Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 801: Breaking the Rules: Crafting Powerful Films Without Hollywood Money with Shawn Whitney

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IFH 801: Breaking the Rules: Crafting Powerful Films Without Hollywood Money with Shawn Whitney · 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 2: Welcome to the Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight,
0:15
Speaker 2: No One 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 show you how to survive
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Speaker 1: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
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0:32
Speaker 3: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
0:35
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle Podcast.
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Speaker 3: I am your humble.
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Speaker 2: Host Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
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1:50
Speaker 2: today's episode with guest host.
1:52
Speaker 3: Dave bullis my guest this week runs micro Budget Film Lab.
1:58
Speaker 3: He has directed to micro Budget of Features and it's
2:00
Speaker 3: in pre production for a third with guests Sean Whitney.
2:05
Speaker 3: Hey Sean, thanks loll for coming on the show.
2:08
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks very much for having me, Dave. I really
2:10
Speaker 4: appreciate it.
2:10
Speaker 3: Oh, you know my pleasure, Sean. You know I've seen
2:13
Speaker 3: everything you've been doing with the micro Budget Film Lab
2:16
Speaker 3: and all the great things that you're doing over there.
2:18
Speaker 3: But before I even you know, we start talking about
2:19
Speaker 3: all the things you do there. I wanted to talk,
2:21
Speaker 3: you know, about your career and about you know, getting started.
2:24
Speaker 3: So you know, we're growing up Sewan. Did you always
2:27
Speaker 3: you know, have this, you know, this hobby of film
2:30
Speaker 3: or this love affair with film and and you know,
2:32
Speaker 3: did you make films growing up as a kid?
2:35
Speaker 5: No, no, short answer, no, No.
2:40
Speaker 4: I I mean I always was.
2:43
Speaker 5: I've thought of myself as a writer since I was
2:45
Speaker 5: probably ten or nine years old. But you know, there
2:50
Speaker 5: was no we didn't have any video cameras or anything
2:52
Speaker 5: like that, like it just we just didn't have them.
2:55
Speaker 4: So it wasn't really around.
2:57
Speaker 5: I watched a lot of old movies, you know, it
2:58
Speaker 5: was back in the days, first before cable and then
3:00
Speaker 5: cable and so you know, we would get like Channel
3:04
Speaker 5: twenty nine from Buffalo and we would watch you know,
3:07
Speaker 5: bad movies or not bad movies, but old movies from
3:09
Speaker 5: the fifties and sixties. But it wasn't really until much
3:13
Speaker 5: later that I decided to pursue film.
3:15
Speaker 3: Actually, so, did you end up going to college for film? No?
3:23
Speaker 5: No, So I went to university in Toronto at the
3:28
Speaker 5: York University, and I did a liberal arts degree in
3:30
Speaker 5: humanities kind of cultural studies, and then I did a
3:32
Speaker 5: master's in interdisciplinary studies that was focused on writing for
3:37
Speaker 5: the theater. And i'd started a small theater company that
3:39
Speaker 5: was doing like Brecdian musical theater, and we did a
3:42
Speaker 5: bunch of really great productions, and you know, I wrote
3:45
Speaker 5: stuff and I was doing that, and then but then
3:50
Speaker 5: I went decided to make a turn towards film really
3:54
Speaker 5: in about the year two thousand and three, I guess,
3:58
Speaker 5: And at that point I just began writing, you know,
4:02
Speaker 5: I've done I tried to do actually a theater production.
4:04
Speaker 4: I did like a workshop production.
4:06
Speaker 5: And it went really badly and I lost a lot
4:07
Speaker 5: of money, and I was really depressed. So I kind
4:10
Speaker 5: of hit in my basement for about three years and
4:13
Speaker 5: just started writing screenplays and just sort of learning how
4:16
Speaker 5: to write screenplays on my own. And then I guess
4:19
Speaker 5: three or four years and then I ended up getting
4:22
Speaker 5: accepted into the Canadian Film Center, which is kind of
4:24
Speaker 5: like the American Film Institute Institute, and that was my
4:28
Speaker 5: kind of you know, my formal the formal official part
4:32
Speaker 5: of my education was that residency there.
4:35
Speaker 3: Now you mentioned, you know, writing your own screenplays and
4:38
Speaker 3: sort of teaching yourself how to write screenplays. You know,
4:41
Speaker 3: that's sort of something I did a few years ago,
4:44
Speaker 3: you know, and I think that helps out a lot.
4:47
Speaker 3: And what I want to ask is, you know, was
4:49
Speaker 3: there any particular books or even scripts or even movies
4:53
Speaker 3: that you sort of us to sort of pick apart,
4:54
Speaker 3: you know, and how to sort of teaching yourself how
4:56
Speaker 3: to write.
4:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a few books.
4:59
Speaker 5: I mean, sid Field I think was maybe the first
5:01
Speaker 5: book screenplay that I that I read, and that kind
5:06
Speaker 5: of opened my eyes to you know, structure and all
5:08
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. And then I read another book
5:10
Speaker 5: by Epstein called Crafty Screenwriting, which was really good. And
5:16
Speaker 5: then the most recently I read a few years ago now,
5:21
Speaker 5: I read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and that
5:24
Speaker 5: was I know, it.
5:26
Speaker 4: Gets, it gets you know, a.
5:28
Speaker 5: Lot of bad people go on about it now because
5:30
Speaker 5: it has become kind of the dominant model in Hollywood
5:33
Speaker 5: in many ways, but it's I still think that it's
5:36
Speaker 5: a really powerful machinery that you can use. You can
5:39
Speaker 5: bend it to kind of more unconventional structures. But it
5:42
Speaker 5: was really useful for me in terms of creating a
5:45
Speaker 5: kind of method to approach the screenwriting process.
5:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have noticed that Say the Cat has has
5:52
Speaker 3: gotten a lot of flack. I mean I think if
5:54
Speaker 3: you're at the top of any field, and you know,
5:57
Speaker 3: I think Save the Cat has sort of gotten to
5:58
Speaker 3: the upper echelon now because I mean, well, Sidfield has
6:02
Speaker 3: passed and so has uh you've had the person who
6:06
Speaker 3: may save the Cat has passed. But I mean I
6:08
Speaker 3: still think that it's been able. It's been it's been
6:11
Speaker 3: sort of passed on through his through his program. And
6:14
Speaker 3: I think now when you when you're at the top field,
6:15
Speaker 3: when you're at the top of any field, I think
6:18
Speaker 3: you're going to get flat for a lot of things.
6:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, and it's partly it's because
6:23
Speaker 4: of the way.
6:23
Speaker 5: That Hollywood approached the whole process of storytelling. I mean,
6:28
Speaker 5: it really is the kind of formula that's in Save
6:31
Speaker 5: the Cat is used constantly, Like you can watch a
6:35
Speaker 5: movie and time.
6:36
Speaker 4: It's kind of just to Save the Cat structure.
6:38
Speaker 5: And and I think people get because of that, and
6:41
Speaker 5: because a lot of Hollywood movies are pretty you know,
6:43
Speaker 5: they're pretty empty sort of commercial properties that are really
6:47
Speaker 5: you know, not about They're not about art, They're about
6:49
Speaker 5: their product, right, And I think people confuse the power
6:54
Speaker 5: of the story structure with the vacancy of the content,
6:57
Speaker 5: and I think that's where a lot of that comes from.
6:59
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, Hollywood movies are kind of empty,
7:02
Speaker 5: or not all of them, but a lot of them
7:03
Speaker 5: are empty, and it's because they all follow this model.
7:05
Speaker 4: And I think that's it's a little bit of a misrepresentation.
7:10
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, I know you can't see this
7:13
Speaker 3: because it's a podcast, but I have a huge screenwriting
7:15
Speaker 3: book library right next to me, to my left, and
7:19
Speaker 3: I sort of did what you did, you know, I
7:21
Speaker 3: wanted to figure out, you know, screenwriting the nuts and
7:23
Speaker 3: bolts and getting down to the absolute, you know, sort
7:26
Speaker 3: of atoms of it and figure out, you know, what
7:28
Speaker 3: makes a great screenwriter, what makes a great screenplay. And
7:31
Speaker 3: I sort of just you know, would buy these books
7:33
Speaker 3: piece by piece. Some of them you could buy, i
7:35
Speaker 3: mean for pennies on the dollar in Amazon. Others, you know,
7:38
Speaker 3: they just came out and they're still full price. But
7:40
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot there. There are some that
7:44
Speaker 3: really speak to to me, and then there's others that
7:47
Speaker 3: I read and I'm just like, I don't know, maybe
7:49
Speaker 3: this is lost because you know, I'm sure it happened
7:50
Speaker 3: to you too, Sewan, where you have people recommend books
7:53
Speaker 3: to you, like screenwriting books, for instance, and you read
7:55
Speaker 3: them and you're just like, what was the big deal
7:57
Speaker 3: about this?
