Latest / Indie Film Podcast / What a "$0" Indie Film Actually Costs ($421 vs $45,000)

Transcript

What a "$0" Indie Film Actually Costs ($421 vs $45,000) · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
If you're going to pay everybody what their commercial rate is
0:03
for an artistic project, it adds up really quickly.
0:06
It does. And that kind of brings me to
0:08
the cheap trick of the week, which is be friends with very
0:12
talented people. We successfully created a zero
0:16
budget short film in 28 days, but today we're going to discuss
0:19
how much does a zero budget film actually cost.
0:23
And is it true that you can only pick two between good, fast and
0:26
cheap? And if so, what did we end up
0:29
with? Welcome to indie film podcast.
0:31
I'm Vic. And I am check Let's Breakdown
0:34
our short film that we just finished as of a few days ago.
0:37
It was a musical. We ended up paying $500 out the
0:40
door to get the film made, but we leaned a lot on our talented
0:45
friends to get it done. And so let's talk about the
0:49
actual cost versus the real cost so that all of you out there can
0:53
kind of have an idea what it is to make a quote, UN quote, 0
0:56
budget film that we shot over 2 days.
0:59
Perfect. Do you want to start us off
1:00
Victoria with the breakdown of what we actually spent money on?
1:03
Yeah, since so far it's sure sounding like this was fast and
1:06
cheap, which does make you wonder about the quality.
1:08
Yeah, for sure. Stay tuned.
1:10
Yeah, you could. Be the judge of that.
1:11
So sign up for our newsletter. We'll eventually send out a
1:14
private Screener link to all our newsletter subscribers so you
1:17
can see it. Judge for yourself.
1:19
But let's talk about the budget. Yes.
1:21
OK. So the actual expenditures that
1:23
we had were, let's see, we had the costumes, yes, crafty props,
1:31
printing supplies all together came out to $421.70.
1:36
Yes, and that was the actual amount of money that we spent on
1:41
making the film. Yes, which isn't that much.
1:43
That is really, really inexpensive.
1:46
Yes. And The thing is, is we went
1:47
back and looked at all of the time that we spent and kind of
1:52
equated that and then looked at the SAG after a budget, what
1:55
that would have cost if we wanted a union stamp on the
2:00
project. And it started to kind of make
2:02
our eyes boggle a little bit. But maybe we should talk about
2:05
how we kept the actual crafty and prop budget so low.
2:09
Yeah, because there were a few things that we did to save a
2:11
little bit of money. And then one thing we did that
2:13
probably didn't save very much money and we probably could have
2:16
found a cheaper way to do that, but that's OK.
2:17
Yeah, because we're still talking about under 500 bucks.
2:20
Yeah, at the end of the day, that is an inexpensive film.
2:23
For sure, For sure. So I feel like the first thing
2:26
that we did to make sure that we didn't have to pay a lot out of
2:29
pocket was to film in this studio.
2:32
Yes. And then in my house, yeah.
2:36
And that made it super cheap because we didn't have to pay a
2:38
location rental. Which is really nice.
2:41
And keeping the shoot that simple meant that we could do it
2:44
in two days, which anytime you're looking to really cut
2:47
down production costs, cut the number of days that you're
2:49
filming. Yeah, that's the number one way
2:51
to make your film less expensive.
2:53
Yes, for sure. The second thing we did was
2:56
everybody was dressed in realistic wardrobe.
2:59
Yeah, we kept everybody and. I shouldn't say realistic
3:02
because you always want your wardrobe to look realistic.
3:05
If you're well, I guess if you're making like a fantasy
3:08
kind of film. The film Murder Party, that
3:11
would look super realistic, but it was intentional.
3:14
Yeah. So, but we kept it as far as
3:17
everybody was dressed as though they were hanging out in 2026 in
3:21
a house. Yes.
3:22
And that's everybody's wardrobe. And that helped a lot.
3:26
We decided to stick to a color palette as opposed to having the
3:30
characters dress up as their little game pieces.
3:33
For those of you who don't know, the entire story is set as sort
3:36
of AD and D game among friends. So they all have a character
3:41
piece that represents them and who they are in the game.
3:44
But instead of trying to find a way to make people dress up in
3:47
these, you know, fur suits or have giant swords or all these
3:51
actual fantasy medieval style elements, we just leaned into
3:56
the color palette. So if the character was pink and
3:58
purple, that actor is wearing pink and purple.
4:01
And that's a nice way to have a nod to it without having to
4:04
break your bank. And it means you can go get your
4:06
costumes from a thrift store. Yes.
4:08
Which is the easiest way to do that.
4:10
I don't know of a better way to do that other than asking
4:12
friends or family to borrow clothes.
4:14
Yeah. So we just bought a couple
4:16
shirts because a couple of the actors had everything already in
4:19
the color scheme that we wanted. Which was nice.
