Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 829: The Secret to Marketing Your Movie Like a Pro with Brad Wilke
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
- 0:07Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.
- 0:12Speaker 2: Welcome to the Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight
- 0:15Speaker 2: twenty nine, Cinema Should make You forget.
- 0:17Speaker 3: You're sitting in a theater, Roman Polanski.
- 0:21Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
- 0:25Speaker 1: Film Hustle Podcast, where we showed you how to survive
- 0:28Speaker 1: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
- 0:31Speaker 1: the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
- 0:35Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle Podcast.
- 0:38Speaker 3: I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is
- 0:41Speaker 3: sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn
- 0:44Speaker 3: your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today
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- 0:57Speaker 3: stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of
- 1:01Speaker 3: making money with your film is broken, and there needs
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- 1:34Speaker 3: will set you up for success. The book is available
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- 1:42Speaker 3: to order it, just head over to www dot filmbizbook
- 1:46Speaker 3: dot com.
- 1:46Speaker 2: That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest
- 1:51Speaker 2: host Dave Bullis So.
- 1:54Speaker 4: For today on the podcast, we have Brad Wilkie. Brad
- 1:57Speaker 4: is a screenwriter of Campbell Spiders and Paracom I'm the
- 2:00Speaker 4: Brad holds an MBA from the University of Washington's Foster
- 2:04Speaker 4: School of Business, as well as a Master of Communication
- 2:06Speaker 4: Digital Media from the University of Washington's Department of Communication.
- 2:10Speaker 5: Brand is also the co.
- 2:11Speaker 4: Founder of swe House Creative, a company that designs and
- 2:14Speaker 4: executes digital and social media strategies for films and filmmakers.
- 2:17Speaker 4: We talked about how to build an ONIONCE for your project,
- 2:20Speaker 4: how to network, and working with the legendary Roger Corman.
- 2:23Speaker 5: Brad, how are you, sir? Oh? Not bad, Daved, thanks
- 2:26Speaker 5: a lot, great to be here.
- 2:28Speaker 4: Oh, I you know, I thank you very much for
- 2:30Speaker 4: coming on, Brad. You know, Brad's a question I always
- 2:33Speaker 4: ask everyone to get started. Is you know, how did
- 2:36Speaker 4: you get started in the film business.
- 2:39Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know it was it was a pretty
- 2:41Speaker 5: winding path that I took. You know, I went to
- 2:44Speaker 5: West Point of all places, so it was in the
- 2:47Speaker 5: army for five years after I graduated in nineteen ninety eight.
- 2:51Speaker 5: So that's how I ended up out here in the
- 2:53Speaker 5: Pacific Northwest at Fort Lewis. And during my time at
- 2:58Speaker 5: Fort Lewis, I you know, would spend a lot of
- 3:01Speaker 5: nights and weekends up in Seattle just you know, this
- 3:05Speaker 5: was before social media and before a lot of you know,
- 3:08Speaker 5: so much like everything was on the web, so you know,
- 3:11Speaker 5: just going to a lot of like film screenings and help,
- 3:14Speaker 5: you know, like just connecting. Like I was interested in film,
- 3:16Speaker 5: but didn't really know that it was like a career
- 3:18Speaker 5: path necessarily, even though I made a lot of short
- 3:21Speaker 5: like VHS movies as a kid growing up with neighborhood friends.
- 3:25Speaker 5: So you know, ended up making a short film here
- 3:29Speaker 5: in Seattle. I shot it on sixteen millimeter and edited
- 3:33Speaker 5: it on a steambeck. So would you know, spend my
- 3:36Speaker 5: day down to Fort Lewis and the army and then
- 3:38Speaker 5: come up here at night and you know, edit old
- 3:42Speaker 5: school style and then drive back down to Fort Lewis.
- 3:45Speaker 5: So that kind of got you know, my feet went
- 3:47Speaker 5: in the business. And you know, I really enjoyed that.
- 3:50Speaker 5: And the short film you know, did okay on the
- 3:52Speaker 5: festival circuit, and you know, led to another one and
- 3:55Speaker 5: then I made, you know, and then it just kind
- 3:57Speaker 5: of blossomed from there, Like I ended up doing some
- 4:02Speaker 5: pre screening for the Seattle International Film Festival, and then, uh,
- 4:06Speaker 5: you know, came on board as a programmer, which is
- 4:09Speaker 5: not a full time job by any by any stretch.
- 4:12Speaker 5: Just FYI, anybody out there, Yes, you you can make
- 4:15Speaker 5: a living as a programmer, but it's you know, those
- 4:20Speaker 5: kind of jobs are few and far between, so you know,
- 4:23Speaker 5: it's definitely a labor of love, and uh, you know,
- 4:27Speaker 5: also had been you know, continuing to write screenplays and
- 4:30Speaker 5: and ended up working through just literally a cold email
- 4:36Speaker 5: that I sent to Jim Onnorski early early one morning,
- 4:40Speaker 5: when I was like on the verge of giving up
- 4:42Speaker 5: screenwriting for good. I was just, you know, it was
- 4:45Speaker 5: one of those like moments, you know, you're staring into
- 4:47Speaker 5: the abyss and you know, and it turned out, you know,
- 4:50Speaker 5: it was it was great and that's turned into a
- 4:52Speaker 5: really fruitful writing relationship with Jim, and you know, and
- 4:57Speaker 5: then smart House started because I got laid off, like
- 4:59Speaker 5: I I during all as all of that was happening,
- 5:03Speaker 5: I'd started a nonprofit when I got out of the Army,
- 5:06Speaker 5: which led me to business school, which is something I
- 5:09Speaker 5: never thought that I would be doing. And from there
- 5:12Speaker 5: I got a kind of a concurrent degree Masters of
- 5:17Speaker 5: Communication and Digital Media, which which really laid the groundwork
- 5:20Speaker 5: for a lot of the work we do at smart House.
- 5:23Speaker 5: And was working for a pretty large global health nonprofit
- 5:26Speaker 5: here in Seattle as their digital engagement strategist and got
- 5:30Speaker 5: laid off at a round of budget cuts and that
- 5:33Speaker 5: hit only the external relations, so they lost you know,
- 5:36Speaker 5: forty percent of their web team and I was part
- 5:38Speaker 5: of that, and that's really where I, you know, was
- 5:42Speaker 5: just sort of like wondering why I have two kids?
- 5:44Speaker 5: What am I going to do now? And I, you know,
- 5:47Speaker 5: I was like, well, I love movies. I you know,
- 5:50Speaker 5: have a fair amount of knowledge about business and digital
- 5:52Speaker 5: strategy and you know that world, and I progre you know,
- 5:56Speaker 5: like all these things, and so I just was like, well,
- 5:57Speaker 5: how can I combine those? And that's kind of really
- 6:00Speaker 5: how how smart House got off the ground, along with
- 6:04Speaker 5: you know, my business partner Brian Davis, like she you know,
- 6:07Speaker 5: wasn't just like I had started my own smaller company
- 6:10Speaker 5: and then we decided to join forces because you know,
- 6:12Speaker 5: she is a publicist and I'm not. So it was
- 6:15Speaker 5: kind of like a match made in film marketing heavens.
- 6:19Speaker 5: So that that's kind of like, you know, in a
- 6:21Speaker 5: nutshell kind of how things progressed.
- 6:24Speaker 4: You know, it's amazing you went to West Point. I
- 6:27Speaker 4: actually used to help out a social media group that
- 6:30Speaker 4: was connected to West Point. Okadd Yeah, they were called
- 6:33Speaker 4: like the Delco Friends of West Point. They found me
- 6:36Speaker 4: some randomly on the Internet one day and they were like,
- 6:40Speaker 4: can we meet with you to discuss a social media strategy?
- 6:43Speaker 4: And they were just you know, I mean we went
- 6:45Speaker 4: over everything, you know, and they would show me videos
- 6:47Speaker 4: of West Point and all this other stuff, and it
- 6:49Speaker 4: was actually, it was actual pretty fascinating. A lot of
- 6:51Speaker 4: the stuff went over. So it's actually, again like I
- 6:53Speaker 4: always say, through this interview, through all these podcasts, I
- 6:56Speaker 4: always say, it's such a small world.
- 6:58Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it really is. And especially you know, it's
- 7:01Speaker 5: what's really interesting is, you know, just kind of on
- 7:04Speaker 5: the topic of West Point, there are very few West
- 7:07Speaker 5: Point graduates, I guess is I was thinking of like
- 7:10Speaker 5: I was like cadets, like what's forgot what the call
- 7:13Speaker 5: momentarily old grads as we're called, who are involved in
- 7:17Speaker 5: the film industry. So and I feel like I'm very
- 7:20Speaker 5: fortunate to know as far as I know, like almost
- 7:23Speaker 5: all of them who are doing stuff, and they're doing
- 7:25Speaker 5: some great stuff. You know, Sean Mallin just wrote and
- 7:28Speaker 5: directed Amra and Sam which came out through Draft House,
- 7:31Speaker 5: And you know, there's a couple other guys, one of
- 7:33Speaker 5: them was working on The Army Wives as a staff writer,
- 7:36Speaker 5: and you know, people are doing some really cool stuff.
- 7:38Speaker 5: Another friend of mine that was actually my classmate, Nick
- 7:40Speaker 5: Paul Oshano, he just directed after raising a pretty large
- 7:44Speaker 5: sum of money on Indiegogo, kind of like a zombie
- 7:48Speaker 5: thriller set I believe at a military base firing range
- 7:54Speaker 5: with his company. It's called Ranger Up. So I'm actually
- 7:57Speaker 5: looking forward to to seeing that. But you know, it's
- 8:00Speaker 5: it can kind of count like alumni and former graduate
- 8:04Speaker 5: who are who are in the uh, you know, entertainment industry.
- 8:07Speaker 5: So it's a it's even smaller world as you get
- 8:09Speaker 5: you know, lower and lower into the weeds there.
- 8:13Speaker 4: You know, Ranger Up sounds pretty good because you know,
- 8:16Speaker 4: one problem I've always had a zombie movies, Brad, is
- 8:19Speaker 4: you know the zombie apocalypse. You know, it happens, there's
- 8:23Speaker 4: an outbreak. There's a group of survivors you know that
- 8:25Speaker 4: are protagonists. We follow them. Well, the first time they
- 8:29Speaker 4: pick up a gun, they're crack shots. They're hitting head
- 8:32Speaker 4: shots like you know, from like you know, a thousand
- 8:36Speaker 4: yards away. Oh you want that zombie bam. I'm like,
- 8:38Speaker 4: and I'm thinking to myself, I mean that is an
- 8:40Speaker 4: amazing shot for a top marksman. And this person is
- 8:43Speaker 4: just randomly you know, picking up you know, a shotgun
- 8:47Speaker 4: and hitting you know, so uh, I imagine in Ranger Up,
- 8:50Speaker 4: if they're actually good at shooting zombies in the head,
- 8:53Speaker 4: there's a good reason for it, now.
- 8:55Speaker 5: Yeah, right, Like that's a that's a great point, you know,
- 8:58Speaker 5: and military people are some of the most critical when
- 9:01Speaker 5: it comes to, you know, films that involve the military,
- 9:04Speaker 5: you know, especially with you know, one of the scripts
- 9:08Speaker 5: that I wrote for Roger Corman with Jim Norsky Camel Spiders.
- 9:13Speaker 5: You know, the protagonist is a captain in the army
- 9:16Speaker 5: who's back from Afghanistan, and you know, everybody's like, you know,
- 9:21Speaker 5: pointing out like problems with his uniform and all these things,
- 9:25Speaker 5: and you know, and blaming the screenwriter, you know, like
- 9:29Speaker 5: I should never like never go on IMDb message boards,
- 9:34Speaker 5: you know, like it actually like it kind of got
- 9:35Speaker 5: gave me like a very various If my skin wasn't
- 9:38Speaker 5: thick enough being in the film industry to begin with,
- 9:41Speaker 5: it got a lot thicker real quick after that movie
- 9:45Speaker 5: came out, and you know, everything, like, ah, a screenwriter
- 9:47Speaker 5: probably has no idea what the you know, it's like.
- 9:49Speaker 5: And here I am, like an Army veteran, you know,
- 9:51Speaker 5: who went to West Point, and you know, I don't
- 9:53Speaker 5: have any control over that, like every you know, a
- 9:55Speaker 5: lot of times like the screenwriter gets to blame.
- 9:58Speaker 3: We'll be right back after word from our sponsor and
- 10:04Speaker 3: now back to the show.
- 10:07Speaker 5: When things aren't right, and never gets the credit when
- 10:10Speaker 5: when things are right. So, you know, screenwriting, anybody who's listening,
- 10:13Speaker 5: is sometimes a very thankless profession.
- 10:17Speaker 4: Very true, Brad, very true. I mean I've had friends
- 10:20Speaker 4: who have worked on like martial arts movies as you know,
- 10:23Speaker 4: look stunt coordinators for instance, or fight choreographers, and you know,
- 10:27Speaker 4: when the movie comes out, you know, some of their
- 10:28Speaker 4: friends are like, wait a minute, you know what what
- 10:31Speaker 4: is going on here?
- 10:32Speaker 5: Why?
- 10:32Speaker 4: You know, why are they throwing? Why is this you know,
- 10:35Speaker 4: grappler wrestler guy throwing punches And he's like, look, you
- 10:38Speaker 4: know that's what the director wanted. You know, it's out
- 10:40Speaker 4: of my hands.
- 10:43Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. It's so true. It's so true.
- 10:46Speaker 4: So, you know, brand I wanted to talk to you.
- 10:47Speaker 4: You mentioned working with Roger Corman, you know on a project.
- 10:51Speaker 4: You know, how did you end up, you know, getting
- 10:52Speaker 4: to work with Roger.
- 10:54Speaker 5: Well, so I was not like I was working with
- 10:56Speaker 5: Jim Wnorsky for a project that was executive produced by
- 10:59Speaker 5: Roger Corman. So I got script notes and stuff. But
- 11:01Speaker 5: I live in Seattle, So this is an interesting kind
- 11:04Speaker 5: of scenario for screenwriters who don't live in you know,
- 11:07Speaker 5: Los Angeles or even New York City. So what happened
- 11:11Speaker 5: was I was watching you know, I've been a big
- 11:13Speaker 5: fan of B movies for my whole life, Like I
- 11:17Speaker 5: grew up watching some of Jim win Norsky's very films
- 11:20Speaker 5: like Dusk Stalker two and Chopping Mall and Not of
- 11:23Speaker 5: This Earth, you know, like fun you know, kind of
- 11:27Speaker 5: classic B movies. Right, And one night in like twenty
- 11:32Speaker 5: ten or maybe it was, No, it was two thousand
- 11:34Speaker 5: and nine, like the fall, like October of two thousand
- 11:36Speaker 5: and nine. So before I went to business school, and
- 11:38Speaker 5: I was kind of like at a low point, like
- 11:40Speaker 5: I was, you know, living with my current you know,
- 11:43Speaker 5: my wife now, but we were you know, not engaged.
