Entertainment Partners delivers the studio-standard budgeting program.  While this update to the venerable Movie Magic Budgeting lacks the groundbreaking dazzle of its predecessor, EP is a solid, no-nonsense program that gets the job done.  And very well at that.

Gorilla is the indie powerhouse of all-in-one budgeting-scheduling-logging-actualizaiton-festival programs.  If Gorilla doesn't have a module to handle it, your film probably doesn't need it.  Every updated version has introduced new features and improved functionality, delivering a powrehouse for the industry to reckon with.

While getting the most bang for your buck is always important to any working producer, never is it so vital as when you're just starting out.

You've just graduated film school. Your bank account is empty and your student loans are as high as they'll ever be. Yet somehow you have to find a way to raise funds for your first feature film, start a business, and figure out all the information film school left out.

Jungle Software's Gorilla has always been a single source of many vital production functions but version 5, just released, adds many additional functions and, again as in previous versions, makes them all interact seamlessly.

LineProducer is a new software application designed specifically for line producers and unit production managers. The program is currently available only for Macintosh OSX 10.6 (a Windows version is in the works).

Unlike the EP suite and Gorilla, LineProducer centers primarily on the timing and actualization of a production’s financial needs. LineProducer includes many built-in features that make it vastly superior to Excel worksheets and paper files.

Once of the most useful features is that line items flow between modules. This means you only have to enter a line item once – usually in the budget and occasionally in the financial plan – and it automatically appears in the cash flow as well. Updates to the line item also update the cash flow immediately. This saves time and the possibility of errors that occur when having to manually update line items.

The Magic is back.  Shelving its own eponymous software, Entertainment Partners has resurrected Movie Magic. And whether you’ve stayed with the standard or updated to EP Budgeting, this version is designed to make you feel perfectly at home.  And there lies both the good news and the bad.

Showbiz delivers a chameleon of a budgeting program, handling movies one minute, AICP forms the next. simple still shoots and complex episodics.  All with astonishing ease.  Easily the most original and powerful budgeting program produced.  With the added advange of multiple languages and calculating actual costs, this program is a winner.  Easily a major player among the top tier programs.