We’re proud to announce that our crowdfunding is LIVE over on Production Funder! Check it out and help us fully fund our first season! Backers will receive our first episode instantly, and there are even more goodies to be unlocked.
Listen to our Series trailer and the Season One Trailer
Their crews, transcripts, and mono mixes are found on their episode pages for the Series and Season One Trailers!
What We’re Asking For in our Crowdfunding
$18,000 is a lot of money, so let us explain how we got there.
To start, here’s our budget breakdown by role. It’s important to us to pay everyone involved every step of the way, and there’s a lot of steps.
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Time for numbers. Here’s our budget breakdown by episode. Each episode costs between $1,300 and $2,000, and with 11 episodes (and two trailers), things add up.
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We’d be here all day if I broke down every role for every episode, but we’ll take a look at our most expensive episode so you can see where these numbers come from and the rate that we’ve determined is fair for everyone.
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We want to pay writers approximately $15 per page of their script. We asked our writers for an 11 page script, which comes out to $165. (Some writers went over, and that affected the page and line counts for the other roles, but we didn’t want to penalize writers who stuck to the page count, so we ended up with a rate of $165 per script). All of our writers brought their A game, and we ended up with incredibly creative (and at times, incredibly emotional) scripts.
We want to pay our script editors $5 per page. I just mentioned that some scripts ended up longer than 11 pages, and this episode came in at 16 pages, which comes out to $80. We did two levels of edits for each script, a story-level pass and a line-edit pass. Our script editor provided crucial feedback to punch up every single script and bring them to a new level.
We want to pay performers either $2 per line or $0.20 per word, whichever is higher. (This is a mid-tier rate on the Voice Acting Club Indie Rate Guide). That came out to $427.80 on this script. Every single one of our voice actors brought their all and gave stunning performances.
We want to pay directors $125 per episode. Our directors took the scripts and organized/oversaw recording. Every episode had a live read through, and many had synchronous recording. In episodes with asynchronous recording, the director still picked takes. Our directors took the scripts from the writers and worked hand in hand with actors to bring the story to life.
We want to pay dialogue editors $0.50 per line, which came out to $83 on this script. Dialogue editors took what was recorded and timed all the lines, often playing with the tiniest of milliseconds between lines to hit the right story beats. Without them, we’d have a large pile of lines scattered about. With them, we have scenes.
We want to pay sound designers $20 per page, which came out to $320. Our sound designers built the worlds that these stories take place in. Every single elevator sounds different, and when things go wrong with them, that sounds different too. Each episode is incredibly immersive, and we couldn’t have done that without our sound designers.
We want to pay our composers $10 per minute of music. The composer for this episode gave us 5 songs, which came out to $240. The music of this show elevates it, heightening stakes and increasing tension. The emotional impact of music comes across so clearly in this show, and we’d be nowhere without our composers.
We also want to pay $75 per episode for marketing and $50 per episode for show art. Our marketing team has made so many graphics and sent so many emails in service of this show, and they deserve to be paid for their work. Making the show is just the first step – getting it out there is a crucial second one.
The collective we produce this show with, Sound Escape Productions, gets an additional 10% of the total cost of tangibles for each episode, and the showrunner gets an additional 20%. Every step of the way the collective and showrunner have been there to keep things running smoothly, occasionally fronting money, and spending more time than is quantifiable on the production of this show, and they deserve to be compensated accordingly.
We know we might not make our goal – this won’t affect the episode number or quality, only the rate of pay our cast and crew get. Our profit share system is set up such that payment to them is proportional to the money we raise. No matter the amount, everyone is going to get paid something. The money they get will increase with every dollar we raise. We wanted to ask for what our cast and crew deserve. Audio drama, even indie audio drama, isn’t cheap to make, and we felt it important to be upfront with what the real cost of making this show is.