The first time I heard of a 50/50 film budget, I was like, yeah, right, like I’m going to spend 50% of my production budget on M&A (Marketing & Advertising).
That was the fall of 2009 after having spent all but $1K of my budget on MAKING a film. The remaining 1K was earmarked for festival submissions. Not long after I started spending my own money to cover outreach and marketing expenses so the film would meet some deserving eye balls. Not including my labor, 20% of the production budget for distribution seemed about right. But then I started factoring in my time and realized how long an outreach, marketing and distribution process lasts. 50% now was very reasonable.
