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BPS 323: How to Raise Your Filmmaker IQ with John Hess · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three twenty three. When given an opportunity, deliver
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  excellence and never quit. Robert Rodriguez broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
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  Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
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  to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
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  host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage.
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  Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the
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  kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so
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  we actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market,
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  and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that
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  used to reading tempowl movies when your movie is going to be done for one
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  hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage,
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  our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WM E, NBC,
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  many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by
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  professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot com. Now,
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  guys, today on the show, we have John Hess from filmmaker iq.
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  Now. I've been a fan of John's work for years. Filmmaker iq is
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  an amazing website with these remarkable mini documentaries that he puts up on YouTube,
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  and he's just shows you everything from how to make airpowered blub squibs, to
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  the history of the mock buster, the fundamental elements of film music, who's
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  in a movie credits, the science of deep focus and hyper focal distance,
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  I mean, the history of a Hollywood musical. He goes deep into each
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  topic he covers and they are so entertaining, so well produced, and I
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  just love what John has been doing over the years. He is definitely an
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  og in this space of helping filmmakers follow their dreams and make their movies.
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  So I just had an absolute ball talking to John on the show. I
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  can't wait to share this episode with you, So without any further ado,
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  please enjoy my conversation with John Hess. I like to welcome to the show
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  the legendary John Hess from Filmmaker IQ. Thank you John for being on the
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  show. Butta hi, thank you for having me. I appreciate it,
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  man. I mean, listen, I've been, like I was telling you
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  earlier, I am been a big fan of Filmmaker IQ and what you do.
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  You have a very unique voice and how you approach the filmmaking process and
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  the work that you do with film Maker IQ than anybody else in our space,
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  and I've been an admired from a distance for quite some times. You
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  are I'd like to call you. There's a few of you guys, but
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  like the Ogs, you're one of the ogs. Uh, one of the
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  original gangsters doing this because it started oh wait right, uh yeah, the
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  site started in no way I believe. Yeah, I guess so, and
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  I haven't really thought about that, but it was at the tail end of
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  the my space era. So if you want to put it all off of
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  that, oh I oh yeah. I made a lot of money on spa
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  space selling lay independent film I was. It was I was huge on my
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  Space. Huge MySpace was I mean if we were talking like a bunch of
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  old old guys sitting around talking about the old days. Yeah. Yeah.
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  My Space was kind of how I got into the whole discussing film online.
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  And it was the through the my Space film forums. That's really kind of
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  how IQ started. It was born there the longest or behind it, I
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  don't know if you want to get into it, but it basically was we
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  wanted. We were kind of kicked off of my Space. So we were
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  both my friend and I Dennis Was. We were both banned from my Space,
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  and he said, let's start our own site because we for the longest
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  time we didn't have moderate moderates moderators on the film forums. And then we've
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  been clamoring let's get some moderate because there's probably people in here spamming constantly.
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  Well, my friend Dennis Was would always post very interesting articles, but he
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  would bump the posts up to get him back the top. He would post
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  an article, but he would bump it up, and that was against the
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  rules, you know, the moderates, so they banned him. One of
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  the one of the more you know, important assets of the film forums banned
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  because he would bump up his old posts, and that's so he said,
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  and I fought for him, and I got banned as well, and the
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  hell with my Space and we went off to our own site well and and
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  arguably that worked out for you, okay, because not many people talk about
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  my space anymore? Is it still? I know it is still on,
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  It's still around, right for I guess there's some bands that use it,
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  you know, or some music and the music scene still kind of uses it.
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  Yeah, yeah, I mean it SoundCloud is probably bigger than that.
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  Yeah, I mean it's probably dead. And I think was it who who
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  bought a Fox? Fox paid like a billion for it back in the day.
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  Yeah, Tom Anderson had a nice little pay day because everybody's friend,
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  remember Tom, Tom? Tom. So, so before we get going,
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  man, how did you get into the business. How did you get into
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  the too? Loving what you do? Oh? Well, you know,
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  it's it's to say you love it, you know, it's it's it's complicated
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  to say you love what you do. I mean, I love it so
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  much and I'm willing to put up with all the crap that I preach.
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  You know. That's it's not that I love I love every single waking date
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  moment. I honestly I'm frustrated half the time. But I wouldn't do it
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  if I wasn't if I was that, if I didn't love it, I'd
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  be on something else. So I started off. I made I made little
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  videos, and I grew up. I was a class of two thousand,
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  so I grew up in the late nineties, and I made little videos for
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  my for my high school, we just is a budding, you know,
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  TV video production in class. And I started doing just little projects, advertising
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  on the morning announcements because we had close circuit television back in those days,
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  advertising the academic decathlon team. So I started making uh spoofs of things.
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  I made, like a like a silent film spoof. I made a Titanic,
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  which is really big back then spoof. I made a Mission Impossible spoof,
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  which is again another movie franchise from the late nineties. And I kind
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  of like I started fall in love with the whole process of just making moving
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  pictures. It's kind of that's if you've read if you heard Spielberg talk about
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  how he Scott started how when he was a kid he had had the little
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  eight emailimary camera, and he would shoot two trains running into each other,
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  and he learned he could just shoot it and watch it over and over again.
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  That's kind of the same way I got into into video making or filmmaking.
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  It's just I liked creating things in this watching them over and over again.
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  I kind of fell in love with that. But as a kid,
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  I always wanted to be in business. I've always because my father was international
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  engineering, so I was always involved with some sort of I always love the
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  air of business. So I went to school to be a business major,
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  and I found out I still like business, but I was like, I
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  still want to make videos. That's still what I want to do. So
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  about my second year of college, I said, hey, I'm gonna go
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  intern at. I want to see if I can make the marry the two
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  become a business and h and video maybe maybe like a producer and film.
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  So I found a small cable company that was out in Corona, California,
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  and they were doing commercials, like local local cable commercials. You know,
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  it's really bad cal Worthington kind of style. Sunday Sunday Sunday. Yeah,
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  oh yeah. So I interned there for like a year, like I just
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  just did it because and like I didn't even take class credit because I was
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  like, I don't want to do the paperwork for the credit. I just
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  wanted to be there and hang out and do like little these little movies,
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  not movies, little commercials. Did that for a year and uh, I
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  mean, I'm going more detail than I probably need to. But I did
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  that for a year, and then I was laid off by the company and
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  the people I worked with were laid off, and I kind of burned me
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  this like this little independent streak. Like, man, these guys I known
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  worked for the company for twenty five years, they built a family, they
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  depend on this job, and that the corporate culture comes in and just kind
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  of access them, and I'm like, I don't want to I don't want
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  to go work for the man. So I when I started to start doing
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  my own business, and that was about twenty years ago or eighteen years ago,
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  seventeen eighteen years ago. And what was that business? And what was
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  that business? Oh, what do you mean my own business? Video production?
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  Okay, so any like any kind of video production in fact I do,
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  That's primarily what I do. I mean, the film was narrative.
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  Filmmaking is something that I want to aspire too more. But right now I'm
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  actually doing a ton of video work for like I do. I do work
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  for cities and corporate corporate corporates that call me in to do like a like
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  a documentary about you know, their corporate culture or whatever they want to promote.
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  So so I ended up still using that business education of mine, the
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  business and marketing, but I make commercials and stuff like that. So filmmaker,
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  right you more was a side kind of like a side hustle for and
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  more of a labor of love for. Yeah, I mean, it's honestly
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  the labor of love kind of thing. It's I mean, I'd like to
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  kind of push it more towards an actual productive income generating stream. It's it
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  really is still more of a labor of love. And I don't know,
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  it's it's one of those things where I don't want to I don't want to
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  kill it by making it too much of a job necessarily, although I do
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  want to do something too, you know, I do want to actually make
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  it to be more of a job. I guess do you want to call
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  it that? I mean, I mean, yes, I'm being very candid,
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  honest, all the people breaking their spells about who I am and what
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  I do. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
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  back to the show. Well, you know, there's a lot, there's
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  a lot of you know, and I've been doing this for five years and
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  I still I still say that I have the original filmmaking tutorial on YouTube.
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  It was in two thousand and five. I put a behind the scenes of
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  my short film that's still up there. So I was one of the first
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  to do that, but I never kept going with it. So a couple
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  other guys like film Riot and Ryan and those guys did it, and Rocket
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  Jump and those guys. But a lot of people think that they have a
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  different perception like I because of how good you do what you do. The
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  perception of what you do is like, oh, he's just you know,
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  this is this is amazing, and he's just killing it and he's just rolling
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  in it, and it's like and a lot of people and a lot of
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  people think that of me as well, like, oh, he must be
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  just killing I'm like, you know what I make, I make, I
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  do okay, I do okay. But but but I'm not Scrooge mcducking it
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  anytime. Yeah, exactly. You know, I even even I mean,
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  I made me even wrong. But like I think even someone like Martin Scorsese,
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  who is all in Prince Purpose is hugely successful, he still has trouble.
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  He still has problems making the movie that he wants to make half the
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  time. You know, he's always complaining, like I can't get the money
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  to do this well, to be fair, To be fair, Marty's not
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  going after two or three hundred thousand dollars, just going after two hundred million
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  to make a movie that doesn't have a lot of market billets you have that
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  you know, you just hit on exactly how I feel about the situation.
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  Yeah, if he would just go for like a ten million dollars movie,
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  you know, get some people he's never worked with before, he could he
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  could get that money in an instant, Yeah, exactly. Like I mean,
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  there's there's different like Spike Lee, Woody Allen and those kind of I
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  mean, would he you know, regardless of his personal life as a filmmaker,
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  he did something that I don't think there is another filmmaker of his generation
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  did he made a movie a year for like thirty years, and he always
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  capped his budget because he knew his art, his films had a specific audience
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  that could generate a certain amount of money, and he would be able to
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  attract huge stars to come in and work scale for him because he was who
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  he was and he built that kind of system up for himself. And I
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  don't think. I mean, maybe Clint is another guy that I would throw
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  in that, but that's just a different that's a different generation, that's a
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  whole different in the world. Yeah, but that's what there was, even
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  Clint, Like you know he did that what was that last movie he did
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  with the bomber Chard Jewel, Yeah, Richard, I can't. I don't
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  think Richard Jewel costs one hundred and fifty. I don't think that cut.
