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IFH 344: Shooting a Feature in One Take with Gavin Michael Booth

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Today on the show is one take filmmaker Gavin Michael Booth. Gavin is obsessed with one take movies, music videos and real-time filmmaking in general. His latest film is Last Call. Shot in two true single takes, filmed simultaneously in two different parts of a city, Last Call, is a real-time feature presented in split-screen showcasing both ends of a wrong number phone call that has the potential to save a life. The film’s music was also conducted and recorded live to picture.

Gavin Michael Booth is an award-winning filmmaker hailing from Toronto, Canada. He works as a writer, director, producer and editor. His film THE SCAREHOUSE was distributed by NBC/Universal (USA) and D Films (Canada) (currently available on Amazon Prime & Showtime) with international releasing including the Philippines, UK, Australia, Germany and more. The Scarehouse won Best Feature at the New York City Horror Film Festival. Booth was recently nominated for two videos of the Year awards for Canadian Country Music as well as Director of the Year by Now Magazine.

In October 2015 Booth broke new filmmaking ground teaming up with producer Jason Blum (The Purge, Get Out) to create the world’s first movie broadcast live using Twitter’s Periscope App. BLUMHOUSE’S FIFTEEN was a success with worldwide media coverage.

He is also a co-writer of Sony’s DEAD RUSH, another Canadian-produced feature. His short film ARE YOU MY MOMMY is currently on the festival circuit, taking awards home from several fests. Booth has worked with top entertainers in the music industry with music videos and documentary projects for Eminem’s D-12, The Tea Party, SYML, Third Eye Blind, Vanessa Carlton, and more. These projects have aired on global television as well as appeared on best-selling DVDs and Enhanced CDs released by major labels.

Enjoy my conversation with Gavin Michael Booth.

Alex Ferrari 2:23
Today on the show we have filmmaker Gavin Michael Booth. And Gavin made a movie called last call, which was has a few things going for it one it was shot in one single take, the entire thing was shot in one single take. And it is a pretty insane story and how he was able to do it, the planning that goes into it, how many versions he shot of the movie. And basically there's no editing in it. So it's not a Alfred Hitchcock or Birdman style where you're like hiding the cuts, there is no cuts in the movie. So I wanted to bring on a filmmaker who has made a really good looking film, which he shot in 8k when we'll talk about why he did that in a minute. But it was pretty remarkable how he did it. And I wanted to kind of dig into how you shoot a one take movie. But the other layers to this cake are that he actually made this film on a micro budget. And he's self distributing the film as well. So we go into his plan to get the movie out there, what he's doing, how he's doing it. And also Gavin is a very accomplished music video director and even created the world's first live film for Blum house in 2015. And we also go into you know, these backstage stories of what he has to go through some time to get access, how he hustled his career, how he got started in the career directing music videos, some of the things he did to get backstage that are gray, let's say to get in wouldn't call it lying but you know, it's it's a gray area but we get all into his techniques on how he was able to do that and it's just a really great conversation. And I just really love talking to them so without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Gavin Michael Booth. I'd like to welcome the show Gavin Michael Booth man thank you so much for coming on the show brother.

Gavin Michael Booth 4:28
Happy to be here big big big fan longtime listener

Alex Ferrari 4:30
I appreciate that man I truly appreciate that I'm I'm a fan of what you do as well man I love the style of your work as a director and we're gonna get into your movie last call in a little bit but before we even get started How did you get into this ridiculous business?

Gavin Michael Booth 4:47
I you know I was like most of us I was that the the geek in high school that every time there's a chance to make a make a video project instead of submit an essay. I took that route, which quickly started figuring out I might I might have a knack for this and you Now visually everybody wants to work in my group because they're going to get 100% of the work done the video that I created.

Alex Ferrari 5:06
Yah I'll carry on life for y'all carry and I'll get some doughnuts.

Gavin Michael Booth 5:10
But that's what I learned what it is to be a producer like oh just get people that are that are willing willing to work and get the job done and your indie projects come together. Yeah, so I was that kid and I you know, I had big dreams I grew up in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, which for pointed references across the river from Detroit, Michigan.

Alex Ferrari 5:26
So the mega, mega mega mega Hollywood

Gavin Michael Booth 5:29
Yeah, there's what's the Star Wars quote, there's a bright if there's a bright center of the galaxy of the film galaxy than Windsor, Ontario is the furthest from

Alex Ferrari 5:37
Thank you. So thank you, for the reference, appreciate that.

Gavin Michael Booth 5:39
We had we had Toronto nearby so that was you know, that was still about a four hour drive. So I you know, I wanted to go to film school in LA, I had my eyes on you know, UCLA, and all these things that I wanted to do and and thought this will be great. But then international student fees and everything else, just like I'm going to take a year off after high school and work at Walmart, and I'm going to save up money and go to film school. And I ended up pulling a hernia while I was there and not being allowed to work. And I was just like, well, maybe I'll start doing wedding videos and some local commercials and all that kind of stuff and just have worked for myself ever since. You know, it's been coming up on 15 1617 years now that I've been at it, and just fell into that, you know, I was you know, when I was in high school when Kevin Smith you know did clerks and El Mariachi and all those and just did one of those like, wait, these guys are making movies for $25,000 I could max out a credit card or two and like and did did that, you know, made made a couple of those movies, you know, 20,000 it basically ended up being cheaper than film school, but learning way more valuable lessons by failing by not having a clue. You know, we survived we finished a movie. I'm proud of it, although nobody should ever have to watch it or suffer through it. But yeah, I didn't know anything about distribution, or what the hell to do with you know, shot on the dv x 100. Like, remember that?

Alex Ferrari 6:53
Was it the 100 or the 100A sir?

Gavin Michael Booth 6:55
It was the 100 Oh, yeah, I got Panasonic to sponsor us. And they actually gave us to the cameras. But it came with a separate anamorphic lens at the time they had to put on it

Alex Ferrari 7:06
With the attachments with the attachment on it, of course.

Gavin Michael Booth 7:08
And then the 100 A and B came out you're like why this is so much easier.

Alex Ferrari 7:11
Yeah, I got the I was on the 100 A sir. And it was honestly one of the best cameras ever created that if that was so beautiful.

Gavin Michael Booth 7:18
I shot it. Yeah, so that was just, I had that camera that I I just did this originally because I wanted to meet bands that I liked, and not pay for concert tickets. So I made fake Canadian media credentials and would cross the border into Detroit all the time and bring my my dv x and bl I'm here to interview the band, you know, like, you know, oh, you're not on the press list. Oh, well, gee, I'm gonna get fired. If I go back home and don't have like the the interview clip for the news tonight. And nine out of 10 times it would work.

Alex Ferrari 7:45
And that's brilliant.

Gavin Michael Booth 7:47
So I would interview I would interview the people and then say, Okay, well can you know, can I get like a pass, I could shoot a few songs, first three songs of the show or whatever. And the most of the time, if you just stick around, nobody says anything. So I just watch all these cons. And half the time I wasn't even actually filming. I just point the camera at the stage and watch the show of all these bands that I loved and I ended up then as well no, I should start filming these like maybe I can. Maybe I can like show make some little clips and send them to the record labels. Maybe somebody will hire me to do a music video. And one of those bands the first band that fell for my my stick and bought into it was Third Eye Blind. If you remember, my third eye, blind, you got it. But I've worked I've worked with them every day to this day. Like they have a new album coming out. They're touring. They're playing the Greek theater soon here in LA and I'm gonna gonna be there shooting some stuff for them. And it's led to all kinds of the first time I ever came to LA it was because of Steven from Third Eye Blind was producing a record out here and brought me out to do the DVD that came with the album. So yeah, I was like, the best thing I ever did for my career was sneak into something and just act like I was supposed to be there. You know,

Alex Ferrari 8:54
did a whole episode on fake it till you make it and that's a I've heard of a lot of stories, my friend that is one that's a new one for me.

Gavin Michael Booth 9:01
I met I met my wife the same way I snuck into a party at the Toronto Film Festival, which she had independently snuck into, and we ended up meeting there. And you know, we've been married six years. So it's it's a strategy that can work.

Alex Ferrari 9:13
It is it's fascinating. I that is a great story, man. You actually made fake credentials for a fake, I guess news. I know. It was a Real News Network. But I just feel like CNN. So you made like CNN credentials in Canada, the CBC, you know, the CBC, any version of it. And since it's another country, they're really not going to check and it's your thing and it's like it, it has a high probability that it would work.

Gavin Michael Booth 9:39
Help. I almost got busted on that particular one. But there was a Detroit radio DJ Steve Grunwald that I knew that really like pulled the you know, no, no, no, He's good. He's legit. We know him. You know, like, oh,

Alex Ferrari 9:49
Donnie Brasco style.

Gavin Michael Booth 9:50
Yeah, wave me in wave man. So that was Yeah, it's it's just been one of those adventures where if I trace everything back, I'm like, man, How different would my career in life be? If not for that? particular mode because I ended up shortly after that like hopping on the tour bus with them and shooting some tour video stuff for them. And it led to that opportunity to come to LA and shoot this DVD. And that opened up doing music videos. And, you know, just this crazy adventure I never thought I'd be on. Or had I stayed in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, just trying to make indie films, right, you know, and maybe have never moved to LA or done anything more significant. Who knows?

Alex Ferrari 10:24
And then once you landed Third Eye Blind, which was a very big, you know, they were huge band in the 90s. Without question, they were one of those big bands, then that automatically gave you the credibility and the authority with our tag line with them, you know, they can help work with us. And I just kind of

Gavin Michael Booth 10:38
Yeah, definitely. And they're one of those bands where they're still people still love that first record so much. And, you know, they still sell 10,000 seats, 15,000 seats a night, you know, like there are there with Jimmy world this year. Like I said, like they're, you know, they're, they're still still going hard. Still have a fan base, but yeah, definitely opens up more opportunities. And then one management company sees what you do and contact you. And one one good video, you know, begets another music video opportunity where and so you know, especially once YouTube took over, and there was a way for people to see the director and find the contacts for directors. And, you know, that's if not for this sort of social media YouTube. That's that's the other thing that was happening in parallel around the same time, you know, 2003 to 2006 was off the social media boom, and making it accessible to find other filmmakers and find bands that needed videos versus just this wasteland of waiting for your phone to possibly ring or only being able to go through the traditional channels of having a music video agents. And then they work with them. And it was a very closed system, like same similar with film distribution and everything else at the gates were locked to most of us until until you know the indie film revolution. Digital Video took off.

