Film Hustlers
Filmmaker Mark Roberts (Meet Me Next Christmas, Strangers with Candy) and aspiring filmmaker Rod "Tuddy” Rinks discuss in detail how to navigate the treacherous world of filmmaking from pitching, financing, casting, securing rights, post-production, distribution etc. We cover it all!
Film Hustlers
Lets get ready to HUSTLE! Lock in your pitch, Don't get discouraged!
Film Hustlers: Back to One: The Art of the Pitch & Making Your Money Back 🎬💰
🔥 The Hustle is Global! Mark, Tuddy, and Davie Dave are talking to hustlers worldwide!
This week, we dive into The Pitch. How to practice your pitch until it's second nature (even with your wife!), and why you should NEVER get discouraged when someone tunes out.
Plus, Tuddy breaks down the ultimate indie success story:
- How his film, Made in Mexico (starring Lilo Brancato), made its money back on hotel channels!
- The painful but necessary lesson on the MUST-HAVE marketing budget—and why relying on favors from friends won't cut it.
The takeaway? Stop waiting for all the money to be collected. Throw your hat over the fence and trust in the moving train! We discuss knowing your worth as a filmmaker and why you should always pitch for more than you think you need.
#FilmHustlers #IndieFilm #FilmmakingTips #Screenwriting #HollywoodHustle #BackToOne #FilmmakerLife #ThePitch #ExtremeMusic
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Film Hustlers. Want to welcome everybody, all the hustlers from all over the world. We are global now, so there's people listening in all corners of the globe, so that's kind of fun. I want to encourage everyone to keep writing, keep developing. There's lots of great things happening in the industry right now. Lots of companies getting ready to spend money, put a lot of product out. So I don't know. I think uh we want to be very optimistic about where it's all going. People are gonna need entertainment forever and ever. It's just changed, whether it's a motor code or a micro movie or a micro series or an actual movie or a TV movie or whatever it is, lots of people making movies. I've heard Eventually's making movies, I've heard uh Roku's making movies. So I think there's a lot of places to uh get your product sold, whether you're making it independently or you're presenting it uh to a company for them to finance. I think there's a lot to do out there. So I want to also thank Extreme Music uh for being our partner, our sponsor. They are the best in the business. I continue to use them on every movie I produce, and I know a lot of people in the industry do too. Extreme Music is the best in the business, and if you're not using them and you haven't heard of them, you should go check them out. All right, well, enjoy the show and let's get back to one people. The name of this show is um or the the intent of this show is Back to One. And a lot of people that listen, I have heard, you know, are inspired by what we talk about. They hear a lot of things that help them move forward. In fact, the editor that we work with, uh Rich Allercon, you know, always now negotiates against me with the stuff I say on the channel. I ended up giving him uh a big part of my back end on the movie because he negoti he heard the show and negotiated the way I told him on the show. There you go, Steve Changing Lives. Changing lives.
Tuddy:He's a talented guy, he deserves everything.
Mark:He really does. Um but he, you know, I think I think when you when you have when all you have is the potential of gaining on a movie or a project in the future, give away as much as you can because it doesn't really matter, right? If it's a success, then you share in the success. Right. What's gonna happen? You get 100%, everyone else gets nothing, and they all helped you for free. That's funny. Um but no, I I definitely want to go back to one on this show because I'm sure that you know, a lot of people during the pandemic decided, hey, so that script I was gonna write, or that money I was gonna raise, or that thing I was gonna shoot, or whatever, sort of probably fell to the wayside, or at least got interrupted. Right. Let's let's talk about this. Like uh your movie, which you you know, it was a it obviously we documented it. If you go back and listen to the show, you can hear how Tootie went from zero to a release. But since we did the show, you actually have gotten your movie on every platform.
Tuddy:Yeah, except for Netflix, but that's a different thing. But yeah, it's on Amazon, it's on Apple, iTunes, Google Play, um, Xbox, Voodoo, and then it's gonna go. I think in like a couple months, it's gonna go to like Tubi and like these other platforms too.
Mark:Yeah, so that's that's a made in Mexico starring Lilo Broncado, starring yourself. And um, you did you finish your run at the hotel network?
