Writing to your Budget w/Aaron Pagniano - Just Shoot It 519
Filmmaker Aaron Pagniano discusses his journey making micro-budget horror films, from his $60,000 Kickstarter debut to his latest $30,000 feature 'It Needs Eyes.' The conversation covers practical strategies for writing to your resources, leveraging favors and networks, and innovative distribution through roadshow touring.
- Write scripts around resources you already have access to rather than writing first and finding resources later
- Building a network of favors over years is essential for micro-budget filmmaking success
- Most indie film distribution deals under $100K budgets are predatory with no real marketing support
- Roadshow touring serves as a promotional strategy rather than a primary revenue source
- Crew empathy from having worked as crew yourself is crucial for managing low-budget productions
"Don't write a script and then figure out how to make it. Figure what do you already have access to write a script around that"
"The entire Kickstarter and first feature process was not being afraid to ask other people for favors"
"There's a lot of predatory sales agents and distribution companies out there that basically scoop up these little indie films. They pay $0"
"The actual money we make from the Roadshow goes to just paying for the Roadshow. But this is essentially a press event"
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0:47
Hey everyone. Welcome to the 519th episode of Just Unit, a podcast about filmmaking, screenwriting and directing. This episode is brought to you by patron Andrew Gibbs. Thank you, Andrew. I'm Warren Kaplan.
0:53
I'm mat in though. Today we've got Aaron Pagnano on the show. They're an old friend and you know
1:03
Aaron from college humor, right?
1:07
Yes, that's correct. Yes. Back in the day, Aaron, and we talk about it a little bit, but Aaron was oftentimes one of the only additional crew members outside of a DP and maybe an art person, you know, basically had your department heads and Aaron was there to kind of do all of the other pieces of work, which turns out to be great life experience for a person who has been making horror movies, micro budget horror movies ever since, basically. So we had Aaron on to talk about the new feature, It Needs Eyes. But I think it's a really. We use that sort of as the shell for talking about micro budget filmmaking and the nature of horror and interesting distribution tactics. They're taking this movie on the road. They're touring the country with it. So, you know, if you're interested in those topics, this is going to be a really interesting, fun conversation. You know, if you're more interested in talking about treatments and pitch decks and commercial life.
1:09
Huge budgets.
2:09
Yeah, yeah. Giant budgets. Just like major broadcast campaigns.
2:11
I do think what Aaron, what was interesting about what Aaron was brought to us was kind of just the methods of how to, you know, make good movies for small budgets, how to cash in favors, how to build networks so that you have people in the cash and favors through with and then how to, you know, write to your resources and those, those things. So I, I think it's definitely useful, especially if you're, if you're like a man inlo and you're like, f these commercials, I'm gonna go make my movie. I don't care what. I have a start date.
2:16
I think you could, you can do a little bit of both.
2:46
Right.
2:48
Like, I think. And Aaron makes our money on branded content stuff.
2:49
Yeah, yeah.
2:54
On the same way that we do. But, you know, it's, it's funny. I'm gonna put you a tiny bit on blast, Oren, because I feel like this, this is the exact sort of topic that you shy away from that you are not interested in, basically. And so, and look, we've been doing this show for a long time. We've had lots of micro budget films on in the past. Aaron. I'm stoked. I wanted Aaron on because, you know, we've known each other for a long time. I kickstarted that first feature and it just was like, you know, what's the point of having a podcast if you can't support a homie? And Aaron's a real one, like a true pirate, like out to, you know, live that indie life. And I'm really stoked because I feel like the conversation was really fruitful. Marin's very transparent. So, like, of all of the chances that we've had over the years to talk micro budget features, I'm. I guess I'm feeling grateful that this was the one we, we went with. We, like I said, we've had people on before, for sure.
2:54
Yeah.
3:50
Yeah. You know, it's not the stock and trade of the show, more or less.
3:50
Yeah, I guess it's, I, I, I think it's awesome. I think it's cool. I think there was like maybe a five year span of this podcast, like 2016-2021 or something, where I was like, hey, if I had $30,000 instead of trying to make a feature, I would make a proof of concept with that. I'd make it short because I've never really heard of a $30,000 feature except for maybe like Paranormal activity and the first feature that I invested in, the Hamiltons that has, that had made its money back, you know.
3:55
Sure.
4:23
So if you're not doing it to make your money back, then for me, it's like I'm doing it to get my voice out into the world, get meetings, get representation, make something really cool and get people excited about it. And I felt Like, I could do that easier with $30,000 and a short form video.
4:23
Yeah. $30,000 on a 10 minute short is very different than $30,000 on a 90 minute feature. For sure.
4:42
Yeah. Like, you can make a great, really great 10 minute short for 30 grand, but you can also make a great feature and just, you know, Aaron works on much bigger budget things too. Aaron's, you know, written and produced things in the. The six figures as well. But maybe I'm harping on the smaller movies because they're the ones that Aaron seemed like, the most excited about.
4:49
Yeah.
5:09
Personally connected to.
5:09
Yes. And also I think just as an advocate for the ways in which we can evolve the medium and, like, you know, change the way that you make movies.
5:11
Right.
5:21
Like, there's a little bit of. Of a rebel, revolutionary spirit to. To the conversation as well, which, you know, I like very much.
5:22
Yeah, no, you're a real rebel and I'm a real mainstream. Lemon.
5:28
You're without a cause.
5:33
Yes.
5:34
Or a crew.
5:35
With a crew.
5:36
Yeah.
5:37
Yeah.
5:37
Anyhow, before we get to talking about Aaron and not about Aaron talking with Aaron, I just want to remind people I have a Patreon. And you know something that Andrew Gibbs just signed up for. Nick Lane, Brian Hoff, you know, these are the people. These are the revolution, the real rebels. They are investing in something that will not give them their money back, but it will return in other ways.
5:38
They are true patrons in the truest sense. Patreon.com just shootapod is where you can throw us a buck or two. Support the show, keep it going. If you found any value in conversations like this or any of the other ones. Also, our. Our numbers are a little low, so it would be really awesome if we were breaking even on the show again.
5:58
So gross up our Patreon officially. Our Patreon income officially is lower than my cholesterol numbers now, and it's a bad sign.
6:18
Yeah. And I'd rather people spend more money than. Or eat a bunch of hot dogs just to kind of get those numbers adjusted.
6:24
Yeah, good point.
6:32
We just got a text while we were recording from producer Tyler, who was like, hey, what's the deal with this. This pilot you guys recorded? So we got to get on editing that or. Yeah.
6:34
Oh, the one where we review commercials and you didn't like my title.
6:42
Wait, what was the title?
6:46
Commercial Directors Watch Commercials.
6:47
When did you. I missed that. That's pretty good.
6:49
Yeah, commercial directors said it while we were recording and you just kept ignoring it.
6:51
Anyhow, it's a force of Habit.
6:56
Sometimes you just got to call your movie Cowboys and Aliens instead of Zora. Do you? Have you seen that interview where John Favreau was like, the reason Zora wasn't good, wasn't. Didn't do well. It's because the name.
6:58
Oh, that's funny.
7:09
And then I made Cowboys and Aliens, and he's like, this is going to do good because we're telling people exactly what it is. I don't think it did that well either.
7:11
It didn't. And also, that was Cowboys and Aliens was like, an instance where they licensed basically a picture that went viral.
7:17
Oh, really? Was it not a graphic novel or something?
7:26
No, I think it was, like, literally a poster.
7:28
Really?
7:32
Anyway, I could be wrong, you know, don't at me.
7:32
Okay. Let's talk to Aaron.
7:35
Aaron, you've always had vampire vibes.
7:38
Yeah, yeah.
7:41
No, I, I, I don't think I've seen you not wear. Wearing black. Like, I think that's literally true.
7:42
Steve Jobs also had that.
7:50
But sure, sure.
7:51
Black or blood red. Sad, you know?
7:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
7:54
Well, no, yeah, I, I was attracted to it because I, I liked it. But I think that more than anything, horror people were just my people. Like, the people who are really passionate about horror movies and making horror movies. And, like, those sets were often the most fun. I can't think of an experience, anything on any other genre that's like being on a horror movie and it's blood time. The whole crew just gets hype. We're gonna dump some buckets of blood on people.
7:56
Yeah, yeah.
8:21
Everyone's hyped. So I wrote a horror movie. I had no method of pink. I was incredibly broke. And so I had a friend who had recently done a Kickstarter for a short film, and I thought, heck, if I can raise some money for a short film, I'll just put it toward a feature and we'll just make a cheaper feature instead. And so we did Kickstarter. Raised money that way, immediately went into production. It was crazy.
8:22
How much did she raise?
8:44
We raised $60,000.
8:46
Again, what year is this?
8:48
This was 2015.
8:50
Okay, that's like, that's like $150,000.
8:53
Yeah, yeah. Truly though, right? Yeah, yeah. And also, like, you guys, you know, I imagine you didn't have to pay for a ton of gear because you guys have been kind of getting those. Buying that was always as you were going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:56
We weren't really buying stuff up. It was like just making friends and having people to, to call on people that would loan Us things or.
9:09
Sure.
9:16
You know, just finding out how to get access to that stuff. So we raised 60,000. The fun thing about Kickstarter is 10,000 of that immediately goes to fees. So really 50,000 from really, it's that high?
9:16
It's like 18% or something.
9:27
So yeah, Kickstarter took like 10 or more. There's credit card fees, there's like credit card drop offs. Right. Because people don't get charged till the end. And like not significant or. Sorry, a not insignificant amount of people's credit cards don't work anymore by the time they get charged. And then fulfilling rewards. Right. If you promise to ship.
9:29
Oh, right.
