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Making a $0 Indie Film in 4 Weeks (What Could Go Wrong?) · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
What is the best way to ensure that your indie film stays on
0:03
time and under budget? Don't procrastinate.
0:06
Is that what we did? Absolutely not.
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Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
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And I am Chuck. This week we're going to start
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documenting our journey to make a 10 minute musical short film
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in one month with $0.00. For the 2026 Idaho Film Family
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Festival and Competition, we were given four months to make a
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movie. So with 28 days left, we're
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finally getting started, Yeah. So we're going to document the
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mistakes that we've made so far with this film process, and
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we're also going to share the stakes of this particular Film
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Festival. Do you want to start with that
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Vic? Absolutely.
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So the Idaho Film Family Festival and competition is
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pretty straightforward. You can make a movie up to 10
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minutes total. It's due on March 20th.
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Right now it is February 23rd for everybody watching.
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We're recording this on February 23rd, yes.
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And you cannot use generative AI in the making of this film,
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which is fair. That's fine.
1:02
We also have to work with somebody new, which I do love
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that aspect of this festival, actually.
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And it is a local festival. We have somebody from at least
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one team from out of state. Actually, no, we have two teams
1:15
from out of state this year, somebody from Wyoming and
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somebody from California. So that'll be really exciting.
1:19
And it is limited spots. They're only 14 teams, I
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believe. And it is a guaranteed screening
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if your project is finished on time.
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And all the judges are sourced just from all across, I believe
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just the United States, but maybe internationally of people
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who work in the film industry. And it is an IMDb qualified
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festival, so the awards can show up somewhere in your repertoire.
1:44
And they do have awards. And you've done 2 films with me
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for this particular Film Festival, last year's dive.
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And then what's the worst that could happen that I did sound
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on. And this will be the first indie
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film podcast, actual film production that we're making
2:00
together. We're Co producing this and the
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Film Festival is they give you a challenge obviously the four
2:07
months to make that 10 minutes short and they give you 2 films
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to inspire you. And the films that we were given
2:13
that were drawn out of a hat to inspire us were Blade Runner and
2:16
Detective Pikachu. And so this this being the very
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first indie film podcast production, I feel like the
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stakes are kind of high, especially since Dive did so
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well on its Film Festival run this past 12 months.
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Yeah, it's done. It's done great.
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And it was, and it was a film I'm really proud of.
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I got to work with some incredible people on that one.
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So I'm, I'm really, I'm really excited about that.
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This one, however, we've been preaching to all of our
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listeners for 14 months now that we know how to make a movie for
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no money whatsoever. And now we get to find out, can
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we actually do that, or at least learn from?
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Yes. So make sure if you have been
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listening to the podcast quite a bit, subscribe, follow along.
2:58
We're going to document this journey very openly, very
3:01
honestly. And we should probably start
3:04
with why we decided to do a musical, what the musical is
3:07
about. Obviously, we're in a little bit
3:09
of a bind right now because we have such a short time to get
3:13
this finished. However, we did come up with a
3:15
story and you basically finished the script a few days ago and
3:21
I've done over half of the music at least as as one draft.
3:26
And we'll share some of the rough aspects of of the
3:29
brainstorming process with you all in this episode as well, as
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well as false on social media. We'll do some of that there as
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well. So do you want to talk about
3:38
what the film's about and why we decided to go with musical?
3:41
Oh, you are definitely going to get to explain why it's musical.
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Some of the goals for the film. So Blade Runner and Detective
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Pikachu don't have a ton of overlap necessarily.
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Noir E, They are both noir E, so that works.
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But Blade Runner is more of a satire, sort of a political
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commentary, and Detective Pikachu is based on a game, so
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we decided to try to combine those.
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So we've got sort of a satirical political commentary based on
4:14
Dungeons and Dragons mechanics because that felt right.
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We get to film it in one location, so we get to keep that
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a little bit simple. There are some more complex post
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things that we're hoping to do to be able to put people into a
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a gaming world without generative AI, which maybe this
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wasn't. The generative AI rule is new
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and perhaps the year that rule was introduced wasn't the year
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to try doing something virtual. Yes, but that's OK.
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It's exciting. And if you follow us on social
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media, the vertical video that we released where we were
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testing the Adobe's new auto masking feature is what we're
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going to lean into. And if you watch the podcast,
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you can see that the backdrop in the studio that we record in is
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pitch black. And we did a test with Victoria
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and I where we recorded ourselves and in front of this
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pitch black background and the masking tool was able to just
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remove the subject very easily. Which was awesome.
