Backpay

Host Mike Gallant speaks on his experience writing/directing/starring/producing/editing the new film BACKPAY which drops on October 2nd digitally in the US/UK and worldwide on November 6th.

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Hey everyone, thanks for joining me on the Film Element Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Glant, and I thank you for joining me today. Um today I'm going to be talking about a film that I made, I would say, in the past like year and a half, and it's called Back Pay. Uh on this episode, I'm going to be speaking about A, my experience making the film, uh, why I made it, what it sort of says, and what it what you can learn from the business on how to make a film, uh, and not only make the film but market it as well. Obviously, the film just had its premiere and it's releasing very soon. Uh, I would say it's basically available for pre-order on Fandango in the US and UK, and then it's also going to be available digitally uh October 2nd on Amazon and Apple for buy and rent. And then at the end of that month on November 6th, it'll be available worldwide on various AVOD platforms, as far as I'm aware. That might be switching up as we go, but that's a conversation for with my distributors. So obviously, saying that, you can say, well, what do you know? What can we learn from you? That makes a lot of sense considering the film just came out. And, you know, fair enough, especially when it comes to marketing. But I'm gonna talk a little bit about A, I'm gonna talk about how I made the film, why I made the film, and then I'm also gonna talk about the marketing implications and sort of what I did to push this film, uh, especially on social media, but also out in public, um, to get the word out, which is what's really important and super uh imperative for films, especially of this size. Basically, any film, any product, really, any any product that you're trying to launch, uh, especially out of thin air, marketing is paramount. And it should not be overlooked or thought of as an afterthought or anything. It's you know, it's the 80-20, it's the 80 of the 20 rule when it comes to filmmaking. So anyway, I'll get started. So I'll talk about the beginning of Back Pay. Um, obviously, as some of you know that might be listening to this, and some of you may not know who I am, but I'm a I am a filmmaker. I've been making films for about 25 years. Uh, I started in high school in the last couple of years of my high school, and then I took it pretty seriously very early on, even in high school. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I even pretty much knew I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was in uh like middle school, maybe grade four or five or something like that. I always knew that I wanted to do to direct and make movies. Um, it was such a huge part of my life. And then many years went by and I went to film school, and that was sort of I wouldn't say a bust, but it was not what I would have hoped. I went to the Toronto Film School, and it was, you know, I learned a lot. I learned a lot of life lessons while I was there, but it just didn't really have you know the breakout moment for me that I would have hoped. Um I got to make a film at the end of there was about four five different uh what do you call them now? Semesters. Five different semesters that were sort of back to back. We didn't, you know, we didn't take the summers off or Christmas break or anything like that. Um so there were these five different semesters, and the the last semester you had to make a short film, and I ended up making something, I think it was about like 32 minutes long or something like that. Pretty long for a short film, but I just I was always ambitious, like I wanted to make something bigger and cooler. And uh I think that was a success on its own. Uh the film was called Frost Week, and uh, you know, I was 20 at the time, so I was just making a film about what it's like to be in college. Uh, you know, it's a sort of a a rote approach, but you know, comedy was comedy and drama was sort of my bread and butter back then, and ironically, it comes back around. That's kind of where back pay ended up uh when it came out. So I made that and uh it got nothing. It didn't go to any festival, it didn't uh, you know, my my school was over, so they didn't even really grade us on it, and that was it. It was done, it was gone. So that's sort of why my experience there wasn't so great. So I spent the next eight years or so, um, or ten years I would say, a whole decade, working for a production company that did video and event videos, and a lot of really great uh corporations we were working for. I think a lot of filmmakers, especially in their early years, go through this period where they're just sort of cutting their teeth and learning how to make films and deliver stuff and edit and do all that stuff. The ironic thing is, is I kind of actually knew what I was doing uh pretty early on into that job. That's kind of why I got hired. That place was a startup and they needed someone like me to do that sort of thing, even even at my young age of 1920. Uh, I was a pretty solid editor right from the beginning uh in a lot of ways. Like honestly, even if you look at some of my high school stuff, you can say whatever about my high school work, but the one thing you can't really argue is that my editing wasn't pretty solid. So anyway, I worked for this person for many years and uh at this startup company, and then I learned a lot about shooting live events, and that was one thing that actually ended up becoming pretty valuable is I always kind of believed in guerrilla filmmaking. You know, if we could if you can steal a shot and get away with it, great. You know, there's whole film franchises that are based off of that mentality. You know, Matt Johnson implements a lot of that in his work, as well as you know, the obvious group is uh the jackass guys. Difference is that they have millions of dollars to sort of write off all these people that they screw over and convince them to sign a waiver and join their movie. Obviously, I never really had that, but I always loved the idea of just using natural settings and places and even people if possible to make stuff. So work working these live events actually taught me a lot about you know, oh, you can actually get you can actually do some cool stuff and get a lot done um in these tight spaces with a lot of people that may or may not know that you're filming. And then the the other great part about that time frame is we're talking like the turn of the decades, so 2000s into the 2010s, and that's sort of when the DSLR revolution began. So now photography cameras were shooting HD footage on some nice lenses, so now you can go into a live space, and people are thinking people will think you're a photographer, and they don't know that you're actually getting footage of them, you know, and this is obviously predates of the great Apple uh iPhone video cameras that we have now. Um so yeah, that sort of shaped my uh filmmaking style for a long time. And even while I was working for that company, I also made shorts as much as I could. I was part of the 48-hour film challenge in Toronto several times, uh a few times in a row. We actually won it the whole thing in I think 2013 with a short called The Hat. And uh that was a great experience. Like we got to go to I think it was New Orleans um and just be around everyone else who was competing there as well. So we got to meet a lot of really great people. Did