BPS 422: The Unscripted Journey of Steven Bernstein From Cinematographer to Storyteller

What if the greatest stories of our lives are the ones we never meant to write? On today’s episode, we welcome Steven Bernstein, a man whose journey through the world of cinema has been anything but predictable. A writer at heart, a cinematographer by accident, and a director by destiny, his career is a living testament to the art of surrendering to the unknown. From his early days at the BBC to the sets of Hollywood blockbusters, his story unfolds like an unplanned masterpiece—one that ultimately brought him full circle, back to the thing he always loved: writing.

In this profound conversation, Steven Bernstein recounts his journey from philosophy student to award-winning cinematographer, where his love of storytelling found an unexpected home behind the lens. He speaks of the curious ways life moves us, sometimes against our best-laid plans. “You tend to go with those things that are providing you income,” he muses, reflecting on how a passion for writing gave way to cinematography, leading him to films like Monster, Like Water for Chocolate, and Scary Movie 2. Yet, even as he shaped light and shadow for some of cinema’s most striking images, the writer within him never faded.There is an undeniable poetry in the way Bernstein describes his work. He doesn’t just shoot a film; he composes it, layering meaning through framing, movement, and light. Every choice—a dolly push, a backlight, an asymmetrical composition—whispers something to the audience. It’s a language beyond words, one that he speaks fluently. “Everything to do with film is a language,” he explains. “And like any language, it’s made up of two parts: that which we present and that which we mean.”His journey back to writing was not an easy one. After years of crafting imagery for others, he took a leap into directing his own films, starting with Decoding Annie Parker. It was a lesson in risk and resilience. At one point, he spent five years in poverty, refusing to return to the safety of cinematography. “If you hold out for the dream, maybe you achieve it,” he says. It is a stark reminder that the artist’s path is often one of sacrifice, but those who persist find themselves richer in ways beyond money.

Yet, Bernstein also understands the tension between art and commerce. Filmmaking is an expensive endeavor, and investors want guarantees. He describes the struggle of balancing creative vision with financial expectations, a dance between inspiration and limitation. And yet, some of the greatest filmmakers—Terry Malick, the Coen Brothers, Charlie Kaufman—have defied convention, proving that the most resonant stories often break the rules.The conversation moves to the nature of collaboration, the unspoken alchemy that happens on a film set when everyone is in sync. He recalls moments from Monster, where the crew, sensing the gravity of a scene, chose to remain completely silent, whispering only when necessary. It was an unspoken agreement, an offering to the art being created. “It was one of the most magical moments I remember in any film I’ve ever worked on,” he recalls. It is a glimpse into the rare, sacred spaces where true storytelling happens—not in the scripts, but in the spaces between them.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four twenty
two eight.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Ain't over till it's.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Over, Yogi Berra broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft.
It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
screenplay bulletproof.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
I am your.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Humble host Alex Ferrari.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now.
Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
on the kind of project you are and the goals
of the project you are, so we actually break it
down by three categories, micro budget, indie film, market and
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(01:04):
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And we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script coverage,
our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney,
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So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered

(01:26):
by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com.
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Speaker 6 (01:36):
That I have my next guest. He has been the
director of cinematography for such films as Monster, directed by
Patty Jenkins, who just directed Wonder Woman, Kicking and Screaming
directed by Noah Bomback, and like Witter for Chocolate. He's
also been the director of cinematography for comedies like The Waterboy,
Half Bake, Scary Movie Two White Chicks, and he's on
action films like Swatt And he also wrote a film

(01:58):
a textbook called Filmuction, and his latest films to Coding,
Andy Parker and Dominion have included actors like Aaron Paul,
John Malkovich, Helen Hunt, just to name a few.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
And currently he's actually teaching some.

Speaker 6 (02:10):
Really cool online and offline seminars, which again I'll link
to in the show notes. We're going to talk about
a lot of really cool stuff on this podcast episode.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
With guests Steven Bernstein.

Speaker 6 (02:23):
So, Stephen, just to get started, you know, you've done
a lot of really amazing work. You've done a lot
of work as a cinematographer, you know, starting in you know,
the the late eighties, and you've done all these wonderful projects,
and I wanted to ask how you got to that point.
I mean, that's sort of the the impetus to a
lot of interviews and a lot of you know, people
who've who've been able to really ascend up that that

(02:45):
proverbial ladder is, you know, how did you get to
that point?

Speaker 3 (02:48):
So what I want to ask you, Steve.

Speaker 6 (02:49):
Is did you to just to sort of start this off,
did you go to film school, you know, to be
a cinematographer or did you do have a or did
you have a completely different sort of entryway into this industry.

Speaker 7 (03:01):
A completely different entryway. I had wanted to be a
writer and read or majored in philosophy at university. When
I came out, there were various job opportunities of different types,
one of which was at the BBC on a training
program which I enrolled in and studied there as a writer, director,

(03:29):
researcher and worked in long form documentary. Great because it
allowed me to travel a great deal, which was an
interest of mine then, and I got to go to China,
Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, South America, South Africa during apartheid
what was then Rhodesia later became Zimbabwe. So a lot

(03:52):
of adventures, a lot of really interesting shoots and some
great experiences, but not really that satisfying and not, as
it turned out, my calling. I came back to London
and continued working at the BBC about the time that
music videos became of interest. The first few music videos

(04:16):
be produced and I got to shoot a few of those,
and soon I was in demand, not as a director
or as a writer, but as what was called then
a lighting cameraman, a cinematographer, and shot a lot of
really interesting music videos for some really then very big

(04:38):
bands in the eighties Eurythmics and so on, and that
led to interest from others, and got into commercials. Worked
with the great Tony Kay, did some really important commercials
with him, some of which won the con Goolden Lion
d d Award, and then I was kind of on
the map. Still, my intention always had been to be

(05:02):
a writer. So it's funny the way life works in
that you tend to go with those things that are
providing you income. Inevitably, you can have good intentions, but
overheads life expenses being what they are, you do what
you have to do. So I was shooting, enjoying it,
particularly the music videos and the commercials, but I was

(05:24):
still writing plays, films, short films, some of which appeared
on Channel four in the UK, some got on the
stage in London, but really nothing that provided me any
sort of success. And then along came like Water for Chocolate.
My friend Gabrielle Bearstein had been offered the work completing

(05:45):
that movie, which had run into a little bit of trouble,
and he couldn't do it, so they asked me to
go to Mexico and finish the film, which I did.
It's a big hit in America, the highest foreign fihest
grossing foreign language film of all time to date. And
I then came to America to see if there was
work to be had here, and that led to all

(06:07):
those studio films, those comedies with Adam Sandler with the
weigh Ins and so on, and that led to my
meeting now the great Noah Bomback and starting an independent
of films in America, and that in turn led to Monsters.
So I've tried to compress what is now seeming a
very long career into a very short period of time,

(06:29):
but a happy series of accidents, doing what I never
intended to do, ending up in a place I never
intended to come to, and somehow working my way back
towards my first intention.

