Mark Wilson Sunderland: Sweatequity Filmmaking (interview)

0:05Shareunknown: And the band band everything, you know. Hello, welcome to Entertain this, a podcast about movies, TV shows, and video games. My name is Hayton. With me I have Mitch. Hello! No Tom, but a much more handsome guest on the show. Well, I haven't seen Tom, so I can't speak for him. Yeah, you I I you got it. Thank you, thank you. His name is uh Mark Sunderland, although you credit yourself as Mark Wilson. Yeah, I go by my full name. Yeah, Mark Wilson Sunderland. What's up with that? Wait, why? Uh there's a few reasons. I think it uh Mark is not a super uh uncommon name, and and even there are some Mark Sunderlands that are in really uh kind of there there's uh one in Atlanta. No way in it which was weird because like Sunderland is not a

1:07Sharevery common name. Um, I'm you're the only one that I know. There are very few of us, and the reason why is because Sunderland is not actually a family name. Sunderland is a place, so my name is technically Mark of Sunderland, like in a sense. Like a bastard from Game of Thrones. Yeah, because in more ways than one. Mark's uh but um but Sunderland is a city in Northeast England, and so my family originally was from there and changed our last name to Sunderland. So anyone named Sunderland, that's what happened. So most people named Sunderland are not related to each other. Okay. Umlow Smith. Yeah, like Smith or Cooper and that sort of thing. Um, but anyway, there's a couple other Mark Sunderlands, and um I

1:52Sharethink you're the first that pops up on IMDb, though. I am, I think, the only Mark Sunderland on IMDb. Okay. But this other guy's like a photographer. Yeah. And so that was one reason. And then the second reason is I I really like prefer my middle name in a lot of ways over my first name. So my my I'm named after my Mark is named after my dad, who I did not have a good relationship with. Okay. And then Wilson is after my great granddad, who I had a very good relationship with. So it kind of balances balances out. That's crazy. Makes me sound like a director. It's got that three. Oh, it's got the Paul Thomas Anderson vibe. He's either a director or a uh presidential assassin or something. I mean, either's fine.

2:33ShareI'm available for both. The rate is similar, I think. You just go crazy in the end, anyway. That's all everybody goes crazy in the end, anyway. Uh anyway, so you made a movie. I did. Dementium. Yes. And uh I think you're one of the more exciting people to talk to. A, because we know each other outside of the industry. Uh we were in the military together. And uh well, now he's gone to the dark side. He's gonna be an officer. I became one on Saturday. Oh, congratulations. You know, I I'd punch you, but you gotta rank me now. It was yeah, it was dumb. Yeah. Like most things in the army are. Yeah. But yes. Everybody standing in the heat? Uh no, it was inside. Oh, okay, that's good. It must be an officer thing.

3:14ShareIf you're yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think it's a more comfy. I got a really dumb joke we can use as an icebreaker. Go for it. Alright, so this is my one of my favorite jokes. My granddad's always joke. So there's a colonel, and he uh likes to have a staff meeting every Monday morning with his staff, everyone's staff, so they all come in, sit around the conference table every Monday morning, like 0-8. And he always likes to start it off with an icebreaker. Um, and one day he's feeling a little like cantankerous and wants to make it a little spicier than usual. So the staff sits around the table and he says, Alright, we're gonna go around the room. Here's the icebreaker for the day. Everybody rolls their eyes, they hate this shit.

3:54ShareAnd he's like, Um, how much of sex is pleasure and how much is work? Disgust, right? And you know, this white colonel that's on the staff is like, you know, I think it's probably like 75% work and 25%. How old is he? That's the question. And then this major, you know, goes, nah, sir, I think it's like 50-50, to be honest. And there's a you know, lieutenant down the way, and he's like, I think it's like 80-20, like 20% work, 80% pleasure. They're going around and you know, hotly debating the issue, and the colonel's loving it. And finally, um, he goes, you know, I I always like to get the enlisted man's perspective on this. And he turns around, there's a private first class making the coffee in the back of the room, and he goes, Private Smith, what

4:41Sharedo you think? Shocked that he's been spoken to, he turns around and he goes, Oh, I think it has to be a hundred percent pleasure. Well, that's interesting. Why do you think that? And he goes, Well, sir, to be frank, if there was any work involved, these officers would have me doing it for them. That's perfect. What do you think an old salty colonel one day? Yeah, exactly. Anyway, get that out of here. We'll see if we can make it work. That has nothing to do with what we're here to do. That's okay. Well, just give personality. Yeah, the personality is the important part. Uh so, but yeah, the reason why I'm super excited to talk to you is because you've been in the industry. I I have dabbled in the industry.

5:24ShareI've done a little bit of uh project work here and there. I've even tried to make my own stupid shorts and stuff in the past, and uh they were they were shorts. I mean, you're not gonna you're not gonna do anything with them. But um they were fun, they were hellacious, you get to see people for who they really are from the beginning of the project to the end of the project. Very true. And um, but to you know, know somebody who was like me and didn't have you know really anything feature length and then all of a sudden do it. Yeah, I I get to I get to pick your brain. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited to talk about it. Uh all right, so you were a part of this process all the way from the development because you wrote the script.

6:05ShareYou helped write the script, correct? Yeah, so um I guess I can tell the story, like the sort of the OG story of how this project came about. Um, and then just to give a little bit of background, I have wanted to be a feature film director basically for 20 years. Yeah. So I was watching the behind the scenes and the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions and watched every minute. You'd be friends with Tom already too. Perfect. I'm just looking better. Uh no, yeah, and I I was just um truly inspired by that and and saw myself in the future as a director and decided that I, you know, I didn't know anybody in the film industry at all. Had very little resources in general uh to do much of anything.

6:51ShareAnd so uh I ended up going to film school at SCAD because I didn't know kind of what else to do, um, and was able to do that because I had a career as a classical singer. Okay. Um kind of from the time that he's a triple threat. Let me guess you act too. No, I'm a two and a half threat. I can sing, I can dance, and I can act enough at a distance to get away with the first ground actor. Yeah, I can but uh I was at I was in the Georgia Boy choir um traveling, singing classical music. I was in the Atlanta School of the Performing Arts in high school doing musical theater. And so that's what allowed me to go to SCAD. SCAD has this really cool thing where you can be scholarshipped in a discipline you don't major in.

7:40ShareThat's very unusual. So usually if you have a vocal performance scholarship somewhere, you gotta major in music at least, if not specifically vocal performance. And I didn't have any interest in that because I didn't think being a classical singer was like a real job. Um it is. Yeah, Michael Booblay and sure. I could have been Michael Booblay, but I decided I didn't want that lifestyle. I was offered that role actually before Michael took it. Yeah. I actually recommended Michael. Yeah, exactly. I mean he's a good kid. He's got a rough name as he has uh it's not cool like Sunderland's. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um so anyway, I uh Scad, you can go and you can get a scholarship and you don't have to major in that thing.

8:29ShareSo I got a vocal performance scholarship singing like their little um president's show choir thing and paid for film school and went to film school. Sweet. Um while I was in film school, needed a job, uh, I had my high school gig um alongside like the music and stuff, was working for a commercial electrician. Wow. And so I was working as a you know uh a middle late teenager uh in the middle of the night hanging lights and parking decks and like rewiring stuff in commercial buildings for his electrician. I started out kind of opening boxes and handing stuff, and by the time I finished that job, I was like there like three years almost. I was doing pretty much everything my boss did post design.

9:11ShareSo I was running, doing, you know, kind of chasing him doing his stuff. So you knew the groundwork for being electrician or something. Yeah, so I yeah, I could have I could have stayed and like, you know, uh ostensibly I guess worked as an apprentice up to being some sort of journeyman electrician. But um I saved my money and moved to Savannah. Uh and while I was in film school, needed a job, got an opportunity. Back then, lighting was a lot more uh electricity heavy, and because everything took a bunch of electricity before kind of LEDs and all of that stuff started really becoming photo friendly. Right. Um like when I got into the business, like LEDs were not a thing. Yeah, remember sky panels?

9:58ShareLike when we thought that was like the coolest new. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. What's a sky panel? It's a big ass LED. But like they're there, they used to be like, I don't know, maybe like the size of two sheets of paper on top of two sheets of paper, you know, but now yeah, now you can have them the side of the house, the size of the size of a house. And what's cool about them is that they don't use very much electricity. And so um generators aren't loud. Yeah, so back in the day, being a lighting technician had a lot to do with managing electrical distribution and power. It still does, but to a much lesser extent. And so I had some transferable skills. I mean, I remember my first day in the union was on a show

10:40Sharecalled Finding Carter, which was a mid-tier dramedy thing on MTV. Uh, it was actually kind of a cool premise, but they blew the whole premise in the pilot, apparently. I never watched it. But the premise basically was this girl is like going to high school, living her life, happy, go lucky, and then the police bust down her door one night, and it turns out that the people she thinks are her loving parents are actually her abductors. Oh yeah. And then she has to go live with her birth family who like loves her, but then she doesn't like know them, and then has to go to like this new high school, and you know, so it's kind of an interesting premise, but then it sort of just becomes like teenage sex, drugs, rock and roll sort of stuff.

11:23ShareYou know. I was on the second season of the show at the at the time, it was my first day in the union, and I didn't know anything. You know, I knew very, very little. Um like I knew what a double scrim was, you know, but that that was about it. Because everything that we'd done in film school was sort of like 2K down. Yeah and you don't use must you know, those are small lights, yeah. Uh kind of in the real world. So I'm following the best boy around. He's kind of you know, I was honest, he knew I didn't know anything, so he kept showing me what's going on. What year was this? This would have been 2014? Okay. So this was uh were you guys in the studio or were you? Wow. And um so you guys had to pack up and move every every day?

12:07ShareWe had we were gonna well it was my first day ever, so I you know I didn't have any of this context, but I think they'd been there for a couple of days. It was kind of the main school set. The school was like a big part of the show, apparently. Again, I never watched it many years ago. Um David Lynch's daughter was the director of the episode. Um I can't remember. Did she take like a million cuts? A million takes? You know, I don't I don't remember. Um but uh what had happened was the the rigging team, so the the lighting techs who come in before and set everything up, and then the show techs, which is the team I was on, come in and kind of run everything on the day of shooting, they had rigged the wrong bathroom.

12:50ShareAnd this is again back before LEDs, back before all this stuff. So you had these movie tone um fluorescent light fixtures that were color corrected and everything, so you don't have this ugly green, nasty, like normal like fluorescent lights, and they go into this bathroom and they switch all of the light fixtures out, they retrofit them all for this like movie-tone kinoflow stuff. But they had done the wrong one. So it was like different paint on the room or something? No, no, no. It was it was like they had put the movie tone lights into bathroom A, and we were supposed to shoot in bathroom B, and there were not movie tone lights in bathroom B, and that's right. And you can't just move to you can't just shoot into bathroom A

13:35Sharebecause you know the lighting department has to now tell the producers look at the wrong bathroom. And so I'm standing behind the best boy, and he cues up on the radio, so I can hear him, but I'm standing next to him, and he just goes, Um, I don't suppose any of you guys know how to retrofit a fluorescent fluorescent light fiction. And I was like, I actually know how to do that. He was like, no fucking way. And I was like, Yeah, he was like an electrician's apprentice. He's like, no shit. And I was like, yeah. So I did it. He's like, How long do you think it would take you to do it? We gotta shoot in here in like four hours. And I laughed at him because I thought it was a joke. Yeah. And he goes, I was like, I'll just take care of it.

