Pre-Production
Script to fundable.
A real shooting schedule and a budget that holds up in front of money — built by people who will still be here when you shoot it.
There's the budget you show people. And the budget you shoot.
Blank & estimated budget — the entry level
Every line item that will cost you money, plus our estimate of each at union and standard rates. Enough to understand your film's real shape and to have an honest conversation about scale. This comes inside the Blueprint development package — flat fee, from $195.
Financing-ready budget & shooting schedule — the real thing
A stripboard, a day-out-of-days, a schedule that survives contact with a location scout, and a budget structured the way a financier, a completion guarantor and a state incentive office expect to read it. This is what you take into the room.
What you receive — documents, not opinions.
Full script breakdown
Every scene tagged: cast, extras, props, wardrobe, vehicles, locations, special requirements. Without it, every other document is a guess.
Stripboard & shooting schedule
Ordered for the way you'll actually shoot it: locations grouped, cast days minimized, company moves counted. This is the document that proves you can make the movie in the days you say you can.
Day-out-of-days
Who works when — the document that tells you what your cast is really going to cost, before you've promised anyone anything.
Financing-ready budget
Structured in standard top-sheet form with the detail behind every line, at current union and market rates. Investors don't fund enthusiasm; they fund a number somebody can defend.
Incentive-aware structuring
Built with the Texas thresholds in view, so your qualifying spend and resident percentages aren't an accident. The rebate is won or lost at the budgeting stage, not at the filing stage.
A schedule you can defend
When someone asks why it's 24 days and not 18, the answer is in the document.
Why filmmakers need this before the money, not after.
Nobody funds a script. They fund a plan. The gap between 'I wrote a movie' and 'I can make this movie' isn't talent — it's evidence. A financier's first move is to hand your numbers to someone who checks them. If the schedule is optimistic or the budget is missing whole departments, the conversation ends politely and permanently. Real pre-production paperwork is what makes the ask credible — and it's the cheapest insurance you will ever buy on a film.
How the premium package is priced — a small amount to start, the rest when the film is real.
Plenty of films get budgeted. Fewer get made. So we split when we get paid rather than discounting what it's worth.
1
Stage one — the prep fee, up front.
Keyed to page count: micro short (under 20 pages) $150, short (20-60 pages) $350, feature (60-150 pages) $950, epic feature quoted. Always credited in full against your total.
2
Settle up front:
3% of the total budget, less the prep fee you've already paid.
3
Or defer until funded:
5% of the total budget, less the prep fee, payable once the film is financed. The spread between the two is simply the cost of us carrying the risk on a film that may never get made.
A $200,000 independent feature: prep fee $950 now. Settle up front and the total is $6,000. Defer and the total is $10,000 — due only when the money lands. Illustrative; your number depends on your budget.
The people who built the budget are the people who can run the show.
By the time you're funded, we already know your film scene by scene. We know which day is going to hurt, which location is optimistic, and which department is under-resourced — because we're the ones who wrote it down. Bringing us through into production isn't onboarding. It's continuing.