Above the Line

What this is about

The dividing line comes from studio accounting and still structures budgets today. Above it sits everything negotiated case by case with individuals before a shoot exists: rights, writing, directing, main cast, producer fee. These items are deal-driven rather than rate-driven, they are settled early, and they rarely move once fixed. In German commercial and corporate work the label appears mainly in international co-productions and larger campaign budgets, while small teams follow the same logic implicitly — the creative deals are done before anyone books a crew.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Deal-driven rather than rate-driven: these items are negotiated individually, not taken from a rate card
• They are usually fixed before the shoot exists, which makes them hard to adjust later
• In German corporate work the label appears mostly in international or large campaign budgets

With TillyGen

TillyGen structures the calculation by cost group, so early creative deals stay visible next to the production lines.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.