Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 297: No-Budget, $600 Camera, 3 Lights & Still Sold Worldwide with Elliot and Zander Weaver

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BPS 297: No-Budget, $600 Camera, 3 Lights & Still Sold Worldwide with Elliot and Zander Weaver · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
• 0:13
  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two ninety seven. All good ideas start out as
• 0:18
  bad ideas. That's why it takes so long. Steven Spielberg broadcasting from a
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  dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next
• 0:27
  draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of
• 0:32
  screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host,
• 0:37
  Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
• 0:44
  I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored
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  by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script
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  Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are in the goals of the
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  project you are, so we actually break it down by three categories micro budget,
• 1:03
  indie film, market, and studio film. There's no reason to get
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  coverage from a reader that used to reading tempole movies when your movie is going
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  to be done for one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that.
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  At Bulletproof script Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA,
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  WM, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers,
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  The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you need your screenplay or
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  TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot
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  com. Now today on the show, guys, we have really inspiring and
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  unique filmmaking story. Today's guests are Xander and Elliott Weaver, the mastermind independent
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  filmmakers behind the feature film Cosmos. Now. On a daily basis, I
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  get pitched just tons and tons of filmmakers wanting to get on the show.
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  And as much as I want to help everybody out, I got you know,
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  I gotta make sure that the stories that I put on the show are
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  really good and really inspiring to the tribe. And I heard about Xander and
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  Elliott's film Cosmos just by running around the internet. And what made their film
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  so unique is that they shot their feature film just like I did, on
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  a black Magic pocket camera ten ADP. And that alone is not enough for
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  it to really grab people's attention, because, like I've said, before,
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  no one cares about what you shooted on as long as it's a good story,
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  and these guys were able to shoot a sci fi adventure film Ala Spielberg
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  Zamechis style about three amateur astronomers who intercept a faint signal from an alien race
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  and stumble upon something potentially world changing. Now, they shot this entire film
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  for about seven thousand bucks, and I was so blown away with how good
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  it looks. And what's even more impressive is they got distribution and they're selling
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  their movie around the world and making apparently good money with it. So the
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  film was shot with three people in a friend's garage on a six hundred dollars
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  camera, three led lights, and a decade old software post production software package.
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  They shot with two lenses, one old and one cheap. One was
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  a timber on eighteen, a two hundred zoom which they buffer about one hundred
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  bucks, and some vintage glass from the sixties from a brand I'd never even
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  heard of. This is a kind of story we as filmmakers need to hear.
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  We don't hear these stories very often, but I want to highlight these
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  guys so much, and I can't wait for you to hear their inspirational story.
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  So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Xander and
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  Elliott Weaver. I like to welcome to show Elliott and Zander Weaver. Man,
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  how are you guys doing very well? Thank you, Alex, thank
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  you very much fiving us on the show. Oh Man, thank you for
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  being on the show. Man. You know, it's I get. I
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  get. I get bombarded with request to be on the show all the time,
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  and they're like, hey, I made this really low budget movie and
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  I, you know, and that was cool like five years ago, Like
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  I made a movie for five grand, Like that's that's cool. But I
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  get thirty of those a week, so it's not I need something a little
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  extra. And I actually, you guys came up on my radar with your
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  film Cosmos a little while. We've been trying to do this for a while
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  now. By the way, so everyone listening the reason why it's taken so
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  long as schedules, technology, all sorts of thanks to finally get to where
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  we're at. But I saw what you're doing and I was pretty blown away
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  by not just the efficiency and the cost and all that stuff that he did.
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  You know, he did a movie for about seven thousand bucks, as
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  you told me. But the camera you used and we'll talk about that and
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  five years and I say that with like, oh gotta help you. You
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  know all that stuff. I feel it, brother, I feel it.
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  It's but I just love what you're doing and the quality and everything looks so
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  great. So we're going to get deep into cosmos today. But before we
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  do that, how did you get into this ridiculous business? Well, we
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  since I think this is a story of many people who made movies and love
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  movies. We've been doing it since we were kids, you know, since
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  we were And the first film we actually made, Elliot was five years old
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  and I was three, and we got the whole video camera and we made
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  a film called When the Toys Came to Life, When the Toys Coming Live
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  and our toys in our bedroom came to life. And after that we were
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  just we were hooked. And all through high school we were making shorts with
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  our mates and making music videos for them and stuff, and we decided to
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  just go straight from high school and jump in. You know, we didn't
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  go to a film school, we didn't go to a university. Um,
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  there aren't really the same kind of level of establishment like there are over in
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  the US for film school options. So we were just we just thought we'd
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  jumped straight in, get some experience and and start trying to, you know,
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  find our feet in the industry. Really but yeah, passionate since since
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  very small, very you know day. So the question is the juicue picks
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  are for stealing toy story from you guys? It's the question. Yeah,
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  yeah, but you know we're working on it, am I from the next
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  movie. I mean, because obviously, I mean I broke the story here
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  that picks are stall. They saw your short, stall your idea and has
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  made billions of I mean we were like seven or six, and we were
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  fuming in the cinema. We were like ready to table out that first taste
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  of you know, the industry, screwing sippy cups flying everywhere. It was
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  just it was just rough back then, I'm saying, storming out of his
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  birthday party. Imagine they give it better. To be fair, I'll give
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  them that was a productor a little bit better than yours, just slightly,
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  just slightly. All right, So so let's let's talk about Cosmos. Mettell
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  how did Cosmos come to be? Cosmos came about because we were actually trying
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  to set up another project. As Zanner said, when we left school,
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  we tried to set well, when we left school, we both tried to
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  jump into it and set our hearts on directing a feature film. You know,
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  it's finally getting around to this thing that we waited to get out of
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  high school to do. And we set this project up. We started writing
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  a script and we we kind of face that challenge that all indie filmmakers face,
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  which is do we write a script we know we can achieve, or
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  do we write the script we'd love to see and look to me and love
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  to make, but and we'll cross that bridge later. And of course it's
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  been like nineteen and twenty one years old. We wrote the script we wanted
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  to see, I thought, you know, we'll cross that bridge, and
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  then we had to cross that bridge. So we were talking to finance and
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  we were talking to investors, and we got a crew together and it was
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  all looking really, really good. But understandably, we were young guys and
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  we were asking for something like five million quid for a budget or something.
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  Because they all snowboard for the people we got involved. It was going really
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  well, and all the investment people kept going, this is your story,
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  sounds great, fantastic, crew looked good, but you know, you haven't
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  done this before, and you're young, and it's a lot money to ask.
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  And we were like, yes, I mean a reasonable you make it
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  good. I mean, I'm just I'm just saying. It's like the equivalent
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  of saying, hey, I need five million to build a house. I've
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  never built a house before. I've seen it, I've seen it on TV.
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  It seems fairly easy. So and by the way, by the way,
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  at the end of a five million dollar house, you have a house.
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  At the end of a five million dollar movie, maybe you'll make money.
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  Maybe you will. So we were like, okay, you know,
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  reasonable, reasonable concerns. They kept saying, go away and make a film.
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  That you can make a movie, and we were frustrated because we were
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  like, this is what we're trying to do. Anyway, we put that
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  initial film on the shelf, which was called Encounter, went back to the
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  drawing board and went, Okay, let's let's probably do what we should always
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  have done. Look at what we've got available. You know, we've got
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  lots of computer screens, we've got a station wagon, you know, Dad's
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  kind of fol though car. We love astronomy and all this sort of thing.
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  What can we Robert Rodriguez filmmaking, What can we make a movie out
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  of that we've already got? And that's how Cosmos was born. And our
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  initial concept was to make it in about twelve to eighteen months and then go
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  back to those investors and go, hey, there you go. Look there's
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  a blue rate. Told you we could do it. Let's get back to
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  business. But because we wanted to do it the way we wanted to do
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  it, where we could prove we had or hopefully prove that we knew what
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  we were talking about and we could take a script and deliver it. We
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  wanted to basically do as much of it as we could ourselves, and that
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  meant it took a lot longer. But we fell in love with the project
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  and we just ran with it. And it took five years in the and
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  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the
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  show. But we're thrilled with the journey. So you so you, I
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  mean, I'm assuming you made this on the weekends and whenever you had spare
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  time and stuff like that. Yeah, well, initially we did so the
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  first basically the first year and a half of work on the film, so
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  that I think the casting of it, finding locations, costumes, making the
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  props and everything. Oh deah, sorry sorry, Yeah, the first year
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  and a half of the movie was was done in a spare time while we
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  were freelancing. And we've run a production company as well, in dependent production
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  company that makes TV documentaries. Then from the end of twenty fifteen onwards and
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  we were like, if we're going to maybe this happen, we've got to
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  commit to it. So we went full time on it. And it sounds
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  a bit rock and roll, it's not rock and roll, but we we
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  lived off the royalties from a documentary production, which is something that we talk
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  about to filmmakers a lot. We say, you know, if you're looking
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  for that liberation to be able to spend the time making your feature film,
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  your narrative feature, consider making some TV documentaries and giving them out on the
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  market and letting them do some work for you. So those documentaries gave us
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  that freedom, and for the next three years or two and a half years,
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  we worked all time on the movie. Now, what was the crew
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  situation, Like the crew situation was limited, right, So we had on
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  the production crew, there was three of us and that was our set,
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  myself under and our mom and we did right. We did everything. So
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  we rigged all the gear, we lit the sets, we rigged the mikes,
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  we shot, we did all the props, we did a lot.
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  Basically we directed as well, there's that, there's that thing. And for
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  the shoot, the shoot was fifty five days spread over a year. Basically
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  we shot in blocks and that was dictated because the actors, you know,
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  were busy and they had other commitments and we tried to work around their commitments.
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  And then in post production it was just it was predominantly the two of
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  us, Sandra and I, and then we worked with a composer over about
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  three months to the soundtrack. So again it was just Sandra and I for
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  like twenty eight months of just post production, just staring at computer screens and
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  just chuking a way through it. It seems like a really it's a mad
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  way to make a film. But again from the very beginning, our objective
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  was we want something that we can show people and then they can look at
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  and basically they can't pick anything away from They can't sit there and go,
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  well, you know, it was well edited, but that was because you
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  hired a professional editor, wasn't it? Or it's well graded, but that's
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  because you hired a professional color grader. We wanted to, for better or
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  worse, whether it ended up being a good film or a bad film,
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  we wanted to have something that we could show these investors and they could go
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  so apart from acting in it and writing the soundtrack, everything else is you
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  and we can go yeah, now on an X movie. We don't want
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  to do that. We want to work with people who are owned their craft
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  and their masters of their skill, and they can bring so much to it.
