This short story kept bouncing back and forth between a short film and an extended short story..
Originally, the entirety of act 2 consisted of Sylvia and Cameron encountering a homeless teenager who was in a pickle, and helping him out of the situation,
However, this 'subplot' was deemed unnecessary to the main plot and character development. And as any first-year student writer knows - or anyone who has studied EARLY James Cameron writing (pre-Avatar), IF YOU CAN CUT OUT SOMETHING WITHOUT IT BEING MISSED, it NEEDS to be cut, no mater the cool reasons for it being there in the first place!
Thus, the focus was now on the main characters only.

Since this was a simple story, the majority of pre-production was spent on making the STORY & CHARACTERS as good as possible - the goal being always elevating the quality to a better level than the previous film project!

The budget was well over $12,000 minimum -- or $19,400+ if the actors were paid scale. Getting the SOURCE of the budget was a roller coaster of DRAMA unlike anything Shannon had experienced before! There were several high valleys when everything SEEMED to be going perfect, and there were as few LOW valleys when all hope seemed to be lost with no way out. But the grace from Shannon's new boss at his new job (at which he screwed up on the 3rd task which cost the company a LOT of money yet they did not fire him but instead allowed him to work to fix the situation, and then the source for the budget was set! And his mother, Pamela Garrison, stepped in with her generosity and helped get the door to success open - which is why she has the very first credit, because without her support, there would have been no means to procure the budget!!

The majority of pre-production was indeed spent on perfecting the script! Since minimalist, shoestring-budget films live & die on the realistic, natural PERFORMANCES of the actors, THAT was the focus of this production, with only a couple high-quality CGI shots to aide in the story-telling! The HUMAN, HEART & SOUL, the CHARACTERS, should be the selling point of this short film, not anything else! #NoPressure

THE FINAL BUDGET IS $20,253. The month of June and July 2026 was THE most nerve-wracking, anxious, stressful time of producer Shannon Shaw's life! It was a roller-coaster of ups and downs... will it or won't it? And most of all, WILL SHANNON SCREW UP AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH NO WAY OUT & RUINING SOMEONE'S ELSES LIFE AS WELL? Well, it all worked out, maybe not in the timing we'd prefer (this summer) but at least when we film NEXT summer, it will be better than ever. Chapter 3 in Shannon's life began, now allowing substantial budgets for each project . The budgets will MOSTLY pertain to paying the cast & crew scale wages (filmmaking minimum wage) or $250 per person per day,... or at least close to that. Although one added asset to the budget is a few shots in GOOD CGI to append a NICE costume that we will be paying for (I like practical effects and the actors appreciate something to act off of instead of a ball representing the asset.