Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 378: Directing as a Team & NOT Killing Each Other with Vanessa & Joseph Winter

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BPS 378: Directing as a Team & NOT Killing Each Other with Vanessa & Joseph Winter · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, episode number three seventy eight.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: Alone, we could do so little. Together, we can do
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: so much.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Helen Keller broadcasting from a dark, windowless.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to make your screenplay bulletproof.
• 0:36
  Speaker 5: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
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  Speaker 3: Now.
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  Speaker 2: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot com. Well, guys,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: today on the show, we have filmmaking team and couple
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Vanessa and Joseph Winter. Now, these two are the filmmaking
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: team behind the creepy and relentless gem dead Stream, which
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: is a film that turns the found footage genre on
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: its head. Now, I love talking to Vanessa and Joseph
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: because I was fascinated on how a married couple can
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: function as a directing and team producing team all together
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: while still maintaining a relationship. And we had a really deep,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: raw and honest conversation on how not only does a
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: couple work together as a directing team, but how creatives
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: and filmmakers who work together as a directing team get along,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: how they deal with things, and it is fascinating look
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: inside of that process. So, without any further ado, please
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: enjoy my conversation with Vanessa and Joseph Winter.
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  Speaker 3: I like to welcome to the show, Vanessa and Joseph Winter.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: How you guys doing great?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Good?
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: Nice? It's hard have Alex.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Guys.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I have not had a couple, like a romantic couple
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: filmmakers ever on the show. So I was intrigued by that.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: And then the horror aspect was also more intriguing. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: then the image that you guys said, I was like, well,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, I gotta have them on now. I mean
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: that picture is worth a thousand words right there. So
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: it's no, it's it's really good. I'm really glad to
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: meet you. I'm fascinated with you guys. I want to
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: I want to find out how all of this happened.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: First first question is how did you guys meet? How
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: did you guys get together decide to go, you know
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: what we should do. We should be horror filmmakers together.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Let's do that. Like, I want to know what that
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: conversation was like, Well, we.
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: Very first met and never crossed my mind that this
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: is my horror filmmaking buddy for the rest of my life.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: But it was so we were in film school at
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: the same time as it was so natural. Yeah, yeah,
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: I was total natural progression, like really quickly.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: But I was in a film class.
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: It was like the first film class you take when
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: you get into the program, and Vanessa was in the class.
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: We'd never talked. She came up to me after class
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: one day said, I'm the production designer of a senior
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: Capstone project. You feel like a great fit for the
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: art director to work under me. How do you feel
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: about that? And that was the first time we'd really spoke,
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: And I mean it was all it was because, as
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: I found out later, everyone else said no. But I
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: was really grateful for that because it was I mean,
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: she was really awesome and we got along really great.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: And then I talked her into loving horror. I mean
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: it wasn't hard, but she hadn't been exposed to, like,
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: you know, the stuff that I'm into.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I was always in a horror But film
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: school really was my introduction to cinema. I grew up
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: in a small town. My family was like very conservative
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: with what we could watch, and so in college took
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: my first film class and immediately I fell into the
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: genre lane of horror and sci fi and so I
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: feel like us deciding, Oh, we're gonna make horror movies
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: for the rest of our life. It's like easy. That
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: was an easy that was way easier than should we
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: have kids? Yeah?
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Well I have to ask you, because I'm married,
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: I have kids, how in God's green eurse do you
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: guys balance the family life, you know, and the in
• 5:00
  Speaker 6: the relationship with the filmmaking, because.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Both are fairly stressful and both are horror shows.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: That that's the perfect description. Like I I mean, we were,
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: like we've been hustling to become narrative filmmakers for like
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: ten years together, working lots of different corporate jobs, commercial jobs,
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: doing the whole whole thing that everybody does. And then
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: we got pregnant at the same like, got pregnant, had
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: a baby. We made a feature almost immediately afterward, like
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: I was getting up at three am writing scripts, like
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: the babies like four weeks old. And then we made
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: a movie, almost finished it. We've almost finished filming it,
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: and then got pregnant by accident, and so then we
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: had a baby, and then we finished our movie and
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: then we may we're part of VHS and like it's honest,
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: we just run around all day screaming and then collapse
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: at night.
• 5:59
  Speaker 7: It's really like, I don't really know how to answer it,
• 6:01
  Speaker 7: because this is like when Dead String production was actually
• 6:05
  Speaker 7: gonna happen and I still had a full time corporate
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: job that was just looming.
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: Over the whole thing.
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: It's like how And I still, looking back, I'm like, Okay,
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: I can see how we squeezed by with like having
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: a little baby and stuff, but it's like I don't
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: have the model to teach somebody how to do that.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's there's I've said this so many times in
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: the show. We're all insane and it's and there's an
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: insanity to do what we do. But you guys are
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: a little different, your next level insane, because I mean
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: you've gone to another place. You've transcended the insanity of
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: just making a film. You got into relationship, you have kids,
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: and while you're having kids, you're like, oh, but my film,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Like like these are the thoughts that cout through your head.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: It's fascinating and it is just a testament to your
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: love of what you guys do. And is there in
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: the relationship, Is there anyone who's grounded? Are you both psychotic?
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Because I'm the psycho drake crazy one in my relationship
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and my wife's the grounded one. He's like, no, no,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: we're not going to do that. And we kind of
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: balanced these other out a little because if if it
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: was two of me, I don't know, I would self destruct.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: So I'm curious and how the dynamic works, and.
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: You're you're crazy about different things.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I think that's how it works.
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: Like sometimes I get really scared at the scope that
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: Vanessa will pitch about something where she's like, no, I
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: really think we can do this, and it's like that's
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: not possible, so I start to panic. In that pragmatic
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: kind of sense.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: I'm a crazy like bite up more than you can
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: chew person, but I've got a more chill energy where
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: Joseph's got the performer, like he's got the excitement but
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: also the like anxiety things are going wrong, and I
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: kind of like the even person, but I've definitely got yeah,
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: like he was just saying my own set of crazy
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: where he's like, well, like it's verier the beginning of projects.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: I get super amped. That's like my my place, and
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: Joseph's like okay, but like for real, Yeah, there's.
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: Plenty of crazy crossover though, where we're not compatible, like
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: we just aren't and we're still trying to figure that out.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: So yes, I know there's too much crazy.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I could see that. I can see that without question.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: So how did you guys? You just said that you
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: guys have been going, you know, ten years, and that's
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: that's kind of the number I throw out to people,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: like how long is it gonna take? Like starting points?
