Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 409: How to Make Indie Films That Make REAL Money with J. Horton

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BPS 409: How to Make Indie Films That Make REAL Money with J. Horton · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network.
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  Speaker 2: For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
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• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four zero nine.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: If you don't find a way to make money while
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you sleep, you will work until you die.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Warren Buffett broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: when we really should be working on that next draft.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It's the Bulletproof.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Coverage actually focuses on the kind of product you are
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and the goals of the project you are, so we
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a reader that's used to reading tempole movies when your
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage,
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  Speaker 1: our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO, Disney,
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  Speaker 1: So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Now, Guys,
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  Speaker 1: today on the show, we have filmmaker and film entrepreneur
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  Speaker 1: Jay Horton. Now, Jason is a filmmaker who figured out
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  Speaker 1: how to make a living making films. And I know
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: that is a weird concept, but he actually makes a
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  Speaker 1: living and all he does is make feature films. And
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  Speaker 1: in our conversation we go over his techniques, what he does,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: how he does it, how he monetizes all of these films,
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  Speaker 1: and what is this secret sauce to his success. Now,
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  Speaker 1: he is not a billionaire or making millions of dollars
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  Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. He'll be the first
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  Speaker 1: to tell you, but he has figured out how to
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  Speaker 1: make a living. That means he only does this to
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  Speaker 1: generate revenue to support him and his family, and that
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  Speaker 1: to me is the dream as a filmmaker to be
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  Speaker 1: able to just do what I love to do and
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  Speaker 1: get paid to do it. So, without any further ado,
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  Speaker 1: please enjoy my conversation with Jay Horton. I like to
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  Speaker 1: welcome the show Jay Horton. Man, how you doing, brother?
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  Speaker 3: Very good? Thanks for having me.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Oh man, thanks for doing this. Man, I am I'm
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  Speaker 1: a fan of what you do and how you do it. It's
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  Speaker 1: rare to find filmmakers who get it and figure out
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  Speaker 1: how to make a living as a filmmaker, which is
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  Speaker 1: you are in the top one percent of one percent
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  Speaker 1: of one percent and and and yeah. But like like
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  Speaker 1: you say in your YouTube videos and a lot of
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  Speaker 1: stuff your content, it's like, I'm not rich by any
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  Speaker 1: stretch of imagination, but I make a living doing what
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  Speaker 1: I love to do. And that's what we wanted to
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  Speaker 1: kind of bring you on the show to explore about.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and to be to be fair, it's taken
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  Speaker 3: me a long time to get there, and a long
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  Speaker 3: time to change my mentality from you know, I'm going
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: to be Quentin Tarantino to I'm going to make a
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  Speaker 3: living as a filmmaker, right.
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  Speaker 1: And I think we all you know, you're you and
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  Speaker 1: I are in similar vintages, as I'd like to say.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: So, you know, when Quentin came out, we were probably
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: in our in our youth, if you will, and everybody
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of our generation wanted to be Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Quentin Tarantino. You know, Rick, Richard Lincoletter, you know John Singleton,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Steven Soderberg, like they're all those guys. But Tarantino has
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  Speaker 1: that rock start, you know, vibe to him when he
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: came out, and I think he as wonderful as he is,
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  Speaker 1: he did hurt a generation of filmmakers because we all
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: figured out, like, we're just never gonna be Quinn Tarantino.
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  Speaker 1: It's like it's it's it's hard pill as well for
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  Speaker 1: a lot of filmmakers, we're just never and it's okay
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  Speaker 1: because nobody's ever gonna be Quinn Tarantina. No, So tell
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  Speaker 1: us a little bit about how you got into the business.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I basically I got started doing movies because
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  Speaker 3: I couldn't do anything else. I was small, I didn't
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  Speaker 3: like sports, I watched movies all the time, so that
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  Speaker 3: was I was always a major focus of mine. And
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  Speaker 3: then you know, speaking of Tarantino, he you know Resolute
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  Speaker 3: Dogs came out when I was eighteen, like coming out
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: of high school. So like that, like for the first time,
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, so what a director does this is?
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  Speaker 3: This is a director I could do this now. It
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  Speaker 3: took me another, you know, four years to get into
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  Speaker 3: college and you know kind of start studying film. But
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: you know, by the time I had finished there, like
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  Speaker 3: I was chomping at the bit to make a movie. So,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I did my first movie right out of college.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we saved up a few thousand dollars, me
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: and a friend and just we had the Panasonic DVX
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: when it first came out TVX.
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  Speaker 1: What was it the A, sir? Or was it just
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a straight up just do you have the A?
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: I believe we had. I think it was before the A.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: So it was the first she had. First generation got it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it wasn't that a great little camera man,
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I'd love that look it was, you know, I still
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: like like the look of it. Sure did A. I
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: did A. I mean I did a really one of
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: my not ladder movies, but like mid career movies, like
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: way after HD had kind of taken over. I think
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: it was like twenty ten. But I liked that look
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: so much. I actually shot one last feature on it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: You know that I still have called a trap, which
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: I did quite a bit. But yeah, I love that look.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: That look was awesome and it was just and for
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: people to just don't understand what that camera was. It
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: was the first twenty four P camera, so it was
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the first time we could see a film look inherent
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: in the image. Before then, all we had was like
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the cannon XL which was it's.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Just oh, it was horrible, disgusting.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: It was disgusting. And then you met and you mixed
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: that with final cut pro. I think it was four yep,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: maybe four or five.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: I think I started on five, but I'm I'm again,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I'm not.
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  Speaker 1: It's around yeah, it's around there. So you combined those
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: two and remember you had to plug in the cable
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and then let the let the final cut like run
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: through the tapes to digitize high reds, which was standard
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: deaf and I know everyone listening to like, it's just
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: two old farts talking about the olden dings, but it
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was you have no understanding how awesome that was, Like
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  Speaker 1: it was insane.
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  Speaker 3: So I still had, you know, the mentality that you know,
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  Speaker 3: I'm gonna be big, I'm gonna be a Spielberg, I'm
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  Speaker 3: gonna be a Tarantino and be Rodriguez. But I'm making
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: this small movie. And I didn't realize it at the time,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: but I was laying the groundwork for, you know, my
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  Speaker 3: later career. So anyway, we finished this movie. It was
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: originally called Rise of the Undead. Many years later distributor
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: changed it to Rising Undead. But anyway, we sold it
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  Speaker 3: to York Entertainment, like just write out the box. I
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: don't know if you know heard of York, but okay,
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  Speaker 3: so York was like one of the first, like predatory distributors.
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  Speaker 3: So I didn't know. I didn't know anything about distribution, marketing.
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  Speaker 3: Nothing was the deal.
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  Speaker 1: What was the deal?
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  Speaker 3: Oh god, twelve year license. The sales fee was like
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  Speaker 3: the cap was over fifty thousand or it was fifty
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: thousand something ridiculous. And I honestly don't remember the rev split.
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  Speaker 3: I think it was like a sixty forty maybe.
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  Speaker 1: Something like that. But you never made it.
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  Speaker 3: You never saw a time, not from them.
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  Speaker 1: No did you get the movie back ever.
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  Speaker 3: Years years later, which I'll get into that a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: Later.
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  Speaker 3: That's how I discovered Amazon and started doing self distribution.
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  Speaker 3: Let's do that. But so anyway, we finished it, we
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  Speaker 3: sold it to York and I was like, and they
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  Speaker 3: did release it, you know, like, you know, it was
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: in Blockbuster, it was in Hollywood Video. It was like,
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  Speaker 3: and I didn't care so much about the money at
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  Speaker 3: the time. I was like, hey, I have a movie out.
