I mentioned the idea of a horror as my next project a while ago. I came up with a tentative budget of around $100K for the project and was in the beginning stages of development when I came to the conclusion it would be easier less difficult to raise my projected $1-2 million budget for my bicycle racing movie than it would be for a horror. Largely because lots of people make horror flicks with low budgets while few (none for the last decade or so) make bike racing movies. And bike racing is a world-wide market segment that probably doesn’t require a ‘name’ actor (much like horror, maybe because they’re used to everyone dying). Thus I’ve been focusing all my attention to the racing project.
That is, until recently. I opted to hire a SAG actress for my bike racing short (what I intend to use as a proof-of-concept when approaching potential investors) and SAG has an obsession with deferred compensation. Thinking about that aspect for a while, I felt if I could get cast and crew to defer most of their compensation, I could potentially drop the initial budget down to $20-30K cash. Which I feel is eminently more feasible to raise than $100K.
Now I’m planning to work the horror in parallel with the bike racing concept. Perhaps, if there’s no movement on the bike racing project, I can film the horror next summer. Naturally, there are lots of moving parts that have to come together (not the least of which is getting the smaller cash budget lined up), but now I’m motivated to take my outline and expand it to a full script.
