Stage two
Producing
Make the film you validated, not the film that emerges.
Step seven of the method done with you.
$13,500 once Stage one is credited.
Why this exists
Every film drifts. The genre softens in the edit. The audience quietly shifts. A casting compromise moves the buyer list. The runtime creeps past what was agreed.
No one of these is a bad decision on its own. Together they produce a film that no longer matches the evidence you gathered, and the six steps behind you become misaligned.
We join the producing team to make sure that the validated idea becomes the same validated film in production.
How we do it
We work alongside the producing team. The tools are simple; the discipline is the service.
The locked one-page brief
Drawn from steps one to six: genre, primary audience, buyer specification and the positioning that won in stage one. It goes on the wall in the production office and the edit suite. Every key decision is made in relation to it.
Change control on anything that moves genre, audience or buyer specification
A decision that moves any of the three is a change, not a note. Changes are written down: what moved, who decided it, what it means for the buyer list. If the movement is significant, we retest rather than hope.
The delivery specification, kept visible from day one
Deliverables end more independent deals than reviews do, and the damage is done after production is wrapped, when the money is gone. The delivery spec is visible from day one before you shoot.
What done looks like
A film a buyer would recognise as the film described in step six.
And if it is not — if the film that emerges is not the film in the brief — the old evidence does not get carried forward. You return to step one and revalidate the film you actually made. It costs time and it costs money.
One thing to be plain about
This stage does not credit forward. Validation credits into Producing; Audience testing credits into Market execution.