Above the Line
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| In one sentence | The people an audience actually notices in a movie, like the writers, director, producers, and lead actors, plus the deals that hire them. |
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| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Below the Line, Costs |
Picture your class putting on a school play. One kid wrote the script, another kid directed everyone, and a few kids play the starring roles everyone will recognize on stage. Now picture everyone else: the kids building the sets, running the lights, and finding costumes in the closet. Both groups are equally needed to put on the play, but they are usually thought of as two different teams.
A movie budget gets split into those same two teams. Above the line means the writers, the director, the producers, and the lead, or "principal," actors: the people whose names the audience actually knows and whose creative choices shape the whole film. Everyone else, like the camera crew, the lighting team, and the people who build the sets, falls into a different bucket called Below the Line.
Why split the budget this way?
Above-the-line people are usually paid based on who they are and what they bring to the project, not on how many hours they clock. A famous director or a movie star might be paid a huge fee, sometimes with a share of the profits on top, because their name alone can convince a studio to make the movie and convince an audience to buy a ticket. That is very different from below-the-line pay, which is usually tied much more closely to how many days of work something actually takes.
Because of this, the above-the-line part of a budget is often decided very early, sometimes before a single day of filming is even scheduled, since it depends on which writer, director, and stars agree to sign on.
Fun facts
- The name comes from old paper budget forms. The first page listed the writer, director, producers, and stars, with a literal line drawn underneath their names, and everyone else was listed on the pages below it.
- One giant movie star's fee can sometimes cost more than the entire below-the-line crew put together, even though the crew might be hundreds of people.
- A studio will often announce a movie by naming its above-the-line talent, like the director and stars, long before it reveals anything about the Costs of actually shooting it.