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May 6, 2025 52 mins
Sometimes, the fire of creativity is struck not by lightning but by the slow, smoldering ache of dissatisfaction. And in today's soul-stirring conversation, we welcome Shawn Whitney, a filmmaker who found cinema not in the corridors of academia, but in the quiet rebellion of self-taught screenwriting and micro-budget filmmaking. Shawn Whitney is a screenwriter, director, and founder of Micro Budget Film Lab who empowers indie creators to tell powerful stories on shoestring budgets.

Our journey with Shawn begins not in childhood fantasies of movie stardom, but in the dense woods of Brechtian theater and the quiet study of old black-and-white films. His path wandered, as many worthwhile ones do, through rejection, basement solitude, and heartbreak—until something within him demanded not just expression but transmutation. Shawn didn’t study film in college. Instead, he emerged from the theater world and fell into filmmaking after a failed workshop production left him broke and dispirited. Yet that fall became his rise. As he said, “I just started writing screenplays and learning the craft in the quiet shadows.”There’s something beautiful in learning the art of story not from glamorous sets or high-priced workshops but from the bones of failed experiments and the echoes of dialogue bouncing around your own mind.

Shawn described his education not with fanfare but humility—referencing Sid Field, Blake Snyder, and the ever-controversial Save the Cat—tools that became his spiritual guides, not rigid masters. And with every script, he refined a method. Not the method, mind you. A method. “You just need a method. You can’t just be anarchy,” he mused.But perhaps what struck me most was Shawn’s philosophy that screenwriting is not just structure—it’s an argument about what makes life meaningful. Films, he insists, must be animated not by market trends, but by inner turmoil, by the strange flickering passions of the human heart. “It can’t just be about chopping up zombies. Your characters must go through an inner transformation.” That idea—that a film is a living question—sets Shawn apart in a world often obsessed with following the formula instead of feeling the pulse.Shawn’s micro-budget films—“A Brand New You” and “F*cking My Way Back Home”—aren’t just titles that stick. They are rebellious acts of filmmaking born from limited means and limitless creativity.

His stories unfold not in sprawling CGI landscapes, but in human longing, funny sadness, and philosophical absurdity. One film follows a man trying to clone his dead wife in the living room. Another explores redemption from the passenger seat of a towed Cutlass Supreme. With a budget of $7,000 and a borrowed tow truck, Shawn pulled off scenes that feel bigger than most tentpole blockbusters.But filmmaking, for Shawn, isn’t just about his own expression. Through Micro Budget Film Lab, he’s become a teacher, a mentor, and a kind of mad scientist in the alchemical lab of storytelling. His passion is not merely to direct, but to help others break free from the gatekeeping systems that keep fresh stories from being told. “We need a micro budget movement,” he declared, envisioning a cinematic rebellion where filmmakers use what they have to tell stories no one else dares to.

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Episode Transcript

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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 Indie Film Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight,
No One 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 show 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 (00:35):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Huscle 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
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(00:59):
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and there needs to be a change the future of
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(01:42):
want to order it, just head over to www dot
filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy
today's episode with guest host.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Dave bullis my guest this week runs micro Budget Film Lab.
He has directed to micro Budget of Features and it's
in pre production for a third with guests Sean Whitney.
Hey Sean, thanks loll for coming on the show.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Thanks thanks very much for having me, Dave. I really
appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Oh, you know my pleasure, Sean. You know I've seen
everything you've been doing with the micro Budget Film Lab
and all the great things that you're doing over there.
But before I even you know, we start talking about
all the things you do there. I wanted to talk,
you know, about your career and about you know, getting started.
So you know, we're growing up Sewan. Did you always
you know, have this, you know, this hobby of film
or this love affair with film and and you know,

(02:32):
did you make films growing up as a kid?

Speaker 5 (02:35):
No, no, short answer, no, No.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
I I mean I always was.

Speaker 5 (02:43):
I've thought of myself as a writer since I was
probably ten or nine years old. But you know, there
was no we didn't have any video cameras or anything
like that, like it just we just didn't have them.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
So it wasn't really around.

Speaker 5 (02:57):
I watched a lot of old movies, you know, it
was back in the days, first before cable and then
cable and so you know, we would get like Channel
twenty nine from Buffalo and we would watch you know,
bad movies or not bad movies, but old movies from
the fifties and sixties. But it wasn't really until much
later that I decided to pursue film.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Actually, so, did you end up going to college for film? No?

Speaker 5 (03:23):
No, So I went to university in Toronto at the
York University, and I did a liberal arts degree in
humanities kind of cultural studies, and then I did a
master's in interdisciplinary studies that was focused on writing for
the theater. And i'd started a small theater company that
was doing like Brecdian musical theater, and we did a
bunch of really great productions, and you know, I wrote

(03:45):
stuff and I was doing that, and then but then
I went decided to make a turn towards film really
in about the year two thousand and three, I guess,
And at that point I just began writing, you know,
I've done I tried to do actually a theater production.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
I did like a workshop production.

Speaker 5 (04:06):
And it went really badly and I lost a lot
of money, and I was really depressed. So I kind
of hit in my basement for about three years and
just started writing screenplays and just sort of learning how
to write screenplays on my own. And then I guess
three or four years and then I ended up getting
accepted into the Canadian Film Center, which is kind of
like the American Film Institute Institute, and that was my

(04:28):
kind of you know, my formal the formal official part
of my education was that residency there.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Now you mentioned, you know, writing your own screenplays and
sort of teaching yourself how to write screenplays. You know,
that's sort of something I did a few years ago,
you know, and I think that helps out a lot.
And what I want to ask is, you know, was
there any particular books or even scripts or even movies
that you sort of us to sort of pick apart,
you know, and how to sort of teaching yourself how

(04:56):
to write.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
Yeah, there was a few books.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
I mean, sid Field I think was maybe the first
book screenplay that I that I read, and that kind
of opened my eyes to you know, structure and all
that kind of stuff. And then I read another book
by Epstein called Crafty Screenwriting, which was really good. And
then the most recently I read a few years ago now,

(05:21):
I read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and that
was I know, it.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Gets, it gets you know, a.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
Lot of bad people go on about it now because
it has become kind of the dominant model in Hollywood
in many ways, but it's I still think that it's
a really powerful machinery that you can use. You can
bend it to kind of more unconventional structures. But it
was really useful for me in terms of creating a
kind of method to approach the screenwriting process.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah, I have noticed that Say the Cat has has
gotten a lot of flack. I mean I think if
you're at the top of any field, and you know,
I think Save the Cat has sort of gotten to
the upper echelon now because I mean, well, Sidfield has
passed and so has uh you've had the person who
may save the Cat has passed. But I mean I
still think that it's been able. It's been it's been

(06:11):
sort of passed on through his through his program. And
I think now when you when you're at the top field,
when you're at the top of any field, I think
you're going to get flat for a lot of things.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, and it's partly it's because
of the way.

