The Fortnight Season 3 Funding

 

 

(In the event that this graphic is not zoomable, I've placed a link to it at the bottom.)

 

 

I created The Fortnight because I wanted to tell a story about a girl, her found family, and the one that turned her world upside down. I wanted to share with the world the people, places and events that meant something to me in hopes that some of these things might be universal.

 

I continued that story because it turns out that the themes in Season 1 were universal, and it did resonate with people, both in the LGBTQ community and beyond. I also ventured on because The Fortnight universe doesn't begin and end in one day, one year, one decade. Every step taken and every step taken backward in each episode is ultimately based on who our characters are and where they've been. Season 2 revolved around understanding the why behind decisions made. I wanted to answer the question of "How did we get here, and what did we miss in the absence of what is seen in the S1 episodes?"

 

I also continued the story because it was imperative to me to expand the representation within the LGBTQ+ community. The content we're given in mainstream media is primarily focused on one or two groups of people within the community and often completely alienates the rest of us. Our storytelling didn't continue simply to check boxes, but to accurately portray real experiences within the community that rarely if ever get seen.

 

Season 3 will answer the question of "What now?" Where do we go from here? Can this group of people find true happiness, and what does that look like with all that we've learned? What does growing up look like?

 

The theme of Season 3 is Go Big before We Go Home. There will be a lot of laughter, a lot of heart, and the most positive representation we can bring to the screen. As this will be the show's final season, we're looking to make it as big and wonderful as possible to leave us all with beautiful lasting memories of Peyton and friends. We also want to make this something that might find a home after Youtube in the future.

 

In order to do that, we have increased our budget costs as well as the members of the team. I'm bringing on Cinematographer Oscar Alvarez to work behind the camera with me. If you are familiar with my directing work from the second season of the award-winning series Functional, you'll know his work also as he was our Cinematographer. He and I worked very closely together and created some really beautiful things in that season. It gave me many ideas for Season 3 that I'd like to implement.

 

I'm also bringing on a First AD, a Script Supervisor and a Production Assistant. With the ideas planned for this season, I want to have people around me ensuring the ship is sailing so that I can focus on some specfic pieces of this puzzle.

 

95% of our actors are now SAG members and thus I need to pay them accordingly. This results in a 34% daily pay increase in accordance with the SAG New Media daily rates. I think the most imporant part of any production is paying our people for their time and talent. The cast was kind enough to do me a HUGE favor in S1, and we met somewhere in the middle for S2. But now, we really must pay them in line with the industry standard.

 

Locations are going to be quite expensive this season. The set will obviously be a cabin and although I have been scouting for 3 years, I have seen the fluctuation in prices for sets like these.

 

The other major fees stem from production equipment upgrades/replacements for sound and post-production editing, licensing fees, and subtitling costs.

 

Last year, we asked the Fortnight community for 12k and thankfully received much more. When all was said and done, the budget ended up totaling $39,000 with total contributions adding up to roughly 24k.

 

This year, we are asking for $65,000. To me, the microbudget indie filmmaker, this seems like an insane amount of money. But the numbers are the numbers. And filmmaking no matter what level you're at is costly. This budget, however, does accurately account for everything including issues we had mid season release. Some of you know our struggles with the change in price of subtitling. This has definitley been built in so as to avoid the late season scramble for funds.

 

We are currently in pre-production, so time is of the essence. I would love to see this premiering for you before the end of the year.

 

We've received so much love from around the world for the past two seasons. We want to this final season all you could hope and more. It would mean so much to us as storytellers to be able to successfully bring more positive queer representation to media today. We have so many stories left to tell. And we can't wait to show you how this story ends.

 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

 

Cory Xenos and The Fortnight Team

 

The Fortnight S3 Budget Breakdown