Alex Ferrari 11:52
Yeah. And then when did you have to put your reel on like three quarter inch and send it off? Or was it Well, that was more commercial work.

Gavin Michael Booth 11:58
And now I mean, I still had I had I had reels on on Betamax, and real flat, lots of VHS demos, you know, like, let's make the most beautiful color labels for all of the right hand presses at home. But they'll look like a machine did it? It's fine.

Alex Ferrari 12:14
Oh, the craziness, the crazy. And on a side note, if anybody wants to try to break into a or break into a a party, or anything along those lines, I mean, it is a little bit of a different world than it was back in the day. I mean, you know, when I used to work a universal, I would just, I would just wave and pretend I look, I work there. And people would just let me and this is pre 911. But but this might still work. If you're at Sundance and you want to get into a Sundance party, one of those house parties. All you have to do is just know, at least two or three names of some big agents at CIA, or at work or do a lot of you me,

Gavin Michael Booth 12:54
It's always it's always somebody, your 20 year old college intern at the door. Yep, or volunteer. And one of the great things about millennials is they're so shy of conflict. Attack. Like I'm supposed to be on the list and point into the bar or the restaurant of the party and say, Well, I mean, is Jim in there like say the person is Jim? Is Jim at well in there. I'm here with Jim eiwa. I'm just going to go in and see if Jim's out I'll come back out and find you. But I'm going to go see of Jim's here he'll he'll come clear everything up and then just never come back. And they don't they won't care.

Alex Ferrari 13:31
What I used to do is I used to when I was starting on Sundays, I would walk up to the to the table and I'd be like, yeah, yeah. Ricky, Ricky smiles, please. Yeah, CIA. And they would look on the list. And they're like, Oh, yeah. Ricky Cohen. Mr. smalls, I'll be like, Yes, thank you, and hope that he hadn't just walked in three minutes. Yeah, I would go or I would go earlier, because I know he would never get there earlier. And he actually was an acquaintance of a friend who knew him so we knew that he was there. So but if not just get a list of people that you know who are going to be there and then you could use

Gavin Michael Booth 14:00
Getting backstage at a concert, you take your cell phone and as you walk close to the security server, but yeah, I'm with the band for at least the next three cities. Yeah, we're going to Dallas tomorrow. We might fly out and do this other thing. But yeah, oh, yeah. I'll definitely tell them I'm about to see them. I'm gonna say hi. And if you look important half the time the guy at the gates not gonna be like, I That guy is too important to like, interrupt and ask to see his credentials. That's where that's where the handful of times.

Alex Ferrari 14:26
You know, this is why we have indie film hustlers to teach people these kind of tips These are things are not on the the show notes. So for anyone listening, these are some bonus bonus things from two to hustlers who've been able to backstage

Gavin Michael Booth 14:40
Yeah, like I said, the minute the minute I'd ever heard of the site in the podcast, like I've been a fan from day one, because it's always exciting for me to hear other people's hustle stories or pick up tips and like, find so many so many of us are kindred spirits in the approach of what what we've had to do to bust those doors open.

Alex Ferrari 14:59
Oh, God, and it's And it's getting tougher now, man, those doors are getting tougher and tougher because there's a lot more people trying to get into that party.

Gavin Michael Booth 15:05
And yeah, and and and just, that's that's a very good analogy of the industry as a whole, you know, literally now that anybody Soderbergh said everybody, anybody with this with an iPhone can make a movie now, right, you know, like, well, the floodgates are open officially.

Alex Ferrari 15:19
Question now. So we've talked a little bit about how you were building your filmmaking career, but is there any tips that you can give people who want to kind of break into music videos or, I mean, he's done some commercials work as well as just mostly music videos and feature

Gavin Michael Booth 15:32
A little bit of commercial stuff, you know, mostly sort of regional for all the late night cable stuff that you see for you know, two for one furniture and suits and things in Detroit. And you know, I've had some interesting even here in LA and some worked on some bigger unit stuff like Calvin Klein commercials that Francis Lawrence was directing with Margot Robbie in it and but directly myself grow I've sort of shied away from commercial work. I know it's it's very foolish of me because it's where the money is. And that's what we pay my bills while I work on my indie films. But I just find it so soulless, and I even music videos that I don't jive with the song, or the concept that the band's presenting versus something I want to do, I do tend to turn things down now that's the one thing I've had, the hardest thing to learn is to say no, because technically I can make anything but if I'm not excited about it, the work suffers. And then I'm just not servicing the client to the best of my abilities. But in terms of getting started with music videos, find bands that live in your city in your region and just say Don't worry about money upfront, just go offer to make something collaborate on something pitch an idea. Something I still do to this day and has worked recently is I sort of shoot stock stock video versions of music videos, I create music videos that the bands that a band wouldn't be in it's just actors like a storyline kind of video I go out and shoot it and then find bands to pair it with later where I just you know like if I have a shoot that's booked on a Monday whatever whatever we have a 12 hour shoot I'll book the gear or keep the crew for the next day and ask everybody to do a discount rate and then we'll shoot just a little like footage we so we literally have no idea what the beat or the rhythm of the song The length of the song you should have a short film basically like yeah, we shoot a silent short film and then find songs to match it to one of my most successful videos ever. This newer artists symbol s y ml the song where's my love was one of those videos where that was a little more complicated was a band that couldn't pay their bills and and the footage got recycled into a different video but similar idea and what inspired it was just yeah, go go and shoot stuff find people in your every indie band is in the same position you're in where they can't afford to make a music video and you don't have a name for yourself as a filmmaker so it's like a match made in heaven to collaborate and just get something on YouTube get your foot in the door and make something to show I am capable of making a music video here's what my skill set looks like and then move forward from there and use that as a sample to try to find more bands.

Alex Ferrari 18:03
Yeah, it worked for spike Jones did okay. Yeah, that gets you guys made a couple music videos we've heard out and a few features we've heard of is if you marry a Coppola things get easier. things a lot easier. Yeah. And then also the music video business in general has changed so much with budgets because I'm sure when the budgets you started off with or not the budget that you're being offered now a lot of things

Gavin Michael Booth 18:27
Now now I often joke be like Alright, well for that budget I can show up with my iPhone and just sell just spin it in 360 will you guys play for three minutes and then we'll call it a day. That's all you can afford. No, it is a what I still I probably shouldn't still do music videos because it's so it's so low pay and everybody every effort all the crews working the whole industry is just changing a little bit where even commercials is they go back to non union and there's less national television campaigns because everything is going to add ads. The whole industry is being hit with that film as it gets cheaper to make films. Well that means that everything else is going to come down rate wise unfortunately. But what I like about it is practicing new techniques, trying out different cameras working with DPS are grips and editors that I haven't worked with before because it's all practicing techniques for the next indie film. So when I want to knock out another, you know, $25,000 feature, I know the people that call on or the people that I've been able to give enough music video work to for six months in a row to then call in that favor. And also as a filmmaker, music videos keep me active because generally you you get the gig you shoot it and it's released within two to four weeks of production. Whereas your indie film, you make it and there's a real question of Will anyone ever sees it's gonna be five years by the time it comes out to the public or, you know, some music videos or the instant gratification that keep me keep me excited about about being a creator versus the dread and self doubt of living alone with your art until you find an audience.

Alex Ferrari 20:05
Fair enough, fair enough. Now tell me about this very remarkable film you may have called last call.

Gavin Michael Booth 20:12
Last call. Easiest pitch is it's a film that we shot in real time. So it's a single take movie true single take no burden and hidden hidden edits. No, like Hitchcock's rope or film could only hold so many minutes per shot in a single take. But also, it's it's in split screen. So what that means is that there's two camera crews that were filming simultaneously in two different parts of a city to make up the real time movie, similar to how Mike figures to timecode, which was the cameras back in the day, but with two and it's the whole movie revolves around a man who's decided to end his life who calls a suicide hotline, not to be talked out of it, he just doesn't want to die alone, because he has no one else to call a figures the comfort of a stranger will be easier. But due to him already drinking and being sort of hopped up on pills, he missed dials and ends up connecting with a random stranger who's the night janitor at a college and when she realizes what he's up to decides to try to stay on the phone and change the outcome of his destiny. So you're actually what they had the actors actually had to act over the telephone for for the full, the full feature and both camera crews sound crews couldn't make a single mistake for the entire duration of the film.

Alex Ferrari 21:29
Well, so why one take man, like why did you go down the road? I mean, obviously, you're obsessed with them. But other than that, yeah, yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 21:35
I did a handful of one take music videos. And those are easy. I mean, they're always challenging, but three or four minutes, it's a lot easier. I had a real time film about a school shooting called four shots and development that we were actually in rehearsal. At one point in time, we had no Gibson's company icon pictures was going to be our world distributor. We had a million dollar budget, everything was great and good to go. But due to real life shooting incidents, that always shied somebody away from saying, I, I don't know we're gonna get eaten alive when we put this film out. And Fair enough, the politics of it weren't right. But ever since that movie not happening I've been kind of obsessed with. So when David my writing partner on this film was also the lead actor in it produced the film with me, David Wilkins, he came to me and said, I have this idea. But a guy called a girl like, I feel like a single take, we keep it interesting, because it's this thing where she can't hang up the phone. She every word, she says that he's either going to hang on or disconnect the phone call that adds this level of tension that I think the single take approach would be interesting, you know, and then I said, Well, we'd have to do a split screen because you'd want to see both sides of the phone call. You don't want to see just him or just her. And we just felt that like, yeah, the nature of the story. Cuz I feel like if you're gonna do a single tech movie, you have to have a reason behind it. It can't just be. Look, we did this technical gimmick. It's good.

