Mark Wilson Sunderland: Sweatequity Filmmaking (interview)

0:01ShareMitch:Free audio post production. Finalphonic dot com.

0:29ShareHello, welcome to Entertain this, a podcast about movies, TV shows, and video games. My name's Hayden. 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 guess we're not. 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? Why? Uh that has 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 one in Atlanta. No way. And it was weird because like Sunderland is not a very common name. Um, I'm you're the only one that I know.

1:17ShareThere 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 a bastard from Game of Thrones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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.

1:43ShareMitch:Oh, okay.

1:44ShareAnyone named Sunderland, that's what happened. So most people named Sunderland are not related to each other. Okay. Um, Smith. Yeah, like Smith or Cooper and this and that sort of thing. Um, but anyway, there's a couple other Mark Sunderlands, and uh I think 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 than 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 Wilson is after my great-granddad, who I had a very

2:26Sharegood relationship with. So it kind of balances, okay, balances out. That's crazy. Makes me sound like a director. Let's get that three. Oh, it's got the Paul Thomas Anderson line. It's either director or a uh presidential assassin or something. I mean, either's fine. I'm a good local for both. The rate is similar, I think. You just go crazy in the end anyway. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it'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.

3:06ShareI became one on Saturday. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. I I'd punch you, but you outranked me now. It was yeah, it was dumb. Yeah. Like most things in the army are. Yeah. But yeah. Everybody's standing in the heat. Uh no, it was inside. Oh, okay. That's good. It must be an officer thing. Yeah, yeah, 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. All right. So this is my one of my favorite jokes. My granddad told me this joke. So there's a colonel. And he uh likes to have a staff meeting every Monday morning with a staff, staff. So they all come in, sit around the conference table every Monday morning. It's like 0-8.

3:44ShareAnd he always likes to start it off with an icebreaker. Um, and one day he's feeling a little like Cantan Chris and wants to make it a little spicier than usual. So the staff sits around the table and he says, All right, we're gonna go around the room. Here's the icebreaker for the day. Everybody rolls their eyes, they hate this shit. And he's like, Um, how much of sex is pleasure and how much is work? Disgust. And, you know, this white colonel that's on the staff is like, you know, I think it's probably like 75% work. 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

4:27Sharehe's like, I think it's like 80, 20, like 20% work, 80% pleasure. Okay. 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 do you think? Shocked that he's been spoken to, he turns around and he goes, Well, I think it has to be 100% 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. When you could be an old salty colonel with your dad one day.

5:08ShareYeah, exactly. Anyway, yeah, you can cut that out if you want. We'll see if we can make it work. That's nothing to do with what we're okay. Just give personality. Sure, sure, sure. 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. I'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 to 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.

5:49ShareAnd 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 think 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. You 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 of the Lord of the Rings extended editions and watched every minute.

6:32ShareYou'd be friends with Tom already. Oh yeah. Perfect. Tom's looking better. Y'all are pretty hot on Tom. Uh no, yeah. And I I was just um really 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. And so uh I ended up going to film school at SCAD. Wow, 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. Now I'm a two and a half threat. I can sing, I can dance, and I can act enough at a distance to

7:25Shareget away with the first background acting. Better than what I can do. Yeah. 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. SCAT has this really cool thing where you can be scholarshipped in a discipline you don't major in. That's very unusual. So usually if you have a vocal performance scholarship somewhere, you got to 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 Boogley and sure.

8:05ShareI could I you know I I could have done Michael Boogley, but I decided I didn't want that lifestyle. He had better things going for him. Yeah, yeah. I was offered that actually before Michael. Okay, yeah. Give the kid a shot. I actually recommended Michael. Didn't want to hold him back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean he's a good kid. Yeah, rough. He's got a rough name as a it's not cool like Sunderland. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um so anyway, I uh Scad, you can go and you can get a scholarship, you don't have to major in that thing. So I got a vocal performance scholarship saying 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.

8:48ShareUh 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 in 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. So I was running, doing, you know, kind of chasing him, doing his stuff. So you knew the groundwork for being an electrician. 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

9:31Sharesome 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, or sky panels, like when we thought that was like the coolest new thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. What's a sky panel? Yeah, big ass LED. But like they're they're 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.

10:19ShareBut 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 called Finding Carter, which was a mid-tier dramy, 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

11:03Shareschool, living her life, happy go lucky. Uh-huh. 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. Sort of descends into Madden. You know. Yeah. 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.

11:38ShareUm, like I knew what a double scram 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 was showing me what's going on. What year was this? This would have been 2014. Okay. So and this was uh were you guys in the studio or were you uh on location at a high school somewhere. Wow. And um So you guys had to pack up and move every every day. We 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

12:19Sharethey'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 as 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? Million takes? You know, I don't I don't remember. Yeah. 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 was the team I was on, come in and kind of run everything on the day of shooting, they had rigged the wrong bathroom. And this is again back before LEDs, back before all this stuff. So you had these movie tone um fluorescent light fixtures that

13:08Sharewere 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 keynoph 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. Okay. There were not movie tone lights in bathroom B. And you can't just move to You can't just shoot it in bathroom A because you know the lighting department has to now tell the producers, like, it did the wrong bathroom. And so I'm standing behind the best boy and he cues up on the

13:50Shareradio, 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 fix. And I was like, I actually know how to do that. It 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 got to shoot in here in like four hours. And I laughed at him because I thought it was a joke. Yeah. And he goes, I'll I was like, I'll just take care of it. So I did it in like, I don't know, 20 minutes. I went upstairs, scavenged everything out of the other bathroom, came down.

