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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
The Evolution of Independent Filmmaking: A Behind-the-Scenes Look
Explore the fascinating evolution of independent filmmaking with veteran writer/director George Huang as he shares insider stories from his 30+ year career. From shooting his first film, Swimming With Sharks, to his most recent work, Weekend in Taipei, our conversation reveals how the business of making movies has undergone a dramatic transformation.
Learn how corporate takeovers have changed studio priorities, how creative "happy accidents" can transform your films (like Benicio Del Toro's unexpected performance choices in Swimming With Sharks), and the financial instruments filmmakers can use today. We'll also explore why Los Angeles craftspeople remain unmatched despite global production incentives, and why sometimes a movie seems to have a life of its own, transcending the director's original vision.
Don't miss this masterclass on the evolution of filmmaking from cocktail napkin pitches to modern independent financing!
0:00 Podcast Introduction
0:43 Casual Conversation Begins
1:25 Reality TV Wardrobe Secrets
1:57 Production Budget Story
3:06 Art and Commerce in Film
4:19 Corporate Influence on Studios
6:25 The "Happy Accidents" in Filmmaking
8:27 Benicio Del Toro's Performance Story
12:38 When a Movie Has Its Own Life
14:40 The Art of Giving Notes
17:42 Evolution of Independent Film Production
19:16 From Cocktail Napkin Pitches to Today
21:40 Technology Changes in Filmmaking
24:20 Financial Instruments for Film Funding
27:19 Finding Grants and Funding Sources
30:19 Los Angeles Craftspeople Excellence
33:16 Challenges of International Production
34:23 Wrapping Up
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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."
Hello and welcome to the IndieWood podcast, a podcast about independent film and the many hats filmmakers have to wear in order to get those films made. Every month, I am joined by a different filmmaker, a different creative, and we talk about their approach to the creative process and how they thrive within the visual medium of film. And this month I'm joined by an extra special guest my former professor at UCLA, a brilliant writer, a wonderful director and producer, George Wong.
Speaker 2:Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll come back for next week yeah, exactly, I see you still are wearing the the same same clothes, you really?
Speaker 2:just okay, no, no, look, I mean it's smart, you always. You know, david lynch famously has like the closet of the same one outfit yeah, exactly one suit and he doesn't have to spend any of his time thinking about what he wants. I remember I had a meeting with brian grazer once and he said I can tell if someone's creative just by how they're dressed. Really, and I'm staring at him okay, what do you think of me? And he did not answer.
Speaker 1:Well, here's a question how do you think they do that in like reality tv, like like, for example? For example right, great british bake off. They always do thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're not shooting everything in the same day?
Speaker 2:No, of course not. No, no, you have multiples. Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's just like yeah, every costume department has like three or four of the same outfit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you buy or, do they like, launder it every day?
Speaker 2:It depends on your budget. Okay, you know, and given your production schedule, is it cheaper to have you know a wardrobe person go and dry, clean and launder everything and have it ready the next morning, which means they're probably gonna be working through the night, or is it better just get like four or five you know ready to go? You know, um, and everyone gets a new version of the outfit every single day. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of production, because you mentioned something last last episode that really stuck with me, where you, your second film was supposed to be shot for $10 million Right, and you came in under by four, so you shot it for six, and then Warner Brothers came in and was like, hey, our accountants are never wrong. You don't have a film, right, apparently because you didn't spend all the money, right. But I'm thinking about how that approach or how that scenario would have played out now, in 2025. Where I think a studio would be like oh, you saved us $4 million, you saved almost 50% of the budget.
Speaker 1:Thank you, please come again. Right, you know. So I wanted to talk about your perspective and everything you've seen from production, from a production standpoint, right, how things have changed from your first film, swimming with the Sharks, to now with your most recent film, weekend in Taipei, that you shot in 23?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or 24? Summer of 23. And it was released in 24. It was released in 24, yep.
Speaker 1:So what's the most jarring thing you've seen, Besides the idea that, oh, you saved money and now they're kicking you out, Right?
