Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 295: Tales from a Million-Dollar Debut Feature Film with Giles Alderson

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BPS 295: Tales from a Million-Dollar Debut Feature Film with Giles Alderson · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
• 0:13
  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two ninety five. You cannot always control what goes
• 0:18
  on outside, but you can always control what goes on inside. Wayne Dyer
• 0:24
  broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working
• 0:29
  on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft
• 0:34
  and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And
• 0:39
  here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the
• 0:44
  Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now. Today's
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  show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services,
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  Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are in the
• 1:00
  goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down by three
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  categories micro budget, indie film, market, and studio film. There's no
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  reason to get coverage from a reader that used to reading temp bowl movies when
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  your movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted
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  to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage, our readers have worked with
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  Marvel Studios, CIA, WM, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free,
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  Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you
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  need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to
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  cover my screenplay dot com. Now, guys, today on the show,
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  we have filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, and fellow podcaster Giles Alderson. And
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  Giles is the host of The Filmmakers Podcast, a very popular podcast over in
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  the UK. Now I've had the pleasure of being on his show multiple times,
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  and we were talking the other day about his first film, and when
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  he told me that his first film had a million dollar budget, I was
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  like, you mean your debut feature film was a million bucks? How the
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  hell did that happen? He goes, it's a hell of a story.
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  So he started telling me the story. I'm like, dude, you've got
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  to come on the show and we got to talk about this. So that's
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  what we did, and it is a hell of a tale that he weaves
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  in regards to how he got this movie made. Just the adventures the misadventures,
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  everything that we went on on making his film, and what he's doing
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  now, his new projects, how that film led to his next project,
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  and so on and so forth. And Giles is just an awesome, awesome
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  guy and I am proud to call him my friend. So, without any
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  further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Giles Alderson. I like to welcome
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  to show Giles Alderson. How are you doing, my friend? I am
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  good. Thank you, Alex. It's an absolute delight, honestly to be
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  hey with you. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show. Man.
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  You know, we've we've known each other for a little while now.
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  You have an amazing podcast called The Filmmaker's Podcast, which I've I've been blessed
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  and honored to be on as a as a guest as well twice twice.
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  Yes I'm a I'm a two timer. Yes, yes i am I'm a
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  two timer. Uh And and we also work together a little bit on your
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  documentary, which we'll talk about later as well. But before we get going,
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  man, how did you get into the business? You see, it's
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  a it's a really interesting one for me because obviously the quicker version of it
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  is I was an actor for years, but getting to be an actor.
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  Was a careers advisor in school and she said to me, because I was
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  like, I'm going to be a footballer, a soccer player. This is
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  all I'm gonna do. I'm gonna play for England as a goalkeeper. And
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  she said to me, she said, yeah, yeah, Well, while
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  you're waiting for that to happen, I saw you in the school play and
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  I heard you, you know, of course, at college while you wait
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  for the football. And I went to this performing arts college and I fell
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  in love with the people, the girls, the idea of it, and
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  I wasn't get any of the roles, but I wanted it and I got
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  the bug and I fell in love. And football didn't happen for me.
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  Sadday, I still waiting. I'm still waiting. It might, you know,
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  you never know one day and then I got into acting and from there
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  I'd put on plays at the Royal Court in London and the Soho Theater which
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  I'd written, and I'd sometimes direct them and it was just an absolute joy
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  to sort of be involved and behind the scenes. But I wanted to be
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  an actor, not a filmmaker. People kept saying, you should really direct
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  shorts, you'd go do something like that. And I shied away from it
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  for so long, and luckily I've managed to be in some great films.
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  I Want Candy and The Dams United and loads of TV. And The dam
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  United was a football movie, a soccer movie, so I got to fulfill
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  my two dreams of being a professional footballer but actually acting away. And then
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  we wrote a pilot for the BBC. The BBC were interested in this pilot
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  that our team at the time were we were writing, and I said,
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  golf and shoot shoot a pilot. We've said okay, all right, great,
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  we can do that, and the director pulled out almost last minute.
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  So I went, I'm going to do it. I am going to do
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  this, and I fell in love with directing on the spot. I went,
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  this is amazing. I didn't know what it was. It was just
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  the the delight of being on set and actually calling the shots and being in
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  control. Camera guy. You know, so actually I just like to move
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  this shot around to here, and and they do it, and You're like,
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  what you're actually doing? What I'm saying? Does this make sense?
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  And yeah, choosing the colors and the palette and the costumes. And I
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  then spent the next part of ten years trying to be a director, and
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  it was very difficult being the actor because people were very much like you,
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  you're an actor, mate, you know, And it was very hard to
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  get take be taken seriously as a director. So whenever I went for directing
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  gigcause I just didn't talk about the acting. And I started to make music
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  videos and promos and brand media and films for banks and whatever I could get
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  my hands on to learn about filmmaking. And yet that's pretty much how I
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  got into it. Very cool. Now you're but your first film. It's
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  very interesting, your debut film. It's not the standard fair for so,
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  so can you tell the story about how you What was the story behind your
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  debut film, sir? So? To get to my debut film, I,
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  like I said, it took a long time. And during that time,
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  I got burnt so much by predatory producers, by my lack of understanding
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  about what a director slash producers slash screenwriters should do and be. And I
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  was favoring people's and I didn't feel I belonged, and constantly relying on other
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  people to make those decisions. I was always hearing things third party, you
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  know, if someone else had have a meeting and it get passed down and
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  now it's not working out, or did always be an issue? You know?
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  We had Jason Statham attached to one project at one time, we had
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  Fox attached to another project. And every single time I wasn't the person speaking
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  to the person, if you like, there was always two or three people
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  in between. And while we so much that I'd hear this third hand,
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  and by then it had been diluted and diluted and diluted, and I couldn't
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  take it anymore. And during that whole process, I got ripped off and
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  those projects got taken away from me, and I didn't have any control.
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  So what I decided to do was take back control. I decided to write
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  my own projects fully. I decided to produce my own projects. And I
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  decided to say I am directing this and no one's going to take it away
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  from me this time. And I had learned mass Fleet about doing that,
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  and about being strong and about being vibrant, and about actually when you do
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  that, people take you seriously. If you're there going I'm directing this.
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  If you're not going to put the money in because I'm directing it. Or
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  if you're not going to be in it because I'm directing it, then you're
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  not going to be in it. I'm not doing it with you. Whereas
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  in the past I was so scared that I think it is interesting story.
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  There was there was one project we were doing where I'd found the investor,
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  i'd found the script, I'd found the actors, and there were some big
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  actors. I'd got it all going. It was great, and then suddenly
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  I get a call from one of the investors. One of it is saying,
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  oh, there's there's a bit of a situation. I'm like, what
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  do you mean to speak to? The producer? Producer was now not returning
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  calls. It seemed to be that the writer and producer had gone behind my
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  back and put the option in a different name and then brought my investors to
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  them, and the investor then rang back up the investor what you're doing?
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  Why? Yeah, you do this, and he said, don't worry,
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  We'll give you an associate producer credit. It'd be really good for your career.
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  So I thought, So this is the time where I changed, and
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  I fought back and I said, I'm not having this anymore. I said,
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  I'll take you to court. I'm going to take this further. I
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  am not having this agents for being really dickheads, and I just fought back.
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  I said I've had enough, and I fought back and it changed.
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  The film didn't happen, which is sad in some ways, but also do
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  you know what I stuck up for myself and all filmmakers need to do that.
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  You've just about about this all the time, and it's so true.
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  It's your project and if you want to go make a film, you have
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  to be strong. And I don't mean be a dick, and I don't
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  mean be obtrusive and in the way, you've just got to be strong and
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  powerful and passionate about your project that people want to work with you. And
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  that's kind of how my first project, The Day came about. So I'm
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  now in this place where I'm struggling to get a project made. I'm struggling
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  for people to take me seriously. We'll be right back after a word from
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  our sponsor. And now back to the show. And I went to see
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  a friend's film called Amit Gupta, and he'd made some big movies with some
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  big people and he'd just made this hundred thousand dollars romantic comedy, and I
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  said to him afterwards, I said, mate, that was fantastic, But
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  why have you gone from making these two three million pounds studio movies, even
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  bigger in some cases, with big names, to making this with no names
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  and no money. He went, because I'm in control, and I got
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  to make a movie. How I wanted to make a movie. And he
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  turned to me and said, why are you not making a movie? And
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  I said, oh, because because because, And he went go home tonight,
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  find a project and go make it for whatever budget you can go make
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  it for, and then you'll be taken seriously. And I took him at
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  his word, and that night I went home found a script that I was
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  so passionate about, and I went out and I said, right, I'm
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  going to make this movie. During that time, obviously bits and pieces happened,
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  and I said, I'm also going to write something myself. But that
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  writer of the other project, I brought him on to my project, which
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  was called The Dare and it was two ideas. I'd had sat in a
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  notebook on my desk here, and at one point I was reading through ideas
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  and that went, why don't I stick them together? There's four people in
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  a basement and we don't know why they're there, and then above there's an
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  old man and he's got a kid, and we don't know their relationship,
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  but it's not his kid. And I thought, why don't I tie these
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  stories together? Why don't they connect somehow? And that was it. It
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  was like a light bulb went off in my head. Now I have this
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  story. And within literally a week, I had written the whole treatment out,
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  almost seventy pages of this treatment. And I went to another producer at
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  the time and things happened and fell down, and then I went back to
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  this writer and I said, you want to write this with me? And
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  within a month we had a really great first draft and the story carries on
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  from there and it gets better. So what's the next step after that?
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  So, because I know you know, you got this movie made? Yeah,
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  how are you animated? It isn't that usual with the first time directors.
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  It's really not. Yeah, coote unquote, first time director, and
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  this is this is interesting. So I've now got the debt, it's a
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  script ready, there's interest, there's proper interest now from new producers and people
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  are very excited. It's a commercial prospect. It's a very sore esque Gore
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  film but with much more psychological lad themes, and people are going, well,
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  we could make money here. This is great, but no one was
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  actually putting the hand in the pocket. And my good friend Julian cost Off,
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  who we acted together in a really bad advert years ago for Panasonic,
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  he said, well, listen, I'm producing now. I've made loads of
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  stuff in Bulgaria, I've acted and stuff. Can I can I send this
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  script to the studio in Bulgaria? And I said, yeah, of course,
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  whatever, thinking nothing of it, and literally, I think a couple
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  of weeks later, we got report back from the script readers over in New
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  Boyana Studios and I'll tell you more about them in the second. But they
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  came back with a great, a really great review, saying, yeah,
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  we could shoot this here. Does the filmmaker want to do it here?
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  Get in touch. So Julian said, this is amazing. Look what we've
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  got here. This is great. So we got in touch with the studio
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  and they're at New Buenna and they said, listen, we love this,
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  but we're not going to make this now. So come back in a year,
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  go try and make it. Then we'll make it with you. We
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  potentially you know all that. We said, all right, fine, We
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  knew that they were connected to Millennium, which Millennium Media who do amazing films
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  or action, big action films like Hellboy, Love and has Fallen Rambo recently.
