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BPS 350: How To Make Four Features In One Year With Chad Archibald & Cody Calahan · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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  Episode number three point fifty. Be ruthless about protecting your writing days,
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  a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that
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  next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business
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  of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your
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  host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting
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  Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is
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  sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof
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  screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot
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  Com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff. Today we're talking with
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  Chad Archibald and Cody Callahan of Black Fawn Films. Their films Antisocial two and
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  Bite just premiered at the Fantasia Fest up in Toronto, and it's supposedly somebody
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  like threw up and it was so gross watching the movie Byite that somebody threw
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  up. I think, you know, I don't know how true it is,
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  but it's a great thing to for publicity, you know. And I
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  think they they after that, they started giving out like barf bags with their
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  logo on it and everything. So, I mean, these it's pretty amazing
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  how they have been able to get out and find an audience. And you
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  know, as we talk about in the interview, they get out and they
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  go to horror fests and they go to cons and do you know they're they're
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  out there really getting the word out about their films and that's how they've been
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  able to build up an audience. And one of the things we talk about
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  a lot on this show is the key to filmmaking is finding your audience.
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  That's all you need to have if you want. If you make a film
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  and are able to sell it and get it out to people who want to
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  see it, that's all you need. Let me go ahead and get to
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  the interview. This is Chad Archibald and Cody Callahan. Worst thing I wanted
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  to talk about was just coming off of Fantasia Fest, and you know,
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  one of the big things we talk about is distribution and how people are connecting
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  with their audiences. And first, I'm kind of wondering how much of a
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  role Fantasia Fest plays into your overall strategy for getting the word out and how
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  are things working nowadays with the way that VOD has kind of changed and DVDs
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  aren't as big anymore. Can you talk about just the way that you're getting
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  your film out there, how people can find it and how you're connecting with
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  your audience. Well, I guess the whole Fantasia thing. We we love
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  going to this festival. It's it's fairly close to us. It's about eight
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  hours from where we live, so it's it's been a staple with I think
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  we've had like eight films there over the years. But we you know,
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  we generally come up with you know, thirty forty people, our entire cast
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  and crew, and we have a great time up there. It's it's kind
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  of like our little vacation from the year, and I mean it's just aside
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  from that is actually, you know, just one of the best festivals out
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  there. It's it's run so well. The organizers put so much effort into
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  uh, you know, picking great films and and making it such a great
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  experience, and the fans there, like the audiences are just there's so much
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  fun. So, I mean, we go up there with our films to
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  premiere them, but we also love just going to actually watch movies and and
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  uh, you know, just see what see what's coming and see what's coming
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  out next. I guess, yeah, I guess as far as getting our
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  films out there, uh, you know, we we have a sales team
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  that goes out to all the markets and and whatnot, like the fms and
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  and whatnot. But you know, it's it's difficult with any indie film to
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  really get noticed and there's just so many films out there. So I mean
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  we try to you know, first of all, I guess you know,
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  we try to make okay movies that that we hope kind of end up getting
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  standing out in the sea of other indie horror films right now. So I
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  mean, I think that's obviously the first thing that you got to try to
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  do. But aside from that, I mean, we you know, we
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  use tons of social media stuff. We uh have worked hard over the years
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  creating relationships with fans and when now we go to tons of conventions and you
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  know, we're always you know, trying to get out there and push our
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  films and just as well push ourselves. We we hire a ton of different
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  people on different shoots and we always try to treat people with respect and it
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  I think that kind of gets the word out there a little bit too,
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  I mean, at least in Canada. And then aside from that, you
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  know, we always come up with a little marketing gigs like we had little
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  barfags at the Bites. You know, we did a big any social can
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  thing at the can Market and yeah, I mean, just try to try
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  to come up with interesting ideas to engage your audiences. Right. Has it
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  changed a lot since the technology has become cheaper and people aren't doing DVDs as
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  much? I mean, is it a harder feel to get into like producing
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  horror movies? Oh, for sure. It's it's completely different now and every
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  year it gets a little bit harder, which is it's funny because it's like
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  we you know, make better movies every year, but the industry kind of
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  it's a little more difficult every year. But it's uh, I mean,
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  you used to be able to make a film and sell it fairly easily because
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  any distributor would be like, okay, well, I mean we're going to
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  sell one hundred thousand copies to the Blockbusters and the Rogers out there instantly,
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  so you know, there's actually no way we're going to lose money on these
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  films. Right. So there's just there's tons of money to be made back
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  then, and distributors nowadays, uh, you know, they have to really
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  work to get people to to watch it or rent it on iTunes or you
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  know, there's just so many films accessible to everyone at the you know touch
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  of a button. So it's it's, uh, it's now a matter of
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  actually getting people to watch your films and getting people to actually like choose them
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  out of the sea of other films. I mean, it's it's definitely changed.
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  It's and it's still changing, and it's getting you know, it's just
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  it's getting more difficult. But it's also just it's getting uh different. People
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  are just having having to come up with new ideas, and you know,
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  for years there's been you know, people in studios, you know, but
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  just being paid like, you know, tons of money to just sit there
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  and try to figure out how to how to res all of the industry because
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  it's you know, so many distributors have closed down. I think there's like,
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  you know, thirteen percent of the distributors out there are still you know,
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  still still kicking. But I mean so many of the smaller guys just
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  got ate up by big studios or just had to close their doors. Whenever,
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  you know, all the DVD market collapse, right, Do you feel
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  like that has anything to do with people like doing more self distribution, or
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  just the fact that it's you know, people aren't renting DVDs anymore, there's
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  no more there's really not like a physical product anymore. Yeah, I mean
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  there's still out there. We still release all our films on DVD and Blu
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  ray, but yeah, it's it's got to the point where I think people
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  who are like real big fans, who are like collectors of DVDs and whatnot,
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  they're the ones who picked that those up. And the people who don't
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  specifically have a giant DVD collection, you know, they end up going on
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  vod and whatnot. So it's it is hard, but there's still you know,
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  we go to tons of conventions and sell DVDs from a booth and and
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  there's still you know a lot of people out there that really really like them.
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  A lot of people are happy spending you know, a few bucks on
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  getting an actual physical product. It turns into kind of a collector's item,
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  you know, right whereas you know, you buy it on iTunes and it
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  just disappears after you can't you can't you know, autograph a download either.
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  So what it would back in the early days before you guys had kind of
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  built up this following. What was your primary way of kind of getting the
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  word out. Has it always been the same way or have you you know,
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  have you used social media? And have you you used you know?
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  I mean, I guess my question is how can people who are kind of
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  going in this into this for the first time start building an audience and you
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  know, focusing on who their core audience is going to be. We'll be
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  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
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  I think years ago me and Cody actually traveled across Canada with a movie
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  called Never Lost and we just uh, you know, we we rented movie
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  theaters from Montreal to Vancouver and just kind of traveled. Every day. We
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  would go to a different location, different theater and try to you know,
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  sell or try to screen our film. It actually proved to be very difficult.
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  I mean, we have we had a great time doing it, and
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  we met a ton of people, but it's to make something like that really
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  work and come out financially, Okay, It's very difficult to get people to
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  come and sit in a theater, especially if you don't have a following in
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  that area, you know, like we can we can pack the theater in
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  Tromp because you know, all our friends and family are from here. But
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  but it was it was something that I think we were a little you know,
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  we learned a lot from doing it. And I mean even even when
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  we were starting out, like the the biggest thing I think that we did
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  was just, you know, try to surround ourselves and work with a ton
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  of people who are really passionate and just from from their passionate excitement about the
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  films, you know, they would spread it to other people. And you
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  know, it's it's not like it was making a huge difference in the industry
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  or anything, but for us, you know, little guys just making a
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  movie, it does help get the word out there. You know, if
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  you post something on social media, then you have you know, ten other
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  people posting it as well, and you know, all their friends on all
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  their from pages see it, and you know, it kind of spreads like
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  that. And I mean we also, you know, we went to we'd
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  rent out theaters around Toronto and gwelf and went on and screened to screen some
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  of our films there and just try to make a big show that we We
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  screened a film years ago where we had you know, we had a big
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  party at a bar and we invited the cast and crew and whoever wanted to
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  come, and we had bands play and at the end of the night it
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  was like the big trailer release and we you know, released the trailer there
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  and then we you know a few months later, we went and we had
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  another bigger party and we had you know, more bands playing. We released
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  a new trailer that was there, and the third band was like the third
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  time was like a release where we showed a few of our music videos for
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  the bands that were playing there, and we showed the trailers and we released
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  tickets for the actual screening at the Cineplex and we ended up selling out three
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  or four theaters well, which was you know, it was great, but
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  that was you know, back in the day whenever you know, there wasn't
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  YouTube, not to day this no, but that that's exactly the kind of
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  things that I hear from a lot of people now, which is, you
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  know, not if you want to have success filmmaking, especially you know way
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  outside you know, in the indie film market, you really have to become
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  your your own giant publicity machine, you know, and connect with people versus
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  some other people who want to, you know, have a company that's like
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  they're going to make their film and then they're just going to go out and
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  sell it to a distributor that that doesn't really seem to exist as much anymore.