anything really come of winning that or uh you know, did we make any great connections doing that? Not really, uh, but it was a fun experience and learning how to make a film in that short amount of time, you know. It was very like SNL style, you know, let's try and get something together in in exactly 48 hours. And the one thing I didn't enjoy about the 48 hour, which is why I stopped doing it, was obviously the writing. I care a lot about the writing, and you know, having to write a script that quickly, I think is where things would always fall apart for a lot of the projects and even ours sometimes as well, is that you know, we just didn't have enough time to write this properly, and you don't know what you're doing when you start off, which is obviously part of the fun and part of the appeal. But I figure if we're getting a lot all these people together and we're putting all this time, effort, and sometimes money into it, you know, to make something where the script is made up on the spot, always just kind of felt pretty uh it was it was very hard to get over that. So I I sort of stepped away from that more so and then just started making my own shorts with my own scripts, and a lot of those turned out very well. Very rarely was I, you know, overly upset with what I made, and I would do it with very few resources. I would either call in favors, or in 2018 I shot something called Terra Beach, so I hired a whole team to do that, and that was basically me trying to do something as professional as humanly possible. In 2015, I shot a feature, it was called The Duchess of Cancun. And again, if you've listened to this podcast before, you've heard me talk about it. And that and that film, we went down to Mexico. I'm not gonna go into all that, I can talk about that another day, but that was sort of the stepping, the springboard that got me into uh the film industry as a whole. Before then, I had felt like I was kind of this guy peering through a window watching all these other people who had made features and you know had started were starting to build their careers, and I was just making 48-hour films and these shorts that weren't really going anywhere doing anything, but it was still I was building a body of work and I was meeting a lot of really great people, and then you know, and the most important thing is I was enjoying what I was doing. I didn't really care if the shorts went anywhere or did anything, I just wanted to make something because that was just what I had to do and wanted to do. Um, you know, it's like a painter, a painter paints, and that's just that you know, they don't care if it's gonna sell or win some sort of award or anything. You just it's something you gotta do. Um, and then when I made the feature, I thought a little more commercially. I was like, okay, if I'm gonna do this, spend this kind of money, uh, make this project. I'm talking about Duchess of Cancun. When I made that, I was like, okay, I gotta I want to fulfill this hole that I have where I I want to become a filmmaker, serious filmmaker, and I want to become a feature filmmaker. And this was a conversation a lot of people would have with me at that time. So I went ahead, I made it, and I learned a lot of lessons. And you know, the film is still out there and it's still making its rounds digitally, uh, you know, on especially on Tubi, but you know, it's in a lot of worldwide markets right now. But it's been 10, 11 years since we filmed it. So it's time to sort of come and pass, and that's that's what films do. They do come back around once in a while, which is fun, and they sort of see a second, third, fourth wind sometimes, um, which is fantastic. That's what you want. And a lot of films are more evergreen than you expect, uh, because markets change, technology changes, everything changes, and you know, everyone is always looking for content. So that in that aspect, films can really help you in that. Um, they can keep the ship going and you don't expect it to. Uh so fast forward, it's 2025. All right, let's go back. It's 2024. I have started acting a little bit. All right, actually, let's go back to 2023. Let's go back to 2022. Uh, in 2022, I had uh a banner year for my career. I was editing a lot, I was directing, and then I got to direct a TV show for Eli Roth called Urban Legend. So I got to direct, it was an anthology series, so every episode was almost like its own movie about its own urban legend. And I got to direct the scuba diver legend that if you've seen Magnolia, they play the whole thing out in the beginning. I I believe Patton Oswald had a role in it as well. Uh, he plays the scuba diver, I believe, or he plays the guy who might have killed the scuba diver. I can't remember. Anyway, um, that Urban Legend was the season finale of the show, and it was the most expensive episode of the series. And it was an unreal experience. I we shot it for five days, uh, just around actually where I live, ironically, with a great uh the cream production team. And I got to work closely with Eli Roth. He was overseeing my edits because I got to edit as well, but he oversaw the directing and the editing uh from LA. And we uh we had a show runner, Stephen Scott, who uh oversaw that, and I worked really closely with him. But he was sort of the mouthpiece of Eli Roth, but he also had his own ideas and everything. Uh, so that was like a pretty unreal experience. And um, ironically, the girl that I cast in that episode, uh, local girl here, really, really talented actress. I think she was about eight years old at the time, might have even been younger, and now she's in all of Eli Roth's projects, and she's on the poster for Ice Cream Man, uh, his newest release uh this summer. So that was a really great experience. So that was 2022. Then 2023 happens, writer strike, actor strike, all this, all these different things sort of happen at once. And not only that, but the uh streaming bubble that was growing because of COVID had burst. So every every streaming giant, Netflix, Disney, uh, HBO, all these different platforms, they had scaled up huge during COVID, thinking that lockdowns were gonna last for years, and that was just how life was gonna be, and that was everyone's that was gonna be any everyone's viewing habits. And then reality hit about 2023, around the same time as the strikes. Maybe they all had something to do with each other, but all that stuff went away. So most of the jobs that were up in Canada, especially, had sort of disappeared, and work halted for six months. But a lot of people don't realize is that work halted months before the strikes when people didn't know, like when it was just hinted that this was gonna happen. And I mean, you can't blame them because you don't want to invest in a production if they're gonna end up going on strike. Uh, it's just not a good, you know, you can't get something like that insured mostly. So there you go. 2023, gone. I was still doing okay in 2023, and then and 2024 things had slowed down, but it was this ripple effect that hit us very slowly, and then inflation came up, interest rates, all these different things, everything sort of started to collapse around 2023, 2024, and then it all sort of came to a head in 2025. Now, at the end of the second half of 2024, I was asked to act randomly in a short film uh by someone who had discovered me out of basically thin air online. I was not advertising myself as an actor in any sense, but I was very slowly trying to get into it as a revenue source because I had worked with other actors and I had done castings, and