Speaker 1: Oh g is, folks, it's show tied. People say good
Speaker 1: money to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they want clod
Speaker 2: sodas popcorn in No monsters in the Protection.
Speaker 1: Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, Don and Off.
Speaker 1: We can all be forgiven the monstrous things this bedevil's
Speaker 1: world has made us too.
Speaker 3: We can all be forgiven. Oh, I see a terrible
Speaker 3: fear of my words.
Speaker 4: At Brodie, you are blessed, You are blessed.
Speaker 5: Why mean, what was so special about me?
Speaker 3: You were born to die for us?
Speaker 6: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 6: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 6: with Rob Cusino and Chris Rosick. They are the co
Speaker 6: directors of the twenty twenty five film So Fades the Light.
Speaker 6: It is out there now available for streaming for purchase.
Speaker 6: I highly recommend it. I had a great time talking
Speaker 6: with Rob and Chris doing a great job with this
Speaker 6: film and all the other stuff of theirs that I've seen.
Speaker 6: Hope you enjoyed this interview and definitely check out So
Speaker 6: Fades the.
Speaker 1: Light, Rob and Chris.
Speaker 6: I'm super excited to have your board tonight talking about so.
Speaker 1: Face the Light.
Speaker 6: I know you guys not from this movie but from before,
Speaker 6: and I'm so curious how do you know each other?
Speaker 6: Like how did you two become friends?
Speaker 1: I met Chris at a failed Comedy Central pilot that
Speaker 1: I was hired to rent a camera to, and Chris,
Speaker 1: I think, was also renting a camera to it, like
Speaker 1: after hours after a job that he was at at
Speaker 1: the time, and they asked us to operate and I
Speaker 1: had literally no idea how to use this camera. I
Speaker 1: just saved up enough money as a bar tend to
Speaker 1: like buy this camera, and Chris was like the person
Speaker 1: who was nice enough to explain to me how to
Speaker 1: use it. That's how I remember it. Pretty much.
Speaker 7: Right after that, we have a mutual friend who was
Speaker 7: at the bar Rob was working at, and he got
Speaker 7: Rob in at a small agency we were working at.
Speaker 8: So Rob was producing.
Speaker 7: Small shoots that I was shooting and directing with the
Speaker 7: owners of that company.
Speaker 6: And then how long have you guys been working together?
Speaker 6: When was this?
Speaker 7: Oh god, this is like teen years now, I think, Yeah,
Speaker 7: we've been doing the code directing for fourteen years. We've
Speaker 7: been working together for fifteen years. Because I actually met
Speaker 7: Rob like three weeks before my wedding, and so that's
Speaker 7: coming on fifteen years, so I can always remember fifteen
Speaker 7: years of Rob as well.
Speaker 6: Do you feel like you're as married to Rob as
Speaker 6: you are to.
Speaker 8: Your wife fifty percent of the time?
Speaker 6: What's that working relationship? Like, like how do you guys
Speaker 6: divvy up the work or how do you work in tandem?
Speaker 1: So I do a lot of the writing and producing.
Speaker 1: Chris is the big ideas guy. He'll like throw a
Speaker 1: few ideas at me. Then I'll make it into a
Speaker 1: script and then he'll go, Okay, what if it's this,
Speaker 1: So then I'll play with it, you know. But when
Speaker 1: we direct, Chris is far more visual than I am.
Speaker 1: I don't think about visuals at all. I'm very spoiled
Speaker 1: by working with Chris at this point. Like I basically
Speaker 1: focus on talent performance, talking to those folks, and you know,
Speaker 1: we work rereally differently. We have been like in out
Speaker 1: of set big enough to have like an AD and
Speaker 1: like another producer, so like I'll be like coordinating the
Speaker 1: crew getting everything set, so I'll kind of be like
Speaker 1: AD while I work with and then Chris will be
Speaker 1: like working with DP or shooting it himself, depending on
Speaker 1: the project. I think Chris does the bulk of the
Speaker 1: post production for our company as well. Chris can do
Speaker 1: visual effects. It's done color. Sometimes you like to work
Speaker 1: with colors.
Speaker 7: But I will say one of the best things about
Speaker 7: co directing is you don't have to be one percent
Speaker 7: on point because it is a lot of like managing
Speaker 7: personalities or like crew members, and it's like there's a
Speaker 7: lot more of like making sure everyone's happy. And Rob
Speaker 7: is much better with like trolling his emotions on that.
Speaker 7: Like there'll be times maybe on set where I'm just like,
Speaker 7: nothing's going right, everything's gonna burn.
Speaker 8: Let me go sleep in my car.
Speaker 7: And Rob's good at like steering us back in the
Speaker 7: direction so that we actually finish something.
Speaker 1: I have a theory that as long as it's fun
Speaker 1: to do it, you'll make something pretty good.
Speaker 6: Is this your first feature together?
Speaker 1: This is our second feature we directed together. We've worked
Speaker 1: on a bunch of features of other folks where we've
Speaker 1: done various jobs, like The Russian Five. We produced it
Speaker 1: as a company. I did a lot of producing or
Speaker 1: to Joshua Reel, the director, and Chris got the bulk
Speaker 1: of the film our first feature was called Future. It
Speaker 1: was kind of us figure out how to make a film.
