Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 479: How to Make an Indie Film When You Have NO Money with Bob Woolsey and Darren Borrowman

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BPS 479: How to Make an Indie Film When You Have NO Money with Bob Woolsey and Darren Borrowman · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four seventy nine.
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  Speaker 1: Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by?
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  Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
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  Speaker 3: Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: Hey, everyone, Thanksgiving for joining me for another episode. Join
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  Speaker 4: me today is Bob Woosley and Darren Barman. They have
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: been collaborated through their company, Bartime Productions for nearly a
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: decade now. They are now launching Bartime's first feature film,
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Do Something with Your Life, on the self distribution platform
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: VHX dot com. You can actually go buy or rent
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: the film, along with a plethora of bonus content, including
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: the ninety minute Anatomy of a Movie that breaks down
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: the entire process of actually producing this first feature film
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: on a shoestring budget. They're hailing from Canada. Bob and Darren,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: how are you?
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  Speaker 5: Oh? Hello there, very good, very today.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Good thing. You know. I've actually been to Canada a
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: few times. I was in the kitchener area.
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: Oh, okay, what are you doing in Kitchener.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: The first times I went up there, I was training
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: with a kung fu grand master.
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: Oh wow, as you do in Kitchener.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, as anybody does. You know, it's a legendary story
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: of an American boy who travels to Canada to train
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: with a Chinese grand master. And the other times we're
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: all just for vacation purposes.
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: Right on, right on, but always over on the on
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: the eastern side of the country. You haven't been to Vancouver.
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: Yet, No, I have not. Unfortunately, Well come on over. Yeah,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: I know, I really should. I really should get more
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: to Western Canada.
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you should get out here. And you know,
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: I remember on your episode with Peter Marshall he was
• 2:59
  Speaker 6: also kind of trying to get you out here. So
• 3:01
  Speaker 6: anytime you want to go to Vancouver, you've got people
• 3:03
  Speaker 6: to meet up with, that's for sure.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Well, you know what's funny about Peter, he's actually moving
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: to China.
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: He's in China now.
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we we know, we know Peter, and we've
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: worked with Peter quite a lot, and uh yeah, he's uh,
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: he's a great guy. I was actually just listening to
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: the episode that you did with him recently, and uh
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: uh I love Peter.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: He's a he's a phenomenal guy, a very good uh
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: film teacher as well. Yeah, everything he all, his advice
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: is always solid.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's kind of been I think a bit of
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: a mentor, uh for us, because we're kind of in
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: the same same circles and we've worked with him quite
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: a bit. So he's uh all of He's just a
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: wealth of knowledge. Yeah.
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Peter's awesome.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's amazing too. You know how even you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: we're in two different countries right now, just you know
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  Speaker 4: how small the the film network is, you know it
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: is globally. You know, it seems like everybody always knows
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: somebody else.
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: That's true, totally totally true. Yeah, and it just get smaller.
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  Speaker 4: I think it's it's true, it is, you know, for
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: some reason, I have a lot of friends in England
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: who've never met each other, but I'm always like introducing
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: them and they're just like on the next town over,
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: even though I'm like, you know, six thousand miles away
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: from them.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, I mean it's great that people that you
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: do these podcasts and things, and I think really knit
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: that network together, right, So this is awesome.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: Oh well, you know, thank you and I try my best. So,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: you know, speaking of you know, I want to get
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: to talking about you guys. You know, you guys have
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: been working together for nearly a decade, you know, So
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: how did you guys end up, you know, sort of
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: meeting and you know, how did you guys start collaborating?
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: How did that all start?
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  Speaker 5: Well, we both went through the Vancouver Film School, but
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: at separate times. I went through the film production program
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: and finished up in about the middle of two thousand
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: and six, I guess, and Bob, you had already finished
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: up your program, a writing program.
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I taken the right program there and nin finished
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: in two thousand and five. And then we kind of
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: found each other in a weird way. Darren, who also
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: does some acting and went to theater school before coming
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: to film school, came and tried out for this sketch
• 5:13
  Speaker 6: comedy group that I was running, and so Darren got
• 5:17
  Speaker 6: into the group and we were working together. He was
• 5:19
  Speaker 6: an actor and I was producing some shows, some live
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: comedy shows, and then there was a day where he
• 5:23
  Speaker 6: started talking about directing this music video, and then I
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: started talking about some writing that I had, and then
• 5:28
  Speaker 6: we you know, sort of sparked from there and eventually
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: ended up culminating and Do Something with Your Life, which
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: which we just launched, you know.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: And by the way, I actually saw that and that
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: was actually a very well done job by both of you,
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: which I want to get to it in just a
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: little bit, you know, as I was reading your bio.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: You know, in twenty ten, you guys made a web
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: series called Bob and Andrew, which was nominated for a
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  Speaker 4: Leo Award. So, you know, what was the impetus to
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: create a web series.
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: I my writing partner, Andrew and I who the shows
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: named after appropriately, We had been writing a bunch of
• 6:04
  Speaker 6: comedy together and we just he also he wrote do
• 6:08
  Speaker 6: Something with Your Life, I produced. I didn't. I didn't
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: write that one, but we were writing together, and I
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: had been going through some life events. I had recently
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: sort of come out as gay, and I want to
• 6:18
  Speaker 6: kind of work through that, and and so the whole
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: idea behind the web series was just kind of like
• 6:23
  Speaker 6: putting down on paper all of the strange things that
• 6:26
  Speaker 6: happened when you go through one of those big life
• 6:28
  Speaker 6: events and you sort of, you know, you look back
• 6:30
  Speaker 6: on it as a bit of an observer and you
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: think that was strange and like why couldn't I get
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: to that place sooner? And you know, you just examine
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: that whole thing. So the idea behind that web series
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: was just to try and you know, make fun of
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  Speaker 6: all the stupid stuff that you go through during that
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: time in your life. And so Darren obviously as the
• 6:47
  Speaker 6: director of Note that I know, directed the series for me.
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  Speaker 6: So yeah, that was a that was a great time.
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  Speaker 6: And the Leo Award was really cool. The Lee Awards
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: or sort of the Western Canada Film Awards, So that
• 6:59
  Speaker 6: was a fun time, even though we didn't get a
• 7:01
  Speaker 6: chance to win. But yeah, that was kind of the
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: first thing that kind of put us on the map
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  Speaker 6: in the community here in Vancouver.
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: The show also picked up a couple of the LA
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  Speaker 5: Webfest Awards. Yeah, we sent both seasons one and two
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  Speaker 5: to the LA Webfest and it sort of got celebrated
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: there as well, So that was kind of cool.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Now is that still online for anyone to watch?
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, if you go to YouTube and just search Bob
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: and Andrew web series, I think are the direct link
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: is YouTube slash bas one thousand and four. You can
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: watch it there. We're also gearing up to do a
• 7:39
  Speaker 6: new Batchet episodes that are a little bigger and better
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: and more produced than the last group. So that should
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: be out sometime next year, maybe next maybe this time
• 7:48
  Speaker 6: next year, we should have that done.