4:21
And we wanted to have the color scheme pop a little bit because
4:25
we were filming our quote UN quote, green screen slash
4:28
rotoscope scenes in the studio, which we've talked about before.
4:31
It's basically black. It's just a black wall.
4:33
And so we wanted people to have colors that would be reflective
4:37
so it would be easier to pull them out in post.
4:39
Because at the time, the assumption was that the AI
4:42
object masking tool in Adobe Premiere would.
4:44
Work and it didn't workout very well, but we're going to go over
4:48
that in the hours of work put in on the project as a whole.
4:52
So we we cut costs there, yes. That ended up being $34.83.
4:57
And yes, after buying clothes at a thrift store, you do want to
5:01
wash them before you have your actors wear them.
5:04
That's just common decency, especially since we were not
5:07
paying these actors. No, they were volunteers, which
5:10
was amazing. And you want to do everything
5:13
that you can, including feed them.
5:14
Yes. So we went to two different
5:15
grocery stores, yes, to get food which was cost effective because
5:20
one had better produce but was more expensive on like the chips
5:26
and packaged pre packaged goods. Yeah.
5:28
And so then we went to another one to buy those materials and
5:32
we. Would have more in bulk to have
5:34
better pricing on bulk items as well.
5:36
And we would have loved to support a local grocery store,
5:39
but those don't really exist much anymore, at least not in
5:43
the Treasure Valley in in Idaho Boise area.
5:45
It's really hard to find a the local grocer.
5:48
There used to be a couple, but I'm not sure there really
5:51
aren't. There are a couple little
5:52
general stores in bodegas. Unfortunately, though, those
5:55
would not have been cost effective for.
5:57
No, we're and we're out in the burbs.
6:00
Yeah, we would have had to have driven 45 minutes to go get to
6:03
one of those bodegas. But but we did support the local
6:07
game shop to pick up for picking up our Dungeons and Dragons
6:11
pieces or miniatures. And the dice and the character
6:14
sheets and things. So that was one thing that
6:16
probably would have been cheaper to order online, but felt better
6:23
to support a local game store. Yeah, anytime that we can, yeah,
6:27
not buy something on Amazon, we do our best, Yeah, which is
6:30
getting harder and harder. It's getting a lot more
6:32
difficult day by day. And we went to a local print
6:35
shop to get all the scripts printed off and get the shop
6:38
list printed off, which actually ended up being cheaper than
6:42
Kinkos FedEx staple. Your local big box printer.
6:47
It was actually a lot cheaper. Yeah, I would say 50%.
6:50
Yeah, because we printed off a couple copies of the script, a
6:53
copy of the coverage map and all the character sheets that we
6:59
didn't buy, some of the customized looking character
7:01
sheets for this homebrew D&D edition that were props.
7:04
And then all of the waivers, which I guess we could have
7:08
saved even more money by going digital for the waivers, but we
7:12
didn't do that. Well, it's it's always a
7:14
crapshoot with Adobe PDFs and getting them back from people.
7:17
Yeah, it's always so much easier to just have a piece of paper
7:20
there for them to sign. Have a clipboard and an AD and a
7:22
pen. I know that.
7:24
Anytime somebody requests what's that form form the W2 for your
7:27
business, Yeah. And you go to download it, it's
7:30
blocked. When you try to open up Adobe
7:32
PDFs and try to edit all the type in the new date and then
7:36
put your signature in there. Like the date area is blocked
7:39
off and then you have to save it as a different type of PDF in
7:42
order to type it in there. You know what?
7:44
Here's my. Crazy.
7:45
Here's my cheap trick for that, or life hack for that, or what
7:48
have you. It doesn't have to be brand new,
7:52
just get one copy from whatever the IRS website or whatever that
7:57
sells it. Jesus, they will start selling
7:59
it. Just wait.
8:00
No page right now you can just download it for free.
8:02
So just download it, fill it out once, save it on your desktop,
8:06
and anytime anybody ever asks you for one, you can just send
8:10
them that. I always feel weird of sending
8:12
the wrong date but I do have one saved where I can make a year.
8:14
Well I can write the name on there with my mouse, but it's
8:16
always looks weird because I'm trying to write actual numbers
8:19
in there and it just remind. It reminds me of myself in first
8:22
grade learning how to write numbers when I write it with a
8:25
mouse. Digital writing is very humbling
8:27
that way. But anyway, so we we ended up
8:31
using the local printing press, local game shop to get the paper
8:36
copies as well as the the props that we needed.
8:40
Yes, which worked out well. And I think that that covers all
8:43
the that was. Everything we've bought. 420
8:45
bucks that we ended up spending on this film.
8:48
Now if. You guessed that most of that
8:49
was crafty. You were right.
8:51
Yes, for sure. Yeah, over half.