Speaker 1: It's like a bit of an homage to Kevin Smith.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's something I'm proud of because we
Speaker 1: made it, but I don't necessarily love that movie anymore.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a very important film that we made,
Speaker 1: and I think there's really great moments in it. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of more harsh on it because I've gotten so
Speaker 1: much better at writing since we wrote it, and I
Speaker 1: think most of that film come from my writing. So
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit more negative about it.
Speaker 6: Well that was only what twenty sixteen, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: just a couple.
Speaker 1: Of years ago.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I do.
Speaker 1: Think it looks great and I think like it feels great.
Speaker 1: There's some great moments, And my little brother was the
Speaker 1: lead in that, Josh, and he's a really good actor,
Speaker 1: and there's strong performances from other folks in it. So
Speaker 1: it's just it's not something I regret. In fact, I
Speaker 1: personally think that, like a lot of people get stuck
Speaker 1: on the idea that the first thing has to be
Speaker 1: so good, right, and I was a little bit stuck
Speaker 1: on that. Chris was just kind of like, let's just
Speaker 1: make a fucking movie. He like kind of forced us
Speaker 1: into making a movie, and so we just did it.
Speaker 1: And I learned so much through that process that if
Speaker 1: that hadn't been our first movie, like anything else we
Speaker 1: did wouldn't have been just going to I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about acting and method and I learned so much
Speaker 1: from making that because I was so afraid of fucking
Speaker 1: it up that I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: drop the ball, especially because like I had gotten investors
Speaker 1: in that film. You know, he raised twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to shoot it, which seemed like an insane amount
Speaker 1: of money to shoot a movie with at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, for like a dumb idea we made up.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, what if we lose
Speaker 1: all this money? And we did because making profits on
Speaker 1: independent hills isn't near impossible.
Speaker 6: How did so Fate's a Light come about?
Speaker 1: Who had that idea?
Speaker 6: And how did the script kind of start to form itself.
Speaker 7: I had the initial idea of, like, what would it
Speaker 7: be like if you were raised in a cult and
Speaker 7: you're worshiped as a child and then like the cult's
Speaker 7: broken up, you're young enough to where you go to
Speaker 7: a foster home, you grow up, Like, what is that
Speaker 7: person like fifteen years later, like in their twenties, Like
Speaker 7: how did they cope with everything? How do they view religion?
Speaker 7: How do they view people? That was the initial thing
Speaker 7: I wanted to explore. And then Rob went in on
Speaker 7: the script and got a lot of the story beats,
Speaker 7: and then Rob can talk a lot more about the
Speaker 7: actual cult and the basis for that.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, when things got weird, I became obsessed
Speaker 1: with studying the strangest right wing shit I could find,
Speaker 1: like QAnon and Proud Boys and all that bullshit. So
Speaker 1: I started looking into that stuff and learning more about it,
Speaker 1: and I noticed consistent rhetoric among hateful people that I
Speaker 1: kind of latched onto and like because I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand it and be like, how is this working? How
Speaker 1: is this working? This is so dumb? How is this working?
Speaker 1: So like I lashed onto it. I sought out those
Speaker 1: communities and like, study the hell out of them, and
Speaker 1: things got even weirder. In twenty twenty one, I started
Speaker 1: seeing different cults pop up, and I started learning more
Speaker 1: about cults and researching it's As the film developed, it
Speaker 1: was like, we knew a couple of base rules about
Speaker 1: like things we did want to happen in the way
Speaker 1: characters were represented. Right. For instance, something Chris and I
Speaker 1: talked a lot about was we wanted the Reverend to
Speaker 1: be charismatic and charming and have like those vibes of
Speaker 1: like someone who you would be enticed by. Well, he's
Speaker 1: saying the worst shit, but it would be so easy
Speaker 1: to have him just to hate speech, right, Like, that'd
Speaker 1: be so easy and boring, And that's not what these
Speaker 1: people do. It's all very coded. It's very like under stated,
Speaker 1: but it's all there. There's a subtext of it, like
Speaker 1: words like globalist when they mean Jewish people whatever, Like
Speaker 1: they use all these code words. It was important to
Speaker 1: us that that came through in a way that matched
Speaker 1: the tone of these right wing, hateful, piece of shit creators.
Speaker 1: So we found that tone and we layered that in.
Speaker 1: And another thing that was really important to was our lead, Kylie,
Speaker 1: Kylie Lotts. We wanted to find a lead that played
Speaker 1: someone who had a history of trauma well but didn't
Speaker 1: play it in a way that it sucks whenever I
Speaker 1: see films where the main characters had a history of trauma.
Speaker 1: It sucks. They're like slumped over. They like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be around that fucking person. I had a
Speaker 1: real fucked up childhood. I'm super fun to talk to, Like,
Speaker 1: can we find more people like that that are like
Speaker 1: funny and like fun So that was the two big
Speaker 1: tone setters. I think that helped define the film, and
Speaker 1: I think we really focused on in the writing it's funny.
Speaker 6: I got a lot of David Koresh from the Reverend.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I think I think honest to God,
Speaker 1: Duke just brought a lot of that because it's a
Speaker 1: really charming, sweet guy in real life. So I think
Speaker 1: he was able to take the best parts of his
Speaker 1: personality and like use that to highlight the worst parts.
Speaker 1: Reverend A very.