14:25ShareI 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 happened. That's the first chapter about the Mark Sunland. That's how I got in for union stuff. I'd worked on some indie stuff before 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. Yeah, he was like, this guy goes with me everywhere I go. And I and it was like, and I and I learned, you know, a bunch of stuff about being a regular lie detect, but it was 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

15:05Sharethe 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 have like some underwater lighting and stuff that you can do. Yeah, 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 other things. There was a lot of gaps in my lighting tech knowledge, but I had these like spikes and the underwater thing and then and then weird electrical tricks.

15:40ShareAnd you didn't you didn't electrocute yourself? No, I did, I did. Oh yeah. I actually 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 was just gonna take a shot at the target. That was a great shot. You know, can't be the main character. Uh Sam Jackson like right at his feet. Really? Yeah, it's really funny. Like, I'm just working and he's standing there, I'm working, I'm like down on the ground, I get hit, and I was like, fuck. And he goes, You probably appreciate it. And it was like it was like a hand squeezer nimmer thing, but you know one of those bullshit things that you like put together.

16:26ShareAnd uh I hadn't built it, somebody else had built it. I was just messing with it, it had like an exposed lead and it tagged me. Oh man. But um, yes, anyway, that is way off topic.

16:37ShareMitch:Uh I do here.

16:40ShareUh so got in as Lighty Tech, ended up doing that the better part of a decade. Uh, never wanted to do it, never really enjoyed it. And that never, I'm not, I'm not really a lighting cinematographer. I'm really not a technical person.

16:53ShareMitch:Yeah.

16:54ShareI 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 somebody 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 widening technique.

17:18ShareMitch:Yeah.

17:19ShareUh 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 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. I mean, I always joke that I'm prior enlisted more ways than one. Because I was definitely like a grunt in the movie world if I ended up working more in kind of an officer's role there towards the end of that being uh being like a crew guide.

18:06ShareThe 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. It's all word of mouth, nobody really uses resumes, not really job applications. IMDB is sort of the closest thing you have to like a like a professional networking solution. A bunch of every day somebody says, Oh, I created it, and I was like, it's never 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. I'm you know, in 500 people's phone is you know, local 479

18:45ShareLighty Tech. Yeah, probably like I get texts from people who are like, hey, I'm looking for work. I'm like, I am not a best boy anymore. Don't insult me. Yeah, no, 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 the 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 writing 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 uh-huh in a lot of ways as a production manager.

19:23ShareUh 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. Best boy has this like additional maintenance you know, component. But even as a production manager, you still deal with that just from the administrative side. Um but I when anytime you go up in the movie business, you kind of 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

20:05Sharelike TV movies and like smaller things because that's sort of how it it works. And then you, you know, if I had 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 you know, no, no, no. 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. I was definitely making more money as a best boy. Really? Um I was definitely making uh making more money as a best boy for sure. But you gotta take the risk if you want to well ultimately um

20:48Shareand and this is kind of like leads into making the the movie, which is what we're kind of getting towards is 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 foyer and a production manager, I took every opportunity I had to talk to directors whenever I got achieved. 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 is was not true of all of my colleagues necessarily. They were like, oh, I'm a director. Right. Okay. Um but what I didn't know is that there's not a way to work your way into that position.

21:34ShareThere's not a way to work into it. You can't work your way up from the mail room to the C suite as a director, that is, there's just not a path uh to there's not a 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 know, probably over a hundred directors over the course of, you know, that however long 10 years. But you gotta you gotta have something that gets you in the door. Like a tech founder is gonna invent tech, right?

22:18ShareYou know, sure. Or they're gonna tell you they're gonna invent tech once they get your money. Um but the the the the point is is that of those hundred directors I spoke to, just call it a hundred, 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 or it had 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

23:08Sharepeople. Right um but some people like I wasn't in the position where that was going to happen to me very likely. Okay. Working in Atlanta nobody's hiring directors out of Atlanta nobody's you know 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 and wasn't going to move to California for a variety of reasons. Most the biggest reason because I was raising my siblings and I could not afford to move the whole family out to California. Yeah. 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

23:52Sharethose people that you know you're gonna eventually meet and work with. Yeah I mean I work 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 I I had some people that like encouraged me to move and join the lighting union. And then on Stranger Things season one Ross Duffer talks to me about it for a little 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

24:40Sharecapacity. He was just like oh you should do it because this, this, and this and he was very very kind and generous with his time as well. But it didn't make it more feasible for I 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 going to break through this membrane of like I don't have the resources so I need to get the resources to do you know these things. And then couple that with I have really expensive ideas. Yeah everybody does. Yeah no I'm not a person like that very expensive ideas. And so uh I never wrote something that isn't expensive was feasible to do like the way that you know you need to do an a no budget indie movie.

25:28ShareYeah 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.