- 11:46Speaker 5: Like it was kind of like what am I doing
- 11:48Speaker 5: with mine? Like I don't know what's going on? And
- 11:50Speaker 5: it was kind of in this like binge watching period
- 11:53Speaker 5: of horror films from Netflix and just whatever. Right, So
- 11:57Speaker 5: I got Chopping Mall one night, and I had seen
- 11:59Speaker 5: it before, so I was gonna watch it with the
- 12:02Speaker 5: I've seen it multiple times, but it's one of Jim's
- 12:04Speaker 5: you know, used to be called Killbots, and it's kind
- 12:06Speaker 5: of like a RoboCop in a mall.
- 12:09Speaker 4: Oh, I've seen that movie. I have a not no,
- 12:11Speaker 4: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I usually would have
- 12:13Speaker 4: like a bad movie marathon and shopping mall is one
- 12:17Speaker 4: of the films I always put in there, and some
- 12:20Speaker 4: people get it, and some other people are like, what
- 12:22Speaker 4: the hell is going on here there? They're security guard
- 12:25Speaker 4: robots or yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great.
- 12:28Speaker 5: And the backstory you know, behind that is you know,
- 12:31Speaker 5: I won't go into all of it, but you know,
- 12:33Speaker 5: Jim kind of made it, you know, in a very
- 12:36Speaker 5: short period of time in evenings, like they were shooting
- 12:39Speaker 5: in the you know, the mall that they shot fast times,
- 12:41Speaker 5: the Regemont High in when it was closed at night
- 12:44Speaker 5: and then they had to be out of there by
- 12:45Speaker 5: the morning. And you know, it was produced by Julie
- 12:47Speaker 5: Korman and Rogers didn't know that Jim was making it.
- 12:50Speaker 5: Like it was just like really really funny story kind
- 12:52Speaker 5: of like the you know, like the golden age of
- 12:54Speaker 5: like the eighties kind of like anything goes filmmaking. But anyway,
- 13:00Speaker 5: so anyway, so I will listen to it with Jim's commentary,
- 13:03Speaker 5: and I was, I was like, man, you know, this
- 13:05Speaker 5: guy seems like a really smart, like seems like a
- 13:08Speaker 5: nice guy. Like I like wonder what he's doing now,
- 13:10Speaker 5: Like I, you know, I didn't know like he had
- 13:12Speaker 5: been like, you know, continuously working since like you know,
- 13:15Speaker 5: nineteen eighty three or something like that, and you know,
- 13:18Speaker 5: churning out a lot of you know, some some good
- 13:20Speaker 5: some you know, you know, the jury's out. I don't
- 13:25Speaker 5: want to say bad, but you know, like, uh, you know,
- 13:27Speaker 5: multiple films a year. So I looked him up on
- 13:31Speaker 5: IMDb Pro and I kind of had this idea in
- 13:34Speaker 5: my back of my mind. I was just like, I'm
- 13:35Speaker 5: just gonna write him an email. And I don't know
- 13:37Speaker 5: what I'm going to say, but I'm gonna write hi
- 13:38Speaker 5: an email. So anyway, so I did that, and sure enough,
- 13:42Speaker 5: on IMDb Pro, his contact information is right there, you know,
- 13:45Speaker 5: on the on his like profile. And I was like, Okay,
- 13:48Speaker 5: I guess that's some sort of sign. I don't know
- 13:50Speaker 5: exactly what, and so, you know, and I and also
- 13:54Speaker 5: like I was not you know, drinking or high at
- 13:57Speaker 5: the time. This was all like, this was all done.
- 13:59Speaker 5: It was just really late and uh and uh, you know,
- 14:02Speaker 5: so I so I tapped out an email and then I,
- 14:05Speaker 5: you know, that morning, I kind of reread it and
- 14:07Speaker 5: just you know, kind of said like, I, you know,
- 14:09Speaker 5: been a fan of your films for a while, you know,
- 14:11Speaker 5: and you know my actually screenwriter, and you know, I've
- 14:13Speaker 5: had some scripts that have placed in contests, but you know,
- 14:17Speaker 5: I just nothing's ever really clicked with you know, I
- 14:20Speaker 5: can't remember exactly what I wrote, but you know, I said,
- 14:22Speaker 5: you know, if you need a second set of eyes
- 14:24Speaker 5: on something, or you know a project that needs, you know,
- 14:27Speaker 5: to go from idea to you know, treatment or whatever,
- 14:32Speaker 5: you know, let me know. I'm you know, I'm I'm
- 14:34Speaker 5: your man. And uh, you know, I just had no
- 14:36Speaker 5: expect I'd never done it before either, so I had
- 14:38Speaker 5: no expectation of what the outcome would be. I was
- 14:41Speaker 5: just like, well, why not write nothing to lose? Like
- 14:44Speaker 5: I was, like I said, on the verge of like
- 14:45Speaker 5: just like throwing in the toll, because you know, if
- 14:48Speaker 5: you're writing without like an agent or a manager, it
- 14:50Speaker 5: can often feel like you're just kind of writing in
- 14:52Speaker 5: a vacuum and you know, your family might read something
- 14:54Speaker 5: or you know, but nobody really cares honestly. And U
- 15:00Speaker 5: you know, the next day, I think it was, got
- 15:02Speaker 5: an email back from him, you know, saying like hey,
- 15:05Speaker 5: thanks for the email, like, you know, seemed like a
- 15:06Speaker 5: smart guy, well written email. I'll give you a call
- 15:09Speaker 5: like well, you know, Like so, so we ended up talking,
- 15:12Speaker 5: you know, either that later that day or the next day,
- 15:15Speaker 5: like very you know, in very short order, and had
- 15:18Speaker 5: a really good conversation. Like Jim's like, you know, no
- 15:21Speaker 5: matter what you would say about his films, like I've
- 15:23Speaker 5: never and I didn't even know the half of it,
- 15:25Speaker 5: but like, you know, he's he's just like a really
- 15:27Speaker 5: really smart like film person, Like he just knows how
- 15:31Speaker 5: movies work and he loves movies. And so we you know,
- 15:34Speaker 5: kind of talked like I for a period after I
- 15:36Speaker 5: got out of the Army, I worked at Scarecrow Video
- 15:38Speaker 5: here in Seattle, which is like sort of like you know,
- 15:40Speaker 5: like sort of a you know, pantheon of you know,
- 15:43Speaker 5: movie geeks. So I could kind of hold my own
- 15:45Speaker 5: with him, and He's like, all right, you know, so
- 15:48Speaker 5: here's what I'm gonna do. I don't know. You know,
- 15:49Speaker 5: I like you. It seems like, you know, he's smart
- 15:52Speaker 5: enough or whatever. And you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna
- 15:55Speaker 5: send you the script. It needs a lot of work
- 15:57Speaker 5: to get a green light from Roger. You know how
- 16:00Speaker 5: he talks like, he's more like he's a lot of
- 16:02Speaker 5: work to get a green you know, he kind of
- 16:03Speaker 5: tie like really really gruff, and and he's like, so
- 16:08Speaker 5: I'm gonna send it to you. Give it a read,
- 16:10Speaker 5: and then I want you to rewrite the first ten pages.
- 16:12Speaker 5: And here's the stuff. I want you to concentrate, you know,
- 16:14Speaker 5: focus on this. You know this needs to be punched up.
- 16:17Speaker 5: This needs to you know. He's like, you know, take
- 16:19Speaker 5: your time because I only give you one chance. And
- 16:21Speaker 5: he's like, you know, send it back to me. And
- 16:23Speaker 5: if I like it, you know you can rewrite the
- 16:25Speaker 5: whole you know, you can basically you know, get it
- 16:28Speaker 5: into fighting shape and then you know, I'll give you
- 16:30Speaker 5: a you know credit, and you know, blah blah all
- 16:32Speaker 5: this stuff, right, and so okay, So so sends me
- 16:36Speaker 5: a script and it's Camel Spiders, and you know, I
- 16:39Speaker 5: read it and thought about it and spent like like
- 16:42Speaker 5: basically like a week like trying to like fix or
- 16:46Speaker 5: like improve the first ten pages. And then I did,
- 16:48Speaker 5: and I sent it back to him, and then you know,
- 16:51Speaker 5: pretty pretty shortly after that, he uh, you know, calls back,
- 16:54Speaker 5: and I didn't have his number in my phone at
- 16:56Speaker 5: this you know, so I just saw it like it
- 16:57Speaker 5: was the same not I was like, oh, we know,
- 16:59Speaker 5: home boy, this is it. I was like, here's the call, right,
- 17:01Speaker 5: you know, this could like you know, make or break
- 17:03Speaker 5: my you know, you know, fledgling career or whatever there
- 17:06Speaker 5: is of it right now, you know. And I was
- 17:09Speaker 5: so used to like rejection and everything that it was
- 17:12Speaker 5: such a shock when when he's like he's like Brad Wilkie,
- 17:14Speaker 5: Jim Wnorski love it, loved it, you know, like you
- 17:17Speaker 5: just like you like it was really just like he's
- 17:19Speaker 5: very blunt, like if he doesn't like something, I've heard
- 17:23Speaker 5: a lot of times from him and be like nope, nope,
- 17:25Speaker 5: hate it, hate it, fix it, change it, and you know,
- 17:28Speaker 5: you just learn, you know, it's just like you don't
- 17:30Speaker 5: take it personally. You just really it's like a kind
- 17:32Speaker 5: of a professional you know, it's just like okay, let's
- 17:35Speaker 5: you know, just here, what we're gonna do. So anyway,
- 17:38Speaker 5: you know, he liked it, and you know, so he
- 17:40Speaker 5: you know, so I ended up you know, rewrite and
- 17:42Speaker 5: then you know, from that, you know, so I went
- 17:44Speaker 5: down to set and you know, I have a little
- 17:47Speaker 5: cameo in the film, and you know, got to you know,
- 17:50Speaker 5: kind of experience that that world of on the fly filmmaking.
- 17:53Speaker 5: But even better, like even like I think more importantly,
- 17:56Speaker 5: it really taught me how to write to budget without
- 18:01Speaker 5: like losing any creativity. And you know, a lot of times, yeah,
- 18:06Speaker 5: people would love to have Like I just told this
- 18:08Speaker 5: story to somebody earlier today who you know, because I
- 18:11Speaker 5: don't usually bring this stuff up in conversation, you know,
- 18:14Speaker 5: in conversation, but sometimes you know, people will know about
- 18:17Speaker 5: it and say like, well, how did you you know,
- 18:19Speaker 5: like you know, what's tell me about that? And so anyway,
- 18:22Speaker 5: I was just telling this very exact story earlier about
- 18:25Speaker 5: how there was a scene where it was like a
- 18:27Speaker 5: busload of tourists and attacked by the camel spiders and
- 18:30Speaker 5: you know, it was it wasn't essential to the story,
- 18:33Speaker 5: but it had a point, like there was a reason
- 18:34Speaker 5: it was there to move the story forward. And you know,
- 18:37Speaker 5: the first thing that Jim did. When you read that
- 18:40Speaker 5: that new scene was like, no, can't do it. I
- 18:43Speaker 5: got to get a bus. I got to get at
- 18:45Speaker 5: least twenty extras. I got to put him up for
- 18:47Speaker 5: a day. I got to feed all of them. I
- 18:49Speaker 5: got it. You know, He's like, do something else, like
- 18:51Speaker 5: take it out, figure out, you know. So it was
- 18:53Speaker 5: like it was kind of like this like boot camp
- 18:55Speaker 5: on you know, writing effective, low budget you know, genre pieces,
- 19:02Speaker 5: and you know from there, you know, then you know,
- 19:05Speaker 5: I pitched uh Parana Conda. So ended up doing like
- 19:10Speaker 5: three different treatments and they all got rejected, which was
- 19:12Speaker 5: really frustrating, and then came on to do some uncredited rewrites,
- 19:17Speaker 5: you know Jim wanted, you know. And I don't even
- 19:19Speaker 5: know if that was like cause my second child was
- 19:21Speaker 5: or my first child was being born at the time,
- 19:24Speaker 5: so like I was supposed to go out to set,
- 19:26Speaker 5: but you know, and I say this, like I don't
- 19:27Speaker 5: regret it at all, not going out to set, but
- 19:29Speaker 5: you know, so I don't know, like if you know,
- 19:31Speaker 5: so it was just like it was like such a
- 19:33Speaker 5: like I was kind of a bit of a letdown
- 19:36Speaker 5: in that sense, like I really wanted to like be
- 19:39Speaker 5: more involved in that project because you know, it was
- 19:41Speaker 5: my you know, and I you know, thankfully, because like
- 19:44Speaker 5: I feel like I've only ever had handshake deals with Jim.
- 19:47Speaker 5: You know, I did get you know, concept and you
- 19:50Speaker 5: know credit and you know all that, you know, like
- 19:53Speaker 5: the you know, like the credit for it, and.
- 19:56Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 20:02Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
- 20:05Speaker 5: You know that that's great, but I wanted to do
- 20:07Speaker 5: more hands on writing. And then, you know, since then,
- 20:09Speaker 5: Jim and I have you know, co written probably at
- 20:13Speaker 5: least three other like full screenplays, none of which have
- 20:17Speaker 5: been produced, but all were like on the docket, were
- 20:20Speaker 5: going to happen, and then, for whatever reason, you know,
- 20:23Speaker 5: funding fell through on one something you know, something else
- 20:26Speaker 5: got you know, a slate got you know. It was
- 20:28Speaker 5: kind of like just the typical reasons movies never get made.
- 20:31Speaker 5: So but each time I learned something, you know, it
- 20:33Speaker 5: was it's yeah, it was a really great experience. And
- 20:37Speaker 5: you know, the movies are low budget creature features, but
- 20:41Speaker 5: I feel like from a writing perspective, you know, they
- 20:44Speaker 5: were invaluable experiences and I really you know, to this day,
- 20:49Speaker 5: you know, I'm sure like you know, Jim probably will
- 20:50Speaker 5: never even listen to the screen or this podcast. But
- 20:53Speaker 5: even if I send it to him, I say listen,
- 20:54Speaker 5: you know, I probably like won't get around to it.
- 20:56Speaker 5: So I'm saying this, like, you know, just as an
- 21:00Speaker 5: actual fact, Like you know, I feel like I've learned
- 21:03Speaker 5: so much from him and like his like you know,
- 21:06Speaker 5: just like taking a chance on like some random person
- 21:09Speaker 5: who emailed him was you know, unbelievable, and you know,
- 21:13Speaker 5: like I just feel like, you know, there's people that
- 21:15Speaker 5: I know that I'll email and like won't get back
- 21:17Speaker 5: to me. You know. I mean, like it's so so
- 21:19Speaker 5: it's you know, I think, you know, there's so much
- 21:22Speaker 5: luck involved in the film industry and so like so
- 21:27Speaker 5: I would never sit here and say like, oh, yeah,
- 21:29Speaker 5: it was because I was such a good writer, you know,
- 21:31Speaker 5: you know, anybody who succeed, you know, I feel like
- 21:34Speaker 5: it's easy for people to kind of like, you know,
- 21:36Speaker 5: after having like some sort of not even like success,
- 21:39Speaker 5: but like just something happens that's good or you know,
- 21:42Speaker 5: you move forward, that you can create this sort of
- 21:45Speaker 5: narrative saying like well it was because of this and
- 21:48Speaker 5: this and kind of piece together random things and say
- 21:50Speaker 5: that's why, but you know, in reality, it's just like
- 21:54Speaker 5: a bunch of random things that happened. And yes, I
- 21:57Speaker 5: was prepared and I was ready and all those kind
- 21:59Speaker 5: of things, but you know, it's you know, I think
- 22:02Speaker 5: you know, for any again, like anybody who's listening who's like,
- 22:05Speaker 5: you know, trying to like get a script made or
- 22:07Speaker 5: get like, it's it's probably not your fault that you know,
- 22:12Speaker 5: like that the screenplay is not you know, going into
- 22:15Speaker 5: production like it's you know, and that's I think that's
- 22:17Speaker 5: hard though to accept. And but I but I also
- 22:19Speaker 5: think like once you do accept it and you know
- 22:22Speaker 5: kind of understand, like have like sort of like a
- 22:24Speaker 5: semi like kind of like zen demeanor about it all,
- 22:27Speaker 5: I think it makes the whole process that much more
- 22:30Speaker 5: enjoyable and actually, you know, maybe even more fruitful.