Alex Ferrari 22:57
It's good, fellas. Is that good, fellas? Yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 22:59
Yeah, yeah, you want to have a reason that it adds as attention or keeps the suspense and we just felt that this was the, the one to do it on. And then to top it off, my composer Adrian Ellis said, You know what, it started as a joke. He said, I feel like I have to do the music live in a single tape because it's just anything I do won't be worthy of what you've accomplished. And I went, that's exactly what you're gonna do. We rented a theater, back home in Windsor, Ontario, where I shot the movie, actually, the theater was donated to us by the same college who let us take over their entire college to shoot the movie. And, and we we brought in audiences the school kids is a field trip to kind of kind of learn about film scoring, and they got to witness him score live to picture. And, you know, ever all the musicians play without missing a note and, and that's that's the score that we have in the film. So everybody was really on board with trying to every department was like, yeah, we're gonna up our game and figure out how to make this happen.

Alex Ferrari 23:54
That's insane, dude. So I've always you know, because I've, I've done some long takes in my day, but nothing even remotely close to this. And I've done the wonder, you know, like a scene out doing a wonder which is great and it's very economical. And if it's done right and Robert Zemeckis doesn't beautifully, Spielberg doesn't beautifully. There. It's, it's, it's an art. It really is an art. But when you consider doing a 90 minute, and what's the running time on this way, it's shorter than that where we're 77 minutes Yeah, fair enough. Alright, so 77 we'll we were

Gavin Michael Booth 24:27
we're smarter. We're like one. We don't want to bore audiences with our indie movie. I've never I all most my indie films have always been cut to 85 minutes or under because I just don't think there's ever a reason. Sure. You know, most movies in general are too long these days in my opinion. Yeah. But we we wanted to but also we shot you know, read read sponsored the movie, and they let us take out two of their helium cameras. So we did shoot an 8k, so we had the best resolution, the best ability to reframe so there's also a limit of how much space you can hold on there. one terabyte cards right? So have we gone over I think 80 minutes or 79 minutes, we would have not got the film we would run out of space.

Alex Ferrari 25:06
Alright, so first of all, what kind of prep Do you need to make something like this work because you just said you have to film crews. And if you as a director, basically just you're basically shooting a play, essentially, because you're just kind of like, yes, you organize everybody. You tell everybody what to do. The actors are pretty much on their own for those 70 some minutes, you can't stop and read directed performances. This take it step by step first on the technical Asher, what does it take to do this?

Gavin Michael Booth 25:35
First was finding finding locations I knew going back home would be would be the easiest way to do it. making films in LA is expensive. There's no way around. So going back home to Canada to Windsor, where I've had a lot of I mean, I wouldn't have a film career without that city being so gracious to me. All of our catering was sponsored, had amazing deals on hotels for out of town cast and crew. Like I said, a college basically gave us the keys and allowed us to come in for 20 days of rehearsal and shooting would let us leave lights up so that we didn't have to redress every night. So we kind of had while the actors were rehearsing for 10 days, we are gaffer and crew could be pre lighting. And what we do is we would film every rehearsal so we can put a rough assembly together every night, we would just shoot it regularly see attend at on the cameras, and we could slap together a rough preview. And then the team would watch it every night and make lighting adjustments, performance adjustments for the actors sound adjustments, would have those 10 days of of tech and performance rehearsal. And then we had four days to shoot the movie. So it was shot at night. So our goal was at I think midday was our start date or start time we would roll the whole thing have lunch, roll the whole thing again. So our goal was to get eight complete takes and then choose the one that was the film we ended up with five complete takes one disaster take and two other times where we just said we're not ready to go again. So let's not exhaust ourselves let's come back tomorrow and just try harder tomorrow was

Alex Ferrari 27:13
a disaster take what was what made the disaster take I'm just curious.

Gavin Michael Booth 27:17
I have a clip on my Instagram it's it's because of because I knew that somebody eventually is going to try to call us out and say that we didn't truly shoot it in a single take and we must have hidden cuts. I had multiple GoPros rigged to each camera rig so we could we could document the entire thing and my camera assistant who was running all the behind the scenes stuff had rigged the GoPro just a little higher I had an easy like so I camera operator one side of it my dp Seth did the other but we had easy rigs but the clearance that I had leaving a bar at the beginning was like maybe an inch and GoPro was ring slightly higher than that. So but nine minutes into a take, I'm going to leave the bar and the GoPro just catches it. So there's me screaming the F word as loud as I can that that I that I put up on Instagram because I just it ultimately becomes a very funny moment, you know?

Alex Ferrari 28:06
Not at the moment. But

Gavin Michael Booth 28:09
no, in the moment. It's like, Ah, yeah, cuz that just drains everyone's energy. And you're like, Oh, we got to start over. And the reset process was was still tedious. But what what worked out in my home city is the college, the bar and the apartment, those are three main sets were all within like two or three city block radius of each other. So we could base camp at one location, originally we were going to use like an actual call center, but it was on the other side of the city. And if we were driving 15 miles between locations to because what we do for rehearsal is we rehearse sort of the one character, the woman, the janitor, played by Sarah booth, we would rehearse her side for six hours on a day. And then we would move over to the apartment and the barn, rehearse his side of the story. And we would do that back and forth until we kind of had it down pat and then we would actually split off into the two crews and then start figuring out how long it was gonna take and we just you know, we're working on a very small cell financing the budget so we Those were the days we had, there was no way to add an extra day if we needed it. We just we had to get it in those 14 days. But sometimes just setting those restrictions. You know, most one take music videos I had, it's like show up that morning figure it out. We have to have a shot by the end of a 12 hour day. So the pressure, the pressure I'm used to but it was not to say without its its challenges.

Alex Ferrari 29:32
So as far as so it was just a constant. It was just rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing rehearsing was you just beating it down until you finally felt in a place that you were comfortable enough to let go?

Gavin Michael Booth 29:42
Well, we ended up rewriting the whole script like about two days before we started the actual filming tag. So but day eight of rehearsal, because we would watch the it's history. The movie would work as a traditional movie with cuts and back and forth but that's the one thing you have to keep in mind with the real time film is like You were not going to be able to change anything in post, I nor any other film usually gets saved in editing.

Alex Ferrari 30:06
Yeah, just a cut, you're like up there, yeah, or just that take, instead of this take all the performance. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Gavin Michael Booth 30:23
We can cut this whole scene out, or we can rearrange the scenes or lines or whatever, we can extend this moment. And we knew that we didn't have any of that. And we just started watching the rehearsals by about day four. I just knew in my gut, I'm like, originally, I don't want to give too much away, but the plot but you know, Originally, it was him, trying to engage her and keep her on the phone because he didn't want to be alone. And I just I was like, she would just hang up the phone and go back to cleaning. She's got her own stuff going on in her life that comes up in the film and this crisis where her son hasn't come home, but she can't leave her job because he's already on thin ice and the bait the baby's here is getting frustrated. And we're just like she just got around. So she would just hang up as if this movie has to be about her. And her wanting and making the decision to stay on the phone with him and try to change. But it meant like a page one rewrite to go through and change. So David's, who again is already in the middle of rehearsing acting for the film and in the thick of producing it with me, he and I spent an all nighter and just cranked out a new draft that he and Sarah the actress had to had to memorize everybody had to make all the changes to to camera movement and know the new sound cues and everything. And our sound guys were we didn't have boom operators because there was just no space to put a boom mic. Or you know, we're dealing with a college with a bunch of glass windows and glass doors and reflections everywhere the camera reflections microphones, so we decided to just double lav both of the actors, so they had to two lav mics per actor. And that way if one fell off, or one got distorted, we would hopefully have the other one. And to their credit, we didn't have to do a single line of ADR in in post production.

Alex Ferrari 32:06
And that was it, which is insane. And I'm fascinated with the process that you're going through now with the actors. Sure they memorize the script, but you know, they didn't hit it perfectly. So things Sir, you loosened up.

Gavin Michael Booth 32:18
I mean, I'm assuming they didn't hit it perfect. Yeah, they loosened things up here and there. It's pretty spot on. But yeah, they definitely we always had those those markers because a lot of his base set Okay, he's he's gonna call it here, you'll you'll be at this point. But because he was the janitor in the college who said listen to he hasn't called put the mop down, pick up this and go on to do this. Just just act like you're you're in this, you're actually a jet, you just keep finding tasks and things to do. And we do have a couple things in in the take that we chose, which is our best take. There's a couple times where he tries to dial and something doesn't connect. And he's got to hang up the phone and try again. So that was our only thing in post. We're like, well, what if we just like, have it that you called the wrong number or call that hesitated and hang up and it feels like a character choice. We just, we work those sorts of mistakes into the story of the film, though, I mean, honestly, we got we got really lucky it could have it's one of those things where you you finish the project, you reflect on it and you're like, I don't even know how or why how we accomplish it. Or why we chose to put ourselves through that would change the movie if we had a hidden cut every 10 minutes? Like for the for really for an audience perspective, you know?

Alex Ferrari 33:32
No, absolutely.

Gavin Michael Booth 33:34
Yeah. But we just we were determined to do it. And it worked. Thankfully, they don't. But we knew we we told like, you know, our private investors, we had said, you know, there's there's a chance that this film doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to. And we've got to make a more traditional version of it or whatever, but we managed to manage to pull it off.

Alex Ferrari 33:52
Now it's Yeah, this is the psychotic thing that we are as filmmakers This is like at the end of the day. Birdman. Really could we could we pull a Birdman on it? Would it really change the experience? No, but I would argue that it would change the energy of the whole movie.

Gavin Michael Booth 34:09
I think so I mean, Birdman Birdman had to have cuts in scope. Especially because they change from day to night and things like that in the story. You know, that is great, but I think Yeah, I but I mean, what what are we as indie filmmakers, if we're not going to be ambitious and try to do things that that not everybody's doing? Well, how are you ever going to stand out making a dramatic film about a another guy at wit's end calling, trying to call a helpline like, we're not the first people to tell the story. We're not going to be the last people to tell the story. What can we do to set ourselves apart and try to get some attention to our careers as well as make a movie that we really believe in that audiences will enjoy?

Alex Ferrari 34:48
Now do you when you're done so you're shooting the first day you shoot the first take? You have lunch during lunch? Are you watching that to make adjustments or are you not?