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  Yeah, it's it's definitely a challenge. Everything is a challenge, and
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  I mean you have to take advantage of the things that don't cost money,
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  and ideas are one of those things that you know, you can often come
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  up with ideas that you can do cheap or or I think if you kind
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  of try to kind of think like a publicist a little bit, just finding
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  different angles of you know, how you can promote something. You know,
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  we had talked about your ago any social which was, uh, you know,
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  it's kind of like what a Facebook turned all its users into zombies and
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  we were going to get you know, little super cheap USB keys and put
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  the trailers on them, you know, hand them out to everyone on the
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  streets and stuff like that. So you know, people get a little USB
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  key, which would you know be a buck or two, and you know
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  on the USB key there would be like this you know, social media horror
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  movie. But I mean, I think just even doing that there's there's the
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  value of people actually picking up the the product, like the USB key or
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  whatever. But there's also a value in just just meeting people right and being
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  like, oh, so you guys are the actual filmmakers and you're actually on
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  the street. It's almost like years ago when you're in line for like a
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  concert, and like a guy would come over and be like, here's my
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  band's tape. We're just handing them out to everyone. I'd like listen to
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  the tape and be like, I met that guy. I think nothing that
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  years ago, and I remember like being like a old school Yeah I had
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  to be this tament. Now he's you know, and now I'm watching his
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  music videos on Much Music when they played music videos, right, well,
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  tell me different. Yeah, well that's my era two. Uh but uh
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  well, let me let me ask you one more thing about distribution, and
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  then I'm going to change focus to uh, you know, screenwriting and some
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  of the other aspects. Now right now, you've got Anti Social too,
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  and you've got Bite and they both premiered at Fantasia Fest. What what is
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  the where do they? Where do you go from there? In terms of
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  like, I mean, are you guys kind of out of the process.
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  Now, are you just doing publicity or are you actually involved with where it's
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  going to be going in terms of like US, distribution, European you know
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  all that stuff. Is that, like where are you right now in that
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  process? I think we're We're lucky enough to work with the studio right now
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  called Breakthrough Entertainment, and they have a team of people who, you know,
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  we've reached out to it and sat down and discussing the festivals that the
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  films are going to be and or at least reach out to and apply to.
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  And they also take it, you know, out as far as into
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  the industry for sales. So I mean, we do our local part with
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  the people that we know to help out. But in all honesty, we're
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  on our next film already. We have an eight picture deal with Breakthrough Entertainment
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  over two years. So we've just finished shooting the third of eight films and
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  we're editing it right now and getting ready to go into prorection on the next
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  five. So what that's like four films per year? Yeah, Okay,
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  Well let's let's go into that a little bit, because that seems to me,
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  that seems I mean, it seems like you guys probably you know,
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  may stop to eat for two seconds and then you go back to work.
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  Is that kind of your lifestyle now? Yeah, that's kind of kind of
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  why I said Pantasia was our holiday for nine days, and as soon as
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  we got back, we're back to work. It's funny. Cody's actually away
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  right now working on Better the Dead, which is the third film that we're
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  doing with Jeff Mahart who directed it. Okay, so can we talk a
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  little bit about it? Oh? Go ahead, Sorry, No, it
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  was just funny because I think we drove back from Montreal and I think I
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  slept in my bed for like six hours and then got up and drove to
• 17:44
  a cottage where we set up like all our edits edit sweets, and I've
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  been here since Fantasia, and that's it's like we have to kind of do
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  these these endurance trips of getting things done. So, I mean, it's
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  it is insane. I mean, we really we're excited going into this set
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  of films, and I think the hardest thing is actually just just getting all
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  the concepts together and getting them all approved of the studio and whatnot. Because
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  you know, like we said, it's it all starts with your idea and
• 18:17
  your concept being unique. If it's not a unique idea, then there's you
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  know, it's going to be very different, difficult to stand out. Well,
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  there obviously has to be a profitable aspect of what you guys are doing,
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  you know, So I mean to attract a company like Breakthrough, right,
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  Yeah, I mean I think the industry is, you know, the
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  industry is still buying movies and there's still you know, I think there's still
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  a spot in it for sure if you if you make quality films, right,
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  and yeah, I think Breakthrough is also kind of you know, I
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  think they've seen a lot of the films that we had done in the past
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  for you know, ten dollars, and they can see, you know,
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  where we've come and where we're going, and they really want to kind of
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  invest in our future as well. So this is this is a first step
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  to it. Okay, now I want to sidetrack for just a second.
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  I wanted to sidetrack for one second because I was reading one of your interviews,
• 19:21
  Chad, specifically about Desperate Souls, which you made I think when you
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  were twenty two. Right, yeah, Now, you mentioned that you kind
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  of messed up the sound and everything, and you had some issues with that,
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  but ended up selling it to Lionsgate and Alliance Films. Right, yeah,
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  okay, can you just describe how that happened or how it's possible that,
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  you know, to do something like that, because I hear so many
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  nightmare stories about filmmaking and things going wrong and people who are never able to
• 19:52
  you know, their film ends up sitting in a closet somewhere. We'll be
• 19:56
  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
• 20:04
  you know, despite their best efforts and everything. And I was just
• 20:07
  wondering how that kind of happened, or if you can talk a little bit
• 20:10
  about that. Yeah, you know, we went out and we made this
• 20:14
  movie, and we made every mistake in the book. We shot it and
• 20:18
  all the audio was so horrible that there's generators in the background of everything.
• 20:22
  I went out and bought three redheads, so like three one K lights and
• 20:27
  lit the whole movie with that. I was just clueless. All we knew
• 20:30
  is that there was these cameras, these DVX one hundreds that shot Sorry,
• 20:36
  there's huge bang. Anyways, and that was the last we heard of Chad.
• 20:45
  Yeah. Anyways, there's these cameras DVX one hundreds that were the first
• 20:51
  cameras to really shoot twenty four P. So it's basically you know that moment
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  when you know, a pro sumer cameras stopped looking like your home video,
• 21:00
  right, So we had pre ordered two of those, and I mean,
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  I know at that point before then, it's like, you know, to
• 21:08
  go out and film the movie on a pro sumer camera, it still had
• 21:12
  a very video e look, right, So the was that is that HD?
• 21:18
  No, that was standard death right, Yes, that's what I thought.
• 21:21
  Yeah, so it so we went out and we shot this movie.
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  You know, we literally thought we could shoot in a week, and it
• 21:27
  took you know, two years, of course, so clueless and yeah,
• 21:33
  we we made every mistake in the book. I ended up having to build
• 21:37
  a sound room in my basement and I re recorded every line of dialogue,
• 21:42
  every sound, every movement, every footstep in this room and Vegas video and
• 21:51
  linked it all up and made the M and E and because I had figured
• 21:56
  out what an M and was at that point, and yeah, yeah,
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  and then released the movie. You know, we went and met with some
• 22:04
  people in Toronto. It's it's kind of it's difficult because well it's funny because
• 22:10
  so many people think it's you know, so hard to set up meetings with
• 22:14
  people in the industry. But I mean, if you have a product,
• 22:18
  if you have you know, an idea or whatever, it's like, it's
• 22:19
  really not that hard. Like people are generally, you know, interested in
• 22:26
  finding what's out there and finding you know, connecting with people. So we
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  always say that in meetings or whatever. It's like, you know, reach
• 22:33
  out and and try to try to meet with people, like we meet with
• 22:37
  people all the time. Just people are like, hey, you know,
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  I'm trying to get into film, and you would love to buy a beer.
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  That's that's what entices us apparently. But anyways, yeah, we you
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  know, got it to someone who who was interested. And back then there's
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  still again Rogers Videos and all those stores. So they looked at it and
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  they were like, you know, this is a complete movie. It's got
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  all the pieces, it's got all the deliverables, which are a whole other
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  story. But we got it all together and sold the lines getting lines less
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  and I it's just it's the worst movie ever. Like I wouldn't be able
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  to give it away. It's just it's horrible. That's a first on the
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  shows, but it's but the fact is we we made every mistake in the
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  book. And I think from that experience, that's where a lot of the
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  knowledge that I have now about filmmaking came from. You know, I I
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  think the problem with people is that, you know, people getting into the
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  industry right now, is they're so eager to just like jump into making a
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  film and you know, sorry, that's kind of what we did do.
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  So I'm not stand but I mean, like there's technology out the iPhones or
• 23:52
  whatever. It's like, go out and just make mistakes. Man, make
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  every mistake that you can possibly do, and work on making and fixing it
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  and figuring, you knowiguring out exactly what you have to do to make a
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  movie. And then whenever you actually get some money and put it into a
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  film, or if you're investing your own money, you know you can you
• 24:08
  can have a better chance of it, you know, getting completed for one
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  again. Yeah, there's so many people out there that start they jump into
• 24:18
  a feature and underestimate it and don't know how to you know, resolve issues
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  on them by themselves. Whenever, you know, shit hits the fed so
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  I think it's it's important if you don't have the money, you have to
• 24:30
  be able to trust yourself to figure it out to get the project done.
• 24:36
  Now, you you mentioned deliverables and said that was a whole other topic.