- 22:34Speaker 4: So you know, you're right about people not getting back
- 22:36Speaker 4: to you on emails. Like I have friends that I've
- 22:39Speaker 4: known for like ten years won't respond to an email,
- 22:43Speaker 4: you know. And I'll email somebody, you know, I found
- 22:46Speaker 4: their website just ask my question or maybe you know,
- 22:49Speaker 4: talk to me about coming on the podcast right away.
- 22:51Speaker 4: They'll respond in a heartbeat and I'm and I'm always like, what,
- 22:55Speaker 4: you know, what the hell is that?
- 22:56Speaker 5: You know what yeah, yeah, you know it's hard to
- 22:59Speaker 5: and I feel like, but what that did is you know,
- 23:01Speaker 5: like I feel like I've always been like relatively generous
- 23:04Speaker 5: with my time, but I feel like, you know, because
- 23:09Speaker 5: of well, like I just I just feel like I
- 23:12Speaker 5: always use that as an example of like I'm never
- 23:15Speaker 5: like too important or too good or too busy or
- 23:18Speaker 5: too whatever to like respond back, like I'm like even
- 23:21Speaker 5: if I can't help the person or like, it's not
- 23:23Speaker 5: a thing like you know, like that I'm in a
- 23:26Speaker 5: position to you know, like it is like a random
- 23:28Speaker 5: like somebody just you know, like I always try to,
- 23:31Speaker 5: like and if not like always do it, like always
- 23:33Speaker 5: at least try to like give some sort of response,
- 23:36Speaker 5: no matter how short it might be, because that's like not
- 23:40Speaker 5: the norm. And you know, it's just it's just frustrating
- 23:44Speaker 5: to me to think, like of how many like people
- 23:47Speaker 5: just stop like because that's the other thing I mean
- 23:49Speaker 5: is I'm sure you know, you know and anybody you know,
- 23:52Speaker 5: like people like who like are interested in this world.
- 23:56Speaker 5: That it's just like it takes so much persistence and
- 23:59Speaker 5: so much like just like you know, it's not even
- 24:02Speaker 5: about like not taking no for an answer or not,
- 24:04Speaker 5: like it's like it's like just like not just being
- 24:07Speaker 5: completely like like debilitatingly like defeated by rejection and just
- 24:14Speaker 5: like indifference that's the problem. Like I would rather deal
- 24:17Speaker 5: with rejection honestly than indifference or you know, somebody just
- 24:20Speaker 5: being like oh, I don't know, you know, like just
- 24:22Speaker 5: like whatever, Like I'm not going to respond to that.
- 24:24Speaker 5: Like I'd rather if somebody say, like, no, this is
- 24:26Speaker 5: a terrible screenplay, You're stupid, then just like not just
- 24:30Speaker 5: kind of be like, hey, what's going And I feel
- 24:32Speaker 5: like that happens more often it is like nobody wants
- 24:34Speaker 5: to like say no, or nobody wants to like take
- 24:37Speaker 5: a position because then you know they have to they're accountable,
- 24:41Speaker 5: and you know that's tough. Like I see that a
- 24:44Speaker 5: lot in programming film programming for myself, Like you know,
- 24:48Speaker 5: I have to like tell filmmakers that I have a
- 24:50Speaker 5: relationship with every year. You know, there there's a handful
- 24:54Speaker 5: where it's where I you know, it's I have to
- 24:56Speaker 5: make a phone call. That's not a positive phone call.
- 24:58Speaker 5: It's saying we can't you know, I can and find
- 25:00Speaker 5: a spot for your film in the program this year.
- 25:03Speaker 5: But I feel like, out of respect for that person,
- 25:05Speaker 5: I respect for that relationship, you know, like you got
- 25:09Speaker 5: to kind of like own up to it and say, yeah,
- 25:12Speaker 5: like here, here's you know, here's the feedback I have.
- 25:14Speaker 5: Like here, you know, I wish it, you know, I
- 25:17Speaker 5: wish it could have been different. But you know, I
- 25:19Speaker 5: feel like a lot of times like people aren't willing
- 25:22Speaker 5: to sort of like take that responsibility, and I think
- 25:26Speaker 5: that creates sort of an environment where it's okay to
- 25:29Speaker 5: like just ignore stuff or kick stuff down the line
- 25:33Speaker 5: to somebody else take care of it. And you know,
- 25:36Speaker 5: I don't know, I'm not saying I'm a saint for
- 25:38Speaker 5: doing it, but it's just like that's that's how I
- 25:40Speaker 5: want to be treated, you know. So I feel like
- 25:42Speaker 5: the least I can do is try to like put
- 25:44Speaker 5: that out in sort of a pay it forward style.
- 25:47Speaker 4: Well, you know, when House of a Thousand Corpses came out,
- 25:51Speaker 4: Sid Hague, who was in the movie, actually said what
- 25:55Speaker 4: we wanted was either people to love it or hate it.
- 25:59Speaker 4: So at the advanced screenings of it, he said, you know,
- 26:01Speaker 4: they gave out those feedback forms and he said anytime
- 26:05Speaker 4: they had somebody love it or hate it, they're like,
- 26:07Speaker 4: that's great what they hated to see. Though, with somebody
- 26:10Speaker 4: giving it like a five out of ten, it's just like,
- 26:12Speaker 4: you know, this movie wasn't good or bad. I didn't feel,
- 26:15Speaker 4: you know, one way or the other. He said, I
- 26:18Speaker 4: want to get you out of that indifference and push
- 26:20Speaker 4: you to one one extreme or the other.
- 26:22Speaker 5: Yeah, totally, and I totally agree with that. It's like
- 26:26Speaker 5: you just want a reaction. I think so much about
- 26:28Speaker 5: film and art and you know anything, really most things
- 26:32Speaker 5: I guess is you know that you want somebody to
- 26:35Speaker 5: like just like be engaged or aware or marketing too.
- 26:39Speaker 5: It's like you want to make an impression, you know,
- 26:42Speaker 5: ideally like a positive impression. But you know, yeah, I
- 26:47Speaker 5: think you could kind of apply that across the board.
- 26:50Speaker 4: Yeah, very true. You know I've seen that too in
- 26:53Speaker 4: screenplays that you know, I've been asking have feedback on.
- 26:56Speaker 4: I'm always you know, trying to you know, there was
- 26:58Speaker 4: a saying one time a screen writing teacher. Wentz told me,
- 27:02Speaker 4: I believe it was a maximum, maximum value, maximum entertainment,
- 27:07Speaker 4: and he said that maximum entertainment ends up taking you
- 27:10Speaker 4: to these extremes.
- 27:11Speaker 5: Then so be it.
- 27:12Speaker 4: You know, like you've seen I mean, for instance, the
- 27:16Speaker 4: Hatchet films. I don't know if you've seen the Hatchet films,
- 27:18Speaker 4: but they're sort of like a splotter House type film.
- 27:21Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of gore, a lot of bloodshed.
- 27:24Speaker 4: Some people just don't get those, you know, movies, but
- 27:27Speaker 4: you know, guys like me, I'm like, hey, this is
- 27:29Speaker 4: this is freaking hilarious.
- 27:31Speaker 5: Yeah, oh I love I mean, I love genre films,
- 27:33Speaker 5: like I feel like those like I mean, I would
- 27:35Speaker 5: much rather watch a bad genre film than a mediocre
- 27:40Speaker 5: you know, kind of narrative like drama, you know that
- 27:43Speaker 5: like might have more prestige or might have a name
- 27:45Speaker 5: actor or something like that. And believe me, like I
- 27:48Speaker 5: watch a lot of movies that don't get you know,
- 27:52Speaker 5: like a release, you know, like you know, because I
- 27:54Speaker 5: pre screened for Sundance, I programmed for Seattle, and then
- 27:58Speaker 5: also like you know, there's a couple of other film
- 28:02Speaker 5: festivals that like I'm like a friend of the you know,
- 28:05Speaker 5: like kind of like hey this might look or what
- 28:07Speaker 5: do you think you know, like get a question like
- 28:08Speaker 5: what do you think of this movie? Or what you know,
- 28:10Speaker 5: like that kind of thing. Plus you know, on Twitter,
- 28:12Speaker 5: like I get people that send me Vimeo links all
- 28:14Speaker 5: the time, which I highly encourage. Like I feel like,
- 28:17Speaker 5: you know, like to take advantage of all those sort
- 28:21Speaker 5: of like network effects that might exist and channels that
- 28:25Speaker 5: you might have access to. And I feel like Twitter
- 28:27Speaker 5: is like a really great way to like build community
- 28:29Speaker 5: and and get to know people and kind of like
- 28:32Speaker 5: just be part of you know, no matter what place
- 28:35Speaker 5: you're in, even around the world, you know, part of
- 28:38Speaker 5: like the conversation around you know, indie film and what's happening,
- 28:42Speaker 5: and you know, it's just yeah, I feel like there's
- 28:46Speaker 5: like you got to it's about like participating in the process. Yeah.
- 28:52Speaker 4: I've always said that Twitter is with one of the
- 28:55Speaker 4: best or if not the best networking tools ever seen.
- 28:59Speaker 4: I've met so many people because of Twitter and just
- 29:02Speaker 4: you know, keeping that social part of social media, because
- 29:05Speaker 4: I mean, you know, if I want to talk to somebody,
- 29:08Speaker 4: I'll follow them. I will make sure to send them
- 29:09Speaker 4: a tweet, you know, talk about you know, something off
- 29:12Speaker 4: their bio. I hate when people follow me and either
- 29:15Speaker 4: don't say anything or they immediately try to get me
- 29:19Speaker 4: to do something for them. Like, Hey, Dave, check out
- 29:21Speaker 4: my social media link, my craft funding link.
- 29:23Speaker 5: Can you retweet this?
- 29:24Speaker 4: And I'm like, I'm like, I don't even know who
- 29:26Speaker 4: you are, Like it's just ludicrous.
- 29:30Speaker 5: Yeah, it really is. And I think that's a great
- 29:31Speaker 5: point that you know, so many people especially you know,
- 29:35Speaker 5: and this is this is kind of like about you know,
- 29:38Speaker 5: indie film marketing or crowdfunding or you know, anything that
- 29:42Speaker 5: involves like kind of like a transactional relationship. Is that
- 29:46Speaker 5: you know, people want to go from like zero to
- 29:48Speaker 5: sixty immediately. That like as soon as like somebody connects
- 29:53Speaker 5: with something or fans something or likes or whatever. You know,
- 29:56Speaker 5: the you know sort of like the metric is or
- 29:58Speaker 5: the you know, the standard is on whatever platform.
- 30:01Speaker 3: Right, we'll be right back after a word from our
- 30:05Speaker 3: sponsor and now back to the show.
- 30:12Speaker 5: Like they immediately are like, hey, do this thing, or
- 30:15Speaker 5: do that thing, or now that I've got your attention,
- 30:17Speaker 5: you know, sign up for these five newsletters that I
- 30:19Speaker 5: have or or and it's just overwhelming because you know
- 30:23Speaker 5: a lot of people are doing that, and you know,
- 30:25Speaker 5: everybody doesn't have to be a pundant, you know, and
- 30:30Speaker 5: everybody doesn't have to be you know, like I think
- 30:32Speaker 5: it's great to have opinions about stuff, but you know,
- 30:34Speaker 5: sometimes it's good to listen sometimes. Like I feel like
- 30:36Speaker 5: that's sort of like the key. Like if I just say, like,
- 30:38Speaker 5: if is there a key to like social media engagement,
- 30:42Speaker 5: I would say it's being a good listener. It's not
- 30:44Speaker 5: being a good tweeter. It's not being a good like
- 30:47Speaker 5: you know, meme maker or gift creator or like any
- 30:50Speaker 5: of that stuff. Yeah, that helps, right, But it's like
- 30:52Speaker 5: if you're not listening to like the tone and sort
- 30:57Speaker 5: of like the scale or like the you know, sort
- 30:59Speaker 5: of like where the conversation's going, you're gonna just like
- 31:04Speaker 5: come in. You're going to be that person at a
- 31:05Speaker 5: party that like, you know, like barges in. It's like, hey,
- 31:08Speaker 5: every you know, it's like you're wearing a toga and
- 31:11Speaker 5: it's a you know, it's a wake or something right,
- 31:13Speaker 5: and nobody you know. Like I always like use like
- 31:16Speaker 5: sort of an analogy of like Twitter and social media
- 31:18Speaker 5: in general just kind of being like an extension of
- 31:21Speaker 5: a cocktail party. And you know, sometimes you talk to
- 31:25Speaker 5: one person, sometimes you talk to a group of people.
- 31:27Speaker 5: Sometimes you talk to everyone that's in your your room,
- 31:30Speaker 5: but you know, it's you have to know appropriate like
- 31:33Speaker 5: times to like when to do those like when to
- 31:36Speaker 5: have the bullhorn out and when to just you know,
- 31:38Speaker 5: you know, or when to direct message like it's yeah,
- 31:41Speaker 5: and and I think it is, Like I absolutely agree
- 31:45Speaker 5: with you about Twitter being such a great tool, especially
- 31:49Speaker 5: for people in you know, kind of like freelance or
- 31:52Speaker 5: creative kind of roles or content creators or whatever that
- 31:56Speaker 5: you know, kind of those kind of groups look like
- 31:59Speaker 5: or you know, I think Twitter is so much better
- 32:02Speaker 5: than LinkedIn or even Facebook, that it's such a professional.
