Horror Screenwriting And Filmmaking Tips - Brian Avenet Bradley [FULL INTERVIEW]

brian we hear filmmakers say that filmmaking keeps them out of trouble or they say you know this is all i can do this is why i do it even though it's hard at times sometimes i wonder is it really all they can do or that's just what they sort of say to themselves that's what they want to do what are your thoughts on this i'm sure it varies for each filmmaker i mean for me i can do other things but what i find happens is if i don't do something creative and for me my creativity seems to always go visual so it always goes into movies if a certain amount of time passes and i haven't done something i start to go a little crazy a little stir crazy so there's like this drive to for me it's a drive to tell stories and then eventually i write a lot and i write a lot of stories and usually the story we end up doing with my filmmaking partner low is usually one that i've had for a while that i keep coming back to or won't go away like you won't sometimes i'll be able to write something and it's kind of done even though it's like never seen the light of day maybe it's a script or a story or just an idea i can get it out of my system and it feels like okay i'm okay but every now and then there's a story that i just keep i keep thinking about it it comes back and comes back and comes back and usually that's the one who's like i have to do this one you know find a way to make it in a format that other people can see it you know is there sort of a time frame for you like if you're in between projects is there like a three-month window where if you don't have something new to work on you can start to feel yourself slipping so to speak uh i mean i'm always like thinking of ideas um so it's like it stays longer than a three-month window for me as long as i as long as i'm like collecting my ideas and thinking about stories and writing it down i'm fine i think it's like if if it's like going up to a year and i'm not actively involved in making a movie or making some other creative project which will come to fruition so other people can see it then i probably get get the shakes almost like i have to do it you know i have to do something yeah what do you start to see yourself slipping into when you know like do you become bored easily or how do you know like oh you know what this is after a while you learn this is because i need to start working on something you know for me it's it's like really i just kind of get into malaise it's like is it really it's like doing something creative is kind of what makes me feel alive and if too much time goes by and i'm not doing something creative it's just i don't know i find myself kind of sinking into this like malaise of just life isn't really working for me and then i'm like what's wrong and i'm like and then it kind of hits me like oh because i'm not doing something creative yeah so amazingly i forget every time they're like why am i feeling this way and then it's like oh that's because i'm not creatively involved in something uh fortunately i have a lot of other things that i do which are also creative so it helps me kind of sustain it a little bit but for me it's like the projects i'm most passionate about are the ones that my wife and filmmaking partner laurence lowe that we do together and those are the ones because it's our project and it's a passion project so we kind of control it from beginning middle and end so it's very much like our vision of what we want to tell and that is to me the most creatively satisfying is when you can do a project like that where it's not going to have too much outside influence that changes what you're trying to make what other creative things do you do i do editing so i do editing for a television series television shows which obviously involves a lot of creativity i do a lot of like uh docu reality type shows which actually requires you as an editor to be very involved in story because you're working with the story people and the producers to help figure out the story and develop so it's like it's more than just cutting something from a script it's very it really engages you creatively because you're really working on figuring out like well how do we tell the story what is the story sometimes you're figuring out well you know what is this you know what is the story and how do you tell a beginning middle and end and make it dramatic and and keep people engaged with it yeah i heard an author speak this weekend a brazilian author and forgive me on her name i'll put it at the below the line part of the video but she said that when she gets writer's block and she says it's very real that she has to do things like go to museums just just you know other creative things that are not writing do you ever feel blocked and if so do you have a ways to get out of it well i definitely feel like uh going places like lo and i like taking trips and going places we like to go out to the desert or to the mountains sometimes up to the beach or the ocean it's like i get a lot of inspiration from locations especially on uh with movies uh and it gets a little tricky sometimes because sometimes i i fall so in love with the location it's hard for me to imagine not shooting it there but uh but they'll be usually a location could be a really big inspiration for me like i'll see something and then it starts my mind going what if what if what if and uh there's been places that we've incorporated uh in our films um sometimes it's not that exact same location but like an idea from that location will find its way into the story something inspired by so i i find like the best way for me at least creatively is to find the inspiration from real life uh because if you don't do that then i feel like you get into a cycle of copying which is really easy to fall into it it's really easy to look at a movie and go oh i like that movie but i would have done something like this with that movie and then you know you can easily change it a few degrees and it'd be a new movie but in essence it's going to be so built on the other film that it's not really a new thing whereas if you can get the inspiration from life or or stories you hear from other people like real stories that happen to them or uh they know of a friend something happened a lot of times that can spark the imagination and think like oh well you know what if what if that story happened and then this happened and that happened to me that's that's the most fun it's kind of like taking that inspiration from real life is location never a character and then if you're filming i know for sure yes i would say location uh for us is almost always uh a character in almost every film we've done i think it's funny because uh this this film um dark remains i forget this is the polish version oh okay this is dark remains uh a location that uh laurence lowe found as i was writing the script she fell in love with this like prison location that was in rome georgia which is no longer in existence but it was a closed prison uh but they we could actually go there and shoot and she's like well you have to add a prison to the story because this prison's so great i'm like well there's no way to put a prison in the store but anyway after like complaining for a while i woke up the next day and i'm like oh well if this prison became part of the story like this it changed everything and it made it better i mean it rippled through and the prison became such a thing like when it came out in japan they're like they they retitled a ghost prison and like you know none of these things are in the movie but it's not even the prison that's in the movie and but they like to do this with clipart and chains the graphics when it goes overseas but they decided they loved the prison so much the movie title became ghost prison so definitely like locations become like a huge thing uh this film uh which was our second film goes to the needle which they read titled asphyxia i think in spain uh that one factor a factory is a very key location for the main character and a lot of events take place in the factory and that became like a very key part to the film and once we found the factory we did a lot of revisions on the script in writing because the the location inspired us because they had other things in the script but once you see the real factor you're like oh well this could happen and this could happen and this is there was an elevator there there's this amazing freight elevator that was there and that added like this whole thing with going between the different floors and and so like for me it's like locations including the first foam we did uh freezer uh was our first film and this actually took place on what was uh the family farm that i spent a lot of time on growing up i was in virginia right across the border from tennessee and uh and i spent a lot of childhood years and weekends and weeks on this farm and that location was like it basically was the script because i basically once i came up with the story and realized it was happening here it like you would go with the characters here and the characters and the situations what would happen because there are these things in that location so once you bring in your protagonists your antagonists and you go well what would they do and then based on being in this environment and then you basically get scenes and you get moments and it actually influences the writing of the script and i find that i don't know i find it very exciting uh when your location can actually be the the when the location that inspires the story can actually be the one that you shoot at that's the best uh i mean it doesn't always work out because you maybe can't for practical reasons she did that location um but that's the best case scenario otherwise whenever you do get the real location you you kind of have to embrace it and make changes instead of trying to fight it to be the location you don't have because that'll work against you but location definitely a character yeah well you've brought several dvds here and they all have amazing covers you were telling us off-camera that some of them are actually the same films right but then during is it the distribution phase then they change titles and covers yes okay well basically what happens is uh when you get your foreign sales agent or foreign distributor who basically sells it to the other countries they get all the artwork uh that you have to redo whatever cover they want and they can retitle it to whatever title they want and lots of times they'll add their own artwork like for example this film is dark remains uh this was kind of similar to the american cover uh but they they changed it a little bit and then in in canada and canada yeah i think it's possible in canada um they really change it they say well okay we want a blue want a blue look and it it's unrated which is funny because it's the same version as the radiant version but i guess they didn't re-rate it in canada so is the underrated version so that was their take on it but still using the same basic poster art but then when it got to japan they really loved the prison that was in the film so they decided to go with ghost prison and they added a prison that actually isn't the president of the movie and then they used this person from clip art who's not in the movie at all but there is a ghost kind of like her in the movie but they decided they wanted this look for the asian markets as more of an asian actress so they went that way so it just it changed and of course i'll actually love this one a lot australia they decided to focus on this there's a ghost girl character in the movie and they decided to like make the focus more on her so they totally changed the art and put the other ghosts kind of around her but that was a really i thought creative you know but it's all the same movie so it's kind of it's kind of funny then you know sometimes they'll change the title like ghost of the needle became uh in spain it became asphyxia and what's funny is they actually got to use that was supposed to be the cover in the u.s for the movie but they um they decided they couldn't use it because they had to get it rated back then and the ratings board would not allow this image to be used for an r rating and we had to deliver an r rating or the other distributor wanted us to so um so i actually got our original artwork to change the title of sticks here but i love this title it's a great title and in other countries it was called dead still so it just it just changes depending on what they think they can sell