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So I'm impressed that there's an Adobe product that I'm actually
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saying it did well. Good job.
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Yes, good job. So we're we're banking on that
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working well in post. We're going to be shooting in
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one location. Hopefully the music is locked in
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and ready to go and in the next basically seven days because we
5:34
need to cast people and then also have them learn their
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lines. Slash.
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Learn the the melodies and the reason that the music needs to
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be locked in in a week is that we're going to have everybody
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lip syncing to the melody of the music because that's the easiest
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way to do a musical in my experience.
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Typically, if Hollywood has taught us anything, that's the
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way they prefer to do it. Yeah, then you can mix it, make
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it sound good, rather than just having people play it live,
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which is its own vibe too, but that would be a lot trickier to
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do. And I want to say Les Mez
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actually did do that where they correct me if I'm wrong in the
6:15
comments because I know you will, But I want to say that
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unlike Rent the Movie where everything was definitely studio
6:23
recorded, I believe Les Mez, they actually did record the
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vocals OK live while they were filming as opposed to in a
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studio and then having everybody sync up to it like.
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Yeah, I guess. Pretty sure you could do that
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the trick. The tricky part would be.
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Having a Hollywood budget. That's that's one thing.
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But from an audio perspective, the reason I want to pre record
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the music for a musical and lip sync it is because if people are
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singing along live, they're going to need to hear the
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background instrumentation. And you can mix it in to the
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actual mix in post, but you will still get some of the background
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music into the vocal microphone. And if you add compression to
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the vocals, which you want to do when you're processing music,
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like you can get away with a lot more compression for radio
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broadcast music stuff versus just a regular film.
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And what that does though is it turns the background music up
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then, so then it would bleed into the actual mix.
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Get a little distracting so I'd sound a little muddy, yeah.
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And the other reason we wanted to do musical is that that will
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open me up. Excuse me?
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It'll open me up to be able to help out with other things
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because I'm not going to be doing live sound as much.
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Also very true. Yeah, but I would like to be
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clear here, Chuck, whose idea was it to do a musical?
7:43
I had the idea to do a musical. That's right.
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Because the last 12 months we've been traveling around to film
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festivals to to screen dive. Yeah.
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And the films that have won at these festivals have all been
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really good. However, some of the really
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strange ones have lived in my head much longer than some of
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the winners have. Those aren't always mutually
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exclusive, but there were some really wild films that we saw at
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these film festivals and they swung for the fences.
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Yeah, and even if you don't quite hit it, it's so much
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better to swing for it and just go for it.
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Just balls to the wall and hope for the best.
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Yes, that's what we're going to. That's what our philosophy is.
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Yeah, maybe it's not a home run, but it'll sure be a fun process
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to watch. Yeah, and we could crash and
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burn. We actually just met with Jesse
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this morning, who was on the previous episode.
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We were talking about music and scoring and we're trying to
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enlist him to help out with acting as well as some of the
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musical ideas and themes in this this musical.
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So we were very open and honest with him during the meeting,
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saying that we don't know how this is going to work in this
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time timeline because it's very abbreviated.
9:02
It's abbreviated. It's it's going to be quick.
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But you know what? Quick games, a good game.
9:07
Yeah, right. But we did spend a couple months
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planning this out. The idea of we did, it's a it's
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going to address the like, male loneliness is going to be part
9:17
of the theme there, where it's AD and D player playing D&D by
9:22
himself with imaginary friends. It's going to hit on some
9:26
political satire as well. Yeah, a la Blade Runner and then
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the D&D game board game will have some some action figures
9:36
there that kind of like overlap with Detective Pikachu.
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I figure if Detective Pikachu can be sort of based on a game
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and set in the world of a game, then as long as we make our film
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kind of set in the world of D&D, then we've done it.
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That is absolutely inspired by both things.
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Yes, I think it counts. And it's a deal with the devil
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type of situation. And we're going to have
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surrealistic battle scenes, hopefully that turn out OK.
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We're we're going to use this black background.
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Or or we'll have people pretending to fight in front of
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a black background because we couldn't make it work.
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Yes, and that's OK too. We'll figure something out.
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So should I go ahead and give a cheap trick?
