IFH 807: Making Your Own Damn Movies: Inside Dave Campfield’s Troma-Fueled Filmmaking Path

Alex Ferrari 0:00
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Dave Bullis 1:06
On this episode, my guest plays Caesar in the comedy team Caesar and Otto. He hosts the Troma Now podcast, and he also was a filmmaker himself. We also talked about he went to a college that no longer exists, which, again, as you know, I probably find really funny. Not not the fact that he went there and doesn't exist, but the fact that the college, do you know, the college doesn't exist anymore. Because, you know, we talk about all that stuff that we talk about the worst onset experiences, including when someone pulled a knife on a first ad, and we talked about getting to work with Troma, creating his own movies, finding an audience, tons more stuff. This is a really awesome interview about going out there and just doing it yourself, and finding all the ways and different connections. And you never know what's going to happen with guest, Dave Campfield.

Dave Campfield 2:40
Actually, we got two, Dave's right here. It's gonna become like that. Chieftain, strong sketch, hey, Dave's not here. Man, no, it's me, Dave, your guest. Dave, so happy new year.

Yeah. Same to you, buddy. Is it snowing where you are, by the way,

I haven't looked out the window today. I'm not gonna lie to you. Oh, I'm a bit of a shut in.

Dave Bullis 3:02
Hey, same here, man. I just kind of look at my window from time to time, being like, oh, that's what it's doing outside. Okay, actually, I have a huge window right in front of me, but you can't see it because we're on a podcast, but, but I swear it's there.

Dave Campfield 3:15
We can swear a lot of things there. That's the beauty of podcasting. You know, I'm talking to you from the shuttle tiger in outer space. And, yeah, welcome to the podcast today.

Dave Bullis 3:30
Yeah, it's great, man. I mean, I could just make up anything too. You know, it's great. It's I, my supermodel wife is actually going to in the kitchen right now making me some lunch. So it's great.

Dave Campfield 3:42
You have a supermodel wife. I do too.

Dave Bullis 3:44
It's great, man. It's great. Oh, it's a small world. Both named Dave, both have supermodel wives. It's great man. And both host podcasts, yeah, both, oh, my God. Well, we should just make a new show called Dave and Dave and and every week we just come on and just, just whatever, whatever stream of consciousness, every any lie, any whatever comes off the top of our head, no one will know the truth either way, and they can kind of like figure out, you know, what are lying about? What's the truth?

Dave Campfield 4:10
This is very psychedelic. Let's get back to reality for a second.

Dave Bullis 4:14
So, so Dave, I wanted to have you on the podcast because we actually met through again, through the magic of Twitter, and you host your own podcast. You're a filmmaker, and hey, you know what? You have an awesome first name. So I figured, you know why? Why not? You know, have you on. We could talk about all this good stuff. We were kind of, you know, missing each other, so to speak. Because I know we try to make our schedule, schedule sync, but you're on now. So, so that's why I wanted to have you on, because, also because, you know, we both, you know, watch a lot of troll movies. We both know Lloyd Kaufman, he's actually been on the show as well. And it's just, you know, again, small world. So, you know, just to get started, Dave wanted to ask you know about your whole career and how you got started in the film industry. And also, some. The really cool you do, too, is, Dave, you do what I've been starting to move this podcast to do, and that is, you actually make movies the same time to the podcast. You know what I mean, like, you're actually out there doing stuff at the same time. I've actually haven't made anything since I started this podcast, which is crazy, but and this and your episode 198 so it's kind of crazy, man, but so I wanted just to get started at the beginning, and that is, you know, when you finally started making your own films. So just to start us at the beginning, did you? Did you go to film school?