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I wanted to ask, you know about that
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: web series, you know, about producing it. So when you
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: when you sat down to write it, and you know,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: and to sort of plan this entire season, did you
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: sort of you know, plan it with Hey, listen, I
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: don't want to spend a lot of money. I don't
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: want to you know, you know, maybe we don't have
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: you know, all this these locations or all this extra gear.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: So did you sort of reverse engineer it where you decided, hey,
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: let's let's shoot this at my house, or let's just
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: try to keep it as low budget as possible.
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: We do everything that way.
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Speaker 6: We're not Darren in particular, but me too. We sort
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: of share this sensibility of not really wanting to wait
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: for something, or not really wanting to convince too many
• 8:30
  Speaker 6: other people about what you're doing, having merit, we just
• 8:33
  Speaker 6: want to go out and do it. And so with
• 8:36
  Speaker 6: the web series in particular, and and do Something with
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: your Life. We shot the first season the web series
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: and Do Something with Your Life around the same time.
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: So yeah, we we completely reverse engineered that. The whole
• 8:48
  Speaker 6: idea was just to showcase the writing and make the
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: writing as tight as possible as like a comedy sample.
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: And then Darren's just a master at kind of taking
• 8:56
  Speaker 6: you know, shoe string, bubble gum and a couple of
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: paper clips and making it look really good.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: So one of the things though, that these guys did
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: when they were writing it was write it really simply.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's written. You know, it's not written to
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: be like a genre thing or anything super crazy and
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: hard to produce. It was really like, you know, it's
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: a sitcom style thing with a single camera. So we needed,
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: you know, some we need a home base for the
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: apartment location, and you know, we'd shoot a few things
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: outside here and there, and you know, the production value
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: in the first season is certainly a lot lower because
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: I think I was like a one person crew. I
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: think at one point I was running the camera and
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: holding a boom microphone and trying to slate at the
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: same time and give direction and try to remember to
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: take the lens cap off but in a second season,
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: we ended up bringing a few more people out to
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: help us, and we started getting permission to shoot in
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: cafes and other public places, so we kind of upped
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: the production value that way.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: But but it was still, you know, pretty much super
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: low budget kind of thing. I think the biggest cost
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: on most of the productions that we've done has been,
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: you know, feeding the crew, or or just a few
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: sort of art costs or something like that.
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: When you don't have a super high production value, you
• 10:28
  Speaker 6: kind of have to make the writing good. You have
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: no other choice, right, So I think that kind of
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: played to what we were trying to showcase anyways, which
• 10:36
  Speaker 6: was the writing. So hopefully that that came through.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So when you went out to you know, find
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: these locations, you know, did you set out to not
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: only just you know, get it for the one time
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: it's like a cafe for instance, did you actually think about,
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: you know, I could build a relationship with with these
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: paid these owners that way I could film there in
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: the future.
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: We definitely got that with some There's actually a couple
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: of places around town that we've shot a number of times,
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: Like there's a local bar just around the corner for
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: where we work that. Funnily enough, they're having their their
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: ten year anniversary and they've kind of been a fostering
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: place for us. You know, we've had a lot of fundraisers,
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: and we've had a lot of parties and after parties
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: and and events just going to watch you know, hockey
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: games and things like that. So we've had a lot
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: of good times there and the guys that run the
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: place are are really awesome and let us shoot there
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: from time to time. So yeah, definitely.
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: It's a bit of a chicken in the egg thing
• 11:38
  Speaker 6: because I think a lot of the places that we
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: approached for those locations and even like favors for if
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: you need a bit of gear or whatever else, it's
• 11:46
  Speaker 6: all people that we kind of knew ahead of time,
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: so you had that relationship going in. And then the
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: other places that we needed to kind of show up,
• 11:53
  Speaker 6: you know, if we need a specific place and we
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: didn't know somebody or whatever, then we approached and and
• 11:57
  Speaker 6: those those ones are a little bit more difficult relationship
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: ships to maintain, just because you know, if you're going
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: and shooting a place, you know how sort of kind
• 12:05
  Speaker 6: of you you have to take it over and you
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: have to really worry about leaving it better than you
• 12:09
  Speaker 6: found it. But even so, it's a bit of an imposition,
• 12:12
  Speaker 6: particularly when you don't have a lot of money to
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: pay for these locations. So we find that it's definitely
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: best to kind of, you know, be a person about
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: town and you know, be a regular at certain places.
• 12:22
  Speaker 6: And when you do become a regular, get to know
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: the bartender, get to know the manager, get to know
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: you know, the barista, whoever it is, and then eventually
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: that'll lead to when you do need something, you can
• 12:32
  Speaker 6: you can have those people to go to and they
• 12:34
  Speaker 6: know you and they like you already, and they know
• 12:36
  Speaker 6: that you spend some money in their place before so.
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: And they know you're not going to burn their location either.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, very true. You know, there was a place around
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: me that I was able to shoot in about, you know,
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: five years ago, and it was a bar and basically
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: I just went up to them and I found them. Actually,
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: the first meeting between them and I became was was
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: actually through social media. I actually sent them a message
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: through my Space. Do you guys remember my Space?
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: I met my wife on my Space. That's who we are.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: Well I'm glad someone actually remembers it, because when I
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: talk about MySpace, they're like, what, what the hell? What's
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: my bro As a quick little note here, MySpace was
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: one of the best dating sites I've ever been on.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: I actually went on more date dates through MySpace and
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: you know Facebook and Twitter, I don't. I don't get
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: to any dates at all, but I.
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: Guess was like Tinder's grandpa.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. She was also good because you worked at
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: MySpace angle, so they can't actually see me full on
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: because once they see me full on, they're like, oh
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: my god, Jesus.
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: Well, my wife's a musician, and so she was using
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: MySpace for, you know, promoting her music, because that was
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: the other thing that my Space was really great for,
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: was you know, you could put up some music or
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: you know, if you just had a band or a
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: song that you liked. I remember, you could set that
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: as sort of like your welcome news to your MySpace page.
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: So so I ended up I think she liked my
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: blog and I liked her music or something like that,
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: and we've been together ever since.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: See MySpace the best dating site that ever was I mean, what.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: Happened to him?
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: I think I've deleted my account now, but unfortunately, apparently
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: there's still a bit of a music scene that it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 6: They've retained to that. I don't know. I'm trying to
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: hear a little bit more about it again, but yeah,
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: I think the social media part of it's pretty.
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: Much gone is over.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because once Justin Timberlake bought it. He it's
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: like an indie music scene.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: Now, wasn't that just in the movie The Social Network though?
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: He just played that, Yeah, a different guy.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: So as we're talking about building relationships, you know, you
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: guys ended up in two thousand and three making a
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: short film. I'm sorry, I don't even butcher the name.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: What is the title?
