The production budget is prepared in two phases. As noted in Chapter 6, a draft budget is calculated on the basis of known components of the production and educated guesses of what the unknown components are likely to be. The purpose of this budget is to get a preliminary indication of the cost of the production so that the appropriate amount of funding can be pursued. When funding has been secured and the decision has been made to commence production, the formal (or ‘final’) working budget is arrived at by finetuning the draft budget or its successors. By the commencement of pre-production, some of the previously uncertain components of the production will have crystallised and can be costed with greater reliability. However, there will still be components whose cost is uncertain. The pre-production process puts cost estimates on these as they are decided.

The bottom line at this stage of the budget, the total cost of the production, is fixed. It is the total of funds that have been raised for the production, whether that figure is greater than, less than or the same as the total for the draft production budget. This figure cannot rise as the production budget consolidates because there are no funds to support its increase. The decisions that clarify previously uncertain costs are made with the knowledge of the amount earmarked for them in the draft budget.