Digital Video Business Budget

Most online businesses have incorporated digital budgeting in planning the upcoming investment at a specific period. Organizations have advanced in technology in ensuring digital businesses run efficiently. One of the most advanced digital businesses is video freelancing through social platforms. This includes marketing oneself in social media applications and obtaining direct clients through samples of work done (Oziemblo, 2020). However, despite a rising trend in the digital video business, various factors determine the business’s long-term success. Before execution, a well-prepared budget plan assists entrepreneurs inefficiently in spending costs on a diversified channel. This research study outlines the various approaches to a pre-determined budget plan of $ 10,000 for a start-up in my digital-video freelancing business.

My digital video business intends to run for one year, narrowed down into weeks and days. Research activities intend to take place within eight weeks during the working period. Preparations are budgeted to run within a total of 6 weeks (est. 42 days). These preparation days include preparing setups for the production crew and pre-production developments. Shooting activities will run for 35 days, while post activities will run for 24 weeks. These post activities include editing and post-production. This is the phase whereby all footage is put together, and an editor pieces them together. During this phase, I intend to incorporate all forms and elements for post-production, including sound mixers, rough cuts using Adobe Premiere, visual effects, and color corrections. The weekly plans are scheduled to make it easier to react quickly and time management.

The table below shows the breakdown of these activities as indicated in the budget worksheet.

My budget is divided into two major aspects; Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL). Above Line expenses include three major expenses intended to be incurred during onboarding. This includes pre-production and development, producing staff, and acquiring rights, music, and talents. However, my budget work plan will incur pre-production costs and costs related to acquiring rights, music, and talents. The pre-production costs relate to costs incurred during research activities that accumulate to $50. Acquisition of rights includes story rights, film clip licenses, stills licenses, composers, and preview fees, among other expenses that accumulate to $537.5. Above Line, activities add up to $587.5 of the budget estimates of the entire framework.

Second, Below the Line activities include activities intended to be part of the filming processes and all expenses incurred during post-production. My work plan incorporates five main approaches to the film-making process. Production expenses include equipment and activity costs incurred during production. Estimated camera costs will include Panasonic DVX100a 24P or similar to be bought at Amazon, tripod, and camera accessories that will cost $10.90. Sound equipment will be rented for 25 days at $2.50 per day. Estimates prices for lighting activities are set to accumulate to $307.6 with expandable rented in for $4.50 per day—the total estimated amount incurred by production expenses accumulated to $8,010.50.

Post-production activities include activities involved after the production process. These expenses include editorial equipment and facilities costs, editorial supplies, graphics, motional controls, and color correction activities. The editorial equipment and facilities include expenses involved within the final cut systems, hard drives intended to be used, the editing system, equipment repairs and maintenance, technical support, and rent to the editing room and working space. The estimated costs incurred during the post-production processes will be $4,983. Like drivers should not drive on the roads without car insurance, video filmmakers and production should obtain insurance cover for video coverage to get it on silver screens. My budget work plan entails 4 types of insurance expenses for video coverage. I intend to obtain a general liability insurance package for $50, errors and commission insurance for $35, negative insurance for $43, and business auto liability for $41. The negative liability is insurance coverage against all risks, including damages, tape stock, developed and undeveloped exposed films, soundtracks, and any direct physical losses that might be incurred during video production (Groner, 2016). The total budgeted costs for insurance cover are estimated to be $169.

Office and administration costs include all supplies and equipment intended to be used during post-production processes. These expenses include office supplies, postage, telephone expenses, rent to the production office, stills reproductions, website names, legal expenses, bank charges, designs, and coding activities, among others spelled out within the budget. The total costs for office and administration expenses are estimated to be $2 082. Other additional items, such as transcription activities, are estimated to be $48. These costs add up to $12,322.50 as the total budgeted costs for Below the Line (BTL) activities.

In order to meet the total budgeted costs, I intend to buy the equipment from the Amazon e-commerce website due to their nature of favorable pricing. However, I cross-checked other vendors, and most of them had no variety of equipment I needed to start up my business. However, my budget exceeded more than $10,000 due to mandatory increased production expenses in starting the digital video business. However, to cut expenses, there will be no costs of hiring new staff such as producers, editors, writers, make-up crew, or other personnel hence reducing the budget estimate to $12,910.

References

Groner, M. (2016, July 21). Negative film and faulty stock / Equipment insurance explained. Front Row Insurance Brokerspage (English Canada). https://www.frontrowinsurance.com/articles/negative-film-and-faulty-stock-insurance-explained

Oziemblo, A. (2020). Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/01/07/the-evolution-of-digital-marketing-to-video-marketing/?sh=7af65a895298