14:14ShareSo I did it in like, I don't know, 20 minutes. I went upstairs, scavenged everything out of the other bathroom, came down, called him, and I was like, hey, you know, that bathroom's fixed. And he goes, Sweet. What do you do in the next month? You're hired, you're hired. No shit. That's how it happens. That's the first chapter of Mark Sunderland. That's how I got in with union stuff. I'd worked on some indie stuff before that. I I'd been working on stuff since like 2011, 12. But this was like the first like real union kind of movie gig I got. He was like, this guy goes with me everywhere I go. And it was like, and I and I learned, you know, a bunch of stuff about being a regular lighting tech, but it

14:50Sharewas always, you know, for the next five or six years until things started to change with LEDs and data. That was always my calling card, is I was the guy who could do the weird electrical stuff. Yeah. Like I was the guy who could drop a stinger from a fluorescent light fixture in the middle of a room where there were no outlets, you know. Like, well, that's why I was looking over some of your IMDB stuff, and it says you had like some underwater lighting and stuff that you can't do. Yeah, and that was the other thing. Yeah. So it was I could do weird electrician stuff and I did the underwater stuff, and that was like my I never learned to solder. You know, I didn't know how to program or do any of those like

15:22Shareother things. There was a lot of gaps in my lighting tech knowledge, but I had these like spikes in the underwater thing and then and then the weird electrical tricks. And you didn't you didn't electrocute yourself? No, I did I did. I actually electrocuted myself on shaft at uh um oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm blanking on the man's name. What, Samuel Jackson? Sam Jackson. Okay. I'm just gonna take a shot at the shot at that. You know, give me the main character. That's been a long time. Uh Sam Jackson like right at his feet. Yeah, it's really funny. Like, I'm just working, he's standing there, I'm working, I'm like down on the ground, I get hit. I was like, fuck. He goes, you appreciate it.

16:14ShareIt was like it was like a hand squeezer nemmer thing, you know, one of those bullshit things that you like put together. And uh I hadn't built it, somebody else had built it, and I was just messing with it and had like an exposed lead that tagged in it. Oh man, as jerks. But um, yes. Anyway, that is way off topic. Uh we do here. Uh so got in as a lighting tech, ended up doing that the better part of a decade, uh, never wanted to do it, never really enjoyed it, and I've never I'm not I'm not really a lighting cinematographer, I'm really not a technical person. Yeah. I can become that way uh about things I care about and because I work hard to pay attention. Yeah. Like I'm just not naturally, I was never gonna be as good as

16:59Sharesomebody who whose brain just kind of works that way. I'm just a much more like big picture, creative, like creative, strategic, even like administrative person. I was a way better best boy than I was a lighting tech. Yeah, uh because it just played better to like my natural abilities and skills. But was a tech for a long time, ended up becoming a best boy right there at the end, and then um transitioned from being a best boy into a production manager. But well, let's not glaze over that part because you know coming from the uh you know the the crew aspect of a film into production, yeah. That's gotta be a significant leap. How hard was it for people to even consider you for that? It it it was hard.

17:42ShareI mean, I always joke that I'm prior enlisted in more ways than one. Because I was definitely like a grunt in the movie world and then ended up working more in kind of an officer's role there towards the end of that being uh being like a crew guy. The movie business is tough because as you guys know, it's so much about your personal brand, and it's like how you're locked into somebody's phone like really defines a lot about your career and how people know you because it's all word of mouth, nobody really uses resumes, there's not really job applications. IMDB is sort of the closest thing you have to like a like a professional networking solution. Every day somebody says, Oh, I created it, and I was like, it's

18:23Sharenever gonna work because it's just the way that the trickle-down hiring system works, it's all about personal relationships and how you are known in those personal relationships. So I'm you know, in 500 people's phone is you know, local 479 Lighting Tech. So I probably should say like I get texts from people who are like, hey, I'm looking for work, and I'm like, I am not a best boy anymore. Don't insult me. Yeah, no, just no, it's not it's not an insult. It's just like I can't I can't help you. Um but so when you anytime you make a transition, and going from a best boy to a production manager is is actually a natural progression if you think about the work. Okay. Because the best boy is kind of the production manager for the

19:04Sharelighting department. Gotcha. Whereas the production manager is sort of the production manager then for the whole unit. Right. Um so it's the same thing. You're doing the same work in a lot of ways as a production manager. Uh at least you're using a lot of the same skills and sort of the same thought processes as a production manager. It's still just like getting the project done, but yeah, the people, budget, you know, um uh hiring, resources, scheduling, like all of those things are kind of similar across both of those. The best boy has this like additional maintenance sort of you know component. But even as a production manager, you still deal with that just from the administrative side. Um but uh when anytime you go up in the movie business, you kind

19:45Shareof go down also. So I was working as a Best Boy on like big Amazon shows and big like CBS shows and and like large-scale movies, and then when I became a production manager, I was doing like TV movies and like smaller things because that's sort of how it it works, and then you you know, if I'd stayed doing that, then I would have built it back up slowly over time. And you were you were like you didn't have a f uh like a wife and kids and stuff at that time, or anything. You were you were willing to take the risk, you know, for that, but also like the pay, for instance, uh I'm sure on some of those projects as a best boy, you're probably better off than you were starting out as a production manager.

20:30ShareI was definitely making more money as a best boy. Really? Um I was definitely making more uh making more money as a best boy, for sure. But you gotta take the risk if you want to. Well, ultimately, um and and this is kind of like leads into making the the movie, which is what we're kind of getting towards. I've had a really clear picture of what I wanted to do. I've not had a clear picture of how to get there. And while I was working as a best boy and a production manager, I took every opportunity I had to talk to directors whenever I got a chance. And I would ask them all like how they got their shot. Right. Because I was smart enough to know that I wasn't gonna get a job directing right out of college, which I think is was

21:16Sharenot true of all of my colleagues necessarily. They were like, oh, I'm a director already. Right, okay. Um but what I didn't know is that there's not a way to work your way into that position. There's not a way to work into it, you can't work your way up from the mailroom to the C-suite as a director because there's just not a path uh to there's not no junior director kind of path to where you're gonna get promoted into that into that position. It's much more similar to being like a tech founder. Okay. You're like not a tech founder until you are a tech founder, and then you are a tech founder, and like being a director is very similar. And when you when I talk to all these different directors, you

21:58Shareknow, probably over a hundred. Directors over the course of you know that however long ten years. But you gotta you gotta have something that gets you in the door. Like a tech founder is gonna invent tech, right? You know, sure. Or they're gonna tell you they're gonna invent tech with your money once they get your money. Um but the the the the point is is that of those hundred directors I spoke to, let's call it a hundred, uh, I got a hundred different stories that were not similar and they weren't possible for me to replicate. And so uh I got really discouraged and upset and frustrated with that because I just saw every story had a resource I didn't have, or it had a moment that I'd not had,

22:46Shareor it had some it had something that I could not go out and like work hard and and make happen. Yes, you mean handouts. Somebody somebody helps you someone along the way to their career at some point. Yeah, and then we all and we all do and get helped by people. Right. Um but some people like I wasn't in the position where that was gonna happen to me very likely. Okay, working in Atlanta, nobody's hiring directors out of Atlanta, um, hiring even nobody's finding like directing mentors in Atlanta because directors don't live in Atlanta. They they come here and they work and then they go back to California. Yeah. Wasn't going to move to California for a variety of reasons. Most the biggest reason because I was raising my siblings and I

23:32Sharecould not afford to move the whole family out to California. Yeah. Um, so I could I couldn't like put myself in these spaces where some like something like that could happen, really. Yeah. Which makes it harder to kind of like rub shoulders with all those people that you know you're gonna meet and work with. Yeah, I mean I I worked with them for a few weeks on a project that they were doing out here, and then they would go away. And I would not be able to continue to build was anybody ever like come to California with me for the next year and we'll see, you know, no? No, I I had some people that like encouraged me to move and join the lighting union, and then on Stranger Things Season 1, um Ross Duffer talked to me about it for a

24:17Sharelittle bit, but it wasn't like he he he wasn't like offering me an opportunity, he was just encouraging me to do it. Okay, and I so it didn't come with any like necessarily like, and I'll introduce you to XYZ or you can come work with us in this capacity. He was just like, oh, you should do it because this, this, and this. And he was very, very kind and generous of his time to talk to me and do that. But it didn't make it more feasible for him. He was like, okay, well that's nice, I can't do that. So I kind of ran out of ran out of options, ran out of ideas for how am I gonna break through this membrane of like I don't have the resources, so I need to get the resources uh to do you know these things.

24:57ShareAnd then couple that with I have really expensive ideas. Yeah, everybody does. I'm not a person like that. Very expensive ideas. And so uh I never wrote something that was feasible to do like the way that you know you need to do a no-budget indie movie. Yeah, and to be fair, they teach you that in film school. You don't write for budget, you let the producers hack the budget down or the story down to make it work for the you know, and and honestly, like because I I I too went to film school and I focused more on writing and uh I did a little bit of directing, but I enjoyed the writing a lot. Yeah, and uh I I learned the hard way how to write for budget. They say don't do it, it it hurts the story.

25:50ShareYou're not gonna come out the gate making a Michael Bay movie. You're not gonna make a Transformers movie on an indie indie budget. No, no. The first full-length feature I wrote was a revisionist history action adventure movie. Oh my god. Set in I told you, yeah, set in an alternate two levels of displacement. 14th century. Two levels historical was basically uh a mixture between Pirates of the Caribbean, Oceans 11, and Assassin's Creed. Alright. Very, very, very, very fun, very expensive. But there's some science fiction involved in that too. I mean, sort of. Yeah. Basically, the premise was the I the Library of Alexandria never burned down, so you had didn't have that knowledge loss. And so imagining what the world would look like without that

26:41Shareknowledge loss, we basically have a Leonardo da Vinci type character happening a hundred years earlier. Yeah. But he's instead of building theoretical models, he's building working prototypes as the gadget guy for a heist team. Yeah, so like like you ever read into how Wild Wild West was made? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is like one of the worst. It's so fun, though. It's so movie. I'm not dogging the movie, I'm dogging the like the pitch. The pitch for it. Because it's a period piece, but with like alternative history, you know, science fiction. Steampunk. Yeah, exactly. Before steampunk was steampunk, so yeah, yeah. So my my idea was like, what what would what is an um a butterfly effect moment that would lead to a steampunk

27:26Sharefuture? Yeah. And my idea was like, okay, what if the Library of Alexandria didn't burn down, you keep concrete, you keep Greek fire, you keep some of these other things. And then what would the 1350s on that timeline kind of look like? Right. And that's sort of the inspiration for the world build. All this to say, very expensive, not something I was going to be able to do as an indie movie for sure. The producer would read that and be like, well, this is you know$300 million. And that's all. It only has 75 locations. And they're all in 1400s Greece. Yeah. Oh, no, Rome. And Paris. And London. Yeah. We have an Icelandic volcano in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So uh all that to say, like, that's kind of where my my

28:15Sharevision and my ambitions kind of live. And so um got to the got to the the point where I was like, okay, I I don't think somebody is going to like be that person who gives me the hand up, who brings me into the room, or whatever. Um and and that was really discouraging. I know a lot of people who've been there uh before. It has nothing to do with my talent, it has nothing to do with you know what I could do or or anything like that. It's really just about being the right place, the right time. Right place, right time, resources, and I've just always been a person who is um predisposed to action, to taking action. I don't Okay, so I I was gonna ask this later, but like I think a lot of people who are nobody in the industry and

29:04Sharethey work around people that are willing to bend their ear to them, you know, I think it's kind of a feat to not ask too much. You know? I've seen a lot of people, myself included, that probably badgered too much on film sets to the point where like, alright, I I don't want to see this guy again, you know? And to have some grace and and just like take the one thing that they tell you, that little shred of advice, and act like that's your big deal and file it away forever. That's a skill that a lot of people uh I don't think seem to have, you know, especially today. So interesting. Yeah, I guess I never really thought about it that way. Yeah. Um would you agree? I mean, have you ever probably crossed the line asking too many

29:48Sharequestions before? You know, has it worked for you? Has it not worked for you? Um no, I I don't think I've crossed the line in just like the initial um the initial like conversations with people. Because again, I was working there for my living, and so like I could not endanger my job, right? Um, and and was very um aware of kind of the professional expectations. There's a couple, there's a couple times that you can like have a more con a candid conversation with somebody, and like rap parties are definitely one of those that where it's appropriate to say, you know, like hey, really enjoyed working with you. Also, by the way, I write and I wrote a script while I was on the show. Oh, that's really cool.