Speaker 2:exactly kicking you out right, exactly. Well, that look for me, the the big straw film was oh, it's always been. It's this unique relationship between art and commerce and you get to sort of scratch both sides and I was like, oh okay, you know, I ended up, you know, sort of like studying business and economics, but you know, I also, well, I consider myself a writer and a storyteller. So, you know, being able to marry both of those worlds is just continually fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:Now, when I started out, you know, making movies in the 90s, I mean, you know, the studios were their kind of their own entities. Yeah, they were. You know, slowly they got absorbed by, like you know, sony, or you know, golf and western, yeah, coca-cola, that type of stuff. But they were pretty much left alone and the studio's all personalities. They had people running it who cared deeply about movies. They were well-read, well-watched on movies and, most importantly, they had pride in making movies. They wanted to be able to brag to the world I made this year's Oscar winner. There was a certain amount of ownership there.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, in Uline back in the day they would force their executives to take producer credits on all the movies that they sort of supervised. You know, which I thought was wonderful because like, yeah, you know, the executives have to take ownership. Yeah, if it's a flop then your name is stuck on for life. So it kind of motivates everyone to sort of like work just a little harder. You know, yeah, um, but you know, in the past decade we've seen these studios sort of been you know, sort of gobbled up, you know, by sort of larger business interests. You know, like we saw universal, you know, uh, get bought by, uh, you know, ge, you know, and I remember, uh, don langley, who was the president production at the time. She's now chairman of universal.
Speaker 2:I think one of the fast movies had, you know, I think it was five or six, had done enormous. What was the best year ever for universal? And you know she went to you know sort of her bosses at ge and said you know, we have had the most successful year ever in universal history. Here's why I did it. And her boss is running a press. He said we made more in airplane parts and so, yeah, so when you're part, you know, when the students are just a tiny subsidiary of a larger company, you know, and the larger company is just caring about the bottom line yeah they are more interested in sort of like budgets and just throwing content out there without any sort of pride in what they're making.
Speaker 2:You know they're not really keeping an eye on. Okay, well, you know, we want this movie to be the biggest event. We want this to be something that you know everyone's going to talk about, that we can brag about to our friends. No, I think a lot of the studios now are just like okay, we just need to fill a certain amount of content in a certain slate and we'll just get it out there as quickly and as cheaply as we possibly can, and so and you feel like that's a remnant of that.
Speaker 1:You know, big corporate, um, all those big corporate mergers where you have like corporate america, come in. We're like, oh, you know what to do? We're middle management, exactly middle management exactly yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:It's funny because you've seen a lot of that like at&t when they bought warner brothers, they thought, okay, well, we can, like no, you can't. You know, and then david zaslav from discovery says, well, I can, it's like no, you can't either. Yeah, it is. Uh, completely. You know there's business and there's show business. You know um, even now, as I'm like, you know um, as I try to write, raise independent financing for movies, and you know, and we're getting financing from. You know really high net worth individuals, people who've had success in other parts of life, and they want to sort of apply what they've learned. I get it from their business practices. But you have to explain to them like, ok, that's manufacturing or that's real estate or that's tech, this is show business. It's a different beast. You know they don't understand the accounting. You know the money, you know. You know why the money matters or why the money doesn't matter. You know sometimes, and you know it's a.
Speaker 1:It's just a different business altogether because you can take the same script, yep, the, I want to say the same crew and maybe, you know, let's say even the same director, right at different points in their life, same cinematographer at different points in their life, giving the same budget, same script, same movie, same locations, and you're going to get three different movies exactly, you know, depending on their mood where they are in the career. You know a gazillion different yeah, different variables. Yeah, give me.
Speaker 2:You know a completely different iteration of it and you know, look, I mean you know again coming from the business background, like part of my frustration. You know, when I first started out directing was always like, oh my God, nothing is happening as planned. You know it's like oh God, we're over schedule, we're over, but you know like, and that would freak me out. But then you know, as I got more sort of, you know, lean into that. It's what Robert Rodriguez calls the happy accidents Stuff that you couldn't have planned for.
