IFH 787: From Ultraviolent Wrestling to Transformative Filmmaking: The Story of Matthew T. Burns

On today’s episode, we welcome Matthew T. Burns, an individual who embodies resilience, creativity, and reinvention. Known to wrestling fans as “Sick Nick Mondo,” Matthew has transitioned from his legendary career in ultraviolent wrestling to become a filmmaker, storyteller, and advocate for the art of storytelling. His journey is nothing short of a profound odyssey, weaving together themes of passion, pain, and redemption.

The conversation begins with an exploration of Matthew’s early days in professional wrestling. Growing up in Pennsylvania, he was drawn to the raw, unfiltered world of ECW wrestling—a stage of audacity and grit that mirrored his burgeoning desire to push boundaries. This rebellious spirit carried him into the extreme realm of deathmatch wrestling, where stunts with glass, barbed wire, and even weed whackers became his calling card. Yet, this wasn’t just about shock value; as Matthew shared, “In the chaos of the ring, I found a strange, unrelenting clarity.”

Matthew’s career in wrestling, however, wasn’t without consequence. A pivotal moment came during a deathmatch tournament where a dangerous stunt left him severely injured. Despite his physical and emotional scars, he chose to leave wrestling on his own terms, marking the beginning of a profound personal transformation. Wrestling may have been his proving ground, but storytelling became his sanctuary.

This shift led Matthew to pursue filmmaking, where he channeled his experiences into his debut film, The Trade. A blend of documentary and scripted storytelling, the film delves into his wrestling career and the connection he shares with Rory, a younger wrestler who idolized him and even adopted his persona in the ring. Their shared journey—a mix of admiration, mentorship, and cautionary wisdom—forms the emotional core of the project. Reflecting on this, Matthew remarked, “I never wanted my story to become someone else’s pain.”

As the conversation unfolds, Matthew reflects on his time in Japan, where he immersed himself in the film industry. He shares the highs and lows of navigating a foreign culture while honing his craft, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and perseverance. From acting roles to operating cameras, Matthew’s journey in Japan became a crucible for refining his artistic vision.

Now back in the United States, Matthew’s focus is on bringing The Trade to broader audiences while exploring new creative ventures. He’s brimming with optimism and gratitude for the lessons learned along the way. “Every chapter,” he says, “teaches us something vital about the next.

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IFH 783: Phil Proctor: A Journey Through Comedy, Resilience, and the Art of Reality

The landscape of existence can sometimes feel like a cosmic play—actors shifting between roles, creating stories that ripple through time. On today’s episode, we welcome Phil Proctor, an artist whose life weaves a tapestry of creativity, resilience, and humor. Known for his work with the legendary Firesign Theatre and an illustrious voice acting career, Phil has left an indelible mark on the worlds of comedy, film, and beyond.

Phil Proctor is not merely a performer; he’s a storyteller who transcends mediums. Reflecting on his career, Phil shared how the Firesign Theatre’s surreal humor was designed not only to entertain but to provoke thought. “We were asking, ‘What is reality?’” he explained. “It’s the question you should ask every day when you get out of bed.” These words capture the essence of his work—a blend of laughter and philosophy that challenges conventional perspectives.

Phil described how technology has transformed his craft. From the days of live radio to recording film dialogue remotely, he marveled at the evolution of his industry. With characteristic wit, he recounted a time he dubbed a French comedy for Mel Brooks, only to find the humor lost on American audiences. “The test audience thought we were speaking French!” he laughed. Moments like these underscore Phil’s adaptability and humor in the face of creative challenges.

Phil also opened up about the impact of his voice acting roles, such as his long-running portrayal of Howard DeVille in Rugrats. He reflected on the joy of connecting with audiences worldwide, even decades after the show’s heyday. From cartoons to video games like Assassin’s Creed, his performances have reached far and wide, bridging generational gaps.

One of the most profound parts of our discussion was Phil’s recollection of surviving the Golden Dragon massacre in 1977. Amidst the chaos, he found solace in an unexpected synchronicity: learning that his wife was pregnant with their daughter. “Life has a way of balancing tragedy with joy,” he mused. This event, along with its psychic premonition, became the foundation of his memoir, Where’s My Fortune Cookie?

Phil’s stories often ventured into the metaphysical. He shared how the Firesign Theatre’s comedy sought to “deprogram” audiences from societal conditioning, offering a fresh lens to perceive reality. This philosophy—wrapped in humor—resonates deeply in today’s fast-paced, media-saturated world. “We were making funny connections,” he said, “exercising the brain to see the world anew.”

Beyond his creative endeavors, Phil’s zest for life shines through in his personal anecdotes. Whether reminiscing about working with Mel Brooks or delighting in his grandchildren’s fascination with technology, he embodies a boundless curiosity. His ability to balance the absurd with the profound makes his journey a testament to the power of humor and resilience.

As the episode drew to a close, one thing became clear: Phil Proctor is more than a performer; he is a philosopher of humor, an explorer of reality, and a living reminder of life’s intricate, interconnected dance. His stories inspire us to embrace curiosity, resilience, and a healthy dose of laughter.

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IFH 782: Turning Holiday Cheer into Chills: The Shaker Brothers’ Journey Behind Killer Christmas

When two brothers decide to turn their holiday traditions into a cinematic thrill, they step into a world where creativity is born from the mundane. On today’s episode, we welcome Peter Paul and Tony Shaker, the innovative minds behind the indie horror film Killer Christmas. With the echoes of sleigh bells and the flicker of holiday lights, they invite us into their journey of making an 80-minute feature film against all odds.

The Shaker brothers, hailing from New Jersey, embraced the modern age of filmmaking, proving that artistry no longer demands lavish sets or big studios. As Peter Paul aptly put it, “You can do this from anywhere, even in the middle of nowhere, if you’re willing to put in the work.” From scriptwriting in their basement to editing with Adobe Premiere Pro, their story is an anthem for resourcefulness and determination.

What began as a family tradition of Christmas tree cutting in western New Jersey blossomed into a creative spark. They envisioned an eerie story of a derelict retreat house and a masked Santa slashing through the cheer. This whimsical yet haunting idea became the bedrock of Killer Christmas. The brothers’ vision materialized with long hours of planning, meticulous scriptwriting, and a bold decision—Tony quit his day job to chase the dream of making their first feature film.

Filming on a shoestring budget came with its own set of hurdles. The Adler Hotel in Sharon Springs, New York, served as the perfect abandoned setting, but its ominous atmosphere wasn’t just cinematic. The brothers encountered mysterious sounds, unexplained footprints, and eerie vibrations during their shoot. “It felt like the hotel was alive,” Tony shared, reflecting on the uncanny experiences that added an authentic layer of unease to their film.

From securing a location to overcoming sound challenges, the Shakers demonstrated that passion is the ultimate tool. They shot through snowstorms and frigid nights, relying on ingenuity and collaboration. Their DIY approach extended to props and effects—crafting realistic rubber weapons and digitally adding blood effects in post-production to adhere to safety and insurance standards.

As the Shaker brothers prepare to release Killer Christmas this holiday season, they offer a lesson for all creators: the tools are accessible, the resources are within reach, and the only barrier is the one we set for ourselves. Their film is more than a holiday slasher—it’s a love letter to indie filmmaking and a testament to the power of perseverance.

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IFH 778: Crafting Over 160 Films, Tales of Creativity, Conflict, and Cinematic Hustle with Jim Wynorski

On today’s episode, we welcome Jim Wynorski, a filmmaker whose career is a kaleidoscope of genres, relentless creativity, and a staggering portfolio of over 160 films. Known for his ability to churn out projects with unmatched efficiency, Jim’s journey through the cinematic landscape is nothing short of fascinating. From cult classics like Chopping Mall to unexpected forays into family-friendly territory, his career offers insights into filmmaking’s raw, unpolished edges.

In this conversation, Jim Wynorski shares the story of how he transitioned from directing commercials in New York to working under the legendary Roger Corman in Hollywood. “I packed up my stuff in a car and drove across the country. I struggled for a few years doing anything I could, and eventually, my scripts got into the right hands,” Jim says. It’s a tale of grit and determination, emblematic of the relentless pursuit of dreams that fuels so many creative spirits.

Jim’s approach to filmmaking is a study in versatility. Whether crafting low-budget horror or light-hearted family films, he has always been deeply attuned to audience preferences. He reflects on this ability, explaining how understanding the marketplace keeps him relevant. “You don’t make a movie for yourself; you make it for the audience. If you don’t, it’s not going to sell,” he advises, underscoring the pragmatism that has defined his work ethic.

The discussion takes a humorous turn when Jim recounts some of the challenges of working with temperamental actors, including notorious on-set dramas. While he speaks fondly of most collaborators, a few experiences left lasting impressions. “Robert Culp, who I loved as a kid, was a prick and a half. He complained about everything—from the lenses to the meals. The entire crew booed him on his last day!” Jim laughs, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the human side of filmmaking.

But Jim isn’t only about business and conflict—his passion for storytelling shines when discussing his favorite films and the joy of working in diverse genres. From the fantastical to the comedic, his projects reflect a deep curiosity about the possibilities of cinema. “Each film took me to new places, both literally and creatively,” Jim recalls, noting how travel and novelty kept the work exciting even during grueling production schedules.

He also touches on the changing dynamics of the film industry, particularly the impact of digital platforms and the decline of physical media. Ever adaptable, Jim explains how these shifts inspired him to pivot from horror to family films, seizing opportunities in a dwindling DVD market. “I walked into Walmart, saw family films selling well, and decided to make one about a dog and Christmas,” he says. The resulting success is a testament to his knack for spotting trends and evolving with the times.

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IFH 777: Carving Her Own Path: Kansas Bowling on Confidence, Creativity, and the Magic of 16mm Film

The craft of filmmaking is as much about the soul as it is about the frame. In today’s conversation, we sit down with Kansas Bowling, a maverick filmmaker who began charting her creative course at just 17 years old. As the first graduate of the Troma Institute for the Gifted, Kansas burst onto the scene with her debut feature, B.C. Butcher, a cavewoman slasher filmed on 16mm. From that bold beginning, her journey has only intensified, guided by a vision both rebellious and deeply personal.

Kansas embodies the heart of artistic defiance, carving her path outside the confines of conventional education. “I thought it would be easier to just make a movie than go to film school,” she reflects, and her success vindicates her instincts. Her philosophy is one of doing: creating without overthinking, trusting her voice, and stepping into the arena without waiting for permission. Her work ethic shines through her portfolio, from feature films to over 20 music videos, all captured on her beloved 16mm film.

Kansas opens a window into her creative process. For her, filmmaking is as much about confidence as it is about technical skill. “Directing is just telling people what you want to see. Everything else, you can learn along the way.” This candid wisdom is refreshing, cutting through the mystique often associated with creative mastery. With humor and humility, she explains her preference for shooting on film, emphasizing its “timeless look” that digital can never replicate.

Despite the beauty of her craft, Kansas has faced challenges that mirror the rawness of her stories. From navigating the loss of her Instagram account due to a controversial post, to fielding inappropriate offers as a female filmmaker, she moves forward with resilience. “People always send me horrible scripts where the whole thing is just a giant sex scene,” she shares, laughing off the absurdity. Yet, she balances these experiences with genuine collaborations, such as her role in The Electra Complex, a project she describes as “the most well-written screenplay I’ve ever read.”

When asked about her influences, Kansas rattles off a list of cinematic gems: F for Fake by Orson Welles, Midnight Cowboy, and the Italian classic Don’t Torture a Duckling. These films, she notes, have a unique authenticity—a quality she strives to infuse in her own work. For Kansas, filmmaking isn’t about mimicking others; it’s about harnessing inspiration while remaining true to her distinctive voice.

As she wraps up production on her second feature, Kansas is also directing multiple music videos, preparing for a shoot in Miami, and starring in a major project. Her days are packed, yet her focus remains sharp. The secret to her productivity? She simply follows her passion. “If you see a film in your head, just go out and make it,” she advises, encouraging budding creatives to trust their instincts and take action.

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IFH 776: Crafting Comedy Without Limits: The Indie Spirit Behind Chasing Molly with Shelley Pack & Josh Sutherland

In today’s episode, we welcome the brilliant comedic minds behind Chasing Molly: Shelley Pack and Josh Sutherland. Together, they share the odyssey of making an independent film from scratch, driven by pure creativity and an unwavering dedication to laughter and storytelling. Their journey is not just one of filmmaking but of persistence, grit, and a desire to carve a unique voice in the comedy genre.

Shelley Pack brings her background as a comedian and improv performer, skillfully assembling a cast of friends and acquaintances to breathe life into Chasing Molly. With no big studios or massive budgets, Shelley and Josh poured their souls into the project. “It was liberating to create something genuinely funny without restrictions,” Shelley reflects, highlighting how the freedom of independent filmmaking allowed her to maintain the authenticity of the comedy.

On the other side, Josh Sutherland recounts his journey from a kid with a camcorder to a professional in Hollywood, working every possible crew position to understand the art and science of film. A student of cinema at the University of Texas, Josh entered the world of visual effects, gaining firsthand knowledge in various roles. When the opportunity arose to collaborate on Chasing Molly, Josh brought not only technical expertise but also a lifelong passion. “Filmmaking is a huge, huge team sport,” he explains, underscoring the communal effort that went into producing the film.

One memorable anecdote shared by Shelley and Josh is the challenge of shooting in a real pawn shop while it was open to the public. With customers oblivious to the filming, Shelley describes an eccentric woman examining items with a magnifying glass, fully engrossed in her shopping while the crew scrambled to finish the scene before sundown. Such improvisational moments added authenticity to the film, revealing the beauty and chaos of guerilla-style filmmaking.

Shelley also speaks about the “Zen Cholo,” a character who emerged through social media sleuthing. Shelley found “Scar,” a YouTube personality with a massive social following, whose calm demeanor brought unexpected depth to the role of a gang leader. This resourcefulness in casting enabled the team to create a distinctive character who, as Shelley notes, is “like a Buddha with street cred,” adding unique charm to the film.

In the end, Chasing Molly is more than a film; it’s a testament to the idea that with a vision, a supportive crew, and a refusal to take “no” for an answer, anything is possible. As Josh says, “We set ourselves up to win,” and that victory is felt in every scene of this indie gem

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IFH 769: Lessons Learned: Being a First-Time Writer/Director with Sarah Elizabeth Mintz

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz received her BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she completed her thesis film Transit, starring Dakota Johnson. After graduating she mentored with filmmakers Cary Fukunaga on True Detective, Joachim Trier on Louder Than Bombs, and worked with Alejandro Inarritu on The Revenant.

Sarah was a Sundance Fellow in the 2017 Writer’s Intensive and 2018 Sundance Strategic Financing Intensive with her project Good Girl Jane. She completed a short film of the same name starring Rachelle Vinberg (Skate Kitchen, HBO’s Betty) and Travis Tope (American Vandal), with cinematography by Jake Saner (Ghosts of Sugar Land).

The short premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London. Good Girl Jane recently wrapped principal photography in Los Angeles starring Rain Spencer, Patrick Gibson and Andie MacDowell. Good Girl Jane is inspired by events in Sarah’s own life.

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IFH 719: Directing ACTION in the World of John Wick for Television with Albert Hughes

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Alex Ferrari 0:04
I'd like to welcome back to the show returning Champion Albert Hughes, how you doing Albert?

Albert Hughes 2:29
So apparently, we still have the record.

Alex Ferrari 2:32
We still have the record brother was that it was during the COVID times. You were stuck in Amsterdam, literally stuck in a room somewhere by yourself. And I think I was the only beacon of hope for a conversation about film for you. They sat there and spoke for three and a half hours, four hours. And it just kept going. And we were we were on Skype. It was again even gone to zoom yet. We were on Skype.

Albert Hughes 2:55
Was it was it Skype? It was it was Skype. Well, Oh, over here about Skype anymore.

Alex Ferrari 3:02
I didn't move over to zoom yet, because I was one of the last holdouts on Skype.

Albert Hughes 3:07
I still have it. I still have the app. Do you still have the app?

Alex Ferrari 3:11
I can't no. Because my I got the new computer. It doesn't now. Like I couldn't record anymore. It's old thing. But man with that that's an epic conversation we had man, it's been one of the most downloaded episodes we ever had. And then of course, when I heard about you, when I heard about it, and press, I emailed you right away, I said, Hey, man, congratulations cannot wait to see what you do in the world of John Wick. And, and you did not disappoint my friend. I have seen it and it is oh, thank you. It is like I was telling you before, it's so nice to see a director direct in television. Not not crapping on anybody else's style, but that you can see a very distinct a point like point of view when you're working. And it's like those things that you and I grew up with in in the 80s. And the 90s are like these kind of directors who like, you know, put the cameras move the cameras, that POV shots, it's like, oh, look at that. That's nice. You know,

Albert Hughes 4:08
I you know, it's also it's a new world now where, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, when we were growing up to it's like the the film directors, film writers, producers kind of looked down on TV, you know, or sphere. There was no streaming back then but, and now like the best writing the best acting, and some of the best directors are coming to those formats. And I mean, Netflix owns have the best directors in town right now. You know, literally, literally, but then.

Alex Ferrari 4:36
But you know what, it's really interesting, because I've heard this from a lot of people is that a lot of the independent filmmakers who would have been an independent film in the 90s in the early 2000s are not going to television, because that's the only place they can actually make a living. Because there is no real output for market. The market place doesn't open it's not as open as it used to be for independent film as it used to.

Albert Hughes 4:58
Yeah it's Like the Marvel movies the tentpole, CIPS they've squeezed up Mom and Pop movies or the midsize movie reviews, other genre movies, you know, like, Well, my house is doing well with their movies, the horror genre.

Alex Ferrari 5:12
But Jason's got the sweetest deal. And Hollywood. I mean, you kidding me? Like I thought when I talked to him on the show, it's like, dude, you'd like you're doing like 10 million $50 million movies being distributed by Universal, like, widely. Like, that's the sweetest deal in the US.

Albert Hughes 5:25
Yeah, and some of those movies are only $5 million. And they have the sweet deals for everybody involved. And he has a really good business model. And it's really not only sensible, but very kind to the town in golf. You know, he's one of the few guys out there that that's doing something like that. We actually share the same account. And I did work with him on the Good Lord Bird. Because his company produced that. Yeah, but it's a new day and time. And that's what strange is like, with this series of Continental, it wasn't set up like a typical TV schedule 10 episodes or eight episodes where you're rolling into the next episode with your cast and crew, then bringing in another director, guest directors. And then you know, sometimes those episodic TV shows have that low in the middle where they're trying to save money, you can tell her filler episodes. And we've talked about me and you I do distinctly remember talking about last time in our marathon run. David Fincher. Oh, and the one thing you if you look at what David Fincher did with mine Hunter and you look at whatever the show runners are, I got to look up with the show runners are on Handmaid's Tale, there's a very consistent style and quality control going on with those shows, both shows could have been shown in a theater, and you would have known none the difference between whether it was a TV show or a movie or a one hour episode. But it all came down to quality control. And then there's other like, really nuanced the details like what I learned the difference between TV in feature filmmaking is a TV is a writer with meaning and as you know, right, and features are a director's medium. So when traditionally the writers medium has been going on it. It's less about style and tone of the museum meets on saying, as you know, you learn in film school. And more about close up close ups, close up shop, close. And close up. Yep. And that they still were to this day, they're still think that way, and they're slowly coming out of it. I'm talking at the executive level when you start getting notes. Well, where's the close up for that shot? It's like, well, people have these big screens that you don't need that close up anymore. So then the cinema like I give this, it's a bad good analogy, I don't know. It's like a guide on the phone with his girlfriend, she's breaking up with him. And he's very lonely, right. And TV, you see, there's a close up shot, because the writers are laying on their dialogue and film. You learn the Masters, like tell them the story in the shot to go really wide and have them really tiny in the corner talking and looking small and only so the shots telling you he's lonely and isolated and being broken up with. And so it's the dialogue but you don't necessarily need to close up let's face at this moment, right? That's the difference. But there's a benefit to TV and what they do, because I've been studying like, I consume a lot of people like succession and all those shows, you know, and they button, the scenes with close ups and the characters wheels are spinning. And that takes you into the next scene. You're like, Oh, I wonder what they're thinking or you might project on what they're thinking. And that's a very useful thing to learn from TV, because cinema doesn't feature the filmmaking doesn't really do that. Yeah. So there's, right now also, there's this thing where it's like, if I'm making something or another feature guys making something, I don't want to change my style, because it's a TV show, I don't want to do more consoles, I want to respect the audience is going to read that shot correctly, especially considering that the TV sizes have changed, you know. So we still all have a lot of adjusting to do especially on the the executive and studio network side, too. Welcome those filmmakers into the TV space for what they do, without constantly pounding them about close optional.

Alex Ferrari 9:03
I would agree with you on that. And when I was watching this, I was noticing I mean, it's this basically they're the three movies. These episodes, they're just three standalone movies with like Paley and like cliffhangers essentially are like the next there's another episode in this thing. It's it's serialized in that sense in this miniseries that you've put together with continental but the Makah segment, the budget, the production value of this thing must have been pretty impressive because the I mean, we all seen the continental and John Wick, right. And we've seen it we've done but this is John Wick in the 70s, which is a great decade to Tunis and by the way, the it was anything I mean, come on. It's I mean, it's as fun as you could get to play in that in that era. But the visual effects I was noticing the how the visual effects. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. And the depth of it the world creation that you did for the Continental. What was that? How did you approach doing it like that? And I assumed there was a decent budget for this. But this is not $100 million $200 million show. But it looks like yeah, it looks like the end, we'll get into the actual sequels in a minute, because that's a whole other story.

Albert Hughes 10:25
Okay. Well, maybe it's actually I was gonna hit on it earlier, but I forgot is the one I was talking about TV schedules. And now they roll into the next thing that there's no prep time for the guest directors, we only had one guest director, Charlotte brush and who has been around forever, very capable. But it's even very difficult for them to maintain the style. And it's a very hard thing to do the quality control, the tone and the look and all that stuff. But one of the reasons I did it, there's several reasons why I did it. One was when I looked at the way they laid it out. It was like a 14 week prep leading into Episode One. While weeks prep, leading into Episode Two or weeks prep, leading to episode three each 35 days a piece that is not normal for TV, that's not a normal schedule. That's not even normal prep for a movie like 12 weeks. 1012 weeks is normal. Not I wasn't allowed to say. But they see that for. Yeah, but they see that 14 is helping the overall to you know, you're not just servicing one. So that was the first thing that raised an eyebrow, they go oh, there, someone was smart. They're trying to ensure quality here, you know, and with a guy like me, don't give me prep, you know, because I'll use it. A lot of directors, you know, don't use it, you know, and don't, you know, you know, parlay that into some real security in quality, basically. And then there's the other thing above the wick film producers talk to me first, because I wasn't sure I wanted to do it. I didn't know if I wanted to play in another man or woman's sandbox. But they they talked to me about it. And I was considering something else. And I go, I just want to have fun man. The COVID thing was really weighing on me as you know. And I think the audience wants to have fun. I don't want to this social issue stuff anymore. Like I've done it. I'll go back to it, maybe but right now, I have fun watching those movies. Why not basically right. And that was a real moto. And then you had me at seven years. Like you just said early. You had me with the 70s. Right. That's the era I grew up in I was born in. I have a white mother who's listened to Pink Floyd a black father was listening to James Brown. And I finally able to explore the the mother's side of my upbringing, you know, the father's side has been tapped into greatly from the past movies with fantastic r&b and hip hop and stuff. But now it's like, Pink Floyd. It's my favorite band of all time. No one would suspect that even some of my closest friends wouldn't know that. That is I don't care what band you bring up. You start bringing up Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, I don't want to hear it. Pink Floyd, My guys are my guys. And then the heartache of having to give that song to episode two, which is a you know, an episode I supervised and finished them the post on but I didn't direct it, though. Yeah. And it was Kirk Woodward, the showrunner. And my friend, my very good buddy. Now my partner in this who he was struggling with that scene, because we just couldn't find the right score for it. And we couldn't find the right. And he came up with that choice. And I go, man, that's one of my favorite songs, like, welcome to the machine. So it was it was he that picked it. And he picked a few others that I was cuz sometimes a needle drops you like I'm pretty, I'm pretty good at it like 70%. But when I'm bad, I'm really bad. It's really off, you know? And once you put it against picture, you're like, What was I thinking? I thought this thing would work. And he is the one that came with Black Sabbath at the end of episode one, which was this attitude Kirk that came with that. Because originally I put it in more of an upbeat kind of, it's kind of a punk reggae. It's called Murder. It's a woman singing murder. Ooh, murder, you know, and I thought, Oh, this is such a downer episode at the end. Because if something tragic happens, I want the audience to leave for a week because I knew it was gonna be a weekly show. I want them not to leave to down and you kept working on me like our and it's not right. It's not right. Okay. And then he brought this sad but track and I go oh, that screaming revenge and anger. So yeah, I got me anger a bit there. But

Alex Ferrari 14:21
You know what? That's the thing. You got to try things before you say no, but no, when you were saying it and I know the scene and I know the ending of that episode. I'm going to pick it would have not worked it just like I'm already playing in my head. I'm like, No, it's not.

Albert Hughes 14:34
I tried it. I tried it. The first few seconds like,

Alex Ferrari 14:37
You need anger. You need revenge. You need vengeance. And that's what that song. The energy of that song came out without question. I mean, listen, you know, John Wick is created an a bunch of movies a world that is unprecedented, really in cinema history. There is nothing like Java. There's just nothing like John Wick, and what piano did and what the creators do. it and the actions is that when you stepped into this world to play like you said on another man sandbox, did you feel any pressure of like, I kind of meant this better bring the heat. Because every single there hasn't been a week John with film in my opinion. Everyone has been like, dude like this last one. I saw it in the theater. I was like, This guy's really like you can bananas. It was it's it's like so much action that you can't even. I'm like how many years? That's like almost like it was a kickback to John Woo style, hardboiled.

Albert Hughes 15:35
That's the that's still Oh, somebody was bringing up No. Like a friend reached out to me yesterday was like, he didn't know I made this and accidentally watched it. And he could recognize it was my style. So he looked at the credits again, and he messaged me. And he goes, it just reminds me of us watching John Wuhan, the night we were go, well, that's where Chad partially, he has a smorgasbord of influences. And some would be shocked to know that not the John Woo part. But the Bob Fossey a musical part. He's into musical and dance numbers. And when you talk to Chad, he'll talk about all these influences. You know, Korean cinema, too, of course, Japanese cinema. Some of the same things overlap with both of us, but I my favorite John Wick, the fours three three just tickled me pink like, it's when you when you talk to the hardcore John Wick fans, they don't. They don't care for three, they love one. I think their order is now it may be one or four. But they really have a soft spot for one. It's one four to three minds in a completely different order of mind. 3124

Alex Ferrari 16:39
And four is still

Albert Hughes 16:42
It's solid, it's crazy. Like they do up the game. There's just weaknesses I have for three because they reminded me of being a 12 year old watching Indiana Jones like that knife fight. And then that Oh, I don't know Museum of knives. Like I thought it couldn't get any better. It just kept getting better and better. And then it ended with a guy's axe in the head. I go oh my god, this is the sword fight and on the motorcycles which is from the villainous Korean movie I believe. But again, it was awesome. And then who could have ever thought the smack of horses asked to kick a guy in the face like there's so there's all and then there's dogs the Halle Berry dog stuff like so it was speaking to the 12 year old boy me were the difference with four was I thought four in the end when it took me a while to realize was more of a spiritual movie. It is became a spiritual Yeah. Is though is one of the most I didn't expect that

Alex Ferrari 17:33
One of the most violent pics. I see that cinema quite some time. But it's it's correct.