30:35ShareSend it to me. You know, like these kinds of moments happen at like rap parties, and but they're they're few and far between. I definitely uh, and I won't say who it was uh just in case they think I'm still battering them. Uh I had one person uh make a mistake and say, keep me in the loop on that. Okay. So you did. And so I did deeply keep them in the loop. Invite them to your wedding? I gave them a lot of updates and uh ultimately was asked to take them out of the loop, and that's kind of embarrassing for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but no, I I think um, you know, people are always receptive to conversations that that that are not fully transactional, you know. Yeah, because like I I think uh some people that I

31:28Shareknow that have zero experience and get put in like a security position in a movie or whatever, yeah. Um they uh they are either like I I'm not gonna talk to anybody, you know, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a stonewall, and then they come off as douchey or whatever. And then there's the the ones that talk too much. And you know, I I've been asked before, like, what's the appropriate amount? I'm like, just talk to them like a person if it comes up in conversation. If it doesn't, but I mean sometimes you meet somebody that's too exciting. I met David Ayer one time and I was like, hey, uh, you know, train day changed my life, kind of thing. He was like, really? You know. Nobody gets tired of hearing a thoughtful, like,

32:07Sharepositive about their work. Yeah. And I think the less famous they are, the more meaningful it usually is. Yeah. Umrew Stanton uh is probably the guy that comes to mind for me in that. He directed a block on Stranger Things season two. Andrew Stanton is the uh I think he's a co-founder of Pixar. Uh but he wrote and directed, um I'm gonna misquote it, but he wrote and wrote and wrote and directed um Bugs Life, I think Toy Story. I don't want to say he was in one, wasn't it? Wally as well. Yeah, I think he did one and two for Toy Story. I think Toy Story, one and two, Wally, a bunch of the a bunch of like the big classic Pixar movies. And um on the second to last day that we worked together, I stopped him and I said, Hey, everybody's gonna try and talk

32:51Shareto you tomorrow, but I just wanted to tell you thank you for my childhood. Yeah, yeah. Like, you you have no idea the impact you've had on me as a storyteller. And like the man almost cried and he like gave me a hug. That's awesome. It's really meaningful. I mean, how meaningful? Like, how can you I mean that would be so meaningful for me to like be in that situation? And then I said, you know, thank you so much, enjoyed it, and then I walked away. Right, you didn't overpress. I didn't ask for anything. Yeah. So that's probably the best way to do it. It would be hard not to, you know, not to you know, overstep. So not to be. Yeah, it's a del it's a delicate balance, but ultimately I think the more you work with somebody, especially I

33:28Sharemean, we'd worked together for six weeks at that point. Yeah, we'd had a bunch of conversations, sat and ate lunch together, as not like me and him, but like at the same table, um, you know, a couple times. And but still even being respectful in all those accounts with all those people that you've met, nobody really kind of pushed you along the line or anything. It's been all you. No, yeah, it's yeah, it really, it really has. I mean, the one the one exception, which is not somebody that I met working, um, is a guy named Mark Marshall. And Mark uh is from Enid, Oklahoma, and he was like good friends with my my dad's family. Um like they went to high school together, um, I think. But they were like in the same community in Enid, Oklahoma.

34:12ShareHe's the only person I'd ever heard of who was in the film business that was like connected to me in any way. And I I had to bother my uncle about it for like a year and a half, but eventually he like gave me his number and I called him, and he is like the world's nicest guy. Yeah. And um you know became kind of a mentor. But but other than Mark, who was not in a position to give me really an opportunity, he gave me some amazing advice, which ultimately it it was a big part of pushing me towards doing the movie. He you're uh that guy, Mark, funny enough, you have the same name. But uh he uh funny enough. You he you said in your panel that he was worked with Spielberg. Yeah, so he was um yeah, he was the first team PA

34:56Shareon the Goonies. No way, which was really funny. But uh one of his first jobs in Hollywood was like running film for Back to the Future in E.T. at the same time. Yeah. But yeah, he ended up being Steven's EA at Amblin. Oh, it's kind of during like the heyday when Kevin Feige was the receptionist. I have a uh a uh Spielberg uh associate that's kind of also been like a mentor for me as well. And he doesn't help me with anything. It's just the same. He gives me great advice. Mark would love to, but he just doesn't have connections anymore. He doesn't have what I would need. So like you know, I I I was badgering this guy, right? And and he said, you know, uh it you you'll get more out of it if you can figure it out for yourself, kind of thing.

35:42ShareAnd I I've I was kind of I was I was bitter about it for a while, but I see where he's going with it, and I I wanted to be a director. I'm not a good director, I'm a I'm a terrible director, but I'm a pretty good writer, and I've enjoyed in he he came up after leaving with Spielberg as a writer. Okay, and uh for him to kind of mentor me in that aspect, he still charges me every time he reads anything that I do, a relationship. But you know, him I think that's what they call a coach. Yeah. Isn't that the difference between coach and mentor? I guess I don't know. But the fact that he's still, you know, helping me and just he'll have coffee with me and talk to me. I I I do appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.

36:26ShareI mean, and and I, you know, my philosophy on leadership and like helping people is is very different than I think a lot of the the status quo Hollywood, like I'm I don't like the way that Hollywood does business. Um I don't like the gatekeeping and the relational capital and all that kind of stuff. Uh yeah, I'm just man enough to tell somebody no. You know, and and they don't like do that. They just don't tell you no, they just ignore you or ghost you or something. Who's who's somebody you tell no? Um hey, this project isn't a I'm you know I'm not looking for a project right now. Okay. Or this project isn't a fit for me. unknown: Good luck. So somebody's approached you with a script and stuff.

37:07ShareYeah, yeah, yeah. And said, can you? Yeah. And you I said no. Was it just because the script's bad or uh Usually I don't even read it. If they ask me to read it and give them notes, then I'm then I might, but if they're saying like, hey, would you be interested in this project for whatever reason as a director or producer it's really more like it's not yours. It's not even that it's not mine. I don't even have the resources to make my own shit. And so it's gonna have to be a pretty compelling sales pitch for me to say, you know what? Instead of using my resources on getting my stuff made or the things that I've already got kind of like on my slate or in my orbit, I'm gonna add this to it. It's gotta be pretty compelling.

37:48ShareYeah. And I can tell based on kind of the log line and the pitch, like, is it is it really worth engaging with? And then it's not kind to either lead people on or to like give somebody some false sense of whatever. And it's not I'm not being critical, I'm like saying, like, I'm not saying like this isn't good. I'm just saying, hey, I'm not really I'm not looking for anything right now. Um, and but people don't do that. Uh you know, I I think I think of like really basic business stuff because I'm a business guy, I'm from the South and the way that sort of we do things, and like I know kind of the way that sort of Northeast is and like business, very, very direct. Exactly. I hate how people talk in the South about business

38:30Sharesometimes. Yeah, you just gotta you gotta be direct, you know. Um, hey, it's for you, it's not for you, it's not personal. Yeah, um, but everything in Hollywood is like very personal, it's very squishy, you know. Um that's not the way I like to do things. I tell you, we worked on a pilot, you know, we we we uh did a lot of work for it and we were led along for a long time. You know, we sucked some money into it, all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I learned real quick I think was real good about telling you if you think your idea's stupid. I mean I'll only tell you if you know you're a friend. We uh did another project where we went drove from like here to Savannah looking at places and locations and all

39:13Sharesorts of stuff. And it's a lot of uh the I think today a lot of towns between Atlanta and Savannah have seen some pop-up productions and things. So but at that time it wasn't really seen yet. Sure. And so the people that we were talking to, the businesses like the handshake deals and stuff like that. Once uh we started to get budgets and things figured out, and it was time to like nail some stuff down, prices changed, you know, people backed out, some decent actors backed out, all sorts of stuff. But I mean that's just part of the business. I'm sure it's like that anywhere, and it's a it's a headache. I I couldn't imagine, man, like like I can't stress enough actually completing a feature film.

39:57ShareOh, I know. Oh, trust me. My wife is not in the business, she's a a lawyer, you know, and so she's this is all like new and exciting to her. But you know, I'm like, the movie's coming out, and she's like, oh babe, I'm so proud of you. Uh no, no, no, I don't think you're like take all the people who ever said I want to make a movie, yeah, and cut it by the amount of people who said I'm going to make a movie. Cut it by the amount of people who start, then by finish the script, then by start recording with the camera, and then finish that, and then start editing, finish that, start post, finish that, like you know, and then actually have it out in the world, and not on Amazon on my YouTube channel.

40:41ShareIt's like, dear, I don't think you understand. That is a very elite fraternity of people who've been able to do that one at all, but two, definitely like truly independently of the system is is insane. And it and it just speaks to our team, which is is a massive, massive team. And one of the things is so cool about our movie is that you know we had some equipment with the equipment rental company that made this a little bit more feasible so we didn't have to rent stuff, and then we had some friends that were you know doing this and that and the other, and we're like a bunch of people who were kind of in a similar position that I was in, you know, my DP, casting director, who were like, Man, we just need

41:25Shareto go make something, let's do it. And so we just had this like group of core folks that were sort of galvanized around just making something on our own. But but then we were like, well, we gotta get a lot more people, like the four of us aren't gonna be able to do this, and we're gonna need some money to like feed everybody and pay actors and and and you know all that stuff. Alright, so what what year was the f the the first time the script was being written? Like what your first draft of the script. What year was that? Clayton, the writer, uh the main the main writer, he wrote wrote the story. He gave me the first draft of the script in November of 2020. Okay. Alright. So you can't count COVID.

42:15ShareSo you're looking at roughly four or five years since the script was written to premiere. Well, yeah, almost almost six, because uh November it'll be six years. unknown: Wow. Well, because I'm doing some like looking up and stuff. You started filming what, it says October 2021? Yeah, first day of filming was October 1st, 2021. Okay. And alright, so a lot of people kind of glaze over the development period of production, but that's like the first step. That's the first nail in the coffin for a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I I I have a lot of questions about that. Yeah, yeah, what do you got? All right. First off, how'd you get your money? Uh what was your budget originally? There was never a budget.