8:55
The thing is, is we then were talking after we turned the
8:59
project in. Obviously it.
9:01
Was on time. On time.
9:03
On time. We got it done in 28 days, a lot
9:07
of nights with very little sleep.
9:09
You were dreaming of pixels because you spent a lot of time
9:11
in VFX. I hear sleep is for the week
9:13
anyway. Do I sound manic?
9:15
Maybe I still am. It's fine.
9:17
You'll catch up eventually. I doubt the brain damage is
9:20
permanent. I.
9:20
Don't think so. The the amount of time that we
9:23
spent on this in post, we were thinking, oh, we should break
9:27
this down. And I reached out to my friend
9:30
Mike Harris as well. He's a union musician.
9:33
That was that was generous enough to come in and record
9:36
some some clarinet tracks for the musical.
9:39
And then he sent me the paperwork that I hadn't seen
9:41
before about union musician rates.
9:44
And I'm like, holy cow. They are good, good.
9:49
I'm glad that an artist and there is a union for those
9:53
artists that is saying yes, your work is valuable because at the
9:56
end of the day, artists work is valuable for sure.
10:01
And just because we could do this for this low.
10:04
Doesn't mean you. Should all the time.
10:06
Not not, not all the time. And so we want to talk about
10:08
that because it's not it wasn't cheap.
10:11
No, we didn't pay a lot of money no to get this film done, but it
10:15
was not a cheap film. So anybody that's out there
10:17
talking about the zero budget film making, it really as isn't
10:21
ever so first thing the the hours that we put in.
10:28
How many hours did we spend on this entire project Victoria,
10:34
every single every single person?
10:36
How many people hours was it? Did it end up being?
10:40
Do I know this? Do do you want to take a guess?
10:42
Oh thank God you know this. I don't.
10:45
I'm like, I don't know every waking moment for the last 28
10:49
days. No, I don't a lot.
10:53
We'll, we're just talking. We're just talking.
10:55
It's gonna be over 100 hours. Oh, for sure.
10:57
So I would say maybe over 250. Yes, it's 281 hours and I'm just
11:02
talking about production and post production.
11:05
Oh, we're not even including the writing and.
11:07
The we're not even talking about like the this is assuming you
11:10
have a script and you're ready to produce it because we didn't
11:13
track any of that stuff. But once we started shooting, we
11:18
had a schedule outlined. Yeah.
11:19
But when you and I were doing the writing and I was coming up
11:22
with music and you were coming up with lyrics and we were
11:24
coming up with, we were scheduling things initially.
11:28
Yeah. Creating the schedule, I guess.
11:30
Yeah. That just got completely lost.
11:33
OK, so. So this.
11:34
Is we can safely assume that was enough hours on top, so it was
11:38
over 300 hours. Total, Oh for sure, easily over
11:41
300 hours in the last month. And this is everybody's time
11:45
though, because we had two days on set where basically everybody
11:48
attended one day where everybody attended full day, yes.
11:51
And that was roughly about a 10 hour shoot day that day.
11:54
And then we had the next day everybody come back into the
11:57
studio again where they spent anywhere from 2 to 4 hours in
12:00
the studio to record their vocals and then also pantomime
12:04
their 8 bit rotoscope scenes. Yeah And so basically 2 days of
12:08
filming for you and I-1 full day of filming for a giant group of
12:13
people. So, and then outside of that, we
12:17
had your VFX, which you estimated that you spent a day
12:21
editing and then 64 hours. Yeah, wait 8 days.
12:27
I would like to say that I felt pretty confident with the edit
12:30
after about 5 hours, but there were probably a few more hours
12:34
put into that. Especially like adding the
12:35
credits and everything because I'm not going to count the
12:37
credits as the VFX work because it's just a Photoshop file.
12:41
That feels like editing to me. But yeah, then.
12:46
Yeah. So it was, it was 9/9 full days
12:49
of work there. And you know around here most of
12:53
us are charging roughly about $50.00 an hour for our day rate
12:57
if we're intermediary. So break that down.
13:00
I reach out to my friend Jesse, who was generous enough to let,
13:04
like, he and I worked one day in a studio, just the two of us.
13:07
Yeah. And then we had two half days
13:08
where we brought in other musicians, excuse me, other
13:11
musicians to record. And then?
13:13
He recorded his own vocals on top of that.
13:15
He recorded extra versions of the songs on top of that for
13:17
everyone, and he was kind enough to come in as the lead actor.
13:19
I don't think we can really say thanks enough to Jesse for that.
13:22
It was really everybody was super generous with all this
13:25
when you break it all down. So there was that time he also
13:29
mixed the and mastered the audio, the music.
