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Indiewood
A Podcast for Indie Filmmakers
In the world of social media, and fast-paced journalism, knowledge is abound. But with all the noise, finding the right information is near impossible. Especially if you’re a creative working in independent film.
Produced by Cinematography For Actors, the Indiewood podcast aims to fix that. This is a podcast about indie filmmakers and the many hats we wear in order to solve problems before, during, and after production.
Every month, award-winning Writer/Director Yaroslav Altunin is joined by a different guest co-host to swap hats, learn about the different aspects of the film industry, and how to implement all you learn into your work.
"We learn from indie filmmakers so we can become better filmmakers. Because we all want to be Hollywood, but first we have to be Indiewood."
Indiewood
Going Beyond Screenwriting: Balancing Ambition and Self-care
On our second episode with the versatile writer Julia Batavia, we go beyond writing to how directing, novels, and narrative podcasts can help you evolve your craft.
Julia candidly shares her experiences working on her short film "Neptune," inspired by an interview with Robert Pattinson, and the vital lessons she learned while directing in confined spaces. Julia's reflections on trying various roles highlight the indispensable value of experimentation and finding one's true passion in filmmaking.
Julia also invites us into the world of storytelling across multiple mediums, exploring the structural nuances between screenwriting and novel writing. We discuss how understanding the technical intricacies of storytelling can lead to greater creative freedom, similar to a jazz musician mastering their craft. Through these explorations, Julia inspires listeners to broaden their creative horizons, embrace new challenges, and find moments of self-care.
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A Podcast for Indie Filmmakers
More on:
IG: @indiewoodpod
YT: Cinematography for Actors
In the world of social media, and fast-paced journalism, knowledge is abound. But with all the noise, finding the right information is near impossible. Especially if you’re a creative working in independent film.
Produced by Cinematography For Actors, the Indiewood podcast aims to fix that. This is a podcast about indie filmmakers and the many hats we wear in order to solve problems before, during, and after production.
Every month, award-winning Writer/Director Yaroslav Altunin is joined by a different guest co-host to swap hats, learn about the different aspects of the film industry, and how to implement all you learn into your work.
"We learn from indie filmmakers so we can become better filmmakers. Because we all want to be Hollywood, but first we have to be Indiewood."
welcome back to the anywood podcast, a podcast about any filmmaking and the many hats filmmakers wear in order to get those films made. My name is yaroslav altunin. I'm a writer, director, I think that's it. I used to do a lot more, but I've now just comfortably settled in the realm of writer and director, and this month we are doing a writing-only series with the talented multi-hyphenate Julia Batavia. Hello, who's a screenwriter, a novelist, a podcaster-writer? I guess that's right. Right, yeah, I've written a podcast.
Speaker 3:Narrative podcast. Yeah, so welcome back. Hey, nice to be here. It's good to have you. Thank you, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Such a joy. So last episode we talked about your career and how you were the engine that kind of propelled everything that you've done so far in your career. And you've been hired to write screenplays, you've been hired to work with directors, you've been hired to write a podcast, and then you've done things on your own and I feel like when I talked about your trajectory in the previous episode, it was inspiring because you did it on your own. You pushed everything forward. You didn't just write a screenplay, send it out to people and be like could get me work. You were like I'm going to get this on my own and you did. And then, coming out of grad school, while you were getting these other projects, you did other things.
Speaker 1:And I think that was also inspiring because you weren't just comfortable being in the bubble of a writer. You were like I need to know what it's like to direct a film. And then you were like I'm gonna write a book. This story wants to be a book, and you did that. And then someone was like, hey, do you want to write a podcast? And you were like I have no, no idea. Sure, right, and you did. The cool thing about it is because you're a biopic writer At least that's what you were back then and then someone was like hey, this is a podcast about sci-fi. And you're like yes, let's do it. And you did it, it was so cool, thanks. So let's talk about Neptune, which is a short film that you wrote and directed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I shot, so maybe I am a cinematographer after all.