Dave Campfield 5:34
I went to a college that doesn't exist anymore. Went to the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. And I went there because it was the only film college in the United States, only college united states that had a film studio on campus. So parts, basically it was, they took their gym and they renovated it, and they shot part of city slickers there, another big film? So, like I when you go into this massive facility and in New Mexico where, where this was, all of the houses and all of the architecture of the building is to code, and everything looks like an adobe building. So yeah, this visual land of imagination between, like, the amber tones of the of the scent of the, you know, there was no grass there. It was like, it was like, go to school on Tatooine in Star Wars. And the film college was, was the renovated gym. I mean, the film studio was the renovated gym. And you could see in, I'm being pointed to where they shot city slickers, you know, this is where they they shot a nighttime fire scene indoors, you know, like it was, it was a lot of the exteriors at night were actually shot inside, you know, like they were able to transform it into the into A grand Vista, grand landscape. And I could see on the glowing ground too, where they shot city slickers, that the basketball court had still existed. The chalk marks from the from the basketball court were still there. But the appeal of going there was really just to be able to witness filmmaking firsthand. And, you know, I want to, I was in school with people who went off to be pretty successful, like Rocklin. Dunbar was a classmate of mine, and now he you can see him in a lot of things, from prison break to he was in Kiss, kiss, bang, bang. He's one of those guys you've seen many, many times. But you know, back then we were both just kids and trying to find a way. And I think college tends to be more about the experience you get working on film sets and meeting other people film college than it is necessarily even some of the stuff that you learn in the classroom, because that you can learn hands on. And so that's where I got started. And you know, I met a good group of friends that I continue to collaborate with over the years and stay in touch with. And my roommate and I were working on a production we're trying to get production off the ground. And he secured two meetings, two meetings, one with a New Line Cinema, one with universal and like this is ridiculous. For about 21 years old, we got a meeting with these two major studios. Things are looking good. The future is looking bright. So bright I had to wear shades. And so we got the universal meeting, and I realized there was nothing to lose, because right up front, they told us, look, fellas, we're having this meeting, but to tell you the truth, we're not going to take your work, but we're interested in meeting you like all right, well, that takes the pressure off, because whatever we have no we have no background, but we make our best pitch, and it was a good meeting, and at the end of which we realized we weren't gonna get anything out of it, maybe other than a contact when we went to New Line, that's when the pressure was on, because it was a somewhat albeit tiny chance that they could look at the script and hire us to make and we got we got prepped by like an entertainment lawyer That was a friend of a friend of a friend, and they were giving us all the pointers that you have to say in your big production meeting. And he was telling us, when you guys go in, what they want to hear is that you're young, you're from the streets, you've got a story to tell, and you've got a dark coming of age comedy and like the stuff they liked from the past, like Grosse point blank or Heather stuff like that. Just tell them, that's the language they speak. So we're going to the New Line Cinema, meeting with Matt Alvarez and so fellas, Tell us. Tell us what you got. So, hey, well, well, that where we're young. We're from the streets. So we're telling a story from hard, a dark comedy, sort of like, you know, like a key, gross point blank or or like a Heathers. And there's a pause as he's sitting looking at us from across the table, and he says to us, you know, I just said, this is all very intriguing, so, and that began at when I was at age 21 like a year long relationship with New Line Cinema in which it was, it was the absolute carrot being dangled in front of the the rabbit and being just out of reach, because it went on like I would do little changes for them, and he, Matt would respond and and I would do another change and take a few months for him to respond again. And there was clearly in touch. But, you know, I saw the writing on the wall. I felt like they were intrigued enough to keep me on leash, but not intrigued enough to make that thing happen. And Matt went off to do one of producing all the ice cube movies. And I decided that I was going to try to, you know, not, not not become one of those people that get into that limbo of just waiting for that big opportunity to happen. You just had to make it happen on your own. So I began production on a my own film called under surveillance, later retitled dark chamber. And my attitude going into it is, I've seen a lot of indie film, like straight to DVD movies, and they tend to sit at a certain pattern, and the the kind of emphasis was on the Murder, Mayhem, destruction and following the paint by numbers plot. You know, that's nothing against them, but that's what they do. You know, like when you go into some of these movies. It's sort of like, okay, the Friday the 13th homage number 2000 and I really wanted to do something different. I wanted to take I wanted to make it character based. I wanted to make it different. I wanted to surprise you, maybe more of a mystery thriller with some horror in there. And that was my attitude going into it. And after like, five years for I spent five years on this, and the things went wrong. This documentary is online. If you type in, you know, the release title was dark chamber. If you type in, making dark chambers, you will see everything that could go wrong in five years, because it usually does when you're making a film. It's amazing how many things could go wrong, especially you just don't have because you're always cutting quarters, you're always compromising. Things are always, you know, money is not on your side. So you're constantly working around issues. And so I spent that time making this, and I was so happy that I made a film that, as I see, broke the conventions of the genre, and I'm proud of my little, young self, and like, I go to the studios, I'm like, here, and then their response is, we wanted something that was more familiar. I'm like, Oh, son of a bitch. I thought, like, I you know, so all of those times when I'm looking at these movies is because they're encouraged to be familiar and they're encouraged to follow the same things and character matters less than does hitting certain beats of of gore and other marketable elements. And I didn't really make that kind of film, but a couple companies said we're interested. And the one I went with was can't motion pictures, slash shock a Rama. And he told me right off the bat, I like this, but to get it into the marketplace, we're gonna have to sell it as a horror, and at that point, all right, do what you have to do. And yeah, got into Netflix. And, you know, people were expecting saw when they saw a cover with a pentagram carved into the back of the of the actress. There was no woman in the movie who got the pentagram carved in her back that made, they made the film look so gory, um, and that was simply what they felt was going to make it viable in the marketplace and at the same time and change the expectations of the audience. But, you know, if I had this perfectly marketed as film with the property, like, if it was called under surveillance, and it had a cover that thoroughly dig, that thoroughly representative film, maybe 10 people would have seen it. So that's the, you know, that's the trade off. I guess. If you if you have a film that doesn't have big stars and and it doesn't have a content that that looks like a standard horror, people whose interest you know, and why? Why see that when Hollywood's presenting the bigger budget equivalent to that same thing, with more production values and more polish some you know, the you live, you learn. And that was, that was a very educational experience. And from there, I began doing. Comedy horrors, because I want to be different in the marketplace, and I want to tell I also want to tell stories that I miss the kind of story and and the Cesar nano franchise, you know, started off with summer camp massacre, dead of the X Men paranormal Halloween. These are their comedy horror satires where you lampoon the genre, and I hadn't seen like these real comedy horrors, other than, you know, the scary movies, but something more akin to Abbott and Castor will meet Frankenstein and those crossover movies where you have two Doofy comedy characters and and they're in the middle of this of a horror film of, you know, genre they have no right being in but somehow, when they are, it's a lot of fun. And that is sort of been the path I've had and and more recently, I got into the trauma now podcast, which was simply Lloyd, appeared in one of the Cesar nada films and and I saw him at a convention, and I said, Lloyd, who's Do you have a podcast? You know he? He knows me, even though at first he was like, Who are you? I said, I'm Dave. I directed you. You remember, Oh, God, Dave, I'm sorry, sir. And he said, there's nobody, there's nobody. We want to do one, but there's nobody doing it. I said, I want to do one. We'd really want to do your podcast. I think I could, you know, we can have some fun. And he said, Yeah, talk to Levi. He gave me, like, some contacts. And then we wound up. We wound up making this thing happen, you know, basically, they give me a little bit of notes before each episode, and then I send them final product. They approve it, they put it up. And they've never yet denied an episode I've done, you know, meaning I could be like, Hey, we don't like this, you know, because I, I tease trauma a lot in the podcast, and they're always game with whatever, and that they've been a wonderful company to to collaborate with, you know, just because of the freedom that they give you. And coming next year, you know, like, you know what? I'm hoping it sounds like Lloyd's going to be the first guest of the new year, and possibly two part episode. So we will, we will see about time you got him on there, it's his podcast.