in that uh in that marketplace and that's so that's five different versions of the same movie pretty well well the two different ones there's dark remains oh this one was ghost of the needle and then this other one which i did bring was called uh freezer most of the countries called it freezer with apostrophe er because it's freeze her and they this image kind of stayed the same in most of the countries but in the us it got released differently they decided to call it cold blood because they thought they were worried that freezer sounded too comedic because it was like they're afraid that freeze hyphen er would make it feel more like a it's a black comedy but it's a very subtle dark comedy so i think that's one of the reasons they wanted to change it so um so yeah and then this cover changed we had a totally different vod cover and then the dvd they wanted to make it look more like a slasher-risk i guess because they put some blood in and an environment that's not in the movie and clip art in the back which doesn't really represent the movie well and that's one of the challenges is you know distributors are always like well we want to have an image that makes people get the movie but the trick of it is you also you want your image to grab people so it's good to get other people's advice on what can market and sell the movie but what's important is you want the image to attract the people who are going to like the movie because you want to be able to sell what you're really selling and trouble can write you what you can run into with the cover is they can make a cover where they're selling to a different sub-genre of horror and maybe those sub-genre fans won't be happy with the movie because it's a different movie but the people who really like that movie and then a different sub-genre for won't check it out because of the cover so you kind of can get yourself in this in this like trap so uh it's tricky when dealing with distributors you always want to get one that will work with you in terms of the cover art or at least involve you in it but it's very difficult of course for you to ever get final say on it but it's always good to try to make it part of the process that you can be involved in it uh so you can try to keep it on track to what you think represents the movie for what it is forgive me what are the different sub genres of of horror because it's interesting like your movie could be divided into different sub genres just depending on how they want to market it well as the marketing divides into different scenarios uh but basically it's like you know there's like you know the slasher movies uh you know you get slasher movies you get uh you know creature films uh you can get more science fiction films uh in the horror genre i mean like malignant was medical horror so it was like a medical horror subgenre you have supernatural subgenre and within the supernatural you can have supernatural like possession exorcist or you could have ghosts so it's like there's basically all these different little subgenres in horror and lots of times they'll mix like our our last film um that uh is on the festival circuit right now echoes echoes of fear um it's a movie it's a supernatural horror movie supernatural horror ghost movie um but it takes an interesting turn it still saves the supernatural ghost movie but it takes an interesting term if you don't talk about because you don't want to ruin the movie sure but but it but it's an example of how the draw some different sub genres can mix within the same film uh and that can be really exciting well i think when when as an audience that's what i like as an audience person is i love to be able to go into a movie i like to go in cold i i like when i go to see a movie it's like if i know i'm gonna see it it's like i will not watch the trailer i i just try to avoid reading anything about it especially reviews because they tend to give you a giant plot synopsis uh i like i like if i know i'm gonna see a movie like oh i wanna see that movie i like i try to like know nothing about it and then go see it and then because that way i like to be surprised uh and then after that i'll read the reviews and and look at the trailer and that kind of stuff but i like to go in cold i'm the same way and i like it it's fun and i love it when there's a movie that you you think it's going one way and then it goes into another it's like to me really exciting uh and horror when you when you can't quite figure out what you know it's fun that way you know because because it's like evolves and it has the twists and turns and it's just organic and it's it's just a lot of fun and a lot of marketing now i get it they want to sell the movie but lots of times to sell the movie they like kind of blow everything and maybe that'll make someone rent and watch the movie but it's really going to diminish their experience because they'll take stuff in the third act and uh for me i'm a very visual person so when i watch a trailer like that i remember those images so it will affect me as i'm watching the movie because i know in the back of my brain things are coming because i haven't seen it yet from the trailer maybe other people can watch the trailer kind of blank after seeing it and not have it ruined for them but you know so the trailer for our last film echoes the fear it was a real challenge for me was to do a trailer which has the mood in the atmosphere and tells you it's a suspenseful scary movie but at the same time it shows good images in there but the same time doesn't blow the movie so you can still have the experience where those where that suspense and scarce and stuff will work when you see the movie the trailer hasn't ruined it that was a big challenge i think i ended up doing like six or seven drafts of the trailer working with uh uh i worked with the sales agent foreign distributor on it as well getting some notes i got notes from other people as well i mean i kept getting notes and people felt like what could help market the movie and then i had to figure out a way to kind of like do those notes without ruining uh giving anything away and ruining it so it was a challenge it's a challenge can you think of some current films because like let's say hereditary i didn't know too much about it going in and i was pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns and i wouldn't say i'm like a total horror like you know fanatic right but i really i was really impressed with that can you think of other films where it really takes you on a ride where you're not expecting stuff oh gosh so often in horror uh so good about that trying to think oh gosh even carried i mean i use those two examples probably too much so i've got to stop but well no no gary's great see that's a great example i mean it's hard to remember now because you know the marketing turned into like her soaked in the blood right on the stage but initially you know everyone of course that also came from the book so in a way they they assumed that a lot of people already knew the basic just the story because of the stephen king book so i think they probably weren't too worried about ruining it um shoot i was just thinking about an example of one and then i lost it well the exorcist too because you're not really totally sure you hope that she's going to be cured right right but you don't know and the doctor the he becomes increasingly more and more angry right you know and kind of becomes his own monster you know right well that's like that's like it's funny like both of such a challenge when they're based on a book because then you're dealing with the expectation that everyone wants it to follow the book but then you have to it's a movie so you have to adapt it you can't just do the book because usually in a book especially stephen king book you know so much is internal with what's inside the characters heads which you can't really get you have to kind of like i mean a great example is the shining which is an amazing book by stephen king and it's an amazing movie by stanley kruber they're very very very different but they're both amazing i mean kubrick basically took the essence of what was in king's book and said well how can i tell this visually in a movie that will work and you know i think king got really mad because a lot of things were dropped and a lot of things unless you've read the book you wouldn't even understand when watching the movie but cooper knew like it had to be its own thing you know instead of the hedge monsters you have the maze the hedge maze because he knew that the hedge monsters was great in the book but especially at that time with the special effects it would it could be really cheesy and and just you know not work and become a laughable thing so he kind of made that same scary environment but making the hotel a character but doing it visually with the camera and like the great shot following behind the kid on the big like riding through the hallway of the thing so uh and i was trying to think of vic your uh your first question about movies that surprised you when you watched it like my brain is just out of nerves it's just defaulting back to like the early movies i saw when i was was younger like john carpenter's the thing i knew nothing about that when i when i watched it and that's and it's so different from the original movie version and and so different from the short story that you just had no idea going into that movie what was going to happen and i'm assuming it's not a spoiler now because everyone's seen this movie but but like when you're watching the movie and you have this dog and you're like oh my gosh don't shoot the dog who are these crazy people in the helicopter shooting this shooting at this poor dog and of course you realize later like the people the helicopter know what that dog is and it's not a dog and it's the alien it's the creature but when you're first watching it and having that experience you don't know that so it's like it's it's it's so great because it it like tricks your sympathies without because it's like you don't know what's going to happen and that's a great movie where you like you never know who the creature is and who's the person who actually is the alien so that constantly changes and evolves and you don't know where it's going it's such a effective film with environment as well with the location and like people forget because everyone knows now norman bates is the killer in psycho but when cycle came out people did not know that so people thought that there was this guy with this crazy murdering mother doing this and that's why original people watching psycho believe and you know hitchcock made this whole thing like please don't ruin the ending it's the only ending i have or something like that i'm paraphrasing but that was part of the marketing it was like don't blow the ending and so for people to have that experience and not know it's like unfortunately like by time i saw psycho it was so known that norman bates is the killer that you don't get that experience anymore but to be i imagine to be in the theater and have that experience of watching psycho not knowing that norman bates is the killer and you have such sympathy for him because he's this poor hindsight boy so that's a great example like you know and i don't know it's like how hard would it be now to try to put out a movie like psycho for the first time and not have it be ruined you know not have it be spoiled and ruined it'd be it's be so difficult now with social media and everything it's just very difficult basically people basically people have to bang it's like please don't you know like the filmmakers basically say like please don't ruin the ending you know and then everyone rushes to the theater sometimes to see it the first weekend because they know it's going to be ruined because once it comes out like everyone's going to start blathering about it and writing articles and they'll be spoilers now and headlines like i won't read the article because i don't want to ruin the movie but then they'll they'll blow it in the headline you're like what are you doing so it's like just by seeing the headline it's kind of ruining something from the film or on twitter yeah twitter it's like it's it's very it's very frustrating i think to be able to go into uh a movie night cold is very difficult i think you have to actively work on it now would you be a filmmaker today if you didn't go to usc oh yeah i i was like making movies like way before usc i mean i started i started doing movies when i was 10 years old my dad worked uh at magnavox and he brought