- 32:06Speaker 5: Like the way I kind of set it up is like,
- 32:08Speaker 5: you know, Facebook is kind of like my broad you know,
- 32:11Speaker 5: like sometimes I'll share family stuff, sometimes I'll share you know,
- 32:13Speaker 5: but like actually even don't spend that much time like
- 32:15Speaker 5: other than for clients, like for my personal Facebook, whereas
- 32:18Speaker 5: I spend a lot of time on Twitter, like reading
- 32:21Speaker 5: news and fallowing, you know, like interacting with people and
- 32:24Speaker 5: sharing stuff about other people's projects or local like Pacific
- 32:28Speaker 5: Northwest filmmaker stuff. You know. LinkedIn again like kind of
- 32:34Speaker 5: same with Facebook, but it's like even less personal. It's
- 32:36Speaker 5: more business y. And Instagram it's just like pictures of
- 32:39Speaker 5: my kids, you know, and I think like each of
- 32:43Speaker 5: those channels have different content styles and they have different
- 32:46Speaker 5: tones and you know, so like all of those things
- 32:49Speaker 5: like that, it's hard to teach, Like you can't really
- 32:52Speaker 5: necessarily learn what works and what doesn't work from like
- 32:57Speaker 5: an article that's like top five ways to become a
- 33:00Speaker 5: you know, top engager on Twitter or something like. You
- 33:03Speaker 5: just have to like be part of the conversation and
- 33:05Speaker 5: be part of the community. And if you're not willing
- 33:08Speaker 5: to take the time to do that, then you can't expect,
- 33:11Speaker 5: you know, the community to embrace you when you have
- 33:15Speaker 5: an ask for them or a need or you know,
- 33:18Speaker 5: because then it will seem like you're just you know,
- 33:21Speaker 5: just coming in and you know, just with your handout,
- 33:24Speaker 5: and you know that's never good. That's you know, interpersonally
- 33:28Speaker 5: or you know. I mean, yeah, I could go on
- 33:31Speaker 5: and on about like you know, sort of like the
- 33:34Speaker 5: like my thinking on sort of like what underlies good
- 33:39Speaker 5: social media engagement and like community and communication. But you know,
- 33:44Speaker 5: it's really not that difficult. It's like, would you you know,
- 33:47Speaker 5: what you would do in real life, like in the
- 33:49Speaker 5: real world, you know, it's not that much different.
- 33:53Speaker 4: I was reading a very good book by Gary Vannerchuk.
- 33:56Speaker 5: I don't know.
- 33:57Speaker 4: Yeah, you know a jab jab jab bread hook, which
- 34:00Speaker 4: is you know, give, give, give, ask. And one of
- 34:03Speaker 4: the things that Gary was always talking about was, you know,
- 34:05Speaker 4: social listening and stop always using it as like a bullhorn,
- 34:08Speaker 4: but actually ask you know, hey, you know what's your
- 34:11Speaker 4: biggest problem in business?
- 34:12Speaker 5: Hey? What?
- 34:12Speaker 4: You know what what could be better in this? And
- 34:15Speaker 4: then you know, once he would you know, give solutions
- 34:17Speaker 4: or give this, then he would ask something of them,
- 34:19Speaker 4: so it would be about an eighty twenty ratio of
- 34:22Speaker 4: you know, asking to giving. I'm sorry, giving to asking,
- 34:26Speaker 4: so you know, give out giving eight percent of time, asking,
- 34:29Speaker 4: you know, twenty percent of the time. And he you know,
- 34:31Speaker 4: that's what he's been using. And you know, I mean
- 34:33Speaker 4: it's just when I see things like that, you know
- 34:36Speaker 4: immediately like people just you know, Joran meet and Jordian like,
- 34:38Speaker 4: hey click this link or hey, you know follow me
- 34:41Speaker 4: or this or that. I just tuned it out on
- 34:45Speaker 4: One thing I just got into recently was Instagram. I
- 34:49Speaker 4: have gotten so big in Instagram and I never really
- 34:52Speaker 4: thought about it that much, and I finally figured out
- 34:56Speaker 4: how to use it the way I want to use it,
- 34:58Speaker 4: and now now it's almost become like it's pushing out
- 35:01Speaker 4: Twitter as my favorite social media platform. So now I'm
- 35:03Speaker 4: just like I'm on Twitter and Instagram right now.
- 35:08Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, and I think like Instagram is just going
- 35:10Speaker 5: to keep growing, and I think you're going to see
- 35:12Speaker 5: a lot of you know, uh activity on Snapchat and
- 35:17Speaker 5: things are just gonna get more and more visual and
- 35:20Speaker 5: you know and shorter and emojis and like all the
- 35:24Speaker 5: like you know, it's and it's like you can either say, like,
- 35:27Speaker 5: I mean, I'm thirty, I gotta be forty years old January.
- 35:30Speaker 5: And you know, I'm not a digital native. I'm not
- 35:32Speaker 5: a millennial. But I'm also you know, like a lifelong learner,
- 35:38Speaker 5: I guess I would describe myself. And so I feel
- 35:41Speaker 5: like there's a lot of people who are kind of like, ah,
- 35:43Speaker 5: you know, social media that's you know, for kids, or
- 35:46Speaker 5: that's for this or that, or it's you know, not relevant,
- 35:48Speaker 5: or I don't need to be on social media, and yeah,
- 35:51Speaker 5: maybe somebody doesn't who's like like Wes Anderson, like it's
- 35:54Speaker 5: not gonna, you know, the film director is not going
- 35:55Speaker 5: to help him necessarily to be on social media or
- 35:58Speaker 5: Sophia Coppola. You know, like somebody like already established kind
- 36:01Speaker 5: of in you know, like in that last kind of
- 36:03Speaker 5: like golden period of you know, the three picture deal
- 36:07Speaker 5: and you know kind of like you know, having your
- 36:09Speaker 5: your way paid by studios and mini majors, whereas like now,
- 36:15Speaker 5: you know, I feel like if you're again like a
- 36:17Speaker 5: creative like freelancer or filmmaker, content creator whatever again like
- 36:23Speaker 5: any of those kind of groups, you know, I think
- 36:25Speaker 5: it's essential to at least have a presence there and
- 36:28Speaker 5: be part of the community. And you know, I think
- 36:31Speaker 5: your instincts are right on the money as far as
- 36:33Speaker 5: like you know, like Instagram and you know, like Snapchat,
- 36:37Speaker 5: and you know, I have to learn, like I every day,
- 36:40Speaker 5: Like I ask our intern. Not every day, not every day,
- 36:43Speaker 5: you know, I don't want because because it's a big ask,
- 36:45Speaker 5: but like at least once a week, I can say
- 36:47Speaker 5: that honestly, Like I ask our intern who's twenty four
- 36:50Speaker 5: years old, to tell me like something new about Snapchat,
- 36:54Speaker 5: Like what do I not know about Snapchat? Or what
- 36:56Speaker 5: do I need to like what's a new thing on
- 36:58Speaker 5: Instagram that I need to be aware of? Or you know,
- 37:01Speaker 5: because I don't know all of that, and it's hard
- 37:02Speaker 5: to like keep track of all that stuff. You know,
- 37:04Speaker 5: you're not going to get it, you know, just by
- 37:06Speaker 5: getting a couple of news letters from you know, social
- 37:09Speaker 5: media business you know, like or whatever. Right, It's like
- 37:13Speaker 5: I feel like it comes like, you know, it's like
- 37:15Speaker 5: face to face kind of like tell me what I
- 37:18Speaker 5: don't know. And I feel like that, you know, applies
- 37:21Speaker 5: to anything. You know. I think it's just the right
- 37:23Speaker 5: way to to learn and stay in the mix. Yeah,
- 37:27Speaker 5: very true.
- 37:28Speaker 4: You know, because when I see social media strategies for
- 37:32Speaker 4: for filmmakers, you know, usually what they try to do
- 37:35Speaker 4: is they just say listen, you know, we'll you know,
- 37:37Speaker 4: they'll do it themselves. They'll crowd you know, when they're crowdfunding,
- 37:41Speaker 4: they try to do that themselves. And you're like, yeah,
- 37:43Speaker 4: you know, I'll answer as it comes in. And you know,
- 37:45Speaker 4: one of the things that I've always said is, you know,
- 37:47Speaker 4: you need to have a better plan than that.
- 37:49Speaker 5: It's sort of like, oh yeah, it's sort of.
- 37:51Speaker 4: Like if you know, hey, if something bit happens, you
- 37:53Speaker 4: know in production, uh, you know, we'll we'll figure out
- 37:56Speaker 4: a way. Who forget planning, forget all that that pre
- 37:58Speaker 4: planning stuff who needs it?
- 38:01Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, and that's just a recipe for disaster.
- 38:04Speaker 4: Yes, you know, and that's very true. And you know,
- 38:07Speaker 4: you know, as we're talking about you know, social strategies,
- 38:10Speaker 4: you know, you've worked with a lot of you know,
- 38:12Speaker 4: really great companies if you work with HBO, and you've
- 38:15Speaker 4: also worked with one of my favorites, which which is
- 38:17Speaker 4: Draft House Films. Oh yeah, and you know, so you know,
- 38:20Speaker 4: how did you end up you know, meeting with some
- 38:22Speaker 4: of these companies and getting to work with them.
- 38:26Speaker 5: So you know, in in HBO's case, it was just
- 38:28Speaker 5: a referral word of mouth. Like we haven't really you know,
- 38:31Speaker 5: Smart House Creative hasn't really done any advertising yet other
- 38:35Speaker 5: than like some promoted posts on Facebook and some you know,
- 38:38Speaker 5: like some Facebook ads, but not more than I think
- 38:40Speaker 5: like two hundred and fifty dollars total over you know, recently.
- 38:44Speaker 5: And we're that's changing in January, like we're sponsoring a
- 38:48Speaker 5: party at Sundance and like I mean like January and
- 38:51Speaker 5: like twenty sixteen forward is more like you know, we're
- 38:55Speaker 5: gonna take a more like as far as like marketing
- 38:58Speaker 5: goes for us, we had been more focusing on content marketing.
- 39:01Speaker 5: We still will be, but you know, we're going to
- 39:03Speaker 5: do a little bit more traditional kind of marketing as well.
- 39:07Speaker 5: So you know, but up until then, it was just
- 39:10Speaker 5: uh word of mouth. So you know, just the HBO
- 39:15Speaker 5: was doing a big premiere for one of their their shows,
- 39:20Speaker 5: Looking here in Seattle, and one of our clients is
- 39:23Speaker 5: Three Dollars Bill Cinema, which is the LGBTQ film nonprofit
- 39:30Speaker 5: film organization that they they produced the Seattle Lesbian and
- 39:32Speaker 5: Gay Film Festival. So we've been working them with them
- 39:35Speaker 5: for two years and uh, you know, we're like their
- 39:38Speaker 5: agency of record now and so it was like, hey,
- 39:41Speaker 5: we're going to do this. We're going to do something
- 39:43Speaker 5: with three dollars Bill. Like how do we pull this off?
- 39:45Speaker 5: And it was just like, okay, you guys got to
- 39:47Speaker 5: work with Smart House. And so we did like a
- 39:49Speaker 5: kind of a live tweet tour with one of the
- 39:51Speaker 5: stars from Looking all over Capitol Hill, going to like
- 39:55Speaker 5: gay friendly businesses and.
- 39:58Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 40:04Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
- 40:07Speaker 5: Just you know, just like just being in the community.
- 40:10Speaker 5: It was a lot of fun and that was a
- 40:12Speaker 5: you know, a great, great experience and then with Draft
- 40:15Speaker 5: House that relationship developed because uh we had been I
- 40:22Speaker 5: had been doing uh the social media and and kind
- 40:26Speaker 5: of like broad general you know, kind of digital strategy
- 40:28Speaker 5: for Amira and Sam which I mentioned earlier, uh director
- 40:35Speaker 5: Sean Mullen West Point Grad. So uh, you know that
- 40:39Speaker 5: was just like a really nice fit. It was like,
- 40:42Speaker 5: I'm gonna help these guys out on their film. It's
- 40:45Speaker 5: and then that was before they even got distribution from
- 40:47Speaker 5: Draft Hoss. Like that was still like as they were
- 40:49Speaker 5: kind of like on the festival circuit, and then when
- 40:52Speaker 5: that happened, it became like a you know, now it's
- 40:56Speaker 5: like let's rally the you know circle awagas how are
- 40:58Speaker 5: we gonna So it was really great working with Draft Out,
- 41:00Speaker 5: who had a you know, many more resources and a
- 41:03Speaker 5: lot of people in the mix. And you know, there
- 41:05Speaker 5: was a you know, some like controversy about some of
- 41:09Speaker 5: the costumes in the film, like with the h job
- 41:12Speaker 5: and how it was worn with a mirror's character and
- 41:16Speaker 5: you know, so there was like some like you know,
- 41:18Speaker 5: sort of like pr style crisis control and like it
- 41:22Speaker 5: was it was really interesting. There was a lot, like
- 41:24Speaker 5: I learned a lot from that whole you know, because
- 41:26Speaker 5: they were you know, doing some tug screenings and doing
- 41:29Speaker 5: some h you know. One of the actors in the
- 41:32Speaker 5: film in a supporting role is Paul Wesley who's in
- 41:35Speaker 5: The Vampire Diaries. And you know, I wasn't aware really
- 41:39Speaker 5: of how big of a star he was on you know,
- 41:43Speaker 5: in general, but especially on social media. But his Twitter
- 41:45Speaker 5: following is like it's you know, probably close to four
- 41:48Speaker 5: million people by now. I think it was like three
- 41:51Speaker 5: point six million or something at the time. So anytime
- 41:55Speaker 5: we would tweet something that he would either retweet, you know,
- 42:00Speaker 5: like that he interacted with somehow, it would just like
- 42:03Speaker 5: just drive engagement through the roof and people like if
- 42:07Speaker 5: you were to retweet a tweet about like signing up
- 42:09Speaker 5: for AMRA and Sam's news letter, people would be retweeting
- 42:13Speaker 5: and favoring that tweet, like you know, I would say,
- 42:16Speaker 5: like at least probably a month after it was originally
- 42:19Speaker 5: sent out. So you know, it's just it's just crazy.
- 42:22Speaker 5: And that really, to me like demonstrates, you know, kind
- 42:24Speaker 5: of the power of social media and you know, kind
- 42:28Speaker 5: of thinking about, you you know, how that integrates into
- 42:31Speaker 5: your casting strategy because I think in the past, you know,
- 42:35Speaker 5: It used to be about, you know, sort of the
- 42:38Speaker 5: what is the international sales or the bankability of a
- 42:42Speaker 5: star overseas, So it's like can this star make money
- 42:47Speaker 5: for us? And when we you know, pre sales overseas
- 42:49Speaker 5: or something. And I think that's still you know, part
- 42:51Speaker 5: of the equation. But I think now if you had
- 42:54Speaker 5: two actors and they were both you know, to to
- 42:57Speaker 5: like lead female role, right, and they're they're both great,
- 43:01Speaker 5: and you know, everything else is equal, but one of
- 43:04Speaker 5: them has two million Twitter followers and one has like
- 43:08Speaker 5: isn't on Twitter as like one hundred or you know,
- 43:10Speaker 5: just doesn't focus on social media. And I said, like
- 43:13Speaker 5: everything else is equal, like there's not like a difference
- 43:15Speaker 5: in talent or anything. I absolutely would hire the one
- 43:19Speaker 5: with two million Twitter followers because that is going to
- 43:22Speaker 5: come and you know, into play when the film is
- 43:24Speaker 5: on the festival circuit, when it's in release, and it's
- 43:27Speaker 5: going to make a difference. So you know, I think
- 43:30Speaker 5: all that stuff is now you know, we're starting to
- 43:32Speaker 5: see that built into some of the strategies. But that's
- 43:35Speaker 5: kind of like how that you know, that whole part
- 43:38Speaker 5: of that you know, came together.
