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IFH 818: From Setbacks to Festival Wins: The Filmmaking Path of Dawn Fields · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
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  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight eighteen,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Cinema Should Make You Forget.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: You're sitting in a theater, Roman Polanski.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle Podcast.
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  Speaker 4: I am your humble.
• 0:39
  Speaker 5: Host Alex Ferrari.
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  Speaker 3: Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur
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  Speaker 3: It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to
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• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
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  Speaker 5: Hey, everyone shreating me to today is Dawn Films. Dawn
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  Speaker 5: is a Los Angeles based producer, writer, director, and owner
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  Speaker 5: of the feature of film production company Palm Street Films.
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  Speaker 5: She has been She has over twenty years of experience
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  Speaker 5: working as a producer, writer, director, assistant director, editor, and
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  Speaker 5: she has a background in acquisitions and development. Dawn has
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  Speaker 5: raised over one hundred thousand dollars for her short films
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  Speaker 5: socially through.
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  Speaker 4: Indiagogo, and she has also worked for such.
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  Speaker 5: Companies as Lucas Film, Twentieth Century Fox, TriStar, ABC, NBC,
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  Speaker 5: Aaron Spelling Productions, and Morgan Creek Dan.
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  Speaker 4: How are you hey?
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  Speaker 6: Good morning, Dave. I'm great, How are.
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  Speaker 4: You pretty good?
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  Speaker 5: Thanks? It's actually staring right here in pa Oh goodness.
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  Speaker 6: Okay, well it's cold here too, but everybody just laughs
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  Speaker 6: at us when we complain about the cold in La.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I think the high today is going to be like
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  Speaker 4: seven or eight.
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  Speaker 6: No way, yeah, oh gosh. Okay, Well I'm gonna stop
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: complaining then about how cold it is here.
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  Speaker 5: So don just to get us started, could you give
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  Speaker 5: us a little bit about your background.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, sure, of course. I started in the film business
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  Speaker 6: in Atlanta, Georgia in the early nineteen nineties when all
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  Speaker 6: of the Hollywood companies were coming out to Georgia to
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  Speaker 6: take advantage of the fact that it was a right
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  Speaker 6: to work state, the fact that you know, people were
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  Speaker 6: more cooperative, they actually got excited to give you their location,
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  Speaker 6: and so there was a lot of a lot of
• 3:19
  Speaker 6: good energy and spirit going on there. So Georgia really
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  Speaker 6: attracted a lot of big budget films that were coming
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  Speaker 6: through the South in the early nineties excuse me, and
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  Speaker 6: I started out as a production assistant and it was
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  Speaker 6: funny because how that happened was as my dad growing up,
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  Speaker 6: my dad always told me I should be an actress.
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  Speaker 6: And so there was a film called Love Potion Number
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  Speaker 6: nine which was in town shooting at the time. That's
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  Speaker 6: the film that actually launched Sandra Bullock's career and was
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  Speaker 6: written and directed by the wonderful Dale Loner. It was
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  Speaker 6: actually his directorial debut. He's a prolific writer and moved
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  Speaker 6: into directing. But anyway, I signed up to be an
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  Speaker 6: extra on that set and I was just it was
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  Speaker 6: my first time on a film set, and I was
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  Speaker 6: just I was hooked. I was just blown away and
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  Speaker 6: I'm like, this is amazing. And I realized very quickly
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  Speaker 6: that I really didn't really want to be in front
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  Speaker 6: of the camera. I wanted to be behind it. And
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  Speaker 6: so one of the pas that was in charge of
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  Speaker 6: the extras I was just really taken with, and I said,
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  Speaker 6: you know, how did you get your job? This looks
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  Speaker 6: really fascinating and he said, well, it's it literally is
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  Speaker 6: who you know. And I turned to him and I said, well,
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  Speaker 6: I know you, and he literally got me my first
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  Speaker 6: job in the business. And the first thing I got
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  Speaker 6: hired to do was go to and Bancroft. And Bancroft
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  Speaker 6: played Madame Ruth, and my first assignment was to go
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  Speaker 6: to her hotel room and read lines with her, and
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  Speaker 6: that was really an amazing experience and she was a wonderful,
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  Speaker 6: wonderful person and I'll never forget that. And then from
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  Speaker 6: there I got assigned to extras casting, and I got
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  Speaker 6: a lot of experience in the whole world of extras casting,
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  Speaker 6: which is a brutal job and I have mad respect
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  Speaker 6: for the people who do that work. And then from
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  Speaker 6: there I just kind of worked my way up. I
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  Speaker 6: thought I wanted to be in the DGA as an
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  Speaker 6: AD I was working towards that and trying to get
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  Speaker 6: my days. At the time, you had to have six
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  Speaker 6: hundred and fifty days as a PA to qualify for
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  Speaker 6: the DGA. So I was working on my days and
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  Speaker 6: I think I got up to like three hundred and
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  Speaker 6: fifty days on various films throughout the Southeast, including Young
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: Indiana Jones, the TV show where I got the opportunity
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  Speaker 6: to work with George Lucas. That was amazing, So I
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  Speaker 6: thought that was the path I wanted to take. And
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  Speaker 6: then after after I worked all these PA days, I
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  Speaker 6: started like wanting more and to move up the ladder.
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  Speaker 6: So I started being a first AD on some short
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  Speaker 6: form projects like short films and music videos and commercials
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  Speaker 6: and industrials and stuff like that, and I realized very
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  Speaker 6: quickly that I couldn't be that close to the camera
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  Speaker 6: without wanting to be involved in the creative decisions. So
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  Speaker 6: that's when I moved into producing with you know, realizing
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  Speaker 6: that being an AD wasn't necessarily the career path that
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  Speaker 6: I wanted to take, but it was definitely something I enjoyed.
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  Speaker 5: So you know that that was absolutely amazing. You got to,
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  Speaker 5: you know, read lines of dam Bancroft.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, it was, and it's it's uh, it was very
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  Speaker 6: hard for me when I heard that she had passed.
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  Speaker 6: That was tough. I know, I didn't know where that well,
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  Speaker 6: but still, whenever you meet someone and you kind of
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  Speaker 6: share a bond with them, you feel like you know them.
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  Speaker 6: And she was a wonderful, wonderful woman. That was That
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  Speaker 6: was a tragedy for sure.
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  Speaker 5: Absolutely, I'm sorry don't. Did I die I cut you
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  Speaker 5: off there? I'm sorry if I did. No, No, no,
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  Speaker 5: not at all, Okay, I I thought, uh, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: I sometimes have a tendency to do that, just to.
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  Speaker 5: Interject no please.
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  Speaker 6: I like that because I don't want to feel like
• 6:34
  Speaker 6: I don't want you to feel like you can't get
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  Speaker 6: a word in edgeviyes. I don't want to just talk
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: and talk and talk, but I tell you I could.
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  Speaker 6: I have so many stories, and I have so much
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  Speaker 6: to say about this business. I could talk to for days.
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  Speaker 6: So feel free to cut me off anytime.
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  Speaker 4: Well, that's good.
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  Speaker 5: Stories are good because I, like I always say, people
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: want to tune for the guest, it's not me because I.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Have a very nasily high, whiny voice and.
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  Speaker 6: I like your voice.
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  Speaker 4: Oh thank you.
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  Speaker 5: When I'm playing these podcasts back, I'm like, oh my goodness,
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  Speaker 5: this is do I sound like.
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  Speaker 6: Oh god? Them the same way when I see myself
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  Speaker 6: on camera, I can't stand it. So so anyways, so
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  Speaker 6: once I started getting into producing, I realized very quickly
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  Speaker 6: that there was no real money in Atlanta. You know,
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  Speaker 6: you could work on crew because there was a lot
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  Speaker 6: of films coming through, but you know, all the big
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  Speaker 6: shows coming through Reunion, and I had decided not to
• 7:21
  Speaker 6: go the DJA route and not to be a Union ad.
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  Speaker 6: So I started kind of branching out on my own,
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  Speaker 6: doing my own thing, and tried to raise some money
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  Speaker 6: for a couple of feature ideas and a couple of scripts,
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  Speaker 6: and then I just realized, Wow, there's just no there's
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  Speaker 6: no film At the time, there was no film business there,
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  Speaker 6: and I don't think there still is a film business there.
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  Speaker 6: I think it's still just a lot of movies coming
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  Speaker 6: through and a lot of things being shot there. There's
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  Speaker 6: certainly not the industry that there is out here where
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  Speaker 6: all the agents and managers and distributed you know, studio
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  Speaker 6: heads and distribution companies and stuff like that. Atlanta still
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  Speaker 6: doesn't have all that, but it's blowing up right now.
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  Speaker 6: There's like a thousand things filming there. And so I
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  Speaker 6: realized very quickly that Atlanta was not really where I
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  Speaker 6: needed to be. So in two thousand and I literally
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  Speaker 6: I remember I was walking my dog on a Tuesday,
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  Speaker 6: and I've been thinking about it for a long time,
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  Speaker 6: and I stopped in my tracks and I just looked
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  Speaker 6: down at my dog and I said, you know what
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  Speaker 6: it's time. And two weeks later I was gone, and
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  Speaker 6: I packed up everything I owned in a U haul
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  Speaker 6: and I drove out here with no job, no apartment.
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  Speaker 6: Had a few connections friends that I knew to let
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  Speaker 6: me sleep on their couch till I found a place,
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  Speaker 6: but I really just took that leap of faith that
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  Speaker 6: I came out here with nothing. And the first the
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  Speaker 6: first several years, well, I've had a lot, you know.
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  Speaker 6: I've been here fifteen years now, and I would say
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  Speaker 6: seventy five percent of that have been tough times. I mean,
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  Speaker 6: this is a brutal industry, and for anybody who thinks
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: that it's not, maybe some people have it easy, but
• 8:46
  Speaker 6: most of us have to really struggle and fight for it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 6: And it's been a struggle almost every step of the way.
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  Speaker 6: But I think that just speaks to how badly you
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: have to want something, because it's still something that I
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  Speaker 6: want more than anything, and it always has been, and
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: so you just you figure out how to make it work.
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  Speaker 6: So the first job that I had when I moved
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  Speaker 6: out here was for a medium size, kind of on
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  Speaker 6: the small side, distribution and production company where it was
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  Speaker 6: a really interesting position. They put me in I was
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  Speaker 6: the vice president of distribution and I was the vice
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  Speaker 6: president of acquisitions. So that was really cool because I
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  Speaker 6: got to go to all the film festivals to scour
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  Speaker 6: finished films for us to acquire, and I got to,
• 9:29
  Speaker 6: you know, reach out to filmmakers for finished films to
• 9:32
  Speaker 6: see which ones we might want to acquire for distribution.
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  Speaker 6: But I also got to go to like pitch panels
• 9:39
  Speaker 6: and meet with agents. I was wining and dining agents
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  Speaker 6: a lot and looking for scripts that our production arm
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  Speaker 6: could produce. So that was like a really great experience,
• 9:48
  Speaker 6: and quite honestly, they paid me pretty well. It was
• 9:50
  Speaker 6: a really nice base salary plus commission, which was real.
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  Speaker 6: So it's really kind of a nice job. But again
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  Speaker 6: I found myself like, we'll.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: now back to the show.