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Ten years? Just that's how you got to look at it,
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: and you gotta just you're gonna be grinding for ten
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: years to make something happen for yourselves. How did you
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: guys keep going? I always love asking that question because
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, everyone's different. I'm like, what you mentally had
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: to tell yourselves and you had each other, which is
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: a blessing.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: But most of us don't. We're alone.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: We're you know, the filmmakers by themselves. And you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: I tried quitting a thousand times, but I can't because
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: I'm it's a disease and you can't get rid of
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: it and it's done. So how did you guys keep going?
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: What did you like? Did you guys help each other out?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Did you did ones like I can't do this anymore,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: and the other ones like no, no, we got to keep going,
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: and vice versa.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: How did it work.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: I'm genuinely interested in your answer, if you want to
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: answer first.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: I was just gonna say, I think you hit the
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: nail on the head with the fact that there's a
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: benefit with us being we're having the same insane dream
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: because we there's definitely like dark nights of the soul.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: I guess you could call them multiple times where we
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: are like on the verge of like tears, like can
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: we actually make this happen? Like what are we doing
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: with all of our time and money depressions? But I
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: think that, yeah, the nice thing about being in it
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: together is that and I feel like the risks are
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: a little bit easier maybe than for somebody that's like
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: in a partnership where the other person is like, you're crazy.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: You're taking things too far, like for our relationship or
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: you know, financially or something where we kind of, yeah,
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: we had the same crazy dream. So when it was
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: like should we mortgage our house to make your first feature,
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: and we were like, yeah, let's do it.
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So so the essential part don't do that.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: By the way, everyone listening, don't do That's it. That's
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: what I tell That's what I tell people.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: Like, don't do what we did. It just so happened
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: to have worked in our case. It's not a good
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: business model. Like but but in order to feel good
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: about what we did to get dead Stream off the ground,
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: we needed ten years of like for me changing my
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: value system, Like, honestly, if I write out of film
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: school had had the opportunity to do a feature, and
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: there's some version of that where I would have imploded
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: just looking back, because the thing I was valuing valuing
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: at the time was getting the film made, being in
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: my twenties and trying to rise to the top and
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: like things that don't mean that much to me anymore.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: And as we were going along in our life started
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: a change to like, Okay, I'm approaching my thirties. Does
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: that actually matter to me? Is there a version where
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: that doesn't? Like, can I just make a movie when
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: I want to, like the kind of movie I want to?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: And I started to.
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: Remove like the superficial stuff or the things that were
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: separate for the love of from the love of the
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: craft and the things that I actually wanted to engage in,
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: and that really helped not feel so panicked about the
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: years burning by and having not made a feature. So
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's how for me, That's how when we
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: got to the point of like, hey, should we open
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: up some zero percent interest credit cards and like.
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: Go for it? It was like, Okay, I feel like I've.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: Got a good foundation now of like what's important to me,
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: and we're not willing to sacrifice everything in order to
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: do it, like we're going to try to balance the
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: family and stuff. And then it just finally made sense.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Well can and I'm imagining you guys had the same
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: conversation that we all do. At twenty three, You're like, shit,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: I didn't make my feature. Orson Wells did twenty twenty
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: seven is like Spielberg Bay Jaws at twenty seven.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: I'm just jacking around right here. Let that help.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what I'm talking Parentino made The Reservoir when
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: he was like thirty one, like it, and that just
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: the number just keeps creeping up until you're like, well, really,
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Scott didn't make it till forty. So that's I'm like, yeah,
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: but he did four thousand, yesic videos and commercials part
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: of that. So that's what you lose it. You're getting
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: loosey goosey. But did you have that conversation with yourselves
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: as well as that as at the caught that time
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: gets click clicking away?
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, for sure.
• 12:36
  Speaker 8: I've got like, I've got an issue with like my
• 12:40
  Speaker 8: like I don't know what you call it, the like
• 12:42
  Speaker 8: the life clock ticking away, where I get really freaked out.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: About time passing by. Joseph's a little cooler about it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: No, that took effort, though, because I just made a
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: decision that was you know, earlier than you about the
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: I'm going to be a piece about the clock aspect
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: and just just have some faith that at you know,
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: when I'm in the right mental place and you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: things will just happen at the right time if we
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: just keep healthily working at it and not sacrificing like
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: our health and things along the way. But yeah, that
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: was always there, man. I'm also pretending right now that
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: it stopped mattering to me, but it you know, it
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: always matters.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: This is I love the neurosis that's going on here
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: when you're in this conversation because you're just kind of like,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: this is really getting inside the mind of the insanity
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: of a filmmaker. And this is not what they teach
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: at school. They don't never do that. They teach you
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: about you're gonna be Spielberg, You're gonna be the next Nolan.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Look, we're gonna teach you how to make a hundred
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: million dollar movie. No one ever in film school is
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: teaching you. Look, it's gonna be ten years of grinding.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: You're gonna want to break psychologically multiple times a day, like,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: you're gonna probably go bank er up a couple times.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: You'll probably lose relationships, Like I mean, they don't tell
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: you all these things, but this is what the truth
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: of it is. So I'm so glad that you guys
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: are being so raw honest about this process for people listening,
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: because I hope it helps wakes some people up to
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: like the realities of this. And the other thing I
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: wanted to ask you is because as as a filmmaker myself,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: I look, I my wife, and I've taken strategic, you know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: risks through my filmmaking career. At the beginning, I threw
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: credit cards and almost went bankrupt and all that kind
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: of stuff at the very early beginning of it, But
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: as I got older, I look, Okay, list's strategically, how
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: are we going to do this without a family? The
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: second the kids came into the picture, it changes things.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: But it seems like you were able to balance having
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: kids because it's one that you guys could eat Ramen.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I mean probably not now. I mean that you don't
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: want to, but we could.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: You know, you could.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: You don't want to, but you could, you know. But
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: now when you have kids, it's a different responsibility. How
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: do you balance the insanity of the dream with the
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: responsibility of a family.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: I think I think for me, like I almost ex
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: experience to what you did backwards where I think I had.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: I kind of had this thing coming out of film
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: school where I didn't and maybe it's because I'm a woman,
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: but I had this feeling of like I didn't go
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: to school for a hobby. So I kind of had
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: this overcompensating like I'm going to get this corporate job
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: and I'm going to make enough money while I'm also
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: chasing my dreams so that I could show that I
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: can like make a living. And there was something about
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: having my first baby where I was kind of like, oh,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: like this is it, Like I am gonna make a
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: feature now or it's never gonna happen. And so I
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: got a little bit more crazy and risk taking where
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: I started putting like childcare on a credit card where
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: I didn't have. I had never done that before, like
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: spend credit card money on I mean besides some student films,
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: like but I hadn't been really doing that. So that
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: for me was kind of like the switch went off
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: where I just started saying no all of my like
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: commercial clients were most of them, and was just like,
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: I'm going to do this thing because if I don't,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: I'm going to regret it, even if it goes badly.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: So that's that's where I was.