Speaker 6 (06:46):
Yeah, you know, And it's funny how it all sort
of comes full circle, right, You start off with one
intention if you find yourself in all these new situations,
but you took advantage of those situations, and you know,
you turn them all into opportunities, and now you're you know,
and now we're going you're going back to writing. And
I think there's something poetic in that, because I think

(07:06):
it's when when we as filmmakers and and whether we're
writers or directors, when we start our careers, you know,
we have an idea of what it's gonna be, and
usually everyone has an idea that it's gonna be. You know,
you're gonna make a movie at twenty two, You're gonna
win Sun Dance, you're gonna make a million dollars and
then you're gonna move to Hollywood and and and and

(07:27):
and you know, Steve, it doesn't really work out that way.
It's a lot of zigzags towards that sort of path,
and uh, you know, and it's just a That's why
I do this podcast because there's so many interesting stories
like yours where it's not just one way. In fact,
with all these episodes, there's so many different ways of
doing things. But what the point I'm trying to make is,

(07:47):
you know, that's that's the thing about the intention that
we have and how life sort of throws out all
these obstacles and how we respond to them and how
we how we respond to them really dictates, you know,
what course are life is going to go on.

Speaker 7 (08:01):
I think you're absolutely right, and it goes to great
complexity that life offers us, which is do we earn
a dollar, do we do what makes us the maxim
amount of profit all the time, or do we hold
on to an individual dream and simply wait it out.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
It's very interesting because I've done both.

Speaker 7 (08:22):
When I started, I make no apology to say that
was kind of an opportunist. I was taking what was
offered to me, and look, it was a fun ride.
I got to again travel a lot, both first with
the BBC and then doing music videos. I got to
meet really interesting people, particularly in the eighties, and the
bands we were dealing with, and the concerts we were
doing and the videos we were doing all very very exciting.

(08:43):
But really it was the work that was offered, and
I took advantage of that. Later when I went to
make my first film, Adcody any Parker, I had seen
other people try to make that same transition to director,
and they try to keep their day job, as it were,
and none of them succeeded. So I resolved that I

(09:04):
would give up everything to do with cinematography. I would
give up anything to do that didn't directly point me
towards directing, and that's what I did, and sadly, decoding
did not happen quickly. We were promised money, that money
went away, we were promised other money.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
That money went.

Speaker 7 (09:23):
Away, and I spent nearly five years unemployed and went
through all my savings and most of my possessions and
was an abject poverty. On the day we finally got
funded and then went to shooting.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.

Speaker 7 (09:51):
So both courses interesting. I think ultimately the latter one
more painful. You sacrifice a great deal, but if you
hold out for the dream, maybe you achieve it.

Speaker 6 (10:04):
Yeah, And you know, holding out for the dream. It's
kind of like Sid Haig, you know. He people once
asked him about his acting career and he had actually
given up. He actually, you know, sort of went away
for a long while because he said every role that
he was offered was basically he came in as a
man with a gun. He came in through the door
holding a gun, or he came in you know, he

(10:25):
was already in the room with the gun. And what
happened was he he came back because you know, he
actually liked it. And finally he said, you know, I
realized now he's in movies with Tarantino and Robert and
Rob Zombie. And he said, you know, it's like Winston
Churchill said, never quit, never quit, never quit.

Speaker 7 (10:43):
I think that's absolutely right. And there's a great example
of this that we know. I mean, Patty Jenkins, a
dear friend of mine. Patty was the director of Monster,
which I shot. The story is interesting, both how our
relationship began and how Patty built her career. I was

(11:03):
shooting the big second unit on SWAT twenty one cameras,
tons of effects, were spending millions of dollars, blowing up
the front of the library in Los Angeles, crashing planes,
shooting rockets into cars. It was everything I thought I
dreamt of when I was a young cinematographer. And then

(11:25):
after four months of that, I got a call from
Clark Peterson, the producer of Monster and known for years.
The film was in some trouble in Florida, and he
asked if I would read the script, speak to the
first time director, and consider leaving SWAT and coming to
Florida to shoot Monster. And I read the script. I

(11:45):
thought it was great. I spoke to Patty on the
phone and was struck by her intelligence, her sensitivity, her
command of the subject matter, and of herself. I just
sensed that she would be a great leader and agreed.
Came down at one twentieth of what I was getting
paid on SWAT, arrived in Florida to this tiny little

(12:07):
film that was underfunded, under equipped, and in real trouble,
and we began working together, and for me it was
a epiphany because I saw people of absolute and genuine integrity,
completely believing in the art they were undertaking to create.

(12:30):
And Charlice was self sacrificing and the role was agonizing
and difficult for her, but she pushed through, as did
Patty and then of course monster when we finished it,
no one would buy it.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
There's a lot of people don't know. Blockbuster would be.

