Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 426: Breaking the Rules: Crafting Powerful Films Without Hollywood Money with Shawn Whitney

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BPS 426: Breaking the Rules: Crafting Powerful Films Without Hollywood Money with Shawn Whitney · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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