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  We thought, wow, this could be a really great inn. Should
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  we wait a year because now we've got this other producer here in the UK
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  who's saying, I can give you one hundred and fifty grand, we can
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  go make this. But I just didn't believe him. You know, when
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  you saw shocking, shocking, shocking, shocking, shocking, and I there
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  was something about him that was just not right. There was just something I
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  was like, but I want to make a movie. I need to make
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  a movie. I'm desperate now by this point, for those filmmakers out there
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  who know what I was going through, who was going through that, You're
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  desperate to make a film and it was my baby and I could do this.
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  And suddenly this guy's offering some sort of money to go make it.
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  So we went through another month of pre production and we were about to sign
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  the deal and go through this and to be honest, it could have been
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  absolute shit show of I did you know when you just think is this real?
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  Is it not? Is the money really going to turn up? Is
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  it really going to be sixty grand? Is people are going to run away
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  with this money that he's saying he's got And it all seemed really dodgy.
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  There's some dodgy people involved in again shocking, shocking again. So the money,
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  the money is going to drop any day now, that's that's the word
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  every day. But we were very far advanced with pre production and looking at
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  locations and all this, and you know, blah blah blah. So Julian
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  went, look, I'm going to go back to the studio again and just
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  knock on that door one more time and tell them we've got money. This
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  is your last chance to make this movie. Do you want to do it?
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  And he calls me back after he called them, and he said,
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  you'll never guess what I said. What he said, if you fly over
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  tomorrow, they're going to see you. And I went, what they said,
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  do you fly to Bulgaria tomorrow and this is like five pm at night,
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  they will see you. And I'm like, oh my god, I
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  drop everything. I look at flights. They go, oh god, that's
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  a way too expensive for my practures. But okay, you've got to do
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  this. This is an opportunity to go to a major student. It's an
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  adventure. It's an adventure for one thing, to Bulgaria. Let's do this.
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  So I practiced my pitch. I book I said, let's do it.
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  Let's do it. Let's book the flight. They said they'd pay for
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  the hotel. That's a great I'll stay for the night. They said,
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  if you. And then I spoke to them. I said, yeah,
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  if you come over, here's the flight details, here's your hotel details.
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  Now we will show you around the studio. So I booked the flight on
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  the time that they suggested. Done. I'm sitting on this flight on my
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  own, absolutely cacking myself. I don't know what to expect. This is
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  crazy. I'm like, oh my god, but I'm actually going to a
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  film studio to pitch my movie. Is this real? They like it?
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  We know they like it. I get to the hotel and they say,
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  okay, Yarev is the execut who's running the show. He says he's a
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  bit busy right now, so just chill here for a bit, okay,
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  and now and Bulgarians some hotel and I can't go out. I've got no
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  money. I've got it's kind of more to literally eat. I'm like,
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  oh my god, how am I going to do this? And eventually he
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  shows up and he's this wonderful, charismatic, interesting guy and he's just like
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  hey, really laid back, almost like in flip flops and the T shirt.
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  And I'm like, really, this guy runs this studio. Okay,
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  cool, all right, fair hair, tall as well, like a bear.
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  I'm like, wow, okay. And he says, so tell me
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  about your movie, and I went, okay, well, you've you've seen
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  the pitch. What do I need to tell you? What? Na?
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  I know nothing, deep breath, go for it. And this is huge
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  advice I can give to any filmmakers. He's no, your pitch inside out.
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  Be fully prepared to bullshit if you have to. But know it's so
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  well that it's like you're telling your mates down the pub. No, it's
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  so well that it's exciting. It's enticing that they really think, Okay,
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  this guy knows what he's doing. Because a guy a girl, because they're
• 17:17
  investing in you. And this is a secret I've only learned recently. I
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  got my movie made because of how I pitched it and how I talked about
• 17:26
  this movie, and how I was passionate about it. Because if i'd come
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  across all, well, I just I don't know. I'm kind of excited
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  to make that. God with me. I'm done, I'm out the door.
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  So I had to pretend to be a pretend, and I mean pretend
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  because you're absolutely kicking yourself to know what you're talking about. I've not made
• 17:45
  a movie. I'm now. I made a studio and they're going, well
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  should why should I invest in you? Why should I put our hard earned
• 17:52
  money into you? So I gave my best pitch. I do strong as
• 17:56
  I could, and I sold myself to high heaven. He said, great,
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  thank you. I like your idea. I like you. I need
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  to think about this, and I said, okay, but you know we've
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  got a UK producer ready to go. We're about to sign the deal.
• 18:15
  Bullshit bullshit, but yeah, it's kind of true, but you know not.
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  And he said, yeah, but I need time to think about it.
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  So if you want to take that deal, take it. Yeah,
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  you don't play, you can't. You don't. Don't, don't be playing
• 18:26
  hardball. That so all right? So real quick, I want to I
• 18:30
  want to stop you there for a second, because everyone listening there's a moment
• 18:33
  to play hardball, or not even hardball, but to play that game of
• 18:37
  like, well, you know, there's another couple on the lot that wants
• 18:41
  to buy this car, and if you don't buy it now, buy the
• 18:45
  next twenty minutes, it's going to have to go. Yeah, that only
• 18:49
  works if the person that you're selling to really wants and has no other options,
• 18:56
  like they're in love with your project or your car. For for the
• 18:59
  analogy, do you say now? Because he was like the studio head,
• 19:03
  he had never even heard about it, at least that's what he said,
• 19:06
  and wanted to hear all of that. That's not the play, and you
• 19:08
  could have very easily screwed up at that moment. It could be he could
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  have said, you know what, why don't you just go off and do
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  that? Thanks by it? Just luck? Is that fair? Totally fair,
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  totally fair, and luck was on my side. That again. I
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  came prepared, as in not only was I very good with the pitch and
• 19:29
  passionate, but I also came with a ton of photos, a ton of
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  moods, a ton of images, even a real rip real I came with.
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  What you'd come is if you were making the movie tomorrow, color palettes,
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  costume ideas, casting ideas. Even at that point we're pretty much cast
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  the movie. Everything I could think of, from listening to your amazing podcast,
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  from listening to people and books that I've read about how to go in
• 19:53
  and pitch yourself. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
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  and now back to the show and just being clever about it and thinking.
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  And my main tip there as well would be I didn't just talk about the
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  movie. And this is interesting and a really fine line because it's just me
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  and him in a hotel. You know, we hadn't gone to the studio.
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  He'd come to the hotel and he said, were sitting in this echoe
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  chamber of this is really weird Eastern European gold, like the hotel that I
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  was put in, and it's just me and him. So I also went
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  on to his level. I also talked to him as the person. I
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  tried to see who's interested in soccer. No, he wasn't. I tried
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  to see if he's interested in whatever he was interested in we talked about.
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  But I got him to like me. I got him to be interested in
• 20:44
  me as a person, because he had no idea if I could make a
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  movie. He had no idea if my film was any good, or if
• 20:49
  I could actually shoot anything. He was interested in me. And what cleverly
• 20:53
  he did was he kept passing the boot back to me and asking about me
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  and what I did and how I anything to not talk about the film if
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  you like. So I'm like, oh, have I done enough? Have
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  I done enough? So he says, okay, well, okay, You've
• 21:07
  got the other film, the other producers, but you choose what you want
• 21:11
  to do. But I'm coming to London in a month. I'm going to
• 21:14
  bring my other producer with me. If you're still interested, we're going to
• 21:17
  pitch again. Then, I said, I said, absolutely said. First
• 21:19
  of all, though, I'm going to take you around the studio and I
• 21:22
  want you to tell me if you think you can shoot your movie in this
• 21:26
  studio. Now. Obviously I'm beautiful, masterful. Of course I don't need
• 21:33
  to see it. Obviously I looked at the photos. I'd looked at the
• 21:36
  whole place there's no question about it. When someone says, can you shoot
• 21:38
  your movie in a studio? Yeah? So, and at that part,
• 21:42
  going well, great, yeah, it'd be really good to look at some
• 21:45
  of the locations and the ideas. Yeah, great, take me around.
• 21:48
  I walk into this studio and newbi on the studios is gorgeous. It's basically
• 21:52
  they've got New York set, New York Street, it looks like New York.
• 21:55
  They've got London Street, they've got a goolag, they've got forests,
• 21:59
  they've got everything you can imagine, and sixteen studio spaces gorgeous. So obviously
• 22:04
  I walk around like a kid in a candy shop, going, oh my
• 22:07
  god, look at this place. Proper tour with the proper people who run
• 22:11
  the studio. Yarib's gone off now doing something else. And eventually I go
• 22:15
  back becau I'm waiting from my flight, and they just sit me in an
• 22:18
  office for a while, and he eventually comes back and he says, so,
• 22:22
  could you shoot your movie here? And I look at him in very
• 22:26
  seriously, look him in the eyes, and I say no, absolutely,
• 22:32
  yeah, this is absolutelyssful. It's horrible. And we have a laugh about
• 22:36
  it, and I said of course I can. I've got plans. I
• 22:37
  know how we could do the forest. You know, the usual. He
• 22:41
  says, great, fantastic, love you to meet you. I've got to
• 22:44
  go. Good luck with the flight back. I'm coming to London a month
• 22:48
  excellent. I go back. I'm like, what we're going to do to
• 22:49
  Julie and he's like, well, of course we've got to wait. Now,
• 22:52
  we've got to wait. So we're sort of fobbing the other producer off
• 22:55
  a bit, and I don't mean that in a nasty way. He was
• 22:56
  also all over the place, so it worked out well. A month later
• 23:02
  he comes back, he comes to London and he sits down with his line,
• 23:06
  and the same thing happened again. We hardly talked about the movie too.
• 23:08
  I had to picture as if I'd never pitched it before. I had
• 23:11
  to describe it as I've never had before. We talked about everything and anything
• 23:15
  as well, apart from the film, and he got to know me.
• 23:18
  He got to know Julian really well, and his love other producer was brilliant
• 23:22
  and we got on brilliantly. And again I still believe this. The real
• 23:26
  reason I got that film made was because he liked me, it didn't really
• 23:30
  matter about the film. Of course it did, of course it was important,
• 23:33
  But what was important was me and the fact that he felt I've got
• 23:37
  to work with this kid for two three and actually, as it's turned out,
• 23:40
  four years before the film's got released in the UK, and will come
• 23:44
  to that if you like, why it took so long, And there we
• 23:47
  are, and suddenly, now after that meeting, he goes, great,
• 23:49
  okay, well we'd like to do the movie. And I'm literally burning up
• 23:56
  inside and my heart is racing and I'm trying to keep it cool, and
• 24:00
  I go, okay, good, good, all right, yeah, well
• 24:03
  I think we could. I think I think we could do. He said,
• 24:04
  well, how are you going to do with the other producer? And
• 24:07
  I went, I think we'll be all right. I think we'll be able
• 24:11
  to do with it. We're going to make that work. We'll make that
• 24:12
  work on our end. We'll make it work on our end. We'll make
• 24:15
  it work. And again we hadn't signed anything with other producer, and it
• 24:18
  wasn't like it was anything. It was again it was all pine the sky
• 24:22
  and talk and just another sort of fake investor producers. Still not he's not
• 24:26
  gone and made any other films, and he's not, so it was another
• 24:29
  one of those fake things. She's so glad I didn't go that way.
