IFH 797: From Instagram Mysteries to Indie Horror: The Bold Experiments of Joe Kowalski

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the INDIEILM Muscle Podcast, Episode number seven ninety seven,
Cinema Should Make You Forget. You're sitting in a theater,
Roman Polanski.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
Film Hustle Podcast, where we showed you how to survive
and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
the film biz.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I am your humble.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for
independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory
film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who
prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker.

(01:00):
The old distribution model of making money with your film
is broken, and there needs to be a change. The
future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the
film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break
down how to actually make money with your film projects
and show you how to turn your indie film into
a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and failures.

(01:24):
This book shows you the step by step method to
turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making
a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content,
the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success.
The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook.
If you want to order it, just head over to www.

(01:45):
Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com.
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
On this episode, we have a Cleveland, Ohio based filmmaker
who recently made I Am the Away, Stephen king Dollar
maybe short film, and he's hitting the film festival circuit
with another film of his called Prism. With guests Joe Kowalski,
No Problem, and I remember the first time you were here.
I butchered your last name and I called just something

(02:15):
completely different. I don't even remember what it was, and
I compared it to a deal disease when John Travolta
called you know, yeah, he called her adell disease.

Speaker 5 (02:25):
Right, I do remember this?

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Yeah, I was like, what the hell happened there? I
was like, I knew his last name and I called
just of the else. I was like, wait, what the
hell did I just do there? So I understand how
John Travolta feels. But since you've been on here, Joe,
I think you were episode eighty four, I want to say,
so that was actually, you know what, Joe, we're getting
close to over one hundred episodes ago because I'm up

(02:51):
to like one, I'm up, yeah, right, it's like one
sixty whatever I'm up to now, And you know, it's
just you know, it's almost a one hundred episodes ago.
We're like, we're like less than twenty away. And so,
you know, Joe, I wanted to reconnect with you because
you're always up to something really cool, and I wanted
to ask about a couple of things, you know, And
as we sort of get rolling on this, so you know,

(03:13):
since we've last talked, you've done one, You've done a
dollar Baby Stephen King short film. Uh two you've graduated
from college, and three you have started an Instagram murder
mystery type interactive game.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
So I'm probably missed a couple other things.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
So I wanted to ask about all that all that
stuff because I think it's awesome, and particularly about your
Stephen King short story The Dollar.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Baby for those listeners. I've touched on this too. I had.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
I actually got a Dollar Baby done once. And I'll
tell you just real quick. I I don't want to
eat up all the time Joe with talking about me.
I'm trying to talk to you about your stuff. But
you know, I actually did the Dollar Baby too, and
I did in the death room. We actually shot in
Eastern State Penitentiary here in Philadelphia. I got us a
location for pretty discounted rate. They would they They also

(04:02):
just let us skip down on the insurance bawd. We
actually had one, but it was it wasn't the one
that they usually recommend it was.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Or asked for.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
It was a It was a lower one that allowed
us to sort of, you know, make the production a
little cheaper. We shot for that in that in there
for like a day. We shot at Ridley Creek State
Park here right down the street from me, uh here
in media, and we kind of like put all this together,
and at the end of it, all the the editor
just lost all the footage. And when I talked to

(04:31):
everyone about it, they were like, they were like, are
you gonna sue that guy? And I said, he's a lunatic,
as if he came recommended to me by somebody, right,
and we we we were working with him, and he
just kept sitting on the footage and I was like,
what do you because you know what happened, Joe. He
had a Facebook addiction and he would just scroll on
Facebook rather than doing it and and I and I

(04:51):
kept saying, I'm like, just give me the footage back
and I'll go to somewhere else. Well, finally he got
it together and we were gonna make all these adjustments.
We were so close to having the final product done,
and then he sends me this message that his MAC
was dying, and I said, look, I'll help you pay
for it.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
And then he's like, oh.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Well, I don't know what I'm gonna do about this,
and blah blah blah this or that, and basically that
was the end of it. And he said that all
the his mac finally died and all the footage went
with it, and I couldn't get a hold of them.
You know a lot of crazy editors out there. So
I honestly, here's my advice anyone listening to this, always
have a backup of your footage.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Because my DP just gave him.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
My DP just gave him the actual fucking hard drive
with everything on it and said here you go edit
the footage. And I was like, dude, I go, I
can't believe you did that without giving it to me
first and letting me copy all this crap. But but
that was my dollar baby adventure. It's another horror story
that I have about filmmaking, Joe.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
It's like, you know, somebody else put it out. They're like, Dave,
all your stories.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
Are all ending like heartbreak and and and and you know,
down on much stuff like that. And I go, yeah,
it's the truth, man, because I have so many crazy people.
But but no, but I want to hear about your experience, Joe.
You know, how did you pick the story that you picked?
You know, what story did you actually pick? You know,
how did you shoot all this? How did you shoot everything?

Speaker 5 (06:11):
You know?

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Being as it's you know, it's very limited to being
what you can do because obviously you can't get investors
for it stuff like that, so you have to kind
of work in a very shoe string budget unless you
have a ton of money, you know what I mean.
But I want to hear all this about all about
this jokes. I'm fascinated. So what story did you pick
from the dollar Baby collection?

Speaker 6 (06:32):
And just to just to clarify for the audience, the
dollar Baby setup is something that Stephen King has done
whereby he has a select number of his short stories,
a lot of older ones in the seventies and early
eighties that are available to use as.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
Long as you pay a dollar to him. So it's probably.

Speaker 6 (06:51):
About maybe twenty short stories on the list. And it's
really cool because people like me who don't have huge budgets,
some stuff kN technically made, even King film without having
to pay ridiculous sums of money. So I had chosen
I Am the Doorway. This kind of came about because

(07:14):
the girl I was dating at the time it was
a huge Stephen King fan and she had heard of
this before and I had heard of it before, and
we were putting together a film called Prism that I
released last year that was a half an hour film,
and we were thinking, like, well, half an hour's kind

(07:36):
of short to bring in.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
A whole audience and stuff.

Speaker 6 (07:38):
So we ended up doing is We kind of made
a film festival event and we featured some other short
films from around the world in this theater in Cleveland,
and I Am the Doorway, which is the one we
ended up going with, was one of those. It was
kind of another way to kind of make the ticket
worth it for people, you know, and kind of give

(08:01):
them a full experience.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
So it was chosen by the girl that was dating
at the time.

Speaker 6 (08:08):
We went through a whole bunch of them, though, and
we read a bunch of them, and we were trying
to figure out, like, what is something.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
That we could do having almost no budget.

Speaker 6 (08:16):
And having only about a month's worth of time before
this big event. And what we did was choose that
one because a lot of what the supernaturalness, as you
see in a lot of Stephen King short stories, was
kind of taking place off screen and you were seeing
more of the results of what was happening, because you
get this astronaut who comes back to Earth and starts

(08:40):
getting these eyes that pop up on his body, and
we kind of created a framework story where we had
these two.

Speaker 5 (08:48):
Guys talking in a bar.

Speaker 6 (08:51):
About this whole situation and they kind of tie into
the story.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
So it was kind of cool to do that because
typically I'm.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
Used to starting stories from scratch and building upon those
and working upon that with friends. But it was really
interesting to take someone else's work, especially someone as you know,
prolific as Stephen King, and try to adapt that to
like a ten minute short film.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
See, I just as a filmmaker standpoint, I'm sorry, as
a filmmaker standpoint, I just kind of think even just
trying to do something like that, Joe, we have an
astroast come back down on Earth. I mean, it just
sounds expensive. We're just wearing my producer hat, you know.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Even with doing.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
With with Death Room, you know, I had that whole prisons,
you know, a location, and even just paying for that,
I was like, you know what they're gonna charge us,
you know, whatever they charge us, it was, you know,
I think probably a.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Grand or something even for that day.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Even back then, I was like, Jesus Christ a grand
and you know, we got to make sure everything's set and.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
There are so many problems that you know, or and
ended up being my fault because I I to do this.
I listened to too many people, and that was my
fault for doing it. I've learned a lot of things
on each and every project. That project was me listening
to too many people, and I tried to sort of
do everything that everyone was recommending. And I just I
you know, we had we we had too much time

(10:29):
being wasted, and there was a lot of production issues
that could have been ironed out if I had not
listened to all those people, if you know what I'm
trying to say, Like I adds that didn't even need
to be there, that we could have just went went went,
you know what, we don't even need this fucking thing.
Fuck it and let's just get rid of it.