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: For me, a really interesting I mean, this happened for
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: both of us. But the thing that I like to
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: tell people about having our kid is like before then,
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: it was twenty four to seven film stuff like what
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: we would talk about in our house. There were no boundaries.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: It wasn't like, Okay, at this time, we're just talking
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: about our personal lives like film, our ideas, the things
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: we were working on, our corporate stuff. It was all
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: just you know, laying in bed talking about it, and
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: when we had our daughter, there started to be some
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: structure around it where we said, at this time, which
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: just family time, like we have to it's only fair
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: to our family to do that. But it was so
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: weird that once we started putting boundaries on when we
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: would work on film, I became way more productive. My
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: output was so much more than it had ever been,
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: and I feel like that has stuck. So now we
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: have that second daughter, it's the same thing. The hours
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: of the day that we have to work are a
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: lot more productive than they ever were before then, So
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: there's that benefit that's come from it.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, unfortunate. We should have discovered you earlier, Alex, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: we could have made a lot of smarter decisions.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Well, but that way, I appreciate that loose. I wish
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: I had me when I can you imagine if a
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: show like this exhibited in the nineties, you know, I
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: pep millions and millions of dollars would have been saved,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: Relationships sy keys would have not you know, busted at
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: at that point. I mean, less people would be in
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: the insane asylum right now if we had this kind
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: of information back then. But so, what were some of
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: these mistakes that you guys made along the way that
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: you were just like that maybe you could talk about
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: that other people can learn from and hopefully not fall
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: into those same dit traps.
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: One of my biggest things, I think was just not
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: saying no to anything. Did same thing, yeah, and uh yeah,
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: I think that with your like, I think the advice
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: that you give, like having multiple legs of your business,
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: I guess you could call it is a really smart
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: thing to do, But I think you don't want to
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: have like forty legs to your business. You don't want
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: to feel like you're missing out because you're not working
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: with this producer. You're not like you're letting go some
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: of your clients or whatever it is. And I think
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: that I just had that for a long time where
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: I was overworking, just overworking for not enough money. And
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: then creatively I kind of had the same problem where
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: I always wanted to be a horror filmmaker, and with
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: doing that, you take, like just in the nature of whore,
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: you take big swings, and you isolate a certain amount
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: of audience. And I think that there were when I
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: would do my own creative like projects like a short
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: film or something I would have in mind, like, oh,
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: but if my commercial clients saw this, like could it
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: help me out? In like both ways. And as soon
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: as I just started really writing and making the things
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: were purely Vanessa, I guess you could call them. They're
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: just weird and and just what I wanted to do.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: That's when audiences started responding. Or that's when I started
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: getting into festivals and ended up finding my management, And
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: so I think, yeah, I think specifically for me, there
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: was a lot of mistakes in just not being focused enough.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: And it sounds like you, it sounds like you did
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: the same thing I did. I think I think every
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: filmmaker goes through this process is you find your voice
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: and then you have the you know, the the cajones
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: as they say, to actually put your voice out there.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: And that's what people are, your secret sauce, that's what
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: people are attracted to. Not I'm gonna go make a
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Sam Raimi movie.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: I'm like, well, we have Sam.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: He doesn't pretty well, we don't need another Sam raimie.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: You know, he's he's solid, Like, we don't need another
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: one of him or a cheap copycat. But but there's
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: only one Vanessa. We'll be right back after a word
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: from our sponsor and now back to the show. So yeah,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: that and that's and that's the thing. There's only one Joseph.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: So that's that when you were able to finally put
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: that out there is that's when I'm so glad you
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: said that that you like, oh, that's when stuff started
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: to happen, when you were brave enough to put yourself
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: out there. I'm assuming that's the same for you. Joseph.
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: Well, the thing that came to my mind is I
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: was afraid after I mean in college, I was afraid
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: to make bad things. After college, I was afraid to
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: make bad things, and that actually kept me from making
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: I wish I would have made so much more things
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: and bad things, because you learn a lot when you
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: make something that's not turning out right, and you actually
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: learn a lot when you make more things that are
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: shorter and in my mind, like the next project I
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: was going to put my energy into was going to
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: be a seventeen minute, like really ambitious thing, and I
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: wish I would have just taken the opportunity to give
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: myself more smaller experiences, have things that I'm too ashamed
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: to show people because I did any way along the way,
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: and like I just feel that's how that's how you learn.
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: And I'm jealous looking back at my other friends that
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: were jumping on these like, yeah, I just got this
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: opportunity to direct a little thing over here. It's not
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: that good, but I'm gonna do it. In my mind,
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: I was like, why would you want to have that
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: on your reel or have that? But like, now I
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: that was a mistake.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: You can you.
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: Should make bad things. You should make lots of bad things,
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: and you can curate what you show people.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: It's I think it's the same, the kind of idis
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: that we we filmmakers have. They're like, well Spielberg didn't
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: have this, and you know, like on his reel, I
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: mean on his his film. Like you want your filmography
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: to be perfect because that's the ego inside of you
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: going one day they'll be studying me in film school
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: and when they do, I can't have this crap out there,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of like that's that you laugh because
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: both of you have thought this in your mind at
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: one one or another. Because I did. I think all
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: of us do, because we all are insane. The filmmaker's
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: ego is, oh my god, it is. There's the level
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: of delusion we have. But you know what, I said
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: this the other day. I was at AFM and I
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: was on stage talking and I said this out loud.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: And it was a friend of mine who told me this,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: and he told me I could steal it.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: My friend John Kim, he.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Said, the delusion and the skills that you need to
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: get a movie done hurt you after the movie is
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: done to try to sell it, because you can't be
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: delusional when you're selling it. It can't be to like,
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: my movie's the greatest obviously the next Quint Tarantino.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: Why Campston?
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: Anybody recognize my genius?
• 22:38
  Speaker 8: Yeah?
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Is that? Do you agree with that?