Dave Bullis 17:02
Yeah, I was gonna say it's, it's kind of like, Where the hell is he?

Dave Campfield 17:06
Like, there's a fun board game. Where's Lloyd? Yeah, yeah, he's wearing the striped shirt and the glasses over in the corner in the adult bookstore. So he's, yeah, he's, he's set to come on, and there's, I haven't actively been making films since I've done the podcast. And as a matter of fact, I had another show that I was hosting, and I had to go on hiatus while I while I made the film, while I made my last feature. So it is definitely difficult to juggle podcasting and filmmaking. It is because, like, if you're doing, if you're filmmaking, you're taking, wearing a lot of hats, you tend to, you tend it tends to become your life, you know, for that period of five months, six months or a year.

Dave Bullis 17:53
Yeah, it's so true. And just trying to get everyone's schedule to sync and all that good stuff, that's why I now, I focus more my writing. I when I say I haven't made anything since I started this podcast, that means I haven't actually produced anything. You know what I mean, other than just just focusing on this and sort of trying to get some stuff off the ground and just him just to make it, but, but next year, I'm dead set. I'm actually, I was actually gonna make something this year, and just kept getting pushed back. Just, we got a day, yeah, I know, right. I got a data to come up with this. I actually was next year. I actually I've already, like, put the groundwork in now, because I haven't made anything like, I haven't directed anything in a long time, just because of, you know, Oh well, I mean people who've listened this podcast. No, I've talked about ad nauseum, but, but basically, I want to start doing something next year and just getting back on the horse, so to speak, or getting back on the wagon or off the wagon, or whichever wagon is, but, but you're making just making sure I'm actually doing stuff now, Dave, I just want to actually backtrack just a second here, because you mentioned something that I really took note of, which is that the college you went to doesn't exist anymore. Did it just lose all its funding and it couldn't operate anymore?

Dave Campfield 19:03
No, apparently I did it. You know, I went there and they're like, Man, when it's what close the doors in this place. And I it was, it was, it was a small school. I was one of the 1000 students that went there. And I think some of these privately funded schools sometimes have a hard time staying afloat unless the, you know, the tuition is egregious, and, you know, and it was, and so I, you know, I had been out there 10 years, but when they, when they closed, and, you know, funny is like the college, like, was military barracks at one point. So it was like World War Two. It was rather was rather our mess hall, or what do you call our London was originally like military barracks from the Second World War. I'm like, this is a hell of a place to go to school. So I think they just, it actually just became another college. They just, you know, gave it a cosmetic gloss, and turned into another school with less of an emphasis. On film.

Dave Bullis 20:11
You know, with this whole stuff about college and stuff like that, you know, I remember when there were a couple years ago, sweet Briar College in Maryland was going to close. And Mark Cuban actually said, See, this is the beginning of the start of the college apocalypse, where all these small colleges are going to close. And I think he's absolutely right, like, so once he So, I actually looked at all the college closings for like, the past like 20 years, and like, the most I think I ever saw, like on that line, I think was, like nine or 10, but like, even the college I went to, I had an awful college experience, by the way, and I just, I still don't understand, you know, why I even went to college, but, and I still, you know, everyone tells you you have to have that degree. And

Dave Campfield 20:56
I worked for one year, Dave, so that's, that's my whole college experience and the rest of the time, and I left specifically to pursue this and do it on my own. So my mind's not a traditional college experience, it's a very short one.

Dave Bullis 21:09
But that's the smart idea, though, is go honestly, man, I've known people who've gone for a day. I've known people who've gone for a year or two, and then they said, Look, this isn't for me. Like I don't get it, like I struggled through, you know, all the fluff, bullshit classes and got out the end, got that degree, and then you find out it means absolutely nothing. So it's like, you know, what was the point of all that? So, you know, because if everyone has a bachelor's, then what does it actually mean? So it's almost like, and then, now, you know, anyways, I'm gonna get off on top of a higher ed anyway. So, so what happened, so with that, you know, I have actually, so, so when you actually were going to pitch, and when they talked about, you know, things like, you know, hey, you know, we want something familiar, you know, I, you know, I have a friend of mine who actually pitched a different way. And what he does is, when he goes into business meetings, he just says a lot of business buzzwords, and it's worked out damn well for him.

Dave Campfield 22:06
Well, I'll tell you this much Dave are you still there? It sounded like there was a little blip.

Dave Bullis 22:12
No, I'm here.

Dave Campfield 22:13
Okay, so number of years ago I was in California when, when we were on the same pitch, and by the way, that's these were for, this was for a different movie. The film in a pitch to to new line. But when we were on California, we we got together with another friend who got a million dollars, and he was saying that his whole method of of securing this money is he would go into a meeting. He was, he was a scam artist, not that he didn't deserve the money, but like his methods were like, what he's gonna have his friend buzz him on the cell phone in the middle of the meeting and say that he has to take the calls it's from another investor. And he had all of these little methods planned that would make the investors think that he's more important that he is. And so sometimes there's tools of manipulation that are that are used. But I've never been that guy. I really would like to think of myself as on the level realistic with who I am, what I'm capable of and and that's it, not trying to turn myself into something I'm not. And for a lot of people, that's how they get their money. You know, if I feel like I wasn't, I couldn't do something terrific, then I don't deserve it. And, you know, I continue with that philosophy in mind. And if it pays off, wonderful, and if it doesn't, whatever, I'm still the person that I am, and I'm still moving forward and making films and and, you know, even if something is like, this is a great experience, just doing podcasts and making indie films is nice. And hopefully you get that opportunity, like I was telling you before we started recording that I I was interviewed for a History Channel hosting gig, and it was a program, and that was as a result of staying the course. You know, I have a friend of mine who's who's done very well, and he says, I like what you do, and I want you to co host a program with me. I want you to audition to co host with a foreign edition with me before a show that I'm gonna be hosting. Had I not been doing what I've been doing, that opportunity wouldn't come through. So a lot of times you have to stick to your gun, if it's what you really believe in, be willing to to not do well, but learn along the way and see where it all takes you. And as a matter of fact, that show did happen. And whereas I wasn't the co host, I was involved with it, and I had to like I had to, like it was one of the reenactors or whatever. This is cool. This is all bigger than the stuff I've done and and it leads that led to more opportunities. So that's why, if you really believe in it, you gotta stick to your guns.

