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Why Your Film Looks Cheap (And It’s Probably Pre-Production) | Indie Film Podcast · Indie Film Podcast

• 0:00
  One of my favorite examples is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• 0:04
  They realized they weren't going to have a budget to have a horse
• 0:06
  on set all the time, and so they used coconuts.
• 0:10
  Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
• 0:13
  And I'm Chuck, this week we're going to be talking about
• 0:15
  inexpensive films versus cheap films and why it's so difficult
• 0:18
  to make an inexpensive film that doesn't look or sound cheap.
• 0:23
  Really difficult. It is.
• 0:24
  We've made a lot of missteps ourselves over the years trying
• 0:27
  to cut budget and get projects across the finish line.
• 0:31
  So we're going to be talking over the next few episodes about
• 0:33
  what, Vic. We're going to be talking about
• 0:36
  specifically the difference between planning for a lean
• 0:40
  budget and making a cheap film. Right on.
• 0:44
  One of those is vastly more acceptable than the other.
• 0:47
  I agree with that completely. So let's talk about pre
• 0:50
  production and we'll share some of the red flags that we've
• 0:52
  encountered over the years of making movies that let us down
• 0:56
  the path of a cheap film versus an inexpensive, decent looking
• 1:02
  and sounding movie. Other than just not doing any
• 1:05
  preproduction whatsoever, because that I do feel like is
• 1:07
  sort of a guarantee, yeah. That's a big red flag.
• 1:09
  Pretty cheap looking film. Yeah.
• 1:10
  How are we going to define preproduction Vic?
• 1:12
  For this for the sake of this podcast episode, preproduction
• 1:17
  is only going to cover writing your script, creating and
• 1:21
  planning your art department, securing your locations,
• 1:24
  blocking in your crew, and rehearsals.
• 1:27
  Yes, rehearsals. Those are super important.
• 1:29
  They are and I feel like those get overlooked a lot even on
• 1:32
  major budget production. Well, even our friends over at
• 1:36
  films Fights with Friends podcast said the same thing that
• 1:40
  even on giant Hollywood multi $1,000,000 budget films
• 1:44
  rehearsals get skipped all the. Time and I was looking for some
• 1:48
  examples of some duty rehearsals on a film set and I ran into a
• 1:53
  story about the steady Cam operator on Martin Scorsese
• 1:57
  Goodfellas. I'll include a link in the
• 1:59
  description. I'm saying that right now to
• 2:01
  remind myself to put that in there.
• 2:03
  But this is from Larry Mcconkey and there's a famous shot of the
• 2:07
  entering of the Copa Club and the Goodfellas movie.
• 2:11
  And the main character hands off his keys to the the person who
• 2:17
  Dr. Valet, thank you. The driver the.
• 2:20
  Driver. The car driver who?
• 2:22
  Drive other people's cars. Thieves.
• 2:25
  That's what they're called. Grand Theft Auto.
• 2:27
  But so So the Steadicam operator actually ended up directing the
• 2:32
  scene. And like I said, I'll put the
• 2:34
  link of the video in the in the comments.
• 2:36
  It's just free on YouTube. But it was, it was really
• 2:37
  interesting to see that they had to rehearse this over and over
• 2:42
  and over and over again to make it look cool because it started
• 2:48
  off as just a tracking shot of this guy walking into the Copa.
• 2:52
  Which I do think is an important thing to call out.
• 2:55
  Inherently tracking wonders are not interesting.
• 3:00
  You're just following the back of somebody.
• 3:02
  This isn't a third person video game.
• 3:04
  Yeah, this is a film. So you do have to put a lot of
• 3:07
  art and time into it. So just having it in the script
• 3:10
  or even just a shot note of yeah, we'll just do a tracking
• 3:13
  one and it'll look great. I good on that steady Cam op for
• 3:16
  stepping up and being like hey I know this isn't technically my
• 3:18
  job but. Yeah, and Ray Liotta, he
• 3:21
  actually came up with a lot of the blocking, I guess because,
• 3:24
  you know, the the steady Cam OP was obviously didn't want to
• 3:28
  make it look like he did a bad job.
• 3:30
  So he was taking ownership of this, which if you're on an
• 3:33
  indie film set, sometimes that's a little bit scary.
• 3:35
  Me personally, doing sound work, and if I'm just on the location
• 3:38
  sound end of something and I'm not on the post sound end of
• 3:41
  something, I always kind of run that risk.
• 3:43
  If they're like, no, we're not going to hand that off to you.
• 3:46
  I keep my fingers crossed. I'm like, well, I hope this
• 3:47
  doesn't sound awful and then ends up on my IMDb page.
• 3:51
  You know, it's tricky. So anyway, the Steadicam OP
• 3:54
  worked with Ray Liotta to get some blocking.
• 3:55
  He was like, OK, you got to lean this way.
• 3:57
  Let's one of the big parts of that is they like walk through
• 4:01
  the kitchen through the scene. And I guess they just walk in a
• 4:03
  big circle. But they were just trying to
• 4:05
  keep it interesting because the lighting in the kitchen is, is
• 4:08
  flat, you know? In a really harsh fluorescent
• 4:10
  light. Yeah.