Speaker 6 (10:45):
You know.

Speaker 5 (10:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (10:46):
And I've worked with directors who've skewed one way or
the other, and some of them are very well meaning,
but yeah, you do have some people who will literally
waste all the time on stuff.

Speaker 5 (10:56):
They see it just like like a party.

Speaker 6 (10:58):
You know, they got all their friends together and there
I wouldn't be cool if we did this and.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
They take an hour. All we got to find a
rope and takes another hour. Let's just eat. We're gonna eat.

Speaker 6 (11:08):
Some people like that, and then you do have the
people who are like so amble about trying to this
is my masterpiece, you know. I got to get every
single detail right now, more of a tiny little smirk.

Speaker 5 (11:19):
In that performance and stuff.

Speaker 6 (11:20):
And so one thing that I've learned over the years
and I'm trying to always get better at, is finding
the balance between like, I want this set.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
To be enjoyable.

Speaker 6 (11:28):
I want people to be having a good time and
not feel like they're miserable doing this. But at the
same time, we also do have to keep like a
tight schedule on this, and there are some things I
do want to be kind of specific about and that
I'm very certain that I went. But I also have
to know when it when to compromise on that, like

(11:49):
if it's not going to work out, find it another
way around. If someone has a great suggestion, be willing
and open to all suggestions if they're going to make
the story better or help move things along better for everybody.
So it is a really hard balance.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
It is very tough.

Speaker 6 (12:04):
So I can understand falling into that trap entirely because
I've been there before.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
Yeah it was funny too, because well funny now, but
it was just because you know, somebody was who was
worked at a at a film festival contact to me,
and he actually was a local Philly guy and we
met and I'll never forget this. I forget his name,
but I never forget where we met. We actually met
and he asked me to meet up with him at
the at the Philly Anarchist Paper headquarters.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
And I said, first off, I didn't even know Philip.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Yeah, I didn't even know Philadelphia had an anarchist newspaper.
I didn't even know an anarchist newspaper was a thing.
We walk in, Joe, and I'm not kidding you. There's
a big sign on the wall that says please no
drug use allowed or sorry, please do not use drugs
while on the premises and in parentheses yes this includes

(12:56):
weed and parentheses. And I and I'm just laughing and
going if you have to put a board up like that,
like what.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
The fuck is going on in here?

Speaker 5 (13:05):
Oh? Man?

Speaker 3 (13:07):
I started talking to this guy.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
And as this guy was talking and I mean, I'm
sure he met well, like I'm like, first off the
neighborhood was terrible, And I'm sitting there going.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Why the hell are we even?

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Like?

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Why why did I have to meet for them?

Speaker 4 (13:19):
This is another thing, Joe that always kind of like
grinds my gears. People always ask to meet me in
person or they want to meet up for coffee or something.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
I go, why why.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Don't we just do a skype message or why don't
you just shoot me an email? Why do we have
to meet face to face? Like I don't get it,
like honestly, like I gotta waste my time, get.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Put gas in my car, drive up all the way
into the city or wherever the hell you are, and
then then we.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Gotta meet and it never, nothing ever gets resolved because
we just go back and forth.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
And it's the same thing with that Stephen King guy.

Speaker 4 (13:45):
We could have done that over a Skype interview with
Sharon screenshare and had the same exact thing, and we
both could have just been in the comfort of our
own homes. It's just, you know what I mean, It's
just I just I'm not saying I'm like gonna become
some obese shut in or anything like that. Like the
mom from Gilbert Grape but but but well, I'm getting
there the other Joe. But but, like to me, if

(14:07):
you're gonna meet somebody, you should have a clear objective
because everyone's you know, I'm at the point in my
life now where I just think time is money now
and I'm always you know, when I.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Was, I mean, how old are you, Joe, twenty four,
I'm only twenty two.

Speaker 5 (14:20):
I'm a baby.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
Twenty two years young, and I'm I'm sorry, and I'm
cursing up a storm at you, sir. But okay, so
you're twenty two, so I'm ten years older than you are.
And so basically I'm at the point now, Joe, where
like I've become like that guy I always didn't want
to be where I'm just like, you know, everything's time.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Is money, you know.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
But when I was when I was your age, Joe, again,
I'm sounding old as shit right now. When I was
your age, show, I actually I would go out and
I would I would go on random film sets, I
would meet new people and I would just get you
know what. I'm just gonna treat everything like an adventure.
I'm gonna treat everything like a learning experience, and I'm
just gonna go out there and I'm just gonna see
whatever happens. And when I made my Stephen King Dollar Baby,

(15:03):
I think I was twenty four or twenty five, and
then I use that experience to parlay that into making
a TV pilot, which I won't go into because you know,
listeners of this show know that story inside and out.
But with the whole uh, with with that, what I
did there was I was always looking at everything as
like a learning experience. And when when you know, meeting

(15:24):
all these different people on the course of actually making
this Stephen King Dollar Baby, I've met so many interesting people,
for both good and bad.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
But like you know, I think as.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
A filmmaker, when you're that age, you know, twenty two,
twenty three, twenty four, you know you have to go
out there and see all these you know, make all
these mistakes. And then when you're like twenty eight twenty nine,
that's kind of like you're you're starting to be getting
your prime. That's the age Quentin Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs.
I think that was the age when when Rodriguez made
Rebel without a crew. I'm mari El Mariachi. I'm not

(15:58):
sure though. That's the age where uh, Damien Chase made Whiplash,
and I you know what I mean. So I kind
of look at those experiences as it's kind of molding me,
because that's that's what I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
That's the whole point of what I'm trying.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
To say here is you know, and and you're treating
this as knowing when these opportunities come down, knowing what
is going to be a good opportunity and what's going
to just be.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
A waste of your time.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
It's almost like, you know what I mean, like when
somebody like when when a producer comes to you and says, hey, listen,
I got this. You know, a producer quote unquote comes
to you and says, hey, listen, Joe, I gotta I
got this, you know, whole whole TV pilot ready to roll.
I need someone to direct it. Would you want to
direct it? And and you're, you know, at first, you're like, Okay,
I'll talk to you about it. And you start to
meet and you go, oh crap, there's so many holes

(16:44):
in this. It's unbelievable, you know.

Speaker 6 (16:45):
What I mean.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
You start you start seeing between the lines, if you
know what I'm trying to.

Speaker 6 (16:48):
Say, right, I think a big part of it too,
is that I think time is the most important thing
for everybody on set, not just because of how the
schedule and everything, but ultimately, especially on an independent film
and you don't have the ability to pay people, that's
the biggest thing they're giving you, and that's the biggest

(17:10):
thing they can give you, is just that time to
be there and help make birth thing come to life.
And so I just find it so incredibly disrespectful when
people don't value that time and don't take into account that,
you know, these people don't have to be there. They're
not you know, they're not being paid to be there anything.
They don't have any obligation to you other than the

(17:32):
sense that maybe they care about this project too, or
maybe they want to see you succeed.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
So I definitely know what you mean.

Speaker 6 (17:38):
When it comes to a lot of the points that
you've made, and I just I try to respect that
time and I want people to get a full experience
out of it. So, like like I said, when I
was trying to put together this festival event, I wanted
to make sure that if people were going to come,
and we didn't have a set price, but we just
were kind of taking donations in general. But people are

(17:59):
going to come and don't money. I want them to
come out seeing like an hour and fifteen minutes of
really top notch short films. And it's tough when you
have friends that come up and say, hey, can you
include my film in this? And I go, I don't
think I can. It doesn't quite meet the expectations of
what we're trying to do with this. It's tough to
be able to do that and to be able to say, like,

(18:21):
you know what, I think you worked hard on this,
but you know, deep down, you know that it's not
quite the quality that you want. And it's a hard
thing to do that because you want to make everyone happen.
You want to have all those context But you're right,
you do have to start getting more selective about how
you spend your time and what you choose to work on.