Speaker 3:You are a cinematographer.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've done cinematography. I'm not a cinematographer, indiana is a cinematographer. I just point a camera at stuff and press record.
Speaker 3:All right. Okay, I was so fed up with having things in development and not seeing actually words I'd written spoken by actors on a screen. I was like, screw it, I'm gonna do a short film. So the idea came from a article that I had read like 10 years earlier. Again, this is why like everything, just sort of Everything matters.
Speaker 3:Everything is in its own time and it was about know, actually it was an interview, uh, with robert pattinson. It was, yeah, at the height of twilight fame, and I remember it was in vanity fair and I remember reading it and he sounded so sad. He was just stuck in his hotel room eating m&ms, like playing the guitar, and I was like man, this guy's life has been like really impacted by fame in a negative way and how awful. So the idea I love the idea of filming things in one space. The anniversary party is probably my favorite film in terms of oh, if I ever wanted to shoot a feature you know it's doable just have it be in a house, you don't have to leave the location. So the short film was based in one hotel room and it was about a celebrity being interviewed by a journalist, played by your wife, sarah my, my then girlfriend then girlfriend.
Speaker 3:Girlfriend, pre-fiance, now wife and a stalker, breaks into the hotel room posed as a room service attendant and holds him hostage at gunpoint. And I think what was interesting to me is, like we're in a soundproof hotel room, there's this crazy guy with a gun, there's this triangulation. What do you do? You have the journalist looking at it, you have the actor experiencing it and then you have the mentally unstable person sort of guiding the action.
Speaker 1:How did that experience writing a short film, directing it and then seeing it? How did that change your writing?
Speaker 3:well, I learned I do not want to direct ever again, which is a good thing to learn, you know, I think it's important to try different roles, to realize what you like and don't like. And there is, I do think there's this huge emphasis on being a writer, director and like that is the pinnacle. But I found that I cared so much more about the words on the page, what was being said. I didn't really care where the camera went. I remember I asked you where do you think it should go?
Speaker 3:and you're like, like you're the director you tell me, and I was like no, but you're the cinematographer you tell me. And so it was like directors, which I completely respect, they have to have this authority, they have to have this vision of this is the way we're gonna do it, which I just don't inherently care enough. Maybe I will if I see another project get made and then I would say, no, put it over there, Don't do that. But at the time my main goal was just hearing things I'd written, spoken aloud, that's so important.
Speaker 1:I feel like if you're always in a vacuum, you don't get the necessary perspective of what your work sounds like, performed by other people and sure were there less expensive ways to do that.
Speaker 3:Like I could have mounted a play. Like I could have less expensive, I mean, but I've always been go big or go home so that is uh I. I chose a short film and I don't regret having done it. It was a. It was a very worthwhile experience.
Speaker 1:I have seen the film again, Not, I want to say recently, but because it was. I was also the editor.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And I remember seeing it pop up on my computer about a year ago maybe two now, but this was when we did this. This was 2019, 2019, 2019.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I saw it maybe again in 2023 and it's good. It's good. I feel like when you detach yourself from something and this is this has happened with work that I've written and photos I've taken and things I've shot and edited years later I'll look back and I'm like damn, and I I think it's like wait, damn, in a good way or a bad way in a good way.
Speaker 1:Okay, I feel like there's a sense of weird, creative, and I want to call it body dysmorphia, yeah, because that's something I've experienced and so that's a unique parallel, for me at least like creatively. I look at something that I've just made. I'm like that's not good enough, that sucks. Yeah, it looks bad. Then I look at it years later, detached from, you know, from my connection to it, uh, like my spiritual connection to it, and I look and I'm like, wow, that looks cool look that looks pretty.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, we have to celebrate the effort yeah like we have to celebrate that.