Dave Bullis 24:56
Yeah, it's I find that. You know. And as we talk about just going forward with the podcast and talk about, you know, making movies at the same time, I find that you have to keep that momentum going. Because if you stop, it's way too easy just to lose sort of track of everything, lose sight of everything, and then suddenly you're like, oh, shit, didn't I want to do this by now? You know what I mean? And it just it's kind of, you got to keep that. You got to keep on that as best as you possibly can.

Dave Campfield 25:22
I've been working on one script called awaken the Reaper for about on and off for about 10 years. So like and it started off as just a fairly generic horror film with a couple of cool twists, maybe, and has evolved into something extremely personal. And I don't think I've ever done anything this personal, and that's what I've been working on, really, for the last year, trying to get, you know, like, fairly full time sure, to get this off the ground and find the proper budget for it. Because these c's are not a comedy movies I've done, they've they've done for, you know, between six and $10,000 and I can't do this anymore. I can't do films. I mean, they're, they're, they're wonderful experiences for the most part, but I can't keep doing films for so little money where I'm getting criticized primarily because I don't have money. It's an incredibly insulting there's faith insult to be criticized for. I have to show what I'm more capable of on a bigger budget, because you're with with a bigger budget, you just have higher production values, you have more tools to play with, you have a wider palette to paint from. And so what started off as this generic film just really became the story of me and how the story, hopefully, of all of us, where we get to a lot in life, we get into a place where we feel stuck, and you feel like you can't move forward, and you feel like every day is you're not moving forward, and and you're you're regretful of past and afraid of the future. And that's, I think, where a lot of us are, and, and and I want to tell that story about sort of getting out of the way of your own fear within the context of a very thought out horror film. And if, if I can make this work the way that I'm imagining and hoping for, if I could touch people on a human level with us. It'll make for a really unique car experience, because it's rare that a heart touches you on a human level and and feels real. And that's what I'm hoping for, and maybe in in 2018 we're really get to make this happen. We'll, we'll find out,

Dave Bullis 27:37
Yeah, you know, money is, is always that, magical thing. But, you know, I always, you know, now I'm sort of working with the other way, where I'm trying to sort of build up where, you know, I build up again, as we talk about the past, you know, I'm trying to build it up again to the point now where, you know, if I, when I do go to an investor, whatever, I actually have a body of work that's more recent, and I think that's what, that's an advantage you have. Again, here's your business term, unfair advantage. You know, what's, what's the unfair advantage? And I think that's yours. Is not only that, you have the podcast, and also you have the body of work. And you could say, Hey, I look, I've made this for a few $1,000 you know, imagine what I could do for 50 you imagine what I could do for 100 and, you know, everything would still be profitable.

Dave Campfield 28:22
Well, profitable is harder and harder to accomplish these days. You just do the best that you can. And I've aligned with them. Wild eye releasing has been a wonderful company for me, and I do a lot of work for them. They've released my last couple of movies. They just released my compilation pack, if you the holiday horrors, the holiday hard horrors DVD, if you typed it in, that's all of my Caesar and auto comedy horror films, which they just re released. And I've been able to to to work and work on other indie films and do some a bunch of stuff for them. And I've gotten to a point where, you know, my films make something back then don't necessarily make their budget back, but it shows you how difficult, in this day and age with with so many movies being made, how challenging it is to make a profit, but it can be done. It can be done.

Dave Bullis 29:16
Yeah, and that's something too, that I talked about too on this podcast with all with a ton of other guests, is that, you know, with so many movies being made, how do you stand out? You know? How do you stand out in any which way, shape or form, and how do you get your movie seen now? So that sort of becomes the new, you know, how the distribution method and the marketing for that distribution method, let's just say I decided to make a movie. I put it on YouTube for the hell of it. I make a movie this weekend. You and I make a movie. Dave, there's one one day left in in 2017 so let's make a movie. And you and I make a movie, and we decided just to throw it on YouTube. It's a short film. And you know what we just say, let's just keyword the hell out of it. Let's just hope for, you know, somebody discover, you know, let's just hope I'm sorry. Let's, let's play Word. Let's just use it as a plan of long tail keywords. And that, you know, as longer it's up there, the more chance it has of being discovered. And we just sort of use that method, and hopefully somebody stumbles upon it again. I keep saying, hopefully I don't, I don't like that word. Hope you know what I mean. It sounds too much like blind faith, but we know what I'm saying. Like, that's, that's the the way of distribution, of marketing, and there's, but there's 1000 other ways to do it. It's all about trying to get a movie scene.

Dave Campfield 30:39
Well, you know, the the most successful person that I worked with on YouTube was a actress named Lauren Francesca. She

Dave Bullis 30:46
Oh, yeah, I know her.