Speaker 7: Important part of the movie in the opening is we
Speaker 7: open with like rhetoric and hate speech, and the guy's
Speaker 7: saying the most horrible things, and it's like, how can
Speaker 7: this guy be likable? And then we cut to the
Speaker 7: camera operator who's been recording this whole thing. We see
Speaker 7: he's really confused and saddened by all of it, and
Speaker 7: then you just see the Reverend like turn it on
Speaker 7: to like you're a special boy, we love you and
Speaker 7: that's why you're here. So I think that shows really quickly,
Speaker 7: like how these people get be sucked into it. A
Speaker 7: lot of people are looking to be like, oh, you're
Speaker 7: a special boy, and people looking for that, I think,
Speaker 7: can get really sucked into some of this gnarly stuff
Speaker 7: like far too easily.
Speaker 8: My only thing to add to that.
Speaker 6: Once the script is in a more finalized state, how
Speaker 6: do you actually go about producing this movie and getting
Speaker 6: all the elements together? I know it's kind of I
Speaker 6: always compare independent movies to like going to War, So
Speaker 6: how did you.
Speaker 1: Play in the battle?
Speaker 8: Ours?
Speaker 1: Is funny because Okay, so I wrote the first draft
Speaker 1: of the script in I think two days, and then
Speaker 1: I edited it for three months. We're taking notes from
Speaker 1: different people, the smarter people than me that put their
Speaker 1: two cents in, and we kept like like playing with
Speaker 1: the idea of making the film, but not really committing
Speaker 1: to it. And then finally we got to the point
Speaker 1: we like, ex send a date. We were just like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's go. So we got a bunch of
Speaker 1: our friends together that worked in commercials. John Beaver shot
Speaker 1: the movies Great DP. We worked all the time in commercials,
Speaker 1: you know, Scotia Lighting was a company that we worked with.
Speaker 1: They gave us a couple of the guys they came out,
Speaker 1: you know, our friend Don Walker, Hen's Vision Bridge Media.
Speaker 1: He lent us like some camera equipment. Like basically, like
Speaker 1: all of these friends that we had commercials that we've
Speaker 1: like given commercial work with, become friendly with, they kind
Speaker 1: of just like gave us their time. Our whole crew
Speaker 1: for this film was right around ten people for most
Speaker 1: of it, and our whole budget for the film was
Speaker 1: about sixty two thousand dollars. So we were able to
Speaker 1: do that because of all the other work we do
Speaker 1: and all the goodwill that we built up. So essentially,
Speaker 1: about a week before we're supposed to shoot, Chris and
Speaker 1: I started like it was even maybe in Leslie would
Speaker 1: have been like four days were supposed to share shooting.
Speaker 1: Our production designer Angie like pitched and started making stuff.
Speaker 1: We started scouting. She got COVID, so our friend Doug
Speaker 1: tagged in and helped her out on set, and then
Speaker 1: she came back later and helped us bring the thing home.
Speaker 1: But she did a lot of leg work and Doug
Speaker 1: was great on set, and then Chris also got COVID
Speaker 1: eight days we were supposed to shoot.
Speaker 8: No, it was three weeks.
Speaker 7: So it's interesting because, yeah, I remember we had a
Speaker 7: production meeting and I went and skated before work, and
Speaker 7: then I was about to come into work and I
Speaker 7: was the first one there, and before I went to
Speaker 7: the door.
Speaker 8: I just had like a weird panic.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh, I think I'm sick, and so
Speaker 7: like before going around to anyone else, Like, I went home,
Speaker 7: took a test. My wife knows I'm a little bit
Speaker 7: of a hypochondriac, so she was like blowing it off,
Speaker 7: like it'll be fine, you just go to work, and
Speaker 7: then like she took the test and like two minutes
Speaker 7: later she's like, yeah, go get another test, like it's positive. So,
Speaker 7: which is a crazy thing to be in isolation three
Speaker 7: weeks before your movie with nothing but like time and
Speaker 7: a shot list and a shot designing program and the script.
Speaker 7: Just like became a little bit of an insane person.
Speaker 7: Once I was able to talk to people again. In
Speaker 7: those four days, it was a lot of like these ideas,
Speaker 7: all these ideas, all these ideas, So it was probably
Speaker 7: a little bit annoying to people as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like Charlie it's always sunny with like
Speaker 1: the fucking pin board and the strings walked away in
Speaker 1: a room without his sense of taste. So Chris got
Speaker 1: that done and then we popped out. We just started shooting.
Speaker 1: I think, like what a week after you were out
Speaker 1: of quarantine, not even yeah, but yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was pretty wild and we just kind of fat it together,
Speaker 1: like it was a bunch of weird shit that just
Speaker 1: kind of worked out. Like my friend Scott, he plays
Speaker 1: the biker singer in the movie, the guy, the big
Speaker 1: guy who singing at the beginning of the movie with
Speaker 1: the great voice. He just went to this weird like
Speaker 1: church camp when he was younger. So we had a
Speaker 1: compound that existed that looked like that. Like we didn't
Speaker 1: have to do much to it, you know. The cast
Speaker 1: was all our friends. We'd been casting it on and
Speaker 1: off for a little while before, about two months before
Speaker 1: we started looking for people, right, we just already had
Speaker 1: all the pieces around us, like Tony the Skater was
Speaker 1: our friend Lou that would hang out there great. And
Speaker 1: then Kylie I met through the music scene and through
Speaker 1: friends of my wife, so and they're great. And Ailie
Speaker 1: introduced this to Anika. Anika was a singer of a
Speaker 1: punk band that Chris really liked, and I really loved
Speaker 1: her folky stuff and she's great. It all kind of
Speaker 1: worked out, and Duke was a guy we knew from
Speaker 1: advertising and he's great. It just kind of worked and
Speaker 1: then everybody kind of pitched in to fill in the blanks.