25:46ShareMitch:Yeah.

25:47ShareAnd uh I I learned the hard way how to write for budget. They say don't do it it it hurts the story. You're not gonna come out the the gate making a Michael Bay movie. You're not gonna make a Transformers movie on an indie indie budget. No the first full length feature I wrote was a revisionist history action adventure movie. Oh my God set I told you set in an alternate oh my god it's two levels of displacement 13th century two levels historical was basically uh a mixture between Pirates of the Caribbean Oceans 11 and Assassin's Creed all right very very very very fun very expensive was there 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

26:44Sharehave that knowledge loss and so imagining what the world would look like without that knowledge 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 looked into how Wild Wild West was made yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah which is like one of the worst like movie I'm I'm not dogging the movie I'm dogging the like the the pitch pitch for 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 is like what what would what is an um a

27:28Sharebutterfly effect moment that would lead to a diversion punk future 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 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. A producer would read that and be like well this is you know 300 million dollar's pay grade it it only has 75 locations yeah and they're all in 1400s Greece. Yeah oh no except no Rome and Paris and London. Yeah let's do we have an Icelandic volcano in yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly so uh all that to say like that's kind of where

28:20Sharemy my vision 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. And that was really discouraging. And I know a lot of people who've been there uh before it has nothing to do with my talent 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, 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

29:11Sharethey 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 all right 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 pile 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 I never really thought about it that way. Yeah. Um would you agree? I mean d have you ever probably crossed the line

29:53Shareasking too many questions 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 in just like the initial um the initial like conversations with people because again I was working there for my living and so I like I could not endanger my job. Right um you know 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 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 send it to me.

30:42ShareYou know like these kinds of moments happen at like rap parties but they're they're few and far between I definitely uh and I won't say who it was um 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. Did you 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 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 know that have zero experience and get put

31:38Sharein like a security position in a movie or whatever yeah um they uh they're 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 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 but no nobody nobody gets tired of of hearing a thoughtful like positive about their work. Yeah and I think the less famous they are the more

32:18Sharemeaningful it usually is every day. Andrew 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 a uh I think he's a co-founder of Pixar yeah uh but he wrote and directed um I'm gonna misquote it but he wrote and wrote wrote and directed um Bugs Life Thinks Toy Story I want to say he was in one wasn't Wally as well yeah I think he did one and two for 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 to you tomorrow but I just wanted to tell you thank you for

33:00Sharemy childhood 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 meaning like how can 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 Yeah it's a del it's a delicate balance but ultimately I think the more you work with somebody especially I mean we'd worked together for six weeks at that point. Yeah we'd had a bunch of conversations sat and ate lunch

33:40Sharetogether 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 we 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 we're like in the same community in Enid Oklahoma. He's the only person I'd ever heard of who was in the film business that was like connected to me any in any way.

34:24ShareAnd 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 to you had the same name but uh he um yeah funny yeah you you you said in your panel that he was worked with Spielberg yeah so he was um yeah he was the first team PA on the Goonies no way which was really funny but uh one of his first jobs in Hollywood was like run and film

35:08Sharefor Back to the Future in ET at the same time. Yeah but yeah he ended up being Steven's EA at the Amblant kind of during like the heyday when Kevin Feynley was the receptionist. I have a uh a uh Spielberg uh associate that was 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 that 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 and and he said you know uh it you'll get more out of it if you can figure it out for yourself kind of thing. And 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

35:56Sharedirector. I am not a good director. I'm a I'm a terrible director but I'm a pretty good writer and I've enjoyed and 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 which drives me nuts we don't have that kind of relationship. But you know him I think that's what they call a coach. Yeah. Isn't that the difference between coach and mentor yes. 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 I mean and and I you know my philosophy on leadership and like helping people is is very different than

36:40ShareI think a lot of the the status quo Hollywood like I'm I don't like the way that Hollywood does business. 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? Hey this project isn't I'm you know I'm not looking for a project right now. Okay. Or this project isn't a fit for me. Good luck. So somebody's approached you with a script and stuff and and said can you? Yeah and you said no. Was it just because the script's bad or uh usually I don't even read it. Really if they ask me to read it and give them

37:24Sharenotes 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 got to be pretty compelling.

37:55ShareMitch:Yeah.

37:55ShareAnd I can tell based on kind of the log line 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 like 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. And but people don't do that 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 sometimes.

38:37ShareYeah 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 er everything in Hollywood is like very personal it's very squishy you know um and it'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 sunk some money into it all sorts of stuff. Yeah I learned real quick Hayden's real good about telling you if you he thinks your idea is stupid. We all need that I'll only tell you if you know you're a friend. Yeah but yeah we we we uh did another project where we w drove from like here to Savannah looking at places and locations and all sorts of stuff.

39:20ShareAnd it's a lot of uh 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 sh the handshake deals and stuff like that once uh we started to get budgets and things figured out 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 and 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 oh I know oh trust me my wife is not

40:07Sharein 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 she I'm like the movie's coming out she's like oh babe I'm so proud of you no no no I don't think you're like take all the people who've 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 right and then cut it by the amount of people who start then by finish the script then by start recording you know 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 just on Amazon on my YouTube channel. It's like dear I don't think you understand.

