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class="site-main" id="main"><header class="page-header" aria-label="Page"><h1 class="page-title"> <span class="vcard">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></h1></header><article id="post-160151" class="post-160151 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-anthony-gibson tag-eleusinian-productions tag-film-distribution tag-he-who-lives-in-hidden-lakes tag-nfts tag-opensea tag-patronized-self-distribution tag-patronized-self-distribution-psd-model tag-self-distribution tag-zach-lona" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/zach-lona-and-anthony-gibson/" rel="bookmark">BPS 408: The Patronized Self-Distribution (PSD) Model with Zach Lona and Anthony Gibson</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-02-27T06:30:48+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">February 27, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/zach-lona-and-anthony-gibson/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson-768x369.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zach-Lona-and-Anthony-Gibson-768x369.webp 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=64308904&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Our guests today are filmmakers and developers, <strong>Zach Lona</strong> and <strong>Anthony Gibson</strong>. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Zach is the founder of Chicago-based <a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/5-stages-indie-film-production/">film production</a> company, <strong>Eleusinian Productions</strong> studio that invented the <strong>Patronized Self-Distribution (PSD) model</strong>. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Patronized self-distribution (PSD) uses <strong>NFTs</strong> essentially as an alternative <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1284191">film distribution</a> model from traditional <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> distribution. It hoists and redefines the status of independent films to that of fine art while targeting the film’s specific audience (art collectors/patrons). </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After finishing up his feature mockumentary film directorial debut, </span><strong>He Who Lives In Hidden Lakes</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">, at the end of 2020, and being reluctant to go the normal film distribution route, Zach sought an alternative and along with his team, invented the PSD model earlier this year. </span></p><p><em><strong>The fanatic beliefs of an internet mystic, a cult leader, and a rookie cop who went rogue are tested on the hunt for the “Hidden Man” — an elusive forest-dwelling cryptid that terrorizes their idyllic suburb.</strong></em></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He Who Lives In Hidden Lakes is now listed as Eleusinian Production’s first <a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/nft-independent-film/">NFT</a> auction on <strong>OpenSea</strong> NFT online marketplace. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">The NFT model is a huge incentive for independent filmmakers because the increase in viewers will lead to an increase in passive income and NFT value.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As you can tell, this is a deep dive topic. So, I wanted to bring them to the show to talk about how all of it works. Efficient ways to implement Patronized Self-Distribution, Who really benefits from Patronized Self-Distribution models, and more.</span></p><p>Enjoy my entertaining conversation with <strong>Anthony and Zach</strong>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/64308904/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Zach Lona – <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachlona/">Linkedin</a></strong></li><li><strong>Eleusinian Productions Marketplace: <a href="https://opensea.io/collection/eleusinian">OpenSea</a></strong></li><li><strong>He Who Lives In Hidden lakes – </strong><strong><a href="https://opensea.io/assets/0x774b85487532de576f89d3945af12271f47b2193/1">OpenSea</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 2.78125V1.5H14.5ZM1.5 10.5V4.71875C2.1875 5.28125 3.21875 6.09375 4.75 7.3125C5.4375 7.84375 6.65625 9.03125 8 9C9.3125 9.03125 10.5 7.84375 11.2188 7.3125C12.75 6.09375 13.7812 5.28125 14.5 4.71875V10.5H1.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Email</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download" href="#" > <svg width="18" height="16" viewBox="0 0 18 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M16.5 9H13.5938L15.0625 7.5625C16 6.625 15.3125 5 14 5H12V1.5C12 0.6875 11.3125 0 10.5 0H7.5C6.65625 0 6 0.6875 6 1.5V5H4C2.65625 5 1.96875 6.625 2.9375 7.5625L4.375 9H1.5C0.65625 9 0 9.6875 0 10.5V14.5C0 15.3438 0.65625 16 1.5 16H16.5C17.3125 16 18 15.3438 18 14.5V10.5C18 9.6875 17.3125 9 16.5 9ZM4 6.5H7.5V1.5H10.5V6.5H14L9 11.5L4 6.5ZM16.5 14.5H1.5V10.5H5.875L7.9375 12.5625C8.5 13.1562 9.46875 13.1562 10.0312 12.5625L12.0938 10.5H16.5V14.5ZM13.75 12.5C13.75 12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 0:11<br /> I like to welcome to the show Anthony Gibson and Zack Lona. How you guys doing?</p><p>Zach Lona 0:16<br /> Doing Excellent. Thanks for having us.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 0:18<br /> Oh, man, thank you so much for coming on the show man, I, you guys reached out to me and I get reached out to on a daily basis to be on the show. And I get pitches constantly. But when I saw what you guys were doing, I was like, This is interesting. And of course, you hit a very sweet spot right now, which is blockchain NFT, these new alternative distribution models using technology to empower the filmmaker. Because there's been a slight history of filmmakers being taken advantage of by distribution. I'm not saying many, but some say just just a couple. I mean, it's it's not the norm or anything. But yeah, I want to bring you guys on the show to talk about your amazing new way of distributing through the blockchain through NF T's. But before we even get to that, how did both of you guys get into the business?</p><p>Zach Lona 1:13<br /> So we actually met each other. In Chicago, we were a bit both based in Chicago at the time. And Anthony has since moved to LA. So we met through our cinematographers at Green on a feature like project, which was my directorial debut is called he lives in hidden lakes, which is the subject of this project here. And then Anthony, and I have since worked on that very closely with his his production skills.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:40<br /> Cool. And that's how you guys got together. And what made you get into the business? Anthony?</p><p>Anthony Gibson 1:45<br /> Oh, yeah, I mean, what made me get into it. I just love movies. My grandpa used to chase me around his house wearing wolf mask brought me into the world via horror movies.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:57<br /> Grandpa, that's an amazing.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 1:59<br /> Yeah, he was big in horror, big and westerns, it's one of my first memories were like in his kitchen, and he's chasing me around on that mask and would have been, it's interesting to have a first memory of feeling like you're about to be eaten by a monster, and feel like that's informed the rest of my life basically attracted to his exact movie here So</p><p>Alex Ferrari 2:17<br /> I think this is, this is where the therapy begins. Anthony.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 2:20<br /> Yeah.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 2:20<br /> So so. So you guys just came up with this new idea called the patronis self distribution model using NF T's essentially, can you explain to the audience and we've had other episodes about this, but just want to kind of carry it a baseline? What is an NF? t? In the simplest, simplest terminology?</p><p>Zach Lona 2:39<br /> Yeah, this is always a tough one, right? Because it's so new. And it's like, I'll give out Anthony. I'll give my definition. And then I've thought a lot about about how to position this. And essentially, how I think of it is it's a immutable function on a blockchain that represents a asset, like a work of art, a film, a house alone, something like this, where it's universally verifiable. So anyone, no matter who you are, where you are, you can come into the blockchain code, and you can verify that this token, this NFT represents this, whatever it is. So basically, that's more confusing than it was before. So now, I'm actually more confused about what an NF T is. And I know what an NF T is. No,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 3:29<br /> I'm joking. So you you don't quit your day job? No. Basically, to my understanding, you guys can explain to this and NFT essentially, is a digital baseball card, a digital comic book, a digital painting, as a one off, or multiple versions, or limited edition prints of something. So there's a 5050 limited a 50 of this, or only one of this. And it's just a digital version of spider man number one, but there's only maybe one of them or there could be 100 of the market be 1000 of them, depending on how many you you release out there. Is that a fair? exponential? FTS? Yeah,</p><p>Anthony Gibson 4:06<br /> you know, I think like, for me, the term in my mind is like digital, physical, or physical, digital, it's like a thing that exists, like, as itself that you can sell as a singular item, the same way that you would have any other merchandise, you can do that with an entity. It's a way to buy and sell means.</p><p>Zach Lona 4:24<br /> Yeah, it's a it's a way to facilitate digital ownership of something.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:29<br /> Right? And then when you were saying blockchain, I mean, I know what blockchain is. So you know the basics of blockchain. If you want to know about the basis of blockchain and what NF T's are based on, I have multiple episodes, and I'll link that in the in the show notes on on blockchain explanations of it, and what it all means in our world, because that's a long conversation, and I think I've ever had that conversation. So I just really want to focus on what you guys are doing, but I'll put that in the show notes guys. So tell me then what is a patronized self distribution model? Or a PSD model?</p><p>Zach Lona 5:02<br /> Yeah, so patronis self distribution is a way to not necessarily actually release your film, but it's a way to verifiably own the film as a work of art. So a lot of projects that have been experimented with NF T's in the film space have been sort of in a in an addition or in a like a, you could like you were saying earlier, you could buy multiple versions of it, like you have like a limited DVD release, or something like this, what patronis self distribution does is that it It means a scarce token of your film. So you're not thinking of your film as a fungible asset anymore, where everyone can go to Netflix or Amazon Prime and see it, now you're thinking of it as almost like a piece of fine art, like a unique one of one painting. So then that is then mapped to the token. And then, on top of that, you can sell that token as a sort of non fungible piece of art. And then the economic aspect of it that we've designed that comes into it grants the owner of that NFT, which is representing your film, in all of its singular artistic glory, and all the blood, sweat and tears you put into it, it also gives utility to the owner. So usually, that's going to be mean like an economic benefit, like a perk. You can also have like crowdfunding type benefits with it with, you know, maybe you can have dinner with the director and producer. But really, what's what's what, what's going to make it the most powerful book for both you as a filmmaker and your patron, is the sort of economic benefit to owning this token.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:57<br /> Right? So when you're saying, so basically someone, let's say, I buy your movie for five grand, you're NFT, according to what I read in your, on your on your website, you whoever buys that token would also get 50% of all streaming revenue, from here on to eternity, essentially, in perpetuity. Oh, yeah. Okay. So then they would come in, so now, I own it. I bought it for $5,000. And then now after I've purchased it, it releases the film, because the film would have not been released at that point yet,</p><p>Zach Lona 7:30<br /> right? Yes, exactly. So there are many ways it really the sky's the limit with what you can do with NF T's, which is really like the power of it is like this is completely untapped potential. And there's use cases for this stuff that no one has even thought of yet. So this is a new one that we thought we would experiment with, where we're saying, okay, we're gonna mint our feature film as a one on one token, which hasn't been done before, to our knowledge. And then we're also going to give an economic benefit to owning the token. And that just exists in perpetuity. So the the potential that that unlocks is you can trade the token again, it's, again, we're thinking of the film as like a painting or a piece of fine art now, where you can now there's now a secondary market for that, for that film. And along with the economic benefit, that which transfers on the resale of the token, the new owner of the film token will then receive that 50% cut. So we can get into a little bit more, but it's, it's, it's powerful.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 8:35<br /> Yeah, you know, it's really like an exploration of incentive, and figuring out, like, what we can do within this new technology to explore new models for small business. I mean, I think of myself as like a small business filmmaker, right. And this is like, like, this new modality is allowing people to enter a space and be new and to define it, and to set up new new norms, which is really exciting. And so I think, like, in this case, it's like, well, we had this feature film that we had produced, and we wanted to see what we could do to distribute it ourselves. And that was like, along came this conversation about annuities. And we just kind of racked our brains around like, Well, what does the incentive look like? And what could scenario be that would put something in the hands of the person who bought it, but also give us an opportunity to have an entirely new platform? And that's what's awesome about these aggregators is like, you can self distribute your movie, you know, and the terms that just happened to be attached to our NFT was, we're not going to touch the aggregator until it's purchased. And that was the term.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:37<br /> Right. And the thing is to that, well, I'm assuming that the budget of the film was at a point where a $5,000 nF t made sense because if you spent a quarter of a million half a million dollars on a movie that doesn't make financial sense to give half of your streaming revenue away, so it's kind of like you know, it But let's say for example, that I have a movie that has a star in it. Even Not, not Brad Pitt, or you know, Leonardo DiCaprio, but just a basic, you know, a star power that has a fan base. And then we put it up for auction, as opposed to locking it in. Did you you guys locked it into 5000. Right? Well, we</p><p>Zach Lona 10:19<br /> did. Oh, yeah. We put it to auction. So we actually got a couple bids in. And our starting auction was one ether, which I think at the time was a little under 2000. Yeah. Yeah. So we got a couple bids in there. And it went up to 2.25 ether, which was the strike price. So that was really cool to see the bids come in for this thing. That means that there's definitely like an inkling of a market forming around this stuff. But yeah.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 10:44<br /> So Alright, so then, so if we put the bid out, and let's say that bid gets up to 75,000 $100,000, that's a very feasible thing, especially if you're guaranteed 50% of streaming revenue coming in, and that's a massive, it could be massive, depending on the kind of revenue you're creating. Where you're being put up on is that, you know, transactional? Is that a VOD? Is that s VOD, is that P VOD. What you can define all that in your NFT. Is that, is that right?</p><p>Zach Lona 11:12<br /> Yeah, that's correct. So with ours, and I'm sure everyone is listening is thinking like, what are these guys doing? Giving a 50%? Like, we haven't gotten into like why we did? That's a good deal, right? But yes, you can define any of that within the economics of your token. It just so happens that we're including, like, you know, a VOD t VOD. Every anywhere it's streamed, the owner of the ift gets a 50% cut of our production company's gross. So not like the entire gross. So just what we take home.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:43<br /> So the So then the question is, why the hell did you do this? And how does this make it make any sort of financial sense?</p><p>Zach Lona 11:50<br /> Yeah, so it's it's an expense, like Anthony said, you know, it's an experiment in incentives. And maybe do you want to take this one.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:58<br /> But I'm assuming it's an experiment, because I experimented to my first one was five grand my second film was three grand, I experimented because my budgets were extremely low. I didn't experiment with 50 or 100. Grand, because I'm not rolling that deep just yet. So I'm assuming that the budget justifies this kind of, of risk, or this kind of experiment. Does that make sense? Totally. Yeah.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 12:18<br /> Yeah. I mean, and Zack can probably share more about where like the budgets coming from and all that stuff. But for us, yeah, we were very much in a place where you know, a, a one ether deal at a certain point for the one to one NFT was more interesting to us than maybe recouping a any money, like all of the funding back within the actual purchase of the NFT. But also to give away 50% of the streaming rights, I think for us with most interesting about it is the experimentation and saying look like we're trying something new, we happen to have something that we're willing to take a risk with. And it's like, hey, like, if this means that more people would watch it, like, the idea of like giving up more money was okay, because it's actually just about the piece of work itself. And also what this could mean for the future. Because everything every project you get out is like a case study in like business and economics and all these kinds of things. And it's every project is going to have a new audience. And it's like, someone who's buying soap and someone who's buying toothpaste, but they buy different kinds of things, you have to find another way to sell to that person. And it's like, well, the only way we're going to get to that knowledge is if we take the thing that we already have and put forth and say we're putting it all we're going all in on our chips here, because something on the other side of this is going to tell us what to do next.</p><p>Zach Lona 13:37<br /> Yeah. And to be specific about, you know why we're actually saying this is the utility that we're going to grant with this NFT is the trying to capitalize on the incentive of either someone by an out of the gate, or on the secondary market of someone who it's almost like a like a High Renaissance artists patron relationship where the kind of person who has the money to allocate to this kind of, you know, merchandise or artwork, they might have in influence in the greater world, where we call it in the crypto space pumping their bags, you know, so you're like, Okay, I just bought this NFT I want to show it to everyone. So the more the meme gets out there that this is a movie, and you should watch it, the more valuable that the original NFT becomes. So the idea is the person who buys this, either one has an incentive to sell it to someone with a with a large audience essentially, or some influence, or the person who acquires it outright, can acquire it for a cheaper price. Like say $5,000, which if we're talking about artwork isn't really that much. But then they can say, Okay, I have an audience of, you know, maybe a million people. Maybe I'm like a big YouTube streamer, I could drop $5,000 on this film, you know, shill it to my audience. And then within a couple months, I've made my initial investment back. And also now the now that all of my audience has seen this film, more people love it. More people love it. The more cultural gravitas that the film has, the more countercultural gravitas that the film has, the more value that the original film and ft can capture on the secondary market. So it's almost like an incentive engine to keep things going and pump the bag essentially.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:32<br /> That's, it's I know, a lot of people who listen to this, like, what are these two guys? What are these three guys talking about? This is these guys are insane. But look, we're and I told you guys, this before we started, I've said this a million times on the show before is that we're in the internet 1996 we're still trying to figure out what HTML is we're still trying to figure out what JPEG is, we're still trying to get faster than dial up modems to log onto the internet without stealing an AOL disk from a magazine in a Barnes and Noble. That's how old I am. So, you know, that's where we are with NF T's with blockchain. With all this, we're at a very, very basic beginning level. And it's been around for how since 2008, when Bitcoin showed up, and the concept of blockchain showed up. It, we were we were around, it's been around that long. And it's taken that long to get to where we are now. And people are starting to figure things out. And again, we've talked about NF T's at nauseam at some of these episodes. So you can go deeper into that. But I'm curious, okay, so obviously, the budget made sense. The benefits make sense for the investor who buys this. Now, something that people might not understand is that if I buy your NFT, I resell it for 20 grand, you get 10% of that for perpetuity, if that sells for 20 grand, and then a year or two later, it sells for 40 grand, you just made another 4000 bucks. And and it keeps going and going and going and going. And hopefully your next movie is you know, taxi driver, you know, circa 2021. And then you blow up as a filmmaker will the value of that NFT astronomically goes up. And I think you use the example of George Lucas, George Lucas added theory M and NF T, what would the Star Wars and if TV and and I've said, What is it? What would taxi driver be? What would be amblin? You know, Spielberg's first short film as an NFT? What would that be worth today if it would have been treated as such? And the technology existed when that came out? So is that</p><p>Zach Lona 17:35<br /> right? Exactly? Yeah, we're so I come from a from more of a fine art background, myself, I didn't start in film, I just sort of arrived at film as a consequence of feeling like that, that was the best medium for my creative ideas to live. So I'm coming at it from I'm trying to kind of combine these two worlds, where now we have an opportunity because of this NFT technology to assign cultural value that translates to economic value to like these priceless film cultural artifacts. I mean, film is such a big part of, you know, our culture. And you know, you can argue that it's, it's sort of got a lot of competition these days, which it does, but that's an opportunity for independent filmmaking at this level to sort of ascend socially in terms of its social status. So I see feature films going more of the way of like the opera, or, or the theater where it's kind of more of a niche interest, but it's got a very high, it's got a higher class, social implication to it, which if we're, then if then we're assigning Fine Art value to the film's and that can be traded. Yeah, the value of these tokens could, you know, seriously be worth a lot in the future. And also, because of the technology, we get a creative royalty on each of those secondary transactions. So if you know one day this sells for a million dollars on the secondary market, we just pocket $100,000 you just automatically,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 19:04<br /> right, exactly. And I mean, imagine Wizard of Oz, or Citizen Kane or you know, if you want to talk about fine art, you mean that's the equivalent, you know, or you know, of the earlier chaplains first films or something like that as NF T's treating film as fine art, which no one's really ever had that opportunity to because film is a next film has always been something that you needed to sell a lot of tickets in order to make it financially viable. And that's the entire business model. This allows that to continue. But this is just another revenue stream for like, I was telling people I'm like, Wait till Marvel or Disney jumps in on this. Like, what it what is what is the Avengers? What is what's the Avengers? And if t worth</p><p>Anthony Gibson 19:49<br /> Yeah, you know, it's interesting, like the idea of like, the the concept of reproducibility is dramatically changing right now. Like there's a seismic shift that is happening. Understanding what like means even are and like essentially what we're talking about is like a meme engine, like a cultural, like cultural currency being added to financial value of like singular internet objects. And it's like, the film has a one to one identity. Now, the film is films have always up until now had this concept of reproducibility films are not plays, you know, right there, they're not a fine art piece. This is that convergence of, it's both now, it's simultaneously both at the same time, if you're approaching it with this model.</p><p>Zach Lona 20:33<br /> Yeah. And it's the same exact concept, as you know, the, the Nyan Cat NFT selling for hundreds of 1000s of dollars. I don't</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:42<br /> like I don't understand it in the least. But</p><p>Zach Lona 20:45<br /> well, it's that's the cultural gravitas of these memes that are being sold it because it's coming from the people who are actually, you know, who created the meme off the bat. So not only is it like, it's the official sort of meme version. And then the more that people share the memes, the more valuable that original NFT becomes. So it's the exact same concept.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:07<br /> I mean, you guys are a bit young for this. But Garbage Pail Kids. Yeah. If you don't if you knew what Garbage Pail Kids were, but I was a young guy when Garbage Pail Kids came out. And I remember the first series of garbage, it's a sticker, man, it's a sticker on a piece of cardboard. That was not Mickey Mantle, which was not Spider Man, it was a garbage. And they were selling for hundreds of 1000s of dollars, Pokemon cards, baseball cards, comic <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/resources/#books">books</a>, these things have value to the audience that they're to the to the tribe that is in invested in that to my wife, a number one first appearance of an Amazing Fantasy number 15 first appearance of spider man is a bunch of paper. To me, it's like, oh my god, that's the first appearance of spider man. And there's a complete disconnect. Like she was like, how much is that gonna cost? I'm like, I don't know, probably a million dollars. But you know, but to me that's valuable. And so art is whatever value you put on it, period, regardless if you agree with that or not.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 22:09<br /> Yeah, it's funny to think to like, like that the interest economy of how like that's localized, like you have a look like it's like a, imagine a local economy where like, value is interspersed amongst itself and has its own definition outside of something that exists over here. And it's like, things that exists on the blockchain with NF T's like we have this dollar value that we can apply to it. But it's like, it's funny to think, yeah, like, you can have one thing over in this corner. And that can be worth so much to one person. And then you come over here, and it's worthless, but it's validating those interests. It's saying within those communities, these things matter, and they get to matter even more now.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:46<br /> I mean, all you got to do is go to Comic Con, and you can figure that out real quick. I mean, I mean, like I've I took my wife to my first Comic Con deck a decade ago, and she was just in her mouth was on the floor. She's like, I see these price tags on these on these little books, what is what's going on? She's completely at no idea she that people are dressed up, like these are these are grown adults. And she would stop them like, what do you do for a living is like, I'm an attorney. What, like, but that's, but that is the world and that's the value that that world puts on, on those pieces of art, where you can walk into a fine art museum or gallery. And I wouldn't, I would look at something like that, that doesn't doesn't float my boat, but the person right next to me, like, I'll give you $100,000 for that because he knows or she knows what that's valued in their community. So this is just another the beginning, just barely starting in naeba level of this this market for for films. And I think independent filmmakers have the ability to really cash in and create not only revenue streams for themselves, but to provide some cultural, cultural art for for the society at large. And like, like Sundance like Sundance winners, SXSW winners con winners, you know, these these things that have these kind of labels like what would what would an NF t from the winner of Best Picture at Sundance be worth today cuz that that director could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars later on because of all I got there for Imagine if you had Sex, Lies and videotape. The very first 1989 basically the beginning of Sundance, this is when Sundance blew up at the moment that Steven Soderbergh sold their movie, at Sundance for a million dollars or whatever it was back then. Imagine if there was if you had that NFT what would the NFP be worth in or slacker or El Mariachi or or clerk? Imagine if you had what would those be worth and they would only be worth something to like my generation, your generation people will understand what that is. The older generation will be like that. It depends.</p><p>Zach Lona 24:56<br /> Well the fact that we're talking about these films in this context and we're realizing like, wow, how much would that be worth? I mean, it speaks to, I think the viability of this this model that we've come up with here too. Because, you know, we're talking about, you know, why are these you know, pieces of paper worth so much? Not only is it from the the meme and the the cultural aspect of it, it's also the scarcity of it too, right. So like, there's only so many, you know, holographic chars are, there's only so many Spider Man first appearances, like the the filmmakers will do very well to understand these principles around economics, incentive and scarcity. So the decision to mint a single NFT was also driven by the scarcity question. So there's only ever going to be we're not going to mint you know, in addition, after this, of, you know, maybe other kilos and hidden lakes, and EF T's that film is only ever going to be mentioned as a one of one NFT. So that means that that's just automatic built in scarcity, there's only ever going to be one. So that's that the dynamic of that makes it much much different than if we said, okay, we're gonna mint, you know, 50 of these, or 100, or 1000. So what that does is, you know, there's much good work to be done in designing incentives around those types of additions. But what happens then, is that you have to manage each one potentially being worth less and also, in less demand as well. So it's, it's, you gotta you gotta look at your trade offs with with this kind of stuff, too.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 26:30<br /> Yeah, and I don't know if you guys knew this, but I jumped into the NFT market. When I did my first in my first interview, and I put out, I happened to be the first film tutorials ever on YouTube. Yeah, which makes me old as dirt. But I happened to be I looked at I looked, and I looked, I'm like, I think I'm the first guy ever to put an eye and I'm, I might be the first movie trailer. I can't. I can't say that for sure. But I beat like Sony classics, which was like four or five months after I released my movie trailer for my first short film in 2004. So I don't I can't find any movie trailers prior to that. But I don't want to say that because I'm like, that would be insane if I actually released the first movie trailer on YouTube. But I don't know I, I can't say I don't have an NF T for it. But But I did put an FCS out for the six videos that I put out on that day tutorials. And I put the first three out just to see what would happen they sold out within two days. If I only sold for 100 bucks, but still was just it was an experiment. Like, let's see what's going on here. So I put the rest of them out. And there's been slowly selling and it's just like, wow, that's because that's kind of cool. Like you have the first filmmaking tutorial now Who is that important to filmmakers, or friends of mine, you know, like something along those lines. You know, again, it's based on the perception of what that is valuable, what's valuable. There's YouTubers, like, you know, whatever, cutie pie, who's got whatever, 150 million followers, I'm like that to his followers, he puts out a scribble on a piece of paper. There's value attached to that, which you and I would pretty much be like, let me put my drink on that. But it's all about perception and value and what people think the value is. It is a very, it is NF T's and your model of NF T's as as ludicrous or genius as a piece of cardboard with a picture of a baseball player. Yeah, and someone attaching value to that. Yeah, it's, it's just a piece of cardboard with a picture on it. But</p><p>Anthony Gibson 28:40<br /> the goal is to turn Zach into a human Pokemon card.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 28:44<br /> Nice. Except no less than 10. We're working on the holographic shirts right now. That's genius. So So what are some tips that you can put, give the audience when they're creating a using the PSD model? What are certain things that should be in place for for a good successful PSD model? And?</p><p>Zach Lona 29:09<br /> Yeah, I would say I would say, again, scarcity is looking very closely at the kind of utility that you're including with, with the NFT because you want to make sure that you're not giving away more than you're willing to lose, right? It's like, you know, the old rule of investing is, you know, don't don't invest more than you can afford to lose. So we went about it, we said, okay, 50% of our streaming revenue is an acceptable trade off for getting this you know, upfront fee, whatever it may be, because we tried to listen for 43 ether and then we put the starting bid at 12 ether. Now, I happen to think that it's still worth that much like we were just talking about, but because it's such a new thing. The market isn't willing to dip its toes that far into it yet. So I would say Make sure that you're that you're the utility is not only beneficial, mutually for you and your patron, but also that your patron isn't. They don't have to try to minimize the work that they have to do in order to capitalize on it. And also, like I was, like I said at the beginning, you know, dinner and, you know, tickets to exclusive premieres and stuff. Oh, that's cool. You can include that. But keep in mind that if you know you resell it, do you want to offer that to the new owners of that? How often do you want to, you know, keep that going. It's stuff like that is less quantifiably valuable to an investor or collector. And I also want to note that when I say investor in this context, much different from your investor, that's going to give you your budget to do the film. So</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:48<br /> to an art invest. It's an art investors different.</p><p>Zach Lona 30:50<br /> Yeah, it's it's much different. So you don't you don't owe them any money. Unless you want to like where we're going or investor or patron money. That's why I call it a patron and not not an investor. But there's also the the next project we're going to be doing is kind of exploring how we can incorporate this model and do like a hybrid PSD crowdfunding model because we, we came into this already having the movie done. So it had never been released before. We just finished it in, you know, the tail end months of 2020. So we had already had the budget, and we you know, did it and you know, that's all done. So we were in a position where we could say, okay, we will have to pay anyone back now because we were self financed. But now how do we use this stuff to viably? crowdfund.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 31:39<br /> Yeah, well, what does it look like to explore the nooks and crannies of incentive in development? And how, you know, you know, Alex, you were talking earlier, like, you know, if you have a star attached, you know, that's, that's often how distribution deals are made, you know, said, Oh, I was able to attach XYZ actor, which, you know, these kinds of audiences like this actor, here's, here's a way of shoring up your investment, because, you know, you've done the calculus, and you're like, this will fit, you know, the likelihood of this exporting value is higher because of this thing. It's like, Well, what does that look like, in today's age, with so many different corners of value in the internet? Because what does it look like when someone who does, you know, video tutorial podcasts? Or? And also someone who does fashion and makeup videos, someone else? Who does video game streaming? And you say, Hey, I'm going to put you all in the same movie? And what does that look like now, when now you're tapping value from all of these different areas? To say that, yes. And also, we're incorporating the NFT universe. And instead of incentivizing with, you know, like various crowdfunding perks and saying, you get a T shirt and those kinds of things? No, you have an NF, you'd like what if there was a way to create an NF T, that could have value on the secondary market. And so it's all about finding all of those different areas of incentive. And for anyone that's looking to make projects considering this as a model, you know, it's there, there are so many ways, it's ultimately so creative right? Now, you can do so many different things, and work right now are just getting nitty gritty for our next project about what that could look like.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 33:21<br /> Right? And you can I mean, in a crowdfunding site, you can use, for example, someone, you could crowdfund an NF T, and then just give them a percentage of based on what they give a percentage of the final gross or the final this or the final that some sort of incentive and that way, so it's almost like more of an investment than a gift of a crowdfunding. So it's now you're you're actually sourcing it out and it's all could be done on the on the blockchain, which would be ideal, and I hope one day we get to the place where all distribution is done on the blockchain. And all payments are done on the blockchain. Yeah, everything's done with smart contracts and and we don't have to deal with this bs anymore that you know, distributors do this or distributors do that or, excuse me, let me rephrase predatory distributors do this. Do that with with not all distributors are bad? by any stretch, there are a lot of great ones out there. But we focus on the predators.</p><p>Zach Lona 34:21<br /> Exactly, why let's let's talk a little bit about how distribution actually like functionally comes into this. Right. So like, for anyone who's still kind of like, skeptical a little bit about it, about this model we've done, I mean, we sold it, so we made, you know, $5,000 off of this, which is comparable to a minimum guarantee, you might get it from a distributor,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 34:39<br /> if you're lucky, if you're</p><p>Zach Lona 34:40<br /> lucky, if you're lucky, if you're lucky. And now, well, now you get the secondary, you know, revenue stream from secondary sales to but, you know, think of it like that, you know, it's like we can because the other thing that's happening with this is that we are retaining all the rights to our film. We're not giving away any rights whatsoever with this Because the revenue stream and the NFT itself are reason enough, obviously, for someone to collect it. So now, we could say, Okay, now we're going to go to a distributor and collect a minimum guarantee from them. So that's, you know, another possible avenue for so yeah, essentially, like you were saying earlier, Alex, this is like a another revenue stream for the film that will also work to hopefully automate some of the marketing lift that you have to do by virtue of being this transferable meme capture</p><p>Alex Ferrari 35:33<br /> unit, so to speak, right. And if you had a, let's say, you did 1000 units, let's say, just throwing that out there 1000 units, and that those 1000 units are worth 10 15% of, of your revenue jumping in there, I'm just going off the top here. So you put away 15% of all revenue is going to go to these, this 100 units that you're going to sell on crowdsourcing of crowdfunding, excuse me. And then all of a sudden, all that all those people who buy those 100 people, they're going to be incentivized to market the living hell out of this. Yeah. And get this out in the world. And if you did that with 1000, and broke them that 15% accordingly that way, then you even have more. So it all depends on what you're doing. And then you could also put a price tag on all of that just to get in the game. There's so many different routes you can go on. It's it is it is essentially the wild wild west right now it is. It's the internet circa 96. Man, it is like the wild</p><p>Anthony Gibson 36:32<br /> wild west, take a look and see, just like, like what's happening on the internet? How are people communicating on the internet? How are people pointing a camera at themselves? How are people quote unquote, influencing? And then, like, how can an taking a look at that and being like, hmm, there's some serious untapped potential, through this communication mechanism for getting new ideas, getting new films out into the world and seen by people. And it's just about connecting the dots. It's just saying, you come over here, you come over here, let's do this thing. It's, you know, in some ways, uses the same philosophy is like, you're if you're a YouTuber, and you want to, like, go on someone else's show to get to get some of their audience to come see your thing. And you cross pollinate. I mean, that's, essentially it's taking that and it's scaling it up, and using the blockchain in order to do that. And it's, it's all like Zach, and I love to just like, you know, one of our favorite things about this whole thing is that it's just, it's all memes, memes mean, everything is it mean, and like, that is like pretty like, you know, core to our philosophy. In all of this. It's like, what can we do with means? What can we do to make people think about memes? And that's a cornerstone of the mythos that we're trying to create with the bigger world that we're actually working on.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:45<br /> Now, you guys also created a physical version of the NFT to send to the person who purchased it, which I think is awesome. How do you How did you create it? Because it looked awesome. From the pictures I saw. What was the cost? If you don't mind me asking like that? That's a customized situation. So what was that situation done?</p><p>Zach Lona 38:04<br /> how he's done? So it that was a nightmare to put together? But I'll just be upfront upfront and get this. So our collector wishes to remain anonymous for now. But they told me like, hang on to it. I'll redeem it. One I feel like it so I still have it. Like it hasn't left my house yet. Which I'm fine with because, you know, I appreciate that. Like, it's, it's, it's gorgeous. We're pretty proud of it. No,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 38:29<br /> it's stunning. I was like, That's gorgeous. Like that looks like a special special, special freakin criterion. The, you know, to the nth degree kind of one on one and drama is beautiful. Okay, you're making us blush. It is.</p><p>Zach Lona 38:45<br /> Appreciate that. Um, yeah, very proud of it. But in terms of the logistics, yeah, it was. So not many, you know, packaging manufacturers take one off orders. And then the ones that do are pretty pricey. And see, here's the thing too, is that we didn't have to do that. Obviously, our patron doesn't even really want it right now, which is something it's a phenomenon that's happening in the crypto art, collectible space with NF T's where it's like, you know, there are artists who offer you know, the physical painting with the NFT and collectors will say I don't want any physicals I just want to I just want the JPEG in my wall. And that's totally cool. So we went into a kind of half expecting that but for me, you know, like, you know, I mentioned earlier I come from a fine arts background. I like having like a physical artifacts for for the film that I've created. But you know, obviously though it I'll put it this way, it was a lot of money. Probably more than I would recommend for someone else who's trying to do this, but it is a very cool thing. And when it's in a museum, you know, 20 3040 years. That's a nice little museum. Now. I'm just kidding.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:50<br /> And when everyone understands my genius by then, I mean, hopefully I won't be Van Gogh when I'm dead and they'll go out Zach I get I guess, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I just saw I saw a clip from I don't even watch Doctor Who. But I saw a clip where they brought back Van Gogh, and they brought him into the museum. Oh, I've seen that. Oh my god, that's so like, you just start tearing up like an art. It's just like, oh my god, it was so cute. Anyway, sorry, geeked out for a second guys. Sorry, apologize. That was so. So did you, but am I wrong? Did you not create any other NFT things for like, you know, stills of the movie? or other things? Or did you? You know, you're getting into sort of the next chapter for us.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 40:43<br /> And, you know, we're working on a big part of, I mean, I can let Zach take over sort of talking about like, the content of the movie itself, because I think it's specific to like, it's kind of amazing what work ended up working out what we ended up having in our lap at a time when crypto was around. It's kind of came to the mainstream. And our film is about a cryptid like a Bigfoot esque Sasquatch, Ian, figure cryptid cryptid meets crypto. And it was just like this perfect marriage of like, what can we do with that? And I feel like it led to that kind of take over there.</p><p>Zach Lona 41:20<br /> Yeah, I mean, there's so many places to go from that, you know, it's like, so one of the ideas we have is, you know, Bill, so essentially what we're trying to get at now the phase that the project is in, is we are taking this feature film that we have, and we're trying to use these community incentives to build an audience around the IP itself. So you know, we can get into like the specifics of the plan, but we're going to be minting more NF T's around the, the the fiction and the lore of this, of this, you know, essentially a monster movie, mockumentary IP so you know, like minting specific clips from, you know, the film like, oh, here's a found footage. So the cryptid is called the hidden man is a proprietary monster that we came up with, you know, here's a, an eight millimeter still, or a film clip that we that we use, yeah, we actually used an eight millimeter camera for some of it. So, you know, a nice little badge of honor there. But yeah, like minting stuff like that, and then using that to sort of, do, you know, add more value into the IP through those specific items of merchandise, where it's like, at a lower level, you know, you're never gonna you're, you're only one person can ever have the actual film NFT but you can own pieces of the film, you can on merchandise of the film, that also give you like, community benefit within the community that we're trying to build.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 42:45<br /> So I'm gonna pitch you guys something for an NF t please bear with me. This is a real thing. This is a real thing. This is not making this up. But there is such a thing called Bigfoot erotica. Now, wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. My friend told me about this. And I'm like, oh my god. This is genius. anyone listening right now when you're done? Listen to this episode, type in Google Bigfoot erotica, and just just lose your mind at what you'll you'll find out. There's not it's not just like pictures. It's like stories, like books, novels, ebooks, about it is amazing. I can't believe you guys have known about this. But the best but the best part was I had a friend of mine who's like, man, my brother's really giving me a hard time. I'm like this what you do? Go to his house. And he's married. He goes go to his house and go on his computer and just start doing a lot of Google search for Bigfoot erotica. And leave it on this. Leave it on his on his thing and let his wife find it. It's exactly what exactly what happened. And he left he loved that his wife and like, his brother calls him like, dude, did you was you were you searching Bigfoot erotica on my computer? My wife thinks I'm doing I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. You're sick and disgusting. And he hangs up. Wow. So that's sad. That is does savage but that's that's their relationship. I don't get involved. But and it is a tool to ruin a marriage. Yeah. Or just or just, uh, you know, hidden man erotica. I'm just throwing it out there. Just throwing it to the in technically, proprietary world of the IP. Why not? Well, exactly speechless. If anyone listening if it was listed by sees next face, it's just like it all right now he can't even speak. Like.</p><p>Zach Lona 44:47<br /> Yes, obviously, obvious is the thing that should happen. Oh, it's funny, actually, in the early days of the film, when I was exploring ideas, I was like, What if we had a romantic interest counter,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:01<br /> tell there's a whole market that you guys are not serving sir. There's a whole market, you could be just selling this stuff to him just we're not saying there isn't a romantic encounter. There might be there might be there might be</p><p>Zach Lona 45:17<br /> like, God, here's the thing. Let's get into me and Anthony have you know, we've got a very specific idea on how we can take this even further. So a new concept, a new blockchain concept that people maybe are not as familiar with is, is a doubt a DA, oh, have you heard of this?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:36<br /> No, I haven't said</p><p>Anthony Gibson 45:38<br /> decentralized autonomous organization.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:41<br /> Well, I've heard of decentralized for banks, but not for organization. Okay, so talk to me about that.</p><p>Zach Lona 45:48<br /> So there's been defy, which is decentralized finance. And that's very cool. The next step after d phi after NF Ts is doubtless, so decentralized, autonomous organizations. And these are essentially corporate structures or business structures, where it's not really run by anyone, there's not really a corporate hierarchy. And the governance of the organization is equally spread out among all of its members. So essentially, anyone can come in, buy the governance token, the, you know, the currency that's native to the Dow organization, and start working on projects and getting paid for it. So is that we're still doing a lot of research on how to</p><p>Anthony Gibson 46:30<br /> imagine a decentralized production company where every all the fans get to vote on what the next project is, that's what we're working on.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:38<br /> And they're paying and they and they pay for, and they'll pay for it by paying into things to help finance it creates a liquidity pool, essentially. Yeah,</p><p>Zach Lona 46:46<br /> yeah. And they get rewarded for financing the production. And also what's going to happen is we're gonna we're creating. Now this is this is very early stages here, but we're really excited about it. The core component of how this data is going to work is essentially it's going to manage the hidden lakes IP. So you know, the, our film is just the first installment of this IP, we're going to be making sequels and stuff. And part of how we're going to get that done is that we're going to fractionalize and decentralize licensing to the IP itself. So we're going to say, okay, we're going to mint a set of 10,000 tokens, you buy a token, you can send it back to the Ethereum contract. And so it's, you know, not in our control. It's in you know, the the contract itself. And for as long as that's in the contract, as long as you're, you know, in this tank, you get in return a license to use the IP however you want. Thanks, man. pornography. Yeah, I mean, the</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:49<br /> thing is, like, erotica, sir, erotica, there is a difference. Let's clarify that right now. Between Bigfoot porn and Bigfoot. Radhika erotica can make porn. Very cool. There's a difference. There's a difference, sir. It's, it's, it's what kind of suit people are gonna think like, I like joy. I'm the one that started this.</p><p>I know right now I know somebody right now listening to this. It's like curving off the road laughing at like the Bigfoot. Oh, Jesus. No, this all sounds great. But this is the thing where we're so early on in this whole this whole experiment of NF T's and blockchain everything. I've said this before on the show. I'll say it again. blockchain is as or more important than the internet is the human civilization. And people, people who don't understand that statement, you will just the same way. As people in 1996 said, the internet's gonna change everything. Just like that guy who shot that rocket up into space the other day that looked like something that I won't say it looked like Bigfoot erotica. His rocket looked like Bigfoot erotica. That guy said, Hey, I'm going to sell books on the internet. And now he sells everything. That that's the same thing that blockchain is going to do. We're just not there yet. And we will get there. And it's getting there. It's growing fast. And there's issues and I think you said it in your article as well. Zach about you know, theory will become cheaper, it will become greener to sell a lot of electricity that runs through to get all this stuff. So it's gonna it's it's just like dial up man and 9695 and before it's like dial up it's like how can anyone can even think or conceive that I could buy something on the internet? Remember that? How old are you guys are younger that much younger than me? So I remember the time was like, people were like, I'm not putting my credit card online. Like that was people were like I'm not putting my credit card online that they're going to steal my identity all that was the mentality back That's where we are right now with blockchain I think in five or 10 years, blockchain will be at a completely different place crypto I think will be probably at a completely different place. And what you guys are talking about and defy and and dow and all this these kind of concepts I think are really going to help not only the world but an our little microcosm of independent film. It's getting a lot of power back to us.</p><p>Zach Lona 50:21<br /> Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is that like this, like the the paradigm shift that's happening that mirrors the internet revolution, that's the the main people who are going to benefit from it are independent creators. So what this technology does, is it it cut out the middleman, it cut out the big centralized institutions that tell you yes or no, it's really going to power the empower the individual creators who want to, you know, contribute things to their favorite stuff and make money in the process,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:49<br /> and you and use it, so you give away 50% of all streaming rights, but as of right now, you still have to do the accounting. In other words, the money has to come into an account, and then you've got to convert that into aetherium, or whatever, you know, whatever, stable coin or whatever you're going to use to pay. Yeah,</p><p>Zach Lona 51:06<br /> that person. Exactly. So that that goes to show how early we are where you know, in five years, that won't be able to be able to get done on chain right now. The there's not really a solution for that. So we ate, you know, for however long that would take, and we'll just say, okay, we're just going to do the accounting ourselves. You know, that being said, you know, it may be that not only is the smart contract upgradeable in that we can automate that, you know, from the token on chain, or we could we could find a crypto powered streaming platform, which is also new territory, where the film will be online and you can watch it for free and also maybe even get paid for watching it. And it also probably give us a better rate streaming wise than, you know, amazon prime or Vimeo on demand. Does you mean a penny a penny for an hour? Is</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:56<br /> that not fair? I think that's more than fair. I don't know. I mean, didn't you hear that? That Jeff Bezos thanks that's all for having him go up into space? Yeah, don't built on the backs of independent filmmakers. Oh, don't even get me started. He made that rocket happen. We made that was all us. We started off at 15 cents. Now he's down to one cents. What happened to those 14 cents boom into space? Bigfoot erotica, anyway. So so another big player jumped on the scene in the NFT world, which is Kevin Smith, and he came on with his film Kilroy Was here, but he did the opposite of what you guys did. He's literally selling or giving his his distribution rights away to this film. What do you think of that? And how do you think that model is gonna work? Didn't even sell it yet? I don't even know if he sold it.</p><p>Zach Lona 52:47<br /> I don't think it's online. So we didn't we that was actually his announcement. Or that was actually the reason why we press the Launch button on this project, because we've been building it since like, March. We're like, Oh, no, we gotta we gotta beat him to the punch. But yeah, I don't think it's online. But again, it's like, it's it's very similar to what we're doing. But there's also some key differences that kind of make it I preferred to not take that approach, simply because, like I was saying earlier, you don't want to make your patron work too much to exercise their, their utility that you give them. So with Kevin Smith's NFT, which also is being minted on the fantasma chain, which is different from aetherium, and we can maybe get into, you know, what chain you should actually meant on. But regardless of that, that's very technical knowledge. Essentially, the the the best person who's gonna want to buy the Kevin Smith and if t is a distributor, so like, if you come come at it, from our perspective, where we're our target market for this NFT is a private individual collector, they're not going to know how to how to distribute this thing, right? So if you're giving them the entirety of your distribution rights, that's cool. Just know that your market is much more different. And you're probably it's it's like, if you're selling to a distributor and you're looking to give the distributor your rights with the NFT you probably don't even need an NF t like that's pretty much just the exact same thing is a deal he would strike in</p><p>Alex Ferrari 54:15<br /> I think he said I think he's just trying to get some hype over it and that's all it was because he's actually selling like, you know, James Island Bob NF T's and he's making a mint with them. You know, all those like cool little memes and stuff like that. He's not stupid in that sense. He definitely I mean, he was one of the first podcasters he was he jumped on the podcasting bandwagon, years ago, before it was cool. And and everybody had a podcast and people tell me I'm like, Oh, you jumped in early and I jumped in six years ago like Kevin Smith jumped in like a decade or more ago like it's it was insane. Like the oh geez for you got a Joe Rogan frickin he jumped into like, oh nine he like couldn't get the damn thing to stream. I saw the first in the first podcast. He was just like trying To make it work, and it was like, like 320 by, you know, by 40 videos like it was horrible. But, but he just made 100 million bucks and snap at it, okay. It's good, good ROI. So I think</p><p>Anthony Gibson 55:16<br /> like, you know, anyone that's doing anything in the NFT space is just like adding to the value of everyone else that's trying to work on it. Like, we're all just trying to, like I said, like, for us, it's an experiment. Like, we're curious about other people's case studies, we want to see what they're doing. We want to see like, what models of incentive, they're developing and kind of like, you know, work some magic. I mean, we're all really excited about the new technology, we need people to know about it. This is still super inaccessible to like, an audience. Like they don't most people don't understand this stuff. And so it's just like, we need more people to be interested.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 55:48<br /> I mean, I had to I had to educate myself. It took me like half a day to figure out how to mint something like the technology so plunky it's just so clunky to get stuff done. Now I'm like, Oh, my God isn't someone figured this out to make this a little easier. Like it doesn't seem that difficult, but it was like an I use mental because it was the easiest open seat was like too expensive. They want a gas freeze up front, mental to gas freeze on the on the now we're like talking in languages that nobody else understands. But, but yeah, but it was it just and even then miserable, was still like a pain in the butt to figure out it just it's still so early, then. We're still so so early. Now, one thing I wanted to ask you is, we're talking about all these NF T's and independent film and all that stuff. Not every projects gonna be a good candidate for an NF. t. So what make how do you how does a filmmaker know if their project makes sense for this world?</p><p>Anthony Gibson 56:43<br /> They know this is an awesome question. I think Zack and I probably talked about this every day. And I think what makes particularly like, understanding like Internet communities, like if, if and who you're from a development perspective, who are the people who are going to be investing in your project to actually like, make it happen. So you can go into production and those kinds of things. Who is your like, financing audience essentially. And like, our film, specifically is targeted towards like, like, Village Voice mythmaking, and where does that happen? happens on the internet. We're doing that every single day. And so dramatically, our project is designed to be talked about on the internet. And it's like, self conscious of that. And we think that that, in itself is interesting to people who are on the internet, creating and sharing memes and using that as a form of communication. And so specifically for this world that we're building out, which is like, like, like a modern mythos, basically, using the internet as like, as like a community standpoint, people are moving money on the internet, people who are in crypto communities and want to see content that is more directly related to them and their user experience. Those are the people that we think right now, because it's the initial audience in this world that are going to be interested in funding projects and seeing things that reflect back like interesting elements to them.</p><p>Zach Lona 58:14<br /> Yeah, I would say if you're trying to build a community like that, and you're trying to build an audience into the IP, and it's like the shared experience, this is definitely NF T's are definitely the route for you. And I think, you know, to for on a moral logistical point, this is definitely geared to like, like the PSD model itself, it's assuming that you already have, you know, you already have a completed film, first of all, and that film is probably going to be low budget, like we were talking about earlier, it's probably going to be director driven. to, you know, take the fine art sort of box. And, you know, like we were talking about before, you know, maybe if you have like a decent name, talent, maybe you don't need you know, the the boost that this PSD model would attempt to give you, but at the same time, maybe that's an incentive to grab an even more, the higher price at the auction, right. So like, oh, Brad Pitt is in this one of one NFT movie, I'm an art collector, I have a Jackson Pollock and and Mark Rothko in my collection, I can throw million dollars at the new Brad Pitt movie NFC, that'll be $50 million in 50 years. So</p><p>Alex Ferrari 59:25<br /> what would what would a Kubrick be worth? What would be what would what would it Kurosawa would be worth? And now we have Nolan Fincher Spielberg Scorsese in what what's the Godfather worth? Like? It's just it I think, once mainstream Hollywood and some of these directors start figuring these things out, they're gonna go Oh, wait a minute. We and we can make not only can we make some money with this, but we can actually insert ourselves into the conversation, culturally. But yeah, it's it's it's worth that I think once filming makers are able to these higher end filmmakers are doing things like that. You know, what would a Fincher and FTP worth man? What a no. And what are the Nolan? You know, what would tenant be worth? You know?</p><p>Zach Lona 1:00:13<br /> Yeah, like, that line of thinking again is very different from saying, okay, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna have NFT tickets, where you know, that might still be worth something that's more like a like a collectible, you know, Pokemon card or like a Beatles ticket from like, 1969 or something like that. So it's like almost like two different asset classes. You have the scarce sort of fine art and FTS and you also have the fungible, quote unquote, like ticker merchandise and</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:40<br /> FTF. Collected collectibles. Yeah,</p><p>Zach Lona 1:00:42<br /> exactly. Yep. So there are two different asset classes. And when we're thinking about what is a David Fincher where there was a Kurosawa worth, like that, to me is the fine art. Like chars are for sure.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:54<br /> Yeah. And obviously, Bigfoot erotica. So I'm Pokemon card. Game Freak, guys. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions asked by my guest guys, what advice would you give filmmakers trying to break into the business today?</p><p>Anthony Gibson 1:01:11<br /> You take that one. And the advice I would give you is focus on what's in front of you and figure out how to, like build a team around the things that you're stoked about. And, like, don't be afraid to just like, not sorry, I'm blanking on giving advice. What I'll say about this is that when I was in college, there were classes that were offered to me. And I felt like that wasn't meeting the needs of what I wanted to get out of my education. So I figured out that I actually had the agency to create my own class and get credit for it and bring people on and make the movies that I wanted to make. And I didn't have to wait for anyone to tell it to give me a curriculum to do that. So get creative. There's tons of opportunities out there you don't have to just follow what's given to you.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:02:05<br /> What is that? Oh, no, go ahead Anthony. And fleet perfect answer for that. What is the lesson that took you guys the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life tax credit financing to say sir, to Shay, to Shay, it's a as a very fine, fine, fine lesson to learn Tax Credit Financing everyone Tax Credit Financing, first time, in almost 500 episodes that someone said Tax Credit Financing is something about how valuable it is. And it's actually big on that. tax credit, and three of your favorite films of all time.</p><p>Zach Lona 1:02:49<br /> Oh, mine are weird. I like 2001 I like Napoleon Dynamite and the third one is a toss up between Mystery Men and Badlands.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:03:00<br /> Well, that's a hell of a combination of films there. I'm trying to put connecting dots I'm like I connected to and I connected to mystery man. Wow, Mystery Men first time on the show Mystery Men. So I love I love mystery minute. What a cast wasn't it? Same cast.</p><p>Zach Lona 1:03:17<br /> They had the production design like the writing Smash Mouth Smash Mouth. Smash Mouth, man. Oh, man. Yeah, so that's that's mine. About about you, Anthony.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 1:03:29<br /> I'll see Princess Mononoke A Little Miss Sunshine classic indie. And I will say Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone probably if I'm</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:03:42<br /> sure Hey, yes, nice. Nice. Nice. Can I use the magic of childhood in Yes. And it's in it's a nice Christmas movie. It's like every time it's I always watched it during Christmas that's when they get out. So I always associate Harry Potter movies with Christmas as well so and where can people find out about your NF T's about your films about your projects and so on?</p><p>Zach Lona 1:04:04<br /> Yeah, so you can learn about the film and the NF t at who is the hidden man calm that's where all of our links are and also follow hidden ones Tao da o on Twitter you can join our discord to to get the drop on that cool Dao project that we're doing which is the next step of this oh and also the film is live on Vimeo on demand too. So you can search for he lives in the hidden lakes on Vimeo on demand and it'll be prime video as well soon</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:33<br /> and you're and you're using film hub as well right</p><p>Zach Lona 1:04:35<br /> yeah, we are using film have discovered them through indie film hustle so thank you to that</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:40<br /> Yeah, there's some good doing some good work over there trying try and everyone's trying. It was trying to like I said everyone's trying to bring you know, you know, break that nut. No one's can crack it No one's cracked the nut yet on on on the perfect model. I think it's always shifting and moving and, and but this is awesome, man. I thank you guys so much for coming on the show. I'm excited anytime I hear new ways that filmmakers make money with their films and especially when it comes to the blockchain I'm, I'm all about it. So thank you guys so much for for coming in and jump in.</p><p>Zach Lona 1:05:10<br /> Yeah. Thanks for having us, Alex.</p><p>Anthony Gibson 1:05:11<br /> Yeah. 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rel="tag">Patronized Self-Distribution (PSD) model</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/self-distribution/" rel="tag">Self distribution</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/zach-lona/" rel="tag">Zach Lona</a></span></footer></div></article><article id="post-160095" class="post-160095 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-career-advice tag-creativity tag-entertainment-industry tag-film-production tag-filmmaking tag-hollywood tag-inspirational-stories tag-leadership tag-motivational-speaker tag-overcoming-challenges tag-personal-growth tag-phillip-andrew tag-resilience tag-storytelling" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/phillip-andrew/" rel="bookmark">BPS 407: Unforgettable Storytelling Phillip Andrew on Creativity, Leadership, and Resilience</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-02-20T06:30:57+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">February 20, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/phillip-andrew/"> <noscript><img width="768" height="369" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew.webp 768w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew-300x144.webp 300w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></noscript><img width="768" height="369" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20768%20369%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew.webp 768w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Phillip-Andrew-300x144.webp 300w" data-sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=64241330&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>On today’s episode, we dive into the fascinating world of creativity, resilience, and the art of storytelling with <strong>Phillip Andrew</strong>, a multi-talented producer, motivational speaker, and DJ from Los Angeles. From his humble beginnings in Michigan to his relentless pursuit of opportunities in <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a>, Phillip’s journey is a testament to the power of determination, adaptability, and the enduring impact of great stories.</p><p>Phillip reminisced about his early days navigating the entertainment industry, sharing candid insights about how unconventional networking—like a chance encounter on a basketball court—landed him his first job in production. Reflecting on this pivotal moment, he said, <em>“You don’t always know which door will open, but that’s why you keep knocking on as many as possible.”</em> This philosophy underscores the importance of persistence, even when the odds seem insurmountable.</p><p>In the heart of Hollywood, Phillip discovered the transformative power of storytelling. He spoke passionately about the evolution of stories—from ancient oral traditions to modern-day cinematic spectacles. Despite technological advancements, Phillip believes the core of storytelling remains unchanged: creating narratives that resonate deeply with people. He emphasized, “It doesn’t matter how advanced the technology is—if the <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a> doesn’t connect, the audience won’t care.”</p><p>Phillip’s journey wasn’t without its challenges. From grappling with personal setbacks to navigating the unpredictable nature of film sets, he revealed how these experiences shaped his outlook. He humorously recounted a lesson from the legendary director Wes Craven, who once said, “Who told you things were ever supposed to go as planned?” This nugget of wisdom became a mantra for Phillip, helping him approach obstacles with creativity and a solutions-oriented mindset.</p><p>A recurring theme in the conversation was leadership—on set and in life. Phillip shared a story about a showrunner who inspired him by personally crawling under a table to fix a light. This simple act of humility and teamwork left a lasting impression, reinforcing Phillip’s belief that effective leaders must lead by example. He noted, “When people see that you’re willing to do the work too, they’ll want to go the extra mile with you.”</p><p>Phillip also touched on the current “golden age of content,” highlighting both the opportunities and challenges it presents. With an explosion of platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, the barrier to entry has never been lower. However, this democratization of content also means creators face more competition than ever. For Phillip, the solution is simple: focus on the power of the story. “If you don’t have a compelling reason for your audience to care, your content will get lost in the noise,” he warned.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/64241330/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Phillip Andrew – <a href="https://www.phillipbarbb.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Site</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 2.78125V1.5H14.5ZM1.5 10.5V4.71875C2.1875 5.28125 3.21875 6.09375 4.75 7.3125C5.4375 7.84375 6.65625 9.03125 8 9C9.3125 9.03125 10.5 7.84375 11.2188 7.3125C12.75 6.09375 13.7812 5.28125 14.5 4.71875V10.5H1.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Email</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download" href="#" > <svg width="18" height="16" viewBox="0 0 18 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M16.5 9H13.5938L15.0625 7.5625C16 6.625 15.3125 5 14 5H12V1.5C12 0.6875 11.3125 0 10.5 0H7.5C6.65625 0 6 0.6875 6 1.5V5H4C2.65625 5 1.96875 6.625 2.9375 7.5625L4.375 9H1.5C0.65625 9 0 9.6875 0 10.5V14.5C0 15.3438 0.65625 16 1.5 16H16.5C17.3125 16 18 15.3438 18 14.5V10.5C18 9.6875 17.3125 9 16.5 9ZM4 6.5H7.5V1.5H10.5V6.5H14L9 11.5L4 6.5ZM16.5 14.5H1.5V10.5H5.875L7.9375 12.5625C8.5 13.1562 9.46875 13.1562 10.0312 12.5625L12.0938 10.5H16.5V14.5ZM13.75 12.5C13.75 12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 1:49<br /> Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.