You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two ninety eight, Looking Good, Billy Ray,
Feeling Good, Lewis Trading places, broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the
kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so
we have you break it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film,
market and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader
that used to reading tempole movies when your movie is going to be done for
one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script
Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC,
HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and
many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by
professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot com. Enjoy today's
episode with guest host Jason Buff. Do you like sharks? Do you like
NATO's? Well, my friend, you are in luck today because today we
are talking with Thunder Levin, screenwriter of Shark Nato and Sharknado two. I
was wondering if you could talk for just a second about your experience when you
first got into Los Angeles and what your expectation was versus what you actually found.
Sure, I got a tala in late nineteen eighty six with my student
film in hand, and I was quite prepared to send it to Steven Spielberg
and have him say, where have you been. We've been waiting for you,
right, That's what usually happens, and that did not happen, to
my great surprise, although I did get a very nice letter back from his
director of development at the time saying we thought it was a very well done
student film, and so then I set about the hard slog of trying to
make connections, and I guess it took about three or four years of just
sort of knocking on doors before I got my first directing job. And then
that didn't go very well. I was sort of outmaneuvered politically. I went
into it being I guess, very naive and thinking everybody was there to help
me realize the vision and all this nonsense, and no, everybody was there
for their own causes, or at least especially the producers, and so that
did not go very well. And so then it was a sort of a
case of regrouping, and I started writing more, and it was a long
time before before other things started happening, and I started doing corporate promotional videos
for a living, which actually is a fairly good living if you can make
it work. But it wasn't what I wanted to do, and so years
went by, and finally I was in my mid thirties when I thought,
you know, this is ridiculous. We've got to make something happen if nobody's
going to hire me to do it. I ought to make my own film,
which had always been the plan. It's just that, you know,
that was a someday kind of thing. Someday, if things don't work out,
I'll just make my own film and I'll show them. And then finally
I realized, you know, someday. It was a couple of years ago,
I've got to get going and tried to raise money to make an indie
film and did not raise enough, and so that project collapsed. But some
of the investors that i'd contacted, you know, who had who had pledged
funds, remembered me a year or so later when I had another project,
and now I seemed like, oh, well, he's done this before,
even though we hadn't actually gotten the first film made, So there was there
was some recognition factor when I went back to them a year or two later
and said, hey, let's let's make this film. We can do it
for less money than that other one, and it's going to be more commercial
and all these things. It was just the funding. It was. It
was more of a niche a niche film. But I don't think that's why
I fell apart. It was a little science fiction film, but I think
it fell apart because we were trying to raise close to a million dollars and
I just didn't have the connections to raise that much money. But then the
next film we tried to raise money for, which was a zombie film,
was much more modestly budgeted. We went in saying we were going to make
it for a hundred brand, but we would have the option of raising one
hundred and fifty, and so we we eventually got to one hundred grand,
and we said, okay, we're invoking our option to raise one hundred and
fifty because we think it'll be a better film that way. And we raised
one hundred and fifty, so it was much more doable and it seemed like
it would be much easier for it to make a profit. So you worked
as a producer on you're talking about mutant vampire Zombies from the Hood. I
am, yeah, and so I was one of I was, I guess
credit wise, I'm the executive producer on that. George Saunders was my partner.
He was a producer, But I ended up raising about ninety five percent
of the money. And so really it was a nuts and bolts from the
beginning to the end kind of production for me, and I learned a lot
doing it. I don't ever want to do it again. I know there
are people out there who enjoy putting the deal together and working all that stuff
out, that that's not really the part of the business that intrigues me.
Like I like making movies. I like the creative part. I like coming
up with a story and figuring out characters and casting and working with crew and
cinematographers and sound people and artists and actors and you know, seeing it all
come to life. Putting together a deal doesn't really doesn't really excite me that
way. Can you talk for just a second about how you were able to
put together that kind of funding? And I mean, I know it's not
the really fun part of filmmaking, But one of the things that I've been
trying to focus more on is talking about the non creative aspects and the more
business aspects of putting together a film. So can you can you discuss just
a little bit about the process of actually putting the film together and raising the
funds and what kind of you know, things like did you have to make
it at LLC? And the legal aspects of it. Sure what I mean,
I guess the first thing for anyone to remember who's going into this is.
It's a film business, not the film art, not the film crew
aft. It's a business first and foremost, at least to people who are
going to be investing, and people are going to be buying films. So
you've got to put together a package that makes sense from a business standpoint.
So it's not about ge this won't this be a really cool story because investors
probably aren't going to care about that. Some of them might, but most
of them aren't. Most people who are investing money in a project want to
make money, so they need to see that you have some grasp of the
business side of it. So the first thing is to do your research and
figure out what movies are selling, what movies are getting made on the low
end, and what are selling in the marketplace. And of course the marketplace
is changing in the midst of changing drastically. You know, ten years ago,
fifteen years ago, it was all about what can you get on the
shelf at Blockbuster, And of course that's not the case anymore. It's about
how do you get attention for a movie it's on vod or on iTunes or
Amazon or what have you. And the all business really is sort of reinventing
itself right now, and even the studios or are scrambling to figure out how
all that is going to work and how to make money from it. So
it's a it's a weird time to be making an indie film right now.
But what we did was to research to put together Basically, we put together
a business plan, and the things we had to include in that were,
how is this film going to make money? What you know, what's the
physical process. We're going to form an LLC, a limited liability company.
The investors are going to be the limited members, and the producer and I
were the general members, which meant that the investors would only have their investment
at stake. They couldn't be touched for any losses beyond the money they put
in, but they would have no particular say in running the company, and
George and I would run the company, and we our investment would be sweat
equity, the effort we put into making the film. And so then we
put together this business plan that would that listed movies that we thought were similar
to our film, and we did research on Okay, what is the low
end that these investors can expect to make? So we did some research on
similar movies that hadn't done so well, and how much money did they make,
how much money did they spend? What's the high end, you know?
And of course at that point what we were all pointing to the high
end was the Blair Witch Project, which has been made for like, you
know, sixty grand and made one hundred million dollars, you know, And
of course you fill it with caveats like it's unlikely that the film will achieve
that kind of success, and your money is at risk and you could lose
everything, and you keep saying that over and over again. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
To protect yourself legally. But at the same time, you have to paint
a Rosie picture or else why would anybody invest in your moving And what is
it about our film? What elements of our film make it likely to succeed?
So, okay, zombies were hot, so it was a zombie film.