9:50
Anybody anything or print anything, you. You start looking at a lot especially. We had like a pretty good success with a lot of people. I know a lot of people that got a smaller amount of large donations. We got very few large donations, but we got like 800 of them.
9:51
And so that's 800 postage stamps, right?
10:05
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a lot of stamps. So we raised that money. And then. Yeah, in terms of gear and stuff like that, it was. We got a Panavision new filmmakers grant. So we got a camera for free. And then light.
10:08
Actually, I imagine the people who are listening to this episode would love to know about that grant actually. And I don't think we've ever talked about it and I've never won it. I feel like I've applied a couple times, so.
10:21
Interesting.
10:31
Kudos, Aaron.
10:32
I assume they're still doing it, but yeah, PAN has this ongoing program and I don't know what the limitations are on like how many of them they give out or anything, but it's like a rolling basis. You can apply to Panavision with a pitch, an idea. It's not really about the idea so much as it is about pitching that you are capable. It's. It's typically a first time filmmaker grant. I'm pretty sure you can't have made a film before or at least you can't have anything that like was successful or widely distributed.
10:33
You need. You must be a failure.
11:00
You must be a potential.
11:01
Yeah, right.
11:03
It's more about proving potential. My mom talks about the idea itself, but yeah, they, they award a certain number of filmmakers like basically a. A full camera package. There's limitations on, you know, what gear you can and cannot get out of that set your sights on, you know, an anamorphic lens set and all that kind of stuff. But it'll provide everything that you need. And what was fun with our film is that we actually they promised one camera, but we got them really excited because we wanted to shoot some of the movie on film and some of the movie digital flashbacks in the movie. And we wanted to shoot all the flashbacks, 16 millimeter, but we ended up getting 35 millimeter, I think, which is even cool.
11:03
Oh yeah. Wow.
11:38
So yeah, we shot flashbacks 35 millimeter. They give us a 35 millimeter camera. Fun fact. How did I afford the film? I didn't. I day played on Batman versus Superman and the.
11:40
As an actor?
11:51
No, as a camera assistant.
11:52
Oh.
11:54
And then the. The loader sent me home with box.
11:55
Are you, you're. Are you a union AC also?
11:58
I was not, but they were. They were doing pickups and I think that they like.
12:01
For VFX or something.
12:05
Exactly. Yes. They're doing like VFX pickups basically out in la because they shot the movie in Detroit and Chicago and stuff. So it was LA unit VFX pickups basically. Super chill day. We didn't have to do much of anything, but I think they'd hit their like union quotas or like whatever number they hit so they could bring on non union people. And so a friend just got me on as a non union.
12:06
I think the VFX houses too, if they're. If the production is kind of under their name, sometimes they can get away with different things.
12:26
I know. I think there's. It's. It's tricky. I know that like Lawson Deming who was on the show years ago and owns a VFX company, he joined the union so that he didn't have to worry about like shooting VFX plates and stuff like that actually. So maybe it's the other way. Yeah, yeah.
12:33
I think, I think technically I was a camera intern. Was.
12:50
I think on the call sheet it was film stealer.
12:53
Yeah. But so I got a big pile of 35 millimeter film and then I already had that. And so when we were deciding on the movie, I was like, well, I have like a.
12:56
You're like, my fridge is stuck.
13:05
We can shoot all the flashbacks on this. And my dp, Edon Menon, who shot that movie, was also extremely hyped.
13:07
Oh, Don was your dp?
13:14
Yeah, my first movie.
13:15
He's been on the podcast.
13:17
Oh, did he. I didn't know he did an episode.
13:19
Yeah.
13:20
Let's go back.
13:21
Yeah, yeah.
13:21
For Lost in a. Lost on a Mountain in Maine.
13:22
Right. Makes sense.
13:25
Yes.
13:25
Yeah, yeah.
13:26
Okay, nice. So pretty recently.
13:26
Yeah, yeah.
13:28
That's amazing. So, yeah, we went and shot in Florida and then we borrowed lighting Gear from my film school in Tallahassee.
13:29
Awesome.
13:35
So yeah, that's how we coddled together a lot of free stuff.
13:35
Sure.
13:39
Cost a lot. We crewed a lot of friends out of Florida. Other people, we, we flew out something. I was like, really, really changed my life as a filmmaker. I think during the Kickstarter. The entire Kickstarter and first feature process was not being afraid to ask other people for favors.
13:40
Sure.
13:56
And just the number of people that said, yes, let's do it, I'll make it work. Knowing that I either had done favors for them in the past or would be 100% good for another favor. Yeah, right.
13:56
Like, yeah, yeah.
14:08
You know, it's like we brought our crew out there and payment was all over the place, depending on what, who they were and how close I was with them. But you know, some people like you done and a few other crew members all piled into an Airbnb with, you know, not enough beds.
14:09
Sure.
14:23
Just did that whole thing to like.
14:23
Did, did, did the indie movie thing.
14:25
Yeah, exactly.
14:27
That's awesome. I, I think though also it's interesting because you had been working for a few years, Right. Like, I think that oftentimes there's that like little golden era after school where maybe people have a little bit of money. Maybe they like, they got some graduation money or like student loans haven't kicked in or maybe they had some savings that, you know, there's a kind of like this, this sweet spot where people aren't freaked out cash wise yet, but also don't have jobs. And I've seen features get made during that time where like payment is a little, you know, sometimes it's a stipend, sometimes it's just volunteer because you need the credit or whatever. But what's, what's interesting to me about it is that like this was a few years after that period of time for all of you.
14:28
But yeah, this is about going three, three plus years into us working in la.
15:17
You had been, you know, stockpiling favors that entire time. You know what I mean? Like, like we, the way that I was alluding to, like, oh, you were a Swiss army knife for that set. I always got the impression that you were doing that non stop and you weren't making a ton of money at college. Humor, I imagine. I don't know, none of us were. Right. So like in a sense doing favors for the people you were gonna ask to say shoot your film already for three or four years. So I think that's important for people to understand. It's like Everyone was working, everyone was busy. But because you had been there for them. And also it still is an opportunity, you know, I think that's kind of a perfect storm.
15:22
Yeah, exactly.
16:02
The other thing that, like in. In that era, because I had done a web series, which is how I ended up getting to work for CollegeHumor, we used to have this philosophy of like, if you can't pay them what they're worth, whether that's free or just a low rate or whatever, offering them the opportunity to up upgrade their skills, like give themselves a better credit in some way, I think was always a huge incentive. And because this is the first feature in your friend group, it makes. It makes all the difference. Right. Like whether Edan had shot a couple features already or not. I don't know. You know, like, DPs tend to get this shoot faster than us, but like. But you know, like, it's still meaningful. No, Regardless, you know, you still. You're. That.
16:03
That could break you, you know, you're 100% correct. I think it was a perfect storm. I am so glad that I built up the favors to do it. I'm also glad that I got to be on as many sets as I was on.
16:46
Sure.
16:58
Before. Well, I had worked on a ton of indie features at that point. Like at least 10. I've been on some real shit shows and that was incredibly helpful. Like low budget shit shows too.
16:58
So where you're like, hey, I should have a bed, you guys. We're all in an Airbnb together, right?
17:09
Yeah. And so I was able to. I'm. I was extremely, I think, aware of way things could go wrong, things that I saw other people do that I liked. But also I was crew and I was crew on all those things. And so I was very empathetic to what I was asking. And this has been a staple of my entire career as a producer and as a director is being incredibly aware. Having been crew for many years. I was backing after the feature too.
17:15
Sure.
17:39
For a few years. Like, what I can ask of my crew, what's reasonable, what their. I can anticipate a lot more of their needs. And by simply getting ahead of some of those things that I see so many other productions fail to get ahead of, I can kind of instantly prove that I'm trustworthy to people who might otherwise want to say no to a low budget horror movie.
17:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:58
I think I'm curious about, you know, your relationship to crew and stuff. Something that I learned like, very early on, actually, before I was even in film, when I was in college, I was an extra and I was on a TV show. And I remember talking to, like, the camera department just, like, between takes. And I mentioned something about the script because I had, like, read it somewhere. You know, there was a copy of it, and I read it and I mentioned something about some other scene. And they were like, oh, we. We didn't read the script. We have, like, no clue what you're talking about. Like, do you think, like, when you're working on a new film like that, like, that it's important that, like, the first AC has, like, read the script or, you know, like, where do you fall on that? Because I think as someone that's crude on a lot of things, sometimes they're like, I'm not. I'm day playing on the thing. I'm not gonna.
17:59
It really depends. I totally understand why people don't. I was a weirdo. I read the script for every single thing I ever worked on in. In any capacity. If I got the script that more than a night before we were there, I would read it. Feature, short, commercial, everything. And I found that that helped me. I obviously had greater aspirations and ulterior motives. And, like, sure, I was getting something else out of that. But even as a crew member, if I'm lighting something, I. I think it helped me a lot. Be that Swiss army knife and be so therefore, because I had a better understanding of the context of everything and being able to anticipate.
18:38
Right, so you kind of do have high standards for the crew, even though you empathize with them.
19:11
Yeah, I. I do have high standards. Similarly, like, I mean, you know, not to be callous or anything, but, like, long hours are the name of the game. Like, that is what we do. Obviously, there's. There's excessive points. If you're not breaking for lunch, if you're not paying overtime, like, if you're, you know, doing too much overtime, all of that, like, obviously can be egregious. But the number of times I would be on set with other people and maybe other members of my team, other crew members and stuff are just like, this is ridiculous. We have to do another take. What are we doing? It was just like, we'll do as many. We're paid to be here for 12 hours. We'll do as many takes as they want for 12 hours.