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  Speaker 3: You know, maybe we'll see some momenty next.
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  Speaker 1: Year that this can'd of stop you right there for
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  Speaker 1: a second. That is the worst disease that we as
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  Speaker 1: filmmakers have when we're first starting out, Like, oh, well,
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  Speaker 1: I see it on the shelves or I see it
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  Speaker 1: on Amazon, or I see it on iTunes, and I've arrived,
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  Speaker 1: and oh, I don't care really about the money. You'll
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  Speaker 1: never make it as a filmmaker if you don't change
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  Speaker 1: that mentality.
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  Speaker 3: Agreed, Oh, totally agreed. And what I was about to
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  Speaker 3: find out was that no one else was going to
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  Speaker 3: give a shit that my movie was in Blockbuster, you know. So,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: like I get it out and we're living in New
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  Speaker 3: Orleans at the time, and you know, we're planning to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: make the move to La Katrina happened and we moved
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: right after Katrina. So I get to l A, and
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  Speaker 3: I have this movie and it's I'm Blockbuster, and I'm like,
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  Speaker 3: LA is going to just be like, welcome, come direct
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  Speaker 3: our movies, you know, and.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Here's twenty million, here's yeah, here's.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Twenty million, or even one. I mean, I wasn't quite
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: that you know, delusionalistic of it, but I was still delusional.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I was thinking a million or five hundred thousand.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: At least, that's like nothing at least yeah, at least
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  Speaker 1: there's nothing they handles it. They just handles out to
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: anybody who walks in the door.
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  Speaker 3: So you know, I'm you know, I'm querying production companies
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: and studios, you know, and just you know, if I
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: ever do get responses, they're pretty much like, lol, you know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: send so but so so. Here I was, you know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: I directed this feature film. You know, I graduated college.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: I'm in LA. Nobody will hire me for anything. I'm like, hey,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: I directed this, I wrote it, I edited it. I
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: could you know I could do editing. I could you
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: know I could do I work the camera. I could
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: do camera work.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: Could I mean I couldn't do work for free. I
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: mean like I couldn't get a job. So I was
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: back working at Starbucks. You know. It's like, you know,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: six months goes by, still no job, and I finally
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: get an assistant editor job on this rinky dink horror movie.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: I think it was called Butcher House. And the special
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: effects guy on that was getting ready to shoot his
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: first movie and I still had that DVX and his
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: DP had quit. I wasn't really a DP, but he
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, you have the camera. You know, we're
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: shooting tomorrow, Come shoot my movie. And that kind of
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: set me off on my path, you know. I worked
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: for that guy, and then his EP was a filmmaker
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: named Jean Claude Lamar. I started editing and directing for him.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Then I got noticed by the Garcia brothers, and I
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: started directing for them. You know, just every just beget everything.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: And I kept moving and it just.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It just kept rocking and rocking. All right. So then,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: so you have a fairly long IMDb. I've noticed, Yes,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: how many movies are you popping out a year? Now? Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Man? I mean at my height, I was probably doing
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: twelve a year.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: So one a month, one a month.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: One a month. So one of the companies I started,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: actually both the companies I was directing. For their business model,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: they were doing micro budget movies, like between ten thousand
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: dollars or like sixty thousand dollars. You know, they got
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: a little bit higher later on. But anyway, so they're
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: making these movies. They'd get like one, you know, B
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: level actor, they'd have him for a day. They had
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: had the movies pre sold, and they were just impressed
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: by my ability to be able to work within their timeframe,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: you know, because we would shoot these movies in five
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: or six days, sometimes less, and then you know I
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: would have less than a month to edit them feature films,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: you know, put them out like that date. That release
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: date would be that before we started shooting, you know,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: like they had. Both of the companies had set deals
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: with different distributors and aggregators, so like they would we
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: would start shooting in April, in the movie would be
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: like on the shelf in June, just like Boom, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: they would do them, you know, at least one a month.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: There was one month with the Garcias where I shot
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: four movies. We did one in uh, we did one
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: pretty much. And no, it was actually that period was concurrent,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: like one after another. So we did we did one
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: movie and one day, I'm sorry, two movies in one day,
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: one movie in two days, a movie in five days,
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: and then another movie in four days.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: How do you do two movies in the day, Like, look,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I've shots not in one I'm sorry, not in one day.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: Oh you're asking, I got you, I got you. Yes, Okay,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: how do you shoot a movie in one day?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I mean you do? I know, how
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: did do it? You just put the camera up and
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: you let the actors act and it's basically masters shot theater.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Well it can be what what worked for me? And
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: now I'm not saying these are great movies. So we
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: still shot him in a day, but sure better than
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: you would think. So, like what we would do is,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: you know we had we would go to sets like
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: stage sets, and you know we would so we have
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: so many scenes in the living room set, we'd set
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: up three cameras. We would run each scene twice, you know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, unless somebody flopped or something, but
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: we'd run two times full through with two completely set
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: different sets of coverage. So I would end up with,
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: you know, six pieces of coverage per scene on average, okay,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: and one of one of my ops was he was
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: he was really good, so we like we would set
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: him on the second take on a long lens and
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: be like, just fish, get my inserts. And I would
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: even always have them set. I would just be like, yeah,
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: get what you can get, and then everybody else would
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: have standard coverage. And my editing background helped me do
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: those as well.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, can you please tell the audience how
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: important understanding editorial helps you make these kind of films.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: to edit anything. I edited my first movie out of necessity.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: But you learned, like if you want to get into
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: directing or writing or any editor, it's one of the
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: best positions to move up, because, like, not only are
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: you learning the entire process, what works, what doesn't, how
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: shots fit together, how much you actually need, you're also
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: setting with the director and the producer, sometimes the financiers.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: If you're lucky enough to be on set, you're you're
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: setting right there with the main producers and the visiting
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: the people that visit, you know, like the big wigs,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: the guys with the money. I mean, I've got movies,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: you know, small movies financed from being on that set
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: and talking to those people, you know. So I think
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I think editing's probably the best. You know, maybe DP
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: on bigger things, but like in an India world, but even.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: DP as an editor as editorial allows you to figure
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: out what you need and how fast I need to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: get it and what you absolutely need. And then also
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: it's one thing being on set, but it's another thing
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: being in a room with producers, directors, financiers for arguably
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: two three weeks at a time. Sometimes I mean in
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: your case a lot faster, but generally speaking, it could
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: be months that you're working together, you know, and those
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: relationships build up.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: One of my very first gigs after I started working,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: besides the horror movie, I was operating camera on this
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: twenty four hour shoot. It was this weird ass comedy documentary.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: I'll spare the details, but I was setting there with
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: the main producer because we were doing some live TV
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: editing on it, and you know, so I talked to
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: him for a few hours and you know, offhandedly mentioned
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: that I was a writer and he was looking for
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: a zombie script. I didn't have one, but I was like, dude,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I could write you one in two weeks. And you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: a month later, we're shooting Edges of Darkness, which was,
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: you know, my first California you know directing.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Sorry, So, so you're popping out a lot
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of movies a month, what is your business model as
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a filmmaker? So kind of explain that to to film
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to the audience.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: So at the time when I was making all of those,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: I was working for other people. So I was like
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: a hired gun. I'm watching their business model. So the
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: business model was basically, you you know, you have to
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: it's a quick release model, you know, like you have
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: to put out so much material a year. You know,