We would guarantee that we would get at least one named star in the
film. It would be shot in twelve days on one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, so the financial risk were very low compared to the potential rewards,
things like that. And basically, we did some research online and we talked
to other people who had done this before, and there are business plans out
there that you can get a look at, and we synthesize the best elements
from a bunch of different business plans that we looked at, and we got
distribution charts from the Hollywood Reporter and from what is a box office Mojo and
a bunch of these other things to show how similar films had performed. We
put together a budget, We put together a cast list of the kind of
actors we thought we would be able to get for the money we had.
We put together a schedule of how the investors could expect to see things proceeds.
So, okay, once all the money is in, it'll take this
long to prepare and cast the film, and this long to shoot it,
and this long to do post. And from the time it's finished in post
until the time it's out on DVD, we'll take about this long. And
once it's out on DVD, how long do we expect it to take to
recoup its money? And then, of course there was the business side of
all. The way we structured it was that all funds that came in from
sales of the film would go to the investors first. We wouldn't get anything
until the investors had recouped one hundred and ten percent of their investment. So
that was sort of their protection that we weren't sort of going to run off
with the money or anything. The investors had the rights to audit the books,
things like that, so we set it up to protect the investors as
much as possible to give them first position. Ah actually was second position,
after any debts that the film might have incurred, And did you have a
distribution model in place at that point. We did not have a distributor signed.
We had a couple of distributors at that point that we had individually worked
with before, I had experience with before, and so we mentioned them and
said that the film will be taken to these distributors and to others. At
the time, we felt like we could probably get a better deal on the
distribution end if we didn't pre sign with an investor. In retrospect, that
was probably a mistake, but we felt that any investor looking at our script
and our little package with filmmakers who were essentially unknown, would not give us
a very good deal, but that if we went out and made a really
good movie, then we could command a higher price in retrospect. It probably
would have been safer. It probably would have been better to take the safer
deal and make a deal upfront. We did have a couple of distributors who
expressed some interest upfront, and that would have at least guaranteed a certain a
certain minimum income for the film. Right now, can you talk about what
it feels like as a director to walk onto the set for the first time.
I mean, I know you had directed other things, but this was
probably the biggest thing you had directed at that point. Right I'm not sure
it wasn't necessarily the biggest. It was the first film where I essentially had
creative control, and so that was a big deal for me. And it
was certain the first film that I was solely responsible for from beginning to end.
And it was interesting because in my position, I'd been telling people for
years and years that I was a great film director, but really had no
way to prove it. You know, it was just you got to take
my word for this. I can see it in my head. I know
what you know, I know what it's going to be like, it'll be
great, you'll see and so in a way, when things didn't go terribly
wrong in the first hour of shooting, it was just sort of a great
vindication for me. That shoot actually ended up being probably to this day,
the best film set I've ever been on. I spent a lot of time
putting the crew together and interviewing people, and people were getting paid, you
know crap. I think most people were making one hundred bucks a day.
But I spent a lot of time interviewing people and making sure we had people
who were going to be really excited about doing it. Everybody was essentially moving
up a step or getting their their break, getting into the business at the
entry level, or you know, like the cinematographers or people who had not
shot features before. But it shot really good short to really good music videos.
That was a kind of people we were looking at. Costume designers had
only been an assisting costume designer things like that, so everybody was looking at
this film as a really good opportunity for them, even though they weren't making
much money. So we had we had really good spirit on the set.
Everybody got along really well. There was a great sense of community and we
were all just really working hard to make this thing the best it could be.
And so my experience on the set as a director, there's an hour
of sheer terror at the beginning of the shoot, where, oh God,
do I know what I'm doing? Is everything going to fall apart? Are
all the pieces in place? Or is this going to be an utter disaster?
And once you get past that, and for me actually that that's kind
of a daily thing. I mean, I've directed several features now, and
every morning I feel the same way until the first shot is in the camp
and then everything is fine. But that that shoot, that it was just
a wonderful sense of vindication. It's like, finally I was doing what I
was supposed to be. You know, this proved nut. It was less
about proving to other people, and it became a confirmation to me that what
I've been saying all these years was actually right, and that this was what
I was meant to do, and that here was a place where I was
at home and I didn't have to count ow to people who didn't know what
the hell they were talking about, and I didn't have to support somebody else's
vision. I was doing what I was supposed to do and it was working,
and so that was a very powerful sort of reaffirmation for me. And
then when the shoot went so well and everybody got along so well, and
despite doing it on an utterly insane schedule, everything worked out. It was
It was just the most wonderful, wonderful thing. And to this day,
I'm very proud of that film. I mean, you know, it's a
low budget zombie horror comedy and it's it's silly, and it's you know,
it doesn't look like a million bucks, but I'm really proud of it for
what it was. I think it was a great film, and I will
put that up against Shaun of the Dead or Zombie Land any day. It
doesn't it doesn't have it doesn't have quite the production value of Zombieland, but
I think the characters are just as engaging, if not more so. I
think the story carries you along. Very few people have really seen it,
but the comments that we see on the various internet forums when people actually do
watch it, I'd say ninety five percent of them really really get into it.
All the comments we've had have been very positive. So it was it
was a great experience from the beginning. Then except for the fact that it
hasn't turned a profit yet. Now, as a Spielberg fan, how was
it? Was it kind of cool working with c Thomas Howe. Did you
ever like talk to him about what it was like working on ET or anything
like that. Yeah, yeah, we uh, we had a few conversations
about that. He had. Tommy has stories about everything because he's not only
has he been in the business since he was a kid, but his father
and even his grandfather, I think we're both in the business as stuntmen.
So he grew up in Hollywood and he has a lot of great stories.
And I remember one that he was talking about was that Spielberg had a trailer
on the set that was filled with pinball machines and video games and stuff,
and so so you know, in between shots, the kids were all in
there and it was basically like their own portable arcade and they just had a
blast playing games while the crew was, you know, setting up the next
shot. When you get on a set, who are the people that you're
really relying on that you kind of lean on throughout the day? Right?
Well, for me, the main collaborator on a film is the is the
cinematographer, to me, that's that's the most important working relationship on a film
for a director. The other one, of course, is the first the
first AD, because he's the one who really runs the show. A lot
of young directors from films coming out of film school or just you know,
people who want to want to make movies, they don't realize just the extent
to which they are not in charge. The director, especially a good director,
if he knows what he's doing, he will allow the first AD to
do his job. And his job is running the set. And you know,
you need to have your vision, you need to know what you're doing
and what's coming next. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show and be able to express that clearly. But
the first AD is the one who's really sort of directing the troops. And
if he's good at his job, if or she is good at If the
first AD is good at his or her job, it frees up the director
to not have to worry about a lot of that stuff and to focus on
working with the cinematographer and working with the actors, and those for me,
those are the key relationships. The cinematographer is going to be translating your vision
onto the screen, so you have to have a good relationship with your DP.