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: Fidelium twenty thirteen we made that, Yeah, Fidelium, Yeah, Hellium.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, you guys know you listened to the show I
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: butcher names all.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: The time, so that's totally fine.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: You know, English, the English langue, which is tough for me.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: So the Favilium was chosen, you know, but none other
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: than George A Ramire George A. Rameri as the winner
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: of the twenty thirteen you know, Bloodshots Canada horror short
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: film competition, you know, so you know, what was the
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: impetus in creating a you know, the script for that, Well.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: It's the Bloodshots was actually a forty eight hour film
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: festival challenge, you know, like one of these film slams
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: where you don't do a whole lot of preparation before
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: they pull the trigger.
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: Well, you do a lot of preparation in terms of
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: like gathering your team and getting your tools together, but
• 15:32
  Speaker 6: you don't know, you don't write the script.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right, So they give you an inspiration package with
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: you know, a character or a line of dialogue or
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: a prop or something like that, and the idea is
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: to craft the whole story using those things in a
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: way that you know, doesn't feel like it's been forced in.
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: You know, it's all sort of organic, and you write
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: it and you shoot it and you edit it and
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: then deliver it within a forty eight hour time frame.
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: And they're intense, but they're awesome. We've done we've done
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: a bunch of those before here in Vancouver. They got
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: really popular for a few years. There was at least
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: two or three of them every year, with a lot
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: of the same people here in the film community that
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: were doing them, so we uh, you know, we combined
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: forces and got our our our inspiration package on the
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: Friday afternoon, Friday evening and went for it. And we
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: and then Bob ended up writing the script. And you know,
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: we had a team of i'd say probably about ten
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: people or so helping with makeup and costume or some
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: camera stuff, and a couple of actors on standby ready
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: to jump in, and other friends ready to take part.
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: And then we just blast through the whole weekend as
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: hard as you can to you know, rush to the
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: finish line and deliver this this uh it's about eight
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: minutes short horror film.
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: And we were we were really lucky on that one.
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: We we had a great team. We had helping us
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: produce was Lindsay Mann, who I've done for Productions, who
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: helped on Charlotte Song, which you know that was later on.
• 17:05
  Speaker 6: But and then we had as our makeup artist on
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: that one was Darley Eden, who actually won face off
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: that the Sci Fi Show, the Sci Fi Makeup Show.
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: So we had a really talented team on that one.
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: Our actors were really great, and so yeah, no that
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: we already kind of have a style of filmmaking that
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: suits those competitions because, like I said, we're pretty impatient people,
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: so when we do you want to make a movie,
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: we do make it relatively quickly. So those competitions are
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: great for us and keep us really sharp, and they're
• 17:36
  Speaker 6: a really great way to build your network because you
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: get out and not only do you have to build
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: your own team to go out and make the movie,
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: but at the same time you get to kind of
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: rub elbows with everybody else because you're at the event
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: where they kick it off and then there's a big
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: screening at the end of it. So they're really wonderful events.
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: And having George A. Romero be the judge that ultimately
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: selected our film as the winner, it was really cool.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: So did you get to meet George wasn't in town.
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: No, we didn't get it to meet him, unfortunately, but
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: they sent they sent the movie to him and he
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: sent us this really nice little message just talking about
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: why he chose our film and the stuff that he
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: liked about it. So it was pretty neat.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: That's great, you know, because I know he lives in Canada.
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: Now, yeah, I heard that as well.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Thank he's over I think he's over around Toronto. I
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: think on the other side.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because when I traveled out to Pittsburgh for one
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: of the Night Living Dead festivals, they actually had mentioned
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: that that George was living in Canada now and they
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: actually did a Night of a Living Dead.
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: I think it was either a stage play or a musical.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: But uh, that's awesome.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I didn't get a chance to check it out,
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: but I mean I heard it got great reviews. So
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: but you know, you know, back to you know, your
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: short film. Is it available online anywhere for anyone to
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: watch it is?
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you can. Uh, I think we've got it. I'm
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: not sure if I'm thinking it's a YouTube link. I'll
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: look it up and give it to you here at SEC.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: But it it's for I think you can google, you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: borrow time Films, Fidelium blood Shots twenty thirteen, something like that. Yeah,
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: and you know, and it's like I say, it's about
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: eight minutes long.
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: It's got some.
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: Wicked makeup. The prosthetics in fact that that Darla came
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: up with were amazing. Actually at one point, my fun
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: little anecdote from shooting was the amount of blood that
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: we had. Because it's called blood shots, you know, you
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: got to have a lot of blood, and the amount
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: of blood that we had got really overpowering. Under the
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: hot lights and everybody looking at it, it got just
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: so gory that some of the crew actually had to
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: step off set. They're like, I can't look at this.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: It's too it's too much. My brain knows that it's fake,
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: but my guts are telling me I got to get
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: out of here. But the crazy thing was that all
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: the blood's made out of syrup.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: And under the hot lights, it starts smelling a bit
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: like pancakes. So mostly I was just hungry during the
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: whole quite amazing. It was great, all.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: Right, guys, we just shot a horror film. Let's go
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: grab some pancakes.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: Come on, let's go now.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: So you kept this, you know, this going because you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: in September of this, this this past september, excuse me,
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: they you know, you supported done for productions on the
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: dark Fantasy feature Charlotte Song, which actually had I win
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: ryon from Game of Thrones, and you know, so did
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: you want to keep you know, working in the horror
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: genre or was that just sort of like a happy coincidence.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: I think horror is kind of a happy coincidence. I
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: mean horror and sort of the genre of horror, thriller,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: I mean even sci fi. They're they're great genres to
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: play in, and they're they're a lot of fun to make,
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: especially when you're dealing with things like makeup and and
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: effects and things like that. I don't know that it's
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: really what either of us are immediately drawn to, but
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: there's those the other aspects, you know, in the production
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: side of making these things that are a lot of
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: fun or that sometimes you can do on a smaller
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: budget and make it really effective, you know. So those
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: are the kinds of things that we're really excited about.
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: But I think also with Charlotte Song, just getting the
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: opportunity to work with someone like I believe it's ewan
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: Ewen ewan Ewan. He's Welsh, so it's a be challenging
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: name to pronounce, but to be able to work with
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: him and a lot of the other people that we've
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: worked with and just kind of, you know, step the
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: whole production up a level. The production was I think
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: it was about twenty seven days of filming through the
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: through June last year. Was a real treat, you know,
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: to just sort of level up in general was great,
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: and to do it with with a lot of the
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: people that we've been working with was fantastic.
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it was Lindsay Man who who produced Fidelium. She
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: was one of the producers from Done for Productions in
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: at Her and Jessica Lee Clark Bojen have that company
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: and they were they were looking to to sort of
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: really swing for the fences on this film and kind
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: of you know, demonstrate this model that we believe in
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: of not a ton of money, but having really talented
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: people and allowing a lot of people to kind of
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: level up and do something that they might not get
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: to do on their regular day job. Because in Vancouver
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: here we've got a lot of service work for LA,
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: but we don't have a lot of stuff where you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: people get to you know, be the screenwriter, be the director,
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: be that kind of stuff. It's all sort of labor
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: work to serve you know, the wonderful network television shows
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: that shoot here and I love them. But the idea
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: was to sort of gather all that talent together, let
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: people move up a notch and and and really make
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: something special, which which I hope we did. But it
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: really for us came down to working with a really
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: talented group of people that we've kind of through that
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: last decade of collaborating together, have seen around town and
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: worked on their stuff and they've worked on our stuff,
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: and just really continuing those relationships through to what was
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: pretty much the biggest and most complex show we've worked on.