13:33
I spent at least a day working on the sound effects as well
13:37
using his mix. And so all of that said and
13:41
done, if we would have paid everybody just what they
13:45
normally ask for and not sag after or union rates, we would
13:50
have been looking at over $15,000. 15,250 Oh there is the
13:56
281 hours I should read. OK.
13:58
Yes, $15,250 was the actual cost of this, but we technically paid
14:06
$421.70. Cents.
14:09
Exactly. OK.
14:10
So we got it fast and good, not necessarily cheap.
14:13
We just got really lucky on the price tag.
14:15
For sure, for sure. So, and I and I do want to talk
14:20
more about, you know, the, the value of volunteering on the
14:23
podcast, but we also did a union rate estimate on this using the
14:28
SAG AFTRA sheets and then using the musician union rates as well
14:34
as the directors. The DGA and the PGA.
14:37
Yeah. And that pushed it up to.
14:40
This is a rough estimate though because there was a lot of
14:43
complicated math on that, but $45,530 was what wouldn't needed
14:50
to have been spent to pay everybody a union rate to see
14:55
those sag after a tags. Which is.
14:57
On there. Nuts.
14:59
When I think of the last few festivals that we've been to,
15:02
yes. And how many of those films have
15:04
that sag after logo at the end of the credits?
15:08
And it just blows my mind that that is a very high budget film.
15:15
That is a high budget film. And it's well outside of our
15:19
realm of being able to raise those kinds of funds.
15:22
The union. The union rate for this project
15:28
is currently the amount that I am working as a producer on
15:32
another feature film to try to raise to make an entire feature
15:37
over a two week shoot Which? We'll be doing with skeleton.
15:40
Through. And I do want to say if we were
15:43
to shoot a short film where it were, it was you running camera,
15:49
me doing sound, maybe one other crew member and then two people
15:51
having a conversation, which we've done a short film in that
15:55
vein. Both of us have many times over
15:58
and over and over again those that would definitely be way
16:02
less expensive. It would be.
16:03
Yeah, but this because of the fact that there was music
16:06
involved and then union musicians, it hypothetically
16:10
would blow up the cost. It would pretty.
16:12
Enormously. But I mean, it also adds leaning
16:17
on the music is how we kind of got away with some of the other
16:21
things being less expensive, right?
16:23
We could have the costumes and and the setting be a living room
16:27
and an afternoon or I guess evening game session between
16:31
friends. Because the music is going to
16:33
elevate this more than if we'd had a really fancy like Clue
16:38
style mansion where everyone's running around in the different
16:41
rooms and actually doing all these things.
16:43
So that, that was a little bit of the the trade off in the
16:46
budget I think too. Yeah, and that was a hypothesis
16:49
that we had, which you all can eventually be the judge of.
16:52
That is if we come into a musical with good quality music
16:56
that people have the potential to grab onto, then that will
17:01
elevate the overall project without needing to worry about
17:04
the visuals. But then at the same time, you
17:06
spend a lot of time in VFX creating an 8 bit world for
17:09
these characters to live in almost half of the movie.
17:12
And so I feel like that elevates it on top of the music.
17:16
It gives it a surrealistic realm of existence.
17:19
So we'll we'll see if that's if that's true.
17:21
But yes, we didn't end up having to pay for, I didn't have to
17:24
bring out my location sound equipment.
17:25
No. Oh, I forgot about Foley.
17:27
I did Foley too. You did the Foley.
17:29
From that next day too. Oh yeah.
17:30
Well, that might have kicked it up slightly more, but I think
17:33
the point is that, yes, if you're going to pay everybody
17:36
what they're worth or what their commercial rate is for a, for an
17:40
artistic project, it adds up really quickly.
17:43
It does. And that kind of brings me to
17:46
the cheap trick of the week, which is be friends with very
17:52
talented people. No, it's it's kind of.
17:56
Make better friends. Yes, come on.
18:01
No, we we were talking about the value of sound effects and
18:06
music, and that's kind of a cheap trick that we've learned
18:11
to cover up some visual things with audio.
18:15
Yeah, because again, citing that study that is very difficult to
18:18
find now instead of just people talking about the study, but
18:22
there was and we have a blog article on our website that
18:26
links out to it from long, long ago.
18:28
So we can get that link. If you really need it, you can
18:31
just go look through our blog articles that we spend all the
18:33
time working on. Just go through our blog now the
18:36
the idea that people will forgive of mid level visuals but
18:43
will not forgive mid level or very low level audio quality.
18:48
Yeah, they will leave the theater if the movie is audibly.
18:53
Bad and the film Sinners has a scene already.
18:58
It looks visually stunning. It's beautiful.
19:00
And I mean. Piece and there is a scene
19:03
though, where they're driving in a car and one of the characters
19:07
is having a flashback and rather than flashing back visually,
19:11
which would have added a lot of time and expense to the film,
19:15
they had the flashback represented auditorily.