• 24:32
  And then I spent three months in Bulgaria and prepping the movie in their movie
• 24:37
  studios, talking about how we're going to make this movie. And it was
• 24:40
  just incredible. You know, you literally walk at it. I had no
• 24:44
  idea which studio is going to be mine, and they're going to build it
• 24:45
  with designing, how we're going to build the basement and build the farmhouse.
• 24:48
  And it was just a magical. And this is your first film, and
• 24:53
  this is my debut movie, and it's with you know, Millennium Media,
• 24:57
  and it's would be two y. It's a studio in New Buanna and there
• 25:03
  I am this kid who's written something with this pal, Johnny Grant. And
• 25:07
  suddenly now my other pal, Julian Costal, is now producing this if you
• 25:11
  like Hollywood movie, and I'm directing it is my debut movie. And I
• 25:15
  can tell you now I was shifting myself. Well, no, I mean,
• 25:19
  anyone listening here is like Jesus, like this is it's the dream,
• 25:22
  but it's the nightmare. All at the same time, I wanted to back
• 25:26
  up on something in your in your story where you kept saying that like they
• 25:30
  talked about everything except the movie. Yes, And the reason and the reason
• 25:34
  I want the audience to understand the reason why they do that is because they
• 25:37
  already know the project is something they're interested in or of quality. That's not
• 25:45
  the because they have twenty of those on the desk at It's like, you
• 25:49
  know, this is not Avatar. I mean, yeah, yeah, this
• 25:53
  is this is They have twenty other projects who are of equal or better quality
• 26:00
  or markability or money making potential. It's all there. But the X factor
• 26:04
  is always the filmmaker. It's always you. And I've been in those meetings
• 26:07
  as well where they're just feeling you out because I'm gonna have to go down
• 26:12
  the road with this guy or this girl for the next year to two,
• 26:17
  if not longer, can I work with this person? And regardless if it's
• 26:22
  the best script in the world, if you're a dick, yep, it
• 26:26
  is done. It's over. And that's why they kind of played that game,
• 26:30
  because they were you could tell that that's a that's a seasoned producer,
• 26:34
  that's a seasoned filmmaker who who walked you through those paces and like, and
• 26:40
  then made you wait a month on top of that, because he could have
• 26:41
  easily greenlit it while you were there. Of course, he could have just
• 26:45
  said, yeah, we want to do it. What do we want to
• 26:47
  do now, he'd let you wait for a month. Let's see how this
• 26:48
  all plays out. This is all a game, and this is something that
• 26:52
  is completely unwritten in the in the in the game play, the game manual
• 26:57
  of making films. It's just in that and I think it's vital. It's
• 27:02
  so important that filmmakers understand that it is them. They are the ones that
• 27:07
  get films made. They are the ones I produce movies. Now, you
• 27:10
  know, it's my journey of that. Since that time has I've produced movies
• 27:14
  and I'm working with people I want to work with one o this as well
• 27:22
  as I making the films one of the hardest things you might do. It's
• 27:26
  torturous. It's hard work. If you're in the trenches with someone who's a
• 27:29
  bit of a dick, not even a massive dick, a bit of a
• 27:33
  dick. You're going, I can't be bothered. I've got other things.
• 27:34
  I'd rather make my own project, and god forbid, maybe a dick on
• 27:37
  that, do you know what I mean? It's like so also as you
• 27:40
  and also as you get older, you just start your tolerance for that.
• 27:45
  Like when you're twenty something, your tolerance for that is very high, Like
• 27:49
  things I did at my twenties. I look back now, I'm like,
• 27:52
  oh my god, I would never But when you're young and hungry, you
• 27:56
  deal with a lot of stuff that you would not deal with as you get
• 27:59
  all. But yes, it's so true, so much like as as even
• 28:03
  in my post business, I would start work, get the potential clients,
• 28:08
  and I'll be just like, m we could do this for this much,
• 28:14
  but let's talk about you, and I would just start feeling them out,
• 28:17
  and I'm like, oh no, this guy's gonna be a nightmare if you
• 28:19
  Yeah, I would have done it for twenty thousand, but it's gonna be
• 28:22
  fifty if I got to put up with you. I need to be paid
• 28:26
  for this pain, absolutely right, absolutely, and when and interesting, when
• 28:32
  I was in that three month piero in I hatch, you think it might
• 28:34
  have ended up being longer. We hadn't got a start date, and this
• 28:38
  was freaking me out because I'm now in Bulgaria, away from my family in
• 28:44
  a hotel room, pretty much on my own a lot of the time,
• 28:45
  getting ferried to the studio, and we didn't have a start date because the
• 28:49
  next London has fallen, all movies come in or Adrian Brody's now shooting you
• 28:55
  Antonio Banderas is now shooting, and the studio always been pushed. It's been
• 28:57
  pushed, it's been pushed. This freaked me out so much that at one
• 29:02
  point, sadly my missus dad had died, so I was like, Okay,
• 29:08
  I need to fly back. But if I fly back, this could
• 29:11
  be a real problem and the film might just die because it's me pushing it
• 29:15
  here. I'm in the studiogo and please give me a start date, Please
• 29:18
  get my actors in our going. Is this really happening? The agents are
• 29:21
  knocking on the door and Julian is going, oh God, what we're going
• 29:22
  to do? So I said, I'm going to fly back and I'm gone,
• 29:27
  And I kind of knew at that point if they don't green light it
• 29:30
  while I'm gone, this might not happen, and it was a risk.
• 29:34
  And I remember I think I was back a week and a half after the
• 29:37
  funeral, and I called up the ARREV and I said, Yahrev, this
• 29:41
  needs to be the start date, and this needs to be when we start
• 29:45
  the edit because of my cast and because of the edit. Is this possible?
• 29:48
  Please tell me this is a goal. And he said, Okay,
• 29:53
  let's do it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and
• 30:02
  now back to the show. And it was it was such a weird thing
• 30:07
  that that was the green light, that was the moment. And whether it
• 30:10
  was me flying back and not being in the vicinity and not knocking on the
• 30:12
  door all the time and not being a pest, and that I was doing
• 30:15
  that at all. I was just in this zone. But it was something
• 30:18
  about that that was really interesting. From that moment, it was all,
• 30:22
  there's the start date, and then it moved forward. I just wanted to
• 30:25
  talk about that because I found that really fascinating as a as a thing.
• 30:29
  Why did that happen? Why? And the whole time, the whole time,
• 30:32
  really I was thinking, I'm a fraud. Any moment now they're just
• 30:36
  going to go, Gils, it's not you, sorry, we made him.
• 30:38
  We opened the wrong door. Impastor syndrome, and it's it is something.
• 30:44
  It is a disease that runs rampant through the filmmaking community and screenwriting community.
• 30:49
  Is that whole like, Oh, they're going to figure me out.
• 30:52
  Look, I still feel that way sometimes, we all do. I've talked
• 30:56
  a big you know, I've interviewed big filmmakers, big screen writers, and
• 31:00
  you know, I asked them sometimes either on the show, we're off the
• 31:03
  show, and they go, yeah, I still I still feel like,
• 31:07
  but you want an ask her and they're like yeah, I still kind of
• 31:10
  feel like, you know, look, Henry Foods, it was a Henry
• 31:14
  Finder. I think was Henry Finder. Every time he would go on to
• 31:18
  do a play, right before he would go on, he threw up yeah
• 31:22
  at seventy seventy five, at seventy five. I think Judi Dench still does
• 31:26
  that. You know. We had Christy Wilson Kens, the writer a screenwriter
• 31:30
  of nineteen seventeen on the podcast recently she said the same thing. She's a
• 31:33
  concert. She's now writing Star Wars. She says, I constantly feel that
• 31:37
  I'm imposter I feel any minute now they're gonna go you can't write why are
• 31:41
  you here? And we feel that too, and it but because it was
• 31:45
  my first movie, it was just this really weird. I didn't feel like
• 31:49
  I'd proved myself in any way, shape or form. And another interesting story
• 31:53
  with the area of another point. I sat down with him and he had
• 31:57
  made all these shorts, award winning shows and docks and promodes and whatever,
• 32:01
  and he said, so, I'm going to tell you what a first aid
• 32:06
  does. I'm going to tell you who calls action. I'm gonna And I
• 32:08
  was like, oh, no, no, I know. But you know
• 32:12
  when you think, oh, if I say I know, is he gonna
• 32:15
  think? Well, hang on? But he just kind of explained what how
• 32:19
  a set works? And I thought, hang on, are you how do
• 32:21
  you think? Do you? I've known nothing on a movie set before.
• 32:27
  And he was a really interesting moment that I just looked at Julie and he
• 32:30
  looked at me when shut up, just let him, let him dog,
• 32:31
  And it's just an amazing moment. You just go, Okay, So so
• 32:36
  this is let's let's day sack there for a second. So this man was
• 32:38
  giving you seven figures, seven figures to make seven figures to make this film.
• 32:45
  Um, which is insane. Um, it's insane. It's insane.
• 32:50
  I've worked on a project that there was a first time director that had a
• 32:52
  million dollars and boy did that didn't go well? Um like really really badly.
• 32:57
  So anytime you give a seven figure deal to of a first time director,
• 33:02
  you know it's you really are rolling the dice. So he basically gave
• 33:08
  you the shot based on the script and you, not your experience, not
• 33:17
  where you came from. And he was like so confident in who you are
• 33:21
  as a human being that he's like, oh, I could teach you how
• 33:23
  to direct. I could teach you. You have vision, and we'll get
• 33:27
  we'll get good people around you, and we'll get the movie made. But
• 33:30
  you have you're the driving force behind it, but you just need some help
• 33:32
  technically, and we can help you with that. That is the sign of
• 33:36
  a very seasoned producer, someone who and I've I've spoken to those guys,
• 33:42
  and I've met those guys, and when you speak to people at that level,
• 33:45
  they're just had a completely different yeah wavelength, because normally you and I,
• 33:50
  you know, when we're coming up, we're dealing with the schmucks,
• 33:53
  the guys who are like I'm like, I'm I got the money, I
• 33:57
  got this investor over here, I got that guy, and I'll how much
• 34:00
  do you want? Three million? That's nothing. I spit three million.
• 34:05
  I throw that away in the morning. Ah, all that stuff and how
• 34:08
  much do you like? All that kind of stuff? And that's these posers
• 34:12
  are what most filmmakers deal with. Our posers, people who are pretending are
• 34:16
  they're acting like they're the big shots. But did you notice in your story
• 34:21
  so far when you met this guy, he showed up and almost flip flops
• 34:25
  in a T shirt and he ran the studio. Why because he wasn't trying
• 34:30
  to impress anyone. He was so comfortable with who he was and what he
• 34:34
  does that he doesn't need to impress you. But the dude shows up in
• 34:37
  a five thousand dollars suit, you know. And from my experience dealing with
• 34:45
  these kind of big producers, they don't do that. They don't they don't
• 34:50
  show off like that. They'll just they might be dicks, they might be
• 34:52
  arrogant, they might be other things, but they generally don't show up,
• 34:58
  and if they do, they're so insecure it's fascinating, it's fascinating. But
• 35:02
  he was. I got my shot because of that. Absolutely agree he'd liked
• 35:07
  me, he believed in what I could do. In my vision, and
• 35:10
  I constant was telling you my vision. I was constantly updating. I was
• 35:14
  doing storyboards for days and days and days. They gave me a storyboard artist,
• 35:17
  for God's sake, and I was like, okay, well, how
• 35:21
  are you going to do? I was like, ah, so now I've
• 35:22
  got to think about how to draw it. You know. I knew how
• 35:24
  to make it look, but to draw it. So I used Lego figures.
