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Will Actors Work for Pizza? Casting a $0 Budget Indie Film · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
I think the hardest part of casting is having to look an
0:02
actor directly in the eye and say, OK, now will you do this
0:05
for pizza? Welcome to any film podcast.
0:09
I'm Vic. And I am Chuck, we spent the
0:11
past week composing music and as of right now our no budget
0:15
musical is due in 18 days. So if you're listening to this
0:19
episode on the day that it drops, we are likely heads down,
0:24
fueled entirely by caffeine and trying desperately to figure out
0:27
how to animate game worlds with, you know, no animation
0:30
experience. We're going to take you behind
0:31
the scenes today to share what we've done the last week for pre
0:34
production, which included obviously the compositions as
0:37
well as casting and some other odds and ends and art
0:39
department. And of course, we'll be sharing
0:41
some hacks that we're leveraging for your next zero budget indie
0:45
film project, especially one that might be due on a tight
0:48
timeline. Yes.
0:49
So Chuck, how has composing the score for a 10 minute musical in
0:53
one week gone for you? It's actually gone fairly
0:56
smoothly, and the reason for that is, is that it's not
1:00
totally finished yet. Yeah, I feel like you need to
1:02
knock on wood after saying that. Yeah, I don't want to because
1:04
it's bad for a podcast audio. So plus I don't think we have
1:07
any wood anywhere nearby. Not wood.
1:10
Oh wait, no, in behind the wall. Behind the wall, I guess the
1:13
sound end wall there. I'll knock on that.
1:15
Hopefully I'm not jinxed any longer.
1:16
But the I, I think I shared a little bit last week on how
1:21
we're going to be recording a musical in such a tight
1:25
timetable because we want the music to sound as good as
1:29
possible. Yeah.
1:30
However, with basically we got the lyrics finished a week ago.
1:37
It was a little bit longer than a week ago because the last
1:39
episode I played just a recording of me singing, playing
1:42
my guitar, what I did. So any of you out there that are
1:45
interested in doing musicals or even music videos, what I did
1:49
was I created a click track with MIDI piano music, right?
1:56
So you can use any instrument to play along with a click track.
1:58
Separate that out. And then I have my vocals
2:01
separated out into a separate track as well.
2:03
And I'm just singing the melody and the rhythm for each song.
2:07
And so we sent those out to the actors as of yesterday so that
2:11
they can learn them. We're going to be filming on
2:15
Saturday and today. Is from now we're.
2:18
Going to be filming in five days and in four days we're going to
2:21
have the actors come in and sing their parts and very therefore
2:26
replace my vocals. And hopefully that means that we
2:29
can use their own recordings. And that's going to be our
2:32
rehearsal time for the music too, unfortunately, because this
2:35
is a very quick turn around. All in one, All in one.
2:38
So if you haven't done a music video before or you haven't, you
2:44
haven't worked with with recorded music on set, you want
2:48
to make sure that you have the final like time down.
2:53
It's easy on a music track like if for a music video, right,
2:56
you're just shooting to the music video, making sure you
2:59
have the music video lined up, getting the shots, maybe even
3:04
playing it in the background so that the artist can actually
3:07
sing to it. And that's another key too, is
3:10
you want the the talent to actually be projecting because
3:14
it looks weird if they mumble it or whisper it or just say it.
3:19
Go ahead, ask us how we know that it looks weird and
3:22
blatantly looks like their lip syncing.
3:24
Just ask us. Yes, I'll ask you.
3:26
Oh, no, we've definitely done that before.
3:28
It looks weird, Yeah. I tried it.
3:29
I tried it once on one of our really early lower Gentry
3:32
projects, and it was the the master Russell Crowe's musical
3:40
that he did. We did.
3:42
We did a rendition of One Day More.
3:44
Oh yeah, we uploaded that. Isn't that lamez?
3:47
Lame is yes, yeah, yeah. And that was, that was Russell
3:49
Crowe. Is that Russell Crowe?
3:51
I think so. We're bad at at movie The
3:54
knowledge and I brought it up that time, so that's my fault.
3:57
But I think I mentioned last week that Lamez was one of the
3:59
few musicals they did record the sound live on set.
4:01
I'm pretty confident in the they actually didn't use recorded
4:05
tracks like, you know, Rent and so many other musical movies had
4:08
done. But that does help the
4:10
performance, yeah, to make sure that they're actually actively
4:13
breathing and singing. And so that's our plan with this
4:16
musical, is to have the temp track, which at this juncture
4:20
will likely be a minimal amount of music and their vocals.
