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IFH 676: Horror Filmmaking Masterclass with Danny Draven · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
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  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six seventy six. I'm happy to do anything
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  on a film set. Nick Frost broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood.
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  It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and
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  thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's
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  your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie
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  Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show
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  is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
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  a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make
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  money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators
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  who prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The
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  old distribution model of making money with your film is broken, and there needs
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  The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook.
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  If you want to order it, just head over to www dot film bizbook
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  dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host
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  Jason Buff. We're continuing our interviews with horror filmmakers with Danny Draven. This
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  is one of this. This is like a masterclass in horror filmmaking. Danny
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  is not only a horror filmmaker, but he's also the author of the phenomenal
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  horror filmmaking book called The Filmmaker's Book of the Dead, and it's now in
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  its second edition. If you want to learn filmmaking, horror filmmaking specifically go
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  get that. I think it's available on Amazon. Check it out. It's
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  full of pictures, It's it's really like over the top in terms of like
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  all the value, all the great things that are in this book. Let
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  me get going with Danny. This is a huge interview about two hours.
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  So I was going to break it up into two different episodes, and I
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  just decided to go ahead and put it out there as one, and you
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  can kind of listen to the first half when you have time, or maybe
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  if you have a two hour car drive or something. You're gonna get a
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  lot out of this episode. I certainly did and learn a lot about how
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  the indie film making world works, especially the indie horror film. So check
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  it out. Hope you enjoy. Like I have all these questions that I've
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  just been coming up with on my own, but what I was thinking we
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  could do was just kind of go through the different um parts of the first
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  book, just I mean going strictly on the uh, the table of contents,
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  and just kind of do a brief description of kind of those different aspects
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  of making a horror film and then just kind of go from there, you
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  know, and just use that as the framework and obviously, I don't want
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  you to go, you know, so far into it. I mean,
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  the thing that I found is that usually the more into it you get,
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  the more interested people get in, you know, buying the book, and
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  like, you know, sure. Anyway, I did have one guy I
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  talked to not too long ago who was like, yeah, um, you
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  know, if you read my book, I'll tell you all about that.
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  You know. It's like, come on, dude, I hear I hear
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  you. No, totally, I'm happy to I don't. I don't do
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  that. I just you just ask me whatever you want. I'll tell you
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  whatever I could, whatever comes to mind. You know, if they buy
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  the book, great, If not, it doesn't you know, when when
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  I get a twenty dollars royalty check in the mail, it doesn't you know,
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  it's not about the money. So it really isn't this book that this
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  the the first edition is actually very simple. I mean the second edition is
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  just enhancements to the first. So it's only you know, it's about one
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  hundred and I don't know, a hundred and forty pages more than the first
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  edition, and a lot of that is just newer interviews and a lot of
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  the information has been updated, so the chapters are all really the same.
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  I only think I only added really want it's just the information was updated considerably
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  because it was out a day because it was five years old. But um
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  and and a lot of new really good interviews with people like Nick Garris and
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  Kane Hotter and all these other dudes and so which it's just pretty much the
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  big difference. And it's got a really good overhaul as far as like a
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  lot more artwork was added, like a lot of really cool like grindhouse art
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  just just for I candy really yeah, stuff like that. So it's it's
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  a fun it's it's the it is by far the definitive best edition of that
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  book and probably the last um and and and it'll it'll has a hardcover edition,
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  which is which is really cool. I mean it's a little it's kind
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  of expensive, but it's they do have a hardcover one that which is kind
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  of cool for it. But but anyway, yeah, so it's it's very
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  so whatever we we ever talked about with the book, it's it's very similar
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  to the second. It's just more updated as all. Well, I mean
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  that might be a good jumping in point. What what do you consider the
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  major things that have changed from the first book to the second book, Um
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  well, technology and distribution, mainly because you know, the film filmmaking process
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  is really still has been kind of the same for you know, one hundred
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  years. It's just you know that just the technology has has has changed to
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  the point you know where particularly in my in my book, it has to
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  do What I change was the distribution uh chapters, which is that's different with
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  digital distribution and everything, and uh and particularly uh uh some of the stuff
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  in the production because as the cameras sipped out better, bigger, smaller and
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  shoot higher, higher quality. You know. So I think it's just mainly
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  the technology stuff in the book is the biggest update. And um and the
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  interviews, because I added about well, I don't know, maybe ten people,
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  I think, but I mean, I mean they're really good interviews because
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  these guys are working, professional filmmakers. I mean, I got Mick Garrison,
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  I sat down and had a great lunch and we just we we had
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  this like two hour interview and I think in the book it's like eight nine
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  pages and they're really good, insightful questions. I had an awesome, awesome
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  interview with big time composer John Oppman and editor. We and that's like a
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  ten page interview is really good. H John Debney, the composer John Debney
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  and Taboard talkas the guy who directed The Gate and Spiders three D. And
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  he did a really good one too. Because I know him. I edited
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  a movie for him years ago for Sci Fi Channel, and I remember when
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  I was editing it with the he he was checking his phone and he was
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  making Mega Snake at the time, and he was showing me some of his
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  stories. He was showing he was showing me some of his storyboards. I
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  was like, because we were just sitting in the editing and I was like,
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  Oh, that's pretty cool. You know this this pretty cool storyboards.
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  So then like literally like, well, I don't know if it's eight years
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  later when I decided to interview him, I was like, hey, man,
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  you still have those Mega Snakes storyboards because that was for you. Those
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  things are really well done and I should put those in the book. And
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  so so that the there's this one scene where the snake eats this guy and
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  it's the exact storyboards that they did for the show for the film. So
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  you get his interview and then you get like, you know, the six
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  pages of these really beautiful storyboards that they did for it, and then you
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  get the frame grabs from the movie how they actually shot it, and and
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  yeah, just stuff like that. I got a really good interview with some
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  other producers, Mark Rodeski and doing fleming from they did. Um exists,
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  you know the big big Foot movie that Eduardo Sanchez did. They were producers
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  on that, and um, and uh, there's uh Mike Mendez he's in
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  there now, director of Big Ass Spider and all right, yeah, yeah,
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  exactly, Yeah, he's a he's a great guy. And um,
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  oh boy, Kine Hotter, Michael Berryman, um, and I I think
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  I'm probably missing a few people, but but anyway, it's it's it's think
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  one of the things people, one of the things that people really enjoyed about
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  this book is is the interviews, especially from the first edition. UM.
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  I mean, all the information there is is great anyway, but but the
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  interviews really kind of drove it home for people because you're you're you're hearing really
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  good advice from people who are actually you know, working out and working professionals
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  in Hollywood. UM. So it was a favorite in the first edition so
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  I decided in the second one, I just want to add a lot more.
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  So that's what we did. You have the same interviews from the first
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  book as well, or is this like, okay, now I know you
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  interview James One in the first book, right, yeah, no, yeah,
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  he's still he's still in there. I think you want to keep him
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  in there. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually iterited him before
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  he you know, back when he was making like I think it was the
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  first Instidious or something like that. It was a while again when we when
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  we talked about it, right, Um, so he did a really good
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  interview, and uh, everybody's the same. It's it's I think I had
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  to remove one person because it was just what they were talking about was like
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  so outdated that I just had got remove. But other than that, it's
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  all the same people, plus you know, and or twelve people that i've
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  added. So is there anything that kind of sticks out at you, like
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  something that just kind of blew your mind with an interview, or somebody who
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  just kind of like, you know, said something to you that you didn't
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  really know beforehand, or I don't know, just kind of like you know,
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  sometimes you talk to one of these filmmakers, and it's just like,
• 9:50
  oh, wow, you know that's something. Yeah, surely we'll be right
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  back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. Sure
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  absolutely, I mean we I mean when you when like, um, I
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  talking when I talked to say, like somebody like Nick Garris or somebody,
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  and I'm asking any specific questions about how he how he directs actors and what
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  his process is like and all that's it's different for everyone, you know,
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  but but you know, his his answers were were were very insightful and uh
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  and you know, not all of them made him into the book, but
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  the ones that did, I thought were the we're the most insightful ones.
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  And it just it's just really um even even as the the interviewer, I
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  mean, I'm I'm like, oh wow, I didn't that's that's interesting.
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  That's how you do. That's how he works. And then I see how
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  how how somebody like um uh t board works or somebod or U or or
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  what what Kane Hotter was thinking when he when he decided to uh uh play
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  the character of Jason and what he did to make it a scary character.
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  And he would answer that question and things like that. Because the guy's usually
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  guys like Kane Hotter and Robert England and um, Michael Berryman and all these
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  guys that have played uh, you know, monsters. I always ask them
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  what their process was like as an actor to really develop that character. It's
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  because it because it's all great horror movie monsters are more than just you know,
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  guys sticking a mask on or a guy in a glove. There's a
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  lot more behind it. And to understand their process was was very insightful.
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  And that's what I that's what I think you get when you read these interviews
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  in this book, as you really see like, wow, Robert England really,
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  you know, he really had a method to how he portrayed Freddie,
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  you know. And same thing with Jason, the same thing with Pluto and
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  h Hills have Eyes you know, and all that stuff. So so it's
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  it's it's it's it's a good it's a it's a fun conversation. It's just
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  kind of like two guys out, you know, sitting at a bar having
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  a beer talking about they're making movies. And that's kind of the style of
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  the of the interview. But um, can you share the health of that,
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  like what what you know? Or just the whole concept of directing actors
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  in a you know, horror movie, whether it be the the good guys
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  or the monsters or whatever. Um no, the whole the whole idea of
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  of uh of directing the monsters for for sorry, what do you what do
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  you mean like the uh? Well, what is your approach? What?
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  And what? What did you learn from these people? What is your approach?
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  And what are some things that you've learned from talking to directors about directing
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  um, you know, monsters or directing actors in general. Oh, I
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  sewage, Um, well, I think I think it's it's it's it's It's
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  certainly going to be different for every director, but I think, um,
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  instinct has a lot to do with it. You know, when when when
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  when directing actors, you know, it's it's instinctual. It's uh um,
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  it's it's trying, you know, not not my styles. I'm very much
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  like an actors director, you know, I I don't. I mean,
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  I have the technical background, no doubt, you know, a post company,
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  and I've been an editor for edited more movies than I care to remember.
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  Um. But but when you combine the sort of technical background with the
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  actors. When you and you understand actors, I think it really can make
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  you a very strong director because a lot of people they come out of film
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  school or they come out of they get into their first film and they they
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  they're they're they're scared of actors and they're scared of um um, of the
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  of the process. It's kind of like, okay, well just they just
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  talk to an ad actor like they're like they're they're a puppet, like okay,
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  you will you say this line and you stand here and then you walk
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  over here and then the camera's gonna push into your face and then you're gonna
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  walk off screen. Okay, you got it. And then you actors like
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  oh okay, and then you know they can they can you know, do
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  it and do what you're talking about. But that you know that that's not
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  really directing. You know, that's just technically you know, you're choreographing the
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  scene. You're just blocking the scene at that point. So um, so
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  you know, my process has always been um to to really take care with
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  the actors and to really um you know, spend a lot of time with
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  them and and just be there for whatever they need. Because you know,
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  and and and and give them what they need from a director so they can
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  play the scene properly and uh and and have the technical understanding to communicate that
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  to the crew and to the um. So that's my problem, that's my
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  process. It's kind of you know a little of both. Um. Some
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  people are just completely technical. You know. It's just like they hire,
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  you know, I'll certainly it's always going to hire the best actors you can
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  afford, um, and you just kind of most of the time you hire
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  an actor of that caliber that you don't they don't need to do much at
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  all. It's just sit back and watch it happen because they're so um amazing
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  and they get it, you know. Um. And other times, you
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  know, they need a lot more and they do need that push and that
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  technical uh direction. You know, maybe maybe it's their first film. They
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  don't know how to hit a mark, you know. So so yeah,
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  So what do you do if you get in a situation where you've hired somebody
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  and everybody's there, you know, the whole crew, and everything's lit,
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  and the actor just isn't giving the right performance or it's just not working.
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  Is there any like trick you have or what what goes through your mind as
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  a director. Oh, well, well, I think if everything you look,
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  if you're on the set, everything's lit, and then the actor's coming
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  out, and it's a lot of times it's the first time. You a
• 15:22
  lot of times there's no especially in the budget movies, there's there wasn't really
• 15:24
  any rehearsal. It's it's, uh, it is the first time that you're
• 15:28
  doing the scene, and uh, what sounded good on what sounded good on
• 15:31
  paper, what sounded good in your head is certainly not what's happening. And
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  um, so you know, you get there and you see him do it,
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  and you're like, oh, oh Jesus, you know. I mean
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  I've been I've been a situation where I'm like, I was like, I
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  don't I don't even think we cast the right person, you know. So
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  so then you're said, then you're like, oh, man, okay,
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  but well, you know, what are you gonna do? You know,
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  you're already hired, they're there in front of you, You got true and
• 15:54
  everybody there, and you you're kind of like, yeah, he probably wasn't
• 15:56
  the right choice, but this is what I have to work with. So
• 15:58
  let's let's do the best we can with what we have, you know.
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  So, I mean I've been definitely been in that situation. Um, but
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  um, I think you know, if if you're in a situation where they're
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  where they're not, an actor is not giving you what they want, the
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  best thing to do is to um pull them aside, you know, don't
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  talk in front of the whole crew, but to pull them aside, talk,
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  you know, and and talk to them about what you're certainly do you
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  know, do, don't criticize, don't yell, don't be an ass.
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  But is to to set the person aside and just tell them what you're looking
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  for in the scene, and don't overdirect them. Just tell them what the
• 16:33
  intention is in the scene, what what how their characters relate to one another
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  maybe, uh, what what the scene is about, you know, um,
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  and let the actor be the one that interprets what you're saying and um
• 16:47
  and adjust their performance based on what based on that. The worst thing you
• 16:51
  can do is to go up to an actor and give them a line read
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  no, I want you to see the line like like this, you know,
• 16:57
  I mean the actor looking like little douche bag, you know what I
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  mean? Like, you know, they're not they're not puppets. You know,
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  they're not marionettes. You know, there's not people that you can just
• 17:07
  you know, a program, you know. Um, So a good direct
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  thing is is um just really understanding the process, their their process, respecting
• 17:18
  their process, and being able to communicate to them in the actor's language.
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  And if you can do that, you're you'll be you know, you'll at
• 17:26
  one one the actors will love you forever and too. You're gonna you're gonna
• 17:30
  have a You're gonna have a great performance. And the worst thing you could
• 17:33
  do in that situation is to is to try to go out there and act
• 17:37
  it for them. It's like, no, okay, let me show you
• 17:40
  how to do it. Then you go no, you come over here,
• 17:41
  then you say this line, you say it like this, and then you
• 17:44
  turn around. You know what I mean. It's like, that's not that's
• 17:48
  not how it goes. So yeah, I mean, I guess that would
• 17:51
  be my sort of advice for for for handling a situation like that. Okay,
• 17:56
  now, um you know this. The podcast is primarily geared towards people
• 18:02
  who are most likely outside of LA and want to make their own feature film
• 18:06
  and a lot of people, you know, And I also think that one
• 18:08
  of the best plate ways to get into the industry and have one feature,
• 18:14
  you know, that actually has some success financially is to try and make you
• 18:18
  know, horror film, just because there's a built in audience and there's you
• 18:21
  know, you don't necessarily need the biggest stars and everything. So what I
• 18:25
  was hoping we could do is just kind of walk through the process of where
• 18:29
  things begin, what you need to get started, you know, maybe more
• 18:32
  towards the producer's side of it. You know, when you're coming up with
• 18:34
  a project, I mean, how much are you do you go to like
• 18:41
  somebody in distribution and like pitch ideas or how does it all work so that
• 18:45
  you know that at the end of the whole thing, you're going to know
• 18:48
  kind of where that production is going to go. Well, that's a great
• 18:53
  question. I mean, that's that's yeah. I mean, every every every
• 18:57
  project that you do. I mean, like if you're if it's your first,
• 19:02
  one thing you have to understand if you're if you're getting into film and
• 19:04
  filmmaking and a period as you have to understand that it is a business.
• 19:08
  You know, it's a it's a you know, you're there, they're you're
• 19:12
  making a picture to to get take with the intention of of of it being
• 19:18
  seen. It's a business. It has to be something marketable and sellable and
• 19:22
  and and of high quality. Um. If you're now, if you're coming
• 19:26
  out, if you're doing something on your own and you want to do like
• 19:29
  a little movie that you're it's just for yourself, and maybe it's an art
• 19:32
  piece or something like that, that's fine, and you can do whatever you
• 19:34
  want. But uh, and in my in my book and the stuff that
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  I'll talk to you about today is from an entertainment perspective, from a business
• 19:44
  perspective of of of if we're making a movie, we're making it. Yeah,
• 19:47
  we're making a movie to tell a great story. We're making a movie
• 19:49
  to make a cool movie. Though all that is there, but we're also
• 19:52
  making a movie that we're we're going to be able to get distributed and seen
• 19:56
  because at the end of the day, we want people to see and like
• 20:00
  our work and and and and hopefully make sequels. You know, after sequel
• 20:06
  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the
• 20:12
  show. Um. So with that in mind, you know, you know,
• 20:19
  always think that you're you know, remember that it is a business.
• 20:22
  So start out with something that, um, you know, a horror is
• 20:27
  a great genre to start in, no doubt because it's a it's kind of
• 20:30
  an evergreen genre. It's it's something that is always has always been successful at
• 20:37
  the box office. I mean, um, you know, whether people you
• 20:41
  know turn their nose up to it or not, the fact is is that
• 20:45
  horror does extremely well at the box office. Um. And you know that
• 20:49
  can be seen with movies like The Conjuring or um, you know how many
• 20:53
  other horror movies that have come out that have just really done well. Um.
• 20:59
  So so you know, if you're if you're starting out, I think
• 21:02
  that coming up with a one an original great concept to to start with.
• 21:07
  And um, you don't you don't have to, Um, it's it's a
• 21:11
  it is a good idea to think about distribution and think about what you're where
• 21:18
  you're going to go with it, you know, early on, because you
• 21:22
  don't want to get too too far into to pre production to production and start
• 21:25
  not even knowing what genre you're and you're kind of like, well, I'm
• 21:26
  not sure it could be a horror comedy. It could be a comedy,
• 21:30
  it could be just horror. You really want to have a definitive plan.
• 21:33
  Okay, we're making a low budget slasher film. We're making a zombie comedy.
• 21:40
  Okay. And you and then you know what you're you're you're you're making.
