Interview: Joshua Caldwell

Indy filmmaker Josh Caldwell made a $6000 film, "Layover", which led to him directing such Hollywood heavyweights as Brian Cox, Bella Thorne, and Patricia Heaton.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:04

Hi everyone, welcome to the Film Element Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Gallant, and I'm doing another interview today with a well-known indie filmmaker that I've been following for, I would say, well over 10 years at this point. His name is Joshua Caldwell, and he's done a lot of really great projects, uh, some of which I've really appreciated, especially with the way they of how they were made and produced. And you know what? Um without further ado, I'm just gonna bring him right in. Hey Josh, how are you?

unknown 0:34

How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Hey, good. How you doing?

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Good, good. Do you prefer Josh or Joshua? It says Joshua on your IMDB.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah, you can um, you know, whenever I do credit or anything like that, meaning like, you know, people were referencing me, I prefer Joshua, but uh in conversation, Josh is fine.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Okay, great. Uh so as I told you right before we started, I'm really glad we have you here because I think um, as I was saying earlier, I've followed your career now for well over a decade. Uh and I think the way you've sort of approached your work over these past 10 years and the ups and downs that you've had, I think have been really interesting and in some ways inspiring in a lot in a lot of ways. And I feel a little uh connective tissue in terms of like your approach to the work is similar to either how I want to do it or how I am doing it. And uh so why don't you just start from sort of the beginning and how you got into the film industry or how you just started making films in general?

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to high school when I started making movies and and knew that I wanted to make movies and uh made a bunch of, you know, really terrible, you know, shorts and and things like that, and um and decided to not pursue film in college. I ended up going to Fordham University in New York City. I just didn't take a traditional film program, but I did keep making movies, and one of the benefits to being at Fordham was they had a really fantastic acting program. So I was able to work with really, really pretty good actors. A lot of them have actually gone on and abandoned a lot of things and and had their own careers. And um, so I got the benefit of that. Made a bunch of movies uh that were also probably not very good, uh, but a step up in terms of quality and and and the technical aspect and all that stuff. And then I made a movie called The Beautiful Eye, which was a short that got me nominated for and won an MTV movie award.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah, like right after I graduated from college, they had a a category for a couple years called the uh uh best film on campus. And so I was the first recipient of that and the only one that had their speech in the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

The MTV screen filmmaker award, and it's undevelopmental. Come on, with MTV films, come on, uh a little bizarre.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Um my first award show. I've been doing pretty good so far. Um I gotta thank uh my parents, Harry and Deborah, for uh always supporting me for going into this crazy business. And uh I think that students really have a voice and really have something to say. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Funny enough, the guy that won it. I think the year after me uh is a director named Josh Greenbaum, who is pretty well known and just recently did the new Spaceballs 2 movie. So he's actually had a way better career so far than I have, but um uh yeah, he he was the guy that won it after me.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

But so d do you mind if I just pause there for a second? So you made this in college that you won't and so was it self-funded? Like what what year are we even talking here?

SPEAKER_02 4:01

I shot it in 2004, but the movie awards were 2006. Okay. I spent two grand on it. I mean, really nothing, you know, and and I, you know, I went into um college with sort of this attitude that and part of why I ended up not doing a traditional film school was uh I I just wanted to make a bunch of movies for as little as possible. Yeah. You know, I I felt that the idea in a film school that you make your sort of junior, you know, junior year 16 millimeter film and then your senior thesis if you even get to make one, it was putting a lot of eggs into those baskets. And I sort of subscribed to the the Robert Rodriguez mentality that is everybody's got bad films in them, and it's better just get them out.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

And I thought maybe I would just make I'll just make a bunch of movies, I'll spend as little as possible on them, but I'll learn how to make better movies in the process because you know, I mean, I maybe had a misguided idea that if I made a good enough short in college, it would somehow launch my career.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Um, looking back on it now, I would say that's ridiculous. And uh, and really your job at that time in your career is to just make a bunch of stuff and have stuff not work and understand why it doesn't work and then apply it to the next thing. And so that's the approach I took. And the beautiful eye was just something that I had made that I felt really good about. Um, it actually starred uh an actress named Michaela McMick Michaela McManus, who is currently on um that Fox show uh Memory of a Killer. What I for I I actually can't remember the title right now. I think Memory of a Killer. Okay. And her movie Redux Redux just came out. Okay. That her brothers directed. And um, so she's had a long career as well. Um and but she was The Beautiful Live was kind of her first, like legit short, I would say.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

And um And did you shoot that on 16 mil or no?

SPEAKER_02 6:04

I shot it on an XL2. Okay, so I have to this day not shot a movie on film.

SPEAKER_04 6:11

Right. That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Not even a little super eight millimeter, like uh, 16 millimeter thing, you know, that like my buddy who was in film school said, Hey, yeah, uh, you know, I got some 16mm film, you want to go do this? And I said, Alright. But the you know, and and it's interesting because I know people who like they they have a huge desire to shoot on film. I really don't. I mean, like, I I don't think I would shoot on film unless I knew unless it was irrelevant to the budget. I would never put myself in a position where I was making a film and I had to limit myself uh as a director because of budgetary limitations around the film. It's also just a massive headache.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

You know, it's like you gotta go, especially on like independent stuff, it's like you gotta go through the process of having the film converted and then you gotta edit it digitally, and then you gotta have it done. It's just like you know, uh the fact is like digital cinema now is so good and so powerful, I just don't see a reason to do it. In fact, I was blown away to learn recently that um uh Nouvelle Vaug, Nouvelle Vague, I think is how you pronounce it, you know, the new movie about the making of Breathless was shot digitally. Like that blew my mind. I for sure thought that movie was shot on either 16 or 35 because it looks like an artifact of that era. And Richard Lick Langer, like his approach on that movie was amazing, and that tricked me. Like, no, most of the time you could figure it out, but that tricked me. And and I think that like, you know, people have this idea that oh, shooting on film is cinema. And I wrote an article on this because I kind of got tired of all these arguments. I'm like, look, if you're Nolan and you want to go shoot on IMAX, like have at it. Um Tarantino, you can do that. Paul Thomas Anderson, you can do it. Like they have the money to do it. Like a lot of people don't have the money to do it. And I point out that the only reason we even misguidedly equate 35mm film with cinema is simply because that's what was used to make a lot of movies and make great movies. At the same time, there's a lot of crap that was shot on 35mm. Yeah, that looks like crap. So it's not like, oh, if you shoot on film, suddenly you've got um you you've got like a cinematic, you know, thing on your hands. Like, I just don't buy that at all. And I think like, you know, when you look at a show like um Project Greenlight, where the the last time they did it, they had that guy who was like, I want to shoot on 35, I want to shoot on 35, and how limited he was in what he could capture because of the limitations of film. It was just like one of those things where I'm like, that was that that limited you in a terrible way. Like you were not, you didn't benefit from that movie being shot on 35 to begin with.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

Well, I'll I'll say this.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

And anyway, so we got on a tangent, but you know, no, it's not a lot of it.

