Film Courage: …And we’re rolling, we have sound?
Okay, great.
And we’ll hand the bag to you.
Justin Warren, filmmaker: [Grabs bag with questions in it]…Ooops, sorry.
Film Courage: Okay, this is from Smeltzer Sounds…hello.
“The itch for a project or idea, how it feels, why you can’t stop thinking about
it, it’s a project that has to get done…what was that first project like for you?”
Justin: What was the first project like that?
Man…there’s a lot of projects like that actually.
Like I kind of have a hard drive of scripts that I just desperately want to make.
But the thing that I try to do was find the great intersection between that feeling he
was talking about.
That I desperately have to make this, I want to have this exist and I’m ready to lay
down on the train tracks to make this work.
That feeling intersecting with kind of like realistic resources of where I am right now.
And so I have script that take place in fantasy worlds where it would take phenomenal amounts
of money to build just the world and those are scripts I desperately want to make but
I’m just not at that level right now.
So the kind of thing for me is that it kind of has to tick two boxes.
It has to tick the feeling of “I just have to make this.”
And “Is this realistic for me to make.”
Because I think one of the hardest things I learned was one of the first movie because
THEN THERE WAS JOE (which was my first feature) was actually the second script that I landed
on to want to make after school.
So I’d written an entire other feature that I was like “I’m going to make this one.
I’m totally going to take this one.”
And it was funny, I was talking to a producer friend of mine (not the producer of the movie,
but a producer friend) and I was saying like “I really want to make this movie.
What do you think I should do?”
And they were like “First off, you should write a business plan.”
And I was like “Ugh, no!”
So you can know realistically if you can make this or not.
And I was just like “Ah, man.
That sounds pretty awful, but I’ll do it anyway.”
So I sat down and for like a couple weeks I budgeted out this script and I figured out
very quickly this is like a million dollar movie.
And I thought just in terms of (perhaps cyclically, I don’t know if realistic is the way to
put it) but cynically I thought who would give me a million dollars to make a movie?
Like who would do that?
And I don’t think anybody would do that?
And so I was like “Okay, I need to try and figure out something else.”
A way that I could gather some amount of money (every movie costs someone amount of money).
It’s not possible to make something with nothing, you have to have some amount of money.
And so I was like “Okay well I’m going to do what I can to write something that has
that feeling of like I have to make this.”
Along with something that where it is cost-effective.
So then I wrote THEN THERE WAS JOE thinking like “Okay, I’ going to shoot this back
home where I’m from.
I’m going to shoot it in my parent’s house where I grew up.
I know for a fact there’s a guy down the street who owns this place who probably will
let us shoot there for free” and so that’s what I was thinking in terms of how to get
it made.
And so if I tried to do that with the other film, I think I’d still be trying to make
it.
I’d still be trying to come up with the money because to be frank I’m still a first-time
filmmaker (I just completed my first feature), I’m still like “Who would give me money
for my next one?
I don’t even know?”
And so I’m still sort of in that mindset of like “Well, okay I know for a fact I
want to make something else.
It has to resonate with me and right now where I am, it has to be made in a way that is realistic,
where I’m still going to be calling in favors most likely.
I think for my next film I think I can get a larger sum of money but not too much, you
know?
My goal eventually is to like stair-step my way into it like each film just gets a little
bit bigger than the last one which is not too unreasonable.
I think it’s easy to think “Oh man, I made this movie and now my next movie is going
to be a 30 million dollar movie.”
And maybe I’m cynical but I just think that’s unrealistic.
Maybe that happens for other people.
It does happen for other people but I don’t know if it would happen for me.
But my goal is just to make films that I feel like I have to make that are within a certain
contained, that can be made in a relatively contained way.
And what’s great about that right now is when I was thinking about that first script
that I wanted to make that was like a million dollars now in hindsight I would never trust
Justin two years ago with a million dollars, I would never do that.
Because I just didn’t have the chops then.
I feel like now I could probably do that, maybe?
I think?
But it’s just one of those things like I feel filmmaking especially directing and writing
it’s a process to get up (to direct) a huge movie.
And I’m just going to slowly, kind of march my way up the stairs until hopefully I’ll
get to direct something really big one day.
Until then I’m going to try and make films within my means that scratch both of those
boxes.
Film Courage: I think it’s great that you wouldn’t be too tempted…I mean who wouldn’t
want 2 million to make something but I mean so many people have over-confidence sometimes
and I think it’s kind of this thing that’s definitely embraced and I think that’s great
that you want to go to these next levels in a progression not just totally jump.
Justin: Yeah because I think if I were to just jump to a huge movie right now, like
I don’t know how good that movie would be?
Because there’s so many, you know there’s that whole thing “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.”
Like that’s kind of a real thing.
So my last movie was of a small budget range.
The next script that I wrote is about twice that but twice of a little is still not very
much, you know what I mean?
And I think I can handle that.
I think I can handle how to make something really solid in a very fiscally responsible
way.
And I like that.
I’ve actually learned to appreciate kind of slow growth and slow progression and being
cool with that.
Because like I was talking about earlier, it’s really easy to just want to get there
right now.
“I want to direct the net AVENGERS movie right now!”
You can really want that but if we’re realistic about it I wouldn’t trust myself right now
at this particular spot in my career, I wouldn’t trust myself with an AVENGERS movie.
There’s no way!
And so when I get there, when I get to the point where I can direct something like that,
I want the experience and the resourcefulness to all line up hopefully in a way where synergy
is occurring where I can actually meet that opportunity and do a good job with it.