7:57
Speaker 5: You know, yeah, yeah, totally, and a lot of them
8:01
Speaker 5: end up, I don't know, after a while, if you
8:04
Speaker 5: read a few of them, it's like, okay, this is
8:05
Speaker 5: I'm kind of reading the same thing.
8:07
Speaker 4: Again, and yeah.
8:09
Speaker 5: At a certain point, you need to just get a
8:10
Speaker 5: method that you're going to use and then apply it
8:14
Speaker 5: and then learn from it and find it find ways
8:15
Speaker 5: to advance upon it.
8:16
Speaker 2: You know.
8:17
Speaker 5: I don't think there's any absolutely perfect or the right
8:20
Speaker 5: method exactly.
8:21
Speaker 4: But you just need a method. You can't just be
8:23
Speaker 4: it can't just be anarchy.
8:25
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, I think a method is key. Finding your
8:28
Speaker 3: routine also, which I guess is another way of saying method,
8:31
Speaker 3: but you know, finding your routine and making sure you know, okay,
8:34
Speaker 3: well eleven o'clock today or maybe a little earlier, or
8:37
Speaker 3: maybe I'm gonna get up too, you know, an hour
8:39
Speaker 3: early today and I'm just going to write, you know,
8:41
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna write for you know, forty five minutes
8:43
Speaker 3: to half an hour, and and you're absolutely right, you know,
8:46
Speaker 3: finding that process is key because, like you just said,
8:50
Speaker 3: when I would read some of these books, I would
8:51
Speaker 3: I felt like I was reading the same thing, same
8:53
Speaker 3: things over and over again. And I'm just like, I
8:55
Speaker 3: didn't I just read this book like with a different
8:57
Speaker 3: cover and by a different author. But I mean, but
9:00
Speaker 3: that's found to happen. You know, once you start, you know,
9:02
Speaker 3: getting to a certain point, you're going to start seeing
9:05
Speaker 3: all that same information just basically you know, used again
9:09
Speaker 3: or maybe presented in a different way.
9:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, totally.
9:12
Speaker 5: I mean, there's only so many ways in a sense
9:15
Speaker 5: to tell a story. And if you're telling a three
9:17
Speaker 5: act story or a story that has a beginning, middle,
9:19
Speaker 5: and end anyway, there's only so many ways to do it.
9:22
Speaker 5: And you know, the interesting thing because I read a
9:25
Speaker 5: lot of scripts in my I have a development job,
9:27
Speaker 5: and I read tons of scripts. And what you see
9:31
Speaker 5: mostly is that is not I mean, you do see
9:34
Speaker 5: scripts that come in that are kind of you know,
9:35
Speaker 5: soulless machines, but mostly what you see from screenwriters who
9:41
Speaker 5: aren't established is that they just don't have the structure.
9:43
Speaker 5: They don't know how to tell a story that keeps
9:46
Speaker 5: moving forward and you really need that. And so to
9:50
Speaker 5: go back to what you're saying is so it feels
9:52
Speaker 5: repetitive on the one hand, and it is repetitive in
9:54
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, but it also is like people
9:56
Speaker 5: need to learn this because otherwise you can't tell a story.
10:01
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
10:07
Speaker 2: And now back to the show.
10:10
Speaker 3: And you touched on something through showan you know, you
10:12
Speaker 3: said the that's some of the scripts that come in
10:14
Speaker 3: are like a Solace machine. You know, I know you
10:17
Speaker 3: can't go into specifics or you know, anything like that,
10:19
Speaker 3: but is there anything any sort of thing that that
10:22
Speaker 3: that writer might be doing wrong, whether it be structure
10:26
Speaker 3: or is it because they don't have a voice that
10:27
Speaker 3: makes it sort of like that Solace machine.
10:30
Speaker 5: Well, what it is is that people write to the
10:32
Speaker 5: market and because you know, people want to make a
10:35
Speaker 5: living and so they think, okay, well, you know, like
10:38
Speaker 5: for a while, we were getting all these found footage
10:41
Speaker 5: scripts for instance, which you know, we're the Rage, and
10:44
Speaker 5: they would come in and people would follow the beats,
10:46
Speaker 5: you know, it would like X would happen on page
10:49
Speaker 5: twelve and why would happen on page twenty three or whatever.
10:52
Speaker 5: But what was lacking in them was that they were
10:55
Speaker 5: just you know, it's like it's like watching a plumber
10:57
Speaker 5: fix your pipes. It's necessary, you know, but it's not
11:02
Speaker 5: interesting besides for you because you know your toilet's overflowing.
11:05
Speaker 5: But for most people it's not going to be that interesting.
11:07
Speaker 5: And so what I find lacking is a kind of
11:10
Speaker 5: some kind of universal universality to it. So you need
11:14
Speaker 5: to have, for instance, your characters it can't just be
11:17
Speaker 5: about you know, chopping up zombies or aliens or whatever.
11:20
Speaker 5: They have to be going through an inner turmoil because
11:22
Speaker 5: really what stories are about is there an argument, you know,
11:25
Speaker 5: about what makes the good life, and you're making an argument.
11:29
Speaker 5: And if you're not making an argument, and if it's
11:30
Speaker 5: not being felt through your character, then it just feels
11:33
Speaker 5: like watching a plumber fix a pipe or watching somebody
11:35
Speaker 5: build a house. It's kind of interesting to see the
11:38
Speaker 5: structure of it, but it's not emotionally moving.
11:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just took a webinar. It was a free
11:43
Speaker 3: webinar but by Doug Richardson, who did who wrote Diehard
11:46
Speaker 3: too and he actually was saying, you know, that whole
11:49
Speaker 3: thing about an argument, and he is His whole thing was, Hey,
11:52
Speaker 3: structure is an argument. You know, how you structure your
11:54
Speaker 3: film should be an argument for your whole movie. And
11:58
Speaker 3: you know that that actually really stuck with me. And uh,
12:01
Speaker 3: you know, just great that you're here. I'm just hearing you,
12:03
Speaker 3: you know, say something similar about your characters in argument
12:06
Speaker 3: as well, which again is I agree with one hundred percent.
12:08
Speaker 3: As something I've learned with screenwriting is that and that
12:11
Speaker 3: you know, we we sort of when we were making characters.
12:15
Speaker 3: I think sometimes screenwriters have a tendency to write themselves
12:18
Speaker 3: just like you said, you know, we put ourselves as
12:21
Speaker 3: the main character, and I think that sort of ends
12:24
Speaker 3: up hurting us because the main character ends up becoming
12:27
Speaker 3: almost like a shell and everybody else is sort of
12:31
Speaker 3: you know, having all the having sort of you know,
12:33
Speaker 3: like the witty banter or maybe they they're actually the
12:36
Speaker 3: ones that are actually going through a transformation and the
12:39
Speaker 3: main character just sort of, you know, is just sort
12:41
Speaker 3: of there going from you know, basically just going through
12:43
Speaker 3: the motions.
12:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, totally, And I mean it can be you,
12:47
Speaker 4: but it has to be you. In a universal way.
12:49
Speaker 5: It has to be universal, you you know, like you
12:51
Speaker 5: have to you know, there's things about your life.
12:53
Speaker 4: You know.
12:53
Speaker 5: There was a film, a micro budget film that I
12:55
Speaker 5: talk about a lot called Bellflower from a few years ago,
12:58
Speaker 5: think twenty eleven, that was for like seventeen grand and
13:01
Speaker 5: it did really well. I think it went to Sundance.
13:02
Speaker 5: Actually it went to Sundance. I got distribution with a Celloscope.
13:06
Speaker 5: It's a great movie and it's about his breakup. So
13:08
Speaker 5: it's a very in some ways of personal film. But
13:10
Speaker 5: he took his breakup and he turned it into a
13:12
Speaker 5: kind of universal crazy story about young male rage and
13:18
Speaker 5: representations of violence and stuff. That's a lot of fun
13:20
Speaker 5: to watch and has universal value to it because he
13:26
Speaker 5: what he does is all the parts, the soul of
13:29
Speaker 5: it all fits together.
13:30
Speaker 4: So the characters are characters.
13:31
Speaker 5: Journey fits with the theme of the movie, and the
13:34
Speaker 5: theme of the movie fits with the visual styling of
13:37
Speaker 5: the movie and with the visual elements in the movie,
13:39
Speaker 5: and that all fits with what's happening with the secondary
13:43
Speaker 5: characters and so on.
13:43
Speaker 4: So it works together.
13:44
Speaker 5: As a as a machine with a machine in the
13:47
Speaker 5: good sense, a machine in the sort of emotional emotional
13:50
Speaker 5: sense that all the parts are firing and all the
13:52
Speaker 5: pistons are firing.
13:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It kind of
13:55
Speaker 3: reminds me also of a sort of Mad Max. You know,
13:58
Speaker 3: may Max Furry wrote, I know what we're talking about now,
14:00
Speaker 3: you know, because with the main character, but in Mad Max,
14:04
Speaker 3: so he never really changes, you know. But but that
14:06
Speaker 3: again is the whole point of Mad Max is that
14:08
Speaker 3: he Max is never actually the main character of any
14:11
Speaker 3: of his movies. You know, he's just going He's helping
14:14
Speaker 3: everybody else out as they're going on their adventures. And
14:17
Speaker 3: I think but going into those even well probably that
14:20
Speaker 3: may be probably starting the second one. But in Road Warrior,
14:22
Speaker 3: but even even you know Road Warrior, then you have
14:25
Speaker 3: Beyon thunder Dome, and then you have the newest one,
14:26
Speaker 3: Fury Road. You kind of see that formulate work and
14:29
Speaker 3: it actually works, like we were just saying, it actually
14:31
Speaker 3: works for that, but anywhere else you'd kind of be like, well,
14:34
Speaker 3: what the hell's going on here? You know, it's not
14:36
Speaker 3: complementing itself, if you know what I mean.
14:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that the model, the Mad
14:40
Speaker 5: Max model, is also the model for Noir.
14:42
Speaker 4: You know, like no our fiction and noir films is.
14:45
Speaker 5: About this cynical, scarred human in the world who is
14:51
Speaker 5: giving us an entry into the world to see that
14:53
Speaker 5: the journey of other people, and we become where they're
14:56
Speaker 5: sort of cynical, where they're sort of bring brought in
14:59
Speaker 5: in the same way, in the same state as that person,
15:02
Speaker 5: and then we're learning through that process the argument about
15:05
Speaker 5: that world and what's valuable.
15:06
Speaker 4: You know.
15:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. It kind of
15:10
Speaker 3: reminds me of Chinatown in a way. You know, Jack Nicholson, Uh,
15:14
Speaker 3: you know, at the whole end, he was very very
15:17
Speaker 3: sort of scarred and by the end, you know, I
15:19
Speaker 3: don't know if he really changed, but but the whole
15:23
Speaker 3: but the whole venture was absolutely amazing. No, absolutely, So,
15:28
Speaker 3: you know, as we talked more about, you know, your career, Sean,
15:30
Speaker 3: you know you obviously you know, you taught yourself how
15:32
Speaker 3: to write screenplays, and you know, so where was it
15:35
Speaker 3: where you actually started to sit down and actually you
15:37
Speaker 3: you made your own film.
15:41
Speaker 5: So I had after I actually shortly before I went
15:45
Speaker 5: to the film center, and then after I went to
15:47
Speaker 5: the film center, I made a few shorts and kind
15:49
Speaker 5: of you know, I'd read. I read a few things about,
15:52
Speaker 5: you know, how to shoot not cross the line, you know, coverage,
15:55
Speaker 5: that kind of thing, and then I started. I shot
15:58
Speaker 5: some some shorts that were you know, from moderate to bad.
16:03
Speaker 5: But it was really fun and I loved it. And
16:05
Speaker 5: I learned a lot as both as a filmmaker and
16:07
Speaker 5: as a writer, because I learned, Okay, well that doesn't work.
16:11
Speaker 5: You know, that's you know, a block of dialogue that.
16:13
Speaker 4: Long isn't going to work.
16:15
Speaker 5: Saying it this way isn't to work like you just
16:17
Speaker 5: you see it being played out. And so it's an
16:20
Speaker 5: extremely useful experience, even from the point of view being
16:23
Speaker 5: a screenwriter. And then, you know, and then when I
16:26
Speaker 5: came out of the Film Center and.
16:28
Speaker 4: Well, a bunch of stuff happened.
16:29
Speaker 5: I had a script options with like an Oscar nominated producer,
16:33
Speaker 5: and it all looked, you know, great, and you know,
16:35
Speaker 5: I was counting the money and thinking my career was
16:38
Speaker 5: about to take off.
16:39
Speaker 4: How did things go wrong?
16:40
Speaker 5: And that was two thousand and eight, and then at
16:42
Speaker 5: the bottom fell out of the financial market, and.
16:44
Speaker 4: In subsequently all the money dried up for indie.
16:48
Speaker 5: Films and Hollywood's reverted to just you know, retreads and
16:52
Speaker 5: remakes and tent pole pictures. And so while I got
16:57
Speaker 5: a job out of that in development that I still have,
17:01
Speaker 5: my career as a filmmaker and as a screenwriter kind
17:04
Speaker 5: of came to a halt.
17:05
Speaker 4: And so after a number of years.
17:07
Speaker 5: Of having done that, I just was like one day
17:09
Speaker 5: sitting in my office with my wife feeling frustrated because
17:12
Speaker 5: I was reading a script that I thought was kind
17:14
Speaker 5: of bad, but was you know, was financed because it
17:16
Speaker 5: had some a list casts. And I turned to my
17:18
Speaker 5: wife and I'm like, this is ridiculous, Like we're helping.
17:21
Speaker 5: You know, she's a wedding photographer, so she helps people
17:23
Speaker 5: realize their dreams in her way, and I was doing
17:26
Speaker 5: it with you know, story editing, and I said, you know,
17:29
Speaker 5: why don't why aren't we Why are we just the bridesmaids?
17:32
Speaker 5: You know, why don't we make our movie? And so
17:36
Speaker 5: we decided at that point then we just started talking
17:38
Speaker 5: about a story. And then it happened.
17:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bottom fell out in two thousand and eight.
17:45
Speaker 3: Man for so many people. I mean, I was so tragic,
17:48
Speaker 3: and you know, I know other people as well who've
17:52
Speaker 3: who had things development and two thousand and eight hit
17:55
Speaker 3: and my god, I mean, and here we are in
17:57
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and we're still recovering from that here America.
18:00
Speaker 3: Uh but but uh yeah, you know, and the and
18:04
Speaker 3: the shocks were sort of felt worldwide. But you know,
18:07
Speaker 3: so you're you know, you're able to regain you know,
18:10
Speaker 3: your composure, you you know regain you know your motivation
18:14
Speaker 3: and you know, So so what was what ended up?
18:16
Speaker 3: Did your first movie ended up being?
18:20
Speaker 4: It ended up being.
18:21
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a it's like a sci fi comedy
18:24
Speaker 5: called A Brand New You about a widower who can't
18:26
Speaker 5: get over the death of his wife, and so he
18:29
Speaker 5: moves into his house and after trying to failing at
18:33
Speaker 5: committing suicide, he convinces his landlord and his roommate to
18:36
Speaker 5: help him try to clone her in the living room
18:39
Speaker 5: because his landlord it turns out as this disgraced biochemist,
18:42
Speaker 5: and so it's about him trying to kind of recreate
18:44
Speaker 5: this moment that is lost. But it's a comedy, so
18:47
Speaker 5: it's funny, but funny sad, I guess, so is.
18:51
Speaker 3: That available to watch online or through view do you
18:53
Speaker 3: or anything?
18:55
Speaker 5: No, We're we got a sales agent and we've been
18:57
Speaker 5: going through the hell that is known as deliverables. And
19:03
Speaker 5: we just sent off for the second time for you
19:06
Speaker 5: have to get a you have to get a quality
19:07
Speaker 5: control report before your film, like we've done all the
19:10
Speaker 5: rest of the stuff, I think, I hope to God,
19:12
Speaker 5: and then we needed to make this quality control report
19:14
Speaker 5: and so it goes, you know, you send it in
19:17
Speaker 5: and it costs you like fifteen hundred bucks for four
19:19
Speaker 5: passes to cover your video and all your audio tracks.
19:23
Speaker 5: And they send you report and if there's any problems
19:25
Speaker 5: in there, you know, and it could be any kinds
19:28
Speaker 5: of thing, and then it comes back to you and
19:29
Speaker 5: then you have to fix those and then you have
19:31
Speaker 5: to send it back. So we got that back and
19:33
Speaker 5: and send it to our audio editor and our editor,
19:36
Speaker 5: our picture editor and and so we've just sent it
19:40
Speaker 5: off for the second QC report and I'm hoping that
19:43
Speaker 5: it's good enough.
19:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, those deliverables sean the more, you know, I didn't
19:48
Speaker 3: know too much about deliverables till a few years ago,
19:50
Speaker 3: and then I found out all that is that is
19:52
Speaker 3: involved with deliverables.
19:55
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
20:01
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
20:05
Speaker 3: And even we're talking with you know, my friend Jason
20:07
Speaker 3: Brubaker at the Stripper, you know, just getting involved with
20:09
Speaker 3: those deliberable deliverables. End up it's like a like you said,
20:13
Speaker 3: it's like, what did you call a living hell? I
20:15
Speaker 3: think that's pretty accurate.
20:18
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, it's totally brutal.