Speaker 3:You did the thing, no matter the outcome. You created something out of nothing. You put yourself out there and now this entity has its own energy and what comes of it we don't know yet. Right, like it could be a delayed response or it could be an imminent reaction, but you created something and I think I'm trying to be kinder to myself because I was so outcome-oriented and that whole releasing attachment to outcome very zen, very cutesy, very demure, very mindful uh we're not very mindful, it was yeah, you were.
Speaker 3:You were very focused on non-mindful things no, it's like if it doesn't win awards, then it was worthless yeah and that's not a good. No, it's not a good, it's not a good mindset to have it's not a good mindset to be in, and I'm still guilty of falling into that trap sometimes of if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound? The tree still fell in the forest.
Speaker 1:You still wrote the script. You still have the material. And maybe someone will come upon the tree and be like, hey, that tree fell and that's actually an interesting segue into another project that you did, that you wrote a long time ago, that fell and that someone heard and found. But we'll get it.
Speaker 2:We'll get to that I think a little later, that's a conversation for a full episode?
Speaker 1:I think sure, um, after neptune, the short film. Yeah, uh, there was a story that came about. It's very personal story. We don't have to talk about the meat, the meat and potatoes will be vague yeah but this event happened in your life and you were like I want to write this, but you didn't write a screenplay, even though I feel like you could have. Yeah, you know it was very much in in line with the other biopics you've written, but the biopic was about you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was the scariest yeah.
Speaker 1:But then you didn't write a movie about that, which was entirely in your lane. Your forte, yeah you wrote a book.
Speaker 3:I did write a book. I wrote a novel in about a year. Why a book book? I wrote a novel in about a year. Why a book? Well, coming from the literary world, and then compare that to everything it takes to make a movie, I was like I only need one editor to like this and then one publisher to say yes. It felt at the time like the bar for entry was a modicum lower than Was it. Thinking back on it, I still think, and it's more optimistic in a way, but maybe that's just my skewed perception.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, I went through a breakup and it was devastating and I wrote nonsense for months until finally I needed the compulsion to be exorcised and the fastest way to do that was a book and I'd actually started taking. Okay, here's the context in 2019, after the breakup, I took a novel writing class at UCLA novel one and this was UCLA Extension UCLA Extension which, by the way, I have two friends from that who I'm still in contact with, and we are a little writers group and we'll meet up, share our ideas. They've read screenplays of mine, but mostly we share fiction. But I wanted to branch out into a different discipline, just to like get some space. And so I started writing a fictionalized version of that in the class.
Speaker 3:Of your breakup Of the breakup.
Speaker 1:I like what you said there Getting out of your creative bubble and kind of trying a different discipline. Yeah, and the last God, it's been, I don't know, maybe a month or two, maybe a bit more. I've just had fantasies about writing a book. And it's not that I don't love screenplays or that I feel like, oh, if I write a screenplay it'll never get made, or whatever, like I still have stories that I want to write as screenplays, regardless of, you know, whatever happens to them. But I really want to write a book. There's something about that shift in discipline where it's all about prose and all about thought. There's so many times when I was writing a screenplay and I was like he thinks this and I was like, ah, I can't write that and it's a movie, you know.
Speaker 3:But in a book I can take a chapter and just be like I'm gonna write a whole, I'm gonna write 20 pages about this guy's singular thought I will say this, though, coming from the discipline of screenwriting, which is so entrenched in structure and you have to understand structure on a basic level to write a very a plus B equals C kind of story. Until you are competent with that, you can't riff like a jazz musician. No, you can't. And novel writing is. It's deceiving in that you think you can just go, but it's hard.
Speaker 1:You can't, god, I'm really glad you said that. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna sidebar for a little bit because, uh, I watched this video and it's this guy I follow on youtube and he's a great musician. I forget his name, I'm so sorry. And uh, he did a video watching. Oh, my god, see I, once I start forgetting names, I forget all the names it's the guy from Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3:Life Finds A Way oh, richard, no Attenborough, that's not Richard Attenborough no, he doesn't say Life Finds A Way.