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I feel like I feel like that's
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: for sure true. I just right now what you're seeing
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: is me trying to think how if I felt that
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: way after we made dead Stream, Like if I had
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: the healthy mindset, I will say, what health is like,
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: we're mature enough going into dead Stream. That's I grew
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: out of so much of that kind of mindset by
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: the time we made it. That we didn't have south
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: By Southwest aspirations when we were making dead Streaming, we
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: didn't have like the successes of the movie were not
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: the goal. Like by the time we made this, it
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: was like very pragmatic. It was We're going to pay
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: for an education in learning the part of the business
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: that most people don't talk about or won't talk about.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: Learn how much people are offering for a low budget
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: movie and like what just like that kind of thing.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: And so I mean ten years before I wouldn't have
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: made a movie that was just my best shop, but
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: mostly for an education and mostly you know, to just
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: do something. So I think that's something that did help
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: with being older and getting started with that.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: The twenty the twenties version of all of us is
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: there were idiots, which are absolutely of course, I didn't
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: make a movie till I was forty because I was like, well,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: it has to be reservoir dogs, it has to like
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: blow everybody out of the water, because again, my filmography
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: is gonna be hot in schools and I can't have
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: this kind of insanity.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: So yeah, man, that pressure can really get to you though, right.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: It's crippling.
• 24:16
  Speaker 9: It's crippling, it is it because it's all self inflicted.
• 24:21
  Speaker 9: It's completely your own delusions in your mind. You know,
• 24:25
  Speaker 9: I kind of ask you Why do you think we
• 24:27
  Speaker 9: do that to ourselves?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Why? Because I've never asked this question on the show before,
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: But like, what who told us that that's the way?
• 24:35
  Speaker 7: Like?
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: What is?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: And it's not just us, it's most filmmakers have this
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: conversation with themselves, are like, my first movie has to
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: be this, and it has to be that, and you know,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: and I have to be respected and it has to win.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: What is it that we can't just go out and
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: like you did with dead Stream and just go We're
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: just gonna go make a movie. We're gonna learn about
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: the process and if it gets in some places, it
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: gets in some places. As opposed to this is oscar Worthy,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: which I've had that conversation, not me, with other filmmakers
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: who I've done posts for and they're like, I'll see
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: it the Oscars next year. I'm like, you see see
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: it there? All right there, buddy, all right, let me
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: tell what that works out for you.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: So man, Yeah, Like I feel like I feel like
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: there's a there's a particular kind of crazy uh of
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: filmmakers that puts you in that mindset. In fairness to filmmakers,
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: I feel like there is a lot of when I
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: compare it to other other art forms. There is some
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: truth to this, like fear and feeling that everything you
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: make could be your last because if you blow it
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: baden up, people don't want to work with you and
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: don't want to pay, like help you pay money. It's
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: so hard to make a film just by yourself, So
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: that does I think add to some of the pressure. Yeah,
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: the I also hearing other writers talk. I think this
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: may cross over to writers too, which is how crippling
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: it is to sit down and realize that your first
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: draft is going to be complete crap, right, And that's
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: like a big mental hurdle. And I don't know if
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: it's just because you're admiring other films that are so
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: good or other books that are so good, but this idea,
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: it's really hard for the idea to sink in that
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: it started as bad. It's like hard to believe, well,
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: it's hard to believe that the first iteration of Jaws
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: or whatever was probably bad and it took a long
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: time before it became Jaws.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: One of the biggest reasons is that's what they put
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: in front of you at film school, like they put
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: the awesome first films.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: In front of you the Masterpiece.
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: Ye talking about reservoir Dogs, is that's not even technically
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: Tarantino's first movie. Oh, and like hearing Edgar Wright, it's like,
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: you don't know this really, like it's not really talk
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: about like that. And then I heard Edgar Wright on
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: a podcast years ago where he talked about a fistfull
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: of Fingers which he doesn't even want people to see,
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: and I still haven't seen it, and he explains why,
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: And I wish I would have been taught that in school,
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: Like here are the filmmakers who made first films that
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: either you can't see or they don't want you to see,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: and then they learn from it and went on to
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: make Seana the Dead or like you know, something else
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: like that.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: Well they don't see that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: That doesn't sell uh, doesn't sell them seats in film school.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, they sell the sizzle, but they don't sell
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: the steak real well. But they sell the sizzle really really,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: really well. And you know what's fascinating is after talking
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: to as many people as I have on the show
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: and speaking to like Edgar and some of these bigger
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: you know, Oscar winners and things like that, I've come
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: to realize in just my own personal journey that all
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: of them go through the same things that we do.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: It's always shit at the beginning, it's always crap, nervous.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: They have to look at the same blank page you
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: guys have to look at and they just work it
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: out in a different way. But it is it is.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: I think Hollywood puts it out there that that, like
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: the story of Rocky, that he wrote it in like
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: what four three nights or something like that, He wrote
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Rocky and then like that was the myth, like, oh,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: he wrote and he won the Oscar. And then years
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: later I saw an interview was stallone and he's like, yeah,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: I wrote the first draft in three days, but I
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: beat the hell out of that day for the next
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: six months, you know, perfecting it.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's that kind of delusion that's put out there.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: But I think that's a Hollywood thing too. It's beIN's that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: You know, it's always been that way with this kind
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: of the sizzle and not the steak. Without question, So
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: let me ask you a dead stream, how did you guys?
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: First of all, that's fantastic, it looks great, man, it's
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: it's so much fun.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: And then I'm like, wait a minute.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Is that is he the star of this too? Like,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: oh god, that's tough enough to do it behind the scenes,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: but in front of the scenes, from in front of
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: the camera to be able to do it all, and
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like basically you're the show on top
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: of it. So there's a lot of pressure on you,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Joe as a performer of that movie. Yeah, you got
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: some ghost and goblins and other things flying around, which
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: are really interesting, but you're funny at shit. By the way,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: You're really really funny in this funny as hell, really
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: well produced. Looks nice, it looks like, you know, because
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: I've see a lot of stuff. I see a lot
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: of stuff and in the horror genre, as you know,
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: that always thoughts brupture value not always. How did you
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: guys decide to do? Like this was the thing? Like
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: get this thing off the ground and then we'll talk
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: about the South By Southwest call.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: Dude, Yeah, I think. Yeah. We started writing and around
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: Joseph's strengths because he can't act and he is hilarious,
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: but it did end up being really grueling and a
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: ton of pressure.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: And now back to the show as Yeah, I.
