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IFH 856: How to Make an Indie Film When You Have NO Money with Bob Woolsey & Darren Borrowman · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
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  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: fifty six. Cinema Should make You forget. You're sitting in
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  Speaker 2: a theater, Roman Polanski.
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  Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
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  Speaker 1: Film Hustle Podcast, where we showed you how to survive
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  Speaker 1: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle Podcast.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: I am your humble.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
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  Speaker 2: the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
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  Speaker 2: a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for
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  Speaker 2: independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory
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• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Hey, I one, Thanksgiv for joining me for another episode.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Join me Today is Bob Woosley and Darren barrowm and
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: they have been collaborating through their company Borrow Time Productions
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: for nearly a decade now. They they are now launching
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Barrow Time's first feature film, Do Something with Your Life,
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: on the self distribution platform VHX dot com. You can
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: actually go by or rent the film along with a
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: plethora of bonus content, including the ninety minute Anatomy of
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: a Movie that breaks down the entire process of actually
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: producing this first feature film on a shoestring budget. They
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: are hailing from Canada, Bob and Darren. How are you? Oh?
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Hello there, very good today.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Good thing.
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: I've actually been to Canada a few times. I was
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: in the Kitchener area.
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: Oh okay, what are you doing in Kitchener?
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: The first times I went up there, I was training
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: with a kung fu grand master.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, as you do in Kitchener.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as anybody does. You know, it's a legendary story
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: of an American boy who travels to Canada to train
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: with a Chinese grand master. And the other times we're
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: all just for vacation purposes.
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: Right on, right on, but always over on the on
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: the eastern side the country. Huh, you haven't been to
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: Vancouver yet.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: I know I have not. Unfortunately, Well come on over. Yeah,
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: I know, I really should, I really should get more
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: to Western Canada.
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you should get out here.
• 3:11
  Speaker 7: And you know, I remember on your episode with Peter
• 3:14
  Speaker 7: Marshall he was also kind of trying to get you
• 3:16
  Speaker 7: out here. So anytime you want to come to Vancouver.
• 3:18
  Speaker 7: You've got people to meet up with, that's for sure.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Well, you know what's funny about Peter, he's actually moving
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: to China.
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: He's in China now.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we know, we know Peter, and we've worked with
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: Peter quite a lot, and uh yeah, he's uh, he's
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: a great guy. I was actually just listening to the
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: episode that you did with him recently, and I love Peter's.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: And he's a phenomenal guy, a very good film teacher
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: as well. Yeah, everything he ill, his advice is always solid.
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's kind of been I think a bit of
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: a mentor for us because we're kind of in the
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: same same circles and we've worked.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: With him quite a bit, so he's all of he's
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: just a wealth of knowledge. Yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Peter's awesome.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's amazing too. You know how even you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: we're in two different countries right now. Just you know
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: how small the film network is, you know it is globally.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: You know it seems like everybody always knows somebody else.
• 4:13
  Speaker 6: That's true, totally totally true.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and it just gets smaller.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I think it's it's true, it is, you know, for
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: some reason. I have a lot of friends in England
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: who've never met each other, but I'm always like introducing
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: them and they're just like on the next town over,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: even though I'm like, you know, six thousand miles away
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: from them.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean it's great that people like you
• 4:33
  Speaker 7: do these podcasts and things and I.
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: Think really knit that network together. Right, So this is awesome.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Oh well, you know, thank you and I try my best. So,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: you know, speaking of you know, I want to get
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: to talking about you guys. You know, you guys have
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: been working together for nearly a decade. You know, So
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: how did you guys end up, you know, sort of
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: meeting and you know, how did you guys start collaborating?
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: How did that all start?
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: Well, we both went through the Vancouver Film School, but
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: at separate times. I went through the film production program
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: and finished up in about the middle of two thousand
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: and six, I guess.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: And Bob, you had already finished up your program, a
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: writing program. Yeah.
• 5:15
  Speaker 7: I had taken the writing program there and i'd finished
• 5:17
  Speaker 7: in two thousand and five. And then we kind of
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: found each other in a weird way. Darren, who also
• 5:23
  Speaker 7: does some acting and went to theater school before coming
• 5:25
  Speaker 7: to film school, came and tried out for this sketch
• 5:28
  Speaker 7: comedy group that I was running, and so Darren got
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: into the group and we were working together. He was
• 5:35
  Speaker 7: an actor, and I was producing some shows, some live
• 5:37
  Speaker 7: comedy shows. And then there was a day where he
• 5:39
  Speaker 7: started talking about directing this music video, and then I
• 5:42
  Speaker 7: started talking about some writing that I had, and then
• 5:44
  Speaker 7: we you know, sort of sparked from there and eventually
• 5:47
  Speaker 7: ended up culminating and do Something with Your Life, which
• 5:51
  Speaker 7: we just launched.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and by the way, I actually saw that and
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: it was actually a very well done job by both
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: of you, which I want to get to in just
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: a little bit. But you know, as I was reading
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: your bio, you know, in twenty ten, you guys made
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: a web series called Bob and Andrew, which was nominated
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: for a Leo Award. So you know, what was the
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: impetus to create a web series.
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: I my writing partner, Andrew and I who the show's
• 6:16
  Speaker 7: named after. Appropriately, we had been writing a bunch of
• 6:20
  Speaker 7: comedy together and we just he also he wrote do
• 6:23
  Speaker 7: Something with Your Life, I produced.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: I didn't.
• 6:25
  Speaker 7: I didn't write that one, but we were writing together
• 6:27
  Speaker 7: and I had been going through some life events. I
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: had recently sort of come out as gay, and I
• 6:34
  Speaker 7: want to kind of work through that. And so the
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: whole idea behind the web series was just kind of
• 6:38
  Speaker 7: like putting down on paper all of the strange things
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: that happened when you go through one of those big
• 6:43
  Speaker 7: life events and you sort of, you know, you look
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: back on it as a bit of an observer and
• 6:47
  Speaker 7: you think that was strange and like, why couldn't I
• 6:49
  Speaker 7: get to that place sooner? And you know, you just
• 6:51
  Speaker 7: examine that whole thing. So the idea behind that web
• 6:54
  Speaker 7: series was just to try and you know, make fun
• 6:56
  Speaker 7: of all the stupid stuff that you go through during
• 6:59
  Speaker 7: that time in your life. And so Darren obviously as
• 7:03
  Speaker 7: the director of Note that I know, directed the series
• 7:07
  Speaker 7: for me. So yeah, that was a great time. And
• 7:10
  Speaker 7: the LEEO Award was really cool, the Lee Awards or
• 7:12
  Speaker 7: sort of the Western Canada Film Awards, So that was
• 7:15
  Speaker 7: a fun time, even though we didn't get a chance
• 7:17
  Speaker 7: to win. But yeah, that was kind of the first
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: thing that kind of put us on the map in
• 7:22
  Speaker 7: the community here in Vancouver.
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: The show also picked up a couple of the LA
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: web Fest Awards. Yeah, we sent both seasons one and
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: two to the La web Fest and it sort of
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: got celebrated there as well, So that was kind of cool.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Now is that still online for anyone to watch?
• 7:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah, if you go to YouTube and just search Bob
• 7:43
  Speaker 7: and Andrew web series I think are the direct link
• 7:46
  Speaker 7: is YouTube slash bas one thousand and four.
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: You can watch it there.
• 7:52
  Speaker 7: We're also gearing up to do a new batch of
• 7:55
  Speaker 7: episodes that are a little bigger and better and more
• 7:58
  Speaker 7: produced than in the last group. So that should be
• 8:02
  Speaker 7: out sometime next year, maybe next maybe this time next year,
• 8:05
  Speaker 7: we should have that done.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wanted to ask, you know about that
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: web series, you know, about producing it. So when you
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: when you sat down to write it and you know,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: and to to sort of plan this entire season, did
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: you sort of you know, plan it with Hey, listen,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: I don't want to spend a lot of money. I
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: don't want to you know, you know, maybe we don't
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: have you know, all this uh these locations or all
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: this extra gear. So did you sort of reverse engineer
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: it where you decided, hey, let's let's shoot this at
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: my house, or let's just try to keep it as
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: low budget as possible.