19:19
Yeah, which? Works beautiful.
19:21
For the scene and it ended up just being 1 long.
19:24
Monologue. One long monologue with sound
19:27
effects in the back explaining kind of like accentuating the
19:30
story of the character, and it was a long shot.
19:33
It was a really long shot they had.
19:35
They did cut away to a couple different little reaction shot
19:37
moments of the other two people in the car, but those were shots
19:40
they were getting already anyway because they needed to have the
19:42
full car conversation. So that wasn't going to go above
19:45
and beyond for them. But it was just a it was a
19:48
beautiful choice and a really smart budget friendly choice.
19:52
I'm not saying that Sinners was worried about their budget.
19:54
For sure I don't. Think.
19:56
They were that might have been a, that might have been a
19:57
creative, a creative choice in that realm anyway, to add some
20:01
uniqueness. But from an indie film
20:03
perspective, that's a good way to cut down on costs.
20:05
Yeah, in my mind. And even in this this most
20:08
recent film that we made, there was a scene where the devil
20:11
disappears. Where you had a crossfade and we
20:15
did a composite shot. So he, you know, dipped out a
20:20
frame in one shot and then we just left it open for the, the,
20:24
the wide shot for the other characters reactions.
20:26
And then you made them disappear.
20:28
But then when he reappears, he just pops out.
20:31
And so with sound effects, what I did is I had like a poof sound
20:34
effect when he, when he disappeared, and then I
20:37
literally just reversed the same sound when he came back into the
20:42
the world. But psychologically, it made you
20:45
ready for like, Oh my gosh, she's coming back.
20:47
Yeah, this, this connected those dots as opposed to he just walks
20:51
into frame where he suddenly wasn't before.
20:53
And that was one other thing that I think, and this might
20:57
just be my my theater background nerding out a little bit hard on
21:01
some of this. But I think leaning into a lot
21:05
of the practical effect stuff that we did where we just had
21:09
people off camera kind of sliding things in or heading,
21:12
heading, wow. Having our actors strategically
21:16
placed so they're in front of the camera kind of hiding other
21:19
people as they enter. So it can look a little bit more
21:21
impressive when then suddenly they pull apart and there's more
21:23
people magically behind them. Little things like that.
21:26
And getting the actors to kind of lean into that.
21:29
The actor playing the devil, Nico for that fade away scene
21:34
where he just dissolves and disappears.
21:36
We knew we were doing that composite shot, so we were
21:39
shooting for that, but told the actor, you know, have fun with
21:42
it. This is the devil.
21:43
How would the devil disappear? And since he was walking behind
21:45
a couch, he was like leaning into the comedy of it and just
21:49
flails and drops behind the couch.
21:51
You just watch him fall. And it almost made me sad to do
21:54
the composite on it at all cuz I'm like, it's way funnier if he
21:57
disappears by just dropping behind the couch for sure.
22:00
Like that's the funnier moment. So we definitely kept it in
22:04
there. For sure.
22:05
You had to, but leaning into kind of silly moments and
22:10
letting the actors play. Once the actors understand the
22:12
concept and you get to kind of chat with them, when you have
22:16
talented actors on a set to feel free to explore and play, you're
22:19
going to get those fun moments that maybe you didn't see
22:21
coming. So I don't know if maybe in
22:24
Sinners, maybe they didn't. Maybe they had planned to film
22:26
all of that or already had filmed all of it.
22:29
And while they were going through, maybe one of the actors
22:33
said like, oh, I can almost hear like what you're saying just as
22:36
you describe the story. And they're like, actually,
22:37
let's do that and just lean in. I don't know if that's what
22:40
happened, but I'm going to tell myself that's what happened
22:42
because I think that's a fun story.
22:43
It's. A creative choice for sure, but
22:46
it could also be budget. Conscious.
22:47
It could have also been budget conscious I guess.
22:50
Do you want to talk about volunteering?
22:52
Because I think, I think the there's a certain morality
22:57
around creating projects for a quote UN quote 0 budget.
23:02
Yeah. And we should probably address
23:04
that. Yeah, and actually one of our
23:08
now friends that we met at the Chicago Horror Film Festival and
23:12
we we stay in touch online and and he makes a bunch of short
23:16
films. He does incredible work.
23:18
Robert Flowers, he had reached out to us about when we were
23:23
talking about budgeting for short films and said that
23:26
there's actually he's gotten and and heard from other film makers
23:31
as well, a little bit of pushback on people sort of
23:34
berating him for paying for shorts at all.
23:38
Oh, interesting. And I, I can't, I cannot imagine
23:41
a world where anybody is saying why are, why are you paying
23:45
artists for doing their work? I don't, I don't get that.