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Yes, before we move on to our next portion here, cash register
10:24
bang. So the cheap trick that I want
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to point out this week, which is something that I did lean on the
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last couple of days while I was trying to write music for this
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short film is a software composer called FL Studio, which
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very inexpensive and you can actually use it for free.
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You can test it out for free. If you get yourself a MIDI
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keyboard, you can actually use your your computer keyboard as
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an instrument input on the software.
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So if you're looking to get into composition and you've only been
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using, you know, like you play an actual piano or you play an
10:58
actual guitar or whatever, If you want to get into the digital
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realm, that's kind of a low barrier to entry because it does
11:05
let you use the demo for free. You can't save anything, but you
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can mess with the software. See if you like it.
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And you can at least test it out, practice it, and learn how
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to do it, even if you don't necessarily get to walk away
11:17
with everything you make. Yeah.
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And and the other nice thing about that particular software,
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which is unique to a lot of softwares is that the program
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itself works as a plug in on other audio programs, which is
11:30
kind of weird and like Meta in a way, because if you've, if
11:35
you're familiar with audio programs and plug insurance,
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like you can get aftermarket plug insurance that is like a
11:40
microphone compressor that makes it sound like a old AM radio
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station, right. These are these are program plug
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insurance that you can use inside of Adobe Audition or Pro
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Tools or the Macintosh one that I always forget all it's not
11:54
Final Cut, but they're Audio Logic Pro.
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No, I was like, you are really expecting me to know that
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program and I do not. So a lot of people don't use FL
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Studio that are in the professional composition world.
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But if you do get that program, you can then still put it back
12:11
into Adobe Audition or Pro Tools and use that program within the
12:16
other program if you like some of the instruments that it has
12:19
in it. Or whatever, or if you get used
12:21
to the interface and kind of how it works and how it flows and
12:24
how to build and create in there, then that sort of brings
12:27
it into your other non linear editing situation a little bit
12:30
better. Yeah.
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It's kind of it's, yeah. It's like a little Russian doll
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ability there to to lock into another.
12:36
Nesting dolls. Nesting dolls into other audio
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software. So should we talk about?
12:42
How on earth you write a very bizarre musical in like 12
12:48
hours, Yes. Yeah.
12:50
Well, lock yourself in a car. You know, I think famous writers
12:54
often lock themselves in really fancy bougie hotel rooms where
12:57
they have a lot of wine or whiskey or something.
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And I we opted for the 12 hour car ride back from Boulder City,
13:04
NV, Nevada, man. We got corrected on that.
13:09
One, I've never been harped on my pronunciation of something so
13:14
strongly before. It's a very like Midwestern
13:19
pronunciation of a clearly Spanish word.
13:21
We had to look it up because it is Spanish.
13:23
Las Vegas, which is where we basically went, Boulder Cities
13:27
right outside of Las Vegas for the damn short Film Festival.
13:30
Great festival. We'll do a review at it about at
13:32
some point in the future. But yeah, Las Vegas was
13:36
discovered by a Spanish explorer, which means the
13:39
Meadow, because it was actually an Oasis previously.
13:43
Didn't know about that. There was like a whole
13:45
underground water supply. No longer.
13:47
Exists basically we use that up people to the Las Vegas sins.
13:53
I don't know how you'd call them but but we.
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We're in Las Vegas, NV. We were in Nevada and everybody
14:00
calls it Nevada, not Nevada. No, but it's not Nevada Spanish.
14:04
Pronunciation would be Nevada. So yes, we were drove down to
14:09
that Film Festival and on the way back you started writing in
14:13
the car. Yes.
14:14
And you were using me as a rhyming dictionary?
14:18
Yes, because we had no cell phone service.
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No. So that made the writing very
14:23
exciting, yeah. We did not have the Internet to
14:26
help us out, but it went really well.
14:28
It went well. We kind of want to talk about
14:30
how this particular short film we need to throw away our
14:36
darlings early because we are going to be recording it to a
14:41
pre recorded track and therefore it's going to be really
14:45
difficult to cut the film in the edit.
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That duration of the film will likely be a little bit longer
14:53
than the musical tracks that we have written because we're
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there's going to be 0 live dialogue in this film and so
15:00
everything is going to be sung and that'll all be prerecorded.