• 24:38
  Can you just briefly talk about deliverables the importance of, you know, having
• 24:45
  the things that you need to give for to make sure the film is all
• 24:48
  legal and everything, just the kind of most important things. Well, I
• 24:52
  mean, I think you know, you have to have your contracts with all
• 24:55
  your cast and crew and whatnot. There's there's different kinds of deliverables. There's
• 24:59
  deliverables if you're want to sell the film, but if you want to do
• 25:00
  tax credits is a whole other list of deliverables. But I mean it's you
• 25:06
  know, anything that you can think that you think you might be viable for,
• 25:07
  right, you know, location agreements, you know, if you're using
• 25:12
  music from someone, if someone's doing the score, you know, you make
• 25:15
  sure they have signed some paperwork and a lot of the templates are you know
• 25:18
  good enough line you can search them, search them all up. Just basically,
• 25:22
  anyone you work with who's adding anything creative, just make sure that something
• 25:29
  or if you're working. You know, if you do know a distributor or
• 25:32
  want to reach out to anyone and just say, you know, can you
• 25:33
  send me a list of what you would ask for if you bought a film.
• 25:38
  And you know, you have all your different you know an Emmy's like
• 25:41
  your music and effects tracks, so you know, when you when you release
• 25:45
  a film, you have you have to deliver one track that's all your dialogue.
• 25:51
  Then you have to release additional tracks that are basically all the sound effects
• 25:55
  in the movie, so you know, footsteps, close, uh osions,
• 26:00
  all the music and basically then if you sell it to Japan, they can
• 26:04
  go they can delete your dialogue track. They still all the other sounds of
• 26:07
  the movie and then they double over you know, beautifully and that needs right.
• 26:18
  And then of course like your trailers, your post elements, you know,
• 26:22
  fifty stills, you know, stills from set post for material right,
• 26:29
  yeah, okay, So moving into building a project, okay, and what
• 26:36
  I want to talk for a second about your process for screenwriting because a lot
• 26:41
  of our we talk a lot with screenwriters and I'm a screenwriter and people like
• 26:45
  to know what can you talk a little bit about your process for beginning of
• 26:49
  project and how you kind of start putting together your screenplays, and especially since
• 26:53
  you guys are kind of cranking stuff out, how what is the secret if
• 26:57
  you've found one for kind of getting to your final draft of a screenplay quickly
• 27:04
  and effectively a few codes? Well, I think we used to, me
• 27:14
  and Chad used to write a lot more because we would make one or maybe
• 27:18
  two movies a year. But now since we're we are doing so much,
• 27:22
  we spend sort of less time actually writing scripts and more time just coming up
• 27:27
  with solid, solid concepts and then bringing on new new writers. And I
• 27:34
  think for us, I mean obviously with every every movie we do something good
• 27:40
  and we're like, okay, we got to do We've got to remember that
• 27:41
  and do that again. But for every good thing, there's fifty back things
• 27:45
  we do. And I think as as we've sort of grown, you know,
• 27:51
  writing and you know, helping other people write and then getting people to
• 27:53
  write for us is just trying to trying to keep our ideas, you know,
• 28:00
  fun and simple and clean. Because I think both me and Chad have
• 28:03
  made movies where at some point in time there's a character who needs to explain
• 28:08
  something. And I think I think we both had that moment of like,
• 28:12
  well, I can't cut the scene because I'm I need to get this information
• 28:17
  across, but I wish I could go back, because no, at no
• 28:19
  point in a movie should somebody sit down in front of somebody and go and
• 28:22
  take a deep breath and explain why you're watching the film. And I've done
• 28:29
  it, and I know lots of filmmakers do it, but I think for
• 28:33
  us, it's like every time we make a movie, you know, we'll
• 28:36
  sit at Pantasia and we even go talk to each other and be like,
• 28:40
  okay, so let's never do that again. Let's do it. But everybody
• 28:44
  love that, so let's make sure we do that again. So I feel
• 28:47
  like every every movie, even though they're all so so different, like Any
• 28:49
  Social Too and Bite, I don't even know if you can compare them how
• 28:52
  different they are, but both of them came out of what we learned from
• 28:59
  the Drowns and Sublet and Any Social One, and it's and it's funny because
• 29:03
  it's like all of those movies are so different, but still filmmaking comes down
• 29:08
  to like some pretty simple rules that you can play with and try to break.
• 29:12
  But there's some things you just have to stick to because every time we
• 29:18
  we don't, you can see the audience's reactions or read about it in a
• 29:22
  review. What are those big mistakes then that you learned from Well, I
• 29:32
  say I would say that the biggest one is is having a having a concept
• 29:37
  that that is that is cool enough that the audience goes, oh, okay,
• 29:44
  well that's interesting and something a little different, but don't go so wacky
• 29:48
  that you need a character to explain why you're watching the film. We'll be
• 29:52
  right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 30:03
  And like you know, even on Anti Social, it took us forever to
• 30:06
  try to figure out a way to tell the audience that Facebook. But you
• 30:11
  know, in our case, the website is called red Room. How does
• 30:15
  how does this website you know, basically possess people? And why is it
• 30:18
  doing it? Without having one character talk to you for five minutes? So
• 30:23
  it was about getting all those pieces of information and suddenly trying to give them
• 30:27
  the different characters at different times. So by the time the you know,
• 30:33
  the hammer comes down and it's like this is the thing that's killing people,
• 30:37
  you already have enough to put everything together so that we don't have to explain
• 30:40
  a lot. I think that one for for us is the biggest. Then
• 30:45
  also trying to trying to keep when you're when you do such graphic horror movies
• 30:52
  where you know people are throwing up at a theater, you've got to remember
• 30:56
  that, like for an hour and a half, if you're going to be
• 31:00
  that discussing that you kind of you should add a little bit of humor,
• 31:04
  just just to release the audience here and there. And I think sometimes,
• 31:08
  you know, I mean for me personally, I can get so so into
• 31:14
  moving and so intense about it that I want it to be so serious that
• 31:15
  sometimes you kind of have to step back and go, Okay, well there's
• 31:18
  a movie about Facebook turning people into zombies, so let's tread lightly on the
• 31:25
  serious factor. So do you start out with a kind of a blueprint and
• 31:30
  put the whole thing together, you know, before you actually start writing,
• 31:33
  or do you just kind of jump in. Usually it's like Chad will call
• 31:38
  me, like he'll be driving home and he'll call me or something and be
• 31:41
  like, what about a movie? And like you know, and I'll call
• 31:45
  him with an idea, and usually we go through I don't know recently,
• 31:52
  we've gone through about fifty different ideas just trying to find the right one to
• 31:56
  put our time into to writing. But I feel like for us, it's
• 32:00
  not it's not that we we take an idea and we work on it so
• 32:05
  long that we figure out how to make it work. But we wait until
• 32:08
  there's that spark or something different or like, okay, cool, I haven't
• 32:12
  seen that before. And usually we we wait for each other's reaction, and
• 32:15
  if the reaction is like, Okay, that's really cool, then we keep
• 32:20
  developing. But I don't. We go through so many different ideas and sometimes
• 32:23
  we'll you know, well, we'll write a twelve page treatment, send it
• 32:27
  to each other and the other person's like, nah, not feeling it.
• 32:30
  Start again. My desktop has like there's a folder called old movies and I
• 32:35
  was just looking at it now and there's there's probably twenty four treatments in there,
• 32:39
  none of which they have to make right. Do you have any kind
• 32:45
  of go to structure that you use when you're like plotting things together? I
• 32:49
  mean, do you ever use something like Save the Cat or Hero's Journey or
• 32:52
  anything like that, or I assume for a horror movie, it's a little
• 32:54
  bit different. Yeah, I mean say the Cat's got some I mean that
• 32:59
  books. That books great because I do think no matter whether it's horror,
• 33:01
  drama or colony or whatever, there is there is structure, things that have
• 33:07
  worked forever. So that so you know, there's some things to keep in
• 33:09
  mind, and especially if it's your if it's your first film, I would
• 33:14
  never tell anybody did not experiment. I think that's the point of making movies.
• 33:16
  But you know, there's some things like that you need to know,
• 33:22
  you need to stick to, like, you know, giving your character a
• 33:25
  reason to be in the story and not just being like, Okay, I'm
• 33:28
  gonna go make a horror movie, so I'm going to spend you know,
• 33:30
  all the money on blood and gore because that's what people want to see.
• 33:34
  It's like I think, you know, I think there's so many movies.
• 33:37
  I think our audiences are getting smarter, and I think you've got to be
• 33:39
  you got to make something that's about people and stuff before you know, heads
• 33:43
  are exploding. Not that we don't do that. I think the other thing
• 33:50
  as well, that that we've got used to doing. And I think this
• 33:52
  is a little bit more of a producer writing thing. Is that you know,
• 33:59
  you make sure that you can pull off what you're writing. So if
• 34:01
  you already know what your budget's going to be, or if you know that
• 34:05
  you're going to be doing it on your own with your friends, it's about
• 34:09
  coming up with ideas that you can that you know that you can pull off
• 34:14
  well, opposed to coming out like creating ideas that are are so big that
• 34:19
  you're just setting yourself up for failure. We me and Cody have done in
• 34:23
  the past. So many other filmmakers I know have done it where it's like,
• 34:28
  you know, they've got a bunch of cops coming in, and it's
• 34:30
  like as soon as you see the cops, they're just like a bunch of
• 34:31
  kids and they're like just wearing all these like whatever blue dress shirts that are
• 34:37
  all big and wonky, and it just takes you out of the whole story.