4:25
Yeah. And then the rhythm to help us
4:27
with with the edit. And then that way you can take
4:30
the temp track and edit while I work with with Jesse and finish
4:37
composing the music. Yes, and Jesse is the composer
4:42
that was on a few episodes ago as well as the lead in this
4:48
musical, which is incredibly generous of him to not only
4:51
offer his his talents all day with us on set, but also to help
4:56
out so much with all of the music.
4:58
So. Yeah.
4:59
And that's that's our plan moving forward.
5:01
So that's how we're going to be able to kind of like separate
5:04
the workflows essentially because you're a very capable
5:09
editor as well as you have some some basic, like some solid
5:14
understanding of After effects, maybe not animation, but after
5:17
effects. And so you'll be able to do a
5:20
lot of that. And I can obviously help with
5:21
that too. But then it'll allow us to kind
5:23
of divide and conquer this post production process and hopefully
5:27
with you editing and then myself and Jesse and some other friends
5:30
out there, Mike and John and my brother.
5:33
Yeah, Bradley. Helped out as well, Bradley.
5:35
'S been hopping in a lot and it's going to hop in and
5:37
volunteer all day on set also so.
5:40
Yeah, it'll hopefully it'll all work out smoothly.
5:42
So that post production, it'll just be like we'll just separate
5:46
meet up every once in a while. We can sync the final picture to
5:50
the final music and it'll go Florida State.
5:54
Absolutely. We're going to run into issues
5:57
obviously and we'll report that as it happens.
6:00
So that's the plan as. Of right now for now, basically
6:05
what you're saying is for anybody looking to do any
6:07
project sort of like this or edit things to music, it's OK if
6:12
the music really isn't there if the the instruments aren't in it
6:16
yet. Like what you really need is
6:18
just a click track giving you a solid tempo.
6:21
Yes, if there are vocals, you should probably have those in
6:23
there and then like your general melody and and the way you want
6:27
it to go, correct? But other than that you could do
6:30
a lot of it in post. Well, here's here's some things
6:32
because we want to talk about what we foresee as problems
6:36
coming ahead. And one of the problems I see
6:39
with us using temp music on set is when we go back into the
6:43
studio and perform with a click track, there might be a little
6:47
bit more of a swing to things. And so if you can, ideally you
6:54
want to have the music locked in before you go on set, have the
6:57
performers familiar with it, have them familiar with the
7:01
execution that they used and have that synergistic experience
7:08
of them working with other musicians and working on the
7:11
track. We don't have that luxury.
7:13
So I'm hoping that it's not going to show too much in the
7:18
final music. However, I don't see how it's, I
7:23
don't know that that will be as good as having had the time to
7:28
do it. Like the more time you have,
7:30
it's obviously going to be better, yeah.
7:31
Period. I think that's the number one
7:33
lesson we've already learned. We're working in a in a limited
7:36
time frame. And so that's one of those
7:40
balances in my mind is OK, we have to get this done as good as
7:44
possible. How do we leave ourselves open
7:47
to fixing it? And then with us being basically
7:50
in charge of all the aspects of of the film edit themselves and
7:56
actress performances and me being able to get input on the
7:59
shot list, how do we make sure that in all of these areas we're
8:04
hitting things at a level that's decent to good?
8:10
And we lean a lot into inserts, cutaways and reaction shots.
8:14
Yeah. Make sure that we have coverage
8:16
so that we can still so that it's visually interesting and
8:19
the audio's good and it's is it going to be as good as if we had
8:23
two months? Clearly not.
8:25
Probably not. So keeping in mind that
8:27
technically we did have two months.
8:29
Yeah. Well, we were travelling, Yeah,
8:31
we were travelling to film festivals.
8:32
Like, what are you going to do? You know, this is, This is why.
8:36
This is why it's good to schedule things out when you
8:38
know you have a deadline. You know, you have a deadline
8:41
and it's four months out. Yeah, you could start
8:43
scheduling. But nobody's going to nobody's
8:46
going to push you to do something if it's your project.
8:49
I think that was Dylan said that on our, our, our group podcast
8:53
recently from the from the Idaho Film Festival.
8:56
So not Idaho Film Festival, Idaho Film Fair, but yeah, so
9:00
nobody's going to push you. You're going to have to push
9:01
yourself. And hey, we're in this spot
9:03
where it's a little bit tighter and we have the option to quit.
9:07
We definitely talked about like, hey, maybe we just don't do
9:10
this. It's an option like the we're,
9:12
we're not being, you know, held hostage by this competition.