• 21:42
  You do your research, you do your homework, you watch, you
• 21:45
  see all the films that have been made on that subject, who they've been
• 21:48
  distributed by, that sort of thing. Um, and you and you just
• 21:52
  you you you really come up with you really know what's out there and what
• 21:56
  the market's like. And uh um, and you make and you make the
• 22:00
  film, you know, I mean you, um, now what let me
• 22:03
  ask one a quick question, sure, just just um out of curiosity?
• 22:07
  Is the primary where's the primary place that you do research of that nature?
• 22:11
  Is it IMDb? Or is it just you know, do you have some
• 22:15
  other place that you see, you know, all the different horror films that
• 22:18
  are releasing, how much you know, who's the distribution company and all that.
• 22:22
  Is it just IMDb? Or is it you know somewhere else that you
• 22:23
  look for that Well, there's a lot of places that you can look,
• 22:26
  especially with the Internet. I mean, you certainly. The IMDb is a
• 22:30
  great resource. Um, you know, read you know, read the trades.
• 22:33
  Look, I mean I read the trades. I read you know,
• 22:36
  Hollywood Reporter and Variety. You know, you know who's making what they're making?
• 22:38
  What what, who's who's remaking what you're coming down the line if you've
• 22:42
  been from the studio level. Um, you there's a home media magazine that's
• 22:48
  a really great resource to see like kind of what's coming out on DVD,
• 22:51
  what's coming out on Blu ray? Um, you know that's a good one
• 22:52
  to read and see what's performing well, what's you know on home video?
• 22:56
  That sort of thing, um, you know, and and and the Internet
• 23:00
  and the im dB. I mean those are really you don't think you read
• 23:03
  to need to get You don't need to go crazy with it, but you
• 23:06
  know, if you just get an idea of of of of okay, who
• 23:08
  were there any zombie movies coming out anytime soon? Or what? You know,
• 23:11
  what what how are they doing? And is it uh you know,
• 23:15
  are they are they being distributed? And if they are, who buy?
• 23:18
  You know that sort of thing. Um, So yeah, you just do
• 23:22
  do do your research before you go out and uh and make one because um,
• 23:26
  if there's if there's something coming out or something some other guy, and
• 23:29
  it happens so often, so many people are making movies like all that guy
• 23:33
  made that one that's just like mine, damn it, you know, and
• 23:36
  you know it's it's so it happens, but it's good. It's it's good
• 23:41
  to have more than one idea too. So if you if you're like,
• 23:44
  well, maybe it's not a good time we could make the film, but
• 23:45
  maybe it's not a good time to make it right now, you know,
• 23:48
  maybe we'll make it like next year, and then the meantime, we'll make
• 23:51
  this other project that we had in mind, you know, and let let
• 23:53
  the let it, let the let it cool off, because you know,
• 23:56
  if that the movie comes out and everybody hates that that subgenre of horror,
• 24:02
  I mean, I mean, you know, then you know, probably not
• 24:04
  a good idea to go out and make another found footage movie. You know.
• 24:07
  Um So look I made a found footage film, and the whole and
• 24:11
  honestly the whole reason we made that. I didn't want to make a found
• 24:14
  footage film. I didn't I never intended on making a found footage film that
• 24:17
  you know, not not it was just it actually was a project that came
• 24:21
  to me and um, it was like, hey, we need to make
• 24:23
  a found footage film. And I'm like found footage film. I was like,
• 24:26
  you know, well it didn't Blair Witch to do that. Why why
• 24:29
  would we make a found foasgelm? Well, you know, it's kind of
• 24:32
  really popular, you know again, you know because you know, I got
• 24:33
  Paranormal, you know, Parental Activity and you know what did the Wreck movies
• 24:38
  were and all that stuff. And I was like, yeah, those are
• 24:41
  great. Those are like, you know, million dollars. I mean not
• 24:44
  Blair, but you know, Rack and stuff like that. I mean,
• 24:45
  you know, they had they had pretty big budgets for the for those found
• 24:49
  footage films and uh and uh it was like yeah, but the market was
• 24:56
  was doing it was hot for those that at that time, and um we
• 25:00
  had some inside you know, uh uh contacts for when when it came to
• 25:07
  distribution, and it was kind of like, hey, you know, we
• 25:11
  make this found footage film, it's uh, it's gonna get distributed and it's
• 25:15
  going to do It's it's a good time for it. So we end up
• 25:18
  making so and that's how kind of really that movie film Really Evil or Now
• 25:22
  aka Spectors was made and and uh so did they come with did they come
• 25:29
  to you? Like I was just talking to uh Scott Kirkpatrick about how they
• 25:33
  build a project and then they'll hire, you know, a screenwriter, they'll
• 25:37
  hire a director and everybody else. I mean, they've already kind of sold
• 25:41
  the project to the distribution company before they even you know, put together the
• 25:47
  screenplay. Is that pretty common? No, I I don't think it's I
• 25:51
  don't I mean, I don't think it's common lowbo on the low budget kind
• 25:55
  of level. I don't think it's that common to really sell the project,
• 26:00
  like sell the project as far as like distribution rights, I mean, and
• 26:06
  didn't go make the movie, you know. I mean I think it used
• 26:07
  to be like that, maybe back in the nineties and stuff, where they
• 26:10
  would sell foreign you know, you sell these pre sales, you know,
• 26:12
  based on artwork like Full Moon used to do back in the day. You
• 26:15
  know, it'd be like, hey, here's an artwork and a title.
• 26:18
  You guys interested, and then they'd be like, yeah, we love it.
• 26:19
  And then they would you know, advance advance most of the budget that
• 26:23
  they would need to go make the film. But these days, you know,
• 26:26
  especially on the lower budgeted level, it's it's uh. Um, you
• 26:32
  know, especially if you don't have it, if you don't have a star
• 26:33
  attached team, forget it. I mean, who's gonna who's gonna The distribution
• 26:37
  companies like who's in it? And they're like, well, nobody, my
• 26:40
  my brother or my sister. You know, they're not gonna. You're not
• 26:42
  gonna get money from indistributor. Now you come to them and say, you
• 26:47
  know, Nicholas Cage is attached to it. Yes, you know that,
• 26:48
  but you're talking about a whole different level of filmmaking at that point. Um,
• 26:52
  but I'm talking on an indie level with with with that's just safe for
• 26:57
  the sake of this conversation that there's no stuf Ours in it and you're just
• 27:00
  making it with um, you know some talent, talented actors that you find,
• 27:03
  but there's no there's no recognizable name in it. Um, your money
• 27:08
  is not most likely not kind of can be coming from your distribution from a
• 27:11
  distribution company unless you're self distributing. But in that case, it's coming from
• 27:15
  you anyway. UM, So you know, yeah, it's it's it's not
• 27:22
  called it's it's more what's more common is you um well, I mean look,
• 27:27
  I mean is the company, the distribution company is often sometimes on the
• 27:33
  lower budget stuff that the distribution company is often the financing company as well.
• 27:37
  So it's kind of their own project anyway, but they're the one making the
• 27:42
  discision on what kind of movie they're making. I mean, like Full Moon
• 27:45
  for instance, Fullman Pictures. I mean, they're they're kind of their own
• 27:48
  distribution company and they will now especially now because they have Fullmen streaming dot com,
• 27:53
  which is where they stream all their latest projects. But I mean his
• 27:56
  that whole business model is kind of like you know, um, they make
• 28:00
  their own product and they distribute their own product. You know, they make
• 28:03
  a new film and it comes out through their their website, their streaming website.
• 28:07
  And that's a that's a big thing now too with um with like the
• 28:11
  Vimeo in Demand and all that stuff is you can you can go out and
• 28:15
  make a film and put it up on a site like m Vimeo on demand
• 28:19
  and people and you can send people there and they can pay to stream your
• 28:22
  movie or they can pay to download your movie. Um and and it's a
• 28:26
  great it's a great distribution. UM method. But you know, you still
• 28:32
  you can you can you can lead the horse to water, but you can't
• 28:36
  necessarily make them drink it, you know, so you still have to have
• 28:40
  a higher quality product for people to uh to to want to go there and
• 28:44
  stream it and buy it. You know. So um, yeah, I'm
• 28:48
  answered a little bit of your question there. Yeah, No, it's perfect.
• 28:51
  You know, I just I get obsessed because I you know, I
• 28:53
  always try to put together this magic formula for you know. You know,
• 28:59
  I've talked to some people that work in distribution and they're just like, yeah,
• 29:02
  man, it's just so oversaturated now. And I know all these people
• 29:04
  who have lost tons of money because they went out and they made these you
• 29:07
  know, horror movies for like you know, half a million dollars, and
• 29:11
  then they got to the distribution and it was like they you know, they
• 29:17
  just lost everything because it wasn't like the right thing. So so one of
• 29:21
  the things that I try to help people with and also myself, you know,
• 29:26
  is like figuring out you know, maybe we can talk for a second
• 29:29
  about you know, budgeting and how much money you know, more or less
• 29:33
  kind of what things are you know, should be priced at because I know
• 29:37
  people who go out and make their first movie for you know, one hundred
• 29:40
  thousand, two hundred thousand dollars. And you know, I've heard other people
• 29:44
  like, you know, just do it as cheap as you possibly can,
• 29:45
  because at the end of the day, if you don't get distribution, then
• 29:48
  you haven't lost your shirt. You know. We'll be right back after a
• 29:53
  word from our sponsor and now back to the show. So what does your
• 30:02
  take on that in terms of just like budgeting save somebody in you know,
• 30:07
  Middle America whatever, you know, it is like wants to make a horror
• 30:10
  movie and wants to try and like maybe take it to AFLM or something or
• 30:14
  whatever. You know, what kind of advice, what, what kind of
• 30:17
  budget range? How? How should that all be broken down when they're first
• 30:19
  starting out and trying to produce a film. Yeah sure, um yeah,
• 30:23
  I totally as But just just to add to to your distribution. Um,
• 30:30
  okay. Comment you know about the people who've made who've lost money, I
• 30:33
  mean, believe me, I mean, I I know so many people that
• 30:37
  have have have lost a lot, you know, I mean including myself.
• 30:41
  You know, when I've I've pulled out the credit cards and you know,
• 30:44
  done the whole thing, and massive massive credit card debt for films, you
• 30:48
  know, for years trying to pay them off, and for ship that wasn't
• 30:52
  even my wasn't even fine. It was just stuff I I wanted to pay
• 30:56
  for out of my own pocket to make it better. And I didn't even
• 30:59
  own the rights to and I was paying for stuff. I mean, I
• 31:00
  mean it's just really stupid stuff like that early on. But but I mean
• 31:03
  that, but but but yeah, people have lost a lot when it becomes
• 31:07
  to distribution. It so, um, when when it comes to I mean
• 31:11
  thinking that, Okay, well we're gonna spend all this money, but we're
• 31:12
  then we're going to go out. Yeah, we're totally going to get it
• 31:15
  distributed. I mean, especially now, I mean it doesn't it's just not
• 31:18
  like that anymore. I mean it's it's it is absolutely oversaturated. It has
• 31:22
  been for a long time. UM. So you know, your your product
• 31:27
  needs to stand out if you're going to um even have a have a really
• 31:32
  good chance of of of a really good distribution um deal and um. And
• 31:37
  you know you're just just going out with some friends and shooting a slasher over
• 31:41
  the weekend, you know, and you you max your credit cards out for
• 31:44
  forty grand or whatever. You know, you really can't expect to be getting
• 31:47
  that back, you know. Um and and I always say, you know,
• 31:51
  look, don't don't invest. Don't invest more than you can reford to
• 31:53
  lose, because it's a very very big possibility that you'll lose all of it
• 31:59
  or you or you might get it distributed, but you won't necessarily get the
• 32:01
  money back. I mean, because you know, when when a company and
• 32:05
  distribution company takes over your your movie, they might give you a little bit
• 32:08
  of an advance. If you're lucky, they give you a little bit of
• 32:10
  advance, like say, okay, well we'll give you two grand of the
• 32:13
  advance and then you'll never see another dime ever again. And that's happened to
• 32:17
  me on films that I've done. And it's like we you know, the
• 32:21
  company goes out of business, and it's like, hey, what have you
• 32:22
  know what happened to those guys? Oh, they change the name of their
• 32:25
  company again. It's like, oh, well, we need to see statements,
• 32:29
  We need to see a producer's statement. No, oh, you know,
• 32:31
  we can't do that for you. So all the money that you've seen
• 32:35
  is is you know, the advance, you know, and and it sucks
• 32:38
  for the filmmaker because you know, at that point your movie has already been
• 32:43
  distributed. You know you can get yeah, sure you can get the rights
• 32:45
  back and try to re redistribute it and everything at that point, but you
• 32:51
  know, um, it's it's kind of used goods at that point, you
• 32:54
  know what I'm saying. So yeah, I mean yeah, so when you're
• 32:59
  when you're going out of the gate, I mean it's just just really be
• 33:02
  careful with the amount of money that you're you're committing to something and and uh
• 33:07
  um and and I think you'll you'll you'll live after your life when you if
• 33:12
  if something, if something doesn't work out the way it's supposed to when it
• 33:15
  comes to distribution. Um. But coming going back to your your your your
• 33:19
  budget um question. Um, you know you asked me how how to how
• 33:23
  to what some um you know what some budget tricks are for for uh um,
• 33:30
  for somebody to want coming out definitely. Um. Well, first of
• 33:36
  all is uh is if you're if you're is to spend trying to spend as
• 33:43
  less money as you possibly can. I mean you really have to kind of
• 33:45
  be don't be annoying. Don't be a mootr, you know, but but
• 33:50
  whatever, you have to sit down and on a piece of paper and write
• 33:53
  down all the things that that you, your friends, your family have available
• 33:59
  that you can use for free. Then then what you do. You sit
• 34:01
  down and say, Okay, well, I have a I have my parents
• 34:05
  house, I have a lake. There's some public lands that they're nobody cares
• 34:09
  if we shoot there. There's that old abandoned building that we could totally shoot
• 34:13
  at. You know, we have a boat, we have a car.
• 34:15
  You know, we have m my my mom's a teacher, and maybe I
• 34:20
  can shoot at the school or something like that. So you write all those
• 34:22
  things down a piece of paper of all the things that that that that you
• 34:25
  have for free. And it can be other things too that you can put
• 34:29
  in the scene like oh, uncle Bob has a Lamborghini or someone say,
• 34:35
  you know has a has a an AK forty seven or so, I don't
• 34:40
  know whatever it is. And you write all those things down and then and
• 34:44
  then what you do is you look at all that stuff. You put it
• 34:45
  up on a board and you can look at all that stuff and say,
• 34:47
  what kind of movie could I make with all of these things what kind of
• 34:51
  story? Or maybe I already have a story. And so if I already
• 34:53
  have a story, can I look at all those elements and say, how
• 34:57
  can I incorporate all that into my story? And my story take place at
• 35:00
  that house, at that at that um, on that boat, in that
• 35:05
  car. Can I can I can? I you know, can I rewrite
• 35:08
  it for that um? And I think if you can do that, and
• 35:12
  if you're willing to compromise whatever it is to to adjust your story to what
• 35:16
  you have available that you can get for free, I think you'll save a
• 35:20
  lot. You'll save a ton of money. I mean, I I was,
• 35:22
  I do that pretty much for every film. Um. But it's it's
• 35:25
  it's it's a process that's kind of like, you know, hey man,
• 35:30
  you know that's not let's not spend where we don't need to spend. And
• 35:32
  uh, one of the big, one big expense on low budget films is
• 35:37
  the location, particularly if you're in LA. You know, when you get
• 35:39
  out of LA, you can pretty much get a lot a lot more for
• 35:42
  free. I mean, people are so much more. So there's just so
• 35:46
  yeah, they're happy to work on a movie because it's exciting and you know,
• 35:51
  you're not taking advantage or anything like that. You know, these people
• 35:53
  are are I believe I shot in like Fresno, and it was like you
• 35:58
  couldn't you couldn't tell these You had to push people away like, hey,
• 36:00
  no, I think we got more than we need, you know, thank
• 36:02
  you. They were just coming I mean they were coming out in the in
• 36:06
  the hundreds to be extras and and and it was it was actually overwhelming,
• 36:12
  I think a lot of times. And um, but in La a whole
• 36:14
  different story. I mean, you're like, you know, you're shooting at
• 36:16
  a location. People are people are being dicks. You know, people are
• 36:20
  you know, turning their lawn mowers on. So you'll go over and tell
• 36:22
  them, you know, to turn it off, and then they'll they then
• 36:25
  then they'll they'll try to extort money out of you to do it, you
• 36:28
  know, like, oh, I'm not going to turn it off unless you
• 36:30
  pay me. And I was like, oh, okay, um, I've
• 36:32
  had people shoot baby guns at me before. We were at a location and
• 36:38
  the AD went over and asked politely if we were shooting a scene in an
• 36:43
  alley and we didn't have a you know, we didn't have a permit to
• 36:45
  be shooting there anyway. But the one of the ads asked them today,
• 36:47
  way, would you guys mind just just for just for like, you know,
• 36:50
  five minutes, we just need to grab this quick shot so on something.
• 36:52
  And they just like went totally like psycho and it's just like, you
• 36:55
  know, fuck you, but we're not fucking dude, bubble on the roof,
• 37:00
  and they started shooting beaty guns at the crew members. Nice. Um,
• 37:04
  you know, I mean tons of stuff like that, you know,
• 37:06
  and I you know, extorting money out of out of us. I've had
• 37:08
  I've had that happened before. I've had you know, fire departments showing up
• 37:12
  and trying is threatening to shut us down unless we paid them immediately, would
• 37:15
  pay them, like I forget, like some kind of some kind of fee
• 37:20
  to get the permit, but like right on the spot. So that's like,
• 37:22
  you know, that sort of thing. And you know, cops,
• 37:24
  neighbors showing up telling us that their generator was causing health problems and stuff and
• 37:29
  they wanted money, and it's just it's ridiculous. I guess that's what I'm
• 37:32
  getting at. But so anyway, I guess what I'm going with that is
• 37:36
  that if you're shooting in la it's probably a little harder to get certain locations
• 37:39
  like that for free. And uh, but when you're since most people that
• 37:44
  are probably listening to your podcasts are outside of la, UM, I think
• 37:46
  you really need to UM utilize what you have. I mean, you know,
• 37:51
  the movie making world isn't isn't just in Los Angeles, you know,
• 37:53
  So if you're living in UM, Kansas or Ohio or wherever it is,
• 38:00
  I mean, there's there's a lot of great UM locations with with with amazing
• 38:04
  production value that you can get. So you just just just utilize all that
• 38:07
  stuff. And UM, I think you'll save big in your in your budget.
