Budgeting for your web series is a very important thing to do without a budget you will be clueless and spend needlessly. Your team can go out of control with their creativity and the director can go for needlessly lavish sets and costume which will lead to higher production costs and make the films final price expensive. You may not get buyers for the film and might even have to sell it fora loss. The budget also is important as payments will have to be made on a regular basis, cost people in the web series space are a freelancer and it is important to pay them of time. The shooting can be stalled and things will get haywire if the budget is not kept in mind. After the screenplay and has been done and casting completed, you can freeze the location for the shoot. This comes under pre-production.
Pre-production:
This is when you have zeroed in on the content, my web series is made on my book I also Slept with Rashmi Verma and is an erotic college campus love story. That is the theme of the content. After this the laugh of the web-series is decided, we choose five episodes of 20 min duration each. The web series will have three songs. The casting was done and 15 actors cast, 6 of them were primary cast and the rest 9 secondary cast. The shooting location is a college campus compound with classes block, canteen, hostel, and an open dance and party area there with a playing field.
Production: Here we decided we will finish the shoot in 14 days and wrap up one episode a day keeping a few days as rest days or extra days if need be. The Backend production team will be of a maximum of 10 people. Which Includes
1 Director
2 Assistant Director
3 Cameraman plus assistant
4 Makeup man
5 Costumes designer
6 Sound recording
7 Lighting
8 Setting plus one assistant
9 Continuity
The arrangement for the actors to stay will be made in the campus college area on a twin sharing
basis.
Travel and Food: For two weeks people will have to be feed and their travel expenses will have to be paid. This is a major cost and is often ignored but needs to be factored into your budget.
Post Production: Editing, sound and background score, mixing of songs, recording, etc.
Launch and Promotion: This should be at least 25% of your total budget as without promotion and marketing no one will know your web-series is around.
If you have not got channel approval, you can launch on amazon prime and YouTube, but don’t bet on making any money, it’s a very long term strategy, do it if no one is buying your film. You can look to do private shows also and charge for tickets or maybe send the film for festivals to get more mileage. You may get more work in production and the movie can be like a showreel to get more production work. But unless your concept has not been bought you are on your own as to how to launch it. The current options will give you visibility but there is no money in it at least in the short term. Keep that in mind.
