3 of 10 · for producers
A thousand feet of 35mm runs about eleven minutes.
At twenty-four frames a second, that is the arithmetic the whole schedule sits on. A magazine is a clock, and a producer who internalises that will make better decisions than one who has memorised a rate card.
This page is the shape of a film budget and a film schedule. Not what it costs — that moves, and it depends on the job.
Lines that do not exist on a digital shoot
Five of them, and they are linked.
Stock
Bought by the foot, before you shoot. It is the one line that is committed up front and cannot be reduced later by working faster. Short ends and recans — usable lengths left on a part-used roll — are real inventory and a good loader saves you money with them.
Processing
Charged by the foot, on everything you expose, whether or not it was a good take. This is where a slipping ratio shows up first.
Scanning
Priced by resolution and by how much you scan. You can process everything and scan selectively; deciding that policy in prep rather than in week three is worth real money.
The loader
A position that simply does not exist on a digital unit, and the one you do not economise on. See page six for why.
Transport and turnaround
Negative has to physically get to the lab, daily, securely. Distance from the lab is a line in the budget and a constraint on the schedule.
Filming in a classroom, history display on the wall
What it does to the schedule
Three effects, all of them upstream.
Prep grows, shoot shrinks
Camera test, lens test, stock test and a lab test, plus the day spent watching them. Productions that cut prep to protect shoot days usually lose more shoot days later.
Rehearsal becomes schedulable work
On film, rehearsal is not goodwill, it is the mechanism that controls the stock line. It belongs in the schedule as a line item, with the cast availability to make it real.
The day has hard stops in it
Magazine changes are not interruptions, they are the rhythm. A 1st AD who plans around run times keeps the day; one who is surprised by them loses it.
The contingency conversation
Budget for the thing that actually goes wrong.
The failure people fear is a lost roll. The failure that actually happens is a ratio quietly running over, a week at a time, until the stock and processing lines are gone and the last block of the schedule has to be rewritten.
Hold contingency against the ratio, review it weekly against the camera reports, and the rest of the format takes care of itself.
