The quality of a film depends on dozens of different factors, not the least of which are your director, producer, script, cast and crew, financial resources, and all phases of production. One way to keep yourself in the red and your sanity in check is to perfect everything you need to do in the preproduction phases. There's still much to be done at this stage, but the more perfectly you can accomplish these tasks ahead of time, the better off you'll be when filming begins. Once you've settled on a script, secured financing, scouted locales, and organized your budget and scheduling, it's time to decide on actors and finalize how large a crew you need and can afford.

Big-budget productions obviously require a large crew, which means hiring all the main executives, director, producer, camera crew, art department, writers, production designers, accounting staff, gaffers, electricians, carpenters, wardrobe and makeup personnel, and a vast range of assistants for every department. Your crew list can be endless if you've got the bucks to back you up, but that requires meticulous organization.

The chances of a first-time filmmaker being awarded a $100 million production budget are slim to none. For established filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron, among others, the box office numbers can potentially be astronomical, so a film's budget is in some cases justifiable. Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic had a $200 million production budget in addition to a multimillion-dollar marketing budget. To date the film has grossed over $600 million domestically. When added to the foreign gross, Titanic has made close to $2 billion, making it the highest grossing film in history.

Documentaries, no-budget, low-budget, and most independent films will typically have much smaller crews. This inevitably means that each crew member will be wearing more than one hat. If you can afford to hire key crew members such as a producer, or production manager, art director, editor, sound editor, and production designer, you'll be in good shape. Add to the mix a host of unpaid interns and you'll be hopping.

One thing to remember always is that any crew member you hire will need prep time in addition to time spent on the shoot. You must also build in additional time and funding, if available, for the end of a shoot, commonly called wrap time. On smaller productions where folks are doing several jobs, this usually isn't an issue; but if you're dealing with union labor, everything will have to be negotiated ahead of time.