Creative core budgets pre-production: script, director, lead cast, producers. The line-items that define the project — everything else is below-the-line.
As soon as you discuss a project with a producer or a financing company, the terms above the line and below the line come up — and this isn't meant academically, but as brutal budget reality. Above the line costs are the names that sell a project: the screenplay, the direction, the stars. These are the positions you mention to a broadcaster, a fund, or an investor before a camera tripod is even bought. They are above the line — metaphorically as well as literally on the budget sheet — because they define the project long before production rolls.
In practice, this means: If your producer says, "We have a budget of 500,000 Euros," then perhaps 200,000 of that is already gone before the first production day begins. The fee for the established screenwriter, the salary of the well-known director, the fees of the A-list actors — these are your above the line expenses. They correlate directly with the fundability of the project. A big name in directing opens doors with financiers; an unknown director with the same script costs significantly less at the top of the sheet. Therefore, above the line is also a strategic, not just a calculative, category — it's about bankability, about the ability to be financed at all.
The dividing line is not always sharply drawn. The lead actor — clearly above the line. A camera crane — clearly below the line. But what about the visual effects supervisor who is involved from the beginning? What about the composer whose score is crucial to the project? In industrial practice, it has become established: Above the line are the core creatives involved in the concept before production begins. Producers, direction, screenplay, lead cast — that's the core. Everything that flows into the production itself — crew, equipment, locations, catering — falls under below the line.
For you as a cinematographer, above the line is initially abstract, but it concretely determines what your budget looks like. The more is planned above the line, the less is available for your equipment, your lighting, your crew. A film with an A-list lead actor and a star director can simultaneously have a smaller budget than a lower-budget project with unknown faces — the money is simply allocated differently. Understanding this helps you to contextualize budget cuts and make realistic production plans.