Speaker 5 (06:23):
That Hollywood approached the whole process of storytelling. I mean,
it really is the kind of formula that's in Save
the Cat is used constantly, Like you can watch a
movie and time.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
It's kind of just to Save the Cat structure.

Speaker 5 (06:38):
And and I think people get because of that, and
because a lot of Hollywood movies are pretty you know,
they're pretty empty sort of commercial properties that are really
you know, not about They're not about art, They're about
their product, right, And I think people confuse the power
of the story structure with the vacancy of the content,
and I think that's where a lot of that comes from.

(06:59):
It's like, you know, Hollywood movies are kind of empty,
or not all of them, but a lot of them
are empty, and it's because they all follow this model.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
And I think that's it's a little bit of a misrepresentation.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah. And you know, I know you can't see this
because it's a podcast, but I have a huge screenwriting
book library right next to me, to my left, and
I sort of did what you did, you know, I
wanted to figure out, you know, screenwriting the nuts and
bolts and getting down to the absolute, you know, sort
of atoms of it and figure out, you know, what
makes a great screenwriter, what makes a great screenplay. And

(07:31):
I sort of just you know, would buy these books
piece by piece. Some of them you could buy, i
mean for pennies on the dollar in Amazon. Others, you know,
they just came out and they're still full price. But
you know, there's a lot there. There are some that
really speak to to me, and then there's others that
I read and I'm just like, I don't know, maybe
this is lost because you know, I'm sure it happened
to you too, Sewan, where you have people recommend books

(07:53):
to you, like screenwriting books, for instance, and you read
them and you're just like, what was the big deal
about this?

Speaker 5 (07:57):
You know, yeah, yeah, totally, and a lot of them
end up, I don't know, after a while, if you
read a few of them, it's like, okay, this is
I'm kind of reading the same thing.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Again, and yeah.

Speaker 5 (08:09):
At a certain point, you need to just get a
method that you're going to use and then apply it
and then learn from it and find it find ways
to advance upon it.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
You know.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
I don't think there's any absolutely perfect or the right
method exactly.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
But you just need a method. You can't just be
it can't just be anarchy.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yes, absolutely, I think a method is key. Finding your
routine also, which I guess is another way of saying method,
but you know, finding your routine and making sure you know, okay,
well eleven o'clock today or maybe a little earlier, or
maybe I'm gonna get up too, you know, an hour
early today and I'm just going to write, you know,
I'm just gonna write for you know, forty five minutes
to half an hour, and and you're absolutely right, you know,

(08:46):
finding that process is key because, like you just said,
when I would read some of these books, I would
I felt like I was reading the same thing, same
things over and over again. And I'm just like, I
didn't I just read this book like with a different
cover and by a different author. But I mean, but
that's found to happen. You know, once you start, you know,
getting to a certain point, you're going to start seeing
all that same information just basically you know, used again

(09:09):
or maybe presented in a different way.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 5 (09:12):
I mean, there's only so many ways in a sense
to tell a story. And if you're telling a three
act story or a story that has a beginning, middle,
and end anyway, there's only so many ways to do it.
And you know, the interesting thing because I read a
lot of scripts in my I have a development job,
and I read tons of scripts. And what you see
mostly is that is not I mean, you do see

(09:34):
scripts that come in that are kind of you know,
soulless machines, but mostly what you see from screenwriters who
aren't established is that they just don't have the structure.
They don't know how to tell a story that keeps
moving forward and you really need that. And so to
go back to what you're saying is so it feels
repetitive on the one hand, and it is repetitive in

(09:54):
a lot of ways, but it also is like people
need to learn this because otherwise you can't tell a story.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
And you touched on something through showan you know, you
said the that's some of the scripts that come in
are like a Solace machine. You know, I know you
can't go into specifics or you know, anything like that,
but is there anything any sort of thing that that
that writer might be doing wrong, whether it be structure
or is it because they don't have a voice that
makes it sort of like that Solace machine.

Speaker 5 (10:30):
Well, what it is is that people write to the
market and because you know, people want to make a
living and so they think, okay, well, you know, like
for a while, we were getting all these found footage
scripts for instance, which you know, we're the Rage, and
they would come in and people would follow the beats,
you know, it would like X would happen on page
twelve and why would happen on page twenty three or whatever.

(10:52):
But what was lacking in them was that they were
just you know, it's like it's like watching a plumber
fix your pipes. It's necessary, you know, but it's not
interesting besides for you because you know your toilet's overflowing.
But for most people it's not going to be that interesting.
And so what I find lacking is a kind of
some kind of universal universality to it. So you need

(11:14):
to have, for instance, your characters it can't just be
about you know, chopping up zombies or aliens or whatever.
They have to be going through an inner turmoil because
really what stories are about is there an argument, you know,
about what makes the good life, and you're making an argument.
And if you're not making an argument, and if it's
not being felt through your character, then it just feels
like watching a plumber fix a pipe or watching somebody

(11:35):
build a house. It's kind of interesting to see the
structure of it, but it's not emotionally moving.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, I just took a webinar. It was a free
webinar but by Doug Richardson, who did who wrote Diehard
too and he actually was saying, you know, that whole
thing about an argument, and he is His whole thing was, Hey,
structure is an argument. You know, how you structure your
film should be an argument for your whole movie. And
you know that that actually really stuck with me. And uh,