19:15
Yeah, yeah. Trying to make it good, you know.
19:51
Have you guys been on. I actually don't know, Matt, how many. Obviously, you produced an indie film and stuff, but, yeah, I don't know. If you did much crewing, I, I crewed on probably also, like, at least 10 indie features.
19:54
I, I really failed up. I, basically, I was a bad crew member. Oh. And not only was I a bad crew member, but I was trying my hardest. Which is the most embarrassing. Like, I was just like, sprinting, but in the wrong direction.
20:04
Yeah.
20:17
Right.
20:17
Can someone go get Matt? You know, like, I was, I was that energy. So pretty quickly I realized, oh, I
20:18
just need to be lost here.
20:24
I have to, I have to write and direct, otherwise this isn't going to work for me. You know what I mean?
20:25
Yeah. Because what I was going to ask is that, like, we, you know, Aaron, you mentioned being on a lot of shit shows, you know, coming up. Like, you, everyone's been on that set where they're like, yeah, if this director maybe would have prepped a little bit, we wouldn't be here till like 15 hours in, you know, they wouldn't do like 17 different versions of the scene. They wouldn't like, be, we wouldn't just. I'll be standing around waiting while they figure out what the shot is.
20:29
Right.
20:52
So there, there is some control. Yeah. That the director has over the hours of the day. Right?
20:52
Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
20:57
Yeah.
20:59
Of course there, there are obviously exceptions, but I'm referring to times when I thought it was completely reasonable that the director. The light was better over there and so we wanted to shoot over there instead.
20:59
We're going to do that. Yeah.
21:10
Right. And then camera's like, oh, my God, I gotta move the dolly. And it's like, yeah.
21:11
You sound like a real tyrant, Aaron.
21:14
Well, I, I, I think what the, the word that you use that I think I want to highlight is trustworthy. Right. Because to your point, filmmaking is hard and it's, it's, it's labor intensive and the hours are long. But there's a big difference between asking someone to do something because you are trustworthy because you know that it's going to make you have a good sense that it's going to make things better and that you were keeping an eye out on everyone's best interests and not abusing them, even though the work is hard versus being ignorant or, or naive or.
21:16
Yes.
21:53
Just oblivious to how hard things can be. Right. I think it's gonna be hard, but,
21:53
yeah, but that's the channel ultimately. Yeah. Trying to land that. Is that like, to, to Oren's question that. Yeah, I, I had, I had been there. I, I know what I'm asking and that sometimes it will be hard I'm not gonna pretend that it's not hard, but I also, like, you know, I want, I want the crew to trust me that because I've been there, I know what I'm. I'm asking them to do. And I'm only going to do that if I think it's worth it.
21:58
Right.
22:21
And that has always typically worked out for me. Yeah. So from there I directed that feature. And then.
22:22
And just to be Sorry, just to give it a little more context, that feature is called Sunset on the River Sticks.
22:27
That's correct.
22:32
I think one kind of interesting thing about it on the.
22:33
I think you owe me a T shirt, Aaron. No, I'm teasing. Too smart to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:34
Well, you had it for. For. I've. I've had this conversation years later a couple times.
22:42
Anyone is thinking about kickstarting or crowdfunding in general. T shirts are a bad idea.
22:48
Bad idea. Don't do them.
22:54
Bad idea. Multiple sizes. And they're very expensive to ship and they're expensive to print in the first place, you know, so, like the margins are crappy, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Sign a postcard, mail that to them. That's a postcard.
22:56
Digital Rewards.
23:08
Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
23:09
What I was going to say is one way that you can tell that, you know, you got a lot of Favors is the IMDb listing. If you look at the, the cast, you listed literally every single partygoer that was in the movie. Like, maybe a hundred people have made a party goer. And you're like, we can't pay you, but we're get you on IMDb.
23:11
And I, we did have like a hundred partygoers and we told everybody if they stayed all the way to rap, we would raffle off an iPad.
23:31
Oh, that's.
23:40
And we did somebody.
23:41
Yeah.
23:41
And it was like an old home
23:42
with, with a brand new iPad, but that cost significantly less than paying 100 extras.
23:43
I.
23:48
Did you.
23:48
Did you buy the iPad or did, like, somebody win an iPad at a raffle or something like that?
23:49
Oh, I'm not. My producer came up with that one.
23:54
Okay.
23:56
That was a Travis Campbell, so I'm not sure where he got that. And honestly, I don't want to know.
23:57
Sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, like, sometimes it's like, oh, it's a rap gift or something. You know, sometimes people end up with stuff that like, you know, they don't want. So. That's funny. Anyway. Yeah.
24:01
So.
24:12
So back on track. So you made, you made this first movie, I assume it did like, Some festivals, et cetera, et cetera, talk to us about distributing it. Actually, let's fast forward to there because I imagine there's some lessons with that first feature, right?
24:12
Absolutely. So, fun fact, our festival premiere for Sunset River Sticks was scheduled to be March 20th of 2020. And so we actually not a notable at all time. We were at cinequest in San Jose premiere. The first of four screenings.
24:27
I'm on my way to cinequest the day after tomorrow, actually. Very exciting. Yeah.
24:48
And it is my nemesis.
24:53
Your nemesis. Oh, wait.
24:54
It's actually. I don't know if you knew this, Matt, but it's the very first film festival I ever played in the cinequest.
24:56
I think we've talked about cinequest a decent amount. So, like, I feel like me, when
25:01
I lived in San Francisco when I was still an engineer, I made a short and that's where it premiered. But we've. The reason they're our nemesis, Aaron, is because we've gotten onto their, like, PR list somehow, and we just get endless. I mean, we've gotten 30 emails today, people saying, can you mention my film on your podcast?
25:06
Oh, my gosh.
25:23
What? No.
25:24
Yeah.
25:25
Aaron Pamiano.
25:26
Yeah.
25:27
Yeah.
25:28
Amazing. So we're set for Film Quest Covet Hit. Literally. We were at cinequest, whole cast was. Came out, crew was there. My mom came out from Florida, and they shut down the festival.
25:28
Like, you were already out there. Yeah, in San Jose, they shut down
25:40
the festival for the day of our screening. Fortunately, they said we're gonna finish out the day. So our screening did happen, but under the warning that nobody should do it.
25:43
Yeah, we're gonna leave.
25:52
Yeah. No one go, but we're gonna finish the screening.
25:55
So, yeah, they're like, as long as you wipe down your seat with an antibacterial pad.
25:57
I don't think we were even to that. We were just like, everyone stay home. And, like, flatten the curve. Right? It was like an era.
26:04
Yeah, yeah, it was that, exactly. So people did come out. I mean, we had a great first screening, to be honest. Awesome. But it was under this, like, crazy situation and risk your life.
26:10
Come to our screen.
26:19
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very weird time. But so, yeah, so I went there. We tried the digital festival thing, Right. Because then a lot of festivals started launching the digital festivals. None of them knew how to do it yet. We found that it was fairly valueless to play any of these digital festivals. Got nothing out of it. And so we just went to. And I say we. I'm talking about myself and my Producer Travis, who is like my producing partner and most things. So we sent that out to. We started just hitting up distro companies. Anyone we'd met, we cold emailed places, some places cold emailed us and we ended up, yeah, we took a lot of meetings. Mostly abysmal, mostly bad offers.
26:20
In what ways were they bad or were they disappointing?
26:56
So in ways that have only gotten worse, which is that there's a lot of predatory sales agents and distribution companies out there that they're holding. Still today, you're saying. Yeah, still today. And I would say it's worse now than it was then because this ended up working out for them. But there's a lot of ones that basically scoop up these like little indie films. They pay $0, right. There's no upfront money. They simply accept the rights to your film and then they add it to a giant catalog of films that they then just try and shop around to whatever screen platform.
26:59
And when you say a giant catalog, you mean like hundreds, thousands of titles? Right?
27:34
Anywhere from 20 to thousand. Yeah. Where it's like there's, there's actually no at the time. Right. Because we're talking. This was 20, 20, 2021, where we're having all these meetings and stuff. We were still on the up. What seemed like the upswing of the. The streaming things.
27:38
More and more, everyone's staying home, people are watching movies. Yeah, more and more.
27:52
Yeah. I mean, yeah, the Netflix will green light anything era, but I'm saying even more new platforms that you probably never heard of and has since died.
27:59
Totally, totally.
28:07
So there's a lot of those that are just, they want a catalog, they wanna, they wanna launch with a thousand movies, but they have no money to pay for those movies. And so they just promise ad revenue. There's all these distribution companies that sort of jump in to do that. So that was most of the meetings that we took. And I had been cautioned, fortunately by. I'd asked a lot of filmmakers who were more further along in their career for a lot of advice during these things. After every meeting, there was a couple different people that I would call to talk about it that had done that before. And yeah, a lot of stay away. A lot of don't do it, don't sign it. Because basically there will never be any sort of ad or like nothing will ever advertise your movie. Right. You will just exist in the off chance that somebody clicks on something related.
28:08
You're hoping the, the algorithm surfaces your film.
28:51
Algorithmic. Yeah.
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30:25
But but sorry but I think Aaron's getting at something even worse than no marketing. It's no marketing and also not surfaced on these platforms. Like think of.
30:35
Think about your not like hey premiering this week on it'll never be recommended.
30:46
You might also like yeah right, right.
30:51
Only be you you have to search for them directly or they'd be on a YouTube. You're banking on the algorithm to put them on the oh you watched x other vampire movie. Here's other movies you might like.
30:54
Right. Right. So so if you were the type of person who really drills down into like fun low budget vampire movies on that platform, then maybe you get there. Right. But like, even if that platform licenses some better known vampire movies, the likelihood that them going from Interview with a Vampire to Blade to you, it's more likely it would surface Brad Pitt and Wesley Snipes movies.