</p><p>Dave Bullis 1:53<br /> On this week's episode of the podcast, we have a guest from LA where else we again we met through the power of Twitter. And this guest and I are gonna be talking all about what an education really means. You know, we talk about college education, we talk about moving out to LA the ups, the downs. You know, pretty brutal, honest interview, as my guest shares a lot of his downs. And, you know how he actually networked, and it wasn't the the traditional ways and and just finding through all of this sort of maze of things, and the whole concept of this interview is going to be unforgettable storytelling, as we kind of talk a lot about the different methods of storytelling, and, you know, directly and indirectly, a lot of the other things that go on here. And you know, what ideas stick, what ideas don't stick? Unreliable narrators, you know, all that good stuff. So without further ado, with guest Phillip Andrew.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 2:49<br /> Ohh, Mandy, you gotta be careful who you meet on the interwebs. Man, you know, isn't it crazy that I like, years ago, you would never it was weird to meet, like, dating, like it was weirded to go online dating, you would never you were told to never take rides with strangers. And now our entire world is like, based around, like, Uber and Lyft and like, jumping in the cars with strangers, and that's completely okay. And like, nobody even knows how to meet each other in person anymore. Everybody's always, you know, you gotta swipe right, swipe left to meet anyone. Like, things have changed so quickly. It's insane.</p><p>Dave Bullis 3:24<br /> Yeah, I mean, you're encouraged now to trust strangers, like, put all your faith and your bodily harm and strangers, it's, it's kind of crazy.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 3:31<br /> Man, I remember I went to so I'm here, I'm out here in Los Angeles, and I remember going to a party, and we go to this party, and it's kind of like, at the base of, like, the the Hollywood Hills. It's like a nice house, but nothing too insane. And we go to this house, and we're like, kind of like, Yo, what is this party for? Like, who's Is it someone's birthday? What is it? They're like, Oh no, it's this, like, new startup app in in we're like, What the hell is that? And they're like, oh well, it's like, here. And they handed me a pen. Like, the only party gifts were, like a pen with the logo on it, like you would get at some, you know, at, like a trade show, and I look at it, and I'm like, lift. I go, What the hell is lift? And they go, oh yeah, man. It's like, this app where you can, you know, you can get rides from people that are already going the way that you're going. And I was like, so you get in a car with a stranger, and they're like, Yeah. And I was like, this is the dumbest idea ever. It'll never work. And then, like, years later, I'm the guy who has to sit here and be like, Oh, I guess I'm not that much of an innovator, you know.</p><p>Dave Bullis 4:32<br /> I'm surprised they actually gave away pens, you know, because, like, an idea for me, what if you're gonna do like a launch like that, you'd give away, like a service. So you would say, Hey, this is the service. This is Lyft, and you would kind of demonstrate it. You know what I mean? Because pens, yeah, I think pens are kind of, I mean, don't get me wrong. I still use pens every day, but, but pens, I just don't know if they really have the same marketing branding powers they once had, you know? I know definitely, yeah, you know what I mean. It's just. Like, I don't think people look at that and go, Oh, man, I gotta use lift now that I'm using their pen. Come on,</p><p>Phillip Andrew 5:06<br /> Right? Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of crazy, so, but yeah, it was. I always try to remember that anytime that I want to anytime, my first immediate reaction is to want to, like, rip something apart, you know? Then I'm like, wait a minute. Think, think in a different world where maybe this could work. How would it work? Why would people, you know, it just forces me, you know, I think in life, you always have those examples of things that happen when you were completely in utterly wrong. And so it's like, it reminds me to be like, All right, don't, don't try to crush this dream, or don't try to, you know, don't. Don't veto this idea really give it, give it a little bit of time think it through and see if there is something there, rather than just giving snap judgments on stuff. So I try to use it as like a life lesson, I guess.</p><p>Dave Bullis 5:50<br /> Yeah, yeah, right. So, and you know, when you saw these new apps come out, now, you kind of wonder how it all ties in together, because you need, with all these apps coming out, you go, my God, there's so many out there, and there's so many different social media channels. It's like, you know what, what catches on, what doesn't, and that's why there's so many <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/resources/#books">books</a> now written about this stuff, about business and about, you know, ideas that catch. There's actually a book called sticky and it's actually about what ideas stick and what and what doesn't, and why that is.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 6:17<br /> Oh, no way. I'm reading a book right now called Sticky marketing.</p><p>Dave Bullis 6:21<br /> Oh, sticky marketing. I don't know if it's the same one, yeah, but it could be.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 6:26<br /> I did, I did see that. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, like, I know they've had tons of studies come out with, like, what makes, what makes something memorable? What? What? How do you know? How do you help things add to your memory? What? What makes something emotional? What is the best you know for us as as storytellers, it's like always trying to figure out exactly like, what is going to resonate with, with the target audience, what's going to stick with them. What is it that they like? You know? What is it that they remember? You know, even we talk about it, you know, from speaking standpoints, when you know, so often people will go in in they could go to a conference and have a great time, and then you'd be like, Oh, what did the speaker talk about? Or who is the speaker? And they'll go, oh, I don't know, but he told this story about blah, blah, blah, and it's like, that's people don't remember the names, necessarily. They don't even remember where the information came from. They remember these powerful stories. And I think that's really important for us to realize, like anytime, that anytime you're whether you're in marketing or advertising or, you know, for us in TV or wherever, like, it's important to tell great stories that people want to repeat. You know, I mean, that's the that was even before we had things to write down, and before we had TV. And way back in the day, that's how things got told. That's how we taught people how to, you know, how to behave. What was the proper way to handle certain situations. How do you stay motivated? It was all through story. It was all through generational storytelling. And I think it's important that we don't ever allow ourselves to get so caught up in the technology you know that we forget that while it's amazing to have these brand new, you know, these amazing cameras that look insane in VR and we're getting all this amazing technology at the core, at the root of it, the most important thing is still storytelling And telling a great, captivating, memorable story. And if you don't have that, it doesn't matter how cool the footage is, it doesn't matter how great the audio is. If you're not saying something that is worth people wanting to hear and wanting to repeat, then what the hell are we doing?</p><p>Dave Bullis 8:36<br /> Yeah, it's sort of like the story behind, you know, even the story you tell within the company, right? So there's a story that, you know, the managers and directors and all that they have to tell everybody. It's like being on a film set, you know, because we're, you know, we're both in the same industry. So if you're the director, you want to be able to, sort of, you must create that. I guess Zeitgeist is the right word I'm looking for, right? We want to create totally, sort of, you know, feeling on set. And it's, it's almost like the story you're telling them, you know, there's a quick addict to it. I want to tell it's a friend of mine was working on a film with Spike Lee. And Spike Lee actually got on the got in front of everybody the day of they started filming, and he actually, he goes, this was like a whole different spike. And he was like, hey, you know what? If we all work together and do all this together, we're gonna make a damn good film. And he was like, man, he goes this spike is awesome, because it's like, you know, he's up there telling a story about how we're all going to work together, and we're all just going to make this amazing thing. And it was, and it's going to be fantastic. And that really stuck with all the crew after that, after spike did that,</p><p>Phillip Andrew 9:35<br /> I think that's, I think it's key, right? It's like, and I think there's, you know, we, we, you study. I've studied a lot of like the great, you know, battle. You know, war, war, like generals and people that led people into massive wars. And, you know, people don't want to fight for someone, when, from the comfort of their own home, you know, like they want to, they want to feel like their leader is out in front, like their leader is there and is willing to go through the battle with them, you know. And I think that's so important. I think that was great, that that spike did that. I had a moment I remember I had a director, you know, Executive Producer, show runner, that I was working with on a project. His name was Phil lot, and Phil was an amazing guy in one of the first things I ever saw Phil do. And I still can picture this to my to this day, we're running around the craziness of getting the first day and getting some getting the shots set up. And I remember, in all the craziness, for some reason, I like look over and I see Phil, and there was a, there was a plug for a light that needed to get plugged in, and it was underneath a table. And, you know, Phil has been in the industry for, you know, 2025, years. He's won tons of awards, very, very talented. And he doesn't, he's got his walkie. He easily could have said, you know, hey, you know, feel for an available PA. I need somebody to, you know, come plug this light in, and it would have been normal. It would have been fine. It would have no one would have thought anything of it. But I sat there and watched the show runner of the project get down on his hands and knees, crawl underneath a table, plug this light in and then walk back, or crawl back from underneath the table, and started adjusting the light. And I remember like it was young in my career. I was probably only 2425 and I remember just seeing that, and it had, I mean, here it is. I'm still telling the story. It had a profound impact on me, because I knew, man, I'm working for a guy that's willing to do the work too. You know, he's not just some guy up here shouting orders. He's not just some guy that wants to sit back and give his coffee and make everyone else do it. He's willing to go. He's willing to do the work too. And it made me that much more excited to want to work with him and learn from him, because I understood, man, that's the type of guy he is, and that's the type of guy that I want to help see win. And I think that was so it's great that spike did that. I mean, I like I said, I think that's really important that people, you know, the stories that we tell ourselves, and also like the way that we show up to other people and and how we how we are perceived, and what we do we we want to make people want to win with us, you know. And I think when you can do that, when you can have everybody on a team that is working towards one common goal, I think it's a really powerful thing, and you can achieve a lot of really great stuff.</p><p>Dave Bullis 12:34<br /> Yeah, you have to lead by example and not be one of those guys just parking on orders, you know, I mean, and we've all been on those film sets too, where, you know, maybe a student film, I see a lot in, you know, I used to work with a lot of student filmmakers, and it's the kind of, I guess maybe they, they kind of feel like they kind of need to micromanage, and they kind of use that as a way of directing, or they or and professionals do that too. I mean, how? You know what I mean. So it's one of those things where you want to lead, you want to let people know that, that you're kind of there. You kind of, you kind of have to be the mother and the father, so to speak. You know what? I mean, you got to, have to say, Yeah, where it's Eve, we're going to do this, right? And also you got to be the father, like, All right, let's, let's pull up our sleeves and kind of get this done.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 13:15<br /> Definitely. I think it's an, you know, in, I think that's why, just in, you know, like with him, you know, with Spike doing that at the beginning of shooting, I think setting the tone is so very, very important. Like so yesterday, I'm, I'm producing a new project for a for a large digital media platform. And, you know, it was our first day on set, and I scheduled a 30 minute meeting that probably only needed to be 10, but it was the first day of filming, and I scheduled this 30 minute meeting, and I went over everything with everyone, you know. We went over safety. I went over, you know, expectations. Made sure everyone was introduced, everyone knew who was leading, what departments in in really just set expectations so that people knew, if you have a problem, where to go. You know, I walked people through creative which a lot of times, especially in what we do. Not everyone is, you know, a lot, not everyone needs to know all of the creative points or exactly the schedule for every little thing. But I really wanted, especially on day one, I wanted everyone to be on the same page, to know what we were doing in the field, that level of comfort and teamwork, because I've been on shows before where you come in day one, and it's like they expect, hey, it's the first day of filming. We're gonna do an hour of ESU equipment set up, and then we're gonna be filming. And it's like, I don't even know who in the heck to ask for anything. I didn't meet anyone. I don't know, you know, I walk up to somebody and ask if they know where the coffee is, and it's the director, you know, it's like, so it's one of those things where it's really important, I think, to set that tone early on. And then when you do that, I think it gives you a little bit more leeway, like, I have a tendency to be a little bit more. High energy. You know, I get nervous. Sometimes I get, you know, sometimes I get my emotions. My emotions start to kind of take over at times, before I check, put them in check. And I always let people know. I go, Hey, look, I want you to know any bit of me that is micromanaging is not coming out of a place of not feeling like you can do your job. It's just that I have a bad memory sometimes, and as soon as things pop in my brain, and I want to know if it's happening, I'll ask you, and please never take offense to that it's not coming from a I go, and I always let people know if I actually am having an issue where I'm maybe not I'm feeling like things could be stepped up. I will come with to you, and I will tell you, I will be 100% honest and open at every point with that stuff. And I think people appreciate that, because they at least they know, like, there's no you know, I don't want to be the person that they don't know where I stand. You know where they're like, oh, I don't know if you how he feels about me. Like, I want people to know that I have their back. I'm there to support them. If there's a way that we can be doing it better, let's figure it out together. But if it's just me being crazy, like, that's just kind of part of my personality, and I will do my best to diminish it and be respectful or, you know, and just, I'll do my best to diminish it and not seem like a crazy person. But, you know, we all have our moments, and I think coming from the beginning, and just setting the tone of all of that on set is so important, so that everybody knows where they stand and what's going on.</p><p>Dave Bullis 16:31<br /> So just, just with that, you know, with taking all that, Phillip, what was so, what was like, the worst onset experience that you've ever had,</p><p>Phillip Andrew 16:39<br /> The worst onset experience,</p><p>Dave Bullis 16:41<br /> Like, like, and you don't have to get like, too much into details, but maybe I'm not looking for you, like, name drop or anything. Oh no. When people hear stuff like that, they're like, Oh man, I can't tell the story. I'm like, no, no, just I want to hear more about the situation, rather than the person you know and how you resolve stuff like that. Because whether it be like, you know, an issue with a person on set or a location falling through, any of that stuff, you know what I mean?</p><p>Phillip Andrew 17:06<br /> Oh yeah, man. Oh, dude, locations that locations falling through happen so much that we can't, I can't even, you know, it's not even a big deal anymore. I remember hearing I worked this is, this is actually a cool, fun story that that I'll tell, and then I'll get back to mine. But like, I worked on a project a few years ago with Wes Craven. There we go, name drop. But no what? He was such a he was such a great dude, and we so talented and so caring. But I remember we were on set and we were shooting this project that was kind of like a horror, horror film directors competing against one another. And I remember one, they were having an argument on set. Like, one of the teams were trying to fire their director and replace it with another one, and they were all arguing and fighting. And I remember one, one of the directors stood up and was like, you know, this is BS. I don't, you know, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. Like, I don't even, like, this isn't it's not going as planned. And Wes immediately Stephanie's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who told you it was going to ever go as planned? And he and he took it, and he had a moment where he was like, he took a coachable moment and was like, Look, when we were filming, scream, um, like, I guess the story goes, like, a few days before they got ready to film, like they're date. They're like 72 hours out from filming. And if anybody knows this and I'm telling you wrong story, please correct me. But this is my way of this is my understanding of how it went down about 72 hours. 36-72 hours before they started filming. The high school that had signed off on everything that they were going to film at someone from the school board finally read the script like they had approved it, but no one read the script, and then they read it, and they're like, Whoa, no way. We are not allowing this to be filmed at our high school. And they pulled they pulled out the high school, the location pulled out like 3672 hours before they were supposed to film. And they had to scramble and find a whole new a whole, like, that's not an easy ask. That's not like, oh, we need another coffee shop on the street. Like, that's a massive, you know, anyone that's ever booked locations knows how the bigger their location, though, those are difficult things. There's a lot of people that have to sign off on that, and so a lot of work went into it, and then all of a sudden, you know, it just, that's how quickly things can change. And if you sit around and if you get worried, if you just, if you focus on problems, you're done. If that's all that you focus on, if you are a person that only sees problems, you're going to get crushed. If you can be the person that sees solutions everywhere, opportunities everywhere. You know, possibilities now you're now, you're in, you're adding to the winning success. Like now you can get into a thing where you're doing well. And I think that that's, um, you know, that's something that you have to do, is really stuff, you know, I told this, I tell this story a lot. I had a, one of my first bosses is a amazing executive producer named he. His name is Eli Holzman, and I love the guy. He's He's amazing.</p><p>And I told the story earlier, and it's funny that I'm telling it again, but you know, I asked him when I was early in my career, I was probably 23 years old, and I asked him, Hey, man, what is, you know, is there something of advice that you can give me? And he said, you know, just always be, always bring solutions. Don't bring problems. You know, if the car breaks down, don't come to me and say, the car broke down. Come to me and say, Hey, man, the car broke down. But we have option A, and we can either pay, you know, $400 to get another car out here. Option C is pay. Or option B is $600 to have somebody come out and fix it and it's going to take two hours. Or option C is we just drive it into the LA River, and then we never we act as if it never happened, right? Like he always talked about solution, solution, solutions, and just that, I mean that that lesson has been monumental for me, because, yeah, the first instinct is when something goes bad, is to want to shut down and get sad and angry and kick things and and, you know, you want to blame someone, like it's just human nature, like we're all these little kids that now have grown up pants on and so we want to get mad. But you know, now, I think that's the biggest thing for me, is just always knowing, like, no matter how bad it gets, there's a way to get through it, and you got, you have to be able to find the solution instead of focusing on the problem.</p><p>Dave Bullis 21:34<br /> Yeah, it's the Art of Problem Solving, as you know. I, I've been saying on the podcast before is, you know, how do you solve a problem without creating an equal or greater problem than the one you're trying to solve? And, yeah, and being a problem solver rather than a problem spotter, you know? I mean, you get those people on set, man, where, where they you hire them as crew, and they come up to you and they say, Hey, Philip, you know this, this location fell through the car, got a flat tire. What should we do, and you're like, well, you're supposed to be here helping me. Yeah, come on,</p><p>Phillip Andrew 22:07<br /> Yeah. It's always a little frustrating at times, because you know you, I try to really let people you know you really empower. You want to empower people you know. You want to let people know that you know what? You act as if, I remember, I had somebody tell me when I was young in my career, he's like, Yo, you got to act as if, like, if you don't do this, it's not going to get done. So what would you do? You know, and really, like, I think most of us, when we don't take that action, it's either a we just don't care, right? Like, we don't care about it, and we're super, you know, D gap about it, we just don't care anymore. Or we're afraid, and we're afraid we'll make the wrong decision, and we want somebody to back us up, and we're, you know, or so. It's like, almost, you know, I remember with somebody, I read it in a book once Brendon Bucha, it had this quote, and it was like, when action is required and a person doesn't act, at best, they're lazy, and at the worst, they're a coward. And it's like, man, like, I use that for any life, but to make that to how do we relate that to set it's like, there are those times where it's like, if you're not willing to make a decision, you know, you're being lazy or you're being a coward. And I've had to do that with myself many times, and especially in as much as I try not to be the guy that, like, hangs on money or finances and things like that. But there are times where I I've stopped and been like, Yo, dude, the paying you a decent amount of money to make these decisions, like, do it, like, figure it out. Like, this is on you like, you can't just, you know, like, for me, it's like, you're not a PA anymore. You don't get to just, you know, sit there and yeah, and do exactly what you're told. Like, as a PA, that's what it is being a PA production assistant is all about. Be quiet, be friendly, smile, do everything that's asked of you, and kind of, you know, stay out of the way, but be there and help, as much as your extra set of hands. When you start producing projects and directing projects and taking on greater responsibility, and the money is there and you're getting paid, and like, you have to be able to make a decision, you know, and it's like, by sitting by and doing nothing, or only, like you said being the person that only brings up problems. You're you're not going to be the person that that gets hired back or that gets a reputation of being the guy who can fix problems. And it's like, if you can be someone that fixes problems or sees problems and fixes them before they even happen. You know, like every firefighter would love to be there moments before the fire gets set, you know, because once it gets out of hand, then it's a lot of work. It's like, if you can be the person that notices and knows how to fix things early on before it becomes this raging, you know, fire, then you're going to keep getting work, and that's what it comes out. You're going to keep getting work, and you're going to make projects. More fun and enjoyable to work on. Yeah, I think, yeah, your point was great. And then I decided to talk for 15 minutes. So,</p><p>Dave Bullis 25:09<br /> No, no, it's all good. It's all good Phillip. And I want to ask you too about how you know, how you know you got started in all this, because, you know, you mentioned Wes Craven. You mentioned working with Phil lot. So I wanted to ask, you know, you grew up in Michigan and you moved out to LA, you know, so at what age did you decide, you know, to move out to LA?</p><p>Phillip Andrew 25:30<br /> Yeah, so I was about nine, and, you know, I'm that kid, dude. I grew up 10 minutes from downtown Detroit, on the side, just outside of Southwest Detroit, and I've always been that, that Midwest kid just in love with everything movies, everything California. I, you know, I joke that I wanted to be, I wanted to live the movie, clueless, like I legit, like that guy. I wanted to, you know, I grew up in watching that movie with my sister, and I just loved it. And, you know, I wrote a paper when I was like 13, about moving to California. And so I think that dream has always been there. But for me, you know, I got, you know, in media productions and creating, and, you know, I did a little bit of theater when I was younger. And so I was just always around creating entertainment. And so when I went, I went to Michigan State University after I graduated from high school, and, you know, went out, started, you know, did the business thing for a while, because obviously I was terrified of putting all my eggs in one basket of entertainment. But I moved. I ended up messing up my GPA, pretty, pretty bad. I joined a fraternity, started drinking and partying, and that became a whole nother. That's a whole nother story for a different podcast. And but, but, you know what? Things kind of, you know, ended up where I screwed my GPA up so much at Michigan State that I was going to it was going to take me a few more semesters to get into the business school. So I said, You know what? I had already started taking my film classes, my film and TV and radio, and I loved that stuff. And that was where I felt like I really came alive and really enjoyed it. I was like, I'm going to go after this and see what I can do. And, you know, I was, I was lucky enough to be able to do a couple of internships and really get some things finished. And I was able to finish college this semester early at state, and was getting ready to move out to LA, excuse me, was getting, you know, getting ready to move out to Los Angeles. And 11 days before I moved to LA, I got popped for a DUI, and it drastically affected my ability to move to California. So it took me a year to kind of get everything square, you know, squared away with the courts and kind of my path with with, you know, alcohol abuse and all that stuff. That's a whole nother story. But so I ended up going to, I stayed in Michigan for a little while. I worked at a radio station, and then when I was 23 I was 23 is when I moved out to Los Angeles. I had never been west of Wisconsin. Didn't really know anyone. There were a couple of kids that went from my high school that were, you know, five or six years older. So I did have one or two people that I could at least kind of ask some sort of advice on. But I really didn't know anything. I didn't know what I was doing. Didn't really even know if I wanted to do Film TV. I was still in the mindset that, you know, 20 people got in a room and came up with an idea and then they worked into, you know, made it like I didn't understand the industry at all. I did not understand how segmented things were. I didn't know how different it was to work in TV versus, you know, TV versus commercial versus movies. I didn't even know reality like, I didn't even really know what reality TV was. You know, I'd seen the real world and some of that stuff, but I didn't even realize how different and segmented a lot of the industry was so I get to California, and I move out, I don't know what in the hell I'm doing. I get a job working at vitamin shop. I get a job working at pack sun. I was doing extra work. I was doing, you know, I've been a DJ since I was 17, so I was DJing, and I'm just doing all this stuff. I'm doing clerical work in office buildings and just trying anything to just make rent and make it work. And, you know, I'm sitting here one day, I remember calling my dad, and I'm like, I have, I've got a four year degree from a Big 10 University, and I'm sitting here folding little kids board shorts and selling old women Metamucil like, what is going on in my life like I'm never gonna get hired. And this was right in 2009 right in the middle of the writer strike out here in Los Angeles. So work was tough, and I remember going, I would just go door to door at places, and I would go door to door at production companies, trying to meet them. I'd go to work, I'd go to the gym, I'd go play basketball, and then I would rinse and repeat. And that was my cycle of what I would do. And I wish I could tell you that one of those production companies called and wanted to hire me. I wish I could say that one of my job interviews went well. I met a guy playing basketball, and I was having a really good game, and I was pissing him off because I kept scoring.</p><p>So we are battling back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The game ends. We start talking, and he ends up being a Midwest kid. We start talking a little bit. He's getting ready to get promoted. As soon as he found somebody to take his assistant job, and he brings me in the interview. I get the interview, and I start, and that was my very first job. Was from a guy working or playing basketball at the park. And that guy, his name is Kevin Bartel. He's a great friend of mine. Still. He runs a production company now here in Los Angeles. And you know, he's, he's such a rock star. He's amazing. And like, we met playing basketball, and like, that's how it was for me. And I started, I got that first job, and the job was me taking the assistant job for the guy, Eli, that I spoke about earlier. And you know, the first show we were doing, when I started, they were they had just finished post on the first episode, the first season of a show called Undercover Boss on CBS, and which was a massive show that, at the time no one had heard of. So I was like, working at a production company no one had heard of, on a show no one had ever heard of, and then it blew up, and it was like, that was my first job I got, just got, you know, but the thing I always tell kids, like, I'll try to mentor kids from Michigan State, and I go, Hey, look, I can't tell you to go play basketball every day, and that's where it's going to be. But what I can say is, if, if it wouldn't have been, if it wouldn't have been Kevin, if I wouldn't have met Kevin on the basketball court, I would have met somebody at the gym, or I would have met someone at an alumni event, or one of those production companies I would have win, would have eventually worked out. It's like you don't know. You don't always know what path is going to open. You don't know what door is going to open. But that's why you just bang on a ton of doors and you just, you know, I always tell people, the best thing you can do is just let people know what you want to do, you know, let them know that you're just hungry and ready and you don't know, yeah, hey, I don't have a ton of experience, but I'm excited to learn. I'm ready to get into it. How do we make this whole thing happen I'm in and I think that that the attitude, I don't know, when I hire pas, I hire on attitudes more than I hire on your experience. You know, like, what's your resume going to tell me what that you are really good at, like, getting water, like that, or that you're going to get coffee, or you can lift 50 pounds over your head. Like, what it's more about your your personality and how you like, what do I see out of you? Are you hungry? Do you want to learn? Are you ready to really get in this thing? Or you just like, I'm in LA, whatever? Like, you know, my buddy, my buddy, works on the show, so I guess I can work here. Like, I want people that are excited, you know? Because I know how I was when I was starting out, I know how eager and excited I was, so, yeah, maybe selfishly, like, I want to hire that I want to hire, you know, you know, people that are excited to be around this, because I love it, you know, I love it so much I want to be around other people that love it. And it's like there's so many people that do care and want to make entertainment, and they're passionate about it that, like, I don't want to hire people that are just there looking at it as a paycheck. You know,</p><p>Dave Bullis 33:28<br /> Yeah, yeah, you can. You can teach somebody how to do a job, but you can't teach them how to be a good person. Totally, yeah, which is something I've learned too, because I made the mistake one time. Phil is, should I call you Phil or Philip? What you prefer.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 33:40<br /> Hey, whatever feels right, man. I jump back into, you know, what? People ask me that all the time, and I joke, like, when I hit 30, I was like, I guess I'm Phillip. Now, you know, or somebody, somebody told me the other day on set, they were like, well, once somebody, like, once someone is your superior, you call them Phillip. And I go, I don't know how this is going. Like, I or I'll say, if you're from the UK, you have to call me Phillip, because it just sounds better in that accent. But no man, Phil, Phillip, whatever is easiest, whatever works. Man, it's all good.</p><p>Dave Bullis 34:08<br /> Yeah. Definitely Phillip sounds better with a British accent, I will admit that. But everything sounds better with the British accent. So very true on set. You know what? I have. Everyone call me. I have. Everyone call me bullous, because that's every, yeah, all my friends call me Bullis everywhere, and they're just like, bullets. I'm like, yeah, just call me Bullis. Don't call me Dave or David. That's fine, and just call me Bullis.</p><p>But because it's a it's a strong name, you don't say I'm like, it's a great, it's a great last name. What's the, what's the background, what's the, what's your family's heritage?</p><p>So on my mom's side, it's Swedish and Irish, and on my dad's side, it's English, particularly from Wales, and that's actually where the last name comes from, by the way, it's English. I mean someone who tends bulls and and if you can, believe it or not, I don't know if you ever seen me, but I actually have a my my dad's grandmother was 100% Cherokee Native American. And so if you look at me, I look like the whitest guy on the planet. So, but like, technically speaking, I'm like 10 to 15% Cherokee? Oh, no way. Yeah, but, but I don't look like it at all. I think the I look much like an Irish, English guy.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 35:31<br /> That's cool, man. I love that. I always love. I don't know why I'm always fascinated with with that type of stuff, like where, you know, like heritage and things like that. I'm, I'm 50% I'm 50% Well, we're all kind of a mix of things, but I only claim to and so, yeah, I'm Polish, and I'm Romanian, and on my this this past year, I took a trip, and I did a little mini DJ tour through Europe. But while I was doing that, I also got a chance to do I went to meet some family in Poland for the first time. In Warsaw, Poland met some cousins, and got to meet them for the first time in person. And then I went to Romania. And I went to the little villages, the two little villages in Transylvania, which I guess I didn't even realize that was a real place. I kind of thought it was just made up. But so I went to Transylvania, where my great grandparents were born and raised before they moved to the US. And, man, it was just cool. Like, you know, I had one of those moments where, you know, and I was getting all emotional, you know, just because I had been there, you know, I had been on the road for like, you know, three weeks, four weeks, and I'm on the road that connected the two little villages, you know, and I'm like, Oh my goodness. Like, I can, you know, for the first time in in my life, like my great grandparents no longer seemed like these old dead people, but they were these, like, Oh man, I can picture the like, the 19 year old version of my or the 19 year old great grandpa, Grandfather walking this road to go see this woman he just met. And like, I don't know, it gave me such a like, I love that history, and it's just really, it's, I don't know, I guess I'm getting I'm getting more emotional in my as I'm getting older. I don't know, but it was just really cool. I love, I love that idea of, like, understanding where, where we come from, in the history of our families and whatnot. We've totally gotten off the topic of production. But you know, that's what happens with me sometimes,</p><p>Dave Bullis 37:21<br /> No, no. So it's all good. I have a tendency to do that to people. People go on this podcast all the time, Philip, and they're just like, Dave, I just have a tendency to ramble when I'm talking to you. I don't know what it is. I go, that's a good sign. I take that as a compliment, a very high compliment, totally Yeah. But yeah, you know, you always want to know where you come from. Eventually, you know? And it's a funny story, because I actually was gonna reach out to some of my relatives in Wales, and then I was just watching this British show called Black Books. And Black Books was kind of like, it wasn't really a hit, but it was. It was a fantastic show. And this one character named Fran, wants to get in touch with all her relatives, right? She's like, I've never seen these people before. I just want to, you know, connect with my family. And all they did was they basically used her as, like, some kind of, like, Pack Mule. And they were like, Oh, wow. They were like, Oh, you have a car, we need a ride somewhere. All you have money, we need some money. All you have a house, we need to move in. It's like, and she goes, I'm so sorry I ever did this. And I just kind of thought to myself, What if I reached out to some relatives, and it's all they did was basically try to, like, use me for anything they could.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 38:27<br /> Oh, man, I think it's worth risking. You never know, but yeah, that's crazy. That would be Man, what's well, what's the one show the Sneaky Pete That's on? What is that on Netflix or on? I don't know what channel is on, but it's that idea. Rabisi is the, the lead, and is, yeah, did that idea that he, you know, came in and he convinces this family that he's someone else. And that's that was scripted, but that was actually, there was a show. I don't know if you ever saw it. My my buddy, Phil, lot, it's funny. We bring him up. He actually did a he did a documentary a few years ago called imposter. And if you guys haven't seen it, it's in it is fascinating. And it's about this guy who, you know, convinces this family that he is this missing child from years and years and years ago, and he he gets into this family. And it's the whole story of him, like infiltrating their lives and why they think that they want it. Oh, man, it's just, it's really, like you're watching it, you know, I love documentaries that I watch and I go, this is there's no way this is real. You know. Like, how did this happen? Like, I think, you know, the the two strongest, I'm sure there's many more, um, you know, I'm oversimplifying, but like when I watch documentaries, the two amazing things that I always notice is, like a if I'm sitting there and I'm going, Whoa, there's no way this is real. I'm waiting for them to say, This is bullshit. How is this even possible?</p><p>That always catches my attention, and then I think it's so amazing in documentaries when it's totally just right time, right you know, right time, right place. You know those documentaries that start out about one thing, and then something crazy happens in just by chance, in the time that they were filming. And then it's and then all of a sudden, you're, you're capturing all these other things, like, Have you, have you seen, have you been watching Flint town on Netflix at all? No, I haven't. So Flint town, it's all about Flint, and obviously the Flint water crisis and all of those things. But, you know, the fascinating thing was just they were there when they went there to kind of do the Flint water crisis, and what was happening in Flint with the water and then, but they were embedded with, like the the police force, the flint police force. And then while they're there, was when we started having all of these, all of these cases coming up about police brutality, and, you know, some of the deaths and things like that. And so it was, so you know, to be able to be there documenting police officers as they are experiencing and as they're learning about these things, and seeing their reactions, and then being able to compare that to how we were reacting, as, you know, as as people in society, it was just, it really was fascinating, because it's one of those things where you're like, they weren't late to the story, you know, like they weren't trying to catch up, like they were catching it as it was happening. And I think that's what makes, I don't know, for me, that's what makes a lot of that stuff really, really exciting.</p><p>Dave Bullis 41:39<br /> Yeah, it's, I love movies and TV shows where, you know, characters, like a pathological liar, like, like, American Psycho that, that example, you know, even stuff like, you know, some of the other stuff that's come out, where just find, like, the character is just a, you know, just a complete, come, you know, pathological or compulsive liar, and the TV show, what was it called? It wasn't, I can't want to say Firefly, but that wasn't right. But there was a TV show where the the character basically took the role of a, of a of a sheriff. He took over his identity. It's Chris. What the hell is it? I forget it, but basically he and the Banshee, that's what it's called, Banshee. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so, so he took over the his whole life, and basically said, I'm the new sheriff, and this and that. So that, that, that that was actually pretty cool, you know, pretty good as well. But, you know, a lot of these shows now, there's so many different channels and stuff like that. There's YouTube, there's Netflix, there's Hulu, there's all this, all these channels. You know, this is the golden age of TV, but it's also incredibly segregated on all these different channels.</p><p>Phillip Andrew 42:48<br /> Yeah, it's, it's crazy. There's so much, there's so much going on. And I think it's, you know, we joke. We've been joking for the last couple years. Like anybody that tells you they know what's going on is full of shit.</p><p>Dave Bullis 43:00<br /> But what William Goldman said, right?</p><p>Phillip Andrew 43:03<br /> Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's tough, man. I mean, it's, you know, I will say, like, I've been lucky to work on, on some, you know, some Netflix shows and some YouTube Red shows. We're actually, I'm really excited. I'm gonna humble brag here for a second. One of the shows that I, that I helped produce, is up for a Daytime Emmy right now. So we find out at the end of the month if we won this Daytime Emmy, which would be just really cool to be, you know, and it's for outstanding educational programming. So it's like to be able to we did a show called minefield, which was all about science and psychology with a with a great guy named uh Michael Stevens, who runs a YouTube channel called V sauce. And it was like to be able to create a show that is educational and entertaining, to where you know that you're to know that you're reaching kids and people in general. But he has, you know, a younger audience like to know you're being able to reach and educate kids that are hungry to learn. You know, I think there's this, there's this stereotype that kids these days don't want to learn and all they want to do is play on their social media. And I mean, our channel shows, and there's a lot of there's a lot of educational programming out there on YouTube that kids can't get enough of. And I think it's really encouraging to see so many kids that are interested in science and interested in math, and they want to learn, and they want to figure things out in psychology. And I think it's really, it's really special, so that, I digress, but yeah, with all of the networks, it's hard, man, it's really hard to know what's going to survive. You know it because, you know, the internet has created a nice, beautiful, new place where it doesn't need to be 22 minutes exactly. It doesn't need to be 44 you don't have to have the ACT breakdown at the exact spot for the commercial break. You don't need to, you know, networks, you know online, they don't have to guarantee 24 hours of programming. Every single day, like a lot of the stuff do on cable. So it's opening the doors for some flexibility, and there's gonna be a lot of shake up, and there's gonna be some winners, and there's gonna be some losers, and it's gonna take a little bit more time for us to figure out how everything is gonna shake out. But I think there's, it's like anything right, like you can either look at the problem of it, or you get out in front of it and see the possibilities and the opportunities, and know that we're at a space now where you want, if you want to create something, if you really want to create something, there's no excuse. There's really no excuse for not creating in in this day and age with the accessibility to cameras, the accessibility to editing, to music, to if you want to be there is no there. Now it's difficult to be seen. That's true. It's there's a lot of clutter, there's a lot of noise. It is not the easiest thing in the world to get attention, but if you have a CR, if you're feeling, if you have creativity inside of you that you want to get out, that you don't, and you feel like you don't have the resources, you are not utilizing your resources, because there is so much to get out there. And if you want to be creative, there's no excuse for not being creative in this day and age.</p><p>Dave Bullis 46:21<br /> Yeah, it's like, Hey, man, this podcast is something I started to just to be creative. You know, I started this a few years ago, just to be creative. And the barrier to entry to starting a podcast is literally so low now you can so low. You could start one on your phone with the with, like a pod, with the pod bean app, which is why my host, they actually, if you launch the app, you can start recording a podcast even through the app. So you don't even need another app for that, and you can edit it right there and then upload it. And there you go,</p><p>Phillip Andrew 46:51<br /> Which and I think that's why, that's why you know, as we start to wrap up here and we bring it back home, I think that's why the power of the story is so important, because now where you do have a lot of competition, because the barriers of entry into a YouTube channel, into a podcast, into a short film, the barriers of entry are so low, but people Still have a high expectation of content. So if you are making, you know, you can buy a $200 gimbal for your iPhone that you already have in your pocket, and you can buy a little recording device for the audio, and you can make a pretty damn good video for 300 bucks, if you got the right people that are willing to help and work on it, and then you can do some really great stuff, but if you do not have a story, if you don't have a compelling reason why anyone should even listen or watch or care about your project, it's going to be very difficult to get any type of visibility with it. So I think that's why I, you know a lot of the kids, and I see that now, a lot of kids coming out of school, or certain schools, or whatever they they'll send me their stuff, and I'm like, cool. It looks great. You understand that if you shoot it in high speed, and you're shooting 60, 120 frames per second, and you slow it down behind some very epic feeling motivational music that it's gonna look cool and look cinematic. Yes, you nailed that. But what do you want me to do now? You know, what is your call to action? You do you want me to open my my wallet and pay you money? Do you want me to call my mother and tell her I love her because I haven't talked to her? Do you want me to cry and miss an ex? What in the hell do you want me to feel now? And I think that that is something that we as as storytellers, as filmmakers, at television show creators, podcasters, we have to understand, like, what is it that we want to what? How are we serving that's what I'll say. How are we serving our viewer? And if we don't have an answer for that, if we don't know what our viewer is going to get out of what we're giving them, then we probably don't have strong product, you know? And it's and then we've just, we've we've created, we've created content that doesn't that's never going to really resonate with anybody because it we didn't think about who was going to consume it. We didn't even care. So I think now nowadays, we have to be that much more disciplined and intentional about understanding what we want to create and who we want to create it for, and then how are we going to do it with a great, powerful story, and then executing that? Because it's not it's just not enough anymore to just throw it up online and hope it gets found. You know,</p><p>Dave Bullis 50:04<br /> Yeah, that's very true. I think those days of kind of like throwing that Hail Mary pass are pretty much, I don't want to say they're over. I don't want to be definitive, but I it's a lot harder now, because there's just, there's just so much content being made, you know, and there's just so much stuff being on there that the probability of anything like that happening is just so low. Now it's probably less than 1% but, you know, I know we're winding down, Phil, so just in closing, is there anything that you wanted to, wanted to say to sort of put a period at the end of this whole conversation?</p><p>Phillip Andrew 50:38<br /> You know, I guess the first thing you know, the the annoying social media plug, I'll say, you know, you guys can find me on, on, you know, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff at Philip, Andrew, LA, I have an email account. I'd love for you guys to email me if you have any specific questions, whether that's wanting to work together on a project, or if you're, if you're listening this, and you're young and you're still in school and you just want some advice, I'm always willing to help as much as possible. So reach out. It's Philip, Andrew <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="d9b5b899beb4b8b0b5f7bab6b4">[email protected]</a> so please connect with me. I'd love to, I would love to talk with you guys any way that I can and help out anyway. I think my last you know, what would be my? What would be my? My takeaway from all of this is, you know, it's if you're listening to this in your you know, I think we already talked about some stuff for for people that are younger in their careers, about getting started and how to do that, and we talked a lot about that. If you're listening to this and you're interested in production or TV or film or podcasting or any, any type of that creative stuff, and you are struggling to either get things going, or maybe your career isn't exactly where you want it to be, or you want to be doing more. You know, I always love this phrase, you know, it's like, it's never too late to be what you might have been. And we get caught up in our heads about where we're supposed to be in life, and what success we should have had at this point, how much money we should be. We have these expectations. And the truth is, you know, we're just you all we have is today, and that's all that we have. And we don't know what's coming tomorrow. We don't know what's going to go ahead. You know what's gonna happen, how life is gonna shake out, so go for it. Just make a decision. Make a decision of what you really want. You know if you want to, if you haven't written that script, if you haven't worked on any film set, if you haven't worked on one in three years, if you know what, no matter how big or small your your situation is, all I'll say is just get moving on it. It's it's all a big thing is just making the decision of what you want to do. And then also one, one thing I love to say is like, write it down. And write it down. Write down that goal. If it's to make X amount more money next year, if it's just to have X amount of episodes of your podcast done, if it's to create some whatever your goal is, be definitive. You know, you've got to have some clarity for your for the purpose, and then what's the action involved, you know? And so I think that's really important is, is figure out what you want and write it down, and then start taking the steps towards it so that you're able to achieve that thing. And it's never too late. It's never too late to be what you might have been. And you're never you're never too young for something. You're never too old for something it all had like, those are just lies that you're allowing that are preventing you from really getting into stuff. So so go after it. If you guys are creative, and number one, I appreciate you guys. If you're still listening this long to me, go on and on, I greatly appreciate it. And I really hope that you'll send me an email and let me know. But yeah, just keep going figure it out. Be very intentional about what you want. Write it down and then get out there and start making it happen.</p><p>Dave Bullis 54:11<br /> And that is an excellent way Phil to end the interview on that note. Everybody I will link to everything that Phil and I talked about in the show notes at davebullis.com Twitter. It's at dB podcast, and my personal Twitter is at Dave_Bullis and Phil. I want to say thank you so much for coming on, man. Again, we were two strangers who met on the internet. And to bring you back, right?</p><p>Phillip Andrew 54:35<br /> I love it. No, I greatly, I greatly appreciate it. I'm only going to call you Bullis from here on out. I love it. It's a great last name. I'm so and I'm a big fan now, man, so you let me know any way that I can ever help out, any way I ever can be of service to you, my friend like, feel free always reach out. We are now friends, bonded through the interwebs and and I greatly appreciate you letting me go. 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tag-screenwriting-competition tag-script-development tag-storytelling tag-writing-tips" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/kristin-overn/" rel="bookmark">BPS 406: Unveiling the Art of Screenwriting A Journey with Kristin Overn</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-02-13T06:30:56+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">February 13, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/kristin-overn/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn-768x369.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kristin-Overn-768x369.webp 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=64240509&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">There’s a certain magic in the way creativity stirs the soul, and on today’s episode, we welcome <strong>Kristin Overn</strong>, a seasoned producer and the visionary behind the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards. With a career steeped in the art of storytelling, Kristin has spent years cultivating opportunities for writers to transform their ideas into scripts that resonate across the industry.</p><p>Kristin’s journey began in the theater world, studying playwriting and directing at Northwestern University. Her love for stories soon led her westward, to the bustling hive of <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a>. “I’ve always been fascinated by <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a>,” she reflects. “It’s the common thread that connects us all.” In Los Angeles, she worked tirelessly—starting as an assistant and script reader, gradually earning her stripes in film production. But her heart’s true calling emerged as she realized a profound gap in the industry: connecting new writers with emerging producers.</p><p>This insight birthed the PAGE Awards, a screenwriting competition designed not just to showcase talent but to bridge the divide between raw creativity and industry access. Kristin’s philosophy is simple yet profound: “Every great script deserves a champion, someone who sees its potential and helps it take flight.” Over the years, the competition has grown exponentially, now receiving over 6,000 entries annually. Its rigorous vetting process ensures that only the most compelling stories rise to the top—a beacon of hope for aspiring writers seeking their breakthrough.</p><p>Kristin’s candid advice to screenwriters is a reminder of the industry’s complexity and the persistence it demands. “Find your voice,” she urges. “Don’t try to be the next Quentin Tarantino or Diablo Cody. Be unapologetically you.” Her anecdotes, drawn from years of working with writers and producers, illustrate the transformative power of authentic storytelling—where characters leap off the page and evoke emotions that linger.</p><p>The episode dives deep into the intricacies of screenwriting competitions, the challenges of script development, and the significance of receiving professional feedback. Kristin’s passion for mentorship shines as she describes the thrill of connecting PAGE winners with managers, agents, and producers who can bring their stories to life. “There’s nothing quite like seeing a writer’s hard work pay off,” she says, with a palpable sense of joy.</p><p>As the conversation unfolds, Kristin’s wisdom offers not just technical insights but a deeper understanding of the human connection that underpins all great storytelling. Her belief in the power of perseverance and the beauty of imperfection reminds us that the road to success is often paved with lessons learned from failure.</p><p>“At the end of the day,” Kristin concludes, “the stories that move us are the ones that come from the heart. They’re honest, raw, and unapologetically human.” It’s a sentiment that echoes long after the episode ends, leaving listeners inspired to pick up their pens and tell their own truths.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/64240509/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Page International Screenwriting Awards – <a href="https://pageawards.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Official Site</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 2.78125V1.5H14.5ZM1.5 10.5V4.71875C2.1875 5.28125 3.21875 6.09375 4.75 7.3125C5.4375 7.84375 6.65625 9.03125 8 9C9.3125 9.03125 10.5 7.84375 11.2188 7.3125C12.75 6.09375 13.7812 5.28125 14.5 4.71875V10.5H1.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Email</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download" href="#" > <svg width="18" height="16" viewBox="0 0 18 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M16.5 9H13.5938L15.0625 7.5625C16 6.625 15.3125 5 14 5H12V1.5C12 0.6875 11.3125 0 10.5 0H7.5C6.65625 0 6 0.6875 6 1.5V5H4C2.65625 5 1.96875 6.625 2.9375 7.5625L4.375 9H1.5C0.65625 9 0 9.6875 0 10.5V14.5C0 15.3438 0.65625 16 1.5 16H16.5C17.3125 16 18 15.3438 18 14.5V10.5C18 9.6875 17.3125 9 16.5 9ZM4 6.5H7.5V1.5H10.5V6.5H14L9 11.5L4 6.5ZM16.5 14.5H1.5V10.5H5.875L7.9375 12.5625C8.5 13.1562 9.46875 13.1562 10.0312 12.5625L12.0938 10.5H16.5V14.5ZM13.75 12.5C13.75 12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 1:49<br /> Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.</p><p>Dave Bullis 1:53<br /> My next guest began her career as an assistant and script reader at Davis entertainment, and she's also a producer's guild member. She's a Director's Guild member, and she's been running this competition now for about 14 years now, and a record high 6,364 scripts were submitted last year. This is a fun episode, especially for all you screenwriters out there. This is purely about screenwriting, with guest Kristin Overn.</p><p>Kristin Overn 2:24<br /> Okay, yeah. Many moons ago, I was a student at Northwestern University studying theater, and I focused very much on directing and playwriting, and I loved that side of the entertainment industry, but I stayed in Chicago for a couple of years, but then very shortly, discovered not only how difficult it is to make a living doing theater, but I was repeatedly encouraged by many friends of mine who had moved out to the West Coast to come out to Los Angeles. And one guy in particular was telling me that I'd make a great what they call a D girl. Back then, that was the early 90s, and D girl was a development girl, a lot of women were working, reading scripts, doing script evaluation at the time, and advancing through the ranks in that way. And I was fascinated by that. I love story. I love storytelling so and I love the weather out here. It was cold and snowy in Chicago, so I finally made the move. And I started out as an assistant, like so many people do, I worked in television on a show called Chicago hope, and I also worked at a place called Davis entertainment, which John Davis' company made some major movies and television at the time as well, and did development for some other companies, slowly, kind of worked my way up, but then took a little detour. I ended up being invited to co produce a feature film, a little independent movie, million dollar feature that a buddy of mine was producing and directing, and he wanted me to work with him. He needed somebody on his side who he could trust and who he felt could help make the movie happen. So I jumped on board, and suddenly I was working in production, in film production, and it was, you know, education by trial by fire, but it was a great experience. And so then I started working more and more in production and learning more and more about that. And I produce theater, but film, of course, has its own quirks and problems and issues, and it was, it was a fabulous education, and I did that for several years, but all the while that I was working in production, doing budgets and hiring crews and working on these low budget features, my real passion has always been storytelling, developing scripts, editing, working with writers, and I discovered a real need. Because one of the things I learned as I was working with all these, all these little independent movies, is that there are were, and still are many. The. Up and coming, new producers and junior agents and new managers, people who are honestly looking for new writers who have a hard time connecting with them because the new writers don't know to pitch them. They don't know how to get to them, because they don't even know, in many cases, that they exist and but these are the people who are truly open to working with new writers, because they're all so new and they want, they're looking for that fresh voice. And I conceived of the idea of the page awards at a contest, using a contest as a means to be like a development department when I, when I was at Davis entertainment, John had money, and they had a big staff, and they had a lot a lot of people reading scripts and evaluating them, moving them up the ranks to the point where they would eventually, hopefully finally, get to his desk. So I thought we could use a contest the exact same way. And so that's when I founded the page awards. It was back in the fall of 2003 and we've been going hot and heavy ever since it's been growing and building and it's it's actually worked beautifully in the way, I hope, which is that it's connected a lot of new writers with new up and coming managers who are looking for new clients and producers looking for new scripts.</p><p>Dave Bullis 6:17<br /> You mentioned Kristin about new writers finding producers, and producers sometimes don't know where to look, or maybe, you know, new screenwriters don't know how to pitch them. And in today's, you know, marketplace with where we have all these different, you know, websites and, you know, not meaning like, you know, social media, and you have all these, you know, different contests and stuff like that. Do you think that it's easier now or it's harder now for for that, that connection to happen simply because, you know, there's so many producers and there's so many writers and that and producers are getting hit by so many different directions. You know, is it harder for talent to sort of stand out?</p><p>Kristin Overn 7:00<br /> That's a really good point. It in some ways, it can be it may be easier for you as the writer, to find people who are looking for new material online. However, as you said, they're getting a barrage of material, and it's not vetted. And the thing that a contest will do, for example, like ours, is vet the material for the producer. And the reason we have a lot of these people reading the final round of our contest. They'll say, I want to read your top 10 thrillers, or your top 10 TV dramas, or whatever it is. And they know that by the time these scripts have advanced to the top 10 to the final round, they've been vetted by 4 or 5 6 8, other people. And so they know that the material is really strong. So that's that's the extra sauce that we add to the process at this point.</p><p>Dave Bullis 7:46<br /> Yeah, you know, I always hear about, you know, all the different, like, different avenues that people could use to and I know I'm kind of getting away from screenwriting, but just using as an example, you know, all of the different avenues that people could use to distribute their film, you know, going on to YouTube or Vimeo, etc. And, you know, as I've talked to different guests on here, that's something that we've always come back to, is, is, you know, how do you, you know, get the attention of, you know, buyers? How do you get the attention of certain people that you're looking for? How do you get the attention of your target market? And I remember there was an interview with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rigas, and they were kind of talking somewhat similar about that. And you know, Tarantino was, was very adamant in the fact that, you know, the the best quality material, whether it be a screenplay or a movie or a piece of music, will always rise to the top and will sort of, you know, get above the noise, so to speak,</p><p>Kristin Overn 8:39<br /> Absolutely I believe that. And so the more people that you have reading it and kind of giving it a stamp of approval, if you will, the more people in the industry can sort of trust that, yeah, other people like this. So, you know, I can take a look, and there is, you know, there's a certain amount of what everyone else likes I should like as well. There's a Hollywood is a funny, funny place in that regard. You know, opinions. Sometimes people aren't always as sure of their own opinions as they are of other people's opinions, if that makes sense. And so that's when you hear about situations like, if one manager wants to wants to sign you, suddenly three others are chomping at the bit as well because they feel like they don't want to miss out on something good. It's competitive, and it it can work to your benefit, it could work against you sometimes, but it's just the nature of the beast. I think.</p><p>Dave Bullis 9:32<br /> Yeah, very, very true. And, you know, I know we were kind of, you know, as we're talking about distribution, I'm kind of getting ahead here, but I wanted to sort of ask too about, you know, getting started in your career, you know, because you produce a lot of things, you know, you've produced a lot of films, you've worked as a year production manager, and you work as a location manager, you work as a line producer.</p><p>And I wanted to ask, Has has this experience when you, when you, when you started out, and as you have gone through your career, how has this experience sort of helped you out your current position at page? I mean, have you sort of, well, you know, I'm sorry, I should, I shouldn't add to that question, Kristen, so I'll just keep it at that, you know, how did this, all this experience, you know, help you with with Paige, as we, as you are the executive director now,</p><p>Kristin Overn 10:28<br /> No, it's a great question, because it does. I mean, a lot of people, I think, sit in offices reading a lot of scripts, and that's great. That's one thing. But when you've actually been in the trenches on the set, set, they're figuring out budgets, seen what actually happens on the set with certain issues in the script that began day one, when the script, you know, was presented, you learn a lot about what works and what doesn't in production, and it is helpful in terms of evaluating material. That said, I will tell you. I mean, the projects I did were all small. They were low budget projects. And a lot of the scripts that win the contest in the action adventure category or historical film are big budget movies. So in that sense, you know, it's like, I don't know that the writer should think of limitations always. I mean, you know, especially depending on the type of movie you're writing, you know, don't be limited if you have a vision for a huge, big movie. I mean, if that's what it wants to be, that's what it wants to be. But if you are trying to write a film that a new producer can do for a million dollars, you know, there are, there are budgetary constraints. There are certain thing you don't you can't usually afford tons of cast of 1000s, you know, huge numbers of extras. CGI is becoming more and more affordable, so that's less and less of a constraint than it used to be. And there will are people who can do it very inexpensively, but still, you know, there are a lot of things you want to keep in mind if you're trying to write something low budget.</p><p>Dave Bullis 11:58<br /> Yeah, I think that's a good point Kristen, and I wanted to, just to sort of follow up that question. Follow up that question, if somebody did have a script, whether it be a short, short screenplay or a feature length screenplay, and you know, they they said, you know, they wanted to make it themselves. And since you have the producing experience and the screenwriting experience, have you ever, do you have you had friends or clients or people you just met, who you know. Have you ever heard had anybody who's had a lot of luck? I don't say luck. I want to say success. Thank you. I was trying to figure out, trying to find that word. Have you had anyone who has had a lot of success doing something like that? Because the reason I ask is, Is that also, I've seen more and more where somebody like we were just discussing is, you know, somebody wants to produce their film. Somebody wants to produce their screenplay. Well, hey, I'm not gonna, you know, I don't want anyone to have to say yes or give me the green light. I'm gonna give myself the green light and go out and do it. So I wanted to ask you a question, have you had any you know, any people that you know, have any success in doing this?</p><p>Kristin Overn 13:00<br /> Absolutely, many of our winners actually have gone ahead and done that. They had that in mind all along with their project, and they wrote it for themselves to direct, and they have, in fact, done so a lot of short films. Obviously, we've had a few people who have been maybe grad students at UCLA, USC, wherever, and perhaps the script they sent us was their graduate thesis or just a project that they wanted to produce coming out of school. And they're very aware of, you know, what it's going to take and how much it's going to cost. And usually they're putting up the money, or their families putting up the money, or whatever. So yeah, and they've been very successful shorts. We also had a script that a couple of scripts that won the contest, that had been produced by features, by the writers themselves and directed by the writers themselves. And one that I can think of right now is landed distribution, and I think will become, be coming out on Netflix and a couple of other places. It's been around the festival circuit. One of our winners, Laurie welts, wrote a script called scout. It was produced by another producer, but she directed it, and that has had a really nice distribution in the festivals, and it was on Netflix. A few weeks ago, I saw it on Netflix, and so yeah, and that's really exciting. We encourage it. We We're so excited by writers who are willing, able to do that? Because that's, you know, that's, it's such a, a, it's, it's such a huge learning process. And B, it's, you know, taking your career into your own hands. And that's wonderful when you can do that.</p><p>Dave Bullis 14:35<br /> Yeah, very, very true. And just to continue with that question, Kristin, you know, as just as we talk about producing films right now, I wanted to ask if we took it the opposite way, which is meaning that somebody did something that was they aimed way too high and then, but for the resources that they had. And honestly, I'm guilty that as well. I've done that before, where I try. Had to make, you know, this action shoot him up at short film, and it's, and you realize you don't have the crew for it, you don't have the CGI people for it. You don't have, you know, the time to set up all these, you know, you know, gunplay scenes and stuff like that. So have you seen that too? Kristen, the where you've had people who just, you know they wanted, they said, Hey, Kristen, can you, can you, can I show you my movie? And it's just, you know, you're it's just you know, you could tell they they fell short.</p><p>Kristin Overn 15:30<br /> Yeah. I mean, well, of course, you every once in a while, you see a short film or a project that has somebody attempted to shoot and they just ran out of money at some point. And you know, that's always too bad when that happens. But again, it's a it's a big, it's a big learning experience. And you know, we all, we all go through our learning experiences, whatever they are, and hopefully come through it and and continue despite whatever problems you might have had with your first project,</p><p>Dave Bullis 15:59<br /> Yeah, and see that's, that's what happened to me, you know, just, just speaking for my own personal experience. Is what happened was, I am too high, you know, I made a student short film and I got, you know, very, very comfortable with, you know, you know, making, you know, you know what I mean. You make a student film, and then suddenly, you know, you're like, oh, okay, I got this. I can now. I made a very simple student short film. I can now make a John Woods like movie. Why not? Right? So that sudden, you know you're falling short. And I think we learn a lot more from our failures and our successes, because as the saying goes, sometimes, you know, with successes you sometimes people get lucky. They really do, as I've learned in life, sometimes you get lucky and you have the right crew in front of you. Sometimes you get lucky and you find the money. Sometimes you get lucky and the location pops up. But with failures, you realize, oh, wait a minute, this isn't my time to make this film or, or for and I'll give you another example to Kristen is I had a friend who was making a time travel movie, and she wanted to make it where, you know, I think it was like the 1800s I think, or the 1700s and I was explaining to her, you know, you're gonna have to buy all these, you know, or, I'm sorry, not buy, but rent all these time period clothes. You're gonna have to worry about cars and everything like that. You're gonna have to worry about planes. And I said, you know, how are you gonna pull this off? And and she was gung ho about it. And when we saw the final project, she said, Oh, now I see what you were talking about. Because she admitted to because, you know, you could spend, you know, a couple grand on Colonial Era clothes in a flash, you know what I mean, in a blink of an eye, and then all of a sudden you're like, Well, okay, that's just, you know, a handful of clothes and, you know, and what else you're gonna spend the rest, you don't have any money to spend the rest of for it, to buy anything else for this movie. So, you know, that's, that's another learning experience. So that's just what I mean by falling short. I want you know it's you learn a lot from your failures, and sometimes we learn more from our failures and our successes.