• 34:40
  But yeah, and it's you know, you're reading the script, it's
• 34:43
  like, you know, the bad guys walk in and there's a riot scene,
• 34:45
  and then you go to shoot it and it's like your four bodies,
• 34:50
  your grips, your gaffers, and there's like ten people in the shot and
• 34:52
  you're like ugh, and none of them are actors, so they're all like,
• 34:58
  you know, there's always a guy who's laughing back and staring at the
• 35:01
  camera. Yeah, okay, So moving on from screenwriting going into pre production,
• 35:08
  I'm going to try to get through this as fast as possible because this
• 35:12
  is this is the kind of stuff people need to know. A lot of
• 35:14
  people want to be in your shoes. The there's the touchy subject of budgeting,
• 35:23
  investing and kind of having an idea of what a film can make.
• 35:30
  Can you guys discuss that a little bit and how you figure out okay,
• 35:34
  we can for example, you know, one hundred thousand dollars, half a
• 35:37
  million dollars, a million dollars going up and up and up. It's like,
• 35:40
  how is there some sort of information you can give us about how all
• 35:46
  that works and how you you budget? People love that question, It's so
• 35:52
  funny. How often like what's that? What's a sweet spot? Yeah?
• 35:55
  Well, you know you make a movie for that and you're to make your
• 36:00
  money back or you know it's I mean, it's different because and you always
• 36:08
  have to say this at the start, is it does come down to your
• 36:10
  concept. You know, you can make a movie for one hundred grand that
• 36:19
  has a really good idea and it could you know, go insane. It
• 36:23
  could it could make you millions, it could you know, be huge,
• 36:28
  or you make a movie for one hundred grand and it could not sell anywhere.
• 36:30
  So I mean, it always does come down to your concept and you
• 36:32
  know, the quality of you know, filmmaking that you're that you're dealing with.
• 36:38
  So I mean, there is no sweet spot that's always going to be
• 36:40
  like, you know, this is this is the safe area. You're always
• 36:43
  going to make your money back. Now, there's accounting things like, for
• 36:45
  example, if you wanted to use you know, tax credits, you know,
• 36:50
  you can look at your budget and be like, all right, we're
• 36:52
  going to invest this much and we'll get this much back in tax credits,
• 36:54
  and you know, it's always a percentage. So it's you know, it
• 36:59
  depends on what you're entire budget is. But it's I mean a lot of
• 37:07
  the stuff that we do is non union, and I mean we do things
• 37:12
  like any social Iwish union, so there's obviously a big gap there. When
• 37:16
  you go non union, you can you can shoot stuff for a lot cheaper,
• 37:22
  and there's a you know, less rules that are gonna demand your funds.
• 37:27
  But I mean, I think if you you know, if you go
• 37:29
  and you make a million dollar film, you're probably gonna want to go union
• 37:34
  because you're gonna want to like to get some names in it. That that's
• 37:37
  going to help sell your product, because I think it does kind of unless
• 37:39
  your film's a complete breakout hit, it does cap out a little bit.
• 37:45
  You know, if you don't have any names in your movie, it can
• 37:49
  be really really awesome. And still you know a lot of distributors will be
• 37:53
  like, I'm not gonna buy that or I'm gonna buy it for this much
• 37:58
  money because it's it's got nobody in it. So but I mean, you
• 38:04
  know, there's there's exceptions to every rule. You know. If people are
• 38:07
  looking for safe answers, that's that's your safe answers that you know, if
• 38:09
  you're gonna, you know, make a movie for a million bucks, you
• 38:12
  got to make sure you try to get some names in it. If you're
• 38:15
  going to make a movie for nothing, then make sure you've got a good
• 38:19
  concept to sell it. Yeah, and so where where exactly do you find
• 38:25
  the money? There's the money? Yeah, if you have any like phone
• 38:31
  numbers and addresses, yes, that's the best answer if we can answer that
• 38:37
  this podcast. All right, well, I won't to hold you to that.
• 38:44
  The industry they released the phone number phone calls from this guy. Okay,
• 38:52
  so yeah, the main thing I'm what I've been saying is just you
• 38:54
  have to really it's like any business, you have to build something that people
• 38:59
  are going to be interested in. You have to have an actor or actors
• 39:02
  or you know, somebody with a track record. You know. I always
• 39:07
  advise people, you know, if you want to make a movie for one
• 39:10
  hundred thousand dollars, make a movie for ten thousand dollars or whatever you can
• 39:14
  afford at that moment, and then you know, build up, you know.
• 39:17
  And I don't know how you guys feel about that, but it just
• 39:20
  seems like most people that are making films, it's like they start out with
• 39:23
  something really low budget and just kind of and even just shorts, you know,
• 39:28
  and then slowly move up with the next project, and as long as
• 39:30
  they can demonstrate that they have a track record, they're going to you know,
• 39:34
  be able to keep making movies. Yeah. Well, I mean it's
• 39:37
  so it's so tricky, and it's so like there's like filmmakers do need to
• 39:42
  be have a sense of responsibility for everyone else, because it's it's become an
• 39:46
  issue over the years now that everyone can make a movie. We'll be right
• 39:52
  back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 40:01
  There's so many people out there that are like, you know, I've never
• 40:05
  made a movie, but I just think that I was born to make a
• 40:07
  movie. So I'm I'm gonna go out. I'm going to talk to,
• 40:12
  you know, all these lawyers and dentists or whatever the hell and raise some
• 40:15
  money, and we're gonna go out and we're gonna make the best movie ever
• 40:20
  because I was born to make movies and I watch a ton of movies,
• 40:22
  so I'm just gonna be the best at it. And then they go out
• 40:24
  and they, you know, make a shitty film or a great film.
• 40:29
  Who knows. But chances are, like anything else, it's like you get
• 40:32
  better at doing something by doing it. And there's a lot of people that
• 40:37
  raise a lot of money and lose a lot of money. For people in
• 40:39
  the industry or not in the industry, there's a lot of people who you
• 40:44
  know, sit back and they look and they're like, oh, this is
• 40:46
  like, you know, my sister in law's cousin son, and he's a
• 40:51
  filmmaker, and he's telling me he's gonna, you know, hit the jackpot
• 40:54
  with this movie, and I'm going to give them fifty grand and they're gonna
• 40:59
  give me back two hundred grand, because that's what his little paper proposal told
• 41:02
  me. And then they go and invest the funds and into someone who's you
• 41:07
  know, made a little booklet that looks really awesome but has no idea what
• 41:12
  they're doing. And you know, then then that person you know, gets
• 41:16
  burnt and tells his story that you know, never invest in a film,
• 41:20
  you'll lose all your money. And then independent like independent people fund like financing
• 41:25
  films like that are you know, they're never going to do it again.
• 41:30
  I think everyone should be working together and you know, raising a responsible numbers
• 41:37
  to try to be like, Okay, how would I get ten grand from
• 41:39
  you even if you lose If I lose it all and there's nothing back,
• 41:44
  like I mean, I could print off DVDs and sell ten grand worth and
• 41:47
  you know a while, you know, it's like there's still you know,
• 41:52
  it's it's not that much money, so you can, like you can still
• 41:54
  recoup it for someone but I mean we you know, me and Cody know
• 41:59
  people who have invested millions of dollars in products that never got finished. And
• 42:06
  it's it's sad, but it's you know, it hurts everyone in the industry,
• 42:10
  and it's you know, it's it's the responsibility now that everyone has the
• 42:13
  power to actually make a movie. You know, you can go out and
• 42:15
  buy you know, a camera for three thousand dollars and make it, you
• 42:20
  know, a movie that could be hit. So technology is not really a
• 42:24
  factor anymore. It's just uh yeah, you know there's people out there that
• 42:29
  have done that. They've gone and raised a million dollars and when shot a
• 42:31
  movie with like casting their buddies in it. No, it's crazy. Again,
• 42:37
  Like I'm not saying don't be ambitious, but I just mean, you
• 42:38
  know, try to try to figure out what you're doing before you start spending
• 42:42
  people's money on it. Yeah. It's funny because you know, back when
• 42:45
  I was more you know, in the age, in my twenties trying to
• 42:50
  make films, I uh, I had a couple I think I had three
• 42:53
  friends who got money by showing people El Mariachi and they get like they had
• 42:58
  they had an investorm meeting. They were like, look at this movie,
• 43:00
  and look how much money this movie's made, you know, And they went
• 43:02
  out and they shot their own movie and nobody ever saw. I mean this
• 43:07
  was back in the days of like, you know, sixteen thirty five millimeters
• 43:09
  and it was a lot more expensive. But it was always funny to be
• 43:13
  like everybody was using the same one example, or clerks or you know,
• 43:17
  back in like the late nineties. You know, yeah, yeah, that
• 43:22
  was that's it. I mean, you know, to going and try to
• 43:31
  try to find money, and I mean me and me and Chad and a
• 43:36
  few people. We spend a bunch of money and shot trailers for movies that
• 43:42
  we wanted to make, and we thought, okay, so we're gonna go
• 43:44
  out, We're gonna make these shows. We're gonna make them look super high
• 43:46
  quality, great little concepts. Try to get the stories across in these short,
• 43:50
  little two to three minutes trailers, and then start setting up meetings because
• 43:59
  we have some in the show. They will show what we can do to
• 44:00
  show that we can direct blah blah blah. And it's funny because I think
• 44:08
  we made four of them, and we pitched some but and just kind of
• 44:14
  realized that. It's like people are like, Okay, that's cool, but
• 44:15
  it doesn't you know, don't show numbers. It doesn't show you guys can
• 44:17
  make money back. But when we met Breakthrough, we showed them the trailers
• 44:21
  and it was funny because they they didn't necessarily want to make those movies,
• 44:23
  but when we showed them the trailer, they were kind of like, Okay,
• 44:25
  if you guys can do if you guys can do that, we'll give
• 44:29
  you a tiny, tiny bit of money and we'll see if we'll see if
• 44:31
  this works. And that that was any sort of one, but I mean
• 44:35
  half of why we got that buzz a trailer for a completely different movie.