40:49ShareThat's a that is a very elite fraternity of people who've been able to do that one at all but two is definitely like truly independently of the system is 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 to go make something let's do it.

41:33ShareAnd 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 got to get a lot more people like the four of us aren't going to 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. All right 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 the wrote the story he gave me the first draft of the script in November of 2020. Okay. All right so you can't count COVID so you're looking at roughly four five years since the script was written to

42:27Sharepremiere well yeah almost almost six because uh November it'll be six years well because I was doing some I like looking up with stuff you started filming what it says October 2021? Yeah first day of filming was October 1st 2021 okay and all right 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 con for a movie so I I I have a lot of questions about yeah yeah what you got all right first off how'd you get your money uh what was your budget originally there was never a budget so you had zero budget did you have any production I 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

43:10Sharemy 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 necessary going into politics too right exactly so it's all about America Jesus freedom um no 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 take it but I'm way more proud of how we did it. I think that that's really what's gonna be the thing that's gonna pull people into this and especially with things like obsessions and back rooms 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

44:00Sharedollars 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. Um we went to we had a core group of people, which, like I said, was like myself, my sister, uh, who was the first AD co-writer, producer, um, Daniel Bowman, who was a producer and the locations manager, Andrew Hunter, who was the producer, casting director, and production designer, uh, Nate Rigaud, who was the DP. So we had this core group of like five, six folks who um who all 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

44:46Sharethat basically was you have when when we ask you to work on the movie and you want to work on the movie, you have this is your menu of options. We will pay you your tier one rate, like your indie rate. Right. Or you can invest to 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'd invested cash. Um, you can then invest your equipment 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? So I got I got a great story about that. Okay. So that that's what we did. And so um we we the vast so we had like 78 people who worked on

45:35Sharethe movie in some capacity or another. Over 50 of those people were elected to invest their time.

45:42ShareMitch:Okay.

45:43ShareSo 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 chart, how how many TAs and and you know, just daily people did you have onset? What what was the busiest day that you had? I'd have to look at the call sheet, but I mean probably 50 people. So where did that money come from, man? Well, we didn't pay most of them. Well, 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 12 different people who put in money to of those 12 people, 10 of them also worked on the movie and invested their

46:31Sharetime. 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, Adrew 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 movie 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 you didn't actually work on. They just threw money in it and that's all. Everybody else was putting their time and their resources into

47:12Sharethe movie. I can't say that word sweat sweat equity. Sweat equity. Sweat sweat sweatity. Yeah. Yeah. So it was sweat equity, but it was also in kind. So for instance, one of our EPs, guy named Nate Glass, used his production company, Glassifier, 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. And so he turned in an invoice. We turned that invoice into an investment agreement and credited in 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. Yeah, I got the tap on my shoulder from my

47:55Sharecommunity. 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'd 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 the 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. Yes. 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 the out-of-box thinking that

48:40ShareI 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 um like one semester from finishing my doctorate in business, and I'm writing a dissertation on leadership in the creative Tillman TV industry. Wow. Um, but make me feel like a real underachiever. I don't even finish college. I don't have any hobbies. All my hobbies are just different kinds of work, you know, 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

49:29Shareof 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. And what aspect? Like they were, they were working, they were underpaid, 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.

50:11ShareAnd 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 this kind of scrappy. How can I do that in such a way that I don't take advantage of anybody? That is so cool. And there were two, there were two solutions. The first one was the equity structure. 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.

50:45ShareMitch:Okay.

50:46ShareAnd then everybody else had contributed their equity. So I told you I was going to 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 another. 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 isn't 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

51:26Sharepay a production sound mixer for the whole movie, which was a big ouch really at that point. And um no budget, so everything's additive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every every spending decision hurts. And so we got this guy, he'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. That 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 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

52:19Sharehave 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 say I'm gonna save I'm gonna save the story for Tyler. Tyler came out on the first weekend, did a phenomenal job. We paid he like he negotiated his rate, and I was like, it hurt. Yeah. Um and uh he called me the like the day after, yeah, three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday with a holiday. And he called me on Sunday or Monday, I guess, and was like, I want to do the rest of the movie and I want to invest my time 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

53:11Shareinvesting 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 done always does a great job for me. But that was such a cool thing, and it would 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 we 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

54:01Sharesomebody rents the movie on Amazon, yeah, my PA that worked one day makes money. No way. That'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 goes up. Every single time that somebody buys that movie or watches it, that PA is gonna make money in perpetuity forever. Well, that's cool. So uh I have a a philosophical question for you about 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 taking a rain with it. And uh sure he's way better at all this stuff than I ever could hope to be. But regardless. Well, it sounded great.

54:48ShareYou heard it in the yeah, yeah. It did, it did sound very great. I heard uh you heard Barker talk about how much he didn't like the cut with the bad audio. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I've been there too. I've had bad, we've had podcasts with bad audio. So yeah. Well, you 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 he came to. And so the mix was not there, it wasn't mixed. It was test on it. It was a pre-mix, yeah. It was a test audience. Yeah, but anyways, all right, philosophical question. Apocalypse now, all right? Okay. That movie had a horrendous, you know, uh shoot. Yeah, like everybody was miserable.