42:56ShareYou had zero budget. You had did you have any production we had? Never made a budget. You're just like, let's just I had to make a budget after the fact to turn it into SAG to get my deposit back. Okay. Um, and anybody asked me what the budget was, I said the same really annoying thing. What do you say? As little as possible, as much as little budget. As much as necessary. Yeah, exactly. So it's all about America, Jesus, freedom. Um, but uh, but yeah, so the way that we did it, and I to me, I'm really, really proud of the movie, and I'm proud of the product that we were able to create, but I'm way more proud of how we did it. And I think that that's really what's gonna be the thing that's gonna pull people into this.

43:44ShareAnd especially with things like obsessions and backrooms and all that stuff, and with people like posting uh the obsessions, people like I worked on obsessions and I made five grand, you know, like making a billion dollars in the marketplace. Are they saying that pissed off? Yes, yeah, super mad. Um and so. But they weren't above the line. Correct. So here's the way that we funded our movie. We had a core group of people, which, like I said, was like myself, my sister, who was the first AD co-writer, producer, Daniel Bowman, who was a producer and the locations manager, Andrew Hunter, who was the producer, casting director, and production designer, Nate Rigaud, who was the DP. So we had this core group of like five, six folks who um who

44:31Shareall contributed their time and energy to get kind of the movie across the starting line. And then what we did is we developed a capital structure that basically was you have when we ask you to work on the movie and you want to work on a movie, this is your menu of options. We will pay you your tier one rate, like your indie rate. Right. Or you can invest your Marvel rate. Your Marvel rate? Yep. You can invest your full rate, and basically what you do is you keep a time card, and at the end of the production, we'll turn it into an investor agreement as if you had invested cash. If you have equipment to invest, and then you can also add cash to it if you want. What if you want to change down the road?

45:17ShareSo I got I got a great story about that. Okay. So that that's what we did. And so um we we the vast we had like 78 people who worked on the movie in some capacity or the other or another. Over 50 of those people elected to invest their time. Okay. So um which which was incredible. So we have, and then for those who did didn't or couldn't or whatever, we paid all the PAs, we paid all the actors, we paid a lot of the folks in post. Um because we were asking for their working days. Yeah, but like this how many PAs and and you know just daily people did you have on set at what was the busiest day that you had? I'd have to look at the call sheet, but I had probably 50 people. So where did that money come from, man?

46:08ShareWell, we didn't pay most of them. But you there's a good chunk of them that you did. Yeah, and so so the people who put in money on top, there are there are 12 different people who put in money to the movie. Of those 12 people, 10 of them also worked on the movie and invested their time. So, like JJ Medeiros, who is the uh CEO of Georgia Special Effects, provided all the special effects. He was a producer, he acted in the movie, and he invested money into the movie. Oh, way I invested money into the movie, Kyle invested money in the movie, Clayton invested money in the movie, Andrew invested money in the movie. Like we pulled it to, we essentially like micro-crowdfunded it, but it was from people who were on the

46:47Sharemovie already. Except for that, we had two people uh who invested. One guy invested$5,000 and one guy invested$2,500. They were the only two people who invested money in the movie who didn't actually work on it. They just threw money in it, that's all. Everybody else was putting their time and their resources into the movie. I can't say that word sweat sweat equity. Sweat equity. Sweat equity. Yeah, I can't say sweat equity, but it was also in kind. So, for instance, one of our EPs, guy named Nate Glass, used his production company, Glassfire, to provide all of our payroll support, all of our insurance, no way, um, and uh all of like our production admin and logistics support uh as an investment.

47:33ShareAnd so he turned in an invoice, we turned that invoice into an investment agreement and credited him with the equity. That's pretty cool. So it you know, you didn't get your your tap on the shoulder from God or whatever and all this, but you got a lot of friends that got dirty together. Yeah, and then I got I got the tap on my shoulder from my community, yeah. Which is way better. And so what was really cool is we ended up raising about $100,000 in cash, but the uh in kind was about half a million dollars. So the movie, if I had paid cash for everything that we did, would have cost like$580,000. But we did it for$100,000. That is awesome. But here's what's cool about it every single person who touches

48:12Sharethe call sheet is an equity owner of the movie, even the people we paid. You could make money right now in film school just teaching. Yeah. I agree. You know? Yeah. Because like the cookie cutter nonsense that I got on how to raise a budget for a film just does not compute. And that that kind of stuff is the out-of-box thinking that I I never would have thought of. Well, I've always been like a business guy. I went, I have an MBA from the University of Georgia. I'm three, uh I'm like one semester from finishing my doctorate in business. No way. And I'm writing a dissertation on leadership in the creative film and TV industry. Wow. Um but you make me feel like a real underachiever. I have a bachelor's degree.

48:59ShareI don't have any hobbies. All my hobbies are just different kinds of work. Except for snowboarding, which I haven't done in three seasons because I've been doing all my different kinds of work. But but, you know, I've always been kind of an out-of-the-box problem solver, which is what I do kind of for my job now, and and um I've also been deeply convicted to not take advantage of people. And so one of the reasons why I'd never made it, I like everyone had told me to make a no-budget movie, and you're like, you need to just go make something, make something, but I had never seen that done where people weren't taken advantage of. In what aspect? Like they were were they were working, they were

49:39Shareunderpaid, they were overworked, they were underappreciated, and then the people who the project was for took that value, said thanks very much, walked away. And that next gig that we're gonna pay full price for never came. You know, and I was just like, I'm not gonna do that. And so I kicked against the goad for years over making a no-budget rebel without a crew, right? Fucking whatever. And I was laying awake at night and I was just going, I'm gonna have to do this. I'm gonna have to, if or I need to give up on being a director. I'm gonna have to figure out a way to make something that's kind of scrappy. How can I do that in such a way that I don't take advantage of anybody? That is so cool.

50:22ShareAnd there were two there were two solutions. The first one was the equity structure, and every single person who touched this movie is an equity owner of the movie, even the people we paid. No way. The people we paid all split 10% of the movie uh relative to the number of days they worked on the movie. Okay. And then everybody else had contributed their equity. So I told you I was gonna tell you a story about this. We had filled every position uh on on the movie uh except for production sound mixer, and we were like two weeks away from shooting the first block, uh, which I'll explain that in a minute. We're two weeks away from shooting the first block, we have no production sound mixer. All of my friends who wanted to do it couldn't for one reason or

51:05Shareanother. And we're like, we're gonna have to like get a recommendation. Like, there's no way that a production sound mixer who doesn't know us is gonna come like work their weekends and invest their time. Like, that's just not gonna happen. So we're like just getting emotionally prepared to have to pay a production sound mixer for the whole movie, which was a big ouch at that point. And um no budget, so everything's additive. Yeah, yeah. Right? So every every spending decision hurts. And so we got this guy who's recommended, um, Tyler Calder. Uh he comes out, he does a great job. You know Tyler because I met Tyler working on Dead Winter. Oh yeah, the short film that I did. So that's where I met Tyler originally.

51:50ShareThat dude screwed up one of my senior projects. Well, this is gonna be a great story about him. No, no, no, it all worked out. If it's the guy who I think it is, he uh he he uh uh formatted uh uh an SD card that had a whole day of shooting on it. Yeah, but to be fair, we were dumb college kids and we should have had some backups and all sorts of stuff too. So rip. Yeah. I'm gonna save it. I'm gonna save it, Tyler. Sorry about that. You're gonna save it? Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna save I'm gonna save the story for Tyler's repetition. Um Tyler came out on the first weekend, did a phenomenal job. We paid him. He like he negotiated his rate, and I was like, I paid him. Just hurt. Yeah. Um and uh he called me the like the day after, yeah.

52:44ShareThree days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday was a holiday. And he called me on Sunday, or Monday, I guess, and was like, I want to do the rest of the day and I want to invest because he had such a great time and enjoyed the energy of what we were doing and was around all these other people who were like investing their time. And he caught he like caught the bug. And to this day he's been like one of my top supporters. I've hired him a bunch of other times, and he's always always does a great job for me. But that was such a cool thing, and for for us as a producing team, when that happened, it was a confirmation that the way that we were doing this was actually honoring people. It wasn't just something we'd convinced ourselves of so that

53:34Sharewe could sleep at night. Yeah. But we had found a way to make a no-budget movie that takes advantage of no one. I only own 13% of this movie. I mean, for your first time, that's that's not a bad chunk. Oh, it's it's awesome. Yeah. It means that every single time, every single time that somebody rents the movie on Amazon, yeah, my PA that worked one day makes money. No way. No, it's not a lot of money. But I mean, not a lot of people would be willing to do that though. One day you worked as a PA, you got paid your commercial rate as a PA, because every single time that somebody buys that movie or watches it, that PA is gonna make money in perpetuity forever. Well, it's cool. So uh I have a philosophical question for you

54:25Shareabout that. Because first off, kudos to Tyler. Uh if if he's if he's who I remember him as, it sounds like he's like really taken and ran with it. And uh I'm sure he's way better at all this stuff than I ever could hope to be. But regardless. Well, it sounded great. You heard it in the theater? Yeah, yeah. I did. It sounded very great. I heard uh you heard Parker talk about how much he didn't like the cut with the bad audio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I've been there too. I've had bad, we've had podcasts with bad audio. So yeah. Well, he just heard an unfinished mix, and he's not a film guy, and so he just didn't know. Oh that was a work in progress, uh like focus group screening that we came to.

55:05ShareAnd so the mix was not there, it wasn't mixed. It was a premix, yeah. It was a test setting. Yeah, but anyways, all right, philosophical question. Apocalypse now, all right? Okay, that movie had a horrendous, you know, uh shoot. It like everybody was miserable, people were like dying and having heart attacks and storms and you know, all sorts of crazy stuff, and people don't look they look back at it kind of like it was an actual war to get through to make this masterpiece of a movie. Yeah. Would you rather have a masterpiece of a movie with a terrible shoot or a mid to terri, you know, you know, not great movie with an amazing uh shoes, you know, story and experience in making that. Um it depends on what makes the shoot terrible.

55:58ShareOkay. If it's just elemental, then I would rather have it. I would rather have the masterpiece. Okay. But if it's people, like if it's because bad attitudes and whatever. Well, like I'm a grunt, right? You know, we're in the infantry and the army. I've I've been in some really terrible, crappy situations that were elementally difficult. It's raining. Right. It's two o'clock in the morning. JRTC. Oh god. Yes. It's raining, it's hot, it's two o'clock in the morning, it's four o'clock in the afternoon, and it's you know, we're running around in body armor or whatever. The nature of the work and the nature of the environment is what made it difficult. But if you had great leadership, then somehow it was still good,

56:48Shareand you were still like able to like get through it, have fun, remember it fondly, build relationships. If it's something like that, yeah, then I'd rather have the masterpiece. So each day is a sense of accomplishment. Yeah. We're doing something hard together, right? Where people feel valued and appreciated and like drawn together towards a common purpose and led well. I'd rather have that. If if the what if what is making it difficult is that people aren't getting along, they're not feeling valued, like they're getting beat down, not just by the elements, but also by the people, then I I would much rather have a mediocre product. What I said in my rap speech, which is on my Instagram, um I

57:28Sharesaid, you know, I care so much more about you than I care about this product, but I care about the product because I care about you. And I believe that to my core. And I also think, in a practical sense, like if you just put on a pragmatics, I would like to make another movie, not just one masterpiece. I would like for people to pick up the phone when I call them and ask them to work together. And best case scenario, they say, Yeah, I'd love to do it. Let's do it again, you know. Like that's what I would prefer, you know. And I and because I think that leadership is ultimately what drives long-term success in any business. Yeah, and that's a tough thing to have. Um, you know, even from like the military aspect, good leaders

58:15Shareare a minority, let alone in this like the civilian world, because you're forced into a leadership capacity of that at some point in the military. Whether you like it or not, you're gonna be a leader in something. Yeah. But in the civilian world or in the in the creative world, right, leaders, you either have it or you don't. You know, it's not like somebody can be trained in it unless you have private experience. And you've stumbled onto the subject of my dissertation. That's exactly it. That's well, okay, so I you could use me as an example of what not to do as a leader sometimes. Like I remember uh for my my capstone, right? Yeah, uh, it was a week-long shoot. We shot it at nights, a lot of kids.