• 44:39
  But at least we you know, put all our effort into that, and
• 44:44
  we didn't spend too much money getting a pitch piece ready, because that's the
• 44:47
  other thing too, is don't spend twenty grand getting something together to pitch to
• 44:52
  get money for a movie. Make a movie, Yeah exactly, and we
• 45:00
  like we we also, you know, there's a ton of people out there
• 45:02
  that will be like, oh, we've got this DP and he just did
• 45:07
  a huge film, so we're going to put all of his stuff in our
• 45:09
  reels, saying that you know, our team has paid it, where you
• 45:13
  know, he may have had a ton of money and you know, a
• 45:15
  whole different group of filmmakers. You know, it is about the team that
• 45:21
  you're working with. Everything we went to break through with was stuff that you
• 45:23
  know, our team had made specifically, so you know we could we could
• 45:29
  say that whenever we walked in. It's like, it's not like we're just
• 45:30
  pulling people's reels and creating a team that's never worked together on a budget so
• 45:35
  low and saying that we can pull off you know what you're seeing here.
• 45:40
  This was us going in there being like we made this with you know,
• 45:44
  out of our own pocket, with the team that we currently have to do
• 45:46
  this this film. So you get the feeling that a lot of these companies
• 45:52
  just want to make sure that you know, you guys kind of know what
• 45:55
  you're doing, and it's like, okay, well we can, you know,
• 45:59
  we just want to see that they can. They have a beautiful image,
• 46:01
  they have good actors, they have they you know what I mean,
• 46:04
  It's like they're they're they know how to make a movie, you know,
• 46:07
  Versus a lot of these people who you know, you never know, I
• 46:10
  get people that send me their shorts all the time, and some of them
• 46:13
  look you know, high end, professionally shot, amazing, and others just
• 46:17
  look like somebody with their you know, handicam walking around or their iPhone and
• 46:22
  have no sense of you know, cinematography, movement, storytelling or anything.
• 46:27
  You know. Yeah, and it's weird because there's been like, We've got
• 46:31
  a ton of shorts and stuff into us, and sometimes it's like you look
• 46:35
  at them and they're just a mess, but you can see something in them
• 46:37
  and you're like, cool, let me know you because I feel like the
• 46:43
  next thing that they do, they're gonna learn from their mistakes on this one.
• 46:45
  Yeah, and yeah, I mean it's uh, it's I think it
• 46:52
  does come down to just proving yourself, making sure that you know, people
• 46:57
  know that they you can handle produce a good product, but also just again,
• 47:06
  it does come down the concept. Like if Cody and pitched this idea
• 47:09
  of Facebook turning people into zombies and the studio inn like that, it didn't
• 47:13
  matter what we actually did. It does come down to you we have a
• 47:17
  concept. Concept in the industry. You know, people say concept is currency,
• 47:22
  So that's how you get creates. So I mean you can have you
• 47:24
  know, tons of actors and tons of people involved and whatnot, and you
• 47:30
  bring it all together and if you don't have a concept that's going to stand
• 47:31
  out, then you know you're gonna get turned out. So it is when
• 47:37
  it all comes down to it, it's about, you know, coming up
• 47:37
  with that idea that's going to stand out. Okay, let me, I'm
• 47:43
  going to try and do a little more rapid fire because I know you guys
• 47:45
  are pressed for time. I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry, I'm saying
• 47:50
  there's a little delay. Okay. So moving into production, who are the
• 47:58
  most you know, you've got your screenplay. Where do you go from there?
• 48:02
  What do you start? Do you work with like movie Magic, start
• 48:06
  working on the budget, hire a line producer? How does what is the
• 48:09
  from the end of the screenplay to the beginning of the filming kind of what
• 48:14
  what happens there? H So, usually what we do is, once we
• 48:22
  get a treatment or a script approved, we you know, create our basic
• 48:28
  budget of the idea and we started assembling our team. We're looking enough.
• 48:31
  We work with a lot of the same people because we're doing so many films
• 48:35
  back to back but we've worked hard on you know, building a crew of
• 48:37
  people that we really trust, we really enjoy working with and and respect.
• 48:44
  And I mean that's you know, it's another you know we'll tell everyone is
• 48:46
  you know, find people that you're happy working with. I get to work
• 48:51
  with Cody every day. It's my best bud, and it's uh, it's
• 48:55
  it's it's fun because it doesn't seem like work, you know obviously some days
• 49:01
  that really do. It's more fun to uh work with people you like to
• 49:07
  get along with and respect. And there's a there's a lot of people out
• 49:12
  there in the industry that want to make movies and uh, you know,
• 49:15
  there's a lot of people that let it go to their heads, uh real
• 49:19
  way that you know, once the pressures on, the pressures on of making
• 49:22
  a film, you know, they get angry or frustrated or you know,
• 49:27
  blow up or whatnot. So I mean, we we work really hard to
• 49:30
  find people who you know, work really hard to deal with stress well and
• 49:36
  are always always able to kind of put a smile on their face and and
• 49:39
  uh and continue on the day. So I mean, it's it really makes
• 49:44
  a difference. Everyone on a cruise treats each other with respect. You know.
• 49:49
  It's a key with with us doing all these films is that everyone everyone,
• 49:53
  you know, gets along and if there's an issue, you know,
• 49:55
  we all talk about it, we all figure out how to how to deal
• 49:58
  with it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
• 50:06
  back to the show. We don't fire people, We don't you know,
• 50:10
  we don't blow up at people. You never hear people yelling and screaming at
• 50:15
  each other at our sets. We make a point of making sure that we
• 50:20
  got a crew. It's it's passionate and we're all in it together and we're
• 50:23
  you know, we say black Fawn family all the time. You know,
• 50:25
  we all we're all brothers and sisters that can bicker and whatnot, but in
• 50:30
  the end we're always we always have each other's back anyway. So we call
• 50:35
  all these people that we like and see, you know, see if they're
• 50:37
  able to come out and set up a crew, figure out, you know,
• 50:40
  if it's a studio, if the build that we're going to do,
• 50:45
  get people involved there. And our pre production times are pretty quick. I
• 50:49
  mean we had I think three or four weeks of pre production on Bite,
• 50:57
  and that's like literally from you know, we got this like finished three weeks
• 51:00
  before we started shooting, so you know, it all has come together really
• 51:07
  quick. But yeah, it's just it's almost like a checklist for us.
• 51:10
  Now here. Here's the people that we need. Let's call out where we're
• 51:15
  going to lodge people, Where are we going to shoot this where, you
• 51:16
  know, do what elements do we need to do? That's our gear.
• 51:22
  We've again, because we were doing so many films, we've set up relationships
• 51:27
  with William White, so you know every show that we every movie that we're
• 51:30
  doing, we just you know, we call them. Everything's all our accounts
• 51:34
  are all set up, everything's ready. We just got a call and just
• 51:38
  discussed what we're doing, and you know they've got our back on everything.
• 51:42
  You know, Pandavision does all our cameras as well as you know, some
• 51:46
  support from from additional camera houses. But it's, uh, you know,
• 51:52
  we've got it laid out with people that we really trust and work well with,
• 51:55
  and you know, luckily we can we can kind of make all these
• 51:58
  calls fairly quickly and get everything together. That's from like a producing standpoint,
• 52:05
  I guess from a directing standpoint, it's you know, it's it's even more
• 52:09
  of a challenge to get a film ready so quickly. And I mean we're
• 52:15
  not we haven't done it. It's not like we're going and storyboard all of
• 52:17
  our stuff with the storyboard artists. You know, as amazing as that would
• 52:22
  be, that's one of the luxuries that we don't. They're always jealous of
• 52:24
  because we are making these films so quickly, we do have to you know,
• 52:28
  we end up with a with a little booklet like Chicken Scratch, where
• 52:34
  it's like, you know, we've we've storyboarded everything out. But I mean
• 52:37
  it's almost like it's in Chinese. It's sore. But I mean whenever you
• 52:44
  sit there it actually you know, go through it with with the DP and
• 52:47
  decipher it all and get on the same page. And you know, we
• 52:51
  you know, sometimes we print them off and you know, give them to
• 52:52
  everyone, show everyone what we're doing every day. Ah, you just arrive
• 52:59
  at the morning with like, ay, we're going to do you know this
• 53:02
  establishing shot, then we're going to do a close up here, and the
• 53:05
  we're going to and you just kind of put all that together the night before
• 53:09
  and then arrive and do the shot list. Is that kind of how it
• 53:13
  works. Yeah, Like, I mean, we have our idea who breaks
• 53:15
  down the whole schedule and works without something, you know that the best way
• 53:20
  that we can we can do this and you know, just go through.