31:06
Correct.
31:37
Than your movie. Right. It's like genre is kind of the least important of those things. So.
31:38
So it's.
31:42
It's not. It's like the algorithm is burying your movie basically because it's trying to surface the things that it thinks people are going to want to watch the most. Which is the most famous movies, basically.
31:43
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we didn't fully escape that, but we did sign with a better company that did at least put some effort into pushing our. Our movie was sold on its own at least. Right. As opposed to being part of things. So we did, we did get some upfront, upfront money. We got an mg, it's called a money guarantee upfront from the movie. It was not high, but we went to a specific platforms as well. We weren't just on these like weird third party random free to upload platforms hoping for ad revenue. So we got a bet. We got the best deal that we could get at the time. I definitely learned a lot from it. And did you have a sales rep there? We did not have a sales rep. Now we were doing it all ourself. The sales reps we had talked to either didn't really have anything.
31:54
We.
32:37
Anything that we felt was like a track record that was provable or the sales rep want. Sales reps want money front. Yeah.
32:37
Pretty typical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know when we, When I did my first feature, you know, we paid the sales rep a lot of money. We ended up kind of finding the distributor on our own, but we. It's already like. So you're taking off so much off the profits just from this money you paid the sales rep, which you didn't really need. I mean, a lot of them are great and we've had a couple on this podcast.
32:45
Yeah, yeah. And we've had. I mean, Glenn Reynolds is, I think probably the person you're referencing or. But he does charge.
33:05
Yeah, the art guys.
33:13
Oh, right, yeah, sure.
33:14
Michael and. Yeah, yeah, those guys.
33:15
Yeah, there's a lot of people. Those people are out there and they're great. None of them talk to us. The people that did talk to us or people who wanted to charge money and also had never had a movie. I Didn't have any movies I had ever heard of or that I could find on a farm.
33:18
Cool. So. So then you got to. It Needs Eyes. Is that. Is it It Needs Eyes, your second feature?
33:33
It is my second feature, but I actually moved into produced between. There was about. That was 2026. We shot River Sticks that came out in. On streaming in 2021. And then for the past like four years or so, I actually ended up moving into producing full time.
33:37
Full time. Interesting. Yeah.
33:53
Yeah. Other. How do you feel about low budget stuff?
33:55
Yeah. Are you happy you're producing or would you wish you were directing?
33:58
Yeah, no, I love it. I love producing. I mean, I want. I want to direct more than I want to produce, but if I'm producing for people that I believe in whose projects that I. I like and things that I. People I love working with, it's an absolute joy. Awesome.
34:02
I think producing is kind of cool if you can get things made, you know.
34:14
Yeah. My specialty has become basically getting things made when there's not a lot of resources and not a lot of money. Right. So it's like, I'm a producer, but no one's gonna hire me to shoot a Hyundai commercial. I'm a producer who knows how to take, you know, 50 grand and.
34:19
Yeah.
34:33
Turn it into a whole movie.
34:33
You know how to turn one bucket of blood into 15 with a garden hose and a little more glycerin or something.
34:35
Yeah, exactly. You know? You know, I produce, I get my hands dirty. Right. And like someone needs to move those lights around and gaffer's over there.
34:42
So I got back and roll.
34:49
Yeah.
34:50
I'm curious about the models because I think when we were emailing back and forth, you alluded to. Yeah. Kind of some of the different ways that you're getting these movies financed. Because basically Aaron, there's a percentage of our audience who is like, Aaron's doing the thing I want to do. I love horror movies. I want to just make horror movies with my friends and I don't care what it costs. But how do you keep. How can you afford to keep doing it basically is the big question.
34:51
So.
35:15
So walk us through kind of post. Post first distribution how you've managed to stay on this flywheel and what. What that looks like.
35:15
Sure. Yeah. It's one of the most. My favorite things to talk about and I love giving this advice and the number one thing I tell anyone and everyone, if you want to make an indie film, don't write a script and then figure out how to make it. Right. Figure what do you already have access to write a script around that?
35:25
And I've resources.
35:41
Exactly right to your resources. But I've heard people say similar things and then need to find an island. Right. And then somehow still have to do something.
35:43
We did have a guest that found an island to shoot her.
35:52
Well, no, no, the other way around. She had an island.
35:55
She. Yes, okay, you're right.
35:58
You're right.
35:59
She had an island.
35:59
Exactly. So. So I say two very specific. Whenever I tell my directors that come to me who want to like write a script, I do it myself. When I'm writing, I make a list of like cool locations I already know I can get or think I can get. And I might. I will make that phone call before I write the script. Locations. Keep logistics small, down to the actors even. Right. Like I'll talk to actors before I even write a script for at least if, you know, if I'm. If I'm definitely going the micro budget route and not trying to get an actor to get more financing or anything, but then even down to just like more crew stuff. Right. Like who Sunset, the River Sticks. I wrote with an extremely strong visual push because I knew I had idot.
36:00
Right.
36:44
I. I wrote characters with. I literally wrote costumes into the movie because I had Laura Ortiz to do the costumes. Exactly. You don's wife, a costume designer. And so I had both of them. And so I was like, okay, that is an asset that I have. If I didn't have them, I would have not written characters that wore like uniforms or elaborate vampire getups or anything.
36:45
I literally would just go to Nordstrom Rack. Right, right.
37:07
Yeah, exactly. I would have changed the characters to not need those things.
37:10
That's smart. I wonder if you ever would be like, oh, there, there's this actor is. They're like a friend of a friend. And I think they're kind of gettable. Like I should just write a role for like a, A leading role for them and kind of.
37:14
I'm in like, I'm in the process of that currently. Absolutely. And those are people that I've met, you know, through, through crewing and stuff as well. And being able to produce things with some, some names that I now have like.
37:27
Right.
37:37
Like Superman and I have access to. Yeah, yeah.
37:37
Batman and Superman.
37:41
You know, Batman and Netflix. Super excited about my never budget horror.
37:42
It's like, as long as it's AI, we're in.
37:45
Yeah, yeah, sure. Right.
37:47
But so that's.
37:49
And also actually. Or Aaron, can you, can you say some numbers out loud actually? Because I Think that's actually helpful for people as well. Right. Like, where. Where are these movies kind of living? What space are they in?
37:50
Right, Absolutely. And that can get me into my next point, which is where does that money come from? Which I'm sure happy to talk about and I think is. Is hard to hear or hard to get access to information sometimes.
38:02
Sure.
38:11
So River Sticks, obviously crowdfunded for 50 grand. We ended up paying a lot. I put a lot more money into it over the next few years. Right. Shot in 2016, came out in 2021.
38:12
I.
38:24
My producer and I were working gigs and putting money into a bank account, like out of. Like we were putting into a savings
38:24
account, basically instead of buying a house, you're. You're making a movie.
38:31
Right, Exactly. So we're putting all that in the post. We're like, okay, we need an editor. Or put money into a bank account so we can afford an editor. Hire the editor. Great. Put money into a. Save up again so we can hire a sound designer. Pay that out. Save up money again for our vfx. Pay a VFX artist. Because these were favors I didn't have. Right.
38:36
Yeah, that's.
38:52
That's fascinating. Right. It's like you're. Because you're living in the production world. That's.
38:53
I didn't know any post people.
38:57
You didn't know any post people. And also the. The challenge of production is like, you can't just like you're. You're dead tired. Right. You just work 12 hours. It's not like you could go edit it yourself. And you also haven't been practicing editing the way that you've been practicing every other aspect of the craft. That's really interesting.
38:59
I think the advice I'd give most people, if you can edit your own movie, you should. I happen to be friends with Michael Felker, and I thought he was just so much better of an editor than I was, that he. He was willing to do like crazy stuff for low numbers for me. But I wanted to buy his time. I didn't want him to be editing it slowly over the course of two years between gigs. And so I went to Michael and I was like, I want to buy a whole month of your time and actually just be able to sit in the edit booth with you and I will make that happen, whatever that number is. Of course, that number was much lower
39:17
than, you know, sure it should have been.
39:47
Yeah, yeah. So that's Rhystics. And then beyond that, everything else I've produced has been for. For indie movies. Everything has been between. Oh, there's one for way lower. Well, did one for about $14,000, but then all the way up to about $100,000. So everything's lived in. In that space. I've produced bigger. I was doing some event producing for a while that had much bigger budgets than that, which is always hilarious to me. We blow three times the highest I could have.
39:49
I could have made a movie three times for the amount of money we spent on a day. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
40:16
But. But for features. Yeah. It's all in that sort of micro budget sub $100,000 range that I've been existing and living in, which requires leveraging the resources you already have. And any director I've ever worked with that has not been able. Has not come to the table with those resources. I've. And I can't provide them because I often bring those resources. I've crude entire movies for. For friends with people that I had. But if there's a resource you don't have, your budget blows up immediately. Oh, there's a dance sequence. I don't know, a dancer or a choreographer. They don't either. Well, that's going to be an insane amount of our budget is going to now go to this thing we don't have as a favorite.
40:22
Yeah. And you also, like, need it to be good. Right?
41:00
Right. And you need to be good. And so it's all about, you know, it is obvious old advice. I'm not going to harp on this, but like, it's got to be focused on character. It has to have some sort of like, clear hook, in my opinion of like what it is that you're making and trying to say, but where that money comes from. Right. And I think this has become. It's shocking to me sometimes how many indie films that you've heard of with like known indie directors that like, I know you guys probably know and stuff that are still self financed. Right. From either the success of their previous films. You know, successful directors who have had films do well and they make money off of it and then they're still paying for their next film themselves out of that money. The other way that I've gotten things. So sometimes it comes just from the director, from the writer. The director will just come out, come to me, we'll budget it out and they'll be like, okay, I have. I have 80 grand, or whatever I can. I'm just gonna pay for it. The other place it comes from is private investment, which is a growing thing I've seen from a Lot of indie filmmakers, friend of a friend's uncle or something like that.