Tuddy:We finished the run at the hotel. The hotel was a cool thing, it got us a lot of uh press, you know, and from a marketing standpoint, I kind of went about it the wrong way. Well, I did have marketing dollars, which we talked about on the show, and at in the beginning of this journey, I didn't really think I needed them because I was gonna rely on you know people to post and all this stuff, and it didn't happen. And so um you really need money to get your project out there. That's important. Marketing is is almost I don't want to say everything, but without it, then you just have a movie that your friends are gonna watch and say, Hey, great job. Yeah, you know what I mean? You need to you need to figure out a way to get it out there for for the masses to see, and and the hotel channel did that for me, unfortunately. Well, I shouldn't say unfortunately, the split was really big with them.
Speaker 01:Right.
Tuddy:And to have it up there, you know, we were at one point I was in between a Disney movie and a Marvel movie that was in theaters, so it was an honor just to be on there and get it there.
Speaker 01:Right.
Tuddy:You know, and that's a place that just by chance I was able to uh you know, it they don't they're not open for everybody. I wish I would have waited because I was too eager to get my film out because of everything that had everything just went to a standstill. But if I would have waited to put it out on platforms at the same time it was in the hotels, I think I would have done a lot better because of the marketing and advertising in the hotel. Not everybody's gonna pay twenty bucks for it, but they will go on their phone if they have Amazon and purchase it for.
Mark:Well, when you look, when you make a small indie, you you probably did, you know, you're probably in the 1% club. I don't think a lot of films do you know get into hotels and get seen by millions of people and then go on platform. So I think it's I think it's exciting what you did, and I'm glad we were able to sort of document the whole thing. So congratulations.
Tuddy:I did make my money the first month. That's amazing. I did uh make the money back. Now the split was painful, yeah. You know what I mean? But hey, it's a part of business.
Mark:But you made all your money back, which is a hard thing to do in this business. So I mean, look, if you're out there and you're thinking, hey, you know, why do it? You know, I think the reality is it as you raise your money, do your movie, figure out what to do. I don't know, somehow the universe puts people in front of you that are gonna help you get it to maybe it's not the hotel channel, maybe it's not every platform, but maybe it's you know, maybe it's something else. Things are changing all the time. You know, people are are finding ways to buy movies and rent movies and see anything they want to see.
Tuddy:So try to hook up with like you know, if you're an indie filmmaker and you're doing a little movie, you don't have any connections, um, in terms of marketing and advertising, look for people, friends of yours that maybe have a big following on social media, and you could even if you drop them a couple hundred bucks or whatever, yeah. That's just try to get you the word out so it's not just your mom and your brother and uncles and your homies watching your movie so you can get more people to view it. Um, you know, and if you could set aside some marketing dollars in the beginning, so and you told me that. You told me in the beginning, like what's your how much you've set aside from marketing. I said, None. I'm gonna give out t-shirts and have all my celebrity friends post. Didn't happen. I mean, I gave out t-shirts and it was just like, you know.
Mark:Yeah, but it's it's look, it's it's hard because um because a lot of people aren't associated with the struggle that you have making a flick, you know. So you make your movie and all of a sudden you're done and you're asking people for favors and they didn't struggle like you did. So sometimes they don't do it and and it doesn't happen. But if we go back to one real quick, on the on the show, we talked about how you got uh top talent for your movie with a great script, not a whole lot of money, right? But it didn't matter. Like you asked Lilo Broncado, he said yes. He's you know, he was on the Sopranos, he was on um Bronx Tale. I mean, he was a super, super big actor compared to the level of your movie. So you are able to do that. You just have to get out there and keep asking for for the money, for help, for you know, you know what I'm coming across right now, Roberts, and maybe you can help me with this.
Tuddy:So investors, they want to see the numbers and you know, uh they want to see how well the film did, you know, in terms of financial gain. But I still haven't seen because it's new on the platforms, like it's a quarterly thing. Three three months, every three months they're gonna give me like a reading or or you know what the movie say statement. Yeah, so I still haven't got there yet. Uh I do have the hotel channel though, which is good, you know what I mean? If you just see like dollars for dollars what it made, not necessarily the cut that was involved. Views on that, that's probably so but it is you I you do like I'm still I can't really go out and hustle for money yet because I don't have all that information.
