The script breakdown is one of the foundational documents of any film production as the initial budget and scheduling estimates are calculated from it. 

It’s so important to learn how to make your script breakdowns faster and more efficient whether you’re a complete beginner or maybe haven’t done one in a while and just need a refresher.

So, we sat down with Michael Wormser, a film and TV producer with fifteen years of experience under his belt and credits for productions of all sizes, and asked him how he does it. 

He talked to us about his process, what elements are easiest to miss, and how script breakdowns scale with larger budgets.

How to initially approach script breakdowns

Read the script from front to back without any tags or notes. This is the most important pass of the many to follow, as it allows for an understanding of the entire story and its context.

This context is crucial for an accurate script breakdown. It's so important, Michael gives himself a day, sometimes two, to digest this information.

After that, he does his first tagging pass for important elements like locations, cast, props, costumes, and stunts… Basically, anything that will have to be produced to make the film happen. On the next pass he’ll look for any elements he may have missed. 

Then he’ll do it again.

As he goes through these passes, his understanding of the production’s needs evolves. He catches elements he missed. This process goes on for about a week before he's ready to begin his initial budget estimation.

“Each time I go in, I learn something new about the script. I don’t believe it’s good to rush through that process. It’s the little details that shape the budget and the overall story.”

✅ Know when your initial script breakdown is ready to turn into a budget estimate

An important skill in how to make a script breakdown is knowing when it's time to stop reading and make your initial budget estimate. 

This breakdown and budget estimate is meant to attract financing and talent and Michael says it doesn't need to be 100% accurate at this stage. 

Further breakdowns by line producers and department heads will help you build a budget accurate enough to produce from.

So for the initial script breakdown, it’s important to focus on the areas that will affect the budget the most: cast and locations. Missing a costume change may not affect your budget meaningfully at this point but missing a location definitely will.

For cast, a key is to account for every speaking part, every day player. It’s easy to spot the important characters, but there can be up to forty day players in many productions. 

Characters like waitresses, ambulance drivers, receptionists, and so on may only have a single line, but that doesn’t mean they should be overlooked. Missing one of those can force you to restart the casting process and cost you a lot of money.

Michael also believes it’s important to know how much background and extras you’ll need. There's a big difference between a small crowd of ten people in a mall when it opens versus filling out something like Times Square.

Locations are also notoriously expensive. 

While you can save money by combining them - say building a doctor’s office in an unused room of a house you’ve rented - Michael finds it’s best to make a list of locations and the true costs associated with them. 

Don’t assume you can make those kinds of savings until you’ve scouted the locations and are sure it’s even possible in the first place.

After getting the list of locations and true associated costs, Michael notes the difference between the interior and exterior of a location. Treat them as separate locations. Sometimes they literally will be. There are many examples in film of a building’s interior being in a different state than their exterior.

Take the Ghostbusters firehouse location as an example. 

Exterior Ghostbusters firehouse location

Interior of the firehouse, shot in a completely different location

Even if you can use the same building, there may be extra costs associated with exterior shooting. These include additional permission from the owner or sidewalk permits from the city. It's always best to find savings later than assume them up front.

✅ Understand the director’s vision

The final step in the initial script breakdown is to speak with the director. This can happen early on or at the end, depending on whether the director is already attached or hired later. Either way, speak to the director to make sure you’re creating a script breakdown for his vision for the movie, not yours.

Michael warns that this can raise your budget, but it can also save you money because you’re budgeting for a more complicated shot than the director needs.

He told us a story of a scene set in a corporate boardroom. In the script, a character hiding in an air duct crashes through the ceiling and onto the conference table in front of everyone.

In his initial script breakdown, Michael accounted for a full stunt team, rigging, and rehearsal time. When he spoke to the director, he discovered they wouldn't need any of it.

The director's plan was to film the faces of people sitting at the table reacting to this fall. He would then cut back to the character lying on the table, surrounded by ceiling debris. 

No stunt team needed.

Tips for better script breakdowns

Michael also gave us several tips on how to make script breakdowns faster and more accurate. 

✅ Always be learning

Always approach your script breakdowns with a growth mindset. No matter how experienced you get, there’s always more to learn. At the start of your career, your cost estimates will come from research. You'll move slowly, but you'll be learning all the while.

The more script breakdowns you do, the more these estimates become second nature. This is especially true if you’re creating opportunities for conversations. The goal is to learn to think like the department heads.

As your budgets grow…$5 million to $10 million, $20 million to $50 million, so on and so forth, you'll encounter new elements you've never worked with before. You'll find yourself researching again. That's good! There will always be more to learn.

Even if you’ve been doing script breakdowns with big budgets for years, remember to stay curious and never be afraid to ask questions if you don’t know the answer. 

✅ Create opportunities for conversations

After department heads, they will do their own script breakdowns and provide their own budget estimations. These will be more focused (and possibly more accurate) because they can drill a mile deep in one area.

They might find ways to save money, or they might tell you that your proposed budget will never work. 

Never let this conversation turn into an argument. Instead, learn from your department heads and their years of experience. 