Speaker 2:Sometimes is 100% better than what you could have planned for I remember I cast Benicio Del Toro in my first movie as the outgoing assistant and I thought he was going to, based on the stuff I'd seen of him previously, he was going to be this really intense guy.
Speaker 1:Was this post-usual suspects or pre?
Speaker 2:Pre-usual suspects yeah, and so he was excited to do it. He read the script Great, Because it was so busy just trying to hold the production together, we didn't really get much time to rehearse. And so he shows up the first day and in my mind it's going to be the glengarry glen ross beach where alec baldwin comes in and lays down the law and then leaves. You know, it's like it's gonna be. Oh, this is gonna be fantastic.
Speaker 2:Um, he starts doing the fenster voice from years of suspects he had been working with the dialect coach that I did not know about for two months and he goes on. He just starts going and everyone's like, behind the camera, what? What is going on? It's like I'm going beneath him. You have to explain. You're laying out the entire exposition the entire, the entire setup for the whole movie. Your mumbling is like yeah are you ready?
Speaker 2:and I felt for it because he'd spent two months like working on this. You know, look, I mean all credit to you know, brian singer and christopher gory. He was like. They saw it, like, oh, that's great, we're gonna use it.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and they got oscars out of me I was going you're ruining my movie, right, yeah, but you know, and for, like, you know, and we went back and forth, back and forth, you know, we finally, you know, got to an understanding. It's like what is the one thing this character is about? Okay, he's indifferent, he doesn't care. Okay, we all agree on that. Okay, give me that version. And so the version is you know what? What you know ended up on film. But it was not my original vision. Um, and even when I was in the ending room, we're going oh, I don't want to do this scene, you know, I just try to cut it down to as short as it could possibly be, but then people would stop by the ending room and go oh, my god, who's this guy? He's hilarious. Going, what are you talking about? It's like come on, this is fun, this is gold. And I didn't realize it because I'd been so locked in on what my original vision yeah, again, I want to be alec baldwin from glenn gary of gunn ross.
Speaker 2:You know, I even told benicio that and he said to me rightfully so then go hire alec baldwin. Okay, you can't win these arguments, right.
Speaker 2:So yeah but again, it was a nice happy accident, the, you know, once benicio found and I found a common mutual understanding what the character should be, he gave that performance. It turned out to be hilarious. People really embraced it. You know, he ended up winning the uh IFP, the independent film project award for best supporting actor that year you know, yeah, but yeah, and it was something that I hated and completely rejected at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah. So you just never know, and so you know, as I've gotten older, you know on more experience, you sort of like you know, you lean, you, you learn to like embrace those sort of like weird sort of things that you know sort of happen on set and you get thrown your way.
Speaker 1:The way I see it is. Sometimes a movie wants to be something on its own, like it has a life of its own.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's living, breathing, yep, and you have to listen to that on some level, yeah, because it can take you into wonderful places, exactly. I shot a film for a friend and I was editing it a short film, yeah, and they had a whole like two minute segment in the end with, just you know, everything was wrapped up beautifully.
Speaker 1:There's stuff that's happening and we were editing and it just didn't quite fit and so I just cut two minutes off the end I was like that's your film and that's the film they, they, they like they went to festivals okay, uh, with just two minutes gone right because that, where that point, where it ended, had so much more weight to it yeah, and the film wanted to end there and start going for another two, three minutes no, no.
Speaker 2:So I thought that was really cool, yeah, but it did take a lot of experience yeah, when you're young and starting out you're like, no, no, that's my vision. It's my vision, you know and you want to. You know, this is the movie I've seen in my head over and over and it's hard to sort of, like you know, hear what the film gods are telling you. Sometimes universe is saying yeah, no, no, cut it here. You know.
Speaker 1:I'm really glad you mentioned that, because I had this conversation the other day where I was giving notes to somebody and I was like what's the difference between giving a good note, giving a good note right, and then giving a bad note? Because sometimes I hear people giving bad notes and it came. I came to this conclusion that it's at some point you just like you stop caring. I think maybe that's not the right word, but you just that. The idea is like I don't have time. I don't have time to give you my like ego version of this. I'm just going to give you, like the straight note, right, uh, because sometimes I think early on in people's careers they want us, they they're giving notes because they want to see their version of the film, right?
