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January 17, 2024 25 mins

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with magician Lance Burton about how he wrote (and directed and starred in) the delightfully comic “Billy Topit: Master Magician.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Lance Burton Website:  https://www.lanceburton.com/

Billy Topit Website:  http://www.billytopit.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Lance Burton Transcript

John: I loved Billy Topit, both Jim and I did. I've made a number of low budget movies in my life, about a half dozen of them and the driving force behind them has almost always been, let's get together with some friends and make a movie. I got the sense that that was kind of part of the DNA of Billy Topit. Is that right?

Lance: Well, yes, I just have to correct you on one thing: Billy Topit was not a low budget movie. It was a nobudget movie. We literally just decided, you know what, I'm not going to spend any money. Everyone volunteered. So, if it ever makes any money, I'll go back and pay the actors.

John: Well, okay. But as someone who has done the same thing, I’ve done that a half dozen times with the no money. The results you got, given the no money status, were great. Your sound is exceptional. One of the things that's normally a big sign that it's a low budget movie is the sound is not good. It's a hard thing to get right and when you do get it right, it makes it sound like a big budget movie. The cinematography is terrific, the editing is fantastic. I don't know if you bought the music, or if someone did the music, but whatever it was it fit perfectly, and it just sailed along. So, for a movie that had no budget, you did an exceptional job of making a real movie.

Lance: Oh, thank you. You’re right, the sound is the one thing you really don't want to skimp on, because that's something you really can't fix in post a lot of the times. So, we did try to pay attention to the sound recording. As far as the music goes, some of the music was from my show that I already own. Some of the performance pieces, some of the music we use just for the movie, was rights free music that that I got from a company called Digital juice. They have all different sorts of music and it's searchable. So, you can find you know, rock and roll hard driving music, you can find, you know, instrumentals, you really have everything.

Then there was a couple of pieces that a friend of mine, who's a musician wrote and recorded for me. And one of the pieces in the film, my lead actress, Joelle Rigetti, she had actual

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