You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three, twenty six. I'm happy to do anything
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today's episode with guest host Jason Buff. We're continuing our interviews with horror filmmakers
with Danny Draven. This is one of this. This is like a masterclass
in horror filmmaking. Danny is not only a horror filmmaker, but he's also
the author of the phenomenal horror filmmaking book called The Filmmaker's Book of the Dead,
and it's now in its second edition. If you want to learn filmmaking,
horror filmmaking specifically, go get that. I think it's available on Amazon.
Check it out. It's full of pictures. It's it's really like over
the top in terms of like all the value, all the great things that
are in this book. Let me get going with Danny. This is a
huge interview, about two hours, so I was going to break it up
into two different episodes, and I just decided to go ahead and put it
out there as one and you can kind of listen to the first half when
you have time, or maybe if you have a two hour car drive or
something. You're gonna get a lot out of this episode. I certainly did
and learn a lot about how the indie film making world works, especially the
indie horror film work. So check it out, hope you enjoy. Like
I have all these questions that I've just been coming up with on my own,
but what I was thinking we could do was just kind of go through
the different parts of the first book, just I mean, going strictly on
the the table of contents and just kind of do a brief description of kind
of those different aspects of making a horror film and then just kind of go
from there, you know, and just use that as the framework. And
obtusly, I don't want you to go, you know, so far into
it. I mean, the thing that I found is that usually the more
into it you get, the more interested people get in you know, buying
the book, and like, you know, sure, anyway, I did
have one guy I talked to not too long ago who was like, yeah,
you know, if you read my book, I'll tell you all about
that. You know. It's like, come on, dude, I hear
I hear you. No, totally, I'm happy to I don't. I
don't do that. I just you just ask me whatever you want. I'll
tell you whatever I could, whatever comes to mind. You know, if
they buy the book, great, If not, it doesn't you know,
when I when I get a twenty dollars royalty check in the mail, it
doesn't you know, it's not about the money. So it really isn't this
this book. I'm that this the the first edition is actually very simple.
I mean the second edition is just enhancements to the first. So it's only
you know, it's about one hundred and I don't know, a hundred and
forty pages more than the first edition, and a lot of that is just
newer interviews, and a lot of the information has been updated, so the
chapters are all really the same. I only think I only added really want
it's just the information was updated considerably because it was out a day because it
was five years old. But and and a lot of new really good interviews
with people like Nick Garris and Kate Hotter and all these other dudes, and
which is just pretty much the big difference, and it's got a really good
overhaul as far as like a lot more artwork was added, like a lot
of really cool like grindhouse art just just for I candy, really stuff like
that. So it's it's a fun it's it's the it is by far the
definitive best edition of that book and probably the last. And and and it'll
it'll has a hardcover edition, which is which is really cool and it's a
little it's kind of expensive, but it's they do have a hardcover one that
which is kind of cool for it. But but anyway, yeah, so
it's it's very so whatever we we ever talked about with the book, it's
it's very similar to the second it's just more updated as all. Well,
I mean, that might be a good jumping in point. What what do
you consider the major things that have changed from the first book to the second
book? What technology and distribution mainly because you know, the film filmmaking process
is really still it has been kind of the same for you know, one
hundred years. It's just you know, just the technology has has has changed
to the point you know where particularly in my in my book, it has
to do when I change was the distribution chapters, which is that's different with
digital distribution and everything, and uh and particularly uh some of the stuff in
the production because because the cameras have gotten better, bigger, smaller and shoot
higher, higher quality, you know. And so I think it's just mainly
the technology stuff in the book is the biggest update. And and the interviews,
because I added about well, I don't know, maybe ten people I
think. I mean, I mean, there were really good interviews because these
guys are working professional filmmakers. I mean, I got Mick Garrison, I
sat down and had a great lunch and we just we we had this like
two hour interview, and I think in the book it's like eight nine pages
and there really good insightful questions. I had an awesome, awesome interview with
big time composer John Outman and editor we and that's like a ten page interview
is really good. John Debney, the composer John Debney, and Tboard Takas,
the guy who directed The Gate and Spider's three D. And he did
a really good one too, because I know him. I edited a movie
for him years ago for Sci Fi Channel, and I remember when I was
editing it with him. He was checking his phone and he was making Mega
Snake at the time, and he was showing me some of his stories.
He was showing he was showing me some of his storyboards, and I was
like, because we were just sitting in the editing and I was like,
oh, that's pretty cool. You know, this is pretty cool storyboards.
So then like literally like, well, I don't know if it's eight years
later when I decided to interview him. I was like, hey, man,
you still have those Mega Snakes storyboards because that was for you. Those
things are really well done and I should put those in the book. And
so so that the there's this one scene where the snake eats this guy and
it's the exact storyboards that they did for their show for the film. So
you get his interview and then you get like, you know, the six
pages of these really beautiful storyboards that they did for it, and then you
get the frame grabs from the movie when how they actually shot it, and
and yeah, just stuff like that. I got a really good interview with
some other producers, Mark Rodeski and doing fleming from they did Exists. You
know, the big big flip movie that Eduardo Sanchez did they were producers on
that, and and there's uh, Mike Mendez, he's sitting there now,
director of Big Ass Spider and all right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, he's a he's a great guy. And I'm oh boy, Kane
Hotter, Michael Berryman and I know, I think I'm probably missing a few
people, but but anyway, it's it's it's think. One of the things
people, one of the things that people really enjoyed about this book is is
the interviews, especially from the first edition. I mean, all the information
there is is great anyway, but but the interviews really kind of drove it
home for people because you're you're you're hearing really good advice from people who were
actually, you know, working out and working professionals in Hollywood. So it
was a favorite in the first edition. So I decided in the second one,
I just want to add a lot more. So that's what we did.
You have the same interviews from the first book as well, or is
it like, okay, now, I know you interviewed James One and the
first book, right, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, he's still
he's still in there, all of I think you want to keep him in
there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually edited him before
he you know, back when he was making like I think it was the
first Instidious or something like that. It was a while ago when we when
we talked about it, right, So he did a really good interview,
and uh, everybody's the same. It's it's I think I had to remove
one person because it was just what they were talking about was like so outdated
that I just had got removed. But other than that, it's all the
same people, plus you know, can or twelve people that I've added.
So is there anything that kind of sticks out at you, like something that
just kind of blew your mind with an interview or somebody who just kind of
like, you know, said something to you that you didn't really know beforehand,
or I don't know, just kind of like you know, sometimes you
talk to one of these filmmakers and it's just like, oh wow, you
know that's something Yeah, surely, sure, absolutely, I mean we I
mean when you when I talking, when I talked to say, like somebody
like mc garris or somebody, and I'm asking any specific questions about how he
how he directs actors and what his process is like and all that's it's different
for everyone you know, but but you know, his his answers were were
very insightful and uh and you know, not all of them made him into
the book, but the ones that did, I thought were the we'll be
right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show,
we're the most insightful ones. And it just it's just really even even as
the the interviewer, I mean, I'm I'm like, oh, wow,
I didn't that's that's interesting. That's how you do, that's how he works.
And then I see how how how somebody like uh t board works or
some or or or or what what Kane Hotter was thinking when he when he
decided to uh uh play the character of Jason and what he did to make
it a scary character. And he would answer that question and things like that,
because the guy's usually the guy's like Kane Hotter and Robert England and Michael
Berriman and all these guys that have played uh, you know, monsters,
I always ask them what their process was like as an actor to really develop
that character. It's because it because it's all great horror movie monsters are more
than just you know, guy sticking a mask on or a guy in a
glove. There's a lot more behind it, and to understand their process was
was very insightful. And and that's what I that's what I think you get
when you read these interviews in this book, as you really see like,
wow, Robert England really, you know, he really had a method to
how he portrayed Freddie, you know, and same thing with Jason, and
the same thing with Pluto and Hills have Eyes you know, and all that
stuff. So so it's it's it's it's it's a good it's a it's a
fun conversation. It's just kind of like two guys out, you know,
sitting at a bar having a beer talking about there making movies. And that's
kind of the style of the of the interview. But can you share a
little bit about the health of that, like what what you know or just
the whole concept of directing actors in a you know, a horror movie,
whether it be the the Good Guys or the monsters or whatever, the whole
the whole idea of of of directing the monsters for for I'm sorry, what
you what you mean? Like the uh, well, what is your approach?
What and what what did you learn from these people. What is your
approach and what are some things that you've learned from talking to directors about directing.
You know, monsters are directing actors in general? Oh, I sewage
that. Well. I think I think it's it's it's it's it's certainly going
to be different for every director, But I think instinct has a lot to
do with it. You know when when when when directing actors, you know,
it's it's instinctual. It's uh, it's it's trying, you know,
not not my styles. I'm very much like an actors director, and I
I don't I mean, I have the technical background, no doubt, you
know, because I want to post company and I've been an editor for I've
edited more movies than I care to remember. But but when you combine the
sort of technical background with the actors, uh, when you win you understand
actors, I think it really can make you a very strong director. Because
a lot of people they come out of films school or they come out of
they get into their first film and they they they're they're they're scared of actors
and they're scared of of the of the process. It's kind of like,
okay, well, just they just talk to an actor like they're like they're
they're a puppet, Like, okay, you will you say this line and
you stand here and then you walk over here, and then the camera's gonna
push into your face and and then you're gonna walk off screen. Okay,
you got it, and then you act just like oh okay, and then
you know they can, they can, you know, do it and do
what you're talking about. But that you know that that's not really directing,
you know, that's just technically you know, you're choreographing the scene. You're
just blocking the scene at that point. So so you know, my process
has always been to to really take care with the actors and to really you
know, spend a lot of time with them and and just be there for
whatever they need because you know, and and and and give them what they
need from a director so like they can play the scene properly and uh and
and have the technical understanding to communicate to the crew and to the So that's
my that's my process. It's kind of you know a little of both.
Some people are just completely technical. You know. It's just like they hire,
you know, I'll certainly it's always going to hire the best actors you
can afford, and you just kind of most of the time if you hire
an actor of that caliber that you don't they don't need to do much at
all. It's just sit back and watch it happen because they're so amazing and
they get it, you know. And other times, you know, they
need a lot more and they do need that push and that technical direction.
You know, maybe maybe it's their first film. They don't know how to
hit a mark, you know. So so yeah, So what do you
do if you get in a situation where you've hired somebody and everybody's there,
you know, the whole crew, and everything's lit, and the actor just
isn't giving the right performance or it's just not working. Is there any like
trick you have or what what goes through your mind as a director? Oh?
Well, well, I think if everything you look, if you're on
the set, everything slit and then the actor's coming out. It's a lot
of times it's the first time. You a lot of times there's no especially
in the budget movies, there's there wasn't really any rehearsal. It's it's,
uh, it is the first time that you're doing the scene, and uh,
what sounded good on what sounded good on paper, what sounded good in
your head is certainly not what's happening. And so, you know, you
get there and you see him do it, and you're like, oh,
oh Jesus, you know. I mean I've been I've been a situation where
I'm like, I was like, I don't I don't even think we cast
the right person. So so then you're so then you're like, oh,
man, okay, but well, you know, what are you gonna do?
You're you know, you're already hired. They were there in front of
you, You got Drew and everybody there, and you you're kind of like,
yeah, he probably wasn't the right choice, but this is what I
have to work with. So let's let's do the best we can with what
we have, you know. So, I mean, I've been definitely been
in that situation. But I think, you know, if if you're in
a situation where they're where they're not an actor's not giving you what they want,
the best thing to do is to pull them aside, you know,
don't talk in front of the whole crew, but to pull them aside,
you know, and and talk to them about what you're certainly do you know
do don't criticize, don't yell, don't be an ass. But is to
to set the person aside and just tell them what you're looking for in the
scene, and don't overdirect them. Just tell them what the intention is in
the scene, what what how their characters relate to one another, maybe what
what the scene is about, you know, and let the actor be the
one that interprets what you're saying and adjust their performance based on what based on
that. The worst thing you can do is to go up to an actor
and give them a lineary No, I want you to a line like like
this, you know, I mean the actor looking at you like little bag,
you know what I mean? Like? You know, they're not They're
not puppets. You know, they're not marionettes. You know. There's not
people that you can just you know, a program, you know. So
a good direct thing is is just really understanding the process, their their process,
respecting their process, and being able to communicate to them in the actors
language. And if you can do that, you're you'll be you know,
you'll want one. The actors will love you forever and too, You're gonna
you're gonna have a you're gonna have a great performance, and the worst thing
you could do in that situation is to is to try to go out there
and act it for them. It's like, no, okay, let me
show you how to do it, and then you go no, you come
over here, and then you say this line, you say it like this,
and then you turn around. You know what I mean. It's like,
that's not that's not how it gets. So yeah, I mean,
I guess that would be my sort of advice for for for handling a situation
like that. Okay, now you know this. The podcast is primarily geared
towards people who are most likely outside of LA and want to make their own
feature film, and a lot of people you know, and I also think
that one of the best plate ways to get into the industry and have one
feature you know, that actually has some success financially is to try and make
you know, horror film, just because there's a built in audience and there's
you know, you don't necessarily need the biggest stars and everything. So what
I was hoping we could do is just kind of walk through the process of
where things begin, what you need to get started, you know, maybe
more towards the producer's side of it. You know, when you're coming up
with a project, I mean, how much are you do you go to
like somebody in distribution and like pitch ideas or how does it all work so
that you know that at the end of the whole thing you're going to know
kind of where that production is going to go. Well, yeah, that's
a great question. I mean, that's that's yeah. I mean every every
every project that you do. I mean, like if you're if it's your
first one thing you have to understand, if you're if you're getting into film
and filmmaking and a periods, you have to understand that it is a business.