23:48
But I guess maybe the idea behind it is that you shouldn't
23:52
be putting money into a short because they aren't necessarily
23:54
lucrative on the reverse, like you're not necessarily going to
23:57
see a great ROI from your short film, which it gets into a much
24:01
bigger discussion about what you plan to do with this film and
24:05
are you using it to build an audience and can you leverage
24:07
that audience? Because there was recently a
24:08
film that did really well with a YouTube following and it was
24:11
made by a YouTube creator. So we're like, don't knock it.
24:16
You know, you find your funds the way you can.
24:18
But I do think, again, artist's work is real work.
24:26
If you can pay your artists for the work that they're doing, you
24:29
should like, yes, you can get actors to volunteer.
24:33
Yes, you can get your friends to do these things.
24:35
But man, yeah, it's also really nice when you can pay people and
24:40
validate the, I guess, you know, commercial sort of validity of,
24:46
of their work. Yeah, I don't know if that makes
24:48
a lot of sense. I.
24:50
Look, maybe we should talk about it instead of from the top down
24:52
perspective because it's not like you and I are just
24:55
producing things and and trying to get people to collaborate
25:01
with and make that our priority because we both work in the
25:05
community as well. We're obviously sharing about
25:07
the projects that we've spearheaded, but maybe you could
25:11
talk about times when you've charged and when you volunteered
25:15
for projects and how you draw the line in the sand there.
25:18
Yeah, that one's, that one's flexible and it shouldn't be
25:23
right. Like you should just always have
25:24
your definitive line in the sand.
25:26
But I feel like it doesn't come down to it that easily.
25:29
Like for example, the competition we made this film
25:31
for, there were two other films that I worked on as well.
25:36
I was choreographer and backup dancer in one and stunt person
25:41
in another. And those I absolutely wasn't
25:45
going to charge for it, like because this is not the type of
25:48
project where you can, but I'm excited for the real footage
25:51
because that'll be fun to have. And I was excited to spend a day
25:54
on set with people that I just genuinely like.
25:56
Plus, I never get to choreograph anything.
25:59
And maybe I shouldn't, but I had a really good time doing it, so
26:02
it's fine. And stunt work is always fun.
26:03
So, you know, as long as there's enjoyment in it, I'm probably
26:08
not going to charge Anytime I'm on camera.
26:10
I'm going to have a much harder time charging for work that my
26:15
creative friends are doing. Yeah, But when I see a casting
26:21
notice come through about a commercial for a product or
26:24
something, yeah, then I'm just automatically going to expect to
26:29
be paid for that. Yes, because it is a a
26:33
commercial thing. And I know that's not
26:36
necessarily fair to look at it that way, but it's also, this is
26:40
a company with a marketing budget looking to pay for
26:45
marketing materials. And as someone that worked in
26:48
marketing for forever, I know that that budget exists and I
26:52
will not feel bad getting paid for it.
26:55
So that way I also have money and time to do the other fun
27:01
things. For sure.
27:02
And I you commercial. Commercial things are different
27:06
than than artistic things. For sure there's.
27:09
Just initially, right, Yeah. If somebody's got a budget, if
27:12
somebody's coming from out of town and they want to sell you
27:16
on doing a commercial, even if it's a small business.
27:19
Yeah. I mean, I will say that there
27:21
are instances if you're in a smaller town where it's probably
27:23
a good idea if you want to learn how to run a camera or make a
27:26
commercial. If you have a a local restaurant
27:29
or a local shop that's like, you know, they're willing to do some
27:33
trade or they're willing to. Trade is great for that.
27:37
Local businesses are great for trade cuz you can then get a
27:40
restaurant or crafty or location or what have you in exchange for
27:46
more practice doing commercial. Work and if you need to build up
27:48
your portfolio, it's gonna be hard to just charge if you have
27:52
a camera in 0 experience, sorry, you need to, you need to
27:55
practice. You need to practice.
27:57
So for me, I always charge for commercial stuff.
28:00
Yeah, right. Sometimes I'll be flexible with
28:02
the budget depending on my actual number one concern, which
28:05
is how much time I have. Oh, that's no, that's really
28:09
fair. The time is is huge for me
28:11
because if I have things that I want to get done, my own
28:16
creative projects, I don't want other projects and crocheting on
28:20
me unless I can't pay my bills. Yeah.
28:23
So there's number one concern is time.
28:26
If I have the time for something and if I have enough money in my
28:29
bank account, right? And none of us here that are
28:31
doing freelance work are making money hand over fist, buying
28:34
yachts and traveling around the world.
28:36
We're just lucky if we get invited on a yacht to take some
28:39
pictures and then we're working and not really enjoying it.
28:42
I would still enjoy it. I will still be available to do
28:45
BTS photos on a yacht. I would do that.
28:47
Yes, I guess Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong that I wouldn't
28:51
enjoy. Doing video on the yacht owners
28:54
in Idaho. Yeah, yeah.