Mark:Yeah, but you raised so see that's the thing, is that you raised Or do I need to have that information?
Tuddy:I guess that's what I'm asking.
Mark:I think you don't. I think you need to know I think you need to know going in how much money the m film made compared to what you spent on it.
Speaker 01:Right.
Mark:I don't think it matters where that money came from. So, like the hotel channel made whatever it made, yeah. Uh your platforms are gonna make whatever they make, yeah, and your foreign is gonna make whatever it makes. You gotta anticipate whatever that amount's gonna be and make that your chunk and say this is how much the movie will make or has made. Uh that's not why people should invest in you, though. You know, people should invest in you because they believe in you. Yeah, if you watch Made in Mexico, you should invest in the filmmaker because of what you think the potential is, not because of what a film made, right? Because if if we all did it that way, not all filmmakers, even the biggest filmmakers in the world, fail. Yeah, but they still go on to make another movie. Yeah. So so I think it's important to remember that you're not you're not pitching the success of made in Mexico because you may you're not making made in Mexico again. You're pitching yourself as a filmmaker and as what you were able to achieve. So someone should be able to turn around and say, So he worked hard, he got a key actor that had a name value, he was able to finish, he was able to deliver uh so good so well that the composer and the and the music in the film was good, that the QC passed all QC elements to be able to be on platforms and to be able to be in hotels, because that's not easy. That's huge, yeah. That's huge. That's um, yeah, that's what producers do. You have to figure out, you know, not every like for instance, if you're sitting at home and you're like listening to this, you're probably thinking, like, oh, I'll just make a movie on my phone and I'll sell it. Well, you can't officially do that because you have to pass QC, you know. Like if you go to Netflix, if you go to Amazon, if you go to Hotel Channel, whatever, there's a QC, right? Because they broadcast films that look great. So your film has to look great, great, it has to pass QC. So you did that. Yeah, so that's something that is valuable. So what you're selling is Tootty, the filmmaker that finished a project, that sold the project, that made the money back on the project, and that made it possible for it to go on all these platforms.
Tuddy:Damn, I'll invest in me after that. Hey, you did it, man.
Mark:You did do it. Like when you think about Steven Spielberg today, of course, you're like, oh, Academy Award winner, biggest films of all time, and all that. And I sometimes think to myself, like, when he was 16, 17, was he still Steven Spielberg? Like, if you had invested in him when he was 16, 17, is he the same guy? Yeah, yeah. So you're the guy right now. So when you speak to investors or you speak to whoever's gonna do your next movie, or even a network executive, um you are not trying to be a filmmaker, you are a filmmaker. It's kind of like Steven Spielberg saying, I am Steven Spielberg when he was 16, 17. He is, and he still is, right? So there's no there's no change in time there. Like he has always been great, right? It's all in his head. So all you did was prove that you can do it, and I think everyone else can do the same. You know, I was talking to David Dave earlier before we started. When I uh started in the business, I came to Universal to audition to be a tour guide.
DavieDave:And I was you had to audition.
