IFH 865: The Screenwriting Blueprint Every First-Time Writer Needs with David Hohl

Alex Ferrari 0:46
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Dave Bullis 1:56
With me today is David Hohl. David is a screenwriting teacher and currently runs horror movie school, an online film school that focuses on the craft of making horror films. He is also a producer and director, which will we will get in today in the show. Dave, how are you?

David Hohl 2:12
Great, thanks. I'm excited to be on your show. Thanks, Dave.

Dave Bullis 2:16
Oh, thank you very much for coming on. This is actually the second time, because the first time the recording got a little messed up, but hopefully I was a charm, right?

David Hohl 2:25
Yeah, I hope so. Hope second time, not third time, but it was fun. So I look forward to it again.

Dave Bullis 2:32
Great. So you actually already know the question, so if it sounds a little rehearsed, it's like, well, David, it's like almost like David.

David Hohl 2:38
Well, I was just thinking about that today, and I was thinking all my answers will probably be completely different, because they're just off the top of my head.

Dave Bullis 2:46
Good. So, then it's really like a total new, totally new.

David Hohl 2:48
That's right. Yeah.

Dave Bullis 2:50
So, Dave, the first question I have for you is, you know, what advice do you have to people that are writing their first screenplay?

David Hohl 2:59
Okay, for people that are just fresh into it and don't have really any education in your, I'm assuming you were talking about that, right?

Dave Bullis 3:07
Yes.

David Hohl 3:08
Well, I mean, there's a few people that might go on the route of going to film school and UCLA or USC or whatever it be, but you know that's not an option for a lot of people, because it's rather expensive, and personally I think there's, there's better ways to get in, and the first thing I would just recommend is get as many good books as you can, with the internet nowadays, you can see, you know, the reviews on the books, and see you know how well screenwriters like them, so just try to find some good books, study them for a few months, read as many screenplays as you can, watch as many movies as you can, especially ones in the genre that you're interested in, and and then start writing, but I would recommend, you know, learning how to do an outline and doing that properly first, and then, and then going in, doing your, your first draft, and then going and meeting people that are screenwriters or screenplay consultants or writers groups, like I know you had a writer's group. It's very helpful, and you can run your material by them. And then after you get it to a pretty good level, then you can send it to a consultant to give you final critiques before you send it out into the market. You really don't want to send it out early, because if you send it to producers before it's at its best, then you know if there's problems in it, they're going to remember that, and then if you submit something again in the future, they might not be interested in reading it, even if it's better at that point.

Dave Bullis 4:54
Yeah, you know, I also heard, Dave, that like certain screenwriting competitions, they actually. Will take the name of the script and the writer, and then they actually have that in their catalog, so if you do submit it again, they actually will base it upon that. So I know the Nicole Fellowship actually mentioned that in a Q and A, and they were like, make sure this is as good as it possibly can, because if you submit it again, you know we have our database. And thanks for mentioning my screenwriters group, Dave, which is the first draft screenwriters group. You know, we've been meeting for over a year now. We finally have a name.

David Hohl 5:29
Okay, great.

Dave Bullis 5:31
And you were gracious enough to come in as a guest, and which was very good.

David Hohl 5:36
Yeah, well, I really recommend that. I mean, putting a group together, you know, gives you people to talk to that have a like mind, you can share, you know, new things, like maybe you know the people in the group don't have a whole lot of money, so you know one person can go to one seminar, another person could go to another seminar, and then sort of share the information amongst each other,

Dave Bullis 5:58
Yeah, that's a really good idea, and so, Dave, I wanted to follow up with that question. I wanted to ask, what challenges did you encounter when you were writing your first screenplay?