• 4:11
  And then moving back into the club again, it was like, OK,
• 4:13
  this is interesting dynamics in the light.
• 4:15
  And so they they just went ahead and blocked it that way to keep
• 4:18
  it moving. But anyway, so you can, you can
• 4:20
  check that out. You have some examples on your
• 4:22
  film sets. I mean, we can beat rehearsals
• 4:25
  to death. Just rehearse.
• 4:26
  But yeah, what are some what are some things that you did that
• 4:29
  led you down the path of, oh boy, I'm embarrassed of this
• 4:33
  movie? Again, other than just
• 4:35
  completely ignoring pre production as a whole and just
• 4:38
  showing up me like pre production is easy.
• 4:41
  You write your script and if it's an action movie, you show
• 4:43
  up with your prop gun. They're done.
• 4:45
  That's all you have to do for pre pro, no?
• 4:49
  Other than that the worst thing I think I did for pre production
• 4:54
  was a 17 page script OK for a film that was not allowed to be
• 5:02
  longer than 12 minutes including final credits.
• 5:05
  So, so those of you that don't know out there, usually it's a
• 5:07
  page a minute. Usually if you're really
• 5:10
  ambitious, sometimes you can get a.
• 5:13
  You could get like 3 pages to like 2 1/2.
• 5:18
  Yeah, it's. Not real hard, it's.
• 5:21
  Going to be pretty hard to get 3 pages down to 2.
• 5:23
  Yeah, Yeah. You're not going to do that.
• 5:24
  No, it's. It's rough.
• 5:25
  You're not going to do that. It's real rough.
• 5:27
  That was. Turned it into a clip show.
• 5:28
  That was the first 48 hour Film Festival I did with my brother.
• 5:31
  We ended up with, I think it was like a 15 page script for a 6
• 5:35
  minute movie. Yeah.
• 5:35
  And then when we cut it together, we're like, this is 15
• 5:38
  minutes. Yeah.
• 5:39
  And it's just the way it works. It's so annoying too, because
• 5:42
  every time in my head I'm like, well, there's so much direction
• 5:44
  in here and there's so much like fluffy detail and it'll be so
• 5:47
  much faster than it actually reads on the page.
• 5:50
  No, it never is. It never is.
• 5:52
  And and what's the worst that happens?
• 5:54
  Your script is, or your final movie is just a little bit
• 5:58
  tighter and a little bit shorter and a little bit more compressed
• 6:01
  and enjoyable. Great, always plan for one
• 6:04
  minute page. Cut the pages out before you get
• 6:08
  to cutting it out in the edit because I've done that before
• 6:11
  too. So one of our we did a one shot
• 6:14
  scene in our very first feature film that I filmed with with my
• 6:18
  brother and we just ended up slashing the whole thing.
• 6:22
  And you know, it wasn't, it wasn't very well rehearsed.
• 6:24
  We didn't have live sound and so we had to try to ADR it.
• 6:27
  And the way that it it went is like it was a, the main
• 6:32
  character was chatting on the phone and saying something like,
• 6:36
  is this a joke? And then it's kind of like a
• 6:37
  record scratch moment. And then it pans over to this
• 6:40
  person on a bench that's like, you want to hear a joke and then
• 6:42
  goes on to this really long joke.
• 6:44
  And it's something that happened in my real life.
• 6:47
  But it would be so funny if you were like in it and really Privy
• 6:52
  to that and probably on set and part of the production.
• 6:55
  That would be so funny. Yeah, no, but it didn't play
• 6:58
  well. No, not to anybody else.
• 7:00
  That is such a niche target audience.
• 7:02
  Yes, Yeah. So I guess that's another lesson
• 7:04
  there is like, don't write a script that is so involved in
• 7:08
  your own personal life that nobody's going to get it.
• 7:10
  Inside jokes are not meant to be on film usually.
• 7:14
  No. I mean there's always
• 7:15
  exceptions, but don't bank on yours being one.
• 7:18
  No, no, It's never going to be as funny if you try to explain
• 7:22
  it to somebody else because it's, you know, it's, it's been
• 7:25
  able to grow and build in your mind and sort of like a legend
• 7:28
  now. Yeah.
• 7:29
  And it's not to anybody else, no.
• 7:31
  No, it never. It never comes that across that
• 7:33
  way in the actual edit. Do you have any other any other
• 7:36
  areas of pre production that you've gone down where it's like
• 7:40
  this is definitely a bad path? I have this horrible habit of
• 7:44
  for locking in crew if I either ask one or two people and get a
• 7:50
  no or I'm just too afraid to ask because I'm anticipating the no.
• 7:59
  And I just sort of tell myself, oh, it's fine, I'll just do it.
• 8:01
  I could just do it myself. I don't, I don't need a gaffer.
• 8:03
  I could just do it. And that's always a lie.
• 8:06
  I always need a gaffer even if I'm on camera and directing,
• 8:10
  which I don't necessarily think you should be doing both, but if
• 8:13
  but but some people love to do that and kudos to them.