Mark:Oh yeah. Oh there was a hundred people. There was a hundred people, I'll never forget it was a hundred people. I was just sitting waiting my turn, and they called my name, and I walked up to the front of the room, and they were like, Hey, who's your favorite actor? And I was like, John Travolta. And and I did this whole piece about why John Travolta was my favorite actor, and I impersonated him, and they picked me, you know, out of a hundred people, they picked like six of us. Yeah. The thing about uh picking Universal as a uh as a starting ground for me, you know, when you're on a tram and they and you see a red light, you have to start talking, right? You have to start pitching. Yeah, but you got a tram full of a hundred people, yeah. And you can't move the tram, so you have to keep them entertained. Oh, hey, you know, if you look off to the left, if you look off to the right, hey, Charlie Chaplin did his movie there, and yeah, Clint Eastwood did four movies over here. You you told me about the offer. I watched all of the offer, yeah. And you know, Robert Evans wasn't a guy that came from running studios to run Paramount. Yeah, he just was an innovator, right? So the reason I brought up uh Universal Studios and being a tour guide is you're always pitching on the tram. It created my ability to pitch. Now, since we're all going back to one, right? Let's talk about the pitch, right? If you're the only way you're gonna raise money is by pitching, right? Yeah, that that goes for if you're doing shoes, if you're doing clothes, if you're doing uh anything you're doing, you gotta pitch. People have to hear you, people have to agree with you, and then they have to give you money or they have to do whatever, right? So your pitch is really important. I practice on you guys all the time, and you don't even know it. Yeah, I'm always pitching my stuff. Like, I'll always start a conversation with my wife, and I'll be like, I'll be like, hey, so have you heard? And then I'll be pitching my idea in a general conversation with her, and she'll turn to me and go, like, wait, are you are you pitching me? And I'll be like, Yeah. He's like, Okay. So I'll be like, What do you think? You know, yeah, but if it sounded natural, it sounded like a normal conversation, so it sounded great. So work on your pitch all the time with your wife, with your son, with your friends, and just make it a general conversation so that when you actually do get to pitching, you um you're really good at what you're saying about your project, right? So you have to be able to tell your story to the point where someone says, wow, I really like that and I want to be involved with you on this and let's go do it. And whether that's money or an actor, if you if you pitch and someone doesn't understand what you're saying or doesn't understand the pitch, do you get mad?
Tuddy:No, I just I just forfeit. Like I just like it just I could tell by like the face and the nod of the head. Like if they're into it, then I keep going. But if I lose them, then I just kind of go, yeah. So I'll tell you something.
Mark:I'll tell you something. If you have a project, doesn't matter what it is, I'm like telling you if it's food, if it's jeans, if it's shoes, if it's whatever you're selling, it's almost like you should take mental note of what's working. It's kind of like being a comedian, right? Like a comedian tells a joke, and if it doesn't work, they have to practice it in front of an audience.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Right? And if they fail, a lot of them don't take it personal, right? Yeah. They just sort of go forward and figure out how that joke's gonna work because they believe in that joke. They know it's funny because they heard it somewhere.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:So I think when you pitch, you have to like take mental notes or even take notes. Just be like, okay, so you know, what did you think of that? Or you can see someone being uninterested or interested. You know, it's funny. I'm gonna tell you guys a story because I just pitched I pitched someone an idea. Big big Was this at the polo lounge? No, no, no, but I'll tell you about the polo lounge next. I pitched last week. I pitched an agent of this big recording star. I don't know her.
DavieDave:William Hung.
Mark:No, I don't know the star, but I pitched the agent. Yeah, and I could tell in the Zoom that the agent had gotten on to pass.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Right? They had gotten on the Zoom and on the meeting to pass on me.
Tuddy:Like courtesy. I'll get on. Like a courtesy.
Mark:I'm gonna get on because you were recommended by a friend.
Tuddy:Yeah, yeah.
Mark:But I'm not into but we're not into this, right? So very courteous. Yeah. So he was so he cut me off at some point and he said, Hey, um, uh so yeah, you know, we're doing this biopic and this, you know, we don't want to infringe on the rights. So, like, so that was where the it was going, and I could see it. I continued to pitch, and as I continued to pitch, the person changed their mind and said, Okay, you know what? This could work. Yeah, the way you're saying it, this could work. Send me an email with the idea, and let me go figure this out, get the thumbs up.
Speaker 01:Nice.
Mark:So I sent the email with the idea, and they were and they further wrote back and said, I think this could really work. So that was my focus on that pitch. So if you're pitching something, don't get discouraged by someone being like visibly not interested in the city.
DavieDave:When they tune out, yeah, you can see them tune out.
Mark:Yeah, you see people tune out. You see you're pitching someone and you see them like look to the right or look to the left, all of a sudden they're not interested. Yeah. But you capture someone by not giving up and by not changing your demeanor about how they what whatever they're doing or seeing, right? So you continue your pitch, whatever it is. Now, if it doesn't work at all, then it doesn't work, then that's not that's not worth continuing, right? You'll you'll know that in the end.