(12:01):
you know, just great that you're here. I'm just hearing you,
you know, say something similar about your characters in argument
as well, which again is I agree with one hundred percent.
As something I've learned with screenwriting is that and that
you know, we we sort of when we were making characters.
I think sometimes screenwriters have a tendency to write themselves
just like you said, you know, we put ourselves as
the main character, and I think that sort of ends

(12:24):
up hurting us because the main character ends up becoming
almost like a shell and everybody else is sort of
you know, having all the having sort of you know,
like the witty banter or maybe they they're actually the
ones that are actually going through a transformation and the
main character just sort of, you know, is just sort
of there going from you know, basically just going through
the motions.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, yeah, totally, And I mean it can be you,
but it has to be you. In a universal way.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
It has to be universal, you you know, like you
have to you know, there's things about your life.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
You know.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
There was a film, a micro budget film that I
talk about a lot called Bellflower from a few years ago,
think twenty eleven, that was for like seventeen grand and
it did really well. I think it went to Sundance.
Actually it went to Sundance. I got distribution with a Celloscope.
It's a great movie and it's about his breakup. So
it's a very in some ways of personal film. But
he took his breakup and he turned it into a
kind of universal crazy story about young male rage and

(13:18):
representations of violence and stuff. That's a lot of fun
to watch and has universal value to it because he
what he does is all the parts, the soul of
it all fits together.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
So the characters are characters.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
Journey fits with the theme of the movie, and the
theme of the movie fits with the visual styling of
the movie and with the visual elements in the movie,
and that all fits with what's happening with the secondary
characters and so on.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
So it works together.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
As a as a machine with a machine in the
good sense, a machine in the sort of emotional emotional
sense that all the parts are firing and all the
pistons are firing.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It kind of
reminds me also of a sort of Mad Max. You know,
may Max Furry wrote, I know what we're talking about now,
you know, because with the main character, but in Mad Max,
so he never really changes, you know. But but that
again is the whole point of Mad Max is that
he Max is never actually the main character of any
of his movies. You know, he's just going He's helping

(14:14):
everybody else out as they're going on their adventures. And
I think but going into those even well probably that
may be probably starting the second one. But in Road Warrior,
but even even you know Road Warrior, then you have
Beyon thunder Dome, and then you have the newest one,
Fury Road. You kind of see that formulate work and
it actually works, like we were just saying, it actually
works for that, but anywhere else you'd kind of be like, well,
what the hell's going on here? You know, it's not

(14:36):
complementing itself, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that the model, the Mad
Max model, is also the model for Noir.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
You know, like no our fiction and noir films is.

Speaker 5 (14:45):
About this cynical, scarred human in the world who is
giving us an entry into the world to see that
the journey of other people, and we become where they're
sort of cynical, where they're sort of bring brought in
in the same way, in the same state as that person,
and then we're learning through that process the argument about
that world and what's valuable.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. It kind of
reminds me of Chinatown in a way. You know, Jack Nicholson, Uh,
you know, at the whole end, he was very very
sort of scarred and by the end, you know, I
don't know if he really changed, but but the whole
but the whole venture was absolutely amazing. No, absolutely, So,

(15:28):
you know, as we talked more about, you know, your career, Sean,
you know you obviously you know, you taught yourself how
to write screenplays, and you know, so where was it
where you actually started to sit down and actually you
you made your own film.

Speaker 5 (15:41):
So I had after I actually shortly before I went
to the film center, and then after I went to
the film center, I made a few shorts and kind
of you know, I'd read. I read a few things about,
you know, how to shoot not cross the line, you know, coverage,
that kind of thing, and then I started. I shot
some some shorts that were you know, from moderate to bad.

(16:03):
But it was really fun and I loved it. And
I learned a lot as both as a filmmaker and
as a writer, because I learned, Okay, well that doesn't work.
You know, that's you know, a block of dialogue that.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Long isn't going to work.

Speaker 5 (16:15):
Saying it this way isn't to work like you just
you see it being played out. And so it's an
extremely useful experience, even from the point of view being
a screenwriter. And then, you know, and then when I
came out of the Film Center and.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Well, a bunch of stuff happened.

Speaker 5 (16:29):
I had a script options with like an Oscar nominated producer,
and it all looked, you know, great, and you know,
I was counting the money and thinking my career was
about to take off.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
How did things go wrong?

Speaker 5 (16:40):
And that was two thousand and eight, and then at
the bottom fell out of the financial market, and.

Speaker 4 (16:44):
In subsequently all the money dried up for indie.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
Films and Hollywood's reverted to just you know, retreads and
remakes and tent pole pictures. And so while I got
a job out of that in development that I still have,
my career as a filmmaker and as a screenwriter kind
of came to a halt.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
And so after a number of years.

Speaker 5 (17:07):
Of having done that, I just was like one day
sitting in my office with my wife feeling frustrated because
I was reading a script that I thought was kind
of bad, but was you know, was financed because it
had some a list casts. And I turned to my
wife and I'm like, this is ridiculous, Like we're helping.
You know, she's a wedding photographer, so she helps people
realize their dreams in her way, and I was doing
it with you know, story editing, and I said, you know,

(17:29):
why don't why aren't we Why are we just the bridesmaids?
You know, why don't we make our movie? And so
we decided at that point then we just started talking
about a story. And then it happened.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, the bottom fell out in two thousand and eight.
Man for so many people. I mean, I was so tragic,
and you know, I know other people as well who've
who had things development and two thousand and eight hit
and my god, I mean, and here we are in
twenty sixteen and we're still recovering from that here America.
Uh but but uh yeah, you know, and the and

(18:04):
the shocks were sort of felt worldwide. But you know,
so you're you know, you're able to regain you know,
your composure, you you know regain you know your motivation
and you know, So so what was what ended up?
Did your first movie ended up being?

Speaker 4 (18:20):
It ended up being.