home like an old video camera where it's like this huge video camera with a tethered cord and a separate deck uh so actually the first thing i did when i was 10 years old was i adapted something a house of frankenstein i i use that title but i adapted like something that someone else had written and adapted it and with my friends we did this thing i played dr jekyll mr hyde but someone else played frankenstein someone played the wolf man but we actually did a house of frankenstein uh and that was the first thing i did when i was 10 years old and then i got into doing super 8 films and uh cutting super 8 films and that kind of stuff and so i've been doing that since i was 10. so i kind of always knew from that point on i i wanted to because it started out i wanted to tell stories and the problem is i would write these plays but the plays were really elaborate it would require the audience to like run around in the woods with my friends to follow the play which i guess would be kind of cool now but at the time it wasn't very practical so that's how i kind of got into filmmaking was i wanted to be able to tell the story and it was it was not practical to bring the audience to us i need to figure out a way to tell the story and bring it to them and that's how i got into doing movies and once i started doing it and realizing like oh my gosh look what you can do you know you can do time compression you can do all these things you can't do in a play uh and then it became really exciting as a kid basically your imagination just goes and all those little shorts are ridiculous of course because your kids running around making it but it was a great way to learn uh and because there was no youtube back then say none of those things were seen so so nothing doesn't embarrass me because it doesn't exist in a way anyone can see it but i i always knew from that point on that i wanted to make movies and i was always into horror and science fiction and thriller and those sub-genres always kind of merged oftentimes like they would kind of like blend together i would be like a science fiction horror or horror sci-fi or you know if it was thriller would be like big horror elements in it and so it kind of just gravitated and grew into that and our first film i did with my wife laurence my first feature uh was a horror film psychological horror film and we really enjoyed it and it kind of like led into our next horror film and they've all been kind of different subgenres we gravitate most i would say to supernatural uh our our uh our first two were kind of like psychological slash supernatural so it's almost like the first one was 100 psychological but there were supernatural occurrences because it was happening in his head the second one was much more ghosts of the needle was much more like is it in his head or is it out there and then our third film we did was a straight-up supernatural ghost movie where we made it all it kind of went all the way and our last one we did echoes of fear also is a supernatural uh ghost movie so but even within that there's a key element to the film talking about hauntings and there's a debate she has with her best friend in terms of like well am i am i going crazy is it a ghost out there or am i going crazy and seeing things and and her friend kind of tells her it's like well if a ghost is going to reach you it's going to be in your head either way so i'm kind of like i'm very intrigued by the idea of kind of breaking down this this barrier of whether it's something in your head versus out there in this idea that if it's in your head it's not real well all reality is in our head so that's how we process the world so it's like to me it becomes a very artificial borderline in a lot of movies where it's like oh is it in her head or in her his head is he crazy or is it out there and it's supernatural where i think to me it's more intriguing like the blurred line and in terms of what that means uh between what's reality in the head and reality out there when all reality is what you process inside your head right didn't philip k dick also kind of wonder about that none of them feel like you did yeah into his own life too oh my goodness it's dark it's a ghost in your mind what is the purpose of story the purpose of story yeah like uh well why do we need story science fiction what is the reason we need story i i don't know it's like i feel like i feel like story is like something that probably happened i don't know probably before humans can even speak probably story was being gestures and being told by drawing things in the sand or in the ashes or pointing or gesturing i think humans i don't know i think there's an innate need to tell stories i mean part of it is to tell the the real story of what's going on like your story of your life so you can communicate with people in terms of what you need and stuff but then i think it really quickly goes into just being able to imagine different scenarios because you kind of have to do that to live life you can't have to think about like if i do this what could happen blah blah blah and then you know it starts when your imagination starts going and thinking like that then you start thinking more and more fanciful ideas and and then you know i start making up characters i don't know it's just like i feel like it's part of basic communication with people is is like we want to be able to read a story or experience a story that's different from our own life experience we want to be exposed to something different than what we're seeing in our daily day to day lives because it just activates the brain and just makes you think about things in the world differently reading a story and here and seeing other people's viewpoints which comes from the story whether it be fiction or non-fiction i think because someone else created it or wrote it you're being exposed to like a different way of thinking about the world which i think is just really important to be able to function in the world to be able to see things from a different perspective i think it's an easy trap we can fall into when we only surround ourselves with stories of just what we believe or what we think about or just relates to our little bubble i think it's very dangerous i think story is very important so we can understand how other people live and exist in the world and see those other viewpoints so we can be more open-minded and understand that like everything doesn't revolve around our little personal lives and all that comes from story i think that's a great point and even more so now because we click on an article online and now that reality is reflected back to us a hundred times because now that algorithm is going to show us so that's why so many stuff that's what you want to read right and now you know they think that that's you know you're you're wanting to learn all about golf and so right right it's very difficult you're it's a that's that's a really good example because it's harder and harder to like because i have a lot of interest and i like to look at a lot of different articles and i noticed that like like if i click on an article about x all of a sudden there's all these articles about the same thing coming up it's like no i just kind of wanted to sample that and i'm good if i want to know more about it i'm going to google it but yeah it it is interesting how i mean it's amazing because of the internet that you have all this access information that was so hard to get and the flip side of it is you're right now that there's this way of algorithms channeling things to you it's almost limiting you a little bit it was felt even like 10 years ago on the internet felt much more wide open like you would just go anywhere go who knows what you'd click on and go see and go find and now that they're trying to target you and guide you down a certain path you kind of have to actively fight it i think now you have to be aware of it and fight it uh and i think it's dangerous and people don't realize i think people are becoming more aware of it now i hope but it's very dangerous people don't realize that things are being channeled to them because they start to believe like oh that's what's going on in the world but is it you know and then you kind of have to make your list of things if it's non-fiction for me at least it's like i have my list of places i go to which i feel like will be able to give me real news i mean i remember growing up maybe i'm showing my age but i remember growing up that when you basically got news you weren't worried about i mean there was a whole separate thing like this is blah blah's opinion this is the opinion moment in the newscast or whatever and the rest of it was news it was basically facts and that's the way it was and uh now it's like very hard to find the places where you know you get real news they're out there uh definitely like most of the mainstream big old news organizations you know you can still like trust them but there's this so many people are getting their news now from other little places that you're like well where are they you know who are these people and how much research did they put in and you know this is dangerous it's probably a dangerous topic to get into maybe the algorithm could be haunting someone that'll be the next one it's stalking that's actually not bad yeah yeah that's actually that's actually not a bad idea it's actually a good idea how did you break into the business well i got started um work-wise i got started from a writing producing standpoint and i started out actually in atlanta georgia uh at a production company and it was writing producing shows some of them were going on nbc they were basically documentary specials and tbs when they had documentary specials on that as well so i kind of started out in that writing and producing and then that kind of did more into directing in that uh as well but at the same time i've always been kind of like doing my original story projects and then once i got together with um laurence my wife lo we basically found we had very similar interests and she came at it more from a visual dp side initially but as we started doing projects together everything kind of really blurred together in terms of what we would do and so we basically have been making i mean echoes of fear is our is our fifth uh feature film it's also our fifth horror feature uh that we've done together but it was the first one that uh we co-directed officially co-directed although i mean because the lines had just been keep kept blurring anyway with what we did and eventually in this one we're like okay you know what you're going to officially co-direct this one because we she already as a dp and we were very collaborative i mean the directing and and the work you do as a dp it was already getting like this and she was working with the actors it was just happening organically so we just basically moved it all the way to say we're officially co-directing so we co-directed it we work on the story together uh i actually write the script the mechanics of writing the script but she's very involved in story and and story ideas uh and taking the scrump once i get it and coming up with like all these original interesting ideas which inherently make it a lot more complicated which is funny because she's also the producer so she gives me these limitations like okay you do it like this and then i do it like that and then she starts expanding the story as it becomes more and more difficult to produce but it's okay because she's doing it but we basically develop the story and and grow it from there and it's very organic process you went to usc but you grew up in the south is that right yeah oh yes i was born in new jersey but i grew up in east tennessee oh you were born in jersey yeah it was very very few years interesting that i i really grew up uh machado was it was in east tennessee so a lot of uh like our first film we did together uh freezer a lot of that was based on a farm a family farm that i spent a lot of time on growing up but definitely like for me environment's very important from a horror film and from growing up in the south there was a lot of stuff in the mountains and trees and woods and farms and barns and all that kind of stuff so that was very much in the early beginning uh when we did our first feature a lot of that came into that and a lot of secrets too if you watch um uh sharp objects yeah if you watch it yes fantastic love it um the the the secretive nature of all the characters and them sort of sort of revealing themselves and holding it back so it's something very