Lights, camera, accounting?
Production accountant, a cool role that no one really talks about.
If you are like me and you once wanted to be an actor/director but somehow ended up being an accountant, there is a role that can get you close to camera that you may have not heard of; production accountant, as someone who loves costing things up this is a dream!
As all of us know, no accounting role done properly is easy and every job has parts which suck so please keep that in the back of your mind.
Here’s the picture, you’ve grinded your way up from a production assistant (you have to start here first and it is a crucial learning step) you’re now a production account, a script lands on your desk and it is now your job to go through it and cost it up!
The usual forecasting, cost reporting, budgeting and P&L’s apply but that’s about as usual as it gets, for example being not in industry I can only guess of standard costs I would budget for e.g. salaries and production crew costs but what about the other stuff? shooting locations; Do you shoot at location or use a filming studio? Or how about sound track costs? things unless you’re in industry, you’ll probably have no idea how they make such decision or how much it costs, could you imagine estimating the cost of the Batmobile?
This is what makes this quiet role brilliant; granted not all roles are going to be Hollywood blockbusters you may do the accounting for an awesome TV show, a role which I imagine will be more office based and feel closer to standard corporate management accounting but let’s say you’re one of the lucky ones imagine you some of the challenges you’ll have to solve and even better than that, imagine seeing the final product at a cinema of your choice knowing you helped bring that to the screen, job satisfaction anyone?
By the way this has nothing to do with accounting but I want to bring this role to light; location scout, I saw it on a Surface pro advert, I did not even know such a role exists but how cool is that?
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