9:16
No, there's no reason to. But at the same time, based on
9:19
the topic that we came up with, and then once you wrote all the
9:21
lyrics, it was like, do we go ahead with this one or do we do
9:25
something easier? Because it would have been very
9:27
easy. We've both done so many shoots
9:29
where it's two people having a conversation at a table.
9:33
Yeah. And you can always lean into
9:34
that. And that's a really good place
9:35
to start with your films. If you can find two people that
9:38
can act fairly decently and you can write some OK dialogue, or
9:41
you want to practice writing dialogue for actors, just do it.
9:45
And we talked about that being an option, but we thought, OK,
9:48
well this is politically relevant.
9:51
We never know how long political relevance is going to last in
9:54
this current political climate because it might take a 180 turn
9:58
in like 3 days. You never know.
9:59
So we. Thought big news?
10:00
Might not be anymore. Yeah, we're like, now's the time
10:03
to do it, let's do it. And so we're going to we're.
10:07
Going to go for it. The fact that we have been
10:09
podcasting for over a year now, talking about all the ways that
10:12
you can make things happen and you can make do and you can,
10:17
yes, obviously more time and more money is always great.
10:19
But if we're going to be talking about, hey, this is, this is how
10:25
we fixed XYZ problem, well, let's create some new really big
10:30
problems. Yeah.
10:31
And we actually ran into a first one recently, but maybe before
10:36
we do that, we'll share a cheap trick because we're talking
10:38
about like cheap ways to if we're.
10:41
Talking about cheap things. So this is from this week, this
10:47
week's featured filmmaker, and this is Kevin Mounts.
10:51
And he says that a great way to shape light when you have
10:54
nothing else and it won't burn is to use tinfoil.
11:00
Keep in mind this should not be your first choice.
11:02
No, I mean, if you can afford, if you can afford a cover, yeah,
11:05
that's nice. But sometimes you get into areas
11:08
it might it might be helpful. Like on some natural lights.
11:11
Yeah, something like that to to to block it like let's say.
11:14
A little something. Yeah, you're, you're shooting on
11:16
an outside porch and you want to have that light there and.
11:18
I've been on film sets before where I've had to take old pairs
11:22
of pants and cut them up to block out skylights because I
11:26
did not have a flag to do that with.
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So I got to cut up old jeans and do that instead.
11:32
And that worked mostly. But in this case, the number one
11:37
thing about the tinfoil is that while it will not burn, it might
11:41
smoke a little bit. But hey, free atmosphere but
11:45
also maybe try to ventilate the space because I don't know if
11:48
that's good to inhale. For yeah, probably doing some.
11:50
Time, but either way. Most people I would imagine are
11:53
using LE DS at this juncture anyway, so probably, hopefully
11:56
you don't have to worry about that.
11:57
But yeah, tinfoil, just carry some with you with your gaffe
12:00
tape. So Victoria, do you want to talk
12:02
a little bit about how we got this, this short cast so
12:07
quickly? Because while you were, while I
12:11
was working on the music, yes, for a week, you were figuring
12:15
out exactly what to do with the roles, Yes.
12:19
And how did you handle that? Desperation.
12:22
No, I'm kidding. Nice.
12:23
No. Just be desperate.
12:25
I don't know if I think that's just like a zeitgeist for most
12:28
film makers. Crazy film makers we always so.
12:30
We're just going to assume that we're all very desperate to try
12:33
to get a project across the. There we go.
12:34
Like you think of the classic like poet or painter is the
12:37
starving artist when you think of the film maker as the the
12:40
desperate artist. Yeah, that's good.
12:44
That sounds great. So how'd you get the cast?
12:47
That was one that Jesse was intrigued enough about this to
12:54
take on the lead role, which is a lot.
12:56
It is a lot of singing, correct, and a lot of wildly different
13:00
music that goes through a lot of different.
13:02
There's like some bluesy type stuff.
13:04
There's some upbeat kind of folksy type stuff.
13:06
There's a couple like hip hop type numbers.
13:08
There's a lot in this 10 minute musical.
13:11
Because if you're going to swing for the fence, come on, go
13:14
bigger. Go home anyway.
13:15
So it's it's going to be 4 characters that are 1 main
13:19
character. That's Jesse.
13:21
There's one main character and one main protagonist, 1 main
13:24
antagonist, and then three additional party members.
13:28
Yes, and this is like AD and D musical that's happening in this
13:32
protagonist fantasy universe. Yes, and we basically reached
13:36
out to Jesse to play the main character.
