ADR Budgeting: Critical vs. Luxury on Indie Films?

Hey everyone,

Catalina here, location scouting for an indie feature right now. We're getting into post-production budgeting, and the topic of ADR came up. My director, bless her heart, is a real perfectionist when it comes to performances. We shot a lot of our scenes on an ALEXA Mini with an MKH 416, but there are definitely some lines that got muddied or need a different take.

I've seen advice about having a tiered ADR budget, critical fixes first, then 'nice-to-haves.' But for my director, every single performance nuance feels like a critical fix. She'll point to a slightly off inflection from a distant AMIRA shot and say it needs to be perfect.

On a tight indie budget where every dollar counts, how do you practically draw that line? How do you decide what's truly a 'critical' technical fix (like an airplane flyover ruining a key line) versus a 'luxury' performance tweak if the director views all performance improvements as essential?