We are back with one of our best Spidcast episodes to date this month (listen in below and subscribe on iTunes) with a focus on web series, acting, getting lucky, and other interesting stuff. January’s Spidcast features the incredible individuals Tom Konkle and America Young. They are our amazing guests for Spidcast 14, January 2012 which you can listen to below.

Our Guests

Tom Konkle is a professional actor and writer who has also done sketch comedy for over ten years. Tom is the founding member of the sketch troupe Lester McFwap, and has performed hundreds of original shows around the country as well as having completed the television pilot, McFwap!

Tom has starred in the short films “Who Makes Movies,” and “Sanctuary” to name only two. He has appeared in comedy films with David Beeler including “Seat Fillers!,” “The Animal In Us All,” “The Secret To Happiness,” “A Paid Advertisement” “Destiny’s Stop” and “The Argument Clinic.”

Tom has written three screenplays including Village of the Darned and Last Breath. He has also written for television, short films, and industrials.

You may have also seen Tom in commercials, guest star roles on television and independent films. His stage career is extensive with shows including The Real Inspector Hound, Beyond The Fringe, Clare and Tom: A One Woman Show, Loot, Nevermore: The Black Cat, Good Night, Britcom, Double Act and many others.

The remaining Monty Python members asked him to direct, perform and ruin their never before seen sketches live in a show called Owl-Stretching Time. Tom was a series regular on NBC’s Spy TV, Sci-Fi Channel’s Scare Tactics and Fox’s The Orlando Jones Show, Arrested Development, NBC’s The Office, Back to You, Secret Life of the American Teenager and CW’s The Game. Tom stars in four episodes of Comedy Gumbo for Sony Pictures Television and is the voice of the cup in the film Behind the Cup.

Tom recently wrote for and starred in a two man sketch show with John Cleese called The Art of Football. Tom is starring in, co-writing and co-producing the comedy horror film, Quarter Cool Cthulu.

America Young helped start the Feel Good Film Festival in 2008 where it ran until May 2011, while it was at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Her titles were Executive Director and co-Programmer. America is behind the web series Geek Therapy which is where non-geeks go to find their inner geek, and geeks go to cope with geek-related problems. She has collaborated on many online video projects, and she has been involved with many traditional films as well including Abandoned.

We thank Tom and America for being such amazing guests!

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show with a product or service you sell that’s filmmaking related, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Tom and America talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from its content!

Full Transcript Below

INTRO

Michael London: Hi, I’m Michael London. Welcome to Spidcast, the Future of Collaborative Video Production brought to you by Spidvid.com. On this episode, we’re visiting with Tom Konkle. He’s an actor, director and co-owner of Pith-e Productions. And Thomas moved into the new media space and will tell us all about that. Then we’ll visit with a lady who has a kind of unusually hyphenated title you don’t often hear. A director-stuntwoman, America Young will be here. She has a wonderful outlook on this business and some great insights as well.

But first up is Tom Konkle. Tom, we’ve seen your face, I know we have. It’s all over TV. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Tom Konkle: I started as a professional actor and director in Los Angeles in the early ‘90s and obviously in traditional media. But I also had a background in sketch comedy. I love performing live. I had a sketch troupe for a long time. We toured many places in the world and around the US, ended up partnering up with Dave Beeler and doing a two-man sketch show as British guys. Our hook was that we would British comedy American made and we started a comedy called Pith-e Productions. Pith-e meaning when the internet, at least when it was first starting, everything had to be very short because of bandwidths and storage so we were short and pithy. So, we’re Pith-e so like email Pith-e Productions, myself and Dave and we started filming our sketches.

And I would take stuff that I would make in traditional media and I’d roll through that money very much like something like Orson Welles would do. He’d work on a studio film and then he’d do his passion project as independent project. He’d roll some of that money into it and we did a very similar thing where we took a leap and made shows like “Invention” with Brian Forbes and “Safety Geeks.”

So, my background really is as a filmmaker and actor who finally found the internet as a way of combining those disciplines.

Michael London: So, take us through that process of you venturing into internet production.

Tom Konkle: Well, the story behind me, I was very fortunate. I came out and I really had a passion for acting and directing. I came out from—I actually moved here from Virginia because I went to college at American University in DC and got a degree in Cinema and Theatre from there and I kind of moved here knowing nothing or anyone and lived in a truck and I found a place on the last day before I had to turn the truck in and have my stuff on the street. I found an apartment somewhere in Glendale, California; lovely Glendale and from there, began working getting an agent doing commercials.

I’ve probably 50, 60 commercials. It’s been a really nice way to free me up to do other creative pursuits and then I’ve always had a passion for writing and directing. I’ve done a lot of short films and short form things; beginning to develop now some features because I’ve made the connections I need to make but really I’m a unique animal and that I’m an actor who understands the technical side, the post production and production side intimately because I’ve been doing it for 17 years.

Michael London: Well, you know what, nothing speaks like experience, that’s for sure and you’ve had a lot of experience in commercials. I know you might not want about them. We want to hear about them. Where have we seen your face?

Tom Konkle: Okay, well, commercially, at the moment I have a Coca-Cola running which runs a lot during American Idol. I have a pretty famous internet meme once where I play Brahms in a thing called Raisin Brahms and I think there’s about 100 little mini-fan films where people have corrupted and changed my spot into something else. So, it’s a very bizarre spot and it’s kind of wonderful. I’ve done spots for Quiznos, most major car companies. ING right now is running where I’m up in a hedge, so there’s a bunch, I usually have four or five at any given year. So, that’s been a real boon to keeping the acting career going.

Michael London: What does that feel like? What does it feel like to be the focus of a (parity)?

Tom Konkle: I have to admit, I love it. The Raisin Brahms one with Guten Tag, I have some of them myself that I’ve saved. There’s one guy who did a screensaver of me doing Guten Tag and it’s actually me saying, “Guten Tag” for full two minutes. I was like “Guten Taaaag” it just cracks me up. I love—everything is a remix and everything is a sort of reformulation and what’s cool about the internet is it’s cross pollinating in everything that happens. We didn’t have that in the ‘90s. We didn’t have that happening and now, I can put something up on YouTube or Blip or KoldCast or wherever and it might inspire something else or I might see it reformulated and then come back to me and I love that.

Michael London: Oh, that’s great. Now, you mentioned earlier that you are a hybrid, the talent and techie and that you really put that into play on Safety Geeks: SVI, right?

Tom Konkle: Absolutely. With Safety Geeks: SVI, that was really, I wanted to see the show. I really love Adult Swim and the Adult Swim sense of humor but I always thought with the human face, being an actor, (I was) like, there’s nothing more expressive than a human face. What if you took the sensibility of Adult Swim and (married it) with actual people and of course, I couldn’t destroy a (Costco), I couldn’t do all the same stuff they do so me and Mike Smith and Thor Melsted and Dave Beeler and Brittney Powell, we all got together. We’re all friends that are professionals and said, how can we learn? What’s our learning curve to create a universe build? How do you make it effects latent comedy because there aren’t a lot of, (in fact), heavy ones and we were really groundbreaking.

We started a company called Lumen Actus which was a subcompany and Lumen Actus really is a visual FX and even 3D company and I know the post process. I’ve worked in the studio system as well and I’ve had to deliver films and television shows and I know how to cut them and if I don’t know how to physical do the mix, I know how to supervise it. And so, Safety Geeks was all these disciplines coming together into a sort of passion project of what would make us laugh, how silly can we be and how can we build a world and the effects are part of the joke and so the acting is there and the writing hopefully is there but what’s cool about is without a filter unfettered by a middle man or anything else, right or wrong, very much like putting up a play in a 99-seat theatre, you rise or fall on your own decisions and I really like that about Safety Geeks. And I think Safety Geeks are groundbreaking because it’s the first 3D web series in the world.

Michael London: You got to love that. No brag, just fact. Now, take us a bit deeper into that somewhat uncertain world of 3D.

Tom Konkle: Well, there’s been slower adoption than was predicted and I think part of that is mistakes made on both side. I think there’s still a stigma that somehow it’s a fad or a gimmick which actually came up as an objection when sound was introduced to film like, “Ah, sound will never last,” and then when color came in, they’re like, “It’s not necessary. I like my black and white TV.” But with 3D used properly, it can immerse you further into it.

I think the problem is the studios paid lip service to the company that make it but we have all hardware and not enough software, not enough shows to watch it on so I think we’re kind of upside down. It’s ironic to me the most successful 3D film in history Avatar is not available on 3D Blu-Ray which, I think, is very odd and we’ve been working to get Safety Geeks out on 3D Blu-Ray through our distributor named Yabazam. It’s a division of DDD, Digital Dynamic Depth and I think as people adopt the television and get more comfortable and hopefully, we’re getting into glasses free 3D, I think that for Indies like us, that becomes special. It becomes almost the hook, the niche is, oh, here’s some 3D content where they won’t go, “Is Will Farrell in this comedy or we won’t take it?”

In this case, well, hey, it’s in 3D. The 3D is decent. It’s good. It doesn’t need to have star names in it, big names. We have certainly some great credits because it’s in 3D, it open doors that we wouldn’t normally have opened. We never would have gotten a deal to have a 3D Blu-Ray of our web series had it not been in 3D.

Michael London: Well, that is a perfect example of collaboration as technologies helped you and you have helped pushed technology with your creative work, right?

Tom Konkle: Absolutely, yes. We broke a lot of ground with it when we started Geeks in 2009. There was really no—there wasn’t even a standard for 3D and originally, we delivered it in 2D to KoldCast who helped with some of the negative costs of creating it and it had 7,000 composite shots which is more than the first three Star Wars, the original Star Wars movies combined. Every single shot is an effect shot in Safety Geeks.

Unless you’re physically touching something and nothing is there and as a filmmaker, I was like wow, it’s an interesting challenge plus I’m in it, plus I wrote it plus I’m worrying about bringing the sandwiches. So, for me, any studio project or if I step on to a television thing, I recently did a little guest spot on community or something, it’s like taking weights off my ankles because I’m like, “Really? I don’t have to pick up the cable?” It’s kind of nice.

Michael London: I bet. And that brings me to one of the main points here today and that’s all about collaboration. I’m certain that you found along the way how valuable collaboration is.

Tom Konkle: I think collaboration is really the most important part of the creative process. Unless you’re a novelist or a painter, it is a team effort. Certainly, you have to have your own vision and people will march in the same direction with you if they feel like you know what you’re talking about but I couldn’t do it without the, they’re frankly friends, without the very dear friends that happened to be artists. We call it friendship with a purpose. Most friends get together and go to the bar, well, we, our friends all get together and go, “Okay, let’s make a show.”

And what’s nice about that is I try and bring out the best in myself and in them by enthusiasm and them knowing if I say I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it and in this town in Los Angeles in particular, a lot of people have a lot of plans and a lot of things they’re going to do but what I pride myself in is with myself or Dave and I or me or Brittney, we’ve worked on some things. If we say we’re going to do it, by golly, we go and do it and people know that it will be fruitful and that they’ll be respected and that their contribution will be considered important and for me, that’s the most exciting thing. Collaborating with people that make your game better, it’s like tennis. You want to play with people as good or better than you.

Michael London: Tom, that is such valuable advice. If you say you’re going to do it, just do it. Great stuff. Now, you might have answered a part of this next question, but what advice can you offer to those just starting out?

Tom Konkle: If you were just starting, I would say have the courage of your conviction and what I mean by that is pick a project that’s scalable that will present you and you must know thyself, you are the expert on you and if you know yourself as an artist and where your strengths are, pick a project that is scalable that you can actually do. Don’t have the helicopters coming over the hill, that’s not your first project. That’s your 50th and pick several actually and take those projects and see them through and assume you’re going to learn a lot and fall and fail and be okay with it because a perfectionist will never start and for me, the first few steps into this world, well, you copy what you like. You learn from it. Like I said, earlier, you remix and reformulate something. Make what you want to see. If no one else agrees with you, get out of the business.

Michael London: I love the advice of picking scalable projects. Now, for the beginners, Tom, how hard do they dig their heels in for what they believe?

Tom Konkle: Well, when you’re starting out, there are places what I called the heel you want to die on. If you dig your heels in and you really feel passionate about it, it’s a double edged sword. People respect that and yes, you will have a singular vision come through but make sure that’s the who you want to die on. If you’re digging your heels in because it has to be this particular store, because it has blue in it, that’s not a battle you want to fight. Where you want to dig your heels in is the integrity of the project. Is it being fundamentally altered so this is no longer yours or worse, many people fall in the trap of doing what they think someone else might want? They’re given a brief like, “Well, someone else will find this funnier. I believe this to be commercial. Or I believe this is what other people want.”

You should be your own audience. You should really develop that compass, that internal compass of taste and your own artistic limitations and say, this is to scale, this is what I can do right now really, really well and present that. It’s great to overreach a little bit, push yourself a little bit, but you’ll never start if it seems so overwhelming or if you really fundamentally don’t believe it.

And last thought on that, this comes from experience. I’ve been doing this for very long time and I’ll say half the sets I’ve been on, with all the money flying around. You’re going to have a million dollar commercial. You’re going to have a television show, you could tell when no one on that show believes in what they’re doing. They’re collecting a paycheck or it’s a machine and it’s running through the machine and it’s reflected in the art. So, it may be a (solo) piece, it may be a commercial piece, it may be fluff. But when you’re on a project and there’s an energy and everyone believes in what’s going on, it transcends even its own limitations. If you have, for example, technique but no feeling, well, then it’s like watching a virtuoso but he’s playing with no feeling.

If you have no technique but a lot of feeling, well, then you have potential there but you’re not executing it. The perfection of art is matching technique and feeling so that what you’re doing is reaching the audience that you intended for which includes you but has a technique where you can execute the idea.

Michael London: And you have indeed reached your intended audience. Where can we see your stuff?

Tom Konkle: There’s a couple of places you can see it. One is really easy, I can’t believe we got this domain name, if you want to see the Dave and Tom stuff, some of its double act which is the British comedy that we do, the sketch show, you go to www.daveandtom.com and that’s AND spelled out so daveandtom.com. Also, it has Invention with Brian Forbes which is a show that has been critically, just chugging along. We call it the little show that could; safetygeekssvi.com, you can see Safety Geeks. If you want to see it in 3D, you go to yabazam.com and I’ll spell that, that’s yabazam.com. You can download it. You can take a look at it. Stream it if you have a 3D TV or computer and the other show that I’m doing is Ask Grim.

If you put in, Ask Grim in YouTube, you’ll see a very funny show that I do with Sandra Payne and all those are there and I have an upcoming series that I’m going to be doing with Brittney Powell called Rom Com which is kind of an edgy romantic comedy which will also be on YouTube. So, any of those places you can find me. And if you’re interested in visual effects or 3D work, lumenactus.com and I’ll spell that out, lumenactus.com and that is my production company and visual effects company.

Michael London: We will meet you there. And how about a parting shot for us to take away?

Tom Konkle: A parting shot would basically be this, take a real assessment of who you want to be as an artist and how you want to present yourself. Have a very real sense of your own audience and what you are capable of creating in this moment, not I want to or I will but where you are right now and know that that art that you create now, you’ll look back and it won’t be, that will be early stage you but it’s okay. So, have the courage of your conviction. Go for it, start, begin. There’s a great quote that I’ll leave you with. I believe it was Somerset Maugham who said, “I only do something when inspiration strikes.” Fortunately, inspiration strikes every morning at 9:00 am.

Michael London: Thank you, Tom Konkle for joining us today on Spidcast.

Tom Konkle: All right, take care. Thank you so much.

Operator: Spidcast.

Michael London: Next stop is director, stuntwoman, America Young. America, thank you so much for joining us today on Spidcast.

America Young: Well, thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.

Michael London: And for the benefit of those listening who haven’t yet heard your name, they will. Fill us in. Tell us a bit about your story.

America Young: My story, I’ve been living out in LA for a few years now. I’ve moved out here to be an actress and while I was out there, I also discovered that I also like bossing people around which naturally lead to producing and directing and I’ve also been doing a lot of stunt work in the last couple of years. So, basically, my story is I’m a storyteller.

Michael London: So, how do we know if you’re telling stories right now?

America Young: I’m always telling a story. Sometimes, they’re true then sometimes they’re not.

Michael London: Well, I say, good for you then. Hey, where have we seen some of your stunts?

America Young: I was actually just in Transformers 3 doing stunt work in Washington DC and I just filmed on John Carter of Mars which is a new Pixar movie coming out and I do a lot of stunt work in a TV show called Goodnight Burbank which is on Hulu and was on HDNet.

Michael London: Oh, we recently had Hayden Black, Goodnight Burbank creator on Spidcast. So, America, how or why did you make the jump to online media?

America Young: Because I was bored and I was not creatively fulfilled by the projects I was working on. A lot of the times, you take projects that pay the bills that you aren’t necessarily proud that you’re a part of or you don’t find them particularly interesting. So, I started just doing stuff online because then you get to tell the stories that you want to tell and the way you want to tell them.

Michael London: So, you’ve kind of taken a different path than most we’ve talked to and that you already had a traditional film career, then you got involved in this new media. Has that helped or hindered you?

America Young: I think it’s only helped jumping from film to new media. I know it does seem a little bit backwards but the truth of the matter is more and more are doing it because of the creative control they get over their own projects and because of the things that they get to create. When you’re working on a film, you’re hindered and helped. I mean, granted you’re helped by the studio and their money but you’re also hindered by the fact that they’re still pulling the strings and that you’re telling the story that they want to tell.

The new media online, you are the boss and you get to do what you do, money restricted, of course, and that helps so much. It helped with my creativity, it helped with my learning of all aspects because we’re doing independent film. You’re doing every aspects of filmmaking possible and I think the more you learn about filmmaking, the better it makes you at whatever you want to be.

If you’re an actor and you learn what it is to produce something, then that makes you a better actor because you know what you’re stepping into. If you’re a director and you have to teach yourself how to edit, that absolutely makes you a better director because then you know how to shoot for the editing room. So, in every single way, it’s like an intensive course on filmmaking.

Michael London: I love everything you just said. I trust there was lots of note taking going on as well. This is terrific insight, America. We appreciate it. Tell us your experience with collaboration.

America Young: The barter system is alive and well in Los Angeles. I’ll work on yours if you work on mine and that has helped so much because there’s no better way to learn than by doing it yourself, by doing it with people who know how to do it better than you and that’s what happened is. You work on somebody’s projects for them doing what you do best. I’ll get hired on someone’s project to do stunt work because that’s something that I do well and I can coordinate and as in return of a favor, then I’ll bring them on to my project to do what they do best and then I learn from them.

So, collaboration is the best way to do this and a lot of new media is not paid or if it’s paid, it’s peanuts. What you’re learning, what you get is so much more valuable because you’re learning and you’re getting the experience.

Michael London: At times, there are things more valuable than the mighty dollar. Now, you touched on so many good points and you may have answered part of this but what are some tips for those just starting out.

America Young: I say, just do it, man. Just jump in and do it. It’s terrifying at first. it’s overwhelming at first but you learn as you go and that’s the best way to go. So, find a story whether it’s a short one-minute video that you want to go viral or if it’s a web series that you want to tell that you think hasn’t been told or hasn’t been told in this way and find somebody who’s a friend of yours who’s a writer and say, “Hey, how do this and do that?” And then once it’s written, get your favorite actor friend that you know or hold auditions and meet a brand new group of talented people and just do it.

It’s a step by step by step and reach out to people in your lives that you know that know what they’re doing or have experience and something that you have questions on. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t have too much ego to not admit that you don’t know what you’re doing and just do it. And your first project most likely will be awful. They’ll be so many things with it that you wish you had done differently but that’s the best way to learn is looking back on that and going, “Oh, my god, I really wish I had done this or wow, we really needed a sound guy on that or next time, we’re definitely having a makeup artist.” And then as you go, you learn what’s important to you for telling your story. But that’s the only way you can do it is to do it.

Michael London: Excellent, love it, just do it. So, where can we see some of the things that you have done?

America Young: Well, I’ve done a lot of work with Comediva. It’s comediva.com. It’s COMEDIVA and it’s a website that’s like a funny or die college humor specifically geared towards female comedy and I’ve done a lot of work with them creating shows and directing things and writing things. So, there’s a lot of stuff of mine on there and you could always follow me on twitter and that’s @america_young and then my website, I usually update. I’m a little behind updating because I’m so busy which is a great excuse to not update but americayoung.com. I usually eventually post links everything I’m working on.

Right before the holidays, I directed a video that was a light saber duo between Christmas elves and you can se that on YouTube. It’s called Elf Sabers and Teal Sherer was actors in it who produced it. It’s on her YouTube channel, My Gimpy Life and I also just directed a web series presentation pilot called Wrestling with Parenthood and it’s basically Mr.Mom in the professional wrestling world so we have some real professional wrestlers who are in it and that’s pretty exciting. So, I’ll be posting updates about that on my website and on Twitter.

Michael London: Lots of cool things to check out so if somebody’s listening and you want them to say, “I was listening to this pod cast and this girl named America Young said blank,” what would you like them to remember?

America Young: Bite off more than you can chew and then chew it. Jump in the deep end and learn how to swim really fast. Just do it. if you want it and this is what you want more than anything in the world, don’t let anything stop you except the law but even law can stop you but other than that.

Michael London: You know, I once had a guy tell me that there’s a wall that I never want you to go over, luckily, it’s made of rubber and I won’t respect you unless you run and hit that wall as hard as you can every now and again.

America Young: I love that. That’s a wonderful expression because it’s true, you do have to hit the wall sometimes and it sucks, man, but it’s worth it because you learn from that and it makes you stronger and if you can survive hitting the wall, you can survive almost anything.

Michael London: America Young, thank you so much for joining us today on Spidcast. It’s been a delight.

America Young: Well, thanks so much for having me. This is really fun.

Michael London: And thank you for listening to our Spidcast show. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at Spidvid.com on our Spidvid blog and you can join on our collaborative filmmaking community at Spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.

Jeremy Campbell community, interview, resources actors, America Young, Dave and Tom, filmmakers, filmmaking, filmmaking podcast, filmmaking show, Geek Therapy, Hollywood, Los Angeles, new media, podcast, podcast show, Safety Geeks, show, spidcast, Tom Konkle, video creators, videomaking podcast, videomaking show

We are back with quite possibly our best Spidcast episode to date this month (listen in below and subscribe on iTunes) with a focus on the early days of web series and traditional filmmaking too. October’s Spidcast features the incredible co-creator of Lonelygirl15, Mesh Flinders, and James Chressanthis has had 2 Emmy nominations for his cinematography, among many other elite accolades. They are our amazing guests for Spidcast 12, October 2011 which you can listen to below.

Our Guests

Mesh Flinders is a filmmaker and the co-creator, writer, and director of the ground breaking web series Lonelygirl15.

His latest short film, Further Lane, has played numerous national and international film festivals including Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, the Hamptons International Film Festival and Indie Shorts London, where it was nominated for the Grand Prix.

Mesh also gives talks on the intersection of film and social media on his website social-film.com.

James Chressanthis, ASC is a filmmaker who has earned a diverse range of nearly forty credits since the early 1990s, including studio motion pictures, independent features, television movies episodic drama series and documentaries. His cinematography has been nominated for an Emmy® twice: Four Minutes Roger Bannister’s quest to break the four minute mile barrier and the acclaimed mini-series Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. He also shot critical additional 1st Unit photography on the Oscar® – winning Chicago. Other notable credits include Urban Legend, the controversial mini-series The Reagans, “3” (The Dale Earnhardt Story), The Music Man, Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime (both with Julie Andrews), Judas Kiss and Brian’s Song.

Chressanthis began his film career shooting break-through and first music videos for such artists as NWA, Dr. Dre, John Wesley Harding, Hammer, and Bobby McFerrin as well as James Brown and a Grammy® nominated clip Smells Like Nirvana for “Weird Al” Yankovic. More recently Chressanthis has been a director and cinematographer of the popular CBS dramatic series Ghost Whisperer completing five seasons and over 100 one-hour episodes. His feature film directing debut No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos about the legendary Hungarian cinematographers and the American New Wave, premiered as an official selection of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and has been seen in more than twenty-five film festivals worldwide culminating with a national broadcast on PBS and his third Emmy® Nomination: Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming.

James Chressanthis trained as a sculptor and today exhibits large mixed media digital prints and paintings when he is not shooting films.

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show with a product or service you sell that’s filmmaking related, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Mesh and James talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from its content!

Full show transcript below

INTRO

Michael: Hi. I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the future of collaborative video production brought to you by Spidvid.com. On this episode, we’re visiting with James Chressanthis, cinematographer and director, and also indie filmmaker, Mesh Flinders. Twice nominated for Emmy awards for cinematography using James’ work on the miniseries “The Reagans,” the film “Chicago” and breakthrough videos for “NWA”, “Dr. Dre”, and also Weird Al’s “Smells Like Nirvana.”

Mesh Flinders credits include being the co-creator of the massively successful web series “Lonelygirl15” which got him widespread media coverage from “Time” and “Newsweek” magazines to the “Times of London” and the “New York Times”, to the “NBC Nightly News”, ABC’s “Nightline”, the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and the “Daily Show”. A wonderful Spidcast on tapped today, settle in. Here we go.

First up is James Chressanthis, ACS. James, welcome to Spidcast.

James: Hey. Hi, Michael

Michael: So tell us a bit about yourself so people can get to know you about how you came to be an award nominated cinematographer.

James: Well, I grew up in kind of modest circumstances in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The L Train was my earliest memory. Not a place close to Hollywood but I was always interested in photography and my father and mother encouraged me in that and so I’ve been taking photographs since the age of 10 and then I started making films in college but very slowly moved toward movies. I studied Fine Arts, black and white photography and sculpture and drawing and so I had a very, very strong Fine Arts education.

And then at that point, I started making little films and one thing led to another but it took me like a 10-year odyssey to finally go to Hollywood.

Michael: Wow. Well, take us, Reader’s Digest style now through those 10 years.

James: I did sculpture and drawing very strong Fine Arts. I actually did bronze casting, did a lot of life drawing. I started doing multimedia installations and I started with shooting film and video with those and doing projection pieces, stuffs of dance and performance. I was sort of on the periphery of movies but then I started making, I made a couple of student films in 16mm and they started to get noticed.

But even then to make a living, to work in Hollywood didn’t seem like possible to me so I made this documentary about a Greek mountain village, a life of a Greek mountain village from the end of winter to the summer wheat harvest and that film got on PBS and it was in a festival in Houston, I think, and the director Bill Richert who did “Winter Kills” was there and he said, “So, kid, you directed the film. You shot the film. You edited the film. You mixed the sound. You cut the negative yourself. You promoted it and got it on PBS and you’re teaching college in Michigan? So, kid, they pay you to do that work out in Hollywood.” So, at age 30, I packed up and went to the American Film Institute and chucked my job and starved for a bit and then started shooting out here in Los Angeles.

Michael: And what was that film? Can we see that somewhere?

James: The film? Gee, it’s on YouTube. I put it on YouTube. That film was “Remembrance of a Journey to the Village,” 1980.

Michael: Now, as I understand that it was your time at AFI when you really blossomed?

James: What happened at the American Film Institute, that was the first time I really started collaborating and working with crews and not working in a solitary fashion and I had the good fortune to be the intern to Vilmos Zsigmond on “The Witches of Eastwick.” And at the end of the show after working on it for 100 days, Vilmos had me shoot some pickup shots and some inserts and some special effects inserts for the movie. So, I went from intern to kind of second unit (DP), in one fell swoop and then I started doing music videos and I shot the music videos of Bobby McFerrin, Hammer, NWA, Dr. Dre. I did about 80 music videos in that period and had a Grammy nomination with “Weird Al” Yankovic in “Smells Like Nirvana.

So, that was a great training ground doing the music videos but especially doing the west coast rap and hip hop artists being right at the beginning of that was very, very nice and then I moved into narrative features and movies and television from there.

Michael: And these music videos must have been really great training for you?

James: Yes, Rupert Wainwright, the director and I, we had a great collaboration and we always tried to do narrative. We always tried narrative music videos, not just performance related videos. I think the business changed a bit and the record companies who were very powerful at that time, they didn’t really want narrative videos. They just wanted simple performance-related showpieces for their music artists but we were always trying to do a narrative and we did an amazing Hammer video called “Turn This Mutha Out” which was terrific and also the video “Straight Outta Compton” which Rupert and I co-directed which was about the gangbangers and the kids in South Central LA being profiled and being arrested for no reason though wouldn’t premiere on the MTV. It premiered on Nightline because it was so controversial.

And then a few months after that, we had the “LA Riots” and “Rodney King” and so forth. So, it was actually a very timely piece and I enjoyed working with NWA. They were great.

Michael: Now, you bring up an interesting term and I want the young filmmakers to really understand this. You said you wanted to make the music videos with a narrative. I’m guessing that came from your documentary background.

James: My documentary background shooting real people, real things, not the phony reality TV we have today which is actually scripted, most people should realize. Most reality television is scripted and manipulated. It’s not real at all, far from it. So, my documentary background shooting real people observing reality, real observing from his life and then trying to visually portray it, it was really useful. When I did, “Straight Outta Compton” we were trying to show what happened on the streets of LA in (East) Compton if you’re a black teenager.

So, that was, I think bringing that sense of reality from my documentary background was very useful in narrative cinema and again, a great narrative film makes you think it completely suspends your disbelief, makes you think it’s real, completely real. It’s happening in front of you and you’re completely subjective in with the characters and a great documentary also has terrific narrative thread, narrative structure strength so you are really invested in the characters that you’re seeing but in this case, it’s their lives.

Michael: So, advice to those just getting into this business in regards to telling the story is what?

James: Any filmmaker, you should really learn the basics of narrative storytelling. This is what you do in documentary is we’re doing dramatic work. Know your Billy Shakespeare, right? I remember when I was in school, Sam Shepherd, the actor and playwright and a great writer came to our school and the kids were all asking him, “Sam, what writers have influenced you?” And of course, they were all expecting 20th century writers to be listed and he looked at us on and he said Sophocles.

So, knowing about drama and dramatic structure is probably one of the most important things a filmmaker can know and also just having a great liberal arts education and knowing about the world. I mean, I really don’t—everything you can learn technically about filmmaking, you can learn in two or three years but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is do you have a story to tell and do you know how tell that story?

Some students asked me, “How do you decide how you shoot something?” And I said it’s very simple. The camera is pointing device. The camera is a pointing device. You point it at what’s important and a lot of young filmmakers don’t do that. They point the camera every which way. You got to know what the story is about whether it’s a music video, a documentary or a narrative piece.

And in terms of technology, I mean, I’m doing, as I said before we got on the interview, I’m going off to Russia and Mongolia here in my living room is some DSLR’s and a sound package and a backpack. So, I’m going to do a whole documentary narrative feature out of that backpack with my laptop and hard drives and so forth. I just recently shot something on the iPhone and I’ll use the iPhone as a backup camera.

So, the technology is tangible. It keeps moving and changing. Probably what doesn’t change is your sense, again, that’s why I talked about narrative and storytelling a structure and the other thing that really is fundamental is do you know aesthetics and composition? Have you developed your aesthetic sense? That’s very, very important. A cinematographer should know or a director should know the history of art of all people of all times. Now, that’s sort of an impossible task but you should be familiar and conversant in art from all through the ages, not just films and photography of this past century but from all time and all culture. If you have that kind of knowledge, you’re going to enrich the kind of movies you make.

Michael: James, you touched a moment ago on emerging technologies and such. Give us your thoughts on collaborative venues like Spidvid.

James: Oh, I don’t know. I think, it’s sorts of anything you need to know is out there and I think it’s what’s valuable is if, unless someone is listening now, they want to see MC Hammer’s “Turn This Mutha Out” they can go on YouTube and see four or five versions of it, various levels of quality. I mean, I think the social media and just the internet in general is useful as an educational tool and as a way of opening our eyes and seeing how other cultures work.

And the project I’m doing in Asia involves film students in Russia and Mongolia and they’re making a little two-minute films and I’m asking them to limit their films to very, very short lengths and we’re constructing a mosaic of images of the work they create and I’m in turn of doing training my cameras on them and doing the documentary about the making of these films and their view of the world because the world is in a tough place right now. So, that’s what my film is about. So, the social media, I think is very, very important. I think all of this is still influx and still there’s a lot of newness to it and it’s basically interesting to see how it all settles out.

Michael: And if you would please tell us about your latest finished film?

James: Well, you need to see, “No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos” a featured documentary that I did. It was kind of a 20-year dream come true. I made it about Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs, the great Hungarian cinematographers who as film students filmed the Hungarian revolution and the subsequent crushing of their revolt by the Russians and with overwhelming force and their tanks and then they decided to smuggle that film out of Hungary to the west. No YouTube in those days so they had to physically take the film out.

And they were nearly killed and they left all their friends and country behind and they had to decide what they were going to do and they said, “Well, we’re without country, we’re broke, what should we do? We’re cinematographers. We should go to Hollywood.” And that’s what they did and they (tourist)-changed world cinema with films like “Easy Rider,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Paper Moon,” “Deliverance.” They shot 140 American movies and really changed the landscape in the forefront of the American new wave.

So, but what was also interesting was they had an amazing loyalty and friendship then they helped each other through their immigrant experience and helped each other climb out of the underbelly of Hollywood where they were working. Since the film has premiered at Cannes and it went on to about 35 film festivals worldwide and still showing today, and it won an Emmy Nomination for its run on PBS in the television version and Vilmos Zsigmond and I, together, and sometimes I by myself have given master cinematography classes all over the world; Argentina, Chicago, Greece, Poland, Romania, Moscow, Russian, Ulam Bator, Mongolia and the list goes on.

Michael: And where can see that film now?

James: Laszloandvilmos.com. You can Google “No Subtitles Necessary” and it will come up first, the film website and it’s also on Facebook at No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlou and Vilmos.

Michael: Fantastic and I know that people listening will want to learn more about James Chressanthis. Where do we do that?

James: Chressanthis.com is my website and you can link to all these other things.

Michael: Thank you so much, James. Safe travels.

Next up is independent filmmaker Mesh Flinders. Mesh, welcome to Spidcast.

Mesh: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Michael: So, let’s start out with a quick overview of Mesh Flinders.

Mesh: I was raised in a small community in Northern California and I was isolated from media almost entirely, didn’t have television. Obviously, we didn’t have the internet in those days and it made me very curious about the world outside of the community where I grew up. First films and television shows that I saw sort of seemed like messages from another planet because I didn’t know about high school or elementary or anything. I was pretty isolated and that’s how I became fascinated with films.

The first films that I saw that made a big impression on me were “Goodfellas,” well, “(Strada)” the “Indiana Jones” films, so kind of a wide variety of stuffs when I was like 13, 14. At first, I really wanted to be in them, I wanted to be an actor and actually started writing screenplays as a way of creating roles for myself in high school, roles that I wanted to play.

When I was 20, I moved to Los Angeles. I went to Occidental College and I quickly lost interest in acting and started writing screenplays and directing short films. After college, I worked as an assistant to several filmmakers. My first sort of break came when I was 25 and I was hired to write a horror script for a company called Blue Omega. I was 25 and all of the sudden, I was a professional screenwriter and I thought this is not hard. What’s everyone complaining about? But then, of course, reality set in and the movie didn’t get made and pretty quickly, I was not getting writing work. It was early 2006 and I was sort of struggling, didn’t really know what I was going to do next and that’s when I met Miles Beckett who have this idea of creating a fictional blogger on YouTube and sort of having in despair. I also met Greg Goodfried and his wife, Amanda Goodfried around this time and together we created “Lonelygirl15.”

I actually didn’t know very much about YouTube at that time. Miles was very passionate on online video and had been experimenting with web video. Before then, Greg was also very passionate about the space. What really excited me about the project was the chance to create this character that had to be totally real, that had to be completely believable. I thought that was a really interesting challenge and to try to kind of create a voice that was authentic enough that people would really think this is a real person.

Michael: Excellent. Now, take us back in time a bit and tell us about that very first thing you wrote that did go into production.

Mesh: The first thing that I was able to produce was until college and it was called, “In the Time of my Undoing” and I think you can actually find it online, if not I’ll put it up on my blog so people listening can just look at it. It was a film made of Occidental College and it was extremely ambitious. It was around that time that “American Beauty” came out and I was really inspired by that and so you’ll see a lot of similarities to “American Beauty”. I was a big fan of that and it was just a short film with actors that I cast from, I think it was a freshman and I cast actors in my class and just went and shot it and I was pretty pleased with it. It was on video. It was pretty early days of videos and not even like high-def, I don’t think, but it was a fun project and that was the first film I ever made.

Michael: Now, if you would, Mesh, take us back to that time of you being the co-creator of the smash web series “Lonelygirl15.”

Mesh: Well, at the beginning, it was like being on a roller coaster. I was surprised by how quickly the show garnered an audience and a really passionate following among its fans. After meeting Miles and Greg and writing, I think, just a few episodes, we very quickly set out to cast it and found Jessica and Yousef and shot these episodes and put them up, it was like June 16th 2006, I think, was the first episode.

What was the most fun for me in those early days was being part of this really tight-knit creative family. I mean, we did everything together. We were all working so hard on the shows. There was so much to do. We basically were working around the clock from dawn until late into the night everyday and I think every young filmmakers should have that experience at least one in their life of going all in on something and then seeing it worked seeing it really catch on.

After about three months of the show growing popularity, fans writing back and forth to “Lonelygirl” everyday, us posting videos probably three or four days a week there in the early stages so really a very fast-paced production schedule. After about three months, we’ve had a very difficult choice to make. So there was a lot of buzz in the press in those first three months of the show and we were faced with a very difficult decision to make which was we could have staged sort of behind the curtain but the pressure was mounting to come out and say that we were doing this and that it was not a real teenage girl and that was a surreal experience.

I thought everyone would hate us and some people did but for the most part, after we came out which was almost exactly three months after the show had premiered, it was September 14, 2006, I believe, for the most part, people were just excited that we pulled it off and wanted to know what the experience was like.

Michael: So, all that buzz and frenzy, what effect did it have on your career going forward?

Mesh: In terms of my career, to date, the “Lonelygirl” is by far the project that I’ve the most success with and so it was very difficult to leave. We work together on the show while I was there for almost two years and in that time, we produced, I believed something like 250 episodes together and so it was like a family and it was just a ton of work really satisfying work. I think the most satisfying thing for my career was that it was instant response to your work. You’re writing something, you’re directing something, you’re editing it all within about a week and then it goes up and the next thing you know people are responding to it. They’re talking about it and its part of this longer sort of bigger narrative and that was incredibly satisfying.

So, and then also just having all that press, I mean, I was able to leave and go do what I initially really wanted to do which was to make films and by the end of 2007, beginning of 2008, I was ready to do that. I was really burned out and I wanted to try a different medium. So, I left and I took a long break from web video and I threw myself into film.

I made a short film and I traveled the world with it to many film festivals and I tried for two and a half years to put together my first feature but it was right up to the economic collapse and in hindsight, I was probably asking for too large of a budget and about a year ago, I finally let go of that project. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but it needed to be done and it really let to where I’m at today.

Michael: Well, and then that, of course, begs the question, where are you today? What is going on?

Mesh: Well, I forced myself to take a really long, hard look, when I put this film down and decided I wasn’t going to try to make it. I’ve been on it for almost two and a half years at that point. I took a really long, hard look at where film is today and why it’s so difficult to get specific kinds of work produced. Projects that don’t rely on already existing fan bases like sequels or adaptations, these are the kinds of films that I love and it’s very hard for these films to get made. It’s hard for them to find audiences and I sort of came to this conclusion that in the 20th century film was arguably the most powerful medium in the world and it just isn’t anymore and that’s very hard for filmmakers to accept.

In the ‘90s, a lot of us came of age; a lot of my generation came of age almost what he talked about. It was the de facto water cooler conversation. Did you see this over the weekend? Did you see that? What did you think of it? And that (isn’t) the case anymore and film is having a hard time adjusting from it.

So, the more that I talked with my colleagues and friends, the more I realized that I really needed to throw myself back again to social media and the more that I talked with my friends, I realized that this was where I needed to be, that the web video world was where the innovation was taking place, that it was where new models were being experimented with. I think that social media gives you the power to find people with similar passions, interests and speak directly to them.

You don’t have to have these big marketing dollars. Going back to “Lonelygirl”, we never had a billboard on Santa Monica Boulevard but we managed to get our work out to millions of people. So, about a year ago, I started consulting on web series. At first, it was honestly, I was more of a student than a teacher because I was so behind. I had so much to learn. I’ve been focusing exclusively on film for almost two years. I owe a lot of friends like Kathleen Grace and Wilson Cleveland who were colleagues and real influencers in the space and it really helped me to see what’s possible and helped me find my passion for that space again, the web video space.

And so in the last year, I’ve worked on a variety of web video projects for clients everywhere from American Express and (AMC) to About.com. I’ve worked for agencies like DigiTalks and like (artists) and I’m directing my first feature next year but the thing that’s really exciting about my feature that it’s actually grown out of social media not the other way around. I think that the mistake I made with the feature that I was trying to put together about a year and a half ago was that I created my dream project and then looked around and said, okay, how is this on social?”

In this I’m taking the opposite approach. I’m starting with social media and sort of filmed it up from that. In addition to that, I recently started a blog that covers filmmakers. We’re using social media in like really interesting ways. This is called social-film.com and there’s like an interview every week with a new filmmaker and new content everyday.

Michael: Now, Mesh, a moment ago you mentioned that you never had a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. How does someone producing content for the web get noticed?

Mesh: First and foremost, content creators have to be aware that as more and more content moves online, they’re competing for eyeballs with professionally produced show and so you have less money. You have less resources but audiences are not going to be distinguishing between your work and “30 Rock” because they’re going to be watching them on the same box.