Speaker 5 (18:39):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Yeah, you know, somebody once told me, Joe that life
is all about creating a bubble around yourself and you
and you start to understand what you like and don't
like inside of that bubble, and anything and everybody that's
not within that confines you push out of that bubble.
And basically that's you know, what I mean. And I
started to realize that over the years and when I

(19:02):
when I meet people and it's just like, hey, you know,
cause cause I do this podcast, and I'll get an
email probably maybe once, I don't know, maybe once a
week saying hey, Dave, would you ever you know, if
you're ever up in New Jersey or in New York,
or you want to come in Philly or whatever, why
don't you come and we'll have coffee or whatever. And
I just go, you know what, I just don't know why,
like you know what I mean, Like, I don't want

(19:23):
to sell like a jerk. I don't want to sell
like a jerk. I really don't, like I don't want
to be like, oh I'm Dave Bulls. But no, I'm
just like, you know, why would you want to talk
to me? Like what?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (19:32):
And it's just like I want I want to make
sure that we're each getting something out of it and
it's not just going to be, you know, turn into
a pitch meeting, which by the way, Joe has happened.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
I had people meet me and they.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Go they're just like hey, yeah, and it's like, hey, Dave,
you know, would you want to join this project, and
I go no, like when they they hevens aart broke
and he goes and he looks at me, he goes,
why not, And I go, well, uh, it's and it's it.
And like you were just saying, you you you try to,
you know, you want to see people succeed, but you
just want to you know, you want to say, well,
it's because it's not going to.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Work, dude.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
There's so many holes in this in in production, like hey,
can we can we shoot a I knew and I
talked about this before about shooting period pieces on a budget,
like hey, I.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Want to shoot a civil war.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
I want to shoot a Civil war period piece with
five hundred bucks. Okay, good luck, you know you know
what I mean?

Speaker 6 (20:35):
Yeah, absolutely, And you get the you get a lot
of that too, and and you know what if if
they do have a substantial amount of money, then those
things are realistic. But otherwise that's a big part of
it too, is knowing what realistically can accomplish. And that's
something I always try to take into mind when I
when I write the projects that I do is I

(20:58):
know the resources I have to work with primarily, I
know the people I have to work with primarily, and
be smart about how you do it, because people will
be so much more impressed if you make a really
good film within your limits than if you try to
reach too far. And that doesn't say, you know, that
doesn't mean you shouldn't challenge yourself, And that doesn't mean

(21:18):
that you know, you might throw in something that might
that might be a little more expensive, it might be
a little bit more complicated that you're.

Speaker 5 (21:24):
Going to have to figure out. You got to give
yourself those challenges.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
But at the same time, don't, like you said, try
to make like a period piece of like this crazy
futuristic sci fi when you know that realistically, if you
try to do that, you're only gonna get like twenty
percent of the way there, and people are just going
to see it as a little silly.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, and it's just going to be you know, if
you want to do yeah, do all that stuff, and
you know, hey, do you have somebody that knows or
rents period piece costumes? Because five you know, even if
I bumped up to five thousand dollars budget, like you're
going to eat through that in no time, just to
just to setting up the world. And it is gonna
and you're right, it's gonna end up looking just silly,

(22:04):
you know. And it's just gonna end up looking just crazy.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I'll give you another.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
Example and then then we'll get back to what you
were talking about.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
I don't want to take this ship again. I don't
want to. I wanted to talk about your stuff.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
But like you know, I had a guy before come
to me and he wanted to shoot a zombie film
for like, I think he said, like five hundred bucks,
and I said, uh, you know it's possible, because I said,
if you look at Colin.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
And I actually had the director and writer Mark V.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Prince on this podcast and we talked about how he
did it for fifty bucks or it really did. He
shot it for fifty bucks, shot a full length zombie
feature called Colin, which is actually really freaking cool. And uh, basically,
with Colin, it's a he gets this guy gets bit
by zombie in the beginning of the film and he
becomes a zombie and for the rest of the film

(22:48):
you follow this shambling zombie throughout the rest of the film.
It's actually really cool and in fact that the fact
that he shot it, Yeah, honestly, it was a phenomenal idea.
And the fact that he got did it for fifty
bucks makes even better because I told him, I said, Mark,
if you had shot this for like, let's just say
somebody gave you a million dollars, I said, you would
have shot yourself in the foot. And you know what

(23:10):
I mean, because you would have been like, holy shit,
now we can have a building explode, you know what
I mean. And I think that's sometimes you know, as
again we were talking about you know, you got to
weigh your opportunities. But Mark, you know, he was able
to do whatever he wanted because he you know, obviously
fifty bucks is fifty bucks. But but anyways, but you know,
as we talked about that, that guy was talking with
the zombie feature. He wanted to shoot it for five

(23:31):
hundred bucks. And he basically was was like real adamant
about shooting this thing, and Joe, I am not getting
around with you. He wanted to shoot it at three
o'clock in the morning. He wanted to shoot this one
scene at three o'clock in the morning. And I'm looking
on Google Maps and I said, what's this building right
across the street from where we're going to film? He goes, oh,
that's the police station. I said, are we going to

(23:54):
have permits? He goes, no, No, it's all going to be
guerrilla stuff. I said, So we're going to shoot right
across from the police station where the army is bombies,
and you don't think anyone's going to say anything? And
he looks at me and he goes, no, do you
think they will? I go, yeah, dude, I think the
police are going to look out their window and go, hey,
here's somebody filming without a permit.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
Yeah, oh boy.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
So yeah, it's stuff like that, man. But you know,
as we go back to talking about your stuff, Joe, so,
what were some of the biggest production issues.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
You had while making Your Dollar Baby? I mean, you know,
did you start a crowdfund campaign for it?

Speaker 6 (24:28):
Uh? No, Like I said, this was kind of more
of a side thing that we could show off for
the festival. So we actually shot pretty much most of
it all in one weekend, and one of the locations
was a restaurant that I do some media work for
that I got permission, and then we filmed at a
beach that was public you know, just public property.

Speaker 5 (24:53):
And yeah, it was just a.

Speaker 6 (24:55):
Lot of like again like using your resources and saying here,
I have this, so why don't I know this in here,
you know, and working with it and making it work
within the stories context. A far bigger project was the
film Prism that I mentioned that we were kind of
showcasing around this whole festival event, and that was that

(25:19):
film basically took a year from the first first typing
it to actually showing it off, And I can talk
a little bit about that if you'd like me to
it all.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (25:35):
Basically the movie is about six people from two different families,
and each character is represented by a separate color. So
while the most of the film you see is in
black and white, when that character is on screen, you
see their color pop.

Speaker 5 (25:52):
Out of the black and white.

Speaker 6 (25:53):
So like if you remember, like in Schindler's List, there's
like the girl red dress.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
And.

Speaker 6 (25:59):
That photo effect comes up a lot, you know, you
see like yellow highlights come out of a you know,
a picture of somebody or something like that. We basically
did that with the whole movie. So like when our
character Green was on screen, his shirt would come out
because he was wearing green, but also the trees in
the background you would see them, and that was a

(26:19):
very interesting challenge from a storytelling standpoint, from a technical
standpoint because all that I think, if you're going to
do something like that, each of the colors have to
have a meaning to them. So that was something we
were very certain about. And also the story kind of
weaves in and out of these characters' lives and how
they relate to each other, and this person's cheating on
this person, and this person's has a crush on this person.