- 43:40Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I was talking about crowdfunding before with
- 43:42Speaker 4: some podcast guests, and one of the you know crowdfunding
- 43:45Speaker 4: you know specialists actually said that's one of the things
- 43:48Speaker 4: he always looks at was, you know, he talks to
- 43:50Speaker 4: the directors, talks to the producers and says, you know,
- 43:54Speaker 4: whoever you have cast it in this film, I would
- 43:56Speaker 4: like to see their social media platform as well, because
- 44:00Speaker 4: you know, there's some people who say, no, I'm not
- 44:02Speaker 4: on social media at all, and then there's others who,
- 44:04Speaker 4: you know, some actors and actresses who take it upon
- 44:07Speaker 4: themselves and like, look, we got to promote ourselves. So
- 44:09Speaker 4: they have the Instagram, they have the Twitter, they have
- 44:11Speaker 4: the Facebook, and they have a pretty good, you know,
- 44:14Speaker 4: a pretty good following, and you're just just to go
- 44:16Speaker 4: back to Gary Vanderchuk, you know, one thing again. He
- 44:19Speaker 4: one thing he also said was with versus depth, and
- 44:22Speaker 4: he said, you know, likes and comments and you know,
- 44:24Speaker 4: retweets are all with and he said, the depth is
- 44:27Speaker 4: where you come in where you have like that engagement
- 44:29Speaker 4: and then you have that conversion rate of them signing
- 44:31Speaker 4: up for newsletters and everything else. And one thing I
- 44:34Speaker 4: took away from it is he said, go one inch
- 44:38Speaker 4: wide and a mile deep.
- 44:40Speaker 5: I like that. Yeah, I've heard similar. Yeah, I mean
- 44:43Speaker 5: I couldn't agree more with that, you know, sort of
- 44:46Speaker 5: general philosophy about you know, like really finding I mean
- 44:48Speaker 5: it speaks. I don't know if it was Fannerchuk who
- 44:53Speaker 5: who said this or or who this was maybe with
- 44:55Speaker 5: Seth Godin or somebody like that, but like the idea
- 44:59Speaker 5: of true fans, like finding those true fans that are
- 45:01Speaker 5: out there, your ambassadors, like you're like with the movie
- 45:06Speaker 5: that's Smart House just acquired called Chatty Caddies, Like I
- 45:10Speaker 5: feel like there are people out there that love love,
- 45:13Speaker 5: love this movie and they're gonna be great ambassadors for
- 45:18Speaker 5: the film. And there are people that love love, love
- 45:20Speaker 5: love cats obviously, and when those two kind of ven
- 45:24Speaker 5: diagrams overlap, I feel like there's the potential at least
- 45:28Speaker 5: for you know, that sort of like al come you know,
- 45:31Speaker 5: alchemy that happens sometimes with social media where it becomes
- 45:36Speaker 5: like people start sharing stuff and talking about stuff, and
- 45:38Speaker 5: I think it's going to be you know, potentially divisive film.
- 45:41Speaker 5: Like you know, it won the Jury Prize at SIF
- 45:44Speaker 5: and sold out its screenings and but some people were
- 45:47Speaker 5: still like, oh that movie, Like I talking cats like
- 45:50Speaker 5: I just don't you know, so people didn't like it
- 45:53Speaker 5: at all, whereas other people thought it was the best
- 45:55Speaker 5: thing they ever And that to me is like a
- 45:57Speaker 5: really good sign. And that speaks to what we just
- 46:00Speaker 5: talked about earlier in the podcast, you know, when you
- 46:02Speaker 5: said about like forget uh sid Hey, you know, you
- 46:06Speaker 5: either want people to love something or hate something. You
- 46:08Speaker 5: don't want them to be indifferent or ambivalent, and I
- 46:10Speaker 5: think that is really key, especially when it comes to distribution.
- 46:16Speaker 4: So, you know, Brad, one of the other questions you know,
- 46:17Speaker 4: I had for you was, you know, how do filmmakers,
- 46:21Speaker 4: you know, approach smarthouse creative? You know, do you sort
- 46:24Speaker 4: of find them or do they find you? Or is
- 46:26Speaker 4: it like a mixture of both.
- 46:28Speaker 5: Well, I think because we're so new in the space
- 46:31Speaker 5: that it's more us finding them, because like I said,
- 46:35Speaker 5: I see a lot of movies sort of in the
- 46:39Speaker 5: you know, the film equivalent of galleys for publishing, and
- 46:44Speaker 5: you know these are picture lock or rough cuts, and
- 46:47Speaker 5: you know, you get a good like it's a you know,
- 46:49Speaker 5: you can evaluate. You know, I feel like feel pretty
- 46:52Speaker 5: good like it with my gut instinct about being able
- 46:55Speaker 5: like once a film has its picture locked, you know,
- 46:57Speaker 5: I don't care if it's missing, you know, doesn't have
- 47:00Speaker 5: color correction, doesn't have finished sound, it's got a tempt score,
- 47:04Speaker 5: all these other things like you know, that doesn't matter
- 47:07Speaker 5: because the story is there, and if the story is
- 47:09Speaker 5: not going to change, you know, I feel pretty confident
- 47:12Speaker 5: saying I can evaluate you know, the film on its merits,
- 47:16Speaker 5: those most important merits the story. So you know, up
- 47:21Speaker 5: until now, you know, it's been like there's just like
- 47:24Speaker 5: a you know, sort of like a wealth of films.
- 47:27Speaker 5: But I think like once Chatty Caddies gets out, and
- 47:32Speaker 5: I think once you know that that other film that
- 47:37Speaker 5: we produced in house called Thirteen Chambers, which is a
- 47:40Speaker 5: genre kind of supernatural anthology directed by thirteen different female
- 47:46Speaker 5: filmmakers from the Seattle area, which I'm super excited about.
- 47:50Speaker 5: I've seen some early rough cuts of those films and
- 47:54Speaker 5: they're just blowing my mind, Like I so so excited
- 47:59Speaker 5: to see that, like a see the rest of them.
- 48:01Speaker 5: But it's it's kind of a great. Yeah, it's great.
- 48:03Speaker 5: It's like Christmas Christmas morning. Every time like a new
- 48:06Speaker 5: filmmaker brings in the computer with the rough cut ands
- 48:09Speaker 5: like all right here. Here's what I got so far,
- 48:11Speaker 5: and it's like, oh my gosh, show me more. I
- 48:13Speaker 5: can't wait to see the rest, you know, so like
- 48:17Speaker 5: we'll be releasing that one ourselves as well. And you
- 48:21Speaker 5: know it's it's like once you I think understand sort
- 48:24Speaker 5: of like the infrastructure, have you know, some some trusted
- 48:27Speaker 5: guides in place to help navigate that landscape, because you know,
- 48:33Speaker 5: it's sort of like the wild West right now with
- 48:35Speaker 5: film distribution. So you know, what what I would like
- 48:38Speaker 5: is for Smart House to you know, sort of develop
- 48:41Speaker 5: into you know, what might be considered like the filmmakers distributor.
- 48:47Speaker 5: And you know, I kind of see you know, like
- 48:50Speaker 5: the deal that we worked out with Chatty Caddies. You know,
- 48:53Speaker 5: we we have an ownership stake in the film Smart
- 48:56Speaker 5: House does, so you know, there's no agency problem. It's
- 48:59Speaker 5: not like we're just like you know, licensing it and
- 49:02Speaker 5: we're gonna you know, distribute it and as soon as
- 49:04Speaker 5: it you know, like it becomes part of our cattle.
- 49:07Speaker 5: Like it's like we're in it for the long haul
- 49:09Speaker 5: and we're working very closely with the filmmakers. And you
- 49:12Speaker 5: know the quote that Pablo Valencia, who's the co writer
- 49:16Speaker 5: and director of the film you know gave for the
- 49:19Speaker 5: Indie Wire article. Like you know, when I when he
- 49:22Speaker 5: first sent that to me, I was like blushing because
- 49:24Speaker 5: I was like, oh my gosh, like I you know,
- 49:26Speaker 5: it was it was like really like that's but that's
- 49:28Speaker 5: exactly like what I wanted, you know, to convey to
- 49:32Speaker 5: film is like this is a home for filmmakers because
- 49:36Speaker 5: as a filmmaker myself, you know, or producer like in
- 49:40Speaker 5: that kind of space, I know how difficult it is
- 49:43Speaker 5: that I know how unfair a lot of you know,
- 49:47Speaker 5: the the deals are that are offered to a lot
- 49:50Speaker 5: of filmmakers, which is what drives them honestly, like and
- 49:53Speaker 5: and truthfully into a di y release or into like
- 49:57Speaker 5: a kind of like a hastily cobbled together.
- 50:03Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 50:09Speaker 3: and now back to the show, you.
- 50:12Speaker 5: Know, sort of like let's just get this out there.
- 50:14Speaker 5: And you know, it's like they're kind of left hanging,
- 50:17Speaker 5: and so you know, I think eventually, like you know,
- 50:21Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, as far as like how to
- 50:24Speaker 5: you know, I would love for filmmakers to send us there.
- 50:27Speaker 5: You know, there they are films that you know, the
- 50:29Speaker 5: picture lock stage and you know, we can evaluate it,
- 50:32Speaker 5: but I think we're going to be very very you know,
- 50:35Speaker 5: we're still sort of like chatty caddies. I think is
- 50:38Speaker 5: a really interesting, you know, sort of a model template
- 50:43Speaker 5: for what a smart house film looks like. And Ryan,
- 50:46Speaker 5: my business partner, and I, you know, talk at length
- 50:48Speaker 5: about what does a smart house film look like? And
- 50:51Speaker 5: it's one of those things where it's like, well, well,
- 50:53Speaker 5: no when we see it, but also you know, it's
- 50:56Speaker 5: it's not something that you could It's not like a
- 50:59Speaker 5: carbon copy or an imitation of what's playing at the multiplex,
- 51:03Speaker 5: because then you know, people like there's not like a
- 51:06Speaker 5: moral imperative necessarily to go see an independent film. It's
- 51:09Speaker 5: not like that's like a marketing hook for anyone, you know. Unfortunately,
- 51:14Speaker 5: you know, for you know, I don't mean to burst
- 51:15Speaker 5: in anyone's bubbles, but I'm just saying, like, you know,
- 51:18Speaker 5: my parents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, like don't give a care
- 51:21Speaker 5: if it's an independent film or not. They don't care
- 51:23Speaker 5: how it was made. They just care if it's a
- 51:25Speaker 5: good movie that they want to see. So, you know,
- 51:28Speaker 5: by trying to find movies that you know, are comparable
- 51:32Speaker 5: to you know, it's an indie. You know, it's an
- 51:34Speaker 5: indie taken three or you know, it's an indie you
- 51:39Speaker 5: know insert you know aloha or something right like that
- 51:42Speaker 5: doesn't I mean, that doesn't do any good. And I
- 51:44Speaker 5: feel like it just kind of sets you up for failure.
- 51:46Speaker 5: So it's like that's why, like a movie like Chatty
- 51:49Speaker 5: Caddy's which is so like just you know, aclectic and
- 51:54Speaker 5: risky in my in my opinion, but you know, like
- 51:57Speaker 5: I said, it still managed to sell out tos and
- 52:00Speaker 5: win the jury prize at a major film festival that
- 52:04Speaker 5: was its world premiere. You know, I feel like, you know,
- 52:07Speaker 5: that's like a really that's like a risk worth taking
- 52:10Speaker 5: in my book, And I feel like that's the whole
- 52:12Speaker 5: reason to get into film distribution or filmmaking is to
- 52:16Speaker 5: take those kind of risks, because you know, you don't
- 52:19Speaker 5: want to just like throw your you know, like kind
- 52:21Speaker 5: of just be like another voice among like a you know,
- 52:24Speaker 5: chattering crowd of thousands of people doing the same thing.
- 52:27Speaker 5: It's like, you know, ideally like you want to stand
- 52:30Speaker 5: out in a positive way and you know kind of
- 52:32Speaker 5: be like a beacon in a sense of for like
- 52:35Speaker 5: what's possible even if it's not per you know, like
- 52:38Speaker 5: you know, there's never going to be that perfect film
- 52:40Speaker 5: or there's never going to be you know that sort
- 52:42Speaker 5: of like perfect strategy or whatever. But you know, again,
- 52:45Speaker 5: it's all about learning and it's about like, you know,
- 52:48Speaker 5: continual incremental improvement is kind of how I like to
- 52:52Speaker 5: look at it.
- 52:53Speaker 4: So that's and you're right about the online distribution because
- 52:58Speaker 4: you know, a lot of filmmakers. On the previous episode
- 53:02Speaker 4: that I had on, two filmmakers from Canada and they
- 53:05Speaker 4: released their film through VHX. They actually spent you know years,
- 53:10Speaker 4: they actually finished the film in twenty twelve, and they
- 53:13Speaker 4: then spent years going to these distributors and asking, hey,
- 53:16Speaker 4: you know, what do you have for us? And their
- 53:19Speaker 4: answer was, well, oh, it's a comedy, Okay, who's in it?
- 53:22Speaker 4: We don't know any of these people forget it and
- 53:25Speaker 4: he and you know, one of the guys, I think,
- 53:27Speaker 4: Bob Wooseley, he actually said, you know, one of the
- 53:30Speaker 4: things he learned was if you're going to do a comedy,
- 53:32Speaker 4: an indie comedy, you have to have some kind of name,
- 53:35Speaker 4: whether it's like a Patent Oswald or you know, a
- 53:39Speaker 4: Bill Murray, you know, but if you do horror, horror
- 53:42Speaker 4: is a lot easier to sell.
- 53:46Speaker 5: Yeah, well that's you know, that's in no small part
- 53:50Speaker 5: why like if we were going to produce a film,
- 53:52Speaker 5: our first film, which we did, thirteen Chambers, aligns with
- 53:55Speaker 5: the horror genre. Like, you know, that wasn't an accident,
- 53:58Speaker 5: and I totally agree with that. And I feel like,
- 54:01Speaker 5: you know, you can't compromise artistic integrity, but at the
- 54:06Speaker 5: same time, you also want to be completely and fully
- 54:10Speaker 5: aware of the realities of the marketplace. And I think
- 54:14Speaker 5: that's like what often happens is you either have one
- 54:17Speaker 5: or the other. You've got a producer who just cares
- 54:20Speaker 5: about product and you know, so they create something that's
- 54:24Speaker 5: kind of a cookie cutter thing. Maybe it'll make money,
- 54:26Speaker 5: which is good, but it's not really adding anything to
- 54:28Speaker 5: the artistic conversation. And then on the other hand, you've got,
- 54:33Speaker 5: you know, a filmmaker that is just only cares about,
- 54:36Speaker 5: you know, his or her vision and doesn't necessarily take
- 54:40Speaker 5: into account that film exists in a commercial marketplace. You know,
- 54:45Speaker 5: it's it's not like an art museum or you know,
- 54:47Speaker 5: unless you're making like a twelve hour experimental you know
- 54:51Speaker 5: kind of perform you know, visual art thing, which is fine,
- 54:55Speaker 5: go ahead and do it if you can find somebody
- 54:57Speaker 5: to pay, you know, like I'm trying to remember the
- 55:02Speaker 5: Maybe it's Christian Barclay. I don't remember the exact name
- 55:05Speaker 5: of the person, but the artist who made that twenty
- 55:07Speaker 5: four hour film The Clock, you know, I think like
- 55:11Speaker 5: that that consists of just like you know, images of
- 55:15Speaker 5: time in film, like that's fat. I would love to
- 55:19Speaker 5: see that, and people pay huge amounts of money to
- 55:21Speaker 5: have it screened and to own a print of it,
- 55:24Speaker 5: and it's kind of a one of a kind thing.
