Film Budget Software, in Your Own Currency

Built from your actual production, not a template

Because the budget draws from your script breakdown and shooting schedule, line items reflect your real cast size, location count, and shoot-day count — not a generic template you have to manually adjust line by line. Cast Rates and Crew Rates tools feed realistic department costs into the same budget.

Plan for what goes wrong, not just what goes right

The Contingency Planner adds a realistic buffer on top of your top-sheet, and — for our free Budget Estimator tool specifically — everything exports as a print-ready PDF you can hand to a producer or financier directly.

The top sheet: your budget in one page

A top sheet is the one-page summary a producer or financier actually reads first — pre-production, production, and post-production totals rolled up from every department, without the line-by-line detail underneath. It's the document that answers "what does this film cost" in under a minute, before anyone drills into camera-department rentals or a specific location's permit fees.

The Story Maker generates the top sheet directly from your full line-item budget, so the summary always matches the detail underneath it — there's no separate top-sheet document to keep manually reconciled with the department-level numbers as your script and schedule change.

Film budget template, built from your actual script

Most film budget templates start as a blank spreadsheet with department rows you fill in by hand, estimating cast size and shoot days from memory. The Story Maker's budget starts instead from your script breakdown and shooting schedule, so the template's line items — cast, crew, locations, equipment — are pre-populated with your production's real numbers rather than generic placeholder rows you have to edit one by one.

If you just want a quick template without building a full script breakdown first, the free Budget Estimator gives you the same top-sheet structure — pre-production, production, post-production — as an instant, downloadable starting point.

Above-the-line and below-the-line costs

A film budget conventionally splits into above-the-line costs — the creative deals: writer, director, producer, and principal cast — and below-the-line costs — everything needed to physically produce and finish the film: crew, equipment, locations, post-production. The split matters because above-the-line costs are usually negotiated individually per project, while below-the-line costs scale more predictably with shoot days, cast size, and location count.

The Story Maker's budget keeps both categories connected to your actual production data: below-the-line line items pull from your script breakdown and schedule, while above-the-line deals are tracked alongside them in the same top sheet — so a financier sees the full picture in one document instead of two disconnected spreadsheets.

Top sheet, line items, and numbers that reconcile

A budget is two documents that must agree: the top sheet a financier reads and the line items a line producer works from. When they are maintained separately they diverge, and a top sheet that does not reconcile against its detail is the fastest way to lose a financier's confidence in the rest of the plan.

Both views are built from the same breakdown and schedule data — element counts drive department lines, cast holds drive cast cost, shoot days drive crew and equipment. Change the schedule and the budget sees it rather than being reconciled by hand afterwards.

Your own currency, not a converted approximation

A production plan denominated in the wrong currency is a rough estimate wearing a suit. Crew rates, equipment hire and location fees are all local, and converting a foreign total at the end hides the fact that the underlying assumptions were someone else's market.

Budgets are built in your own currency, with 110 supported at checkout, and cast and crew rates use regional bands so the figures reflect where you are actually producing.

Frequently asked questions