• 38:13
  I think that's one of the biggest uh money savers on a low bution
• 38:17
  film is the availability of stuff you already have. Now, on the other
• 38:22
  side of that, what are the things that you absolutely can't be cheap about?
• 38:28
  Oh? Well, that that that goes without saying. Uh, there's
• 38:30
  one thing you don't want to be cheap about, is um the quality of
• 38:35
  your film? UM and and what and first and foremost the actors. Don't
• 38:38
  be cheap with your actors. Pay for good actors and you will, you
• 38:42
  will, you will not be sorry. UM, pay for good good a
• 38:45
  good camera. I mean, look, you know, I mean look within
• 38:47
  reason. I mean, not everybody can shoot on the AXI. Not everybody
• 38:51
  can shoot on the Red Weapon, you know, but if you have I
• 38:52
  mean, but now, I mean look, I mean, uhh the film
• 38:58
  that Sean Baker did, the if they shot it, you shot on an
• 39:00
  iPhone five s with an anamorphic attachment, you know, you using a nine
• 39:05
  dollars app or eight dollar app you know, and that got a theatrical release.
• 39:08
  You know what I mean. I mean, there are other ways to
• 39:10
  do things, but um, you know, and then you have the black
• 39:15
  Magic Pocket Cinema camera, a thousand dollar camera, you know you have,
• 39:19
  um, you know, the Alexa has a mini now you know, the
• 39:22
  Alexa Mini just came out. I was looking at that this year and then
• 39:24
  at the NAB show. And there are other other options. But don't be
• 39:30
  cheap with your camera, you know, don't don't don't be cheap with your
• 39:34
  camera. Don't be cheap with your key crew members. And you know what
• 39:37
  I mean by as your DP credibly important for obviously if you look at your
• 39:40
  movie, don't be cheap with lenses don't don't be cheap with the camera,
• 39:45
  don't be cheap with lenses, don't be cheap with the DP, don't be
• 39:46
  cheap with production design. Um, put the money on the screen, you
• 39:51
  know, at all times, I think if you just go into it and
• 39:52
  say, look, if I'm where I'm spending money in this budget, I
• 39:57
  need to make sure that this money is going up on the screen, We'll
• 40:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 40:07
  show. So you know, if I'm spending money for silly stuff, you
• 40:13
  know, see if you can cut that stuff back and redistribute that money into
• 40:17
  something I think that the audience is actually going to see on the screen.
• 40:21
  And that can be anything that I just listened, I just mentioned, you
• 40:23
  know, and more. You know, so uh yeah, I mean,
• 40:28
  don't you know, don't don't be cheap on that stuff. Yeah, it
• 40:31
  will show. It definitely will show. And post dude, don't be oh
• 40:34
  my god, don't don't be cheap on your post. And don't say I'm
• 40:37
  going to fix it in post either, because as an owner of a post
• 40:39
  company for ten years, it's it's kind of cost you. I have a
• 40:44
  lot more money to fix it in posts than it would have been to get
• 40:45
  it right the first time. And a lot of that has to do with
• 40:49
  sound usually, so is probably the biggest problems that I have coming into my
• 40:53
  post company. People that just hired the worst sound people known to man,
• 40:58
  and it's just like a disaster. Um, you know, they usually so,
• 41:04
  yeah, so don't don't right, it's not well that That's one of
• 41:08
  the big things that I think a lot of people don't understand. And I
• 41:13
  always try to like kit that over the head, you know, as much
• 41:15
  as possible. In terms of sound. People will be like, oh,
• 41:17
  yeah, we've got you know, this amazing four K camera and whatever,
• 41:21
  and it's like it's like, yeah, that doesn't really matter at all,
• 41:23
  you know, if you don't have good sound, if you don't have a
• 41:25
  good DP work in the camera, if you don't have all the things,
• 41:29
  you know what I mean. So I always try to make sure that people
• 41:31
  understand, you know, and I've heard from some people that like the sound
• 41:36
  guy and the the catering guy or sometimes the most important guy on the set,
• 41:40
  you know, yeah, don't don't cheap no, I mean, don't
• 41:44
  be cheap with your food too. I mean, you really don't. I
• 41:45
  mean you you really got to get you know, these people are coming there
• 41:49
  and working hard, and you got got to take care of your As a
• 41:51
  producer myself, you gotta take care of your people. Definitely taking you not
• 41:54
  the whole like okay, hamburgers for everybody, and there's coke and the thing
• 41:59
  that that's not a it's not a proper diet for you know, most people.
• 42:01
  You know what I mean. You have to uh, you know,
• 42:05
  spend the money into feeding eating people and giving people options and to what to
• 42:10
  eat on set. You know, don't don't take everybody out to McDonald's.
• 42:14
  That's that's that's not catering, you know what I mean. That's that's that's
• 42:16
  actually quite punishment. Punishment, you know. But but um, I was
• 42:22
  gonna say something else there. Uh, you're you're tracking on something there,
• 42:25
  and I headed in my head, but then I went off on some stupid
• 42:29
  McDonald's rents. Uh when you were talking about well sounding catering, you know,
• 42:35
  people sound sound catering. But the DP two, I mean, look,
• 42:37
  I mean here's the bit. Here's one of the biggest things I see
• 42:38
  I see happening to a lot of times is that these cameras have become so
• 42:44
  amazing and so cheap that oftentimes filmmakers will just say, man, you know
• 42:52
  what do I need a DP for? I just shooting myself. You know,
• 42:54
  just just point and shoot. You know, we'll just use a zoom
• 42:57
  lens. We'll point and shoot and it looks good to me. I turned
• 43:00
  the camera and the you know, the cameras can can shoot and with a
• 43:02
  candle on in the room and it actually still looks pretty decent. But that's
• 43:07
  not you know, that's not again, it's not the that's not cinematography.
• 43:10
  That's not you know, real filmmaking. You really want to get you know,
• 43:15
  get somebody in there that's dedicated to that department, right, you know,
• 43:20
  and and not the direct cause I'm vped and directly before and so it's
• 43:22
  all God, it's it's crazy. But if you but you know, you
• 43:25
  really want to hire a TP that comes in and can really give you the
• 43:29
  look that you want and makes the right lens choices and and uh and and
• 43:34
  give you something because it will absolutely show in your movie when you're done.
• 43:37
  You can tell, you'll look at a movie and be like, yeah,
• 43:39
  movie, it's not bad. But you know, God, they must have
• 43:42
  shot at all of the zoom lens, or they just shot it with some
• 43:44
  cheap lens, or you know that they just kept moving around and then you
• 43:46
  see another film that could be then you'll shot on the same camera. But
• 43:50
  you're like, oh my god, this looks fantastic what they do. Oh
• 43:52
  my god, they were using like they were They had this amazing set of
• 43:57
  prime lenses that they were using, and and and a really good deep that
• 44:00
  actually knows how to light. You know. That's one of the things I
• 44:01
  learned from Mac Albergum Mac was a guy that Mac just so those of you
• 44:07
  don't know, Mac Alberg was a He was a DP that I worked with
• 44:10
  on two films, and he shot re Animator and um House and Beverly Hills
• 44:15
  Cop three and all these big Hollywood movies, big big horror movies. M
• 44:21
  He's also worked on stearcording a lot. And anyway, Mac and I were
• 44:24
  good friends, and he shot two movies, but I remember for me and
• 44:28
  then he shot two movies, and we used to talk all the time about
• 44:30
  cinematography. And he goes all the way but he was a really older guy.
• 44:36
  He goes all the way back to um Ingmar Bergman. He shot um
• 44:39
  he shot one of the I think one shot in the Seventh Seal Inglar Berman's
• 44:44
  movie, and he was so proud about that, and of course that's movie
• 44:47
  to even being involved in that. Uh. Anyway, one of the things
• 44:52
  he would always I learned from him was he always would light. He won
• 44:59
  his first film on digital, I think was with me and I made me
• 45:01
  mistaken. I think it was with me, and he would like the digital
• 45:07
  like it was film and it would look and it would look so good and
• 45:10
  he you know, and it wasn't one of those things where he just would
• 45:13
  flip on the camera and be like, well, you're singing an image,
• 45:15
  so yeah, that's great, that'll work. So it was really cool to
• 45:19
  watch him and watch him work and how he just he still lit the digital
• 45:22
  like it was film and gave it the right exposure and everything, and it
• 45:25
  just the stuff really looked fantastic. But I mean, you know, to
• 45:29
  get a guy like that special But now, I mean, you know,
• 45:31
  you just got to really make sure that you you get somebody on board who's
• 45:36
  gonna he's gonna do a really good cinematography job for you. Because I'm telling
• 45:39
  you, man, it shows so much, you know, when when you
• 45:43
  when you don't have that, you know, right, and so yeah,
• 45:46
  spend the money on that. Now, who are the key when you start
• 45:51
  working, you know, we're still a little bit in pre production. Who
• 45:54
  are the people that you really are kind of like your you know, who
• 45:59
  do you go too for like putting together the budget and who your key kind
• 46:04
  of players and who do you need even you know, talking about you know,
• 46:07
  lower budget features, but who would be the people that you needed to
• 46:12
  kind of like to make up your team aside from the DP, like people
• 46:15
  like the assistant director, production manager or you know who. Sure anyway,
• 46:20
  yeah suh, no, I got you and I totally got it. Um
• 46:23
  okay, well one of them. And that's one of the things. This
• 46:27
  is another thing that you don't want to be cheap on it. And and
• 46:29
  it is the the the the management of your crew or the management of you,
• 46:32
  I'm sorry, the management of your film, you know, app upper
• 46:36
  management of your film. You you do not want to take on all the
• 46:38
  responsibilities yourself, Believe me, don't do that. Um, you know,
• 46:43
  delegate, delegate as much as you possibly can afford. Particularly um when it
• 46:49
  comes to having having an experienced line producer, particularly when it comes to having
• 46:53
  an experienced the UPM like you a production manager, particularly when it comes to
• 46:58
  uh, you know, having um um, i'd say those two. If
• 47:04
  you have those two, you're you're already uh, you're already doing a pretty
• 47:07
  good at that point. Um. But you know, just I think it's
• 47:12
  very important for you to just to install an upper management team. Um.
• 47:16
  Start. You know, it's starting with your line producers. Your line producer
• 47:20
  is really going to be your you're, you're, you're, you're your buddy.
• 47:24
  Can you can you describe some people that don't completely understand what what exactly
• 47:29
  the line producer's role is on the film? Sure? Sure, Well,
• 47:32
  line producers just one oh one, Yeah, I mean they're they're not They're
• 47:37
  not really in a creative role on the film. They're more in the in
• 47:40
  the role of you know, a line producer is more like the guy who
• 47:45
  the producer that really does all the work, the great work, right,
• 47:51
  He's the guy who makes sure everybody's showing up, make sure you know things
• 47:54
  are um, you know, people are getting hired, people, you know,
• 47:58
  the things are on, people are moving on schedule. Sometimes they deal
• 48:00
  with the they deal with the studio. If there's a studio, Um,
• 48:05
  they they they're really the the the that like the central uh producing element in
• 48:14
  the film. Um so what I'm producing a film. I I won't produce
• 48:16
  a film without a freaking line producer, you know and producing. For me,
• 48:21
  it's more, it's more I'm more of I want to be more of
• 48:22
  a I'm more of a creative producer. So it's more like, you know,
• 48:25
  I can get I get the I can get the I get the idea,
• 48:30
  the script, I work with the writers. I'm creatively developed the project.
• 48:35
  I usually get the money or the funding for it. And then once
• 48:37
  that happens, first one of the first things I do is bring on a
• 48:39
  one. Once we were ready to go into production, one of the first
• 48:42
  things I do will bring on a line producer, and the line producer will
• 48:45
  take that. They'll budget it, they'll break down this, they'll break down
• 48:47
  the script. Oftentimes, they'll bill, they'll um, they'll handle, they'll
• 48:52
  they'll do a schedule oftentimes. Um although you sometimes your ad is more involved
• 48:57
  in that later on, but often the line producer does the initial budget,
• 49:00
  an initial schedule. They'll deal with SAG, they'll deal with all those other
• 49:07
  elements. So there, there, there. It's important to get an experienced
• 49:09
  line producer on board because it'll really help things, especially on low budget stuff.
• 49:15
  And then you have you know, other upper management, like your AD.
• 49:17
  You know who's I mean, I've made plenty of movies without an AD
• 49:21
  because they'll use the line producers like, oh we can afford an a D,
• 49:23
  so I'll be your a D. And I'm like, oh right.
• 49:28
  But to have a dedicated a D is a real godsend because they really do
• 49:31
  you know, they help, They help you run, They help you run
• 49:35
  the set, and they let allow for you to concentrate on being a director
• 49:38
  and just just directing and not having to worry about where am I freaking actors?
• 49:43
  Why do I have to go find these guys? You know, that's
• 49:45
  the job of your AD, and they do to help you stay on schedule
• 49:47
  and tell people to be quiet when they need to be quiet and man that
• 49:51
  sort of thing. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and
• 49:59
  now back to the show. Um. So you know, those those those
• 50:05
  upper upper management team is super important to install um and quality and get qualified
• 50:10
  people if you if you can for it, if the budget allows people who
• 50:13
  have experience in that level of moviemaking. Um, it's always a good thing
• 50:16
  too because they get low budget. If they get low budget, they understand
• 50:20
  like, hey, we you know, we can't be spending you know,
• 50:22
  uh, two hundred dollars on a refrigerator. I mean I did a friend
• 50:25
  of mine, a well known director friend of mine, gave me a budget
• 50:30
  one time and he's like, he's like, you know, you just made
• 50:34
  this movie forum thirty five thousand dollars, and like, you know, this
• 50:37
  movie though I'm doing, it's like, it's not that much more complicated than
• 50:39
  one they did that. They just gave me a three hundred and fifty thousand
• 50:43
  dollars budget, and he's like, can you you think you could look at
• 50:45
  this for me and see if you could, you know, shave off one
• 50:46
  hundred grand or something like that. So I did it for you. And
• 50:50
  I looked at it and I was like I was my eyes were bleeding.
• 50:52
  I couldn't believe the stuff that they were paying for in there. And I
• 50:55
  just went through it with think. I'm like no, no, no,
• 50:58
  no. He was just looking at me like huh, and I was like
• 51:00
  no, no, no, no. I was like, dude, you
• 51:01
  have somebody actually budgeted for you to have a two to go out and buy
• 51:06
  a two hundred dollars refrigerator for your production office. What is that? What
• 51:12
  movies have you been this guy been working on? This is a low budget.
• 51:15
  We have two hundred dollars for refrigerator. I mean just things like that.
• 51:20
  It was it was absolutely ridiculous. So I shaved off like one hundred
• 51:23
  and fifty grand for him. He was really happy. Um but um yeah,
• 51:27
  I mean things like that, you just it's like, oh jeez.
• 51:30
  Um so so yeah, So I hope I answered your question there. But
• 51:34
  yeah, So when you're when you start directing the how how important is it
• 51:37
  that you can just like kind of be Do you have kind of that laser
• 51:40
  focus on Okay, we have to get this scene. Then we're moving to
• 51:45
  that scene, and you know, are you just like visualizing where the camera's
• 51:47
  going to go or you have you worked it out most of it before you
• 51:52
  get on the set, or do you kind of do it while you're there?
• 51:54
  Um? Well, I think on this when you on the I've done
• 52:00
  it both ways. Um. But honestly, on the films that I've done,
• 52:06
  they've they've been done in such a hurry that you know, I mean,
• 52:10
  I got, you know, look really really evil. I shot in
• 52:13
  six days, okay, I mean and you know we were doing seven seventeen
• 52:16
  fifteen pages a day in Atlanta Vista Hospital, East LA, running around this
• 52:21
  freaking giant hospital, the whole thing. But at sixteen a sixth day movie.
• 52:24
  Um. And you know, I think when you're doing something that quickly,
• 52:30
  a lot of people, a lot of people, and they should they
• 52:31
  they people should be prepared. They want to come in prepared, like,
• 52:35
  hey, you know, I know every single shot that I'm doing, I'm
• 52:37
  gonna come in. Everybody's gonna be like, Wow, you're the most amazing
• 52:40
  prepared director I've ever met. Blah blah bo. And then they get there
• 52:44
  and they're like and your lifeage comes up to you and say, oh yeah,
• 52:46
  the location or says we can't shoot on that floor today. There's another
• 52:51
  crew coming in and the deal we may but blah blah blah. So you
• 52:52
  can't shoot there, and you have to shoot on another floor and then and
• 52:55
  then and then immediately your your shot list is gone. It's you just got
• 53:00
  crumbled up. The third way, you're like, well, it ain't gonna
• 53:01
  work here. So now we gotta, um, we gotta shoot on a
• 53:05
  completely different floor, completely different look, and we have to roll with the
• 53:07
  punch. So now all that prep you did doesn't matter. So I mean
• 53:10
  like really evil, like I you know, I mean obviously a lot of
• 53:14
  the films, but particularly really Evil. I remember because I just was like,
• 53:16
  you just show up and I'm like, okay, you know what are
• 53:19
  we doing. It's like, okay, here's this saw. And I would
• 53:21
  I literally would look at the schedule and just say, okay, we're shooting
• 53:23
  that. We're shooting, were shooting that? Okay, great, and then
• 53:25
  I would go I go in there, I grabbed the actors, I'd read
• 53:29
  over the scene and um, and I would just start cutting the scene together
• 53:32
  in my head like okay, you know, but I mean, I have
• 53:34
  the experience from as an editor, so go in and I already know what
• 53:37
  it's gonna look like. So I'm like, okay, well you come around
• 53:39
  the corner and the cameras here, and then the shoot it this way and
• 53:42
  then boom, we're done. So for me, it's very fast and to
• 53:45
  the point, and we don't waste footage. We don't I don't overcover,
• 53:49
  I don't shoot too many takes. I know when I got something, when
• 53:52
  I don't cut something. But that comes from a lot of experience with editing.
• 53:55
  Um, so you know, I mean, I maybe I can do
• 53:59
  that kind of stuff. I'm sure other people can do that kind of stuff.