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: and most of them did, okay, but these aren't. You know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: they make it for fifty They they might make seventy
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: five thousand in the first year, or they might make
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: a hundred, or it might break even. You know, they
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: had a pretty good track record for not losing. But
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: you know, it was a volume business for those guys.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: And so I'm sitting there watching these guys, I'm like, Okay,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: I get the business side of it. Now. If I
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: can if I can fine tune the creative and you know,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: make these a little bit better, which you know, I
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: believe you can. It's like, that's that's a good that's
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: a good model. And then you know, I started working
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: for a larger company for a while, an animation company,
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: which kind of took me away from filmmaking for about
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: two years. And then last year, a year before last,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: I started getting back, basically taking their business model but
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: creating it for myself. So like that that's what I'm
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: doing now. And I chose a slightly different path with
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: what I'm doing now. So like I had talked to
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: a producer because so three years ago I shot a
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: movie called Death Day or it was called The Campus.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: The distributor changed it later.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I have that a lot, but they tend to do that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this but this movie, I think. I think our
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: hard budget was like I don't know, forty five thousand
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: and maybe another twenty or so post but so it
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: was decent for a micro budget, and you know, we
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: shot it anamorphic. You know, I was pretty happy with
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: how it turned out, and basing my past work, I
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: was like, oh man, I'm going to make one hundred
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: grand first year on this easy break even, you know.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: So it comes out in like late twenty seventeen or
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: early twenty eighteen, and it just wasn't the case anymore.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: It failed pretty spectacularly, Like I didn't make anything, and
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: I'm still like, you know, dealing with investors and whatnot
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: on it. So I was kind of in a spot
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: where I'm like this business model that I came in
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: professionally on, like it's not really working anymore because like
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: these guys they were making these movies so fast, put
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: out one a month, but you know, they weren't particularly
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: they weren't all great they and they weren't making money anymore.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: But in you know, twenty ten, twenty.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Fourteen, money it was still flowing. Yeah.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you could make a movie for fifty thousand dollars,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: put Eric Roberts in it and still like make money,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: you know, not anymore. Now now they're like Eric Roberts,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Oh shit, I got thirty of those, yeah exactly. I
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: mean I remember I was at can a few years ago.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: One of the I overheard a producer or a distributors
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: somebody saying, if I see one more fucking movie with
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Eric Roberts with a.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Screen I've mentioned Eric a couple of times because I
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: one year as a post as a post supervisor, worked
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: on three Eric Roberts movies just myself, and I'm like,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: he must have done about twenty to twenty five movies
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: that year, and it's just he just diluted his whatever
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: value he might have had. You know, there's a and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: there's a handful of those kind of actors who could
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: do that kind of stuff. But yeah, and for people
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to understand, in twenty ten, twenty eleven, DVD.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Was still a thing that was huge.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: It was still a thing, and at that time, streaming
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: had just started to the idea started to Germany and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Netflix had just started to do it, and as the
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: technology got better and better. But so you could literally
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: put out a crap movie, for a fifty thousand dollars
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: crap movie with Eric Roberts, and you'll pull a hundred
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: grand off of it. Just oh yeah, comfortably, comfortably those
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: days are gone. We'll be right back after a word
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: from our sponsor. And now back to the show's in
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: that sense. In that sense, so how did you switch
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: your business model? Currently?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, So the other thing that happened, and I think
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: it first happened around twenty ten Amazon unboxed, which became
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Prime Video Direct. It was somewhere around that time. I
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: think we were still putting them up through Create space,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: like it was a self book publishing thing. But she
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: had a DVD and when streaming first came out, you
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: could you could upload your movies through there, and hardly
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: anybody knew about it film right wise.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: And you and you, you were basically a big fish
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: in a very well a small pond because it was
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of people.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: A lot of competition exactly. And that you know, that
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: first movie, the rights hadn't expired, but the company had
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: went under, so I got the rights back on that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: I still had the rights on Trap and I think
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: one other. So I put these three movies up and
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: I I just forgot about it. You know, they were
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: making five or six bucks a month something like that,
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: something small, but I think it was two thousand. A
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: year later, like twenty thirteen, one of these movies like
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: just out of nowhere, Like I wasn't promoting it nothing,
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: It just it just popped up like it was making
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: I think it was around I think at the height
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: it was making almost two thousand a month, but like
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: it was bouncing between one thousand and two thousand a
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: month for almost twelve months. Like I made I made
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the budget on it. Then this movie was at least
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: six years old, maybe seven, and I was like, for
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: the very first time, I'm like, oh, I mean there's
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: something to this like self distribution thing. So I you know,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: I finished my stint directing for the other guys, and
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: you know, I had the failure with Campus, and then
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: was like, I'm going to try to go back to
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: this self distribution model, you know. So and a producer
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: had told me that they were having a lot of
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: trouble you know with you know, narrative features you'll get lucky.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: But he's like, you should try documentaries. And at the
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: time I had no interest in documentaries whatsoever. But I
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: was like, well, I mean I'd like to make stuff.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Let me let me make a few and see what happens.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: So I just really as fast as I could make them,
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: I made I think it was like six documentaries and
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: I did these and like, I want to say, two months.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Why they're like full feature, Yeah, like between between sixty
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: and ninety minutes. Like so with streaming. With streaming documentaries
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: like if you hit over the sixty minute mark, you
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: can kind of you can sell it as a feature,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: right anyway, So between sixty and ninety, So like I
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: would and I mean these are talking head kind of documentaries,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: there would be you know, b roll but you know
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: most of its stock, you know, I do. I do
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: the interviews in like a day, you know, Like I
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: would set up five people, interview them for a couple
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: hours apiece, and just boom, knock it all out. So
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: and I was just basically throwing shit at the wall.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: I was like, I had subjects I was interested in,
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: but I had no idea what the market would bear.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: So I'm trying to figure that out. So I do
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: these six and and each one's in a completely different genre.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: You know, one about a dog rescue, one about medical cannabis,
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: you know, one about Brexit. I forget the other three.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: But so anyways, so I put them out really quick.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And and so what and what made you choose those topics?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Were you actually going after hot topics or hot niches
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: or something like that, or what was your mentality behind you?
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: I was, I was trying to figure it out, and
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: at the time, I was whatever I had access to,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: like what was the what was the path of least resistance?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: What am I interested in? What could I spend a
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: couple of weeks on and not want to puke? You know.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: I had a friend that ran the dog rescue in Vegas,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: so like I went down there and did that one,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: the the Brexit one. I have a filmmaker friend that's
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: in the UK that wanted to shoot interviews for this.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: So I was like, Okay, here's the interviews, here's questions.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: You go out and do it and we'll do like
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: a red split on it. So he did that and
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: then I posted it and distribute it. So I do
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: these like six movies really quick, and again it's kind
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: of just like testing the market. There's another thing that
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: had happened is I had another documentary from way back
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: when about Katrina that a friend of mine had made,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: and it had popped up out of nowhere and was
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: making money. There's another reason I decided on the documentaries.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So through those six I start to see, okay, like
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: the dog Rescue for one did well, Like I was
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: making around one thousand dollars a month on it, maybe
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a little less.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: How much did it cost?