Speaker 7 (12:46):
The only people that would put forward a not very
good offer, which was taken with the proviso the film
would get a very limited theatrical release and amazing to them,
and I guess to kind of everybody. Film got spectacular
reviews in the papers. Patty ended up, along with Charlease

(13:06):
on Charlie Rose, and then we went to Berlin, where
she at least won the Silver Lion, then a silver
Bear rather than the Golden Globe, than the Oscar, of course,
and the rest is kind of legend. Right after that,
Patty was offered pretty much everything from studios and you,
or I don't mean to speak for you, Let's say

(13:28):
someone like me would have taken that opportunity to work
on a studio be paid a million or two million.
I don't know what she's offered but a lot. But
Patty had a vision of what she wanted to do,
and remarkably, and this goes to her character, she said, no,
these aren't the films that I want to do. She

(13:49):
wanted to do a film about Chuck Yeager. She had
some other projects that were interesting to her, and she
was going to hold out, as I did on my film,
for what she was waiting for and what she believed
she'd be adept at doing and achieving.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
And waited and waited.

Speaker 7 (14:07):
Did some television pilots, very successful ones, the Killing, which
she did a great job on them. And then along
came a wonder woman and Patty said, yeah, here's a
strong woman with a voice that I find interesting, a
subject matter that I've always liked. I'm going to make
this film. And what did it do this weekend? I
mean it was spectacular. And it's not just the box

(14:27):
office revenue we generated. Look at the reviews it's getting.
So that's Patty's remarkable and I think in structural and
structural journey.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
You know.

Speaker 6 (14:38):
I once met Kane Hotter and Kane actually said the
best actor actress that he ever worked with was Shirleys.
There on, and he said she was not only was
she very nice to everybody with no airs whatsoever, but
he said when time came, she was absolutely amazing. Every
single take, every single day. He's like, she never did

(15:01):
a bad take, not one time. And when you see
something like Monster, it's you know, because because Charlie's is
a beautiful woman. And then you know, she transformed herself
with all they make up and she really became that role.
You know, I had on a couple different acting coaches
and they said that was the secret of acting, is
that you don't act like you're a person, you are

(15:22):
that person.

Speaker 5 (15:24):
I think that's spot on.

Speaker 7 (15:25):
And you know, look, I have the remarkable distinction of
being the one cinematographer that managed to make Charlie their
own look bad. So it's very very special and I'm
very proud of myself, and Charlie's was very proud of me.
But she and I worked very hard on making her
look bad. That goes to her great courage, because look,

(15:46):
an actress's beauty is in part her commodity in Hollywood,
and the fact that Charlie, like Patty before her, had
such an integrity of vision that she was willing to
sacrifice her commodity value, the pursuit of art goes to
the person that she is. And secondly, you're absolutely right
about the quality of Charlice's performance, and she does this

(16:11):
strange hybrid of method acting and more classical approaches. She
knows the material, she's always off page, she gets it completely.
She intellectually understands and engaged is with the topic and
knows her character in the character's art. But in the
moment she is a method actor. She is completely engaged.

(16:32):
And as your acting coach, a person that you interviewed
said she became that character.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
We believe she was that person completely.

Speaker 7 (16:42):
You know, there's a remarkable thing that happened on Monster
one day where it was a key moment when Christina
Ricci and Charlie Sterra and the two characters were saying
goodbye to each other at a train station, and they
both had worked their way into this emotional high. There's
a sense of intense and if you know film sets,
I'm sure you do. The crews, you know, just carry

(17:04):
on eating their sandwiches and lying down their track and
doing what crews do. But something remarkable happened this day
and the crew just sensed that they wanted to support
Christina and Charlie's and what they were pursuing. So the
crew decided, you know, latterly not to speak that day,
and the crew was communicating with each other with hand

(17:27):
signals and with pointing and occasionally a whispered word, but
it was dead quiet on that set for the entire sequence,
and it was one of the most magical moments I
remember in any film I've ever worked on, This sense
of synergy of all of us working together to support
what we felt was the achievement of great art, and

(17:50):
I think it facilitated those two performances in that remarkable film.

Speaker 6 (17:55):
I mean, and see stories like that are just so
interesting to hear. You know, she's working with different actors
over the years and seeing all the different methods and
different approaches, and it's very interesting to see that the crew,
you know, responding in that method of a crew responding
and being very very receptive and helping Charley's and Christina
Ricci and doing something like that.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's just very interesting to me.

Speaker 6 (18:17):
When when because because you mean, you've been you've seen
a lot of said Steve, where the crew ends up
and the crew and the cast they ends up becoming
like a family because you're spending you know, days into
weeks and a months making this film, and it almost
becomes like a child for everybody you know, and and
and everyone's a team player, and they all want to see,

(18:38):
you know, what's best for this project that they've worked
for so long on.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
I think you're exactly right.

Speaker 7 (18:44):
And this is the thing I think that's most attractive
about film is you do acquire a family for a
few months or a few weeks, or one of the
films I did in India for a year where you're
all on under great pressure, but you're all mutually dependent
on each other, and you're isolated from the rest of

(19:07):
the world, and you feel somehow special, not special as entitled,
but that somehow the way you are mediating the world
is different from the way you mediate the world in
the civilian or non film world. So the camaraderie and
friendships that are built on film sets to me are

(19:28):
still singular. And my closest friends all come from film
and the most intense experiences in my life generally have
occurred on film sets. And I must tell you there's
never been a film that I've worked on, however, bad
the film they have been where it wasn't followed, at
least for me, by a profound depression that would last

(19:48):
days or weeks. And I think I speak for virtually
all film crews and actors. When you walk away from
your family and just say, Okay, this film's done, I'm
going back home.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Now, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 7 (20:09):
Home doesn't seem like home. The set was home, and
there's a peculiar transition stage which some people never get
it over.

Speaker 6 (20:17):
You know, you're absolutely right, Steve. I've been on a
lot of sets like that where it's almost you know,
it's I don't want to use this expression, but I will.
It's almost like a high. It's almost like this this feeling,
this energy. Actually energy is a better word than I
it's his energy that you feel, and you know, you
just sort of whenever, especially when everybody is gelling together

(20:39):
and everyone's there and they're professional and they're all working together,
it's that, you know, you get that feeling and you
want to you know, and when you leave and the
project's over, you sort of go home and you're like,
what am I going to do now? I guess I
better watch Netflix and you know, order a pizza.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Right, It's like, but you want that feeling again so much?

