Ross Michaels, an accomplished entertainment accountant, began his acting career at 18 as a performer in New York City. During his acting career, Michaels performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, in children's theater, summer stock, regional theaters, and international productions where he also worked as a stage manager.
Michaels was stage managing off-Broadway, when the leading actress required a few weeks off. Instead of collecting unemployment, Michaels' friend discovered the overworked accounting staff on The Equalizer needed help and suggested Michaels for the job. Michaels’ accounting career "began to blossom" as he learned how to use petty cash, accounts payable, purchase orders, financial coding, episodic budgets, and payroll.
Now Michaels has more than 20 years of entertainment accounting experience including work on several films (Titanic, Friday Night Lights, Paycheck, Great Expectations) and television series (The Equalizer, Northern Exposure and Law & Order).
Entertainment accounting is one of the first departments to be hired on a project. As a production accountant, Michaels has acted as a financial liaison between the producer, the production manager and the studio. Most of an accountant's duties include setting the payroll and reviewing the cost report with the production manager and/or producer on a weekly basis. The budget entails all costs required to make that particular film (writing, producing, directing, filming, editing, etc.), and then getting the final product completed.
Cost reporting is another big responsibility of the production accountant, who must be able to predict financial changes and report them. Sometimes Michaels must fine tune a budget from the studio and decide if the production will be filming on a sound stage with facility costs or in actual locations requiring police, traffic security, and port-a-potties. On Titanic, there were 154 filming days and accounting worked in 24 departments for three years, covering three countries - the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Michaels, born in Toledo, Ohio, recently sat down with us to discuss film, fame, and, of course, finances.
Please describe some of your challenges and accomplishments.
After working in Texas on Friday Night Lights for Universal, Disney sent me to Louisiana on Glory Road to help with the rebate, hurricane evacuation (the year before Katrina) and to initiate the insurance claim procedures. Then I came back to Los Angeles with the picture to finalize and submit the Louisiana rebate documents. In those few months at Disney post-production, I worked on 13 other films to finalize their rebates and tax credits — both foreign and domestic.
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