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: Missing being in production. You know. I was working in
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: an office all day and I was helping other people
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  Speaker 6: with their films, but I wasn't being able to do
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  Speaker 6: my film, so that even though that was a great job,
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: it lasted about three months, excuse me, and then I
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: left that job and decided I wanted to do my
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: own things. So I found a couple of scripts that
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  Speaker 6: I really liked, was in development on those for quite
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: a while, and before I knew it, like several years
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: had gone by and I hadn't still hadn't produced anything.
• 10:39
  Speaker 6: I was ading here and there just for freelance and
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: helping people here and there with their shoots, but I
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: wasn't really doing what I wanted to do. So I
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: remember it was in twenty twelve, I believe late twenty
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  Speaker 6: twelve I finally just said, you know what, I've had enough.
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  Speaker 6: I just want to make a movie. And by this
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: time I had acquired over five thousand friends on Facebook,
• 11:06
  Speaker 6: well right at five thousand friends, because they cap it
• 11:09
  Speaker 6: at that, but I had reached my five thousand limit
• 11:12
  Speaker 6: of friends on Facebook, which was an account I created,
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: like I had a friends and family account when I
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: first moved here. But my friends and family, I think
• 11:20
  Speaker 6: they got tired of me only talking about film all
• 11:22
  Speaker 6: the time, because that's all I talked about. So about
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: five years ago, maybe it's been more now. I created
• 11:29
  Speaker 6: a Facebook profile for myself just to interact and engage
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  Speaker 6: with other filmmakers, and that just grew organically out of
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  Speaker 6: my need and my desire to friend other filmmakers and
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: other film companies and just kind of keep up to
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: date on what everybody else was doing. I was just fascinated.
• 11:45
  Speaker 6: I simply wanted to know what everybody else was doing,
• 11:48
  Speaker 6: and that, in a crazy way, just organically grew to
• 11:53
  Speaker 6: the point where I now have almost five thousand friends.
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: I have to keep it limited so I can add
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  Speaker 6: new people as I actually make friends, not just connections
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  Speaker 6: but actual friends and people I know, so I have
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  Speaker 6: to kind of keep that limited. But several years ago,
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: Facebook opened up subscribers and people could follow you even
• 12:09
  Speaker 6: on top of friending you, and really quickly I had
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  Speaker 6: amassed over twelve four hundred people as subscribers that are
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  Speaker 6: all in the film business. So little did I know
• 12:23
  Speaker 6: at the time how beneficial overall that was going to
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: be for me in my career, because as we get
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: into discussions a little bit later on about crowdfunding and
• 12:32
  Speaker 6: how I financed all my films, it's almost exclusively come
• 12:36
  Speaker 6: from that base of friends and followers.
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  Speaker 5: So you know, that's absolutely amazing, and you know, really quickly,
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  Speaker 5: I just wanted to ask you, how do you decide
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: who to delete on that five thousand friends? You know,
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: because I'm coming through that cap too, when I'm just like, well,
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: who gets cut here at?
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  Speaker 4: How do you make that decision?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah? Well, you know, when I first started friending people
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: way back in the early I would friend anybody from anywhere.
• 13:02
  Speaker 6: I actually had friended a whole bunch of you know,
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: back then you could go in and do a search
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: for terms like film, movie, film industry, those kind of
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  Speaker 6: I was putting in terms like that, and all these
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: suggestions were coming up, and I just friended and liked
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  Speaker 6: all of them, and a huge handful of them were foreign,
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: and some of them were in foreign languages even that
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: I couldn't understand. But at the time, I was just
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: like reached out to everybody. Once I started getting close
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: to my five thousand, that's the first thing I went
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: in and did as I went in and started eliminating
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: those companies and those people that were foreign where I
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: couldn't even understand what they were saying. But now it's
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: actually become quite a problem because every film I work on,
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: I meet, you know, ten twenty thirty new people, and
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: I want to friend all of them. And as I
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: go through you know, various pre production and development and
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: castings and all that kind of stuff. I'm always meeting
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: new people, so I've had to go through many times
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: and just make the tough decision of who to cut,
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: and Facebook doesn't make it easy. Unfortunately. I wish that
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: there was a really simple way to just go in
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: and delete, like people who haven't been active in six
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: months to a year, because there's a lot of accounts
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: that people create that they don't ever do anything with.
• 14:20
  Speaker 6: But they don't really make it that easy. But I
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: can tell you this, if you have a well, there's
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: a couple of ways you can do it. If you
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: go to hang let me just pull my microphone over
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: here to my other computer. If you go to your
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: profile on Facebook and you click on the friends tab,
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: there's a couple of categories there. You can bring up
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: your friends if you'll notice, you can bring up recently added,
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: you can bring up work friends, college friends, high school,
• 14:54
  Speaker 6: current city. There's a couple of other followers following. There's
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: several selections there. It will group them by that, and
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: Facebook's algorithms are such that the people you interact with
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: most are going to come up first, and that everybody
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: else comes up after. So you could conceivably go into
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: any one of those categories, or just look at your
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: friends group as a whole and just scroll all the
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: way down to the end. Now that's going to take
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: you about fifteen minutes probably if you have five thousand friends,
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: but you can scroll all the way down, and you know,
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: you have to look at the people too and make sure.
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: But for the most part, the lesser active people are
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: going to be down at the bottom, and then you
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: can click on each one of those decide if you
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: want a friend them or not for unfriend them.
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: You know that's interesting because you know, Twitter makes it
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: a lot easier because you can use different programs like
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: manage filter or Flitter I think it's called. And then
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: you know, you can actually just see who's been inactive
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: for you know, three months, four months, et cetera, and
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: you can follow those people.
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: Don't We all wish Facebook would do that. I you know, Facebook,
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: I don't think want you to unfollow people is probably
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: their whole thing. But yeah, I wish it were that easy.
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: But you know, I think that you shouldn't be friending
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: people you don't know anyway. But but the truth is,
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: it's kind of ridiculous that Facebook limits people to five thousand.
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: That's never made any sense to me how they want
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: to control how many friends I have.
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, what I've been doing is with close to my
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: five thousand friends. A little bit I've started to realize,
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: like I think a lot of friends from high school,
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: probably like I don't talk to most of them anyway,
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, most of them found me like I, Like
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: you just said, I usually only from acuest people that
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: I know or have met at a networking party or
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: have met somewhere else, and then I'll from across them
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: or you know, et cetera. But you know a lot
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: of and also, you know, I think some people too,
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: like you just said with oh, you talk about his film, like, oh,
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: I talk about film too. My social media sites are
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: very rarely anything political or religious or anything like that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: So usually it's all film stuff because that's all I
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: want to talk about, you know, I don't want to
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: talk about politics or religion online, you know what I mean?
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I know. And that's there's you know, you and
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: I could be fast friends. That's one of the things
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: that ties James that I together. James pap Heiden is
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: a really good friend of mine. He actually started working
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: for me in my production office a couple of years
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: ago as an intern and slowly has now made his
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: way up to helping me produce stuff. He's a producer
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: now and he's actually in the next month or so,
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: in the in the month of March, I believe is
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: going to direct for the first time. So and that's
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: kind of what we have in common. And I don't
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: I don't think anybody else outside the business could stand
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: being around the two of us, pretend, you know, for
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: any length of time, because it's all we talk about.
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, which means one of my friends talk
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: about too. Is you know, we talked about a lot
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: of film stuff, and you know, screenwriting writers' groups, this
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: and that. You know, it's just that way, you know
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: what you're getting stelf into. So so everyone, if you
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: subscribe to Dawn on Facebook, that's all you're going to
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: hear is about film stuff, which that's true, which I
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: think is a great thing.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: By the way.
• 17:53
  Speaker 6: However, however, I will say though that the more I
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: started engaging with my filmmaker friends on face Book, the
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: less I started interacting with my friends and family. I'm
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: sad to say I don't even use my friends and
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: family account anymore. So what you'll find on my on
• 18:08
  Speaker 6: my Facebook account now is it's kind of a mix.
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: I do talk about, you know, the foods I like
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: to cook and the things I like to do for
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: fun and I do, and my opinions on things. So
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: it it has kind of become a hybrid because you know,
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: I do so many crowdfunding campaigns and I do so
• 18:24
  Speaker 6: many things like seminars now. I'm doing seminars now, and
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: I have a script contest. I don't want people to
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: think I'm just trying to like be a business and
• 18:33
  Speaker 6: shove all my business stuff in their face. So you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: I just that's my own, my only account now, and
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: that's where I share really my It's really become my
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: personal and my professional profile because I'm because I'm on
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: it all the time. I just I don't have time
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: to go back to my friends and family, Moore. It's
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: very sad they all miss me, but I keep you know,
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: most of them are friends on my face you know,
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: my filmmaker Facebook as well, so I always tell them
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: if they want to know what's going on with me,
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: to you know, click on that one and join that
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: when and most of them have.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: So yeah, that's it's a good way to keep in
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: contact too, is I mean, honestly, I I tried to
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: have multiple facebooks and that that wasn't gonna that. That
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: just I was like, mine, this is a lot of work.
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: So what I did was if anyone was keeping contact
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: with me, like you know what I mean, Like I
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: usually just post stuff like what I'm doing and this
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: is what I'm up to and there that's it, you know,
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: and we've caught up. So yeah, I just want to
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: usually post everything I'm doing.
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: So, but are there Yeah, and there is something to
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: be said for you know, your friends and family you
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: should be hanging out with and calling on the phone, so,
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: you know. So so I tell my friends and family,
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: I'm like, hey, if you miss me, pick up the
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: phone and call me. You don't have to go to
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: Facebook to see what I'm doing.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: And just you know, speaking of you know, what you're doing,
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: you know, just to talk about you know, all your projects.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: I really want to you know, cause you have a
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: lot of really interesting film projects here. Uh you know
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: you started Palm Street Films in what year.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 20:09
  Speaker 6: I believe I started it in twenty ten. I had
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: had another production company before that called Glass Mountain Entertainment,
• 20:16
  Speaker 6: but we never really had any projects that we ran
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: through there or had anything really happen with it. We
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: were more in just development on things. So I don't
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: even remember why I ended up closing that when and
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: changing the name, but I did, I guess just rebranding remarketing.
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: Wasn't sure I loved the name, so rebranded and launched
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: a new company, I believe in twenty ten. That's when
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: we started that.
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: So you know, then, could you talk about, you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: your first project with the Palm Street Films, which is
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: Bonds and Lace.
• 20:46
  Speaker 6: Actually, Dave, I will, I'm going to actually go more
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: old school than that. The actual there were actually three
• 20:54
  Speaker 6: documentaries that I had in development and in production. Actually
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: some of them are as much as eighty percent shot.
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: That That were the first things that I did through
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: the company. But one we ran out of money for
• 21:09
  Speaker 6: the documentaries, which is one thing. But then I just
• 21:12
  Speaker 6: started realizing that documentaries it's a whole different style of filmmaking.
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: It's a whole different set of rules. It's completely different.
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: It's really truly apples and oranges from narrative filmmaking, and
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: as much as I had these personal stories that I
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: really wanted to tell, I just kept being gravitated back
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: towards narrative. And so I still want to finish those
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: documentaries some day. I haven't shelved them, but it's taking
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: some time to figure out how to get those on autopology.
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: I would love to hire a documentary person into my
• 21:40
  Speaker 6: company once we actually have some funds to do that
• 21:43
  Speaker 6: with and high and have them help me finish those out.