• 23:20
  Speaker 6: So that was a really fun time.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: On Charlotte Song, you mentioned all the Hollywood productions that
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: come to Canada, and that's very true, you know, because
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: whenever you know, I've been a part of a production,
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: that's one of the things that comes up is those
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: tax incentives, and they're always you know, talking about, hey,
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: this is what we have in the States, but if
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: we go to Canada, you know, we also have to
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: factor in the currency exchange totally.
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: I mean, the exchange rates really good for you guys
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: right now. And you know, we've looked at some of
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: the different tax incentives, not that we really qualify for
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: them because we've got such small budgets at the moment,
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: but you know we've that if you do some really
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: creative math and production organization, I suppose you can get
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: as much as like forty percent or forty five percent
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: of of your output back in tax incentives.
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: Mostly it's all labor costs. So I mean it's all
• 24:22
  Speaker 6: about like for us to keep our budgets low, we
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: get a lot of people to come out and help
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: us and you know, work for little or no money
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: and get a share of our film.
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: But a lot of people if you wanted to pay
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: you know, union labor rates, you would be getting forty
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: cents on the dollar back immediately in return just for
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: employing you know, British Columbia filmmakers.
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: And you actually raised another good point too, which is
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: I was actually listening to a podcast and the guest
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: was Dove Simmons, and he actually mentioned that was when
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: if you don't have money, he goes. But you really
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: want to work with certain people, whether it be actors
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: or crew, one of the best ways to get them
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: on boarder production is to actually offer them, you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: some points on the back end, some shares of your film.
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's true. I mean that's something that I think
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: if it's your first time putting a film together, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: you got to be a little bit careful with that
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: because you can give away a lot of equity in
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: the back end of the film. And one of the
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: things that I think a lot of people do it
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: in another sort of model of things is they hand
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: out a lot of deferrals where I say, you know,
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: you come on board, Dave and help me as my
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: DP or whatever, and I'll pay you half your rate now,
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: and I'll pay you half your rate when the movie
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: makes money. But the thing that people need to remember
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: is that you know these deferrals, and if you are
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: handing out back end points, if your movie, you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: does do quite well and you end up making quite
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: a bit of money on it, that can really affect
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: the back end of that film, or it can make
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: your movie really not attractive to distribution to sell it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: If you know, somebody owns a bunch of back end
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: points or somebody owns you know, there's all these deferrals
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: that may be paid out. So you just have to
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: be careful with that and sort of look down the road.
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: And I'd suggest that anybody that's that's thinking about doing
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: that gets some advice. But if you're starting out and
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: there's not a lot of money in the budget, I
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: think giving people an ownership share in your movie is
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: is you know, it's fair because these people are putting
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: their bloodweat and tears in just like you are. And
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: if you can't afford to pay them, the least you
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: can do is allow them to share in the success
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: if the movie does get out and make some money.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: So then you know, now you've made your feature film.
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: Do something with your life. It's available now on VHX
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: dot com. So I wanted to, you know, talk to
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: you about that is, you know, what was the impetus
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: in running this script.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: Well, the you know, we'd sort of taken the momentum
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: that we built with these different forty eight and seventy
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: two hour film festivals, and I guess it was probably
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: by about the time I was about five years out
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: of film school, I had, you know, we'd been shooting
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: a lot of short films or the web series, and
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: I've been doing other things here and there, but really,
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: you know, wanted to wanted to do the first feature.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: And so I sort of like i'd been working with
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: Bob and with Andrew who ended up being the writer
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: on the film, and sort of talked to them and
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: our other friend Keith, who also took the writing program
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: and came on as a producer, and the four of us,
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: you know, I somehow conned them into coming along on
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: this ride with me. I think it was in September
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: two thousand and nine. I approached them just after my
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: wedding and said, you know, guys, I want to make
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: a feature film and I would like to shoot it
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: next summer, so let's start working on it. And I
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: think Andrew had a bunch of time on his hands.
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: He was recently unemployed or something along those lines, so
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: he had a bunch of time to be able to
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: work on the script almost full time, which was huge.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: So we started getting together for you know, story and
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: concept meetings at least once or twice a week through
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: the whole fall, and you know, launched a fundraising campaign
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: by December of that year with the goal to raise
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: about ten thousand dollars to start shooting around the beginning
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: middle of June and twenty ten. I'd always kind of
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: been inspired by stories from someone like, you know, Robert
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: Rodriguez made his first film for like seven thousand dollars
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: on film, and I think after reading his book, I
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: started thinking, well, yeah, I think I could probably do
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: something like that, and that would be that would be
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: a pretty great way to you know, make a short,
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: make a feature film on a small budget, but be
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: able to potentially raise all the money ourselves so that
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: we're not indebted to investors, so that we can kind
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: of make whatever movie we want to and if it
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: is a good movie, then people will want to see it,
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: and if it's a bad movie, well, you know, it
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: doesn't have to make any money. So that was kind
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: of the start of it, I think, yeah.
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: And then, you know, the movie was a long and
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: arduous journey, as many indie films are, so we shot
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: through through the summer weekends through the summer of twenty
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: ten for about eight weekends. Post production was a bit
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: of a challenge, and we got the movie cut together
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: after about you know, Abyss was early twenty eleven. We
• 29:11
  Speaker 6: had the movie cut together in sort of a rough cut,
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: and we realized that, you know, certain things weren't working
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: and other things really were working. So then we basically
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: excised an entire subplot of the movie that was just
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: totally not working, and reshot an entire subplot with one
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: of our actors who he plays a different character. We
• 29:33
  Speaker 6: completely cut him out of the movie and then put
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: him back in the movie as a different character. So
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: we reshot that and ended up premiering at the Olio
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: Festival in twenty twelve, and then from there till now,
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: we've just been kind of, you know, having cups of
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: coffees with distributors and talking to people about that kind
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: of stuff and learning a lot about the indie film world.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: And now we're at this point where we can finally
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: get it out and share it with people, and we're
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: pretty proud.
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: So you mentioned you you crowdfunded the project. What platform
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: did you use?
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: We used indigog and at that time it was there
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: was definitely not nearly as much crowdfunding as there is now.
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, we didn't even have Kickstarter here in Canada
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: at that point, and I see how many different options
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: there are around, you know, North America specifically for for
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: crowdfunding companies. I know Seeden, Spark and those guys have
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: been doing a lot of indie crowdfunding and things like this,
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: But at the time, I think the only option really
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: for us was indigo Go, and our crowdfunding campaign was abysmal.