41:03
Right.
42:08
This is the, this is the rich dentist model, basically.
42:09
Exactly. It's. And if you know any dentist, everyone's talking about the dentist. I don't know any dentist, so I'm not working with dentists much. But yeah, it's, it's the rich dentist model. It is getting someone who you're tangentially related to who a thinks it would be cool to be accredited executive producer on a movie. That's an essential component. But the other thing is has needs to take a big loss for the year because of the amount of money that they've made, and they need to invest money into something that takes a loss so they don't get taxed on it. And then a movie, a feature film, is 100% of the time a loss in the year that you pay for it.
42:12
Right, right.
42:48
And so we've been able to successfully pitch that a couple of times for a couple other horror movies.
42:49
I once met a producer whose entire model was, hey, we're going to make a very expensive movie that will not make money. So you rich people who need to take a loss can just funnel their money directly into these movies without worrying about it. Right.
42:55
I've heard that my, our model has been. My model. The people I've worked with that we've been successfully doing this with has been. They need to take a loss now, but they do want that money to come back to them.
43:15
Sure.
43:25
There's no advantage of just losing.
43:28
Losing money. Yeah, yeah, totally.
43:30
But. But there is an advantage of investing it in a film instead of in the irs. Right, right.
43:31
Yep, exactly. And so, yeah, let's see. I did a movie for. For 90, did 1 for 80, did 1 for 60, and then I wish I did 1 for 15. And that was. That was both the hardest and one of the most fun movies I've ever been a part of.
43:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at 15, obviously, like, basically you're, you're. That's burrito money. Right? Like, that's just like, like literally. Yeah.
43:50
That's making a movie for free and going over budget by 15,000.
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44:35
And you. This is a movie you produced. You didn't direct, Correct.
45:00
I produced and shot it and did a lot of DP and lit it. And our crew is three people for that one, which was fun.
45:03
Do you find, Like, I'm curious as a dp, because I used to shoot things, you know, when I first moved to la, and I own some lights and I. Yeah, you know, I feel like I'm. I understand the concept of lighting, but I don't think I've, like, stayed up to date. Like, when I started, you know, we used, like, airy kits and kino flows and things, and now it's, like, just totally different. I don't even know the names of the lake.
45:10
It's all panels and tubes.
45:29
It's like cream your. You know, vortex cream, whatever.
45:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:34
I'm like, what is like. You know, even Quasar is like, call me an old man if I, like, use that.
45:35
I say Quasar and they roll the rice. Yeah.
45:40
So. And it's like, aperture. Isn't that for prosumers? And they're like, no, it's like, the best. Like, so how do you, like, as a dp, how are you kind of staying up to date on, like, how to shoot and light things? Or is that. Does that not really change over the years?
45:43
That's a great question. I mean, it. Sometimes you're using ARRI kits and jokers. So the $15,000 one, we had one. We had an arri kit, one Joker 801 light mat, and we lit the entire film with those three lights.
45:56
I feel like anytime someone says joker in this context, there should be a sound cue. And there's a sound cue in my brain of just like, oh, like, you know, I. I go back in time. Like, it's just like such a. I
46:11
love that light of the gym ball, you know?
46:24
Yeah, it was the best.
46:27
It's like an hmi.
46:28
Yeah.
46:29
That was like, you could take on
46:30
an airplane and you wouldn't blow a circuit. You could plug it into house power. It was. It was the only light, but that's all you need.
46:31
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
46:38
Yeah. I mean, nowadays with. You know, I. I've talked about this way too much, but Train Dreams, which was shot like almost completely with natural light. And I did this. I worked at. I did VFX on a commercial that Mike Mills directed and Greg Fraser shot. Cool. And they used like two light tubes and everything else is practical lights. And it was all nighttime stuff too.
46:39
Oh.
46:57
Like a Christmas scene. And you're like, yeah, I guess it's being. You can do it.
46:57
For me, it's always like, we. If I'm DPing something now, which I do shoot occasionally, it's about what do I have access to and making the most out of that. There might be some specific asks that I like, you know, demand, but honestly, I've been a producer on everything that I've DP'd as well.
47:01
Sure, sure, sure.
47:17
I'm a conflict of my own interest if I want a bigger light. So it's like, you know, what do we have access to? How do I make the most out of that? And then, yeah, leveraging natural light and practical light as much as possible and making that the style of the film. Right.
47:18
You.
47:32
You find yourself in a hole if you want to make a style of film that you cannot afford the gear for.
47:32
Right.
47:39
And then the next part of it is back to what you said. I still to this day, I have friends now that own rental houses. Sure, sure. Or like, have Mr. Coyote. I still. People that have like an insane amounts of gear and rent them out all the time. I'm able to call on them because I hired them and I got them all of their work.
47:40
Right, right, right.
47:58
When they first.
47:59
That's.
48:00
The other thing is, like, you do have to be a connector and be a sharer. You have to be like, hey, this person will be perfect for this. Like, making sure that you're putting other people's names out there is part of it. Aaron, can I ask a hard question that we can cut out if you don't want to answer it?
48:00
Sure, yeah.
48:15
But hearing these numbers, hearing $15,000, $80,000, $60,000, $100,000, and knowing how much of that needs to go onto screen in order for them to be good and knowing how committed you are to making a good movie, are you making a living doing this? Where does your. Where does your life come from? You know what I mean?
48:16
That's a great question. So I make very Little money from indie features. As a producer, I make my money producing events and music videos and things like that. In between those things, I've been producing a lot of branded social media nonsense.
48:37
Sure.
48:52
Yeah, yeah.
48:53
This is the stuff that, you know.
48:53
Yeah, yeah.
48:55
It's all, all of our bread gets buttered the same way, it sounds like.
48:56
But it is funny because when we, you know, when you talk about commercial and you're like, oh, they've only got a hundred thousand dollars, you know, it's. It's just a different.
48:59
Yeah.
49:06
Scale of budgets.
49:07
No, 100. I do, you know, when, when possible, we try and budget. So that crew, including myself, gets paid on movies, but it's. It's rent money. Right. You're not making money.
49:09
You're.
49:18
You're surviving on it for the most part. But what's what I love about it essentially is I feel like what I'm doing essentially is giving a lot of other directors the opportunity to do what I was able to do, essentially. Right. I've done a lot of directors, like first movies or help people do their first music videos and stuff. And then. Yeah, as I was doing that, I was able to start booking more things that could pay for my life, then go on hiatus every so often to go shoot like just a fun movie with a bunch of cool people.
49:19
Yeah, yeah. You're like, what's his name? Box Car Bir. Like Roger Corman. The Roger Corman of
49:48
maybe. That's funny. My distributor for It Needs Eyes. He wants to be the Roger Corman of today.
49:56
He's okay. Does he say that?
50:01
Yeah, yeah, actively.
50:03
Good, good, good.
50:04
Well, so about It Needs Eyes, your latest movie. I did notice that you, you have a co director on it and you also are the cinematographer on it. So does that, how does that affect, like directing, actors and like, kind of.
50:05
Sure.
50:17
You know, the, the specifics of the filmmaking part, like the onset part.
50:18
Yeah. So it Needs Eyes was basically an opportunity that came to us from our distributor, Insurgents. We were pitching some other stuff, trying to get more money for another feature that we would attach cast and all this stuff to. But Insurgents was specifically doing micro budget movies. They had a budget cap. They're like, we want to make a movie up to this amount and no more.
50:22
Can you say that number out loud or no?
50:41
I'll say it.
50:43
Yeah.
50:44
$30,000. Okay, awesome. So, yeah, less than, you know, less than half of what I made my first feature for sure. And so we just wrote.
50:44
And the premise. You, you guys, you wrote this movie too. Because I see the premise is kind of based on like screens and.
50:53
Yeah. So I. I went to my co writer, co director Zach some.
50:59
We.
51:03
We'd been writing together. We'd pitched. We'd written and pitched some cartoon shows. So like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and stuff. And we just had like. We have a great synergy together. And I was like, I have this opportunity to do a very tiny movie. Will you come on and do it with me? As no one I trust creatively more than you. And I think that he create. He logistically fills in holes that I don't. That I. That I lack. Right. And so we're gonna make this for no money. We're gonna have to be able to do it ourselves. There has to be basically in case nobody shows up to set except us because we can't pay them. What can both of us do? He's really talented with like art direction and set design and. And that kind of stuff. And I'm more talented with camera and lighting and those things. And so we kind of like fit together very perfectly. We wrote the movie together. We wrote it to be tiny in. In premise. I've been told many times hopefully that it doesn't feel tiny, but it is essentially it's a movie about a teen girl on her fun for 90 minutes. Obviously we leave that we do other things but that carries the film is that it's. It's mostly a one location situation with a girl interacting with the world through her computer.
51:04
And do you have to. What's the company that does the Timor or you know the.
52:14
Yeah, the editors. Baslev is. I can never remember how to say it right. Bas. But yes. Yeah. But Tina Burkhoff. It's screen movies. Her.
52:19
What was the movie snatched or he
52:28
did Searching, missing and. And also Mercy is the best lovers show.
52:30
Yeah. Yeah.
52:35
Yes. Screen life where a lot. A lot of the content is made in post.
52:36
I like those movies, you guys.