55:27SharePeople 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 ter you know, you know, not great movie with an amazing uh shoot, you know, story uh experience in making that um it depends on what makes the shoot terrible. Okay. 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 attitudes and well, like I'm a grunt, right? You know, we're in the infantry and the army.

56:23ShareI've I've been in some really terrible, crappy situations that were elementally difficult. Right. 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. Yeah. 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 and 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.

57:06ShareYeah. Right. 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 said, 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 just put on a

57:51Sharepragmatics, 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. Like, 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 are a minority, yeah, 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 of something.

58:32ShareMitch:Yeah.

58:32ShareBut 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. Uh-huh. 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 sometime. Yes, you do. Oh, sorry, don't allow out. But uh like I remember uh for my my capstone, right? Yeah, uh it was a week-long shoot. We shot it at night, a lot of kids. They didn't they'd never worked more than eight hours a day, yeah, you know, and we're we're going overnight. And like I started out with a crew of 50, and the last day was

59:16Sharedown to like eight. Like, you know, they they were tired and they had school. Yeah, 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.

59:27ShareMitch:Yeah.

59:27ShareAnd I have a family and stuff. And I'm like, what are you complaining about? I'm being an absolute dick about it. But uh I laugh because me and him, you know, we just started hanging out and being friends and stuff. And somehow this project. Yeah. Somehow I'm out there holding up a barn door in the rain, and I'm like, why am I here? It's because the other kid got scared and ran off. No, to be fair though, like I I didn't take time to to like mingle and and make people feel valued, let them see the vision and you know, learn from that experience. 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,

1:00:06Sharekind of thing. And student projects are always gonna be like, oh, 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. Yeah, 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. Well I 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 Dementium who wouldn't work with

1:00:47Shareme again. Yeah. And and what I've seen in years and years of work in 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 draw 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. And it they were gonna blow up a bigoture for it. Yeah. And he's like, hey, look what I did over Christmas. And they and you're they were like, Whoa, and he just did it

1:01:31Sharebecause he wanted to help to the 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 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 that leadership. Yeah. That you know, leadership is the act of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the

1:02:07Sharemission and improve the organization. I don't think that's just for the army. No, it's true. 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 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. Yeah, 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

1:02:54Sharebest 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 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 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 you are. Oh man, that's so nice. I try to play like I didn't invite anybody that doesn't like it. There you go. You can message us on uh our Witch. Yeah, yeah.

1:03:36ShareIf you're listening to this and you need me, entertain this podcast. Entertain this podcast. But um further out there. Yeah. Um all right, we gotta 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 there were kind of two things that we did to honor everybody. One of the things was the equity plan that we did, which I think

1:04:18Shareis 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 it on the weekends. Weekends and holidays. And that meant that we had to shoot it in blocks. So we ended up shooting 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 gray and gross looking. And then all of the uh stuff that isn't present, whether it's

1:05:00Sharea 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 first day 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 weeds 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 gonna shoot two weekends in a row. So that's and I was one for getting because we wanted to

1:05:41Sharekeep 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. Which is at the end when the cops come in and it like just jib up. We tried a couple other things, but that was the only thing we ended 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. No way. Yeah. And the other car was my car, and the other car was my

1:06:21Sharesister's car. If 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 recognized the badge and stuff, and I was like, yeah. No, it's I mean it's a movie car that just like my buddy, he's a Alex Ori is a producer, he let us borrow it, and we credited him as an investor in the movie. All right. So 16 days. Yeah, so 16 days total, but really it's 13 days. And then we did that like three-hour drum 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. No way. Okay. Abyss thing where he's like when he falls into the abyss and he

1:07:02Shareso 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. 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, at special effects guy, right? Special effects guy. Oh, yeah. So he was clutch for this movie. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's just done. Yeah, he was in the movie. Yeah. Yeah. And he's and I'll plug in. 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.

1:07:38ShareYeah, check it out. Georgia Special Effects. Okay. It's very good. Maybe we should talk to him. You should talk to him. It's great. Um 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. No, 12 hours on the clock, 12 hours elapsed of call time. And that day was 12 and a half hours. unknown: 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 being a lighting tech, like I was like,

1:08:22Shareall right, we're gonna spend this 200, you know,$2,500 between the balloon and the tech and the helium. 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. Just floated up there. I'm not everything. 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 know, like indie movies, moonlight is real like nighttime is so hard. Yeah, it's harsh. Like 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

1:08:53Sharefault, but like never had that happening before, and it just really boned 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 allowed. So did you have to rush stuff to make up? Uh we no, we made we made tactical changes. Okay. Yeah, we we changed. 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 one 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.

1:09:40ShareAnd I you you would have never guessed. I what did you guys have like a focus pull or anything like that? Okay, yeah, 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 there I'm expecting just one dude with a camera just being like no, no, no. Both camera team, polygrip. Yeah, okay, why only one lens? Because the only lens we have. I didn't want to pay to rent one, and it was a zoom lens, and I never had to take it off a 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 didn't. Focus fullers did a great job. Um, Erica Colquit and uh uh the other guy's name is oh my gosh,

1:10:24ShareI feel bad. I'm blanking on it. I can't remember anybody's name. It's uh no, I I feel bad. This this this podcast is ran by me, Mitch, and some other guy.