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: Compared to what you see for you know, successfully funded campaigns. Now,
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: we I think we put together a short little video
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: and a couple of pictures in a short little bio
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: on the four of us. You know, I don't think
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: we ever really intended for it would have been great
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: to get it outside of our network, but I think
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: really what we ended up using Indigogo for the most
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: was for friends and family that weren't here in Vancouver
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: and couldn't come to any of our fundraisers to be
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: able to make a donation. We raised a couple thousand
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: dollars through the Indigogo site, but you know, that was
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: only a small portion of the budget. A lot of
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: it came from these other fundraisers that we did here
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: at at the bar that we go to all the time, yaggers,
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: it's called and And I started picking up a bunch
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: of sort of you know, editing contracts and things that
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: go on Craigslist and find people that were looking for,
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: you know, a short video that I could shoot that
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: was going to be a relatively quick turnaround, or if
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: other people needed some editing done. I started picking up
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: whatever I could in my spare time to put all
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: of that money into the into the budget, and Keith,
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: our other producer, you know, even went so far as
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: to we thought of different ways that we could get
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: other people interested in the film as well, and he
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: started doing a bottle drive, which is something I don't
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: think anyone's really done since I was in.
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: About grade five, and I wouldn't recommend it. We didn't
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: make much money for the bottle drive, but it was
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: a cool thing because it really kind of spoke to
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: the will to get the movie made. And that was
• 32:23
  Speaker 6: a thing Darren was mentioning how he somehow wrote this
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: into it. It really it was just this this madness
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: in his eyes that he said, I'm making this movie
• 32:31
  Speaker 6: come hell or high water, and you can come or not.
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: And so we came along. Because I think that that's
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: a point that I would definitely like to stress, is that,
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: you know, for young filmmakers or anybody that's thinking about
• 32:43
  Speaker 6: doing their first feature, you really need that madness and
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: that dedication to say I'm going to make this movie
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: and make it work no matter what, because that really
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: was what got this movie made, and that was all Darren.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: So let me guess when you were on Indiegogo, did
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: you have to spend most of your time. I'm explaining
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: what Indiegogo was. I had to when I first did
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: it in twenty ten. The next question everyone's mouth was, wait,
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: what is it called?
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: AI?
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so did you have to do a lot of
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: explaining about what crowdfunding was?
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: There was a fair bit of explaining, but I kind
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: of I think that we just kind of said, you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: like here's a link, follow the directions and you can
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: input your credit card details and add as many zeros
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: as you can. And yeah, I don't think it was
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: that difficult. But then we also didn't really have a
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: lot of people going to it, you know, like I say,
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: ours really was friends and family, and so it didn't
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: take very long to explain that way. We haven't really
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: done any crowdfunding campaigns since then, and I think, you know,
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: probably for one of our next projects, whether it's the
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: next iteration of the Bob and Andrew web series or
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: something else, you know, we're definitely going to be putting
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: a lot more work into that crowdfunding campaign than we
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: did the first one, because I think you have to
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, very true, and you know, I still get you know,
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: friends and even people who find me through the website
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: of the podcast, and they send me links to their
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: crowdfunding campaigns and it's dead in the water, and they
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: want to know what happened, you know, and you know,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: can I give them some advice? I'm like, well, you
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: have no video, you've got no pictures. It's almost like, hey, listen,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: this is my campaign. You give me money, well, and
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: we promise it's going to look like something. But I mean,
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you guys have seen those.
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: Two Yeah, for sure. And you know, I mean, the
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: incentives are also pretty important. I think, you know, people
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: want stuff, or at least I want stuff. And if
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: I'm going to film, if I'm going to fund a campaign,
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's a big part of it. You know,
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: there's something that I see where I'm like, oh, I'd
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: like to see that. I definitely will help that out,
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: that team out, or if it's you know, friends or
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: other filmmakers in the community where you see their campaign,
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: it's like, oh, that's that's a cool idea. But then also,
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: you know, the other side, and the thing that I
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: think we got wrong on our our Indiegogo campaign was
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: those incentives. You know, a lot of times the tendency
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: is to offer physical items, you know, whether it's signed
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: posters or DVDs or T shirts or whatever. And that
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: kind of stuff also costs money to produce, so in
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: a lot of kid and a lot of time, and
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: you know, if you end up sort of promising a
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: lot of that kind of stuff, cool though they are.
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: I sometimes wonder for people that do that, how much
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: of the money do they actually put into the into
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: the project versus into the incentives. And I guess there's
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: a balance back and forth because it does get you know,
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: more interest or more visibility if people like those incentives.
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: But I'm really excited about the idea, and I've seen
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: a few other campaigns do this. Some friends of mine
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: around Washington and the Seattle area have made a number
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: of low budget features now and are using those their
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: past releases as as incentive packages to fund their next projects,
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: which I think is pretty neat because you know, it
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: kind of gets the word of their previous projects out
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: as a thank you for for donating to the next one.
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: So it's kind of like promotional crowdfunding in a way. Yeah,
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: I think it's it's you got to get the thing
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: about crowdfunding is too, you know, back when we did
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: that campaign for doing something with your life, and like
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: you're talking about how to explain what Indie Gog was,
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: We're not in that that realm anymore. I think that
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: the game, the bar has really been up in terms
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: of what you need for a successful crowdfunding campaign, and
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: people expect it to be part of the story, part
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: of the narrative, right, I mean you need to you
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: need to be crafting it in preparing for it, almost as.
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: Much as you would for doing a film. You know,
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: you've got to be generating content and being creative about
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: what those rewards are and making sure that it's a
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: companion piece to your to your movie or whatever project
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: it's for, not just you know, a receptacle to get money,
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: because people catch on to that pretty quick.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: So do you think that for your next project you'll
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: you'll make another or launch another crowdfund a campaign.
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: We're definitely gearing up to do one. We're kind of
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: the mind that you know, when you do do one,
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: you kind of got to make it count. And so,
• 37:19
  Speaker 6: like Darren was saying, we're kind of we're writing right
• 37:21
  Speaker 6: now the next batch of scripts for Bob and Andrew,
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: and once we've got those scripts done, we'll kind of assess,
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: you know, what kind of budget we need for that.
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: But I think we're looking at possibly doing a crowdfunding
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: campaign for that batch of episodes, just because the show
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: already has a little bit of a built in audience.
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: I mean it's not much, but it's a little bit
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: of a built in audience, some recognition there. We've had
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: some success within the past, and so I think that's
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: that's important too when your crowdfunding is to show that
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: what you're going to make has some validity to it
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: and people can go and look at things and know
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: whether or not they'll be interested.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: So with your crowdfunding campaign for Do Something with Your Life,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: you know, what was your most popular perk level? Uh?
• 38:02
  Speaker 6: I think it was probably about twenty dollars something like that.
• 38:06
  Speaker 6: And for that they got to copy the film and
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: a poster. I think, uh, something along those lines.
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd have to take a look again. There was
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: a couple of different things again, you know, it was like, uh,
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: we were at the time we were going to start
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: making I wanted to make DVDs because I'm a big
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: fan of physical media.