52:40
They're really good.
52:42
Yeah, we actually specifically didn't do that. There's not a lot.
52:42
Yeah, there's not a lot of screen. There's not a lot of story that's being told on the screens.
52:46
No, not really. There's story being told on the screens but not with the care. I think I feel like the definite. What defines the screen life in some ways is that your main characters are on a lot of like Zoom calls and FaceTime calls and things like that. We're actively not doing that we watch.
52:50
That is actually kind of expensive.
53:04
That's like a point. It leans into a more found footage Element. We didn't do that. Ours is a lot more traditional cinema, shot cinema, but we're. We're watching somebody watch a lot of things.
53:06
Right. And then you can't let go. You can't let go of shallow depth of field and cool lenses and lights.
53:16
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. Yeah. Where's. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So I wrote with Zach. We directed it together, but we were able to basically show up to set, divide and conquer different tasks so that we could trust each other to go get done, reconvene. We had talked so extensively with each other and with the cast ahead of time. Like, both of us before, we had stuff in our hands to be able to try and, you know, convey what we wanted to be happening on set. And then, yeah, we came up with some hand signals on set to give each other if we, you know, wanted to say something to each other without saying it out loud in front of the actors.
53:23
Oh, okay.
53:57
To make sure that there wasn't ever a conflict where somebody was like, oh, we're good, we're moving on, or no, we need another.
53:58
Yeah, yeah.
54:05
We didn't want to argue in from the cast.
54:06
What were the hand signals? I'm curious.
54:08
It was super basic, but it was basically like the way I was holding the camera usually, like, because he.
54:10
He.
54:15
Because I was always holding the camera, he was typically the like, walk up to the actors and give them notes and stuff. Sure, right. And so he confer with me, but I didn't want us to have to, like, confer and talk then go back between every single take. And so I just had like a. A series of, like, you would hold
54:15
up one finger, two finger, or your thumb out. Yeah. Yeah. Great.
54:30
Based on if you loved it, like, it's like, yeah, Bas it a score
54:33
basically, like one to five.
54:36
It was not. No, that. That would have made sense, but it was more specific. Like, we need another. Was like, thumb was technically a thumbs up, but it's not obvious.
54:38
Sure.
54:45
So I'm like, hold me. So, like, thumb is. Is. Yeah, we're good to go. Let's move on. One is I need another, and two is I need another, and I need to talk to you about it.
54:46
Oh, interesting.
54:53
I love that. You know, I would also just. I would just give directions and stuff too. It wasn't like. It was like a silent part, but if there was something we needed to, like, talk about.
54:54
There's something so novel about this. This hand code, though. I'm. I'm curious.
55:01
Did you.
55:04
Did it just evolve?
55:05
I can never use it. Again, now it's out here.
55:07
Sure, sure. This is a very popular podcast, but did you guys, like, sidebar be like, hey, if I. If I do this, it means this? Or, like, did it just kind of happen? Organ, you know. Awesome.
55:09
I had co directed once before on a short film, and I didn't have communication worked out, and I. I love her to death. It was. She was great. No complaints about her as a person. The communication was a disaster, I felt, in a lot of ways. And so I realized I needed to get ahead of that this time.
55:18
Awesome.
55:34
Awesome.
55:34
I love that co directing is. But I think we've also all been on sets where there's a co. There's co directors, and it's like, ready and, you know, action, and someone says they're line and cut. And then it's like 20 minutes of, like, just being whispering behind the monitor.
55:35
Yep. Didn't want to do any of that. Wanted to feel like we were moving and grooving.
55:50
Yeah. So that's awesome. That's awesome. Can I ask, when you're making a $30,000 movie, what are you spending the money on?
55:54
Similarly, you're trying to make everything for free and going over budget. We spent money on our limited amount of cast. We spent money on lodging for the cast because we had definitely.
56:01
Where did you shoot that one?
56:12
Connecticut. But we unfortunately did not mean we were trying so hard to cast out of Connecticut in New York, because New York is right there. New York City, sure. Incredible actors, but the best tapes we got were from Florida.
56:13
Oh, interesting.
56:25
No way.
56:25
Yeah.
56:26
And so we were trying so hard to, like, fight about this logistically, but at the end of the day, we were like, these are the best actors that we have. And so we flew. It was not sagged.
56:26
Interesting that the best. Why do you think the best tapes were coming from Florida? I mean, New York. Were you looking at Chicago?
56:37
Hide your skepticism a little bit more.
56:42
It's.
56:45
It's.
56:45
It's.
56:46
Well, it's not. It's nothing about Florida. It's more about New York.
56:46
It's.
56:49
It's about network. It's about us having a stronger network of people in casting director who had, like, stronger. We did not have a casting director now. Wow. And so we were going to friends and asking for wrecks, and then we did like, the backstage thing and we, you know, posted, like, for tapes and stuff. But yeah, the best wrecks came from our network, and our network was strongest, I think, in Florida, of people who had the, like, hidden diamonds, basically. Of people who were like, this person Rules. And they will say yes. Right.
56:50
What's the minimum budget for an indie feature to make it sag? Because I feel like people are making like two thousand dollar shorts that are SAG all the time.
57:18
You know, you. I think shorts are totally different if
57:26
it is a feature for profit. Basically with the, the. It may have changed. We shot before the SAG strike, so some of these rules might have changed. I know they've updated their stuff, but at the time, basically if you're making an indie feature for profit, you cannot defer the pay. You have to. Unless there's like it's.
57:29
I thought it gets triggered on distribution. Like when you acquire distribution.
57:48
There's not. No.
57:52
So what. But, but there's a minimum is like, it's like 100 bucks a day or something, right?
57:53
Yeah, the minimum is like, it's 215 or something. Is SAG minimum.
57:56
Oh, per day.
58:01
Wow.
58:02
It's gone up since I, I was involved in that stuff per day.
58:02
But it's not, it's not the day rate. Subica. Happily we. We did pay those day rates. Like we. Yeah, SEG minimum is not the problem. It's all of the, the healthcare and pension. Look into SAG. If you make a $15,000 feature, you're not doing sack. If you make a $30,000 feature with like one actor doing like a one man show, you could probably do sag. You can get an incredible actor. You could do, you know, Tom Hardy and lock in a car.
58:07
Sure.
58:30
There you go.
58:31
With a SAG actor for 30 grand probably, if that actor is super down for, you know, the minimum being locked
58:31
into a coffin or whatever.
58:37
But yeah, so I wouldn't recommend anyone really go SAG for like a standard or typical movie for, for less than 100 grand.
58:38
Okay. So 100 grand is kind of like triggers. I mean, you obviously met your guys's movie was very sad.
58:45
Yeah. Yeah.
58:50
See you next Christmas.
58:51
The bottom level for reference for SAG, the SAG's Ultra Low Budget movie, the bottom floor of what they consider like the cap, the minimum cap is $200,000
58:52
ultra low budget, by the way. It's up to 300 now.
59:02
Oh, that increased.
59:04
Yeah. So besides actors, you see you were saying lodging. Right. So finding people out. Right.
59:05
So money on. On actors, on lodging and then gosh, honestly, what did we.
59:10
That's most of it probably, right?
59:15
That's probably most of it, yeah. Oh, food, sure.
59:17
Yeah.
59:21
Honestly, like feeding people like real food every day adds up quite a lot. And then post some VFX sound Design those kinds of things. There's the extremely time intensive stuff I'm a, I'm a firm believer in. I'm sure they're out there. Really hard to find post people that can do something for a favor and did not drag on for a really, really, really long time because you're not for any fault of their own. Like they cannot prioritize your movie if you have a friend editing it for free that cannot prioritize it or sound designing it for free. Right. Like edit it yourself. Honestly. But get a real sound person and any sound person who says they can do it for free or for extremely cheap. My experience 100% of the time has been it's going to take nine months for your rough.
59:21
Sure.
1:00:05
And so if you don't want that, you do have to. To pay them something. And I think it's better. I think it's not just like, oh, you have to. It's like it's, it's much better for everybody involved. Everybody will like each other better and you'll get your, your sound design done well.
1:00:06
And I think the hard thing is like there, there's a large number of crew positions where exposure doesn't help. Right. Like a director directing a movie for free. There's still a very clear upside. Same for writers. Same for producers to a certain extent and cinematographers. But like the people who are less visible, the people who aren't out at the Q and A holding microphones.
1:00:20
Yeah.
1:00:45
You know what, what else is it? It's not just for the love of the game. Right. That they're doing this work.
1:00:46
Yeah. They don't, they don't get to reap a lot of the rewards and benefits of and stuff and other things we spend money on like incidental stuff like tape. I mean it's not right, but. Yes. And then all these little things that stack up and staples and paper and copies, you know, that ends up being
1:00:51
hard drives are so expensive now you
1:01:08
guys, we did even just giving people rides and stuff. Probably send someone in an Uber.
1:01:10
Literally Ubers to the hotel and back. Gas. It's like all those little things that are like not part of the filmmaking because we did all that for free. Gear was free.
1:01:15
Right.
1:01:23
Camera was free. Again, all that was free. But it was all these like little extra things. Double A batteries for the sound kit.
1:01:24
The worst.
1:01:31
Yeah. $40,000 in double A batteries.
1:01:32
There you go.
1:01:34
So how, so how can people watch the movie now?
1:01:35
Great question. So we partnered with our distributor Insurgents, who is a self proclaimed leading the indie revolt they're trying a lot of interesting and cool stuff that I'm pretty excited about. In the indie space. We are doing a roadshow and so we are currently traveling, my co director and I, intermittently. It's all. I'm at all of them. He's coming for some of them. And some of our cast. We're traveling the country like a band in an rv, driving city to city, showing the movie. And so we.