Speaker 7 (20:58):
No, absolutely, right the point where it's like a maybe
high is better because you're like an attic. You'll be
walking down the street and you'll you'll see another film
shooting and sort of wander over thinking that you might
be able to pick up on some of that energy.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Maybe they'll invite you to lunch.

Speaker 7 (21:14):
But it's it's something that you that you absolutely miss
when you're.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
Not doing it. And listen.

Speaker 7 (21:18):
That's one of the problems I have when I moved
from cinematographer to writer, director and producers that when I
was a cinematographer, I would be doing sometimes two features,
sometimes even three a year. I'd be working all the time,
and I'd be on those film sets with my with
my friends, with my with my film friend family. When
you're a director, when you're a writer, in particular, you're

(21:40):
locked in a room, you know, with a computer or
with a fountain pen and no friends at all, just
writing and writing and writing, and it's not as much fun.
I'm down with the Dorothy Parker who said I love
having written, I hate writing well that's that's kind of

(22:03):
my view.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
I'm very proud of my last.

Speaker 7 (22:05):
Script, in particular Dominion, the one with John Malcovich, and
I'm very proud of to Cody Andy Parker and the
next one coming up. But still the process of creating
those stories, those scripts, very very hard and very lonely.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
It is a very lonely process.

Speaker 6 (22:22):
And you know, I wanted to ask Steve, you know,
when you've, you know, worked all these years as an
accomplished cinematographer and you and you go back to your
first love, which was writing. As odd as this question sounds,
was there any skills that translated? Because I think there was,
and here's the one I one skill I think that
really translated well was you you will obviously lensing all

(22:45):
these wonderful films and like like Monster. You know how
that you you know, have you have that image in
your mind, You have that that sort of mind's I
where you're saying, okay, I can imagine, you know, we're
opening up on this mountain range or I imagine we're
opening up on this sort of dark night and we
can barely see. I imagine that helps a lot with
your exposition when you're writing scripts because when you're writing,

(23:08):
you know this. The action lines I imagine they're they're very
very well told because obviously you know exactly what it's
going to look like, because hey, you're a cinematographer, you know,
and you can bring all those years of imagery and
seeing all these different things to your script.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Am I right? Or am I?

Speaker 6 (23:27):
Or?

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Am I completely off? Based the email?

Speaker 5 (23:29):
You're spot on?

Speaker 7 (23:30):
And and go to the very essence of my philosophy
and understanding of film. What I discovered, both from first
my reading when I was a student of philosophy and
then later as a writer and then as a cinematographer,
is that everything to do with film is a language,
and we have to understand what a language is. A

(23:51):
language is inevitably made up of two parts, uh that
which we intend to mean and that which we present
to create that meaning, or what I think the philosopher's
called the signifier that which the audience sees, and the
signified that which we mean the idea.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
That we're trying to present.

Speaker 7 (24:10):
As a cinematographer, you realize that when you compose a
shot in a particular way, you can create a certain
feeling in an audience. You can even suggest an idea.
When you push a camera forward on a dolly, for example,
into a face, you're saying to an audience, Hey, what
this character is about to say or do is important.
That's not in a script. But the camera movement is

(24:33):
the signifier. The idea of importance is the signified. And
then I began analyzing everything I did as a cinematographer
as a language. If I light with a backlight, that's
the signifier. It's backlight signified. Mystery or uncertainty, an asymmetrical
composition that is the signifier. The signified. Possibly a character

(24:55):
who's alienated, or a film like Wait until Dark, a
character who's a at risk.

Speaker 5 (25:01):
To edit a shot.

Speaker 7 (25:02):
Where you do an extreme close up and go to
a very wide shot David Lean might have done, you're saying, oh,
here's a person in a small and a landscape. That's
the signifier. The signify is the insignificance of the human
condition perhaps or the weakness of that individual at that moment.
So when I realize all those things, I realize that

(25:23):
everything I put in a written script is again a
matter of what I signify and what it means, how
it is indicated, and ultimately what I'm trying to convey
to an audience, but I also realize that not everything
can be done with the spoken word. That sometimes the
most powerful, although the most ignematic, elements are not written,

(25:45):
but implied with the photographic image. So as I write,
I'm always thinking, is it better for the character to
say this, or is it better to have the character
say very little and imply something simply with a compisition
or a camera movement, or perhaps with the music or
with the rhythm of the editing. If I begin to

(26:06):
look at film as I suggest everybody does, as a
series of integrated languages, each with their own set of
signifiers and each signifying different things, then I don't feel
an obligation to put everything into a dialogue, And the
dialogue become more economical and more real, and the medium
as a whole, integrating all these different processes, becomes more effective.

Speaker 6 (26:31):
Does that make sense, Oh, it makes perfect sense. You know,
as you were describing, you know, your process, I was
reminded of there will be blood, and there will be
blood the first twenty minutes. You know, there's no there's
no dialogue whatsoever. It's a lot of imagery, it's a
lot of you know, we see Daniel plain View as
he's coming down into that.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Pit looking for gold.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
He doesn't find gold, however, he finds oil and that
becomes as it becomes that oil barren oil tycoon, sociopathic businessman.
But that first twenty minutes there's absolutely no dialogue. And
when I first saw that movie, I was like, Wow,
this is a really bold choice because I mean, I imagine the.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Pitch meeting for that.

Speaker 6 (27:16):
If you say, if you're a pitch meeting on the
first twenty minutes says no dialogue whatsoever. You know, it's
just kind of you know, but you know, once she's
start getting into the movie, it's I mean, I thought
it was absolutely phenomenal, and I mean the only reason
it lost Best Picture was because it was up against
the No Country for Old Men and you know I,
which is another movie very heavy in imagery.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Have you have you seen either of those movies, Stephen.

Speaker 7 (27:39):
I've seen them both and loved them both, and I
would throw into that mix. Terry Mallix Films Days of Heaven,
which was the film I think that inspired me more
than any other to be a cinematographer. You know melex
character's relationship to nature and nature being indifferent, and again
the visceral effect that nature's power, sublime matter may and

(28:00):
in difference to us as living breathing souls is important.
So in a Terry Maylick film all the time, he's
cutting away to shots of nature. Again, as you say,
if a pitch meeting or a description to some investor,
you're saying, well, a lot of these shots won't have
any obvious meaning or won't advance the story to the

(28:21):
next plot point, but it'll be laden with meaning. It
will make us understand how indifferent nature and a god
or an absent god is to us, and how that
should make us potentially feel. And he does that almost
exclusively in Days of Heaven with images, not with a dialogue.

