Writing to Budget
Writing to Budget from Pipeline Artists Symposium on Vimeo.
If you want to be a professional screenwriter you need to realize a couple of things.
- 95% of a screenwriter’s income come from works for hire. Rewrites, adaptations, writing for hire.
- Each one of those jobs comes with a budget to write to.
Every time you get a writing assignment of any kind it comes with what the budget for the film is, and you are expected to write to that budget. Every writer at some point gets these same limitations.
You either learn to write to them or they hire someone else who can.
There are a lot of ways to write to budget while still being as creative as you can be. You just need to learn them.
Bob Saenz will share the tips he personally uses to write to budget.
[Recorded August 5, 2024]
What Attendees Have Said ...
"Great insight from a business professional! A well presented webinar that sticked to the topic plus Q&A at the end."
"Bob gave detailed examples of what is important to know about budgets when writing a script. His book, That's Not the Way It's Done, summarized some things I had not learned in my multitude of writing classes. This webinar on budgets taught even more things I would not have thought of, such as the cost of moving trucks from location to location. I always look for his Sunday posts on Facebook. He's definitely a working expert."
Bob Saenz is a screenwriter living in Nashville, with 21 credited produced films. Works include the comedy, Extracurricular Activities, Help for the Holidays, Rescuing Madison, A Christmas Star, The Right Girl, Sound of Christmas, Church People, The Christmas Yule Blog and The Farmer and the Belle. He regularly does rewrites and polishes on film and TV projects for Producers and Production Companies. He speaks and teaches at Film Festivals and Writers' Conferences across the country and is the author of two books—the popular screenwriting book, That’s Not the Way It Works: A Non-Nonsense Guide to the Craft and Business of Screenwriting, and a Young Adult novel, Jessica's Vampire Diary.