SPEAKER_04 9:07

A lot of people would appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

I shot all that early stuff on the XL2. Yeah, you know, we use that um we use that converter, the um what is it called? The thing where you could use cine lenses on the digital cameras. Um like an adapter? Like Yeah, it was an adapter, but it was like a very specific adapter. Um PS Technic, the PS Technic adapter for the XL2, which allowed you to use Cine lenses on the digital camera. So that's how we approach stuff.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Um and uh and that was cool. So, you know, anyway. Uh and then I saw this uh this post from MTVU, which is the this I don't know if it's still around, but it was like the the university version of MTV, and they had a contest and you could submit your films and and I did and and got chosen and I eventually won and uh got to go on stage and receive a golden popcorn.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

That's that's incredible. So you were at uh it it wasn't the MTV, was it the MTV movie awards or was it a movie awards, not the Moon Man, not the Moon Man Awards. Right, but it was the MTV movie awards.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:14

Wow, and so it was like the whole shebang, what and you're saying 2006. So were you on television for that?

SPEAKER_02 10:22

I was on TV. So they they basically at that time for that particular year, the movie awards were pre-recorded.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

So it was interesting. They did all the awards, and you know, it was it was an award show, but they basically would film all of them in order, and then they filmed all the musical acts at the end. Um, really? Okay, it was a little odd.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

I, you know, I that's probably where I benefited from being getting to be on it because it wasn't a live show, so I wasn't ever like, you know, it wasn't like something where they could say, Oh, we're running out of time. We need to we need to not do these awards. So they edited my speech um a little bit, but that was fine. So I yeah, I'm in the show. I'm in the show.

SPEAKER_04 11:06

That's incredible. Wow. What a what a I I never knew that about you. I just always associated like the first project that I remember you doing is Layover, which is almost like you know, seven years after that. But I didn't I had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

That was like seven eight years into a career.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

Yeah. So I guess, like I said, that's how I sort of knew you. Funny enough, I heard about your film through the Filmcast podcast, David Chen. And this is a podcast I literally listen to every week, or at least I just listen to it when they do a film I've seen. And I remember him talking about Layover just randomly. So, and he was gushing about it, so I checked it out. And so Layover is this film about it's a French-speaking film, mainly in LA, which is very odd, right? You just basically have never seen that, and there's no real explanation for it either, which is hilarious. And then um, yeah, just this really great small stakes, but very interesting uh character piece about this woman who has a layover in LA because I guess she's going back to Europe to meet up with her husband or boyfriend, I can't remember. And then uh, yeah, she has this like 12-hour layover and then ends up meeting somebody and goes to a party and all these different things. And you shot it with the DSLR, I believe the 5D Mark II. Uh correct me if I yeah. So, and I remember watching that and just being blown away because I think I'd also saw behind the scenes that you had posted or somebody had posted about it, and it was like you guys didn't even have a sound person, like you were just sort of using a zoom recorder. So you had all of these super DIY techniques to make that film uh back when I felt like this there was this wave of DSLR uh content and films that were coming out where these filmmakers, uh and I would put myself in that category, was already utilizing this technology in a new way, right? We weren't relying we weren't stuck with the SD crap, you know, that did it that couldn't age well, that wasn't future-proofed. Uh, but we also couldn't use film either, right? Like we didn't have those kind of budgets. So the DSLR, like this more the red at the time. Yeah, red had j like barely started to exist at that time. And then there was, yeah, there's a couple like cinematic HD cameras, obviously, that were starting to get used, um, you know, even as early as Attack of the Clones, but uh they really didn't start picking up until like 2010 or 11. So it was just very interesting to watch that DSLR film. And uh I feel like you've talked about it a little bit, but was that a cornerstone in your career, like when that film came out, or is that sort of just sort of another bump on the road?

SPEAKER_02 13:57

No, it's I owe my career to that film. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 14:00

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Oh yeah. I mean, you know, it's not like it was like some huge Sundance hit, but um it kickstarted it. Wow, okay. It it was like it was that that movie got me the next three movies.

SPEAKER_04 14:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

So and I was just I was literally reading before we uh started this interview. So you had it premiered at the Seattle Film Festival. I think that's where David Chen saw it, if I remember correctly. I mean, it's been over ten years, but um, and then it said it was a sold-out showing, and then that got everything going for you.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Uh you know, it wasn't that. It was um because to be honest, nobody cares about the Seattle International Film Festival. And I say that as somebody born and raised in Seattle. Yeah, yeah, of course. But you can say that about every single festival except maybe Sundance Toronto, Tribeca, and South By. And even with those, yeah, simply getting in doesn't mean people are gonna care.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Seattle was just an opportunity because we had a connection there that allowed us to uh, you know, get the film in. Right. And we thought, you know, me and Travis, my producing partner, Travis Oberlander, um, you know, being Seattle guys, we thought, oh, that's a great place to sort of launch from. The interesting thing was we thought again, we were misguided, but we thought that by premiering there, it might lead to us getting some distribution opportunities. Okay. And the opportunities that came were really more um aggregators than they were an actual distributor.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

And instead of um going with that, we decided, you know what, like we really don't have to pay this money back. This whole thing has been an education for us, like, why not keep that education going? And let's do a our own self-release. Let's do a what we call direct distribution. Okay. So not self-distribution, direct distribution. And what we did was we set up um a direct download purchase through uh uh Gumroad. And then we did um, we did our our sort of rental platform through Vimeo or VHX is what it was called at the time. And we planned to launch in the fall. And so we pr we screened in Seattle in June, and then we launched in I forget the date, maybe October. And um and you know, really what we did, which is what I talk to people about now, is we didn't uh view the distribution as this holy grail. Okay. And what I mean by that is that a lot of people think that if they get a distribution for their film, if they get their film on Amazon, if they get their film on iTunes or whatever, that somehow that is going to lead to more opportunities. And it doesn't. Yeah. And the main reason it doesn't is nobody is paying attention to what movies are coming out on Amazon and iTunes. They're just not. Nobody in Hollywood is paying attention to that. So what we did was we hired a PR agent for a month and paid him and told him to get us whatever he could in the trades. And so I did an article for the rap. We got featured on Slash Film thanks to David Chen and his support of the film. Um, we were in numerous sort of trade magazines for various reasons, but most of which was we had made this movie for six thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_05 17:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

And it was apparent it was for a lot of people, it was very impressive. So uh I didn't think it would be because I was like, you know, this is just a drama. Like, there's not what did we really have to spend money on? But I think obviously even dramas cost a lot of money. So people were just enamored with the idea that we had made this for so little, and it got a lot of attention. And what I say now is I wasn't interested in getting the attention of Joe Schmoe in, you know, Texas to watch the film. I made the film for one person, and I made the film for the person that was gonna give me my next job. Yeah, that's who I made this movie for, right? And that's who we targeted with our PR, with our marketing, and everything like that. So even though we were doing a direct direct distribution and we were not on all the major platforms, um, I got a bunch of meetings off of it, and I got jobs, and I got, you know, opportunities that came out of it because the right people heard about it.

SPEAKER_04 18:12

And how did like you say you targeted those people? So in what in what exact way, like, did you have a list of people specifically that you had in mind? And like we're and were you're living in LA at the time too, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yeah, I was living in LA. It wasn't anyone specific, it was more like let's get this in front of in the trade in the in the you know trades that the people in Hollywood watch that agents watch, that producers are read, that agents read, that producers read. And then I also had a lot of connections because again, I wasn't a filmmaker out of nowhere. I'd spent three, four years working for Anthony Zeiker, the creator of CSI, and had met a lot of people and knew a lot of people. In fact, the job I got right after working for Anthony was with somebody that we had done a project with when I was there. Um, but that guy was unaware of me as a director, and it wasn't until he saw Layover, because I emailed everybody I knew and said, Hey, our movie's available, we'd love for you to check it out. He saw Layover and was blown away and and called me in to pitch on this new project that he was doing, which ended up being a series for Hulu. And so, you know, it was it was through sort of connections I had built and spent time building, but it was the work of Layover that ended up convincing people that I was somebody who could actually direct.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Right. Wow, that's incredible. So, and then but you the timeline of that is that after the Seattle International Film Festival is when you guys kicked into that PR, that month-long of like trades and all that stuff, building up to your release in October, or did or did you guys kind of start it right before the release and overlap?