I thought, okay, there's a lot of guys out there that I am uh a part of that demo that are getting work and don't seem to be that talented, or at least at the very least, I could be I could do what they're doing, and if they're making some money, especially if you're doing commercials non-union, you know, that's a couple thousand in the bank right there for a couple days of work. Uh so I so I went into that uh lane. And in 2024, I started doing background and just I and through some twist of fate, this uh director, Maya Fink, reached out to me and hired me, or not even hired me, just asked me to be in this short one day, and I said, Okay, I will do this uh for no money, that's fine. Um but let me edit it because I'm an editor and I don't know who you're gonna get to edit it. I don't think she'd even had anybody thought of anybody yet. So in my head, I thought, I'm like, okay, if this is at least half decent, at least I'll own the I'll have an edit so I can encourage her to release it. Um so that's what I did. I I did this short and it went well, and it seemed to everyone seemed to be satisfied with what I was doing, and I was able to edit something together, and her and I went back and forth. So this was a non-speaking role, but it was all me. I was the leader in the whole short. There was no there was literally no other human beings in the short. So I thought, okay, let's try dialogue. Let's see if I can pull off acting and directing and editing a short where I actually have lines. Can that be done? So I did this short called Paternal, and I had hired uh uh and I use the word hired uh in air quotes. I can't remember if I paid them. Maybe I didn't pay them, I can't remember. I'm sorry to the actors if I didn't pay you. Uh but I got a group of actors that I had worked with previously, uh, that past summer tw summer of 2024. I had done about eight viral vertical drama shorts that were about eight to ten minutes, and I had written or sorry, I did not write them, but I directed, edited, and produced them, and I shot them as well. And you know, we would there's about four different days so that we would shoot two shorts, eight minutes each, uh, every day. So six hours on one short, six hours on another short. And you know, sometimes some of the same actors were would be in both, but it was a lot. Those shoot days were intense and they were a lot, but it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed what we were doing. Some of the stories weren't the best, but uh I was interacting and basically doing what I love and getting paid for it. Um, again, not a lot of money. And you want to talk about another uh platform that's collapsed is this uh, you know, the verticals. Everyone thought this was the next gold rush, and as soon as they made that announcement, the gold was gone. And uh so keeping up with that has already become difficult. Now people are going back to the movie theater. Now movie theaters are where it's at. Uh so I had met a lot of actors doing that, and you know, some of them were much better than the material they were given. So I was able to use a lot of those actors in this short that I did, uh, paternal. And I want to give a shout-out to the cast, Shaylin Noise, Justin Bott, Isaac Towel, uh, Seled Calderon, and obviously myself. And uh and I want to give a shout-out to the crew, uh, specifically my cinematographer, Chris Moresby. And I'll talk about Chris uh when it comes to backpack because he was involved with that as well. But Chris Moresby is a cinematographer, he's also a music producer, really talented music producer, uh as well. And Chris comes with a lot of gear and he's very knowledgeable. He's been in the game many, many years, uh many decades. So he really knows what he's doing when it comes to the gear and uh framing shots, and you know, he just has a really he just wants to make cool stuff, uh even at his age, which is really refreshing to see. So I think that's why he and I get along so well. He and he also just has a really great presence and personality about him. Anyone that's met him or knows him, I'm sure would say the same thing. So he helped me shoot paternal, we put that together, and it was good. And we shot it on the Aria Alexa 35, so the the quality was top-notch, uh, the visual quality was top-notch. And I was I realized I'm like, okay, I can I can say lines and I don't embarrass myself. It looks okay, especially if I'm the editor. And believe me, editing yourself trying to act, I mean, there's no that's the seventh ring of hell, basically. There's nothing more painful than editing your own acting performance, especially when you're a struggling actor like me. And when you're directing and You know, have all these things in the back of your head, you know, sometimes you're just not in it. And then I when I'm editing myself, I see that I was like, I wish you could have been more in it, but I also understand you were directing and producing at the exact same time. So that happened. And then uh some of you guys have heard me talk about this before, but I have uh projects that are on film hub. A lot of my shorts are on film hub, making a little couple of dollars here and there, nothing, and I literally mean a couple of dollars. Um, and then I have two anthology films, one's called Last Known Backup, and that one's on Tubi and Amazon Prime, even in Canada, uh, available for streaming if you have, and Tubi's obviously a free is a free platform. And so I learned a lot with Film Hub and sort of what you need for assets and deliverables, and how all of these different platforms uh choose their projects that they license onto their system. So that experience was very eye-opening, and then I used that knowledge to pitch doing a very, very, very small film uh based off of the paternal short that I did at the end of 2024. And I thought, okay, this to me probably lines up with the Avod, the Tubi world. It makes sense that this would be the story we expand on. I had other shorts that maybe I could or couldn't have expanded on, but at the same time, I was being a little selfish, and I did that for my family as well, because I had no, I obviously had no leading man credits, and I had very little credits, uh, film credits to begin with. So I couldn't fill up my reel with a lot of stuff. So I thought, okay, I just proved with the short that I can act my way out of a paper bag at the very least, and especially if I'm the editor, I can make myself look half decent. So I thought, you know what? I help everyone else out for all of these years, all of these decades, get stuff for their reels, make stuff that they can show up to a premiere and feel good about. Why don't I just put myself forward and just see if see if this is even possible? Well would anyone even bite on me starring in a film? Would people want to work on a film like that? And much to my delight, I found out yes. I guess, you know, I got, you know, the self-doubt sort of went away once I saw all the great people that started showing up. Again, Chris Moresby said, Absolutely, I'll do a film uh with you. And we put a schedule together, it was about six or seven days, uh, and which is a really short amount of time to make a feature, but when your budget is as tight as it was, and again, I wanted to keep the budget tight as humanly possible because I wanted to give ourselves the best chance to get an ROI because I knew the bigger you go, A, the harder it is to get the money, and B, um the more the less likely you are to get yourself into the black. Uh there's a lot of talk these days about how