• 35:29
  And this is really I went to the shop and I got a load
• 35:31
  of Lego figures, because again I'm in Bulgaria. Not everyone's great at English.
• 35:36
  You know that some people are brilliant, but not everyone. So when
• 35:38
  you're trying to talk too shot or a specific angle you want, it doesn't
• 35:43
  really translate. So I've got these little mini Lego figures and I put a
• 35:47
  dagger in one of their hands, and I just kept moving them around this,
• 35:51
  you know, because most of it's set in a basement, and I
• 35:53
  just take folks. I said, okay, I'm going to shoot from this
• 35:55
  angle. I'll do that, and she'd go okay, cool. And it
• 35:58
  made a huge difference to understanding my vision. And yeah, but you're right.
• 36:02
  He believed in me and based on the script and me. And that
• 36:07
  is a huge lesson to any filmmaker out there, is that is what it's
• 36:10
  about this world is that obviously you've got to be talenting, You've got to
• 36:14
  know what you're doing. And I'm sure he done. He's how much?
• 36:15
  But yeah, no, no, I promise you the whole I don't know
• 36:19
  anything that's now. No, I promise you he knew what was going on.
• 36:22
  He'd probably read the script, he probably listened to the pitch. He
• 36:27
  just wanted to hear you say it. Um, there's no way a man
• 36:30
  like that's just going to show up going yeah, what, what's what?
• 36:34
  So? What are you about? Like, he's not going to get in
• 36:36
  a car drive to your hotel. It's that that's no, there's no chance
• 36:39
  at all. But I want to make this very clear to everyone listening.
• 36:44
  Your story is an anomaly. It is it is an outlier. It is
• 36:49
  not the norm. And from someone who's been hustling in the business for twenty
• 36:53
  five years, you're the first positive example of someone having a million dollars plus
• 37:04
  seven figure plus film and in their first film and not just epically throwing the
• 37:14
  money away. Your ego gets out of hand. But how old were you
• 37:16
  when you made this? It was four years ago. Yeah, man,
• 37:22
  you're you're not a kid. No, I was definitely not a kid.
• 37:24
  Yeah, it's it's a little bit different. I promise you. If you
• 37:28
  would have been ten years younger, this wouldn't have happened. I agree,
• 37:31
  he wouldn't have. And I'm glad because back then, when I was trying
• 37:35
  to make the movie, you like to say, the eight year period of
• 37:37
  trying to do that, up until that four years ago, I wouldn't have
• 37:40
  been ready. And like I said, when I had Jason Staton, when
• 37:43
  we had Fox, I wasn't ready for that. That's why it didn't happen
• 37:46
  as much as it hurt. And I cried in my pillow and all these
• 37:50
  things when it all fell down, and the other thing as well as I
• 37:52
  only had one project and I'm never doing that again. Have more than one,
• 37:55
  have ten, so that if one falls down, it's not the end
• 37:59
  of the world. Back then I had one. But yeah, it's it
• 38:00
  is an anomaly. And I'm amazed. And do you know what, I
• 38:05
  worked so hard when we were shooting, and I gave it everything, and
• 38:08
  do you know what, fantastically it's done really well. Why did it take
• 38:14
  so long to get out? So it took so long to get up because
• 38:16
  it's a studio movie and we needed to do pickups. Basically, the last
• 38:22
  part of the movie originally was they come out of the cabin if you like,
• 38:28
  you know, not to give any spoilers away of the film, but
• 38:30
  it was snowing on the day we needed to shoot during our print principal photography,
• 38:37
  so we were like, don't worry, we'll come back and shoot in
• 38:38
  a month's time. When you've had look at the edit, you can do
• 38:40
  some other pickups. Then he'd already promised me. This was interesting. He
• 38:44
  only came to set twice or three times, and both those times he literally
• 38:49
  almost walked right onto in the middleware the camera. He just walked on and
• 38:52
  I'm there. I'm literally with our young kid who's playing young Dominic, and
• 38:58
  I could see someone at the corner. I'm like, why is there someone
• 39:00
  stood there? Any minute now, I'm going to go, I'm sorry,
• 39:02
  you can't be there. There's there's the camera coming through and stuff like that,
• 39:06
  and I'm directing this kid and I'm really going into detail. It was
• 39:08
  a great moment for him to be stood there watching me really direct this kid
• 39:13
  to try and get the performance. And I look up and there heways just
• 39:15
  stood there sort of half smiling at me. Again cool, and he pulls
• 39:19
  me. I'm so glad it was that moment and not maybe another moment maybe
• 39:22
  not doing what I'm supposed to do or whatever. And he pulls me aside
• 39:25
  and he says, look, we're really happy where it's going. I'm going
• 39:29
  to give you two extra pickup days. And I went, can I have
• 39:31
  them now? I said, can I finish? I need them? I'm
• 39:37
  desperate. We had Originally we had one bit to shoot that really should take
• 39:40
  six days, and in the end we got two days at night and it
• 39:45
  shouldn't have been anyway that I can go into that another time. But he
• 39:47
  pulled me aside and I said, you'd get an extra two days And I
• 39:50
  said, can I have them now? And he said, no, you'll
• 39:52
  need them later. I promise you when you look at the edit, you'll
• 39:55
  need them. We'll be right back after a from our sponsor and now back
• 40:05
  to the show. So anyway, so I knew I had these two days.
• 40:08
  So when the snow felt fall came, I was like Okay, well
• 40:13
  we'll have to pick that up in a month's time or whatever. So I'm
• 40:16
  now in the edit. Sweet, I'm editing away and still in Bulgaria for
• 40:22
  this at this point. It was pretty soon after I went back and then
• 40:25
  edited with my great editor Olie Parker back in the UK. And during that
• 40:30
  time there was no sign of any pickup times. It wasn't nothing. And
• 40:32
  I'm like, when's it happening. They went, oh, finished the edit
• 40:36
  first, and then we'll look at it properly. And a year goes by
• 40:38
  and oh god, yeah, yeah, we've now finished the ed. I
• 40:44
  think we had two months to do that. So we've done that, and
• 40:46
  they said, great, we're now going to do look at screening. And
• 40:51
  I went over to Bulgaria months later and they said, right screen in front
• 40:52
  of all our execs and the big people, and they said, gave us
• 40:55
  notes and said here's some notes, here's what we're wanting to change, and
• 40:59
  here's pickups we want you to do. I said, yeah, great,
• 41:01
  they're all following my style, no problem. I was in a great place.
• 41:05
  It's like happy. Then they just couldn't find time to us to shoot
• 41:08
  because the next dayson stay from film came in, the next Fallen film has
• 41:14
  come in. Hell Boy then started shooting, and every time it was like,
• 41:17
  we're going to fit you in, We're just going to And then when
• 41:21
  they found a time, my actors weren't available and now they're all doing really
• 41:23
  really well, or they've now cut the hair or all these things had a
• 41:28
  big impact. So it was a full year later when we shot the first
• 41:31
  set of pickups. Then we did another edit of the movie and put them
• 41:36
  in. At that point, Millennium said, we think you should reshoot the
• 41:39
  beginning because he comes across as a bit of a dickie lead character. It
• 41:44
  was a stag Do. I've got all my mates across to play the stag
• 41:45
  Do guys. And they weren't you just gonna have to cut all that.
• 41:49
  We wanted to be a family man. It's better for the story, and
• 41:52
  it was. There were one hundred percent right, but oh my god,
• 41:53
  it killed me to cut out this stuff of my friends as well. So
• 41:58
  there was another delay. Now we have to shoot that. We now need
• 42:00
  to wait for my actors and a studio space to shoot that. Two years
• 42:04
  go by. Oh my god, you know, I mean, you're doing
• 42:07
  other things during this time. Of course, now I've made another feature film
• 42:09
  during that time. You think it is anything gonna come out? What you
• 42:15
  feel really silly? You know, I'd started the film because podcast at that
• 42:17
  point, and I'm talking about the dare constantly and I'm like, is it
• 42:20
  ever going to come out? Is this ever gonna happen? So I think
• 42:24
  it was yeah, fully, maybe two and a half up to three years
• 42:29
  later before we now locked the final film. And then it was a case
• 42:32
  of now that's showing it at can Now we're showing it at these places.
• 42:37
  We'd already got sales in certain territories already, just off the back of my
• 42:39
  first teacher I T teaser I've done three and a half years ago, so
• 42:44
  we'd already pre sold in so many territories off that. And it took that
• 42:47
  long, you know, that's just how it is. And in that it
• 42:50
  came out in March in the US and Canada and now it's October in the
• 42:53
  UK, and that's full four years after we first started POTG eight. Can
• 43:01
  goes like I say, I've had another movie, two movies out in that
• 43:05
  time. One that we did it was five months turnaround, This is four
• 43:08
  years and NAT's the studio. My debut movie has come out after my second
• 43:14
  and third movie, So another lesson we should be talking to everyone listening.
• 43:19
  Patience. Patience is so key vaatients A lot of time. That is what
• 43:25
  this business does. It will wear you down, grind you little. But
• 43:31
  and it's not sometimes it's a big hit, but a lot of more n
• 43:36
  likely it's the paper cuts of something like this that could just drive you crazy.
• 43:43
  Imagine if you had done nothing, you were like working aside, you
• 43:45
  work in a Starbucks during this time because for whatever reason, your whole life
• 43:52
  is wrapped around this. You were smart enough to start working on other projects
• 43:54
  and get other things developed. A lot of filmmakers I know don't do that.
• 43:58
  They'll just sit for four same I know friends have done the same.
• 44:02
  Look or No, I want this film to come out and be successful and
• 44:06
  then I can get a big guest studio movie off the back of that.
• 44:08
  I totally disagree with that. I think you improve as a director by directing.
• 44:15
  If you're not directing, you're sat on your bomb at home. If
• 44:17
  an actor is constantly on set, a DP is constantly on set and they're
• 44:22
  constantly honing their craft. And getting better. If you've not directed for four
• 44:24
  years, god forbid. You know, let's say the Dead comes out and
• 44:28
  it's a it was a washout. It wasn't any good. Now I've wasted
• 44:31
  for four years and now no one's going to hire me. But if I've
• 44:34
  made two three other movies during that time, people are now going, oh
• 44:37
  cool, It doesn't matter what happened to that first movie. You've already had
• 44:39
  other successes or your failures or whatever they are. Why would you wait?
