Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 821: Filmmaking Without Permission: The Independent Journey of Clarke Scott

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IFH 821: Filmmaking Without Permission: The Independent Journey of Clarke Scott · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the INDIEILM Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight twenty one.
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Speaker 1: Cinema should make You Forget. You're sitting in a theater,
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Speaker 1: Roman Polanski.
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Speaker 2: Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
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Speaker 2: Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
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Speaker 2: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
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Speaker 2: the film biz.
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Speaker 3: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle podcast.
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Speaker 1: I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Today's show is
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Speaker 1: sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn
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Speaker 1: That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest
1:51
Speaker 1: host Dave Bullis.
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Speaker 4: On today's episode, Clark is an Australian writer, director, and
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Speaker 4: commercial photographer. He just recently shot his first feature film,
2:02
Speaker 4: A Thousand Moments, currently in post production.
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Speaker 5: So here we go with Clark Scott.
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Speaker 6: Hey, Clark, thanks love for coming on the show. I please,
2:13
Speaker 6: so Clark, I wanted to ask you know, it's a
2:14
Speaker 6: question I always ask everybody and that is your background
2:18
Speaker 6: in filmmaking, so you know, I wanted to ask, you
2:20
Speaker 6: know what brought brought Clark Scott into the filmmaking world.
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Speaker 3: H Do you want the long answer or the short answer?
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Speaker 5: Dave, I will take the long answer.
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Speaker 3: The long answer, all right, so it's actually pretty long.
2:37
Speaker 3: I will I'll go backwards. Hows that sound? So? I'm
2:42
Speaker 3: currently in post production on my first feature film called
2:46
Speaker 3: One Thousand Moments Later. It was a tiny little independent
2:51
Speaker 3: movie that I shot. I wrote, directed, shot, I'm doing
2:55
Speaker 3: the editing. I'm doing basically everything other than acting. And
3:00
Speaker 3: that came about because I'd spent a couple of years
3:04
Speaker 3: writing and trying to get projects up through to the
3:07
Speaker 3: point where I'd had producers reading scripts. And I'm from Australia,
3:13
Speaker 3: from Melbourne, but I'd had I'd had a guy in
3:17
Speaker 3: LA looking at some of my work and things. It
3:20
Speaker 3: was just difficult. Things fell through. So I pulled the
3:24
Speaker 3: bug because it was just moving too slowly for me.
3:29
Speaker 3: And that's where the film came about filmmaking. Prior to that,
3:36
Speaker 3: i'd worked in kind of commercial corporate video, industrial video
3:47
Speaker 3: for about six years. So the whole filmmaking thing came
3:51
Speaker 3: about because I was we're going to remember, I'm going
3:54
Speaker 3: backwards in time, right, So twenty ten, I'm doing a
3:58
Speaker 3: PhD in the of the Himalayas. I'm totally burnt out.
4:03
Speaker 3: And the PhD was in philosophy. So I was taking
4:06
Speaker 3: a fourteenth century Tibetan philosopher and his notion of the
4:09
Speaker 3: self and passing that via six Western philosophers, including John
4:14
Speaker 3: Locke David Human For those interested, the American Constitution was
4:19
Speaker 3: actually came from John Locke's political philosophy. So, and he
4:24
Speaker 3: was a British guy. I'm not sure how many of
4:26
Speaker 3: your American listeners would know that. I had no idea,
4:31
Speaker 3: but I was burnt out. And so I was walking
4:34
Speaker 3: through the foothills of the Himalayas, and I was in
4:37
Speaker 3: a place called durham Sala, that's where the Dala a
4:41
Speaker 3: Lama lives. And I came across a guy with what
4:46
Speaker 3: turned out to be a Canon five D mark two,
4:48
Speaker 3: and he was from La. He was a small time DP.
4:53
Speaker 3: He was shooting a documentary on the Dala a Lama
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Speaker 3: and I stopped, as you do like this, it's the Humalays.
5:01
Speaker 3: There's no one around, and it's like, dude, who are you?
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Speaker 3: You know, what are you doing here? So we got
5:07
Speaker 3: to chatting and that kind of opened up a whole
5:10
Speaker 3: new world to me. Philip Bloom vinceit la foret the
5:15
Speaker 3: whole five D Revolution was taking place at that very point,
5:20
Speaker 3: so it was I don't know, it might have been nine,
5:23
Speaker 3: so I was perhaps a little late. I think the
5:25
Speaker 3: was it the five to Mark who come out in eight?
5:28
Speaker 3: I think I can't remember anyway. And so when I
5:37
Speaker 3: say it opened up a whole new world, it was
5:40
Speaker 3: a whole new world for me. But it was also
5:42
Speaker 3: a reconnection with my past and where I'd come from.
5:47
Speaker 3: So as a young bloke, I went to music school,
5:51
Speaker 3: a prestigious music school in Melbourne called Victorian College of
5:54
Speaker 3: the Arts, and at the time it was it was
5:58
Speaker 3: like Juilliard in a lot of ways, and I was
6:00
Speaker 3: kind of earmarked for a career in that. So I
6:05
Speaker 3: was from a young the time of a teenager. Young teenager,
6:09
Speaker 3: I was doing all kinds of things. I was designing
6:13
Speaker 3: my own my own clothing, I was playing in rock bands,
6:18
Speaker 3: I was writing poetry and I was a very creative
6:22
Speaker 3: kid that kind of got knocked out of me through life.
6:29
Speaker 3: So just I guess following the advice of people who
6:34
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have. They hadn't bet their best. They had
6:39
Speaker 3: my best intentions in mind, but they wanted me to
6:43
Speaker 3: do something that just wasn't right for my personality. So
6:46
Speaker 3: between the PhD and this kind of creative phase of
6:52
Speaker 3: my life where I was at music school, there was
6:54
Speaker 3: a phase where I was doing web development and I
6:58
Speaker 3: taught myself to code, and I kind of got into
7:01
Speaker 3: a whole corporate world, but that I got burnt out
7:06
Speaker 3: by that, and I'd had a love of philosophy all
7:08
Speaker 3: at the same time, so I thought that rather than
7:13
Speaker 3: continuing on in it, I'd go into a PhD and
7:16
Speaker 3: then perhaps going to academia, and that kind of didn't
7:21
Speaker 3: work because it didn't really suit my personality. So when
7:24
Speaker 3: I when I came along and found this DP from
7:30
Speaker 3: La with a Cannon five D, and then through that
7:32
Speaker 3: going onto the internet and seeing Philip Bloom's work and
7:36
Speaker 3: Vincent la Farret's work, my mind was blown. And what
7:40
Speaker 3: it did allow me to do is it allowed me
7:43
Speaker 3: to couple my love of being creative with the kind
7:51
Speaker 3: of the geeky aspect of filmmaking. So filmmaking can be
7:55
Speaker 3: quite technical, and there's the whole gear thing, so marrying
7:59
Speaker 3: those two plus I really wanted to create stories of
8:06
Speaker 3: the told stories of human potential, something that I'm keenly
8:10
Speaker 3: interested in and something that I pursue in my own life.
8:17
Speaker 3: But it helped me and what A thousand moments later
8:21
Speaker 3: in essence is actually about. It's an exercise in that
8:26
Speaker 3: it allowed me to do that but also have a
8:30
Speaker 3: career where I could feed my family. So if that
8:33
Speaker 3: the way I looked at it was if I go
8:36
Speaker 3: ahead and I stop my PhD and I start this
8:39
Speaker 3: other thing, and there's a whole bunch of things that
8:41
Speaker 3: I have to learn at the if all of that fails,
8:45
Speaker 3: at least I've got skills that someone can employ me for.
8:50
Speaker 3: I can I can learn editing, and I can go
8:53
Speaker 3: off and earn money cutting shitty corporate videos. And actually
8:58
Speaker 3: that's what happened for the first couple of years. So
9:01
Speaker 3: that's that's coind that's the that's the verbose version, Dave.
9:07
Speaker 6: I will always choose the long version if if I
9:10
Speaker 6: ever get the option, because I always find the long
9:12
Speaker 6: version always includes a lot of you know, interesting tidbits
9:17
Speaker 6: and side roads that I always find fascinating. Because I
9:21
Speaker 6: find one thing that happens to a lot of us
9:23
Speaker 6: in this industry is it's not a clear path from
9:25
Speaker 6: A to B. Usually it's from like A to B,
9:29
Speaker 6: you have to go through all the other letters of
9:31
Speaker 6: the alphabet and then come backwards and then come through
9:33
Speaker 6: and then you can get to from A to B.