hard it is to actually make your money back on a film because a lot of people have to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars, but then they don't have a big enough star in the movie, or even if they get a star in the movie, it's still they're still not gonna make enough money back or even come close to justify it. And yes, in Canada we have tax credits, so there's that advantage too. But tax credits take a couple years to get in return, so you know, and the money on the other side is building interest that you took a loan out on, so it's a really difficult balancing act that you sort of have to figure out. Um, but I thought, at least this time around, let's make it as small and micro budget as possible. I can do everything, I could literally shoot it if I needed to, but obviously I could I couldn't while I was on camera. But if I have all of those aspects, why why stop yourself? You know, I constantly look around, especially the YouTubers that are out there, and they're blazing it up themselves. They don't have this second doubt, they don't think they should wait around for other technicians or other people who can do other jobs slightly better than them. They go out, they don't ask for permission, they go out and do it. And not only here, but around the world too. You know, India and China and the content makers out there, they they don't overthink this stuff nearly as much as most of us do. So I put together Back Pay, and it was an extended version of my short paternal. One aspect of paternal that I got a few comments about was my character specifically sort of made this turn that they're not sure how and why he became quote unquote a badass. Uh, like, where did that sort of come from? Now I'm sure a lot of that comes from it was all people that knew me, so maybe they're just like, I don't see you being this guy. Uh, or like, not that you could or couldn't, but you just we needed to see that progression because it didn't feel like the beginning was that. So what I decided in back pay, I just naturally had to because A, it's sort of my lane, and B, you know, I just I need to fill up 86 pages or 85 pages, and I made it more of a comedy. And not in a comedy like a broad comedy, like old school or wedding crashers or something like that. It was more of a situational dark comedy, you know, which would that was the type of vibe that a lot of films in the 90s and the early 2000s, uh, that's sort of how they would operate, right? It's uh you would be in these really intense, dangerous or violent situations, but there was this dark co comedic site side to it as well. Tarantino obviously was very good at that stuff. Um so I thought, okay, and if I'm going to play it, comedy is probably more my strong suit anyway. And I just feel that if I'm gonna play a character, I don't have a crazy amount of range, so I should just play something that I can play, like a version of myself, basically. Uh an exaggerated version, but I just want to get into the headspace of a like I'm and this is twenty we filmed in 2025, and 2025 arguably was probably the toughest year of my career that I can think of, uh, especially financially. It was a hard time. My you know, my kid, uh, we had just we my second daughter wasn't even one year old yet, and my wife was on maternity leave, and all the all the work that started drying up in 2023 and 2024 was basically gone by 2025. The drought had actually fully hit and settled by then. Fortunately, it feels like 2026 is a different story. Uh seems to be the case for a lot of people as well, and hopefully that maintains, who knows, with all the geopolitical stuff going on right now. But um, so I was in the good headspace to play a character like this. I was very frustrated, very anxious. Uh, and also I I just personally have a gallows humor to myself, and I I'm a sarcastic idiot sometimes. So I brought that all to this character, Steve, in Back Pay, and I just sort of navigated, uh, I expanded on what we did on Paternal and just cranked it up to 11. And I made these characters, I wrote backstories into these great characters, these four characters. Um, well, and then five, actually, I should say. And uh it was I don't know, it was it was fantastic. And the experience of shooting back pay. Now, we shot it in three different towns. The first day we shot was in my hometown of Milton, Ontario. We shot at a restaurant that I frequent all the time, which is just down the street from my house. This really beautiful little Italian restaurant called Casso Americo. If you're ever in Milton, I recommend going to it. The owner is the greatest guy on earth, Americ. Um, we shot on the main street. Now we didn't get a permit for that shit, but uh we got this incredible footage um of myself and my co-star Dwayne Murphy just talking on a bench. And it was a it was stunning, it was an insanely great location because it's the main street of Milton, uh, which is this really old, historic, beautiful part of the city. But when we were done, it was a short little scene, it was just like this, you know, two-minute dialogue scene between two old friends. And uh when we started packing up and we were all done, someone came up to me and she said she was a business leader of Milton, and she said, Oh, do you have a permit to shoot here? And I was like, uh, we're done. So I don't know what you can do about that. And she just kind of stared at me. She's like, Oh, okay. So, like I said, if you want to break the rules, be smart about it. You know, don't uh don't overstay your welcome ever, and leave anywhere you shoot better than when you found it. A lot of filmmakers don't take that to heart enough, and they think they can just waltz in, do whatever they want, and then waltz out. Um, so yeah, and then we shot a few other places around Milton, and then I think the last part of that day we shot in my garage at my house. And again, we were kind of we're stealing locations. Um not exact like you know, this is not kosher, but at the same time, if you can get in and you can keep yourself light, and it was hard because we were shooting on Alexa 35 with anamorphic lenses, and if any any filmmaker knows anything about anamorphic lenses, those things the it's like having two barbecues stitched together and filming with those, so it's like you needed the tripod, you need you know, you need a crew helping carry all this stuff around. It's it's no joke. Um, but we managed to make it work, and we got all the scenes we needed that day. And then I don't know, I get oh yes, so the second day, day two was in Cambridge. Uh, we shot at my parents' house, um, this bungalow in a town called Hespler, which is part of Cambridge, and that was a really great day as well. I don't remember specifically what stuff we shot there. There was uh I know there were some dramatic scenes and there was some really intense stuff, but it was great. And then we shot for three days up in this house called Stowville, and it was a lake house. It was this beautiful place. I got kind of off of a verbo or Airbnb, I can't remember, but I contacted the owner and I said, Listen, I love your house. Is it available? It'd be perfect uh for our film shoot. We'll be, you know, we'll be light as kittens. We will, you know, leave no footprint or evidence that we were even there, I promise. And she was really cool and really excited about having a film production there. I don't know if she would feel that way now, but at least for those three days, uh, she really appreciated having a film production there, and she was really cool to us. Uh, and