interesting that you know and and the you know the bless your heart but then you can't tell well it's very they really mean it or not yes it's very interesting in a small town it's like it's weird you have to keep your guard up so much in a small town because it's like everybody excuse me everybody knows everybody and then um gossip gets around and everybody talks so you just kind of really have to keep like a very careful face it's like when you get into the city which i love it's like it's like everyone is so cool nobody cares right it's so great you can just be yourself and no one really really cares anymore and to me it's like very liberating that you don't have to like try to be like oh i need to be careful because everyone's different everyone's crazy and everyone kind of knows it in the city right and so it's like it's not really that big of a deal but yeah definitely in the small town which is why i think a lot of great horror movies are set in small town environments and that because it's like it does have that mystery and intrigue because everyone's always watching everyone else you know what's the neighbor doing you know you know what are they up to and that kind of thing so well i think too they don't have enough going on in their lives in small towns and i think a lot of bad stuff comes out of that whether it's real real stuff that someone's gossiping about or fabricated and i think you can even like look at the beginning of rambo you know so he's going into this this new town and then brian dennehy sees him you know and he's like you know i don't recognize that you know so there's so little going on right that when something that's sort of out of the ordinary you know what is it idol hands or the devils whatever that whatever that's saying well there's a great um i can't remember the the story but one of the original sherlock holmes arthur corden doyle stories that they published in the strand he's like in a train with watson and they're leaving the city heading out in the country and watson's like looking out like oh look at the beautiful countryside and then sherlock holmes says well it's an occupational hazard but i can't look at it like that because i i see all these neighbors and they're all separated and they're all so isolated i'm always like well what are they doing they could be doing anything because no one's really can see what they're doing and he goes that's why he said like in the city he would say in the city at least you have your neighbors keeping you in check because you you're you're being watched a little bit there's people around you but like out in the farm in the countryside it's like who knows what's in the barn or in that basement or hidden in that locked house uh and uh it in like in the farm uh family farmer grew up it's like my brother-in-law stayed sometime in in in the house before the farm got sold and he was like it was a firm believer like if you just took a compass and and you drew out a circle that encompassed the same population like all the stuff that's happening in the city is happening in the country it's all just about the popular population but it's scarier in the country because it's so isolated and if something's happening it's like how are you going to find out about it how did you get your first feature film produced oh well the the first feature film uh produced was uh i mean once uh i partnered up with my wife laurence and uh i was like working on it's funny i was gonna do another short film i've done a lot of short films ever since like i was 10 years old doing short films so i was gonna do another short film and uh i basically was getting frustrated because i couldn't really get the story i couldn't cover the story i wanted to tell in the short film it was it was getting too long and then we did some tests in super 8 and i wasn't happy with how it looked you know is what i really need to do in 16 but the story is too long and it would cost too much money and 16 if you did this short because it won't make any money so you're going to lose all the money you put into it and she's like washes make it into a feature so once he kind of like threw down the gauntlet we started working on on the story and fleshing it out and figuring out and we did a lot of so many uh script passes on that while we were raising the money and putting the money together and we we got a great investor kendall dryer who had never invested in a movie before but he was very interested in us and was interested in film uh and you know we pitched in the story and this is the story we want to tell and he came on board as an investor and we also invested as well with some money and also our time and energy to do it on sweat equity and it took us a while it was our first film we shot over the course of a year i was shooting at an old family farm but i was living in atlanta so i was finishing my day job getting in a car we were driving five hours to the location shooting all weekend packing back up and coming back so i could go to work on monday so and she was working as well at a tv station at the time so it we basically except for two weeks we were able to shoot a little bit i think 14 days in a row but the rest of it was all done like a day and a half at a time every week over the course of a year so it was a long process so how does a first-time filmmaker feature filmmaker i realize you had shorts that you made convinced someone who has never invested in a movie before to do so you know i think i think when you're doing your your first one if you're doing it the way we did it was a very micro budget way it was just more money because back then it's like you pretty much had to shoot film if you wanted it to look good at all i mean the the digital revolution hadn't really reached the point where it could look so good so we knew we wanted to shoot in 16 which of course with film stock and processing and transfer and stuff already gives you a certain budget level that you're going to have to raise money and i think for the first one it's like usually it comes from someone that you know that uh because they have to believe in you so you know it's hard to get someone to believe in you if you haven't done a feature yet even if you have shorts so i think it's someone who believes in you and someone who's interested in movies as well and they also money but they're interested in movies and being part of that experience of of a movie being made which kendall was very involved he actually played a role in the film as well oh nice because we made him because he was perfect for a role i was like you have to be in it uh so he put him in it but it was like a very like uh homegrown like tight very low low-budgeted small crew passion project but it turned out really well and we finished it and it got distributed in the u.s but it also got distributed overseas around the world so it's like for a first time film that we did on such a micro budget it was like very successful experience and it kind of led into the next two kind of pretty rapidly it kind of kept going a little bit and then the markets and everything changed a bit and then you kind of had to learn how to ride that now it's like i think in some ways it's easier to make a feature film because of the digital revolution and you can do things now on your home computer you can get access to cameras that can shoot and if you have the right dp and knows how to light it and then with the right expertise it can look really really good uh so in that sense it's it it can bring down the cost but on the flip side it's much more challenging i think in terms of distribution in terms of distribution where you make money now in terms of distribution but you just get it out there obviously there's a million ways to do that now but in terms of like making it go out there where you can make money so you can you know get your cast and paid and your crew paid and everything else or if you're paying them up front by the budget so you can get your investors money back it's much more challenging i think now so it's kind of an interesting change and before it was like much more difficult and more expensive to make the movie but if you could make the movie distribution was much better now it's much easier to maybe make the movie but distribution is much harder so it's kind of been the slow change that we've seen over the course of making the five films so it's it's interesting and do you think that's because sort of the collapse of the dvd market i think part of it is the collapse of the dvd mark in the sense there aren't video stores anymore and video stores kind of was this weird great equalizer because your movie would be sitting on the shelf right next to a multi-million dollar hollywood movie and you'd be on the same shelf in the new releases and if your cover was good someone might pick it up and read the back and if the story sounded interesting and stuff they may rent that movie and and check it out so it was a way of people finding out about your movie in the new release section of video stores in a very tactile way now of course you have it in vod but they're little tiny little croutons and and lots of times now placement is based more on the distributor and who has the muscle to get the better placement on the platforms and there's all those things and that makes it more challenging now that it's more of a digital world as opposed to physical media and also actually i think it's more challenging in terms of because of piracy and and the biggest reason that's the challenge is world cells is more difficult now because once your movie comes out anywhere the movie will immediately be pirated and all those countries know that the movie will be pirated and it used to be there was a very big physical separation between the different countries so you would sell your movie in your different territories and everything was very separated it's still separated now but the issue is because of piracy that breaks through all those borders so it makes it much more difficult for uh buyers in those countries to pay you more money because they know there's also going to be a pirated version around because it just will i mean it just will happen so i think estimated i think it's one of the reasons it's more challenging in terms of distribution and yes it goes back to what you're saying with dvds because it was a physical thing it was a little harder to pirate i mean still piracy in physical dvds and and blu-ray you know but it was harder because it was a physical tactile object and a lot of people like to have the good art and the you know the good disc with the image on the desk and it was something people like to own and have and now that it's going to the digital realm it's it's changing it's a different thing what about the distribution deals were they much more in favor of the filmmaker before or it's always been sort of a rocky i think they've they've never been really in favor of the filmmaker ever unless you get to a certain point where you have certain clout or power it's it's it but i think the the difference is because there's like less and less money coming into the pot so it's still getting it would still like get siphoned to this little amount you would get but because less is pouring in so that amount is smaller you know what i mean i think it's always like distributors you know they they especially in the we're talking about the indie side obviously it's very different than a big hollywood movie but on the indie side uh the distributor would take less of the risk and they don't really want to spend much money marketing the movie and they make you pay to deliver everything to them that's on you to pay everything and give them everything they need so if it sells for them great if it doesn't sell really well it's not really that much skin off their teeth because they're still going to make a little bit of money so that way it becomes more of a challenge to to the filmmaker because before there would be a little bit more of a distribution cost so you could get maybe a little bit more marketing from the distributor and it depends on the distributor too and like we talked about earlier it's easy to make a movie now and because of that there's a lot more movies now a lot of the movies aren't good but but they exist and so and then you can put a nice piece of cover art on it and and stuff and and it looks like a movie until maybe you watch it and it's not that good uh but it clutters the market and so there's more of that and people are willing to sell those sometimes like for nothing and which you know