For me that I've always started working with my DP at the very earliest
stage that I can. I'd like to have my DP in the room when
we're doing storyboards if I'm doing storyboards. In fact, for me, the
best situation is if my DP is also an artist and can do the storyboards
himself. So we'll sit in a room and we'll go through the script and
I'll lock out my vision and what I think the shots will be, and
I'll describe them to him, and maybe i'll draw stick figures, and then
if the DP can draw, he will do storyboards because I can't draw to
save my life. So I'll draw a stick figure of what the shots should
be, and then he'll look at it and go what the fuck is that?
And I will explain it to him and he's say, oh, yeah,
I don't look like this, and he'll draw it out, or we'll
have a storyboard artist in the room with us who will draw it out.
And then maybe the DP will make a suggestion, well, what if we
DiPT it from this slightly different angle, or what if we move the camera
here. I like to collaborate with my DP as much as I can,
so that really the way the film looks becomes kind of a shared vision.
And that way, when we get on the set, I don't need to
explain anything. He knows exactly what it's supposed to look like, exactly where
the camera's supposed to go, exactly where he wants the lights to go,
so I don't need to worry about explaining that to him. All we'll need
to do is adjust for you know, those situations where the location or the
set requires that something be changed from what our original plan was, and then
we'll figure that out together, and then he can worry about all that,
and I can go work with the actors on their performance and they're blocking and
so forth. So for me, the most important relationship is between the director
and the DP. Then between the director and the AD that's got to be
a working relationship. You're not too concerned about a creative relationship there, but
you've got to be able to get along and he's got to be able to
understand the way you work. If there's friction between the director and the first
a D, things tend not to work very well. And I've experienced both
of those where I've had really great relationships with my ad and not so great
relationships, and life is a whole lot better than the director in the idea
get along. And then the other key, the other key relationship on a
set, And this was something that maybe surprised me a bit in the early
days, was the relationship between the director and the star, especially in these
low budget films where you have just one name actor, and that actor has
a lot more a lot more cloud on set than some directors might like because
probably he's the reason your film got funded, and he's the reason your film
is gonna get distributed, and he knows that. So having a good relationship
with your star where you're both working towards the same vision is really crucial because
if you get on if you come into it with different visions and he is
pushing to get it his way and you're pushing to get it yours, and
he has a certain level of control because you know you can't physically make him
do something he doesn't want to do, that that can become an awkward situation
too. So making sure that you and your star are on the same wavelength
and that you both see at least his character the same way can be very
helpful, and the star can become a great ally too, because on a
low budget indie film where you're trying to shoot the film in ten or twelve
or fifteen or reason twenty days, you really don't have time to do the
kind of dramatic work with the actors that you'd like to do, and so
your star, if he really understands his role and you guys are on the
same page with it, he can then become a very helpful force for working
with the other actors as well, because one would expect in an indie film,
especially in a B movie, where you tend to be casting someone in
the lead who has probably already had a career and has been doing it for
a while, because those are the people who will sell a low budget moving
Did you ever find yourself maybe overdirecting or doing things that they didn't really need
you to do, or did you learn no, Just the opposite, in
fact, is that you can actually do less because they know what they're doing,
and they can also pass along their experience and their their years of wisdom
to the less experienced members of the cast. Because on a low budget indie
film, You're probably going to have a lot of actors who haven't done this
as much, right, and so having a good relationship with your star he
can sort of carry some of that burden for you, and he can talk
to some of the actors about what they're doing and the little the little techniques
of acting that he's picked up in his years of experience that will help them
do what you need them to do, you know, And you've you've got
to You've got to balance that by making sure that everybody in stands it,
understands that you're in charge. And a good star, uh gets that,
and he won't question you publicly. You know. I had a moment at
a moment on one of my films where you know, now I don't even
remember what it was, but it was it was a case of the star
sort of questioned something, you know, and I took him aside. And
he was a guy who who you know, made dozens of films and it
had a very successful TV series, and I had to take him aside and
say, look, you know, we can we can talk about this as
much as you want. If you don't like what I'm doing, we can
we can work it out together, but you can't question me in front of
the rest of the cast and crew. And he was like, you're absolutely
right. I apologize for that. And then when you were shot and we
had a very good and yeah, we we were literally out in the middle
of the jungle and we did not have a stunt coordinator on that film,
and Adrian Paul kind of took over that role for us, and he would
help the other actors with the physical stuff that they needed to do thanks to
all his experience, you know, on Highlander, mainly because you know,
he spent several years doing endless fight scenes and stuff, so he was really
good at that, and he was able to help the other actors in ways
that I probably would not have been able to. And even if I had
been able to, I certainly wouldn't have had the time because there's so many
things. I've often said that directing a feature film is probably the most all
encompassing, intense experience that a human being can have, short of going to
war. There are so many things that you have to keep in your head,
so many things going on at any one moment aren't doing what I need,
and I would have had to go back and talk to them and there
would would have cost more time. But actually my star was talking to them
and was bringing them along. And especially if you're working with if you're doing
an action movie, as most of the might have been, and your star
is someone who's done a lot of action work before, then he can also
be very helpful with the physical stuff. Both see Thomas Howe on Mutant Vampire
Zombies and also Adrian Paul who is my star in AE. You know,
they both had a lot of action experience and so they would they would help
the other actors. Okay, here's how you here's how you might want to
run through this scene. Yeah, we're running through the jungle. Well,
how are we going to make sure we don't trip and fall over this?
You know? Vine here, there's a lot going on, And it's a
funny thing to think about how much time it takes to simply be able to
run through a patch of jungle. This is something you don't think about when
you're watching an action film, But simply being able to run through the jungle
for a hundred feet without tripping on something thing is harder than you might think.
And so having somebody with a certain level of experience at that kind of
thing, how do I slide down this hillside without falling over and breaking my
ankle? That that can be very helpful, especially when you don't have a
huge stunt team, you know, working with everybody on one of these films.
You're you're lucky if you have a stunt coordinator at all, much less
a whole stunt team to work with each of your ten different actors in a
scene that are you were responsible for. That it can really get overwhelming,
and you tend to develop a tunnel vision to a certain extent. And I
know it happens for me that I am totally focused on the moment we're putting
in front of the camera, and if somebody asked me about another moment in
the film, I'm like, what, huh, there, there's another moment.
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
the show, and I'll have to like make a physical, conscious effort to
change my focus and think about this other thing that needs to be addressed.
