ABSTRACT
You may have heard the statement, “The lower the budget, the longer the prep.” Well, is it absolutely true. However, when the budget is as low as a SAG ultra-low, like the projects I was producing, there is certainly no money at this stage. I don’t want to start spending money and writing checks until the first day of preproduction. I promised my investors that I would not start soft prep until 80 percent of the funding was complete; in the case of the first one, Candy Stripers, I had promised the investors that I would not be moving forward on the film until 100 percent of the funding was complete. So the minute I knew we were in good shape percentagewise, I started soft prep. To me, it means doing a ton of work and getting plenty of what would normally be considered preproduction done without spending money.