You know, it's a it's a you know, you're there, you're
making a picture to to get take with the intention of of it being seen.
It's a business. It has to be something marketable and sellable and and
and of high quality. If you're now, if you're coming out, if
you're doing something on your own and you want to do like a little movie
that you're it's just for yourself and maybe it's an art piece or something like
that, that's fine, and you can do whatever you want. But uh,
and in my in my book and the stuff that I'll talk to you
about today is from an entertainment perspective, from a business perspective of of of
if we're making a movie, we're making it. Yeah, we're making a
movie to tell a great story. We're making a movie to to make a
cool movie. Though all that is there, but we're also making a movie
that we're we're going to be able to get distributed and seen because at the
end of the day, we want people to see and like our work,
and and and and hopefully make sequels, you know, after sequel. So
with that in mind, you know, you're you know, always think that
you're you're you know, remember that it is a business. So start out
with something that will be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
back to the show. You know, a horror is a great genre to
start, in no doubt because it's a it's kind of an evergreen genre.
It's it's something that is always has always been successful at the box office.
I mean, you know, whether people, you know, turn their nose
up to it or not, the fact is is that horror does extremely well
at the box office. And you know that can be seen with movies like
The Conjuring or you know how many other horror movies that have come out that
have just really done well. So so you know, if you're if you're
starting out, I think that coming up with one an original great concept to
start with, and you don't you don't have to. It's it's a it
is a good idea to think about distribution and think about what you're where you're
going to go with it, you know, early on, because you don't
want to get too too far into to pre production or production and start not
even knowing what genre you're in. You're kind of like, well, I'm
not sure. It could be a horror comedy. It could be a comedy,
it could be just horror. You really want to have a definitive plan.
Okay, we're making a low budget slasher film, we're making a zombie
comedy. Okay. And you and then you know what you're you're you're you're
making. You do your research, you do your homework, you watch,
you see all the films that have been made on that subject, who they've
been distributed by, that sort of thing, and you and you just you
you you really come up with you really know what's out there and what the
market's like and uh, and you make and you make the film, you
know, I mean you now what Let me ask one a quick question,
sure, just just out of curiosity, is the primary where's the primary place
that you do research of that nature? Is it IMDb? Or is it
just you know, do you have some other place that you see you know,
all the different horror films that are releasing, how much you know,
who's the distribution company and all that. Is it just IMDb or is it
you know, somewhere else that you look for that. Well, there's a
lot of places that you can look, especially with the Internet. I mean
you certainly the IMDb is a great resource. You know, read you know,
read the trades, you look I mean I read the trades. I
read you know, Hollywood Reporter and Variety. You know, you know who's
making what they're making what what, who's who's remaking what you're coming down the
line if you've been from the studio level, you there's a home media magazine
that's a really great resource to see like kind of what's coming out on DVD,
what's coming out on Blu ray. You know, that's a good one
to read and see what's performing well. What's you know on home video that
sort of thing, you know, and and and the internet and IMDb.
I mean those are really you don't think you read to need to get you
don't need to go crazy with it. But you know, if you just
get an idea of of of of Okay, are there any zombie movies coming
out anytime soon or what you know, what what's how are they doing?
And is it uh you know, are they are they being distributed? And
if they are, who buy you know that sort of thing. So yeah,
you just do do do your research before you go out and uh and
make one. Because if there's if there's something coming out or some some other
guy and it happens so often, so many people are making movies like all
that guy I made that one that's just like mine, damn it, you
know, and you know it's it's so it happens, but it's good.
It's it's good to have more than one idea too. So if you if
you're like, well, maybe it's not a good time we could make the
film, but maybe it's not a good time to make it right now,
you know, maybe we'll make it like next year and then the meantime we'll
make this other project that we had in mind, you know, and let
let the let it, let the let it cool off, because you know,
if that the movie comes out and and everybody hates that that sub genre
of horror, I mean, I mean, you know, then you know,
probably not a good idea to go out and make another found footage movie.
You know. So look, I mean I made a found footage film,
and the whole and honestly the whole reason we made that. I didn't
want to make a found footage film. I didn't. I never intended on
making a found footage film, you know, not not I It was just
it actually was a project that came to me and it was like, hey,
we need to make a found footage film. And I'm like, found
footage film. I was like, you know, well it didn't Blair Witch
to do that. Why why would we make a found potashelm Well, you
know, it's kind of really popular, you know again, you know,
because you know, I got paranormal and you know, a peronal activity and
you know what the reck wreck movies were and all that stuff. And I
was like, yeah, those are great, those are like, you know,
million dollars. I mean, not Blair, but you know, rack
and stuff like that. I mean, you know, they had they had
pretty big budgets for the for those found footage films, and and uh it
was like yeah, but the market was was doing it was hot for those
at that time, and we had some inside you know, uh uh contacts
for when when it came to distribution, and it was kind of like,
hey, you know, so we make this found footage film, it's it's
gonna get distributed and it's gonna do it's it's a good time for it.
So we end up making so and that's how kind of really that movie Filmed
Realiable or now aka Spectors was made. And and uh so did they come
with did they come to you? Like I was just talking to uh,
Scott Kirpatrick about how they build a project and then they'll hire you know,
a screenwriter, they'll hire a director and everybody else. I mean, they've
already kind of sold the project to the distribution company before they even you know,
put together the screenplay. Is that pretty common? No? I don't
think it's I don't I mean, I don't think it's common in the lobo
on the low budget kind of level. I don't think it's that common to
really sell the project, like like sell the project as far as like distribution
rights, I mean, and didn't go make the movie, you know.
I mean I think it used to be like that, maybe back in the
nineties and stuff, where they would sell foreign you know, you sell these
pre sales, you know, based on artwork like Full Moon used to do
back in the day. You know, it'd be like, hey, here's
an art working at title. You guys interested, and then they'd be like,
yeah, we love it, and then they would you know, advance
advance most of the budget that they would need to go make the film.
But these days, you know, especially at on the lower budgeted level,
it's it's uh, you know, especially if you don't have it, if
you don't have a star attached to forget it. I mean, who's gonna
Who's gonna The distribution companies like who's in it? And they're like, well,
nobody, my my brother or my sister. You know, they're not
gonna You're not gonna get money from a distributor. Now if you come to
them and say, you know, Nicholas Cage is attached to it, yes,
you know that, but you're talking about a whole different level of filmmaking
at that point. But I'm talking on an indie level with with with that's
just safe for the sake of this conversation, that there's no stars in it
and you're just making it with you know, some talent, talented actors that
you find, but there's no there's no recognizable name in it. Your money
is not most likely not kind of be coming from your distribution from a distribution
company, unless you're self distributing, but in that case, it's coming from
you anyway. So you know, yeah, it's it's it's not common,
it's it's more what's more common, is you? I mean, look,
I mean it's the company. The distribution company is often sometimes on the lower
budget stuff that the distribution company is often the financing company as well, so
it's kind of their own project anyway, but they're the one making that.
It's general what kind of movie they're making. I mean like Full Moon for
instance, Fullmen Pictures. I mean, they're they're kind of their own distribution
company, and they will now especially now because they have Fullmen streaming dot com,
which is where they stream all their latest projects. But I mean,
his that whole business model is kind of like you know, they make their
own product and they distribute their own product. You know, they make a
new film and it comes out through their their website, their streaming website.
And that's a that's a big thing now too with with like the BMEO in
demand and all that stuff. Is you can you can go out and make
a film and put it up on a site like Vimeo on demand and people
and you can send people there and they can pay to stream your movie or
they can pay to download your movie. And it's a great it's a great
distribution method. But you know, you still you can you can you can
lead the horse to water, but you can't necessarily make them drink it,
you know, so you still have to have a higher quality product for people
to uh to want to go there and stream it and buy it. You
know. So yeah, I'm answered a little bit of your question there.
Yeah, No, it's perfect. You know, I just I get obsessed
because you know, I always try to put together this magic formula for you
know. You know, I've talked to some people that work in distribution and
they're just like, yeah, man, it's just so oversaturated now. And
I know all these people who have lost tons of money because they went out
and they made these you know, horror movies for like, you know,
half a million dollars, and then they got to the distribution and it was
like they you know, they just lost everything because it wasn't like the right
thing. So so one of the things that I try to help people with
and also myself, you know, is like figuring out you know, maybe
we can talk for a second about you know, budgeting and how much money
you know, more or less kind of what things are you know, should
be priced at, because I know people who go out and make their first
movie for you know, one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars, and
you know, I've heard other people like, you know, just do it
as cheap as you possibly can, because at the end of the day,
if you don't get distribution, then you haven't lost your shirt, you know.
So what does your take on that in terms of just like budgeting save
somebody in you know, Middle America whatever you know, is like wants to
make a horror movie and wants to try and like maybe take it to AFM
or something or whatever. You know, what kind of advice, what what
kind of budget range? How how should that all be broken down when they're
first starting out and trying to produce a film. We'll be right back after
a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Yeah,
sure, yeah totally. But just just to add to to your distribution comment
about the people who made who've lost money, I mean, believe me.
I mean, I I know so many people that have have have lost a
lot, you know, I mean, including myself. You know, when
I've I've pulled out the credit cards and you know, I've done the whole
massive, massive credit card debt for films, you know, for years trying
to pay them off, and for ship that wasn't even my wasn't even fine.
It was just stuff I I wanted to pay for out of my own
pocket to make it better. And I didn't even own the rights to it,
and I was paying for stuff. I mean, I mean, it's
just really stupid stuff like that early on. But but I mean that,
but but but yeah, people have lost a lot when it comes to distribution.
So when when it comes to I mean thinking that Okay, well we're
gonna spend all this money, but we're then we're gonna go out. Yeah,
We're totally gonna get it distributed. I mean especially now, I mean
it doesn't it's just not like that anymore. I mean, it's it's it
is absolutely oversaturated. It has been for a long time. So you know,
your your product needs to stand out if you're going to even have a
have a really good chance of of of a really good distribution deal. And
and you know, just just going out with some friends and shooting a splasher
over the weekend, you know, and you you max your credit cards out
for forty grand or whatever. You know, you really can't expect to be
getting that back, you know. And and I always say, you know,
look, don't don't invest. Don't invest more than you can afford to
lose, because it's a very very big possibility that you'll lose all of it
or you or you might get it distributed, but you won't necessarily get the
money back. I mean, because you know, when when a company and
distribution company takes over your your movie, they might give you a little bit
of an advance. If you're lucky, it give you a little bit of
advance like say, okay, well we'll give you two grand of the advance
and then you'll never see another dime ever again. And that's happened to me
on on on films that I've done, and it's like, we you know,
the company goes out of business and it's like, hey, what have
you know what happened to those guys? Oh, they change the name of
their company again. It's like, oh, well, we need to see
statements, We need to see a producer statement. No, you know,
we can't do that for you. So all the money that you've seen is
is you know, the advance, you know, And and it sucks for
the filmmaker because you know, at that point your movie has already been distributed.
You know, you can get yeah, sure you can get the rights
back and try to re redistribute it and everything at that point, but you
know, it's it's kind of used goods at that point, you know what
I'm saying. So yeah, I mean yeah, So when you're when you're
going out of the gate, I mean it's it's just really be careful with
the amount of money that you're you're committing to something, and uh and I
think you'll you'll you'll live after your life and when you if if something,
if something doesn't work out the way it's supposed to, when it comes to
distribution. But coming going back to your your your your budget question. You
know you asked me how how to how to what's some you know what some
budget tricks are for for uh, for somebody to want coming out definitely.
Well, first of all is uh is if you're if you're is to spend
it trying to spend as less money as you possibly make can. I mean
you really have to kind of be don't be annoying, don't be a moocher,
you know, but but whatever, you have to sit down and on
a piece of paper and write down all the things that that you, your
friends, your family have available that you can use for free. Then then
what you do You sit down and say, okay, well I have a
I have my parents house, I have a lake. There's some public lands
that they're they nobody cares that we shoot there. There's that old abandoned building
that we could totally shoot at. You know, we have a boat,
we have a car, you know, we have my mom's a teacher,
and maybe I can shoot at the school or something like that. So you
write all those things down on a piece of paper, of all the things
that that that that you have for free, and and it can be other
things too that you can put in the scene, like oh, uncle Bob
has a Lamborghini or someone still say, uh, you know has a has
a an AK forty seven or so, I don't know whatever it is.
And you write all those things down and then and then what you do is
you look at all that stuff. You put it up on a board,
and you can look at all that stuff and say, what kind of movie
could I make with all of these things? What kind of story? Or
maybe I already have a story, but it so if I already have a
story, can I look at all those elements and say, how can I
incorporate all that into my story? Can my story take place at that house,
at that at that on that boat, in that car? Can I
can? I can? I you know, can I rewrite it for that?
And I think if you can do that, and if you're willing to
compromise whatever it is to to adjust your story to what you have available,
you can get for free. I think you'll save a lot. You'll save
a ton of money. I mean, I I was. I do that
pretty much for every film. But it's it's it's it's a process that's kind
of like you know, hey, man, you know, let's not let's
not spend where we don't need to spend. And uh, one of the
big, one big expense on low budget films is the location, particularly if
you're in LA. You know, when you get out of LA, you
can pretty much get a lot, a lot more for free. I mean,
people are so much more. So there's just they're happy to work on
a movie because it's exciting and you know, you're not taking advantage or anything
like that. You know, these people are are are I believe I shot
in like Fresno, and it was like you couldn't you couldn't tell these people.