SPEAKER_02 19:46

No, we did it in the month, we did it in the month, we did it maybe three weeks before the release and then a week after it was available.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Um but I but I really you know I have I have a lot of opinions on that. I you know, the the two the two mistakes we made uh were one I wish that we had basically had the movie available to buy like the day after we screened in Seattle. Oh I would have basically arranged for it to be released, you know, but we were thinking, oh, we're gonna get a distribution deal. I've been like, screw that. Like, let's just release the movie ourselves and we're gonna do it the day after the release of the festival, like the the premiere of the festival, because now you've got all this hype and build around the festival, yeah, and you can carry you get that for free, you can carry that into hey, you didn't get to see it at the festival, but it's available and you can buy it right now. And the second mistake we made is I am a believer that when you are talking about a product, sort of a digital product, right? Like let's a movie's a digital product, it's something that uh people are gonna buy and download. The worst thing you can presume is that people are gonna remember to come buy your film when it's out. So, like, if you've got Fast of the Furious or Mission Impossible and you want to build anticipation for a movie, yeah, doing a lead-up sort of PR campaign, marketing campaign, makes sense. You're building awareness. That doesn't really work for indie films, especially small indie films. Like, to me, the mistake we made was thinking, oh, let's do these three weeks of sort of preempting marketing and then the film will come out. Right. To me, an article going up on a trade that does not contain a link to buy that film immediately is you've lost a sale in my interest. Like I I can't get any I I this is a this is a like prove me wrong, like unpopular opinion among people, and I've even had discussions, but like to me, if you were trying to get people to buy your your film and download it and not like go to the theater, but like purchase your film to To do PR and to not have them be able to click a link immediately and buy the film is a loss. Like people are just not putting, you know, oh, layover comes out in three weeks. I'm gonna remember to, you know, I'm gonna put it in my calendar or try to remember and come back in three weeks and buy it after I read this article. So I think that we should have had the movie available, like do a quiet release, just have it up, and then angle, you know, and then and then basically stage all of our marketing that includes, hey, you can buy it today.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

Right. Yeah, I mean that's that's brilliant thinking. And it seems obvious, especially because, like you said, like there's a film that came out. Uh I know a lot of people that were associated with it. It actually came out theatrically for like a couple weeks. I had this very, very limited release. They made it, you know, they said they made it for $30,000. I think it ended up being $100,000, $200 by the end. Um, but I knew about it for a long time and they had talked about it for a long time. And I was hitting up people, I was like, where can I watch this? Where can I watch this? And they're like, not yet, not yet. And I I actually think that built up actually helped me to want to see it more. Um, but I think I'm also invested in a way that the average person reading or hearing about it wouldn't be. Because I think exactly what you said. It's like, like, if I knew that you had a film coming out in three weeks and I read an article about it, I would still remember to be excited about it in three or four weeks and I would hit it up. But what you want is the average guy who doesn't have time to check back in in a month, right? Like you want him to be like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll check it out right now.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

And well, that's the thing, too, is like you are the exception. You're not the rule. Yeah. People make the mistake of thinking the exception is the rule.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

And it's not the case. I mean, we can get into a whole thing about like just what are what you the problem is you can't you can't take the outlier and presume that to be typical behavior because it's not typical behavior. Like, you have to look at the behavior of your audience, like, you know, and the fact is, like, how do people read the internet? They read quickly and they forget our attention spans are so small and so short that like people are not gonna remember some random indie film that they were like, oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah, they're just not gonna clock it because also that was your one shot. Like, if you're Mission Impossible, you've got the trailer release, the second trailer, you've got the Super Bowl spot, you've got the posters, you've got the like cont like you know what I mean? Like, they have the ability to blanket the airwaves and and and really do a generalized marketing campaign so that you know when you go to the theater, you go, Oh yeah, like Mission Impossible is out. It's toothpaste, yeah. It's brand marketing, is what they're doing. And you don't have that ability. You want to be doing direct marketing. And if you're doing direct marketing and saying, hey, in three weeks you can buy this, you're wasting money. Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_04 24:56

No, I think that's I think that's really smart. I think you're dead on, at least at our level. Like you like you're saying, you once you get to a certain level with certain stars and talent, and maybe Blair Witch uh was able to convince a lot of people, mainly because they thought it was real.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

No, but that's like 25 years ago. It's not it's not you know, especially post-COVID, yeah, people just don't go to the theater. Why? I mean, they complain about all the kind of content that's on Netflix, like, oh, there's too much. But like you have another choice to go to the Cineplex and you're not doing it. Like people, like, you know, people just the behavior has changed. So you can't point to 25-year-old examples and say, well, they they did that. It's like, okay, but that was like a completely different time. There was no ability to watch a movie until it came out on DVD. So people felt, oh, I'm compelled to go see it now because I don't want to miss out. Now everybody goes, I don't know if it's really worth seeing in the theater, and I don't really care if I mess it, miss out. So I'm just gonna wait, you know, till it till it comes out on on Netflix. They don't even wait for it to come out on iTunes, they just wait for it to come out on Netflix or Disney Plus or like whatever that is.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

Unless it's something they really want to see, and then you know, and then but the problem is stuff just isn't coming out enough that people just want to see. It doesn't feel like I mean, I'm I'm older, you're older, right? It's like 20 years ago, there were so many things I just wanted to see. Like I couldn't wait until whatever day arrived and I could go see that. Right. And then I don't know why, but I don't I haven't felt that in a very, very, very long time. I think maybe I felt that with one battle after another. And I love that movie, but I didn't even love it as much as I I was hoping I was going to. Um those moments are so few and far between now, which is uh, you know, it's depressing. And I don't like I said, I don't know if it's me, I don't know if it's them or if it's both.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Well, let's be and let's and let's be real, the moments when they're happening are not for some random indie film from Joe Schmo, which is what we're talking about. You know, they're even with movies like One Battle or you know, like Oppenheimer, or you know, I mean Nolan's sort of an entity into himself. Like, you know, but but really it's like it's one of those things where you are aware of it because you've been bombarded by marketing. Yeah, that's the way they get you, is they put it everywhere. So you you start to create I I as just an indie filmmaker, you know, with the release, we don't have that abil we don't have that ability, you know, we don't have that money to blanket. And I'll tell you, like, it really requires a lot, you know. Like I on Mending the Line, we you know, we had a a trailer that played in front of movies at the theater. We were told, oh, that's the best audience to have because they're already movie goers. So they're gonna like see your trailer and they're gonna want to go see it. And then we put a lot of stuff into like fly fishing, you know, magazines and fly fishing groups and online point. We did we blanketed the fly fishing world, right? And and then even the veteran world as well. We were out in 400 theaters and nobody went and saw the movie. They just didn't go because they there and there are people today, there are fly fishermen who like I talked to and they didn't know the film existed. So, like, so so it's just not as simple as like even getting to an audience, even having a movie that can attract an audience, right? A very niche specific audience. Like, there's one movie that's about fly fishing, which is A River Runs Through It. So we were the second. So we're like, okay, like maybe maybe people really grab onto this. But even then, now when it went to Netflix and it was suddenly free, right? I'm putting air quotes up, like within the context of of your subscription.