59:01ShareThey didn't they'd never worked more than eight hours a day, you know, and we're we're going overnight. And like I started out with a crew of 50, and the last day was down to like eight. It's like you know, they they were tired and they had school. Yeah, yeah. I'm working full time, I'm also going, uh I'm in the military, and I'm also going to school full-time. Yeah. And I have a family and stuff. I'm like, what are you complaining about? I'm being an absolute dick about it. We just started hanging out being friends and stuff. The other kid got scared of my to be fair though, like I didn't take time to to like mingle and make people feel valued. Let him see the vision and you know, learn from that

59:50Shareexperience. I was just all about like I was putting out fires and our our our pre-production was a mess to begin with. So it was more of like building the airplane while in flight, kind of thing. And theater projects are always gonna be that way. There's never enough time. Oh yeah. And and a lot of people that said they knew how to do stuff that didn't know how to do stuff. Common. But uh regardless, though, instead of me being a dick about it, I could have I I I could have just been like, you know what, it's okay. We're gonna figure this out. Um and I that's something I look back and kind of you know regret it a little bit, but uh yeah, I'm sure if I had your demeanor, it would have been a masterpiece.

1:00:27ShareWell, I know I don't know. I mean, you know, I don't I don't I don't know. Um what I do know is that unless they've unless they haven't told me, um there's nobody on Dimentium who wouldn't work with me again. Yeah. And and what I've seen in years and years of work in the film business is that when you do have a good leader, yeah, people give that extra mile. And that's what I was inspired by when I was watching the behind the scenes in Floor of the Rings. Yeah. Peter got every drop out of those people. And they wanted to do it. Yeah, and it's not just the actors. You heard the story about the guy that stayed in the uh the visual effects department over Christmas to destroy the Eye of Siron and uh that graphical, you know, whatever thing.

1:01:17ShareAnd they were gonna blow up a bigoture for it. Yeah, and he's like, Hey, look what I did over Christmas. And they and they were like, Whoa, and he just did it because he wanted to help the yeah. So that's people don't go the extra mile if they don't like it. No, and they don't, yeah, and they don't exactly they're gonna do the bare minimum, even if they're professionals, they're gonna do the bare minimum of whatever that professional standard is. Yeah, but when people really care and they want you to be successful and they feel seen and valued, and you know, if you in the non-commissioned officer's creed, I was like I've I've drank that Kool-Aid man, it's like all soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership, and I will provide

1:01:52Sharethat leadership. Yeah, that you know, leadership is the act of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization. I don't think that's just for the army. No, it should be. I think that's everywhere. Yeah. And I think that when as leaders we can take like the burden of responsibility not just for the product, but also for the the mission, but also for the organization, then the loyalty that you can develop in people, which is not in a transactional sense, not like, oh well they're loyal and now they'll it's it's this like community, communal uh directional joy that can happen even in the rain, even at two o'clock in the morning.

1:02:41ShareYeah, some of the best army memories I have is when we were physically the most miserable, right? You know, and and generally it's when you had the best company and the best You're with the boys. With the boys, right? So I think that's what I that's that's what we were able to accomplish on Dimentian, and I think Tyler's story is a great example of like how powerful that that canon was, you know, in that moment. And by the way, we were snooping around talking to everybody and acting like we didn't know who you were at the premiere, and and I was like, how is this guy? Is he is he and they're like, no, he's he's the he's one of the best. Like everybody couldn't show up about how great she was.

1:03:21ShareI try to play like invite anybody that doesn't like that. There you go. You can message us on uh listen to this and you need me. Entertain this podcast. Entertain this podcast. I'm sure they're out there. Yeah. Um, we got to dig into this movie, man. All right. You want to go back to the development thing? You said you had some questions there, and I know we kind of got off sidetrack. So let's let's jump into um let's jump into production. Okay. Did you know from day one how the production was gonna go? Or you had a decent plan, but it obviously changed a lot. Uh we had a pretty good plan. Yeah, we had a pretty good plan. So like you know, I mentioned earlier that it were kind of two things that we did to honor everybody.

1:04:07ShareOne of the things was the equity plan that we did, which I think is where a lot of the story is. But I think like to your point for like the film school kind of thing. The second thing was to ask for no working days. Okay. Because all the people that we were working with were working on TV and films during the week, and we didn't want them to have to take days off. So you shot on the weekends, weekends and holidays. And that meant that we had to shoot it in blocks. So we ended up shooting it in, I think, six or seven blocks. So you did all your exteriors in one season. Well, we did half of them. Okay. So all of the present day stuff is in the winter, and the trees are really bare and everything's really

1:04:48Sharegray and gross looking, and then all of the uh stuff that isn't present, whether it's a flashback or a dream or part of the drug world, yeah, is all summer and it's all very green, it's very lush. And so literally the trees foliage is different. I mean, I remember we shot the first day, it was in October 1st, remember? So we're already late in the season. We were planning on shooting in September, had to push, I don't remember exactly why. Um but I woke up every single day in the month of October freaked out that the leaves were gonna change. Yeah. So we shot October 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and then I think the next day we shot was the 10th, because that was the other thing. It was like we're gonna ask for no working days, and we're never

1:05:28Sharegonna shoot two weekends in a row. So that's and that was one for getting because we wanted to keep as many of the same crew as we could, especially like the keys. How many days of production total? Uh sixteen total, but only 13 full production days, and then we did three like half splinter unit kind of days. That's really fast. So, like Splinter Unit day one was a drone day, and all we did was the one drone shop. Okay. Uh, which is at the end when the cops come in, it just does a jib up. We tried a couple other things, but that was the only thing we. Up using. Um, and that was like a couple hours with the cars. Um which was probably expensive to get all those cop cars and all that stuff. Uh no, the cop car was contributed as equity.

1:06:11ShareNo way. Yeah. And the other car was my car, and the other car was my sister's car. You put like decals on it or whatever? The cop car? Yeah. We just didn't look at them. It says Atlanta PD. Yeah, we just didn't look at it. I mean, I recognized the badge and stuff, and I was like, I mean, it's a movie car that just like my buddy, he's a Alex Orr is a producer, he let us borrow it, and we credited him as an investor in the movie. Alright. So 16 days. Yeah, so 16 days total, but really it's 13 days. And then we did that like three-hour drone day. We did a like three-hour day for the abyss stuff. So that was all in us in the studio down at Georgia Special Effects. So we like built this big fish tank rig.

1:06:52ShareOkay. So that's a fish tank rig thing weirdness that we did. And so it that was like a half day. And then the other half day was the snow at the end. Okay. That was a half day. Where did you do that at? That was at some church. I don't even remember. And it was fake snow or something? Fake snow, yeah. And then yeah, special effects guy, right? Special effects guy. Man, yeah. So he was clutch for this movie. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, he's a stud. Yeah, he was in the movie, yeah. Yeah. And he's and I'll plug him. He is has got a new show on YouTube about special effects where they're doing like different effects and showing you how it's done, kind of like a mythbusters for special effects. It's actually really well done.

1:07:32ShareYou gotta check it out, Georgia Special Effects. Okay. It's very good. Maybe we should talk to him. You should talk to him. He's great. JJ Madeiris, Georgia Special Effects. But um, so they only had shot 13 days. Of those 13 days, only one day went over 12 hours elapsed. Not 12 hours on the clock, 12 hours elapsed of call time. And that day was 12 and a half hours. What? So it was only 12 hours on the clock. The rest of them were under 11 and a half hours. So you guys never hit a brick wall when you're shooting. We well, we had one night that was real bad, but um, but for other than that night, no. What was uh what was the hitch? Uh we rented a balloon. Okay. Uh lighting balloon. Oh. My background is being a lighting tech.

1:08:15ShareLike, I know I was like, all right, we're gonna spend this $200, you know,$2,500 between the balloon and the tech and the helium with the lights, but then we're gonna shoot two days of overnights in one day. Okay. Because it was just the efficiency with the lighting balloon is amazing. Yeah, yeah. Never played with it. Floated up there, it's got two 4Ks in it, it lights everything. You just it looks like the moon. It's amazing. You don't like indie movies, moonlight is real like nighttime is so hard. Yeah, it's harsh light. So just put this balloon up there and it's done. Balloon gets there, balloon doesn't work. I've never had that happen before. I won't drop the name of the vendor because it's not their

1:08:46Sharefault, but like never had that happen before, and it just really bummed us. Um so we ended up getting it back, but we just didn't we we wrapped in 11 and a half hours, but we just didn't make our day that day. Okay. Every other day we made our day in under 12 hours elapsed. So did you have to rush stuff to make it up? Uh we no, we made we made tactical changes. Okay. Yeah, we we changed stuff. And so um the so a couple other things. One, we only shot on one lens because it was the only lens we had, and I didn't want to wait for lens changes. Yeah, and that's wild because when uh you said that at the beginning of the premiere, I was like, ooh, one lens. This is uh I don't know what this is gonna look like.

1:09:34ShareAnd I I you would have never have guessed. I what did you guys have like a focus puller or anything like that? Okay, yeah, yeah. Full camera team. Okay, yeah. Camera operator first, second assistant. Yeah, because like some of those shots, I was like, there's no way. I'm expecting just one dude with a camera just being like no no no full camera team, dolly grip, you know, okay. Why only one lens? The only lens we had. I didn't want to pay to rent one, and it was a zoom lens, and I never had to take it off the camera. So we never waited for a lens change. I never saw a shot out of focus or anything, you know. So like I said, I think Focus Folders did a great job. Um, Erica Colquitt and uh uh the other guy's name is oh my gosh,

1:10:18ShareI feel bad. No, I'm blanking on it. I can't remember anybody's name. Oh, it's uh no, I I feel bad. This this podcast is ran by me, Mitch, and some other guy. Yeah, but uh yeah, the threats. So one lens, so we never waited to swing a lens during the whole time we made the movie. One camera. Um, and then we basically had a couple of like production rules that the DP and the producers and I had, and one of those rules was do not shoot two shots if one shot will do. Okay, so you do the scores you rule five. Most of the scenes have one or two shots. And there are, I think, like 25 scenes that are only one shot. There's a lot of dialogue and a lot of long shots too. Yeah, so the his monologue is one one take, one shot.

1:11:12ShareI do was like six minutes. And actually the full take is like eight minutes, and I had to cut like the beginning of it off for pacing, but it's it was still brilliant. Like the whole thing was brilliant. But but that's what we chose to do, and we were like, let's just make one, let's make that as a bold choice. It's a risky choice, but let's make that choice. And then also we get this production benefit of like most days we were only doing between 12 and 16 setups for the whole day. And we were doing them in the right order, and we were really efficient because we're not a bunch of indie movie folks, like we're people who they were working five days a week on Black Panther and you know, whatever else, big movies.