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: But the actual first project that we ran through Palm
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: Street Films was Zombie Elves.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: Oh that's right.
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Again, it came at a time where I'm like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: I just want to shoot something. I'm tired of all
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: this talk. I want to make a movie, and I started,
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: you know, started thinking about what could I do that
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: I would enjoy that would also be profitable, because for
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: the last few years, I've also really tried to focus
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: on how do I make a living at this business?
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: How do I not only pay my bills, but hopefully
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: someday make enough money to have a savings account set aside,
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: to have a retirement plan, to have a little next egg,
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: bose some financial security. Those kinds of things. So Zombie's
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: was really my attempt at creating a project that I
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: thought would really succeed financially. And zombies were really hot
• 22:33
  Speaker 6: at the time, and you just can't go wrong with
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: the marketing power of Christmas, and so I thought, you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: what would happen if you created a situation where there
• 22:44
  Speaker 6: was a zombie outbreak on the North Pole? And everybody
• 22:47
  Speaker 6: just went crazy over the idea and they laughed and
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: they thought it was hysterical, and we just had so
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: much fun developing that project, and we did actually get
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: a script written. The script kind of went in a
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: direction that was not right. We sent it out for
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: some feedback, and people just really didn't enjoy it. I
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: don't think I think we went too much Zombie and
• 23:06
  Speaker 6: not enough Christmas. And people really wanted that there needed
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: to be some Christmas spirit in there. There needed to
• 23:11
  Speaker 6: be a lesson learned, there needed to be some magic
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: of Christmas. We kind of didn't put any of that
• 23:17
  Speaker 6: stuff in there, and it turned out that it wasn't
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: very satisfying for audiences. But Zombiell's was actually my first
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: crowdfunding campaign, and I made a ton of mistakes on
• 23:27
  Speaker 6: that campaign. That's part of where I start my seminars
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: now is talking about Zombielves. And that's really the campaign
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: that I learned all my lessons on.
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: You know, I remember Zombie Elves. I actually donated and
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: I still have that T shirt.
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: Well here's the thing that's so funny. It's like, we
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: were so excited about the marketing power of this film
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: that long before we even thought about crowdfunding, we wanted
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: to set up merchandise because everybody was telling me that
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: horror films love their merch right, and so we were like, okay, great,
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: well let's do these T shirts. So let's do this calendar,
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: and let's do bumper stickers, and let's do all this
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: merchandise that the horror films are And I started. I
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: created a Facebook account just to start interacting and engaging
• 24:09
  Speaker 6: with horror fans, and I got up to five thousand
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: friends instantly on that there's a just a there's a
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: huge following database of horror fans on Facebook and Twitter.
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's a huge culture of horror fans out there.
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: So we had started creating all that merchandise before we
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: even decided to do crowdfunding. So that's part of the
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: reason we were like, look, we have all this merchandise
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: we're creating. Crowdfunding makes sense because we can offer all
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: those things as perks. And some of the stuff wasn't
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: finished yet. We hadn't finished the calendar yet, we were
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: working on it. Some of the one we had done
• 24:40
  Speaker 6: one T shirt but wanted to do more. So it
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: just kind of made sense. So we had budgeted the
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: film at six hundred thousand dollars, and we decided that
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: if we could raise like forty thousand dollars in development money,
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: that would you know, get me through the six months
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: or so that I needed to pay a writer, get
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: a script written, you know, start tackling the very difficult
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: task of casting, because there's the question of a movie
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: like this, do you use little people, do you use
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: small actors, do you use children? Do use cgi? It's
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: like how do you make how do you make the
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: story happen? And at the time, I was a producer,
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: not a director, so I didn't really have a terribly
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: clear vision for it. Yet I knew marketing wise, what
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: I wanted it to be, and from a producers standpoint,
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: I knew what it needed to accomplish. But I didn't
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: really have those director skills yet, so I still wasn't
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: sure really what the film was going to be. So
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: we did. We made the number one mistake that people
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: make in crowdfunding, which is they feel like if they
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: put it out there, they will come. And that's really
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: not true unless you take years and years to try
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: to make that happen. But the reality of it is
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: for a campaign to raise that much money we were
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: looking for forty thousand dollars. For that much money, you
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: have to have an existing fan base. You have to
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: because thirty days or forty five days or how many
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: of her long days you can run an Indigogo campaign
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: or a crowdfunding campaign, you don't have time to all
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: of a sudden whip up ten thousand fans or a
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: million fans. You have to do all that in advance.
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: You have to have an existing fan base to already
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: go out and say to those people, Hey, here's what
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: I'm doing. You've loved my work before, you love me,
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: now fund this project. I was under the bad assumption
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: that if we put it out there, the horror fans
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: would just glom all and all of a sudden we'd
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: get all this money and that absolutely didn't happen. Do
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: my friends and family and Facebook followers and fans. I
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: did manage to raise about four thousand dollars, and since
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: we already had all the merchandise anyway, I had two choices.
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: I'm like, you know, when we didn't hit our goal
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: or come anywhere close to it, I'm like, well, I
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: can refund everybody's money and back to absolutely zero, or
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: I can use that money to go ahead and fulfill
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: the perks anyway and at least give everybody their perks
• 26:55
  Speaker 6: because we do still plan on making that film. It's
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: a very difficult film that's taking a long time toime
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: figure out how to make that film be what it
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: needs to be. But it is definitely not shelved. It's
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: very much alive and well, and we do plan on
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: making that movie. And now that I'm directing, I'm actually
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: very very excited about the opportunity to direct it. So
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: that's a whole nother development that's happened just in the
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: last two years that wasn't in place there. But I'm
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: so glad you got your shirt and your calendar, and
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: I hope you enjoy it. Hang on to it because
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: it may be worth something someday.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I definitely keep well hold on to that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: I actually took a picture of that and shared it
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: on some social media sites and people were like, hey,
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: what movie is this? Where can I get this at?
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: I know?
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: And it was you know, I was like, hey, check
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: out this campaign. That's where I got it from.
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: It's a great idea. It's it's going to be you know,
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: I always tell people, the more I talk to people
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: in Hollywood, the more I find out it's the kind
• 27:46
  Speaker 6: of movie that everybody wants to see, but nobody wants
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: to make because it's difficult. You know, you have to
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: build that world. You have to create a set, you
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: have to build the north Pole, you have to vision
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: it because you know, you can have it be a
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: different North Pole than we've seen before, which is my
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: vision for it. You know, like I said, there's a
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: lot of options in casting. None of them are cheap.
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: By the way, all three of those options that I listed,
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: Little People, Children CGI, none of those are cheap. And
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: you know, everybody wants to make Zombielles for two hundred
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: thousand dollars and put it out on the market and
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: then just see if it becomes this cult classic. You
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: can't make that film for two hundred thousand dollars, and
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: so it's been a bit of a struggle. But the
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: biggest challenge for me is what is the film. Is
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: it kind of a dark family film like Gremlins. Is
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: it funny and over the top like a shan of
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: the Dead. Is it violent and gruesome but kind of
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: campy like a you know, Leprechaun, Wasn't that gruesome? But
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: is it kind of a Leprechaun kind of thing where
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: you have kind of the comedic element of these small individuals,
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: you know, because that's kind of funny in itself, really,
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: you know. Or do you just take it really seriously
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: and treat it like just this all out zombie survival story,
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: which is what we did in the first draft, and
• 29:11
  Speaker 6: that didn't really resonate with people. So the biggest challenge
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: for me with this film is really just trying to
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: figure out almost what genre to put it in, but
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: more specifically, what do you want it to be to
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: the audience? A comedy, a slasher film, you know, what
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: is it? That's where I'm hung up right now, and
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: I'm getting really close to making that decision. But the
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: choice I'm about to make is not cheap and so
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: that is its own problem.
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: If you ever want someone who bounce ide youself of Dawn,
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: please feel free to always contact me.
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: Oh sure, absolutely, I would love that. Oh you know,
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: I'm finishing out my last two short films now that
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: are in post and the than then we are moving
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: into what are we going to do for our first feature.
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: I don't know ZOMBIELLS is going to be the first
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: feature because it is difficult and expensive and complicated, but
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: it will definitely be the second. I might do a
• 29:59
  Speaker 6: small character piece first.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: But it's it's definitely on the list and it's definitely
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: going to happen.
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: Excellent and yes, so please keep me informed of what's
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: going on, you know, I you know, I again, I
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: think it's a great idea and honestly, I think, you know,
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: the marketing in that is so many different creative ways
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: to market that film.
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: It's almost a no brainer. Really, I mean it almost is.
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: And the reason I love the idea of it right
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: from the beginnings because we initially we were going to
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: do it for that two hundred thousand dollars level, and
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: just you know, we because we were thinking, you know,
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: even if this sucks, even if this is like the
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: worst film ever made, it's still going to be a
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: cult classic. You know, there's you almost can't fail with it.
• 30:49
  Speaker 6: And there was a movie called Thanks Killing. Yes, I've
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: seen that, you know, kind of like that. I mean
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: they just went in so tongue in cheeks, so campy,
• 30:57
  Speaker 6: low production value. But those guys were just having fun
• 31:00
  Speaker 6: and you know, kind of poking fun at the genres
• 31:02
  Speaker 6: and all that kind of stuff, and it blew up
• 31:04
  Speaker 6: and it did really well and they end up doing
• 31:06
  Speaker 6: a second movie. So but but I have now that
• 31:09
  Speaker 6: my taste have evolved, and I I don't think I
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: was ever really comfortable going that route with that film
• 31:15
  Speaker 6: because that's not my style as a producer or director.
• 31:18
  Speaker 6: My style is high production value, high quality. That was
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: never really resonating with me to make the film that way.
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah I did. You didn't mention Sean on the Dead,
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: And I think that that is probably the best way
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: to go, because when I heard the concept of the movie,
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: I mean even something similar short on the Dead would
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: be hilarious.
• 31:39
  Speaker 6: Well it would, but honestly, the you know, the difficult
• 31:41
  Speaker 6: part is is I've had the honor of working with
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: several little people throughout this process. We did some castings.
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: We we actually in our indiegog video needed someone. We
• 31:52
  Speaker 6: did some zombie walks where we had you know, some
• 31:55
  Speaker 6: people dressed up as zombie elves and that was really
• 31:58
  Speaker 6: funny and people love that and it took a lot
• 31:59
  Speaker 6: of pictures. But I have a huge amount of respect
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: for them and I and I just want to be
• 32:05
  Speaker 6: very careful in this film that we're not poking fun
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: at them. You know. It's like I want the care
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: if we do go with little people as the elves,
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: I want to treat them with the utmost respect. And
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: I want them to be serious characters and have serious
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: storylines and character arcs and emotional conflicts and interactions with
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: each other. And so it's you know, it's like I
• 32:31
  Speaker 6: I teeter back and forth on how funny do I
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: really want it to be? There's some you know what
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: I'm saying, It's like it's it's it's a challenge. It's
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: a real challenge.
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely know what you mean. And you know,
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: you're always you know, wanting to know that you don't
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: actually make fun of them. But you know, I honestly
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: I think you would. You would hit the perfect mix
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: of you know, humor and horror and you know, without
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: going over the top. But again, you know again, if
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: you ever want, you know, boundside these off, someone please
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: let me.