1:10:37ShareMitch:Yeah, yeah. But uh, this ranks.

1:10:40ShareSo 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 scorecey rule of thumb. Most of the scenes have one or two shots. Hmm. And there are, I think, like 25 scenes that are only there's a lot of dialogue and a lot of long shots too. Yeah, so the his monologue is one one take, one shot. I 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.

1:11:32ShareBut 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. Right. 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

1:12:10Sharehave really good, clean communication with each other. Yeah, but like having this this communal uh sweaty sweat, sweaty. It's it's contagious now. Sweat gritty. 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.

1:12:41ShareMitch:Yeah.

1:12:41ShareWas 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 the 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 on any other project. So, like our A-camera operator, Josh Heatherks, 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,

1:13:19Sharesweet. 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 DP, and I 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.

1:13:43ShareMitch:Okay.

1:13:44ShareAnd 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 yes or no 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 as a team. Yeah. I didn't. Okay. Like we did as a team where we said, like, these this is how we're gonna kind of handle this. And 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?

1:14:29ShareI 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.

1:14:41ShareMitch:Okay. unknown: Yeah.

1:14:42ShareI 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. And now he doesn't believe in the project anymore. No, we were all we were all really aligned. And and uh, 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. 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 just changed at some point, and uh 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

1:15:26Shareclimax right before we did it. And the reason why it was is not super meaningful, but the reason why we did it. So originally the way it was written is dad is still supposed to be in the chair when the cops get there.

1:15:41ShareMitch:Right.

1:15:42ShareBut Adam got COVID. Oh and so he couldn't come. Or he got COVID or something happened. Yeah, like had COVID or something, like anyway, like Adam could 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? It's like the dummy doesn't really look like Do you remember a dummy being uh so like what's when he gets out of the trunk and like carries in and that's a dunk. He's like, we have this dummy, should we just try to use a dummy? And it's like we could so what we decided was we'll just put

1:16:23Sharehim in the casket. Yeah. So she she comes in and she checks the pulse in the casket. We don't see in the casket. Okay. He says no pulse. And he goes, I'm gonna call in a suicide. She says it's not even him. So 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. Wow, wild ending. I did not well so the the casket threw me off at the beginning until the reveals throughout the movie. I was like, Oh, okay, okay. Well, yeah, uh, 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 this whole bit where she was gonna like check

1:17:01Sharedad's pulse and like it was the 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 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. There's only one location. So the whole thing is on Rex Christmas Tree Farm, and they just have three different houses and then the first thing.

1:17:37ShareOkay, 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 back in. And you didn't have to orchestrate anything on the fly for any of that. Wow. That's all I did when I 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 door is, that just goes into their like other living room.

1:18:19ShareSo 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. No way. 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. Oh 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 look like the whole process on the I've never had to do set design before. I couldn't even imagine. Well, the one project that I worked with you on, they you had the uh the one where like the the family has to

1:18:59Sharego into the bathroom to hide. Yeah, and it's it was it was a closet. Oh yeah, yeah, that was that was just us shooting at the end. At angles, yeah. Yeah, heat thing. Yeah. Well, 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 a basement or something. It was a basement and then didn't just find the bodies at it. Yeah, no. Fully dress like fully dressed it. Yeah. Um Kate Wilson was our our kind of set decorator on a movie. So she she did all that and it was she she buy in too on a way. Those those bodies, yeah. So where did is that from the uh special effects studio too? I think we rented the bodies. Okay, because they weren't just like Halloween decorations, I

1:19:42Sharewas like, whoa. No, I think I think we rented the bodies. Yeah. Yeah. You have any goofy shots, like like candid photos and stuff like that with you guys? Uh 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. Yeah. 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 to grab the girl 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 that's there. We enhanced the snow at the end. So there's practical snow mixed with VFX snow. Okay. Okay.

1:20:29ShareUh fall, snowfall, because we wanted to time it exactly uh with their hands coming together. And so that that starts with the starts with the effect snow and then it's mixed in with practical snow.

1:20:38ShareMitch:Okay.

1:20:39ShareUm, 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. Okay, man. Um painting out lights got not easy to no. Well, fortunately, I uh am a part owner in a post house. So I was able to do it at cost, which is great. So it's called Find Fire Digital Services. We do VFX, 3D modeling, uh, 3D, 2D animation, color. What's your guys' uh what do you guys use for I you are asking the wrong guy. Okay. I do the business. Oh uh all right, Kyle Woodyal, our post production supervisor that managed is the general manager of that company. And he does all like the actual nerd stuff? He coordinates it. Okay.

1:21:22ShareHe doesn't necessarily do it, do it, but he he's the post. 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 a little cool. Do we know Lucas Bryant? Safe house post. I don't. Was he you should talk to him? He's great. Was he a north North Georgian alumni? I don't think so. All right. Well, anyways, um So then we had some other fixes. We like there was the scene where you remember where he his dad is up standing up and he's like approaching him and then tackles him. We saw his pack, uh, his mic pack. Oh, okay. And then the other the only other things that we did, um, we enhanced the blood on the wrist.