You had to push people away like, hey, no, I think
we got more than we need, you know, thank you. They were
just coming I mean they were coming out in the in the hundreds to be
extras and and and it was it was actually overwhelming, I think a lot
of times. And but in La a whole different story. I mean you're
like, you know, you're shooting at a location people or people are being
dicks. You know, people are you know, turning their lawnmowers on.
So you'll go over and tell them, you know, to turn it off,
and then they'll they then then they'll they'll try to extort money out of
you to do it, you know, like, oh, I'm not going
to turn it off unless you pay me. And I was like, oh,
okay, I've had people shoot beaty guns at me before. We were
at we were at a location and the ad went over and asked politely if
we were shooting a scene in an alley and we didn't have a you know,
we didn't have a permit to be shooting there anyway. But the one
of the ads asked them and they would you guys, mind just just for
just for like, you know, five minutes, we just we need to
grab this quick shot so on something. And they just like went totally like
psycho and they're just like, you know, fuck you, but we're not,
fucking dude, bubble. And they got on the roof and they started
shooting beaty guns at the crew members. Nice you know, I mean tons
of stuff like that, you know, and you know, extorting money out
of out of us. I've had. I've had that happened before. I've
had you know, fire departments showing up and trying its threatening to shut us
down unless we paid them immediately, would pay. I'm like, I forget
some kind of some kind of fee to get the permit, but like right
on the spot. So that's like, you know, that sort of thing,
and you know, cops, neighbors showing up telling us that their generator
was causing health problems and stuff and they wanted money, and it's just it's
ridiculous. I guess it's what I'm getting at. But so anyway, I
guess what I'm going with that is that if you're shooting in LA it's probably
a little harder to get certain locations like that for free. And uh,
but when you're since most people are probably listening to your podcasts are outside of
LA, I think you really need to utilize what you have. I mean,
you know, the movie making world isn't isn't just in Los Angeles,
you know, So if you're living in Kansas or Ohio or wherever it is,
I mean, there's there's a lot of great locations with with with amazing
production value that you can get. So you just just just utilize all that
stuff, and I think you'll save big in your in your budget. I
think that's one of the biggest money savers on a low film is the availability
of stuff you already have. Now on the other side of that, what
are the things that you absolutely can't be cheap about? Oh well that that
that goes without saying. There's one thing you don't want to be cheap about
is the quality of your film. And what and first and foremost the actors.
Don't be cheap with your actors. Pay for good actors and you will
you will, you will not be sorry. Pay for good good a good
camera. I mean, look, you know, let me look within reason.
I mean, not everybody can shoot on the AX. Not everybody can
shoot on the Red Weapon, you know, but if you have I mean,
but now, I mean, look, I mean the film that's Sean
Baker they shot. He shot on an iPhone five s with an anamorphic attachment,
you know, it using a nine dollars APP or eight dollar app you
know, and that got a theatrical release, you know what I mean.
I mean, there are other ways to do things, but you know,
and then you have the black Magic pocket cinema camera, a thousand dollar camera,
you know, you have you know, the Alexa has a mini now
you know, the Alex of Mini just came out. I was looking at
that this year and then at the NAB Show, and there are other other
options. But don't be cheap with your camera, you know, don't don't
don't be cheap with your camera. Don't be cheap with your key crew members.
And you know what I mean by as your DP credibly important for obviously
if you'll look at your movie, don't be cheap with lenses, don't don't
be cheap with the camera. Don't be cheap with lenses, don't be cheaper
with the DP, don't be cheap with production design. And put the money
on the screen. You know, at all times, I think if you
just go into it and say, look, if I'm where I'm spending money
in this budget, I need to make sure that this money is going up
on the screen. So you know, if I'm spending money for silly stuff,
you know, see if you can cut that stuff back, We'll be
right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
and redistribute that money into something that the audience is actually going to see
on the screen. And that can be anything that I just listen, I
just mentioned, you know, and more, you know, right, so
yeah, I mean, don't you know, don't don't be cheap on that
stuff. Yeah, it will show. It definitely will show. And post
too. Don't be oh my god, don't don't be cheap on your post.
And don't say I'm going to fix it in post either, because as
an owner of a post company for ten years, it's it's kind of cost
you. I have love a lot more money to fix it in posts than
it would have been to get it right the first time. And and a
lot of that has to do with sound. Usually, so is probably the
biggest problems that I have coming into my post company. People have just hired
the worst sound people known to man, and it's just like a disaster,
you know, the usually so yeah, so don't don't be cheap, right,
Well, that that's one of the big things that I think a lot
of people don't understand. And I always try to like kit that over the
head, you know, as much as possible. In terms of sound.
People will be like, oh, yeah, We've got you know, this
amazing four K camera and whatever, and it's like it's like, yeah,
that doesn't really matter at all, you know, if you don't have good
sound, if you don't have a good DP work in the camera, if
you don't have all the things you know what I mean. So I always
try to make sure that people understand, you know, and I've heard from
some people that like the sound guy and the the catering guy or sometimes the
most important guy on the set, you know, Yeah, don't don't cheat.
No, I mean, don't be cheap with your food too. I
mean, you really don't. I mean, you really got to get you
know, these people are coming there and working hard, and you got gotta
take care of your As a producer myself, you gotta take care of your
people. Definitely takes you, not the whole like okay, hamburgers for everybody,
and there's coke and the thing that that's not that's not a proper diet
for you know, most people, you know what I mean. You have
to, uh, you know, spend the money into feeding eating people and
giving people options and to what to eat on set. You know, don't
don't take everybody out to McDonald's. That's that's that's not catering, you know
what I mean. That's that's that's actually punishment. Punishment, you know.
But but I was gonna say something else there. You're you're tracking on something
there, and I headed in my head, but then I went off on
some stupid McDonald's rents when you were talking about well sound sound, sound,
cater but the DP too. I mean, look, I mean, here's
the Here's one of the biggest things I see I see happening to a lot
of times is that these cameras have become so amazing and so cheap that oftentimes
filmmakers will just say, man, you know what do I need a DP
for? I just shooting myself, you know, just just point and shoot.
You know, we'll just use the zoom lens. We'll point and shoot
and it looks good to me. I turned the camera and the you know,
the cameras can can shoot and and with a candle on in the room
and it actually still looks pretty decent. But that's not you know, that's
not again, it's not the that's not cinematography. That's not you know,
real filmmaking. You really want to get you know, get somebody in there
that's dedicated to that department, right, you know, and and not the
direct because I vped and directly before and so it's all god, it's it's
crazy. But if you but you know, you really want to hire a
DP that comes in and can really give you the look that you want and
makes the right lens choices and and uh and and give you something because it
will absolutely show in your movie when you're done. You can tell. You'll
look at a movie and be like, yeah, movie's not bad, but
you know, god, they must have shot at all of the zoom lens
or they just shot it with some cheap lens, or you know that they
just kept moving around and then you see another film that could be then you'll
shot on the same camera, but you're like, oh my god, this
looks fantastic. What did they do? Oh my god? They were using
like they were They had this amazing set of prime lenses that they were using
and a really good DP that actually knows how to light. You know.
It's one of the things I learned from Mac Alberg. Mac was a guy
that Mac just so those of you don't know, Mac Alberg was a He
was a DP that I worked with on two films, and he shot re
Animator and House and Beverly Hills Cop three and all these big Hollywood movies,
big big horror movies. He's also worked with Stewart cording a lot. And
anyway, Mac and I were were good friends, and he shot two two
movies, but I remember for me and then he shot two movies, and
we used to talk all the time about cinematography and he goes all the way,
but he was a really older guy. He goes all the way back
to Ingmar Bergman. He shot he shot one of the I think one shot
in the seventh seal in Bergman's movie, and he was so proud about that,
and of course that's like movie to even being involved in that. H
Anyway, one of the things he would always I learned from him was he
always would like he won his first film on digital I think was with me
and I made me mistake of but I think it was with me. And
he would like the digital like it was film, and it would look and
it would look so good and he you know, and it wasn't one of
those things where he just would flip on the camera and be like, well,
we're singing an image, so yeah, that's great, that'll work.
It was really cool to watch him, watch him work and how he just
hes still lit the digital like it was film and gave it the right exposure
and everything and it's just the stuff really looked fantastic. But I mean,
you know, to get a guy like that special. But now, I
mean, you know, you just got to really make sure that you you
get somebody on board who's gonna he's gonna do a really good cinematography job for
you, because I'm telling you, man, it shows so much you know
when when you when you don't have that, you know, right, and
so yeah, spend the money on that. Now, who are the key
when you start working you know, we're still a little bit in pre production.
Who are the people that you really are kind of like your you know,
who do you go to for like putting together the budget and who are
your key kind of players and who do you need even you know talking about
you know, lower budget features, But who would be the people that you
needed to kind of like to make up your team aside from the DP,
like people like the assistant director production manager you know who? Sure anyway,
yeah, sure, sure, No, I got you and I totally got
you, Okay. Well, one of the and that's one of the things.
This is another thing that you don't want to be cheap on it and
and it is the the the the management of your crew or the management of
you I'm sorry, the management of your film, you know, upper upper
management of your film. You you do not want to take on all the
responsibilities yourself. Believe me, don't do that, you know, delegate,
delegate as much as you possibly can afford, particularly when it comes to having
having an experienced line producer, particularly when it comes to having an experience the
UPM and the production manager, particularly when it comes to, uh, you
know, having I'd say those two, If you have those two, you're
you're already uh, you're already doing a pretty good at that point. But
you know, just I think it's very important for you to just to install
an upper management team start. You know, it's starting with your line producers.
Your line producers is really going to be your you're, you're, you're,
you're your buddy. Can you can you describe some people that don't completely
understand what what exactly the line producer's role is on the film? Sure,
sure, Well a line producers just one oh one, they're not sure Yeah,
I mean they're they're not They're not really in a creative role on the
film. They're more in the in the role of you know, a line
producer is more like the guy who the producer that really does all the work
the great work Like he's the guy who makes sure everybody's showing up. Make
sure you know things are you know, people are getting hired, people,
you know, the things are on, people are moving on schedule. Sometimes
they deal with the they deal with the studio. If there's a studio,
they they they're really the the the that like the central, uh producing element
in the film. So what I'm producing a film. I won't produce a
film without breaking line producer, you know, and producing. For me,
it's more, it's more I'm more of I want to be more of a
I'm more of a creative producer. So it's more like, you know,
I can get I get the I can get the I get the idea,
the script. I work with the writers' creatively developed the project. I usually
get the money or the funding for it. And then once that happens.
First one of the first things I do is bring on all one once we
were ready to go into production, and one of the first things I do
will bring on a line producer, and the line producer will take that,
they'll budget it, they'll break down, they'll break down the script. Oftentimes
they'll they'll they'll they'll handle they'll they'll do a schedule oftentimes, although you're sometimes
you're a D is more involved than that later on, but often the line
producer does the initial budget and initial schedule. They'll deal with SAG, they'll
deal with all those other elements. So there, there, there. It's
important to get an experienced line producer on board because it'll it'll really help things,
especially on low budget stuff. And then you have you know, other
upper management like you're a you know who's and I mean, I've made plenty
of movies without an AD because they'll usually the lying producers like, oh,
we can afford an a D, so I'll be your A D. And
I'm like, oh right. But to have a dedicated a D is a
real godsend because they really do you know, they help, They help you
run, They help you run the set, and they let allow for you
to concentrate on being a director and just just directing and not having to worry
about where are my freaking actors? Why do I have to go find these
guys? You know, that's the job of your A D. And they
do to help you stay on schedule and tell people to be quiet when they
need to be quiet, and and that sort of thing. So you know,
those those those upper upper management team is super important to install and quality
and get qualified people if you if you can afford it, if the budget
allows people who have experience in that level of movie making, it's always a
good thing too because they get low budget. If they get low budget,
they understand like, hey, we you know, we can't be spending you
know, uh, two hundred dollars on a refrigerator. I mean I did
a friend of mine. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. A well known director friend of mine
gave me a budget one time, and he's like, he's like, you
know, you just made this movie for thirty five thousand dollars, and like,
you know, this movie though I'm doing, it's like, it's not
that much more complicated than one they did that. They just gave me a
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars budget, and he's like, can you you
think you could look at this for me and see if you could, you
know, shave off one hundred grand or something like that. So I did
it for me, and I looked at it and I was like, I
was my eyes were bleeding I couldn't believe the stuff that they were paying for
in there, and I just went through it with think. I'm like no,
no, no no. He was just looking at me like h and
I was like no, no, no no. I was like, dude,
you have somebody actually budgeted for you to have a two to go out
and buy a two hundred dollars refrigerator for your production office. I'm like,
what is that? What movies have you been this guy been working on?
This is a low budget moving on two hundred dollars for refrigerators. I mean
just things like that. It was it was absolutely ridiculous. So I shaved
off like one hundred and fifty grand for him. He was really happy.
But yeah, I mean things like that, you just it's like, oh
jeez. So so yeah, so I hope I answered your question there.
But yeah, So when you're when you start directing the how how important is
it that you can just like kind of be do you have kind of that
laser focus on Okay, we have to get this scene. Then we're moving
to that scene, and you know, are you just like visualizing where the
camera's going to go or you have you worked it out most of it before
you get on the set or do you kind of do it while you're there.