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: Now, absolutely, And I appreciate that. And as I've gotten
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: more comfortable in my director's hat, I've I've realized that
• 33:08
  Speaker 6: almost the thing that almost all my films have in
• 33:10
  Speaker 6: common is an emotional intimacy. And I think, well, except
• 33:16
  Speaker 6: for one comedy that I did that really was just
• 33:18
  Speaker 6: kind of a straight out comedy, but all the other
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: films really have really a very intense emotional thread to them.
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: So I think a lot of people would question if
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: I'm the right person to do zombielles and I would
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: say I absolutely am, because I because I would bring
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: that to the table.
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I know what you mean about you.
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: Sometimes the comedies can just be comedies because I've done
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: that too. Like I made a short film one time
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: and it was literally, I'm sorry, a feature film and
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: it was literally just you know, uh going over the
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: top every each every time, and it was it was
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: what I used as a student film and literally that's
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: what I used to, you know, to cut my own
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: teeth on. And it was just, you know, if you
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: weren't in on the joke, let's saying, people just like
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: either thought this was so ridiculous, some people actually got it,
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: or like some people were like, I don't get this
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: at all, Dave, and I'm like, you know, I completely understand.
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: You know. Well, I learned really on when I was
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: in development at that company I was telling you about
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: I would get. I would come across some comedy scripts
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: that I just thought were gold that I loved, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: I would send them out to some agents who specialized
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: in comedy, and they just wouldn't get it. They wouldn't
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: think it was funny. So I learned really early on
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: that what they say is true comedy is subjective.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: Oh absolutely, you know. I was actually just talking to
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: Steve Kaplan today. Steve Kaplan, if you know, he does
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: his comedy Chaplincomedy dot com and he is all about
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: you know, these seminars and he also has his own book.
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: His book is probably the best book on comedy I've
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: ever read, and it opened my eyes to what people
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: find funny. How Come I find something funny, but you don't.
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: It's kind of like that dress. Everyone saw a line.
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: Some people saw golden Yeah what coor did you see
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: I saw golden white?
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: Yeah? Me too, Yeah me too. That's kind of crazy.
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: But uh but yeah, I'm sorry not to segue too
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: far before, but you talk about yeah, so addresses and everything. Yeah,
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: I was actually gonna go into color theory too, and
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: that's why I was like, let me stop myself, yes,
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: because so you know, but yeah, if you ever get
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: a chance to, I highly recommend his book. And his
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: name was, again is Steve Kaplan, and he's actually been
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: on the podcast and he is absolutely phenomenal.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: At this stuff.
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: So great.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: So okay, so after.
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: Zombie Els, after you knew, you know, at that you
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: know point in time, you know, you didn't have the
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: you know, the right amount of resources to make that,
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: you know, what project did you move on to after that?
• 35:41
  Speaker 6: Well? It was interesting because I had built enough of
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: a following on Facebook at this point where I'm like,
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: you know what, I know a bunch of writers. Let
• 35:48
  Speaker 6: me just see if I can find a ten page
• 35:50
  Speaker 6: script or less, something that's easy to shoot that we
• 35:52
  Speaker 6: can just do over a weekend for very little money,
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: and let's just do that. So I put out a
• 35:57
  Speaker 6: call on my Facebook for scripts and I got over
• 35:59
  Speaker 6: the hundred responses.
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: Wow, and yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 6: It was incredible. And so we narrowed that down to
• 36:06
  Speaker 6: the top fifteen and we announced that on Facebook, and
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: then we got it to the top ten and announced
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: that in the top five, and then the top three,
• 36:13
  Speaker 6: and everybody was so excited every time, you know, we
• 36:15
  Speaker 6: made the announcement of who had made the cut and
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: the final three scripts. I kind of liked all of them,
• 36:22
  Speaker 6: so I sent them out to about a dozen friends
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: of mine and colleagues who I trusted, and hands down,
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: the winning script was a script called Fragment. And this
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: was a short script written by a UK writer named
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: Carly Street. And I can't really say what the script
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: is about because there's a there's a twist in it
• 36:39
  Speaker 6: to this day that I still don't like to give away.
• 36:41
  Speaker 6: But it was this very powerful script. You think it's
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: one thing. You think it's like this horror film and
• 36:46
  Speaker 6: this kind of torture porn kind of movie, and then
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: in the end you kind of realize it's something completely different.
• 36:54
  Speaker 6: But Carly's script took place over like five different locations,
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: one of them being a grocery store, one of them
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: being a hospital, and a lot in many parts of
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: the hospital not just a room, but a room and
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: a hallway and a bathroom. So we'd have to have
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: like a bit like a real hospital, not just a
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: one room set. And anybody in LA knows that those
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: are not expensive and not easy to get. So I'm like, well,
• 37:18
  Speaker 6: how am I going to do this? So I put
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: my producer hat on and I said, Carly, what do
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: you think about? You know, she she had won one
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: hundred and fifty dollars cash for the script and that
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: we were going to make it, so it was a
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: pretty good deal for her. So we own the script
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: at that point, and I said, Carly, what do you
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: think about? Do you mind if I go in and
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: just kind of make it all happen. I'd asked her
• 37:40
  Speaker 6: to do it initially, I said, you know, do you
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: think you could go in and make this all happen
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: in one location? And she said, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: So she went in and she did a great job,
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: but it's still there were still some other locations in there.
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: It still wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. So
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: I said to her, I'm like, you know, do you
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: mind if I go in and take a stab at it,
• 37:56
  Speaker 6: because I think I know what I want. And she said,
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: she said, yeah, yeah, absolutly no problem please. And I
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: think this is the first time I started thinking like
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: a director. And I didn't even know it yet because
• 38:06
  Speaker 6: I was still just producing at the time. But I
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: went in and something I chanced, I channeled something. I
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: don't know what came over me, but I just really
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: started resonating with the story and I went in and
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: I made the whole thing happen inside the house. And
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: once I started sending that script out to people for feedback,
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: it was just overwhelming. People were like, oh my god,
• 38:29
  Speaker 6: Oh my god. And I'm like, you know what, guys,
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: We're onto something here. This isn't this little, no budget,
• 38:34
  Speaker 6: two day weekend script with a bunch of volunteers. This
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: is like a really powerful film now. And it kept
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Maybe too big honestly
• 38:42
  Speaker 6: in hindsight, but it just took on this massive life
• 38:45
  Speaker 6: of its own. And then we started thinking, well, what
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: actors can we get in this. We started sending the
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: script out to some agents and some big agents actually,
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: and the response was unbelievable. There was all these actors
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: that were dying to do it for free, and they
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: wanted to be a part of it. And there was
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: an agent at the Abrams agency that told me it
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: was the most powerful short script she'd ever read. And
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: so we just started going, Oh my god, we're really
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: onto something here, and we changed the title of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: script to Shattered Love. So this is the story of
• 39:13
  Speaker 6: how Shattered Love got started. So we we realized pretty
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: quickly that we needed some money to keep this going,
• 39:24
  Speaker 6: to make this happen. So I took everything I had learned,
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: because the other thing I learned from Zombie Elves is
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: I did not factor in the ship the shipping and
• 39:36
  Speaker 6: handling and postage for all those perks. I sent out
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: each one of those envelopes that had a calendar and
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: a T shirt, and it cost three dollars and fifty
• 39:44
  Speaker 6: cents to ship. And that was in addition to the envelopes,
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: the labels, the time, the cost of putting it all together,
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: the cost of manufacturing the shirts, getting the calendars printed.
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: I mean it took the whole four thousand dollars that
• 39:58
  Speaker 6: I raised just to get all those perks of a
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: FE build.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: So when I did the next campaign, that was the
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: lesson I learned with that is no more physical perks
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: from now on, I'm only going to give like digital
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: perks and things that don't have to be manufactured or ships.
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: That was a really that was the second big lesson.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: The first is have a fan base first, and the
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: second is limit the stuff you're actually manufacturing and shipping
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: out because the cost of that will be thirty percent
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: of what you're trying to raise. So what I did is,
• 40:40
  Speaker 6: I'm like, well, what do we have asset wise, I'm like,
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: we have a really powerful script. So I created an
• 40:45
  Speaker 6: Indigogo campaign for two weeks, and I didn't have a director,
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: I didn't have any actors attached yet. All I did
• 40:52
  Speaker 6: was scan those script pages and post them as images
• 40:55
  Speaker 6: on the Indigogo wall. And I because I didn't want
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: people to have to click on a link. I wanted
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: to just to be able to read the script as
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: soon as they landed on the campaign page. And in
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: two weeks I had raised over five thousand dollars just
• 41:08
  Speaker 6: based on the strength of the script. And the script,
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: by the way, was only seven pages. So that was
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: our first funding campaign. Then we got some actors attached,
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: we got a director attached. We ran a second two
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: week campaign and raised another five thousand dollars. And then
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: but from that point on everything started growing. We wanted
• 41:29
  Speaker 6: the best DP, we wanted the best location, we wanted insurance,
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: we wanted to be able to pay people, we wanted
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: all this kind of stuff. Next thing we know, we
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: have a sixty thousand dollar budget, and I think in hindsight, honestly,
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: it just got too big for its own breitches. It
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and honestly,
• 41:48
  Speaker 6: I think the film itself probably would have been better
• 41:52
  Speaker 6: off in the long run if we had just done
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: it really small and simple with unknown actors right from
• 41:56
  Speaker 6: the start. It certainly would have saved us from the
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: calamity that that happened shortly afterwards. But anyway, so we
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: had we had we had cast some name actors that
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: we ended up not really being, not not really resonating
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: with through the course of the rehearsal process, and some
• 42:16
  Speaker 6: other processes that we went down. We decided that we
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: kind of weren't happy with the direction that the film
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: was going in. I wasn't happy with the director. I gone,
• 42:25
  Speaker 6: I had gone through three directors at this point, and
• 42:27
  Speaker 6: all of them had disappointed me, had tried to change
• 42:30
  Speaker 6: the script. The one thing we knew was solid was
• 42:32
  Speaker 6: that damn script, and they kept trying to change it.
• 42:35
  Speaker 6: And that was a huge sticking point with me. So
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: we just kind of stopped the whole process. Let all
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: the directors go, let all the actors go. I'm like,
• 42:45
  Speaker 6: this isn't working well. We kept one of the actors.
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: We kept the female lead actor because she was we
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: always really liked her a lot. So we shut everything down.
• 42:56
  Speaker 6: We regrouped, and my team kept telling me. They're like,
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: don you're not happy with these directors for a reason.
• 43:02
  Speaker 6: We think you need to direct it, and I'm like, no,
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: I gave up directing a long time ago. I didn't
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: do so well my first time out. I realized I
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: was a better producer than I am a director. It's like,
• 43:10
  Speaker 6: I don't know if I want to go down that
• 43:12
  Speaker 6: road again. But they're like, no, no, you have a
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: vision for this. You have to do it, so I
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: stepped up as director. We hired some unknown actors, cast
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: some unknown actors. We raised about by this time, including
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: the money we had already raised plus the new batch
• 43:27
  Speaker 6: of money to shoot on, we had raised about fifty
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: thousand dollars. So we rented a stage, we got our
• 43:33
  Speaker 6: actors involved, we set everything up. I was so excited.
• 43:36
  Speaker 6: I told everybody, I'm like, guys, I'm an inexperienced director.
• 43:39
  Speaker 6: I need a lot of support around me. I'm telling
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: you right now, I don't really know what I'm doing.