1:22:08ShareSo that's a mix between practical and I didn't even notice it. No way it was all practical. The mix. The mix. So he has tubes around his wrists that are makeup and and bleeds practical blood, and we enhanced it with VFX. Yeah, I didn't even notice it. Um, and then uh 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 you 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 the Yeah, it's a locked off shot, so they just painted him out and then painted him.

1:22:49ShareOh, okay. Okay. Um so most of the VFX was just to clean up what was already there. It was all like enhancement or fix. All right. Okay, yeah, there was nothing, there was nothing purely like CGI, which is smart for as best as you can do with yeah. We like 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 these jagged, nasty teeth. Yeah, I it was almost frustrating that we never really get 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 a scientist.

1:23:28ShareOh, yeah, 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. 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 it was the only thing I think we cast off a real like background sound. Oh man, we should we should have talked about casting too, 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.

1:24:08ShareAll the same lens, all the same. Did 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 that's obviously graded different. But no, it's the same thing. 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 like 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 hear in Gladiator, where it was like that slow shutter angle and all the motion. Yeah, 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

1:24:41Sharecamera, all the same lens. All right, do not shoot two shots if one shot will do. Yeah. Uh post-wise, you chose to edit your own movie. Yes. Okay. So about that one. Well, 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 past. Um mostly as a function of budget. Yeah. And the reason why I direct uh the reason why I edited this one was as a function of budget. I was the best available free editor.

1:25:27ShareOkay. 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. Did you third guess, fourth guess? Yeah, it honestly it took me forever and I stalled out a bunch of times. And 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, feedback's a gift. Yeah. I was always happy to hear, you know, something was working or not. I mean, certain certain scenes cut fast and certain scenes cut slow because, you know, just the pay, you know, trying to fix things or like seeing my failures as a director and moments that I wished I had taken again or differently, or

1:26:11Sharewell, 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 don'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

1:27:02Sharemovies ever made after the edit, they're like, Man, I bet you could have been even better with Choice. So writer cut, man. Yeah. But but we but we walked into this movie really eyes open, and like Nate and I, the DP, would look at each other in the morning of every single shoot day and say, we got to get a C today. Because we just all knew what this was. 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, mate.

1:27:34ShareMitch:Okay.

1:27:35ShareI need to be able to say the sentence, this is not my first 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 odd Of that movie being a magnum opus were slim to none. They were not zero. They were slim to 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,

1:28:29Shareyou know. I really, really, really want the movie to be able to 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.

1:29:09ShareMitch:Yeah.

1:29:10ShareFor everyone else, I need it to break even. Yeah. Because if the movie breaks even, I will consider that a monumental success. If I can like go back to Josh Heeterks and stroke him at $10,000 check, waste it has no interest on his investment. Yeah, by the way. He will be happy as a clam, I'm sure, to get a windfall of $10,000, you know, instead of nowhere. And that would make me the happiest man in the world. And so yeah, I need to break even um, 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 him, I was like, if you're not getting something

1:29:52Shareout of just being here, then you probably shouldn't come. And so, like, like I mentioned, Josh was there to be the A 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

1:30:30Sharetime. Right. Just and it wasn't even that much weekend time because of the way we're spacing it out. Um and so the money, I hope you know, I I want everybody to get their money, but it was very clear like this this is not about money. All right, so you you you have your final cut, everything's done. Yeah, uh everybody always forgets the exhibition portion of 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 were you realistic from the b from the beginning? Um my plan was to try and find a sales agent. Okay. And then let that sales agent do their thing.

1:31:20ShareMy what is this sales agent? What is so my my perspectives on leadership and creativity is like hire great people and let them do their expertise. I don't have to be the expert. Crenn 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, I'm there. No, I wouldn't do it. 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.

1:32:00ShareI interviewed probably 30 of them uh and then ended up going with uh Zach Reeder at Lucky27 Media, and he found me the deal with 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 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%. Okay, Zach gets 10%, and then our company gets the rest. So that ends up being of what comes after out after the exhibitioner or the exhibitor, it ends up being um 65%. Okay.

1:32:58ShareThat'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. You're gonna be on Amazon for seven years. No, 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 happen with

1:33:32Sharephysical media, but that's very much like the streamer they play in. But there's a there's two different kinds of straight to DVD distributors. There'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 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%

1:34:09Sharefor seven years license deal just for U.S. 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 gonna have some deals otherwise. That's why it was the North American premiere of Dementium, because it's actually been out uh overseas. Oh, okay.

1:34:24ShareMitch:Okay.

1:34:25ShareUm 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, has a lot more resources than you know, a standalone straight to DVD distributor. Yeah. 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, Zach's recommendation, which I asked him, I said, Would you recommend that I do this deal? And 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 going to get.

1:35:05ShareOkay. Because he makes money off of that too. So I trusted him on that, and then 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.

1:35:35ShareMitch:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:35:36ShareUm 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. There are there are legitimate filmmakers out there that make a living off of that. 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

1:36:17Sharefrom now, we'll still make$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 city. Okay, gotcha. 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. Right. 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.

1:36:55ShareIt was kind of a party. Uh all the crew, casting crew got free tickets. Pretty much everybody there got some sort of discount or some sort of group rate or some sort of invitation. And you chose the plaza just because you got connections? No, I wanted an independent theater. There's only three of them. Oh. 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 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.