1:11:56ShareRight. And so these are people who've been around, they know what to do. There's we have we've worked I've worked with all these people before because they're all my friends, and so we all have really good, clean communication with each other. Yeah, but like having this this communal uh swe sweaty sweaty sweat sweaty. It's it's contagious now. Sweat goody having this like communal process of like we're all in this together, there's there's gotta be the caveat to that, which would be people probably offering a lot of suggestions and stuff outside their wheelhouse. Yeah. Was there a lot of tamping that down and controlling and um not controlling but like redirecting? Most, yeah. Well, most of the people working on on the movie were working in

1:12:46Sharethe capacity or in one level above the capacity that they worked as professionals. So they were just kind of doing the same thing that they would do on any other project. So, like our A-camera operator Josh Heaterks was just being the A camera operator and would would offer the suggestions that were appropriate and normal for an A-camera operator to do. Because the reason why he was doing it is because he was a B camera operator and he wanted to be an A camera operator, so he was coming to be the best A camera operator he could be so that he could get an A camera A cam operator credit and get some time running in that role. Right. So, you know, a lot and expand that to like everybody else, the

1:13:23ShareDP, you know, it was gaffer, everybody was was kind of like doing that. Where it became a challenge was in the producing core. Um and because there were a lot a lot of creativity that has gone into the movie came from a a collaborative group of people. Okay, and so on the day there would be ideas and thoughts coming from a variety of different places, but we all um worked through that as a team, and then everybody sort of recognized that somebody has to make this role at the end of the day. And did you like lay down ground rules like if it changes money, we're not doing it? We did it as a team. Yeah, I didn't, but like we did as a team where we said, like, these this is how we're gonna kind of handle this,

1:14:04Shareand then I think they did a good job of trusting me to like make the call. Okay. I did a good job of um you know, compromising and accommodating ideas whenever I I could. Was anybody ever you know, was there ever any conflict about any of that? I mean, I don't not really conflict. I mean, certainly like tension in the sense that like somebody would have an idea they really believed in that wouldn't make it. But it was never there was never like an argument. Okay. Yeah that I remember. That would bother me, like, oh man, this guy, you know, he he wants to sell this so bad, but we just can't do it. Now he doesn't believe in the project anymore. No, we were all we were all really aligned, and and

1:14:48Shareuh you know the producing core had worked on this for the better part of a year by the time we started it, and we were just very aligned on what we were there to do and why we were there to do that. And no no part of the script changed once the shooting started. Um, not meaningfully. Okay. That's that's really impressive. I mean, you hear all these stories about everything gets changed at some point, and we there was one thing that changed um now that I remember. So we we rewrote a the we rewrote some of the ending, the climax. Okay. Right before we did it. And the reason why it was is not super meaningful, but the reason why we did it is originally the way it was written is dad is still supposed to be in the chair when the cops get there.

1:15:34ShareRight. But Adam got COVID. Oh and so he couldn't come. Or he got COVID or something happened. He like had COVID or something, like anyway, like Adam couldn't come to shoot for some reason. I don't remember exactly why. And he was all he was gonna do was sit in the chair as a cadaver. Right, right. Right. So I mean, and we so we're like, do we use the dummy? Because we have this dummy, and we're like, Do we use the dummy? The dummy doesn't really look like do you remember a dummy being? So, like what's when he gets out of the trunk and like carries in and oh yeah, that's a dummy. So he's like, We have this dummy, should we just try to use a dummy? And he's like, So we could so what we decided was we'll just

1:16:16Shareput him in the casket. Yeah. So she she comes in and she checks the pulse in the casket. We don't see in the casket. Oh, she says no pulse, and he goes, I'm gonna call in a suicide. She says it's not even him. So then we understand, okay, the dad's in the casket, or somebody else is in the casket, it's not Mike, and then we go down to the kill room eventually and we find Mike down there. Wild ending. I did not well so the casket threw me off at the beginning until the reveal throughout the movie. I was like, oh, okay, okay. Well good. Um but yeah, so so the ending got reworked a little bit just in like the blocking and kind of the sequencing of it, but not like meaningfully, but it was because there was

1:16:53Sharethis whole bit where she was gonna like check dad's pulse and like there's a whole thing, but like dad wasn't there, so we had to kind of refigure that out, but not it wasn't a rewrite in the sense of like the way that you would normally think of it. It was like dad, dad can't come be a cadaver today. Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? We'll put dad in the coffin and then we'll rearrange the sequence a little bit. The script didn't change besides just that one little detail. Yeah, but shotless though. No, shotless didn't really change. I mean, like, you know, we you knew the location and everything beforehand. It was only one location. So the whole thing is on Rex Christmas Tree Farm, and they

1:17:28Sharejust have three different houses and different things. Okay, gotcha. All right. Then we shot uh three days at um Kessler Lake in the tent. And that was its own block. That was actually the first block that was October 1st through uh second and third, was at the different location. The rest of the show was at one location, and then um you know the pickup, the two pickup days, one was in the studio and then one was at like some church. I can't remember. And you didn't have to orchestrate anything on the fly for any of that. Wow. No, that's all I did when I was we we had a shoot in a barn and the door didn't work and all sorts of stuff, and yeah, we were making it. No, we we built um a set piece, so like the where the

1:18:09Sharedoor is, that just goes into their like other living rooms. So we put that shelf in. So when you see it before when he's like looking around for stuff and yeah, all the time he's in the house, that shelf back there is fake. Oh right. Um it's like an open doorway into like a mud room kind of thing. So we built that shelf and then put the door behind it so that and originally our plan was that it was gonna open and reveal the door, yeah. Like, but we couldn't make that work. So we just had it be there. But even still, like that's some set design, right? So like the whole process and the I've never had it do set design before. I couldn't even imagine. Well, the one project that I worked with you

1:18:49Shareon, they you had the uh the one where like the the family has to go into the bathroom to hide. Yeah, and it's it was it was a closet. That was that was just us shooting at angles, yeah. Yeah, it was the cheat thing. Yeah, but believe it or not, there was not already a kill room at the um the farm. We actually had to make the kill room. Okay, like out of a basement or something. It was a basement, and then we just find the bodies out there. Yeah, yeah. Fully dress like we fully dressed it, you know. Um Kate Wilson was our our current set decorator on the movies, so she she did all that and it was pretty much. She she buy into that. No way. Those those bodies, yeah. So where did is that from the special effects studio

1:19:30Sharetoo? I think we rented the bodies. Okay. Because they weren't just like Halloween decorations. I was like, wow. No, I think I think we rented the bodies. Yeah. unknown: Yeah. Do you have any goofy shots, like like candid photos and stuff like that with you guys? Um I don't have anything with the body, but I do have this great picture of Doug dressed as the witch like on his phone in the corner. Uh before we I I guess this is a good transition into post-production. I noticed one visual effect shot where he like shows up in his magical, you know, wizardry to the grab the grill or whatever. Uh was there anything else? Yeah, so um we enhanced the abyss. So there's just like some swirling black stuff that's

1:20:16Sharethat's there. We enhanced the snow at the end. So there's practical snow mixed with VFX snow. Okay. Okay. Uh fall. Snowfall, because we wanted to time it exactly uh with their hands coming together. So that that starts with the starts with VFX snow and then it's mixed in with practical snow. Okay. Um, we did some fixes. So, like I said, remember that fake shelf? Yeah. There were some shots where we could see light from the other side, so we painted that out. No way, man. Um painting out lights got not easy too. No. Well, fortunately, I uh am a part owner in a post house. So I was able to do it at cost, which was great. So it's called Fine Fire Digital Services. We do VFX, 3D modeling, uh, 3D, 2D animation, color.

1:20:59ShareWhat's your guys' uh what do you guys use for uh you are asking the wrong guy. I do the business. Uh uh, Kyle Woodyle, our production supervisor, that manag is the general manager of that company. And he does all like the actual nerd stuff? He coordinates it. He doesn't necessarily do it, do it, but he he's the post super talking to a VFX person would be cool too. Yeah. Well he's in Colorado, so it would have to be a uh thing. Or you could talk to Lucas Bryant, the colorist, he's local. Do we know Lucas Bryant? Safehouse Post? I don't. You should talk to him, he's great. Was he a north North Georgia alumni? I don't think so. Alright. Well, anyways, um So then we had some other fixes. We like there was the scene where you remember where he his

1:21:45Sharedad is up standing up and he's like approaching him and then tackles him? We saw his pack. Uh his mic pack. Oh, okay. So we painted his mic pack out in that shot. Man. And then the other the only other things that we did, um, we enhanced the blood on the wrist. So that's a mix between practical and I didn't even notice it. No way. It was all practical. That's a mix. So he has tubes around his wrists that are makeup and and bleeds, practical blood, and then we enhanced it with VFX. I didn't even notice it. Um and then um yeah, so I mean it's really well done. We worked really hard on that one. And then uh Did you guys shoot uh with these VFX in mind and then like try and block it for things that weren't there, like

1:22:29Shareyou know, like a Marvel movie and stuff like that? No, there was never anything that like wasn't there. So like you're talking about the one shot where he like sort of manifests in it's a locked off shot, so they just painted him out and then painted him out. Oh, okay. Okay. Um so most of the VFX was just to clean up what was already there. It was all like enhancement or fix. Alright. Okay. Yeah, there was nothing, there was nothing purely like CGI, which is smart as best as you can do with the witch has like some CGI makeup enhancement and stuff, you know. Like um when he when he stabs the girl is like the only time we ever see him like really, really close. He's got all these jagged, nasty teeth.

1:23:09ShareYeah, it was almost frustrating that we never really got to like lay on the witch's face too much because I'm like, is this is this a dude? What is this? What am I looking at here? Yeah, it's Doug. It's the same guy, it's the scientist. Oh I thought it was. Uh I think it was Troy. Troy didn't believe me. Yeah, well, no, it's the same guy. Okay, which is why they're both there at the end. Those cutaways were great, by the way. Uh the scientist stuff? Yeah. Doug's so great. I he he taped. I didn't know him. He taped and I cast him off of his witch read. I was like, this guy's amazing. Yeah, it was the only thing I think we cast off a real like background scene. Oh man, we should we should have talked about casting

1:23:49Sharetoo. But it's too late now. Um so yeah, by the way, real quick, the uh the the scientist scenes, that's the same camera. Yeah, same camera. I I would have sworn that was a different lens. All the same camera. All the same lens, all the same. You guys do something to the to to like flatten it out and post or something like that? Because it looks completely different. It was lit different, and it's obviously graded different. But no, it's the same. I believe you're gonna be able to do that. All of that, like all that wispy stuff, you know, when he's like running and stuff, that's all in-camera trick. That's a shutter angle trick. I called it the um the Ridley Scott battle, because it just looks like that stuff that he used to do in Gladiator where it

1:24:27Sharewas like that slow shutter angle and all the motion. Yeah, yeah. So we did that. Um we did some in-camera stuff. Yeah, we did there's a few things, but nope, all the same camera, all the same lens. All right, do not shoot two shots of one shot, will do. Yeah. Uh post-wise. You chose to edit your own movie. Yes. Okay. So about that. All right. I have done that before, and I will never do that again. And it was it was for like a 10 minute short, yeah, right. So sitting where you're at now, would you ever do that again? Yeah, no, I would never I would never edit my own feature again. Um I I edit, like I edit all the most of the music videos that I direct, and I've edited all the shorts I've ever directed in the