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So we want to make sure that we cut that down ahead of time and
15:07
we actually watched a film that was done in a one shot where to
15:11
to kind of help us learn where to cut things in the scripting
15:15
process. Yeah, because we can't cut it in
15:18
post unless we cut the whole damn thing and throw it out the
15:20
window. No, that's not that is not an
15:22
option. Yeah.
15:24
So think more opera than musical, I guess.
15:26
Yeah, in that sense. Do you want to share some of the
15:28
lines that you've already cut? Because we started off with how
15:31
many pages? Within the last three days we
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went from 10 or 10 pages down to seven.
15:38
Yeah, I want to say. So we've caught quite a bit, and
15:41
there was a lot that got, yeah, just I guess for fun here this
15:46
is. This is all of our lyrics.
15:50
If you can, if you're not looking at it online and you're
15:53
listening to it, there are probably about a.
15:56
Lot of pages and a lot of colored.
15:57
Pens 12? No, that's probably about 15
16:00
pages of of scribblings in a notebook.
16:04
It's a lot, it's a lot, but there were there were some that
16:08
I was actually quite proud of. If there are any D&D nerds,
16:10
maybe you'll tell me if this is good.
16:12
I have maxed out charisma in a world that doesn't notice I
16:16
thought was very entertaining. I'm giving main character vibes
16:20
in an NPC role. There's lag between who I am and
16:24
who they see. And oh, I've restarted entire
16:29
timelines just to keep my friends alive.
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Well, there we go. And don't worry, none of those
16:35
lines have made it into the current draft.
16:38
Yeah, and the musical drafting process has been basically me
16:43
sitting in front of my computer with a guitar, looking at these
16:46
lyrics, and then Victoria and I changing, adjusting them a
16:50
little bit to try to fit some music.
16:51
What we're learning now is that usually a film is about a page a
16:56
minute ish. Yeah, right.
16:59
Typically general rule of thumb, but it feels like the we're
17:03
we're pushing it more towards a minute and 1/2 per page for
17:07
music. Yeah, it's definitely so.
17:10
We're down to 7 pages of lyrics, but we probably need to cut that
17:14
down closer to six. Yeah in the next week and then
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lock the music in. But I'll play a little bit of
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some of this. This is rough recording here,
17:22
but this is part of 100% transparency.
17:26
This is the first draft of like a little segment of the intro
17:29
song for this film potentially. I mean this all it.
17:33
Could all change? We don't know.
17:34
Yet record next week. All
17:51
So you'll hear how that changes. Theoretically, we'll be able to
17:55
compare that. That'll be a fun little
17:58
comparison though. Yeah, this is nice.
18:00
The this is a phone recording versus this is a more rehearsed.
18:07
Fully produced. Fully produced because we will
18:10
have time the the plan is to shoot in basically a week and
18:15
1/2 from now over the weekend. But then the post work we'll
18:20
still be able to you like massage the music a lot, have
18:25
the people come in sing their actual parts rather than using
18:29
myself or you possibly as like temp.
18:33
Oh, I'm sure they would love that.
18:35
Yeah, they. Would really enjoy that if I
18:37
did. It we just got to get the beats
18:38
right and then we can fix the, you know, the pitch pitching and
18:42
things like that and have the people come in and sing the
18:44
actual parts after they record or hopefully before they record
18:47
if time allows. That would be nice.
18:49
Yeah. And we'll get, we'll get that
18:52
all hammered out and we'll still have a few weeks, a couple weeks
18:57
for post. Yeah, because we'll be wrapped
18:59
at the beginning of March and we'll have till the 20th.
19:02
So I think it's like 2 weeks. I'm sure that's plenty of time.
19:06
Yeah, as long as the VFX go super smoothly.
19:08
They always do. They usually do.
19:11
Ever goes wrong in post. I'm pretty sure that's a T-shirt
19:14
somewhere. Yeah.
19:15
So this is our idea now. And then it'll be fun to see how
19:18
this changes over the next 4 weeks as we're recording these
19:21
podcast episodes and, and, you know, updating you all.
19:26
And then at the end, we'll most likely share it to our
19:29
newsletter subscribers. Yeah.
19:31
Well, no, no, we'll definitely, yeah, we'll definitely share it
19:33
to the newsletter subscribers for sure.
19:35
So that way you can at least. You can see it.
19:37
See what we've been talking about?
19:38
Yeah, so I kind of want to talk about the film Victoria from
19:42
2015. Yeah, you.
19:44
But you did recommend that I that we watch this film?