</p><p>Kristin Overn 17:57<br /> Absolutely true. God knows that's true for me, and I have to say she had the opportunity to learn from your failures, which is even better, because I always say I'd rather learn from someone else's failures, so I listened very closely to other people, and she made the mistake, perhaps, of not listening to you in that case, but she learned the lesson anyway, and she had to go through it, and I'm sure she got a lot out of it despite whatever happened, you know, because that's what that's what Life is all about at the end of the day,</p><p>Dave Bullis 18:23<br /> Yeah, and trust me, there's, there's one thing I know, it's how to fail. So, so it's how to fail, how to fail often, but, but you know, you, you sort of, as you meet at different people, you you learn that almost everyone has made some kind of mistake like that, where they try to do way too much, too early, as they started making their films, I've learned that from just doing this podcast, you know, they make a simple film to begin, or they maybe again, maybe they got, they were in the right place the right time, and they got an amazing crew, or what have you. And the second film and the third film were like, Wait, what happened here? You're taking like, you know, steps backwards, so</p><p>Kristin Overn 19:03<br /> The sophomore curse, or something like that, you know, I don't know, but yeah, it's, it's that happens a lot. We have that in the contest as well. I've seen situations where writers somewhat rare, but it happens there's because of their just basic writing talent, somehow what they piece together, almost by intuition, accident, whatever is just really works. But then they try to write that second and third and fourth script, and somehow it kind of all dissipates and and, you know, you wonder, well, then they have to go back and learn the lessons that they and solidify the understanding of why the first script worked, why the first script worked, and you know, how they can replicate it, although I hate the word replicate, but replicate the elements of that that worked, you know, so it's, it's fascinating.</p><p>Dave Bullis 19:55<br /> Yeah, that's actually really interesting. You know, if somebody writes, you know, a script, you know the first one there, let's call it the freshman, the freshman script, and they hit it out of the park. It's a home run. It's you know, everyone you know loves it that people want to read it and the second and third script aren't there. I mean, it, you know, is it usually because maybe they were trying a different method? Is it maybe because they just tried to just rush things out too quickly? I mean, is that some of the things that you've seen?</p><p>Kristin Overn 20:35<br /> I have no you know, I honestly have to say I have no idea why it doesn't work the second time or the third time. I have no idea what it is that sparked first one that just somehow didn't work in the second, third and fourth. It can be probably any one of the things you mentioned, you know, but, but I we have a situation recently. I don't think the right writer would mind, because I think he's talked about it himself. He won this page awards and 2007 with his very first screenplay, and he's been working on it ever since, and his subsequent efforts haven't quite worked as well. And he says himself, he's just had to go through a huge learning, kind of relearning process to really understand what it is that makes a screenplay work, even though, intuitively, he did something wonderful the first time out of the gate. And now this year, he won another prize with us. He's kept getting notes, he's kept reading, he's he's gone to conferences. He's just really continued to work and stuck with it, and at the end of the day, that's brought him back to maybe where he began. But now with that basis of really solid understanding of the process, the writing process, what it, you know, a better understanding of screenplays as a craft, you know,</p><p>Dave Bullis 21:53<br /> Yeah, and that's interesting too, because you mentioned he, he wrote his first screenplay, and that's what he he ended up winning with in 2007 so does that happen a lot in your experience?</p><p>Kristin Overn 22:06<br /> No, no, it doesn't. Most of the time. To be honest, people's first screenplays are can be kind of a train wreck. I mean, sometimes they just haven't bothered to really study the form at all. They sometimes writers think they know how to format a script better than the people who do it every day, you know. Or they think they don't have to study know anything about structure or what I don't know what it is, but they think they've seen a lot, I guess what it is, they think they've seen a lot of bad movies, and so their movie is bound to be better than all these bad movies they've seen, but most of the time, people's first efforts are not, are not, you know, they don't reveal their full potential. It's only after, most people will tell you, it takes many scripts before you really achieve something wonderful and special and something that's going to get you signed or something that's going to get produced. But there are exceptions, like, I mean, every once in a while that you run across somebody who whose very first script is just somehow magic. I don't know what to tell you. There's a little mystery to the whole thing, which is what makes it fun.</p><p>Dave Bullis 23:15<br /> It reminds me what Shane Black once said he was doing this, this Q and A session, and and somebody asked him a question. He said, all the time he gets, you know, a lot of go get an email, or he'll get a note sent to him, sent to him via his agent, from, from like, a, you know, a fan or filmmaker, what have you. And it's always Hey, you know, Hey, Shane, I saw this movie in a blockbuster to Netflix or whatever, and I could write better than that. So I decided to write. And then Shane usually goes back with, Well, I'm glad that you think your mediocrity is better than some other mediocrity that you saw. And he said his advice is, is, instead of, you know, using that as saying, Oh, I could write better than this, how the hell is that a movie? You know, he's like you should really just want to do it in general, regardless of you know, if you think you could write better than than some other movie that's out there</p><p>Kristin Overn 24:06<br /> Exactly, it's got to be, at the end of the day, it's got to be a passion that you're willing to stick with. And that's again, why I admire this writer who stuck with it all these years, even though his second and third and fourth efforts were not as successful as his first. I mean, his first script did not end up selling, but it got a lot of good attention, and it's still a viable movie, from my point of view. So, you know, but it takes that kind of dedication and passion, and if you've got it, you know, stick with it. Keep keep at it, and study and read and talk with other writers and be part of a writers group, and don't be afraid to get notes. A lot of beginning writers are really afraid of getting feedback on their scripts, because, honestly, they're afraid of what the person reading their script is going to say, and they don't want to hear it. You know, deep down, it's like, you don't want to hear that you have cancer or something. You know, it's, it's you don't want the bad news. But the truth is, um. That's what's going to help you grow again. It's your mistakes that, you know, learning from your mistakes that is going to get you to the next level as a screenwriter.</p><p>Dave Bullis 25:08<br /> You know, that is 100% true. You know, I actually used to run a screenwriting group, and we would have people who would want to join. You know, every so often somebody would come in and and say, Hey, I have a friend, where I have somebody else who wants to join. And this one time somebody came in, he was a first time screenwriter, and he actually had illustrations within his screenplay. And I, and I, you know, something, I was a little nicer about it. I was like, hey, you know, I wrote a little note on there, hey, don't put in, you know, illustrations of a design and a screenplay. Like, you know you're not, you know you're not like a James Cameron level, where he could just do whatever he wants and no one's gonna bat an eye. You know, if you're using this as a calling card or what have you, it has to follow certain guidelines. Other people just put on the put in the script. They were like, No, an exclamation point and stuff. Like, you know what? I mean? It's just, it's, it is very hard, especially when, you know, you put all this effort and time to a screenplay and you get feedback, and you know, people tell you, hey, you know what? It just isn't good. Or, or some people will say, hey, look, it just sucks. And I think that what happens is, is, I think we, we kind of view it as an extension of ourselves. So we think, hey, look, this screenplay sucks, therefore I suck</p><p>Kristin Overn 26:23<br /> Exactly it. You know, it's your baby and, and I know that, for example, the folks who read for us, the judges who read for us and write notes. And we talked to them about this a lot. You know, it's, it's critical that they understand that each script is a writer's baby, and they believe in it and love it and, and our job is to help them make it better and advance as writers. And I think our judges really try to do that. But I I have also heard a lot about writing groups where things can get pretty brutal. Sometimes other writers can be, you know, your toughest critics. You know you're, I don't know it's, it can be really great to be part of a writers group. I've heard some horror stories too. So it's all about putting together the right group of people that are going to, you know, grow together as a group.</p><p>Dave Bullis 27:10<br /> Yes, very, very true. And about if everybody is really a part of the same goal, which is to be a professional writer, a working writer. And, you know, I was a part of another group where every meeting, every month, we met once a month, and every month we would have a whole new batch of people show up. So we would have to explain, like, the beginning of screenwriting, you know, we Hey, this is what formatting is. Hey, go buy final draft. Hey, you know, make sure that you're, you're all set. We know what I mean. Like, it's all, it's all these things. And finally, we started, you know, me and the guy, the guy who ran it at that point in time, we said, Wait a minute here. You know, we're kind of like spinning our wheels in the mud, because every meeting we're just briefing these, these new, you know, new people, and then they leave, and then we're getting a whole nother group, and then we're explaining it to them. So it's like, at some somebody once told me that the best way to run a run a writers group is to gain entry, you have to submit a screenplay, a fully, a feature length screenplay, and every, every member, sort of, you know, takes it and gives her feedback, and then you take a vote on it. But that's the key, is they have to have written at least one screenplay</p><p>Kristin Overn 28:18<br /> That's very smart. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Or if it's a group of people, none of whom have written a screenplay, that's fine, too. But then you're on the same level, and you're learning together, you know? But the commitment is the other part. It sounds like it sounds brutal to be losing people all the time and have bringing in new people all the time, that would be really hard.</p><p>Dave Bullis 28:37<br /> Yeah, you know what I think it was, was because, the reason we had that, that constant flux of people leaving and coming, leaving and coming, was because of the the time did change every month. And also, I think that a lot of people weren't really ready for, like, Oh, this is a real writers group, you know, because, like everybody, like the about the three or four people who are, I would say we're at the, sort of like, I guess, top of the group, if you know, though. I mean, we all, I mean, it was myself and through the guys and we, we all are doing stuff now, you know, I in the, in the business, one way or another. But the thing is, like everybody else, I think, was more long lines up. They wanted to start, like, a beginners group, you know what? I mean, like, Hey, I you know, because it's kind of like, you know, if you want to go play a sport or something, you know, you want to start on a team with other people that are, you know, you're like, you know, around, like, your your skill level, you don't want to start, and all of a sudden, you're, you're playing with people who've been, who are veterans, playing for years. You know what? I mean, it's just kind of, you get a little intimidated, if you will,</p><p>Kristin Overn 29:38<br /> Absolutely, and it needs to be mutually beneficial for everybody involved, you know, so it's best if you're all kind of on roughly the same level. I think, yeah,</p><p>Dave Bullis 29:47<br /> Exactly. And I'm not saying, like I'm some expert either, Kristen, I'm not, oh yes. I'm just saying, You know what? I mean. It's just like, sometimes, you know, in this business, sometimes things could get intimidating, period, you know. You see, you see a film in a film festival, you're a part of, you're like, Oh, well, God damn it, that person is better than me. I have no shot of winning, so, you know. And it's, I think it's happened to everybody,</p><p>Kristin Overn 30:20<br /> Sure, sure. And it's understandable that people get intimidated, you know, because it's hard, and you know you're vulnerable, because it's your baby, then it's, that's, that's, that's what makes it great, though, that you know when, when you have that kind of passion for your project and you care that much, it's, it's both a curse and a blessing, because, you know, it's what, it's what is ultimately going to make your writing special, and that project special, it's also what's going to make you vulnerable to taking notes personally, or, you know, driving people away because you're too difficult to deal with, or whatever the situation is. So, you know, there you go. It's just part and parcel of the business.</p><p>Dave Bullis 31:03<br /> Yeah, very, very true. And I wanted to ask to Kristen, as we sort of get into this about about page in general, you know, as we were talking the pre interview, there was an impetus for you to start page. And I wanted to ask, you know, what was that point in time in your life where you decided to actually start the competition.</p><p>Kristin Overn 31:23<br /> It was a time when I was doing a lot of producing. I was working as a line producer. I was doing a lot of budgets for people reading a lot of scripts. And I really realized that I just missed the writing aspect, working with writers and evaluating scripts and helping writers develop scripts, and all of that that was more my passion than all of the work I was doing on movies to get movies made. That that's a grueling life, and I have friends who are great at it and who love it, but you're working 20 hour days for weeks at a time, and then suddenly the project is over. You got to have another gig right away and move on to the next. And it's it's a it's a tough life, and it wasn't the kind of creative life that I wanted. So I wanted to get back into working with writers and reading scripts and working with people who evaluate scripts, which is what all our judges are. And also being a little bit of a matchmaker, I have to tell you, I love the opportunity to take our winners and introduce them to certain judges. Sometimes I have a hint hit that a certain judge is really going to love a certain script, and maybe if they even read a different category, it's like, ah, yeah, I know you read the comedies, but I think you're really going to love this family film, and so I slip it to them in the process. And sometimes that works out, and it's really exciting when that happens.</p><p>Dave Bullis 32:49<br /> So when you actually started Paige, you know, what was some of the responses that, you know, you first got? I mean, you know, again, like, when you start anything, like we were just discussing, you know, it's very nerve wracking. You get very nervous, you know, because there's always that feeling, you know, what, if I fail, you know. So, so what were you feeling when, you know, when you first started page?</p><p>Kristin Overn 33:07<br /> Well, yeah, you're nervous that it's not going to work. Of course, luckily, because we did something unique with page at the time, which has since become pretty common, which is that we split the contest into these different genre categories. Initially we had nine. Now we have 10, and we have the judges evaluate scripts only in the genre that they're most interested in reading. Sometimes people like reading several, but we focus. We have them focus on one. And so basically they're kind of comparing apples to apples, if you will. Of course, not every drama is like every other drama, but at least you're not comparing a drama to a sci fi film or whatever. So you know that that that has been a real help on every level, both in terms of the judging process. The writers love being able to submit in a certain genre, knowing that their script is really going to be read by people who love that particular type of script, and that way, we could also present awards in the different categories and send out promotions. And so if people are looking for our top 10 sci fi scripts or whatever, we can send them those it's it's ended up working out really well over time. And sort of the when you talk about the beginnings of the contest, that was, that was one of the key things that I saw working right away, and I felt was really important. And so that's kind of kind of kept me going through the first couple of years, even though, of course, the first couple of years, we got about 1000 entries, which was pretty good, but, you know, it was tough to make ends meet. It was, we were still operating at a loss, but it was, I could see that this could really work, and people were starting to find projects that they liked, and that kept me going, you know, in the beginning, because I felt like, yeah, this idea is good. This idea will work. We. Have to get the word out, and it has to become better known.</p><p>Dave Bullis 35:04<br /> So just to go now to sort of Flash forward to today, you know, 2017 how many submissions do you get a year now?</p><p>Kristin Overn 35:15<br /> We got about 6300, both the past couple of years. So that's we're almost peaked out. I think the nickel receives just over 7000 lately. The past couple of years, I think Austin has received something like 9000 submissions, which is massive. We our judges, the way we structure things, we would have a hard time handling too much more than we get right now. So we're kind of, we're at a good place. I feel some people say that you have to read about 100 even 200 scripts to find a great one. Well, if we get about 6000 entries and we give 30 prizes, 31 prizes, that's about, right, then I figure</p><p>Dave Bullis 35:57<br /> When you get, like, you know, you know, 6000 7000 entries, you know, I could just imagine, you know, that there's a, you know, that just all these screenplays sitting in a room, and it's like, my god, would you even start? You know, so, you know, how is the process? I've always been interested, you know, even with, with the Nicole and the and and the the Austin Film Festival one, and you know, some of these other screenplay competitions, you know that are getting, you know, five four digit high four digits submissions. You know, how do you start to sort through them as they come in?</p><p>Kristin Overn 36:32<br /> Well, it's, it's well systematized now. And luckily, because everything's online, there's some things are doable that would not have been doable 1012, years ago. So as the scripts come in, they come in in a certain category, we have certain judges reading certain categories, and they get assigned to them online. And everyone's reading everything online now. So it makes it, makes it relatively easy, but we do have over 90 judges over the course of the five rounds of competition. So it's a lot of people going through it, but it's, it's all, it's all handled through a little online system that that works pretty well, pretty well.</p><p>Dave Bullis 37:08<br /> So, so they didn't just just sort of continue with that same question, do you ever get like, so much digital traffic, then in your like and you start to sort of lose track of things, or we, you know, I mean, again, with all the submissions, I mean, I could just imagine, with that, with, again, high four digit submissions, it's like, how do you keep track of everything you know? And I imagine so. So do you have, like, a whole team behind the scenes, sort of like, okay, this is an action adventure, this is a comedy, this is a horror,</p><p>Kristin Overn 37:36<br /> Yeah, absolutely. But it's all online too. It's all recorded when the script comes in so that the scripts can be automatically tracked to the right judges. And Zoe and Jennifer are very hands on our team behind the scenes. And Zoe handles all the submissions, and she does a fabulous job, and she's very much on top of it, watching as things come in and making sure that they're tracking to the right judges. And when writers request feedback, she'll be careful to she actually assigns those individually. So she makes sure that it's a script that that particular judge has not read before, it's the type of script that she thinks they'll like based on the log line, you know, that kind of thing. So we're very hands on, but by the same token, we've got it pretty well systematized now so that, so that things keep moving, which it has to do. You know, when you, as you say, when you have 6000 entries, and you have basically from January through October, is the whole process, but the vast majority of them are, are read by the middle of July. It's, it's, it's a lot of scripts to read, and a lot of people reading,</p><p>Dave Bullis 38:38<br /> Yeah, and I mean having to get, you know, and all the feedback and stuff like that. I, you know, I've had friends who even started, you know, I mean, their own screenwriting competitions on a on a much smaller scale, obviously. And even then it was like, it was just like, my god, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?</p><p>Kristin Overn 38:57<br /> That's very true, you know. I mean, I think a lot of people think, oh, let's start a screenwriting competition. We'll make some money. It'll be easy. We're looking for a looking for some in some cases, like we're looking for a script. Let's start a contest, you know, but it's actually if you're, if you're honest about it, and if you do it with integrity, it's a lot, a lot of work, and it takes a lot of, you know, kind of caring people behind the scenes, the administrative team and the judges to to make it work well. Otherwise it ends up being pretty much a rip off for the writers. And I've seen and heard a lot of horror stories in that regard. So, yeah,</p><p>Dave Bullis 39:28<br /> I mean, because I've entered screw any competitions before, and I haven't entered page yet, but I'm actually hoping to get something done in time to enter. But, you know,</p><p>Kristin Overn 39:43<br /> I hope we'll live up to your expectations. But yeah, I mean your own experience, I'm sure would be really educational for your listeners, because, you know, what's the range of experience you had with contests?</p><p>Dave Bullis 39:54<br /> Well, I think Paige already meets my expectations. Because, like, honestly my expect, because, I mean, I've heard of the competition before, you know, as I was, you know, just just, you know, obviously we were just discussing this whole conversation, you know, I'm familiar with Paige, you know, Austin, the nickel. But in my experience, by the way, the ones I just mentioned, I've not entered before. I entered one, and I got back maybe half a page, or a page of like, of course, by you know, of like, feedback. And that's what I really wanted, was that feedback. So I wanted to hear what the writer was going I mean, I'm sorry the reader was going to say, and basically, at the end, she admitted that this screenplay wasn't for her, and just kind of, you know, let me down easily because she she just didn't know where it fits, so to speak. And I forget what language she used. But, you know, I felt like, Okay, I don't really know if this was worth the extra money to pay for the for the for the feedback. But what I did was, and this is a part of the funny story was, I took this screenplay and I knew a producer, and he said, Hey, you know, if it's a it's a horror comedy, and I sent it to him, and he goes, Dave, this is so over the top. He goes, I don't know how to even market this thing. Bob, you know, etc, etc. Well, a couple months later, I ended up bumping into him again, and he goes, You know what? I should have went with you on that screenplay. He goes, I don't know what the hell I was thinking about. He goes, I've been thinking about that opening. He goes, and the and the funny parts were funny, the horror parts were scary. He goes, but he goes, I just don't know. He goes, I just don't know how to actually market it. And I said, it would be tricky. It would be very tricky, but it could be done. And so I told him that the feedback I got from the screenwriting competition. And he said, Yeah. He said, You know, we talked about what competition it was. And he said, Yeah, they they oftentimes either don't give any any feedback, or they just sort of give, like this very homogenized feedback.</p><p>Kristin Overn 42:05<br /> Yeah, yeah. I mean, feedback. What can I say? We work really hard to give our writers great feedback. That's a very important part of our mission, because, you know, it helps writers grow, and that's what our goal is. We'd love to see. We love it when writers enter a few years in a row and they keep doing better and better, and they've got more and more scripts and a stronger body of material, and so that finally, when they do, when they end up getting signed because they have a body of material to show an agent or manager, and things are launched from there, that's actually kind of an ideal scenario. And we love to be a part of that. We love to help to help writers do that. And feedback is a huge part of it. I think getting professional feedback is so helpful for writers when you can get it from someplace that's supportive, that's going to really that's where the goal is, to help you improve as a writer, rather than just trash you or tell you you know why the script doesn't work. So, you know. But there's the whole range out there. It's writers, you know. I think as much as you can get, my bottom line advice would be, get as much as you can and take it all with a big grain of salt, because that's really at the end of the day, when you're working as a professional writer, you're getting notes all the time on everything you do eight sets of rewrites on a script by the time it gets into production, or more. I mean, it's it's crazy, how much and you have to be able to take all these opinions from the producers initially and the financiers and then the director and the actors and somehow incorporate that into your script, and keep the integrity of your script and keep make sure it continues to work, because often the notes you get aren't even if the person offers a solution, often it's not the right solution, but maybe they have their finger on the pulse of something that's problematic, so you have to, as the writer, interpret it, interpret that, and make the note work within your vision of the script. It's very complex, that complicated and hard to do. So the more practice you get at taking notes, even if they're bad notes, and just figuring out, hmm, what was this person really saying? And, you know, is it something I want to do? Is it something that I want to incorporate in the script? Or, you know, and when you start hearing a note from more than one person, really pay attention, because something's not working, you know?</p><p>Dave Bullis 44:23<br /> Yeah, I concur. And one of the thing I wanted to say, too was that sometimes, you know, the that note could be that something's not working. And one thing I've noticed, too is also something could be working. Because one, I wrote a screenplay years ago, and I remember I the one positive I got out of it was that everyone there was one note I always got it was like, Oh, this was actually working pretty well. This is a really nice way to open that this movie. And only one person out of everyone I let read it was said, Oh, no, that's too much over dramatic. Don't do it that way. And everybody else disagreed. And I was like, Alright, I think I'm gonna go with that, with the just gonna keep it in.</p><p>Kristin Overn 44:59<br /> And that's again, you make my point for me, which is, get as many opinions as you can, and ideally professional opinions, but your friends is fine, as long as they know something about reading a screenplay. If your Writers Group is great, but get as many opinions as you can and get as many professional opinions as you can from wherever, because the more you hear, the more things will start to make sense, and then that one oddball opinion will stand out as like, Oh no, no. That was just that person who had a bad dinner that night or whatever, but or just didn't understand something about this, whatever the situation might be. But if you just get notes from one person, and you take those as gospel, you know you could potentially be be led astray.</p><p>Dave Bullis 45:43<br /> Yeah, very true. Kristin, very true. You know, Kristin I know that the page screenwriting awards opens this year, which is December 1 2017 which is in about two weeks, give or take, and probably about a week when this podcast actually is going up. But I just wanted to, you know, ask just while you know, why have you on here? Because I've always heard this about screening competitions. I heard that the the better the chance for to sort of win, or to even just to get noticed, is to get your screenplay in earlier. And the reason, the the reason they say this, is because they say, you know, judges and everybody has to read so many screenplays that they end up, you know, pulling their favorites out first. You know what I mean, like, they'll have that in their meaning, in their mind, though, you know, they have, like, Oh man, I remember reading this script, and if you know, and it really stood out, and then, versus handing it in later, and, you know, you have less of a chance to sort of stand out. You know what I mean, like, we were talking about earlier on, where the with the time? The where the top always goes, the cream always rises at the top. So is there any truth to that in your experience?</p><p>Kristin Overn 46:48<br /> No, no. So you know, that's one of the myths. And you know, I do think that the judges have less to read early on, and they're fresher, if you like, in a sense, although most of these people, keep in mind, are reading for their companies all the time. Anyway, it's it. So this is just something they incorporate into their schedule over time, but, but here's, here's the thing. Like for us, we have five different rounds of competition, so your first round judge will read your script pretty much soon after it comes in, right? And then this we also have the second round that starts right about in March, once there's enough build up of stuff moving forward from the first round. So those people start reading in March, and they read through the middle of the summer. But once you get to the third round and fourth round, they're kind of reading things all at the same time, and not necessarily in order that it was submitted. So basically, what we have found, and I've tracked this because people have asked this question a lot, we've had scripts with over the you know, with the 31 prizes we give, usually, one of them will have been submitted on the very first day of the contest, and one or two of them will have been submitted on the last day, and they pretty much are scattered all throughout. So it really that is not it saves you money to enter early. We push you to enter early because we want to get scripts in for the judges to read. We want to give them enough time to read everything. We don't want everything coming in in May, at which point, you know, we wouldn't be able to get everything read in time to make our announcements. So that's why we give, you know, all kinds of incentives to enter as early as possible, but it does not affect your chances of winning.</p><p>Dave Bullis 48:33<br /> That's another sort of false myth out there put down. I'm glad, I'm glad I asked that question, because, you know, you see all these false myths online about about screenwriting in general, and I'm just glad that that</p><p>Kristin Overn 48:45<br /> I think at least in our experience, that's one of them. I mean, maybe other contests. I can only speak for us, but, but that's, that's the way things run here. And I honestly have seen a lot of the scripts that are submitted in the last couple of rounds of competition win, as well as some that are submitted early on. So it's, it's, it's pretty well spread out throughout</p><p>Dave Bullis 49:06<br /> And, you know, Kristen, we've been talking for about, you know, 50 minutes now. And I just wanted to ask, you know, is there anything that we can get a chance to talk about that maybe wanted to discuss right now, or just even anything you want to say to sort of put a period into this whole conversation?</p><p>Kristin Overn 49:19<br /> I think the only thing is, you know, people ask me a lot, what does it take to make a winning script? What is it that puts the winners over the top? And it's a very, very hard question to answer, and I've tried to sort of distill it down over the years, but I would say that for us, the scripts that advance up to the semi final and final round. They're all really strong. They're strong writers. They're interesting ideas. They have the scripts have a lot of strengths, but every script has certain what somebody would call a weakness. You know, if one judge read it, they might say, Oh, I love this character to me, you know, so everyone, I mean, opinions differ in that regard. But at the end of the day, what I hear over and over, when we're down to the final final decisions, is people saying this script. The thing that's so special about it is this is a character that I know 10 actors who would love to play this role. It's so compelling, and so story moved me and and it will move an actor. So the script has a real shot of getting made, and it it the voice of the writer is just so clear and so specific and so special that they feel like they bred something that is unique and will stand out from the crowd. So whatever its other flaws might potentially be in terms of that they can work on in development, which, as I said, it'll end up probably going through however many rewrites in the course of development and into production. But that the true thing that's there, that the core of an idea that's really special, a role for an actor, that's really unique and compelling and and something that's really going to make an actor sit up and take notice, and just something in the voice of the writing that is, makes it stand out from the from the crowd, whatever that is,</p><p>Dave Bullis 51:36<br /> Yeah, and that's very true too, because whatever gets you to stand up from The crowd. And you've seen examples, you know, all throughout, even in the in the like the 90s, for example, when Shane Black wrote Lethal Weapon Quentin Tarantino, you can really tell when he really enjoys writing his scripts, because they just sort of pop their own style of popping out at you. And then you even some of the screenplay competitions, the award winners, like they just released the screenplay from mud bound, they released a couple of other screenplays that you know, how the you know you could you and you when you read them, you can kind of see how you know they did what they did with their screenplays, how, what, what causes them to be unique.</p><p>Kristin Overn 52:15<br /> Absolutely, when Juno came out, that was such a special script and movie, because she had such a strong voice on the same sort of note. But the flip side of it is that, please do not try to copy Quentin Tarantino or David Mamet or somebody else who has a really strong voice. Because really, the judges roll their eyes at that industry readers roll their eyes at that they you know, they've seen a lot of copycat scripts. It's really about finding your own vision, your own voice, your own approach to the world and to your story that is unexpected and fresh. And that's where you hear the phrase familiar but fresh. You know? It's like an idea that perhaps people in the industry can understand and say, oh, yeah, I know we did. We know about movie that some movie like that, but this particular script has such a fresh twist on the idea, and that's the writer's voice, the writer's point of view, that makes it stand out.</p><p>Dave Bullis 53:14<br /> Yeah, and that's a really good point, by the way, Kristin about not trying to copy anybody else. I once had a friend of mine who who started before me in the film business, and he started before me, and he he ended up calling himself the next Quentin Tarantino, and he kept labeling himself as that. And finally, I think he bumped into a manager, agent, and they said, Why are you marketing yourself as the next Quentin Tarantino? They were like, do you think Quentin Tarantino went around and said he was the next whatever, like, he just wanted to be Quentin Tarantino. That was it, like, you should be focused on that, not trying to be somebody else. And I think I'm sorry</p><p>Kristin Overn 53:50<br /> Absolutely, I'm just agreeing because it's, yeah, it's so important. You have no idea. I mean, I can't tell you how many times, oh, that's another guy, Richie script, you know, or something. They they're just and people do it. So you have no idea how many other writers are trying to copy some of these iconic writers, and it just doesn't. It doesn't work. So find your voice. Find your own voice. Oh, but you know, one good exercise, if writers want to play with it, and this is a fun thing to do, is write a script in the style of just for fun, as you're learning, maybe a short film, even just as you're learning, as you're growing, just to kind of strengthen your chops you know, write a script in the style of Quentin Tarantino or Diablo Cody or whoever you know, just to see how different writers might approach a different subject, a different basic storyline. That's a really fun thing to do, and it teaches you a lot doing something like that.</p><p>Dave Bullis 54:44<br /> Yeah, I know what you exactly what you mean, and I've seen, but I do like the idea too, is just to be unique and be yourself. Because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you have to be yourself, right Kristin?</p><p>Kristin Overn 54:57<br /> Absolutely, you know, absolutely, it's. So I think that's a great, a great sort of sign off. It's like, be yourself.</p><p>Dave Bullis 55:04<br /> Yeah. I just want to ask in closing, though, is where we will find you, at online?</p><p>Kristin Overn 55:09<br /> Pageawards.com is our website.</p><p>Dave Bullis 55:12<br /> Kristin, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on.</p><p>Kristin Overn 55:15<br /> It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Dave.</p><p>Dave Bullis 55:18<br /> Oh, my pleasure Kristin.</p></div><div class="fbxt-content--footer"> <a href="#"> <svg width="9" height="11" viewBox="0 0 9 11" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M0.5625 0.25C0.234375 0.25 0 0.507812 0 0.8125V1.375C0 1.70312 0.234375 1.9375 0.5625 1.9375H8.4375C8.74219 1.9375 9 1.70312 9 1.375V0.8125C9 0.507812 8.74219 0.25 8.4375 0.25H0.5625ZM2.10938 6.83594L3.65625 5.28906V10.1875C3.65625 10.5156 3.89062 10.75 4.21875 10.75H4.78125C5.08594 10.75 5.34375 10.5156 5.34375 10.1875V5.28906L6.86719 6.83594C7.10156 7.04688 7.45312 7.04688 7.66406 6.83594L8.0625 6.4375C8.27344 6.22656 8.27344 5.85156 8.0625 5.64062L4.89844 2.47656C4.66406 2.24219 4.3125 2.24219 4.10156 2.47656L0.914062 5.64062C0.703125 5.85156 0.703125 6.22656 0.914062 6.4375L1.3125 6.83594C1.52344 7.04688 1.89844 7.04688 2.10938 6.83594Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Scroll back to top</span> </a></div><div class="fbxt-modal 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has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-360-camera-video tag-360-degree-video tag-360-degree-video-camera tag-360-video tag-360-video-camera tag-gopro-360-video tag-how-to-make-360-video tag-how-to-shoot-360-video tag-josh-gibson tag-youtube-360-degree-video" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/josh-gibson/" rel="bookmark">BPS 405: How to Shoot 360 Video & Actually Make Money with Josh Gibson</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-02-06T06:30:48+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">February 6, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/josh-gibson/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson-768x369.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Josh-Gibson-768x369.webp 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63715384&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Today, we welcome <strong>Josh Gibson</strong>, a pioneer in the realm of 360-degree video and the founder of 360 Video Academy. With a deep understanding of immersive storytelling, he guides us through the labyrinth of this ever-evolving technology, revealing its profound potential beyond mere entertainment.</p><p>At first, 360 video may seem like an extension of traditional filmmaking, but as <strong>Josh Gibson</strong> explains, it is not just about capturing an image—it is about placing the viewer inside a world. Unlike conventional storytelling, where a director dictates the frame, 360 video invites audiences to choose their own focus, to explore, to be participants rather than mere observers. “It’s not just about framing a shot,” he says. “It’s about framing an experience.”</p><p>The evolution of this technology has been astonishing. What started as a jumble of GoPro cameras rigged together has now led to compact spherical cameras, capable of seamlessly stitching together breathtaking landscapes and bustling cityscapes. As Josh points out, it is no longer just the domain of <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> or high-budget productions—this is a tool accessible to storytellers, educators, and explorers alike. The real estate industry, for instance, is already using it to provide virtual property tours, while educators take students on immersive field trips to ancient ruins or even the surface of Mars.</p><p>Yet, for all its promise, there are challenges to consider. The mechanics of “stitching,” the art of blending multiple video feeds into a seamless 360-degree environment, remains both a technical and creative hurdle. Imperfections in stitching can disrupt immersion, snapping the viewer out of the dreamlike state that great 360 content aspires to create. This is where artistry meets technology, where patience and precision elevate an experience from mere footage to something truly transcendent.</p><p>And what of narrative storytelling? Can a filmmaker truly control a viewer’s attention in a world without a frame? Here, Josh acknowledges the paradox. Traditional cinema directs the gaze, guiding emotion with each cut and composition. But 360 video asks something different of both the creator and the viewer—it invites presence. The horror genre, he notes, has embraced this shift masterfully, using space to intensify suspense, while documentary filmmakers have found it a tool for deeper empathy, placing audiences in the shoes of another’s lived experience.</p><p>Perhaps, at its core, 360 video is less about replacing film and more about expanding consciousness. It is a step toward a future where reality is not confined to a screen but becomes a shared, navigable space. From medical training to meditation experiences, from historical reconstructions to virtual reality concerts, we are only beginning to understand what this technology can offer.</p><p>Please enjoy my conversation with <strong>Josh Gibson</strong>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63715384/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong><a href="http://www.filmbizbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rise of the Filmtrepreneur®: How to Turn Your Indie Film into a Moneymaking Business</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rise of the Filmtrepreneur®: FREE AUDIOBOOK</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="http://www.indiefilmhustle.tv/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Indie Film Hustle TV 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/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 0:10<br /> So I've added on the show Josh Gibson, who is a three, a 360 video specialist. He's the founder of 360, video academy.com. And is a pretty much you know, kind of knows what he's talking about when it comes to 360 video, so I wanted to bring them on the show. So we can kind of explain it to us layman's on how you could do it, what the cost is to get into it. And if you can even make money as doing it as a filmmaker, so I won't waste any more time. Let's get right into it. Enjoy my conversation with Josh Gibson from 360 video Academy. I'd like to welcome to the show Josh Gibson, man. Thanks for coming on the show, man.</p><p>Josh Gibson 4:24<br /> Hey, thanks so much for having me, Alex, it's good to be here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:26<br /> I wanted you on the show. Because I am just dangerous. I just know enough to be dangerous in the 360 world. So I wanted to get a professional to come on and i'm gonna i'm just gonna beat you up with a lot of questions if that's okay,</p><p>Josh Gibson 4:38<br /> now that's totally great. Shoot, I'm glad you're excited for it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:42<br /> Cool, man. So let's first and foremost, what the hell is 360 video for people who don't know?</p><p>Josh Gibson 4:48<br /> You know, that's a good question. It's kind of something that's been around for a while. I mean, you look at like Google streetview. You look at, you know, virtual tours on maybe some real estate sites like it's sort of this technology of you know, the three Under 60 degree panorama has been around for a while. But it's sort of been stuck in this the still world until, you know, a few years back when people started messing around with GoPros. And, you know, trying to get smaller cameras and putting them all together so that they're shooting in all directions, and trying to capture 360 degree video. So that's kind of where, you know, the explosion happened. And when people started realizing, hey, you know, GoPros not too expensive, you know, and this, a lot of companies like color, and, you know, other companies, including GoPro started seeing a real future in this. And yeah, they started building software for it. And, you know, and the rest is history. So it's basically putting a bunch of cameras together, shooting in every single direction, and sinking all those cameras up and then stitching them together later on a computer. So it's kind of a process, but, you know, pretty simple, simple, you know, you're wrapping a sphere around a video and, and, you know, that's how it works.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 5:54<br /> Now, there, there's, I mean, from the point of GoPro rigs, now they're actually coming out with cameras that are built into a sphere, I saw some of them in cinna gear last year, and companies are coming out with those by themselves with their own proprietary software and things like that. Is that correct?</p><p>Josh Gibson 6:10<br /> Yeah, yeah, that's, that's actually really Yep, exactly. Right. So there's a few cameras that technically I think there's one that shoots 270 degrees, and it's just one lens with one sensor. But as a matter of getting the full 360 degrees, you actually still technically need two cameras, at least. And there's some like Kodak makes a couple the SDK, you know, where you put two cameras back to back basically, with super, you know, fisheye wide angle lenses on each one of those. So you basically have to, you know, half domes that you're getting and then you're just wrapping them together, or that you're, you know, joining them together and aligning them. But you know, yeah,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:47<br /> but when you're dealing with 360, though, I mean, the kind of 360 that I've seen that looks good is somewhat distorted, but not completely distorted like a fisheye would be. So that's good. I mean, that's what we're kind of going for, right? It's not like this kind of distorted, fisheye, because if that's the point, then we're back in BC, Beastie Boys videos back in the day, right? Yeah, so</p><p>Josh Gibson 7:09<br /> I mean, yeah, that's kind of my opinion, too. I think there's, I mean, the Samsung Gear is obviously another example of, you know, the two camera system, and those are great, and they work pretty well. But the issue you run into with those two, two lens systems is obviously at the very edge of any fisheye lens, there's going to be distortion pixels are going to get stretched. So if you're going to be trying to stretch those back out to make them undistorted in a 360 degree, you know, viewing space, you know, it's gonna be a little bit blurrier. You're gonna see some, you know, aliasing or whatever, on those edges. So that's why people started moving into the, you know, multi camera rigs where you have, you know, 10, GoPros, 20, GoPros, or, you know, any other small camera like the Blackmagic, you know, camera that you can put it on there. So people have been experimenting with all sorts of different setups. But obviously, the other downside is when you add more cameras, you're going to run into more stitching complications. With all the weird lines and stuff. We'll get</p><p>Alex Ferrari 8:00<br /> into stitching later. Yes. I have questions about stitching. That one's fun. everyone's asking, like, what the hell is stitching my door? We'll get we'll get to it soon enough, ladies and gentlemen. So a real basic question is what's the difference between 360 and VR? virtual reality? Because they're kind of similar?</p><p>Josh Gibson 8:20<br /> Yeah, yeah, they are really similar and they're used interchangeably a lot? That's a really great question. So VR, you know, if we want to throw the dictionary at it, is basically kind of like the video games that you see out there where people are walking around in an actual 3d space, they have goggles on, it's usually hooked up to a really high powered PC or something, a computer, and they also have those little things are holding in their hands where they can interact. And you know, you see the cool video games where you're shooting zombies all around or something. So that's VR where you can interact completely with the environment you can walk, you know, with your actual two feet, and the goggles on your face are basically just you know, re, you know, displaying what you're what you should be seeing in the video game or whatever. So there aren't a lot of actual VR video if you will. But so and before I get into that, sorry, I'll talk about the difference. So 360 video, on the other hand, is basically captured video wrapped in a sphere around a user and the only thing that the user can actually interact with in the video is where they're looking which direction they're looking at. The filmmaker still has control basically over how tall that viewer is and where they are standing in that space. So with 360 video, you can look around you can move your phone around if you're watching on a phone or a tablet or whatever or on a computer you can click around and move you know your direction but you can't actually walk you know anywhere you can't say oh what's that rock over there? I'm gonna go see what's behind it you can't do that quite yet with with 360 video but in a VR world that's it's all built on a computer so everything is you know, all the data is there you could walk around and see what's behind the rock you know, etc, etc.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:56<br /> So yeah, got it. So it's a it Yeah, actually saw thing on Facebook once i was i was i think i was watching Casey Neistat with with the Samsung brig and he posted something on Facebook and it said move your phone left I'm like What does that mean? I'm like, Oh my God. Jesus this is this is witchcraft it's insane it's really it was the weirdest thing ever like how did they know it was and Facebook has I guess you could do it on you could upload 360 video on Facebook now and I was like wow that's insane like just the things you can do with that are amazing which brings me to my next question What kind of stories can you tell with 360 video Can you can you shoot a feature film with 360</p><p>Josh Gibson 10:40<br /> oh that's Yeah, that's the million dollar question. I there's been a lot of really cool experimentation going on. So I think the big question right now at least in my mind, is you know what future does 360 video have with like documentary filmmaking versus like narrative fiction filmmaking? Right so there have been a lot of like, horror the horror genre has been obviously all over 360 because you know, you have all this new space to work with the jump and scare people. And I've seen a lot of recreations like historical recreations in 360 video and you know of course that's my background is in documentary filmmaking. So that's kind of where I've been working mostly. But yeah, the short answer is everybody's doing doing 360 and there have been falling feature films made in it there's as yeah there's been Can you name some I actually don't know the name off the top my head it's been pretty recent, but there have been a few like TV networks and stuff that thrown you know, pretty big chunks of money at VR and 360 and there's a lot of experimentation going on with it right now. So I think it's, it's been living a lot in the documentary world and I can look up some of these and give you links and stuff you can throw in the shownotes but sure. It's been living a lot in the documentary world, but I think a lot of fiction filmmakers, and you know, like horror and stuff like that have been really interested in doing it. But another kind of unforeseen, huge genre of 360 filmmaking is the education world There have been a lot of universities especially at the most recent na B when I was out there you know, I met up with a lot of you know, professors and administrators education people that were from all over the country all over the world wanting to implement VR and 360 into their teaching which is awesome because you know, obviously you can take people out on a field trip or a virtual field trip anywhere you want whether that be Mars or just a canyon up the street of the school you know, and then Matter of fact that's a project I'm working on now with a local university here is their geology department is is hiring me to do some work with them to basically do some drone footage and some really cool like virtual walkthroughs of this canyon this really interesting Canyon nearby so that they show their students</p><p>Alex Ferrari 12:52<br /> that's insane so yeah, like she was like it like basically like okay let's go to the pyramids of Giza and yeah you know, the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China or any of these places</p><p>Josh Gibson 13:01<br /> and you can overlay graphics and put really cool you know, you know text or you could even throw you know 3d animated timelapses if you want saying like hey, this is what it looked like 10,000 years ago now it's jumped to today Stop it. Yeah. Okay, just be standing in the middle that's really cool experience right? So it's awesome and then the cool part is people can watch it on their phones now they can watch it on their tablets they can do it anywhere so you don't need to go to some fancy you know planetarium or anything it's it's very accessible so unlike</p><p>Alex Ferrari 13:29<br /> VR, you don't need a helmet or a pair of goggles to look at 360 video as long as you have it on a it's being projected in a proper way correct?</p><p>Josh Gibson 13:38<br /> Yeah, so right you can technically you can watch it on a computer just on a laptop or you know whatever and click around with the mouse or you can watch it you can hold your phone out in front of your tablet obviously the most ideal way to watch VR or 360 is through goggles it's a little bit more immersive that way you know with some headphones on and stuff and you know there's spatial audio which interacts the audio actually can track to your head too so there's that's a whole other topic as well Yeah, I</p><p>Alex Ferrari 14:04<br /> was gonna say audio mixing for this must be</p><p>Josh Gibson 14:07<br /> a bitch it's complex man it's and I'm not an audio engineer by any stretch of the imagination so I can't speak to the nitty gritty too much but it's it's there they're making it more simple. I've been messing around and beta testing for a few companies some software that basically allows you to mix the audio in like you know, a Dolby Surround sort of format you know, 5171 and then basically what happens is, you tell the cat or you tell the software where is your like your point one you know, your your base point, and then as soon as your head turns the software in either the phone or the goggles has to actually process and change and mix that audio on the spot. Come on, so yeah, it's so the Yeah, it's pretty, pretty well.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 14:53<br /> It's insanity man. I mean, we're starting to get into Star Trek world, man. It's crazy. It's work. We're just we're only a few steps away from the from the holodeck. We</p><p>Josh Gibson 15:05<br /> wouldn't and maybe the next thing is being able to create hamburgers from the you know, the little touchscreen.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:10<br /> Oh god right imagine like teach in this just did you by the way I hope the audience enjoy enjoyed my sound effects. Know I did I appreciate it so so now that let's say we're gonna go out and shoot some stuff, what some pre shoot equipment that you would need to just do a basic 360 shoot.</p><p>Josh Gibson 15:30<br /> So yeah, that's a great question. I mean, that was the thing with 360 cameras, you can go as small as like the Samsung Gear, or you know, codecs got one of those dual camera setups to where it's got the two cameras back to back. But really, with 360 video, I mean, you could go all the way up to the Ozo to the Nokia oza that's like $45,000 camera, you know, that's completely professional global shutter, you know, 13 stops of dynamic range kind of thing. So that one's great. But with 360 video, you can go you know, as small as you really want, you know, and it's it's kind of threatening, and it feels a little bit scary to go out and shoot it. But as long as you're holding your arm steady and or if you're on a tripod, and you're just shooting like landscape stuff, you know, pre shoot equipment, all you really need is, you know, the camera and kind of a sense of imagination,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:18<br /> really? And do you how do you record the audio. So the audio</p><p>Josh Gibson 16:21<br /> can usually be recorded on the actual device, Samsung Gear has a few microphones and the Kodak does as well. There actually are even a few, it's, I think it's called the Insta 360 it's company from I'm not even sure where they're from, but they have a cool little basically small 360 camera that you can plug into the bottom of your phone, either Android or iOS. And you can livestream 360 video now on Facebook or YouTube. So I mean, I'm sure vloggers and stuff are going to be you know, all over this and wanting to get into that. So that's kind of fun, you can be you know, taking people on a tour and stuff of you know, if you're vacationing or you know, talking to the camera, they can look at you or they can look behind you</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:59<br /> or, or if you're on a film set, and you want to give the people a tour of the film set that would be a great marketing for Oh, yeah, stunning, really awesome. That would blow people's mind as far as great content and great material that you can use for marketing. I mean, imagine just doing a 360 table read? Oh, yeah, of all the actors, I mean, you could do it in my mind that my marketing minds turning on now. So that would be</p><p>Josh Gibson 17:24<br /> I'm sure they're going to implement it with Skype and with any other you know, I'm sure it's going to be a business solution here pretty soon where if you want to beam into a meeting or something, you know, across the country or across the globe, you can just sit there and it'll be like you're actually sitting there you can look around, see who's talking it won't be like a, you know, a webcam that they set up in the corner trying to you know, see everybody it'll just be a 360 camera, sitting in a chair somewhere and you know, the CEO or whoever can sit there and look around and chat and likely like that pretty cool.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:52<br /> Like the Jedi Council. Yes, exactly. That's the goal. That's the goal Jedi Council boom, yes, just with better dialogue. But um, so um, so what are some of the pitfalls that you should avoid when shooting 360 video?</p><p>Josh Gibson 18:08<br /> So with 360 video, I think one of the biggest complications one of the newest thing or not complications, but one of the biggest difficulties is a lot of creative control is is stripped from the Creator. So I think a lot of people go into it expecting to still be able to like frame the shot, if you will.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:24<br /> 360 How can you?</p><p>Josh Gibson 18:28<br /> So that's kind of a new frustrating thing. And I even remember going out and doing, you know, like prevas, or, you know, tech scouts, location scouts for different shoots. And think it's kind of weird, because you stand there and you're like, Oh, that's a nice angle. That's a nice frame, oh, wait, I can't actually have an angle. You know, this isn't a 2d thing, a box where I'm saying, hey, here are the edges of the frame. You know, there's no lenses that I choose to shoot with, I can't, you know, really change a lot of the things, all I can really choose is where the person who's standing, and how tall they are. So obviously, there's still a lot of cool things you can do with that with movement and drones or whatever you can come up with. But that's kind of the first hurdle that a lot of people have to get over is understanding that when you're framing a shot in quotes, you've got to basically stand in one place and kind of look in every single direction and say, is this interesting over here? Is this interesting over there. And then you've also got to say, well, maybe I don't want it to be interesting. Other than this one little place, I want to I want to draw attention to that one part of the 360 degree space. So there's a lot of new questions to ask yourself. And that's kind of one of the bigger, you know, artistic hurdles to overcome. There's plenty of technological and other ones we can get into. But that was one of the bigger ones that I remember going through as a creator, you know, coming from the two dimensional world of filmmaking. It was kind of interesting to be like, wow, this is a totally new way of thinking and a totally new way of storytelling.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 19:47<br /> No, I saw I was I was watching your demo on your website, and I saw you in the corner. Yeah. So which brings me to my next question. How do you hide or remove gear crew camera operator's etc.</p><p>Josh Gibson 20:01<br /> right that's a that's a great point that's actually something I go into a lot in, you know, in the things I teach in the course. But basically you have to, you know, make a decision whether or not you can even remove yourself like I was filming at that holy color festival. And that was practically impossible. I mean, I could have tried to paint myself out. But basically the short answer is it's it's simple techniques like that you've learned in Photoshop or After Effects where you're compositing out different things in a 2d in a 2d space, like on a 2d shot. But with 360 video, obviously, it's you know, how many how many ever more times work to make sure everything gets painted out in that 360 space. So there's a few plugins like skybox metal, that are metals, skybox. Sweet is really awesome, that's the one I use. I also use a mixture of like Mocha Pro and mocha VR with, you know, premiere and After Effects, too. And I have a little bit of background in visual effects not tons, but I had enough that I could figure out basically how to convert this weird sphere video this equirectangular what they call it video into something that I could work with as a VFX artist. But it's basically the same techniques you know, as painting out people in two dimensional video, it's just being able to convert that back and distort it properly. So that it looks right in, you know, that sphere and that 360 video.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:18<br /> So I was going through your site and I wanted to ask you what is auto panel video pro?</p><p>Josh Gibson 21:25<br /> Oh, yeah, that's that is my favorite software. It's, it's basically the stitching software for it's kind of the first step in the whole process. So once you've shot everything, whether you've got, you know, 10 cameras, or you know, three cameras or whatever, basically, you obviously have a bunch of SD cards, or you have a bunch of different video files, however you get them. And what auto pin a video does is it basically takes all those videos and it will smartly sync and allows you to easily either by an audio cue or a visual clap or something, you can sync them all up. And then it basically finds all the all those little intricate points and stitches them all together. So obviously the idea with 360 video is when you're shooting with 10 cameras, you want to have overlap right on each one of those cameras so that there's a little bit of wiggle room as far as you know, how you're stitching and how you're kind of melding them together to make the edges look seamless. And that's kind of what auto pen of video takes care of, is it gives you a lot of tools to customize and to really tweak and make things look just right and there's also a partner program called autopano Giga that I believe has been around a lot longer than autopano video and autopano Giga is just basically another program that has done the still version so people that did Google streetview or that you know they're really awesome people that would go on and add 360 photos of the Eiffel Tower or something on Google Earth I remember looking at those even as a kid they all use programs very similar to autopano Giga so data panel video is basically the same thing but just for video</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:52<br /> so stitching basically if for layman terms is basically just because you've overlapping the video all the video frames of all the all the cameras you're using in the in the rig they overlap so you got to kind of melt them together or composite them together in some way in stitching is the term to use and that's what basically stitching is an auto panel video kind of does helps you tremendously by doing that.</p><p>Josh Gibson 23:15<br /> Yes, yes that is exactly right. So there's that you can there's I know a few people that not a few people but there's there's people that I've heard do their stitching in programs like fusion, you know, from black magic, or they use nuke and stuff and that's there's there's plenty of you know, there's always a million ways to skin a cat as far as the post production goes. But the one I really liked to use that makes it pretty simple and gives you still you know, power user customization options is auto Pena video,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 23:40<br /> you know, is there, but I saw some and at again at that cinna gear, I saw some setups that were doing autos auto stitching, like it was Yeah, it was automatically just doing it for you. Can you talk a little bit about that?</p><p>Josh Gibson 23:53<br /> Yeah, they've got I mean, the Nokia Ozo has proprietary software. I believe the jaunt actually is entirely cloud based. So when you go out and shoot with a giant camera, you just upload your media to the cloud, and they do all the processing and stitching for you. But yeah, so it's pretty efficient. Obviously, it's like, you know, that's, and I'm sure you pay for it on the back end, but I'm sure it's it's really awesome. The only downside, I think, to those kinds of solutions in this isn't really a downside. But you do need to go in and add, you know, finishing touches. So if there are minor stitch problems, obviously the human eye can notice weird aberrations a lot easier and more efficiently than a computer could. But that said, I think it won't be you know, another two or three years before computer stitching is completely awesome. You know, Google's got a Google jump program. They're working with all sorts of there. They haven't opened up their API yet, but they're working with all sorts of camera companies. And they've got some really, really awesome like AI driven stitching. And Facebook even has some stitching solutions as well. So I think that's kind of the Holy Grail right now a lot of companies are looking for, you know, a seamless, a perfect 100% awesome stitching solution so that filmmakers no longer have to worry about all that, you know, technical stitching and stuff like that. But when you do want to fix minor issues or Polish things off and make things look a little bit better, or add little embellishments here and there, you still do need to work in that equirectangular format. So, but yeah, that's stitching, hopefully, eventually, I'm very sure will be automated soon.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 25:27<br /> Now, are there any tips that you can give the listeners to do a perfect stitch?</p><p>Josh Gibson 25:32<br /> That's Yeah, that's a, just a couple tips. Yeah, a couple of tips. So I think was stitching, the big thing is just being detail oriented. I think a lot of people either try to just run through it quickly. And you know, they don't want to really spend time looking through each possible angle of their shot. And, you know, the best way to do that is just to go through and watch it over and over again and look up stuff and make sure that it looks good. Sorry, did you hear that? Sorry, no,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 26:01<br /> keep going. Okay,</p><p>Josh Gibson 26:02<br /> there's a little notification that came up. But so yeah, I mean, detail oriented, I think is important. Being able to walk, watch through your shot and notice things because the biggest draw, I think, are the biggest important thing with stitching for me is, as soon as somebody notices an obvious stitch error, it kind of pulls them out of the magic, as a viewer. And obviously you don't need to be you don't need to pull your hair out about it. And you know, spend 1000s of hours making everything look flawless. But I think that's the biggest thing is to realize how important are good stitches. And then I think the other thing is, is to just identify and be smart about your shooting. That's honestly the the best advice I can give anybody is the magic really doesn't happen in post production as much as it happens in actually production and shooting. So if you shoot smart and you understand the limitations and the possibilities of your camera, then you know you're gonna avoid a lot of headaches in post production.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 26:55<br /> Now, did you? I'm assuming you saw Justin Lin's short film help? Yes, awesome. The three there's a 360 short film. So that's a really good example of a narrative <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a>.</p><p>Josh Gibson 27:08<br /> Yeah, yeah. It's great. I mean, they shot that on reds. So they got a bunch, they gotta hear</p><p>Alex Ferrari 27:12<br /> this. What's up, when you get that when you get that kind of we got just a live money. Yeah. And I think it was Google who paid for it. So</p><p>Josh Gibson 27:18<br /> Right, right. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was a huge, huge undertaking. But yeah, that was a that was also a really good example of kind of the mixed media, if you will, of, you know, the real life captured footage from the Reds in that 360 rig that they built. But then also adding in three dimensional elements that hid a lot, I'm sure of those, you know, any stitching problems they had, they could, you know, kind of paint out, or they could hide behind a monster or whatever. So that's actually what a lot of people are moving towards. A lot of filmmakers that I've seen, they're actually shooting a lot of just kind of base plates on in actual 360. And then they actually go in and shoot a lot of the assets and all that they know the characters and things that are happening in the frame on like a green screen, just in a you know, normal studio, and then they composite those in into that 360 space. So there's really a lot of ways you can do this. And a lot of people are, you know, experimenting with all sorts of different ways. So it's really exciting.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 28:11<br /> So what programs do you use to edit 360 video,</p><p>Josh Gibson 28:15<br /> I just use Adobe Premiere. So it's basically the exact same thing you're editing exactly how you would normally, you know, a 2d stuff. premiere has just recently at you know, upgraded and added a kind of a 360 view button, like a toggle, you can choose on the program monitor, which is really handy. So you mostly can just it Look, you can edit and that equirectangular video format is what they call it, where it looks like it's just really wide angle, it's kind of weird. But then you can click a little button and you can actually, you know, hit play on your, your keyboard and actually watch in real time, what your viewer would be seeing or what they could be seeing. So premiere has been really good at adopting the technology as well. But luckily, it's exactly the same as, as you know, editing 2d video,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 28:56<br /> and then and for visual effects. Any of the standard visual effects. Packages would work.</p><p>Josh Gibson 29:01<br /> Yeah, I mean that that's kind of another difficult thing when when you're wrapping 360 video in that sphere from the equirectangular format a lot of like blur effects or pixelate, or, you know, whatever effects you might have added initially, even color correction sometimes can be a little difficult because at the very end at the 180 degree mark line right behind the viewer, sometimes you'll get a hard line because the effect doesn't know how to basically repeat infinitely in that sphere. So it actually has to sort of recalculate things in skybox are metal, the company has been doing a really good job at coming out with transitions, coming out with effects like, you know, Blur and sharpen and things like that basic stuff right now, but I'm sure it'll get more advanced, you know, in the near future. They're coming out with those effects that are actually 360 ready. So right now it's kind of a lot of experimentation to see if it'll work and most of the time they do. But as far as, you know, actually having 360 degree or VR ready effects. I think that's still something that needs to be worked on. And a lot of companies I'm sure are doing that now. So</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:02<br /> we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show now how do you deliver your final product? What like what format Do you deliver it on.