Speaker 1:their version of the script exactly, and at some point, when you get getting get some experience, get some more confidence, let go of that pride a little bit, you stop thinking like that. You're like I don't care about my version of this, right, I just want to help you because I want to do my own thing, right, I have things to do, exactly, yeah. And then you give, I think, better notes, yeah, and I think that also um kind of connects with this idea of you know, you get to a certain point in your career, you kind of let go of what you want, right, and then you let the creative flow kind of guide you exactly but look, I mean in, you know it's for people receiving notes and you know sort sort of the creative events.
Speaker 2:It's always hard to take notes. It is hard because you know, yeah, you don't want to hear the bad news and sometimes you know, I know my, my immediate reaction is always fuck you.
Speaker 3:You don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know but then you let it sit for 24 or 48 hours. It's gone. Ok, yeah, they have a point. Yeah, you got it.
Speaker 2:Let me go back and take a look at it Like I mean, yeah, I, you know, just attended a test screen of Luke Besson's Dracula, you know, and I gave him notes and he got so angry. Luke, you asked me for notes. I'm giving you notes. I'm just giving you three notes. Ok, I think you need to do this. This didn't work for me and I didn't like the music, that's it. And he was so upset about it for like two months. We're going. Luke, you've been doing this for like 50 years seriously but yeah, you know, yeah, these are babies.
Speaker 2:It's hard for us sometimes to say, yeah, we're all emotionally invested. But you know, yeah, the experienced ones know, like you know. And yeah, luke has finally called me back after two months like, oh, you're okay, yeah, you're right I changed this.
Speaker 2:I tried to cut this down. Yeah, so, yeah, so, um, but yeah, that that's sort of that initial. Yeah, it's like, oh, you know, you sort of clinch up and everyone, yeah, it's hard to hard to hear it. You want to, you know. That's why you know I don't know if you notice this at workshop, um, at ucla and the classes, but, but we give notes. It's always in a compliment sandwich.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2:I really like what you did with this scene and it's really engaging, but maybe, However, it was just really. It was a great read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were always like, yeah, massage it a little, exactly.
Speaker 2:It goes down easily, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But looking at the clock it's like exactly, exactly, yeah exactly, but oh yeah, like I'm looking at, the clock is like you don't have enough time for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like we were always running late to give notes, exactly. I feel like if you cut off the compliment part, exactly, it would be like go, go, go, go, go, yeah. But you know, uh, I feel like, though, that idea of adding a compliment and or the beginning, and or the beginning and then the note, kind of the critical note in the middle, um, opens up receptiveness yeah now I'm trying to think of like a cooking analogy where you're like, saute the food so it opens up, and then you salt it yeah, yeah
Speaker 2:herbs and spices. Yeah, and so then?
Speaker 1:you can kind of really, you know, make the notes stick, yeah, because so people aren't defensive, right? Well, I wanted to kind of continue a little bit more about you know, your, your perspective on how things have evolved. Yeah, from a production standpoint, specifically for independent film yep uh, you know from this first several films to like.
Speaker 1:You know now, right, how has production changed? How has financing changed? How is how is getting a film off the ground, off the page, into production? And then, I think, like later on, we'll kind of touch on distribution and exhibition, because that's changed as well yeah, no, it definitely has.
Speaker 2:I mean it's interesting because you know it feels like you know now I've been doing this like 35 years. 35 years later I'm having to go back to you know, my very first song, swimming sharks of. Like day one, just trying to, you got to go out and get the findings.
Speaker 3:So you got to package this yourself.
Speaker 2:You got to. You know, just go do everything on your own. I mean, you know, you know back in the nineties and even, like you know, through the odds and stuff, like if I went to a studio and said, oh okay, I've got this really good script normally, or sometimes, oh, my God, you know, and I feel bad for all of you coming out. We, all of you coming out of like, yeah, he's like. We used to be able to just scribble ideas on a cocktail napkin and sell it, you know like two sentences you know what if arnold schwarzenegger?