so it's like all that kind of it's it's difficult it's always been hard i think it's just difficult it's kind of like what's happening with the music industry for a long time with the same exact thing when you started not selling cds and records anymore as much and then digital and then it's streaming and then there's less money coming from streaming because people aren't buying the movie on the cart they're paying for a service and so it's the same thing that kind of happened to music has been happening you know last four or five years more with movies so it's the same challenging market i think so with making your first feature film because it was a passion project you had this great investor he was in the film did that in some ways spoil your expectations because then it was such a wonderful experience and whether it was difficult or not it got made and you had a good relationship with the person but then subsequent movies you thought were going to be that easy and they weren't i don't know i'm just assuming i think every movie has like it's like going to war and it has its own unique challenges so it's like it's always different and the challenges are always different but it's never easy even though we had a great experience with the with the first film in terms of kendall and him being an investor it was still very little money and it was very grueling shoot over the course of a year and it was very tough i mean physically it was like it was really brutal uh thinking how we survived that shoot so that that was the challenge on that one and then other ones you you know maybe you you have more money it's a little bit of an easier shoot but then maybe your challenge is because of your you're dealing with uh sag or you're dealing with a union type situation or you're dealing with a distribution challenge or something or a location challenge it's like saying i think it varies from every movie it's just different there's but it's always challenging i think any any indie filmmaking whatever the genre i think is is challenging but i mean in terms of your personal view on how easy it was going to be did that one sort of no i don't want to say spoil it because that sounds too negative but did it did it oh did you did you have rose-colored glasses on for the longest time thinking that i can do we can do another one and it's going to yes it'll be difficult and i might have to drive five hours and i have to work another job and some that sounds draining to me just hearing about that but but in terms of actually getting investors and making things work it actually wasn't that easy that one was like a special all the stars were aligned or whatever well that one was really special uh i'm trying to think like personally did you did you think that everything was going to be that easy and then well it's weird because it didn't feel easy it didn't feel easy okay it doesn't sound easy so actually kind of was always hoping it to get a little easier uh our second film we also did with that investor uh and that was ghost of the needle and um and that was another great experience actually production experience was actually really really really positive uh on on that film had a little bit bigger budget but then on the flip of it we and we also had a really good foreign sales experience uh from that film but we had a very negative north american distribution experience from it so it started out feeling really really good and then it became kind of painful in the end because of distribution even though like i said overseas it was great it came out in so many countries and did really good overseas so it's always it always feels like you're you're in a challenge where it's like if this works out then you have a problem here that works out there's a problem there and uh you know you just kind of have to roll with it knowing that there's going to be these challenges coming you don't know what they are sometimes you just plan really really hard and try to eliminate all the problems you possibly can but no you just know that things are gonna pop up and then you just have to deal with them so as they as they come i think our are probably our are i mean echoes the fear is our new one still in the festivals and it won't come out to like fall 2019 so i don't know what's going to happen that was a great experience making it was a really great experience making the movie but in terms of the distribution process the only one that's been that kind of went through the full cycle that was really uh a great experience for us was was darker banes which is a different group of investors uh tony click i can't remember the other guy david cameron's last name but um but that was a great experience uh making uh dark remains and that worked you know that sold nicely in the u.s and overseas and it got a new life on vod it got picked up uh later when bod became a more a better market it got re-kind of re-released on on the vod platforms and the streaming and it's so it's been that's been probably our most positive experience going through distribution hopefully echoes the fear our new one we'll see what happens but uh i mean the film the response from the audience has been great to the film and it's been doing an amazing i mean our biggest success in terms of festivals because it's won five best feature awards it's already done eight festivals um i think it's gonna be in four or five uh before it ends it at least before it ends its festival run and the audience response has been amazing so obviously we have high hopes how that one's gonna turn out but you know you never know you just you just get it out there make the best film you can and then you work hard to market and release it and see what happens would you say you're an optimist i'm a realist uh but i think you have to have a little bit of insane optimism to make an indie film uh because if you're really a realist you probably would look at making indie film and just go no and you would stop so even though you're you're realistically you know what to expect you have to kind of like have the optimism or the belief or it kind of boils down to you have to make it it's like you you've got the story you really want to tell uh my wife and i you know we tell these stories together and then eventually there's a point where it's like we really want to tell the story so we got to make it happen and then you just so in that sense it's optimism yes because you just have to go we're going to do it and then you kind of dive in and do it were you always just were you always this way or after making many short films and then features then you realize like this is kind of the attitude i need to adopt i need to be like a happy realist [Laughter] i think it really comes from uh laurent slow my filmmaking partner i think it really comes from her uh she's very much into like you have to find your own path and what you're doing creatively not worry about what other people are doing not look at other people's success or lack of success and think about that you just have to excuse me you have to follow your path you know believe in what you believe in and and then just do it uh and so i take great inspiration really from her because she's very much like even from going back to the first film i'm like i really want to make a feature film i'm not sure how and she's like well just do it and you know and she was she's always been like that in terms of just finding a way to make it happen so i think i think probably from her from her where does a movie begin for you i think for me our movie really begins uh with an idea or the story the key story element or or the what if like this is kind of like a fall um and sometimes like uh low will bring you know we'll have an idea or have a dream uh and say oh this is really great and you're like i always jot it down like i jot down her ideas and and her dreams and my dreams when i have an idea or a thought i wake up from or if i'm daydreaming and and like oh you know so i kind of try to write all those little thoughts down and then eventually what i find happens is there's some of those ones that get written down there's one that kind of keeps chirping keep like hey and like it like more ideas come to it and at a certain point it reaches critical mass i mean usually when i have like 10 or 12 pages of ideas relating to a particular story it kind of reaches the critical mass where i start going okay now we're gonna figure out the you know what this is a real script you know all these ideas are great and then figuring out what coalesces into the script and then it kind of evolves like i work with low like ever you know when i finish the first draft is very useful because she usually gets fresh eyes on it at that point so it's great to get like a fresh perspective and then the story grows and then of course as you are inspired by locations or or real things you experience and oftentimes when you as it progresses like when you start casting like an actor can be a huge like influence in terms of like oh this person is like changes that character this could make the movie turn into this so all those things kind of and it just kind of grows so it's fun so it's my probably my favorite part is like developing the story and once that happens once that chirping is so loud then how do you bring it to life how do you know that it's time to start casting that this is like this is something worth spending time writing a script on well it's funny it's like sometimes i i don't know until after i've written the script i mean i've written i was giant bin of scripts which sometimes i'll sometimes i'll finish the first draft of the script and and i'll feel like okay well that's good for now i finished this first draft and there it is and i read it go um okay this is interesting but not right now and it'll go in the bin uh so sometimes like just in the process of writing the first draft but then if i finish the first draft and lo looks at it and i look at it go there's something here then it might lead to the second draft the third draft of the fourth draft at a certain point the story gets to a point where you're like yes this this story's here it's like this is a really really good story and we should we should really make it and at that point it kind of like then it kind of moves into the pre-production phase or like or the phase of like well how can we actually make it happen you know so writing a script is almost like a safety valve in some sense because if you see that first draft and you're like uh okay i did it i'm not like totally wild about it imagine you spend two three years trying to you know get it made raise money get distribution all that well that's what it really boils down to because it's so hard as an indie filmmaker to make a movie it has to be one that you kind of like are insane to make because the journey is gonna be so difficult so it has to be an idea that can really stand that test of time that you could live with it for that time to not only make it but then you got to do the festival circuit then you got to get the distributor and then once the distributor takes it you got to work on the marketing of it to help the distributor out so people know the movie exists so it's a very long process it usually ends up being a three to five year process when you go through the whole cycle so it better it needs to be an idea that you feel really really really strongly about um it's interesting because if i was in a position probably to snap my fingers a lot of these other scripting ideas that i probably would love to see into fruition if i knew it could be a shorter cycle and i think they could actually be really really good stories it'd be entertaining and people would enjoy but the trick is because there's only so much you can do you kind of have to pick the one that kind of leaps to the top like me you know your mother you know you've got you got a new me and that's kind of you know it seems like there's always one which will float to the top like that and also it's realistically it's it's money and budget it's like i have ideas all the time i can't make into a feature film right now because it's too much money i can't raise it you go through the process of trying to shop it to people and get a producer involved and you go through that process but you know that on our own we can't do it it would need someone else involved which we'd love to do and we have several of those that we you know hope hopefully one day will happen but that's kind of on a different track than the ones that you do is just a straight up indie filmmaker because