters were lies trickled out until the real numbers came out.

But really all budget numbers at our level are lies anyway. I know the dollar amount of LOST CHILDREN. But if I factored in my time? The year and a half of script work? The 6 months of pre-pro? At the amount I bill clients? Or if I factor in the favors I called in? Or the pay cuts my crew took to get the movie done? The extra amount of Ooomph they put up to make sure it got done and got done well? The dollar numbers are really meaningless I think. So just make one up that suits your marketing and run with it. If anything, I'd say low dollar budgets drive almost all normal people away from movies.

Also, I don't hold that at our level the finished product is always the most sellable product. I think - if I'm able to sell it at all, I'll sell LOST CHILDREN for the IP before the movie I made. I think that's worth much more than the actual film I made. And many films are commonly purchased for this reason; Paranormal Activity being one of the most popular recent examples.
 
Mark Harris said:
For me, I don't see any benefit in ever revealing my budget. It's hard for me to see it helping with press in my case. And as we know now, all of the numbers for Monsters were lies trickled out until the real numbers came out.

But really all budget numbers at our level are lies anyway. I know the dollar amount of LOST CHILDREN. But if I factored in my time? The year and a half of script work? The 6 months of pre-pro? At the amount I bill clients? Or if I factor in the favors I called in? Or the pay cuts my crew took to get the movie done? The extra amount of Ooomph they put up to make sure it got done and got done well? The dollar numbers are really meaningless I think. So just make one up that suits your marketing and run with it. If anything, I'd say low dollar budgets drive almost all normal people away from movies.

Also, I don't hold that at our level the finished product is always the most sellable product. I think - if I'm able to sell it at all, I'll sell LOST CHILDREN for the IP before the movie I made. I think that's worth much more than the actual film I made. And many films are commonly purchased for this reason; Paranormal Activity being one of the most popular recent examples.
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More good points, I think. If time is money, then we definitely spend a lot of our own!

Mark, when you said the MONSTERS numbers were lies, what do you mean? I had always heard 17,000EU, So 27K US. Was it higher than that?
 
Kholi said:
More good points, I think. If time is money, then we definitely spend a lot of our own!

Mark, when you said the MONSTERS numbers were lies, what do you mean? I had always heard 17,000EU, So 27K US. Was it higher than that?
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The first number that was blasted all over the world was $15K. It still shows up in older reviews. The last one I read was closer to $500K. Which is a lot more realistic.
 
Mark Harris said:
The first number that was blasted all over the world was $15K. It still shows up in older reviews. The last one I read was closer to $500K. Which is a lot more realistic.
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Okay, yeah the first number I heard was 15K Euro. Everyone was getting the currency wrong.

I haven't heard 500K, but that might be a number for post after it was acquired. I'd imagine for Audio and grading.
 
As far as selling to distributors, I think Mark had it spot on - sell it for what you need, what you think it's worth (or ultimately, what you can get for it!).

As for marketing... personally, I'd much rather viewers said "That movie was really good" or "That movie was a piece of s**t," instead of "That movie was good for what they had.*"

As a friend of mine pointed out about the recent fad of promoting your short film by saying it was shot on a DSLR, the only thing you're going to get is a bunch of tech nerds analyzing the images to see how the camera held up. Promote the story, because in the end, a good story can be told on $50mil or $0.50.

*otherwise known as the infamous Blue Ribbon, or the "we're all winners, thanks for playing" award.
 
When I sold my film, I said nothing of the format it was shot on nor the budget. I wanted it to be sold based on the film itself as a story and production value they saw and heard. Revealing any of that beforehand puts a preconceived notion in their heads which can affect price or desire to even to watch it.

Michael
 
Barry_Green said:
And doubly finally -- consider who your audience is. Who are you marketing to? Are you marketing to distributors?

Think long and hard about it, because once you say the number, you can never un-say it. Make sure that you have good reasons for revealing it, and that it'll help you more than it hurts you.
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Definitely good points.

Think about it like this? Who cares about what the budget is? Honestly. Other Filmmakers (because they want to know how much it took to judge it accordingly on production value) and Distributors (to know how low they can go assuming they're willing to offer anything at all). So, Budget has very little marketing value in my opinion. I used to think it would make a difference if you made a kick ass movie for a fraction of the average cost but I think that novelty has worn off in most media circles.

I definitely do not intend to reveal our budget because I believe our movie can stand against any in terms of production values. In other words, the $$ we spent or didn't spend are not what will make the opinions of our movie. And that's exactly where you want to be as a filmmaker. Excuse free.

I've been where I've spoken till I'm blue in the face...well, we only had $500 for this movie so we couldn't set design...or whatever the issue were. Nobody cares. They care if the movie is good...or if the movie is marketable.