(26:42):
And one thing I really had to learn from this
film was really to just outline everything, and that's not
something I'm very used to doing. I kind of like
diving in and then just seeing where it goes. And
sometimes that works, but it's a lot of work after
the fact to try to make that into something cohesive.
But particularly in relation to the families, we had to

(27:05):
like sit down and write out a family tree and
figure out the relation of each character to the other,
and that was something that was kind of difficult because
then we would say, well, this doesn't really work because
this character wouldn't interact with this person. It was a
very unusual process for this whole movie, and we aren't
really able to show it off yet because we're trying

(27:27):
to get in some film festivals and we haven't had
any luck yet, but we're going to keep trying. But
the trailer is online if anyone wants to check it out.
If you look up like Prism twenty sixteen or Prism
Short Film twenty sixteen, or even on my channel Pog
Joe and that's p Ogi e Joe, there's a couple

(27:47):
of trailers on there, so you can kind of get
an idea of what I'm talking about with this color thing.

Speaker 4 (27:54):
You know, Joe, I actually have some film festivals I
would recommend that you entered into. Number one being the
Delco Film Festival. I think they that would be a
good film festival for you to enter it into. That's
actually right by my house as well. But if you like,
I can actually introduce you. I can actually introduce you
to the guy who runs it.

Speaker 5 (28:12):
Oh that'd be that would be amazing. And you know,
if I was ever in.

Speaker 6 (28:15):
That area, we could meet up and have some coffee
and I have this great pitch I want to sell you.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
No go, Joe, no way, no, No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yeah, No, I would see like, like somebody that I've
actually met and talked to, I would be down for that.
And you know the funny the founder is Chris Piermenico,
and he's actually been on the podcast before, and uh,
Chris is Chris is a very good guy. And before
we got on the podcast, he said to me, He's like,
please try not to curse too much because I'm going

(28:47):
to recommend this to my students, and don't tell any
weird stories. And I go, that's all I have in
life is weird stories and cursing.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
That's it.

Speaker 6 (28:55):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
You take that away from me. I'm not I'm nothing anymore.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
Right, you're a show.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
But yeah, I'll exactly, I'm just like a shell of
a man. I'm not even I'm not even my George
Costanza self. But I will introduce you to him. And
I read this podcast and I'm sure Chris would love
to talk to you about having that film there. And
you know, so as you made, you know your dollar
baby too, because I'll link to everything in the show
notes as well.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Everybody.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
I'll link to the Delco Film Festival and every and
Joe's channel and everything else. But when you're talking about
you know, your dollar baby, and you actually just you
shot it into a weekend. Did you have any like
real huge production issues come up that that like anything
that we were talking about, or anything like completely unexpected, like, hey,
it rained on a Sunday when we thought it was
going to be clear skies anything like that.

Speaker 5 (29:41):
Actually, that was surprisingly straightforward.

Speaker 6 (29:43):
We were actually kind of marveling that it came out
as well as it did. And the nice part about
it is that the people we cast in it were
people that we were considering for the other film Prism,
that were really good, but they just didn't quite fit
the parts we were looking for. So were like, what's
the capacity that we can use these people.

Speaker 2 (30:03):

Speaker 6 (30:12):
So we were able to get four of these actors
who were really, really good that I still wanted to
work with into this film and you know, get to
spend a couple of days filming with them. And the
thing about that it was just basically a skeleton crew
of me and my girlfriend at the time, and so
I guess we didn't really have to worry too much

(30:33):
about other cast and crew members. It wasn't like the
other film where we had like a full cast and everything.
It was kind of just us just going at it
and it was almost a fun relief side project after
having that massive project, like I said, kind of churning
into that for a year. So actually, I'm really really
glad I did The Dollar Baby because it was just

(30:54):
such a nice, like what's the word I'm looking for.

Speaker 5 (31:01):
It wasn't It wasn't a high level stress thing.

Speaker 6 (31:04):
It was something that we planned out and really just
kind of had fun doing.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, And you know that's something too. You know.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
I talked to Alex Ferrari about if any film hustle
and we were talking about that as well, where you know,
at some points, I mean, you you and and.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
It's good that you learned at the age of twenty two.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Sometimes when you're making something, you just get this obsession
with it, like everything has to be perfect, and then
you start, you know, and everything, the stress starts to
get on you, and then you by the end of it,
you're like, I just can't wait to get this thing
done and I'll never talk about it again. And you're like,
and honestly, that's what happened to me and my short
my student film. I I by the end, Joe I

(31:44):
was like, I just want to get these last shots
I'm gonna do. The last day I was doing my short,
my student film, I actually said I to everybody, I said,
we're doing one take of everything. That's it, and then
I'm and then we're just gonna call it a day.
And and everybody was just burned out from it. So
we end up doing more than one take on a
lot of stuff, but still it ended up and we're like, look,
that's it, We're done.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
I don't want to talk about this every again.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
But it's you know, and then you want to do
something fun where you just can have fun while you're
actually shooting, because you know, at the end of the day,
this is supposed to be fun, right, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (32:15):
Yeah, And that's why I think you really really have
to care about the story you're telling with a big,
long term production, because it is very easy to get
tired of it. But you have to know deep down
that when you finish it, it's going to be so
rewarding because it's a story you really care about, and
in a way, you never quite leave it because even
after you show it, at least in my case, we

(32:36):
did like crowdfunding, so you still have to go in
and you know, like the DVDs and the Blu rays
and the bonus material, and you still have to promote
it for film festivals if you're trying to get into
that whole realm, and and and then you have to
try to get the movie to various people and who
didn't get a chance to see it, and you forever
are always kind of attached to it and pushing it

(33:01):
and trying to get it out to people. So that's
the thing I think that's really important, and that's why
I try to come up with good stories that are
that that I can care about even when I don't
feel like caring about them.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
Yeah, it is, you know, and when you're trying to
have you know, just a good time with this stuff,
and you know, you want to be able to see,
you know, you have fun while you're making it, and
then you see it up on the screen and that's
something everyone can be proud of and you because you know,
you all did your best and you it's that feeling
you get, you know, okay, we've you know, it was
it was a little tough, it was a little frustrating.
We're all tired but we all did our best, and

(33:39):
now the proofs in the pudding. Now it's all up
up on uh up on screen there, and you know,
some days you watch it and you're like, oh man,
there's a mistake.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
There's another mistake.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
Yeah, and you.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
Know and sort of you know that, you know what
I mean, like that that that sort of seeps in
after a while too.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
But you know, at the end of the day.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
I think some of the best filmmaking advice is by
Mark Duplas, where he said, literally every weekend, go out
and for a hundred bucks, make a short film with
your friends. He said, don't spend more than a hundred bucks,
and it'll teach you more about filmmaking than anything else could,
because you're actually out there doing it, and you're actually

(34:16):
out there actually making stuff, and you can you know,
and if you don't, and honestly, if it sucks, hey
we spend one hundred bucks.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
If it's good, you put it up on YouTube.

Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (34:24):
And that's one thing I'm really grateful for with things
like YouTube is because since I've been doing it for
seven years now fairly regularly, it is that kind of
experience where I always am trying new things and making
cool stuff with friends, and you're right, like, you know,
even if you're not even spending that much money, you're

(34:46):
still getting the experience. So you're you're making something that
can be a sort of time capsule.

Speaker 5 (34:51):
Like I remember when I.

Speaker 6 (34:52):
Was hanging out with that friend in Cleveland, you know,
years later, and I think, honestly, I think that that's
how I got to where I am.

Speaker 5 (35:01):
And it's not like I'm not trying to brag or anything.
I'm not saying that I'm like at the top of
the top or anything like that.