• 54:00
  But if you're maybe, if it's your first project, um, it's
• 54:04
  always a good idea to be prepared, you know. I mean because even
• 54:07
  if you do the prep work and you come in with the plan, most
• 54:10
  of the time you can execute it. But not all the time. You
• 54:14
  can. A lot of times you can't shoot that direction or the sun's in
• 54:16
  the wrong, we can't shoot that direction how you plant it, you know,
• 54:20
  so you have to shoot the other way. Well that kind of changes
• 54:22
  your your blocking plan or your your shot plan, you know, and you
• 54:25
  just have to be able to roll with it, you know. And if
• 54:29
  you can do that, then I think you know you're you're on your way
• 54:31
  to uh you're directing and directing a lot, you know, because it certainly
• 54:37
  doesn't always turn out the way you had it on paper. Right, So,
• 54:42
  so what is the key talking specifically now since this is going to be
• 54:45
  for our October scarethon. I don't know what it's going to be called,
• 54:52
  but what what is the key to You know, horror is very different than
• 54:57
  every other genre, you know, because you have to really affect the audience,
• 55:01
  like you have to scare the pants off of them, you know,
• 55:04
  and if you're a successful horror movie, you have you know, maybe not
• 55:08
  jump scares, but you have to scare people. What what do you think
• 55:10
  are kind of the key ingredients for creating a successful horror film and making people
• 55:15
  feel like they got what they wanted to out of it, you know,
• 55:19
  scaring them or whatever. Well yeah, yeah, great, no, great
• 55:23
  question. I think that Um, I think it comes down to having,
• 55:29
  you know, having one, having characters that you really care about, that
• 55:32
  that are are compelling, you know, the people that you want to watch,
• 55:37
  people that you're gonna you're gonna actually give a shit if they're coming up
• 55:40
  against a monster or a threat of some kind. Um, you know,
• 55:45
  you you say you so that definitely number one is your story and your characters.
• 55:51
  But um, as far as like you know, the monsters and what
• 55:54
  things like that, I mean yeah, I mean, I mean, I
• 55:59
  mean, look, I mean monsters, like like running monsters, But that
• 56:01
  somebody like um like a leather Face or or or a Jason and Freddie.
• 56:07
  I mean, those guys have been around for a long time for a reason.
• 56:10
  You know, they were compelling monster, compelling horror movie villains. I
• 56:17
  mean that that's why they've lasted this long. And I think if you can
• 56:22
  come up with a monster or a disease or whatever it may be, you
• 56:28
  know that that that is compelling enough to to to to do a lot of
• 56:31
  sequels. Hopefully, uh that they should go with it, you know,
• 56:37
  but you know, you know, really I know it's hard now though too.
• 56:40
  It is hard, you know, because there's you know, things how
• 56:44
  everything seems like everything's been done. But that doesn't that doesn't mean that doesn't
• 56:47
  mean that you know, you can't do another It certainly doesn't mean you can't
• 56:51
  go out and make your own slasher just because there's been a billion slashers made.
• 56:54
  You just need to go out and make a slasher that is your own
• 56:58
  point of view and is that your own interpretation of what you think a slasher
• 57:04
  movie should be like, and hopefully that translates into your vision and to your
• 57:09
  um, your esthetic and your brand and your your unique style of moviemaking.
• 57:15
  So I think if you look at it from that point of view, you
• 57:19
  can't really you know, you can, you can. You might be able
• 57:21
  to get inspired and say, hey, you know, well, you know
• 57:22
  I always wanted to make a slasher on a submarine or I own just like
• 57:25
  a slasher in a treehouse or whatever the hell it may be, you know,
• 57:29
  And and I have a unique way that I think is going to work
• 57:31
  for doing it, and and and that's what you should do, you know.
• 57:36
  And uh so there really, I mean, there really isn't. I
• 57:37
  mean, you can you can study. You can study horror movies all you
• 57:40
  want, and you should, you absolutely should, particularly in the classics.
• 57:44
  Particularly. Um, there's a lot so many great movies that have been made
• 57:47
  in the eighties and the eighties and the seventies certainly certainly today too, but
• 57:51
  I think more so in the in the in the earlier years, you know.
• 57:54
  But um, you have any specific films that like stick out that kind
• 58:00
  of really affected you. Oh yeah, I mean, look when I when
• 58:01
  I made Stuart Gordon was a big influence for me because he was my kind
• 58:06
  of my directing mentor really we made a movie together many years ago and uh,
• 58:12
  thirty five thousand dollars movie called Deathbed Stuart Gordon Presents Deathbed. We were
• 58:15
  going to do a whole series of these things, Stuart Gordon presents this and
• 58:19
  that and then the whole deal. Um. But the first one we made
• 58:22
  together, and he was the executive producer and his name was above the title
• 58:25
  and the whole deal. And I just watched a bunch of the outtakes from
• 58:30
  that because it's on YouTube, behind the scenes footage of you guys shooting that.
• 58:35
  That's really kind of cool. Yeah, that was a fun one.
• 58:37
  It was. It was. It was fun. But I mean I learned
• 58:39
  so much on that film. I mean it was it was so low.
• 58:42
  I mean we again, it was we shot it for twenty five grand and
• 58:45
  it was posted for ten and we shot it. This is pre twenty four
• 58:47
  piece, so like this is before like the cameras were like they are now.
• 58:52
  This is this is when we would shoot on digital video. We shoot
• 58:53
  on DV cam and we would film look it through through after effects plug in
• 58:59
  or or the company in Burbank called film Look. They would actually take take
• 59:01
  it and remove the tell us any and try to make it look more like
• 59:05
  it was shot on film, and that's why we were doing a lot of
• 59:07
  stuff in the in the early two thousand before the twenty four cameras came out.
• 59:12
  So anyway, we made this film and um, and I remember before
• 59:15
  we made the film, Stewart I went up Stewart went over to Stewart's house
• 59:19
  with mac Alberg or DP and UM, and we we He's like, hey,
• 59:22
  let's watch some let's watch some horror movies. So him and so we
• 59:25
  watched, um one of my favorite her classic horror films, which is called
• 59:30
  The Innocence, and uh, that's a really great one for you to watch.
• 59:35
  Um. And then we and I kept seeing that and what is what
• 59:37
  is that? Who's when that? Um? That is? Um? What's
• 59:40
  the lady's name? Um? That is Uh, it's a black and white
• 59:45
  film. It's it's god, my brain my brain just completely went brain.
• 59:49
  Deb deb Yeah, I think it's Deb Bro. Oh yeah yeah, because
• 59:52
  she was the one who was in Poltergeist, right, oh yeah yeah,
• 59:54
  but just yeah, okay, I remember, Yeah, that was really good.
• 59:58
  It's amazing. It's a fantastic film. We'll be right back after a
• 1:00:01
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. You know,
• 1:00:09
  it's like a ghost movie. Yeah that that was amazing. I remember I
• 1:00:14
  saw that last year. Yeah, it's a classic man, just just I
• 1:00:15
  mean that's that you can't go Innocence. Yeah, okay. And the other
• 1:00:20
  film that that I think is very well certainly was very powerful and very that
• 1:00:23
  pretty much Stuart Gordon says it was his horror film school is Rosemary's Baby and
• 1:00:30
  Rosemary's Baby. The original Rosemary's Baby. I don't know if they made a
• 1:00:32
  TV series or something, who knows, but they try to pretend there's not
• 1:00:36
  another one Roans. Rosemary's Baby was absolutely I know for Stuart certainly was it
• 1:00:43
  was his film school or and I watched it with him when we watched it
• 1:00:46
  together, and he was pointing out things and I was like that, you
• 1:00:50
  know, I never really thought about it like that. Yeah, I see
• 1:00:52
  what you're saying. Um, And so we watched it together and really took
• 1:00:55
  it apart, and it was like it was so cool because you know,
• 1:00:59
  here I sitting with freaking you know, Stuart Gordon, you know, a
• 1:01:02
  part Rosemary's Baby and it was like amazing. So I think, you know,
• 1:01:07
  the Rosemary's Baby and the innocence, I mean there's there's a lot of
• 1:01:10
  them, but I think those two in particular really certainly stood out classics because
• 1:01:17
  we we were specifically looking at a sort of more round that style of filmmaking,
• 1:01:22
  sort of like ghost stories. And I think you can learn so much
• 1:01:25
  about directing and screenwriting from Rosemary's Baby just by itself, you know, because
• 1:01:30
  you watch it, you can watch it five or six times. In the
• 1:01:32
  second time, what you've seen the whole thing, and you watch it again
• 1:01:36
  and you see what's kind of going on, Like so much of that movie
• 1:01:39
  takes place away from the camera, you know what I mean. So it's
• 1:01:43
  like you're you're learning all these things from uh, you know, the neighbors
• 1:01:47
  and everything, and you know all these things that are going on, and
• 1:01:51
  you're kind of seeing everything through the point of view of a woman who you
• 1:01:54
  know, seems like she's kind of losing her mind, but it's actually,
• 1:01:58
  you know, it's actually something's actually happening to her. But it's just brilliant
• 1:02:01
  that And you know, I always like that in Chinatown. You know,
• 1:02:05
  Lanscas two movies back to back that were just incredible. Those are like filmmaking
• 1:02:09
  schools on there. There absolutely absolutely man Polansky. I mean he's a he's
• 1:02:15
  a he's a master filmmaker. There's no, no, no question about that.
• 1:02:17
  I mean, look in The Shining too, and Shining is a great
• 1:02:20
  example. There's a really good book actually I've been reading um. It's called
• 1:02:22
  UM. It's called The Shining Studies in the Horror Film by Daniel Olson,
• 1:02:29
  edited by Daniel Olson, and it's just this big old freaking book about the
• 1:02:32
  making of the Shining and it's just a really really really interesting if you're interested
• 1:02:37
  in that. So there's also one on The Exorcist too, Studies in the
• 1:02:39
  Horror Film Series that's really good. I mean, of course the Exorcist,
• 1:02:43
  there's no question that that's, you know, one of probably one of the
• 1:02:45
  best poor films ever made. But I mean The Shining And one of one
• 1:02:51
  film that I was actually I was just talking about it last night was as
• 1:02:53
  a film called The Entity with Barbara Hershey is one of the films that scared
• 1:02:58
  to freaking shit out of me. It was really, really, really scary.
• 1:03:00
  UM. And The Changeling is an amazed not that Angeline and Jolie thing,
• 1:03:06
  the the the Changeling, the old the classic one with George uh George
• 1:03:13
  God um, the guy who played Pattent for God's sake, Georgeie Scott anyway,
• 1:03:22
  anyway, So yeah, but he's in this film called The Changeling.
• 1:03:24
  Oh man, it's such a great such a great ghost story, just classy
• 1:03:29
  and just offic just awesome film, really amazing film. Um. But I
• 1:03:34
  mean, you know, I mean I could go on, we could go
• 1:03:35
  on all day about that. That's a whole other podcast, I think.
• 1:03:37
  But um, the this, but this, um, this is so important
• 1:03:42
  to to do, is to really look at these films and really study these
• 1:03:45
  classics, and certainly Hitchcock. If you Hitchcock is probably one of the best
• 1:03:50
  film schools that you could ever have. Is to just watch Hitchcock and study
• 1:03:53
  Hitchcock. I mean, he's just it's just it goes without goes without saying
• 1:03:58
  that. Uh that's that's a good one too. Um So yeah, so
• 1:04:04
  love me. Let's let's move slowly just so. I mean, I know
• 1:04:06
  you don't have a whole lot of time. Just I'm here for you,
• 1:04:11
  so just let me just keep me Okay, we'll be here for another four
• 1:04:14
  hours. I have no big deal, just kidding. Uh So moving into
• 1:04:19
  um, well, let me ask you something about, um, just the
• 1:04:25
  actual creating of creatures. Do you go to just like a creature workshop?
• 1:04:31
  How is the creatures designed? How does that whole process work? And who
• 1:04:35
  owns at the end of the day. Um, say, for example,
• 1:04:39
  you create you know, you've got a screenplay, You've right, you've got
• 1:04:42
  this character, you have you know, artists working on it or whatever.
• 1:04:45
  Um, do you own that creature after they create it? Does the company
• 1:04:49
  that make it own those rights? You know? How does that all work?
• 1:04:53
  Well? Yeah, it's gonna be whoever owns the whoever owns the the
• 1:04:58
  film. I mean, because you're you're creating a you're creating a likeness of
• 1:05:00
  a character. So I mean you know you're creating a say it's a a
• 1:05:06
  I don't know, some kind of weird pumpkin creature or a pumpkin head,
• 1:05:11
  but I mean some kind of Yeah, whoever designs that, I mean if
• 1:05:13
  you if it's in the film, I mean you whoever owns the rights of
• 1:05:15
  the film, is going to own that that likeness of that creature. I
• 1:05:19
  mean, of course, it depends on how the legal paperwork was all worked
• 1:05:24
  out too. I mean, maybe they could have licensed the image that they
• 1:05:28
  didn't necessarily own it, you know what I mean. But more than the
• 1:05:32
  chances are that whoever whoever made the film, the crusers have made the film
• 1:05:35
  are the ones to actually own it and can license it out and make T
• 1:05:40
  shirts and you know, masks and all that thing and that sort of thing
• 1:05:45
  um because I've actually had masks made from my film dark Walker. They made
• 1:05:48
  two masks out of it too, Halloween masks, dark Walker Wool one and
• 1:05:51
  dark Walker two. Of course there was never a dark Walker two, but
• 1:05:54
  they made a mask called dark Walker two and you can look it up.
• 1:05:58
  Actually, if you look it up on its it's it's a fantastic mask.
• 1:06:01
  I saw it research. It looks way better than the one in the movie,
• 1:06:06
  and it's like it's like, man, that should have been the creature
• 1:06:10
  in the film. What happened? So but I mean, if you can
• 1:06:14
  just buy one and make part two real quick. You know what's funny is
• 1:06:17
  uh I was in I traveled to I think it was in Indonesia, and
• 1:06:20
  I had a I found I found. You know, I'm always interested.
• 1:06:25
  I'm very interested in for in horror. I love for inn horror films,
• 1:06:27
  particularly Asian horror. But I found this film and I and I picked it
• 1:06:30
  up off the shelf and it was some Indonesian horror movie and I was looking
• 1:06:33
  at I was like, oh, it's some kind of weird ghost movie thing.
• 1:06:35
  If I flipped over to the back and I was like, what the
• 1:06:39
  fuck? They had bought the mask for my movie Dark Walker and used it
• 1:06:45
  in the movie, as it was, that was the creature in their movie.
• 1:06:50
  And then on the back cover there's a picture of the mask, the
• 1:06:55
  guy wearing the mask, and then you know, they just added a little
• 1:06:57
  blood on it or something to make it look a little different and have a
• 1:06:59
  different suit. And then and then I was like, I was like,
• 1:07:00
  what the hell? I mean, Yeah, so anyway I thought, I
• 1:07:03
  mean, I didn't care. I thought it was funny, you know,
• 1:07:04
  to me, I don't know, whatever, you know, go do it.
• 1:07:06
  They want to do that. It's flattering, you know. But I
• 1:07:10
  just thought it was hilarious. I was looking at this movie, like,
• 1:07:12
  what the so, yeah, I mean, it happens, but in that
• 1:07:15
  case, it's certainly in that particular case, certainly we own the likeness of
• 1:07:19
  the masks of the pressure needed it. So um, but I think as
• 1:07:24
  far as as far as how it gets created. UM. That is usually
• 1:07:30
  a conversation with the director. The writer can write it one way, but
• 1:07:32
  the director might have a different vision of how it looks. So usually the
• 1:07:35
  director talks with the either the makeup artist UM and and says, hey,
• 1:07:41
  I wanted to look a little a little like, uh, this and this
• 1:07:44
  and this, and then the makeup artists will usually do a Sometimes they'll do
• 1:07:46
  a drawing. They could do a drawing for you. Sometimes you could have
• 1:07:49
  an artist do a drawing and then you just give it to the makeup artists
• 1:07:51
  say I want you to I want you to do a model of this.
• 1:07:55
  I've done I've done it both ways. UM. Sometimes the the makeup or
• 1:08:00
  the specialects artists would would um would do a mock up for you, you
• 1:08:03
  know and just say man and they do they do a you know, a
• 1:08:08
  sculpture of it, and then you can do you know, do some adjustments
• 1:08:11
  there, and then once you're satisfied with it, then they they mold it
• 1:08:14
  and they they make the prosthetics that they need to make and you're done,
• 1:08:18
  you know, and uh and uh you have a you have your your new
• 1:08:21
  character. So that's kind of really the process with it. It's it's kind
• 1:08:25
  of a collect so definitely a collaborative process. I mean, um, if
• 1:08:28
  you have something super specific in mind, it's a good idea to hire a
• 1:08:32
  h an artist to draw it for you to do, even if it's just
• 1:08:36
  a simple pencil drawing to somebody to draw what you have in mind, and
• 1:08:42
  the hand that to somebody who can execute it as a as a prosthetic,
• 1:08:45
  uh or or whatever you know, particular effect you're doing, right, So
• 1:08:50
  that's that's kind of how that that whole thing works. Yeah, Now would
• 1:08:54
  you say that's a lot more effective the I mean not effective, but a
• 1:08:57
  lot more um economic if you're trying to do a creature. I mean,
• 1:09:02
  is there any way you can do CGI or something like that in these low
• 1:09:06
  budget movies? Oh yeah, no, totally. I've done it several times
• 1:09:10
  to fix bad makeup what I've had. I've did it on Ghost Month,
• 1:09:15
  I did it on Real Evil. What what I call I call it digital
• 1:09:18
  makeup, and what it is is, um, you know, you go,
• 1:09:21
  you know, I had a situation where, you know, we did
• 1:09:26
  some makeup tests and I thought it was going to look better than it did,
• 1:09:28
  and then we got to set and the guy came out, and I
• 1:09:31
  was like, what the fuck did they? I mean, it just looked
• 1:09:34
  it looks so bad. I mean, it happens a lot on little budget
• 1:09:38
  movies. Happens to me, seems seems like a lot in my earlier movies.
• 1:09:41
  It was like a lot of times it would be the first time that
• 1:09:44
  I had actually even seen the makeup. Would be when I'm on set.
• 1:09:47
  We would hire somebody and we would we just didn't have the bunny and the
• 1:09:50
  budget and the time, and it would just be they would come out and
• 1:09:54
  say here's the vampire, and I was like, Okay, what Halloween store
• 1:09:58
  did we go to? Right, We'll be right back after a word from
• 1:10:01
  our sponsor, and now back to the show. And so so I would
• 1:10:11
  spend all this energy trying to figure out how I'm going to cover this,
• 1:10:15
  How I'm gonna not show this person because it looks so ridiculous. So a
• 1:10:17
  lot of times they'll be in shadow or you don't you don't stay on them
• 1:10:20
  too long, and it was just like, you know, always like that.
• 1:10:23
  But I remember one film it was like the guy came out and it
• 1:10:28
  was like it was like, what, you know, he looks like,
• 1:10:30
  he looks like powder, you know, the guy from the Powder picked herself.
• 1:10:34
  It's just it's just terrible. And I was like, it didn't look
• 1:10:36
  at anything like. So I was like, okay, well let's change.