SPEAKER_03 28:48

Yeah, that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Well, then we were the number one movie, you know, on Netflix for a week. Wow, okay. And and have 12 million views. You know, so I mean, if you were to if you were to say, oh wow, like, you know, well, if we had had 12 million people go see the movie in a theater at 10 bucks a ticket, all of a sudden that's uh it's not gonna happen, but it's like, what is that? 120,000.

SPEAKER_04 29:13

120,000 uh 120 million dollars, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Yeah, right? No. Yeah, 12 million touchdowns, whatever it is. Anyway, um right, that's a totally different story.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

So uh, you know, it's just like the behavior's changed. Yeah. And um, and it's it's you know, and and unless even even movies that get real distribution in real theaters really struggle because we are as a society overwhelmed by things to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

And carving out, even with a very specific niche audience, is incredibly difficult.

SPEAKER_04 29:54

Well, it's funny because and I think this is the same in both of our countries. I think there's a middle ground, uh, like in the US, I call it middle America, right? And uh in Canada, we have a lot of northern populations as well. A lot colder, a lot more remote. Um, so even streaming struggles to like be reliable out there. Like we have one of the most the worst um internet, I think, for a G7 country in the world. Like it's a it's literally a joke. So there's a lot of remote areas, a lot of aging populations that don't rely on streaming as much. So they actually do rely more on physical media, and but even worse is how few movie theaters are out there, right? So movie theaters actually rely pretty heavily on older populations, especially nowadays, because they just aren't as attuned to streaming as the younger generations are. And then I've been reading, and again, I don't know how accurate all this is, but I've been reading that younger generations are now starting to turn on streaming as well. And going back to like physical media, a lot of stores have said they're seeing record profits by younger generations like Gen Z and Gen Alpha coming back to physical media and sort of getting old with like it's just these things cycle through again, right? Like those generations are always that age group is always looking for authenticity, so and they're always rebelling against what's in, quote unquote. So uh just like the way vinyl came back like five, ten years ago, right? And had like a weird resurgence. So there is that, but it's funny because I also saw something about like we all want people to go to the movie theaters, but we underestimate how few movie theaters actually exist. Like we just assume every town has one and they're just everywhere. But I saw this map of the US specifically, and it's just like the dots are so sparse, especially in the middle of the country, right? Like they're in the there's more dots around urban areas, but once you start getting out into the more rural areas, not even that rural, but just where the towns and the smaller cities are, it's like the movie theaters are not there, like, and a lot of them are closing down. So it's this weird thing of like, yeah, we want people to go back to the movie theaters, and I think audiences do, like, stuff still does well, but I think we also have to reckon with the fact that A, they just aren't as important as they used to be, and B, they're just not there like they used to be either. There's not right. I don't think we have more movie theaters now than we used to. Maybe I'm completely wrong on that.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

But uh Yeah, well, I mean AMC just announced they were closing locations, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

So yeah, and exactly, and it's like if I drive an hour north of where I live, I don't know where the closest I like. I think the closest movie theater from there is another hour or two hours in another direction. So it's not like they're just like and we we have a pretty densely populated province too, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

I mean, look, I you know I I I'm a great case study for this. I mean, I am a filmmaker, I love movies, and I never go to the theater. Yeah, and I have a theater ten minutes away from me, I have another AMC that's like you know, 20 minutes away. On occasion, I didn't see I I didn't see uh Oppenheimer in the theater, I didn't see uh one battle after another in the theater. Like, I don't I don't have time. I I just don't have time. I'm a dad, I've got two kids, I've got my own career, like you know, my son's super into baseball. Like, you know, I just don't I just don't have the time to go see a movie. On occasion, we'll go with the kids, we'll go see some big kids' movie.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

But me taking two hours out of the day to like see a movie now and and pay the money to do it versus like I have access to you know, I have 4K Blu-rays and great, you know, good TV. Like, I don't even have a home theater system, it's just like a TV with that and like headphones, and I I enjoy the movies in the same way. It doesn't really change for me seeing a movie in a theater versus seeing it because the other thing too is I never want to go to a movie theater when it's like packed, like I don't want to bother. So, like, I if I do go, I'll go in the middle of the day when nobody's there. Yeah, so you know, yeah, there's something to be said for like, oh, it's the sound and whatever, and I don't want to take away from that experience, but like we as a society are just like it's just not the same. We have access to anything we want in our pocket, which you can argue whether that's good or bad, but it's the truth, and so you're competing with that attention, and you're asking people to take time out of their day, to like drive somewhere, to pay a decent amount of money. I mean, it's still probably the cheapest form of entertainment, but uh, you know, I mean, including snacks and whatever for a family of four, it's gonna be uh eighty bucks, yeah, you know, for some theaters, and it's just like they why they're paying twenty dollars a month for Netflix. Like, why let's we're gonna stay home and watch something on Netflix. We're paying for it. Why not use it? Well, I think there used to be a distinction between television and and cinema, and that's just started to really go away. And so it's just again, you have to look like I I was gonna I'm gonna write a Substack article on this because I think people are struggle with this idea that you have to look at the behavior of the audience. Like, what is the odd how is the audience behaving in relation to the general idea of this industry and what we're what we're giving them? And you know, to me, people have a lot, I don't want to get into a whole thing about AI, but like AI will live and die as an entertainment form of entertainment if the audience either goes for it or rejects it. Yeah, and that's it. And a great example of this is the whole 3D thing. Like, you know, great 3D like Avatar. Like, honestly, it wasn't even enough to really convince people to fully go into it, but the studios were like, Oh, it's this new thing, we can charge more for it. Let's do this hard push into it. The quality sucked, and everyone said, This is awful, I don't want to experience this, so they rejected it. And where is 3D now? Yeah, you can't even buy a 3D TV if you wanted to, like, they don't exist. And so I think that's like a great example in terms of like the AI stuff, which is like if audiences go see movies and and reward the making of a movie with completely with AI with their checkbook or you know, with their cash, then we'll be over, then AI is gonna become the future. Yeah, if they decide this isn't worth seeing, then it's not gonna go anywhere. It's simplified, I'm sure, but like, you know, what is the be the audience is the ones driving the their behavior is what's driving what's going on. And so, you know, to me, again, like you talk about shooting on film, audiences don't care if I've shot a movie on film. They don't. It's I'm doing if I do it, I'm doing it for me. I'm not doing it for anything other than my ego of wanting to shoot on film. You can argue, oh, it looks richer, it looks this, it looks that. I've even seen some prints of like, you know, some some well-known filmmakers, and the film looks like shit compared to digital.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Right? It just doesn't look good. It's like consistently.