Well, I think on this on when you on the I've done it
both ways. But honestly, on the films that I've done, they've they've
been done in such a hurry that you know, I mean, I got,
you know, look really really well. I shot in six days,
okay, I mean, and you know we were doing seven seventeen fifteen pages
a day in Atlanta Vista Hospital, East LA, running around this freaking giant
hospital, the whole thing. But at sixteen a sixth day movie. And
you know, I think when you're doing something that quickly, a lot of
people, a lot of people, and they should they like, people should
be prepared. They want to come in prepare like, hey, you know,
I know every single shot that I'm doing, I'm gonna come in.
Everybody's gonna be like, Wow, you're the most amazing prepared director I've ever
met. Blah blah blah. And then they get there and they're like,
and your life page comes up to you and say, oh yeah, the
location or says we can't shoot on that floor today, there's another crew coming
in and the deal we may but blah blah blah. So you can't shoot
there, and you have to shoot on another floor. And then and then
immediately your your shot list is gone. It's it's you just gotta crumbled up
the third way. You're like, well, it ain't gonna work here,
so now we gotta we gotta shoot on a completely different floor, completely different
look, and we have to roll with the punch. So now all that
prep you did doesn't matter. So I mean, like really Evil, like
I you know, I mean obviously a lot of the films, but particularly
really Evil. I remember because I just was like just show up and I'm
like, okay, you know, what are we doing. It's like,
okay, here's the saw. And I would I literally would look at the
schedule and just say, okay, we're shooting that. We're shooting, were
shooting that. Okay great, And then I would go I go in there,
I grab the actors, I'd read over the scene, and I would
just start cutting the scene together in my head like okay, you know,
but I mean I have the experience from as an editor, so go in
and I already know what it's going to look like. So I'm like,
okay, well you come around the corner and the camera's here, the shoot
it this way and then boom, we're done. So for me, it's
very fast and to the point, and we don't waste footage. We don't.
I don't overcover, I don't shoot too many takes. I know when
I got something when I don't got somebody. But that comes from a lot
of experience with editing, so you know, I mean, I maybe I
can do that kind of stuff. I'm sure other people can do that kind
of stuff. But if you're maybe if it's your first project, it's always
a good idea to be prepared, you know. I mean, because even
if you do the prep work and you come in with a plan, most
of the time you can execute it. But not all the time. You
can. A lot of times you can't shoot that direction, or the sun's
in the wrong, you can't shoot that direction how you plan it, you
know, so you have to shoot the other way. Well that kind of
changes your your blocking plan or your your shot plan, you know, and
you just have to be able to roll with it, you know. And
if you can do that, then I think, you know, you're you're
on your way to uh You're directing and directing a lot, you know,
because it certainly doesn't always turn out the way you had it on paper,
right, So, so what is the key? Talking specifically now since this
is going to be for our October scare Athon, I don't know what it's
going to be called, you scare Athon, but what what is the key
to? You know, horror is very different than every other genre, you
know, because you have to really affect the audience, like you have to
scare the pants off of them, you know, and if you're a successful
horror movie, you have you know, maybe not jump scares, but you
have to scare people. What what do you think are kind of the key
ingredients for creating a successful horror film and making people feel like they got what
they wanted to out of it, you know, scaring them or whatever.
Well, yeah, yeah, they're a great No, great question. I
think that I think it comes down to having, you know, having one,
having characters that you really care about, that that are are compelling,
you know, the people that you you want to watch, people that you're
gonna you're gonna actually give a shit if they're coming up against a monster or
a threat of some kind, you know, you you So, so that
definitely number one is your story and your characters. But as far as like,
you know, the monsters and what things like that, I mean,
yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, look, I mean
monsters like like not monsters, but somebody like like a leather face or or
or a Jason and Freddie. I mean, those guys have been around for
a long time for a reason. You know, they were compelling monster,
compelling horror movie bill. I mean that that's why they've lasted this long.
And I think if you can come up with a monster or a disease or
whatever it may be, you know that that that is compelling enough to to
to to do a lot of sequels hopefully, uh that they should go with
it, you know, but you know, you know, you really,
I know it's hard now though too. It is hard, you know,
because there's you know, things how everything seems like everything's been done. But
that doesn't that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that you know, you can't do
another It certainly doesn't mean you can't go out and make your own slasher just
because there's been a billion slashers made. You just need to go out and
make a slasher that is your own point of view and is that your own
interpretation of what you think a slasher movie should be like, and hopefully that
translates into your vision and to your your aesthetic and your brand and your your
unique style of movie making. So I think if you look at it from
point of view, you can't really you know, you can, you can.
You might be able to get inspired and say, hey, you know,
well, you know I always wanted to make a slasher on a submarine
or I own just like a slasher in a treehouse or whatever the hell it
may be, you know, And and I have a unique way that I
think it's going to work for doing it, and and that's what you should
do, you know. And uh so there really, I mean, there
really isn't. I mean, you can you can study. You can study
horror movies all you want, and you should. You absolutely should, particularly
in the classics particularly there's a lot, so many great movies that have been
made in the eighties and the eighties and the seventies certainly certainly today too,
but I think more so in the in the in the earlier years. You
know. But do you have any specific films that like stick out that kind
of really affected you? Oh yeah, I mean, look, when I
when I made Stuart Gordon was a big influence for me because he was my
kind of my directing mentor. Really we made a movie together many years ago
and uh thirty five thousand dollars movie called Deathbed Stuart Gordon Presents the Death Bet.
We were going to do a whole series of these things Stuart Cordon presents
this and that and then the whole deal. But the first one we made
together, and he was the executive producer and his name was above the title
and the whole deal. And I just watched a bunch of the outtakes from
that because it's on YouTube, behind the scenes footage of you guys shooting that.
That's really kind of cool. Yeah, that was a fun one.
It was. It was. It was fun. But I mean I learned
so much on that film. I mean it was it was so low.
I mean we again, it was we shot it for twenty five grand and
it was posted for ten and we shot it. This is pre twenty four
piece, so like this is before like the cameras were like they are now.
This is this is when we would shoot on digital video. We shoot
on DV cam and we would film look it through after effects plug in or
or the company in Burbank called film Look. They would actually take take it
and remove the telesmi and try to make it look more like it was shot
on film. And that's why we were doing a lot of stuff in the
in the early two thousand before the twenty four pe cameras came out. So
anyway, we made this film and and I remember before we made the film,
Stewart I went up Stewart went over to Stewart's house with mac Alberg r
DP and and we we He's like, hey, let's watch some let's watch
some horror movies to him, and so we watched one of my favorite,
uh classic horror films, which is called The Innocence, and uh, that's
a really great one for you to watch. And then we and I kept
seeing that what is what is that? Who's when that? That is?
What's the lady's name? That is? Uh, it's a black and white
film, it's it's god, my brain my brain just completely went brain dab
dab. I think it's dead bro Oh yeah yeah, because she was the
one who was in Poultergeist, right, oh yeah yeah, but just okay,
I remember, yeah, that was really good. It's amazing. It's
a fantastic you know, it's like a ghost movie. Yeah, that that
was amazing. I remember I saw that last year. Yeah. It's a
classic. Man, just just I mean that's that. You can't go with
innocence. Yeah, okay. And the other film that that I think is
very well certainly was very powerful and very that pretty much Stewart Gordon says it
was his horror film school is Rosemary's Baby. We'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show and Rosemary's Baby.
The original Rosemary's Baby. I don't know if they made a TV series or
something. Who knows, but you ever try to pretend there's not another one.
Lass Rosemary's Baby was absolutely I know for Stuart certainly was was his film
school or and I watched it with me when we watched it together, and
he was pointing out things and I was like that, you know, I
never really thought about it like that. Yeah, I see what you're saying.
And so we watched it together and really took it apart and it was
like, it was so cool because you don't hear I have sitting with freaking
you know, Stuart Gordon, you know, breaking apart Rosemary's Baby, and
it was like amazing. So I think you know that Rosemary's Baby and The
Innocence, I mean, there's there's a lot of them, but I think
those two in particular really certainly stood out class because we were we were specifically
looking at a sort of more round that style of filmmaking, sort of like
ghost stories, and well, I think you can learn so much about directing
and screenwriting from Rosemary's Baby just by itself, you know, because you watch
it, you can watch it five or six times. In the second time,
what you've seen the whole thing, and you watch it again and you
see what's kind of going on, Like so much of that movie takes place
away from the camera, you know what I mean. So it's like you're
you're learning all these things from uh, you know, the neighbors and everything
and there you know, all these things that are going on, and you're
kind of seeing everything through the point of view of a woman who you know,
seems like she's kind of losing her mind, but it's actually you know,
it's actually something's actually happening to her. But it's just brilliant that and
you know, I always like that in Chinatown. You know, Planska's two
movies back to back that were just incredible. Those are like filmmaking schools on
there. They're absolutely absolutely man Plansky. I mean, he's a he's a
he's a master filmmaker. There's no, no, no question about that.
I mean, looking the Shining too. The Shining is a great example.
There's a really good book actually I've been reading. It's called it's called The
Shining Studies in the Horror Film by Daniel Olson, edited by Daniel Olson,
and it's just this big old freaking book about the making of The Shining and
it's just a really, really really interesting if you're interested in that. So
there's also one on The Exorcist too, Studies in the Horror Film Series that's
really good. I mean, of course, The Exorcist, there's no question
that that's, you know, one of probably one of the best poor films
ever made. But I meant the Shining and one of one film that I
was actually I was just talking about it last night was as a film called
The Entity with Barbara Hershey is one of the films that's scared to freaking shit
out of me. It was really, really really scary. And The Changeling
is an amazing not that Angelina Jolie thing, the the the Changeling, the
old the classic one with George uh, George Got, the guy who played
Patton Forgot. I'd say Georgey Scott anyway anyway, So yeah, but he's
in this film called The Change, Like, oh man, it's such a
great such a great ghost story, just classy and just offic just awesome film,
really amazing film. But I mean, you know, I mean I
could go on, we could go on all day about that. That's a
whole another podcast, I think. But the this, but this, this
is so important to to do, is to really look at these films and
really study these classics, and certainly Hitchcock. If you Hitchcock is probably one
of the best film schools that you could ever have. Is to just watch
Hitchcock and study Hitchcock. I mean, he's just it's just it goes without
goes without saying that. That's a that's a good one too. So yeahright,
so love me. Let's let's move slowly just so. I mean,
I know you don't have a whole lot of time. Just whatever, I'm
here for you, So just love me. Just keep Okay, well we'll
be here for another four hours. I haven't another big deal just uh so
moving into well, let me ask you something about just the actual creating of
creatures. Do you go to just like a creature workshop? How is the
creatures designed? How does that whole process work? And who owns at the
end of the day. Say, for example, you create you know,
you've got a screenplay, You've right, you've got this character you have you
know, artists working on it or whatever. Do you own that creature after
they create it? Does the company that make it own those rights? You
know? How does that all work? Well, yeah, it's gonna be
whoever owns the whoever owns the the film. I mean, because you're you're
creating a you're creating a likeness of a character. So I mean, you
know you're creating us say it's a I don't know, some kind of weird
pumpkin creature or pumpkin head, but I mean some kind of whoever designs that.
I mean, if you if it's in the film, I mean you
whoever owns the rights of the film is going to own that that likeness of
that creature. I mean, of course, it depends on how the legal
paperwork was all worked out too. I mean, maybe they could have licensed
the image if that they didn't necessarily own it, you know what I mean.
But more than the chances are that whoever, whoever made the film,
the cruisers that made the film are the ones that actually own it and can
license it out and make T shirts and you know, masks and all that
thing and that sort of thing. Because I've actually had masks made from my
film dark Walker. They made two masks out of it, two Halloween masks,
dark Walker WOL one and dark Walker two. Of course there was never
a dark Walker two, but they made a mask called dark Walker two and
you can look it up. Actually, if you look it up on it
it's a see it's it's a fantastic mask. I saw it research. It
looks way better than the one in the movie, and it's like, it's
like, man, I mean that should have been the creature in the film.
What happened? So but I mean, if you can just buy one
and make part two real quick. You know what's funny is I was in
I traveled to I think it was in Indonesia, and I had a I
found I found you know, I'm always interested. I'm very interested in foreign
horror. I love foreign horror films, particularly Asian horror. But I found
this film and I picked it up off the shelf, and it was some
Indonesian horror movie, and I was looking. I was like, oh,
it's some kind of weird ghost movie thing. Because I flipped over to the
back and I was like, what the fuck. They had bought the mask
for my movie Dark Walker and used it in the movie as if it was
I that was the creature in their movie. And then on the back cover
there's a picture of the mask, the guy wearing the mask, and then
you know, they just added a little blood on it or something to make
it look a little different and have a different suit. And then I was
like, I was like, what the hell. I mean, Yeah,
so anyway I thought, I mean, I didn't care. I thought it
was funny, you know, to me, I don't wantever, you know,
go do it. They want to do that. It's flattering, you
know, but I just thought it was hilarious. I was looking at this
movie, like, what the fuck. So, yeah, I mean,
it happens, but in that case, it's certainly in that particular case,
we own the likeness of the mask of the pressures needed it. So,
but I think as far as as far as how it gets created, that
is usually a conversation with the director. The writer can write it one way,
but the director might have a different vision of how it looks. So
usually the director talks with the either the makeup artist and and says, hey,
I want it to look a little a little like, uh, this
and this and this, and then the makeup artists will usually do a Sometimes
they'll do a drawing. They could do a drawing for you. Sometimes you
could have an artist do a drawing and then you just give it to the
makeup artists. I want you to I want you to do a model of
this. I've done I've done it both ways. Sometimes the the makeup or
the special effects artists would would would do a mock up for you. You
know, let's just say come in and they do a they do a you
know, a sculpture of it, and then you can do, you know,
do some adjustments there, and then once you're satisfied with it, then
they mold it and and there they make the prosthetics that they need to make
and you're done, you know, and uh and uh, you have a
you have your your new character. So that's kind of really the process with
it. It's it's kind of a colla definitely a collaborative process. I mean,
if you have something super specific in mine, it's a good idea to
hire a u an artist to draw it for you to do, even if
it's just a simple pencil drawing to somebody to draw what you have in mind
and hand that to somebody who can execute it as a as a prosthetic,
uh or or whatever you know, particular effect you're doing. So that's that's
kind of how that that whole thing works. Yeah, Now would you say
that's a lot more effective than I mean, not effective, but a lot
more economic if you're trying to do a creature I mean, is there any
way you can do CGI or something like that in these low budget movies?