Speaker 1:Sam Neill, jeff Goldblum. Thank you.
Speaker 3:I can't believe we didn't rep Jeff Goldblum. I love you, jeff, jeff, sorry.
Speaker 1:I should have remembered, because I watched a video about Jeff Goldblum playing jazz. Oh, and so this musician, very talented jazz musician, is watching Jeff Goldblum play. Jeff Goldblum played jazz with his band. Because he does that. He'll pop up in a club in Los angeles and play jazz. Yeah, and just be pure jeff goldblum. Right, you know, like his mannerisms and his yeah is his. I don't want to call him tix, but it's just way of being he's a national treasure.
Speaker 1:He should be, if not. And so he plays jazz and he is I don't know how to describe it because I'm not a jazz musician, but I understand music a little bit because I did it a long time ago. Um, he is good but, I feel like, can truly only be appreciated by other jazz musicians. Sure, because there's some jazz that you listen to. You're like what the what is that right? And a jazz musician is like oh man, I get it, I get that weird, like seventh sustained to you know whatever, like dissonance.
Speaker 1:And so the musician said something interesting. He was like jeff goldblum understands the technical of it, but he doesn't necessarily have the experience. Sure, right, but because he understands the, the technical side of jazz, he can play what he's listening to. Sure, because there's two types of jazz where you have the technical knowledge and experience and your hands just go up and down the scales and they can play riffs and it's, it's nice and free and and sexy, but then there's what you're listening to, which is a lot harder to play, yeah, and so, coming back to novel writing, and screenwriting.
Speaker 3:I feel like if you don't understand the technical of it, you can't play that really complex jazz If you don't have a comfortability with the foundations of story structure. It's extremely daunting to go write 50,000 words.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and keep it coherent and keep it coherent. So the book I wrote is very structured in that each chapter is an hour of the day and so the book takes place in 24 hours. I mean that was a way that I could wrap my head around getting it to the finish line. But within those chapters, those hours, that's the jazz. That's where you just go off and riff, and that's not to say in screenplays. You can't riff either, but it all stems from, I would say, a classical story structure.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I wrote the book, I happened to still be in contact with one or two people from the Penguin world. I asked who they recommended would be a good editor. New York Book Editors is a company that has freelance editors and you submit what your story's about and what you're looking for and they pair you with someone. She recommended this individual woman, jennifer credila. I will. I will, uh, stan jen, because she was amazing, and so I ended up working with jen on editing the book, and then jen was able to connect me, help me write a query letter to a handful of agents that she thought would be interested in the book, and from the 10 agents, two responded, which is very lucky. I understand that that actually was like probably the exception to the rule.
Speaker 1:But also a testament to your craft.
Speaker 3:Well, the next part of the story is we sent out the book at maybe the wrong time because it was november 20. We didn't do it november of 2020, but, um, we did it around that time and it just wasn't a story that was particularly relevant, I would say. So the book itself got a lot of rave rejections. I'll put it that way. Fine, it's a first novel. I did it. I came out of this with a book agent that I've sent short stories to, and she submitted those places. So the win here for me is not the published book, it's the connection to future possibilities.
Speaker 1:And also I feel like it's the act of creation as well. You created something massive, because 50 000 words words is no joke yeah, and again it stemmed from passion compulsion. I had to figure out a way to make sense of what had happened and a lot of work that I think we do as writers is therapeutic in a way. I mean I've said this on the pod before where a lot of my stuff is just me unpacking my, my life and upbringing.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm I cringe a bit thinking how I made friends read that, thinking about, like god, that was an open wound, that I was like, what do you think? And they're still my friends so that's great.
Speaker 1:That means something about the friendship right more about the friendship than the book probably well, since then you've written short stories, which I think are are also really fun because they they can bring forth other versions of that story. Like you can write a short story that can then become a short film. It can become a feature. I think it's a really cool avenue for for exploring uh different stories in short form.
