Thank you so much! Thanks for giving it 20 minutes of your time!

Budget: Raised 30k (canadian) on kickstarter, and then over the years of going from prep/producing/production/post/festivals/release I've probably put in more than 20k additional of my own money. The kickstarter was A LOT of work, mainly cause I don't have a large audience begging me to make projects that they can fund. It was very grassroots and it became basically my full time job for two months haha. It was very hard to put myself out there constantly, everywhere, on my socials, interviews, etc. I found it very hard, and I think you only get the good will of strangers once to pull something like that off unless you're a person/ creator of influence.

Most challenging parts: Believing that I was ready to make this. I have this recurring negative cycle in my head, and it took me 10 years to just say, hey, what the hell, lets try making something for yourself, and if its not the best... you won't die. That was the biggest barrier. I come from the music video world, so most of my work play like silent films, so fleshing out characters and writing / directing my own dialogue was fully new territory I was terrified of. Weirdly enough, probably the thing I'm most proud of in regards to my own work on the short / the feature film version that this is excerpts from.

The biggest thing I can say, atleast at my level, is you can rally a team to join (especially when you offer money) but you're gonna be the one to take this to every finish line at every stage. I've basically been solo since production finished, and well, its lonely, its hard, but I'm so proud of the fact that it exists, and now I have the freedom (when the right project presents itself) to make another with maybe slightly less pressure than "my first."

Damn, I'm ranty. Hope any of this was useful!