David Hohl 6:10
Yeah, my very first screenplay, I did, I believe I was 17 years old, I was in high school still, and I thought, I want to do that movie stuff, let me, I can write a screenplay just like anyone else. So I just wrote a screenplay, and you know, I had my ideas of what characters I wanted and the basic ideas, and I had some scenes in my mind, and so I went about and I wrote this script and had some cool scenes, and I think it probably had some good dialog for a 17 year old. I'd probably not like it now, but when I went back and read the entire screenplay, it really didn't have any focus, and that's because I just wrote off the top of my head I didn't realize that there was this whole art to screenwriting and having structure and, and knowing how to do outlines and things, so I would suggest to others to really learn outlining, and that was my biggest challenge, is is trying to write without doing those things that I just recommended. I read like one or two books, but nowadays there's a lot, a lot more education out there. There's more seminars. A friend of mine, David Freeman, has a great seminar called Beyond Structure. That's one. Michael Hague has seminars, Chris Soph, you know, there's a lot of great seminars out there, and then there's specialty seminars for different genres. I have a class on horror, so I would just recommend getting the education and learning how to do outlining before you go into it, because that was my biggest mistake when I first started,

Dave Bullis 7:54
And that's something I found out too, is that outlining is so key, because you have to know where your story begins, and where it ends, and you need to see that in a whole, you know, whether it's, you know, in just one sheet, so you could see, like, you know, just in one glance, or whether it's like, you know, writing it over the span of cold pages to add in, like, a beat sheet, it's just so important to know, you know, what's going on, the scenes, everything, like, and what's happening in those scenes, and then you can really start to develop that move from there.

David Hohl 8:24
Yeah, and and when I did my first screenplay, I did know what my beginning and end was, but I didn't know all of the signposts along the way. I just sort of tried to fill it in as I was writing, and just because you, some people think, just because you have an outline, it means you're being rigid and you're being formulaic, and that you're not being creative, but that's really not true. The structure just gives you the spine of the story, or if you look at it as building a house, it's a blueprint of the structure of the house, but that doesn't mean you can't be creative and go in and paint the walls however you want them, or put the trim on the on the ceiling or the doorknobs a certain way, so that once the structure is there, it gives you freedom to go in and do all the real creative stuff, in my opinion.

Dave Bullis 9:18
Oh yeah, and I agree on that too. And speaking of resources, there's other places online now where you can literally pull off screenplays, and you can pull off even, like, you know, things like about sequences, and about, you know, the, you were speaking about the signposts on the road, were you speaking about, like, the nine main beats, like, you know, like an inciting incident, the first, yeah,

David Hohl 9:40
Generally those things, yeah, they're different according to who you talk to in terms of terminology, but the basic - that's what I meant by signposts, the basic plot points, you know, the major plot points, and then the lesser plot points along the way.

Dave Bullis 9:56
So Dave, what challenges do you encounter when you're writing a screenplay now?

David Hohl 10:04
Now, well, I joked last time about it being my daughter, because she's five and she's always tugging my leg, gasping for something, it's actually true, so I'd say the challenge is just working in a schedule with everything else that's going on in life, and I know that's something that a lot of people have problems with. There's a lot of people interested in screenwriting that work full time, and they have kids, or they have spouses, or they have other obligations, so just being able to schedule things and having a time where you can really get in and, and write, that's a challenge, and you just have to be persistent. You have to just write it out, you know that it's this time, and you know you could be creative. Some people say there's there is no time. I have no time. Well, that just means that your priority is low. If your priority is not to do it, then you won't do it. But if it is a priority, then you will do it, even if it means waking up an hour early and you know, getting to work an hour early and getting your laptop out before and in writing a few scenes or or something, you can, you can do it,

Dave Bullis 11:26
Yeah, and you've heard of a lot of writers doing that too, where they've either gotten to work early or they stay late just to knock out something, and you know that with that extra hour or so,

David Hohl 11:35
Right, right,

Dave Bullis 11:37
So and Dave, your approach to writing is, you know, I know you break it down into eights. Do you want to talk more about your, your real method?