You definitely can't take it back once you put it out there. At the same time, it's not the end of the world if the budget does get found out. If the film is good enough, you can still get what it is worth. I mean lets say Distributor A and Distributor B want the movie. They both know you spent 10K on it. So? You take the offer that works for you better. Distrib A says "okay, you spent 10K, I'll give you 11K for it." Well, fine...but Distrib B will give you 15K. Then it becomes a matter of worth and setting it in your mind what you're willing to take for it. Again, if they aren't going to pay you what it is worth because of the budget...then they don't value it enough to bother with. Only the filmmaker really knows.

However, I'd still say don't reveal your budget if you don't have to.

-M
 
Kholi said:
I didn't get to see how THE SIGNAL guys (Bush, Gentry and Bruckner) did their dealings before the prospect of Magnolia even came into play, but I do remember the budget was openly stated at 60K.
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I'm doing a panel in ATL with David Bruckner in a couple weeks. I know The Signal story pretty well. I was at their Sundance Premiere and partying with them just before and all that good stuff. We were the first to ever cover that movie in our online magazine CinemATL.

Let me choose the following words carefully. That figure isn't entirely accurate. It goes to a point Mark Harris makes about these kinds of things. Yes, that was how much cold hard Cash was invested in it.

However, that does not encompass what the entire budget was. What about Deferments? What about Post-Production, etc.

That number wasn't being advertised prior to the premiere either. I knew that rough figure ahead of time because I'm in the community and it was going around at that time. I actually partnered on my first feature with the post-house that partnered with The Signal (and Jacob Gentry's first feature) so I know roughly how much extra was on the books for budget that was covered up front by the post house.

Also, if I recall correctly, the budget listed on IMDB prior to their deal was not the budget that was later stated so freely. It was listed for much more at the time.

However, in the end it didn't matter. Shoreline knew the budget and weren't going to reveal it. All they were saying was they had a great movie. And the premiere for it at Sundance was ELECTRIC...it was off the hook. So the film was determined to be worth what Magnolia made the deal for...

Throwing around the number later freely was more to enhance the story for the indie press. You can't blame them, it was probably asked a million times and by the time they were speaking to press, the deal was done. It didn't matter.

I just think you keep your number quiet as long as you can. When it doesn't matter, throw it around. Ultimately it has less cache than it once did, so the marginal return on a low figure is far less than in the days of El Mariachi and even Primer.

There have been lots of quality movies made for super low budgets, it's not a Houdini-like wonder any longer.

Just my take,

Martin
 
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Martay said:
I mean lets say Distributor A and Distributor B want the movie. They both know you spent 10K on it. So? You take the offer that works for you better. Distrib A says "okay, you spent 10K, I'll give you 11K for it." Well, fine...but Distrib B will give you 15K. Then it becomes a matter of worth and setting it in your mind what you're willing to take for it.
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Sure, but -- here's one of the classic strategies in negotiation -- "the first party to mention a number, loses." That's such a given, it's so well-known, that there shouldn't be anyone out there who DOESN'T know it. ;)

When you mention a budget of $10k, that gives the distrib a position to base his offer from -- and you just lost. If you never mention a budget, then he has to base his offer on what he thinks the film is worth, what he can sell it for, and what he thinks you'll take. If you mention the budget, then that's the TOP that he'll offer. Heck, he knows you're desperate, he knows you don't know what you're doing (because you told somebody what the budget was!) and he knows you have maxxed out your credit cards, and that you'll take whatever you can get. So he'll lowball you. But what if, on the other hand, he looked at it on its own merits and thought "well, I don't know, middle-of-the-road film, I can probably get $5k from Asia, $20k from Germany, $15k from England, $100k from the US... all told, I can probably sell this for $1.5 million, so... I'll offer this kid $250k." That MIGHT have happened. But it will never happen, once he knows that your number is $10k.

UNLESS -- as Martay said, there's a second bidder in the equation. That's when it gets fun. But even then, you've already ruined your position by telling them how cheap it was. Because it becomes a matter of male ego and pride at that point. Who wants to pay $1m for something that they KNOW cost the other guy $10k?

I just don't see how giving out the real, micro-figure beforehand, will ever strengthen your position in that negotiation. Ever. Especially since it's as Mark said -- the cash budget rarely ever reflects the value of what it truly cost to make. If you ever do reveal a budget, it should be one that reflects ALL the value of what went in to make the picture, valuing your time and your cast and crew's time at current fair rates.
 