Dave Campfield 30:46
Oh she had a little cameo in one of my films, and I was pretty friendly with her for a couple of years there. We did a lot. I wrote and directed and co starred. Knew a bunch of videos for her, but I found what, I think the key to his her success was that she understood YouTube better than I know, that anybody better than anybody I know, like in she would show me science of it and keywords and this and that. So it's two things, you know, do you have the content, and do you know how to market yourself? And I made a film that should have gone, I think, gangbusters on YouTube, like, because it was sort of made for YouTube, and it did okay. Like, people really seem to respond to it, but not that many people have really seen it overall, and it's because I don't understand YouTube that well. Look at piggyzilla, P, I, G, G, Y, Z, I, L, L, A, you like Godzilla? Do you like guinea pigs? Piggyzilla. And it's, you know, like a bunch of two minute shorts, and they and I thought it would be more of a hit on YouTube, because it's sort of made for it. It's short, silly, it's got animals. So

Dave Bullis 31:48
I'll link that in the show notes, by the way, Dave, I actually just looked that up real quick, so I will link to that in the show notes, everybody, so we can all check out piggyzilla. But no, but the but like, I understand what you mean about like, stuff like that, because I actually, I you know, I've, as I've gotten more to YouTube. I actually have a friend of mine who who runs one of the top YouTube channels, not like, it's like, the top one percentile, and unfortunately, he doesn't do much with it anymore. And I've always said, like, give it, you know, give it to somebody who could actually use it, and he, he just won't, won't give it up. I mean, it just kind of sits there rotting away, which is,

Dave Campfield 32:24
How often does he post videos?

Dave Bullis 32:28
Not very often at all. And by that, I mean, like, probably once every six months at most. And I mean, like, I mean, honestly, I've had him on the podcast, and we actually talked about that. And it's kind of like this where, you know, he wants to it, he wants to make content for it, but once, maybe a certain kind of content, and this, it takes time to make that content, and then it's just, it's everything sort of keeps going into the back burner. So it's one of those situations and but I keep telling him, I said, you know, you could be making a pretty good amount of money every month from this thing, if it was just constantly have being the monster was,

Dave Campfield 33:07
Of course, there are people who make livings off of YouTube and make pretty good livings off YouTube, and that's like, to me, unfathomable, but it can be done, you know. So by all means, there's the reason, tell you the truth, the advantage of doing the Troma Now podcast instead of the Dave Campfield podcast is that I come out on their channel, and they already have a built in in fan base, and I know their content, and I like them personally. So you know, teaming with with somebody who's already established themselves and given them product that they're that they like, is always a win, win.

Dave Bullis 33:42
Yeah, yeah. And also, too, when you do the trauma now podcast, it's, you know, it's branding and and honestly, I that's so important, because, you know, people know what trauma is, you know, maybe I would go back and I change the name of this podcast, because, like, guys like Alex Ferrari, who have the indie film hustle podcast, you know, any film hustle just kind of rolls off the tongue, and you kind of can envision what it is. You know, you hear my name, you hear this podcast like, what the hell? Who the hell is Dave Bullis? And two, I don't even care who he is. So

Dave Campfield 34:09
It's, it's, it's a reverse. It's almost like that guy, just once you've done a podcast with a brand name, then you've got your own name. Because what would Lloyd be without trauma came and then people knew Lloyd. So it's sort of like you have to come up the brand name. Up the brand name, and then you get known for your brand name.

Dave Bullis 34:26
Where were you three years ago when I was doing this?

Dave Campfield 34:31
Call it the bullets. Your name sounds like bullets, right? You got to use bullets, film, bullet, film. And, you know, like, it's just something, something, bullet, cause unit, you had a cool kind of you got a cool edge to your name. So, oh, thank you absolutely. And, yeah, let me just have to too late. Now, Dave, you gotta, you gotta stick to the Dave Bullis podcast. So,

Dave Bullis 34:53
Yeah, no, we're 100 and, well, actually, we're over 200 episodes. Now you're 198 but we've actually recorded the other. They're a couple. So now we're equal, yeah, you're, you're actually, yeah. So the Met to the magic of podcasting, you're actually the prequel to the sequel, which hasn't released yet.

Dave Campfield 35:11
Wow, we're shooting at a sequence here. I like it,

Dave Bullis 35:15
Yeah, yeah. Just like a movie. We're shooting at a sequence. Oh, man. It just, you know, and for everyone listening, you know, if you're going to start your own podcast, if I, if I could just give you a really quickly before we get to talking about, you know, Dave and all the stuff he's up to, I want to just say, if you're going to start a podcast, here's my recommendations for right now. The name has to really be unique. The it has to, you know, roll off the tongue and but it also has to do with so people can, when they hear it, it envisions what they're going to be listening to. The format has to be, you know, obviously around the around an idea of what the core of this is going to be. And you can make it short, you can make it long, as long as it's always in tune with that idea. And, I mean, there are some podcasts I listen to that are five minutes, and it's like, that's exactly how long this should be. And there's podcasts that I've listened to that are, you know, an hour, hour and a half, and that's exactly how long that should have been, because they're, they're telling, like, a murder mystery, you know what I mean? Like, there's story type podcasts where, which have gotten pretty popular on, like, you know, my American life, and NPR and all that good stuff, and then, and then you have the other stuff. So always, you know, because I think the interview podcast, I think we've kind of reached, like Max interview podcast, even though this is an interview podcast, but like, you know, Mark Mara's, WTF, Adam corollas, you know, Joe Rogan's podcast, I think that the more you can stand out, the better it is. But I think the reason you stand out, Dave is, again, you have that unique angle, again, unfair advantage of going with trauma. And also, you know, you sound like a radio host, like I, like I said before the pre interview.

Dave Campfield 36:50
Thanks. Why? Thank you, Dave. Maybe I should push it a little more and become the the exaggerated radio host. But I was gonna say that when you talk about Marc Maron and a lot of these guys just gets, got started on the when the when it was beginning, when podcasts were really beginning. They got in then if Mark Maron tried to come out of nowhere right now, maybe he wouldn't have that luck. He probably wouldn't, to tell you the truth. So it has a lot to do with when he started. He sort of pioneered the, you could say podcasting in general. So as one of the first he, you know, he thrived. So it's almost like we have to for we have to see where the next evolution in in media is going to be and get in on the ground level, you know, which is what a lot of these guys did. They saw where the industry was going, or at least took a gamble on it and got it at the right time. So, yeah, that was a million podcasts. Now there's a million podcasts. It's very, it's harder for us to stand out.