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Spent nothing? I mean my time. You know, I spent
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: three days shooting it and probably maybe maybe five days
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: editing it.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: So it was all basically you used all the resources
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you had was just camera and you're editing gear basically
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that you already have paid for essentially.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, I had my camera, a small light kit. Sound. Yeah,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: so yeah, that's that's That's pretty much how he did all.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: It was the only time, you know, and we never paid.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: We always did it on a rev split situation. But
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: if I was working with another filmmaker that was shooting
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: the interviews, we would just work out a back and
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: split on it and then they would do the interviews.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: But most of them was just me. And by the
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: time those because and again these things and at the time,
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Amazon was still putting out movies pretty fast, so I
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: would self distribute on Amazon through your Prime Video direct.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: I would take the US and the UK, and then
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I would use a film hub to fill out you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: any foreign or you know, different platforms that I couldn't
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: get to. And this was before tob had kind of
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: you know, sparked up, but later on that became a thing.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm looking at these six I'm looking at the
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: dog rescue did well, the Brexit did okay. I did
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: one on filmmaking, which did abysmal, and so I was like, okay,
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: unless unless I'm going to tie the filmmaking into you know,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: like you know, how how to or something is you know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: just stuff out filmmaking, not not so much that it
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: didn't work out. So anyway, I looked at the success
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: or failure of these sex and then I started being
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: a little more selective on my subjects, you know, like
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I moved in. I did one on Bigfoot that did
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: like it did crazy, like I think, I think I
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: streamed ten No, I know I did. I streamed ten
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: million minutes for three months.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: In a row for Bigfoot documentary, for a Bigfoot documentary.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Like again, yeah, okay, So.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't mean interrupt you, but okay, because I'm fascinated
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: with this. Because so Bigfoot obviously is a very niche
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: audience that people who believe in Bigfoot want to follow Bigfoot,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: want to learn about Bigfoot. But it's a fairly dense audience.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who believe in Bigfoot listen
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: about this, and there's whole industries wrapped around Bigfoot. I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: even found out I found out a friend of mine
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: told me that there was erotica, bigfoot erotica where I'm
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: not kidding you. I'm not kidding you. So for anybody
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: in the audience who wants to play a trick, this
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: is what my buddy and I did. My buddy had
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a brother who was was, you know, the we're grown
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: ass man. So he's got a wife, he's got kids
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and everything, so he wanted to make sure he wanted
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to play a trick on his brother. I'm like, why
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: don't you do this next time you're over at his house,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Go on the on the on the compute on his
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: laptop and look up bigfoot erotica and just leave it
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: there and let his wife find it. And and it's
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: not like pornographic. It's just like people writing stories about
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: bigfoot erotica. Like you're like, and he I'm not even
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: gonna get to it because I read a couple of them,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and I was just like, oh my god, there's if
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: there's something for every freak in the world, and if
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: if there, if there are any bigfoot erotica's listeners out there,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: forgive me, I just don't understand you. But but anyway,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: so that just I'm sorry I had to tell you
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: that story. But so Bigfoot, that that niche is fairly
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like UFO or Locked This Monster or
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: any of these kind of nitches. So you basically just
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: interviewed a bunch of like bigfoot hunters or something like that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean basically, like with the Bigfoot one.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: I took a look at the marketplace, Like I looked
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: at probably twenty different documentaries on Bigfoot, and there are
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of them. Yeah, so I'm like, oh, so
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: there is going to be a lot of competition here.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: But what I didn't see was there weren't a lot
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: of just like introductions into the subject, like just like
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: a general this is the thing, this is what cryptozoology is.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: So like it seems like all the filmmakers are so
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: focused on I'm going to provide new information or I'm
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: going to show like this new picture of Bigfoot, and
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: you know, nine times out of ten it's complete like obvious,
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: you know, bullshit.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're saying that tenth time it's real and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: there's a real Bigfoot.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: No, I'm saying it's more believe a little like it
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: looks a little bit, be sure, so that's interesting.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: So instead, so that's interesting for the audience to take
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a note of that. If there is a lot of
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: competition in a documentary space about a subject, an introduction
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to it might be a way in and apparently it
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: was for.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: You, yeah, or or it might be going more specific too.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: It could be either way. But you know, at this
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: around the same time, I was also just like very
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: late to the game, starting to get into the YouTube stuff,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: and I'm watching all these videos on YouTube, and some
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: of the best marketing advice I have ever heard comes
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: from these, like the people that have been successfully grown
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: their YouTube channels and do the videos about like how
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: to grow your YouTube channels. You follow the right people
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: and the information is like it's gold. And they're talking
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: about retention, they're talking about how to niche down, and
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I'm thinking about these movies because
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: you're also getting something on Amazon called CEER Customer Engagement Ranking.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: You know, which is this like nebulous thing that nobody
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: can figure out, But it's how they base their rate
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: of pay and it's it's based on things like, how
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: long are you retaining your audience? How are your reviews?
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Are people clicking on your movie and watching, you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: thirty seconds and clicking off? Or are they actually watching
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: it through? Are they rating it? Are they engaging with it?
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: You know what? One hundred different factors. But the retention
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: thing really that they kept talking about on YouTube really
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: like started seeping into my documentaries. I'm like, okay, So
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: then I started thinking about structure in a whole different way.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: It's like, you know, it's not necessarily just this three
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: act structure, peaks and valleys. How do I keep people
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: for that? Especially that like critical fifteen, first fifteen or
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: twenty minutes. You know, I'm not saying the rest of
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: it's inconsequential, but you know, I start thinking, you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: like you don't have you know, in this day and
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: age on streaming, you don't have ten minutes to get
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: the audience, you know, like the used to stay with screenplays.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: You know you got you have ten minutes to set
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: up your store.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: You got the first five, you got five pages, and
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: if it's not done.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and now with with the streaming stuff, I'd say
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: it's maybe even less. It's like if they're not into it.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: In like ninety seconds, they're like, eh, click off, go
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: to something else. So anyway, the retention thing really like
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: it changed things for me the Bigfoot movie, like just
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: seeing how well that did and how the marketing worked,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: like how you can you know, target a specific niche.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: It just it just opened it up. And now when
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: I look for subjects, I look for things that, Okay,
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: what is something It doesn't have to be supernatural, but
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: what is something that has a group of people that
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: are into it? Like these people that were into Bigfoot?
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So okay, so yeah, can you? Yeah, so how to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: explain the process of you picking your niche and how
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you like, what are the checklist things that you need
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to kind of look for in order for you to
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: spend at least two weeks on a project? Yeah, at
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: least I mean at least two yeah, two weeks.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and it's like now it's around two months.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: But okay, but yeah, I love you, like I can't
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I stand in this project for two weeks without losing
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: my mind? And I'm thinking to myself, are you kidding me?
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Most of the filmmakers listening are like a year to
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: two in like two weeks even two months is is
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: a vacation, very very short.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I start with my interests or something that
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: I'm interested in learning more about. For example, I like,
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: I'm not into Bigfoot, but I was. I was really
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: interested to see why other people were, you know, like
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: and that was that was kind of my focus. And
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: I did a UFO one, like in a similar manner,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: you know, the dog rescue. I'm a dog lover, you know,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: so I moved into that. But so the first thing
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: I do, so I say, okay, I'm gonna do a
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Bigfoot one. I google Bigfoot, you know, and I start
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: looking at what's popping up first, you know, and if
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: if like I can find the audience fairly easily, like
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: where they're congregating. You know, there's a lot of like Bigfoot,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: for example, you go to Facebook and type in Bigfoot
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: and you'll get like groups, yeah, a thousand groups, you know,
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: with and and there's hundreds of thousands of members in
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: some of these yeah. Like so so I was like,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: oh my gosh, that like just on these Facebook groups alone,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: I can I can push this movie. So I mean
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: that that was a no brainer. The Alien one was
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: a no brainer. Animal rescue stuff's a no brainer, you know.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: It's like, but then you get into some like I
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: hear people pitching stuff all the time, and it's like
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: maybe a little esoteric or it's a little looser, like
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: you know, like we're doing one and you know it
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: it's you know, it's a it's a coming of age
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: story about you know, growing up, you know, a little
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: too broadest little way yeah, way too way too rod,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: way too ride, you know, and or maybe the guy
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: does have an incredible story, but like he's started as
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: a football player and then and then he became a
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: scientist and then you know, it's just like two segmented
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and there's not enough in the one area. So I
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: try to find something where it's you know, pretty laser
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: focused in terms of audience and where I find them.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: So those are my main things why I'm interested in.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Can I sell it now?
