3 Ways to Save Money on Your Film Catering Budget

Get to work in the Kitchen
If you do not know how to prepare meals, your film can end up costing more than you can afford. This isn’t because you have to feed the cast and crew but because you will be depending on someone else to do it whether it is a film caterer, McDonalds or Betty Crocker. Consider the expenses that fast-food or other professionally prepared food will reqire. A large pizza costs around $15 OR maybe you can get that "3 for $5" deal that Dominoes, Pizza Hut, or some othe popular restaurant is promoting. A professional film caterer or even an experienced caterer who has not worked on films could cost you $300 at the minimum....and that's just to feed a small film crew.

Taking these numbers into account, cooking food for your cast and crew members can save you between $15 and $300. Just think about all of the film festivals you can enter into OR all of the extra postcards you can get printed to promote your movie!

Be a Coupon-clipping filmmaker
You know those coupons that come in the newspaper with display ads that say "Save 30 cents off of this when you buy two" and "Save 50 cents off of this and that"? Well, the time has come to start collecting them in order to save money on your film. This concept may seem corny and a waste of time to many filmmakers. Of course, you have other cool, enjoyable or otherwise more important tasks to complete during production such as call sheets, movie script changes, Mapquest directions to backup locations and pre-ordering coffee to keep you awake overnight so that a rough-cut of the film can be edited before Sundance rolls around. STILL, coupons can help you save money on your film throughout the entire production schedule. Those cents and dollars add up and it would be much better to have a grocery bill of $77 instead of $112 when you are at the check-out counter.

Adjust Your Shooting Schedule
Everyone may not have to be on your film set at the same time. Do you really need ALL of the main actors, extras, their friends, boyfriends, family members and that weird guy who cleans your lighting kit on the weekends at your 8a.m. shoot for one schoolyard scene? The answer is clearly no. If you reference the script, that scene probably has only four characters in it, which requires ONLY the four actors who are playing those characters and whoever else is actually WORKING on your film. By working, I mean contributing some sort of technical or creative skill to the project, which is obviously needed or else you wouldn't have hired him or her in the first place. I'll get to the point here by letting you know one key move that will save you at least $50 on your film:

Only schedule the people who are actually IN or WORKING on a particular scene.

So you want to be like hot indie directors who shoot like 100 setups per day? That's fine too, but everyone still does not have to be on your set at once. Scheduling a few actors and crew members to arrive one hour later than originally called for will have a nice impact on your film budget. Why serve pancakes to people who are still going to sit around for hours until their scene is actually being setup and then (and ONLY then) they will contribute to your film and be worth those $5 pancakes that you bought from McDonalds. Changing the call sheet for certain cast and crew members can significantly lower your production budget in the food category.

When I started this post, the list was counted at 5. I am tired and do not feel like figuring out what the other two were. So, chew on this for the time being and more ways to save money on your film catering budget will be posted in the near future.

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