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  But at least, hopefully it demonstrates that, you know, we have
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  an understanding of visual effects, and we have an understanding of editing, and
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  we have an understanding of Foley and all this sort of stuff. We don't
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  want to do it professionally, but at least we can be part of those
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  conversations as directors. That was the ad anyway. So I mean, because
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  I mean, I've heard of these stories of projects going on for five years
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  and it generally never ends well. It generally doesn't end well when you're hear
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  like, yeah, we've making this movie for five years. They're like,
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  oh, okay, and if it's something i've I've worked on features that took
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  that long to make and it just never got released. Just they paid it,
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  they did it, and they just couldn't get it sold because it was
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  either too bad or for whatever reason. So that you guys actually got it
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  to the finish line and it looks and it looks as good as it didn't.
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  It made as much noise as it did. M is a feat in
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  itself, man, it really really. I mean, you are a guy.
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  You guys are definitely the indie film muscle prolonification. There's no no question
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  about it. Because to stay on a project for five years, man,
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  you got to be committed. And that also says a lot about you as
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  filmmakers. You know, if I'm an investor, I'm like, these guys
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  are serious, man. They stuck on this thing for five years, better
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  or worse. And there's a reason why it took them this long. It's
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  not because they were crazy. Because they didn't have any money and if they
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  would have had a decent budget, this could have been done within a year.
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  All in So, now you chose the black Magic Pocket Camera, which
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  has just a dear place in my heart because I shot my last film on
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  the black back the pocket camera as well. I've been saying this for a
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  while. It's a stunning image. It's gorgeous. It's ten edyp I don't
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  care, it's gorgeous. I yeah, we totally agree. We think it's
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  this unsung hero of the d filmmaking world and it's completely it's quite overlooked.
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  Actually, yeah, we saw when when we shot the film in twenty fifteen.
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  We started to shoot the film in twenty fifteen, and the pocket camera,
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  the original pocket camera, I think was it. Did it come out
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  in twenty thirteen something like that, Yeah, yeah, something like that,
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  Yeah, yeah yeah, and we we we saw the footage start coming through
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  online of people doing camera tests, and we were just absolutely blown away.
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  But it we just thought it just has such this film equality to it just
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  looks absolutely lovely. So as soon as we could we could, we freelanced
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  camera men at the time and we bought the camera to use for work and
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  then we will this is it. We've got to use this for Cosmos.
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  So it served us incredibly well. There are there are you know, bumps
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  in the road with the camera. Battery life, for example, is now
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  doing the streets of bit Y and all that kind of stuff. But once
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  you've got those things in place, Yeah, what you effectively when you buy
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  the camera is this beautiful sensor. Really and um, we were. We
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  were very happy with the results of the film, so much so actually afterwards
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  we approached after the film was released, we approached Black Magic. They gave
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  it to give away to the filmmaking community, which was wonderful. Like to
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  have that association and that affiliation with them was the real moment of pride.
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  Yeah, what I love about What I love about the camera, Yes,
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  the battery power. I use the juice box, so I just like used
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  to have that. I just I put it in with the juice box.
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  At last, I wish we shoot six hours. Oh yeah, yeah,
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  it keeps going. It just goes and goes and goes with the juice box.
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  It was solid that part. And then I got the what is it?
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  Did you guys get the speed booster? We did? We did get
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  metal bones. Yeah at a bone speed booster just automatic gives you another stop
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  and a half. It's wonderful. And yes, the monitor in the back
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  can have issues, can't have issues. But you could plug in if you're
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  if you're so inclined, a little little monitor, pop it out or something
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  like that if you want to. But the speed that you could, the
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  speed you can move, the size of it, I mean, and now
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  I mean now they have the four K pocket camera or actually the six K
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  pocket cat. Four k's old school. Now they have the six K pocket
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  camera as well, So they have these other versions that are a little bit
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  more beefy. But this has this super sixteen style. It's a super sixteen
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  image. It's a sensor, it's a super sixteen censor. So for me,
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  like with my film, I wanted that like nineteen nineties sun Dance in
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  the vibe with a little bit of gray. I actually added it was too
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  clean. I added grain to the image in post. But it's such a
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  beautiful camera. Now what lenses did you use? We shot most of the
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  movie actually on a single stills lens that we added a twenty eight mile nineteen
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  sixty steals lens that we just had. Yeah, and it just like you
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  said, I don't know what it is about that sensor, but the way
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  sort of the light blooms it does have like a grainy although it's obviously digital
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  noise, it does have a grainy look to it. It looks like film
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  grain. Yeah, but it's but it's pretty clean. But it's pretty clear
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  if you shoot it right, it's clean. And but the aesthetic of the
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  image has that super sixteen clean look, and you and if you just add
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  just a little bit of digital grain to it, which a little film grain
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  onto it on top of it, it could just take it to that other
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  beautiful people. It worked. It was perfect for our needs. You know,
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  Cosmos is a film set predominantly in in this car, you know,
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  in a station wagon. So we had to get a camera and all the
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  you know, a slider and stuff inside this car and shoot in the confines
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  of the vehicle. And to have this small camera, it's just absolutely you
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  wouldn't have been able to do it. Otherwise you would have to have like
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  cut the car in half and fly, you know, fly in and out
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  and all this kind of stuff. Like I actually in that Yeah, like
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  I own U the black Magic four point six K camera, but I chose
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  to shoot with the little camera because of the ease. Even if you would
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  have had a red or an Alexa, you couldn't have shot this film.
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  We couldn't. We say that to people sometimes and they kind of look at
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  this and they go, what do you mean? And you go, well,
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  I mean it's tough to get a camera in a car, like it's
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  not it's actually our car. It's not a set. You know, we're
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  filming in. Can't chop the roof off. We've got to drive home.
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  So yeah it is. And also it da ten DP and against some filmmakers
• 19:48
  look at you like you know you've landed from Mars if you like. But
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  it doesn't. It doesn't matter to me, and it doesn't matter in general.
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  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 20:04
  the show. But there is something beautiful about like film is high resolution,
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  but it's soft. It's a delicate image. It's not pin sharp, crystal
• 20:18
  clear high fidelity. And I think the ten ATP black Magic it has the
• 20:22
  same texture the film has. It's a bit of pin shot image if you
• 20:26
  want it. And it's clean, like you said, but it's soft.
• 20:30
  It just softens the edges in a way that film does. Um. I
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  mean they I've talked to Black Magic a lot about this when I work with
• 20:38
  them, and I've told them that camera is just like in all of their
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  actually all of their images, they always have this this kind of like beautiful
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  like it's like red is freaking just scalpel esque in their image. It's so
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  crystal clear. It's a bit it's a bit much um where Alexa is also
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  a soft image. But the Alexa costs eighty two hundred thousand as opposed to
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  the black Magic and all of that. Now, one thing I found interesting
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  about your story is that you guys you had a sound stage. Obviously they
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  don't tell you, don't thought, they don't say this publicly enough, but
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  you had a sound stage. It was your garage. You actually build a
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  garage sound stage where you shot a lot of the filming. Can you explain
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  that processor sus uh yeah, yeah, Well we the the garage is actually
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  a friend of ours, so we have One of the challenges that we faced
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  is that the actual set of the movie is the is this car, but
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  the vehicle that we would us to get from the garage every single day,
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  so um, you know, at the end of filming, we would at
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  the beginning of the day, we'd get there and we get all the gear
• 21:45
  out and we set the props up in the vehicle and we shoot, and
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  then by the end of the day we had to de rig everything, put
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  it all back in the car and drive off. We couldn't it all set
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  up. But the film takes place across one night effectively, and instead of
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  having the car out in the middle of the field and shooting actually in the
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  middle of the night for the interiors, we just drove it into this garage.
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  We put up a black syke and we shot during the day and faked
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  it as if it was at nighttime and it worked superbly well, but we
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  we did all start going a bit d lightly by the end of it because
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  we weren't seeing any daylight. It was the middle of the winter here in
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  the UK, and we drive in in the dark, shoot in the dark
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  night, and drive out in the dark. So yeah, we craved the
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  lunchtime daylight that we got every day. Now I wanted to go back real
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  quick to the whole ten DP aspect. Did you shooting ANTENDP affect your dr
• 22:42
  distribution deal, your sales? Did you they go, oh, no,
• 22:47
  we can't take your film because we need four K. Can I just want
• 22:51
  because this is a myth. People think you have to master in four K,
• 22:53
  you have to shoot in six or now twelve K or something like that.
• 23:00
  I want you, I want you. Please tell the people, Please
• 23:03
  tell the people the truth. Did it matter? No, it doesn't matter.
• 23:07
  When it didn't matter to us, We spoke to a handful of distributors,
• 23:11
  We spoke to a handful of sales agents. We even got two distributors
• 23:15
  bidding against each other for the film. And even when we'd settled on one
• 23:19
  and signing all the deals up, not once in the sort of six months
• 23:26
  that we were doing distribution and since have we been asked about what resolution the
• 23:32
  film was shot on? Not once did they ask us during the negotiation process,
• 23:37
  what resolution is it? You know, what did you shoot on?
• 23:40
  It didn't matter. And in fact, when we got the deliverable the tech
• 23:45
  specs in the tech specs but I distributed, it actually said if you have
• 23:49
  shot your film in four K, can you please let us know because we
• 23:52
  all have to set up a special pipeline for you. Basically, not many
• 23:57
  people do that, you know. In other words, not many people do
• 24:00
  that, and we'll have to go a special route for you. So yeah,
• 24:03
  not once where we asked is it in two K, four K,
• 24:07
  six K? They just they watched the screener and that's all they really wanted
• 24:10
  to talk about. So we often get asked too, and we get emailed
• 24:15
  by people going, oh, you shot on the six K. I Reggie
• 24:18
  shot on the black Magic six K, and we're like, no, no,
• 24:19
  we shot on the and they're like the same things to be well,
• 24:29
  this will happen, right, They'll get in touch on us, say we
• 24:30
  watched the movie, you know, really impressed with what you achieved with your
• 24:33
  limited resources. And you're like, oh, that's amazing, thank you,
• 24:36
  And they say what did what what camera did you shoot on? You tell
• 24:40
  them and like Elliot said, they assume it's six six and you know it's
• 24:44
  the ten A TP one and they go, really, I'm shocked. It's
• 24:45
  like, well, you you watched it, so like do you like,
• 24:49
  did it work for you, did it distract from the story for you,
• 24:52
  or did you just watch it and enjoy it and not really worry. So
• 24:56
  yeah, I think it's very easy to get lost in the at K war
• 25:00
  with all the modern technology, But ultimately I think a storytellers focus should be
• 25:06
  more on the script and the acting and the soundtrack. Stop it on how
• 25:10
  many kkes? Stop it? Stop it, sir. You're talking crazy talk,
• 25:14
  sir, crazy talk. It's all about the cameras. It's all about
• 25:15
  the gear. If you've got a twelve K camera, if you have an
• 25:19
  Alexa with one hundred thousand dollars uh lens on it, that's all you need.
