Financing Phase Shooting Schedule

How to get a rough sense of the cost of production long before shooting starts.

A first shooting schedule will be created in the financing phase, long before shooting begins. It is created by a producer or line producer, provides initial conclusions about the feasibility of the script and is the basis for further preparation, in particular for the calculation of the required budget. It is therefore called a calculation schedule. The respective costs are figured out by multiplying the cost of each resource by the number of days it will be necessary: i.e., the calculated cost of the cast and the sets and other key elements based on the number of shooting days (this is the Day Out of Days).

At this early stage, there is usually no finished script. The fewest parameters and personal details are known, and the director is not yet attached. A calculation schedule, therefore, focuses on the basic information and cost-relevant resources of a script, bringing the scenes into an order that seems possible and realistic, based on knowledge of how the director works or experiences from other projects. At this early stage, it makes sense to include a sensible financial buffer, as financing is not yet faced with logistical constraints that may require additional costs later on. Based on a calculation schedule, there are discussions about the feasibility of a project, and it is possible that the number of shooting days will be corrected or the script adapted.