Oh yeah, no, totally. I've done it several times to fix bad
makeup what I've had. I've did it on Ghost Month, I did it
on Real Evil. What I call I call it digital makeup, and what
it is is you know, you go, you know, I had a
situation where, you know, we did some makeup tests and I thought it
was going to look better than it did. And then we got to set
and the guy came out, and I was like, what the fuck did
they? I mean, it just looked it looks so bad. I mean,
it happens a lot on the little budget movies. Happens to me,
seems seems like a lot in my earlier movies. It was like a lot
of times it would be the first time that I had actually even seen the
makeup. Would be when I'm on set. We we would hire somebody,
then we would we just didn't have the bunny and the budget and the time,
and it would just be they would come out and say here's the vampire,
and I was like, Okay, what Halloween store did we go to?
Right? And so so I would spend all this energy trying to figure
out how I'm going to cover this, How I'm gonna not show this person
because it looks so ridiculous. So a lot of times they'll be in shadow
or you don't you don't stay on them too long, and it was just
like, you know, always like that. But I remember one film it
was like, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
now back to the show. The guy came out and I was like,
I was like, what, you know, he looks like he looks like
powder, you know, the guy from the Powder picked herself. It just
it just looked terrible. And I was like, it didn't look at anything
like. So I was like, okay, well, let's change. I
talk to the DP. I was like, look, you know, we
got I gotta shoot this because there's no there's no where in the middle of
the desert. There's nothing else we can do, so we you know,
I said. I talked to him about changing the lighting up and changing in
the way we're gonna shoot it and how I'm gonna shoot it and that sort
of thing, and and you know, it helped. And then when I
got it into post, because that's kind of one of my things specialties is,
I was like, I gave it to a friend and I said,
hey, you, let's do some digital makeup on this guy because he looks
ridiculous. So I had his face morph into like a SkELL Thiner and you
know, and I had the other girl's face morph into this weird like Corpsey
looking thing and so on and so forth, and it worked great. And
after that I was happy because I was like, oh, good, because
it looks a little more supernatural now because their face is actually morphing from some
some one one state to another state. So it looked a little bit it
was fun or to use. But but yeah, I mean that's happened,
and to me, several times I did it on Real Evil too. There
was some stuff where the it wasn't that the makeup was necessarily it wasn't that
the make ida it wasn't happy with the makeup on that when it was more
that I thought it could be scarier, so we added the digital makeup onto
it to make it even scarier. So so yeah, that's uh, that
definitely, uh, definitely happens. And you can roll roll with the roll
with the punches with what you gotta work with. But sometimes you can fix
the stuff like that in post if you have the know how right, you
believe in the idea, that's better not to see the monster. You know
that it's more scary. You know. I'm I'm a huge fan of Jaws.
That's one of my favorite movies. So I'm always like you know,
and and you know, Spielberg's big influence was a movie called kat Eyes,
you know, and so he he was like, well, I don't know
how to tell the story. The sharp is terrible. So we got to
find a way to shoot this movie without showing the shark. So, you
know, he was talking about how this movie Cat Eyes, you never ever
see the creature. You're the monster, the cat or whatever. Yeah,
so I would think that's another way to kind of, like, you know,
and even if you have a cool character, to kind of keep it
in the dark, you know, until maybe towards the end where you do
like a reveal or something like that. Yeah. No, absolutely, I
think I think I'm a firm believer in that. Absolutely, And it's it's
a closed door is way scarier than than to not know what's behind that door
or what's in that darkness. But you know, something is there is such
a great technique, a horror movie making technique that you know that be the
mind of the audience just goes goes crazy, you know, and you know,
and I think that's it's a great that those are the kind of films
that I prefer to make. You know, I'm I'm totally like more of
a classical or guy like I like to make movie like a Rosemary's Baby or
you know, or all the ones I mentioned before. You know, those
those are the films I like to make. But you know, when you're
making something for higher or for as a producer for higher director or higher oftentimes
you don't really have those options. A lot of times they you know,
the companies are the distributors. They want to see a lot more because it
makes a great trailer, you know, where it makes a great piece of
art, you know, or that sort of thing, you know, which
of course is obviously completely business related, not artistic related. But but you
know, I mean, you know, it's entertainment businesses like that. It's
it's the combination of art and commerce, you know, and and you it's
just finding a way to still get your vision on the screen, but understanding
that you have to walk down a wavy you know, a sort of a
wavy way of trying to get get the commerce out of it, but still
trying to get the art out of it at the same time, you know,
and being able to compromise and still get get a good movie made at
the same time. You know. It's it's it's it's it's difficult to do,
no doubt, I mean, so so yeah, well, a lot
of the people that I've talked to who are you know, producers that a
lot of them are like, you know, we need to package it in
such a way that people are gonna want to watch it in the first place.
Yeah, but sometimes you have to hide a good movie within a movie
that's more commercial, you know, so it's like I want to watch this.
You got to get that initial click and then it's like, oh,
this is actually a good movie, you know. Can Jaws to me is
always the perfect example of that. It's like the perfect you know, popcorn
movie, but inside of it, it's an amazing movie obviously, you know
what I mean. Yeah, totally, man, I mean absolutely, And
that's that's a great way to look at it. But I think I think,
I mean, Jobs, of course was made you know, thirty whatever
year, forty years I think now, right four years ago, but and
that was that was such a great time to be making movies back then,
you know. But I think with now, I mean, with the distribution
being changed so much, what's happening, uh, I certain, Look,
I mean just happened on a movie I just did, so, you know.
I mean they change the artwork in the campaign and everything. But a
lot of it has to do with when it comes, especially with digital distribution,
it has to. It comes down to, like you only get a
moment for somebody to be browsing through their Netflix que or or browsing through their
Hulu queue to stop and say, hey, that it's kind of cool.
You know. The title's good if it's usually higher up on the higher up
on the list. Sometimes if it's alphabetical. Sometimes it's good to have,
like something that starts with an A or a B, or a C or
a D. You know, there's just something that starts with a Z,
you know, kind of thing. There's little little things like that that can
be taken to consideration. But certainly artwork and trailer are are you know,
it's so key to to to getting people to to click on it, you
know, to watch it, I mean and uh and in the case of
a company like say Hulu, you the filmmaker gets paid per click, so
every time somebody clicks on that, they get x amount, you know,
so you know, it's it's important to get people to to to watch it.
And if you can, if if if that means you know, putting
together an amazing piece of art and amazing trailer, then that's what you gotta
do, you know, right, So, but but the movie still has
to stand you know, on its own too. After you get you can
get people to click on it, but you can't necessarily get them to watch
it. So you still got to make a good movie. But you can
have a good trailer or a good movie, good art. You know,
you're you're, you're, you're on your way, you know. Yeah,
it just seems like nowadays, you you know, especially with Netflix, if
you go into the horror section, it's like they put all this money into
the graphic design of the poster and then you start watching it and it's like,
oh, yeah, this is terrible. Yeah, it's like they just
kind of made it. I mean, it must have been bought as part
of like a larger package or something, you know, but the movie just
completely there's nothing to it. It's badly shot, you know. So,
you know, we've gotten into this world I think where it's almost kind of
like social media. People are trying to figure out how to get more stars
on things. People trying to just like get things shared around. But you
know, the quality a lot of times isn't there. You know. Sure,
I probably made one of two of those that you could I mean you
no, you're absolutely right. I mean you'll click on I mean, look
I I click on this stuff, and I'm like, what the fuck,
you know, and then it just that's why I just like to watch classics
my private main. But I mean, yeah, yeah, totally. It's
it's in they're bought as packages, they're bought as other deals or licensing deals
with guy who knows. You know, there's Voodoo and Hulu and Netflix and
all these other distributors that the Amazon and Prime all that stuff. Yeah.
Yeah. So one of the things that I try to do kind of with
you know, the podcast is you know, trying trying to find that kind
of line between Okay, there's people I talked to a lot of people who
are just doing purely you know, art films that are like you know,
stories of tragedy and things that have you know, I mean, and they're
probably going to be really good movies. Sure, they're never going to be
able to sell them, right, It's like it's never going to go anywhere.
So I'm always kind of like, okay, well there's got you know,
like the stuff that I write is more you know, in the horror,
you know, monster movie kind of thing. But inside of the movie,
there's like stories, characters, and there's like an actual you know,
hopefully you know, an actual good movie inside of that. You know.
So I always try to tell people, you know, try to do something.
I mean, it's good to make a movie about you know, you're
growing up in a small town and this and that, and but you know,
you have to connect somehow. If you can connect with your own audience,
you know, good, good for you. You know, go ahead
and do that, and that's great, but you know, you do have
to have something that you know, think about Netflix or iTunes. What are
people going to click on? You know, absolutely, I mean again it's
art and commerce because I mean, so many people I I I know,
I know certainly happens a lot with me when when people find out I'm I'm
a producer and director or whatever that's and especially if you're not in the business
too, all of a sudden, they're like, well, I would go
out of story for you. And then they start telling me their life story
about this and that and and and and you know, and for them,
yeah, it's it's their own story. But they what they don't understand is
everybody's got a story, you know, but not, you know, not
not every story makes a good movie, you know. So you know,
I mean there's plenty of stories out there like yeah, at the time that
my my uh boyfriend did this, wouldn't I make it a great movie?
And you're just kind of like, well, not really know. I mean,
you know, it's deeper than that. I mean, it's a lot
deeper than that. And a lot of that has to do. I mean,
it's gonna it's gonna do with the the certainly, the the the the
premise you know of it is has to be compelling, and the characters have
to be compelling. The story, the telling has to be compelling. The
writing has to be compelling. I mean, before you even get to all
this stuff that we're talking about, we'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor, and now back to the show. I mean, we just
you need to rewind and go back to the to your to your your premise,
your concept, and then and then if you have a great premise and
a great concept, then you you you know, work up a treatment.
You work up a treatment, you work out some bugs, you work up
the script. You know, then then you got more time to work on
that script. You keep working, you keep chiseling that down to to the
way it needs to be. And if you know kind of what budget level
you're going to shoot it on, then you need to limit the locations and
limit the amount of people that are in the in the scenes. And uh.
And then when you once you get that all nice and polished up,
give it to a few people that that don't read scripts for a living and
and see what they think. And then and then do one more pass on
it, you know you and then and then at some point around there,
then maybe it's time to start, you know, getting the money to do
it and put it in actually green light it and put it into and put
it into production. But I think a lot of people don't spend enough time
on the script. And so I'm certainly guilty of that. I it's certainly
guilty of films that I've made that were just like, you know, you
you add, you're just like, the script's not ready, Oh well we're
shooting next week, oh you know, and you try to roll with it
like, oh, maybe there's something I can do to make it better,
and you know, and you're like, no, not really, because if
it's not on the page to begin with it's not only so much you can
do with it, you know. So yeah, it's it's trying, and
you don't want to go into production with something that's that's not ready. But
yeah, I mean it's so it's it's it's it's such important, it's it's
actually one chat one section in this book that I wasn't able to because it's
a whole different book. I mean, I can't. I can't write like
twenty five pages about about screenwriting and storytelling and everything. So I just there
was kind of an overview in my book about getting started and how to you
know, combine mosters, you know, stuff to inspire to get it going.
And then the rest is about actually making the film, production and distribution
and everything. But the screenwriting aspect of it, which it's it's a whole
another book in itself. But if you're you know, if you're starting filmmaker
and you really want to get some really good books on screenwriting, there's there's
so many out there. Certainly Story by Robert McKee is probably one of the
best ones. There's a an endless amount of them that have been written.
I wouldn't say all of them are good, but I would say uh,
there's some. There's certainly some that have been written on on specifically on horror.
I think the one guy writte one on the genre filmmaking. Can't remember
the name of the author, but but just yeah, I just take a
look at what's out there, and uh, well you'll you'll see. But
one of the what I find that's even that's even better than that. It
means great, it's great to do to read it. And you know,
and if you if you understand, agree, if not, you know that
you know, read read more. But one of the best things to do
is to actually read screenplays. To to get horror screenplays if that's the genre
of your choice, certainly is there's a lot of them available out there,
excuse me, on the online is to you know, to get them and
to read them and to study them and look at the formatting, look at
the way that that that it's that written, and and and really really study
the screen the screenplay page. I mean, I'm a writer myself, so
I have an extensive collection of screenplays. I mean I have a whole shelf.
I mean just just like literally like a thousand screenplays that are on my
shelf. And and you know, and I just go over when I want
to and say, oh, I'm going to read the script for you Turn,
or I'm going to read the script for Knocked Up or whatever it is.