SPEAKER_04 37:14

In my opinion, it just has a different look, especially if you go down to like super 16. Like I I can completely understand the aspirations to do something like that. Just to sort of set yourself apart. Like if you're trying to, if you're trying to make something that you care about and you're trying to set yourself apart, especially, like I said, I think 16 mil, especially, sort of sets you apart if it's utilized properly. Again, it's like all these things have are different tools. Like, I I've worked DIT on projects and I've used uh, for instance, the Alexa 35. I just used that on my feature last year. And that process, even though it's digital, the amount of work you have to do just to back it up and then use it, it's not, you know, like there's a there's a perception that it's the same as a DSLR, just plug it in and you're good. It's like there's a really intense process, especially in post, to navigate these giant clips that, you know, my little my little feature came out to like 45 terabytes or something, almost 50. And we weren't shooting like a bunch of takes. It was like seven days worth of, we only had one camera. So I, or maybe it wasn't that high, but it was definitely in the tens of terabytes. So, in that aspect, I can actually sympathize with people saying, like, well, let's at least try film because we're not gonna shoot a bunch of shit we don't need anyway, which is what a lot of digital filmmakers do.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

But right, but in but in your example, you're actually you're you're at the very least, you've got a baseline cost, and then you've got the cost of physical film. Yeah. You got the cost of your negative, you got the cost of your your you know that's oh the processing, yeah, of course. So but but you're not saving money on the digital side of things because all that film has to get scanned in. It's got a it's getting scanned in at a high quality, uh, if not a higher quality than what you shot the Alexa on. So it's like that's the thing, is it's not like it, it's not even it's not even faster. It's not faster, it's not cheaper, and it's not less space, you know, because then you're dealing with, well, how are we saving this negative? Are we saving the negative? Are we paying storage on this negative? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

Like I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's better. It's like it's easier or more efficient. I definitely am completely saying the opposite. But I always, like I said, as a someone who's dealt with something like the Alexa 35 and all this stuff, I it makes me laugh at just like how much work those ones still. Yeah, it'll still work.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

It's uh you know, the Alexa 35 is a is a it's a it's a high-end cinema camera that's meant to replace 35 millimeter, right? Everybody when the red came out, they assumed, oh, I could just pick up the camera and shoot anything. It's like, no, that thing was a replacement for 35 millimeter. It was not it was not like, oh, it's a point and shoot camera. But I think like here's the thing like I'll say I'll say this. I think the notion that somehow cinema elevates the film is a privileged position that very few people get to experience, and audiences do not care. Nobody is seeing a movie, I mean, other than film nerds who are really into it. And maybe I'd go see, like, you know, when Licorice Pizza came out, yeah, I went and saw that on a 70 millimeter, you know, projection because it was like, okay, like let's see it. Yeah, but I'm I'm just as happy watching that movie on on Amazon or on a Blu-ray.

SPEAKER_05 40:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Like general audiences don't care. The only reason why cinema is held in such or 35 is held in such high regard is because that's what for whatever 90 years of Hollywood, that's what everything was shot on. So great movies were shot on that, and you equate that greatness with the quality of film, right? Yeah. But like it's really irrelevant. If we had figured out digital way sooner, then The Godfather would have been shot digitally, and it would have been still great because the format doesn't make the the the format doesn't make it good. I don't think, because again, a lot of shit was shot on 35. Everything was shot on 35, like you know, bad porn, like, you know, uh uh TV shows, um sports, like you know, but it was all shot very quick, cheaply, like like all that crap was shot on 35, and it didn't make it better, it doesn't enhance it in a way that's meaningful to an audience and to the story. And that's what I come back to. What's meaningful to me as a director is do I have the time and the space to capture the performance that I need? Or am I having to do one or two takes because that's the only film, that's all the film that I can afford. Yeah, that's when you get stuck. I don't ever want to feel like if I were ever to shoot on 35, I would only do it if again, if it was irrelevant to the budget, like if it didn't impact the budget at all, and I could still shoot the way that I shoot, which is let's go for another take, let's do this, let's do that. I don't want to feel like I'm limited to what I can capture because of the format I'm using. And so to me, what makes it better? The time and space to capture great performance and tell the story appropriately. You know, a lot of people years ago were making the argument for 6k, 8k resolution. And I was I was saying, I think resolution is irrelevant. I don't think resolution helps you. I think it actually hurts you because now you've got these enormous file sizes that you have to deal with. What does help you? Uh low light sensitivity, yeah, higher ISOs. I was a proponent of that from the beginning with layover shooting on 3200, 6400, shooting 100,000 and 25,000 ISO on the ME20 on negative because what that allowed me to do was I'd use I had smaller crews, less light, like I could get away with a lot more. It increased the amount that I could shoot. That's what was beneficial to me. I could step into any situation, and instead of spending two hours lighting the thing, I could bump the ISO and spend 20 minutes lighting it and spend an hour and 40 minutes capturing performance.

SPEAKER_03 43:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

That's the meaningful stuff to me. So when I look at film, again, unless you're in a place where it's irrelevant to your budget and it doesn't matter, which which you know there's few people that that's the case with, then it's a vanity thing. It's an ego thing because it actually hurts you. I think it limits your capabilities on set, and you're not doing it for something that is actually improving your film.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

Well, and not only that, but it it flips But that's an unpopular opinion, maybe among a lot of people. So No, no, no. I th I think it's an independent filmmaker. I think you absolutely have to shoot digital unless you and what I was gonna say is unless you are literally the most disciplined director of all time who is still somehow doing a really small project. And you have just really great actors. And shorts are one thing, but if we're talking specifically features and you're financing your own feature and using 16 mil, it's like you got to be so disciplined, so rehearsed, so planned out of what you need that you every frame is utilized properly, and you like you said, you don't waste money because otherwise you're gonna need every dime you you can get on a small independent project. It's like for anything, and then especially for posts, because that's where most of the money disappears once it's time for that. As someone who's dealt with a lot of independent filmmakers and posts, it's like, oh yeah, like uh we spent so much money, we we only have this amount for editing. It's like, why was that even touched? Like that should have been held in a vault untouched somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Put it this way like if you're a young filmmaker, right? I can go out with uh, you know, a Sony FX6 or a C Canon C400, and I can I can shoot my movie, you know, and I can bring it back and I can do everything myself.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

I can I can store the footage, I can, you know, bring the footage into my editor, I can edit all the footage, I can bring the footage then into Da Vinci, I can color all the footage, I can then master that footage out, and I can put the film up on whatever I want to do, right? Yeah, I literally can do all of that myself. You shoot on film, that's not happening.

SPEAKER_04 45:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Like no way.

SPEAKER_04 45:30

At the very least, you need another person who's a loader, you know. Like you at least need someone to do somebody do that.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Not even just production. You're thinking, okay, now I gotta go get all this film scanned, which is not cheap. That's being scanned, you know. I've got to have somebody who's keeping track of all this, especially if I'm going back out to film.

SPEAKER_05 45:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

You know, am I color timing on film? I don't know. It's like to me, it seems like a huge headache that just is also kind of a dying art. So it's not like, oh, I'm future-proofing myself by knowing how to do this.