- 55:26Speaker 5: But you know, outside of those like examples or like
- 55:29Speaker 5: a Matthew Barney, you know, sort of like hybrid experimental
- 55:34Speaker 5: slash just weirdo experiment, those opportunities don't exist for most
- 55:41Speaker 5: independent if not all, independent filmmakers. So you've got to
- 55:44Speaker 5: find that balance point. You have to find that sweet spot.
- 55:48Speaker 5: And it's tough. You know, I'm not saying that I
- 55:52Speaker 5: or Smart House or you know, anybody that I know
- 55:55Speaker 5: has like the solution or the perfect solution or it's
- 55:57Speaker 5: like I feel like we're all learning, but I feel
- 55:59Speaker 5: like the more that we're able to share through you know,
- 56:03Speaker 5: through channels like social media or being on a podcast
- 56:06Speaker 5: like this, or you know, connecting at a film festival
- 56:09Speaker 5: or something like that, you know, kind of share what
- 56:12Speaker 5: we've learned in the experiences. Like I feel like that's
- 56:15Speaker 5: going to help, you know, the next project that somebody
- 56:19Speaker 5: makes or two projects down the road. You know, I
- 56:22Speaker 5: think you're going to see that sort of cumulative positive impact.
- 56:26Speaker 5: But that's what you know, that's what I hope for
- 56:28Speaker 5: at least. But you know, it's tough independent filmmaking like
- 56:33Speaker 5: anything right now. Is it's like just like a tough,
- 56:37Speaker 5: tough world. Like it's just you know, it just is
- 56:41Speaker 5: it just you got to be a real scrapper. You
- 56:43Speaker 5: got to be a real hustler, I guess, you know,
- 56:45Speaker 5: in a positive you know, like not like where you're
- 56:47Speaker 5: like scamming somebody, but where you're just like always like
- 56:51Speaker 5: trying to like make an improvement somewhere. Yeah.
- 56:55Speaker 4: I concur I also, you know, Brett, I have a
- 56:58Speaker 4: feeling that the next coming years, I think everything's going
- 57:03Speaker 4: to come back on the upswing. I just have this feeling.
- 57:05Speaker 4: I can just see the economy approving here and there,
- 57:08Speaker 4: you know, I think it's it's going to come back,
- 57:11Speaker 4: and I think the people are going to have a
- 57:13Speaker 4: lot more disposable income, and you know, hopefully some of
- 57:16Speaker 4: this stuff will will you know, be eased up, so
- 57:19Speaker 4: you know, but at least that's my hope.
- 57:21Speaker 5: Yeah, that'd be great.
- 57:23Speaker 4: So you know, Brad, I I know, you know, we've
- 57:25Speaker 4: been talking for almost an hour and I know you're busy.
- 57:28Speaker 4: I had one fan question come in that I really
- 57:30Speaker 4: wanted to make sure to ask you particularly.
- 57:33Speaker 5: Uh.
- 57:33Speaker 4: This is actually from Bob Woosley, who I just was
- 57:36Speaker 4: mentioning about who was on the podcast, said before you
- 57:40Speaker 4: and he said sorry. His question is, with so many
- 57:44Speaker 4: platforms out there, where do you start when I'm planning
- 57:47Speaker 4: a social media strategy?
- 57:50Speaker 5: Well, you know, that is a great question, and so
- 57:54Speaker 5: so here's like that's so I want to like actually
- 57:58Speaker 5: like give a legitimate response to this that somebody could
- 58:00Speaker 5: actually you know, take action on in a practical kind
- 58:03Speaker 5: of way. So I think the first thing you have
- 58:06Speaker 5: to figure out is, like the first response is it
- 58:08Speaker 5: depends and it really does, and it depends on your project.
- 58:12Speaker 5: It depends on your audience. And I feel like you
- 58:14Speaker 5: have to really know your project very very well. So
- 58:17Speaker 5: if you're the filmmaker, the producer, it's like that should
- 58:20Speaker 5: you should, So that's good, You've got that information already.
- 58:23Speaker 5: And then based on like what you learn from your
- 58:27Speaker 5: crowdfunding campaign if you did one, or what you've learned
- 58:30Speaker 5: from you know, sort of like work in progress screenings
- 58:33Speaker 5: if you've done any of those, which I you know,
- 58:35Speaker 5: find to be like very helpful, you know, not like
- 58:38Speaker 5: we have to have like a formal audience feedback surveying
- 58:41Speaker 5: kind of thing, but it's more like you know, friends
- 58:43Speaker 5: and family or trusted advisors you know, or you know,
- 58:45Speaker 5: kind of confident kind of thing, and you know, it's
- 58:48Speaker 5: like you're figuring out like what your audience looks like
- 58:52Speaker 5: and and who they are, you know, or like what
- 58:55Speaker 5: who they might align with, you know, out in the
- 58:57Speaker 5: world right like maybe developing some personas and you know,
- 59:02Speaker 5: then I then I think it really comes down to
- 59:06Speaker 5: how much capacity you have to manage each of these channels,
- 59:09Speaker 5: because you know, each of the channels, Like the worst
- 59:11Speaker 5: thing you could do is, you know, set it up
- 59:14Speaker 5: so that whatever you post on Facebook also gets automatically tweeted,
- 59:19Speaker 5: which also you know, you know, you take a picture
- 59:23Speaker 5: and post it on Instagram, and then you also just
- 59:25Speaker 5: like say, like you know, hit all those buttons that
- 59:27Speaker 5: say like post a Facebook and post to Twitter and
- 59:29Speaker 5: post it to like It's like that's like the absolute
- 59:32Speaker 5: wrong way to do it, and that's a good indicator
- 59:34Speaker 5: that you're like stretch too thin and you want to
- 59:37Speaker 5: like really focus on you know, one or two channels.
- 59:43Speaker 5: And before I go into more about that, and I
- 59:46Speaker 5: want to make this like a huge like you know,
- 59:48Speaker 5: mini class or something like that, but you know, I
- 59:51Speaker 5: think you can get a lot of traction out of
- 59:55Speaker 5: a hashtag.
- 59:57Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
- 1:00:06Speaker 5: So for instance, like I'll say, like I'll kind of
- 1:00:10Speaker 5: like give like a case study style example here with
- 1:00:13Speaker 5: our film thirteen Chambers. So in that case, like you know,
- 1:00:19Speaker 5: it would be real easy to say, like, oh, we're
- 1:00:21Speaker 5: gonna you know, we're gonna make a Facebook page for
- 1:00:24Speaker 5: this movie, and then we're going to make a Twitter
- 1:00:25Speaker 5: account for this movie because people are going to want
- 1:00:27Speaker 5: to follow it. We're going to make an Instagram account
- 1:00:29Speaker 5: because you know, we have to have a presence on
- 1:00:31Speaker 5: all these different places. Right well, you know, if you
- 1:00:35Speaker 5: already have an established, you know, like the filmmaker has
- 1:00:38Speaker 5: an established presence, or the actors do, or you know,
- 1:00:41Speaker 5: the company who produced it does, like if all those
- 1:00:43Speaker 5: things are already in place. And one of the things
- 1:00:45Speaker 5: that we talk about a lot at Smart House is
- 1:00:47Speaker 5: this kind of idea of filmmaker first, So you know,
- 1:00:52Speaker 5: so like in Bob's case, it's more about positioning him
- 1:00:56Speaker 5: as a filmmaker who has multiple projects you know in
- 1:01:00Speaker 5: the pipeline. He's got this one that he's working on
- 1:01:02Speaker 5: right now, but you know there's two more coming down
- 1:01:05Speaker 5: the pike, and it's really you know, neck and neck
- 1:01:07Speaker 5: which one's going to get made. But you know it's
- 1:01:09Speaker 5: filmmaker first because those projects have a limited shelf life,
- 1:01:12Speaker 5: whereas you know, Bob's career is going to hopefully, you know,
- 1:01:16Speaker 5: be you know, much longer lasting than any one single project.
- 1:01:21Speaker 5: So you know, based on that, you know, you know,
- 1:01:24Speaker 5: I would say, like you know, for for thirteen Chambers,
- 1:01:27Speaker 5: like we're doing most of our engagement via the hashtag.
- 1:01:31Speaker 5: So anytime like I personally tweet anything, or smart House does,
- 1:01:34Speaker 5: or one of the filmmakers or whatever, we just make
- 1:01:37Speaker 5: sure we include the hashtag and then you could go
- 1:01:40Speaker 5: onto apps or you know, platforms like tag board or
- 1:01:46Speaker 5: hash at it. There's there's like a whole bunch if
- 1:01:48Speaker 5: you search like hashtag like search engines, and what they'll
- 1:01:51Speaker 5: do is you can embed this then in your website
- 1:01:55Speaker 5: or you know, you know, because I think every film
- 1:01:59Speaker 5: should definitely have website, Like you need to have a website,
- 1:02:02Speaker 5: so like you know, and you know, that's like sort
- 1:02:06Speaker 5: of like because eventually you're gonna want to embed your
- 1:02:11Speaker 5: vod you know, kind of Vimeo on Demand or VHX
- 1:02:16Speaker 5: or gum Road or if you do it through quiver,
- 1:02:18Speaker 5: Like I mean, there's all these options, right, but you
- 1:02:20Speaker 5: want to have your like you want to have like
- 1:02:24Speaker 5: an anchor, and I think, you know, the film's website
- 1:02:27Speaker 5: should be the anchor. Now if that is the filmmaker,
- 1:02:30Speaker 5: and like then it could be like you know, Bob
- 1:02:32Speaker 5: Woolsey dot com backslash film title right, Like it doesn't
- 1:02:36Speaker 5: like you don't have to create brand new things for
- 1:02:38Speaker 5: every single project that you do. You should try to
- 1:02:41Speaker 5: like integrate them. And this is where the digital strategy
- 1:02:43Speaker 5: comes into play. Integrate them as well as well as
- 1:02:46Speaker 5: you can and as smartly as you can. So again
- 1:02:50Speaker 5: it's like so for thirteen Chambers, Right, We're gonna have
- 1:02:52Speaker 5: a website thirteen Chambers Movie, and then the film eventually
- 1:02:57Speaker 5: like after you know, we'll try to do a theatric
- 1:03:00Speaker 5: release to whatever extent that we are able to, you know,
- 1:03:03Speaker 5: through independent film theaters and everything, and then once that
- 1:03:09Speaker 5: revenue stream has diminished to a certain point, then will
- 1:03:13Speaker 5: make it available through our website, through the filmmakers' websites,
- 1:03:18Speaker 5: you know, everywhere you can inbed because I found actually
- 1:03:20Speaker 5: that like one of the key like the leading indicators
- 1:03:24Speaker 5: I think for like all the data that you can
- 1:03:27Speaker 5: get through Vimeo on demand is the number of times
- 1:03:30Speaker 5: that the embedded player, like the trailer gets loaded. Is
- 1:03:37Speaker 5: seems to be at least indicative of a higher Like
- 1:03:41Speaker 5: I'm not so you know, I'm not a statistician, but
- 1:03:44Speaker 5: I do understand statistics. So I'm not saying, you know
- 1:03:47Speaker 5: that this correlation means causation, right, Like it's you got
- 1:03:50Speaker 5: to take it all with a grain of salt. But
- 1:03:52Speaker 5: the more times that the embedded player gets loaded, you know,
- 1:03:57Speaker 5: like the when when those are the highest, those numbers
- 1:03:59Speaker 5: are the highest. It's also you know, correlates to a
- 1:04:03Speaker 5: higher number of sales or rentals. So so I think
- 1:04:08Speaker 5: the more places you could have the trailer embedded through
- 1:04:11Speaker 5: the Vimeo you know sort of embedded, you know that
- 1:04:14Speaker 5: the code that you can get that that's like a
- 1:04:16Speaker 5: really strong tactic when it comes to like your your
- 1:04:19Speaker 5: online kind of sales strategy. So but beyond that though,
- 1:04:26Speaker 5: all the other social channels that we've already established, my
- 1:04:28Speaker 5: personal Twitter, smart House's Twitter, smart House's Facebook page, my
- 1:04:33Speaker 5: personal Facebook page, smart House's Instagram, my personal Instagram, smart
- 1:04:38Speaker 5: House Snapchat. That that's where we're going to be promoting
- 1:04:42Speaker 5: and pushing the film via the hashtag thirteen Chambers and
- 1:04:46Speaker 5: then kind of aggregating all of that content that's out
- 1:04:49Speaker 5: there to see you know, what kind of traction we
- 1:04:52Speaker 5: get and using tools like tweet Reach and topsy and
- 1:04:56Speaker 5: you know, there's a couple other free ones that are
- 1:04:58Speaker 5: out there that will allow you to kind of see
- 1:05:02Speaker 5: kind of like who's like, who's talking about the film
- 1:05:08Speaker 5: via this hashtag and who to follow up with and
- 1:05:12Speaker 5: what kind of insights you can glean from that. So,
- 1:05:15Speaker 5: you know, as far as it comes to like picking
- 1:05:17Speaker 5: a you know, a platform, like what I what I
- 1:05:21Speaker 5: would say is like go with what you already have
- 1:05:23Speaker 5: established and excuse me, work the hashtag into it. And
- 1:05:29Speaker 5: if you don't have anything established, then I would say
- 1:05:32Speaker 5: start with your own personal channels first. So establish yourself
- 1:05:36Speaker 5: on Twitter first, establish yourself on Instagram first, and then
- 1:05:42Speaker 5: you know, work the film into that, because that's going
- 1:05:46Speaker 5: to be the sustainable way to do it. And I
- 1:05:48Speaker 5: think a lot of people want to jump in right
- 1:05:50Speaker 5: away and be like, well, we got to We've got
- 1:05:52Speaker 5: to create a Twitter handle for this film, and it's
- 1:05:54Speaker 5: got to be you know, thirteen Chambers movie, you know,
- 1:05:57Speaker 5: for Twitter. But what that means then is that you
- 1:05:59Speaker 5: also have to like provide relevant content on that channel
- 1:06:03Speaker 5: for the audience, because if you encourage somebody to follow
- 1:06:06Speaker 5: your thirteen Chambers Twitter handle or Instagram account or whatever,
- 1:06:12Speaker 5: then that audience is going to expect something beyond just
- 1:06:16Speaker 5: hey everyone, here's our trailer, here's our poster, here's our
- 1:06:19Speaker 5: you know, here's where we're playing next on the festival circuit.