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: Think we should like talk about why though. The reason
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: is like we were trying to We gave ourselves the
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: creative prompt of like what if there was a movie
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: no one could say no to if we made like
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: could we in theory make something by ourselves? And that's
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: the thing that led us to, well that would of
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: course I would be in it. And it wasn't like honestly,
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: we didn't think I was great. We just thought that
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: I could act like I'd been in some of our
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: other stuff that we had made. So it was like, okay,
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: a given it's me in a haunted house, is there
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: and nobody else is in it? Like that's kind of
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: where what we were building off of.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're like originally we were like twenty
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: five thousand dollars twenty five thirty like what could we
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: do if we just strapped cameras to Joseph? And that
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: was kind of like we were kind of like simmering
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: on that like a little bit. And then I think
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: once it started, once it started feeling like somebody who
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: was going to go in and do a real live
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: stream and put up extra cameras and a movie that
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: was going to escalate from maybe a little bit more
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: grounded to just completely Bonker's eighties creature feature. That's where
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: at least I started getting really creatively excited. But then
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: of course the budget like tripled having to pull something
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: like that off, so that I guess that's its own
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: that's its own genesis. As far as Joseph's role in it,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: it became clear, like increasingly that how difficult it was
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: going to be because on the on the performer, just
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: the pressure on the performer to carry the whole movie.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: And as we started diving into YouTube personalities and started
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: writing the script and refining the script, we became really
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: scared about how hard it is actually to talk for
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: ninety minutes and have people care. And it also made
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: us gate the influencers online a lot more of just
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: what kind of talent and art form they've kind of
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: honed in with this vlogging style comedy I would call it.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: I would think some of them are definitely comedic artists.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: So we started studying that a lot. And yeah, so
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: it ended up being a lot of pressure for Joseph
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: to deliver that kind of performance and that kind of
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: nuance that could actually be watchable, and even when we
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: had a script that was super we felt like it
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: was really solid. We have a casual writers group with
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: friends that we would read stuff out, read stuff with,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: and even when we felt like it was slain pretty
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: well with them, we started doing some tech rehearsals and
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: realized that the character wasn't there yet, that he was
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: just going to be unwatchable. So anyway ended up being
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: a lot of rehearsals for Joseph. And then the technical
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: side was also a little bit unexpected, just how difficult
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: it was to operate the camera. So a lot of
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: the movie was just me like not yelling at you,
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: but like bossily directing and saying, hey, pan that room again,
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: but this time twenty percent slower. So all of this
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: was like, well, he was trying to be in here.
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: So that was the thing that we didn't like.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: We had thought through a lot.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: We did not.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: Think through the part of operating while acting like we
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: just didn't. I didn't, and it was a completely different thing.
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: It was engaging a different part of my brain than
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: the performer, and it was just incredibly difficult and like
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: at the time, so I had avoided actually thinking about
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: me doing some of the emotional scenes or like actually
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: the weight of the movie, because I knew if I
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: did think about it, I would clam up, I would
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: get that paralysis before we ever made it. So I
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: waited to think about it until we were shooting and
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: it really felt it just felt crushing. That first day
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: was a mess. We had to reshoot all the whole thing.
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: Like I just wasn't good. I wasn't on. But but yeah,
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, thank goodness it wasn't a studio movie because
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: we had we had the ability to pop in some
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: weekends to the same location over the next few months
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: and do some pickups just on our own dime on
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: you know, whenever we had a chance. So that was
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: fortunate and that really saved the movie.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think the missing piece as far as
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: when we talked about starting starting the movie, it was
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: a kind of do it yourself. But then as the
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: script progressed and the idea got bigger, we ended up
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: bringing on a partner, Jared Cook, who was our co
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: producer and also our DP, and so this wasn't He
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: was so instrumental in pulling off how the how seamless
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: the camera rigs worked along with the he designed the
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: interface for the chat, so he was a really big
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: creative force and we did. We put a lot of
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: work into the tech, rehearsals and can tests to make
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: sure the movie wasn't too shaky. Joseph actually had two
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: cameras strapped to his head as the pee over the
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: point of view camera so that we could change angle
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: or lens length, and one of them had a little
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: gimbal in it to help stabilize so that it wasn't
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: a nauseating found footage scary movie experience. So anyway, that's
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: I was really happy with the way that the tech
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: worked out in the movie, but it did put extra
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: pressure on Joseph to camera operate. It wasn't just a
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: it's It wasn't an improvised like go act scared, tell
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: some jokes. Everything was like very finely tuned with timing
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: and where he was looking and how.
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: To exces It was a very precise film.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: I'm exhausted and I didn't even make this movie, Mike.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, just when you're explained, I'm like, oh my god,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: I'm tired already. Jesus, Well, let me ask you, so, like,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: how many days you gotta shoot.
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: That is hard now because of all the partial stuff.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: But the first we.
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: Did seven days back to back as our main principle,
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: and then there were a few picks. I think the
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: way last time we calculated probably ends up at fourteen
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: or fifteen days when it.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Was all said and done with the pickups and things
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: that you just go back and do. What was so
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: I was like asking this question, you know, we're all
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: you know, we all are on set, and there's always
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: that one day that do you feel the entire thing
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: is going to come crashing down around you?
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: As directors?
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: I'm assuming that happened every day, probably at realitor of
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: every day. Was there the one thing that you were
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: just like, I don't think we're going to make it?
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: How did what was that thing?
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: And how did you overcome it? Which should we choose man?
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: For me?
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: For me, it was day one and maybe it's because
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: I as like the director that was behind monitored the
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: schedule was more in my shoulders. But we had a
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: huge windstorm through the very first day and blew off
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: all of our makeshift dubatine on the outside of the house.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: Which was like, so we had to cover the entire
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: house so that we could shoot during the day.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: We ended up like spending hours and hours repairing that.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: And then by the time we got our first shot off,
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: just the morale wasn't there, the character hadn't really vibed yet,
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: and we got the camera tech we realized even with
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: all of our tests, it just I mean, they're not
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: action cameras, are not cinema cameras. So the consistency there
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: was just a lot of surprises, and we thought we
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: were going to shoot the whole movie in six days.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Oh man.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: So that was sary, like Puma Jesus Night for me,
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: which was like coming home late and just we only
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: had a couple hours to sleep anyway. But I just
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: remember just sitting like awake the whole time, being like,
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: how are we gonna pull this off? Oh? That's what
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: we So that was the worst. I think that was
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: the darkest.
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: We literally sat in this office. It was like, oh man,
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: it's like seventeen hours after showing up for the shoot
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: and we were sitting here literally saying, how are we
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: going to save the movie? Because it was like this
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: is going to crash and burn. We're not even gonna
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: finish making it. It's not And then what we finished.