</p><p>Josh Gibson 30:19<br /> So the format is still the same it's just a quick time video. But with premiere what what you do when you actually export there's there used to not be this actually before premiere updated, there was a little program you had to download from YouTube that uploaded metadata into this video file, however, you know, you export it, whether it be an mp4 or an M Avi and then that that metadata basically told whichever player you uploaded to that it was a 360 video and then it needed to be treated differently right so the big issue with delivering 360 video right now is you need to be able to deliver it on a platform that can actually view 360 video because if you just play it on you know without that metadata on like a TV or anything it'll just play back you know that weird stretched out format which is not what you want obviously. So when you when you're working with clients, the you know premier has updated their thing where you just click a little box that says this is VR video or this is a 360 video and it'll actually automatically upload that metadata into the video file and then you just deliver the video file as if you're sending any other 2d video and then obviously you just need to make sure that you're either watching it on you know a headset or if you know they're wanting to do like web distribution you need to use a program or use like YouTube or Facebook or something like Wistia or Vimeo even has 360 video now so I'm sure it'll become more you know, affluent in the future. But yeah, you just need to make sure that they understand that you can't just watch it absolutely anywhere you need to upload it to a program that can or like YouTube or a service that can actually support playing back 360 videos so</p><p>Alex Ferrari 31:52<br /> with all this said after all the stuff we've talked about it's fair it's fair to say that this is not this is a you need to know your stuff to come shoot this it's not like grabbing a camera and going out and you know shooting like you really need to understand the technology you really need to understand the workflow the post workflow which is a lot more complicated than just shooting a narrative on a 2d situation</p><p>Josh Gibson 32:20<br /> right yeah, I mean it's it's definitely I mean there's some simplicity and stuff and I've been in it for a long time so it's really hard for me to to you know really step back and see but I remember starting out how complex it was and you know it basically having to experiment a lot a lot of hair pulling a lot getting super mad wanting to punch the computer and stuff but yeah, I mean it's honestly once you understand the big picture it makes the whole process a lot smoother so I think that's probably one of the big frustrating things is people try to jump into it without really understanding the end and beginning in the middle on how all that like you said how the workflow goes so it's still very complicated there are it's not as complicated as I think people I definitely don't want to scare anybody away that's kind of my goal with you know what I've been doing I definitely want people to come and be creators in it and I think that was a pleasant surprise that I had to I was like okay, this is complex This is hard there's things to learn but you know it's doable even a dumb guy like make and figure it out and you know and learn how to do all this stuff and have fun doing it so it's kind of that blend where yeah you know people can save themselves a lot of headache if they do a little bit of homework at the beginning but yeah i mean if they wanted to jump in they could if they have you know hundreds hundreds of hours of free time and you know the Google and stuff like sure go ahead there's there's plenty of you know random places all over the internet to learn how to do it just like anything I guess right but</p><p>Alex Ferrari 33:53<br /> but you've been so you've been doing this for a while so you've seen the technology changed dramatically in the course of the time that you've been in it so it's getting easier things that used to take you hours to do now you could do in minutes purely because of technology</p><p>Josh Gibson 34:05<br /> yeah and I in honestly I haven't even been in it as long as some people have and even the past few years that I've been doing it it's Yeah, it's attention it's getting from big companies is I think that is the best news that we could be having right now. Because all that money in research is now going into it and companies are coming out with really awesome technology that helps you know, obviously with the stitching, that's the biggest thing right now that I think people are going to be trying to simplify. And then obviously as well, shooting with with 360 is going to become better and better as well because you look at like the Nokia Ozo and that cameras professional, it's great. But it's also It weighs about you know it weighs like 20 pounds. And it's very difficult to work with as far as like a documentary filmmaker that just wants to go out and shoot right? It is battery powered, but it's like you need so much gear. And you kind of look at the evolution of the DSLR right where that sort of blew up, you know The idea that indie filmmakers can go out and just make make a movie right they could go out they'll start is like backpack stuff</p><p>Alex Ferrari 35:07<br /> yeah you started please don't get me started</p><p>Josh Gibson 35:11<br /> with the downside right?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 35:14<br /> I mean</p><p>Josh Gibson 35:18<br /> I hope that with 360 video the technology gets to the place where it's simpler and obviously it will be I mean in the future it will be but yeah as of right now it's it's still pretty hard to do complex it's you know, it takes a little bit expertise. But it's also something that if somebody really wants to do they should and they can so now</p><p>Alex Ferrari 35:37<br /> I mean, I would equate 360 video a little bit with the 3d resurgence back in the 2009 2010 11 where 3d was all the rage and everything was going to be shot in 3d and everybody's running around trying to get the rigs together and oh my god, I need the my software I can edit 3d and you can't call it great 3d and all of this stuff. And I remember all that I was I was sitting in, in in presentations and and rental houses and they're all trying to sell their their new 3d rig and James Karen was coming out and the only 3d I've ever seen that I liked was avatar on Hugo Hugo was really good too because it because you have two masters working in the format. Right, but but I think that's a lot a little bit of that's happening with 360 But unlike 3d in my personal opinion, I think 360 has a much brighter future. I think it's something that will be around for many, many years to come and will evolve into something that will eventually turn into the holodeck.</p><p>Josh Gibson 36:38<br /> Right? Right And yeah, that's that was honestly the first thing I remember getting into 360 and I was working with I work at a place called the good line. That's kind of like my full time gig. And you know my bosses my colleagues were talking to me about 360 video a few years back and that was kind of the first thing we thought is like okay, is this just another smellivision is this right i mean is it just another gimmick and we kind of started thinking it was at first but yeah like you say once I think everybody started catching on to the marketing possibilities the education possibilities the entertainment possibility it really just fits all these different you know needs that a lot of companies and medical medic yeah you name it it's you know even Yeah, all sorts of ways to train people I've seen really cool studies done with people that are you know, in end of life care, elderly folks that are going through a lot of pain or Alzheimer's and they actually give them 360 goggles or VR goggles to like sit at a beach or to go on a walk and they actually have shown you know, through MRIs and stuff that it's helping with their you know, depression their anxiety of course, you know, pain so it's it's awesome. It's It has also it really goes across the whole spectrum of how it can help Pete It is,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:48<br /> it is turning into like, Total Recall and all these old sci fi Oh, yes, it really is like I was that the sixth day, I remember where Michael Rapaport an hour Schwarzenegger movie called The six day at 660. And, and, you know, he had a three dimensional, you know, girlfriend, you know, and all that. But I'm not saying that this is turning into that, but I'm like, wow, it's it's, we're all getting to that place where you can sit on a beach, and I can be in Hawaii, I can have the sound and I can have this I can feel the heat of the sun, but I can almost smell it and see</p><p>Josh Gibson 38:21<br /> Oh, they're getting there. I'm sure they're gonna I mean, they even have they're doing research now where you put on gloves. And it actually will give you a tactile feedback. So you can touch things and feel like for you can feel, you know, glass, you can I mean, it's getting scary. It's the matrix. Matrix.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 38:36<br /> We're getting into the maze. Oh, it</p><p>Josh Gibson 38:37<br /> certainly is. I mean, there might even be people in I think it's you know, Inception where people are dreaming. And they pay to they go to these little underground places just to stay in their dreams, because they like it better in real life. And I honestly would not think that that's too far off. You know, eventually we're going to get to that point where, yeah, it's wild. I mean, people are even using it for I even heard of a dentist that was using it and is not needing to use painkiller at all when he's doing fillings or root canals, because people are so into the VR experience. I mean, they just use VR goggles instead of painkiller. It's wild. Yeah, it's crazy. And I think the exciting thing that I remember seeing nav just this last time, is we are actually very, very close to actually getting VR video. So as I explained before VR is when you can walk around in a space and look around objects and stuff, it's not just looking where you're at, they're actually coming up with cameras, like the lytro and other cameras that are basically light field capture. So it's more than just capturing, you know, the brightness of the reflection of light like a normal camera does or the color of whatever the reflection is, it's actually capturing depth information. And it will be able to 3d scan an environment in real time and then you can literally walk around, you know, at a sporting event, or even it'll take virtual field trips to the next level because you can go up and, and who knows, maybe you can go touch rocks, and you can I mean, it's crazy. I mean, the the sky's the limit really on on how this technology will develop. So that and that's kind of where I think we saw to kind of going back to your original question that it's it's definitely more than a gimmick I think at this point because I think people are realizing this is kind of the future of how we present information to people remotely. I mean, it will make the world that much smaller, you can go swimming in the the ocean, and then the next second, you can be walking on Mars from 3d scans from the rover, you know, I mean,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 40:30<br /> yeah, I mean, I think I think at this point for filmmakers, it's, I don't, I don't see it, how it can turn into something for narrative filmmaking, per se. Like I saw the Justin Lin thing, and that's great. And it's awesome. But that's not a film. That's an experience. It's a it's like almost a it's almost like a ride. It's almost like a carnival ride. But like, you know, some sort of Disney or universal ride where you kind of experience something absolutely different than filmmaking is different than television or movies or anything like that. It's right, because that, that that that medium is about a creator, Director telling you, I need you to look at this now. I need you to look at that now. Totally. So you can't get that with 360. But with three but the other things that are available, what you can do with it is massive. So can you real quickly. tell the audience a few places like hey, I'm gonna get into the 360 world now I'm a filmmaker. Where can I make some money?</p><p>Josh Gibson 41:29<br /> That's a great question. Yeah. Honestly, the biggest place right now I think, is education. That is the biggest market right now to get involved with so there's a lot of schools all over the country all over the world, whether that be high schools or you know, universities obviously usually have a little bit bigger budgets. They're all looking for, you know, everything from consultants to actual practitioners, which is what I'm doing with the University here in Utah where you're they're wanting to create this 360 content, and they're wanting to make it interactive and interesting and fun. So there's a huge huge market in education. And I would think the next one real estate is obviously a big one. Because you know, real estate agents are also always looking for, you know, ways to sell homes, innovatively and better. There's other cameras like the matterport that do the photo still virtual tours, those are cool, but I think 360 video has a space there. But yeah, I mean education and in real estate, I think are kind of the biggest low hanging fruit right now. As far as like actually doing branding and marketing. I think that's also another big area that's kind of what where I've been, you know, in my wheelhouse for the past while like I was out in the Philippines directing a video showcasing a factory seller for a company named Kota epoxy where we followed a sower and one of their factories kind of in a day to day in the life kind of with his really adorable family and his home and everything. So I think there's a lot of companies that are wanting to do that as well. We've seen a lot of like liquor companies or you know companies that want to show Okay, this is how this product is made factory origin right, they want to see the the, the people working with their hands and stuff. So I think there's a lot of marketing and branding work that will be coming out soon as well. And I think like I actually tend to agree with you that narrative filmmaking is cool with 360 but like you say it's more of an experience and I think documentary filmmaking can still have a place with 360 and I think it still will I don't know if it's still if it's still called a documentary you know film it's definitely different because like you say you're not really directing where people are looking yeah but like</p><p>Alex Ferrari 43:39<br /> plant but like planet earth or or national juke any kind of wildlife documentary I mean, it's built for that kind of stuff. But like you're going to see you know, Fahrenheit 911 360 I don't really think so. You know, Bowling for Columbine, not really the 360 kind of movie but I think for for those kinds of documentaries those the anything nature based is or anything that you like, I'm gonna go see how how you know olive oil has made for lack of a better term I'm going to go to or wine and I'm going to go to the winery and you walk through but it's an experience it's different it's it's not new there it is kind of narrative but it's different so I think we're still we're still in the infancy basically of this oil slowly</p><p>Josh Gibson 44:29<br /> I think people are still filling out you know where it's it's used well for you know, why why we should use it over another tool. And I and I guess it comes back to that foundation is something that I've always tried to work you know live by in my career is that you know, story is king. You know, your content is what matters. It doesn't matter if you're shooting with you know, fancy camera or not fancy camera. Obviously, tools are important. You want to have as good a gear as you can. But 360 video VR, that kind of thing is just another tool in the toolbox, right? So if you've got a story, or an experience or a message or anything that you're wanting to share share with somebody, you know, you should always still consider 360 is a possibility. But also, I think people should avoid and try to avoid the pitfall of shooting a 360 just because it's cool. You know, there, you see a lot of stuff where even commercials and stuff I'm like, Oh, that's cool. Like, it's cool. 360 but I, I don't know why they decided to shoot in 360 other than just to have 360 in the metadata. Right? Right. Right. So I think it's another tool in the toolkit and, and people should, you should respect it, obviously, and understand its power, and you know, how it can be used, but also avoid using it just for the sake of using it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:34<br /> Now, can you tell us a little bit about your awesome course on 360? Because I know you have a course telling us how to master this technology, sir.</p><p>Josh Gibson 45:44<br /> Yeah, yeah, no, it's I appreciate that. It's it's a it's been a fun, you know, project passion project of love basically, put a lot of thought a lot of time into it. Basically, it's the problem that I wanted to solve where I you know, if you don't want to spend hours on Google, if you don't want to, you know, watch random tutorial videos. And there's a lot of great stuff out there. I don't mean to bash anything. But I kind of just wanted to put everything in one place. And I kind of OCD about that. So I had a lot of fun organizing it and figuring out the process in the workflow. And I wanted to put it all into one place where people can learn the A to Z, right, so pre production, everything from pre production, all the way to delivery. And, you know, and while I'm talking about this, as well, I'm also continually adding to the course. And I do kind of these virtual job shadows, if you will, where I'll be editing and putting together videos of me actually out working, I've got that geology shoot here coming up in a few weeks, and I've got, you know, whole crew ready to go out, and we're going to go shoot the video, obviously, but I'm also going to be doing education and teaching while I'm doing the project. So I'll be talking to the camera explaining why I'm doing certain things. So people can, you know, kind of come along and see how I work and see, you know, the choices that are making and how I'm making them why I'm making them. So it's a really cool course, it's a place it's it's kind of a community as well that I'd like to build where, you know, serious 360 filmmakers are wanting to come for feedback, they're wanting to be able to learn new things and kind of come to a place that's continually updating with, you know, the latest and greatest information. And, you know, that's kind of why I did it, because I love 360 video, I'm passionate about it. And you know, I feel like you know, people need to come together and learn together and I think it could be a really cool place.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:20<br /> And and, and the hustlers the tribe, Josh has given us a cool discount on the course. And I'll leave that in the show notes. And I'll talk a little bit about that after we're done with this interview. But I'll give you all of that cool information. So now Josh, I have a few questions. I always ask all of our guests, so please prepare yourself for the Oprah questions. Okay. I'm ready. First and foremost, what advice would you give a filmmaker who's just wanting to jump into the 360 realm?</p><p>Josh Gibson 47:52<br /> Well, yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, the best advice I can give is to to worry more about creating and getting stuff made than a what people are going to think about it and to earn be how you're going to market it, I think that's one of the biggest downsides I see about people starting out is they're worried so much about their keywords, they're worried about their SEO, they're worried about, you know, all the technicalities of it, but they're not stressing as much on the actual creating and making and going out and making mistakes and, and, you know, having fun and enjoying the process. So that's what I would say go out and make and worry later about how to get, you know, the clients or get, you know, the views or whatever, I think the the important part is going out and creating and going through that process.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:39<br /> Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?</p><p>Josh Gibson 48:44<br /> Oh, man, that is a good question. I</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:47<br /> told you.</p><p>Josh Gibson 48:50<br /> Okay, I would say, Gosh, I still even struggle with it, I think, but I think I'm getting a little bit better at not worrying about what other people think about my work. So obviously, you need to make money you need to, you know, your work needs to, to be what other people want a lot of the time, but I've learned that the reason anybody gets into filmmaking or you know, any kind of art, I think, for that matter is to obviously, I mean, it's fulfilling to you right for to making it for whatever it's worth and sometimes people don't like it, sometimes people do. I think the biggest thing for you know, is to go through that world and take note of feedback, take note of constructive criticism, but also don't take it too personally, you know, and don't let it affect your work. Don't let it discourage you from moving on. You know, if you have to make stuff that people hate for a few years, you know, that's part of the process and go through that and make it and then you'll learn and grow and eventually you'll be making stuff that everybody wants to see and yeah, I think that was that was kind of a lesson that you know, I'm still learning even where you just want to learn How to, I guess have thick skin in a way? Right?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:03<br /> You definitely need that in this business. In any three nn e in one ad in 360 in all degrees you need thanks, Drew. So, um, so Name three of your favorite films of all time. Oh my gosh. It won't be on your gravestone. Just three that comes to your mind.</p><p>Josh Gibson 50:25<br /> Come to my mind. Um, let's see. Gosh, so I always answered it. I probably will get judged by all my, you know, film school. You know, nerds, cinephiles, but Tommy Boy, yes. It's kind of a shameless plug. I mean, I</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:46<br /> mean, come on. It's Chris Farley.</p><p>Josh Gibson 50:47<br /> It's It's classic. It's got everything you need, you know. Laughing crying. It's totally one of those movies for me. Let me see here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:58<br /> Yeah, I know. I know. When you ever do these lists, like so Akira Kurosawa and Bergman like nah man Tommy Boy I like all right, Tommy Boy Yeah, I mean I could get into the film school sure of course. Boring right yeah. Tommy Boy okay</p><p>Josh Gibson 51:12<br /> um the one of the more recent ones that I saw that I absolutely loved as Logan I've seen that God is so amazed loved it it's so so good. It's the words it's a snow experience. Oh absolutely. I was blown away with how down to earth a superhero movie could be and that's what I was really impressed with that had all that superhero action but it just felt so raw and gritty and it was great. So that was what I really love too. And then let's go into the documentary world I think one that I saw at Sundance a couple years back called pervert Park I don't know if you've seen that I have not it's a basically about a an RV park where a bunch of you know perfect basically sec Yeah. sexual deviants I guess you could say people have been convicted of you know all sorts of terrible things they basically can't find living anywhere else other than this RV park so there's a bunch of pedophiles you know rapists terrible Oh Jesus that have happened at this one place and but it's interesting because it kind of takes you into their world a little bit in interviews with them talks with them about you know how what their history is how you know whatever happened happened so it's kind of a it definitely doesn't give you know like an okay to what they did but it definitely humanizes it a little bit. And it kind of opened my eyes to that that world and so if anybody's looking for a nice depressing really serious documentary go ahead and go watch pervert Park, but it's it's really well made really fantastic documentary filmmaking if you ask me</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:43<br /> so and then also after that, just watch Tommy Boy, and you'll be fine.</p><p>Josh Gibson 52:46<br /> Yes. And then watch Tommy. Yeah, Tommy was</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:49<br /> asked. So Josh, where can people find you?</p><p>Josh Gibson 52:52<br /> So I'm on pretty much any social media platform. My Yeah, of course, you can find me at the website. The course website. You can even chat with me at any time down at the bottom right there if you'd like. I'm on Twitter at Josh L. Gibson. Yeah, Facebook. I mean, you just search for me, my website is Josh gibson.me as well. So if you just want to go there, you can find I think it's the bottom left. There's all my social media icons and stuff. So if anybody were to reach out,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:20<br /> if anybody needs a good 360 guide, give Josh a call. He'll help you out. So Josh, man, thank you so much for answering all of our questions, man, I really, really appreciate it.</p><p>Josh Gibson 53:30<br /> No, I it's my pleasure. I'm very, very happy to come on and is great time.</p></div><div class="fbxt-content--footer"> <a href="#"> <svg width="9" height="11" viewBox="0 0 9 11" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M0.5625 0.25C0.234375 0.25 0 0.507812 0 0.8125V1.375C0 1.70312 0.234375 1.9375 0.5625 1.9375H8.4375C8.74219 1.9375 9 1.70312 9 1.375V0.8125C9 0.507812 8.74219 0.25 8.4375 0.25H0.5625ZM2.10938 6.83594L3.65625 5.28906V10.1875C3.65625 10.5156 3.89062 10.75 4.21875 10.75H4.78125C5.08594 10.75 5.34375 10.5156 5.34375 10.1875V5.28906L6.86719 6.83594C7.10156 7.04688 7.45312 7.04688 7.66406 6.83594L8.0625 6.4375C8.27344 6.22656 8.27344 5.85156 8.0625 5.64062L4.89844 2.47656C4.66406 2.24219 4.3125 2.24219 4.10156 2.47656L0.914062 5.64062C0.703125 5.85156 0.703125 6.22656 0.914062 6.4375L1.3125 6.83594C1.52344 7.04688 1.89844 7.04688 2.10938 6.83594Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Scroll back to top</span> </a></div><div class="fbxt-modal fbxt-email-signup"><h4> Sign up to receive email 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href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/how-to-shoot-360-video/" rel="tag">how to shoot 360 video</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/josh-gibson/" rel="tag">Josh Gibson</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/youtube-360-degree-video/" rel="tag">youtube 360 degree video</a></span></footer></div></article><article id="post-160008" class="post-160008 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-film-directing-course tag-gil-bettman tag-hollywood-directing tag-udemy-filmmaking" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/gil-bettman/" rel="bookmark">BPS 404: Hollywood Directing: How to Choose the Right Lens for Your Shot with Gil Bettman</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-01-30T06:30:27+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">January 30, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/gil-bettman/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-174.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-174.jpg 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-174-300x144.jpg 300w, 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data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63713770&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>In today’s episode, I wanted to give you a sneak peek of one of the best selling filmmaking courses on Udemy right now, <strong><a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Film & Television Directing Masterclass </strong>with former guest and master film instructor <strong><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/gil-bettman-directing-action-sequence/">Gil Bettman</a>. </strong>On the show, you’ll hear a lesson on how you can AMP UP your static shots by choosing the right lenses.</p><p>Enjoy!</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63713770/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/thisismeg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy This is Meg on iTunes</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div 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12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 4:00<br /> So, today's show, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at the Hollywood directing masterclass course that we released with Gil Bettman. And it is a game changing course. And I wanted to give you one of the lessons for free so you guys could listen to it. Just see what kind of cool stuff Gil does. I mean, I mean, I've been directing for 20 years. And you know, when I watched this course and took this course, Gil gave me all sorts of ideas I just did not have before, and it's one of the best rated filmmaking courses on Udemy right now, and without any further ado, here is a lesson on how to amp up your static shots just by using lenses. And you know how much I love my lenses. So it's kind of a little masterclass on Lensman ship, as he calls it and enjoy it guys. I think you guys are gonna get a lot out of it</p><p>Gil Bettman 4:58<br /> Though different lenses. lend themselves to different kinds of shots. Okay? So if we're talking about field of vision and depth of field, all right, the one with a wide angle is you've got you can see, you know, the world the entire world. Okay, so what would be a good shot to do with a wide angle lens? A BB a big shot as part of a big master okay, but but specifically what what subject you kind of want to do any a city or even if you want to do a shot in a bathroom, you want to get the entire bed. Yeah, all right. But but that's a little atypical. But, but basically with a with a wide angle lens when you're talking about if it's big, and you want to see all of it, right? Use a wide angle lens to basically it's your establishing lens, because you see all of it. And it's all in focus. So a big room or a typically a big room or a big Stadium, right. This is this is the thing about a normal room will look the true size, not with a 50 millimeter lens, but with a with a wide angle, okay, because of the field, the field of vision property, the telephotos are good for something which is like if you if you have one thing and you want to eat you want it to fill the frame, and to be that which is like the isolette you want to isolate something in a frame, like this shot of a butterfly, okay? This is a good application of a telephoto lens, right? Because you see, only this one thing because of the narrow field of vision, right. And because of the narrow depth of field, only the butterflies in focus, everything else is soft. This is the Brooklyn Bridge with a wide angle lens. And you see all the braids and much of the Manhattan skyline behind it. Okay, so if it's big, and you want to see all of it, use the wide angle lens because of the wide angle lens is the ability to show you. Great field of vision and great depth of field. Okay, that clear? Now, you're talking about applications of lenses, in terms of in terms of perspective, okay? The way that the way that perspective changes the way that things look, with a wide angle lens, it makes objects look bigger, or more bulkier, or more bulbous more round, right. I mean, a perfect example if, if you had a beautiful Greek column, if this is the Greek column, all right of the Parthenon, and I shot it with a wide angle lens at this height with a nine five lens. Okay. What would it look like? Exactly, Angeles guy, it would be it would taper to the top, taper the bomb and be fat in the middle. Is that aesthetically pleasing? No. Because it's made what what is graceful has been made bulky and bulbous. Okay, but some things look good, bulky and bulbous. What can you think of which looks big? Good. If it's big and fat and juicy. A burger is a burger is closer to it. All right, a burger looks good. big, fat and juicy. What else besides a burger food one of the piece of food? Ice cream or an apple an apple or a tomato? Right? Or a car for some rear reason. cars look nice winner big and curvy. Kind of like girls. I don't know they have biggest thing is not right but curvy. The distortion of a car. You know the lines of a car made curvy by the distortion of the wide angle lens. This this distortion here. The extreme wide angle looks good. Okay, that's the way that perspective alters the way things look. Now with telephoto. It's the opposite. Okay with the extreme telephoto extreme long lenses. You get things look looking thinner. Okay, what looks better thinner? If you're shooting a close up on your leading lady, what was he going to use 35 no 100</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:43<br /> I can't speak more highly about this course. I mean, it's such a great course on directing, and specifically how to move the camera how to get good action sequences, how to tell a <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a> visually. It's just a It's a unique course because there is Not much of anything like this out on line. And it's so well put together and Gil is a, you know, just a amazing instructor. So I definitely advise you guys go out there and check it out, just head over to indie film hustle.com Ford slash directing 19 that's indie film hustle.com, forward slash directing 19. And that'll get you the course for 19 bucks. And normally, the course sells for 200. So definitely check it out, guys. And I wanted to let everybody know in the Los Angeles area that this is Meg is going to have its la premiere at Holly shorts, it's going to be the closing night feature film. And it's going to play at the Chinese theatre, the world famous Chinese Theater, I cannot tell you how excited I am and jealous and we're just so blessed and just so grateful that we're going to be playing at the Chinese Theater, a little movie that we made last year. And it's going to be la premiering there. It's It's such a big deal. So if you guys want tickets, just go to the show notes at indie film hustle.com forward slash 174. And you'll get links there with discount discount codes for tickets. And it's going to be playing August 19 at 8pm. And I'll be there the whole cast will be there. It's gonna be amazing. And we probably go out and get drinks afterwards. There'll be a lot of fun. So definitely check it out, guys. I hope I can see you guys there. I really appreciate all the support. Thank you so much. And as always keep that hustle going keep that dream alive. 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class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/philip-bloom/" rel="bookmark">BPS 403: Cinematic Masterclass with Philip Bloom</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-01-23T06:30:14+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">January 23, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/philip-bloom/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom.jpg 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom-300x144.jpg 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom-768x369.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom.jpg" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom.jpg 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom-300x144.jpg 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PhillipBloom-768x369.jpg 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63713465&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Today on the show we have a legend in the filmmaking blogosphere, award-winning cinematographer Philip Bloom. Philip is a world-renowned filmmaker who, for the past 10 years of his 27-year career has specialized in creating incredible cinematic images no matter what the camera. He started blogging back in the early 2000s before anyone was really doing it. I personally have been following him for years.</p><p>Philip even got an opportunity to shoot for the Jedi Master himself <a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/the-power-of-myth-star-wars-joseph-campbell/"><strong>George Lucas.</strong></a></p><p>Here’s some more info on Philip Bloom:</p><p>Some of his most iconic work was created with Canon DSLRs. As one of the biggest evangelists for their use in productions his website became the place to go to for budding filmmakers as well as experienced ones keen to embrace the new technology. His site now regularly has over 1,000,000 visitors a month.</p><p>His use of Canon to shoot part of Lucasfilms’ last movie “Red Tails” proved a huge point to the naysayers. This technology was proved very viable in large-scale productions.</p><p>He has become very well known for his in-depth video reviews of various cameras, which have helped many people in the huge decision of buying a camera. He has worked for all the major UK broadcasters, such as the BBC, ITV, C4 and Sky, as well as countless independent production companies and many others around the world including CNN, CBS, Discovery, FOX and NBC.</p><p>Independent projects are key to Philip and he splits his time between bigger projects and small independent ones. One of his most successful independent projects was “How To Start A Revolution” which won a BAFTA in 2012 and was also awarded prizes at several film festivals including Best Documentary at the 2011 Raindance festival.</p><p>If you want to learn more about Philip Bloom‘s techniques and methods I’d suggest you take a look at his new online course <strong><a href="https://www.mzed.com/courses/philip-bloom-cinematic-masterclass?tap_a=17272-420962&tap_s=184018-0b1541" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Philip Bloom’s Cinematic Masterclass</a>.</strong></p><p>Here’s some info on the course:</p><p>Join filmmaker, educator, and pioneer Philip Bloom as he embarks on his most adventurous project to date. From the wind-swept coast of Ireland to the unforgiving heat of the Mojave Desert, USA, travel with Philip as he guides you through the art and science of filmmaking, and shares his most important advice for capturing the style of cinematic images that have made him one of the world’s most beloved independent filmmakers. Available in gorgeous 4K resolution, Philip Bloom’s Cinematic Masterclass is a ten-hour journey that will educate, entertain and inspire you.</p><p>As a gift to the tribe, you can watch the first lesson for FREE.</p><p>Enjoy my conversation with Philip Bloom.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63713465/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong><a href="https://www.mzed.com/courses/philip-bloom-cinematic-masterclass?tap_a=17272-420962&tap_s=184018-0b1541" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Philip Bloom’s Cinematic Masterclass</a></strong></li><li><strong>Philip Bloom – <a href="https://main.philipbloom.net/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Work</a></strong></li><li><strong>Philip Bloom – <a href="http://philipbloom.net/blog/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Blog</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcM_6ay33BNpChknCrMCgig" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">YouTube</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div 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13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 1:34<br /> I'd like to welcome to the show Philip Bloom. Thank you, sir so much for taking the time out to to share your knowledge with the the tribe.</p><p>Philip Bloom 3:12<br /> Alex, thanks for having me.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 3:14<br /> So how did you get into this crazy business?</p><p>Philip Bloom 3:18<br /> I very a path which probably doesn't exist anymore. I it goes back to I think most times when you grow up, you don't know what to do. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I was watching a TV show. And it was about a guy who tried out different careers. And what episode was where he tried to be a news photographer. And I watched that this was this was like a knee sort of like mid 80s. And I thought that looks really cool. So I friend of my dad's new oppress geographer. And so I had a conversation with him about it. And I took photos and I was you know, a hobbyist. nothing particularly is better photos. But I thought that looks like a really interesting job. I didn't really know what to do. And then he said to me, I would not bother doing this because photography is on the way out because digital is coming in. And that's going to change everything. It's going to cheapen industry, you should get into TV news. That's where the future is. So when Yeah, why not. So I then sort of like made inquiries and contacts and tried to get in touch with somebody and eventually found somebody who knew somebody and I managed to go out with a news crew. I was about to get about 16 or 17 did that for a day and it was the best thing I'd ever done. It was so much fun. And this was back in the golden age of TV news in a way because where you are really looked after I think they did a I went out with like three man crew. We went out to the press conference for boxer. Then we had a three hour lunch and just Chinese restaurants really expensive Chinese restaurant all on the company. And I was like, Wow, this is amazing. This is the life that I think then they said, We may do something later, but probably not. That'll be it for the day. I'm like, this is a job. And by eventually, I, by the time I left school, I then got I managed to get my foot in the door into sky television, and to try and become a news cameraman. So that's kind of how I got in never wanted to be a filmmaker, and I want to be a filmmaker in the slightest. wanting to do something, wanted to find a job that could pay me to do something that was interesting. Because I really had no idea what I want to do growing up. And that was basically just sort of fell into it just found that I really enjoyed filming, and really enjoyed the the excitement of and boredom as well of news. And that kind of that's kind of where we're ready. And I did that for 17 years. Oh, wow. was what? for staff? And it was the best training anybody I think you can have when you want to become a storyteller? Because you get I got to learn how to use Git not particularly technically, because it was much simpler times it was one camera one lens, right? In two settings like a try. That's it. It was like, yeah, there's no settings in camera. It's turned it on. And now you you had a gain switch. There you go.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:26<br /> Yes. In the white balance</p><p>Philip Bloom 6:28<br /> Yeah, yeah, white balance, and of course, is black and white, if you find so you had to get it right. You knew you got it, right, because you didn't get a phone call later to tell you that you got it wrong. And that the way things worked back then. But it was brilliant was great training, I got to learn how to tell stories really quickly. Learn how to shoot efficiently, how to walk into a room and see the positions where I need to be, I knew how to learn how to figure out how to shots I needed to get really quickly. And then they asked then it gave me a chance to do long form stuff later on. And I was always traveling around the world. And they taught me how to edit. It was just a really brilliant experience. And, and I guess it's one of those things that when you get to I got really comfortable with it. And I could easily still be doing it now. But I realized that I had to leave to push myself further. And that was 11 years ago, in this way.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 7:19<br /> And then you get into more filmmaking more documentary after that.</p><p>Philip Bloom 7:24<br /> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, docu, documentaries is kind of what I was doing for the last few years of my startup anyway. Because I was one of the few cameraman, there was like 25 kehrmann that worked at the company on the news roster. And I was one of the few who edited. And so I got sent to do the interesting stories. And then it gave me the more creative stuff. And I showed a flair for doing creative stuff. And so they pushed me to more and more do that. And then so I was doing the longer form stuff, sort of like what I guess what you equate slight, 60 minutes, types you have. And that was brilliant. So that really gave me a taste for longer stuff of doing that. So that's why I went into freelancing. That's why I really wanted to still push forward with documentaries, as my main thing is still my main thing. But also try the other things which could, which you know, interested me, you know, and, and I've certainly found that trying all these different things, and still doing different types of work really helps in every aspect you're in. If you're filming narrative fiction, coming from a news documentary background is incredibly useful. Because you're, you know, you have that speed of thought. But also if you've you we can take from that fiction, though, is that aspect of planning, and, and working with others for to in a much more controlled way. And bring that into your documentary work can can have a really interesting effects. I love the way that everything that I've done in these past 11 years has really sort of jailed and work together to make everything hopefully better.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:03<br /> Now you were at what point in your career did you decide, hey, I'm gonna start blogging. I'm gonna open up a YouTube show, YouTube channel, you're one of the first guys in the in the industry in the film industry at all that was kind of figuring that out. How did you start this blog and what made you want to start one?</p><p>Philip Bloom 9:23<br /> So I think the website started initially, this is in 2006, just as a place for my showreel because nobody, because prior to this, people were just and still what at this time we're sending out DVDs,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:40<br /> Sure CD ROM, or VHS,</p><p>Philip Bloom 9:42<br /> Or VHS is and nobody the effort it takes for somebody to open it up and put it in a machine and play it. It means they're not going to watch it. And I just thought if I could just send them a link over this thing called email, the employee seems to start having these days and it's When basically it was just seemed like the most obvious way of doing things. And that's basically started it. And then about a year later, I started up the blog. And the blog was really was just a simple way of me sharing my experiences using something called 35 millimeter adapters, which is what we use before data loss as a way of tricking the smaller sensor cameras into having essentially 35 millimeter field of view and aesthetic and everything and it was really clunky. system. Yeah, remember, and the only way you could find out information about these really was by going through all of these forums, the dv x users and the DB info and stuff like that. And it was going through countless threads. And I thought, yeah, I'm just gonna just have a place where I can just share my my experience with it and see, I can hopefully help people out if they think you're going down this path, and I can see me trying out all this, all these gears, all these different adapters that I'm buying, trying to get the most filmic look at it's simply my it sounds a bit trite, but it is true, I did actually just want to give a little bit back because I was trained by such brilliant cameraman back in my news days. And I just wanted to just to have, you know, I was taught I was educated on the job and stuff like that. And I could only see the way things were going, that that wasn't happening anymore. And people were sort of floundering. So I just wanted to share my experiences. And so hopefully people could learn a little bit from what I was doing. And that's kind of really basically what it started out as just simply just me giving a little bit back.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:40<br /> And then it grew and grew and grew till it's the juggernaut that it is today. And you and your YouTube, and when did you start your YouTube channel?</p><p>Philip Bloom 11:48<br /> Um, you eager to find out? I mean, it started it a long time ago. I can't remember how long ago, but I mean, it must be about nine,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:58<br /> At least like 2000 2010 2008, something like that.</p><p>Philip Bloom 12:01<br /> Oh, well, but yeah, before then yeah, so I didn't really do much with it. It was just a place of putting up some stuff. And, and really, I have to say, I mean, Vimeo was kind of my main place, there was exposure, and then Vimeo exposure and disappeared. And maybe I used to use that as a place to put my work up to be seen because it's a clean platform. YouTube always struck me as a very noisy environment. Yep. And I've actually grown to love YouTube for what it is I've embraced it for what it is. And it took me quite a few years to understand what needs to be done with it. And I've never really embraced it in the full way that many have. Because I think to truly do that. It's a full time job. That hands on YouTube for me. So it's just, I put up stuff every now and then. But it's and i'm not i'm not a snob at all about these things. And you see this online, when you talk about these things. People say oh, no, I don't put myself on YouTube, the quality of people who watch it out, and we're near as good as quality people who watch it on Vimeo, unlike, right, so you want to pick and choose your audience where you're in the wrong business. If you want me to watch it, surely as many people watch as possible, there's no and YouTube is for me, it's now grown bigger to me than than Vimeo. I still use Vimeo, initially put my stuff up. And then when I'm happy with it, I will then put it up onto YouTube. Because as you know, you can't change the video on YouTube, you have to let it go. And it's not like I do daily vlogs or anything. It's when I put stuff up on YouTube, it's generally quite a crafted piece that I put up there. So it takes me a while to make it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 13:46<br /> So when you approach a film or a series, how do you approach How do you kind of like creatively go after a new job?</p><p>Philip Bloom 13:58<br /> It is that's a tricky one. Because it really depends on the type of work there is so varied and degenerate the way that work. I'm lucky enough to be in a position now where I don't have to actually knock on doors are such the fine work. I still make new contacts and do things like that just the normal way. But I don't send my my I don't try and contact people looking for ways I get people contacting me with job offers and ideas. And if it's something that interests me, then I will, then I'll go and work with that. And it really depends on what the job is. It can be it's such a different process, you know, whether it's set, whether it's working on a documentary series, or doing a corporate or branded content, for example, I mean, all of these things have such different processes. Obviously, there's some parts of it which are of a similar, which is I think the common ground and all of it would be filming. Because on everything that I do, I'll always be filming something But other stuff I may not be editing, I may not be doing any pre production it really depends on on type of thing that I do.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:08<br /> Now you should a lot on location. Do you have any tips on lighting with natural light?</p><p>Philip Bloom 15:19<br /> Yeah, lighting, natural lighting is a wonderful thing. It's an unpredictable uncontrollable thing frequently. And so whilst working with what there is, is a nice quick way of doing things, you can't use it for everything, it's the best thing I can suggest when when you're working with available, I mean, I would always suggest having your own lights as well, to give it a try and do talking heads and interviews in a room trying to do that on just available light or natural light. Unless you've got continuous gray cloud outside or anything like that, it's just gonna be a nightmare. But it is a case of working with what's there don't fight it, embrace the light work find a location or room with a background that works with the windows what there is when you walk into a room that has lights on, turn them off, and then see what the lights like and then turn the back on again if you want. So it's a case of just don't, don't turn the camera on until you've you've figured out where the light is and how you can harness it. And I think too many people don't look at where the light is, before they choose their background first and then they go about the light the two should be hand in hand especially if you're going to be working with natural light you need to make make it work together very well.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:47<br /> It's not it's in other words you kind of roll with the punches when it comes to natural light as opposed to trying to control it or manipulate it too much I mean you can control manipulate it to a certain extent but it's ever changing so it's kind of like you know wrestling a wet cat.</p><p>Philip Bloom 17:01<br /> Yeah, it just depends on what it is you're trying to film if you're just trying to grab some shots here and there it's you know, you can work with it and we know lighting is not turning up the ISO and your camera as you know, is a completely different thing. Right horrendous thing some people actually do think that is what lighting is no, we still need to lighting so you know creates the really creates everything and I love natural light. But when I when the natural light doesn't work for me, which is can easily be you know 75% of the time, that's when you start adding lights yourself, but in the most naturalistic way possible for me, it's all about finding the position where you would like to be that looks like it's a motivated lightsource like it could be the window and that's what I could be doing I could literally just be putting up a light to add to the window light to take it over to add a little bit more to it to give a bit more sparkle casing changes. So I think that's kind of what you need to do with it and then there's lots of apps and things out there which you can use to see you know if you want to scout locations beforehand to see where the sun will be the light will be and how that will affect things. But most of the time if you're just doing things quickly you just have to work with it and just be quick is my best advice if you are going to work with natural light don't faff around and start being undecided about what to do You just have to just go with it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:27<br /> Now I know because I actually watched your your Skywalker Ranch video that you did years ago which was stunning and for any Star Wars fan that is Mecca so I watched that I found that online I was like wow and then you were shooting it with a DSLR if I'm not mistaken right</p><p>Philip Bloom 18:46<br /> Yeah, yeah, so that was a that was an interesting time so that was back in 2009 and they contacted minutes is a fun it's a nice <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a> because I'm a huge Star Wars fan have been up since I saw the first Star Wars 77 and they emailed me and I didn't reply so Lucasfilm emailed me and I didn't reply because I'm terrible with emails and in I have a PA now and it makes things better but now she does my work email she doesn't do my personal emails and I'm still rapid with my personal emails. But I still was still bad then and I missed it and then they called me and I did I'm rubbish with voicemails terrible with voicemails. I'll be like, you know, you have 60 new voicemail right got it. Me. But actually, the did play it back. I played one back about a day after it was left and it was producer Rick McCallum said dropped to an email last week and tried to avoid it strange that we've not heard about. from you. I think basically, anybody never nobody ignores and I wasn't ignoring I'm just rubbish.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:07<br /> No one ever ignores an email from George Lucas.</p><p>Philip Bloom 20:10<br /> I mainly call them back and apologize. And they just said that they, they want to know what this can find the marks who's about if it's any good. They have second world war movie that they're currently shooting called Red Tails. And they've got some other plans for other stuff that they just want to just don't know what the quality is like. They've got one, they messed around with it, but they're not they don't really know much about it. So could I come over to Skywalker Ranch for maybe a few days? And give them some advice? And I was like, yeah,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:43<br /> Sure what actually,</p><p>Philip Bloom 20:44<br /> I was actually I was booked on a job. Oh, yeah, I was booked on a job to do short notice. It was like, can you come out next week? I was booked for like three weeks. And so I found out the production manager at the job I was on and gave a sob story of like, you know, how important Star Wars was to my life. And then eventually got to the bit that I said, and they've asked me to come over there next week to work with them. And she said to me, why don't you tell me that the beginning 10 minutes ago? Yeah, that's fine. Understand totally, no problem. I'll let you I'll let you off the job. And yeah, so I went out there. And I shot with it around the ranch, which was I didn't have long today at all. And they just wanted to see it didn't want me to shoot any test charts or anything like that. They weren't interested in that they wanted to see what it looked like projected. So I just shot some stuff around the ranch. And I went into their, into the the main house into the screening room. And it was ahead of experience because it was McCallum there. And George Lucas is he's visiting director friend Quentin Tarantino's legendary sound designer and editor Ben Ben burrs there. So they go into this and</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:06<br /> What then then just Dennis Miranda show up.</p><p>Philip Bloom 22:09<br /> He was he wasn't that I cut the stuff on my laptop in the room. And when it looks are I bit noisy bit of aliasing there bit more. Right? It's all right. God. And I didn't know they were going to screen it on the big screen. So I wanted to get in there. And I had is one of the things I would like to have seen on the big screen before anybody else saw it, just to check it. So the first time I ever saw canon five, the Mk two subjected was at that point. And it looked beautiful looks so much better than did it on the computer, through their their magical idea what amazing project that I had it looked fantastic. And they loved it. So it was a hell of an experience.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:50<br /> And then then you get to work a little bit on Red Tails.</p><p>Philip Bloom 22:53<br /> Yeah, so I did some shoots did some stuff for them up at in Sonoma a couple of weeks. And then in Prague A few months later as well. So I did about three weeks work on the on the movie. And it was that was it was crazy, because that was me with my little ID mark two. And I also had a 1d Mark four as well, that have a seven day as well, maybe a seven day cop member, I think I did had a 70 modified to PL as well as at the three cameras to switch between. And they they were shooting on Sony f 35. So big beasts, and you know, proper cinema crew. And sure it looks like it's just a monster. So you know that I would be there to get an angle they hadn't thought of because I was so nimble and able to just slot it and find things with my eye what I did. And I was able to be set up and ready within like two minutes. guys were like 45 minutes to an hour just to repo each position. Of course. That was it was it was fun. It was it's a fun drinking game watching the movie. Boy, I can't do it because I would kill myself. There's 150 shots of my film.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 24:11<br /> Yeah, that's insane.</p><p>Philip Bloom 24:12<br /> I know. I know every single one of the shots when it comes on. And of course they've graded it beautifully. You couldn't tell. But it's not. It's not for what people initially thought of. Oh, you must be using it for like cockpit cams and stuff like that, like, because they're not really the cockpits they're obviously it's a stage and they're on. They're on gimballed and there's a techno crane and I'm sure they're so my camera was not forgetting those really like small space type stuff. It was really just I was the small camera to find small spaces and get angles that they couldn't or hadn't thought off beforehand.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 24:48<br /> Now you would you agree that they found you basic did they find you because of your blog? And because you work with one kind of talking about DSLRs a lot?</p><p>Philip Bloom 24:57<br /> Yeah, I think I mean without question who It was the when the five D came along, I didn't embrace it straightaway. The Fray did reverie, of course in November 2008. And I had played with I bought the Nikon D 90 a month before that hated it. I was so excited by the concept of DSLR, I was having a large sensor to better shoot video, but the quality of the nicotine, it was so bad. And then I saw the five D Mark two and when that looks cool, but I have no Canvas, and it only shoots 30 P and I need to shoot 25 p 24. p. So that gets me but I did get to try it for the first time in May. And then realized you could you can get past that the lens limitations and also the fact that there was no manual control by using old Nikon glass with an adapter and and also found a way of converting the set up to 25 p to make it look okay. And so yeah, so I was I you know, once I did, once I figure that out, I really just loved it. And I think that's kind of you know, a lot of people saw my stuff and so I was doing and picked up from there.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 26:07<br /> Now can you because I have I have a love hate relationship with DSLRs because I've upgraded I've graded probably about five features that were shot on the DSLR and they've never shot properly. If you shoot the DSLR properly, like you did on Red Tails. I'm sure it looks and I saw the movie. It looks great. Yeah, but most people don't know how to shoot DSLRs properly gets too grainy, like one movie I had was like in the movie in the woods at night with no light. And they're like, hey, why is there so much grain? I'm like, Guys, you know, it's you know, we have we it's not it's it just couldn't work. So What tips do you have with a shooting DSLR now that DSLR is also that you shot red cells which are much different than they are now with the ACS two that can literally look into into the darkness of of hell, and they clean but what what what kind of tips do you have when shooting DSLRs for filmmakers who want to shoot a feature or a short and try to get the most out of that camera.</p><p>Philip Bloom 27:09<br /> It's funny that has been quite a few years now since they first came out and the yet the image quality has come on enormously. But the key the key core principles we need to stick to much the same. You need to if you're going to use it use a handheld need to have it on some some sort of rig just to stabilize a little bit because unless you have one you know one of these five axes stabilized sensors, then that's going to help you as well. But that's one of the first things is just make sure if you are going to shoot handheld Just be aware of the terrible issues we can have a rolling shutter which is a huge giveaway for DSLRs is that horrible micro vibrations that we can really see not just jello, not just like rolling shutter he said that you know that you don't wish it really looked like oh my god like somebody's wobbly much caffeine. Sure while they're holding the camera. So be careful that you know using is lens Miss stabilized lens if you haven't got that. But it's know what your camera performs best out with its ISOs. And yes, many of the cameras that you know the a seven s two, you can push your camera much higher, but you still need to expose correctly. So that's one of the things that people aren't doing right. And I do not recommend shooting vlog format on any of the DS laws with eight bit codecs, which is pretty much all of them except the GH five leave and then it's it's still a little bit challenging. It's a it's a hell of a codec, the GH five blog, it's it's, it's really hard to grade. So I would I would suggest No, no, no, no how far you can push your ISO, and then only use it for extreme purposes. It's not a replacement for lighting. It's a way of hopefully being able to film in environments that you couldn't normally film in. That's basically what their solarz were excited to me about was was apart from the size and the optics was just this just I think it was the ability to push that low light up a little bit like that. And I think when the SMS two came out of there, seven s came out initially, it wasn't the fact that I could film in moonlight. It was the fact that I could film in street light but not wide open, which is what too many people are still doing when choosing on DSLRs. That's the other tip is just because you've got an F 1.4 lens doesn't mean you should shoot at F one point for every single shot, right. It's incredibly hard to keep focus. We do have some cameras coming out now with pretty decent autofocus. But it's still not necessarily the way to go. That's a different thing. I would use that for certain things like interviews and stuff like that other than that, it's being sensible with it being sensible. So I would say the key things is going to be Don't be shooting wide open. Keep your camera stable if you can, as much as possible, don't push your ISO too far and don't fall into temptation of shooting log unless you absolutely have to proper video cameras with 10 bit codecs or shoot log fantastic. But eight bit compressed codecs, whether it's a drone, or DSLR, it's it's a nightmare. And you spend so much time in post just trying to hide all the problems, which if you hadn't done that in the first place you wouldn't be doing</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:31<br /> Now, one thing I really do like about your your work is that you are it's Lisa seems from your blog and from your your YouTube channel that you are not married to any one camera. You're not like, I'm only the Canon guy. I'm only a Blackmagic. I'm only a Nikon guy. I'm only an Erica, you. You use multiple cameras, depending on your job. Can you can you suggest or show people how or advice on how you could pick the right camera for the right job, which I think it's so, so important, because I think sometimes it's just trying to use a hammer to screw in a lightbulb. It's like just hammer it. There are other tools.</p><p>Philip Bloom 31:13<br /> Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. Back in the candidates, I was approached to be one of their ambassadors. And I said no, because I wanted to, I didn't want to be tied to any format. I had an independent voice. I didn't want to lose that. And also didn't want to lose out on the fact that I you know, other people gonna make cool cameras in their phone. I don't want to be like, Oh, no, I can't use this because I'm signed in, signed up with these guys. And so yeah, I'm, and I'm always gonna be like this because I, I'm very fickle, and I will fall in love with a camera, and then something else will come along and turn my head and go, Oh, no, use this now. And, and so yeah, I mean, when it comes to life photography, I mean cameras, Pentax and Fuji cameras. And, and so but when it comes to video, I my main video cameras or Sony, but I also have canon ones as well. And I have lots of different types of of them and and I guess I am lucky that I can be in that position of saying the right tool for the right job. And obviously, if you you've already got one camera, then you're going to be a little bit stuck and kind of that's your your camera for the job. But if it's if it's important, then I would certainly try and rent it or find somebody who's got something that would be more appropriate for your job. Because you're right, it's it's, you see people using totally the wrong cameras, when it could be something as simple as you can have a chocolate bar, so they try to use a Blackmagic Ursa mini for wedding videos and like you crazy. We try to do Yeah, but I'm sure we can shoot RAW, raw, like why you should enjoy in the first place for a wedding video. And the camera they can't put over 800 ISO and a wedding video with no control of your lighting and probably no lights. Sure, crazy itself nice and nice to write. You know, and so somebody who's Oh, I want to do you know, some visual effects and that it's all going to be green screen and stuff like that. I'm shooting on an 87x. And I'll be like, why that's the wrong camera for you for doing this. Right, you should get yourself Blackmagic submitty because that shoots raw and that shoots 10 bit progress. And that's going to be much better for you and it's still pretty cheap. And you're already in his lip. It's already late because it has to be because in a studio and green screen, so they have to worry about the fact that you can't push your ISO. Right. So I mean that you know that's that's the best thing about like the black magics is is working in lit controlled locations. They do really well with that. And then we have to push it too far. Because they're the cheapest cameras I know of that have a terrific inbuilt codec or Pro. It's gorgeous hand roll if you need it. You know having to deal with all of these nasty compressed v frame codecs all the time eight bit ones when you get committed to shoot straight pro rated like Oh, no transcoding. Oh, my this system works with it. And I can grade it, it doesn't fall apart. Wow. Fantastic. So that's kind of what you need to look at is what but if you know it's safe, you don't have to Tamar, that it's a bit harder. I mean, I interesting. I read on reading Facebook today and a dp guy I know. And he was asking about time lapse. He's got a red, epic W and he's complaining about the fact that the time lapse ability of the camera is basically lacking in that you can't do more than one frame a second and say currently long exposures right tool for the right job. This is a 70,000 whatever it is dollar camera, right? Just get a $2,000 DSLR that's going to shoot RAW, shoot long exposure, shoot everything you wanted to do the right job and doesn't doesn't tie up your 70 or 1000 Dollar camera. There's a time lapse. So</p><p>Alex Ferrari 35:03<br /> Yeah, I think yeah, I think a lot of times filmmakers DPS, they spend 70 grand on a camera and they wanted to do everything and be perfect for everything. And a lot of times you, right, you, you have that ability in your work has shown that you could just like, you know what I yes, I have a $70,000 camera, but, you know, it's like I have a Porsche, but I'm not going to drive to the supermarket with a Porsche where I could easily either just walk or, or or drive my Prius, you know, it's just the right tool for the right job. kind of thing. Yeah.</p><p>Philip Bloom 35:33<br /> Yeah. I suppose if you have spent 70,000, you kind of insistent on the fact that oh, my God, I'm going to get every single last pennies worth out of this camera. Right. But, you know, I said this in, in many times. And I've also got this policy now of not wanting to, I'm never going to buy a camera over $10,000 again. And I've done that like three times now. Yes, before. And now it's just, there's loads of great cameras sub 10,000. Not so much. And if you need anything more than just rent it because it's just not worth it. Because they get cheated, they get superseded so quickly these days. And it's just not really worth spending all that money, especially in a system that you could end up changing in a read requires so many bits and pieces, and maybe then you'll switch to area who knows. But it's I just think there's so many great cameras out there for for the sub that just just stick with that. Really, unless you're super rich because I bought a Sony f 35. And with allowes Last time, I bought a really expensive camera. And I loved it, it was amazing. And then the FS seven came out, and it did everything I needed it to do for documentaries without me worrying about my hugely expensive camera being potentially damaged and stuff like that. So I found that it was sitting on the shelf for like six months hadn't really been touched and the FSM was being used all the time. And so I sold it and that was when I decided this is silly I should now you know I'm not going to buy the expensive camera again. So because the FS seven did everything I needed to do it didn't shoot RAW easily. Didn't matter because I didn't need to shoot RAW right right. Yeah, the rifle</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:17<br /> Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of the Blackmagic I shot my feature on the 2.5k Cinema Yeah, and the pocket is arguably some of the most beautiful images come out of that little camera you know again right tool for the right job you know if I'm going to go shoot an IMAX This is not the tool for you. But if you're creating this kind of almost Super 16 style film look out of the box that that little pocket camera is amazing and the Ursa Mini is is one of the most underrated I think cameras out there because it's not as sexy as the red or the Alexa a man it has a bite Would you agree?</p><p>Philip Bloom 37:54<br /> Yeah, I haven't shot anything properly myself with the 4.6 Ursa mini I really liked what I go with it though I had definitely had issues with as a from a documentary background with the fact the buy in is available light I will I knew I was going to come a Cropper and there are some quirks here and there which slow me down but I thought for the money the image was fantastic and I've always found it disappointing that they well they went with originally with the the Ursa which was the craziest camera Oh the</p><p>Alex Ferrari 38:27<br /> The first one was hard</p><p>Philip Bloom 38:28<br /> Yeah That was funny. I mean I went to a trade show Yes. And I remember the first time I picked it up I just you know in front of them that they've let me pick it up and I went holy crap anyway yeah we don't really consider this a handheld camera I like what kind of world do you live in? What is that he was he was a camera should be anything he shouldn't we consider this a tripod camera might blind me Sure studio camera is a tripod camera but this is crazy sure, but I just wish that develops the pocket camera but I wish that made no version of that because that really is the I think is my favorite camera that I like bought from them yes in size and form I had loads of issues while but what it gave you was astonishing in the package</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:22<br /> I wish they would do 4k like if they could do 4k in that little camera with raw in progress and handle the damn battery issue it's just</p><p>Philip Bloom 39:29<br /> Yes</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:30<br /> Just do something better with the battery if the plug in a juice box or something like that now whenever the juice box it will run six seven hours but still it's like a little bit more bulky but God that little camera is good and the Micro Four Thirds opens you up to so much glass especially vintage glass that I'm a big vintage glass guy and it's it really is gorgeous It is wonderful camera.</p><p>Philip Bloom 39:53<br /> Yeah, it's just a shame that they didn't really know they just seem to just forgot this has gotten battered and they have their micro camera setup. I call it this is not the same, it's not the same thing. It's so I don't know if then they'll ever go back to that the SMD pro looks I have never played with it it looks like a soldier many of the operational issues they had with the previous one so</p><p>Alex Ferrari 40:14<br /> They have solved that I shot a shot a series with it and I shot with the new one and the old one. And they both work like champs but the brand new one that they just released the time code on the on the side and everything it's solved. It's a tank now it really is a tank and it's you'd like you're right if you push it a little too. It's not. I always I did a test between the Aerie Alexa and the end the Ursa Mini, and I shot them down the middle. And when you shoot them down the middle, man, yeah, it's pretty damn close. It's definitely not you can tell it's not worth spending 80 grand or whatever the Alexa cost now, comparatively, all down the mirror, you just start seeing where the Alexa is worth it. When you start pushing her. When you start pushing on the on the darks and the highlights get clipped a little bit. So if you go a little bit up or down is when you start getting but if you should have done the middle of it. best bang for your buck.</p><p>Philip Bloom 41:07<br /> But let me ask you, though, if you were given, somebody said I'm going to swap out your Ursus for aerial axes for free. You'd go Yeah, right. Of course you would. We'll work because they're amazing. But you're right it's unless I dated people I know who own a Lexus smart bought a Lexus, our DPS who read them to the production's share first. So that's those are people who who should be buying a Lexus the rest of us should be renting them in. absolutely need them.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 41:42<br /> Absolutely. Now, do you have any advice on how you test a new camera which I know a lot of filmmakers get their cameras and they really don't know how to push it or test it or you know, put it through the through the wringer a little bit to see if it's even worth it.