Dave Bullis 37:50
Yeah, very, very, very true, man. It is just getting in that ground floor, then just dominating the industry, or just dominating that niche. You know, when marron started, it was just in its early days, and now he's up to what like over 1000 episodes. And you know, the same thing with like Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla. And that's why, when a new podcast comes out, they usually have a ton of marketing money behind it, like what some of these other podcasts that have done well are doing is because they just have a ton of marketing and they don't market that to the traditional way, because, again, that would be foolish. They are. They market specifically on social media. They market. It's all direct marketing. It's no more. It's like there's hardly any permission based marketing anymore, and it's all basically, you know what I mean. So, so

Dave Campfield 38:32
I want to tell you something that my friend Ethan Wiley, who he's a filmmaker, has made a lot of fun films you might have seen before. He made, made house movies one and two. He made children of the corn five. He's done a lot of things, and he told me, the problem with host these things is that it's almost like having a billboard in the jungle. It's like you're surround. No one will see it, you know, no one will know it's there, because there's so much around us, and it's hard in a world where where, you know, one out of 10 people, and make it a guess what, like, so when people have podcasts, how, how do you get seen? You know, I have another podcast that I do occasionally. I've done one episode called production hell, and that's all about the trials and tribulations of indie filmmaking, like really getting to the nightmare stories of what couldn't go wrong and what has gone wrong on film sets. I made one episode, and it's, you know, it's not even at 100 listens, you know, because there's nothing you know. I don't promote it, but it's nothing you know. No buzzwords that people are tapping into. People aren't finding it. So, you know, therefore I stick with the trome Now podcast until, uh, until people really get a sense of, you know, my style, and hopefully check out whatever else I do.

Dave Bullis 40:03
I like that, by the way, production hell, that's that is a really good, good idea for a podcast.

Dave Campfield 40:09
It's on SoundCloud, Panda one episode.

Dave Bullis 40:12
It's almost like, you know, be a good podcast is something like that, where you have like, two people who fell out during the filming of a film, like, I'd like the director, producer, or the two directors, or whatever, and you bring them on there, and you almost use that as, like a kind of, like a film court, where each guy gets to tell the side of the story. That would be interesting, man, because there's 1001 things that I you know what I mean, like on film sets where I've had people draw, like, friendships have ended on a film set. You know, I've had people on this podcast where one has the audio, one has the video. You know, even you know what I mean, stuff like that. That would be, yeah,

Dave Campfield 40:48
I have, I have somebody I knew in college who pulled a knife on on his production assistant, or something like he so things have, things have gone down seriously wrong.

Dave Bullis 41:00
Why is it he pull a knife on him or her?

Dave Campfield 41:05
It was her, to my understanding, there was a fight about and probably maybe it was an assistant director. So one was a director, and assistant director was probably saying that she's leaving. She doesn't think this makes sense. She doesn't want to do it anymore. And apparently that was, this is bad. This is as bad as a film argument can go so there are countless stories about all of the things that can go wrong. And also I have countless stories about things that could have gone right if things were just have happened a little bit differently, like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this story, and maybe we'll, I'll leave it at this years ago when I think when I was was 19 and I dropped out of college and making my own film, and a friend of mine is doing boom mic on a on a little indie film in New Jersey, and he's telling me he's got my script, and he's pitching it. He's showing it to a couple people on the set, and they responded to it. I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Cool. And tells me about one actor that sounds promising. You know, I really think you'd be good in this role, but I'm talking to this other guy. He's not really big yet. Like, okay, but he seems to like the script so far. He says, Wow, this is dark. And like, Okay, tell me who is he rent this film. And I had, he had me rent this film, the little cameo in little comedy from Universal literal and like, I don't know if this guy's really right for anything in this movie. He's like, totally it does a total disconnect, though. I don't, yeah, don't worry about pursuing him. I don't think it's a good match. That actor's name was Ben Affleck, and I closed the door on Ben Affleck before he became benef elect. And the film that they were shooting was Chasing Amy. Now, the one that really defined him, and the film that I looked at it from his was mall rats. If you look at him in mall rats, you know, it's very particular. He's not at his best, and he's not, he didn't, he's not what he became. He's fine, but, you know, there was no role for him. So, I mean, if I said, Yeah, this guy's great. I mean, it probably would have fallen apart anyway, because you would have gotten too big, and, like, you know, we would have lost touch, like, so same thing that happened with my New Line Cinema experience, but, but still to think beneflec was reading my stuff and saying, this is cool. I like it, and before he became famous is pretty funny.

Dave Bullis 43:23
Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's the door that's out of the door to close. You know, it's just funny with mall rats. I remember that Kevin Smith told a story about mall rats when he showed it to rob Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and he said, you know, what do you guys think? And they were like, oh, you know, I think you went a little too much. I mean, he said, both of them just kind of looked dejected. And then when he made Chasing Amy, he said, both, I'm like, All right, now you found your mark again. Great. Good job. Yeah.