1:25:10Sharepast. Um the reason why I directed the reason why I edited this one was as a function of budget. I was the best available free editor. Okay. Um, and it just took me forever. I never edited a feature before. Did you start second guessing yourself through the editorial? Start second guessing yourself. Did you er guess, forecast? Yeah, it honestly it took me forever and I stalled out a bunch of times. And I mean it took me over a year. Did you let anybody look at some early rough cuts and wish you hadn't and things like that? No, no, I never wished I hadn't. I mean, uh feedback's a gift. Yeah. Certain scenes cut fast and certain scenes cut slow because, you know, just the pay, you know, trying to fix things or

1:25:56Sharelike seeing my failures as a director and moments that I wished I had taken, you know, again or differently, or well that's what I was gonna ask. Like in the edit, were you like, man, we gotta do a pickup or uh reshoot or there's one scene that we probably should have reshot, and we ended up just cutting it. Okay. And um I just couldn't ask people to do reshoots. Okay. And so, like, between the talent and the crew and everybody, it's just how much of a significance to the story was that scene? I mean, it's it adds a lot. Yeah. It adds a lot. I think the movie works without it. I think the movie would have been better if we had been able to nail that scene and get it in. See, that's the thing, is there's no like I

1:26:48Sharedon't know how else to say it. There's no post-nut clarity when it comes to an edit. Because like, I'm sure to this day, uh, you know, the best movies ever made after the edit, they're like, man, I bet you could have been even better with the scene in it. Yeah. So spider cut man. But we but we walked into this movie really eyes open, and like Nate and I, the VP, would look at each other in the morning of every single shoot day and say, we gotta get a C today. Because we just all knew what this was. I I even said this, I said this a lot, and I said it to Nate, and I said it to others. I said, there's only one thing that this movie really needs to accomplish me. Okay. I need to be able to say the sentence, this is not my

1:27:33Sharefirst movie. Okay. And if that first movie doesn't embarrass me, even better. Yeah. You know, like, and so we took a very much like, let's not let great be the enemy of done. Oh, okay. Okay, that's uh that's because I needed to get a first movie done. The odds of that movie being a Magnum opus were slim to none. They were not zero, but they were slim to none. None, and I was like, I can ride these people into the gates of hell who are out here doing me a favor, or we can all just do pretty good, enjoy the process, enjoy the process, and finish something and be and be proud of it. But isn't there a pressure though? Like everybody's got their equity invested in this movie, you know. I really, really, really want the movie to be able

1:28:26Shareto make enough money to pay people back. And ultimately, it's a pretty low bar, you know, a$500,000 movie to make its money back. It's not a lot of money in the world of movies. Uh and it's been distributed by a real distributor. So I mean, like, it will eventually very likely do that. You know, I don't know how long it will take. But, you know, it's not gonna make anybody rich, it was never gonna make anybody rich. And so that would be the second thing is like, first of all, I to for it to serve me, I need to be able to say about my second movie, this is not my first movie. Yeah. And if that first movie doesn't embarrass me, even better. Yeah. For everyone else, I need it to break even. Yeah.

1:29:06ShareBecause if the movie breaks even, I will consider that a monumental success. If I can like go back to Josh Sheeturks and stroke him a $10,000 check, which it has no interest on his investment. Yeah. He will be happy as a clam, I'm sure, to get a windfall of $10,000, you know, nowhere. And that would make me the happiest man in the world. And so, yeah, I needed to break even you know eventually for that. But no, the the pressure, the pressure really is like everyone who came came fully knowing that they might not get any money. Okay. I didn't make any promises. And I even told them, I was like, if you're not getting something out of just being here, then you probably shouldn't come. And so, like, like I mentioned, Josh was there to be the

1:29:52ShareA-Camera operator and to do a whole feature as the A-Camera operator. I was there to do it as a director. Clayton was there to get one of his scripts made. You know, my sister Kyle was uh working first AD at the time, and she was trying to stack first AD credits on features, and so she got something out of it. And you know, my JJ wanted to be a producer, not just a special effects guy, and so he came out to be a part of the creative process. And so everybody was getting something out of just being there that they thought was worth it, that the money part, and they weren't giving anything up except for their weekend time, right? And it wasn't even that much weekend time because of the way we're spacing it out.

1:30:28ShareUm and so the money ho ho, you know, I I want everybody to get their money, but it was very clear like this this is not about money. Alright, so you you you have your final cut, everything's done. Uh everybody always forgets the exhibition portion of filmmaking. And uh that's probably the least interesting, but you're a business guy, so it's the most interesting part to me. Yeah, so what was your what was your initial plan? Did you see this going into theaters? Were you realistic from the big from the beginning? Um my plan was to try and find a sales agent. Okay. And then let that sales agent do their thing. My what is this sales agent? So, my my perspective on leadership and creativity is like hire great people and let them do their

1:31:21Shareexpertise. I don't have to be the expert. Cron Tarantino talks about that in the keynote uh UCLA, where he's like, you don't have to be an expert. You have to be able to communicate the vision to experts, and then they will go do their expertise. And I think that applies to everything. Yeah. That's why I don't cut my own grass. I don't either. Oh, no matter what. No, we'ren't doing so um, you know, there's people who make their living brokering independent films. That's what AFM is, that's what EF, you know, uh Berlin Film Market is, it's like these professionals that broker films. I interviewed probably 30 of them uh and then ended up going with uh Zach Reeder at Lucky27 Media, and he found me the deal

1:32:03Sharewith Freestyle, who is the distributor for domestic uh US Canada hotel uh on-demand and airline on-demand. So that agent he takes a cut. Yep. The uh exhibitionist takes a cut. Yep. And then well, you get a third of that? So the way that deal works is um the exhibitionist will take their first cut. So in this case it's Amazon, they'll take the first cut. Then of what's left of that, Freestyle gets 25%, Zach gets 10%, and then our company gets the rest. So that ends up being of what comes after out after the exhibition or the exhibitor, it ends up being um 65%. Okay. That's more than what I thought it would be. And so that's a seven-year license. So after seven years, I will get that back. So that's uh that's Amazon.

1:33:00ShareYou're gonna be on Amazon for seven years. No, no, we'll be with Freestyle for seven years. Okay. We're gonna be with Amazon as long as Freestyle wants us with Amazon. And if Amazon drops you for whatever reason, they'll find out. They'll find somebody else. Yeah. So the plan is that it's gonna be on on demand for 90 days and then they're gonna move it to a streamer. Okay. So that's that's kind of the freestyle, that's their playbook. Okay. They're they're basically like a straight to DVD type distributor, but like that obviously doesn't have any more physical media, but that's very much like the world they play in. But they're there's a there's two different kinds of straight to DVD distributors.

1:33:33ShareThere's like standalone straight to DVD distributors, where that's their whole business. And then there's straight to D distribution departments that are part of larger businesses. And Freestyle is the second one. They're a part of the Byron Allen media group that owns like the Weather Channel and a bunch of other really big businesses. They own you know outlets, they own, you know, YouTube channels, they own all this stuff. And you chose them because A, worked out, and B because you want to have history with them? They made me a deal that I liked, which is this 25% for seven years license deal just for US Canada. We still keep the rest of the international with Zach. We've uh have a deal in Taiwan, we have a deal in Germany, we're

1:34:11Sharegonna have some deals otherwise. That's why it was the North American premiere of Dementium, because it's actually been out uh overseas already. Oh, okay. Okay. Um so he'll keep the international and continue to peddle that um and he makes 15% of the international sales. He dropped his percentage to 10 to do the freestyle deal. But freestyle, because they're part of this huge company, it has a lot more resources than you know a standalone straight to DVD distributor. And they have a lot of other kinds of businesses, and so I felt like between the deal that they offered, kind of the history that they had, and Zach's recommendation, which I asked him, I said, Would you recommend that I do this deal?

1:34:51ShareAnd he said yes. And I knew that he wouldn't choke off the US-Canada market for a deal that he didn't think was reasonably the best deal we were gonna get. Okay, because he makes money off of that too. So I trusted him on that, and I think that's been a good decision. Um but then ultimately um they're they have a lot more firepower in their orbit than a lot of these other smaller mom and pop shops or like small businesses and that that kind of stuff. Because there's a lot of people that do this in like an independent sense or like an aggregator, like a film hub or something like that. Okay. So they just have a lot more resource that they can throw at a little movie if it makes sense for that.

1:35:29ShareYeah, yeah, yeah. Um that that's a market that I don't think the average audience understands, is like what you would call like the straight to DVD for streaming. We think about it like Redbox. Yes. Like, what's the digital version of Redbox? Like, that's kind of what we're talking about here. And for a half a million dollar movie, that's where it should go. Right. Unless you hit this outsize hit, which happens. And there are there are legitimate filmmakers out there that make a living off of it. A good living, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because we'll like the 75 people and I will own this movie forever, and then their children are own it, and then you know whatever. And so, like legacy. We can, you know, we'll make uh 30 years from now, we'll still

1:36:11Sharemake$1,500 a quarter on this thing. So um there's the people who make their livings is by volume. Yeah. They got 20 of these, you know, in the red boxes of the and all 20 of them are paying them$1,500 a quarter. Okay. You know. Um, so so it's just like when you think about the economics of film, my movie doesn't need to make a billion dollars because I didn't spend$200 million making it and$300 million marketing it. So it doesn't need to make a million billion dollars. It actually needs to make $720,000. What about the premiere though? You had to pay for that. I had to front it. Okay. I had to front the premiere. So but it was kind of a party, you know. It was kind of a party. Uh all the crew, casting crew got free tickets.

1:36:52SharePretty much everybody there got some sort of discount or some sort of group rate or some sort of invitation or something. And you chose the plaza just because you got connections? No, I wanted an independent theater, there's only three of them. Oh. And uh, you know, I didn't want to go to like an AMC and rent it out because I wanted it to feel like an event. Yeah, and it was. It was a party. So it was pretty much the plaza, the Terra, or Midtown Art. Um, the Plaza and the Terra are owned by the same people. Um Midtown Art is a great little cinema to go see any movies, but it feels more like a real movie theater. It doesn't feel as much like an event theater. So the Plaza of the Terra. Um, and the Plaza has a room that seats 325 people, and the

1:37:31Shareoutside of it is not in like a strip mall. And why did you choose to have um well? I thought the interview process was really interesting. Um also including other filmmakers. Oh, you mean the panel? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So most people would say you shouldn't bring other, you know, people that would detract from your your product or whatever, but I thought it was kind of actually pretty interesting to see other filmmakers, and they're they're all vastly different in what they're doing. Including the the trailers for their movies and stuff too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One, it like made it feel like a real movie experience, but um I I I think I think just I think this is a great place to kind of land the plane, is I really think this

1:38:13ShareI'm very proud of the movie. I think the performances are incredible. I think if you watch that movie and you don't think Michael Aaron Milligan can act, you're insane. Right. He's great. Um, all the performers are great, the DP is great, the colorist is great, composer is great, John is great. So there's a lot of good stuff going on. The the movie is a B plus because of just the limitation of resources and time. Which is great, because we were shooting for a C plus. We outperform all the way. Hell yeah. Um, which is fabulous. Out of the color grade, the surround sound mix from Adrian Maury. The color was way impressive. Oh, so good. When you had those uh sunny shots outside, uh it I mean, first I would slap you in the face, but like Oh, that reminds

1:38:57Shareme of the other visual effects we did. We did some sky replacement. Oh, oh, okay in the in the boat scene at the beginning. Okay. Wow. All right. But yeah, like the the coloring and the the harsh transition between the shots or the scenes was was phenomenal. Yeah, I I mean I agree, Lucas is a genius, and we you'll you'll have to have him on because he did some weird German color science lab weirdness that's over with. But he'll I'm sure he'd love to talk about it. But um before very so I'll stay very proud of the movie. I think there's a lot to be proud of for a lot of people and for the team as a whole, and for me. But I really think what's interesting is the way we made the movie, the way we honored people, the sweat quitty.