9:36
Speaker 3: You know.
9:36
Speaker 6: Stuff like you know, when you were just saying about
9:38
Speaker 6: learning side going into the side jobs and and doing
9:41
Speaker 6: all the corporate work and stuff like that, That's what
9:44
Speaker 6: happened to me. I actually went into academia and I
9:48
Speaker 6: ended up teaching classes that I wasn't getting paid for.
9:52
Speaker 6: I ended up, you know, and finally, you know, you
9:54
Speaker 6: get burned out. And finally April of this year, I
9:56
Speaker 6: had to leave because I was like, this job is literally.
10:01
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
10:07
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
10:10
Speaker 6: I'm living and breathing it and I could never get
10:13
Speaker 6: away from it.
10:14
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I was surprised. Actually when I went into
10:17
Speaker 3: the whole world of academia, I was two things. I
10:20
Speaker 3: was surprised by, actually three. They worked incredibly hard for
10:26
Speaker 3: not a lot of financial will turn like you know,
10:31
Speaker 3: some of my professors eighty ninety hours and they were
10:34
Speaker 3: earning not a lot of money, and that may be
10:37
Speaker 3: an Australian thing. I don't know what it's like in
10:39
Speaker 3: the US. But the politics and because of that, the
10:42
Speaker 3: politics that that kind of environment fosters meant that. And
10:47
Speaker 3: these people aren't sages, they're not better saphas, They're not
10:51
Speaker 3: you know, their lives aren't embedded in notions of compassion.
10:55
Speaker 3: Some of them are, but a lot of marred. So
10:57
Speaker 3: there's a lot of kind of there was a lot
11:00
Speaker 3: of backstabbing, I guess, just a lot of politics. And
11:05
Speaker 3: I was really surprised by that. So the fact that
11:07
Speaker 3: I burned out and didn't finish, I'm it's a regret.
11:10
Speaker 3: I would have liked to have finished. But even if
11:13
Speaker 3: I had, I would not have gone into into I
11:17
Speaker 3: was going to say politics. I wouldn't have gone into academia.
11:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, where I worked a lot of politics.
11:24
Speaker 6: It was a smaller school, uh, and it was just
11:28
Speaker 6: some of the professors would I mean, I'll give you
11:30
Speaker 6: an example. There was a multimedia professor who taught editing
11:35
Speaker 6: who knew nothing about editing. He would literally just send
11:38
Speaker 6: them to me and never asked me about it. And
11:40
Speaker 6: he would just say, hey, go talk to Dave and
11:43
Speaker 6: you know, he'll help you out. Well, finally, I'm like,
11:45
Speaker 6: you know, why are all these people coming to me?
11:47
Speaker 6: And then they would say, well, all the students would say, well,
11:49
Speaker 6: you know, doctor blah blah blah told us to go
11:51
Speaker 6: talk to you. And meanwhile, he's at home, you know,
11:54
Speaker 6: having dinner with his family, and I'm down there teaching editing,
11:57
Speaker 6: and you know, you complain to people and nobody care.
12:01
Speaker 3: It's a shame.
12:01
Speaker 6: But I think academia at the most part has pretty
12:05
Speaker 6: much been eroded over the years because of that, because
12:08
Speaker 6: of the of a political game, but also because there
12:13
Speaker 6: used to be where they'd be working professionals and they
12:15
Speaker 6: would be you know, they get their bachelors, go out
12:16
Speaker 6: into the real world at the same time, work on
12:19
Speaker 6: their masters, and then they would come back and maybe
12:22
Speaker 6: get that PhD and then start teaching at the same
12:25
Speaker 6: time the still out in the real world. I don't
12:28
Speaker 6: think they do that anymore, at least for the most part.
12:30
Speaker 6: At least I don't see that is. I think it's basically,
12:32
Speaker 6: they get their bachelors, they jump on board as a
12:35
Speaker 6: TA or something working inside the school, get their masters
12:39
Speaker 6: and do the same thing.
12:40
Speaker 3: For the PhD.
12:41
Speaker 6: So they have no real world skills, but they have
12:43
Speaker 6: a lot of very fancy degrees, and that I think
12:47
Speaker 6: that's the problem, and I think that's the reason they
12:49
Speaker 6: play the political game, because anybody who's better than them
12:52
Speaker 6: immediately has to be taken out because otherwise, what do
12:54
Speaker 6: we need this guy for?
12:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Australian academa is probably a
12:59
Speaker 3: little bit softer than that. That does not sound like
13:03
Speaker 3: an enjoyable environment to work.
13:05
Speaker 6: So yeah, but you know, I wanted to go back
13:09
Speaker 6: to what you were talking about, you know, you were
13:12
Speaker 6: talking about, you know, the guys from l A were
13:13
Speaker 6: you know, taking too long?
13:15
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure you know, you know they were.
13:19
Speaker 6: They were probably it was probably a money thing, right
13:22
Speaker 6: like they're probably trying to find fun financing.
13:26
Speaker 4: Uh.
13:28
Speaker 3: Yes, And no, they wanted to make changes in the
13:31
Speaker 3: so I'm sure they were, But they're also making changes
13:35
Speaker 3: to the script that I felt were more than unjustified,
13:43
Speaker 3: and I didn't want to go down the road of
13:46
Speaker 3: and I thought about it, I thought about moving to
13:48
Speaker 3: l A. I didn't think about it for very long,
13:52
Speaker 3: to be honest, but the changes were they just didn't
13:56
Speaker 3: suit my Australian aesthetic, not to say that the LA
14:01
Speaker 3: aesthetic is less sophisticated, but I just I wanted to
14:07
Speaker 3: produce something that I was going to be proud of
14:11
Speaker 3: as a body of work. Over time, and in the end,
14:14
Speaker 3: I could see that I could very easily continue along
14:18
Speaker 3: this path and I could move to LA and I
14:21
Speaker 3: could potentially get something happening. But how's it going? What
14:27
Speaker 3: kind of taste is that going to leave in my
14:29
Speaker 3: lot in my mouth over the longer term. So I
14:32
Speaker 3: made the decision just not to go that route and
14:36
Speaker 3: to stay in Australia. And even if that meant that
14:39
Speaker 3: I was going to end up producing much smaller films,
14:43
Speaker 3: I'd rather do that and earn money in a way
14:49
Speaker 3: that allows me to produce something that had that that
14:55
Speaker 3: I'm essentially proud of. The quality because of the budget
15:01
Speaker 3: will be less. That's just That's just true, and I
15:06
Speaker 3: know that's true because I've gone through a thousand moments later.
15:09
Speaker 3: We did essentially on my own coin. The actors worked
15:15
Speaker 3: on the back end, so we were all it was
15:17
Speaker 3: very do I and while we worked our asses off,
15:21
Speaker 3: we didn't we didn't have we didn't have the crew
15:26
Speaker 3: to allow us to produce something that was you know,
15:32
Speaker 3: what's what's the what's the cliche that the the the
15:36
Speaker 3: parts and the parts are greater than the some of
15:40
Speaker 3: the parts are greater than the whole, or something like that.
15:42
Speaker 3: I'm vaguing right now, but yeah, so that's that's what
15:47
Speaker 3: I decided. I decided that I would pull back and
15:49
Speaker 3: just stay where I am, be a little bit more patient,
15:53
Speaker 3: because I think I was. I think it was sometimes
15:56
Speaker 3: we can we can push really hard because we've feel
16:00
Speaker 3: like it's got to happen tomorrow. And if you look
16:03
Speaker 3: at some of certainly some of my filmmaking heroes, they
16:09
Speaker 3: don't look at it that way. Someone like Terry Mallick,
16:11
Speaker 3: you know, he goes off and he produces his first
16:15
Speaker 3: couple of feature films and then hides for twenty years.