SPEAKER_05 45:58

Right. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

You know, I I just don't think you're going to. And so but again, the bigger thing is if you want to separate yourself, I don't find that film is really the way to do it. To me, it's a stylistic choice in how you shoot it, which can be done with digital or not. Like it's you know, again, if you look at Nouvelle Vague, the fact that I mean, not just me, but like I I was convinced they shot on film tells you everything you need to know about like you know uh what you can do digitally these days. Yeah. Um, if that's a look that you're wanting to go for. I just don't see I there's so little upside to me um at the end of the day, but if you know, people are free to do it, but I just I I think that like you know, below a certain threshold, it really is something that kind of hampers you than it does help you.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

Well, I think, and this is going back to I'm thinking of two of the films. Obviously, we talked about layover, and you did another one called Negative. Um and I think it goes back to sort of your ethos, and I sort of share a little bit of this ethos as well, in terms of like I get so exhausted with trying to do projects and trying to, you know, bring people in and figure stuff out, and it's like, oh, this DOP, but he wants to bring this equipment and it's gonna cost this, and we're gonna need to light this and blah blah blah blah, and we need to use this camera, and then this this guy over here needs the art department, and then I need to finance all of this, I need to pay all of these people, and uh as soon as more crew come on, more mouths to feed, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whereas like I got to the point, and this happens every couple of years, where I'm just like, all right, screw it all. I just want to go and do it myself. A because I know how to, and B, I have a like I have an EVA1 camera at the very least. So I can go out and do that. And I've seen the footage, like I know how decent it can it holds up to most other stuff out there. Is it better? Probably not, but is it close enough, in my opinion, yes, uh, to get what I need, especially if it has a good color grade to it, right? Afterwards. So I think I think that's also what happens to guys like you and I, where it's like we because you're an editor too, right? Like you edit all your own stuff, and yeah. So I think when you have all of those uh weapons in your arsenal, to waste money um on film, uh, you know, when it's not financed by something else. And again, it's like the money you could spend on a film, it's like, well, we could just cast a bigger actor, and then this film would be more well known. You know what I mean? Like those are the trade-offs.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 48:30

Or, you know, we get more uh camera cars or like just little stuff that like we couldn't do because we didn't have it, then I agree with you. It's like that that makes more sense to spend the money in that direction than to just do it on film. That's dead. I personally I don't necessarily share, I agree with you philosophically about what you're talking about with film. I I am more nostalgic for film personally. Like I wish most people could just shoot on film or half of them we could go back. Like, I I hate the look of most digital projects these days, but I understand I understand why we're doing it and what and I myself have taken advantage of it. Like I personally, when I make projects, I try and eliminate that HDR look, right? Where it's like, no, I want shadows, I want deep blacks, I want to be able to not see everything in the frame. And I think that's a big issue with a lot of like the movie Wicked is taking a lot of crap right now because of that, right? It's their color grade, it's like literally everything's just in the frame and everything looks like it was shot in a studio and it's still on log or S log or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:43

So I yeah I I don't know. Is that is that sort of where that uh mentality comes from uh against film? Like uh even going back to your film negative?

SPEAKER_02 49:53

I I don't think I'm against film. I just I I'm just not like enamored with it like other people are. Yeah, I just think it like you're putting too much into a format. You're like you're just putting too much into a format. It just doesn't it just does not matter. It just does not matter to the people watching your film. Nobody is gonna hire you because you shot a movie on 35, and nobody's gonna watch your movie because they shot you shot it on 35. It's just not it's just not a difference maker. And so, you know, um I've tried to shoot on 35 a number of times, just never worked out from a budget perspective. I don't feel like I've lost anything. I I just really don't because I I think like look, if you're Nolan and you've got 150 million dollars or whatever, and you can put in all this research and RD and figuring out the best way to go and and all this stuff, then sure, like you know, but I'm I'm just more I guess I'm more of like the Soderberg approach, which is like what's the quickest, most efficient way to do this? Yeah, you know, and and yeah, if I was forced to shoot everything on 35 or 16, you know, like you would say in the 90s, then I probably wouldn't get to make a lot of stuff. Yeah, you know, there just wouldn't be as the same opportunities as I have using a C70 and going out and shooting an entire documentary on my own.

SPEAKER_03 51:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Um it'd be a lot harder and cost a lot more. And I so anyway, I mean this is a little off topic. I I think there's just the idea to me of of yeah, like I think as a as a somebody that's creating, you need to be creating. And anything that gets in the way of that creating is not gonna help you. Anything that creates a barrier or creates an obstacle to creating is not going to benefit you as a creator. So if you say, well, I'm only gonna shoot on 35 and until I do, I'm not gonna do anything. Yeah, well then that's tough. That's I mean, fine, I don't care. Like, you know, but I think that like it's just people are just putting too much into it as a as a thing that that is not a thing. It it is not a thing anymore. These cameras now are so good, you can do whatever you want. If you want to make something look like film, you can do it. So go do it. And it'll cost you way less than actually shooting on film. So, you know, I mean, I just like to me, the format is largely irrelevant.

SPEAKER_04 52:16

And layover is a good you know, sort of that's what I was gonna get representation of that.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Yeah, because you know, we shot on a cheap format. We, you know, I was not I'm not in love with the 5D Mark II image. We used the camera that we had, yeah. But nobody has ever said to me that I mean, a lot of people think it looks really good. I have my own it I have, you know, I think it looks a little rough, but like, you know, nobody's ever really rejected the film because of the look or or because there was noise in the image or anything like that. What makes layover something that people sort of keep coming back to and I keep talking about 11 years later, is it's got a story that connects with people, and it's uh you know, got a characters and characters that people can identify with. You know, that movie Layover is largely about coming to a fork in the road and wondering if you make the right choice. And I could tell you from screening it with people that are in their 20s to screening it for people that are in their 70s. Everybody faces that situation at some point in your life. And if you're in your 20s, you're going, well, what would I do? And if you're in your 70s, you're going, Did I make that right choice? And that's what keeps people coming back to it, you know. And so, um, you know, but the other thing too about that movie was like it also is not like, oh, we shot it on 5D, we shot it all in one apartment. You know, because we were shooting on the 5D, we could go shoot at the airport, we could shoot on on planes, we could shoot in clubs and all without permission, and steal a ton of stuff and make a film that felt much larger than um than you know its sort of budget, what you would have thought with its budget. You know, again, I look at like the movies of if you look at like Cassavetti's, right? He shot everything on 16 because that's the four that's the cheapest format that he had available to him. But when you look at those movies, you know, they're super grainy, they're like, you know, he's just not really thinking about quote unquote the cinematography in the same way that you would if you were really trying to do something polished. But those movies have a raw quality to them that allow them to sort of stand the test of time because they're about, you know, they're about something that audiences are connecting with. And and that is actually to me, that's actually the failure of negative. Negative for me was sort of like a technical achievement because I shot that largely on my own, on my own. I was the DP of it. You know, I wanted to prove that you could shoot at high ISOs and the audience would not care. What was missing from that film, which is something I take responsibility for, what was missing from that film was some kind of like element that allowed the audience to connect with it. And instead, it was sort of just kind of like trying to be a cool film, which I think it was, but it was not enough to really have audiences like connect to it, you know. And so, as much as I really love how Negative looks, the failure in that was the storytelling. I think it's still a solid film, it's still interesting. I'm very proud of the work I did, but when you look at the response to it, like people just never connected to it because there was really nothing there to connect to, um, which is fine, not every movie needs to be that. But when I look at where am I where am I willing to make trade-offs, and where am I willing to put time and attention versus other things, and where am I willing to put money? It's definitely not in the sort of look of a movie because I don't think nobody ever said, Well, the care that story sucked, and the character, but I thought it was great because of the cinematography.

SPEAKER_04 55:41

Yeah, it's always the other way around at the very way around.

