Well, my first big foray into excel seems successful. We have a detailed line item budget. And it was surprisingly good news. The show can be pulled off for $23,000, I believe. Which puts us within $8,000, which is very doable. I’m quite confident we can raise that money in the coming months.

As well, I had been concerned about what our maximum budget might be, if everything I dream of comes to fruition. That absolutely can not exceed $40,000, if the investment break-down is to work. The good news is that we are still several thousand dollars under 40K, even when I dream extravagantly.

Okay, so that’s all good news. But now do you want the frickin’ great news?!

It looks like we have ourselves an arcade game designer. Yeah, that’s right, straight up, we are going to have our very own Disembody flash game that is playable online at our website and on a stand-alone arcade machine in the theater.

Oh my heck! Could I be more excited? I don’t think so. This is going to be fabulous.
Our designer is a gentleman named Mitch Cichocki. I hope to have bio info up for him on the site soon.
In the meantime, if I’m not mistaken, his myspace page (if I’m not mistaken that it is indeed his) suggests he’s right up the 23E alley: his musical selection is Xenakis.

What else has happened this week?

The website is growing and getting stronger.
My interior designers gave me a budget for the theater interior and it is very reasonable. Have I mentioned how fabulous they are?

And speaking of fabulous, have I mentioned how fabulous Amy Sampson is? She not only hooked us up with Mitch, but also with her friend Jean who is submitting a trailer for the show. She also has supplied us with a fair amount of clothing. This will be going out to our embroiderer next week to be branded with our logos.
And she has been invaluable in finding investors.
Hence her executive producer status on the project. This could not happen without her enthusiastic assistance.

Jonny and I have also been talking a lot lately about a couple of additional aspects of the project. He suggested an online time clock so that we can actually track the amount of time that goes into a contemporary art work. This is a brilliant idea. And even though I’m a little concerned about where it could lead (jealousy), I think it’s too brilliant an idea not to play around with.
As well, he’s counseling me on making a slight change to the crew payout system. It would be an optional change that people could make. For now, that’s all I’ll say about that.

Finally, this is still in the air, but we have the possibility of bringing a puppeteer onboard for the week of the shoot. Skye and I are super excited by the idea, but still have to work out a lot of details.

Okay, sure,
I was away, not you.

But, nonetheless, we missed each other, didn’t we?

Two pieces of news:

Well, I’m sure there’s more, but

1:
We have an architect, finally. Chris Chalmers has joined the crew. This is super exciting, one, because this issue is finally resolved, and two, because Chris has a reputation amongst his peers as one of the best digital artists in the field.
He’s creating a fly-through and a set of digital blueprints for the theater.

We’re a little overbudget now, as even with a substantial break on his usual fee, this will cost more than planned.
But the budget was designed with a fair amount of wiggle room.
And recently I’ve been squirming under the weight of this issue more than wiggling, so…

2:
Today we’re moving our SF offices from SOMA to the Richmond District.

For over four years, 23E Studios’ parents, Green Door Studios and The Museum of Viral Memory, have been located in a warehouse space in beautiful downtown San Francisco. But now our entertainment empire, including the 23E Studios offices, will be found in a new suite of rooms in the distant West of SF. With Disembody moving ahead at full steam this move was rather inconvenient, and was the reason we disappeared for so long from the blog, but all in all will lead to a better production and happier atmosphere in which to work.
Never underestimate happiness.

So, that’s it for today, we have movers arriving in less than an hour and need to finish packing up the office.
We’re back and all is well. We’re moving along just a bit behind schedule and a touch overbudget - it finally feels like a real film!