Speaker 5 (18:21):
I mean, it's a it's like a sci fi comedy
called A Brand New You about a widower who can't
get over the death of his wife, and so he
moves into his house and after trying to failing at
committing suicide, he convinces his landlord and his roommate to
help him try to clone her in the living room
because his landlord it turns out as this disgraced biochemist,

(18:42):
and so it's about him trying to kind of recreate
this moment that is lost. But it's a comedy, so
it's funny, but funny sad, I guess, so is.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
That available to watch online or through view do you
or anything?

Speaker 5 (18:55):
No, We're we got a sales agent and we've been
going through the hell that is known as deliverables. And
we just sent off for the second time for you
have to get a you have to get a quality
control report before your film, like we've done all the
rest of the stuff, I think, I hope to God,
and then we needed to make this quality control report
and so it goes, you know, you send it in

(19:17):
and it costs you like fifteen hundred bucks for four
passes to cover your video and all your audio tracks.
And they send you report and if there's any problems
in there, you know, and it could be any kinds
of thing, and then it comes back to you and
then you have to fix those and then you have
to send it back. So we got that back and
and send it to our audio editor and our editor,
our picture editor and and so we've just sent it

(19:40):
off for the second QC report and I'm hoping that
it's good enough.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, those deliverables sean the more, you know, I didn't
know too much about deliverables till a few years ago,
and then I found out all that is that is
involved with deliverables.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
And even we're talking with you know, my friend Jason
Brubaker at the Stripper, you know, just getting involved with
those deliberable deliverables. End up it's like a like you said,
it's like, what did you call a living hell? I
think that's pretty accurate.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
But yeah, yeah, it's totally brutal.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
So, you know, so right after you finished your first
movie and again you know, that was a micro budget film,
and you know, you you made your second film, which,
by the way, I love the name of this of
this film, by the way, uh fucking my way back Home. Yeah,
that that is a very a very good title, by
the way. And also it's very eye catching. So even

(20:41):
if I didn't know what it was, even if I
didn't know what it was about, I could just imagine
what that what that is about. But but you know,
so where was the impetus to make your second film?
I mean, did you already have this script, you know,
written while you did your first one, or did you
sort of just you know, have a lot of motivation
to sort of make this script.

Speaker 5 (21:01):
No, we were, well, we'd done the kind of the
festival thing with the first one and gone to a
few festivals and won some awards, and we.

Speaker 4 (21:08):
Were like, what are we going to do next?

Speaker 5 (21:09):
And so we you know, I had some other scripts
that we wanted to do, but they were bigger. They
were like, you know, at least one hundred thousand dollars
kind of thing, and we're just we're not in the
position to make one hundred thousand dollars movie unfortunately at
the moment.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
And so we, you know.

Speaker 5 (21:24):
My production partners, there's four of us in the company,
and we said, well, you know, what are we going
to do next? And I had this story that I
had developed with another writer years earlier that he and
I were going to shoot together, a wonderful writer, Nam
Rhys Cruthers, But it just never happened. We'd both kind
of gotten busy with our own things, and so I
spoke to him and I said, hey, dude, can I

(21:45):
take our story and write it up.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
As a script so we can shoot it? And he
was like, yeah, absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 5 (21:50):
So I then I wrote it up and we started editing,
you know, getting notes back and forth, and you know,
I don't know how many months later, eight months later,
maybe nine months later than we shot the movie.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
So when you shot the movie, did you have a
slightly bigger budget than than with your first movie.

Speaker 5 (22:10):
No, you know, the irony is, we learned a lot
from the first movie. You know, we made mistakes that
cost us money, and we got better at improv improvising,
and so the first film cost us I think twenty
two thousand or something, and the second movie we shot
for seven thousand. But it's actually more complicated and there's
more locations, and we a lot of it takes place

(22:31):
in a car going around the city.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
So we had to tow the car because our.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
Driver, like he plays the driver in the film, is
like maybe the worst driver on the planet. So the
idea of him acting while driving this like nineteen seventy
four cut the Supreme was was a horrifying thought.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
So we had to like tow the car around.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
So when you had toe the car around, I guess
the biggest then, the biggest part of production budget then
was obviously a tow truck. A driver and then a
tow you obviously had to get like some kind of
I guess you had a route that you wanted to go. Again,
I'm just I'm just thinking with a producer's hat right now,
Sean of what was.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
Yeah, yeah, no, you know, we went so plan a
was okay.

Speaker 5 (23:13):
So plan A was we thought, you know, we had
a connection with the post production house and maybe he
could get us a deal with a you know, a
rental house, Whites in Toronto, and he contacted them for
us and they got back and they were like, oh, yeah,
you can get a you know, you know, a toe vehicle,
but it's like ten thousand dollars a day plus you
need to get cops, right, you need to have off

(23:35):
duty you know, paid paid duty officers. And we're like, well,
it's more than our budget. So we tried U haul
and we did attacks and we did a test shoot
with a U haul trailer pulling it around and so on,
and that seemed like the way we were going to go.
But that was going to be I think about a
thousand bucks with insurance, and that still seemed high. So

(23:55):
what we ended up doing was a guy who owns
a cafe around the corner from my house had a
tow truck and while he had a car, first of all,
he had this Cutlass Supreme and I was like, hey, man,
can I rent your car for the shoot? Your car
is like this big, ugly beast and it's a beautiful
sky blue color. And I really want to use it
because it really looks good. And he was like, yeah, yeah, totally.
And we told him were going to tow it, and

(24:16):
he was like, oh, hey, do you want to you
want to rent my my my pickup trucks, little Toyota
pickup truck, Like yeah, sure. So we rented it off
him for a few hundred dollars and then we went
on Craigslist and we found somebody who rented like a
car tow trailer, and we rented it for two weeks
for I think three hundred dollars. So in total, you know, car, toe,

(24:37):
vehicle and trailer was like eight hundred bucks, seven hundred bucks.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Well that, you know, again, that's amazing. How you know
just by by just sort of putting on your producer hat,
you can actually you know, get that down further and
further and further, and again I imagine also you're going
to have insurance because you're just imagine no towing a
car around. But so it was insurance included into that
eight hundred dollars an hour cost.