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: We do everything that way.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're not Darren in particular, but mean too.
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: We sort of share this sensibility of not really wanting
• 8:43
  Speaker 7: to wait for something or not really wanting to convince
• 8:45
  Speaker 7: too many other people about what you're doing, having merit,
• 8:49
  Speaker 7: we just want to go out and do it. And
• 8:51
  Speaker 7: so with the web series in particular, and uh and
• 8:54
  Speaker 7: and do something with your life. We shot the first
• 8:56
  Speaker 7: season the web series and do Something with your Life
• 8:57
  Speaker 7: around the same time. So yeah, we completely reverse engineered that.
• 9:03
  Speaker 7: The whole idea is just to showcase the writing and
• 9:06
  Speaker 7: make the writing as tight as possible as like a
• 9:08
  Speaker 7: comedy sample. And then Darren's just a master at kind
• 9:11
  Speaker 7: of taking you know, shoe string, bubblegum and a couple
• 9:15
  Speaker 7: of paper clips and making it look really good.
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: So one of the things though, that these guys did
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: when they were writing it was write it really simply.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's written. You know, it's not written to be.
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: Like a genre thing or anything super crazy and hard
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: to produce. It was really like, you know, it's a
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: sitcom style thing with a single camera. So we needed,
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: you know, some we need a home base for the
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: apartment location, and you know, we'd shoot a few things
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: outside here and there, and you know, the production value
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: in the first season is certainly a lot lower because
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: I think I was like a one person crew. I
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: think at one point I was running the camera and
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: holding a boom microphone and trying to slate at the
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: same time.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: And give direction and try to remember to take the
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: lens cap off. But in the second season, we ended
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: up bringing a few more people out to help us,
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: and we started getting permission to shoot in cafes and
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: other public places, so we kind of upped the production
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: value that way, but it was still, you know, pretty much.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: Super low budget kind of thing.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: I think the biggest cost on most of the productions
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: that we've done has been, you know, feeding the crew or.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Just a few sort of art costs or something like that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 7: When you don't have a super high production value, you
• 10:44
  Speaker 7: kind of have to make the writing good.
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: You have no other choice, right, So I.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Think that kind of played to what we.
• 10:50
  Speaker 7: Were trying to showcase anyways, which was the writing. So
• 10:53
  Speaker 7: hopefully that came through.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So when you went out to you know, find
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: these locations. You know, did you know set out to
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: not only just you know, get it for the one
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: time it's like a cafe for instance, did you actually
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: think about, you know, I could build a relationship with
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: with these paid these owners that way I could film
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: there in the future.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: We definitely got that with some places.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: There's actually a couple of places around town that we've
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: shot a number of times, Like there's there's a local
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: bar just around the corner from where we work that
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: Funnily enough, they're having their their ten year anniversary and
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: they've kind of been a.
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: Fostering place for us.
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: You know, We've had a lot of fundraisers, and we've
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: had a lot of parties and after parties and and
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: and and events just going to watch you know, hockey
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: games and things like that. So we've had a lot
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: of good times there and the guys that run the
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: place are are really awesome and let us shoot there
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: from time to time.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: So yeah, definitely.
• 11:52
  Speaker 7: It's a bit of a chicken in the egg thing
• 11:54
  Speaker 7: because I think a lot of the places that we
• 11:55
  Speaker 7: approached for those locations and even like.
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: Favors for if you need a bit of gear or
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: whatever else.
• 12:02
  Speaker 7: It's all people that we kind of knew ahead of time,
• 12:04
  Speaker 7: so you have that relationship going in, and then the
• 12:06
  Speaker 7: other places that we needed to kind of shore up,
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: you know, if we need a specific place we didn't
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: know somebody or whatever, then we approached and those those
• 12:13
  Speaker 7: ones are a little bit more difficult relationships to maintain,
• 12:16
  Speaker 7: just because you know, if you're going and shooting a place,
• 12:18
  Speaker 7: you know how sort of kind of you you have
• 12:21
  Speaker 7: to take it over and you have to really worry
• 12:23
  Speaker 7: about leaving it better than you found it. But even so,
• 12:26
  Speaker 7: it's a bit of an imposition, particularly when you don't
• 12:28
  Speaker 7: have a lot of money to pay for these locations.
• 12:30
  Speaker 7: So we find that it's definitely best to kind of,
• 12:34
  Speaker 7: you know, be a person about town and you know,
• 12:36
  Speaker 7: be a regular at certain places. And when you do
• 12:38
  Speaker 7: become a regular, get to know the bartender, get to
• 12:40
  Speaker 7: know the manager, get to know you know, the barista,
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: whoever it is, and then eventually that'll lead to when
• 12:45
  Speaker 7: you do need something, you can you can have those
• 12:48
  Speaker 7: people to go to and they know you and they
• 12:50
  Speaker 7: like you already, and they know that you spent some
• 12:52
  Speaker 7: money in their place.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: Before so and they know you're not going to burn
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: their location either.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very true. You know, there was a place around
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: me that I was able to shoot in about you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: five years ago, and it was a bar, and basically
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: I just went up to them and I found them. Actually,
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: the first meeting between them and I became was was
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: actually through social media. I actually sent them a message
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: through my Space. Do you guys remember my Space?
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: I met my wife on my Space. That's who we are.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Well I'm glad someone actually remembers it, because when I
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: talk about MySpace, they're like, what, what the hell? What's
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: my As a quick little note here, MySpace was one
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: of the best dating sites I've ever been on. I
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: actually went on more date dates through my Space, and
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: you know Facebook and Twitter, I don't I don't get
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: to any dates at all.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: But this was like Tinder's grandpa.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. So it was also good because you worked
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: at MySpace angle, so they can't actually see me full on,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: because once they see me full on, they're like, oh
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: my god, Jesus.
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: Well, my wife's a musician, and so she was using
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: MySpace for you know, promoting her music. Because that was
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: the other thing that my Space was really great for was,
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: you know, you could put up some music or you know,
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: if you just had a band or a song that
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: you liked. I remember you could set that as sort
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: of like your welcome music to your MySpace page.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: So so I ended up.
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: I think she liked my blog and I liked her
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: music or something like that, and we've been together ever since.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: See MySpace the best dating site that ever was.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: And what happened to me? I think I've deleted my
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: account now, but unfortunately.
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: Apparently there's still a bit of a music scene there.
• 14:35
  Speaker 6: They've favoritaine to that.
• 14:36
  Speaker 7: I don't know, I'm trying to hear a little bit
• 14:38
  Speaker 7: more about it again, but yeah, I think the social
• 14:39
  Speaker 7: media part of it's pretty much gone.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: It's over, Yeah, because once justin Timberlake bought it. He
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: it's like an indie music scene.
• 14:47
  Speaker 6: Now, wasn't that just in.
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: The movie The Social Network though he just played that, yeah,
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: a different guy.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: So, you know, as we're talking about building relationships, you know,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: you guys ended up in two thousand and three making
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: a short film. I'm sorry, I don't want even butcher
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: the name. What is the title?
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: Fidelium twenty thirteen?
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: You made that, Yeah, Fidelium, Yeah, Dellium.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, you guys know, you listened to the show I
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: butcher names all the time, so that's totally fine. You know, English,
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: the English language is tough for me. So the Favilium
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: was chosen, you know, but none other than George A.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Ramira George A. Rameri as the winner of the twenty
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: thirteen you know, blood Shots Canada Horror Short film competition.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: You know, so you know what was the impetus in
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: creating a you know, the script for that, Well.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: It's the Bloodshots was actually a forty eight hour film
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: festival challenge, you know, like one of these film slams
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: where you don't do a whole lot of preparation before
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: they pull the trigger.