• 8:16
  Absolutely. But yeah, I don't think you
• 8:19
  should also be in charge of all of your gaffing then.
• 8:22
  No, that's probably bad. Yes, and also your focus puller
• 8:26
  and also your own, like B Cam and all.
• 8:28
  Yeah, just don't do it, you know?
• 8:30
  No, you're not going to do a bunch of the jobs well.
• 8:34
  No, you're not. You're going to end up with
• 8:36
  what's the worst that could happen?
• 8:37
  Just a short that I did make where I it was basically he
• 8:41
  approached Chuck and said hey Chuck, you want to make a movie?
• 8:43
  I've got like 30 actors. He had to weird the whole crew.
• 8:46
  Yep, it. Was the two of us.
• 8:48
  No, we had Cat hop in and then Elizabeth hop in.
• 8:50
  We had some people hop in and and we're willing to to sort of
• 8:53
  help out here and there where they could.
• 8:55
  And that's late and this and that.
• 8:56
  But it was not. It was not.
• 8:58
  You were directing in cinematographer and I was
• 9:00
  booming and then doing some gaffing on the side.
• 9:03
  Yeah, it was best I could. It was not.
• 9:05
  It was not a full-fledged. Which hopefully that'll be
• 9:07
  coming out on YouTube very soon. Yeah, actually, hopefully by the
• 9:10
  time this is posted, OK. If it is, we'll put a link in
• 9:12
  the description. If not, we'll just keep talking.
• 9:14
  About it Stay tuned. You'll want to see.
• 9:16
  It we record a couple a couple weeks ahead of time, I have to
• 9:18
  look at my notes here because I got sidetracked.
• 9:21
  Oh boy. Oh panic.
• 9:22
  Decorating classrooms. I may have talked about this
• 9:24
  before. I want to hear about panic
• 9:26
  decorating classrooms. Well, that was one of those pre
• 9:28
  production things that we that we skipped and it was first
• 9:31
  stocked into Table Rock, which is on Amazon Prime right now.
• 9:35
  And it it turned out OK luckily, but we went into shoot.
• 9:39
  In a school movie is great. This particular panic decorating
• 9:43
  classrooms turned out OK. Correct?
• 9:45
  Just to clarify that. Thank you.
• 9:46
  Thank you. So the, the, we went into, we
• 9:50
  secured a school and we secured the school when the school was
• 9:54
  open. And I, I'm fairly certain I've
• 9:56
  shared this before, but then when we got into shoot, we shot
• 10:00
  during the summer. Yeah.
• 10:01
  And they take down all the decorations so that they can
• 10:04
  repaint and do work on everything.
• 10:06
  So none of the classrooms had decorations up, none of the
• 10:09
  hallways had decorations up. And so it was 100% pure panic
• 10:13
  when we arrived that day. School or a mental institution
• 10:16
  you. Don't know.
• 10:18
  Yeah, it was it was close. Unfortunately, it.
• 10:19
  Would have been a fun twist on Stockton to Table Rock if the
• 10:22
  whole thing was actually just mental.
• 10:23
  Institutions. But we had done the rehearsals
• 10:25
  ahead of time, so we didn't want to make too many changes.
• 10:28
  Last minute need a Shutter Island moment here.
• 10:31
  OK, so then actually, I guess slightly on the subject of
• 10:34
  Stockton to table rocks, I think it came up for this particular
• 10:37
  one before we move into the inexpensive hacks that can keep
• 10:42
  your film from looking cheap, the difference being inexpensive
• 10:46
  to cheap. So before we go into that,
• 10:49
  Chuck, do you have a cheap trick for us, not the band.
• 10:53
  Cheap trick, not the band. I can't audio drop that.
• 10:56
  I'll just do it cash registering, you know.
• 10:57
  It'd be really cool if we could drop the band though.
• 10:59
  So people talk. Yeah, I know.
• 11:01
  But they flag us so much. They would get so upset, yeah.
• 11:05
  We don't want to be demonetized before we're monetized.
• 11:07
  I want them to want us. Yes, good one.
• 11:12
  I like that. So back, back to Stockton Table
• 11:15
  Rock, we had to that was a $10,000 feature film.
• 11:18
  And so we had to get creative. We shot it on a steady Cam or
• 11:23
  Danny clamorous or cinematographer shot on a steady
• 11:25
  Cam. And so for the Dolly shots, one
• 11:29
  of the Dolly shots that we got, which is inside of a hospital
• 11:31
  scene, we just used a wheelchair because it happened to be on
• 11:36
  set. And to make the shot more
• 11:38
  interesting, we wanted to add movement.
• 11:40
  And so this Danny sat on the wheelchair with a steady Cam and
• 11:44
  then my brother, the director, pushed and pulled him around and
• 11:48
  it turned out 100% fine. What you hear about that all the
• 11:50
  time, like use a wheelchair or use like an office chair to to
• 11:54
  move around a camera on set if you're in a pinch.
• 11:57
  He did have the steady Cam on his lap.