</p><p>Philip Bloom 41:55<br /> Yeah, so me It totally is totally real world. It's it taking out of other kind of other working studios as such I do work in doors and things like that, but that working studio so I want to see how it works with unpredictable lighting. I want to see how it operates as a camera is how slow is to figure out I think the last time I tested was the Canon c 200. And I kind of I actually really liked it it's a bit of a strange quirky camera in that it has a terrific inbuilt inbuilt feature called 12 bit raw internally and yet the if you can't do roll then you have to do an eight bit right 14 okay that which is so bizarre to have no middle ground I mean we all know it's a cannon protecting its other cameras issue right but it's but other than that it's actually really nice image and a really nice camera and for me I just wanted to see the things which that it was a selling point really which was the the role the autofocus and just what the eight bit codec was like so those are kind of the headline features I was looking at to see what they're like and this like when I'm getting our hands on the the ETA one from Panasonic what I want to see is what this July so is going to like what sort of noise levels Am I getting because the main selling point is that you can shoot in low light conditions by switching to different the higher native setting so want to see what that's like there's kind of I look at the headline features of the camera and go Okay, I need to see what this actually is like and then as well do the everyday the bread and butter type stuff to see how it actually works for real use because obviously you need to if it may well have a really cool feature but if it doesn't operate the camera well just generally then it's it's a bit pointless. And it takes me back to when I saw the was when the Sony A seven s came out and it was all about all about how amazing the low light was. And they released a video and it was I watched it and I was like Okay, it looks nice. It's nicely shot and it was like fishermen in Scotland or something and it was all shot high ISO and it showed you a couple of exactly what it was six</p><p>Alex Ferrari 44:19<br /> Or something like that</p><p>Philip Bloom 44:20<br /> Even though like nighttime it looked like daytime or something right and which was fine but because it it was like that all the way through I had no sense of any of what it was doing. And so I got the camera on loan from them just before it was released and went Alright, I'm gonna take this down down to Brighton and in south of England and then just really just see what this is like and so I did a video and I shot it where I want did I this is what it looks like to the eye which is like 100 ISO and then I shot it at 25,600 ISO which did turn it into like daylight is having this Friends having this ability to do this transition show, this is what I see. And this is what this shows. And that's I mean that's kind of a way to sell the cameras ability because he saw straight away that was like, ah, I now I get it I get what, how amazing this is because I didn't get it before because everything was just brought everything just looked okay look fine. So it's, that's kind of what I when I'm looking at cameras that's kind of I just want to see what makes this special.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:28<br /> We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Now what are three of your go to lenses? If you're on a desert island? I know it's like picking your children</p><p>Philip Bloom 45:50<br /> That question you know religion say one actually one's easier, one's easier and always You didn't tell me what size sensor which sensor we're talking here?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:58<br /> Let's say full frame.</p><p>Philip Bloom 46:00<br /> Okay, all right, then. That's easier. So I would say a 15 millimeter is my first lens without question. Because as long as it's the relative field of view of what we see our eyes so I do love that standard field of view and I can show you pretty much everything on that. And then it gets really tricky because my favorite walk around lens is a 35 mil</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:25<br /> Which was brand?</p><p>Philip Bloom 46:29<br /> And you know I don't really have any you to my focal lengths or brands?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:35<br /> Brands brand brands like like Canon Nightcore</p><p>Philip Bloom 46:40<br /> This is getting really hard. So if you you know if you want the really beautiful sharp images and the Sigma art lens is a fantastic</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:53<br /> Amazing</p><p>Philip Bloom 46:53<br /> If you want, they are incredibly, but if you want some a little bit more character than sure some of the older knickers are always good for that sort of thing. Nice and cheap.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:07<br /> Do you use a lot of Do you use a lot of vintage glass? Or do you ever play with it</p><p>Philip Bloom 47:11<br /> Occasionally, occasionally, not as much as I used to. I used to these days I tend to use a lot more detailed, sharper lenses. But I still I still do you know when I'm doing any lens whacking freelancing or using my old glass and a lot more for stills I do for stills as well. But for videos, probably less so. But I don't really always a horrible question to ask because I just I love long telephoto is as well.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:43<br /> Sure it's the right tool for the right job. I know it's like it's a it's a tough question. If someone asked me I have a couple of lenses that I go to all the time. But in there's a couple of fun ones that I I play with like a</p><p>Philip Bloom 47:58<br /> Hand and got a great one that I've recently bought 70 to 300 Yes, it's not a standard constant aperture. It's not their white one. It's their their non L series one but it's new ish like last year and it's not that expensive. It's got crazy fast autofocus for doing stills. And build quality is great. It's light and the optics are great. It gives you a huge range so 70 to 300</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:24<br /> What's the How fast is it 35256 I think okay, so it's outdoor soccer but</p><p>Philip Bloom 48:33<br /> Yeah, it's an outdoor lens but you know if you if you want a lens which is a you can limit me to three it's really cheap with a long big long zoom that's going to cover a big range and I still have a fast 50 mil for my primes then wide angles I love my big wide angles as well but you know my think my biggest wide angle I've got that is not fisheye is 10 mil which is ridiculous that's avoid lander</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:56<br /> So you haven't avoid it.</p><p>Philip Bloom 48:58<br /> It's It's It's boy let them make amazing glass.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:02<br /> They do.</p><p>Philip Bloom 49:03<br /> Well that 10 mil is like I bring it with and I put it on and I take a couple of shots with it. I think I've shot video with it twice maybe briefly. sure if it's too wide, or it's just ridiculous. It's it's an effect lens. So my favorite actual why my favorite focal length in wide is actually around 24 2024 mil around. Yeah, I do like wider than that. But it's you know, it's you can just find myself a little bit too it'd be a little bit too wide. So 2024 is a good sort of middle ground like sigma record rate 24 mil point for that make a 20 mil as well.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:44<br /> They're 18 to 35 is amazing.</p><p>Philip Bloom 49:46<br /> There aren't lens. Yeah, if you've got for crop sensors that it at 35 is fantastic. Yeah. And I and I if you're 20 that gives you your 24 to 2474 frame equivalent, so it's a great lens</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:59<br /> Now If If you want to talk about why my favorite Why'd I have is the canoptek 5.7 micro four thirds, but it doesn't. It doesn't fisheye. That's impressive. It's the it's the Kubrick lens. It's what he shot is the big brother of that is the 9.8 which is for 35 that one is for 16 so I use it with a pocket and with a pocket it just it's amazing. But it doesn't fisheye so if you remember the Sheen's from the shining in the yeah that's all shot with the Coptic as well as the the right before the rape scene and Clockwork Orange that was shot with the Coptic it's one of his It was one of his go to lenses in his in the series, but it's gorgeous. It's such a gorgeous lens. So we're geeking out.</p><p>Philip Bloom 50:50<br /> On I mean, I do love my wide angles, and Zeno bought the 10 stuff like that, but um, yeah, sort of like a 1635 zoom is always a good a good, yes. You know, it's one of the things that people ask for advice. And they say what three lenses should I buy? My advice tends to be a call first question is how much money you got? No, point giving them any advice? Because it's such a you know, it's it's an impossible question to answer. And then</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:15<br /> There's the end lenses and what kind of what camera? Are you going to be using it on? Or what are you going to do a shooting film or video? I mean, or photo or motion? It's Yeah, it's, it's a very big question has many multiple answers. Now, do you have any tips? Well, good.</p><p>Philip Bloom 51:29<br /> Yeah, I just I mean, just with the five D are just in its it hasn't really changed in five days, simply, you have the three, the three zooms, you're 1635 24 7070 to 200, that covers everything. And then you have a fast prime for everything else d 51.4. And that's kind of what you need to go. But that's 1000s. You know, it's if you're shooting documentaries, you kind of want that flexibility. If you're shooting features and narrative type stuff, then you can shoot on on primes. And not is that the joy of a zoom is the speed which you need when you're shooting documentary. You don't have to worry about that, then you can you can go with cheaper, more vintage primes. So it's a massive question.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:12<br /> That's a whole podcast in itself. Yeah. Now let's talk a little bit about your masterclass, you nuke a new course that you put together for m Zed? Yeah. Can you talk about what the course is about? And what students can expect in the class?</p><p>Philip Bloom 52:25<br /> Yeah, it's, um, I would say it's pretty much my 27 years of experience and knowledge as much as possible, just distilled into the facts of what it's like nine episodes, 131 and eight main episodes, like runs like nine and a half hours or so. And it's, I just wanted initially, m Zed asked me to do something about drones. And I went, yeah, cool. I don't that's gonna be, there's no way I can possibly feel much more than, you know, a couple of hours just on that. And so then I made the mistake of suggesting What if we did it about everything, everything that I do every type of filming styles I do. And then when Yeah, cool. And so then I realized just what I was letting myself in for, because I started breaking it down twice, I should have done that before I suggested it to them. Initially, it was going to be a six hour course. And by the time I started editing, that guide is going to be a lot longer than six hours, because I knew that when I was filming it, that it was going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Because once you start talking about a subject, you realize you need to go down a path. So when I was breaking it down in pre production, and what we needed to do and figure out which episodes, what topics we should cover. That was kind of you know, where I realized, you know, it was a very good thing to actually make discipline wise, because it did require a lot of people duction. Otherwise, it just was not going to be a practical thing to shoot because it's sure enough as it was. And so I went through the topics that I really wanted to cover. The first one is the first episode is quite dull in in respect, because it's just me in my kitchen, but it's me explaining all of the stuff you actually do need to understand before you go out and shoot, which is all the technical stuff, a little bit of history as to why we're using these cameras and some of the flaws, the problems we can have with them. So it's going through everything you needed to know squeezed into like an hour and 20 minutes and then I went out and then I realized the next episode was okay, now I've got all that stuff out of the way. And I can just focus on being creative. And then it was never really competition is one of the things that's been very natural to me. And I've always been asked how can I improve my composition? And that always, well, you can always read <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/resources/#books">books</a> and to understand how what you're looking for competition. But then you need to work then you need to experiment and then you need to watch movies and TV shows and see how they do things and see what you like and and So that's kind of why this the first episode. So the second episode was all about showing what different lenses do and showing how cool a long telephoto can be on a subject and bringing a background closer to a person and the effect it can have compared to say, a standard lens and a wide angle lens. And then showing people how to move the camera when not to move the camera showing all these toys that can distract you when to use them. I mean, it was just so much in this course. And, and I think it's one of the things that I can look at the the list of the topics, the only really explains half of what you're learning, or did not even that from just what it is. So like, people will say, oh, there's no episode on lighting. I'm like, Well, no, because lighting is in every single every episode. Same with sound she found in every episode. I didn't want to do one because it's all filmed on location. I tackle things real world, much like I've always, I always want to do my reviews. And it's like an extension of that I wanted to show Okay, so I'm gonna do this episodes about interviews. So this is how you deal with getting to location and you know, you don't have the right room, you got to work with the light. One of the issues with the lights was the problems with the sound we have here. What can our background be, and it was really trying to take things as realistically as possible. And unless you're having real problems that I had to solve during the actual shoot, and showing them how I would deal with it. So that was kind of what I was trying to get with it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 56:34<br /> Well, I'm excited to to watch it myself. And I will definitely put all the information in the show notes for this episode for everyone to take a look at now. I have a few few more questions if you have some time. Sure. Yeah, sure. you've traveled pretty much all over the planet at this point in your career. Do you have any travel hacks for filmmakers? In what respect in their words of traveling, packing, getting things through? Oh, I mean, like you know, getting cheaper deals or even just even be able to pack all your gear what gear to bring with don't overpack. Yeah, everything. Like there's a bunch of stuff. Any any tips at all? Because I know Yeah, in today's world traveling, yeah, traveling with a bunch of gear and keeping it safe. And you're walking around with 20,000 bucks in your backpack? You know, it's like, it's pretty rough.</p><p>Philip Bloom 57:26<br /> It's the worst thing about my job by far is the traveling. It's not the it's not that it's the traveling bit itself. It's not being in other places. That's the coolest bit. Sure. It's the getting there is the worst bet it is. And it's the most stressful thing is packing and figuring out what you need your weight allowances in whenever I'm booked on jobs. And I need to look up flight routes and see who flies there. Because I know which airlines have the better baggage policies. You're you're lucky you live in the states and you think you have bad baggage policies that you do not. You also write even your worst baggage allowance part of the policy with an airline is amazing compared to what we have to deal with here. There's like two airlines that fly out that the UK airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic who charge you per bag, everybody else charges you per kilo. Ah, so that is where things start getting crazy expensive. So I think the most I've ever spent on excess baggage, probably about three and a half 1000 pounds each way.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 58:43<br /> Three and a half 1000 pounds.</p><p>Philip Bloom 58:45<br /> Yeah. And that was it was a great as a job in in Japan. And the client had insisted on flying via Amsterdam with KLM KLM charge per kilo. And I told them, this is expensive, and they didn't listen to me and then they had to pay. And so you choose the airlines for reason. You it's worth if you're flying entirely in the USA. So if I fly to the US, you get like two bags. There's your minimum allowance. But if you fly anywhere else from from London, you'd get one bag. So I guess you guys have just managed to negotiate a better thing and</p><p>Alex Ferrari 59:25<br /> We and we think it's horrible. It's absolutely atrocious.</p><p>Philip Bloom 59:28<br /> Yeah, it's worth seeing if you can get some media accreditation because there's a number of airlines which give you better deals. Southwestern Delta, United a couple of others. There's a few of them out there which you know if you've got problem with media accreditation can save you a lot. I mean delta will also you know quite good in that they will let you I think like 50 bucks or probably change 30 bucks per bag up to 100 pounds which is crazy. Just remember that the important stuff always has to be carried with you. And we're supposed to carry out our lithium ion batteries as carry on luggage. So know your rights with the airlines, because I guarantee you, they don't know your rights. So you will they will tell you something and like, actually, no, if you look at the policy on your website, this shows you what you're allowed. And again, let me check on my and they go, and then they'll confer with somebody else. So this happens all the time. They need to understand what you are allowed and what you can't do. You know, when it comes to batteries, you got to be careful about the what hours you have on some of the drone batteries, some of the larger era batteries, you can you can take like two per person. So make sure you fly with somebody else who can help you out with that. I do check a lot of expensive stuff. You have to because of your your carry on limits. Sure. Sure. And I don't use petty cases of Pelican cases. The simple reason being is yes, they offer great protection, but they look expensive. Yep. And stealable Yep. And so my luggage looks really unfilmed gear like it's still really protected inside. It just doesn't look like if and that's I look like average luggage. And if you know if you can get the pinkest most colorful, garish looking luggage with Hello Kitty stickers on. Do it. 1000 valuables nobody's gonna steal it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:01:45<br /> That's great advice. Actually, that's awesome. Yeah,</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:01:49<br /> I really think Petey should Pelican should make a series of I think, yeah, I you know, when I have had to fly with with the hard cases, whether it'd be like for mobi or a drone ohnaka and inspire, then I cover them with stickers, like superheroes and stuff like that really do my those hard cases got Superman stickers on everything, it just doesn't look like professional film gear anymore. Try to disguise it as much as possible. It's, it's a big old topic. And it's a difficult one. And it's and then you get because certain countries will need you if you're taking professional film gear into be to have a proper document accardi, which costs a lot of money. And you need to have everything itemized and listed. But some countries won't accept that. And you have to negotiate with them beforehand, or find out what you needed to have there. And this is why sometimes it's really nice just to go with a small DSLR style camera, and just try and not be obvious. If it's if it's difficult to get to be too or too expensive to have that then it's try and go in. But you are always going to have a risk if you are doing a paid job. And you try to try to cut corners and not get a carny and go to the tourist and not get the correct visa and you you're gay get stopped and doesn't get brought in. That's your fault. And it's just one of these things. If you're doing it for a client, you have to pass on these costs to them, explain to them okay, well, we're going here. And we need this and, and it's just one of the things flying is just absolutely horrendous. And, you know, there's really every day you know, there's always a new story about how the FAA or wherever it is are going to change what we can share data saying anything with any lithium ion battery cannot be checked. And then and then no camera can be checked. And it's kind of like no professional electronic gear can be checked online at some point soon. If this goes down this road. I don't think we'll ever be able to fly abroad with our gear anymore. We'll just have the era of the rental company is going to be there because every speaking FM a major rental outlet, every single city in every single place because we can't fly with anything. Which be terrible, terrible if that ever happens. But yeah, it's I hate it. I hate it so much. I always bring too much always bring too much. So make the best advice I say is just make a list beforehand. And just bring what you need. Maybe you know a couple of backup things as much as possible. Like I always have a second camera just in case. But but kind of the obvious stuff. Really.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:32<br /> Okay. Batteries always bring back extra batteries. Oh god. Yeah. batteries, batteries, batteries. Now um, what advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today?</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:04:44<br /> Ah, I guess the first question is why do you want to as long as doing it for the right reasons and that's great. It's not you know, you never was not a business to get rich in two.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:56<br /> Gonna say it's not rich and famous. That's not the reason why to get in?</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:05:00<br /> Ohh no. Go and become a banker or something you want if you just want to do something creative and you because you get into because you want to be creative. So that's my best advice to start with. And it's a tricky thing, it's, it's one of the things that I think this is kind of partly why it's so good to have. This course I've done with em, Zed is it. Whilst it's not a film, school replacement, it condenses all of my knowledge into this one thing. So people watch it, they can get, you're not gonna become a filmmaker from watching this, but you're going to get a lot of knowledge from it. And hopefully use that knowledge to find your own style and voice and know how to do things a bit better. Because that's what you're going to need to do, you're going to need to be patient, which a lot of people aren't these days, or too much like, wanting stuff to happen overnight. I think my best example of this was a guy did. So I do this, I do some private tuition with people. And this guy emailed me saying he wanted to get to make a short film to be entered into next year's Cannes Film Festival. And he wants some training for that. I'm like, interesting. And so I asked him to tell me, it's a really strange way of actually wording things. And yes, I want to make,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:06:26<br /> I'm gonna submit it to the Oscars. It's been submitted to the Oscars.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:06:29<br /> Yeah, I'd like to win an Oscar. So I'd like to do some training. I have not won an Oscar. So I'm the wrong person. That comes to me. But I said to him, so what is it? What do you want to do? What do you want to learn from say, I want to get a grounding of light, you know, things which can help me make me be able to make this film. I was so What experience do you have? None. I've never used the camera. I've never made a film. Oh, God. But I've, I've seen lots of film. Oh. So I then said, Well, I don't know how long you're expecting, trading wise for me. But</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:07:06<br /> You got 10 years</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:07:08<br /> How long do you expect? What do you want for me? Exactly. And he said, maybe? How much would it cost for two hours of training?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:07:22<br /> Oh, my God, you gotta be kidding.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:07:24<br /> I reply to everything when you know, that's not going to be enough. And then he replied, saying, well, we're about four. That's where the conversation I felt like a practical joke. But it wasn't I was being deadly serious. And it's one of the things you've got to be so patient with. And you've got to work your ass off for years. For years for years. Yeah, absolutely. It's before, you know, when I left sky, I was senior care man. And you know, I couldn't go any further at the company without going into management, leaving the camera behind. And then when I left, I didn't want to do news anymore. So I had to start completely again from the bottom. And it took me four years to start getting the work that I really wanted to do, even after being 17 years in another aspect of the business. Exactly. So it's, and now there's a huge amount of more competition than there was even 11 years ago. So it's you've got to be really patient. And you've you've got to be obviously got to have talent, you got to have the ability to sell yourself as well. And it's not something to be embarrassed about and talk about not talk about, you know, it's a business or any job, any job where you are selling yourself and your skills, its business and you have to be able to sell yourself I remember what would this guy who's such talented director, filmmaker, but wasn't doing anywhere near the work he should be because he just was a terrible salesman. So you've got to have that skill as well find good people to work with try and network as much as you can with people. I'm not sure you know, a Facebook group is not the same as open networking, whilst it can be useful. It's just there's so much noise on there. It's It's everything has become so diluted, it's much much much harder to find clear voices. Yep. Listen to. But at the end of the day, if you can make it in this as a business, then it's a career, then fantastic, because it is the mean it's the greatest thing in the world to be able to to be able to do what I would do if you weren't paying me and pay me for stuff as well. That's great. But you got to understand that most of the time that you get paid, you won't like what you're doing. You won't like the work that you're producing. Yes. Amen. And let it go and Then do stuff yourself to have that creative fulfillment. Because when you're doing a corporate for some guy, you're gonna, you're gonna look at a girl guide. And they're going to tell it, you're working for them. You're not you're not making, they're not hiring you to make a Philip bloom film, that how you make a film. They're, they're the client, you make it for them. And yeah, you've got to make it as good as you possibly can, they probably come to you because they've seen something that you've done, right? But the end of the day, you are going to find that you are not going to love what's been done with your, what you've made necessarily, or what's been done with your work. And you just have to accept that and move on. Now what, wait, they'll give everything to it, just because it is not just a crappy thing. still get everything to it. Because you can still be you can still be creative, you can still get so much out of it yourself. And when you get home, you don't feel like oh my God, what a terrible day, I had to film this worst call center ever. It was all for lighting, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, that's fine. But if you made an effort and made it look good, then you can come home and go and pour yourself a drink and go I deserve this because I I made that look good. And you're happy. You won't come home and feel better ever.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:11:18<br /> God Yes. And there are a lot of bitter filmmakers out there without question because they fall into that trap. And when I when I spoke to work with Robert Forester, and he gave a great piece of advice, which is like no matter how small the job, give yourself, give it 110% because you never know who's watching. You never know who's on set, or who will see that work and maybe hire you for another job somewhere else.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:11:42<br /> Even then, even that client, they may give you this really terrible job. Yep. And then they see my God, this was really bad and can't believe how good you made this. You're perfect for this, this job that we have six months in the Seychelles, right? All right, great.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:11:59<br /> And that you never know. You never know. You never know what you're gonna get. Now, what's the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life?</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:12:10<br /> Oh don't kill yourself with work. Take set yourself. time where you stop. Now, my edit suite is I have a home edit suite, which is financially convenient. And obviously nice and handy. There's no commute for me when I'm editing. But that divide between work and life is really difficult. And so when I am editing apart from I mean, when I was cutting him dead serious Mind you, I had to break this most times because I was working, stupid long hours editing. But for most jobs, I kind of set myself if it's 630 to 7pm I'm like, okay, no more work up to seven. And be disciplined about it. discipline that you start time disciplined about your finish time. And make sure you give yourself time to see your your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your husband, your friends, your children. Sure, make sure you have a life. I very rarely work weekends now. Unless the shoot demands it or you know, I have to go somewhere. So I will down towards that weekend. Yeah, you still find me with a camera, you're still seeing find me flying a drone or taking photos somewhere. But that's me. That's my own time. And unless you can find yourself a girlfriend to who'd like to do it with you. Always good. Myself and Sarah loves, loves shooting and she loves all that stuff as well. So that really does help. But I think it's really important to get the work life balance, right. And it took me probably about 20 years or so to start realizing how off it was. Yes. And now I work way less than I used to write. I probably work I probably work half as much as I used to two years ago. So yeah, I earn a lot less, but I'm a lot happier.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:14:14<br /> And that's really nice.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:14:16<br /> It is priceless. It also makes my work better. But yes, I'm happier.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:14:21<br /> Yes. very diligently.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:14:23<br /> Yeah, I think that's probably the best thing I've learned took me a long time to learn it. I'm very stubborn. But I eventually figured out</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:14:32<br /> I feel you 100% I try to do exactly all those things. I don't work weekends. And I have a specific time I come in and a specific time I come out every day. And because everyone always asked how do you create so much content? How do you you know run this this, you know this big blog and do all the stuff you do and have twins and have a family and all this Mike, you got to you got to do exactly what you said. Got to be very strict with yourself. And</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:14:55<br /> I'm impressed. I mean, you got kids. I mean I haven't got kids yet and I don't even know How I'll cope with having kids as well. Apart from I'll probably just film them a lot.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:15:05<br /> Yes, they were probably the most documented children in history without question. I think they probably will. Yeah. And last question, what are three of your favorite films of all time? Oh, you know, it's an impossible question. Just today today, what do you feel like today?</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:15:20<br /> Oh, um, I still want to go with Empire Strikes Back is in is in always in my top three? Absolutely. It was. It was. That was one of the first films I ever saw as a kid where I still remember the emotional reaction I had. Also that, and it's still watch it today. And I still feel Wow, this is incredible. I'm also a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan. Yes. And find it difficult to pick a favorite. But again, I think for the emotional impact, or maybe it's another film with a downer ending. That's vertigo. Yeah. It's just such an incredible film in every way. I think I just think of all my favorites, or have such downer endings. I don't know why I actually like happy endings. I like things to I want to I don't want to feel like like I felt at the end of seven every time I see a film.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:16:17<br /> I know. Right? Yes. Like that's Fincher for you. That's Gone Girl. I'm like, holy crap. No, the worst date film of all time. Yes, they are. The worst. Is that fatal attraction and fatal your breakup</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:16:37<br /> Fatal Attraction break up now shares your Yeah, that's not a good one as well. I guess what? And I think maybe something more recent. I don't know. But of the films that I've seen recently, what another one that had a really good emotional impact on me was Danny bill knows arrival last year.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:16:56<br /> Yeah, that was actually a really interesting. That's such an interesting film to watch.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:17:01<br /> It's not my favorite film. Now. It was my favorite film of the year. And in I saw blade runner 2049 last week, and that's, again, incredible. Oh, yeah. He's an amazing filmmaker. But I always tend to go back to the same films I end up watching again and again, again, whether it's original Planet of the Apes. Sure. I love love my sci fi very much. And invaders. ravenloft are</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:17:27<br /> Of course</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:17:28<br /> Perfect film than Raiders.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:17:30<br /> Raiders is is, is perfect. It is a perfect film. And since you're a Hitchcock fan, have you seen the new documentary? 7852? No, I have not. Have you heard of it? No, I have not. I just found out. I just found out about it the other day. Well, it's on iTunes. I watched it yesterday. And it is an entire documentary about the shower scene in psycho. Wow. And they go through every shot. And they talk to everything in the impact of psycho. But they've literally break down everything about the shower scene, which is arguably the you know, 90 seconds, the most important 90 seconds in film history. Honestly, some of them yeah, I mean, what he was able to do in that shower sequence. But someone put together arguably a really good documentary shot in black and white by the way. It's gorgeous. It's on iTunes, you definitely should watch if any film geek, definitely Hitchcock fan will love it. Yeah. Anybody who has not seen psycho, what the hell are you doing? Why are you listening to us? Go watch psycho.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:18:32<br /> Watch this film. That is if you take the sections, which obviously date the film, which is the beginning, the anything that anything outside of just the motel is it stands up completely today. It could have been that it's just so incredible. And I just some of the it's the most innovative filmmaking you'll ever say. And we're talking</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:18:57<br /> 1960 it's we could do a whole episode just on psycho without question. Now, where can where can people find you and your work?</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:19:14<br /> My website is philipbloom.net. So it's P H I L I P B L O O M, and my blog is there and that is the same Philip Bloom is what I have for all of my social media, whether it's instagram, facebook, twitter,it's just</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:19:33<br /> My space my space geo cities No, sorry. You know, it probably is still there Mises to properly</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:19:39<br /> I haven't really used it as such. Right. It's one of the things I do have. But yeah, so it's pretty simple to find me and I'm quite active. I'm pretty active on them. And it is a real mixture of photography, filmmaking, and personal stuff. I put some I do put personal stuff on social media. That's kind of you know, Another, it's a whole podcast is about, you know, yes, you will have a dividing line between this sort of thing. And I think it's important that to be to be to be you on social media. And that's why I always say my bio silly grumpy so depending on how I'm feeling, I will be like that. And I put some personal stuff up there and I put some perfect everything I tried to make as nice as possible. And a nice mix and I just try and make it feel as as, as me as it is, you know, like the M Zed course, it's me what you see is a very, I'm very different anything else you will ever see training wise, because it's it's very personal. And I kind of think that kind of sums me up reading and how I like to share things.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:20:46<br /> Philip man, thank you so much for taking the time out. It's been an absolute joy speaking to you man. Thank you so much.</p><p>Philip Bloom 1:20:52<br /> Thank you very much for having me. 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itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/dan-may/" rel="bookmark">BPS 402: Behind the Curtain of Blackmagic Design with President Dan May</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-01-16T06:30:10+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">January 16, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/dan-may/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255-768x369.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IFH-255-768x369.webp 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63477694&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>If you are an avid listener of this podcast you know how much I LOVE Blackmagic Design products. From giving away Davinci Resolve for free to releasing a 4K Pocket Camera with RAW, Blackmagic is truly in the corner of every filmmaker. Their motto is…</p><blockquote><p>“Power to the people!”</p></blockquote><p>I always wanted to know how and why they make such amazing products for filmmakers at such ridiculously affordable prices. Today’s guest, <em><strong>Dan May – President of Blackmagic Design</strong></em>, would be the man to ask. I go deep into the weeds on how the company works, why they make their products so accessible to so many people and why they care so much about the little guy.</p><p>Just to clarify, no I was not paid for this interview at all. I really wanted to get into the mind of one of my favorite camera and post production companies. We also talk a little bit about gear.</p><p>Enjoy this rare look behind the curtain at <strong>Blackmagic Design with President Dan May</strong>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63477694/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Blackmagic Design – <a href="https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Official Site</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Blackmagic 4k Pocket Camera</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Davinci Resolve 15 (Download for FREE)</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/egoanddesire/">On the Corner of Ego and Desire (SHOT on BMPCC)</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 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class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 1:50<br /> I like to welcome to the show. Dan May, Dan, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you're a very busy man.</p><p>Dan May 4:20<br /> No problem, Alex I'm happy to be here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:22<br /> I was I had the pleasure of meeting you at this year's na B and you were you were you were like the the prom queen or king.</p><p>Dan May 4:31<br /> Yeah, well look, I'll take it either way we were busy, busy is good. You know, maybes for us are always exciting. We generally tend to have a number of new announcements out and this year was no different. So it was great to be there be talking to you know, folks that are using our products people that are excited about what we're doing. And you know, we were really pleased without the whole show when as a whole</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:51<br /> It was it was insane because I had never been to nav before when I when I drove up to the convention center. All I saw was black magic.</p><p>Dan May 4:58<br /> Like yeah, it is It's a good place where we're at right now we, you know, obviously the company has grown massively over the last few years. And, you know, we've had, I mean, a lot of our enemies have been great shows where we've had great product announcements. And, you know, some of the standouts were the obviously the the first time we came out with DaVinci Resolve at $1,000. And, you know, when we came out with that first camera, it was like, earth shattering news was rippling through the hall. So, you know, we've had a number of just na B's, they've been really, you know, outstanding for us as a company. And, you know, we really tried to make the most of that opportunity to be there and engage with users face to face, but also, you know, it is it is really one of the few shows that globally, is kind of seeing now, it's not just those people that show up in Las Vegas, you know, there are, you know, plenty of media folks that are there, the reporting from all over the world. So we definitely try to make the most of that opportunity and, and go big, you know, go big with announcements and with our presence, and, you know, to try to help change our industry, that shows a big piece of our ability to do that.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:02<br /> And you guys are definitely doing that. So I wanted to get I wanted to first ask you, how did you get into the world of black magic? Because obviously, you weren't born into it out of the womb? So how did you get into black magic?</p><p>Dan May 6:14<br /> I was created in a lab for no. So I, you know, interesting for me, I actually my background was in music, I have a degree in music, and I'd been doing some some work, just you know, as you do after university trying to find your way in the world and, and ended up landing at another video company and transition quite smoothly into into video for a manufacturer because, you know, while audio and video are different, certainly, you know, like, hey, it's a timeline things move. This is how things edit and kind of did started working for a manufacturer there started doing just some side, you know, like, here's how you work on video project type stuff, and just had worked for a couple other manufacturers for a few years. And eventually, when Blackmagic Design decided they want to start start an office in the US. You know, I kind of got that call to say, Hey, you know, we want to we you know, we sold some product into the US I think Blackmagic was about getting on to about four years old as a company. They had essentially no full time employees in the US. And they said, Look, we want to start this office in the US. What do you think? And I was like, below Yeah, that sounds like a great, you know, a great opportunity to basically be employee number one. This is, you know, a time when we were selling decklink cards, and that was pretty much it,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 7:34<br /> I remember those decklink cards very fine</p><p>Dan May 7:36<br /> Yeah great card, great products. And, you know, he kind of kind of looked at the landscape and said, look, I think this is a great opportunity, kind of believed in the vision of what grant pay the CEO wanted to do. And and came on board is basically employee number one in the US. So when you're president of black magic design, Inc, in 2018, that sounds incredibly impressive. When you're when you're president of Blackmagic Design in 2000. And was that six? Yeah, it's it's less impressive. Your employee number one in the US and you kind of build from there. But, you know, it's</p><p>Alex Ferrari 8:08<br /> Not many people knew a lot about black magic, other than some day cards.</p><p>Dan May 8:11<br /> Yeah, exactly. In cards, what we wanted to do so so, you know, obviously, it's been a quite a transformation and, and, obviously be a part of what black magics been able to do, you know, play my role to help in the company and, and help grant with his vision, you know, it's been a, it's been a fantastic run, and, you know, 2018, some 12 years later. Yeah, if you had told me 12 years ago, this is where we'd be, you know, it sounds crazy. But these are the stories that happened when companies do, you know, figure out the kind of the, the magic, the black magic, what it is they want to do when people latch on to, you know, what we what we're all about, and the fact that we continue to kind of push the envelope, you know, that's all led to growth and success and, and, hopefully, continued growth and success as we continue to, you know, have any of these, like when we had this last April?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:04<br /> So in 2006, you joined black magic, how was the digital landscape then compared to now?</p><p>Dan May 9:11<br /> I mean, the big thing, then, well, as you know, what, what Blackmagic had had been able to kind of figure out was, you know, things like Final Cut Pro, and what, what that application was able to do was was able to really take a major crack at that kind of glass ceiling as far as the democratization of, of, you know, professional video production, right, you before before, I mean, look, dV existed on kind of what was the consumer prosumer I hate using those terms, but it was it was a way for people to have some capabilities that didn't really exist before. You know, obviously, personal computers we're getting more more faster, right, more powerful to be able to do some amount of processing a video DVD was compressed enough to where you didn't necessarily require the crazy crazy computing processing power but and that's where Final Cut kind of had gotten its, you know, almost start as a look, we know we can be this other great DVD editing software. But when you start bringing in uncompressed capture cards like Blackmagic Design hadn't hadn't developed, you know, you're talking about now being able to have this uncompressed video quality that was really limited to the Hollywood hate to say this Hollywood elite but really those you know, the had the big budgets to be able to do that professional quality and and gain the benefits of working in uncompressed video. And suddenly Final Cut became a tool that folks in Hollywood can use immediately because, hey, look, I have the same uncompressed video capabilities at this much lower price point. Now, of course, what ended up happening there was every other independent filmmaker or student filmmaker, you know, anybody else said, Well, wait a minute, for a few $1,000, I now have the ability that took hundreds of 1000s of dollars to do in that Hollywood and post production facility. So that was already on the table. That was what was changing the game. So when I, as I went outside of that piece looked at it said, Look, that's really fascinating. And, you know, I feel like I can help with some of that, you know, literally, that I know, the entire roadmap, and the opportunities that we were able to tackle as a company, as the last, you know, kind of decade plus has gone by, to help us get to where we are now.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:30<br /> Yeah, I mean, I mean, I remember when Final Cut came out, and basically allowed me to open up my post facility. Because before then, avid basically was the dominant factor of of editing, and it costs hundreds of 1000s of dollars to have an editing system. So Final Cut, did open that door and did the democratize. Thank you. Yeah, that's the word that is the word that a lot, and you guys are black. It is very black magic. And you guys do that not only with software, but also with digital cameras and cinema cameras to be specific, When was the first time you guys decided to look into creating the first cinema cameras.</p><p>Dan May 12:12<br /> So we we had, like many people that are looking around the industry, and we hadn't seen that there was a gap in kind of that camera space. And, you know, you know, we had at that point, we had already made the da Vinci acquisitions, we had already had kind of resolved cooking along, you know, we had kind of diversified our breadth of products there. And we had made these hyper decks for these video recording purposes where we were seeing that, you know, the DSLRs, had come in and shaken up a bit of the landscape as well, where you had these amazing photo cameras, that also did video, and they did video pretty well, it was compressed, and it looked good. And it suddenly put kind of professional video into a lot more people's hands, again, the democratization of having this great looking video. Now coming from the post production side of things, we also realize the trouble with that highly compressed h 264 format that you're seeing out there. And where, you know, it was just problematic, it wasn't a super high quality, it didn't give you the real time performance, you know, there's just some problems on there. And then from there, when you when you say, well, let's solve those post production problems. Well, from there, you're jumping up into 40,000 plus dollar cameras that are in that Sydney world, which are amazing cameras, you know, they obviously function at the highest level that gives you that great post production capability. They're very flexible, and they are largely unattainable by many, many most people show rental cameras, most people that can even get them at that level, but they're not cameras that are largely owned by people and certainly aren't something you're going to go out and shoot on the weekend or do student films on you know, there's, there's a big gap, big, big gap there. So, you know, we had we had said like everyone else will look someday some one of these, one of these end of the spectrum is going to, you know, make a decision to move up or down stream, right, we're gonna find DSLRs that suddenly have that workflow capability that's going to be very post friendly, or we're going to find these high end Cinema Camera manufacturers have figured out that this is how they're going to make that sub $10,000 kind of camera that gives you some functionality of their premium brand, I guess you could say and then you know, we would heard whispers of that for years, right? We'd heard people say that we're gonna have, you know, 4k for 4k or whatever. Lots of different rumors that were out there never seem to come and pass year after year kind of went by. And I remember we were sitting there and this must have been, you know, sometime in 2010. If I want to say and we were we were talking about our next version of what the hyper decks Were going to be. And, you know, these are little SSD recorders at the time, they just had some button funktionale and we talked about adding them monitor and marketing, things like that. And, you know, eventually what became what the video assist later became. And that kind of became the, but you know, if we just put a sensor on it, basically a camera, and literally a few months later sitting in Australia and having these engineers come out, and this was been, you know, December, November, December timeframe, having them walk out with this giant PCB with a lens on it, and then going, Well, this is a working camera, and we can show this in April and you go, there's no way we're going to show that in April. That's insane. Of course, this is what we do all the time. We all the time frame up these ideas, we have these brilliant engineers, and lo behold, you know, a few months later, that's the first Cinema Camera 2.5k. And it was no, it was brilliant. For what is basically our first camera, I still love the image that that camera, you know, makes And while many, many things we've done in the year since then have helped build upon that camera</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:57<br /> And the camera speaking of is the 2.5. Okay, yeah, and wonderful, I shot my first feature on that.</p><p>Dan May 16:04<br /> It's, it's and again, he now you would call it an old camera by black magics standards five years old, where it is old. It is that image is still amazing, it's going to assert that 13 stops of dynamic range, if you're really just doing 2k or, or HD, you know, that is a beautiful image that creates now we've added to our kind of subset of like, Well, here's how you build a better menu system. And here's our these ergonomics may be more what people want to see. But for a first camera, it i mean that I tell you that na B It was like aftershocks had just rippled through the industry. And I remember that was an amazing moment to be a part of Blackmagic. And to say, Wow, we've really changed things. Because even if that camera sold, you know, 5000 or 50,000, or 500,000, or whatever it was going to end up doing. We had realized that at that point, we had entered a place that Blackmagic hadn't been before, that it was a very big stage that we were stepping on to and that even if you know regardless of how we did with that camera, which I would say we did well and have continued to do well with that camera, that that was going to change the way that people looked at cameras in that space forever. There was never no one was ever going to be able to say, Well, I'm gonna buy this other camera and not say, but how does it compare to what Blackmagic is doing over there. And that and that's a really cool thing to be a part of when you know, you know, when you can actively say this is a moment in time, we are helping shift this industry what we believe for the better for the users out there.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:30<br /> And how much and how much was that camera? The price point was also another big thing</p><p>Dan May 17:34<br /> $3,000 I want to say at the time there so No, it was it was it was it helped. But there's there's a lot of things that go into the thought of what we're doing right. And when you look back at that camera, it was the idea of you know, we need to be able to convince someone that using a DSLR already, why they would want this camera Look, it's using the same EF glass you probably already own, you're interested in doing better post production work anyway, this is the camera that's going to give you that more post production friendly workflow having things like pro res, having things like raw capabilities that you don't have on your DSLR if you're really serious pursuing the, you know, the cinema style of post production, heck, we're going to give you DaVinci Resolve as part of that package, because we want to pull you into the abilities that resolve offers. And kind of step up your game that way. And, and it was a great opportunity for us to help pull people over there. And then at the same point, I remember like one of those first conversations at any be talking to a cinematographer and then going, look, I'm still going to rent that other camera package for that week long BMW shoot or whatever, you know, commercial work I'm going to do. But this is the camera I can own for the other three weeks of the month, where I'm shooting my independent films while I'm working on my pet projects, you know, these are the this is the type of product that I would want to have there. So we know we left that nav, feeling like we had ticked off a lot of the boxes. Now of course you get lots of other feedback like well, you should have done this and you should have done this better than that. That's great. We want that feedback. That's what's helped us these last five years continue to refine our camera development shape the products that go every year. And you know, every year you've seen kind of new developments from Blackmagic but that's another big shift. When we started coming out with more cameras, people were like how can you make another camera 12 months 18.0</p><p>Alex Ferrari 19:23<br /> God I know</p><p>Dan May 19:25<br /> You kind of go look Blackmagic tends to pursue a model that's more like say your cell phone or your graphics card. You know you don't necessarily buy a new graphics card every year just because there's a new graphics card. It's more powerful. Maybe there's new features. same can be said for your phone. Now if you want to great if you've got the capability or you've got the return on investment, we would say look we hope that $3,000 camera has served you well for the last 12 months or 18 months or two years. You don't have to buy the new Ursa mini or the new Ursa Mini Pro or the new pocket, cinema 4k but you know you spent 12 12 $100 or $2,000, or $5,000, at some point, you're going to decide you want to make that step, just like you wouldn't be your cell phone. I mean, I upgrade my cell phone every year, I may upgrade it every three or four years. But that's much different for a lot of folks that will coming from that market where you buy a DSLR, and you use it for the next five years or 10 years, because maybe they haven't come out with so many quick things. Or if you were going to buy a higher end Cinema Camera, it's an investment that clearly you're going to hold on to for five years, 10 years, and maybe you would sell it and you'd get some type of return on that. Well, that's not really the Blackmagic model, the Blackmagic model is going to be we are going to price that thing as affordably as humanly possible so that we can get it out to the most people we can possibly get it to. And we're right back into the kitchen to work on something that's going to be two years down the road. You know, hopefully even better, maybe you need it. Maybe you don't. But you know, we're going to continue to have this frantic push to get engineering done. Because, you know, that's what's going to best serve our customers.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:59<br /> Well, one thing I love about working with Blackmagic products is that you are the only company currently that has the full ecosystem, from camera to final deliverables, and post production and so on. You haven't done lenses yet, but I'm sure that's probably always discussed. Definitely. trepidation, it's tough. That's a tough, that's a tough one to crack. I've seen many I've seen many companies come and go in the lens game. It's a really tough, tough place to go into. But with DaVinci Resolve, you know, first of all, what made you guys go after a color grading system, which is basically the color grading system that cost $300,000 before and then now buy it and then basically give it away.</p><p>Dan May 21:46<br /> So yeah, there's lots of I mean, look like everything in life, a lot of things come down to opportunity, right, recognizing what the opportunity is when something does come across your way. And for some of our products, we can look at say like live production switchers. And you can say that's something that was on black magics roadmap at that point in time, when the opportunity to go out and buy Ecolab, a company that didn't switchers came along. So you say great, that makes sense. Let's get it that's closer to market to do that than to continue the development that we're already working on da Vinci was probably a little different Da Vinci was our first acquisition, obviously was at a time when we were we were growing, we had we had made the ducklings we had moved in the converters and some video hubs. And we were thinking about what our future and how to diversify was going to be. And along came this opportunity for us to acquire DaVinci. And, you know, as you say, you know, the Vinci was kind of like the coke brand of our industry, you know, it was such a rarity. And when you when you walk into a post production facility, if they had color grading a suite, it usually was like the crown jewel of the facility. And you know, it was a lot of times in Hollywood was DaVinci. And, you know, it was just kind of this amazing product that was out there that was was a big standard of Hollywood, essentially. And I remember trying to explain to you know, like my mother and people that aren't part of our industry. And it was right at the time when, when Disney had bought Marvel, right? And I said, Imagine if Marvel bought Disney? It would seem weird. And I think in our industry, people were like, how did black magic this company that makes very nice widgets. And I say that lovingly, we're doing just fine selling widgets, blue products, how are they buying this company? DaVinci, which is this, you know, 25 something year old company that's building these, you know, half million dollar million dollar systems, you know, what are they doing? And that was a large leap of faith, I think for us to go in and say like, Look, this is what we could do if we do this. And you know, hear me out because it sounds crazy. You know, we could, we could continue to be a great partner to partner, all the software partners that are out there. Because obviously, we were partnered up with, you know, all the guys out there making software. But we also take a bit of control of our own destiny by doing this because we can have a software platform that we can build around that we can kind of have as a piece of a workflow that kind of fits into our vision of where we want to go as a company. And you know, what ends up happening there is you end up not necessarily being completely beholden to other partners that you may have. So again, we want to we want to have the great partnerships with all the other software platforms out there. It's incredibly important for us to make those Dec links and ultrastudio products work with those companies to make sure that our cameras have great workflows through all of their platforms, but we're also not completely beholden to, you know, like, well, if they if they were to go away, or if they were to withdraw support from us as a company, you know, we're not left out on an island and so it was it was good for us. But we also said You know, look, this is going to continue with our mission of being able to provide these incredibly powerful platforms and solutions to as many people as possible. And, you know, clearly, when you look at what we've been able to do with that over the last eight years, you know, it feels like we've advanced, we've advanced back patient along considerably well, because you might have a little pat on the back for that one.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 25:24<br /> I know, I mean, what you guys were able to do with resolve, I mean, I was one of the I think I was one of the first guys to jump on seriously as an editor on it a few years ago, because when you guys switched it over to I think was the 12 to 12. Five, when editing became a really, or 11, even. But I think 12 is when it really kind of took off. It was really solid nonlinear editing system, when I edited my first feature on it, then I did shoot shows, and you know, Hulu shows and other big projects on it. And then I started preaching about I'm like, Guys, you don't understand this is amazing. And I started like preaching from the top of the, of the of the mountaintops of like, everybody, it's free, jump on it, and please use this, and then it's just been getting better and better. It's fascinating what you were able to do with that software. And now, I swear to God, when I, when I showed up, then a B, actually, I got the email a day or two, before I flew up to nav that then you have now added not only color, not only sound, but you added fusion</p><p>Dan May 26:27<br /> And that and that goes back to building out that platform to be as the best platform it can be. And I think there's two important points that, you know, we always try to kind of reiterate to folks is that, you know, we want, like I said, we want to work with everybody out there, right. So if someone comes along and says, Look, I'm using this other camera, we want to say great, we've got resolved, it's a great platform for you to use. If someone comes along and says, Look, I'm married to this other software platform, that's what I use, we say no problem, you know, we've got these Dec links, or mini converters, or our camera has a great workflow, you know, part of the great Blackmagic plan has always been don't force people to use what they don't want to use, right? Don't use proprietary media don't use proprietary lens choices don't say great. Once you've gotten into our solution, you have to use all our solution, because that's not what anybody know, said nobody ever nobody, I hope, a lawyer I hope they forced me to use everything that they make, because that's just disastrous. And we've seen it be disasterous in our field, and we've seen it be disastrous in other fields. So we want to be really upfront about that, like, Look, you love your product, other product brand product, by all means if we can make that work within our ecosystem, we want to make that be the case. And if you want to stay in a black magic ecosystem, that is our goal, like you should be able to buy a camera from us use DaVinci Resolve use our IO hardware, you know, stay across that platform, use all that, you know, as much Blackmagic product as you're comfortable using with hopefully will provide a lot of incentive to do that price will be one of those other workflow capabilities will be others. But look, don't feel like we're gonna come and say like, well, you're not a true black magic person, because, you know, you decided to use that other product, like they are just tools, and we all recognize they are just tools in the look, we want to obviously do well as a business getting those tools out there. But, you know, we don't feel that forcing people to stick within an equal structure is, is going to lead to that. So, you know, that is a big piece of what we do. But, you know, how great is it to be able to go to one software application and say, Look, I brought in my Blackmagic camera files, whether they're pro res raw. And while there, I'm one person, and I've got this one tool to go, yeah, great edit color, the effects, audio, you know, basically don't have to worry about conform, where everyone pulls out. Yeah, and be done with it. Or, you know, I'm a post production company that says, Look, I can have multiple people working on the same product at the same time, same project on the same product at the same time. And I again, don't have to do the conform where again, everyone loses their hair and is up at four in the morning wondering what's going to go wrong next. Like these are great workflow benefits of being able to have that so, you know, we feel like not only did we just go out and say like, Look, we're going to take this great platform and and give it away, you know, we can actually do something that's not been done before, right? And put this all into one tool, do it well. And and and hopefully you know, the the fears are always like, Look, don't add this in and suddenly make color be terrible. Or you know, like don't try to overdo one thing. So we, you know, we've had to take it slow. Like I said, you know, 11 1212 five, every ever</p><p>Alex Ferrari 29:39<br /> Between 14 and 15 was not that slow cuz I just updated to 14, and then all of a sudden I'm like, son of a doubt. They just got 50 literally like within a month of when I updated it</p><p>Dan May 29:52<br /> Still in beta. So it's still exactly what you mean but goes back to what he said is like we're never going to stop or rest on our own. And do that kind of like, cool. We're done. Now let's just collect checks the next three years and just off the mighty else, you know, kind of messes with the plan, like it's always going to be about us going. Okay, that was cool. You know, we you when you go to a show like nav, like I said, that's where you get all that great feedback. This is amazing. But you know what else you could do? Oh, yeah, you're right, that would be cool. How cool would that be? If we did that? Or, you know, we still like how many of our hardware products have we gone out? And we're like, we're building all these racks. We're doing all this live production and stuff? Like why do we keep buying these other audios? Which are, you know, audio monitors that aren't made for video, either expensive and bi can't select which, you know, audio tracks I want over the SDI? Yeah, we could build that. Let's just build, like, I mean, we are, you know, grant is champion of like, the nerds in the workshop that are just going like, this is cool. And we can do it. Let's do it, you know, business model. Okay, let's figure out what that is. Okay, cool. That should work me.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:58<br /> We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.</p><p>Dan May 31:09<br /> But, you know, for us, it's about kind of always comes back to what's best for the users if we think this is a good idea, because we would want it or we're going to use it, or we think it empowers more people. And that's pretty good. Like, let's start there. Instead of, you know, how do we build a really expensive camera like built that's useless? Like there are other folks out there to do a fine job with that, you know, how to how do we sit down and say, how do we build the best $1,000 Cinema Camera, which was that first pocket camera? You know, how do you how do you do that? Like, what does it take? You know, how much can you shove into a product like that, and still make it be great at $1,000, and profit much and profitable, profitable, that's a much different approach than we built this product, how much can we charge for it, which is a very typical kind of manufacturing approach to things. So it's just a very different way. Blackmagic approach is a, you know, building products, building solutions, and hopefully helping, what we consider the most amount of users out there,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 32:09<br /> What I find fascinating, I've told this to people a lot, since I've been, you know, working with you guys over the years is like you are the biggest mom and pop operation I've ever seen. I mean, it's just like, you have that mom and pop, beautiful, like small, you mean, like, you know, I can have access to I can get access to someone like you, you know, there is no big ivory towers, everyone's just like this small little community, but it's not it's a massive competition. It's huge.</p><p>Dan May 32:37<br /> And, and look, to be honest, like, it's hard, like, these are hard things to do. And there's a reason why you don't see this, you know, out there often because as a company grows, you know, you get more people, you have more processes, you have more things, and the risk ends up being there, that you you kind of get diluted from your main goal. The main goal to be stuffed for bureaucrats to make things be easy is it about, you know, profitability, and how much money can you know, we're all gonna drive, you know, fancy cars and have boats and or whatever that what is the actual goals and the fact that black magics been able to maintain that goal of empowering the most users out there, that's the single focus and the, you know, the thing that drives us every day, and and the rest of it becomes a look, let's make sure that look, we obviously want to grow. And we do have to have processes, and we do have to have profit, and those are the things but that's not actually the first goal. The first goal is empowering people and then down the list becomes, okay, let's make sure that this process makes sense and is efficient, because that efficiency is going to help us keep that cost down. But that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. And, and and look, I'm glad the black magics grown, the way it's grown, I'm glad it didn't grow necessarily overnight, you know, because that obviously would be you know, like jumping into cold water, you know, just just shocking, we've been able to kind of have that organic growth, that's allowed us to stay focused on what we're doing to still have that kind of, like you said, sort of mom and pop feel, even though the company has gotten a lot bigger, because the core values of the company are still there. And that hunger to still succeed at whatever level of success you want to kind of put down there, whether it be growth or whether it be empowering people, whether it be you know, just building out a product line that we think is exciting, you know, those are the things that keep us kind of keep us going and and the other stuff is important, obviously want to keep the lights on paychecks. Yeah, that's great. That is important part of it. But you know, all those other things have to be about does that help empower more and more users out there</p><p>Alex Ferrari 34:45<br /> Now are what are some of the films and television shows that use Blackmagic cameras because I think a lot of people don't realize that you you at the highest levels.</p><p>Dan May 34:54<br /> Yeah, I mean, the thing that's hard with the camera stuff is that you know Mr. namedropping, but, you know, when you go into a major production company that that does Hollywood type stuff, you know, and I can think of a distinct example where we're sitting there, and they're showing us these are tests, and they are so thrilled with how the Blackmagic cameras are standing up to, you know, the very expensive cameras that they they use on on all of their productions. And they said, Look, you know, we, we do this, because, you know, we have, you know, that being who they are, you know, of course, they can afford to use whatever camera they want to use, and they'll say, look, we're gonna use, we're gonna continue to use those cameras, because we can on all of these highest level things, but you best well be sure we're taking Blackmagic cameras on every one of those shoots. Because the last thing we want to do is put that camera in a situation that you know, it shouldn't be in, whether that be in a tight corner or in a car or in a danger zone where we can use those Blackmagic cameras almost flippantly because they're almost disposable at that highest level. But at the same point, when we have, you know, smaller projects, they can be a cameras and we have other behind the scenes things, we can use them for all of that. So, you know, that's how they generally get used on the highest level. And when I use a lot the Mad Max example of, you know, of course, they used to think it was two Ari's as their primary cameras, all their headshots all the things we're doing with a beautiful press <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a>, you can find our website about this, but they use some 30 or 40, other Blackmagic cameras, because the last thing they want to do is run all of those stunts over and over again, you know, a lot of those are, we're doing this once, let's put all the Blackmagic cameras out there because they cut so beautifully when they do if if a camera ends up getting blown up or run over, a Hollywood person is not that concerned about losing their $3,000 camera at the end of the day, right?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 36:48<br /> That's craft services for five minutes,</p><p>Dan May 36:50<br /> Exactly. They've they're not worried about that, at the end of the day, they have so much footage to then be able to pool, they can run that very expensive stunt once and the cameras are just a very small, small piece of that. And that's a great example of at the highest level. And why would they not want to use other beautiful, expensive cameras, they're all customed to it, they give them everything and more than they'd ever want. But they can use our cameras in ways that really give them new capabilities that they wouldn't have had before. Now, when you move back from that you start talking about television and work when you talk about commercial work when you talk about you know, that's where you start seeing all the Blackmagic cameras starting to show up as a cameras and commercial work. And you know, that's that's always exciting to be but you know, we're we're always excited is when it suddenly becomes in when you want. I remember well, gosh, it must have been 12 boy, 434 years ago now, going into a university, bringing whatever the latest new camera we had, and having the university professor talking to his group of film students and going like, well, how many people are familiar with Blackmagic cameras, and every film student puts their hand hand up? And then he says, Does anybody have a Blackmagic camera and literally half the students raise their hand because they had Pocket Cinema cameras, and they had cinema 2.5 cameras, and even the professor was blown away, because that's such a big change for that ownership of a professional camera. Right? You know, these are the things that when we look and we say like, you know, have cameras been successful? Yeah, look, I'd love to have the next Marvel movie be all shot with Blackmagic cameras. That'd be great from just again, calling up my mom and telling.