• 15:44
  Speaker 7: Well, you do a lot of preparation in terms of
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: like gathering your team, getting your tools.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: Together, but you don't know, you don't write the script.
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right, So they give you an inspiration package with
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: you know, a character or a line of dialogue or
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: a prop or something like that, and the idea is
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: to craft the whole story using those things in a
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: way that you know, doesn't feel like it's been forced in.
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: You know, it's all sort of organic, and you write
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: it and you shoot it and you edit it and
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: then deliver it within a forty eight hour time frame.
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: And they're intense, but they're awesome, and we've done we've
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: done a bunch of those before here in Vancouver. They
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: got really popular for a few years. There was at
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: least two or three of them every year, with a
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: lot of the same people here in the film community
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: that were doing them. So we, you know, we combined
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: forces and got our our inspiration package on the Friday afternoon,
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: Friday evening and went for it. And we and then
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: Bob ended up writing the script. And you know, we
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: had a team of i'd say probably about ten people
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: or so helping with makeup and costume or some camera stuff,
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: and a couple of actors on standby ready to jump in,
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: and other friends ready to take part. And then we
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: just blast through the whole weekend as hard as you
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: can to, you know, rush to the finish line and
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: deliver this this uh it's about eight minutes short horror film.
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: And we were we were really lucky on that one.
• 17:12
  Speaker 7: We had a great team we had helping us produce
• 17:15
  Speaker 7: was Lindsay Mann, who I've done for Productions, who helped
• 17:18
  Speaker 7: on Charlotte Song, which you know that was later on,
• 17:20
  Speaker 7: but uh, and then we had as our makeup artist
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: on that one was Darley Eaton, who actually won.
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: Face Off that the sci Fi Show, the sci Fi
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: Makeup Show, So we had a really talented team on
• 17:32
  Speaker 6: that one. Our actors were really great, and so yeah,
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: no that we.
• 17:36
  Speaker 7: Already kind of have a style of filmmaking that that
• 17:40
  Speaker 7: suits those competitions, because, like I say, we're pretty impatient people,
• 17:43
  Speaker 7: so when we do you want to make a movie,
• 17:46
  Speaker 7: we do make it relatively quickly. So those competitions are
• 17:50
  Speaker 7: great for us and keep us really sharp, and they're
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: a really great way to build your network because you
• 17:54
  Speaker 7: get out and not only do you have to build
• 17:56
  Speaker 7: your own team to go out and make the movie,
• 17:58
  Speaker 7: but at the same time you get to kind of
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: rub elbows with everybody else because you're at the event
• 18:02
  Speaker 7: where they kick it off and then there's a big
• 18:05
  Speaker 7: screening at the end of it.
• 18:05
  Speaker 6: So they're really wonderful events. And having George A.
• 18:08
  Speaker 7: Romero be the judge that ultimately selected our film was
• 18:11
  Speaker 7: the winner, it was really cool.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: So did you get to meet George He.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: Wasn't in town.
• 18:15
  Speaker 7: No, we didn't get into meet him, unfortunately, but they
• 18:18
  Speaker 7: sent the movie to him, and he sent us this
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: really nice little message just talking about why he chose
• 18:23
  Speaker 7: our film and the stuff that he liked about it.
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: So it was pretty neat.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: That's great, you know, because I know he lives in
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Canada now.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've heard that as well.
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's over I think he's over around Toronto, I
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: think on the other side.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because when I traveled off to Pittsburgh for one
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: of the Living Dead festivals, they actually had mentioned that
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: that George was living in Canada now and they actually
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: did a night of a Living Dead. I think it
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: was either a stage play or a musical.
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: But that's awesome.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't get a chance to check it out,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: but I mean I heard it got great reviews. So
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: but you know, you know, back to you know, your
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: short film. Is it available online anywhere for anyone to.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: Watch it is? Yeah, you can.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: I think we've got it. I'm not sure if I'm
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: thinking it's a YouTube link. I'll look it up and
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: give it to you here in a sec. But it's Fidelium.
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: I think you can google, you know, borrow time films
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: Fidelium blood Shots twenty twenty thirteen, something like that. Yeah,
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: and you know, and it's like I say, it's about
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: eight minutes long. It's got some wicked some wicked makeup.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: The prosthetics in fact, that that Darla came up with
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: were amazing. Actually, at one point, my fun little anecdote
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: from from shooting was the amount of blood that we had.
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: Because it's called blood shots, you know, you got to
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: have a lot of blood. And the amount of blood
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: that we had got really overpowering.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: Under the hot lights and.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: Everybody looking at it, it got just so gory that
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: some of the some of the crew actually had to
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: step off set.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: They were like, I can't look at this. It's too
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: it's too much.
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: My brain knows that it's fake, but my guts are
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: telling me I got to get out of here. But
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: the crazy thing was that all the blood's made out
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: of syrup, and under the hot lights it starts smelling
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: a bit like pancakes. So mostly I was just hungry
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: during the whole quite amazing.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: It was great.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: All right, guys, we just shot a horror film. Let's
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: go grab some pancakes.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: Come on, let's go.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: So you kept this, you know, this going because you know,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: in September of this this this past September, excuse me,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: they you know, you supported done for productions on the
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Dark Fantasy feature Charlotte Song, which actually had I win
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Ryon from Game of Thrones, and you know, so did
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: you want to keep you know, working in the horror
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: genre or was that just sort of like a happy coincidence.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: I think horror is kind of a happy coincident. I
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: mean horror and sort of the genre of horror, thriller,
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, even sci fi. They're they're great genres to
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: play in, and they're they're a lot of fun to make,
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: especially when you're dealing with things like makeup and and
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: effects and things like that. I don't know that it's
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: really what what either of us are immediately drawn to,
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: but there's those the other aspects, you know, in in
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: the production side of making these things that are a
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: lot of fun or that sometimes you can do on
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: a on a smaller budget and make it really effective,
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: So those are the kinds of things that we're really
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: excited about.
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: But I think also with Charlotte Song, just getting the
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: opportunity to work with someone like I believe it's ewan
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: ewen you He's Welsh, so it's a really challenging name
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: to pronounce. But to be able to work with him
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: and and a lot of the other people that we've
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: worked with and just kind of, you know, step the
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: whole production up a lot. The production was I think
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: it was about twenty seven days of filming through the
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: through June.
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: Last year.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Was a real treat. You know, to just sort of
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: level up in general was great, and to do it
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: with a lot of the people that we've been working
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: with was fantastic.
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it was Lindsay Mann who produced Fidelium.
• 22:23
  Speaker 7: She was one of the producers from Done for Productions
• 22:26
  Speaker 7: in that her and Jessica Lee Clark Bosen have that company,
• 22:30
  Speaker 7: and they were they were looking to sort of really
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: swing for the fences on this film and kind of,
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: you know, demonstrate this model that we believe in of
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: not a ton of money, but having really talented people
• 22:43
  Speaker 7: and allowing a lot of people to kind of level
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: up and do something that they might not get to
• 22:47
  Speaker 7: do on their regular day job. Because in Vancouver here
• 22:50
  Speaker 7: we've got a lot of service work for LA but
• 22:53
  Speaker 7: we don't have a lot of stuff where you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 7: people get to you know, be the screenwriter, be the director,
• 22:58
  Speaker 7: be that kind of stuff. It's all sort of labor
• 23:01
  Speaker 7: work to serve, you know, the wonderful network television shows
• 23:05
  Speaker 7: that shoot here, and I love them. But the idea
• 23:08
  Speaker 7: was to sort of gather all that talent together, let
• 23:10
  Speaker 7: people move up a notch and really make something special,
• 23:14
  Speaker 7: which I hope we did. But it really for us
• 23:17
  Speaker 7: came down to working with a really talented group of
• 23:19
  Speaker 7: people that we've kind of through that last decade of
• 23:23
  Speaker 7: collaborating together, have seen around town and worked on their
• 23:26
  Speaker 7: stuff and they've worked on our stuff, and just really
• 23:28
  Speaker 7: continuing those relationships through to what was pretty much the
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: biggest and most complex show we've worked on.
