A presentation on how we would spend our budget in Media Studies

1. A P R E S E N T A T I O N B Y T O M C A R T W R I G H T , D A L E L U C K ,
M A R C U S L A A D I K A N D S A M R E E D E R
FILM BUDGETS

2. DIRECTORS
• Film directors have very varying costs depending on
their reputation within the industry.
• In order to keep within the £40 million budget,
we’ve decided that we will buy a reasonably well
known director in order to increase the likelihood of
the film being a success.
• We would go for an A List director who costs…

3. CAST + CREW
• After some research, we found that Bruce Willis, the star of the
previous Die Hard films, costs around £20-25 million just to hire – we
don’t have that kind of cash to throw around. Instead, we’ve
decided to get a relatively unknown C-List actor who can act up to
the role Bruce Willis moulded so well.
• This actor will, of course, play a different character within the movie,
for which the actual storyline will have to be changed to follow him
rather than John McClaine.
• The C-List actor we will hire, along with various random extras that
we’ll probably hire from nearby, will probably want to be paid
around…

4. LOCATION
• We’ll be wanting to set the film somewhere in
Europe, in order to have a valid plot reason for not
coming across the character of John McClaine.
• This will likely mean the price to shoot the film at this
location will be…

5. EQUIPMENT
• For all the cameras, tripods, etcetera., the final
price of the equipment will probably, at most, come
to a total of…

6. PROPS
• For props and the like – this includes a few cars that
will probably be destroyed, actual sets, etcetera. –
the price will probably come to around…

7. SCRIPT WRITERS
• We’ll need a reasonably good screenwriter in order
to increase the chance that the film will be a
commercial success.
• The price of a good screenwriter will probably
come to around…

8. ADVERTISING
• Over recent years, the price of television advertising has
decreased dramatically – also, as a personal thought that
many more people see television advertisements than
billboards, we’ve decided to pay for only adverts, in order to
save money in the budget for other things.
• The price of advertising for the television on a relatively well
known set of channels would come to around 50-100,000
each, so main channels (E4, BBC1, ITV, Dave and Sky One)
were chosen and the final price for that would come to
around...

9. RIGHTS
• Whilst we couldn’t find an exact amount, the rights to make a
Die Hard film would most likely be rather expensive due to how
famous the film itself is. We couldn’t seem to find general
prices for anything other than books, and they were around
$10 million – we don’t have that kind of cash to spare (but still
plenty more than Hannah), so I’m hoping this is about right.
• We estimated the price for these rights to be...

10. TRANSPORT
• The film would be set in one area, so not much will
need to be spent on transport. In fact, it won’t
come to much at all, because auditions will
probably be set in the area that we would film the
majority of the movie in, so at the very most we’d
be looking at about...

11. EDITING
• Having looked at various sites prices, generally people charge
by the hour. The best one we came across was £100 per hour,
with £50 extra for DVD/CD production – the prices for 2D/3D
animation (which may or may not be needed at some point)
wasn’t listed. With the quality needed to create a high-profile
film such as Die Hard (BOOM!), it would likely require a lot of
time and effort to make.
• I don’t know if this would be an exaggeration or not, but we’d
be willing to pay around...

12. COSTUME + MAKE UP
• Not much shall be spent on costume – not many designer
labels, if any. In order to keep with the level of grimy realism of
the past Die Hard films, we thought it would be better than the
crew were simply asked to not doll themselves up in the
morning, and we’d throw some clothes on them when they
got there. However, the sheer amount of extras and the like
will make the price for clothing sore (sp?).
• With the low price of clothes, and the lack of make up and
the like, we’d estimate this to be around...

13. HOTELS
• The hotels will probably need to be relatively good,
though somewhat cheap. The production would
probably take over around 24 months, after
everything else had been sorted out, which at
average prices of ~100 pounds a night would be
around...

14. OTHER USES
• With over 6 million left in the budget, the remaining
funds could be spread equally between the
different sections to boost production in specific
ways – for example, advertising could probably do
with billboards, the cast could now include
stuntmen, the props could have LOTSA SPLODEY
CARS and the costume department could perhaps
be dolled up a tad.
• This entire presentation is probably wrong. Oh well.