Albert Hughes 17:37
But I also saw it with green screen. Yeah, I saw it though early cut where the RTA triumph, you couldn't even see the structure when they were doing that you couldn't see what happened to the Continental. I was watching a lot of blue screen and it was like a three and a half hour cut out. I watched it first. So when I saw it in the cinemas, I was shocked at like how good the VFX were like that arc to the Triumph thing like how there was no, there was no no Orchidee triumph there. They did shoot it in Lidar and do all those things. Right. But how realistic those VFX were like, I didn't know what that scene would become like,

Alex Ferrari 18:12
I thought the shot. I thought they shot it there personally, I said not that you told me that I'm like, I thought they shot they did a fantastic job. Because I couldn't tell

Albert Hughes 18:19
Well, there's established yours you know, and even in an established yours, if you look closely, you can tell that there's digital cars not not that it's badly done it just at the speed they're going in that traffic. And unless you're in Boston locked down all of Paris, it's impossible. You know, of course, we know how these things are constructed. You and I so we're able to know even if it's really great VFX What the What's going on, you know,

Alex Ferrari 18:45
I thought they might have locked up you know, you know, from one o'clock to four o'clock in the morning, something like that, because it was just looks so so good. And going back to John Woo, though. I mean, you go back to those kid that killer hardboiled that is ballet, with guns, and then WIC is just taking it to a whole other place, which then brings me to, but

Albert Hughes 19:07
You don't know what to say just before we get up at John Woo the big difference between then and now is that John wounded and have those air guns that you can put up to somebody's face and see the recoil and hear a little sound that's so safe. You can literally put up your eyeball. You know, he was using real muzzle flashes. stunk. Man, they were getting hurt all the time, because there are regulations out there for protections aren't the same in China at the time, like just running through stunt men, right? He was shooting for 100 days and more like, you know, John, who was going all balls to the walls without all the stuff that we have the tools we have nowadays. And then you have someone like Chester hausky, who comes from its background, who specializes in that. And then he found this perfect match with Keanu in that kind of world. And it's like a parallel universe, which is what's so freeing about doing the show the continental is like

Alex Ferrari 19:58
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 20:07
You know, when I started checking up a list of why I should do something like this, one of it was like, Well, my brain is gonna be free just to have fun now. So what's that going to be like, I didn't have any idea that I would have the most fun in my life on a set, or in post or in prep. It was like, an experience I'll never forget

Alex Ferrari 20:24
When going into the action, I mean, when I was watching the episodes, I was like, Mike, what is this like John Wick level, action, movie level action. So that this is it's not like if you're tuning in to see the continental and expecting like TV versions of John Wick action. It is not. It is. You could say it's, you could take it out and put it right into $100 million $200 million movie and it would fit perfect that was so I was like, man, it's ball. It was a single man.

Albert Hughes 20:54
It's the same guy. It's a company that Chad owns with David leach called at 711. And some of the same people that were in some of the Jaguar films are part of the stunt team too. And Lauryn Hill Stovall, the coordinator and action director was, it's from that, that at Simon Lebon camp to, and Chad had to bless the person that was being chosen for that basically, before we started, and then they go and do this thing called stunt biz, which is wonderful. You get to see everything beforehand and make adjustments. And they do this really cool thing a new school of stunt men do which is, first of all, they show you the stuff the old school never showed you anything right? They also make use of the environment. And if the environment is not Columba we may rewrite where we're at more this fights gonna take place. And it's interesting, I'm telling you, because there's one scene in episode three that particularly cater to your audience No way. It's like, when we talked in the past about when you have no money, what do you do with it? Right, right. So Kirk had written this scene where this character Lu, a black woman's being followed by this detective Mayhew and it was going to end up in this like fight between the both of them in the streets. And I said, You know what, I've always wanted to do Kirk a fight in the phone booth you ever heard that expression of fighting for was like, Hey, I've heard it, or sometimes a boxer announcer like they're just blowing each other in a corner and blowing each other and hitting each other. Taking blows in the corner, you know, there's they all skill has gone out the window. They're just,

Alex Ferrari 22:26
It's again, it's a street fight. Yeah, it's a street fight. Yeah,

Albert Hughes 22:29
It's street fight in, in close proximity. It's, uh, it was like watching a fight in a phone booth. So I said, we need to do this for two reasons. One, I think it'd be cool. Because we can use the phone with the environment a phone booth to this could be a lesson to people with no money in film school. But I want this thing to be the kind of scene where they look at it and go, you see, you can do something interesting without scope, and still tell the story and move on and play play on kind of, I don't know what the what that's an analogy, I guess, or a metaphor. Play on something like that. Yeah, we did have the budget to do what we want. I didn't feel the pinch in any way. Like you can give me $10 million. I'm not going to feel a pinch. I'll design the movie to the budget. You can give me five I'll design the movie to the budget. But what I always aspire to from the first movie is you give me 2.5 I want to make it as low as seven you give me 10 I want to make it like 20 and there's little tricks to do that we talked about in the last time we talked about but people should know we each budget had a pretty much the same budget as a first John Wick movie. That's it well, it wasn't any lower whether any higher.

Alex Ferrari 23:36
Yeah, and the thing is too is like when I was watching this again, I said this you use some of those tricks to get more bang for your buck. Because it definitely looks more bang for your buck without question. Now speaking of stunt, guys, this is my I love I love stunt guys. I was working on my on a project I was working with a 24 stunt team, the 20 Kiefer Sutherland's shout back in the day, and is it just me or are all of them absolutely nuts?

Albert Hughes 24:07
They are the old school guys are a different type of nuts. The New School guy right there a different type of nuts. Yeah, they all are like, go ahead. Sorry.

Alex Ferrari 24:16
No, it's like I heard like when when I would go Listen, I need you to do this. I need to do a gainer here. And I needed to do flip like but kind of jump off the second story. Like no, I don't need a second. I'm we're good here on the first No, no, but like, I could do the second store. I could like I'm good. Like no, but I'm like guys, it was not there but all of them would always take it to 11 as they say in spite of

Albert Hughes 24:39
Yeah, they're their adrenaline adrenaline junkies, you know, and they're like fighter pilots here in this whole other mode, you know, and they recall from the past and and has moved to the new school. They have this swagger this kind of arrogance in they need that arrogance in their job, you know, but sometimes you can miss read the air again and not see the person basically right. And they're very interesting, especially the new school guys that come out of 87. Let me because they always overdesign, like you're talking about that in a way they want to give you more than it's done. guys never want to give you less. And you actually always have to talk a stunt person though. Like no, no, do. We don't really don't but

Alex Ferrari 25:21
Guy, or girl.

Albert Hughes 25:22
Yeah, but all the dirty little the dirty little secret. The dirty little secret is, the more times they do that stung the keep getting paid bumps on depending on how dangerous Dustin is that you're getting these these crazy pay bumps. You know, I didn't know that until four years ago. I found that out. I'm like, really? Oh, that's why they're so eager to do another. Like they're lipping to the third take like, Yeah, let's go.

Alex Ferrari 25:45
Let's go. Let's go ahead. Let's go again. I can't imagine like with the with the stunt team that you had on the continental these guys, I mean, there has to be, I mean, other professionals, but it's got to do some some damage. Damage on these guys, the body can only take so much, even as a professional as

Albert Hughes 26:02
Somebody,

Alex Ferrari 26:03
You can only throw them down the stairs so many times. Right? I mean, seriously, at a certain point, even if they know how to follow them if they got the gear on. And at a certain point, you just got it that God bless.

Albert Hughes 26:18
Yeah, and the differences too is they have to train our actors. Like that's what the wig fan base wants us to see their actors doing it. And we had this interesting story one day when the Jessa lane is an actress who played Lulu and they're the brother of Myles Hubert. Ponte jour is the actor's name. But it just was, you know, she's a very sweet woman. And she doesn't like violence, really. And they're training her and she accidentally it's a stunt guy in rehearsal. You know, we're not shooting there in the warehouse doing this. And she's really emotional, but she's really bent, bent out of shape about it and like, no, no, this happens all the time. They don't worry. And we were all a little worried about her. Like, is she ever gonna be able to like, just get over this and she did. And you've seen the El Camino fight with her in the back of an El Camino on Episode Two, I think. Yeah, you've seen the whole series, right. Okay, so,

Alex Ferrari 27:09
I've seen most of the series. I haven't seen all of it yet. I'm gonna see most of it.

Albert Hughes 27:12
Oh, shit. You gotta get the three man we shouldn't. Okay, we'll come back with Kirk.

Alex Ferrari 27:16
You come back with Kurt. Oh, that I've seen the first Oh, I've not seen the third one yet because I have a family.

Albert Hughes 27:22
Oh, the third and the third one goes. I know. The third one goes off the rails. But but she is an episode two in the back of an El Camino like kicking a bunch of people's asses. Right? You see in that and then she basically blossom? Yeah, you know, but wait, I gotta pause for Episode Three prepare you because it's gonna feel like to you a very deceptive, it starts out like, Oh, this is kind of starting out like the others. You know, it's normally paced. And then it just takes this right turn and it just goes nonstop for 15 minutes. So

Alex Ferrari 27:53
So you were trying to you were trying to John Wick for it basically just this nonstop.

Albert Hughes 27:57
Why would he was a hybrid because Chad has a status thing he does. It's wonderful is that? It because he has a two or two and a half hour movie and doesn't have to tow a 3x structure and too many new characters. And you have Ken Oh, and the audience knows what he can do. You can wallow in a 20 minute set piece. I can't really because I have a story to tell. I also don't want to bore the audience. You know, I'm very much in tune, not having action fatigue happen. So it's deceptive in episode three. Because there are modules of action, seemingly taking place in one set piece which is inside the hotel. It's a raid. I mean, it's pretty obvious at this point, it's a raid, you know, that Winston has to take power from this hotel, and a revenge story, right? So it feels like one continuous action scene. It actually isn't. It's one continuous raid, that the way to fix your reign is as you're watching a lot of action. Because it it jumps around to different locations within the hotel and different group members doing different things. But it's relentless, not in the same way as relentless as you get the Arc de triumph and then you get the Dragon's Breath seen from the above angle in the building, and then you get this steps. Then you get the steps. You put those three back to back that's like 45 minutes straight of nonstop action. You know,

Alex Ferrari 29:19
It's a lot. It's a lot. Now I gotta ask you, man, because there's a there's a special actor who play who's in this in this show. Mr. Mel Gibson. How do you work with not only a legend, but arguably one of the better directors of his generation? Because he is a really good director as well. How was it to work with him?

Albert Hughes 29:42
Yeah. He's, he's, he's a pro. And once you get to three, you'll see he goes off the hinges, you know.

Alex Ferrari 29:52
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 30:01
I'm in the process of working with him you've seen in the past like he does he's very passionate like ransom or Braveheart or road warriors, my favorite. And that's why we wanted him. Yeah hacksaw as as a director is he he makes you believe in what he's doing in the movie if he's playing the character, you believe, right? What I found was interesting is that he, those zingers and one liners that Sam he likes playing with words from Lethal Weapon movies, that is him. That's what he comes with. That's how his brain works. And he plays naive on the set. It doesn't look back and look at everything and like what lens you're using, you know, and he acts like he doesn't know, he knows. And he's watching everything like a hawk. And he doesn't go to his trailer, which is a great thing to have with an actor is like they're not slowing you down. He's very much I think he said it one day, he goes, I'm a good soldier. And he is, and he's highly intelligent on both sides of the camera. And it was just a fun, we had fun with the whole cast. Because I have some people in here, like Adam Shapiro, who's opened a pretzel business during COVID. And it's all the rage in Hollywood right now. And chopping pretzels. Who's a who's a one liner, walking one liners Zinger comedy act, you know, that I work with the past few people I've worked with in the past that have this thing that I was dealing with, with Mel to like, they just want to go on the set and have fun. And they don't want to cause problems. They don't want any headaches. They don't want any drama. And those are my favorite kind of people. So he's cut from that cloth. And I've been here for 40 years of professional he is on the set. And it's exactly what I saw.

Alex Ferrari 31:35
That's beautiful man, not when you when you walk into an action sequence like that as a director. These are not simple, not simple sequences by any stretch and right it's not like a punch, punch, punch, the movement the camera. How would you how do you approach doing this? I know you've seen that a little bit of previous but like if you're if you're talking to a young directors who are trying to get into action. How do you approach like some of the scenes like that in the in the first episode? Does their sequence going down the stairs with him? Will you look like Kiana by the way he will I mean, he was on point, the main actor, the main character.

Albert Hughes 32:15
Yeah, less training though you only had three weeks.

Alex Ferrari 32:17
But he but he looked like I'm like this guy looks like John. I mean, in the movie. He looked like John Wick. I was like, Oh, wow. He's like John Wick style. That's how good he is.

Albert Hughes 32:26
And we are not into that.

Alex Ferrari 32:28
Yeah, obviously. Yeah. Because he's just he was so good at it reminded me so much of John, or of Keanu doing that. How do you approach that kind of scene as a director?

Albert Hughes 32:38
Well, I was very lucky because of the built in nature of at 711 in L'Oreal is you would think you would have to stress about it. If it's a younger filmmaker, and you don't have a great stunt team, you're in trouble. Sure, if you have a great stunt team, what I do with them, as I say, I've learned in the years it's like, and I think we discussed it before, it's like sometimes let professionals be professionals if you're trusting and don't get in our way, let them do their job and then stir the pot every once in a while I'll have my bullet points of once. And for that sequence, what I want it was very overall in a general sense was um, Jackie Chan's use of objects and how playful he is with so he's Frankie's carrying a chest with the point precedent and I will I kept saying it might it was bullet points written down and I will talk to her No, I want him to throw it at somebody. So that distracts them and they can shoot it that's very Jackie Chan that's also very chest to hausky to and John Wick. It's very much fits in that world. But I remember first seeing it with Jackie Chan it's a playful playfulness with chairs with objects and stuff like that. And then we would talk about the sequence and they would design it and then we start just making adjustments now a lot of times the struggle between me and Lauren no healthy really healthy struggle and debate creatively was how long he was going that scene is a one page that's one minute you give me one minute he would turn in six minutes right I'm gonna go now you're killing me over here right so there's a this would constantly going on and that's part of the wick way of being trained in stocks is like they do explore it fully right? So in that staircase sequence you're talking about I cannot a whole floor of violence. There's a whole tooth two sets of stairs that I cut out because I felt like it was undercutting the gag before in the gag after and sometimes you have too much of something. It just undercuts itself because you can't focus on the peaks and valleys basically. And so that was even in a phone booth fight that phone booth fight was really long when I first got it. The you'll see this really fantastic fight between these two women and Episode Three on a roof on the roof of the continental I when I first got it, it was long. And I told my editor like let's maybe cut back to somebody else and then cut back to this. And he just looked at me Sit No, this is wick. This is like world, you know, you know it's a cutaway, we're gonna stay in it. And I think him and that's what a good editor does too is like when you're insecure as a director, they just say stop. No, they did like the scene. You've seen it because you haven't made it to three. You saw the adjudicator see where he has been beaten down that guy. And that atrium, right. So when I get the first cut of that, because I love my offline sounds to be great. They put great sounds and so it was pretty much the same thing in an offline It was brutal and how many times he was punching them in the opening. And I said Ron Ron Rosen's, my editor, I mean, he's a genius like Iran. I think maybe there's too many punches on this guy's face, and the studio or the network's gonna say something, and I kind of agree maybe it's a little too much he goes, dude, dude, it's, it's the wick. It's the wick roll. There's, there's no such thing as too many punches. I'm like, Okay, well, we'll just keep it for now and see if they say anything, right. They never said anything. And then I watched John Wick for and when he's when he's punching killer in the face to get his tooth. Like, it's about the same number of punches. But again, it's kianak Carol has such a soft spot for the audience. And he can pretty much get away with anything, except killing an animal.

Alex Ferrari 36:15
Right! I mean, you could fall out of four stories land on a limo and limp away four times and then move

Albert Hughes 36:22
Continuously. Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 36:23
Continue, keep and then fall down 45 flights of stairs. Get up brush it off and you just like get shot

Albert Hughes 36:29
Off the building could shut off a building by Winston fall following an awning and then on the concrete. Yep,

Alex Ferrari 36:35
Sure. Why not? Yeah, it makes the ice canopy of course it's SynScan. Now with that said, it was so with that said did you have any easter eggs? Laid out throughout this episode? These episodes are for John Wick.

Albert Hughes 36:49
There is the John Wick easter egg. For the hardcore fans. There's the casual easter eggs. And then there's the 1970s Easter eggs like let's go in reverse. So 1970s Easter eggs en picks up Frankie after the staircase shootout. That's an exact replica of Travis bagels taxi from taxi driver. I remember I saw on Episode Two. Episode Two. If you notice that late in episode two, a Starsky and Hutch car appears red with that Nike, white swoosh whatever that is. Episode Three. Right before that phone booth be done I told you about. There's the warriors from the movie warriors. There's the hearse with a graffiti all over it right. Then you have the obvious John Wick kind of easter eggs that are quite obvious. Whether it's what they were doing with the coins, what some of the rules are, what some of the changes in the rules are then the deeper ones. Like in episode one, when Winston gets the idea to go to the theater to see that old decrepit theater where he finds his brother. The scene before that he's at a stoplight. And he looks at a poster. And it's a Marilyn Monroe movie. Yeah. And the name of the movie is Be seeing you, which is from which film to and I think the the death, the death of a woman I forgot her name. She's constantly saying to him be seeing you and he would sign back up or he killed or Be seeing you. So that's the title of the Marilyn Monroe movie because they wouldn't give us the rights to Gentlemen Prefer Prefer Blondes as a title. And that triggers a memory. And then that line recalls again in episode three of the show, and also the adjudicators license plate. She has a car we reveal in episode three, but her license plate is a line from the adjudicator and film Three, show filthy. Right? So there's a bunch of them that and Kirk, the showrunner. He itemize them all because Oh, He cocked marketing and Amazon Marketing wanted it for the you know, that's a really smart thing for them to do. They wanted it to use it for marketing. I forget until I see it like oh god, there's that there's that there's a bunch of them in there.

Alex Ferrari 38:58
So that's really interesting. So that was kind of part of the plan. All I mean, yeah, like every once in a while you'll throw stuff in. But this was like really thought out. Like, where are you going to throw?

Albert Hughes 39:06
Yeah, it was more coming from me and Kurt, being fans of the movie. It wasn't any mandate. There wasn't even they didn't even just tip us off from the film side. What happens in John Wick, or although I saw it early in post for this, they weren't doing that. And it was so freeing in a way they weren't doing what Disney or Marvel would do which is like they have these particular mandates. You have to have to show the show to not to the future. We love that we could reverse engineer and know what we will the first three films where we knew what that that was. And they they just kind of trusted us. I don't know why but they did. And me and Kirk would just break down those movies and say, well, that'd be funny if we can put that in there. And it's always fun to put easter eggs. I think easter eggs like even if you're just doing a normal movie that has no reference to anything IP related. To put easter eggs in there nodding to other movies is always a fun thing.

Alex Ferrari 39:59
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 40:09
And then episode three, you'll get the famous one. You have to really watch out for my favorite movie of all time. Midnight Cowboy. I'm walking over here, you know,

Alex Ferrari 40:18
Yeah, of course, that was a complete fluke. When that happened?

Albert Hughes 40:22
Well, neither did you hear there's two different versions of that story now,

Alex Ferrari 40:25
That that was not really what I know is that it was a real Capitan, a real cab almost ran over Dustin Hoffman. He's like, that's that was the story was the story.

Albert Hughes 40:37
Now there's a counter story that is actually believable because we know what goes on, they would have had to get a release from that guy that uses his likeness. The cab driver because you clearly see his face, and they would never wanted to put the actors in that much peril. Walking across the street secretly recording. And the line of dialogue I heard is actually written the ad lib may be the line after where he talks about that could be a good insurance scam, too. I saw the story that broke it all down I go. That's interesting, because for years people thought this, but we're gonna hear it from Dustin's mouth, I guess.

Alex Ferrari 41:15
I mean, anything's gonna tell the truth at this point. The game he's just gonna make want to live. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he. I mean, it was the 60s. Right? It was the 60s and I

Albert Hughes 41:24
68. He was shot 68 was shot.

Alex Ferrari 41:27
So it was the 60s. Would they need to release Yeah, but it wasn't a public environment. So maybe like That's true. Yeah, that's true. You can kind of get the documentary but you could because it wasn't a public street. Technically you don't need I mean, and it was just a different

Albert Hughes 41:43
And they weren't doing that thing back then were with in New York when we they were shooting inside of a van with like the tinted glass the good shots like that.

Alex Ferrari 41:51
Oh, yeah, like Yeah, and without permits, and just like running around sometimes. Because it was kind of it was guerilla filmmaking was kind of the beginning. And then that beginning but it was like when they started really start being the vibe started like nothing then that capital really kind of started that whole easy, Easy Rider. And now and obviously, reading C drive, right, Raging Bull and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, there was, I'm curious if you talk to us next time you talk to Dustin. Let me know

Albert Hughes 42:19
I'll hit him up on my rolodex.

Alex Ferrari 42:22
Exactly. So I'm coming from a collar battle I was at the colorist for a long time as well and had a post house I was looking at the approach to the color grading of this which is shoot this on by the way, gentle camera

Albert Hughes 42:37
It was the the airy trigger, which model DX whatever the fuck it was the same lens. It looked like we it was degraded. It was degraded because we got the 1950s lenses I may have talked to you about this before from had a vision that no DPS want to use anymore because their soul they literally had to dust them off when I was doing Good Lord Bird, and they have all these imperfections and anomalies in them. Right. And they they are they were built for MGM by path A or path a path A and MGM are somehow involved, right. They hadn't been used in years. And I had danza Zaki was the lens guru over at penerbitan, who services all the top DPS. And I just went in one day without my DP because my DP was in a different city. And I said, just give me the funkiest lenses you got just think of anything wild that nobody wants to touch. Even if it's cracked, just bring it and then we started testing them out. And I picked his set. And later I found out because I said I would like a list of the films these were shot on. Were Yeah, and it took them actually months to give me the list. It was like a list of 200 films, but the three films that stood out to me were Dr. Zhivago. Cool Hand Luke, and the graduate. Oh, so you watching the Continental? Yeah, you're actually seeing through the same exact lenses that shot those three classic films right. Now, I could have shot with a red and airy or Sony and I don't think you truly could know the difference because we're not only doing that we're also deciding a lot. We're Maxine Gervais who was my colorist I spoke to you about last time it was on all my projects dating back to Book of Eli which we talked about that she's fantastic. She's an artist. She's my partner on every project like there is no DP director relationship without her that that try it that Trifecta doesn't work if the DP comes in and doesn't get along with her. I can't hire him because she's she's my partner in this you know? So she goes in and we start doing the grain thing again we start we don't do that that film grain that one they license out which is bullshit you know it's a scam there's no that's a complete scam. It's a scam okay. She scan she's they've scanned every film stock imaginable from the past okay. She Oh, for great. And then she does a thing. And I don't know the technical terms for it. But there's different layers of color registration and mids highlights, and you know more than I on the thing, right, and how brain interacts with the mids and the highlights and the blacks. And she goes in and there's different layers to and degrees to it. And sometimes we land, we do the stubble, we try to have the imperfection or like one close up maybe grainy or than the other one, or the wide shots are a little more grainy than the medium shots. So we checkerboard, the grain, we pick the degrees of grain 1020 or 30, or 40%. And we are base level, let's say be 20 throughout the whole show, and then we sometimes will attend and go to 40. And it's a subconscious thing where you when you're watching it, you feel a little bit of inconsistency that reminds you of analog. And so there was a lot of things she did that she's a genius colorist basically, like she's like, I think she's gonna be mad. I said that she like the Rain Man of colorist because I tease her about certain things.

Alex Ferrari 46:05
It is a compliment, but I could see where she could go. Hey, man,

Albert Hughes 46:09
Yeah, but I teased her about we mean are like, people come into our color selections. They see us bickering, because she's so sensitive, because she's an artist. And she just goes hard to get it right. And sometimes I'll just say something just to fuck with her. But they think that me and Maxine are fighting and we're not really fighting. We love each other. And we're never mad at each other. Never right? She'll pick, she'll pick on me and I'll pick on her. And she'll say something like, Okay, so there's a transition. I know, you will notice it's like I like sometimes selfconscious transition. So it's tilting up from the beat down the adjudicator and goes this atrium, yellow circle turns into a yellow white right?

Alex Ferrari 46:48
Oh, I love that. Well, I love that shot. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. That was one of the shots. I was talking about what I said about directors. Absolutely.

Albert Hughes 46:53
Yes. So with her like, early in, prep up putting a shot list. I'll put a magazine dissolve, which is a customized dissolve, you know how that works. You're pulling different image up on the second the beside, and you get the customized This is all I said I put out so I'll put in the shot list. And for the editor too, because he has my shot list. So then we Maxine does all by putting a quotation to the next thing. And it's a it's a yellow white. I didn't know I didn't explain it to my editor would a magazine dissolve was because him and his assistant were busy online thinking it's a technical term from Hollywood. They can and I said no, no, no, it's my colorist who who does these? Fantastic kind of creative dissolves, because that was one. Like one session. We were snapping at each other on Alpha about as I said, Okay, Maxine, I need like a 48 frame dissolve here. And she just snickered at me and goes, Oh, you want to dissolve here? I thought you wanted something more creative. I'm like, well, sometimes a normal dissolve. Works, you know, just that's better.

Alex Ferrari 47:55
That's amazing that they thought that was like a special tip. Because to be fair, in Hollywood there. There's always insisted beginning of time, there's all these weird names for certain things and you know, a stinger a B 52. Wilhelm scream? Yeah, well, exactly. And then people like, Maxine, dissolve where's the Maxine?

Albert Hughes 48:15
Yeah, well, now, you know, from your show, in the film, also, a Maxine, dissolve as accustomed as all from henceforth,

Alex Ferrari 48:25
Yes. From hence for they will be called the Maxine. It dissolve. I gotta ask you, man, look, him and you and I are a couple of old dogs. We've been we got a couple of bit of shrapnel under our belt. And, you know, when you and I talk is so much fun, because we talk in cinema and talking about but we, you know, our generation kind of grew up with, and I don't see that coming up behind us men. I mean, there are some, where do you think 50? I mean, are they going to be doing? You know, this kind of like, what you just explained with the grain? Like, are they going to be doing that in 40? Or 50 years, man? Is it what do you think?

Albert Hughes 49:06
Well, it's, it's the true the Tiktok generation now, right now, the the generation that was born. I mean, a lot of after us are just a limbo out for us. We were we were there. From the analog to digital, we saw that I'm so happy we were that we know that difference between film

Alex Ferrari 49:24
British generation. It's the British generation.

Albert Hughes 49:26
Yeah. And we know the difference between digital editing and film editing. You know, it's so I'm so grateful that we got to see that there's something interesting going on. And this is a subtle or conversation or more nuanced one on about this generation. It's like they're seeing like, let's say a movie is out in the theater and they didn't put film great and they didn't do this and it's very clean. It's a Marvel movie and it's very everything's very clean. It's very digital. It still somehow does feel like film because of 24 frames because the shutter Oh

Alex Ferrari 50:01
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 50:10
Motion Blur and depth of field depending on how you use it, those three things we talked about before, right? That do convey the sense of cinema, it took a while for digital to get there because of those three things in image quality, right? But if you actually play a piece of film, you go whoa, whoa, this is completely Oh, done. Oh, God. Oh, even me, and you have been been fooled into thinking, this looks like film would actually know it. There's a whole other thing going on. There's registration problems, there's scratches, there's ducks prints, there's all this

Alex Ferrari 50:43
Project project the print of Lawrence of Arabia and project digitally project the print of a Marvel movie. And you tell me if there's a difference in the

Albert Hughes 50:54
It's an analog, it's an analog quality. Now there's no I'm gonna parse this argument out different like, I think you and I talked about this before I really don't get off on this whole film purists shit, that group of filmmakers and filmmakers. I think it's fucking bullshit. It's nostalgia. It makes no sense. And Excuse Excuse me for saying this. It's a bunch of white men who are in this Daljit okay. They need to stop going against the winds of need to stop going against the winds of change and start help building windmills. Okay. Um, no, like I'm when I see a bunch of nostalgic old timers. It triggers me is a half biracial guy. Do you start getting to nostalgia that goes down a dangerous road? Okay. Enough. Let's just take all these. Let's take all the and I know I'm being harsh there. Okay, but let's take all these tools available to us. And tell the stories we need to tell by some of them don't believe in di somehow I didn't have any VFX in this movie. I don't give a fuck. Or are talking overly too much about IMAX like, I don't give a shit is Is it good? That's all the audience cares about? Is it good? If it was shot in an iPhone like tangerine? It doesn't matter? Is it good? But to answer the larger thing you're talking about, it's like we're in a world where everything's getting drowned out by too many voices on the internet. And like, you know that because you have to find your niche and all that stuff. So film guys on what film in history, it's got to kind of die away with the new generation. And they're gonna be talking about the film from our generation as being you know, they're gonna be talking, it's not really our agenda, but they're gonna be talking about Marvel movies like, like, as if it's So Lawrence of Arabia. That's what's crazy.