16:19
Speaker 3: Was I mean, no one really knows other than his
16:21
Speaker 3: close friends and family, no one really knows what he
16:24
Speaker 3: was doing. And then he comes out and does a
16:27
Speaker 3: thin red line. I mean, that's and it's probably the
16:31
Speaker 3: greatest war movie ever made. So yeah, I wanted to
16:38
Speaker 3: take a different approach. And one of the guys, the
16:41
Speaker 3: Turk is directed by the name of Nuri Blajeelon who
16:45
Speaker 3: did He won the Palm d'Or in twenty fourteen with
16:49
Speaker 3: Winter's Sleep. I started researching his his career and the
16:56
Speaker 3: way he went about things. So he'd gone in his
17:00
Speaker 3: last film one the Palm d'Or. It doesn't mean a
17:03
Speaker 3: lot of financial return or but it does mean a
17:06
Speaker 3: lot of I mean it's the Palm d'Or. But where
17:11
Speaker 3: he started. He started from very very humble beginnings, and
17:15
Speaker 3: he started late like I did, so late thirties. The
17:20
Speaker 3: I could really I felt close to him, so I
17:26
Speaker 3: was confident in what I was doing in not going
17:30
Speaker 3: to La. So but I think the guys in LA
17:34
Speaker 3: that was surprised, to be honest, I think they were.
17:38
Speaker 6: You know, that's actually an interesting strategy, Clark, because that's
17:42
Speaker 6: something that you know, other people too have used, other
17:45
Speaker 6: guests they've had on the podcast, and that is, you know,
17:48
Speaker 6: in your hometown, wherever that might be in the world,
17:51
Speaker 6: you have advantages and disadvantages. Yes, you know, it's not
17:55
Speaker 6: LA unless or less a question of you're in LA,
17:58
Speaker 6: but unless you were born or L I mean, you know,
18:01
Speaker 6: but but with the advantages I always talk about it,
18:03
Speaker 6: are you know, if you live in a small town
18:06
Speaker 6: and you know, a small town America in the middle
18:08
Speaker 6: of America, and you know, you have a list of
18:14
Speaker 6: people that you know. And because this the town is smaller,
18:17
Speaker 6: you usually know a lot more people and usually are
18:20
Speaker 6: able to get things, most likely for free or even
18:24
Speaker 6: at a highly discounted rate, because they're going to say, hey,
18:27
Speaker 6: look there's you know, I'm sure people in Melbourne you know,
18:29
Speaker 6: and I don't want to ask you about this. We're
18:31
Speaker 6: probably saying, hey, look there's Clark. You know, uh, you know,
18:34
Speaker 6: maybe you you know in your neighborhood, or you know,
18:37
Speaker 6: you know, the people knew you and said, hey, look
18:39
Speaker 6: there's there's Clark. You know, he's making a film. He
18:42
Speaker 6: needs a car of some kind, he needs this, he
18:44
Speaker 6: needs a location. They may have been more willing to
18:47
Speaker 6: help you out because you know, you're a familiar person.
18:50
Speaker 6: And that's why, you know, whenever we you know, when
18:52
Speaker 6: I talk with guests, but moving to l a uh,
18:55
Speaker 6: we always talk about a strategy to it where they
18:57
Speaker 6: always they either have meetings or connect a place to
19:00
Speaker 6: stay a job already, you know, and it's sort of
19:03
Speaker 6: like stacking the deck in your favor as much as possible.
19:07
Speaker 5: Because we both know Clark.
19:08
Speaker 6: Things will go wrong pretty quickly, as they usually do
19:11
Speaker 6: in this world. But but you know, so that you know,
19:16
Speaker 6: that is something I've seen before, and that's a strategy.
19:18
Speaker 6: But I'm using myself because even filming here in Philadelphia, it's,
19:20
Speaker 6: you know, the seventh or eighth most popular city in America,
19:24
Speaker 6: and even filming around here, I've been able to sort
19:28
Speaker 6: of finagle things free or cheaper because I'm a local
19:32
Speaker 6: guy making a local film.
19:33
Speaker 3: If you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I think
19:36
Speaker 3: it comes down to this. Those that want to move
19:39
Speaker 3: to la are probably looking to work in the film industry.
19:46
Speaker 3: But if you want to mike films, there's absolutely no reason.
19:49
Speaker 3: In fact, it can be detrimental to move to LA
19:52
Speaker 3: if you want to be if you want to mic films,
19:55
Speaker 3: stye where you are.
19:57
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our spon, sir,
20:03
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
20:06
Speaker 3: Write good stories, leverage the tools that we have available
20:10
Speaker 3: to us now to create those films, and then go
20:14
Speaker 3: out find an audience. Create an audience if you have
20:18
Speaker 3: to find an audience, and then over time, take the
20:21
Speaker 3: long game. Over time, you'll find that you'll create work.
20:26
Speaker 3: If you're talented it because all of this is predicated
20:29
Speaker 3: on talent. If there's no talent, there's no career over
20:33
Speaker 3: long game, a talented person will naturally rise. It'll just happen.
20:39
Speaker 3: But if you think that and that was a guy,
20:43
Speaker 3: a guy by the name of Stuart MacDonald, who's a
20:46
Speaker 3: fairly big director here in Australia. He's done TV, he's
20:50
Speaker 3: done film, he's actually been to LA, shot some TV
20:53
Speaker 3: in LA, come back to Australia. I knew him through
20:59
Speaker 3: through philosophy and my interest in philosophy. He has a
21:02
Speaker 3: similar interest. And he said to me unbeknowns of where
21:08
Speaker 3: I was, so I was just some guy that he
21:11
Speaker 3: was speaking to, although I knew him through philosophy. He said, Clark,
21:16
Speaker 3: don't line up at the end of the film school
21:20
Speaker 3: the film school line. There's a whole bunch of people
21:22
Speaker 3: that go to film school. He was one of them.
21:25
Speaker 3: Or want to work in the film industry, and that
21:27
Speaker 3: line is really long. Do not do that. Go on
21:30
Speaker 3: by a canon five D and make your own film.
21:34
Speaker 3: That's the way to get to get in. And I
21:37
Speaker 3: think that's true even if you do want to work
21:39
Speaker 3: in So I think LA is probably harder. But if
21:42
Speaker 3: I wanted to work in TV in Australia in Melbourne,
21:45
Speaker 3: which I'd love to do, by the way, the best
21:48
Speaker 3: way for me to do that these days is actually
21:52
Speaker 3: to go and produce something of a certain kind of
21:56
Speaker 3: quality under a certain amount of time and budgetstraints, and
22:01
Speaker 3: then show that to the gatekeepers in TV via relationships
22:05
Speaker 3: that I've created through the process of creative of creating,
22:08
Speaker 3: of making a film, and then over time and do
22:11
Speaker 3: that a couple of times and people will see that
22:13
Speaker 3: they that you've you've got the You've you've got both
22:17
Speaker 3: the balls to go and do something, the audacity to
22:19
Speaker 3: do something like this, but you've also got the skills,
22:22
Speaker 3: so not only the esthetic skills, but also the management
22:27
Speaker 3: and communication skills and and also the skills of persuasion,
22:33
Speaker 3: because you need to be able to go to an
22:36
Speaker 3: actor and say, look, I don't have any money to
22:39
Speaker 3: give you up front, but I can give you a
22:41
Speaker 3: piece of the pie on the back end. That's just
22:45
Speaker 3: an example, and that's what I did with mine to
22:47
Speaker 3: two actors. But they didn't do it because just because
22:53
Speaker 3: you know, just because of that, just because of who
22:56
Speaker 3: I am, They read the script and said they read
22:59
Speaker 3: the script, and it was an fairly undeveloped script as
23:02
Speaker 3: well because of the way I shot it. But we
23:05
Speaker 3: had meetings and they were convinced that I was the
23:09
Speaker 3: kind of person that could finish a project and that
23:13
Speaker 3: it would be of a certain kind of quality. So
23:15
Speaker 3: they came on board for those reasons. So I was
23:17
Speaker 3: able to I was able to get great actors for
23:21
Speaker 3: my project through my ability to communicate with others. If
23:25
Speaker 3: I take that as a package to a TV producer,
23:28
Speaker 3: someone who actually has money to produce episodes of television
23:33
Speaker 3: here in Australia, there's a good chance that all of
23:37
Speaker 3: that information will go down a lot better than some
23:41
Speaker 3: kid that's gone through film school, who is you know,
23:44
Speaker 3: who's got a a great looking CV, but nothing other
23:49
Speaker 3: than that. And I know that that's true because there
23:55
Speaker 3: was an Australian Director's conference a couple of years ago
23:59
Speaker 3: and that they recorded all of the sessions and I
24:03
Speaker 3: was listening to it. It may have been three or
24:05
Speaker 3: four years ago now, and one of the sessions they
24:07
Speaker 3: had was breaking into TV and it was a whole
24:10
Speaker 3: bunch of both TV execs here in Australia and producers
24:15
Speaker 3: and the one thing that they all agreed upon was
24:18
Speaker 3: that the road, the path to becoming a director in
24:23
Speaker 3: episodic programming here in Australia was not necessarily your esthetic style,
24:30
Speaker 3: but your ability to get the day done, to shoot.