Speaker 1: Like I said, our whole crew was like ten people,
Speaker 1: and it was a very ambitious film. When I say that,
Speaker 1: plus the scale and the budget, it was like, we
Speaker 1: just got lucky. My friend Tom Way Cities, who's like
Speaker 1: the best location guy I ever worked with. He just
Speaker 1: helped us find substitute locations. Our buddy Julian, who was
Speaker 1: like an associate producer on it, hit so many jobs.
Speaker 1: He was helping us scheduling, and he was doing second
Speaker 1: ac work and he was shooting some stuff. It was
Speaker 1: just everybody just did everything.
Speaker 6: Higley is amazing and I'm so glad that you found
Speaker 6: them because performance they give is just phenomenal. And like
Speaker 6: I always say, when it comes to independent film, it
Speaker 6: lives and dies by those performances, because you can have
Speaker 6: the best looking thing in the world, but if your
Speaker 6: lead actor or actress is clunky, and Kylie is the
Speaker 6: opposite of clunky. In fact, I think straight down the lay,
Speaker 6: there are so many good performances, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I do think like so much of what this
Speaker 1: film is rested completely on Kylie, because so much of
Speaker 1: this film is just living with this person, and that
Speaker 1: person needs to be so dynamic and not be you know,
Speaker 1: some doll sad sack, which is like, again, something we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about. Not that I mean whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: not judge people are depressed. I'm just saying, like, as
Speaker 1: someone who experiences depression, I'm not one note and I
Speaker 1: think I find that a lot of times in film,
Speaker 1: this is a person who's like got like shooting fun
Speaker 1: things in their van and they like have a little
Speaker 1: life and they're doing all these things. Like it was
Speaker 1: a fully fleshed out character, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: came from I mean, Kylie. We met with a lot
Speaker 1: before the film. We talked to Kylie. I'm many guests,
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty times about like tone and character.
Speaker 1: And another thing we did prior to shooting was we
Speaker 1: did a table read with all of the talent, and
Speaker 1: in that read, we would go scene by scene. At
Speaker 1: the end of each scene, I go, how did that feel?
Speaker 1: Would you say that? Because a lot of these people
Speaker 1: were first time actors or non actors too, and I
Speaker 1: would just have to rewrite the script in their own words,
Speaker 1: and it was great, Like a god of what is
Speaker 1: the sci fi writer's name that Lou brought to the table,
Speaker 1: it's they reference it in the skater scene. But that
Speaker 1: was that bit where like Lou talks to Tony but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I didn't know who Actavit Butler was until Lou
Speaker 1: brought Actavia Butler up to me. So like that bit
Speaker 1: where they're talking, that was a bit I wrote around
Speaker 1: as I lay dying with Focner. So the whole scene
Speaker 1: was supposed to be out a Faucner reference of like
Speaker 1: going home this long road home, and Lou is like,
Speaker 1: have you read Actavia Butler? And they gave me this
Speaker 1: like reference and that works so much better because it's
Speaker 1: something Lou connected with. And by the way, Luke came
Speaker 1: so prepared, Chris, that was the first time Lo's ever
Speaker 1: been in a film, and they were great. We just
Speaker 1: got lucky.
Speaker 6: I do have to ask, because you have some non
Speaker 6: binary people in here, You've got your main character su Wen,
Speaker 6: but can also be heard as as oh, and I mean,
Speaker 6: how much was gender factor when you were writing this?
Speaker 1: When I was right, it was very little. Once we
Speaker 1: started casting it, I became very cognizant of it in
Speaker 1: the writing. The funny thing about Sun is I based
Speaker 1: a lot of the cult off of an actual existing cult,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if I can say it, just
Speaker 1: in case they're litigious, but like, the names came from
Speaker 1: real people in that cult. So that was where it
Speaker 1: was like the reverend had a name and the lawyer
Speaker 1: was like, absolutely not, don't do.
Speaker 8: That, so that went away.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I became very cognizant of it in
Speaker 1: the process, Like casting Lou made that scene. Even kyl
Speaker 1: that was talking about how that scene felt like a
Speaker 1: little bit of like a crush then, and it was
Speaker 1: this fun new element and I hadn't thought of any
Speaker 1: of that stuff until I had watched the actors interact.
Speaker 1: Then I became very cognizant of it, and I think
Speaker 1: Chris and I really adapted to Like I said, we
Speaker 1: really tried to adapt it to their voices. And I
Speaker 1: always knew that I wanted everyone that Son encounters to
Speaker 1: be someone that would be othered by or rejected by
Speaker 1: the people in the cult. So that way Son could
Speaker 1: meet these folks and have a positive interactions with them,
Speaker 1: because in a way, it's like you're seeing, you know
Speaker 1: what ripening in America has put on this person, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing them interact with these folks in real life.
Speaker 1: And Sun doesn't have those like preconceived notions that they
Speaker 1: were raised with, but like you're seeing them interact with
Speaker 1: these people in real life, and you're seeing the kindness
Speaker 1: that comes from these communities. And even though a lot
Speaker 1: of these folks, like the couple at the campfire, have
Speaker 1: been rejected by or like damaged by these communities, they
Speaker 1: don't shy away from meeting new people. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Anika is like, I'm done apologizing for the way I've
Speaker 1: been treated. I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm
Speaker 1: my own person. We found our own world outside of
Speaker 1: the world that's been they rejected the world, they didn't
Speaker 1: get rejected by it. And that was like kind of
Speaker 1: seeing Sun being welcomed by those people. It meant a
Speaker 1: lot to me, and I think it meant a lot
Speaker 1: to the actors.