• 12:00
  That feels like the better choice, right because but also I
• 12:04
  will say I would trust a hospital chair over an office
• 12:07
  chair for sure. And maybe that's just because of
• 12:09
  our did some pretty typical corporate environments where
• 12:12
  those office chairs are not, that's not a smooth ride.
• 12:17
  It's never going to be a smooth ride.
• 12:18
  And at least in a hospital, you know that it's not going to be
• 12:22
  the weird Berber carpeting on top of concrete like you're
• 12:25
  going to have in an office building.
• 12:27
  And then it's also in a hospital chair, an actual wheelchair.
• 12:31
  You're going to have hopefully a smoother ride.
• 12:35
  Yeah, absolutely. And, and having the not just
• 12:38
  setting it on a chair obviously, because that's going to pick up
• 12:40
  every vibration. If you want to talk about making
• 12:43
  cheap looking movies, we did screw up on that early on
• 12:46
  because we tried to make our own equipment when my brother and I
• 12:49
  were teachers and a lot of stuff did not work out.
• 12:53
  And in the realm of Dolly building, we did the PVC pipe
• 12:57
  Dolly that we made ourselves. But then we found an old set of
• 13:02
  roller blades in the attic, and so we tore those apart, and with
• 13:06
  the PVC pipe we mounted some rollerblade wheels onto those to
• 13:12
  roll the tripod back. Into which is very creative
• 13:15
  thinking. Yeah, but it didn't work.
• 13:18
  And had you just gone and splurged for the new inline
• 13:21
  skate wheels or even just typical classic skate wheels or
• 13:25
  skateboard wheels? Yeah, it would have been, yeah,
• 13:27
  But the the wheels were used and so they were kind of worn out
• 13:29
  and so it made all the shots bumpy.
• 13:31
  That would no, probably, probably better.
• 13:35
  I attempted one of those. I'm sure everybody has one of
• 13:39
  these at some point in their filmmaking careers.
• 13:42
  Those really cheap little like you just put your tripod onto it
• 13:47
  and it's got the caster wheels underneath and it's just like a
• 13:50
  little handle and you just fold it out and there's three wheel
• 13:55
  your wheels and you pull out your tripod.
• 13:56
  It's just like wheels that go underneath your tripod.
• 13:59
  Exactly. And you tell yourself this is
• 14:01
  going to be so cool. I'm going to get so many.
• 14:03
  I'm going to have moving shots. Dolly that is not limited by the
• 14:06
  railings. Yeah, forget left and right.
• 14:08
  I can go anywhere. I can follow people.
• 14:11
  No, you cannot. That is the bumpiest thing and.
• 14:14
  It looks like crap. Oh man, and I used that in 1-1
• 14:20
  really long scene and I did my best to make it work but it was
• 14:26
  so loud we couldn't even get it out of the audio.
• 14:30
  Like you just you heard it. Yeah.
• 14:32
  The whole we had somebody running location sound and you
• 14:36
  just, it was so loud and so bumpy and so shaky.
• 14:40
  It was. It was the worst.
• 14:41
  The noise is the other factor, Yeah, the the squeaky wheels.
• 14:44
  And that was like a smooth, glossy, A hardwood floor of like
• 14:46
  a dance studio. And I was like if it's not going
• 14:48
  to work on. That you're you're toast.
• 14:50
  Yeah, it's never going to work on that.
• 14:52
  It's going in the trash or you sell it to a film, no?
• 14:55
  I've actually, I've kept it as just sort of a precautionary
• 14:59
  tale to myself, like, don't ever sink this low again.
• 15:02
  Don't. Do it.
• 15:03
  It's a literal equipment skeleton in your closet.
• 15:05
  Yeah. It's there to haunt me.
• 15:06
  I like it. I like it.
• 15:07
  Let's talk about some of the things that we've done.
• 15:09
  OK, yes, to make our stuff look it's inexpensive approach.
• 15:14
  Yeah, and one of my favorite examples in a film is Monty
• 15:18
  Python and the Holy Grail. They planned on not having a
• 15:23
  horse for the king. And so they used coconuts in
• 15:27
  that movie instead of having a horse.
• 15:29
  And they they realized they weren't going to have a budget
• 15:32
  to have a horse on set all the time.
• 15:34
  Because the original script said horse.
• 15:36
  Yes, I. Believe so, Yeah.
• 15:38
  Yeah. And then when the budget got set
• 15:44
  with the script, then all of a sudden it was like, oh, OK, so
• 15:47
  definitely not real. You're going to have to cut
• 15:49
  horse. So what do we do to in this at
• 15:51
  the script level to make this a creative decision rather than
• 15:55
  we're just going to shoehorn something in or, you know, and
• 15:59
  they, they did a good job with that.
• 16:00
  They did. The coconut decision was the
• 16:02
  right one. It's still so funny and it's so
• 16:05
  funny on so many levels. Right, because there wouldn't be
• 16:07
  coconuts there. It opened itself up to the
• 16:09
  swallows unladen swallow joke later.
• 16:11
  Like it, just it and. And I feel like that's that's
• 16:16
  where the inexpensive aspect needs to start, in my opinion,
• 16:21
  is at the script level. Yeah.
• 16:23
  And that's a lesson that I've learned over and over again.