• 1:10:40
  I talk to the DP. I was like, well, you know,
• 1:10:42
  we got I gotta shoot this sun because there's no there's no where in the
• 1:10:45
  middle of the desert. There's nothing else we can do, so we um,
• 1:10:48
  you know, I said. I talked to him about changing the lighting
• 1:10:50
  up and changing in the way we're gonna shoot it and how I'm gonna shoot
• 1:10:54
  it and that sort of thing, and and you know, it helped.
• 1:10:57
  And then when I got it into post because that's kind of one of my
• 1:11:00
  things specialties is as like, I gave it to a friend and I I
• 1:11:03
  said, hey, you know, let's do some digital makeup on this guy
• 1:11:05
  because he looks ridiculous. So I had his face morph into like a SkELL
• 1:11:09
  Thiner and you know, and I had the other girl's face morph into this
• 1:11:12
  weird like Corpsey looking thing and so on and so forth. Then and it
• 1:11:15
  worked great. And after that I was happy because I was like, oh
• 1:11:17
  good, because it looks a little more supernatural now. Because their face is
• 1:11:19
  actually morphing from some some one one state to another state. So it looked
• 1:11:25
  a little bit it was fun or to use. But um but yeah,
• 1:11:28
  I mean that's happened, and to me several times I did it on Real
• 1:11:30
  Evil too. There was some stuff where them. It wasn't that the makeup
• 1:11:33
  was necessarily it wasn't at the make I did. It wasn't happy with the
• 1:11:38
  makeup on that one. It was more that I thought it could be scarier,
• 1:11:40
  so we added the digital makeup onto it to make it even scarier.
• 1:11:44
  Um. So so yeah, that's uh, that definitely, uh, definitely
• 1:11:48
  happens. And you can roll roll with the roll with the punches with what
• 1:11:54
  you got to work with. But sometimes you can fix them stuff like that
• 1:11:57
  in post if you have the know how right do you believe in the idea
• 1:12:01
  that's better not to see the monster? You know that it's more scary.
• 1:12:04
  You know. I'm I'm a huge fan of Jaws. It's one of my
• 1:12:08
  favorite movies. So I'm always like, you know, and and you know,
• 1:12:11
  Spielberg's big influence was a movie called Cat Eyes, you know, and
• 1:12:14
  so he he was like, well, I don't know how to tell the
• 1:12:16
  store the shark is terrible, so we got to find a way to shoot
• 1:12:20
  this movie without showing the shark. So, you know, he was talking
• 1:12:24
  about how this movie Cat Eyes, you never ever see the creature or the
• 1:12:30
  monster, the cat or whatever. Yeah. Um, so I would think
• 1:12:33
  that's another way to kind of, like, you know, and even if
• 1:12:36
  you have a cool character, to kind of keep it in the dark,
• 1:12:40
  you know, until maybe towards the end where you do like a reveal or
• 1:12:43
  something like that. Yeah. No, absolutely, I think I think I'm
• 1:12:45
  a firm believer in that. Absolutely. It's it's a closed door is way
• 1:12:50
  scarier than than to not know what's behind that door or what's in that darkness.
• 1:12:57
  But you know, something is there is such a great technique, a
• 1:13:00
  horror movie making technique that you know that be the mind of the audience just
• 1:13:05
  goes goes crazy, you know, and you know, and I think that's
• 1:13:11
  a it's a great that those are the kind of films that I prefer to
• 1:13:14
  make. You know, I'm I'm totally like more of a classical or guy
• 1:13:16
  like I like to make movies like a Rosemary's Baby or you know, um
• 1:13:19
  or or all the ones I mentioned before. You know, those are the
• 1:13:23
  films I like to make. Um. But you know, when you're making
• 1:13:26
  something for higher or for as a producer, for higher directive or higher oftentimes
• 1:13:30
  you don't really have those options. A lot of times they you know,
• 1:13:32
  the companies are distributors. They want to see a lot more because it makes
• 1:13:36
  a great trailer, you know, or it makes a great um uh piece
• 1:13:41
  of art you know, or that sort of thing you know, which of
• 1:13:43
  course is obviously completely business related, not artistic related. Um but but you
• 1:13:48
  know, I mean, you know, it's entertainment businesses like that. It's
• 1:13:51
  a it's the combination of art and commerce, you know, and um and
• 1:13:57
  you it's just finding a way to still get your vision on the screen,
• 1:14:02
  but understanding that you have to walk down a way, you know, a
• 1:14:09
  sort of a way way of trying to get get the commerce out of it,
• 1:14:14
  but still trying to get the art out of it at the same time,
• 1:14:15
  you know, and being able to compromise and still get get a good
• 1:14:20
  movie made at the same time. You know. It's it's it's it's it's
• 1:14:23
  difficult to do, no doubt, I mean so so yeah, well,
• 1:14:27
  a lot of the people that I've talked to who are you know, producers
• 1:14:30
  that a lot of them are like, you know, we need to package
• 1:14:31
  it in such a way that people are gonna want to watch it in the
• 1:14:34
  first place. Yeah, but sometimes you have to hide a good movie within
• 1:14:38
  a movie that's more commercial, you know. Yeah, so it's like I
• 1:14:41
  want to watch this. You got to get that initial click and then it's
• 1:14:43
  like, oh, this is actually a good movie, you know can Jaws
• 1:14:45
  to me is always the perfect example of that. It's like the perfect you
• 1:14:48
  know, popcorn movie, but inside of it, it's an amazing movie obviously,
• 1:14:53
  you know what I mean. Yeah, totally, man, I mean
• 1:14:55
  absolutely, And that's that's a great way to look at it. But I
• 1:14:57
  think I think, I mean, Jaws of course was made you know,
• 1:15:00
  thirty whatever year, forty years I think now, right, four years ago?
• 1:15:03
  Um, but and that was that was such a great time to be
• 1:15:08
  making movies back then, you know. But I think with now, I
• 1:15:11
  mean, with the distribution being changed so much, what's happening? Uh?
• 1:15:15
  I certainly, Look, I mean it just happened on a movie I just
• 1:15:17
  did, so, you know, I mean, they change the artwork in
• 1:15:19
  the campaign and everything. But a lot of it has to do with um
• 1:15:24
  when it comes especially with digital distribution, it has to It comes down to,
• 1:15:28
  like you only get a moment for somebody to be browsing through their Netflix
• 1:15:32
  que or or browsing through their Hulu queue to stop and say, hey,
• 1:15:35
  that looks kind of cool. You know. The title's good if it's usually
• 1:15:40
  higher up on the higher up on the list. Sometimes if it's alphabetical.
• 1:15:44
  Sometimes it's good to have, like something that starts with an A or a
• 1:15:46
  B or a C or a D. You know, there's something that starts
• 1:15:49
  with a Z, you know, kind of thing. There's little little things
• 1:15:51
  like that that can be taken to consideration. But certainly artwork and trailer are
• 1:15:57
  are you know, so key to to to getting people to uh to click
• 1:16:03
  on it, you know, to watch it, I mean and uh you
• 1:16:05
  know, and in the case of who a company like say Hulu, the
• 1:16:11
  filmmaker gets paid per click, so every time somebody clicks on that, they
• 1:16:14
  get x amount, you know, so you know, it's it's important to
• 1:16:18
  get people to to to watch it. And if you can, if if
• 1:16:21
  if that means you know, putting together an amazing piece of art, an
• 1:16:25
  amazing trailer, then that's what you gotta do, you know, right.
• 1:16:28
  So, uh but but the movie still has to stand you know, on
• 1:16:32
  its own too. After you get you can get people to click on it,
• 1:16:34
  but you can't necessarily get them to watch it. So you still got
• 1:16:38
  to make a good movie. But you can have a good trailer or a
• 1:16:40
  good movie, good art. You know, you're you're, you're, you're
• 1:16:43
  on your way, you know. Yeah, it just seems like nowadays,
• 1:16:46
  you you know, especially with Netflix, if you go into the horror section,
• 1:16:49
  it's like they put all this money into the graphic design of the poster
• 1:16:54
  and then you start watching it and it's like, oh, yeah, this
• 1:16:58
  is terrible. Yeah yeah, they just kind of made it. I mean,
• 1:17:00
  it must have been bought as part of like a larger package or something,
• 1:17:03
  you know, but the movie just completely there's nothing to it. It's
• 1:17:06
  badly shot, you know. So, you know, we've gotten into this
• 1:17:12
  world I think where it's almost kind of like social media. People are trying
• 1:17:15
  to figure out how to get more stars on things. People are trying to
• 1:17:17
  just like get things shared around. But you know, the quality a lot
• 1:17:21
  of times isn't there. You know, sure, I probably made one of
• 1:17:25
  two of those that you quick I mean, you know, you're absolutely right.
• 1:17:30
  I mean you'll click on I mean, look, I I click on
• 1:17:31
  the stuff and I'm like, what the fuck you know, and then it
• 1:17:33
  just that's why I just like to watch classics part. But I mean,
• 1:17:40
  yeah, yeah, totally. It's it's in they're bought as packages, they're
• 1:17:44
  bought as other deals or licensing deals with guy who knows. You know,
• 1:17:47
  there's Voodoo and Hulu and Netflix and all these other distributors that the Amazon and
• 1:17:54
  Prime and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, So one of the things
• 1:17:58
  that I try to do kind of with you know, the podcast is you
• 1:18:01
  know, trying trying to find that kind of line between Okay, there's people
• 1:18:06
  I talk to a lot of people who are just doing purely you know,
• 1:18:10
  art films that are like you know, stories of tragedy and things that have
• 1:18:14
  you know, I mean, and they're probably going to be really good movies,
• 1:18:17
  but they're never going to be able to sell them, right, It's
• 1:18:19
  like it's never going to go anywhere. So I'm always kind of like,
• 1:18:23
  okay, well there's got you know, like the stuff that I write is
• 1:18:25
  more you know, in the horror, you know, monster movie kind of
• 1:18:29
  thing. But inside of the movie, there's like stories, characters, and
• 1:18:33
  there's like an actual you know, hopefully you know, an actually good movie
• 1:18:38
  inside of that. You know. So I always try to tell people,
• 1:18:41
  you know, try to do something. I mean, it's good to make
• 1:18:43
  a movie about you know, you're growing up in a small town and this
• 1:18:47
  and that, and but you know, you have to connect somehow. If
• 1:18:50
  you can connect with your own audience, you know, good, good for
• 1:18:55
  you. You know, to go ahead and do that, and that's great,
• 1:18:57
  but you know you do have to have something that you know, think
• 1:19:00
  about Netflix or iTunes. What are people going to click on? You know?
• 1:19:03
  Yeah? Absolutely, I mean again it's art and commerce because I mean,
• 1:19:06
  so many people I I I know, I know certainly happens a lot
• 1:19:10
  with me when when people find out I'm a I'm a producer and director or
• 1:19:13
  whatever that's and especially if you're not in the business too, all of a
• 1:19:15
  sudden, they're like, well, I got a story for you. And
• 1:19:18
  then they start telling me their life story about this and that and and and
• 1:19:23
  and you know, and for them, yeah, it's it's their own story.
• 1:19:26
  But they they what they don't understand is everybody's got a story, you
• 1:19:30
  know, but not you know, not not every story makes a good movie,
• 1:19:32
  you know. So you know, I mean there's there's plenty of stories
• 1:19:35
  out there like, yeah, at the time that my my uh boyfriend did
• 1:19:40
  this, wouldn't that make it a great movie, And you're just kind of
• 1:19:42
  like, well, not really. I mean, you know, it's deeper
• 1:19:45
  than that. I mean, it's a lot deeper than that. And a
• 1:19:48
  lot of that has to do. I mean, it's gonna it's gonna do
• 1:19:50
  with the the certainly, the the the the premise you know of it is
• 1:19:56
  has to be compelling, and the u the character have to be compelling.
• 1:20:01
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:20:09
  the show. The story, the telling has to be compelling. The writing
• 1:20:13
  has to be compelling. I mean, before you even get to all this
• 1:20:15
  stuff that we're talking about, I mean, we just you need to rewind
• 1:20:19
  and go back to the to your to your your premise, your concept,
• 1:20:23
  and then and then if you have a great premise and a great concept,
• 1:20:26
  then you you you know, work up a treatment. You work up the
• 1:20:29
  treatment, you work out some bugs, you work up the script. You
• 1:20:30
  know, then you then you got more time to work on that script.
• 1:20:33
  You keep working, you keep chiseling that down to to the way it needs
• 1:20:36
  to be. And if you know kind of what budget level you're going to
• 1:20:40
  shoot it on, then you need to limit your locations and limit the amount
• 1:20:43
  of people that are in the in the scenes. And uh. And then
• 1:20:46
  when you once you get that all nice and polished up, give it to
• 1:20:49
  a few people that that don't read scripts for a living and and see what
• 1:20:54
  they think. And then and then do one more pass on it, you
• 1:20:56
  know you, and then and then at some point around there, then maybe
• 1:21:00
  it's time to start, you know, getting the money to do it and
• 1:21:03
  put it in actually green light it and put it into and put it into
• 1:21:05
  production. But I think a lot of people don't spend enough time on the
• 1:21:09
  script. And so I'm certainly guilty of that. I it's certainly guilty of
• 1:21:13
  films that I've made that were just like, you know, you you added,
• 1:21:16
  you're just like, the script's already, oh, well we're shooting next
• 1:21:18
  week, oh you know, and you try to roll with it like,
• 1:21:23
  oh, maybe there's something I can do to make it better, and you
• 1:21:25
  know, and you're like, Noah, not really, because if it's not
• 1:21:27
  on the page to begin with, it's not only so much you can do
• 1:21:30
  with it, you know. So um yeah, it's it's trying. You
• 1:21:32
  don't want to go into production with something that's that's not ready. But um
• 1:21:38
  yeah, I mean it's so it's it's it's it's such important. It's it's
• 1:21:40
  actually one chat one section in this book that I wasn't able to because it's
• 1:21:45
  a whole different book. I mean, you can't. I can't write like
• 1:21:46
  twenty five pages about about screenwriting and storytelling and everything. So I just there's
• 1:21:51
  kind of an overview in my book about getting started and how to you know,
• 1:21:56
  combine monsters, you know, stuff to inspire to get it going.
• 1:22:00
  And then the rest is about actually making the film, production and distribution and
• 1:22:02
  everything. But um, the screenwriting aspect of it, which is it's it's
• 1:22:06
  a whole other book in itself. But if you're you know, if you're
• 1:22:11
  starting filmmaker and you really want to get some really good books on on screenwriting,
• 1:22:17
  Um, there's there's so many out there. Certainly Story by Robert McKee
• 1:22:20
  is probably one of the best ones. Um, there's a an endless amount
• 1:22:26
  of them. That have been written. I wouldn't say all of them are
• 1:22:29
  good, but I would say, uh, there's some. There's certainly some
• 1:22:32
  that have been written on specifically on horror. Um, I think the one
• 1:22:36
  guy write one on the genre filmmaking. Can't remember the name of the author.
• 1:22:39
  But but just yeah, just take a look at what's out there and
• 1:22:43
  uh, you'll you'll see. But one of the what I find that's even
• 1:22:46
  that's even better than that. It means it's great to do to read it
• 1:22:50
  and you know, and if you if you understand a gree if not,
• 1:22:54
  you know that you know, read read more. But one of the best
• 1:22:57
  things to do is to actually read screenplay. To get horror screenplays if that's
• 1:23:01
  the genre of your choice. Um, certainly is there a lot of them
• 1:23:05
  available out there, excuse me on the online is to you know, to
• 1:23:11
  get them and to read them and to study them and look at the formatting,
• 1:23:15
  look at the way that that that it's that it's written, and and
• 1:23:17
  really really study the screen the screenplay page. I mean, I'm I'm a
• 1:23:23
  writer myself, so I have an extensive collection of screenplays. I mean,
• 1:23:27
  I have a whole shelf. I mean, just just like literally like a
• 1:23:30
  thousand screenplays that are on my shelf, and and you know, and I
• 1:23:34
  just go over when I want to and say, oh, I'm going to
• 1:23:36
  read the script for you Turn or I'm going to read the script for Knocked
• 1:23:40
  Up or whatever it is. I mean, there's aren't horror films, but
• 1:23:42
  I mean I have I have the script for hell Raiser, I'm you know,
• 1:23:45
  and I have the script for um, you know, House on Haunted
• 1:23:48
  Hill with script notes. You know that's what and and and you know that's
• 1:23:53
  that's really I think one of the most powerful ways to learn how to how
• 1:23:58
  to how to how to write is to read great other writers that are really
• 1:24:01
  great and study them, you know, right, Yeah, I think it's
• 1:24:04
  kind of like through osmosis in a way. I remember I used to read
• 1:24:08
  the Aliens screenplay all the time, you know, and it was just like
• 1:24:14
  I would read it over and over and over again, and then when I
• 1:24:15
  would go back and actually watch the film, I would remember kind of how
• 1:24:18
  it looked, you know, on the on the page, and how it
• 1:24:21
  kind of came to life, and you really realize how kind of succinct it
• 1:24:28
  has to all be. You know, screenplays have to be completely just tight.
• 1:24:30
  There can't be one, you know, moment in it that doesn't have
• 1:24:33
  a reason. You know. And if you read those screenplays, you know,
• 1:24:36
  especially the you know, the classics or even just good movies, you
• 1:24:40
  know, I think you kind of just see, uh, you know,
• 1:24:43
  you don't have It's not like a book where you have a lot of pages
• 1:24:45
  that you know probably could be left out. But UM, let me ask
• 1:24:50
  you one more thing about that, because a lot of screenwriters listen to this.
• 1:24:54
  Um, do the companies where you've worked for, the production houses,
• 1:24:59
  do they regularly I mean where are they getting their writers and screenplays from?
• 1:25:04
  I mean do you find that they're mostly people that are in town or do
• 1:25:08
  they ever, like just find people outside of town submit screenplays and stuff like
• 1:25:13
  that. Oh? Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to answer. Um.
• 1:25:15
  Before I do, I wanted to add to your your aliens comment on
• 1:25:18
  the screenplay. There's there's actually a really cool book if you haven't checked it
• 1:25:21
  out, it's called Dan O'Bannon wrote it. It's Dan O'Bannon's Guide to Screenplay
• 1:25:27
  Structure. Oh really, I don't think i've ever seen Yeah, he actually
• 1:25:30
  wrote a book on on his sort of methodology to how he's how he writes
• 1:25:35
  particularly Alien, and he has a very it's it's it's it's an interesting read.