David Hohl 11:47
Well, yeah, I won't get going to a lot of detail, because that might take some time, and people can learn that on my website too. But it's basically, it's based on the sequence method from USC, where they break it down into sequences, and the reason I like that is because they're bite-sized pieces that you really, you could understand what each section is attempting to do within the story, and then also gives you a goal, a really clear goal that you know you can make, and then once you make that goal, you know of the 12 pages or so, or 15, depending on what you're shooting for, once you make it, then you just go on to the next, and then you have another clear goal, so I think it is easier to get through the whole script doing that, and my real outlining technique is basically taking that sequence method and putting it onto an outline template where someone can just easily, you know, put in the major plot points of each of the reels, and then build it, and you can look at it from an overview. It's like a bird's eye view, and see this entire structure of the screenplay, and you could play around and move, move the scenes around, and things until you know it's really clear, and then you can write a first draft really quickly, and that's that's my goal, and I found it very successful when I've been hired to do something with a tight deadline, you know, I've had to write features in three weeks, which is crazy, I think, and you know, but if I have the outline, then three weeks is actually, actually a long time. You can do it quicker than that. So, usually, if I had three weeks, I would spend, you know, a whole week just doing the outline, and then I would zip through the first draft, you know, in the, in the two weeks or less. So that's what, nutshell of the out the real outlining method,

Dave Bullis 14:05
You know, I found that that also helps a lot with outlining, just sequencing it out and breaking it into eights, you know, so you know you have two sequences in act one, four and act two, and then two and act three, and it really helps to sort of just see this and break out into manipul pieces, it really helps you. Now you can say, "Hey, this isn't as much as just if I said, you know, okay, we're gonna act one to act two to, and then act two, deck three, and then you know to a conclusion.

David Hohl 14:31
Yeah, and that's why, you know, in the early days of screenwriting, when people just had Sid Field's book, they always would say the same thing, that as soon as it got into act two they would get lost and bogged down and and it would take forever because there weren't really those clear sign posts along the way so it got difficult and the whole idea of reels you know come from. Them, when in the theaters, they actually used reels of film, and they were broken down into it wasn't just one giant reel of the entire movie, they'd have to switch the reels, and so they would be in, in, you know, I think they were 11 minute, 12 minute reels, and then they would switch it over, so that's the the idea of a reel, and if you take those eight of them, they pretty much come to the exact perfect length of a feature. So,

Dave Bullis 15:31
So, and we're talking about all the resources online, and, and you know, you can learn online pretty much anything now, any subject you want. What was some of the reasons why you started her, excuse me, the horror movie school.

David Hohl 15:44
Yeah, it's horrormovieschool.com And the reason I started it is because when I worked in Hollywood after school, the first job I had was in post production, and I had that for several years, and I saw all of these films come in, you know, where we would do the post production, we would do music, we would do sound effects editing, and, and all that, and I got to see, you know, the films worked on, and they were mainly independent films, but, you know, they were anywhere from a few $100,000 to, you know, maybe 10 or $15 million as independent films, and I got to see them being worked on, and then I got to see what happened to them, you know, in a year or two down the line, and I'd always find that the horror movies ended up on the shelves of Blockbuster, or or sold, distributed, and I'd see them, and I'd rent them, even, and I say, "Hey, this is one of the ones I worked on, but the other ones, the comedies, the dramas, they disappeared, and I figured they're just shown at Christmas time at the director's house, you know, for their family or something, and yeah, yeah, so they, you know, they spent $500,000 of their life savings, and and now it's just something that their friends watch, and you know that's sad, because maybe it was a really good story, but the thing that I learned was that genre is something that really sells, and it's something that you don't need star power for. So, that comedy, you know, if it had a star in it, it might have been very successful, because people would have wanted to see it, but if there's no one in it, they recognize no one's going to want to rent it, but horror, they're going to want to rent it simply because it's horror, and because it's a cool idea. It's a star unto itself, that's what I say. And so I figured that I can help people learn this genre. It's something I've been working on for many, many years, and it's something that can help people break in. There's a lot of producers out there looking for low budget horror things to make, and you know, once you break in, then you can do what you want. You know, you could be Sam Raimi, and you know, do Evil Dead, and then decide you want to go do a western or Spider Man or something, but if you love horror, you know you can stay in it too. It'll just give you a way in.