• 44:45
  The more I've directed, the better I've got act. Well, then I'm
• 44:49
  gonna I'm gonna play Devil's advocate. And I completely agree with you, but
• 44:52
  I'm gonna play Devil's advom. But Stanley Kubrick waits seven years between movies,
• 44:55
  he doesn't direct all the time, And I would answer he was Stanley Kubrick,
• 45:01
  He's Stanley whatever Stanley wants, because I know there's a I know someone
• 45:09
  out there's listening, going well, you know, like some of these directors
• 45:14
  take three or four years between movies. You don't have to be directly all
• 45:15
  the time. I'm like, yeah, those guys have forgotten more about filmmaking
• 45:21
  than you will ever learn. Absolutely and do you know what, those guys
• 45:22
  will probably be paid you to retainer or they've been paid to the scripts by
• 45:27
  studios or on deals all that. When you're not when you're independent filmmaker,
• 45:31
  what are you waiting for? Go make another movie. Don't worry about it.
• 45:35
  It doesn't matter. You have to be in control of your career.
• 45:38
  Because this is another secret, and alex Is probably told you this many times.
• 45:44
  Is not These people won't watch your movies if they're out, they're being
• 45:47
  released, they know it's come out. They can speak to someone someone say
• 45:51
  yeah, it's cool. That that's all they need to know. They might
• 45:52
  watch the trailer. You think they're going to sit through and watch your movie.
• 45:55
  Why they're going to talk to you about the new one you've got,
• 45:59
  the next one you've got. So it doesn't matter if you've made another three,
• 46:01
  four or five movies that maybe aren't as good as that one or whatever
• 46:05
  it is. It doesn't matter. You're making films and you get better,
• 46:08
  you work better with people. More actors want to work with you because you've
• 46:13
  made more films. All these type of things. You meet more people.
• 46:16
  It's vital that you, as a filmmaker constantly work that muscle. That's my
• 46:21
  opinion. I know plenty of friends who don't do it that way. That's
• 46:24
  their prerogative and their choice. Well, I love being on set. That's
• 46:30
  why I produce as well, because you can be on set, right.
• 46:31
  Yeah, it's it's um. It's the only thing that cures or at least
• 46:37
  treats this, this h this affliction that we have. There's called filmmaking totally,
• 46:43
  it really is. And just I supposed to wrap up the whole Dare
• 46:46
  thing as much as it's not comm out in the UK. Yet it did
• 46:50
  massive numbers in Holland the cinema was I didn't even know it's on in the
• 46:52
  cinema in Holland, huge numbers. I have no idea why I have no
• 46:57
  publicity anyway. The good thing about this is this big talk of a sequel
• 47:00
  and it's all and we're really deep in, you know, developing it.
• 47:05
  And isn't that magical that some small idea I had in literally my loft here
• 47:09
  two ideas and it becomes something. It becomes something real and tangible that people
• 47:14
  can love and hate and disagree with and I argue about, but hey,
• 47:19
  you get you get to be part of this magical world called moviemaking. And
• 47:22
  you don't do that by sitting on your ass, and you don't do that
• 47:24
  by going one day, I'll write a script and one day I'll give it
• 47:27
  to a producer. Now you've got to do it, and you've got to
• 47:30
  send it to those producers and find them and go to events. That's how
• 47:32
  shit happens. And now during this weirding time, you also made a couple
• 47:37
  other like micro budget films, where it so which is the one that which
• 47:42
  is the movie that that went to showtime in sky? And how did you
• 47:45
  get that to work out? So this is called A Serial Killers Guide to
• 47:49
  Life. And just after I'd finished shooting the first block of principal photography on
• 47:53
  the Dare, my good friend Stanton Cousins Row said, look, I'm making
• 47:58
  this movie called A Serial Killers Guide Life. Would you come and help me
• 48:00
  produce it because they're acting it. And he said, you know, there's
• 48:04
  a few of the producers on and stuff. Come and share the load.
• 48:07
  And I did. And it was micro budget, but it was a wonderful
• 48:10
  experience for me at the time. Even though a producing directed a load of
• 48:15
  other stuff to actually go on. Someone else's movie and not be creative and
• 48:20
  do the nuts and bolts of making a film the literally, how does a
• 48:22
  truck go from there? Who empties the toilet? Me? All right,
• 48:27
  how do you know all these type of things? Actors need to get from
• 48:29
  there to there? Okay, it's raining, we need to get umbrellas out
• 48:31
  and need to put tents at all this stuff. It's nuts and bolts of
• 48:34
  filmmaking producing that a lot of people don't realize it's producing. So I learned
• 48:37
  that and I did it, and we had a you know, a great
• 48:40
  shoot and the film turned out wonderful and got selected for fright first since got
• 48:45
  awards across the board and you know how did but how did you get that
• 48:50
  micro film to Showtime and to Sky Movies. Yeah, so it was a
• 48:54
  case of getting with the right distributor with that case. So we did.
• 49:00
  We knew it was good, We knew that the buzz was great. We
• 49:02
  were sending out little teasers and the buzz was really good on the film.
• 49:06
  So what we did was we kind of did a bidding war in a cinema
• 49:08
  in London, in a screen room in London, and we got all the
• 49:13
  disputes to turn up and there was some really lovely people came and saw it
• 49:17
  and gave us some brilliantly And again this is a movie with no real names
• 49:21
  in it. Certainly not the time. And now the sister in Fleabag,
• 49:25
  Sam Clifford, she's in the movie. But the time, you know,
• 49:28
  it wasn't you know, it wasn't massive and just some brilliant actors and yeah,
• 49:34
  and we then pitched it to them and pitched it to the whole team
• 49:36
  of how we do this, and we negotiated the deals and Stanton directly directly
• 49:40
  or with a distributor, or directly with Sky Direction with the distributes. Yeah,
• 49:45
  ok, directly just talked to about how we're going to make this for
• 49:47
  how we're going to sell this film around the world directly with the distribute.
• 49:52
  So we did the contract. Staton mainly ran that and yeah, from that,
• 49:55
  that's how we got it onto Sky Movies and to showtime. We'll be
• 50:00
  right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
• 50:09
  And what was your experience with this distributor. I always love to ask
• 50:13
  was it a positive, was it a negative? Did you get paid things
• 50:15
  like? Yeah, it was very positive. Horror films are very good in
• 50:21
  the UK and very well known for that. So we specifically targeted distributors who
• 50:25
  we knew and I did my research and homework and so did starting on who
• 50:31
  the distributors were for this type of film, because it's a quirky sight Seers
• 50:36
  film from Louise type move right, so it had a quirk, it's slightly
• 50:39
  unusual, it's it's got horror elements, but it's also, you know,
• 50:43
  a drama. So we made sure we investigate who these distributors were to make
• 50:47
  sure that they were right for the movie. And I rank so many friends
• 50:51
  who would work with them and said did they rip you off? Did this
• 50:52
  happen? And they said no, this is how to behave this is how
• 50:57
  to do it. So we did that, We really did at home,
• 51:00
  and it's paid off massively and so we could a guy's life has done really
• 51:04
  well. Yeah, that's amazing, that's amazing. And I was a micro
• 51:08
  budget. It was a micro budget. Yeah. And then you did another
• 51:14
  movie during this time period on Arthurian Legend, Little budget Home because what because
• 51:21
  why not? Because why not? Because why not? And also because when
• 51:24
  you like say, when you're making movies, and you're around movies. And
• 51:28
  I produced another movie in that time, and I made another documentary called World
• 51:30
  of Darkness, and then the Thought documentary, which you were involved in as
• 51:35
  well. We were shooting, and then the Signature Entertainment, who a friend
• 51:38
  of mine was working with a lot, said hey, look you're you're in
• 51:43
  the mix for the making this King Arthur movie. Because you'd made movies.
• 51:46
  That was the be all. And it didn't matter that they hadn't come out.
• 51:50
  They could see the trailer, they could see the bits and pieces I'd
• 51:52
  made for it, and they suddenly were really keen for me to come and
• 51:55
  direct it. And again the same thing. I went in and pitched and
• 51:59
  went in and sold myself as how I could do this, and again the
• 52:01
  same thing. They liked me. They liked me. But also what was
• 52:06
  really interesting here is I felt much more aware of my own ability. And
• 52:13
  now it's a strange one, but I was also very much more secure of
• 52:17
  myself. Well, of course, look, man, you've gone down the
• 52:20
  path. You've gone, You've already walked the path a little bit like yeah,
• 52:22
  I mean before shooting for the Mob, and after shooting for the Mob,
• 52:27
  I was a little bit of a different filmmaker, you know, dealing
• 52:30
  with that adventure of the mob and meeting these big movie guys in LA and
• 52:35
  stuff. Absolutely, you feel sometimes you feel more confidence. Some other times
• 52:38
  you feel like I can't do this. There's that as well, But no,
• 52:43
  once you start getting you just get a feature under your belt, two
• 52:45
  features in your belt. That's the thing I always trying to tell people.
• 52:47
  I'm like, you know, everyone talked about Robert Rodriguez and Amodiachi, but
• 52:52
  that was his first film, like it, He that twenty five shorts before
• 52:55
  then. He felt really comfortable with the gear, with the stuff, the
• 53:00
  visuals, He edited everything, And that's the thing. You just got to
• 53:02
  get the practice in. And the same thing with screenwriny. Can't just write
• 53:06
  one screenplay and you gotta write twenty yep. Absolutely yeah, it's not going
• 53:09
  to happen for you if you do that, or you'll be massively lucky if
• 53:13
  you do that. You know, like I said before the Dare, I'd
• 53:15
  made so many mistakes, so many issues, so many other screenplays that are
• 53:19
  sat on my shelf. Now I'll never get made that aren't good enough.
• 53:22
  But I had to go through those failures to be good enough or to be
• 53:25
  anywhere close to good enough that someone would take a chance on you, and
• 53:29
  someone I took a chance for me with Arthur and Merlin. And yeah,
• 53:31
  that's now out mostly around the world. I hainting the States in December.
• 53:36
  But yeah, I got to make an Arthurian movie about King Arthur. I
• 53:39
  mean, well, how brilliant. I've got to bring on my DP from
• 53:43
  The Dare, and I got to bring in brilliant actors. I got to
• 53:45
  bring back Richard Brake who stars in The Dare and bring him as Merlin and
• 53:50
  Richard Shaw, you know, and these people you just you want to work
• 53:52
  with and you're passionate about. And I'll tell you what if you're good to
• 53:55
  them and you treat them well and you understand how an actor works, which
• 54:00
  is great that I was an actor as well, because I understand what go
• 54:02
  to an actor's mind. I do understand when you're covered in blood or you've
• 54:06
  been screaming all day, how difficult that is, and how when you sound
• 54:09
  I need another take, they are going to kick off at you and they
• 54:12
  are going to be angry. So you've got to be aware of that and
• 54:15
  plan your shoots and your shots correctly because of that that these people, once
• 54:20
  you're nice and good to them, they will want to work with you again.
• 54:22
  And it was so lovely. Richard Brake obviously has been in Game of
• 54:25
  Thrones and so many other amazing movies like Mandy and Whatnot, thirty one then
• 54:30
  a load of really cool stuff that he's been saying in interviews now when he's
• 54:34
  been promoting Arthur and Murder. He came to do it because of me.