Speaker 6 (35:07):
But I think I've done more than a lot of
peers my age because of that experience and because I've
always been interested in creating things and I can't stop.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yeah, exactly, you know.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
And you know, I think artists more than anybody else obviously,
because they have this desire to create. It's like this desire,
this innate desire you're kind of born with, and you
you have this desire to create, and.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Sometimes you're when you're younger, you don't really know what
it is.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
You just kind of do it, you know what I mean,
whether it be like an arts and crafts or something
like that. And then some people pick up a video
camera if they're if they're you know, if they that's
what they're if their adolescence is filled with if their
parents had a video camera, and you you sort of,
you know, you start doing all this stuff, and I mean,
you know, because you're born with this life and it's
almost like this feeling of we have to creates something

(36:00):
of value at all times. And it's something I feel too,
And it's almost like this feeling of Okay, I'm here,
now what should I do? Well, you know, and if
you're an artist, you say, well, I'm gonna create some more.
And I have this desire to create. And you know,
maybe other people are like chefs and they just want
to make make food, and that's that's sort of desire
to create. And you know, when we start putting all

(36:20):
these projects out there, and you know, you've been doing
YouTube for seven years, and I think that's phenomenal. Honestly, Joe,
I hope you keep doing it because honestly, I you know,
you're you're obviously I know you're getting better.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
You're getting better and better and better.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
And also because I just think it's a great outlet too,
because again, like we were just saying, if you make
a film for a hundred bucks and if you don't
like it, at the end of the day, hey, look
I spend one hundred bucks. But if you do like it,
hey put it on up on YouTube and who knows
what could happen.

Speaker 5 (36:49):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And.

Speaker 6 (36:54):
There's there's I think there's a lot of marriage that
we were saying about having those those projects that are
just something fun.

Speaker 5 (37:00):
And one thing for me too.

Speaker 6 (37:03):
Besides just the YouTube stuff, is also our podcast, which
you've actually been on once before, and.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
We're not that's right, Yeah I have.

Speaker 6 (37:11):
Yeah, we're not as far along as you are, but
we're getting pretty close to seventy episodes. And that's like
a fun thing where like just me and a few
of my friends can get together once a week and
just have a good time. And it's not something you know,
I'll have it edited in a couple hours and you
still have to post it and promote it a little
bit at sponsors occasionally and stuff like that. But at

(37:33):
the same time, when we're just sitting there recording it,
it's just an hour where we can just have a
good time and talk, whether it be about deep things
or maybe it's just goofy light hearted stuff. But that's
been a really cool project to collaborate with my friends
on because it is that little kind of low stress

(37:55):
relieving kind of project.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
Yeah, it's you know, the podcast is fun. You know,
that's why I do my podcast. I actually made a
promise to myself. I said, in the day it stops
becoming fun, I'm gonna stop doing it. I've broken that
promise a few times, but you know, I was listening.
I was listening to Tim Ferriss one time, and he
said the whole idea, the whole concept of his podcast was.
He goes, I just want to edit it myself, but

(38:21):
I want to make editing no more than ten minutes.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
He goes. If I had to sit here and edit
out stuff, he goes, I hate doing that. He goes,
I think it's pointless.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
He goes, I just want to have a conversation and
put it up online.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
And I mean, look at his fan base. It's unfreaking believable.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
And you know that's kind of like what I wanted
to was, you know, just having not having to sit
here for you know, four hours a night, going okay,
let me edit this podcast and do all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
I mean, I do do some editing to it.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
But I try to keep it as pure with the
conversation as possible. Most of my editing involves like I'm
gonna boost your maybe I'll boost your audio a little bit,
or maybe I'll put it like a Dehisser effect in there,
just would take out any sort of like that static
noise or de hummer.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Something like that, you know.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
But yeah, I mean, a podcast is a really cool
way just to sort of you know, just a it's
another form of media because the gatekeepers are all non existent.
Because I mean literally you can create a podcast with
your phone now and upload it to like something like Podbean.

Speaker 5 (39:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
Absolutely, And I already had all the equipment I needed
to make something like this because I already have a
bunch of audio and video equipment from doing all the
other work that I do.

Speaker 5 (39:33):
So it wasn't like I needed to go out and
get some special stuff.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
I mean, eventually we did get like a nicer microphone,
and you know, we'd like to eventually save up to
do more live shows to kind of have the.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
Equipment to do that.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
But I mean most of the stuff was already there.
Only needed was each other and an idea. So I
totally see the appeal. And while I edit it in
like ten minutes, I do take out some things.

Speaker 5 (39:59):
And you know, we bleep out a couple of words
and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor

Speaker 6 (40:13):
For the most part, it's it is a pretty low
stress project compared to a lot of other things that
I'm trying to do.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
And you know, actually it's something else I wanted to
talk about too. Is you know, what else are you
are you trying to do? Because I know you did
the Instagram Murder Mystery game, So I want to hear
about this because you know, I purposely don't know anything
about it because I wanted to actually talk to you
about it. So like, what is Is it like a game?
It's a game that anybody can play, right.

Speaker 6 (40:39):
Yeah, yeah, as long as you have an Instagram account,
you should be able to play it. And this is
actually I was trying to make a capstone for an
interactive media class that I was taking before I graduated
this past semester. And you know a lot of people
were doing a lot of cool stuff with like VR
and with like some interactive videos. But I was trying

(41:02):
to think of something that I hadn't tried before because
I had done a little bit of both those things,
and I was thinking a lot about how people use
Instagram sometimes to create these picture grids of sorts. You know,
if you upload the pictures in the right order, all
of a sudden, if you go to that person's page,
you know, one big picture can be made out of

(41:24):
like nine pictures.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
And I just thought that was really cool.

Speaker 6 (41:27):
So I was wondering, like, could you do something with that,
Like how do you how do you make something that
feels self contained, you know, not like it's like it's
like you're inside this little experience through Instagram.

Speaker 5 (41:42):
And so what I did is I.

Speaker 6 (41:44):
Used those kind of picture grids, and I use the
tagging system, whereas like if you if you tap on
a picture, it will come up with like a tag
in that person's account. So I between those two features. Again,
Instagram isn't design for something like this, but I kind of, yeah,
created a game of sorts, and if you go to

(42:05):
the account Murder Mystery game all one word, people can
check that out. I mean, you start up with like
a map of Cleveland, and then if you go to
the individual pictures there are those tags where you can
go to other parts of Cleveland and look for clues,
and then you get the testimony from all these different characters.
And if you tap on more of the pictures within
those accounts, you can sometimes see these fake characters' accounts

(42:31):
and just little clues that are hidden throughout. And like
I said, the whole idea is that you're trying to
solve this this murder mystery of this girl who was killed.

Speaker 5 (42:40):
So it was.

Speaker 6 (42:41):
A very unusual project because it's not a linear thing
where you just set out like, Okay, I have this
scene and I have this scene. But at the same time,
it was utilizing a lot of the things I had
learned from doing video and filmmaking and stuff like that.
Whereas you know, if you set up a schedule, I'm
meeting with this person at this time, we're gonna record
video of them, We're going to stage a bunch of

(43:02):
pictures with them, and then later on we're moving to
this person and planning it out like that made it
a much less scarier process because I got way in
over my head. One of the things I faced, too,
was that for every new Instagram account, you have to
have an email address attached to it. So I was
just making all these like Gmail accounts that we're associating

(43:25):
with all the different accounts. But then Gmail was like, hey,
you can't make that many accounts, and I was like, okay,
So I went to Yeahoo and I started making all
these big Yeahoo accounts to try to make more Instagram accounts,
and yeah Who was like, hey, you can't make that
many yeah Who accounts.

Speaker 5 (43:41):
So I ended up going.

Speaker 6 (43:43):
To like seven different email servers to try to create
all these fake email accounts I could make all these
different Instagram accounts, which is just yet another way that
proves that Instagram wasn't really designed to work like that.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
You know, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
You know, Instagram is is cool at all, but there's
a lot of things that are like limiting with it.
I know, they want to make like, for instance, the
mobile uploading. You know, I tried to like post things.
I can post things to my desktop, but you know
what I mean, And sometimes they make it so difficult
to just post, you know, stuff like that, because I, hey,
I want to take a photo and I want to
do some stuff to it then put it to Instagram, you.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah, And again I understand completely where you.

Speaker 5 (44:28):
Oh no, that was, Joe. I'm sorry, it's a little
bit of a lag because that leads to some of it.