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  No, No, it did cost one hundred and fifty because Clinton knows,
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  like you know, I'm gonna make a movie about Richard Jewel and it's called
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  Richard Jwel, Like the people like what who else in Hollywood in a studio
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  is making Richard Jewel with a shlubby lead actors Like I can put a slubby
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  guy on the front who who no one's knows who knows nose, like it's
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  not a face that people recognize. So but he's Clint, but he's smart,
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  Like there's a there's a there's a budget range that makes sense for that
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  movie. Marty still hasn't figured that out yet. No, you know,
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  that's it's funny that you're articulating like one, I feel like I was a
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  lone voice back when what's the movie that Martin Irishman did? Finished Irishman,
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  Like Irishman costs almost as much as Spider Man Homecoming, you know, like
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  how can you? And it's that's that should be like if people will will
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  that's because we spend too much money on comic book movies. Well there's a
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  bigger audience for the comic book movie, you know, the Spider Man.
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  So I don't know that that whole thing was. You could just smell the
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  marketing. That's business major. You can feel it, you know, coming
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  at you. No exactly, and if you look at I mean if you
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  look at someone like Nolan, who also you know, has a very expensive
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  palette, but his films are for a very broad audience. Even though like
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  Inception, it makes my head hurt, it makes everyone's head hurt, Like
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  thinking about the plotting in that film is it's pretty insane. But for whatever,
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  but he brings in action, he brings in start like he he understands
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  his art form very well, where Fincher has a little bit of that Scorsese
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  vibe to him, which is like, you know, I really I really
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  need one hundred and fifty million, but into like Fincher, we love you,
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  man, but we can't. Yeah. No, I love I love
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  the fact that we're talking about this if because it's you know, like so
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  much of what I see online is kind of like just give give these guys
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  two give marks would say two hundred million dollars because he deserves it. It's
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  like that's not how Yeah, that's not business. Put your money into it
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  first, if you had to put your put your dollar up and looks like,
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  so everyone we're talking about here, we're all talking about giants. So
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  Martin, you know, Marty and and Nolan and Fincher and all these kind
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  of they're just giants there. They live on Mount Hollywood. I call it
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  Mount Hollywood where where where they're the gods the Olympic, They the Greek gods
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  of of Hollywood, And we're just the peasants throwing up stones, and I'm
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  not throwing up stones at all, because I'm huge fans of all of them.
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  And believe me, if it was up to me, I would give
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  Marty five hundred million dollars because I would love to see what he does with
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  that. But the reality is, on a business standpoint, it makes no
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  sense. You have to you have to have if you're going to create a
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  product. And I know a lot of filmmakers out there going to go film's
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  not a product. I hate to tell you, it is. It is.
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  So if you're going to have a product, that product has to have
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  a cost, and there has to be an ROI return on investment. If
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  you want to do art films, you make that five million dollars or that
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  Woody Allen budget range film and do whatever the hell you want, like whatever
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  you want, because you'll make your money back because they're the ROI on a
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  film like that makes sense for a filmmaker of that caliber. But if not,
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  then no, Like look, Spielberg couldn't get Lincoln financed. You know
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  it's Steven Spielberg with Daniel de Lewis as a star, and didn't get financing
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  for for Lincoln, if Mark, if Steve, And then the reason why
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  he couldn't get that was because the roy essentially didn't look like, who's gonna
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  go see a movie about linking and like, how what's the budget range?
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  Is it gonna makes sense? And the way Spielberg was selling this movie Lincoln,
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  he was saying, this is going to be a courtroom dram about the
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  fourteenth Amendment. Right, Someone's in great marketing at all. That's that's like,
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  oh, yeah, that's summer blog. That's a popcorn movie right there,
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  right right. So even so someone was like one of the greatest filmmakers
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  of all time, one of the most successful filmmakers of all time, couldn't
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  get financing for a film. And it wasn't like he was asking for Marty
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  numbers because Marty, you know, it's Marty. Yeah. He was still
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  asking for you know, seventy eighty million, ninety million to make this kind
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  of period peace film. It took it had to go to India to get
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  the money, and they were just like they were just happy to be making
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  a movie with Spielberg. They like, here, here's a check. And
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  it worked out for him, And now Netflix is doing the same thing.
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  With Marty. I think he's they're doing this his next movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.
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  So, but they're that business model is different. Though Irishman made sense
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  in the Netflix ecosystem. Uh huh, it made it made all the sense
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  in the world to to spend one hundred and fifty hundred and eighty million dollars
• 17:14
  in the Netflix ecosystem, in their Hollywood studio system. It makes absolutely no
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  sense. It's just not fine. It's just makes no sense. Would you
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  agree, Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know
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  much. I don't know enough about the Netflix world. I mean, to
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  me, the Netflix streaming stuff is still so speculative. We did there,
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  no one knows exactly what the numbers are, and then they purposely hide that.
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  So I don't know. I mean, but I know that Netflix is
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  raising so much capital to make new properties, and part of me is like,
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  well, why can't I get a piece of that action? But yeah,
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  well, if you know, if we could go, we could go
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  down the Netflix a hole in a set for a second, which from what
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  I'm hearing about Netflix is I know for a fact that they're extremely in debt,
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  extremely in debt, because they've just they've had this kind of don't forget
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  they were not a studio. They're a Silicon valley startup. So they looked
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  they brought their entire business model as a Silicon valley startup, meaning spend a
• 18:15
  lot of money, lose money for a long time to gain market share,
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  and then you'll be probably at the Amazon model, the Facebook model, every
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  big Airbnb model, all of those kind of models. Then it became a
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  studio afterwards, but you know, they're there. I don't know, man,
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  Everything's just like we were talking about earlier. Is like, it doesn't
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  from what outside, we look like we're Scrooge mcducking it. Netflix is the
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  same thing. I think a lot of people have a different perception of Netflix.
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  A's like, oh, they're just killing it. They're they're hurting,
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  they're hurting. I don't know if you know, I don't know if you
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  knew it or not, but this is not We're getting into a little bit
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  of tech geek stuff. Since the pandemic, Netflix has been extremely hurting because
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  more people are watching Netflix, so the load on their servers and the technology
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  and the cost of that has I think tripled. But there are no new
• 19:11
  subscribers to can't to to offset that, so that's just exists. Now they're
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  just like, oh man, we've got this. Everyone's watching Netflix now.
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  Great. Unfortunately our business models not set up for that. We just want
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  a few people to be watching Netflix and pay for it, but don't watch
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  it. And that's that's what happened. So they actually started throttling. I
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  don't know if you know that. They started throttling the image quality just a
• 19:33
  bit because if they drop it five percent, that could be millions of dollars
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  in service feeds. So that's that's what's that's that's one of the things.
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  Enough but I but enough. Yeah, I think you're right ye this thing
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  to think about it because yeah, like people, people who are losing their
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  jobs are not getting new Netflix subscriptions. We'll be right back after a word
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  from our sponsor. And now back to the show. No, and there
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  is an album, and there's also a critical level of critical mass where there
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  are no more subscribers that they can get. But yet they're going to have
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  to keep spending Irishman style money for projects to keep what they have because now
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  Disney's out and I want to actually want That brings me to another question.
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  I want to hear. I want to talk to you about, you know,
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  Disney Plus and the whole COVID situation and what happened. And you know,
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  Disney is already over sixty million as of this recording subscribers, which had
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  gotten less than a year. It's insane. Now they're doing Mulan, so
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  they're skipping theatrical. What do you think about that whole thirty dollars You've got
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  to be a member of Disney Plus to watch it. And it's an experiment.
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  It's literally they're doing a one hundred and fifty million dollars experiment, which
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  is what I was saying when everyone was talking about trolls too, like,
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  oh, Trolls two killed, and I'm like, dude, this Trolls two
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  was the first month of the quarantine. Everybody that there's kids at home,
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  nobody knew what to do. Of course they're going to spend twenty bucks controls
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  too, But I want to see a tent pole. Mulan is a tent
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  pole. What do you what do you what do you think is going to
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  happen with? What's your thoughts on it? Oh? That's a you know,
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  it's it's when I hate the cliche be interesting to see because it's like,
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  if you can say about everything, I think it will probably be it'll
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  probably do what this it's hard to say because we are in such a weird
• 21:26
  time right now because we can't go to the movie theaters though, so theatrical
• 21:32
  is not even an option for them. As far as as far as what
• 21:37
  I think it's gonna I mean, I think it's an option. It's it's
• 21:38
  an it's an extra experiment, but I'm not sure you can be repeated next
• 21:42
  year when theaters do eventually open up again. Can you do that? Can
• 21:47
  you see that same kind of success if people have the option to go back
• 21:49
  theater and again. I know theater is also one of those topics that people
• 21:52
  are feel It's very weird that every time I bring up theater like on social
• 21:57
  media or theatrical on social media, there's a group of people that want to
• 22:02
  see it die. I don't understand why you noticed that. I have.
• 22:08
  I have noticed that people are like, it's and I've I've i'ven't said it,
• 22:11
  I've said it many times and like I think I personally think that the
• 22:17
  theatrical experience as we knew it In January twenty twenty will not return to that
• 22:23
  level probably ever again. We will never have as many screens like that again,
• 22:27
  because it was all going in a downward, slow, downward trajectory.
• 22:33
  I mean, theatrical attendance and things. It's just what's happening, and regardless
• 22:38
  if you love it or not. I think there'll always be a theatrical like
• 22:41
  there's there's Broadway plays. There's always gonna be a movie theater. There's always
• 22:45
  gonna be Imax, there's gonna be an experiment, an experience like that.