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: We will never show anybody because I did so bad
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: that first day. But yeah, so I agree with her
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: first day.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if it makes you feel any better.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: When I've made my first big film, a hurricane kim
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: And in Florida and flooded our sets completely, so we
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: decided to write it into the script, that's good. I
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: mean I wrote it into the like like oh and oh,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: so Fema decided to set up at the hospital that
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: we're at, so there was ten thousand people outside online
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: getting food and water while we're trying to shoot a
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: movie in the basement of this like working slash abandoned hospital.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Like we're just like, yeah, write it in. Man, we can't.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: What are we gonna do. We have no money.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Let's so lesson for everyone listening that sometimes you gotta
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: write it in.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: That's here, that's hero status.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to keep make it movie again.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: The insanity of what we do, it's.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: That's like, hey, maybe maybe we shouldn't do this now.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: That never cross our mind. It's like, we've got trucks
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: out here, there's a dolly. We're shooting on the Patasonic
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: DVX one hunder Day Mini dv the best film camera
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: ever made in the world. I mean, we gotta go,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: gotta go. I even had the adapter for the wide angle.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: We have to go. This was happening, This was happening.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: It was five days.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: Of Oh my god. Anyway, that's a whole other story.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: If you guys had a chance to go back in
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: time to talk to both of yourselves, We'll be right
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: back after a word from our sponsor. And now back
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: to the show. At the beginning of this insanity, what
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: would be the one thing you would tell them?
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: Would it be the beginning of the dead stream insanity or.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, the entire journey of this
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: ten year odyssey to get to where you are right now.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: At the beginning, you're at film school, both of you
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: and you, and all of a sudden, you Marty mcflyd
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: in and you just walk in and just go, Guys,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: I'm from the future. I can't tell you much, but
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I could tell you this one thing I need you to.
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: I would say, chill the f out and just like
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: adjust expectations. This is like get in touch with the
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: love of the craft and life. And then let's talk
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: making an actual feature length film. So like that, was
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: the thing. If you would have told me back then,
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: fifteen years later your first movie comes out or whatever,
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: I would have imploded. And like, I wish I could
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: go back and just say, don't implode, like be okay
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: with that.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: I think I would have been like, look myself in
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: the eyes and be like, you're never gonna be good
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: at commercials. You know, you're never gonna be good at commercials,
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: just gonna make horror movies.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Unless the horror commercials.
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: You know. I've actually done some of those, and that
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: was a lot of fun. I guess it's not like
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: a whole thing.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: It's just as everyone's in a blue boat, you get
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: you get to play like that. Well, you know when
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: you guys, when you guys work, do you guys work
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: together as a team, like besides dead stream? Like how
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: do you direct on set? Do you guys work as
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: a team? And if you do, what, like how do
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: you I always fascinated by teams of directors, Like what
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: do you guys do?
• 41:48
  Speaker 7: Do you?
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, do you like know what each other's thinking?
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Are you coen brothering it?
• 41:52
  Speaker 8: Like?
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: How are you doing it?
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah? So what we say like usually I mean I'm
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: usually in front of the camera so far and what
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: we've done, And because of that, we do a lot
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: of pre pro so that when we show up, like
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: a lot of storyboarding with our iPhones and like making
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: sure that the decisions as much as possible get made
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: before we show up. That way, there is less likely
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: of the friction of having a completely different idea for
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: something which will still happen, because no matter how much
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: you prepare, things are different.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think we're on like the Cohen brother lovel yet.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Actually I haven't seen them direct, so I don't know
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: what it's like. But if we realize on set that
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: we've been imagining something completely different, then we just kind
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: of argue it out and are luckily our crews have
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: kind of gotten used to it. But we'll just sit
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: there and be like, are you sure you want it
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: to be over the shoulder, like not a two shot,
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: and we'll just argue the pros and cons and tell
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: somebody's house.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Aloud in front of the children.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: You can't do that.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: On VHS ninety nine, we made a goal to not
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: do that. Like to we'll be like, hey, sidebar and
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: then we would go think it last very long, but
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: like we We started that way with the sidebar, but
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: then it was like it was so crazy with the
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: schedules and yeah, there wasn't time, so we just had
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: to say, like after a take, I'd just be like
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: yelling over the camera like hey, wherever she was hiding,
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: and we would just argue it out like that. So
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: we're working on that.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: That's you don't you don't argue for the children. That
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: the children being the crew, you can't do, you know, like,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: but apparently they figured out that the.
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: Special crew it's the same crew as dead Stream, So
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: by that point they felt like our actual children and
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: they were great.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: Bamba dadi fighting again, Let's just take a break. Now.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: What thing you did with dead Stream is a horror comedy.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Horr comedies are not easy. They're arguably one of the
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: most difficult things to do in that genre because you
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: got to balance how much comedy versus how much horror.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, Sam is the Sam is the master of that.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: I mean evil Dead or Army of Darkness is beautifully balanced.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: And I think you guys did a really great job here.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: But how do you and the creative process think, should
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: we throw a gag in here or scaring here? Like,
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: how how do you balance that out?
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: I always say a lot of Like when I think
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: about the process, it's a lot of trial and error.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: So yeah, lots of lots of rewrites in the script,
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: and then I think on set there's moments of feeling like,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: you know what, I think, even if we have to
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: cut this joke that we love, I think it's the
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: most important that this scene is scary, So we'll make
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: those kind of decisions, and then I think it still
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: really finds itself in post test. Audiences are really helpful,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: and there is sound design like also transformed our movie
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: because we were able to really lean into okay, this
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: is this is a scary like moment, do we need
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: to cut some dialogue really physize to scare with sound?
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: But yeah, it was just kind of a it's kind
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: of a crapshoot.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you were to read the draft of if you.
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: Were to read what we thought we were making when
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: we set out to make dead Stream, so a lot
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: more jokey. I mean, our movie is very comedy, but
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: on the page there were more little gags and jokes
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: and longer monologues that we thought were funny that weren't
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: actually funny, and like by the time, the version you've
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: seen now is way more scary than what was on
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: the page, and that's because of the editing. Like we
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: actually shot it pretty true to what that was on
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: the page, but then we refined it in post and
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: it was like test screenings and just feeling it out
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: with different people where we finally were able to realize, yeah,
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: this is like too many jokes in this moment.
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: This needs to be scary.
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: So I would say the secret sauce so far was
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: has been post production.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we also kind of benefited from being two brains,
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: where I think because Joseph was the performer, he could
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: really folks on the moment and the comedy in the moment,
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: and I was very focused on things the tension and
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: the scares that I wanted. I was thinking about the
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: movie a little bit more as a whole, and so that, Yeah,
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: unlike the super brain of Sam Raimie, we have two.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: I think that he's not human. Obviously, he actually opened
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: up the book and that's how he and that's just
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: the way it is now. I always love asking this question,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: especially you guys. Now that I know the backstory of
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: dead Stream, you submit to all these film festivals and
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: we all do it. You know, we're all going to
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: submit to the lottery ticket of Sundance Slam Dance south
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: By Toronto the top five or ten, and then you
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: get a call from south By Southwest? What was that
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: like for you guys? Considering that wasn't the delusion at
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: the beginning of this process, you were just like, oh,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: it's just I'm assuming you just like, let's just see what.