(28:44):
He is combining languages. My feeling is that as a writer,
as a director, you don't write your film in spoken
language exclusively. You write your film in five different languages
like a very skilled linguist, and you combine those together
to create meanings and choosing which language to use based

(29:05):
on which is most effective and which goes to your
audience's sensibilities.

Speaker 6 (29:11):
Yeah, you know that's very true, because you know as
I've been, because I I my first love is writing
as well. And when when I'm writing a screenplay, there's
so many different pairs of eyes to sort of look
at it through. Uh, you know, there's an editor's eyes,
there's there's you know, the director's eyes. Sometimes you're thinking
even in terms of being a producer, you know what
I mean, and you're you're thinking of all these different

(29:33):
of different ways. And then but when you're adding all
these layers into your actual writing, you know.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
You're you're really you know, because you're.

Speaker 6 (29:40):
You're trying to sort of hook the reader, as they say,
you know, hook the reader in the first couple of pages,
but you have to hook them throughout the whole story.
You're trying to always, you know, keep that tension in there.
You're trying to figure you know, you're sort of, you know,
wearing a lot of different hats. You're doing a lot
of different things at the at the micro and the
macro levels.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
We'll be right back after a word for sponsor and
now back to the show.

Speaker 7 (30:07):
You're right, and it's very very hard, particularly we start
talking about producing, because you know, the person or persons
who may determine whether your film gets made may have
never made a film and may have no understanding of
cinematic language, of what composition does camera movement? May not
have seen a Terry Maylick film, may not have seen

(30:28):
Paul Thomas Anderson film, may not have seen a Coen
Brothers film. They may have read McKee's book on story
and take that template and apply it to your script,
and if your script does not use that template, they
may feel that your script is a failed one. And
this is difficult for all writers and all artists to determine.

(30:54):
Do you do what the orthodoxy in our film community
suggest or giving you a better chance of getting your
film made, or do you protect your singular vision be
it part of that orthodoxy or not, in the belief
that you know better how best to express the ideas

(31:17):
you hope to express. It's interesting because, unlike other art forms,
ours is so very expensive that there is a inhibiting element,
and that's the one of finance. People backing a film
want to know their investment is safe, and therefore are
looking for absolute metrics to determine what will make your

(31:40):
film a good investment for them. They're not interested in
your ideas about how to engage an audience viscerally with
a composition. They want to know that if the rules
of which they may be aware are applied, does that
mean your film will succeed? And if it will, will
they make more money? Very difficult way to approach filmmaking.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (32:04):
I have a friend of mine, you know, he and
I were just discussing this as well, because you know,
he was a part of a film. The film was already,
everything was casted, they were about to shoot, and then
suddenly it just all went away. And he said, Dave,
it's happened too many times in my career at account
and he says, it just you know, it happens sometimes
where you know, the money goes away. And then there's

(32:27):
been other times where he's been pitching a project for
for years and years and years and it's finally you
get a financier and you're able to finally find that money.
I casin ovis on this podcast and he was discussing
how he found the money for Dallas Buyers Club, and
you know, it was just one of those things where
he had a connection from years ago who was willing

(32:47):
to help him out out of a bind, and it was,
you know, one of those cases where your network really
is your net worth.

Speaker 5 (32:54):
No question.

Speaker 7 (32:55):
I mean, you've got to build relationships and contacts, and
then you've got to convince people to give you their
money to make your film. And again there's a natural
conservative factor and all that, and that they don't want
you to take a lot of risks because they don't
know that that will generate money for them necessarily. I mean,

(33:15):
we all want the investor who says, just go ahead
and make what you believe, but those are rare. Most
investors want to get involved and say, Okay, we're giving
you this money. What's our best way of guaranteeing this.
Are you definitely going to have three acts? And are
your plot points going to come on the right pages
and all the rest of it. And again that may
or may not be the best way to write a script,
but that's what they want because that's what they've been

(33:36):
told is the way to success. And that, as I say,
it could be very inhibiting for a writer. For creative artists.
I'm sure that Terry Maylick doesn't work to that template,
you know, I'm sure Charlie Coffin doesn't work at that template.
I'm pretty sure that the con Brothers don't. And there's
some of the most successful and important filmmakers we have working.

(33:58):
So these are some of this time decisions that filmmakers
have to make, particularly when you go to financial film
because you want that money, but you also want to
make a great movie.

Speaker 6 (34:08):
Yeah, you know, absolutely, and I you know when we're
when because writing is my first love as well, and
when we're writing these scripts sometimes there's a tendency to
write with that producer's hat because you're wondering, oh, would
this be able to be you know, will this be
too much money?

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Will I be able to even obtain this? You know stuff?

Speaker 6 (34:25):
You know, And that's sort of as I find writing
the first draft, we have to kind of sort of
brush that aside and just sort of focus on just
telling the best single story.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Possible that we can tell.

Speaker 6 (34:35):
And then later on when you're maybe doing rewrites or
you're in different meetings and you can sort of take
things out and maybe add things in, and then sort of,
you know, the story sort of evolves and it kind
of ties in with what we were talking about before,
where you know, we set off in the beginning with
these expectations that's going to go into a straight line,
and then suddenly it's zigzagging all over the map, and we're,

(34:56):
you know, we're we're you know, finding these obstacles, and
we're we're trying to turn these obstacles into either they
can either set us back or we can move forward
with them.

Speaker 5 (35:05):
You make a great point.

