Film Courage Filmmaker Life Panel (Partial - Not Entire Video) Audience Member Question: Thanks. So this is the question I think I've developed some answers to for
myself and escalators making shorts and stuff but I'd love to get your input
what are the things when you're making the movie with no budget what are the
things that you absolutely have to spend money on food that's when I mean at the
end of the day okay I go back to Corman because that's where my father went from
Roger Corman I'm wearing for my father you can pay the crew
excuse my language where you can pay the crew shit you can work long hours all
these things if they're fed well and they're constantly taken care of
nobody's going to complain you know we don't normally do it but that's why
you're stuck at meals or one thing in the next day we always try to make sure
the lunch is better than were they before because we might have worked
longer I'm a big Strickler when I'm producing for a 12 hour a day doesn't
always happen but you want to make sure that the food the craft service you
actually pay the crafty person more than you would normally member to make sure
that the food is there I found there there's certain things that I've just
never been able to get around like a good five point one mix or seven point
one make so those are the things that no matter how many people you know you can
get favors from color-correction often to really get good color correction
those are kind of the last steps that that I've often just had a hard time not
spending money on because I usually because I can do a lot of it myself but
yes definitely food actors good actors I mean yeah a lot will work for nothing
for you know for free whatever but but you need good actors they're carrying
your whole movie so you know for me that's where you got to put some money
and preferably sag actors and you know if you can it may be something that
happened while on set or before in pre-production that film school could
not have taught you for this but since that happened you were never the same in
terms of how you prepared whether people thought you were totally OCD but you
knew that what you were doing was right because you never wanted to have that
happen again and you were probably you were protect
your own production I think of course it depends on what your goal is for your
film you know if you're trying to get your money back that's a that's one goal
if you're trying to win you know or get into a big festival that's another goal
if you're just trying to make something that's another goal for me I think by
far the most eye-opening moment in this business because I had actually been in
the business for many years working in commercials I started working
commercials in college and I've I still do ten years
now and I was always on the periphery of Hollywood and I I had you know know
people in Hollywood and you know had a manager and you know talked to all these
different people and I had made my movie and I had real cast in it and all this
stuff but the one thing I was not prepared for and that I wish I had done
like day one when I got to LA was go to AFM because that place is the most
eye-opening experience for an independent filmmaker that you could
have I think in terms of this business because it's essentially like a giant
bazaar where they take over the whole Lowe's hotel and every hotel room is an
office of a different sales agent distributor producer or whatever from
all over the world and they're there and they're slinging films and they don't
care what your movies about they want to know who's in it what's the genre what
was the budget I need and you when you experience that like firsthand you just
you can't I can tell you this but you can't mentally understand until you
stand in that place and you walk those floors and you see how it's done it's
it's mind-blowing and then you realize you're like okay actually the movie
business is kind of like the forks and knives business like one fork is made
out of titanium and one is made out of plastic
and that's how they sell these things it's really it's insane for an artist
for a filmmaker you can't believe that that's how it's it's done so when you
left that first time from from the lows did you feel almost like shell-shocked a
little bit or what did it give you a new hope because you realized okay then I
can do this in this and then I felt you know completely overwhelmed and I don't
really get overwhelmed very easily it's a cool under fire but that place it just
made you you feel like wow there's a tidal wave out there that people are
surfing on that like I didn't even know about or I wasn't you know I was still
like inland I don't know how to explain it and I know this sounds naive I know
that it's like oh of course you know FM and film markets and can and Toronto
that's how they work but again you just don't really get it until you're
standing there and you're seeing it so that's great thank you
I think I've got two things one is I think just learning distribution because
you unfortunately think we probably have all learned the hard way
and and hopefully you do actually learn how to do it better that you can
actually make good deals and you don't have to be so afraid and you don't have
to be so eager or desperate but whether you make money on your film or whether
your investors make their money back it lives or dies on the decisions you make
going in to work with the distributor so I think those are the biggest lessons
that I carry continue to carry forward and try to make even to continue to
learn and then my second one is oftentimes we have to work with named
talents and I've just kind of learned over the years
boy that experience can be good or or bad and often on our kind of budget
levels where you know it's not the most comfortable film it's not what they're