• 16:26
  Unfortunately, trying to do things like a sci-fi movie about
• 16:30
  the singularity, it ended up looking a little cheap.
• 16:34
  Because, OK. But to be fair, what year was
• 16:36
  that? That was 20.
• 16:39
  I think we shot it in like 2013, 2014, I want to say.
• 16:43
  OK, so more than a decade later now, to be fair, there are
• 16:48
  enough AI platforms out there that you could probably do a
• 16:52
  little bit more with the special effects and visual effects stuff
• 16:55
  now at at an easier your what is that the slope of of entry point
• 17:04
  or whatever that's called we're like.
• 17:06
  The singularity, you mean the elbow of the exponential curve
• 17:11
  where we're reaching it right now and basically AI is going to
• 17:14
  take over the world and we're all done anyway.
• 17:16
  You can see it all in this movie.
• 17:17
  I was very mad at a suggest using AI on that.
• 17:20
  Oh my God. OK, yes, if you would like to
• 17:22
  see if. You would like to see the end of
• 17:23
  civilization? No, it's.
• 17:24
  Brown truck, right? Brown Truck.
• 17:26
  The end of the movie, yes, but it's it was a little rough.
• 17:30
  But instead of moving forward, what we learned was that it's
• 17:35
  important to write what what you know how to accomplish and make
• 17:42
  sure that you're make sure that you're staying within the realm
• 17:47
  of your ability and while still extending yourself.
• 17:51
  But you don't want to extend yourself on multiple realms, you
• 17:55
  know, like multiple times in one shooting day, right?
• 17:58
  Like for example on your short film Dive, you had a complicated
• 18:04
  moving shot planned that was not necessary for the film.
• 18:09
  It was not. It was really cool.
• 18:12
  It was a, it was a nice to have, but you planned accordingly,
• 18:15
  like if we can get this, we can get this.
• 18:17
  If not, we're going to cut it because it was already a super
• 18:21
  aggressive shooting schedule. Shooting.
• 18:24
  Schedule and and that was just basically two people having a
• 18:27
  conversation at a bar. Yeah, yeah, it didn't need the
• 18:31
  motion, it didn't need to be overcomplicated.
• 18:33
  It wasn't a requirement, but it would have been really, really
• 18:35
  cool. And Danny, again, the
• 18:38
  cinematographer, because apparently this episode, despite
• 18:41
  being very pre production, is all about freezing Danny.
• 18:43
  Oh, yes, gratefully so. Well, it helps.
• 18:45
  To have it helps to have a cinematographer who does an
• 18:48
  excellent job of gaffing well, Lee helped out in gaffing on
• 18:50
  yours too. Yeah.
• 18:52
  But it's it's nice that we work with a lot of people.
• 18:54
  I want to say that too. That was one of the points I
• 18:56
  wanted to bring up is working with the same crew and or cast
• 19:01
  over and over again on smaller projects.
• 19:04
  That's going to help you learn what is possible.
• 19:08
  So there are fewer unknown unknowns when you go into
• 19:10
  something because that's, I feel like it's, it's, it's really
• 19:13
  important to build a rapport on set and that's going to help you
• 19:18
  execute things less expensively because you can get them done
• 19:22
  more quickly. Yeah.
• 19:23
  And you're comfortable with these people.
• 19:24
  You know exactly how to ask for what you're asking for.
• 19:27
  I will say that's one of, that's one of my actual tips is I do
• 19:34
  very specific, intentional coordinated meetings with my
• 19:38
  crew. So everybody on my crew knows
• 19:41
  what the shot list is. Everybody knows where we're
• 19:43
  shooting. They know what the space looks
• 19:45
  like, they've seen it, they've toured it.
• 19:47
  They've, if they weren't able to be there physically and get a
• 19:49
  tour of it. I took way too many photos and
• 19:52
  flooded it all in a Slack or a Discord channel somewhere and
• 19:55
  they are sick of it. But they're there and they can
• 19:57
  see it, and they know the space, they know what to expect and
• 20:00
  they know what the shoot day is going to consist of.
• 20:02
  Yeah, absolutely. So I do think that's an
• 20:03
  important and thing to keep in mind too.
• 20:07
  I agree. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:08
  I mean rehearsals it's. It's like rehearsals, but it's
• 20:12
  like a crew meeting in addition to a rehearsal.
• 20:16
  Because I do want my crew there, if possible for rehearsals,
• 20:20
  because I want my crew to be able to plan out like especially
• 20:22
  the cinematographer if they can. I want them to see the space and
• 20:27
  the actors and get an idea for what's happening and what we're
• 20:31
  trying to communicate and what I'm really pushing for with the
• 20:34
  actors. So that way the cinematographer
• 20:36
  can be like, oh, you know, what shots going to totally like just
• 20:39
  sell this. I want this, this, this and this
• 20:41
  and they can use that to kind of craft their their shot list.
• 20:45
  Nice. And what advice do you have for
• 20:47
  people as far as like getting the getting people on board at
• 20:51
  an inexpensive rate, maybe talented crew, talented cast?