19:46
Yes, this one did come up in the research because we were looking
19:50
at kind of short production time, Yeah.
19:52
And while the overall pre production time for this film
19:55
was a little bit longer, I want to say it was closer to a couple
19:57
of years. They did shoot the entire thing
20:01
in one takes. It was only a few hours
20:03
technically to get the film shot, which is really
20:07
impressive. But to your point earlier.
20:10
Just like we really can't fix much in post and there's not
20:14
much we can cut in post. They couldn't do that with this
20:17
film either because it wasn't one shot.
20:19
Yeah. So I kind of want to give it
20:21
share everybody a little bit of the details about the movie
20:23
Victoria. If you haven't seen it, I highly
20:26
recommend that you watch. It it actually was a really
20:28
interesting watch. Yeah, the director is Sebastian
20:31
Shipper, the cinematographer, which was very crucial role for
20:36
a one shot film that went all over Berlin.
20:39
Yeah, it was all over the place. Sterla Brandt Groveland.
20:43
I believe I pronounced that right.
20:45
We'll find out. Yes, correct me if I'm wrong.
20:47
So basically it's about a young Spanish woman.
20:50
She had recently moved to Berlin.
20:53
She meets some new guy and they kind of flirt a little bit at
20:57
the beginning of the movie and and their night basically takes
21:03
a turn for the worse and they get kind of pulled into some
21:07
drama and crime and violence. Shady moments, if you will.
21:12
And all done in one shot. Yeah, the biggest criticism I
21:16
have for this movie was it was 2 hours and 20 minutes, 218 or
21:22
220, and I feel like they could have cut the first hour down a
21:27
lot. They probably could have.
21:30
They could have trimmed some of it.
21:31
And to be fair, there are some really human beautiful moments.
21:36
The entire, the entire 1st 5 to 7 minutes felt very guttural and
21:43
relatable as a human, especially if you've ever travelled
21:46
internationally and maybe you don't 100% of the language and
21:49
you're sort of still just feeling things out and you don't
21:51
have the culture and you don't have a lot of friends yet.
21:52
So you're kind of travelling alone.
21:53
And it's all from the perspective of this woman,
21:55
Victoria. And it was just really cool.
22:00
It was very visceral, which was nice.
22:03
And I really liked that. But yeah, it did.
22:05
It did drag just a touch. The first hour was vibe and I
22:10
was to the point where I was thinking, I don't know if I can
22:12
keep watching this movie. And then the plot hit.
22:15
Really hard. And it was great.
22:17
So cool and. So you just see this woman
22:21
getting pulled into this, you know, they hint at this one guy
22:24
being involved in crime and having gone to jail.
22:26
And then all of a sudden he's having a meeting with a dude
22:29
that he owes a favor and they need to rob some people and they
22:32
get handed guns. And it was, it was really well
22:35
done. It turned into an action film at
22:36
the end. Yeah, it was nuts.
22:38
But as far as our project is concerned, I feel like the
22:41
lesson there was they needed to kill the darlings on their
22:45
script early on. But I do want to point out that
22:47
this this. Script is generous.
22:49
Yes, they had a 12 page basically outline and was the
22:53
quote UN quote script for this film and most of the dialogue
22:55
was improvised. Which is really funny.
22:58
It reminds me of those dinner theatre shows, what they do,
23:01
because that's exactly what they do.
23:03
There is an outline that's maybe 10 to 12 pages or so.
23:07
And it's just here are the beats that have to happen.
23:10
And here's the the keys that each actor has to hit and the
23:13
beats that have to happen for the story to continue.
23:15
Otherwise, just go have fun. And so I wonder how much there
23:22
were a few moments and a few lines that sort of happened.
23:25
There was 1 moment where the main guy is on a bicycle and
23:30
Victoria's then riding passenger instead of trying to ride
23:34
actually pedal the bike now. And he makes a joke like because
23:37
she'd run into his cigarette. And so then it was it snapped
23:40
off in his hand. He just looks at her like he
23:42
broke my cigarette and just throws it.
23:44
And I'm like, there's no way that was scripted, but it was,
23:47
it was a nice way to react in the moment.
23:49
It was just, it was entertaining and it was fun.
23:51
So there's a lot of stuff like. That it was a lot of reacting,
23:53
but the, I think the lesson that I got out of that was they
23:59
didn't move to the plot quickly enough for in my opinion.