maybe used to it's not the big trailers and so for me it's important to actually
get to know the people and socialize with them before I cast them it's not
enough to just meet them in a casting room I actually like to go out and the
social studying and just see are we gonna get
along or they are they gonna be able to roll with me on this and go on this
journey with me and not complain about it and and and the only way to really
that I have found to figure that out is to to go out with them and socialize a
little bit and and there's always someone else so if you're getting a bad
vibe from them there's always another actor because we're not talking about
the A+ level you know we're talking about some really great amazing known
character actors and working actors but there will be somebody else if you don't
get al if you don't vibe with that person or you think they're difficult
there there is another person that's just as qualified and just as good
something that never prepared for and no one ever told me would happen I can't
actually talk about the movie per se but I was held for ransom Wow
thinking of that the the crew came first and the cast and crew came first
together when I'm away from the area and hoping that the company I was dealing
with could get me out of there yeah that was you you asked for change that's been
my barometer of how bad a movie is it ain't that bad so I'm doing good I mean
that's that's my day-to-day if something's really bad it's probably
best that's smart but wow I mean I can't even imagine I did get permission to do
the making of that film are you making it part of it that we're trying to get
everyone's side because what I dealt with was different than what the other
person dealt with I was just the last person to leave yeah thank you
um I had a moment basically I think the biggest thing I took from like one of my
learning experience was if you don't do it when you're on set and when you're
shooting you're never gonna get a chance to do it so I doesn't exist yeah exactly
so like if your gut if you're like like I had a there's a one shot in my film
Queen that I don't have a moment and every time I watch it I am upset that I
just I let it all get away for me to not get this one thing that I really wanted
because if I if I don't do it then I'm never gonna get to do it afterwards
there's nobody just there's no real think all the reshoots
you know there's picking up maybe little pieces here and there and but yeah
there's no fixing an impost so yeah so it's like trust it like that moment was
I didn't trust my gut well I did I I knew what my got one and I went with
kind of a sway of everyone else wanting to do something else and I was talked
out of something and I wish I wasn't and it's I still love I mean his just that
one moment and I realized I will never let that happen again those on those you
know 12 hours of those days that we're on set and we're shooting in this tight
time you know that's your time as a filmmaker and it's everyone else's but
it's yours because you live with it forever and I said to actually the
person that was involved that kind of forced it to not happen I said you know
what you walk out of here and the phone was 12 days so you walk away in 12 days
and you never have to worry about this again I live with this for the rest of
my life and it sounds severe but it feels severe when you do we all know
that these films define us for the rest of our lives I'll just follow that
thread because I really like what you're saying I would say in in the indie world
especially and really you should be any world but they'll never do it on the on
the bigger movies because they can just spend money later but it it on the indie
world especially it's like and I say this even at the jobs that work is there
really the motto needs to be fixed it in pre you have to fix it in pre-production
there's always gonna be surprises in production but you need to like map it
out so there were surprises it's not stuffy shouldn't have already like
figured out ahead of time I mean when we learned a great discipline which I'm
glad we learned this discipline my wife and I cuz when we first started doing
the movies we were shooting in 16 millimeter he's you know the CP 16
Vietnam War camera and when you're shooting an ultra low budget in
filmin sixty millimeter and you're paying for that film stock and that
processing and that transfer you know what you're shooting and you figure it
out ahead of time because you don't have the film to burn through multiple takes
or coverage I mean I had I had boards and basically like if there was a
close-up in the board that's because I knew that line was the close-up I
couldn't run that scene for hey no no that's the line I'm in the close-up here
I'm in the two-shot because it's like you can't so that we've tried to carry
that discipline over to the digital age and I think it's really a good
discipline to have you can always be spontaneous and come up with new ideas
in the set and and seize the moment but it's always good to like to have that
thing to fall back on it's basically having it prepped out so I would say
that's that will really help you on anything you do is basically prep it out
as much as possible and even though it makes you a little bit paranoid and
crazy you basically have to play the game if
you're producing it yourself of thinking of every possible scenario that can go
wrong and you'll still be surprised but you it kind of makes you a little bit
crazy because you're like oh I'm gonna go here and we're gonna shoot well it's
like well is it trash day when you shoot when it's trash day on that Street you
know it's things like that you have to always think of like anything that could
possibly go wrong which is a miserable thing to do but you
have to so then why do it if it's so stress half - because if there was any
way you could do anything else you would stop but you can