Writing for a budget

A period piece that I read recently had a bit of a problem. The first fifteen or twenty pages would have been big budget by any standards. It was an interesting concept that would be difficult to market, like most any period piece. For this script, the first fifteen or twenty pages of the script would have had a bigger budget than all of the rest of the script. That would definitely be a problem.

One of the big problems that I had with the script was the recurrent thought about how that first 15 or 20 pages was too costly and needed to be dumped. It bugged me nearly the entire time that I read the script. The story would be better and more marketable without that initial costly drama, but would it be as entertaining?

Then I got to thinking that the plot points wouldn't be correct with most of the first act gone. Maybe it's too much thinking going into a spec script that isn't my spec script! Since I do have a period piece script, the film budget is something that I'll never be able to avoid when reading any period piece or other screenplay.

When it came to my own period piece, the entire script was written with an eye to keeping the budget down and to still be entertaining. And I've had some legitimate interest in the script. Would I have had the same interest if the script started off with 15 or 20 pages with a big budget? No, I don't think it would and doubt it would get read much past that point.

This regard to cost has even extended itself to actual movies. The other night, I watched the original BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) and kept wondering how much it would cost to even get all those 50's and 40's automobiles in one place to shoot the film. So it looks like I'm going to have that budget consideration run through my head even while watching movies. Damn it!

I recall reading a comment by screenwriter Kyle Killen. Kyle wrote THE BEAVER that was recently being shot in New York City. His script was pretty low budget from what I remember from reading it. His comment was something funny about how much money was being spent to create the Beaver hand puppet(s). The first thought to hit my mind was that the cost was probably minimal compared to what Mel Gibson would make for playing the lead. Hopefully Kyle makes a killing on the movie and kicks out a couple more entertaining scripts that make it to film.

What I'm getting at here is that a period piece or any spec script should be written to control the budget. Think about how much it will actually cost to create the world you've created in a scene. I know it doesn't matter as much for CGI (cartoons), but most of those are remakes of something that wasn't originally a movie. My point with this entire post is a script can contain scenes that are either prohibitively expensive or not technically feasible without turning it into a cartoon. That can ruin any chance your script has and can stop a read at page 15. Make sure to consider the budget while creating your masterpiece..