Gavin Michael Booth 34:57
Yet most of the time I would load it just loaded up into premiere do a rough version of the splits here because this screen actually also rotates through the film from sort of a horizontal split to vertical split a different most of the camera men need to know where to where to change that up to but we we just do a very sloppy version of it. So we could we could watch it but yeah, we try to watch it on the lunch break because our lunch breaks for like, a couple hours because what happens where we were filming downtown, there's a very busy bar strip it's kind of like to one of the north where all the underage Americans in 1920 can come over and drink that so there's a there's there's a period of around like 1am to 3am where it just gets very sloppy and loud, noisy and then because we didn't have permits to close streets and things we were sort of just out in the wild and didn't have full control of everything so we extended Yeah, we took an extended lunch because we we knew it would help avoid some some problematic people or people trying to like stick their face in like in the camera as it goes by. That's amazing when you're walking by like a $60,000 camera rig you don't want to be doing it too in the morning in a downtown somewhere you know the chances of theft or theft or somebody just being an idiot and trying to break it are much higher than your regular business hours

Alex Ferrari 36:12
but wait a minute but in Canada there's there is no crime everything's perfect. Everyone's super sweet super nice. There are no bad people there that's just generally the marketing.

Gavin Michael Booth 36:22
Except moms against a wall will do you guys did have to for moms against Canada I saw document is South Park movie, right?

Alex Ferrari 36:32
Yes, yes. That was a grandmother. Blame Canada. Absolutely.

Gavin Michael Booth 36:38
As a Canadian I saw that movie in New York with some friends on opening weekend and just like I've never laughed harder my entire life because I have no idea is walking into South Park movie where they're gonna like Ripon, Canada for 90 minutes.

Alex Ferrari 36:51
By the way, if anyone has not seen the South Park movie, it's it's one to watch

Gavin Michael Booth 36:55
The Oscar nominated southpark movie,

Alex Ferrari 36:58
Robin Williams sung blame Canada on the Oscars that year. I'll never forget it. It was just things where you're like this shouldn't be happening. Now as a director, what is some of the biggest challenges of shooting a one take? You know, is it the actors? Is it the crew? Is it the lack of control? Is it the lack of any sort of control almost like what is what's the biggest challenge you see.

Gavin Michael Booth 37:24
I mean, the biggest challenge I had was I was I was not intended to be the camera operator of one side that was thrown at me. Like the last day before we started shooting because we had a camera operator that is a wonderful camera operator just couldn't hit because the camera operators were also their own focus pullers. Oh are using the we're using the nucleus m handles from tilta. Because again, adding another body with another wireless control that could potentially go wrong, another set of shadows and people who avoid getting in and out of vehicles or into elevators, and we just want to eliminate and stripped the crew down as much as possible. That was thrown at me the night before we started. So I had gone from. I've dp many music videos, I've been my own cinematographer on projects. I've stepped away from that the last five or six years and always higher DPS, so suddenly was like you're back in the fray, go for it. But I will say my experience, shooting tour videos for bands and concert videos and things really came into play because that's a lot of running gun of like, got to nail it every moment can't possibly like mess up the focus while you're running around. So that that was the biggest personal challenge. But the scary, the scariest thing is just Are we going to get it because there's just too many variables at play. batteries that could go signals that could be lost. You know, the tripping tripping downstairs and I thought the biggest thing would be technical. I was not concerned about the actors, David, who stars in it and wrote it. David comes from like a comedy background, but he's really looking to do something more dramatic. And at first it's kind of like I you know, I had like Ken Kenny do it is he gonna be able to stretch himself that far? You know, he's he's the guy that won the Doritos superbowl commercial for the funny commercial The Time Machine redoes.

Alex Ferrari 39:16
That's why that's why I recognize them

Gavin Michael Booth 39:18
from quick because it's four years later, and it plays on TV every single day. Like it's Doritos most popular commercial still. It's

Alex Ferrari 39:24
great. It's commercial. It's a great commercial.

Gavin Michael Booth 39:26
So yeah, so but that was and then we were going to cast a different week we had access to a team of like legit Current TV star that was really interested in doing the project. But as we were researching the technical aspects of the film, we kept having to Okay, we're going to push back a month we're going to push back a month until we have it right. And she ended up going back to her NBC show and wasn't able to do the project anymore. So we we approached Sarah booth who's my wife and I thought, well, if I know anybody that can do theater, I had seen her in a production of Blackbird She did in Toronto in 2012. I was sorry, more like 2015 Blackbird is a one act play. It's rapid fire dialogue for two hours in very intense. The story is dark and intense. And it's just two actors on stage. No seam breaks, no act breaks, nothing just start to finish, I thought, well, she can do this, I know that I can trust her. So that was the biggest thing for me once. Once I trusted both actors and saw a couple of rehearsals and knew that they were good to go, I knew we could make all the technical come together and work. That's always that's always the challenge of hiding, hiding every light cable. You know, hiding every reflector masking every door that's got to at the college, every door, this kind of furnace behind it or something that that's causing all the sound issues, you know, making sure the the AC unit is turned off in every single classroom that we're going to wander in and out of and is the technical side of it was the bigger challenge for for me. But the actors have a different story.

Alex Ferrari 41:04
But how about the timing? Because you didn't just shoot one, one take movie shot to one take movies, basically. Because once a kid like if you just using one camera and just following people around, that's a different conversation. But you had to coordinate basically to complete movies, like figures, his movie they had to, they had to do for works. It works. I mean, and their their movies. Interesting, because it's time you know, I'm obsessed with timecode. But you know, it was it was largely improv.

Gavin Michael Booth 41:31
Yeah. And they got to do 16 full run throughs of it over 16 days. So they were sort of developing, it was a little looser, that, you know, the thing that was coordinating was, if you remember, it's on the data. There's a couple of earthquakes in Los Angeles. So the camera operators all I do know it exactly in sync when to when to shake the camera and everybody do the Star Trek thing where they bounce around and present.

Alex Ferrari 41:50
Basically, that's just like a timing cue that you could do. So is that kind of what I did? Yeah, well,

Gavin Michael Booth 41:56
I mean, the advantage we have is that they are largely on the phone for the majority of the movie. So once, once they call and start their conversation together, everyone's locked into sort of the same schedule or or timeframe, it's when they when they hang up or disconnect or have moments that they're not together on the phone that were sort of the wild card moments. Or for you know, David's character, Scott leaves, starts in a bar and leaves and walks to the to his apartment building and gets in the lobby in the elevator. And we had no idea what that was going to take every night. Was that going to be a two minute walk? Was it going to it's going to hit red lights and have to wait across the street was going to be four minutes? Was the elevator going to arrive? As soon as you push the button, we're going to wait in the lobby for a minute. Just all those variables we didn't know. So we said some of it was just a bit of a, you know, hold your breath and hope for the best on each tech.

Alex Ferrari 42:51
And people could argue that, you know, choosing a one take movies a lot cheaper than shooting a traditional movie. I mean, it's just one week, it's 90 minutes. It's That's all it is. That's really no. So can you talk a little bit about that measure or or confirm that or if there's a happy medium between the myth in that verse,

Gavin Michael Booth 43:11
I hear that conversation a lot with music good. Well, we'll do a one day thing like that's, that's easier. I'm like, well, you end up spending, if you have a 12 hour shoot day, on average for music video, if you're doing a one take video, you're probably going to spend 11 hours rehearsing and trying to get everything ready and then one hour, so you're still there with the same amount of crew the same amount of gear, the same amount of time, you know, like we essentially had a 14 day production, which is almost a little luxurious for independent film where most people try to get it in 1011 or 12 days. You know, I admire those people. I'm the guy that like I've been very fortunate that even in the indie world, I've had 20 or 21 days to shoot

Alex Ferrari 43:53
society. The madness the Mad Yes,

Gavin Michael Booth 43:56
yeah. But then, like I do, I do have a indie feature coming up where we're going to shoot it, like 10 days. And so I'm going to have that challenge. But, you know, we technically had more days to rehearse and prep than than most But no, it costs you the same because, you know, we've got to rent the cameras for that whole amount of time. If you know if there was a way where we could have rehearsed and then brought the cameras in just for a couple of days you know, things

Alex Ferrari 44:18
like that, like we could have shot with other cameras, like a cheaper dv x 108 Yeah, for example. Yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 44:24
I think the smart the smart move would have been using like a Sony A seven s or a gh five or something that didn't have the weight but because we had to deal with red and you know, so we just had to rent the lenses and read the support gear. But yeah, it definitely made for but if we had to rent all of that stuff, like any traditional indie filmmaker we do it would have cost the same to shoot a 14 day movie shot traditionally or a one take movie where even if we only shot for one day and rehearsed for 13 would have cost the same.

Alex Ferrari 44:57
But would you can the argument made that if you're going to shoot a one day a one take movie. And it's a real traditional one take movie, not like what you did, which is basically two movies sunk together with two film crews. You could maybe shoot it in if you if you rehearse it a bunch of stuff. But you also had a, you got a benefit too, because you had a lot of locations that you had basically, access to for free, absolute during that when to be killed,

Gavin Michael Booth 45:21
I would have killed our budget if we and you and I'm also at a point to where like I do like to I mean, everybody's still working for reduce raise. But we did want to spend enough with our budget or have enough of a budget that we could pay everybody a day rate for being there versus calling in just favors. Yeah. So again, so if it's a short film, I don't believe in spending a lot of money on short films, because there's not a financial return from them. And I think there's a general consensus among most of my friends that are actors or crew people that, hey, we're all making short films to get ourselves notice to practice our craft, like really, I don't mind me donating some days here and there are working on a super reduced rate. But when it comes to a feature, where, you know, ultimately, the producers are aiming at selling it and making some money off of it, well, then they should pay everybody upfront that like, of course, we offer everybody a back end percentage deal. There's always a lottery ticket that you know, it really is a lottery ticket. Like every once in a while it's gonna pay off Paranormal

Alex Ferrari 46:15
Activity guys made a bundle. Yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 46:17
exactly. I know, I worked on a project with the blumhouse guys and just always like, man, some of these movies must the back ends must just be bonkers, you know?

Alex Ferrari 46:26
Right, because they got a great cast, but but they actually do all make obscene amounts of money.