Speaker 5 (25:04):
Yeah, we got we got production insurance and that was
more that was for the entire production, and I think
it was about nine hundred bucks maybe to cover the
whole thing, and it was a bit dodgy, Like we
told them. They were like, you know, we have this
car and we'll be towing at two locations and then
putting it off the trailer and shooting it in location,
and so they you know, if they found out we

(25:24):
were shooting with people in the vehicle towing it around,
we probably wouldn't have been covered. So we would have
had to evacuate everybody from the car if we'd gotten
a new accident. But luckily we didn't and there was
no there was no insurance claims were made.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Excellent. You know it's always going every whenever you never
have to make an insurance claim, right, So yes, So
now showing with with sort of finishing the film, is
it is it on VOD yet or are you putting
that together right now?

Speaker 5 (25:54):
Yeah, we just got picture lock like last week, and
so we've sent it off to the composer. We've sent
it off to the audio mixer to begin that process,
and we've sent it off to the colorist.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
So now now, so so now that that pictures locked,
now now uh again I'm cheating because I have your
whole hole in full in front of me, and I
know you made a third movie, so we've got a
third movie that's actually in development right now.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, there's a we have a we
have a script that's written that's I think a second
draft at this point that we're hoping to do a
little little higher budget if we can raise the cash
or I guess, you know, figure out the whatever the
equivalent is of, uh, you know, a tow trailer for
for our our spaceship because it's all takes place inside

(26:41):
of Spaceship.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
And that's called the Century of Redemption.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
Right, Century of Redemption. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, So obviously you're going to shoot that next year,
and uh you know, again, I wish you the best
with shooting that, and uh so what I wanted to
ask about was obviously your micro budget film lab. You know,
you know, you sort of started this, and what was
sort of the impetus to actually start micro budget film lab.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
Well, when we shot the first film, I mean, finding
information was it was really dispersed. You know, we could
find an article here, an article there, and get you know,
pull some tips here and there, but a lot of
it was really learning on the fly, which added added
stress to the whole process. So and you know, we

(27:29):
were borrowing money and you know, figuring out how to
finance it and all that stuff that we had to
kind of build the machine from scratch, as it were.
And so my thinking was that it would be great
because there are so many people out there who want
to make a micro budget or who want to make
a feature and are just waiting. They're doing like I did,
you know, They're waiting for years and you know, submitting
to contests and you know, spending hundreds and hundreds of

(27:50):
dollars on contests, and you know, sometimes contests don't even
send you.

Speaker 4 (27:53):
The results and never mind notes.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
And I was like, you know, people need to have
that resource, and so I want to be that resource.
And I wanted it to be different than you know,
No Film School, which is a great site, but you know,
it has a lot of gear focus. And I'm, you know,
because I'm my background coming in from the point of
view of story and from screenwriting, I was kind of
more interested in the aesthetics and the story construction side,

(28:17):
and how to do things differently and how to create
a kind of shared aesthetic. Like I mean, I wrote
a post a little while ago called about you know,
we need a micro budget movement and I've been thinking
about that a lot, and the need to kind of
for us as micro budget filmmakers to move beyond simply
you know, atomized individuals all struggling to make our films.

(28:37):
And I'm happy to help people out on that basis,
just like the technical side of how to make a movie.
But also, you know, where there have been successes in
the past with people outside of the system, they've generally
been coming from people who exist as a movement. You know,
you look at Dogma ninety five or mumble Core, or
the Neo Realists or the French New Wave, and they

(28:58):
part of their market buzz and part of their power
comes from this aesthetic challenge to the dominant h storytelling
models and cinematic models.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
And so I wanted to.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
Kind of create a space where that kind of could
do gest state and that's where that's kind of where
the name Lab came from. It was like a laboratory
for for film movements.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
We can do a lot of like experimentation, right yeah, yeah,
like sort of mixing chemicals like a mad scientist.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Yeah yeah, making drugs, but no, I mean.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
But experimentation film. I think that's what allows you know,
with making micro budgets. And you know, even even when I,
you know, made my own student film, it allowed for
more experimentation because obviously, number one, we had no clue
to how we were doing. And I mean me personally,
I had no clue what I was doing when I
was making my student film. Two, the budget was like

(29:52):
the change you know people have in their pockets.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
And three, I know your answer to so any any
weird wacky thing we did, you know, is it funny? Okay,
let's put it, let's put it in there. But you know,
with micro budgets, you know, you know this is it's
always you know, encouraged for experimentation because I mean, you know, Sean,
if you had a couple million dollar budget and you
had people who are reporting to every day, you know,

(30:26):
you try to do something out of the norm, and
they're going to say, well, what the what, what the
fuck are you doing?

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

Speaker 5 (30:32):
Yeah, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of
there's a lot of steak when you've got a million
or ten million or a hundred million dollars. You know,
they want you to do what works, and what works
is what worked last year or the year before, and
so they just want to repeat the same thing because
it's a formula that makes money. But that that formula
that works for Hollywood for ten million dollar movies or
one hundred million dollar movies doesn't work for micro budgets

(30:54):
because they just look like cheap knockoffs, right yeah, and
they look like and they look like, uh, they look
like cheap knock offs. But more than that, they all
the flaws of Hollywood can be are kind of hidden
by the money that's poured into the great effects and
the great sound and the great light, and you know,
these awesome actors who are loved and so people forgive them,

(31:16):
you know, any.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
Errors or whatever.

Speaker 5 (31:17):
All that stuff allows Hollywood to kind of smooth out
the problems in their in their in their storytelling, and
and you know, the conventionality of their their cinematics technique
or whatever. You don't have that in a micro budget,
So you get none of the good of Hollywood of
all that that money, and you get all of the
bad when you're trying to just replicate a Hollywood formula.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
Film on like, you know what they.

