The Ball is Rolling - Finally!

We've accomplished quite a lot this last week - we've finished the business plan and most importantly, met up with even more wonderful people.

The Business Plan
Eng Tiong and I always wondered how the hell do we do the damn business plan. Even after attending this and that course about film financing, we're pretty much left more confused than ever.

A moviemaking business plan is slightly different from a traditional business plan people do to start a business. I've a thick book on entreprenuership that has a sampled business plan but I can't exactly use that verbatim.

So Eng Tiong trawl the internet and found some! And they are for sale! Unbelievable! It really takes a lot of guesswork out of the equation. Of course, the plan is based on the independent American film market. So we have to change that to reflect the local scene.

I basically do some research, reading up on the Media Development Authority's policies, schemes, press releases, etc, etc, etc. I've even compiled a database of local films made since 1991. ("Medium Rare" started the next wave of moviemaking in Singapore since the Shaw and Cathay Keris moviemaking days in the 1970s.) Most of the information are gathered from MDA's website but it isn't updated so we've added in the latest figures/ productions that we've found from other sources.

Meeting People
We've met up with really wonderful people, including a very popular actress who used to act alot for TV. The feeling we get is - the ball is finally rolling!

Meeting Actor for Old Teo's Role
We've met up with a really experienced actor for the role of Old Teo. And it's all thanks to the earlier meeting we had with the popular actress (sorry about the mysteriousness but I can't risk getting sued). And that meeting with the popular actress is all thanks to a really wonderful artiste management company that we got acquainted with.

Old Teo is one of the 2 lead roles. Like our main character Renee's role, we already have someone in mind for Old Teo even before we pen the script. And that someone is this actor that we are meeting. It's great that we've got to see him face-to-face, telling him about the story and our convictions for making this movie.

We will hopefully hear from him in a week or so.

The next step is to find the rest of the supporting cast and the key production people. That's part of packaging. Once completed, we'll go out and find investors. The budget is now set slightly higher because we're taking into consideration the cost of transferring the final cut to film. (Cos' most cinemas still show movies the tradtional way.) But all in all, we're relatively comfortable with the new figures because we're confident that our movie will be great and therefore, it'll be picked up for distribution and you'll get to watch it in the cinemas (and DVDs, cable TV, etc, etc, etc)!