Film Courage: When you talk about the entrepreneurial aspects of building a story or a
franchise, what are some of the counter points that students or people that have
read your book say? And also to what are the age groups of
the people that are countering your stance? Author and Professor Houston Howard: Yeah...that the the people that
sort of push back against yeah yeah so uh so the the biggest pushback is is
what what I was just talking about is the biggest pushback as always it's
going to diminish it's going to diminish the the beginning you know it's gonna
diminish the first thing it's going to diminish the first experience that they
have and but for me it's look that that looks at the the whole situation from a
I don't say selfish point of view but it it's looking at it just from a
filmmakers perspective and not from an audience perspective there's a there's a
school of thought a philosophy out there called phenomenology and phenomenology
states that the highest achievement of the artist isn't the creation of the art
itself it's actually the experience that the audience has with the art is that's
the highest achievement that you can get and so a lot of a painter that paints a
painting once these finished with the painting that's that's not the highest
achievement that that that he has it's only until someone has an experience
with the painting that you actually have ever achieved something so if you create
a painting that no one ever sees if you're out of book that no one ever
reads or makes them make a movie that no one ever watches according to
phenomenology you actually haven't created anything that's just the first
step and to be a phenomenal filmmaker or a phenomenal creator you have to create
things that people have these dynamic experiences with which means you have to
be thinking of the audience and the audience's experience with your brand
and your project from the beginning and that's a very different mindset that
most filmmakers have they think of what's the story I want to tell and
though in the way I want to tell it and it's all about me and my vision and
it's very insular and the way they approach the project because it's it's
it's their craft and their art but to be a phenomenal filmmaker you have to say
what's the story I want to tell and how do I want to tell it but you always have
in the back of your mind or maybe in the front of your mind how ultimately is the
audience going to be experiencing it and what does the audience want and and and
it's the balance of those two that can move you out of just being a filmmaker
to a phenomenal filmmaker and so what the audience wants right now is they
want more story they want more of this amazing world that you created more of
these amazing characters that you've created and and we have to now figure
out how to deliver more and more and more story to them but in a way that
doesn't diminish the original work in it and and I'm not saying this is easy the
this this causes you to now not just think of a two-hour story you know when
you're making a movie you're thinking of 120 pages and that's it and I'm done now
that's just step one now I got to think almost like in a television mindset of
where I'm not just creating the pilot episode I'm creating the pilot episode
the rest of the first season and seven seasons from here on out and so now
you're thinking of 100 stories rather than one and so now you have to have
that sort of facility to say how do I tell a hundred stories that spin off of
my movie because this is what my audience wants and so that that that's
the trick and that's the big pushback another pushback is I don't know how to
do the other stuff I don't know how to make comic books I don't know how to
make music I don't know how to make any of this stuff
well the the good the good thing is that there are people who do in every
industry every creative industry out here there are people that are looking
for collaborations and partnerships and because they're trying to figure out how
to break in as well so you can find you throw a rock at any direction in
Hollywood you're gonna hit a screenwriter you throw another rock in
another direction you're gonna hear somebody trying to break into the music
industry somebody's trying to break into the to the as a playwright into the
stage industry you're gonna somebody's trying
to break into animation and design and all of a sudden if I'm trying to break
in in film and you're trying to break in and music then if I go to you and say
listen here's an opportunity to collaborate and I have this movie I'm
trying to get made if if we can figure out how to how to partner on a musical
extension that's going to extend the story in a really dynamic way and maybe
we could shoot music videos that sort of coincide and then he is an animation guy
so maybe he can create animated music videos for the music that you then
create and then all this works around the movie that I'm going to create now
we can create this really interesting transmedia project and all and all
benefit from the partnership because we're leveraging each other
you know a fire ants are really interesting is where I was watching this
nature video where fire ants in the Amazon when the floods fire ants they
they they clip their jaws together and they hold on to each other and they
create these massive like it looks like a raft that that floats on top of the
water individually the fire ants will drown then the flood but as soon as they
see the water company good coming they latch their jaws on create a raft and
they all float on top and that in it in an industry as competitive as Hollywood
where we it's not just filmmakers as filmmakers and authors and musicians and
everybody in between when when the the water is rushing all the time the way
for us to see to succeed especially when we're trying to break in isn't just to
insulate ourselves individually it I feel like it's it's cross-platform
multidisciplinary teams of people let's lock our jaws together and figure out
how we can float together on top of the water rather than just drowned