• 43:42
  Speaker 6: You guys have to help me through this process. Well, unfortunately,
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: I made some unfortunate decisions with the people that I hired,
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: and the film shut down a day and a half
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: after shooting. It was a three day shoot. It shut
• 43:55
  Speaker 6: down at lunch on day two. The biggest problem being
• 44:01
  Speaker 6: the art department really screwed up and they could never
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: get They started late day one, they never got caught up,
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: and literally by day two we had no rooms that
• 44:11
  Speaker 6: were dressed and ready to shoot in. And I didn't
• 44:14
  Speaker 6: have enough experience as a director to deal with that
• 44:16
  Speaker 6: and to figure out how to make that work. So
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: it was really an unfortunate situation. I found out afterwards
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: that the Art Department had been on two different shows
• 44:28
  Speaker 6: at the same time, and the six days of prep
• 44:30
  Speaker 6: that we had agreed to got done in the twenty
• 44:33
  Speaker 6: four hours prior to my shoot. They tried to cram
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: six days of prep into literally twenty four hours around
• 44:40
  Speaker 6: the clock before our seven o'clock am call time, and
• 44:43
  Speaker 6: you can imagine the Art department band didn't even show
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: up to the set. So it was just I don't know,
• 44:49
  Speaker 6: It's like a comedy of errors. It was like, Oh
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: my god, I'm like, how are all these tragic, horrible
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: things happening to this beautiful script? I was like, how
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: is this possible? And about sixteen thousand of that money
• 45:02
  Speaker 6: had been crowdfunded. It was people who donated, and so
• 45:05
  Speaker 6: I was heartbroken. I didn't know what to do because
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: and tens of thousands of that was money that I borrowed,
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: that I put in that I had to pay back personally.
• 45:14
  Speaker 6: So it was heartbreaking. It was absolutely the most devastating
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: thing that's ever happened to me, And I blamed everybody
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: else at first, because I was angry and I was
• 45:25
  Speaker 6: upset at the financial loss and the fact that my
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: film had gone through that, and I went to a
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: deep dark place for about three months. I curled up
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: into a ball and I went to a really dark place,
• 45:41
  Speaker 6: and I finally started accepting my responsibility as the director.
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: Because the thing is the thing about directing that people
• 45:47
  Speaker 6: don't understand. One it's a very vulnerable position, and two
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: you're responsible for everything that goes up on the screen,
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: whether it was your fault or not. Other people can
• 45:57
  Speaker 6: make mistakes and not do their jobs, but it's still
• 45:59
  Speaker 6: your fault. Now, the good news is is that if
• 46:03
  Speaker 6: it does go well, you also get most of the glory,
• 46:05
  Speaker 6: so it's kind of good news bad news. But on
• 46:08
  Speaker 6: that particular film, I think people particularly pointed the finger
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: at me, and that was really tough, and I thought
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: about leaving the business. I had convinced myself that I
• 46:19
  Speaker 6: wasn't right for this industry and I was about to
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: pick up everything I owned and moved to LA and
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: move out of LA and just go do something else
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: for a living. And that lasted about thirty six hours
• 46:33
  Speaker 6: and then something clicked in me, something kicked out, and
• 46:36
  Speaker 6: I don't know, the warrior in me stood up. I
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: picked myself up, I dust myself off and and I said,
• 46:40
  Speaker 6: you know what, I'm not going down that way. This
• 46:43
  Speaker 6: is what i want to do. It's what I've always
• 46:44
  Speaker 6: want to do. There's nothing else I want to do,
• 46:46
  Speaker 6: and I've got to figure out how to make this work.
• 46:50
  Speaker 6: And so I went on this tear. I went on
• 46:52
  Speaker 6: this mission to direct as many films as I could
• 46:55
  Speaker 6: possibly get my hands on, so that I would have
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: enough experience to be able to handle something like that
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: better in the future, because mistakes always happened, things always
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: go wrong on a film set, and I just clearly
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: I just wasn't simply wasn't ready to handle it. I
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: wasn't prepared, didn't have the experience. So I and I felt,
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: you know, I felt an obligation to all the donors
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: who had donated to that FULMB. I mean, I could
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: have just shut it down and not moved on and said, Okay, guys,
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: you know it's too bad, this mistake happened. We had
• 47:27
  Speaker 6: some people that screwed up, I screwed up, are bad
• 47:30
  Speaker 6: my mistake. You know that We're going to accept that
• 47:33
  Speaker 6: loss and move on. But that's not who I am,
• 47:36
  Speaker 6: and that's not what I'm made of. I'm like I'm
• 47:38
  Speaker 6: going to get this movie made if it kills me. Literally.
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: I said that, and I still do this day. Mean it.
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: I meant it when I said that.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: So when when you actually got with the art department,
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: you've actually found that out.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: Did they actually admit it right away?
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah?
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: Oh okay, oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: I had no idea actually, and I kind of wish
• 47:59
  Speaker 6: he hadn't told me. When he told me, I went ballistic.
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: I was, Oh my god, I've never been so angry
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: and so upset in my life. This when you know
• 48:09
  Speaker 6: he admitted it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Wow, I mean that is you know, uh, you know,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: one of the pretty bad story because you know some
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: of other people have been on TU they've had, you know,
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: share their war stories as well, and.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: You know, it is.
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: All about, you know, putting together that team. And sometimes
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: you do hire people who just they they project themselves
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: as one way and then you find out they're they're
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: either lying or they just you know, or just maybe
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: a sociopath.
• 48:42
  Speaker 6: Well here's what I've come to realize with a little
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: bit of hindsight. This is a tough business and the
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: economy is really bad, and they really all they're guilty
• 48:53
  Speaker 6: of and I hate to sound like I'm condoning it
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: or even forgiving it. I guess I have forgiven it
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: at this point. But in this industry it's called double dipping.
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: And what he had done was the show he was
• 49:04
  Speaker 6: working on prior to that ran long, and I think
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: he truly, honestly, I think he was coming from a
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: good place. I think he had he wanted to be
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: loyal to them and finish out that job, but he
• 49:15
  Speaker 6: also wanted to be loyal to me and not quit
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: or leave me hanging. And I honestly think he thought
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: he could do it in twenty four hours. But to
• 49:24
  Speaker 6: some extent, that was disrespectful to me in my project,
• 49:26
  Speaker 6: to think that you could cram six days of prep.
• 49:29
  Speaker 6: You know, we decided and agreed on six days of
• 49:31
  Speaker 6: prep for a reason. It was a big show. It
• 49:34
  Speaker 6: was a huge art department show. We were working on
• 49:36
  Speaker 6: a set and everything had to be built and set
• 49:39
  Speaker 6: dressed from scratch. It was a huge job, and he
• 49:41
  Speaker 6: had four people on his team to make that happen
• 49:46
  Speaker 6: on the day. But it just.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 50:01
  Speaker 6: I don't know's I'm trying to try to understand the situation.
• 50:08
  Speaker 6: In hindsight, he really should have just told me his
• 50:10
  Speaker 6: job got extended, then I should hire somebody else. In hindsight,
• 50:13
  Speaker 6: that's what it should have happened. But you know, he
• 50:15
  Speaker 6: was trying to satisfy me, to try to satisfy the
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: other production he was working on, and unfortunately for him,
• 50:21
  Speaker 6: it just it didn't work out. Now, was he the
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: only reason the show was troubled? Absolutely not. There were
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: other problems. There were other issues that the show didn't
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: shut down because of that. I wasn't doing a very
• 50:35
  Speaker 6: good job as director because I was rattled by the
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: whole art department thing. We had to We had a
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: very specific shooting schedule that we had to do so
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: the art department could keep up because it was very ambitious,
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: and when when art department arrived on the set that
• 50:48
  Speaker 6: morning with no Van, it screwed up the whole schedule,
• 50:52
  Speaker 6: and that threw me off my game, and I was
• 50:54
  Speaker 6: just flustered and rattled the whole time. So would the
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: film have probably turned out poorley and had to have
• 51:00
  Speaker 6: been reshot anyway? Probably, I can honestly say it probably
• 51:04
  Speaker 6: would have, But at least we would have finished it.
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: And maybe something would have been salvageable, but the way
• 51:10
  Speaker 6: it went down, it shut down because there was there
• 51:13
  Speaker 6: were no rooms available to shoot.
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: So you know, when you went onto your next project,
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: did you ever use even any of the same crew?
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Was it a completely new cast and crew?
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: Well, no, it was a completely different I mean, I
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: have my core people. I hate James and Debbie Rankin.
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: They they've stayed with me as part of my core team.
• 51:40
  Speaker 6: But no, not, And there's a couple of crew people
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: that I enjoyed working with. It wasn't their fault that
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: I have worked with since. But no, for the most part,
• 51:48
  Speaker 6: Two to nine was our next film after that, and
• 51:50
  Speaker 6: that was a whole different cast and crew.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: You touched on something too with the experienced director.
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: You know, I actually think it's good that you said that,
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: because I think it's you know, there was someby once
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: told me when I first started that, you know, the
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: director is the only person on set who doesn't need
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: to have any experience, And they saidnew that the centhotographers
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: got to know how to do all his or her work,
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: the actors, everybody else, but really the director doesn't have
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: to have a certain x amount of experience and you know,
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: I think that's good in a way because when you
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: actually mentioned that, like I need support, I think it
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: really at least you up front and honest with the crew,
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: and that way, at least you you're on the same
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: page there, so you know, they're not too many expectations.
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: Well, it's it's not so much that I was afraid
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: of expectations. It's just I literally needed the help. It's like,
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: you know, it's like, honestly, it's like, you know, I've
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: never I haven't done this in twenty years, and you know,
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: I know the importance of a good DP and I
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: know the importance of a good production designer. Those are
• 52:52
  Speaker 6: the two people that you lean on the most. And unfortunately,
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: in this situation, you know, those things didn't work out
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: so well. You know, it's unfortunate, and I went to
• 53:03
  Speaker 6: a really bad place and I almost didn't recover from it,
• 53:06
  Speaker 6: quite honestly. But it's interesting how something deep inside once
• 53:11
  Speaker 6: I It's funny, once I made my peace with it,
• 53:14
  Speaker 6: and you know, I debated and debated. Once I made
• 53:15
  Speaker 6: my peace with it and decided I was going to
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: leave LA and where am I What city am I
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: going to move to? And what job am I going
• 53:20
  Speaker 6: to do now? Once I made my peace with it
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: and kind of decided that's what I was going to do,
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: that's when that little thing, that little warrior deep inside
• 53:28
  Speaker 6: me finally was allowed to come back up and say, oh, no,
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: you're not going down like that. But it wasn't till
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: I made my peace with it that my true desires
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: and my true nature kicked in. And I wonder if
• 53:41
  Speaker 6: some people don't wait long enough, or if that doesn't happen
• 53:43
  Speaker 6: for them soon enough, and then they end up giving
• 53:45
  Speaker 6: up on something and moving on to something that they're
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: not happy with. It makes me wonder. But it took
• 53:51
  Speaker 6: me about thirty six hours before that little warrior stood
• 53:54
  Speaker 6: up and said, huh huh, that's not gonna be your
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: that's not gonna be your history, that's not going to
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: be your your bio.
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, you made a good point there. I
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: was just in a seminary ES today with Corey Mandel.
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: He was just on the podcast too, and he actually
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: mentioned about this where if you have like a mind's theater,
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: and he said, you know, there's all sorts of people
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: in the audience, and he said, the people in the
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: front row are the ones who are really controlling the show.