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: So that that was a really fun time.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: On Charlotte' Song, you mentioned all of the Hollywood productions
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: that come to Canada, and that's very true, you know,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: because whenever you know, I've been a part of a production,
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: that's one of the things that comes up is those
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: tax incentives, and they're always you know, talking about, hey,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: this is what we have in the States, but if
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: we go to Canada, you know, we also have to
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: factor in the currency change.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Totally.
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: I mean, the exchange rates really good for you guys
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: right now. And you know, we've looked at some of
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: the different tax incentives, not that we really qualify for
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: them because we've got such small budgets at the moment,
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: but you know we've we've seen that if you do
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: some really creative math and production organization, I suppose you
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: can get as much as like forty percent or forty
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: five percent of your of your output back in tax incentives.
• 24:35
  Speaker 7: Mostly it's all labor costs, So I mean it's all
• 24:37
  Speaker 7: about like for us to keep our budgets low, we
• 24:39
  Speaker 7: get a lot of people to come out and help
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: us and you know, work for little or no money
• 24:44
  Speaker 7: and get a share of our film.
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: Right, But a lot of people if you wanted to
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: pay you know, union.
• 24:49
  Speaker 7: Labor rates, you would be getting forty cents on the
• 24:51
  Speaker 7: dollar back immediately in return just for employing you know,
• 24:56
  Speaker 7: British Columbia filmmakers.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: And you actually raised another good point too, which is
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: I was actually listening to a podcast and the guest
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: was Dob Simmons, and he actually mentioned that was when
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: if you don't have money, he goes, but you really
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: want to work with certain people, whether it be actors
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: or crew, one of the best ways to get them
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: on board your production is to actually offer them, you know,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: some points on the back end, some shares of your film.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: I mean that's something that I think if it's your
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: first time putting a film together, you know, you've got
• 25:30
  Speaker 7: to be a little bit careful with that because you
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: can give away a lot of equity in the back
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: end of the film. And one of the things that
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: I think a lot of people do in another sort
• 25:39
  Speaker 7: of model of things is they hand out a lot
• 25:40
  Speaker 7: of deferrals where I say, you know, you come on board,
• 25:44
  Speaker 7: Dave and help me as my DP or whatever, and
• 25:46
  Speaker 7: I'll pay you half your rate now, and I'll pay
• 25:48
  Speaker 7: you half your rate when the movie makes money. But
• 25:50
  Speaker 7: the thing that people need to remember is that you
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: know these deferrals and if you are handing out back
• 25:55
  Speaker 7: end points, if your movie, you know, does do quite
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: well and you end up making quite a bit of
• 26:00
  Speaker 7: money on it, that can really affect the back end
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: of that film, or it can make your movie really
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: not attractive to distribution to sell it. If you know,
• 26:09
  Speaker 7: somebody owns a bunch of back end points or somebody owns.
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: You know, there's all these deferrals and need be paid out,
• 26:13
  Speaker 7: So you just have to be careful with that and
• 26:16
  Speaker 7: sort of look down the road. And I'd suggest that
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: anybody that's that's thinking about doing that gets some advice.
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: But if you're starting out and there's not a lot
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: of money in the budget, I think giving people an
• 26:24
  Speaker 7: ownership share in your movie is is you know, it's
• 26:28
  Speaker 7: fair because these people are putting their blood, sweat and
• 26:31
  Speaker 7: tears in just like you are. And if you can't
• 26:33
  Speaker 7: afford to pay them, the least you can do is
• 26:34
  Speaker 7: allow them to share in the success if the movie
• 26:37
  Speaker 7: does get out and make some money.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: So then you know, now you've made your feature film.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Do something with your life. It's available now on VHX
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: dot com. So I wanted to talk to you about that.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Is you know, what was the impetus in running this script.
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: Well, the you know, we'd sort of taken the momentum
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: that we built with these different forty eight and seventy
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: two hour film festivals, and I guess it was probably
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: by about the time I was about five years out
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: of film school, I had, you know, we'd been shooting
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: a lot of short films or the web series, and
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: I've been doing other things here and there, but really,
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: you know, wanted to wanted to.
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: Do the first feature.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: And so I sort of like i'd been working with
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: Bob and with Andrew who ended up being a writer
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: on the film, and sort of talked to them and
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: our other friend Keith, who also took the writing program
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: and came on as a producer, and the four of us,
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: you know, I somehow conned them into coming along on
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: this ride with me. I think it was in September
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: two thousand and nine. I approached them just after my
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: wedding and said, you know, guys, I want to make
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: a feature film and I would like to shoot it
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: next summer, so let's start working on it. And I
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: think Andrew had a bunch of time on his hands.
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: He was recently unemployed or something along those lines, so
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: he had a bunch of time to be able to
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: work on the script almost full time, which was huge.
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: So we started getting together for you know, story and
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: concept meetings at least once or twice a week through
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: the whole fall, and you know, launched a launched a
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: fundraising campaign by December of that year, with the goal
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: to raise about ten thousand dollars to start shooting around
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: the beginning middle of June and twenty ten.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: I'd always kind of.
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: Been inspired by stories from someone like, you know, Robert
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez made his first film for like seven thousand dollars
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: on film, and I think after reading his book, I
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: started thinking, well, yeah, I think I could probably do
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: something like that, and that would be that would be
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: a pretty great way to you know, make a short,
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: make a feature film on a small budget, but be
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: able to potentially raise all the money ourselves so that
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: we're not indebted to investors, so that we can kind
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: of make whatever movie we want to and if it
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: is a good movie, then people will want to see it.
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: And if it's a bad movie, well, you know, it
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: doesn't have to make any money. So that was kind
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: of the start of it, I think.
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: Yeah, And then you know, the movie was a long
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: and arduous journey, as many indie films are, so we
• 29:14
  Speaker 7: shot through the summer weekends through the summer of twenty
• 29:18
  Speaker 7: ten and for about eight weekends. Post production was a
• 29:21
  Speaker 7: bit of a challenge, and we got the movie cut
• 29:23
  Speaker 7: together after about you know, Abyss was early twenty eleven,
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: we had the movie cut together in sort of a
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: rough cut, and we realized that, you know, certain things
• 29:31
  Speaker 7: weren't working and other things really were working. So then
• 29:35
  Speaker 7: we basically xcized an entire subplot of the movie that
• 29:40
  Speaker 7: was just totally not working, and a reshot an entire
• 29:43
  Speaker 7: subplot with one of our actors who he plays a
• 29:47
  Speaker 7: different character. We completely cut him out of the movie
• 29:49
  Speaker 7: and then put him back in the movie as a
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: different character. So we reshot that and ended up premiering
• 29:55
  Speaker 7: at the Olio Festival.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 30:07
  Speaker 7: In twenty twelve, and then from there till now, we've
• 30:10
  Speaker 7: just been kind of, you know, having cups of coffees
• 30:12
  Speaker 7: with distributors and talking to people about that kind of
• 30:14
  Speaker 7: stuff and learning a lot about the indie film world.
• 30:21
  Speaker 7: And now we're at this point where we can finally
• 30:22
  Speaker 7: get it out and share it with people, and we're
• 30:24
  Speaker 7: pretty proud.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: So you mentioned you you crowdfunded the project. What platform
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: did you use?