28:57
I don't know if there are many of those.
28:58
So, so I create, I create a project.
29:01
I think there's also a little bit of a if you're a really
29:06
solid gaffer, you're a really solid DP or you're really solid
29:10
location sound recordist. This is just me assuming that
29:14
somebody that wrote a script wants to direct it and bring on
29:18
a talented crew to make it look and sound good.
29:20
Yeah, that's a little bit trickier for me because if I
29:24
were to take every single creative project that somebody
29:26
came to me with and to do location sound, I would just be
29:29
doing free location sound all the time.
29:31
Unfortunately, that's the truth it is.
29:34
And the post sound, which that takes up an enormous amount of
29:39
time as well much the post sound ends up taking a lot longer than
29:43
the location sound in a lot of cases because you add sound
29:46
effects and you get creative, which is, yeah, cleaning up
29:49
dialogue. If, you know, they have to use
29:52
the take that was when the car was passing by or whatever,
29:54
finding ways to mask that out. So yeah, to me.
29:59
But if there's somebody that comes up to me with something
30:01
where it's like, oh, OK, well, this is for another project,
30:05
right? Are you willing to donate some
30:06
time to help create a fundraising video and then
30:10
you'll be on for this larger project?
30:13
Yeah, well, let me look at the project.
30:14
OK, Cool. Looks good.
30:16
Absolutely. If I have the weekend available,
30:18
let's do it. Yeah.
30:19
You know, because that's hopefully bigger projects coming
30:22
into our community. And then also the if there's
30:26
just something really cool, I know.
30:29
You know, something exciting. You never know because
30:31
everything's just a ticket, right?
30:34
Yeah. And we learned what?
30:35
Kind of ticket, speeding ticket or lottery ticket?
30:38
Yeah, lottery ticket. OK, Everything's a lottery
30:40
ticket, not just speeding tickets, although, yeah, we did
30:44
both with your short film as we were driving down to Las Vegas.
30:47
Yeah, I guess we did get a speeding ticket and and the
30:52
lottery ticket of whether or not dive was going to get, I don't
30:55
know, distribution or picked up by somebody or noticed or
30:57
whatever. No, I I am proud to say I found
31:00
out this morning that Dive did win Best Women in Film Short at
31:05
the Austin Indie Film Fest. Oh, congratulations.
31:07
Thank. You that was really exciting.
31:09
I was hoping for like getting some, some nominations for my
31:13
actor. I just, I like to be able to
31:16
kind of give back a little bit. Oh, yeah, you can.
31:18
So if you, if you win awards and stuff, at least you could be
31:21
like, look, see, now this is something for your resume,
31:23
really. Even if you don't like the
31:25
footage, at least it's still something for your resume.
31:27
Yeah, sort of. And I think that's another
31:29
volunteer situation as well, is if if I do get in a case where
31:34
there isn't a lot of location sound stuff, I don't want to get
31:37
rusty either. Yeah, you know it's good to dust
31:40
off the old boom mic and dust off the labs before you point
31:44
them in someone's face, but. Yeah, I don't, I don't think you
31:46
do a lot of audio stuff on a weekly basis or anything, right?
31:51
Now, this is different than location sound.
31:53
I'm going to tell you that right now.
31:55
That's why I don't do location sound.
31:57
Podcast processing is different than location sound, different
32:00
microphones. You can't put this at the end of
32:02
a boom pole. You would just get garbage
32:03
audio. You could, I don't know.
32:04
If you'd be happy about it, but you could.
32:06
Just use the on camera mic. No, I don't know if we'll do
32:09
that, but but these, these need to be pretty close.
32:13
But yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's important to get involved in
32:16
your community because I, I did make a quote last week when I
32:18
was talking about volunteering that I wanted to clarify.
32:21
I think I made some notes on here because because it sounded
32:26
like I was preaching like some sort of quid pro quo.
32:30
Situation. And that was not my intention.
32:34
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like 1, I, I learned by
32:38
volunteering because I didn't go to film school.
32:40
Yeah. So if you want to learn how to
32:43
do something, that's like the first step, Yeah.
32:46
If you have a script and you want to direct something and
32:48
you've never been to film school, definitely volunteer.
32:50
Always learn a lot from the people around you.
32:53
On as many different types of sets as you can.
32:55
Short films, features, music videos, commercial stuff,
32:58
whatever you can get and see how every single type of set works.
33:02
Because then you can see people screw things up.
33:04
Because I. In real time so that you don't
33:06
have to do that. I did go to film school mostly,
33:09
and I still learned so much more on all the sets that I've been
33:15
on then, you know, I mean, I, I learned a lot in school.
33:18
I I was very, very lucky that I had great teachers, but you
33:22
learn so much more on a set for sure.
33:24
It's a crash course. You know, you go to school and
33:25
they teach you how to read and write and do math.