Speaker 7 (35:06):
And I always try to write my first draft in
seven days or less. And there's a reason for that.
I call it a slock draft, not a first draft,
because what I want to do is write so quickly
that I don't have time to think. So first, there's
the idea of just an intuitive understanding of character. But

(35:30):
also I find that I write to know what I think.
That if I try to outline before I begin writing,
the ideas only are only notional. I really don't know
my characters. I don't know my story that well. I
think I do, and I can try to plot it out,
and I can draw all sorts of diagrams and put
all sorts of index cards up, but it's not really

(35:52):
fully realized. Then if I take a different approach and
simply start writing and say I'm gonna write hundred and
twenty pages in seven days, what I discover is that
by the time I get to that last page, I
have developed an understanding of character, I have developed an
understanding of what the narrative should be, and I might

(36:12):
even understand some of the subtexts. Then I go back
and I begin the real process of writing, which is rewriting.
But I couldn't have done that if I tried to
make that first draft perfect. And you talked about where
in your producers hat. I think it's essential, and I
think you've made a very good point that when you're writing,
you're thinking of nothing except those characters. I don't care

(36:35):
how long a dialogue scene goes on for, or how
outrageous what the characters say are, or or if they
begin in a pristian fashion and talking about things that
have nothing to do with the story at all, because
in fact, that's what people do in real life, is
talk about things that don't necessarily have to do with
the advancement of their individual plot. And then when you
write that version, that slop version, and look at it,

(36:57):
to me, it is the door to all things. You
come to an understanding of everything that's important about your film,
and then you can put those things, those things in
when you go back.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
To to rewrite. It's a crazy way of writing, but
it works very well for me.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
Well, you know, I actually think that's a very good
way of writing, because even when I have, you know,
started writing stuff in the past, and even now, sometimes
when I sit down to start writing, one of two
things happens. Number one is you get distracted very easily.
I think as this happens to everybody where, you know,
your phone chimes or somebody at your door, your friend

(37:33):
calls you and says, hey, Steve, can you help me move?
I have to you know, can you take me to
the airport? And the second thing is you have paralysis
through analysis where you're sitting at your desk, you know,
or wherever you're writing, and suddenly you're just kind of like, oh,
wouldn't it be cool if and you start brainstorming and
you're just basically you're just spinning your wheels so to speak.

Speaker 7 (37:55):
No, exactly right, And I think this is to me
it was a breakthrough. You know, I was so concerned
with failing that I was preventing myself from succeeding. So
when I was convinced ultimately that I should write badly,
I sat down and wrote the worst script I possibly could,

(38:18):
And when I was finished, it was truly terrible, but
it pointed the way to a much better script, a
script that was so good. This is what I did
with Dominion that when I sent it to John Malcovich,
he signed up immediately and it was a low budget film.

Speaker 5 (38:33):
But John loved the.

Speaker 7 (38:35):
Writing of that script because the dialogue seemed so natural
and so imaginative to him. If I had written Dominion
to an outline, my characters would have been speaking to
deliver the next plot point, to get to the next subject,
to keep the story moving along as it had been outlined.
But the way I wrote Dominion was I simply had

(38:56):
my characters talk about things that were important to them
and then and back on the next draft, and then
imposed a form on that, and it was much more natural.
The writing was much better, And it's a system that
simply works. I say to all writers, and I have
a lot of assistants that work with me, don't try
to be perfect on the first draft, or don't let

(39:18):
the perfect be the enemy of the good. Simply write
as quickly as you possibly can and then discover what
you always meant to say and never realized it.

Speaker 6 (39:29):
You know, I like that approach, Steve, where you know
you gave yourself permission to fail, and you basically said,
I'm going to write the worst possible thing.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
You know.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
I was talking to another colleague of mine, Jason Brubaker,
and he had a theory about you know, guys who
always talk about making a film, They always you know,
and you've met guys like this to Steve, where they're
always saying things like, oh, I have this great idea
for a film, you know, me and my buddies, blah
blah blah, but they never actually make it.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
And his theory.

Speaker 6 (40:08):
Jason's theory was that the reason they don't make it
is because if it does suck, if it is bad,
it's a reflection of them as an artist, and it
kind of encompasses their entire career in sort of one
foul swoop. So if they do write a bad screenplay
or make one bad movie, well you suck.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
You're never going to make anything, do you know what
I mean? Steve?

Speaker 7 (40:28):
I know exactly what you mean. And I've just just
a majority of people, not just in film, but in life,
most people would rather talk about something than do it.
Most people would rather criticize others than do it. Those
who criticize and don't do are always safe because they
can't possibly fail and can always make clear how superior

(40:48):
they are because they can criticize that which you did.
Look when I made Dominion, a lot of people said, oh, well, Steven,
you had trouble finishing it. There was some money issues,
et cetera, all of which were true, and those were resolved.
But the thing is I did it. Had I simply
not done it and watched others, I don't know if

(41:10):
I would have the sense of self that I have.
I'm proud of what I've done. I've done it because
I've taken risks. But you go to a very important point.
If you want to make films, you have to make films.
And if you're going to do that, it means you're
going to take risks. It means people are going to
criticize and ridicule you, and you may even fail. But

(41:32):
I'd much rather do and fail than observe and criticize others.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
Yeah, and that is beautiful, Steve, because honestly, that is
so true. You know, and I think we all have
somebody in our lives where We've known somebody like that
in our lives, where they don't want to actually do anything.
They may talk a big game or they constantly criticize
what other people are doing and kind of like downplay
it in that sort of condescending, sort of very almost

(42:03):
like jaded type of attitude where they're like, oh, yeah,
that you're gonna make.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
A movie this weekend, that's cool, you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 (42:10):
And they just like they and people like that, you know,
if they never do anything, they're always just sort of
criticizing others from the comfort of their couch, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 3 (42:18):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 7 (42:19):
I completely know what Jamade and I look. I pay
tribute to anyone who takes a risk in their life
of any kind. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't sometimes
be safe, but you only, I think, have one life.
You only have a few opportunities, and when they're presented
to you seize them.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
I know.

Speaker 7 (42:39):
When we started decoding any Parker, we had spent a
long time raising the money and I got a little
bit of money from India, some from Canada. I was
very lucky and got the tax cred in California, and
we were very very close within like one hundred thousand
dollars what we needed, and the producers all got on
the phone with each other and we had to decide

(43:00):
to do And at that point Helen Hunt had read
the script and loved it and had signed up for
a very reasonable sum of money. We had Samantha Morton
Helen of course one, a Oscar Samoth been nominated for two.