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: We used indiegog and at that time it was there
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: was definitely not nearly as much crowdfunding as there is now.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, we didn't even have Kickstarter here in Canada
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: at that point, and I see how many different options
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: there are around, you know, North America, specifically for crowdfunding companies.
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: I know Seeden, Spark and those guys have been doing
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: a lot of indie crowdfunding and things like this, But
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: at the time, I think the only option really for
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: us was Indiegogo, and our crowdfunding campaign was abysmal compared
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: to what you see for you know, successfully funded campaigns. Now,
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: we I think we put together a short little video
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: and a couple of pictures and a short little bio
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: on the four of us. You know, I don't think
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: we ever really intended for it would have been great
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: to get it outside of our network, but I think
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: really what we ended up using Indigogo for the most
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: was for friends and family that weren't here in Vancouver
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: and couldn't come to any of our fundraisers to be
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: able to make a donation.
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: We raised a couple thousand dollars.
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: Through the Indigogo site, but you know, that was only
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: a small portion of the budget. A lot of it
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: came from these other fundraisers that we did here at
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: our at the bar that we go to all the
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: time Yaggers, it's called and and I started picking up
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: a bunch of sort of you know, editing contracts and
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: things that go on Craigslist and find people that were
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: looking for, you know, a short video that I could
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: shoot that was going to be a relatively quick turnaround,
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: or if other people needed some editing done. I started
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: picking up whatever I could in my spare time to
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: put all of that money into the budget. And Keith,
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: our other producer, you know, even went so far as
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: we thought of different ways that we could get other
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: people interested in the film as well, and he started
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: doing a bottle drive, which is something I don't think
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: anyone's really done since I was in about grade five.
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: And I wouldn't recommend it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: We didn't make much money for the bottle drive, but
• 32:31
  Speaker 7: it was a cool thing because it really kind of
• 32:34
  Speaker 7: spoke to the will to get the movie made. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 7: that was a thing Darren was mentioning how he somehow.
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: Wrote this into it.
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: It really it was just this this madness in his
• 32:44
  Speaker 7: eyes that he said, I'm making this movie come hell
• 32:46
  Speaker 7: or high water, and you can come or not. And
• 32:49
  Speaker 7: so we came along because I think that that's a
• 32:53
  Speaker 7: point that I would definitely like to stress is that,
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: you know, for young filmmakers or anybody that's that's thinking
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: about doing their first feature, you really need that madness
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: and that dedication to say I'm going to make this
• 33:04
  Speaker 7: movie and make it work no matter what, because that
• 33:06
  Speaker 7: really was what got this movie made, and that was
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: all Darren.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: So, let me guess when you were on indiegog, did
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: you have to spend most of your time explaining what
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: indiegog was? I had to when I first did it
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: in twenty ten. The next question everyone's mouth was, wait,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: what is it called indy? Yeah? So did you have
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: to do a lot of explaining about what crowdfunding was?
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: There was a fair bit of explaining, but I kind
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: of I think that we just kind of said, you know,
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: like here's a link, follow the directions and you can
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: input your credit card details and add as many zeros
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: as you can.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: And yeah, I don't think it was that difficult.
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: But then we also didn't really have a lot of
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: people going to it, you know, like I say, ours
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: really was friends and family, and so it didn't take
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: very long to explain that way. We haven't really done
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: any crowdfunding campaigns since then, and I think, you know,
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: probably for one of our next projects, whether it's the
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: next iteration of the Bob and Andrew web series or
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: something else. You know, we're definitely going to be putting
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: a lot more work into that crowdfunding campaign than we
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: did the first one, because I think you have to
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very true. And you know, I still get you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: friends and even people who find me through the website
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: of the podcast and they send me links to their
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: crowdfunding campaigns and it's dead in the water, and they
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: want to know what happened, you know, and you know,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: can give them some advice, and I'm like, well, you
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: have no video, You've got no pictures. It's almost like, hey, listen,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: this is my campaign. You give me money, well, and
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: we promise it's going to look like something. But I mean,
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you guys have seen those.
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: Two, Yeah, for sure.
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: And you know, I mean the incentives are also pretty important.
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, people want stuff, or at least
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: I want stuff. And if I'm going to film, if
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: I'm going to fund a campaign, I mean there's a
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: big part of it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: That's something that I see where I'm like, oh, I'd
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: like to see that, I definitely will help that out,
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: that team out, or if it's you know, friends or
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: other filmmakers in the community where you see their campaign,
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: it's like, oh, that's that's a cool idea. But then also,
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: you know the other side, and the thing that I
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: think we got wrong on our our Indiegogo campaign was
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: those incentives. You know, a lot of times the tendency
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: is to offer physical items, you know, whether it's signed
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: posters or DVDs or T shirts or whatever, and that
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: kind of stuff also costs money to produce, so in
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: a lot of times and a lot of time, and
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: you know, if you end up sort of promising a
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: lot of that kind of stuff, cool though they are,
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: I sometimes wonder for people that do that, how much
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: of the money do they actually put into the into
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: the project versus into the incentives. And I guess there's
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: a balance back and forth, because it does get you know,
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: more interest or more visibility if people like those incentives.
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: But I'm really excited about the idea, and I've seen
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: a few other campaigns do this. Some friends of mine
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: around Washington and the Seattle area have made a number
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: of low budget features now and are using those their
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: past releases as as incentive packages to fund their next projects,
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: which I think is pretty neat because you know, it
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: kind of gets the word of their previous projects out
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: as a thank you for for donating to the next one.
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: So it's kind of like promotional crowdfunding in a way.
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's it's you got to get the
• 36:38
  Speaker 7: thing about crowdfunding is too you know, back when we
• 36:41
  Speaker 7: did that campaign for Do Something with your Life, and
• 36:43
  Speaker 7: like you're talking about having to explain what indi Gogo was,
• 36:46
  Speaker 7: We're not in that realm anymore. I think that the game,
• 36:49
  Speaker 7: that the bar has really been up in terms of
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: what you need for a successful crowdfunding campaign, and people
• 36:54
  Speaker 7: expect it to be part of the story, part of
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: the narrative, right, I mean you need to you need
• 36:59
  Speaker 7: to be craft it in preparing for it, almost as
• 37:02
  Speaker 7: much as you would for doing a film. You know,
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: you've got to be generating content and being creative about
• 37:09
  Speaker 7: what those rewards are and making sure that it's a
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: companion piece to your to your movie or whatever project
• 37:14
  Speaker 7: it's for, not just you know, a receptacle to get money,
• 37:18
  Speaker 7: because people catch on to that pretty quick.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: So do you think that for your next project, you'll
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: you'll make another or launch another crowdfund a campaign.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: We're definitely gearing up to do one.
• 37:28
  Speaker 7: We're kind of of the mind that you know, when
• 37:31
  Speaker 7: you do do one, you kind of got to make
• 37:32
  Speaker 7: it count. And so, like Darren was saying, we're kind
• 37:35
  Speaker 7: of we're writing right now the next batch of scripts
• 37:38
  Speaker 7: for Bob and Andrew, and once we've got those scripts done,
• 37:41
  Speaker 7: we'll kind of assess, you know, what kind of budget
• 37:43
  Speaker 7: we need for that. But I think we're looking at
• 37:45
  Speaker 7: possibly doing a crowdfunding campaign for that batch of episodes,
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: just because the show already has a little bit of
• 37:52
  Speaker 7: a built in audience. I mean it's not much, but
• 37:53
  Speaker 7: it's a little bit of a built in audience, some
• 37:55
  Speaker 7: recognition there. We've had some success within the past, and
• 37:58
  Speaker 7: so I think that's that's import and too when your
• 38:01
  Speaker 7: crowdfunding is to show that what you're going to make
• 38:04
  Speaker 7: has some validity to it and people can go and
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: look at things and know whether or not they'll be interested.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: So with your crowdfunding campaign for Do Something with your Life,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: you know, what was your most popular perk level?