13:38
And thankfully, he said yes. Yes.
13:40
And he, he recently went from, well, he still plays music live
13:43
all the time, but he was cast locally in as, as an extra, an
13:49
ensemble member in a musical. And so he did get a little bit
13:53
of experience there. He did, and he seemed OK with it
13:56
and he seemed intrigued by it, so this is a good opportunity
13:58
for him to actually get something out of it.
14:01
Too. And once we got that piece in
14:03
place where we knew a vast majority of the vocals are going
14:07
to fall on his shoulders, yes, then you started to reach out to
14:11
people. I did, and I have directed a
14:14
couple musicals in town and have the luxury of being able to
14:19
leverage those people. Yeah, since I've worked with
14:23
them before and thankfully they were, they were relatively at
14:26
least. Especially the second one was a
14:27
really good cast experience. And especially because it was
14:30
such a small cast, you all bond really closely when you're
14:32
working so closely on a show for, you know, 3-4 months that,
14:38
you know, you become friends as well.
14:40
So when I pitched this to a lot of them, that was thankfully
14:44
well received. So that went well.
14:47
Casting anybody of colour like a, a, a POC in Idaho is always
14:54
kind of a challenge, especially when they also need to be
14:57
comfortable singing in front of people.
14:59
So we do have one cast member that fits that type and that one
15:05
was definitely more of a struggle and we had to put out
15:09
kind of a rush casting call locally here.
15:12
Yeah, which you actually got that you got some responses
15:15
within a couple days. Yes, thankfully.
15:17
And how did you, how did you make a post that got people's
15:22
attention? Because I thought this was
15:23
really interesting for me. I would try to utilize all of my
15:28
own personal connections. Oh, I definitely did.
15:31
But apparently this weekend is a big travel weekend for people.
15:34
So there were not a lot of people in town this coming
15:37
weekend. Yeah, yeah.
15:38
So obviously we're in a small town, smaller town, smaller
15:42
city, I guess in the Boise area, and finding people that want to
15:47
work for little to to nothing and also finding a variety of
15:53
different actors. Especially when this competition
15:55
is going on and a lot of other people are filming these same
15:58
weekends, our options get slim. And I am going to say I think
16:02
that is the hardest part about casting a project like this is
16:06
not necessarily finding the talent because thankfully we are
16:09
lucky to have a ridiculously talented group in Ida like,
16:14
well, the Boise metropolitan area.
16:16
We have a lot of talent here, and that's amazing.
16:19
I think the hardest part of casting is having to look an
16:21
actor directly in the eye and say, OK, now will you do this
16:24
for pizza? Yeah, for sure.
16:27
Because the answer the answer should be no.
16:31
But for some reason, everybody's nice and is willing to say yes
16:35
sometimes. And I do want to point out to
16:38
everybody, that's for myself, it's been over 10 years of doing
16:41
creative projects here in the in the Boise community and working
16:45
with people and not necessarily being all that concerned with a
16:49
paycheck. And you do, the more work that
16:52
you do, art for the sake of art, you're going to be able to find
16:57
those people. Yeah, I would imagine,
16:59
regardless of the size of the city.
17:01
It's true. And you find you find the people
17:02
that kind of get you because that's another thing that was
17:04
really challenging about this particular project is that, and
17:10
I understand a lot of projects will feel this way, but one
17:12
thing that was really difficult about this particular script is
17:14
making a political satire in a gaming world, which means two
17:17
things. One, we have to convey the game
17:20
world in a way that does service to the gamers.
17:24
Yes, because I know enough about DND to get myself in trouble,
17:29
and I know that other DND players would definitely know if
17:32
something was horribly, horribly wrong.
17:34
And yeah, we had to kind of make some shortcuts to make some
17:36
words rhyme, and that's fine. We made it work.
17:38
But the other thing is that as a political satire, the goal is
17:42
for it to be funny. Yeah.
17:44
And comedy is so subjective. True.
17:49
So I think that that's also very difficult to throw a comedy
17:54
musical script with very specific world mechanics out to
17:59
a person and be like, I hope this makes you laugh too.
18:02
Yeah, yeah. Which we, you know, some people
18:05
that we sent the script to just didn't get back to us.
18:07
No. So we have to decide, did they
18:09
ghost just because of who we are or because of what the script?
18:12
Yeah, that's true. Well, the the people that got
18:15
back to me got back to me initially and then didn't get
18:17
back to me later on. So.