• 38:23
  Speaker 6: Don't ever help Dan borrowm and move I've done it
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: many times, and there's just a bunch of.
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: And shelves of records and eight tracks and yeah, mini discs.
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I think probably around about the twenty dollars
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: range for a crowdfunding campaign was the most popular for us.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: And I mean we've only just launched the movie online
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: itself through VHX, but that seems to be sort of
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: like uh an average that people that are interested are
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: are willing to pay for either a good cause or
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: maybe it's a lot of content. I mean, our our
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: our film is on VHX as a with a pay
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: what you want structure. I mean we've got suggested prices
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: for the deluxe package with all the bonus material and
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: stuff like that. Well there's minimum prices, basically, there are
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: minimum prices, yeah for sure. But you know with the
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: pay what you want, a lot of times people will,
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: you know, give a little extra which is always nice
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: as well.
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: So you know, I have to ask the question I'm
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: sure you've you've been asked a lot, is what you
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: every filmmakers asked is what'd you shoot that on? Ah?
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: Every festal you go to, it's always so you know,
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: what'd you shoot that on?
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: You shoot that.
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: Darren's eyes just lit up. This is the question. He
• 39:44
  Speaker 6: loves answering.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: I love talking about here and stuff. This is this
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: is exciting now, you know. It was funny because we
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: shot we were shooting the Bob and Andrew web series.
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: We had borrowed a friends sony EX three.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and now back to the.
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: Show, which is you know, an HD ten eighty camera
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: that actually has interchangeable lenses, or you can if you've
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: got the right mounts and whatnot. We didn't have the
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: right mounts. I think we had two lenses, and we
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: were playing around with this camera and shooting and unfortunately,
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: I think somebody tripped over a cable and the camera
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: went lens first into the ground. And that we had
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: By that point, we had raised about twelve thousand dollars
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: through our crowdfunding or through all of our fundraising for
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: the movie, and the first twenty five hundred or so
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: went into repairing this uninsured camera, which was unfortunate but
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: also a blessing because it made us kind of go, well,
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: this camera probably you know, isn't going to work because
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: the it's damaged. Good now the lenses shattered, so we
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: need something else. Our cinematographer, Jordan Ewan, we'd worked with
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: him a lot, and he wasamiliar with those cameras. But
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: he also sort of pointed out the fact that some
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: of these still camera companies were coming out with you know,
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: like DSLRs had just started coming onto the market. So
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: he sort of said, let's take a look at this,
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: this new one, the Canon five D Mark two. It
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: shoots ten eighty video and I've got a bunch of
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: Nikon lenses. And all of the Canon purists cringed when
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: he talked about putting Nikon lenses on a Canon camera,
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: but but that ended up being what we did.
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: I think that was one of the smartest choices we
• 41:33
  Speaker 6: made having Jordan on board. I mean, the photography in
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: the movie, because we had a tiny crew again, you know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: very small budget. Jordan made that that looked pretty good,
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: I think now with those lenses in that camera.
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure, he was. He was fantastic. And
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: you know, between the use of the prime lenses that
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: we had and and and having the five D as
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: as much as we made fun of it, because you know,
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: Jordan actually works in the in the industry, here in town.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: As a second, he was just you know, he was
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: just in Dubai on the latest Star Trek movie, and
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: he was you know, he did the Monster Trucks movie
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: or some big FX show, and so he's used to
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: working with techno cranes and you know Arie Alexa's and
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: just the full gamut of industry gear. So to suddenly
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: sort of have him pick up a you know, a
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: two pound DSLR and go, okay, well we're gonna shoot
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: the whole film with this, and.
• 42:29
  Speaker 6: Well and we didn't even have a kit for most
• 42:30
  Speaker 6: of the time. I mean, there were some days where
• 42:32
  Speaker 6: we had, you know, a kit where we had you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 6: mat box and you know, like a shoulder A couple
• 42:38
  Speaker 6: of days we did. We talked this on the on
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: some of the special features that I noticed the behind
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: the scenes there's a mat box. There was a mat
• 42:44
  Speaker 6: box on one of like one weekend that we had.
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: But anyways, most of the time it was just Jordan
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: holding the camera.
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: It really was. It was there was no followup focus.
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: And you know, if you ever tried pulling focus on
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: a on a stills lens, it's like one millimeter equals
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: a distance of you know, one hundred foot change. It's like,
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: oh geez, the depth of field can be so shallow,
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: especially if you're shooting wide open that you know, it's
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: a miracle that everything is mostly in focus.
• 43:10
  Speaker 6: So the beauty of it was, though, we were able
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: to bomb around and get a bunch of shots in
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: public and people didn't really bother us too much because
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: you know, there's all that stuff from the beginning of
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: the movie of mind riding the bike around, you know,
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: when he takes transit and stuff like that. We were
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: able to bomb around with that camera and nobody really
• 43:28
  Speaker 6: gave us any trouble because it looked like we were
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: taking a bunch of stills, right, So so that kind
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: of helped not having all of the bells and whistles
• 43:36
  Speaker 6: on the camera, but the huge caveat being make sure
• 43:40
  Speaker 6: your DP knows what the heck they're doing, because jan
• 43:42
  Speaker 6: was Jordan's a pretty skilled operator.
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: With that, yeah, he you know, just the size of
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: the camera itself. For instance, in the opening sequence when
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: we are riding around, you know, a lot of people
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: ask how did you get that shot where the camera's
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: right down at his feet and he's riding and it's
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: like a pedal foot insert. You know, we used a
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: lot of c stand arms and kind of mounted the
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: camera upside down hanging off the back of a BMX,
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: which you can't really do with you know, fifty thousand
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: dollars cameras. So so that was a real benefit of
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: using that particular camera. The challenge actually with the camera, though,
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: came in post because at the same time, you know,
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: we ended up editing with Final Cut seven, which famously
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: could not handle h two sixty four video files. So
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: the camera of files that came straight out of the
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: out of the five D, trying to edit those as
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: compressed and small file size as they were was practically impossible,
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: and it just kept crashing my programs. So I learned
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: a lot about the post process, you know, even though
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: I had a lot of education in the whole world,
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: a lot of things you don't know until you've actually
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: been in that situation. So we ended up transl like
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: terabytes worth of you know, sixteen gigabyte cards out of
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: the out of the five D and then editing it
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: all from there.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: So, you know, I've had some friends too who've moved
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: away from Final Cut seven. Well actually sorry, they moved
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: away from Final Cut X because once X came out,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: they all either moved to ADVID Media Composer or they
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: went with the route I went to, which is Adobe
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Creative Cloud used using Perl your pro So, if you
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: were gonna when you edit again, you know, do you
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: think you're gonna go back to Final Cut seven or
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: do you think you would use like, you know, something
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: like Premiere.