1:01:38
And how do you get people to show up?
1:02:06
That is a great question. So far it's been a combination of obviously activating our local networks. Right. We're going to play in major cities where we know people that we can basically grassroots political style, like politics. They'll be like, hey, can you get five friends to like me come to
1:02:08
this cool indie movie? It's a once in a lifetime. Yeah, yeah, yep.
1:02:24
Inviting people. We're trying to play it. We played a lot of indie theaters and stuff, and a lot of those theaters have like some built in audiences and fan bases and we've had people come just through the theaters advertising and then the last one. We're trying a lot of different stuff we're doing. We're trying to dial into local, like Facebook groups or film clubs. Film groups. Horror fans club groups. That's been a helpful one. And then Instagram and Facebook ads.
1:02:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating. You know, I. I always fantasize about a new model and the roadshow being part of it. Obviously, like, you know, Hundreds of Beavers is like the textbook.
1:02:53
Yep. Right.
1:03:05
For listeners who don't know that was a movie that's VFX driven, but like essentially made by three or four people. Right.
1:03:06
And you saw it at like a roadshow type of thing, right?
1:03:14
No, no, no. I. I think I became aware of it, Kelly. Oh, yeah, Kelly. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But they did this great roadshow where, you know, it's essentially like if Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton made a Looney Tunes cartoon right, in black and white with vfx. So it's like it's the lead and a guy in a beaver costume doing shtick, right? So like they're throwing a party. And I guess I always loved that idea because when I was a kid, like in high school, Sacramento was just filled, like did that stuff all the time. We had this thing called the Trash Film Orgy. It was like a midnight movie screening series that changed my life. Do you know what I mean? I understood Amazing Camp. And my first John Waters movie is at that situation, you know, and they're like, doing a stage performance and, like, you know, cardboard Kaiju Fight or, you know, all of that stuff is. I. I love it so much. Or like, Oren, you must have gone to the Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted show, right? Like, the animation.
1:03:17
Yeah, I think I. The festival.
1:04:19
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was, like, the touring festival of, like, gross animated shorts, basically, that, like, you know, people would get stoned and, you know, that's awesome and stuff. It was so fun.
1:04:21
But so.
1:04:31
So I romanticize the road totally. In the Roadshow, for sure.
1:04:31
Same. Yeah. We're early in our tour, so we're trying a lot of things. We're throwing a lot of spaghetti out there and seeing what sticks and what goes well and what resonates. We've done two shows so far. They've both been really great. That's heartening, I would say, for the future, but we need to keep up our momentum. But a lot of what the. The being honest, like, among filmmakers here, like, a lot of the purpose of the Roadshow is not the distribution. It's not the moneymaker. This is not how we're going to make the money back on. We're just not playing enough theaters. We can't play enough theaters in this model to, like, make money that way.
1:04:35
Lose money on gas just getting from.
1:05:08
Just. Just getting there. Yeah. So the. The actual money we make from the Roadshow goes to just paying for the Roadshow. But this is essentially a. A press event. This is promotional tour. This is a promotional tour because along the way, we're reaching out to, you know, all of the horror mags and filmmaking publications and local press podcasts. Anyone we can sort of talk to, to sort of say, like, this is fun. It is viable, and it is a way that someone with no marketing budget, really, which is something we just simply don't have access to at our. At our level, our budget level. Right. We can't do all this marketing and stuff. We're sort of doing our own marketing. But what. Our marketing pays for itself with the Roadshow, if we can sell tickets to our marketing, essentially, then.
1:05:10
Are you selling merch? Are there T shirts in a suitcase and the rv?
1:05:55
Absolutely. There's a. There's a bin of T shirts, posters, stickers, a few other things coming soon.
1:06:00
And how. You know, how. How has that. You said it was heartening. Are you seeing, like, who's showing up? Like, what. What sort of. What's working, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask.
1:06:06
Yeah. I've been excited about ages. People coming from the venue Being like, oh, I. They were doing this weird. Like this movie looked weird and interesting. Her poster is just like an eyeball, basically. And then the Instagram ads have been like, working for you. Like, it's interesting. I don't know if I've ever gone to something because of an Instagram ad specifically, but yeah, we've been getting a lot of people from.
1:06:18
Are the ads kind of funky or are they just a trailer?
1:06:39
Not so far. So we're, we're trying a couple of them. The one that has done the best is just me talking to camera, being like, no one's gonna go to the theater to watch an indie movie. Right. I'm traveling the country going to, you know, reverse psychology. Yeah, yeah, like.
1:06:42
Or you gotta go on Tick tock, buddy. That's, that's a.
1:06:56
Is that, is that, that's a move for sure.
1:06:59
Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah.
1:07:01
That's like Magic Mind. They'd be like, hate Magic Mind because it turns out that they're having a sale right now and I just paid full price.
1:07:02
Yeah, sure.
1:07:08
Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah. It's that you say something that they disagree with so that they want to listen or that maybe they do agree with and are afraid is true. Right. No one's gonna go to a theater to watch an indie movie, Right. That one did pretty well. And we brought out a decent number of people who like, saw that. And then, you know, there's clips from the movie in there and then they look.
1:07:09
Sure.
1:07:26
I'm not sure.
1:07:26
Yeah.
1:07:27
But all horror fans, right? And I think that that is, that is an essential component, I think, is that built in fan base of people who. The horror audience just like, wants to see the weird stuff. They want to see the genre. And so they're coming out, they're like, what's this?
1:07:28
That's awesome, dude.
1:07:43
It's so awesome.
1:07:44
So is there a website to go hear about it? Like, find.
1:07:45
So our full schedule and we're dropping new dates all the time is my production company website, which is unfortunately long. Formidable filefilms.com formidablefilefilms.com or. But we're also obviously posting all the dates on our TikTok and our Instagram, which is at Formidable File Films.
1:07:49
Formidable Style Films.
1:08:08
And where, where have you toured already? Where, what cities have you been to?
1:08:10
So we've done two shows so far. So we're, we're, we've just gotten going. We started our first show. Our first show was in Gainesville, Florida. Second show, Columbus, Ohio. Hard to drive. I flew To Columbus. Because it was not. It was not.
1:08:14
Yeah, yeah. You're going to book a couple dates in between, I think.
1:08:28
Exactly. Yeah. But I'm going to fly back to, to where I came from now. And we're, we're locking in dates for the, the, the Atlanta, Nashville. We have next weekend. Not this week. Like following weekend is North Carolina. We have one coming from South Carolina. We have dates on our website for New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania.
1:08:31
That's so awesome. I'm so excited for you. That's like half those states and, but also just like think about all of the awesome indie movie theaters you're going to get to see. Right?
1:08:51
Like, so far, both of the venues have been awesome.
1:09:01
Did you play in, in Columbus? Was it the film center or where, where did you play?
1:09:04
No, it's the Studio 35.
1:09:09
Oh, cool.
1:09:11
Which is like a. More indie theater, but it's like a bar. I mean, it just looks like a bar and they're like, oh, we got a theater here too.
1:09:12
Awesome, dude, but awesome. So exciting, man. Well, congratulations. Do you have a few more minutes to endorse with us?
1:09:18
Yeah, absolutely.
1:09:25
Awesome. Unpaid endorsements. My unpaid endorsement. This one's been on my list for a long time. Is the perfect episode to do it. But Chris Gethard was on the Vulture podcast. I don't know if you guys saw clips of this. Gethard kind of, you know, he, he's a standup comic and an improv comedian. He had like a crazy DIY public access show on, on New York public access for like many years and was like on Broad City in the office and stuff. Anyway, now he's middle aged and has a kid and he's always been pretty radical, but has been radicalized. Basically. He had to go get a job. Job. Right. And he's kind of been talking about the nature of DIY and punk rock ethics as they relate to comedy and the fact that there's not really a middle class comedy economy anymore. You know, he made a joke that like he had to apologize for later, I think. But that like, dropout is really awesome. It's kind of the only game in town. And he doesn't think that your ability to survive in comedy is predicated on your knowledge of the gathering. Right. There should be more options. There used to be when we were all starting out. Right. And so it's a really great conversation. He makes a lot of really cogent points about just where comedy is and the nature of DIY showbiz and how insidious and problematic he thinks it is. So if you want to, like, tune in, if you care about alt comedy, if you care about DIY ethics or indie film or indie comedy, you want to get activated. This Chris Gethard Vulture. Good one episode is really great. It's pretty awesome. Aaron, what you got?
1:09:26
It's amazing. I have a pretty weird one. I hope it's okay. I don't know what the parameters are. No rock and roll.
1:11:14
Yeah.
1:11:19
I mean, I was recently in southern Colorado, and so there is a very sizable alligator rescue in the mountains at about 9, 000ft above sea level.
1:11:19
Awesome.
1:11:32
Called just you. If you're driving through Colorado, south Colorado, and you see billboards that say Colorado gators or gators in Colorado, question mark. You have to turn. You just have to go there. They have 300 rescue alligators and a bunch of other wildlife. Obviously, they sell the gators because it's the weirdest thing that's there. Huge amount of, like, interesting, like, strange wildlife, especially up in the mountains. There's a natural hot spring up there, and so the water is, like, very warm all year round. It's apparently perfect for the alligators. It started. This is why I loved it and why I was so glad I went. Because I walked in and obviously the first question I said is, why are these here? What's going on? It started as a. I believe it was tilapia farm, like a fishery because of the. The temperature, the water. This guy back in the 50s was raising tilapia, but he was ending up with all these, like, you don't sell the. The. The bones or the head or anything. He's ending with all these fish bones and fish heads, is becoming, like, so hard to dispose of them that one of his friends said, well, if you get an alligator up in here, like, they'll eat anything. And this guy took that seriously, apparently, and imported from Florida several alligators just to eat his. His fish waste. And then over time, those. He got male and female because he didn't think about it. Those alligators started breeding. And then other people started coming to him, being like, oh, I heard you have alligators. I have a pet alligator that's gotten way bigger than I thought it was going to. I don't know what to do with it. He was like, all right, bring me your alligator. And then it just became a thing. And people, they rescue alligators now?