Speaker 6: Tell me a little bit more about the shoot. I
Speaker 6: mean other than Chris getting COVID any major stumbling blocks Otherwise.
Speaker 7: There's a van in the movie that didn't run eighty
Speaker 7: percent of the time, which is actually funny because we
Speaker 7: bought a VW Bus US a month before that. The
Speaker 7: day before the shoot stopped running, so we actually happened
Speaker 7: to find the van from our friend Jeff, who was
Speaker 7: just his secondary car. So yeah, having like a road
Speaker 7: trip movie that the van kept breaking down was a
Speaker 7: bit of a hassle. I mean it broke down since
Speaker 7: you're from Michigan, like in Frank and Mooth when we
Speaker 7: were trying to go to Bay City, so it broke
Speaker 7: down about an hour and a half away from us,
Speaker 7: in maybe like forty minutes away from where we were
Speaker 7: trying to get.
Speaker 1: Other than that, though, the production wasn't really like fraught
Speaker 1: with a lot of problems. I mean it was exhausting,
Speaker 1: right because I was doing like the next day schedule
Speaker 1: and the call sheets with Julian and Nyat, who were
Speaker 1: both in the movie. They were both helping against as well.
Speaker 1: It's like coordinating and stuff. But you know, it wasn't, uh,
Speaker 1: it was exhausting, but like it wasn't a miserable experience
Speaker 1: pity means like a lot of times I think it
Speaker 1: can be, and I think a lot of indie films
Speaker 1: get into that trap of like oh this is so hard,
Speaker 1: this is hard. But like it was fucking fun, you know,
Speaker 1: like we're making a movie and we're doing something cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was some challenges as far as like
Speaker 1: I had to drive to Atlanta to get the fake
Speaker 1: guns because they wouldn't ship them, so like I literally
Speaker 1: drove to a prop house in Atlanta, like well I think
Speaker 1: two days before we shot and cut the guns and
Speaker 1: brought them back and I had drive them back afterwards.
Speaker 1: But me and my wife turned into like a little
Speaker 1: mini vacation. We hung out in Atlanta for a day.
Speaker 1: It was fun. But you know, none of the guns
Speaker 1: on sat were like ever real guns by the way,
Speaker 1: So like we did safety meetings, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: need nothing like rubber or plastic or corked, so like
Speaker 1: there was never an opportunity for them to be dangerous,
Speaker 1: but we still have to treat them like they were
Speaker 1: because we didn't want to be disrespectful of like shit
Speaker 1: that happened with rust and stuff like that. So like
Speaker 1: we still had to take them very seriously. And then
Speaker 1: that was I guess the struggle for me, because doing
Speaker 1: anything serious is a bit of a tough th for me.
Speaker 1: But we just got really lucky. We had great locations.
Speaker 1: You know, we used young Up Donuts. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever been there downriver. That's not Chris and
Speaker 1: the order like met me once and just handed me
Speaker 1: the keys. He's like, yeah, I just lock it up
Speaker 1: when you're done. You can stay overnight like cool. And
Speaker 1: then you know we had the compound, which is great.
Speaker 1: You know, we shot Autumn's houses. I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: right now from my window. It's my in law's house.
Speaker 1: They are my neighbors now I've moved into the house
Speaker 1: next door since we shot the film. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of the leveraging relationships we had. And you know
Speaker 1: Ray Rivard, who is our steady cam op. He came
Speaker 1: out for like next to nothing and fucking just would
Speaker 1: hang out all day, Like he'd wrap his steady cam
Speaker 1: shit and he'dn't be like what else can I do?
Speaker 1: And he'd like set his rig down. And this guy
Speaker 1: does this at for like huge budget commercials and he
Speaker 1: was just like on board. People just like really committed
Speaker 1: like John Luca committed, and Jake RG and e guys.
Speaker 1: They were just everybody's like a huge part of the
Speaker 1: team and it was a great experience.
Speaker 6: When did you actually shoot this and how long was
Speaker 6: the shoot?
Speaker 7: It's probably about three years ago was the initial shoot.
Speaker 7: We shot it actually in three parts. We shot a
Speaker 7: big chunk of the movie with like full casting crew,
Speaker 7: and we knew there was just like smaller parts that
Speaker 7: we could get, like just Rob and Die and like
Speaker 7: Julian who was producing with us, and then Dug our
Speaker 7: props person and an audio person. We also shot very
Speaker 7: like weird hours just because everyone was doing favors. There
Speaker 7: was like a diner scene in the movie, and we
Speaker 7: shot for four hours and then you know, we wrapped,
Speaker 7: and Rob and I worked on getting the next day
Speaker 7: shoot ready, and like we didn't really go over ten hours,
Speaker 7: so I think.
Speaker 1: I think it was only one day we even hit
Speaker 1: ten hours.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so it's probably like a three week shoot. And
Speaker 7: then just like pick up days where Robin I would
Speaker 7: go and shoot out the car window to get scenery
Speaker 7: or blue Kylie into town and shot like like van
Speaker 7: breakdown scene and like just little flavor stuff like them
Speaker 7: going to the laundrymat and small stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I think we shot the last day on my fortieth birthday,
Speaker 1: but we did, which.