I mean, those are horror films, but I mean I have I
have the script for hell Raiser and you know, and I have the script
for you know, House on Haunted Hill with script notes. You know that's
right, and and and you know that's that's really I think one of the
most powerful ways to learn how to how to how to how to write is
to read great other writers that are really great and study them, you know,
right, Yeah, I think it's kind of like through osmosis in a
way. I remember I used to read the Aliens screenplay all the time,
you know, and it was just like I would read it over and over
and over again, and then when I would go back and actually watch the
film, I would remember kind of how it looked, you know, on
the on the page, and how it kind of came to life, and
you really realize how kind of succinct that has to all be. You know,
screenplays have to be completely just tight. There can't be one, you
know, moment in it that doesn't have a reason. You know, and
if you read those screenplays, you know, especially the you know, the
classics or even just good movies, you know, I think you kind of
just see, uh, you know, you don't have It's not like a
book where you have a lot of pages that you know probably could be left
out. But let me ask you one more thing about that, because a
lot of screenwriters listen to this. Do the companies where you've worked for,
the production houses, do they regularly I mean where are they getting their writers
and screenplays from? I mean do you find that they're mostly people that are
in town or do they ever, like just find people outside of town submit
screenplays and stuff like that. Oh? Yeah, sure, I'd be happy
to answer. Before I do, I wanted to add to your your Aliens
comment on the screenplay. There's there's actually a really cool book if you haven't
checked it out, it's called Dan O'Bannon wrote it. It's Dan O'Bannon's Guide
to Screenplay Structure. Oh really, I don't think i've ever seen. Yeah,
he actually wrote a book on on his sort of methodology to how he's
how he he writes, particularly Alien, and he has a very it's it's
it's it's an interesting read. He's a very unorthodox way of doing it.
But I think, I think if for screenwriters that are reading this, and
certainly for me as a screenwriter myself, I found it. I found it
really really insightful to see how somebody like Dan O'Bannon, who of course wrote
Aliens Alien it works A Night of Living Dad, Sorry, Cheez night Live
Return to the Living Daddy wrote Returning Living Dad too, of course. Uh.
And it's really it's a it's a it's a cool it's a cool little
it's a cool read. So you should check it out. Yeah, the
ready to do it. But certainly, uh, I think most filmmakers would
agree that. But one of the best ways to learn how to make movie
is certainly to one watch movies but watch them, not watch them just to
watch him once them once, just to watch them, but watch it twice,
to study it, you know, and to really break it apart,
and to to to read screenplays. I'm always amazed how many people I meet
that that. And I asked him like, like, what do you have
a screenplay? Like you want to be a screenwriter and you don't have any
screenplays in your house? You know, you don't read screenplays. Who know,
it's just just my own you know, like okay, you know,
so so are you gonna be are you gonna make your own music but only
listen to your own music? You know? And it doesn't make any sense.
You have you know, you have to you know, if you if
you're a screenwriter and you don't have like either a folder on your computer with
a bunch of PDF screenplays that you you bought, you know, to to
to to read and study, or actually have a lot of screenplays in your
own personal library, or if you don't even have a personal library and you
want and you're a writer or a screenwriter, you know, it's like,
you know, yeah, it kind of might be gone of a good idea
to do something like that. I mean, Newmarket Press is probably one of
the most well known publishers that published screenplays, and I would highly recommend checking
out that particular publishing company. They publish a lot of that stuff. But
there's a lot of that out there that that that you that you should that
you should should get out and study. So anyway, with that said,
uh, that transitions just into the screenwriting question. And I'd hired plenty of
writers and as a producer us. Certainly I hired them for a number of
reasons. But usual sometimes it's because I'm I just don't have the time to
write it myself. Because as as a writer myself, usually I want to
write it myself, but I'm kind of like, oh God, I just
don't have the time, and I need to spend the time on the producing
and getting money to even make the thing and that sort of thing. So
oftentimes I'll have I'll have I'll hire a screenwriter, and it's usually it just
depends, you know, what it is. But usually on the low budget
level of things, screen scripts are written as work for hire, which means
that the writer actually doesn't omit. You're writing it for me as a job,
so you know, you you're you're getting paid X amount. You know,
it could be it could be as ridiculously embarrassingly cheap as fifteen hundred dollars
to four thousand dollars or five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars, you know,
depending on what the budget is. Usually usually a writer gets a screenwriter
gets somewhere around like two percent of the budget for what for the script.
I'm just saying, in general, it's just throwing that around. So two
percent. So if you're making one hundred thousand dollars movie, or the writer
m may have got two grand, may have got four grand, depending on
you know, how generous the producer is. Me particularly, I'm kind of
generous because I'm a writer myself, and I know how hard it is to
do that, to write anything and then to have to turn it over,
you know, but sometimes you have to do that in order to get get
it made, especially if you're an unproduced writer. You know, sometimes that's
the best way to get started. I mean, you know, if you
give me a script and you have no credits at all, and I'm like,
well, hey, I can make this movie. We're gonna make it
for a hundred grand, but I can get it made. Yeah, Now
you're going to get paid a little bit, but you know, the production
company takes it over, they pay you, they own the scripted, but
we actually make the film, and then that helps you get another gig after,
you know, that sort of thing, right, But but you know,
it just depends, you know, I'm with the low budget stuff,
you know, usually yeah, it's usually kind of a standard case where it's
two percent of the budget or or and usually the writer it's it's it's a
work for higher kind of situation, you know. And I've I've hired plenty
of different writers, all different kinds of writers, and a lot of times
they use alias. Sometimes they use aliases for what for their for all kinds
of reasons. Other times they're they who knows you know what what what what
it is? But U and and you you know, they usually have a
very short amount of time to write it. So usually I tend to hire
writers that can write quickly. We'll be right back after a word from our
sponsor and now back to the show. But but with quality, you know,
so I would like for instance, so I just I hired a write
or not too long ago, and I gave him I think I gave him
a week to work up a treatment, and then we worked out notes on
the treatment. I think he had. I think he gave him for three
or four weeks to write the first draft. So I think he did it
in three. I think he did in three, But I've had people do
it in two, you know, And then you know, and then we
would we would certainly do do several other drafts after that, But the first
draft, you know, because once you work out the initial story in the
treatment and stuff, the drafting part of it can come a little quicker.
But and that that's kind of how that that process works, at least with
with some of the lower budget of stuff. The studio levels a whole different
ball game, a whole different Just ignore everything I said, because it's a
whole you're just you're dealing with like executives and you're you know, you're you're
dealing with a whole different group of people. So I'm speaking to you just
as an independent filmmaker that has hired people to write films that have been made
in the under one hundred under two hundred thousand dollars range, and what a
typical scenario may be like. So that's that's what I'm telling you here.
So it's not so if you're a screenwriter you're like, oh, fu,
coming enough for two grand for the rest of my life be broke and my
kid's gonna eat that sort of thing. Now that's not really that's not the
case. But if you're looking to get it something that you have that's already
you know, that that you think could be good for a low budget situation,
yeah, I mean, yeah, you can you can do something like
that? So right, But yeah, I mean I've had people, I
get people submitting all the time for scripts. Uh Oftentimes they're just ridiculously too
complicated, or there's just way too many locations and way too many characters too
to execute. You know, it's usually the case. But you know,
sometimes people come in with stuff that's just really well well written, well executed,
and it's simple, you know, and and and those are the ones
that I tend to to to like as far as making on on a low
on a lower budgeted level. So so yeah, but but you know,
if you have something that you're as a writer, though, if you have
something that you're that you worked on for like twelve years and it's like your
baby, don't sell it to some producer for two grand, you know what
I mean. I mean, I'll be the first one to tell you.
I mean I would if you gave it to me. And I'm like,
man, this is amazing. And I was like usually I was like,
dude, I can't give you two grand for this. No, No,
I mean I just but I mean, you know, look, I mean,
just just if you have something that's like really your your your baby,
I mean it, don't hang on to it and it don't just don't just
let let it go for pennies unless you really unless you're part of the project.
Oftentimes I've made deals with writers too were oftentimes there they were producers,
so they wrote it. The deal was that they they're involved in the percentage
of the any profits, if if any, usually there's none because movies barely
make money. And uh, but they're they're they're more involved in the financial
pie if there is a pie. But often if somebody's always eating the pie
and there is no pie and they're they're sometimes there's no crumbs either from the
pie, so uh, you know, but but you know, it's sometimes
you can make make arrangements like that. Sometimes it's two percent plus a percentage
of them in the back end. And you think it's a good way for
people that are just like trying to get their start and build up some credits.
Can I think it's a great way to start. Yeah, I mean,
I mean, I think it's better if you're if if if you're the
writer and director, because I think like when you if you're just the writer
and you get it to another director, they're gonna have you gotta Remember this
is an interpretive art form here we're talking. Yeah, So so it starts
with you, it starts with the it starts with the idea, it starts
with the writer. It starts it's an that thing. But it ends it
ends in the editing room with some guy like me that's going, well,
what the hell is all this dialogue? Let's cut this out? You know,
it ends, It ends with the editor, It ends with the director
at the end kind of your script down, So like, let's get rid
of this whole Indianapolis speech. This is telling me about it. Man,
you see the ship that I've got out of the movie. It seems that
they shot and they're just like, this scene is so freaking boring. That's
just cut it out. We call the hold. They move on. But
you know, I think I think if you have the knack for it,
if you have the personality to be a director, and you're and you have
a script that's you're really passionate about, you should consider doing it yourself,
you know, being the writer director, or if you do get a production
company involved with it, that you you you are the direct you in the
terms are that you you get to direct it, even though that's that scares
producers. I honestly, it scares them a little bit because, especially on
this level of filmmaking, because you know, to have a first time anybody
when you need to pull stuff off in eight to ten days is very It
can make the producer very nervous because it's like that you know what he's doing.
You know, that's the director behind the camera. That sort of think.
But but but if that's the case, you know, hey, you
know, kickstart it yourself or something, go out and make it yourself.
You know. You know, I've always encouraged people like, hey man,
look at you got your You've got your own script, and it's great,
and you think it's something you can do for a low budget. You know,
there's there's there's nothing that says you can't go out and and either what
you could do, you yea kickstart or whatever. You know, it's it's
a crapshoot with that too, but you know, you could try to do
some kickstarting. You could maybe hopefully you're financially well off yourself, maybe you
could you know, uh, sell your your ridiculous comic book collection because you're
in your fifties now and maybe maybe you don't need to have that anymore,
and and uh sell your comic book collection like I think Kevin Smith did to
make clerks and uh, you know, raise some money, you know,
and and say, hey, I you know, look at I can I
have a I have thirty grand that I can put into something, you know,
and instead of that that midlife crisis car maybe I invest in a in
my movie and you go out and do it yourself, and you you maybe
you produce it yourself and you direct it yourself and you do it. And
I think I think for me, that's always been the best way to do
it, is to kind of carve your own path with it, because certainly
it's it's a little bit more sure that it's going to happen, But don't
go into it without at least doing your due diligence and research and thinking about
about about how to make movies. I mean, I mean, certainly,
you know, you can read the books, you can read, you know
all you want, but there's nothing like experience, you know. And uh
and you will get experience doing it yourself that way, believe me. So
so yeah, man, I mean, I don't know, I think that's
a good way to to start and yeah. Yeah, so well, can
we can we move into post production? Because I know that your big thing,
and I you know, I know you guys talked about it a lot
on Dave Bullis's podcast, so I recommend everybody you know check that out too.
But I wanted to talk to you about post production and you know,
what, what are the important aspects of that and what what do people need
to you know, plan for when they're beginning. You know, one of
the things you guys even talked about was, you know, you have to
have enough budget to do your post production, and you know, you can't
just put it all into shooting it and then you know, expect to just
like do the post production aspect of it, you know, without any money.
You know, I think people get kind of stuck with that, you
know that they they do everything in production and they get to post production and
they've run out of budget. Oh yeah, totally no, Yeah, I
can totally totally give you some good, good advice on that. Well.
I think I think when you before you look, before you get involved in
your when you start, when you're ready to start shooting your film in pre
production, you need to start thinking about post production in pre production because everything,
you kind of always have to kind of work backwards. I mean,
certainly even from distribution. I would say I always say start, start from
where you want this film to end up. So if you're like, okay,
I want this film to be theatrical, okay, well, if you
wanted to be theatrical, probably shouldn't be shoting on your phone. You know,
you might want to. You might want to even though that's happened when
you're wrong. But if you really wanted to be a theatrical release, or
even have the possibility of being a theatrical release, you want to start deciding
on your your your cameras, you know, and say, okay, well
maybe we should shoot with the Alexa. Maybe we need to shoot at four
K so we can get a four K DCP that we can take out to
screen in theaters and so on and so forth. So you you, you
and start thinking about your deliverables, like, okay, we want to be
able to sell this fore end. We want to be able to you know,
do a full delivery on this too everywhere. Well okay, that's that's
great. I'm glad you're thinking about that in pre production, because what you're
gonna need to do is you're gonna It's like I said, you're gonna think
about what camera you're shooting on you guys, start thinking about your your how
you're gonna you know, because you need to budget that stuff out, Like,
Hey, we're gonna need M and E tracks, We're gonna need five
point one We're gonna need five point one M and ease, We're gonna need
uh, We're gonna need to do the stems. We're gonna need to do
close captioning. By the way, you can't even get a movie on iTunes
unless it's closed captioned, and and so on and so forth. So I
mean you you really need to start thinking about that kind of stuff early on
and budget for it, because by the time you get to post, people
are like, what you mean, I gotta have that? How much is
that gonna cost? Oh? I gotta do five point one M and e
What the hell is that? You know? I gotta do? I gotta
do what you know? I gotta do. I gotta do QC. What
the hell is QC? You know that sort of thing? And how much
does that cost? Oh? My god, that costs like five hundred dollars
to do that, and all of a sudden, you're you're you're just like
you're overwhelmed and in your movie doesn't your movie doesn't get finished because you couldn't
sell it. Because you didn't you weren't able to deliver it. And if
you're not able to deliver your movie, you're in trouble, man. I
mean, you're gonna spend you know, your because you know, these guys
aren't gonna wait around forever. When you get a distribute, when you get
a distributor on the hook and they say, we like your film, it's
really good. We want to make a deal with you, blah blah blah,
and then you start looking at the contract and you're like, oh my
god, I can't deliver all this stuff. We'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. I didn't shoot
on set stills, or I didn't shoot I didn't I didn't I didn't do
this, or it doesn't pass QC because it has to you know, normally
has to pass a QC process. And you have all these post issues,
you know with God knows what you know, and they they're like, hey,
you know, look, we you know, we're interested in your film.