1:11:32
Yeah. Yeah.
1:13:04
And where do you keep them? Like, do you have, like, a swamp in the backyard?
1:13:04
They. They hit a. A river, basically, that bubbles up out of a hot or a stream. I Guess that comes out of a hot spring nearby.
1:13:09
Are you asking about when people have pet alligators?
1:13:16
No, I'm saying when you have a reserve or whatever, like this park.
1:13:20
Yeah.
1:13:24
You just have fences that keep the alligators in.
1:13:24
And they have fences. Yes, they keep the alligators in.
1:13:26
Wow. Crazy. Real Florida thing.
1:13:28
Yeah, it's real Florida. My Florida heart was overjoyed to see my in Colorado. So.
1:13:30
Representing Flor. Yeah.
1:13:35
I did grow up in Florida.
1:13:36
Yeah.
1:13:37
The swampy part, so. With the gates. Sure.
1:13:38
You know, the gators.
1:13:41
Did you go to school on one of those, like, air hovercraft?
1:13:42
What are they called?
1:13:45
Fan boats?
1:13:47
Fanboat. Yeah. I did not. I went. My school was surrounded by cows mostly.
1:13:48
Oh, cool. I like same, actually. Yeah. Kaplan, what you got? Cool.
1:13:52
Well, I'm. I'm just gonna. First, I think the episode we did with Carlin that just came out is where I talked about this popcorn popper.
1:13:57
Yes.
1:14:05
I bought. But not used yet.
1:14:06
Correct.
1:14:07
I used it tonight and. Awesome. Awesome. Highly recommended.
1:14:08
I almost texted you today about it. Awesome.
1:14:11
Yeah. It's for $10. You know, making popcorn. There. There's this. There's always this thing because everyone's microwaves are different strengths, where they say, once the. Once the pops of the kernels, it's the five seconds between each pop, then you have to stop.
1:14:13
Yep.
1:14:29
But it's something that's really hard to figure out when focused. Yeah. So I'm, like, there with my son. I'm like, okay, pop one, two. Pop one, two. What? Pop one. And I'm. And he's just accounting all these numbers. I'm like, how do you even do this? But. So I think the first batch I did was, like, sure, maybe a little burnt. But now I figured out my microwave, 2 minutes, 20 seconds is perfect for a quarter cup.
1:14:29
Interesting.
1:14:54
Do you have opinions? I feel like Matt knows way more about popping corn than I do.
1:14:54
No, no. I was going to say my sweet spot on my microwave is 2 minutes, 11 seconds. And it's nice to have that dialed in, but that's with, like, a bag of, like, pop Secret or whatever.
1:14:58
You got to have the exact. Right.
1:15:08
Yes. Yeah. So I. I'm curious, Aaron, this backstory. Oren and I were sent a variety pack of, like, premium.
1:15:10
A formidable amount of popcorn.
1:15:18
Yeah. Like, probably, like, honestly, like, a couple years worth of popcorn. Like, go hard on it.
1:15:20
Yeah.
1:15:25
But they're all different kernel sizes, so I'm gonna. I can imagine that, like, dialing in each pop. Yeah. It's gonna be tricky.
1:15:25
Yeah. It's funny. Growing up, my stepdad was like really lazy. So like the only microwave times we would ever do would be like 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3.
1:15:33
I do that the best for that popcorn.
1:15:42
Now as an adult, I'm like, I guess I can do 2, 1, 1. But that feels like.
1:15:46
Yeah, you're just like, God, I have to move my. Disrespecting my finger a little bit. Yeah.
1:15:50
The other thing, and this totally doesn't count because it's another thing that Matt just endorsed. But I was just like watching the hamnet dances today and just like, just tears streaming down my eyes. I was like, I need to take some photos of myself to record what I look like when I'm moved emotionally so I can show actors that are.
1:15:53
I honestly got emotional talking about it last night on the show. I was like, I got teary eyed. It was crazy. I was like, oh, that's amazing. I don't know. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
1:16:11
Yeah.
1:16:20
Yeah.
1:16:20
Also I'm just like me like that.
1:16:21
Yeah.
1:16:23
Right? Yeah. Yeah. We're watching the Pit and you know, the first season we watched like all at once and we binged it. The second season it just comes out every Thursday. It's like 24 episodes, however many. And I was like, there's no way we could watch this show. And I'm sure you guys know the premise is like every episode is one hour of the day.
1:16:23
Yeah, it's 24, but I'm put in a hospital.
1:16:40
Yeah.
1:16:42
Brilliant.
1:16:43
I was like, there's no way this will be interesting because like we're every stories. You know, they have like 20 stories going on. But it's, it's so good. The episode last night, recording this March 11th was just very moving.
1:16:43
Anyhow, I heard the, the showrunner, the town, and he mentioned that all of the background all know because they have to be there the whole time. Right. It's like if it's one day the lady who checks in to like, you know, get a piece of glass removed from her hand or whatever is there for the entire season.
1:16:55
Yeah. Or if you're there for two and a half hours because you sneezed wrong.
1:17:13
Right.
1:17:16
You're going to be on three episodes.
1:17:16
You're going to be on three episodes. So all the ad team plans out so that the actors know what their ailment is. What time of. Do they go to lunch? Does the character go to lunch in the day of the Pit? So like they are. Everything's mapped out and it just so romantic to me. Yeah.
1:17:18
Like hours of the day of the pit, as opposed to.
1:17:35
Yeah, exactly.
1:17:38
Yeah. They had this shot in the episode we saw last night that was just like this really wide shot. Like Noah, Wy and the woman that plays the kind of head of the nurses were standing next to each other. And it was just about the chaos that's going on. They have like, their computer systems go down and. And it was just this very wide shot and everyone. I mean, there must have been like 60 people in the shot. And they're all like main characters and nurses and things, you know, and they're. All of them are doing something, you know, like these people are arguing about where the chart goes. This person is, like trying to run over to a bleeding patient. And I was like, just. Just sitting there wondering, like, did the writers write every single thing that is happening with every one of these characters in the script, or are the characters, like you said, just so in tune with where exactly they are in this part of the day that you just.
1:17:39
You're just like, okay, guys, to understand,
1:18:24
yeah, 6:04pm Just do the thing that you shouldn't be doing at this time.
1:18:26
Yeah. And.
1:18:29
Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know, it's. The cast is working, is directing themselves in this weird.
1:18:30
Yeah. I suspect it's not scary in the script, but I suspect there's some intense
1:18:34
spreadsheets tracking, like, oh, okay, this person's going to be on this shift and they've been working for X number of hours and they're worried about this storyline because it happened last episode, but it hasn't told me.
1:18:38
Yeah, that sounds fun. I love that.
1:18:51
Really. The writing is so good. The reason it won the SAG award, you know, and all this, all these awards, is literally there will be a character that just came in for some emergency and within 30 seconds, you're, like, so invested.
1:18:52
Yeah.
1:19:05
Health and their success.
1:19:07
Yeah.
1:19:09
Yeah.
1:19:09
And it's. It's just amazing. It's amazing. It's like really fast, emotional, and then there will be really funny parts, you know, But I don't need to tell people to watch the pit. But if you've been on the fence, the crazy thing is I have so many doctor friends, none of them watch it.
1:19:10
You watch a pit?
1:19:23
Like, no. So I don't know what to do about that.
1:19:24
It's like, I don't watch shows about the studio.
1:19:27
You don't watch Wonder Man?
1:19:29
Yeah. Yeah.
1:19:31
You said it's good.
1:19:32
Pretty good.
1:19:33
I'm sure it's great.
1:19:33
Awesome. Aaron, this was great. So excited. I'm really proud of you, dude. Like you're doing it, you know, it's really. It's really, really cool. It's awesome. It's so inspiring. I think people are gonna love the show. One more time. Where can people check out the movie?
1:19:34
Absolutely. The movie's called It Needs Eyes.
1:19:48
Google.
1:19:50
It'll probably come up, but formidablefilefilms.com or on socials at Formidable Files Films.
1:19:50
Yeah.
1:19:57
And for what it's worth, I found it by googling your name. Aaron Paniano with a G. Also Google.
1:19:58
Yeah, Aaron Panano.
1:20:03
There you go.
1:20:04
Where the G go over constantly adding dates. We're doing all the major cities that we can possibly fit into our tour.
1:20:05
Awesome. Well, if you have any thoughts on indie filmmaking, on distribution, on road shows, on the Pit, email us just shooter pod gmail.com or DM us on Instagram mainly is the best place at just shoot a pod. Even though I heard Rachel Sennett on the town say that she's like bored with Instagram. It's falling flat for her. So maybe we're old people now freezing Instagram. I thought Facebook was for old people, but I guess anyhow long enough timeline. Follow me on Instagram. I'm Aplan.
1:20:11
And I'm Rmadan Lowe. Across all social media, including Instagram and Letterbox. As I imagine. This episode was edited by Kevin O. Yang. Our social media is done by Lily Bouvier and Tyler Schmalz, our producer. And you're listening to music provided by the Free Music Archive and the artist Jazzar. Thanks, everyone.
1:20:39
Bye bye bye.
1:20:57
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