18:18
But you never know what's going on.
18:20
You know, people could get busy. Can you can you go back to the
18:22
the house that you made on social?
18:23
Media, yeah. So because we are a smaller
18:26
rather tight knit community, the majority of the actors and film
18:30
makers and and just general film talent exist in Facebook groups
18:33
here in a larger market. You're probably going to go to
18:36
Backstage or Actors Access or nobody goes to casting calls
18:39
from America anymore, I'm pretty sure.
18:41
But anyway, you're going to go to those particular places and
18:44
find people when it's not a paid gig.
18:47
I assume it's more difficult, but you have those routes and
18:51
those options. It's not as common to do that
18:53
here. It's more common to go to
18:55
Facebook. And unfortunately, Facebook is
18:58
awful. It's just awful.
19:00
It is. This is going to get cut into a
19:01
reel that gets posted onto Facebook, and then Facebook is
19:04
going to hate me even more. And you know what?
19:05
That's fine. I hate you too Meta.
19:08
Anyway, when you're posting into a Facebook group, you need an
19:12
image of some sort to kind of get people's attention.
19:14
Because otherwise, if it's just a big block of text, it's going
19:17
to get lost because it's not visually appealing.
19:19
And if too many people skim over and don't pay attention to it,
19:21
and you aren't very active in that group especially, it's just
19:25
going to get ignored and buried and nobody's going to see it.
19:27
And you're casting notice isn't going to do you a lot of good.
19:29
So we also managed to basically create the poster art.
19:34
By we she means you did. It was a stock photo and font
19:39
that I had because I actually did the projections for a DND
19:44
musical, funny enough. Perfect.
19:46
No, it's not a musical. It's a play.
19:47
Yeah, she goes monsters. It's not a musical.
19:49
That's right, yeah. Yes.
19:51
And so we, I already had a lot of like dragony looking font,
19:55
medieval style fonts and some assets there.
19:57
So that was kind of nice to just be able to throw that together.
20:00
And based on our timeline, I don't know if we're going to
20:02
have time to change it. So that might just be the
20:03
poster. Well, two birds, one stone.
20:06
And like you said, I didn't realize that that a lot of times
20:09
casting notice will get buried on social media if they don't
20:11
have the right images. And it's nice that you have some
20:14
graphic design background to be able to make something that
20:16
looks professional. And that's one of those things,
20:19
to me personally, I do feel like that has something that has been
20:24
ignored that I ignore on my own. Ortfolio is branding.
20:30
It's kind of kind of one of those things like the project
20:34
should speak for itself, The script should just speak for
20:37
itself. However, you can't even get most
20:40
people to read A10 page script unless they have some sort of.
20:44
They need to have a tie to it. Some sort of push, like I'm
20:47
going to actually be interested in this.
20:49
This might be worth my time, right?
20:51
Because we get a lot of scripts. We do.
20:53
And I'm sorry if I haven't read your script yet.
20:55
I really want to read everybody's scripts, but I
20:57
don't. Have two hours after 18 days
20:59
from now. Yeah, you know it.
21:02
And and having written scripts or been been in the on the
21:05
writing table and working with my brother as he writes scripts,
21:08
it's one of those things when we send it out, I don't think I was
21:11
appreciative enough of the people who read the scripts.
21:15
So if you've ever read one of the scripts that I've been
21:18
listed on as like us collaborating on the story,
21:22
thank you so much for reading it because we get inundated with
21:25
them. And so if you have a actor that
21:29
you do, which we did want to have them review the script
21:32
first because not everybody wants to be associated with
21:35
something that might have a little bit of a political bent
21:37
right now. Yeah, because we're all freaking
21:39
sick of it. And that's valid.
21:41
And that's valid. There is nothing wrong with
21:43
being like, I really don't want to do something political.
21:46
But on the other hand, some people are very excited about
21:49
the opportunity of being on camera.
21:51
Yeah. And they will say yes.
21:55
And then when you get them the script, they might back out.
21:58
So it's always really important, especially if you're working on
22:01
a volunteer basis, to be completely, 100% transparent so
22:06
that people you're getting the people that are excited about it
22:09
because that will show up. Hopefully we'll find out on
22:11
ours, but that does show up on the screen usually.
22:14
Usually you can kind of tell if the enthusiasm is or isn't
22:17
there, but you also run the risk of of no shows, right?
22:23
If you get somebody that reads a script or or agrees to do
22:28
something but doesn't read the script, and then a day or two
22:31
before they read it and they're like, Oh no, I don't want to do
22:35
this. And we get a lot of the people
22:38
that apply for filmmaker of the Week that have stories of no
22:41
shows. Yeah.