Speaker 7: Also is good because we would see stuff in the
Speaker 7: edit where we were missing it. So our ability to
Speaker 7: like have a cut and then show it to people
Speaker 7: and people would be like, oh, this goes by too
Speaker 7: fast or I feel like, you know, like base it
Speaker 7: out like this, and then we had the ability to
Speaker 7: just like grab gear and go and shoot that stuff,
Speaker 7: cut it in, show it to more people again and
Speaker 7: they would say like, oh, So it was actually very
Speaker 7: helpful that we could work as a very small crew
Speaker 7: after having like big crew, because I think having the
Speaker 7: like the our bigger crew really gave like a high
Speaker 7: quality look to the movie. And then we were able
Speaker 7: to like sneak in some smaller stuff and it kind
Speaker 7: of like seats in there being helped by the larger
Speaker 7: stuff we did.
Speaker 6: And it probably helps that you're the editor as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the editor.
Speaker 7: And also in working with commercial you do learn how
Speaker 7: to check your ego at the door, because no matter
Speaker 7: if Rob and I are directing and editing the commercial,
Speaker 7: it's always for the client in the end. We don't
Speaker 7: get offended if someone comes back and this part's way
Speaker 7: too slow or this part makes no sense, instead of
Speaker 7: all there's stupid, they don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 7: Why would they say that, and then kind of readjusting
Speaker 7: and then like sending it out to another person to
Speaker 7: see what they say, and then back to that person,
Speaker 7: Yeah your name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We had a lot of awesome people give us
Speaker 1: notes on the edit to like Jen Wexler, who's like
Speaker 1: a director we look up to. She gave us some
Speaker 1: great notes, and Joe Swanberg actually watched it and gave
Speaker 1: us some great notes. And we were very lucky just
Speaker 1: by reaching out to some folks that we've you know,
Speaker 1: had like interactions with that where they were like invested
Speaker 1: enough to watch the film and tell us our thoughts,
Speaker 1: and we definitely I mean Joe gave us one of
Speaker 1: the best edits in the movie, which is the gag
Speaker 1: where Son's drinking the juice and then you cut to
Speaker 1: them seeing the stain on this shirt. That was a
Speaker 1: Joe Swanberg note. Like we had a whole sequence where
Speaker 1: they just filled it and Joe was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: the obvious cut, and we're like it's so good, and
Speaker 1: it's the best cut.
Speaker 7: Also, yeah, if you have someone like Joe Swanberg telling
Speaker 7: you that, like you just need to pick up the
Speaker 7: edit at the back half, you're like, oh man, this
Speaker 7: guy makes the kind of slow movies that we really
Speaker 7: really like.
Speaker 8: So if he's saying pick it up, like, you got
Speaker 8: to take that note.
Speaker 6: Not to nerd out, but what did you cut on Chris?
Speaker 7: We did Premiere and Rob actually did the initial cut.
Speaker 7: I was actually kind of really burnt out at that point,
Speaker 7: and so Rob did the first assembly and then I
Speaker 7: laid everything got in a row.
Speaker 8: It was there and it was very helpful.
Speaker 7: But so we used Premiere Pro and I guess the
Speaker 7: nerdiest thing to say about it is Premiere has a
Speaker 7: feature that a lot of people don't talk about, called production,
Speaker 7: and so it works in a way where it's more
Speaker 7: like how an Avid project would be. Were like, it
Speaker 7: just really simplifies and organizes the project so that you're
Speaker 7: not opening up like one hundred sequences. Every time you
Speaker 7: open up a project, you're opening up one sequence and
Speaker 7: then it's all referencing back to a master project. So
Speaker 7: that's my nerdy thing is Premiere And then like I
Speaker 7: love the productions for a narrative.
Speaker 6: Tell me a little bit more about the post process,
Speaker 6: especially around the music. Tell me more about how the
Speaker 6: soundtrack came together.
Speaker 1: So I wrote in the movie or in the script,
Speaker 1: I was listening Analogy Bloom, which is the band with
Speaker 1: the song that plays in the van, and then again
Speaker 1: at the end, I was listening to their album a lot,
Speaker 1: and I like reached out to them and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm writing a movie and I love your music. Can
Speaker 1: I use the song? And They're like sure, which is wild.
Speaker 1: So that one was kind of on board. I think
Speaker 1: that might have been a bit of a tone setter
Speaker 1: because from that point on, like Chris pulled a bunch
Speaker 1: of well, you had a bunch of friends. I mean,
Speaker 1: you love Bouurgeois philth that's a band that's in there,
Speaker 1: And what are some of your friend's bands? Chris like, sorry,
Speaker 1: I can never. I mean our friends Fireworks is a
Speaker 1: great band that we know, so they gave us access
Speaker 1: to music. You know, they're really good friends of mine
Speaker 1: and my friend Masha Mirchai. She has that opening song
Speaker 1: with a reverence getting out of prison, that open sequence,
Speaker 1: and that that film. I even told Masha this, like
Speaker 1: that was one of the songs I was listening when
Speaker 1: I was writing, and it kind of set a tone
Speaker 1: when I did the first pass of like laying out
Speaker 1: the edit in my head for like the pace because
Speaker 1: that song, I don't know what it means, Tomasha, but
Speaker 1: it very much reminds me of like a funeral march.