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: When you when you So let's go back to Bigfoot
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: for a second. So when you were marketing it, how
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: did you how do you go about marketing your your
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: films to the niche? Once you've identified the niche audience,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: how do you go about marketing to that audience and
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: what the cost is involved?
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Okay. So most most of it, at least to start,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: was social media, like free stuff you know, on Facebook.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: I targeted the groups, you know, I would I created
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: a page for it, but the only thing I would
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: do with that page is occasionally boost you know, a
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: post or a video to that target audience. I don't
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: do a lot with paid ads, maybe a one hundred
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: two hundred bucks a month probably total across the board,
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: so I would mostly just find these the audiences online.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: So I do the Facebook groups and somebody had mentioned
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Reddit and I was like, you never see people promoting
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: on Reddit, And I was like, oh, fuck Reddit. Okay,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: but you have to be a lot more clever on
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Reddit because it's a it's a discussion based platform. So
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: it's like, if you're just throwing up a link to
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: your thing, nobody's going to look at it. But if
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: you establish you know, a line of communication, then you
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: can do it. You know, but it's hard. I've been
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: banned from a couple of groups for you know, throwing
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: up some links. But for the most part is it
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: works good. And then the other one. I discovered that
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: no filmmakers are talking about the sill like a bonus
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: TEP Pinterest, Like I didn't even know what pinterest was.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: I don't remember who recommended it, but I was like, okay,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I looked it up, signed up, and I was like, oh,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: this looks like recipes. I don't know, but just just
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: for ships and giggles. I put up. Somebody had told
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: me to do short videos, so I created a business account,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: which is free, and I put in like, I don't know,
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: maybe a dozen like thirty to forty five second video
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: clips from I think two movies, you know, and you
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: can put the URLs to where you know you want
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: to send them in there, and you can create your
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: thumbnails all that. So anyway, I do that, put them up,
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: and then just walk away. I'm like, okay, this isn't
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: going to be nothing. The next day I look at
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: it and my Pinterest page had like thirty five thousand
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: page views, like in less than a day.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And what was but what was the topic? What was
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the niche?
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: One of them and it was so I did too.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: One was the Bigfoot one, you know, okay, okay, Bigfoot,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: I see it. The other one was oh man, was
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: it brexit or it was either Brexit or the animal Rescue.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: I can't remember which.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: All three, all three have very passionate groups.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but they they they just they. I was like wow,
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: and they were actually watching the videos, like the like
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: the average video watch length was like I don't know,
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: twenty seconds, and these were you know, thirty to forty
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: five second videos, and like i'd say, ten percent, we're
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: clicking on the link. So I was like, oh, because
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: they they huge give you all those that's huge. Yeah,
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: they give you all those metrics. So I was like,
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: holy shit. So like twice a week I would put
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: up like thirty clips. Within I want to say, the
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: first three weeks, I had over three hundred thousand page views.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: That's about as high as I've gotten a month now.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: But that's every month. That's about what I do, somewhere
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: between two and three hundred thousand.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: So you're using interest as a marketing machine for your
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: projects and it's free and now it's free.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally free. I do a little bit of paid
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: promotion just I'm being experimenting with it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: How is it? How is that? How is it paid? Paid?
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: On Pinterest?
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: I mean it's kind of like Facebook, but you can
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: do lower amounts, so like I'll boost something for like
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: five bucks for you know whatever, five days or something,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: just to just to see because every now and then,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: because I put a lot of clips up there, So
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I'll put ten up there, six six or seven of
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: them will do like the thousand views in the first day,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: and then like three of them will do like one,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: you know. So like I'll take the ones that do one,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: and I might give them a little push, you know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: get up there around you know, yeah, just just to
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: push it. And then there's a social media scheduler called
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: Tailwind that works specifically with Pinterest, and it does all
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: this like scheduled reposting because if you have multiple boards,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: you can take those pins and then repost them to
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: other boards and it opens up the audience. So like
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: I'll do that once a month, and then I just
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: set them up on a repeating basis, so like once
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: every month or two and that post will come back up.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And how many boards do you have on Pinterest?
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe twenty, Like I mean, I have
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of projects, and I don't do them. I
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: started doing them specific to just like one project, and
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: then I started grouping them into projects because the more
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: boards you have, the more you can share between the
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: boards and I noticed, And again I've only been doing
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: this for through four months now, so it's fairly new.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: But you know, and it's also coincides with COVID, so
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: it's it's hard to tell where the bumps come from.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: I have had, like on my library titles like maybe
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: a fifteen percent bump and overall sales, you know, since
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: I started implementing some of these things, and you know,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: like I said, it's hard to tell.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So what is your distribution model right now? Is
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: strictly Amazon only? And then we're going to talk about
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Amazon and A but do you do tvo svod Ava?
