My name is clay Moffat I'm a filmmaker in San Tan Valley Arizona. In my
professional film career I guess I've made probably five or six short films
and currently working on my third feature film right now. As director on
average I shoot a feature film in about three or four days. I do all the writing
directing producing and editing myself I'm able to support my family and keep
throwing money and income into films by having a full-time job I actually manage
a pizza restaurant and I work 55 hours every single week in addition to seeing
my wife raising my kids and living that lifestyle and also producing films so
there's only 24 hours in a day and I stretch it thin the secret is caffeine I
would say the secret and a lot of people tell me this too is the secret is
managing your time and I think that I'm able to do that so well because I've
been a restaurant manager for 12 years so I understand the scheduling and the
aspect that goes with that and I just put that into filmmaking and my daily
life my favorite role in the whole process is definitely post-production
editing I really like doing the visual effects work but I also like cutting the
film together I think it's it's funny how different things can turn out just
with simple cutting and editing so that's definitely I think where the
magic happens and whether or not whether or not your movies gonna make it or
break it my least favorite part of the whole
process is the before I like writing don't get me wrong but I think from the
coming up with the idea and then writing it and then before you shoot like the
casting and the planning and finding locations I want to give that to someone
else I'm not much of a planner and maybe that's why my process works the way it
does for me is because I'm much more let's just go do it I want to make a
movie I don't care what that location looks like as long as we can do a shot
in it my process for casting and following through with the cast I
posted audition notices on my overnight pictures page my personal Facebook page
some people that I know would then share it in like acting pages on Facebook that
I'm not a part of stuff like that just get get out there as much as many eyes
as can see it so that we have the biggest pool coming back to us so I got
I think the final tally was like a hundred and twenty eight emails from
people that wanted to be a part of this movie and I sent them back sides for
characters that I felt they looked like so some people got two or three sides
some only got one some of them got the majority of characters sides and they
sent back a video and I basically weed out that way and from there we actually
had live auditions but the number had been cut in half or less by that point
once the cast has been picked we do table reads I kind of get on everybody
for weeks and weeks leading up to the shoot and then I think my philosophy on
shooting so quick works because they don't have time to get out of character
they stay in character the whole shoot they're like boom ready to go the whole
three or four days when I post the casting calls I actually include that
it's going to be only a three or four days shoot you're gonna work 12 plus
hour days because that's what my work schedule allows me to get off so I you
know I know some people the majority of people will shoot a couple of days take
days off whatever take you know a month long four weeks whatever it is but my
life and my schedule doesn't allow that right now so it's
tough when we're shooting one of my movies the way that it works is I
usually yell action and I let the actors go and if they mess up they just keep
going and we'll usually get two or three takes I try to make sure one of them is
a close-up so sometimes I might not be getting exactly what I want and other
directors might want to shoot eight or nine takes but I think for me as long as
you're getting one of everything that you're happy with you're gonna be okay
because at the end of the day only one of those takes is going in the movie now
you can cut it up and mix it up however you want but really only one visual is
gonna go on that frame I think a lot of people overcompensate for that because
they get eight or nine but it's like dude you're only gonna put one of those
in your movie and if you're happy with what you're seeing then there's no point
in going on especially when you're on such a tight schedule in the past some
of my films I I see what they're gonna look like and then they come out and I'm
happy with them but I'm not like that's how I envisioned that to look
particularly with silver woods now silver woods was shot in a day and a
half so that leaves a little room for error like if you mess up it you pretty
much what we have to go on that's tough but I would say it it's different with
silver woods and some of my other films because we didn't plan out how things
were gonna look we had a story we had a script we had a cast we had a location
but we didn't really get to do scouting we didn't really get to set up what
things were gonna look like and it was just kind of will play a by ear when we
get there and set up with pocket man and cargo boy it was a little bit different
we did a little bit more planning we got to see pictures of locations ahead of
time so we got to kind of plan out what things were gonna look like but I would
say the biggest difference between Pocky man and cargo boy is I wrote POC man in
cargo boy when I was 13 I've already made Pocky man and cargo boy twice this
is the third time I'm making this feature it's the time that I'm making it
the way I want it to look so I've known what this movie and this whole series is
going to look like for a decade and to be able to get the budget the actors the
crew the location the camera to be able to do what I want to do was awesome I
have found myself upset with the footage I have not done reshoots I've had to
work around it sometimes we don't get access to the locations that we were at
because they were rented I've gone in the way of finding places through like
Airbnb and the owners will let me use the house or the the cabin whatever it
might be but five months down the road when I'm editing and I'm not happy with
something I might not have access to that place again for example when we
shot the October flowers the owner actually sold the house a week after we
wrapped so I don't know that the new owner would even let us back in there
and there's no guarantee that any of the furniture would still be in there I'm
assuming they took all their stuff with them so reshoots were kind of out of the
question I just kind of have to find tricks through edit and fix it or cut
the scene entirely which I don't do very often I usually figure out how to kind
of make it all work but there's definitely times where I'm like oh we
should have done this why did we do that my approach to how I handle actors and
crew on set is probably not very ideal compared to how other directors might do
things my philosophy is always have fun and make sure everyone is comfortable
because I believe that if they like what they're doing and the environment is fun
they're going to give a better performance have a better time and be
more understanding if you might fall an hour behind schedule but it might not
work for other people if you're the director and you're walking around and
you're this mean old guy that especially the kids might be scared of or
intimidated by I think you're gonna just the environment is gonna be different I
mean if you're gonna be working for 14 plus
hours you gotta like who you're with it's no different than any other job I
would never go to a place where I got to work a full day and my boss is just this
person that I'm scared to approach so I directed Paki man and cargo boy in a
robe and it was fun everybody had a fun time and it was light-hearted and it's
different I know but it works I'm actually self-taught in filmmaking
I grew up making movies in my parents house that was my location that I had
access to so I wrote stories around that idea and I think as I've grown I've been
able to get outside the box a little bit I've been able to get locations go and
get forests and mountains and whatever I wanted that my story was needing but I
think that that idea of being limited early on has helped me out now because
if I find something that I'm not sure how to do or don't have the money for it
doesn't scare me I'm able to well look I made 50 short films in my parents house
growing up I can figure this out the idea for paquimé and Kargil boy was
written when I was 13 living at home with my parents but I was able to take
that idea as an adult and a professional filmmaker and turn it into something so
much bigger but still following the same idea I eventually did go to film school
I went to Collins College and learned avid and got to play with some really
expensive cameras and that was nice and it taught me networking but I think it's
important to understand that a filmmaker can be by the books a filmmaker can be
someone who has all the experience and knows every aspect of filmmaking and a
filmmaker can also be someone who's a beginner that just wants to learn their
way because that's kind of how I started I used to tell my friends one day I'm
gonna make big movies and people are gonna watch them
they laughed you know I have always had support but I don't think it's worth
adducts to go the way that I went but that doesn't mean that you can't find
your own way you don't have to do what everyone else is doing and conform I got
to go to film school I got to be a PA on a big shoot you can do whatever you want
and you don't need a lot of money I'm able to make all my projects for really
under 22 even sometimes ten thousand dollars so it's not a ton of money being
thrown out there all at once it's possible to make quality work with a
shoestring budget there's a difference in being ambitious and being there's no
way in heck you're going to be able to pull that off and you have to be clear
on that when you go in because if you go into something knowing that you can't
pull it off you're gonna fail from the start but I think that everybody should
probably take away the idea that just because you're limited doesn't mean you
can't make something big