Speaker 2:was a witness protection aid done we bought it.
Speaker 1:It's like we're singer is is a cop and teaching kindergarten exactly done, bought it right, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like don't you want to see? Nope, we'll give you a million dollars, like shit. All right, yeah, now. Not only do you have to have a full script, you have to have all the stars yeah, director attached and half the financing before you even go to a studio. And at that point it's like, well, I'm just gonna go make this myself. Why do I need you?
Speaker 1:I'll just keep half the financing and go do it exactly for half the price exactly.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like you know for the filmmakers who are serious about film and want to you know, just go do it you know yeah you can. There are ways to sort of yeah, sort of, construct this model and just get out there and make your movie well um just to also add you know, like the technology's changed so much oh, yeah, no exactly and when you were shooting, you know, uh like independent film on film on 35, it's so expensive
Speaker 2:that money alone that you spent on film could just be a film now exactly, yeah, exactly yeah, no, no, I mean, you know, um, you know, for weekend in taipei we shot a lot of stuff on the iphone. I mean, you know the new danny boyle film out right now, 28 years later, y'all shot it on iphone.
Speaker 1:I mean the technology also shot in 28 phones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly but still, 28 000 or 28 iphones is still a bargain compared to okay, I got to get a million feet of film, oh my God you know. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, and I got to process it and they got a video transfer it and they got a color correct. Yeah, it's just like. Oh my God you know. Um, yeah, I mean I, I don't look.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean I, I hear, like, you know what Quentin Tarantino or chris rossola yeah, you know, we have to scrap, be a little more scrappy and be a little more entrepreneurial about how we tackle these things. And that's where I think you know, for me the business is circled back. As a filmmaker, I have to get back in that independent. Let's go raise some money ourselves. Let's go find, you know, the actors ourselves who's got an apartment?
Speaker 1:who's got a car?
Speaker 2:exactly what locations do we have? You know, um, it's sort of the same thing that robert did for mario. Just bring out a blank page. What do we have? We got a bus. We got a dog. We get a car case. What's the movie around that? Yeah, and so that's, yeah. That's what we circle back to in this modern age. Yeah, you know. Again, the good news is with the technology and you know the resources that are available to us now, you know a lot of stuff you know that would have cost a fortune in time.
Speaker 2:You know, um, and resources you know you can do now on your home computer or on your phone you know, um, and I tell a lot of them, our students used to lay that you, because they're well you know, I want to get hired to write something. It's like I want to get hired to be in a writer's room.
Speaker 2:It's like, like you know, robert has been doing like sort of this talking tour because he's got like a whole new financing model but yeah but you know, the attitude he has is like and he told me this too is like if you're going to wait for somebody to give you permission to make your movie, you, you're going to be waiting a long, long time.
Speaker 1:I keep saying this and it kind of sounds mean and I think maybe I'll, I'll change the language uh, uh, like down the road, but uh, it's, nobody cares until they care, right, you know? And so like, how do you make them?
Speaker 3:care, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Uh, and the answer is however you can or however you want, however you can, or however you want, exactly, or however you can find the path to, because my wife was in a show and we decided to do some PR, okay, and then I was also talking to a lot of filmmakers who had PR, who were at Sundance and doing festivals, and they were like everybody's trying to make everybody care, right, but people aren't going to care until they care right, and it's, it's weird, like catch 22, where in order to grab somebody's attention so they can help you, you're going to have to do a lot and like make them care and want to help you, right, and but in order to do that, you're going to have to get their help. It's weird, like you know no, it's a weird catch-22.
Speaker 2:It really is. It really is that we experienced that with the weekend in taipei, because you know, the theatrical experience is hard you know, to make a dent in that, and especially marketing.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just like yeah so, you know, we went with the distributor, you know ketchup entertainment, a small upstart. They did not have, you know, the money to spend for marketing, so a lot of it had to be grassroots, you know. And so we'd reach out especially to sort of the asian american community to get them to try to rally behind the film and yeah, and so we'd hold screenings. You know I have to do a lot of, you know, sort of host a lot of screenings and yeah, the response we got was great but at the end of the day it's still them.