Dave Bullis 18:25
Yeah, because you look at movies like Paranormal Activity, and you look at other, you know, other movies like The Blair Witch Project. They were basically like a no to, well, they would be classified as like a no to micro budget films, and then they had minimal locations, but they really focus on the horror, and they did, I mean, both those movies did extremely well, and I know they're outliers, obviously, because you know, because they both made a couple 100 million dollars, but yeah, that is a good point, though, because if you know, if we had such a $5,000 to make a movie, which is basically considered no budget, if we were, we could actually, you know, get a one location, whether it's someone's house or what have you, and then you know we could actually film the movie there

David Hohl 19:09
Exactly, and, and you know, you can do that with a drama too, but the difference is you have a lot better chance of selling the horror film or getting someone to, you know, rent to watch it, whatever. Just because it's the genre, you have a fan base built in already. Yeah, I mean, I think paranormal activity, the last time I checked, which maybe something's changed by now, but I think it was the most successful film of all time in terms of return on investment, the amount of money put in, according to how much they made, it was just insane, how much they made.

Dave Bullis 19:49
Yeah, it really is. And you know, a little side fact, one person I had on the on my previous show. Actually, used to work with Oren Patelli, and they worked together at Sony, and they actually were both coders, and all Oren one day just quit because he said, "Guys, I sold a movie to Sony, or whoever, and he said, "I, that's gonna do now, and they thought he was kidding around, he was serious, and now that guy's into filmmaking now, and his name is Scott McMahon, and he just had him, Oren, on his podcast to discuss, to discuss how he did it. So it's actually, if you want to look up Scott's podcast, I'm gonna put the link on the show notes, but it's really, really interesting. How he talks to Orrin about how the movie got discovered, and how Oren was able to get, get it to where it was.

David Hohl 20:48
Oh, that's great. I'd love to hear that. What's the website address again?

Dave Bullis 20:53
It's.. I forget what he's.. I think it's called Filmmaker Fridays, is his podcast name, but the guy who runs it's called Scott McMahon, I'm going to put the URL in the show notes.

David Hohl 21:03
Okay, fantastic.

Dave Bullis 21:05
And you know, just to just continue with the online learning, you know, Dave, do you ever think that, like, online learning, or you know, distance learning is sometimes called? Do you ever think they'll replace standard universities?

David Hohl 21:18
It's never going to replace it, because the universities are too large, and they have the reputation, and there's always going to be someone that has a lot of money and a lot of time and wants to have that, you know, just the name saying they went, went there. I don't think it's necessary to go there. There's lots of people that have been successful that haven't gone to the major universities, and there's a lot more people that now have access to education and, and learning, like I was saying before, there's a whole lot of people out there that, you know, they have to support themselves, they have to have a job, they have to, you know, help their families, or what have you, and online learning gives them the opportunity to, you know, when your kids go to sleep, you pull out the computer at any time of the night, and you can get that education, you can do the practices, you can learn from seminars, audio, video, what have you, you know, whenever, even at lunchtime at your job, so there's no excuses for not doing it, because there's so many opportunities out there, and it just online learning just is great. I mean, I use it all the time still. I, whenever there's a little class or seminar that I want to learn, I go online and I just do it when it's convenient,

Dave Bullis 22:41
That's great, because you know, and even like there's apps now for the phone, you know, whether of Android or iOS, there you know, I've oftentimes, so I'm taking some online classes right now, and I can just pop it open, and that can go through a lesson right then and there,

David Hohl 22:55
Yeah, that's that's great technology makes it easier, and not only classes, but just like things you're doing, you're doing this podcast. It's a great educational tool for people to learn things, and you know, a lot of times you'll learn things that you'd never even learn in a film school, in places like this.

Dave Bullis 23:16
And it's also a good place to network, too, because I know you're people with different experiences, and you may not get exposed to them, you know, without that.

David Hohl 23:26
Yeah.

Dave Bullis 23:26
And then, so, Dave, just to move to production, now you wrote and directed a feature-length film called In Search of Lovecraft. Yeah, what challenges did you encounter when you made that movie?