Dave Campfield 43:52
Once, once, one is like, true, Kevin Smith and the other one sort of like Kevin Smith throwing a piece of Studio, you know, where you sort of lose your core like it, lose your uniqueness, your distinctness. And, you know, it's great that he got to tell you the truth. I think up the game, you know, from, you know, clerks was very raw and very true to Kevin's style and voice and mole rats was sort of, I guess, diluted, sort of like, Hey guys, you like this, and then chasing Amy's kind of like a more mature, not that mature, but more mature, version of his, of his voice. And, you know, you see, you know, terrific evolution. And I met Kevin Smith. It was the funniest. It was most bizarre circumstance, because I really so badly wanted him to see a seat like one of my Cesar Otto films, because he could think, Wow, this is akin to Jay and Silent Bob in their own way, like and and so I had been trying to get in touch with them. I tried emailing. Nothing worked. Nothing worked. And one day, I'm on a flight to California to do some reshoots on Cesar Anatos did the xmas and I looked at my right and son of a bitch, he's coming out of the airport terminal. He's, he's, he's going through bag. He's going through he's putting his his stuff on a conveyor belt. I see a hockey jersey, a beard and a baseball cap on backward. I'm like, That's fucking Kevin Smith. I've got some like, what do I do? And I had my I had my summer camp massacre movie, my bag like, and I heard him recently talk about sleepaway camp, like, on a podcast, and he was in my film summer camp spoof. Sleepaway camp has got the actors from sleepboy camp. My good friend Felicia rose, she's she's in there. Like, okay, so I was sashay over to him, and I say, Can I pay you a compliment? He's like, Yeah, sure, man, I want you to know I You're probably the best verbal storyteller I've ever heard my life. I was like, Oh, thanks, man. You know, I'm no I'm no gene Shepherd, he says, because, you know, I always thought that verbal storytelling is the my best gift, because God knows my films ain't worth a shit. Like, oh, my God, look at this modesty for success story, a pure success story. And, and at one point I say to him, I you like the film, sleepaway camp, Ryan wrote that 80 slasher film. He says, Yeah, sleepover camp a girl with a face. And I said, I have I made a spoof of that film, and I use the same actress? Is it? No shit, man. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I have in my bag. You want it? Sure, man, I wrote up in my bag. I'm like, oh, like, oh, like, oh, my god. I can't believe this is going so well. And I remember my bag, and I hand to him. It was just like, just released and shrink wrapped and and I said, you know, like, if you ever had a chance to see it, you know, just email me, let me know what you think. Ah, you know. And so we gave it to him. A few weeks later, I my friend tells me he hears on a podcast that he mentioned the whole interaction, and on this mod cast the episode called cannabis, he's talking about, like, how he was in an airport and ran into a guy that was because they were talking about sleepaway camp, and, like, he just retold the whole experience. So, like, wow. Like, he remember, I don't think he ever saw the movie, because I later heard him say that people give him stuff all the time, and it goes into a pile of stuff he'll watch one day when he when he's sick. So it's somewhere maybe in the middle of that pile, by that point, you know, like, you know, you're always growing as a filmmaker. So it'd be like looking at somebody's earlier, really early work. So that's, and incidentally, that film summer camp, which you can see on YouTube, but like, it was put on YouTube legally through the first distributor, was the first movie of an actor named Trey Byers. I cast him like, I like this guy. He was an Italian it was an Italian role, but this actor is African American. He's got great personality. He's got a great presence. Liked him a lot. Now, Trey stars on Empire. So I have this, I have this ability of, like, casting people in their first role, and they come and become famous, and then I never talked to him again, because Peter scan of, you know, my first film, uh, dark chamber. He stars on law and order now. So I basically my films, my first two films cast one of the stars of law and order, and when the stars of empire, and I'm still a nobody,

Dave Bullis 48:07
Well, there you go. You find people who are going to become big. So that's that's your gift, Dave. So that way I want to encourage every actor now just to shoot you the their headshot and everything else, and then you can find out, no, I'm just kidding. But, no, no. But seriously, that is cool though. You see, you meet people before they become big, and you can't see it again because we're on a podcast. But I actually have a Kevin Smith fig a podcast figure. I actually saw it one day. It was like on sale, and I decided to get it. So it's actually him with the beard. It says Puck, you on there, and he's got a microphone in his hand. And it's actually just sits in front of my desk here. It's one of my three figures in front figures in front of me. But it's just really, really cool that you got to meet him like that.

Dave Campfield 48:46
Yeah. I mean, of all, it was almost like, I would say it's divine intervention, except for nothing came out of it. So, but other but he did plug, he did, he did mention it on the on the podcast. So it was, it was a little gift from heaven, you could say. So was there any there anything else that you wanted to touch on regarding, because I know, like, if you really talk to somebody, it's a podcast that goes on forever, and people are on the basis for that. But was there anything that that else you were interested in terms of what I was up to?

Dave Bullis 49:16
Well, just, just, you know, well, two things I know. I know we are running out of time, but just two things before we before we sort of say goodbye, just just creating, you know, Caesar and auto, and just making films that you do right now. You know how? You know. So basically, you know, you had to have a time frame. You'd have all this stuff in play. So, you know, where a lot of these films, you know, when you were starting out, did you did you self finance, like, the first couple of season autos, and then you shot it, and then you just started shopping for a distributor. And, I mean, now, do you have, like, sort of, like a set plan in place, like, they come, they say, Hey, Dave, you know, are you making something else that we can just put, you know, just put out

Dave Campfield 49:54
The first season auto film came about this way So when I when chakaroma released dark chamber, Mike Rosso, the head of the company, asked if I had any, if I had anything else that I was working on and I said I had this film awake in the Reaper. And he said, no, that sounds serious. I want a comedy, comedy horror. And I said, a thought occurred to me. I had made a $700 feature film called Caesar and Otto, and it was just about us to do full, you know, characters now is instantaneously imagined, like an avid castella made Frankenstein. What if I put them in? I put them in horror film? Okay, so, and then I was spitballing right off the top of my head. So, Mike, what about, you know, Cesar nano in horror film? Maybe, like a summer camp film, you know, I know the star sleep boy camp, maybe I can talk her into this. And it's, you know, Cesar nano and a summer camp massacre, and, and, and he says, Write it. I took 30 days. I wrote it, and they, he, they approved it. They gave me a little bit of money to make it. And then by the time that it was made, like I showed a rough cut. We love this. And then by the time it was to release it, like the it was the DVD implosion, where everything they were selling was less and less, especially comedies. And by the time they were releasing it, it's like, Dave, the whole market's falling apart. They had released a few comedies back to back, and they all, they all lost money. It says, so I don't know what, really, what we're gonna do with this. We might shelve it for now, put it on a compilation DVD. Like, here's your money back. I'm going to find another home. And I, you know, that's what we did. I found another home for it. It did better than chakarama would have anticipated. And then from that distributor, I went to another one we did in deadly Xmas, which was, you know, finance between a friend of mine and I and and then lastly, with paranormal Halloween. It was mostly funded through Indiegogo. You know, at that point, there had been enough traction from previous films to give the audience an idea of what, what they were going to get and and, you know, I offered a lot of perks that I think they enjoyed, and that helped as well.