24:02
And so when we're dealing with our script, my thought is we
24:08
need to try to get to the meat of the show, especially since
24:13
it's a short. You don't want to build things
24:15
up, especially a slow burn, you know, and that film was a
24:18
definitely a slow burn. And then it, it ignited and took
24:21
off very quickly. But the, when you're doing a
24:24
short film, you want to grab everybody's attention real
24:27
quick. And so we have to be very
24:31
careful with what we're doing to make sure that it's interesting
24:34
both visually auditorily within the first one minute and and
24:40
then get right, get get the get the setting down fast, which I
24:44
feel like we're close already because that intro song is just
24:49
under a minute and a half before the rest of the plot comes in
24:53
where it's establishing the character in the setting.
24:56
So, but when you're doing a short film, I feel like even
24:59
quicker because we did that with Dive where it's like basically
25:02
30 seconds. Right.
25:04
Yeah, that's right. Because I had a like 92nd intro
25:07
and then I let you look at it for the edit and you said
25:11
absolutely not. And then it ended up at 30
25:13
seconds. Well, it's fun though too,
25:15
because we're putting our editing cap on right away.
25:18
Yeah, it's kind of wild to be stepping back and not just
25:22
excited to explore the introductory things.
25:25
And, well, we can let the characters kind of play.
25:27
We have some room, we can get a little extra footage and then
25:30
adjust as we go. And none of that is happening.
25:32
It's the complete opposite. It's actually, well, do we
25:35
really care if we know too much about the back story or, well,
25:39
how important is it that there's that much detail to what the
25:42
actual quest that these characters are going on is?
25:45
Do we need much? Or can it just be, hey, go get a
25:47
lamp? Like maybe that's enough?
25:49
Yeah. And trust, trust in the
25:50
audience. How much can you trust the
25:51
audience? Because sometimes I don't know
25:55
how what your experience has been in been in this situation,
25:58
but you question yourself with the film that you're about to
26:01
release and you're thinking, was I clear enough?
26:06
Is the audience going to understand this?
26:08
And it's a tough balance. Like do you want to take more
26:11
time for exposition or give more hints at what's going to happen?
26:15
Or do you trust that the audience is going to get it's a
26:18
very fine line because if you explain too much, it comes off
26:24
as lame or condescending. And then if you don't explain
26:28
enough, then. It's just confusing and nobody
26:31
has any idea what's going on. And then the only way to save
26:33
face on that is say something like, well, that was an artistic
26:37
choice or whatever. That's why it's supposed it's
26:39
supposed to be vague. We promise.
26:41
Yeah, but it was it was really cool to watch that wonder film,
26:46
which is actually a wonder. It was shot on it.
26:49
I just kind of want to share some of the.
26:50
Details too. Oh no, please do, because I'm
26:52
very excited about the camera for this particular.
26:54
Shot on a C300, a Canon C300 and they used just a prime Zeiss
27:01
lens. 24mm cinematographer knocked it out of the park.
27:05
Yeah, on. That film too, just.
27:07
Completely blown away. Goes from a setting where they
27:10
are at a club. With strobing, flashing lights
27:13
with. Strobing, flashing lights.
27:15
They're moving around Berlin in cars.
27:18
And in the. Dark side of cars, like chasing
27:21
people on bicycles, on foot, yeah.
27:24
Moving, yeah. And it goes all the way till
27:27
sunrise. So there is it's sunrise.
27:29
By the end it's you can. Tell that they planned the final
27:33
shot to happen exactly when it happened, which was kind of
27:35
cool, but they shot it from 4:30 AM to to 7:00 AM.
27:39
They actually shot the film as an edited film first so that
27:45
they could guarantee the funding because their funders didn't
27:48
believe that this could be done in a Warner.
27:52
So they shot the film once in several long takes.
27:56
They then took three other separate days to shoot it as
28:00
three winners. And they ended up using the
28:02
final, yeah, the final version. So.
28:05
And they nailed it. It's a good one.
28:07
Victoria from 2015. Well done, $450,000.
28:11
And I also want to point out that they had three boom
28:13
operators and two sound mixers. They knew.
28:16
One camera, but you got to make sure you got to, you got to get
28:19
your sound ready if everybody's going to be running around.
28:21
And if everybody's running around and you know they're
28:23
going to a place and some sound people there first to like set
28:27
up and be ready, you know, just in case.
28:30
Yeah, makes sense. Cool.