Alex Ferrari 52:38
But you know what, quit and quit and said this really quick. I saw an interview with Quentin. And he said this really interesting. He said he saw he had a conversation with his 16 year old. And he's like, Hey, I was four years old and Iron Man came out and he goes for that kid. That is Citizen Kane. That is, you know, Lawrence of Arabia,

Albert Hughes 52:55
And Ironman is a good movie. That is a great movie.

Alex Ferrari 52:58
Ironman is a fantastic film. But the point is that that is I mean, if you talk to John Favre, he's not gonna like yeah, it's it's good as long as Arabia or is as good as you know, all these it's not. It's a classic in the in that genre, without question. But

Albert Hughes 53:11
What what's also like, it's just like when we are you were younger. Did you remember I'm sure even went to the stage where you were the certain age or like, I don't know, watch a black and white film when you're 12. Oh, watch it black and white. It's Oh, yeah, different watch it, and they know, not older. And you're like, oh, Samurai. But here's what happened during COVID. I gotta tell you about what happens because I've been to film school, I got film books, and I read and I watch a lot of stuff. I have the criterion channel. And I started deep diving in the 30s. And being really fascinated by the fact that the technique of opticals, in camera movement in lighting was at an apex in the 30s. And I'm like, Well, why is this like 30s 40s 50s and started slow down by the 60s who was out unless with a very special director, like Hitchcock, right? Or David Lean or somebody like that, but the 30s Kubrick, but the 30s had transitions and moves like I've never seen before, right? And I go, What is this and I started thinking about it, I go, Well, 1930 1927 2728 sound came in. Before sound, they had to rely strictly on the visual so they were well flexing the visual and opticals right, you look at metropolis and the optical no multilayer obstacles, okay, in the framing, and that also, they started leaning more towards dialogue and now that they started going away from technique of the visual. And that was a an epiphany. I came to I don't know if it's correct film theory, but an epiphany. I came through this last year because I've been deep diving on 30 films. And I'm like, Oh, my God, that I'm so embarrassed that I thought that we cannot scale them. You know, it's like, no, you can't creativity is creativity. It doesn't age you know?

Alex Ferrari 54:55
I mean, you look at the look at something like Seven Samurai or you look at you know, any of the core equals our films that were Russia mon are all of those ease just looking at? Oh, okay. Yeah, I just, I just okay, I got what

Albert Hughes 55:10
They're doing I did a time when there was no video monitors. They couldn't image Sergio Leone didn't have a video monitor with those close ups

Alex Ferrari 55:17
Bro watch. I am Cuba. Are you kidding me? watch that movie Iron Cuba and you're just sitting there like who never heard of these filmmakers doing stuff with like 5000 pound cameras that look like they're doing it with an iPhone. They're you know, putting things on on wires and putting them in the middle of the street while there's a revolution got like what is going on? And that was what's the 60s it was in the 60s of him not mistake. Yeah. Early 60s. Yeah, it was it was hidden until

Albert Hughes 55:49
Yeah, well, that sounds amazing. And that's what's amazing about those films like it was much tougher, much heavier equipment, like you're saying, right? Communication. They didn't even have walkie talkies. early cinema, right? They didn't have cracked wall control. This, they didn't have a lot of things. It was a lot tougher. And then you had to get printed scripts do everything by phone. There was no digitally sending the print or script to Well, someone across town to read it right away. It's, it's amazing. It's like it just shows you something like put those people nowadays. Oh, they're running circles around all of us. I mean, can you already work? But let's say

Alex Ferrari 56:27
Can you imagine Kubrick with today's technology? Can you imagine Hitchcock

Albert Hughes 56:31
I wonder I'm so that's the that's that's a fascinating thing. You just said like, what would Hitchcock and Kubrick embrace digital? Or would they do like these other handful of directors? Who would? No no, I was oh my god, I shouldn't film. Which Well, I thought I was gonna be one of those guys in film school. I was I'll never leave felt like, I'll never leave home. No. We talked about it before. It's like I love the control of digital. I love knowing I can sleep at night. I got it.

Alex Ferrari 56:57
Right. You don't have to wait the next day that you rolled the dice. Oh, was the gate? Was there a hair on the gate? Oh, was there

Albert Hughes 57:03
A monitor. You can see you could put your lead on there. You can see all the sudden and costumes react to it? Like no, I'm not into the mystery dog. Forget that

Alex Ferrari 57:12
Kind of greed. But you got but the thing is that both you and I had the opportunity to shoot 35 to shoot 16 to shoot Super Eight. To play with those things, you know, to do cross processing in the lab to like get image Get Image saturation with

Albert Hughes 57:28
And I'm nostalgic about I am nostalgic about it in one way. I like to emulate it. I like the look of it, it doesn't mean I want to use that tool to get the look, I want to use this tool it gets, you know, because this tool gives me greater comfort and control. And I can even do my blow ups in repose and stabilizations much more. Not easier. It just there's another word for it. It comes down to quality and control. And people can debate this thing about you know, you hear different people say that a 35 millimeter is 8k or 10k. And then you're hearing another DP tell me? No, it's nothing better than 10 at its pixels versus grain. Depending on the stock you pick, you know, so you know, at a certain point you're human I after four 4k is not. I even would even dare dare the audience member to know the difference. You know,

Alex Ferrari 58:21
You really can't tell the difference. I mean then now there's a little bit difference with the each boy that forgot what's called with the color grading. Or you HDR you get a little bit more cardid

Albert Hughes 58:30
I did a we did a past and and it's a trip, man, dude, it's a trip. And they bring it to monitors and they're coloring, Maxine's coloring. The standard one I forgot what rec 709 or whatever it is. Yeah. And then ACR. And depending on your TV screen, you can get the HDR version of the Continental. Right at first I'm like, Well, I don't understand what I know what HDR is, you know how it grabs the highlights and the mids and lows and balance it out basically in your phone. I know what it is in theory, but when I'm looking at this image that's HDR looks more contrasted and meets popping more. I go well, I didn't think that's what HDR was. But there's something going on there that I actually prefer that over the rec 709 or whatever, if I'm correct term it like that.

Alex Ferrari 59:16
But then you put your whole filmography is that you like Poppy stuff, dude, like look at back Blue Book of Eli

Albert Hughes 59:21
Contract, right?

Alex Ferrari 59:23
Yeah, yeah, you're crunching you're crunching the blacks. You're dropping the highlights. You're making things a little bit poppier. That's my style to love.

Albert Hughes 59:31
But the difference is, if you I don't know what time type TV you're watching, I'm assuming you have a huge TV. You're watching this laptop. Okay. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 59:41
I was watching it on this last night. It was great. Yeah. The difference? Probably. I shouldn't watch it.

Albert Hughes 59:48
Oh, no, no, no, no, we're talking we were just talking about that generation. Get ready for it. And we all we by the way, it's funny, but we all do have to be aware of that. Right? Sure. But like, if you look at the lighting style,

Alex Ferrari 1:00:00
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 1:00:10
Episode One in two I chose is really young DP really dope, or he's a hippie dude. Long hair from Norway, right? Spain man, just an artist, right? But he needs more into ambient light, you know, fill the room and will smoke and not hard, light, soft light. And I started learning along the way that I actually loved the way it look. It's not what I've done with in the past Potomac contrast, it's harder to do contrast Hawaii style like that, if you're seeing lighting, oh, it's empty. So what I learned during the show was when you couple that with these old lenses, it can get dangerous. You have to watch out here right? They get to the third episode with Peter Demings shooter who I worked with him from hell and a bunch of other stuff all time. He's been around. He's done Austin Powers. He's done the scream series. He's done session. Last highway, David Lynch Mulholland Drive. He's been around. So the certain point we're shooting, and I can't wait for you to see three. We're shooting and he just goes Howard, trying to introduce a little hard light here. And I didn't know what he meant, right? Because I do have in my style guide noir lighting, this that shadows, silhouettes, and you need hard lighting for that kind of stuff, usually. Okay, so we wrap the whole thing and I see him at the premiere and I'm talking to him. And I said, I know what you mean. Now, moving forward, we have to be careful with these lenses. I love what they've done for the show because they they forget it up with that kind of more diffused look. But moving forward with this. I want to use more hardline I now know what you were saying that day Peter like thank you basically right? Because this is why actually when you see Episode Three you'll see what Peter Deming did with those lenses he's still within the same style of lighting but he's when he's like we're creeping into without using handheld I got out of handheld because I'm actually not a fan of it. I think me and you talked about it before it's like control to me it works in the John Wick world for certain things and Chester house he does it wonderfully because he's not doing it in that Paul. Paul Greengrass style. Just elfies More it's almost it's almost a Steadicam the way they use it for piano you know, we went a little bit more raw with a staircase scene because it's the 70s you can get away with a throwback handheld look you know, but you'll see if you go from episode one, two and three there is not one handheld shot and three there's a little into and there's a few Dutch tilts in there that I had to adjust and put in because I'm not into big into Dutch tails but that was that directors thing and you know, I had to adjust the other episodes because of it so I was able to go but a Dutch Tillman one that's what's great about TV you can Oh well that director did that is not necessarily in my style guide but I can course correct this a little bit for the audience you know

Alex Ferrari 1:02:49
You know it's it's interesting I shot with the Super Bowl stars back in the day on a red for the same reason you shot with the airy and these older indeed Super Bowl tires were like dirty from the 40s very hot like it was like I forgot last home made them I don't know who made them. But they were like it gave it a funky look because the red had this hard edge digital thing is very nice one Yeah, yeah, the very few the older ones had really hard edges. And I'm like I can't I can't I need something to soften it up. But then you start throwing a little ambience and a little smoke in there.

Albert Hughes 1:03:26
Yeah. You get you by the way to register to eat up smoke. Did you notice Oh yeah. Yeah, the first test we do like register on film The Red would just eat it up and make it go away in a way like your room morpher read

Alex Ferrari 1:03:40
Right and then when you start when you know how it is to smoke like the Tony Scott stuff. Like when you start Tony scouting it up a little bit. It's hard man it's hard to control the light yes hard and to try to match it for cuts. You

Albert Hughes 1:03:55
I mean you always you always run into that problem but if you if you have a good stage that's the only way to control it. Yeah, that's the only way you know what I'm gonna do on it. Yeah, no, you definitely have to have a good what do you call it's the effects guys dansette effects guys that do it. Then dp and gaffer keep their eye on it. The camera operators keep his eye on it to direct dress to keep his owner and everybody's like checking the level o's and now you can reference the other shot now thank God like back in the day you couldn't do that. But it's interesting with Peter does some of that you're talking about you'll see in episode three when you get there. There's a lot of shaft lighting come starting to play into it early on. Yeah, yeah. That's why I want to bring Kirk Well, I want to bring Kurt back because if you'll have us if you'll have a horse and we could do because we're lining up Episode Three there's a lot of screenings going on for Episode Three with collider and you know, there's other screenings going on around town and they're actually you know, hopefully this thing in Hollywood will be over soon. You know, I'm praying and everybody will be able to meet the the actors In the others, but for Kirk and I to come talk to you about three because I think you're you're gonna see a lot of stuff in there that we grew. We grew up. We grew up on

Alex Ferrari 1:05:14
Of course, you're welcome, sir. Anytime and I'd love to talk to Kurt as well. I have to ask you this one question. What was the toughest day on set? And how did you overcome it?

Albert Hughes 1:05:23
Oh, geez, man, you have a pro youth this is this is why we went three and a half hours a generation where?

Alex Ferrari 1:05:29
Well, no, well, we'll start wrapping it up soon. I

Albert Hughes 1:05:32
Was still wrapping it up. But I know, I mean, you hit me with something that I gotta say he's like, you saw it, because you you've seen the first episode. It was a toughest shoot day of my life is at party scene, that appears to be a winner, but we stitch together three shots. And the issue was, and I don't want to come off on kind here, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna try to thread the needle here. If you're conducting an orchestra, and one instruments out of place, you know, you have to have a little talk with the flute player. And if that instruments still out of place, you might have to think about replacing the flute player. Well, we had the flute player and the via violinist was out of tune. And I saw some early signs of it. And that the shot was way more challenging that it had to be okay. Because of you correctly plan it, you get your your extras in pods, you know, you're dealing with animals, you know, you're dealing with Arelis you're dealing with a lot of things in that in that shot. Um, you're hiding things, you're revealing things. You need the whole. And that's what I love about I wonder that's what I told the crew out in Budapest, and they were wonderful, by the way, had nothing to do with the Hungarian crew because they were fucking fantastic. Okay, it was either an American or British I'm talking about, okay. And they're supposed to be fantastic. What I said is what I love about one or is is you can get a lot done quickly. That's one thing you have the aesthetic thing is another thing which you know about, right? The thing the other thing it does, and most people don't give enough weight to is, no one has an escape, not the actor, not wardrobe, not hair, not makeup, everybody's exposed not to grips. Everybody's exposed, okay. So they hide, they get to this heightened sense of, they go into fighter pilot mode, because they don't want to be the weak link. And if you drop a one on them every other day, or every day, a mini one or a long run or, you know, you don't have to do it a lot, you're just doing it to save time on a certain section of the scene, or whatever. They your crew gets into fighter pilot mode, because they don't want to be the weak link. And they all super, they're super focused. Now if you do coverage, they start to unfocus because they know that you can come around a mistake. If an equipment piece drops. An actor flubs a line of hair and makeup, don't get the hair overnight and time that led to take continue. So it does this wonderful thing mentally to the crew. And so I have this scene that you were asking the question about, and by the end of it, it just felt like I went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson because I didn't have the I had the proper support of 80% of the crew night of 90% of the crew that 10% Really, really affected the day on what shouldn't have been an easy shot. But what should have been on a normal one or one day if it was properly done by everybody being at their best. But again, this is what post is for this is what I why repo why stabilize? Oh, why building hidden cuts. And this is why people you know, sometimes feel like there's some filmmakers I'll take swipe at other filmmakers like that's not a real winner. Well, it doesn't matter. It's for the audience to to have the impression you're doing something real time the audience doesn't know that. Just because you know that Jackass doesn't mean it's not about how you do it. It's about the result, basically, you know, so yes. The toughest day of my career.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:59
You can say the same thing about rope. That's not a real winner. I'm like, okay, but it's Hitchcock, and he was doing it in seven pots Shut the hell up. I mean, come on, shut the hell up. No, that's just desperate.

Albert Hughes 1:09:07
I mean, he still has the record. He kind of still has the record. But if you think about it, because it's per real during film, he has to record

Alex Ferrari 1:09:15
Oh, don't want that stuff. Ya know what I mean? He was insane. It was insane. But we can be done with that three hours on Hitchcock alone. So I want to ask you a few questions that are asked all the guests. See how if they've changed a bit since last you were here? What advice would you give? What advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break in today's business?

Albert Hughes 1:09:38
I remember my last answer, I think it had to do with talent. And sometimes you can develop your talent. But you have to know if you have the talent for what you're trying to do. If you're saying filmmaker by director. You mean director, not writer, not cameraman filmmaker.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:56
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Albert Hughes 1:10:06
Recognize if you have talent early if you do keep going if you don't, and you have to be honest with yourself, get out of the way is what I said in the last podcast because you're wasting space for people who need that space. Right? There's plenty of other jobs in this business that you can do. Breaking into the business, I think I would say just keep shooting, no matter who's watching a budget your mom, or you and your room alone. That's all I do. In Prague, I have 250 shorts that nobody's ever seen. I know. I said a couple Oh, I cut I set it up to you like, those are the ones I make available to my friends, like a handful them, I think five or 10, right? I don't, I don't know. What do you call a. You practice your craft. And the most important thing, it's like, I don't say this enough. It's like, you have to be willing to do it when nobody's watching. And still love it. If you love it when nobody's watching, you got yourself a plan.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:01
Beautiful, beautiful answer, sir. That should be a t shirt. I'm just saying.

Albert Hughes 1:11:06
Right under hustle,

Alex Ferrari 1:11:08
rather than a t shirt. If you can go back in time, and talk to Little Albert, what advice would you give him?

Albert Hughes 1:11:18
I now this is a new answer. I know, I think this is a new answer. Any question? The new answer is, when you're young, you think wisdom or being wise is goes hand in hand with being smart. It actually doesn't. I think Wisdom means to me, I don't know, the literal definition means to me, you learn from the past. And you adjust. And that makes you smart enough, you're smart enough to adjust, let's say. And you collect a note on top of these experiences, that you know what to do quite clearly in the future. And I would tell my younger self to go easy on myself. And to not take it so hard that this is part of the process of trying to become wiser in this job or this position. And that you cannot rush that you can't rush wisdom. Wisdom takes time. You can rush talent a lot like you've seen some flash in the pan boxers, lawyers, filmmakers, writers, entertainers filmmaker you that you've seen them like woof super talented, but they don't have the wisdom yet. But they're still super talented, they can rush their talent, you know?

Alex Ferrari 1:12:28
What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?

Albert Hughes 1:12:33
Up patients, you know the answer, you know, like, Yeah, but you know, like we, you have to hurry up and wait, but that thing I think we talked about last time, it's like, Don't get involved in every argument it takes place in front of you that has to do with your film. It's a waste of time with those people figure it out. And you know, poke and prod a little bit and I have a, I've learned how to do this, I've never good because I think I have a little bit of OCD problem, as I wasn't good at tuning out the room when you're in a conference room, and people are talking because sometimes you'll have your production designer and prop guy now on the same page. And they may be arguing off to the side, or the picture car guy might be arguing with somebody else. And you think it's an unhealthy thing to see an argument but it's quite healthy. And if you get involved in it is going to stress you out and you're gonna be able to your job, they're there to help you. And they're there to do their jobs professionally. And just because they're creatively arguing about something doesn't mean you need to get involved, because that can tax you. And what you need to do is have a way of just making it noise. And if you hear a trigger word, where you need to get in to stir the pot one direction you do that, but generally stay out of it because of the best idea usually comes out when the creative crew starts having a healthy debate.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:49
Very good. And of course the toughest of all the questions three of your favorite films of all time.

Albert Hughes 1:13:56
Did I answered this one before? Yeah, we talked about one I remember. Yeah, they remain the same. Okay, Midnight Cowboy is number one for a lot of reasons. Taxi driver got knocked out of the number one position long ago by taxi driver was it forever okay? It's been a cowboy. It's manbites Dog is second. And taxi drivers third,

Alex Ferrari 1:14:19
That's what we ran remember man, but because there's very few people who know that frickin film. And it is oh mazing criteria lays you

Albert Hughes 1:14:28
At a run menu at a run on we went on a run about it. Okay, because it's only inside baseball too. It is such a look at the bill it is but if you look at the film, there's no reason at face value somebody's looking at my list should believe that should be number two over taxi driver. Oh, and the reason is forget all the stuff that mean you know and I'll finish with this. It's the for the reason is it's the only film and the history of me watching films that made me question Should have my own moral compass. I was okay with a bunch of shit in that film into that one scene. And then I walked out, I draw the line there. And then I got it on criterion laser. And I watch the rest of and I go, Oh my God, it's not the film, it's me. It this is a statement about me. And that's far more important than watching a mentally deranged taxi driver, done well by my hero Scorsese, a film that shakes you like that, and rejiggered and by the way, Midnight Cowboy did the same and made me question a lot of things about growing up in what I saw with my mom, my dad, and you know, what's, you know, the, you know, there's a debate between me my daughter about whether they're to heterosexual men in love or whether they're repressed homosexuals in that form a bond, let's say, okay, and you can have that debate and I finally found the answer, and I was wrong. So that that film was special to me because a foreigner made it from England. John Slusher came to New York and it also blows my mind that this lunatic what's his name of the actor? John's right wing lunatic. Jon Voight like he's gone. He's gone so far, like almost almost into Nazi territory as my daughter walking in with her dog right now. Moving the camera with her Go ahead. Yeah, cuz me and him go along a little, you know, it's like I couldn't I couldn't believe that Jon Voight would do. You had to be liberal minded and open minded to do that type of felt, you know, so that that shocked me.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:34
Oh, and deliverance into deliverance to

Albert Hughes 1:16:38
I gotta watch it again. I don't know. Okay. I gotta watch that film. Again, because I haven't seen this up my childhood.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:45
And, and that says a lot about you. And that says a lot about you that you saw deliverance in your child.

Albert Hughes 1:16:52
While parents took me to inappropriate movies,

Alex Ferrari 1:16:54
Everywhere, but back then there was also only so many Disney films playing in the theater. So there was it was deliverance enough that

Albert Hughes 1:17:00
My dad took me. My dad took me to see all that jazz. And I distinctly remember the nudity and an open heart surgery. I recently saw it again and went on a bob posse run. And it's exactly as I remember, except for the nudity. When you're a kid, it's amplified. You're like, oh my god, you know? It's a but that's a fantastic film. And so it's cabaret like a deep dive on him. And he's, he's just amazing.

Alex Ferrari 1:17:25
Albert, it is a pleasure. And as always talking to you, where can people find and watch your new Opus, the Continental?

Albert Hughes 1:17:35
It's on peacock. The premiere episode was last Friday the 22nd I believe what I'm getting right. That was episode one. Episode Two is the 29th. Friday the 29th. Episode Three is October the sixth on a Friday and get to episode three everybody because it's building that it's all building towards how Winston gets that hotel. And it builds to an explosion. And I'm telling everybody that I'm going to see Alex again with Kirk ward. Our show running to this stuff in episode three in the near future.

Alex Ferrari 1:18:06
Very near future. I can't wait to have you back. And last question. Is there another? Are we going to keep expanding this John Wick world?

Albert Hughes 1:18:14
That's up to like Lionsgate into producers. I have no idea. It's so good to wonderful world. You know, you can go so many different directions with so many different crazy characters. I suspect they will they have the antidote Dr. missa ballerina coming out next year. And it feels like it's ready made 40 Plus it's fresh. It's not a superhero. IP, you know, rightly so it's whether I'm exactly and whether that's what's she you pointed out something I never heard before. That's an adult it never really. It's

Alex Ferrari 1:18:48
PG 13 IP, or PG IP. There's never adult IPS out there really like well, they should taxi driver right Pete? Like they should do another. Like, what? Let's go into that.

Albert Hughes 1:19:00
That's fascinating. That's fascinating. I think like whether I'm involved or not doesn't matter. I'm just a fan of the the show that we did. I'm a fan of the movies and they keep making them and they're good. I'll keep watching them.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:13
But as always, thank you for coming on. We can keep going. And I wish we could but we're going to come back with her and

Albert Hughes 1:19:21
We have a part two, we have a part two,

Alex Ferrari 1:19:22
We'll have a part 2. My pleasure as always my friend. Thank you so much.

Albert Hughes 1:19:26
You too.

IFH 704: From Short Film to Hollywood Blockbuster with David F. Sandberg

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Alex Ferrari 2:00
Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Jason Buff.

Jason Buff 2:05
Now I want you to imagine I want us all to close our eyes and imagine something you're sitting in your apartment one day you and your wife and you have always wanted to make a horror film, but you don't really know what the next step is. So you see these horror competitions and you say, You know what, let's enter into one of these horror competitions and see how it goes using just the resources you know, you don't have a lot of money. So just using the camera that you have and the equipment that you have, you're going to create a horse short and submit it to one of these competitions just to see what happens. And not only do you win the competition, but your video becomes a huge viral sensation. Suddenly, your you know, Vimeo videos and YouTube videos are being downloaded by 1000s and 1000s of people and not too long after that you start getting phone calls from people in Los Angeles that you know want to have meetings with you. Now fast forward a little bit to you know, being invited, you're invited to Los Angeles by new line. And before long, you're sitting in a meeting with James Wan talking about making a feature film version of your short this is more or less what happened to David F. Sandberg in 2013 when his short lights out became a huge viral sensation. And on June 22, the feature film version of Lights Out starring Maria Bello and produced by James one will be coming to a theater near you all right now on with the show

David F. Sandberg 3:26
Came here. My wife Laura and I a little over a year ago now. But it all happened really fast. Because it was like, you know, we got the call that yeah, lights out the movie is getting made. So can you get on a plane next week? So we flew over and yeah, we went back home just over Christmas now. But that's that's it. Now it's been weird. Like, it all happened so fast. When we first got here we just were the first like nine months or so or whatever we stayed in the Airbnb is around town. And it's just now this year that we've gotten a proper apartment to stay.

Jason Buff 4:08
So it was really like, I mean, well, let me ask you, first of all, how was how was living in LA? Because I've lived there. And it was very difficult. I mean, I and I'm from the US, you know, so it was kind of a culture shock for me. Are you guys like settling in and feeling more at home? Are you are you there permanently? Are you going to go back to Sweden?

David F. Sandberg 4:29
I mean, right now, it's pretty permanent because we've rented out our apartment back in Sweden. And I mean, as long as things keep going, well here we'll stick around, you know, right. But But yeah, it's a lot different from Sweden. But both good and bad. You know, the weather's always great. And there's a lot of cool stuff here. And that Yeah, I mean, we love it. So far. We haven't seen a lot of the other parts of us. We've only been to California. We went to Las Vegas for a day for cinema con. Right? This is all we know, like, we want to see more of the states.

Jason Buff 5:09
Yeah, you gotta go. Well, I'm from North Carolina. So you should definitely head that way. And kind of see something. LA is very, it's cool, but it's very different from the rest of the US.

David F. Sandberg 5:18
Yeah, that's, I can imagine. It's, it's, it's a unique place. It feels like

Jason Buff 5:24
The people that rented your old apartment know that that was where the short was filmed.

David F. Sandberg 5:30
Now, yeah, that's one of our friends who who's actually in, we met a short called picture, and she's the queen in the picture. So yeah, she knows and she thinks it's cool. Like, she has people over and it's like, Hey, this is the lights out apartment. Whoa. Yeah.

Jason Buff 5:48
That's cool. Well, what I want to do is I got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, and I want to be very conscience. conscious of your time.

David F. Sandberg 5:56
Let's I mean, it's Saturday today, so there's no work today. So that's, that's fine.

Jason Buff 6:00
Okay. So what what is, what are you guys doing right now? I mean, I assume the, you know, pictures locked in what what's kind of going on right now? And you're like, what's your week full of right now?

David F. Sandberg 6:11
Right now? It's pre production on Annabelle two. So, yeah, we're shooting in six weeks. Okay, so it's getting close, lot to lot to prepare.

Jason Buff 6:26
Is there anything you can I mean, that story wise, but I mean, what, when you say you're preparing to shoot, what is that kind of mean? Are you working on? Is the screenplay ready? Are you working on?

David F. Sandberg 6:37
There's still tweaks being done on the screenplay, but also, you know, we're casting people, we're scouting some of the locations we still haven't figured out yet. And this one has a bigger budget than lights out. So we're shooting it on a stage on the Warner Brothers lot, which is awesome. So we're the house has been the sets are being built, you know, and there's, you know, some budget issues like, hey, maybe we can, you know, we're a little bit over, maybe we can cut out this room of the house, a lot of stuff like that back and forth

Jason Buff 7:09
As the way you think about it changed now that you I mean, I would assume that walking into lights out the feature, you probably still had a lot of those ideas in your head about oh, there's ways to save money and cut corners and do this and you start working with a studio and it's kind of like, oh, okay, well, there actually is some money to spend on this.

David F. Sandberg 7:29
Well, I mean, I had no idea. I mean, I've, I'm so lucky to have skipped all of these steps. You know, like I went from making no budget shorts, which is locked on me back in Sweden, right into making Hollywood studio features. Like, I've never made an independent movie or anything. Like I've never been on a real film set until lights out. Right, which was scary as hell. And there was so much like, you know, I put so much pressure on myself as well, just like, This is my shot, you know, better not screw it up. Because, you know, then I'll go back to Sweden and never do a movie again. So, yeah, that was intense. And it was just so much to learn, like, you know, I know how to sort of make a little movie, like how to tell a story. But everything around it was just new, the whole the studio thing and just working with so many people, you know, I'm used to shooting myself and editing myself and doing all of that stuff. And now I had to work with other people for the first time and just working with a writer and yeah, there. I had, like, I'd wake up in the middle of the night being all stressed out and like, I have these things where I wake up, and I'm half asleep and I hallucinate. And I'd see like the whole crew standing around my bed just waiting. And I'd be like, Wait, what are we doing? What? Why? So hopefully now on Annabelle, I know a little bit more what to expect, and maybe we'll have a little less nightmares. Right?