Speaker 3:I guess I think the thread throughout is how do you do the most with the least, how do you be efficient, how do you use every word, every action to the most it can deliver? I think that is a great exercise writing short prose that then can translate into other things, because a lot of times, you know, in screenplays you start too early, you end too late, no one or your, there's no subtext. I mean that we'll get into that in another point. But, um, I think that anytime you can do more with less, you've you've done something good speaking of more with less, but I say that sarcastically.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about the podcast, sure, because this is, uh, a story that was based on a film released on a big streamer right, and they want to do an origin story for one of the characters right and disclaimer.
Speaker 3:This may never see the light of day. Yeah, I don't think it will. It's still. It's still in the works. Light of day yeah, I don't think it will, it's still. It's still in the works, it's still being. I don't think it, I think it's, I think it's gone, but that's fine.
Speaker 1:So working on the podcast, because it was a narrative podcast but it was audio form and and was still screenplay-esque I guess in a way I would call it a radio drama. Okay, but it's still based on a film, so there was still some structure in it. Yeah, how did that, like that writing process, change you as a writer?
Speaker 3:First I started working on it with a creative collaborator, this writer, peter. We had both been hired by Q-Code, who had been partnered with Paramount because the movie was a Paramount film. They went to Q Code, who makes narrative podcasts, and were like we want to do an origin story. So my management at the time had put me up for the job. I interviewed, I got it started working with Peter, so we took the characters from the movie and created like a whole kind of world and we had six episodes at the time, half hour each. And it did stretch my capacity, because I am terrible at world building, I am terrible at sci-fi.
Speaker 1:It's just not something that I uh, you've written about damaged creative men for 10 years, you know meanwhile, the character is a damaged, creative man and that's why I probably got the job.
Speaker 3:The main character was, uh, this dude who just couldn't get his shit together. Um, but anyway, uh, and that's what was fun writing with Peter, who was more about the world building the context. What are we looking at? What space are we occupying? The pew pew. But also, when you're writing a podcast, you're not writing visual, you're writing for sound. So it's about figuring out what are we hearing?
Speaker 1:is it like writing a stage play, but for not even because, like you, don't well, let me finish the thought. Is it like writing a stage play but for people who can't see? Because it's the plays are all about audio, because you don't really do much in the physical space, like, yeah, you move around, you there's props, there's sets, but it's still about the spoken word, you know. That's why plays, for the most part, is a dialogue right, I, but you're well.
Speaker 3:It's different, though, because you're writing in action, in the form of sound, so you have to write in footsteps. You have to write in the clink of a teacup, the pouring of the water, the shut of a door. There's wind, chimes outside, like you're, you're creating a space literally in sound for the blind. Yeah, yes, uh, that was a huge shift, nothing I'd ever done before, and it did make me more conscious of transitions and how important sound is in a screenplay.
Speaker 1:From a craft standpoint after writing that podcast, are you adding those audible little blurbs into screenplays now, or has your formatting or writing changed, because you've had this experience writing quite extensively for that podcast?
Speaker 3:because we'll talk about that in a bit I think that I have been more informed and more conscious of yeah, audio, audio, audio that's not a word audio, audio cues and how they affect character and how they affect tone and the mood of the story, because I mean, it's sort of like, uh stereotypical, oh, your character's going through a dark time, there's thunder outside. You know what I? Mean like how does it affect what's happening? Oh, your character's happy birds are chirping.
Speaker 1:But of course you can be more creative than that I like that because you could yeah, it could be like the crack of thunder instead of. You know, there's thunder outside they have an idea.
Speaker 3:Oh, the microwave goes off.
Speaker 1:Eureka, yeah, I like that, uh-huh and uh, I want to mention a little bit about uh, a little bit about how much you you wrote for that podcast. I feel like when we start a new thing or we want to elevate our craft, it's like oh well, I'll write a screenplay. It's not about writing one screenplay. To become a better writer, you have to write 10.