• 20:57
  Because that's another huge barrier to overcome for for
• 21:00
  those that are trying to make films.
• 21:03
  Well, you know, ask nicely. No kidding.
• 21:06
  Yeah. Don't demand.
• 21:08
  Don't demand. That they work cheap and or free
• 21:10
  or for credit or for future payment.
• 21:13
  Oh no, never promise somebody like when this makes money then
• 21:17
  we'll go into profit shit. No it won't.
• 21:20
  Good luck you or. It might.
• 21:22
  I've never said never say die. But I guess that's fair and
• 21:25
  plenty of people have wasn't that.
• 21:27
  Isn't there somebody in like Star Wars or some of them who
• 21:30
  like signed away their like Darth Vader?
• 21:32
  Oh yeah, we talked about that. Yeah, the original, the original
• 21:34
  Darth Vader didn't get a cut. Yeah, OK.
• 21:37
  All right. So I guess nevermind.
• 21:38
  You know what? Hey, promise, whatever you want.
• 21:40
  You never know what could happen.
• 21:41
  Yeah, I, I think a lot of it has to come down to knowing the
• 21:47
  person and knowing their motivators, right?
• 21:50
  Because not everybody is motivated by money, though it is
• 21:54
  a great motivator. So if you've got a big budget,
• 21:57
  fantastic. Love that.
• 21:59
  Use it because money talks. But if you don't, I do think
• 22:05
  there are other things that you can work around.
• 22:09
  There was this movie called the, I think it was just called The
• 22:14
  Monkey, or maybe The Monkey's Paw.
• 22:17
  I think it was just called The Monkey.
• 22:18
  It was recent and it was originally supposed to be a
• 22:22
  Stephen King Dollar Baby back when that program still existed,
• 22:25
  but it got taken off the list. But one guy had already really
• 22:29
  had his heart set on making it and actually made an entire
• 22:32
  campaign appealing to Stephen King to be able to.
• 22:35
  Please let me make this Dollar Baby movie with this script
• 22:39
  because it's the one I fell in love with.
• 22:42
  Stephen King ended up saying yes and coming back and being like,
• 22:45
  OK, let's do this. And then it ended up getting so
• 22:46
  much like notoriety and credit and stuff that it actually got a
• 22:49
  really big budget behind it. And it actually ended up being
• 22:51
  this just this whole big Stephen King film that was released, I
• 22:55
  want to say in either end of 2024 or early 2025.
• 22:58
  It was very recent and they had not a huge budget but definitely
• 23:05
  a budget and Elijah Wood in it. Oh.
• 23:11
  I haven't. Seen this?
• 23:12
  It's it's entertaining. It's definitely like kind of
• 23:16
  campy. They did a good job with it and
• 23:18
  it, you got to keep in mind it's a Stephen King.
• 23:20
  It started as like a dollar baby, right?
• 23:22
  It's one of Stephen King's short stories that's not super well
• 23:25
  known. It's not a very common one.
• 23:27
  It's this really creepy monkey puppet doll thing and some
• 23:32
  surprisingly good young actors in it playing these young
• 23:35
  brothers. Anyway, it's good.
• 23:37
  I do recommend it. It's fun, it's wild, it's weird,
• 23:40
  it's a it's a horror movie. Have a good time with it.
• 23:43
  But it has Elijah Wood in it. Not because they can necessarily
• 23:46
  afford Elijah Wood's day rate, but because they could offer him
• 23:52
  a really weird, really wild, really uncomfortable role in
• 23:58
  this one-of-a-kind movie that he would be like, OK, that's
• 24:03
  interesting enough to get to play that part.
• 24:05
  You've got it set. So I only have to be there for
• 24:07
  one shooting day. I can give you one day at a
• 24:11
  vastly discounted rate as long as I get to do something
• 24:13
  exciting and interesting. And you'd be surprised how many
• 24:16
  actors actually will do that. And I assume the same goes for
• 24:19
  costumers, choreographers, cinematographers, gaffers.
• 24:23
  Like, ask, find out. And don't be afraid to haggle.
• 24:28
  I don't have money to offer you, So what would make this worth
• 24:31
  your while? And just see what they say.
• 24:34
  Yeah, the worst they can say is only money and then you're out.
• 24:37
  Or find a bigger budget. But I have money coming down the
• 24:41
  pipe on this one. I'm positive this one's selling
• 24:45
  on Tubi for $5 billion. Guaranteed.
• 24:49
  Yes, Almost. Yeah.
• 24:51
  It's, it's funny to think about that as far as getting people on
• 24:54
  board, because I, I feel like for some reason, there are, I've
• 24:59
  had many instances where you run into people in, in filmmaking
• 25:03
  and some of them just kind of come off as like self-centered
• 25:07
  narcissists. No offense to any of you out
• 25:10
  there that are film makers, but there's.
• 25:12
  Yeah, I'm sure we've never come across that way on this podcast.
• 25:15
  Yeah, all right, perfect. But people that aren't like
• 25:19
  that, No, the, the, the excitement about the project is
• 25:24
  one thing, but the empathy towards other people and helping
• 25:31
  them make their goals or reach goals and finding a synergistic
• 25:35
  approach to be able to get a project done is a different one.