• 25:26
  You don't need a story or acting. That's that that automatically makes your
• 25:29
  movie good, Isn't that? That's what I've been sold, That's what I've
• 25:32
  been doing. Am I wrong? I mean we also gassed you know what
• 25:37
  codec We shot in and we shot people. Go oh you shot raw then,
• 25:41
  right, and we actually shot pro RaSE LT. Okay, well that's
• 25:44
  now. That's now honest looking now I'm going to have to say that it
• 25:47
  is kind of crazy talk. Why didn't you shoot? Come on, guys,
• 25:48
  you could have shot raw well ld have bit it, but you edited
• 25:51
  in final cut, which we'll get to in a minute, so raw would
• 25:53
  have been a big pain in the butt for you. It would have been.
• 25:56
  It would have been. I mean, we just we did our own
• 25:57
  little camera tests. We put on knows to the screen and we were like
• 26:00
  LT. You sharlty, not even ProRes just yea yea currently the difference.
• 26:07
  Yeah, we did HQ proras and LT tests and we were like looking at
• 26:12
  our monitor, you know, our Mac monitor, going which one is this?
• 26:15
  I can't tell? So we also like wanted to just like we wanted
• 26:21
  to. We're big fans of like committing on location, so basically what it
• 26:26
  looks like and how it did lit and the color and you know, and
• 26:30
  so because that's those are the directors that we look up to from our childhood.
• 26:33
  You know, they didn't have that kind of flexibility that is now available
• 26:37
  to filmmakers, and I think it can hone your abilities and your craft.
• 26:41
  So to some degree, we wanted to test ourselves and go, look,
• 26:44
  we're going to bake this in. We're going to just shoot, and what
• 26:47
  we get is what we get, and we're going to live with it.
• 26:48
  And and that's that to us is part of the thrill and excitement of filmmaking.
• 26:52
  It's crazy man, crazy talk. Yes, it's crazy talk. And
• 26:56
  but you also had a limited theatrical right we did. Yeah, but how
• 27:00
  could I but sir, but how could you do that with a ten DP?
• 27:03
  That's not possible sir, how could you do that? Wow? The
• 27:07
  great question. Yeah, it held up beautifully on screen. We did actually
• 27:11
  do an upbreas two k upbreads for the DC using Davincia resolves upscale, which
• 27:18
  is nuts. In fact, I've heard that many people are selling their Black
• 27:25
  Magic six ks and four ks going back to the originals and just up raising
• 27:29
  them because they prefer the image how it looks on the original. But yeah,
• 27:33
  we had a limited theatrical release. The movie was in nine cities across
• 27:37
  the States, which was just mad for us, right. We didn't We
• 27:41
  were not anticipating that, like two kids from Birmingham, UK making a movie
• 27:45
  and it's going to be shown in cinemas in America. That was that was
• 27:48
  a dream come true. And we've seen it. We saw it twice on
• 27:52
  a big screen. We had a premier here in the UK, premiere out
• 27:55
  in Los Angeles as well, and it just really holds up incredibly well considering
• 28:00
  and I just I just wish that filmmakers could, you know, stop worrying
• 28:06
  so much about it because the kit that we've got available at I think it
• 28:08
  tips now. It's just so incredibly powerful. Yes, and there is just
• 28:14
  no excuse, I think no when I and and that's why, that's another
• 28:17
  reason why I wanted you guys on the show, because you shot with this
• 28:18
  camera, because I shot with the camera as well, and everyone says all
• 28:22
  the same things you could get I've gotten with my film, and I did
• 28:26
  the same thing, like because on my monitor here where I color graded,
• 28:30
  it looked great. But when I was I premiered at the Chinese Theater in
• 28:33
  Hollywood with my film, and I was like, this is amazing, and
• 28:37
  but do you understand I was terrified. I just up as I did a
• 28:41
  DP a DCP up warre as to two K, I'm like, it's gonna
• 28:45
  work. It's I don't know what it's gonna look like. I'd like,
• 28:48
  is it gonna be super grainy? I'm like, okay, well it's supposed
• 28:49
  to be kind of grainy because I wanted it. And when I saw I
• 28:52
  projected in the Chinese and I just sat there before the audience came out that
• 28:56
  we did a little little text text us out on it, I was like,
• 29:00
  Oh, Mike, it looks amazing. It's gorgeous. It was so
• 29:06
  and we did the DCP through to Da Vinci and I was just blown away.
• 29:10
  It's honestly enough, shot with all the cameras known to man, thirty
• 29:14
  five sixty and I've shot everything. It's probably one of the most beautiful things
• 29:18
  I've ever shot. That film. It's such a great camera. And that's
• 29:22
  why I wanted. I want people listening to understand. You can buy that
• 29:26
  little camera right now on eBay for six to eight hundred dollars maybe less maybe,
• 29:33
  and you could buy you could buy in the full like a full kit
• 29:36
  for like a thousand, twelve hundred bucks, and that comes with like a
• 29:40
  lot of I mean I bought my I bought mine off of eBay. I
• 29:42
  bought it like for I think a thousand bucks. But it was like a
• 29:45
  full kit, case, batteries, all of that stuff. And then to
• 29:49
  rig it out it doesn't cost that much. Like, yeah, if you
• 29:53
  need to, if you need a mat box, I got my mat box
• 29:56
  for like one hundred and fifty bucks. We'll be right back after a word
• 30:02
  from our sponsor and now back to the show. Either Yeah, it's it's
• 30:11
  so you could really great. You can pimp it out, man, you
• 30:15
  can pimp it out really really really. I actually made our camera rigal.
• 30:18
  Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, yes, so please tell tell
• 30:22
  us about your your rig, sir. Yeah, we actually put up a
• 30:26
  video on our Facebook page a few months back just to show people because they
• 30:32
  kept We've we've spoken about the fact that I've made this rig, and I
• 30:36
  don't think some people believe that it was actually true. But yeah, it's
• 30:38
  It's one of those very kind of Heath Robinson held together with gaffetape kind of
• 30:45
  affairs. Really, but just you know, I went to I was looking
• 30:48
  online. We don't have a budget for this movie. I was looking online
• 30:51
  and there's some wonderful rigs out there. But I think there's like two kinds.
• 30:55
  Right. There's there's these lovely machine milled beautiful things, right that are
• 31:00
  quite expensive and thus but she plastic ones and you think that they're going to
• 31:04
  snap when I first use them. Say, I just thought, because we
• 31:08
  had some very specific requirements with Cosmos getting in the car and being able to
• 31:14
  just the rig set up and what we wanted to do with it, I
• 31:15
  was like, well, don't I just make a custom one? So went
• 31:18
  to the hardware store, did got some wood, got some copper pipe,
• 31:22
  got some nails, and just put it all together. Really and you could
• 31:26
  see it in the behind the scenes. It's not pretty, right, it's
• 31:27
  not. But that's part of the fun of this baby, all, right,
• 31:30
  of this film. You know, we are very proud and very like
• 31:34
  humbled by how well it's done. But we're also really excited because we've done
• 31:40
  it in sort of the most kit bashed ad hoc way. You know.
• 31:45
  We've got a cardboard mat box and we've got ankle weights on the back of
• 31:48
  our rig, and we're using a wheelchair for a dolly And it doesn't matter,
• 31:53
  or it doesn't matter to us. And it was a film about It
• 31:56
  wasn't about standing behind a camera with l cap on and posing and looking cool.
• 32:01
  It was about making a film no matter what. And it wasn't about
• 32:06
  being cool and being seen with a red epic or an election. Yeah,
• 32:08
  we'd love to work with that, you know, it would be a dream,
• 32:12
  but we for we forewent that that sort of the image of feeling good
• 32:17
  about ourselves in exchange for actually being able to get a film made. Yeah,
• 32:23
  no, it's And when I saw when I saw the behind the scenes
• 32:27
  and I saw you guys in a wheelchair, I was like, oh,
• 32:30
  Robert, mister rogery this has helped us out so much because he was I
• 32:34
  mean, I'm a bit older than you guys. So I came up around
• 32:37
  the same time Robert did. I speak of him like, I'm my friend,
• 32:40
  I'm not but um but Robert, but Bobby, Bobby um Bobby h
• 32:45
  No, uh Robert. He did the wheelchair thing with his with all Mariachi
• 32:51
  and I did a wheelchair thing. Every everybody of my generation did the wheelchair
• 32:54
  like we yeah, And to be honest with you, this is what how
• 32:58
  I got because wheelchairs are expensive, dude, They're not cheap. So what
• 33:00
  we did this is back in ninety got ninety four. I think we went
• 33:06
  to the mall where you could rent a wheelchair for the day for a dollar
• 33:10
  twenty five. Oh wow, but we just took it home. Wolly questionable.
• 33:19
  No wait wait wait, used it, returned it afterwards, got my
• 33:22
  dollar. I got a quarterback because I returned it, So the essential rental
• 33:27
  would be. It was just because no one does that, like and there's
• 33:30
  also the nineties and they didn't, you know, and it's it's a different
• 33:34
  world. Let's go, let's let's cameras, let's cameras in the you know,
• 33:38
  security camera is less security. It was it was the Wow Wild West.
• 33:43
  But yes, that's that was what I do, right, that's the
• 33:47
  indy film hustle. No man that since I've been I've been. I've been
• 33:51
  living the brand since ninety two. Sir, what is the biggest mistake you
• 33:59
  made making this film? I'm sure there's a list, but what's the one
• 34:02
  that you're like, Oh, um, I think I think the biggest.