• 53:24
  You know, they send theirs out to everyone the day before everyone gets it.
• 53:28
  They kind of give a little skin of what we're doing, what rooms
• 53:30
  we're in. At the end of our days, we generally try to you
• 53:34
  know, have a little discussion with our lighting team went on and what we're
• 53:37
  doing first the next day, and you know, how we can get a
• 53:39
  jump on the day because that's always the biggest challenge is getting the first shot
• 53:44
  off. And yeah, so I mean it's a yeah, do you have
• 53:52
  any advice for Like I recently watched The Drownsman and the quality of the image
• 54:00
  on that is incredible. And I don't know, I don't know what the
• 54:04
  budget was on the film, but I was wondering if there were any sort
• 54:07
  of tricks or tips that you had for you know, getting that kind of
• 54:13
  production value and working at that kind of like budget level. Do you light
• 54:20
  each shot or is it just like you light the whole thing and then shoot
• 54:22
  from different areas? I think on The Drownsmen. Depending on where where we're
• 54:28
  talking about, Like The Drownsman, there was a set that we had built
• 54:31
  right, and I mean, you know, so many people talk about lighting
• 54:35
  and and cameras and lenses and whatnot, but I mean it's it's something that
• 54:42
  people just that miss from like an indie perspective, So many people just just
• 54:47
  totally skimp out on set design in our direction, filling your frame of things.
• 54:53
  And Cody came from a art background, so you know when me and
• 54:58
  him sar worked together own stuff really left a lot from from him and uh
• 55:01
  kind of his insights on that because it is you know, it's like light
• 55:07
  something beautifully. You can you can have a great camera, but if if
• 55:12
  your frames not the pieces aren't all in the right spots, then uh,
• 55:17
  you know, it's not gonna it's not gonna be the shot that you're looking
• 55:21
  for. So even like things like The Johnsman, like we we've built a
• 55:24
  bunch of our sets, and when we build their sets, it's literally like
• 55:28
  it's us building the sets. It's not like you know, we hire a
• 55:30
  big you know, we have a small team of people that we really trust
• 55:34
  that are so hard working and we all get together and build these in a
• 55:40
  few days, and you know it's it's nights that we're you know pulling you
• 55:46
  know, three hour days and and when not to actually build them. But
• 55:50
  we do it so that we can actually have that control where we can you
• 55:52
  know, put elements wherever we want them to create our frames and we're not
• 56:00
  so it's to start off, you know, that's how we we try to
• 56:02
  you know, make things look great. Brownson, there was completely you know,
• 56:06
  we decided that we can't shoot at in the basement. We don't want
• 56:08
  to be limited by you know, your standard basement rips that look like every
• 56:15
  other indie film. You know, we wanted to use water, and we
• 56:19
  wanted to flood the place, and you know we can't do that inside a
• 56:21
  studio or inside someone's basement. So yeah, I mean we could do it,
• 56:28
  but you know again burning vitations and people, you can do it once.
• 56:36
  But as far as you know, you set up your room and your
• 56:38
  your your basic setup of like this is this is kind of the look that
• 56:42
  we're going to have. This is our standard look for this room. And
• 56:46
  then according like depending on how you're shooting things, you you know, you
• 56:51
  have floating lights, moving around you have, you know, whatever you need
• 56:54
  to kind of uh entice the shot a little bit. And I'm and also
• 57:00
  you know, keeping continuity with everything as much as you know, you move
• 57:02
  lights around in between shots and you know, make every shot look radio.
• 57:07
  So you know, you don't want to go from a shot a wive where
• 57:10
  your actors faces shadowed and then you know you're push into close up and it's
• 57:15
  like they're beautifully light. You know, it's about it's about standing the lighting
• 57:21
  for all the shots when you start, when you start on your lives,
• 57:23
  you know, But I mean it's not that, it's it's just about kind
• 57:28
  of creating, creating your atmosphere, filling your frame using you know, using
• 57:32
  the foreground and uh the background we had in the drowns and layer. We
• 57:38
  decided we wanted to use these kind of old aquariums and we kind of like
• 57:44
  hid them among soul think they were like old tomato plants that had drought up
• 57:49
  from a backron that we had kind of haangled over everything just to kind of
• 57:53
  give everything a little bit more textures, stuff that light can kind of touch,
• 57:58
  opposed to just having flat holes, right, And then we we took
• 58:02
  all these aquariums, you know, filled them with dirty water and leaves and
• 58:07
  craft, and then we threw through lights, little lights to behind them,
• 58:10
  like just little keynotes or short keynotes or whatever, and lit them all up.
• 58:16
  So then you know, as they're walking through here, there's no like
• 58:19
  the only light sources kind of like these weird like dirty musty aquarium or at
• 58:27
  least that that's what they're illusion that that's the only light sources these things,
• 58:30
  and they're always you know, there's something way in the background, and you
• 58:34
  know, a dirty water just kind of has like a little bit of a
• 58:37
  gradient to it to kind of you know, there something a little interesting and
• 58:43
  I'm just visually appealing in the background. You right now, can you talk
• 58:47
  a little bit about Sorry I interrupted you yea have a skype I've done Okay,
• 59:00
  it's like doing a broadcast broadcast to the Middle East or something. Okay,
• 59:05
  So I want to One of the things that always jumps out at me
• 59:09
  literally is, uh, you know these scenes, these really gut wrenching horror
• 59:15
  scenes where you know you've got your actress there, you've got you know,
• 59:21
  they're being dragged off or something Horrible's happening to them. Can you talk a
• 59:23
  little bit about directing a scene like that, how it feels being on set
• 59:29
  doing something like that, because it's just like I've always been curious, how,
• 59:34
  you know, just what are you talking about it? Do you cut
• 59:37
  the camera, cut the scene and everybody's laughing two seconds later or what?
• 59:40
  What kind of what's that like? Uh? I don't know, Coach,
• 59:49
  I don't know. Sometimes it can it could go either way. Like sometimes
• 59:52
  it's you know, you'll shoot a scene where you know, the bad guys
• 59:57
  getting killed or whatever, and we'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:00:01
  sponsor and now back to the show. There's a huge explosion of blood and
• 1:00:12
  it sort of as soon as you cut the camera, it's like, you
• 1:00:14
  know, the gore guys are cheering and everybody's laughing because it's you know,
• 1:00:17
  it is a little ridiculous. But then sometimes we have those scenes where you
• 1:00:22
  know it the actors get so into it and you get so into it and
• 1:00:27
  you're you're pushing for the best performance and you sort of get a performance that's
• 1:00:30
  that's like real, and so you know, so I think it goes either
• 1:00:37
  way, because you know, we've had times where you know, the scene
• 1:00:38
  ends, we say cut and it's just silence, and everybody's like, holy
• 1:00:43
  shit, Okay, I think we got that. We can move on.
• 1:00:47
  I think it kind of depends what what the scene. You know, what
• 1:00:52
  the scene is. You know, if it's if it's somebody running around with
• 1:00:53
  a chainsaw, kind of people off in the blood spray everywhere, we usually
• 1:00:58
  get a pretty positive response from our crew. But if it's something more emotional,
• 1:01:04
  then you know, sometimes it's one of those ones where I can't remember
• 1:01:07
  the exact scene, but I remember shooting something with Jeff Mahars, who's are
• 1:01:12
  usually our DP for everything, and you know, I said cut and he
• 1:01:15
  just sort of looked at me and he's like sort of had that holy shit
• 1:01:19
  look on his face, and it's like, okay, now we're moving on.
• 1:01:22
  So let's go to scene scene thirty four, that was twenty minutes before
• 1:01:24
  this when you were happy. Yeah, it's uh yeah, we did the
• 1:01:34
  film bite and it was full of you know, gooey, gross, disgusting
• 1:01:38
  eggs and uh and dripping like it it's supposed to be like New Kids.
• 1:01:45
  So it's really like when you want the film, it's it's it's pretty gross.
• 1:01:49
  But on set it was you know, you kind of know when you've
• 1:01:52
  got something good because you get those reactions, right, that's kind of that's
• 1:01:57
  like what you're talking about. Whenever you have been poor scene and it's like
• 1:02:00
  blood explodes everywhere, it's like you always like hope that whenever it's dumb and
• 1:02:04
  you call it cut, everyone cheers and like, you know, love it.
