How to cut Your Production Budget

Limited budget.

It’s a real internal conflict for me, because I like to dream BIG! The first thing I do when I hear a story that needs to be filmed is actually play it in my head as a film, Hollywood style.

This week I’m working on a small scope film based on a girl’s testimony. The reason it’s small scope is because of budget, plain and simple.

As I said before, once I hear the story I’m envisioning it being played out like a film, and I start thinking of creative ideas on how to represent the events of the story.

The stark reality is that budget is often limited- but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a good film or a powerful story!

In fact I’m a big believer that the story can be incredible even if the technical quality is sub-par. (Not talking about myself here, lol. I have great technical skills!)

A strong story is going to be remembered for ages, whether it’s filmed with a budget of 50K or $500. (But of course a good budget definitely opens up a lot of opportunities to breathe life into that story.)

Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is that this project I have is very limited on budget. And because of that reason, I needed to decide how to be as efficient as possible while still packing a punch in that story.

So what do I cut?

Pre-interview, storyline development, research, phone calls, shooting days, hiring help, equipment rentals, post-production contractors, editing time, color grading time…

There’s a lot of things I can cut, and a lot of them will get cut because of cost.

But there’s ONE thing I have committed to NEVER cutting:

STORY DEVELOPMENT

IF YOU NEED TO CUT, CUT PRODUCTION TIME NOT STORY DEVELOPMENT.

I will not cut the time I put into developing the story. That includes pre-interviews (which can take over an hour), building a storyline and sometimes a creative outline as well.

This process of story development is what MAKES OR BREAKS your film. For a story to be engaging, captivating, emotional, and impacting you have to have a strong structure, and that has to be developed by you.

So instead of cutting out that pre-pro time, I decided to cut production time instead (which tends to be the most costly anyway). I limited the amount of days or hours of shooting, and figured out how to film what I needed to cover the storyline within that time limit.

Consider cutting production time

For your project maybe it means less b-roll, maybe it means using only natural light instead of setting up a bunch of equipment…

And sure, it’s not our favorite thing to limit capturing beautiful images.. but it must be done to prioritize story.

Your challenge:

So to you, fellow video creator, I say that the next time you have a limited budget (or time) I challenge you to invest that time in the story development and cut out time in your production. It might sting a little, but your film will be so much better for it, trust me!