Tuddy:And I think the more you pitch, the better you get, obviously. Because like when I pitched made in Mexico, I was so I had it down like so fast and so concise, and I could tell people most people were interested, like really interested. And that was in the beginning, like it wasn't even after me pitching and pitching and pitching, it was early on.
Mark:Well, you knew you knew what was good about your story, yeah.
Tuddy:And I knew what's capturing people, I knew what would hook people, you know.
Mark:Obviously, they get people give you money, like at some point you gotta know your pitch is so good that it gives you money. I mean, at some point in the future, we should get on a conversation about don't shortchange yourself, you know, go for more money than you think you need and have someone else lower the amount. Oh, can you do always give me a hundred grand? Oh, a hundred geez, I was thinking like ten. Okay, give me the ten. All right, I'll take it. I just raised ten thousand dollars. But um, but yeah, no, I think I think that that's the key is that you have to work on your pitch. Like I was talking to someone the other day that was like, Oh, I I have a story for you. I I gotta pitch you this story. I got this great story, right? It said, Okay, pitch me your story. He's like, wait, right now, right here, I'm not ready. Like, I I need to like prepare. That's the other thing, is that you got you gotta have your pitch down, whatever that's gonna be, and you have to know how it affects people. So if you have an idea that you want to raise money for, or pitch a studio, or pitch an executive, whoever you want to pitch, an actor, just have your elevator pitch, which is about 30 seconds 10 minutes, that will interest that person to the point where you've got you know you have them. Yeah, and if you lose them in the middle of the pitch, just keep going if you know that there's some compelling shit coming in your conversation. That's back to one.
Tuddy:Yeah, I'd say keep it under five lines too. Like if you're if you're a writer and you're gonna write your pitch, you know, keep it under five sentences.
Mark:Yeah, totally. You know what I mean? Watching the offer, which by the way, you recommended I watch.
Tuddy:I haven't even finished it.
Mark:It was amazing to watch like that guy already was not a filmmaker.
Tuddy:No, he worked at a defense uh software company or something like that.
Mark:Yeah, so he was a software guy, ended up creating Hogan's Heroes. He had a good instinct.
Tuddy:Oh, he did, yeah, yeah. But in the in the offer, without giving it away, he's pitching, and people are listening. Like he was at the Chateau Montmart, and I'm it's pretty accurate, I think. I mean, I've heard people say it's not as accurate, you know, but you know, in the in the offer, he was pitching. And obviously he knew how to pitch or he wouldn't have sold Hogan's heroes.
Mark:Look, my personal interest is always in a quick pitch, something that I can tell you real fast, something that I can excite you in. If I have to tell you about the grandma's uncle's sister who moved from here to there and created like this thing and then this business, you know, I I that's not my ex that that's not an exciting pitch to me. That's not what I do as a producer, right? But I think if you're doing independent work, you either do what you did, which is understand your story so well that you can pitch it and people can get it and get excited about it, or go high concept. Easy Jurassic Park sort of pitch and then build it out from there. Build it out from your super, super high concept story. Um, but I guess the back to one part of this show is get your pitch down, don't give up on the dream of making your movie or your TV show. Continue to pitch people and go and do it.
Tuddy:Pretty good. Um, how about talent? Should you try to attach talent before? What do you think?
Mark:If you have them accessible, yeah.
Tuddy:Yeah.
Mark:Yeah. I mean, you you like you didn't. You went you went the other way. You you raised the money first, you got your executive producers first, you you wrote your script, you got your you got your money, and then you went after Lilo.
Tuddy:Yeah.
Mark:Right? That's one way to do it.
Tuddy:If for some reason Lilo had bad I wrote the script first, then I got the money based on the script, then I got some of the money, not all of it. Then I got Lilo, then I got more of the money, yeah, and then other things fell into play.