• 54:37
  He wanted to work with me again. And this is just a really important
• 54:39
  lesson for filmmakers, is don't be that dick that Alex always says, don't
• 54:44
  do it. If there's issues on set, keep them to yourself. Don't
• 54:47
  be the big I am this is a team game and learned that it's this
• 54:52
  team. Everyone's in it together, from your production assistance all the way up
• 54:57
  to your execs. Everyone's in this together, and you need to be as
• 55:00
  careful with them as you are with the money. You know, it's everyone's
• 55:02
  important, and I'm learning You've got to learn, but don't be the big
• 55:07
  think you're the big bollocks, Absolutely not. So I have to ask you,
• 55:10
  so you you did the day it started about four. This whole process
• 55:13
  start about four years ago. HM, so I've been so when did you
• 55:17
  start listening to my podcast? Because I've been doing it for five years?
• 55:21
  So did you like listen? Were you listening to the podcast while you were
• 55:23
  making this? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It is a huge inspiration and
• 55:29
  you were an inspiration for starting my podcast in UK because I felt there wasn't
• 55:31
  an Indi film hustle type thing in the UK is such that with an English
• 55:36
  voice, And it was only after I've downed the Dead that I felt even
• 55:38
  anywhere near able to talk about that sort of stuff. But no, I
• 55:42
  I was a full on Indy film hustle fan time through that because you would.
• 55:46
  It inspired me massively. You You were the one of the people who
• 55:49
  you constantly by banging on about gotta make your film, go do it?
• 55:52
  Oh yeah, so you saw you were like listening during when I was making
• 55:55
  Meg, when you were making Meg, and and the episode you did with
• 55:59
  the full cast. For me, it was an absolute joy. I mean
• 56:01
  all back then it was. It was a huge inspiration for me, and
• 56:06
  I imagine lots of the filmmakers I've had. No I always the reason I
• 56:08
  ask is because there are other filmmakers that I've talked to them were like,
• 56:10
  yeah, you know, I made I made my first feature around the time
• 56:15
  that you were making Meg And I was listening to you while I was going
• 56:17
  through my stuff, and I always find it fascinating. It's just like,
• 56:21
  you know, for you know this as well as I do. Man,
• 56:22
  Like when when you podcast, you just talking to a microphone, sure,
• 56:28
  you know, and if you interview, if you're lucky enough to do interviews,
• 56:30
  you get to talk to one other person. You really don't know how
• 56:32
  this. Why don't you press publish? You really kind of don't know what
• 56:37
  happens out there in the ether. And I always love hearing stories about you
• 56:43
  know, email, I get emails all the time. I'm like this or
• 56:45
  that, but specific stories about like you, Like I was making this million
• 56:50
  dollars you know plus film in Bulgaria while I was listening to Europe. You
• 56:57
  know, I was totally in the rooms in these on my own hotel,
• 57:00
  listening to your podcast. Go all right, okay, this is how your
• 57:04
  guests have done it. This is what to go through because until you've made
• 57:07
  a feature film, you honestly do not know what it's like. It's really
• 57:10
  hard to put into words. We can talk about to a bloom the face,
• 57:14
  and even when you did, I still didn't believe it. I still
• 57:16
  did not believe it. So again, Filma, they have not made one.
• 57:21
  You'll think the same. You get, Oh, let's just talk.
• 57:22
  I'll be fine. No no, no, no, no, You'll be
• 57:24
  dead. You will be Your brain is fried. You have so much information
• 57:30
  you need to keep hold on. But the thing is, no, that's
• 57:35
  the thing. Like you were making your first feature at a completely different level
• 57:38
  than I was making my first feature five Grand Mine yours. Yeah, a
• 57:44
  little bit more with the studio and you know, storyboard artists and backlogs and
• 57:50
  they're building stuff for you. But here's what I've learned, Alex. There's
• 57:53
  no difference at the end of the race, of course, but at the
• 57:57
  end of it, you know, hey, we got craft services. But
• 58:00
  at the end of the day, it's just you and the actors. You
• 58:04
  the camera and the actors. Technically, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is.
• 58:07
  It doesn't matter how amazing your shot is. If the acting is not
• 58:10
  right, the story is not right. No right care. That's why people
• 58:15
  love Meg because it was you lot everyone room doing it and the story was
• 58:16
  brilliant. This is this is what filmmakers need to know, is that it's
• 58:21
  all about the script. The script has to be the best it can be
• 58:24
  for the story you've got. The rest doesn't matter. You have to work
• 58:28
  brilliantly with your actors and get the performances you need so that people enjoy your
• 58:31
  film. And you're on an iPhone. Absolutely, you can shoot on your
• 58:36
  dad's old VHS camera order. It doesn't matter, as long as the story
• 58:39
  is good enough. I mean, well, I mean you should shoot besides
• 58:43
  the VHS. I mean, let's just throw that out there. You don't
• 58:45
  meet there's other options, sir, got a best buy here in the States,
• 58:50
  and then return it in thirty days, and return it in thirty days
• 58:52
  and you get a free camera. I mean, there's these things. I
• 58:53
  mean, I don't I don't approve of that, but I've heard other filmmakers
• 58:57
  do things like that. And you were one of the few people ever to
• 59:05
  watch Ego and Desire on the big screen. You know, I had a
• 59:08
  short film a film festival because I didn't do a lot of film festivals with
• 59:12
  it, but you saw it at the world premiere at Rain dance I did.
• 59:15
  I was there the RAINDOWNCE Film Festival. We obviously promoted it on our
• 59:17
  podcast a lot and a lot of the people who listened turned out. So
• 59:22
  the first time I met a lot of these people as well, and they
• 59:23
  were there and it's like, hey, it's so nice to meet you.
• 59:25
  And do you know what as well we're talking about the podcasting indie film world.
• 59:30
  Is you all connect And this is what I've loved about doing mine and
• 59:34
  you coming on and everyone will message me and go, oh, I love
• 59:37
  Alex's stuff. It's so great you're all connecting. But all the indie filmmakers
• 59:39
  I talked to and you talk to, we all kind of know each other.
• 59:44
  We're all in the world of just going out there and making our shrooms.
• 59:47
  And what I've learned is that pretty much every single journey is different,
• 59:52
  not one route is the same. Hey, Yet at the end of the
• 59:54
  day, you need money and you shoot a film shown, but there's there's
• 59:59
  million it's different ways that that could happen and fall down and go up and
• 1:00:01
  down, And that just says, oh, there's no there's no secret,
• 1:00:06
  there's no like, oh, that's the button to press. The one thing
• 1:00:08
  I've learned, and I wasted a lot of time doing this. When I
• 1:00:12
  was coming up is I studied. I read every biography about filmmakers I could
• 1:00:16
  get my hands. I watched every documentary about how movies are made. And
• 1:00:21
  of course I came up and I think you and I are similar vintages.
• 1:00:23
  I think it might be a little bit older than you. But um,
• 1:00:28
  but we came up around the time of the nineties where the myth of Rodriguez,
• 1:00:34
  Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, We'll be right back after a
• 1:00:39
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show Sudberg because Singleton,
• 1:00:52
  those that group of the nineties link Letter, like all of the that that
• 1:00:55
  group. It was like every week there was a new appointed myth and and
• 1:01:02
  you're like, well if I you know, and well, maybe if I
• 1:01:06
  go down to Kevin Smith route, well maybe I'll get that way, or
• 1:01:07
  maybe if I go down my Riachi's route, or and before that, I
• 1:01:10
  was like, maybe I'll do what Spielberg did, I'll I don't do that,
• 1:01:13
  and maybe I'll do what Lucas did. I'll maybe I'll do a couple
• 1:01:15
  of At the end of the day, there is no you could study all
• 1:01:20
  of them, and you might be able to take a couple of ideas from
• 1:01:22
  each path, but the path that comes. Look at your path, dude,
• 1:01:27
  look at your path. Yeah, there's no path like that. Look
• 1:01:30
  at my path, like my path. I was like, oh yeah,
• 1:01:31
  I made my first feature because I was a podcaster, Like after twenty odd
• 1:01:36
  years of directing commercials, music videos and series and doing post on like fifty
• 1:01:43
  features and all the stuff I did, it was podcasting that gave me the
• 1:01:49
  courage to finally go, I'm gonna make my first feature because I had for
• 1:01:55
  I don't know what it was meant mentally, dude, I don't know if
• 1:01:58
  this was with you, but with me, it was about, well,
• 1:02:01
  if it doesn't work, I could just go back to doing what I do,
• 1:02:04
  you know. And I was gonna do it anyway. But like,
• 1:02:06
  I felt comfortable. I felt safe because I had a community, even even
• 1:02:09
  back then it was twenty seventeen, so it was smaller community than I have
• 1:02:13
  now, but it was still like I'm just gonna do this and see what
• 1:02:16
  happens and what the hell. And also because you're you're preaching to people,
• 1:02:21
  you know, you're talking to people about filmmaking. And then, like I
• 1:02:24
  say, the difference between you before you made a feature after your podcast,
• 1:02:30
  do you know what you could tell the difference you could tell the You could
• 1:02:34
  so tell the difference before and after I shot that first feature. The tone
• 1:02:38
  and then well the tone of my pie, I'm sure as yours as well,
• 1:02:42
  it's changed, like yep, you go back to listen to those first
• 1:02:45
  few episodes, first fifteen to twenty, I'm just well, first of all,
• 1:02:49
  they're horrible. I hate this. It's just I know what I mean.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, it's just just was not a brutal, but you could hear
• 1:02:57
  the angry, bitter filmmaker there a little bit more. I was a little
• 1:03:00
  bit more angry and bitness. I always tell people, if everybody here knows
• 1:03:05
  an angry and bitter filmmaker, and if you don't know an angry and bitter
• 1:03:07
  filmmaker, you are the angry and bitter filmmak. And it's so true.
• 1:03:15
  So you could feel that bitterness a bit more then, and the grizzled voice
• 1:03:21
  and all the stuff in the shrapnel. And that's still with me. But
• 1:03:23
  after you made that first feature, as small as that film was, as
• 1:03:28
  it's like it's really quiet, little you know, you know, kind of
• 1:03:31
  mumble core style film that I made, which was completely I've never made anything
• 1:03:36
  like that. I was always doing action movies. It was just like,
• 1:03:38
  I want to get this done, and afterwards, I can't explain it to
• 1:03:44
  people. I don't know if you felt like this, because I think I
• 1:03:47
  stopped me for so many years and making movies because I said, well,
• 1:03:51
  if it's my first feature, it's got to come out like Reservoir, like
• 1:03:52
  it's gotta come out like my Riagi, like I gotta come out guns a
• 1:03:57
  blaring. And there was so much pressure to put it on yourself as as
• 1:04:00
  a first time filmmaker. You can't do that. You can't do that.
• 1:04:02
  Would you agree? I totally agree. I think people put way too much
• 1:04:06
  pressure on their first feature. And I say this a lot to people on
• 1:04:10
  mentor and stuff like that now from the London Film School and whoever else that
• 1:04:14
  mentoring. Stop worrying about your first feature being this breakout hit. How you
• 1:04:17
  think of all the filmmakers out there in the world, how many of them
• 1:04:21
  are breakout filmmakers? But you could probably name the ones we've just named.
• 1:04:26
  There isn't many more. So out of those hundred thousand films that came out
• 1:04:30
  last year, how many of them are broken out none had they gone on
• 1:04:32
  to make other films. Well, okay, maybe fifty percent of them.