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: Happens kind of vibe right, let me actually tell you
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: about the delusion. So like we weren't we go We
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: were so like we we were so non delusional about
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: the kind.
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: Of hated film like at least for me, like I
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: had a thing against film festivals. It's like the rejections
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: and the lottery of it is so painful. We also
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: live right by Sundance and go every year and it's
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: just kind of this looming like we don't even try.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: That was like my reaction to it, Like I don't
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: I don't have any I'm not even gonna have hopes
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: that they can crush anymore.
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, that was a little rude towards Sunday. We
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: love Sundance. It was just this feeling of like we
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: don't belong, you know what I mean, like like we're
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: not We're not going to give them that power. We're
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: not gonna submit to the A list festivals. So we
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: didn't like Honestly, the biggest festivals that we submitted to
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: were the fall festivals that was like Beyond Fest, and
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: there was fright Fest and Fantasia, and those were like
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: the long shots to us. The thing that changed the
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: course of the movie was we got rejected by the
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: big ones except Beyond Fest. Evrem Ersoy, who helps run
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: the festival, he called us and he said, I would
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: love to play you at Beyond Fest, but I think
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: you're selling yourself short. I have a sales agent friend
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: who could talk to you, take over the festival thing
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: that you're doing, and you could try for first quarter
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: festival like south By Southwest and Sun Danced. And we
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: were like no brain or no thanks, like we're not
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: we're not that, Like we have.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: A nice, sweet guy. What is sweet?
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: It was like whoa, what's this angle? That's how I
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: was feeling, like what's this guy's angle? Because he's just
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: being too good to be true, Like he's being so
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: nice and so sweet so.
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: We're like, what, this guy just loves cinema or something.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: He's like a human.
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, there's none of that in film business.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: But that.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: But the thing like after thinking about after we actually
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: told him no, we want to do world premiere at
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: your festival, we thought, okay, we made dead Stream as
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: a huge swing, everything about it. We put everything on
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: the line for the movie. Why would we stop doing
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: that right now when this guy's telling us there is a.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: Shot, a small shot, but a shot.
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: So we came back and said, all right, let's do it.
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: Let's talk to the sales agent. We withdrew from the
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: path that we had, like some of the small ones
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: we've been accepted to, and we just he the sales
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: agent started submitting for us, which is how most festivals
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: are programmed and sound.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: It sounds dumb, but it was so nerve wracking because
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: we'd had some offers for distribution, and I felt like,
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: you know, if we pull out of the fall festivals,
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: which is very genre friendly, there's a chance that nobody
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: we get rejected from the bigger festivals and nobody just
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: ever sees our movie.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: And these offers kind of go away, and so yeah,
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: I was putting. So this is all leading up to
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: your question of the call from by.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: The way, What were the offers? Were they any good
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: or were they pretty predatory or they were like solid
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: or no.
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: I have strong feelings. I don't like I usually say
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: the strongest version of this, which is very predatorial in
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: my mind. Now here's the thing. I wouldn't have known
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: that if I hadn't listened to Indie Film Hustle, because
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: I had no frame of reference. But you talk about
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: the predatorial distribution industry, and so that was on my
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: brain when I saw we got this very big distribution
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: company that started talking to us after the Beyond Fest offer,
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: and we were so excited. We're like, if we have
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: their name on our movie, oh oh.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Gosh, without you saying it, I know who it is,
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: and we won't say it publicly, but when we stop recording,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you and I'll tell you who
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: it is. I know who it is.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: Go ahead, you probably do.
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: And it was so it was solow and it was
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: just deflating, and I felt I feelt offended, but also
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: like might to be offended at this, like it's just
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: a stupid movie. And so basically from that to like
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: with the sales agent using the south By Southwest like
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: behind the scenes, Hey, let's have exclusive negotiations to like Shutter,
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: it's a completely different Oh, like it's it's not even close.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: So so you get so you get into south By
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: and we'll get to the phone call in a second.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: But you your sales agent's you know, working behind the
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: scenes to negotiate a good deal for you because now
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: you're in south By and now it's a conversation and
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: because you're going to premiere it south By, Hey, let's
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: talk to Shutter. Now. You want to make a deal
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: before this goes out, because once this goes once this
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: premiere's is going to be a feeding frenzy. Let's let's
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: make a deal beforehand. Is that kind of that? That
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: was kind of the vibe.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. For a little bit more detail, it was, uh,
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: going out to some big some big people first, so
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: like Shutter, Netflix, Blumhouse and seeing what they thought and
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: seeing is there any is there any chance of kind
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: of creating not like a bidding war, but like a
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: friendly version of that. And then when it didn't seem
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: like that was gonna happen. It was the conversation of
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: Shutters offering a really good price now and they benefit
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: from like announcing at an A list festival, So do
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: we go with that or do we take the risk
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: of it premiering and then trying to negotiate and so yeah, yeah,
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: so we ended up and we also we really loved Shutter,
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: and that was one of our goals at the beginning
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: was to be on Shutter. We just feel like that's
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: where our audience was. So after talking with them and stuff,
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: we felt like signing with them before south By was
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: the right decision and we ended up being really happy
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: with it. So last time I'll say is the name
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: of our sales agent, Bluefinch. They're based out of London.
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: I've never heard anybody have a bad experience with them.
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: I've heard of them, yeah, and they like. They've also
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: handled the international sales portion, which has ended up being
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: significant for us, which was great and unforeseen. And having
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: somebody that's really honest and transparent and showing you all
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: of the deals is just made such a huge difference.
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: And I know it's so rare, it's so rare.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: What's completely you're a unicorns are unicorns.
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: We were so aware of that this whole time, Like
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: we kept thinking, when's the part where Bluefinch is gonna
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: screw us or light us? And they never did. It's
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: it has not happened. They've been such a great partner,
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: and with the Shutter thing, I want to say, like
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: the numbers made sense. There's a reason why we said
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: all right, let's just go to Shutter. This is like
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: we're happy with this. But a big part of that
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: was they wanted to take care of the movie. So
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: it was like it was a good deal and there
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: was that promise of we will release you in October.
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: That week that you come out will be all about
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: dead stream, and like they really believed in the movie,
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: got the movie where the other distribution company that we're
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: talking about was talking about it like just a number.
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: It was like something they're gonna throw at the wall,
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: see if it sticks and then that's it.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: I've heard that.
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: So we're very So it's gonna be so rare too,
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: just in the streaming days of having a streamer that
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: actually is passionate about your film and is planning a
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: release and a marketing strategy, and so that that was
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: also just really shutter, was really great in that way.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: No, so you get the phone call, what happens?