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Do you go anywhere else other than Amazon for your
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: to generate revenue. We'll be right back after a word
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: So this has all changed for me dramatically in the
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: past three months. So prior to February, my model was
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: to do Amazon US and UK on my own, put
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: put it up, directly, uploaded to Prime Video, direct to
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: film Hub for the rest that that's pretty much what
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: I do. Maybe maybe do some physical media myself, either
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: through my website or do the media on demand thing.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: I personally never had a lot of luck with physical media.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: But it's something that I want to like get a
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: little more into in the coming months, even though it's
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: it feels like it's going out. But I'm sorry, I
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: lost my train of thought.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: The I lost my train of thought to revenue.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so that was that. So I would launch
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: a movie in TVOD and I would keep it on
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: TVOD as long as it was making more then I
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: think three hundred dollars a month was my cutoff on
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: that and if it was falling below that, you know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: then I was just like, okay, let me switch over
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: to ASPOD. So it's you know, start out at tv
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: I move to as FOD and.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: All Amazon with all Amazon, all.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: Amazon, And sometimes that would happen very quickly. You like,
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: say I put a movie up and you know, in
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: the first week I've rented, you know whatever, three units,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, this isn't working. Move over to as FOD.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: And in my experience, and it's I know it's not
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: a popular opinion, but when you're dealing with movies this small,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: like and I still feel even with the changes that
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: as FOD is still overall for small movies superior, like
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: the discoverability is just it's it beats the raids, you know,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: like if you if you do this little movie, it's
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: so hard to get people to rent an independent feature.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: You know it let alone by let alone buy buy.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So and maybe this is something they'll change. And
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: I know some other filmmakers that have had better luck
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: with the t VOD, but me personally, I never had
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: the amount of marketing work that you need to push
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: this To make the same amount of money on tv
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: I that you make on s FOD is it's astronomical.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I can put a movie out on s FOD,
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: even at the one cent an hour, and turn over
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: one thousand dollars in a month fairly easily, like not
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: every time, but fairly easily. But on ti VO, you know,
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: I'd be lucky to crack like two hundred bucks, you know,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: on those particular titles.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because I've been trying to I've been yelling
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that from the top of the mountain for a long
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: time as well, that TVOD is essentially dead for independent filmmaking.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: It only works if you have an audience that is
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: passionate about your film or you or the subject matter
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: or something like that that you can drive them, and
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: that's going to be a short window of maybe two
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: three four months if that, that's the only time that
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: for an independent. And again for the budgets we're talking about,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, fifty thousand, seventy five thousand
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and below kind of projects. TI VOT is and and
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I'd argue even a million in below t vot is
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: still a tough still a tough sell unless you're unless
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: you're pumping it through a lot of marketing, or you
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: have recognizable talent, like really recognizable talent.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't until I actually started like
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: networking more with other filmmakers that were putting out movies
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: and selling them where you realized how little some of
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: these movies were making. You know, like some of these movies, man,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: you know, I just you know, I just signed a
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: couple of movies with Indie, right, So I've been looking
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: at a lot of their other movies and like there's
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: some X there's some excellent stuff there made, you know, say,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: but between seventy five thousand and say one hundred and
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: fifty thousand and that are making twenty nothing, And.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's some that are making nothing and they're
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: just some there making yeah, you know, fifty one hundred bucks. Yeah,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: a couple bucks up. Yeah. Man, it was sobering, No,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: it is, it's in And you know, I think that's
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: one of the things I love about indie rights, because
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: they have both of my films as well, is that
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: they allow filmmakers to see the truth of what films
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: are really worth and if you don't market them and
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: if you don't do them, this is what it's going
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: to happen. And it's sobering. It is sobering for filmmakers
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: to kind of understand the like, oh, I don't have
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the prettiest baby. No you don't. You know, there are
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: ugly babies. Unfortunately an independent film there, you know, it's like, no,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: there's no other.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Babies, possibly more than cute babies.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly, but everyone thinks that their baby is gorgeous. Yeah,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and I understand that, but it's just the cruel reality.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: And then now let's talk a little bit about Amazon
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and how brutal they have been with independent filmmakers. I mean,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: so to my experience, early on, they were you were
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: you can make a lot of money through Spot like
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: twelve cent oh my god, fifteen cent and you sound
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: like it doesn't sound like a lot, but you.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: Can made fifty fifteen cents, I mean, interrupt just for
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: a second. So at fifteen cents an hour my Bigfoot movie,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: but so on Amazon, I made I think sixteen hundred
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: dollars on it in July, right or I'm sorry June,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: but this last sack same least this lesson Yeah, yeah,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: just last month. Okay, So that exact same movie at
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: fifteen cents an hour would have been like twenty five
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: thousand dollars something like that my math think right, but
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: I know it's over twenty or around two.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you could have been making.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it and you can count on a new
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: release like kind of maintaining that basic ballpark for about
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: ninety days. Sure, so you know, like I mean, I
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: could have cleared you know, fifty to sixty thousand in
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: three months on that movie that I I made for
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: you know, less than five hundred dollars that when I
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: paid for a couple of interviews. But you know, you
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: know what I say that is, oh my gosh. When
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: I think about that, I get like, I mean, I
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: get emotional. I get a clip because I mean, now
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: fifty percent of titles are going to make a cent,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: are going to make one penny because anything any movie
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: with a CR of under fifty percent is one penny.
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: The sliding scale stops at fifty percent. Like wha, I
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: mean the The Bigfoot, for example, at the CR was
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: forty three percent, forty three percent one penny, fifty percent
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: five five pennies.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: So like, so you would have made as you would
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: have made six thousand it was six seven eight thousand
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: bucks something like that.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly with just a with a five percent differential,
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: which is and then try to figure out why your CR.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Is what it is.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: There's no figuring it out. I used to think there was.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: I was like, if you have enough data, you could
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: crunch it. You can this stuff out. But there's so
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: many unseen factors. I heard from another filmmaker that has
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: a relationship with someone that works in Amazon, and they
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: wouldn't tell them what the factors were, but they said
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: there's well over one hundred factors that go into CER.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: You know, it's not just your rating, it's not just
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: how many minutes you stream, like it could come down
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: to they put more weight if somebody watches your movie
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: in New York City as opposed to watches it and
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: you know, bumfuck Indiana like that, there's a there's a difference.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Or this person that watches the movie purchases more other stuff,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: so your CR is high.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So you no, you have no.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: No control, no control, there's no And there's people that
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: just say, well if I just if I just do
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: the advertising right, and I was one of these people,
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: I would, I'd preach it. When I first started doing
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: YouTube videos, I was like, just you know, you do
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: your marketing right, you do this, you do this, you
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: do that, your your CR will be higher. You can
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: still do it. And I was still defending Amazon. I
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, you know, they're they're they're toughening up
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: standards because they got a lot of crap on there.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: They but like it's gotten ridiculous now and now they're
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: purging even more movies. I just I lost the movie
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: two days ago.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: They just decided just it's just like come out, we're done.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Just pulled it. And it had a ceer of over
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: fifty percent.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: So why did they pull it? And they don't tell you.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: They won't tell you. I mean now it was not
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: doing good numbers, so maybe it was that, but who knows?
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: So, so now what do you do?
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: So what I do now? I no longer do direct
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: to Amazon. I still use Amazon because it's still it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: still a thing. I still make one thousand dollars a
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: project there, but I don't put them up myself any longer.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: Like if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna do or release,
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: I'll either I go to Indie Rights first and I'll
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: see if they want to pick it up, and if
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: it's something that they're not interested in, or if it's
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: something that maybe I'm not so proud of, I'll just
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: I'll go straight to film Hub and I'll give it
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: all the film Hub I give.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: And how it's and how is and how's film Hub
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: working out for you? Is that is? Are they paying?
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Are they getting you?
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: What I'm curious to see. I haven't heard of a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: lot of success stories with film Hub, so I would
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: love to hear what your experience is.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: So I've had good experiences with film Hub. I still
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: don't make as much collectively off film Hub as I
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: was making off Amazon, but it grows, it grows every month.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: So what I like about film Hub is that you
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: know the first like two movies that I ever got
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: on to BTV were you know, through film Hub, you know,
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: and I do pretty good on to B through film Hub. Uh,
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: it's not it's it's it's good. They pay quarterly and
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: they pay out. I think it's like they's flee but
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: like quarterly in one so they're always like a quarter behind,
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: which I don't think people under understand that, so they'll
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: they'll bitch about it. And the numbers aren't astronomical.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Like, unless you get on like a hit out on
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: two B, ninety percent of those channels are making you know,
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: pennies or a few dollars, but it does it gives
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: you a little more visibility, and then if you get
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: onto a good platform, you know, it can Like I'm
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: just now getting to the point where, like my titles
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: on two B are making more than what they're making
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: on Amazon. But it took me almost a year to get.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: There, right, And there's also not all your projects are
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: on two B's just a handful.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, because like out of two B,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: I think I've I think I've uploaded fifteen movies onto
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: two B. And out of the fifteen, I think six
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: are on two B. I mean on Film Club and
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: six are on two B.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: So what I'm what I'm hearing is and well, first
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: of all, what they have to ask you, like, what
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: do you do if you have one hundred and fifty
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: one thousand dollars indie film with no talent attached and
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: it's a narrative film.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: Well, my first thing, I probably would make one hundred
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: thousand dollars right, right.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of but there's a lot of
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: like a lot of filmmakers out there have that mentality
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: like it's only one hundred and fifty thousand, it's only
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: a quarter of a million, it's only one hundred thousand,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: and it's a it's a drama, and I have no
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: stars in it, and they expect that. Like in today's marketplace,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: as we're recording this, what are your what are the options?