• 1:25:41
  He's a very unorthodox way of doing it. But I think, I
• 1:25:44
  think if for screenwriters that are reading this, and certainly for me as a
• 1:25:46
  screenwriter myself, I found it. I found it really really insightful to see
• 1:25:49
  how somebody like Dan O'Bannon, who of course wrote Aliens Alien, Um it
• 1:25:56
  works in Night Duphs Hardchee's Night Live Return of the Living Daddy wrote any Living
• 1:26:00
  Dead too, of course, um uh and uh, it's really it's a
• 1:26:02
  it's a it's a cool it's a cool little it's a cool read. So
• 1:26:05
  you should check it out. Yeah, ready to do it. But um,
• 1:26:12
  certainly uh. I think most filmmakers would agree that. But one of
• 1:26:15
  the best ways to learn how to make movies is certainly to one watch movies
• 1:26:18
  but watch them, not watch them just to watch him once them once,
• 1:26:24
  just to watch them, but watch it twice, to study it, you
• 1:26:26
  know, and to really break it apart, and to to to read screenplays.
• 1:26:30
  I'm always amazed how many people I meet that that. And I asked
• 1:26:34
  him, like, like, what do you have a screenplay at you want
• 1:26:39
  to be a screenwriter and you don't have any screenplays in your house. You
• 1:26:43
  know, you don't read screenplay who know, it's just just my own you
• 1:26:45
  know, like okay, you know, so so are you gonna be are
• 1:26:49
  you gonna make your own music but only listen to your own music? You
• 1:26:53
  know, it doesn't make any sense. You have you know, you have
• 1:26:55
  to you know, if you if you're a screenwriter and you don't have like
• 1:26:59
  either a folder on your computer with a bunch of PDF screenplays that you you
• 1:27:03
  bought, you know, to to to to read and study, or actually
• 1:27:06
  have a lot of screenplays in your own personal library, or if you don't
• 1:27:10
  even have a personal library and you want and you're a writer or a screenwriter,
• 1:27:14
  you know, it's like, you know, yeah, kind might be
• 1:27:15
  gone of a good idea to do something like that. I mean, Newmarket
• 1:27:19
  Press is probably one of the most well known publishers that published screenplays, and
• 1:27:23
  I would highly recommend checking out that particular publishing company. They publish a lot
• 1:27:27
  of that stuff. But there's a lot of that out there, um that
• 1:27:30
  that that you that you should that you should should get out and study.
• 1:27:33
  So Anyway. With that said, Uh, it's that transitions just into the
• 1:27:38
  screenwriting question, and um, I'd hire plenty of writers um uh and my
• 1:27:44
  as a producer, uh certainly, Um, I hired them for a number
• 1:27:50
  of reasons. But sometimes it's because I'm I just don't have the time to
• 1:27:56
  write it myself. Because as as a writer myself, usually I want to
• 1:27:59
  write it myself, but I'm kind of like, oh God, I just
• 1:28:00
  don't have the time and I need to spend the time on the producing and
• 1:28:03
  getting money to even make the thing and that sort of thing. So oftentimes
• 1:28:08
  I'll have, I'll have I'll hire a screenwriter, and it's usually it just
• 1:28:13
  depends you know what it is. But usually on the low budget level of
• 1:28:16
  things, screen scripts are written as work for hire, which means that the
• 1:28:21
  writer actually doesn't own it. You're writing it for me as a job.
• 1:28:25
  So um, you know, you you you're getting paid X amount. You
• 1:28:29
  know, it could be it could be as ridiculously embarrassingly cheap as fifteen hundred
• 1:28:33
  dollars to four thousand dollars or five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars, you
• 1:28:38
  know, depending on what the budget is. Usually usually a writer gets.
• 1:28:41
  A screenwriter gets somewhere around like two percent of the budget for what for their
• 1:28:45
  script. I'm just saying in general, it's just throwing that around. So
• 1:28:48
  two percent, So if you're making one hundred thousand dollars movie, or the
• 1:28:50
  writer might may have got two grand, may have got four grand, depending
• 1:28:56
  on you know, how generous the producer is. Me particularly, I'm kind
• 1:28:59
  of generous. Is I'm a writer myself, and I know how hard it
• 1:29:01
  is to do that, to write anything and then to have to turn it
• 1:29:04
  over, you know, but sometimes you have to do that in order to
• 1:29:06
  get it made, especially if you're an unproduced writer. You know, sometimes
• 1:29:11
  that's the best way to get started. I mean, you know, if
• 1:29:14
  if you give me a script and you have no credits at all, and
• 1:29:17
  I'm like, well, hey, I can make this movie. You're gonna
• 1:29:18
  make it for a hundred grand, but I can get it made. Yeah,
• 1:29:21
  Now you're going to get paid a little bit. But you know,
• 1:29:24
  the production company takes it over, they pay you, they own the script,
• 1:29:27
  and but we actually make the film, and then that helps you get
• 1:29:30
  another gig after. You know that sort of thing, right, But but
• 1:29:34
  you know, it just depends, you know, I'm with the low budget
• 1:29:36
  stuff, you know. Usually yeah, that's usually kind of a standard case
• 1:29:40
  where it's two percent of the budget or or and usually the writer it's it's
• 1:29:45
  it's a work for higher kind of situation, you know. And I've I've
• 1:29:48
  hired plenty of different writers, all different kinds of writers, and a lot
• 1:29:51
  of times they use alias. Sometimes they'll use aliases for what their for all
• 1:29:57
  kinds of reasons. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and
• 1:30:04
  now back to the show. The other times they're uh, they who knows,
• 1:30:11
  you know, what what what what what it is? But uh and
• 1:30:15
  and you you know, they usually have a very short amount of time to
• 1:30:17
  write it. So usually I tend to hire writers that can write quickly,
• 1:30:21
  but but but with quality, you know, so I would like for instance,
• 1:30:25
  so I just I hired a write or not too long ago, and
• 1:30:27
  I gave him I think I gave him a week to work up a treatment,
• 1:30:30
  and then we worked out notes on the treatment. I think he had.
• 1:30:32
  Uh. I think I gave him for three or four weeks to write
• 1:30:36
  the first draft, so I think he did it in three. I think
• 1:30:41
  he did in three, But I've had people do it in two you know,
• 1:30:44
  and then um, you know, and then we would we would certainly
• 1:30:46
  do do several other drafts after that, but the first draft, you know,
• 1:30:49
  because once you work out the initial story in the treatment and stuff,
• 1:30:53
  the drafting part of it can come a little quicker. But um, and
• 1:30:57
  that that's kind of how that that process works, at least with with the
• 1:31:00
  some of the lower budget of stuff. In the studio level, it's a
• 1:31:01
  whole different ball game, a whole different Just ignore everything I said, because
• 1:31:06
  it's a whole that you're you're dealing with like executives and you're you know,
• 1:31:12
  you're you're dealing with a whole different group of people. So I'm speaking to
• 1:31:15
  you just as an independent filmmaker that has hired people to write films that have
• 1:31:20
  been made in the under one hundred under two hundred thousand dollars range in what
• 1:31:25
  a typical scenario may be like. So that's that's what I'm telling you here.
• 1:31:29
  So it's not so if you're a screenwriter you're like, oh, com
• 1:31:32
  enough for two grand for the rest of my life be broke and my kid's
• 1:31:35
  going to eat that sort of thing. Now that's not really, that's not
• 1:31:39
  the case. But if you're looking to get it something that you have that's
• 1:31:41
  already you know, that that you think could be good for a low budget
• 1:31:45
  situation, yeah, I mean, yeah, you can. You can do
• 1:31:47
  something like that, so right, Um, but yeah, I mean I've
• 1:31:50
  had people I get people submitting all the time for scripts. Uh um.
• 1:31:56
  Oftentimes they're just ridiculously too complicated, or there's this way too many locations and
• 1:32:00
  way too many characters too to execute. You know, it's usually the case.
• 1:32:04
  Uh, but you know, sometimes people come in with stuff that's just
• 1:32:08
  really well well written, well executed, and it's simple, you know,
• 1:32:11
  and and and those are the ones that I tend to to to like as
• 1:32:15
  far as making on on a on a lower budgeted level. So so yeah,
• 1:32:19
  but but you know, if you have something that you're as a writer,
• 1:32:23
  though, if you have something that you're that you worked on for like
• 1:32:25
  twelve years and it's like your baby, don't sell it to some producer or
• 1:32:29
  too grand you know what I mean. I mean, I'll be the first
• 1:32:30
  one to tell you. I mean I would if you gave it to me.
• 1:32:33
  And I'm like, man, this is amazing. And I was like
• 1:32:35
  usually I was like, dude, I can't give you too grand for this.
• 1:32:39
  No, No, I mean I just but I mean, you know,
• 1:32:41
  look, I mean just just if you have something that's like really your
• 1:32:44
  your your baby, I mean it, don't hang on to it and it
• 1:32:47
  don't just don't just let let it go for pennies unless you really, unless
• 1:32:51
  you're part of the project. Oftentimes I've made deals with writers too, were
• 1:32:55
  oftentimes there they were producers, so they wrote it. The deal was that
• 1:33:00
  they're involved in the percentage of the any profits, if if any. Usually
• 1:33:03
  there's none because movies barely make money. Um and uh, but they're they're
• 1:33:10
  they're more involved in the financial pie if there is a pie. But often
• 1:33:14
  if somebody has always eaten the pie and there is no pie and they're they're
• 1:33:17
  ofttimes there's no crumbs either from the pie, right, so uh, you
• 1:33:23
  know, but but you know, it's sometimes you can make make arrangements like
• 1:33:26
  that. Sometimes it's two percent plus a percentage of them the back end,
• 1:33:29
  um um. And you think it's a good way for people that are just
• 1:33:32
  like trying to get their start and build up some credits. Can I think
• 1:33:35
  it's a great way to start yeah. I mean, I mean, I
• 1:33:38
  think it's better if you're if if if you're the writer and director, because
• 1:33:43
  I think like when you if you're just the writer and you give it to
• 1:33:45
  another director, they're gonna have you. Gotta remember, this is an interpretive
• 1:33:48
  art form here we're talking. Yeah, So so it starts with you.
• 1:33:51
  It starts with the it starts with the idea, It starts with the writer.
• 1:33:55
  It starts it's that thing. But it ends. It ends in the
• 1:33:58
  editing room with some guy like me that's going, well, what the hell
• 1:34:00
  is all this dialogue? Let's cut this out? You know, it ends,
• 1:34:03
  It ends with the editor. It ends with the director at the end.
• 1:34:06
  Cut your script down, So like, let's get rid of this whole
• 1:34:11
  Indianapolis speech is telling me about it. Man, you see this ship that
• 1:34:15
  I've cut out of movie. It seems that they shot and you're just like,
• 1:34:19
  this scene is so freaking boring. That's just cut it out, wet
• 1:34:21
  They move on. Um. But you know, I think I think if
• 1:34:27
  you have the knack for it, if you have the personality to be a
• 1:34:30
  director, and you're and you have a script that's you're really passionate about,
• 1:34:34
  you should consider doing it yourself, you know, being the writer, director,
• 1:34:39
  or if you do get a production company involved with it, that you
• 1:34:42
  you you are the direct you into terms are that you you get to direct
• 1:34:45
  it. Even though that's that scares producers. I honestly it scares them a
• 1:34:50
  little bit because especially on this level of filmmaking, because you know, to
• 1:34:55
  have a first time anybody, when you need to pull stuff off in eight
• 1:34:58
  to ten days, it's very It can make the producer very nervous because it's
• 1:35:03
  like, you know what he's doing. You know, that's a director behind
• 1:35:05
  the camera, that sort of thing. But but but if that's the case,
• 1:35:11
  you know, hey, you know, kickstart it yourself or something.
• 1:35:14
  Go out and make it yourself. You know. You know, I've always
• 1:35:16
  encouraged people like, hey, man, look at you got your you got
• 1:35:18
  your own script and it's great and you think it's something you can do for
• 1:35:21
  a low budget. You know, there's there's there's nothing that says you can't
• 1:35:25
  go out and and either what you could do you yeah, kickstart or whatever.
• 1:35:29
  You know, it's it's a crapshoot with that too. But you know,
• 1:35:31
  you could try to do some kickstarting. You could maybe hopefully you're financially
• 1:35:34
  well off yourself. Maybe you could, you know, uh sell your your
• 1:35:40
  ridiculous comic book collection because you're in your fifties now and maybe maybe you don't
• 1:35:44
  need to have that anymore, and and uh sell your comic book collection like
• 1:35:46
  I think Kevin Smith did to make clerks and uh, um, you know,
• 1:35:51
  raise some money, you know, and and say, hey, I
• 1:35:54
  you know, look at I can I have a I have thirty grand that
• 1:35:58
  I I can put into something, you know, and instead of that that
• 1:36:01
  midlife crisis car maybe I invest in a in my movie and you go out
• 1:36:06
  and do it yourself, and you you maybe you produce it yourself and you
• 1:36:10
  direct it yourself, and you do it. And I think, I think
• 1:36:12
  for me, that's always been the best way to do it is to kind
• 1:36:15
  of carve your own path with it, um, because certainly it's it's a
• 1:36:18
  little bit more sure that it's going to happen, um. But don't go
• 1:36:26
  into it without at least doing your due diligence and research and thinking about about
• 1:36:30
  about how to make movies. I mean, I mean, certainly, you
• 1:36:32
  know, you can read the books, you can read, you know all
• 1:36:35
  you want, but there's nothing like experience, you know. And uh and
• 1:36:42
  you will get experience doing it yourself that way, believe me. So so
• 1:36:45
  yeah, man, I mean I don't know, I think that's a good
• 1:36:47
  way to start. Um and yeah, yeah, so well, can we
• 1:36:54
  can we move into post production? Because I know that your big thing and
• 1:36:58
  I you know, um, I know you guys talked about it a lot
• 1:37:01
  on Dave Bullis's podcast. I recommend everybody you know check that out too,
• 1:37:06
  But I wanted to talk to you about post production and um, you know,
• 1:37:12
  what what are the important aspects of that and what what do people need
• 1:37:15
  to you know, plan for when they're beginning. You know, one of
• 1:37:19
  the things you guys even talked about was, you know, you have to
• 1:37:24
  have enough budget to do your post production, and you know, you can't
• 1:37:27
  just put it all into shooting it and then you know expect to just like
• 1:37:31
  do the post production aspect of it, you know, without any money.
• 1:37:35
  You know. I think people get kind of stuck with that, you know
• 1:37:38
  that they they do everything in production and they get to post production and they've
• 1:37:41
  run out of budget. Oh yeah, totally, no, Yeah, I
• 1:37:44
  can totally totally give you some good, good advice on that, well,
• 1:37:48
  I think I think when you before you look, before you get involved in
• 1:37:54
  your when you start, when you're ready to start shooting your film in pre
• 1:37:57
  production, you need to start thinking about post production in pre production, uh,
• 1:38:01
  because everything you kind of always have to kind of work backwards. I
• 1:38:04
  mean certainly even from distribution. Uh. I would say, I always say
• 1:38:09
  start, start from where you want this film to end up. So if
• 1:38:12
  you're like, Okay, I want this film to be theatrical, Okay,
• 1:38:15
  well, if you wanted to be theatrical, probably shouldn't be shooting on your
• 1:38:16
  phone. You know, you might want to, You might want to even
• 1:38:19
  though that's happened when they're wrong. But if you really wanted to be a
• 1:38:24
  theatrical release, or even have the possibility of being a theatrical release, you
• 1:38:28
  want to start deciding on your your your cameras, you know, and say,
• 1:38:30
  okay, well maybe we should shoot with the Alexa. Maybe we need
• 1:38:32
  to shoot in four K so we can get a four K DCP that we
• 1:38:36
  can take out to screen in theaters and so on and so forth. So
• 1:38:41
  you you you and start thinking about your deliverables, like okay, um,
• 1:38:45
  we want to be able to sell this fore end. We want to be
• 1:38:47
  able to, you know, do a full delivery on this too everywhere.
• 1:38:50
  Well okay, that's that's great. I'm glad you're thinking about that in pre
• 1:38:55
  production because what you're gonna need to do is you're gonna, like I said,
• 1:38:58
  you're gonna think about what camera your shooting on. You guys, start
• 1:39:00
  thinking about, um, you're you're how you're gonna you know, because you
• 1:39:03
  need to budget that stuff out, Like, Hey, we're gonna need M
• 1:39:05
  and E tracks, We're gonna need five point one We're gonna need five point
• 1:39:09
  one M and e's, we're gonna need uh, we're gonna need to do
• 1:39:13
  the stems. We're gonna need to do close captioning. By the way,
• 1:39:15
  Um, you can't even get a movie on iTunes unless it's close captioned.
• 1:39:20
  Um and uh and so on and so forth. So I mean you,
• 1:39:25
  uh, you really need to start thinking about that kind of stuff early on
• 1:39:29
  and budget for it, because by the time you get to post, people
• 1:39:31
  are like, what you mean, I gotta have that? How much is
• 1:39:33
  that gonna cost? Oh? I gotta do five point one M and E?
• 1:39:36
  What the hell is that? You know? I gotta do. I
• 1:39:39
  gotta do what you know, I gotta do. I gotta do QC.
• 1:39:43
  What the hell is QC? You know that sort of thing? And how
• 1:39:45
  much does that cost? Oh my god, that costs like five hundred dollars
• 1:39:48
  to do that. And all of a sudden, you're you're you're just like
• 1:39:50
  you're overwhelmed and in your movie doesn't your movie doesn't get finished because you couldn't
• 1:39:55
  sell it because you didn't you weren't able to deliver it. Well, you
• 1:40:00
  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:40:09
  And if you're not able to deliver your movie, you're in trouble,
• 1:40:11
  man. I mean, you're going to spend you know, you're you're because
• 1:40:13
  you know, these guys aren't going to wait around forever. When you get
• 1:40:15
  a distribt When you get a distributor on the hook and they say, we
• 1:40:17
  like your film, it's really good. We want to make a deal with
• 1:40:20
  you, blah blah blah, and then you start looking at the contract and
• 1:40:23
  you're like, oh my god, I can't deliver all this stuff. I
• 1:40:25
  didn't shoot on set stills or I didn't shoot I didn't I didn't I didn't
• 1:40:28
  do this, and or it doesn't pass QC because it has to you know,
• 1:40:30
  normally has to pass a QC process, and you have all these post
• 1:40:33
  issues you know with god knows what, you know, uh, And they
• 1:40:39
  they're like, hey, you know, look, we you know, we're
• 1:40:42
  interested in your film, but if you can't pass QC, and if you
• 1:40:44
  if it's not if you don't, if you can't deliver what the contract says
• 1:40:46
  that we need as a delivery, we can't. We can't take your film.