that was a really great experience as well. So we were shooting, you know, and like I said, we're shooting 12 pages, 14 pages, something like an absolute crazy number. But I want to reiterate, or I won't not even reiterate, I just want to hit this point home. We did not have long days, and maybe we should have had a couple more long days, but we were done most days within about 10 hours, sometimes 11, 12. I don't remember any day going over 12 hours. Maybe there is one uh that was like a night shoot, but uh well, we didn't even have night shoots really, just sort of day into night or splits, I guess you would say, but even those didn't go that late past like midnight or anything. Um so uh so I'm really proud of how we organized the production. I obviously had everything planned out pretty tightly, but at the same time I also had monologues of dialogue to remember and say, and you know, that was a that was a lot. I mean trying to balance all of that stuff and be there for my co-stars and the other actors, both as an actor and a director, but also being there for the crew, and you know, in between trying to learn monologues and my lines, which obviously I had an insight into because I wrote it, so I at least had that, I at least knew what I was going for every single time. But you know, there's times I had to like dip away because I had to order lunch, or I was also the DIT too. And you know, when you're shooting on Alexa 35, you know, you don't just like pop a card in and walk away. It's like those are heavy d that's heavy duty footage, you know, we're shooting open gate, full uh RE RAW, all that stuff. So we're at the we're at the absolute ceiling of data. And you know, fortunately we it was only a one camera shoot. Um, but yeah, uh at lunch I would dump a card, and when we would uh and just in between scenes, whenever I would get a chance, I would have to I would have to think of that too and go dump a card. Uh so that was that all that stuff was really, really tough to navigate, and then on top of it, thinking about wardrobe and thinking about locations and the angles. So it's like, okay, what what direction do we want to shoot this? How do we want to shoot this? Um is the light in and then you know fortunately Chris uh the DOP took over a lot of that stuff, like the the lighting and the angles, and I would go through scenes of just acting and I would just have to rely on him uh you know to hope that we got it. And yes, I would try and watch playback whenever I could, but we were moving so quickly, sometimes I I didn't even have a chance to, and I would have to just rely on him. And uh and for the most part, you know, I was good to rely on him. He gave me exactly what I needed. So anyway, that was that was the shoot. Uh so that went on for about seven days. So we shot, and then the last two days I don't remember I know day six, we were back in Cambridge, and then I don't remember where day seven was. I think that might have just been a random pickup day. I'd have to go back through my footage and see if I could figure out what day seven was, or even if we did have did we have a day seven? Maybe we didn't. Um we eventually know we had a pickup day of a scene the uh that became the opening scene. So I had edited the film over the next month or two, and I had started showing it around to different people because obviously I'm in my own uh subjective bubble. Uh because I'm editing I was obviously the writer, director, star, and the uh you know, and the producer and everything. So I knew I was seriously lacking objectivity. Um so I tried to show it to as many people as I could, especially other professionals, other uh filmmakers and other editors, but also just regular people. Like I wanted civilians to watch it and just get their raw thoughts about it. And uh one thing that came out, and this came from Dwayne, my co-star, uh, who plays Murphy in the film, and he's fantastic, is he said, myself and my co-star Seled, who played my wife, you know, were at each other's throats a lot in the film. Um, you know, because the story is about sort of about a marriage falling apart, and he said, I need to see a flashback of you guys actually getting along. And I was like, Yeah, but I think we got that. Like we have our all these little flashbacks and stuff. He goes, No, no, he goes, I j I need something rock solid, I need something more to uh glob onto, uh, especially in the beginning. So we shot another scene, I think it was in July. Uh Soled and I got together and Chris came out again with the anamorphic lenses and the Alexa 35, and this was even more of a strip-down shoot compared to the rest of the feature. Uh you know, we didn't even have a sound guy, we were using um we were using uh Bluetooth lav mics, which shocked the hell out of me because that scene sounded better than some of our other scenes where we had a full sound guy and doing his thing. That's no knock against him, but it might have just been the location or the situation we were in. It just shocked me too, uh, how good these little DJI lav mics can be, these little Bluetooth mics. So we shot that, and the great thing about that scene is that it became my favorite scene in the whole film, and it didn't even exist in the early draft of either the edit or the script. Uh so that came out really fantastic, and I think everyone sort of agreed that putting that into the beginning set a whole new great tone for the rest of the film. And uh I'm I'm very proud of that. That scene actually became something where I've been trying to do something similar like that for most of my career, a scene like that, but never did I expect that I would be the one acting in that scene that I was desperately trying to create at some point in at least one of my projects. So uh so that worked out. So anyway, we move ahead. I'm editing, we get the music composer involved eventually. Once we lock picture, we get the colorist involved. So that sort of takes a couple months on their own. Me going back and forth with the composer and the uh the colorist at the same time because he was doing it again. This is a very independent project. So I wasn't always able to just sit down with him and go through every single shot and every single frame about color. I I'd have to sort of, I'm like, all right, set the look, send me whatever you can, and then I would go through and time code stuff I thought that was working and not working. And then at some points we actually did sit down together and work it out, uh, which was great. And same with the composer. She would send me stuff that worked and stuff that uh, you know, didn't work so much, work as much for me. But and the problem is too, when you're an editor and a filmmaker, when you get married to your uh what's I can't even think of the term. The temp score. When you get married to your temp score in your film, that can that can become really dangerous because it's hard to it's hard to get away from it and hard to undo it. And I've been through that a few times and it's very frustrating, but at the same time, it's one of those things you just have to get over, and you have to understand it's gonna happen, just get over it. And unfortunately, Rebecca Everett, who is our composer, was so good at what she did that it made everything else just so much easier. Um so that was that process. So by so this is the end of 2025, basically, we're at now. So the beginning of 2026, the film is basically finished. Um, I can't remember at what point I start submitting it to festivals. I think it's shortly after that. Uh, and