Again, ask questions.

Why do they need those items in their budgets? 

Are there ways they can do without? 

A producer’s job is to be a support system of sorts. Let the department heads have the authority to manage their own plan, and try not to fall into micromanaging them. 

Sometimes this requires compromises. You will always help your argument by being transparent about your estimates. You know the story context, so you know what moments matter. There may be creative solutions if you can help the department heads understand what they don't know. 

You’re already paying them for their expertise. Don’t waste it.

✅ Understand the importance of extraneous costs

According to Michael, off-camera costs or “extraneous costs” are easy to miss when doing a script breakdown.

These are the costs associated with elements that don’t appear on the screen. He gave us an example to illustrate this concept.

“Let’s say we’ve got a big stunt sequence, a huge bar fight that will need a twenty-person stunt team. We know we have to budget for the place they’re fighting in, the stunt team, and the rehearsal time.”

But that stunt team will need somewhere to park when they show up. “If there’s not enough parking for them at the location, we’ll have to set up an off-site parking location. That will also mean we’ll need to rent one or two vans to drive them to base camp, and hire drivers for those vans. We’ll need extra catering and craft services on the day for that team. We might even need an extra security guard to keep everything locked down, another trailer for make-up, and an extra generator to run that trailer.”

This is a key insight in how to make a script breakdown. Understanding that it's not only the cost of each element you tag but also recognizing the extraneous costs that support each element as well.

Take the time to estimate the extraneous costs of each element for your script breakdown and consider how much the element will really cost once you account for everything necessary to support it.

This will become more important as your budget grows.

✅ Scale up for larger budgets

The basic script breakdown process remains the same as budgets scale up...Read for context, identify elements, and understand the director’s vision.

However, each line-item becomes more challenging the larger the budget. That’s because each line-item becomes more surgical and detailed. Larger budgets require an in-depth understanding of union fringes, crew rates, and payroll.

They also, by their nature, have more of those extraneous costs. 

On a smaller production, there might be a single equipment truck. Larger budgets won't just need more equipment, they'll need separate trucks for the camera, lighting, and sound crews.

Take Michael's example twenty-person bar brawl and scale it up. Now, it's a pitched superhero battle. Explosions, people flying in the air, and clashes between characters with superhuman strength.

It’s easy to see how this increases the overhead. Larger teams mean larger extraneous costs such as parking and transportation. But it’s not as simple as adding more money to the budget. It’s important to understand the director’s vision so you spend your money wisely.

Consider those people hurtling through the air. It could be done several ways, but you need to understand the director's vision to tag it. 

Are those characters in the background of the fight scene and not that important? 

That’s a CGI effect. No actors or stunt team needed.

But if they’re the focus of the scene, then a CGI effect might not cut it. You may need to get actors in harnesses, or budget green screen time.

How can I use script breakdown software?

The most important element in how to make a script breakdown is your knowledge, skill, and judgment. 

Script breakdown software can help your process, but only if used smartly. 

Michael shared two tips for how you can get the most out of your tools.

✅ Export quick lists from Final Draft

Final Draft is the industry standard for screenwriting. Thanks to its tagging features, you may even be using it as script breakdown software. You can also produce faster location and cast estimations with Final Draft's reporting features.

The Cast Report can produce a list of characters ordered by how often they appear or speak. This info can be used to quickly estimate which cast members will need the most set time. 

The Location Report does the same thing for locations. You’ll be able to identify every location you need and how often you’ll need to go back there. Frequently used places will need extra time and attention. As an example, it might be cheaper to build a fake restaurant on a soundstage if you’ll be spending a quarter of the film there.

You can also look at the bottom of your list - people who rarely show up and locations only visited once. Can those elements be cut or combined with others? 

For instance, are multiple police officers needed to speak at a crime scene? Save money by giving some or all of their dialogue to the detective character. This is, if of course it aligns with the directions vision as well. 

✅ Use AI script breakdown software thoughtfully

Michael has tested several AI script breakdown software programs. He was impressed by their functionality and speed, but emphasizes that they are still tools and cannot currently fully replace reading the script yourself.

AI script breakdown software is excellent for quick and dirty budgets. It can tag major elements in ten minutes that would take Michael a week. If all you need is a very rough estimate, they can be perfect.

Still, AI script breakdown software isn’t (yet) to the point of understanding story context or a director’s vision. It only knows that an item is a prop, not how important that prop is. 

“The AI can tell me that I need a kitchen knife on page forty-three. It can’t tell me if that knife will be used to carve a turkey or by a slasher to kill fourteen people, and that’s a big difference to the prop department.”

That’s a wrap

Start improving your script breakdowns today by internalizing these three key lessons from Michael:

• Understand the director’s vision and the context of the story so you can tag elements and estimate budgets accurately. 
• Remember that every element on the page is supported by costs that never appear on camera. 
• Listen, learn and ask questions. There’s always more to understand and make the next

Do those, and you’ll be on your way to script breakdown success whether you’re just starting out or getting back on the script breakdown horse again.