Gavin Michael Booth 46:31
But even that was Ma Ma that just opened or whatever that Oh, it was it was 18 million on a $5 million budget. You're like, Oh, that's gonna just keep going and going, you know,

Alex Ferrari 46:41
another that's the sweetest deal ever. And

Gavin Michael Booth 46:45
that was that was the one you know what I've been talking about the any of the fear or worries or stress of making last call. I had done a project for blumhouse. We did the world's first live movie. So it was actually broadcast live, we use su 2015. So we use Periscope, like the live streaming platform. Before Facebook video, or Facebook Live came along and everybody goes, What's Periscope. This time we did a movie where essentially the serial killer was using his iPhone to broadcast his murders. Sort of and we approach it like a Total War of the Worlds thing where we didn't tell the audience what they were watching was a movie. We just let everyone assume that this this feed they tuned into was live. So as a bass killer talking to the camera, and essentially taunting the police in the audience saying it was called 15 said if you have 15 minutes to figure out where I am where I'm going to kill again and then proceeds to start stocking a house very Michael Myers like looking in the window. These two young girls getting ready for a Halloween party we did it on on devils night on October 30 or October 29. somewhere around there. And everybody our actor was the camera operator that could read all the comments coming in in real time and then and then also interact with the audience. So have like some username was like Superman three to five says oh, this is this is fake. He could go Oh yeah, Superman three to five. I'll come kill your family next. And there's like, what this isn't like this is this isn't rehearse this is happening live. How did how to do how to do. We had a lot of viewers got a lot of attention from it. It was it was really fun to have blumhouse is trust to create that project under their brand because I I knew I could do it and get a couple 1000 people to watch through my own like Facebook and Twitter and Periscope, but I'm like, man, they're the kings of found footage and all these low budget I'm like if I can get them on board, and not only just having them on board to have their audience. It was beneficial because they're also great at developing horror stories and having their insights and ways to do it and access to Cass and other things. But that was the scariest moment in my life because we would rehearse it on sort of like a closed periscope feed where you can invite just the 10 people that are the department heads to watch. And there was a three to six second delay. So if the actor said something, six seconds later showed up in the feed, when we broadcast live in 10s of 1000s of people or whatever start tuning in, or 1000s of people are tuning in. The delay went to a minute, a minute and a half or somewhere but there were a lot of things that we plan on were okay, I bang on the window here, this actor knows to leave this room and start start they're part of the story. This this audio cue I've got, I've got a sound effects thing and a PA system and the neighboring yard with police sirens and other things. But all of a sudden, nobody knew when the queues were supposed to happen. Because we're watching we're watching the actor enter the house and then on our periscope feed a minute and a half later. It's it's showing up so everything I was suddenly like crawling like RV style, like having to squat and crawl around front yards and like really, you know, crawl into the house where the set is and try to like give new cues and and keep it all going while it's happening live where there was no way to stop restart. And then I always joke the scariest thing is trusting an at&t phone signal in LA to not you know, it was only 25 like 2025 minute project, it was a short film. But trusting, you know, trusting any phone call in LA to last more than three minutes is, is a real leap of faith.

Alex Ferrari 50:11
It seems like you've, you've carved out a little niche for yourself as a director as a psychotic who likes to do these kind of one take one day, like

Gavin Michael Booth 50:19
if you like traditional film too, but this is the it's the first for me. It's always the fun stuff of what can we do that we haven't done before? So everybody's, everyone's really on their toes all the time and trying to like anything, you have to invent or create new ways to figure out how to do it. That's the stuff that generally excites me the most.

Alex Ferrari 50:37
Do you see yourself in 30 years sitting on a set when you're 60? going? Alright, we're gonna do this one take hologram shot. All right, let's do this. And we're gonna we're gonna do it for only four hours this time.

Gavin Michael Booth 50:47
Holiday Yeah, directing the hologram actors that's gonna it's gonna happen. We're so we're so close to that with like motion capture and bringing

Alex Ferrari 50:55
to the holodeck edge and we're going to the holodeck. That's what that's the end. That's the end game is the holodeck. I mean, they

Gavin Michael Booth 51:00
technically have their you see like the like the previous or things of like Gareth Edwards on Rogue One, for example. And he's holding like, he's like, okay, I'll move this virtual camera here, but near real time and almost finished render, he can see what's happening.

Alex Ferrari 51:13
But until you can physically walk into a room like on Star Trek, and I live and breathe in, even to a certain extent even eventually touch. I don't know how that technology will work. Yeah, interact with that environment that you're in. Have you been to the VR experience of the Void? I've heard, I've heard of it.

Gavin Michael Booth 51:30
As a Star Wars fan, my friend you need to go you get to be a stormtrooper. And it's a physical space that you walk through. So there are walls and levers that you pull the must just be like, a piece of wood. But it is like fully rendered and CG as you walk around and you go to like, Darth Vader's planet moves too far. And they've got the heat cranked through heat lamps, and the smell of like burning paper in the air. So it feels like the molten lava is burning and bubbling all around you. And

Alex Ferrari 51:57
I'm sorry, it's called the void, sir. It's the void.

Gavin Michael Booth 52:00
Yeah, it's the Glendale Galleria. And they have a Ghostbusters one and a WreckIt Ralph one, but I want to do that I'll meet you there. I'm always going to go back and do that experience. It's, it's it was the next level where I went, Oh, this is where VR and video games are going. And they figure out how to make a home version of this where it's relevant. And we're only one step away yet. It's never one step away from the holodeck.

Alex Ferrari 52:25
The holodeck what smellivision Got it? Got it.

Gavin Michael Booth 52:28
It's gonna be Apple's gonna move in contact lenses right like the true iPhone and then i o and then everything will be then everything and then we'll have to all figure out new ways to make I don't know if you've done any virtual reality filmmaking yet. I'm just starting to dabble in it. But it's a it's a whole other world where I don't really feel like anyone's truly figured out how to do narrative stuff with it and really make it exciting. But

Alex Ferrari 52:52
Justin Linda did that. Or it was I forgot the director who did that short film. We had it we had a we've had a couple of people didn't Rodriguez do one. Not that none of you are he did. He did that thing with john malkovich that won't be seen for 100 years that gets put in into the vault for for that liquor company you ever saw that one. He shattered as fast fire short film for a liquor company was hired to do it and two stars john malkovich and a few other people, and it's locked away in a vault and it will be released in the time capsule in 100 years. And it was a sci fi short, it was a sight it was paid for by by the the, the liquor company so it was like some sort of, you know, tequila and then say here seems a little like nobody's gonna remember this happens. Yeah. You know, someone's gonna find that and they're gonna go, What? Who's this? JOHN, what else? This Oh, you'd be that company that went bankrupt in 2021. I hope we get like smart marketing. I hope it gets released before then. Now as far as as far as marketing and distribution, how do you how are you guys getting this out there? Is it out there already? what's what's the what's the plan?

Gavin Michael Booth 53:59
It's just it's on the festival circuit right now. I mean, obviously, this podcast will air later but we're about to come up to our dances with films from air here in LA at the Chinese theatre. We we we actually weren't going to so here's our strategy. I like many of us have been through the wringer where you sell your film to a big company. No, no, by film, the scare house played all over the globe and played theatrically in Asia and the Philippines and it's on VOD everywhere. It's on blu ray all over the place. You're watching on Showtime?

Alex Ferrari 54:33
Sure well one question but one question to ask you how do you enjoy your golden toilet that you that you will go to the bathroom on every day? Obviously buckets of money came in from this deal has to make sense now.

Gavin Michael Booth 54:42
Well it's amazing right because you know we went and then made last call next and people go He must be hiding all that money. How is he making another video? It's that is that deal was the producer you have to deal with everybody's assumption, disappointment and wrongful expectations because we have not seen one, single penny wise we all know that system that endless expenses, the

Alex Ferrari 55:09
Oh, you didn't cafe, cafe expenses,

Gavin Michael Booth 55:12
when at the time when you made a film in Canada, we had the We have wonderful grant systems telephone Canada and tax credit systems but at the time you had to have a distributor attached before you went to camera. That's one of the stipulations of who they give money to. But that gives the distribution companies the advantage of handing you a contract where it's like, you sign this or you don't get to make your movie.

Alex Ferrari 55:36
So and what was the distribution company? Yeah, well, we'll keep that.

Gavin Michael Booth 55:44
But I do I do give you credit, you should shout it out a few independent distribution companies in the past when I listen to one of your podcasts about distribution and Michael Ingram at parade deck films, he actually came in and helped us sell some of the territories and things that that were not exploited, so that we could actually start to like, at least make back some of the investment money on the film. But long story short, we made last call for a micro budget with the goal of like, let's just make something small enough that we can own the IP forever and cut out the middleman. So I've actually launched my own distribution company called Fq entertainment, which stands for filmmakers unites and will support us will stand together united and say a few to the industry that I just figured, you know, because we made it for such a low amount of money, we'll be able to get in the green rather quickly with a couple sales to places that I've had films place in the past. And and we weren't going to do a festival run at all because we're like, that's not the goal. We don't because you usually go to a festival to try to seek Richard tional distribution company. And not to say that there are people in this new digital world figuring out ways to not rip off your like the old car. There's

Alex Ferrari 57:01
quite a few of them.

Gavin Michael Booth 57:02
Yeah, it's they exist. We just wanted to do something on our own. But then we had a festival in Wisconsin, the Beloit International Film Festival, all places like your film sounds really fascinating. Would you submit? We're like, why not? I mean, and it was like, why aren't you doing Sundance for premieres like? Well, because the realistic expectations of waiting an entire year and then getting a rejection letter doesn't sound very exciting to me.