Jason Buff 9:05
So your confidence is better going through this? Or did you look at the finished film and just kind of sit back and be like, holy crap. I did this.

David F. Sandberg 9:15
Yeah, no, I mean, but that happened to like, just during editing, you know, we were cutting the scene with between Maria Bello and Teresa Palmer. They have this argument and it's like, Shit, I actually directed this, like, a real movie with real actors. And yeah, that was there's been a lot of those moments, especially because of the beginnings of the whole thing. Like I'd see people you know, painting the sets and stuff like that. And I'd have this feeling of these people are working on this. Just because lotto and I made this little short, you know, just an evening back in Sweden, which is insane.

Alex Ferrari 9:56
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Jason Buff 10:05
Did you ever run into because I remember reading stories about when, for example, James Cameron was making aliens. And nobody really knew who he was. So they were kind of like, Oh, this guy didn't know what that, you know, he was making the best or movies of all time. But the people on the set, were just kind of like, Who's this guy doesn't and he was, you know, he was, I think it was on a British set, too. So everybody was like, Is this you know, America,

David F. Sandberg 10:27
I saw that documentary as well, which is, I love that. It's one of my favorite movies as well. But yeah, I There were definitely elements of that have, you know, it's some there was this feeling of some people on the crew, like, you know, they're doing me a favor, because I'm this nobody from, from Sweden and the they've worked on all these big movies. And it led to some friction in some places, where it's like, some arguments with the camera department and where they, you know, try to tell them, like, No, you don't need to do that. And I was like, No, we need to do that. Like, I know what I'm doing. So it led to arguments about stupid stuff as well. Like, how, how cameras work. And like, because they were telling me that there was this one shot that they were telling me you can just you can shoot at high speed, and then decide in post if you want it to be slow motion or regular speed. And I was telling them, but But no, because the shutter speed will then look, you know, the shutter angle will look, it will look like you know, the opening of Saving Private Ryan, if you?

Jason Buff 11:42
Yeah, so, what 48

David F. Sandberg 11:44
So they were telling me that, no, the shutter speeds always the same. And I was became this whole argument, and I was like, but then why do you need more light when you shoot high speed changes? And it was like,

Jason Buff 11:57
Like, damn, this guy knows what he's doing.

David F. Sandberg 11:59
Yeah, I mean, stupid arguments like that. But I mean, it got better, you know, further into production, everything did but when we sort of got to know each other and what we knew and didn't know.

Jason Buff 12:14
Yeah. What were you shooting on

David F. Sandberg 12:17
Yeah, the Alexa.

Jason Buff 12:19
Right, right. Was there ever I mean, if I was you, and I was kind of like, I mean, cuz you're a do it yourself kind of guy. Yeah, I would just be like looking over everybody's shoulder and be like, Okay, what do you guys, you know, and just like, in between directing, just kind of, like, all the time.

David F. Sandberg 12:33
I mean, this was my home school in a way like, I didn't go to film school. And now I was I was getting paid for. So it was a lot of that. Okay, so you're lighting it like that? You're putting it there. Okay, cool, was like, you know, finding stuff.

Jason Buff 12:49
Is there anything that kind of maybe you can share that jumps out at you at like in terms of just purely like cinematography? Were there any things that you just kind of were surprised by that? You? You know, having done things yourself? You're like, Oh, I didn't realize this is actually how they do it on a film set not to put you on the spot.

David F. Sandberg 13:11
No, but I don't know. I mean, I think I I mean, I read a lot like I read like the American cinematographer, and all of those things. So I try to keep up as much as possible. So nothing really surprised me that much. No, it was just being there and seeing in real life, you know, on a full set that was was interesting, but I mean, you know, the lighting it feels like it's the same thing when you're doing it yourself with what little you have. It's just on a bigger scale, and you have more fun toys really?

Jason Buff 13:52
Was there ever a moment when you were like, is there like an Ikea around that? I can? Yeah, is there is there's an I when I was there, I mean, I was there back in like 99. So it's been a while but there was a brand new IKEA. And it was like a huge deal. I mean, this is off the point, but I just happen to remember that because I think it's kind of a funny idea. Have you been like, you know if you just get a trash kid? Yeah, we do have money here, man.

David F. Sandberg 14:15
Yeah. Now with IKEA is awesome. I built my own my trash cans here as well bought some lights. I found out that the light bulbs here don't dim. They do in Sweden for some reason. The fluorescent the LED bulbs are some

Jason Buff 14:34
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, some of them do. And I mean, you have to kind of look for him, but the US is really, and I haven't lived in the US since in since 2002. I actually live in Mexico. Now. I do everything from Mexico. But you know, I'm amazed when I go back because here everything is so energy efficient, and everybody has LED bulbs or fluorescent and then I go back to the US and it's always amazing to me that that still hasn't kind of caught on you know people have them but they're not Uh, as you know, I don't know how it is in Sweden.

David F. Sandberg 15:03
No sweetness. I think they've, like banned regular light bulbs. Right? We can even buy them anymore. You can probably just steal some old stock probably. But it's mostly LEDs and compact fluorescents.

Jason Buff 15:18
You guys are so you know, so far ahead with everything. Yeah. I actually lived in Finland for a while. Yeah. And that for a while, but for for half of the year I went to school in yo ensue. So we were we were up in that area for a long time. And we pass through Sweden. I got lost in Sweden for a while and but it's just it's one of my favorite countries in the world.

David F. Sandberg 15:41
It's great in the summer, but in the winter, it's just gray and dark for so long. There's like, not enough sunlight. Maybe I'll miss it eventually. But now it's just it's here. It's sunny all the time.

Jason Buff 15:56
Yeah, you get actually I got kind of tired of it being sunny. All I missed the snows the coziness of having like your coffee and being inside and, you know,

David F. Sandberg 16:07
Maybe

Jason Buff 16:10
Around Christmas time, I think you start kind of like, like when you have your first warm Christmas is always really bizarre.

David F. Sandberg 16:16
Yeah, I mean, we went home for Christmas. But that was the thing as well. Like we were thinking that maybe when we were back in Sweden, we will feel that now this is our home. We don't want to go back to LA. But when we got home, it was gray and dark. And we both got Vinter winter vomit disease lotto nights, we would like just throw one up. Yeah, we couldn't wait to get back.

Jason Buff 16:39
Okay, well, what I want to do is kind of go back and talk a little bit about your biography, I guess, you know, and how you got into this. And I was wondering if you could start a little bit by just talking about where you were at what what you what led up to making the original shorts. And as far as I was lights out the first shorts you made? Or was it like after making a few more because it's listed in IMDb is like the third or fourth one you man.

David F. Sandberg 17:09
I mean, it was the second one I made with that loss. And I made together. So what happened was, you know, I've been making little shorts and stuff ever since I was a kid, you know, borrowed my dad's video camera. But then, as I got an older, it got more sort of difficult to you know, get your friends together and make movies. So I started playing around with animation. Because that was something you could do all by yourself. And what happened was when YouTube was new, this was in 2005, I made an animated short that became like a viral hit in Scandinavia. And that led to me getting a lot of job offers to do like commercials and videos for different companies with my sort of brand of animated humor. So I did that for a few years. But eventually, I felt that, you know, what I really wanted to do was live action genre stuff. So you know a lot and I we made this movie called cam closer, which we really enjoyed doing just a two and a half minute short. And we tried getting like in Sweden, you have the Swedish Film Institute that gives grants to movies, shorts and features. And that's pretty much how we finance films. But they they weren't very interested in financing genres stuff. Like we tried several times to get just some little bit of money to make horror shorts. And they said no, every time. So we figured, you know, screw it, you know, I have a camera, and we can do stuff ourselves just in our apartment. So yeah, lights out was the second one we did. And yeah, it became this whole crazy thing.

Jason Buff 19:02
Now, just to get into the nuts and bolts, because I was curious about this, you had you were working with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Yeah. What? What was just from a purely nerd point of view, what was your decision to get that camera versus some of the other ones that are out here?

David F. Sandberg 19:18
Well, I mean, I started when, you know, when I was younger, I got like a consumer DV camera and started shooting shorts with my friends. And then I actually got a grant like a cultural stipend or whatever it's called, so I could buy an HD camera. And I've never had a lot of money to buy cameras. But then I saw about this Blackmagic camera that was coming on to the shooting RAW, which was very interesting to me, because you know, when you're shooting like H 264 stuff, you can't shoot the compression when you shoot dark stuff. It just breaks apart in the shadows.

Alex Ferrari 20:04
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

David F. Sandberg 20:13
So, I really wanted that camera so we I have a producing friend in Sweden who we got some money to do a short called Wallace which is sort of like an you could say that sort of like an anti bullying film or something. That's the kind of stuff you can get money from for this from the Swedish Film Institute. You know, we got money to do a documentary about a Thai Lady Boy and like, more sort of important subjects I guess. But because we got some money to do Wallace, I could buy the Blackmagic Cinema Camera finally so that's what we used to do she lets out but the the the short shot before that cam closer I shot on the Panasonic GH one. So I had to have a lot of sort of lights that just to have a break apart in the shadows.

Jason Buff 21:09
I've always heard that the Blackmagic wasn't that great with shooting in low light, though, right?

David F. Sandberg 21:14
Well, not low light that shadows like so. Okay, in lights up. You know, when she that bedside table lamp. There's actually like a 375 watt bulb, photo bulb. Oh, what I did like, so there's a lot of light, but it's not evenly lit. You know? So I could. And that works out great. So if you're not shooting, if you're not trying to bring the shadows up, but just bringing everything down instead, it works great. So you still need light, but you don't have to evenly light your scene.

Jason Buff 21:59
So that was the same one you had with. Closer, right when you did the trash can thing. Yeah, that really close to lots of space so that everything else would be black. And you would just turn down the the aperture or the

David F. Sandberg 22:14
Yeah, so that one I've used for all of our shorts, except for the very latest one called closet space because that one I used to pocket camera for so what happened was that when we moved over here, I didn't bring my cinema camera. And I was kind of missing my camera almost, you know, when I was over here. So when I got started getting paid for lights out, I bought the pocket camera. And we actually use that on some stuff for lights out the feature. And that's, you know, now since I've been back this weekend, I've actually brought my, the cinema camera with me as well. So I have both the cinema camera and the pocket camera. But they're great cameras.

Jason Buff 23:00
Yeah, I thought it was really interesting on your video talking about the trailer. And by the way, I really I can't tell you how much it means to indie filmmakers to get to see the behind the scenes stuff because it's, you know, you're in a very unique position to be able to let us in on a lot of that stuff. Because we're all kind of watching. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff that that we don't know, you know, and you know, all those videos, like I mean, there's just little tips that are are kind of like, oh, well, I didn't know it was that easy to do that or whatever, you know. But did you have any any resistance to shooting with the pocket cam for those that each hit the like the old eight millimeter super eights.

David F. Sandberg 23:47
The only resistance was that I was shooting it. So what happened was we went to this, like abandoned hospital to shoot some stuff. And um, you know, I was telling them, like the studio, like, you know, I could shoot that myself, you know, I just need the actors and my little pocket camera. And they were like, you know, they didn't really believe in that or something. I don't know. So what happened was, we went there with the whole crew, and shots and stuff with the Alexa and none of that Alexa stuff is in the movie. So like between setups, I would borrow the the cast and just go shoot these little snippets of film. And that's the only thing that wound up in the movie, but the only thing they were sort of afraid of was me shooting it myself just because of union stuff and all that like if it's the cinematographers union would be upset about me shooting stuff myself or something, but I don't know.

Jason Buff 24:47
Yeah, I've heard a lot about ah, I heard some of that, you know, with some of the other stuff that I've been involved with where it was like, I just wanted to go and shoot B roll with a like a five If D or something, yeah. And the cinematographer was kind of like, that's like, you're really not supposed to do that, you know, but when you're used to shooting your own stuff, you don't even think about that kind of thing.

David F. Sandberg 25:12
Yeah, I mean, that that was also the thing with the effects. Because I, we shot, for example, we shot at a school where we weren't allowed to show the name of the school. So I was telling the line producer that, you know, I can just paint that out on my laptop, you know, with open source software. But he was like, No, I mean, it has to go through the proper channels, and we don't have that in the VFX budget. So instead, the production designer had to paint or make a physical sign and actually hang it up over the real sign, which just felt stupid. But then, when we were in post, I did a lot of work. Some, like 15 or so the effects shots myself. And then it was alright, because, you know, the VFX. Guys, you know, unfortunately for them, they don't have a union. So that was sort of all right, with me doing a bunch of VFX shots myself.

Jason Buff 26:10
That kind of gives you the their vote of approval with the stuff that you did.

David F. Sandberg 26:15
Yeah, I mean, no one said anything like we showed it to people like you. I mean, the studio know that I was doing some of the stuff and they didn't mind united for free. So you know, when when?

Jason Buff 26:28
Yeah, were you now one of the things that I see that you use? And you mentioned this in one of your videos, is that you'd like to use open source software like blender?

David F. Sandberg 26:38
Yeah, I mean, that's it started out just because I didn't have any money. And I was homemakers like, Oh, hey, this free software is free. And it was a bit of a learning curve. I think blenders gotten a lot better recently. But you know, since it was free, and was pretty much the only option, I sort of powered through and learned it.

Jason Buff 27:03
Did you just learn by creating projects? or was there some sort of resource that you were using?

David F. Sandberg 27:08
This is sort of a common, I mean, mostly, if I wanted to find out how to do a specific thing I or sort of a specific thing. I just searched YouTube for tutorials on that. Otherwise, it would like blender guru has a lot of cool tutorials. And now on blender nation, you can find a lot of cool stuff as well. So, yeah, but mostly just doing like, trying to find out what can and can't do. Right.

Jason Buff 27:39
Now talking about horror in general, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about why your shorts, really, I mean, they're very effective in terms of, you know, having a kind of universal idea behind them something that's very much, you know, something that connects with people, you know, no matter where they are. Can you talk a little bit about how you developed your ability to kind of me know, it's not just like cheap jumpscares there's actually some, you know, there's a lot of, you know, story to it, and things that are going on almost subconsciously while you're watching it. How did you kind of develop your technique in terms of, you know, when you're watching the, the short lights out? What What were your influences and things that you were like, Okay, this is how I'm going to, you know, really suck people in and then scare the hell out of them. If that makes sense. It's a long.

David F. Sandberg 28:38
I mean, I, when I started making horror shows with friends, there were a lot of fake blood and stabbing and stuff like that, which I sort of got tired of. And I'm more into sort of suspense and sort of playing with fun ideas and stuff. So I mean, just the main thing with with the short was that, you know, we tried to have not just a bunch of scares, but just have that scare in the beginning to get you on the edge just because then you know, that, okay, anything can jump out at any moment, but then not have another scare until the end. So it's just tension up until that point, because whenever you have a jump scare, you sort of deflate the tension and you have to start over again, you know, because you sort of, you can laugh because you jumped or, or whatever. I don't know, I just just love mood and sort of tension and try to keep that maintain for as long as possible.

Alex Ferrari 29:49
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Jason Buff 29:58
Are you thinking to yourself, are you You're kind of like, okay, this is what I want people to be thinking at this moment or feeling at this moment. And just trying to kind of like, I mean, there's a great moment when Lata tapes, the light, and that's kind of like, that's a little bit of comic relief. I think that I mean, I don't know if it was planned like that. And it's very similar to the moment where she drops the, I guess it's like a pearl or something, or the marble or something into the No, yeah, right thing. And there's always there's, there's like, it seems like there's a, it's like, it leads up there's something that's like, okay, we're supposed to sit there and be like, Okay, what, what's going on? What is this? You know, and a lot of it's the thing that I love about your shorts is so much is done with sound? There's not these cheesy FX, you know, CDs, or whatever, you know, I mean, it's all done purely, like quiet, and you just hear these little subtle noises.

David F. Sandberg 30:58
Yeah, I mean, I love playing with expectations. Because there's nothing more boring when you watch a movie and you, you already know, every beat is going to play, you know. So that's what I hope to achieve, to play with extra typical expectations. And that's something very proud of in the feature that they a lot of some of the characters, they don't do the typical stupid horror movie character stuff and get themselves killed. So, you know, people who have seen the film are like, Oh, he's going to die now. And then it turns out, no, he's actually smart, and he's going to get away. But also, as far as the humor, you know, yeah, I've been doing sort of humorous animation for a long time. So I like to have that little bit of humor in it. And, in fact, in lights out nuts, I mean, the tape was definitely supposed to be a little moment, brief moment of humor. But the face at the end, to me was supposed to be humorous as well, because it's this sort of face that turns off the lights, but most people are. They don't see the humor, but

Jason Buff 32:08
Kind of a twisted humor problem.

David F. Sandberg 32:09
Yeah. No, but I like that. Because there's no there's funny moments in the the feature as well. That's, that's not very evident in the trailer they released but people, you know, that that's, I love seeing the future with an audience because they laugh and clap, and they cheer and like, it's the best. It's like horror and comedy, are the best sort of films to see with an audience really?

Jason Buff 32:39
Yeah, I think that one of the things that a lot of horror movies don't get right as the humor, you know, they think that everything is supposed to be just okay, scary. jumpscares you know, somebody's walking with a flashlight, and then jumpscare, and they don't really develop the characters at all, you know, they don't really work on the story, we have,

David F. Sandberg 33:00
I think you need that sort of dynamic range in movies, you know, like, because then, you know, if everything is just depressive darkness, you know, then means you need the lighter moments as well just to have the difference between the two and the same in comedies. If it's just silly the whole time. It's not as good as if you have some emotional depth times you just need variation really. And I think no movies, has this needs to be serious enough that you can have some light moments.

Jason Buff 33:38
What would you consider I was actually watching one of your other interviews, and you mentioned jumpscares that were just kind of cheap. jumpscares Yeah. And I was wondering if you had kind of an example of what is like an urn jumpscare versus one that's just the cheap one thrown in there for effect.

David F. Sandberg 34:00
Now, the cheap ones are the typical, you know, the cat jumping out from a cupboard or something or the friend putting a hand on the shoulder or just stuff that's not that's not part of a scare, you know, like it needs to come from whatever it is that scary. So, I mean, for instance, take an example from James Juan from insidious you know, the Red Demon face. I mean, that sits behind Patrick Wilson.

Jason Buff 34:30
I think that's such a great scene.

David F. Sandberg 34:32
Yeah. Because that's really well made because you have you have her telling the story and setting the mood. And then you even have that sound design that crackly sound design sort of creeping in a little bit for you see the the face. I mean, you can have jumpscares like, I think is one is it Paranormal Activity two or something like that all the cupboards open at once. And it's like, you know, it's just quiet just someone sitting in a kitchen doing nothing, it's just boring. And then bam, all these kitchen cabinets fly open. And, of course, you're going to jump because it's unexpected, but it's not part of, it's not really scary, you know, it's not, it's not building to anything. So I think those are the sort of lace your jumpscares, because you can make people jump there easily, they just have to be unprepared. But to make them to put them in that mood, and then make them jump is a lot more fun and effective.

Jason Buff 35:36
So is there like a choreography to it that you're like, Okay, here's this, like, when you watch and Sidious. And I want to talk about James one and just a second. And, you know, it seems very, you know, I don't know exactly how he approaches it, but it seems like okay, this is we're going to create this jumpscare you know, we're gonna put it together and it's got certain beats to it. Yeah. Is there like, as you're going through the screenplay, and everything are you like, Okay, we need to have, you know, certain moments that are going to be like this, and you just kind of start putting them together? I mean, how does that all work?

David F. Sandberg 36:14
This sort of come naturally from the situation. So that's what I tried to do, at least to just build from the situations the characters are in, and then not to have them just be like a singular scare, but actually haven't be part of a longer sequence. And I think that's sort of James's mo as well to not just have bandages scare, and now it's normal scene, and bam, there's a scare, but it's actually something that builds you have. Things start going crazy. And then they get even creepier, you have a little bit of a scare, and then it just ramps up and it stretches out for longer than just have those brief punctuation scares, you know? Do you work?

Jason Buff 37:02
Are you conscious of the like the compression and expansion of times you're going through like this is gonna go by real fast. And then once we get to this suspenseful scene, let's just drag it out as much as we can.

David F. Sandberg 37:13
Pretty much yeah, we'll just Yeah, I mean, all scenes need, you need to find that sort of rhythm of when to compress and when to expand. But yeah, for when you're when you're in those tense moments, you really want to expand as much as possible without without going overboard, you know, you can have people just walking through a hallway for way too long.

Jason Buff 37:39
You do that in editing, you're just kind of like Okay, let's try it a little shorter. Okay, little Okay, little I mean, do you like, sit there and just nitpick exactly when is the right moment?

David F. Sandberg 37:49
Kinda Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, I mean, I have a pretty clear, I plan these things out in advance so much that it's not that much that can change in editing, I guess. But. But yeah, then then it's finding the sound effects as well to work with, and just where the sound design because a lot of movies have that that's something that happened in the initial sound design on the outside as well that they the sound guys were putting in. They were sort of giving away the scares with the sounds like they had sounds building up to a scare or like, they just had a tendency to put in too much sound and telegraphing everything that was going to happen. So that was a bit of a struggle.

Jason Buff 38:37
There's nothing scarier to me than being in a horror film. And all of a sudden, there's like, no sound. I mean, that's the scariest. Yeah, it's scary. She can do because you know, something's gonna happen.

David F. Sandberg 38:47
Yeah, and that was the thing with the music as well for the feature that I didn't want a lot of music for the scarier prospect. We can have use it whenever else. But let's go quiet. And let's just have the scenes play out. As they aren't, you know?

Jason Buff 39:04
Now, moving back, I kind of jumped forward, talking about lights out when that became a big, you know, kind of a viral success. What were you contacted by other people? I mean, what what was that kind of like, when you realize that people were kind of sharing it? I mean, I think it had like, 20,000 or 20 million views or something like like crazy. Yeah.

David F. Sandberg 39:27
Well, first sort of people, just random people contacted us and said, they want to work with us. And you know, like actors and like this one guy who does special effects for movies, like big blockbuster movies. It was like, Hey, I'd love to work with you. And I was like, Yeah, I'd love that too. But, you know, it's just me and locked down on our apartment in Sweden with no money. It's like, how's that going? But then, I actually, you know, we started getting contacted by these people on by journalists and I actually said look like, you know,

Alex Ferrari 40:02
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David F. Sandberg 40:11
I've heard that people in Hollywood, you know, get representative, but people get representation from Hollywood, through like viral videos and stuff that agents, managers, you know, look at Vimeo staff pics and stuff like that. And it was just like a day after I said that I woke up and I had my first email from a management company here. And then it was just all at once, like, I got contacted by me, managers and agents and producers and studios. And it was just insane. Like, I had to put together a spreadsheet with everyone I talked to, and what I what was said the last time. And yeah, so we're like, so, you know, first of all, I had to sort of choose manager and agent, which was a great position to be in because I had all these options, but at the same time, I knew nothing about them. Because when you Google these management companies or agencies, you know, they don't they hardly have webpages, because they don't want people contacting them like that. They'll contact you if you've done something they're interested in. Right? So I had a, I got like an IMDb Pro account, so that I could at least see like who these guys were representing. Just to get a feel for who they were. And yeah, it was a crazy time, because because of the time difference, you know, during the day, I just have a normal day. And then during the evening and the night, it was just phone calls with Hollywood every day.

Jason Buff 41:47
So you still had like a normal day job when this was all going on?

David F. Sandberg 41:51
Yeah, I mean, my job at the time was pretty much a freelance animator, right, which is code word for broke. Because I was doing this on my own, and I'm terrible with charging for my work. So they were like, Hey, so how much do you want to make this one minute commercial? And it's like, oh, well, you know, it's not that hard to do. So I can really charge a lot of money for it. And yeah, so. And that guy was, that was the thing as well, that once I picked a manager, they were like, Hey, so can you fly out to LA, because we want you to meet all these people. And you know, go on this, go to all these producers and studios and stuff like that. I'm like, Nope, I don't have money. So all I could do was sort of Skype with people for the time. But then, I got in contact with a producer called Lawrence gray. He was one of the first sort of producers I got in contact with who wants to make something out of lights out. And, you know, as soon as that started coming together, he he paid for me to fly out to LA. So we could meet, you know, James Juan in the studio and get everyone on board. And that when we were out here, that's when I did the whole water bottle tour, as they call it, where you go to all these studios and producers and just have general meetings. And, you know, they offer you a bottle of water. And so yeah, so that

Jason Buff 43:26
How was that. I mean, was that like a total cultural shock for you?

David F. Sandberg 43:30
Yeah. I didn't know what you're supposed to do. But this is just a general meeting. So it's like, they just, they ask about you. And you know what, who you are and like, what you want to do. And then they give you their spiel about who they are, what they do. And then you can get their business card, and it's like, hey, let's keep in touch or something and you walk out over sometimes they might send you a script or something like, Hey, maybe this script is something for you. Yeah, but I just, yeah, it was all new. And then that's the thing as well, that after. So we were out here for a little over a week, I think. And one of the last scheduled things was to meet new line in the studio that was interested in, in doing lights out. And so after every general meeting, my agents would talk to, you know, like, checkup and also how was that the feedback they got was that I was very sort of reserved, and that, you know, I didn't talk a lot because, you know, I was very Swedish. And

Jason Buff 44:38
What do you want?

David F. Sandberg 44:39
Yeah. So, so I got this call from my agent that were my managers and they were telling me that you know, it's important when you meet the studio now that you know, you can show them that you're that you can be captain of the ship, you know, that you can be a director, take charge and it's like, Ah, I don't know how to do that. I just, you know, tried my best to just talk a lot and be, you know, I was sort of telling them about this. YouTube short, I made the got banned from YouTube because it was had a lot of, you know, giant dicks and vaginas and a lot of sex and stuff in it. You know, that made him laugh. So, you know, and you know, I got to break the movie, so must have done something, right.

Jason Buff 45:26
But your manager was like, Okay, that was a little too far. Stone it down now.

David F. Sandberg 45:30
Well, they weren't there. They just knew that. They called me. Well, yeah, they just called me back after I heard you killed it. Okay.

Jason Buff 45:40
So that was with new line. Yeah. Okay. So that how did these these, the project comes together? You're talking to the executives? I mean, you know, where does Where does James one come into the picture with all this?

David F. Sandberg 45:55
Well, it actually started with when I was talking to all these people in Hollywood, I, one of the managers I talked to had this client who had written a script that I really loved. Because I, you know, even before all this happened, I'd read a lot of scripts, like I, you know, every year they have the blacklist with the most read scripts, and most liked scripts in Hollywood, or whatever. So I'd made sure every year to find downloads of of the scripts, so I could read them just to see what good scripts are like. And this guy had written one of those blacklist scripts, a horror script that I really liked. So I got in touch with him, and started talking about lightside. Because when we made the short, we had no idea what what a feature would be, because we didn't expect to make a feature out of it. So I started talking to this writer here in LA, who had an idea for it. But his idea was very big. And I felt like, I don't think I could, I don't think I could handle that as my first movie. And I don't think people would give me that kind of budget, you know, just coming from having done nothing to do such a big thing. So instead, I had this idea of making a smaller, sort of more family based story that could be made for less money, which that writer wasn't as interested in. But that writer put me in touch with Lawrence Gray, the producer, and Lawrence Gray was still interested in that idea. So I wrote a treatment based on that idea, like a 15 page treatment or something. And Lawrence, new James won, like he had a meeting with him, and they want to do find something to do together. And he felt that this could be it. So he sent my treatment to James to read, which he liked. So that's when they flew me out here to LA to meet with James. And so we did that. And then because James has his relationship in new line, that's how they came in, you know, they, they work together a lot. And James has now his production company at the Warner a lot to make, you know, this kind of low budget horror movies with newline. And it just came together really fast and really smoothly. And people kept telling me, you know, that don't get used to that, because that's usually not how it happens. But yeah, it just worked out really well.