33:27
And then you're like, oh, wait, I don't know how to respond to
33:29
corporate emails. It's like, oh, no, you get a
33:32
feeling for it. You don't actually need to say
33:34
anything to this one. And if you e-mail this one to
33:36
this other person, then they'll sit on it for a week and you
33:38
don't have to do anything. Yeah, the little the little
33:42
important things that you have to learn to navigate corporate
33:44
America. Yeah, don't e-mail them.
33:47
They'll e-mail you back right away.
33:48
But send an important e-mail at 4:00 PM on a Friday, and then
33:51
you can be mad on Monday when it took you until Monday to get a
33:54
response. There it is.
33:55
It's good. These are the skills.
33:57
But yeah, so, you know, I think it is good to volunteer on sets
34:02
and I I will always volunteer on a creative set.
34:04
That was another point. People that are creative want to
34:08
do stuff that's new, and if they truly love the work that they're
34:11
doing, they're going to want to volunteer if you come up with a
34:13
good idea. That is true too, is that you
34:16
can start kind of building your community and the people who
34:19
really get you and your vision and your style when you work
34:23
with more and more people and as you start kind of building a
34:25
reputation for yourself. Like if people know that you're
34:28
doing the sound on something and they know that your brother
34:32
Bradley, who's been on the podcast several times and helped
34:35
us immensely with this film too, and they know he's, you know,
34:38
writer, director on it. They're like, OK, that's, that's
34:42
two pieces of the pie right there that are really solid.
34:45
The script's going to be good and the direction's going to be
34:46
good. That's going to sound really
34:48
good. And then when you throw in Danny
34:50
as the DP, I mean, you, you all never have trouble getting
34:53
talent to show up for your projects, paid or unpaid, which
34:57
is nice because you've built that reputation.
34:59
And you do also give back to your community and volunteer in
35:01
your community whenever you can too.
35:03
So, you know, it's a networking thing.
35:06
That's what you do. Yeah, and then you can just
35:08
leverage that too. And people owe you favors.
35:11
No, just kidding. Call them All in all at once.
35:14
You owe me this many favors. Now I wanna do my feature film
35:19
for nothing. It'll be great.
35:22
I'm sure that won't cause any problems whatsoever.
35:24
Should we talk? Should we talk about our
35:25
Filmmaker of the Week? I think so.
35:27
I'm really excited about our Filmmaker of the Week.
35:29
Well, I'm always pretty excited about the Filmmaker of the Week,
35:31
but this week we have Carlos Garcia.
35:33
Did you want me to go through it or do you want to go through?
35:35
Let me try it, see if I can read it this week.
35:38
So Carlos says honestly, I've been stuck in the I want to make
35:42
short films but never technically got going.
35:46
So that was his mode that he was in.
35:48
And then within the last two years I finally kicked it into
35:51
OverDrive and made several, one of them being in Spanish.
35:55
I'm really proud of that one because as a Mexican American
35:57
filmmaker, I want to tell stories that highlight my
35:59
culture and my people. Telling a Horror Story set in
36:02
the universe of 28 Days Later with a Spanish crew was my
36:05
proudest achievement. I even have a behind the scenes
36:08
on my channel showing the amazing crew that helped me
36:10
bring that short film to life. I was impressed by him because
36:13
he sent us a link to his YouTube channel and he is working it and
36:18
you can see that he's doing he's creating shots that I think are
36:24
unique and and sound design stuff.
36:27
And it looks like he's stretching himself posting it on
36:31
YouTube and learning as he's going.
36:34
I kind of got that vibe just from the YouTube channel.
36:37
So let, let us know Carlos, if that's true.
36:39
But it sounds like it was one of those things like you just got
36:41
to you just got to get out there and do it.
36:43
And don't be afraid if it's not great, because chances are
36:48
nobody's going to care anyway. No, don't let the perfect be the
36:51
enemy of the. Good.
36:52
No, never, ever let the idea of perfection stop you from putting
36:57
something together and just getting your work out there.
36:59
Absolutely. I think that's awesome.
37:00
Yeah. Plus I love the idea of like
37:02
more Mexican American film makers, like kind of bringing
37:04
that culture into their films and and showcasing it because, I
37:09
mean, especially for horror films, since he said it's like a
37:12
28 Days Later kind of thing. Especially for horror films, I
37:15
think, I think Spanish films tend to tend to take the cake on
37:20
horror as a whole. I could be.
37:23
I mean, there are a lot of good horror films that are not
37:25
Spanish films, but man, Spanish horror, there's they go to a
37:30
whole other edge of things and it's good and it's creepy and
37:34
it's good. So cool.
37:36
Anything else you'd. Like to add or shall we
37:38
succinctly save? Farewell.
37:39
I think we should just save. Farewell, bye, bye.