• 22:48
  But it's never gonna die. People still want to go out and do that,
• 22:52
  but the business model is going to change. So now Disney could just
• 22:57
  go you know what, guys, We're just going to release this for three
• 23:00
  weeks and then we're going to go straight to Disney Plus. And if you
• 23:03
  don't like it, we'll just go straight to Disney Plus because we'll probably make
• 23:06
  enough money to cover that. Well. I mean, I don't know if
• 23:07
  you followed. The courts just have want to overturn that paramount decrease, so
• 23:14
  which I'm I think, you know, people are you know, jumping overhead.
• 23:17
  How can we do this? I think the paramount decrease are kind of
• 23:19
  long and done because they were made a point when movies had no movies had
• 23:25
  only radio as a competition because nineteen forty eight, you know, television was
• 23:30
  fifties. So television came in and kind of beat the crap out of movies.
• 23:34
  And now we've got internet streaming, which let's face it, most people
• 23:37
  are probably doing instead of watching movies. So I think the time for a
• 23:41
  business model shift is probably here. So, like what you're saying, as
• 23:47
  far as Disney, maybe Disney ends up buying a bunch of theaters where they
• 23:49
  become like Disney dine Egyptian here because no, no, they copy here.
• 23:56
  Yeah that's Disney. So maybe that happens in like Saint Louis. Now they
• 24:00
  have a you know, the Disney El Captain in Saint Luis or wherever Toledo,
• 24:04
  you know, and then that's all they do is they show Disney movies.
• 24:07
  And I'm not a parent, but imagine if you're if I was a
• 24:10
  parent, Hey, okay, I take my kid to the Disney theater once
• 24:12
  in a while. I mean it might be something that's worth worth pursuing.
• 24:15
  And don't forget there will be a Disney store inside that Disney theater exactly.
• 24:21
  I mean, and so for them, it's almost a lost leader to get
• 24:25
  you in the door to watch the movie because they're gonna sell you on other
• 24:27
  side. I mean, it's the truth and it's the only way. Like
• 24:32
  I agree with you one hundred percent. I think that theaters someone's gonna buy
• 24:37
  AMC before the years out, if not this year, end of next year
• 24:41
  or sometime in early next year, someone's gonna buy. Amazon's already circling.
• 24:45
  There's a lot of people with a lot of cash who can just come in
• 24:48
  and buy it. And all of a sudden, you have how many screens
• 24:53
  all around the country, so and there's and there's there's so many regal and
• 24:57
  all these other things. They're hurting and they're they're they're going to be vulnerable
• 25:02
  for purchase. I agree with you. There's only three major studios that have
• 25:06
  the power to do anything like that, that have the financial power to do
• 25:10
  that, which would be Disney, Warners and Universal. But but the big
• 25:15
  unknowns Facebook, Cash, Google, Amazon, Apple, they have Apple has
• 25:23
  four hundred billion cash. Yeah, just cash, No, I mean,
• 25:33
  so that is but that's the key to this. It's it's this kind of
• 25:36
  creating of this ecosystem. The Disney has been a I mean that's what Disney
• 25:41
  does. Disney, that's I mean, their theme parks, their cruises,
• 25:45
  their their Disney stores. It's it's what they do. So there's no doubt
• 25:49
  that there's going to be a Disney chain. And it just makes all the
• 25:52
  sense in the world. M hm and and that. And in that world
• 25:56
  where we have the internet streaming, I don't see that as a bad thing
• 26:00
  because it's not. I don't feel like it's stifling competition because it's not like
• 26:03
  these indie movies are getting into those big chains anyway. So I don't know,
• 26:07
  yeah exactly. I don't think you're absolutely right. I mean yeah,
• 26:12
  MC, I mean, I mean, I mean, yes, some,
• 26:15
  but not like really indie movies. The theatrical experience for independent film is almost
• 26:21
  non existent unless you really are at the top one percent of all independent films,
• 26:26
  whether either you've got a a taste maker like Sun Dance or South Buy
• 26:33
  or an A twenty four or someone like that Neon, one of these guys
• 26:36
  that can kind of come in and elevate, elevate the art house vibe.
• 26:41
  And there are small movies that could do that and you have to really understand
• 26:45
  how you do marketing and audience building and all that kind of stuff. But
• 26:48
  for like the standard you know one hundred. Yeah, an they're also like
• 26:52
  these independent wings and these major studios that because I mean, if you're if
• 26:56
  you're Fox Adam or whatever, you know, Searchlight Studios or whatever, where
• 27:00
  you can that that's where you would see some sort of uh, you know,
• 27:03
  if you're partnering with a large studio for an independent I mean, I'm
• 27:07
  not I'm kind of speaking out of my experience there. Yeah, but but
• 27:11
  those kind of things have kind of fallen off to the wayst side that it's
• 27:12
  not the early nineties anymore, where everybody like you know, Paramount Vantage and
• 27:18
  Fox, search Light and you know, Focus Film like all of these small
• 27:22
  little independent independence where the money's at. So of course they all made their
• 27:26
  independent labels. But so do you think that so do you think the theatrical
• 27:33
  experience would you agree that it is going to be different? Do you think
• 27:37
  that it's going to be the Disney studios? You think, you know,
• 27:40
  Imax is going to be a thing. Like how It's mean, I think
• 27:42
  it was changing before January twenty and twenty. I mean I noticed my like,
• 27:47
  I'm a big fan of the movie theater subscription model personally because I just
• 27:52
  I like, for twenty bucks, I can go to movie theaters every weekend.
• 27:55
  Count me in and maybe I'll buy an extra popcorn and the you know,
• 27:57
  get the movies will will make a little more money off of me.
• 28:00
  So I was already way on board with the subscription model, and then my
• 28:03
  AMC just recently switched over to all the you know, the big the big
• 28:07
  chairs and the more spaced out stuff. I'm like, yeah, this is
• 28:11
  what I would. I'll pay extra to do this. So I mean,
• 28:15
  we're no longer it's not that that that you know, sardines in a can
• 28:18
  kind of situations. We used to squeeze everybody in the theater, and the
• 28:22
  seats where like worse than you know, airline seats, or they were the
• 28:26
  same as airline seats. But so I so I think that in that respect,
• 28:30
  But then again it's there's a there's an old there's a theater that does
• 28:33
  the secondhand when not second second run theater and whatever, yeah, dollar theater,
• 28:38
  and they used to always do they do like Rocky horror every every three
• 28:41
  or four months, and there's that there's a little bit of that. I'm
• 28:45
  like, I don't want to see that go away, you know, I
• 28:48
  want I want to be throwing popcorn at the screen and having just a crazy
• 28:52
  time on in the theater. So, you know, maybe, but maybe
• 28:56
  the dollar theaters models still kind of floats surround as a side. Doesn't mean
• 29:02
  you can have more than one, you know, model out there. So,
• 29:06
  yeah, it was changing, I think so. And I think with
• 29:11
  with the reason the COVID discussion about how we have to separate the seats and
• 29:15
  all that, it's gonna be quite different at least for at least for the
• 29:18
  rest of this year. For I think, I think for the foreseeable future,
• 29:22
  it's gonna Yeah, I think the next two or three years this is
• 29:27
  gonna be not exactly what we're going through right now, but there'll be different
• 29:32
  versions of this moving forward. I think COVID. I don't think it's going
• 29:34
  to go away in the way. It's gonna be with us in one way,
• 29:40
  shape or form. We're not eradicating it anytime in the year exactly.
• 29:45
  So, and there's always the other the question what's next after COVID. You
• 29:49
  know what disease comes next that we all get. Well, there's there's murder,
• 29:52
  hornets, earthquakes. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 30:03
  And now back to the show explosions. I mean, there's just so
• 30:08
  there's I'm sure there's a meteor. Honest way as we speak, everyone busts
• 30:14
  out a Deep Impact and armageddon so we can figure out how do we deal
• 30:17
  with it? Yeah, but there's it's coming. It's coming. The secrets,
• 30:21
  the secrets, oil oil, oil drillers. That's how we get through.
• 30:25
  The next train astronauts to drill Let's train drillers to be astronauts in five
• 30:30
  days. Yes, this this makes all the sense of the world. But
• 30:34
  hell, what a hell of a romp of a film. I love ARMYGD
• 30:37
  It's a gilt pleasure. That's I mean, look, I look, I'll
• 30:44
  watch Armageddon before I'll watch Deep Impact like I watched Deep Impact once. I've
• 30:48
  seen Armageddon probably ten tomes in my life. So you know, uh,
• 30:56
  what's the what was it? The every him painting? Did the whole thing
• 31:00
  else say him? Oh yeah, that's that's a really good, good video,
• 31:03
  just discussion about it. He gets so little respect for being kind of
• 31:07
  just visually interesting. No, even though it's even though his storylines might be
• 31:11
  stupid, but you gotta give it to him to a shot. I said
• 31:17
  this, I've said this publicly before and I'll say it again. There's action
• 31:22
  films before Michael Bay, and there's action films after Michael Bay. And the
• 31:26
  same thing happened with Ridley Scott when Ridley's Tony Scott. When Tony Scott showed
• 31:30
  up, there's action films before Tony, there's action shots films after Tony Bay.
• 31:36
  Shift the visual medium Michael Bay. Everybody wanted to look hit their action
• 31:41
  films to look like Michael Bay. They just did, and you could see
• 31:42
  them. They just they copied the shots and they never got it right.