Jason Buff 48:35
You off the topic? Do you ever deal with like trolls and people who are just kind of being jerks about like, I mean, it is kind of a rapid rise to that kind of thing.

David F. Sandberg 48:47
That's what I was expected that people would sort of hate me because I got this that I got this lucky, you know, people should hate that. But instead, people at least on YouTube, and all the comments I've read, people are like, Hey, I'm so proud of you and like, yay. Like, oh, okay, great. Like, that doesn't seem to be jealousy. There's seems more to be like, Oh, hey, one of us actually got in the door of, of Hollywood, you know? Yeah. Which is how I feel about it, because I certainly don't feel Yeah.

Jason Buff 49:23
Well, I mean, I think if you had a you know, if you came out with sunglasses on, you're just like, you know, being all egotistical. Yay. I was a nice guy. What happened to the Vimeo guy that I used to? Screw you guys now I'm a big time player. No.

David F. Sandberg 49:40
Like, just the other day I was meeting with this actress for potentially for Annabelle, too. And, of course, they set up this meeting at Chateau Margaux Chateau Marmont year where you know you're supposed to meet celebrities

Alex Ferrari 49:59
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David F. Sandberg 50:08
And he's just just so awkward. Like he was like, she was like, Oh, well, let me give you my email and she put out her hand to sue. Because you want me to give her my phone to her. But when she stretched out her hand, I was like, Oh, she wants to shake my hand. Okay, so I shake her hand. It's like, she was like, No, your phones like, oh, okay, so, yeah, I think I'm always going to be that awkward.

Jason Buff 50:38
That probably I mean, you know, once you've have one, you've got one on your, you know, behind you. I think the next one, you're going to be a little more like, okay, the step I'm getting, you're gonna find your comfort zone, you know?

David F. Sandberg 50:49
Yeah, hopefully, it's just Yeah, it's weird. It feels like I'm just going along with everything. And just, okay. No, no, yeah. So far.

Jason Buff 51:00
I mean, I certainly can't speak from, you know, experience with that. But LA is a very bizarre town to, you know, which is the way people act. And I mean, I was, I was a, you know, lowest I was working as like a PA on stuff. And, you know, there was just this whole way that people talk and act that I just couldn't ever wrap my head around, you know, because I come from the south, and we're just kind of say, we, I don't know, it's just a different world.

David F. Sandberg 51:25
Yeah. And it's weird as far as like, I hope I don't turn into an asshole. But like, I mean, I started I get a lot of people were sending me like their shorts, like, Hey, can you watch my short or they send me scripts and stuff like that. And, you know, I watch them. But now the more time goes on, I'm getting so many shorts sent to me, like, I don't have time to watch them all. It's like, sorry, you know, like, yeah, I want to be a nice guy and helpful, but I just don't have the time.

Jason Buff 52:01
Now. Well, let me let me ask you a question about that. You know, you're you're in a situation now where you're seeing a lot of shorts. And your shorts were they were all very effective. What are the things that you see with people who are making maybe indie films, indie horror films, and making shorts and things like that, that maybe, is kind of like mistakes that you see people making in terms of, you know, not being really effective, as, you know, maybe jumpscares, or being scary or whatever, because there's a lot of filmmakers out there, making shorts trying to do what you're doing. And it's just not quite hitting the nail on the head.

David F. Sandberg 52:42
I mean, I'd say the biggest problem that I see is that they're too long, or that they don't get to it quickly enough. Even even the ones that are just three minutes or something like, I feel like with attention spans today, and especially online, you have to you have to keep up the pace. And just I think timing is just the biggest issue. The second biggest is probably sound that people don't, you know, spend enough time on sound like the lot of shorts can look great, because you have all these cameras and tools these days to make them look really expensive. But then people don't pay as much attention to sound and timing and sound. I'd say,

Jason Buff 53:29
What did you use to like? You? I assume you had like a digital recorder? Yeah. When you were shooting did you What did you use for like the kind of jumps those those sounds?

David F. Sandberg 53:42
Well, actually, I believe they didn't have for all of these shorts, I don't record sound when we're shooting, I replace all the sound in post. And that's something I started doing. As soon as I could edit, digitally, like on a computer, that's how I did it just replace every sound, even the dialogue just to have that control. Like, I may not be necessary to be that anal about it. But you know, that's that's been how I work with it. So and also I've always wanted to make sure that I could put these up without any copyright issues and stuff like that. So I've always been sort of afraid of like sound effects libraries or royalty free music and stuff like that, in case they weren't actually royalty free and stuff like that. So I've made a point of trying to record as much sound myself as that I can and just try and make my own music even even though it's not great. It's at least I know I can use it as much as I want. But yeah, I've just I have for a while there I used to record a lot of sounds just on my little I had assumed h four and just brought it with me When I was going places just because hey, maybe I'll find a cool sound.

Jason Buff 55:06
Yeah, like Ben Burtt. Sorry. Are you a fan of Ben Burtt?

David F. Sandberg 55:11
Yeah, absolutely. He's awesome. But yeah, just trying to gather as much sounds as I can keep in my little library.

Jason Buff 55:23
Do you? One of the things that I think is also really effective is not showing the monster, you know? Yeah. That I've seen a couple of shorts recently, where it was like, Oh, okay. That was the, that's the thing that we're supposed to be afraid of. And you look at it and kind of like, okay, that's quite, you know, no,

David F. Sandberg 55:41
Yeah, like we did this shortcode coffer where I kind of kind of regret showing a monster at the end there, because I don't think it was needed. But yeah, in general, I try to not show it as much. And even in the feature, you don't see a lot of the what she actually looks like. Because I mean, you're what you imagined something to be is always going to be scarier than whatever rubber suit you get made. Even though you have even though we had like, Oscar winning makeup artists created, you know? Yeah, I remember,

Jason Buff 56:15
I think it was Spielberg who was always saying that, you know, your what you bring, it doesn't matter how scary the monster is, what you have in your head is always going to be a lot scarier than anything we can create on screen.

David F. Sandberg 56:26
Yeah, I'm I. I'm a big believer in that.

Jason Buff 56:30
So I want to get into a little bit about talking with James one. And if you could describe meeting with him, because we your sounded very casual about that. But I mean, I think that for most of us, it would be kind of a big deal to meet, you know, somebody like James Wan, and to be able to kind of just see how his mind works. Can you talk a little bit about that?

David F. Sandberg 56:51
Well, there's a lot going on in his mind. I mean, that first time I met him, he was just, he had so many ideas. Like he was just saying, Hey, we do this, maybe that happened, maybe this could be that. And they were. So like, far apart from each other. And like from I mean, some were like, totally sort of opposite from the treatment I had, while others were very much in line with it. But it's like, so walking out of that meeting. I was like, am I supposed to incorporate ideas into the script or into the story? Because I can't do that. Like, there's just so many and so varied, you know, but he just has a lot of ideas. Now, but that first meeting was great, except for just freaking out with all the ideas he had. I mean, yeah, he's cool. I mean, he sort of started out with a short as well, I mean, saw as a short and about to make a feature over here. And yeah, it was just telling me a lot about just just to have fun with it. Because it's it's weird business in a weird process. So, but couldn't really listen to that on lifestyle, because I was freaking out, like, Oh, this is my chance, chance, I better make it awesome. Maybe for maybe for anabol be able to be a little more relaxed and have fun with it.

Jason Buff 58:18
What did you I mean, psychologically, was what did you have to do to kind of just say, Okay, I'm going to deal with this and just kind of move forward. And even though things are freaking me out? Um, I mean, did, I'm sure there was a certain aspect of your personality that was like, that has like this imposter syndrome, which is something we all have, oh, yeah. You know, of like, walking in somewhere and being like, Oh, well, you know, I'm just waiting for these guys to figure out that, you know, I'm a fake or whatever, you know, and that's not just, I mean, that's everybody's kind of has that, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

David F. Sandberg 58:51
And I mean, especially with this, it's like, how come they're letting me do this, like, do they? I have more experience than I actually do? Because I think maybe it was an advantage. But I was from Sweden. So for all they know, I could be huge in Sweden and have a big career there. But so, yeah, I mean, I just was this weird feeling of just going along with everything, just, you know, just like, there was no way to prepare. So it's just alright, I'll just go along and try to figure things out as best I can try to be as prepared as possible, do a lot of storyboards and just figure everything out as much as possible in advance. And there's just so much weirdness. Like when we've a little over a year ago, when we first got here. I was invited to this, you know, like I'm with the same agency as James Wan. And Furious seven had recently came out were made like a billion dollars or something. So a lot and I were invited to this party in James's honor. And we had just gotten here and that wasn't on film wasn't good. mean like, yeah, so we had no money.

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David F. Sandberg 1:00:12
Like, we had borrowed from our families as much as we could, just to, you know, buy food and stuff. So we had no money at all. And we got invited to this party in this mansion in Beverly Beverly Hills, you know, and it's like, you know, Vin Diesel was there and Adrian Brody and it's like, What the hell are we doing here? It felt like we'd snuck into this thing. And so we were just sort of standing there talking to me that each other in Swedish, like keeping this appearance up of just casually talking, but we were just saying things like, This is so fucking weird. Like, what are we doing here? Like we, you know,

Jason Buff 1:00:49
Like, Oh, hey, Vin Diesel, how's it going?

David F. Sandberg 1:00:53
And I mean that that weirdness just hasn't stopped. Like when we went to cinema con recently because now we're doing publicity for light sound. Now we got to go on a private plane charted by Warner Brothers, you know, and diverse, like Samuel Jackson and Christoph Waltz. And just all these celebrities, Jared Leto, and on a private plane going to Vegas, this is so weird, like, I how can you can you ever get used to this?

Jason Buff 1:01:27
Is there anything that like kind of being in that world that surprised you that you kind of didn't think would be the way it actually is? It's kind of a vague question. But yeah, I mean, are people just kind of are people that are like that, you know, celebrities and stuff. When you're kind of hanging out at that level? Is it like, are they just kind of down to earth? And just like, kind of well, I mean, yeah,

David F. Sandberg 1:01:53
Well, I don't dare to talk to them anyways. Yeah, I talked to two Swedish celebrities, just briefly, Alexander Skarsgard. And Joel Kinnaman. But otherwise, it's like, I just feel so out of place that I can you know, I just keep them myself. Yeah. Yeah. But they seem like normal people, I guess. Yeah.

Jason Buff 1:02:17
Now, I want to go a little into pre production. And just talk about that a little bit. What was involved? How long was that process? Was it like, Okay, this is, when you're setting it all out? I assume that just from a complete, outsider's point of view, you've got I mean, who who's kind of your chief person that you're leaning on? Are you dealing with like a line producer? Are they giving you a certain you've got? Okay, this is your certain amount of time that you have to work on this. You're working on the screenplay with your writer? I mean, how is how does basically, pre production all come together? And then, you know, what are the kind of ways that you know, what are the things that you're doing? Yeah,

David F. Sandberg 1:02:58
I mean, first is sort of like a soft prep, I guess, when you're still just figuring out the screenplay. And you're sort of people are slowly starting to get hired like, yeah, line producers is was the one you sort of talked to a lot during pre production. And then all of a sudden, we, you know, you have a pre production office with all these people. And yeah, I mean, my first sort of thought before all of this was like, is this just going to be like me stepping onto a film set, and not knowing what the hell's going to happen or how things work. But during prep, I don't know how many, like real prep weeks, we had six, seven, or something on lights. But during prep, there's so much going through everything that once you get on set you you know, the movie Inside Out, you know, you have all these you do camera tests, you do like tech scouts, where you go through, you know, the whole location and just tell everyone, everything that's going to be shot and how it's going to be shot. And so it's just a lot of preparing and a lot of answering questions, because that's something that newline told me before it all started, like I went to dinner with these two executives, and they were like, you're gonna get a lot of questions, just answer them right away. Don't let them pile up until this big thing because even if you answer them wrong, we can always fix that on set. And all the questions were like, you know, what kind of car does this person drive what kind of shovel this this person pick up? And this seemed like stuff like that. Like there's a shot where someone picks up a shovel. So you get presented with like five different shovel options. And it's like, yeah, I want that shovel. And it's just so much weird. So many questions and it like it started. A gun burned out on giving answers. So I was actually buying a hamburger late one evening, and I like couldn't decide on the menu which burger to get. So I like I called my lockdown my wife and I was like, hey, just tell me what burger to get because I, I'm done with answers now so it's just, yeah, a lot of going through everything and figuring everything out lots of answering questions. And the weird thing on LightSail was that there was some casting issues. That ate up a lot of the pre production time, unfortunately. So, for example, Teresa Palmer wanted to do it pretty early on. But then there were some issues. Like, for example, we found out that she didn't actually have a visa, or like a work visa, because she's Australian. So like, she's married to an American. So we all figure like, well, she, you know, she's married to them. But it turned out that she, like, you have to be in the country for a certain number of days, consecutive days. And because she's an accuracy travels all over all the time. So she hasn't had that opportunity yet. So while that was figured out, we had to look for others. And yeah, was this whole thing where people got canceled very late. In fact, Maria Bello was cast, like a week or two into shooting the movie. So the first time I actually met her was like, five minutes before her first scene. So it's like, Oh, hey, nice to meet you. And action. So I was really lucky in the fact that we had such great actors that, you know, it's not like we needed all of that prep, like, they got into it really quickly. And were awesome. Because, you know, newline was saying, like, Yeah, this is the first time we've never had a table read before a shoe, because we just didn't have the cast. Oh, wow. And it also meant that, like Billy Burke is in the film, and he was cast even later than Maria Bello that he plays her husband. So all the, like, family photos in the house had to be just green pieces of paper, and then we'd have to, you know, put that post. So that was insane. But it worked out.

Jason Buff 1:07:25
Well talk a little bit about I think one of the things that intimidates directors, it certainly does me is the idea of, you know, working with an actor who is at that level, you know, what did you learn by, you know, working with those people? And what kind of what things can you share about what you learned about the directing actors?

David F. Sandberg 1:07:47
Well, I mean, something I've learned since I was younger, it's just that you're never going to get what's in your head, like, you have this sort of vision, about, I mean, the whole movie, really, but with accuracy, as well, that you hear them in your head saying things a certain way. But you're never gonna get that. I mean, if you try to just get them to say exactly this in exactly this way, it's just not going to be good. So my approach is just to go sort of, to not go against the grain and let the actors sort of find, or whatever. So for the first, like, for the first take, and not give them much direction at all, and just see what, what would come out of them. And if it was too far from what I wanted, we'd talk about it and we'd try it again, you know, but, yeah, in general, I just, I mean, they were so great that it was just, it wasn't very difficult. It wasn't like I had to pull a good performance out of it just sort of came naturally. And we just did. tweaked it a little bit. Yeah. But yeah, it was sort of intimidating. Like you know, Maria Bella, which I'm a huge fan of John she's in love a history of violence, which he's in and like, she's a nurse and all that. And, but, you know, she's like Karachi, come in and just nail it. And she would also sort of talk about, like, almost give tips or like, when she was walking working with Gabrielle cool kid in the film, she sort of come over to me and like, you know, he's doing this, this, maybe you can talk to him about that. So, which is very helpful.

Jason Buff 1:09:34
Yeah, I've found also that on some of the indie, you know, really low budget stuff. If you have one really good actor in there. A lot of times they kind of become the default, like acting teacher for everybody. So it's like, if you have a film, get at least one. I mean, you and your case, you've got a bunch of great actors.

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Jason Buff 1:10:01
But I mean, in that case, it's like, everybody's game goes up when you have somebody who is really,

David F. Sandberg 1:10:06
Yeah. Maria and and Teresa, lay mother and daughter were just awesome. Like, we have this scene where they're sort of a little bit of an emotional scene between them. And it's like, everyone who was there and saw that it was just like, yes, we, we, we got it, you know, this is, this is gonna be great. Because they just play off each other really well.

Jason Buff 1:10:32
And you can just sit back and go look at what a good director I

David F. Sandberg 1:10:36
It was a little bit like that, because we have the we're shooting this we're shooting this argument at a dinner table. And we were shooting a sort of handheld, sort of free flowing. And you know, sitting by the monitor, looking at that sort of handheld argument with great acting was like she just feels like the last one, three or four or something like, awesome.

Jason Buff 1:11:02
They were like who? That some Swedish guy? Yeah. Well, cool. Yeah, that's, I mean, I'm just kind of amazed. I'm kind of living vicariously through this through everything. You're saying,

David F. Sandberg 1:11:17
You know, what I want to I plan on doing a bunch of YouTube videos just talking about all this because it's stuff that I would want to know, like, how does this happen? And how, what's the process like? And I really want to talk about that. But most of that will have to be after the movie comes out, just because I want to go so in depth with the whole thing. You know what? Yeah, story points and everything?

Jason Buff 1:11:40
No, that would be amazing. You know, it's one of the difficult things I'm doing. You know, this is probably the first time I've talked to a filmmaker about a film that hasn't come out. Usually what we would do is just kind of jump in, start dissecting everything. You know, but I'm really looking forward to hearing hopefully, yeah, that'd be great. If you could just kind of explain the experience and put things together. Yeah, um, I just want to make sure that I've got a bunch of questions here. How are you doing for time? You okay?

David F. Sandberg 1:12:06
I have the whole day.

Jason Buff 1:12:08
Okay. Yeah, this will be our first 24 hour. Yeah, we'll just sit here. People will tune out. Now, let me see here. I've got a bunch of different things. I wanted to continue talking a little bit. I don't know how, you know, I talked to, I've talked to a number of filmmakers who have worked with, you know, kind of people that have big names in horror. Right now, I talked to Daniel Stam about making The Last Exorcism with Eli Roth and James Wan and Eli Roth are kind of in similar stratosphere is right now in terms of the horror world? Was he kind of, you know, hands on with stuff when he come on set. And one of the things that I was thinking about was like, you know, wouldn't it be cool if you're working on a horror film? And you could say, I wonder how James Wan would do this thing. And then you just say, Well, let me give him a call and like, let him see this or whatever. Were there any like moments like that? Where you're like, let me let me kind of see what's in his head, how would we put this together to be better or, or was there anything like that?

David F. Sandberg 1:13:10
A little bit of I mean, he, he's a really busy guy. He wasn't around all the time. But he did come by the set a few times. And he did have a lot of input, like, it gives me sort of his input, like, you know, maybe you can shoot this scene all in sort of one tape, because that is usually very effective when when you don't cut a lot when you have these sort of scary sequences. So we try that and nothing he didn't come in and sort of come with come up with some advice. And he in pre production, he was around for a little bit as well and had some ideas. Like, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the there's a neon sign gag, you know, that neon sign goes on and off, and she sort of blinks in and out. That was actually his idea, because my original idea was that it would be cars going by outside and the sort of headlights would sort of sweep across the room. And that's how she would sort of appear and disappear. But the neon sign was a really cool thing because you get more of that on off thing instead of this, this sweeping light. did make it hard to shoot though, because, you know, a neon sign would be on a set time interval. So at first we tried shooting it like okay, it's four minutes, four seconds on four seconds off. And Teresa would have to sort of act to that number. It's like okay, so the first time it goes off, you do this and second time you do this and it just didn't work. So what we had to do was I would just call out on or off so I would watch her performance and it's like okay, now it'd be good if it came on now would be good if it came off. But But So I was sort of afraid that people would go, what the hell's wrong with that neon sign? Because that sometimes it's all for 10 seconds. Sometimes it's all for one second, but no one's that seen the movie so far is complaint. So, yeah, it worked out.

Jason Buff 1:15:16
Did you ever talk to him about any of his films like The Conjuring? Or insidious? Or any of those? Or did you have any? Like, I would just be like, I would have like a million questions. It'd be like, Okay, I don't want to work with this guy anymore. Just leave me alone. Did you like ever kind of talk about his stuff? Because I mean, obviously, you know, when I watched lights out, the first kind of idea I had was, this is kind of in the same genre, kind of in the same mindset is insidious. And I don't know if insidious, I don't know, which came before or whatever. But did that did his films influenced you?

Or saw obviously,

David F. Sandberg 1:15:55
I'm sure they did. But what we mostly talked about, I think was saw just because that was his, that was the closest to my experience, because that was his first movie, his first time sort of coming to LA and doing all of that. So he would talk about, you know, the difficulties of getting the app made and just Yeah, trying trying to give as much advice as he could on just how to get through your your first movie, but I mean, his was a little bit different as well, because he, like he couldn't get into the country right away. So like, he had to do like all the pre production from he was stuck up in Canada waiting for his visa. So he, you know, he had like, a couple of days of prep on site before they had to start shooting. So yeah, I'm really glad that didn't happen to me. And yeah, no, we didn't really talk about stuff like that, he would sort of just give more of a general advice, like, you know, try to shoot more overlapping stuff. Because I, I'm so used to shooting and editing myself. So I'll only shoot like, okay, now I know that I'm going to cut to this and then I'm going to cut back. So I don't need all that. But so he was sort of adamant that no, but try to actually shoot everything through because she don't know what happens in edited and stuff like that.

Jason Buff 1:17:26
When you were on set, who was the guy that kind of I mean, did you have a pretty good relationship with your assistant director? Was there was it? Did you feel pretty comfortable after a while? Yeah.

David F. Sandberg 1:17:38
Yeah, no, I've got along great with everyone. And he's my assistant director is coming back on Annabelle to like, I have no idea. That's the first time I've ever worked with an assistant director. So it's good or not, but I liked him. He's coming back. No, it's just the first time working with every one really, like I've never had an someone else edit what I've shot before. So that was weird, or someone else should shoot when I'm making. So a lot of times it was almost like, oh, just let me do it. You know? Yeah.

Jason Buff 1:18:15
Did you kind of sit in video village and just kind of watch from there? Or did you actually get up and derive a camera?

David F. Sandberg 1:18:22
Yeah, I'm always sort of near the camera. I only look at a monitor. I mean, I usually just look at the focus pullers monitor because it was closer. I didn't want to go all the way to video village. But yeah, I mean, the good thing about the editing was that I've never edited with Avid on the AVID. So so even if I wanted to take over I didn't know that software at all. So I just had to sort of talk to the editor instead.

Jason Buff 1:18:57
What was that process? Like? I mean, how did you? I was it when did they start editing before you finished directing? What was what was kind of the timeline on that?

David F. Sandberg 1:19:08
No, they were editing while we were shooting, you know, like they got material continuously. So as soon as we wrapped production, I, you know, went to the post production office, and I could see the first cut of the movie. And I got super depressed. This is the worst thing ever. And everyone was telling me that that's how everyone feels. But good now starts the real work, you know, to make it into a good movie because everyone's saying like, well, you know, when Ben Affleck saw the first cut of Argo, he was like my career's over and then he won Oscars and stuff. And it really is like that because you have while you're shooting and you have this vision in your head.

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David F. Sandberg 1:20:03
And then you see what someone else has put together? And it's like, oh, no, I wouldn't have put that there. And that, you know, it's all. It's not at all what you'd expect, you get really depressed. But you just you keep working at it, you take things out, you move things around, and you tweak it. And then eventually, it's like, hey, this isn't bad. But yeah, and I mean, I got really depressed during the shooting as well. Because here's, the thing is that whenever we make our shorts, Latina, halfway through the short, I'll just be now this is shit. I don't want to do this. And she'll have to convince me that, no, we're actually going to finish this. And then we do and then it actually you're like, hey, this is bad. You know, we've actually made something cool. And that happened on lights out as well. But because it was a feature in my first Hollywood film and everything, it was so much worse, like, I got so depressed for a while there in the middle was like, this isn't fun at all. Like, I don't want to make movies. And yeah, and the producers took me out to dinner to sort of cheer me up and talk about it. And that's the whole Ben Affleck Argo thing came up there as well as like, he was unlike it when it's finished. Yeah, and I got back to it and powered through and then got fun again, and it turned into a good movie, but it was just so overwhelming, you know, working with all these people and being like, question on the camera stuff that I was talking about before and just, it was so overwhelming and just so much work, you know, you work 15 hour day, so you you really become depressed. But then once it's over, you're like, Yeah, let's do that again. It's weird.

Jason Buff 1:21:54
Do you remember a moment when you really started feeling that depression? I mean, was it just things weren't coming together the way you wanted them to?

David F. Sandberg 1:22:03
Yeah, we're just I don't know exactly what it was. It was just dealing with so much. At once, and then those really long hour days. I think I was the most depressed after like, a 15 hour day, came home at night. It's like this. I can't I can't do it, you know,

Jason Buff 1:22:25
Just from exhaustion.

David F. Sandberg 1:22:27
Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. Because I can't really point to one thing was like, Oh, that just fucked everything up. And yeah, it's just hard to get through. But yeah, I did. It's,

Jason Buff 1:22:39
I mean, I think that's really super important for other filmmakers also to hear, you know, because not many people will, you know, they don't talk about that aspect of it that, you know, and you can look back through time, I mean, look at, you know, Star Wars or all these, you know, amazing films, I was listening to some interview, I think with Robert Rodriguez about talking with Quentin Tarantino, and how depressed he was that pulp fiction was just this piece of shit. And he was like, so depressed about it. And he's like, it's doesn't make any sense. And it's the done whatever, you know, and it's like, it seems like a pretty common thread with, you know, making a film that you you will go through that, you know, yeah, even the shorts, like you said, like, the short too. Yeah,

David F. Sandberg 1:23:22
I mean, the most important thing is to not give up even though I mean, when you're in that moment, you are 100% sure that this is never going to be good that this is going to be shit. So it's really hard to continue, especially if you're making a low budget, no budget thing at home, because then it's easy. It's just not was, you know, go watch Game of Thrones, or, you know, do something else instead. But you just really have to power through and get it done because you you can't know how you will feel about it when it's done while you're in the making of you just can't even though you're 100% convinced that you can. Alright.

Jason Buff 1:24:03
Now, I'm just curious how old were you when you made lights up? The short?

David F. Sandberg 1:24:09
So I was How old are you? I'm 35. So 33 and 3233. Okay, I guess it was at the end of the deadline for that competition that we entered it in was December 30 2013. And then it went viral in the spring of 2014. Right.

Jason Buff 1:24:35
Well, can you uh, was there any day in particular that sticks out? That was like the hardest day you ever had on the set?

David F. Sandberg 1:24:45
I mean, I guess it must have been about 15 hour day when we were just trying to pick as the we actually shot the finale of the film, or a big sort of scene pretty early. Leon, that's what took so much time, it was so hard. And yeah, I don't know, if it was the same day, maybe it was the same day. But when when we're having a big argument with the camera team as well, because we were shooting one of those scenes with the neon light when she disappears, you know, so you have to shoot, you have to lock the camera off, shoot it with the performer, and then shoot it without the performer. So you can do that the effects thing of her going in and out. And they were. So we've moved the camera, and then we were going to shoot one more time of her appearing and disappearing. And they were telling me that no, but we already shot the clean clean plate. And I was like, but we've moved the camera, we're gonna have to do another clean plate. And they were kept telling me that. But we already have we shot it before. And I was like, eventually I just snapped and I was like, just put the camera here. Turn it on. And now you come in here and now you okay, not roll the camera, cut it and like I just had to take over and be Yeah, I was kind of mad.

Jason Buff 1:26:15
Do you have what looking back now on the process and kind of being a little more weathered? I mean, do you feel like you changed a lot from the first day to the last day in terms of just the way you were doing things?

David F. Sandberg 1:26:29
Yeah, and I just just realizing how much you can ask for or demand even. Because it was this whole thing that I've talked about. I've talked about reasonably where like, I wanted this scene to be shot with candle light. Like the little boy Gabriel, he has a candle walking through the house. And everyone was telling me like, No, you can't do that you got to light and you got to light it properly. Okay, and but then James came to the set that they were shooting that and he was like, Hey, you should like that. But just a candle. And everyone was like, oh, okay, great. Great. We'll do that. So it's like,

Jason Buff 1:27:10
Mr. Wong, sure. Whatever you say? Yeah. So

David F. Sandberg 1:27:13
I've just realized that you can demand more. And something I discovered as well was, sometimes when I was just tired and things weren't going as well as I wanted to, I'd be like, Alright, that's good enough. Let's move on. But then everyone would be like, good enough. No, like, that's like the worst thing you can tell the film crew that it's just good enough? Because they want it to be really good.