Yeah. So on Ae we were out in the middle of the jungle in
Costa Rica. There's very little film infrastructure there, and what there is is
based in the capital of San Jose. So the people there are San Jose's
just a city like La people there have no more experience working in the jungle
than anybody here would. So even our quote unquote local crew was still out
of their element. So yeah, Adrian was very very helpful on that production
and it was it was great working with it. Now, why was the
decision made to shoot in Costa Rica? Is that just because the screenplay or
was there some sort of financial incentive for shooting there? That was actually a
weird, a weird situation. That decision was made the partners at the Asylum
that was an asylum film, and they had shot several films in Beliez,
which honestly is where I expected to shoot the film, but they wanted a
different look because most of their jungle films had been shot in Beliezed, and
so they started looking around at different places where we could shoot a jungle film.
And we were talking about the Dominican Republic too, and we were talking
about Puerto Rico, and I was kind of interested in Puerto Rico because I
had another project, an indie project that I'd been developing that I thought we
would probably shoot in Puerto Rico because it needed both jungle and a Spanish colonial
city, and so you got both of those in Puerto Rico. Plus they
speak English. Plus it's close to you asked you know there are no import
restrictions or I think because it's part of the US and it's so close by
playing that you could fly equipment in and stuff. So Puerto Rico was interesting
to me. But they decided that Puerto Rico was probably going to be too
expensive, and I think there were union issues there too, so they were
looking at Dominican Republic, and then Panama got into the mix, and then
finally the decision to shoot in Costa Rica. Oddly enough, was made for
two reasons. One was that one of the partners at the Asylum, his
father I think, owns a house in Costa Rica, and so somehow that
made it better. I guess they just had a connection there. And then
they got in touch with a local production company in Costa Rica who kind of
sold them on shooting there. And as it turns out, it might have
been a mistake because it turns out that Costa Rica is not an inexpensive place,
and we were there during prime tourist season and there was no local crew
in the jungle. So even the quote unquote local crew we were hiring all
had to be transported from Santos. They all had to be put up in
hotels. You know, normally think, well, we're going to hire a
local crew, they'll just be living at home and they'll come to the set
every day. But it wasn't like that. So the expense of shooting in
Costa Rica and everything's very expensive there. It's not. It's not this third
world, you know, a country where you can hire a labor for ten
cents an hour or something. What little film production there is there was mostly
TV commercials and an actual Costa Rican television programs, so they were all used
to working sort of a normal day in a studio setting and getting paid decent
rates. And we were coming in with this crazy low budget film that was
going to be shot out in the middle of the jungle, and we wanted
people to work for what to them was very little, and so it was
Costa Rica actually was a wonderful place, but from a production standpoint, it
actually kind of worked against us and it ended up costing a lot more than
anybody expected. But it was beautiful. When you're shooting in the jungle.
How do you scout out locations? Do you just kind of say, okay,
well here's a river and we can shoot it like this, I mean,
is there are you shooting it kind of in the same area or do
you do you have like a location manager there that's dealing with that sort of
thing. Yeah, it's funny. We didn't have an actual location scout.
We hired a tour guide who basically took people, just tourists on tours,
and we hired him to show us all these places, you know, And
so during preproduction he took us around. We needed a waterfall, we needed
a river, we need a dense jungle, we needed an open clearing.
So he took us around to a bunch of waterfalls and rivers and things like
that that he knew about. But yeah, we all we had to get
it all in one basic area because we couldn't afford time wise or money wise
to be traveling all around the country. And we were fortunate we found this.
I guess it was a plantation. I guess it was a I'm sure
it was a coconut plantation. I forget what they were growing there, but
there was this plantation where a part of it was cultivated, and then part
of it was just wild jungle, and they happen to have a cave which
we needed, and there was a river on their property, and so we
talked to the owners of this land and we were able to end up shooting
about eighty percent of the film on this one plot of land where we had
most of the things we needed. And that really saved us because before we
found that we were going to be moving around constantly, and that would have
just cost way too much time getting to new locations each day and setting up
all over again. And you know, the producers kept saying, well,
it's it's a jungle country, just pull over to the side of the road
and shoot. And it was like, no, you can't do that.
For one thing, at the side of the road that the jungle was so
dense that you literally couldn't get into it. You would have had to hack
your way in with a machette. You know, you want you want the
actors to appear to be running through dense jungle, but it's virtually impossible to
get your equipment in and shoot that way. So you need a place with
paths and roads and and and dirt trails and stuff where you can get to
places that look like they're in the middle of the jungle but are actually easily
accessible, and you know where where are fifty people going to sit down and
have lunch on their break and how are you going to run electricity in?
And where are you going to lay dolly track and all this stuff. So
shooting in dense jungle is pretty tricky, but we were lucky in it.
We found a lot of beautiful locations very close to each other. But the
days where we had to move and go to a different location, like we
did for the waterfall, it was it was pretty hairy. And finding all
these things because they were they were widely spaced, was was tricky too,
but it all worked out. Was your DP working with like big five K
lights and things like that outside or did you try to use mostly natural light
when you could, No, it was mostly it was mostly natural light.
In fact, one of the interesting things was we had this scene inside the
cave that was supposed to be lit by glow stick you know, these chemical
light sticks, and at a certain point we decided to just light it with
glow sticks, and we bought the brightest glow sticks you could find, and
we wrapped a bunch of them together, and we actually shot one scene where
they're walking through this dark cave lit entirely by glow sticks, with people holding
them near their face and stuff. So that was kind of cool, you
know. No, we had we had a very minimal lighting kit and we
were really only using it. I mean, you know, he'd set up
a backlight occasionally, but we were in the jug. When we were outside
in the jungle, we were mostly using available lighting because it was a matter
of well, where are you going to run power from? Can we get
a generator into this place we were there? There were there were days were
the only way to reach where we were shooting was in a four wheel druct
pickup truck. There was no way to get a grip truck there, so
transporting a lot of equipment just what wouldn't have been practical. So a lot
of that film, the vast majority of that film was shot with available light
and reflectors, and every once in a while we'd set up a couple of
couple of lights here and there, and then inside the cave where we needed
actual light. That was that was one day where we brought in a generator
and we had to do a real lighting setup. And then there was some
stuff that we actually shot in the city. You know, there were sets
and buildings and so forth, and those we had lighting, but that you
know, we weren't in the jungle there. We were in a controllable situation.
Now, can you talk for a second about how you developed a relationship
with the Asylum and how you first met David Lott and those guys. That
was a very slow process and it wasn't intentional. I met the Lapp before
the Asylum existed. Basically, I had had a day job that I won't
even mention what I was doing because it's so embarrassing. But while I was
there, I made friends with this woman who was a talent manager, and
she knew David. I don't really know how she knew David, but she
knew David Latt. They were friends, and so eventually she introduced me to
him and we started talking and nothing came of that. This is actually,
I think one of the most important lessons for somebody coming out to Hollywood to
try and get into the business is to just meet as many people as you
can, because you never know what's going to turn into a great connection.