Speaker 5 (43:12):
I had met Aaron.

Speaker 7 (43:13):
Paul and we had become fast friends, and Aaron Paul,
who was at the height of his fame with Breaking Bad,
had agreed to do it. Corey Stall and I had
gotten closed as he had read the script and we
talked about the evolution of the characters, Rashida Jones, Bradley Whitford,
just this incredible cast we've put together. And we were

(43:34):
on the phone considering whether we should pull the plug
because we didn't have quite enough money, and I ultimately
decided that we would go ahead, and I realized it
was a huge risk, and we nearly had to shut down.
I think we did shut down for day at the
end of a week, and then we went and raised

(43:55):
more money and we managed to finish. The film went
on to win the Sloan Award. The Hampton's One Best
Actress for Samantha Morton at Seattle when the Milan Film
Festival two or three awards there raised a couple of
million dollars for charities, et cetera. We pulled it off,
but there was a moment in that process where we
had to decide whether to play it safe or to

(44:17):
take a considerable risk. And I think those moments come
often in film. Because I think it was Hitchcock the
one said that drama is a life with the boring
bits taken out. I would suggest that filmmaking is life
with the combits taken out. So it's a constant state
of risk and near hysteria and certain failure and from

(44:41):
that you extract, hopefully a film and a bit of
a life.

Speaker 6 (44:46):
And you know, as you talk about your projects, you know,
I wanted to ask, you know, when you started to
actually go from that cinematographer's sort of chair so to
speak to being a director, you know, what were some
of the things that you've picked up? I mean, because
you've you've had a lot of really cool directors, like
Patty being the first example I can think of. You know,

(45:06):
what were some of the things that you saw that
these directors were doing when they were talking to actors
or maybe even talking to you as a cinematographer, you know,
and talking about, you know, a shot list here, and hey, Steven.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Here's my storyboard.

Speaker 6 (45:18):
You know, what are some of the great things that
they have done over the years that you sort of
took into your projects.

Speaker 7 (45:24):
Well, it wasn't just Patty, it was John Favreau. I
worked with a couple of times. John and I are friends.
Noah Bombback, of course, I did three films with Noah Bombback,
which was fantastic. So I had an opportunity to work
with lots of Taylor Hackford, of course, I mean lots
of other great directors, and I took something of value

(45:46):
from each of them. Certainly always grateful to my training
at the BBC, and always grateful to all my stage actors.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
And what I learned there.

Speaker 7 (45:55):
But I learned as I observed about different management systems,
different lea leadership methodologies, and different ways of working with
actors and with cruise.

Speaker 5 (46:07):
Noah and I.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
Before we did both Kicking and Screaming and Mister Jealousy
and Highball, spent a lot of time prepping. We were
in Noah's place in Greenwich Village, and we would go
through the entire script seen by seeing shot by shot,
determining not only what we planned to shoot, but why

(46:29):
we're shooting, what the camera would mean. Going back to
what I was saying before about Signify and signified he
was a walide shot or close shot. Noah would show
me clips from movies that he liked and said, this
is very important to me. Could we infuse this sequence
with the same feeling from this film. I remember on

(46:49):
Mister Jealousy he'd been much influenced by the French nuvolvag,
so we were using those kind of circular fade outs,
and even the music that he chose was very much
in that style. But also compositionally, the way the camera
moved and the way I lit it all had to
be in the style of the New Bulldog, so that
was exciting. That's what's so great about a collaborator like

(47:14):
Noah is that he had a very clearly determined vision
of not only what his characters were, but stylistically what
he wanted to do, and that would be a great
starting place for me to then run with some of
my own ideas, and I bring him books from painters
or from designers, or from other filmmakers photographers with that period.

(47:34):
So what about this, What if we did this like
this and so on, and we would integrate some of
my ideas into his vision. Patty, I think I told
you about her focus very much on actors. How Patty,
at the end of every performance read than speaking to
any of the crew, would drop the headphones and make
a beeline directly for the actor. It doesn't matter what

(47:55):
anyone else had to say to her. Her first point
of contact after a take was those actors to tell
them that they had been observed, that they're being protected,
that someone is listening, because that's what actors want most
of all, is to know the actor. Be an experienced
director or an experienced director, those actors want to know
that there's someone watching, protecting them, creating a rarefied, safe

(48:19):
environment where someone's making sure that their performance is okay
and will tell them honestly if it isn't. And Patty
really did that to a great degree. John Favreau, it
was the atmosphere on set. It's kind of like he
felt strongly that what happens on set somehow appears on screen.

(48:41):
So his sets were fun and light, full of energy,
full of comedy, and a very very gentle hand that
everyone felt protected and facilitated. And again that lent itself
to what appeared on screen. Taylor Hackford very very well
prepared and would cover things from every possible angle, knowing

(49:04):
that whatever he planned, he knew that he might alter
it in the cutting room and wanted to make sure
that he had plenty of material to cut that with.
So for me, thirty years of observing some of the
best directors in the world was a wonderful education for
me and it informs everything I do now.

Speaker 5 (49:26):
But was even.

Speaker 7 (49:26):
Better educationally was watching some truly terrible directors get it wrong.
And I got to watch that as well, and I'm
not going to mention their names, but it helped me to.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
Know what not to do.

Speaker 7 (49:42):
So to accumulate all that knowledge and to be able
to walk onto the first feature that I directed, knowing
what these great directors had done and what the bad
directors had done and what I should or shouldn't do
was a huge help to me.

Speaker 4 (49:59):
Still, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 6 (50:11):
And you you mentioned this to Steve, and you have
thirty years of experience, you know, you you have you know,
started as a writer, you became this accomplished cinematographer. You've
won this just plethora of awards. You got to see
all these great sort of you know, all these great
directors and all the things that they they did right,
and and sort of put this all together for your
own projects. But I know now you're you're also doing

(50:33):
some seminars which you know, you're you know, gonna going
to impart all this knowledge, which I think is phenomenal.
So could you just you know, talk a little bit
about some of the seminars you have coming up.