Alex Ferrari 57:26
That's exactly what I did with on the corner vehicles. I waited a year for Sundance, because it was a movie about Sundance. And I would think you know, you think that this is the best shot I'm gonna get. Yep. And I got that rejection letter and I did a whole episode called I got rejected. I just think that should be the poster. That should be the poster in the movie, the rejection letter, it should be the official rejection by at Sundance Film Festival. I should put that on laurels with official rejection Sundancer festival. It's

Gavin Michael Booth 57:54
funny that you say that I have that currently. I mean, I'll call it up while we're talking. So yeah, so we we got invited this vessel, we want to best feature award there, and then dance with films. I'm an alum. I had a short film there last year. I've helped out on a few other films that have played there. We just thought, Well, I don't know. Maybe we'll give it a festival. Right? Yeah. Because most people that saw the film suddenly went, you know what, this, this is the festival movie, it is the thing that will makers love and we're like, well, then that'll be that'll be great. So you know what you're you're very familiar with the festival circuit. When you do the festival circuit. You have to make postcards that you put out in the lobby. And everything's like trying to like just anything to get people interested in seeing your movie. If you're like me, you appreciate everyone's effort. But you look at that sea of postcards, and you go, I don't know, care. Like I don't know. I don't know who this is. I don't know who these actors are. And if the arts not 1,000% captivating, it's going to be forgotten. So we thought we went with a little less traditional postcard this year that just says placeholder last call poster goes here, but we put fake laurels on there. So one of them is is cannabis ever submitted? Yes. Official rejection Oh Miss deadline for Sundance this year. I'm

Alex Ferrari 59:16
gonna I'm stealing all of that. I don't know. I don't know if you get this one right here word

Gavin Michael Booth 59:22
companies word from Tropic Thunder when they reference that and one of the This one's my favorite I stole this from a friend

Alex Ferrari 59:29
everyone everything looks official with Laura.

Gavin Michael Booth 59:33
And then this one winner of the blind International Festival this one's real. What we did on the back of the postcard idea was to you know just use something tasty but then on the back we have this this whole write up that says like, Look, you're probably thinking filmmakers without a poster don't know what they're doing. But we can't explain our movie in a poster. This is what we did a single take movie yada yada and it goes all the way through says but I bet you're probably at least curious now and like it has the website. So

Alex Ferrari 59:58
that's actually quite brilliant. That's the best some of the best marketing I've seen for Film Festival. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:00:15
I mean, it goes back to I'm a huge fan of Dan Mirvish and the slam Dance Festival, you know, it is yeah, with this film. Omaha Roma, where he he went, he did the sandwich board sign and when city to city and like, just, you booked a theater and invited people in one one at a time. And I'm a huge fan of doing whatever you can in the industry, because it's not good enough to make a film that everybody likes, you have to make sure that it makes an impact somehow. Or you get the word out there, that and you see it all the time at festivals, like festivals or wonder I love festivals for meeting other filmmakers because you really do meet like, your future collaborators or you find that next person were you like, oh, man, I want to work with you. I want to direct something that you've written or vice versa, whatever it is, that's always going to be a great thing about film festivals. But you also just see a lot of sadness, and desperation and people that you know, I feel blessed to have sort of as a promotion marketing brain somewhere in me, because a lot of people if you're just the creative and can make a beautiful product, it's not enough anymore. Unless you have the money to pay someone else to do all that for you. You have to be inventive, and find ways to get to get your film out there. No,

Alex Ferrari 1:01:31
no question, man. Well, that first of all, I'm gonna steal all of those because that's fantastic. That is fantastic. I'm sure somebody out there right now is going to do that. I was doing that back in oh five, where, where I went for my festival and I with my shorts broken. I actually I got into like 150 200 something like that festivals. Yeah. But I got rejected from all the big boys. And I put officially visiting Sundance Film Festival officially visiting Toronto where I actually went with my film there. And then if you click on the laurels, there's pictures of me with celebrities and hanging out in Toronto.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:02:06
Now as Toronto has a very good festival that was the same everyone can is like put it in TIFF. I'm like it doesn't work like that. They're

Alex Ferrari 1:02:12
no you're Canadian automatic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:02:15
It's like it doesn't work like that. And again, I didn't want to wait till September. I'm like we submitted and who knows? if they if they say yes, awesome. But you know, a lot of festivals are very big on weed. It has to be a world premiere. It's like, well, it can't be a world premiere everywhere. So right.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:28
So then you get into it, then you get into North American premiere, then you get into California premiere, and then you get these ridiculous premieres.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:02:36
So I would you know, I would say one of the big things I think is, you know, opportunities like this, if you listen to podcasts about filmmaking Call, call them up, I called you up and said, Hey, I have something I think would be interesting to talk about, like, you can sit at your keyboard now and find anyone on social media and find a way to contact them. We did hire a publicist for this festival premiere in LA, this is my first feature premiering in LA ever. I've had shorts here. I've had films that have played theatrical here, but we've never had like a premiere event for something. So we thought, you know what, you know, and my wife's in the film, too. So her acting career is going great. I'm guest stars on television and things, but I really think more so than the movie itself. The acting performances and last call are phenomenal. Because if you want to see people that like can't edit their performances, or have any ADR, you know, it's it, they did a wonderful job. So we just thought, let's try to do, let's let's blend traditional and non traditional, like, let's get a publicists. And she's wonderful. But you know, let's not also just rely on that alone. She had actually recommended your podcast, so there are a policy issue they're very much aware of. That's how the film has. I actually have I haven't interviewed book there already. But yeah, she's she's a big fan and listens all the time. Kristen Schrader, I don't Yeah, she

Alex Ferrari 1:03:49
she email the other day. She's like, yeah, yeah, you know, big fan. I'm like, that's, it's always crazy when I hear things like that, because I'm just a dude. in Burbank. Your neighbor,

Gavin Michael Booth 1:04:02
I'm your neighbor. I'm in noho. I'm looking at the Burbank mountains out my window.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:05
You're literally I know, you're down the street from me did Oh, yeah. I'm, I'm taking you for lunch. Yeah. There's no question.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:04:14
Like I said, what I was gonna say to you is, you know, but you you I do want to thank you because you provide this outlet and you provide, because even you know, I'm a filmmaker. This made a handful of features and all this stuff. But like, I love podcasts like yours, because you can never, you can never be harmed by having a motivating voice in your ear and hearing other people's struggles and that kindred spirit and your podcast is one of the best if not the best out there and the voice. I preach I say that as an actual longtime listener not just trying to kiss up because

Alex Ferrari 1:04:46
you're ready. We're almost done with the interview. It's over.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:04:48
Yeah, no need to kiss up at the beginning. Yeah, you're doing it backwards. But yeah, you keep keep it up. everything you're doing is great. Is is wonderful.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:57
I appreciate that, brother. I really do. I have to ask Question is,

Gavin Michael Booth 1:05:00
is it a world premiere? Or is it a North American premiere or us premiere for dances with films? It would be the West Coast premiere because we already premiered and now Wisconsin

Alex Ferrari 1:05:09
Alright, so I have to say I have to tell you my dances with films story and I'm gonna have to call I'm gonna call it dances with films. I'm sorry, I'm gonna call them out or sorry, Michael. Because you see you never piss off somebody with a podcast. I mean, this is what this is why? I'm actually good. I've been invited by a friend of mine who has another movie premiering there's I'm going to Bri be at dances with films, just hanging out. And I've got tickets for your free June 18 come see our screening. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Because another year and they're like, Well, I have to say no to filmmakers there. So at least, I might go. But with my first feature, this is Meg. I submitted the dances the film's and we I went all the way to the end. And I said, like, I got accepted into cinequest. And I'm like, Look, I've already seen the quest is up north isn't sure yeah, you guys are a couple years ago this right? So you guys could get the LA premiere. Like it's, I mean, I'm gonna be able to bring everybody out from LA had a lot of Hollywood stars in it. It had it you know, I can, you know, motivate the tribe to head out and check out this film that I've been talking about. At the end. They literally took it to the last second and they finally said because it's not the West Coast premiere. We can't do it. And I'm like, you son of a bitch. So from Unless Unless otherwise I shall never submit now I'm joking.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:06:28
No, Oscar I should five we have I have an email or you know, I submitted we got thing back said I use kind of language Why would you premiere your film? Oh, there instead of instead of brutal, it's brutal. I really prefer world premieres. And I wrote back something to the effect of like, slow down Sundance, you know, to be the West Coast premiere, I said, and I and I counted, I said, Have you because at that point, it's like if they don't want the film, I said, you know, but have you ever seen a film shot in a single tape with two camera crews in two different parts of a city that was scored live in a single tank? Probably not. So I think we're still be interesting to your audience.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:06
Yeah, and that's the kind of way that only you can only say that once you have a few a few pieces of shrapnel in you from from you're working in the business Oh yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 1:07:15
you learn it once you once you toughen up and don't fear the industry anymore. I think opportunities open up a lot more because because when you live we all live in fear of like well, we can't we have to be polite everybody. No, this is this is my whole thing. When when I I mean, I could go on forever. But because there are a lot of film festivals that like should not be film festivals because they don't do anything to draw people out. You know, you spend all that money to fly across the country and buy a new tie and rented Airbnb and I

Alex Ferrari 1:07:43
cannot call it can I never call out festivals I have to call our festival and this is the only festival I've ever done this with I do it constantly. The LA shorts Film Festival. Stay away anyway. I've never been part of it. But la shorts Film Festival everyone stay away from that festival. The reason why is because exactly what you did. I flew out from Florida. I came out there. I had guys I knew guys that were flying from Spain, from Spain to do their short blocks. Such disrespect, no q&a, when we asked they would just like get out. And I'm like, wow. And that was in 2005. Fast forward a few years but there's a lot to call them out. It's a lot of people like a lot

Gavin Michael Booth 1:08:21
of and I believe that most of the people starting the small film festivals have the best of intentions. But if they don't if they're not marketing and bringing if it's only it's all that Saturday Night Live sketch with the the film festival you saw with Emily Blunt where like it was the film, the film ends and they're like everybody who was part of the film and everyone in the audience gets up to except for one person. You know, it's like, like I can play to my friends and family at home. I don't need to come to spend money to go to a festival. But my point is, it's great that film film freeway now has I mean film freeway over without a box is brilliant to begin with. They have the review the review thing. Have you ever read anything that was less than a five star review of a festival on there? No, shout, Phil. It's all of us filmmakers that like live in fear of not being invited back again by being honest about you know what, no one showed up to my screening. This happened we weren't given a q&a. They shut my film off. Well, the credits were halfway sound Yeah, they wanted to clean the cinequest screwed us we had a short there and there was a weird flicker problem with the projector and instead of stopping it and fixing it wasn't our DCP it worked fine. They didn't stop it restarted they just let the entire 15 minute short play that way and didn't offer an apology or anything and yeah, I was close to kicking the projection booth door down and stopping the projector but yeah, it's it's those stories are everywhere. But I think I think we need to as filmmakers, be less afraid because the more honest we are in the morning we all speak up then it will help improve these festivals. Yeah, because that because the great festivals are the ones that you know, even when we're below below it was wonderful. Few like, I'll call them technical imperfections. It's just Yeah, it's a mess. Where the venues are less traditional venues, your shelves in a party room at a big restaurant or something. So you'd like there's things where the sound could be tweaked or things just aren't set are sure what they the programmers are wonderful, you would suggest things like that. They'd be like, how do we do that? Let's call someone in and fix that immediately. So it doesn't have to any other screenings like you know, there it's not to say that it's it's a it's an all out evil across the board. It's