David Hohl 23:41
Well, primarily, I am a screenplay consultant, that's what I've been doing for over, I think it's over 15 years now, and that's what I'm known for mainly, but I've done production also. When I very first started, you know, when I was a teenager, I was doing national commercials of Prodigy and Macy's and Dodge and things like that, I would work in production, so I've always worked in production, and when I was studying screenwriting, when I moved to Los Angeles, I also did a whole ton of low-budget films with students, and some really low-budget horror movies features, I worked in production, but I'm always the script person, the script analyst, but I, I was talking with my wife, and we were just saying, you know, do you think you can make a feature, and I said, sure, and it was sort of a bet, you know, before your birthday, which is in three months, can you get a feature put together, and so just for the experience, I did it, I wrote it really quickly, and started casting it, and got all the locations, and got some really cool locations. Actually, we are the only production, at least at the time, which was, I think, three years ago, to ever shoot at Coit Tower in San Fran. Cisco, because normally they wouldn't give you permission to go in and shoot, but we sort of talked our way in with the manager, and, and got in to shoot there, that, and that, so that was cool, and we have a lot of high-profile San Francisco locations that we shot in, the biggest obstacle was time, we'd run out of time because we had almost no budget. We shot the whole thing in 10 days, and so all of these things I had on my shot lists, you know, I would say, okay, we're on this shot now. Now get the dolly ready. I want to do a dolly shot here, and at the same time, you know, boom, the arm up, so we can get a shot. So dolly shot with a boom, and they'd say, "No, I don't think so. We don't have the time for that. We're going to put it on sticks and shoot it, you know, straight. And a lot of that happened, so that was disappointing, and that taught me just that the next one I do, I just need a bigger budget, so we have more time, more time,

Dave Bullis 26:12
Yeah, and that's something I've learned too, is I would much prefer to have more days,

David Hohl 26:17
Yeah,

Dave Bullis 26:17
But and make them less hours, because I mean, you hear sometimes like 14, 16, 18 hour days.

David Hohl 26:23
Oh, yeah,

Dave Bullis 26:24
That just grinds out your crew more than anything.

David Hohl 26:27
Yeah, we were doing for 10 days, we did 18 to 20 hour days every day, and yeah, the only thing that kept the crew from mutiny was having really, really good food, so I would, I would definitely don't skimp on food if you're making your crew work a lot.

Dave Bullis 26:49
Yeah, we was actually shooting a zombie trailer with a friend of mine and business partner, Chris Witt, and we actually had this catering company actually donated food to us, so like, all the lunches were like this amazing food each day, and because we, I'm glad they worked out that way, because it was raining every single day, we were shooting, just like putting the cast out there was so brutal, it was cold, and you know that thing, that is one thing I really made up for, it was the fact that we had awesome food.

David Hohl 27:22
Yeah, that always helps. And I need to talk to you sometime on how you got it donated. It's pretty good,

Dave Bullis 27:30
You know. It's different producers. I always say different producers have different skill sets, and sometimes it's just, you know, connections, or it's just me, like you were able to, you know, talk your way into shooting in certain locations, and you know, like, I forget who told me this, but someone said that a producer with a large rolodex is actually like your best, is like your best asset, because, yeah, you can just call around, and that's

David Hohl 27:53
True, that's true.

Dave Bullis 27:55
So, if you were to make another film, Dave, do you think you would go the crowdfunding route?

David Hohl 28:01
Say that again, which route,

Dave Bullis 28:03
The crowdfunding route. Do you think you may use Kickstarter?

David Hohl 28:07
I, I might.. I think you know, I know several people that had success in it. One of my friends did a short film successfully and got funding through that. Another friend did a documentary. Any budget that I want to work with now, I think it'd be probably too much to raise through that. I know there's been some success. I know there's a, there's this game maker. I'm a big Lovecraft fan, being horror or a person, and there's this game designer named Sandy Petersen, who designed the Call of Cthulhu Horror Lovecraft game, and he did a Kickstarter to raise $90,000 to make a new Lovecraft game, and he ended up raising, I think, 1.4 million instead of 90,000 so you can definitely succeed if you do it right, and you have some kind of a name there, but I think I'd be more likely to go private investor route and just do, you know, business plan and get a lawyer and go to private funding.