Speaker 1: It's like finding that song set a pace where I
Speaker 1: was like when I was laying out the first pass,
Speaker 1: and I think some of that that pacing stayed in there.
Speaker 1: Every time I thought I should cut, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: what if it's just a little bit longer, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? And I don't know if that pace
Speaker 1: landed in the film, but I think that idea stuck
Speaker 1: with me and Chris of like what if it is
Speaker 1: a little bit longer, what if it stays with us
Speaker 1: a little bit longer? And that was also on set
Speaker 1: a bit of that as well, But no Chris talk
Speaker 1: about some of the music he brought to the table.
Speaker 7: The mixtape minus Algae Bloom, I think is mostly music
Speaker 7: I actually listened to in middle school in high school,
Speaker 7: and so like my friend's band, the same Fate is
Speaker 7: in there. And then like Rob mentioned unknown, Chris from
Speaker 7: fireworks since he was maybe in middle school. The song
Speaker 7: that they're skating to is just like one of my
Speaker 7: favorite bands from when I was in middle school, like
Speaker 7: a local Michigan punk sky band, and so a lot
Speaker 7: of it is just like music that Robin I really
Speaker 7: really like, and like I was kind of excited. It's
Speaker 7: like middle school in me is very excited to get
Speaker 7: to use like a ska punk band from Berkeley, Michigan.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: In a narrative feature, I will also say too, there
Speaker 1: was a funny moment where and one of the songs
Speaker 1: got taken off because of sony music. But it was
Speaker 1: one point where we had two far more successful directors
Speaker 1: than ourselves on the soundtrack. So our buddy Andrews met
Speaker 1: a great, amazing sound designer, a great guy, and sat
Speaker 1: pe'sp worked with Lucky McKey forever, and we have Lucky's
Speaker 1: band on the soundtrack. They're called Uglodar. They're great. And
Speaker 1: Andrews like, you should ask Lucky for some music. And
Speaker 1: Andrew asked him, and he gave us some stuff and
Speaker 1: it's a fucking great album. Google Diar, everybody check out Uguladar.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, so he gave us one and then
Speaker 1: our buddy Adam Raymyer. He just did that film Dinner
Speaker 1: America and Snack Chatty. She's a Michigan dude. He's actually
Speaker 1: shooting his new movie, which I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about. But he had this great song
Speaker 1: Watermelon from Dinner America that we had on the soundtrack,
Speaker 1: but like when we put it in it and by
Speaker 1: the time we were putting the movie out, he's like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't own it anymore. So we had to swapped
Speaker 1: that one out. But the other thenue where we had
Speaker 1: much more successful directors that I thought the.
Speaker 7: Soundtrack, which is a lesson of just get the contract
Speaker 7: signed right away, even if it is like it wasn't
Speaker 7: Adam like it was a handshake deal. He was good
Speaker 7: to his word, and it was before that movie had
Speaker 7: like its big resurgence and that like song went up
Speaker 7: really really huge on like Spotify.
Speaker 8: It was out of his hands, but had we.
Speaker 7: As soon as like he was like, yeah, totally use it,
Speaker 7: Like we're like okay, and here's an email of the
Speaker 7: paperwork sign that it would be a different story.
Speaker 8: But that's just I guess it sucks.
Speaker 7: But even if they really want to do it, you
Speaker 7: still have to get the paperwork signed.
Speaker 6: You talked about sending this off, getting those bits of
Speaker 6: feedback and everything, all the notes. When do you actually
Speaker 6: get to see this with a audience.
Speaker 1: Our buddy Julian and his father Carlos put together a
Speaker 1: test screening, probably like a two months before lock cut,
Speaker 1: not even They got us like the small room at
Speaker 1: the Imagine in Birmingham and we had about twenty people
Speaker 1: come out and we just listened to feedback and that
Speaker 1: was really great. Chris unfortunately was stuck kind of commercial job,
Speaker 1: so you didn't get to go to that, which sucks,
Speaker 1: but it was really great and I think we got
Speaker 1: a couple of notes out of that. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what they were, but we had a few pretty good
Speaker 1: thoughts out of that. And actually the craziest thing was
Speaker 1: out of that process we were able to introduce one
Speaker 1: of our investors and Julian to our friend Josh Mallerman,
Speaker 1: and we ended up doing a documentary with him that's
Speaker 1: going to be premiering at a festival soon because of
Speaker 1: that night, because we did that note session, so it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is another new project. I know.
Speaker 1: We definitely got some great feedback out of that, and
Speaker 1: then I think we watched it a lot with our
Speaker 1: producer Bill Sturtz. He was very helpful of the post
Speaker 1: notes in process. He was like super fucking healthfully great ideas.
Speaker 1: He was around for some of the earlier passes. What else,
Speaker 1: Chris Well.
Speaker 7: Then we premiered at the Charlotte Film Festival, which is
Speaker 7: like a really great film festival, and it's in a
Speaker 7: recently updated art house theater, so I mean like projection
Speaker 7: and seating and sound was like actually one of the
Speaker 7: best places. I think it sounded amazing and it looked amazing,
Speaker 7: and it actually hasn't looked or sounded as good since then.