1:37:28ShareSo I just the Plaza of the Terra. Um, and the Plaza has a room that seats 325 people. And the outside of it is not in like a street 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 own 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. It like made it feel like a movie experience, but um

1:38:13ShareI I I think I think just I think this is a great place to kind of land the plane. Is I really think this I'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, the 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 season. We outperformed, yeah. Hell yeah. Um, which is fabulous. We get a out of the out of the color greed, the surround sound mix from Adrian Marty.

1:38:55ShareThe color was way impressive. Oh, so good. When you had those uh sunny shots outside, uh it I mean, first I was slap you in the face, but like Oh, that reminds me 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 the harsh transition between the shots or the scenes was was phenomenal. Yeah, I I mean I agree. Lucas is a genius, and we'll you'll have to have him on because he did some weird German color science lab weirdness that he'll I'm sure he'd love to talk about it. But um being very so all that to say he's very proud of the movie. I think there's a lot to be proud of for a lot of people and

1:39:34Sharefor 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 quiddy, said it. Yeah, I tried. I don't know, I've been thinking about it in my brain. 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

1:40:14Sharethe shifting, changing, you know, streaming even now, kind of like coming to like the post-streaming era where all that'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

1:41:02Shareresulting in the resonance of the storytelling of the product? I think that's going to be the luxury good five, 10 years from 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

1:41:41Sharethere's a a switch in the industry, and I I think that there's too much investment into the film industry in Georgia for it 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, yeah. 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

1:42:28Sharetrajectories and a bunch of other bad stuff. But the flip side of that, the opportunity side of that, is I can 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, Trilliph is gonna be here, like Dan Caffey is not going anywhere, that that facility is not going anywhere. They're gonna continue to figure out. That was the pilot the way ahead 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

1:43:09Shareaudience. Like, you know, I would like to be that guy. Like, 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. Yeah, it's an industry. And and just like you had it with your film set by the sweat coop with D, I can't do it. Good job. Yeah. I'm so excited again. I nailed it that way. I'm gonna leave it alone. Well, 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.

1:43:52ShareExactly. There's no above the line, there's no below the line. Inclusive vicity, which is another word I can't say. Uh 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. That'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

1:44:31Sharereframe into more an abundance mindset. And I think not just in filmmaking, but in the economy as 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 a lot of that stuff. It always adds. If you look at the history of business throughout Americana,

1:45:11Shareyou know, it's it's been the the film entertainment business, you know. Our number one export is entertainment. Yeah, you know, so I agree a hundred percent. 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. So we'll have to do it again. We 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

1:45:54Shareway. I always say that like I want to be kind of the Gary Vaynerchuk of 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 podcasts. Doctors, you know, different podcasts, but like 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.

1:46:33ShareIt is a sports crime and mob thriller. Okay. Basically, it's set around the sport of High Lye, which is that weird slingy basket helmet sport. I haven't seen that one. Yeah. Uh you'd recognize it if you saw a picture of it. Um the scoop, it's what it is. Oh, it's yeah, it's Dungeon Crawler Carla. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. unknown: Yeah. So the High Lye 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 there's a movie where they they try to invest in a guy that with High Lie and then he like just takes their money and disappears with it. I can't remember what's fun. Yeah. Uh all right, sorry, go ahead. Um fastest growing sport in America is paramutual.

1:47:20ShareSo basically that means that if you take the gambling out, it like ruins 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 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 a part of. We um our company did the movie Nuremberg.

1:47:52ShareMitch:Oh, wow.

1:47:53ShareAnd Sandy was a development producer on that 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 be 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 the cost. And I what I love about stories, like my sort of director's

1:48:35Sharevoice, is I like heroism. Yeah. I like people who make decisions that have costs. Yeah, mistakes. It's gotta cost you something. That's why I like snooze on the superhero movies. Yeah. It's gotta cost you something. Bring Tony Stark back after you. I hate pulled punches. Yeah. One of my favorite comparisons is comparing Air Force One to Captain America to Air Force One, when Gary Oldman and them are 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.

1:49:17ShareRight? 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 they're more 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 put your 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. Throw that guy, right? Because then we're all like sucked in, like um Pirates of the Caribbean three in the first five minutes when they hang a child. Yeah. It's like, I'm in.

1:49:56ShareMitch:Yeah.

1:49:56ShareLike, no one's safe. unknown: Yeah. And so Fronten very much has this very high stakes kind of storytelling. And Sandy does a really great job of taking a story that is about a sport, but 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 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, no. It's basically racquetball, for lack of a better, you know, it's

1:50:44Sharethere's you want to be killed. There's no one to racquall except it's wildly dangerous. But so that's the next one. It's a feature film. Um location. 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 Ly 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. Oh, okay. It really depends on uh where I get the money from, uh, on how how much control I'll have over uh 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.

1:51:30ShareWell, 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't promise 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. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Hopefully, 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 him out. Go watch the Mentium on Amazon.

1:52:06ShareOkay. Pay for it. It's worth it. Leave a review. 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. I'm sorry. Honest review. All right. And uh thanks. Yeah.

1:52:19ShareMitch:Thanks.com.