that's a little bit more out of control because you're dependent excuse me on some different people saying yes so it's like you you know it's like that's not completely in fair control was the ones that you know that no matter what you can do if you set your mind to it those kind of move to the top as well because nothing can stop you as long as you decide to do it you know that's the only thing that would stop you from doing it is the decision like yes i'm doing this one how long should it take for you to write the first draft of a screenplay like what's your typical turnaround time for the first drive well it's interesting because usually the way i write a script is i'm usually working on another finishing the previous movie so what i tend to do is i tend to use a certain amount of my free time on developing the story and jotting down ideas and i can spend a long time jotting down ideas while i'm working on something else and then once it reaches critical mass and there's enough ideas jotted down then it's just a matter of me going yes i'm going to write that into a script and finding the time to do it and i can usually buckle down at that point after having spent all that time with the ideas and developing the characters are there and i know the basic plot i know the basic set pieces all that's been you know slowly accumulated over months and months by doing something else the first draft can happen really fast first draft can be done in in a couple of weeks if that's all i'm doing if i'm able to have a couple weeks straight all i can do is to sit down and write you know 10 or 12 hours a day boom you can do the first draft but the first draft is the start of the process the first draft is kind of like just you taking all those notes and putting it into a form where you go ah it's a script and then at that point then you can really start i i show it to lo laurence and and and she looks at it and we can start the process of like figuring out what what seems to be working what scenes are great well there should be more scenes like that this this scene it's like obviously she won't be mad if i say it but sometimes she'll so like early on i would write a script and she would like i i love the first the first initial notes on the first draft are fantastic and sometimes it'll be like giant x's on a page like boring you know but it's great because it basically you're getting those outside eyes to know like what's engaging what's capturing you and then the other part of it is of course on the drafts it's like shrinking everything down everything to its core essence uh so you don't have any repetition in terms of scenes repetition in terms of locations or characters doing the same thing it kind of like for me what i've learned over the years is you basically like what's the latest you can get into a scene and the earliest you can get out you know it's like how and how can you make that work and flow uh and from an editing standpoint and also low as a shooter and cinematographer like we spent a lot of time um a lot of time with echoes of fear our last one when we were doing the different scripts was figuring out like um you know how we can make that flow really nicely whereas the beginning of the movie we passed through about two and a half weeks of time in the first 20 minutes of the movie we go through about two and a half weeks and we have a lot of like short scenes like actually if you clock them there are like scenes there are 25 seconds so a lot of it was like figuring out in the script stage like how to dovetail the audio hit the scene have everything still flow so even though you have all these like really really short scenes and you're passing time and you're going you know in as late as you can and out as early as you can but you can't be like disjointed everything has to flow in terms of the visual and the edit and that that first starts with working that out in the script and then of course when you get into post you some you know you push that even further but he has to start in the script stage you know it has to be thought out that way in the beginning so you know like these are the moments in the scene which will bridge us and visually into the next scene and stuff so it's exciting to me it's like that's i mean i love the process of doing the multiple drafts on the script and honing it to me like honing the story is is the most fun the most daunting is probably like getting all those initial ideas together and getting through that first draft because once you have that then you you can just play on all the different versions and just keep making it better the same way like when you finish the movie you keep editing it to make it better you keep you know you finish your first version which is your script and then like forget the script now we got this and then you start letting the movie tell you what it wants to be and start playing and edit to like figure out how to even make it tighter and better and take it to the next step in the editing room so then of course music and sound design that's really the icing on the kick when you get to get to that level you think your experience as an editor has really helped with the storytelling i think so because even when i started um like by the time i was doing my second or third short so i guess by the time i was like 12 years old i was editing at that point i was shooting super eight uh and believe me when you shoot in edit super 8 and you are physically cutting the film and then having to tape it back together you think about why you're editing because because it's like that is a process so you really are editing in your head because it was difficult you edit in your head so as a kid i was like you already started editing in your head because of the difficulty of splicing that super 8 film and putting it together so i kind of like learn that and internalize that and then what you learn is what you start doing is you start editing in your head before you even shoot so before you even shoot anything you're storyboarding and you're storyboarding and out from the edit in your head and in that in that so it's like you're editing even from the very beginning of course that changes because things on the set and it's very organic and things may change from your storyboards and they may change from the edit in your head when you actually get into physically truly editing what you shot but i think you're just always editing i think and same with writing and the same way when you're writing your editing you're editing the scene to figure out to make it shorter or tighter in the words and do they need to say all those words do they need to say any words you know is is it can this just be expressed by an expression so it may start out in your first draft it's a paragraph speech from someone which turns into maybe three words so in a way it's like i think editing is the essence of telling a story is is editing whether it be like editing in your writing or editing in your head when you're storyboarding before you shoot or truly the editing what's called editing when you're editing your your finished product so even if i reached a point where i would be using another editor which i would not be against at all in terms of the physical editing i still think the process would be a lot of editing would be going on in my head uh you know so yeah i think it's just like a key element for me is seeing i see it visually and that's how i got into making uh movies to begin with as opposed to like doing short story writing or writing novels as much is that i i i see it in my head this is how the story comes to me so in a way even when i'm writing the script i'm watching it in my head sometimes i wish you could just jack a little cable into your brain you know it would be pretty awesome maybe one day that's gonna happen everyone's gonna be able to do their own movies because they're gonna be able to do it but then you have to really think about it i guess or your your movie would be pretty jumbled but uh yeah like charging an electric car yeah yeah but sometimes as the challenge is you see it in your head in in on an independent level when you're fighting with your budget and it can be very challenging and frustrating because you have this movie in your head and you're trying to get to that it wasn't until we did echoes of fear for the first time i felt like i got something better than what was in my head and to me i definitely think it's the best film we've done lo and i have done together and uh and it was such an amazing feeling to watch the finished movie and go that's better than what i edited in my head before i did it and made me so happy because usually the other movies i would watch and i was like happy with dark remains or third movie because i felt like i got 80 of what was in my head and i was like oh wow this is an amazing accomplishment i got eighty percent what i saw in my head so to actually get something better than i saw in my head really made me feel like okay we finally we finally got it we probably figured it out so it's pretty nice well plus you hear so many filmmakers say it wasn't the movie i thought i was gonna make like it it got away from me once we got in the edit room it wasn't it was still i'm still happy with it or whatever but it wasn't the movie i want you know because i you have this fantasy of how we want something to turn out right and then you're dealing with so many elements on set right and things just get away right and so that's well the real magic is when you can like what happened with us with echoes of fear their own magic is when the movie takes on a life of its own and becomes something better than what was in your head and that i feel like is when you finally break through the wall is when that happens and i think the really great movies that's when the magic happens is when it actually becomes something beyond it's like you just reach a point where all the elements come together and it goes a step beyond what you even had imagined and then i feel like then to me that's like to me it's like the really rewarding experience because otherwise you're just chasing what's in your head and it can become very frustrating i mean i guess unless you're david lynch have 100 million dollars and by golly you'll get what's in your head you know because you've got the resources and money to do it but you know there's probably 10 directors in the world who can actually call you know have the resources to be able to truly do no matter what to accomplish their vision it's very difficult i'm sure even if you ask some of those those directors they would probably maybe who knows say well it sort of is but you know how everyone's critical of their own work right right yeah they hear us something that we would never you're right you know sound of a footstep that they thought wasn't you know but a lot of people like i bet you like martin scorsese doesn't stop editing a movie until martin scorsese decides it's he's ready to stop editing oh sure sure yeah but this is great about it yeah it's like when you can reach a level to have that level of talent and be able to be recognized so you get the resources because people respect your talent and your vision that's a truly amazing thing that's true but then there's new pressure yes of course because then now if for whatever reason some critic who's never made a film before right decides to trash it right and and tell you how it's all wrong right right so yeah true but that's another video of all the different scripts that you have and like this bin yeah i don't know if it's a real binge oh it's real wow okay that was a metaphor i like to have tactile paper so yes it's a real benefit okay um have there been any that you want to make but the budget isn't there and it wouldn't do it justice to do it on an indie budget yes there's like three that have floated to the top of that that um i'd very much like to do um the process of working that would involve some other people uh to make that work one is a science fiction uh kind of apocalyptic creature movie uh one of them is a very intense psychological horror movie uh with the female protagonist or slash antagonist depending on how you look at it uh but then another one i uh that i really wanted to do was um a comedy horror creature uh film which i really was really tried really hard to like crunch numbers to figure out like how could we creatively do it but it still was too much but we actually came up with a creative way of telling that story in a different medium uh so uh lo laurence came up the idea uh i'd say