then I also simultaneously start looking for a distributor. Now, a lot of filmmakers will tell you you should go the festival route to find a distributor, but I kind of felt that this wasn't going to be a festival movie just because of what it's about and you know who's involved and how it was made. Um, sure, it might get into some some small festivals, and here's a little uh uh, you know, here's a little controversial take I'll take about film festivals. Most of them are a waste of your time. Um, I would say almost all of them are. A lot of them are fun and you get what you put into it a lot. Uh so if you go and you really blow it out and you have a good time and you really network and meet a lot of great people, I mean that's fantastic. Good for you. But I find I'm at a position in my life where I want to make something that makes money. And if in order to make money, you have to be extremely strategic about how you spend the money, not just in the production and post production. And you absolutely should save money for post production. I'm getting really exhausted with the amount of people who don't, and then bring me on and say, Yeah, I was sorry, we just ran out of money. Good, great. Uh so when it comes to marketing. Um I believe personally that unless you're you've made something that will definitely get into con or uh Sundance or TIFF maybe Venice even uh Berlinale all these other prestigious film festivals and listen I I'm counting it on one hand that exists I otherwise think the money that you were spending on marketing should be better spent somewhere else and this is where I wanted to start talking about marketing a little bit I know this has been a long episode so I'm not gonna go on for too much longer but I have been when I released last known backup last year I really started to learn about digital marketing and how to push a film and in what ways uh you do that and here's the thing a lot of people a lot of filmmakers will hire a PR firm which I did for back pay myself um they will hire this PR firm and sort of wash their hands and say all right now you handle it I'll give you the assets you guys go ahead and promote the film I mean that's great if you have a million dollars and you can pay this marketing team half a million dollars to promote it uh that's what they say right when they any Hollywood film probably spends about twice its budget or at least 50% of its budget on marketing. So uh and that's something that's sort of not quantifiable but you need money and you need effort and you need a lot of strategy in promotion and marketing and it goes with even how you design the movie okay you design the movie like is this going to sell and is this going to sell to your audience and what is your audience who are you who is your audience is there enough of them out there that will show up and make this worthwhile now if you're a filmmaker who doesn't care about that stuff like doesn't care how much the movie makes um congratulations for having a bunch of money you can burn in a pyramid good for you uh I've certainly never been in that position um not willingly at least uh but there are some people that are like that some people just get tired after after the movie's done and post is done they just get tired of promoting it and talking about it and they want to move on and that's respectful too but I'm in the business of trying to make back at least every dollar that we spent and then some I want eyeballs on my project I want people to see what I did and I want it to get the appreciation I think it deserves now um a couple of things I have done personally to promote back pay now it got into yeah it didn't get into a lot of festivals but it did get into a local one here in Toronto. Now this lined up with the October 2nd uh release date and so this festival was doing a live showing of my film at uh the Paradise Theater in downtown Toronto on Bloor Street now this theater is really beautiful has a giant marquee uh it was renovated a couple years ago so the screen is state of the art the seats are comfortable it's just it's a really really good movie going experience there's even a balcony in the back um so it's like an old school but modernized uh movie theater and I knew I've shown a short that I've done before called Fire and Powder at this movie theater and I remember the picture quality was fucking stunning just absolutely stunning so I thought at the very least I will do you know let's if it can get into this film festival which I had a good feeling it would um I can get people there it's a great venue it's on Bloor Street it's downtown Toronto and it's also during TIFF so people are sort of in town people are kind of in movie going seeing mode you know indie there's no better time in the city than that to like promote an indie film because everyone's sort of in that mode and going to the parties and talking about their work and everything. So so anyway we did that and I print I designed using the uh the Photoshop file and I don't know how to use Photoshop but I designed a backdrop using one of my posters and uh I made an eight by eight uh eight foot by eight foot uh tarp and I had an old photography stand with a backdrop that I would use for my auditions so I thought all right I'll I already have the stands let's use this for the backdrop and shockingly that ended up working out really really well so what the media wall did it created a buzz out front of the movie theater now we didn't have a lot of time I kinda I probably didn't time it out perfectly but we spent I spent a lot of time with the photographer I hired sort of figuring out where to put it that would make sense and we ended up finding a spot out on the sidewalk uh right right against the building but probably I probably should have moved a little bit faster but you know when the clock is ticking down and your movie's about to start you know the tension really builds up and you start seeing the lineup build and you start seeing people coming and going and people are coming up to you being like you know all excited to see you and seeing your the rest of the cast as well so and you obviously want to uh be a a gracious host and you want everyone to be in a great vibe while they're going into the movie theater so but we managed to get some really great photos of the people that were there we had a lot of you know young people people you know millennials Gen Z maybe some Gen Alpha I don't know what what what age is Gen okay so probably just Gen Z and millennials and a lot of really great you know stylish people um that were associated with the cast uh my co-star Dwayne Murphy and the other two female co-stars Sled Calderon and Golden Madison and uh so a lot of their friends showed up which was really fantastic and you know I have my family there a little bit too my mom my dad and my sister and uh some old school friends that I hadn't seen in a while so it was just a it was a really great crowd going in. And I'm happy to say it looks like we sold about like a hundred tickets. Now you have to remember I thought this was going to be a tubi movie uh something I made for like a few dollars so for it to go through this process and become this great acting experience and this great film that I feel very proud of and good about uh to sell a hundred tickets I that might not sound like a lot to other people but it it blew me away I was satisfied if we were gonna get 50 um but for it it felt really good that a lot of people that excited now were there a hundred people in the movie theater I I don't think so I