Dave Bullis 52:20
Yeah, yeah. And so that's kind of, you know, again, like you sort of, as I was touching on the beginning this podcast, you have that that is almost like a method or plan in place where, you know, you can do the podcast, you get your name out there still, and then you're still doing the films. And I think that's important now, is you have to have a, almost like a pre existing fan base, you know, was new. I mean, with a lot of this stuff now, because if you just go out cold, it's kind of, it's a lot harder to only be make people aware of it, but also just to sort of get the attention of, you know, the right people.

Dave Campfield 52:50
Well, my fan base is small, but intense. I mean, I can rattle them off on on two hands, so, you know, like, named by nips, but, but it's, you know, it's helpful. It's very helpful that they're out there to, you know, to champion this stuff and and without them, I probably wouldn't be able to do any of this, really.

Dave Bullis 53:10
Yeah, it's, like they say, 1000 true fans. That's all you need.

Dave Campfield 53:18
Well, it's less than that. Maybe one day here, one day 1000 was good.

Dave Bullis 53:21
So Dave, just in closing, I know we've been talking for about 50 minutes now, but just in closing, is there anything we didn't get a chance to discuss, or anything that you want to say right now, just to put a period at the end of this whole conversation,

Dave Campfield 53:33
Follow me on Twitter. I'll be doing an interview with Lloyd coming up. So if you have a question you would like me to ask Lloyd no at me and bro, hopefully bring it up and yeah, just, you know, you could see my work at IMDb, get an idea of what I worked on. If you have any questions, you know, anybody getting me up on Facebook? I'm always receptive to answering questions and all of that.

Dave Bullis 53:59
And I will link to all that in the show notes. Everybody everything that Dave and I talked about @davebullis.com Twitter, it's @dave_bullis. The podcast is at DB podcast. David Campfield, I want to say thank you so much for coming on man,

Dave Campfield 54:11
One last thing you called me. David Campfield,

Dave Bullis 54:15
Oh, wait, did I say oh, man,

Dave Campfield 54:17
No, no, that's not a that's not a problem. But get this, it's an uncommon name, clearly, David Campfield, Dave Campfield, these are not everyday names, not John Smith. There's another David Canfield out there who wants to be an actor. Son of a bitch. Both of us want to be actors. Both of us are actors. He was in movies. I was in movies. And it's very confusing. So if you IMDb David Campfield, you get him, you IMDb Dave Campfield to get me. And when it comes to unions, it gets even more confusing. All right, you could take David. I could take Dave. So there's another David Campfield out there, and he's an actor of all things. I can't believe it. So yeah, we're friends with each other. I.

Dave Bullis 55:00
Oh, that's good, because there's another Dave Bullis out there, and he actually has a Twitter Dave Bullis because I my Twitter's @dave, @dave_bullis so I said to him one day, I said, Hi, I'm Dave. And I said, Listen, I think we better for you if we just kind of like swapped Twitter names. And I said, you know, if there's something I could do to help you out, I said, because people were killing him. They were tweeting him all the time. And finally he, you know, he finally responded back, like, I'm not that Dave bulls, this guy. And finally he blocked me one day, and I said, like, I tried to help you out here. And like, he had like 20 followers. Now he doesn't even use Twitter anymore, and but, yeah, he ended up blocking me all because he got angry. People were tweeting at him looking for me.

Dave Campfield 55:42
Well, that's an impractical response. People, there's, there's, you know, there's at least 1% of the population. That's completely unreasonable. So he's one of those, so wonderful talking to you fellow Dave and podcasting. So hopefully we will, will be speaking again.

Dave Bullis 56:00
I'm sure we will, man, trust me, I I'm sure our paths will cross at some point.

Dave Campfield 56:03
But where are you from, by the way, what state?

Dave Bullis 56:07
I'm in Philadelphia, which is Pennsylvania.

Dave Campfield 56:09
Well, not too far. You know, I just edited a commercial for the Philadelphia Pet Expo. So coming up, you'll be able to see dogs and cats living together in mass hysteria. So actually, though, seriously, I do, I do some, I do some part time editing on the on the side, and editing, get Philadelphia pet expo was one of my gigs. That's, that's the fun thing about being a freelancer.

Dave Bullis 56:33
It's where. Oh, are you in Jersey?

Dave Campfield 56:35
No, I'm on Long Island.

Dave Bullis 56:36
Oh, Long Island. Okay, cool. So, so it is not something where you are, probably

Dave Campfield 56:41
No, you can let me know it is, oh, how it's snowing? No, I just as I said, I'm not kidding when I said I haven't looked out the window in the dark.

Dave Bullis 56:47
Oh, it's no problem. It's, it's, it's actually just stopped. Actually, during this podcast, the snow is actually stopped. It's not doing anything anymore. So probably don't my way, but I've already, I've already been outside many times already, just to push it all out of the way. So I'm gonna go do that now. So anyways, just keep just to get the rest of it out of here. So Dave, again, it's been a blast, and thanks again for coming on and Yeah, well, I'm sure we'll talk soon.