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: And he said, you know, if you have too much negativity,
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: and he goes to this whole thing and in this books,
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: but he say, if you go too much negativity and
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: there's people always in the front row, that's where you
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: start getting all these doubts. And that's where we start
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: getting all these you know, you can't do this, you
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: can't do that, and and basically, you know, and part
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: of it is, you know, you know, not only just
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: our self doubts and self sabotage, but it's just you know,
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: almost like our bodies natural way to react sometimes is
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: almost like a fear, a fear response. Yeah, so you know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: and he says, you know, these things all tie in together,
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: and which is why you know, sometimes we're writing, you're saying,
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: oh this sucks, and we just some somebody would never
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: come back. I mean, I've known screenwriters who they started
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: writing a script and they started before me, and I
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: you know, run into them nowadays and it's just.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: They I'm not in it anymore.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: I'm you know, doing whatever now.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: As you know. I always find that kind of interesting.
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, and I, like I said, it makes
• 55:19
  Speaker 6: me question, do people wait long enough sometimes for that
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: warrior to kick inn or they just give up. Maybe
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: some people don't have it. I don't know.
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: So you know, so after you know, Shattered Love and
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: you finally we were to pull yourself together, you know
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: what project did you work on after that?
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: Well? I was determined at that point to prove that
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: the film didn't shut down because of me. Would it
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: have been poorly directed, probably because I didn't know what
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: I was doing and I didn't have the right support
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: around me. But I really wanted to prove that I
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: have twenty years of experience in this business. I've worked
• 55:52
  Speaker 6: on big budget movie sets. I know my shit. I
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: was trained by some of the best ads in this country.
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: I know how movies work, and I know how a
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: film set works, and I know how to get a
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: movie made. So I just I just became a hell
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: bent on proving to people that that I was capable
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: and I was I was able to do this. So
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: I was inspired by a workshop that I took one
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: day to write a script called two O nine and
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: two O nine was a very simple story two guys
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: in a hotel room, and my theory was, what's the
• 56:25
  Speaker 6: worst thing that could happen between two dudes in a
• 56:28
  Speaker 6: hotel room who have come together for some very dramatic reason.
• 56:32
  Speaker 6: And I came up with this story about a childhood
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: friend who had ten years prior accidentally murdered his best
• 56:40
  Speaker 6: friend's little sister, and he's come back ten years later
• 56:43
  Speaker 6: to confess. And so we cast our actors. We raised
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: about seventy nine hundred dollars on Indiegogo for that one,
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: and that one reached. That one exceeded its goal. We
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: made our goal on that one, and we had a
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: set built and we were all ready to go, and
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: we shot it, and you know, there were some issues still.
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: I was still trying to figure out how to work
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: properly with the DP, how to communicate, how to get
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: my vision across, how to command and control a crew.
• 57:11
  Speaker 6: And by the way, I do not agree with the
• 57:13
  Speaker 6: statement that a director has to be the least experienced
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: person on the set. That has not been my experience whatsoever.
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: Mine has been the opposite. My experience has been the
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: director absolutely has to know every single thing that needs
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: to happen, and they need to know how to tell
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: the crew to do it, and how to express their
• 57:29
  Speaker 6: vision and how to communicate that vision so that everyone
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: can execute it. That's been my experience, and I still
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: hadn't really gotten very good at that, So there were
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: some struggles on two on nine. It didn't really turn
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: out the way I wanted. The story I think was
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: still smaller and more contained than I had hoped, and
• 57:48
  Speaker 6: it just wasn't the It wasn't the redemption piece that
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: I wanted it to be, and I was very much
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: seeking redemption at this point. I was hell bent on redemption.
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: At this point, it meant everything to me. Me. I was
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: determined to build up a good director's reel to prove myself.
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: So James and I had many many conversations about do
• 58:09
  Speaker 6: we attempt it again and what do we do? Do
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: we just let it go and move on? And at
• 58:14
  Speaker 6: the end of the day we both agreed that the
• 58:16
  Speaker 6: kernel of the two nine story was good enough where
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: if we embellished it more and really took that little
• 58:24
  Speaker 6: seed of an idea and really fleshed it out, it
• 58:27
  Speaker 6: could be like this really moving, impactful film. And so
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: we made the decision, even as tough as it was,
• 58:34
  Speaker 6: to rewrite, not rewrite, but to embellish the script, make
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: it longer, build more character arc more character background, more
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: character history. Really tell that whole complete story, not just
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: a moment in time, but build this whole story and
• 58:49
  Speaker 6: raise the money again and shoot it properly. So that's
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: what we did and two o nine became Found, and
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: I'm extremely proud of Found. We just submitted it a
• 59:03
  Speaker 6: couple months ago to the twenty fifteen Idle Wild International
• 59:07
  Speaker 6: Festival of Cinema. It was the first and only festival
• 59:12
  Speaker 6: that we had submitted to at the time. It was
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: my first time in competition as a director, and I'm
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: thrilled to say that we won Best Short Film, Best
• 59:22
  Speaker 6: a Best Director award and we were nominated for Best
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: Cinematography and Best Score.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, congratulations, thank you.
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: And it changed everything. I mean, that redemption that I
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: was looking for and that success that I was hoping
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: would launch me and kind of make me relevant and
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: make people take notice. That film did that, and that
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: was exactly what I wanted it to do. I wanted
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: a I wanted a film to do that, and if
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: it wasn't going to be that film, I'd have to
• 59:45
  Speaker 6: just put all my efforts into the next film and
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: make that film the film that did that. But Fortunately
• 59:50
  Speaker 6: for us, the very next film that we launched after
• 59:53
  Speaker 6: Shattered Love shut down ended up even though we went
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: through a lot of trials and tribulations and quite a
• 59:58
  Speaker 6: bit of expense with it ended up being a hu
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: huge phenomenal success.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: sponsor and now back to the show.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just it's blown me away. It's it's succeeded
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 6: all my expectations and it's finally giving me a little
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 6: bit of sense of confidence that I can do this,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: even though I know I still have so much to learn.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: So, uh, when did you actually make fragil Store with
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: Lance Hendrickson?
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: Okay, so what it happened was when so so we
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 6: had done because because here's there was a time where
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: I'm like, oh my god, this is like crazy. You know,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 6: Shattered Love didn't work out, and then two o nine
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 6: wasn't the film I wanted it to be. It's like,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 6: oh my god, It's like do I really even need
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: to be doing this kind of work? But what I
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: realize now is I'm a fighter and I'm a survivor,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: and I will do whatever it takes to make my
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: films the absolute best movies that they can be. It's
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 6: not about me. Maybe it's a little ego driven, I
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: think everything in this business is, But I really I'm
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 6: hell bent with every project I work on to make
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: it the best film it could possibly be. And we
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: never intended on not shooting Shattered Love. Reshooting Shattered Love.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 6: I just needed to put some time and distance between
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: me and that project, you know, I needed to clear
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: out all the negativity. I needed to build up my skills.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: So basically what I did is I spent the next
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 6: year and a half after Shattered Love shut down, I
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 6: spent the next year and a half directing as many
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 6: films as I could to get ready to reshoot Shattered Love.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 6: It was all about everything I did, every step of
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: the way, was one hundred percent designed to put me
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 6: in a position where by the time we were ready
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: to reshoot that film, I was ready and I was
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 6: going to make it a good film. And I was
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: fortunate enough during the whole time that we were doing
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: two oh nine and found during that whole time, so
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: other opportunities had come up. There were some volunteer groups
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: like the all women sen Ale Ladies Group. I got
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: the chance to direct a film for them, and that
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: was Bonds and Lace that you mentioned before. That was
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: done for no money, all volunteer group. That was a
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: script I wrote and directed, co wrote with Lucy Delatt.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 6: That film. You know, it was okay, it turned out okay.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 6: We did it all on a day. It was a
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: hugely ambitious, vicious project all in one day with no money.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: But I'm still very proud of it. And then there's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: another group of all independent filmmakers that I actually organized
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: and created called the Los Angeles Film Collective and I
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: did one short through that group called Better with Friends.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: That was another one that was done for no money,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: all volunteer. So I got the opportunity along the way
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: to do some other projects. And then there was a
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 6: specific lull where nothing was going on where James and
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: I are like, ah, we just want I just want
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: to direct again. I want to might shoot something, and
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: so we wrote and created Touch and Touch was literally
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: conceived and shot in like a three weeks time. And
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: while I still felt like I made some mistakes on
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: that one, I wasn't quite where I wanted to be directorially,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 6: the film still turned out extremely well. I'm very proud
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: of it. It got huge response online. That film actually had
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: its world premiere Dances with Films this past year and
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 6: that was a huge success. So very proud of that one.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: So you know, I was just my problem is I
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 6: love directing now that I've started doing it, and now
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: that I've got a little bit of confidence in myself,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: I just love directing, and I want to move on
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: to the next one before I've even finished the first one.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 6: It's like, what's next, What's next? I want to direct
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: something else. Get me on set, Get me on set.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: So that's caused a little bit of a problem actually,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: and that we shot way too many films back to
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 6: back and then they got bottlenecked and posts and we're
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 6: actually still dealing with that a little bit now. But
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: getting found out the door was a huge accomplishment and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 6: that was, I guess, a huge catalyst to moving forward
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: with everything else. But to answer your question, there were
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: all these other projects, including a short film that I
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: really wanted to do, but I felt like Shattered Love
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: still had to get done and it was still there,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: and I realized that part of the problem was there
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 6: were some casting decisions that we made when we used
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: those unknown actors that when I looked at the dailies
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: of the stuff that we did shoot before we shut down.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: It just wasn't working for me. There was some physical
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 6: resemblances that were supposed to happen for one of the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: characters that wasn't really quite there. We were trying to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 6: work around it with some makeup and effects and stuff
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: like that, but contact lenses, things like that, trying to
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: pull some tricks, but it just wasn't really working for me.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: And I was having a hard time imagining raising another
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: fifty thousand dollars for this project, relaunching this whole thing
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: after the massive loss that we took on the first one.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: For actors, I wasn't absolutely thrilled about. And I realized
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: that that was holding me back, and it was paralyzing me,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: and it was keeping me from moving forward with the project.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 6: So again James and I much debate. We had many,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: many discussions about I had become friends with these people,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: I was loyal to them, I love them to death,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: But it just came down to I had to do
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: what I had to do that was best for the film.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: So I made the calls. I pick up the phone
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: and I told the actors, much to their heartbreak unfortunately,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: and this was so tough to make this call that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: we were going to recast them. And at this point,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 6: I'm feeling like such a loser. I'm like, oh my god,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 6: I've had to recast all these actors. One of the
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: film shut down. I fired three directors. It's like, oh
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: my god, this is such a mess. But it's amazing
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 6: because once I hung up the phone from those phone calls,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: that little warrior jumped back up again. And I made
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: those calls the end of August, and by the end
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: of September we were shooting. That's how fast it happened.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: Because once I was unburdened from the things that were
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: really kind of holding me back, I was like a
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: locomotive and everything just went on hyper speed. And so
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: while I initially wanted to use unknown actors for this film,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: started thinking at this point, it's like, you know what,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: We've invested so much money in this film. At this point,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: it's like, we need an actor. We need a name
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: at this point to just really, you know, give the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: film some credibility, to kind of raise the bar. It's like,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: you know, it just felt like the right thing to do.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: And as we were researching actors in that age range.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: Lance Hendrickson came across our radar and as soon as
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: I looked him up, I mean I knew who he was,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: of course, but I hadn't like, as soon as I
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 6: looked him up, like what he looks like? Now, I
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: was like, that's it. That's the character. That's Norman. And
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: I'm like, there's an We were still talking about some
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 6: other names, but I'm like, no, nobody else makes sense,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: nobody on this planet makes sense. But Lance Hendrickson. He's