20:20
Speaker 3: So, you know, so right after you finished your first
20:23
Speaker 3: movie and again you know, that was a micro budget film,
20:26
Speaker 3: and you know, you you made your second film, which,
20:29
Speaker 3: by the way, I love the name of this of
20:31
Speaker 3: this film, by the way, uh fucking my way back Home. Yeah,
20:36
Speaker 3: that that is a very a very good title, by
20:40
Speaker 3: the way. And also it's very eye catching. So even
20:41
Speaker 3: if I didn't know what it was, even if I
20:43
Speaker 3: didn't know what it was about, I could just imagine
20:45
Speaker 3: what that what that is about. But but you know,
20:48
Speaker 3: so where was the impetus to make your second film?
20:51
Speaker 3: I mean, did you already have this script, you know,
20:53
Speaker 3: written while you did your first one, or did you
20:55
Speaker 3: sort of just you know, have a lot of motivation
20:57
Speaker 3: to sort of make this script.
21:01
Speaker 5: No, we were, well, we'd done the kind of the
21:03
Speaker 5: festival thing with the first one and gone to a
21:06
Speaker 5: few festivals and won some awards, and we.
21:08
Speaker 4: Were like, what are we going to do next?
21:09
Speaker 5: And so we you know, I had some other scripts
21:12
Speaker 5: that we wanted to do, but they were bigger. They
21:14
Speaker 5: were like, you know, at least one hundred thousand dollars
21:16
Speaker 5: kind of thing, and we're just we're not in the
21:19
Speaker 5: position to make one hundred thousand dollars movie unfortunately at
21:21
Speaker 5: the moment.
21:21
Speaker 4: And so we, you know.
21:24
Speaker 5: My production partners, there's four of us in the company,
21:28
Speaker 5: and we said, well, you know, what are we going
21:29
Speaker 5: to do next? And I had this story that I
21:31
Speaker 5: had developed with another writer years earlier that he and
21:35
Speaker 5: I were going to shoot together, a wonderful writer, Nam
21:37
Speaker 5: Rhys Cruthers, But it just never happened. We'd both kind
21:41
Speaker 5: of gotten busy with our own things, and so I
21:43
Speaker 5: spoke to him and I said, hey, dude, can I
21:45
Speaker 5: take our story and write it up.
21:47
Speaker 4: As a script so we can shoot it? And he
21:48
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, absolutely absolutely.
21:50
Speaker 5: So I then I wrote it up and we started editing,
21:53
Speaker 5: you know, getting notes back and forth, and you know,
21:57
Speaker 5: I don't know how many months later, eight months later,
22:00
Speaker 5: maybe nine months later than we shot the movie.
22:04
Speaker 3: So when you shot the movie, did you have a
22:06
Speaker 3: slightly bigger budget than than with your first movie.
22:10
Speaker 5: No, you know, the irony is, we learned a lot
22:13
Speaker 5: from the first movie. You know, we made mistakes that
22:16
Speaker 5: cost us money, and we got better at improv improvising,
22:20
Speaker 5: and so the first film cost us I think twenty
22:22
Speaker 5: two thousand or something, and the second movie we shot
22:26
Speaker 5: for seven thousand. But it's actually more complicated and there's
22:28
Speaker 5: more locations, and we a lot of it takes place
22:31
Speaker 5: in a car going around the city.
22:32
Speaker 4: So we had to tow the car because our.
22:35
Speaker 5: Driver, like he plays the driver in the film, is
22:38
Speaker 5: like maybe the worst driver on the planet. So the
22:40
Speaker 5: idea of him acting while driving this like nineteen seventy
22:43
Speaker 5: four cut the Supreme was was a horrifying thought.
22:47
Speaker 4: So we had to like tow the car around.
22:51
Speaker 3: So when you had toe the car around, I guess
22:54
Speaker 3: the biggest then, the biggest part of production budget then
22:57
Speaker 3: was obviously a tow truck. A driver and then a
22:59
Speaker 3: tow you obviously had to get like some kind of
23:03
Speaker 3: I guess you had a route that you wanted to go. Again,
23:05
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just thinking with a producer's hat right now,
23:07
Speaker 3: Sean of what was.
23:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, you know, we went so plan a
23:13
Speaker 4: was okay.
23:13
Speaker 5: So plan A was we thought, you know, we had
23:15
Speaker 5: a connection with the post production house and maybe he
23:18
Speaker 5: could get us a deal with a you know, a
23:21
Speaker 5: rental house, Whites in Toronto, and he contacted them for
23:24
Speaker 5: us and they got back and they were like, oh, yeah,
23:25
Speaker 5: you can get a you know, you know, a toe vehicle,
23:30
Speaker 5: but it's like ten thousand dollars a day plus you
23:33
Speaker 5: need to get cops, right, you need to have off
23:35
Speaker 5: duty you know, paid paid duty officers. And we're like, well,
23:38
Speaker 5: it's more than our budget. So we tried U haul
23:41
Speaker 5: and we did attacks and we did a test shoot
23:44
Speaker 5: with a U haul trailer pulling it around and so on,
23:48
Speaker 5: and that seemed like the way we were going to go.
23:50
Speaker 5: But that was going to be I think about a
23:52
Speaker 5: thousand bucks with insurance, and that still seemed high. So
23:55
Speaker 5: what we ended up doing was a guy who owns
23:57
Speaker 5: a cafe around the corner from my house had a
23:59
Speaker 5: tow truck and while he had a car, first of all,
24:02
Speaker 5: he had this Cutlass Supreme and I was like, hey, man,
24:03
Speaker 5: can I rent your car for the shoot? Your car
24:06
Speaker 5: is like this big, ugly beast and it's a beautiful
24:09
Speaker 5: sky blue color. And I really want to use it
24:11
Speaker 5: because it really looks good. And he was like, yeah, yeah, totally.
24:13
Speaker 5: And we told him were going to tow it, and
24:16
Speaker 5: he was like, oh, hey, do you want to you
24:17
Speaker 5: want to rent my my my pickup trucks, little Toyota
24:22
Speaker 5: pickup truck, Like yeah, sure. So we rented it off
24:25
Speaker 5: him for a few hundred dollars and then we went
24:26
Speaker 5: on Craigslist and we found somebody who rented like a
24:29
Speaker 5: car tow trailer, and we rented it for two weeks
24:33
Speaker 5: for I think three hundred dollars. So in total, you know, car, toe,
24:37
Speaker 5: vehicle and trailer was like eight hundred bucks, seven hundred bucks.
24:43
Speaker 3: Well that, you know, again, that's amazing. How you know
24:46
Speaker 3: just by by just sort of putting on your producer hat,
24:48
Speaker 3: you can actually you know, get that down further and
24:51
Speaker 3: further and further, and again I imagine also you're going
24:55
Speaker 3: to have insurance because you're just imagine no towing a
24:58
Speaker 3: car around. But so it was insurance included into that
25:02
Speaker 3: eight hundred dollars an hour cost.
25:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, we got we got production insurance and that was
25:06
Speaker 5: more that was for the entire production, and I think
25:09
Speaker 5: it was about nine hundred bucks maybe to cover the
25:12
Speaker 5: whole thing, and it was a bit dodgy, Like we
25:14
Speaker 5: told them. They were like, you know, we have this
25:16
Speaker 5: car and we'll be towing at two locations and then
25:19
Speaker 5: putting it off the trailer and shooting it in location,
25:22
Speaker 5: and so they you know, if they found out we
25:24
Speaker 5: were shooting with people in the vehicle towing it around,
25:28
Speaker 5: we probably wouldn't have been covered. So we would have
25:30
Speaker 5: had to evacuate everybody from the car if we'd gotten
25:32
Speaker 5: a new accident. But luckily we didn't and there was
25:35
Speaker 5: no there was no insurance claims were made.
25:38
Speaker 3: Excellent. You know it's always going every whenever you never
25:41
Speaker 3: have to make an insurance claim, right, So yes, So
25:44
Speaker 3: now showing with with sort of finishing the film, is
25:49
Speaker 3: it is it on VOD yet or are you putting
25:52
Speaker 3: that together right now?
25:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, we just got picture lock like last week, and
25:58
Speaker 5: so we've sent it off to the composer. We've sent
26:01
Speaker 5: it off to the audio mixer to begin that process,
26:05
Speaker 5: and we've sent it off to the colorist.
26:08
Speaker 3: So now now, so so now that that pictures locked,
26:11
Speaker 3: now now uh again I'm cheating because I have your
26:15
Speaker 3: whole hole in full in front of me, and I
26:17
Speaker 3: know you made a third movie, so we've got a
26:19
Speaker 3: third movie that's actually in development right now.
26:21
Speaker 5: Correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, there's a we have a we
26:24
Speaker 5: have a script that's written that's I think a second
26:26
Speaker 5: draft at this point that we're hoping to do a
26:29
Speaker 5: little little higher budget if we can raise the cash
26:32
Speaker 5: or I guess, you know, figure out the whatever the
26:35
Speaker 5: equivalent is of, uh, you know, a tow trailer for
26:38
Speaker 5: for our our spaceship because it's all takes place inside
26:41
Speaker 5: of Spaceship.
26:43
Speaker 3: And that's called the Century of Redemption.
