A film budget is built from two documents you should already have, the breakdown and the schedule, plus a stack of deals and vendor quotes. A budget is much less intimidating once you can read the one-page summary before you open the forty pages of detail behind it. Learn it from the outside in: structure first, then how lines get priced, then how the budget gets used once money starts going out.
The structure
Start with what is a film production budget. It covers the three layers of the document (top sheet, account level, line detail) and walks through a 20-day feature. Then read above the line vs below the line, since that split affects how incentives treat a cost, how union tiers are measured, and how a financier reads the whole thing. Film budget top sheet explained shows the ratios investors check before they look at any single line, and the budget top sheet template is the same page ready to fill in.
Account numbers look arbitrary at first. The chart of accounts entry explains the common US layout, with the 1000s above the line, the 2000s and 3000s for production, and the 4000s for post. The exact numbers vary between software and studios, but after two or three budgets you'll find your way around any of them.
Pricing the lines
Next comes the formula. How to fill in a film budget template sets the globals block, then the fringe table, then prices each line as amount x units x multiplier x rate. Work through it with the film budget template open. Two lines trip up a lot of first budgets: fringes, which ride on top of every payroll line, and contingency.
Then read finished budgets. The $1.48M indie feature, line by line goes account by account from rights through post. The $50,000 short film budget uses the same logic at a size where the Short Project Agreement's budget cap decides what's affordable, and the example ends up $336 over it. The indie film budget template is a $450,000, 12-day feature you can copy and change.
The assumptions underneath
Every budget rests on things that can move: shoot days, hours per day, union status, exchange rates, and when incentive money actually arrives. Film budget assumptions shows how to write them on an assumptions page and stress-test the expensive ones. Union status moves every labor line and its fringes. Tier projects explains how the budget figure sets IATSE crew minimums, and the unions and compliance path covers the agreements themselves.
Before the detail exists, the film budget estimator builds a rough top sheet from your own inputs, which is enough for a first conversation with a financier.
During the shoot
Once the budget is locked, it becomes the baseline for tracking. A hot cost report compares each day's actual cost with what the budget assumed for that day, which is how overtime, meal penalties, and extra background get caught while there's still time to react. On cost reports you'll see estimate to complete and budget variance. If a production has to stop, how to run a shutdown cost prices a three-week hiatus against abandoning the picture.
Accounts that behave differently
VFX and music are priced from vendor bids and negotiated deals, and both tend to grow during post. VFX and music budgeting works through a VFX budget for a $2.5 million thriller and the composer and licensing side of music. Commercials and music videos use their own formats and bidding habits, described on the commercials and music videos pages.
Before and after the budget
A budget can't be more accurate than the shooting schedule it was priced from, so if your day count is shaky, fix that first. Where the money comes from, and how an incentive lowers the net cost of the same budget, is in film financing.