So I met David Latt, and I just knew him. He was just
somebody I knew, and we would talk every once in a while when we
were visiting with our mutual friend. I didn't really time with him on my
own per se. I mean, my girlfriend and I were invited to his
wedding. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
back to the show, you know. And on on and off over the
years we'd be in contact. Um, maybe we'd go to parties, the
same parties occasionally because we had mutual friends. I ended up a friend who
introduced us ran a co ed softball team, and David's wife played on the
team and I played on the team, so so jud we were just in
contact on and off for years. And when the Asylum started, I think
it was called something else. They were actually doing art house films, you
know, and I talked to him on occasion about trying to get something going,
and it never really amounted too much, and I guess I was just
oh, that that friend of Donna's who wants to be a director, right,
and and so I don't think he really took me terribly seriously. But
then once I made the Zombie film, and I could actually show him something.
I could say, here, look at this, I can do what
I've been saying I could do. And he looked at it, and there
was a movie proving that I could do what I said I could do,
and he couldn't sort of ignore that anymore. And by then the Asylum had
sort of become this low budget film factory where they were churning movies out in
large numbers, and they had plans to expand and make even more films,
and they had just hired a new director of development to guide that process when
I made the zombie film, and he said, okay, that's pretty good.
I will put you in touch with my director of development, and you
know, when he puts out a call to writers for script ideas, you'll
be on the list. And so we went through a few different scenarios where
I got an email from the director of development saying, hey, we need
some ideas based on this this concept, you know. And there were a
few where I pitched idea, is that nothing ever came of it. And
then finally there was they were going to do a knockoff of Fast and the
Furious five, I guess, and I was into cars, and street racing
and so forth, and so I pitched him my idea and they went with
it, and it just sort of we developed a relationship from there and I
wrote that that first script for them. I wrote that in ten days because
we spent a while talking about the story, and by the time they finally
approved what the story was going to be, they called me into the office
and say they said, okay, we want you to write this for us,
but we need to script in twelve days. And I was like,
I've never written a script in less than two months before, but okay.
And what's worse is that it was right before Christmas. For some reason,
I always seemed to be writing scripts for The Asylum right before Christmas, and
I had a Christmas party plan and so I lost a day and a half
two days shopping and getting ready for this party. So I really had to
write that script for two hundred miles per hour in ten days. But I
did it, and I got it to them and it was what they needed.
And that led to another and another, and eventually to this this sort
of insane moment where they said, okay, we want you to write a
movie called Sharknado. What's your process when you begin writing, do you try
to outline everything before you ever start writing? Or do you I mean,
what do you do before you actually start working on the screenplay. It depends
on the situation, because if I'm writing on assignment for somebody, then I'm
gonna be having to fulfill their needs. The Asylum has a very specific process.
They start with a one sentence log line that they will provide usually,
and they'll ask for a one variety of one paragraph pitches that would fulfill this
concept. And then they'll pick one of those one paragraphs and they'll say,
okay, now write a one page story with a clear eight acts structure.
So I'll write a one page story and then they'll give you notes on that,
and once they're happy with the way the one page goes, they'll say,
okay, now write us a three page outline with more detail and break
it up into the eight acts for a TV movie. Because most of their
stuff, you know that they're hoping they can sell it to sci fi or
whatever, so it needs a TV movie structure of eight acts. And so
then you do this three page outline for them, and then when there'll be
notes on that, and then they'll finally approve that, and then you go
to script. So that's the way I have to work for that. When
I'm doing a spec project, I prefer not to do that. What I
generally do on a spec project is I'll have a basic idea of what the
story is going to be, so I'll probably have that one paragraph idea,
and then I'll go to an outline format, where what I do is I
make up a sheet with lines labeled one through ninety, and each one of
those lines should correspond to a scene, on the general assumption that it'll be
about one scene per page. So I've got ninety scenes, and usually the
opening of the film will just be in my head because that's the the impetus
for the story, and so I'll fill out, you know, the first
one, two, three, four or five ten lines with a one sentence
description of what is that scene. And then usually if you know what your
story is, you know what your beginning is, you probably have an idea
how you want it to end. So I'll go in and I'll plug in,
Okay, what's the climax of the film, and that'll be like or
eighty five, eighty six, eighty seven, and then okay, what's the
turnaround in the middle, and so somewhere in the middle, and this will
be less precise where it goes. I'll say, Okay, now this happens,
you know, and maybe there'll be a couple of intermediary moments. And
so I'll have this one sheet of ninety lines where there's a bunch filled out
at the top and there are a few interspersed in the middle. Okay,
I know this kind of thing has to happen somewhere in here, and then
there'll be more detail towards the end. And on a spec script, I'll
just start writing the script then, and usually as I start writing, more
ideas will come to me to fill in those blank lines in the middle.
So probably by the time I've finished the script, I've also finished the outline,
and I'll be able to move things around. I don't do the index
cards like a lot of film schools teacher, and I know a lot of
writers. Do you just let the structure come out. I like this.
I like this outline because I want the structure in front of me. I
want to physically see it all in sort of one gaze, one glance,
So it's having it fit on one sheet of paper or sometimes two sheets of
paper taped together. I like to be able to see the structure of the
film in front of me. Do you have any basis? Did you just
kind of feel out the structure or do you have like beats that you like
to hit by specific points? I mean, I hate to say something like
save the Cat or whatever, but you know anything like that that you ever
use if you're in a bind and you can't really figure out what's going to
go somewhere. No, I've never read say of the Cat. I've never
read True Bee. I've never read any of these screenwriting guys. In fact,
it's funny because I've been talking to a film school about possibly teaching a
class for them, and I want to teach a directing class, but because
of Shark Nado, of course it's to their advantage to have me teach a
screenwriting class. And I keep telling them I don't know anything about screening.
I just sort of do this instinctively, So no, I don't really do
that. I just get an idea, and then I'll get an idea of
who the characters are, at least who the main characters are, and then
I just sort of watch what they do and I write it down. Do
you have any tricks for characters? Are like, how do you keep characters
consistent and really developed your characters? I really don't know how to articulate how
I do that. It's just I mean, I just put myself. Maybe
I'll put myself in the head of the weed character and try and put myself
in that place and say, Okay, what would I do if I were
this person in this situation? And then for the bad guy, I'll think,
Okay, what wouldn't I do? I don't know. I really have
never analyzed. It's it's a much more organic process for me. I mean,
I could tell you how I direct a film, but how I actually
write one of these scripts. It's it's just sort of a thing that happens,
you know. And there are certain rules. I mean, obviously you
know that you have to establish all your characters and the impetus for the story.