• 34:07
  Well, so this is this is an interesting question. The thing that we
• 34:13
  often say we would do differently is we would just get some help, right,
• 34:16
  we would raise a bit of money. Right, two people is very
• 34:22
  obvious, like two people, three people maybe. But the challenge that the
• 34:28
  reason it's not that simple actually for us is because part of part of the
• 34:32
  marketing for Cosmos has been leveraging this kind of indie film spirit. It's been
• 34:38
  connecting with the filmmaking community by saying, look, we're just doing this with
• 34:43
  nothing. Follow us along to be part of it. And and so if
• 34:47
  we'd have done it how most of the people do it, where they pull
• 34:51
  a band together and they kick start and they raise a thousand dollars, then
• 34:54
  you're just the same as everybody else, right, So to some degree,
• 34:58
  this nuts to pid way of doing a movie was took ages, but it
• 35:02
  paid off because it's allowed us to open up conversation. We're talking to you
• 35:07
  now because of it. We wouldn't be Otherwise. I would say, if
• 35:12
  I wanted to get it done quicker, with less stress, just collaborate with
• 35:16
  more people, get it done sooner. But you know, I'm very proud
• 35:21
  of like the way we've done it and the experience that we've obtained from it.
• 35:25
  It's just like God, it's a measurable to just have a bit of
• 35:29
  a glimpse and and understanding about all these elements and aspects. It's like the
• 35:34
  ultimate film school. So I you know, it's a really interesting question.
• 35:38
  What did what didn't mom do? She'd use your third groomen of course,
• 35:44
  woman's quite essential. So our mom professionally not anymore, but before we were
• 35:52
  born and while we were kids, she was a professional TV makeup artist,
• 35:57
  so we should we should. One of the main disciplines that she had on
• 36:00
  the film, where she was hair and makeup and obviously keep you know,
• 36:05
  sort of rolled over into continuity. So she was keeping track of all the
• 36:08
  beard length and the hair length and the collars and all that sort of thing.
• 36:12
  And then we did also journ just like roper In and put her to
• 36:15
  good use, doing the clap of board every now and then, sometimes holding
• 36:19
  the boom and sometimes running the smoke machine round. She was sort of almost
• 36:23
  like the third director. Really we were all in it together, but she
• 36:27
  was also we often say, she was the onset mom, and every set
• 36:31
  needs a mom, you know. And all the boys, all the guys,
• 36:36
  they kind of she murthered them and they adopted her. So we all
• 36:40
  we had this sort of family family unit on the film. Yeah, now,
• 36:45
  what did you guys use for smoke machine? Did you actually like buy
• 36:46
  one of those like party smoke machines or we yeah, we had we already
• 36:52
  had like a mist like a disco smoke machine type thing, but and we
• 36:58
  tested it outside and we're like, this is just not not going to hack
• 37:00
  it, you know, like in the windy British winter, it's like,
• 37:02
  okay, it's just lit a cigarette. Yeah, that's not gonna work.
• 37:07
  So actually, the single biggest expense on the movie we bought a gas powered
• 37:12
  our ten smoke machine. Yah, the propane ones, yeah, the proper
• 37:15
  jobs, you know, and and but but us, we could justify it
• 37:20
  in our heads because we were just like, this is going to give us
• 37:23
  a production value. We're going to be out in a forest and it's going
• 37:25
  to give us the depth and allow us to kind of make it look like
• 37:29
  we have more lights than we do. And you know, we're big fans
• 37:31
  of like having that smoke medium to light in and all that stuff. So
• 37:36
  for us, it was it was about it was over ten percent of the
• 37:38
  budget on the smoke machine. It was. But I want to get it.
• 37:43
  I want to ask you something because I've shot with a ton of haze
• 37:45
  machines and smoke machines in my career, and you guys didn't shoot Rat so
• 37:52
  I know from shooting with smoke machines that smoke doesn't take direction quite well.
• 37:57
  How How Tony Scott shot every scene of every movie that he ever did with
• 38:04
  a smoke machine or a haze machine and it looked perfect every time? How
• 38:08
  he did it, I don't know. I can only imagine. I've had
• 38:13
  trouble with full crews. How the hell did you wrangle smoke or haze in
• 38:20
  a shot and how did it not? How did you match it in post?
• 38:23
  And how did you deal with it in color, because sometimes if it's
• 38:27
  one SHOT's hazy and then the coverage is not hazy. How do you like,
• 38:30
  how did you do it? Well, it's difficult. It was hard
• 38:36
  to tell, Alex, I have to tell you. It was ridiculously hard,
• 38:39
  impossible. We almost set everything on fire and third degree burns and the
• 38:46
  whole lot. Really um no. Yeah, So we we did get quite
• 38:51
  good at like timing the smoke machines, so you can we could sort of
• 38:55
  like leave it off on its own and it would just trickle out on its
• 38:59
  own, very against the rules of owning a propane gasi smoke machine is never
• 39:04
  leave it unattended. But you know, we were all grown up. You
• 39:07
  were only a few feet away. You were a few feet away. It
• 39:08
  was yeah, we all think we do it like a blast, right,
• 39:13
  we do. We like one of us would run around with the smoke machine,
• 39:16
  blast it into the grass and all that kind of stuff, and then
• 39:19
  you stepped back and interesting this enormous bog cloud right, and you'd be behind
• 39:22
  the camera ready act as it will be ready, wait for it, wait
• 39:24
  for the moment, wait for the you know, and then just when it
• 39:28
  was right, we went for it. I have to. I just have
• 39:30
  to point something out that you were judging me morally about my my wheelchairs to
• 39:34
  scam. Sir. You left the propane machine unattended, sir, which actually
• 39:39
  could have killed people. My little scam did not kill anybody, and it
• 39:44
  was returned, sir, So both of you, I just I just wanted
• 39:46
  to point that out. Thank thank you. I take everything back. I'm
• 39:51
  sorry. So yeah, so then even even in postal like matching, we'll
• 39:58
  be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the
• 40:05
  show matching that haze. We did do it did it was for the most
• 40:12
  part we were it was okay like we'd we'd for one reason or another.
• 40:15
  We didn't have too much problems, but we did. There is always that,
• 40:20
  you know, There's always that balance, isn't there. When you come
• 40:22
  to to your color grade and you I think you did a bit of smoke
• 40:24
  stuffed in post being in pasting backgrounds and pasting, can you just take the
• 40:30
  smoke from behind this guy's head in this shop, yeah and put it in
• 40:34
  this guy and you would just be like, okay, yeah, yeah,
• 40:37
  you have to. I mean it's it's I just want people that hearing this,
• 40:40
  understand shooting with a smoke machine or haze machine. It's not easy and
• 40:46
  it's time consuming. It is you shoot it up, settle weight weight shoot,
• 40:53
  oh, cut, do it again, and then like, oh and
• 40:58
  you guys, you don't done an inside. I've never done it outside,
• 41:00
  so I can only imagine outside. You guys had action as well, Like
• 41:07
  you'll be for ten minutes to bow to right and then suddenly you're like,
• 41:12
  I'll put the smoke machine over there. You know it's it's you're chasing your
• 41:15
  tail all night long. Now, can you talk everybody, because you guys
• 41:19
  did purchase a very high expensive wind machine, So can you tell people what
• 41:23
  that wind machine was? Yes, yes, absolutely, Well, you know,
• 41:28
  in the in the spirit of all high end special effects that you see
• 41:31
  in all the blockbusters. Um, we we went into our garden shed and
• 41:37
  we were digging around and we were aware that, you know, once upon
• 41:40
  a time we were the proud owners of a leaf blower. So we got
• 41:46
  that dice and leaf blower out, gave it a bit of a blast and
• 41:50
  thought, okay, well, we can't record any dialogue while are using this,
• 41:52
  but we can have winds. So yeah, that was one of one
• 41:57
  of our jobs. In fact, my job on the end of the you,
• 42:00
  I was directing and blowing hot, dusty air into the faces of the
• 42:05
  actors. So you were just directing, right, yeah, yea method,
• 42:08
  it was method. Yeah, you wanted them to cry, so you just
• 42:14
  just slam dirt into their eyes basically at high school. Absolutely, yeah,
• 42:20
  Terry Glass might look that's great. Oh sorry, no, you've just got
• 42:23
  leaps in your face. Amazing yea. Now, um, what I want
• 42:30
  to talk about post because but I read what you guys didn't post um again
• 42:36
  made my heart just just it warmed my heart because you were using two pieces
• 42:40
  of software that I used on I. Look, I'm a recent convert from
• 42:45
  Final Cut seven. When I say recent, was probably like four or five
• 42:49
  years, like four four years ago, maybe I think four or four years
• 42:53
  ago. I think I switched over to editing four or five years ago.
• 42:57
  I switched to editing too in Resolve strictly. But I had seven solid and
• 43:02
  with ten d P and you guys were shooting a progress so I actually,
• 43:08
  I mean with my first film, I had to actually go to Resolve because
• 43:12
  I was shooting raw on the the old cinema camera the original, the original
• 43:16
  two point five K cinema camera. So I had to go raw because I'm
• 43:20
  like, finally I have to leave poor final cut seven. So you edited
• 43:23
  in final cut seven, and then you colored in color too, apple color
• 43:27
  If I'm mistaken right, I did a lot of apple color sound designed in
• 43:32
  final Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, So you guys are doing and
• 43:37
  what here was this? This? Yeah? So then truly truly no excuse.
• 43:44
  So because I'm saying because I I did all this in like two thousand
• 43:49
  and six, so there is um, there's no excuse. No, but
• 43:52
  you had what you had, and that's again that's another great lesson here you
• 43:55
  have it, you own it, use what you got. That's it.
• 44:00
  That's what it's all about. And for us, we produced all of our
• 44:04
  documentaries usually final cuts seven. Again, that philosophy is just like, look,
• 44:08
  there's been Oscar Oscar winning movies that have been edited on final cut seven.
• 44:14
  We have no requirement to push to a new piece of software. We're
• 44:17
  not shooting in four K, O eight K or something crazy. We're shooting
• 44:22
  in TENN ATP. If it's good enough, Well, Parasite won the best
• 44:25
  time. Yeah, yeah, edited on final cut seven. Yeah, No,
• 44:30
  Parasite was editing seven. Yeah it was, so it's easy. I
• 44:37
  didn't know that. Yeah, it's still going strong. There's a small band
• 44:42
  of FTP seven users they're like, come on, keep it alive. Software.
• 44:46
  It's a crapie of software. Though, I do like Resolve a little
• 44:50
  bit better than Color. I have to say. Yeah, we're in the
• 44:53
  process of kind of switching overle to Resolve for all things, all things generally
• 44:59
  really you know, cutting and and grading as well. So I mean just
• 45:02
  black Magic all the way. And that's another thing that people want people to
• 45:07
  understand is like if you if you stay within the black Magic ecosystem, man,
• 45:12
  it works beautifully. Like you you shoot raw, bring it into Resolve,
• 45:15
  and you can do everything in Resolve, and then you don't have to
• 45:19
  actually even go out to online anywhere. It all stays in. Visual effects
• 45:23
  are connected, sound is connected. It's it's a pretty amazing piece of software.