Speaker 7 (50:44):
Absolutely for years, really starting back to write about the
time about the BBC, I began teaching if somebody was
a writer and wanted to know something about cinematography. Because
I had done both those things, I was uniquely able
to explain in a plane language for a writer or

(51:05):
a director what a cinematographer does. And then later when
I began directing, I could go into great detail to
people about what each below the line crew member did,
and when I was producing, I could explain to the
investors why we needed money for different things, what the
post production crew would be doing, what the on set

(51:29):
crew would be doing why we needed as many makeup
people as we needed, and so on. So I was
always teaching, and sometimes formally I taught at the International
Film School in London. I had a film school of
my own in the UK in London, I set a
film school up the New Brunswick. In Canada, I've taught
at universities including USC here and others all around the country.

(51:54):
And I wrote a book about film production that covers
all these things. And then finally I just thought, you know,
I should formalize this and make it available to a
lot more people than I've made it available to in
the past. So we're taking right now. Six of my
most popular lectures went on making the independent film, how

(52:17):
you actually put together independent film, how you find the money,
how you use that money to shoot the film, how
you take it through posts and get into sales and distribution.
Another one about for stills photographers, because so many stills
photographers have come to me and saying, hey, I want
to be a cinematographer. I've bought this camera, I've done
stills work, but how is cinematography different from photography, and

(52:38):
particularly with lighting? So I've done that, so many directors
and producers want to know about cinematography, how it works.
So I've running a course on cinematography for non cinematographers.
And so many actors I've worked with, both on stage
and on screen, feel uncomfortable when they first step onto

(53:01):
a film set, and I wanted to run a seminar
so that actors would know what it's like to come
onto a film set, and what the assistant directors do,
what the first assistant directors do, what the director wants,
what the cinematographer wants, so all those things very useful
for them. And then going back to something you and

(53:23):
I've talked about a lot in this discussion is I
wanted very much to run a course for writers so
they would understand the technical aspects of filmmaking and they
could employ that in their writing to make them better screenwriters.
So yeah, we set that up. We've got a website
called somebody studios dot com. You can see all the

(53:49):
seminars there. People can sign up. I think that they
from the time they sign up, they've got a month
to watch the individual seminar they selected, or they can
sign up for multiple ones. And the course has been
very successful in the past. Not only do I teach
the course, but then afterwards I have a Q and

(54:10):
A and we keep the lines open and we make
sure people have access to me in the future for advice.
I want to help others as I've been helped over
all these many years, and I really very much looking.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
Forward to it.

Speaker 7 (54:25):
July the fifteenth we go live with everything, so we're
getting very close to that date. So I hope people
go to the website, picks on the out for themselves
and see what they might be able to learn.

Speaker 6 (54:35):
And I will also link to your seminars in the
show notes, you know, as well as any other site
you have, Steven. And it's just great too because it's
something that I've learned over the years.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Whenever I want to take a.

Speaker 6 (54:49):
Seminar or a webinar, or read a book or a
filmmaking book, one thing I always my one sort of
barrier to entry to reading or buying it is the
person has had to have some kind of experience. I
think you've also seen it, Stephen, where you sort of
see a book.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
In the in maybe in a Barnes and Nobles or on.

Speaker 6 (55:10):
Amazon, and you see that they're, you know, the person
that wrote it has never written a screenplay or never
actually made made a film, and you say to yourself, well,
what would they possibly know about something that they've never done.
It's it's a lot like me teaching you how to
build a car, and I'm saying, well, I'm not a mechanic,
nor have I ever designed one. I see you you've
actually you've been there.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
You know you've done that.

Speaker 6 (55:31):
You've done it many many times over thirty years, and
you know, and again that's why I was blown away
by having on this podcast, because you know you've you've
done I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Stephen half Baked. I remember watching that.

Speaker 6 (55:44):
Movie on repeat over and over again, you know, growing up,
because it was just absolutely hilarious. I mean, you've been
able to sort of go in and out of you know,
comedy with Half Baked and scary movie.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Two in the Monster, which is more of a of
a of a of a of.

Speaker 6 (55:59):
A not only is a drama, but it's also a
personal introspective of the of these two women. Who are
you know, who are you know literal and figurative monsters?
And then you know you now you're doing your own projects,
so it's always good to learn from somebody who's actually
has gone out there and done it.

Speaker 5 (56:15):
Yeah, well, thank you.

Speaker 7 (56:16):
And I have done a lot of different things a
producer now, a director, a writer, a cinematographer. It's not
always been easy, but it's interesting when you get to
farther down the road you realize how each of these
things informs the other. I'm a better producer because I
was a cinematographer. I'm a better director because I'm a

(56:38):
writer and a cinematographer. And it's not just the films
that will be made, I guess. In the last eighteen months,
I've been commissioned to write five other Majure feature film.
Has been a very, very busy period for us. We
have a TV series that's an advanced stage development. And
the reason I am now writing so quickly and so
efficiently is that I'm borrowing from my other experiences as

(57:01):
a producer, as a cinematographer, as a director, and I
realize what I need to write and what I don't.
I understand what will work best and what works most efficiently,
and it's a help. So look, if I can help
others understand all these things based on my experience, I'm
more than happy to impart it to them.

Speaker 6 (57:23):
And you know, Steve, I know we're just about out
of time, and I want to again say thank you
so much for coming on and imparting your wisdom here
for the past hour. And just in closing, where can
people find you out online? Give any other social media
links and also you may just to give that seminar
link again.

Speaker 5 (57:40):
Well, it's the key one to go to.

Speaker 7 (57:42):
And this links to pretty much everything to do with
me is Somebody Studios dot com. You can also find
me Steven Bergstein, writer director online and there's usually links
to our courses or what's going on on my life
there Steve Bernstein, director writer on Instagram as well. And

(58:03):
of course I say Somebody Studios dot Com is pretty
much available on all social media platforms, so we really
hope that people might join us.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
Thanks Stephen Bernstein, I want to say thank you so
much for coming on, sir, my.

Speaker 5 (58:16):
Very great pleasure. Was a great talk. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
a great job on this episode. If you want to
get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
Forward Slash for twenty two. Thank you so much for listening. Guys,
as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk
to you soon.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
dot tv.