• 25:38
  And the and the people that at least in this film community in
• 25:42
  Boise, ID, not huge, but there are people that have like come
• 25:45
  and gone and they're the ones that were always excited, but
• 25:49
  then making promises that they couldn't keep versus the ones
• 25:52
  that continue to make movies, continue to move up, continue to
• 25:56
  get more notoriety. And those are the ones that are,
• 26:00
  you know, creative collaborators.
• 26:03
  And if Martin Scorsese can hand over the direction of a scene
• 26:08
  to. A.
• 26:09
  Steadicam Operator and this is 1990 Goodfellas, and so we
• 26:14
  already had a few movies under his belt and he obviously had
• 26:16
  more in the future. But for him to be able to let go
• 26:20
  of creative control, it's one of those things things if you're
• 26:22
  trying to make something inexpensively, it is probably
• 26:26
  important that you let go of creative control because you
• 26:29
  want to get buy in from those people that are really skilled
• 26:32
  at what they're doing. Yeah.
• 26:33
  And for, I mean, I have that story about Danny as the
• 26:37
  cinematographer for Dive because I thought it was too big of an
• 26:40
  ask to ask him to be the cinematographer.
• 26:42
  So I asked him if he would just gaffe because that seemed like
• 26:45
  less of a demand on his time. But he didn't want to gaffe.
• 26:50
  No, he said yeah, he wanted to be some cinematographer.
• 26:53
  So by the time we finally sorted that out, then it was like, oh,
• 26:56
  OK, this is a no brainer. I should have just asked for
• 26:58
  what I wanted in the first place.
• 26:59
  See See what people see, what people will do and and work
• 27:03
  around their schedule and be flexible with your script.
• 27:07
  Yeah. To make sure that you can hold
• 27:10
  on to those ideas for later. And that's one of the things I
• 27:11
  wanted to talk about too, about making something inexpensively
• 27:14
  is if you're setting time aside to think of creative ideas
• 27:19
  constantly, you'll have ideas to pull from.
• 27:23
  Yeah, which is what? Just a running log.
• 27:25
  What my brother and I did when we did our our chit chat series
• 27:28
  and he always writes. He's a writer, though.
• 27:31
  On top of that. Helps of a director, but he
• 27:33
  writes all the time. But it's good to have those
• 27:34
  ideas in the background that you can pull from.
• 27:37
  I'll do that with my music. I have an ongoing music journal
• 27:40
  where I just write music constantly and it goes in there.
• 27:43
  And then if I need something for some some project or something,
• 27:47
  I can pull a little bit of an idea from my backlog rather than
• 27:51
  having to come up with something first from scratch.
• 27:54
  So if you're a filmmaker out there, it's probably a good idea
• 27:57
  to come up with. They need different ideas.
• 28:00
  Just keep them somewhere in a note, in a notebook, in a
• 28:04
  spreadsheet. I do that too.
• 28:05
  Like you never know. You never know when you're going
• 28:07
  to need it or what it's going to be handy or what it's just going
• 28:10
  to make a good story at a dinner party and you desperately need
• 28:13
  to kill the time. Not just because like it was
• 28:15
  recently the holidays or anything and we were all around
• 28:17
  a bunch of family members. We didn't have anything to say
• 28:19
  to that wouldn't really happen anyway.
• 28:22
  One other thing, yes I would like to mention, please do as
• 28:26
  far as cheap versus inexpensive is it is important to know the
• 28:33
  difference. I guess in the 2.
• 28:35
  So in my mind, cheap is cutting corners but inexpensive is
• 28:39
  choosing wisely. OK, I like that.
• 28:42
  One example from my personal life is when I was directing
• 28:46
  Evil Dead the Musical, I had the option do I go really really big
• 28:51
  budget and make it look all out and amazing and awesome or do I
• 28:54
  accept that this is a community theater so the budget isn't
• 28:59
  there and also it's based off AB horror movie.
• 29:02
  I can lean in to that B horror vibe or a more popular option
• 29:08
  that people might know since apparently not everybody knows
• 29:10
  Evil Dead the Musical, which is a shame, is Murder Party the
• 29:15
  movie. Oh yeah, murder party.
• 29:17
  Yeah, where this guy needed a Halloween costume and he's the
• 29:23
  lead character and in this costume for the entirety of the
• 29:26
  film, and it's made of cardboard and duct tape because it's just
• 29:30
  what he had available. He got invited to a last minute
• 29:32
  Halloween or yeah, Halloween party and he threw together a
• 29:35
  last minute costume and it looks last minute.
• 29:37
  Now, obviously it's definitely, if it holds up for that long
• 29:40
  through that many days of filming and everything, it was
• 29:41
  obviously a little bit more high quality than it looked, but it
• 29:46
  wasn't. The jokes were not, you know,
• 29:51
  dependent upon his costume looking like a real robot.
• 29:55
  It could look like a guy dressed up in cardboard boxes and duct
• 29:58
  tape. Yeah, I thought, yeah, that was
• 30:00
  a great example. Margaret Party was.