• 45:30
  You're talking about. It's some kind of unknown future world to a falling
• 45:32
  we're still dealing. Fine, get a floppy disk. Get the floppy disk.
• 45:40
  No, no, get the zip Get the zip disc, sir,
• 45:43
  Get the zip disc, the zip disc and the jazz even do you know
• 45:46
  even know what a jazz drive is? No, do you know what a
• 45:50
  zip disc? Do you know what a zip disc is? You guys are
• 45:53
  so young. You're so young, is right? No, A floppy disk
• 46:00
  was at one point two mega, if I'm not mistaken, disc held like
• 46:04
  one point two. The zip disc held a hundred megs and it was like
• 46:07
  a plastic disc. And then the jazz was the big brother of the zip.
• 46:14
  It was all by Omega. It was a company. This is now
• 46:16
  I'm just I'm I'm dating myself and only like five percent of my audience is
• 46:21
  going, oh I remember that. No, I'm much apparently much older than
• 46:25
  you guys, extremely much much older than you guys. We used floppies high
• 46:31
  school, putting our Courseboke on floppy disc. The usbing the whole flash drive
• 46:36
  thing was like, wow, science finish, science fiction, isn't it?
• 46:39
  Yeah? Yeah, now it's like, oh, he's We were talking to
• 46:45
  someone not long ago and they were talking about MP three players. Weren't they
• 46:46
  something? One was it? And they said, oh, you were saying
• 46:50
  They were saying something like, oh, apparently there was a time when MP
• 46:53
  three players couldn't do this, And we were just like, oh my god,
• 46:57
  Like there wasn't a time when MP three plays like yeah, yeah,
• 47:01
  yeah, yeah, there was. There was a thing called tapes, um
• 47:05
  see that records eight track. I remember eight track vaguely in a car,
• 47:12
  in a car when I was a kid. I remember a tract anyway,
• 47:15
  I'm so, I'm so, I'm so fff and old. I appreciate you.
• 47:19
  You're reminding me. Thank you. Take a set of children of the
• 47:22
  tape recording you your mix tapes on radio and waiting, yeah, waiting for
• 47:27
  the radio, just like I hoping the DJ does not say a damn word
• 47:31
  over the song a song and you're like, this is right way, yes,
• 47:39
  because you hear that a thousand times and you're like, hey, welcome
• 47:43
  back, Like you're just waiting for that. You Oh my god, I
• 47:49
  used to do that all the time. So because you guys, you guys
• 47:55
  were the dps on this um as well. And it looks, by the
• 47:59
  way, finn tastic. It looks gorgeous. Um. So that's extremely impressive.
• 48:04
  You got what I love about the film is that you you really made
• 48:07
  it. You could get so much production value, but yet in a very
• 48:10
  condensed, very small space. Really it was a small group of characters,
• 48:15
  and a lot of people think that you have to make a very contained movie
• 48:17
  like yours, which is contained, but it wasn't contained. There's like big
• 48:21
  outside scenes and there's excitement and things like that. But it doesn't have to
• 48:24
  be in a room. I mean you you can think outside the box a
• 48:29
  little bit and it's still very But you did a car m but it was
• 48:31
  a car with outside and and you know, the sky, and there was
• 48:36
  a lot of production value and all the stuff that you did with it.
• 48:38
  Um. But when the look of the film is really great. When you
• 48:43
  got into color though, how much did you do? Was it like you
• 48:46
  guys were close to where you wanted to be? And that's scary man.
• 48:50
  I'm like, I'm just I'm letting you know. I've been a Colors for
• 48:52
  ten twelve years. I have to shoot raw because I need that the freedom
• 48:59
  to like save me from me. I think it's the right thing to do.
• 49:04
  Yeah, it is the correct sensible thing to do. As what you're
• 49:07
  saying, I mean, why not is the real answer to that question?
• 49:10
  Why would you not use those tools? They're available? But yeah, no,
• 49:14
  we we shot as we previously mentioned, we lived with the colors we
• 49:20
  wanted it, you know how, we wanted to be lit with big fans
• 49:22
  of splashing color in there. Yeah, Tony, you know, and we're
• 49:29
  not liking ourselves. No, no, no, no, no, just
• 49:31
  like Tony Scott, this is what I do. No, No, we
• 49:35
  understand. Yeah, we understand Tony. Rest in peace, Tony. But
• 49:38
  I mean Tony and Ridley both just bas so. Yeah, we we our
• 49:45
  goals to just capture that as much as possible on location, and then when
• 49:50
  we got to the color grade, for the most part, it was a
• 49:54
  few kind of vignette power windows here and there. We'll be right after a
• 50:00
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. We pushed We
• 50:08
  did a thing. We did some tests early on when we were comparing the
• 50:12
  Black Magic footage to film footage, and we noticed that film had like a
• 50:17
  kind of slight greeny yellowy tint in the highlights. That's something we just saw,
• 50:22
  and so we just pushed a bit of that in of the saturation of
• 50:25
  the contrast that was so slightly. It was a very I mean, it
• 50:29
  was a time consuming process because it always is, isn't it, with the
• 50:32
  with the color matching and everything. But in terms of how how much we
• 50:37
  pushed the image. We didn't do a huge amount to it. We were
• 50:40
  quite delicate with it. And how about visual effects, because there's there's a
• 50:44
  couple of visual effects on The Boy. There's seventy visual effects of the film,
• 50:49
  one hundred and seventy. Yeah. Nice. Most of them are not
• 50:52
  visible there. We call them in vis effects because they're just not even supposed
• 50:58
  to be noticed. They're like set x engions and skylines and stars in the
• 51:01
  sky and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I handled the visual
• 51:06
  effects while eli It was doing all the sound design and the foley for the
• 51:07
  film. I did the visual effects on Blender, which is fantastic open source.
• 51:14
  The effects software is just getting stronger and stronger, and man, it's
• 51:16
  exciting to see what they're doing with it, pioneering stuff. And yeah,
• 51:23
  and after effects as well. But for the most part, like I said,
• 51:28
  it was some seth extensions, some skylines, but there were more involved
• 51:30
  things. For example, in front of the telescope. We replaced the front
• 51:36
  end of the telescope in the movie because it looked pretty awful. Actually it
• 51:38
  was. It was originally a tripod carry tube and we created a prop for
• 51:45
  the front to make it look like a telescope. And then we got into
• 51:47
  the edit and we were like, that just does not sell rubbish, rubbish,
• 51:52
  rubbish, absolute trash. And so Elliott turned to me and he said,
• 51:58
  can we do something about that? So I had to figure that out.
• 52:00
  It was very much a learning process as we went. But yeah,
• 52:06
  I always say that, like when it came to the visual effects, it
• 52:08
  was something I was doing for fun before Cosmos was even a consideration. So
• 52:14
  if you ever get that kind of tinge of excitement about anything, just just
• 52:19
  explore it a bit, because for filmmaking is such a diverse discipline. There's
• 52:22
  so many different elements to it. Chances are it will come back and help
• 52:25
  you at some point. And you so you camped in after effects, camping
• 52:30
  after effects, visual effect three D in Blender three D and color, and
• 52:36
  then you also my extrad sound and final couple, which I know is ridiculous
• 52:40
  because I've done it myself. It's not really built, not built as an
• 52:45
  audio not at all, not even a little bit now, even a little
• 52:49
  bit. And then you guys also did fully as well. We did a
• 52:52
  lot. Yeah, we did the folly and I did that. So what
• 52:54
  was and was doing the visual effects? I was stomping around and rustling and
• 53:00
  breathing into microphones and all that sort of thing. And it's amazing, sixty
• 53:04
  six thousand sound effects we've put in onto one hundred audio tracks. So what
• 53:09
  what machine were you? What machine were you running? Because I know Final
• 53:13
  Cut seven fairly well, that's going to tax the that's going to tax the
• 53:16
  software, sir, Yeah it did. I don't I just a Mac and
• 53:21
  ima iMac that's an iMac with with with an operating system that still runs Final
• 53:25
  Cut seven. Because now officially it's dead. You can't upgrade. Yes,
• 53:31
  that is absolutely right. We have two Imax right, this one which is
• 53:35
  as to date and the one we made costa sign which we cannot change.
• 53:39
  Also, the Mac is like dead now you turn it on and you just
• 53:44
  try and open up Rome or something. You just think we killed this confuse
• 53:47
  trying to make that film. Yeah. Another feeling. It just wants to
• 53:52
  retire, It wants to be Is it is it something about Max? Is
• 53:58
  it something to say I still have three towers hours of old Max that I
• 54:01
  just I can't get rid of them. I just there's there's just something like
• 54:07
  I can't there's not I can't get rid of my MAC. I don't like
• 54:10
  just just in case you need that CD ROM for some reason. Yeah yeah,
• 54:15
  I mean, you know, absolutely see you with a poppy disk drive
• 54:22
  on it. So you know, gotta keep you gotta keep the options just
• 54:27
  in case everything goes goes to hell. You got final cut seven, Let's
• 54:30
  rock and roll into business now. And so you finished this whole movie.