Speaker 6 (31:42):
Their budget for their coffee cups, So true, Sean, you know,
and again, yeah, you know if you try to yeah,
you're right, if you try to try to emulate that,
you're just going to end up, you know, shooting yourself
in the face.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
And that's something that I found as well. You know,
I tried to emulate different action movies so you know
with my second student films, and I'm like, holy crap,
I don't have the time, the budget, the resources to
do all this stuff. So I can't make, you know,
a whole scene about gunplay, or you know, I can't
blow up this whole building even with you know, red
giant effects, you know, And it sort of reminds me. Also,

(32:17):
there was this panel of discussion was watching on TCM
and one of the guys who host TCM said he
actually loved the era of the fifties and sixties with
movie making because they didn't have a budget to blow
up buildings or anything, so they had to focus on
this story. And to me, that's where we are again.
Is I think a hallmark of a filmmaker nowadays is
you have to make a micro budget film set in

(32:40):
one to three locations very minimal, and the story and
the concept have to be what is your main selling
point of this whole thing.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
Yeah, I mean I don't know about you know, there's
some dogma films that I really love, like Celebration I
really love, and you know, they had their vow of
chastity or whatever that.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Was very very strict. Most of them ended up breaking it.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
And I don't know about all of the rules in
terms of restrictions about what you can and can't do,
because there's you know, there's a film Monsters by Gareth
Edwards who went on to do Godzilla, and Godzilla apparently sucks.
I've never seen it, but you know, I've got bad
reviews and so on, and Monsters did really well. And
Monsters did really well, I think because kind of of
what you're saying about story, because it was a really

(33:24):
fresh It's a monster movie, but it's not about the monsters.
The monsters are just the backdrop to this road movie
and this relationship between these two people in a structure
that's not It's much more open and alive than really tight,
tightly bound Hollywood structures where you know, there's a monster
and they kill people one at a time in the
woods and so on, and it wasn't that, and so

(33:46):
he used you know, there's a lot of effects in that,
but he shot it for like fifteen thousand bucks. And
then he just happens to be this you know, special
effects wizard who has worked for years for the BBC
doing you know, crazy compositing and and all this incredible stuff.
So he had those he had that talent and so
you know, kudos to him to bring that talent. But

(34:07):
then you know where he couldn't He couldn't do the
kind of practical effects that you can do with Hollywood.
So his his shooting was was this story, this really simple,
beautiful little story, but this relationship between these people, and
that's what gave the movie its power.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
The Monsters was you know, sometimes kind of was.

Speaker 5 (34:25):
Neat or whatever, but that's you know, when he got
to Godzilla, then he could then he didn't have to
think about stories so much, and so he ended up
with a much weaker picture than Monsters, which was made
for again like the coffee cup budget for Godzilla.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
And you know, I don't know what he's doing.

Speaker 5 (34:39):
Next, but that that point that you make about the
story being so important and breaking with the conventions of
what Hollywood does with stories and really allowing yourself, you know,
to take advantage of the freedom that you have as
a as a filmmaker because you don't have that hundred
million dollar weight hanging over your head that you have
to recoup.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, and it's I it was also of reading something
about this as well, where a lot of studios now
are looking at you know, the micro budget film, the
micro budget film world, the independent film world, and they're
taking directors who may be made a movie for a
million or less, and all of a sudden, they're make
giving them all this, you know, uh, all this money
to sort of make these these franchises. For instance, Josh

(35:19):
Trank with Fantastic Four. Prior to that, he made Chronicle
for I think what three million dollars, And you know,
I've seen stuff like that, and I think, also, I
don't know how well that's transferred over though. I think
that I don't know if the studios are rushing because
they're so desperate for a hit to sort of prop
up every of the other properties, or if maybe you know,

(35:40):
these these independent directors maybe aren't aren't there yet, if
you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
I think it's more, I mean they're trying to. I
think there's two things.

Speaker 5 (35:48):
I think that often us as artists, often we don't
know what makes us special or you know, our artists
artistic production specially you know, we're not super self critical
law all the time, and so we don't know how
to necessarily replicate it. And when we're put in a
new situation where suddenly you've got ten or one hundred
whatever million dollars, you're in a new situation and so

(36:10):
you're not you have you know, before there was all
kinds of pressures on you that forced you to be
the kind of artists that you were, and now there's
different pressures on you that are changing you in a
different direction. So there's there's that, But there's also Hollywood
is isn't interested in what is magical about the really
small budget movies. What they're interested in is the buzz

(36:31):
and the cachet.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
And the you know, the edginess of them.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
But they those are just words for them, and they
don't really know how to capture it because again they're
thinking about one hundred million bucks that they just invested
and they need to recoup that, and so they need
to take all.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
The edges off because you want to appeal to you know.

Speaker 5 (36:48):
You know, it's like I had a meeting with a
sales agent on a completely different project a while back,
and the first question they asked me about the project
was who's your white male lead? And it was sort
of eye opening to me, you know. And this guy
was probably a nice guy whatever, you know, probably not
a racist, but he he is speaking about how the market,

(37:08):
the superstitions of the market conceived of it because they're like, well,
black guys and women and you know, lesbian's engage don't
sell in China or they don't sell in Africa.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
So we need somebody who's like a universal.

Speaker 5 (37:23):
Icon or avatar for money making, and that is the
white male dude between the ages of thirty five and fifty.
And so that's the kind of the way that they
think about it. And so even when you get an
edgy director up there, you know, like Garet Edwards doing Godzilla, now,
they're trying to fit it into the money making mold
that they know, and it has to fit into that.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
And so even you know, you know, you go into it.
It's like the old joke, right, Oh, I.

Speaker 5 (37:49):
Joined the government to change it from within and then
instead of changing the system, the system changes you.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
And I think that's what happens.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, it's very true. And you know you talk about
you know, budgets, you know you have currently you know,
a micro budget you know film Lab Fun competition, which
I think is amazing. So could you go into a
little detail about that.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
Yeah, you know, I was.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
What I wanted to do was to create a screenwriting
coaching program because I think often people who you know,
because there is so much emphasis on gear because gear
has become so cheap and made it so possible to
make micro budget films now, whether it's camera gear or
sound gear or whatever, and people get so hung up
on gear and they become gearheads, and you know, people
talking about.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
The latest red camera and black magic.