Jason Buff 1:27:37
Did you say that on the air? It's good enough?

David F. Sandberg 1:27:40
It did. And I got that reaction. It's like, what do you mean, good enough? Like,

Jason Buff 1:27:45
I'm Swedish, but I mean, something else? Does we say it a different way? That it sound bad? I don't know.

David F. Sandberg 1:27:50
Yeah. So it's just realizing how much you can actually demand or sort of get people to do, because the thing is, well, is that no one on set is going to care as much about the film as you do, just because for most of these people, for most of the crew, it's just another job, you know, like, there's another movie, and they'll just soon move on to another thing. So of course, if there's an easy way to do it, then that means they'll go home to their families earlier. And you know, you can't blame him for that. But sometimes, you have to do things the hard way that the way that will take a lot of time just to get it right. And, yeah, that's sort of learned to demand that I guess.

Jason Buff 1:28:34
I mean, as far as I've seen, with a lot of, you know, these films, the director is usually the one person who has the least experience of being on a set. Yeah, you know, because all these other guys have been working for years, as you know, crew members, and it's doing stuff.

David F. Sandberg 1:28:49
That's a weird thing. Like, there's two jobs on a film set you can get with no experience in PA and the director. We were just super weird to be on that film set and feel. I mean, it's reassuring as well to feel that you were the least experienced, because I believe everyone else has made movies before. Yeah, it's really good that a director can get that shot, while others have to do go the long way, you know, to get good at cinematographer, or you know, it's a strange business.

Jason Buff 1:29:27
Well, you kind of see that going right and going wrong with different people, you know, because there's a lot of directors who are around now that's I mean, I look at like Gareth Edwards for example is probably one of the closest examples to kind of your story you know, which was he made he went out and was making stuff on his own and then you know, he made monsters with a little you know, the ATX X something the Sony with a lettuce 50 millimeter on his you know, and then just took it into, I mean, I see a lot of similarities with with what you guys Done.

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Jason Buff 1:30:11
And he, he was the one that kind of inspired me to kind of get back into filmmaking after, you know, I've been doing graphic design for years. And I was like, wow, look at what this guy did, and just kind of shot handheld and put all the effects in with motion tracking and everything. And then I saw what you did. And when I first discovered your videos, I didn't know that you were making a feature. I think the first time I saw lights out you had already you were already in LA, you were already making it, you know, so I didn't even know that part of the story after it.

David F. Sandberg 1:30:40
Yeah, no, I mean, it's quite interesting that there's so Hollywood seems to be so prepared to take chances on new directors, which is probably a bad idea. Sometimes, I wouldn't have given me a movie because that's the thing back in Sweden, where we couldn't get money, you know, I went to one of the film centers in Sweden, and want to get like, a couple of grand to make a short. And they thought that they said that I wasn't experienced enough to apply for the sort of professional money. And they said, yeah, maybe you can apply for the rookie money. But the rookie money were was for people under 30. So suddenly, I was like, Okay, I'm too old. For the rookie money. I'm too inexperienced for professional money. So what do I do now? While Hollywood? You know, they see a two and a half minute short, I directed and they're like, Hey, here's $5 million. direct a movie. And I was talking to a DP who shot a single man, among other films. He's from Spain. And he was saying the same thing like he was 27. And no one in Spain wanted to take a chance on him as a DP. But in Hollywood, they were like, Yeah, you can DP a single man. So for some reason, they're stupid enough to take chances on people.

Jason Buff 1:32:04
Do you find that like, I mean, what did you notice? When you are in that world of producers and executives and stuff? Are they kind of dialed into that whole world of YouTube people? And Vimeo? I mean, is that kind of Yeah, that they really started focusing on finding their next people from them? And obviously with you?

David F. Sandberg 1:32:24
Yeah. No, that's something I've discovered here. Like, you hear a lot of talk about what's currently the, you know, the viral video or Yeah, people get discovered from that a lot. It seems I mean, I don't seems to still be pretty rare that one goes to a feature, but you can still, you know, get in a room and get meetings and people and maybe representation by doing shorts, because they seem to keep track of what's out there. And what's popular

Jason Buff 1:32:54
With Nate would talk to you about your shorts when I mean, and I don't know if you and James talked about this, but were were they commenting on the amount of views that had and the the amount of like the viral sensation, or did they specifically say Oh, well, this guy knows what he's doing. Because look at this short and look at these things that he you know, these are kind of advanced things that you were doing versus somebody who just started doing, you know,

David F. Sandberg 1:33:19
Yeah, I don't think they cared that much about the views just sort of the effectiveness of the film. Really. Um, then I know James was at first a little hesitant because he was like, yeah, it's a cool short, but can this guy tell like a 90 minute story, which is, you know, the treatment I wrote was what? Persuade him it's like, that's what made him go okay. This guy. No longer storytel Darling as well. Yeah.

Jason Buff 1:33:52
Did you when you were after the treatment it what was is the the actual screenplay pretty, pretty much what you had in that treatment, or was it changed?

David F. Sandberg 1:34:03
It's out of here. Eric Kaiser who wrote the screenplay, kept very close to that treatment. In fact, there's even like, ended up treatment were bits of dialogue and stuff that actually made it through to the film as well. Like, there was one scene in there where we needed like a little scene between Teresa and her boyfriend. And sort of like a placeholder, I wrote this scene where they have a, like, an argument about a sock, or whatever, that actually made it through the film. Like I was convinced that that would be the first thing that he would throw out. But he kept it in. So yeah, good. Pretty close.

Jason Buff 1:34:43
Was there ever a moment when you you were considering or you thought about actually writing the screenplay for it? Or did they want to just go with somebody that was a little more seasoned?

David F. Sandberg 1:34:53
Like I felt that I didn't want to push my luck, you know? I'm just like a first time Director, so they probably don't want a first time writer as well. And it's the same thing with lock day, you know, like, she's been the star of every short. But like, we didn't want to push her to be the lead in the film, because I mean, we just didn't want to push her luck because it felt like oh, well, we have this chance now. Like, if we push too hard, they might go, oh, well done. We're not doing the film. So it's like, yeah, a lot of that, like, Yeah, sure. I'll just work with the writer. But it turned out great, because I loved Eric's work as well. And he, you know, while I was doing the water ball tour, and agents, were sending me scripts. The one script that I wanted, really wanted to make was one that he had written called Birdbox. And

Jason Buff 1:35:46
Was that one you said?

David F. Sandberg 1:35:48
Yeah. Well, that was another writer. But yeah, that Birdbox was on blacklist as well. Okay. Okay. Sorry. That's so no lot and I even made a little like a trailer for Birdbox to sort of, to pitch that to production company, but I'm not really sure what to do with that now. I think Andy machete or miscarry or the who made Mama's is right, but he's doing it now. So I don't know what's happening with that. But that was a really good script that I was very happy that he wanted to write lights out.

Jason Buff 1:36:28
Yeah, well, that's another example. That guy that made Mama is another guy that like had a short Yeah. And was kind of did the same trajectory that you did. Yeah. And

David F. Sandberg 1:36:38
God gambled. Guillermo del Toro as a producer.

Jason Buff 1:36:42
Not too shabby. How is Lata dealt with La she feel uncomfortable there is that what has she done?

David F. Sandberg 1:36:51
Yeah, no. She's loving it as well. I mean,

Jason Buff 1:36:56
She ever get recognized?

David F. Sandberg 1:36:58
She does. I mean, even I've started to get recognized. We were at the grove here in LA the other day, and these three guys came up, say, Hey, are you the director of lights out? And it's like, hey. Now, so that's weird. But yeah, see you like that?

Jason Buff 1:37:14
I mean, do you like being recognized?

David F. Sandberg 1:37:16
So far? Yeah. I mean, as a director, I don't think you ever get to that point where it's annoying. Well, I mean, I wouldn't want to be, you know, Brad Pitt, or someone who can't probably can't go out side. A lot. But yeah, so far. It's it's great.

Jason Buff 1:37:36
Yeah, I can imagine like you just, you know, go into that well, in LA. It's totally different, though. Because you'll go to the grocery store, and you'll see like five or six stars shopping there. And it's like nothing.

David F. Sandberg 1:37:45
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Like, yeah, just down the street here. I walked by Christopher Nolan the other day and said,

Jason Buff 1:37:51
Oh, like I'm a fellow director.

David F. Sandberg 1:37:55
Yeah. We were in the same union.

Jason Buff 1:38:01
Yeah, I used to go to a grocery store that was like down the road from like, near kind of near Melrose, I used to live. And there was a grocery store there that I would always go and I would pay more because I would always see a star there. But I would just kind of sit there and like, watch them and be like, Wow, that's

David F. Sandberg 1:38:14
Yeah, it's like, Daniel, same thing here. We've seen a lot of celebrities down in the grocery store. You just play cool. You just

Jason Buff 1:38:26
Well, you know, now you can do that a new movie set, you can be like, hey, that's just gonna talk to me. Oh, he's coming over here. Like, you're the director. Why are you hiding? Yeah. Hi, how you doing?

David F. Sandberg 1:38:39
I have a friend was like, Hey, can you give me that guy's autograph or whatever? It's like, No, I have to play cool. I know what I'm doing. When I'm meeting all these people.

Jason Buff 1:38:50
Well, is there like, do you kind of have a dual life now? I mean, it's like you go, you go back to Sweden. And it's kind of like, oh, yeah, it's just David. You know, how's it going and everything. Then he come back. And it's kind of like you get to be on a set and have all these, like, famous people and everything.

David F. Sandberg 1:39:06
I mean, so far, I only been back for two weeks at Christmas. So like, I don't know, I'm just here all the time now. This is my life now. But it's awesome. I want to see how far I can take this Hollywood thing because I can always go back to making nobody short. If this doesn't work out.

Jason Buff 1:39:26
Well, you can always talk to the people that didn't give you your fund. Yeah, be like Hey, guys, remember?

David F. Sandberg 1:39:32
Yeah, I've moved to Hollywood movies. Now. I got some money. Like, I don't know. I haven't done any Swedish movies.

Jason Buff 1:39:40
Yeah, that's the real you know the sign. Are there any Swedish horror movies that people like did I mean I know you probably I've seen seen your your other conversations and I know you you like mostly kind of American based horror films and stuff. Are there any horror films from Sweden that people should check out?

Alex Ferrari 1:40:01
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David F. Sandberg 1:40:10
Yeah, I mean, the one of the more famous ones is select the right one, and

Jason Buff 1:40:15
Oh, yeah, that's brilliant.

David F. Sandberg 1:40:17
No, do they do some of that stuff? Usually it's based on books. I guess that makes them more comfortable in doing genre, stuff like that. And you know, girl with a dragon tattoo just isn't really hard. And that's more of a genre film. What else? Is there? Not a lot of horror made in Sweden. I don't think it's more serious sort of movies about alcoholism, and immigrants and divorce.

Jason Buff 1:40:47
But what would you what are your like, favorite? Like, what if you had to go back and like pick, say, like five films that are the ones that influenced you the most? What would those be?

David F. Sandberg 1:40:56
Well, just from my childhood, it's sort of Action, Horror, sci fi, you know, aliens Terminator. The thing. Diehard, you know, the stuff I grew up on, which I still love, and yeah, I just last week, I think it was they were showing aliens on the big screen here at Arclight. And that's always been my dream to see that in a theater. So I had to go on. It's like, yeah, man, this movie still holds up. I love that movie.

Jason Buff 1:41:24
Yeah, so good. Yeah. But yeah, alien or Aliens.

David F. Sandberg 1:41:29
Aliens. I mean, one of the best.

Jason Buff 1:41:32
Well, it's amazing. Yeah. Aliens was the first movie that I ever saw. I'm a little older than you. But I mean, I saw that I was I got into the theater with my family to watch it. And I realized about a couple minutes in that I was way too young to be on that movie. Because that was scary. I mean, I didn't sleep for a week. And to this day, it's still the most horrifying movie just in terms of, you know, scaring the hell out of me. But I mean, I think it came out at what, like 96 or something. I mean, 8686 Yeah. Yeah. And I would have been like 12 or something like that, but I remember going to see that and Oh, my God, it was so scary. And I mean, that's probably one of my favorite screenplays, too, you know? Yeah. I mean, James Cameron, just like, has this way of creating anyway, I don't want to get off.

David F. Sandberg 1:42:20
Yeah, no, but I'm not. I'm like Cameron fanboy as well.

Jason Buff 1:42:23
Okay. So let me just ask you this. And I'll kind of wrap it up with Annabelle, too, are you? Do you go back and look at the original movie? Are you what, what do you do in a creative sense? And I know you're you're not writing the screenplay for it, I assume. Yeah. But I assume you have a lot to do with what's going to be in the screenplay.

David F. Sandberg 1:42:45
Yeah, we're working together with the writer and all that. You know, without giving too much away, the story of animal two isn't a continuation of animal one rally, which was enticing to me. But it's its own thing more, you know. But of course, I had to go back and rewatch and about one and sort of get into that and see what they did in conjuring one and two as well, because a bit all this in was special in country one, which is where she first appeared.

Jason Buff 1:43:27
But James wrapped on the conjuring, too. That's that's like a done deal now, right?

David F. Sandberg 1:43:33
Oh, yeah. They even had like a surprise screening in Austin the other day. And, yeah, so that opens on first, sort of, they have their premiere at the LA Film Festival on the June 7. And then on June 8, we show lights out. So that after June 8, people are going to know there's gonna be reviews and stuff, I guess.

Jason Buff 1:43:57
So what what is your biggest? Like? How do you feel? What's your biggest fear right now? Are you kind of like just waiting for that?

David F. Sandberg 1:44:03
I am. Weird thing is that everyone is so confident that it's going to be hit that I think they're going to jinx it, you know? Because it's been tested really well. And like, everyone's like, No, this is gonna be hit. It's like, you don't know, anything can happen. You know. So, you know, I hope people like it.

Jason Buff 1:44:26
Well, I think one of the really interesting things about it, and, you know, not a lot of other films can say this, but it's already had, you know, because of the short it's already got people who are kind of aware. Yeah, I mean, that's a huge I mean, in terms of marketing of a film, that's got to be like a huge, you know, huge deal for them. I don't know how much they think about that when they're doing it, you know, when they're like planning stuff out, but it's like, okay, well, this has had a bazillion downloads. So everybody already knows the short, you know,

David F. Sandberg 1:44:54
Yeah, I mean, we've had to push that a little bit because, like, you know, I don't had to cut the trailer. That's all marketing. But so they they, they had this trailer that they wanted to shell that was similar to this trailer, but it didn't start with lockdown the light switch. And we told the marketing department like you have to put that in the trailer and put it at the top. Because there's going to be people out there that may have seen the short, but they don't might not remember the name or whatever. But if you have that scene with her doing the same thing as in the short, they're gonna go, Oh, I've seen this before. Like, I remember that. So we really had to sort of push them to put that in the trailer. But the other ones I know, I think those Warner's digital marketing department are more on top of it, you know, with views and all that because they wanted. They wanted to get all the stats from my YouTube and Vimeo pages. And I'm not sure what they're doing with that, and probably something cool. So, yeah, it's not been a It's not been at the forefront. It's been more, the marketing seems to be more pushing that it's produced by James Wan, because people know, conjuring and all that.

Jason Buff 1:46:15
No, I just lost my train of thought I had a question for you. All right, Scott. Sorry. That's something really important. Give me marketing short million. What do you how much? Are they kind of like, I mean, are you getting we talk a lot about marketing and distribution here. And I don't know how much you've kind of been, you know, a part of that. I mean, is there any insights you've had in terms of the way they're promoting it and the way that you know, things that you've seen on your side?

David F. Sandberg 1:46:50
I mean, the frustrating thing, how little you are part of that, because the weird thing is, like this movie cost, like $5 million. But to market a movie, you need way more than that. So like the marketing budget is many times the actual movie budget for a project like this. And they, I mean, you just have to hope that they know what they're doing. Because you're, you know, they cut the trailers, they make the posters, and they do all that thing. All those things. I mean, they look, they'll show it to you, and you can sort of, say what you want, but ultimately, it's they do their thing. You know, they know, the marketing. Like that's one thing I've been sort of trying to say that this movie is more fun than like, the trailer is very traditional horror movie, but it actually is a bit more fun, more fun movie, which I told marketing, like, isn't there a way to get that in there for the next trailer? Man? It's more like just No, like, this is how you market a horror movie. It's like, Alright, I guess.

Jason Buff 1:47:58
What is the feeling? They've like, just done it so many times. They're like, yeah, we know we're doing just, you know, quiet down. We'll put it all together. And this is we've done this a million times. We've made a bazillion dollars. And,

David F. Sandberg 1:48:09
I mean, yeah, they have made a gazillion dollars. Yeah, I guess they know what they're doing. You know, but and that's the same thing. Like if I, if I were to cut a trailer, you probably wouldn't see a lot because I was like, No, we can't give that away. Can't give that away. So it's like the, I guess you got to have someone who's more sort of, now we know how this works. Like? Yeah.

Jason Buff 1:48:33
Yeah. Well, I mean, my favorite is always like, if you look back at the alien, the original Alien ads just had an egg hatching? You know? And yeah, you know, I, that's, I'm a big fan of that, you know, have and that's one of the big things I like about your shorts as well is that it just has, you know, I'm working on a short right now. And I keep making it bigger and bigger and bigger. And I keep adding people in No, no, no, no, I gotta get, I gotta get it down to just the basic idea. You know, and I think that's one of the things that your short also really inspires people to think about. It's like, look, you know, we were just sitting around the apartment one day, and we were like, Okay, let's come up with some ideas that are scary. And let's just shoot it, you know? Yeah. I don't know if it was like that. But

David F. Sandberg 1:49:20
Ya know, I think a lot of people, they have like feature ideas that they only have resources for short. So they try to compress feature ideas into a very short amount of time. And I think I mean, at least the way we looked at it may come it's just a scene or two, you know, it's not really trying to tell such a big story. We're just going in for a couple of scenes and making the best we can out of that.

Alex Ferrari 1:49:50
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Jason Buff 1:50:00
Do you consciously think I mean, when you were making lights out the short? was? Was it just like, Okay, we want we know people are sitting, how much? Are you thinking about your audience? Are you like, Okay, wait, let's make this I know people don't have any sort of attention span. There's a bunch of little horror shorts out there. Are you thinking about that? I mean, are you just like, Okay, let's let's come up with something that people can click on real quick and just watch something fast.

David F. Sandberg 1:50:26
Yeah, it's just get straight to the point, just have her flip that light switch as early as you can. She's just walking from the bathroom and right there to just get straight into it. Because once they see that, they get sore, like, Oh, that's cool. And then they're hooked. You know, they want to see where it takes off. From there. There's just a lot you can cut out of both shorts and features. And still, you know, that you don't need I mean, you still have to have a good pace and a good rhythm to it. But I think movies today are too long. So lights out. It's actually like, things like 80 minutes or something. And one of the producers was kind of freaking out about that he was like, has to be longer. Like, why? People have seen it. No one has said that it's too short, or that the pacing is weird, or something that just feels right. No, I wish more people more films for like, 90 minutes. Instead of the two and a half hours. Things we get nowadays, nowadays.

Jason Buff 1:51:29
It makes you wonder how many movies are like, you know, you see all these movies that come out all these blockbusters and everything. And it's like, it was just like, maybe 10 minutes a little too long. And you wonder if that was like some executive and they're gone. Yeah, we need to we need to add a little bit more. And it was just like, why? You know, what? Movie could have ended?

David F. Sandberg 1:51:48
Yeah. Yeah, that's really because I mean, if they have shorter movies, they can have more showings in a day and they'll make more money. But maybe it's something. Everything has to be epic these days, I guess.

Jason Buff 1:52:00
Now, what are you sick of seeing in horror movies? What turns you off to, you know, if you're watching something? And you're just like, okay, within like, say the first 15 minutes? What is the harm of yes to do in the first 15 10 15 minutes to kind of like pull you in?

David F. Sandberg 1:52:19
Well, I mean, as long as they don't have really stupid characters that you just like, you don't want to harm or will you want the people to die? You know, I mean, that can be fun. But stuff like that, and just Yeah. And the fake kind of jumpscares was just loud sounds with stuff that has nothing to do with the horrors of the film. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Buff 1:52:46
You watch, like, you click around like Netflix and stuff like that, and try to find new stuff. I just seems like there's I mean, one of the things that we talked about, you know, and I've talked to a lot of indie filmmakers who are, you know, making all different levels of, you know, they make stuff that, you know, very low budget from a couple $1,000 To 50,000 to 100, or, you know, in that range. And, you know, I just kind of tried to figure out like, what, what's the whole process, you know, where are they? Where are they selling it? What's what's, what's that world? Like, you know, and

David F. Sandberg 1:53:22
Yeah, I mean, for the last year or so, I mean, since we came to LA, we haven't had the television. So to watch a lot of stuff just on our laptops. But the good thing about living in LA is that you can see a lot of limited release smaller movies. So like I saw my favorites recently, were greenroom, which I loved. And the invitation, which was really good as well.

Jason Buff 1:53:51
Now, but I didn't see the greenroom.

David F. Sandberg 1:53:54
I love that one. Now with that, and that's actually I go since we don't have a TV we go more to the theaters these days. Because we live right by Northlight. So it's it's great. But a lot of movies is just feels like the same, you know, like, it's still the same sort of superhero stories and stuff like that. So it's almost a point you get like her I'm kind of tired of movies, but then you see a movie like greener I was like, No, I love movies, you know? Yeah. But yeah, and Netflix is I try to find stuff there. But usually you just Netflix, it's just scrolling through looking at movies and then never watching anything.

Jason Buff 1:54:40
Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting though, the way things are changing now, you know, and I try as much as possible to see stuff in the theater. But, you know, especially down here, we just don't get a lot. But it's just kind of watching the evolution. You know, when I was younger, you would go see a movie because the quality was my Ah, better. That was that was the only opportunity you had, you know, and then it would go to, you know, home video was even kind of like a new thing, you know, and things have changed so quickly. So everybody's watching, you know, the majority of people are going to see your film on a TV, which kind of sucks, you know, because it's made for being in a theater. Yeah. So, you know, there's this giant kind of glut of now that the technology is so cheap, there's just horror movies like crazy coming out. You know, I mean, if you go on, like Amazon Prime, and Netflix and all these different places, it's like in the qualities, a lot of them's just not very good. So I don't really have any points just bitching about it?

David F. Sandberg 1:55:41
No, but I mean, the sad truth is that 90% of horror movies are pretty terrible. And which is kind of sad. Because nowadays, like now that I'm, I mean, this last year, and now I've been working so much, that it's almost like, I don't really want to take chances. You know, I want to see something that I know is good. So, yeah, I mean, especially now that I'm making movies, I'm actually trying to watch a lot of classics, because I want to see something that I know is good. And something that's sort of valuable. So I've been watching old stuff like Fred's lines and your yumbo. And just trying to Yeah, I mean, what cool stuff?

Jason Buff 1:56:26
Yeah, of course, I'll I don't know if you're like me, but I find it's so inspiring to kind of see those stories and be like, oh, you know, do you get inspired? Like, when you watch other people's movies? Do you start having your own ideas about things?

David F. Sandberg 1:56:39
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jason Buff 1:56:41
I mean, is that let me just ask you this kind of blank question in terms of creativity, like what do you have any Have you learned to kind of like control your creativity and learn how to use it and put it together and stuff and you do do things that you know, are going to kind of jolt that creativity? Yeah.

David F. Sandberg 1:57:04
I don't have a specific process. It's just sort of comes up, I guess I love sort of idea by based things, especially sort of time travel movies, and sort of that has a neat ID at the core of it. But you're not really sure where the ideas come from.

Jason Buff 1:57:25
You write things down. I mean, you'd like if you're, you know, you said you wake up in the middle of night sometimes is that what do you get ideas sometimes that way? Or?

David F. Sandberg 1:57:33
Yes? No, just a little while ago, I had this. Like, I dream, this whole scene. And I woke up and I wrote it down on my phone. And then the, the morning after, I sent that to the screenwriter, for Annabelle to was like, Hey, can we put this in the movie? And it was like, if I wrote like, I had this dream of this

Jason Buff 1:57:56
Banana face, put it in the movie? Yes. It's like, What the hell are you talking about man?

David F. Sandberg 1:58:01
Yeah. And I wrote out this whole scene and sent it to him. And he was like, why don't I have dreams? Like, get a whole scene? But in the movie? No. So that's actually in the script isn't?

Jason Buff 1:58:14
Right. That's awesome. Well, you know, one of the things that, you know, there was a book out not too long ago that talked about how you're the state of mind that you're in just as you wake up is so far into your right brain, that that is you will never find a more purely creative moment that when you're in that kind of dream state, because you're in the same state of mind when you dream. So your mind is just creating stuff. So that's why a lot of people always have like a, you know, a pad and paper beside the bed. Or people write when they first wake up, you know,

David F. Sandberg 1:58:46
Kind of explains a lot because I do have that a lot of being sort of half awake, half asleep, usually sort of nightmarish stuff. I freak out and like, my wife will have to go no, no, no, you're dreaming, like, get back to sleep. So maybe that's where a lot of it is born.

Jason Buff 1:59:04
Yeah. Well, David, I really appreciate this man. Is there? Is there any thing else that we could touch on? Is there any advice that you have for all the indie filmmakers that are out there kind of like, hoping to emulate you a little bit or kind of following your path a bit?

David F. Sandberg 1:59:22
I mean, the the main advice would just be to keep making stuff and putting it up online and not giving up even though you think it's gonna be shit, because you never know. And yeah, and you never know what it is that gonna resonate with people. Like, you know, I was talking to this producer who made this big Kickstarter project like this big like series of videos that they had quite a budget for.

Alex Ferrari 1:59:50
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show

David F. Sandberg 1:59:59
And nothing really happened with it. And then with his friends, he just did like a quick YouTube thing that cost no money. And that's what got them representation in Hollywood and got into a bunch of meetings and stuff. So you just keep making stuff and you, you never know what's gonna, what's gonna be the thing that actually gets you out there.

Jason Buff 2:00:22
Now that that's one of the, you know, after doing this for like, a year and a half, you know, and I had a project that fell apart a couple years ago. And I just, you know, it's really inspiring the stuff that you did, and with your short and everything, but it's just like that, that seems to be the common thread with people who are having success in the indie film world now is just Okay, start making shorts, just get out there, start shooting, it doesn't matter, you know, shoot with your DSLR or whatever, it's like, the equipment doesn't matter anymore. And just slowly, not all of us are gonna get like, picked up for a feature film, but it's like, just slowly, one short, a little, you know, and learn. I mean, were you, you know, each short that you did, were you learning a little bit more and kind of saying, Okay, put this together. Now. Let me try it a little bit more. Or Absolutely.

David F. Sandberg 2:01:09
I mean, yeah, I'm 35 now, and I've been making movies since I was eight, you know, so, right? Or you get better and better. And you learn more and more the whole time. So yeah.

Jason Buff 2:01:21
Cool. Is there. Do you want to leave? Usually I asked people if they want to leave their, like websites and information. I don't know if there's anything that you want to leave or like your Twitter handle, maybe people can follow you.

David F. Sandberg 2:01:35
Yeah, I'm at pony smasher on on Twitter and on Instagram and on YouTube. I'm pony smasher as well.

Jason Buff 2:01:45
Should I ask what that?

David F. Sandberg 2:01:47
Well, it all started with YouTube. I mean, when YouTube was this new thing, like I signed up for that, but it wasn't a thing yet. So I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna use this. I'll just pony smasher. And then it became a thing. So it's like, okay, I guess I'm pony smasher now. So it's kind of weird now that they're, like the marketing people or like, when articles and stuff on Twitter about like, you know, you have at Teresa Palmer or whatever, and then at pony smasher and say, Oh, but Jamie.

Jason Buff 2:02:19
I mean, it could have been worse. You know, it could have been like gorilla penis or something.

David F. Sandberg 2:02:33
Yeah.

Jason Buff 2:02:33
Oh, okay.

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IFH 702: How to Make Four Features in One Year with Chad Archibald & Cody Calahan

Right-click here to download the MP3

Alex Ferrari 2:00
Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Jason Buff.