SPEAKER_02 55:45

And again, there's really crappy movies that people could appreciate for the cinematography, I'm sure, but like it's just not the same, they don't have that sort of endearing quality. Of course. I mean, if if you know, if you look at like mending the line, mending the line probably has the opportunity to extend into its, you know, and have some kind of legacy to it because of the messaging of the movie and the fact that it's like about loss and about trauma, and we will always be going through loss and trauma, you know. Whereas like in negative, nobody's really ever gonna be caught up in a spy thriller. So it's just hard for people to really connect to it. But uh, Layover is just one of those movies where I think I just happen to and again, I say this at not being you know, it's not it wasn't some like massive breakout hit, but like those that see it do really connect to it. And a lot of it just comes down to I kind of was able to capture this millennial angst of of being of being unsure about who I am and what I want to be, and that just sort of spoke to people, which is sort of a surprise to me because I was sort of going, like, I'm just gonna write this thing and put this story in and bring in some autobiographical elements and and kind of tell something that's very personal to me. And of course, that's the stuff that ends up really connecting with people.

SPEAKER_04 56:58

Yeah. Well, and I think too, Layover just hit a zeitgeist moment too. It's like those sort of like low-stakes hangout, uh like romantic indies, uh, I think I've always sort of do well when they're done well. And I think that's as if you do it right, it works. Like, even like I went and made my film Duchess of Cancun because of Layover. Like I saw Layover, and I was like, okay, like you can do it at the smallest scale possible, spend as little like I knew I paid attention to a lot what was going on of the behind the scenes of that. So I had heard you get you made it for $6,000. So I sort of had that mentality. It's like, okay, well, what if I did it uh something similar, but just in Mexico? So there's elements of Dutchess that have that layover hangout, like low-stakes sort of romantic feel to it. And I think, and Dutchess again wasn't some breakout hit for me either. Uh, probably not even close to how Layover was for you, but it definitely the people that see it seem to connect to it, and you know, it's on all these like YouTube uh licensing sites, so it's like, you know, people can watch it for free on YouTube. Uh and there's a Polish version too that has like a Polish uh description over it, like it's not even a dub, it's just the guy is translating what they're saying in real time, so it's just one guy doing everyone's dialogue, which is funny. But people in Poland watch it and then they comment and people have really strong opinions about the characters, and I just find that all really hilarious and interesting. Um, but I think that aspect is always just going to be strong when it's done well, right? When you have sure the writing is sharp and the actors are good. And I thought negative again was a sharply made, and again, negative inspired me too because of exactly what you said. I know that you had shot it yourself on a what was it, C300 or 500?

SPEAKER_02 58:59

C100, most of it was shot on the C100, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:01

So it was at least 4K though, right? Or was it no 1080p. Oh wow, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

So I guess but but the other thing to note is again, going back to the idea I could do it myself, I shot on the C100 because at 1080p because that's what my like computer system and Da Vinci at the time could handle. Right. So I knew that I could cover post in that movie if I shot it at 1080p, whereas if I had shot at 4K, I mean I guess I could have done the whole proxy thing. But again, the C100 was the camera I had.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:30

Like, so I was like, well, that's what I'm gonna shoot on. And then I eventually got access to a C300 Mark II and the ME20 through Canon, but that was only certain portions of the movie were shot with those.

SPEAKER_04 59:40

So what uh uh you don't have to go too deep into negative, but like what happened with negative once it was finished and released?

SPEAKER_02 59:48

Well, negative was um financed by Mar Vista. Oh, they were they were at the time looking to do more of these small indie budgets, and I went in and said, Well, I've got a movie, I need a hundred thousand dollars, and I want you to leave me alone and let me go make it. And they said, All right, like we'll do that. And so I got a hundred grand to go make this film, and I I only asked for that because I knew it was gonna be low enough that they weren't really gonna be on me about it, but it was high enough that I would have what I need to make the film. So, you know, it did okay. Like it we finished it. It premiered at the uh um oh shoot, what's the uh premiered at the Newport Film Festival, which was kind of cool, and then it came out, and I mean it didn't, you know, I don't know how well it did, but part of doing negative was I wanted to prove that I could do action.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

Right? So like and shootouts and all that kind of stuff. So like it did. And then that allowed that allowed me to make and that allowed me when the time came time to do infamous, it allowed me to say, Right, I can do action, I'm capable of it on a on a low budget.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:50

Oh my god, I can't believe we haven't talked about uh Infamous yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Yeah, yeah. Well that might have to be the sec uh podcast number two, yeah, part two.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:58

But maybe let's just talk about that really quickly. So that that came out in what year? Infamous?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

Infamous, it came out in 2020. It was shot in 2019.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:07

Okay, and then and how did was that a success or was that I know COVID probably screwed some of that up, but I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:15

It's I mean, yes, it was successful by the metric of did it end up making its money back? I'm pr I'm pretty sure it did. Okay. You know, it was, I mean, technically we were the number one new movie in America when we came out. Okay. Um, I mean, it's got an asterisk on that because there was no other movies out, but we did a thing where it was kind of cool because typically with that distribution process, it would have been, oh, here's it's in 20 token movie theaters across the country to satisfy it as a theatrical release, and it was released on VOD the same day, but those movie theaters weren't open, so vertical to their credit, rather than just dumping it on digital, yeah, they came to me and said, Hey, like what if we put it in drive-ins? Oh, like, that's cool. So we actually released in like 70 drive-ins. Okay. Um, the week of the release, and then vertical negotiated uh it to premiere on Hulu. So it was on Hulu for like a year. You know, critics didn't like it, but a lot of people that that liked Bella really thought it was great. And I think it was just like I think that movie maybe came out at the wrong time. Um, you know, it was all during well, COVID was tough, but then also like, you know, you had a lot of the George Floyd stuff going on, and so a movie about kind of two kids, two white kids running around with guns and killing people just didn't really seem like the right thing at the time. In fact, we had people said say that they weren't even interested in talking to us about it because of everything going on.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:41

So really wow, like like critics and journalists and stuff, critics, journalists, yeah, all that kind of stuff. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

Um but I love it, I think it's a great movie. I and really loved making it. Um, and again, the now I stepped it up with the budget. So now I was like, okay, like I've shown I can deliver a film at this budget, which then helped me do net mending line. Even though Mending Line was a completely different film, it still gave people confidence that I could deliver, yeah, you know, on a multi-million dollar budget level.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:13

Yeah. And you have bigger stars than you've had before, like Brian Cox, Patricia Heaton, um, and some, you know, some other people. And I I'm sure this is an obvious question, but uh going back to infamous, Bella's in uh so we're talking about Bella Thorne. So her online influence, I have to imagine that had a big impact on the success of the film. Or because there's a lot of debate of whether or not the they actually can influence um the budgets and the box office of a film in a meaningful way. What was your sort of takeaway from that?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

I mean, I think it it certainly didn't hurt whether it the whether there was a uh translation from one to the other is I'm unsure because I I wasn't really privy to a lot of the data, so I don't really know where we stood. But I think that um, you know, the challenge with Bella is as much as she's got a lot of followers, a lot of people follow her as hate followers, right? Like people she's she's she's um you know, which which is you know from afar tough because I she's very pleasant. I would work with her again. I thought she was great, she was super professional, you know. Um I I'd love to make another movie with Bella. So I think a lot of that discourse is unfair. Um, but I think you know, the the challenge to the now and with Bella, Bella was an actress first who became sort of more influential and oh she was, okay. I was I wasn't sure. She's always been an actress. No, she's always been an actress. Okay. And um, but I think when you talk about people that are influencers who are then put into movies in an effort to get their audience to come, I don't think that works at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