Speaker 6 (44:34):
I was just gonna say I did run into that
problem a lot too, especially given that I have a
very cheap phone that doesn't have a whole lot of memory.
So anytime I had to like download all of these
pictures or god forbid, when I had to download the
actual video clips, it would take up so much room
on my phone that I would have to like delete
a bunch of apps on my phone, download the pictures

(44:55):
and footage, upload them to this Instagram account, and then
re download my apps to.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
Yeah, it's uh, I mean, I know there was a
slight lag on de side. I don't know, you know,
I think I might be uh just our our recording
host Skype, but but uh with your phone and you
had to do backup all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
I've been there before. I used to have, like.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
I bought one of the one I bought one of
the smart first smartphones that came out called the LG Revolution.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Joe.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
It was one of the worst freaking friends I've ever had.
It was so I bought it in the two thousand
and six or seven. It was little literally garbage, and
I kept having to like back up on every everything
else I would try to, you know, it was so
I've been there, man, but but no I So it's
so so if somebody wanted to like solve the murder
mystery Joe, So if I had an Instagram account, let's

(45:48):
just say right now, I say I want to check
out Joe's murder mystery game. I went to that inst
I have an Instagram account. I went to your Instagram account.
So we're how do I how would I go about
like solving my first clue to see you know, to
seeing who you know? Obviously we find out who is murdered.
How do we go about, you know, sort of doing this.
Do you provide any clues or are they supposed to
sort of have to solve it themselves.

Speaker 6 (46:09):
Yeah, it's very much on the on the user's own
volition that they have to find the clues.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
But there are a lot of clues sprinkled throughout.

Speaker 6 (46:17):
But there are a lot of red herrings throughout and
dead end and basically when most of the accounts start
with murder mystery and then end with a word, So
like when you're at the beach, it's murder Mystery Beach,
and when you're downtown, it's murder Mystery Downtown. So to
figure out if they solved right, you have to go

(46:38):
to an account that starts with murder mystery and ends
with the murder weapon used to kill the victim. So
and then on that page you get to kind of
see if you're right, and you get a little kind
of set of pictures and a little video clip kind
of explaining how that went down. So if you look
around and you go to all these different accounts, you'll

(46:58):
you shouldn't be able to find out what the murder
weapon was. And not everyone I've shown it too has
figured it out. Some people needed a little extra help,
but I did have quite a few people who were
able to get to the end successfully. So that was
the one thing I was nervous about, like did I
make this too hard? Like are people going to be
able to figure this out? But there are there are
some people who were able to get to the end.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
So Joe just to just to sort of ask, when
you get to the end, is there any sort of
like like I don't want to say prize, but is
there anything that like a little trophy or something that
like people would like, you know what I mean, like
they could sort of bragging rights or you know what
I mean. Is there anything at the end where people
know it's the end? And is there any type of
like prize so to speak, as I'm trying.

Speaker 6 (47:42):
To say, not so much any external prize, but like
I said, when you get to the account when you
saw it, there is like a set of pictures and
like a video clip that kind of explained how exactly
how it happened.

Speaker 5 (47:56):
You get to see how how the murder happened.

Speaker 6 (47:59):
And I, uh, that's that's that's pretty much it.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
No, I just wanted to ask, you know, I imagine, what
do you like, you know, cool bragging rights to?

Speaker 3 (48:11):
And it is a really cool idea. So I'm glad,
you know, honestly used in social.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
Media that way where you know, it's very creative and
you know, it's a lot of interactivity, which I which
you know, I think is becoming big now, especially with
you know, stuff like advances and VR and stuff like that.

Speaker 6 (48:28):
Yeah, And and that's the thing is that all these
interactive methods are constantly evolving. You're never going to have
the same technology used you know, even two or three
years later. I went to the Cleveland Film Festival this year,
which is a pretty pretty big festival for those who
don't know anything about it, and they I went to

(48:48):
a whole VR demonstration. And I've always kind of had
a catal interest in VR. I've gone to some meetings
where I've got to try out the oculus and and
uh some of the other more elaborate ones where you
get like the full body experience, which is really really
really cool. And I really believe, especially that virtual reality

(49:09):
is going to continue to be a bigger and bigger
factor in our lives. I think, not only in terms
of gaming, but in terms of how we learn and
things used in schools and how we promote ideas, and.

Speaker 5 (49:23):
It can be such an immersive experience.

Speaker 6 (49:27):
But yeah, some of these films at the Cleveland Film Folks,
it's really interesting to see how they used virtual reality,
because I think some of them nailed it really well,
and some of them were like, you know, like there
was I saw this documentary where they took you to
an area where malaria was really active, and it was

(49:49):
about this family trying to move to a new area
where they could have tents that had mosquito nets on them.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
And now back to the show.

Speaker 6 (50:05):
And being and like seeing and be able to look
around in these environments really really connected you with this
family in a way that I don't think I would
have felt quite as strongly if it was just a
regular two D image that I was watching. And of
course at the end it was for an organization where
you could donate to help these families, and that was
like a really exciting use of VR that I think

(50:30):
that could be really useful in the future. But then
I also watched another one where the whole idea is
that you died and you got like buried, and that
sounds really cool in theory, but it was not done
in a way that I felt was like it just
felt really gimmicky. Like if it was telling like a

(50:51):
really compelling story, I think it would be more interesting,
but it was kind of grainy, and it was to
the factor that like, I think within two or three years,
the technology is going to make something like that a
little less likely to hold up than this really engaging documentary.
And I also got to see too, there's a short
film called Pearl that was nominated for an Academy Award,

(51:13):
and it was a really big deal because it was
the first virtual reality project to be nominated for an
Academy Award. And that was another one like it was, Yeah,
maybe the technology will evolve and this this short film
won't be as immersive or as as high tech as
it is right now, but it was such an endearing
story that I think I think it will hold up.

(51:34):
It was about this this father and daughter playing music
together and traveling in this same vans across the country, and.

Speaker 5 (51:42):
It was it was just very, very touching.

Speaker 6 (51:44):
So I think the more and more people use this
kind of technology and the more it evolves, I think
we'll keep finding what works and what doesn't and what
will hold up and what won't.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
Yeah, you know, you touched on something there that I
feel about about about VR. And sometimes I just feel
that they're using it as sort of like a gimmick
where it's like it's not really about a story. It's
about like it's an it's a pure experience. It's almost
like a roller coaster. You get on the roller coaster
and you're not being you're not asking to be total story.
It's just like here's an experience and if and if that, honestly,

(52:20):
if that's what somebody wants to do, hey, and we're
powa tone because you know, I think you know, you
can't really tell somebody, you know, if if that's an
experience that you want to have, hey, man, you know,
go for it. But like as far as storytelling goes,
I think VR is gonna fall short. I I just
I just don't think see it actually where people are
gonna sit there, honestly, Joe, if like maybe two hours,

(52:41):
maybe four hours, even.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
With like a video game. I'm talking about video games
right now.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
If we're like if I had a video game with
a VR headset on with a controller in my hand
and it was like a first person shooter and I'm
you know, zombies are coming in. I honestly can't see anybody.
I can't see like a main part portion of the
population anywhere in the world wanting to do that for
more than like twenty minutes. I I honestly, man, I

(53:05):
think VR has a lot of a lot of things
that's going to share with three D. I think where
VR is going to come into play. And I mentioned
this with Jamie Buckner, who was on the podcast few
episodes ago, as we were talking about this as well.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I think the big thing with VR is.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
Is going to be education, because yeah, because I actually
used to work in Higher Ed and I got to
see a lot of different stuff, and I think one
of the big things is gonna be is going to
be like you, your textbook isn't going to be an
actual book anymore. It's gonna be almost like a tablet
that you know, when you're learning about the human body,

(53:38):
you're gonna well, now we're gonna kind of get into ar,
but but the there's just gonna be an image of like, hey,
we're studying the human brain, and an image of the
human brain will come up out of this tablet and yeah,
be able to actually interact with it and touch and touch. Okay,
well this is this is your sarahbellum and this is
gonna be your uh, you know, frontal cortex and stuff
like that, and you're and you're like, oh, okay, that's

(53:59):
where this is in the brain and shit like that.
And I think that's where I think VR is going
to be very huge. By the way, you want to
hear something really cool that I was shown in Higher
Ed and it never got to I've never seen it anywhere,
and I don't think.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
I don't think it's ever going to be approved.