• 31:45
  And you know, there's there's guys out there who will remain nameless, directors
• 31:49
  who really really like we're on top of trying to exactly do what Michael Bay
• 31:53
  did and all this kind of stuff, regardless you love him or hate him,
• 31:57
  Like The Rock is still imparting my favorite Michael Bay some of all time,
• 32:00
  and it still holds up. Its probably the best story. But we
• 32:06
  love him or hate him, you've got to respect the visual prowess of what
• 32:09
  he's been able to do. I mean, it's there is nobody in the
• 32:13
  history of film that did what he's done. You know. Do I like
• 32:17
  all his films? No, But visually I meant, oh yeah, the
• 32:27
  one with them with Ryan Reynolds, Yeah, that wasn't bad. But you
• 32:30
  could tell it's it's you could tell it's it's Michael, Like the second a
• 32:34
  frame shows up, Oh yeah, that's I mean, there's a lot of
• 32:36
  stupid stuff that you're looking at it like like, whoa, I never thought
• 32:38
  you would do that in a frame. It's like, there's so much clever
• 32:42
  visual stuff that's going on. It's yeah, sure it's wrapped in some some
• 32:45
  kind of silliness from in my taste, but like I can appreciate the fact
• 32:47
  that there's there's there's just so sit set pieces that are like this is very
• 32:52
  creative, this is very ingenious. So yeah, I end up really liking
• 32:57
  that. In that movie, yeah, I can't remember the name of it.
• 33:00
  I was like six something six or something like that. That something six.
• 33:05
  I was like the six ghosts, ghost guys out there doing what they
• 33:08
  do. But go rou back to theaters real quick. I mean, I've
• 33:14
  always said that theaters have had a combative relationship with their customer base for a
• 33:20
  long I mean it's, first of all, the experience used to suck.
• 33:24
  So it was this, It was sardine, sticky floors, stale popcorn.
• 33:29
  And then they charge you inside forty five dollars for a coke, seventy five
• 33:34
  dollars for a popcorn. Like it's like it's almost like it's almost like airport
• 33:42
  costs. So and they never really cared a lot. But then slowly but
• 33:45
  surely, as their number started to go down, they're like, oh,
• 33:47
  wait a minute, we've got to create a better experience because we're not the
• 33:51
  only show in town anymore. And that's when these seats started showing up and
• 33:55
  bars like like the MC here in Burbank has like a bar and side of
• 34:00
  it, and it's like, you know, special seatings, and the sound
• 34:02
  got better. But it's like, you know, for a certain generation,
• 34:07
  we all remember, and they're still abusive. I still think they're abusive and
• 34:09
  pricing. It's so abusive and come on, give me a break. Yeah,
• 34:15
  so they're still well, I was gonna say that the other day,
• 34:17
  I was thinking about this and I didn't forgot to mention it. But yeah,
• 34:20
  if you if if this Disney owned, I mean, Disney's not gonna
• 34:23
  Disney's not gonna lower the price, I think, oh no, but they're
• 34:27
  experienced. Look when you walk into Disneyland or Disney World, oh yeah,
• 34:31
  you just my wife and I every time we drive into the parking lot to
• 34:35
  one of those places, we just go let the beating begin, because you
• 34:38
  are you're just being charged like twenty five dollars a park and you're boomboo like
• 34:45
  and you're just and you're in there. But the experience they are offering you
• 34:49
  a very high quality experience for the most part. So that's what you get.
• 34:54
  But you don't get that with a standard movie theater. Like have you
• 34:59
  ever been to the copy Tone? No? I haven't. I need to
• 35:01
  go. So when I went to when I went to Elkapitan, I saw
• 35:04
  Frozen there with my daughters, and they had like the Princess came out and
• 35:07
  did like the pre show, and and there's this stuff. It was like,
• 35:12
  you know, it's Disney everything, and next door there's a Disney store,
• 35:15
  and it's like this whole experience and the price. Honestly, wasn't much
• 35:20
  different than a normal movie theater. So I was like, okay, this
• 35:22
  is this makes sense, this makes sense. Well, I think I think
• 35:25
  the point I was trying to make was that I think if if let's say,
• 35:30
  let's not pick these, let's play like Amazon or something owns a studio
• 35:32
  or owns a theater, you might conceivably see a lowering of the costs of
• 35:38
  like concessions, because traditionally the argument was that concessions is where the movie theater
• 35:44
  makes money. Well, if the movie theater is owned by the studio,
• 35:45
  then they're also making on the on the ticket price. Conceivably they can lower
• 35:52
  the you know, popcorn being seven dollars very small, Maybe it's five dollars
• 35:55
  very small because' and that's still abusive, and that's still abusive. But sure,
• 36:00
  but it's three is two three dollars last Yeah, sure, yeah,
• 36:04
  agreed. So there might be that might be a benefit that comes out of
• 36:07
  it. I don't know. Well, it's a different business model. I
• 36:09
  mean, since you're a business major. So if you look at the business
• 36:13
  models of theaters, it's they get you know, fifty percent or you know,
• 36:16
  forty percent or thirty percent depending on the big how big the movie is
• 36:20
  in the week it's coming out, So you get a small percentage of the
• 36:22
  box office. All their money is made at concessions, but if the studio
• 36:27
  owns the space, then they get one hundred percent of royal of the sales
• 36:30
  of the box office, and they get a little bit off of royalties off
• 36:35
  of the concessions. But where they start making their money is off of ancillary
• 36:39
  products. And so if there's a Warner Brothers style theater chain, then there'd
• 36:45
  be all sorts of Warner Brothers and you could buy the poster of the movie,
• 36:50
  you could buy all the merch for that movie that week, and it's
• 36:52
  it's rotating in and out every week. And it makes sense. That's a
• 36:57
  different business model than what we have currently, and it's gonna change. It's
• 37:01
  just no I mean arc Light. You've been to arc Lights, I'm assuming
• 37:04
  yeah. Yeah. So they have that little store on the side that has
• 37:07
  like, you know, the movie memorabilia stuff and sometimes they would bring out
• 37:10
  stuff, but it's kind of like almost not throw away, but it's not
• 37:15
  themed out like a Warner Brothers or a Disney or even an Amazon theater would
• 37:22
  have. Because and with Amazon's data on people's buying habits. They know what
• 37:28
  products are going to be out there, and they're gonna have you just walk
• 37:30
  in with your app, pick up the thing, and walk out, and
• 37:32
  they charge your Amazon account. I mean that's oh boy. Well, they
• 37:37
  have those stores that they convenient. They have those stores now. They have
• 37:39
  the bookstore now like that the Amazon bookstore that you walk in. Not to
• 37:44
  get sidetracked too much, but I'll just tell you a story about yesterday.
• 37:45
  I was returning something from Amazon and I found out that Amazon has this Coals
• 37:50
  thing where you go into Coals and you just drop off your product. And
• 37:52
  I did that, and then the Coals said thanks for dropping off, here's
• 37:57
  a twenty five percent coupon for Coals and also impress, I actually bought something.
• 38:00
  I was like, I need some sandals, and I just bought them.
• 38:04
  And I was like, this is this is such a brilliant idea because
• 38:07
  it's a great service for me because I don't have to package, you don't
• 38:09
  have to take it to ups I have to worry about that. And gets
• 38:13
  me in their store and I got I got what I wanted. I needed
• 38:15
  some sandals, so I finally got my sandals, and I got a coupon
• 38:19
  for it. So for coals, and it's yeah, for coals, it's
• 38:22
  a little bit, you know, a little bit more hassles and staff one
• 38:25
  person staff to deal with it, and more foot traffic. And Amazon was
• 38:29
  like, we need more, we need real estate, So we'll give you
• 38:32
  traffic. You give us the real estate. It's a deal. It is,
• 38:37
  it's it is fairly fairly brilliant. Now let's talk a little bit about
• 38:43
  production film production. Yeah, what do you think it's gonna look like?
• 38:49
  I mean, you're shooting now, Like, how how is it working?
• 38:52
  You know, shooting with you know this COVID stuff. I mean for one
• 38:55
  man crew are short, like two man crew is one thing, but like
• 38:59
  for narrative TV show, like, I don't know how you move forward right
• 39:02
  right now? At least I really I agree with you. I mean I
• 39:06
  do one man too man things operations I do, and I work with corporate
• 39:10
  clients of including school districts, and it just it's a lot. I mean,
• 39:15
  I don't want to get I don't want to sound too too dangerously political,
• 39:20
  I guess, but it's it's a lot about optics. It's about appearing
• 39:23
  to look like you're doing. I mean, you get to wear the masks,
• 39:27
  you stay here, do your social distancing, you to apply uh,
• 39:30
  you know, apply the hand sanitizers and all that. But it really just
• 39:37
  comes down to we just have to look like we're doing our jobs. And
• 39:40
  unfortunately, with with with when you get to larger narratives, when you have
• 39:45
  lots of groups of you know, hair, makeup and sets and all that,
• 39:49
  and just thirty forty people crews, we'll be right back after a word
• 39:53
  from our sponsor and now back to the show. It's hard to maintain those
• 40:02
  optics. I mean you can. There's there's a whole movement about, you
• 40:06
  know, getting so many people trained in you know, health and safety and
• 40:09
  having that one person on set, And look, is that really gonna make
• 40:14
  that much a difference? Is that you're just kind of it's just a cya
• 40:16
  maneuver. I don't know, you know, I don't, I don't.
• 40:22
  I don't see us really getting into like traditional and it's like, guess was
• 40:27
  look, I don't know if you've you've probably been affected. But I think
• 40:30
  I feel like a lot of the society in general husband had like overhanging depression.
• 40:35
  All this Yeah, you know, it was like like Obama, like
• 40:37
  Michelle Obama came out and she says she has low grade depression, and I
• 40:42
  think it was said everyone, and I think what seth Meyer said, like
• 40:45
  when you go low, I go high. I have high grade depression.