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 6: our guy. He's the one, and he's and I literally
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: told my people, if we don't get Lance, we're not
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: doing the film. And so we picked up the phone
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 6: and we called his manager and she loved the script.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: And it was a tough negotiation because you know, these
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: guys don't work for free and they very rarely do
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: short films. So it was a tough negotiation and we
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: ended up not being able to negotiate. I tried and
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 6: tried and tried, but you know, basically, at the bottom,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: at the end of the day, you have to give
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 6: them what they ask for, and we did. And you know,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: the other thing that we had to do was a
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: pay or play, which is very typical, and that was
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: very stressful on me. But in a way, that's what
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: helped it happened so fast, is because once we had
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 6: to lock into a shoot date, you know, paying his
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: fee and being locked into a shoot date. That'll motivate you.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: I'm telling you right now, if you're having trouble getting
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: the film made, just lock yourself into a pay or
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: play date with the big actor and you'll get your
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 6: film made. And that's what happened. So you know, thirty
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: days later we were on set and we were shooting
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: and Lance Hendrickson is so amazing. It was my first
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: time working with the name actor and he was He's
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: so passionate, he's so dedicated, he's so talented, and also
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: just a beautiful spirit and a beautiful person, and everybody
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 6: on set just fell in love with him. And the
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 6: girls were all like these you know, crushes on him,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 6: and they were like, you know, it was just like
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 6: it was. It was wonderful, and the chemistry between him
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 6: and our actors with other actors was was amazing. And unfortunately,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 6: because of the rate we had to pay, we could
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: only have him for two days and the film was
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 6: never scheduled for less than three and we even wanted
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: four at one point to shoot it. So I unfortunately
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 6: had to go back and shave back the script a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 6: little bit, make it a little bit more lean, and
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: so that we could so that the scenes we did
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: shoot in two days weren't really compromised. But I have
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 6: to I'll be the first to admit, you know, we
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: were we were pushing it to shoot this film in
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 6: two days, so you know, yeah, I think there's a
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 6: few things that got sacrificed along the way story wise,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: but I think to have Lance Hendrickson in our film
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: and to still have the film tell the story, the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 6: amazing story that we were trying to tell, it was
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 6: completely worth it. And so that film got shot the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: end of September and we're currently in post production.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: Awesome, and you know, excuse me, you know, it's great
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: that you were able to get Lance Hendrickson. I've heard
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: nothing but amazing things about him from people who've worked
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: with him.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: He's unbelievable. He really is an amazing person, and we
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 6: were totally blessed that he agreed to do our script.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: We really feel very fortunate, So.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: You know, just you know, and again you know, congratulations
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: and everything with found and I'm glad you know you're
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: able to get you know, your redemption and you're able
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: to you know, actually prove to yourself you can do this,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: and you know, you know, forget those negative voices that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: we all face sometimes. So you know, you know, recently
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: you've started your own fund, your own short film seminar.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after or a word from our
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: sponsor and now back to the show.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: And this is what I want to talk to you
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: about with terms of crowdfunding. You know, I saw you actually,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: you know, did a live event of this, so meaning
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: in person, So if you could, could you just give
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: us like a brief synopsis of we know what you
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 5: go over and things of that nature.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah, teaching has always been something that's been a
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: goal of mine because I really truly enjoy enjoy it
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: and I find it extremely rewarding. And ever since I've
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 6: moved to LA as you've heard from my history, I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: haven't really gotten the credentials. You know, to teach and
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 6: to justify charging people for seminar, you have to have
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: a certain amount of credentials, and that's what I was
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: working towards and trying to build up this past decade,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 6: and it was just a real struggle. Finally, with Found
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 6: being made and winning awards and doing as well as
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: it did. Plus the fact that I've crowdfunded now eight
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 6: short film projects, actually I actually eight, eight of them
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 6: we crowdfunded, I feel like I have some knowledge now
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 6: and some credentials to speak knowledgeably about that particular subject.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: So I'm very clear about I'm only teaching raising money
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 6: for short films because I have not raised money for
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 6: a feature, and I think that is different if you're
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: trying to raise more than like fifty sixty thousand dollars.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: And I've never used any other platform other than Indigogo.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 6: So in my classes, I'm very specific, and in my marketing,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 6: I'm very specific to tell people this is a specific
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 6: class on how to raise money for a short film
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 6: on Indiegogo, and the amounts of money that I feel
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 6: like I can specialize in helping people raise is between
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 6: five and ten thousand dollars. That's a real sweet spot
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: with me. I feel like I could raise that much
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: money for film like every time where I've gotten into trouble.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 6: And I'm also very honest about this. In my seminars.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 6: Where I've gotten into trouble personally is trying to raise
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: money in the amounts of thirty thousand or more. I've
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 6: raised up to twenty five thousand, but not in one
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 6: single campaign. That's where I have a sore spot. And
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 6: I think part of this is because it's for a
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: short although there have been several people who have raised
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 6: more than fifty thousand dollars for their shorts, and I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 6: can speak to that, and I can tell them what
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 6: I think they need to do in order to make
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 6: that happen. But it's a different process because there's raising
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 6: money inside your circle and then there's raising money outside
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 6: your circle. And to hit those high numbers of twenty thirty,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 6: forty thousand or more, you have to go outside your circle.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 6: You have to hit communities and organizations, and you have
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 6: to get press and publicity and marketing. And that's like
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: a whole nother animal can't but I can't speak to that.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 6: I do understand that, and I've just never actually done that.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 6: And the two campaigns that we did try to run
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 6: that were thirty thousand or more, there were various reasons
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 6: those campaigns didn't succeed. But what I like to do
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 6: in the seminar is I use those as an exam
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: as examples to show what does not work because it
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 6: didn't work for us, and I know exactly why it
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 6: didn't work. I think sometimes you can learn from people
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 6: of what to do, but I think you can also
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 6: learn from what not to do. Like I could tell
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 6: people all day long with my experience with Shattered Love,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: I'll tell you what not to do, you know.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: So Daan, now let you know you've had some of
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 5: these live seminars. Are you playing on, you know, having
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 5: any online seminars for people who couldn't make it out
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 5: of La.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's really funny. When I posted the first live
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 6: one on Facebook, I was like, oh, yeah, hopefully all
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 6: these people in my area will come. But what happened
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 6: was everybody started sending me emails and messages going I
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 6: don't live in LA, but I really want to take
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: this class, and so I'm like, maybe I need to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 6: do an online version, and everybody was like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 6: I do an online version. So I'm like, okay, well
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 6: that might actually even be more popular because a lot
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 6: of my followers aren't in LA. So I've been working
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: real hard on an online version, and I'm actually launching tonight,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: as a matter of fact, my very first webinar. It's
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 6: Secrets to Funding your Short Film on indiegog and it's
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 6: going to be tonight from six thirty to eight thirty
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 6: Pacific Standard time, so that's Los Angeles time, six thirty
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 6: to eight thirty live, live webinar that you can sign
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 6: up for and interact and ask questions and all that
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 6: are kind of stuff. And I will be that's posted
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: on my wall and on my on my website.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: Okay, excellent, And you know I'll make sure I linked
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: that in show notes as well.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that would be La Filmseminars dot com. You can
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 6: register there or Palmstreet Films dot com you can register
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 6: there as well.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 5: Awesome cool and yeah, I'll make sure linkedos in the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 5: show notes by the way, Oh that'd be great. And
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 5: you know, speaking of you know, you know Palm Films
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: by the way, you know, is there you know, just
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: to get to your short script competition? I know you
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: s this is you've held us for a couple of
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: different excuse me, held this for a couple of years,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: you know, is uh is there an impetus to you know,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: why you started this. I mean, I know you kind
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 5: of touched on that earlier, but is there you know,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: have you really sort of evolved this meaning like, is there, like,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: you know, any other reasons why you may have do
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: these competitions.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, there's a very specific history with these. The
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 6: first script the first script contests we're calling the one
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: with with that Callly one with Fragments and Shattered Love,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 6: where I just put out a call on my Facebook
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 6: that's we're calling that our first Palm Street Films contests.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 6: Later that year, we got access to a series of
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 6: standing sets in Orange County where it's a it's a
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 6: stage where they filled a couple of standing sets. A
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: standing set is like a pre built living room or
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 6: hospital room, or it's a set. Everybody knows what a
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: film set is. It's like it's pre built sets that
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 6: all exist in one space and it's a series of them,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 6: like all spread out throughout the space. And we were
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 6: given access to use one of the standing set space
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: where they had a house, the house where we actually
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 6: shot Shattered Love. Actually it's the same stage. They had
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 6: a house, they had a jail cell, they had an
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: executive boardroom. At the time, they had a hospital set
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: and they had even an airplane thing. It's called Silver
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: Dream Factory in Orange County. If you haven't heard about it,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: it's fantastic. It is within the sixty mile zone thirty
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: mile zone. Sorry asked for Roland Kanamar. He's a good
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 6: friend of mine. He's treated us very well every time
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: we've shot there. But we had access to the stage
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 6: and we wanted to shoot something last minute. So I
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: put another call out to my Facebook. You know, no
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: submission fee, nothing like that, just because of an informal
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 6: call for scripts, and we told people we needed like
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 6: a five page script, something we could shoot in one
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 6: day that's set in one of these locations. And we
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 6: listed all the locations and John Whetstone was one of
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: my Facebook followers who sat down and actually found this
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 6: really brilliant way to utilize two of the sets. And
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 6: that was the Interrogation. And so Shattered Love was the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: first script contest and that film got made eventually into
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 6: a film starring Lynce Hendrickson. And then the second contest
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 6: was the Interrogation, which ended up getting made and actually
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 6: in my seminars both live and online, I show the interrogation.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: Even though we never actually released it publicly online. That
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 6: one's still because Virgin Produced is still considering showing that
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 6: on their airlines. So we haven't. And that's a deal
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: that we got through Dances with Films because the Interrogation
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 6: had premiered at Santa Barbara International Film Festival. That was
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 6: its world premiere, and then it had its La premiere
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 6: Dances with Films, and through Dances with Films is how
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 6: we made the connection with Virgin Produced. So we're still
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 6: waiting to hear about that. So we haven't released that officially,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 6: but I do show that film in my seminars, which
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 6: is really great. People love seeing that. I also in
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 6: my seminars, I show the original ZOMBIELLS campaign video, which
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 6: a lot of people thought was like at the time,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 6: it was like people thought it was like, oh, that's
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: a great hook, that's a really cute video. There's been
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 6: a whole lot of really great videos since then that
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: have kind of eclipsed that. People do some really great
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: and wonderful and creative things with their campaign videos these days,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 6: but we still thought it was kind of a fun
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: little thing, so I show that in the seminar. But
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 6: and then last year we were starting to think about
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 6: our first feature film and what we were going to do.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 6: So last year was the first time we decided to
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 6: launch an official script contest where there was a submission
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 6: fee and a cash prize, a significant cash prize, So
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 6: we launched a contest, charged a submission fee. We got
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 6: just under one hundred submissions total. So the good news
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 6: about this festival is you're not competing with thousands of
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 6: other scripts. So I really encourage anybody listening to this