All has to happen within the first twenty pages. I'm preferably within the
first ten. There needs to be some action in the opening. At some
point in those first twenty pages, the hero makes a decision that propels you
into the story, or propels the hero into the story, the dilemma has
to be presented to the hero and then he has to make a decision as
to what to do and that changes his world. Somewhere in the middle,
there has to be a turnaround where suddenly things aren't going to go the way
the hero had hoped they were going to go. And then as you get
towards the three quarter point in the story, you know that there generally needs
to be an all is lost moment where it looks like everybody's going to die.
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
to the show, and then that propels you into your action finale where the
hero does something and saves the day. That's about us as close to a
formal structure as I really get, and then it's just a matter of what
happens. And now again, when I'm writing for The Asylum and they have
this very strict aida act structure, that's a bit different because I know that
each act is going to be about twelve minutes long. The first act will
be a bit longer, and the last act will be a bit shorter,
and in each of those acts there has to be an action beat, so
that that needs to be fulfilled in the outline stage. So you're writing for
commercials or is it like is that the breakup? Well, they don't want
you to write for hard commercial breaks, although on Shardnado two I started doing
that because Sci Fi when they air these movies will often put the brakes someplace
other than where you thought they were going to go. But they still want
it structured, so that every twelve minutes there's there's an action beat and sort
of a mini climax, and then each one would get progressively bigger until you
reach the act. So yeah, you do, especially for the ones that
they know are going to Sci Fi, you do have to delineate your act
and they all need to be about the right length, you know, So
maybe one act could be a bit shorter, or maybe you could have a
ten minute act if you have somewhere else in an act that's fourteen or fifteen
minutes. But that's about a structured as I guess. Now, when you
wrote Apocalypse Earth, did you eat that write that about the same time as
Shartnado, Yes, and and it should it should be noted that it was
not called Apocalypse Earth when I wrote it. It was just called AE and
there were a variety of things that AE was going to stand for, and
basically when people asked me what did it stand for? I said almost everything.
Apocalypse Earth was actually a tag that was added on during post production by
the Asylum, and at first they were going to call it Alpha Earth,
and I was like, no, we can't call it Alpha Earth. That
gives away the twist at the end. So Apocalypse Earth. Somehow I thought,
well, there's this big apocalypse in the opening theme, so if we
call it Apocalypse Earth and people see that, maybe they won't be looking for
the twist later on. But yes, I was Let's see, how how
did that go. They came to me. I was talking It was after
American Warships, and we were talking about what my next project for them was
going to be, and we were talking about a giant monster movie that they
wanted, and so at first I agreed to do this giant monster movie.
No, that's not how it work. We were talking about what we were
going to do and we were still tossing around ideas and they came to me
and they said, we want you to write a movie called Shark Storm,
and that just didn't sound very appealing to me. It seemed like Shark Storm.
Okay, well there's been a lot of movies about sharks and storms and
you know it, just why would we need this that it didn't appeal to
me? So I said no, and we kept talking about about other projects
and uh, and we started talking about this giant monster movie that they wanted
to do, which I guess was going to be a mockbuster of Pacific Wrin
and so I started working on that in sort of a vague concept form,
and then they came back to me and they said, Okay, what we
really want you to do is Sharknado. And I said, what does sharks
have to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? And they said no,
no, no, not Sharknado. Sharknado a tornado full of sharks. And
I said, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. That makes a
lot more sense, and if I can write it that way, then sure,
I'd love to do that. Because the Asylum tends to play all their
movies completely straight. They don't like, they don't like to stray into forest
or comedy unless it's a comedy, which personally I have always take an issue
with because I think, if you're going to make a low budget movie,
and you know it's going to be low budget and it's going to look kind
of cheap, then it's better to get the audience laughing with you than at
you. That was certainly the approach I took with Mutant Vampire Zombies from the
hood. And so when they said Sharknado, I was a little concerned that
they would want to play it completely straight. And I just didn't see how
you could take a movie called Sharknado and play it completely straight. And they
said, no, we understand it's called Sharknado. There's going to be a
certain tongue in cheek element to it. And so with that comforting thought,
I agreed to do it. And originally I was supposed to direct it,
and so I guess this was This would have been the summer of two thousand
and twelve, and so the outlining process went pretty smoothly, and then the
script writing, the first draft went very smoothly, and it was done in
a relatively quick period of time, and there weren't a lot of notes,
and it was just done, and I was going to direct it, except
that I'd felt a little burned on American Warships because I thought i'd what we
had done on set was really was really a good movie. And then I
thought the visual effects, which we'd really been depending on, kind of let
us down. And if i'd known their process a bit better that that was
the first film I directed for the Assaunt, and if i'd really sort of
known a bit better what we were going to be dealing with, maybe I
wouldn't have left the film so dependent on the visual effects. And so I
was looking at the script I'd written for Sharknado and thinking, there's just no
way. There's just no way that this can be done on the kind of
budget they're talking about. At least I don't see how to do it.
I could do it for twenty million, maybe I could do it for ten
million. It's really one hundred million dollars film. And so I sort of
shied away from directing it because I didn't want to be in that position again,
because even though the script had this tongue in cheek element to it,
I still I didn't want to be unintentionally bad. You know, the stuff
that was going to be cheesy had to be where I intended it to be
cheesy. I didn't want to be in a position where I just didn't have
what I needed to make it the way I wanted it to look. And
at the same time, I had been getting utterly enthralled with Game of Thrones,
and I had this sort of craving to create a whole world. And
I've always been a science fiction guy. So I went into the director of
development and I said, look, you know, we've got this Sharknado,
and I'm supposed to direct it. But truth is, what I really want
to do is make a movie where I can create a whole world and have
a society in it and just sort of build something from the ground up,
whole alternate reality. And he said, well, we've got this project that
It's the one sentence description is a group of refugees from Earth have to survive
on a hostile alien planet. And that just said it perfect to me.
But I said, yes, I'll do that, and so I started writing
that and that would have been I guess September of twenty twelve, and so
I wrote AE. And as that writing process was going along, they scheduled
the shoots of AE and Sharknado for exam Actually the same time they were both
going to shoot in January, and so I was forced to choose. And
at that point I decided to do AE and I wanted to do this science
fiction film in the jungle, and so I said, you know, I
respectfully withdraw from Shark Nado. I hope somebody else makes it work, and
I'm going to go off to Costa Rica and shoot my science fiction movie.