• 40:50
  And it's it's very it's very true. Another there is. I mean,
• 40:52
  I don't know why I do this, but I watched the news every day
• 40:55
  and I just watched thirty minutes of it. It's just I know it's I
• 40:59
  watched Network News and I just watch it just to just to find out what's
• 41:02
  going on, just just to stay in form, because we've got kind of
• 41:07
  got kind of gotta know what's going on. I mean, because I never
• 41:09
  was a person who watched the news like I just I'm like, you know
• 41:13
  what, if it's big enough, I'll hear about it, I'll find it
• 41:16
  on my Facebook feed or someone will tell me about it. And now it's
• 41:21
  just like things are changing so rapidly and craziness is happening on a daily basis
• 41:25
  that you kind of have to stay for. And you know, I sit
• 41:29
  there with with my wife, I just turned I'm like why why, why,
• 41:30
  why why are we doing this? I don't under you know, we're
• 41:34
  we're praying for that last segment, which is like how a puppy saved someone
• 41:38
  with COVID Like it's it's it's like, that's we're praying for that one happy
• 41:44
  moment at the end of the broadcast. Yeah, that's well, it's it's
• 41:50
  the sort of pressing is I think, you know, I'm trying to if
• 41:52
  I try to put together like a small production and I'm not I'm not throwing
• 41:55
  lots of money at it. I'm just gonna, you know, put together
• 41:58
  a little short film or something. I can't really foreseeably do that in the
• 42:01
  next, you know, a few months, just because if I wanted to
• 42:05
  cast it, it would be difficult because there's gonna be half of your cast
• 42:07
  is probably na. Well, I'm not gonna or not even interested in working
• 42:10
  in something right now. They don't want to be in anything, you know,
• 42:14
  and I'm not going to be paying them a huge amounts of money.
• 42:16
  This is more of like a for fun project. How can you It's hard
• 42:20
  to justify it, and it's hard to even even look like you're doing I
• 42:23
  don't know, watching and watching old movies and thinking like huh, I wish
• 42:28
  we could hug people like that. It's a movie because you can't do any
• 42:31
  of that stuff. So I don't know what's going to happen. Love scenes.
• 42:35
  How can you do a love scene? No? How can you do
• 42:37
  a fight like a like a like a like a fight fight close? No,
• 42:42
  you can't do it. I mean it's I know. I mean someone
• 42:46
  like Tyler Perry, who has an infrastructure that makes all the sense in the
• 42:50
  world. He's popping out content like crazy, and he was. He's a
• 42:52
  guy who creates content like he creates like like fifty episodes of a show in
• 42:57
  like four weeks or something like that, Like it flows them amazing. He
• 43:00
  just pumps it out. But he has a unique person because he has an
• 43:06
  entire movie studio at his disposal, which he can quarantine, lock it down,
• 43:09
  and everyone's in a bubble for the time and you could shoot that makes
• 43:13
  sense, But no, we're not set up for that. Like that's never
• 43:16
  been a thing. And that's in the studio world, let alone in the
• 43:20
  indie world. I actually did a whole episode about COVID safety because I went
• 43:24
  for a bike ride and I saw, of course, independent filmmakers on the
• 43:30
  side of the road in my neighborhood shooting a short or some scenes that were
• 43:37
  COVID related because the guys were dressed up in like, you know, has
• 43:39
  Matt suits and stuff, and I'm just and they nobody was when they had
• 43:45
  the has mat suit off but the head was off. They were all clunk
• 43:47
  together in a small group talking, the actors were all talking, and then
• 43:51
  the director in DP were setting something up over there and that nobody had masks
• 43:54
  on, and I'm like this, this is so irresponsible, Like you can't.
• 44:00
  You can't do it, Like I couldn't as a film director put my
• 44:04
  cast or crew in harm's way right now with for a film, like it's
• 44:12
  not worth it right now. It just doesn't make any sense to do something
• 44:16
  like that. I can't good conscience send it further to I mean, look,
• 44:22
  I may not if someone and I'm not saying I disagree, but I'm
• 44:27
  saying, if you, even if you think it's not an issue, you
• 44:30
  can't get other people to do it, you know what I mean. It's
• 44:32
  it's like, so you're you're just unless you find like a bunch of people
• 44:37
  that all agree that, oh we're going to take the risk. But that's
• 44:39
  not fun. That's not the point of making films, right, So it's
• 44:45
  I, yeah, we're all independent film. Independent film is going to have
• 44:50
  a rough time for the next few years, and people are gonna have to
• 44:52
  get very creative. You know, they're gonna if they are going to do
• 44:55
  something, it's gonna be you know, kind of like what I did with
• 44:58
  my last film, which was well last one I couldn't do now is because
• 45:00
  going to Sundance and shooting at Sundance, which is something I can't do right
• 45:05
  now. But it was a small crew. It was a three three man
• 45:07
  crew was me, the DP and the sound guy and then my actors and
• 45:13
  that was it, and I was running around. So you have to you
• 45:15
  have to start getting creative and in the storytelling process on how to do it.
• 45:19
  Like I've been hearing from the studios and people in the studios that they're
• 45:22
  saying when you're writing, no crowds, don't put this in, don't put
• 45:28
  that in anymore, no more love scenes. You don't like, figure out
• 45:31
  another way to do it if we if we're going to continue to so I
• 45:35
  think there's gonna be a COVID era in filmmaking where after we're done with everything
• 45:39
  that's in the can. We're gonna start seeing films and television shows that are
• 45:45
  going to be just like, oh that was in the COVID era. Yeah,
• 45:47
  and it's gonna be like they can't kiss, they can't touch, It's
• 45:51
  like this whole weird thing. But I think that's what's gonna happen. And
• 45:54
  an independent film, I think, you know, I'm waiting for the next
• 45:59
  great COVID era independent film, like the El Mariachi of this era. I
• 46:05
  don't know what that will be. You know, that's gonna like take the
• 46:08
  world by storm, like the paranormal like paranormal activity, perfect COVID movie,
• 46:15
  like perfect COVID movie. Like you that's a problem, no, no,
• 46:19
  no. But if they they've quarantined together, they're fine. Okay, so
• 46:23
  again, but this small crew, very small amount. You know, if
• 46:27
  you quarantine with somebody for two weeks and everyone's all, we're all good,
• 46:30
  all right, great, let's let's go and we're all in a house and
• 46:34
  it's very controlled. And that's the kind of films I think we're going to
• 46:37
  be seeing coming out. Yeah. I I mean I always think about,
• 46:40
  like what what will future generations look back and ask us, you know,
• 46:44
  like, oh you lived through that, are was alike, It's it's gonna
• 46:47
  be an interesting story to tell the grandkids. No, So I want to
• 46:52
  go back real quick to Filmmakerrek you man, because I just I love what
• 46:55
  you do with filmmaker you You've You've created some amazing I've mooted your stuff over
• 47:00
  the years, as far as those little mini documentaries you make over like you
• 47:05
  know a lens that the field of the one eight rule, like and then
• 47:08
  all you know, all this color and the twenty eight frames and twenty four
• 47:12
  frames a second, all this kind of stuff. How why do you do
• 47:16
  it? Because it's a lot of work, dude. It's like I can
• 47:20
  see, it's a ton You've got the little three D image that the three
• 47:23
  D guys coming out setting all that, I mean to create a fifteen minute
• 47:28
  video must take you forever. Well, the last video I did, started
• 47:31
  at the beginning of the COVID thing, was that Fox video, The History
• 47:36
  of William Fox, and ended being like forty three minutes long, and it
• 47:38
  was a ton of research, just trying to go well, I mean,
• 47:42
  why do I why why did? I mean? I think it's all it's
• 47:45
  it's a it's a self expression kind of thing. I really enjoy. I
• 47:50
  just really enjoy exploring the truth of a topic like that and kind of going
• 47:53
  in depth into it because I don't. I feel like no one else is
• 47:57
  really kind of tackling it the way that I do, which is just unrelenting
• 48:02
  depths, just obscene, obscene depth of fifteen minutes on unfocused like or on
• 48:09
  depth of field. I think fifteen minutes of that, and like it was
• 48:13
  like, but it's so entertaining, and like you go into the history of
• 48:15
  it and it's like the lenses and the breakdowns. That's great, and of
• 48:20
  which I will get plenty of YouTube comments that will argue with me and tell
• 48:22
  me I'm completely wrong because I have not done the research. Just like yeah,
• 48:28
  but uh now you know it's also born I think I have. I
• 48:31
  have an Internet form personality where I do like to go on on I unfortunately
• 48:37
  read all the comments and I engage and don't do that. Don't do that.
• 48:40
  Yeah, I mean, it's it's a habit. It's part of who
• 48:45
  who I am. A lot of stuff drives sometimes the ideas for new content
• 48:49
  was based on all that person made a mistake about that. So I want
• 48:52
  to talk about that particular point, you know, but it's it's it's kind
• 48:55
  of in that in that range. That's that's, you know, I want
• 48:59
  to get to the point where I don't work, can no longer read comments
• 49:00
  because there's too many of them. That's that's that's my goal. But until
• 49:05
  then, I'm just I'm stuck arguing about twenty four frames a second every day.
• 49:08
  Yeah, I mean, I mean, and the depth that you do
• 49:12
  in these videos is pretty insane, and the research that goes into them is
• 49:15
  insane. The production of them. And again, you've been doing this for
• 49:20
  years now, over a decade, you know, you've been you've been doing
• 49:22
  because some of these some of those little documentaries, the ones with the little
• 49:27
  the little Dude, I call them the little Dudes. I don't know if
• 49:29
  you haven't specifics, Yeah, the little three d dudes. They go back
• 49:31
  sevent eight years. Yeah, that about eight years. That's when they start
• 49:35
  doing the videos. Because we were when we first started, filmmaker Que was
• 49:37
  more of an aggregator site, a blog site, and we do, like
• 49:42
  what all the other bloggers do is just go out and try to find articles
• 49:45
  and post them together and Just the funny thing is, if you do that
• 49:49
  long enough, you kind of get a very good sense of what the blog
• 49:52
  is sphere looks like, and you get kind of discussed by like I've seen
• 49:54
  the same thing over again. We'll be right back after a wor from our
• 50:00
  sponsor and now back to the show. So decide at that point, like
• 50:07
  I should start making our own stuff instead of relying on to other people to
• 50:10
  make stuff. So that's when the videos started happenings. And the first one
• 50:14
  was like Dolly Zoom when I first explored that topic. But yeah, but
• 50:20
  I think I think what it is is I've talked to some people about this,
• 50:24
  but I feel like filmmakers have like all like eighty percent of filmmakers have
• 50:30
  an expiration date of like say, I wouldn't say like three or four years.