• 1:40:49
  I've seen that happen several times with people, you know, they they
• 1:40:53
  their movies just undeliverable. It's not it's bad, it just they couldn't deliver
• 1:40:58
  it the way the distributor wanted it, so they just rid or had to
• 1:41:00
  pass on it. What would cause a film not to pass QC. Oh,
• 1:41:04
  so many things, so many things. Actually, it's one of the
• 1:41:06
  things. I have a really good chapter, probably one of the only ones
• 1:41:11
  that are in print, I think, in a book, about about the
• 1:41:15
  whole sort of the process of delivery, you know, mastering and delivery and
• 1:41:19
  all that stuff. And I have a little bit there on QC and QC.
• 1:41:23
  For those of you don't know is it stays quality control. Um and
• 1:41:27
  uh, it's it's a process. It's a very subjective process. Um.
• 1:41:31
  And what happens is your movie goes to a lab. Let's just say like
• 1:41:38
  like, UM, I don't want to mention any lab because let talk to
• 1:41:42
  me after this now. UM, you say, your body goes to a
• 1:41:45
  lab and you for a qcing process. What they do is they take the
• 1:41:47
  master and they they run it through the ring or they they they they look
• 1:41:53
  at the video, the levels, the gamma, m all these things.
• 1:41:59
  They run through a machine and and and they run it through this machine.
• 1:42:01
  And this machine, I'll say, oh, this movie is out of uh
• 1:42:04
  the gamma does this. And there's there's dead pixels on these shots and there's
• 1:42:10
  uh, um, this shot is out of focus, or there's a there's
• 1:42:14
  a there's a C stand in the shot. I mean I mean literally stuff
• 1:42:17
  like that, like there's a C stand in the shot. You have to
• 1:42:19
  that's that's a QC flag or um a dead pixel, which can happen you
• 1:42:24
  know on digital cameras sometimes it's just a dead pixel in the middle. Very
• 1:42:28
  hard you know to get rid of those us sometimes us after shooting on film
• 1:42:31
  it could be film scratches, you know, all the way to uh uh
• 1:42:36
  uh stuff being out of focus and so on. And it's it's graded like
• 1:42:41
  a by a number system, So you have like one, A one,
• 1:42:45
  two, and a three. Like A one is like kind of they're just
• 1:42:49
  letting you know, kind of thing. It's not It doesn't won't cause you
• 1:42:51
  to pass. Two is kind of like not really enough too. It's bad,
• 1:42:56
  but it's not that bad. Three is like absolutely, you have to
• 1:42:59
  fix this kind of thing, you know. So it's it's brading on scale.
• 1:43:01
  In my book, I put in I think two examples of what a
• 1:43:04
  QC report actually looks like, and ones that have passed and ones that have
• 1:43:10
  failed. And they'll they'll pick out all kinds of stuff audio chances, particularly
• 1:43:13
  audio. They'll they'll pick out things like, um, the folly is off,
• 1:43:16
  or she has a bracelet on, but we're not hearing the bracelet,
• 1:43:19
  you know, on the M and E track, I mean stuff like that,
• 1:43:23
  lips mats, you know, I mean just the most ridiculous stuff that
• 1:43:26
  you're just like, oh my god, you know, what is wrong with
• 1:43:28
  these people? Um? So yeah, But but it's a very real and
• 1:43:31
  a very important part of the selling of the film process. So it's so
• 1:43:35
  it's like if there's just too many things in there, then you fail to
• 1:43:39
  QC chest Okay, there's only two outcomes to QC okays and fail. There's
• 1:43:45
  no in between. If you fail, forget about your distribution. I mean,
• 1:43:48
  you have a chance to fix it. They'll say, Okay, well
• 1:43:50
  it failed, so you need to fix all this stuff. But if you
• 1:43:53
  go back and like, I can't fix it it, there's no there's no
• 1:43:55
  way I can fix it, Well, you're probably not going to get the
• 1:43:57
  distribution deal at you just you try to get because nobody, no distributor wants
• 1:44:00
  to take a movie that's failed QC, and certainly for TV for television.
• 1:44:04
  You know, like my film Ghost Month premiered on NBC Universal's Chill or TV.
• 1:44:11
  It's a main television network, so they see, you know, but
• 1:44:14
  it had to pass a QC. And it did because I shot it on
• 1:44:16
  thirty five and I did the post so I made sure it passed. But
• 1:44:18
  it had, you know, it had it's it's share fair problems. But
• 1:44:21
  I was able to fix it, and they weren't. They weren't too horrible.
• 1:44:25
  Um, but you know, is there is there any way to test
• 1:44:29
  it yourself before you send it over or I mean, are there ways?
• 1:44:31
  Not really, because it's subjective, because you're you're you're giving it to a
• 1:44:35
  lab that that's got some dude in there that's getting you know, eight bucks
• 1:44:40
  an hour to sit there run it through a machine and and watch it and
• 1:44:44
  to say, oh, oh yeah it's the levels or the you know,
• 1:44:46
  there's there's really not a hundred percent way to say, you know, yeah,
• 1:44:53
  this is definitely going to pass QC because I did it myself. But
• 1:44:58
  you you certainly can, you certainly can look out for things like and I
• 1:45:00
  can tell you firsthand, you know, if your shot is ridiculously out of
• 1:45:04
  focus, it's probably gonna get flag. If you have a C stand in
• 1:45:08
  the shot, it's gonna get flag. If you're if you're not, if
• 1:45:10
  you're One of the most common things as the levels are falling out of the
• 1:45:14
  legal you know, so the legal zone for levels, but oftentimes that can
• 1:45:18
  be fixed with filters and Final Cut or Adobe Premier and stuff like. You
• 1:45:21
  can add a filter to that and you can get tho levels back into a
• 1:45:27
  what they call it a legal illegalized area. UM and uh titles are out
• 1:45:31
  of title safe zones, UM that sort of thing you said. There are
• 1:45:34
  some There are things if you know a lot about post production that you can
• 1:45:38
  look out for, Like I can look at a movie and tell you if
• 1:45:40
  it will pass QC. Usually UM from visually audio not as much because you
• 1:45:45
  have to really they really have to listen to it UM and really QC,
• 1:45:48
  like the M and E tracks and make sure like there's footsteps filled in and
• 1:45:54
  although there's fully where it needs to be. That sort of thing. There
• 1:45:58
  are different different labs or you know. Sometimes you know, I've I've had
• 1:46:02
  stuff that they've told me to fix and I went back and said, yeah,
• 1:46:06
  I fixed it, no problem, And I didn't fix it. I
• 1:46:09
  was just just bullshitting them. And then they passed it, you know,
• 1:46:14
  and it happened. It happened like two a few times too, because I'm
• 1:46:16
  like, yeah, oh yeah I fixed that, yeah, yeah, all
• 1:46:18
  that pixel that you said, Yeah, I totally fixed it. And then
• 1:46:20
  they come back and they go okay, great, and then they get it.
• 1:46:23
  Then they past. So that's why I'm saying, it's a very subjective
• 1:46:25
  process. You can have it go, you can have it past one QC
• 1:46:28
  house in the United States, and then you can give it to a foreign
• 1:46:31
  place that that Q sees it, and you'll get a whole the list of
• 1:46:34
  problems that they did pay. So it's it's a really weird, a very
• 1:46:40
  frustrating process for a filmmaker to get past that stage. But but I will
• 1:46:44
  say it is one of the big hang ups for people, especially on low
• 1:46:47
  budget movies, because you don't really a lot of times have the money to
• 1:46:50
  get it fixed. So that's one thing you really need to be careful with
• 1:46:54
  and watch out for. Okay, so can you walk us through the process.
• 1:46:59
  Okay, you know, just editing the film and everything, like what,
• 1:47:02
  um, what the processes? You know? Are you typically editing as
• 1:47:06
  they're shooting or um? Can you give me just an idea of how that
• 1:47:11
  all you know comes together? A quick idea, but I mean typically typically
• 1:47:15
  No, I'm not not not really editing as they're shooting. Um, it
• 1:47:18
  depends. I mean, if I'm full moon. Sometimes we used to do
• 1:47:23
  that when we were making Public Master ten and stuff like that. Sometimes I
• 1:47:25
  would be editing as they're shooting. They would give me because that was just
• 1:47:28
  the editor. They would Charlie Van would give me the material and like a
• 1:47:31
  daily basis, i'd be cutting as we're going and that sort of thing some
• 1:47:34
  you know, so that that can certainly happen. But sometimes if it's your
• 1:47:39
  own picture, um, you're not really thinking about that right now. You're
• 1:47:42
  probably just more concerned about getting a shot. So usually what happens is after
• 1:47:45
  you get it all shot, then you then you um, then you meet
• 1:47:48
  you either if you're not editing it yourself, you'll meet with an editor and
• 1:47:54
  um, excuse me, you'll you'll go over with it. You'll go over
• 1:47:59
  with the editor. You know kind of what's going on. The editor will
• 1:48:01
  you know, of course, get the script usually what's called a line a
• 1:48:04
  line script that they had if you had a script supervisor on set, and
• 1:48:09
  they'll get an idea of what the coverage is like and what takes you like,
• 1:48:12
  that sort of thing, if if you even had one. A lot
• 1:48:14
  of times a low budgets, they don't even have a script supervisor. Um.
• 1:48:17
  And then and then it's pretty much up to the editor. At that
• 1:48:19
  point, you have a conversation a couple conversations with a director and you stay
• 1:48:23
  and start cutting away and then you just goes through a process of of you
• 1:48:28
  know, an assembly and a director's cut and a producer's cut oftentimes, uh,
• 1:48:33
  until you until you get it locked, and then once you get it
• 1:48:36
  locked and then you you head onto sound from that point forward. But the
• 1:48:40
  editing process, though, one thing I will tell you, and this is
• 1:48:43
  another area that you really should spend the money in, is Um, Look,
• 1:48:46
  if you're a great editor yourself, fine, but if you're if you're
• 1:48:50
  just you know, a guy that cut a few commercials together, a few
• 1:48:55
  car commercials together, a Dorito's commercial, is not a feature film editor.
• 1:48:59
  Um, you really got to look at who you're hiring as an editor because
• 1:49:01
  editing is is so important to the process. And I've I've I've edited so
• 1:49:08
  many feature films, man, I mean over I think I'm like a hundred
• 1:49:13
  and something now feature films. No, I mean a lot of them are
• 1:49:15
  just blah, But I mean the one I mean, I mean, I
• 1:49:19
  edited for Sci Fi Channel, edited for people, and it's just so important,
• 1:49:27
  right, the editor experience. And I'm losing you a little bit,
• 1:49:36
  I can't really hear you. You're you're dropping out a little bit. Are
• 1:49:41
  you going through a tunnel? Yeah, Yeah, that's what I was saying,
• 1:49:46
  it's been on an experienced editor, because in the long run, it
• 1:49:50
  will really save you. It's just had a really good DP or anything else,
• 1:49:54
  because a really good editor can make or break your movie. They can.
• 1:50:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:50:05
  to the show. I can cut a scene eighteen different ways and get completely
• 1:50:13
  different meanings every time in the scene. But but you know so, so
• 1:50:15
  that's what I'm saying. I mean, an editor is just important. It's
• 1:50:18
  not just a matter of slinging together a bunch of coverage. That's not editing.
• 1:50:24
  Editing is a craft like anything else, just like you know, cinematography,
• 1:50:28
  just like production design. And it's it's the end part of your film
• 1:50:31
  here, you know. So, Um, it's it's everything. It's timing,
• 1:50:35
  it's it's it's a performance. It's whether or not to show the knife
• 1:50:41
  yet, or to show it at the end. If I cut a scene
• 1:50:44
  and I show you the knife too early, the scare is gone. The
• 1:50:46
  scare might beat gone. But if I show it at the end, you
• 1:50:50
  know, the scene could play a completely different way. So that's an enormous
• 1:50:55
  amount of power to have over a movie as an editor. So that's why
• 1:50:58
  that's why I'm just really you know, say like, hey, you know,
• 1:51:00
  it is an important part of the process, and and really get somebody
• 1:51:03
  that knows how to cut feature films together, and uh uh if it's yourself,
• 1:51:09
  great, but if it's just somebody with no experience, you know,
• 1:51:11
  I would really advise against it. So so anyway, you edit, After
• 1:51:15
  you get that done and you you beautiful edited thing together and you can move
• 1:51:18
  on, then you lock the picture, which means no further changes to the
• 1:51:24
  to the to the picture. Uh. And then that can be given at
• 1:51:27
  that point over to the sound department, and the sound starts and the and
• 1:51:31
  that's also when the composer usually starts, and CGI and everything else starts at
• 1:51:36
  that point, titling and all that. Right, So are you able to
• 1:51:40
  have like composers for these I mean, is that some points within the budget?
• 1:51:44
  Yeah? Absolutely, Well, my wife's a composer, so I'm lucky.
• 1:51:46
  Okay, that's right. I forgot about it that she's she plays for
• 1:51:49
  guitar for Blue Bang Group, and uh, she's also a composer, film
• 1:51:55
  composer. She scored a lot of my my films and everything too. So
• 1:51:58
  it's convenient. Definitely a convenient relationship, right, um so yes, composed.
• 1:52:05
  And let me let me tell you here too, because this is also
• 1:52:08
  extremely important. Um. One of the one of the things that's very common
• 1:52:12
  that seems to be like a plague these days, because that's what I any
• 1:52:20
  of you there, I can't hear you. Let me try to call them
• 1:52:26
  back. Hey, we're back. I just keep going. You want me
• 1:52:31
  to call you back? Is it? Okay? He's the connection? Okay,
• 1:52:33
  yeah, the connections. Good you were you were saying the one of
• 1:52:35
  the plagues. Okay, maybe plague is not a good word. But one
• 1:52:41
  of the one of the real mistakes I think that that I see some filmmakers
• 1:52:45
  doing these days is is the the the use of music libraries in place of
• 1:52:55
  an original film score. Now I'm talking, I'm not talking about trailers,
• 1:53:00
  and I mean, look, I mean if you trailers or documentaries or whatever
• 1:53:02
  and you need to find, you need to pull a piece out or a
• 1:53:04
  song out or whatever, Okay, find because they you know, libraries can
• 1:53:09
  have their uses for for certain for certain things, for certain you know of
• 1:53:14
  corporate videos or or commercials, and you know, you know that that that
• 1:53:17
  that's great, But but this is of course my personal opinion on the on
• 1:53:20
  the matter. But um, for me, as a filmmaker like I would
• 1:53:25
  never pull out music from a library, Absolutely not. And there's a reason
• 1:53:29
  for that. I mean, amuse, a film is an original piece of
• 1:53:32
  work, you know, I mean it's like a paint thing, you know.
• 1:53:35
  I mean, you're you're you want to have an original composer come in
• 1:53:39
  and do an original score to your film because your film is unique. It
• 1:53:44
  flows a certain way, it's edited a certain way, it's it's it has
• 1:53:46
  a certain esthetic, it has a certain sound to it, it has certain
• 1:53:50
  instrumentation that you want to enhance the performance of the characters. You're not going
• 1:53:56
  to get that from a library. You know what you're going to get from
• 1:53:58
  a library. You're going to get the same queue that nineteen and thousand other
• 1:54:01
  people just used in a car commercial and a feature film and something else that
• 1:54:05
  people just are using over and over again. So it's really to your advantage
• 1:54:11
  as a filmmaker to hire a composer on your feature film and get an original
• 1:54:16
  score. The audience will love you for it, You'll love yourself for it.
• 1:54:19
  And there are lots and it's not look it's not expensive. Lots of
• 1:54:24
  composers out there that are hungry looking for work that I'll even do it,
• 1:54:27
  that will even do it for experience, just to to to to to work
• 1:54:30
  on it sometimes, you know, I mean, just you just need to
• 1:54:33
  find those people and reach out to those people to do an original score to
• 1:54:35
  your movie. It is absolutely worth it. And do not cheap out on
• 1:54:40
  the music, because I mean, even George Lucas will tell you that sound
• 1:54:44
  is fifty percent of the movie, so um, you know, and it's
• 1:54:47
  true because you know, we see with our eyes and we smell with our
• 1:54:49
  nose, but we're gon we hear with our ears. But since we're not
• 1:54:51
  in smell a vision, you know, we're seeing and hearing. So it's
• 1:54:56
  like kind of a fifty fifty experience. So sound and sound to music and
• 1:55:00
  all that stuff is is such an important part to your film. Don't cheap
• 1:55:04
  out on it. Do you use a temp track when you're editing or whatever,
• 1:55:09
  Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. I look, if you're editing and
• 1:55:13
  you're editing and you're and you're using al al Alan Sevestree temp track because you
• 1:55:16
  just want to give the composer an idea or something. Yeah, that's fine,
• 1:55:19
  But I'm just saying at the end of the day, you know you
• 1:55:23
  have to uh certainly a temp temp tracking is very common. Yeah. You
• 1:55:28
  people are just putting in music just to get an idea, you know when
• 1:55:30
  they're cutting, but the end result is something completely different. Uh. So
• 1:55:35
  that's that's that's a that's obviously a good way to to to to do it.
• 1:55:39
  But when you I have a whole chapter in the book about the music
• 1:55:42
  of horror films, and I interview, I interview some amazing composers you know
• 1:55:45
  in there. I mean John and John Atman, John Debney, you know,
• 1:55:48
  I need to you know, some great folks, um and they I
• 1:55:54
  really get into it with them about that stuff. And I think it's very
• 1:55:57
  insightful for you to for for the reas to read that chapter on music and
• 1:56:01
  sound. It's really it's really a good when. It's actually one of my
• 1:56:03
  actually I think it is my favorite chapter in the book. It's right,
• 1:56:05
  it's actually quite extensive to the interviews. Um. But but you know,
• 1:56:10
  but music though, too, I mean, you know, it's uh,
• 1:56:13
  there are there are just so many elements to it, between instrumentation and and
• 1:56:18
  and uh and the overall feel of scenes and everything. Music really helps the
• 1:56:23
  audience. It really helps direct the audience to the emotions that that they want
• 1:56:28
  to feel in a scene. And and and for you to just like pull
• 1:56:30
  something out of your hat, you know, it's it's it's it's a shame.
• 1:56:33
  It's too bad, you know, And I think that it can be
• 1:56:35
  you can really improve yourself if you if you hire a composer. So so,
• 1:56:41
  did they come in during as the you know, you lock the picture,
• 1:56:45
  it goes over to sound posts they're doing the the you know fully and
• 1:56:49
  the designing and everything. Does the soundtrack come in at the very you know,
• 1:56:54
  after all that happens, or is that kind of going on at the
• 1:56:56
  same time? Well, well, sometimes sometimes you can have sometimes you can
• 1:57:00
  get depending on your relationship with the composer. Sometimes you can get get if
• 1:57:03
  you're married to the customer. But if you sometimes if you're if you're like
• 1:57:10
  before you even like unreal evil like I had, I had uh the music
• 1:57:14
  music ideas before we even started. I had them, you know, like
• 1:57:16
  I said, hey, you know, I want this kind of style.