Speaker 3:You know it's hard to make a dent.
Speaker 2:You know and sort of yeah, the you know, we're all bombarded every day with you know, like information and stuff, so it's hard to cut through all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah the noise. Here's a question Do you think taking a film on tour is a good strategy?
Speaker 2:I think it is if you offer something unique about the live experience of that. Like you know, kevin Smith is great at that. Like you know know, he is taking dogma out on a live tour now, uh, where he will speak at it afterwards, and yeah, and kevin is like, yeah, he's just what you could. Yeah, he can go on for four hours on a stage and just like and wax extemporaneously about any topic and he's so massively entertaining. So, yeah, there's something about the live experience of, like we're going to show you a movie but then kevin is going to like, talk afterwards and do a live q a. Yeah, uh, that's great.
Speaker 2:Uh, adam green, who did the hatchet movies, used to do that with his horror movies and those are, like you know, smaller, you know lower tier, you know horror films, but you know it still gets it honest because there's something unique about the live experience. But you know, just four walling a movie on your own from theater to theater. You know, I think most people would rather we've all been conditioned now, you know, especially after pandemics like, yeah, we'll just wait and watch it at home yeah when they come for, you know, convenience of our own home.
Speaker 1:We've all gotten lazy that way yeah, I, I see that like adding some sort of other you know uh layer to that experience exactly something you can only get you know from going out to the theater to experience that.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I see that, okay, yeah, all right yeah, but yeah, but you know it's all come to, yeah, hustle, hustle, hustle. You know, and you know there are a lot of hustles out there, yeah, and like, in terms of financing, I'm getting introduced like weird sort of like financial instruments. You know I was telling you the other day like, um, there's something called the 181 fund. Okay, yeah, so there are people out there.
Speaker 2:So george bush, when he's president, signed into law that movies can take their full depreciation of an asset in the first year okay so for people who don't know and I didn't know this until I went to business school but depreciation, it's like when you buy a house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, the house just loses value over time and so usually, for example yeah, exactly like you drive off the lot, it's like you lose ten thousand, you lose ten thousand, yeah, so that's appreciation.
Speaker 2:So, but usually it's spaced out over 15, 20, 30 years. You know. So your house, you know every year when you do taxes, you know, um, let's say, okay, we're going to take $7,000 off the value of the house in depreciation so you can write that off on your taxes. George Bush said, well, for movies you can write it all off in the first year. So if you spend $10 million in a movie, you can report a tax depreciation of $10 million, which is a nice loss to report for someone. So there are funds that will actually gather these sort of movie budgets and sell off the depreciation to high net tax people who need that write-off.
Speaker 2:And so they'll say, okay, well Yarrow, that's brilliant. Yeah, it is actually so. For $1 million, we'll give you $750,000 or $800,000. For your $1 million of depreciation, we'll buy it off you so we can go sell it somewhere else?
Speaker 1:Is that specifically in the States? In the United States, yeah.
Speaker 2:Specifically in the United States. It's only in the United States. Yeah, yeah, so and yeah like even I was going, that seems like you would get audited and a lot of these funds go. We haven't audited. We've been audited 15 times but we've beaten it every single time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a law. I'm sitting here thinking like, okay, let's end the pot early. I got to go, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So there are all these sort of like weird financial instruments that you can engage in order to make movies.
Speaker 2:I just recommended to one of our uh student um, you know, she's from oklahoma, she's part of an indian tribe. There is a national indian grant. No questions asked is like yeah, if you are part of a tribe, we will give you money as part of reparations for whether it's a small business, whether it's a movie, a record album, whatever, we will just give you a grant. That's amazing, yeah, and you just have to apply for it.
Speaker 2:And yeah, even some of the you know bigger, you know banks like co-america and you know working industry, they're aware of this grant and they will, yeah, they will, yeah, base. If you would get a grant approved, we will, you know, give you the money, yeah there are.
