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Budgets for pitches.

post #1 of 8
7/27/10 at 2:38am
Thread Starter 
I'm a bit out of my element helping a friend prepare a budget for a webseries she's pitching. All my work with budgets has been on the production side. I'm not actually sure on how to prepare or even present a budget for a pitch. Anyone have any tips?
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post #2 of 8
7/27/10 at 2:45am
I can't help much when it comes to this subject, but I want to mention that I also would be incredibly grateful for any advice or knowledge.
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post #3 of 8
7/27/10 at 3:56am
This is a pitch to investors?
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post #4 of 8
7/27/10 at 3:58am
Thread Starter 
Yup.
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post #5 of 8
7/27/10 at 4:41am
Well, hopefully another Chewer out there will have more useful advice than me... barring that, and without knowing the full context of your friend's pitch, I'd advise just proceeding like you normally would.

I've been in a couple pitch meetings where the budget was involved. In one the dude had it all Kinkos'd out, bound and so forth, multiple copies for everyone to look at and keep. In another meeting it was just on someone's laptop for people to poke over casually. That first one was for a web series, actually. The second was a film. Though I don't think that necessarily means anything.

Wish I had more direct experience for ya.
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post #6 of 8
7/27/10 at 5:03am
A potentially even more helpful question. Where to look for investment opportunities.
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post #7 of 8
7/27/10 at 6:14am
My company makes commercials, not webseries so it might not be quite the same but a pitch budget is pretty straight-forward. It's just an estimate of what the job would take to produce, incorporating everyone's quotes and made as transparent as possible. It's not that different from a production budget - just subdivide it into headings such as Production, Editing, Animation, Audio etc. to make it easy to read for your investor.

It all really depends on who makes the series and what resources she plans on using. People and computers, for example, can be charged out by day, by hour or just by finished product. You can allow amounts for stuff like telephones, faxing, couriers, mini DV tapes, quicktime encoding, uploading etc. Also, we generally add Tax and a 10-20% company markup at the bottom.

As far as presenting goes, we just print out from Excel and give to the client to keep.

Anyways, you're welcome to PM me and I can send you one of our budgets if you think that'd be helpful.
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post #8 of 8
7/27/10 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeman View Post
A potentially even more helpful question. Where to look for investment opportunities.
Anywhere and everywhere. If you're not inclined to hit up friends and family, or in a position to hit up production companies, the best private sector source for indie $ is upper-middle-class people who either have some interest in the arts or are maybe just kinda bored and looking for new adventures. Most smart people know investing $ in a movie isn't actually a good way to make $. They're doing it for the prestige or fun. Unfortunately, with the economic implosion still happening, these people are not as prevalent as they were several years ago.

As for locating such people: you could try and figure out who in your area invested in previous projects (be they film or whatever). An easier way is to work personal connections. Even if you don't know someone who might be interested, you probably know someone who knows someone who would. And people with $ usually know similar people with $, and they can be instrumental is helping gather more financing.
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