- 1:06:22Speaker 5: Hey guess what we're available for vod Because those are
- 1:06:25Speaker 5: all things that you can say on any channel, doesn't matter.
- 1:06:28Speaker 5: You can do promoted posts and you know, ads on
- 1:06:31Speaker 5: any channel. It doesn't have to be a specific film channel.
- 1:06:33Speaker 5: So you know, I think eventually it gets to a
- 1:06:36Speaker 5: point where you no longer have anything relevant to share
- 1:06:40Speaker 5: about that film that's not redundant and not like just
- 1:06:43Speaker 5: like purely promotional, and then people will like, you'll lose
- 1:06:46Speaker 5: that part of your audience. Right. Whereas if you set
- 1:06:49Speaker 5: it up that you are the hub and not the
- 1:06:52Speaker 5: film as the hub, but you as the filmmaker or
- 1:06:55Speaker 5: the hub, and you each of your projects are spokes
- 1:06:59Speaker 5: and those spokes look like hashtags and actual accounts, then
- 1:07:02Speaker 5: I think what you start doing is you start developing
- 1:07:05Speaker 5: a sustainable framework for you know, sort of this you know,
- 1:07:11Speaker 5: sort of new UH you know, digital first and and
- 1:07:17Speaker 5: you know, sort of like new landscape that we're that
- 1:07:20Speaker 5: it's very fragmented, it's very fractured, and it's it's it's
- 1:07:24Speaker 5: ever changing, so you know, and this is all part
- 1:07:26Speaker 5: of like UH a presentation I gave at the Portland
- 1:07:30Speaker 5: Film Festival in UH September this past this couple of
- 1:07:35Speaker 5: months ago, and that we're also giving at the Wild
- 1:07:37Speaker 5: and Scenic Film Festival in January, and it's it's called
- 1:07:41Speaker 5: basically bridging the Indie Gap, and the idea is it's
- 1:07:44Speaker 5: a practical guide for UH you know, independent filmmakers and artists.
- 1:07:50Speaker 5: You don't necessarily have to be a filmmaker. That could
- 1:07:52Speaker 5: apply for a musician or a you know, a visual
- 1:07:55Speaker 5: artist or whatever whatever that person's doing really practical steps
- 1:08:00Speaker 5: kind of like what I'm talking about here, So it's
- 1:08:02Speaker 5: not like a you know, it's not like a loss
- 1:08:03Speaker 5: leader or content marketing thing. You know, it's going to
- 1:08:06Speaker 5: be you know, it's going to end up eventually as
- 1:08:08Speaker 5: an ebook that you know, I'll sell you know through
- 1:08:11Speaker 5: you know, smart House will sell for like three ninety
- 1:08:13Speaker 5: nine or something and you know, three dollars in ninety
- 1:08:16Speaker 5: nine cents, by the way, and it's something that like
- 1:08:19Speaker 5: if you know, you're a filmmaker in Nebraska who has
- 1:08:21Speaker 5: no connections and you're just like, what do I do now?
- 1:08:25Speaker 5: You know, maybe you can't afford to hire somebody like
- 1:08:27Speaker 5: smart House, but you could buy this ebook for three
- 1:08:30Speaker 5: ninety nine that will have like all these templates and
- 1:08:33Speaker 5: all these things that if you take the time to
- 1:08:35Speaker 5: implement them, like, it'll at least put you in the
- 1:08:38Speaker 5: ballpark for being successful with what you're trying to do,
- 1:08:42Speaker 5: and you know, lay the groundwork for that that sort
- 1:08:46Speaker 5: of eventual success because there is no overnight sort of
- 1:08:49Speaker 5: like social media success for like ninety nine percent of
- 1:08:53Speaker 5: the people. So so never think of yourself as the outlier.
- 1:08:56Speaker 5: You should always think of yourself as like the average case,
- 1:09:00Speaker 5: and like that will I think, you know, help you
- 1:09:03Speaker 5: succeed and prepare you for the realities of what that
- 1:09:07Speaker 5: might look like, you know, much better than if you
- 1:09:09Speaker 5: think that you're going to be the person who finances
- 1:09:12Speaker 5: their independent film on their credit card and then sells
- 1:09:15Speaker 5: it at sundance to Harvey Weinstein.
- 1:09:16Speaker 4: You know, just to sort of put a period at
- 1:09:18Speaker 4: the end of that too. You know, some people I
- 1:09:21Speaker 4: know have actually bought followers on social media. So what
- 1:09:23Speaker 4: they'll do is, you know, they'll set it up on
- 1:09:25Speaker 4: like a Sunday, and all of a sudden, you know,
- 1:09:28Speaker 4: the next week they've got ten thousand followers.
- 1:09:30Speaker 5: And at first I was like, how did you do this?
- 1:09:32Speaker 4: And they said, oh, you know, we did a little
- 1:09:34Speaker 4: bit of this and that. And then finally, finally, you know,
- 1:09:37Speaker 4: I asked them and they admitted, okay, we paid for
- 1:09:40Speaker 4: somebody on fiver to you know follow us with a
- 1:09:42Speaker 4: you know, a thousand or ten thousand bought accounts that
- 1:09:46Speaker 4: are just you know they're not real, there's nothing behind them.
- 1:09:49Speaker 4: They're just they're a photo, a generated username, and the
- 1:09:53Speaker 4: photo was found by a program which just finds photos
- 1:09:57Speaker 4: plops it in there, and none of this is a
- 1:09:59Speaker 4: real engagement.
- 1:10:01Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 1:10:07Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
- 1:10:10Speaker 4: So now you know, whatever they do, whatever they send out,
- 1:10:13Speaker 4: nobody even sees it. It's just it's literally like putting
- 1:10:15Speaker 4: it up there for a bunch of automated bots to see.
- 1:10:19Speaker 5: Yeah, no, exactly. And I think that's a great example
- 1:10:22Speaker 5: of quality versus quantity. And I'm always amazed by like
- 1:10:28Speaker 5: when I see like, you know, accounts with like lots
- 1:10:31Speaker 5: and lots of followers. You know, like if you ever
- 1:10:34Speaker 5: look at this, isn't every account with a lot of followers,
- 1:10:37Speaker 5: but you know, just like do like a little you know,
- 1:10:39Speaker 5: anecdotal kind of survey. You know, you see somebody who's
- 1:10:42Speaker 5: got like ten thousand followers or this or that, like
- 1:10:45Speaker 5: and then you like you look at their tweets and
- 1:10:46Speaker 5: like there's no interaction or engagement at all on any
- 1:10:50Speaker 5: of their tweets, Like nobody's even liking something, much less responding,
- 1:10:54Speaker 5: replying or retweeting or whatever, right, And you know, I
- 1:10:58Speaker 5: think it's foolish, like we alway tell our clients like
- 1:11:01Speaker 5: when you're looking at social media metrics and that's you know,
- 1:11:05Speaker 5: something else that I think is really important is it's
- 1:11:07Speaker 5: not just about you know, good content or you know,
- 1:11:13Speaker 5: community engagement in the sense of like community management, like
- 1:11:16Speaker 5: where you're like, hey, I'm just like a fun person
- 1:11:19Speaker 5: and I'm you know, I'm good on social media. Like
- 1:11:22Speaker 5: you really have to see like what are the metrics
- 1:11:25Speaker 5: and what are the goals that you're trying to achieve
- 1:11:28Speaker 5: through this engagement and through this content, and you know
- 1:11:31Speaker 5: what kind of tactics that you're trying. And you know,
- 1:11:34Speaker 5: you never want to look at gross numbers without somehow
- 1:11:40Speaker 5: filtering them. And I feel like you always want to
- 1:11:42Speaker 5: look at rates and you always want to look at
- 1:11:45Speaker 5: per capita kind of interactions. And you'll find that like
- 1:11:51Speaker 5: organizations or brands or people that have huge followers almost
- 1:11:55Speaker 5: always have like really really poultry rates of engagement because
- 1:12:00Speaker 5: there just isn't you know, people follow like I don't
- 1:12:03Speaker 5: know why I would follow, Like I don't mean to
- 1:12:05Speaker 5: pick on Pepsi, but like why I would follow Pepsi?
- 1:12:08Speaker 5: Or Walmart or like why I would follow like a
- 1:12:10Speaker 5: major brand. I don't. I don't know what the incentive
- 1:12:14Speaker 5: is really, you know, even if there's like a chance
- 1:12:16Speaker 5: for quote unquote good deals or you know whatever. Right,
- 1:12:19Speaker 5: It's like, so these brands have these huge like and
- 1:12:23Speaker 5: I guarantee you like I know as a fact, like
- 1:12:24Speaker 5: most huge brands on Facebook, and like they're constantly promoting
- 1:12:29Speaker 5: every single post, like paying to boost the posts and
- 1:12:32Speaker 5: paying for ads. Like like you know, organic engagement on
- 1:12:36Speaker 5: Facebook especially is really really low and it's hard to
- 1:12:40Speaker 5: come by, and you know, you got to have a
- 1:12:43Speaker 5: really focused audience to do it and to make it work.
- 1:12:48Speaker 5: So yeah, so I think you know, anybody who looks
- 1:12:51Speaker 5: at kind of like you know, the I've got a
- 1:12:56Speaker 5: great you know, I guess like your example is perfect, like,
- 1:13:00Speaker 5: but I feel like there's you know a number of
- 1:13:03Speaker 5: examples like that where you know, people get hung up
- 1:13:06Speaker 5: on the number, the volume, and they forget about sort
- 1:13:12Speaker 5: of the the whole reason, like the goal that they
- 1:13:17Speaker 5: should be aiming at, and that's to get people actually
- 1:13:20Speaker 5: care about whatever it is that they're working on or
- 1:13:22Speaker 5: doing and not saying like you know, it's like the
- 1:13:25Speaker 5: person who has one hundred followers, but fifty of them
- 1:13:28Speaker 5: are engaged, compared to a person who has ten thousand
- 1:13:31Speaker 5: followers and twenty five of them are engaged. You know,
- 1:13:34Speaker 5: most people would say, oh, well, this person with ten
- 1:13:36Speaker 5: thousand followers, they're obviously doing something right. I have to like,
- 1:13:40Speaker 5: you know, listen to their wise counsel or listen to
- 1:13:42Speaker 5: you know, give them my money or do whatever. Right,
- 1:13:44Speaker 5: I have to follow them right. Whereas the person with
- 1:13:47Speaker 5: one hundred followers with fifty engaged, you know, that's the
- 1:13:51Speaker 5: one that's going to slip through the cracks. But that's
- 1:13:53Speaker 5: where the real engagement is happening, and that's you know,
- 1:13:55Speaker 5: maybe one of those followers is a you know, maybe
- 1:13:58Speaker 5: ten of those followers are studio executatives, and you know,
- 1:14:01Speaker 5: whatever that person tweets becomes, you know, ends up in
- 1:14:04Speaker 5: the Hollywood Reporter next week, or you know. Like so
- 1:14:07Speaker 5: there's all sorts of different influence, you know, levels and
- 1:14:10Speaker 5: types of influence on online. So yeah, I think what
- 1:14:13Speaker 5: you described as a great example of, like, you know,
- 1:14:17Speaker 5: be cautious and be skeptical about you know, social media.
- 1:14:25Speaker 4: And I remember when I when I a couple of
- 1:14:27Speaker 4: years ago, when I was getting into crowdfunding. A person
- 1:14:29Speaker 4: I was talking to actually said, you know, there was
- 1:14:32Speaker 4: a case called the Soldier Boy case, which was Soldier
- 1:14:36Speaker 4: Boy is a rapper and he had like three four
- 1:14:39Speaker 4: million followers so on Twitter and when his you know,
- 1:14:43Speaker 4: new CD was coming out, They're like, well, this thing's
- 1:14:45Speaker 4: going to obviously be number one because you know, he's
- 1:14:48Speaker 4: tweeting about it constantly. It came out the album and
- 1:14:53Speaker 4: it didn't do anywhere near what they thought. And they said,
- 1:14:56Speaker 4: wait a minute, how does this guy with four million followers,
- 1:15:01Speaker 4: how does he not have you know, the number one album?
- 1:15:05Speaker 4: And they thought was a piracy? Well not really, they looked,
- 1:15:09Speaker 4: you know, they they didn't think it was that they did.
- 1:15:11Speaker 4: They ended up deciding that it was they're more interested
- 1:15:15Speaker 4: in hearing about like his thoughts about rat beefs and
- 1:15:18Speaker 4: other lyrics and this and that than they are about
- 1:15:21Speaker 4: his new album.
- 1:15:23Speaker 5: Yeah, right, And so all of that.
- 1:15:25Speaker 4: Was you know, sort of for naught. Uh And you know,
- 1:15:27Speaker 4: and there are you know, people that are obsessed with
- 1:15:29Speaker 4: his vanity analytics. There's vanity metrics.
- 1:15:31Speaker 5: You know.
- 1:15:32Speaker 4: Oh, I've got you know, twenty thousand Twitter followers. You know,
- 1:15:36Speaker 4: I actually did a crowdfunding webinar. I used to do
- 1:15:39Speaker 4: it more regularly, but we haven't done it in a while.
- 1:15:42Speaker 4: We actually did a crowdfunding webinar.
- 1:15:44Speaker 5: It was furry.
- 1:15:45Speaker 4: It was on a Google hangout and somebody actually said, hey,
- 1:15:48Speaker 4: you know, we have the star that we've signed. She's
- 1:15:51Speaker 4: an actress and you know, she's got a huge social
- 1:15:54Speaker 4: media social media following. But she but but we don't
- 1:15:56Speaker 4: get a lot of conversions. And we and we looked
- 1:15:58Speaker 4: at her photos and basically it's a lot of you know,
- 1:16:02Speaker 4: modeling Laingerie's type stuff that you know, guys follow her
- 1:16:06Speaker 4: to see that so they can hit like or to
- 1:16:09Speaker 4: you know, retweet or tell her how hot she is.
- 1:16:11Speaker 4: They're not there to sort of you know, invest in
- 1:16:13Speaker 4: any of her projects or buy any of her other stuff.
- 1:16:16Speaker 4: They just want to you know, be there clicking on
- 1:16:18Speaker 4: that stuff.