• 50:32
  It's like, I think three or four years it takes to learn everything
• 50:37
  about filmmaking and it's still that fun like exciting, Oh I could learn about
• 50:40
  this camera, this new camera's coming out. So about three or four years
• 50:43
  you absorb all this information and then after that you either if you love it,
• 50:47
  you continue on you and you pursue like story and you pursue the creation
• 50:52
  of actual and you just said a product. You know, you get over
• 50:57
  the oh this is exciting word learning thing, and then the other segment of
• 51:01
  the population just loses interest and they disappear. So I feel like a lot
• 51:06
  of what the growth and the Internet is capturing that first like three or four
• 51:10
  years of people that are just starting to learn this stuff. And Uh,
• 51:15
  what's scary about that is there's so much marketing. There's so much like the
• 51:21
  manufacturers are shoving down marketing informations down your throat, like like like I'm I'm
• 51:27
  gonna pick on them. Black Magic just came. You were going to say,
• 51:31
  well, there's twelfth K camera and they're saying it's revolutionary. It doesn't
• 51:35
  have a Bayer system, And I'm sitting back your thinking the Beyer system is
• 51:38
  a good thing. People. There's people online saying the Beyer system sucks now
• 51:43
  because this new marketing is coming down and slapping them with this new we got
• 51:46
  this new system of camera. So I don't know where I'm going with all
• 51:51
  of them. Well, I mean, but it started with Red. Red
• 51:53
  was the one that first came out with four K and just like exploded.
• 51:57
  I remember at an AD when it was a box. It was a box,
• 52:02
  and they're like, just give us ten thousand dollars and you will get
• 52:06
  a camera one day. And like that was insane and they sold, like
• 52:10
  whenever, five hundred cameras that during an av at that time. And they
• 52:15
  changed the game. Red changed the game, love him or hate him.
• 52:17
  They changed the game. Arie took a while to catch up, and now
• 52:21
  people argue all the time, Ari's better than Red, Sony's better than Arie,
• 52:25
  and black Magic is now. You know, black Magic was like another
• 52:29
  redheaded stepchild for a long time, and now they've kind of come into their
• 52:31
  own as a real player in the camera game, you know. And I've
• 52:36
  always said personal, I'm a big I love black Magic. I've had I've
• 52:39
  shot black Magic. I shot both my features on him, and I love
• 52:45
  black Magic cameras and Da Vinci I edit Unresolved, and you know, I
• 52:47
  drank the kool aid because I feel because I feel that they have the best
• 52:51
  bang for the buck. I think out of all the cinematic cameras, I
• 52:55
  think they have the best bang for the buck. And I did some tests
• 52:59
  once and I shot an Airy down the middle, an Aery Alexa down the
• 53:01
  middle and I shot the four point six K black Magic down the middle,
• 53:07
  and I put them up, and I brought in some filmmakers and some dps.
• 53:12
  I'm like, which is which? And none of the ten times they
• 53:15
  can they cannot tell the difference because the black Magic image it lit the same,
• 53:20
  everything was the same, SAM lenses and everything. The image is equivalent.
• 53:24
  It's not you can. And I know a lot of people are going
• 53:27
  to be like, no, what he was saying, I'm like, no,
• 53:29
  listen, calm the hell down. Where the cost? The reason why
• 53:34
  the Alexa costs so much more is when you start going three or four stops,
• 53:37
  under five stops, it falls apart. The black Magic falls apart.
• 53:42
  But if you shoot it like you're supposed to shoot it, it's pretty damn
• 53:46
  good. And the cost versus like eighty eighty thousand versus this a really easy
• 53:52
  workflow versus a fairly intense workflow in post. All of all of that just
• 54:00
  got to kind of look and now the twelveth K, what does how much
• 54:01
  it costs? Ten thousand? Ten thousand dollars? Yeah, I I you
• 54:05
  know, I'm not good. I'm fine with I have a four point six
• 54:07
  I'm good. It's yeah, like it's an interesting camera. The thing is,
• 54:10
  I've seen a lot of people jump on board with it, and it's
• 54:14
  just I don't feel like the existence of a twelve K camera does not invalidate
• 54:20
  your four point six, right, you know, But it feels like a
• 54:23
  lot of people are are thinking that and and it's marketing. It's not.
• 54:28
  And look, Grant Petty's he's he did a good job on his video,
• 54:30
  but I think it's the it's the next layer. It's the people that talk
• 54:34
  about what he said that are kind of overhyping it. And uh, that's
• 54:39
  that's what That's what bugs me about kind of marketing. And that's kind of
• 54:43
  what I've trying to do with my videos, a little business, trying to
• 54:45
  get down to the fundamentals, get down to the understanding of how what does
• 54:49
  what does it mean when they say Bayer system, Bayer pattern, you know,
• 54:53
  uh, what does that mean? And then kind of cut through some
• 54:55
  of that marketing hype that you're just constantly inundated with. And that's going back
• 55:00
  That's kind of what I'm trying to do with some of these videos. So
• 55:04
  like, yeah, when Black when Black Magic came out with the four K,
• 55:07
  the little Mini Pocket four K. Then that everybody was like, oh
• 55:09
  my god, oh my god, my god, we got it's a Pocket
• 55:10
  four K. And then like five months la, four months later, the
• 55:15
  sixth K comes out and I'm like, are you kidding me? Guys?
• 55:17
  Are you? Are you ev and kidding me? Really? Yeah? Like
• 55:21
  can you can you stop it? CanYa? Can you just not? And
• 55:24
  I know the black Magic guys. I've worked with black Magic. I yell
• 55:28
  at him all the time. I'll go like, dude, dude, seriously,
• 55:30
  man, like, give us a year, give us like some time
• 55:32
  to like enjoy what we have, Like I'll give you a better one.
• 55:36
  I have the Adam Mini, which I bought like earlier, well I think
• 55:39
  earlier this year. They came with an Adam Mini Pro, which I bought
• 55:43
  because I like because I need that multicam view, which is what it added
• 55:45
  to the system. And then a month later, like the week I got
• 55:50
  it, after being on back order for a month, they announced the Adam
• 55:52
  Mini Pro ISO, which can record all all your camera streams at the same
• 55:57
  time. So it's like literally a month after I got this thing, a
• 56:00
  brand new one came out and I'm looking at it like, ah, that's
• 56:04
  a great feature to have. Do I need it? Not really, but
• 56:07
  man, I wish I had that option. That's the thing is that you
• 56:10
  have to get used to the fact, like, hey, you know what
• 56:13
  I can I need to stop buying technology and make stuff with the stuff I
• 56:17
  have had purchased. That's that's what I need to do. Well, I
• 56:22
  think, and I think a lot of filmmakers use technology as an excuse not
• 56:25
  to actually get into the arena. Well, yeah, that's so true.
• 56:30
  I mean, so many filmmakers just like, oh, I can't shoot it
• 56:31
  because I need this camera. Oh I can't shoot it because I need that
• 56:36
  camera. What I would I argue when people argue with me about twenty four
• 56:38
  frames a second and people say that they want a high frame rate movies,
• 56:44
  I always say, go out there and shoot them yourself, like you be
• 56:46
  the change you you you go out And then every single time they always tell
• 56:52
  me I can't because I don't have any of this. I don't have any
• 56:53
  equipment, I don't have any castrower. So it's always it's always an excuse
• 57:00
  to get out of making something. Well listen, man, I mean I've
• 57:05
  been I've been a filmmaker for twenty odd twenty five years plus, and I
• 57:09
  understand the excuse demon because it's fear. We're fearful of putting ourselves out there,
• 57:19
  We're fearful of creating art and oh my god, no one's gonna like
• 57:22
  it, the comments, holy cow, all of that kind of stuff,
• 57:27
  and and not to mention the pressure of if it's you know, the cost
• 57:30
  and people you're working with, and can I really do it and all of
• 57:35
  the there's so many doubts and fears that we as filmmakers have that we find
• 57:39
  whatever excuse. Look, the same thing happens with screenwriters that's like, oh,
• 57:43
  I'll write tomorrow, or it's it's like there's fear. As an artist
• 57:46
  in general, there's always fear, and gear is the one of the easiest
• 57:52
  things you can say, like oh I don't have this camera, I don't
• 57:55
  have that camera, or I don't have this lighting. Oh I need that
• 57:59
  location, or I can't make this script without three million, like I can't.
• 58:02
  I just I can't not to say I'm not gonna go write a script
• 58:07
  that can make for ten thousand, but this script I can't make, So
• 58:09
  I'm going to just sit around for three years chasing money for it, and
• 58:14
  that makes me feel like I'm a filmmaker. But you're really not a filmmaker.
• 58:16
  You're just a guy or a girl chasing money that will more unlikely never
• 58:22
  happen. And I played that game for twenty years. Twenty years I played
• 58:29
  that game. So I turned forty and I was attached to another big project
• 58:32
  with a big producer and screenwriter, and the project fell apart again, and
• 58:38
  I said, I'm forty, I can't do this anymore. So thirty days
• 58:44
  later, I was shooting my first feature with a black Magic send. I'm
• 58:46
  a two point five K Why because I had it and I didn't even hire
• 58:52
  a DP. I lit the damn thing myself and I never really dpted before.
• 58:55
  I was a callerist for ten years, so I felt that I could
• 58:59
  get it. I just gave me it down the middle. I'll fix in
• 59:00
  a post and I did. You're inspiring me, Alex, But I did.
• 59:07
  But that's this story. But the thing is that I didn't. I
• 59:09
  made it because I was already in with indie film hustle at that time,
• 59:13
  so I felt very comfortable for whatever it was, something psychological, but I
• 59:19
  just felt, oh, I have indie film husse I can go back to
• 59:22
  like I have my I have my tribe. So if it doesn't work out,
• 59:24
  no big deal, because I don't know about you. But in my
• 59:29
  mind when I made my first feature, it was going to be Reservoir Dogs.