Mark:Yeah, I mean, look, uh the other thing that we have to discuss is you have to take chances. Like it's a very, very complicated business. You have to take chances, you have to decide how you're gonna do it. Okay, you have to do the script first, you have to start raising some of the money. Well, you by the way, we've talked about this. What happens when you raise some of the money? You throw your hat over the fence, yeah, you're gonna start this film no matter what. You got 10 grand, you need 20. I'm gonna do it no matter what. That's what happened, right? That's what happens. But but you know what? Life never lets you down if you take risks. Yeah, life never lets you down. If you don't take a risk, you know how many filmmakers have you met that say, Oh, you know what? Once I raise all the money, I'm gonna start. Well, that doesn't always happen. Sometimes raising some of the money excites other money.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Sometimes you getting started excites other money. Sometimes getting talent excites other money. But if you just sit there and we're waiting for all of it to be collected first, there's no moving train there. There's no reason to jump on. By the way, investors love a moving train. Yeah, they feel like they're gonna miss the boat, they feel like they're not gonna get on this one. You're gonna make it, and you offered it to me, and I'm not gonna be part of it, and you're gonna go make it, and I don't want that to happen, so I'm in. Yeah. So there's there's a ticking time clock on good investors. You know, good investors are people that are gonna give you money because they don't want to miss out on the opportunity that is your uh the opportunity you're offering. Yeah, I think that happened a lot to you, right? You were telling people about how you were moving and they were like, Oh, I'm in. I'll do it with you.
Tuddy:Yeah, yeah. I mean, the money wasn't that, you know, it wasn't a lot of money, so it was like, you know, hey, how much okay, I'll I'll I'll I'm jumping up. And then it got to the point where I didn't I don't want to say I didn't need it, but I didn't want to keep like I knew what I had and I knew what I was what was gonna happen with it. I knew I I started seeing the dailies and I knew what it was gonna turn into. So I didn't need more people to give me more money at that point. Does that make sense? Yeah, like I knew I already had it, like I knew it was just a matter of time before it all came together. Yeah. Um, but now going forward with trying to raise money for a second project, I could revisit those people and say, hey, I'm starting this new project, and they're gonna tell me, Hey, you making it for 20 grand again? And I'm gonna say, No, I can't. Right. Well 50 mil. But but no, not 50 mil. Because there's also that. Like m my buddy who's been helping me, you know, he read one of my scripts, he really liked it, and um, he knows people, money people and stuff, and he got a producer on board, and um we attached talent right away, a good talent, um, and they started taking it out the pitch, and they were asking for like four or five million dollars. And I was like, I don't know, you guys. That's I know the talent we got is worth it, you know, because we got Joe Montaigne to play the lead as the mob guy, uh, and he's worth it, but I don't think four and a half million, five million dollars is gonna be tough. And it was tough. Like we got it to some investors and they passed, they liked it, but it was just too it's a lot of money, you know what I mean? And I'm really like I'm a first-time director. I'm not a first-time director, but you know, I've made a movie, it's successful, you know, I've it's rated really well. Um I I think I need to go like one and a half. And I told my buddy that I said, let's go for one and a half. We could still get Montaigne, we could still pay him his fee, and and you know, we're just not gonna make as much money, but five million dollars is a lot of money to raise for an independent.
Mark:Yeah, but let let let people, you know, you gotta try.
Tuddy:I think I think uh So what do you do in that situation, Roberts? Do I keep going for that number or do I tell because I told him drop it down to like one, one and a half, two because if I go two, I'm gonna get one and a half.
Mark:I think you have to go with your gut. Like if if your actor is an older actor and isn't really isn't really gonna create a sale for you, right? There are there are actors that are gonna create sales for you. He probably or there are actors that won't create sales for you.
Tuddy:So you know ironically, he was a big they took it to one of the platforms and the platform was like, Oh, you got him, and we thought we had a good that we thought that was it. That's where that four and a half came from. Because of his you know, success in TV and stuff, he's a globally recognized face.