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: So we actually got we actually got an email because
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: the phone of our sales agent got the phone call
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: since they submitted. So I saw in the middle of
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: the night because I woke up for some reason saw
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: the email, and I was so excited. I was shaking
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, I woke Joseph, Joseph up in the
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: freakiest way possible, just like shaking him. And I'm not
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: saying shaking him. He's so confused. I finally get it out, like,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: what what happened? I'm not kidding. He went back to sleep. No,
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: this is what happened.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: It's a dream, but it's a dream. It's a dream.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: Philibert is by myself, just eating like canned soup on
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: the floor, being like, wa so check it out.
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: We got we got rejected, our entire new strategy rejected
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: from everybody except for south By. So south By was
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: like the last thing we're waiting for, so we're not
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: gonna get it. In my mind, it's like we blew it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: We blew it with this whole thing so she wakes
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: me up by literally shaking me going we got in
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: and sad like that, and I was like, oh shit,
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: her dad died. Like that's how I came out of
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: my sleep, is like her dad died or something.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for you.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: But I also, as soon as I realized that it
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: wasn't bad, in my mind, I was like, your your
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: sleep is so precious. So I was like, okay, I'm
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: gonna I'm just gonna try to go back to sleep,
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: and I did. When I woke up the next day,
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: I was like, what was I thinking?
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: Going back to sleep?
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: Like I I legit did not let myself feel anything.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: Like if you have a six month year old baby,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: it makes sense.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: Why no no no you can no no no, no
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: no no, six month six month old. I don't care
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: if you would get an OSCAR nomination like that's nice.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: I'll deal with that in the warning.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: But so so, but you went back to sleep knowing
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: that you got out the south by or did you
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: still think it was did that that passed?
• 56:29
  Speaker 8: No?
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: I I knew as soon as it was good news,
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna go back to sleep, and like,
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: wait to feel this but I woke up being like.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: South By, It's like Christmas Day, It's like Christmas Day.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: It was amazing, awesome, that's amazing, guys.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Like, I'm so happy to you guys, have I hope
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: this story. I mean, we've got through the rollercoaster of
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: emotions here from the very bit of despair at the
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: beginning to to like now, look, we haven't been screwed.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: We're actually making money. We made a movie with you know,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: you're on the VHS ninety nine coming out. You guys
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: are off and running now. And I'm so happy for you, guys.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: And you know it was overnight obviously, just this was
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: overnight success.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: Obviously, it was very quick.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: You didn't have to struggle at all through this process. No,
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: when is when is it? It's already out and shutter right,
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: everyone could see that shream on shutter And when is
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: VHS ninety nine come out?
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: That came out in October as well, So they're oh.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: So both and what's next? What's next for you guys?
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: It's totally more horror movies?
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think nothing lined up, Like I'm assuming you
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: got a couple of things lined up.
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: We've got a couple of things brewing but not ready
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: to announce.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: All right, all right, but you're working on stuff, that's
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: all I'm.
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: Work And I can say horror comedy for sure, horror comedy.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: You're sticking in the genre that you like. Stay right there,
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: all right, I'm gonna ask you a few questions to
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: ask I'm my guests. If you guys have listened to me,
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: you know what these questions are. What advice would you
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today.
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: Let me tap into my memories of all the times
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: I've imagined answering this question I heard. I feel like
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go back to that regret of like
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: making not making more stuff, and just being willing to
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: make bad things to write bad things because that's how
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: good things are made.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say the landscape is always changing, Like
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: things are changing so much that all the stuff I
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: learned in film school. And I think you've said this
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: before in your podcast, which is like all your heroes
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: in the nineties or whatever, that stuff's not relevant anymore.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: So it's always carving out your own path. And I
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: think there just is this trial and error of finding
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: your niche, and it's gonna take some time.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: And also, don't make twenty minute short films. They're hard
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: to program and like, oh, really short.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Films, make them sure. I mean my first film was
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: twenty minutes and it got into one hundred and sixty
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: film festivals, but it was two thousand and five less competition.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: Got its two hundred and fifty festivals.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: If it would have been ten minutes.
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: We had a seventeen minute sci fi three D.
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: It was twenty two minutes.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: It was way too two minutes three D, like three D,
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: three D actual three.
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: This was my This was my film school delusion. Like
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: I was like, I'm gonna make that.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: Again, the three D when three D was like super
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: hot and then you get yeah it was like this
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: whole thing still sweet built like.
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we didn't. So that was when everything everything
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: was being converted three D and we were like, f this,
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: let's make real three D. So that's what we did,
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: and I regret it, honestly. It was like, why make
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: a twenty two minute epic thing. I could have made
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: like six things and grown as an artist. Wouldn't that
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: have been nice?
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: That doesn't that does a fall to the delusion, sir?
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn,
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: whether in the film business.
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: Or in life, everything's gonna be okay when everything is
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: going bad, Like literally every production, big state, small stakes,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: they'll end up being okay.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: After the bad we'll be right back after a word
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: It's hard for me to still remember that, but like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: it's true.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: Hmm yeah, life. Yeah, the risk when to take risks
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: was my I think my biggest learning thing. So I think, yeah,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: you the business requires taking risks and committing, and so
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: by default you're gonna miss out on other things.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: All right, and three of your favorite films, which I'm
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: assuming will be more.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: Of all time.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: Okay for me, here's the three. We've got The Shining
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: Creep Show, Silver Bullet, The Gate, Monster Squad, three Amigos.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: That's that's six good.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: You can't make me shoes.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: I tried.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: You were ready, You were ready for that, you were
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: ready for the question. I appreciate that Monster Squad. I
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: mean Wolf Finn has arts.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: She is you, my dear? Oh yeah, I'm not as prepared.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: I would say. I love the Original Alien. I think
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: it's a perfect monster movie. There's nineteen seventy nine Russian
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: movie called Solaris, which is sci fi horror, and I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: think it's just beautiful and haunting. I also love from
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: the seventies Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland in it. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: it's a great husband and wife relationship but also just terrifying,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: and the imagery is super iconic. So I don't know
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: if those are my favorite, but those are three.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: And where can people find out more about you guys
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: and what you guys are doing.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Joseph Winter VHS.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: My handle is Vanessa MS and Marie Winter.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: All Right, guys, it's been such a pleasure talking to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: you guys, and I really hope that this conversation inspires
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: and terrifies people all at the same time. I appreciate
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: you continued success and congratulations on everything, guys.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, very honored to be here. Thanks.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Vanessa and Joseph for coming on
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: the show and dropping their knowledge bombs on the Tribe today.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you so so much, guys.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: about in this episode, head over to the show notes
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: Forward Slash three seventy eight. Thank you so much for listening. Guys,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: to you soon.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.