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: if you have a short film, and we opened it
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 6: up to both this year. We did short films and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 6: feature film scripts, so I really encourage you. We're about
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 6: to launch the fourth annual FALM Street Films Contest. You
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: guys should really enter your scripts because you're not going
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 6: against thousands of other scripts. You may not even be
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 6: going against hundreds of other scripts because we're a very small,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: intimate kind of in contest. But the prize is five
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: hundred dollars for winning short and one thousand dollars for
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: winning feature, So that's that's pretty groovy. Also, and this
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 6: is announcement I just made last last week. We've decided
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: the winning short film script from last year was a
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 6: really wonderful script called Five Days in Calcutta, which was
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: written by Fred Perry. That script not only won our contest,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 6: but I didn't realize this until after we had awarded,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: it has also won like a dozen other short film
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 6: script contests. That's how good it is. It won Houston
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 6: Comedy Fest and it also won DC Shorts. And we
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: love that script and we love Fred, and so we've
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: decided that we're going to produce that one and I'm directing.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: So every single script contest that we've had, the films
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: have gotten made.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 5: Oh wow, that is huge.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 6: That's to some people that's more important than a cash prize.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 6: But this year, as in last year, we're offering a
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 6: cash prize and the chance for your film to get produced.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 6: But this year I'm specifically looking for features because I'm
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: looking I'm looking to direct my first feature.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: and now back to the show.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: So basically it kind of ties with my next question,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: which is, you know, what is your next project that
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 5: you have?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: Uh, well, I'm in post production on Fragile Storm right now,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 6: and one other short film that we did early this year.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 6: This a small, smaller film. We're trying to get those
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 6: two things wrapped out and post and then we're gonna shoot.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 6: Once that's done, we're gonna shoot five Days in Calcutta,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 6: and we hope to do that in the summer. It
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 6: depends on how long it takes to actually get Fragile
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 6: Storm finished. There's a lot that still needs to be
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 6: done on that and we want to focus on that
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 6: exclusively before we move on to anything else. But five
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: Days in Calcutta is up next, and then, like I said,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 6: after that, I'm looking to jump into my first feature,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 6: and then after that I want to do zombiells. So
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: that's kind of the I guess two year plan.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 5: And you know, I really wish you the best with
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 5: Zombiell's and everything else too. I think I think honestly,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 5: doing I think Zombie Elves, when you come and revisit
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 5: that you're going to have a whole new no pun intended,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 5: but a whole new life to it.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, because I look at you know, since I
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 6: started directing two years ago, I look at everything differently.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 6: I look colors seem different, people seem different, I see
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 6: movies differently. I have literally a whole new perspective on
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 6: not only on life, but or not only in the
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 6: film business, I guess, but also on life. But I
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: see movies differently now, I see them in my head
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 6: and I form visions more quickly, and I and everything
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 6: comes to me more quickly. And I'm super excited about
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 6: all the visual possibilities of Zombie Elves.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and also also what I meant to us, you know,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 5: just the market is changing too, and you know, I
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: just think there's gonna be even more opportunities. I mean,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 5: because you know, when you first started that, I don't
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 5: think Amazon Studios was around. They were looking for new stuff.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 5: But now if you look at it, everyone's.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: Looking for new material.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, I as I was talking to
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 5: you know, Richard Botto from say thirty two, he has
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: you know, he never going back and forth with just
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 5: all of the new content, uh stress streams out there
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 5: that are just looking for that that need content.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: So honestly, I think.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 5: You will have you know, more of of an opportunity
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 5: with Zombie Elle's.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so too. I'm excited. And you know,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 6: it's just that film has so much potential on so
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 6: many levels. But it's also an awesome responsibility because you
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 6: you know, you have to be loyal and true to Christmas.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 6: You have to be low and true to zombie fans.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 6: It's it's quite you know, it's it's a bit daunting,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 6: to be honest with you. But I am excited for
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 6: the challenge, and we were even for a time we
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 6: were even thinking about doing it in three D. But
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 6: I'm not sure if that makes sense. These days, it
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 6: doesn't seem like three D is taken off the way
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 6: people had hoped it would. Yet.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: It just seems to be in certain movies that three
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 5: D is accepted. Obviously anything that James Cameron does, and
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 5: few things here and there, but yeah, three D. I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 5: don't think even with the three D TVs that they released,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 5: I haven't seen much for them.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: Oh gosh. I got a three D TV for Christmas
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 6: three years ago and I watched maybe five movies on
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 6: it and now it's collecting dust. It's like, you know,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 6: and it's a great experience. I love stuff in three D.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 6: I'm a total fan. But it's just you know, putting
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 6: on the glasses and charging them up, you know. I
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 6: had one of those systems and it just you know,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 6: it just I don't know, it's just not the experience
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 6: that I think people were hoping for, and finding content
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: in three D that you could buy for your home
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 6: system was a huge challenge at the time. You know,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 6: like three years ago when I got it, you couldn't
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 6: buy anything for less than fifty bucks. That's true, there
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 6: was and there was very little content available in the stores,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: and that became really frustrating.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of the stores too, are even
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: getting rid of their Blue rays. I mean it's just
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 5: you know, if you're like a Best Buying, they sort
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 5: of consolidated, they've bumped out all the DVDs, and now
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 5: you know that's that whole entire area is getting smaller
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 5: and smaller basically.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, no, gohd.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 5: I was just gonna say, basically, they want you to
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: go online or they assume you're gonna buy a digital copy.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 5: But I'm sorry, what are we gonna say?
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 6: No? I just remember a couple of years ago, I
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: bought a Blu ray burner and I went out to
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 6: like Office Max and Best Buy. In all these places,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 6: I couldn't even find like blank Blu rays.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 6: It was like, what's happening to the Blu ray market?
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: And why?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you had to special order them online. You can't
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 6: even just walk into a store and buy blank blu
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 6: rays Like really.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's uh.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: I mean it really depends too.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 5: I've noticed, unlike the area and whatever they seem to stock.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 5: But I even had trouble getting black blue rays before.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 5: I actually had to order them from online from somewhere
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 5: I think maybe the Amazon I heard him from.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So, uh, you know, don We've we've.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 5: Been talking probably close to two hours now.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 6: I told you I'm a talker.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 5: So what I might have doing is I might end
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 5: up splitting this into much sure, yet I'm gonna when
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 5: I put this together off, I can, you know, have
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: a better picture of everything. But just you know, in closing,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 5: is there anything you want to discuss that we haven't
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 5: touched on.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: There's a thousand things I could talk about that. I
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 6: have so many stories, I have so many thoughts on
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 6: this business, so much in my head I want to
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: share with people. You know, I could go on for days,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 6: but you know, just to just to give people some
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 6: ideas about the script contest. I believe we're gonna launch
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 6: that sometime this month, sometime in March. And if you
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 6: follow me on Facebook, it's Facebook dot com forward slash
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: Donfield's producer. I tag that name when I was producing.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 6: I wish I could change it to director. But if
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 6: you just follow me on that, you'll see all the announcements. Also,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 6: if you go to Palm Streetfilms dot com and join
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 6: our mailing list, there's a subscribe button there where you
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 6: can join our mailing list, you'll also be notified. But
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 6: we're hoping to launch that in March, and we're super
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 6: excited and I'm hoping that my next feature film or
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 6: my first few your film is in that group of submissions.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: Awesome.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: So again, everyone, I will link to down's all of
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 5: Dawn's websites that she's discussed in the show notes.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: So again, if.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 5: You're a screenwriter and you want to you know, have
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: an opportunity to you know, have something produced, check out
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 5: Dawn's uh uh new opportunities. I mean, you hear the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 5: the contest sounds amazing and you know, like I was
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 5: just saying, go on about all the different you know,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 5: conscient content streams. I mean, this is another opportunity for
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 5: people now, and it's just it's amazing. With everything else,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 5: I mean, everything's coming up to at once, you know,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: you got the Nicole Fellowship coming up, and you got
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 5: i mean stripped the Balus I think is coming up.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 5: I mean there's just so many, you know, but yeah, everyone,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 5: you can uh find me at Dave Bulls dot com. Twitter,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 5: it's at Dave Wonderscore Bullets and Facebook it's at Dave
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 5: dot bullets. But again in the show not you can
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 5: just click on that and request me and stalk me.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 5: So Dawn, thank you very much for coming on.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: Thank you, Dave. This was awesome. I really enjoyed it.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 6: You're you're an awesome host. Thank you so much.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much. Anyti, I'm gonna come back on.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: Let me know.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 6: You know, I feel like with all the trials and
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 6: tribulations that I've been through, I always like to say
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 6: from one of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quests, never give up,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 6: never surrender, because this business is hard and it will
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 6: tear you down if you let it. But if you
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 6: want it badly enough and if you work hard enough,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 6: you can accomplish any filmmaking dream that you want to accomplish,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 6: and you can be anything that you want to be.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 6: And it's funny now that people are telling me that
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 6: I'm an inspiration. I always felt like, oh my god,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 6: I'm doing everything wrong and I'm making all these mistakes
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 6: and nothing's going right. But things never go right in
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 6: this business. It's the nature of it. And whether you
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 6: succeed or fail is going to be determined not by
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 6: how many failures you have, but how many times you
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 6: pick yourself up and make it right.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 5: And then, you know, that's a great piece of advice.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 6: Don and that's what I always try to do. I
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 6: just try to keep pushing them forward and try to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 6: do the right thing as often as I can, and
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 6: do the right thing for my films and never give up.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 5: And that that's that's amazing, you know. There there have
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: been other people in the podcast too who have you know,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 5: mentioned that, uh, you know, it's it is something we
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 5: have to just keep going. And you know, once you
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 5: you know you've done a project, just try to move
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 5: on to the next one, you know, and the you know,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: if some of the other stories that I've heard too,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 5: in yours included, I mean, even if some people can
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 5: use these stories to avoid these pitfalls and sort of
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 5: learn from everybody else's experience, I think, you know, they
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 5: would be it would behoove them to actually, you know,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 5: make a game plan, actually listen to these uh these
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 5: podcasts and stories like yours and and something like you know,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: Kelly Baker's and piece together. You know, how could I
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: avoid the same the same the same instances, the same
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 5: scenarios playing out, and you know, and the steps they
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 5: could do to prevent those.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's a tough business. It'll tear you down,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 6: it really will. And I feel like if I can,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 6: if I can direct, anybody can direct, because it does
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 6: not come easy to me, does not come naturally to me.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 6: I've had to learn it. I've had to practice it,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 6: of had to hone my crap. And I still feel
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 6: like I may be twenty five percent there. I have
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 6: not done my best work yet.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 5: And you know, and I wish you the best because
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 5: I mean, you know that that's we're always looking to improve,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 5: We're always looking to evolve, So you know, again, don
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 5: I wish you the best with everything.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Dave. I really enjoyed this. Thank
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 6: you so much.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at Indie film Huscle
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: dot com Forward slash eight eighteen. If you have it already,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: please head over to filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: leave a good review for the show.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: It really helps us out a lot, guys.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: Thank you again so much for listening to guys.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: F I L M h U S T l E
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: dot com.