• 1:57:18
  And it was able to start kind of getting gone on the music early on
• 1:57:21
  you before we even shot the film. So I mean, I think sometimes
• 1:57:25
  you can if you have that kind of a relationship with a composer, you
• 1:57:27
  can say, hey, I'm kind of thinking I want to do this kind
• 1:57:29
  of thing, you know, maybe start coming up with some ideas, and
• 1:57:31
  then they can start doing that early on. But but what normally happens is
• 1:57:36
  this. You you you shoot the movie, you cut the movie, you
• 1:57:40
  you lock the movie, and then and then it goes to the sound stage,
• 1:57:44
  the sound sound uh, not an actual sound stage, I mean this
• 1:57:47
  sound the sound editing process, so the music process stage of production. UM.
• 1:57:54
  And what what you the director? What the director should be doing at
• 1:57:58
  this at this point after after the picture is locked, is you need to
• 1:58:00
  you need to UM sit with usually three different kinds of people, usually your
• 1:58:06
  sound designer, your composer, and your your CGI artist if you have one,
• 1:58:13
  which a lot of times you don't, but sometimes you do, and
• 1:58:15
  you'll need to sit with them and talk about the special effects shots that you
• 1:58:17
  need to do. UM. But more commonly you'll probably on low budget,
• 1:58:21
  it's probably gonna be just your sound and your music. So what you're gonna
• 1:58:25
  do is you're gonna sit with you you're gonna hire a sound um, a
• 1:58:28
  sound designer and a sound editor, and they're gonna you're gonna you're gonna do
• 1:58:31
  what's called spotting. You're gonna spot with these guys. You're gonna you're gonna
• 1:58:34
  watch the film from beginning to end, and you're gonna give them notes.
• 1:58:38
  You're gonna say this scene, I would like to hear metallic sounds coming from
• 1:58:42
  there, and I want more of a Bobcat growl on the monster, and
• 1:58:45
  I want this and bla blah blah blah. And they'll just make notes as
• 1:58:48
  as you're going along, and you'll it'll it. Believe me, they'll thank
• 1:58:51
  you for it because it helps them, saves them time, saves you time.
• 1:58:57
  Everybody's on the same page of what kind of sound design looking for.
• 1:59:00
  Then you do a spotting session with your composer and it's the same sort of
• 1:59:04
  process, but you're talking more in terms of music. You're saying, I'm
• 1:59:08
  I'm thinking more like you know, you know. Depending on how detailed they
• 1:59:14
  get with you and what you're understanding is of music and how it works,
• 1:59:16
  the conversations can be very detailed, and they can be very generic. They
• 1:59:20
  can be very much like, well, I don't know. I think there
• 1:59:24
  should be some music here, but I'm not really sure what. And then
• 1:59:26
  the composer will say, okay, cool, I'll do something there. But
• 1:59:29
  I have a like, I have a little bit of a music background,
• 1:59:30
  So when I talked to my wife and about composer, we have like a
• 1:59:34
  nice conversation about like I don't know about you know, the horns and maybe
• 1:59:38
  the D minors better, or maybe some piano work here. That's sort of
• 1:59:41
  thing. So it's a little bit more detailed, um, But I think
• 1:59:45
  in general, when you're talking to a composer, it's better to give them,
• 1:59:48
  give them the emotion that you're going for in the scene, like this
• 1:59:53
  scene is sad, this scene is scary, this scene means this scene is
• 1:59:57
  a really big moment, and I don't want to hear any music at all
• 2:00:00
  until we see the knife at the end. We'll be right back after a
• 2:00:04
  word from our sponsor and now back to the show. You know that kind
• 2:00:13
  of direction for your answer, And again the composer will thank you for this,
• 2:00:17
  and they have a clear idea of clear direction of where they're going with
• 2:00:20
  that. And then the same thing happens with the CGI, you do the
• 2:00:24
  same thing. I sit with them and you spot it and you tell them
• 2:00:27
  what kind of special effects you want. You know, I want it to
• 2:00:29
  glow, and I want the guy's face to morph into a lizard or whatever
• 2:00:31
  it is, and I want it to be green and that sort of thing.
• 2:00:34
  And uh and that and that's really kind of in the in a in
• 2:00:38
  a really quick nutshell, the entire part four of my book, And that's
• 2:00:43
  kind of what you're what you got to do there at that stage, right,
• 2:00:46
  And I got there. Any typical mistakes that you see, like if
• 2:00:49
  people want CGI in a scene, are there any things they need to make
• 2:00:53
  sure they have for you to to do that? Absolutely, that's the that's
• 2:00:58
  the last chapter. Actually it's pit falls of post production and there are many
• 2:01:01
  but but but to answer that specifically, um, yes, Uh. The
• 2:01:06
  oftentimes, like I did a lot of movies that I that I've had come
• 2:01:11
  in had had one of their biggest problems is shooting the wrong plates. You
• 2:01:16
  know, like they think that, oh, well, we'll just remove the
• 2:01:18
  background and then we'll just throw some green some green shit behind him and then
• 2:01:21
  we'll take it out and after effects and it'll be great. And then they
• 2:01:25
  come in and then I mean, I've had that stuff come into me and
• 2:01:28
  it's like, yeah, just take out his take out the background. I'm
• 2:01:30
  like, guys, you didn't light the freaking green screen, right, you
• 2:01:32
  just put up you just like put some green cloth behind the guy. You
• 2:01:39
  got in too close to it. He's casting a shadow on it. How
• 2:01:43
  am I supposed to pull him out of that background and make it look believable?
• 2:01:45
  You know what I mean? Like that sort of stuff that happens all
• 2:01:47
  the freaking time. Or you know, somebody will be in front of a
• 2:01:51
  green screen but they're wearing like a green shirt. You know, it's like
• 2:01:56
  shot this right, you know, and it happens, man, I mean
• 2:02:00
  and and uh, you know, just little things like that. You know,
• 2:02:01
  there there's uh and there's book you know, there's plenty of books out
• 2:02:04
  there on green screen. Uh to if you're if you're doing green screen work.
• 2:02:09
  But that's one of the big things I see coming in as people that
• 2:02:11
  want to do green screen work on the low budget level, but they don't
• 2:02:14
  shoot it right. They shoot it very They think just because it's green,
• 2:02:18
  that's good enough, and it's not. Believe me. Um, there is
• 2:02:23
  there is a very special way to do that to get it looking good.
• 2:02:26
  And you know, it can be a million other things. Too. Bad
• 2:02:29
  sound is also a very common thing, you know, just you just had
• 2:02:31
  bad sound on set and nobody seemed to notice, and now it's been problem
• 2:02:36
  or um um. If there's voice over, make sure you get it recorded
• 2:02:41
  on set if you can, because the last thing you want to do is
• 2:02:44
  to be having to bring back actors because and especially if they have to do
• 2:02:47
  a DR and replace their dialogue over bad, badly recorded dialogue, it looks
• 2:02:54
  terrible first of all, most of the time, and oftentimes they you lose
• 2:02:58
  the original meaning of the performance. That's what I'm saying, right, So,
• 2:03:02
  I mean, I think it was Cubrick that didn't do a DR at
• 2:03:06
  all because he was like totally opposed against it. At least I think that's
• 2:03:10
  what I heard from a full Metal Jacket or something like that, they wouldn't
• 2:03:13
  do ADR or something like that. And and you know, and I'm with
• 2:03:16
  you with I'm it's like i'd say, because it's like, man, you
• 2:03:18
  know, adr socks. It's like, no, there's a match that happened
• 2:03:24
  on the set, and when you have to replace it in the studio.
• 2:03:27
  It's not it's not the same. It means not the same. Yeah,
• 2:03:30
  so you get it, I can, um so yeah. So I mean
• 2:03:35
  there's there's other things. You know. Slating is a big issue of times
• 2:03:39
  for you know, people that just horrible, horrible people that just don't slay.
• 2:03:44
  You know, like what's wrong with you? Um, slating is is
• 2:03:46
  just inexcusable. You really need to do a good slate for the editor and
• 2:03:50
  for your own sanity. And there are apps on the iPad and the iPhone.
• 2:03:57
  Um, I can't remember. I mentioned in my book, but I
• 2:03:59
  can't remember or what it's called. Off the top my head. I think
• 2:04:00
  it's called movie slate or something like that. Just look at on the iTunes
• 2:04:03
  store and I think it's like twenty bucks or something, and it's it's just
• 2:04:08
  it's it's it's amazing. You know. It's just an an iPad or an
• 2:04:11
  iPhone app and you just put the iPhone in front of the camera and you
• 2:04:14
  just click a little button and it goes click like that and it slates it
• 2:04:16
  for you. You know. So it's a it's a good high tech way
• 2:04:19
  to do all that stuff. You know. Now when you're when you're dealing
• 2:04:23
  with these higher end cameras, I do you have a high end audio track
• 2:04:29
  that's going into the camera that you've got or are you still just having to
• 2:04:32
  sync all the audio? Um? Well, what I do? This is
• 2:04:36
  what what I do is, UM, I make sure that my sound people
• 2:04:41
  are doing two things. That one one, they're running a line into the
• 2:04:45
  camera. Okay, um, so you're getting it recorded on camera, but
• 2:04:48
  they're also running into a backup, a high quality backup that that is usually
• 2:04:53
  running into a recorder that that can record it at way high quality, a
• 2:04:57
  way higher quality than the camera. Actually, so usually the audio sounds better
• 2:05:01
  on their recorder than it does on the camera. So what I do is
• 2:05:04
  I actually resinc I resink the films, so I I bring it in.
• 2:05:09
  I used the the the audio that they that they did, that they recorded
• 2:05:12
  on their their their high end recorder at higher bit rate higher um um,
• 2:05:19
  like I usually done, and I used to do like ninety six k twenty
• 2:05:24
  four bit recording super high quality of audio right um, And then I resinc
• 2:05:30
  it with the the material. Um that way now is that the most common
• 2:05:34
  way? No, Most people just take it right off the camera and oftentimes
• 2:05:38
  that's fine, um, so you know, you but if you take it
• 2:05:43
  right off the camera, it's always a good idea to have a backup too,
• 2:05:45
  you know, because if the audios fucked up on the camera. I
• 2:05:47
  had a movie that came in one time, and I kid you, not
• 2:05:50
  fifty percent of the movie they thought they had the audio on the camera and
• 2:05:55
  it was all distorted because somebody didn't set the level right going into the camera.
• 2:05:59
  So he was monitoring he was monitoring it okay through his mixer, but
• 2:06:02
  the output from his mixer going into the camera the camera was set at a
• 2:06:06
  different level, so it was distorted. Everything that it was being recorded on
• 2:06:11
  the camera was restorted and there was no backup. So everything that came in
• 2:06:15
  it was like that the whole time. And they were they were totally devastated,
• 2:06:19
  totally pissed, fired the fucking sound guy, and uh and it was
• 2:06:24
  we had they had the adr like fifty percent of the movie and it looks
• 2:06:27
  terrible. It's it's dreadful. And because you couldn't even hear what the guy
• 2:06:30
  said to begin with, because you couldn't even tell what he was the thing
• 2:06:35
  you had to look at his lips you know, versus like normally ADR at
• 2:06:39
  least if it's bad audio, you can kind of hear what they said to
• 2:06:42
  match it. So so yeah, I mean that's a big problem. Sound
• 2:06:45
  is a big problem in post. So pay a lot of attention to that
• 2:06:49
  and you won't be sorry. Do you typically have a love on every actor
• 2:06:54
  and the boom or how is that? Like usually one of the most difficult
• 2:06:59
  sound jos sound shows that I directed was real evil, And the reason for
• 2:07:03
  that is, like they're swinging around three sixty running down halls. It was.
• 2:07:10
  It was. It was actually one of the most difficult technically to shoot,
• 2:07:15
  and a lot of that has to do with the camera, the sound,
• 2:07:17
  the audio. And I was hiding in drawers and finals and laying on
• 2:07:23
  ground the ground, I mean, I was hiding all over the place.
• 2:07:26
  But sound on that was very difficult. And I knew it because I have
• 2:07:29
  the post experience. So I told the producers and so I said, hey,
• 2:07:32
  man, you got to hire this sound guy, this one sound guy
• 2:07:34
  I've used before, And I said, you know, he's got the gear.
• 2:07:36
  We need to lab all these actors. You need to run the audio
• 2:07:42
  into this mixer and all this stuff otherwise we're gonna have a We're gonna have
• 2:07:45
  a cluster fucking post sound wise. Luckily they listened to me and we so,
• 2:07:49
  yeah, real evil when you know, we everybody has got to lab
• 2:07:53
  on. They're running around. The sound guy's ducking around in rooms and whatnot,
• 2:07:57
  and uh that's kind of how that was made, uh you know,
• 2:08:00
  but usually it's usually it's just a few labs and a boom, you know,
• 2:08:03
  and it's and that's that's plenty for what you're doing. But you know,
• 2:08:07
  when your found footage is a little harder to make because you're because of
• 2:08:11
  the you're not shooting in just one direction, and then you can move the
• 2:08:13
  cast and crew and video village all the time. You know, you're swinging
• 2:08:16
  around three sixty you know, seeing everything. And it was also a lighting
• 2:08:22
  challenge to um, so yeah, labs labs is always a good idea and
• 2:08:26
  akin and that do you have to light the whole thing? Like, I
• 2:08:30
  mean, do you light everything and just like start shooting or do you actually
• 2:08:33
  light individual stuff individual shelts. Well, since we were we were shooting in
• 2:08:39
  a practical location, an actually abandoned hospital, we couldn't light from above.
• 2:08:45
  You knoww Wreck, the movie Wreck, that that whole house, that whole
• 2:08:50
  building that they're in, that was a sound stage. That thing they that's
• 2:08:54
  like a two stories sound stage that they lit from above so they could swing
• 2:08:58
  around no problem because they had lights already rigged. Now, in our case,
• 2:09:01
  we're shooting in practical locations, so we had to hide the lights a
• 2:09:05
  lot of times. Um. And then there was some story element, like
• 2:09:07
  there was this film crew shooting, so we lay left the lights around and
• 2:09:11
  songs stood forth. And that was one of our sort of cheap ways to
• 2:09:15
  try to leave lights in the shot and I sort of have some sort of
• 2:09:18
  meaning why they're there, um and and but you know, for but now
• 2:09:22
  we have to pre love the scenes so we can stay three sixty as much
• 2:09:26
  as we wanted. And that's how most of that movie was shot. But
• 2:09:30
  it was it was a difficult shoot technically speaking, for a lot for those
• 2:09:35
  reasons. So, okay, let me ask you one more thing about post
• 2:09:39
  production. And when you're talking about budgeting, if we're saying, okay,
• 2:09:45
  let's say, for example, we're trying to shoot a fifty thousand dollars film,
• 2:09:52
  how much of that is going to be needed for post production, Like
• 2:09:56
  how much do you need to have to have you know, an editor,
• 2:10:00
  sound mix, and you know, a score. I know it's always different,
• 2:10:05
  but just to get people kind of an idea, A fifty thousand dollars
• 2:10:09
  budget, Yeah, well, I would say i'd say somewhere maybe around I
• 2:10:16
  don't know, maybe maybe maybe seventy thirty maybe seventy for you for everything,
• 2:10:24
  your production, the actors, everything, and then maybe thirty for your post
• 2:10:28
  budget. You know, possibly somewhere in that range, maybe thirty five,
• 2:10:31
  maybe even forty, depending on what you're you're doing. But I would say
• 2:10:35
  I would say somewhere around seventy thirty. Maybe it could could work for you.
• 2:10:39
  Um, because um, he's that ridiculously low or is it? Like
• 2:10:43
  on part I mean, I don't even know where that falls. It's not,
• 2:10:46
  it's not. I wouldn't say I guess this is this is gonna be.
• 2:10:50
  Everybody is going to be a different answer on that, because I mean
• 2:10:52
  I have a lot of resources for posts too, so I um, it
• 2:10:56
  just depends kind of what you have, you know, what you have to
• 2:10:58
  work with, you know, I mean editing software is incredibly cheap these days,
• 2:11:01
  but it's not the software where it's the person you're operating it. So,
• 2:11:05
  um, you know, you could buy a final cut for three hundred
• 2:11:07
  bucks, but you can't really get a good editor for three hundred bucks,
• 2:11:11
  you know. So. Um, But if you're already a experienced editor and
• 2:11:16
  you can cut the film yourself and save money, yeah, you're gonna save
• 2:11:18
  five grand in your budget or whatever it may be. But I would say
• 2:11:22
  fifty grand. You know you're not your fifty grand budget. You know you're
• 2:11:26
  not paying you know, you're probably paying somewhere, you know. Yeah,
• 2:11:31
  I would say somewhere maybe in the maybe like sixty forty to seventy thirty third
• 2:11:37
  thirty and forty being the post end of things. It shouldn't post. Shouldn't
• 2:11:41
  be as much as your production budget, I guess, is what I'm saying.
• 2:11:43
  You know, your production is going to be the chunk of the money
• 2:11:46
  is going to go to your production. All right, that's gonna do it
• 2:11:50
  for today's show. Um, we the phone kind of got funky there and
• 2:11:54
  we were having some technical difficulties and then we talk for a little bit more,
• 2:11:58
  but it wasn't really part of the show. So I'm just gonna end
• 2:12:00
  it there. I want to thank Danny Draven for coming on the show.
• 2:12:03
  Don't forget to check out his book at The Filmmaker's Book of the Dead.
• 2:12:05
  Absolutely the Bible of horror filmmaking that you know. Go to Amazon and get
• 2:12:13
  it today because it's a really if you want to be a horror filmmaker,
• 2:12:16
  there's like I'm just tons and tons of information in there. Okay, So
• 2:12:20
  thanks guys, and I'll see you on the next episode. I want to
• 2:12:24
  thank Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode. If
• 2:12:28
  you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head
• 2:12:30
  over to the show notes at Indyfilmhuscle dot com Forward slash six seventy six and
• 2:12:35
  if you have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com.
• 2:12:39
  Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out
• 2:12:43
  a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys,
• 2:12:46
  as always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, stay safe
• 2:12:50
  out there, and I'll talk too soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie
• 2:12:52
  Film Hustle podcast at Indie film huscle dot com. That's I N D I
• 2:12:58
  E F F I L M HU stli dot com,