But if you can't pass QC, and if if it's not, if
you don't, if you can't deliver what the contract says that we need as
a delivery, we can't. We can't take your film. I've seen that
happen several times with people, you know, they they their movies just undeliverable.
It's not it's bad, it just they couldn't deliver it the way the
distributor wanted it, so the distributor had to pass on it. What would
cause a film not to pass QC? Oh, so many things, so
many things. Actually, it's one of the things. I have a really
good chapter, probably one of the only ones that are in print, I
think, in a book about about the whole sort of the process of delivery,
you know, mastering and delivery and all that stuff. And I have
a little bit and there on QC and QC For those of you don't know,
is it say, it's quality control, and it's it's a process.
It's a very subjective process. And what happens is your movie goes to a
lab. Let's just say like like, I don't want to mention any laugh,
because let's talk to me after this. No, you say your body
goes to a lab and you for a QCING process. What they do is
they take the master and they they run it through the ring or they they
they they look at the video, the levels, the gamma, all all
these things. They run through a machine and and and they run it through
this machine. This machine, I'll say, oh, this movie's out of
uh the gamma does this. And there's there's a dead pixels on these shots.
And there's a this shot is out of focus, or there's a there's
a there's a C stand in the shot. I mean, I mean literally
stuff like that, Like there's a C stand in the shot, you have
to that's that's a QC flag or a dead pixel, which can happen,
you know on digital cameras sometimes it's just a dead pixel in the middle.
Very hard you know to get rid of those sometimes us if you're shooting on
film, it could be film scratches, you know, all the way to
uh uh uh stuff being out of focus and so and so whatever. And
it's it's grated like a by a number system, so you have like one,
a one, two, and a three Like a one is like kind
of they're just letting you know, kind of thing it's not. It doesn't
won't cause you to pass. Two is kind of like not really enough too.
It's bad, but it's not that bad. Three is like absolutely,
you have to fix this kind of thing, you know. So it's it's
grated on scale. In my book, I put in I think two examples
of what a QC report actually looks like, and ones that have passed and
ones that have failed. And they'll they'll pick out all kinds of stuff audio
chances, particularly audio. They'll they'll pick out things like the folly is off,
or she has a bracelet on, but we're not hearing the bracelet,
you know, on the M and E track. I mean, stuff like
that, lips mats, you know, I mean just the most ridiculous stuff
that you're just like, oh my god, you know, what is wrong
with these people? So yeah, but but it's a very real and a
very important part of the selling of the film process. So it's like,
if there's just too many things in there, then you fail to QC chest
Okay, there's only two outcomes to QC okays and fail. There's no in
between. If you fail, forget about your distribution. I mean, you
have a chance to fix it. They'll say, Okay, well it failed,
so you need to fix all this stuff. But if you go back
and like, I can't fix it, there's no there's no way I can
fix it, well, you're probably not going to get the distribution deal at
you just you try to get because nobody, no distributor wants to take a
movie that's failed QC and certainly for TV for television. You know, like
my film Ghost Month premiered on NBC Universal's chill or TV. It's a main
television network, so you see, you know, but it had to pass
a QC and it did as I shot it on thirty five and I did
the post so I made sure it passed. But it had, you know,
it had it's it's share fair problems. But I was able to fix
it, and they weren't They weren't too horrible. But you know, is
there is there any way to test it yourself before you send it over or
I mean, are there ways? Not? Really, because it's subjective,
because you're you're you're giving it to a lab that that's got some dude in
there that's getting you know, eight bucks an hour to sit there, run
it through a machine and and watch it and to say oh, oh yeah,
it's the levels or the you know, there's there's really not a hundred
percent way to say, you know, yeah, this is definitely gonna pass,
you see, because I did it myself. But you you certainly can,
You certainly can look out for things like and I can tell you firsthand,
you know, if your shot is ridiculously out of focus, it's probably
gonna get flag. If you have a C stand in the shot, it's
gonna get flag. If you're if you're not, if you're One of the
most common things as the levels are falling out of the legal you know,
so the legal zone for levels, but oftentimes that can be fixed with filters
and final cut or Adobe Premier and stuff like. You can add a filter
to that and you can get the levels back into what they call it a
legal illegalized area. And titles are out of title safe zones, that sort
of thing you said. There are some There are things, if you know
a lot about post production that you can look out for, like I can
look at a movie and tell you if it will pass QC. Usually from
visually audio not as much because you have to really they really have to listen
to it and really QC like the M and E tracks and make sure like
there's footsteps filled in and although there's fully where it needs to be. That
sort of thing, there are different different labs or you know. Sometimes you
know, I've I've had stuff that they've told me to fix and I went
back and said, yeah, I fixed it, no problem, and I
didn't fix it. I was just just bullshitting them, and then they passed
it, you know, and it happens. It happened like two a few
science too, because I'm like, yeah, oh yeah I fixed that,
Yeah, yeah, all that pixel that you said, Yeah, I totally
fixed it. And then they come back and they go okay, great and
then they get then they pass. So that's why I'm saying it's a very
subjective process. You can have it go, you can have it past one
QC house in the United States, and then you can give it to a
foreign place that that q sees it and you'll get a whole the list of
problems that they did. Pay So it's it's a really weird, a very
frustrating process for a filmmaker to to to get past that stage. But but
I will say it is one of the big hang ups for people, especially
on a low budget movies, because you don't really a lot of times have
the money to get it fixed. So that's one thing you really need to
be careful with and watch out for. Okay, so can you walk us
through the process Okay, you know, just editing the film and everything,
Like what what the processes? You know? Are you typically editing as they're
shooting or can you give me just an idea of how that all you know
comes together? Quick idea? But I mean typically typically no, I'm not
not really editing as they're shooting. It depends. I mean, if I'm
full moon. Sometimes we used to do that and we're making public Master ten
and stuff like that. Sometimes I would be editing as they're shooting. They
would give me. That was just the editor they would Charlie Van would give
me the material and like a daily basis, I'd be cutting as we're going
and that sort of thing. Some you know, so that that can certainly
happen. But sometimes if it's your own picture, you're not really thinking about
that right now. You're probably just more concerned about getting a shot. So
usually what happens is after you get it all shot, then you then you
then you meet you either, if you're not editing it yourself, you'll meet
with an editor and excuse me, you'll you'll go over with it. You'll
go over with the editor. You know kind of what's going on. The
editor will you know, of course, give the script usually what's called a
line a line script that they had if you had a script supervisor on set,
and they'll get an idea of what the coverage is like and what takes
you like, that sort of thing, if if you even had one.
A lot of times a little budgets, they don't even have a script supervisor.
And then and then it's pretty much up to the editor. At that
point, you have a conversation a couple conversations with a director and you stay
and start cutting away, and then you just goes through a process of of
you know, an assembly and a director's cut and producer's cut oftentimes until you
until you get it locked. And then once you get it locked, and
then you you head onto sound from that point forward. But the editing process,
though, one thing I will tell you, and this is another area
that you really should spend the money in is Look, if you're a great
editor yourself, fine, but if you're if you're just you know, a
guy that cut a few commercials together, a few car commercials together, a
Dorito's commercial, it's not a feature film editor. You really got to look
at who you're hiring as an editor, because editing is so important to the
process. And I've I've edited so many feature films, man, I mean
over, I think I'm like a hundred and something now. Feature films,
now, I mean a lot of them are this blah, but I mean
the the one I mean, I mean, I edited for Sci Fi Channel
for people, and it's just such important right out of the editor h experience.
And I'm losing you a little bit. I can't really hear you.
You're you're dropping out a little bit. Are you going through a tunnel?
Yeah? Yeah, So what I was saying on an experienced editor, because
in the long run, they'll really save you. It's just have a really
good DP or anything else, because a really good editor can make or break
your movie. They can I can cut a scene eighteen different ways and get
completely different meanings every time in the scene. But but you know, so,
so that's what I'm saying. I mean, an editor is just important.
It's not just a matter of slinging together a bunch of coverage. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
show that's not editing. Editing is a craft like anything else, just like
you know, cinematography, just like production design. And it's it's the end
part of your film here, you know. So it's it's everything. It's
timing, it's it's it's a performance. It's whether or not to show the
knife yet or to show it at the end. If I cut a scene
and I show you the knife too early, the scare is gone. The
scare might be gone. But if I show it at the end, you
know, the scene could play a completely different way. So that's an enormous
amount of power to have over a movie as an editor. So that's why
that's why I'm just really, you know, saying like, hey, you
know, it is an important part of the process, and and really get
somebody that knows how to cut feature films together, and and uh uh,
if it's yourself, great, But if it's just somebody with no experience,
you know, I would really advise against it. So fay way, you
edit, after you get that done, and you a new, beautiful edited
thing together. And you can move on. Then you lock the picture,
which means no further changes to the to the to the picture. Uh,
and then that can be given at that point over to the sound department,
and the sound starts and the and that's also when the composer usually starts,
and CGI and everything else starts at that point, titling and all that.
Right, So, are you able to have like composers for these I mean,
is that some point that's within the budget? Yeah? Absolutely, Well,
my wife's a composer, so I'm lucky. Okay, that's right.
I forgot about it. She's she's she plays for guitar for Blueman Group,
and she's also a composer, a film composer. She she scored a lot
of my my films and everything too. So it's convenient. Yeah, definitely,
definitely a convenient relationship. Right, So, yes, composed And let
me let me tell you here too, because this is also extremely important.
One of the one of the things that's very common that seems to be like
a plague these days, because that's what any of you there, I can't
hear you. Let me trailer call them back. Hey, we're back.
I just keep going, don't want me to call you back, is it?
Okay, he's the connection. Okay, yeah, the connections. Good.
You were you were saying. One of the plagues. Okay, maybe
play is not a good word, but one of the one of the real
mistakes. I think that that I see some filmmakers doing these days is the
the the use of music libraries in place of an original film score. Now
I'm talking. I'm not talking about trailers and and I mean, look,
I mean, if you trailers or documentaries or whatever and you need to find
you need to pull a piece out or a song out or whatever. Okay,
fine, because they you know, libraries can have their uses for for
certain for certain things, for certain you know, corporate videos or or commercials,
and you know, you know that that that that's great. But this
is of course my personal opinion on the matter. But for me, as
a filmmaker like I would never pull out music from a library, absolutely not.
And there's a reason for that. I mean, amusing a film is
an original piece of work, you know. I mean, it's like a
paint thing, you know. I mean, you're you're you want to have
an original composer come in and do an original score to your film, because
your film is unique. It flows a certain way, it's edited a certain
way, it's it's it has a certain esthetic, it has a certain sound
to it, it has certain instrumentation that you want to enhance the performance of
the characters. You're not going to get that from a library. You know
what you're going to get from a library. You're going to get the same
queue that nineteen thousand other people just used in a car commercial and a feature
film and something else that people just are using over and over again. So
it's really to your advantage as a filmmaker to hire a composer on your feature
film and get an original score. The audience will love you for it.
You'll love yourself for it. And there are lots and it's not look,
it's not expensive. Lots of composers out there that are hungry looking for work,
that will even do it, that'll even do it for experience, just
to to to to to work on it sometimes, you know, I mean,
just you just need to find those people and reach out to those people
to do an original score to your movie. It is absolutely worth it.
And do not cheap out on the music, because I mean, even George
Lucas will tell you that sound is fifty percent of the movie. So you
know, and it's true because you know, we see with our eyes and
we smell with our nose, but when we hear with our ears. But
since we're not in smell a vision, you know, we're seeing and hearing.
So it's like kind of a fifty fifty experience. So sound and sound
and music and all that stuff is such an important part to your film.
Don't cheap out on it. Do you use a temp track when you're editing
or whatever, Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, to look, if you're
editing and you're editing and you're and you're using al Alan Sevestree temp track because
you just want to give the composer an idea or something, Yeah, that's
fine. But I'm just saying at the end of the day, you know
you have to uh certainly a temp temp tracking is very common. Yeah.
You you people are just putting in music just to get an idea, you
know when they're cutting, but the end result is something completely different. Uh.
So that's that's that's that's actously a good way to to to to do
it. But when you I have a whole chapter in the book about the
music of horror films, and I interview I interview some amazing composers you know
in there, I mean John, John Ahman, John Debney, you know,
I need to you know, some great folks and they I really get
into it with them about that stuff. And I think it's very insightful for
you to for for the readers to read that chapter on music and sound.