• 54:38
  You're ready, it's been five years, um, and and you're like,
• 54:44
  okay, let's get this out to the world. Um. Tell me your
• 54:47
  adventures in distribution. Okay, yes, So we finished the film and we
• 54:52
  then set about putting together the marketing materials that we thought we would need in
• 54:59
  order to get a district. So we did our own poster, and we
• 55:01
  cut our own trailer, and we put a screener together and all that sort
• 55:06
  of thing. And then we decided to, in the spirit of the film,
• 55:12
  continue to do everything ourselves. So of course, why wouldn't you,
• 55:15
  Why wouldn't you, Why wouldn't we change? Why wouldn't we have learned our
• 55:17
  lesson after five years? Um? So we started, we actually tried to
• 55:22
  submit, or we did submit the film to probably a dozen film festivals UM
• 55:29
  in sort of the tier of film festival that you hope your film might so
• 55:32
  Sundance, of course you don't. You donated to Robert Redford's retirement fund,
• 55:39
  understand. I'm sure he appreciated that. And we obviously got plat out rejected
• 55:45
  from from every festival we submitted to UM and then we decided to just sort
• 55:50
  of we were going, well, we're going to get we're trying to get
• 55:52
  into festivals so we can connect with distributors, but I wonder if we can
• 55:58
  just connect with those distributors direct. We spoke to a few filmmakers that we
• 56:01
  knew who had done that route, and that's what we pursued. So without
• 56:06
  marketing material screener of our film, we set about reaching out directly and sent
• 56:10
  out some introductory emails, sent out some screeners and just started talking to people
• 56:15
  really and we spoke to sales agents as well and try to set out whether
• 56:20
  that was the right route for us. And in the end we we got
• 56:24
  we actually got two distributes for competing in a Giddings for the film and pushed
• 56:30
  up the or you know, yeah, pushed the bid up and made it
• 56:34
  more favorable for us, and then ended up going with one that we felt
• 56:37
  offered us something that was worth you know, the deal, worth signing up
• 56:44
  to, and that's what we did. That process took about six months from
• 56:46
  from the day of finishing the film too, But that's nothing good. But
• 56:51
  that's nothing for guys like you. You've already taken you're taking you four and
• 56:53
  a half five years to make a movie. Six months or distribution, that's
• 56:57
  nothing sense of time. It's like, we're like six months. I Yeah,
• 57:09
  it was an interesting process for sure, But we used IMDb pros free
• 57:14
  trial to create a list of distributors that you know, in the in the
• 57:17
  kind of realm that we were looking for, and we just we just went
• 57:20
  down that list and ultimately it worked out and we found a home for Cosmos
• 57:25
  that has done, for the most part, all we wanted it to do.
• 57:30
  Although no distribution story is playing sailing for sure. Yeah, I haven't
• 57:34
  heard of one of those yet. It was like, yes, it was
• 57:37
  fantastic. They only gave me money. I actually didn't know what to do
• 57:40
  with all the money and attention I was getting. Um, it was generally
• 57:45
  not something you hear, but but generally speaking, though you're happy with where
• 57:50
  you went with the distribution company and how things have been, how it's been
• 57:52
  put out into the world and everything like that, because look, I've seen
• 57:55
  it everywhere and I've seen it pop up a bunch of different plays. So
• 58:00
  I'm assuming that's you guys. As far as marketing is concerned, Yeah,
• 58:04
  it is. It is us for sure. Yeah, we will, we
• 58:06
  will. We're with Gratast Ventures, and I think their model is very much
• 58:09
  the to the producers. They know their movie, they can market it.
• 58:13
  You know, we'll put it on the platforms and so the as far as
• 58:17
  we're aware, most of the marketing of the movie is our work really,
• 58:22
  you know, we put the post in the Trader together. We did an
• 58:24
  ad spend on some social media to try and get it out there, and
• 58:29
  we're just trying to engage with the filmmaking community and share the process really as
• 58:32
  much as we possibly can. But you know, we are. We are
• 58:37
  certainly happy with the reach of the movie. It's available on you know,
• 58:43
  many platforms. It's in the US, it's on like Hulu to Be,
• 58:46
  it's on Prime streaming and Leo, it's all all the all the spot and
• 58:52
  bod options that you could really be hope for, to be quite honest,
• 58:57
  But there's also certainly a strong argument for that kind of independent distribution route where
• 59:01
  you handle it yourself if you're doing all the marketing anyway, right like why
• 59:06
  not? Why not made that final step for us. We our goal was
• 59:09
  very much to be able to finish the movie, give it to somebody else,
• 59:14
  have control over the marketing, because we didn't want that to be in
• 59:17
  someone else's hands. We were worried that it could be marketed incorrectly, but
• 59:22
  to not to not have all that time spent on getting that movie out there.
• 59:27
  So it actually made sense to hand it to somebody else because we wanted
• 59:30
  to start writing a new project, to start moving forwards and not get kind
• 59:34
  of like googed down in the in the personal distribution of the movie now.
• 59:38
  But the other thing is too you guys had a very different endgame for this
• 59:43
  film, and that's something that's really important for filmmakers to understand listening, is
• 59:46
  that your goals with the film were not to make a million dollars or you
• 59:51
  know, or be you know rich or anything like that off the film.
• 59:53
  Money is nice. We would like to have money if we can't keep going
• 59:58
  without it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 1:00:07
  now back to the show. Um, but because I'm assuming you don't want
• 1:00:12
  to do another five years like this, I'm assuming this is it. You're
• 1:00:16
  not doing any more, no more of these movies. You have to promise
• 1:00:21
  me no more. But um, but you, But your goal was to
• 1:00:25
  get it out there and get your name out there, for people to see
• 1:00:30
  you, to have conversations about other projects, to talk to other investors.
• 1:00:34
  That was the endgame for this film. Correct, Absolutely, yeah, I
• 1:00:37
  mean the film has the film has been out six months now and we are
• 1:00:43
  starting to move into a phase where the film is making us money, which
• 1:00:47
  is great because that's a real uptick. But you're right, our goal was
• 1:00:52
  we have the philosophy that, like, we couldn't buy our way into the
• 1:00:57
  movie industry even if we had loads of money, So we've got to find
• 1:01:01
  something of value beyond the finances that will allow us to progress as film directors.
• 1:01:07
  So if we could trade the financial reward for the exposure and hope people
• 1:01:14
  were liking the movie and the word getting around and maybe people in industry hearing
• 1:01:17
  about it and going, oh yeah, i've heard about this film. Actually
• 1:01:21
  that was more valuable to us as filmmakers. And we do try and stress
• 1:01:23
  that to people we talked to and you know on things like this that we're
• 1:01:29
  not at all sort of suggesting, but this is a business model four seven
• 1:01:37
  thousand dollars five year model. Then no, not so much. We were
• 1:01:42
  you know, we run a production company. Aside from this, we've we've
• 1:01:45
  got other projects and other fingers and other pies. The reason we wanted to
• 1:01:50
  make this movie initially was as a bargaining chip to get that initial film off
• 1:01:53
  the ground. In the end, it was just supposed to be something that
• 1:01:57
  we could barter with. But now you know, it ended becoming something bigger
• 1:02:00
  and it's actually acting in a way as like a crowbar to open industry doors.
• 1:02:06
  And since the film has been released, we've had people from you know,
• 1:02:08
  Hollywood email us, and you know, we've been talking to managers and
• 1:02:13
  we're potentially talking to people and it has it has given us that sort of
• 1:02:19
  um springboard. So yeah, we we traded the finances for um the potential,
• 1:02:28
  you know, to be able to help our create move further on.
• 1:02:30
  But the other thing is that you also didn't make a two hundred thousand dollars
• 1:02:34
  movie and had that goal and then you made a seven thousand dollars movie.
• 1:02:37
  Yes, you know, very very Rabbert Rodriguez esque it was. It was
• 1:02:43
  a nice round seven thousand. Yeah, absolutely on the dot exactly. Um
• 1:02:50
  no, that's that's amazing. Guys. You guys are definitely an inspiration,
• 1:02:52
  an indie filmed inspiration, and in you know, it's it's you did it
• 1:02:58
  in today's world. It yet a little bit in the past because its two
• 1:03:01
  five years to do. But but all the things that you did travel to
• 1:03:07
  this point right now, and the the basic um spirit of what you do
• 1:03:13
  is is getting out there and doing it. And not everyone needs five years,
• 1:03:17
  some might, some might need seven. But um but you did it,
• 1:03:22
  and you did it on your own terms, and you told a story
• 1:03:23
  you wanted to tell, and it's doing exactly what you want for it.
• 1:03:27
  And Okay, you can't really ask for I mean, you could ask for
• 1:03:29
  a bunch more, but generally speaking, you've got what you aimed for.
• 1:03:32
  Yeah, we absolutely, we actually got a lot more than we aimed for.
• 1:03:36
  I mean, we've walked away with the movie that people are watching and
• 1:03:39
  they're enjoying and we're hiring people contact us every single day to say, you
• 1:03:45
  know, I checked out your movie and we're in lockdown and it's brought me
• 1:03:49
  hope. And it's probably you know, and it sounds corny, right,
• 1:03:51
  but like, ultimately, as filmmakers, our goal is to like tell a
• 1:03:55
  story that people connect with and and and to hear that people are enjoying the
• 1:03:59
  film and wanting to kind of connect with the community and be part of it.
• 1:04:03
  It's just it's an absolute dream. And on top of that, the
• 1:04:08
  actors that are in the movie, my family us, you know, like
• 1:04:11
  we've been to the weddings and we've moved houses and we you know, we
• 1:04:15
  we we're all part of it together now. And it's been a testing experience,
• 1:04:19
  but just an incredible one as well, very very lucky. Now,
• 1:04:24
  I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions as well, my guests, What
• 1:04:26
  advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today? Blindly,
• 1:04:31
  Um, I would yeah, take five years, take five years,
• 1:04:38
  and make sure to take something nuts. I would say, be passionate because
• 1:04:47
  I think there are a lot of people, you know, and and I
• 1:04:50
  talked to a lot of people we cross pass with filmmakers, and I think
• 1:04:53
  you can and also young crew. You can sort of sniff out the ones
• 1:04:59
  who kind of to be in it because they think it's cool and it'd be
• 1:05:01
  like I'd love to walk the red carpet and I'd love to be it's a
• 1:05:03
  glitzy glamor industry. And then you can also immediately tell the people that don't
• 1:05:09
  care about that at all. They just they have to do this because they
• 1:05:12
  love it so much. And I think I think the people who are in
• 1:05:15
  positions of power can tell why why you're sitting in front of them. And
• 1:05:18
  if you're passionate and you love it so much, I think that you're going
• 1:05:23
  to win them over. So I'd say be passionate about what that's good to
• 1:05:26
  do. I say, really identify like what it is about making movies that
• 1:05:32
  he's going to make you happy? Like why do you want to do it?
• 1:05:35
  Because if you're doing it for the end goal, if you're doing it
• 1:05:40
  because it's going to get you somewhere someday, that's just not really going to
• 1:05:44
  get you through those challenging nights where you're you know, you could find at
• 1:05:48
  Seven's crashed on you for the hundredth time when you're in the middle of a
• 1:05:51
  render and you just lost you know, it's to me. A big thing
• 1:05:58
  I've learned through the making of Cosmos has been about just enjoying the process.
• 1:06:01
  Don't forget that it's filmmaking that you love, not the next movie, not
• 1:06:08
  the movie you're making ten years, not where you'll be or what you could
• 1:06:11
  be doing someday. It's it's right now. And if you're on set with
• 1:06:15
  a camera and you're making a movie with actors, you're doing it. You're
• 1:06:18
  just doing it. So just enjoy that and try to hold onto that through
• 1:06:23
  the whole process. Now, what is the lesson that took get the longest
• 1:06:26
  to learn, Whether in the film business or in life. Things take time.