well like i want to do like maybe i could adapt the script into like a fun fun text and then we could have a picture every three or four pages to make it visual and keep it fun uh and then uh and then she came up with the idea of like well no it should be like a we should do a picture per per page of text so like every page you have text and then you have a cool picture on the other side and i'm like oh that's great so it was a way of us keeping the visual nature of it um be able to tell to still have images uh while also being able to do uh you know have the text and tell the story yet not be limited uh by the budget of like if you were trying to tell it into a movie and that's this is an early prototype book of it called innards um which it's very early prototype uh we have a amazing artist armando norte who did the uh illustrations for it so there's 106 illustrations for the novella so like once again a picture for every every every page uh lo is actually doing the coloring in in a weird way the lighting on the black and white illustrations and she also just came up with the other day it's really exciting she just came up with the idea because we were trying to figure out how to make the text work with the image and keep it visual as well and she came up with the great idea that the text is actually going to be hand printed as well to go along so the text even though it's on the right side it's text it's going to be hand written and hand drawn and it's very creative in terms of like how the uh how the text is done and that was always even when it was typed it was done that way so like in terms of the words that come out and the layout and the page and stuff it's very different so it's a really unique i'm really excited about it because it's very unique because we call it an illustrated novella it's not a comic book but it's definitely not a novella with a few illustrations so it's living in this interesting in-between world between the two so it's very unique uh but it really it just suited the story really well because it was a comedy story uh the comedy comes from the characters in the very bizarre situation uh so with the creature so because it was common he just really lend itself to doing it with this fun text style with the uh with the images and in a very uh interesting graphic images to go with it it really lended itself to be able to tell it in this way so that's something we're going to turn to after echoes of fear our last feature comes out uh fall of 2019 hopefully everything works out on that uh we're going to start turning our attention to that low's currently finishing the coloring and lighting on it so yeah so that's that's innards so how long how long was the script oh the script was a full feature script um trying to remember like how many script pages i think it was like 98 script pages okay uh but you know of course it's it's not the script i had to like go back to my creative writing origins and and you know convert the script into a story but the great thing was because of the illustrations i could keep the story really simple and fun in terms of the text part because the the illustration of page kind of gives you a lot of the details that you would have to do if you were just writing the story you did well what does the main character look like you have to describe it you did describe the creature really well and the location so basically by having the image of page it enables you to kind of get more into the meat and the fun of the story in terms of the dialogue in the key events in action you can kind of jump right to that in the text because the picture is kind of helping you along helping the reader or viewer along in terms of what what it looks like visually so that's why it's a fun really fun marriage and that's where it comes in a little bit heading into your comic book realm a little bit uh but a lot more text in a comic book where it comes back into novella world so it's in that nice in in-between space that we kind of created we know adaptations are common but how common is it for a script to then be turned into a novella or a novel whatever you know i think it happens from time to time a lot of times it happens because people will do it um to try to sell the script uh in the story which i of course would not be against if that ended up happening once the illustrated uh you know enters the illustrator novella came out if it helped it turn into a movie great but our key goal was in doing it to make it a very like its own project so if it doesn't if it leads to the movie great if it doesn't lead to a movie it's okay because it exists in this in its own way you know in this form that people can enjoy it and get the story and once again a way of someone experiencing the story uh that you can't get you can't like hand someone a script you know it's like it's like handing someone who's not an architect the blueprints of a house it's not a very satisfying way to experience a story you know scripts aren't meant to be the end result i mean scripts are always a step like the burpees of a house to turn into a house to turn into a movie so to so this was fun with this is this basically you know adapting it in such a way that it's complete in and of itself that's really cool it's very exciting we'll get it done this year for sure and then we'll figure out uh like how to get it out there that'll be a whole new distribution world because we've never done it you've never done distribution of books so i don't know is this so you don't know so you we have to learn because it's first time we've ever done this i mean i mean our all of our experience from doing um movies doesn't really lend itself to what we're gonna do with this novella so that'll be something new we'll have to learn in terms of distribution and marketing and and you know what the best way is for to get it out there to people where did you actually get the book made uh it's a beautiful book you want to hold it up oh yeah absolutely gorgeous um where did you actually get the once you had the artist attached and you were finished with your text where did you actually get it put together the book the bounding well this this is just the prototype of it uh we wanted to do it uh lo found a place to have it printed uh so we could basically have a proof of concept for ourselves because uh this was early on before the text was was handwritten so the text is just typed but we just wanted to get a sense and the images are still black and white and a lot of them weren't in their complete stage yet but we just wanted to get a sense of like well how would it work in terms of reading it and experiencing it getting your image per page you know and so how would that feel and how would it work and so it was kind of like a proof of concept for us to be able to hold it in our hands and read it and uh you know we made a lot of changes from this because this was a great way of us kind of it's almost like a rough draft or a first cut of a movie is a great way to kind of get a layout of like oh okay so this is where it's heading and how can we make it better and from this we realized that like to really make it pop and for the comedy to come through it was it was important to do the color and then low actually experimented and learned how to do the coloring on it and she's a dp so it's weird it's like you actually add lighting once you add color so in an interesting way you're almost like adding color and lighting it and it helped bring out uh the artist of mondo norde and it helped really bring his illustrations out you could really see the line work he did and everything and help like it helped the viewer be able to see that better and like see all that detail work they did on it and uh and like i said in just um uh recently we we learned from doing all that that she came up with the idea of doing the text in a hand-drawn manner to once again helping with the comedy and the flow of it in in complementing the illustrations so we're very excited how it's going to turn out it'd be interesting imagine like it's such a hit that they want a second one but they don't want to turn into a movie they actually like it in novella form and it becomes like its own series that's great cool i mean we every time we do a creative project we're like we try not to think about what it's gonna who knows what's gonna lead to so we try to be open you know we like finish it and see where it goes and see what opportunities it opens up for whether it's a movie what opportunity it opens up for another movie if it's this you know if it opens up an opportunity to tell another story this way i mean it'd be interesting so i think for us it's like finding the right avenue um to tell the story you know what it lends itself to you know to tell it did you go to bookstores the few that are left and try to see i mean sorry the few wonderful bookstores that are left did you go to them and try to see what other novellas in the horror section just to get an idea since this was a new realm for them well yes we actually dropped into a amazing um horror shop called dark delicacies uh and they are burbank sorry uh yes okay yes yes uh and um it was interesting because uh the proprietor that dell he uh is an author himself and he's very aware of everything that's out there in publishing especially in the horror genre realm and it basically there wasn't there it's kind of unique there isn't anything exactly like this there's some things with an image um but um it's like every three or four pages or it's not balanced the same we did see like a book that was done there i can't remember the name of it later after we kind of done the prototype and and mapped it out where they did kind of have an image and and with with text per page but it was different it was it wasn't a novella as much it was almost like poetry in a way so so it's like we haven't really seen anything exactly like this which to us is exciting we've heard other people say well that's not good because it doesn't fall into like a little niche like oh it's that type it's this it's that but to me it's exciting it's different remember shel silverstein like did his thing you know remember shel silverstein the writer like oh okay he did kind of like these cool like poems and then there would be these drawings and i mean i'm dating myself i think that's like a bay area no i mean he was worldwide i know but so he kind of i don't know well when i was a kid like the poet the poet that really impressed me uh in terms of what he did visually was e cummings and how he laid out his uh poetry actually uh really affected me a lot actually you know a long time ago did some poetry and i would kind of like it was a i kind of fell into a similar thing where i would visually kind of move the words around in a different creative way which when it got adapted into this novella that same thing kind of came through even though i hadn't done it since i don't know college i guess but but the same thing would happen where like i would bring words up and words would be big and move things on the page different and uh so that's why it's like it's different even in the tech side of it it's not just like a normal text where it's like line nine nine nine nine nine line paragraph you know it has its own uh its own uh rhythm and style in terms of that as well which will be brought out even more that's gonna be the text now the text is gonna be done by hand by low it's going to make that even more pronounced so i'm very excited were you you were a poet in tennessee in high school oh god that was good how was that pretentiously awful i i didn't have any like-minded people i filled books with my poetry uh which no one has ever no one has ever seen them except for uh very good friends and and laurence obviously lois has seen has seen some of them but uh but yeah it was just for me uh it was it was a way i would let out creative outlet uh steam when i couldn't make a movie i would use that as an outlet uh that's before i became i would write scripts so much once i started writing scripts a lot more i kind of like kind of stopped doing that and became my much more just writing scripts with an outlet now because of this i'm kind of it's weird i'm dovetailing back into that a little bit but uh well for me it's like the key is whatever we do i just want it to be entertaining because it's like i do this even though it it's very personal and it's stories we're interested in to me it's like it's also stories that should interest other people because it's done for other people to see and have fun with uh even when we do