• 1:04:35
  Great be that filmmaker. Go make a film and make another one. Don't
• 1:04:40
  put everything on your first film being this huge success, because you'll only fail
• 1:04:44
  by doing that, or you'll never make a film. Well, I got
• 1:04:46
  lucky. I mean, look at I mean, you look at Norland,
• 1:04:49
  his first film as the following. Not a breakout here, not a break
• 1:04:54
  not a breakout hit. You know it wasn't a breakout here. Then you
• 1:04:59
  look at Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott one of the most accomplished filmmakers, first
• 1:05:04
  time filmmakers in history. He had directed what for thousand commercials at that point
• 1:05:12
  in his life, and he did The Shootest and The Shootest a beautiful film,
• 1:05:16
  not a breakout, not a breakout hit. No. So, but
• 1:05:20
  that was the myth in the nineties. That kind of I feel that independent
• 1:05:24
  film became independent film in the nineties, and I think so many filmmakers still
• 1:05:29
  hold on to that idea of independent filmmaking that doesn't exist anymore. Like those
• 1:05:35
  guys and I said this so many times on the show. Kevin Smith shows
• 1:05:40
  up today with clerks, he'll never get seen. Robert Rodrigue shows up with
• 1:05:43
  Mariachi, link Letter shows up with Slacker. The only one out of that
• 1:05:46
  crew that really might make some noise is Tarantino with the Reservoir, because it's
• 1:05:50
  just such a one of the men. He'd already written a big breakout hit
• 1:05:56
  you So, I mean he'd already done that first movie he wrote you know,
• 1:05:59
  well, he did a true romance, he wrote to Romance and Natural
• 1:06:01
  Park Killers. So he was already a screenwriter at that point. Yeah,
• 1:06:03
  a publisher or professional screenwriter. But it's just you can't put that much pressure
• 1:06:11
  on you. And us as filmmakers, we put so much pressure and so
• 1:06:14
  much stress on it. And when I finally just said, screw it,
• 1:06:17
  I'm just going to make a film and I don't care how it. I
• 1:06:21
  mean, I don't care what happens with it. I'm just gonna tell my
• 1:06:24
  story and go on. And my second film, Ego and Desire, was
• 1:06:28
  that in Spade. Yeah, absolutely, and it was brilliant and I really
• 1:06:31
  enjoyed watching it, you know, the premier there in London. It was
• 1:06:34
  so cool. But the fact you made that in a you know, at
• 1:06:38
  some dance. Who does that? Does that? Hey, listeners, guess
• 1:06:43
  what I'm gonna do. If you're not inspired by elects, you're not inspired
• 1:06:45
  by anybody, do you know what I mean? I appreciate you can go
• 1:06:48
  out and make a film. There you go Premier Raindown's Film Festival. That's
• 1:06:54
  where I did that by just going, hey, I'm gonna shoot movie with
• 1:06:57
  actors i've not met, the actors I haven't met, and we're gonna shoot
• 1:07:00
  it in the four days for four days, but about three grand while I'm
• 1:07:03
  shooting interviews for my podcast. So it was like a side hustle and you
• 1:07:09
  actually you're in the movie as a podcast, which is even better. I
• 1:07:12
  mean, the whole thing's just it. That's such a meta film. I
• 1:07:16
  can't even explain to you. Um But obviously with all your future films,
• 1:07:21
  you need to use a star wipe. Obviously a star wipe is I have
• 1:07:26
  to move on. I've got to move forward to that level. Once I've
• 1:07:29
  got a star wipe in my film where I need to be. It might
• 1:07:32
  take me a while a few more films yet. But when you see that
• 1:07:34
  star. That's a that's an inside you have to see the film, guys,
• 1:07:38
  it's an inside joke star Wipe. But if you when the star Wipe
• 1:07:41
  shows up, you'll just go, yeah, yeah it is. I was
• 1:07:45
  waiting for the little the actually you know, the actual star that they have
• 1:07:48
  and then the star grows and goes out. I was looking forward to one
• 1:07:51
  of those. We didn't have the budget for things like that, So we
• 1:07:56
  didn't have the time nor the budget for things like that. Um no,
• 1:08:00
  I want to real quickly. I want to talk about the vegan documentary that
• 1:08:02
  yesterday you're making. So, um, what's the name of that? It's
• 1:08:05
  Food for Thought. It's called Food for Thought. Yeah, and it's on
• 1:08:09
  health, it's on the plant based life as we're having now, and it's
• 1:08:12
  on animal welfare. And because I have a voice in the filmmaking community,
• 1:08:16
  and because I care and I'm a filmmaker, I was like, well,
• 1:08:21
  why I'm making something that I'm passionate about. Because The Dare is Hey,
• 1:08:26
  the Dare is a you know, a commercial type movie that has a message,
• 1:08:30
  but it's not you know, it's not going to change the world.
• 1:08:32
  It's entertainment. It's bullying messages and all that stuff in there, but hey,
• 1:08:36
  I wanted to do something I was passionate about myself. And Dan Richardson
• 1:08:40
  fellow vegans, said why aren't we making a movie about this and what we
• 1:08:44
  care about? And we said, let's do it. You know, he's
• 1:08:45
  a big sort of face in that kind of world anywhere, and he's you
• 1:08:48
  know, born free ambassador, so we've got connections and we were like,
• 1:08:53
  we've got cameras, we've got equipment, let's just go shoot it. So
• 1:08:56
  we came with this idea to say, why don't we get a load of
• 1:08:59
  the people who aren't vegan to go vegan for thirty days. We'll document their
• 1:09:01
  whole life, and during that we'll interview people who either care about this or
• 1:09:08
  feel they cancer cured them or they got killed of cancer bygoing plant based.
• 1:09:13
  You know, we wanted to talk to these type people who bygoing plant based
• 1:09:17
  or having a care about animals, made a difference, and we care about
• 1:09:20
  this and we wanted to do something, and we asked you to be in
• 1:09:24
  the documentary as well, which you very kindly agreed to be interviewed. And
• 1:09:28
  do you know, and that's interesting you're in the dock because obviously we started
• 1:09:30
  talking on the podcast and found out you were vegan as well, and we
• 1:09:33
  were like, right've you've got to be in the dock. So yeah,
• 1:09:36
  and we got some we were worried about because we've traveled around the world,
• 1:09:43
  you know, we traveled to Croatian Lay and Sweden and obviously London and South
• 1:09:46
  Africa. We were like, how are we going to forward this? This
• 1:09:50
  is just us and we want to do this properly and make this really good.
• 1:09:53
  So we did a crowdfunder. We'll be right back after a word from
• 1:09:59
  our sponsor and now back to the show. We raised a really nice amount
• 1:10:08
  of money, but we were very clever about how we did that. We
• 1:10:13
  specifically targeted. We were the riches are in the niches, as you always
• 1:10:17
  say, and we targeted the niches. We targeted vegan groups, we targeted
• 1:10:20
  animal welfare groups, we targeted health companies, and we literally did different techniques
• 1:10:27
  for every day, how we were targeted them, why they would invest,
• 1:10:30
  and then there that would spread out into that market and suddenly we'd have money
• 1:10:34
  flying in from all around the world and we ended up raising seventy five k
• 1:10:40
  on that crowdfunder, which is ridiculous and insane, but that's because we were
• 1:10:44
  passionate about it and our story came across that way, and we really worked
• 1:10:47
  our asses off. It was literally like making a feature film for a month.
• 1:10:51
  It's brutal, isn't it. Crowdfunding is a brutish and it's horrible.
• 1:10:55
  We don't want to do it again. It's it's rough, it's rough.
• 1:11:00
  What that meant was that we could afford to hiring a camera team, We
• 1:11:02
  could afford to fly to these places, and we can afford to spend that
• 1:11:05
  on marketing and use a lot of that money to market the movie and self
• 1:11:10
  distribute ourselves. And the only reason I'm wanted to self distribute this movie was
• 1:11:14
  because of Alex's brilliant book, Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, And that is
• 1:11:17
  fact honestly about going, Oh we could, we could. Distributes are going
• 1:11:23
  to jump all over this. When we were in Can last year, not
• 1:11:26
  this year, obviously, the amount of distributes were like, we'll take this,
• 1:11:29
  we'll take this. They won't give you any money, but they'll take
• 1:11:31
  it. We won't give any money. We knew that, but we went
• 1:11:33
  but because this is the really weird thing about this. We'd rather this and
• 1:11:38
  this is kind of not true, but we want more eyeballs on this because
• 1:11:42
  we want people to understand how the world is going to really implode on itself
• 1:11:45
  unless we all change and make a difference. So we want more eyeballs on
• 1:11:50
  that. So we also didn't want to self distribute this ourselves if we didn't
• 1:11:54
  have what we were doing, And because of the book, we were like,
• 1:11:57
  we're going to self distribute ourselves because we thought we can do this.
• 1:12:00
  Alex, I felt you gave us that power and passion that we could make
• 1:12:05
  the money from this and I not mean and that money can then go back
• 1:12:09
  into us making more docs about this world and about how we can not save
• 1:12:13
  the planet but save people's lives who are eating the wrong kind of foods,
• 1:12:15
  who are not being careful, who are ruining the environment and animals and treat
• 1:12:20
  them badly. And that we can do that. Why give it to a
• 1:12:24
  distribute Who's going to run off with that money and then we can't make more
• 1:12:27
  films from that. Hey, people might know of the doc, but we
• 1:12:30
  want to continue this as a business and keep going and you inspired us to
• 1:12:33
  do that. I am humble than I appreciate that. And I mean obviously
• 1:12:39
  because the book, obviously I talk about the Vegan Chef movie and I want
• 1:12:44
  to make that movie. So I'm a screenwriter who want to write that,
• 1:12:47
  I'll make it. I mean, you know what I mean. You know,
• 1:12:50
  I think there's people out there listening who've read the book and they're just
• 1:12:54
  like, I'm afraid of doing that, because Alex said at first, I'm
• 1:12:57
  like, I am giving yeah, real rain. It's a free idea.
• 1:13:00
  If someone out there can make the vegan romantic comedy that I've laid out the
• 1:13:04
  story pretty much. It's laid out in between episodes and in the book and
• 1:13:10
  all this stuff, go make it. Just let me know. I'll come
• 1:13:15
  on. I'll want you on the show. I want to and I'll help
• 1:13:17
  you. I hope you put out the business, the film entrepreneur business around
• 1:13:20
  it. Just please. So basically what I laid out in the book.
• 1:13:25
  A lot of examples are with the Vegan Chef movie, which are like,
• 1:13:28
  and you could do this because it's vegan, and you could do that because
• 1:13:30
  it's vegan. You basically just took that blueprint. Has he written this for
• 1:13:35
  me? This vegan Duck and he's written this book all about how vegan Chef
• 1:13:41
  movie could happen. I'm like, well, we can follow all that.
• 1:13:43
  We can do this ourselves, and hey, it's going to be a ton
• 1:13:45
  of work. But interestingly, since making movies, I've now moved into helping
• 1:13:51
  other filmmakers get with the right distributors, and especially with all your wonderful Facebook
• 1:13:57
  group as well. There's so much amazing knowledge on that another filmmakers helping people.