22:42
And it does. It does happen.
22:44
We've had experiences. I know I've had experiences on
22:47
set. I'm sure you've had experiences
22:48
on set where someone doesn't show up.
22:50
And it's one of those things that you have to learn how to
22:53
communicate ahead of time as much as possible to prevent that
22:56
from happening. I'm not concerned about anyone
22:59
not showing up when we film on Saturday.
23:03
However, stuff does happen. People can get, people can get
23:07
sick and it's one of those things we'll adjust.
23:10
Yeah, we'll make it worse. It's it's it's you can't plan
23:14
for every single contingency. You want to, but there's just no
23:17
way. Some things you have to just
23:18
react to. Do you want to talk a little bit
23:21
about the the movie we watched that we want to use for some
23:25
inspiration on this? Yeah.
23:26
Actually, because we've had the goal to to sit down and actually
23:29
watch a film that is applicable to what we're sort of trying to
23:32
do. So this time we chose once from
23:35
2007. Yes.
23:37
Written and directed by John. Yep, the budget was $150,000.
23:42
The box office return was 23.3 million.
23:46
Oh, so not that successful. Pretty good, pretty good return,
23:49
pretty good return monetarily there.
23:52
So this this is kind of a Irish mumblecore movie is how I would
23:57
describe it. Yeah.
23:58
And it's 2007. So it's it's kind of right in
24:01
that that whole. That is mumblecore era.
24:03
For sure. The difference between this one
24:06
is that they did shoot it kind of like a music video, so there
24:12
are several scenes where they clearly miked these musicians to
24:17
be able to play. There's there's a scene with the
24:20
2 quasi love interests at a music shop, 1's playing piano,
24:25
one's playing guitar, they're singing, they just go through
24:27
the whole song. They play the whole song.
24:30
There's a really cool scene with the main actress who's named
24:33
girl. That's literally how they're
24:35
credited. There's Guy and Girl, so they
24:36
don't actually have names. But they did that so well.
24:39
No, at no point in the movie that I even become aware of the
24:42
fact I didn't know their names. I thought that was well done.
24:45
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
24:47
So there's a really cool shot of the the you know, the the main,
24:51
the lead guy wants the girl to play, wants girl to play, help
24:57
him with his compositions. There's a really cool scene
25:00
where she puts headphones on and ACD player and then walks out of
25:03
this, this convenient store. Yeah, bodega.
25:06
And then it just transitions from like in ear music to full
25:10
music and she's singing along with it.
25:12
Really cool. And then like a studio recording
25:15
session and a few other ones. And I thought that was an
25:18
interesting way to make a feature film because I've shot
25:21
live music video before, and to me that would be a very easy way
25:28
to fill like 5 to 8 minutes. So maybe this started as a short
25:34
film and they're like, wait a minute, what if we actually
25:36
played the songs and now it's a feature?
25:38
Not that I shouldn't say that it isn't that that it's easy, quote
25:41
UN quote, but they actually cast real musicians for this film.
25:44
And so I would imagine that they would rehearse it.
25:46
It would take a lot of pre production to do that.
25:48
But then once they have the pieces down, you can get they
25:52
shot it looked like multicam and so you get a couple cameras set
25:55
up. I do want to point out too that
25:56
the camera that they used was a Sony HVR Z1 E.
26:02
It was a mini DV. They shot it in 1080P it looks.
26:06
It looks like it. It looks like a prosumer movie,
26:10
but that was very running gun and one of the tricks they used
26:13
was to use Max Zoom and they filmed it in Dublin without any
26:16
film permits. So they just lapped up the
26:18
talent, used Max Zoom and had them perform and people around
26:22
them didn't know that they were in a movie.
26:24
Which is kind of cool. Yeah, Risky.
26:27
Very risky, but really cool. And I will say the the way that
26:34
they built the story, like music was the thing kind of tying them
26:38
all together. And obviously it definitely
26:40
helped that they had professional musicians who
26:42
sounded really good. They just sound good.
26:45
Yeah. It was a really beautiful movie
26:47
about kind of, you know, acceptance and being seen for
26:50
your art and exploring, I guess exploring kind of are you
26:55
valuable enough with or without your art or are they tied or are
26:59
they not? And, you know, there was a lot
27:01
of like, parental approval stuff and, you know, like exes and
27:05
what's worth pursuing your career, love life.