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: You know Finnally I I was the editor on Charlotte
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: song last year, and we did edit in Final Cut seven.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: I'm not a really big fan of Final Cut X either,
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: and I did learn and train on AVID, but I
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: haven't really used it quite as much. And I like
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: the the tactility of you know, Final Cut or Premiere,
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: and I've pretty much switched over to Creative Cloud myself.
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: But last year, because I think I didn't have Creative
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: Cloud at the time, I was pretty confident and solid
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: still with Final Cut seven, so I ended up using
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: that for a Charlotte song. But you know, moving forward now,
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: I think pretty much everything I'm doing is is all
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: in Premiere because it's a little bit more versatile.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, you know, I actually edit this entire
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: podcast and audition, which is a part of creative which
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: is a part of the creative cloud, in case anyone's interested.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: As we talk all this techie geek stuff, as we
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: get involved, moved deeper into this. So so you know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: you decided to distribute this movie on VHX dot com.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: And you know, as you were saying before, you know,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: you talked for you know, months upon months with all
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: these distributors. So you know, what are some of the
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: things that you you took away from having all these
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: meetings with these with these distributors.
• 46:49
  Speaker 6: The biggest thing was, if you're going to do a comedy,
• 46:52
  Speaker 6: you need a recognizable actor in your movie. Yes, it's
• 46:56
  Speaker 6: it's just a fact of life. Now. We thought that
• 46:58
  Speaker 6: if we made a court enough you know, comedy, that
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: they would kind of stand alone. And the realities of
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: the of the marketplace now is such that, you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: all the distributors that we showed it to, they all
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: pretty much Nascali said, we love your movie. It's a
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: great little movie. You guys are doing a good job.
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: Come back to us when you have either a horror
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: movie with nobody in it or somebody in it's better obviously,
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: but a horror movie science fiction or you know, get
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: a star in your movie and we can talk. But
• 47:26
  Speaker 6: that was that was somewhat of a sort of realization
• 47:30
  Speaker 6: that we had to come to very slowly over time.
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: And when we first had the movie finished and we
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: had got it to a couple of festivals and we
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: had our premiere here, self distribution seemed like a bit
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: of a bit of a failure in a way. But
• 47:46
  Speaker 6: with things like VHX and with things, you know, the
• 47:48
  Speaker 6: other platforms, because we looked at like five or six
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: different platforms and there's a lot of really good ones
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: right now, we won't VHX just because it seemed to
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: have the most versatility for us. But self distribution now,
• 47:59
  Speaker 6: I think is a really viable option. And I think
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: for especially for people that are making their first feature
• 48:05
  Speaker 6: or people that are making super low budget features and
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: they can't they can't get, you know, a star to
• 48:09
  Speaker 6: be in their movie. Plan for self distribution, I mean,
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: you're not gonna make a ton of money, but you're
• 48:14
  Speaker 6: gonna get your movie out there and you're gonna start
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: building an audience. And I think that that's the thing
• 48:19
  Speaker 6: that a lot of people need to think about as
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: well getting into indie filmmaking, is that you can't put
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: all your eggs in that first feature basket. That first
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: feature now is almost more like what it was to
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: have a really polished short film back when we were
• 48:33
  Speaker 6: shooting on film. You know, it was so hard to
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: make a movie back then. You had to, you know,
• 48:37
  Speaker 6: you got a crew together, make a film, a short
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: film on film, and get it out there. It could
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: be a calling card. And now I think that first
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: feature really is become your calling card. So I think
• 48:47
  Speaker 6: I think that speaks also to the way that we
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: do things and just trying to keep things as cheap
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: as possible, and you know, trying to trying to really
• 48:54
  Speaker 6: focus on the important aspects of the story and and
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: you know, the acting, and trying to get good cinematography
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: in there, but doing it cheap and making sure you
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: don't owe anybody any money on that first future, so
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: that if you don't make any money, at least you
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: can build your audience and build your name and build
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: your reputation and hopefully put that as a cornerstone towards
• 49:14
  Speaker 6: your career.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: I think one of the things that Bob also mentioned
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: that I would I would take away from the whole
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: experience of that of do something with your life is
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: you know, he said plan for distribution, and that was
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: not something that I was thinking about at all. I've
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: been trapped in the nineties for most of my life musically,
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: and I mean fashion wise, I tend to only wear
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: a plaid and grunge stuff. But you know, I was
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: also thinking about the distribution process in the early nineties
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: and thinking that we could sort of do the same thing.
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: You know, you make a feature, send it to some festivals,
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: they love it. You become the next you know, Richard
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: Linklater or you know, Quentin Tarantino or whoever or whatever
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: that is, and.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: And that was kind of the way that things went
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: for a while when when it was a lot more
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: challenging to make a film because it was actually shot
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: on film and you needed a crew, and you needed
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: a lot more money. And I mean these guys had
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: stars and things like that as well. But you know,
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: I feel like the festivals in the early nineties were
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: a very different thing than what they are now. And
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: when we set out to make the movie, getting it
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: out there and the distribution and everything that comes with
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: finishing the movie was not at all what I was
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: thinking about. My favorite time of the whole phase is
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: the actual production, from when you've got the money or
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: the green light or you start doing it, until you
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: kind of hand it off and you're finished with the
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: end of the project. You know it's edited, it's mastered,
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: and you screen it. That's my favorite part, and unfortunately
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: the get the money and the selling the movie my
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: least favorite parts. Are definitely probably two of the most
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: important things that you really need to think about as
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: a filmmaker because a lot of times you aren't and
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: you don't want to, and you want somebody else to
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: think about that for you, but you know nobody's really
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: going to do that for you. You need to plan
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: for that yourself.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: You know, Darren, you made a very good point about
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: the whole horror movie thing, because I've noticed that at
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: talking to more distributors, talking to more people who teach workshops,
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: they always recommend a horror movie as sort of like
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: your first quote unquote your first film, because horror itself
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: becomes becomes the main character.
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, look at the top directors you know
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: in North America right now and even around the world.
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: Some of the best directors started there, or the new generations.
• 51:58
  Speaker 6: Of the people that you're talking about, like the Richard
• 52:00
  Speaker 6: Linklaters and whatever you're talking about now, it's like it's
• 52:03
  Speaker 6: Eli Roth and James Wan and people like this that
• 52:06
  Speaker 6: all came out of horror. Yeah, you know, they made
• 52:08
  Speaker 6: their horror movies, were their first ones, and they broke
• 52:10
  Speaker 6: through with those. And that's the thing about today's marketplace
• 52:14
  Speaker 6: is that no distributor is going to go near your
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: movie unless they know they can sell it. Not they
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: think they can sell it, they know they can sell it.