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Because your business model works because your overhead is extremely low,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Like when you make a movie for five hundred bucks
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: and you're generating consistently one thousand to two thousand to
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: three thousand bucks a month, or let's say for the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: first let's say you you generate off that movie ten
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: grand over the course of its lifetime. That's a business
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: like you make a product for five hundred, you make
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: ten grand off of it. And it's a volume business
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: as well. You can't do one of those, You need
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to do twelve.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: In order to keep them going.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: And you got to keep them going and keep something.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: But you also have a library as well. So how
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: many films do you have in your library that you
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: own and are generating revenue with, even if it's a
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: few bet of dollars a month?
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: I think twenty right right now?
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I think twenty all right, so you have twenty features
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: that you're generating revenue with. Yeah, that's in This basically
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is the film entrepreneur method. Is what I've been preaching
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: with my book, like overhead really low, find a niche audience,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: market to that niche audience, rinse, repeat, and just and
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: just keep doing it and build that library that you
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: own and control to continuously generate revenue for you. And
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: when there's a new platform boom have a new revenue streaming,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: you could just jump in twenty.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Films and I think what I'd say about the one
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars, Yeah, thing, yeah, is because I still
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: like my passion is to still like do narrative film,
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: like I believe me. I just I love making movies.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: So I get a lot of pleasure out of the documentaries.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: But I still want to make narrative stuff. But to
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: be one hundred percent honest, and you know, nobody wants
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: to hear this, but I don't know how to make
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: money on one hundred thousand dollars narrative feature without a star, Like,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know, you might get lucky, you know, I could.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: I have kind of an idea about what to do,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: but I don't know that it'll work. So risk now, yeah,
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: it's a risk. It's a it's a huge risk. So
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: what I do now is I treat the documentaries has
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: this is my day job. This is like my this
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: is my more fun day job. And then once a year,
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: you know, I take some of that, raise a little
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: bit more money and make a narrative movie. And if
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: the narrative fails, oh well, you know, like I still
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: have my income from the documentaries, you know, because I
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: just don't see like how at that level to have
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: a sustainable business model making narrative features. I I know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: there's people that do, but I don't see it not
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: without without stars or without really understanding your niche and
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: really understanding the business about it and creating ancillary product
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: lines and creating like all these other things that.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: You can do. It's just you've got to be so perfect,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: like you can't. You can't be sloppy at all, like
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: your your business model. You can be as a little sloppy.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: You know, you're because your budget's really low. Like when
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I made my my last feature, it was about three grand. Yep,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I I shot it in four days. Okay,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: It's like, I'm not it's not that big of a deal.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just making something that's fun and it's narrative,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and it was you know, it's so it's a it
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: was for my audience and all that kind of good stuff.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: But if I would have made that movie for one
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: hundred grand, forget it.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if I wouldn't even know it Just it's just
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: just so it's so difficult.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Then that's why I wanted to have you on as
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: an example as a case study for filmmakers to understand,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: like this is better or worse. It is the new normal.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: You have to figure out how to generate revenue. And
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: I applaud you because you've been able to create a
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: day job for yourself that you control, you own, and
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: to continue to give you passive income, like once the
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: work is done, that will continue to pay you something
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: for a while.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I have you know, I have almost
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: fifty I have an almost fifteen year old movie that
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: I still make a couple hundred bucks a month off of,
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: you know. So, I mean I get pushback from people.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: Sometimes they are like, oh, well, it's easy for you
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: to say because you have whatever so many projects or
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: you just throw them at or you don't care about them,
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: and it's not true. Like I care deeply about everything
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: I do, but like this is what I need to
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: do to make a living, Like I am not you know,
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: I graduate, I graduated college, but I didn't finish law school.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't do any of that. So like at this
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: point in my life, like I can't afford to make
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: a hundred thousand dollars movie and have it fail, Like I.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: That's done, you're done, that's you're done. It will crush you,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: it would crush you. I get it. I get it,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: And that's what filmmakers don't understand because they'll take that
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: risk and then they'll get crushed and they'll never come back.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: They'll never they'll never come back into the business because
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: they can't. And you've been able to establish yourself making
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: these films, and look at it at the end of
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the day. I always filmmakers always have this issue with
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: art versus commerce, and it drives me. It drives me nuts.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: It drives me nuts. Look, we all want to be Scorsese,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: we all want to be Nolan, we all want to
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: be Fincher, we all want to be Kubrick. And that's fantastic.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: And these guys are, you know, on the Mount Hollywood
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and they're like they're they're they're gods on Mount Hollywood,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: there's no question. But they come from a different world,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: different existence than the rest of us. Like this is
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: like if I've spoken to directors of that caliber and
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: when I tell them that I made a three thousand
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: dollars movies, they're they're they just you can see things
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: just it's like they don't. It's like malfunction, like short
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: circuit Magne, Johnny five, Malfunch, Like it's like freaking out,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: like it doesn't compute. They can't wrap their heads around that,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: and because they just come from a completely different existence.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: It's like an NFL player talking to a high school player,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: like it's just we both do arguably the same thing.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: We're both playing the game, but at completely different levels.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: And there's nothing wrong with either of them. It's just
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: it's just different. But filmmakers so much get caught up
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: with the art and the dream that they look down
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: upon what I like to call the blue collar filmmaker.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Someone like that comes in as building a business around
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: what they love to do, and you go. I had
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: another I had another director on who does Michael uh
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: five And he does lifetime movies.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Lifetime movies. And all he did is like he pops
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: out like four or five of these a year, and
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: he's gotten built up to the relationship that he can
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: just he just gets financing from the companies and he
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: just works and he's just always working. He's flying to grease,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: he's flying all over the place. He's made and people
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: are like, oh, you make lifetime movies and I and
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I told him that, I'm like anyone who says that,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: screw you, because this man is living the dream that
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: most filmmakers would kill to do. He's getting to do
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: his art for a living.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And how and how dare you judge what my
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: art is or my art isn't and what you feel
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: that it should be. I don't care. It's irrelevant, you know.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: I mean people don't like Tyler Perry movies. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: as a lot of people despise Tyler Perry and the
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: films he makes. He's laughing all the way to the.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Bank, all the way, all the way.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Now, but real quick, do you use email lists at all?
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Or do you do?
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: You?
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, build that I do so.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: And then again, this is this is something I mean,
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of my business really has like
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: blown up and changed so much over the last year.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: So I would say, actually, even prior to like twenty eighteen,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: I was still pretty firmly in the like I just
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: want to make I just want to make movies. I
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: don't care about the business. You know. It took a
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: good ten years of me getting kicked around before I'm like, okay,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: wait ante, I do need to make I need to
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: make some fucking buddy, But so yes, I do use them.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: My email list isn't huge now, I think it's like
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: maybe five thousand. I run it through my website and
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: now through Patreon.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our spon
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: And you know, I'm collecting them, and I like, I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: send out, you know, for uh, well, once a month
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: newsletter and then I'll send out like kind of a
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: project specific one once a month and I'll kind of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: maybe I'll lay some other titles in there as well.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: And you're now and now you have a podcast, you
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: have a YouTube channel that you're building up. Is that
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: part of Are you trying to build yourself up as
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: a brand in the filmmaking space to attract filmmakers to
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: what you're doing as another potential revenue stream or things
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: like that? Can you explain what you're doing?