Speaker 1:There is a lot of money out there, especially for the arts. I know like when we think about filming europe, it's like, oh, it's subsidized, right, but here it's not. No, but it kind of is just the legwork you have to do exactly there's a lot of hoops. Yeah, it's you know it's. It's more work than actually making the film on some level yeah, um, but I think it's also beneficial to filmmakers to really kind of dig deep into those, you know, like funding pools.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe in 2025, maybe not so much, but like there's money, no, it's been earmarked years ago exactly I mean the the new david fincher, brad pitt, quinn tarantino movie just got a 20 million dollar, you know, california state tax incentive, yeah, to go make the movie and you're here in california so yeah, so it's out there, yeah you know the tough thing. I mean you know I know gavin newsom has been trying to pass that 750 million. You know incentive, but you know it's. You know politically it's a hard look you know.
Speaker 2:For the rest, you know, for a lot of like taxpayers and voters is like. You know they see movies as oh it's like they're movie stars. You know they're driving around in luxury vehicles and living in like nice hollywood hills houses. Why am I subsidizing their lifestyle and you know it's.
Speaker 1:You know it's, it's the community of. You know filmmakers exactly who are crewing, who are exactly now there's a whole middle class of just the regular blue collar workers.
Speaker 2:You know, and they're artists in their own right too we're just trying to make a living. Yeah, you know, making movies and you know, look, hollywood, los angeles, it's, you know, the media capital of the world. It, and you know, it's part of our identity in the city. And you know, hopefully, you know, we can stop some of the runaway production. You know that. You know, of course I'm saying this.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to convince people that hey, don't work in Taiwan and film stuff, we'll finance it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's hard, because, yeah, I mean, mean, you know, hollywood has always meant something, at least to me and now it's like, okay, you know most films these days like tron, bulgaria, budapest, you know, yeah, like other places that are just cheaper atlanta. You know new mexico yeah, there's so many competing in, you know incentives that it's just like, well, yeah, I mean as a filmmaker, you just want to get it made, you just want to get it done. So you know, yeah, you'll, you'll take whatever help you can get, and if that means, okay, we're going to georgia to do this, yeah, you got to do what you got to do yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I do want to say, though, that still, maybe it's changing, maybe it will change soon, or at least down the down the road a couple years. The crafts people in los angeles are just on a different level they are, you know. Oh my god, it's so good, it's like theater yep, I was watching theater in los angeles and I was like, oh, this is a good show, right. And then I I had a touring company come from new york the broadway show the original cast and I saw it because.
Speaker 1:So just a more background. We saw a sunday in a park with george in los angeles, like a local, uh, regional, theater. I was like this is great, wonderful show, loved it. Right then you I had. We saw old friends come in with the broadway show bernadette peters was in it, like all these icons of you know the stage from new york, and they did a segment from sunday in the park with george I know it was just next level. It was, it was transcendent.
Speaker 2:I was like okay, that's how people work in los angeles versus somewhere else yeah, no, no, when I shot trojan war, my second movie that sort of you know landed me in jail. I had the great privilege of working with dean semler and his camera crew and his grips and stuff. It was like working with seal team six. They were on. I mean, it's just like. It's like okay, so we only have like six hours effective shooting time because they're shooting summer nights. I don't worry about it. Yeah, they were on walkies. They would anticipate things three moves ahead what I was thinking, and they'd have everything ready. It's like you know, like the actors even like okay, well, you know we're turning around. That means you know we're flipping the whole set. And they'd start to walk off to the trailers and Dean's almost like okay, we're ready.
Speaker 1:It's like what Like.
Speaker 2:Lily, I had to do a pilot in Montreal, you know, and again you want to do it for the Canadian tax incentives and stuff. But you know this is that time when Montreal was, you know they were offering these generous incentives because they were trying to build up the industry. So if you did not get the A-list crew, oh God. So the A-list crew was shooting the Bone Collector, the Angel Lee film at the time and literally I said, oh my God, you know, oh my God. Yes, they gave us 50% back, so it only cost half as much, but it ended up we went over budget because it took us three times as long to just get a shot.
