Welcome to the New Era of Line Production

Posted July 21st, 2011 by Lou

The first commercial I ever directed was low, low budget. It was a public service announcement for breast cancer awareness that became my vehicle for breaking into directing. If it wasn’t for the extraordinary generosity of the crew and the talent, as well as the amazing ability of my line producer to stretch every penny to its absolute maximum, the spot would have never made it to television.

In addition to the practical experience of going through the process of creating a commercial, I also learned a little bit about the hyper efficiency of the line producer. They live in a world of numbers that are constantly juggling. One department may have too much money and another department is in the red. Moving the funds around is how the producers, the unsung heroes of photography production, pull off the miracles time and time again.

Our new Blinkbid production module is based on how line producers work managing photography or commercial productions. And as much as it is a tool targeted directly at producers, non producers will benefit from the feature as well to increase the profits of their jobs. With budgets getting tighter, efficient money management is a big part of putting more money in your pocket, and it is also a big part of getting paid more quickly because your production numbers and support is organized.

Managing Money During Production

Take a look at your estimate. Each line item is going to have a bunch of costs associated with it. For example a props line item in your estimate which totals $1,500.00 will have many receipts from a few different prop rental houses. Keeping mind that your agency approved numbers are an estimate you may only end up spending $900.00 on prop rentals. So what happens with that left over money?

As you add receipts to the other line items in the production module of Blinkbid, one like the meals line item, may have gone over budget by a few hundred dollars. Knowing that there is no more money to get from the client, you have to make up that shortfall. In the production module you can click on the negative budget balance of the meals line item and then click on the highlighted budget surplus of the props line item and grab some of the money to balance your shortfall.

You can do this with multiple line items until you’ve depleted the surplus. And, in case you need to get some money back into the props budget because of a last minute addition, you simply click on the negative number in the adjustment column to reclaim some cash.

Tracking Actual and Anticipated Receipts

In the course of a job there are two types of receipts or invoices: actual and anticipated. For example when your production assistant comes back from the prop house with rental receipts, those are actual, in-hand receipts that you can add to the props line item in the production module.

On the other hand, a crew member like a makeup artist probably won’t give you an invoice until after the job wraps. Since you’ve already agreed on a price, however, you can enter that number under the makeup artist line item as an anticipated receipt which will be indicated in orange. Now you have their expense deducted from your budget so you can see how your bottom line is doing, but you also know that you need to get an invoice from them to turn into the agency (if they request support [receipts]).

Adding Unexpected Expenses and Overages

Also in the course of a job, you may find that your estimate wasn’t as tight as it should be, or, you may need to add some extra expenses to ensure a successful shoot. Unfortunately these expenses fall upon your shoulders to pay for. By clicking the Quick Add Item button you’ll see the item catalog pop out from the right. Add the additional line item, like a second assistant, or an additional PA and the line item shows up in your production sheet with a zero budget. The item is indicated as an additional expense in the left column with a black mark. As soon as you add a receipt to that line item, the budget balance for that item will indicate a negative amount. You can then try and balance that line item budget with a surplus from another item.

If a client requests additional production elements for your shoot you follow the same process to add the line item from the catalog, except these items will be indicated in the left column in blue, and you can assign them a budget amount.

If you add additional usage fees to the production those will also be indicated in blue, but they will not impact the bottom line of the budget.

To have your client requested overages approved click the print button and choose overages. Once the client has signed off on the overages, you can click the blue marks in the left column to clear them as approved.

To be certain line producers are truly magical people. It’s not only their ability to manage numbers, but it is the vast network of people they know, relationships they have and inherent, uncanny capacity to solve extraordinary problems in background while you worry about being creative in the foreground.

As much as the producer module in Blinkbid will help you produce your own projects, we recommend hiring a line producer at every opportunity. Our workflow is designed to help producers help you get the job done quickly and efficiently. I’m going to take you through a typical scenario so you can see how to get the most out of our new feature.

Share the Estimate with the Team

As you already know you can share an estimate back and forth with your agent via the share option in Blinkbid. Once your estimate is approved use the same share feature to send the estimate to your producer. Of course, you can hide your fees if you’d like, the line producer doesn’t need that information in order to produce the job.

Once your line producer downloads the job and the estimate he or she can transfer that estimate to the production window and utilize the tools outlined above to manage the job. When it’s time to wrap the job the producer can click on the production status button to get some suggestions on which line items still need some attention. When the producer is satisfied, he or she can print out a top sheet for each category in order to quickly make a wrap book to give to you, to give to the agency.

Not all jobs have to show support, but if you do, we just made it heck of a lot easier to do so.

The producer then clicks the upload button to upload the production sheet to the server. All you need to do now is click the download button in the production window of the job you’re working on to download it into your copy of Blinkbid.

Creating an invoice is as easy as clicking the transfer button. You’ll see that the invoice is now populated with actual amounts from the job, as well as any additional fees and your fees from the estimate window.

You can now make any last minute adjustments and send the invoice off to your client.

Don’t have Blinkbid yet? Download our estimating, production and invoicing software today and try it free for two weeks, or purchase it before August 5 and save $30! Use promo code 8244.

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