Dave Bullis 29:23
Yeah, and you know, I've often talked about this. Maybe you could do a mix of the two, because I've talked about this to other, to other filmmakers, and just to say, like, you know, maybe not crowdfund your entire budget, maybe crowdfund, maybe you know 20 30% could use that as, like, a almost like a proof of concept, but, but you know, sometimes I, you know, gotten to discussions before about if you need to crowdfund, like, $5,000 is it really, quote unquote, worth it? And some people say yes, some people say no but you know, I see what you mean about, you know, you having a name attached, because you have to have, you know, the perks have to be right, the project has to be, you know, low has low quality, you know, everything has to, you know, there's a whole checklist, and you know, I did a podcast with John Trigonis, a couple weeks ago, I'm gonna have him on again, and we always get into that, about, you know, sometimes filmmakers just, they set this unrealistic goal, and there's absolutely no way they're ever gonna make it, like, you know, like, you know, $500,000 to share a simple zombie movie, and you're like, what, what's costing $500,000

David Hohl 30:42
Right, or Or how do we.. you know, who are you? Why are we going to give it to you?

Dave Bullis 30:46
Yes, exactly.

David Hohl 30:47
You know when we can, you know, do it ourselves or give it to some person we've heard of. And if I.. I'm not exactly sure, but I've been told that in crowdfunder, you know, if you know, correct me, that you can ask to raise a certain amount, and if you don't hit that goal, you still receive the funds, while in Kickstarter, you don't receive any funds unless you meet the full goal.

Dave Bullis 31:17
Yes, Indiegogo, or Indiegogo, I keep calling it Indie Agogo, but in Indiegogo you can have it set either way, whether it's, you know, whether you meet the goal and get nothing, or you meet the goal, and even if you don't meet the goal, you still get something. So you can have it set either way. Kickstarter, it's all or nothing, so yeah, $1 short, you get absolutely nothing.

David Hohl 31:38
And I, in a way, I think I like that better, because then that way the people that are getting involved in giving you money know that the project is gonna, you know, go forward, as opposed to, you know, you get partial funding, and then it might not ever be finished,

Dave Bullis 31:54
And you know, there's been discussions about that, you know, online too, about, you know, what is actually better, and really, it does come down to the project, you know. I was talking to Trigonous about this, and he.. I didn't even know about this, but there was a whole zombie-like, you know, crowd in within Indiegogo, and basically he was touring out the idea of just having your hashtag GoGo Zombie, because there's so many zombie projects on there, and they all get funded too, which is, which speaks a lot about the horror genre, and the zombie, the zombie subgenre. And so, Dave, just to continue with the whole conversation about your projects, what are you working on next?

David Hohl 32:36
Well, I'm working a lot on, you know, student things. I have the horror movie school.com and then I have my consulting business, so I do screenplay consulting for a lot of writers. I just talked to someone today, actually, about a really, really big project, which I'm not going to say until I get it, you know, signed, but that's something I'm working on, and then I have my own spec projects that that I'm working on, I think I mentioned to you this before, I'm actually getting away from horror on this project and doing a kids Disney type, Disney type film because I have some a good friend that works in directing for Disney, and so that's an open opportunity, and also I'd like to have something that my daughter can watch, and I can tell her I did it. I can't show her any in my horror stuff, but I mean, I, my true love is still horror, but I like to be diverse. I mean, I watch romantic comedies too, it's not that I'm stuck only in horror; it's just happens to be my specialty.

Dave Bullis 33:46
And speaking of Horror Disney, we were just talking about Escape from Tomorrow.