• 1:06:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Patience, persistence, things take
• 1:06:38
  time, Things take longer than you ever thought they could. Just accept it
• 1:06:44
  and don't fight it. You know you're doing the best you can. I
• 1:06:48
  remember hearing there's a phrase that we i'd adduced to tell us. He heard
• 1:06:53
  and he told us, and he said that people overestimate what they can achieve
• 1:06:56
  in a year, but underestimate what they can achieve in a dec Yeah,
• 1:07:00
  and it's like, that's that's bait. I remember leaving school at eighteen and
• 1:07:03
  being like, this is it, you know, by the time I should
• 1:07:06
  be any time? Now oscars? Should I should I get the tux?
• 1:07:10
  Now? What should I do? And now I'm thirty two, It's been
• 1:07:13
  fourteen years since I left school, and I've just you know, it's been
• 1:07:16
  six months We've released our first film. It took a hell of a lot
• 1:07:19
  longer than we thought it would, but we didn't give up and we are
• 1:07:23
  now here. So patients, don't give up. Keep working hard, love
• 1:07:27
  what you do, and it will come. And three of your favorite films
• 1:07:30
  of all time? Definitely et Yeah, I figured each compliment. Man,
• 1:07:40
  I don't know. When I saw Cosmos, I'm like, oh boy,
• 1:07:43
  these guys love that Spielberg. Boy, they just love it Steven Spielberg.
• 1:07:48
  Yeah, I mean it's good. It could easily be three Spielberg films to
• 1:07:51
  be top three. But tell you what, we watched the other day again
• 1:07:55
  the first time in a while. Meet Joe Black. You seen it,
• 1:07:58
  of course? Yeah, I love I love me Joe Black. I love
• 1:08:01
  me Joe What a movie? Wow? Incredible? Um, But yeah,
• 1:08:05
  you go and pick a big one. It's hard to pick a favorite movie.
• 1:08:11
  I'll tell you what, not pick a favorite movie, but another good
• 1:08:13
  Martin Press movie, Scent of a Woman. Oh yeah, why scene really
• 1:08:21
  anything Spielberg Jaws, Close Encounters Lassie is a good man. But you can
• 1:08:29
  fans. I mean, you can watch Jaws right now. And it is
• 1:08:32
  perfection. It's it's the Shark. I don't care. It's just perfect.
• 1:08:40
  It's exactly what it needs to be. I don't want to see g sark.
• 1:08:43
  I want, I want, I want that shark. It's it's so
• 1:08:46
  so perfect. And did you know I'll give you a little bit of Jaws
• 1:08:49
  trivia. The scene in the boat where they're drunk. It's the night before
• 1:08:55
  the big thing, and um, what's his name? Oh the old Oh
• 1:08:59
  god, Robert Robert Shaw is doing that whole like long diatribe about like this
• 1:09:05
  dialogue and he's like talking about that that was actually written by John Millius.
• 1:09:11
  Really, Spielberg called them like the night before and said, hey, John
• 1:09:15
  man, we had to shoot shoot the scene tomorrow and we need a scene.
• 1:09:18
  And John here's actually and he wrote the scene out for him. Wow,
• 1:09:21
  I'll just tie this up for Yeah. But what's like. It's like
• 1:09:26
  you calling one of your mates and going, hey, dude, can you
• 1:09:28
  can you help me out with this show? But that's who they were.
• 1:09:30
  They're like the yes, young filmmakers. You know. That's amazing. I
• 1:09:33
  mean it's funny because we'll have this we'll talk to the film you know,
• 1:09:36
  we'll talk to filmmaks by yourself, and you'll have this phrase like what's the
• 1:09:40
  perfect film and people say Jaws and suddenly everyone goes, oh, Jem Johns
• 1:09:45
  is a perfect It is, Yeah, there's I mean, Spielberg has a
• 1:09:50
  few perfect films. I mean there's He's he's got a couple in his you
• 1:09:55
  know. And I mean I can go into the Kubrick. So I can
• 1:09:58
  go into Fincher it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:10:05
  and now back to the show. I can go into Nolan, I
• 1:10:12
  can go to mart I can go into Marty, I mean Coppola, I
• 1:10:15
  mean Godfather, obviously Scott we left Gladiator as well, Blade, Blade Runner,
• 1:10:20
  Blade Runner, Alien Aliens, if you want to go down. So
• 1:10:30
  this is the funny thing. Okay, Now that's just two Jesus film geeks
• 1:10:33
  talking guys. So just bear with us, Um, Cameron. I when
• 1:10:38
  Titanic came out. I people were like, you know, I don't how
• 1:10:42
  old you guys when Titanic came out? Nine yeah, okay, cool?
• 1:10:47
  Have you seen it? Yeah? Yeah, so so okay, so nine,
• 1:10:51
  So it's nine. I was a bit older than you ninety seven.
• 1:10:54
  Um. But uh when when everybody it was a big hoop blaw two hunter
• 1:10:59
  million dollars is gonna bomb. Who's gonna want to watch Titanic? I mean,
• 1:11:02
  we all know how it ends, Like, why would you do that?
• 1:11:06
  And I just kept saying to everybody who was saying that anyone I talked
• 1:11:10
  to him, like in camera and I trust, yeah, Camera, and
• 1:11:15
  I trust because he has yet to make a bad movie. And if you
• 1:11:18
  look at his filmography from the Abyss Aliens Terminator Terminator to True Lies, he
• 1:11:28
  just always delivered it just always. So then when fast forward a decade and
• 1:11:34
  then Avatars, they're saying the same thing about Avatar. I'm like, hey,
• 1:11:39
  Camera, I trust, and Cameron, we trust. He's one of
• 1:11:43
  the most underrated filmmakers I think in history. He's the most one of the
• 1:11:47
  most successful filmmakers in history. And the funny thing is that And I always
• 1:11:51
  tell people that's like, do you understand that nobody else can make Avatar?
• 1:11:56
  Like there is no Spielberg. Spielberg is not getting half a million and a
• 1:12:00
  half a billion dollars to go develop a new ip, new technology about blue
• 1:12:04
  people um with with arguably no major bankable stars, like major stars involved,
• 1:12:13
  you know, other like you Supportney with nothing that could support a half a
• 1:12:15
  billion dollars? Did that you today? Yeah? Today's stars? Yeah?
• 1:12:19
  Yeah, And so nobody not Peter Jackson, definitely not Finer, definitely not
• 1:12:25
  Nolan, Like nobody else could do it other than someone like James Cameron.
• 1:12:29
  And there is nobody else. And when you when you realize and I've heard
• 1:12:33
  these interviews, like when you're the only person on the planet that could do
• 1:12:41
  something like there's no there's not an argument here. Could Spielberg make a movie
• 1:12:45
  like Avatar? Yes, but not by himself. He doesn't have the skill
• 1:12:48
  set. Cameron isn't like at a whole other level, like with the technology
• 1:12:54
  and and you know, and and Nolan and all you know, there's just
• 1:12:57
  nobody else that could do that film. No one else would, No one
• 1:13:00
  else will get a check for half a billion dollars. Now you're you're right.
• 1:13:03
  Actually that's something you qubabe easily overlook because you just go, yeah,
• 1:13:06
  it's Cameron, but you take it. You take it for granted. You
• 1:13:10
  just take it like, oh, yes, it's James Cameron, but there's
• 1:13:12
  nobody else. I love watching behind scenes footage of especially saves in the water
• 1:13:19
  camera on his shoulders. Did you did you? Did you? Guys?
• 1:13:23
  Listen to my interview with Russell Carpenter, the DP from Titanic. Okay,
• 1:13:29
  so you have to. You have to listen to about tell you a quick
• 1:13:30
  Cameron story and everyone again we are now you guys can leave. It's now
• 1:13:34
  just between us. We're just we're just talking now because we're geeks. Um.
• 1:13:40
  Russell Carpenter gets called into his Malibu house and it's like we're gonna do
• 1:13:45
  true lies. It was about true lies because he did true lies and then
• 1:13:47
  he did Titanic and now he's doing all the avatars um and he calls him
• 1:13:51
  up and James Cameron just brings him into his mansion and Malibu and they're walking
• 1:13:56
  around and he's just talking to Russell like he got the job, like there's
• 1:14:00
  no offer, there's no nothing, he's just talked to him like he's been
• 1:14:03
  hired. So he gets out, he leaves. He's like, I think
• 1:14:05
  I was hired. And then and Cameron during that time, even during the
• 1:14:12
  Titanic time, his reputation is he's rough. Let's just call he's rough.
• 1:14:16
  He's a little bit of a taskmaster. Let's call it um. Cameron's legendary
• 1:14:20
  for being that dude on set. And so then he's shooting true lies and
• 1:14:26
  everyone's like, how's it working with James Cameron. He's like, it's great.
• 1:14:29
  I have no problem. I don't understand what everyone's having such an issue
• 1:14:30
  with James. They're like, we've been shooting for a couple of days.
• 1:14:33
  It's been Peaches, it's been great. So they're in his Malibu house again,
• 1:14:40
  his screening room in Malibu, and they're in they're seeing dailies and a
• 1:14:47
  shot comes up from Arnold and then I'm gonna guys, everyone prepare yourselfs.
• 1:14:53
  I'm gonna curse. I don't care. Sorry off them, just quoting mister
• 1:14:56
  Cameron at this point, and he goes, what the fuck is that?
• 1:15:03
  And Russell was like, oh. He starts like and the production designers there
• 1:15:09
  and the First Day D's there and a couple of their keys are there,
• 1:15:12
  and he goes, hey, Russell, I just spent twenty million dollars in
• 1:15:15
  the biggest movie star on Earth. It'd be nice if I could see its
• 1:15:18
  fucking fakes. Oh no, wow, And then all of a sudden,
• 1:15:26
  the next shot comes up and he just goes the town and every singles shot
• 1:15:30
  and Russell's just like, okay, okay. So he leaves. He's out
• 1:15:34
  in the parking in the parking area, and he's like, he's calling his
• 1:15:36
  wife. He's like, I've been fired. I've been fired. I've been
• 1:15:39
  fired. I've just been fired. There's no way I can go back.