think I know personally people literally said they had bought a ticket and then for whatever reason couldn't show up. Now granted this was this Thursday night this screening at 210 p.m in Toronto so a lot of people didn't live in Toronto and it was a school night you know so it just is what it is and I expected that and that's fine. Um so then the film plays and it gets this insane reaction something I totally didn't see coming uh I knew that we had had some comedic moments I did not expect that this movie would literally get the reaction of a comedy and I mean that in a good sense I don't think people were laughing at the movie I think they were laughing with it and you know specifically I had a lot of comedic stuff like I said earlier I was I wrote it to be more comedic just to you know go in line with my strengths and that ended up being a recipe for six for success I think it was the right call to make and a lot of people were really into the story and then they were into the actors playing the story. I think the actors and actresses did a phenomenal job I always knew that but I'm not gonna lie when that movie was about to start and all those people were showing up I was extremely nervous and I think most people and most filmmakers will feel that way about right before they're about to screen something is you suddenly think this was the worst idea you've ever had. Why am I doing this? Why am I subjecting other people to this like who am I to think that I can entertain all these people on a Thursday night I've done stand up a couple of times not a lot but just a couple and the absolute panic you feel right before you go on the stage uh you know to tell jokes that you made up and you expect people to just sit there and listen and then on top of it laugh? Like they they're not just gonna sit there and listen but you expect them to laugh I just think that's so audacious and insane. And that and even the last time I did stand up I did okay but that feeling beforehand was so uh you know debilitating that I just decided I don't want to do this anymore. Even though I got laughs and I enjoyed myself once I was up there the panic I had before I went up was it was horrendous and it was similar to how I felt before this film started especially because I was starring in it. Again, who am I to think I'm an actor who will what you're not an actor what makes you think you're an actor those are the thoughts that go through my head right um but I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction and yes this was a friendly room it was a lot of our friends and family so clearly you're going to get some grace uh on a lot of things but I still I always believe that laughs are involuntary um you know people were obviously in a good mood going in and that helps obviously any comedian will tell you you always want the crowd in a good mood uh you know makes laughter easier and more infectious um but regardless I still believe you know they would they would give us some grace but well the grace we got was not you know it was earned it wasn't it wasn't given to us like charity and uh you know and I chalk that up to my actors and and like I said before screening in that venue was like watching it on a on the greatest projection I've ever seen it I've stared at this footage for a year I've seen it almost every day and seeing it on that screen was like seeing it for the first time it was stunning it was breathtaking um so I want to give a huge shout out to our cinematographer for that and our colorist uh Dinesh because you know it was it was a game changer I think it really it set the tone for how people understood that they were about to see something by somebody that knows what they're doing and you know hopefully hopefully most of the people in that room felt that way but yeah so and then so getting back to the marketing aspect so why did I why did I do this screening well there's some debate about whether or not I should have in my own personal mind. Here's the thing again so I saw sell a hundred tickets do the hundred tickets go to me no does any of that money go to me no it goes to the film festival and I'm you know is a film festival going to promote your film this one didn't uh maybe they should have maybe they don't I don't know but I know I was doing all the legwork for the promotion and not just me but the other people associated with the film uh you know specifically the the lead actors um you know and the lead act uh actress Golden Madison organized our pre-party and got people there and then our other actress Celed Calderon she organized our after party at another spot so pre-party was at this place called Pete's ambassador which is down the street from uh the paradise shout out to them and then uh the after party was at this really great little bar called Teddy Beer again down the street from paradise and both were great venues to uh to host uh the pre-and after party and so here's the thing we sell all those tickets we get all those people out and then what do we get in return for it? I mean we do all the work so here's the thing you can rent out a movie theater some of them for as low as 500 bucks a night on a Thursday probably you could probably get that so I sell a hundred tickets now this now this film festival was selling it at uh movie tickets at twenty three dollars um and then I I think even with tax it almost goes up to twenty five now I would personally never sell movie tickets that expensive I would want to sell it maybe at 1520 you know I'd have to debate it at the moment but let's but let's do some quick math there 23 for 100 tickets that's 2300 bucks right so and the the venue had a capacity I think about 200 seats so yes it obviously wasn't full and like I said I don't think every I don't think a hundred people were in that movie theater but enough were there I think if you at least get 50 you can have a good pretty good screening unless you're in a giant giant theater but uh okay so you rent so if I if I had rented a theater myself and done all the promotion myself which I did already you know I'd be up and that's what that's what I really want to talk about and I want to talk about this to independent filmmakers is that there's this belief that the film festival is the way to go and the the honest truth is is that you can do a lot of this promotion yourself on social media that's what it's there for and if you know how to if you're savvy enough to work through that and if you have good relationships with I mean this is why having young actresses is good in your movie I'll just be frank they're just better at that shit they're just better at getting photos getting video on their phones for social media they're probably they're probably gonna have a higher uh follower count than you now should you hire an actor or actress only on uh view or sorry uh follower counts that's the big debate that's been going on for the past like five years in Hollywood and just everywhere uh obviously the answer is probably no but does it help? Yes uh is it are you if you have two really great actresses back to back and you can't decide and then you look at the follower count I mean I'm sorry and I I say this as an actor too it's like if if it's between me and another guy and we're basically the same person but he has a high follower count they're probably gonna go with him and especially for an independent film because they need that audience and you know it's also value that's been instilled on these people is to show that they have an audience and that's that's the star system in