27:07
And I don't know. It was, it was kind of mid
27:10
aughts like artistic guy struggling with a girl that he
27:14
was in love with and doesn't know what to do with his life.
27:16
I mean, if you've seen Garden State, it was kind of similar
27:19
vibe to that. I definitely liked it more than
27:21
Garden State. It was better than Garden State,
27:23
but what did you learn from watching that?
27:27
That you think you want to apply to the musical that we're going
27:29
to be filming in the next 7 days.
27:31
I think we should just grab a mini DV camera and go for it.
27:35
I still have my old 10. Nice.
27:37
I think we should just lean into.
27:39
Some dead pixels in. There probably, yeah.
27:41
There's probably more dead ones than live ones at this point.
27:44
We'll just make it a creative choice.
27:45
It's not 1080. Pi went through the pawn shop
27:48
and I found the one with the exact right dead pixels and I
27:50
love this one. This one's it.
27:52
This is the one no I. See, you can always say
27:55
something as a creative choice, even if it's not.
27:58
Sorry for anyone that was complaining about 28 days later.
28:02
I just, I don't know, I'm incredulous.
28:06
I think realistically the best thing to take from it is that
28:13
the music is so important because I think I spent a lot of
28:18
time really fretting with the lyrics.
28:20
And even after you started writing a lot of the music, then
28:22
I was like, no, now we have to go back and work the rework the
28:24
lyrics because the story just isn't there and the story just
28:27
isn't good enough. I don't know if that actually
28:29
matters. Yeah, that's what I got from
28:32
that movie too, is that Once doesn't really have the story at
28:36
all. It's very and then still.
28:39
Definitely want to have a story. Oh no, we're but as far as oh,
28:43
this is this movie once won an Academy Award for Best Song.
28:47
Best original song. Yes, Best original song.
28:50
Yes, which it beat out. It beat out Enchanted, which
28:53
blew my mind. That is Alan Menken.
28:55
That is the the genius that brought you Little Shop of
28:57
Horrors and Little Mermaid and the clat like.
29:00
And you can tell in a few of the songs that there's definitely
29:03
like, only Alan Menken would get away with ripping off Little
29:06
Mermaid quite that hard for some of these other songs.
29:09
But he wrote. They also were nominated for
29:11
three songs, so I think it's split the vote.
29:15
But this? Is why you never vote
29:16
independent just. Kidding.
29:17
Oh my God, this isn't the satire, Chuck.
29:21
Maybe we can get like, maybe we can get like 3 Republicans and
29:24
three Democrats to run for office and then the independent
29:26
will win and all. Right, so OK, and let's so the
29:32
song falling slowly though was is it still exists is a really
29:38
beautiful song, but it wasn't really about the lyrics.
29:42
It was about the feeling behind them.
29:45
A lot of the composition of it, it just sounded really good.
29:48
So then getting to go into a recording studio with a bunch of
29:52
your musician friends and work through a lot of this was really
29:57
cool to watch. If you ever get a chance to
29:58
watch like a music creation and ideation session, do it.
30:02
Because I don't speak music. And that was so cool.
30:06
That was the most interesting thing I'd seen in so long.
30:09
Just a whole other language building a song, and then it's a
30:14
song and it actually sounds like music.
30:16
Not just, you know, me trying to rap, sing in my head and
30:21
probably listen to too much Hamilton before writing half of
30:24
this. But that's fine.
30:25
Like, it was really, really cool.
30:27
So that was amazing. Thanks.
30:30
So alone. Or, excuse me, not alone, but
30:33
once. I mean, that could have been
30:37
like maybe parentheticals alone. Yeah, I don't.
30:40
Know, but once yeah, that's great.
30:43
I got the same thing out of that.
30:45
Like the plot didn't really matter in that movie that much.
30:47
And so we do want to make sure that on ours that the music's is
30:50
as good as it can possibly be because that'll carry it a very
30:52
long way. It will.
30:53
That's going to do more for it. And by say very little plot in
30:56
once. Like really there isn't 1?
30:58
The the plot seems to be a struggling musician needs
31:03
lyricist to record album which they.
31:06
And when I talk about plot I define like an event happens
31:10
because of a previous event and I mean.
31:14
This felt more like a classified ad.
31:17
Yeah, yeah. It was just a bunch of random
31:18
things happen together and then they strung it along.
31:20
They they kind of like laced it with music and that was the
31:23
fabric of the film and still worth watching.
31:25
I thought it was really cool. It was.
31:26
Really cool. Yeah.