• 1:02:07
  It's always a bummer whenever you do one of those scenes and it goes
• 1:02:12
  and it was like, okay, that's quiet, like ship. You always
• 1:02:19
  want that cheer at the end, you know, you want that. With
• 1:02:22
  Bite, it was like anytime this the stringy nu kiss stuff that like it,
• 1:02:27
  as soon as it's stuck to something, it would be like webs,
• 1:02:29
  it would kind of you know, it's really very gross. And uh,
• 1:02:34
  you know, we had so much fun making that movie because you know,
• 1:02:37
  as soon as we'd called cut it, we're like, ah, so grouse
• 1:02:45
  so and and yeah. But I mean, I think when it does come
• 1:02:47
  down to shooting, the actual coverage of your of your cast, there's somebody,
• 1:02:52
  you know, depending on what your movie is, if it's you know,
• 1:02:54
  if it's a serious moment and they have to stay in character. You
• 1:02:58
  know, lot of times we'll keep everyone quiet, or we'll even you know,
• 1:03:02
  try to keep it a few people on set as possible. But yeah,
• 1:03:08
  I mean we we've shown a bunch of films. We haven't gone into
• 1:03:12
  that territory of like dirty dark, like truly disturbing, like upsetting scenes that
• 1:03:22
  are so uncomfortable to even shoot. I'm sure we will eventually. We've been
• 1:03:30
  a lot of our films have had a little bit of a lighter tone to
• 1:03:34
  them. Okay, sure, yeah, they're pretty pretty lighthearted. We're moving
• 1:03:46
  like not making like serbian film or something like that. You know, it's
• 1:03:51
  like, I can't, I can't. I don't know how people would react
• 1:03:54
  on a disturbing scene like one of those. Sorry, I had to hold
• 1:04:00
  discussion about that movie today, So it's like, that's what that's what I
• 1:04:01
  think when that guy look at our movie pretty hearted, you know, joking
• 1:04:06
  around. You know, some of our stuff is a little cartoon even,
• 1:04:11
  but uh, who was that. I didn't hear you. Some o our
• 1:04:15
  stuff is even, you know, sometimes a little joking and cartoony. No,
• 1:04:18
  but what film did you say that you you were talking about serpient film?
• 1:04:24
  Okay, I don't know if Yeah, yeah, well I haven't seen
• 1:04:28
  an effort about it. I haven't. You know, it's not on my
• 1:04:30
  list that actually thinking about things like that. It's like, because I do,
• 1:04:35
  I've often wondered I the scenes that are truly disturbing or like rape scenes
• 1:04:45
  or anything like that. It's like, you know, we haven't done anything
• 1:04:47
  like that, and I'm sure it's a it's a one that I'm sure the
• 1:04:53
  weird tone that for those and I think I think it would probably be a
• 1:04:57
  you know, something that would be very awkward to to direct or you know,
• 1:05:01
  you would really have to put a lot of uh, pay a lot
• 1:05:03
  of attention to how you're treating everyone and your actors and respect and you know,
• 1:05:10
  if you're you know, doing very serious scene and you want to make
• 1:05:14
  sure that everyone chills after, like take big breaks in between, or if
• 1:05:17
  you just want to shoot, keep shooting and you know everyone can go cry
• 1:05:20
  at the end of it. Yeah, well, I mean, okay,
• 1:05:25
  talking about the I'm trying to wrap up a little bit because I know you
• 1:05:28
  guys have to go how do you deal with the emotional stress of shooting and
• 1:05:32
  everything. Is there anything any way that you have been able to kind of
• 1:05:36
  because I mean, you guys, you're shooting a lot of movies, but
• 1:05:41
  I mean for a lot of like normal people, it's it's i mean,
• 1:05:46
  probably the most stressful thing you can do. You know, is there any
• 1:05:51
  way that you've learned to deal with that, overcoming you know, doubts or
• 1:05:57
  any sort of psychological aspect of filmmaking that you can discuss. I think,
• 1:06:02
  I mean that's kind of the great thing about Black Phone and myself and Chad
• 1:06:08
  because I think we lean on each other a lot and we share like when
• 1:06:14
  when I'm directing, I mean I'm him a lot, and when he's directing,
• 1:06:16
  he leans on me a lot. So it's like, at least we
• 1:06:18
  know when we go into a film, even if we're not directing and we're
• 1:06:21
  producing, at least we know when we go into film that there's somebody else
• 1:06:26
  there if if something goes wrong or something's like just we can't handle something,
• 1:06:30
  at least there's some of the some other person there to pow wow with or
• 1:06:34
  two, you know, just so we're not ever doing it on our own.
• 1:06:39
  But I'd say for me, what I've learned over making movies is you
• 1:06:44
  know, the minute you get there, put one hundred percent into everything while
• 1:06:46
  you're there, but just you know, try not to take everything home,
• 1:06:53
  you know, like leave leave, leave some of it, even though it's
• 1:06:56
  a past. It's hard because filmmaking is you know, at work fifty said
• 1:07:00
  passion, So it's hard to leave it sometimes. But I mean for me,
• 1:07:02
  I think it's made me a better filmmaker, not taking it home,
• 1:07:05
  not dwelling on it and not allowing myself to sleep because I'm thinking about a
• 1:07:10
  scene tomorrow and I can't figure it out. So I don't know. For
• 1:07:14
  me, I try my hardest. And that's not to say that I don't
• 1:07:16
  do it, but I try my hardest to sort of give it all on
• 1:07:19
  there and then you know, I'll still think about it at home, but
• 1:07:23
  I try not to bring it all home. Yeah, it's weird, like
• 1:07:28
  filmaking is weird, especially Indie filmmaking. The majority of the projects we do
• 1:07:33
  are overly ambitious, but just enough we'd like to think. So it's one
• 1:07:41
  of those things that's like you get out what you put into it every day,
• 1:07:45
  which is I think it's kind of a dangerous concept. It's almost like
• 1:07:50
  you know you're you're swimming in the ocean and you're doing a contest, and
• 1:07:55
  the more water you drink, the better are you. That's how you're gonna
• 1:08:00
  win. You're just gonna keep drinking water and more. Whoever drinks the most
• 1:08:04
  water wins. Where it's like it's endless. It's not like you can drink
• 1:08:08
  all the water. You know. It's like when you go to make a
• 1:08:10
  movie, it's like there's always more you can do. There's always things that
• 1:08:14
  can make the shots better, or make your days go better, or make
• 1:08:15
  your you know, film go better, or more takes, and like it's
• 1:08:19
  it's never done. So, I mean there are points, especially directing,
• 1:08:26
  when you're just like you're pushing so hard and you're like, you know,
• 1:08:29
  you just want it to be better and better and better and bigger and bigger,
• 1:08:31
  and you know you have to kind of control yourself so that you don't
• 1:08:34
  get you know, one shot done in the day. It's uh so,
• 1:08:40
  I mean, you know, it's it's it's always it's always a struggle and
• 1:08:45
  it's always stressful. And yeah, like Cody said, you know, having
• 1:08:49
  working with people that you trust and being able to kind of lean on each
• 1:08:54
  other and knowing that you're all in together and you're all trying to make it
• 1:08:57
  work is a definitely what kind of gets us through through our shoots because we
• 1:09:02
  you know, we tend to do very long days. How how long do
• 1:09:08
  you guys usually shoot, like a typical film, you know, Bite or
• 1:09:12
  Anti Social two or the Drownsman. How how long do those take to shoot?
• 1:09:18
  I mean they're all different. I think Bite took about fifteen days and
• 1:09:25
  fifteen days in Ontario, and then we shot additional two or three days,
• 1:09:30
  and so I mean they're all different. But again it does come down to
• 1:09:34
  you know, your how ambitious you're going to be. Drownsman was, oh
• 1:09:39
  man, we just kept going back for more shoots and more. Anytime you're
• 1:09:44
  dealing with water things like that, it just gets so insane. So it's
• 1:09:50
  it. I mean we've probably shot thirty days on Drownsmen. If you actually
• 1:09:55
  add them all up, we'll be right back after a word from our our
• 1:10:00
  sponsor. And now back to the show hanging In Social two. We shot
• 1:10:09
  it all a fair bit more than we planned as well, not too many,
• 1:10:13
  I betual We shot like, you know, twenty days or something like
• 1:10:15
  that on any social too. Yeah, and we usually have an editor on
• 1:10:21
  set as well, who edits as we go, so we kind of gets
• 1:10:25
  actually, you know, on day two we see day one footage or we
• 1:10:29
  see day one scenes cut together. Right, I was going to ask you
• 1:10:31
  that, so you can kind of see what if you if you miss anything
• 1:10:34
  or whatever, you can just do a quick reshoot while you have everything set
• 1:10:38
  up right exactly, so you can kind of run over and grab a shot
• 1:10:41
  that you missed her at least put her on a list and come on back
• 1:10:45
  on a weekend or something like that to uh to grab it. So I
• 1:10:48
  mean that definitely, that definitely helps us move in and it also gets that
• 1:10:53
  you know, the entire cast and crew and everyone a little bit of It's
• 1:10:57
  exciting. You know, it's like you're watching something and see some scenes come
• 1:11:00
  together and they look really really good, and you can kind of, you
• 1:11:03
  know, shoot the cast a little bit of their performance, you know,
• 1:11:06
  give them a little taste of what we're doing. You know, there's a
• 1:11:10
  lot of pas for the cast go and uh they do an entire film.
• 1:11:14
  Then they go and they send the theater and watch it and they're like,
• 1:11:15
  oh my god, this is horrible. And I mean, but we all
• 1:11:21
  do I'm sure casts of some of our earlier films do that as well.
