BlampCo Monthly Debrief - May 2025

Greetings employees!

THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS LIVE!

That’s the main headline of this month’s debrief, and as we outline to you where all your generous cash has gone, remember that BlampCo’s launch and subsequent 55k subscribers couldn’t have happened without you!

Thank you squared.

Equipment:

We’re transitioning to a point where payroll will be our chief expense every month, but there’s still a few things we’ve needed to buy to make all the formats that the Patreon/YouTube will offer moving forward.

If you haven’t yet checked them out, the bimonthly WWE2K25 MyRise streams have been great fun and in order to stream that gaming content we purchased an Elgato HD60X capture card. If you haven’t seen Teri’s ‘The Lovemaker’ creation, you owe it to yourself to plant that seed in your forever nightmares.

The finishing touches are happening to the studio and we’ve made a few adjustments to make sure that we can film Board Rooms properly. For those who’ve seen the most recent episode of Office Bromance, they’ll know that we’ve nailed the setup for two-player games. Three Sigma 18-35mm lenses are more than enough to pick up the action.

However, for 4-5 player games, we’ll need a wide angle lens for the master shot; the 18-35 sigma just doesn’t provide us with the coverage in such a small space. For that, as well as the overhead shots, we’ve turned to a Sigma Art 14-24mm, which is a brilliant lens for picking up a wide shot with minimal distortion at the edges, but clocks in at double the price of our standard lenses. Still, worth it eh?

For the first Board Room shoot, to keep costs down, we rented the one needed for the master  and bought the second one for overhead shots. We’ll be looking to buy the master lens most likely in July when we do the next shoots.

We also bought a second monitor to make Teri’s life easier, which means she can supervise and direct every angle we shoot from a single seat, including the lovely overhead shot. Thank you, lens!

Hanging lights from the walls won’t work for the space so we’ve bought a few more tripods to hold them, as well as a corner light to go behind the main kallax. This is a remote-control RBG light to provide a wee bit more depth to the shot, again trying to maximise the small space.

We’ve also invested in a few drum seats, just to squeeze people a little closer together around the table. I don’t think we looked that squashed in the footage, but the lovely pink chairs are a bit big to get players as shoulder-to-shoulder as the framing needed.

We’re approaching the end of equipment investment but it’s been another spenny month on that front, just to get everything in order!

Payroll + Freelancers:

HUGE freelancer investment this month. May saw us organise 

- IRL Board Room shoot

- 2 x Zoom Board Room shoots

- Would You Still Love Me If… shoot

- MITB Watchalong

- Ken for A Rad Time

- Much modding

- Adam and Teri’s salaries.

We’ve also brought on board our first freelance editor to help us manage the amount of content we want to make in order to maximise the Patreon’s value. We don’t really see this considerable monthly payroll expenditure going down anytime soon, but it's all manageable with careful budgeting. We actually don’t have any freelancer shoots currently planned for June as we’ve backlogged a ton of content this month. With our equipment costs nearly covered, as we spread the payments out over alternating months of shooting, we’re still very much in the black.

We’ll be dropping the first IRL Board Room video on our YouTube soon, and I hope when you watch it you’ll understand that the costs to our burgeoning talent pool are worth every penny.

Subscriptions:

The usual Netflix, Adobe, Epidemic Sound, Zoom Pro and Motion Array. We’ve also added a monthly patreon pledge to The Pandemonium Institute to storytell our first ever BOTC Patron games! We played four hours worth of EXCELLENT games with some patrons, and while they were recorded for posterity, we won’t be uploading them to the Patreon.

Unfortunately, as is the way with Patreon, we’re aware that we’re somewhat limited in preventing that footage being leaked elsewhere online, and we don’t feel comfortable putting the playing Patrons in that position.

Wonderful patron Felix has the footage if you wish to approach him on the Discord about it, but it’s purely up to his discretion to share it as and when he sees fit, and we ask that it not be shared without due notice and consent to keep the BOTC games a safe space.

Total:

Roughly £18,000

Future Plans/Expenses:

To add to next month’s employment costs, we’ve approached lawyers to draft contracts that provide two-way protection for freelancers, secure our IPs, and also pave the way for merch! 

OOOHHH MERCH!

We have some super fun options coming to those willing to rep our brand in public, hopefully adding another healthy revenue stream to the company.

Having those contracts drafted will cost thousands, but will be worth it in terms of our freelancer relationships, as well as securing BlampCo’s IP and merch rights long-term. 

In terms of equipment left to buy, Teri’s laptop will need an upgrade as even with its juicy specs, it’s still not enough RAM to cover Board Room edits. We’ll also need one more wide angle lens, and they do NOT come cheap. However, we plan to use interest-free payment plans for these purchases, spreading the costs over the coming months, making it much easier to deal with.

With the launch of the YouTube channel, we’ve seen a big spike of investment from our wonderful Patrons and we’re trying to put as much of that money as we can back into the business. If all the costs we’ve outlaid this month seem stark, please know that we’re budgeting everything super carefully and have zero worries about the costs either in the short-term or the future. 

Hope you all enjoy the first episode of The Board Room when it drops in a few days. We’re playing Unmatched, which is one of my very favourite games, and let me tell you, we had a blast playing it!

To all who have subscribed to the YouTube channel, and to all those who support us on this Patreon, thank you once again. We’re really taking off now, and it’s been a heck of a journey getting us to the point where BlampCo was not only ready but eager to go public!

See you next month, everyone!

Get back to work

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