26:45
Speaker 4: Right, Century of Redemption. Yeah.
26:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously you're going to shoot that next year,
26:51
Speaker 3: and uh you know, again, I wish you the best
26:54
Speaker 3: with shooting that, and uh so what I wanted to
26:56
Speaker 3: ask about was obviously your micro budget film lab. You know,
27:00
Speaker 3: you know, you sort of started this, and what was
27:03
Speaker 3: sort of the impetus to actually start micro budget film lab.
27:08
Speaker 5: Well, when we shot the first film, I mean, finding
27:13
Speaker 5: information was it was really dispersed. You know, we could
27:16
Speaker 5: find an article here, an article there, and get you know,
27:18
Speaker 5: pull some tips here and there, but a lot of
27:20
Speaker 5: it was really learning on the fly, which added added
27:25
Speaker 5: stress to the whole process. So and you know, we
27:29
Speaker 5: were borrowing money and you know, figuring out how to
27:31
Speaker 5: finance it and all that stuff that we had to
27:33
Speaker 5: kind of build the machine from scratch, as it were.
27:37
Speaker 5: And so my thinking was that it would be great
27:40
Speaker 5: because there are so many people out there who want
27:41
Speaker 5: to make a micro budget or who want to make
27:43
Speaker 5: a feature and are just waiting. They're doing like I did,
27:46
Speaker 5: you know, They're waiting for years and you know, submitting
27:48
Speaker 5: to contests and you know, spending hundreds and hundreds of
27:50
Speaker 5: dollars on contests, and you know, sometimes contests don't even
27:53
Speaker 5: send you.
27:53
Speaker 4: The results and never mind notes.
27:55
Speaker 5: And I was like, you know, people need to have
27:58
Speaker 5: that resource, and so I want to be that resource.
28:01
Speaker 5: And I wanted it to be different than you know,
28:03
Speaker 5: No Film School, which is a great site, but you know,
28:05
Speaker 5: it has a lot of gear focus. And I'm, you know,
28:09
Speaker 5: because I'm my background coming in from the point of
28:11
Speaker 5: view of story and from screenwriting, I was kind of
28:13
Speaker 5: more interested in the aesthetics and the story construction side,
28:17
Speaker 5: and how to do things differently and how to create
28:20
Speaker 5: a kind of shared aesthetic. Like I mean, I wrote
28:22
Speaker 5: a post a little while ago called about you know,
28:26
Speaker 5: we need a micro budget movement and I've been thinking
28:28
Speaker 5: about that a lot, and the need to kind of
28:30
Speaker 5: for us as micro budget filmmakers to move beyond simply
28:34
Speaker 5: you know, atomized individuals all struggling to make our films.
28:37
Speaker 5: And I'm happy to help people out on that basis,
28:40
Speaker 5: just like the technical side of how to make a movie.
28:42
Speaker 5: But also, you know, where there have been successes in
28:46
Speaker 5: the past with people outside of the system, they've generally
28:48
Speaker 5: been coming from people who exist as a movement. You know,
28:51
Speaker 5: you look at Dogma ninety five or mumble Core, or
28:54
Speaker 5: the Neo Realists or the French New Wave, and they
28:58
Speaker 5: part of their market buzz and part of their power
29:02
Speaker 5: comes from this aesthetic challenge to the dominant h storytelling
29:07
Speaker 5: models and cinematic models.
29:10
Speaker 4: And so I wanted to.
29:11
Speaker 5: Kind of create a space where that kind of could
29:14
Speaker 5: do gest state and that's where that's kind of where
29:17
Speaker 5: the name Lab came from. It was like a laboratory
29:20
Speaker 5: for for film movements.
29:22
Speaker 3: We can do a lot of like experimentation, right yeah, yeah,
29:25
Speaker 3: like sort of mixing chemicals like a mad scientist.
29:28
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, making drugs, but no, I mean.
29:32
Speaker 3: But experimentation film. I think that's what allows you know,
29:36
Speaker 3: with making micro budgets. And you know, even even when I,
29:39
Speaker 3: you know, made my own student film, it allowed for
29:41
Speaker 3: more experimentation because obviously, number one, we had no clue
29:45
Speaker 3: to how we were doing. And I mean me personally,
29:47
Speaker 3: I had no clue what I was doing when I
29:48
Speaker 3: was making my student film. Two, the budget was like
29:52
Speaker 3: the change you know people have in their pockets.
29:56
Speaker 2: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
30:02
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
30:05
Speaker 3: And three, I know your answer to so any any
30:08
Speaker 3: weird wacky thing we did, you know, is it funny? Okay,
30:12
Speaker 3: let's put it, let's put it in there. But you know,
30:14
Speaker 3: with micro budgets, you know, you know this is it's
30:17
Speaker 3: always you know, encouraged for experimentation because I mean, you know, Sean,
30:21
Speaker 3: if you had a couple million dollar budget and you
30:23
Speaker 3: had people who are reporting to every day, you know,
30:26
Speaker 3: you try to do something out of the norm, and
30:28
Speaker 3: they're going to say, well, what the what, what the
30:29
Speaker 3: fuck are you doing?
30:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
30:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of
30:34
Speaker 5: there's a lot of steak when you've got a million
30:36
Speaker 5: or ten million or a hundred million dollars. You know,
30:39
Speaker 5: they want you to do what works, and what works
30:42
Speaker 5: is what worked last year or the year before, and
30:44
Speaker 5: so they just want to repeat the same thing because
30:46
Speaker 5: it's a formula that makes money. But that that formula
30:49
Speaker 5: that works for Hollywood for ten million dollar movies or
30:51
Speaker 5: one hundred million dollar movies doesn't work for micro budgets
30:54
Speaker 5: because they just look like cheap knockoffs, right yeah, and
30:57
Speaker 5: they look like and they look like, uh, they look
31:01
Speaker 5: like cheap knock offs. But more than that, they all
31:04
Speaker 5: the flaws of Hollywood can be are kind of hidden
31:08
Speaker 5: by the money that's poured into the great effects and
31:11
Speaker 5: the great sound and the great light, and you know,
31:13
Speaker 5: these awesome actors who are loved and so people forgive them,
31:16
Speaker 5: you know, any.
31:16
Speaker 4: Errors or whatever.
31:17
Speaker 5: All that stuff allows Hollywood to kind of smooth out
31:21
Speaker 5: the problems in their in their in their storytelling, and
31:24
Speaker 5: and you know, the conventionality of their their cinematics technique
31:29
Speaker 5: or whatever. You don't have that in a micro budget,
31:31
Speaker 5: So you get none of the good of Hollywood of
31:33
Speaker 5: all that that money, and you get all of the
31:35
Speaker 5: bad when you're trying to just replicate a Hollywood formula.
31:39
Speaker 4: Film on like, you know what they.
31:42
Speaker 6: Their budget for their coffee cups, So true, Sean, you know,
31:46
Speaker 6: and again, yeah, you know if you try to yeah,
31:49
Speaker 6: you're right, if you try to try to emulate that,
31:51
Speaker 6: you're just going to end up, you know, shooting yourself
31:53
Speaker 6: in the face.
31:54
Speaker 3: And that's something that I found as well. You know,
31:56
Speaker 3: I tried to emulate different action movies so you know
31:58
Speaker 3: with my second student films, and I'm like, holy crap,
32:02
Speaker 3: I don't have the time, the budget, the resources to
32:04
Speaker 3: do all this stuff. So I can't make, you know,
32:07
Speaker 3: a whole scene about gunplay, or you know, I can't
32:10
Speaker 3: blow up this whole building even with you know, red
32:13
Speaker 3: giant effects, you know, And it sort of reminds me. Also,
32:17
Speaker 3: there was this panel of discussion was watching on TCM
32:20
Speaker 3: and one of the guys who host TCM said he
32:23
Speaker 3: actually loved the era of the fifties and sixties with
32:26
Speaker 3: movie making because they didn't have a budget to blow
32:28
Speaker 3: up buildings or anything, so they had to focus on
32:30
Speaker 3: this story. And to me, that's where we are again.
32:33
Speaker 3: Is I think a hallmark of a filmmaker nowadays is
32:37
Speaker 3: you have to make a micro budget film set in
32:40
Speaker 3: one to three locations very minimal, and the story and
32:44
Speaker 3: the concept have to be what is your main selling
32:47
Speaker 3: point of this whole thing.
32:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I don't know about you know, there's
32:53
Speaker 5: some dogma films that I really love, like Celebration I
32:55
Speaker 5: really love, and you know, they had their vow of
32:57
Speaker 5: chastity or whatever that.
32:58
Speaker 4: Was very very strict. Most of them ended up breaking it.
33:01
Speaker 5: And I don't know about all of the rules in
33:03
Speaker 5: terms of restrictions about what you can and can't do,
33:06
Speaker 5: because there's you know, there's a film Monsters by Gareth
33:09
Speaker 5: Edwards who went on to do Godzilla, and Godzilla apparently sucks.