Speaker 4 (54:13):
They had a special paint that had nanotechnology in it
that actually blocked cell phones, so like if you were like, yeah,
and actually except for to dial nine one one, that
was the only thing that allowed. I never heard anything
about it since I honestly don't think I could get
it passed because I because probably there's probably gonna be

(54:34):
some issue where like it probably well that they said
it didn't it blocked nine it didn't block nine one one,
but they probably end up did blocking nine one one
or something and they couldn't figure out how to get
it passed or or maybe some you know what I mean,
because because if if something ever did happen at a school,
God forbid, you would sit there and say, oh, well
they didn't have their cell phones because then because of
the paint on the walls. Yeah, So you don't want

(54:57):
to be you know, uh, you don't want to be
in that situation and be like, well the pain of
the walls, you know, stop them. But but yeah, I
I but but it's a cool idea though, I mean, honestly,
it sounds like a really good idea. But but I
but I get why it wouldn't be too mainstream and
maybe maybe they're going to roll it out later on.
Maybe it's one of those things it takes a few
years to come out. But but but yeah, that's where

(55:20):
I see VR going. As far as VR and movies go,
I I just don't think it's ever gonna happen. I honestly,
I think we're at the point now where I mean,
there's a video game that's out right now that somebody
was telling me like, hey, Dave, look at this. You
could make a movie out of this someday. And I
took a look at it, and I said, this thing
is so far from.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
A movie, I don't even know where to begin. And
it was it.

Speaker 4 (55:42):
Was this big war game where you can have these
two armies battle into each other. And I said, there's
no there's no detail to the characters. Every character has
the same exact stabbing motion. I said, it's really cool
in scope, but I mean, and when you actually get
down to it, it's not really It's impressive from a
coding standpoint, but from a movie standpoint, I said, this

(56:02):
would be that you know, people would tune out after
a minute, you know there's no story to it.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
There's no there's no there's nothing that's being told.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
And you know that that's again when we when we're
differentiating between a story and an experience.

Speaker 6 (56:15):
Yeah, I think I think there's a way they could
still coexist.

Speaker 5 (56:19):
Though because I do kind of agree with you.

Speaker 6 (56:21):
I don't think it's going to take over movies, that
all movie theaters are going to be VR experiences or anything,
because I think it does offer a different thing. And
the thing that I'm starting to notice is that when
you're directing a VR film, you direct it more like
a stage show or like a play, because you with
a movie you have the choice of like I'm going
to put the pick of the camera here and this

(56:42):
is what the audience sees, whereas like with with a
VR film, you have to think more of like what
do I what do I want to lead the audience toward?
Like if I want to look over this way, I'll
have something to flash you over here, you know, or
if I I'll have them follow this character as they
walk across the way. And it presents an interesting challenge

(57:03):
that I think doesn't replace movies, but could be a
very interesting thing in and of itself, and I have
to say, when it comes to gaming and stuff, there
was a really cool game I tried at one of
these VR demonstrations where you were on top of castle
and you had to knock over these little Minecraft like
figures from getting into your fort.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
And I have to say, after after about.

Speaker 6 (57:24):
A minute of being there with this bow and arrow
on top of this this tower, you know, shooting at
these little guys trying to get into your castle, not
only do you first of all forget that you're pressing
a button that's in your hand to unleash this bow
and arrow, You kind of forget that you're not in

(57:45):
this environment. And and I think that's the thing where
I don't know if I entirely agree that I don't.
I don't think it will take over take over gaming
be the only thing available. But it was such an
incredible experience for me to do this that if I think,
if it's cheap enough, and I think it gets into
enough hands, I can't.

Speaker 5 (58:06):
See a future where this isn't a huge part of gaming. Personally.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, you know, I think it goes back to how
people want to play their games. I know a lot
of people want to like stream and you know, and
they can wear their viewer headset and stream at the
same time. I mean, look, for example, Paudie Pie if
he were to do something like that. You know, I
think also it depends upon Sometimes, honestly, Joe, I feel

(58:34):
like I'm staring at a screen every second of my day.
Some days, which I probably am. I staring at it
either a laptop. I have four different laptops I have
to use. I have two cell phones, and I'm just
like when I drive, I also have an onboard computer
that's my GPS, and also collect cell phone stuff for me,
and it's just like, you know, I just I don't

(58:56):
have to look at that. But like driving is probably
the only time LEFTO I'm not staring at a screen,
and I'm just you know, do I really wanna do
I really want to, you know, just keep staring at
a screen that's now gonna be like two inches from
my face.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
I actually played when I played that Batman game, it
was actually for for PS four. It was actually really
cool to look around the back cave and everything like that,
and you know, take a look at this or that,
and and my friend had that exercise bike thing where
you can put the VR headset on and you can
you know, you're in the Alps or whatever. Really cool.
But I just wonder if it's something where you're gonna

(59:28):
want to use it every day for the mom and
I know those people out there who would use it
every day, but for other people, I wonder if it's
just something that would What I'm trying to say is
I wonder if VR would end up just becoming a
real niche market, almost like three D became what I
think four K Blu Rays might become. Because I hear
four K Blu Rays and I and I honestly, you know,

(59:49):
I mean, how many people if I if I gave them,
like and you know a screen I said, pick out
the four K version, could actually find it if it
was the same TV with the same players with this,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
Yeah, And it's just.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
We'll be right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Back after a word from our sponsor and now back
to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
Because I mean, if it's not shot in four K,
I mean, it's not gonna look like four K. I mean, honestly,
Mad Max Fury road shot in two K. I see
a four K release of it, and I'm like, why
it's not even it wasn't even shot in four K.
I mean, I know they could do upscaling and stuff
like that, but I mean, really, you know what I mean, Like,
I think a lot of this stuff's gonna end up

(01:00:32):
becoming a niche sort of market, if you that's just
my prediction.

Speaker 6 (01:00:36):
Oh, VR will definitely have to cross that hurdle, very
similar to what you said like three D, where I
think one of the big reasons three D didn't catch
on as big as it did in a home market
is because of the glasses situation. You know, if you
wanted to get together because like I saw like demonstrations
as like three D sports games and those are really cool,
it just looked like these little tiny people really on

(01:00:58):
your screen running around. But you know, like if someone's
trying to get together a group of friends and watch
like a like a basketball game or a football game
or something like that, I highly doubt they're gonna want
to put on a bunch of glasses and fiddle with
that and all let's get the settings right and stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
So I think you're right to a certain degree.

Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
I think if VR wants to not just become that
little niche thing, they're gonna have to find a way
to a make it more financially available to everybody, and
b find a way that maybe they won't have to
have these big clunky headsets on the entire time and
make it more of a maybe a more integrated experience
where it's it seemed like less hassle.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
You know, yes, that is that is exactly right, man,
with those three D glasses. I had a friend of
mine who actually bought a three D TV and he
bought four pairs of glasses. He bought it a one
Black Friday he had. You know, we went over there,
we put on the glasses, we watched Avatar. Well it's
really cool, and I was like, you know, but after it,
I'm like, you know, by the end of Less like,
I'd rather just watch a regular two D movie like

(01:01:57):
I honestly, man, I'm old school in that method where
I'm like, I'd rather watch an eighties horror slasher like
Jason Jason Friday The Thirteenth Part three. He tried, they
tried to make that three D and I was like, yeah,
it's cool and everything where you know, the arrows are
coming at you with the one shot and this and
that and the other thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
But I'm like at the end.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
You know, somebody once told me, good three D goes in,
bad three D comes out. So if you're constantly like
dodging stuff, that's you know, okay, that's almost like a
wake up to the audience or that's like a cool
effect or whatever. But good three D, like Avatar was,
it goes in and you can actually just see as
far as you can actually as the eye can see, literally,
because it's just an immersive world back there, you know

(01:02:35):
what I mean. And and you know, that's one of
the things why I actually did like Avatar. I actually
was dating a girl at the time. We went to
go see it, and she goes, that was terrible. I
was like, I was like, shut up, what do you
know about it? I was like, this, shut out, what
do you know about movies? I said, I'll tell you
if it's good or not. No, I'm just kidding around you.
But but but but but but she said, you know,

(01:02:56):
she didn't like him. We were just talking about it,
and I was like, you know, I'm a sucker for
James Cameron. But just to get back that we're talking about,
you know, with with with all this stuff, you know,
I just think yet having people having to put on
like headsets and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
It it becomes like a almost.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Like a like you know, because some people are going
to say, oh, Greg, I put on this headset again,
or I gotta put it away and they gotta find
it again, or it's just like something like they've misplaced it,
or you know what I mean. It's just more things
that they're moving parts to a situation, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 6 (01:03:25):
Yeah, I think it's a very akin to something. I mean,
it could go either way because I mean look at
something like a like a computer tablet, right like like
when the iPad came out, people were scoffing because people
been trying to pitch tablets for years. I mean the
been There have been tablets that came out in the
nineties and it just never connected with the public.

Speaker 5 (01:03:44):
You know, it just wasn't. They were too pricey, they
were too clunky.

Speaker 6 (01:03:48):
But Apple managed to make something that people wanted and
found a usage for. They brought back an old idea
and made it in a way that was consumable and
made it in a way that people really really liked.
So yeah, I completely agree. I think with VR and
I think there are I agree that there are some
good uses of three D, but I don't think there

(01:04:10):
was enough of a of a difference. Like I think
one movie that used it really well that I saw
in three D was Pixar's Up, because like at the
beginning of the film, the three D was very flat
because you're living in his life where he's cooped up
and he's just this old guy, this widower, and and
he's lonely.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
And then like when he's out there in the middle.

Speaker 6 (01:04:33):
Of South America, like gets really deep and he's up
in the clouds and it feels big and vast.

Speaker 5 (01:04:38):
So I think people are.

Speaker 6 (01:04:39):
Gonna have to use VR like that, you know, like
I said, don't just tell a story about Look, you're
dying and now you're in a coffin, Like take the
gimmick out of it and really focus on the exciting
storytelling potential of this medium and what can be done
with it. And and that doesn't mean you have to
play it safe, but be smart about how you use

(01:05:00):
it and use it in a way that that people
connect to.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Yeah, exactly right, Joe. It always comes back to the story.

Speaker 4 (01:05:08):
It always comes back to you know, what kind of
story are you telling and what what kind of emotional
core are we going with here?

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Because character, because people have to care about these characters.
They have to be you know, not sympathetic, but empathetic.
We have to empathize with them. And you know, and
with the story you're telling, you know, it's just we
have to become hooked. And that's why I always get
pissed off Joe and people say, you got to hook
them in the first ten pages. No, you have to
hook them the whole freaking story, not in the first
ten pages. Maybe the reader, maybe the maybe some reader,

(01:05:39):
the gatekeeper I used to hook for the first ten
pages he or she passes. But from when I gather,
most most gatekeepers who are script readers who have to
read those scripts, they have to read everything cover to cover.
They can't read the first ten pages and say see,
if you know, forget this and and and you know
what I mean, And they have to write a report
about it afterwards. They have through their weekend reads and

(01:06:00):
as well, and from what I gather, they have to
read every script cover to cover. So you have to
hook them the whole script. And you know, you have
to hook them the whole whole time, no matter what
you're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
And uh, you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
Know, as you talk about the experiences, that too has
a hook to it. You know, even if you write
a roller coaster, there has to be something special about
it that sets it apart, whether you put all the
extra loops in, whether it twists and turns, whether you
sit down like the Superman roller coaster, all that good stuff.
And yeah, I mean you know so uh yeah, you know,
everything has to have you know, it's it's speciality. It's

(01:06:30):
it's you know, what makes it special. And you know,
because Joe, I mean we you know, we've been talking
for about over an hour now, and I want to ask,
you know, Joe, is there anything we could talk about
that you wanted to discuss now, or anything you wanted
to say to put a period at the end of
this whole conversation.

Speaker 6 (01:06:44):
Uh? No, I guess just as a whole like it's
it's really good to talk about this kind of stuff
with people who who share your interests and and also
care about creating.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
And I think it's important.

Speaker 6 (01:06:57):
To to connect with with people who are doing stuff
similar to us. And I think you just you do
that so wonderfully on your show and you create this
conversation because there are all these people out there who
are making such cool stuff and it's so cool that
you bring a light to those things. And I just

(01:07:18):
want to thank you for creating that conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Oh, thank you so much, Joe. I try my best, I,
you know, with them with this podcast and everything like that.
And one of the reasons I started this was because
I wanted to actually talk to filmmakers out there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
And I got to meet great you no, great people
like you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
I've got to you know, and I Honestly've got to
meet so many great people, and uh, I just look
at it as like this is the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
And I also want to just keep moving forward with.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
This and in a lot of different ways, and you know,
and start doing a couple more things and people people. Actually,
you know, not to seguay too far away, but somebody
once said to me, what are you working on now?
You know, you haven't worked on anything in probably a
few years, And honestly, it's it's I've been taking a
step back to take to take two steps forward. And
you know that's something I'm working on now is I'm

(01:08:07):
working on a ton of stuff, and uh, a lot
of cool podcasting stuff as well that uh, uh that
I've been talking a few people about and hopefully, you know,
I'm gonna hopefully do a bunch of stuff with that soon.
And but I also got a couple of other things playing.
But uh, but Joe, thank you so much, you know,
for coming on. And where where can people find you
out online?

Speaker 5 (01:08:25):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):
If you go to pog Joe dot com p O
G I E Joe dot com. Uh, you can see
all the things that I've talked about. We have our
Prism trailer on there. There's I think I just put
a thing about the murder mystery game. Uh, there's links
to a podcast, and we're on all different kinds of
podcasting apps and sources and everything.

Speaker 5 (01:08:44):
My YouTube stuff is on there.

Speaker 6 (01:08:46):
So to see any of the stuff I've mentioned at
all during the show, that's probably the best place to go.

Speaker 4 (01:08:54):
And I will link to all of that in the
show notes. Everyone Joe does some really really cool stuff.
And really I like that nickname too, Pogi Joe, and
you know, and uh, and he does some really cool
stuff and I'm gonna link to that all in the
show notes. Joe Kolalski Poji Joe. I want to say
thank you so much for coming on, my friend.

Speaker 5 (01:09:14):
Hey, thank you so much. It's always a joy to
talk to you.

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
Oh, thank you. And you know I appreciate at least
one person wants to talk to me. But but thanks
you so much, Joe. No, it's really great and honestly, man,
I can't wait to see what you're gonna do next.
And I also will introduce you to that guy who
runs that film festival right now, I will shoot, I
will make a Facebook message introduction and get you two talking.

Speaker 5 (01:09:38):
Thank you. That would be brilliant. I would really like
to talk to him.

Speaker 4 (01:09:42):
Sure, no problem, Joe, Joe, have a great day and
I will talk to you very soon, my friend.

Speaker 5 (01:09:47):
All right, you want to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
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 any film uncle dot com Forward
slash seven ninety seven. If you haven't already, please head
over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and leave a
good review for the show. It really helps us out
a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:10:07):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always,
keep that hustle going keep that dream alive. Stay safe
out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
F I L M h U S T l E
dot com.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}IFH 797: From Instagram Mysteries to Indie Horror: The Bold Experiments of Joe Kowalski

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

All Episodes

IFH 797: From Instagram Mysteries to Indie Horror: The Bold Experiments of Joe Kowalski

Stuff You Should Know