• 59:30
  I mean, I don't know about you, but it was gonna be
• 59:32
  Reservoir Dogs. It was gonna be Mariagi, it was gonna be Clerks,
• 59:36
  it was going to be one of these big independent films that explode out of
• 59:39
  the gate. So that pressure that I put on myself stifled me for twenty
• 59:45
  years. And of course I was fearful, and of course I was chasing
• 59:46
  every other dream and every other little project and everything else because I was scared
• 59:51
  to actually go do it. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 59:55
  sponsor, and now back to the show. Whereas when I finally just said,
• 1:00:05
  you know what, screw it, I'm gonna just go out and shoot
• 1:00:07
  it. Thirty days later, we shot with a scriptment which was, you
• 1:00:09
  know, eight page outline with a bunch of stand up comics and improvisers,
• 1:00:15
  and we shot around our shot at all their apartments and around LA and we
• 1:00:20
  shot the whole damn thing in eight days, I went up to the Hollywood
• 1:00:22
  Sign and stole it. Which, by the way, anyone wanting to shoot
• 1:00:27
  on the Hollywood Sign, this is this is a little tip if you just
• 1:00:30
  want to, because if you want to get permits and stuff, it becomes
• 1:00:31
  a pain in the ass. But oh yeah. So I was like,
• 1:00:35
  I'm just gonna steal it, and like halfway and we were really so I
• 1:00:37
  was scared. I'm like, oh my god, what did we get to
• 1:00:39
  this? The Hollywood Sign? Oh my god. Halfway up while I'm lugging
• 1:00:43
  the gear up with my actress. My actress is walking in front of me
• 1:00:45
  and I've got all this gear, I'm lugging up, and I said,
• 1:00:50
  no one's coming, No one cares. No one kid Like, if someone
• 1:00:57
  called them, hey, someone's illegally shooting, by the they're not helicoptering somebody
• 1:01:01
  in. By the time they get up there, I'm done with my shot.
• 1:01:06
  So I just realized, I'm like, okay, fine, I don't
• 1:01:08
  I could just shoot, and we shot and it was all these cool images
• 1:01:12
  and stuff that we got up there. But I didn't give my mind a
• 1:01:15
  moment to stop itself because it was afraid and I just did it and I
• 1:01:20
  was done, and I got it out there and and it sold to Hulu
• 1:01:23
  and we sold internationally and we did very well with it. And it was
• 1:01:28
  cost like five grand to make and it was great, But that was I
• 1:01:31
  had to It took me twenty years to get there because of the fear.
• 1:01:36
  And I think gear was one of the all band I need a red,
• 1:01:38
  I can't, I need, I need a red. I can't I need
• 1:01:45
  I need, I need a techno. How can I not shoot without a
• 1:01:46
  techno? I mean, have you ever shot? Have you ever shot with
• 1:01:50
  a techno? By the way, no, I have seen him, but
• 1:01:52
  I never touched. I was shooting a music video and I had a techno
• 1:01:54
  the entire day, first time I ever had one. Oh my god,
• 1:01:58
  It's so amazing. Yeah, it's just it lived on the tech all day,
• 1:02:02
  just like I just like, I can't, I can't. I can't
• 1:02:06
  shoot without a Mini Techo everywhere I go. It was so amazing to have
• 1:02:10
  that thing. I was just like, oh, I get why James Cameron
• 1:02:14
  has like twenty of these on the set just in case. But but anyway,
• 1:02:21
  so that's the that's the fear thing. So I think as we're kind
• 1:02:25
  of talking about gear fear, fear of gear, but I think it's also
• 1:02:29
  the fear of actually materializing your idea. Because as long as it's an idea
• 1:02:32
  in your head, it's brilliant, it's perfect. You know, the movie
• 1:02:36
  in your head is is Oscar winning. You put it on paper and then
• 1:02:39
  you start realizing, oh crap, it's maybe it's not that good, and
• 1:02:44
  then you start shooting, oh maybe yeah, or you see it, Oh
• 1:02:47
  crap, this isn't really as good as I thought, what's gonna be?
• 1:02:52
  It's the fear. No, it's scary, man, it's scary being a
• 1:02:54
  filmmaker and doing all that. But you know, anyone listening out there,
• 1:02:59
  I hope they don't get caught up that because tomorrow you'll wake up and you'll
• 1:03:00
  be, you know, seventy, and you'll be still chasing that that that
• 1:03:05
  that Hollywood dream that Hollywood sells you. That is bogus. It's the sizzle.
• 1:03:07
  There's no steak behind it, and you kind of just gotta go out
• 1:03:10
  and do it. Like my second film, I shot with the pocket camera
• 1:03:14
  ten EIGHTYP, the first generation pocket camera. I shot the whole movie on
• 1:03:17
  that. People thought where I was crazy. That was crazy to shoot a
• 1:03:21
  whole film on that. I'm like, no, I love the look of
• 1:03:22
  it. It looks great. And it was a ten ADP camera right,
• 1:03:25
  blew it up to two K for for my DCP, screened it at the
• 1:03:30
  Chinese Theater. It's one of the best things I've ever shot in my life.
• 1:03:32
  It was beautiful least shots. I was like, I can't I was.
• 1:03:37
  I was scared to death because on my my, my fifty five inch
• 1:03:40
  you know, a color grading monitor, it looked great. I'm like,
• 1:03:43
  yeah, but this is a projection and like, I don't know. And
• 1:03:45
  the first time I saw it was at the Chinese Theater projected theatrically, I
• 1:03:49
  was like, holy cow, it holds like I thought it was gonna get
• 1:03:52
  pigs like it held so beautifully. So I don't want to hear excuses from
• 1:03:55
  people like oh, this and that, and if you want to go to
• 1:03:58
  Tangerine with the iPhone and just worry about your story, people will forgive the
• 1:04:03
  image quality and don't get caught up in like you're dude, you're not deacons.
• 1:04:09
  Like you're not deacons anyone listening. You're not Roger Deacons. You're not
• 1:04:14
  going to make something look like Roger Deacons. I'm sorry, it's because there's
• 1:04:16
  one Roger Deacons. You're not gonna be Fincher, You're not gonna be Nolan,
• 1:04:20
  You're not going to be Spielberg, because that's what they do, and
• 1:04:24
  it took them years of not decades, to get to where they are.
• 1:04:28
  Be yourself and be the best version of yourself that you can be, and
• 1:04:30
  that's all we could ever do as a filmmaker. That's a fantastic message.
• 1:04:33
  Now, Deacons doesn't work alone. He's got you know, script or set
• 1:04:39
  dressers. He's got you know, location scouts and all the basically all the
• 1:04:43
  all the resources at his exposal exposed exposal. Yeah, I was gonna say
• 1:04:47
  that this might sound narcissistic, but if if, if it was between me
• 1:04:53
  and Sebe and Spielberg and s Fiel Spielberg was given like fifteen minutes to work
• 1:04:57
  a scene and shoot it, and I was given eight hours to shoot the
• 1:05:00
  scene, and I had the same people that Steven Spielberg has. I think
• 1:05:05
  I would probably hold up at least I would. I wouldn't I wouldn't embarrass
• 1:05:10
  myself. I think you get something competent up there. Yeah, it'd be
• 1:05:14
  something there. Yeah, I agree, I agree. I mean, I
• 1:05:15
  know what you're saying. You're not saying that you're Steven Spielberg, nor that
• 1:05:18
  you can compete at that level because he's Steven Spielberg. No one can't exactly.
• 1:05:24
  But if you use the same crew, the same resources, chances are
• 1:05:27
  your stuff is going to look It would be more it be Steven Spielberg,
• 1:05:31
  but it would still be okay. I mean it's especially given a time time
• 1:05:35
  difference that I had. If I had a lot more time than Steven Spielberg,
• 1:05:39
  I might pull off something, you know, something that looks really good.
• 1:05:43
  Like you know, something that looks really good. And then before before
• 1:05:46
  we go, man, I gotta ask you cats. Oh okay, cats,
• 1:05:50
  I mean, come on, let's let's yeah, let's talk about cats
• 1:05:54
  for a second, because you wrote it. You did a video about that
• 1:05:57
  you like cats, and I've about cats publicly many times. Okay, And
• 1:06:01
  I generally don't like to bash other filmmakers on the show, and I'm not
• 1:06:05
  bashing the filmmaker. That something happened. In my opinion, I don't know
• 1:06:10
  what it was, because it was such a perfect storm that you will never
• 1:06:16
  see in your lifetime again, because you had Spielberg producing, you had an
• 1:06:21
  Oscar winner directing it, you had based on one of the biggest Broadway shows
• 1:06:27
  of all time with the biggest music stars of all time. Some Oscar like
• 1:06:30
  were throwing Oscar winners around like it was water on that set to and everyone
• 1:06:36
  drank the kool aid, like everyone said, this is going to be huge.
• 1:06:43
  This is a great idea that doesn't happen. You know, you get
• 1:06:47
  the room every once in a while, like you'll get the room, You'll
• 1:06:50
  get a show Girls, you'll get a Trolls too, You'll get something that's
• 1:06:55
  so bad that it transcends being good. I'm still not at the point where
• 1:07:00
  Cats transcends to being good. I got through twenty minutes of it and I
• 1:07:03
  just said, oh my god, this is so bad. I can't keep
• 1:07:08
  going. Maybe with a group of people I can watch it again, but
• 1:07:11
  I'm the rum I could watch again and again, but I can't watch Cats.
• 1:07:15
  Well. I think with Cats, what I think what's to me is
• 1:07:17
  I enjoyed. I really liked basically, the garishness of it is part of
• 1:07:23
  it. The first twint Missus when he has when he had a Jenny any
• 1:07:26
  dots sequence when you have the kids and the cockroaches, Oh, that is
• 1:07:30
  a bridge too far. That's I mean, that's what I think. That's
• 1:07:32
  the worst part of the movie. I get it gets better, It gets
• 1:07:35
  better, I guess totally. It is totally like once you get past that,
• 1:07:41
  once you get past the dancing cock roaches, but the children faces,
• 1:07:45
  child's faces. But that's the thing I want. I just want to impress
• 1:07:48
  upon everyone listening is that this was a universal movie with Spielberg producing it,
• 1:07:57
  Like, with one hundred million dollars behind it. This doesn't happen. These
• 1:08:02
  studios don't take risks like this. But on pick but on paper, this
• 1:08:09
  was a sure hit, fire hit like this was a hit on paper.
