Getting paid

Financing a film in this region is half a creative problem and half a cash-handling problem, and nobody teaches the second half.

Money arriving from abroad

Grant money and co-production money arrive by bank transfer, in a foreign currency, into an account that may hold it for several days before releasing it. Two things follow. First, the date the fund says it paid is not the date you can spend it — build a week into the schedule. Second, the exchange rate applied is the bank's, not the market's, and on a small budget the difference is a shooting day.

Paying people who have no account

On a small crew, several people will not have a bank account, or will have one they do not use. Paying them means cash, and cash means somebody has to withdraw it, carry it and record it. Produce a signed receipt for every payment: funds audit, and an unreceipted cash payment is the item that fails the audit.

Where cash has to be moved between cities or handed over outside banking hours, agent cashier networks are the practical route — small licensed points that take cash in one place and pay it out in another. In Egypt these run through an operator app rather than a branch counter: the تطبيق mobcash is what most agents in the country actually work through, and it is worth reading what the network asks of sender and recipient before you need it at short notice. It is neither a bank nor an exchange office, and productions routinely use this third category without knowing it has a name.

Deposits

Rental houses take a deposit, usually in cash and usually large. Ask whether it can be held rather than taken — many will accept a hold against a card and release it on return, which keeps the money in your budget instead of theirs for the length of the shoot.