- 1:16:19Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, yep. Yeah. And I think that's you know,
- 1:16:23Speaker 5: sort of again like sort of that like you know,
- 1:16:25Speaker 5: the the fallacy of you know, social media, like the
- 1:16:28Speaker 5: silver bullet of social media. It's it's not going to
- 1:16:32Speaker 5: solve all your problems. Like I think you got to
- 1:16:35Speaker 5: use it effectively, and I think there are great ways
- 1:16:37Speaker 5: to use it effectively and I think, I actually think
- 1:16:39Speaker 5: Facebook ads are like a really effective way, especially if
- 1:16:42Speaker 5: you know, like you are able to target them and
- 1:16:44Speaker 5: you can get your you know your uh you know,
- 1:16:48Speaker 5: like your click rates, like as far as like how
- 1:16:49Speaker 5: much you're paying for clicks you know down like and
- 1:16:52Speaker 5: always like driving you know people like so it's not
- 1:16:55Speaker 5: like you're paying for impressions, but you're actually like driving
- 1:16:57Speaker 5: to an actual goal and putting a pixel on the sites,
- 1:17:00Speaker 5: you know, when you're converting like all these things which
- 1:17:04Speaker 5: like are like actually like take like some thought process
- 1:17:07Speaker 5: and you know that's where the real value can be
- 1:17:10Speaker 5: had and the real value can be added. But so
- 1:17:13Speaker 5: many people aren't willing really to take or even to
- 1:17:16Speaker 5: like think about the need for that or like why
- 1:17:20Speaker 5: you have to connect all those dots for like a
- 1:17:23Speaker 5: proper social media strategy or an overall digital strategy, like
- 1:17:27Speaker 5: how all those pieces fit together. So it's not rocket science,
- 1:17:31Speaker 5: but I feel like it definitely requires somebody on your team.
- 1:17:36Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be a paid consultant, but it
- 1:17:38Speaker 5: had like somebody should like really think about it. Usually
- 1:17:43Speaker 5: producer in most cases, but you know that doesn't usually happen,
- 1:17:47Speaker 5: so then it you know when a film gets its
- 1:17:49Speaker 5: first festival acceptance, or you know, they're going to try
- 1:17:53Speaker 5: a DIY release, or they've got a distributor that's like
- 1:17:56Speaker 5: going to quote unquote distribute them, but they're not going
- 1:17:59Speaker 5: to put any money or effort toward you know, marketing
- 1:18:02Speaker 5: or promoting that. And it's you know, it's really up
- 1:18:05Speaker 5: to the filmmakers, So you know, what are you going
- 1:18:08Speaker 5: to do? Then? Like you like, these are all questions
- 1:18:10Speaker 5: that will eventually come to like you know, bear like,
- 1:18:15Speaker 5: they will eventually like have an impact on you, So
- 1:18:18Speaker 5: you might as well think about them and figure them
- 1:18:20Speaker 5: out in the beginning and then realize, well, we don't
- 1:18:23Speaker 5: need this, we need this, We got to put more
- 1:18:24Speaker 5: money in toward this. We don't have enough for this.
- 1:18:27Speaker 5: Put it in your budget instead of like being at
- 1:18:30Speaker 5: the end when you toss the finish line because you've
- 1:18:32Speaker 5: completed your film, when you realize that it's just like
- 1:18:35Speaker 5: the first lap that you're like all of a sudden, like, oh,
- 1:18:38Speaker 5: we have three more laps that we have to run
- 1:18:40Speaker 5: with this film, and we have no money left and
- 1:18:43Speaker 5: everybody had burned out and we've called in all our favors.
- 1:18:46Speaker 5: Then who's going to see your movie. And that's just
- 1:18:49Speaker 5: the reality because there's so much content being produced and
- 1:18:53Speaker 5: the means of production are so like the bar is
- 1:18:55Speaker 5: solow for people to get something made, and you know,
- 1:18:59Speaker 5: it's just a lot of bad stuff out there. And
- 1:19:02Speaker 5: you know, if you've got a good movie, people should
- 1:19:04Speaker 5: be able to see it. And that's you know, it's
- 1:19:06Speaker 5: not you know, on an audience because you can't expect
- 1:19:10Speaker 5: them to search everything out. Like if you just put
- 1:19:12Speaker 5: your movie on VHX or on vimeo on man and
- 1:19:15Speaker 5: be like all right there, it is like I've leveled
- 1:19:17Speaker 5: the playing field. Well that's like the first step. Like
- 1:19:21Speaker 5: you've got to show people, like you've got to lead
- 1:19:23Speaker 5: people to that content, and you've got to encourage them.
- 1:19:26Speaker 5: You've got to convert them, and you've got to turn
- 1:19:27Speaker 5: them into fans, and you've got to you know, bring
- 1:19:29Speaker 5: them along for your next project and you know, show
- 1:19:32Speaker 5: them some value and give you know, provide you know,
- 1:19:35Speaker 5: a you know, community value and you know all that stuff.
- 1:19:39Speaker 5: So it's you know, if you think about it too much,
- 1:19:41Speaker 5: it can seem overwhelming. But you know that's kind of
- 1:19:45Speaker 5: like what these conversations are about is to you know,
- 1:19:48Speaker 5: hopefully try to like break it down. So somebody's like, Okay,
- 1:19:51Speaker 5: if I approach it from you know, this logical, step
- 1:19:54Speaker 5: by step kind of thing, it's like, it's not as
- 1:19:56Speaker 5: overwhelming or as crazy as it sounds.
- 1:20:01Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
- 1:20:07Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
- 1:20:10Speaker 5: It actually can be done by somebody who's just getting
- 1:20:12Speaker 5: you know. But maybe that's not the filmmaker, but maybe
- 1:20:15Speaker 5: it's you know, as a student intern, or maybe it's
- 1:20:18Speaker 5: your you know, uncles, you know, your cousin or whatever.
- 1:20:21Speaker 5: It's like, who's you know, twenty three years old and
- 1:20:24Speaker 5: knows everything about Snapchat and that's where you're going to
- 1:20:27Speaker 5: find your biggest audience. So anyway, you know, we could
- 1:20:30Speaker 5: probably go on and on.
- 1:20:33Speaker 4: You know, we could go on and on, because you know,
- 1:20:36Speaker 4: I was just going to say, you know, one of
- 1:20:37Speaker 4: the things that I realized from crowdfunding my last film
- 1:20:40Speaker 4: was I would definitely and for the next time I
- 1:20:43Speaker 4: plan a crowdfund, I have a team in mind. And
- 1:20:46Speaker 4: one of the things is, you know, obviously I'll sort
- 1:20:49Speaker 4: of be like, you know, the dictator, but but you know,
- 1:20:53Speaker 4: you've got to have, you know, a person who's in
- 1:20:55Speaker 4: charge of the crowdfunding campaign. You also have to have
- 1:20:57Speaker 4: a person who's in charge of the social media and
- 1:21:00Speaker 4: then from that person, I would put like one person's
- 1:21:03Speaker 4: in charge of Twitter, I have a person charge of Facebook,
- 1:21:06Speaker 4: have a person in charge of Instagram. And if you can't,
- 1:21:09Speaker 4: let's just say you can't build that dream team. You
- 1:21:11Speaker 4: can't pay everybody. You know, that's excellent advice. You had
- 1:21:13Speaker 4: just find somebody you know who maybe will work for free,
- 1:21:18Speaker 4: or who's a relative, a friend, you know, somebody had
- 1:21:20Speaker 4: bumped it on the street and maybe they can help
- 1:21:22Speaker 4: you out in some way you may and maybe you
- 1:21:25Speaker 4: can offer them something on you know, however, you want
- 1:21:27Speaker 4: to compensate them, you know, I mean, you know it's
- 1:21:30Speaker 4: it's it takes a village to raise a child, right Brad, Oh.
- 1:21:33Speaker 5: Yeah, that's for sure. Yep, Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
- 1:21:38Speaker 5: All all that stuff you just said, and it's like, yeah,
- 1:21:40Speaker 5: it's never going to be your perfect team. It's never
- 1:21:42Speaker 5: you know, your you know, your plan's never going to
- 1:21:44Speaker 5: be perfect. And once you implement it and you start
- 1:21:46Speaker 5: executing it, half of it's going to go out the
- 1:21:49Speaker 5: window because something changes, or somebody gets sick or what
- 1:21:53Speaker 5: you know, just kind of just be like prepared and
- 1:21:55Speaker 5: just move on and you know, just make it work somehow,
- 1:21:59Speaker 5: and if it doesn't work, then you know, set that
- 1:22:02Speaker 5: project aside and focus on the next one. Like like
- 1:22:06Speaker 5: I have a very like sort of like, you know,
- 1:22:09Speaker 5: just I'm not too precious about any one project or
- 1:22:13Speaker 5: anyone sort of thing, because I know that so many
- 1:22:18Speaker 5: things influence the success or failure of those projects that
- 1:22:25Speaker 5: you know, you just have to focus on the things
- 1:22:27Speaker 5: that you can control, hope for some good luck on
- 1:22:30Speaker 5: the things that you can't, and then just really, you know,
- 1:22:33Speaker 5: without sounding too pollyannish about it, but like just try
- 1:22:36Speaker 5: to stay positive about it through the whole through the
- 1:22:38Speaker 5: whole process, and you know, and you'll find like even
- 1:22:40Speaker 5: if the project doesn't succeed or like something gets goes
- 1:22:44Speaker 5: wrong midway or whatever, like, you may find that some
- 1:22:47Speaker 5: of your collaborators that you brought on board end up
- 1:22:51Speaker 5: being you know, key team members in the next project
- 1:22:55Speaker 5: or you help. You know, it's like you just never know.
- 1:22:58Speaker 5: And I think that's kind of like one of the
- 1:22:59Speaker 5: really cool things about a lot of this randomness that
- 1:23:03Speaker 5: we kind of discussed is that you just never know.
- 1:23:06Speaker 5: So you should always be open to those possibilities.
- 1:23:10Speaker 4: Some of those struggles could maybe lead to a better
- 1:23:13Speaker 4: opportunity or lead to a better discovery. There was a
- 1:23:15Speaker 4: book I was actually just reading. I have to finish
- 1:23:18Speaker 4: reading it called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holliday,
- 1:23:22Speaker 4: and that was very interesting. Yeah, and that's what it's
- 1:23:24Speaker 4: all about. The the New England Patriots actually distributed that
- 1:23:28Speaker 4: to all their players this year and to teach them
- 1:23:31Speaker 4: all about you know, adversity and everything else. And you
- 1:23:34Speaker 4: know that they do pretty well in football.
- 1:23:36Speaker 5: Yeah right, you know, Brad.
- 1:23:38Speaker 4: Sometimes you know, I hopefully we can sit down again.
- 1:23:41Speaker 4: I can have you back on the show if it
- 1:23:43Speaker 4: be able to come back.
- 1:23:45Speaker 5: Oh for sure. I'm actually I feel like I'm losing
- 1:23:47Speaker 5: my voice right now, so like to find me. I'd
- 1:23:49Speaker 5: love to come back. That'd be great.
- 1:23:50Speaker 4: Oh excellent. So Brad, where do you find your online.
- 1:23:54Speaker 5: So you can find you know, smart house is at
- 1:23:57Speaker 5: smart Housecreative dot com all one word because it's you know,
- 1:24:01Speaker 5: spelled normally. I'm on Twitter at JB W I l
- 1:24:07Speaker 5: K e H. Smart Houses on Twitter and Instagram at
- 1:24:11Speaker 5: teams smart house, and I'm also on Instagram at JB
- 1:24:15Speaker 5: Will keep that's another you know, just one more little
- 1:24:17Speaker 5: piece of advice is if you can can can standardize
- 1:24:21Speaker 5: all of your handles so that like people don't have
- 1:24:23Speaker 5: to like remember three different handles across your Twitter, Instagram,
- 1:24:27Speaker 5: you know, whatever else you might have, like try to
- 1:24:30Speaker 5: like if you can make them the same thing, so
- 1:24:32Speaker 5: it's not like it takes a lot of the guest
- 1:24:34Speaker 5: work out of the whole process of somebody is trying
- 1:24:36Speaker 5: to tag you at a conference or at a Q
- 1:24:38Speaker 5: and A or whatever. So you know, and then you know,
- 1:24:41Speaker 5: smart House is on Facebook and you know you can
- 1:24:44Speaker 5: you can find us. We have a blog to where
- 1:24:46Speaker 5: we do a lot of you know, guest posts from
- 1:24:48Speaker 5: people like filmmakers talk about their experiences and you know,
- 1:24:52Speaker 5: so anyway, that's you know, we're out there. Like I'm
- 1:24:57Speaker 5: usually not like I'm a good promoter, but sometimes like
- 1:25:00Speaker 5: I'm just like, you know, if you're interested, like you'll
- 1:25:03Speaker 5: be able to find us just team smart House, smart
- 1:25:06Speaker 5: House Creative JB. Wilkie. But yeah, I encourage like and
- 1:25:10Speaker 5: it would actually welcome anybody to tweet questions at me
- 1:25:14Speaker 5: on you know, on Twitter or to you know email. Brad,
- 1:25:17Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean that's you know another great way,
- 1:25:20Speaker 5: Brad b r a d at smart House Creative dot
- 1:25:23Speaker 5: com is my email address. So you know, if anybody
- 1:25:25Speaker 5: who's listening, as you know, questions that I might be
- 1:25:29Speaker 5: able to answer, like in an email or by you know,
- 1:25:31Speaker 5: sharing a link to something, you know, please get in touch.
- 1:25:34Speaker 5: You know, like I feel like I'm always like trying
- 1:25:36Speaker 5: to you know, broaden that community, and you know, and
- 1:25:39Speaker 5: and do you know, help out if I can, and
- 1:25:42Speaker 5: you know those like really minor kind of ways, but
- 1:25:44Speaker 5: you know, so yeah, tweet me your questions, email your questions,
- 1:25:47Speaker 5: and you know, I'll really do my best to get
- 1:25:50Speaker 5: you some some actual, like practical answers.
- 1:25:52Speaker 4: So, Brad, I want to say thank you very much
- 1:25:55Speaker 4: for coming on. This has been a fantastic episode for
- 1:25:58Speaker 4: all those people who were you know, confused about social
- 1:26:01Speaker 4: media and all that other you know, the digital the
- 1:26:04Speaker 4: digital media. I hopefully you know, they listen to this,
- 1:26:07Speaker 4: and I hope they gained a lot, you know, from this,
- 1:26:11Speaker 4: you know, or listen to it again everybody, if you're
- 1:26:12Speaker 4: still you know, if you're still not quite sure, because
- 1:26:15Speaker 4: Brad set a lot of key points in this interview
- 1:26:18Speaker 4: that I can't I can't stress enough of how to
- 1:26:21Speaker 4: build that digital market.
- 1:26:22Speaker 5: Well, you know, glad glad to and I'm you know,
- 1:26:24Speaker 5: I really, like I said, like trying to be as
- 1:26:27Speaker 5: practical and as like, you know, straightforward and clear as possible.
- 1:26:30Speaker 5: So because I feel like there's a lot of like
- 1:26:32Speaker 5: you know, anyway, we'll say that for the next episode.
- 1:26:36Speaker 4: I have a great night, buddy, and I wish you
- 1:26:39Speaker 4: the best. All right, thanks a lot, Deve anytime, buddy,
- 1:26:41Speaker 4: take care right.
- 1:26:44Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
- 1:26:46Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
- 1:26:47Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
- 1:26:49Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at any filmuscle dot
- 1:26:52Speaker 2: com forwards Lash eight twenty nine, and if you have
- 1:26:54Speaker 2: it already, please head over to filmmaking podcast dot com.
- 1:26:59Speaker 3: Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It
- 1:27:02Speaker 3: really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again
- 1:27:04Speaker 3: so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that
- 1:27:06Speaker 3: hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
- 1:27:09Speaker 3: and I'll talk to you soon.
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
- 1:27:18Speaker 1: F I L M h U S t l E
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: dot com,