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 38:25<br /> Because she's still there, she's still not impressed with you.</p><p>Dan May 38:27<br /> Yeah. Because really, I still will never be impressed. But, you know, for me to be able to walk into that university or that film school and say, hey, how much magic stuff do you use? And they say, Well, I own this camera. And I've been learning on resolve, and I, you know, I've been working on these other products and you go like, well, that's amazing, because that's something that, you know, again, 12 years ago, you said, that's a goal, that's a real goal for us to have, because that's going to be what helps continue to empower more people goes back to that mission statement every time and be willing to help the brand going forward. Because, you know, when those film students graduate, you know, they're going to be very comfortable with, you know, black magic as a company as a brand and, you know, relate to what we're trying to do. And that's incredibly empowering, and incredibly important to us.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:12<br /> It's what you've been able to do with like, specifically resolve where you're giving it away, you're basically creating a generation of filmmakers who are going to be using your product just like Final Cut did back in the day when it first came out. Like that's what because when they were students or when they were coming up, when they moved into, you know, full blown facilities or into bigger companies. They like, Hey, why don't we set up DaVinci Resolve I did that specifically when I, I grew up and I grew up, I was an avid editor. Then I jumped the final cut. And then when I moved into a studio job, I was headed to the post production department and they're like, well, we want to get there was one old app and I'm like, well, let's set up final cuts. And I set up in like 10 final cuts for the price of one avid and they were like oh my god and i know That's exactly what's gonna happen and is happening today with resolve and then also the cameras and all the other things that you you guys do. So it is quite genius. What is he doing?</p><p>Dan May 40:10<br /> It's a it's a, you know, we talk we talk internally short term long term. Now what are what are our plans? What our hopes? What are we tried to do when the you know, a few of us kind of think about where we're where the ship is going, you know, Grant's got both hands on the wheel. And he's swerving lefties Wurman. Right, yeah, the conversations about Okay, what's, what's the plan here? And we're obviously goal is to empower people, how do you do that? Right? You know, it sounds great, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna win, we're going to be successful. And there's the long term plan and the short term plan, the short term plan is, you know, we're going to build the next planet, we're going to have this launch, this is how we're going to package these things. This is how we're going to get out there. This is how we're going to be efficient, and all the doing that long term plans. How do you be a company in this industry that has had major, you know, strangleholds, on certain segments, by certain brands? How do you? How do you become someone that's visible at that level as some of those folks that have been around 20 3040 years as a brand? And how do you do that in a way that can be both disruptive? Because obviously, you can't just come in and be nice. But how do you do that without necessarily making everyone your enemy and and that long term plan has to be about that, look, we have to play nice with everybody, we have to be open, you know, we have to obviously have a stick, you know, if the stick is just be very affordable, or give it away or whatever, you know, like these are, these are important to being able to to differentiate. And again, hopefully creating workflow advantages. Look, we don't just build a product, because we want it to be inexpensive. You know, that's nice. But it also has to do something, you also have to do something better than what's already out there. So you know, these are the type of conversations we have. And we say, look, should we build a resolve, affordable panel, and for a long time, we didn't think that was worth doing. Because there are great panels out there that are very affordable by other manufacturers. And we said, Look, we can focus on building other things, work on cameras work on switchers, because those guys are doing a great job there. Now, a couple years down the road, you kind of go and you say, you know what, those are great panels. But one of the things about those other panels is they're great, because you can use them for any application out there. That's kind of the great part about them. The problem with that is is they don't become a resolved specific panel. So what we can do is we can create the best resolve specific panel. And that's what led to those micro and mini panels to say amazing, you know, they are amazing panels for resolve, we're not pretending that they're great panels for anything else. Those other panels do a great job of that. But here's how we can do something that a differentiates B empowers people. And c really helps fill out, you know, a piece of the overall workflow. But that's kind of how some of those processes come around. Everyone comes to nav and says, again, like the lenses is a great example, you should build lenses. Yep, that sounds great. If we could build really affordable lenses, that'd be awesome. But what are we actually going to do? That's, that's not been done there other than being affordable, like that may be enough on its own. And those are, those are the conversations that we wrestle with and say, you know, what, next, what are the next C, we're gonna say all the SS Blackmagic into havoc and, and, you know, totally change our industry. You know, it's hard, it's tough. And it's part of, you know, part of the big, the big picture that we're always trying to look at.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 43:30<br /> So what speaking of disrupting, and the SS Blackmagic. And, and, and changing the industry. Let's talk about the new Blackmagic Pocket camera. Because I saw it, I held it, we spoke a little bit on the floor about it. I just literally finished shooting my second feature on the original pocket camera. And it was wonderful, because I love the look of that super 16 sensor. It is such a unique look that there is nothing else on the marketplace like it. So but of course the one thing that everybody always said about the pocket camera was like, Ah, it could just be 4k.</p><p>Dan May 44:10<br /> Yeah, I mean, so this is one of those. This is again, one of those, like, you know, you get to nav and people like you know what you guys should do?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 44:18<br /> Of course,</p><p>Dan May 44:19<br /> First of all, let me get out my notepad real quick, because I want to jot this down, because you're the only one who's ever the only one who's coming from the pocket 4k camera. And I say that very lovingly. We want that feedback from folks. But when we would tell that very passionate individual that I always have to remind our team that like, it's great because so many people want black magic to succeed. How fortunate are we as a company that people come and they they like I love what you're doing and I can't wait for you to make more stuff and I want you to be successful. And even people that say I don't use your x product. They're like I I'm so happy with what you're doing because you're changing industry. So we are so lucky to be in the position. We're in where people are literally cheering for black magic and wanting us to be successful because of how we are helping them and helping change the industry. Back to the pocket 4k camera, we would tell that very impassioned person that came to us, we say, look, we get it, like we understand why we want it. But, you know, we had made this production camera 4k that kind of feels like about the smallest, we could build the 4k camera at that point in time. We know we're not so sure what else we can do. Or we could add to that. And of course, this is, you know, four years ago, three years ago, sure. And about two years ago, you start going, Okay, look, we could we could actually do this, like we can get it to be a bit smaller, you know, what are the other things that we could do that would improve upon this and it takes, it takes time, right? It's not like we mean is as magical as black magic is, it's not like we can just, you know, turn anything out of anything like it does actually take engineering, and resources and developments in technology to be able to do it. So, you know, when we finally kind of started going, like, Look, we worked on building smaller kind of electronics, you know, you see some of these crazy little, you know, micro converters and ultra studio minis and we had worked on building smaller products and getting compact down and dealing, how do you deal with heat dissipating heat, you know, obviously, as Blackmagic grow, we were able to add more engineers and bring more talent on the table to help with all that. So it's not just a, like, let's get back in the lab and one guy comes out like it does take time it takes those developments to get done. So we started building, what became the Pocket Cinema Camera 4k and, and you know, again, when you do have the ability to kind of sit back for four or five years, we're able to kind of say, okay, cool, like, you know, we've advanced some of our menu systems, we've advanced some of our, you know, recording capabilities. Like I said, some of the heat, things that were concerns when we had not been sure about how to make it smaller and, and even still, you know, where we're having conversations as early as I think, maybe the beginning of the year going. And this is the kind of things where, you know, like, you're probably very fortunate to be in a situation, I'm like, should we call it the pocket camera? It's, like, the biggest problems you're worried about? Right? You know, having a discussion about like, Look, you know, you know, like I said, when we started out with that original pocket camera, you know, how do you build the best $1,000 camera, and we're starting to look at this camera going like, Look, this is this is maybe not going to be $1,000 like, you know, again, we want to keep the lights up and keep all those brilliant engineers paid to build more products. Sure. 95 is gonna be a bit tough. And you know, what are we gonna charge for it, you know, we want to, you know, we want to get as many of these out there, we don't want price to ever be the reason why someone can't buy a Blackmagic product and should be 1295 should be 1495 is 1995 too much. And eventually, you know, the conversations you're having as you're getting it out the door, because the price was never really the first problem. The first problem was, well, how are we going to build this amazing product, keep it as low as we want, as far as cost can be. And eventually, that's how we got it. We eventually said, you know, resolve and come down to 295, because that's how we roll. And we said, well, we're not gonna do 995 Let's settle on 1295. And we'll give them resolve for free, which we had not given on the pocket camera. And that became a very incredibly agreeable line for us to be able to stick to so you know, it's it's insane. It's 95. That's, yeah, and look, it's always that there is their internal wrestling that goes like, yeah, should we charge 1495 for that, that wouldn't be an extra $200 it would basically go to help pay for engineering and you wonder, would we sell less? If we did? Or would we sell more at 1295? And it's you know, these are, these are the questions that we do wrestle with, but at the end of the day, it goes right back to that first mission statement, which is how we're going to help our users the most. And if we stick to that, we feel that we're more we're more right than wrong most often. So what becomes a fallback kind of for us in a lot of ways.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:49<br /> I've what I find fascinating about the pocket camera is I do believe out of all the cameras that you've created and recreated the Ursa and the minis, and and so on, that have been disruptors. This product specifically, when I first saw it heard about it like this has the biggest potential to be an absolute industry disrupter, because you're basically finally giving a DSLR style camera or size of camera, but with raw capability and pro res capability, which does not exist. Yeah, at that price point is in SAM giving them a free editing software.</p><p>Dan May 49:30<br /> They're gonna want that if they're going to be doing any type of overall workflow. And you're right, it is something that you look and you say, that is why the price is so important, because you want to make that that threshold to get this product as low as possible, right? You want to make it so that people look at it and they'll find faults because there's no perfect product out there. And they'll say, Well, I wish I had this. I have my own wishes. But at 1295 are you willing to overlook that because where else are you getting this kind of price performance In a product and then, and then like in, again, why these pricings are so important to us. Once they do that, and then hopefully they open up resolved and they see some of the benefits of the workflow. And then they think about, maybe I should get a decklink or ultrastudio product to get, you know, video out of the computer into a monitor or in if I have other things that I want to get input. And you know, and that's how someone becomes if they hadn't been familiar with the Blackmagic brand. That's how they become familiar. And they and they start looking at what we have to offer, and hopefully have that experience that says, Look, there's a lot of great things here. And I am never going to claim that any one of these products do the same thing that the 40,000 or $80,000 ones do. But there's a reason those products cost at a mountain. That's great. They shouldn't that's what they cater to, and they sell 10 or whatever. I don't know what the reason why that model exists, our model is going to exist to go out there and empower the most amount of people possible with the hope that they're going to turn around and say, Well, I got this amazing camera I got this free software let me buy some converters, let me buy some decklink card right me when we when we look at these other products and build them in and Wow, now I've got this one company that really is helping me and giving me the choices that I don't seem to be able to find elsewhere. And hey, look, Alex, it seemed to have worked out pretty well. And well as</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:18<br /> You guys have been doing good. So basically your products are like doorbusters on for on Black Friday, you put it</p><p>Dan May 51:26<br /> But every but every product is it's like an L we've got you know we've got yo system will hit you with the $10,000 a year support contract like we would come from that's</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:36<br /> Exactly it. Every product is a doorbuster. And then so that's it's it's genius. And then how you guys are still alive and functioning as a company and these boys, it's amazing!</p><p>Dan May 51:47<br /> That goes back to the business end of things about efficiencies like Don't, don't stuff yourself with a bunch of bureaucrats and everyone has to be really doing, you know, no one can hide it black magic, you know, you hear about these companies where it's like, well, I'm employee number 39,722. And what do you do? Well, I have coffee six hours a day, great. No one can hide a black magic because we everyone has to be efficient. All of our how we build things, how we develop, you know, how we do everything has to be super efficient. Now, sometimes that comes around where people don't understand, you know, hollywood customer comes around and says, Well, what, what's my price? And you say, it's $12.95? This, it's the same price is the film's student, it's trying to scrape together the money to buy their first professional camera. Well, you know who I am? I don't know, man, when you get on Southwest, you just decided to pay more money so that you can, you can write and then there have those things out there. But, you know, this is the this is the world of democratization. And look, you know, everyone pays Edu pricing. That's, that's that's how we're rolling a black man.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:49<br /> Yeah, I've heard stories off off air, which I won't repeat names, but there have been very famous directors who just like, Don't you know who I am? Like, that's nice. That's, um, it's 1295. And then like, you just made 20 million on your last movie. Can you afford it?</p><p>Dan May 53:05<br /> Yeah, and the problem. And the problem with the Hollywood and this is what happens with, there's a reason why the Vinci was in this situation where they were in, they were catering to Hollywood, they were building half million dollar systems, and those 10 customers and just using that number, because you know, those 10 customers would tell them what to do, they would struggle to get it done, they would sell one or two systems. And that was the business model. The problem is, no one wants to spend a million dollars anymore, or even a half million dollars anymore. And what we what the terrifying thing for those customers when we did we we didn't do it eventually, when they said you're going to screw everything up by giving it away for free or $1,000, or whatever they perceived it to be. It was a look, you have to realize, you guys are not funding the development that's needed for this application to be successful. And what's going to fund the development for those applications to be successful is all of these other users. So yes, we realize it's terrifying that we're putting professional color grading software into everybody's hands out there. But you know what, that major film is not going to go to buckos color grading company out in the middle of nowhere. They're coming to you because they trust you and your service. And you've have all of those believe that but and look, you guys want more capable colorist and more people to come to you to work workforce. And to have that workforce, that's never going to happen if there's just this elite product that no one can touch in us. But these are the things that, you know, like I said, we have to sit down and say, Look, we're going to empower users Check, check that box, you know, how are we going to make this be as efficient as possible so that we can build the user base we can have, we can't just ship 100 of these things. We got to chip 100,000 of these things to make that all work and it has to be incredibly efficient. But that's how these last 12 would fit in before even I was here. 15 years for black magic has been you know, building a business exists like that. And that's very hard to do if you're one of those companies. There's also in that South hall or other Hall, that nav and you go, Well, how is this company going to be here in 10 or 15 years, they've built business around selling, what they sell at a model that they have? How do you turn that tank down the windy road? And say, No, no, we're going to do it all over again and give it away for free. Like that kind of has to be built from the outset, or you have to have, you know, massive revolution from within. And that's obviously higher. And that's why I say, this is very hard to do. And look, someday when the black magic book gets written, you know, maybe people will appreciate it more of what what it all is. But you know, for now, we're just happy to see the success of the products out there, you know, when you again, see it may use by a Hollywood user, or when you walk into that university, and the students say, you know, we are so glad that you guys are doing what you do. You know that that's, you know, that's what makes us a great back to the lab,let's get on with building more great products.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 55:58<br /> All right, so Dan thank you so much for being on the show, I have a few questions that I asked all my guests is going to be kind of a speed round, if you have got it. All right. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today other than buying Blackmagic products?</p><p>Dan May 56:12<br /> You know, one of the things that I realized actually doing this job and that I tell filmmakers today is, you know, the only thing that separates you from that other successful person you idolize is the fact that they've done it and you haven't yet there was a time where I thought, look, you know, someday, someone's gonna realize I'm a fraud, I have no idea what I'm doing. I you know, I don't have any of the same skills that other successful person that I idolize is, and you realize, once you kind of start breaking through that that's totally a load of crap. The only thing that actually separates you is the fact that they've gone and been able to do it. And you haven't done that yet. So obviously, it takes hard work. Obviously, it takes discipline to do. But that's it. That's it's not that they're brilliant. It's not that they've got some special formula. Sure luck's involved, there's other things that are in there, but you actually have to go and do it. So don't be discouraged by the fact that I'll never be able to be a filmmaker or an audio person or a post production engineer, whatever that dream is, it just the only thing that separates you from the person that at that level is the fact they've done it. So just go do it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 57:17<br /> Fantastic. Now, can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or career?</p><p>Dan May 57:23<br /> Boy book? I don't, don't just audio man like audio. But then But yeah, I had read a lot about I can't pull anyone up. But being I had come from music I had read about a lot of, you know, composers and musicians throughout history that and so even as I transferred into video, like that last bit of advice, I just remember thinking about the troubles and the tribulation news, especially, you know, when you think about musicians, in particular, the struggles of not really having a lot of money, or obviously lots of folks went through, you know, drug and alcohol abuse and the struggles, they went, one of the reasons why I decide I didn't really want to pursue that lifestyle. And that's still the same video, but you know, reading the biographies of so many people out there and the troubles, it makes you recognize that you're not, you know, you're a you're not unique, so like, you know, everyone's got their struggles, everyone's got their challenges. You know, it helps you kind of say, look, all you have to do is kind of keep going, keep reaching, and keep at it. And you'll that's the plan to be able to get there. Because if you don't, you just won't get there.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 58:26<br /> What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry, in your business or in life?</p><p>Dan May 58:31<br /> Don't be afraid of admitting failure, because failure is a part of growth. And when you're young, you're so worried that if I do this, and I do this wrong, and I'm going to fail, and everything is going to be over? And when when you're very young, real, like if you really think that like life is over. And as you get older, you realize that that is just all part of the process. So you know, hey, that didn't work out the way I want. What can I learn from that? How can I do it better the next time and again, just get on to the next time? And three of your favorite films of all time. Oh, boy, as well. Fun. Yeah, I mean, look, you can't I cannot ever leave like an Empire Strikes Back off off the list, of course, completely. Revolutionary, you know, just change change how you saw film. You know, Godfather, probably too, is got to be up up on that list, too. But man, you know, here's a weird one. I remember being a little kid and watching ice pirates. That was such a great film, like, like, but and I think it was at that age where it was just like, Oh, you know, being the sci fi nerd that I was like, You must have watched that film, literally 3000 times because it was just, I don't know, my parents probably didn't even know that. I was watching it that many times. But I just remember being, you know, a five or seven year old kid and Jessica, zillions out yeah, totally not on the normal list of films</p><p>Alex Ferrari 59:52<br /> A few films that remind me of but</p><p>Dan May 59:54<br /> Probably if I watch that now I'd be like, this is terrible.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 59:57<br /> Oh no, you can't you can't have to live in your mind. You can't have go back</p><p>Dan May 1:00:00<br /> In my mind, as you know, just something that was very formative as what adventure meant</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:06<br /> To to add to that list of those kind of movies, ice pirate movies Time Bandits,</p><p>Dan May 1:00:10<br /> Time Bandits, is right there.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:12<br /> Crawl. Yes. Horrible.</p><p>Dan May 1:00:16<br /> Terrible. But again, like I you know, there's a lot of things that I think I can look back and go like, you know, wasn't Voltron and amazing cartoon, you go back and look at it. It's not the same tropes that every one of those things have. But look at the time you go like, this is amazing. And that's part of what kind of, for me built in that sense of adventure, that sense of creativity. And you know that I mean, even if it's not something that you carry with you day to day that it is still part of what you who you feel is you. So look, sometimes you can't deny it, you just got to embrace it, and you know, work with it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:49<br /> And now where can people find more about more about black magic,</p><p>Dan May 1:00:53<br /> The best place is to just go to our website, which is www.Blackmagicdesign.com.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:01:01<br /> And there's a lot of stuff in that website.</p><p>Dan May 1:01:04<br /> A lot of stuff you can dig through in there if you've got the time, patience and energy.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:01:08<br /> Dan, thank you, man, you've been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and inspiration. And again, thank you for doing the good work that you're doing over black magic with, with all of those amazing people that work with you.</p><p>Dan May 1:01:18<br /> No problem, Alex happy to speak with you anytime.</p></div><div class="fbxt-content--footer"> <a href="#"> <svg width="9" height="11" viewBox="0 0 9 11" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M0.5625 0.25C0.234375 0.25 0 0.507812 0 0.8125V1.375C0 1.70312 0.234375 1.9375 0.5625 1.9375H8.4375C8.74219 1.9375 9 1.70312 9 1.375V0.8125C9 0.507812 8.74219 0.25 8.4375 0.25H0.5625ZM2.10938 6.83594L3.65625 5.28906V10.1875C3.65625 10.5156 3.89062 10.75 4.21875 10.75H4.78125C5.08594 10.75 5.34375 10.5156 5.34375 10.1875V5.28906L6.86719 6.83594C7.10156 7.04688 7.45312 7.04688 7.66406 6.83594L8.0625 6.4375C8.27344 6.22656 8.27344 5.85156 8.0625 5.64062L4.89844 2.47656C4.66406 2.24219 4.3125 2.24219 4.10156 2.47656L0.914062 5.64062C0.703125 5.85156 0.703125 6.22656 0.914062 6.4375L1.3125 6.83594C1.52344 7.04688 1.89844 7.04688 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has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-cinematography tag-filmbreaker tag-iphone-cinematography tag-iphone-filmmaking tag-jason-van-genderen" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/jason-van-genderen/" rel="bookmark">BPS 401: iPhone Filmmaking & Cinematography with Jason Van Genderen</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-01-09T06:30:27+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">January 9, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/jason-van-genderen/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen.jpg 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen-300x144.jpg 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen-768x369.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen.jpg" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen.jpg 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen-300x144.jpg 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jason-Van-Genderen-768x369.jpg 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63477133&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Today on the show I have iPhone filmmaking master and TEDTalk Speaker <strong>Jason Van Genderen</strong>. I’ve wanted to have Jason on the podcast for a long time. He is a true inspiration to anyone who wants to pick up a camera and tell a <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a>. He has made an industry out of professional shooting with iPhones for corporate clients, on commercials, music videos, and short films. Here’s some more info on our guest.</p><p class="font_8">No script, storyboard or crew. No exposure to focus controls. A resolution of 640 x 480 pixels and a total memory of just 160MB. That was Jason’s unexpected entry into the global filmmaking stage back in 2008.</p><p class="font_8">‘Mankind is No Island’ went on to win numerous prestigious accolades at film festivals around the globe and was one of the very first exemplar films to champion a whole new emerging medium of iPhone filmmaking.</p><p class="font_8">With screenings and awards from Tropfest NY, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs, San Francisco Short Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival right through to Sundance London, Jason’s made mobile stories that matter, becoming an unexpected voice for marginalized or emerging storytellers. It’s the very reason he proudly labels himself a Filmbreaker.</p><p class="font_8">An equally passionate educator, Jason’s talks have inspired audiences from TEDx Newy to the Aspen Ideas Festival; from countless televisions, how appearances to keynote addresses at film schools and festivals. His masterclass workshops continue to inspire both beginners and seasoned professionals alike. Jason Van Genderen has also consulted and collaborated with some of the world’s largest imaging brands, from Sony and Nokia to Nikon and currently Apple Australia. This year he also commenced an on-air role presenting guest segments on Channel 7’s ‘Get Arty’ children show, and has recently consulted to 7 West Media Group on broadcast applications for smartphone technology.</p><p>When your introduction to puberty is selling pet rocks and wearing a back brace, you’d have to hope that the ability to think creatively comes naturally. For Jason, his life of creative problem solving was seeded by 20 years hard labor in the advertising & design industry… before turning his hand to short films. His reputation for quick thinking under challenging circumstances saw him carve an early niche, being a four-time winner in the 24-hour in-camera film festival The Shoot Out.</p><p>Always a custodian of content over craft, in 2008 he experimented with filming on his mobile phone, making a short with no script, storyboard, actors, narration or budget. ‘Mankind is no Island’ went on to win Tropfest NY and numerous other accolades globally, by breaking every rule in the book. His unorthodox approach to filtering story with low-tech simplicity has seen him in demand internationally as a presenter on pocket filmmaking.</p><p>There are NO MORE EXCUSES ANYMORE. You can tell your story with what’s in your pocket.</p><p class="font_8">Enjoy my conversation with <strong>Jason Van Genderen.</strong></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63477133/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Jason Van Genderen – <a href="https://www.jasonvangenderen.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Official Site</a></strong></li><li><strong>Jason Van Genderen – <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2290652/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">IMDB</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfgo5mYU79T684LMnAMf65g" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">YouTube</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.indiefilmhustle.tv/programs/ifhtv-video-podcast-iphone-filmmaking-with-jason-van-genderen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">IFHTV Video Podcast: iPhone Filmmaking</a> with Jason Van Genderen</strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 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12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 3:04<br /> I'd like to welcome to the show, Jason Van Genderen. Man, thank you so much for being on the show brother!</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 5:57<br /> Alex, it's amazing to finally meet you, rather than just listening to through the podcast channels finally get to see you and hear your voice. One on one. It's fantastic. It's awesome, man.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:07<br /> And you are and we are having this. This is like a international call. So you are in Australia, what time is it over there right now?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 6:15<br /> And well, it's it's almost coming up to half past 10 in the morning for me here. Oh, nice, nice, sunny morning.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:23<br /> So you are in the future. So you can tell me what happens.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 6:27<br /> I can tell you everything that happened to me or at least half day ahead of you. Well, thanks for the time, Australia is considered to be ahead of anywhere in the world.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:36<br /> Fair enough. Fair enough. So thank you again for jumping on man. And I you know, the reason why we put you on is because you have a very unique set of skills that we have not had a guest on the show before, which is iPhone filmmaking or pocket filmmaking, as you put it, so we're gonna get deep into that. But first, how did you get in to this crazy business we'd like to call the film industry?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 7:00<br /> Well, my my checkered background really started in the world of advertising. So I, I was working as an art director in the advertising industry for about 13 years. And got really, really tired of just making 30 seconds and 45 seconds stories. Yeah, and just thought there must be another life beyond that. So basically, I I set up my own little business production business called treehouse 17 years ago. And from there, we've gradually we started pretty much as a as a an advertising branding agency. We started working more in television and video and online. And now it's it's 100% of our business, we do a lot of branded content. So we do a lot of commercial content, we do a lot of social content for a lot of brands around the world. And in the spare time, I still make my own films and make a lot of training resources and have really, as you said before, I've have not that I've fallen in love with making things on smartphones. But smartphones really found me as a way of making content. And I was so surprised by what they could create as a tool that I started digging deeper and was just so pleasantly surprised by how deep we could take the technology and the level of what we could actually create with this new miniaturization of our cameras.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 8:25<br /> It is I mean, it is like the latest stuff. I mean, there's they're really powerful cameras. I mean, they have some insane capabilities. That literally is incredible. It's sitting around your pocket, but a lot of people just don't know what to do with it because you are not trained anywhere. How to shoot with an iPhone, not in a film school. It's not generally in the mainstream. Everyone looks down upon it, because oh, it's just an iPhone. But Shaun Baker kind of taught us a little bit about that. With his amazing film tangerine. By the way. What did you think of tangerine? When you saw it?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 8:59<br /> Incredible. I watched it in flight somewhere on the way to another festival and yeah, I thought was it? I mean, he shot it on iPhone five. I think?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:07<br /> It was 5s if I'm not mistaken was either four. I think I might have even been 4s, but it might have been five Yeah, cuz I own a six. I own a six. So I haven't jumped yet. So I think it was one or two back. It was a while ago. Yeah.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 9:23<br /> I think again, it was a trailblazing project and it was very brave, very adventurous. And again with every great story you're watching a film that sure you know it's been shot on a smartphone. Maybe that's how you come across tangerina initially to watch it but i think you know a few minutes in you are totally swept into that story. And that's the great charm of of any film, regardless of what we make it on is all about creating that incredible story. And I think that's that's the voice we need to rise to the top through this. It's not so much about what camera we're filming on. It's about enabling ourselves to tell better stories in more ways.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:59<br /> No Without question, and I mean, I, when I had Shawn on the show to talk about that a while ago, and he actually told me he's like we played in Sundance, and nobody knew that we shot it on iPhone. Like after the first screening at the very end, it's at shot on an iPhone and everybody just mind blew up.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 10:18<br /> It was like insane. And I think that was an absolute, you know, stroke of brilliance on Sean's behalf. Because a lot of people would have had the temptation of actually saying right up front. Oh, yeah, leave lead with it. Right on. But yeah, it's incredible. The fact that he did that a set is extremely brave, but you know, very critical film. It's deserved or success. It's, it's enjoyed. And yeah, I think, wonderful, a great example of exactly what we're talking about today, which is the fact that, you know, people anywhere with a with a fantastic idea can actually realize their story in some capacity, if they just rethink the tools that they have accessible to them now already. And certainly our smartphones are a fantastic way of upscaling filmic ability.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:02<br /> Yeah, without question. So. So from what I read about you, there was this like, famous moment where you literally threw away your high end video camera or film camera, it was a video camera, I guess? And just said, screw it. I'm going iPhone all the way. What was that moment? And what caused you to go down that road?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 11:21<br /> You're going down the rabbit hole. Now, Alex, this is a crazy story. This takes us all the way back to 2008. That was like that was like yeah, to this years, decades, really. 10 years ago, 10 years ago. That's just crazy. And I think that we you know, this is I think two years in on having cameras on smartphones right now commercial, so so I find it only just released the year before. I'm not even sure if the 2008 version of the iPhone could record video. But the camera that I had back then was a Nokia in 95, a little sliding smartphone. And I remember carrying this thing around looking at it. And and wondering whether one day we'd actually end up telling stories on our smartphones, whether we could use them as actual camera tools. So I pretty much just walked around and with a couple of friends of mine, Shane Emmett, and john Roy, his his fantastic musical composer. I just we started talking one day I said I'd love to make a film on a smartphone and see if we can actually ever get that into a film Film Festival. And of course, sitting here in Australia. Our aim was to try and get into an International Film Festival. So we, we had this concept of of you know, those magnetic poetry kits? Yeah. Rich. Yeah. Oh, about something, someone add something to it as they walk past the fridge. It's a cool little idea. So we thought what if we could do that with a smartphone film? What if we could actually walk around the city? And so we walked around Sydney with with this little Nokia, and we just filmed words on sites. So we were I guess harvesting words from shopfronts, and vans on parked on the side of the street from the sidewalk from anywhere, we could see signage and words, we'd start filming individual words, we had no concept of a script, we had no storyboard, we had no budget. And we're working with a smartphone that was back in 2000. That we ended up collecting 1200 words. I remember Bluetooth in them one at a time from the phone to my Mac.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 13:14<br /> Yeah, there was no way to look it up backwards. Oh, yeah. It was the way to hook it up back there. That's right.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 13:20<br /> By way, absolutely no way. But still, yeah, we were blitzed by that science. We're like, oh, wow, you can actually wirelessly transmit this thing from a phone to a device.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 13:28<br /> It's fairly it's fairly insane that technology is</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 13:32<br /> It is. So we ended up with 1200 words. And we decided to try and make a film out of that. And of course, it was the complete one on one way of Do not try and make a short film this way. We had no concept of really what we were making film about. We hadn't Like I said before, no script or storyboard. So we weren't we realized, as we were capturing these words on on street signs that were very affected by homeless communities in in the city and the fact that, you know, you can walk down the street, and you can walk past 1020 homeless people a day and never look them in the eye. They kind of become part of the the furniture in the city. Right? The landscape. Yeah. And so we decided we would try and make a project that I guess a story that spoke to that and and questioned whether, you know that there was another way we could connect with with one another on that level. And so we wanted to make a film about homeless societies, in cities in urban environments. And Shane and I, we sat there looking at this list of 1200 words for three nights in a row, and trying to find something to consider something to stitch together into a narrative. And nothing really, it was just like, was like going to the dentist three times in a row. It was honestly we were sitting there just nothing was coming to us. And then we are remember one night we contacted john Roy, this composer friend of ours and we said look, we've got this idea of a film. We want to cut the things together these words, we've got some shots of these incredible homeless people we've met along the way. We want to make a story about hammer societies in an urban environment and our sense of disconnect with that. We want like a piano score, but it has to be like plinky blank. So we can cut the words on certain notes. And I'm totally from a non musical background. So when I say Blinky calm, that's pretty advanced, technical musical speak.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:22<br /> Same here.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 15:25<br /> But I never like that. So I sent him, I sent him a page with 12 images on it from the shoot. And he went away and compose this incredible three and a half minute piece, which he almost threw away. And he found me the next day, I said, Look, I've got one little piece of music, and but I want to just fine tune it out. And I said, No, no, no, john, send it through. And he did. And Shane and I listened to it and just knew instantly it was the right piece of music for this film. And you can hear the breath in the piano strings was incredible. And the film we made was called mankind is no Ireland. We ended up being inspired by the music, the word started leaping off the page. Once we heard the music, we started finding all of those connections. We put this together, we entered it into a film festival in New York called tropfest, New York. And tropfest at that stage was Australia's biggest Short Film Festival. It attracted an annual live audience of between 80 and 100,000. People.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:21<br /> I'm sorry, how much</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 16:22<br /> 80 to 100,000 for a short film festival, or Short Film Festival. This is right on a Sunday evening. On Sunday, summer's evening in Sydney,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:32<br /> Is there nothing else to do in Sydney during that, like, I don't know. it's mind blowing. Sundance doesn't get like, even Sunday doesn't even get that many people. That's crazy.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 16:44<br /> It is like a rock concert for short for making this insane. I said I had a version in New York, and we decided to enter it into that. And that's where the whole story first started, we end up getting selected, flew across for the festival. We we played the film, we won, we won People's Choice as well, we got this film. And it just started this whole conversation rolling in a much bigger space. And we did lots of media interviews and lots of talks to other film festivals and universities and phone colleges. And yeah, it just started this love of, of actually not being confined so much by the limitations in the gear, we didn't have to tell stories and actually looking at what we did have available to us, and how we could appropriate it and appropriate the concepts that we're working on to be told with simple tools, simple, simpler camera tools.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:33<br /> And that film cost you $57 if I read correctly,</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 17:37<br /> 57 Australian dollars.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:39<br /> Wow. So it's not even American dollar. So while that's not even Americans</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 17:43<br /> Will see you know, 42 or three American dollars today.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:47<br /> And then how much? How much prize money</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 17:51<br /> Today, still actually going in festivals around the world. There's 10 years on it still doing the rounds and managed to win over $33,000 in prize money.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:01<br /> That's insane. Oh my god, like that's, that is that is the hustle that is the indie film hustle without question. Look, I thought I was rough. Because that my first short film, I had it running in festivals, probably like four or five years. And you're still going 10 years in that's insane is not competing anymore. But it's still</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 18:23<br /> Getting invitations all the time to screen. And it's amazing. I just love those little projects, you work on those little experimental projects that end up surprising you as the creator as well, as well as the audience. And I think, you know, it's the, for us, it's the gift that keeps on giving. It's the film story that just keeps on traveling around the world finding new audiences. And I watch it every now and then it still teaches me a little bit about what I'm doing. It's still it still has little little gems to give. You know, it's</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:52<br /> Funny I was because a lot of the people I worked a lot of my collaborators have worked on with us short film they kept every time they would see that short film my favorite film come back up. They're like, isn't that horse dead? Like, didn't you kill that? Like the you've you've written that horse? As long as you can? Anything since I'm like, I'm like, No, I just I just, you know, inject them with some adrenaline pick the horse back up and just keep writing up until he keeps going. So hey, if it keeps going, why not right? I mean, if people said it, it's all good. Yeah, and then what would you do? Did you distribute that film? Did you actually put it somewhere to be watched or sold? Or is it strictly just off offline?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 19:27<br /> Literally just just offline on festivals? it's it's it is online at the moment on the the tropfest YouTube channel. Okay, so let's head to life. They're a tad over a million views on there. Yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. I mean, short film in Australia is a really strong, healthy medium for for creatives coming out of colleges and film schools. It's something we really actively embrace and I feel really fortunate that you know, even a little little old Australia we can actually say we've got a film festival. draws a live audience of 80 to 100,000 a year. It's just insane. And when filmmakers come from overseas, they've never experienced anything like that they walk into this field and they see this sea of people and they think they're at some crazy concert. It's just an incredible experience.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:15<br /> I mean, you're almost inspiring me to make a short film. I mean, as soon as I gotta send something over there, because I'm just I just want to experience that that sounds amazing. for filming. Like, look, there's very few venues, very few things out there. Can you know Sundance Toronto? They don't bring in 100,000 eyeballs, you know, that's, yeah, that's like YouTube numbers. You get 100,000? Yes.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 20:40<br /> That's it. Yeah. So if if any filmmakers want to make a trip to Australia, try and try and make it around February when tropfest screens in Australia and come and experience the festival because as a filmmaker, it's just this energy of even just being in the in the audience. Even if you don't have a film in the festival, just being in that crowd, and seeing 80 to 100,000 people react and respond at once that to something that seen a screen is just mind blowing. It gives me chills just speaking about</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:08<br /> Because it's nothing that no normal filmmakers don't get that. Like, you know, even the biggest blockbusters from Hollywood doesn't get that all in one. But you don't get an ad 200,000 people watching Avengers like it doesn't happen. So it's, that must be amazing. So let me ask you a few tips for making your iPhone more cinematic. Because that is because if you mean iPhones just like any other tool, you could use a poorly you use it really well.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 21:34<br /> Yeah, yeah. So there's probably a couple of key things. One would be you need to obviously understand the strengths and the limitations of your iPhone as a camera tool. It's got a tiny lens, it's got a tiny imaging chip. The obviously the latest versions of the iPhone have stepped up in quality again, and they're got incredible, you know, dynamic range now. So the things that I would say from the get go, you really need to focus on in accessorizing your phone with to make it a real cinematic capture tool would be. First of all, there's an app called Filmic Pro, which is the same app that Shaun Baker filmed on as well film tangerine on to it gives you a complete manual control of all the camera inputs on your iPhone. So if you can imagine the kind of controls you have on a DSLR camera, you can have those on your iPhone with Filmic Pro. So it's invaluable. It's It's It's the number one selling manual camera app around the world, I believe. And it allows you to then work with a whole host of other accessories which you can obviously then put onto your phone to expand what it can see optically what it can hear. So yeah, Filmic Pro, that'd be the first thing I tell people to do go rush out, find that out, put it on your phone and play with it. And it's pretty cheap. That's incredible, like 15 bucks profit. Yeah, probably. I think it's around 20 something here in Australia. But yeah, it's look for. Isn't it funny these days with apps we talked about, you know, paying anything for an app. And whenever I go to a film college and I say, Oh, you need to buy this app, and it's $20. And they got like, wow, that's crazy. I'm never paying $20 for an app. But you know, you're expanding the functionality of the device. Everybody wants everything for free. It's insane.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 23:19<br /> Tell me about it. Well, I know. I completely understand what you're saying.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 23:27<br /> Fairly. So Philly Pro is the bedrock that's that's the thing I would start with. And of course, it's available in an android version as well. So if you're not on iPhone, if you got something else you can you can run Filmic Pro It's amazing. The other thing that that is a real game changer with iPhone, we call it iconography his</p><p>Alex Ferrari 23:45<br /> Trademark</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 23:48<br /> Is the ability to add accessory lenses now. So a lot of people always they've heard of, you know, lens clips like auto clip or moment lenses and things like that, which have their own sort of fastening system onto your phone. Base grip, make an incredible caged system for your iPhone or for any smartphone and have a device called a df two which has a depth of field converter and accent essentially it's a it's a barrel which attaches to the base group camera cage, which you put your phone in, and it allows you to then accessorize your iPhone with any number of different DSLR lenses or Sony lenses.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 24:25<br /> Is it worth it? Because that's a lot of glass going through a lot of glass. So is it gonna degrade the image a bunch or is it worth it?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 24:34<br /> It's definitely worth it if you want to work with with no shallow depth of field, it's really at the moment the only real way we can do it until computational imaging sort of steps it up another couple of notches and we can get the effect of what we see in portrait store mode now on our phones. But you know when we can get that in video mode, then that kind of is another conversation again. But in the meantime, if you do love, you know that beautiful cinematic look of layering the focus in your vision If you need something like a depth of field converter to actually attach accessory lenses to your smartphone and look it is great. It does cut back the light input a little bit because essentially what you're telling the lens to do is to focus on a another focusing screen inside the depth of field converter. And that sounds very technical, but in the end of the day, it allows your your iPhone to be able to see through any lens pretty much you can put in front of it. And we've seen things captured we've certainly captured things ourselves here commercially, through through lenses that people would never ever guess have been attached to a phone. They just they wouldn't think it's been filmed in the smartphone.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 25:37<br /> I mean, I think you and I are similar vintages as far as our age is concerned. So you might remember this camera Do you remember the dv x 100? a Panasonic yes was really wonderful. Wasn't that with the most beautiful camera ever? It was the first 24 feet the first 24 p camera and it had a stock lens on it was a like it was a beautiful lock lens, but then you couldn't get that depth. So you had the 35 millimeter adapter and then you could put on those things, but then you would it automatically lose like a stopper too. So you have to like yeah, totally pop so similar in that way. And I think it had like a glass didn't have like a glass. Oh, yeah, this was something. I did a movie once that because I shot my film on the DVS and I had the adapt I had a screw in adapter and that the 35 but a screw in Yeah, to get the white. Just to get the sorry, everybody were geeking out old school now. Yeah. But But I had a film that came in, it was a million dollar feature film that they shot on the DVD x. I don't know why, but they did this is back years years ago. And they never attached the adapter properly. And in the top corner, you would see the mirror like the little little circle like flickering. The whole movie, all the footage I'm like, was the first time dp but that's a whole other story for a whole other movie, podcast. But that was that was the technology we were dealing with. But the reason I brought that up is because it did drop a lot of drop stops. So I'm assuming that this is similar, that you've got to pump similar light in</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 27:09<br /> More light. And that's that is an absolute given with with all smartphones and any small lens camera we need to smaller sensors need more light. So we need to work with more light when we're when we're shooting. Although you know, having said that the new Xs dynamic range and that is incredible. We took that out for camera test a couple of weeks ago to film festival here in Australia. just comparing the 10 to the 10 s in nighttime tests and the amount of extra latitude and exposure was insane. It's it's like 30 to 40% more light coming in in low light situations. Now are you choosing?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 27:44<br /> Are you finding more filmmakers using this as a serious cat like a serious package? Because I don't see a lot I mean other than Shaun Baker and there's a handful of other, you know, outliers and yourself obviously. But are there Have you seen Have you run across other filmmakers who are doing serious work with iPhones?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 28:02<br /> We have we've actually started to see the explosion of smartphone film festivals are really taking off. Yeah, so earlier this year, I was at one in San Diego run by Susan botello amazing smartphone Film Fest went to one in Zurich, the MoMA Film Festival here in Australia with SF three smartphone flick fest. Now these these are getting big support and played at the Opera House in Sydney. I mean that's how much attention these festivals are getting. People are rocking up at the Opera House LMR building here in Australia to watch films all created on a smartphone and people are really starting to push the boundaries it's not just people picking these up and you know a weekend hack someone just having a go at the first time it's storytelling we're seeing real capable storytellers picking up their smartphones and really experimenting with the media and pushing the envelope as to what it can do as a camera tool and of course these days we can we can accessorize with any microphone we can we can put wireless microphones on smartphones and capture dialogue and distance without being connected with leads we can do all that sort of</p><p>Alex Ferrari 29:09<br /> Yeah, I was gonna actually ask you how do you record professional sound because a lot of people will just pick up and go action and be like no, that's not gonna work very well.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 29:19<br /> Well we work with with all the full range of pro microphones we use any other other kind of production we can still work with with our smartphones as well or your obviously you still have the choice of recording your audio separately and sinking it in post. We generally do both. We recording to the camera as well as have backup audio too. We can never enough backups of audio. So yeah, yeah, accessory microphones are definitely out there for literally for less than $100 you can buy a really incredible quality microphone to improve the quality of the sound in your smartphone 300% and it's a no brainer. We see people actually starting to access Whereas with a couple of $100 worth of equipment, and they see the leap in quality that they're achieving, they just get the bag and they want to get more and more and more. And the amount of times I've been on red carpets at film festivals, and I pull out a little Smartphone Rig, and I'm just doing a little voxpop with someone or someone I've met that I want to ask a question to. And I get one or two questions out, and then instantly it's finished. All the producers and directors just start coming over there taking photos of the phone rig, they want to know what it is, how do you shoot with it? Where do I get it that like it still seems to be such a new conversation. But the more that people are seeing it, the more they're getting exposed to it, the more they're understanding that there's a place in their production kit for a smartphone, a broadcast smartphone kit.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:41<br /> We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Now, let me ask you because there is a stigma around shooting with an iPhone. I mean, Shaun Baker definitely broke that down a bunch. But everybody I mean, I've talked to people professionals, you know, snooty, let's call them snooty la guys, who's like, that's not a real cinema phone. I mean, that's this or that. Yeah. And you know what, you can't compete and I found I can compete with Alexa. It's just not going to period, it's never going to, but it will put the power of it of being able to tell a story in the hands of someone who can't maybe afford or get access to an Alexa. Now how do you look? Because I know a lot of people listening right now. their egos are are full right now. people listening I promise you, I promise you someone out there is going this is ridiculous. I would never I'm a I'm a serious change out already. I Exactly. Like I'm a serious cinematic cinephile. I'm a filmmaker, I don't, I don't shoot with an iPhone. That's what's in my pocket. I talk on by text on that. But what do you say to people like that? Because I mean, I'm always about like, whatever is the best tool for what you know, I shot my last film on the pocket camera. So it's just like, what's the proper tool, it's not perfect for everything, if you're going to shoot a half million dollar movie, I found might not be the right tool for it. But if you're doing short, or you're doing a smaller micro budget feature, and you could get a lot of bang for your buck. So what do you say to people like that, who have that, and I'm sure you've run into them.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 32:18<br /> I'm positive all the time, all the time. And they're my favorite people to convert when I go to a festival. And the I mean, some of my peers I work with in the industry here are still saying, I've got rocks in my head by right we, when I show them what's possible with with the equipment, they they quickly change their mind. And I think as you said, there is a definite stigma associated with not having a large camera in your hands when you're going to film a serious projects. But we can turn that stigma around to I think that that stigma is something that's been a bit of a stain on the industry as a whole. For a long time, a lot of people feel the day, there hasn't been room for them, there hasn't been an inclusion there because they don't have access to that red epic, or they don't have the means available to them to tool up with what's considered to be a proper cinematic camera or broadcast camera. And they've not gone into storytelling or filmmaking because of that. And I think that's a great shame. Because I've met some incredible writers, I've met some incredible producers, and want to be cinematographers that have incredible ideas that just put them on ice for three, four or five years, and they never make them because they just don't think those things are available to them. So the great joy here is actually saying we can turn that stigma around actually say that stigma is probably one of the strengths of smartphone cinematography, and that you can actually be a story teller, anywhere, anytime, with with that thing that's in your pocket. And no one's gonna question you you can be, you can be a one person production team, you can be operating very frugally. You could be in the middle of Times Square. filming this incredible shot, but nobody knows whether you're filming it just for a social feed or whether you're actually making something that's going to screen at Sundance, you're never gonna get a tap on the shoulder by the security guards or the local administration asking you for your film permits. You're never going oh, you see what I'm saying? You can really fly under the radar with with a small camera like a smartphone. And even when it's accessorize with some lenses and audio, we've never ever been kicked out of an area. We've never been stopped from filming. We've never been considered a serious crew. And that's part of what I love. We can actually travel around we can get these incredible stories, we can capture this incredible footage. And we're never hindered in our way. And it's such as an enabler for us in in in capturing story. I love it. For me, that's what I love doing. I'm a documentary filmmaker. So for me, you know being able to run around like a ninja and, and capture and create story and not be burdened by the process of the people around me or the environment that I'm filming in is a wonderful joy and it's something that's allowed me to to actually make stories I couldn't make any other way.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 34:54<br /> Yeah, exactly. I think it was a lot like the when the DSLRs first came out. People were Making you know, like Michel Polish his film for lovers only or things like that where they literally went to Paris and shot everywhere in restaurants every because it was it was people thought they were taking pictures that technology was so new and now similar things with iPhones like no one. They're not professionals obviously, there they don't know what they're doing obviously so let's not bother them you know, I even ran across that with with the pocket, you know, like with my pocket camera people are like, what do you what do you do and I'm I'm shooting a feature Like what? Like it's, it's mind blowing, but you could sneak in with those kinds of cameras in the iPhone is the ultimate of that because everybody knows that camera. I mean, you knows that device, so you never you'll never get caught with it. And you</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 35:46<br /> It's happened all through the chain. Sorry, I just said it's happened all through the chain of evolution in camera craft. If we look back to the very beginning with with film camera and sexual film cameras, when the digital video camera revolution came along the film industry, the film camera industry, all those traditional cinematographers did not write the digital camera setups, they, they they never thought they were gonna have a long lasting place in the industry. And of course, history tells us otherwise when you know, the first DSLR came out, I think in 2007 or eight actually film video.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 36:20<br /> Yeah, remember the five d? came out? Yeah,</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 36:23<br /> Yeah. You know, when that first one came out with the record capacity for video, the digital video camera market said that's not that's not a proper camera that said we can record video of course, yeah. Everybody deny that that was actually going to make any kind of inroads in our industry. And now we're sitting at that other chapter, we've got the further miniaturization of aircraft, we've got smartphones, we've got action cameras, adventure cameras. We've got all sorts with a wearable cameras coming next. Yeah, we've got so many things that are new to the industry. And of course, everyone's shooting on a DSLR, or a digital video camera or anything else is, is going that that's definitely not a serious camera history will prove that different. And again, it's not about saying, you know, smartphone cameras are going to overtake the industry. And you know, every other kind of camera is going to destroy it. Of course, it's not going to happen now. But what we do need to be aware of is the fact that, you know, for some of those productions, or some elements of your production, maybe a smartphone camera is actually going to be able to capture that scene, or tell that story better than something else. You're already having your kid.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:25<br /> Yeah, and without question. No, no, absolutely. Without question. And you could sneak into places with that small camera and get shots. I do actually know of a few filmmakers in DPS, who are on network shows, who will Yeah, we'll do a little and they'll intercut. And if it's a quick little action thing or something like that, you know, it works. It really works.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 37:50<br /> I think the way that I a couple of weeks ago Alex, I actually was a guest at one of our major television networks here in Australia, there was 240, their executives gathered around in one of the big studios, they have one of these get togethers every three months. And they have guest speakers from all sides of the of the film and television industry coming in and address them once. Every quarter, I came in to talk to him about what smartphones are going to do what what space is there for smartphones in the broadcast television world and, and I would have thought that would have been a really hostile audience going in and speaking to all those executives and AP, network producers and series producers, and they loved it. They were they were totally on board, they loved opening their minds to what they could do. And of course, you know, we'd be having drps working on TV series coming up to us afterwards saying, you know, we've been filming with the same cameras for 20 years. And we're not allowed to upgrade our cameras because of budget. But we could afford two or three of these kids to accessorize what we're doing in our production. And so they're seeing the the opportunity for it, and there's definitely space for it in the industry. And when people start seeing some you know, in the coming years, we'll see some more feature films We'll see. definitely see a lot more documentaries coming out that have been created on smartphones. And I think that'll help really change maybe a catalyst of change for that conversation. And you know, we can buy $120 anamorphic lens to put on the front of your phone and capture a beautiful animal for picture right. Off the lens me is the whole thing. Yeah, it's and it fits in your pocket. It's inside. It's It's crazy,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:28<br /> Do. I mean, do you feel like it's I mean, the iPhone revolution or the smartphone revolution is kind of similar to what happened with the DSLR like, people were like only like the first early adopters would go in and start playing and toy and making little films with it and all that kind of stuff. And now I feel that that's what's happening with iPhone technology and with smartphone technology</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 39:50<br /> Completely completely. In fact, we've so we run a production agency here in Australia, and we earlier this year became the first production house In Australia to actually down scale our tools. So we now actually shoot all of our television commercials and all of our brand content for big brands exclusively on iPhones. We do it all on iPhones, with accessory lenses, accessory microphones, everything we produce out of our production agency is all sourced on our phone.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 40:17<br /> Now how, how is it when you show up to set? you bust up and be like, Oh, I love it. No, no, but like other people, like other people, like what are the What is it? Other people say, I have to believe that like, you show up and there's a crew, and they're like, No, seriously, what are we shooting on?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 40:34<br /> Is there 20 people, there's five people and then all of a sudden it's like, Yeah, but you guys aren't serious. He just doing the social stuff. Right? And and are we actually doing the broadcast stuff today? And, look, it's amazing, because it opens many conversations, when we're filming talent, they love it, because it's a completely different way of working. And they find they're more in the mind rather than the process of the filmmaking process. So that it's a bit of liberated for talent as well. And definitely, you know, when when we're doing documentary interviews, there's nothing like putting an unassuming camera setup in front of the documentary subjects and getting them to open up, we have been able to get so many more incredibly deep conversations going through using smartphones as camera capture tools, as opposed to traditional camera setups. For people that aren't used to being in front of the camera, it is an incredible enabler. And absolutely, without a doubt we've we've made stories that wouldn't have ever made it to air. If it wasn't for the iPhone as a caption capture tool.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 41:35<br /> Now, you said you touched on something I would love to kind of dig deep a little deeper into a talent. I mean, obviously the documentary world it You're right, because obviously documentaries you got when people open up and when they see this Alexa, or red rig, which tend to be huge sometimes. Yeah, it could be over into is especially intimidating for people who are not versed in our world. But when you you know, you're like, Okay, we're just gonna shoot this just open up, it's fine. It's Yeah, yeah, that I have to believe is a lot better on a documentary standpoint, but also just as actors, you know, there's a freedom and a speed that you can move with these rigs. You know, even with my experience with shooting with with the the small camera, I was able to move so quickly. And the actors were just like on, like, there's no going back to the trailer for an hour while we reset, know where we're going. And there's an energy to it. So what I would love to talk to you about that?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 42:35<br /> Yeah, totally, we find exactly the same, it's, you know, it's so much faster to do same transitions to lighting setups are simpler, everything is a lot more simpler. And so we find we have more ability to block through a scene, we have more ability to work through the dialogue, the transactions, we just we see a lot more scope, a lot more experimentation with what we're capturing, as opposed to being extremely didactic about what we're wanting to shoot. And we call it lean forward filmmaking, we think it's really this, this sense of stepping on set, and we actually have the camera in hand ready to go. And we let the camera almost show and guide for us what could be a good flow for the camera movement, what could be good coverage in the scene, it's quite different to actually sitting there. And first of all, overly pre producing, how we're going to actually capture that scene, how we're going to lens it, how we're going to load, all that sort of thing, we find that there's just this, there's almost like an organic nature to the production, which is really nice. And particularly, I think for people that are not really versed with working with larger crews that are relatively new to working with other people, I think anything you can do to help keep your your crew small, to keep your equipment tight overhead, gives you more flexibility in your shoot day. And then in your call sheet. I think all that stuff's all the positive. So it's a great way to actually really give yourself many more options and what you probably would do with it with a traditional camera setup.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 44:05<br /> And at the end of the day, and I think this is I think we could both agree on this. It doesn't really matter what the hell you shoot on is What's the story? And that's what people get so until I mean I did I did full podcast about stop obsessing about gear no one gives a crap like they really don't. Only guys like you and me will go so what you shoot on, like, really, but people watching a film on Netflix doesn't care. They shot on my legs on red on black magic on an iPhone, it doesn't matter. But people I think and you might you know, you might love to hear what you think about it. But I think a lot of times filmmakers use that as an excuse not to actually be filmmakers because they hide behind it.