And in retrospect, I don't know if that was the stupidest thing I've ever
done or not. You know, because if I had written and directed Shark
Nado, then I would be the one getting all the attention for it,
and maybe I'd be hailed as this great genius, whereas now Anthony and I
are splitting the attention for it. But at the same time, you know,
you wonder maybe things went the way they were supposed to go, and
maybe it wouldn't have worked if I'd directed it. Who knows if if something
Anthony did, you know, and dealing with not having the resources he needed
to properly create this this insane situation that I had written. You know that
it could well be that that is what endeared it to people. So maybe
things worked out for the best. And I'm getting the attention from Sharknado.
But I also have this this serious science fiction film that I can point to
and say, see, I can do that too. Now, when you
saw Sharknado, was it pretty much kind of how you had envidgeted or is
it very different from your idea? Well, Anthony didn't want me to see
it until it was done. It was funny because we met for the first
time in the editing room. We were sharing an editing suite. I was
cutting AE at the same time he was cutting Sharknado. And I was in
there working with my editor and this guy walks in and he walks up to
me and he says, I want to punch you. We'll be right back
after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And
I didn't know who he was. And I said, okay, why and
he said, I directed Shargnado. I said, oh, well, then
you have every right to write Aunty, that makes sense. And so that
was the beginning of what has become a great friendship. But he didn't want
me to see it until it was done, so I didn't actually see I
mean, while we were editing, you know, I would look over my
shoulder because we were sharing this editing suite, and so I would occasionally look
over my shoulder to see what had become of my words, and some of
it looked right, and some of it was like, what the hell is
that? You know, because there was a car chase, and I didn't
write a car chase. What was that about? You know? And obviously
they didn't have the wherewithal for it to be raining comes and lee in every
shot, and for Los Angeles to be filling up with water, which was
this giant disaster that I'd written. So when I finally thought I saw it
with the public along with everybody else, I was just at home watching it
on TV. There wasn't a premiere or anything at the at the asylum when
things been the it wasn't. What happened out here is we get the East
Coast Sci Fi feed and then there's the re airing for the West Coast.
So the plan was the people were just going to watch the East Coast feed,
you know, wherever they were, and then we were all going to
get together to watch the West Coast feed at a party. But then,
you know, during the initial broadcast, this whole thing started happening. On
Twitter, and it just just sort of became insane, And so I was
on the computer and I was corresponding with people and tweeting and getting phone calls
for people saying can you believe what's happening and all this stuff. And so
then I had to run out at the last minute to go to the party
for the second airing, and I got I guess it was going to start
at nine o'clock here, and I got in the car and I got on
the freeway and for some reason, I guess there's been an accident or something,
but the fruler was at a dead standstill. And after about twenty minutes
of this and realizing I'd already missed the beginning, I just gave up and
went home and got back on Twitter and got back on Facebook and email,
where the world was still blowing up. Very strange things were happening, and
I was corresponding with Damon Lindelofen, and I was starting to get requests for
interviews, and it was just sort of the most surreal night of my life.
Well, you know, for the so for the first twenty to thirty
minutes of Shardnado, I was sitting there going what that's not that's not what
I know. Wait what But after that, after about the first thirty minutes,
it settles down to be basically the way I wrote it. I mean,
it doesn't look like what I saw in my head, because I still
had this huge disaster movie los Angeles is filling up with water kind of thing,
you know, as the background. I to me, it was a
it was a two layer thing. There was this realistic disaster movie going on
where Los Angeles is flooding, and then on top of that, there was
this ridiculous element of sharks falling from the sky. And so obviously the realism
of the disaster scenario was not achievable on the budget they had. And so
I can't say that it looked the way I saw it in my head when
I wrote it, except for certain moments where where it really did. But
on the whole, you know, I was a little frustrated that they couldn't
really achieve that kind of level of destruction and disaster, but still that they
kept to my script from from about the twenty or thirty minute point on,
and I was no longer going Wait, I didn't write that. Anthony changed
a fair amount in the opening do you think they carried off the tone that
you had, the kind of comic tone, but not like the actors took
it seriously, but they were within a world that was kind of yeah,
you know, chaotic or absurd in a way. Yeah, I mean that
that the tone was what I intended. The production value was where it wasn't
what I had envisioned. But one of the reasons that I ended up not
directing it was because I knew there was no way to achieve what I had
in my head. So I think it all worked out for the best.
Now you guys went back and making Sharkonado two, was the process completely different
now that you had had all this success with the first one? Yes,
it was. It was interesting because the first one, nobody paid any attention
to me the outlining story, outlining process. You know, there there were
a few notes, and then it was like, okay, go ahead write
it. And then the first draft of the script the Asylum had a few
notes which I addressed. Then sci Fi had a few notes, and then
it was done and you know, nobody thought anything of it. It was
just this ridiculous little movie. By the second one, of course, that
had become this phenomena, and so everybody had their eyes on it, and
every little thing that I did was being examined by you know, half a
dozen different people who all had to have input on it. So it was
it was a much more political process getting the second script done, and of
course there was a lot more writing on it because the first one nobody thought
anything of it, and the second one suddenly suddenly it was going to become
this franchise if we didn't screw it up. So there was there was a
lot more pressure, there was a lot more eyes on and the whole process
took a lot longer getting the script done. Now, what does it feel
like when all of a sudden people are, you know, noticing you and
wanting to interview you, and you know, you get all this recognition.
How does that feel? Is it a good feeling or is it kind of
does it give you anxiety or no? Well, the only anxiety has actually
has happened in the last couple of months, whereas somehow my home address got
out on the internet, I guess, and so I've been getting fan mail
at home and that's a little disturbing, you know. Unfortunately, it's all
been good. There haven't been any death threats or anything, but the fact
that somehow my address got out there, that that makes me a little bit
anxious. Other than that, it's it's just been wonderful, you know.
I mean, I came out to Hollywood expecting to be the next Steven Spielberg
and imagining something like this, but imagining it happening twenty years ago. And
so after years of struggling in anonymity. While I still hope for a level
of success and public appreciation, I'm not sure I necessarily expected it anymore.
So when when it finally started happening, it's just been wonderful. But I
had been, you know, sort of preparing myself for this kind of career,
you know, for twenty odd years. So I think if it had
actually happened when I was that young, when I first came out here,
I probably would have messed with my head. I think the years of struggling
have allowed me to stay a lot more grounded during this whole process and just
sort of take it for what it is and enjoy it and not let myself
get too carried away with it all. But you know, it's a wonderful
thing. You go to these conventions, and lining up to get your autograph
and telling you how much they loved the movie and what fun they had with
it, and little kids too. I remember at Comic Con, not this
last summer, but the year before, after the first movie had just come
out. I walked on too, walked onto the floor at Comic Con the
first night I got there and it was about to close. I'd gotten there
really late because there was traffic or I don't remember what it was, but
I got there late. So I just figured i'd take a quick walk around
the convention floor. And I'm walking through these tables of displays and stuff,
and the very first little snippet of a conversation I hear as I'm walking past
somebody, is this guy saying yeah, and then he dives into the shark
and then he cuts his way out. And that was literally the first thing
I heard as I walked through the convention floor at Comic Con. And that
was just surreal. And then the next day, we were doing this poster
signing, and you know, we'd been signing pretty consistently for like half an
hour, and I was of surprise that people were still coming, and so
I took a break and I went out to look for the line to see
where all these people were coming from, and I couldn't find the line.