24:35
Speaker 3: If you've got to shoot four pages or excuse me, Dave,
24:39
Speaker 3: six pages, then you've got that kind of genuine esque
24:45
Speaker 3: ability to get a whole bunch of people together and
24:49
Speaker 3: move them along through the day and to make the day.
24:53
Speaker 3: And that's the one skill they all require, because then
24:56
Speaker 3: they're going to hand over half a million dollars or
24:59
Speaker 3: being dollars for a production to someone who who can't
25:03
Speaker 3: make that happen. So that's the skill they're actually looking for,
25:07
Speaker 3: and that, if you think about it, that makes total sense.
25:11
Speaker 3: If you have a director who doesn't have those skills, uh,
25:17
Speaker 3: you don't have a television program, you don't have a
25:20
Speaker 3: product to sell. So from a producer's point of view,
25:24
Speaker 3: that almost trumps aesthetics. So yeah, that was a bit
25:30
Speaker 3: of a rant. Sorry, Dave, No, no no problem.
25:33
Speaker 4: Uh.
25:34
Speaker 6: You know people on this podcast tend to rant, Clark,
25:37
Speaker 6: so please you You're it's it's par for the course.
25:40
Speaker 6: I tend to bring that out in people okay, but
25:43
Speaker 6: but but but no, I can I agree with you completely.
25:47
Speaker 6: You know, I used to be a part of of
25:48
Speaker 6: a screenwriting group and everybody who was who was in
25:51
Speaker 6: it was a lot further ahead. I mean this was
25:53
Speaker 6: years ago, but they were further ahead than I was.
25:55
Speaker 6: And I remember the one guy had just got done
25:57
Speaker 6: pitching to the Sci Fi Channel and he had he
26:01
Speaker 6: said two things that he took that that I really
26:03
Speaker 6: took away from what he said. He said, number one,
26:06
Speaker 6: you know, when you're in those pitch meetings, they don't
26:07
Speaker 6: care about what your dreams are. They only care if
26:10
Speaker 6: what you're pitching to them will be profitable and viable
26:13
Speaker 6: in that market. Number Two, when you go into a
26:16
Speaker 6: Walmart or a wal or yah Walmart, or a best
26:20
Speaker 6: Buy or you know anywhere, you know, you have that
26:23
Speaker 6: physical shelf space that is, you know, everything has a
26:28
Speaker 6: dollar amount to it. So he said, when they put
26:30
Speaker 6: out you know, those movies, you know, like you know,
26:32
Speaker 6: Zombie Headhunter eighteen, the reason that they give that shelf
26:36
Speaker 6: space is because that's going to sell a certain amount
26:39
Speaker 6: of units and they know exactly how many. Usually they
26:42
Speaker 6: can make a you know, a prediction or you know
26:43
Speaker 6: an estimate of how many units that's going to sell,
26:46
Speaker 6: and they're able to you know, calculate that up and
26:48
Speaker 6: then give that x amount of shelf space. And you know,
26:52
Speaker 6: I started to take.
26:52
Speaker 3: That and realize, you know, this is so true. That's
26:54
Speaker 3: why you.
26:55
Speaker 6: See movies certain movies and you don't see other movies.
26:57
Speaker 6: It's because you know, they wanted to make sure that
26:59
Speaker 6: they a viable product. And you know what you were
27:02
Speaker 6: just saying. You know, obviously, yes, you know they're not.
27:04
Speaker 6: You know, it's like what Dalls Simon's always says. You know,
27:06
Speaker 6: they're not just going to give somebody fresh out of
27:08
Speaker 6: film school one hundred million dollars and say here, go
27:10
Speaker 6: make this movie and then you know it's gonna be
27:12
Speaker 6: in every theater in the world and you're gonna make
27:14
Speaker 6: you know, ten billion dollars. It just doesn't happen that way.
27:17
Speaker 6: You know, you have to make a movie, you know,
27:20
Speaker 6: even even if it's gorilla filmmaking, even if it's no
27:22
Speaker 6: budget filmmaking where it's you know, you know, you yourself
27:25
Speaker 6: and maybe you get some you know, higher some actors,
27:27
Speaker 6: you get a movie gig, you get that and if
27:30
Speaker 6: and if it's good enough, if it's slick enough, they'll
27:32
Speaker 6: give you. Then you can tell producers, look what I
27:35
Speaker 6: did for nothing, Imagine what I could do for ten thousand,
27:37
Speaker 6: and then you sort of move up to fifty, then
27:38
Speaker 6: one hundred, and then as you you can keep increasing
27:40
Speaker 6: that process with more money, then they'll sort try, you know,
27:44
Speaker 6: trusting you with the bigger budgets and the bigger crews
27:47
Speaker 6: and all that stuff, and then you know, finally you
27:49
Speaker 6: can you know, start start getting that those big paydays.
27:52
Speaker 6: But but but you know, I agrew through completely Clark,
27:55
Speaker 6: you know, That's That's where I'm at right now too,
27:57
Speaker 6: is trying to convince well, I'm trying to actually rate
28:01
Speaker 6: stuff right now. But then the probably to convince you know, hey,
28:05
Speaker 6: you know, give me money. I'm not a complete idiot.
28:07
Speaker 6: I'm a somewhat of an idiot clerk, but I'm not
28:09
Speaker 6: a complete idiot.
28:10
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think we need to I think we need
28:13
Speaker 3: to understand the game that's played and to not belittle
28:16
Speaker 3: the game. So sometimes I hear and I'm not suggesting
28:20
Speaker 3: this is what you're doing, Dave, but I do hear
28:25
Speaker 3: younger people it tends to be complaining about the state
28:29
Speaker 3: of the industry and I think if you're complaining about
28:32
Speaker 3: the state of the industry, then you're actually two things.
28:36
Speaker 3: You're missing a massive opportunity that has afforded us as
28:39
Speaker 3: filmmakers these days, regardless of your age and the tools
28:43
Speaker 3: that are available. But you're also you're kind of missing
28:46
Speaker 3: the point of how the game is played. And that's
28:50
Speaker 3: not to say that this is a business.
28:52
Speaker 1: You hear.
28:53
Speaker 3: The opposite is you hear people say, well, it's a
28:55
Speaker 3: film business. When I hear that, I think you're a
28:59
Speaker 3: marketing bullshit artist. I don't know if that translates well
29:03
Speaker 3: to the American kind of vernacular, but you're, you know,
29:09
Speaker 3: someone that's all marketing all it's all source and noose
29:13
Speaker 3: substance the game and to even use the phrase of
29:19
Speaker 3: the game, I'll change that up to the context in
29:22
Speaker 3: which we live is such that our industry is and
29:30
Speaker 3: works on the supposition that it is product based, and
29:35
Speaker 3: the only way that we can get stuff made is
29:39
Speaker 3: to is to give someone something in return that helps
29:43
Speaker 3: them feed their family. It's called money.