It's really it's really a good one. It's actually one of my Actually I
think it is my favorite chapter in the book. It's very it's actually quite
extensive to the interviews. But but you know, but music though too,
I mean, you know, it's uh, there are there are just so
many elements to it, uh between instrumentation and and uh and the overall feel
of scenes and everything. Music really helps the audience. It really helps direct
the audience to the emotions that that they want to feel in a scene.
And and for you to just like pull something out of your hat, you
know, it's it's it's it's a shame. It's too bad, you know,
And I think that it can be you can really improve yourself if you
if you hire a composer. So so did they come in during as the
you know, you lock the picture, it goes over to sound posts.
They're doing the the you know fully, and the designing and everything. Does
the soundtrack come in at the very you know, after all that happens,
or is that kind of going on at the same time. Well, well,
sometimes sometimes you can have Sometimes you can get depending on your relationship with
the composer. Sometimes you can get if you're married to the compomer. But
if you sometimes if you're if you're like before you even like unreal eval like
I had, I had the music music ideas before we even start it.
I am you know, like I said, hey, you know, I
want this kind of style, and it was able to start kind of getting
going on the music early on, you before we even shot the film.
So I mean, I think sometimes you can if you have that kind of
a relationship with a composer, you can say, hey, I'm kind of
thinking I want to do this kind of thing. You know, maybe you
start coming up with some ideas and then they can start doing that early on.
But but what normally happens is this, you you you shoot the movie,
you cut the movie, you you lock the movie, and then and
then it goes to the sound stage. The sound the sound uh, not
an actual sound stage. I mean this sound the sound editing process, so
the music process, stage of production, and what the director, what the
director should be doing at this at this point after after the picture is locked,
is you need to you need to sit with usually three different kinds of
people, usually your sound designer, your composer, and your your CGI artist
if you have one, which a lot of times you don't, but sometimes
you do, and you'll need to sit with it and talk about the special
effects shots that you need to do. But more commonly, you're probably on
low budget. It's probably going to be just your sound and your music.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna sit with you You're gonna hire a
sound a sound designer and a sound editor, and they're gonna you're gonna you're
gonna do what's called spotting. You're gonna spot with these guys. You're gonna
you're gonna watch the film from beginning to end, and you're gonna give them
notes. You're gonna say this scene, I would like to hear metallic sounds
coming from there, and I want more of a Bobcat growl on the monster,
and I want this and blah blah blah blah, and they'll just make
notes as as you're going along, and you'll and it'll it. Believe me,
they'll thank you for it because it helps them, saves them time,
saves you time. Everybody's on the same page of what kind of sound design
you're looking for. Then you do a spotting session with your composer, and
it's the same sort of process, but you're talking more in terms of music.
You're saying, I'm I'm thinking more like you know, you know.
Depending on how detailed they get with you and what your understanding is of music
and how it works, the conversations can be very detailed, and they can
be very generic. They can be very much like, well, I don't
know, I think there should be some music here, but I'm not really
sure what. And then the composer will say, okay, cool, I'll
do something there. But I have a I have a little bit of a
music background. So when I talked to my wife and about composing, we
have like a nice conversation about like, I don't know about you know,
the horns, and maybe the D minor is better, or maybe some piano
work here, that sort of thing. So it's a little bit more detailed,
but I think in general, when you're talking to a composer, it's
better to give them, give them the emotion that you're going for in the
scene, like this scene is sad, this scene is scary, this scene
means, this scene is a really big moment, and I don't want to
hear any music at all until we see the knife at the end. You
know, that kind of direction for your cons And and again the composer will
thank you for this, and they have a clear idea, of clear direction
of where they're going with that. And then the same thing happens with the
CGI you do. The same thing will be right after a word from our
sponsor. And now back to the show. I sit with them, and
you spot it and you tell them what kind of special effects you want.
You know, I wanted to glow, and I want the guy's face to
morph into a lizard or whatever it is, and I want it to be
green and that sort of thing, and uh and that, and that's really
kind of in the in a in a really quick nutshell, the entire part
four of my book, And that's kind of what you're what you got to
do there at that stage, right, And I got there. Any typical
mistakes that you see, like if people want CGI in a scene, are
there any things they need to make sure they have for you to to do
that? Absolutely, that's the that's the last chapter. Actually it's pit falls
of post production. There are many. But but to answer that specifically,
yes, Uh. The oftentimes, like I did a lot of movies that
I that I had come in and had one of their biggest problems is shooting
the wrong plates. You know, like they think that, oh, well,
we'll just remove the background and then we'll just throw some green some green
ship behind him and then we'll take it out and after effects and it'll be
great. And then they come in and then I mean, I've had that
stuff come in to me and it's like, yeah, just take out his
take out the background. I'm like, guys, you didn't light the freaking
green screen right it? Look you just put up you just like put some
green cloth behind the guy. You got him too close to it, he's
casting a shadow on it. How am I supposed to pull him out of
that background and make it look believable? You know what I mean? Like
that sort of stuff that happens all the freaking time, or you know,
somebody will be in front of a green screen but they're wearing like a green
shirt. You know, it's like shot this right, you know, and
you know it happens, man, I mean and uh, you know,
just little things like that. You know, there there's and there's book.
You know, there's plenty of books out there on green screen too, if
you're if you're doing green screen work. But that's one of the big things
I see coming in as people that are want to do green screen work on
the low budget level, but they don't shoot it right. They shoot it
very They think just because it's green, that's good enough, and it's not.
Believe me, there is there is a very special way to do that
to get it looking good, and you know, it can be a million
other things too. Bad sound is also a very common thing. You know,
just you just had bad sound on set and nobody seemed to notice,
and now I've been problem. Or if there's voice over, make sure you
get it recorded on set if you can, because the last thing you want
to do is to be having to bring back actors and especially if they have
to do a dr and replace their dialogue over bad over badly recorded dialogue.
It looks terrible first of all. Most of the time, and oftentimes they
you lose the original meaning of the performance. That's what I'm saying, right,
So, I mean I think it was Cubrick that didn't do a DR
at all because he was like totally opposed against it. At least I think
that's what I heard from Full Metal Jacket or something like that they wouldn't do
a DR or something like that. And you know, and I'm with you
with that. I'm it's like, it's because it's a man, you know,
a r socks. It's like, no, there's a match stick that
happened on the set, and when you have to replace it in the studio,
it's just not it's not the same. It means not the same.
Yeah, So you get it, I can so yeah. So I mean
there's there's other things. You know, Slating is a big issue out of
times for you know, people that just horrible, horrible people that just don't
slate. You know, I was like, what's wrong with you? Slating
is is just inexcusable. You really need to do a good slate for the
editor and for your own sanity. And there are apps on the iPad and
the iPhone. I can't reme. I mentioned in my book, but I
can't remember what it's called the top of my head. I think it's called
movie slate or something like that. Just look at on the iTunes store and
I think it's like twenty bucks or something, and it's it's just it's it's
it's amazing. You know. It's just an I an iPad or an iPhone
app and you just put the iPhone in front of the camera and you just
click a little button and it goes clear like that and it slates it for
you. You know. So it's a it's a good high tech way to
do all that stuff. You know. Now when you're when you're dealing with
these higher end cameras, I do you have a high end audio track that's
going into the camera that you've got or are you still just having to sink
all the audio? Well? What I do, this is what what I
do is I make sure that my sound people are doing two things. That
one one, they're running a line into the camera. Okay, so you're
getting it recorded on camera, but they're also running into a backup, a
high quality backup that that is usually running into a recorder that that can record
it at way high quality, at a way higher quality than the camera actually
can. So usually the audio sounds better on their recorder than it does on
the camera. So what I do is I actually resink. I resink the
films, so I I bring it in. I use the the the audio
that they that they did, that they recorded on their their their high end
recorder at a higher bit rate, higher like I usually do, usual to
do, like ninety six k twenty four bit recording super high quality audio right,
and then I rethink it with the material that way. Now, is
that the most common way. No. Most people just take it right off
the camera, and oftentimes that's fine, so you know, you but if
you take it right off the camera, it's always a good idea to have
a backup too, you know, because if the audios fucked up on the
camera. I had a movie that came in one time, and I kid
you not fifty percent of the movie they thought they had the audio on the
camera and it was all distorted because somebody didn't set the level right going into
the camera. So he was monitoring he was monitoring it okay through his mixer,
but the output from his mixer going into the camera the camera was set
at a different level, so it was distorted. Everything that it was being
recorded on the camera was restorted, and there was no backup, so everything
that came in it was I don't like that the whole time, and they
were, they were totally devastated, totally pissed, fired the fucking sound guy,
and uh and it was we had they had the adr like fifty percent
of the movie and it looks terrible. It's it's dreadful. And because you
couldn't even hear what the guy said to begin with, because you couldn't even
tell what he was saying, you had to look at his lips, you
know, versus like normally a dr at least if it's bad audio, you
can kind of hear what they said to match it. So so yeah,
I mean that's a big problem. Sound is a big problem at posts.
So they pay a lot of attention to that, and you won't be sorry.
Do you typically have a love on every actor and the boom or how
is that? Like? Usually one of the most difficult sound sound shows that
I directed was real evil, And the reason for that is, like they're
swinging around three sixty running down halls. It wasn't it was. It was
actually one of the most difficult technically to shoot, and a lot of that
has to do with the camera, the sound, the audio. And I
was hiding in drawers and final balls and laying on ground the ground, I
mean, I was hiding all over the place. But sound on that was
very difficult. And I knew it because I have the post experience. So
I told the producers and so I said, hey, man, you got
to hire this sound guy, this one sound guy I've used before. And
I said, you know, he's got the gear. We need to lab
all these actors. You need to run the audio into this mixer and all
this stuff. Otherwise we're gonna have a We're gonna have a a cluster fucking
post sound wise. Luckily they listened to me, and we so, yeah,
really evil when you know, we everybody has got a lab on.
They're running around the sound guys ducking around in rooms and whatnot, and uh
and that's kind of how that was made, you know. But usually it's
usually it's just a few labs and a boom, you know, and it's
and that's that's plenty for what you're doing. But you know, when you're
found footage is a little a little harder to make because you're because of the
you're not shooting in just one direction, and then you can move the cast
and crew video village all the time. You know, you're swinging around three
sixty you know, seeing everything. And it was also a lighting challenge too,
So lab labs is always a good idea, and and that do you
have to light the whole thing, like, I mean, do you light
everything and just like start shooting or do you actually light individual stuff, individual
shots. Well, since we were we were shooting in a practical location,
an actually abandoned hospital, we couldn't light from above. You now, wreck
the movie wreck that that whole house, that whole building that they're in that
was a sound stage. That thing they that's like a two stories down stage
that they lit from above so they could swing around no problem because they had
lights already rigged. Now in our case, we're shooting in practical locations,
so we had to hide the lights a lot of times. And then there
was some story element, like there was this film crew shooting, so we
lay left the lights around and saw and stop forth. And that was one
of our sort of cheap ways to try to be lights in the shot and
I sort of have some sort of meaning while they're there, and and but
you know, for work. But now we have to pre live the scene
so we can say three sixty as much as we wanted. And that's how
most of that movie was shot. But it was it was a difficult shoot
technically speaking, uh, for a lot for those reasons. So okay,
let me ask you one more thing about post production. And when you're talking
about budgeting, if we're saying, okay, let's say, for example,
we're trying to shoot a fifty thousand dollars film, how much of that is
going to be needed for post production? Like how much do you need to
have to have you know, an editor, sound mix, and you know,
a score. I know it's always different, but just to get people
kind of an idea a fifty thousand dollars budget. We'll be right back after
a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. Yeah, well,
I would say i'd say somewhere maybe around I don't know, maybe maybe
maybe seventy thirty maybe seventy for your for everything, your production actors, everything,
and then maybe thirty for your post budget. You know, possibly somewhere
in that range, maybe thirty five, maybe even forty, depending on what
you're doing. But I would say I would say somewhere around seventy thirty.
Maybe it could could work for you because he's that ridiculously low or is it
like on Porro? I mean, I don't even know where that falls.
It's not it's not. I wouldn't say I guess this is this is gonna
be. Everybody is going to be a different answer on that, because I
mean I have a lot of resources for posts too, so I it just
depends kind of what you have, you know, what you have to work
with, you know, I mean editing software is incredibly cheap these days,
but it's not the software where it's the person you're operating it. So you
know, you could buy final cut for three hundred bucks, but you can't
really get a good editor for three hundred bucks, you know. So,
but if you're already a experienced editor and you can cut the film yourself and
save money, yeah, you're gonna save five grant in your budget or whatever
it may be. But I would say fifty grand. You know you're not
you're fifty grand budget. You know you're not paying you know you're probably paying
somewhere, you know. Yeah, I would say somewhere maybe in the maybe
like sixty forty to seventy thirty, third thirty and forty being the post end
of things. It shouldn't post. Shouldn't be as much as your production budget,
I guess, is what I'm saying. You know, your production is
going to be the chunk of the money is going to go to your production.
All right, that's gonna do it. For today's show, we the
phone kind of got funky there and we were having some technical difficulties and then
we talked for a little bit more, but it wasn't really part of the
show, so I'm just gonna end it there. I want to thank Danny
Draven for coming on the show. Don't forget to check out his book,
The film Maker's Book of the Dead, Absolutely the Bible of horror filmmaking that
you know, go to Amazon and get it today because it's a really if
you want to be a horror filmmaker. There's like just tons and tons of
information in there. Okay, so thanks guys. I want to thank Jason
so much for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want
to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to
the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward Slash three twenty six.
Thank you so much for listening to guys as always, keep on writing no
matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof
Screenwriting podcast at bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.