general that's what a star is is someone that can create and bring an audience and people have to sort of get over that especially independent filmmakers um but this is why young actresses they're just so much more savvy at that stuff than guys older guys older people that don't understand the technology this is just where it is um so that's that would be one piece of advice I would definitely have to an independent filmmaker. Find a role that you can hire someone an actress who's in her 20s or 30s and uh ideally you know will is willing to help promote the film because they're probably going to be better at it than even you are and I I certainly found that out on Thursday uh on September 17th when we were doing that they were very effective Golden and Celed were very effective and even a friend of ours uh uh Milkania who's an actress I've worked with before and she's got her own career going she has a film at TIFF right now that she starred in and she came out just to support and she shot video for me on her own phone and gave me all the videos and she took photos and was just very encouraging of getting people out and promoting the film as well. So this is what you want you want a network of people that you can build up and sometimes it takes a long time to build that up sometimes it takes years and sometimes that network changes and goes in other directions and you you sort of hit yourself to a wagon and then that wagon goes in another direction or they don't return the favor and that's just that's reality. Some people just aren't going to be there for you when you need them and that's okay that's life you know but the I one thing I've learned over the past couple years is that it's it's w the people that return that favor especially as a filmmaker so I I can help a lot of people uh with what I do the people that give that energy back to you in a way that you want are worth hanging on to and worth investing in and sometimes it's not sometimes you try and look for something that isn't that that ultimately isn't there and you it it's fair to think it's there but sometimes it not it might not be but that's okay that's life you know don't dwell on it just move forward um so again I I and I think the cast of Back Pay exemplifies that a lot and I think they're a big reason that this film exists and it got the reaction that it did on that screening. Like I said if you you know uh I think there's Brian Cox says it in the movie adaptation if you can wow them in the end then you got it. When he's talking to Nicolas Cage right and I remember I think about 10 years ago or maybe 12 years ago something I took a filmmaking a producer's course like a sort of a crash course over weekend and this guy Dove Simons was the professor and he said when your movie ends you don't want this you don't want just golf clapping at the end. What you want is people jumping out of their seat and cheering and like Vladdy just hit a grand slam and I've when I won the 48 hour film project back in 2013 our little dumb short called the hat ended on such an insane note that I'm convinced it was that reason and that reason alone it won us uh Toronto and sent it off because the reaction was so electric and insane at the end. Big laughs cheering all that stuff that you want um I feel like I pulled the same sort of magic trick with this film back pay uh not so much a laugh actually and then the final line of the movie basically does get a giant laugh from me uh at least it did last night and uh or it did on Thursday night but again it was I we end the movie off on this insane climax and this really great moment that I always knew was going to get a pop uh if the audience was at least half invested into the film and I was and I couldn't have been more right and obviously that was very validating and uh I won't obviously give away what happens but um but yeah and I think that was proof that the film is something um so yeah so again that goes into the marketing right you want to make a film but you want to make something that people talk about you don't want people in and out and just forget about it. You want people going to their social media wanting to listen to the QA wanting to post about it be like I just saw this amazing film blah blah blah you want people coming up to you afterwards and be like that was crazy like what I didn't expect that now again obviously before I showed the film I had a lot of self-doubt about whether or not this was going to work or whatever uh and then afterwards to see the way it went is just I mean not there's nothing better in life I'm not gonna lie it's definitely a career highlight of me if not the career highlight and I don't even know what second place is whatever is second place is it's a distant second because that night was uh you know this basically the stuff that dreams are made of I expected the movie to do okay and expected people to be into it but I was not expecting that level of reaction and positivity coming out um so this alone as well is sort of a soft promotion for back pay which is coming out soon I do want to have more screenings and I do want to do more QA screenings with the film if I can get Cass involved too even better. But yeah this is and I said this the other day as well it became a theatrical movie in a way I didn't even expect I expected to make a Tubi movie and then that was it I would move on collect the checks over the years as as they came in through film hub but I did not expect this and and now I feel encouraged to want to make a theatrical experience out of this whether or not I can uh even reliably you know will remain to be seen but uh I think I'm gonna end it there. So like I said backpay is releasing it's on Fandango right now in the US for pre-order and then on October 2nd it will be released on Amazon Apple and a few other platforms I think cable platforms as well digitally and then I'm from Canada so as far as I understand worldwide happens on November 6th and that might be an AVOD release on several several different platforms but we're still kind of working on finalizing what that will actually look like and if we you know if there are some other options in front of us I think the screening obviously helped show that there might be and then on top of it what like I said before I'm gonna try and do theatrical stuff you know whether locally or even go into the US or I I think this film works in a in a room full of people on a level I didn't expect. You can still have a good time watching it digitally by yourself or hopefully with somebody it's a good date movie I think as well and I think both men and women can get something out of it but yeah so I think I'm gonna end it there. So remember check out backpay and not only that review it vote for it put in your watch list letterboxed IMDB all those platforms anywhere you see it promote it uh promote about it and there is an Instagram account backpay underscore film and if you want to go check it out there we got a lot of great stuff there a lot of BTS again with the marketing I took a lot of photos we have a lot of um and not really even great like video or photos or anything just whatever we could grab but all of that stuff is so important to promote your film and I promote I've been promoting it non stop so that's the thing in the next two months I basically have to be a carnival barker and that's what you gotta do to promote your film and you can't act like you got to be anything less. And uh so yeah again this is about back pay so check it out backpay underscore film. Thank you for your time