Mark:Yeah, I mean I would I would stick with the number. If if if your producers are saying four and a half, five, then they could still go to people and people can still say, Look, if you can do it for two or three then we're in, then we're in. But if you if it's five, we're out. I think people can decide that. You don't have to decide that right off the bat. I mean, you look, uh I want to preface this by saying I think you should do what you have to do to be creative if it's what you want to do. But at the end of the day, the reality is you have to push for more money because you're gonna need that money to give an actor like the quality of what you're talking about, time to do his scenes.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Right? A lot I've I've been on movies that were a million dollars that actors wouldn't take because they knew they weren't gonna have enough takes. Yeah, they'd be like, Look, I want to do this part, but I need like five or six takes each time.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:And we had to say, Well, you're not gonna get that, you're gonna get two takes, maybe. Yeah, maybe three. Yeah, yeah, that's not gonna work because I need to know I can work with this character and and and mess around with the with the days, and we're like, we can't do that. So we lost actors because of that. So maybe maybe you stick with the amount, but say we're flexible with the budget. Yeah, you know, we're flexible with it. If you love it, if someone loves it, then I'm open to talking about lowering the budget. Yeah, but right now we're just trying to get better actors to surround you know, Montaigne, yeah, and we're trying to allow for more time per day for these scenes to play out.
Speaker 01:Right, right, right.
Tuddy:And in the way I wrote it in a way to be shot, like it's minimal. Look, I wrote it as an indie. I I wrote it to be for me to make it, like for you know, half a million, right? Couple hundred thousand, you know, it pretty much takes place in a hotel, yeah. Um, a casino. Um but yeah, I mean, I don't know, that's where I'm ca because in my mind I look at that number and I'm like, fuck, when I wrote this thing, I was thinking like 500,000.
Mark:So let's talk about extreme music. One thing that I didn't realize is you know, I spend a lot of time on extreme music finding my music for my movies and for different scenes. This time on stepping into the holidays, I could not find this one song. And it was sort of a dance thing. It was it did have to do with my art choreographer. So I called Spencer Liff and I was like, look, I can't find the song for this scene. I feel like you might be able to. So here is the login to Extreme Music. Go check out, use whatever key phrases you want that you think might get you to the music that you like. He did it for half an hour, he found the song that was perfect for the scene. And I was like, that's amazing. But he did it, he had never heard of Extreme Music, but he went on the site, he put, you know, just like Google, you punch in the type of music you want, it gives you a big list, you start to listen to each one of those, and he and he picked one, it was terrific. But I think extreme music continues to evolve, you know. When you produce movies for uh an investor or for a network or for a studio, you can't start putting music in until all of your scenes are locked, right? Because otherwise your composer has to keep rewriting everything. So everything before then is temp. A lot of times I'll put in all of this extreme music into the movie as temp, and we'll end up keeping it because it's so good.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Because it's kind of curated, right? You're a producer, you're listening, you're putting, you're picking it, you're giving it to your editor. The editor puts it in and you're like, hey, this is perfect. Then you give it to your investor or the network. Yeah, the network says this is amazing.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:So you end up keeping it.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:And the other the other great thing is that Russ and Extreme Music have figured out how to make it affordable.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:So you don't, you know, you don't do this and end up paying like a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:You know, you pay a good chunk, but you were able to do it with um made in Mexico. I was able to do it with every movie I've ever made in the past. Five years it's been nothing but extreme music. I did an entire movie with nothing but extreme music. I didn't even use a composer.
Tuddy:Really?
Mark:Yeah, that's how great it is.
Tuddy:So don't they have a feature where you can kind of compose, you can pull stuff out?
Mark:Yeah, and I've done that before where you actually pick a song, and if there's like too much guitar or too much sacks.
Tuddy:So you don't really you could do it all yourself then.
Mark:Yeah, I mean some of the songs have that feature, some of them don't. But if you find like an orchestrated song and you decide that you don't want that much strings or you don't watch that you don't want that much uh horns, you can remove them and listen to the song without it. And then if you like it, you download it and it'll create the song without that stuff on it.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Mark:Which is pretty amazing. But we'll talk a lot more about Extreme Music. We'll get uh Russ Emmanuel in here back in, yeah. And we'll talk to him. But we're excited to have them back on board. Obviously, they believe in what we're doing, and uh, you know, we believe in them. So let's continue to support extreme music.com because they're amazing. Yeah, they're probably the best there's ever been.
Tuddy:I mean, yeah, they're good. They're really good. Alarcon used it, you know, when he did all the tech music, same thing. He did a lot of the tech music which we kept.
Mark:You kept so it ended up becoming your actual score.
