I'll be honest, we didn't expect this to happen. Or rather, we didn't expect this to happen as quickly as it did. The kindness and generosity on display, sometimes from people we've never even met, has been overwhelming. We couldn't be more grateful to those who dug deep into their pockets and gave us their hard-earned money to help us tell this intimate little story.

With a modest target of $3,000, we're now currently sitting on $3,100 of our goal. After taking into account the time elapsed since hitting our target and the day in which our campaign was pending before publishing to social media, we raised this amount in 16 days. The response was heartwarming, to say the least. We selected GoFundMe as our platform because they don't have an "all or nothing" approach to crowdfunding; aside from their platform fee in which they take a small percentage of funds raised, you get what you raise even if you don't reach your target -- unlike platforms like Kickstarter. We set out with a target of $3,000, a small amount as far as filmmaking budgets are concerned, simply to aid in making a film which we had already committed ourselves to make. Anything that we raised, even if it was only $500, would allow us to push the production value that little bit further. In a sense, our goal was a stretch target even though we would still be stretching our budget thin with that amount.

Once you start breaking things down, money vanishes very quickly. But we felt our goal was appropriate for the scale of our script; this is a two-hander performance-driven film with no action set-pieces or VFX. To ask for more than was necessary felt like an act of greed even knowing the low-budget independent filmmaking struggle we'd be going through with our set target. To exceed that target is humbling and invigorating. Below is the current list of people who donated to our production. We extend our warmest thank you's to all of you!

Kate Christianopoulos, Jordan Koroveshi, Jessica Cook, Catherine Bates, Jeremy Adams, Finn Pettit, Darren Saldanha, Jake Doherty, Tim Neal, Priscilla Thom, Elizabeth Lilley, Stacey Maguire, Julia Lawrinson, Andrea Cockburn, Gloria Spunner, Damien Page, Grace Reay-Mackey & Tiffany Coulter, Elisha Owen, Aisling O'Leary, Kim Robertson, Marianne & Greg Reay-Mackey, David Smart, Debbie Bowdler, Jeremy Levi, Geraint Lee James, Rama Dolman, Andrew Peirce, Geoffrey Hutchinson, Karen & Diniz Lay, Venus Stewart, Corrinne Easton, Paisha Thom, Matthew Cato, Dean Spunner, Annmarie Bell, Charlie Oliver, Slaine Lunt, Nicola Boyle, Alicia Lawrinson, Loralyn Plummer, Brenton Thom, Brie Garn, Michael Boyle, Shayden Bouwman, Tahu Stanley, Lauren Mitchell, and Gregg Watson.

Our GoFundMe page is still up and we're still able to take donations. As mentioned earlier, any additional funds will aid us in pushing the production value just that little bit further!

Since my previous post, we've been lining up and locking in the various requirements for the production; location scouting, bringing on required crew members, assembling the needed props and set design elements, and the all-important character discussions with our two leads. Even though we had them locked in before the release of our campaign, we were really excited to announce our cast on social media over a week ago; Luke Morgan & Milu Green.

Both Luke and Milu auditioned beautifully in the three stages we asked them to go through -- video/self-tape, the first in-person audition, and then the final callbacks. In a film which centres itself around a now ended relationship, the connection and chemistry between the two actors was the most important element to find. Not only were Luke and Milu fantastic performers individually, they were fantastic together. As a writer, you naturally have an idea of what you're looking for in a performer as you're developing the characters and their voices. As a director, the most exciting part is seeing people who not only deliver that but expand upon it in ways that you didn't expect. Suddenly, it goes from simply words on paper to something actually alive. Collaborating with these two has already been a rich and rewarding experience and I cannot wait to go into production with these two by my side.

With our location finally locked place, we have our production dates pencilled in with our shoot commencing in the first week of August. Keep an eye on this space and our social media posts for more updates. We hope to do you all proud!

And finally, Dan and I recently sat down with Andrew from The Curb as part of his Not A Knife podcast to talk about Residue, independent filmmaking, and the power of memes. It's a long conversation with a bit of wind noise interfering with the audio every now and again, but it was a lot of fun and we hope everyone can take away a little bit of our process and what we hope to achieve with this film. Thanks for having us, Andrew!

A very tired Dan and a very self-conscious Kori.

Until next time ...