Friday, January 14, 2011

The Production Company - Looking Further Down The Line

Since things started taking off with Spinward Fringe last year, I've been falling back on my business education and experience to start formulating a long term plan. A large part of what I make still goes to survival and saving so I have something for emergencies, but it won't be long before I will have a little extra to branch out.

It comes down to what a mentor of mine said years ago; "For every minute you spend planning for the worst, make sure you spend one on planning for success." His main point was that, if you plan ahead for when you get ahead, you can turn that momentary advantage into a longer lasting, more significant gain. The mentor I'm speaking about didn't refer to money much, he was far more opportunity oriented, and that made him all the more helpful.

Right now I'm hellbent on getting Broadcast 7 done as fast as I can, then editing it as well as possible and finally handing it over for proof reading. I want it all done before spring, which is coming faster than I'd like. After that, there's a lot more writing to do - which is what I love doing - but that doesn't mean I can't spend a few hours a week building skills, doing legal ground work, and laying the foundations for a small production company. I need an excuse to get out of the house, after all.

This production company would be a ground up operation. One of the starting factors - believe it or not - is the store, which will be up and running in February. Unless I personally run into massive financial difficulty, all the proceeds from the store will go towards the production company. The store will also double as a prop purchaser and storage house. The first gains in the store will go towards legal costs, which are low, but unavoidable.

While that's happening, I have a lot to learn about the fields I'm looking to tap into. The store is easy, I've trained retail people before, owned three businesses (two of which were successful enough to close in the black), and managed a retail computer store / technician centre. The Spinward Fringe store is the easiest part.

When I say the production company will give me a reason to get out of the house I'm not kidding. This summer I plan on engaging in a little guerilla film making and other inexpensive, no-budget hobby work in my spare time so I can pick up a few extra skills and see if I have an eye for that kind of thing. It'll probably be a lot of Ed Wood meets Blair Witch if I'm lucky. I won't have much time to do this stuff, mostly weekends, because I write during the week.

There is a road map for the production company that leads from February 1, 2011 all the way to February 1, 2015. As the stepping stones are laid down, and I can talk about my part time secondary passion more, I'll reveal more about the production company. That includes the name, which hasn't been nailed down just yet.

RL

[The camera in the picture is more of a pipe-dream at this point, but we'll see...]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to flog a dead horse, if it is a dead horse, but do you think you will be getting back to Dark Arts?

Randolph Lalonde said...

No worries, that's a totally fair question.

The Dark Arts novel is on my writing list for 2011. There's an excellent chance that Dark Arts won't be limited to that medium either, but I can't talk about that yet.

RL

David "Wildfire" Sewell said...

Just as long as you leave the anti-jitter function on the camera I'll watch whatever! Blair Witch turned me off so much over the overall shakiness of the picture I walked out of the theater. And it was made by the folks that are right in my backyard (UCF, which is about 20 minutes from me).

Randolph Lalonde said...

haha! Anti-jitter, gotcha!

I think the Flip cameras are known for that, which is what I'll probably play around with at first for events and such. You can't beat solid 720p for around $230.00.

Now that you mention it the Blair Witch Project did give me a headache near the end.

Unknown said...

Speaking of getting Broadcast 7 done, do you have enough proof readers? While reading through the earlier books I caught several typos. If you need help feel free to email. Keep up the good work with the Spinward books!

Randolph Lalonde said...

Hi Jon!

It looks like I'll have enough test readers this time around, but I'm still working on the final draft of the book so things aren't set in stone just yet. With regards to the typos and such in the existing books, a final edit project is set to continue this year. It'll take time but all the books should eventually get a proper treatment.

I'm glad you've enjoyed the series so far, and thank you for offering your help!

RL

Unknown said...

Hi! We LOVE Spinward fringe. Any thoughts of making a TV Series with your new Production company? It would be Fabulous! Great eBooks, keep them coming!

Randolph Lalonde said...

Thanks for stopping in Christine, and I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the series!

I don't know what the chances of a major network picking up a brand new intellectual property from an indie author are. What I do know is that it's never happened before.

So, early pre-production is scheduled to start slowly some time this year. There are a lot of barriers to each phase of a cinematic quality web series, so there's a lot to learn, people to meet and a foundation to build. Here's the link to the topic about a web series here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/454234-spinward-fringe-tv-web-series-a-long-road

I've turned other pipe dreams into realities, so I'm hoping practice makes perfect. Thank you for asking, and for reading!

RL