So here we are! THE COWARD is now in prep. Well, pre-pre-pre-prep, to be honest. But it's begun, which is something.

Now, have a look at this little beauty:

Ain't she pretty?

OK, OK, yes, its boring. To you. It's a screenshot of an excel file so double that boring quotient. To be specific, it's a sheet from a production budget, so triple boring - but not to me!

Now, even though it's just a basic budget it does provide a spending total. So I'm actually excited about this little excel file, really really excited because this (A) means I now know what I need to spend, which (B) means I now know what I need to raise on Kickstarter.

In short, it gives me financial context for "The Coward".

This first budget, Budget v1.0, uses a common Commercials template, one with certain...quirks, shall we say. I got my friend, Mitch Cappe (who's one of my favourite Producers and favourite people) to review the file. Mitch is a careful and conscientious guy. He always aims for clarity and simplicity in project finances, something he's found lacking in many budget templates out there in the wild and, well...lets just say he had some choice words and descriptive sentences about that particular template. Nonetheless he very kindly took the time to go through the numbers with me.

That process gave me a much clearer image of where to spend my (imaginary) monies. One danger he highlighted is getting too granular, too early. It's good to line item your budget and have a grasp of the details but (to parse his advice in a military way) it is important to not let the tactics drive the strategy. Don't get too deep too early.

One item which could/will push the totals higher with additional Covid costs (cast & crew tests, mostly - about $5,000). However, these costs might be mitigated if the vaccines are rolled out quickly enough. We'll see. There's really only one consistent thing about this god awful pandemic - it's not going away anytime soon.

Nice young man that he is, Mitch then forwarded an excellent high-level budget template that gives me everything I need without the distraction of line items I don't understand. I will use this template to process Budget v.2. I doubt this will be much different in terms of the final total but it will definitely be an easier document for me to understand and, critically, to explain to others.

So I now have a financial framework which, again, really helps with setting up and planning the Kickstarter campaign. If you don't know how much money you need, how can you plan for the future?

Oh and what is that budget total, you wonder?

_....$30,000.

Eeeee-yup. Budget v.1 is viewable here as a pdf.

~ Conor ~