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 44:49<br /> I totally agree. And I think you and I have both gone to the exact same networking opportunities at festivals where you step into a room of fellow creatives, filmmakers You meet one another, and it's nobody talks about the project they're working on, they say, I've just been shooting something on XYZ, right? straightaway, they're into the gear that straightaway, it's all about the box. And I'm sure if you go to a great restaurant and go and have a chat to some chefs, they're not talking about what brand knife they've been chopping vegetables and fish with that night, they're talking about something entirely different. You know, when we, when we think about, you know, incredible performance on stage, the first thing they don't credit their success with is the brand of the microphone that they're singing into, or the PA system. But somehow, in the filmmaking industry, we're still very caught up in the fact that it's all about boxes and lenses. It's marketing. It's the marketing.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:42<br /> It's the marketing of the companies, though, the companies want you to continue to buy new lenses, buy new cameras, buy new everything. So it's, and again, you hear from the beginning of your career, so you get caught up in it. I've kind of let go of that. Now. I'm like, what's the right tool for the job?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 45:58<br /> Yeah, yeah, totally. And it's become almost like a skin, I feel it's like something you said before, like, we wrap it over. So I was like a mask. And that's we talking about the equipment and the gear seems to be an easier thing to do, then actually opening up about what we're trying to say with what we're capturing. And, and I think as soon as we can start changing those conversations, it's actually Alex the same reason why I never go on in introduce myself as a filmmaker anymore. As early this year, I now call myself a film breaker. Because I feel the way I make films is, is at odds with what the industry perception of normally is. And so I think I tend to break a lot of rules when I make my films rather than making them. So when I say I'm a filmmaker, and I step in that same environment, yeah. What's the first question you think someone asked you? When you say you're a filmmaker? What's the next thing that comes out of their mouth?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:46<br /> Or what are you shooting on? Or what? What films have you made that I know? Well, there's that chance?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 46:51<br /> Yeah, it's not a lot. Yeah, there's probably not a lot that I've made that that most people would have seen. So yeah, you're right, you release myself as a phone breaker that introduces a conversation rather than stopping it with a period in the conversation. It's just, it's a way of enabling people to understand that there's more than one way to make a film come alive.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:08<br /> I always tell people that, you know, if you give a canvas and paint and brush to Basquiat, Warhol, and Paul, you're gonna get paint on a canvas. But how you get it is up to them. And it really doesn't matter. The style you make it like I know, I've worked with filmmakers who. And I've also talked to filmmakers who are completely improv films, like I've done my last two films are fairly, you know, structures, outlines and film. And you know, and that's the first time I ever did that, before that it was more structured and storyboards, and previous, and all that kind of stuff. But there's millions of different ways to tell the story. But at the end of the day, and I think this is where filmmakers get so caught, just missed the mark. It is about what story you're trying to tell, how are you trying to impact the world in one way, shape, or form? Whatever, your what's your, what's your take on it? What is your perspective?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 48:03<br /> On voice? A lot of people get lost in that. Yeah, they they, they forget that really, that perfecting their craft is not about learning how to use more boxes. It's really about learning how to really define their voice and their style as a storyteller. And embracing that and let him feeling comfortable in their skin, actually owning their style of production and what they bring to the films that they want to release to market actually, I think that's, that's actually a really good point. People really need to focus more on their voice. And and what they want to say, as opposed to experimenting with, you know, 14 different types of camera setups before they feel they've made a serious film.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:43<br /> Well, I think the other thing is that like, well, that movie was shot you know, this Oscar winning movie was shot on Alexa. So if I shoot a movie with Alexa, then my chances are so much better to get an Oscar. Like, isn't that the mentality? Like seriously? Oh, I have to get a read because that's what like the Avengers was shot on. So I want a $200 million budgets. I guess I have Yeah. It's it's, it's it's not a it really is not,</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 49:06<br /> I hope we've aged if we only felt comfortable stepping out on the road and driving a car if we could have a $300,000 vehicle. I mean, we can still drive in a $2,000 bomb. But you know, it's, it's, we're still it still gets us to a to b hopefully. But it's fine to aspire towards those those other lofty cameras and setups. But the main thing is, I think what people need to think about is, if I'm a great storyteller, if I've got an idea for telling a story, what can a resource around me that'll help enable me to tell that story right, rather than give myself more excuses and delays and procrastinating about actually starting making that form?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:44<br /> Absolutely. I hope today's conversation Jason has has woken a few people up has inspired a few people to pick up the thing in their pocket and go tell a story, experiment learn. I mean, there is no film development. There is no Huge amounts of media that you have to buy. And trust me, it's if you want to tell a story, there is no excuse. And that's what I that's what I hope this conversation this interview has helped a few people today. So thank you for, for dropping the knowledge bombs, I'm gonna ask a few questions that I asked all my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 50:26<br /> I would say you are your projects best advocate. So never ever give up on it. If you give up on your project, if you waver if you lose the love, nobody else is going to have the love for your project like you do. So you need to be the absolute champion for your project. And never ever lose sight of that. I think I see a lot of people with an idea that soon as they start shopping it around or they start asking for opinions, they feel that it's probably a less lesser thing than what they started out with. And they park it off to the side and then they lose the love for it. I think you need to be your projects, best advocate. So never stop selling the concept of what you want to make. If you believe in it with all your heart. If you feel it's a thing you really want to make, it's your sole responsibility to the champion for it, you need to you need to pull everybody else on board and you need to fly the flag all the time.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:21<br /> And I think you have to be free of the good opinion of others. In many ways.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 51:27<br /> Absolutely. In fact, you know, seeking the advice and opinions of people around you that aren't your friends and family is probably the other thing I would say is making sure you get some good independent reviews of your work. And and it'll hurt the first time someone comes back to you and tears it to shreds. Yeah, it's a horrible experience. But if you sit on it for two or three days and look at your work again with with that, in your mind, hopefully you can learn from the process. And certainly, that's probably how I've grown as a filmmaker and a storyteller is by exposing my work to people that I really respect that don't have a personal association with me, that feel honest enough to actually really be honest about a project want to show that to them and take on board listen to listen to their conversation with fresh ears and eyes after a few days when the pain is settled, and you can look at your work and actually learn from it and grow as a storyteller. Important.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:22<br /> Absolutely. Now, can you tell me the book that had the biggest impact on your life or career?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 52:29<br /> The book that had the biggest impact on my life or career? I'm going to probably be a little controversial here and say it's going to be a book with no words. Okay. And I'm going to give you a book called The Arrival by Shaun tan. Okay. I don't know if you've heard of that. he's a he's a graphic novelist. Based in the western side of Australia. He won an Academy Award for an animation called The last thing I believe, two years ago. And he Yeah, this graphical novel called the the arrival is an incredible story about what it likes what it's like to feel, to walk in the shoes of being an immigrant in a new country. But it's completely taught through incredible illustrations. No words needed. It invents its own language through the book when you read it. Yeah, the arrival by Shaun tan definitely check that out. Incredible readable, great, great. It's like a storyboard incredible storyboard.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:28<br /> Awesome. Now what lesson took you the longest to learn whether the film industry or in life?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 53:36<br /> The lesson that took me the longest to learn, would have to be to never stop making. Whether you feel your success or failure, whether you feel you're inspired or not, there is no replacement for making and keeping your tools sharp and keeping your skills sharp. And I think always staying in the game. Always going out, finding story listening, making story all the time. Always refine your skills and keep going. Don't give yourself a year off from filmmaking. You need to keep making wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you need to keep making whatever that story is that's in front of you keep making it</p><p>Alex Ferrari 54:16<br /> And three of your favorite films of all time?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 54:20<br /> Three of my favorite films of all time, I'm going to keep it a documentary, because that's probably my passion.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 54:26<br /> Okay.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 54:28<br /> The first one I would say would be Blackfish probably one of my all time favorite. Yeah, that's a killer whale.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 54:38<br /> What I will kill them to kill the entire company. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're here. I'm here in LA. So I saw I saw when it happened, like I went to SeaWorld that like with my family, yeah, girls wanted to go. I was like, I don't really want to go, let's support it, or we're gonna go once and that's it. Man. They changed everything. It was pretty remarkable that one move be knocked down a multi million dollar corporations pretty amazing.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 55:04<br /> Clearly and if you want inspiration as a documentary filmmaker, there is no greater inspiration than something like that. When you see the cause and effect of the film like that's incredible. The second film I would probably pick is searching for sugar man,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 55:18<br /> Ohh what I wonder. Oh, God, I love that movie. Yeah, it was so good. Sorry. No, go ahead. Good.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 55:26<br /> I just large chunks of it were actually filmed on iPhone. Really? I didn't know that. Yes, I looked it up large chunks of the the recreated historical footage, I think was filmed with a eight millimeter film app on a smartphone.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 55:44<br /> Because he was doing it sad that he passed away but I remember the filmmaker. He did it almost all by himself. Like he was Yeah, editing for like, three years and and then he got the Oscar which was just like, Oh my God when I saw</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 55:58<br /> I mean, that is the ultimate indie film hustle searching for sugar. And this this guy made it happen. incredible story made with with really scarce resources. Yeah. Beautiful.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 56:07<br /> What's the other one that just came out a few years ago. Is it the Walk walk the line? About Oh, what do you want to talk about? The one that the guy across the Twin Towers? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Type rope. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. What an amazing documentary. I fell in love with that guy. He's crazy. I love him. Alright, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The third one,</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 56:29<br /> I got a third one for you. And that's a filmmaker called Brian hurt slinger. And in his documentary as my date with Drew, came out, and I remember that I've seen that movie. Yeah, when he went about making it</p><p>Alex Ferrari 56:44<br /> When the stalker laws were a little less back then apparently. But he wanted. He wanted to make he wanted to date with Drew Barrymore. And he made a whole documentary about it.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 56:54<br /> In 30 days, incredible, just the ultimate challenge. How can you make a film in 30 days, he didn't even own a camera. That was an incredible thing. He and his two friends had to go and beg, borrow and steal a camera on a credit card, which I had to be able to get a refund on within 30 days, that was the Prime Minister making a film rather than using a window to make 30 days ago and find a date with Drew Barrymore. And I think Rotten Tomatoes actually called it the love it or hate it's stalker artsy. Like it was. Like I said, you probably could not make that film in 2018. But back in 2004, it was just it's one of those heartwarming, very simply made films, the aesthetics in a very pure, very basic, but super sweet story and as a documentary filmmaker, so much hope in there for filmmaking story with minimal means.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 57:41<br /> So those are some great choices, my friend great choices. Now where can people find you in the work you do?</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 57:49<br /> Look, probably the best place would be on Facebook to look up film breaker, film breaker, that's the page where I've been sharing most of my, my knowledge, bombs and work of late. We've got a few influences on there. Contributing basically it's a space where people who want to learn how to make films with their smartphones can be tooled up can be can be inspired. And we we set that up in March this year with an aim of finding 10,000 people around the world that had a similar mindset. And we're now up to just over 30,000. So yeah, film breaker on Facebook is definitely the place to connect, to stay in touch with what we're making. And yeah, check out our work.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 58:32<br /> Awesome, man. Thank you, Jason, again, so much. This has been an amazing interview, amazing conversation. And I really do hope it inspires people out there in the tribe and whoever is listening to this to get out there and just go tell their story man with doesn't matter what you could you have the power in your hands.</p><p>Jason Van Genderen 58:51<br /> Completely Alex wonderful being on the show. Thanks so much for the opportunity. 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4.686 12.284 0 16.97l-180 180c-4.686 4.687-12.284 4.687-16.97 0-4.686-4.686-4.686-12.284 0-16.97L479.029 279.5 259.515 59.985c-4.686-4.686-4.686-12.284 0-16.97z" /></svg></span><span class="screen-reader-text">Tags </span><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/cinematography/" rel="tag">cinematography</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/filmbreaker/" rel="tag">Filmbreaker</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/iphone-cinematography/" rel="tag">iPhone Cinematography</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/iphone-filmmaking/" rel="tag">iphone filmmaking</a>, <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/tag/jason-van-genderen/" rel="tag">Jason Van Genderen</a></span></footer></div></article><article id="post-159867" class="post-159867 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-blog category-podcast tag-archival-footage tag-james-forsher tag-stock-footage tag-stock-footage-everything-under-the-sun-using-archival-material-to-make-your-good-film-great" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/james-forsher/" rel="bookmark">BPS 400: How I Made $100K+ Selling Stock Footage with James Forsher</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2025-01-03T06:30:54+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">January 3, 2025</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/james-forsher/"> <noscript><img width="768" height="369" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher.webp 768w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher-300x144.webp 300w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></noscript><img width="768" height="369" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20768%20369%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher.webp 768w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/James-Forsher-300x144.webp 300w" data-sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63476522&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Today on the show we have the Stock Footage Yoda <strong>James Forsher</strong>. James has nearly forty years of experience in producing, writing, and directing documentaries and television commercials. Forsher’s productions, ranging from half-hour shows to feature-length documentaries, have aired on the Discovery Channel, The Movie Channel, Cinemax, A & E, and PBS.</p><p>Forsher’s productions range from this year’s hour-long show Elvis and the Girl from Vienna back to his 1977 documentary Conrad Hilton: Insight into a Giant. Forsher has also taught film and video production at the college and university level for nearly two decades directed the broadcast program at California State University, East Bay, and has taught communication courses as a Fulbright Scholar in Europe.</p><p>His new book <strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161593295X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=161593295X&linkCode=as2&tag=whatisbroke-20&linkId=7419c61570bce373f0637f0a22314c9a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-amzn-asin="161593295X">Stock Footage + Everything Under the Sun: Using Archival Material to Make Your Good Film Great</a><noscript><img decoding="async" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=whatisbroke-20&l=am2&o=1&a=161593295X" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></noscript><img class="lazyload" decoding="async" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201%201%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=whatisbroke-20&l=am2&o=1&a=161593295X" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /> </strong>is the bible of stock footage. It is the only book that gives an overview of the use of archival footage and how it played an expanding and crucial role in documentary and TV films. Readers learn how to research images and clear the rights.</p><ul><li>Part One is an overview of archival footage, reviewing exactly what constitutes archival material and how it fits within the broader history of film and TV production. It also introduces the areas of research and legal parameters to the reader.</li><li>Part Two examines the variety of styles of entertainment programming that use archival footage, including separate sections on network magazine formats, cable reality shows, webisodes, PBS documentaries, feature-length documentaries, and how documentaries can sway public opinion. Each Part offers interviews with experts who give a realistic idea of how they’ve used stock footage in their own work.</li><li>Part Three covers Visual Literacy 101, a short course on how to “read” a film. By looking at only a few seconds of footage, one can deduce some very important facts about the film. This part makes a detective out of any researcher or editor who is determined to find the most authentic setting and context for their film.</li><li>Part Four discusses how to use archival footage, writing a script that includes archival material, editing archival material, negotiating rights and budgeting constraints.</li></ul><p>If you ever wanted to know how to get, use or sell stock and archival footage for your film get ready to take notes.</p><p><strong>Enjoy my conversation with James Forsher.</strong></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63476522/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161593295X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=161593295X&linkCode=as2&tag=whatisbroke-20&linkId=7419c61570bce373f0637f0a22314c9a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-amzn-asin="161593295X">Stock Footage + Everything Under the Sun: Using Archival Material to Make Your Good Film Great</a><noscript><img decoding="async" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=whatisbroke-20&l=am2&o=1&a=161593295X" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></noscript><img class="lazyload" decoding="async" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201%201%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=whatisbroke-20&l=am2&o=1&a=161593295X" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></strong></li><li><strong>James Forsher – <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0286868/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">IMDB</a></strong></li><li><strong>James Forsher – <a href="https://rainmakers.tv/dr-james-forsher-special-consultant-adviser/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rainmakers.tv</a></strong></li><li><strong><em>Alex Ferrari’s Shooting for the Mob Book- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/194808063X/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547142961&sr=1-7&_encoding=UTF8&tag=whatisbroke-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=f471eab046bcf8102432db250069fcfb&camp=1789&creative=9325" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-amzn-asin="194808063X">Amazon Link</a></em></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 2.78125V1.5H14.5ZM1.5 10.5V4.71875C2.1875 5.28125 3.21875 6.09375 4.75 7.3125C5.4375 7.84375 6.65625 9.03125 8 9C9.3125 9.03125 10.5 7.84375 11.2188 7.3125C12.75 6.09375 13.7812 5.28125 14.5 4.71875V10.5H1.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Email</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download" href="#" > <svg width="18" height="16" viewBox="0 0 18 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M16.5 9H13.5938L15.0625 7.5625C16 6.625 15.3125 5 14 5H12V1.5C12 0.6875 11.3125 0 10.5 0H7.5C6.65625 0 6 0.6875 6 1.5V5H4C2.65625 5 1.96875 6.625 2.9375 7.5625L4.375 9H1.5C0.65625 9 0 9.6875 0 10.5V14.5C0 15.3438 0.65625 16 1.5 16H16.5C17.3125 16 18 15.3438 18 14.5V10.5C18 9.6875 17.3125 9 16.5 9ZM4 6.5H7.5V1.5H10.5V6.5H14L9 11.5L4 6.5ZM16.5 14.5H1.5V10.5H5.875L7.9375 12.5625C8.5 13.1562 9.46875 13.1562 10.0312 12.5625L12.0938 10.5H16.5V14.5ZM13.75 12.5C13.75 12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 1:51<br /> I'd like to welcome to the show, James Forsher, man, how you doing?</p><p>James Forsher 3:06<br /> We're good.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 3:07<br /> Thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it.</p><p>James Forsher 3:10<br /> Well, my pleasure. I'm glad to talk about all things archival material.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 3:14<br /> Well, there is a ton I want to know about stock footage and about archival and all that kind of stuff. But before we get into it first, can you tell me a little bit about how you got into the business?</p><p>James Forsher 3:24<br /> Um, I got in the business a couple of different ways. One is my mom was Elvis Presley Secretary from 1956 to 61. And then she awesome. Amanda Zucker, the second, who was the grandson of the founder of paramount and so they produce shows together. So I was kind of born to this whole environment, which was a plus and a minus. Because I saw the greatest things about the industry. I saw the worst things about the industry. I'm in college, they gave me a couple of interviews they had done with people that had just gone stealth and they didn't want to deal with it. And but for me, I thought as a Career Builder, if I want to get in this business, they were great. So one was an interview with Conrad Hilton. And so I finished my senior year at the University of California, Santa Cruz and aired on TV. So that was my first credit and I hadn't even graduated yet. And then the second was an interview with Zuko, who started Paramount Studios, and he kind of a life history of the film industry, actually was my first film I spent about a year year and a half kind of learning how to make a film making that and that's what introduced me to archival material.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 4:33<br /> Very cool. Now your book is called stock footage, everything under the sun using archival material to make a good film. Great. It's a lengthy title, but a great one.</p><p>James Forsher 4:46<br /> I didn't come up with it. The publisher gwec did I mean it really covers it, I mean, pretty much started stock footage, but there's 25 other chapters but every other type of archival material actually does go Possibly into your film or creative project?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 5:03<br /> Well, let's talk about stock footage. Can you explain to the audience what stock footage is? in general?</p><p>James Forsher 5:08<br /> Yeah. Anything from the very first film shot like 1893, up to something that was shot this morning, it is now in the closet, because what do you do with it? It covers everything that exists. And so when you're looking for material for a shot, and you don't have a camera, and you can't go run outside and go shoot it, you got to find it from someplace. And that falls under what we call the archival material houses, stock houses. So you're always looking for material, it's always past tense, it gets a little philosophical, but that's kind of what really is going on here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 5:47<br /> Now, and is there a big difference between the term archival footage because when I think archival footage, I'm thinking old black and white, you know, old school stuff, you're not thinking of things that were just shot a day ago?</p><p>James Forsher 5:58<br /> Exactly. And that's one of the misconceptions. And one of the reasons I wrote the book, because I had produced for, you know, I mean, for almost 40 years, and I had spent 20 years teaching to, and most of my students 95%. And when I mentioned archival livestock, they would go, but that's great old stuff is public domain. And that's about as far as it went. And it's, that's like one quarter of 1% of 1% majority of it is everything else Gone with the Wind. Well, if you need a shot of flying monkeys, good place to go. And, you know, man on the moon, that's another piece of stock footage. It's all under stock footage. The broader term is archival footage, same thing, but archival material encompasses the whole wide world of existing creative stuff. Graphics, music, sound effects, still photos, newsreels.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 6:54<br /> You know, it's massive, it's a massive amount of mass within.</p><p>James Forsher 6:58<br /> And so the whole point of the book was a real primer introduction to this massive world in bite sized pieces. So the filmmakers could look at this and go, Oh, God, okay, I can do this. I can get this I can grab this. And suddenly, I think projects become a lot more interesting, because you can put a lot more stuff in it to tell your <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a>.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 7:17<br /> So you mentioned Gone with the Wind, which I think you meant Wizard of Oz, because I don't remember flying monkeys and Gone with the Wind. Oh, no. They should go with the winners and other Philby flying monkeys in you know? Yeah. So how would you? So then how would you go about, you know, calling MGM up and going, Hey, I would like to get a scene from Gone with the Wind for my dock or for my narrative feature that I want to playing in the background or something along those lines? How would you go about because I will talk a little bit about more of the standard stock footage, like go into a stock footage files and things like that. But for films I'm really curious about especially famous ones,</p><p>James Forsher 7:55<br /> Famous films are funny little story unto themselves, because you think the studios would be happy to be able to license and make 1,000,002 million, 3 million a year. Some studios are some studios love to have a few million, some studios, oh, they can't be bothered. And they will not license it out unless you're a friend of a friend of a friend. So for example, when I got started back in the early 80s, we needed material from Warner Brothers. And I called the contact I had who was very grouchy and who knows, I don't know if I want to license you I don't want to deal with it. So I called the distributor that I was working with. And I said, Who do you know there? He says, I know the President I said can you call the president? Well, within a week, we had the footage, okay, at a rate of a third of what I could have bargained for. So part of it comes down to just calling the studio, which is all you can do and typically starts with a letter to the legal department. And the other part is if they give you a hard time copy, if you have a distributor, talk to them and find out who knows whom, because that also helps.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 8:59<br /> And then licensing fees vary, I'm assuming</p><p>James Forsher 9:02<br /> Yes. And let me go back to that last point. I can't stress enough to have a expert clip, licensed person do the work for you. It costs a little extra, it may cost you $502,000 for a typical job, but here's the deal. They already have the relationships in place, they already know the people. So you're buying that expertise without having to beg your distributor to do a favor. They may or may not be able to do so having a clip licensed person and I mentioned some in my book that will help you get through and get the right price because they'll be able to get you the price. They know a sphere.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:45<br /> So it's a better price than what you could get probably if you just called up directly and they have no relationship with you.</p><p>James Forsher 9:51<br /> Yeah, this is Pennywise pound foolish if you really have no money. Yeah, do it yourself and keep your fingers crossed. But if you have some money your budget, you just hire someone to do this part of the job because it really is a full time job unto itself. And these people who do it have done for years, they have relationships, relationships that go back years. And they know the prices. So they're really well worth acquiring.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 10:16<br /> I worked on a film, excuse me in a show for Hulu. And I noticed that one of the characters had a image of john Carpenter's the thing, another thing, they live on it. And I asked the director and the producers of that, because I was working with him in post, I'm like, how did you get that? Like, you can't like how he's like, we called up the studio, and we go, Hey, we want to use an image for a T shirt. And it was fairly affordable, like extremely affordable, actually, for what they want. And they're like, yeah, we'll design it, just send us a send it over to us, and we'll approve it, and then just pay us and we're good. That's kind of how it works.</p><p>James Forsher 10:53<br /> It can I did a discovery channel special, I needed a minute of walk the dinosaur from many years ago. Yeah, we just called it like it was Disney at the time and or whatnot. Well, that was another film. I called up the owner. And they said, Sure, you know, put it in because it's promotion. So a lot of times people are glad to give away things, let alone get money, if it falls into promoting their item, if it's available at that time.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:19<br /> And it benefit you more if you're a bigger project, or to get that kind of giveaway stuff as opposed or they'll look at you and go, Oh, they have money so they can I can charge it. So it's a little double edged sword.</p><p>James Forsher 11:32<br /> Yeah, well, they go by market. So if you sit there and say, one brother is distributing our feature length film worldwide, they'll say dollar dollar dollar. If you say we're doing a show for Hulu, they'll say half $1. And they'll know what's there and what works.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 11:50<br /> Gotcha. Now can you give me a few examples of stock footage being used in successful projects that are like let's say feature films, because we all know Ken Burns, we all know doc documentaries, that's where archival kind of is known to be to make its bones, if you will. But for feature films, I don't I don't know any many of many examples.</p><p>James Forsher 12:10<br /> Yeah, well, a lot of feature films use stock footage, it may simply be the scene where the actors walked into a hotel room. There's a TV on his on the television. And that comes from somewhere, you know, so that stock footage. I remember years ago, it was a film called Firestarter, I used to have our film division. And we sold them some 1920s footage we had and then just played in a television scene where she's watching television and going from channel to channel and I was one of the channels. So you know, that's</p><p>Alex Ferrari 12:44<br /> And and you'd like to and that was footage that you owned,</p><p>James Forsher 12:46<br /> Licensed yet. And so the the deal is what you always have to think of still images, music films, always think of the nasty lawyer will keep you honest. And this will keep making sure you do what you've got to do. You're covering your back, you're covering your back from the nasty lawyer. Also, it even goes beyond the nasty lawyer it can actually be the the trade councils of countries now the short story. years ago, I did a documentary. And we used a clip from a foreign film. And I did library Congress search, which is what everyone should do if they have they think they have a public domain piece of footage. Always request a library of congress research report to put in your errors and emissions report, which is the insurance package you get at the end of the film. And we did it aired on Discovery Channel. In the third year, the final airing, I get a call from a production company from this country or in country and they said you used our fuel illegally, and it's copyrighted, blah, blah, blah. So I said, Well, I think we have a misunderstanding. I sent him my library Congress report, which showed that I had done due diligence in the matter. I got calls every week from them demanding 1000s of dollars that they really wanted, you know, the money and we broke the law, blah, blah, blah. And he actually had the trade mission from that country call me in an edit session. I mean, it really was, wow, nasty stuff. And so finally, you know, I looked at him or told him on a phone call. You know, you I don't know if you're gonna understand this, but you can't get blood out of a turnip. And I hung up on him. I guess he talked to somebody who translated that to him, and they stopped calling. But the thing is, it was weeks worth of very nasty phone calls. And they were right. And I was writing meaning this was their film, but they hadn't properly copyrighted here. So I was able to use it. But it still didn't stop me from being, you know, harangue, I guess you call it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:06<br /> So let me ask you that because that's, that's something that's very interesting. And a lot of people kind of get lost in it. copywriting here in the US is one thing. But then there's copyrights in England, there's copyrights in France, there's copyrights all over the place. So if they want to see if a movie is made in the in an Australia, they'll copyright in Australia, but if but if they want to protect it in the US to have to have to copyright it in the US as well, correct?</p><p>James Forsher 15:33<br /> Well, nowadays, a copyright. If you've never heard in the US, it's pretty, it's pretty much worldwide at this point. But what what happened was, for many, many years, the majority of time for the feature film history, there were two copyright conventions. It was the Berne Convention, which was Europe and Asia, whatever countries subscribed to it that the US did, US had its own copyright tribunal. And so if you come out here, yes, you would have to go and do a Berne Convention copyright and have the two copyrights. So what you'll find is there were films that were caught red in Europe, returned public domain here, like propolis. And it was a mess. And I think Finally, in the last decade or so, we signed on, and now it's a really is a worldwide convention.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 16:25<br /> So So let me talk a little bit about stock footage, or public shaming public domain footage. Because I've had so many questions about this, like the Alfred Hitchcock collection, and Metropolis and Nosferatu and, of course, famously made a night of living dead, which is why it's on every television of every independent movie ever. Because public domain, but films like specifically like the Hitchcock collection, which they has, there's the British Hitchcock films, which is early on, like the lodger in Jamaica in and other things like that. Then they then there's the US version, from what I understand using his films, you could arguably use the British films here as public domain because they went public domain here in the States, but you cannot show it in England or anywhere that's accessible to England. Is that correct? not correct?</p><p>James Forsher 17:22<br /> Well, it's a loaded question. And that's the book really talks about this. But in a nutshell, here's the deal. There's clear public domain, there's murky public domain, foreign films, I'd call that murky public domain, because it could have been shown here and they could have copyrighted under a different title. So they've been released overseas and one title and release. Here's another title. When it was released is a big issue. So when it was produced 75 years ago, it falls under the old copyright law, it was produced last 20 years, it pulls into the new one, the old one was 20 years with renewal. The new one is 75 years and 85 years and you know, 5000 years and you might as well consider it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:15<br /> Well never gonna see Mickey Mouse is basically never gonna see Steamboat Willie.</p><p>James Forsher 18:19<br /> Cities are too powerful. So that's one area you really have to be careful about is is is it really public domain? Because someone says it is I always go by the Library of Congress research report. That's your backup again, think of the nasty attorney. Thank you protecting yourself from that lawsuit. And so if someone tells you it's public domain fine, but go get it for like at least like 10 or $12 per title, get it verified.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 18:50<br /> Now if you but if you if you buy let's say one of these films from a library a stock stock House says hey, here's I got a pristine 35 millimeter print of the larger you know, which is and I can I could get it to you digitally or beta SP or Digi bait or whatever. And they tell me Hey, you know, you can play it here in the USB can't played in England. Is that something?</p><p>James Forsher 19:17<br /> It's something but you know, think about your sales. I mean, nowadays your sales in the US are not what they were 20 years ago, right? The old days, you had video sales, you better pay cable, you had basic cable syndication, you had all these possibilities to make money now. You basically streaming thrown in and streaming and that pays bubkis. And so really the world is more your market nowadays. And so the dollars have changed. I would check to see if it is available overseas because the US is so small part of the market. I just finished a film sold all over Europe, but we couldn't make a sale here because of these rights issues and they were just too much spensive you,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:01<br /> Really. So there was just footage that you used in the movie that just,</p><p>James Forsher 20:04<br /> Yeah, well, expensive here. We're in Europe, they do it completely differently in Europe, you do a report, you turn it in, and it goes to royalty reports and pays it. We're here you have to license it directly from the music companies.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:20<br /> Oh, so in other words, so yeah, basically, everybody, basically, you have all the music available to you in Europe. And it just like you just pay in the system, and the system pays them out.</p><p>James Forsher 20:30<br /> I mean, every filmmaker in the US wishes that were that way here. But it kills it. I could not show this film. It's a good film. And I couldn't show the film The US because the license fees for the music loan, were probably three times what the most I could have gotten from a Netflix sale. Astronomical.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:47<br /> Right? So if you wanted a Beatle song, or you want an Elvis song or something like that, you actually lit up the go to who owns the publishing</p><p>James Forsher 20:56<br /> And performance right issues. And that's all us. So I did a film about Star Trek years ago in Germany, it was about three years ago. And I wanted to use the Alexander courage theme song. They started at $10,000. But yeah, he really, there's me, I don't know if you guys are chicken, but our documentaries from Netflix 10,000 is kind of not that far from the ballpark that would have barely paid for from</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:25<br /> Is that what is that what Netflix is paying, though?</p><p>James Forsher 21:27<br /> Well, if you're lucky, Netflix was taking everything and now they're getting much, much, much easier.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:32<br /> And then they're just being pickier with and then they're not paying a whole lot anymore.</p><p>James Forsher 21:36<br /> Well, we never did pay that much. Remember, Netflix scale kills every cable sale, too. So you know,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:42<br /> it's, it's the very last, then it's the last last thing you do.</p><p>James Forsher 21:47<br /> So back to the book, the whole book, The reason why I wrote the book was to kind of explain all this, because as you kind of hearing, it's really</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:55<br /> It's murky, it's murky as heck.</p><p>James Forsher 21:57<br /> And you got to know all the elements and know how to deal with them. And that's what I hopefully accomplished writing this thing.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:04<br /> Now, where can where can filmmakers find stock footage that they're just looking for? Because now we were talking about archival footage, meaning films and things like that. But there is other kinds of archival footage. There's just stock footage in general, like if you need a aerial of New York City, you can go and find a play, you know, where do people go out and find that stuff?</p><p>James Forsher 22:24<br /> Well, you know, I don't know how many students over the years said, let's just go to YouTube and download it. Okay. Let me explain the problem with the I'll just go to YouTube and download it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:35<br /> There's a few there's a there's a couple.</p><p>James Forsher 22:37<br /> Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's been done. But here's the deal. Again, go back to that nasty attorney who's sitting right back yet. So you downloader from YouTube. You can letter the next week after releases. I'm I'm the nasty attorney, I represent the producer. And you took this producers YouTube copy without permission and showed. Okay, so what do you say? Well, it's public domain, and then the producer will come back and say prove it. So here's the deal. This is why you have archival footage, houses in studios, they write you a letter to license agreement, and they say we own it, or we own these rights. And we give it to you for this fee. So when that nasty attorney calls and you say, Well, I got this from Getty, or Corbis, or whoever, and I paid them two $3,000 for it. And they say they own it, you talk to them about your issues. So it's it's kind of like a legal protection. Exactly. Number two is if you do this, and if you really, you know, shot by shot, you go through it and make sure every shot you have is protected. The end of the day, if you have a film that's going to make some money, you have to have errors and omissions insurance. This is insurance where if someone actually does sue you, they will take care of it. So believe me as a producer, you want errors, omissions insurance, because when you get that nasty phone call where they actually do have some type of legal standing, you say talk to my insurance. And here's the phone number Good luck. And insurance people know how to deal with these people. And so because with insurance has done is they've gone through your script scene by scene and made sure you have protected yourself. So when the call comes they say every scene is licensed. We double checked it, you're wrong.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 24:26<br /> So let me ask you about this lovely term called fair use. Yeah. Especially when it comes to documentary. It was I don't think you could do it for narrative but you can you can claim fair use and documentary a lot. Can you explain what fair use is and what are the limitations of fair use when dealing with archival?</p><p>James Forsher 24:47<br /> My understanding of fair use is law permits for educational purposes. educating the public educating the audience usage of what is copyrighted material in Very short form. So you can take 10 2030 minutes of something and stick it in and say, well, it's very use, I mean, but if you use a 10 second 22nd clip within an educational environment of people or news reels, for example, TV news, oftentimes you'll see copyright images on your. Yeah, I mean, and they don't worry about because it is covered under the Fair Use protection. Where it gets murky is where Michael Moore does a film that makes $16 million and, or, or Sacha Baron Cohen. And they're saying, well, we're protected by fair use, because it's educational. So this is where you always have to think of that attorney. The attorney goes, Oh, you guys made $50 million last year on that film. And I'm sorry, this is not under fair use. This is entertainment. The success in the commercial market prove this is entertainment and not an educational mission. And there, they try to break that fair use argument. And so what you've got is the lawyers arguing, you're paying $400 an hour for the lawyers to argue the point. So what I always tell filmmakers, and I told all my students throughout the years is, well, we hope you're going to use fair use, I really hope you have a failure in your project, and it doesn't get a penny. Because you actually do make money. No matter how much you think you're protected by this various argument, you may, the commercial success of it may hurt your various protection, because they smell money, and it's worth the settlement effort. So if you've made $50 million on your feature coming after, I'll come after you. And so fairness is a really it's a great thing. And it's for public television, that's a good usage. Only for Hulu, because of the license agreement. You can even call it you know, the, the Alex Ferrari you know, new show, I'm sure you're protected. But Michael Moore, I'm sure those lawyers keep busy.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 27:06<br /> And so that so things like because I've seen this a lot on YouTube, where they do these explanation of scenes and movies, and things like that YouTube is constantly hitting people up with copyright issues with that. But as long as you're talking over the footage and explaining it, it's part of fair use, as well, because it's because you are explaining it it is it is a a public explanation educational or just your opinion, which is a big thing and also satire, it you can get away with satire a lot too, because if you look at The Daily Show, you look at any of these late night shows, they'll bust out copyrighted footage, in the middle of you know, from a movie that has nothing to do with anything.</p><p>James Forsher 27:53<br /> And yeah, I mean, and there, they may be trying to get away with it on that. So you also have this other issue, which deals with image rights, and exploitation of image rights. So if you show a Coca Cola image, and you sit there say, there it is, here's a Coca Cola image, and it's a worst drink ever made. And you and you sit there and you people drinking it, and throwing up whatever. And then, and it comes from a public domain, Coca Cola commercial. And then you play with it. Make sure you get a call Coca Cola attorneys saying you have tampered with our very tightly controlled image rights of Coca Cola. And so that becomes another area where you may or may not be protected. Yes, it's a fair usage of Yes, the commercial may be considered a public domain commercial that you've used, because it's older than you know, it hasn't been copyrighted or whatever. But if you're demeaning an image, you open yourself up for a potential lawsuit. Well, dirt that exploited themselves during the time they were alive, as a lawyer alive today represent even if they're dead, representing that estate of that James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Chaplin, because they exploited the image when they were alive. Elvis Presley, that estate guarding that image of him makes 10s of millions of dollars a year off the image. And if you do anything with an image that demeans, and they say, hurts that image, you're holding yourself liable for crawling.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 29:36<br /> So they said, that's a good example. So I've heard of, you know, people like Chaplin's estate and things like that, because there are a lot of Chaplin movies, Buster Keaton movies that are public domain. Yeah. And arguably, you could just play them in their entirety, but if you do anything else at it, because arguably public domain stuff you could do whatever you want. You know, arguably, but if you're editing in Chaplin with a porno banana so much, is this not going to work? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.</p><p>James Forsher 30:19<br /> Yeah, that's where the image right comes in. Right? If you do a commercial and you show, you know, what do you think of this cigarette, Charlie? And then you have a shot of Charlie Chaplin smiling and going like that lawsuit? Because you are using human to exploit a commercial product?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 30:37<br /> And is that why Disney is so so crazily protective of Steamboat Willie? Because arguably, Steamboat Willie should have been. And for people who are listening who don't know what Steamboat Willie is, it is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. And the first sound cartoon</p><p>James Forsher 30:54<br /> Copyrighted both as a film and also the image right of Mickey Mouse. And so,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 31:02<br /> But eventually, it's supposed to go into public domain eventually, with image rights me not. So So in other words, the movie itself would but you could never play it.</p><p>James Forsher 31:12<br /> Well, once it legally falls to the public domain. You could use it in your documentary. But if you tried to use Mickey in a commercial, that's explained the image and that's where you get the problems.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 31:22<br /> And Disney has a very large legal team. Oh, yeah. And will practice, practice, especially when it comes to their, to their copyrighted images and stuff. It's fascinating. I know. I mean, I stock footage is always it's always been an interesting thing for me, because especially public domain stuff, because you just like, oh, wow, like, you know, you could just grab a whole bunch of Hitchcock's films and and Chaplin films and Buster Keaton films and, and project them on a screen somewhere. And you can, but there is that murkiness that you talk about in the book?</p><p>James Forsher 32:00<br /> Yeah, well, you know, you just have to know what you need. And then you have to know how to deal with it. Once you break it down into that one two step, it's not that difficult. You just have to do it. That's the problem. I mean, a lot of people just don't want to deal with it's like, I got enough headaches, just making this film. I don't want to have to sit there and deal with all these lawyers and licenses. Welcome to the adult world, this is what we do. Again, if you have the money, hire the film clip person, because to them, they don't have they don't lose sleep over it, or just been hired to do it. And they do a great job.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 32:38<br /> So is that the reason why in every independent film ever made you see the Night of the Living Dead on television? Because it is pretty much solidly copyright free or in public domain?</p><p>James Forsher 32:53<br /> Yeah. And, but to even tell you, okay, the more famous example, or just as being this, it's a wonderful life.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 33:01<br /> Yeah, that was exactly.</p><p>James Forsher 33:02<br /> So it's wonderful. I was it was a commercial failure when it was released. Liberty films folded in 20 years later, which was the length of the old copyright law. No one was around to renew it. And then this, the TV stations in the mid 70s, caught, you know, caught hold it, this may be a pretty good Christmas film. So they all started airing because it was public domain. And they all do and then. So what's so funny is Turner got wind of it, that was public domain, so they colorized it. So suddenly, there was a copyrighted version, the colorized version, and then would have my music clearance people have told me many, many years ago, guess what it's wonderful life is the black woman version is not public domain anymore, I said. And I was hired to go back and copyright all of the music that was in it separately. And if you listen to that film, it's wall to wall music, right? So they, the letter that then her client would send out was not that we own copyright to the film, but we own copyright to all the music to film and therefore we own this film, and you owe us money for arrogant</p><p>Alex Ferrari 34:17<br /> facilities. But how do you separate the two? Like, how could you go back and and redo that and</p><p>James Forsher 34:26<br /> go through this in the book, but here's the deal. Look at every film as the elements that go into it. So nowadays, for example, if you license a new Star Wars clip, and the studio says, okay, fine, Aleksey, we'll give it to you for 20 $25,000 a minute, which is kind of standard nowadays. 25,000 a minute. Yeah. 20 25,000 Okay, okay, well, okay, fine. I'll do it. You're not done. You've got now all the secondary clearances that go with that. Because, as filmmakers we know, we've got music That's a separate clip as sudo doesn't necessarily own that. And you have the directors clear if you've got to go to the Directors Guild and pay them money, and the Writers Guild will pay the money in every actor that appears in that scene, and with the others, or they just have to take the money and there's a set amount, the actor you have to negotiate the amount and they can say yes or no. No. Many years ago, I did a show on censorship, the movie so Peter Fonda was the host. And there was a scene in there from easy riders. If you remember the film, Easy Rider, the really famous scene in there is where jack nicholson and Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda are around a campfire, and they're smoking dope. Yeah, super time check. Nixon smoked a joint, right. I mean, that's the that's the quintessential scene in EZ rider besides the ending. And I need it I want to use that double clip, it was it was part of the story, it was actually banned in the film, and the host of the film was in it, and was friends mostly with jack nicholson. So we call jack Nicholson's Asian, we want to use it and we're paying everyone 1000 a minute. And they come back to a note checked out. So do clip shows, quote, unquote, ELS remember that, and we couldn't use it. And I had to use a completely different scene just didn't work as well. And so you never I mean, these are the complexities you're dealing with every film is broken into the bits and pieces. That's</p><p>Alex Ferrari 36:31<br /> insane. Yes. It makes my head hurt thinking about,</p><p>James Forsher 36:38<br /> you know, it makes you think twice I'm doing documentaries. Because they're not there a lot of work. You don't make that much money. And you got to deal with the stuff because you don't want to be dealing with the headaches of universal or Sony calling you up and threatening to sue you or</p><p>Alex Ferrari 36:56<br /> is it just basically at a certain point is it's just a bully thing that could they have so many resources, they can outspend you a billion to one. And they know it so they're like, Look, we're just gonna bully you until you give us some money basically.</p><p>James Forsher 37:10<br /> Exactly. That's what isn't that what law is pretty much not gonna hire the nice attorney that doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. You want to hire a barracuda that's that's got really sharp teeth that can go after people because, you know, in the film business is notorious for that.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:29<br /> That's, that's ridiculous. Now, there was a movie that I saw. When in my video store days that used it was a unique film, because the entire movie was made of stock footage. Yeah. And it was called atomic cafe. Oh, yeah, sure. You remember atomic cafe? Can you tell the audience a little bit about that that film? Because it's become a cult classic over the</p><p>James Forsher 37:49<br /> years? Yeah, well, the theme was that the early 1950s, when the atomic bomb, they were trying to find useful purpose for Besides, you know, destroying cities. And so they came up with all these like, you know, you can drink it as Alexa and it'll be healthy for you. You can survive in a nuclear bomb attack by hiding under the desk. And so this filmmaker, I forget his name, filming put together a whole film of material that was just of their all entertaining, because they're also ridiculous. And he was able to craft an entire feature film out of that. But they were all basically their industrial films, educational films, or government films. It was pretty clear. When it was made, it was very little concern about music. So I'm sure he cleared whatever music was there, if any, are for a very cheap price. And so it was an affordable price. I don't know the audience today, if that were released today, movie theaters, as well, because we're so sophisticated. But yeah, it was a hit because it really was something we could laugh out.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 38:58<br /> Right. Now. You also said something about government. Can you please let everybody know, in regards to government footage and government? Anything that the government makes is, to my knowledge, public domain, so any any NASA stuff, anything? Moon Landing, all that stuff is complete public domain? Correct? Yeah.</p><p>James Forsher 39:18<br /> Yeah. And what you do, and I mentioned this in the book, how to do it. You assume it may or may not be public domain. And what I mean by that is, they may have music that they licensed in it. That may be copyrighted. So if you're seeing a film, and suddenly they're playing a theme song from a 1960s television show, they may have just licensed it in their producers just as much as we're producers. So that's one thing to be careful about. years ago, I did a a documentary on disasters, and I use the film, a government film about earthquake, the earthquake damage and in the film was like a minute from MGM classic San Francisco, Clark Gable, the whole destruction of San Francisco came from that film. That's not public domain. That's very copyrighted. So if I would have just pulled that out stuck that in my film, I would have gotten a call probably from MGM at some point going, excuse me, you just use a minute. And if I said, Well, I got it from this Government Bill. And they said, We don't care. Yeah, yeah, we licensed it to them 40 years ago, but the point is, you use it. So music, reuse. I mean, those are issues you just have to be aware of. But for the most part, it's much safer to use government films than any other type</p><p>Alex Ferrari 40:39<br /> into like any of the NASA footage. Just be careful with I mean, if it's sound by just them talking is fine. But we use Yeah, if you're hearing Neil Armstrong say whatever he says. But when you have music underneath it, that's when it becomes problem. Careful. Yeah. Now there is like something like that, let's say the NASA footage. To find high quality versions of that is also like another because there's a lot of stock footage. Jimmy, you could download, go to archive.org or gov or something like that. Or tube or whatever. Yeah, exactly. in there, it's there for you to download as as a that is public domain, but to have the access to high quality now 2k versions or 4k versions, or even just plain HD versions of this stuff. That's where the stock footage houses really make their money, because I've actually reached out to companies who have let's say, a Natalie dead, let's say they're like, oh, but we have a 35 millimeter print, and it's pristine. And we've transferred it and you know, as opposed to something you could download off a YouTube, it's completely different. Is that where you have to go to find this kind of really high quality version of the stuff?</p><p>James Forsher 41:54<br /> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. How do you get to the sources? And well, the government has, you can call the National Archives directly. If it's National Archives. NASA has its own film department. So you do a Google search, find out, you know, if it's in Houston, now, whatever, you go to them directly. If you're going to be going directly to the original source, they may be requesting things from you. So they may request What are you doing? How are you using it? That type information may or may not give it to you. Just because you found the original source doesn't mean you're going to automatically get it, they don't have to give it to you. There's someone there called a bureaucrat, and they decide, you know, this is this is worthy of us giving to them or not. If you're doing a recruitment film for the for the Moscow's because you're not going to get any FBI films from here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 42:53<br /> Correct. And, and years ago, I actually reached out to NASA about stuff and you can't get me there's just a massive amount of just massive amount. Yeah, but the thing, not only that, but then it's like, Okay, if you want it in beta SP it cost this much if you want it in Digi beta. This is years ago. Yeah, well,</p><p>James Forsher 43:13<br /> here's the point for all filmmakers to remember now, we've now had about 10 plus years of high def is too high. Well, here's the thing, keep in mind, we have 120 years worth of media 10 years of it has hot is HD, over 100 years of it is not is called STL standard. And you're not going to be getting 16 nine high def, we're 99% of what's out there,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 43:50<br /> Unless you go unless you get a 35 millimeter print,</p><p>James Forsher 43:53<br /> And then re transferred. Alright. And yeah, at $400 an hour tell us Indian. Yeah. And a lot of this stuff is 16 millimeter, I gotta tell you, taking a 16 millimeter and blowing it up through to high def, oftentimes kind of works against you. Because all the scratches and all the things that come in the 16 prints, you're seeing those ways you didn't want to see them. So SD may actually even be a better way to go because the image is actually going to probably look possibly better. So you have to be careful about that.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 44:27<br /> Now, how can filmmakers make money with their own stock footage? Because if I go out, I mean, I live here in Los Angeles and I go out and go to Hollywood Boulevard and have my beautiful red camera and I shoot a whole bunch of stock footage of of Hollywood Boulevard By the way, there's 1000s of that. So anybody living in Los Angeles don't do that. But if you do that, where do I go?</p><p>James Forsher 44:49<br /> A couple of places. I mean, the most immediate are Adobe in places like Adobe and Vimeo that have their own stock footage, services built into their offerings. So if you go to Vimeo, they have it. If you go to Adobe, they've got it and you can just upload it. And if anyone takes it, you get a piece of the pie. Footage dotnet is another site to look at possibly, if you have enough stock footage, you can advertise it on footage net. For most filmmakers, the question asked is do I have something that's rare? So you know, shot of dramas Chinese or Mann's Chinese? Please, you got something that really is unique, rare, interesting, and you think some filmmakers around the world would like it, you can call it go to film footage.net look at all the big archive houses, and then contact each of them and say I'd like you to represent and see if any of you like to represent it, and you get, you know, 4050 60% or whatever of the profit if there is a sale.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:50<br /> So if you live in, if you live in a unique place that there's like, obviously, Los Angeles, I mean, seriously, the shot, the city has been shot a billion times. So every corner of it is somewhere on stock footage or in a film. But if you live in Guam, and or let's say you live in Hawaii, and you saw that volcano blow up a few years. Last year,</p><p>James Forsher 46:12<br /> right? This you footage, if you scuba dive, and you're scuba diving and getting some great HD footage. You know, that's a possibility. If your grandfather was an avid 60 millimeter camera, and shot all this stuff on 60 millimeter Can you imagine? And I got some of that stuff in my archives. It's just wonderful material. I've got a shot from the Hindenburg. I was shot as a whole movie. It's great stuff. And that stuff you can actually resell.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:41<br /> That's That's because because there's no copyright on it. It's and if you own it, it's yours.</p><p>James Forsher 46:46<br /> It's yours. So you can actually then consider the copyright.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:49<br /> Now if you know do you own you own also own like a footage house as well that you license?</p><p>James Forsher 46:54<br /> When I did my Paramount documentary back in the mid 70s. Sorry, collecting I went, you know, and then I had a friend, but 19th 1980 or so that was working in Entertainment Tonight. And he knew I had all this old footage and they keep calling me and saying oh, we need this and this and I'd sell to him. I was making all I was making more money selling to Entertainment Tonight bands making producing films. And that's what made me think I really should be doing this as well as making films. I'm enjoying films, but I'm making money selling stock footage. So I started back in the mid 70s doing that now I've got about 5000 titles in my art and my database.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:37<br /> Nice. And so then people contact you if they want to access you know certain things.</p><p>James Forsher 47:42<br /> Well, yeah, I had it for about 20 years as a business. And then I went into academia and stood up because I was doing fine just teaching. But right now it's You know, Friends calling me I need this, I need that I just send it to them. Every year I'm doing one or two films and so I don't have to worry about stock footage because they just go and see what I've gotten. Make sure I have enough for it.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:03<br /> And is that a fairly high quality or is it all standard def HD?</p><p>James Forsher 48:07<br /> Oh, I've got a 700 films. And then the rest is one inch beta and then three quarter inch films meaning and films meaning what we bought, okay, but they're like actual narrative films or reels, government, industrials, educational newsreels, cartoons. Oftentimes, they fit the themes of films I did over the years. So if I was doing films on disasters, I got lots of disasters, I've been war related films, I got lots of war related films. And I'd always get films that were public domain or considered public domain.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 48:43<br /> So then once you so basically, as, as you're being a filmmaker, you're gathering a collection of these clips, which then you could resell later, because they become</p><p>James Forsher 48:55<br /> more than clips, I would buy the entire films, because it's cheaper for me to buy an entire half hour hour film, license anything from anyone.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:02<br /> So then when you buy, so Okay, so then so just so I'm clear, so then you would just buy the film, 30 minutes, that's a cartoon of Tom and Jerry, you buy, you know, a bunch of my series of them. That's in the public domain. But once you've got that at a high quality now it's in your archives, and now you can sell</p><p>James Forsher 49:20<br /> and the secret is finding a buying it knowing it's in the public domain that's takes a little expertise. Got it and that's where you need to clip clip person to help you.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 49:33<br /> Or they call you if you but you don't do that anymore. Now where can where can people buy people find your book?</p><p>James Forsher 49:42<br /> I think everywhere at this point is Amazon Of course. It's available on the mwp.com which is the publisher Michael AC productions their site in also any bookstore can order it if they don't have it already on their shelves.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:00<br /> Very cool. And God website is a website that you have.</p><p>James Forsher 50:03<br /> Yeah, there's a website with a book called stock footage book calm. So there's some more information on that. There's also a Facebook page.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:12<br /> Very cool. And I'm gonna ask you a few questions I asked all of my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today?</p><p>James Forsher 50:22<br /> Well, first thing I would always advise anyone is if they're in school, look around the classmates and see where you stand compared to them. If you're looking at a class of 30, students, one to two of them will be able to get up into the next level, which is an internship that will lead to a first job. Are you as good? Are you at the top? Or are there 10 people ahead of you, if you're sitting in there, for whatever reason, you're getting a D or C, and there's a person getting an A or A minus, that's telling you one thing right away that the competition just at school is already beating. So just a warning. Second thing is, gotta get an internship, figure out what you're best at editing, shooting, getting coffee, it doesn't matter wherever your best app, because it's again, it's this crazy competitive world always has been worse than ever now. Because there's 5000 film schools, and everybody's turning out Steven Spielberg, of course. So if you're good at whatever your chances, whatever it is, you may not be as interested in it. But your chances of success are greatly increased, than if you're saying, well, I want to be a director, but you know, you have no clue how to direct. So that's number two. Number three is once you get an internship, rule of thumb with internships is you make sure that you do 110% every day, and you leave an internship with one or two people that think you are the best, you're not likely going to get a job at that place. But if you can press one or two people, and they'll let you know that you go to them at the enemy and say, you know, I'm available for work, you have anyone you could send me to, that I can get employed with. And they will then do that. And that's how you kind of break in. And once you broke it in wherever that level is, well, you know, the career change, everything changes so quickly, a year, two or three years from now, who knows? I mean, five years from now, everything maybe virtual reality films, we don't know. So I'm worried about five years from now you worry about getting that first paid job. And that's kind of the sequence I just laid out how you do it. And it's kind of what I've told you. I've had literally had several 1000 students over the last few years. And I tell them the same thing and the ones that listen to me they've got work and once a to listen to me they can they knew better. They're now probably at Walmart reading people or wherever they are, but they're not in the film industry. That's how</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:53<br /> I got my start. I had multiple internships, multiple multiple internships, and I got hired often. Yeah, pa jobs are, you know, running around or out here? You might be the office pa for a little bit of you. I'm sure I'll be the office,</p><p>James Forsher 53:07<br /> You're good at it. You You didn't go into work saying I know how to do this. started, I would hire undergrads. super passionate. They always impressed me much more than hiring the grads, graduate students who really thought they knew better than me how to make a film.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:26<br /> Yes, the ego? Isn't that always amazing?</p><p>James Forsher 53:30<br /> Check it at the desk, walk in there. And let everyone think that they are the smartest people in the world. And that you really are getting a lot from them, even if you think they're an idiot.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:42<br /> Isn't, isn't it? But the thing is when when those egos do walk in the door, the business will sort them out.</p><p>James Forsher 53:48<br /> It always does. But it's very quick to tell those people that really think they know what they're doing. Because basically, all my years of running into those people, I'd say, Good luck. And let me know when you sell your personal.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 54:01<br /> Yeah, I deal with on a daily basis, dealing with egos and people who have delusions of grandeur. I'm like, dream big, but be real. Exactly. And there has to be a balance between the two. Now, can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or career?</p><p>James Forsher 54:21<br /> I love reading. So I don't know if there's one book or types of <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/resources/#books">books</a>. I'm a believer that you've got to be a storyteller, that every film you're making at the end of the day, it's not how you're cutting it. It's the story you're telling. So the classics you know you're going back to weathering heights are gone with the winner. books that have really good story structures. I love Michael Connelly. It's a reason there's 30 micro comic books out there because this guy has a really good way of telling the story of itself. Visual, it draws you in. The same thing with the old classics in Dickens. Those were books that you actually saw the story unfold. And so that's why they were so easily taken from the book to the screen. So that's one area. I liked reading about people in the industry, how they succeeded. It's not like I was going to follow their success, but to read books by Goldman and the or whatever, how they actually went from. Nothing to building themselves up to you know, the best in their craft is really you pick up pieces that can help you. And throughout the years, I did a lot of films about Hollywood in Hollywood history, probably about 3035 any from half our features, and I interviewed a lot of people who were kind of in nowadays you consider them the early pioneers. So I interview Nat Levine that Levine remembers Latin Lee, he started Republic studios. He started mascot which became Republic. I interviewed Hal Roach and documentary about him, little rascals, Laurel and Hardy. So those people also kind of I picked up things from them how they succeeded, how they work. My mom's old boss was a guy named Colonel Parker.