individually so I think this collaboration is out there to be made
that can help that can help that problem and to we're good we're all gonna things
in today's world it's very difficult to find somebody who only does one thing
especially younger people right anybody that's especially under 30 they've grown
up in a world where that you know everybody can take
pictures because the phones you know the smartphone everybody's a hobby
photographer at this point you know you're an Instagram photographer
everybody knows how to make a movie and edit it kind of everybody knows how to
you know using GarageBand or something on a Mac they don't have a create a song
and and and produce a song to some extent we all know how to maybe probably
we could probably all figure out how to launch a website in some way using
online web materials and so all of a sudden if you really think about it we
all have facilities in five or six different ways that we could probably
figure out how to create some of this stuff ourselves if we had to and so we
can create a website companion to our movie that extends the story in a
valuable way and at the same time have an Instagram account
for from the perspective of one of the characters in the movie that disappears
in act 1 and doesn't reappear in act 2 all of a sudden or maybe they reappear
in act 3 then where are they all through act two is now told on the Instagram
account and so that that now the Instagram account is working with the
movie that's also working with the website and you can do all that your
stuff yourself because we're all pretty good at everything right and so those
are the two biggest the two biggest push backs is is I don't want to diminish the
original work and I don't know how to do everything and and I don't have the
money to do it that's the third biggest thing is I
don't have the money to do it well it's it's that with these boxes that are in
our pockets you that that shoot 4k resolution that
that we all have GarageBand on our phones and our on our laptops like we
could we all have access to social media that's completely for free we should be
able to shoot create and extend stories completely for free
maybe we're not making big motion pictures maybe we're not making platform
video games but there should be a way for everybody on a zero budget to be
able to continue to engage their audience or even establish an audience
in a dynamic way completely for free I knew these guys that created a podcast
and they wanted to they wanted to launch an independent movie and that was sort
of this it was about this crazy wacky kind of
haunted town and it was this really weird thing this got across they shopped
it around they couldn't get it they couldn't get any traction on it so they
went and created a podcast and the podcast is is from the perspective of
the of the radio DJ in that town and he just and he talks about like the crazy
things that happen in the town the different characters they interview some
of the characters on there and it's just this weekly podcast that gives sort of
the weekly news of the crazy town the podcast has blown up the world they have
hundreds of thousands of subscribers to this podcast what they've done now is
they've established pre awareness for their project and now they take that a
couple hundred thousand loyal audience that they have for the podcast and have
leveraged that into a film deal because there's a they've proved the marketplace
is ready for this project right and so to create a Fahd cast it cost zero money
completely zero dollars right and so and so they just recognize the tool and I'm
not talking about a podcast that where you're talking about your movie right
right it's like it's it there's a difference between in world and outer
world when we're talking what I'm talking about transmedia is in world
extensions so works Tim then we're inside the world and we're extending the
story in various ways I'm not talking about behind the scenes cast and crew
interviews and think those are valuable and valuable in different ways typically
they're valuable after something's been released but when
really Trent we're talking about transmedia and super story and these
things like this but I'm not getting inside the world and extending
invaluable ways and so and there's so many tools at our disposal that we don't
even know that are there that that could we can use to be able to extend and and
I was watching the the pilot episode of better call Saul there was a character
who wanted Saul Goodman to be his lawyer and said Saul Goodman didn't want to be
his lawyer because this guy was sort of this mean criminal kind of a guy so this
guy writes his phone number on a matchbook and
throws it on the on the desk and say call me and for me being a trans Muni
guy I pause the TV and I call the number because of course I would
and I call the number and I get the characters voicemail
Wow right and so doing little things like that you can do almost for free
very inexpensive very easily yourself right now when you say I'm going to
create my want to write my book and or I'm gonna release my movie I'm gonna now
implant these things into the scene where people can just use their cell
phones call the different numbers get the different number the characters
voicemails be able to leave them voicemails be able to listen to their
voice mails and be able to set you know set up these fake phone numbers you can
do you do one phone number for a year for like 14 bucks that just goes to
voicemail very inexpensive but at the same time
very valuable to the fan base and it just kind of makes it feel different
like wow this is cool I'm like doing this really interesting thing so so
there's lots of tools that we can use that we just don't know are there that
are very expensive you don't need you don't need the Star Wars budget to be do
to use the principles of Star Wars right you don't you don't need this stuff we
just need that we just need the principles to understand the rubric and
now we use so those low cost those low cost tools to attack the marketplace in
a very different way
you