33:13
Speaker 5: I've never seen it, but you know, I've got bad
33:15
Speaker 5: reviews and so on, and Monsters did really well. And
33:17
Speaker 5: Monsters did really well, I think because kind of of
33:20
Speaker 5: what you're saying about story, because it was a really
33:24
Speaker 5: fresh It's a monster movie, but it's not about the monsters.
33:27
Speaker 5: The monsters are just the backdrop to this road movie
33:29
Speaker 5: and this relationship between these two people in a structure
33:32
Speaker 5: that's not It's much more open and alive than really tight,
33:38
Speaker 5: tightly bound Hollywood structures where you know, there's a monster
33:41
Speaker 5: and they kill people one at a time in the
33:44
Speaker 5: woods and so on, and it wasn't that, and so
33:46
Speaker 5: he used you know, there's a lot of effects in that,
33:48
Speaker 5: but he shot it for like fifteen thousand bucks. And
33:51
Speaker 5: then he just happens to be this you know, special
33:54
Speaker 5: effects wizard who has worked for years for the BBC
33:57
Speaker 5: doing you know, crazy compositing and and all this incredible stuff.
34:01
Speaker 5: So he had those he had that talent and so
34:04
Speaker 5: you know, kudos to him to bring that talent. But
34:07
Speaker 5: then you know where he couldn't He couldn't do the
34:11
Speaker 5: kind of practical effects that you can do with Hollywood.
34:15
Speaker 5: So his his shooting was was this story, this really simple,
34:18
Speaker 5: beautiful little story, but this relationship between these people, and
34:21
Speaker 5: that's what gave the movie its power.
34:23
Speaker 4: The Monsters was you know, sometimes kind of was.
34:25
Speaker 5: Neat or whatever, but that's you know, when he got
34:27
Speaker 5: to Godzilla, then he could then he didn't have to
34:30
Speaker 5: think about stories so much, and so he ended up
34:32
Speaker 5: with a much weaker picture than Monsters, which was made
34:34
Speaker 5: for again like the coffee cup budget for Godzilla.
34:37
Speaker 4: And you know, I don't know what he's doing.
34:39
Speaker 5: Next, but that that point that you make about the
34:41
Speaker 5: story being so important and breaking with the conventions of
34:47
Speaker 5: what Hollywood does with stories and really allowing yourself, you know,
34:50
Speaker 5: to take advantage of the freedom that you have as
34:52
Speaker 5: a as a filmmaker because you don't have that hundred
34:54
Speaker 5: million dollar weight hanging over your head that you have
34:57
Speaker 5: to recoup.
34:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's I it was also of reading something
35:00
Speaker 3: about this as well, where a lot of studios now
35:03
Speaker 3: are looking at you know, the micro budget film, the
35:05
Speaker 3: micro budget film world, the independent film world, and they're
35:08
Speaker 3: taking directors who may be made a movie for a
35:11
Speaker 3: million or less, and all of a sudden, they're make
35:13
Speaker 3: giving them all this, you know, uh, all this money
35:15
Speaker 3: to sort of make these these franchises. For instance, Josh
35:19
Speaker 3: Trank with Fantastic Four. Prior to that, he made Chronicle
35:22
Speaker 3: for I think what three million dollars, And you know,
35:25
Speaker 3: I've seen stuff like that, and I think, also, I
35:28
Speaker 3: don't know how well that's transferred over though. I think
35:31
Speaker 3: that I don't know if the studios are rushing because
35:34
Speaker 3: they're so desperate for a hit to sort of prop
35:36
Speaker 3: up every of the other properties, or if maybe you know,
35:40
Speaker 3: these these independent directors maybe aren't aren't there yet, if
35:43
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
35:45
Speaker 4: I think it's more, I mean they're trying to. I
35:48
Speaker 4: think there's two things.
35:48
Speaker 5: I think that often us as artists, often we don't
35:53
Speaker 5: know what makes us special or you know, our artists
35:56
Speaker 5: artistic production specially you know, we're not super self critical
36:00
Speaker 5: law all the time, and so we don't know how
36:02
Speaker 5: to necessarily replicate it. And when we're put in a
36:04
Speaker 5: new situation where suddenly you've got ten or one hundred
36:07
Speaker 5: whatever million dollars, you're in a new situation and so
36:10
Speaker 5: you're not you have you know, before there was all
36:13
Speaker 5: kinds of pressures on you that forced you to be
36:15
Speaker 5: the kind of artists that you were, and now there's
36:17
Speaker 5: different pressures on you that are changing you in a
36:19
Speaker 5: different direction. So there's there's that, But there's also Hollywood
36:23
Speaker 5: is isn't interested in what is magical about the really
36:28
Speaker 5: small budget movies. What they're interested in is the buzz
36:31
Speaker 5: and the cachet.
36:33
Speaker 4: And the you know, the edginess of them.
36:35
Speaker 5: But they those are just words for them, and they
36:37
Speaker 5: don't really know how to capture it because again they're
36:40
Speaker 5: thinking about one hundred million bucks that they just invested
36:43
Speaker 5: and they need to recoup that, and so they need
36:44
Speaker 5: to take all.
36:45
Speaker 4: The edges off because you want to appeal to you know.
36:48
Speaker 5: You know, it's like I had a meeting with a
36:50
Speaker 5: sales agent on a completely different project a while back,
36:54
Speaker 5: and the first question they asked me about the project
36:56
Speaker 5: was who's your white male lead? And it was sort
37:00
Speaker 5: of eye opening to me, you know. And this guy
37:01
Speaker 5: was probably a nice guy whatever, you know, probably not
37:04
Speaker 5: a racist, but he he is speaking about how the market,
37:08
Speaker 5: the superstitions of the market conceived of it because they're like, well,
37:11
Speaker 5: black guys and women and you know, lesbian's engage don't
37:17
Speaker 5: sell in China or they don't sell in Africa.
37:19
Speaker 4: So we need somebody who's like a universal.
37:23
Speaker 5: Icon or avatar for money making, and that is the
37:27
Speaker 5: white male dude between the ages of thirty five and fifty.
37:30
Speaker 5: And so that's the kind of the way that they
37:32
Speaker 5: think about it. And so even when you get an
37:34
Speaker 5: edgy director up there, you know, like Garet Edwards doing Godzilla, now,
37:38
Speaker 5: they're trying to fit it into the money making mold
37:41
Speaker 5: that they know, and it has to fit into that.
37:43
Speaker 4: And so even you know, you know, you go into it.
37:46
Speaker 4: It's like the old joke, right, Oh, I.
37:49
Speaker 5: Joined the government to change it from within and then
37:51
Speaker 5: instead of changing the system, the system changes you.
37:54
Speaker 4: And I think that's what happens.
37:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very true. And you know you talk about
38:00
Speaker 3: you know, budgets, you know you have currently you know,
38:03
Speaker 3: a micro budget you know film Lab Fun competition, which
38:07
Speaker 3: I think is amazing. So could you go into a
38:09
Speaker 3: little detail about that.
38:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I was.
38:14
Speaker 5: What I wanted to do was to create a screenwriting
38:17
Speaker 5: coaching program because I think often people who you know,
38:21
Speaker 5: because there is so much emphasis on gear because gear
38:24
Speaker 5: has become so cheap and made it so possible to
38:26
Speaker 5: make micro budget films now, whether it's camera gear or
38:28
Speaker 5: sound gear or whatever, and people get so hung up
38:31
Speaker 5: on gear and they become gearheads, and you know, people
38:32
Speaker 5: talking about.
38:33
Speaker 4: The latest red camera and black magic.
38:35
Speaker 5: And you know, blah blah blah and they and the
38:38
Speaker 5: scripts I read are and you know, I read about
38:42
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty scripts a year, Like I've read
38:43
Speaker 5: well over a thousand scripts in the last eight years,
38:45
Speaker 5: and I'm.
38:46
Speaker 4: Telling you most of them are are very weak and
38:49
Speaker 4: not developed.
38:50
Speaker 5: And it's kind of part of my argument to my
38:53
Speaker 5: community is you need to develop your script. So I
38:56
Speaker 5: was like, how can I motivate people to develop good,
39:00
Speaker 5: you know, edgy fresh scripts and get them to focus
39:04
Speaker 5: on that so that they can make some great pictures
39:07
Speaker 5: and like really go deep in terms of the stories
39:09
Speaker 5: that exist inside themselves. So I thought, well, I'm going
39:11
Speaker 5: to do a screenwriting thing, but how can I get
39:14
Speaker 5: people interested? So I decided to come up with this
39:17
Speaker 5: screenwriting coaching intensive that would last over a period of
39:20
Speaker 5: three months, and I would work with, you know, a
39:21
Speaker 5: relatively small group of people to go through each stage
39:24
Speaker 5: of the screenwriting process, from you know, how to come
39:28
Speaker 5: up with a story for a micro budget, how to
39:31
Speaker 5: create a logline, how to create a story structure, developing characters, theme,
39:35
Speaker 5: all that stuff right through to revising, how to revise
39:37
Speaker 5: your script with a micro budget in mind, and then
39:39
Speaker 5: have this and provide feedback the whole time, and then
39:44
Speaker 5: at the end have this potential award so that you know,
39:47
Speaker 5: of the first ten scripts that are submitted at the
39:49
Speaker 5: end of this process, I would give like a full
39:52
Speaker 5: story edit of their scripts, which is what I do professionally,
39:56
Speaker 5: and I would meet with them over Skype.