Jason Buff 2:05
Today we're talking with Chad Archibald and Cody Calahan of black fawn films, their films antisocial to and bite just premiered at the Fantasia fest up in Toronto, and it's supposedly somebody like threw up and it was so gross watching the movie bite that somebody threw up, I think, you know, I don't know how true it is. But it's a great thing to for publicity, you know. And I think they after that they started giving out like barf bags with their logo on it and everything. So I mean, these, it's pretty amazing how they have been able to get out and find an audience. And you know, as we talked about in the interview, they get out and they go to horror fests and they go to cons and do you know, they're out there, really getting the word out about their films. And that's how they've been able to build up an audience. And one of the things we talked about a lot on the show is the key to filmmaking is finding your audience. That's all you need to have if you want if you make a film, and are able to sell it and get it out to people who want to see it. That's all you need. Let me go ahead and get to the interview. This is Chad Archibald and Cody Callahan. First thing I wanted to talk about was just coming off of Fantasia fest. And, you know, one of the big things we talk about is distribution and how people are connecting with their audiences. And first, I'm kind of wondering how much of a role Fantasia fest plays into your overall strategy for getting the word out? And how are things working nowadays with with the way that VOD has kind of changed and DVDs aren't as big anymore? Can you talk about just the way that you're getting your film out there? How people can find it, and how you're connecting with your audience?

Chad Archibald 3:51
Um, well, I guess the whole Fantasia thing we, we love going to this festival, it's fairly close to us, it's about eight hours from where we live. So it's, it's been a staple with I think we've had like eight films there over the years. But we, you know, we generally come up with you know, 3040 people, our entire cast and crew. And we have a we have a great time up there. It's, it's kind of like our little vacation from the year. And I mean, it's just aside from that is actually, you know, just one of the best festivals out there. It's, it's run so well. The organizers put so much effort into picking great films and making it such a great experience. And the fans that are like the audiences are just there's so much fun. So I mean, we go up there with our films to revere them but we also love just going to actually watch movies and and, you know, just see what see what's coming and see what's coming out next, I guess, right. Now, I guess as far as getting our films out there, you know, we We have a sales team that goes out to all the markets and whatnot like the FM's and, and whatnot. But you know, it's, it's difficult with any indie film to really get noticed. And there's just so many films out there. So, I mean, we try to, you know, first of all, I guess isn't, you know, we're trying to make, okay movies that, that we hope, kind of end up getting standing out in the sea of other indie horror films right now. So I mean, I think that's obviously the first thing that you got to try to do. But aside from that, I mean, we, you know, we use tons of social media stuff. We have worked hard over the years, creating relationships with fans and whatnot, we go to tons of conventions, and, you know, we're always, you know, trying to get out there and push her films and just as well push ourselves. We, we hire a ton of different people in different shoots. And we always try to treat people with respect. And it, I think, that kind of gets the word out there a little bit, too. I mean, Canada. And then aside from that, you know, we always come up with little marketing gigs. Like we had little barf bags that the bites. You know, we did a big any social campaign at the Cannes market. And yeah, I mean, just try to try to come up with interesting ideas to engage your audience's

Jason Buff 6:35
Has it changed a lot since the technologies become cheaper and people aren't doing DVDs as much. I mean, is it a harder field to get into, like producing horror movies?

Chad Archibald 6:45
Oh, for sure. It's, it's completely different now. And every year, it gets a little bit harder, which is, it's funny, because it's like we, you know, make better movies every year, but the industry kind of gets a little more difficult every year. But it's, I mean, you used to be able to make a film and sell it fairly easily, because any distributor would be like, Okay, well, I mean, we're gonna sell 100,000 copies, to the blockbusters and the Rogers out there instantly. So, you know, there's actually no way we're going to lose money on these films, right. So there's just there's tons of money to be made back then. And distributors nowadays, you know, they have to really work to get people to watch it, or rent it on iTunes, or, you know, there's just so many films accessible to everyone at the touch of a button. So it's, it's, it's now a matter of actually getting people to watch your films and getting people to actually, like, choose them out of the sea of other films. I mean, it's, it's definitely changed. It's an it's still changing. And it's getting, you know, it's just, it's getting more difficult, but it's also just, it's getting different, right? People are just having having to come up with new ideas. And, you know, for years, there's been, you know, people in studios, who would just be paid, like, you know, tons of money to just sit there and try to figure out how to, how to resolve the industry, because it's, uh, you know, so many distributors have closed down, I think there's, like, you know, 13% of the distributors out there still, you know, still still kicking, but I mean, so many of the smaller guys just got ate up by big studios, or just had to close the doors whenever, you know, all the DVD market collapse, right?

Jason Buff 8:39
Do you feel like that has anything to do with people like doing more self distribution, or just the fact that it's, you know, people aren't renting DVDs anymore? There's no more there's really not like a physical product anymore.

Chad Archibald 8:51
Yeah, I mean, they're still out there. We still release all our, our, our films on DVD and blu ray. But yeah, it's, it's, it's got to the point where I think people who are like real big fans who are like collectors of DVDs and whatnot, they don't want to pick that those up. And the people who don't specifically have a giant DVD collection that, you know, they they end up going on VOD, and, and whatnot. So it's, it is hard, but they're still you know, we go to tons of conventions and sell DVDs from a booth and there's still, you know, a lot of people out there that really, really liked them. A lot of people are happy spending, you know, a few bucks on getting an actual physical product, it turns into kind of a collector's item, you know, right. Whereas, you know, you buy it on iTunes and it just disappears after

Jason Buff 9:46
You can't, you can't, you know, autograph or download either.

Alex Ferrari 9:52
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Jason Buff 10:00
Oh, And so what, back in the early days before you guys had kind of built up this following what was your primary way of kind of getting the word out? Is it always been the same way? Or have you? You know, have you used social media and view you used? You know, I mean, I guess my question is, how can people who are kind of going in this into this for the first time, start building an audience, and, you know, focusing on who their core audience is going to be.

Chad Archibald 10:29
Um, I think, years ago, me and Cody actually traveled across Canada with a movie called never lost. And we just, you know, we, we rented movie theaters from Montreal to Vancouver, and just kind of traveled every day, we would go to a different location, different theater and try to, you know, cellar versus trying to screen our film actually proved to be very difficult. I mean, we, we had a great time doing it, and we met a ton of people, but it's to make something like that really work and come out financially, okay, it's very difficult to get people to come and sit in a theater, especially if you don't have a following in that area. You know, like we can, we can pack Theatre in Toronto, because, you know, all our friends and family are from here, but but it was, it was something that I think were a little, you know, we learned a lot from doing it. And, I mean, even even when we're starting out, like, the the biggest thing, I think, that we did was just, you know, try to surround ourselves and work with a ton of people who are really passionate, and just from, from their passion and excitement about the film's, you know, they would spread it to other people. And, you know, it's not like it was making a huge difference in the industry or anything. But for us, you know, little guys just making a movie. It does help get the word out there, you know, if you post something on social media, then you have, you know, 10 other people posting it as well. And, you know, all their friends on other front pages, see it, and, you know, it kind of spreads like that. And I mean, we also, you know, we went to we'd rent out theaters around Toronto and Guelph, and whatnot, and Scream Screen, some of our films, they're just trying to make a big show that we, we screened a film years ago, where we had, you know, we had a big party at a bar. And we invited the cast and crew and whoever wanted to come and we had bands play. And at the end of the night, it was like the big trailer release, and we released a trailer there. And then we, you know, a few months later, we went and we had another bigger party, and we had, you know, more bands playing, we released a new trailer that was there. And the third band was like, or the third time was like, a release, where we showed a few of our music videos for the bands that were playing there. And we showed the trailers and we released tickets for the actual screening at the Cineplex and we ended up selling out three or four theaters. Wow. Which was, you know, it was great, but that was, you know, back in the day whenever, you know, there wasn't youtube today, that's

Jason Buff 13:19
No, but that's exactly the kind of things that I hear from a lot of people now which is you know, if you want to have success filmmaking, especially, you know, way outside you know, in the indie film market, you really have to become your, your own giant publicity machine, you know, and connect with people versus some other people who want to, you know, have a company that's like, they're gonna make their film and then they're just gonna go out and sell it to a distributor that doesn't really seem to exist as much anymore.

Chad Archibald 13:49
Yeah, it's a it's definitely a challenge everything's a challenge and I mean, you have to take advantage of the things that don't cost money and ideas are one of those things that you know, you can often come up with ideas that you can do cheap or or I think if you can try to kind of think like a publicist a little bit just finding different angles of you know, how you can promote something you know, we had talked about years ago anti social which was you know, it's kind of like what a Facebook turned on its users into zombies. And we were gonna get, you know, little super cheap USB keys and put the trailers on them and you know, hand them out to everyone on the streets and stuff like that. So you know, people get a little USB key which would be a buck or two and you know, on the USB key there, it'd be like this you know, social media horror movie. But I mean, I think just even doing that there's there's the value of people actually picking up the the product like a USB key or whatever, but there's also a value in just just meeting All right, that'd be in like, Oh, so you guys are the actual filmmakers and you're actually on the street. It's almost like years ago when you're in line for like a concert and like, a guy would come over and be like, here's my band's tape. We're just handing them out to everyone. I'd like listen to the tape and be like, I met that guy. I think nothing FaZe did that years years ago, and I remember like, being like, I'm old school. I Yeah, added me this tape. And now he's, you know, now and watch his music videos on on much music when they played music videos.

Jason Buff 15:33
Right? Well tell me. Yeah, what's my error too? But, well, let me let me ask you one more thing about distribution. And then I'm going to change focus to, you know, screenwriting and some of the other aspects. Now, right now, you've got antisocial too, and you've got bite, and they both premiered at Fantasia fest? What what is the where do they where do you go from there in terms of like, I mean, are you guys kind of out of the the process now? Or are you just doing publicity? Or are you actually involved with where it's going to be going in terms of like, US distribution? European, just, you know, all that stuff? Is that like, where are you right now in that process?

Chad Archibald 16:20
I think we're, we're lucky enough to work with a studio. Okay, now called Breakthrough entertainment. And they have a team of people who, you know, we we've reached out to and sat down and discussing the festivals that the films are going to be in, or at least reach out to and apply to. And they also take it, you know, out as far as into the industry for sales. So I mean, we do our little part with the people that we know, to help out. But in all honesty, we're on our next film already. Well, yeah, we have a pitcher deal with breakthrough entertainment over two years. So we've just finished shooting the third of eight films, and where we're editing it right now and getting ready to go into production on the next five. So what

Jason Buff 17:10
That's like for four films per year? Yeah. Okay, well, let's let's go into that a little bit. Because that seems to me that seems insane. I mean, it seems like you guys probably, you know, make stop to eat for two seconds, and then you go back to work. Is that kind of your lifestyle?

Chad Archibald 17:28
Yeah, that's why I said Fantasia was our holiday because for nine days and, and as soon as we got back, we're back to work. It's funny, Cody's actually away right now working on better the dead, which is the third film that we're doing with Jeff Mahara? Who directed it?

Okay. So can we talk a little bit about? No, go ahead. Sorry.

Cody Calahan 17:54
No, it was just fine. Because I think we drove back from Montreal, I think. I slept in my bed for like, six hours, and then got up and drove to a cottage where we set up like all our edits, edit suites, and I've been here since Fantasia.

Chad Archibald 18:12
And that says, like, we have to kind of do these, these endurance trips of getting things done. So I mean, it's, it is insane. I mean, we, we really, were excited going into this slate of films. And I think the hardest thing is actually just just getting all the concepts together and getting them all approved by the studio and whatnot. Because, you know, like we said, it's it all starts with your idea and your concept being unique. If it's not a unique idea, then there's, you know, it's going to be very different, difficult to stand out.

Jason Buff 18:47
Well, there obviously has to be a profitable aspect of what you guys are doing, you know, so I mean, to to attract a company like breakthrough, right.

Chad Archibald 18:58
Yeah, I mean, I think the industry is, you know, the industry still buying movies, and they're still, you know, I think there's still a spot in it for sure. If you if you make quality films. And yeah, I think breakthrough is also kind of, you know, I think they've seen a lot of the films that we had done in the past for, you know, $10. And they can, they can see, you know, where we've come and where we're going and they really want to kind of invest in our future as well. So, this is, this is a first step to it.

Jason Buff 19:31
Okay, now I wanted to sidetrack for just a second ever. I wanted to sidetrack for one second, because I was reading one of your interviews, Chad, specifically, about desperate souls, which you made, I think when you were 22, right. Yeah. Now, you mentioned that you kind of messed up the sound and everything and you had some issues with that but ended up selling it to Lionsgate and Alliance films, right. Yeah. Okay.

Alex Ferrari 20:00
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Jason Buff 20:09
Can you just describe how that happened or how it's possible that you know, to do something like that, because I hear so many nightmare stories about filmmaking and things going wrong and people who are never able to, you know, their film ends up sitting in a closet somewhere, you know, despite their best efforts and everything, and I was just wondering how that kind of happened or if you can talk a little bit about that.

Chad Archibald 20:31
Yeah, you know, we went out and we made this movie and we made every mistake in the book. We we shot it and all the audio was so horrible that there's generators in the background of everything. I went out and bought three red heads, like three 1k lights and lit the whole movie with that I was just clueless all we knew is that there was these cameras DVS one hundreds that shot. Sorry, there's huge bang and so anyway.

Jason Buff 21:02
And that was the last we heard of Chad.

Chad Archibald 21:04
Yeah. Anyways, there's a these cameras dv x 100 said, We're the first cameras to really shoot 24 P. So it's basically you know, that moment when, you know, a prosumer prosumer camera stop looking like your home video, right. So we had pre ordered two of those. And I mean, I know at that point before then it's like, you know, to go out and film the movie. On a prosumer camera, it still had a very video II look. Right. So these are that does that HD? No, that was standard def, right? Yes. That's what I thought. Yeah. So. So we went out and we shot this movie, you know, we literally thought we could shoot it in a week. And it took you know, two years. Of course, were so clueless. And, yeah, we we made every mistake in the book, I ended up having to build a sound room in my basement and I rerecorded every line of dialogue every sound every movement every footstep in this room in Vegas video and linked it all up and made the m&e and because I figured out what an m&a was at that point. And you had Yeah, and then released a movie. And, you know, we went and met with some people in Toronto, it's, it's kind of it's difficult to get well, it's funny, because so many people think it's, you know, so hard to set up meetings with people in the industry. But I mean, if you have a product, if you have, you know, an idea or whatever it's like, it's really not that hard. Like people are generally, you know, interested in finding what's out there and finding, you know, connecting with people. So we always say that in meetings or whatever it's like, you know, reach out and try to try to meet with people like we we meet with people all the time, people are like, hey, you know, I'm trying to get into film and we'd love to buy a beer. That's, that's what entices us, apparently. But anyways, yeah, we, you know, got it to someone who who was interested in back then there's still again, Rogers videos and all those stores. So they looked at it, and they were like, you know, this is a, it's a complete movie, it's got all the pieces, it's got all the deliverables, which are a whole other story, but we got it all together and, and sold at Lionsgate and lights. And a, it's just, it's a worst movie ever. Like, I wouldn't be able to give it away. Just, it's horrible.

Jason Buff 23:38
That's the first on the show.

Chad Archibald 23:41
But it's, but the fact is, we made every mistake in the book. And I think from that experience, that's where a lot of the knowledge that I have now about filmmaking came from, you know, I think the problem with people is that, you know, people getting into the industry right now is they're so eager to just, like, jump into making a film. And, you know, sorry, that's kind of what we did do. So I'm not saying but I mean, like, there's technology out, there's iPhones, or whatever it's like, go out and just make mistakes and make every mistake that you can possibly do, and work on making and fixing it and figuring you know, figuring out exactly what you have to do to make a movie. And then whenever you actually get some money and put it into a film or if you're investing your own money, you know, you can you can have a better chance of it getting completed from on again. Yeah, there's so many people out there that did start they jump into a feature and underestimate it and don't know how to you know, resolve issues on them by themselves whenever, you know, shit hits the fan. So I think it's it's important if you don't have the money, you have to be able to trust yourself to figure it out to get the project done.

Jason Buff 24:56
Now, you mentioned deliverables and said that was a whole other topic. Can you just bring If we talk about deliverables, the importance of, you know, having the things that you need to give for to make sure the film is all legal and everything, just the kind of most important things.

Chad Archibald 25:12
Well, I mean, I think, you know, you have to have your contracts without your cast and crew and whatnot. There's, there's different kinds of deliverables. There's deliverables, if you want to sell the film, but if you want to do tax credits is a whole other list of deliverables. But I mean, it's, you know, anything that you can think of, that you think you might be available for, right, you know, location agreements. You know, if you're using music from someone, or someone's doing the score, you know, make sure they had signed some paperwork. And a lot of the templates are good enough online, you can search them, search them all up, just basically anyone you work with, who's adding anything creative, just make sure. Or if you're working, you know, if you do know, a distributor or moderator go to anyone and just say, you know, can you send me a list of what you would ask for if you bought a film? And you know, you have all your different you know, an m&e, like your music and effects tracks. So, you know, when you when you release a film you have, you have to deliver one track, that's all your dialogue, then you have to release additional tracks that are basically all the sound effects in the movie. So, you know, footsteps, close, explosions, all the music. And basically, then if you sell it to Japan, they can go they can delete your dialogue track, they still have all the other sounds of the movie, and then they dub over, you know, beautifully in and then of course, like your trailers, your poster elements, you know, 50 stills, you know, stills from set, poster material. Right? Yeah.

Jason Buff 26:50
Okay. So moving into building a project. Okay, and what I want to talk for a second about your process for screenwriting? Because a lot of our we talk a lot with screenwriters, and I'm a screenwriter and people like to know what can you talk a little bit about your process for beginning a project and how you kind of start putting together your screenplays. And especially since you guys are kind of cranking stuff out? What is the secret? If you found one for kind of getting to your final draft of a screenplay quickly and effectively.

Cody Calahan 27:32
I will, I think we used the immune challenges to write a lot more because we would make one or maybe two movies a year. But now since we're we are doing so much we spend sort of less time actually writing scripts and more time, just coming up with solid, solid concepts and then bringing on new new writers. And I think for us, I mean, obviously with every every movie, we do something good. And we're like, Okay, we got to do, we got to remember that do that again. But for every good thing, there's 50 past things we do. And I think as as we've sort of grown, you know, writing and you know, helping other people, right? And then getting people to write for us, is just trying to try to keep our ideas, you know, fun and simple and clean. Because I think both me and shadow made movies where at some point in time, there's a character who needs to explain something. And I think I think we've both had that moment of like, well, I can't cut the scenes, because I'm, I need to get this information across. But I wish I could go back. Because no, no point in a movie. Should somebody sit down in front of somebody and go and take a deep breath and explain why you're watching. And I've done it. I know lots of filmmakers do it. But I think for us, it's like every time we make a movie, you know will sit at Fantasia and then leave and go talk to each other and be like, Okay, so let's never do that again. Everybody loved that. So let's make sure we do that again. So I feel like every every movie even though they're all so so different, like any social to invite, I don't even know if you can compare them how different they are. Both of them came out of what we've learned from the drowns man and sublet, and any social one. And it's it's funny, because it's like, all of those movies are so different. But still, filmmaking comes down to like some pretty simple rules that you can play with and try to break but there's some things you just have to stick to because every time we we don't you can see the audience's reactions or read about it in a review. You can also

Jason Buff 29:46
Big make mistakes then that you learn from.

Alex Ferrari 29:51
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Cody Calahan 30:01
Well, I'd say I would say that the biggest one is, is having a, having a concept that that is cool enough that the audience goes, Oh, okay, well, that's interesting and something a little different. But don't go so wacky, that you need a character to explain why you're watching the film. And like, you know, even on any social, it took us forever to try to figure out a way to tell the audience that Facebook, but you know, in our case, the websites called Red Room, how does how does this website, you know, basically possessed people? And why is it doing it without having one character talk to you for five minutes. So it was about getting all those pieces of information and suddenly trying to put give them to different characters at different times. So by the time the, you know, the hammer comes down, and it's like, this is the thing that's killing people, you already have enough to put everything together so that we don't have to explain a lot. I think that one for for us is the the biggest and also trying to trying to keep when you're going to do such graphic horror movies, where people are throwing up at a theater, you got to remember that, like, for an hour and a half, if you're going to be that discussing that you kind of you should add a little bit of humor. Just just to release the audience here and there. And I think sometimes, you know, I mean, for me, personally, I can get so sore in the movie, and so intense about it that I want it to be so serious, but sometimes you can have to step back and go, Okay, well, there's a movie about Facebook, turning people into zombies. So let's tread lightly on the on the serious factor.

Jason Buff 31:46
So do you start out with a kind of a blueprint and put the whole thing together? You know, before you actually start writing? Or do you just kind of jump in?

Cody Calahan 31:54
I'm usually it's like, shall call me like, he'll be driving home? And they'll call me or something and be like, what about a movie? And like, you know, that that, and I'll call him and with with an idea. And usually we go through? I don't know, recently, we've gone through about 50 different ideas, just trying to find the right one to put our time into writing. But I feel like for us, it's not. It's not that we we take an idea. And we work on it so long that we figured out how to make it work. But we wait until there's that spark, or something different or like okay, cool. I haven't seen that before. And usually we we we wait for each other's reaction. And if the reaction is like, okay, that's really cool, then we keep developing. But as we go through so many different ideas, and sometimes we'll you know, well, we'll write a 12 page treatment, send it to each other, and the other person's like, Nah, not feeling it. My Desktop has like, his a folder called old movies. And I was just looking at it now. And there's, there's probably 24 treatments in there. None of which.

Jason Buff 33:01
Right? Do you have any kind of go to structure that you use when you're like plotting things together? I mean, do you ever use something like save the cat or, or hero's journey or anything like that? Or I assume for a horror movie, it's a little bit different.

Cody Calahan 33:15
Yeah, I mean, say the Cat's got some, I mean, that looks that looks great. Because I do think no matter whether if it's for drama, or comedy, or whatever, there is, there's structure things that have worked forever. So that so you know, there's some things to keep in mind. And especially if it's your, if it's your first film, I would never tell anybody did not experiment. I think that's the point of making movies. But you know, there's some things like that you need to you need to stick to like, giving your your character a reason to be in the story and not just being like, Okay, I'm gonna go make a horror movie. So I'm going to spend, you know, all the money on blood and gore. Because that's what people want to see. It's like, I think, you know, I think there's so many movies, I think audiences are getting smarter. And I think you gotta be, you gotta make something that's about people and stuff before, you know, heads are exploding. Not that we don't do that.

Chad Archibald 34:08
I think the other thing as well, that we've gotten used to doing and I think this is a little bit more of a producer writing thing is that, you know, you make sure that you can pull off what you're writing. So if you already know what your budget is going to be, or if you know that you're going to be doing it on your own with your friends. It's about coming up with ideas that you can that you know, that you can pull off well, as opposed to coming out, like creating ideas that are so big that you're just setting yourself up for failure. We mean, Cody have done it in the past. So many other filmmakers I know have done it, where it's like, you know, they've got a bunch of cops coming in, and it's like, as soon as you see the cops, they're just like a bunch of kids and they're like just wearing all these like, whatever blue dress shirts that are all big and wonky and it just takes you out of the whole story.

Cody Calahan 35:01
You know, you're reading the script. It's like, you know, the bad guys walk out and there's a riot scene, and then you go to shoot it. And it's like, your four buddies, your grips your gaffers. And there's like 10 people in the shot and you're like,

Chad Archibald 35:15
And none of them are actors. So they're all like, you know, there's always a guy who's laughing in the back and

Cody Calahan 35:20
staring at the camera. Yeah.

Jason Buff 35:24
Okay, so moving on from screenwriting. Going into pre production, I'm gonna try to get through this as fast as possible, because this is this is the kind of stuff people need to know a lot of people want to be in your shoes. The there's the touchy subject of budgeting, investing, and kind of having an idea of what a film can make. Can you guys discuss that a little bit? And how you figure out, okay, we can, for example, you know, $100,000, half a million dollars, a million dollars going up and up and up? It's like, how is there some sort of information you can give us about how all that works? And how you budget?

Chad Archibald 36:09
People love that question. It's so funny how often people ask me, like, what's that? What's the sweet spot? Like? Yeah, well, you know, you make a movie for that, and you're gonna make your money back or, you know, it's, I mean, it, it's different, because, and you always have to say this at the start is, it does come down to your concept, you know, you can make a movie, for 100 grand, that has a really good idea. And it could, you know, go insane, it could, it could make you millions, it could, you know, be huge, or make a movie for 100 grand, and it could not sell anywhere. So, I mean, it always does come down to your concept, and you know, the quality of, you know, filmmaking that you're that you're dealing with. So, I mean, there is no sweet spot, that's always going to be like, you know, this is, this is the safe area, you're always going to make your money back. Now, there's accounting things, like for example, if you wanted to use, you know, tax credits, you know, you can look at your budget and be like, Alright, we're gonna invest this much, and we'll get this much back in tax credits. And, you know, it's always a percentage. So it's, you know, depends on what your entire budget is. But it's, I mean, a lot of the stuff that we do is non union. And, I mean, we do things like ad social, to which union. So there's obviously a big gap there. When you go non union, you can, you can shoot stuff for a lot cheaper. And there's, you know, less rules that are going to demand your funds. But I mean, I think if you, you know, if you go and you make a million dollar film, you're probably going to want to go union, because you're going to want to like to get some names, and that's going to help sell your product, because I think it does kind of, unless your films that complete breakout head, it does cap out a little bit, you know, if you don't have any names in your movie, it can be really, really awesome. And still, you know, a lot of distributors will be like, I'm not gonna buy that, or I'm gonna buy it for this much money because it's got nobody at it. So but I mean, you know, there's, there's exceptions to every rule. You know, if people are looking for safe answers, that's, that's your safe answers that, you know, if you're going to, you know, make a movie for a million bucks, you got to make sure you try to get some names in it. If you're going to make a movie for nothing, then make sure you got a good concept to sell it.

Jason Buff 38:43
Yeah, and so where exactly do you find the money? Where's the money? That's yeah, what do you have any like phone numbers and addresses?

Cody Calahan 38:54
Yes, it is the best answer if we can answer that this podcast would be amazing.

Jason Buff 39:00
All right, well, I won't hold you to that.

Chad Archibald 39:03
Industry, they released the phone number.

Jason Buff 39:07
Phone calls from this guy. Okay, so the the main thing I'm what I've been saying is just you have to really, it's like any business, you have to build something that people are going to be interested in, you have to have an actor or actors or, you know, somebody with a track record. You know, I always advise people, you know, if you want to make a movie for $100,000, make a movie for $10,000 or whatever you can afford at that moment, and then, you know, build up, you know, and I don't know how you guys feel about that. But it just seems like most people that are making films, it's like they start out with something really low budget, and just kind of an even just shorts, you know, and then slowly move up with the next project. And as long as they can demonstrate that they have a track record, they're gonna you know, be able to keep making movies.