David Hohl 33:50
Yeah, you turned me on to that last time, and I'd never heard of it, actually. So I looked it up, and I read a little bit about it, and I guess the guy got an inheritance from his grandparents, and he spent 600 650,000 on making this film, and he shot it guerrilla style, and in Disneyland, or Disney World, I guess it is in Florida, and it's in black and white, and I watched a few scenes, and it has a really interesting look to it, and it's just amazing that he pulled this off, shooting the whole thing guerrilla style, and not being caught. I mean, I read that he and the crew would go and take these rides, you know, 15 times in a row to get the scene right, and nobody noticed anything that was going on. He used his, their phones had their scripts on them, like you were telling me, and and they were using cameras that looked consumer, you know, that other people in the park might have. So it's very interesting. I'm gonna, I'm gonna watch the whole thing, but. I wouldn't recommend doing that. I mean, if that guy came to me and said, 'Should I do this? I would tell him no, and I guess in this case I would have been wrong, because it was successful and went to the festival, but you know that's one out of a million. I know another person, a friend of mine, that shot something similar movie where I told him he shouldn't be doing it because he didn't have the rights, and he said that's no big deal. And then as soon as he finished it, the first advertisement he put out, first marketing thing he put out there, he got calls from lawyers saying we're going to sue you out of existence if you show this or market it at all. So I was really surprised that Disney didn't go after this guy, but luckily they didn't. So you can see it looks very interesting.

Dave Bullis 35:57
Yeah, I definitely would check it out. Sorry, I definitely recommend it to filmmakers who just interesting, how he actually did it, and it obviously just feel what he did with the, with you know, although he had a larger budget than most people had, it's just how he went about doing it. But yeah, like you said, Dave, I would, if somebody asked me about this, I would say no way, do not even attempt to do something like that.

David Hohl 36:19
Yeah, and the funny thing is, he knew that there could be major trouble, because I read that he, as soon as he had everything in the can, he went to, I guess, South Korea, and had all the visual effects done in South Korea, because he didn't want any of the post-production houses to talk about it, and it to get to Disney, so yeah,

Dave Bullis 36:43
Yeah, that, that's a good way to do it, I guess. I mean, I don't know how much that extra would have cost them, but yeah, it's really interesting story, you know. It's only some of these films, you know, like Bowfinger, there was a that was based off a real movie where apparently the, you know, like actors would just walk up this actress on the beach and just say lines to where, and she go, what? And then, you know, they use that as the actual movie. I don't know the name of it, but that's what Bow Finger was based off of.

David Hohl 37:10
Okay,

Dave Bullis 37:12
So yeah, it's, you know, it's crazy silly stories.

David Hohl 37:15
Yeah,

Dave Bullis 37:16
So, so Dave, you know, just to wrap everything up, is there anything else you'd like to share or discuss that we haven't talked about yet?

David Hohl 37:24
Oh, just a couple of tips, maybe we talked a little bit about this last time. I would just suggest, you know, if you know what genre you have a love for, you know, watch as many films as you can, and get the scripts, because you can't just get it from watching the movies, you have to get the screenplay. So, pick up copies of the scripts, the spec scripts, preferably before they're turned into shooting scripts, and read them, and read them, read a lot of them, and also, whenever you see a movie, rent a movie, or whatever, write down the names of people that did them, you know, write down the names of the writers, the producers, the directors, or cinematographers, even, and then, you know, you could probably look them up on IMDb Pro, you know, IMDB Pro is not that expensive. I think it's 15 bucks a month or something, and and it gives you contact information, and just, you know, write them, and you know, tell them you're a fan, and you really like this. How did they do the scene, or whatever? And, and I find that when you're honest and you're not just making it up if it's true, and you're also, you know, telling them that you like what they've done, they're more likely than not to respond to you, and you know most of them are nice people, and you know if you could build up a conversation and then let that last for several months, then at some point they might consider reading something you've done, you know. So just constantly build those relationships any way you can, and a writer's group is another good way, you know, because you might be in a writer's group with a bunch of guys that are brand new, and then in two years one of them just made it big, and you know he's writing sci-fi action movies, and in a studio told him about a comedy, and he knew that you did comedies, and so he tells you about it, you know, so there's always those possibilities to just keep up the networking,

Dave Bullis 39:42
You know, Michael K. Sutter, who's on the first episode, actually, you know, he's been able to pitch to some absolutely amazing people, and he actually wrote a script about Mickey Mouse and now he got to pitch that to Disney, and now I don't know if they sign it or not, but I know he's got a lot of meetings from that, at least just from that script alone. Great, and you have two books that you're working on, correct, Dave?