• 52:21
  Speaker 6: And the only genre out there that they know they
• 52:24
  Speaker 6: can sell without having, like I'm saying, some kind of
• 52:27
  Speaker 6: bankable star or at least recognizable star in your movie
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: is horror. Sci fi to a certain extent, but horror
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: it really is where it's at for that kind of thing. So,
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: I mean, if you're interested in horror as a young filmmaker,
• 52:38
  Speaker 6: I'd say, by all means, dive in. And if you're not,
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: just be aware of the reality that you know you're
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: probably going to be looking at a self distribution model,
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: which is not the end of the world. There's still
• 52:49
  Speaker 6: a lot of really cool ways to do that and
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: get it out there. But again, it takes a lot
• 52:54
  Speaker 6: of effort and a lot of planning, and that handoff
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: between filmmaker and distributor doesn't really exist like it did before,
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: because even when you do get a distributor on board
• 53:03
  Speaker 6: a small film, it's still really the onus is on
• 53:06
  Speaker 6: the filmmaker to make sure that it gets out there
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: and reaches its audience. You know. So I think I
• 53:11
  Speaker 6: think filmmaking is much more a three hundred and sixty
• 53:15
  Speaker 6: degree proposition than it ever has been. So that's just
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: something I think people should keep in mind when they
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: dive into something like this.
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: You know, very true. You know, guys, we've been talking
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: for about fifty minutes now, so you know, in closing,
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: is there you know, anything that you would like to
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: add to sort of put, you know, a period at
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: the end of this entire conversation.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: You know, I think the process of making any film
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: is is massive. It's such a lot of work, and
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: it's it can be really challenging at times, and there
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: were plenty of times when you know, when you go
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: through production and things are challenging and you've got a
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: team of people there on set to sort of help
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: you and support you through it, and you know, get
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: through the the either mental blocks or when things aren't
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: going right. And then when you get into post production
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: sometimes you're by yourself or you know, you feel lonely
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: in the in the edit suite there, and you get
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: all the way through the to the end of it,
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: and then you go through the whole slog of trying
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: to get the movie out there and sell it, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: a lot of times you feel by the time it's
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: wrapping up or that it's over, that you don't ever
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: want to do it again. But then a week goes
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: by and you're like, I got to pick up a
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: camera and go and shoot something like now, And I
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: guess that's kind of the definition of an insanity, But
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: I think we're just going to keep on doing that.
• 54:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I would say too. And I think
• 54:44
  Speaker 6: this comes through in a lot of the special features
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: that we that we put onto for the Do Something
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: with Your Life package is that yes, we made all
• 54:52
  Speaker 6: these mistakes and we learned all these lessons, and we
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: have all this advice for young filmmakers or whoever's going
• 54:57
  Speaker 6: to start out on their first feature about planned for
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: this plan for that, don't forget about distribution. But at
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: the end of the day, buckle down and make your movie.
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: That's the most important thing. Just get it done. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 6: there will be times along the way where you feel
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: completely exhausted or defeated or whatever. The key to getting
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: over that is to find good collaborators. And that's I
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: think this movie is a testament to that. Darren and
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: I have worked with the same people over and over
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: again for the past, you know, eight years that we've
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: known each other, and I'd say to anybody getting into this,
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: make sure you have a team, because you can't do
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: it by yourself.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: And so I.
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: Would say to put a button on this conversation, I'd
• 55:35
  Speaker 6: just say thanks to everybody that helped us make do
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: something with your life or any of those other projects
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: that we talked about, because we couldn't have done it
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: without any of them.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And you know that's a great point too, is
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: you have to build a team. You have to have
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: a team. I know, we can all we all like
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: to think of ourselves now as like a one man army.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: We can you know, film, edit, cast, write all this
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: other stuff. And then finally it's like, oh my god,
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: how did I get involved? And you know I had
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: some help.
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: It's just you know, and I've been there myself where
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: I've tried to do everything and just like it just
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: over it consumes you and overwhelms you. And then you're like,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe there is something to this whole teamwork thing.
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I love doing a little
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: bit of everything. You know, I like picking up a camera,
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: I'll I like doing sound work, and I like doing
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: all these different things. But it's impossible to do everything
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: at once. And you you know, I think you build
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: that team around you that can support you and people
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: that you want to work with. That's the other big challenges.
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: You know, there's plenty of egos and whatnot. But when
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: you find the people that you want to work with
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: and you can continue to work together, you know, and
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: find a rhythm for making your production days or you know,
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: coming up with great ideas for stuff, then it just
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: becomes it's not work, it's all fun. Well.
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: I mean, film, film's a team sport, right, and I
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: think the the you know, to use a sports analogy,
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: you know, when when you're down by a couple of
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: goals and you look down the bench, you want to
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: see people that are going to go to battle for you,
• 57:04
  Speaker 6: and I think, uh, that's the most important part because
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: you're going to reach that point where you feel like
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: you're defeated, particularly when you're when you're like you're saying day,
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: doing a lot of stuff and at the center of everything.
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: So you know, being able to look over at somebody
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: who's in the trenches with you, I think is really
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: really important.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: You know, I can tell you're from Canada because you
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: have right to that hockey analogy.
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: He's a big hockey player. Bob plays a lot of hockey.
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: I do my best, Yeah, represent the Canadian way.
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: All right, guys, where do people find you out online?
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: Uh? We're kind of all over. I guess we've got
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: the Boro Time Film's Facebook page is Facebook slash Borotime Films.
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: The movie Do Something with is available at www dot
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: do somethingmovie dot com, and then other than that, Twitter
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: is probably the best way to find us. I'm at
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: b Underscore Wolsey and Borrowtime Films is at Borrowtime Films.
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: And I'm at de Borough Time.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: And I will have those all in the show notes everybody,
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: so you can you can stalk Bob and Darren all
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: day long, and but as.
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: Always on social media, so if you tweet at him,
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: he'll probably get back to you within about ten minutes.
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: Well let's not get you carried away, oh thirteen, he promises.
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, I mean we you know, we like connecting
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: with other people and hearing other people's stories, especially when
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: it comes to indie filmmaking, and there's there's a lot
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: of other great stories and other people making really great
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: films out there, and I want to see more of them.
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: I'm thinking about in January setting a challenge of watching
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: only independent films, like possibly not necessarily going to the theater,
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: but just looking around and finding stuff that I've never
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: heard of and watching just brand new stuff for an
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: entire month and see what that.
• 59:00
  Speaker 6: Well, there you go. If you have an indie film,
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: send it to Darren.
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, send me to your films. I want to watch
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: stuff I've never heard of and never seen.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Well, there you go. Like we were saying before the show,
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: I always get people hitting me up for that stuff.
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: So I will start saying in your way, sir, and
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: you'll be like, God, I'm so sorry I ever heard this,
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: Dave Bliska.
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: I'll stop going to work and I'll just just watch
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: movies all day.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: It sounds terrible, you're becoming agoraphobic and just you know, ah,
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: no again, everything we've talked about I'm going to have
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: in the show notes, so it'd be very easy to
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: navigate through this entire interview. Again, guys, Bob Darren, I
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: want to say thank you very much for coming on.
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Dave. Thanks Dave.
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: It's been great much appreciate it.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: Oh my pleasure, guys, and I wish you the best.
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: Curious take care of bye bye bye.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: a great job on this episode. If you want to
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: tv for it Slash four seventy nine.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to guys. As always,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: dot tv.