How to Keep a Film on Budget and on Schedule featuring Stephen Marinaccio
From On Production by Wrapbook
April 7, 2026 · 1h 9m · Season 1 · Episode 88
About this episode
Cameron Woodward interviews line producer Stephen Marinaccio about managing film budgets and schedules.
Cameron Woodward sits down with veteran line producer Stephen Marinaccio to talk about the part of physical production that quietly determines what actually gets made: the budget. Drawing on work across projects like Ghosts of Beirut and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan , Stephen breaks down how line producers translate scripts into workable schedules, where budgets tend to drift from reality, and what it takes to keep a plan aligned once production is in motion. Beyond his decades of hands-on production experience, Stephen is also the longtime moderator of the Reddit community r/FilmTVBudgeting , where industry professionals share real-world insights about the craft of budgeting and physical production. That same commitment to modernizing workflows led him to co-found Line Budgeter , a next-generation budgeting platform built to address the limitations of legacy “digital paper” systems. The conversation digs into the practical mechanics of prep, from early scheduling decisions and department coordination to the production variables that most often create downstream cost problems. Stephen shares why visual effects, locations, setup time, and poorly modeled fringes can throw budgets off…
People in this episode
Host: Cameron Woodward
Guest: Stephen Marinaccio
Topics covered
- film budgeting
- line production
- scheduling
- cost management
- production workflow
Keywords
- film production
- budgeting
- line producer
- scheduling
- visual effects
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: r/FilmTVBudgeting, Line Budgeter
Books & works: Ghosts of Beirut, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
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