Speaker 5 (38:35):
And you know, blah blah blah and they and the
scripts I read are and you know, I read about
one hundred and fifty scripts a year, Like I've read
well over a thousand scripts in the last eight years,
and I'm.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
Telling you most of them are are very weak and
not developed.

Speaker 5 (38:50):
And it's kind of part of my argument to my
community is you need to develop your script. So I
was like, how can I motivate people to develop good,
you know, edgy fresh scripts and get them to focus
on that so that they can make some great pictures
and like really go deep in terms of the stories
that exist inside themselves. So I thought, well, I'm going

(39:11):
to do a screenwriting thing, but how can I get
people interested? So I decided to come up with this
screenwriting coaching intensive that would last over a period of
three months, and I would work with, you know, a
relatively small group of people to go through each stage
of the screenwriting process, from you know, how to come
up with a story for a micro budget, how to
create a logline, how to create a story structure, developing characters, theme,

(39:35):
all that stuff right through to revising, how to revise
your script with a micro budget in mind, and then
have this and provide feedback the whole time, and then
at the end have this potential award so that you know,
of the first ten scripts that are submitted at the
end of this process, I would give like a full
story edit of their scripts, which is what I do professionally,

(39:56):
and I would meet with them over Skype.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 5 (40:08):
And then the best script of those ten, I would
give them an you know, I would invest twenty five
hundred dollars into making their movie.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
And so that's kind of how it was born.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
And I also like you're doing the video question and
answer section because I imagine as soon as you announced
the competition, this flurry of questions came in, and I'm sure,
and it's a great idea by the way, that you're
doing it through video, because video is you know, it's
always obviously it's it's a great promotional tool. And I
think also a lot of times people more especially filmmakers,

(40:43):
more adapt to watching a video tutorial or explanation, if
you will. Then then just you know, reading sort of
like a blog post.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (40:52):
Yeah, I mean I try to mix it up a
little bit and do a bit of both. But yeah,
and it's kind of nice to do, you know, Like
with the FAQs that I've done, I can just you know,
I get I get tons of you know, questions, and
I went through them and found some of the most
common ones, and then I could just go up on
my roof. You know, there's a terrorists in our apartment.
So I went up on the terras and and just

(41:14):
sat there with my coffee and you know, could just
talk into you know, my selfie stick that I put
an elastic band on to hold it to a chair,
and I could just talk to it and answer the
question like like we're sitting down having about coffee.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Yeah, it did feel that way as well. And so
obviously just to sort of answer a few of those questions,
I know you already answered them, but just for obviously
for the listeners, you know, like I guess the one
would be, you know, who actually owns the script at
the end of all this.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
The writer such filmmaker owns the scripts. The only deal
is for the money. The only conditions, I guess is
that it's an investment, so there'll be an investor's contract
and if the film makes money, then you have to
pay back.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
You have to pay back the money, you know, and
which seems reasonable.

Speaker 5 (42:03):
And I want people to take some responsibility for the
process of you know, their their contributors to their to
their film.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
And then that money it won't come back to me.

Speaker 5 (42:11):
I'll put it into another fund so that I can
grow a fund to ultimately supply, you know, help other
other people in the same in the same corner sort
of way. And then the second thing is that the
money will be released on the first day of principal photography,
So you actually don't just write a script and get
the money. You actually have to go into proper pre
production and I'll work with people through the pre production

(42:32):
process to help them get the show on the road,
and then on the first day of principal photography, that
cash will be released from them from escrow.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
And I think that's an amazing idea, Sean. And so
further so for people listening who might be interested in work,
where could they enter U you know this fun competition.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Well, it hasn't the doors haven't opened yet.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
I've been taking because I got tons of feedback from
people and but what they felt should be in the
program and so on, and so I'm going to open
the doors to that. And as I say, it's not
to you know, it's not going to be to tons
of people, because because I'm giving feedback, I can only
deal with so many people. Before I would, you know,
have to start taking amphetamines and stay.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Up all night.

Speaker 5 (43:14):
So that'll happen on not this coming Monday, but the
following Tuesday, So a week Tuesday, I'll open the doors
on that and is that.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
For people just in Canada or people in the US
and UK enter.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
Yeah, it's people internationally, you know. One of the cool things,
you know, I've been promoting the Facebook page and the
website and so on through Facebook, which is you know,
in terms of you know, micro budget film marketing. Facebook
is actually has a really user friendly, very powerful interface.
But I've been I was marketing, and I was marketing

(43:51):
at primarily to the United States and Canada because that's,
you know, where I'm from, and by accident, I think
I selected worldwide and so it ended up promoting this
thing is one of the posts out to internationally, and
I started getting I'm like, why am I getting all
these people with.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
Names like Indian names.

Speaker 5 (44:08):
It was like all of a sudden, like literally like
dozens of people contacting me from India, And I realized
that made this mistake, and it was awesome because it's
I'm meeting these filmmakers from India, Like I just interviewed
a filmmaker last week who did a micro budget film
called d Major, which is a beautiful film and has
gotten is getting it looks like it's getting distribution on
the India's version of Netflix, and it's got him, you know,

(44:30):
a producer is coming on board for his next film. Anyway,
and it was a fascinating interview just to hear how
in Kolkata he made a movie for three thousand dollars
and how they did it and you know, they didn't
have a slider, so they put a camera on the
sweater and they pulled it across the.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
Table and this kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 (44:43):
But anyway, that's a long detour to say that the
program is open internationally.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
The reason I ask is because you know, obviously America
is my my you know, US is my biggest market,
followed by the UK, followed by China, then Australia, then Canada.
So I just want to just obviously just wanted to
make sure.

Speaker 5 (45:04):
So yeah, yeah, so yeah, the Chinese filmmakers are more
than welcome as well obviously as Americans and in the
in Brits excellent.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
And uh I was as shocked as everyone else when
I heard that China was my third biggest market. I
looked at my numbers and I'm like, wow, okay, but bigger,
bigger than yeah, seriously, who knew bigger than bigger than
the Australia and Canada. Wow. And you know, so Sean,
you know, I know we touched this briefly, but you know,
sort of you know, in closing, I wanted to ask,

(45:34):
you know, what, is there anything else that you're working
on that we should know about?