29:46
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
29:52
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
29:55
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be a dirty thing, so we
29:59
Speaker 3: can either and I don't believe that you have to
30:02
Speaker 3: live on either extreme either we you're one of these
30:05
Speaker 3: people that say it's the film business, or you're one
30:09
Speaker 3: of these people that is pure art and hates anyone
30:13
Speaker 3: that's wearing a suit. I think there's a middle, a
30:16
Speaker 3: middle way approach, to use a philosophical term from from India,
30:21
Speaker 3: and the middle way is understand the context in which
30:24
Speaker 3: you live, and then live as best as possible. So
30:28
Speaker 3: within the context of filmmaking, understand that that it requires money,
30:33
Speaker 3: and it requires it requires money in a way that
30:39
Speaker 3: without it it cannot work. And there and then pitch
30:44
Speaker 3: yourself with at the at the level at which you
30:48
Speaker 3: want to make your art. So for me, going to
30:50
Speaker 3: LA wasn't going to work because I would have to
30:53
Speaker 3: I would have to produce and create stories that didn't
30:58
Speaker 3: have the kind of a steady appeal that I wanted
31:01
Speaker 3: to be able to show other people and say I
31:03
Speaker 3: did this. So therefore I have to bring and even
31:08
Speaker 3: the notion of levels that somehow that that's a better
31:11
Speaker 3: level than you know, the LA films are better because
31:15
Speaker 3: they're more money. I think is kind of weird because
31:21
Speaker 3: some of the best films that I've seen are actually
31:24
Speaker 3: made for a lot less money, and they're a lot
31:26
Speaker 3: more important there. And they say a lot more important,
31:29
Speaker 3: they're not. It's not popcorn but not popcorn movies, but
31:34
Speaker 3: they do and they will live much longer in cinematic
31:38
Speaker 3: history than a lot of films that come out of
31:41
Speaker 3: LA So I think by understanding the context in which
31:44
Speaker 3: we live and work, then we can better understand ourselves
31:51
Speaker 3: and our own aesthetic and then move forward with confidence,
31:56
Speaker 3: both from from a producer's point of view and which
31:59
Speaker 3: is the kind of the suity side, the business side,
32:02
Speaker 3: and from the artistic side, from the director, writer, cinematograph
32:08
Speaker 3: from that side, so that you're not butting heads with
32:11
Speaker 3: these two aspects of filmmaking, but you understand each side
32:14
Speaker 3: of the story, and even anyone that has to write,
32:18
Speaker 3: direct and produce their own material has to balance those
32:23
Speaker 3: aspects out anyway. I know that's what it was like
32:26
Speaker 3: with one thousand moments later, I had actors saying we
32:29
Speaker 3: should be doing it this way, all that way, and
32:32
Speaker 3: they don't know the story, they don't know how I
32:34
Speaker 3: want to shoot it, but they also don't know how
32:37
Speaker 3: much time we have. So there were some scenes that
32:40
Speaker 3: I got once an in particular, where we did a
32:44
Speaker 3: lot of tasks because the actor was just not getting
32:48
Speaker 3: what I wanted and it was very very important to
32:51
Speaker 3: me and to the film that she delivered it in
32:56
Speaker 3: a certain kind of way, and she never never really
32:58
Speaker 3: quite got there. But we ended up I spent probably
33:03
Speaker 3: two days getting this one scene, and in the end
33:06
Speaker 3: it was just it was she was super frustrated. But
33:11
Speaker 3: that's actually that frustration. There was two things that happened, Dave.
33:15
Speaker 3: Was the weather change on the second day, so we
33:17
Speaker 3: actually got stormy. Whether there was a big storm that
33:20
Speaker 3: was coming in, and she was backing into this storm
33:24
Speaker 3: with this kind of a tirade of dialogue at her
33:29
Speaker 3: at her husband. But because she was so frustrated by
33:34
Speaker 3: the fact that she just wasn't able to get what
33:37
Speaker 3: I was asking her to do, and it wasn't a
33:40
Speaker 3: lack of skill, that was what I was asking to
33:42
Speaker 3: do was actually really really fucking hard. Because she was frustrated,
33:48
Speaker 3: frustrated with me, frustrated with herself. They came out in
33:52
Speaker 3: the performance and it actually improved the performance. But the
33:55
Speaker 3: only way we were able to get there was to
33:58
Speaker 3: spend much more time than there was originally allocated for
34:02
Speaker 3: that particular scene. But I knew that I could do
34:05
Speaker 3: that because I knew the scenes after that. We could
34:08
Speaker 3: get on the same day in a car and I
34:11
Speaker 3: could just rip through them because I was also the cinematographer,
34:13
Speaker 3: so I knew, okay, so we just go down this
34:16
Speaker 3: road and then turn there. I can point the camera
34:18
Speaker 3: this way, and I can do that. I can point
34:20
Speaker 3: the camera that way while the actors are just we're
34:23
Speaker 3: going from one one location to the next. So I
34:30
Speaker 3: think by understanding the context in which we live, both
34:33
Speaker 3: from a human point of view, I think that it's
34:35
Speaker 3: true if you look at your own life, if you
34:38
Speaker 3: understand the context in which you live as a human being,
34:41
Speaker 3: then you're able to be a better human being. And
34:44
Speaker 3: it's only when we live from through ignorance that ignorance
34:50
Speaker 3: influences us in negative ways. So again another ant apologies.
34:58
Speaker 5: Now, like I said, Clo, no worries at all.
35:01
Speaker 6: You know, I wanted to ask about one thousand moments later,
35:04
Speaker 6: so you know, what was your what was the you
35:07
Speaker 6: know when you started writing the script. I wanted to ask,
35:09
Speaker 6: you know, I wanted to ask, did you know did
35:13
Speaker 6: you subscribe to any sort of method when you write
35:15
Speaker 6: or do you you know? So you know basically, because
35:18
Speaker 6: obviously everything starts with the script, I just want to ask,
35:20
Speaker 6: you know, how you put that all together?
35:22
Speaker 3: Okay, So here's the thing. By this stage, I was
35:26
Speaker 3: I was super frustrated. I'd spent a couple of years
35:32
Speaker 3: writing a number of scripts, working with producers, and I
35:37
Speaker 3: got to a point where I just I was deflated.
35:45
Speaker 3: I was going to say I was ready to give in,
35:47
Speaker 3: but that's not true at all. But I was certainly
35:50
Speaker 3: deflated in my enthusiasm for working with others. And I
35:56
Speaker 3: just recently found the Turkish director that I mentioned earlier
36:00
Speaker 3: his work, and I I'd researched him and I'd emailed him,
36:05
Speaker 3: and I was super enthusiastic about how he about his
36:09
Speaker 3: life and how he went about things. And I basically
36:13
Speaker 3: had a little bit of a man crusher on this guy.
36:16
Speaker 3: I'm certainly a fanbo I love his aesthetic. I love
36:19
Speaker 3: the way he moves the camera, but I also love
36:21
Speaker 3: the way he goes about it. And that is the
36:23
Speaker 3: way he does go about it. I used as a template,
36:26
Speaker 3: and that is to say, I'm not going to rely
36:29
Speaker 3: on anyone, no one. I will do everything and from
36:35
Speaker 3: that point you then go out into the world and
36:37
Speaker 3: you tell people what you're going to do. That enthusiasm
36:41
Speaker 3: and that kind of resolve somehow shields it makes you
36:49
Speaker 3: bigger than you really are, and people want to be
36:53
Speaker 3: a part of that kind of magnetism. So I actually,
37:01
Speaker 3: and I think roughly at the same time, I came
37:03
Speaker 3: across the movie Blue Valentine by Derek c in France
37:06
Speaker 3: with Michelle Williams and Ryan Ryan Gosling, who's the male actor. Yeah,
37:14
Speaker 3: Ryan Gosling. Great film if you haven't seen it, it's
37:16
Speaker 3: a beautiful little film. But look at the look at
37:19
Speaker 3: the behind the scenes and going to how they got,
37:21
Speaker 3: how they had, how they shot it. And I wanted
37:24
Speaker 3: to use that kind of semi doco style because I
37:30
Speaker 3: knew that I could, I could produce a film in
37:32
Speaker 3: a similar way. So what I did was I I
37:36
Speaker 3: used I actually used Aristotle's cathartic moment and the structure
37:40
Speaker 3: of his dramatic storytelling as the bedrock from which the
37:45
Speaker 3: story grew. And I also started with the theme, and
37:48
Speaker 3: the theme is that love is a choice. So love
37:52
Speaker 3: is not something that happens to us. It's in fact
37:54
Speaker 3: something that we choose, and I then wrote an outline
38:03
Speaker 3: that that essentially resolved that issue. And the way I
38:09
Speaker 3: did it was, I went, okay, so I need two
38:12
Speaker 3: actors like Blue Valentine. Let's put it in like, make
38:15
Speaker 3: it a road movie, so I can I can get
38:18
Speaker 3: I can use We've got to in Melbourne, We've got
38:21
Speaker 3: to Victoria. We've got a road called the Great Ocean Road,
38:25
Speaker 3: and it's this this road that winds around a coast
38:31
Speaker 3: that is incredibly scenic. So by putting two people in
38:35
Speaker 3: a car making part of it a road movie, I
38:37
Speaker 3: can use the natural environment as part of the set.