28:33
Is there anything else that you wanted to share about Victoria?
28:36
No, I not you, but the film. I think that.
28:40
Should we talk about? I've heard the word Victoria
28:43
enough for today, now I'm good. Should we?
28:45
Should we talk about our featured filmmaker?
28:47
Featured Filmmaker of the Week. Only if you can say that title.
28:50
Yes, I can. Beautiful.
28:55
This week we have our Featured Filmmaker of the Week, Adam
28:58
Smith, a Milwaukee based director, producer and
29:01
screenwriter with an emphasis in Southern Gothic, Gothic and
29:04
science fiction related storytelling.
29:06
Since moving to Wisconsin, Adams contributed to commercial
29:09
projects for NFL Films, Mr. Beast, WWE and the Milwaukee
29:13
Bucks. He is the writer behind the new
29:15
horror short Aroma Vision and political satire The Redacted
29:19
States of America. I like the log line for Aroma
29:22
Vision. Yeah, it says.
29:24
With the invention of a television that broadcast sent,
29:27
an ordinary Milwaukee man gets pulled into a daunting new
29:31
cooking show. I am actually really excited
29:33
about that film. It looks really cool.
29:36
So Adam also shared with us that he nearly killed NBA superstar
29:40
Damian Lillard on the set of a commercial for Mad Max.
29:43
But unfortunately he was. He was too busy working on a
29:47
gig, which I feel like we can all relate to his film makers,
29:50
so his schedule didn't allow him to elaborate, but I'm very
29:55
intrigued. Yeah, hopefully it was just a
29:57
peanut allergy that almost got Damian Lillard.
30:00
I don't know what his allergies. Are I don't know what his
30:01
allergies are either, but I hope, I hope Adam will share
30:04
more about that story with us. Yeah.
30:06
Excellent. So thanks, Adam.
30:08
If you are interested in submitting to be Film Maker of
30:10
the Week, go to Indie Film Podcast Forward slash Submit
30:15
indiefilmpodcast.com. Forward slash submit.
30:18
There we go. And also one other thing I do
30:21
want to mention from Adam that will link in the show notes to
30:23
his website below. He has a program called Voices
30:26
off Paper, which is just a Milwaukee based community
30:30
engagement effort for actors and writers and creatives to come
30:35
together for table reads, which I think is a really awesome way
30:38
to expand community engagement and involvement and also test
30:42
out your material and see how it lands with different people.
30:44
And I just really love that. So it's called Voices Off Paper,
30:47
and again, I think you can get on the mailing list to to sign
30:50
up and get more involved in that on his website.
30:52
So we'll link that in the show notes.
30:53
But it sounds really cool. So thanks Adam for not just
30:56
doing cool stuff, but also for working with your community to
31:00
expand artistic connection. Because there's a lot of people
31:02
that we get reached out to a lot with people with scripts because
31:05
they don't know what to do with them.
31:06
Yeah. And so anybody out there that,
31:09
you know, is interested in connecting, that's a great way
31:11
to to garner more scripts, especially if you're less
31:15
interested in writing and more interested in directing.
31:18
Yeah, there's tons of writers out there with scripts.
31:20
Yeah. And some of them are good.
31:23
We'll find out if ours is. Yeah, yeah.
31:26
It's not right now. Everybody will see the evidence
31:28
on that one. All right?
31:29
So please, if you are not, make sure that you're subscribed to
31:32
this podcast like and follow if you've made it this far.
31:35
I mean, come on. But also, if you want to find
31:38
out what happens next, just subscribe.
31:41
Though if you want real time updates, follow us on social
31:44
media. There is a little bit of lag
31:46
time between when we record the podcast and when it goes live
31:48
for sure. So keep that in mind.
31:50
But if you want real time updates, Instagram and TikTok
31:52
are great places to go. YouTube shorts.
31:54
YouTube Shorts will happen too. That's fair.
31:56
So just subscribe here, yes, or on.
31:58
If you're on Spotify, go to YouTube.
32:00
And go find, go find us there. So thank you all so much for
32:04
tuning in this week. We'll keep you updated on how
32:06
the short film unfolds. And if we ever get a cast.
32:10
Yes, that'll be this week. We're going to find out who's
32:13
actually going to be in this this thing, so hopefully we can
32:16
find some volunteers. All right.
32:17
With that, shall we succinctly say farewell?
32:20
Sounds wonderful. Bye