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: Uh? I think it was probably about twenty dollars something
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: like that and for that they got to copy the
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: film and a poster.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: I think something along those lines. Yeah, I'd have to
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: take a look again. There was a couple of different things.
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: Again, you know, it was like, uh, we were at
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: the time we were going to start making I wanted to
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: make DVDs because I'm a big fan of physical media.
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: Don't ever help darn borrow and move. I've done it
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: many times. And there's just a bunch.
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: Of of shed media and shelves of records and eight
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: tracks and yeah, mini discs. But yeah, I think probably
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: around about the twenty dollars range for a crowdfunding campaign
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: was was the most popular for us. And I I
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: mean we've only just launched the movie online itself through VHX,
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: But that seems to be sort of like uh an
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: average that people that are interested are willing to pay
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: for either a good cause or maybe it's a lot
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: of content. I mean, our our film is on VHX
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: as a with a pay what you want structure. I
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: mean we've got suggested prices for the deluxe package with
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: all the bonus material and stuff like that.
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: Well, there's minimum prices, basically, there are minimum prices.
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, but you know, with the pay what
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: you want, a lot of times people will, you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: give a little extra, which is always nice as well.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: So you know, I have to ask a question. I'm
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: sure you've been asked a lot is what you havey
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: filmmakers asked, is what'd you shoot that on? Ah, every
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: festal you go to, it's always so you know, what'd
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: you shoot that on?
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: Well would you shoot that? Darren guy just lit up.
• 40:09
  Speaker 6: This is the question. He loves answering.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: I love talking about here and stuff. This is this
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: is exciting now.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: It was funny because we shot we were shooting the
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: Bob and Andrew web series. We had borrowed a friend's
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: Sony Ex three, which is you know, an HD ten
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: eighty camera that actually has interchangeable lenses or you can
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: if you've got the right mounts and whatnot. We didn't
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: have the right mounts. I think we had two lenses.
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: We were playing around with this camera and shooting and unfortunately,
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: I think somebody tripped over a cable and the camera
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: went lens first into the ground and that and we
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: had by that point we had raised about twelve thousand
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: dollars through our crowdfunding or through all of our fundraising
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: for the movie, and the first twenty five hundred or
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: so went into repairing this uninsured camera, which was unfortunate
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: but also a blessing because it made us kind of go, well,
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: this camera probably, you know, isn't gonna work because it's damaged.
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: Good now the lenses shattered, so we need something else.
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: Our cinematographer, Jordan Ewan, we'd worked with him a lot
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: and he was familiar with those cameras, but he also
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: sort of pointed out the fact that some of these
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: still camera companies were coming out with you know, like
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: DSLRs had just started coming onto the market. So he
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: sort of said, let's take a look at this this
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: new one, the Canon five D Mark two. It shoots
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: ten eighty video and I've got a bunch of Nikon lenses.
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: And all of the Canon purists cringed when he talked
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: about putting Nikon lenses on a Canon camera, but that
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: ended up being what we did.
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: I think that was one of the smartest choices we made,
• 41:49
  Speaker 6: having Jordan on board.
• 41:50
  Speaker 7: I think the photography in the movie because we had
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: a tiny crew again, you know, very small budget.
• 41:56
  Speaker 6: Jordan made that.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: That look pretty good, I think, you know, with those
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: lenses in that camera. Oh yeah, for sure, he was.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: He was fantastic.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: And you know, between the use of of the prime
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: lenses that we had and and and having the five
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: D as as much as we made fun of it,
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: because you know, Jordan actually works in the in the
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: industry here in town. As a second, he was just
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: you know, he was just in Dubai on the latest
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: Star Trek movie, and he was you know, he did
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: the Monster Trucks movie or some big FX show, and
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: so he's used to working with techno cranes and you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: Arie Alexa's and just the full gamut of industry gear.
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: So to suddenly sort of have him pick up a
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: you know, a two pound dsl R and go, okay,
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: well we're gonna shoot the whole film with this, and.
• 42:44
  Speaker 7: Well and we didn't even have a kit for most
• 42:46
  Speaker 7: of the time. I mean there were some days where
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: we had you know, a kit where we had you know, matt.
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: Box and no like a shoulder.
• 42:53
  Speaker 7: A couple of days we did We talked all this
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: on the on some of the special features that I
• 42:57
  Speaker 7: noticed behind the scenes.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: There's a matt box.
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: There was a matt box on one of like one
• 43:00
  Speaker 7: weekend that we had. But anyways, most of the time
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: it was just Jordan holding the camera.
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: It really was. It was there was no follow focus.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: And you know, if you've ever tried pulling focus on
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: a stills lens, it's like one millimeter equals a distance
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: of you know, one hundred foot change.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh geez, the depth of.
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: Field can be so shallow, especially if you're shooting wide
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: open that you know, it's a miracle that everything is
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: mostly in focus.
• 43:25
  Speaker 7: So the beauty of it was, though we were able
• 43:28
  Speaker 7: to bomb around and get a bunch of shots in
• 43:31
  Speaker 7: public and people didn't really bother us too much because
• 43:34
  Speaker 7: you know, there's all that stuff from the beginning of
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: the movie of mind riding the bike around Bite and
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: you know when he takes transit and stuff like that.
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: We were able to bomb around with that camera and
• 43:42
  Speaker 7: nobody really gave us any trouble because it looked like
• 43:45
  Speaker 7: we were taking a bunch of stills, right, So so
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: that kind of helped not having all of the bells
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: and whistles on the camera. But the huge caveat being
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: make sure your DP knows what the heck they're doing,
• 43:56
  Speaker 7: because Jordan's pretty skilled.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: Operator with that.
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, just the size of the camera itself.
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: For instance, in the opening sequence when we are riding around,
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: you know, a lot of people ask how did you
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: get that shot where the camera's right down at his
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: feet and he's riding and it's like a pedal foot insert,
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: and you know, we we we use a lot of
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: c stand arms and kind of mounted the camera upside
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: down hanging off the back of a BMX, which you
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: can't really do with you know, fifty thousand dollars cameras.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: So so that was a real benefit of using that
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: particular camera. The challenge actually with the camera, though, came
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: in post because at the same time, you know, we
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: ended up editing with Final Cut seven, which famously could
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: not handle h two sixty four video files. So the
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: camera of files that came straight out of the out
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: of the five D, trying to edit those as compressed
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: and small file size as they were was practically impossible,
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: and it just kept crashing my programs. So I learned
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: a lot about the pop the post process. You know,
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: even though I had a lot of education in the
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: whole world, a lot of things you don't know until
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: you've actually been in that situation. So we ended up
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: trans like a terabytes worth of you know, sixteen gigabyte
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: cards out of the out of the five D and
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: then editing it all from there.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: So, you know, I've had some friends too who've moved
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: away from Final Cut seven actually sortain they moved away
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: from Final Cut X because once X came out, they
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: all either moved to ADVID Media Composer or they went
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: with the route I went to, which is Adobe Creative
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Cloud used using pil your pro So if you were
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: gonna when you edit again, you know, do you think
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: you're going to go back to Final Cut seven or
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: do you think you would use like, you know, something
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: like Premiere.
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: You know, funnally, I I was the editor on Charlotte
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: Song last year and we did edit in Final Cut seven.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: I'm not a really big fan of Final Cut X either,
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: and I did learn and train on Avid, but.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: I haven't really used it quite as much.