Speaker 7: But so that was kind of our first experience having
Speaker 7: it in front of an audience of people who didn't
Speaker 7: know us at all, which is maybe one of the
Speaker 7: more nerve wracking things because getting friends and family feedback
Speaker 7: is like one thing because it's a lot of other
Speaker 7: filmmakers and you're able to make changes from that. Like
Speaker 7: people who don't know you, though they could walk out
Speaker 7: during they could just you know, ask you some of
Speaker 7: the gnarliest questions, like why do you think you could
Speaker 7: make this movie? But no one did but you just
Speaker 7: always have that in the back of your head. So
Speaker 7: that's kind of the most nerve wracking thing, I think
Speaker 7: is playing it in a different stay with no one
Speaker 7: you know in the theater.
Speaker 1: Then Charlotte. Also, there was one dude to the audience
Speaker 1: who asked us a question that we was something we
Speaker 1: really wanted to come across, very subtle performance, and he
Speaker 1: was like, is this what you were doing with that?
Speaker 1: And I was like, yes. It felt so good that
Speaker 1: he got that. I was like, we did a thing
Speaker 1: that's really fucking hard to do and someone got it,
Speaker 1: because like a lot of times, I think when you
Speaker 1: talk with filmmakers about intent that they can see it
Speaker 1: and not the audience can. So I was really proud
Speaker 1: to like get past that hurdle and have somebody like
Speaker 1: recognize a very intense like moment and of intent and
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 6: I don't usually praise the poster art for films when
Speaker 6: I talk about the filmmakers, but the poster art with
Speaker 6: the bullets so beautiful, absolutely stunning and such an eye
Speaker 6: catching image.
Speaker 7: I was in a filmmaker group on Facebook for one
Speaker 7: of the festivals that a short of Arts had played
Speaker 7: back and someone else just posted the question like, hey,
Speaker 7: I need art any recommendations, And so I looked at
Speaker 7: kind of followed that thread and you know, found his
Speaker 7: website and he actually did the Dinner in America artwork
Speaker 7: and oh Jeeves full Circle. He did twenty four exposures
Speaker 7: to Joe Swanberg posters, so just like two things that
Speaker 7: I really liked, and then we sent him the movie.
Speaker 7: He really dug it and like pitched us so many
Speaker 7: ideas and it was hard to narrow down. But you know,
Speaker 7: we came down to that one and it was I
Speaker 7: don't know, he was ridiculously fast, had so many different ideas.
Speaker 7: It was just a great experience to do that. And
Speaker 7: also he had a pre existing relationship with our distributor, so.
Speaker 8: That made it even easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he actually made us two posters and we went
Speaker 1: with our favorite. But Chris Davidson is his name, and
Speaker 1: everybody who's doing any film should reach out to Chris
Speaker 1: David's to the Robot I because he worked with our
Speaker 1: budget and he did amazing work. He really gave a shit.
Speaker 1: You could tell he really poured himself into it, and
Speaker 1: he's like an honest to God, like true artist. His
Speaker 1: process was great. He gave us so many options to
Speaker 1: pick from before he did the finish one. He was
Speaker 1: amazing to work with. And yeah, that poster, Like, when
Speaker 1: I see it, I get fired up. Actually just found out.
Speaker 1: I'm so dumb about my own stuff. But I just
Speaker 1: found that there's physical copies you can get from Amazon,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh shit, I gotta get a
Speaker 1: blue ray this. This is so cool.
Speaker 6: Well, that kind of answers my next question as to
Speaker 6: where can people see this movie?
Speaker 1: As far as I know right now, it's just Amazon
Speaker 1: where you can stream it or watch or get the
Speaker 1: physical media, or Apple TV Plus And is that it, Chris,
Speaker 1: of those the two spots.
Speaker 8: I think Fandango Home and then.
Speaker 7: It's going to kind of like trickle out to just
Speaker 7: every other streaming service after that. But I know right
Speaker 7: now the two big ones are Amazon Prime and Apple
Speaker 7: TV or iTunes, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: It came out on the twenty fourth, available on Amazon
Speaker 1: and iTunes.
Speaker 6: And is there a good place for people to keep
Speaker 6: up with you guys?
Speaker 1: There's the Sofate's Light Film Instagram if you're curious about
Speaker 1: the film. And then Chris kind of runs our company Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is just gets super Red on Instagram and if
Speaker 1: anybody wants to follow me, I don't ever use social
Speaker 1: media outside of promoting new projects. But it's just Rob
Speaker 1: Kuzina on Instagram. And also if you're a filmmaker, follow
Speaker 1: me on Facebook and message me here whatever. I love
Speaker 1: to meet you know, anyone but Michigan filmmakers especially. I
Speaker 1: love talking to people and it's probably like my second
Speaker 1: full time job is just trying to connect every filmmaker
Speaker 1: I meet with people that can help them make stuffs.
Speaker 6: Chris and Rob, thank you so much for your time, guys.
Speaker 6: This is great friendly being able to have a proper conversation.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate it, and great work on the movie.
Speaker 7: Congratulations, thank you, and thank you very much for like
Speaker 7: having us on something like this. It's really hard to
Speaker 7: get in front of people in front of eyes, so
Speaker 7: I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also will say too, like you doing this
Speaker 1: with us does lend a lot of your credibility to
Speaker 1: us as far as you know, your reputation in the
Speaker 1: film world, and we really appreciate that and you taking
Speaker 1: the time means a lot to us. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I know it's other
Speaker 6: things you'd probably be rather doing on a Monday night, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. This is it.
Speaker 6: It was nice connecting.
Speaker 5: So thank you so much, guys.
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