• 1:15:42
  I mean, obviously James Cameron wants. Then the production designed in the first
• 1:15:45
  Day D come out and he goes Russell Russell, he does that to everybody,
• 1:15:49
  So what do he goes, No, No, that's he called all
• 1:15:51
  the other dps he's worked with. He does it to everybody. He calls
• 1:15:54
  up the DP from the from like the Abyss and he goes does he goes,
• 1:15:57
  did he try the whole I want to see the face guy? Yeah,
• 1:16:00
  he does to them, me too. He does it to everybody.
• 1:16:01
  It's not you You're fine, just keep going. And that is James Cameron.
• 1:16:10
  We saw all recently, we saw the some of the behind the scenes
• 1:16:14
  from the Abysses. I was about to say that, did you see that
• 1:16:15
  documentary? You see the set like the Underworld? No, but did you
• 1:16:18
  see the documentary? Did you see? Yeah, you've seen the whole documentary
• 1:16:23
  right, the whole ideas. Why am I look? I mean all the
• 1:16:27
  way from the beginning, right Cameron. You go, oh, yeah,
• 1:16:29
  the guy that made Avatar. You go no, no, no, no,
• 1:16:30
  no, no, nows like, oh yes, so nuclear silo,
• 1:16:34
  Let's put it with water and build our set. What are you talking about?
• 1:16:38
  He's been and I'll give you one more camera story and then we will
• 1:16:42
  end this interview because we could just keep talking for another hour. I read
• 1:16:46
  it. I read in one of Cameron's biographies on the abyss if you saw
• 1:16:51
  that behind the scenes with this And by the way, anyone listening here should
• 1:16:55
  go watch The abyss if you haven't seen it, and get the DVD and
• 1:16:58
  or Blu ray and watch arguably one of the best filmmaking documentaries I've ever seen
• 1:17:03
  up there with Hearts of Darkness for Apocalypse Now it is amazing to watch.
• 1:17:10
  You just sit there with your mouth on the floor of the entire time they're
• 1:17:12
  doing it. And the suits at twenty century Fox, it was it was
• 1:17:16
  way over budget. It was like a fifty at that time. It was
• 1:17:18
  like fifty million bucks sixty million dollars to make the movie. And it was
• 1:17:23
  just going up and up, and like you know, the tarp broke and
• 1:17:26
  the filtration system broke, so people and they had to buy these really expensive
• 1:17:30
  like design these really expensive suits so people could not only see and we can
• 1:17:34
  see their faces. So he has like he so on the line item it's
• 1:17:38
  wardrobe. It's wardrobe, but it costs like ten thousand dollars, and everyone
• 1:17:44
  like no one knows what's going on at the studio. In the studio and
• 1:17:45
  they're somewhere in North Carolina, and so a suit flies in and if you
• 1:17:49
  saw the behind the scenes Cameron, you know, you're underwater for ten hours,
• 1:17:55
  so you have to decompress for two or three hours underwater so you can
• 1:18:00
  and come up without getting the bends. And Cameron was doing this all day
• 1:18:03
  every day. He was more he was in the water more than anybody else.
• 1:18:08
  So he was a taskmaster. But he was proving he's walking the walk,
• 1:18:12
  so this he's just getting out of this decomposition. He takes off that
• 1:18:16
  that that's you know, that that helmet that he that they built, right,
• 1:18:20
  and this guy comes up, who's obviously a suit an executive. He
• 1:18:25
  comes up and goes, hey, James, I'm here from the and before
• 1:18:29
  he could finish the sentence, James took the helmet and slammed it on the
• 1:18:32
  guy's head. So now the guy can't breathe because it's without oxygen. That
• 1:18:38
  thing is air tight, So now he can't breathe. He grabs him by
• 1:18:42
  the by his tie and dre and lifts him over like he's dangling from the
• 1:18:47
  edge. And if he falls into water, the dude is gonna die.
• 1:18:50
  If he falls into water, unless someone gets to him, he's gonna die.
• 1:18:55
  And he dangles him there while the guy's like barely breathing for like ten
• 1:18:58
  seconds. Then he pulls him back in, rips the thing off. He
• 1:19:01
  goes, if I ever see you on my fucking sent again, I'll kill
• 1:19:04
  you. And now you see, this is the nineties, guys, this
• 1:19:10
  is early nineties. This is a whole other world. I don't suggest you
• 1:19:14
  do something like this. But these are the legendary stories of James Cameron.
• 1:19:19
  This is one of a billion of them that I have heard or read about
• 1:19:25
  over the years, and I know a lot of people who've worked with him.
• 1:19:28
  And every single time I meet with somebody like I had another guy.
• 1:19:32
  Okay, one more story, and that'll be the last James Camera story.
• 1:19:35
  Buddy of mine, he was at the DGA and he's a DJ director and
• 1:19:40
  he's you know, he's a good director in his own right and has a
• 1:19:44
  couple of films under his belt, and he's big in music videos at the
• 1:19:46
  time. And I think it was Spielberg and Cameron, I think in Jackson
• 1:19:50
  or someone like that. We're there giving a talk to the other and they're
• 1:19:54
  like, yeah, you need to do this, and we're doing this is
• 1:19:56
  a new way and doing this. We'll be right back after a word from
• 1:20:00
  our sponsor and now back to the show. And my buddy comes up.
• 1:20:09
  He stands up, he goes, hey, James, that's really nice because
• 1:20:12
  you're James Cameron. I don't have access to that kind of stuff, Like
• 1:20:15
  in front of everybody, called out James Cameron in front of all these other
• 1:20:18
  directors and James goes, well, what are you doing him? Are do
• 1:20:20
  you want to come to set? Now? This is this is Avatar.
• 1:20:24
  Before anybody knew what the hell Avatar was, before anyone knew what the technology.
• 1:20:28
  All you heard was rumors about what the technology was that was being bibilt.
• 1:20:31
  And I even heard I was here at that time. I was here
• 1:20:33
  in La so I heard, like through the grapevine, like James Cameron's doing
• 1:20:36
  something like a this down. So he shows up, shows up onto set,
• 1:20:41
  which is the what is that the volume? The volume right, and
• 1:20:45
  he's yeah, the volume, and there's this and they're basically developing technology.
• 1:20:49
  This is all brand new technology they're developing. So behind him in this sound
• 1:20:54
  stage, just like three rows up with just computers. It must have been
• 1:20:59
  forty people with wires and computer gears and and just servers and ship just because
• 1:21:04
  you know. And you see James Cameron with this monitor in front of him,
• 1:21:10
  and in the monitor wherever he moves the camera, you see Avatar.
• 1:21:15
  You see whatever that I forgot the name of the planet. Pandora. Yeah,
• 1:21:18
  you see Pandora, right, So you see Pandora in real time,
• 1:21:23
  in real time, you're seeing everything in real time, so he sees everything,
• 1:21:28
  but it's all virtual. So then my buddy's standing behind him because he's
• 1:21:32
  shadowing him. He stands behind and he's watching and he goes all right,
• 1:21:35
  action and it's the scene where they like they arrived the first time the helicopter
• 1:21:39
  and they jump out, Yeah that thing right, So he does and he
• 1:21:44
  goes in the tanks action and he jumps off like a stool. He jumps
• 1:21:47
  off with the camera and he runs and he runs into a digital tree,
• 1:21:53
  like he runs into a digital tree, and he goes, hey, Jimmy,
• 1:21:57
  can you move this thing about twenty feet that way? And he goes,
• 1:22:01
  sure, James, And all of a sudden, like from God,
• 1:22:04
  a mouse from God comes into the screen, clicks on this tree in real
• 1:22:11
  time, lifts it up roots and all moves it over thirty feet and plants
• 1:22:15
  it over there. Let's go again, he's like, and then they do
• 1:22:19
  and they so then my buddy comes up to him after like, you know,
• 1:22:23
  a few hours of this, and they're like prepping something and he goes,
• 1:22:26
  James, man, this is this is pretty cool technology. And this
• 1:22:30
  is where you understand where James Cameron's in a completely different playing field. Than
• 1:22:33
  any of us are. He goes, you know, we'll be really fucking
• 1:22:36
  cool if I didn't have a cable to this damn thing. This cable has
• 1:22:40
  been driving me nuts. I wish we could figure out a way to do
• 1:22:44
  this without a cable. It's the most cutting edge technology in film history at
• 1:22:47
  the moment. And he's like, but the cable is buggy yet, and
• 1:22:54
  that and that is and that is James Cameron. I'm sorry everyone for listening.
• 1:22:59
  If you're still it does we turned this into a James Camera love fest.
• 1:23:01
  I apologize. But guys, guys, where can people find you?
• 1:23:08
  What you're doing, your film, all that good stuff. Well, we
• 1:23:12
  have a website, Cosmos movie official dot com where you can find out where
• 1:23:15
  you can check out the film and follow us on social media and even buy
• 1:23:18
  some merchandise if you fancy some merch Are you selling merch We're selling cats and
• 1:23:25
  they're they're flying up the shelf. But yeah, we're on all social media,
• 1:23:29
  and we make we make it a personal quest to apply to every single
• 1:23:32
  piece of correspondence we get. So if you have any questions about the process
• 1:23:36
  or about your own movie and how distribution might work, all this that and
• 1:23:41
  the other just get in touch. We're always happy to talk genuinely. Thank
• 1:23:45
  you guys for being an inspiration to the to the film tribe and to filmmakers
• 1:23:51
  everywhere. We need stories like this to keep us going because it is a
• 1:23:58
  fairly depressing time. Now we're currently and andre before you know, the situation
• 1:24:04
  that we're all in, it was still depressing twenty nineteen. It was still
• 1:24:10
  fairly depressing for filmmakers, especially in the pending filmakers and making money and making
• 1:24:13
  your movies and all this kind of stuff. So these are the kind of
• 1:24:15
  stories I'd like to promote and really give people inspiration to go out there and
• 1:24:18
  make their movies. And you guys are the personification of indie film hustle.
• 1:24:24
  So thank you guys so much for being on the show. I really appreciate
• 1:24:26
  it. Well, thank you very much for having us. It's honestly,
• 1:24:30
  it's awesome to be on the show. Is follow Thank you. I want
• 1:24:33
  to thank Xander and Elliott so much for coming on the show and inspiring the
• 1:24:39
  Tribe with their misadventures in making cosmos. Thank you so so much. Guys.
• 1:24:45
  If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode.
• 1:24:47
  Please head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford
• 1:24:51
  Slash two ninety seven. Thank you so much for listening. Guys, as
• 1:24:55
  always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:24:59
  Thanks for los thinking. To the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv