Podcasts about sundance labs

November 22, 2024, Park City, UT — The nonprofit Sundance Institute today announced details for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival's gala fundraiser, Celebrating Sundance Institute Presented by Google TV, which will take place on Friday, January 24, 2025 at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Utah. The event will be an evening in celebration of Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs at Sundance Institute, for her longstanding commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs, where visionary artists convene to develop groundbreaking projects through an in-depth creative process, for the past four decades. The annual Vanguard Awards Presented by Acura will be awarded during the evening to Sean Wang, writer and director of Dìdi (弟弟), and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, co-directors of Sugarcane, who premiered their films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The annual gala enables the nonprofit to raise funds to support independent artists year-round through labs, grants, and public programming that nurture artists from all over the world. The 2025 event is made possible with the generous support of Google TV. The Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, with a selection of titles available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 for audiences across the country to discover bold independent storytelling. Starting in 1981, Michelle Satter worked alongside Robert Redford who founded the Sundance Institute. Together with a committed team of leaders and collaborators, they developed impactful ways of mentoring emerging independent storytellers in a creative, rigorous, and safe space which launched with the annual June Filmmakers Lab. Satter has acted as an influential mentor to generations of award-winning filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, Chloé Zhao, Dee Rees, John Cameron Mitchell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ryan Coogler, Miranda July, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi, and many more. Over the years, Satter has built the Episodic Program, Producers Program, the Institute's global initiatives and oversees the Indigenous, Catalyst, and Documentary Film Programs. She also founded Sundance Collab — a global digital platform for storytelling, learning, and community, open to creators everywhere. Over the years, Satter's contributions to film and advocacy have been recognized with numerous awards including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an Oscar presented at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science's 2024 Governors Awards, the Women in Film Business Leadership Award, and the ACLU Bill of Rights Award. Stay connected with me at: https://www.chonacas.com/links/ Read more on David's Guide: https://davidsguide.com/michelle-satter-to-be-honored-at-2025-sundance-film-festival-gala-celebrating-sundance-institute-presented-by-google-tv/    

Join us on this special episode as we chat with producer Daniel Emmerson and director Kibwe Tavares as they chat their Netflix movie The Kitchen. The Kitchen written and co directed by Oscar Winner Daniel Kaluuya is out now on NETFLIX. Daniel Emmerson who's previous movies were Calm with Horses and Scrapper talks about his producing background and how The Kitchen was a ten year marathon to get made via the Sundance Labs and Film 4 before landing with Netflix. Kibwe Tavares talks about moving from short films to feature debut, co directing with Daniel Kaluuya, how he worked with his cast, his vision and belief in the film to stick with it over the ten year development process. LINKS PUNCHING BAG Support Rob Ayling and the crowdfunder for his short film on Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1095957799/punching-bag PODCAST MERCH Get your very own Tees, Hoodies, onset water bottles, mugs and more MERCH. https://my-store-11604768.creator-spring.com/ COURSES Want to learn how to finish your film? Take our POST PRODUCTION COURSE https://cuttingroom.info/post-production-demystified/   PATREON Big thank you to: Serena Gardner Mark Hammett Lee Hutchings Marli J Monroe Karen Newman Want your name in the show notes or some great bonus material on filmmaking? Join our Patreon for bonus episodes, industry survival guides, and feedback on your film projects!   SUPPORT THE PODCAST Check out our full episode archive on how to make films at TheFilmmakersPodcast.com   CREDITS The Filmmakers Podcast is produced, edited and written by Giles Alderson @gilesalderson Logo and Banner Art by Lois Creative  Theme Music by John J. Harvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Check out this new podcast episode featuring Writer/Filmmaker: KRISTINE GEROLAGA!Kristine Gerolaga is a Filipina American filmmaker and actor. Her work has been featured on ATTN:, Amazon Fire TV, ALTER, Shudder, Fangoria, Rappler, and Vulture. Her short films were finalists for the TIFFxInstagram Shorts Fest and Justin Lin's Interpretations 2.0 Asian American Filmmaker Initiative. She is a 2023 grant recipient of The Future of Film is Female's Short Film Fund. She is also a Sundance Institute supported artist: She was a 2022 Uprise Grantee, a 2023 TAAF Collab Scholar, and most recently, a 2024 January Screenwriters Lab Fellow and recipient of the Horror Fellowship in support of her feature film LAMOK. Her latest short film MOSQUITO LADY, the proof of concept for LAMOK, premiered at the 2023 Beyond Fest and is on the festival circuit now.#filipina #writer #filmmaker #sundance

On October 28th, I hosted a webinar called "How To Write A Great Story," where I talked about how to come up with interesting and unique story ideas, as well as how tapping into your everyday life interactions with people can help with this. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch.Show NotesFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletterAutogenerated TranscriptMichael Jamin:Yeah, you better figure that out because your story needs to be about one thing everyone wants to throw in the kitchen sink. And it's about this, but it's also about this, but it also has elements of this. It's like, no, no, you don't know what your story is. You got a hot mess. You can't kitchen sink it. Your story's about one thing. And if you think it's about two things, congratulations. Now you have a sequel or you have another episode, but your story's about one thing. And if you think I'm making it up, read stories that you've enjoyed and ask yourself the same question. What is this about you're listening to? What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, welcome back to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? And today I am answering your questions and I'm back here with Phil. Welcome back, Phil,Phil Hudson:Good to be here. Thank you forMichael Jamin:Having me. We had a delay because I borrowed some of Phil's mic equipment for a few weeks and then I gave it back to him with the wrong card. And then Phil, you learned a lesson. The lesson is no good deed goes unpunished.Phil Hudson:Oh man, I feel like's. I'mMichael Jamin:Happy to have taught you that lesson. ThankPhil Hudson:You for teaching me that lesson. I feel like the theme of every story I've ever written is that you get screwed either way. Just so everyone knows. Sometimes high tech is low tech and we have these awesome zoom recorders and they only allow you to have a 32 megabyte SD card. And then the American way of gluttony. We bought massive SD cards for the podcast, missed an SD card somewhere. SoMichael Jamin:Here we're won't run, but we're back and we made it work. We had a little delay. And so today I have these webinars every three weeks or so where I talk to people about writing. And anyone's welcome to join. It's free, go to michaeljamn.com/webinar for the next one. And we have a rotating list of topics that I cover and they're all writing related. And so these are some of the questions I didn't have time to answer during these webinars.Phil Hudson:And you are often testing new subjects too, so if you've attended them in the past, make sure you come sign up so you can get into those.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:Alright, well, we've got several topics and as we do, I tend to group these together based on subject matter, and these are raw questions just ask during the podcast. So I apologize in advance for ruining people's names and mispronouncing everything, but let's start with craft. I think that's the thing people care a lot about is how do they get better at writing? And s sl junk indie author asks, how does the story structure fluctuate depending on genre, I should say too, this is from your podcast, how to Write a Great Story, which is one of your MyMichael Jamin:Webinar. My webinar. YourPhil Hudson:Webinar, yeah, yeah. Excuse me. Your webinar, how to Write a Great Story, which is one of your most popular webinars that we have. So if you haven't signed up for that, go do that the next time it's up. So how does the story structure fluctuate? Depending on genre, if I'm writing a horror, but I'm used to fantasy, what are some things I need to consider when structuring my story?Michael Jamin:I really don't think there's that much of a difference, to be honest. I think if you're writing a mystery that's different, and I think writing mysteries, people do it wrong all the time. Rich are a little harder to do, but you're just telling the story structure is very similar. You're telling a scary story. A horror story is just a scary story. A fantasy is just, it is a fantastical story, but they're just stories. I mean, everyone gets hung up on these genres. You get to decide the tone and the tone of your story is scary or fantastical, but it's still a story.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Something that you told me privately that I think is interesting for everybody listening, you were approached by a publisher who said, we want to make you the next Save the Cat. We want you to publish this book series, and you've never read any of those things. But for those of us who have, this is commonly taught, what are the tropes of your genre? What are the things in your genre? What is the story structure of your genre? And it's like you read between the lines and it's like what you've said many times. You're taking something apart and reassembling that and it's not the right way. You need to start with structure and then move forward. It's the same reason you do a foundation and then a frame, and then you do the rest of the house.Michael Jamin:You can paint the house any color you want, and that's whether it's scary or funny or dramatic or whatever. That's just color of paint. But the house still looks the same for the framing, still looks the same regardless of what paint you want to put on it.Phil Hudson:Awesome. Just Mason May. How does someone overcome the concern that our work won't live up to its potential?Michael Jamin:Oh, it never does. To get over it, you'll never be happy. You'll never be, oh, I should have done it. This. When you're done, you're always going to look at it and go, I wonder if this could have been better. I think any artist is going to feel that way, but if the question is how do I make sure it's good enough to even share, well, then you can just give it to your friend or your mother or whoever and have them look at it and read it. Take your name off the cover and ask them, did you enjoy reading this? When you got to the bottom of the page, did you want to turn the page or not? And if you wanted to turn the page, you did a good job. And if you didn't, something's wrong.Phil Hudson:Right. Aside from that, what would you recommend people do to overcome the fear of rejection or the fear of someone hating their work?Michael Jamin:I get over it. I mean, that's the job you're signing up for this. Hopefully no one's going to be too mean to you, but just know that when I was starting off, I was no good. No one's good when they start off. I mean, no one starts every single artist you admire, musician, actor, writer, whatever, performer, they were not good when they started. Listen to them in interviews. They'll say as much, so you get better. The more you do, the better you get.Phil Hudson:Yeah. We watch these kids shows now that I've got small children, and one of our favorite shows is Bluey, which I've talked about before. And they just dropped a bunch of new episodes yesterday, and one of the episodes is about drawing. And the daughter bluey is not good at drawing, but the dad's not good at drawing, but the mom's really good at drawing, and then the little sister doesn't care at all. She's just a kid and she's just drawing whatever she wants. And so the dad's super conscientious, self-conscious of what he's drawing. And so bluey the protagonist becomes a little self-conscious of her drawing, and they tell the story that the dad made fun of when he was a kid. So he stopped and the mom, just, her mom incentivized her, encouraged her, you're doing great for a 7-year-old. And she was like, oh, and that was enough. And then she became a wonderful artist. So at the end, bluey and the dad are both freed up to draw the things that they got made fun of or were worried about. And it's this beautiful allegory of just, Hey, just let it go. Who cares? That person's just being a jerk and it's because they envy what you do. That'sMichael Jamin:A good lesson. That's a good lesson from that show.Phil Hudson:Yeah, it's a great show. I bet we should watch it with your kids, Michael.Michael Jamin:My kids are too old to watch TV with me now.Phil Hudson:Yeah, that's scary. It's so sad to hear that. Rachel Zoo, I would like to get my motivation for riding back and for everybody. You have this other webinar you just put out, which is about how professional writers overcome writer's block. And I think that kind of addresses this, but this was before that. But what general thoughts do you have about getting motivation back to write?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I can't motivate anyone. I mean, if you don't have the motivation in you, then it's not going to get done. So you have to be self-driven. But probably what you're experiencing is the fact that you just don't know how to do it. And so when you don't know how to do something or you think you're bad at it, it's not fun. Why would you want to do anything when you feel like you're horrible at it? But once you learn how to do it and story structure can be taught and it doesn't make writing easier, it makes it easier. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it easier. So I think the problem that you're facing is you just dunno how to do it yet. So come to some of my webinars and that'll help you a lot just to learn. You're flailing. I don't blame you. It's no fun. When you're flailingPhil Hudson:For everybody who is unaware, you also give away the first lesson of your online course for free @michaeljamin.com/free. And you teach this beautiful lesson about what is story. That alone is worth its weight in gold because it's just something we all miss or forget. And you've even said you forget sometimes.Michael Jamin:Yeah. I mean, I was watching a movie that I got a screener the other, and I'm getting halfway through, I go, there's no story here. I'm bored. And now my wife was bored by it too, but she didn't know why. I knew why because I'm a writer. I'm like, what's the story you're telling? No one knew. And yet the movie got made. I dunno, I got to tell you.Phil Hudson:Yeah. The other thing that comes to mind is many people have heard this guy, and you've heard me talk about him before, this guy, Jocko Willink, former Navy Seal leadership consultant, multiple New York Times bestsellers, a huge podcast, and he has this motto that says, discipline equals freedom. And he's like, it's a little bit counterintuitive because you think if you're disciplined, then you don't have choice and you can't do things. And his point is, if you are disciplined, you don't have to rely on motivation. And that's what I hear from you and I've heard from other professional writers is being a professional is doing it When you don't feel like it, motivation doesn't matter.Michael Jamin:You know what? I'll tell you as well, I post every day on TikTok or at least five or six days a week. I find, and I've talked to other creators who feel the same way. If I take too many days off, it gets harder to get back on. So two is the max, and you got to, because I know people think it's easy to, it's not easy posting on social media. It's like I got to think about what I'm going to say. I got to rehearse it, I got to shoot it, then I got to tag it, upload it, make all the meta tags. I don't do it in two seconds. And yeah, it's like brushing your teeth. You have to do it,Phil Hudson:And that's like any habit they say you can mess up once, don't mess up twice. It's like dieting, don't make two bad choices. If you made one, that's okay. Now continue to get back on track, but it's discipline, discipline, discipline. You just need to sit down and do the work because that is what is required. And if you're not willing to do that, this is not the career for you. It might be fun for you to do on your own, but even then I imagine that's going to be pretty brutal if you don't have the discipline and the habit of just sitting down and doingMichael Jamin:It. Oh, even if it's a hobby, it'll still be more fun if you know how to do it. I mean, golf is a hobby for most people. The better you get, the more fun it is to play.Phil Hudson:Yeah, I don't like being bad at things. That's very true. Great. Stephanie Anthony, what are daily writing exercise exercises that are invaluable to helping to build stronger storytelling muscles?Michael Jamin:Well, I don't do exercises, but would certainly have. Keeping a journal or a diary and writing it, knowing that no one will read it is very freeing. When I was in high school, I wrote, I had a creative writing class and our assignment was to write daily entries in this journal and we gave it to him at the end of every class and then he would read it and he was always so kind. He always said such nice things about what I wrote. He was looking forward to reading it. I thought that was really nice of him to do. I'm sure it wasn't very good, but I was trying to entertain him and he appreciated it. Yeah, just write and read how those are your exercises. Write and read.Phil Hudson:I've talked before about some of my experiences translating for the Sundance Labs and some of the things I got to do with the scholarship I had through Robert Redford and this woman Joan, who runs these workshops at the labs for whether you're a writer, a director, whether you're doing editing, whatever it is, everyone goes through this basic storytelling lab with her, these workshops almost every day. And it's about taking, basically it's what you talk about in your course, mining your life for stories. And I remember that one time I went and she saw me and she recognized me from doing this Redford scholarship stuff, and she was like, it's so good to see you here. And I told her what I was doing and she was introducing everybody in the room and I introduced myself and she was kind enough to say, and Phil is a very talented writer, and I made the mistake of saying, well, that's why I'm here translating. And I've been thinking about that literally today as doing the work and practicing and getting better and then getting acknowledgement from other people is important. The practice of doing it every single day is the exercise. And then I think the other exercise is accepting people's praise when it's earned and deserved.Michael Jamin:Take the compliment because you know why it's insulting not to. It insults the person, not if you shit on it, then they gave you a giftPhil Hudson:And I did.Michael Jamin:I see people do it all the time. You're not the only one. It's normal. You also feel like, well, I'm not good enough.Phil Hudson:My thought was like, well, I'm not in the labs, so I'm here translating, but I did it in front of people and I did apologize to her after, and she was very kind and we had a good chat about it, but that was ringing in my head today.Michael Jamin:It's hard to take a compliment for a lot, a lot of time I feel the same way. I feel the same way,Phil Hudson:But if you say no or you shoot it down, then it's all going to be harder because you're reinforcing unconsciously that you are not good or it isn't good enoughMichael Jamin:AndPhil Hudson:You got to take the wins. Take the wins.Michael Jamin:Yeah, right.Phil Hudson:Awesome. A couple of questions related to the topic, and you're online screenwriting course, so they're kind of bundled together, Joel Riedel regarding execution of an idea in a script. How do you know when you've taken a script far enough? In other words, how do you know if it's ready?Michael Jamin:Well, kind of the same. I kind of touched on this earlier, but basically give it to someone and take the title sheet off. If so, they don't know you wrote it and then give 'em a week or so to read it. And if they get to page 20 and they ask, they're going to say, what do I know? I'm not a Hollywood director. How do I know if your script is any good? You say, well, no. When you get to 20, do you want to read more? Does it feel like I gave you a gift or a homework assignment? That's it. You don't even, because your reader is your audience, they don't have to be a Hollywood insider to know whether they like something or not. Do they want to turn the page or not? And if they do, it's good. If it's not, if they don't, that's a problem.Phil Hudson:Yeah, there's levels of that too, because I've written things that I've given to friends and they said this was great and then given 'em to you and you've given me good praise, but solid feedback and things that I could improve, and it's the quality of the feedback is also important, but what I'm hearing you say is regardless of that, if you have a show on tv, whoever's going to sit down and invest their time to watch your story, they need to all understand there's a story here and it's worth the hour of my time, the 27 minutes of my time, whatever it is that they're doing.Michael Jamin:Yeah, because no one's obligated to watch your show. They'll turn the channel now. So that's how you judge things.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Are you ever at a point when you write things where you feel you've done enough, I'm happy with that one, that one's good to go, or is it always like, I can make that better. I just got to turn it in?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I always feel that way. Even with my book coming out, I always feel like I could have done that a little differently, but it's like, no, you got to let it go. You got to let, but I saw an interview with Frank Geary and he was looking at, I think it was 60 minutes, and he was staring at the Disney Concert Hall, which he designed, and he's a fantastic architect. I think he was with Leslie Stall, and they're admiring his work and she goes, when you see this building and it is one of the most beautiful buildings in la, yeah, it'sPhil Hudson:Great. It's gorgeous. If you guys have seen Iron Man, I want to say Iron Man one, they go to it,Michael Jamin:They do. It's very sculptural. It looks like a piece of sculpture, and she said, when you look at this building, what do you see? He goes, I see all the things I would do differently now, and he's a master, so you just never get past that stage,Phil Hudson:But that's not the job of a pro, which is what you teach. The job of a professional is you do the work, you turn it in, you move on.Michael Jamin:Yeah, you move on to something else and make the next one better if you can.Phil Hudson:Well, you always do the best you can with the time you have. Is that accurate to say?Michael Jamin:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's definitely what with tv, we got to turn on an episode of TV and at the end of the week, so we do the best we can.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Awesome. Camika Hartford in creating a story with structure in mind first, is it ever useful to organically write or figure it out, then go back and pick out the pieces you want to create a solid narrative, or is that just wasted time? This is in regards to Greta Gerwig process. That's a little bit different than most people. That'sMichael Jamin:A great question, and if you were writing a movie on your own time, sure, you can write it. You don't have time to schedule. You could take four years to write your movie, and if you want to discover it organically and if you understand how to do that, if you understand what that means, it means you have to write and write and then you figure out what the story is. Then once you finally find the story, you can go back and rewrite all the other stuff that's not the story and then fix it. But you still have to understand what story structure is to know what you're fixing. If you were to on a TV show though, you don't have that luxury. You're on staff with a bunch of other writers in a room, and before one word is written, you break the story on the whiteboard and then you outline it. Just don't discovering the story. Everyone agrees on what the story is in the writer's room, so it's a very different process. One is more organic, the other is definitely more efficient.Phil Hudson:You said everyone agrees, and I've been in the room, or I've seen people not agree with the showrunner.Michael Jamin:When I say everyone agrees, I mean the showrunner agrees. Yeah,Phil Hudson:So just for a point of clarification for people, it is not your job to approve every decision in a writer's room, but like you said, when you're writing something for yourself, you have the luxury of doing that. So yeah, fascinating question and answer. Thank you, cam. Gleb, Lin, how can I bring my vision to life through a screenplay?Michael Jamin:How can I bring my vision to life? I'm not really sure. Are they asking how do I sell it orPhil Hudson:How do I think? What I'm hearing from this question based on the topic is, alright, so I've got this vision for what I want my story to be, and I've chosen screenplay as my medium. How do I get what's in my head on the pageMichael Jamin:And justice?Phil Hudson:You knowMichael Jamin:What? I saw this short by Wes Anderson last night, God, I can't remember what it was called, damnit, I don't remember what it was called. It was with Ray Fines and Ben Kingsley. It was a half hour long and it was typical Wes Anderson only, it wasn't shot like a movie, it was shot like a stage play, and so the character would talk and behind the character, the sets would move and would fly in this different set. Then he'd pretend to walk and then he'd be in a different set, and it was wonderful to watch. It was so creative, but on paper, it's the most boring thing in the world. There's no magic on paper. You have to see it. So if that's what you want to do, you're going to have to just build that yourself. You're going to have to got a phone, you got a camera, you got friends, make it yourself and don't spend a lot of money. Whatever you think it's going to cost, I guarantee you I can shoot it for much less because it's not about the money. It's always about the words and the more creative you are. I did a bunch of commercials that I wrote for,Phil Hudson:It's just about to talk about, wereMichael Jamin:You going to say that?Phil Hudson:I was, yeah.Michael Jamin:For Twirly Girl, my wife had a company called Twirly Girl, and we shot all these commercials and I wrote and produced them and I hired a bunch of high school kids to shoot it as my crew and the sets, I built the sets out of cardboard, literally I got cardboard boxes and I built everything. And the fact that it was made out of a cardboard made it funnier. It made it silly,Phil Hudson:But tonally on point too because it's a children's clothing line, right? Yeah.Michael Jamin:But it was magical, but it had the same, Wes Anderson has that same kind of magical thing about him. It doesn't exist so cool about it.Phil Hudson:For those of you who haven't seen them, are those published anywhere? Are they on Twirly Girl YouTube? I know we have in your Vimeo account. I've seen them.Michael Jamin:I know there, I mean, I think you could see some of them. If you go to twirly girl shop.com,Phil Hudson:Would you ever want those published on your site just as examples?Michael Jamin:We can do that. Do you think someone is interested? We should put some there.Phil Hudson:Why don't you guys, if you guys are listening to this, just go comment on Instagram and just put hashtag twirly girl in the comments, and so we know if you guys want to see 'em, we can load 'em up on your side. Yeah,Michael Jamin:We can make a page for that, but it's probably a good idea, Phil. I think it should be inspiring. Each of those commercials, they're about three to five minutes long, whatever. Maybe they're five minutes, but I cut 'em down to three and each one costs, the first one I think was 1200 bucks. You can do it cheap. You can do it cheap.Phil Hudson:My business partner Rich, he was one of my professors in film school, actually he's teaching at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. He's teaching film right now. And so for the final project last semester, he had them shoot a video, basically that kind of commercial for pickleball brand. And the thing looks incredible. There's amazing camera, there's crane movement, there's drones, it looks good, and $128.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great.Phil Hudson:Yeah, it looks like it was 10 grand. Now there's, it got to perform as an ad. I dunno, but the quality was definitely there and what I'm getting to is when you talk about getting your vision to life, it is the job of the writer. It is the job of the writer to get the vision on the page so that anyone who reads it can see that vision. But it is the director's job to take that and work with the art department and everyone else to expand it. Or in tv, the writer is typically the showrunner. That showrunner has that same capacity to get the vision made beyond doing it yourself. I think the other piece of advice that I might give would be you need to understand your craft. You need to understand what a screenplay looks like, and your formatting and your own style and tone are going to influence your ability to do that on the page. If you're not going to produce your own stuff, and I don't mean that to counter what or contrast with what you're saying, it's just the person who's not going to go shoot those things. If you're just talking about it from a writer's perspective, you got to have your story there. The structure has to be sound, and then you need to be able to use the words and the style and format of screenwriting to get the job done to convey that vision.Michael Jamin:And as you were talking, I forgot to tell you this morning on TikTok, someone tagged me and they said they're in law school and that they're taking an entertainment law class and their professor assigned them to watch my channel.Phil Hudson:That's awesome. Why?Michael Jamin:I don't know why. What a weird homework assignment.Phil Hudson:Love it. Love it. Maybe he's going to just call out all the things that you could be sued for. Yeah, maybe. That's wild, man. The world's shifted in the Michael Jamin sphere over here. You got Michael's got his own Wikipedia page too. Yeah,Michael Jamin:I'm on Kpia. Yeah,Phil Hudson:A couple of years ago you would've never wanted any of this attention, right?Michael Jamin:No, I still struggle with it a little bit. I still strugglePhil Hudson:Just highlighting that for everybody here who's struggling to put their stuff out there, what a lot of these questions are about, you wanted to do something, just publish this book and you said, what do I need to make that happen? It's been over two years in that process. And your book will be coming out pretty soon.Michael Jamin:Yeah, we'll do a special episode on that. But yeah, when I'm yelling at you guys to build the damn mountain to build it yourself, I just want you to know everything I recommend, either I have done or I'm currently doing, so I'm not talking out of my ass. SoPhil Hudson:Zero hypocrisy here with the recommendations and I will defend you on that because I see it happening. Yeah. Alright. Sucks to suck has a question. Great. Great. Username story build finding, planning the path of the characters. This is a statement, it's not a question, but when you're story building, how do you find or plan the path for your characters? What are their arcs?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I mean, that's something I teach in my course, my screenwriting course. Come sign up michael jammin.com/course, but that's not a 32nd answer. That's a 14 hour course. So yeah, come to my webinars. I did a webinar a couple weeks ago where I literally gave away part of the course. Not a lot of it, just a small part of it.Phil Hudson:I was surprised. It's a lot though. It's a lot of nuggets in there of,Michael Jamin:Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in that. I was like, I kind of felt like, guys, if you don't hit the whole thing, you're missing out because this is pretty good stuff.Phil Hudson:What was that? How professional writers create great characters? Is thatMichael Jamin:What it meant? No, it was, I don't know. It was not. It might've been getting past writer's block or what was the onePhil Hudson:After that? Both of those are pretty good, and I think you've given a lot of new context and a lot of context in there for that. I think it was a great characters was one specifically on this subject, and you talk about this, I don't want to spoil it for people who are going to miss it, but you talk about the principle of how to put the right character in a story and it is worth watching. I don't want to steal the opportunity for you to learn that lesson by listening to Michael.Michael Jamin:Come to my talk on characters that it'll help you a lot and it's free.Phil Hudson:Awesome. Sammy Cisneros, how strict should we follow conventional story structure?Michael Jamin:I would say don't break the rules until you understand them. So I would say very strict, and just so you know, I don't break the rules and I've been doing it for a long time. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Honestly, once you're in that story structure, there's still so much creative freedom that you can have once you understand, it's not like I don't feel handcuffed when I'm writing a story that way. I feel liberated. I understand how to do it. There's the roadmap that'll help.Phil Hudson:You discussed this principle of Picasso in your free lesson, which I think everyone should go pick up or rewatch if you've signed up for it in the past, but you talk about what it means to become a master and it's visually apparent when you look at the way you display that in that lesson.Michael Jamin:Yeah, go watch. Yeah, that was in the free lesson,Phil Hudson:Michael jamon.com/free.Michael Jamin:Yeah, go watch that. That'll help.Phil Hudson:Great. Leoni Bennett, when breaking a story, do you keep track of both plot and story?Michael Jamin:Yeah, it's all yes, all yes. And if you don't know what that means, there's a difference between plot and story, and I talk about this in I think the free lesson, but yeah, you have to keep both in mind. You don't do one without the other. It's the same time. You can have a plot if you have a good plot, but no story. You got nothing. If you've got a good story but no plot, you also have nothing. So you need both.Phil Hudson:Yeah, I think lesson two in the course is heavily dedicated to this, and you do touch on it on the free one, but second year in the course and you get to lesson two, it's like, oh, okay, this makes a lot more sense. And I've always said this since we started the podcast and doing this stuff together. You're the only writer I know online who talks about story and not plot everyone else's. What are your plot points? What is this plot? What is this beat? How does this beat build to this? What is your inciting incident to this thing? To crossing the threshold to the Boone? And they're mixing all this jargon from all of it's youngian, it's Joseph Campbell. It's like all this stuff. It's very hard to even wrap your head around. And I'm egotistically. I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person who's capable of learning. And very often when I started studying screenwriting, I was just beating my head against the wall because it's like I don't even understand what subtext is, and you're telling me to use it, but no one's teaching how to use subtext, which you talk about, but it's that. Yeah, it's the story. It's story, story, story. And then the plot is, to me, it is the painting of the story. It's what makes the story matter.Michael Jamin:Well, I watched a movie the other day and there was plenty of plot. Things were moving along, things were clipping, things were happening, but the whole time I'm like, so what? Who cares? Why do I, this is so who cares? And so the story is really the who cares part. Why shouldPhil Hudson:Write that down? WriteMichael Jamin:That down. Yeah, write that down. It's the who cares. It's what to me as the viewer or the listener or the reader, it's all the same. Why do I care what happens to the main character? And if you don't, I won't say it on camera, I won't say which one it was, but it was a big movie, big budget, big director who's done some great stuff. You shouldPhil Hudson:Just text me so I know what itMichael Jamin:Is. I'll tell you later, but I was like, who cares? Why do I care about any of this?Phil Hudson:Yeah. Dave Crossman, who is pretty active in the course we've talked about before. He has said that I have a coined phrase now when I read someone's script. It's a lot of things happen, a lot of people doing things and nothing's happening.Michael Jamin:Okay, yeah,Phil Hudson:That's good. Lots of stuff. JustMichael Jamin:Plot is so boring.Phil Hudson:Cool. Yeah. Alright. David Campbell, how do we determine which contestants, which content to reveal in what order?Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. I have a whole analogy that I go through in one of my free webinars about the order in which you unpack the details of your story is really important, and that's what I teach in the course. But for sure, yeah, a lot of times you'll read new writers and they just do a dump. They just dump everything out. But that's not how you tell a story. The story is like you as the author, you get to decide when your reader learns this, and that's how you keep people turning the page.Phil Hudson:Yeah. I have bought a lot of self-published books from friends and people I went to film school with and some are good and some are like, wow, what you just put in a chapter could have been a whole book and you ended this chapter in a place that makes zero sense. And it's because of the way they're laying out the story. They have so much they want to say they're just rushing through it or they have so little they want to say it's dragging on. And to me, I think that's what we're talking about, story structure. If you understand structure, then the artistic way you unfold that sort of unravel that story is your craft and your voice and that the person who comes to mind for me is Guy Richie. I think Guy Richie does that masterfully in his stories.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I'm working on a story right now, which I'm writing, and there's one of two ways I want to write it. And so I'm not sure which way I'm supposed to do it, but I'll choose one and I'll go down that path and if I find it halfway through, it doesn't work, I'll go back and do the other way.Phil Hudson:So you're saying you're not married to the words you wrote. They're not precious written in stone and can never be changed.Michael Jamin:No. It's all about, yeah, exactly. I've tossed out so many stories that weren't working, but I am always thinking about what's the best way to compel the reader to turn the page.Phil Hudson:High level note there, guys, write that one down too. WriteMichael Jamin:It down.Phil Hudson:Paul Gomez, seven 90 Should a story center around subject or a character, is there a different approach for each? What I'm hearing with this question is should I focus on theme or character when I write my story?Michael Jamin:Honestly, I think you focus on a character and then theme comes a little bit later, but I've seen some movies, the very interesting setting, very interesting subject matter, very interesting. But because I don't care about what the character wants and I'm not invested in the character, I was very unsatisfied with the movie, even though the subject matter was really interesting.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Previous podcast episode we've done, we talked about basically picking a word. There's a word that's going to color my story then to me is theme. What is the theme of this that might help shape the character that I'm telling to convey that theme, but the character has to matter or it doesn't matter what the theme is.Michael Jamin:Yeah. When my partner and I are writing, often we pretend there's a drinking game. That theme will keep on appearing, and often you'll see a word recurring over and over in a script, and we always will drink, drink, and then when we're done, we go back and change those words. So it's not so obvious we disguise it. But if you're doing it right, that theme will reappear many times and throughout your script, but you just have to hide it a little better.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Guys. I know some of you are advanced enough to know how much gold Michael's just dumping his pockets right now. Just gold nuggets. For those of you who are newer, this is worth re-listening to so that you can pick up that gold. This is stuff that will shape you, and I would come back and listen to this one six months from now because you're going to be a different place as a writer at different things. I've definitely seen that even just listening to our podcast with questions I've asked you. The answer is that I got two years ago apply very differently to me. Now. I'm a father of two kids now I am dealing with all these other different life issues than I was two years ago, and that affects the way I tell my stories and what things I want to talk about.Michael Jamin:And I'm still learning, guys, just, I mean, you're never done learning when you're writing, so I don't know everything. I just pretend toPhil Hudson:More than he gives himself credit for, but he's going to take credit like we talked about, right?Michael Jamin:Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michael jamon.com/and now back to what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about?Phil Hudson:Alright, is that my voice asks the beats? Is that what we are referencing here when we talk about story structure are the beats?Michael Jamin:The question is what? What'sPhil Hudson:The question? Yeah, so the context of this is from the webinar, how to write a great story. And when you're asking the question, what is a story or what is story structure? They're asking, are you referencing beats? Is that what you mean when you say story structure? They'reMichael Jamin:Beats, so they're about seven or eight beats in every story, and it doesn't matter whether you're writing a half hour, an hour and a half feature, whatever that you must hit, in my opinion, in order for a story to feel fulfilling. And so those are the beats I talk about. And one is at the bottom of act one, bottom of act two, these are all important beats and I teach that. But yeah, and there's still some creativity you can have. Well, a lot of creativity you can have once those beats.Phil Hudson:I want to highlight something because I know you don't read any of the other advice that people are giving. And again, a lot of these people are not riders. In my intro to storytelling class, which is writing 1 0 1 in college, my professor asked this question, how many beats, beats are in this thing? And he'd have us watch a movie and count the number of beats. And then he put up this image on the board and it was 40 beats. And he says that every feature should have about 40 beats. Now, that's the difference between sequences and beats, and you already can tell this is again very confusing, right? But this is the formulaic approach that is very confusing and shackling to people who are starting out and what you're saying, I don't want people to misconstrue what you're saying by saying there should only be eight moments in a script or eight scenes, but he was describing scenes as beats and how you progress through things. And that comes from a book, and I can't remember which book, but it lays that out.Michael Jamin:That's just too many. How are you going to keep all that in your head? I feel like eight is manageable. Eight not eight scenes, but eight moments that you have to hit. And then it just like when you go from A to B2C to D, you can take a little side trip from A to B, but you still got to get to B.Phil Hudson:Yeah. And I think that USC and UCLA, I think they use what they call eight beat story structure, which mirrors pretty close to what you teach, but you'd expect that because they're proper film schools taught by professional writers, directors, producers, editors who are just doing that now because they've moved out of their first career. So yeah, I just want to make sure people are not misconstruing the two or conflating 'em. NRS creates How can a series pilot with more than eight main characters work without story overload?Michael Jamin:You wouldn't want to have that many go back and watch some of these old pilots or any pilot even towards whatever season five or eight. They may introduce a lot of new characters, but in the pilot, how many characters were in the pilot? And if it's a sitcom, you're talking probably five or six. It's if an hour long, you're going to have a few more. You might be eight, but you should be able to service eight characters in an hour long story. So it shouldn't be a problem. It's when you start growing the cast, it gets more complicated.Phil Hudson:Yeah, I think lost is a great example of this. Tons of people, plane crash, there's mayhem happening all around you, and we're looking at four or five people. And then as the series goes along, they introduce more people and the stories become more complex and there's side things happening. But in the pilot, which is two hours, I think JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof did that masterfully.Michael Jamin:Yeah, great pilot.Phil Hudson:Richard Monroy, life, death Rebirth. These themes are found in art. How can this be applied to screenwriting?Michael Jamin:Well, I mean, what else are you going to write about when you're going to write about all events that happen to you in life? Jealousy, anger, love, betrayal, vengeance, whatever. That's what you're going to write about. So you're going to you life mirrors art and art mirrors life.Phil Hudson:Yeah. I think that ties back to our theme as well, right? You pick your theme and then that's the thing you're deciding to talk about, and then your characters and the story and the plot all play to paint that picture. Yeah. David Campbell, another question here. Do you have to write a log line for every episode or story?Michael Jamin:Yes. One of the things, when my partner and I run a TV show, what we make all the writers do, including ourselves, is we write after the story is broken on the whiteboard and one writer is chosen or a team is chosen to write that script, the first thing they got to do is write what we call a book report, which is a one page summary of what we just discussed in the writer's room for past week. And this is not as easy as it looks. We need to make sure everyone's on the, were you paying attention? Did you understand what we finally agreed to? And at the top of that book report, we make them write a log line. What is it about? What is this episode about? And it's amazing how that one simple thing can really, really be beneficial. I never assume anyone understands what it's about.And sometimes I tell a story that a couple of years ago, I think it was on Tacoma, my partner and I were writing an episode, we're writing the outline and we're figuring out these scenes. We start arguing over what the scene should be. And I was like, I'm right. And he's like, he's right. And I'm like, wait a minute, what do you think the story's about? And we didn't agree on what the story was about. We literally didn't agree. So we stopped and went back to the whiteboard to figure out what the story was about. Even though we had spent a week working on it, we couldn't agree.Phil Hudson:Yeah, that's how much it matters. I don't know that there's anything to add to that. That's great. Henry Wind, as an audience member, I'm really trying to catch the details and the dialogue so I can understand what is happening in this scene between two actors. How do you deepen subtext?Michael Jamin:Well, characters often don't say what they're actually thinking. And so that's the difference between writing directly and writing indirectly. And again, I talk about this in the course to greater detail, but writing directly is, I'm really mad at you. You hurt my feelings. The other day when you said this about that's writing directly, writing indirectly might be just me ignoring you or me telling you that your hat is stupid. So you know what I'm saying? Who cares about your hat? I'm really mad about you for what you did. And so that's the difference. And the more indirect you can write your writing, the better the smarter it seems.Phil Hudson:Yeah, it's amazing how this is human nature though. Just last night, my daughter, she just turned three, and so she's throwing a little bit of the terrible three tantrums. I've heard terrible twos, but it's really the threes is what every parent says. And she wanted to do something and we said, no, it's time for bed. And so her lovey, her stuffy Is Cob the Cow? And she's like, I don't want cob in my bed. And my wife who's wonderful, says, just because you're mad at us doesn't mean you should take it out on other people. And she said, okay. And then she cuddled her little stuffed animal, but it's human nature to do this. She didn't say, I'm mad at you. She's like, I don't want COB in here. I don't want to sing songs. I don't want to read a book. She's mad atMichael Jamin:Me. She's writing indirectly. She's a writer.Phil Hudson:Yep. She's human nature. The beautiful things you learn from kids, man. All right. Moving on to breaking in the Broken Breaking Seas. That's an apt name. Can you talk about working with a writing partner a bit? I'm very curious what that process is like.Michael Jamin:Well, it's sort of a marriage and you get to decide who you want to marry. I've been working with my partner Seaver for close to 30 years. And at this point there's a lot of trust and there's a lot of, we try to argue as little as possible. The truth is I don't really care if it's his idea or my idea. I really don't. If it's his idea, great. That's one less idea I have to come up with. It's not about my ego and it's really about what's best for the work. And then great. I mean, it helps to have one, it helps have one bounce idea. We can bounce ideas off each other and often he'll shoot down my idea, say whatever. I don't really care. It's really about getting the work done.Phil Hudson:We did a whole episode about writing with partners on the podcast, so go check that out as well.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:Alright, moving on to miscellaneous questions. We got about 10 left, Michael, does that sound good? Sure. We hit those in the next 17 minutes and wrap this up in an hour. Sounds great. Lisa J. Robinson, for a beginning writer, what program do you recommend to write a script that is very user-friendly? Imagine thatMichael Jamin:RightPhil Hudson:In my mouth. Didn't even know, didn't even know Michael. This question in October would serving today. SoMichael Jamin:Every single television show, movie, everything I've sold, every single one of them have been written in a program called Final Draft. And that is considered to be the industry standard now. So it's the best as far as I'm concerned. Now. They offered me a brand deal a couple months ago, and so I've since done some spots for them and I had no problem doing it because it's not like it's a product that I have. I use the product, so Sure.Phil Hudson:And you've turned down so many deals from people with different writing software. Even when we first started doing this, people were reaching out. It's like, Hey, we'd love to pay you to talk about our screenwriting software, and you turn them all down.Michael Jamin:No. So thisPhil Hudson:Is a bigMichael Jamin:Deal, but if you want to use Final Draft, we do have, they gave me a brand deal, so if get on my newsletter, we said, well, there'll be a link on my newsletter and you can click on that link and you can get a discount 25% off on finalPhil Hudson:Draft. Do you want to give them the code? Do you want toMichael Jamin:Give the I think so we could do the code. Yeah.Phil Hudson:It's M jamming 25 I think, right?Michael Jamin:24 I think.Phil Hudson:Correct. For it's 24 M jamming 24, but it gives you 25% off your purchase. And I used it and it worked on my upgrade from vinyl draft 12. So you saved me 25 bucks on something I was going to buy anyway.Michael Jamin:Yeah, you can upgrade. You can upgrade at some point you have to continue, you got to upgrade your, so it doesn't fall out of surface andPhil Hudson:And there's new stuff that come in. There's all kinds of stuff that comesMichael Jamin:That, yeah, there's bells and whistles, but honestly I've been using Final draft since final draft five. They don't update it every day, every couple of years they improve it.Phil Hudson:We used a final draft for the collaboration mode in the writer's room.Michael Jamin:The collaboration is a good feature.Phil Hudson:And while I was doing this yesterday, this is totally unprompted, I was looking for this. You sent me a bunch of stuff and in 2016, just as I was going to move out here, you were asking me for my resume, like, Hey, there's somebody out here who was interested in getting your resume. And I sent it over and you told me in here, and I'm trying to find the exact words, but it was basically study final draft and know it like the back of your hand. And that was 2016, so that you've been preaching this for a long time.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it helps to know that program. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Great. Alright, Mimi, how to find the main idea from a lot of ideas you have in your book. So I'm assuming she's writing a book and she wants to know what the main idea. Yeah,Michael Jamin:You better figure that out because your story needs to be about one thing everyone wants to throw in the kitchen sink. And it's about this, but it's also about this, but it also has elements of this. It's like, no, no, no, you don't know what your story is. You got a hot mess. You can't kitchen sink it. Your story's about one thing. And if you think it's about two things, congratulations. Now you have a sequel or you have another episode, but your story's about one thing. And if you think I'm making it up, read stories that you've enjoyed and ask yourself the same question. What is this about?Phil Hudson:What's the difference between an A plot B plot C plot though, if it's only about one thing,Michael Jamin:Right? So an APL will occupy two or three characters, and that's a story that has the most emotional weight, and that's the one that has the most time on screen. YouPhil Hudson:Have, it's usually the leads too though, right? It's your main character.Michael Jamin:But if you have five leads on your show, then two of them will be in the A story. And then you have to occupy your other characters. So you give them a B story and maybe a C story if you still have to occupy some of them. But they don't carry as much emotional weight often they're just lighter.Phil Hudson:You don't want 'em sitting in their trailers cashing a check, right?Michael Jamin:Yeah, you got to pay these people. The audience wants to see them too. So you want to give the audience what they want.Phil Hudson:Great mental pictures. Love to know an example of a log line on a whiteboard in the writer's room.Michael Jamin:So a log line might be, okay, we wrote an episode called Fire Choir, and I think the log line was Eddie joins a malePhil Hudson:Choir acapella group. It was like firefighters, acapella choirMichael Jamin:To basically recapture the lost fame of his youth. It was something like that. So you knew what the plot was and you also knew what the story was. Oh, he's there to recapture his law. He was famous, whatever. He was in a garage band when he was a kid, and here's the chance to feel like a star again. So that's what it's really about. It's about the fame partPhil Hudson:And a great episode with one of our favorite characters. Wolf BoykinsMichael Jamin:Wolf. Yes. So played by Paul Soder.Phil Hudson:Paul Soder says, hi, by the way. Oh, you should have him on the podcast.Michael Jamin:I should. I'll get him on. That's a good question. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Richard Monroy, can you describe this Greta Gerwig style in more detail? It seems more unstructured and organic.Michael Jamin:It's not unstructured, it's just the fact that it's definitely not unstructured. It's just that how she comes about finding the structure. So I believe she still hits the same eight points that I'm talking about, but whereas in TV or even in movies, for the most part, you'll think about this before you're ever writing a word. You're figuring out what those story points are. And you might spend weeks or months if it's a movie before you're actually writing. But she doesn't do it that way. But she's Greta Gerwig until you become her, you may want to rethink how you do this, but what she does is she starts writing, oh, I think this is what it's about. And she starts typing the script and she'll say the same thing. I've heard her talk about it. Alright, now I have an 800 page script. Well, we can't shoot an 800 page script. Now she has to go back and throw out 700 pages and figure out what the story is. So it's very inefficient, but it's organic. But again, she can do it. She knows what story is. And by the way, that movie made a billion dollars. It's not for me to say that she's doing it wrong, she's doing it right. It's just that it's just inefficient. And unless you really have a good grasp upon what story structure is like she does, you're probably going to screw it up.Phil Hudson:This just popped into my mind, one of the best tiktoks I've ever seen was this story. And you've seen 'em before. And it's like everyone told me that I was a loser and I would never make it as an artist. And over the years I've practiced and honed my craft and it shows all these different art. You see their art evolving year over year, and now here I am and look what I've done. And then they show the worst drawing of a horse you've ever seen. And it brought me to tears because mocking this thing, which is the reality, is you can't be a one year in rider or a four year in rider and think that you can write the way someone's been running for 20 years will, you also can't do it, but think you're going to paint or draw the way in one year or two years. The way that Picasso or Van Gogh or anybody else has done who's devoted their life to that craft. It's effectively, I'm hearing you say, is she's earned the right to do things her way and it shows in the box office, and that is not an excuse for you to do it that way, and that's not to say you won't do it that way, but you have to learn structure and process and all of those things form light balance. You have to learn those things before you can make artMichael Jamin:And it's not easy for her. I saw an interview where she was saying, look, every time I sit down, I'm like, I don't know how to do this it, you're starting from scratch. I feel the same way. It's like, ah, I don't really know how to do this. I do, but I still feel like I don't, it's hard.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Yep. I saw that interview too. And that's going back to what we talked about earlier. That's the discipline. It's hard, but she sits down and does it and then she's able to get billion box officeMichael Jamin:And sometimes I'm writing, I'm like, am I saying too much or am I saying too little? Am I taking my audience? Am I insulting their intelligence by saying too much or am I taking their intelligence for granted? That's a hard question.Phil Hudson:Yeah. EG wants to know what if the notes you receive from the higher ups make the story worse?Michael Jamin:Often it does. Your goal is to try to give them what they want without making the story too much worse. And what can I tell you? Sometimes they're not writers so often that's the give and take. Often you'll argue with them, you're almost never going to win the argument, and so you have to give them what they want. They're the buyer. And so sometimes people say, sometimes it makes it better too, but people often say, why does TV suck? Well, there's a lot of people involved and a lot of people have opinions and they all want to be heard. I've worked with actors who've had notes who make the story worse. What are you going to do? That's the job. It's it's life.Phil Hudson:I've talked about this documentary before, but showrunners, which you can find it in a bunch of places, they talk about an interview, a pretty well known actor. I'm blanking on his name, but he talks about how at a certain point, the first year, the showrunner, it's the showrunner story. The second year, it's the showrunner story, the third year, it's kind of a balance between the actors and the showrunner, and then the fourth, it's kind of the actors because they are the characters. And his whole opinion here was, I think famously he got an argument and a heated battle with the showrunner who created the show, and the showrunner got fired because he was the star of the show. And he said, it's my job to protect my character because that's me and who I'm playing. And I was like, yeah, that's just the reality of this. It's none of it's yours.Michael Jamin:You can't, the funny thing is, yeah, the showrunner hires all the actors. It's their show. They sold it, they created it, but at some point, if there's an argument between the actor, the star and the showrunner, you can always get a new showrunner. The star is on camera, and so the star is going to win that fight nine times out of 10.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Pretty interesting. Go check that out guys. Yeah. Richard Roy asks, if you're an independent writer, do you ever reveal what you're working on in early stages?Michael Jamin:Some people tell you no. I mean, some people will say, don't reveal your dreams to anybody because people will tell you how stupid it is for you to dream. So why keep it to yourself? That's a personal choice whether you want to share it or not.Phil Hudson:Yeah. My opinion is screw the haters.Michael Jamin:Screw the haters. But also, I mean, you can also put it out there and maybe they hold you accountable. Well, now that I went on record saying I'm going to do this, I better do itPhil Hudson:For a lot of people, a lot of people, that's some strong accountability saying, I'm going to do something. Eagle Boy, 7 1 0 9 0. How strict should we expect prospective studios to be about the page length of a historical drama limited series? I've seen some episode ones that are nearly 80 pages for an hour long show.Michael Jamin:Listen, the question is who do you think you are? I mean, when you write your script, your script is a writing sample and that's it. Stop thinking about what I'm going to sell it for, how much money I'm going to make. Some people ask me, how much money can you make as a first? Now you're spending the money. Your job first is to write a great script. That's it. One episode. Don't worry about episode 12, writing that one first. Great script is damn hard enough. And it's a calling card. And it's a writing sample. So some of these questions are for people like me, this is a question I might ask a fellow showrunner. I might ask them that question because we are doing, this is stuff that we have to worry about, but you don't have to worry about this.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Big note there too, that this is the big takeaway I've gotten from doing this work with you over the podcast is everything is a writing sample. If it sells, great. If it's good enough to sell, great. But right now, I need to be good enough to give me a job.Michael Jamin:Yeah, get me a job.Phil Hudson:Yep. Matt Sharpe, with the changes to TV writing rooms during the pandemic, do you see Zoom rooms still being a thing post the WGA strike? More to the point, do you still have to live in LA to write in tv?Michael Jamin:A lot of these rooms are still on Zoom. That's probably going to go the way at some point. I don't know. Maybe it's going to get back in person probably sooner than later, but someone made that point. I was going to do a TikTok on social media. What are you talking about? Everything's on Zoom. Okay. But how do you get the job? How do you get the job so that you can be on a show that's on Zoom. Tell me how you do that. Unless you live in la, there's no answer for that because you have to live in la. Sorry. There's a handful of screenwriters who work mostly in features who get to live other places. Maybe they have to fly to LA or maybe they live in New York. I follow Julia York from New York. She lives in York or Yorks, but she's in New York and she's able to make a living out of it somehow, but it's definitely harder. You made a hard career. You're making a hard career. Harder.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Tacoma FD is now streaming on Netflix, so everybody go watchMichael Jamin:That. Go watch thatPhil Hudson:Talk. Tacoma fd, which is the companion podcast that Kevin and Steve the showrunners do that dropped. And in episode four, I actually was in the cold open and I got put in the cold open. They talk about it on Sarco fna. It was very kind of them to mock me a little bit and poke fun. But what they said is basically what you have said to me all along is if you want to make it in Hollywood, you have to be in LA because they need you Now. It's not two a week from now. And evidence of this is I got cast in the cold open because the actor tested positive for Covid that day. And they said, well, this is a guy protesting pornography, and Phil is a religious dude. Let's get him out here. And then they were like, he came out and he gave this tirade of just Christian anti pornographic stuff. It's like he'd rehearsed it, you could tell. And it was like I'd done acting classes with Jill and with Cynthia. I've done prep work. I've been on set. I've seen how it's done, and I was just able to go and perform in this moment because of all of that prep work. And I only got it because I was on set standing next to the showrunner when he heard that this guy got covid.Michael Jamin:So two things, half of life is about showing up and two, but also being prepared for yourPhil Hudson:Could imagine, because you could have choked shot the bed. Imagine you could choked shot the bed

Have you considered submitting an application for a development program or a writer's lab, but you don't know where to start? You're unsure what you should include in your application, and you don't know what to expect if you do get accepted.  In today's episode, No Film School's GG Hawkins speaks with the Director of Artist Programs at Tribeca Studios, Bryce Norbitz, to discuss: Artist development programs and how they help new filmmakers What Bryce focuses on when she first reads an application  The benefit of applying to a program even if you don't get accepted What the jury has to consider when deciding on a program winner The credibility that comes with being a program finalist What it looks like to work with a brand partnership on your film When you should avoid submitting your story to a lab or program What applicants should include in their submissions Attending small, community-driven festivals in order to network Powerful reasons to attend film festivals as an emerging filmmaker Memorable Quotes “Nobody goes into any brand funding without knowing what the brand's goals are.” [27:35] “Knowing exactly what you are putting yourself up for will save you energy.” [32:13] “People need to feel more comfortable shouting themselves out.” [32:38] “Your career as a filmmaker will likely not be consistent. It will be ever changing.” [35:12] “My scene was cut, and I never acted again.” [39:06] Resources: Getting accepted into the Sundance Labs on the 5th attempt New Orleans Film Festival  Blackstar Film Festival Connect with Bryce: untoldstories@tribecafilm.com Find No Film School everywhere: On the Web https://nofilmschool.com/ Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/nofilmschool Twitter  https://twitter.com/nofilmschool YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/user/nofilmschool Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nofilmschool Send us an email with questions or feedback: podcast@nofilmschool.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura Moss and Brendan J. O'Brien are the writers behind the film, Birth/Rebirth, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The film was inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, but with a focus on the madness and monstrosity of motherhood.  In this episode, No Film School's GG Hawkins speaks with writers Laura Moss and Brendan J O'Brien to discuss:  How Laura and Brendan met and their very unique relationship One of the best pieces of advice Laura ever received on scriptwriting Finally getting accepted into the Sundance Labs on the 5th attempt Advice for anyone who applies to Sundance Labs and gets rejected The amazing experience working with the production company The biggest challenge they had in post-production Using natural sounds like ultrasounds and fetal heartbeats Weaving in sound design and score in a complicated scene What it was like working with a six-year-old actor for a horror film Casting Judy Reyes as one of the stars  Memorable Quotes “We got to know each other. We fell in love. We got married. We got divorced. And then we started really writing together in earnest.” [5:14] “One rejection does not mean you are punted.” [14:03] “The thing you think is going to be the easiest, turns out to be the hardest thing in the movie.” [29:56] “We both have had so much rejection behind us and so much rejection in front of us.” [46:35] Resources: Birth/Rebirth Follow Laura and Brendan on Instagram Find No Film School everywhere: On the Web https://nofilmschool.com/ Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/nofilmschool Twitter  https://twitter.com/nofilmschool YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/user/nofilmschool Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nofilmschool Send us an email with questions or feedback: podcast@nofilmschool.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the third episode in the WGA inspired mini-season. A break from the usual "Directors on Directing," this season is focused on the granular mechanics screenwriting. Each of these conversations were recorded as a part of a remote writer's group that I ran in early 2020. Though they weren't ever intended to be released publicly - given the WGA (and now SAG) strikes, I thought it would be a small act of solidarity to bring our attention back to the work that goes into the creation of the screenplay This episode features a conversation with BASSAM TARIQ. Bassam was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and later migrated to the United States, where he grew up in Queens, New York. His dual-cultural upbringing significantly influenced his work, providing him a distinctive lens through which to explore and portray complex issues related to identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience. Tariq's debut feature film, "These Birds Walk," premiered at South by Southwest in 2013 and was named one of the best indie films of the year by The New Yorker. In 2019, he directed "The Ghosts of Sugarland" - a documentary short he wrote and directed about his post-9/11 high school experience. The film premiered at Sundance in 2019. He then directed "Mogul Mowgli" in 2020, starring Riz Ahmed, which earned rave reviews for its exploration of diaspora identity and the physical and emotional toll of ambition. The film premiered at Berlinale in 2020. Throughout his career, Tariq has consistently demonstrated his ability to deftly intertwine personal narratives with broader societal themes and his profound dedication to storytelling continues to resonate powerfully in the work he creates. In this conversation we specifically discuss page count, finding and maintaining a "voice", the movement from documentary to narrative storytelling, and the importance of protecting your vision.

This week Alrik and Liz welcome filmmaker Chris Makoto Yogi to talk about his experience going through the Sundance Labs, making his first feature film August at Akikos and how that led to him making his second feature I was a Simple Man that premiered at Sundance in 2021! After that, we discuss an article about how a new NFT platform is hoping to boost indie filmmakers. Enjoy! For 20% off your Jambox subscription use code MMIH @ jambox.io Check out the ISA at: www.networkisa.org This Weeks Article: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/01/sundance-filmmakers-direct-blockbusters-1234692811/

Arianna got interested in documentary filmmaking because she asks too many questions. This turned out to be an excellent discipline to direct this sort of energy. Arianna most recently directed two films for a new CNN Films shorts series; The Bunker Boom, about a subterranean prepper community in South Dakota, and Super Reviewers, an unusual journey into a surprising sub-culture on the internet. Prior to this, Arianna's television directing credits include the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything, Emmy-nominated Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak, and Edward R. Murrow award-winning Unadopted on PBS. Arianna has directed and shot Emmy-nominated and Edward R. Murrow award-winning work for The New York Times, Nat Geo, Al Jazeera, and Viceland on issues ranging from child marriage, gang violence, to political conflicts around the world. Her work has taken her to more than fifty countries; directing crews in the sewers beneath London, to a locked down “clean room” at the NASA space center in Houston. She has embedded with female Kurdish soldiers fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq and documented the effects of Rhino breeding in South Africa for National Geographic.Films she has directed have screened at SXSW, DOCFest, Tribeca, DOC NYC, and PBS, and have been supported by the Sundance Labs, ITVS, IFP, and won a Peabody Award. Arianna was a Director of Photography for many years before pivoting to directing full time.SHOW LESS

Brian's guest this week is actor, writer, and comedian Maggie Mae Fish. Maggie is a wildly prolific writer having worked on projects for Cracked.com, College Humor, Screen Junkies, DreamworksTV, Amazon, and more. She also has a popular Youtube channel, Maggie Does Film Analysis. She's won awards and shout-outs for her work from Sundance Labs, Coverfly, the LA Independent Film Festival, Polygon, and Forbes.Maggie and Brian talk about the acting ecosystem, generational expectations, film and culture from a woman's perspective, and the unconscious baggage readers and viewers bring to their entertainment experiences. Enjoy Brian's conversation with Maggie Mae Fish!Find Maggie on Twitter, Youtube, or her website!Find Brian at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wine: BIO:Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz (the hyphen is silent) is a Salt Lake City-based, AfroLatinX writer/director, whose emphasis on character marks culture as integral to identity, but second to story. His work mirrors the frail and current socio-political climate with tongue-in-cheek dialogue and nuanced behavior that give characters depth and relatability, distinct but somehow common--a feat that has drawn attention from the Sundance Labs (a 2021 finalist), Nicholl's Fellowship & Screencraft Competitions. He and Zach Johnson, lifelong friends and cinephiles, work to bridge the gap between the siloed other and the mainstream, focusing on simple slices of life and relationship dynamics. Gianfranco's stories are a bright mix of the beats, verve, and rhythm of the tribal-and-Dominican-native tambora drum and the urban percussion of 90s boom-bap. For him, film is about discovery, catharsis and decolonization.VimeoInstagram

Damon Davis is a post-disciplinary artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans across a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. He is well known for his body of work, Darker Gods, which explores Afro-surrealist manifestations of Black culture. Davis is a Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. He is the founder and creative director of St. Louis-based music label/ artist collective FarFetched and his work is featured in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Show Notes: www.artistdecoded.com www.heartacheandpaint.com www.instagram.com/damondavis

Yung Chang and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new, memorable and hopeful film Wuhan Wuhan, empathy, universals, hatred and division, humanizing statistics and tragedy, everyday heroes and the poetic history of a city.Find out more about the film here.Synopsis:Wuhan Wuhan is an observational documentary unfolding during February and March, 2020 at the height of the pandemic in Wuhan city, where the coronavirus began. With unprecedented access at the peak of the pandemic lockdown, Wuhan Wuhan goes beyond the statistics and salacious headlines and puts a human experience into the early days of the mysterious virus as Chinese citizens and frontline healthcare workers grappled with an invisible, deadly killer.The film focuses on five heart-wrenching and endearing stories: a soft-hearted ER doctor and an unflappable ICU nurse from the COVID-19 hospital; a compassionate volunteer psychologist at a temporary hospital; a tenacious mother and son who are COVID-19 patients navigating the byzantine PRC healthcare system; and a volunteer driver for medical workers and his 9-month pregnant wife whose heartfelt story forms the backbone of this film. In a time when the world needs greater cross-cultural understanding, Wuhan Wuhan is an invaluable depiction of a metropolis joining together to overcome a crisis.About Yung:Yung Chang is the director of Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight and The Fruit Hunters. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant, which was selected in 2015 to participate in the prestigious Sundance Labs.Chang’s films have premiered at international film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, and IDFA and have played theatrically in cinemas around the world. Up the Yangtze was one of the top-grossing documentary releases in 2008. In 2013, China Heavyweight became the most widely screened social-issue documentary in Chinese history with an official release in 200 Mainland Chinese cinemas.His films have been critically acclaimed, receiving awards in Paris, Milan, Vancouver, San Francisco, the Canadian Genie, Taiwan Golden Horse, Cinema Eye Honors, among others and have been nominated at Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Emmys. Chang's films have been shown on international broadcasters including PBS, National Geographic, ARTE, ZDF, Channel 4, HBO, TMN, NHK, CBC, TV2, SBS and EBS. Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award.He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Image Copyright and Credit: Yung Chang and Kartemquin Films.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Sundance Film Festival is entirely virtual. But what exactly does a virtual film festival look like? Glenn sits down with Keri Putnam, CEO of the Sundance Institute, Tabitha Jackson, the brand new director of the Sundance Film Festival, and Michelle Satter, director of the Sundance Labs, to answer all these questions and more. It’s a fascinating conversation about not just the challenges of hosting the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, but also the new opportunities this situation may have uncovered. Indeed, this year could become the road map for the future of The Institute, The Labs, and The Sundance Film Festival itself. “It was such a privilege to be trusted with this incredible thing that is the festival. And so I approached it like holding this precious metal. And I must not break it. I'm going to carry it with two hands. I must not break it. [Then] the pandemic hit. And it was clear that, oh, I've got to break it. I've got to break it into pieces so that we can rebuild something to meet the moment.” - Tabitha Jackson, Sundance Film Festival director Buy tickets to the https://festival.sundance.org/ (2021 Sundance Film Festival). Please subscribe to Sound + Image Lab: The Dolby Institute Podcast https://linktr.ee/dolbyinstitute (wherever you get your podcasts). You can also check out the https://youtu.be/7EZTfA3GamA (video) for this episode. Learn more about the https://www.dolby.com/institute/ (Dolby Institute) and check out https://www.dolby.com/ (Dolby.com). Connect with Dolby on https://www.instagram.com/dolbylabs/ (Instagram), https://twitter.com/Dolby (Twitter), https://www.facebook.com/Dolby/ (Facebook), or https://www.linkedin.com/company/6229/ (LinkedIn). Movie buff? Follow Dolby Cinema on https://www.instagram.com/dolbycinema/?hl=en (Instagram).

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Sundance Film Festival will be entirely virtual. But what exactly does a virtual film festival look like? Glenn sits down with Keri Putnam, CEO of the Sundance Institute, Tabitha Jackson, the brand new director of the Sundance Film Festival, and Michelle Satter, director of the Sundance Labs, to answer all these questions and more. It’s a fascinating conversation about not just the challenges of hosting the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, but also the new opportunities this situation may have uncovered. Indeed, this year could become the road map for the future of The Institute, The Labs, and The Sundance Film Festival itself. “It was such a privilege to be trusted with this incredible thing that is the festival. And so I approached it like holding this precious metal. And I must not break it. I'm going to carry it with two hands. I must not break it. [Then] the pandemic hit. And it was clear that, oh, I've got to breawk it. I've got to break it into pieces so that we can rebuild something to meet the moment.” - Tabitha Jackson, Sundance Film Festival director Buy tickets to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. https://festival.sundance.org Please subscribe to Sound + Vision Lab: The Dolby Institute Podcast wherever you get your podcasts: https://linktr.ee/dolbyinstitute Learn more about the Dolby Institute and check out Dolby.com: www.dolby.com/institute www.dolby.com

I’m a Emmy® Award winning professional cinematographer with 20+ years in film and television. I’ve been the Director of Photography (DP) on four features and countless shorts over my career, earning over 100 awards. I have had a unique film education throughout my career, working as head of the camera department for the Sundance Filmmakers Program (a private film school, headed by Robert Redford). Over 16 years at the Sundance Labs, I have had the opportunity to work and study under some of the best and most accomplished DP’s in the film industry. My last year at Sundance, I ran the Labs as Labs production Manager. In the past two years, I have taken the second largest airgun e-commerce company in the United States and grown it’s social media followers to over five times its original size through video content I produced, filmed and edited. I spend most of my time between L.A. and Utah as I continue in my pursuit of the perfect shot.

Our first remote recording, and it’s a spectacular one. We’re joined by director Tayarisha Poe to discuss Rian Johnson’s Brick. Tayarisha takes April step by step through the process of getting her first feature film financed and produced, Selah And The Spades. She discusses going through the Sundance Labs and taking joy from her mentors ripping her project apart. She also talks about creating a unique world in her own film, with its own original language and look, on the smallest possible budget.You can watch Selah And The Spades on Amazon Prime on April 17thIf you haven’t seen Brick…it’s good!AND, if you want to check out April’s Staff Pick – watch Coralie Fargeat’s RevengeWith April Wolfe and Tayarisha Poe

Robert Fisk and Yung Chang and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film This Is Not A Movie, fake news and journalism, our addiction to social media, complicity, a “dead language”, and something called, “apparent clarity.” Trailer Synopsis: For more than 40 years, journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world: Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Syria. Yong Chang’s This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action—feet on the ground, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, interviewing both combatants and ordinary folk, ferreting out the facts and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions. As corporations devour independent media, and language becomes a weapon, another less obvious battle is taking place. In an ever-accelerating 24-hour news cycle, the process of translating raw experience into incisive and passionate dispatches requires the determination to see things first-hand and the tenacity to say what others won’t. In his relentless pursuit of the facts, Fisk has attracted his share of controversy. But in spite of the danger, he has continued to cover stories as they unfold, talking directly to the people involved, whether that’s Osama Bin Laden or a young Palestinians woman whose father was recently murdered. Unlike the glamorous films that fueled Fisk’s early ambitions, justice rarely prevails, villains aren’t punished, and there are no tidy endings. As Fisk says, “the truth is that this is not a movie.” About the Director and Robert: Yung Chang is the director of Up the Yangtze, China heavyweight and The Fruit Hunters. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant. In 2015, Chang was selected to participate in the prestigious Sundance Labs for Eggplant. His award-winning short Gatekeeper is a Vimeo Staff Pick and distributed by Field of Vision, Laura Poitras’ curated online film unit. Chang’s films have screened at international film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, and IDFA and have played theatrically in cinemas around the world. Up the Yangtze was one of the top-grossing documentary releases in 2008. In 2013, China Heavyweight became the most widely screened social-issues documentary I Chinese history with an official release in 200 Chinese cinemas. His films have been critically acclaimed, receiving awards in Paris, Milan, Vancouver, San Francisco, the Canadian Screen Award, Taiwan Golden Horse, Cinema Eye Honors, among others and have been nominated at Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Emmys.​Chang's films have been shown on international broadcasters including PBS, National Geographic, ARTE, ZDF, Channel 4, HBO, TMN, NHK, CBC, Bell Media, TV2, SBS, RTS and EBS. He's received funding from major organizations like Sundance Institute, BRITDOC, Telefilm, SODEC, Hot Docs, National Film Board and Canada Council for the Arts. Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Academy Awards. Up the Yangtze and The Fruit Hunters were co-produced by the National Film Board and Eyesteel film. Robert Fisk is the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain, according to The New York Times. He is the Middle East correspondent of the London Independent and has won more than 20 major British and international journalism awards for his reporting from the region. He is the author of several bestselling books, including Pity the Nation, an eyewitness account of the Lebanese Civil War, and the historical volume The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. First for The Times of London and then for The Independent, Fisk has been reporting from the Middle East for nearly 40 years, covering everything from the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon. He was among the first Western journalists to report the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. He also witnessed and reported from the Iranian Revolution (1979), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the Algerian Civil War (1990–1998), the US-Iraqi Gulf War (1991), the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts (1992–1995, 1998), the American attack on Afghanistan (2001), and the US invasion of Iraq (2003). He covered many of the 2011 Arab revolutions, especially Egypt, and is today reporting from the civil war in Syria. He is the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden three times—first in Sudan and then in Al-Qaeda’s secret camps in Afghanistan. Born in England in 1946, Fisk holds a BA in English and Linguistics from Lancaster University in the UK, and a PhD in Politics from Trinity College, University of Dublin. He has received 17 honorary doctorates from British, Canadian, and other universities. He is a frequent broadcaster and lecturer around the world. Fisk is the author of five books, including two works on Irish history, one of them an account of Irish neutrality in the Second World War; it remains a bestseller. Outside of the Middle East, Fisk has written and lectured extensively on the First and Second World Wars. He was the first Englishman to be invited to give a lecture to the families of Irish Catholics killed by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday. He remains based in Beirut as The Independent’s Middle East correspondent and is currently working on a new history of the region called Night of Power. Image Copyright: TINAM Inc. and the NFB. Used with permission. F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission. For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here. With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sonja O'Hara is a multi award winning actress and filmmaker. She is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Sonja was featured as one of INDEPENDENT Magazine's “10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2017”, chosen by a jury from MovieMaker Magazine, the Sundance Institute and Austin Film Festival. Sonja created and stars in the series DOOMSDAY (The Spectator's "7 Series To Binge Watch."), which qualified for the 2017 Emmy award and was nominated for "Best Indie Series" at the Streamy Awards. Sonja was also awarded the prestigious “Best Director” prize at The New York Television Festival out of 4000 pilot submissions. She is a four time semi finalist for the Sundance Labs. Sonja has been featured on panels at SXSW, SeriesFest, The BAFTA's, HBO's ITVFest, NYU Tisch, and The Nordic Film Festival. As an actress, Sonja was awarded the Indie Soul Special Recognition Award at the Boston International Film Festival for her lead role in the feature film OVUM (“Best Picture” at The Big Apple Film Festival) which she also wrote and produced. The film was released this spring by Sony's The Orchard and can be watched On Demand or on iTunes here. It will be re-released by the prestigious Tribeca Shortlist in the spring of 2018. Sonja can also be seen playing Lauren in the feature film CREATIVE CONTROL (opposite Nora Zehetner of IFC's MARON) which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW Film Festival and was released internationally by Magnolia Films & Amazon. Sonja is originally from a fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada. She attended Marymount Manhattan College and is a graduate of the two-year Meisner acting program at the New York Conservatory For Dramatic Arts. As a filmmaker, her work has been hailed as, “deeply unsettling” (Splash Report), “provocative” (After Ellen), and “whip smart” (Rogue Cinema). Like Brit Marling and Greta Gerwig before her, Sonja is committed to creating diverse and female-driven boundary pushing content. "One of the many things I love about my recurring gig as a moderator for SAG-AFTRA Foundation Q&As, like my recent chat with Jessica Chastain, is getting to meet up-and-coming actors...One such rising star, Sonja O’Hara — like Chastain, a wildly talented redhead — breaks out this week in two newly released movies." -Bruce Fretts/ The New York Times "O'Hara is as smart and funny as she is attractive with a real knack for writing that’s sure to get her discovered sooner rather than later." ComingSoon.net You can view her work here: https://www.sonjaohara.com/reel Speaking to Sonja was truly inspirational. Also, you can check out my documentary The People of Brixton, on Kwelitv here: www.kweli.tv/programs/the-peopl…xton?autoplay=true Damien Swaby Social Media Links: Instagram www.instagram.com/damien_swaby_video_producer/ Twitter twitter.com/DamienSwaby?ref_src…erp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Facebook www.facebook.com/Damien-Swaby-213…7/?ref=bookmarks I love iPhone filmmaking, my latest short film shot on one, you can view it here! vimeo.com/348228831

Sonja O'Hara is a multi award winning actress and filmmaker. She is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Sonja was featured as one of INDEPENDENT Magazine's “10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2017”, chosen by a jury from MovieMaker Magazine, the Sundance Institute and Austin Film Festival. Sonja created and stars in the series DOOMSDAY (The Spectator's "7 Series To Binge Watch."), which qualified for the 2017 Emmy award and was nominated for "Best Indie Series" at the Streamy Awards. Sonja was also awarded the prestigious “Best Director” prize at The New York Television Festival out of 4000 pilot submissions. She is a four time semi finalist for the Sundance Labs. Sonja has been featured on panels at SXSW, SeriesFest, The BAFTA's, HBO's ITVFest, NYU Tisch, and The Nordic Film Festival.As an actress, Sonja was awarded the Indie Soul Special Recognition Award at the Boston International Film Festival for her lead role in the feature film OVUM (“Best Picture” at The Big Apple Film Festival) which she also wrote and produced. The film was released this spring by Sony's The Orchard and can be watched On Demand or on iTunes here. It will be re-released by the prestigious Tribeca Shortlist in the spring of 2018. Sonja can also be seen playing Lauren in the feature film CREATIVE CONTROL (opposite Nora Zehetner of IFC's MARON) which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW Film Festival and was released internationally by Magnolia Films & Amazon.Sonja is originally from a fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada. She attended Marymount Manhattan College and is a graduate of the two-year Meisner acting program at the New York Conservatory For Dramatic Arts.As a filmmaker, her work has been hailed as, “deeply unsettling” (Splash Report), “provocative” (After Ellen), and “whip smart” (Rogue Cinema). Like Brit Marling and Greta Gerwig before her, Sonja is committed to creating diverse and female-driven boundary pushing content."One of the many things I love about my recurring gig as a moderator for SAG-AFTRA Foundation Q&As, like my recent chat with Jessica Chastain, is getting to meet up-and-coming actors...One such rising star, Sonja O'Hara — like Chastain, a wildly talented redhead — breaks out this week in two newly released movies." -Bruce Fretts/ The New York Times "O'Hara is as smart and funny as she is attractive with a real knack for writing that's sure to get her discovered sooner rather than later." ComingSoon.netYou can view her work here: https://www.sonjaohara.com/reelSpeaking to Sonja was truly inspirational. Also, you can check out my documentary The People of Brixton, on Kwelitv here: www.kweli.tv/programs/the-peopl…xton?autoplay=trueDamien Swaby Social Media Links:Instagram www.instagram.com/damien_swaby_video_producer/Twittertwitter.com/DamienSwaby?ref_src…erp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorFacebookwww.facebook.com/Damien-Swaby-213…7/?ref=bookmarksI love iPhone filmmaking, my latest short film shot on one, you can view it here! vimeo.com/348228831

Brett Potter Brett Potter is a filmmaker living in South Florida. As a producer, he has premiered features and shorts at Sundance, Cannes, SXSW and more. An alumni of the Sundance Labs, Brett currently serves as the Chairman of the Board for Borscht Corp in Miami. As a director, his television pilot The Midnight Service premiered at Tribeca and continues touring on the festival circuit. "I usually like to write them very short! :)"-Brett Potter Screen Heat Miami Screen Heat Miami (SHM) is hosted by veteran Miami based producers Kevin Sharpley and JL Martinez and each week covers the latest trends in the film, tv, and entertainment industry, including interviews with global and local industry leaders, all told from a "Miami" point of view.

Debra was a Boston independent filmmaker before she picked up and left for NYU’s graduate film program. Her first short film there, “Snake Feed,” was accepted into the Sundance Labs, where she developed the concept into her first narrative feature, Down to the Bone, starring Vera Fermiga. From there, Debra and her creative partner Anne Rossellini developed a film based on Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 novel, Winter's Bone. The film was released in 2010 and tells the story of a girl who’s the sole caretaker of her family who must hunt down her missing father to avoid being kicked out of her house and losing everything. The girl was played by Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence was nominated for an Academy Award, as was Debra’s film and screenplay. In 2018, she directed Leave No Trace, a story about a father with PTSD trying to raise his teen daughter off the grid when some well-meaning people intervene and change the course of their lives. Starring Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin Mckenzie Harcourt, Leave No Trace has been on multiple Top Ten lists, and won Debra the Best Director award at the 2019 LAFCA awards ceremony. The film that Debra has chosen to discuss is Samuel Fuller's classic noir, Pickup on South Street. This is a personal favorite of Debra's and it becomes clear with how much appreciation and thought she has for the film. Debra discusses how she is able to create realistic dialogue for people who aren't from her "bougie, liberal" world. She talks about working with actress Dale Dickey, and why people love watching her on screen. Debra also elaborates on the use of guns in cinema, how we rely on them to tell stories, and how she is trying to "restore meaning to the woundable body." You can watch Leave No Trace on Amazon Prime. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch Pickup on South Street. With April Wolfe and Debra Granik. You can let us know what you think of Switchblade Sisters on Twitter or Facebook. Or email us at switchbladesisters@maximumfun.org. Produced by Casey O'Brien and Laura Swisher for MaximumFun.org.

Lois Vossen is the Executive Producer of Independent Lens and has been with the show since its inception as a primetime series on PBS. Lois is responsible for commissioning new films, programming the series and working with filmmakers on editorial and broadcast issues. Independent Lens films have received 17 Emmy Awards, 16 George Foster Peabody Awards, five Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Journalism Awards and eight Academy Award nominations. The series was honored in 2013, 2014, 2015  and 2017 with the International Documentary Association (IDA) Award for Best Series. Before joining ITVS, Lois was the Associate Managing Director of Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Labs. Lois is a member of the Television Academy Board of Governors, representing the documentary branch. She has served on the jury at Shanghai Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, SXSW, DOC New Zealand and Palm Springs International Film Festival, among others. Under her leadership, films funded or co-produced by Independent Lens include I Am Not Your Negro, Always in Season, Bedlam, One Child Nation, Black Memorabilia, The King, People’s Republic of Desire, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, TOWER, Newtown, Best of Enemies, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, (T)ERROR, The House I Live In, The Invisible War, and The Trials of Muhammad Ali, among many others. Widely regarded as one of the most influential supporters of independent and documentary filmmaking, Lois Vossen joins us for a conversation on the role that Independent Lens /POV and Public Broadcasting has had in maintaining the highest standards for innovative storytelling in non-fiction cinema. For news and updates go to: pbs.org/independentlens/films Social Media: facebook.com/independentlens twitter.com/independentlens instagram.com/independentlens

¡Hola Crononautas! Hoy os traemos uno de los audios más especiales que hemos grabado hasta el momento. Una entrevista interesantísima a Daniel Scheinert, uno de los componentes de la dupla directorial The Daniels, que filmaron la excepcionalmente original Swiss Army Man. A continuación tenéis una traducción escrita de la entrevista al español y más abajo la transcripción de la misma al inglés, para que no os perdáis ningún detalle. Muchas gracias al Agente N y a Mario Wire por su tremendo trabajo. Entrevista a Daniel Scheinert (Traducción al Español por El Agente N)   Pregunta 1 Déjanos empezar con una pregunta que le hacemos a todos nuestros invitados: de donde proviene tu amor por las películas? Podrías resaltar una figura que durante tu infancia te influyera especialmente?   Daniel: Hola! Me llamo Daniel Scheinert una mitad de los Daniels y he pensado que podía contestar a vuestras preguntas grabándome en el teléfono por si luego queríais incluirlas en el podcast. Vamos allá!   Ok! Pregunta número uno. Si pudiese nombrar una persona que me haya influido…Posiblemente no hayáis escuchado este nombre nunca, su nombre es Brett Scheinert. El es mi hermano mayor, en el cual me fijaba cuando era pequeño. El y sus amigos empezaron haciendo películas cuando estaban en el instituto. Yo estaba celoso, quería molar como ellos, por lo que empecé a hacer películas también. Y de ahí proviene además mi amor por hacer películas. Honestamente, antes de eso no era el mayor fan del cine. En verdad, es hacer las películas no verlas lo que me apasiona del cine. Y en el transcurso he grabado unas cuantas (hasta el momento 16  entradas en IMDb). Actualmente, mi hermano no es cineasta, ayuda a diseñar videojuegos en Estocolmo (Suecia) para una compañía que se llama Paradox, creo.   Pregunta 2 Podrías nombrar una película o películas / cineastas que hayan influido especialmente en tu trabajo en Swiss Army Man? El Parque Jurásico de Spielberg debe ser uno de ellos …   Nosotros siempre tememos que nos digan a quien hemos plagiado cuando hemos hecho una película. Hemos intentado copiar a un grupo de gente…jajaja. Paul Dano (Hank) que está en la película, describe el largometraje como una mezcla entre Terrence Malick y Dumb and Dumber (dos tontos muy tontos) y estábamos bastante halagados por ello porque somos unos grandes fans de Dumb and Dumber. Además, supongo que soy un gran fan de Malik jajaja. Pero pienso que de lejos la verdaderas influencias son otra combinación: Miyazaki y Jackass. De Miyazaki tomamos  inspiración de películas animadas y animaciones. Muchas veces tuvimos la sensación de tomar ideas “animadas” y ver si podríamos traducirlas en acción real, y ese es nuestro trabajo. Pero su trabajo es, obviamente, fantástico, tiene sus propias reglas, y es precioso. Pero nuestra película también es bastante tonta y pervertida, así que supongo que mi otra influencia es Jackass, la cual fue co-creada por Spike Jonze, uno de nuestros cineastas preferidos. Es simplemente tosco, divertido, fraternal, comedia lo que presenta este show televisivo, Jackass. Honestamente, es una influencia grandísima en nuestro trabajo, y cómo de simple y entretenida intentamos hacer la comedia en nuestras películas. Pregunta 3 Usted ha dicho repetidamente en entrevistas anteriores que la idea central del proyecto siempre fue el encuentro de un náufrago con "un cadáver que se tira pedos¨, dado que el proyecto presentaba este extraño estilo cómico, ¿fue muy difícil conseguir fondos para ello? ¿Podrías contarnos un poco sobre el proceso de financiación?   Fue difícil, pero también divertido porque aún cuando la gente nos decía que no nosotros hacíamos una pequeña performance, ya sabes, sentados con algún rico inversor escenificando nuestro drama de un cadáver pedorro (risas). Pero creo que hubo tres factores clave que nos ayudaron en la financiación. En primer lugar tenemos un productor con el que hemos trabajado durante años, y él hizo la gran parte del trabajo duro, Jonathan Wang. Yo no sé ni la mitad de lo que hizo, pero fué genial tenerle a nuestro lado para que luchara y creyese en nosotros. En segundo lugar, pudimos colarnos en ‘Sundance Labs’,  que es una especie de taller donde cogieron nuestro guión, el borrador final del guión, y lo hicieron trizas para luego sentamos con diversos cineastas que nos ayudaron a trabajar sobre en él. Este proceso supuso además un sello de aprobación que los inversores tuvieron en cuenta ‘oh mira, esto ha pasado por Sundance Labs así que no debe ser una locura total’. Y finalmente, hicimos “Turn Down for what”, que fue nuestro video musical más exitoso que nunca hayamos hecho, y creo que el haber sacado este video el mismo año que intentamos obtener fondos para la película…no puedo imaginar…apuesto que no hubiéramos obtenido fondos sin este vídeo, ya sabes, fuimos capaces de decir ‘Mira esto, todo el mundo lo ha visto!. Por favor, dadnos vuestro dinero’, y de alguna manera engañamos a un par de inversores para que creyeran en nosotros.   Pregunta 4 Hoy en día vivimos en una sociedad sin un término medio. Parece que todo es un 0 o un 10. ¿Tuviste fe en que se entendiera la película o era algo que te preocupaba?   Esta es una pregunta difícil, ¿Tuvimos fe en que se entendiera la película o estábamos preocupados en algún momento porque se mal entendiera? Nosotros siempre estuvimos muy preocupados de que la película no fuera comprendida correctamente y aún sigo preocupado, pero  pienso que hay una parte en mí que quiere que la gente me quiera y me comprenda, y otra parte que quiere saltar del acantilado hacia la ambigüedad. La película al completo es un ejercicio de confianza entre Dan y yo, corriendo el gran riesgo de poner algo ahí fuera que no es blanco y negro, que no sermonea y  que hace preguntas a las que ni siquiera nosotros sabemos las respuestas. Creo que lo que me gusta es que mis películas sean una experiencia y no sólo una pequeña obra de entretenimiento perfectamente construida, sino algo con lo que te tienes que ‘pelear’, que te planteas y que experimentas. Tú has planteado que la sociedad no tiene un término medio y creo que en muchos sentidos… que accidentalmente hemos hecho algo que se mueve en esa zona grisácea y que apuntaba a ése punto medio. Estoy de acuerdo en que no hay suficiente terreno medio y ambigüedad, no hay suficientes películas que lidien con personas que no tienen claro su género o sexualidad y fue divertido hacer una película que no se encuentra en ninguno de los lados del espectro. La película no tiene un mensaje super claro, pero tenemos confianza en que se abordan cierta temáticas en ella con claridad. Ha sido una respuesta algo rara (risas) Pregunta 5 Una de las grandes ventajas de la película es su elenco. Al parecer, Dano y Radcliffe no fueron muy difíciles de convencer para participar en la película y su química es increíble. Esto hace que uno se pregunte acerca de las escenas que podría haber dejado fuera del corte final. ¿Podrías contarnos un poco sobre tus momentos favoritos de improvisación o partes de la trama que no llegaron a la película?     Momentos favoritos de improvisación o historias que fueron suprimidas: Había tantas historias que cortamos, escribimos un millón de borradores de esta película. Había un borrador en el que Manny tenía alergia a las abejas y él se caía de un precipicio, mientras caían, Hank agarraba a una abeja y pinchaba a Manny con ella, que se inflaba como una balsa salvavidas y aterrizaban en el agua arreglándoselas para no morir… (Daniel se ríe)... Tuvimos que cortar eso, tendríamos que haber presentado muchos conceptos nuevos..., las alergias a las abejas no tienen una conexión temática con nuestra película. Pero siempre quise hacer una gran balsa de Manny. La escena que tristemente cortamos es una en la que Hank cree que ve a Manny llorar y luego se da cuenta de que está empezando a llover y que no es una lágrima (¿o sí?) antes de que Manny comience a hablar. Luego, cuando filmamos, intentamos hacerlo tirando pequeñas gotas de agua en la cara de Daniel Radcliff para falsificar las lágrimas, pero no pudimos hacer que las lágrimas cayeran bien. Danny decía: '”solo rueda, simplemente rueda” y consiguió sacar una lágrima de su globo ocular sin siquiera parpadear, fue la cosa más surrealista que alguna vez he visto hacer a un ser humano, pero la escena se cortó. Su logro culminante no llegó al corte final, pero creo que está en los extras en algún lugar del DVD.   Pregunta 6 Todo en vuestra película tiene un enfoque único y fresco, incluido la banda sonora. ¿Por qué decidisteis tener una banda sonora a capela? ¿Qué quería transmitir y por qué cree que se transmitió mejor de esta manera?   La banda sonora a capela para la película fue una idea muy temprana. Cuando bromeábamos sobre esta película, una de las cosas que realmente lo inició para nosotros fue la idea de una película sobre un tipo ajeno a la sociedad, el cual tendría alguna manera de contar su propia historia. Originalmente, la idea era que él narraría la historia en vez de tener flashbacks. El trataría de crear un escenario, intentaría construir cosas para recordar su hogar. La película entera sería algo así como un hombre atrapado en el bosque obsesionado con el hogar. Por lo tanto, naturalmente, tiene sentido que él también se pusiese su propia banda sonora. Desde muy temprano nosotros decíamos: “oh, será como un escenario hecho a mano construido con basura del bosque con una banda sonora hecha por él mismo en el bosque”. Simplemente sabíamos que  si las reglas de la narrativa desarrollasen al personaje, sería un aspecto que sumaría mucho a la historia. Así que siempre pensamos en los accesorios, la música, y todo sería hecho por Hank y ayudaría al espectador a conocer al personaje.   Pregunta 7 ¿Cómo fue trabajar con Andy Hull y Robert McDowel? ¿Fue su idea componer y muchas veces grabar partes de la banda sonora mientras se filmaba la película? Debo decir que esta es una de las hazañas más asombrosas en en cuanto a composición de una banda sonora que he escuchado.   Trabajar con Andy y Rob de la banda Manchester Orchestra siempre es un placer. Somos amigos de esos muchachos y lo hemos sido desde que hicimos un video musical para ellos, creo que en 2011. Así que les pedimos que compusieran la banda sonora de la película por un par de razones: sabíamos que queríamos a alguien que tuviera una hermosa voz para el canto y que pudiera crear hermosas armonías, pero también nos gusta trabajar con personas agradables y simplemente les queremos. Fuimos muy afortunados de que resultasen grandes compositores, fue algo colaborativo al desarrollar la sensación de la película. Sabíamos que queríamos que fuera a capela. En cuanto Andy leyó el guión, comenzó a escribir canciones, nos envió las canciones que había escrito y nosotros terminamos incluyéndolas en el guión. Nunca imaginamos que el la música sería tan no irónicamente épica y hermosa, pensamos que sería un poco más estúpida inicialmente. Empezaron a hacer música y comenzamos a pensar: "espera, esto es increíble y totalmente bizarro, yuxtaponiendo una hermosa partitura a un cadáver pedorro". Sabíamos que queríamos que esa parte fuera hermosa, pero realmente nunca nos hubiéramos imaginado que se convertiría en lo que se hizo en realidad. Andy y Rob siempre nos sorprendían y lo llevaban más allá agregando más capas de las que pensábamos que necesitaban. Me alegra que os haya gustado la partitura.   Pregunta 8 ¿Figuraba en el guión desde el principio el final con Manny "propulsandose" en el mar? Esto sucede en un punto muy catártico de la película donde el espectador puede pensar que finalmente había entendido la película, muchas veces rompiendo este sentido de comprensión. ¿Fue pensado como un último giro irreverente para que no olvidemos que esta no es una película habitual?   Se nos ocurrió el final de Manny lanzándose a la puesta del sol bastante pronto. Creo que tal vez en el tercer borrador del guión ya está ahí. Se nos ocurrió el desafío de comenzar la película con un pedo que te hace reír y terminar con uno que te hace llorar. Siempre fue una lucha tratar de hacer que el final fuera ambiguo, pero no desagradablemente ambiguo. A algunas personas no les gusta el final, pero fue muy importante para nosotros que tenga sentido para el personaje de Hank, incluso si no tuvo mucho sentido para la audiencia lo que sucedió o no. Si no has visto la película no escuches/leas esta parte del podcast. Lo que significa para nosotros es que Hank finalmente no se avergüenza, él se pee y dice "he sido yo". Manny le enseñó a no avergonzarse más de sí mismo, y con su misión cumplida sale volando como un ángel que vino a la Tierra para enseñarle una lección. Un adiós agridulce. Independientemente, nosotros pensamos que algunos miembros de la audiencia creerían que Manny era real, en base a este final, y algunos otros pensarían que tenía que ser un engaño y que no había forma de que Manny fuera real. Decidimos que esto estaba bien, la gente nunca estaría de acuerdo y queríamos que las caras de todos en la playa demostrasen las diferentes formas en que las personas pueden reaccionar ante esta película, como dándoles permiso a esas personas para sentirse así. Así que algunas personas pueden simplemente reírse, otras pueden llorar, algunas personas pueden decir "WTF" o sentirse asqueadas por ello y todo eso está bien... así que eso es lo que ves a cada personaje haciendo en la playa.   Pregunta 9 Después de su primera experiencia como directores de largometrajes y después de su éxito en Sundance, ¿cómo será el futuro para ustedes? Leemos en Collider que los hermanos Russo están produciendo su próxima película. ¿Podría contarnos algo al respecto?   Entonces, ¿cuál es nuestro próximo paso? Estamos intentando hacer una nueva película para el próximo año que hemos estado escribiendo durante un par de años y que los hermanos Russo la han estado desarrollando. Se llama "Everything, everywhere, all at once" y es un dramedia de ciencia ficción donde la mayoría de los personajes principales son asiático-americanos, ese es el origen de los padres de Daniel Kwan. Es una especie de carta de amor a algunas de nuestras películas favoritas como 'Brasil' o 'The Matrix' pero con temas modernos, como el sentirse abrumado y desesperado en un mar de información infinita. Es una idea un poco ¨tonta¨ como todas nuestras ideas, pero tonta de una manera de la que estamos orgullosos. Mientras tanto estamos trabajando en otras cosas. Yo tengo una película sobre de dónde soy, Alabama, al sur de los Estados Unidos, que se espera que salga el año que viene con suerte. La produce A24 también, es un pequeño drama policial ... dramedia, divertido y triste, así que estad atentos... pero no te diré el nombre. Ya veréis, es una sorpresa.   Pregunta 10 "Swiss Army Man" ganó el premio a  "Mejor película" en el festival de Sitges en 2016. ¿Estuviste en el Festival? Si es así, ¿recuerdas algo en especial sobre el festival o sobre España en general?   Desafortunadamente, no pudimos ir al festival de Sitges (lo siento, no sé cómo pronunciarlo) pero hubiéramos estado muy contentos de estar allí, lamento que no estuviéramos y me encantaría volver a visitar España. No he vuelto desde principios de la década de 2000. Visité Barcelona y otro par de ciudades … oh! mi cerebro me falla, no recuerdo los nombres... creo recordar que era la ciudad de donde era Salvador Dalí. Es un país hermoso, me gustó mucho. Nos encantaría volver. Gracias chicos por contactar conmigo, espero que esto haya sido útil y espero que el podcast salga bien. “Adios”.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------   Daniel Scheinert Interview (Transcription by Mario Wire) 1.Let us start with a question we ask all of our guests, where does your love for films come from? Could you point out a person in your childhood that specially influenced you that way? Daniel Scheinert: Ok, question number 1, if I could name one person that influenced me to pursue film...   You probably haven’t heard of this person, his name is Brad Scheinert and he was my older brother. I looked up to him a lot when I was a kid, and he and his friend started to make movies together in high-school and I was jealous and I wanted to be cool like them, so I started making movies as well. That is really where my love for making films came from, and honestly I wasn't even the biggest film love before that. It was really making movies not watching movies that I fell in love with, and along the way… I watched a few movies I guess. Now my brother is not a filmmaker he helps to design video games , right now he works in Stockholm (Sweden) for a company called Paradox - I think. 2. Could you name a movie or movies/film makers that specially influenced your work in Swiss Army Man? Spielberg´s Jurassic Park must be one of them... There is a whole lot  of them , we’re always afraid that people will be able to tell who are we ripping off when we make movies, so we try just to rip off a bunch of people (laughs). Paul Dano, who is in the movie, described the film as ´Terrence Malick meets Dumb and Dumber’ and we were very flattered by that because we are huge ‘Dumb and Dumber’ fans, and I’m a pretty big fan of Terrence Malick I guess (laughs). I think as far as real influences , another combination I’d say would be like Hayao Miyazaki, Dan and I both take a ton of inspiration from animated films and from animations, and a lot of times we feel like we are taking animated ideas and just see if we can do it in live action, and that is kind of our work. His stuff (Miyazaki’s) is obviously so fantastical and has its own rules and it's really beautiful, but then our movie is pretty dumb and perverted so, I guess my other influence would be ‘Jackass’ which was co-created by Spike Jones, one of our favourite filmmakers, but just the like raw, fun, brotherly comedy of that television show ‘Jackass’ it was honestly a huge influence on us ,in our work, in just how a …  simple entertainment that we try to make the comedy in our movies. 3. You have said repeatedly in past interviews that the core idea of the project always was the encounter of a castaway with ¨a farting corpse¨,  given that the project featured this bizarre comedic style, was it very hard to get it funded? Could you tell us a bit about the funding process? It was hard, but it was also really fun, cause even when people said no to us it  felt like doing a piece of performance art. You known, sitting down with a rich investor and pitching our farting-corpse drama (laughs). The two things that helped us getting it funded,  three things, one we had a producer we’ve worked with for years and he did a lot of the hard work, Jonathan Wang, I don’t even know half of what he did do but it was great having him fight for us and believe in us , two, we got into sundance labs which is an awesome kind of workshop were they took our screenplay, we had a finished draft of it and they just tore it apart and we sat down with different filmmakers and they helped us workshop it but also it was a stamp of approval so investors can see ‘oh this went to sundance labs, it must be not totally insane’ and three was that we made ‘Turn down for what’ which is a music video that was our most successful video we’ve ever made and I think , having that come out the same year that we were trying to get it funded…. I cannot imagine.. I bet that we couldn’t have gotten it funded without that ,you know, we were able to just say ‘look at that , everybody watched it , please give us your money’ and somehow tricked a couple of investors into believing us. 4. Nowadays we live in a society with no middle ground. It seems like everything is either a 0 or a 10. Did you have faith in the movie being understood, or were you worried at some point about this? This is a tough question. Did we have faith in the movie being understood or were we worried at some point it’ll be misunderstood?. We were always very worried that the movie would be misunderstood and I still I’m worried that it was misunderstood but I think that …. there is a part of me that wants people to like me and understand me, and there is a part of me that wants to... jump off a cliff of ambiguity and this whole movie was kind of a trust exercise between Dan and I and just like a crazy risk of putting something out in the world that is not black-and-white and isn’t preachy and that it asks questions that we don’t even know the answers to, I think I like for my movies to be an experience not just a... kind of, perfectly constructed little piece of entertainment but like something that you wrestle with and experience and you questioned, just asked..you mentioned that society has no middle ground and I think that in a lot of ways this whole movie was kind of something we… we accidentally made something that was filled with gray area and was kind of aiming at the middle ground, because I agree there is not enough middle ground and ambiguity, there is not enough movies that wrestle with people who aren’t sure of their gender or sexuality and it was fun to make a movie that doesn’t come down on either side of that. There is not a super clear message, but there are very clear themes that we felt confident we come across by the end of it all. Ok, weird answer (chuckles). 5. One of the huge pros of the movie is its cast. Apparently Dano and Radcliffe were not very hard to convince to participate in the film and their chemistry is amazing. This makes one wonder about the scenes you might have left out of the final cut. Could you tell us a little bit about your favorite moments of improvisation or story lines that did not make it into the movie? There were so many story lines we cutted out. We wrote a million drafts of this movie and there was one draft where Manny had a allergy to bees and he falled off a cliff and as they are falling Hank grabs the bee and stabs Manny and he inflates like a liferaft and they land in the water and manage not to die down below….eh…(se descojona él solo)….we had to cut that out, there was a lot of set up…. bee allergies do not have a thematic connection to our film. But I always wanted to do a big fat Manny raft. The scene that sadly we cut out it’s a one where Hank thinks he sees Manny crying and then he realises that it’s starting to rain and that it is not a tear (or was it?) before Manny starts talking and then, when we shot it we’re trying do like water droplets into the Daniel Radcliffe´s face but we couldn’t get the tears to land right and Danny was like ‘just roll, just roll’ and just willed a tear out of his eyeball without even blinking and it was the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen a human being do….but the scene got cut…..his crowning achievement did not make the final cut but I think it's in the special features somewhere in the dvd. 6.Everything in your movie has a very unique and fresh approach, including the Score. Why did you decide on having a fully acapella score? What did you want to transmit and why do you think it was transmitted better this way? So the a capella score for the film was an idea very early on  when we’re joking around about this movie. One of the things that really unlocked it for us was the idea a movie about a guy stranded away from society and he will have to kind of tell the story himself and originally the idea was that he was narrate and that instead of having flashbacks he would create sets, he would try to build things to remind himself of home. The hole movie would be kind of about a man stranded in the woods obsessed with home and so he just can naturally make sense to this day he would make the score too and so from very early on ‘oh it will be like handmade props made of crap from the woods and a score made by that guy out in the woods’ we just knew that it would add to kind of the story overall if like the rules of the movie will develop the character so we always thought  the props and the music and everything will be all made by Hank and it will help you to know the character. 7.What was it like working with Andy Hull and Robert McDowel? Was it their idea to compose and many times record parts of the score while the film was being shot? I have to say, this is one of the most amazing feats in movie scores I have ever heard of... Working with Andy and Rob from the band Manchester Orchestra is always a treat. We’re friends of those guys and have been ever since we did a music video for them back on I think 2011  so we asked them to compose the film for a couple of reasons. We knew we want someone who had a beautiful singing voice and could create beautiful harmonies but also we like working with nice people and we just love them and so we were very lucky that  turns out they’re great composers and it was a collaborative thing kind of developing the feel of the movie we knew we wanted it to be a capella but Andy wrote the script and just started writing songs and he will send us songs that he had written and ended up getting written into the script and we never imagine that  the music will be so unironically epic and beautiful we kind of thought it will be a little stupider…I think initially and the they started making music we’re like “wait, this is incredible beautiful and totally bizarre to juxtapose beautiful score with a farting corpse…We knew we want it that part to be beautiful but really like we never could have imagined that would sonically turned into what it did turned into and Andy and Rob were always surprising us and pushing it forward and adding more layers than we thought they needed to and …. yap. I am glad you liked the score. 8. Was the ending with Manny ‘propelling away’ in the sea scripted from the beginning? This happens at a very cathartic point in the movie where the viewer may think he had finally understood the movie, many times braking this sense of understanding. Was this intended as one last irreverent turn so we would not forget that this was not your usual movie? We came up with the ending of Manny farting off into the sunset pretty early on I think maybe on the third draft of the script we can zeroed in on that we came up with the challenge that we wanted the movie start with a fart that will makes you laugh and end it with a fart that makes you cry and it was always a struggle trying to make the ending ambiguous but not obnoxiously frustrated ambiguous. Some people don’t like the ending but it was kind important to us that it makes sense for the character of Hank, even if it didn’t totally make sense for the audience what happened or not so if you haven’t seen the movie don’t listen to this part of the podcast but what it means to us is that Hank finally is not ashamed, he farts and says ‘that was me’  Manny has taught him to no longer be ashamed of himself and having taught him his lesson he flies away like an angel that came to Earth to teach him a lesson. A bitter-sweet goodbye. But regardless we kind of thought some audience members would believe that Manny was real, based on this ending, and some members would think that it had to be a delusion and there was no way that Manny was real and we decided that it was ok with us that people would disagree and we wanted everybody’s faces there on the beach to demonstrate the different ways people may react to this movie and almost give those people permission to feel that way. So some people may just laugh, some people may cry, some people may say “what the fuck” o “be grossed out” and all of that’s ok….so that’s what you see everybody doing on the beach. 9. After your first experience as feature film directors and after your success in Sundance, what does the future look like for you? We read in Collider that the Russo brothers are producing your next movie, could you tell us something about it? So what’s next for us? We are trying to make a new movie next year that we have been writing for a couple of years and the Russo Brothers have been developing it. It’s called “everything everywhere all at once” and it’s a sci-fi dramedy and, where  most of the main characters are Chinese-Americans and that’s a Daniel Kuan’s parents background and it’s a kind of a love letter to some of our favourite films like ‘Brazil’ or ’The Matrix’ but with kind of modern themes of feeling overwhelmed and hopeless in a sea of endless information. That is kind of a bit about it, and it’s kind of dumb, like all of our stuff, dumb in a way we are proud of. But in the meantime we’re working in other things. I have a movie about where I’m from, which is Alabama in the South of the United States, that is supposed to come out next year hopefully. From A24 as  well and is small crime drama….dramedy, funny and sad, so look out for that but I am not gonna tell you the name. You’ll see….it’s a surprise. 10.Swiss army man won “Best film” at Sitges festival in 2016. Were you in the Festival? If so, do you have any thoughts about it or about Spain in general? Unfortunately we didn’t get to go to the Sitges festival…sorry I don’t know how to pronounce it, but we’re very happy to play there, bummed we weren’t there and I’d love to visit Spain again… I’ve not been back since early 2000s I’ve got to visit Barcelona and a couple of other towns….oh, my brain is farting I can´t remember, I don’t remember…I think the town where Salvador Dali was from, but it was a beautiful, beautiful country, I liked it a lot. We’d love come back.   Thanks for reaching out you guys I hope this stuff was helpful and I hope the podcast turns out well. Adios.

¡Hola Crononautas! Hoy os traemos uno de los audios más especiales que hemos grabado hasta el momento. Una entrevista interesantísima a Daniel Scheinert, uno de los componentes de la dupla directorial The Daniels, que filmaron la excepcionalmente original Swiss Army Man. A continuación tenéis una traducción escrita de la entrevista al español y más abajo la transcripción de la misma al inglés, para que no os perdáis ningún detalle. Muchas gracias al Agente N y a Mario Wire por su tremendo trabajo. Entrevista a Daniel Scheinert (Traducción al Español por El Agente N)   Pregunta 1 Déjanos empezar con una pregunta que le hacemos a todos nuestros invitados: de donde proviene tu amor por las películas? Podrías resaltar una figura que durante tu infancia te influyera especialmente?   Daniel: Hola! Me llamo Daniel Scheinert una mitad de los Daniels y he pensado que podía contestar a vuestras preguntas grabándome en el teléfono por si luego queríais incluirlas en el podcast. Vamos allá!   Ok! Pregunta número uno. Si pudiese nombrar una persona que me haya influido…Posiblemente no hayáis escuchado este nombre nunca, su nombre es Brett Scheinert. El es mi hermano mayor, en el cual me fijaba cuando era pequeño. El y sus amigos empezaron haciendo películas cuando estaban en el instituto. Yo estaba celoso, quería molar como ellos, por lo que empecé a hacer películas también. Y de ahí proviene además mi amor por hacer películas. Honestamente, antes de eso no era el mayor fan del cine. En verdad, es hacer las películas no verlas lo que me apasiona del cine. Y en el transcurso he grabado unas cuantas (hasta el momento 16  entradas en IMDb). Actualmente, mi hermano no es cineasta, ayuda a diseñar videojuegos en Estocolmo (Suecia) para una compañía que se llama Paradox, creo.   Pregunta 2 Podrías nombrar una película o películas / cineastas que hayan influido especialmente en tu trabajo en Swiss Army Man? El Parque Jurásico de Spielberg debe ser uno de ellos …   Nosotros siempre tememos que nos digan a quien hemos plagiado cuando hemos hecho una película. Hemos intentado copiar a un grupo de gente…jajaja. Paul Dano (Hank) que está en la película, describe el largometraje como una mezcla entre Terrence Malick y Dumb and Dumber (dos tontos muy tontos) y estábamos bastante halagados por ello porque somos unos grandes fans de Dumb and Dumber. Además, supongo que soy un gran fan de Malik jajaja. Pero pienso que de lejos la verdaderas influencias son otra combinación: Miyazaki y Jackass. De Miyazaki tomamos  inspiración de películas animadas y animaciones. Muchas veces tuvimos la sensación de tomar ideas “animadas” y ver si podríamos traducirlas en acción real, y ese es nuestro trabajo. Pero su trabajo es, obviamente, fantástico, tiene sus propias reglas, y es precioso. Pero nuestra película también es bastante tonta y pervertida, así que supongo que mi otra influencia es Jackass, la cual fue co-creada por Spike Jonze, uno de nuestros cineastas preferidos. Es simplemente tosco, divertido, fraternal, comedia lo que presenta este show televisivo, Jackass. Honestamente, es una influencia grandísima en nuestro trabajo, y cómo de simple y entretenida intentamos hacer la comedia en nuestras películas. Pregunta 3 Usted ha dicho repetidamente en entrevistas anteriores que la idea central del proyecto siempre fue el encuentro de un náufrago con "un cadáver que se tira pedos¨, dado que el proyecto presentaba este extraño estilo cómico, ¿fue muy difícil conseguir fondos para ello? ¿Podrías contarnos un poco sobre el proceso de financiación?   Fue difícil, pero también divertido porque aún cuando la gente nos decía que no nosotros hacíamos una pequeña performance, ya sabes, sentados con algún rico inversor escenificando nuestro drama de un cadáver pedorro (risas). Pero creo que hubo tres factores clave que nos ayudaron en la financiación. En primer lugar tenemos un productor con el que hemos trabajado durante años, y él hizo la gran parte del trabajo duro, Jonathan Wang. Yo no sé ni la mitad de lo que hizo, pero fué genial tenerle a nuestro lado para que luchara y creyese en nosotros. En segundo lugar, pudimos colarnos en ‘Sundance Labs’,  que es una especie de taller donde cogieron nuestro guión, el borrador final del guión, y lo hicieron trizas para luego sentamos con diversos cineastas que nos ayudaron a trabajar sobre en él. Este proceso supuso además un sello de aprobación que los inversores tuvieron en cuenta ‘oh mira, esto ha pasado por Sundance Labs así que no debe ser una locura total’. Y finalmente, hicimos “Turn Down for what”, que fue nuestro video musical más exitoso que nunca hayamos hecho, y creo que el haber sacado este video el mismo año que intentamos obtener fondos para la película…no puedo imaginar…apuesto que no hubiéramos obtenido fondos sin este vídeo, ya sabes, fuimos capaces de decir ‘Mira esto, todo el mundo lo ha visto!. Por favor, dadnos vuestro dinero’, y de alguna manera engañamos a un par de inversores para que creyeran en nosotros.   Pregunta 4 Hoy en día vivimos en una sociedad sin un término medio. Parece que todo es un 0 o un 10. ¿Tuviste fe en que se entendiera la película o era algo que te preocupaba?   Esta es una pregunta difícil, ¿Tuvimos fe en que se entendiera la película o estábamos preocupados en algún momento porque se mal entendiera? Nosotros siempre estuvimos muy preocupados de que la película no fuera comprendida correctamente y aún sigo preocupado, pero  pienso que hay una parte en mí que quiere que la gente me quiera y me comprenda, y otra parte que quiere saltar del acantilado hacia la ambigüedad. La película al completo es un ejercicio de confianza entre Dan y yo, corriendo el gran riesgo de poner algo ahí fuera que no es blanco y negro, que no sermonea y  que hace preguntas a las que ni siquiera nosotros sabemos las respuestas. Creo que lo que me gusta es que mis películas sean una experiencia y no sólo una pequeña obra de entretenimiento perfectamente construida, sino algo con lo que te tienes que ‘pelear’, que te planteas y que experimentas. Tú has planteado que la sociedad no tiene un término medio y creo que en muchos sentidos… que accidentalmente hemos hecho algo que se mueve en esa zona grisácea y que apuntaba a ése punto medio. Estoy de acuerdo en que no hay suficiente terreno medio y ambigüedad, no hay suficientes películas que lidien con personas que no tienen claro su género o sexualidad y fue divertido hacer una película que no se encuentra en ninguno de los lados del espectro. La película no tiene un mensaje super claro, pero tenemos confianza en que se abordan cierta temáticas en ella con claridad. Ha sido una respuesta algo rara (risas) Pregunta 5 Una de las grandes ventajas de la película es su elenco. Al parecer, Dano y Radcliffe no fueron muy difíciles de convencer para participar en la película y su química es increíble. Esto hace que uno se pregunte acerca de las escenas que podría haber dejado fuera del corte final. ¿Podrías contarnos un poco sobre tus momentos favoritos de improvisación o partes de la trama que no llegaron a la película?     Momentos favoritos de improvisación o historias que fueron suprimidas: Había tantas historias que cortamos, escribimos un millón de borradores de esta película. Había un borrador en el que Manny tenía alergia a las abejas y él se caía de un precipicio, mientras caían, Hank agarraba a una abeja y pinchaba a Manny con ella, que se inflaba como una balsa salvavidas y aterrizaban en el agua arreglándoselas para no morir… (Daniel se ríe)... Tuvimos que cortar eso, tendríamos que haber presentado muchos conceptos nuevos..., las alergias a las abejas no tienen una conexión temática con nuestra película. Pero siempre quise hacer una gran balsa de Manny. La escena que tristemente cortamos es una en la que Hank cree que ve a Manny llorar y luego se da cuenta de que está empezando a llover y que no es una lágrima (¿o sí?) antes de que Manny comience a hablar. Luego, cuando filmamos, intentamos hacerlo tirando pequeñas gotas de agua en la cara de Daniel Radcliff para falsificar las lágrimas, pero no pudimos hacer que las lágrimas cayeran bien. Danny decía: '”solo rueda, simplemente rueda” y consiguió sacar una lágrima de su globo ocular sin siquiera parpadear, fue la cosa más surrealista que alguna vez he visto hacer a un ser humano, pero la escena se cortó. Su logro culminante no llegó al corte final, pero creo que está en los extras en algún lugar del DVD.   Pregunta 6 Todo en vuestra película tiene un enfoque único y fresco, incluido la banda sonora. ¿Por qué decidisteis tener una banda sonora a capela? ¿Qué quería transmitir y por qué cree que se transmitió mejor de esta manera?   La banda sonora a capela para la película fue una idea muy temprana. Cuando bromeábamos sobre esta película, una de las cosas que realmente lo inició para nosotros fue la idea de una película sobre un tipo ajeno a la sociedad, el cual tendría alguna manera de contar su propia historia. Originalmente, la idea era que él narraría la historia en vez de tener flashbacks. El trataría de crear un escenario, intentaría construir cosas para recordar su hogar. La película entera sería algo así como un hombre atrapado en el bosque obsesionado con el hogar. Por lo tanto, naturalmente, tiene sentido que él también se pusiese su propia banda sonora. Desde muy temprano nosotros decíamos: “oh, será como un escenario hecho a mano construido con basura del bosque con una banda sonora hecha por él mismo en el bosque”. Simplemente sabíamos que  si las reglas de la narrativa desarrollasen al personaje, sería un aspecto que sumaría mucho a la historia. Así que siempre pensamos en los accesorios, la música, y todo sería hecho por Hank y ayudaría al espectador a conocer al personaje.   Pregunta 7 ¿Cómo fue trabajar con Andy Hull y Robert McDowel? ¿Fue su idea componer y muchas veces grabar partes de la banda sonora mientras se filmaba la película? Debo decir que esta es una de las hazañas más asombrosas en en cuanto a composición de una banda sonora que he escuchado.   Trabajar con Andy y Rob de la banda Manchester Orchestra siempre es un placer. Somos amigos de esos muchachos y lo hemos sido desde que hicimos un video musical para ellos, creo que en 2011. Así que les pedimos que compusieran la banda sonora de la película por un par de razones: sabíamos que queríamos a alguien que tuviera una hermosa voz para el canto y que pudiera crear hermosas armonías, pero también nos gusta trabajar con personas agradables y simplemente les queremos. Fuimos muy afortunados de que resultasen grandes compositores, fue algo colaborativo al desarrollar la sensación de la película. Sabíamos que queríamos que fuera a capela. En cuanto Andy leyó el guión, comenzó a escribir canciones, nos envió las canciones que había escrito y nosotros terminamos incluyéndolas en el guión. Nunca imaginamos que el la música sería tan no irónicamente épica y hermosa, pensamos que sería un poco más estúpida inicialmente. Empezaron a hacer música y comenzamos a pensar: "espera, esto es increíble y totalmente bizarro, yuxtaponiendo una hermosa partitura a un cadáver pedorro". Sabíamos que queríamos que esa parte fuera hermosa, pero realmente nunca nos hubiéramos imaginado que se convertiría en lo que se hizo en realidad. Andy y Rob siempre nos sorprendían y lo llevaban más allá agregando más capas de las que pensábamos que necesitaban. Me alegra que os haya gustado la partitura.   Pregunta 8 ¿Figuraba en el guión desde el principio el final con Manny "propulsandose" en el mar? Esto sucede en un punto muy catártico de la película donde el espectador puede pensar que finalmente había entendido la película, muchas veces rompiendo este sentido de comprensión. ¿Fue pensado como un último giro irreverente para que no olvidemos que esta no es una película habitual?   Se nos ocurrió el final de Manny lanzándose a la puesta del sol bastante pronto. Creo que tal vez en el tercer borrador del guión ya está ahí. Se nos ocurrió el desafío de comenzar la película con un pedo que te hace reír y terminar con uno que te hace llorar. Siempre fue una lucha tratar de hacer que el final fuera ambiguo, pero no desagradablemente ambiguo. A algunas personas no les gusta el final, pero fue muy importante para nosotros que tenga sentido para el personaje de Hank, incluso si no tuvo mucho sentido para la audiencia lo que sucedió o no. Si no has visto la película no escuches/leas esta parte del podcast. Lo que significa para nosotros es que Hank finalmente no se avergüenza, él se pee y dice "he sido yo". Manny le enseñó a no avergonzarse más de sí mismo, y con su misión cumplida sale volando como un ángel que vino a la Tierra para enseñarle una lección. Un adiós agridulce. Independientemente, nosotros pensamos que algunos miembros de la audiencia creerían que Manny era real, en base a este final, y algunos otros pensarían que tenía que ser un engaño y que no había forma de que Manny fuera real. Decidimos que esto estaba bien, la gente nunca estaría de acuerdo y queríamos que las caras de todos en la playa demostrasen las diferentes formas en que las personas pueden reaccionar ante esta película, como dándoles permiso a esas personas para sentirse así. Así que algunas personas pueden simplemente reírse, otras pueden llorar, algunas personas pueden decir "WTF" o sentirse asqueadas por ello y todo eso está bien... así que eso es lo que ves a cada personaje haciendo en la playa.   Pregunta 9 Después de su primera experiencia como directores de largometrajes y después de su éxito en Sundance, ¿cómo será el futuro para ustedes? Leemos en Collider que los hermanos Russo están produciendo su próxima película. ¿Podría contarnos algo al respecto?   Entonces, ¿cuál es nuestro próximo paso? Estamos intentando hacer una nueva película para el próximo año que hemos estado escribiendo durante un par de años y que los hermanos Russo la han estado desarrollando. Se llama "Everything, everywhere, all at once" y es un dramedia de ciencia ficción donde la mayoría de los personajes principales son asiático-americanos, ese es el origen de los padres de Daniel Kwan. Es una especie de carta de amor a algunas de nuestras películas favoritas como 'Brasil' o 'The Matrix' pero con temas modernos, como el sentirse abrumado y desesperado en un mar de información infinita. Es una idea un poco ¨tonta¨ como todas nuestras ideas, pero tonta de una manera de la que estamos orgullosos. Mientras tanto estamos trabajando en otras cosas. Yo tengo una película sobre de dónde soy, Alabama, al sur de los Estados Unidos, que se espera que salga el año que viene con suerte. La produce A24 también, es un pequeño drama policial ... dramedia, divertido y triste, así que estad atentos... pero no te diré el nombre. Ya veréis, es una sorpresa.   Pregunta 10 "Swiss Army Man" ganó el premio a  "Mejor película" en el festival de Sitges en 2016. ¿Estuviste en el Festival? Si es así, ¿recuerdas algo en especial sobre el festival o sobre España en general?   Desafortunadamente, no pudimos ir al festival de Sitges (lo siento, no sé cómo pronunciarlo) pero hubiéramos estado muy contentos de estar allí, lamento que no estuviéramos y me encantaría volver a visitar España. No he vuelto desde principios de la década de 2000. Visité Barcelona y otro par de ciudades … oh! mi cerebro me falla, no recuerdo los nombres... creo recordar que era la ciudad de donde era Salvador Dalí. Es un país hermoso, me gustó mucho. Nos encantaría volver. Gracias chicos por contactar conmigo, espero que esto haya sido útil y espero que el podcast salga bien. “Adios”.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------   Daniel Scheinert Interview (Transcription by Mario Wire) 1.Let us start with a question we ask all of our guests, where does your love for films come from? Could you point out a person in your childhood that specially influenced you that way? Daniel Scheinert: Ok, question number 1, if I could name one person that influenced me to pursue film...   You probably haven’t heard of this person, his name is Brad Scheinert and he was my older brother. I looked up to him a lot when I was a kid, and he and his friend started to make movies together in high-school and I was jealous and I wanted to be cool like them, so I started making movies as well. That is really where my love for making films came from, and honestly I wasn't even the biggest film love before that. It was really making movies not watching movies that I fell in love with, and along the way… I watched a few movies I guess. Now my brother is not a filmmaker he helps to design video games , right now he works in Stockholm (Sweden) for a company called Paradox - I think. 2. Could you name a movie or movies/film makers that specially influenced your work in Swiss Army Man? Spielberg´s Jurassic Park must be one of them... There is a whole lot  of them , we’re always afraid that people will be able to tell who are we ripping off when we make movies, so we try just to rip off a bunch of people (laughs). Paul Dano, who is in the movie, described the film as ´Terrence Malick meets Dumb and Dumber’ and we were very flattered by that because we are huge ‘Dumb and Dumber’ fans, and I’m a pretty big fan of Terrence Malick I guess (laughs). I think as far as real influences , another combination I’d say would be like Hayao Miyazaki, Dan and I both take a ton of inspiration from animated films and from animations, and a lot of times we feel like we are taking animated ideas and just see if we can do it in live action, and that is kind of our work. His stuff (Miyazaki’s) is obviously so fantastical and has its own rules and it's really beautiful, but then our movie is pretty dumb and perverted so, I guess my other influence would be ‘Jackass’ which was co-created by Spike Jones, one of our favourite filmmakers, but just the like raw, fun, brotherly comedy of that television show ‘Jackass’ it was honestly a huge influence on us ,in our work, in just how a …  simple entertainment that we try to make the comedy in our movies. 3. You have said repeatedly in past interviews that the core idea of the project always was the encounter of a castaway with ¨a farting corpse¨,  given that the project featured this bizarre comedic style, was it very hard to get it funded? Could you tell us a bit about the funding process? It was hard, but it was also really fun, cause even when people said no to us it  felt like doing a piece of performance art. You known, sitting down with a rich investor and pitching our farting-corpse drama (laughs). The two things that helped us getting it funded,  three things, one we had a producer we’ve worked with for years and he did a lot of the hard work, Jonathan Wang, I don’t even know half of what he did do but it was great having him fight for us and believe in us , two, we got into sundance labs which is an awesome kind of workshop were they took our screenplay, we had a finished draft of it and they just tore it apart and we sat down with different filmmakers and they helped us workshop it but also it was a stamp of approval so investors can see ‘oh this went to sundance labs, it must be not totally insane’ and three was that we made ‘Turn down for what’ which is a music video that was our most successful video we’ve ever made and I think , having that come out the same year that we were trying to get it funded…. I cannot imagine.. I bet that we couldn’t have gotten it funded without that ,you know, we were able to just say ‘look at that , everybody watched it , please give us your money’ and somehow tricked a couple of investors into believing us. 4. Nowadays we live in a society with no middle ground. It seems like everything is either a 0 or a 10. Did you have faith in the movie being understood, or were you worried at some point about this? This is a tough question. Did we have faith in the movie being understood or were we worried at some point it’ll be misunderstood?. We were always very worried that the movie would be misunderstood and I still I’m worried that it was misunderstood but I think that …. there is a part of me that wants people to like me and understand me, and there is a part of me that wants to... jump off a cliff of ambiguity and this whole movie was kind of a trust exercise between Dan and I and just like a crazy risk of putting something out in the world that is not black-and-white and isn’t preachy and that it asks questions that we don’t even know the answers to, I think I like for my movies to be an experience not just a... kind of, perfectly constructed little piece of entertainment but like something that you wrestle with and experience and you questioned, just asked..you mentioned that society has no middle ground and I think that in a lot of ways this whole movie was kind of something we… we accidentally made something that was filled with gray area and was kind of aiming at the middle ground, because I agree there is not enough middle ground and ambiguity, there is not enough movies that wrestle with people who aren’t sure of their gender or sexuality and it was fun to make a movie that doesn’t come down on either side of that. There is not a super clear message, but there are very clear themes that we felt confident we come across by the end of it all. Ok, weird answer (chuckles). 5. One of the huge pros of the movie is its cast. Apparently Dano and Radcliffe were not very hard to convince to participate in the film and their chemistry is amazing. This makes one wonder about the scenes you might have left out of the final cut. Could you tell us a little bit about your favorite moments of improvisation or story lines that did not make it into the movie? There were so many story lines we cutted out. We wrote a million drafts of this movie and there was one draft where Manny had a allergy to bees and he falled off a cliff and as they are falling Hank grabs the bee and stabs Manny and he inflates like a liferaft and they land in the water and manage not to die down below….eh…(se descojona él solo)….we had to cut that out, there was a lot of set up…. bee allergies do not have a thematic connection to our film. But I always wanted to do a big fat Manny raft. The scene that sadly we cut out it’s a one where Hank thinks he sees Manny crying and then he realises that it’s starting to rain and that it is not a tear (or was it?) before Manny starts talking and then, when we shot it we’re trying do like water droplets into the Daniel Radcliffe´s face but we couldn’t get the tears to land right and Danny was like ‘just roll, just roll’ and just willed a tear out of his eyeball without even blinking and it was the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen a human being do….but the scene got cut…..his crowning achievement did not make the final cut but I think it's in the special features somewhere in the dvd. 6.Everything in your movie has a very unique and fresh approach, including the Score. Why did you decide on having a fully acapella score? What did you want to transmit and why do you think it was transmitted better this way? So the a capella score for the film was an idea very early on  when we’re joking around about this movie. One of the things that really unlocked it for us was the idea a movie about a guy stranded away from society and he will have to kind of tell the story himself and originally the idea was that he was narrate and that instead of having flashbacks he would create sets, he would try to build things to remind himself of home. The hole movie would be kind of about a man stranded in the woods obsessed with home and so he just can naturally make sense to this day he would make the score too and so from very early on ‘oh it will be like handmade props made of crap from the woods and a score made by that guy out in the woods’ we just knew that it would add to kind of the story overall if like the rules of the movie will develop the character so we always thought  the props and the music and everything will be all made by Hank and it will help you to know the character. 7.What was it like working with Andy Hull and Robert McDowel? Was it their idea to compose and many times record parts of the score while the film was being shot? I have to say, this is one of the most amazing feats in movie scores I have ever heard of... Working with Andy and Rob from the band Manchester Orchestra is always a treat. We’re friends of those guys and have been ever since we did a music video for them back on I think 2011  so we asked them to compose the film for a couple of reasons. We knew we want someone who had a beautiful singing voice and could create beautiful harmonies but also we like working with nice people and we just love them and so we were very lucky that  turns out they’re great composers and it was a collaborative thing kind of developing the feel of the movie we knew we wanted it to be a capella but Andy wrote the script and just started writing songs and he will send us songs that he had written and ended up getting written into the script and we never imagine that  the music will be so unironically epic and beautiful we kind of thought it will be a little stupider…I think initially and the they started making music we’re like “wait, this is incredible beautiful and totally bizarre to juxtapose beautiful score with a farting corpse…We knew we want it that part to be beautiful but really like we never could have imagined that would sonically turned into what it did turned into and Andy and Rob were always surprising us and pushing it forward and adding more layers than we thought they needed to and …. yap. I am glad you liked the score. 8. Was the ending with Manny ‘propelling away’ in the sea scripted from the beginning? This happens at a very cathartic point in the movie where the viewer may think he had finally understood the movie, many times braking this sense of understanding. Was this intended as one last irreverent turn so we would not forget that this was not your usual movie? We came up with the ending of Manny farting off into the sunset pretty early on I think maybe on the third draft of the script we can zeroed in on that we came up with the challenge that we wanted the movie start with a fart that will makes you laugh and end it with a fart that makes you cry and it was always a struggle trying to make the ending ambiguous but not obnoxiously frustrated ambiguous. Some people don’t like the ending but it was kind important to us that it makes sense for the character of Hank, even if it didn’t totally make sense for the audience what happened or not so if you haven’t seen the movie don’t listen to this part of the podcast but what it means to us is that Hank finally is not ashamed, he farts and says ‘that was me’  Manny has taught him to no longer be ashamed of himself and having taught him his lesson he flies away like an angel that came to Earth to teach him a lesson. A bitter-sweet goodbye. But regardless we kind of thought some audience members would believe that Manny was real, based on this ending, and some members would think that it had to be a delusion and there was no way that Manny was real and we decided that it was ok with us that people would disagree and we wanted everybody’s faces there on the beach to demonstrate the different ways people may react to this movie and almost give those people permission to feel that way. So some people may just laugh, some people may cry, some people may say “what the fuck” o “be grossed out” and all of that’s ok….so that’s what you see everybody doing on the beach. 9. After your first experience as feature film directors and after your success in Sundance, what does the future look like for you? We read in Collider that the Russo brothers are producing your next movie, could you tell us something about it? So what’s next for us? We are trying to make a new movie next year that we have been writing for a couple of years and the Russo Brothers have been developing it. It’s called “everything everywhere all at once” and it’s a sci-fi dramedy and, where  most of the main characters are Chinese-Americans and that’s a Daniel Kuan’s parents background and it’s a kind of a love letter to some of our favourite films like ‘Brazil’ or ’The Matrix’ but with kind of modern themes of feeling overwhelmed and hopeless in a sea of endless information. That is kind of a bit about it, and it’s kind of dumb, like all of our stuff, dumb in a way we are proud of. But in the meantime we’re working in other things. I have a movie about where I’m from, which is Alabama in the South of the United States, that is supposed to come out next year hopefully. From A24 as  well and is small crime drama….dramedy, funny and sad, so look out for that but I am not gonna tell you the name. You’ll see….it’s a surprise. 10.Swiss army man won “Best film” at Sitges festival in 2016. Were you in the Festival? If so, do you have any thoughts about it or about Spain in general? Unfortunately we didn’t get to go to the Sitges festival…sorry I don’t know how to pronounce it, but we’re very happy to play there, bummed we weren’t there and I’d love to visit Spain again… I’ve not been back since early 2000s I’ve got to visit Barcelona and a couple of other towns….oh, my brain is farting I can´t remember, I don’t remember…I think the town where Salvador Dali was from, but it was a beautiful, beautiful country, I liked it a lot. We’d love come back.   Thanks for reaching out you guys I hope this stuff was helpful and I hope the podcast turns out well. Adios.

