A half dozen people buzzed around the office. In the next part of the building, a printing press hummed & clangged & spit out sheets of chipboard. I looked over the paperwork on my desk. Bills. And more bills. "How will I pay all these?" I said to myself; I picked some about to come due, wrote some cheques, then shoved the rest into my desk.
"Carl Saunders is on line 1." said the receptionist.
"O! Thanks Betty." I picked up the phone. "Saunders! It's good to hear from you. We've already started production on the 'Galactic Runners' movie and-"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. We're pulling out."
My heart sank. "Carl, you can't-"
"You know how things are. They're predicting a recession, & we feel an investment in film isn't worth it with all the piracy, & the collapse of DVD sales..."
"But streamers are looking for content. Any content. They'll pull out the weirdest B-films from the 60's just to-"
"We've already discussed it, Bill. And we're not ready. I'm sorry. There are other investments we'd rather pursue."
"Carl, you already agreed-"
"It's not a contract."
"Yes, yes it was. 45% ownership for-"
"We'll, we don't need 45% of a movie. Or 50 or 55 or 100% if that matters. We're pulling out."
I sighed. "We're depending on that money, Carl. We were relying on you; we had a good faith agreement-"
He hung up. I did too. I said a brief prayer, then walked into the next cubical. "We need to shave $10 million off 'Galactic Runner: The Movie'."
Everyone stopped & stared. "You can't be serious."
I swallow. "Our investor pulled out. Any ideas?"
"What- what's the budget without them? It was already so low..."
"Don't say that. $12 million is more than most see in a lifetime. We have two million to work with. That's enough. It may not be enough for all the cool ideas we had, but it's enough for something. Start cutting things from the script; set pieces, locations, sequences even. Just make sure it still makes sense, ok?"
There was a deathly silence. Finally, someone said something. "Ok." That was it "Ok."
I walked back to my cubicle. "This film was supposed to make Franchise Media Development great," I thought. "Now it'll kill it." I opened my drawer & took out the bills. Who was I kidding? My company was already dead.
After choosing a few I could pay with the little bit of money we had coming in from receivables, a few where the interest wouldn't be so bad, & a few I thought I could put off or negotiate down, I got out a notepad. I started jotting ideas; I could think of a hundred new projects, but they would take money to start. I sighed. I got up & went back to the next cubical. "Ok. Let's see what we can do." I said, sitting down. "Any ideas?"
We went over the script. The book we'd written was about a galaxy-wide quest for a mythic sword. But we didn't have the budget for that many locations. The book had several side plots, to pad its length. In spite of this it sold well. Good action & imagination, or good cover art I guessed. Or maybe it was luck.
"Why don't we focus on just the last three chapters?" I said after an hour of hand wringing. Everyone looked at me. "We can include character building bits as flashbacks, shot in very, very soft focus against backdrops. We'll have to expand it a lot, but it's do able." I left out the bit about that merely being my hope. I set the writers to work on the cut down, expanded script, & went next door to check on the printing press.
Chapter 2
I was in college & I was bored, so I browsed random websites during class, mostly about sci-fi & fantasy. A few had short programs, to write descriptions of cities, or characters, or plot outlines automatically. I was learning programming, so I made a few myself. They grew long & slow & difficult to maintain, but they were feature rich. One would create descriptions of locations, based on check boxes you selected; another would outline the flow of a conversation; still another would write a fight scene or a chase scene. Eventually, I copied the mess of code into one long text document to create a full-fledged story outliner; I only had write dialogue.
That was the idea; in reality it took time to work out the bugs. It was finally usable, oh, about two years after I graduated. The outlines it spat out were messes, but I didn't mind that; each was a puzzle to solve. How could I fill in the blanks in a way that made sense? Each day after work I'd come home, have it print off an outline, & I'd solve the puzzle.
I sent a few of my finished puzzles to magazines. (Alright, I may have sent in all of them.) When a few sold, I thought that was a sign that my system worke. In truth, it was probably just a number game; I sent in so many a few were bound to make it through. But the magazine money gave me a bit of freedom; I took a few of the unsold stories, printed them, & asked to set up a spinner rack in a few local pharmacies. When the racks were empty, I printed more, & added a few pharmacies that were farther from my home town. I kept repeating this pattern for three years before I decided it was time for the next step...