Alex Ferrari 39:56
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Chad Archibald 40:05
Well, I mean, it's so it's so tricky and it's so like, there, there's like, filmmakers do need to be, to have a sense of responsibility for everyone else. Because it's, it's become an issue over the years now that everyone can make a movie, there's so many people out there that are like, you know, I've never made a movie, but I just think that I was born to make a movie. So I'm, I'm gonna go out, and I'm going to talk to, you know, all these lawyers and dentists or whatever the hell and raise some money and we're gonna go out and we're gonna make the best movie ever because I was born to make movies, and I watched a ton of movie, so I'm just going to be the best at it. And then they go out and they, you know, make a shitty film or a great film, who knows, but chances are, like anything else, it's like, you get better at doing something by doing it. And there's a lot of people that raise a lot of money and lose a lot of money for people in the industry. Or not, not in the industry, there's a lot of people who, you know, sit back, and they look and they're like, Oh, this is like, you know, my sister in law's cousin's son, and he's a filmmaker, and he's telling me, he's going to, you know, hit the jackpot with this movie, and I'm going to give them 50 grand, and they're going to give me back 200 grand, because that's what his little paper proposal told me. And then they go in and invest the funds and into someone who's, you know, made a little booklet that looks really awesome, but has no idea what they're doing. And, you know, then then that person, you know, gets burnt and tells his story that, you know, never invest in a film, you'll lose all your money. And then independent, like, independent people fun, like financing films like that are, you know, they're never going to do it again. I think everyone should be working together and, you know, raising responsible numbers to try to be like, Okay, I'll, how would I get 10 grand from you, even if you lose, if I lose it all, and there's nothing back. Like, I mean, I could print off DVDs and sell 10 grand worth and, you know, a while, you know, it's like, there's still, you know, it's that much money, so you can like, you can still recoup it for someone. But I mean, we, you know, me and Cody know, people who have invested millions of dollars in products that never got finished. And it's, it's sad, but it's, you know, it hurts everyone in the industry. And it's, you know, it's, it's the responsibility now that everyone has the power to actually make a movie, you know, you can go out and buy, you know, a camera for $3,000 and make it, you know, a movie that could be a hit. So, technology's not really a factor anymore. It's just, yeah, you know, there's people out there that have done that they've gone and raised a million dollars in one shot, and maybe with like, casting their buddies in it. Now, it's a crazy. Again, like, I'm not saying don't be ambitious, but I just mean, you know, try to try to figure out what you're doing before you start spending people's money on.

Jason Buff 43:03
Yeah, it's funny, because, you know, back when I was more, you know, in the age in my 20s, trying to make films, I, I had a couple, I think I had three friends who got money by showing people around El Mariachi, and they get like they had they had an investor meeting, they were like, look at this movie, and look how much money this movies made, you know, and they went out and they shot their own movie, and nobody ever saw. I mean, this was back in the days of like, you know, 1635 millimeter, and it was a lot more expensive. But it was always funny to be like, everybody was using the same one example or clerks or, you know, back in like the late 90s, you know?

Chad Archibald 43:39
Yeah, yeah. That was uh, that's it

Cody Calahan 43:48
To go on, and try to try to find money and I mean, me and me and Chad and a few people, we spent a bunch of money and shot trailers for movies that we wanted to make. And we thought, okay, so we're gonna go out we're gonna make these shows we're gonna make them look super high quality, great little concepts, try to get the stories across in these short little two to three minute trailers and then start setting up meetings because we have something to show that will show that we can do show that we can drag bla bla bla and it's funny because I think we made four of them. And we've picked some but and just kind of realized that it's like to go like, Okay, that's cool, but it doesn't you know, show numbers doesn't show you guys can make money back but when we met breakthrough, we showed them the trailers and it's funny because they, they didn't necessarily want to make those movies but when we showed them the trailer, they were kinda like, Okay, do you guys can do you guys can do that. We'll give you a tiny bit tiny bit of money and we'll see if we'll see if this works. And that was that was an historical one. But I've mean half of the why we got that was a trailer for a completely different movie, but at least we You know, put all our effort into that, and we didn't spend too much money getting a getting a pitch piece ready, because that's the other thing, too, is don't spend 20 grand getting something together to pitch to get money for a movie. Make a movie.

Chad Archibald 45:16
Yeah, exactly. And we are like, we also, you know, there's a ton of people out there that will be like, Oh, we've got this DP, and he just did a huge film. So we're gonna put all his stuff in our reel, saying that, you know, our team has made it where, you know, he may have had a ton of money and, you know, a whole different group of filmmakers, you know, it is about the team that you're working with. Everything that we went to break through, it was stuff that, you know, our team had made, specifically. So you know, we can we can say that whenever we walked in, it's like, it's not like, we're just pulling people's reels and creating a team that's never worked together on a budget so low. And saying that we can pull off, you know, what you're seeing here, this was us going in there being like, we made this with, you know, out of our own pocket with the team that we currently have to do this, this film. So

Jason Buff 46:09
You get the feeling that a lot of these companies just want to make sure that, you know, you guys kind of know what you're doing. And it's like, okay, well, we can, you know, we just want to see that they can they have a beautiful image, they have good actors, they have they, you know what I mean? It's like they're there. They know how to make a movie, you know, versus a lot of these people who, you know, you never know, I get people that send me their shorts all the time. And some of them look, you know, high end professionally shot, amazing. And others just look like somebody with their, you know, handycam walking around or their iPhone and have no sense of, you know, cinematography, movement, storytelling, or anything, you know?

Chad Archibald 46:48
Yeah, and it's weird, because there's been like, we've got a ton of shorts and stuff sent to us. And sometimes it's like, you look at them, and they're just a mess, but you can see something in them. And you're like, cool. Let me know. Because I feel like the next thing that they do, they're gonna learn from their mistakes on this one. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I think, it does come down to just proving yourself making sure that you know, people know that, that you can handle produce a good product. But also, just again, it does come down to content, like if Cody and pitch this idea of Facebook, turning people into zombies in the studio, then like that, it didn't matter what we actually did. It does come down to, we have a concept concept in the industry, you know, people say concept is currency. So, that's how you get creative. So, I mean, you can have, you know, tons of actors and tons of people involved and whatnot, and you bring it all together. And if you don't have a concept that's going to stand out, and you know, you're gonna get burned out. So it is all comes down to it. It's about you know, coming up with that idea that's going to stand out.

Jason Buff 48:00
Okay, let me I'm gonna try and do a little more rapid fire because I know you guys are pressed for time. I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry. There's a little delay. Okay, so moving into production, who are the most? You know, you've got your screenplay? Where do you go from there? Where do you start? Do you work with like movie magic, start working on the budget, hire a line producer, how does what is the, from the end of the screenplay to the beginning of the filming kind of what what happens there.

Chad Archibald 48:38
So, usually what we do is once we get a treatment, or a script approved, we create our basic budget of the idea. And we start assembling our team, we're lucky enough, we've worked with a lot of the same people, because we're doing so many films back to back. But we've worked hard on you know, building a crew of people that we really trust we really enjoy working with and, and respect. And, I mean, that's, you know, it's another, you know, tell everyone is, you know, find people that you're happy working with, I get to work with Cody every day is my best bud. It's it's, it's, it's finally can doesn't seem like work, you know, obviously that some days it really do. It's more fun to work with people you like, and respect. And there's, there's a lot of people out there in the industry that want to make movies. And, you know, there's a lot of people that let it go to their heads right away that, you know, once the pressures on some pressures on of making a film, you know, they get angry or frustrated or, you know, blow up or whatnot. So, I mean, we, we worked really hard to find people who work really hard deal with stress well, and are always, always able to kind of put a smile on their face and

Alex Ferrari 50:00
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Chad Archibald 50:09
And, and continue on today. So I mean, it's it really makes a difference. Everyone on our crews treats each other with respect. You know, it's a key with with us doing all these films is that everyone, everyone gets along. And if there's an issue, you know, we all talk about it, we all figured out how to how to deal with it. We don't fire people we don't, we don't blow up at people, you never hear people yelling and screaming at each other on our sets. We make a point of making sure that we've got a crew that's, that's passionate, and we're all in it together. And we're, you know, we say black font family all the time, you know, we all we're all the brothers and sisters that can bicker and whatnot. But in the end, we're always we always have each other's back. Anyway, so we call all these people like to see, you know, see if they're able to come out and set up a crew figure out, you know, if it's a studio have to build, we're going to do get people involved there in our pre production times are pretty quick. I mean, we had, I think three or four weeks of pre production on by, and that's like literally from, you know, got the script, like, finished three weeks before we started shooting. So, you know, it all has come together really quick. But yeah, it's just, it's almost like a checklist for us now, here is the people that we need, that's called figure out where are we going to lodge people? Where are we going to shoot this where, you know, what do What elements do, we need to do, that's our gear, we've, again, because we were doing so many films, we've set up relationships with William a flag. So you know, every show that we remember that we're doing, we just, you know, we call them, everything's all our accounts are all set up, everything's ready, we just got a call center, just discuss what we're doing. And you know, they've got our back on everything, you know, television does all the cameras, as well as, you know, some support from from additional camera houses. But it's, you know, we've got it laid out with people that we really trust and work well, within, you know, luckily, we can kind of make all these calls fairly quickly and get everything together. That's from like a producing standpoint, I guess from a directing standpoint, it's, you know, it's even more of a challenge to get a film ready so quickly. And I mean, we're not we haven't done it, it's not like we go on and storyboard all of our stuff with the storyboard artists, you know, as amazing as that would be. That's one of the luxuries that we built, they were always jealous of, because we are making these films. So quickly, we do have to, you know, we end up with a, with a little booklet of like, chicken scratch, where it's like, you know, we've we've storyboarded everything out, but I mean, it's almost like it's in Chinese, it's so far. But I mean, whenever you sit there and actually, you know, go through it with with the DP can decipher it all and then get on the same page. And, you know, we, you know, sometimes we print them off and give them to everyone show everyone what we're doing every day.

Jason Buff 53:16
You just arrive at the morning with like, Okay, we're going to do, you know, this establishing shot, and we're going to do a close up here. And I'm going to you just kind of put all that together the night before and then arrive and do the shot list. Is that kind of how it works.

Chad Archibald 53:32
Yeah, like I mean, we have already extended the whole schedule, and works with us on figuring out the best way that we can, we can do this. And, you know, just go through, you know, they send it out to everyone the day before everyone gets it, they kind of give a little scheme of what we're doing, what rooms we're in. At the end of our days, we generally try to, you know, have a little discussion with our lighting team will honor what we're doing first the next day. And you know how we can get a jump on the day, because that's always the biggest challenge is getting the first shot off. And yes, so I mean, it's a that

Jason Buff 54:12
You have any advice for, like I recently watched the drowns woman. And the quality of the image on that is incredible. And I don't know, I don't know what the budget was on the film. But I was wondering if there were any sort of tricks or tips that you had for, you know, getting that kind of production value, and working at that kind of like budget level. You might need shot or is it just like you'd like the whole thing and then shoot from different areas.

Chad Archibald 54:43
I think I'm the draftsman depending on on where we're talking about, like we're the draftsman, there was a set that we had built. Right and I mean, you know, so many people talked about lighting and cameras and lenses and when not, but I mean it's, it's Something that people just miss, from like an indie perspective, so many people will just just totally skimp out on set design in our direction. Filling your frame with things and Cody came from our background. So, you know, when me and him started working together on stuff I really learned a lot from, from him and kind of his insights on that. Because it is, you know, it's like, light something beautifully, you can, you can have a great camera and but if if your frames not the pieces aren't all in right spots, then you know, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be the shot that you're looking for. So even like things like the John's been, like, we, we've built a bunch of our sets. And when we build their sets, it's literally like, it's us building the sets, it's not like, you know, we hire a big, you know, we have a small team of people that we really trust that are so hard working. And we all get together and build this stuff in a few days, and, you know, it's tired, it's nice, we're, you know, pulling 30 hour days and, and whatnot to actually build on but we do it so that we can actually have that control where we can, you know, put elements wherever we want them to create our friends and whatnot. So it's to start off, you know, that's how we, we try to, you know, make things look great Johnson layer was completely, we decided that we can shoot up in the basement, we don't want to be limited by, you know, your standard basement reps that look like every other indie film. You know, we wanted to use water and we wanted to flood plays, and you know, we can't do that inside of studio or inside someone's basement. So I mean, we could do it, but, you know, again, burning patients and people we can do it once. But as far as you know, you set up your room and you have your, your basic setup of like this is, this is kind of the look that we're going to have, this is our standard look for this room. And then accordingly, depending on how you're shooting things, you know, you have floating lights moving around, you have whatever you need to kind of, in taste the shot a little bit. And I mean, also, you know, keeping continuity with everything, as much as you know, you move later on, in between shots, and you know, make every shot look great, you know, so you don't want to go from a shot a wide where your actors faces shadowed, and, you know, you push into the close up and it's like, they're beautifully lit. You know, it's about standing the lighting for all the shots when you start when you start on your watch, you know. But I mean, it's often that it's, it's just about kind of creating, training or atmosphere filling your frame using using the foreground and the background we had in the Johnson lair, we decided we wanted to use these kind of aquariums. And we've kind of like hidden along so they were like old tomato plants that had dried up from an action that we had kind of dangled over everything just to kind of give everything a little bit more textures, stuff that light can kind of touch as opposed to just have inflatables, right. And then we we took all these aquariums, you know, filled them with dirty water and leaves and crap and then we threw through lights, little lights, and behind them, like just a little keynotes or short keynotes or whatever and let them all up. So then, you know, as they're walking through here, there's no like the only light source is kind of like these beard like, dirty, musty Aquarian. Very sad. That's what the illusion that that's the only light sources these things and they're always you know, there's something going on in the background and, you know, dirty water just kind of has like a little bit of a gradient to it to kind of, you know, create something a little interesting. And just visually appealing in the background. Yeah. Right.

Jason Buff 59:06
Now, can you talk a little bit about sorry, did you Skype okay. It's like doing a broadcast broadcast to the Middle East or something. Okay, so I want to one of the things that always jumps out at me literally, is, you know, these scenes these really gut wrenching horror scenes where you know, you've got your actress there, you've got you know, they're being dragged off or something horrible is happening to them. Can you talk a little bit about directing a scene like that how it feels being on set during something like that, because it just like, I've always been curious how, you know, just what are you talking about? Do you cut the camera, cut the scene and everybody's laughing two seconds later or what? kind of what's that? Like?

Alex Ferrari 1:00:02
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Cody Calahan 1:00:15
Um, I don't know, sometimes it can, it could go either way. Like, sometimes it's, you know, you'll shoot a scene where, you know, the bad guys getting killed or whatever. And there's a huge explosion of blood. And it sort of as soon as you've had the camera, it's like, you know, the gore guys are cheering and everybody's laughing because it's, you know, it is a little ridiculous, but then sometimes have those scenes where, you know, the actors get so into it, and you get so into it, and you're, you're pushing for the best performance and you sort of get a performance. That's, that's real. And, you know, so I think it goes either way, except, you know, we've had times where, you know, the scene ends, we say, Cut and it's just silence. And everybody's like, holy shit. Okay. Well, I think we can move on. I think kind of depends what what the scene, you know, what the scene is, you know, if it's, if somebody's running around with the chainsaw, people, often there's blood spraying everywhere, we usually get a pretty positive response from our crew. But if it's something more emotional, then, you know, sometimes it's one of those ones where I can't remember the exact scene. But I remember shooting some with Jeff Mahara, those are, those are usually our DP for everything. And I said cut and he just sort of looked at me and he was like, sort of had that holy shit look on his face and said, Okay, now we're moving on. So let's go to scene. Scene. 34. That was 20 minutes before this when you were happy

Chad Archibald 1:01:49
Yeah, it's, we, we did the film bite, and it was full of, you know, gooey, gross, disgusting, a eggs and dripping. Like it sounds to be like mucus. So it was really like, when you watch the film, it's it's pretty gross. But on sad it was, you know, you, you kind of know when you've got something good because you get those reactions, right. That's kind of that's like, what he's talking about whenever you have been foreseen, and it's like, blood explodes everywhere. It's like, you always like hope that when I was done, and he called cut, everyone cheers. And like, you know, it's always a bummer whenever you do one of those scenes, and it goes. And it's like, okay, it's quiet. It's like, shit, you always want that cheer at the end, you know, you want that. With bite, it was like, anytime is the stringy mucus stuff that like as soon as it's stuck to something, it would be like webs it kind of, is really very gross. And, you know, we had so much fun making a movie because, you know, it used to be called cut and be like, ah

So and yeah, but I mean, I think when it does come down to shooting national coverage of your, of your cast, or somebody you know, depending on what your movie is, if it's, you know, if it's a serious moment, and they have to stay in character. You know, a lot of times we'll keep everyone quiet. Or we'll even you know, try to keep as few people on set as possible. But yeah, I mean, we we've shot a bunch of films, we haven't gone into that territory of like, dirty, dark, like truly disturbing, like, upsetting scenes that are so uncomfortable to even shoot. I'm sure we will eventually add a little bit of a lighter tone to them.

Jason Buff 1:03:55
Okay, sure. They're pretty, pretty light hearted. family movies

Chad Archibald 1:04:06
About making like Serbian film or something like that, you know, it's like, I can't I can't. I don't know how people will react on a disturbing scene, like close. Sorry, I had a whole discussion about that movie today. So it's like I look at our movies. Pretty big hearted, you know, joking around and, you know, some of our stuff is a little cartoony even, but

Jason Buff 1:04:29
Uh, was that I didn't hear you.

Chad Archibald 1:04:33
Serbian even sometimes a little jokey and cartoony?

Jason Buff 1:04:37
No, but what film that you say that to what you were talking about?

Chad Archibald 1:04:40
Serbian film. Okay. Which? I don't know if Yeah, well,

Jason Buff 1:04:46
I haven't seen it. I've heard about it. I haven't. You know, it's not on my list that

Chad Archibald 1:04:51
You're thinking about things like that. It's like because I do I've often wondered. I seems They're true and disturbing, or like rape scenes or anything like that, it's like it, you know, we haven't done anything like that, and I'm sure it's, it's a tone that I'm sure there's a weird tone on set for those, they think it would probably be a, you know, something that would be very awkward to direct, or you would really have to put a lot of pay a lot of attention to how you're treating everyone and your actors and respect. And you know, if you're, you know, doing very serious thing, and you want to make sure that everyone shows after, like, take big breaks in between or if you just want to shoot, keep shooting, and you know, everyone can go cry at the end of it.

Jason Buff 1:05:42
Yeah, well, I mean, okay, talking about the I'm trying to wrap up a little bit, because I know you guys have to go. How do you deal with the emotional stress of shooting and everything? Is there any, any way that you have been able to kind of because I mean, you guys, you're shooting a lot of movies, but I mean, for a lot of like normal people? It's, it's, I mean, probably the most stressful thing you can do? You know? Is there any way that you've learned to deal with that overcoming, you know, doubts, or any sort of psychological aspect of filmmaking that you can discuss?

Cody Calahan 1:06:20
I think. I mean, that's kind of the great thing about Blackphone. And myself and Chad, because I think we lean on each other a lot. And we share. Like, when, when I'm directing, I mean, I'm him a lot. And when he's directing, he leans on me a lot. So it's like, at least we know, when we go into a film, even if we're not directing or producing, at least we know, when we go into film, that there's somebody else there if if something goes wrong, or something's like, just we can't handle it, something, at least are some of the some of the person there to powwow with or to, you know, just so we're not ever doing it on our own. But I'd say, for me, what I've learned over making movies is, you know, the minute you get there, put 100% into everything while you're there. But just, you know, try not to take everything home. You know, like Leave, leave, leave some of it. You know, it's, it's hard because filmmaking is, you know, 50% Worth 50% passion. So it's hard to leave it sometimes. But I mean, for me, I think it's made me a better filmmaker, not taking it home, not dwelling on it, and not allowing myself to sleep, because I'm thinking about a scene tomorrow, and I can't figure it out. So I don't know, for me, I, I try my hardest. And then that's not to say that I don't do it, but I tried my hardest to sort of give it all on there. And then, you know, I'll still think about it at home, but I try not to bring it all home.

Chad Archibald 1:07:44
Yeah, it's weird, like filmmaking is weird, especially indie filmmaking. The majority of the products we do are overly ambitious, but just enough, we'd like to think. So it's one of those things is like, you get what you put into it every day, which is, I think it's kind of a dangerous concept. It's almost like, you know, you're, you're swimming in the ocean, and you're doing a contest, and the more water you drink, the better you are, that's how you're gonna win. You just got to keep drinking water anymore. Why? Who whoever drinks the most water wins, where it's like, it's endless. It's not like, a drink all the water, you know, it's like, when you go to make a movie, it's like, there's always more you can do, there's always things that can make the shots better, or make your days go better, or make your, you know, film goes better or more takes and like it's never done. So I mean, there are points, especially directing, when you're just like, you're pushing so hard, and you're like, you know, you just want it to be better and better and better and bigger and bigger. And, you know, you have to kind of control yourself so that you don't get you know, one shot done in a day. It's so I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's always it's always a struggle, and it's always stressful. And yeah, like Cody said, you know, having working with people that you trust and be able to kind of lean on each other. And knowing that you're all in one together and you're all trying to make it work is is definitely what kind of gets us through through our shoots. Because we, you know, we tend to do very long days.

Jason Buff 1:09:26
How long do you guys usually shoot, like a typical film, you know, bite or antisocial to or the draftsman? How long did this take to shoot?

Chad Archibald 1:09:38
I mean, they're all different. I think bite took about 15 days and 15 days in Ontario and then we shot additional two or three days and

Alex Ferrari 1:09:51
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Chad Archibald 1:10:01
I mean, they're all different. But again, it does come down to you know, you're how ambitious you're going to be. Johnson was, oh, man, we just kept going back for more shoots and more. Anytime you're dealing with water, things like that, it just gets so insane. So it's it. I mean, we probably shot 30 days on groundsman, if you actually add them all up, hanging in social too, we shot a fair bit more than we planned as well. Not too many, I've actually been shot like, you know, 20 days or something like that on a social, too. Yeah, and we usually have an editor on side as well, who read it as we go. So we kind of get to actually, you know, on day two, we see one's footage, or we see day one scenes cut together.

Jason Buff 1:10:49
Right! I was gonna ask you that. So you can kind of see what if you're, if you miss anything, or whatever, you can just do a quick reshoot while you have everything set up. Right?

Chad Archibald 1:10:57
Exactly. So you can kind of run over and grab a shot that you mister, at least put it on the list and come on back on a weekend or something like that, to grab it. So I mean, that definitely, that definitely helps us move in. And it also gives, you know, the entire cast and crew and everyone a little bit of it's exciting, you know, it's like you're watching something and you see some scenes come together and they look really, really good. And you can kind of show the cast a little bit of their performance, you know, give them a little taste of what we're doing. You know, there's a lot of ways for the Casco and they do an entire film then they go on the Senate theater and watching like oh my god, this is horrible. And I mean, we all do I'm sure cast is some of our earlier films do that as well. But at least being able to kind of show them there. They have a confidence in the crew has a confidence that everyone's building some thing that's gonna look really good. And then come out and you know, it's a good way to kind of get everyone excited about the project and keep keep everyone's passionate levels up high.

Jason Buff 1:12:03
Okay, so moving into post production just a couple more questions.

Chad Archibald 1:12:07
You hmm, we may have lost Cody

Jason Buff 1:12:13
Oh yeah, let me that's not good. Hold on a second. Yeah, he doesn't look like he's on there. But maybe he had to leave let me see I can try texted me he's like dude, no more

Chad Archibald 1:12:30
Often it won't let him return a line and he let me

Jason Buff 1:12:33
Let me put them back on there we go. Like where did you go man, we were all we were concerned. I don't want to let him know that we didn't notice he wasn't there. There Cody. Hey, man. Yeah, sorry about that. All right. Yeah, okay, so let me let me launch into a few more quick questions about post just for our my people here the getting into the post production process. How long does that typically last? And what is the kind of can you walk through what happens first? What happens next just so people have a general idea of how it all comes together?

Chad Archibald 1:13:26
Yeah, we like I was saying we do a lot of our editing on set. So by the time we're done shooting a movie, you know 80% of it. Ideally cut and I we fairly fast turnarounds on our phones, I think we shot by in December and screen that the cam market in May. So again, like we'd like we were saying with, with all the LEDs that we have for production, we do the same in post. You know, red lab in Toronto does all our color correct? For each one of our films, and we've worked out a deal. So they know when it's coming in. Urban posters are post sound, you know, so we create our schedules with all of them. And, you know, we get an edit together, and we take it to the studio, we sit down with them and kind of get everyone's input and trim it down, make whatever changes you need to lock our picture, send it off to read lab, sit in there and do our color sessions with them. Send it off to urban, they work on on other sound edits, for whatever reason, we always end up on some crazy deadline like it's going to screen somewhere. And you know, it's a big panic to actually get it all done. But I mean luckily we have such great companies are working with and post that. They work really hard to make it all happen to anything excited when they see you need to work on something they get to see in a theater in two weeks. I

Jason Buff 1:15:02
And in terms of the drowns Minh, which is I haven't been able to see the other two movies because they're not out yet. But you work with George Flores on that, right?

Chad Archibald 1:15:14
Yeah, I've worked with George a bunch of times. Because

Jason Buff 1:15:19
George has a friend of mine, actually.

Chad Archibald 1:15:20
I love George.

Jason Buff 1:15:24
He always taught me more about filmmaking, I think when I was starting a small film, down here, and he was just one of the people that I was talking with about doing post sound. And he would just sit there for, you know, and talk about all these things that we need to make sure we had and everything. I mean, just very generous with his time. So I'm, I want to make sure I promote George on the show. Absolutely.

Chad Archibald 1:15:46
No, George did a film called Neverland. With me to go, and he did this. And, you know, we had such a great time working on with those zones. And, yeah, I definitely have a huge supporter of George as well.

Jason Buff 1:16:04
So the typical time from editing and doing sound, and when do you work with, like soundtrack music and things like that.

Chad Archibald 1:16:13
So we have, like, for example, drowns in a social bite, all the sounds were scored by a woman named Steph Copeland, who, you know, we get along with works so well with her, and she's so talented. You know, I'm sure we'll work on many more funds after this. But, you know, she loves to come in early as well. And just kind of minutes or, you know, she's already got stuff that she's working on before she even sees that is where she's just read the script, and she's getting ideas. And building functions, again, very passionate. artist, who just is always working hard and was, you know, really excited to project and we're not, you know, so we, as soon as we pitch a lock, that's kind of what everyone's always waiting on. Everyone's excited to be like, okay, feature lock feature luggage locks, as soon as we get it, we kind of, you know, press the go button, it goes to her, it goes to urban post, it goes to a red live, and everyone gets to start working on it kind of at once.

Okay, well, guys, I don't want to take much. And let me just ask you one final question. How? What can you give just a little bit of advice to people out there who haven't made their first film and are, you know, wanting to, you know, get out and kind of do what you guys have done? Do you have any sort of like, you know, if you could go into a time machine and tell yourself before you started, what what kind of advice would you give yourself?

I mean, the things that, that I would say are definitely, like we're doing now we work on tons of different ideas to find the right one. I would say spend the time Don't, don't get excited with with an idea that is just a generic throwaway idea and just dive at it to make a movie. You know, make sure you spend spend your time a lot of people write scripts, because they're, you know, they sit down as prescriptive, as if it's like, if they have a script, they're going to make a good movie, you know. So, work hard and make sure you understand the concept or your your film that you're going to make and make sure you really wanna make it because that's it to a lot of people lose passion halfway through their eyes. So again, this sounds not really, I don't really care about it. I mean, figure out, figure out what you want to make and figure out a concept that you're really passionate about the you know, you think she can, you know, matters what you want to do. Are you making a film to create an art piece? Are you making a film to sell to the market? Are you going to go for, you know, something that's going to make funds back? Are you trying to do something that's, you know, in our piece, you kind of have to know what you're going to do before you go into it. And then after that, again, take your time and find the right people to work with. There's a lot of great people in the film industry like any other any industry, there's a lot of great people and there's a lot of people that it's actually counterproductive to work with. So find find the right people you want to work with, surround yourself with some and find talented people and I mean, if you you know, go out and show how passionate you are and show people give people confidence that you know what your, your plan is, and you've you've worked hard to organize it and figure things out that you know, they will have confidence in you. And then aside from that, just go out on your own even with your iPhone and shoot some stupid stuff with your friends. You know, it's there's a reason why in film school they're like I go to do an action scene go chasing go do these because like they don't want you to come back with beauty for Chase team, they want you to go realize the mistakes and the issues that you're going to that are going to arise whenever you make a chasing, you know, just so the next time you do it, you you've already gone through a few steps. And, and learn. Now, if you do 10, chasing your 11th one is going to be amazing. And it's going to be even better than the other one. So, that's, you know, don't be don't be afraid to go out and make crappy shorts or whatever, like don't they don't even have to be shorts, you know, you're gonna get giant crews together and devote, you know, understanding how to do these things. And it doesn't take big cameras or anything. It's the same as everything else, you know, you just got to go out and make your mistakes and learn from

Jason Buff 1:20:45
Alright guys, I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot for coming on the show. And I look forward to seeing antisocial too, and bite. But anyway, thanks a lot, guys.

Chad Archibald 1:20:54
Thanks so much.

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