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: And I like the the tactility of you know, Final
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: Cut or Premiere, and I've pretty much switched over to
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: Creative Cloud myself, but last year, because I think I
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: didn't have Creative Cloud at the time, I was pretty
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: confident and solid still with Final Cut seven. So I
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: ended up using that for a Charlotte song. But you know,
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: moving forward now, I think pretty much everything I'm doing
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: is all in premiere because it's a little bit more versatile.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, you know, I actually edit this entire
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: podcast and audition, which is a part of creative which
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: is a part of the creative Cloud, in case anyone's interested,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: as we talk all this techie geek stuff, as we
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: get involved, moved deeper into this. Yeah, so you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: you decided to distribute this movie on VHX dot com.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: And you know, as you were saying before, you know,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: you talked for you know, months upon months with all
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: these distributors. So you know, what are some of the
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: things that you you took away from having all these
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: meetings with these with these distributors.
• 47:05
  Speaker 7: The biggest thing was, if you're going to do a comedy,
• 47:07
  Speaker 7: you need a recognizable actor in your movie.
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: It's it's it's just a fact of life.
• 47:12
  Speaker 7: Now, we thought that if we made a quirky enough,
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: you know, comedy, that they would kind of stand alone
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: and the realities of the of the marketplace now is
• 47:21
  Speaker 7: such that, you know, all the distributors that we showed
• 47:24
  Speaker 7: it to, they all pretty much Nancy said, we love
• 47:27
  Speaker 7: your movie.
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: It's a great little movie. You guys are doing a
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: good job.
• 47:30
  Speaker 7: Come back to us when you have either a horror
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: movie with nobody in it or somebody in it's better obviously,
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: but a horror movie science fiction, or you know, get
• 47:38
  Speaker 7: a star in your movie and we can talk. But
• 47:41
  Speaker 7: that was that was somewhat of a sort of realization
• 47:46
  Speaker 7: that we had to come to very slowly over time.
• 47:49
  Speaker 7: And when we first had the movie finished and we
• 47:52
  Speaker 7: had got it to a couple of festivals and we
• 47:54
  Speaker 7: had our premiere here, self distribution seemed like a bit
• 47:58
  Speaker 7: of a bit of a failure in a way. But
• 48:01
  Speaker 7: with things like VHX and with things, you know, the
• 48:04
  Speaker 7: other platforms, because we looked at like five or six
• 48:06
  Speaker 7: different platforms and there's a lot of really good ones
• 48:08
  Speaker 7: right now. We won't VHX just because it seemed to
• 48:11
  Speaker 7: have the most versatility for us. But self distribution now,
• 48:14
  Speaker 7: I think is a really viable option. I think for
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: especially for people that are making their first feature or
• 48:20
  Speaker 7: people that are making super low budget features and they
• 48:22
  Speaker 7: can't they can't get you know, a star to be
• 48:25
  Speaker 7: in their movie plan for self distribution. I mean, you're
• 48:28
  Speaker 7: not going to make a ton of money, but you're
• 48:29
  Speaker 7: going to get your movie out there and you're going
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: to start building an audience. And I think that that's
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: the thing that a lot of people need to think
• 48:35
  Speaker 7: about as well getting into indie filmmaking, is that you
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: can't put all your eggs in that first feature basket.
• 48:42
  Speaker 7: That first feature now is almost more like what it
• 48:45
  Speaker 7: was to have a really polished short film back when
• 48:48
  Speaker 7: we were shooting on film. You know, it was so
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: hard to make a movie back then. You had to
• 48:52
  Speaker 7: you know, you got a crew together and make a
• 48:54
  Speaker 7: short film on film and get it out there. It
• 48:56
  Speaker 7: could be a calling card. And now I think that
• 48:58
  Speaker 7: first feature really is come your calling cards. So I
• 49:01
  Speaker 7: think I think that speaks also to the way that
• 49:03
  Speaker 7: we do things and just trying to keep things as
• 49:05
  Speaker 7: cheap as possible, and you know, trying to trying to
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: really focus on the important aspects of the story and
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: and you know, the acting, and trying to trying to
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: get some good cinematography in there. But but doing it
• 49:17
  Speaker 7: cheap and making sure you don't owe anybody any money
• 49:19
  Speaker 7: on that first feature, so that if you don't make
• 49:21
  Speaker 7: any money, at least you can build your audience and
• 49:24
  Speaker 7: build your name and build your reputation and hopefully put
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: that as a cornerstone towards your career.
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: I think one of the things that that Bob also
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: mentioned that I would I would take away from the
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: whole experience of that of do something with your life
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: is you know, he said plan for distribution, and that
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: was not something that I was thinking about at all.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: I've been trapped in the nineties for most of my.
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: Life musically, and I mean fashion wise, I tend to
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: only wear a plaid and grunge stuff.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: But you know, I was also thinking about the distribution.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: Process in the early nineties and thinking that we could
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: sort of do the same thing. You know, you make
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: a feature sentence to some festivals, they love it. You
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: become the next you know, Richard linklater or you know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: Quentin Tarantino or whoever or whatever that is. And that
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: was kind of the way that things went for a while.
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: When when it was a lot more challenging to make
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: a film because it was actually shot on film and
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: you needed a crew, and you needed a lot more money.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: And I mean, these guys had stars and things like
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: that as well. But you know, I feel like the
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: festivals in the early nineties were a very different thing
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: than what they are now, and when we set out
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: to make the movie, getting it out there and the
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: distribution and everything that comes with finishing the movie was
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: not at all what I was thinking about. My favorite
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: time of the whole phase is the actual production, from
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: when you've got the money or the green light or
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: you start doing it until you kind of hand it
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: off and you're finished with the end of the project.
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: You know it's edited, it's mastered, and you screen it.
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: That's my favorite part, and unfortunately, the getting the money
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: and the selling the movie my.
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Least favorite parts.
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: Are definitely probably two of the most important things that
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: you really need to think about as a filmmaker, because
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: a lot of times you aren't and you don't want to,
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: and you want somebody else to think about that.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: For you, but you know, nobody's really going to do
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: that for you. You need to plan for that yourself.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: You know, Darren, you made a very good point about
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: the whole horror movie thing, because I've noticed that at
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: talking to more distributors, talking to more people who teach workshops,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: they always recommend a horror movie as sort of like
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: your first quote unquote your first film, because horror itself
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: becomes the character.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: M hmm.
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, look at the top directors you know
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: in North America right now and even around the world.
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: Some of the best directors started there, or the new
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: generations of the people that you're talking about, like the
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: Richard Linklaters and whatever you're talking about now.
• 52:17
  Speaker 7: It's like it's Eli Roth and James Wan and people
• 52:20
  Speaker 7: like this that all came out of horror. Yeah, you know,
• 52:23
  Speaker 7: they made their horror movies, were their first ones, and
• 52:25
  Speaker 7: they broke through with those. And that's that's the thing
• 52:27
  Speaker 7: about today's marketplace, is that no distributor is going to
• 52:31
  Speaker 7: go near your movie unless they know they can sell it.
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: Not they think they can sell it, they know they
• 52:35
  Speaker 6: can sell it. And the only genre out.