Speaker 3:You have to. I don't know if the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours has been debunked it has been, but the concept still stands.
Speaker 1:The more you do. I think it's like 40 000 more than that, to be honest. But with the podcast, how you? Because eventually peter left that project and it was just you yeah, so you wrote yeah, uh it we.
Speaker 3:The podcast was over a couple years on and off, with big chunks in between of like we'll wait to hear back from them like eight months, here and there. And by that point you know we had written Peter and I had written six episodes of like 30 pages each. That was there for a while and then Paramount that was the studio. Paramount came back and said, well, we want our episodes, and eight of them, and peter was like he had, he had other things to do and I was like I don't have anything else to do, give me so and it was like an insane deadline.
Speaker 3:I remember this was like february of 2022. I ended up writing roughly 48 pages per week for eight weeks, based on the writing we had done previously. So some of it, but I was already there. But a lot of it was changing and that was I was like, oh, this is like a writer writing like an entire season of television, yeah, and multiple screenplays. It was hard, but it's also, you know, it's a good discipline practice. You had to, but it's also, you know, it was a good discipline practice. You had to get it. I had to get it done. There was a deadline, there was someone waiting to read it. So, um, was it my best work?
Speaker 1:No, absolutely not. It was good training. If, if not, if anything else, yes, I.
Speaker 3:I think you need absolutely more time to write something. That's just my personal experience.
Speaker 1:Well, thinking back on all the things you've done apart from being a writer, because you were like oh, I'm coming out of grad school, I'm a screenwriter, I'm trained, I went to film school at NYU, I got the experience. And then you're like wait, wait a minute, what's this directing thing? What's this novel thing? What's this podcast thing?
Speaker 1:that became like you going to the gym every day, you know training for a marathon it's true, and I think you know if anything uh people listening to this episode can get from our conversation is, there is so much more to learn about your creative process and other disciplines and I think, even if you don't have a career in that other discipline, dip your tongue to it, because I feel like it will.
Speaker 3:It's not going to dilute your talent. It's not going to make you any less of a. It will. It's not gonna dilute your, your talent yeah it's not gonna make you any less of a screenwriter, gonna make you better. If you write a novel, it's like all of a sudden, somehow you're not like some pure yeah tour has bullshit, like try, try, I dare you. I dare you to write a novel. It's hard I.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking about it for for months and I think I think soon, maybe, maybe I'll do it for november oh yeah, the novel writing month, yeah although they got in trouble with ai.
Speaker 3:So did they?
Speaker 1:yeah, well don't you could? You could use ai to write a book. Everyone's like what?
Speaker 3:oh god okay, maybe'm wrong, I don't want to allegedly the South Park Chat GBT episode is truly the most epic when it comes to like the AI.
Speaker 1:Oh, you mean the one that. Ai generated yeah. Yeah, it's amazing that was a scary one to watch Scary, but I have a lot of knowledge. Well, you do have a lot of knowledge on craft, on screenwriting, not on AI though.
Speaker 1:Not on AI, but I want to talk to you about screenwriting craft, and we'll save that for the next episode next week. Great yeah. So, julia, thank you for coming on, thank you for everybody listening and we'll see you next week. See ya, bye-bye. Thank you for joining us at the CFA Studio for another series of the Inwood Podcast. You can find the podcast wherever you find your podcasts, or on YouTube at the Cinematography for Actors YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:See you next week From the CFA Network. Cinematography for Actors is bridging the gap through education and community building. Find out about us and listen to our other podcast at cinematographyforactorscom. Cinematography for Actors Institute is a 501c3 non-profit. For more information on fiscal sponsorship donations because we're tax exempt now, so it's a tax write-off and upcoming education, you can email us at contact at cinematographyforactorscom. Thanks.