On today's episode, we have Writer & Director, Reinaldo Marcus Green! Reinaldo's debut feature film, "Monsters and Men" hits theaters this weekend! After winning the Special Jury Price at this year's Sundance Film Festival, "Monsters and Men" and continued to receive great praise from movie goers and critics alike. The film offers a unique take on the sensitive topic of police brutality and is a film we feel everybody should see.  We talked with Reinaldo about how he and Austin met at the Sundance Labs while working on "Monsters and Men", the inspiration behind the film, growing up in New York, Directing episodes for a Netflix show, upcoming projects, and so much more.  A huge Thanks to Reinaldo for taking the time to join us on this episode. He was only in LA for 48 hours and was kind enough to fit us into the schedule while the premier of his film was going on. Please get out and see this film and share it with your friends. Make sure to follow Reinaldo on all of the social media sites below to see all of his upcoming projects.  Thanks, Reinaldo!  Enjoy the episode.   

To spend five minutes with Jen Tullock is to be in stitches. She carries comedic turns-of-phrase and brilliant language choices that sear into your heart, open your mind, make you think, force you to laugh, and leaves you begging for more. Jen isn’t just a smart and lovable comedian, though. Her serious acting credentials are stacking up to build an impressive resume. She and her ever-present co-collaborator, Hannah Utt, created, wrote, and (Hannah) directed, and starred in the mega popular Super Deluxe Original Series, “Disengaged” – the story of a lesbian couple who stumbles into a hasty engagement on the eve of the Supreme Court’s ruling that legalizes same sex marriage and the ways that decision both strengthens and tests their relationship. Later this year, Jen Tullock and Hannah Utt will team up again to star alongside actors Alec Baldwin, Judith Light, and Ludacris in a feature film they have co-created at Sundance Labs called, “Stupid Happy.” And soon to be released as a Netflix original movie on April 6th, Jen Tullock joins Dave Franco and Abbi Jacobson in a film titled, “6 balloons” – a story of how a family struggles to deal with a brother’s heroin addiction and the pressures to enable his need for “just one more fix.” Listen for yourself to experience the talent and insight that oozes from one of our nation’s most promising up-and-coming LGBT artists. Catch Jen Tullock’s latest film, “6 balloons,” on Netflix starting April 6th.  Later this year, she and Hannah Utt will team up again to star alongside actors Alec Baldwin, Judith Light, and Ludacris in a feature film they have co-created at Sundance Labs called, “Stupid Happy.”

Rafael Agustin (Jane The Virgin, Sundance Labs) stops by to talk his insane origin story of finding out he was "ILLEGAL." We also chat accomplishing everything while knowing nothing, tattoo mistakes, dating off the grid, and more! Music and Production by Kyle Rodriguez Need advice? Ask my friends! WWMFDpodcast@gmail.com

This week on StoryWeb: Sherman Alexie’s film Smoke Signals. Smoke Signals is the first – and as far as I know, only – feature-length, commercially distributed film written and directed by Native Americans with a fully Native American cast. Written by Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre, the 1998 film is loosely based on Alexie’s first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, published in 1993. The film also includes characters who recur throughout Alexie’s other literary works. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? I suppose it is predominantly a drama, as Victor Joseph and his friend Thomas Builds-the-Fire travel from the Coeur d’Alene reservation in Washington to Phoenix, Arizona, to pick up his father’s remains. In that sense, it is a coming-of-age story of sorts – or perhaps more accurately, a coming-to-terms story. But there are also many comic elements to the film, and the wry humor emerges in part because Smoke Signals is also a classic buddy road trip movie. Victor and Thomas, as mismatched as they ever were as children, spar and play off each other – Victor the cool, stoic Indian, Thomas the geeky, ever-chatty storyteller who smiles too much. As they ride the bus to Arizona, Victor tutors Thomas in how to present himself as a “real Indian.” He needs to let his hair flow freely as a symbol of his warrior status, and he needs to wipe the goofy grin off his face. Thomas returns wearing a Fry Bread Power T-shirt, his braids unfurled, his gaze serious, and his walk a swagger. While this scene is funny, it is also searing, as Alexie deftly skewers the stereotypes white Americans have of Indian people. Alexie pulls off this double-edged humor again and again in the film. One of my favorite scenes is the one in which Victor and Thomas ask two young women on the reservation for a ride. The women say they’ll consider the request but first need to hear a story. Ever one to spin a yarn, Thomas launches into an account of Victor’s father, Arnold Joseph, being arrested for protesting against the Vietnam War. He plea bargained, and his ultimate charge was “being an Indian in the twentieth century.” When Victor asks the women what they think and whether this story is good enough to catch them a ride, one of the women says, “I think it is a fine example of the oral tradition.” Academics who teach Native American storytelling and literature are caught up short – they’re forever celebrating the Native American oral tradition – but those in the audience can’t help but laugh. The scene ends with Victor and Thomas climbing into the backseat and with the car taking off in reverse – the only direction in which it goes. But the film is much more than jokes, funny thought they may be. No, the film is much more a drama. Called to retrieve his dead father’s ashes, Victor goes on a quest to find his father, to make peace – if he can – with the legacy of an alcoholic, sometimes violent father who abandoned Victor and his mother. At the end of the film, Victor calls to his father, Arnold, from the bridge over a river, and we feel his release as he lets his father’s ashes go. Like all of Alexie’s writing, Smoke Signals is self-aware, self-conscious, self-referential, perhaps one could say postmodern and not go too far. In Smoke Signals, there is a strong, clear story. But there are also “meta” references, where it’s clear that Alexie, as screenwriter, and Eyre, as director, are very well aware of the tropes they are using and overturning. Buddy film? Check. Road film? Check. Coming-of-age story? You got it. Western? You just might have something there. Developed at Sundance Labs, Smoke Signals won the Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance. Provocative insights into the film can be found in Filmmaker Magazine’s interview with Alexie and Eyre – and background on the making of the film and its impact on other Native American filmmakers can be found in an interview with Eyre. As the New York Times says, it is also more than a “first” in Native American film: “it is a step by a new generation of Indian artists toward finding an idiom for exploring their individual and cultural identities without resorting to self-pity, political correctness or Hollywood cliches.” For those of you who are teachers, check out the University of Michigan Press’s curriculum guide to Smoke Signals as well as the Teach with Movies supplemental lesson materials. If you haven’t seen Smoke Signals, you owe it to yourself to get a copy and take a look. And when you get hooked on Alexie’s work (as I know you will), you’ll want to delve into his print writing as well. Alexie is absolutely one of the best American Indian writers today (along with N. Scott Momaday, among others). His first novel, Reservation Blues, was published in 1996. His young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. War Dances, a collection of Alexie’s short stories and poems, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. This year, he published a picture book for children, Thunder Boy Jr. In addition to his fiction, poetry, screenplays, and books for young adults and children, you’ll also want to check out his poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel.” Visit thestoryweb.com/alexie for links to all these resources and to watch a short clip from Smoke Signals.

AFTERBUZZ TV - AfterBuzz TV's Spotlight On edition, is a long form interview series featuring Actors and TV personalities discussing their roles and shows as well as their thoughts, passions and journeys. In this episode host Kristin Carole interviews Charles Halford. Charles's bio: Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Charles Halford began his training as an actor on the indie circuit. Halford cut his teeth in the Sundance Filmmaker Labs where he worked as a 'stock' actor for several seasons. The Sundance Labs granted him the opportunity to work with a number of A-list talent as well as ascending directors, actors, and producers. Many of the productions were award winning and earned critical accolades. Since honing his craft in Park City, Halford forged a name for himself on the small screen with credits in a number of high-profile television productions. He leant his imposing physicality in recent work as the towering, meth-cooking serial killer suspect, --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

AFTERBUZZ TV - AfterBuzz TV's Spotlight On edition, is a long form interview series featuring Actors and TV personalities discussing their roles and shows as well as their thoughts, passions and journeys. In this episode host Kristin Carole interviews Charles Halford. Charles's bio: Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Charles Halford began his training as an actor on the indie circuit. Halford cut his teeth in the Sundance Filmmaker Labs where he worked as a 'stock' actor for several seasons. The Sundance Labs granted him the opportunity to work with a number of A-list talent as well as ascending directors, actors, and producers. Many of the productions were award winning and earned critical accolades. Since honing his craft in Park City, Halford forged a name for himself on the small screen with credits in a number of high-profile television productions. He leant his imposing physicality in recent work as the towering, meth-cooking serial killer suspect, --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app