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 56:21<br /> Of course, Elvis,</p><p>James Forsher 56:22<br /> An old time I was three on Colonel Parker, which really is very interesting. When Donald Trump got elected, I went wake up, Colonel Parker now is president because Donald Trump is a exact duplicate of Colonel Parker in terms of what Colonel Parker used to call, his philosophy was snowing, he used to snow people. Snow person is a person you can't it's another word for conning people. That's what we've got as a president. This guy knows how and just like Colonel did, how to make people believe something that's not true. And but you're not sure if it's true or not true. And you get confused. Right? And so you know, having grown up with Colonel my whole life till I was in my late 20s. I knew Oh, it was snowing. And so I woke up in November 2016. And we got a snowman as President, this will be interesting.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 57:18<br /> He's in Colonel, the colonel Parker. He is one of the main reasons you think that Elvis was as popular as he was. I mean, obviously, Elvis was Elvis. Elvis was an incredible talent. But you needed he you needed that. That gas. He was a fire, but I think Colonel Parker was the gasoline on it that make it a raging fire.</p><p>James Forsher 57:38<br /> And he thought that himself. I mean, I've got I remember, my mom used to always tell me stories about telling Colonel Oh, Elvis, the distant Elvis said dad and Colonel said, Yeah, Trudy and, you know, all that if I hadn't taken them off of his plumbing job, and, you know, put them in front of audiences, he'd still be on his plumbing truck. Gotcha. So, you know, yeah.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 58:03<br /> Now, what lesson took you the longest to learn, whether in the film business or in life.</p><p>James Forsher 58:09<br /> But what I'm still learning is, is I don't know if it's a lesson or just a reality of the business of getting up. You know, after being knocked down, dusting off your self, and then going back and finding one more day. This is a business of notes. The reason it's a business that knows is very simple. It's a lot easier to say no to something. And they say, Yeah, go ahead and do it. You say, go ahead and do it. You're on the line. And so most people are very, very reticent to sit there say, Yeah, go ahead and do that. Okay, I'll help you. Where if you sit there and say, No, you don't have to deal with it, you're not going to have headaches, it's not going to be a failure. And so convincing people to join in a project. And then all the work that's involved in getting a film or television show made, requires a lot of people saying yes, which is not a natural thing in the film business. And that's probably the toughest part to me is is just going okay. What am I gonna do today to avoid what happened yesterday?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 59:17<br /> Fair enough. And three of your favorite films of all time.</p><p>James Forsher 59:23<br /> Oh, God. Okay. Well, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Okay. That's the top of my list. I show that every year when I was teaching film history, and I never cease to be amazed at what capital was able to do with that film. I know, every word of it. It's still kind of brings me in. Not so much film but filmmaker of Busby Berkeley. I, I've seen every one of his films, and I look at those dance numbers. I mean, the stories are not why you watch them. You look at those and go tell it The hell did he do that?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:02<br /> Pretty remarkable.</p><p>James Forsher 1:00:03<br /> Yeah, we do all these years later. It's pretty amazing.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:07<br /> It'd be tough to do it today. Honestly, some of you did. It was amazing.</p><p>James Forsher 1:00:10<br /> Oh, it's totally amazing. And I I got into documentaries because of an old documentary filmmaker named les blank. And less blank. was great at taking, taking a story, real life in putting it together as an entertainment piece. So not to be confused with Mel Blanc that made funny voices out of</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:36<br /> Bugs Bunny. Yes. And then where can people find your work and and stuff? You do?</p><p>James Forsher 1:00:42<br /> Um, no clue. But if you go to a force your productions, it's a list of films I've done are some of them. And a lot of those aren't eBay. You know, I, you can buy a lot of my films for very cheap because they're, yeah, they're VHS and DVDs in whatever. So I commercially have nothing available out in the market as of today. In America, Europe, yes, but not here is what I've been producing lately. I can't afford to sell it in America.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:01:11<br /> And of course, if they want to license any footage, they can contact you.</p><p>James Forsher 1:01:16<br /> Plenty of footage from, you know, very cheap to pretty expensive.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:01:21<br /> Fair enough. James, thank you so much for spending the time with me and dropping some knowledge bombs on the tribe today. 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tag-shooting-for-the-mob-free" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope><div class="inside-article"><header class="entry-header"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/shooting-for-the-mob/" rel="bookmark">BPS 399: FBI Witness Relocation Interview with Boris The Cinematographer from Shooting for the Mob</a></h2><div class="entry-meta"> <span class="posted-on"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2024-12-27T06:30:48+00:00" itemprop="datePublished">December 27, 2024</time></span> <span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard" itemprop="author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope><a class="url fn n" href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/author/cyrene-williams/" title="View all posts by Bulletproof Screenwriting" rel="author" itemprop="url"><span class="author-name" itemprop="name">Bulletproof Screenwriting</span></a></span></span></div></header><div class="post-image"> <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/shooting-for-the-mob/"> <noscript><img width="808" height="388" src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris.webp" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris-768x369.webp 768w" sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /></noscript><img width="808" height="388" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20808%20388%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data-src="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris.webp" class="lazyload attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" itemprop="image" decoding="async" data-srcset="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris.webp 808w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris-300x144.webp 300w, https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Boris-768x369.webp 768w" data-sizes="(max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px" /> </a></div><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text"><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition conditions-list-item__element" data-v-0c8d7ae0="" data-v-bf15c786="" data-v-db41850c=""><div class="condition__column condition__info" data-v-0c8d7ae0=""><div class="reasons-list-item__container item-container" data-v-db41850c="" data-v-fe7a4d08="" data-v-11f42803="" data-v-4a644564=""><div id="comp-jpu63grx" class="style-jpu63gt3"><div class="comp-jpu63grx"><div id="gallery-wrapper-comp-jpu63grx"><div id="pro-gallery-comp-jpu63grx" class="pro-gallery"><div id="description-container" class="style-scope ytd-channel-about-metadata-renderer"><div class="group w-full text-gray-800 dark:text-gray-100 border-b border-black/10 dark:border-gray-900/50 bg-gray-50 dark:bg-[#444654]"><div class="flex p-4 gap-4 text-base md:gap-6 md:max-w-2xl lg:max-w-[38rem] xl:max-w-3xl md:py-6 lg:px-0 m-auto"><div class="relative flex w-[calc(100%-50px)] flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3 lg:w-[calc(100%-115px)]"><div class="flex flex-grow flex-col gap-3"><div class="min-h-[20px] flex flex-col items-start gap-4 whitespace-pre-wrap break-words"><div class="soda odd"> <iframe loading="lazy" src="https://widget.spreaker.com/player?episode_id=63375057&theme=dark&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-logo=false&hide-download=true" width="100%" height="150px" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Today we have a very special episode. My guest is coming from an undisclosed location somewhere in Los Angeles. His code name is BORIS: The Cinematographer. We changed his voice and image for his protection. Boris was my cinematographer on the film I almost directed for the mob. I met him while prepping the infamous feature film discussed in my book <a href="http://www.shootingforthemob.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"><strong>Shooting for the Mob</strong></a>. If you want to learn more about the <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1331998">story</a> of the book take a listen to this podcast. <strong>(<a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/shooting-for-the-mob-alex-ferrari/">Click Here</a>)</strong></p><p>Here’s a summary on the book:</p><p>A bipolar gangster, a naive, young film director, and Batman. What could go wrong? Alex Ferrari is a first-time film director who just got hired to direct a $20 million feature film, the only problem is the film is about Jimmy, an egomaniacal gangster who wants the film to be about his life in the mob.</p><p>From the backwater towns of Louisiana to the <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/1917608">Hollywood</a> Hills, Alex is taken on a crazy misadventure through the world of the mafia and Hollywood. Huge movie stars, billion-dollar producers, studio heads and, of course, a few gangsters, populate this unbelievable journey down the rabbit hole of chasing your dream. Would you sell your soul to the devil to make your dream come true? Alex did.</p><p>By the way, did we mention that this story is based on true events? no, seriously it is.</p><p>If you want to watch Boris’ interview check it out in its entirety below.</p><p>I asked Boris, an industry-recognized cinematographer if he would be willing to do an interview on his experience working with Jimmy the gangster, the craziness that happened all those years ago and what it was like being in the center of that filmmaking tornado with me.</p><p>Boris jumped at the chance but he asked that we change his voice to protect his identity. He doesn’t want to put himself out there at this time. Trust me you are going to love this episode.</p><p>Boris lets loose on all things Shooting for the Mob and even tells me stories I didn’t know about. If you want to know what it’s like trying to shot an indie feature film for a bi-polar, egomaniacal gangster then perk up those ears cause you are going to love this extremely entertaining episode.</p><p>Enjoy my EPIC conversation with <strong>BORIS – The Cinematographer</strong>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><a href="https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/63375057/download.mp3"><strong>Right-click here to download </strong><strong>the </strong><strong>MP3</strong></a></p><h2>LINKS</h2><ul><li><strong>Alex Ferrari’s Shooting for the Mob (Based on the Incredible True Story) Book- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/194808063X/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547142961&sr=1-7&_encoding=UTF8&tag=whatisbroke-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=f471eab046bcf8102432db250069fcfb&camp=1789&creative=9325" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-amzn-asin="194808063X">Buy It on Amazon</a></strong></li></ul><div><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><h2>SPONSORS</h2></div></div></div></div><ol><li><a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/script-coverage-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Bulletproof Script Coverage</strong></a><strong>– Get Your Screenplay Read by Hollywood Professionals</strong></li><li><a href="http://www.freefilmbook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Audible</strong></a>– <strong>Get a Free Screenwriting Audiobook</strong></li></ol><div id="comp-jzhq90sw" class="style-jzhqdfrt" data-has-iframe="true"><div id="fbxt-wrap" ><div id="fbxt-wrap--inner" class="fbxt-extra-class"><div class="fbxt-header"><div class="fbxt-header--logo"> <svg width="24" height="25" viewBox="0 0 24 25" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle opacity="0.05" cx="11.6406" cy="12.3918" r="11.6406" fill="#C60808"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 10.2899H6.63672V9.04663H16.6445V10.2899Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M16.6445 13.3421H6.63672V12.0989H16.6445V13.3421Z"/> <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M12.7025 16.395H6.63672V15.1518H12.7025V16.395Z"/> </svg> <span class="fbxt-header-text">Episode Transcript</span></div><div class="fbxt-header--nav"> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email" href="#" style="display:none" > <svg width="16" height="12" viewBox="0 0 16 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M14.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V10.5C0 11.3438 0.65625 12 1.5 12H14.5C15.3125 12 16 11.3438 16 10.5V1.5C16 0.6875 15.3125 0 14.5 0ZM14.5 1.5V2.78125C13.7812 3.375 12.6562 4.25 10.2812 6.125C9.75 6.53125 8.71875 7.53125 8 7.5C7.25 7.53125 6.21875 6.53125 5.6875 6.125C3.3125 4.25 2.1875 3.375 1.5 2.78125V1.5H14.5ZM1.5 10.5V4.71875C2.1875 5.28125 3.21875 6.09375 4.75 7.3125C5.4375 7.84375 6.65625 9.03125 8 9C9.3125 9.03125 10.5 7.84375 11.2188 7.3125C12.75 6.09375 13.7812 5.28125 14.5 4.71875V10.5H1.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Email</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download" href="#" > <svg width="18" height="16" viewBox="0 0 18 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M16.5 9H13.5938L15.0625 7.5625C16 6.625 15.3125 5 14 5H12V1.5C12 0.6875 11.3125 0 10.5 0H7.5C6.65625 0 6 0.6875 6 1.5V5H4C2.65625 5 1.96875 6.625 2.9375 7.5625L4.375 9H1.5C0.65625 9 0 9.6875 0 10.5V14.5C0 15.3438 0.65625 16 1.5 16H16.5C17.3125 16 18 15.3438 18 14.5V10.5C18 9.6875 17.3125 9 16.5 9ZM4 6.5H7.5V1.5H10.5V6.5H14L9 11.5L4 6.5ZM16.5 14.5H1.5V10.5H5.875L7.9375 12.5625C8.5 13.1562 9.46875 13.1562 10.0312 12.5625L12.0938 10.5H16.5V14.5ZM13.75 12.5C13.75 12.9375 14.0625 13.25 14.5 13.25C14.9062 13.25 15.25 12.9375 15.25 12.5C15.25 12.0938 14.9062 11.75 14.5 11.75C14.0625 11.75 13.75 12.0938 13.75 12.5Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">Download</span> </a> <a class="fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab" href="#" > <svg width="14" height="14" viewBox="0 0 14 14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path d="M12.5 0H1.5C0.65625 0 0 0.6875 0 1.5V12.5C0 13.3438 0.65625 14 1.5 14H12.5C13.3125 14 14 13.3438 14 12.5V1.5C14 0.6875 13.3125 0 12.5 0ZM12.3125 12.5H1.6875C1.5625 12.5 1.5 12.4375 1.5 12.3125V1.6875C1.5 1.59375 1.5625 1.5 1.6875 1.5H12.3125C12.4062 1.5 12.5 1.59375 12.5 1.6875V12.3125C12.5 12.4375 12.4062 12.5 12.3125 12.5ZM10.625 3L6.375 3.03125C6.15625 3.03125 6 3.1875 6 3.40625V4.25C6 4.46875 6.15625 4.65625 6.375 4.625L8.1875 4.5625L3.09375 9.65625C2.9375 9.8125 2.9375 10.0312 3.09375 10.1875L3.8125 10.9062C3.96875 11.0625 4.1875 11.0625 4.34375 10.9062L9.4375 5.8125L9.375 7.625C9.34375 7.84375 9.53125 8 9.75 8H10.5938C10.8125 8 10.9688 7.84375 10.9688 7.625L11 3.375C11 3.1875 10.8125 3 10.625 3Z" /> </svg> <span class="fbxt-nav-text">New Tab</span> </a></div></div><div class="fbxt-content"><div class="fbxt-content--inner"><p>Alex Ferrari 0:00<br /> So guys, today we have a very, very, very special guest. Today, we have Boris the cinematographer. Now this is a cinematographer that worked with me on shooting for the mob in the in the movie inside the book shooting for the mob, and we've been friends for about almost 20 years now. And he is the main reason I actually got off my butt and wrote this story and told, wrote this book and decided to tell my story because of him constantly beating me up over the years to do so. And I wanted to bring Boris on the show to talk about the story from his perspective. And it is done in a very deep throat, FBI witness relocation program kind of style, so his voice will be altered. So his identity is not revealed. He does sense a little bit of worry about putting himself out there publicly right now I told him, he shouldn't unless he really really wants to, for obvious reasons. I mean, we are talking about a gangster a mobster, you know, all that kind of good stuff. I on the other hand, decided, hey, what the heck, I'm just gonna do it anyway, because I need to get this story out of me and out into the world. So that was my decision. But again, I want to have Boris on. Because his perspective and his storytelling is awesome. And this is going to be a very, very interesting episode. So if you guys have not heard, I have written a book called shooting for the mob, it is now officially available on Amazon. So please go buy it, tell people about it, share it, just go to shooting for the mob calm, it'll take you straight to Amazon. Or you could just go to indie film, hustle, calm Ford slash mob, and it'll take you there as well. And if you have read the book, I really really need you to stop what you're doing. And go leave a review on Amazon it really, really helps us out a lot. We have, believe it or not become bestsellers already on Amazon in the in certain category. So we are an Amazon best selling book, which is insane to me. And I'm humbled by it. So thank you guys so much for buying the book and continuing to buy the book and please spread the word and tell anybody and everybody about the book, I really, really appreciate it. And if you guys are in the LA area, April 25, we will be having a screening of on the corner of ego and desire at the Chinese theatre, the world famous Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, followed by a q&a for the movie. And then I'm going to be doing a talk about fear and breaking through your fears to make your first feature film and talking about this my story and what I went through with shooting for the mob and then afterwards we're gonna have q&a and then a book signing and we'll be selling <a href="https://bulletproofscreenwriting.tv/resources/#books">books</a> there as well. So If you want to get tickets to come out and see the tribe visit with the tribe and myself, just head over to indie film hustle.com Ford slash screening to check it out. And I promise you, it's gonna be a pretty epic evening. But this episode, this interview is fairly epic. It's nothing like I've ever done before on the show. But I want you to remember that we altered the voice for Boris to protect him. And I just didn't feel comfortable putting him out there, exposing who he is, and putting his name out there at this point in time, because I really care about Boris and I want anything that happened to him. So that is the reason why we have altered his voice. So bear with it. So it is just amazing. Really, I'm so happy to bring this to you guys. I'm like you can tell in my voice. I'm so like, giddy, because I can't wait for you guys to hear this story. So I've told you a little bit of the story. But now you're going to hear a whole bunch more about the story from behind the scenes episodes of what's going on things that were happening at the time. And I just I'm just excited to get it to you. So without any further ado, please enjoy my deep throat witness relocation program interview with Boris the cinematographer. Okay, Boris. So you've read the book. And and you were let's take it back to the beginning. You were the reason why I wrote this book, you were the one that kept hounding me for years to tell this story. And finally came to the point where I could not argue with you anymore, because you wanted me to write a screenplay originally. And I said, No, I can't write a screenplay. I don't want to write a screenplay. This is just not I'm not gonna go chase money. And then you said to me, Well, why don't you write a book. And I was like, dammit, I can write a book. And it's your fault that this has happened in the first place.</p><p>Boris 6:58<br /> Yes, we do this. in Eastern Europe, you know where I come from, we read books. Also very important part of your education. And books are also something that stays as a document for the history for posterity. So having the book on having the book debates, it's more than just like doing your own personal soul searching or making the journey or read it experiencing everything that you went through. But think about it, this is like something that generations and generations of aspiring filmmakers or if there is any films, something in the future, they may be doing something else. But they will be finally this is a very, very interesting and inspiring abusing educational format to whatever else people will find in this book.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 7:52<br /> Yes, it is. It was all of that. And then and then some question. So you've read the book, I want to ask you straight. Is this book true to your experience? Because you were with me on this journey for about three months out of the year that I was involved with this project? What is your feelings on the books, truth, authenticity? And did I exaggerate anything?</p><p>Boris 8:16<br /> I don't know, comes down to exaggeration. I don't think there is any level of exaggeration in the book. I think. That's what the biggest, I think that the real value of the book is that there is really no exaggeration. It's real. It's all real and truly 100% of the truth what really happened. And that's what I think is going to be the most intriguing aspect of the book. To me, I think, was really interesting to read the book because not only that, I was part of this for all this several months we spent together on it, but learning all the background stories, learning about you or learning how you get into this morning about some of the people that I had the chance to interact during our pre production so this is all combined together. Give me hold your perspective on our experience back then.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 9:11<br /> Right because you didn't know the whole story you only knew a parts of the story it was patchy and then you only knew the stories from your perspective. You never saw all the stuff that I went through behind the scenes A lot of it before and after you left</p><p>Boris 9:25<br /> That's right when you are in pre-production you don't have time for to travel although we did have a lot of time later on down but but at least you know, we ended up we ended up doing I think very very interesting work with an interesting group of people really talented people and and going back and thinking about this. I really wish we made this movie because aside from all the experience that we went through, I still wish that story is told somehow about about Judy's life and everything that</p><p>Alex Ferrari 10:00<br /> It's about the story is obviously about redemption. redemption, there's no, there's no question that the story is not about Jimmy. It's all about redemption. No, it was always from the beginning all about. Now, you actually coined that phrase, you're the one that said redemption to him. And then from that moment on, I apparently he looked up the word. And he, and he started spouting that. And you turn to me, like I just told him that yesterday.</p><p>Boris 10:27<br /> Well, as we all know, Jimmy had the standard shoe because he's a newcomer to the world of film. So he does not understand really the the language, the lingo that we use in business and industry. So I remember, one of his favorite phrases was favored nation in the contract, because many times he would get any kind of draft of the contract. Well favored nation is a term he was normally in a contract in a legal language, basically, explaining that everybody's equal, every nation. But so for me, any any, when we had this production meeting, I still remember vividly. pep talk pep rally, and Walter wanted to hear how everybody is so excited about the project and everybody. I remember the production meeting we had, Jimmy was so eager to hear from everybody, like one of the first meetings like how great this all film is going to be. And what we think about it, and for me, well, he was kind of just like, war that came out of our, it's about redemption, because as much it was all evil in the project, he was very sensitive, not to make it obvious. So I think redemption was a perfect excuse for him to find the real catchphrase that explained, explain really the meaning of the film. So it's about redemption. silverbolt, of course,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 12:13<br /> Very much so was all about it without question. Now, a quick question, Before we continue, we obviously have blacked out your face here and changed your voice to protect your identity. I obviously cannot protect my identity, because I'm the author and the subject of the book. Do you fear for yourself? Is that the reason why you you know, agreed to do this? I mean, is it a reason why you wanted us to block out your face and change your voice you fear for your life in any way?</p><p>Boris 12:45<br /> Well, I don't feel for my life, to share my fear for my life. But I think it's better to not to be too public about this, at least for me, you know, maybe one day, I may say really, who Boris really is and everything, but that remains to be seen. I think what is more important that you tell the story because this is your story. And we are all just part of that wall that happened during the during the production. So I think at this point, it's still better for me to stay kind of in the shadow and have to drive to protection</p><p>Alex Ferrari 13:24<br /> Literally in the shadows fair enough. So when one of the one of the the moments that I loved in the in the book and us when we when we met was the the espresso the cappuccino events? Can you refresh for the audience for people listening? Because people a lot of people who are watching this have already read the book, can you talk from your perspective about the cappuccino machine?</p><p>Boris 13:55<br /> It's very important coffee is not to just adjust the drink that you get in the morning and get your day going. has more social meaning, you know, we will sit and enjoy coffee while having a meaningful conversation or just kind of having a little chat and just a warm up before we really get serious about whatever we want to do that day. So for me, having this ritual is really essential. And I still keep this ritual first thing in the morning, even at my walk here, economic opportunity machine and then gradually embark upon the day and see what's gonna happen but I never drink coffee by myself. It's kind of boring. So coffee is a social event, coffees and coffees are part of the cultural ritual. And I wanted to bring this culture into the cultural production successful.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 14:52<br /> You actually, if I may quote you said what are we savages we will have cappuccino</p><p>Boris 14:56<br /> That's exactly my point is to be in production. front office, coffee maker organized with a bit more sophisticated. So coffee maker call, after all, we have $20 million budgets. It has to be best, we cannot just go for some whatever, you know, folders.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 15:13<br /> And let's talk about that $20 million budget, which we never saw in the budget kept getting dropped daily, or weekly, and rescheduled and all this kind of stuff. When you showed up to the production offices the first day, what was your thought when you were dropped off at a racetrack?</p><p>Boris 15:33<br /> Well, from what even before I showed up on on the racetrack in our production office, I knew this is not going to be your typical normal production. As we all used, we knew there was already so many things just that just the way I was brought in, it was so out of the ordinary being hired without reading the script and was being brought because I said I liked the script to read. And that was enough for me to be hired that was that spoke the volume, they just want to be very interesting, unusual journey. So for me, the fact that I was picked up by the producer and his wife and couple other assistants and brought to some Italian restaurant in south side of the city. And, and, and immediately presented with my key rib and the gaffer as people who are already hired as a lot of things and given week, Lexus SUV to drive around to me these old signs out of something very much out of the charts. And then of course, coming to horse Truck Race truck, which I've never been in my life. It was yet another world that I had to learn experience and no API and it was quite interesting experience. But then seeing the vastness of production office. It was something that I did on Apple bigger and smaller production productions. But I've never seen anybody having production of this of this scope</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:08<br /> For such a, you know, an unknown.</p><p>Boris 17:11<br /> Right. Right.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 17:12<br /> Now, I want to I've always wanted to ask you this question. What did you think when they told you Oh, it's a first time director, and he's a young guy and all that kind of stuff? Because this was I mean, you had already been directed deep being a cinematographer for a few years. I mean, we're not few years, you probably about 10 years by that point. So you were an established cinematographer, you know, working your way up the ladder. What did you think when you saw the trailer that I shot and everything like that, in general before you even met me?</p><p>Boris 17:42<br /> Yeah, the truth is, yes, I was by then I was I say, my career was nicely on on on steady, rising direction. And anyway, as a cinematographer, we always have to be open minded about the projects that we are working on. And, and I always find it exciting, meeting new people to work with new people. Working with the first time director, that was the first time that I work with the first time director. So for me, it was not something out of the ordinary when it comes to my approach to working with first time director. As a cinematographer requires a little bit more, I would say patience, and time. Because the COP is much as creatively, you might have some great ideas and in some ways how you see this bill is one of the cinematographer who just had to bring it out to reality and consolidate and figured out how to basically deliver the vision and sometimes if the reference have no experience, they might be dreaming big and way beyond what is really feasible and impossible. But after seeing the problem that you got shot before I came aboard, that I definitely recognize a talent that will be was like, Okay, well, that's somebody who I think I can work with and we will be able to communicate. You know, when we started working when we started our pre production and everything else, we quickly established our way of communication, as we all know, and it's really been described in the book. But the I would say the the gap that we had was just a natural gap women already identified like maybe six seven feature films and much wider projects. So I felt it's my duty to bring you up to speed and take you out any possible like expose normally first directors tends to get on. So of course, I enjoyed the fact that we could, because we had a time we could actually watch a movie.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 19:51<br /> We watched many,</p><p>Boris 19:54<br /> Many movies. So for me it was kind of like having the beginning of basically personal History almost built history, cinematography, personal class, just for you to be able to find referencing something. So it can be a little short. And so it's easy or if I say whatever, course, or whatever it was being able to throw around, which is also good because we know what you're talking about,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 20:23<br /> Because it's all about redemption. Now, have you ever been on before or since a project that had well been in pre production for nine months?</p><p>Boris 20:37<br /> That is such a rarity. Honestly, when I think about I just personally think of agreements. It's a separate Rarity, unless you're really unsure of somebody's product, it's normally the cinematographer will be part of or part of the pre production for several months. Traditionally, in typical Hollywood productions, cinematographers always brought well depends on the budget for six, maybe eight weeks, that's all you like getting into video, we do battery productions. And if you're in any larger size, well, there is a reason if you have too much pre production that's like the scope of the field. And the scope of the pre production is far bigger than having enough time to really watch movies for 40 hours every day, during cappuccinos, and Scout, endlessly, endlessly, all over the state. That's kind of luxury, which I never had,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 21:33<br /> When we were traveling around Louisiana, looking at all those locations. I mean, we must have had, how many locations that we we look at hundreds,</p><p>Boris 21:42<br /> I don't know I stopped, I stopped counting because I know after initial scope, and initial digital locations, we will go again revisit them. And then again, revisit them just to make sure that maybe something might change. Or maybe let's check another prison or check another strip bar. And, or another house or whatever. I don't even know how many places we started. It was kind of just like almost a baby routine. Get in the morning, get a coffee, get a breakfast, watch a movie and then get in our Lexus. The 480 SUVs with navigation lady in the truck will guide us to our design. That was Space Age technology back then. It was unbelievable what it was like to return these SUVs every week</p><p>Alex Ferrari 22:37<br /> Because of the mileage. So can we talk about that really quickly. We actually got a product placement for move for these Lexus's from a local dealership not from Lexus, but from a local dealership. So then we could actually, you know, return it after 100 miles</p><p>Boris 22:58<br /> Another week, or two weeks, whatever. And we would just replace the new word because the new cars otherwise.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 23:06<br /> Needless to say, this was a period piece film, so there was no place for a 2001 Lexus.</p><p>Boris 23:15<br /> I remember what I asked who, what I asked her to give me about it. He said don't worry, don't worry, it will be a word we're gonna put a bit of background knowledge. Nobody's gonna recognize but I don't remember even in the movie, which ends up in I think 1990 was the final scene of the film of the screenplay, at least. They had this kind of cars as you please. So I just didn't want to argue, hey, who would argue if somebody gives you I have to say this was the first and only time that I had such a car is my vehicle to drive around in production? That's like that's really like normally I see director or producer so they drive this up, not to the end. So other people on production.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 23:57<br /> Yes, exactly the production designer, our location scouts, and our first ad who was generally on on the journey with us every time. Now, you you heard a lot of these stories of what Jimmy was doing as far as yelling and threatening people and screaming what was the one time that you heard or saw something that you that sticks with you still to this day?</p><p>Boris 24:23<br /> Um, well, I have to admit, having driven around was always fun. Because he is definitely one of these kind of characters you see like in this movies about gangsters and mafia. I think I think he was definitely trying very hard to to impersonate either Joe Petrie or one of these guys. And I mean, these guys are always very charismatic, very talkative, for stories are predictable on every moment. You never know what's happened to them. And that's what kind of a simple mystery to each of these guys. So with a Jimmy Well, I think he liked me right away from the beginning. I think he trusted me. And that was a big deal. I think on an instinctive level he, he felt that he can, he can rely on me which is, which is fine. It's such a good place to be when you're dealing with ads like this. But his, his impulsiveness is something that was interesting to me to observe. And I've seen him a couple times in production office, I remember one occasion that he was talking to agent to the agent, one of the prospective actors, but it was actually a real I think we had somebody who was attached, attached Well, not really attached to somebody who said that he's interested in reading the script. Well, if you're in the film business, john said, somebody says, Well, I'm interested in reading the script means nothing. It has no commitment has no obligation to read it when I have time. Well, in his mind, that meant we got this guy, he's reading the script he's interested in she's gonna do the movie. And I think that was a basic, basically, like a stopping point for him to even pull the trigger in production. So that's why he brought all of us and started production, because he has a guy who is interested. And it was quite known actor that I think I happen to be in the office when the agent of that particular talent, but the <a href="https://www.ifhacademy.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2147707319">movie star</a> basically passed on possible impossible, partly because he couldn't do it because I think schedule conflict or or something was not really quite, as we say, kosher. So. So I think that's what created this rage in Jimmy and he was yelling and screaming and cursing and threatening This is gonna break this guy's kneecap next time he sees him. And he slammed the phone off great. Just like there's a whole, like, there's something if you're head of big studio, and you're doing some big movie in 40s. I think that's how they used to act. Like, probably, but not if you're someone who's never done anything. And to me there was like, okay, they just want to be very, very interesting. Of course, I called my agent right away. And that's also what's happening. She said, Well, the word is out already. That is, she said, Lowe's Canada. Nobody wants to commit to this project, no matter what associated all be here. As long as you can, but I don't think this movie ever gonna get made.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 28:09<br /> Do you think that Jimmy was the best thing and the worst thing to try to get the movie because the door, you would have never been able to crack the door into Hollywood without Jimmy and his story. But because of Jimmy, it will never get made.</p><p>Boris 28:25<br /> There was one thing? I think maybe when I told you that, at some point, what I realized from all this experience is that maybe subconsciously, you never want to make really, and why people don't do that. Well. It's not about money. I don't think you needed money. Well, it's about redemption. It's about you. So the process of making being acting as a producer, having people around him, making him so important of daily basis was what he needed. In his mind, as long as he can, he can live this life of importance. He is ready, but he that's what gives him really, really like like, like the film is made. Well, that's it. He doesn't have an edible, which is his one only crop. This is the story. It's great story. I think and I'll go and I'll start developing another whatever I doubt that he will be able to, even if he made the movie. So for him, it was more important to the dream of making it never making it and as we conceived this movie was ever made. And I thought it was reasonable.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 29:53<br /> It was while it was his dream. It was our nightmare.</p><p>Boris 29:57<br /> Well, it was a roller coaster of emotion. All right, we're for sure because you you were bested in the film, far more than that our snare just kept. So you know, kind of like, record, perhaps one of the props, we are just kind of like a supporting supporting extras were extras really like in all this in all this drama as much as much it was all really close to for me. I enjoyed every moment. I enjoy being with you I enjoy being with Jimmy and all other people that actually became friend for life, which is great, this kind of experience really bonds you but but one thing that I knew right away from the beginning, especially after that episode in his office and slamming the phone and yelling and threatening, and you're just gonna be so calm. And so for me, it was like okay, like, just just enjoy the ride. And it was a roller coaster, for sure. But if I think about anything bad that happened to me, not really. Nothing really got an actual great time. What I think about it is fantastic time we will hang out, do the things that we like to do except we will never make the movie. I think in my mind you remember I told you that in my mind after we finish all the scouts after we finish endless talks, discussions about the sea and shortlisting it and storyboarding it and everything. Basically like I feel like your scope. For me this movies that this movie I already made it just made executed in front of the lens. But I had every possible beat on worked out what kind of like where what lens, what, what movement, everything was. So as far as I'm concerned.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 31:55<br /> Now you being there for the three months that you were you caught me at towards the tail end of my journey. out from your perspective, I wanted to ask you what you thought of me and what you witnessed in my, my day, my day to day life, then because you were pretty much the closest un. And the first ad were the closest to people to me on the production who I leaned on the most. What did what was your take on? What was that, like your impression of what I was going through and, and kind of tell the audience that?</p><p>Boris 32:30<br /> Well, right away from the moment when we met, I realized that you are the tremendous pressure. That's why you're so so you're like a completely understand and relate where the pressure was coming from, it was obvious to me, after two minutes in production of is, it's clear, who's tightening the grip, and pressuring everything, but you have different responsibilities than anybody else in production. So obviously, for you the pressure was far greater. And then later on learning about all this background story that you had, prior to me stepping in was explains everything even more. So my take was okay, I can see. He's under pressure. How can I help? So I'm gonna be focusing mostly in creating the helping you to to, to to kind of keeping away from Genie. Ensuring Genie, and I did a couple of times I would say to me, don't worry. Otherwise, it's fine. It's okay. We'll ask anybody. Good question. Anybody? I'm sure. Okay, something like that. It'll just, you know, I can understand also for Jimmy was also he was probably he was probably reporting to some high higher authority, I don't make a true. So he had somebody to report. Somebody was giving money, obviously, we are getting our bags and being paid almost good. Cash mostly. But clearly going back to, to our connection, really, I think my main main goal was to use the pressure. And yet you're really into the world of what is important to make. This movie never gets made. I felt it would be great value for you to go through the process to prepare you at least, what's the proper way and the next time you get into the production office, how we do it this way, that way, that way, and not the other way. And I think we've made</p><p>Alex Ferrari 34:45<br /> You basically were my film school, a second film school with with this whole project, and I was it's a film history core class and also a production class on how to actually between you and the first ad Frank They you to taught me how to make a movie, like how to actually make a feature film. And I could have done that if Jimmy wasn't around.</p><p>Boris 35:10<br /> Yeah, well, Frank was fantastic like to have around, you have to say you have to reconsider that you're so lucky to have that knowledge and experience and also the calmness the way he was handling any situation like a really good season at work. There's nothing that can take him out of his balance. That was the greatest thing to have. Anybody else I would say he would freak out and run for his life up Frankie Frankie's who know how to do it right away. And well, for me, it was really like a kind of growth of enter, which I do nowadays, regularly with Gemma prefers. And I enjoy doing that I enjoy sharing knowledge, because I always find out. It's the two way street and working with somebody who does not have maybe that much experience. Well, the value of somebody who doesn't have much experience is a freedom. You know, as much as getting an order to getting education or learning the craft, learning what you do is great, and gives you confidence and knowledge and skill. But I've had a little bit of naivete gives you far more freedom to be unconventional. And I think for somebody who gets a little bit season, it's always good to be reminded that there is another purpose, a structured approach to do the same thing. So for me, it was like, Okay, well, I think between your freedom in doing things, and between my pragmatic, logical way of planning, because at the end, that's also what I think we can find nice balance, and I think we did exactly that.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:00<br /> So basically, you were the spark to my Kirk, shoulders.</p><p>Boris 37:05<br /> As we say, back in Eastern Europe, yes.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:09<br /> What What was the worst day you saw? First of all, your worst day and my worst day that you saw, from your perspective, I'd love to if you remember anything specifically.</p><p>Boris 37:21<br /> I think my worst day was not really necessarily my worst day, but people's worst day for everybody. Not 11. Yes. Yes, that was the day when we knew things will be different. That definitely set the tone for quite a lot of things.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:43<br /> But you weren't on the production during 911. Yet you came after I came off, right. So on actual production on the actual production</p><p>Boris 37:49<br /> Actual production, you know, there was just</p><p>Alex Ferrari 37:52<br /> A week a week away before. Yeah, that happened a week before, it was still in the year.</p><p>Boris 37:57<br /> But he was very much, I would say the worst. The worst always say, more like bringing Dell to reality day was the fact that when our production designer went first to Jamie's office, to ask to be released to know some other project and when to return and almost punch him for daring to ask such thing. Because obviously, we saw this as a personal betrayal. I guess in his mind wanting commitment at all. That's just how it is. So basically, I realized that he owes us we are really props were really like, like extras in the drama in the wall that he created for himself to tell the story about himself. So that was a thing like, okay, that's gonna be interesting. How do I get out of this?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 39:01<br /> Yeah, because I think that was the moment that it dawned on you like, oh, wait a minute. I can't leave. Like I was having fun. But like, all of a sudden, like, wait a minute, I I have to figure out how to get out of here cuz you're in a different state. I mean, it would have been, you know, you just can't walk away. You know, all that kind of stuff. So it must have been, it must have been interesting for you. Because you and Frank were the only two la guys were at the time everybody else was local or so you guys were in a unique situation. You were living out of a hotel. You know, you you were making your sandwiches and bringing them in for lunch because there was no catering.</p><p>Boris 39:40<br /> Yeah, that was that was very interesting. To me. It was very Yeah, he owes me a frank. There's the only two guys and we've been talking about okay after that, like, frequently we do. Practice like I really don't know, you know, I'm sure in There must be some kind of scenario. And we just have to find a moment that has to be perfect storm so to speak for the audience for Jimmy to be open for the idea. But seeing how he reacted on our production design his request to let him go and barely managed to get the vibe of the office to be there was a sign I was going to be using it I was thinking about it because obviously realities are not as fun as we had any we had a fun, it was fun we doing things but Okay, that's enough. Let's close this chapter. Let's move on. I have other projects lined up and careers to take care of. And I can also send out in beautiful, sweet, sweet on top top of the hotel, penthouse. I mean, it's all nice. I'm complaining it was all great, obviously did really well. Even the sandwiches I was making because like I get tired of local pools I got life. So my friend. European,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 41:02<br /> Yes, you cut your you cut your sandwich with a knife and fork</p><p>Boris 41:07<br /> And so that was a kind of all these elements to finally get to an idea that Christmas was coming. And that's like, that's the opportunity that's like, say for me any day, a whole year, if any opportunity can be worth it, excuse the example. It's a Christmas. And that's what I did. I went to the office, try to be as calm as I could imagine, gets to mean more than Chat Chat and chat and kind of in passing measure that you know, the Christmas is coming will be so nice if I could benefit my family. And he looked at me like what are you telling me? thinking what would happen? Would it be so nice? If I could maybe spend but but of course I'm committed to your part of this American project. And that, you know, you can count on me and you wanted me kind of like I have never ever my word committed to this. But you can count on this that the moment you leave me I'm there for you. And if you said well, if you really want to go see your family, I can understand it. You know, I'll be back when there was a moment when I had everything packed and ready. Just in case it works. I get in a car drove pick up my stuff and I was on the flight like what was ready.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 42:40<br /> And Frank was right behind you</p><p>Boris 42:42<br /> Frank was right behind me. So I guess Frank realize all this maybe the moment when remains soft. Because of us that same kind of like opening for him.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 42:56<br /> I tell you though, that was I'll never forget you guys getting in the cab and driving the light. I will never, I remember we were right up front of the racetrack. And you guys got on the car and you said, you said to me, I'll be back. Don't worry, I'll be back. And I knew you were never coming back. I knew. And that was honestly the saddest day out of all the craziness that happened. That to me was the saddest day because then I knew I was alone, again, and I had no one to really protect me or guide me or, or anything to be a barrier between me and Jimmy. It was it was the saddest day of my existence on a project.</p><p>Boris 43:38<br /> I knew that I knew that I knew this was gonna probably happen. But we didn't feel like we're leaving you hanging out there. And we really hope that our leaving the project will help with the other kind of open the door really wide. So the flood of people dropping the ship will really just happen. And then eventually, Jimmy, my disciple, put everything on hold and like you're kind of off the hook. We hoped for it because it was clear lbos especially when you realize a $20 million became 15. They became incredible thinking about it and started getting smaller and smaller. And then we realized, well, there must be some issue there. Obviously the biggest issue was Jimmy, which he will never realize.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 44:30<br /> And what was the worst day that you saw in me. From your perspective. I'm really curious to hear that. If you remember any worse specific day.</p><p>Boris 44:41<br /> I don't know if it was really specific day but I think there are moments you have the days coming at are usually these days of hyped up expectations for you. I know that you'd be you'd have to take a trip to meet some big actor and that multiple multiple Yes, so. So I could see that every time, you'll come back from any of these trips, meeting actors that your spirit was broken, or more, and I can see that you're realizing that the dream that you'll be dreaming for months and months and months, is further further away have ever been realized. And then I've also realized, I've been realizing that you're basically cropped, without any any way out. So to me, it's not one event, but there's been several then as especially if you have to deal with your coming back from these meetings with the actors and realizing.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 45:46<br /> We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Those were the those were tough times. And what was the one thing that you told me about moving to LA?</p><p>Boris 46:08<br /> Like we could all do? Well, if you really want to if you're serious about making movies, comfortable, Hollywood,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 46:14<br /> And what was the one thing you always told me was the biggest regret you will ever have? Is that you didn't do it earlier?</p><p>Boris 46:19<br /> Yes, it was. A lot of people told me Yes, I remember, we had to do it right away. But it always right away. Because yes, you will have the biggest regret. If you don't do this, you will have biggest regret not doing it. If you do it later, well, you're probably not doing it earlier. But at the end of the day, I believe that things always happen where they're supposed to happen. You know, there's a, there's a there was a moment when you have to act on your instinct, or if something tells you this thing to do that you don't like it maybe too early, can be also damaging is maybe more than not doing it at all. So I think you'll do the right thing you did. You evaluated everything that you You came here, when was the right time for you to be here.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 47:12<br /> So reviewing everything that we've gone through, you're one of my oldest and dearest friends. We went through war together, as these kind of relationships are built up on on locations on productions. They're pretty intense. Ours was probably one of the more intense ones you've ever dealt with, with another director, in this sense, looking back at it everything, what is what is the feeling that you have about the whole experience? That really kind of just rings to you, at this point, looking back with the perspective of almost 20 years back now, I mean, I can't believe we're saying 20 years, but it's almost 20 years that we did this? What's the thing that that you know, comes to your mind when you kind of look at Jimmy and the experience. And now the book, and how the story is finally going to get out there to people what's what's your feeling on it</p><p>Boris 48:15<br /> Never fails to really amaze me, when it comes down to film industry, the range of people that this business attracts, that's really To me, it's most fascinating. And the experience, particularly its brilliance on our film world was so much different than than anything I've ever experienced before or after. But proves my point absolutely, totally to the core. And really it's a case study of the madness, the mayhem, but also the termination. And I don't think any business that quite off brings people with so much determination and also I think it's following the dream. Dream about being anything being chef being I don't know, I don't being a doctor, his dreams, but the intensity or the dream that people in the Philippines say it's exponentially higher. So no business I think other than really the cause experience what comes down to bonding. Just being a break from production. production. The level you see what Bond's people I think it's being being it's, it's really seen Best and Worst on everybody because the pressure creates environment, but you can afford you cannot cheat. We cannot lie you You are who you are. And the pressure really enables people to get to know each other, a much different level than you would normally do. And that's why everybody says, Well, that's kind of causes you when you're in a war, when you're in the trenches, you really get to know it, because you rely, you're part of the team. It's not only you, it's about everybody. So you know that if a person next to you, does not trust you, well, it could affect on everybody else and everything. So. So I think it's about the ultimate team building experience, when you're in production, that creates this unity creates a connection, especially when you come across people that are on the same wavelength, so to speak, and they're on some different level connected. That's the biggest thing that you get out of out of this.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 50:51<br /> The one thing I mentioned this in the book, but I wanted to hear from your point of view you when you came back to LA, you would tell anybody who would listen about this story and have been for the last 20 years. Is this true?</p><p>Boris 51:06<br /> Yes. This was the conversation that sparked the conversation I had almost 20 years. Still going, it's still they're still going going every time, you know, we hang out the pill people and everybody shares the horror stories from the set and like, oh, let me tell you my story. I'm going to drop off this. Absolutely. Nothing comes close to this one. And so far, I mean, I never heard anybody that to talk to this story. But any dinner or party conversation, because every time I mentioned GBM, what we went through and what all happens, everyone off, that's not possible, like, well, trust me. Because if I told him Yeah, it's really it's true.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:47<br /> And now you actually are going to be handing out books to everybody.</p><p>Boris 51:50<br /> I cannot wait to get the books. And that's what I told them at the party was actually there. And it's and here it is.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 51:59<br /> Now, it's also true that anytime I would show up to one of these parties, your friends would would find me and it will come to me and go your Is it true with a Boris was just joking. Is it true? And I would have to sit there and like validate your story.</p><p>Boris 52:14<br /> That's right. That's right. And that brings even even, like expression of confusion and disbelief on everybody level. Also, that really must be the truth. And then how is this possible for? Yeah, for sure. That's very, very, quite few things off of this?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 52:32<br /> Oh, no, there's many, many good things that came out of this experience, obviously, a great friendship over the years. And it made me who I am today. And it's also made me the grizzled, independent filmmaker that I am now because of it. So, and it was probably one of the reasons why I wanted to launch indie film hustle, because I wanted to help others not to do the same mistakes that I did.</p><p>Boris 52:54<br /> I think this will be perfect. For anybody who is in the film hustle world as well as anybody who is just for sheer amusement quality of the book itself. I think that's that's gonna be just amazing.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:09<br /> And without question, please explain to people who are listening, because a lot of people were like, Oh, this must happen all the time, or this situation can't be this unique. You've been now close to 30 years in the film business. 20 odd years. Close it there. Let's let's round it up. round it up. You're younger man, sir. But yes, let's just throw it out there. In kindergarten, you started</p><p>Boris 53:37<br /> With my first films. We know that we make movies in kindergarten and elementary school. And that's why we have such good cinematographers. That's the key.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 53:48<br /> That's right. That's right. But please explain to the audience how unique and ridiculous this in that this does not happen.</p><p>Boris 54:02<br /> Well, it's really hard to explain ridiculousness of all this experience. I mean, every detail you bring telling the story. In my case, just if I see how I get the film, it's only like, come on. If there is more than ever, there is no way. I don't want to say oh, by the way, at all, no accounting possible. So the level of ridiculousness in this whole experience, it's something that is really hard to hard to match. And that's why all the US who really lived and experienced with this, can really, truly understand how this was possible. As we went through this, as well, whatever happens to us, but I think for everybody who reads the book, I'm sure there will be people who say no, that was all No way that was all like born out of proportion. And it's okay to think that it's fine. It's fine, because for other people, there will be no point of reference in their own personal experience to say, Oh, yeah, I seen that. Maybe I didn't recognize the episodes and say, Oh, yeah, I remember also that. When we ended up scouting for a strip club in our scouting entire state to find out the best report for Pixie, I'm sure there will be people like that only I will also be the producer who hang up on the fall. Yeah. All these puzzles all these owners together, it's something that's I think, very hard to match. But it's also what I get out of this experience. is nothing ever surprises me anymore. And I've been to some productions since then. quite few. But that's okay. Let's go to like, Okay, once you have this experience, when you hit a point that is hard to make, she's like, been there, it's worse. It's nothing like in wag the dog. That's nothing. Oh, we shot the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, we will still do the bad. That's nothing like dusty Hoffman's character. It's nothing. So for me that kind of That's nothing. And that's great place to be like, whenever you get in production. And things are really tough. And they don't, they will be so so because I know. I've seen that I lived through. And I see worse. I live to worse.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 56:30<br /> Now there has been already there's going to be this question after the book comes out. And it's already you know, from the few industry people that have read it before it comes out about the movie. The movie version, it is a question that's asked constantly in any of my interviews, it's constantly asked by anybody, is it this would make a great movie. Originally, your idea for me was to write a screenplay. I said, I didn't want to write the screenplay. And the book came out, I think it's much better that the book came out first, because I got the whole story out, the screenplay can't encompass the entire story. So what is your feeling of the movie? idea, first of all, getting made one day. And secondly, if the movie does go through, obviously, I'm the only director that I will allow on the project. And you are the only cinematographer that I will allow on this project. What's your feeling on first of the movie? And then us being part of the movie?</p><p>Boris 57:30<br /> Well, here's the thing. The movie itself, I always say, this is still one of the best scripts I wrote</p><p>Alex Ferrari 57:37<br /> The movie of the of the of Jimmy's movie.</p><p>Boris 57:42<br /> The script itself. It was great. It was a free rated. If we made it, it could have done something about something. I think it had the potential. The story's interesting. And it's very colorful, and the characters are colorful, and setting is colorful, and it was unique. It was a unique take on it. Very, you know, yes, it is kind of like a mafia movie, but with a little bit more personal family. So I would see, I could see that I could see that what would set this game apart from anything else. All film making of that film will be something that well, you remember I kept telling you during the pre production that the worst thing that we are missing here, but we don't have surveillance cameras, broadcasting 24 hours what's happening in production, that it could have been the best film ever made about making off of the movie that was ever made. But we didn't think about it. We just joked about it. But now in hindsight, when we think about it, like wow, I wish we had the cameras. Well, it'd be so great to have cameras and get all these precious moments recorded. So if this movie ever gets made, making off the movie, I think it could be so interesting, because I remember back maybe around the same time, there was a movie called rope about crazy filmmaker, who coincidentally couple friends of mine worked on it when they told me when they told me what was experienced working on this film, which is probably as crazy as it can get. I will not either ended up seeing the room after a couple of times of studying for the screening. And it was the craziest the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. But it became a cult following. It still has a following without screens as a whole. And then somebody heard about it. And they made movie disaster artist about making a movie about how they made the movie The role with the crazy guy who was the director, producer, everything It was successful, it was really successful. So for a lot of people who have not even seen the movie, it was just enough to see the movie about making it to make it really great film. So I feel the same way about this film that if, if we will make it one day, well, that will be fantastic to which time.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:00:25<br /> But the question I get, I always tell people this, that, you know, I always use a critique Jimmy, and you did to that this movie, he was an ego maniacal maniac, because he was making a movie about his producing a movie about his own life. And I had never really seen a producer produce a film about their own life, generally speaking, it's not something that's done. But then of course, I would take it to the next level where not only would not only produce, I would direct and write a movie about my life, have me in the scene, and then you would be there next to me. So then now, how surreal and meta would it be that I would be directing a scene with you and me as the characters and then you would be there where the the actor playing you, which would obviously saw Sacha Baron Cohen,</p><p>Boris 1:01:18<br /> This will be so unique. I don't think he's ever in history of cinema. So there is a point that we have to break new ground here it is what it is. And as far as such a bottom coin? Well, I have to think about, I have to look at the resumes and do the screen test. I've been cinematographer in this particular story is the second crucial part, it's almost as equally as important as more important than director I would disagree, but go ahead. So we have to really think about complexity of the character, and how it is possible to bring all these nuances. Bonus is very complex guys, Jesus, because we communicate his his historic background, education, his cultural heritage, aside from his artistic skill, and whole philosophy, when it comes down to telling the story visually. So our point will be as close as we can get to get the character of polish. As really true to the life</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:02:25<br /> I'm rethinking the whole Boris character in general, we might have to tone it down a little bit, you might just have one or two scenes there. You should make it on the poster, you should be the poster. Without without question, I think it would be it would obviously be a very unique experience. I couldn't even I can't even think about making a movie like this without you. So it just has to happen. If it has, I mean, I can't have another cinematographer do this. It has to be you. Frank is no longer with us. He has since passed. But I would have loved to have Frank on this on this project as well. But But between I mean, having you would be there would be so surreal, I think we might break the space time continuum,</p><p>Boris 1:03:19<br /> I have a feeling the right way to do this would be to go back to the original location to the crime scene and go to the same restaurant, get back to the same production of this as we had a lot of makeup Katrina and start production there, which will also serve as a location for the movie. And it will show you and I think everybody who participated in the original movie will be great. So bring them all back into the amazing, fantastic by now. I'm sure many of them have very good successful career. So maybe a major stepping down but doesn't matter. They can still be a better than anyone. All right. So I think that would be a really wise way to do this. Question is, how would we be?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:03<br /> That was a question. What do you think? What What do you think Jimmy is going to do when he sees it? Because this will eventually get to him.</p><p>Boris 1:04:12<br /> Well, it's hard to predict. As we know, it is very hard to pick the type of guy he might have his own idea. And I think the biggest problem, the biggest issue people have is that he will be taken out of equation, the whole process. So he will not like that. On the other hand, in whatever capacity even just to play himself. Who knows? That might open all possibility. But it won't happen.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:43<br /> No, it will not happen. Not on my set, sir. I'm sorry. That will not happen. We are not casting Jimmy to play Jimmy</p><p>Boris 1:04:50<br /> But we can bring him or we can bring him as a consultant.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:04:54<br /> Absolutely not. I don't want there's no consulting. There's nothing I want Jimmy to do on this film. nothing whatsoever. If anything, we might be able to give him a ticket to the premiere</p><p>Boris 1:05:07<br /> I think we need a beef of security for anything else for the product,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:05:09<br /> or that I give that I guarantee you, we're gonna have beef up. But you and I will have personal bodyguards walking around with us. But in all honesty that what do you think Jimmy will do when he when he sees this?</p><p>Boris 1:05:24<br /> I think here's, here's the thing. He would, of course, be very happy because he is important part of the story. So for him, it will stop us really nicely. in Monterrey, immortalize him as a as a genie forever. And that's something I'm sure he would love. I think that he would not love Well, it will not be filled. If you wanted to make about himself, it's about us. It's about the process, where he's just important part, but not the key player in all story. Show modularizing Jimmy as a character in all this story structure will be something he will not be happy about call me</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:06:05<br /> He won't be the star but he is the main protagonist, excuse me the antagonist.</p><p>Boris 1:06:09<br /> He is also starring currently starring Boris</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:06:16<br /> Okay. Boris is not fulfilling. Can I have please? And you think that he would? That would be the problem he has</p><p>Boris 1:06:37<br /> I think to find out to make it as soon as possible and to what really reaction?</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:06:42<br /> Well, he didn't hear the book before the movie is made? I that's no question the book will get out before the movies. I mean, no question. Because we are recording this prior to the release of the book. You know, we haven't spoke we'll maybe we'll do another one. When we speak after the book has been released. Maybe after it gets a little press, we'll see what happens. But right now this is being this has been recorded before the book is released. So we have no idea what will happen to the book. What what what will go on, we have no idea. So this is a very interesting place to be.</p><p>Boris 1:07:15<br /> Oh, yes, definitely interesting place to be. And I'm very happy to be in this place. People we don't know. Reports. But</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:07:25<br /> I think that one day will I think the real Boris will step out of the shadows one day,</p><p>Boris 1:07:29<br /> I will probably be proud one day to bring the cue light with me and finally release the ideal voice.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:07:38<br /> And one last question. Or two last questions. They kind of similar. What did you feel when you first read the book, but the whole thing from cover to cover? When you first read it? What was the first thing that came to you.</p><p>Boris 1:07:59<br /> Rereading the book was like, because a quarter as much for you was also quoted away for me. Because I remember, we are more before that. When I made a phone call and call you and told you, Hey, I just heard Jimmy on the radio, can't believe is not still around and still doing the same thing. something needs to be done about it. And I told you when you did it, because I knew that you need to get it out of your system. That's important. There was something that was always like we will always over years. reference it make joke always crappy jobs kind of revisit the moments and but I knew that there is far more to the story than what you and I went through. And you and I joked about. So for me, finally, when I read the book, I get the whole picture, I get the whole picture like okay, that's what's about you, that was a chapter that you needed to close for your sanity for your sake of mine. And it's also I think it was a good place to go to revisit where you started and where you are right now. Can you kind of do some kind of validation of your personal existence, your personal life. So to me, that was the thing I love. I love the book very much for the beginning when I started reading a chapter about boys. That was really very, very inspirational. And for me, it was really like I don't know what you know, like, in one continuous chunk of time. That's how I think compellingly it is regardless if I was part of it, that I could relate to many characters to many events, but it's a journey that takes people the pitch reader on even if it's hopelessly fictional. I think it's it's great to be diverse in uniform porn from porn.</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:10:02<br /> And when you held the book in your hand, I just did that recently, I gave you a full book because you read the digital version, when you saw it with the cover and everything. What did you feel?</p><p>Boris 1:10:15<br /> Well, you know, there's a document. And it's a real. And I hope this book is going to stay in somewhere in some archives in the Library of Congress. So whatever is going on, others want to keep his book for generations and generations. So for me, it was a, it was a real final closure. For your, for us, for anybody who was part of this, it was like, Okay, this thing is not real. And now this thing is wonderful out there. And become part of life's of many, many people out there. So now you have the real thing in your head. And that to me was like, great moment of,</p><p>Alex Ferrari 1:10:55<br /> Boris, thank you so much for, for the inspiration to write the book for the nudging that you've been giving me for the last 20 years. Every time you give, and you tell me to do something, it takes me a little bit to get around. You told me to move to LA, it took me about six, seven years to do that. And you pushed me for 17 years or so to put to write this book, or to write to tell the story. But it finally got it done. So I want to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart to that you did that. And for everything you did while I was going through the most difficult time of my entire life.</p><p>Boris 1:11:33<br /> Well, thank you for taking me along on the journey. And I'm very happy that I can, I can push you in the right direction. And then when you listen to me, always results in something that you appreciate. It makes me feel good to solid things are not as crazy as I might be autos received back in all countries placebo. 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