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 $33,465 - which is technically an ultra low budget film according to SAG, which we use as REFERENCE, and that is with the cast & crew being paid scale - $264/day. 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 a few LOW valleys when all hope seemed to be lost with no way out. But with 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), 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 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 (summer of 2026) 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 $264 per person per day - or $330 if they have a agent/manager that gets 20%, thus the actor will still gross $264! 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.

This was originally intended to be a SHORT STORY. However, the rough draft turned out to be 67 pages - that is technically a feature film! But, to be honest, there are several pages of EXTREMELY FAST PACED BACK-N-FORTH (ala iCarly) dialogue that takes up an entire page/minute, but on screen will last only a few seconds. Still that IS a ROUGH DRAFT. There is now enough time in pre-production to make the script MUCH more concise! Hopefully, in SEVERAL AREAS of the story, an entire page of dialogue can be condensed down to only a few lines and still get the point across. The actors will be allowed to improvise as much as they want, using the script MOSTLY as a suggestion/guide. Nut we will most likely try to shoot a take as scripted, then focus on more takes allowing the actors to BECOME THEIR CHARACTERS, IN THE MOMENT and improvise to their hearts content for a MUCH more NATURAL sounding CONVERSDATION instead of actors waiting their turn to spout memorized lines. Hopefully any scripted monologues will be trimmed to a bare minimum for vital plot/character moments only instead of having a half page monologue every other page!! We HAVE learned our lesson from previous films: NEVER SHOOT A MOVIE USING A ROUGH DRAFT!!!!

Currently, the filming will take place over 12 days or so sometime during early SUMMER 2027, AT THE CAST & SCREW'S convenience -- an unusual approach, especially with a three major locations needing a set date to film on, however due to the enormous budget and paychecks all being over the legal $600 limit, it is a legal necessity for the schedule to be at the cast member's choosing so they can be legally classified as independent contractors instead of actual 'employees' - which is what most production companies do anyway.