• 1:11:27
  Uh, but at least being able to kind of show them they have they
• 1:11:30
  have a confidence in the crew, has a confidence that everyone's building something that's
• 1:11:33
  going to look really good and uh then come out. You know. It's
• 1:11:38
  a good way to kind of get everyone excited about the project and keep keep
• 1:11:41
  everyone's passionate. That was up high. Okay, so moving into post production,
• 1:11:45
  just a couple more questions you uh huh, I think we may have
• 1:11:51
  lost Cody. Oh yeah, let me that's not good. Hold on a
• 1:11:58
  second. Yeah, he doesn't look like he's on there that maybe you had
• 1:12:00
  to leave. Let me see I can. It's like, dude, no
• 1:12:09
  more, come off and I won't let him return on and he let me
• 1:12:15
  let me put him back on. Uh there we go. Uh They're like,
• 1:12:27
  where did you go? Man? We were all we were concerned.
• 1:12:30
  I don't want to let him know that we didn't notice he wasn't there.
• 1:12:32
  Are you there, Cody ay Man? Sorry about that? Yeah, okay,
• 1:12:42
  so let me let me launch into a few more quick questions about posts
• 1:12:45
  just for our my my people here, the getting into the post production process.
• 1:12:54
  How long does that typically last and what is the kind of can you
• 1:13:00
  through what happens first, what happens next, Just so people have a general
• 1:13:02
  idea of how it all comes together. Yeah, we, like I was
• 1:13:10
  saying, we do a lot of our riding on set, so by the
• 1:13:13
  time we're dune in the movie, you know, eighty percent of its ideally
• 1:13:17
  cut. And we fairly fast turnarounds on our films. I think we shall
• 1:13:25
  bite in December, and it screened at the can Market in May. Wow.
• 1:13:31
  So again, like we like we were saying, with with all the
• 1:13:35
  outlts that we have for production, we do the same in post. You
• 1:13:39
  know, Red Lab in Toronto does all our color correct for each our films,
• 1:13:44
  and we've worked out a deal so they know when it's coming in Urban
• 1:13:46
  Post does our post sound uh? You know. So we we create our
• 1:13:51
  schedules with all of them, and you know, we get an edit together
• 1:13:56
  and we take it to the studio. We sit down with them and kind
• 1:14:00
  of get everyone's input and trim it down, make whatever change you need to
• 1:14:04
  lock our picture, send it off to Red Lab, sit in there and
• 1:14:09
  do our color sessions with them, send it off to Urban They work on
• 1:14:13
  on others sound at it's for whatever reason, we always end up on some
• 1:14:15
  crazy deadline like it's going to screen somewhere, and uh, you know,
• 1:14:20
  it's a big panic to actually get it all done. But I mean,
• 1:14:24
  luckily we have such great companies that we're working with in posts that you know,
• 1:14:32
  they work really hard to make it all happen to I think they're excited
• 1:14:35
  when they see, you know, they can work on something that they get
• 1:14:39
  to see in a theater like two weeks later. And in terms of The
• 1:14:46
  Drownsman, which is I haven't been able to see the other two movies because
• 1:14:49
  they're not out yet. But you work with George Flores on that, right,
• 1:14:57
  Yeah. Yeah, I worked with George a bunch of times because George
• 1:15:00
  is a friend of mine. Actually, I love George. Yeah, he
• 1:15:05
  always He taught me more about filmmaking. I think when I was starting a
• 1:15:10
  small film down here and he was just one of the people that I was
• 1:15:13
  talking with about doing post sound and we would just sit there for you know,
• 1:15:16
  and talk about all these things that we need to make sure we had
• 1:15:19
  and everything. I mean, just very generous with his time. So I'm
• 1:15:24
  I want to make sure I promote George on the show. Absolutely No.
• 1:15:28
  George did a film called Never Lost with me years ago and he did the
• 1:15:34
  announcement and you know, we had such a great time working on with those
• 1:15:39
  songs, and yeah, I definitely each supporter of George as well. So
• 1:15:45
  the typical time from editing and doing sound and when when do you work with
• 1:15:50
  like soundtrack music and things like that. Uh So we have like for example,
• 1:15:58
  Drones and any Social Bite. All those films were scored by a woman
• 1:16:03
  named Steph Copeland, who you know, we get along with, works so
• 1:16:09
  well with her, and she's so talented. You know, I'm sure we'll
• 1:16:14
  work on many more films after this. But you know, she loves to
• 1:16:17
  come in early as well and just kind of you see some of the hits
• 1:16:19
  or you know, she's already got stuff that she's working on before she even
• 1:16:24
  sees that. It's where she's just read the script and she's getting ideas and
• 1:16:28
  building from it. She's again very passionate uh artists who uh just is always
• 1:16:35
  working hard, always you know, really accepted a project and whatnot. You
• 1:16:39
  know, so we uh as soon as we have a picture lock That's kind
• 1:16:44
  of what everyone's always waiting on. Everyone's excepted to be like, okay,
• 1:16:46
  picture lock you luck. So as soon as we get it, we kind
• 1:16:48
  of you know, press the go button and it goes to her, it
• 1:16:50
  goes to urban Post, it goes to a red lab and everyone gets to
• 1:16:58
  start working on it kind of at once. M Okay, well, guys,
• 1:17:04
  I don't want to take much and let me just ask you one final
• 1:17:09
  question. How uh what can you give just a little bit of advice to
• 1:17:14
  people out there who haven't made their first film and are you know, wanting
• 1:17:16
  to you know, get out and kind of do what you guys have done.
• 1:17:20
  Do you have any sort of like, you know, if you could
• 1:17:23
  go into a time machine and tell yourself before you started, what, what
• 1:17:26
  kind of advice would you give yourself. I mean, the things that that
• 1:17:31
  I would say are definitely look we're doing now. We work on tons of
• 1:17:38
  different ideas to find the right one. I would say, spend the time,
• 1:17:43
  don't don't get excited with with with an idea that it's just a you
• 1:17:47
  know, generic throwaway idea and just to dive out of it to make a
• 1:17:50
  movie. You know, make sure you spend spend your time on lot of
• 1:17:55
  people write scripts because they're you know, they sit down there power a script.
• 1:17:59
  So if it's like, if they have a script, they're going to
• 1:18:00
  make a good movie. You know, so work hard. Make sure you
• 1:18:04
  understand your concept or you're a film that you're going to make, and make
• 1:18:08
  sure you really want to make it, because that's it too. A lot
• 1:18:11
  of people lose passion halfway through. They realize it's like, yeah, this
• 1:18:14
  film's not really I don't really care about it. So we figure out figure
• 1:18:20
  out what you want to make and then figure out the concept that you're really
• 1:18:24
  passionate about. The you know, you thinks unique and you know it matters
• 1:18:27
  what you want to do. Are you making a film to create an art
• 1:18:29
  piece? Are you making a film to sell to the market. Are you
• 1:18:32
  trying to go for you know, something that's gonna make funds back, or
• 1:18:36
  are you trying to do something that's you know, in our piece. You
• 1:18:40
  kind of have to know what you're going to do before you go into it,
• 1:18:43
  and then after that again, take your time and find the right people
• 1:18:46
  to work with. There's a lot of great people in the film industry,
• 1:18:50
  like any of any industry, there's a lot of great people and there's a
• 1:18:53
  lot of people that it's actually counterproductive to work with. So find find the
• 1:18:59
  right people you want to work with, surround yourself with them, and find
• 1:19:02
  talented people. And and I mean, if you you know, go out
• 1:19:06
  and show how passionate you are and and and show people, give people confidence
• 1:19:13
  that you know what your your plan is and you've you've worked hard to organize
• 1:19:17
  it and figure things out. Then you know they will have confidence in you.
• 1:19:24
  And then aside from that, just go out on your own, even
• 1:19:27
  with your iPhone, and shoot some stupid stuff with your friends. You know.
• 1:19:31
  It's there's a reason why I'm film school. They're like, I go
• 1:19:35
  go do an action scene, go chasing, Go do these because like they
• 1:19:39
  don't want you to come back with a beautiful chase scene. They want you
• 1:19:42
  to go realize the mistakes and the issues that you're gonna that are gonna rise
• 1:19:46
  whenever you make a chase scene. You know, just so the next time
• 1:19:50
  you do it, you you've already gone through a few steps at least,
• 1:19:54
  and and learn. You know, if you do ten chasing, your eleventh
• 1:19:59
  one is going to be amazing, and it's going to be even better than
• 1:20:00
  the other one. So it's you know, don't be don't be afraid to
• 1:20:05
  go out and make crappy shorts or whatever like, don't they don't even have
• 1:20:11
  to be shorts. You don anyone to get a giant crews together about you
• 1:20:14
  know, understanding how to do these things. And it doesn't take big cameras
• 1:20:19
  or anything. It's it's the same as everything else. You know, you
• 1:20:23
  just gotta go out and make sure mistakes and then from them. All Right,
• 1:20:27
  guys, I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot for coming on the
• 1:20:30
  show, and I look forward to seeing Antisocial two and Bite. But anyway,
• 1:20:34
  thanks a lot, guys. Thanks slash Man. All right, that's
• 1:20:38
  going to do it for today. My thanks to Chad Archibald and Cody Callahan
• 1:20:42
  of Black Fawn Films, and we'll see you next Tuesday. I want to
• 1:20:45
  thank Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode. If
• 1:20:48
  you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head
• 1:20:50
  over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford Slash three fifty,
• 1:20:57
  thank you so much for listening to guys as always, keep on right
• 1:21:00
  no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:21:02
  Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.