31:28
So I think that's. And there's a shot at the very
31:31
end that I'm still not 100% sure how they did with a mini DV
31:34
camera. Oh yeah, that's.
31:35
True. Like I assume they had somebody
31:37
in a cherry picker because there's no way it was a jib.
31:39
I don't know how they did it, but it's a if you, if you watch
31:43
it and you make it to the end and you know how they got that
31:45
shot, let us know. Yeah, that'd be great.
31:48
Yeah, I think it was just like they commandeered at somebody
31:51
working on an electrical. I think so.
31:52
It's just a cherry picker and they just we're like quick, you
31:55
can drive this, right? They're on their lunch break.
31:57
Let's go. That'd be pretty cool.
31:59
All right. Shall we talk about the Featured
32:01
Filmmaker of the Week? I think so.
32:03
This week we have Kevin Mounts, who's been making movies since
32:06
he was 6. It's impressive.
32:10
Yeah. And he realized at 13 you can
32:12
make a career of it. So he has a great story about
32:14
making the most of things. When filming a scene for his
32:17
first feature film, the main talent was running through the
32:20
woods, slid, fell, wiped out hard.
32:22
But he was able to track the camera movement, Florida State,
32:25
to make it look intentional, and it was captured well enough that
32:28
it stayed in the final product. So always be rolling, especially
32:32
on very dangerous shots because you never know what you might
32:37
get. You never know.
32:38
Hopefully you've done some stunt choreo and practice.
32:41
Too. And you know, if it's not a good
32:43
movie, snuff films, those always sell.
32:45
I'm pretty sure it's so. There's only one place those
32:48
sell, and that is the dark web. Right on.
32:50
I don't know what they go for. So any of you film makers out
32:53
there making money and some. Hey, you know what, Chase?
32:56
That dollar, you got to do what you got to do.
32:57
Yeah. So Kevin actually has a quote
32:59
that I, I really, really loved. So with filmmaking, there are
33:02
always barriers and obstacles to overcome.
33:05
If it was easy, everyone would do it.
33:07
We do it because of the obstacles.
33:10
And I just love that idea that it's not film makers pursuing
33:15
their passion in spite of the obstacles, but it's actually no
33:19
those challenges And that really euphoric.
33:21
I conquered this feeling is exactly why we do it.
33:25
I just really like that perspective.
33:26
I thought it was fun. Yeah, that makes sense.
33:28
It feels good. Like, you know, never ran a
33:31
marathon before, but maybe film makers can be compared to
33:35
marathon runners. I would never compare myself to
33:38
a if you're a runner, triathlete, a runner.
33:40
The triathlete, it's like you do it for the challenge, not
33:42
because while it's happening it's the most enjoyable thing,
33:46
but a lot. Of you know, I will say.
33:47
State and you see the obstacles ahead of you and you're like,
33:50
this is my chance. This is it.
33:52
Five times shine, and we'll keep you posted on how the filming
33:57
actually goes the next time we record.
33:59
So if you're not subscribed here and whatever lessening platform
34:04
that you're on, make sure that you do so you can keep posted on
34:07
this. If you want to see the final
34:09
film, no matter how it turns out, make sure you're subscribed
34:12
to our newsletter, which you can do in the show notes.
34:14
There'll be a link there. Yeah, once it's finished, we're
34:16
going to we're going to share it to our newsletter subscribers so
34:18
you can have a private Screener link, get a sneak peek.
34:22
Let us know what you think. Yeah.
34:23
And let us know if we should send it out to more film
34:26
festivals or. Or let us know.
34:27
If we just lay it to the rest. Yeah, just just let that one go.
34:30
It's OK. Not every project has to be a
34:32
winner, and that's OK too. No, but the more you have, the
34:35
more shots you take. That's it.
34:38
The. More chances.
34:39
I don't remember what the quote is, but it was Michael Scott.
34:41
You can look it up. Oh yeah, that's right.
34:43
It wasn't the shot you miss, every shot you take from Wayne
34:47
Gretzky. And then yeah, yeah, OK, yeah,
34:49
there we go. And then, oh, and if you want to
34:52
follow along live as we go, then make sure you're subscribed on
34:57
social because we're going to be posting all the in the moment up
35:00
to date episode up or in the moment up to date movie making
35:04
chaos, if you will. Whereas all our podcast episodes
35:08
are going to have a weak delay. So keep that.
35:10
In mind, we're right up to date on social media.
35:12
So all right, shall we succinctly say farewell?
35:14
I think so. Bye bye.