Alex Ferrari 1:10:22
no, it's there's a lot of different festivals. I

Gavin Michael Booth 1:10:25
mean, I always promote the holly shorts, because I think they're one of the greatest. I've not played there. But I've been to plenty of screenings is wonderful.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:32
They're wonderful, wonderful festival. And there's a lot of festivals that I've gone to that I recommend tremendously, but I think it's You're right, I think we got a call out, you know, bad experience. And look, I had a really great experience of cinequest you didn't it happened. You know, I mean, I'm sure other rest of the festival was phenomenal. presentation, which I think was missing because you were Canadian hair there. Yeah, probably it's because you run an ad. And that's why we shot it in LA and I lived in LA already. It doesn't only Hey, they can smell it, they can smell it. They were I mean, the one

Gavin Michael Booth 1:11:02
festival in terms of taking care of their filmmakers and like, like, open bar all day and the filmmaker lounge like it was it's

Alex Ferrari 1:11:09
no good.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:11:11
It was wonderful. We went the year that would have been 2016 it was the year that they lost the theater downtown was being renovated.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:18
I know and when that's the year that I went to 2015 that's when

Gavin Michael Booth 1:11:22
I see the shuttle bus raid to go back and forth between because they they had the theater somewhere else. But even that they would make sure that everybody everybody was taken care of and had a way had a way to get everywhere. It's just it was awesome. So that's it, let's say thanks then with the boy festival I can't say enough You know, so it's a smaller Midwest festival with man the audiences were great engagement with the film was great they they would give every every single filmmaker a personal driver to get you to and from they take you like on cheese factory tours. I wonder whatever you obviously took care of

Alex Ferrari 1:11:51
you need some cheese factory to I mean, why wouldn't you? But the thing is also I've noticed is that some of the smaller festivals or mid range festivals, they do take care of the film for filmmaker, especially if they're not like LA, or not like New York, if they're in a small town, they're just the whole town is excited about the festival. It's a little thing you know, it's a real big thing like Park City was back in the day when Sundance first started now they're just like, Oh, God, here, these 50,000 people are showing that only the

Gavin Michael Booth 1:12:19
only the hotel and cafe owners are excited everyone else is just like I just want to get to work and Exactly.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:26
But yet sometimes those smaller festivals, you do have a much, much better experience, because it's just so much more excited to have you then some of these bigger festivals or you might fall fall by the wayside. But anyway, so you

Gavin Michael Booth 1:12:37
could get generally you can never go wrong, you're always gonna meet another actor or filmmaker, somebody that you want to work with and collaborate with or pick up new tips about making films or marketing films like you can always sponge great information from even terrible experiences. Oh, absolutely. So there's always value in that. But at the same time, if you could save a grand and you know, put that towards your next film or buy some Facebook ads to get people to watch your film online instead of 16 people in a mostly, you know, empty theater at midnight, some Podunk town, that would also be great to know in advance. Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 1:13:10
this is a this is a this is a whole other podcast, I think we could actually do an entire just you and me bitching about film festivals in our experience. It's

Gavin Michael Booth 1:13:18
a film festival podcast where we review festivals, yeah. Could you imagine that? We'd be like, it'd be like that South Park episode about Yelp reviewers where they're like, Oh, we got to give them the best table because they're just gonna give us a bad review. If they don't,

Alex Ferrari 1:13:30
we got to let them in. We got to let them in. If not, we're not gonna get any submission. So that's I think that's the next thing. You and I become those guys. And then all the time and then when we have movies, we call them up. If we don't get in. You won't get any submissions this year. So

Gavin Michael Booth 1:13:45
hey, it's it's Alison Gavin. Yeah, we're the guys shooting that documentary about Film Festival. So yeah, I'm just gonna email you. What's the waiver code?

Alex Ferrari 1:13:54
Okay. Anyway, anyway, let's finish it off. Because I know you and I feel that we could talk for at least another five hours about stuff. Alright, so these are the questions I asked all my guests and you should know them. There might be a few new ones you haven't heard? But let's see. All right. All right. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today?

Gavin Michael Booth 1:14:13
Pick up whatever camera you have. And go make your first short stop sitting on the couch saying I gotta wait till I can afford a red cam. Oh, I've got to learn more about lighting. Oh, I don't know any actors. Go find your local theatre company. Go to the local college that has an acting problem. Do whatever it takes to get off your ass right now. And make a film. Don't worry if it could be better. It's always going. There's always the scenario could be better. Just go make stuff, put it on YouTube, do whatever it takes to establish yourself and get in the game because all it's going to do is excite you to keep going. But if you don't ever get over that first hump, and you know social media exists, Go on Go on Facebook. Every city has its own like, I need a producer kind of Facebook group where you can go in and you can be very honest to say I don't have a budget. I'm looking for For other people starting out, let's get together and meet me for coffee and figure out how to go volunteer and other people sets if you expect people to volunteer on yours. Just every person, you know making films go off to do anything, be the driver, be the guy watching the gear in the truck. It doesn't have to be glamorous, just go network. Because those people in your city, wherever you live making content, they should be your inspiration. And they will gladly repay a favor when you're ready to make your first project.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:27
Yeah, without question now, can you tell me what book had the biggest impact in your life or career? Oh, yes. I see many of them in the back. I see many of them. Yeah, a story pops right out. But that's always the one that's in everybody. Yeah,

Gavin Michael Booth 1:15:41
it's how to make a movie for under $10,000 and not go to jail.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:45
I've never heard it is,

Gavin Michael Booth 1:15:50
where is it? Right. Brett stern is the author. It was the first one. The first one that I read where it was like, it was very real advice. It wasn't just like, here's the technical way. And here's how you break out a budget. There's a chapter in there, like, okay, here's like a recipe for stew that will feed people for three days, and you can return into the soup The next day, instead of buying everyone's subway or burgers, that's going to cost you this much money. Now you're in the editing phase. This is where you hate everything you hate yourself. You're not going to shower for days, your girlfriend's probably going to leave you like it was just very, like real world advice about what to expect and emotionally anticipate making a film, but also how to practically do it, and cut through all the fat and you can make a movie for 10 grand if you want to. So that was one of the best. Yeah. Show. Yeah, so it's a Bruce. Brett. Brett stern. Yeah, he, if he doesn't have an indie film podcast, he should because he's one of those guys. He said that books been around for years. I read that probably 15 years ago. And then of course, Rebel Without a crew. I actually actually read that and said, You can't make a movie as one person. So I went out I took seven grand and said I'm gonna go make a movie by myself as the only crew person and I did it. I made a whole feature that way. I'm like, Alright, he wasn't he wasn't BS. And you can actually do it if you want to do it. Yeah, and it's funny all those ones. I sort of those are the books always lend out never come back kind of thing. When I moved to LA I went down Santa Monica has I think it's just called bookworm or book. There's a great little used bookstore there. And I was like, Oh man, I can rebuy all the books that I read before I'd ever made a movie and reread them again and see like, see how much information actually like stuck with me or I thought it'd be a good time because sort of revisiting all those books.

Alex Ferrari 1:17:35
Nice. Nice. Now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?

Gavin Michael Booth 1:17:43
Oh, boy. Let go of ego and not not worry about outside criticism or feedback, because you can't avoid it. And there's no reason to have an ego in this industry. This is my latest one is unless you have a name or something behind you where people will recognize your name. Don't put a film by Gavin booth on your poster. I left let know that it's not just me. I can guarantee it but I laughed my ass off at festivals all day long. When I look at posters, it's like a film by and I loudly just point I go Who? Who is that like? That is a credit reserved for people whose name have achieved greatness in terms of artistic success or is a marketing tool and will actually help sell tickets but nine film by Quentin Tarantino Steven Spielberg film that means something to selling tickets. JOHN, john Anthony you know john Anthony Stewart from Chicago's second film it doesn't mean anything. So let the film and the film art and the story sell your film and I was like that is like oh it's just what everybody does you put your name on everything you brand everything. And same with music video director stop putting year Oh, that directly by credit the beginning of the video. Like it's a it's a it's all part of the social media things that I the Instagram age of just self importance that I just let go of your ego. Make the work be proud of what you made regardless of nobody else's proud of it.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:20
Fair enough. Fair enough. Now, what is the biggest fear you ever had to overcome from making your films?

Gavin Michael Booth 1:19:27
Ah, I think believing that my stories are worthy of calling on let's call them like bigger or more established people to get involved with them. When you sit there and say, Oh man, this would be a great role for this actor. Man I really love this cinema the cinematographers work but I could never afford they'd never come do something in the one I started sneaking into events and meeting people you realize everybody wants to make creative projects and if you have something in Interesting, you might just hit them at the right time, the right place in their career where they go like oh wait, you only need me for three days phenomenal I'll cut my rate I'll come do that. Don't fear anything because it's it's exactly like dating. The worst that girl or guy or the person you're attracted to is going to say is no. And it sucks rejection will never stop sucking. But if you're in the film industry you're already looking at a lifetime of rejection. So just just go and ask like believe that your script is is good enough or believe that this little thing that you if you believe in it that hard other people will as well so just I had to get over that fear of like, Oh, I could never get an agent in LA like I'm not I'm not the area or like, or I don't know if I should call blumhouse about this live film it's it's just it's such a tiny little weird project and nobody's ever made a live film before. If I if I had lived with that, you know, if I had not gotten over my fear, and I still have those fears, of course, self doubt and fear like are riddled through every filmmaker. It's a prerequisite. I don't care how big your Ascot is your sunglasses. You're riddled with fear and fear of rejection.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:07
I don't I don't have mascot with me.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:21:08
Not you.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:09
Not today, sir. Not today. Not today, sir. But

Gavin Michael Booth 1:21:12
Short aside my wife's grandmother when when I first met her said, Oh, you're a director? Does that mean you have to wear one of those neck scarves when you're on TV giving interviews? And I spit my drink out of the restaurant and died laughing because I just like Oh, it's so she's so correct. She's so correct.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:29
Oh, no, that's that's better than what my wife my mother in law said when I first met or not when she first heard that I was in the film business. Like they're on drugs. They're all on drugs. They're all on drugs. They sleep around. They don't like I'm not like a soap opera star like in South America.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:21:44
Like Yeah, you're gonna get really famous for people started offering you like free drugs and stuff. I mean, if you can't afford to make an indie film you can't afford a cocaine habit. Those are that's a pretty Yeah. Accounting summary.