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the YouTube thing started out honestly, it started
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: just I was looking for I was I was because
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: I get questions online all the time about my business
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: model and about how I make movies. So I was like, oh,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: like people seem really interested in this information. So I
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: was just like, I'm just going to share some of
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: that information, and you know, I did a few videos
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: and the response for it was so good, and I
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: start looking at other people like yourself that were working
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: in the filmmaking space, and I'm like, oh, maybe this
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: is a thing. Like I wasn't thinking about immediately monetizing
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: it or anything. I was like, I'm enjoying doing it,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: but let me let's let's see where it takes me.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: So I started.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: I started doing it and get taking it a little
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: more seriously and watching the YouTube videos and you know,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: building the channel. I mean, I'm still probably a year
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: away from making any real money from it, you know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: but it's it's something you got to build. You can't
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: just you don't just start and you're making Bundy. I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: enjoy doing it.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: And that's the other thing I want people to understand
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: is like a lot of people look at what I've
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: done with indie film Hustle and my other companies and
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well, you know you've been like I've
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: been doing this five years. It took me two and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: a half to three years to start really getting traction
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: and to quit my day job and to you know,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: not do post production anymore, only direct when I want
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: to direct. And it took time. And that's and like
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: even with what your business model is one film at
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: a time to build up.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: Elaborate it all takes time. I mean the the documentary stuff,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: you know, it took it took six or seven months
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: before I was making like enough money on the documentaries
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: that it supplemented my income.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: But that's that's fast. That's fast.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: But that is that is fast. But it wasn't automatic
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: inst what I said. But then like the YouTube and
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: thing and all that, those are those are like long
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: those are long games, you know, and you know you
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: get it. You do get a few more eyeballs on
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: your projects from that as well.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So that's hopefully helping. Yeah, you're you're using
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: the model like I'm gonna show you how I made
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the Bigfoot documentary. And oh, by the way, if you
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: want to watch it Fit Book Fook Documentary, it's over
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: here for yeah, go watch it for free on two
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: b or on Amazon Prime or something like that.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: And by the way, once Amazon kicks you off, it's done, right,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: You can't put that movie back.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: On it is. Yeah, it is done. Now. I know
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: you guys didn't hear this from me, but there are
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: filmmakers that will retitle do new art and then they'll
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: upload through film Hub. Like if you do it through
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: your same account, they're going to catch you. But like
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: say you go to film Hub or somewhere else and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: have it put up or create a new account with
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: a new title, you might get lucky, but most likely
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: the same thing that got it kicked off the first
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: time is going to get it kicked off again. So
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: the official rule is, once it's done, it's done. There's
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: a few ways to get around it. But even if
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: you do, is it worth the risk? I don't do it,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: and you.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Don't use aggregators. You don't use like an aggregator to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: put it up on iTunes or on Google Play or
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: in fandango or any of that stuff.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: Right, No, No, I did. I did an aggregator once
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: for iTunes, and I did it on a campus that day,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: and uh, I think I made seventy five dollars with it,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Like iTunes is really hard to push too, yeah, uh
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: but yeah, so no I don't. I don't again, Like
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm making these movies like so fast and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: so cheap if I'm paying one thousand dollars per platform,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: like the movie might not even make that much.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: I don't do it. I'll give up that twenty percent
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: from film Hub, you know, because it's nothing up front.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: But or indie rights or indie rights or or.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: Indie rights, it's the same thing. But I wouldn't, I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: wouldn't pay to be placed.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Very cool. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: ask all of my quests. What advice would you give
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: a filmmaker trying to break into the business today.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: If you can do anything else, if you enjoy doing
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: anything else, do it. I'm not saying, look I am,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: I don't regret it. I've lived a great life. I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: like I do something I enjoy for a living. But
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: it is not it looks a lot cooler in the brochure.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: It's it's not awesome.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: And you mean it's not like it's not like watching
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: the making of Raiders of the Lost Arc. It's not
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: like that at all.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: No, it's and it's it's nothing like Entourage. But uh.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: And then my second part to that would be study, Like, like,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: if you know you're young, you're just getting started, whether
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: it's in school or on YouTube or in books, study
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: business and marketing, lees be consider that to be sixty
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: percent of a movie success. It's probably more than that,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: but I'm gonna say sixty like it's like, it's it's
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: more that's more important than the movie being good as
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: far as it's selling. You know, absolutely, there's business and marketing.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of good movies out there that no
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: one watches, and there's a lot of bad movies out
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: there that make a lot of money.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. What is the lesson that took you the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: longest to learn, whether in the film business or life.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: Probably to especially on my narrative features, to stop doings
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: trying to take on too much myself. Yeah, try trying
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: to do too much. You need to like movies as
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: a collaborative art and like you have, you have to give.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: Even even on the docks where I'm pretty much one
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: man crew, I still have people that I can count
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: on to do this or that. Go to people who
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: are experts in their area. Just you know, don't don't
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: try to take on too much yourself.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: And what are three of your favorite films of all time?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: Three films? Oh, I'd say I had this changes week
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: to week. But the world, according to garp Avam Williams
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: movie that means a lot to me and a lot
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: of a lot of my favorite movies have to do
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: with what's going on at the time, and I just
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: I bonded with my mother over that movie, like really,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: like in a really powerful way, and I just I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: always love it and it's one of Robin williams the
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: best dramatic performances. Great movie, my second one. And again
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: I hate to be yeah, I always feel like self
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: conscious when I talk about Tarantino because I don't want
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: to be that filmmaker's like, oh, no, Tarantino good, It's
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: all good. And I say Reservoir Dogs and again not
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: necessarily like you know, I think he's made better movies,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: but like Reservoir Dogs. And when it came out, that
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: was my gateway movie like that. I mean, I had
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: seen all kinds of stuff, but it was right there.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: And then hearing him talk and talk about John wu
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: and talk about Walter Hill and talk about French New Wave,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, it just opened up this world.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: I'm watching all these guitared movies and I'm watching you know,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: The Killer and Heart Boiled and Bolt in the Head.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: It just it and it showed me what a director
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: could be. I just I didn't up until that point,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: I had seen pretty much every Walter Hill movie. But
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: it wasn't until I heard Tarantino talking about him that
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: I like put the two and two together, like oh,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: forty eight hours and the Long Riders, like, oh, it's
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: the same guy, you know. Yeah, so that's as Dogs
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: and then maybe amily after.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's been on the list of any times.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just a just a visual style and it's so
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: sweet and beautiful. Like I've done. I've done a lot
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: of like nihilistic horror movies and stuff, so it always
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: seems weird, but some of the things that affect me
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: the most are these like basically like positive suite like movies.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: And I don't know that one, like I can watch
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: that over and over.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Now, where can people find you? So?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: I have a website at www dot Jhorton dot com.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: You can pretty much find me on you know, Twitter, Instagram,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: wherever at at j Horton. My YouTube is Jay Horton
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: or the j Horton. Yeah, and that's about it.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Jamie. You are an inspiration, sir of and
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and a personification of the film entrepreneur method. So I
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: do appreciate you coming on and dropping the knowledge bombs
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: on the tribe. Brother, Thank you so much, man, thank you.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I want to thank Jason for coming on the show
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: and dropping those knowledge bombs on the tribe. He is
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: a true film entrepreneur and is expanding his film entrepreneurial
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: empire on a daily basis. I hope you get some
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: inspiration from Jason and what he is doing, because there
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: is no excuse anymore why you, as a filmmaker can't
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: make a living doing what you love to do. If
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: you want to get links to anything we spoke about
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: in this episode, head over to the show notes at
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash for zero nine. Thank
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: you so much for listening, guys, as always, keep on
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: Screenwriting dot tv.