Had a really interesting conversation with Paul the co-writer today during a story conference meeting we were having. We're in the process of really nailing the structure and tone of the film in treatment form before moving onto the actual screenplay draft. It's constantly evolving, characters are changing and morphing into others and levels of importance are constantly in flux. This is the fun part, but also pretty tough. It's easy to get lost - but it helps to work in a team. We both can keep each other in check. With an idea like this it's easy to let your imagination totally wander and you start getting an idea that would require a budget of $100m or something. Our aim with this film isn't to make a blockbuster type affair but more something like a dark thriller, a film that deals with the characters' lives and situations in a fantastical and visually interesting setting. We're having to strike the balance between taking the story to the limits and writing a script that can be produced on a reasonable budget. Normally you just worry about the story you want to tell - which is pretty much how we approached the short script version ...

It has been some time since our last blog posting. Not because we didn't want to, but because both the Director Azhur and I have been working very hard on The Marionette Unit. So without further ado, onto the news... Firstly, I'd like to say thank you to all the members of the Facebook Group LINK HERE. We now have almost 180 members, which is great. For those of you that have donated, we thank you. Your donations are making The Marionette Unit a reality. On more exciting news for funding, Azhur and I found out this week that we have been awarded funding from the 5th Vevey European First Film Awards in Switzerland. This is amazing, coupled with the personal donations from the Facebook group and Official Website LINK HERE we are well on our way to bringing the film to the screen. The Marionette Unit website has been a huge success for us. We have had so much feedback for the site that it is very humbling and we are so grateful. To add to this, the website has now had over 94,000 total hits! That is amazing, that amount of traffic for our film is great and we hope it will continue. From ...

So this week was about funding and budgeting meetings. As producer I am responsible for finding and sourcing the money to make the film, this can prove challenging for numerous reasons. Lack of money for independent film, finding executive producers who might be interested, lining up donations etc... During script development, I normally produce a rough budget to outline the overall money spent for the film. This covers pre production, production, post production and distribution & marketing. For this I take the script and break it down into different elements, its typically divided into four sections: above-the-line (creative talent), below-the-line (direct production costs), post-production (editing, visual effects, etc), and other (insurance, distribution, etc). When and if financing is finally secured, I then draw up a more concise film budget. I normally use a spreadsheet application like Numbers ( Website Link ) or Excel to start with, I can work much quicker in these. I normally do this for the rough budget, then once I start drawing up the final budget I then convert it into EP Budgeting. ( Website Link ) EP Budgeting is an industry standard application for film budgeting. It is a tough one to learn, but a good one to learn, because you ...