Speaker 6 (45:40):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (45:41):
Well, I mean, in terms of my film, it's it's
the you know when you mentioned Century of Redemption, which
is a space kind of there's a sci fi but
all takes place in one location, though a fairly elaborate location.
And then I mean, I am I'm on a I'm
a senior programmer at the Victoria, Texas Indie Film Festival,
which is a wonderful film festival just outside of Houston

(46:02):
and h and I you know, I mean, I'm working
on stuff all the time with this company I work
for in Canada Media Biz, and I've been with them
as an executive story consultant for about eight years doing
both story editing and also developing original content. So I
have I have some TV series that are in development
that I'm pretty stoked about and hoping something happens with them.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
But you know, I'm at the point now.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
You know, if you've been in the film industry anytime
at all, you know, you know, producers come to you
and they're like super excited about your project, and you
get all excited and it's going to happen, and then
then they don't happen, And so I'm I'm I still
retain a small glimmer of hope in my heart, but
part of me is always like, yeah, you know, I
can't get I can't get excited about maybe you know,
the mainstream stuff any longer, because it's just so hard.

(46:47):
It's so hard to get stuff off the ground. Things
crash and burn all the time.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yes, I couldn't agree more, Sean. I I just was
having this conversation the other day. It is so hard
to get things without with you know, even a pretty
sizeable budget off the ground. You know, and people who
listen to this podcast on a frequent basis know that
I talk about that a lot. I talk about my
own projects and things that I've just crashed and burned
and things that never really got off and things that

(47:12):
got off and still had a lot of problems on takeoff.
But so you know, inclosing, Sean, is there anything we
didn't talk about that maybe you wanted to discuss, or
any sort of final thoughts to sort of put a
period at the end of this whole conversation.

Speaker 5 (47:25):
Well, I think the main thing and the main inspiration
from micro budget film lab is, you know, following on
from what we were just saying about everything's crashing and burning,
and you know, I looked up I was reading some
stuff on the speck of screenplay market recently, and something
like one hundred thousand scripts are registered every year with
the Writer's Guild of America and this year less than

(47:45):
one hundred were purchased by the studios and the indie majors.
And it can look really depressing, and you can sit
around sending query letters forever, and it's just important that
people know that you don't have to do that, and
that there you can make a great movie, you know,
and there are some awesome movies people I think forget.
You know, the French new wave Breathless was a micro budget.

(48:07):
It was under one hundred thousand dollars, and you know
some of these great movies for lovers only made by
the Polish Brothers was shot for like zero and made
five hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
But more than that, it was you know.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
They made a really cool romantic movie and so you
can make really good stuff for not a lot of money,
and so you shouldn't feel like you have to wait
around for some benevolent producer to sort of land in
your lap and do it for you, or some dentist
with you know, more money than he knows what to
do with to invest in your film. You can you
can do it with a relatively small amount of money.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Yeah, you know that. That's something I've been talking to
Sean about, you know, in a lot of my intros
about talking about this whole you know, don't wait around,
you know, figure out what you have at your disposal
location wise. You know what I call the resource list,
you know, locations, actors and like sort of like props.
So if you can make those lists and you can
sort of bring storm and sort of a verse engineer

(49:01):
a script, because that way you're not you know, if
if if I know my my uncle owns an abandoned
house somewhere, how could I use that for a film?
You know? Or even if I use my own living room.
I had a friend of mine who shot a film
of his in his own living room and he later
regretted it, but uh, because he wanted to do all
this blood stuff and he did it all. But then

(49:21):
he said, look that smell got in the house, and
uh so if you got so so there's a tip.
If you're gonna use blood a lot, you know, a
lot of blood, maybe not, don't do that in your
living room. But yeah, but yeah, you know, and I
think again, you know Jason Brewer Baker calls the backyard Indie.
I think again, this is gonna be the Hallmark Sean
where you have to be able to sort of make

(49:42):
a film in a very minimal location with with very
minimal locations, actors, props, and and be able to tell
the best story you can. And I think that's going
to sort of be like the Hallmark now with how
you know you can sort of you know, build your
career from that.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
We'll be right back after a wh heard from our
sponsor and now back to the show.

Speaker 5 (50:07):
Yeah, no, I think that's totally true. And I think
that you know, make a list of your resources is
really important and extend that list not just to you know,
cool stuff that you have lying around and cool locations
that you have, but also to your skills and the
skills of people around. You know, if you're like Gareth Edwards,
and you can do great compositing and great you know visuals,
you know VFX on your computer.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
That's a resource also, or if.

Speaker 5 (50:30):
You can, you know, blackmail your brother in law to
do it for you, whatever happens to be, that's that's
a resource that you should. You should, you know, you
should make the movie that you can, not the movie
that you want, because it's you know, what you've been
told is the right kind of movie.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, I definitely agree. So Shewan, where can people find
you out online?

Speaker 5 (50:49):
They can go to our Facebook page, they can just
I'm sure search on Facebook to micro Budget Film Lab
or our website is Microbudget film Lab dot com and
they can find us there.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Are you on Twitter or Facebook?

Speaker 4 (51:02):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (51:02):
I'm sorry you already said Facebook? So you on Twitter?
Anything else?

Speaker 4 (51:06):
I on Twitter a little bit.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
On Twitter, I've never really gotten into. I do have
a YouTube channel that I'm slowly adding material to, but
those the primary locations at this point are our Facebook
and the website.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
Sean, Sean Whitney, I want to say thank you very
much for coming on.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
Sir, thank you very much for having me. It's been
great talking to you.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
It's been great talking to you as well. And I
wish you the best of luck with everything.

Speaker 5 (51:32):
Thank you you too, Thank you very much, luck in China.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Thank you very much, Jean. I'll talk to you soon, Buddy.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Okay, take care, bodebye.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
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 any filmuffo dot
com Forward slash eight No. One, and if you have
it 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, guys. Thank you again

(52:02):
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 (52:10):
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.
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