Speaker 2:I mean here the dolly grips, they measure everything out. It's like military precision. They're watching, they understand the story, they know they go with it. In Montreal the dolly grip was stoned out of his mind and, like you know, just like miss him, like completely out of frame and go. What's happening here? It's like, well, you got to tell me what speed you want. It's like just follow.
Speaker 3:Oh, my god you know exactly, just follow.
Speaker 2:That's, that's your job. You know we had to bring out a metronome and just count off for the actor and the dog to be and saying, okay, one, two, and this is a simple walking shot.
Speaker 1:It's like oh, I uh my a friend of mine shot a film uh, a student film for, I believe, afi and they were like I want to shoot super 16. They had money and they hired somebody to shoot and this was a couple years ago so this is, like you know, not in the film days and um, he goes, cool, I can, I can like focus by. I don't need to measure.
Speaker 2:90 of the shots were out of focus, and this is on film, I know so.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's no fixing that, oh my god they can't reshoot because they spent like 20 grand on film. It was brutal, I know no no.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that is sort of again the buyer beware you know I always tell producers, like you know, it's stepping over dollars to become dimes. I get it. Some of these incentives are really attractive but you really got to vet out the crew. You got to find people who know what they're doing and especially if you're going overseas.
Speaker 2:You know the language is very is yeah, it is always a translation problem and just the resources just aren't there. I remember, uh, I was visiting a friend in Prague when they're shooting Blade 2, you know and you know, get the blue look. You know that Guillermo del Toro wanted for. You know the vampires and you know the overall look of the film. You know, normally you would just put blue gel over the lights you know here if you're here in Hollywood.
Speaker 2:They didn't have that. So they they basically raided all these tanning salons and got the blue UV light. Yeah, basically raided all these tanning salons and got the blue uv light. Yeah, yeah, people started dropping and fainting on set from sun poisoning. It was insane. So, yeah, there's stuff like that. That goes on. I mean, even you know, with my movie in taipei, even though you know, like my mandarin's not great, you know, and but you think, okay, english, like you know, said okay, um, you know, bring me an apple box. You know all of us in the industry.
Speaker 2:They brought us a box of apples.
Speaker 1:I'm going okay, we're going to have to. I was going to say like even now, things should be more like. Film is global. People should know the language more, people should know the techniques and kind of you know, be on the same page, but you're still finding pockets of like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's still people. You know this is a great thing, about movies. People love movies. They all want to be a part of it. This is why every country in the world wants to offer incentives. They want to train crew members. They recognize the soft power that, you know, movies have you know all around the world.
Speaker 2:You know um, but again, they're still very nascent. You know sort of infrastructure there they still don't. You know just getting permits, you know, while here, like la, can just walk into an office, you know, and 20 minutes later I've got my permit. You know that.
Speaker 2:I just remember in taipei, oh my god, it took months and you know, I remember, like you know, um, so you know, because it rains a lot there, and so like, okay, uh, we weren't able to shoot on the monday, so we got to move it to thursday. Uh, can we change a permit? And they didn't understand that.
Speaker 2:They said no wait, what do we gave you a permit already. It's like, yeah, but it was raining, so we got to move it. Look, we gave you a permit and you didn't use it. It's like, look, I don't want to offend you and I know you worked hard on it, but it rained. There's nothing we can do. You know, we got to move it to thursday. It's like they yeah, they were not very flexible with that. Yeah, so it became hard. Yeah, so you know it's again stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. But you know, again, if this is what the film gods are at you, how can you adapt? How can you make something different?
Speaker 1:Sometimes that's the only way, I wanted to kind of maybe dig a bit deeper into the craft side of things, and less for production, yeah. But I think we'll save that for the next episode.
Speaker 3:Okay, episode three.
Speaker 1:All right. And for now we'll wrap things up and thank everyone for listening. George, thank you for coming on the pod no problem and we'll see you next week. Yeah, see you next week, all right. Thank you for listening to the Anywood Podcast on the Cinematography for Actors YouTube channel. See you next week.
Speaker 3: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 nonprofit. 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 cinematography for actorscom. Thanks.