• 52:37
  Speaker 7: There that they know they can sell without having, like
• 52:41
  Speaker 7: I'm saying, some kind of bankable star or at least
• 52:43
  Speaker 7: recognizable star in your movie is horror sci fi to
• 52:47
  Speaker 7: a certain extent, but horror really is where it's at
• 52:50
  Speaker 7: for that kind of thing. So, I mean, if you're
• 52:51
  Speaker 7: interested in horror as a as a young filmmaker, I'd say,
• 52:54
  Speaker 7: by all means, dive in and if you're not, just
• 52:57
  Speaker 7: be aware of the reality that you know, you're probably
• 52:59
  Speaker 7: going to be looking at a self distribution model, which
• 53:02
  Speaker 7: is not the end of the world's There's still a
• 53:05
  Speaker 7: lot of really cool ways to do that and get
• 53:06
  Speaker 7: it out there. But again, it takes a lot of
• 53:09
  Speaker 7: effort and a lot of planning, and that handoff between
• 53:12
  Speaker 7: filmmaker and distributor doesn't really exist like it did before,
• 53:15
  Speaker 7: because even when you do get a distributor on board
• 53:18
  Speaker 7: a small film, it's still really the onus is on
• 53:21
  Speaker 7: the filmmaker to make sure that it gets out there
• 53:23
  Speaker 7: and reaches its audience, you know. So I think I
• 53:27
  Speaker 7: think filmmaking is much more a three hundred and sixty
• 53:30
  Speaker 7: degree proposition than it ever has been. So that's just
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: something I think people should keep in mind when they
• 53:34
  Speaker 7: dive into something like this.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: You know, very true. You know, guys, we've been talking
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: for about fifty minutes now, so you know, in closing,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: is there you know, anything that you would like to
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: add to sort of put you know, a period at
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: the end of this entire conversation.
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: You know, I think the process of making any film
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: is massive. It's such a lot of work, and it
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: can be really challenging at times. And there are plenty
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: of times when, you know, when you go through production
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: and things are challenging, and you've got a team of
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: people there on set to sort of help you and
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: support you through it, and you know, get through the
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: either mental blocks or when things aren't going right. And
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: then when you get into post production, sometimes you're by
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: yourself or you know, you feel lonely in the in
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: the edit suite there, and you get all the way
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: through the to the end of it, and then you
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: go through the whole slog of trying to get the
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: movie out there and sell it. And a lot of
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: times you feel by the time it's wrapping up or
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: that it's over, that you don't ever want to do
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: it again. But then a week goes by and you're like,
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: I got to pick up a camera and go and
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: shoot something like now. And I guess that's kind of
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: the definition of an insanity. But I think we're just
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: going to keep on doing that. Yeah, I think I
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: would say too.
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: And I think this comes through in a lot of
• 55:01
  Speaker 7: the special features that we that we put on for
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: the Do Something with Your Life package is that, yes,
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: we made all these mistakes and we learned all these lessons,
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: and we have all this advice for young filmmakers or
• 55:11
  Speaker 7: whoever is going to start out on their first feature
• 55:13
  Speaker 7: about plan for this, plan for that, don't forget about distribution.
• 55:17
  Speaker 7: But at the end of the day, buckle down and
• 55:20
  Speaker 7: make your movie. That's the most important thing. Just get
• 55:22
  Speaker 7: it done. And there will be times along the way
• 55:25
  Speaker 7: where you feel completely exhausted or defeated or whatever. The
• 55:28
  Speaker 7: key to getting over that is to find good collaborators.
• 55:31
  Speaker 7: And that's I think this movie is a testament to that.
• 55:35
  Speaker 6: Darren and I have worked with the.
• 55:36
  Speaker 7: Same people over and over again for the past, you know,
• 55:39
  Speaker 7: eight years that we've known each other, and I'd say
• 55:42
  Speaker 7: to anybody getting into this, make sure you have a team,
• 55:45
  Speaker 7: because you can't do it by yourself. And so I
• 55:48
  Speaker 7: would say to put a button on this conversation, I'd
• 55:50
  Speaker 7: just say thanks to everybody that helped us make Do
• 55:52
  Speaker 7: Something with Your Life or any of those other projects
• 55:55
  Speaker 7: that we talked about because we couldn't have done it
• 55:56
  Speaker 7: without any of them.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know that's great point too, is you
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: have to build a team. You have to have a team.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: I know, we can all we all like to think
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: of ourselves now as like a one man army. We
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: can you know, film edit, cast, right, all this other stuff.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: And then finally it's like, oh my god, how did
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: I get involved? And you know I had some help, Yeah, totally.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: It's just you know, and I've been there myself where
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: I've tried to do everything and just like it just
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: over it consumes you and overwhelms you. And then you're like,
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe there is something to this whole teamwork thing.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I love doing a little
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: bit of everything.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: You know, I like picking up a camera, I I
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: like doing sound work, and I like doing all these
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: different things.
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: But it's impossible to do everything at once.
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: And you you know, I think you build that team
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: around you that can support you and people that you
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: want to work with. That's the other big challenge is
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: you know, there's plenty of egos and whatnot, but when
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: you find the people that you want to work with
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: and you can continue to work together, you know, and
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: find a rhythm for making your production days or you know,
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: coming up with great ideas for for stuff. Then it
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: just becomes it's all work, it's all fun.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, film, film is a team sport.
• 57:09
  Speaker 7: Right, and I think the the you know, to use
• 57:13
  Speaker 7: a sports analogy. You know, when when you're down by
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: a couple of goals and you look down the bench,
• 57:17
  Speaker 7: you want to see people that are going to go
• 57:19
  Speaker 7: to battle for you. And I think, uh, that's the
• 57:21
  Speaker 7: most important part because you're going to reach that point
• 57:24
  Speaker 7: where you feel like you're defeated, particularly when you're when
• 57:28
  Speaker 7: you're like you're saying to you're doing a lot of
• 57:30
  Speaker 7: stuff and at the center of everything. So you know,
• 57:33
  Speaker 7: being able to look over at somebody who's in the
• 57:34
  Speaker 7: trenches with you, I think is really really important.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: You know. I I can tell you're from Canada because
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: you got right to that hockey analogy.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: He's a big hockey player. Bob plays a lot of hockey.
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: I do my best, Yeah, represent the Canadian way.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: All right, guys, where do people find you out online?
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: We're kind of all over I guess we've got the
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: Boro Time Films, Facebook, page is Facebook slash Borotime Films.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: The movie Do.
• 58:06
  Speaker 7: Something with Your Life is available at www dot Do
• 58:09
  Speaker 7: somethingmovie dot com. And then other than that, Twitter is
• 58:12
  Speaker 7: probably the best way to find us. I'm at Bob Underscore,
• 58:16
  Speaker 7: Woolsey and Borrowtime Films is at Borotime.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: Films, and I'm at d boro Time.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: And I will have those all in the show notes everybody,
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: so you can. You can stalk Bob and Darren all
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: day long, and.
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: But as always on social media, so if you tweet
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: at him, he'll probably get back to you within about
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: ten minutes.
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: Well let's not get too carried away. Well that's me,
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: he promises.
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, I mean we you know, we like connecting
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: with other people and hearing other people's stories, especially when
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: it comes to indie filmmaking, and there's there's a lot
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: of other great stories and other people making really great
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: films out there, and I want to see more of them.
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: Thinking about in January setting a challenge of watching only
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: independent films, like possibly not necessarily going to the theater, but
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: just looking around and finding stuff that I've never heard
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: of and watching just brand new stuff for an entire
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: month and see what that's.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: Like, well, there you go.
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: If you have an indie film, send it to Darren.
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, send me to your films. I want to watch
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: stuff I've never heard of and never seen.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: Well, there you go. Like we were saying before the show,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: I always get people hitting me up for that stuff.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: So I will start saying in your way, sir, and
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: you'll be like, God, I'm so sorry I ever heard this,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: Dave Baliska.
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: I'll stop going to work and I'll just just watch
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: movies all day.
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: It sounds terrible.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: You're becoming agoraphobic, and just you know, no again, everything
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: we've talked about I'm going to have in the show notes,
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: so it'll be very easy to navigate through this entire interview. Again, guys, Bob, Darren,
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: I want to say thank you very much for coming on.
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Dave, Thanks Dave.
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: It's been great much appreciate it.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: Oh my pleasure. Guys, and I wish you the best,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: Curious take care, but bye bye.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at Indie Film Muscle.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Dot com Forward Slash eight fifty six. If you have
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: really helps us out a lot, guys.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you again so much for listening.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: Guys, as always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
• 1:00:35
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• 1:00:38
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• 1:00:40
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