Barry_Green said:
Sure, but -- here's one of the classic strategies in negotiation -- "the first party to mention a number, loses." That's such a given, it's so well-known, that there shouldn't be anyone out there who DOESN'T know it. ;)
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Absolutely true. I just wanted to encourage anyone who has let the budget amount slip and in the age of kickstarter and the like, it's going to be more common that people know what costs (at least partially) are going into the creation of a movie.

The movie is still worth what it's worth and with a strong will and nerves of steel, one can still get what they deserve even if a budget figure has been leaked.

-Martin
 
Barry_Green said:
Sure, but -- here's one of the classic strategies in negotiation -- "the first party to mention a number, loses." That's such a given, it's so well-known, that there shouldn't be anyone out there who DOESN'T know it. ;)

When you mention a budget of $10k, that gives the distrib a position to base his offer from -- and you just lost. If you never mention a budget, then he has to base his offer on what he thinks the film is worth, what he can sell it for, and what he thinks you'll take. If you mention the budget, then that's the TOP that he'll offer. Heck, he knows you're desperate, he knows you don't know what you're doing (because you told somebody what the budget was!) and he knows you have maxxed out your credit cards, and that you'll take whatever you can get. So he'll lowball you. But what if, on the other hand, he looked at it on its own merits and thought "well, I don't know, middle-of-the-road film, I can probably get $5k from Asia, $20k from Germany, $15k from England, $100k from the US... all told, I can probably sell this for $1.5 million, so... I'll offer this kid $250k." That MIGHT have happened. But it will never happen, once he knows that your number is $10k.

UNLESS -- as Martay said, there's a second bidder in the equation. That's when it gets fun. But even then, you've already ruined your position by telling them how cheap it was. Because it becomes a matter of male ego and pride at that point. Who wants to pay $1m for something that they KNOW cost the other guy $10k?

I just don't see how giving out the real, micro-figure beforehand, will ever strengthen your position in that negotiation. Ever. Especially since it's as Mark said -- the cash budget rarely ever reflects the value of what it truly cost to make. If you ever do reveal a budget, it should be one that reflects ALL the value of what went in to make the picture, valuing your time and your cast and crew's time at current fair rates.
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But what if a distributor asks about the budget as the first question right on the spot? I don't think I would be taken seriously if I said "I can't reveal that" or "Ummm...uhhh...20 dollars can buy a lot of peanuts".
 
Martin, and Barry, thanks for the insight and perspective on the subject.

I agree, the last thing I'd want to hear from someone is "it's good for what they had to work with".

I'd rather hear that it's bad in that case.

Budget stays quiet.
 
RockmanX3 said:
But what if a distributor asks about the budget as the first question right on the spot? I don't think I would be taken seriously if I said "I can't reveal that" or "Ummm...uhhh...20 dollars can buy a lot of peanuts".
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Why do they deserve an answer? What possible bearing does it have on anything?

What would you answer if they said "how much money do you make per year?" You'd say "get lost, you nosy bugger, that's none of your business." Well, the same applies to the budget. What you spent on the film is irrelevant. If they ask me what the budget is, I'd say "We had plenty of budget to make an excellent picture. What's your offer?"
 
Barry_Green said:
Why do they deserve an answer? What possible bearing does it have on anything?

What would you answer if they said "how much money do you make per year?" You'd say "get lost, you nosy bugger, that's none of your business." Well, the same applies to the budget. What you spent on the film is irrelevant. If they ask me what the budget is, I'd say "We had plenty of budget to make an excellent picture. What's your offer?"
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that's an excellent response. it would force the person to actually come out in some way and say "well my offer is based on how much you spent without paying out too much $$$ and to get it for as cheap as possible"
 
To which I'd probably say "and I'm not intersted in someone trying to take my picture for as cheap as possible; I want a distribution partner who sees the value of what we've made here and is excited about the prospect of bringing it to as wide an audience as possible. Your offer will show me your level of commitment to the picture."

(well, okay, I'd like to say that... but it really depends on the situation. If you've been out there shopping your picture for a year and a half and you've only ever gotten one nibble, you take it. But if you've got two bidders, then you can say stuff like this.)
 
Barry_Green said:
To which I'd probably say "and I'm not intersted in someone trying to take my picture for as cheap as possible; I want a distribution partner who sees the value of what we've made here and is excited about the prospect of bringing it to as wide an audience as possible. Your offer will show me your level of commitment to the picture."

(well, okay, I'd like to say that... but it really depends on the situation. If you've been out there shopping your picture for a year and a half and you've only ever gotten one nibble, you take it. But if you've got two bidders, then you can say stuff like this.)
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I wish this advice was around when I made my horrible deal. It still haunts me till this day and will forever. Those bastards are making so much money of my movie it makes me so angry. But lesson is you live and learn.
 
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