• 1:14:01
  And luckily we got amazing distributors on the day. We got the Horror
• 1:14:04
  Collective who are just absolutely wonderful and I can't recommend them enough. And what
• 1:14:10
  they do is they spell everything out and they give you a spreadsheet of where
• 1:14:14
  the money's being spent, how much money's come back in. Stop it's all
• 1:14:16
  that stopp Yep. You mean you mean transparency with a distributor? Yep?
• 1:14:23
  Sacrilege, sacrilege. Did they get kicked out? Did they kicked out of
• 1:14:27
  the distributor's guild by doing things like that? Yeah? Well, well,
• 1:14:30
  interestingly, Shaquid used to be an epic and now he's not hisself in his
• 1:14:33
  own new company the whole that's right. Yeah, I forgot the name it
• 1:14:41
  was because he has it was it Yeah. Okay, that's one of his
• 1:14:45
  branches of his new Yeah, so he has entertainment. Everyone knowing. Shaquid
• 1:14:47
  has been on the show. Shaki has been on the show a couple of
• 1:14:49
  times. He's a friend, and he actually does care about filmmakers and he's
• 1:14:54
  there you go. He's one of the good guys. He's one of the
• 1:14:57
  good guys. So I highly recommend if you've got who a movie, go
• 1:15:00
  to him. They're being brilliant. So because of making movies and helping other
• 1:15:03
  filmmakers, we've taken another movie to the Horror Collective, which we are now
• 1:15:08
  acting as sort of sales, producers, reps sales, yes, more producers,
• 1:15:12
  reps and sales, but we it's a better word, right sure,
• 1:15:15
  But I now understand that world, mainly you know from your book, but
• 1:15:19
  also from understanding that and it's so important. It's a self distribution, even
• 1:15:25
  though it's going to be very difficult with the Vegan documentary, the thought it
• 1:15:29
  makes so much sense for us to do that ourselves, especially with Dan's reach
• 1:15:32
  being bone Free ambassador and everything, and with mind in the podcast and my
• 1:15:35
  world out there. Yeah, and the budget, and it's not an expensive
• 1:15:40
  it's already been paid for essentially, so you're in the black right away already.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah. Yeah, there's so much you could do with that. You
• 1:15:47
  know, I one day will make a vegan documentary. But I just like,
• 1:15:50
  I was just like, this makes all the sense in the world,
• 1:15:54
  Like it's I just think, look the blueprit's laid out. I mean,
• 1:15:56
  there's so many of these vegan docs have just built out multimillion our businesses around
• 1:16:00
  totally, totally. We could give you a percentage, really, Alex,
• 1:16:03
  and just send cash, toilet paper and Ammo. That's all we need is
• 1:16:12
  Ammo because we're American. Obviously we're Americans, so we need we need Ammo
• 1:16:16
  toilet paper and just that's fine cash cash if you that's fine. Straight yeah,
• 1:16:24
  no wiring, just straight Actually pounds. If you can send pounds over
• 1:16:28
  that even be better. I'll fax them across. Oh, my friend,
• 1:16:36
  we could keep talking for at least another two hours. This is what happens
• 1:16:40
  when two podcasters get together. But I'm gonna so I'm gonna ask you,
• 1:16:45
  now, um a few questions. I ask all of my guests, what
• 1:16:47
  advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today. Great
• 1:16:53
  question. I love this question. I say, educate yourself on everything you
• 1:16:57
  can about filmmaking. Don't go into this blind. Find a project that you
• 1:17:01
  love. Understand that market. So if it's a skateboarding movie or BMX movie,
• 1:17:06
  perfect because it's a niche movie, target that audience with it. Understand
• 1:17:12
  what they like and don't like. Get a BMX sponsor on board, whatever
• 1:17:15
  it is. That's the way to make a movie as a first time filmmaker,
• 1:17:19
  because now you're in a you've got a chance of your movie breaking out.
• 1:17:23
  Not many films get made about gymnastics and made one about that, you
• 1:17:27
  know, whatever it is BMX thing. I think that to me is really
• 1:17:30
  important, and I suppose it's what it talks about earlier. Is just don't
• 1:17:33
  worry about it not being a huge success. Don't worry about it not being
• 1:17:38
  on Netflix and all your friends going when I'm gonna see on Netflix, don't
• 1:17:41
  worry about that. It's all about your journey as a filmmaker. I'll tell
• 1:17:45
  you what. If you want to be that filmmaker, the director, to
• 1:17:46
  the screenwriter, the producer, it's a long career. If your film makes
• 1:17:51
  massive straight away. You might you might never recover from that. It's too
• 1:17:56
  big. Who knows. I mean, yeah, hey, we all want
• 1:17:57
  that, but it's a long journey. Don't forget that and find a project
• 1:18:01
  that's right. If you find a screenwriter that you love, and I'll tell
• 1:18:04
  you what, you only need to search. Put a little email out of
• 1:18:08
  Facebook out I'm looking for a screenwriter. Who's going, oh no, don't
• 1:18:10
  do that. Oh no, that's yeah, don't see yeah, I don't
• 1:18:14
  don't don't don't go hey, I'm looking for a screenwriter. No, no,
• 1:18:15
  no, no, don't do that. Guys, please, that's that's
• 1:18:18
  that's a that's a recipe for disaster. Do some research. There's some good
• 1:18:23
  there's some good websites, blacklists slated um Stage thirty two where you can network
• 1:18:29
  and connect with other screenwriters and other projects that you might be able to work
• 1:18:32
  with. But definitely do not go on Facebook and go, hey, anybody
• 1:18:36
  want to make a movie. Yeah, don't do the I that's a good
• 1:18:41
  yeah, we mean by let's find the right screenwriter, yeah wherever that is
• 1:18:45
  exactly yeah, and then find the team again the same you speak to people,
• 1:18:49
  go to events. There'll be people. And there's another filmmaker, go
• 1:18:53
  hey, I saw you. Can I see your short and if the short's
• 1:18:55
  brilliant, ask him who the DP was and work with them. There's so
• 1:18:58
  many ways you can do it, but that for me that's really vital is
• 1:19:01
  no, you know what film you want to make and then really target how
• 1:19:05
  you can really make a business from that and a great film from it.
• 1:19:09
  Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether
• 1:19:11
  in the film business or in life, sign contracts? I early, early
• 1:19:20
  on, I didn't do this at all, and it was a huge mistake.
• 1:19:25
  Like I said, projects got taken away from me. We'll be right
• 1:19:29
  back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
• 1:19:38
  Things happen. If I'd sign a contract with these people, it wouldn't have
• 1:19:41
  happened. And even if that's on a napkin. And I'm sure you're going
• 1:19:43
  to jump down with and say no, don't do that, but whatever,
• 1:19:45
  it is no joking, but I feel it's really important that when you're working
• 1:19:50
  with people, things can go wrong. When you're starting out, people do
• 1:19:55
  talk all the game. We'll be right back after a word from our sp
• 1:20:00
  answer, and now back to the show. So if you've got something signed
• 1:20:09
  at least, then you're not going to get burnt. And within that,
• 1:20:12
  don't be afraid to walk away. You might have worked on it for so
• 1:20:15
  long, but hey, if it's not working, they're not the right people.
• 1:20:17
  Walk away because it's too short to be hurt, to be messed around.
• 1:20:21
  Go do something else. Have more than one project. That took me
• 1:20:25
  the longest to learn. I spent eight years on one project. Waste of
• 1:20:29
  time. Waste. Yeah. Yes. What was the biggest fear you had
• 1:20:33
  to overcome to make your first film? I think it was my own fear
• 1:20:42
  of not being good enough. I think it was my fear of not understanding
• 1:20:45
  my actual ability and my own courage and overcoming that and like I say,
• 1:20:53
  not being scared. Okay, you were the actor, Okay, you wrote
• 1:20:56
  stuff, Okay, you put stuff on in theater. But it was that
• 1:20:59
  fear of thinking you're not good enough. I'll tell you what. If you've
• 1:21:01
  got a vision and you've got an understanding of how you want it to be
• 1:21:05
  set out, even if you don't know technicalities of a camera or you've not
• 1:21:09
  worked with actors before, if you've got a vision and you're passionate, You'll
• 1:21:13
  be great, You'll be fine, And that to me is that was my
• 1:21:15
  fear and I had to overcome that, you know, once you're on a
• 1:21:18
  studio movie, which you suddenly need to overcome that very quickly. And three
• 1:21:24
  of your favorite films of all time Okay, Magnolia, love it. I
• 1:21:30
  probably should rewatch it terminated too, and some log a Millionaire. Yeah,
• 1:21:38
  such a great film. I love that film, such a great film.
• 1:21:41
  And plus the whole very different genre as I noticed a love romantic comment.
• 1:21:45
  I'm a sucker for that. Sucker for that. I'll be making some sick.
• 1:21:49
  Yeah, you make a vegan a vegan chef for a menta comedy any
• 1:21:53
  day. Now, Well, there we go. You just need someone to
• 1:21:56
  write it. And where can people I'm putting that out on Facebook? Yeah,
• 1:22:01
  yes absolutely, um and where can people find you? Jails. You
• 1:22:06
  can find me on Twitter is mainly where I do a lot of my social
• 1:22:11
  media stuff is at Giles all of this sutten on Twitter. Yeah, that's
• 1:22:15
  mainly where I am. Website it's jis Alston dot com. But yeah,
• 1:22:18
  my films, the films that are out there, dare and you know the
• 1:22:21
  aftermovie out from Madden, which is cool. And the podcast, if you
• 1:22:26
  fancy it is the Filmmakers Podcast, which is on Twitter at filmmakers pod.
• 1:22:30
  Yes, I recommend hit this podcast fantastic. It's a fantastic podcast and it's
• 1:22:35
  a great addition to the indie to the indie film muscle podcast because if you
• 1:22:42
  get tired of listening to my voice all the time, it's nice, say
• 1:22:44
  the episodes with Alex, you can listen to those, but hey you no,
• 1:22:46
  no, no no, that's all they need is to listen to me
• 1:22:49
  here and then go listen to me talk more over there. Now. It's
• 1:22:51
  it's it's it's enough. Jiles man, thank you so much for being on
• 1:22:55
  the show. Brother. I appreciate and congrats on all your success and for
• 1:22:58
  everything you're doing for the for the film community. I appreciate you really.
• 1:23:01
  Alex, thank you, and honestly, same guys to you. You're an
• 1:23:04
  absolute inspiration and the joy and you're wonderful guy as well. So well done.
• 1:23:09
  Everyone give it up to Alex. Welcome buddy, Thank you. I
• 1:23:13
  want to thank Jiles for coming on the show and dropping those knowledge bombs.
• 1:23:16
  Thank you for a hell of a tale. Giles. If you want to
• 1:23:20
  get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the
• 1:23:24
  show notes at Indie film Huscle dot com forward slash four two three, and
• 1:23:29
  if you haven't checked out his podcast, The Filmmaker's Podcast, I highly recommend
• 1:23:33
  it. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this
• 1:23:35
  episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv forward slash
• 1:23:41
  two ninety five. Thank you so much for listening to guys. As always,
• 1:23:44
  keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks
• 1:23:47
  for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.