• 30:02
  So good. And lean into some of that
• 30:04
  embarrassment. You're going to be embarrassed.
• 30:07
  At least for me, I'm always embarrassed when I look back at
• 30:11
  the things that I've done previously.
• 30:13
  If you're not, it means you're not growing as a filmmaker.
• 30:15
  Yeah. So that's a good thing, you
• 30:18
  know, it's OK. Rather than shooting for the
• 30:20
  stars and cutting corners, maybe just be prepared that this is
• 30:25
  not going to be the most amazing thing that's ever been created
• 30:28
  on the face of the Earth. No, but enjoy the process as
• 30:31
  you're making it and rather than overextending yourself and
• 30:36
  making it uncomfortable along the way, figure out ways to to
• 30:40
  plan to make it as good as you possibly can make it while still
• 30:44
  keeping it well under budget. If you have a budget, you know,
• 30:47
  or time budget. I mean, that's always something
• 30:50
  that people have to be concerned about when they're getting
• 30:52
  volunteers or or people that are going to work for much less than
• 30:55
  their usual day rate because your project is way more
• 30:58
  interesting than another corporate talking head video.
• 31:00
  Yeah, you'd be surprised what you can get just by having a
• 31:04
  creative narrative project. Yeah, that isn't just.
• 31:09
  Another snoozer, Yeah. Awesome.
• 31:11
  Well, shall we talk about our our Filmmaker of the Week?
• 31:14
  Yeah, absolutely. Sweet.
• 31:16
  I think I'm going to read this one this week.
• 31:18
  So our filmmaker of the week is Janae Rachel Ballot.
• 31:22
  And this is kind of a a fun story here.
• 31:24
  It's it's a when life gives you lemons.
• 31:26
  This is the epitome of when life gives you lemons, you're.
• 31:29
  Supposed to get the vodka ready, Yeah.
• 31:32
  Is that the line? I'm pretty sure.
• 31:33
  OK, well either way. Something about lemonade or
• 31:36
  something, I don't know you. Drink it.
• 31:37
  Yeah, you drink it. So after numerous attempts to
• 31:40
  use industry connections and traditional studio pitches to
• 31:43
  make a movie about her life, Janae took it on herself to
• 31:46
  simply grab a camera, get her friends to play themselves, and
• 31:50
  visit old childhood homes and haunts.
• 31:52
  Sometimes even without a script to capture the story and tell it
• 31:56
  in the most true to life way possible.
• 31:58
  Things were running smoothly enough spare one shoot day they
• 32:01
  kept getting rescheduled. Finally, the night before the
• 32:04
  problematic shoot, Jane was stoked to get the footage and
• 32:07
  some errands done at the same time and found herself in path
• 32:10
  in the path of a car traveling at 35 miles an hour.
• 32:15
  Which doesn't sound like the fastest thing in the world, but
• 32:20
  man, when you consider like, not moving and suddenly being met by
• 32:24
  something going that speed, yeah.
• 32:28
  Not fun. So anyway, she got hit, she was
• 32:30
  in the hospital and that that actual incident.
• 32:34
  Then she decided to make it part of the script.
• 32:38
  Which I think is really. Cool.
• 32:39
  So that's the vodka part of the story, Janae.
• 32:42
  So Congrats on making the most out of that situation.
• 32:45
  We're hope that you're doing better and we're excited to see
• 32:48
  the film, which is Dissociated me.
• 32:50
  Yeah, it sounds pretty awesome. And that's a really cool way to
• 32:54
  take something that, yeah, could have, could have been a total
• 32:56
  show stopper. Like.
• 32:57
  Absolutely. I feel like that could have
• 32:59
  easily been interpreted as, OK, well, we're not finishing this
• 33:01
  movie. Yeah, but people are, people are
• 33:03
  going to make excuses not to make a movie all the time.
• 33:06
  Usually if they get to some point, it's like these are the
• 33:08
  type of people that are just going to get it done.
• 33:10
  Yeah. So Janae, good on you.
• 33:12
  Congrats. Get that film done and thanks.
• 33:14
  For being our Filmmaker of the Week and if you would like to be
• 33:16
  our Featured Filmmaker of the Week, please head to
• 33:19
  indiefilmpodcast.com/submit. And in addition to some other
• 33:23
  options for getting your film reviewed or being a sponsor of
• 33:26
  the episode, you'll also see Become a Featured Filmmaker and
• 33:29
  you can submit and fill out the form.
• 33:30
  There, Yeah, share some information with us.
• 33:31
  You can upload an audio snippet too.
• 33:33
  We'd love to share some audio snippets and if you have any
• 33:36
  things that tips, tricks that you want to share, be sure to
• 33:39
  leave a comment. Be sure to like and subscribe,
• 33:41
  especially if you made it this far into the podcast.
• 33:43
  Yeah, we're supposed to be asking people to do that.
• 33:45
  Yeah. We'd appreciate it greatly.
• 33:47
  That would be wonderful. Awesome.
• 33:49
  On that, shall we succinctly say farewell?
• 33:51
  I think so. Bye.
• 33:53
  Bye.