the scary supernatural horror movies they're for it's fun you know it's scary i mean it's good to have a it's fun to have a good scare and tell a creepy scary suspense horror story so everything we do is kind of like focused on it being entertaining which is why i get scared to see the word poetry that's why that poetry does not exist in little books i hand out it's just for me because i don't i don't think it would those things would be really entertaining for someone else it's more like something i would do creatively but it's not something designed for the outside world because i don't think other people would find it entertaining [Laughter] do you have tips for writing twists and turns in a screenplay to really keep that audience guessing so that it's a movie where you would want to see it because you can't figure it out if you go in cold you're not going to be able to figure it out well i think the the best tip on that i think is if the story is coming from your imagination and or from what you're inspired by from real life or what you're inspired by that's not from another movie that will be like a great that would naturally make it be less predictable if you're not copying a movie you've seen or thinking about well what did other movies do when they did this if you're if you're if you're just bringing the story from imagination and in in in playing with it that way i think that's a that inherently already right from the beginning will help you do things that are unpredictable because you're not basing it on something that's already been done i think that the trap you can fall into is is like there was a trope with slasher movies which i love a good slash movie there's a trope in the 80s it became a parody and a joke where people they would do fake jump scares where people would open a closet and the cat would jump out and it would be like this joke in a while like how long is this cabin trapped in this closet so we could like jump out and scare it but but it's funny because even you know alien there's a scene where the locker gets opened and the cat jumps out it's a fake jump scare but it's perfect and alien and it's handled beautifully but uh you know it's like but then everyone's like oh the the cat jump scare became like this it became a joke as it should be because it then it became used in parodies which is great using it in a parody but uh so i think that a lot of it has to do with just not doing what's been done before um and you know you can always try to like attack that more intellectually if you're aware of having seen a bunch of horror movies by just deliberately making sure you don't do what's already been done uh or if you know that's been done you you make sure if your story naturally has something similar that you figure out a way to make sure it goes in a different direction so you don't go the direction that usually goes into which and that's something we worked um really hard with with uh echoes of fear there's a a very big turn in the in in the end of the second act into the third act which is very organic to the story uh but it but it's a very big turn in the story which a lot of people are really responding to from the festival place the festival audience is really responding to that because once again it takes it in a direction um that you're not expecting from how you're watching the movie and you think it's following this path of the way this type of movie it is but then it goes in a completely different way um but once again that came from the fact that uh the first part of the movie was inspired by real events so he drew from that and the other stuff came from um true events and true stories that we heard about so we incorporated that into the story and segwayed that in and that's what made it unique uh because it wasn't following like a formula or a particular pattern or wasn't even obeying the rules of just falling neatly into a particular sub-genre it kind of added a sub-genre as it got to the uh as it got into heading into the third act and it's been a great response from that so i definitely think that it's always good no matter what story or genre if if you can you know think outside the box in terms of like just based on how you come up with your story it'll happen naturally as long as you're not copying things i think and then if you feel like your story is naturally falling into being too similar to something then you can work actively against it you can you can like decide like to actively like make sure you do the left turn when everyone else does the right turn if you have to if it just happens that like it feels like it's getting too close to something you can intellectually decide to do that but i think it works best when it's organic when you're coming up with a story it kind of works best when it just the story evolves and naturally those twists and turns happen because of the story it's always best if it could just happen as you develop the story naturally i think did you ever catch yourself in the beginning like you know what this is way too similar to this one scene in a bryan de palma movie i can't do this this is too much like out did you ever see because i think it's natural for writers as well you're going to emulate those that you're you're watching your your your reading and then you realize oh wait i'm becoming that voice that's not original i know it's kind of hard to see especially if it's you're in you're wrong yeah yeah i'm trying to think uh i think it was a trap it was easier to fall into initially when i was writing um the script that didn't even get made um before even before we even did our first feature um i feel like i pretty much actively fight against it i know that definitely when we come to orchestrating suspense uh intention and especially uh a scare earning that scare organically and naturally not using the tropes that are you overused and doing the same and that might be an example of kind of like actively working to turn left instead of right you know actively working to not do the thing that that's usually done both in terms of sound design in terms of music in terms of like the build uh to that moment to like to execute it differently what makes a good horror protagonist a good horror protagonist oh that's an interesting question um well i think any protagonist any genre i think it has to be an interesting character it doesn't have to necessarily be a likable character but there has to be something about the character which is fascinating and interesting that you want to know what they're going to do and you're invested in terms of what's going to happen to them and i think that's really the key um you know a lot you know obviously it is like one of the scripts we talked about um the intense psychological horror film with the with the female protagonist you know someone could look at inverse that script and see her as the antagonist but she's the main character it's her story so she's protagonist um but once again it's like she what she goes through and she's a very fascinating character in terms of what she's experienced and what she's become and what happens to her and how she responds to it it really much pulls you in in the horror thing in terms of what's going to happen next you know how is she going to get out of that how is she going to solve that problem what's going to happen to her oh my gosh what she just did what is that going to lead to and i think especially in horror that has a lot to do with it is whether you like the protagonist or or you don't like the protagonist or the protagonist as an anti-hero a lot of it has to do with like seeing what's happening to them how they respond to it or what they do which makes the things happen to them and just kind of seeing that riddle in terms of what it leads to like what every step leads to and how the character responds so i think the key is it's like the character everything the character does needs to be in character it has to be a response that that character would have and of course as the movie moves along a lot of times your character will change because the character will have an arc but it's natural and organic in terms of what's happened to this character their changes because of the world that's bombarding them based on their actions and i think watching that unfold especially in terms of horror if there's suspense and mystery is like one of the things that really pulls you in because you're invested because you want to know what's going to happen you know with that character is it janet lee sorry walking up to the top of the stairs and not knowing whether the flashlight works oh right and and not checking and she's in underwear like i'm taking that from another video that we we did someone brought that up like first of all yeah yeah somehow film americans think that women are just always in their underwear walking in dark garages or different things but exactly in the forest well the funny thing is it's funny it's like it's almost the opposite of what you're asking but there's like this trope in a horror movie where where somebody hears something outside and they go out to investigate and everyone laughs at people in a horror film but the thing is is like but that's what you would do in real life because you don't know you're in a horror film in real life so if you if you're in bed and you hear something in your patio you're going to get up and turn the light on and probably see what the noise was it's like naturally a human thing but it's it's weird it's become a trope in horror film because people like respond and laugh at it but if you really like think about it it it's like um it's what you would naturally do i mean you don't hear something you don't hear a noise on your patio and call 9-1-1 and lock yourself in your room if you don't know what it is we don't know the noises so that's a that's an example where it's tricky because even though your character would in real life do something normal it's like you have to be really careful that people don't see it as funny and it's like it's almost like you have to fight against you have to fight against these problems in a horror film because people will always be like don't open the door you know the thing is but of course in real life you would open the door so then you have to like in a weird way it's like oftentimes your protagonist becomes hyper-intelligent because you have to make because you're actively working against the audience judging the protagonist from doing things so in a way you make them like almost you have to make them like sometimes like even more almost like they're they are aware they're in a horror movie they're doing things like super self-aware just but you're only doing it just because you don't want the audience to be like why are they doing that but that can be frustrating because in real life of course i hear a noise in the house i'm going to get up and investigate it so it's like then that becomes your challenge as a filmmaker and a writer how you do that without making the audience judge the character even though it's a perfectly logical thing to do i mean low laurent a lot of the main characters tropes and echoes of fear is inspired by my wife lo because she's she's totally fearless she's the one who will hear the thing on the patio and immediately will be lights on throwing open the door and i'll be more like well wait let me grab something let me get it back he's like wait a second what you know don't rush outside but uh so actually a lot of the inspiration came from our character and echoes of fear from that and making her a very fearless character uh and once you establish that as a character trope then it stops the problem of it becoming a laughable thing because it's coming from the character and when you realize that the character is very much someone who takes care of themselves and isn't spooked out by things isn't creeped out by the bumps and the bumps in the night uh then you're then once the audience understands that in a sense about the character then you can kind of pass through some of those horror tropes that would be a problem kind of halfway answering your question

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 6,871

Keywords: Filmmaking tips, filmmaking advice, filmmaking for beginners, filmmaking 101, how to be a filmmaker, filmmaking mistakes, producing a movie, how to make a movie, want to make a movie, Brian avenet-bradley, horror films, thriller movies, filmcourage, film courage, interview

Id: WZGB3V0jQhQ

Length: 97min 59sec (5879 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021