1:39:37ShareHe said it. Yeah, I tried. I've been thinking about it in my brain for that trying to get it out. I'm not gonna do it again. Um, and the production schedule and the production philosophy and the way that we went out and we made a Rebel Without a Crew type movie with a crew, don't hate us, at least for everybody's still friends. Everybody's still friends, everybody's proud of it, everybody's excited about it. I think that's really the story is like going out and making something. And I think like when we think about the future of um filmmaking, especially with AI and with mergers and with all of the shifting, changing, you know, streaming even now, kind of like coming to like the post-streaming era where all

1:40:14Sharethat's sort of stabilized. I think this is the kind of thing that we're going to need to be able to do as a filmmaking community. Yeah. In order to tell original stories for people like me to get an opportunity to be discovered as a storyteller. But then also I think there's going to be a premium as AI comes into corporate filmmaking on resonance, on human, on human authenticity. And so I think that's a less perfect movie that has a greater. This is a phrase I've been using a lot that I think I'm going to start writing about, um uh intention density. Like, what is the density of the human decisions that are then resulting in the resonance of the storytelling of the product? I think that's gonna be the luxury good five to ten years

1:41:03Sharefrom now. And places like Georgia, who you know built out all this infrastructure on money that was getting carted in from California and now nobody has any work because the only person who's here who's raising capital and creating jobs is Tyler Perry, and he's he's doing a great job, but he's not doing enough to sustain the growth of the industry that was here, so the industry is contracting and people are getting out of the business. And like the best dolly grip, one of the best dolly grips I know is a cop because he was gonna lose his house. Well, I I do think that you know, every time that there's a switch in the industry, and I think that there's too much investment into the film industry in Georgia for

1:41:41Shareit to go away. And maybe I'm an optimist. Um entirely go away, probably. Yeah, I I think that it's it's actually kind of more of an exciting uh acumen for what the future of the industry is, and not to get into a lot of like predictions and whatnot that'll take up the rest of this hour, but essentially I think that the uh the indie scene is gonna have a renaissance in Georgia. I 100% agree because we have all the resources which are now not scarce because Marvel's not sucking them all up. Right. And that's a bad thing in a lot of senses because it's put a lot of people out of work and really changed people's life trajectories and a bunch of other bad stuff. But the flip side of that, the opportunity side of that, is I

1:42:27Sharecan go make a deal with a studio that I would not have been able to make 10 years ago to do something in a collaborative manner. Um, you know, Trillith is gonna be here, like Dan Kathy is not going anywhere, that that facility's not going anywhere. They're gonna continue to do that. That was almost the pilot that we had with, but yeah. They're gonna they're gonna continue to figure out how to make that work. You know, Tyler's not going anywhere, his sort of ecosystem. We need like four or five more Tyler Perry's in Georgia where they're putting capital and making jobs into the economy, where they're making original things, where they know their audience. Like, you know, I would like to be that guy.

1:43:06ShareLike, I would like to be the Tyler Perry type guy where I'm creating all of this ecosystemically. I think you are though, because you incorporated you know your competition into the mix because it's not a competition, it's an industry. And and just like you had it with your film set by the sweat with the I can't try to get nailed it down. With the communal effort put into the uh to the project, you know, and then broadening it even bigger with like it's not just my project, it's our project with uh with with your your uh your fellow filmmakers and then including them into your uh there's no line. Exactly. There's no above the line, there's no below the line, inclusivity, which is another word I can't say.

1:43:52ShareUh uh all of you can help each other, and that I think that's the indie scene that California's been dreaming about forever. Yeah. You know, but California is built entirely on a mindset of scarcity, which is why they have the gatekeeping, which is why they have all that other stuff. There's not enough for everyone. There's not enough for everyone. Right. And the reality is there isn't enough for everyone in that model. But if we change the way that we think about above the line, below the line, contributors, who gets ownership, the way if we change the way we think about all that stuff, we can really reframe into more an abundance mindset. And I think not just in filmmaking, but in the economy

1:44:31Shareas a whole, that's gonna have to happen. Yeah. With automation and with AI and with population growth, like we're eventually gonna get to a post-vocational society where the conflation with uh employment and the ability to live a basic life are not gonna be able to be together because there's just not gonna be enough jobs for all the humans. Yeah. And so then people, we're gonna have to change the way we think about work and we're gonna have to change the way we think about so many things. And I think the creative world can lead in a lot of that stuff. It always adds if you look at the history of business throughout Americana, you know, it's it's been the the film entertainment business, you know.

1:45:09ShareOur number one export is entertainment. Yeah, you know, so I agree 100%. Man, we could talk about all sorts of stuff. And this is the nerd things that Mitch and Tom roll their eyes about, but I I I love talking about this kind of stuff. Me too. So we'll have to do it again, but we went way past our timeline. So before we tap out, though, you you're not done done with Dementium. But you know, there's other things on the horizon for you. Yeah. Is there anything you want to talk about? Yeah, uh, there's there's kind of two things. Um, the first thing is I'm trying to build a platform of thought leadership to talk about this kind of stuff in a broader way. I always say that like I want to be kind of the Gary Vaynerchuk

1:45:51Shareof like the creative film and entertainment stuff. He's sort of entertainment adjacent, but like in media advertising. But I want to talk about you know this stuff, and I want to encourage people and speak um you know about the future and equity models and all that kind of stuff. So that's why I'm getting my doctorate, is because when my name starts with Doctor, then maybe more people will invite me on podcast. Doctor Sunderland. You know, different podcasts, but like you know. Um so that's one thing. I'm working on that. And then the as far as like filmmaking, I have my second movie picked out. Um, it's a movie called Fronten. It's uh set in 1970s, Miami. It is a sports crime and mob thriller.

1:46:31ShareOkay. Basically, it's set around the sport of Highli, which is that weird swingy basket helmet sport. Yeah. Uh you'd recognize it if you saw a picture of it. Um the scoop, it's what it's like. Oh, it's Dr. Carla Carla. So the Hyli was the fastest growing sport in America in the 70s, but it's a paramutual sport, like horse racing. Um, what is that show where or is it a movie where they they try to invest in the guy that with High Lie and then he like just takes their money and disappears with it? I can't remember what he called it. I don't have any idea. Alright, sorry, go ahead. Um fastest growing sport in America was paramutual, so basically that means that if you take the gambling out, it like

1:47:16Shareruins it. Um and so there was a lot of like games commission stuff. It was illegal in a lot of states, and they were like lobbying and all this stuff. Well, anytime there's gambling, a lot of times there's organized crime and there's game fixing, and so there were all these stings that the FBI did in the 70s on highlight syndicates, and it effectively killed the spread of the sport. Um so this guy, Sandy Schenckman, who is a development producer, works a lot with Bluestone, which is a company I'm part of. We um our company did the movie Nuremberg. Oh wow, and Sandy was a development producer on that and as well as on several other Bluestone projects. I'm an equity partner in the business. Um but he saw an early cut of Dementium and uh asked me if I'd

1:47:59Sharebe interested in taking a look at his script that he'd written, which is this Fronten script, uh, and considered directing it. So read it. It's really, really, really great. It's a fictional story set against that historical backdrop about kind of a washed-up college baseball player whose dad fell in with the mob and ended up getting sent to prison, finds himself uh as a high ally player in Miami, caught between the mob, FBI, friends, love, loyalty, doing the right thing with a cost. And I what I love about stories, like my sort of director's voice, is I like heroism. Yeah, I like people who make decisions that have costs. Yeah, mistakes. Stakes, costs. It's gotta cost you something. That's why I like snooze on the superhero movies.

1:48:39ShareYeah. Because like I it's gotta cost you something. Yeah, you can't bring Tony Stark back after you get it. I hate pulled punches. One of my favorite comparisons is comparing Air Force One to Captain America 2. So Air Force One, when Gary Oldman and them were taking over the plane, uh, the pilot looks at the co-pilot and they're landing in Rommstein, and he goes, No matter what happens, we are going to land this plane. Gary Oldman and the other guy burst through and they're like, You will take this plane back in the air now. And the captain goes, No, and they shoot him in the head. Right? Great moment, but the best moment is when they turn to the co-pilot because he now does not have to wonder if they're

1:49:17Sharethey're worth their money. Right? And he's like, You will take this plane into the air now, and he just holds still and gets killed. I'm like, Yes, that is what we want. That shows the stakes, that's the cost of a brave decision. Then compare that with Captain America with button pusher Bob, where there he's like, You will push the button, and he says, Nope, can't, captain's orders, and then he lives, yeah, kill that guy, right? Because then we're all like sucked in, like uh pirates of the Caribbean III in the first five minutes when they hang a child. Yeah. Like, I'm in. Yeah. Like, no one's safe. And so Fronton very much has this very high stakes kind of storytelling, and Sandy does a really great job of taking a

1:50:02Sharestory that is about a sport, set against the backdrop of a sport that most people don't know or understand. But for the first three quarters of the movie, the sport or the results of games don't really matter. Yeah. It's just sort of happening in the background. But by the time he very cleverly twists the story to where the all of a sudden who wins the game matters the most, the audience has had a chance to kind of like understand the game now. Yeah. It's really brilliant. And um, aren't as complicated as cricket. No, no, it's basically racquetball, for lack of a better, you know, it's it's very soon. Very similar to Racketball except it's wildly dangerous. But so that's the next one. It's a feature film.

1:50:44ShareUm shoot it in Atlanta. Okay. Shoot it in Atlanta. We may do some exteriors in Miami. Most of it'll be on stage in um in the High Lye arena. So are you gonna keep your uh your doctrine on how people buy into this movie? Uh you know, it really depends. Uh I need like seven to ten million dollars. So it really depends on uh where I get the money from, uh, on how much control I'll have over uh over the equity structure. So uh if I can raise it myself, then then yes. If I get you know a producer who comes in to make it, then I'll have to you know flex what I can within my lane. Well, we'll share your this podcast with whoever we know. Yeah. Uh if anybody wants to not lose money on a movie, I can't promise you that you're gonna make money, but I can

1:51:33Sharepromise you you're not gonna lose money. There you go. Uh you know where to find me. Oh man, this is awesome. Thanks so much for coming in, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Happy to do it again anytime uh and recommend you know some other folks that you should talk to. I think conversations like this are really important. Yeah. And so thanks for having them. Yeah. All right. Well, that was Mark Sunderland. This is Entertain this. And uh go check them out. Go watch the Mentium on Amazon, okay? Pay for it, it's worth it. Leave a review, please. Please leave a good review. No, it doesn't have to be good, just leave a review. At least a B plus. Honest review. At least a C plus.

1:52:09ShareHonest review. All right. And uh thanks. Yeah, thanks.