• 1:08:13
  It had it checked every single box off. The one thing it did not
• 1:08:16
  check off was the cat anuses that were in it and the unfinished hands and
• 1:08:25
  visual effects that they released it. It was a god i't even notice the
• 1:08:29
  hands part. But I think what I what I appreciate was it was cats
• 1:08:32
  though is it? It does offer It adds something to the musical genre that
• 1:08:36
  has been missing in a long for a long time, and that's actually having
• 1:08:42
  some people involved that are and again I'm looking past the effects, which I
• 1:08:45
  think I just kind of got. It's like a hot tub, you kind
• 1:08:47
  of get used to it after a while. Immediately that was great. It's
• 1:08:50
  a great analogy like after what's it's really hot when you get in, but
• 1:08:55
  after a while, just like it just waves over the ocean. But yeah,
• 1:08:59
  I think and I think you got like all these a lot of the
• 1:09:01
  role a lot of the more major roles of and again, like I got
• 1:09:04
  this is an admission that I am a big Cats fan before the movie came
• 1:09:09
  out, so I know I knew the there's not a story, it's it's
• 1:09:13
  a collection of songs. It's really what it is. It's it's based on
• 1:09:15
  poems by DS Elliott, So I I mean, I have that background of
• 1:09:19
  it, so I understand. I knew the characterizations. But you have a
• 1:09:24
  lot of people that are that are in the musical genre that don't because the
• 1:09:27
  musical genre for a long time has been plagued by the fact that you have
• 1:09:30
  to have the paper. The paper has to say, you know, we
• 1:09:32
  have this star and it's gonna bring this much box off this star, this
• 1:09:34
  star. And the problem with you know that is Johnny Depp, for example,
• 1:09:39
  when Sweeney Todd, he's not really a good singer, not for that
• 1:09:43
  particular role. That's the problem. So what Cats did, which was kind
• 1:09:47
  of unique, was that they got a lot of people in the leads that
• 1:09:51
  aren't household names, that are that are from like the Royal Ballet Company.
• 1:09:58
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:10:05
  the show, which was like, wow, we're actually bringing in people that
• 1:10:11
  are good artists. Now we covered them, but in those sets brought in
• 1:10:17
  some good, some good. If you actually, if you were to only
• 1:10:20
  watch one segment and not and just trying to ignore the rest of it,
• 1:10:24
  if you watch the skimball shanks, the railway cat and this is this is
• 1:10:27
  this is not absurd. Now if you watch just that segment and you can
• 1:10:33
  it's it's actually very good, because it's probably the best segment in the entire
• 1:10:36
  film. It's not it's not like disturbing, there's no children on cockroaches,
• 1:10:42
  but it's actually actually see some very very high level dancing on display. It's
• 1:10:46
  something you don't actually see in movies. So I'll give I'll give the filmmaker
• 1:10:50
  credit for that. It's It's lit beautifully. The dancing is great, the
• 1:10:57
  singing is fantastic. The songs are the song they're great. You know what
• 1:11:01
  A Genna's Little Cat, whatever the hell that thing is called. I don't
• 1:11:04
  vangelical Cat. The first eight minutes of the movie is just one long ass
• 1:11:10
  song. And my wife looked at me. She's like, is this gonna
• 1:11:12
  stop anytime soon? I'm like, no, it's not. It's not.
• 1:11:15
  And the best review I've ever heard for a movie was for Cats, and
• 1:11:21
  it's one sentences just so perfect. Cats is the worst thing that happened to
• 1:11:27
  cats since Dogs. It's just absolutely But it's been bashed enough in the press.
• 1:11:33
  But I just wanted to hear your point of view, So I appreciate
• 1:11:36
  that anyone out there please watch Cats. Let's know what you think below.
• 1:11:44
  It helps if you'd go into it, maybe a little. Oh no,
• 1:11:47
  I'm halfway like in those first twenty minutes, I'm like, man, if
• 1:11:50
  I don't, I don't drink, ground will smoke. I've never done drugs,
• 1:11:53
  but I'm like, if I was high, this would be much better,
• 1:11:59
  Like I could if you're if you're tripping again, I have never tripped,
• 1:12:02
  but if if I could only imagine, like if I was tripping this,
• 1:12:05
  this movie would blow my mind. It is. It is one of
• 1:12:11
  those in the mood movies. Again. The thing is, I'm also a
• 1:12:15
  huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who's uh obviously wrote cats. But Andrew
• 1:12:18
  low Webber in his earlier years, you have to realize the guy was there
• 1:12:25
  was some weird stuff he put out. Really weird is in that category in
• 1:12:30
  that cat agory. Hey, I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions to
• 1:12:35
  ask all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break
• 1:12:40
  into the business today. Oh my lord, h I could be very,
• 1:12:45
  very facetious and say quit, just just run away. Just run away,
• 1:12:49
  because if you follow that advice, then you probably made a good decision.
• 1:12:54
  If you said no, John, you're an idiot. I don't want to
• 1:12:56
  listen to you, and you probably have the right mindset for sticking it out
• 1:13:00
  in this business because it is it is hard, I think, but it
• 1:13:03
  would be less facetious, I think is to to really understand what you're trying
• 1:13:06
  to put out there. I think a lot of people get so so narrow,
• 1:13:12
  so they put the blinders on they think about their project, their movie,
• 1:13:15
  and they think it's it is so perfect for everybody, and everyone will
• 1:13:17
  love my movie because I'm the one that made it. And actually had somebody
• 1:13:20
  send me a question the other day. He asked me, what does what
• 1:13:24
  do they mean by target audience? And I had to ask myself, like,
• 1:13:27
  how how do you not understand what your targeting? So I just kind
• 1:13:30
  of went through went through with him, was like, who do is your
• 1:13:32
  movie appeal to? Who do you think would want to see your movie?
• 1:13:36
  And I think that's if any advice, maybe it's just to understand not only
• 1:13:41
  like what what are you making your movie? Uh necessarily for who you're making
• 1:13:45
  the movie, but or how how does it the how does it fit in
• 1:13:47
  the larger world? You know? And uh and and also realized too that
• 1:13:53
  you don't necessarily make movies for uh, for the entire world sometimes a lot
• 1:13:57
  of times you make a movie for yourself first, but also realize that fact
• 1:14:00
  that you know, try to tie that into I mean, I try that
• 1:14:04
  and make make the movie for yourself, but also realize that how how does
• 1:14:09
  that how to appeal to other people? If that makes sense, it makes
• 1:14:15
  understand who your audience is basically and and try to create something for that audience
• 1:14:19
  is a good piece of advice. Yeah, And I think again, the
• 1:14:23
  audience could be you too. I mean, you are in the audience.
• 1:14:26
  You are you are the first audience. So if it doesn't appeal to you,
• 1:14:29
  then obviously it's not. I mean, if it doesn't appeal to you're
• 1:14:31
  gonna have troubles appealing it to somebody else. And and three of your favorite
• 1:14:35
  films of all time? Oh, that's Doctor Strangelove is probably one of my
• 1:14:40
  favorites of all time. I'm not gonna go cats by what you may think.
• 1:14:45
  It's not even near top ten. I'm trying to think of the Doctor
• 1:14:49
  Strangelove is absolutely my favorite. Oh I love something like it hot. Yeah,
• 1:14:55
  I just like I was to pick another one that it's kind of a
• 1:14:59
  more of a smaller one. This is kind of what really inspired me to
• 1:15:01
  be a filmmaker. Is a movie called The Big Cahuna. Yeah, I
• 1:15:04
  remember I remember this. Kevin Spacey yep, Any de Vito and the guy
• 1:15:09
  that played the one of the vampires on Twilight. We all went on to
• 1:15:13
  what's name you know he's talking about? Yeah, and it's it's a it's
• 1:15:15
  a it's a great little movie from the night late nineties. It's about these
• 1:15:19
  three salesmen that get together and they're trying to land the big Ahuna, and
• 1:15:25
  it's entirely driven by conversation and entirely place. It takes place in a single
• 1:15:29
  room, and it is some of the best performances I've ever seen on film.
• 1:15:33
  So that's that's I think that's one of my favorites. Very cool.
• 1:15:36
  I'm not that out there now. Where and where can people find you?
• 1:15:41
  Oh uh, filmmaker iq dot com I need to I'm I am reading the
• 1:15:45
  website eventually, It's it's a long process. But if you really want to
• 1:15:49
  find me YouTube dot com, slash, I think filmmaker i q is just
• 1:15:53
  look up filmmaker iq. You can can chase me around on Facebook. I
• 1:15:57
  mean I post more like person stuff on Facebook. But between those two that's
• 1:16:01
  really where you're going to see most of my face. And obviously on this
• 1:16:04
  podcast, John, I really appreciate it you coming on the show man.
• 1:16:10
  We could talk for probably another two three hours just keeping just geeking out alone
• 1:16:14
  on cats. But but I really appreciate what you do, man, and
• 1:16:19
  all the education you put out there for filmmakers out there, So thank you
• 1:16:23
  for doing what you do. My friend, Oh, thank you for having
• 1:16:26
  me. I want to thank John for coming on the show and dropping his
• 1:16:30
  filmmaker IQ on the Tribe today. Thank you so so much. John.
• 1:16:34
  If you want to get links to anything we spoke about it in this episode,
• 1:16:36
  head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford Slash
• 1:16:41
  three twenty three. Thank you so much for listening. Guys, As always,
• 1:16:45
  keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks
• 1:16:47
  for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.