I think because what you're telling me is as an audience, as somebody who follows this influencer, right, you're going, uh okay, I have 24-7 access for free to the real persona that I want to follow, and you're asking me to come spend 10 bucks and take two hours of my time to watch them play a different person. That doesn't work.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:30

And arguably half the time, not believably.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

Right, and I I know this because I made a movie with somebody like that, Matt Espinoza. I did my third, my second feature, it was called Be Somebody, which was this kind of you know, influencer. He's an influencer, he's a blind guy. And the big thing we got, well, the big thing I perceived from that is like I don't think anybody really was had an interest in watching him play a character. Especially when they had access to what they perceived to be a one on one relationship with him. Him, right? So if you're on your phone watching an influencer, that feels like a one-on-one engagement.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:05

Um, that does not happen when you're watching the movie. When you talk about somebody like Tom Cruise, most people only ever experience Tom Cruise through the movie. So if they see Tom Cruise kissing somebody, another woman, they put themselves in the the woman, women, not everyone, this is an example, but like the women would put themselves in the place of that woman, right? And they would live in that, they could live in that fantasy. When you talk about an influencer kissing somebody on screen, that's not how their audience perceives it. They don't insert themselves into be that person. They're seeing this person that they've come to know and love and whatever kissing somebody that's not them.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

So there's a real rejection towards it. Um, and uh, you know, so it was really interesting to go through that. But, you know, to me, uh honestly, when I wrote the role of Infamous, I kind of wrote it with Bella in mind. You know, I really thought like trying to, you know, she was sort of felt like the most natural fit for it. So I'm I'm super thankful she said yes, because I think she's fantastic in the movie. I mean, I wrote a character who really is polarizing and and is really unlikable, right? Intentionally unlikable, but she played it uh magnificently. I thought she was really, really good in the movie, and and again, like was uh like we really felt like we had a partnership in terms of like executing this. So um, you know, again, she's great. I would 100% work with her again, and and um, you know, and and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:35

Yeah, uh yeah, she was great. I and I r uh it's been a really long time since I've seen that movie, but I remember really liking the guy as well. And I think he's Canadian too, right? What was I think he was Canadian, the uh the other guy?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

Jake, yes, I believe is Canadian.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:52

Yeah, I thought he was uh fantastic too. So yeah, like you said, it that film is exactly what it is in a in a good sense, and I think you're right. I think you delivered something that is what um you know, you you proved new chops that you're oh okay, I'm not just the indie guy who shoots on a 5D or whatever. It's like I can I can make a film that feels just as Hollywood-esque uh with the right budget as well. So I think that's I think that's really great as well. Um yeah, so I think uh I mean we've been talking for a while now, and I could talk forever. Yeah, me too. I do have it to run.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:31

I have another call here in 20 minutes. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

So let's I I I think I think we've covered a lot of bases, but let's let's just chat about what you're up to now um and help promote that. And uh yeah, why don't what what's on the pipeline now, or what are you currently working on, or about to work on?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:51

Yeah, so I actually just wrapped a feature. Oh, great. Yeah, called Three People in the Woods, and it stars uh Catherine McPhee, Henry Thomas, and Jim Gaffigan. Oh, great, okay. As well as um Morgan Saylor and uh and Forrest Weber. And um we shot that down in Atlanta and had a great time. So I'm in post on that. I'm editing it right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:13

And um Are you editing it yourself? Did they let you oh wow, great.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

Yeah, I took it on myself. Um, which normally I wouldn't have done, but we did with this movie, we shot a lot of uh, you know, the coverage was very simple and we shot a lot of oneers.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

I wouldn't say simple, it was like efficient. I didn't shoot a lot of takes and I didn't do a lot of coverage or anything like that. Like I shot a lot of oneers, and I sort of felt like, you know what, I think I have a pretty good handle on this. I'm pretty sure I can like I can edit this, and and so I'm in the middle of it now, and um, and it's great. And we're just sort of trying to me and the financier producers are trying to think of like let's do another one. Um, not necessarily like I mean, we're thinking, you know, we're trying to figure out another movie to make. That's awesome. Um and uh yeah, I'm uh and then I've got a documentary that I made um last year called Legacy, which is about a fly fisherman named Barry Beck. That is actually coming out on YouTube on Friday. That'll be launched. That's a like a 44-minute documentary, um, which is fun. Again, something I shot all on my own, did it all on my own, edited it, finished it. Um, and uh that was on outdoor channels back in the fall. March March 6th, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:21

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

Um, and then three people, we don't know where it's gonna land yet. You know, we're doing pre-sales and all that stuff, and I've got to finish it up, you know, probably in the next couple months.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:31

And three people, is it a drama, action?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

It's uh it's like a horror thriller.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:36

Oh, great, okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

That's really cool. Very different for me. Um I've been looking to do a horror.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:43

Yeah, you sort of spread the gamut, don't you, in a lot of different genres.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

I guess I never really saw myself as doing that, but I sort of have I I just like, I mean, look, part of it is you take the movies that come to you, yeah. The opportunities that come to you, but also like you know, drama's really hard. Drama's really hard, you know, not to do, but just to get made to get people to see. And I was sort of struck by uh uh a comment that a director that I I know um uh had had said on a podcast, and she was like talking about horror, and she sort she said that like horror was kind of the last place where you could really do drama. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of interesting, and that's kind of what this movie is. It's a lot of drama, but it's got this sort of like wrapper of a of a genre piece. Um and so that that was kind of a fun space to live in.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:38

Well, yeah, it's funny because I think uh there's some internet memes out there right now about horror films where the horror horror films of your, like back in the day, they were just straight up, you know, kids being bullies or shitty or whatever, and now in the last like 10, 20 years, it's all about trauma. What the main character has trauma, they're dealing with their trauma. Like, exactly. It's sort of wrapped around it's these little Sundance movies with like really intense personal stuff, but then there's all this like horror wrapped around it. I know that because I've edited a few hor uh horror features and they've had trauma as well. So I've noticed that trend in the last like 10-15 years.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:21

But but yeah, it's definitely a hot trend. And like you said, it makes a lot of sense because dramas can't really sell themselves as features anymore. They have to be television or they had you know, that seems to be the only place drama can really dramas can really um flourish. Yeah, so it makes a lot of sense to make use of the horror genre, which is just exploding on every metric right now. So that's that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:47

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:48

But yeah, okay. Well, man, uh like we definitely we talked over twice as long as I expected, so but I'm not surprised because I think there was a lot of great stuff to talk about, and I think there's a lot of information that a lot of people can take back. And you know, like I said, I could talk about distribution all day, every day. Uh yeah, and I think the stuff you've brought up and sort of your approach, especially with layover, is really informative and really inspiring because a lot of people can, you know, take lessons from that and uh even even try and avoid the mistakes that you admitted that you made as well, right? Even though you did very well. Um, you know, I think day to day uh sales and releases and after you know a big premiere, I think that's a smart idea, and including links and you know, your press is a really smart idea as well. So um, but yeah, I really appreciate you talking to me and uh I uh I'm sure we'll talk again in the future. But anytime.