David Hohl 40:20
Yeah, one is 101 screenplay tips, blasting down the gatekeepers doors. It's a, it's a book with 101 different things that I've come across over the years. They're little tips that are expanded out and explained in this book, and they're just little things that you can read at your leisure, you know. Whenever you have a free few minutes, you can pick it up and read one of the tips, and I think they all will help your writing overall. Your screenwriting, you can get a condensed version of it, sort of a cheat sheet of it that just lists them with basic information on my website, which is davidhohl.com D A V I D H O H L.com and subscribe to the newsletter, and then that will get sent to you, and that's free, and that'll just give you all the basics, and then the book coming out will be more expansive, and then I have a horror writing 13 steps to terror, which is a book on the horror genre, and you know, I looked out there and I didn't really see anything good for horror screenwriting. There's a ton of general screenwriting books and some good comedy books, like Steve Kaplan's book, get that if you have any interest in comedy, but there's nothing really good out there that I've seen for horror, so I'm bringing that one out. Hopefully people will learn some good pointers in there,

Dave Bullis 41:56
And I would also recommend Steve Kaplan's book. I think Steve is awesome. I got to talk to him a couple times. I actually hope to have him on the podcast in the near future.

David Hohl 42:05
Yeah, he's a great guy, very funny, very interesting, a lot of good stuff in his, his books. And even if you're doing horror or any other genre, you know there's always a place for comedy within within what you're doing, as well as just the genre itself. So you should know comedy elements like anything else.

Dave Bullis 42:24
I agree, and you know, I've actually taken Dave's course, by the way, the Horror Movie School, and I highly recommend it for anybody out there wondering. You know, after I got done the class, I did have a couple people ask me about it, and I always, I did tell them, hey, is it definitely a worthwhile course?

David Hohl 42:41
Oh, good, thank you.

Dave Bullis 42:42
So, the amount of materials and everything you get, and so definitely to check that out, especially if you're interested in horror screenwriting. And so, those two books you're working on, are there's going to be Kindle or Nook only? Are they also going to be in physical copies?

David Hohl 42:58
The 101 screenplay will probably only be Kindle, and I'm hoping the horror one will be with a bigger publisher and be hard copy as well.

Dave Bullis 43:10
Okay. Excellent.

David Hohl 43:12
Yeah. So, oh, can I just get my website really quick?

Dave Bullis 43:15
Oh, sure.

David Hohl 43:16
It's horrormovieschool.com so www.horrormovieschool.com and and you could subscribe to a newsletter there, and it'll give you a lot of free stuff, some free papers, a couple of free seminars, audio seminars, and then information about the class if you're interested.

Dave Bullis 43:36
I think you actually beat me to the punch. It was actually the next thing I was going to say.

David Hohl 43:39
Okay, thanks.

Dave Bullis 43:40
No problem. But you know, Dave. Thank you very much for coming on, and again, everyone, check out Dave at Horror Movies school.com and you can follow him on Twitter at Script MD. Dave, was there anything you like to say to end the show?

David Hohl 43:56
No, just keep writing, and great work what you're doing, Dave, it's a good resource for people, so, so, keep it up.

Dave Bullis 44:03
Oh, thank you very much. I'm actually working tomorrow to get this on iTunes. I think I finally found out the problem of why it won't import right, so hopefully once I've done that, you know, because people been asking again and again why this isn't on iTunes and why it's just on Podomatic. Potomac is good, but iTunes, obviously, is a brand name, and people, and people already have the, you know, the podcast app on their phone, so you know, I do want to get it on there eventually, but you know, and again, Dave is a great script consultant, I'm actually, I was just before the show, I was talking to him about a script I'm working on, which is another horror comedy, and I've mentioned this in one of my podcasts about two weeks ago, when it was just me, and it's, you know, it's a fun slasher movie, and I hope to, you know, maybe just write it for fun, or maybe, you know, produce it somewhere down the line, you never know, right? So, all right, again, Dave, thank you much, very much for coming on, and I hope you have a great night.

David Hohl 44:59
Okay, you too. Thanks, Dave.

Dave Bullis 45:00
Thanks.

David Hohl 45:01
Bye!