38:42
Speaker 3: So I'm getting production value from from where I've shot
38:45
Speaker 3: the film. And that was something that that new Bella
38:49
Speaker 3: Jealon had used. So I'm not really I'm basically just
38:54
Speaker 3: copying others in a lot of ways. What do they say,
38:57
Speaker 3: we we we stand on the giant, so we stand
39:00
Speaker 3: on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us.
39:03
Speaker 3: And I did just that. So I took aspects of
39:07
Speaker 3: different filmmakers the way they got things done, and then
39:10
Speaker 3: just uses those as both inspiration and templates from which
39:15
Speaker 3: I would then work. And so I had this outline.
39:18
Speaker 3: I then put a casting call out and made it
39:22
Speaker 3: sound I mean, I told the truth, but it sounded
39:26
Speaker 3: like a fantastic little story to be a part of.
39:30
Speaker 3: But I didn't make it sound better than it was.
39:33
Speaker 3: I'm just I spend a lot of time nuancing the
39:37
Speaker 3: words so that I would get the right kind of people.
39:41
Speaker 3: And I think I auditioned about eighty people all up
39:44
Speaker 3: in the end. Actually it was one hundred and sixty.
39:48
Speaker 3: It was eighty two men and eighty one women.
39:54
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
40:01
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
40:06
Speaker 3: But even though the audition process is pretty simple, because
40:09
Speaker 3: as soon as particularly with Lily, as soon as she
40:11
Speaker 3: walked in, I knew this was the girl. And the
40:16
Speaker 3: reason why I knew this was the girl was that
40:18
Speaker 3: she had food poisoning. Yet she still turned up. She
40:21
Speaker 3: walked in and apologized. She looked like shit, She was
40:25
Speaker 3: really crook. She had sweat pouring down her face, and
40:30
Speaker 3: halfway through the interview, which didn't go for very long
40:32
Speaker 3: because I felt sorry for her, she excused herself and
40:35
Speaker 3: ran off to the toilet. But I knew it was
40:38
Speaker 3: her immediate because anyone that wants to be a part
40:40
Speaker 3: of a production that much, then they're going to see
40:45
Speaker 3: it through. And of course I had to. I had
40:47
Speaker 3: to make sure that she could act. She looked the part.
40:49
Speaker 3: She looked great, the right height, right eye color, right, heck,
40:55
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. But she could also act really
40:58
Speaker 3: really well. So but she she won me over by
41:01
Speaker 3: just turning up crook. So she had she had gusto,
41:06
Speaker 3: which I loved. But to be honest, even when we
41:10
Speaker 3: were into pre production, when I'd hired the actors they
41:14
Speaker 3: were on board, I hadn't finished the script yet. I
41:17
Speaker 3: was still writing the script actually as we were, right
41:21
Speaker 3: as we were shooting the film. There's a there's a
41:26
Speaker 3: few big dialogue scenes that I wrote in the days
41:29
Speaker 3: before that were they're not just dialogue with two people talking.
41:36
Speaker 3: They're actually a part of They function in a way
41:41
Speaker 3: that tell the subtext of the story. And I did
41:45
Speaker 3: it that way because two things I knew I could
41:49
Speaker 3: do it. I knew the story well enough. I'd had
41:54
Speaker 3: visualized basically every scene, every look, every turn that the
42:01
Speaker 3: actors were going to do before I'd even written the script,
42:06
Speaker 3: so I knew the outline. And this is something that
42:08
Speaker 3: I heard Derek sin France, this is what he does.
42:11
Speaker 3: He he visualizes the film every like, every cut, every shot,
42:18
Speaker 3: every cut, and he's got a detailed visual outline in
42:23
Speaker 3: his mind before he's and he's writing at the same time,
42:27
Speaker 3: so the outline kind of gets fleshed out, if you like,
42:31
Speaker 3: over time through this process. And I'm a very visual person,
42:37
Speaker 3: and I find myself writing in a similar kind of way.
42:40
Speaker 3: And I've heard other writers write in similar ways when
42:45
Speaker 3: it's in when they write pros, they write books, but
42:47
Speaker 3: they'll write via an outline. So so we did that,
42:52
Speaker 3: and what that meant was that that I I knew
42:58
Speaker 3: the film inside out, and then it was just a
43:01
Speaker 3: matter of finding interesting ways and interesting locations to embed
43:07
Speaker 3: that story in. And we did that Chris and I
43:12
Speaker 3: the actor who helped me a little bit with the
43:17
Speaker 3: producing side. We've done a scouting location. So I had
43:21
Speaker 3: this one scene where after a little bit of a battle,
43:25
Speaker 3: they come along and then she's It's a moment in
43:29
Speaker 3: the film that's supposed to be slightly comedic, but its
43:33
Speaker 3: function is to just release a little bit of tension.
43:36
Speaker 3: So storytelling and movies are kind of like jazz. Rather
43:39
Speaker 3: it's tension and release. It's low music. So there's this
43:42
Speaker 3: really tense part and then there's this kind of letting
43:45
Speaker 3: go of that, and then a slight comedic moment before
43:48
Speaker 3: there's another piece of tension. And in this I needed
43:52
Speaker 3: to find a certain kind of location. So we went
43:54
Speaker 3: for a drive down the Grayson Road and we just
43:57
Speaker 3: drive around for a day and I made notes, took
44:01
Speaker 3: a couple of photos, and then when we were shooting,
44:05
Speaker 3: we just drove to where we thought that would work.
44:08
Speaker 3: And if the weather was good, great, If the weather sucked, fine,
44:12
Speaker 3: that problems. I'll shoot in a different angle and then
44:15
Speaker 3: try and cut it all together. So that's seemed to
44:17
Speaker 3: work really really well. So you know, that's excellent. You know, well,
44:23
Speaker 3: you know, you find the process that actually is going
44:25
Speaker 3: to work for you. You find a process that you
44:28
Speaker 3: know is indicative to the project.
44:30
Speaker 6: And I mean, I think that's you know, a key
44:32
Speaker 6: that a lot of filmmakers miss is that they they
44:35
Speaker 6: they try to emulate too many people that that may
44:38
Speaker 6: have either more time, more money, more people, whatever. But
44:41
Speaker 6: if they could just you know, find that process, you
44:45
Speaker 6: know that that that can that fits in within their
44:46
Speaker 6: budget and fits with and is you know, fits with
44:49
Speaker 6: the project, they would have more success.
44:52
Speaker 5: I mean I've done that myself as well, where I've you.
44:55
Speaker 6: Know, tried to emulate too much and try to do
44:57
Speaker 6: too much with with with not having the proper sort
45:01
Speaker 6: of foundation set, if you know.
45:03
Speaker 3: What I mean totally. If you're gonna watch a bunch
45:07
Speaker 3: of film school kids or young kids try and produce,
45:10
Speaker 3: try and create a feature film that's sci fi, it
45:14
Speaker 3: will probably suck because they just don't have the means
45:18
Speaker 3: of dolls that it takes to make the special effects
45:21
Speaker 3: not look laughable. I've never seen one sci fi and
45:25
Speaker 3: I love sci fi, but I'm not a sci fi geek.
45:28
Speaker 3: So there's probably people out there going, what an idiot?
45:30
Speaker 3: That's just roll. But from my point of view, it
45:35
Speaker 3: never works. And but what does work if there's a
45:39
Speaker 3: there's actually a really good behind the scenes of the
45:43
Speaker 3: film brick I'm vaguing on. I know the guy first.
45:47
Speaker 3: The guy's name is Ryan I can't remember his surname.
45:50
Speaker 3: He's now directing Star Wars, but he's Ryan Jars, Ryan Johnson.
45:56
Speaker 3: That's him. A great guy. Really, you should try and
46:00
Speaker 3: get him on your podcast or maybe because he's doing
46:03
Speaker 3: Star Wars now, he's too busy, but he's incredibly approachable
46:06
Speaker 3: on social media. He's done some great films, but his
46:11
Speaker 3: first film, Brick, Uh, there's a there's a fantastic behind
46:16
Speaker 3: the scenes on that, and you'll see that he's done
46:18
Speaker 3: the same thing. Use the sets, use the locations you
46:21
Speaker 3: know from your local area that will add value production
46:26
Speaker 3: value to your and that you can get for free.