39:59
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
40:05
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
40:08
Speaker 5: And then the best script of those ten, I would
40:11
Speaker 5: give them an you know, I would invest twenty five
40:14
Speaker 5: hundred dollars into making their movie.
40:17
Speaker 4: And so that's kind of how it was born.
40:19
Speaker 3: And I also like you're doing the video question and
40:23
Speaker 3: answer section because I imagine as soon as you announced
40:25
Speaker 3: the competition, this flurry of questions came in, and I'm sure,
40:30
Speaker 3: and it's a great idea by the way, that you're
40:32
Speaker 3: doing it through video, because video is you know, it's
40:36
Speaker 3: always obviously it's it's a great promotional tool. And I
40:39
Speaker 3: think also a lot of times people more especially filmmakers,
40:43
Speaker 3: more adapt to watching a video tutorial or explanation, if
40:48
Speaker 3: you will. Then then just you know, reading sort of
40:49
Speaker 3: like a blog post.
40:51
Speaker 4: Yeah.
40:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I try to mix it up a
40:53
Speaker 5: little bit and do a bit of both. But yeah,
40:56
Speaker 5: and it's kind of nice to do, you know, Like
40:58
Speaker 5: with the FAQs that I've done, I can just you know,
41:01
Speaker 5: I get I get tons of you know, questions, and
41:04
Speaker 5: I went through them and found some of the most
41:06
Speaker 5: common ones, and then I could just go up on
41:08
Speaker 5: my roof. You know, there's a terrorists in our apartment.
41:11
Speaker 5: So I went up on the terras and and just
41:14
Speaker 5: sat there with my coffee and you know, could just
41:16
Speaker 5: talk into you know, my selfie stick that I put
41:19
Speaker 5: an elastic band on to hold it to a chair,
41:21
Speaker 5: and I could just talk to it and answer the
41:23
Speaker 5: question like like we're sitting down having about coffee.
41:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did feel that way as well. And so
41:30
Speaker 3: obviously just to sort of answer a few of those questions,
41:33
Speaker 3: I know you already answered them, but just for obviously
41:35
Speaker 3: for the listeners, you know, like I guess the one
41:38
Speaker 3: would be, you know, who actually owns the script at
41:41
Speaker 3: the end of all this.
41:43
Speaker 5: The writer such filmmaker owns the scripts. The only deal
41:48
Speaker 5: is for the money. The only conditions, I guess is
41:51
Speaker 5: that it's an investment, so there'll be an investor's contract
41:55
Speaker 5: and if the film makes money, then you have to
41:57
Speaker 5: pay back.
41:58
Speaker 4: You have to pay back the money, you know, and
42:02
Speaker 4: which seems reasonable.
42:03
Speaker 5: And I want people to take some responsibility for the
42:06
Speaker 5: process of you know, their their contributors to their to
42:09
Speaker 5: their film.
42:10
Speaker 4: And then that money it won't come back to me.
42:11
Speaker 5: I'll put it into another fund so that I can
42:13
Speaker 5: grow a fund to ultimately supply, you know, help other
42:17
Speaker 5: other people in the same in the same corner sort
42:19
Speaker 5: of way. And then the second thing is that the
42:21
Speaker 5: money will be released on the first day of principal photography,
42:24
Speaker 5: So you actually don't just write a script and get
42:26
Speaker 5: the money. You actually have to go into proper pre
42:29
Speaker 5: production and I'll work with people through the pre production
42:32
Speaker 5: process to help them get the show on the road,
42:34
Speaker 5: and then on the first day of principal photography, that
42:36
Speaker 5: cash will be released from them from escrow.
42:39
Speaker 3: And I think that's an amazing idea, Sean. And so
42:42
Speaker 3: further so for people listening who might be interested in work,
42:45
Speaker 3: where could they enter U you know this fun competition.
42:49
Speaker 4: Well, it hasn't the doors haven't opened yet.
42:52
Speaker 5: I've been taking because I got tons of feedback from
42:54
Speaker 5: people and but what they felt should be in the
42:58
Speaker 5: program and so on, and so I'm going to open
43:00
Speaker 5: the doors to that. And as I say, it's not
43:03
Speaker 5: to you know, it's not going to be to tons
43:05
Speaker 5: of people, because because I'm giving feedback, I can only
43:07
Speaker 5: deal with so many people. Before I would, you know,
43:09
Speaker 5: have to start taking amphetamines and stay.
43:11
Speaker 3: Up all night.
43:14
Speaker 5: So that'll happen on not this coming Monday, but the
43:18
Speaker 5: following Tuesday, So a week Tuesday, I'll open the doors
43:23
Speaker 5: on that and is that.
43:25
Speaker 3: For people just in Canada or people in the US
43:27
Speaker 3: and UK enter.
43:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's people internationally, you know. One of the cool things,
43:33
Speaker 5: you know, I've been promoting the Facebook page and the
43:38
Speaker 5: website and so on through Facebook, which is you know,
43:41
Speaker 5: in terms of you know, micro budget film marketing. Facebook
43:44
Speaker 5: is actually has a really user friendly, very powerful interface.
43:48
Speaker 5: But I've been I was marketing, and I was marketing
43:51
Speaker 5: at primarily to the United States and Canada because that's,
43:53
Speaker 5: you know, where I'm from, and by accident, I think
43:57
Speaker 5: I selected worldwide and so it ended up promoting this
44:01
Speaker 5: thing is one of the posts out to internationally, and
44:04
Speaker 5: I started getting I'm like, why am I getting all
44:05
Speaker 5: these people with.
44:07
Speaker 4: Names like Indian names.
44:08
Speaker 5: It was like all of a sudden, like literally like
44:10
Speaker 5: dozens of people contacting me from India, And I realized
44:13
Speaker 5: that made this mistake, and it was awesome because it's
44:16
Speaker 5: I'm meeting these filmmakers from India, Like I just interviewed
44:19
Speaker 5: a filmmaker last week who did a micro budget film
44:22
Speaker 5: called d Major, which is a beautiful film and has
44:25
Speaker 5: gotten is getting it looks like it's getting distribution on
44:27
Speaker 5: the India's version of Netflix, and it's got him, you know,
44:30
Speaker 5: a producer is coming on board for his next film. Anyway,
44:32
Speaker 5: and it was a fascinating interview just to hear how
44:34
Speaker 5: in Kolkata he made a movie for three thousand dollars
44:37
Speaker 5: and how they did it and you know, they didn't
44:39
Speaker 5: have a slider, so they put a camera on the
44:41
Speaker 5: sweater and they pulled it across the.
44:42
Speaker 4: Table and this kind of stuff.
44:43
Speaker 5: But anyway, that's a long detour to say that the
44:47
Speaker 5: program is open internationally.
44:50
Speaker 3: The reason I ask is because you know, obviously America
44:53
Speaker 3: is my my you know, US is my biggest market,
44:56
Speaker 3: followed by the UK, followed by China, then Australia, then Canada.
45:00
Speaker 3: So I just want to just obviously just wanted to
45:03
Speaker 3: make sure.
45:04
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, so yeah, the Chinese filmmakers are more
45:07
Speaker 5: than welcome as well obviously as Americans and in the
45:11
Speaker 5: in Brits excellent.
45:12
Speaker 3: And uh I was as shocked as everyone else when
45:15
Speaker 3: I heard that China was my third biggest market. I
45:17
Speaker 3: looked at my numbers and I'm like, wow, okay, but bigger,
45:22
Speaker 3: bigger than yeah, seriously, who knew bigger than bigger than
45:24
Speaker 3: the Australia and Canada. Wow. And you know, so Sean,
45:29
Speaker 3: you know, I know we touched this briefly, but you know,
45:32
Speaker 3: sort of you know, in closing, I wanted to ask,
45:34
Speaker 3: you know, what, is there anything else that you're working
45:36
Speaker 3: on that we should know about?
45:40
Speaker 6: Uh?
45:41
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, in terms of my film, it's it's
45:43
Speaker 5: the you know when you mentioned Century of Redemption, which
45:46
Speaker 5: is a space kind of there's a sci fi but
45:50
Speaker 5: all takes place in one location, though a fairly elaborate location.