Tuddy:Yeah, I mean, yeah, for the most part. It's amazing.
Mark:Well, I what I like about it too is that when you when you download a song and you put it into your system, you can edit that song to fit your scene. Right. Right? So that's exciting. That's that's the best part about it, because if you couldn't do that, then you couldn't do it.
Speaker 01:Right.
Mark:If you weren't able to edit the song, then you couldn't put it in. But there's been super hits, and we'll talk about that with uh Russ in the future. By the way, Russ recently played for the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Extreme music. I'm guessing he plays bass or something. I don't know. Like he's a he's a big time musician. I I gotta hear more about that.
Tuddy:I don't know if we can get him at this point.
Mark:That's some serious stuff, Buckingham Palace. All right, Russ. Well, we'll have to hear all about that soon. Next week we've got Tommy Harper on the show, yeah, who executive produced Top Gum Maverick, yeah, which is at a billion, over a billion dollars made.
Tuddy:So is that the biggest movie so far? Did it beat Titanic?
Mark:Because Titanic Titanic, I think, and Avatar still continue to be like the top. No, no, this is like this is the biggest film of the year. For hands down. Yeah, of the year, but I don't think no, no. I mean I don't think I don't think it's I think Avatar's on top.
Tuddy:Yeah. Is it? Yeah. How many billions? I don't know.
Mark:I don't know about billions, but probably one point like something. We'll we'll figure it out. How many avatars are there now? Let me get back to you.
DavieDave:Um there's one, but there's one coming out this year. They have like six in the slate. Yeah.
Mark:There's a lot. What? Yeah.
DavieDave:They've already they've already this is they're shooting like the third or fourth order.
Mark:There's so much, there's so much to talk about in the show this season. Checking the gate. No, checking the gate. That's not a thing anymore.
Tuddy:What do you mean it's not a thing anymore?
Mark:They don't use film anymore. They don't check the gate anymore. They don't check the gate anymore. Did I tell you I worked in Mexico one time and um they were we were still using film, and you know, in the U.S., checking the gate was everything, right? Gotta check the gate. What do you check the gate for? There's hair in the gate. You gotta reshoot the thing. Right, there's dust or something. So I'm in Mexico and I realized like halfway through the week, the first week, that no one had ever checked the gate. And I went to the DP, Mexican DP, and I was like, hey man, like, aren't you gonna check the gate? He's like, No, if I check the gate, something will get in there. I'm not kidding. He said that. I was like, I guess you're right. Like, you know, different strokes for different folks. But um, but yeah, no, I'm excited about this season. We're gonna have a lot of great guests. We're gonna talk about a lot of uh pitching and getting your film made. I want to talk more about using a lawyer, I want to talk more about LLCs, we got Walter Bath back on. There's lots of things to talk about. We get uh Antoine Fisher, which I'm doing a project with right now. We Caroline Keptness. Caroline Kepnus, yeah. I wasn't I wasn't here for the last one. I had to work. Oh, is that true? Oh, yeah, let's get her back on. It's gonna be a great season, but I I just want to say if you're out there and you're thinking about you know you got stopped by COVID and you think you didn't keep your film dream alive. No time like the present. Go out let's get with some money raised, let's get uh in the bank and let's get something shot. Lots of platforms buying stuff, lots of ways ways to show you a movie. So don't get stopped. Let's get it, don't get stopped, let's get it done this year. You can count on us. We're gonna be here every week talking to you about it. If you have questions, send them over to the Instagram. Um the Instagram. The Instagram, what's it called? Instagram? Facebook, Facebook. No, it's called the the face Facebook. Um Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Uh no, but definitely send it send them over. We'll we'll answer them. But I think uh the key is this year, let's get it done. Robert, do you want to raise money for an independent movie?
Tuddy:Oh dude, I'm uh I'm happy to raise money for come on, you're you're you're trapped in the studio system.
Mark:Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. We're gonna talk more about this next time, and uh on the next show we're gonna be um meeting up with Tommy Harper, the executive producer of Top Gun Maverick, which is hit over a billion dollars. And uh looking forward to um to a great year. That's what's up. All right.