46:28
Speaker 3: Right because you can do you can use it. If
46:30
Speaker 3: he used a car park from his school, he used
46:33
Speaker 3: his school, his high school in fact, because he knew
46:36
Speaker 3: that area. And the film. The film is great and
46:40
Speaker 3: it has a it has a kind of a film
46:42
Speaker 3: you are kind of vibe to it. I think the
46:45
Speaker 3: first time I saw it actually was on television, late
46:48
Speaker 3: night television here in Australia, and from there I then
46:50
Speaker 3: researched and found this dude and it's amazing. Some Yeah,
46:57
Speaker 3: so that's both. He's just he'm I've done exactly what
47:01
Speaker 3: he did. He's probably got more talent and skilled than
47:06
Speaker 3: than I have. Certainly had more money because Brick's still
47:09
Speaker 3: the bricks still cost money, but it was done in
47:13
Speaker 3: a time prior to DSLR. So I think if he
47:18
Speaker 3: was around today, he wouldn't he wouldn't be making excuses.
47:21
Speaker 3: He'd he'd be the kind of guy that just go
47:23
Speaker 3: out and ah and use the tools to his advantage.
47:30
Speaker 3: So rather than so a DSLR can be or you
47:33
Speaker 3: know the new Sony is is I shot thousand moments
47:36
Speaker 3: later on an A seven s. Use the aesthetic of
47:41
Speaker 3: the of the equipment. You've got to enhance the story,
47:45
Speaker 3: not try and create a me and dollar looking film
47:48
Speaker 3: on something that's never ever gonna look that good. It's
47:51
Speaker 3: just not so.
47:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, you brought up the films to train too.
47:59
Speaker 5: US five piece.
48:01
Speaker 6: There were some film students that I knew who were
48:03
Speaker 6: trying to do a time period piece and they were
48:06
Speaker 6: trying to raise five thousand on Kickstarter, and they they
48:10
Speaker 6: asked me what I thought of it, and I said, guys,
48:12
Speaker 6: you will spend five thousand dollars on costumes alone, and
48:17
Speaker 6: that will only be for half of the of the cast.
48:19
Speaker 3: I said, one costume.
48:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean the because you're doing something from
48:24
Speaker 6: the eighteen hundreds, everything was a lot heavier. It's you know,
48:28
Speaker 6: all of this stuff that and and just to get
48:30
Speaker 6: and I've I've dealt with those rental houses before. Who
48:32
Speaker 6: weren't those kind of costumes and I mean it's not
48:35
Speaker 6: like because I think they're they're thinking that they could
48:37
Speaker 6: just skirt by by getting some like cheap replicas, you know,
48:42
Speaker 6: but and I told them, you know, people are going
48:44
Speaker 6: to be able to tell that.
48:45
Speaker 5: You know, people are going to be able to tell
48:46
Speaker 5: this stuff.
48:47
Speaker 6: And if it looks chintzy and cheap, you know, if
48:49
Speaker 6: the aesthetic looks tension cheap, the production value looks tension cheap,
48:53
Speaker 6: it's going to come up.
48:53
Speaker 5: It's going to come through.
48:55
Speaker 6: And I said, you know, you could create a better
48:56
Speaker 6: movie setting it in today's world and just you know,
49:00
Speaker 6: using what you have access to and creating something that way,
49:02
Speaker 6: and then you could move on and do something else,
49:04
Speaker 6: you know, when you need you have a more audience,
49:07
Speaker 6: more of a budget, you know, stuff like that.
49:09
Speaker 3: Just tweak the story like you could do. You could
49:11
Speaker 3: make them speak like use the costumes of today, you
49:16
Speaker 3: get them to use their own clothes, but make them
49:18
Speaker 3: speak as if they're from the aid and hundreds and
49:20
Speaker 3: tweak the story so in an interesting way to leverage
49:24
Speaker 3: what you've got on you right now, That's that's to me.
49:28
Speaker 3: I'd be more interested. I imagine a film. Of course,
49:31
Speaker 3: the story's got to be good about a bunch of
49:34
Speaker 3: people from the aiden hundreds. But but you know, somehow
49:39
Speaker 3: they're their clothings or modern I mean to me, that's
49:43
Speaker 3: far more interesting already. The only people that can do
49:47
Speaker 3: period are people who have the budget. Down to abbey
49:51
Speaker 3: is down to an abbey, and it's never ever going
49:54
Speaker 3: to be shot without means and means of dollars behind it,
49:58
Speaker 3: because it just would not work.
50:02
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
50:08
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
50:11
Speaker 5: Well, and we were talking about Brick.
50:13
Speaker 6: You know, Brick was set in modern times, but everyone
50:15
Speaker 6: talked like they were from the nineteen thirties or forties.
50:18
Speaker 6: You know, there was like a you know they kind
50:20
Speaker 6: of kind of speech. So, you know, I wanted to
50:23
Speaker 6: ask you a thousand moments later. You know it's it's
50:26
Speaker 6: in post production right now, correct, card, That's correct? Yeah,
50:30
Speaker 6: So do you do you have a time? Do you
50:32
Speaker 6: do you know all that you have an estimated time
50:33
Speaker 6: to be when it will be released.
50:36
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to release it or submit it to a
50:39
Speaker 3: couple of film festivals, and then I'm going to self.
50:44
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sell it, even if someone was
50:47
Speaker 3: willing to buy it. I'm going to release it on
50:51
Speaker 3: iTunes and basically do a digital release after a series
50:56
Speaker 3: of a film festival run, so that you know, with
50:59
Speaker 3: film festivals that's a little bit of you're basically just leveraging,
51:04
Speaker 3: leveraging them for marketing. So again looking at the long
51:09
Speaker 3: term game here. My thought behind this strategy is this,
51:14
Speaker 3: if I can get the film into a film festival
51:18
Speaker 3: with a little bit of prestige, I can then use
51:21
Speaker 3: that on my CV. And it's really that's the only thing,
51:24
Speaker 3: the only reason why I would do this if it
51:27
Speaker 3: can get into a Sundance. And the likelihood of getting
51:31
Speaker 3: into a Sundance is just ridiculously slim. It's ridiculous to
51:34
Speaker 3: even mention the name Sundance, but I'll do it just
51:37
Speaker 3: for an example, if a thousand moments later was able
51:41
Speaker 3: to get into Sundance, I could then go to a
51:45
Speaker 3: producer and say, here's a screener for the film we
51:49
Speaker 3: are in Sundance. Here's my name, here's my CV, please
51:52
Speaker 3: give me. And here's another project. Here's another script. This
51:55
Speaker 3: is the thing I want to do next. Can you
51:58
Speaker 3: help me? Someone is likely more likely to help at
52:04
Speaker 3: that point than if it's not in Sundance, so we
52:08
Speaker 3: can you know, Sundance, slam Dance, There's there's a bunch
52:12
Speaker 3: of film festivals that I can use to help me
52:17
Speaker 3: step up on my next with my next project, and
52:22
Speaker 3: then and after that, then I will release it via
52:27
Speaker 3: iTunes the digital platforms and try and recruit recoup the
52:32
Speaker 3: money that I spent, which wasn't a lot. We're talking,
52:37
Speaker 3: you know, thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars,
52:40
Speaker 3: certainly not hundreds of it's probably including my time, it'll
52:44
Speaker 3: be tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands. I'd
52:47
Speaker 3: like to be able to recoup that money and and
52:50
Speaker 3: then pay the actors for their time.
52:52
Speaker 6: So that's what I'm looking to do. Yeah, you know,
52:57
Speaker 6: I guess I had on here. Jason Brubaker always would
53:00
Speaker 6: talk about that as well. He'd always say that, you know,
53:02
Speaker 6: getting into Sundance is not a financial or distribution plan,
53:06
Speaker 6: because a lot of filmmakers would say that, you know,
53:08
Speaker 6: that would be their pitch to investors or even to
53:10
Speaker 6: anybody else, would be Hey, you know, we're gonna get
53:12
Speaker 6: this into Sundance. We're gonna sell it for a mill
53:15
Speaker 6: and then that's how we'll recoup the budget, And he said,
53:18
Speaker 6: that's not realistic because you know, every year Sundance has
53:22
Speaker 6: more entries than it had the year before, and you know,
53:25
Speaker 6: they have all sorts of movies coming in, and it's just,
53:27
Speaker 6: you know, it's a it's that golden ticket type of
53:30
Speaker 6: thinking that he always tells people not to do. And instead,
53:33
Speaker 6: just get a website, put a big buy now button
53:36
Speaker 6: on the website, and you could sell your film through
53:38
Speaker 6: your own website.