45:53
Speaker 5: And then I mean, I am I'm on a I'm
45:56
Speaker 5: a senior programmer at the Victoria, Texas Indie Film Festival,
45:59
Speaker 5: which is a wonderful film festival just outside of Houston
46:02
Speaker 5: and h and I you know, I mean, I'm working
46:04
Speaker 5: on stuff all the time with this company I work
46:07
Speaker 5: for in Canada Media Biz, and I've been with them
46:10
Speaker 5: as an executive story consultant for about eight years doing
46:14
Speaker 5: both story editing and also developing original content. So I
46:17
Speaker 5: have I have some TV series that are in development
46:19
Speaker 5: that I'm pretty stoked about and hoping something happens with them.
46:23
Speaker 4: But you know, I'm at the point now.
46:25
Speaker 5: You know, if you've been in the film industry anytime
46:26
Speaker 5: at all, you know, you know, producers come to you
46:28
Speaker 5: and they're like super excited about your project, and you
46:30
Speaker 5: get all excited and it's going to happen, and then
46:32
Speaker 5: then they don't happen, And so I'm I'm I still
46:36
Speaker 5: retain a small glimmer of hope in my heart, but
46:38
Speaker 5: part of me is always like, yeah, you know, I
46:41
Speaker 5: can't get I can't get excited about maybe you know,
46:44
Speaker 5: the mainstream stuff any longer, because it's just so hard.
46:47
Speaker 5: It's so hard to get stuff off the ground. Things
46:49
Speaker 5: crash and burn all the time.
46:51
Speaker 3: Yes, I couldn't agree more, Sean. I I just was
46:53
Speaker 3: having this conversation the other day. It is so hard
46:56
Speaker 3: to get things without with you know, even a pretty
47:00
Speaker 3: sizeable budget off the ground. You know, and people who
47:04
Speaker 3: listen to this podcast on a frequent basis know that
47:06
Speaker 3: I talk about that a lot. I talk about my
47:08
Speaker 3: own projects and things that I've just crashed and burned
47:10
Speaker 3: and things that never really got off and things that
47:12
Speaker 3: got off and still had a lot of problems on takeoff.
47:15
Speaker 3: But so you know, inclosing, Sean, is there anything we
47:18
Speaker 3: didn't talk about that maybe you wanted to discuss, or
47:20
Speaker 3: any sort of final thoughts to sort of put a
47:22
Speaker 3: period at the end of this whole conversation.
47:25
Speaker 5: Well, I think the main thing and the main inspiration
47:27
Speaker 5: from micro budget film lab is, you know, following on
47:31
Speaker 5: from what we were just saying about everything's crashing and burning,
47:33
Speaker 5: and you know, I looked up I was reading some
47:36
Speaker 5: stuff on the speck of screenplay market recently, and something
47:39
Speaker 5: like one hundred thousand scripts are registered every year with
47:42
Speaker 5: the Writer's Guild of America and this year less than
47:45
Speaker 5: one hundred were purchased by the studios and the indie majors.
47:50
Speaker 5: And it can look really depressing, and you can sit
47:52
Speaker 5: around sending query letters forever, and it's just important that
47:57
Speaker 5: people know that you don't have to do that, and
47:59
Speaker 5: that there you can make a great movie, you know,
48:01
Speaker 5: and there are some awesome movies people I think forget.
48:04
Speaker 5: You know, the French new wave Breathless was a micro budget.
48:07
Speaker 5: It was under one hundred thousand dollars, and you know
48:10
Speaker 5: some of these great movies for lovers only made by
48:12
Speaker 5: the Polish Brothers was shot for like zero and made
48:15
Speaker 5: five hundred thousand dollars.
48:16
Speaker 4: But more than that, it was you know.
48:18
Speaker 5: They made a really cool romantic movie and so you
48:21
Speaker 5: can make really good stuff for not a lot of money,
48:23
Speaker 5: and so you shouldn't feel like you have to wait
48:25
Speaker 5: around for some benevolent producer to sort of land in
48:29
Speaker 5: your lap and do it for you, or some dentist
48:32
Speaker 5: with you know, more money than he knows what to
48:34
Speaker 5: do with to invest in your film. You can you
48:36
Speaker 5: can do it with a relatively small amount of money.
48:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that. That's something I've been talking to
48:42
Speaker 3: Sean about, you know, in a lot of my intros
48:44
Speaker 3: about talking about this whole you know, don't wait around,
48:47
Speaker 3: you know, figure out what you have at your disposal
48:49
Speaker 3: location wise. You know what I call the resource list,
48:53
Speaker 3: you know, locations, actors and like sort of like props.
48:57
Speaker 3: So if you can make those lists and you can
48:59
Speaker 3: sort of bring storm and sort of a verse engineer
49:01
Speaker 3: a script, because that way you're not you know, if
49:03
Speaker 3: if if I know my my uncle owns an abandoned
49:06
Speaker 3: house somewhere, how could I use that for a film?
49:08
Speaker 3: You know? Or even if I use my own living room.
49:11
Speaker 3: I had a friend of mine who shot a film
49:13
Speaker 3: of his in his own living room and he later
49:15
Speaker 3: regretted it, but uh, because he wanted to do all
49:19
Speaker 3: this blood stuff and he did it all. But then
49:21
Speaker 3: he said, look that smell got in the house, and
49:24
Speaker 3: uh so if you got so so there's a tip.
49:26
Speaker 3: If you're gonna use blood a lot, you know, a
49:27
Speaker 3: lot of blood, maybe not, don't do that in your
49:29
Speaker 3: living room. But yeah, but yeah, you know, and I
49:33
Speaker 3: think again, you know Jason Brewer Baker calls the backyard Indie.
49:37
Speaker 3: I think again, this is gonna be the Hallmark Sean
49:39
Speaker 3: where you have to be able to sort of make
49:42
Speaker 3: a film in a very minimal location with with very
49:45
Speaker 3: minimal locations, actors, props, and and be able to tell
49:49
Speaker 3: the best story you can. And I think that's going
49:51
Speaker 3: to sort of be like the Hallmark now with how
49:53
Speaker 3: you know you can sort of you know, build your
49:56
Speaker 3: career from that.
49:58
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a wh heard from our
50:00
Speaker 2: sponsor and now back to the show.
50:07
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I think that's totally true. And I think
50:10
Speaker 5: that you know, make a list of your resources is
50:12
Speaker 5: really important and extend that list not just to you know,
50:16
Speaker 5: cool stuff that you have lying around and cool locations
50:19
Speaker 5: that you have, but also to your skills and the
50:21
Speaker 5: skills of people around. You know, if you're like Gareth Edwards,
50:23
Speaker 5: and you can do great compositing and great you know visuals,
50:26
Speaker 5: you know VFX on your computer.
50:28
Speaker 4: That's a resource also, or if.
50:30
Speaker 5: You can, you know, blackmail your brother in law to
50:32
Speaker 5: do it for you, whatever happens to be, that's that's
50:35
Speaker 5: a resource that you should. You should, you know, you
50:37
Speaker 5: should make the movie that you can, not the movie
50:39
Speaker 5: that you want, because it's you know, what you've been
50:42
Speaker 5: told is the right kind of movie.
50:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely agree. So Shewan, where can people find
50:46
Speaker 3: you out online?
50:49
Speaker 5: They can go to our Facebook page, they can just
50:51
Speaker 5: I'm sure search on Facebook to micro Budget Film Lab
50:55
Speaker 5: or our website is Microbudget film Lab dot com and
50:58
Speaker 5: they can find us there.
51:01
Speaker 3: Are you on Twitter or Facebook?
51:02
Speaker 4: Oh?
51:02
Speaker 3: I'm sorry you already said Facebook? So you on Twitter?
51:04
Speaker 3: Anything else?
51:06
Speaker 4: I on Twitter a little bit.
51:09
Speaker 5: On Twitter, I've never really gotten into. I do have
51:13
Speaker 5: a YouTube channel that I'm slowly adding material to, but
51:16
Speaker 5: those the primary locations at this point are our Facebook
51:20
Speaker 5: and the website.
51:22
Speaker 3: Sean, Sean Whitney, I want to say thank you very
51:24
Speaker 3: much for coming on.
51:25
Speaker 4: Sir, thank you very much for having me. It's been
51:27
Speaker 4: great talking to you.
51:28
Speaker 3: It's been great talking to you as well. And I
51:29
Speaker 3: wish you the best of luck with everything.
51:32
Speaker 5: Thank you you too, Thank you very much, luck in China.
51:37
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Jean. I'll talk to you soon, Buddy.
51:40
Speaker 4: Okay, take care, bodebye.
51:42
Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
51:44
Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
51:45
Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
51:47
Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at any filmuffo dot
51:50
Speaker 2: com Forward slash eight No. One, and if you have
51:53
Speaker 2: it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com.
51:57
Speaker 2: Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It
52:00
Speaker 2: really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again
52:02
Speaker 2: so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that
52:04
Speaker 2: hustle going, keep that dream alive, stay safe out there,
52:08
Speaker 2: and I'll talk to you soon.
52:10
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
52:13
Speaker 1: indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
52:17
Speaker 1: F I L M h U S T l E
52:19
Speaker 1: dot com.