Alex Ferrari 1:21:55
I have I've never been offered cocaine. Not yet. I haven't gotten to that level yet until I get offered.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:22:01
I have to the music industry course your time. But yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's a life. It's a lifestyle that costs a lot more than trying to be an indie filmmaker

Alex Ferrari 1:22:12
Several several 1000 times I've been offered. She's just sniffle a lot around her and you know, it'll be fine. It'll be Oh, He's good. He's good. I'm good. I just had a I had one sorry, three of your favorite films of all time.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:22:29
Original Star Wars hands down. Ofcourse, he run Lola run is a great time it was the most inventive film it was still one of the most inventive films I love that man. And then the movie that I've watched the most of my entire life stand by me now so any any great like coming of age story like that those those are the three films I've probably seen the most in my life out of dozens of others that I that I love those those are the three that are the most rewatchable for me.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:56
And where can people find you?

Gavin Michael Booth 1:22:59
You can find me I deleted my twitter i get sick of politics and you couldn't avoid it but you can find me Facebook it's Gavin Michael Booth I have a page that I don't really check but if you ever want to reach out or collaborator I can share any advice or war stories you can share I mean we're

Alex Ferrari 1:23:15
Careful and careful

Gavin Michael Booth 1:23:16
Yeah, I help out with I'm sure you're inundated you get a whole separate email channel just for the requests

Alex Ferrari 1:23:24
Careful I've had other guests say things like this I and they weren't they call me after like I had no idea what you were gonna do to me like I'm like hey.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:23:32
I'mready for it. I'm ready. I think like I might have made some films but I also I want to meet all your other listeners that want to collaborate with everybody in some way shape or form. And then just gavinmichaelbooth.com. That's where you can find some of my past short films trailers for anything and then a bunch of the music videos I made.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:49
Oh man, this

Gavin Michael Booth 1:23:50
Instagram Of course, @GavinMichaelBooth.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:54
Met Gavin has been an absolute pleasure talking to you brother. It has been great. I feel like we're kindred spirits and

Gavin Michael Booth 1:24:00
And we're we're neighbors I'm going to take you for lunch and take you to the void so you can come be a stormtrooper right? Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 1:24:06
Well, I mean as you see my life size do it on the background. You know, I I rolled that way. So absolutely.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:24:10
That's unfortunately it's an episode one yada, but I'll let that go.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:13
You know what? Listen, do you have a life size Yoda in your room? No, no, no, you don't!

Gavin Michael Booth 1:24:19
Fairpoint Well, we'll have to borrow a custom made lightsaber from galaxy's edge.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:26
What Okay, so now we're gonna have to throw our our Star Wars up. You know what's on the table. And our man hoods both gonna have to be slapped on the table or Star Wars man who slept on the table. I will I have back there, which not many people can see. But I have an autographed Star Wars lunchbox by George Lucas, who I met who I met in Toluca Lake, when he had lunch with his daughter right next to my old offices. And it was during the time he was selling Disney. So it was before For the Disney sale, yeah, that's why he was in town. Because I'm like, why is George Lucas and like to look at why is he here? Yeah. And then like a month later, Disney buys I'm like that was he was there for the meeting. So that's what I have in the background that generally Trumps a lot.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:25:13
So you had a Star Wars lunchbox in your office, you know, like,

Alex Ferrari 1:25:16
Better. Better, better. Better than that. The story is this. I swear, this is the way it happened.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:25:21
You stole from a child?

Alex Ferrari 1:25:22
I no, I will, obviously, but no, I ordered a Star Wars lunchbox from Amazon, because I'd always wanted a Star Wars lunchbox that like you know, just put it in my office. Yep. It arrived that morning. And I would have taken it home when I went to lunch. But it was there in the three hour window that George Lucas and I had on a city and I had autographed pens, because I had my clients autograph posters and stuff on my walls and stuff. So I was just like, it was just literally and he never autographs so it was actually his daughter who said, Dad just just sign it just saw. Yeah. And he's like, all right, and, and I don't make it out to me. Cuz I'm never selling this.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:26:01
That's amazing.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:02
So there, but I would do would like a custom lightsaber. That would be kind of cool

Gavin Michael Booth 1:26:08
If they weren't $200 each I grab one for you while I was there you know

Alex Ferrari 1:26:12
It's been a tough isn't a tougher like with the wife just says like, baby, you know, I think I need a I think I need a life size Yoda

Gavin Michael Booth 1:26:20
Were pretty good because you know, she the amount of acting classes and things that she does to better her career than I go like I used to be like, I kind of wanna get the criterion streaming channel. She's like, like, it's $10 a month and she's like, I pay this much for acting class every go do it like she's because I don't buy a lot of memorabilia anymore. When we move from Canada here we sort of like I got out of the habit of collecting DVDs and blu rays and so so I technically save us a fortune every year. You know, there's she thinks I'm insane for subscribing to Entertainment Weekly, but I tried to remind her that when I was in high school, the internet didn't exist. And getting Entertainment Weekly. That was the Bible of like, what movies were coming out. What do you what was happening, what people were doing and there's just some there's that nostalgia in me I like to read it every week when it comes to sit down and read it instead of reading it. I could read it on my iPad I could get Apple news plus some things are just you know, whatever you grew up with, you should have that love I mean, you know sitting on my desk I've got blockbuster, please because

Alex Ferrari 1:27:22
Just to remind you of your of your of your roots, sir. Have your roots. Yes, yes. Yeah. I look at that every day while I edit. Yeah, sir. It has been an absolute pleasure, brother. Thank you so much for coming on the show and dropping some knowledge bombs on how to shoot a one take or two one take two. One take two person

Gavin Michael Booth 1:27:42
Split screen double shot something or other is a lot of work. Just everybody go see last call whenever you can find it in your area.

Alex Ferrari 1:27:49
Thanks again, brother. I appreciate it.

Gavin Michael Booth 1:27:50
Happy to be part of the tribe.

Alex Ferrari 1:27:52
Thank you so much for such an entertaining conversation. Gavin, thank you again for coming on the show and dropping the knowledge bombs on the tribe man. So thank you again, so so much. If you want links to Gavin's film last call, how to get in touch with Gavin, anything we talked about in this episode, please head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com/344 for the show notes. And guys a few weeks ago, I said that was going to be another big announcement after I launched filmtrepreneur.com and all the things I did with the book and everything else that's going on. But I have another big announcement coming either later this week, or by the latest next week. And it's going to be a doozy. It's something that you guys have been asking for, for ever. And it's something that I finally have gotten around to do it. And I really hope it's great for you guys in the tribe. And for any filmmaker that's going to be finding about about it. I hope it helps. I know I'm being cryptic, I'm sorry. You know me, you know what I like to do. I'd like to keep you guys in suspense. But you know what, I never disappoint. I truly try never to disappoint when I do something like this. So more stuff coming. I've got more announcements coming down the line, but this is a pretty big one as well. So keep an eye out for that. And real quick, guys. Before we finish I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about last week's episode on predatory film distributors is you know in this by your response, it's a very popular topic. And a lot of filmmakers are really interested in a lot of members of the tribe are really interested in that episode. And thank you so much for all the responses all the stories that I'm getting from filmmakers. I want to put this out there if you guys have had afraid to do this, but if you guys have had a bad you know situation if you've had a bad experience with a film distributor, email me your story. Email me what happened at [email protected]. This I feel again, as I said last week is a moral issue. It is a big problem in this industry. It's kind of like One, you know, everybody knew about the casting couch. And it took a big event to finally break that open. And the casting couch was something that everyone understood, knew it happened and just ignored. And I feel that these distributors, these predatory distributors are, you know, there's no light shined on these bastards. So I want to use my platform, I want to use indie film, hustle, I want to use the power of the tribe, to focus a nice, bright, shiny light on all of these distributors that are doing wrong to filmmakers, and are predatory and hurting filmmakers. Because if you hurt one filmmaker, honestly, you hurt us all. Because God knows what would have happened if that filmmaker would have been successful. And but instead, they left they left the business because they just, you know, they got a bit taken advantage of and they couldn't come back from the financial hate have been basically their movie stolen from them. So I want to I really want to focus as much energy as I can, on this cause on this movement I want if you are listening, please spread the word on that last episode, as well as this episode, but on that last episode, and any content that I'm going to be putting up over the next months, weeks and months about this topic, share it because I want this information to get out there. I want filmmakers to be prepared to do it, you know, to deal with film distributors. And again, not all of them are bad, but you really need to protect yourselves because it is a brutal, brutal business and it's something that's so it's just like entrenched in, in this in the system in the business that everyone goes, Oh, you know, yeah, I get screwed by my distributor. Oh, I got screwed by my distributor. Oh, they stole money. Oh, they never paid me Oh, they did this or did that. I've hear that story 1000 times over the course of my career, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it. And I want to help. So again, if you have a story about a bad experience with a film distributor, or that you signed a predatory film distribution contract, and it's just you can't get ahold of them. They haven't paid you blah, blah, blah, whatever the story is, send it to me. I want to I want to hear about it. So I can better educate the tribe about these predatory film distributors. Okay. email me at [email protected] thanks again for listening guys. As always, keep that also going. Keep that dream alive. And I'll talk to you soon.

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