All I saw was the big crowd of people filling the hall, and then
I realized that was our line, and they were actually lined up out the
door to get these posters side. And mind you, I and and Tara
weren't even there. It was me and Anthony and Jason Simmons and one other
cast member I think, so the big stars weren't even there, and we
have a line out the door of people to get their Sharknado posters side,
and it was just like, Wow, what is going on here? This
is amazing. And then this mother came up with a little girl and must
have been about I don't know, six or seven, and she was dancing
around and going Sharknadou was jack Nado as she was spinning around encircled, And
it's just been a remarkable experience. You right back after a word from our
sponsor and now back to the show, and it's just so it's just really
wonderful to see that people have gotten into him like this and have embraced it
in the spirit that we intended. Just a wonderful feeling well, it's funny
because my son's completely obsessed with tornadoes right now, and his favorite movie is
Twister. He's six years old. And last night I had a Sharknado on,
you know, doing a little bit of research, and I was like,
son, this is a tornado, but a tornado with sharks in it,
and he just about lost his mind. And that was the first thing
he said. This morning, He's like, Dad, can we watch Sharknado?
And I was like, after school, maybe it's, you know,
pick a time. I'm sorry. So I had one more thing that you
had mentioned something in an interview before that's kind of a different topic, and
I just wanted to ask you this real quick and then let you go.
You had said that if you could do things all over again, you would
have made a feature film a lot earlier in your career, and I was
wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that. Well, like
I said, it had always been in the back of my mind that if
I didn't succeed, if I didn't get where I wanted to go, Following
the traditional route of trying to get a film, getting somebody to make a
film, getting a production company or a studio, to hire me to make
a film that eventually I was just going to have to raise the money and
make my own. But I guess I kept putting off that moment because that
reaching that decision sort of implied that I had failed up till then that nobody
was going to hire me to make a movie, and so coming to accept
that and saying Okay, I'm going to have to take matters into my own
hands took longer than it probably should have. If I made that zombie movie
five or ten years earlier, then the things that came as a result of
it would have happened five or ten years earlier, and you know, hopefully
I would be five or ten years further along in my career than I am
now, because because everything that's happened, from making movies to The Asylum to
the success of Shargnadom, all of it can be traced back to that zombie
film where I proved that, yes, I can actually make a movie.
So if I had, if I had done that sooner, then maybe I'd
be further along now, and maybe I'd be making big studio films now,
or at least maybe I would have spent an extra ten years doing what I
wanted to do rather than just struggling to make a living. So I do
sort of regret not having made that film earlier. The question arises, you
know, would I have wouldn't have been as successful if I'd done it when
I was younger and had less experience and less maturity. I don't know,
there's no way to know. Of course, I think it would have.
Don't you think technology also kinds of plays a role to a certain extent.
I mean that that it's so much cheaper to Yeah, yeah, we were.
We were able to make that film cheaper than if we'd shot it ten
years earlier and had to shoot on film, actually even five years earlier,
because we were we were sort of you know, we weren't the first indie
film to shoot on HD, but it was still a relatively new thing and
and so the technology was still actually sort of a question mark at that point.
I remember we built a computer to edit it, and it's like,
okay, what what does this computer need to be able to do? And
ended up sending like five grand to build a computer, And now you could
do it for you know, eight hundred on a laptop. So yeah,
it probably would have been more expensive if we'd done it sooner. But at
the same time, there was more money available because films were more expensive then,
and part of the so called democratization of film that's come with the digital
revolution, I think there's a little less respect for what it takes to make
a movie now. People think, oh, well, anybody with a video
camera can make a movie, and that's not true. And unfortunately, I
think people think, oh, it's really cheap to make a movie now,
and that's not true either. Certain elements have become less expensive. You don't
have to process film stock, you don't have to buy film stock, you
don't need to print your movie. At the end, renting a high end
HD camera costs as much as renting you know, a pan of FLEXI used
to do. So that hasn't changed so much. If you're really trying to
do it at a professional level, Yes, you can go out and buy
a cheap HD camera now. Hell, I mean, you know, there
are phones that will shoot four K videos, but they still have crappy,
little plastic lens. It's not like you're really going to be able to make
a movie that looks like a movie on your camera phone. So yes,
certain elements have gotten cheaper. You know, you don't need to rent an
Avid anymore. You can do it on any home computer. You can edit
a film. Now digital effects can be done on less sophisticated computers, but
you still need the really good software and you still need people who know how
to use it. And so the craft hasn't changed. It hasn't gotten any
cheaper, but unfortunately people seem to think it has. And so, you
know, it used to be that people in the film industry got paid pretty
well, and part of that was the assumption that they had a craft that
they had learned over many years that was a rare skill. And part of
it was the fact that you're not going to be working fifty weeks a year,
so you need to be paid enough when you are working to live,
you know, in between projects. And one of the unfortunate things that's happened
in recent years is people seem to have forgotten that these are still hard one,
hard fought skills that take a lot of time to perfect and not just
anybody with a computer and an iPhone can do it. You need to know
what you're doing. But because of the technological advances, there's a changed perception.
I think of what's involved here, and so people think that they shouldn't
have to pay for all this stuff. So you see all these visual effects
companies, you know, winning Oscars and then going out of business because they're
forced to do things so cheaply. And you see people making films on their
iPhone and then they get surprised when they can't sell the movie to a distributor.
So it's it's been a double edged sword, I think. And yes,
certain aspects of it are a bit cheap than it used to be,
but costs like sets and feeding your crew and hiring actors and hiring crew and
putting them up if you're in a different location, or building sets or finding
locations and paying for none of the costs of this stuff have changed. Movies
are expensive. It's very hard to make a good movie cheap. You know,
every once in a while it can be done if you have a concept
that lends itself to that, like you know the Blair Witch Project in or
if you're making a movie about two people sitting at a table talking. But
to make a popcorn movie still costs money, just because the cameras and the
editing equipment are a bit cheaper now. It doesn't really change that. 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
eight. 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 podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.