53:39
Speaker 3: Sure, And not only is it, I mean, it's just
53:42
Speaker 3: that's not half Sundance works anymore, and it hasn't for
53:45
Speaker 3: quite a while. So anyone that's signing that to investors
53:49
Speaker 3: is trading in their investors, because that's not how the
53:52
Speaker 3: business works anymore. The business has fundamentally changed out of
53:56
Speaker 3: the last five years, and even out of the last
54:00
Speaker 3: two years. You just look at the digital platforms that
54:02
Speaker 3: are available now compared to two years ago. We are
54:06
Speaker 3: in a totally different environment. So anyone, anyone that wants
54:10
Speaker 3: to lay down some coin on the potential hope that
54:14
Speaker 3: you even get into Sundance, let alone someone gives you
54:16
Speaker 3: a million dollars, No, it does not happen that way.
54:19
Speaker 3: And you've just you Anyone that understands the way distribution,
54:23
Speaker 3: even traditional distribution works, will know that the possibility of
54:30
Speaker 3: recouping money is so slim. I'm sure. Look, I'm sure
54:36
Speaker 3: I'm probably overstating that the facts. I'm sure someone will say, Clark,
54:42
Speaker 3: you're wrong. Here's an example. Sure, okay, but how many
54:46
Speaker 3: films are played at Sundance, let alone are submitted? Well,
54:51
Speaker 3: what's what are the numbers? There are three thousand feature films.
54:56
Speaker 6: Unless year they had fifteen thousands. So so yeah, and
55:05
Speaker 6: you know every it gets more every year.
55:07
Speaker 3: Uh.
55:07
Speaker 6: You know, Clark, we've been talking for about you know,
55:10
Speaker 6: fifty minutes now, Uh, you know, just in closing, is
55:13
Speaker 6: there anything that you know we didn't discuss that you
55:15
Speaker 6: want to just to talk about or is there anything
55:17
Speaker 6: you want to sort of say to put a period
55:19
Speaker 6: at the end of this whole conversation.
55:24
Speaker 3: Not really. I think we've we've we've gone into we're gone,
55:29
Speaker 3: we've we've dived deep evenly.
55:31
Speaker 5: Dave, Yeah, well we have dove pretty deeply.
55:34
Speaker 1: Yep.
55:35
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, No, I'm I'm cool man, all right.
55:39
Speaker 6: Excellent, Clark. Where you'll find you out online?
55:42
Speaker 3: Our best place is Clark Scott. That's Clark with an e.
55:46
Speaker 3: Clarkscott dot org. From there all my social media links.
55:49
Speaker 3: There's a newsletter the links to one thousand Moments Later
55:55
Speaker 3: website where people can there's a newsletter there also with
56:02
Speaker 3: the film where once I do release it, I've got
56:06
Speaker 3: a load of behind the scenes things that I've produced
56:10
Speaker 3: for and bonus content that I've produced for the film,
56:13
Speaker 3: so you can you can hire. And here's here it lies,
56:18
Speaker 3: the real benefit of the age in which we live.
56:23
Speaker 3: I can, on my own bat in a day, whack
56:27
Speaker 3: up a website, throw up a website and a buy
56:31
Speaker 3: button or a higher button, and as long as I've
56:36
Speaker 3: produced content for it, I can give people an option
56:38
Speaker 3: to just hire the movie for forty eight hours or
56:41
Speaker 3: buy it for download. They can buy that and behind
56:45
Speaker 3: the scenes or I've got three packages. The full package
56:51
Speaker 3: I go into. It's basically as essentially a course in
56:56
Speaker 3: how to produce your own independent film. And I do
57:00
Speaker 3: that for like fifty bucks. So for fifty bucks, I'm
57:04
Speaker 3: opening the door to my entire process from the screenwriting
57:08
Speaker 3: how I used Aristotle's cathartic moment and his structure to
57:11
Speaker 3: to create the dramatic and thematic essence of the film,
57:19
Speaker 3: through to screen casts of how I edit interviews with
57:23
Speaker 3: the actors I've got. I recorded the voiceover session with Chris,
57:29
Speaker 3: so you get to hear him stumble through the voiceover
57:33
Speaker 3: and me give him points and notes, director's notes on
57:37
Speaker 3: you know, we need to do this and that, and
57:41
Speaker 3: it's totally unedited. There's no in that at least there's
57:45
Speaker 3: there's there's no no editing. So and I can do
57:50
Speaker 3: that for virtually no real upfront costs because I've got
57:56
Speaker 3: all the skills and all the equipment and all the
57:58
Speaker 3: all the tools at my disposal in order to create
58:01
Speaker 3: all of that, and then I can just put it online.
58:04
Speaker 3: And the way I look at it is that if
58:07
Speaker 3: people if they if people want to buy it, then
58:09
Speaker 3: it's there. If they don't, no problem, and that will help.
58:15
Speaker 3: It helps both me, but it's also that allows me
58:18
Speaker 3: to give something back. If I use the word of
58:24
Speaker 3: the universe, it sounds kind of new aging, but I'm
58:26
Speaker 3: just I'm giving something back to whatever it is that
58:30
Speaker 3: allowed me, that allowed me to be born and be
58:35
Speaker 3: sitting here right now talking to you, and that with
58:38
Speaker 3: that from that place of generosity, I'm hoping that over time,
58:44
Speaker 3: people will just I mean, there will be some people
58:46
Speaker 3: listening to this now. In fact, if they've got this far,
58:50
Speaker 3: they're probably thinking, there won't be too many people who
58:53
Speaker 3: think that I'm an absolute wanker, but there will be
58:57
Speaker 3: people who go, I don't like the way this guy talks.
59:00
Speaker 3: I don't like he's aesthetic. But there are and they're
59:03
Speaker 3: not my people. My people are the ones that look
59:06
Speaker 3: at my work, that look at my aesthetic, that look
59:10
Speaker 3: at the approach that I've taken, that I've taken, and
59:13
Speaker 3: they go, this guy is fantastic, just the way I
59:15
Speaker 3: looked at Nari Bala Jilon and went, man, I fucking
59:20
Speaker 3: love this guy. He is so ballsy. He you know,
59:23
Speaker 3: the first film he did, he used his own money
59:27
Speaker 3: and he did everything himself, and I love that approach.
59:31
Speaker 3: I got really excited and inspired me. So by me
59:35
Speaker 3: putting this stuff out out there, I'm helping others. I'm
59:39
Speaker 3: being generous because it's a hell of a lot of
59:42
Speaker 3: work for fifty bucks. I'm not going to make any
59:44
Speaker 3: money back, but what I will do is create connections,
59:47
Speaker 3: and I believe that those connections, fundamentally are is the
59:55
Speaker 3: foundation of a good life. You cannot have a good
59:57
Speaker 3: life without other people in family, friends, et cetera. So yeah,
1:00:04
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Dive. I ended on a rant, right, that's
1:00:08
Speaker 3: no problem at all.
1:00:09
Speaker 6: I will I think you're rot you know, you bring
1:00:11
Speaker 6: it out right, you really do.
1:00:12
Speaker 3: It's what I do.
1:00:15
Speaker 6: I'm sorry to mean to cut you off.
1:00:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, and I guy for it.
1:00:18
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was just gonna say I do. I just
1:00:20
Speaker 6: have a tendency to bring that out in people. Clark Scott,
1:00:22
Speaker 6: I want to say thank you very much for coming
1:00:24
Speaker 6: on the podcast.
1:00:24
Speaker 3: My pleasure to Dive, great to speak to you.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
1:00:29
Speaker 1: a great job on this episode. If you want to
1:00:30
Speaker 1: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
1:00:32
Speaker 1: head over to the show notes at Indie film Muscle
1:00:35
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward Slash eight twenty one, and if you
1:00:37
Speaker 1: have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com.
1:00:42
Speaker 1: Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It
1:00:45
Speaker 1: really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again
1:00:47
Speaker 1: so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that
1:00:49
Speaker 1: hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: and I'll talk too soon.
1:00:55
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
1:00:58
Speaker 2: Indie film hustle dot com.
1:01:00
Speaker 3: That's I N D I E F I L M
1:01:03
Speaker 3: h U s t l E dot com.