What we do have, what levels of playing field is our social networks and I think that content creators like Felicia Day, Freddie Wong, iJustine, I think they’ve done a brilliant job of this on YouTube, of creating a large, engaged social following and then of course, on the independent film side, you got people like Kevin Smith, Joe Lamberg, independent names that certainly aren’t as well known as Felicia and Freddie but they have a dedicated social following, a large social network and they leveraged that to give themselves freedom to produce what they want because they know that they don’t need to go through Universal or Paramount to find their audience, that their audience is right there online literally at their fingertips.

And I think that this is potentially incredibly liberating for filmmakers. It’s not—there isn’t one model, there isn’t a one-side fits all model there right now and fill this highly experimental space and of all six of those people that I just mentioned, they’re all actually doing very different things with it but I think what they’ve done has been very effective so I think they’re good examples. There’s a lot of experimenting going on and new models sort of being rolled out everyday.

Michael: Wonderful advice. Young and new filmmakers have a lot so they can learn from you. Where do we find out more about Mesh Flinders?

Mesh: You can go to my website, social-film.com.

Michael: That’s it for this show. Thanks for listening to Spidcast. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at spidvid.com or on our Spidvid blog and you can join our collaborative filmmaking community at spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.

Jeremy Campbell interview, podcast, resources Chicago, collaboration, directing, documentaries, documentary, feature film, filmmakers, filmmaking, films, Ghost Whisperer, indie film, Jessica Rose, Lonelygirl15, new media, podcast, podcast show, producer, short film, show, spidcast, TV, TV series, TV show, video creator, web series, web show

We are back with our best Spidcast episode to date this month (listen in below and subscribe on iTunes) with a focus on storytelling and passion. September’s Spidcast features the incredible John Gray, who’s the creator of TV show “Ghost Whisperer” along with the amazingly talented Melissa Jo Peltier who’s the co-executive producer of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

Our Guests

John Gray is a writer, director, producer, who is the creator and one of the executive producers of the CBS television series Ghost Whisperer starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. He has also written and directed many high profile movies for television, such as the remake of the 1976 film Helter Skelter, Martin and Lewis, The Hunley, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, among others. He has written and directed feature films as well.

Melissa Jo Peltier is a two-time Emmy Award-winning writer, director and producer. Melissa wrote and directed the primetime documentary special, Scared Silent: Exposing and Ending Child Abuse, hosted by Oprah Winfrey. She’s also a Peabody & Humanitas Film & TV Writer/Producer/Director & NYT Best Selling Book Author. And she’s Producer of the indie film White Irish Drinkers.

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show with a product or service you sell that’s filmmaking related, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Melissa and John talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from its content!

Full Show Transcript Below

INTRO

Michael: Hi. I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the future of collaborative video production brought to you by Spidvid.com. On this episode, we’re visiting with John Gray and Melissa Jo Peltier. You’ve recently seen John’s work as a producer on the TV series “Ghost Whisperer” and in TV movies such as “Helter Skelter”, “Martin and Lewis” and a lot more. Melissa’s credits include executive producer with the “Dog Whisperer” and co-executive producer on “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. They collaborated together on John’s semi-autobiographical film “ White Irish Drinkers”. I’m certain you’ll enjoy their similar but quite unique stories as well.

First up is John Gray. John, welcome to Spidcast.

John: Well, thanks for having me.

Michael: Tell us a bit about your story?

John: Well, I was very, very luck to know, at a young age, that this is what I want to do. I used to think I wanted to be an actor when I was very young kid because I thought the actors kind of did a role and then it started to dawn on me as I made films with my uncle’s Super 8 camera and got more involved with what it takes to actually put a little movie together and tell a story, I realized that there was a sort of presence, another brain that was behind the camera that pretty holds the stuff together. And I gave up the idea of being an actor which I think is good news for the world and really got committed to writing and directing and they both came to be one thing to me.

I was very young when I made that commitment. I was also very lucky because I was so young and because I grew in Brooklyn and knew no one in the film business or the television business; no connections whatsoever. I had no idea how hard it was. I really did have no idea how impossible trying to break it to the business. I just kind of went on my way just thinking this is was what I’m going to do with my life and I’m going to make it happen.

It took about 12 years, I guess, before I can actually start making a living at it but I was just really persistent and always try to make movies on my own, always trying to do a lot by yourself and writing all the time and it opened to me that I got an opportunity to direct some educational films in Washington, DC that were dramatic films but they were for classroom use and it was great experience.

To make the very long story short, there’s the script I had written that got me signed by an agent in LA, and that’s what started my career, in earnest, I was then able to really make a living just writing and openly to directing and I got started in television. My first film was actually an independent feature and I started doing TV movies which I really enjoy because I was able to do really, I felt, really interesting stories. It really had some great material to work with. That’s sort of the really telescoped “Reader’s Digest” version of how I got started.

Michael: John, you touched on something just a moment ago. If you had known just how difficult this business can be, would you have taken the same career path?

John: You know, that’s a great question. That’s a really great question and that’s something that I often think about. One of the reasons why I think I’m so lucky that I didn’t know. Because maybe if someone sat me down and say, okay, you’re 18, (you’re going to reach to) 30, by the time you can actually make a living doing this.

I don’t know maybe don’t want to do that. I don’t know. I’d like to think that I was committed enough to not care, but in my mind I was going to be a (success) tomorrow. I’m going to get this next thing done tomorrow. That’s how the attitude had a little…so I never sat down and went, “Wow, this is taking a really long time. Should I give up?” The more obstacles I found, the more determined I got to do it. It’s really important here you’ll be desperate too because you’ll realize I didn’t think I was suited for anything else in life really than to be a filmmaker. That was really what I felt I was here to do. That’s a good question. I’m glad I didn’t have to answer it for real.

Michael: Tell us a bit about how creating content for television differs from content for the film world?

John: I think the big difference is that if you’re for TV, of course, for broadcast television, you’re trying to get that big here wide audience but at the same time, at least in terms of movies, not so much series but in terms of movies, the subject matter you can tackle is so much more interesting that what you can usually do in the feature world. I made movies about the first Civil War submarine. I did a movie about the partnership between Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. I did a movie about Lincoln assassination.

I was able to indulge a lot of my own personal fascinations by making movies about them for television which, in the feature world, you’re probably never going to get those movies made unless you have some mega star casting. That’s why always love working in television movies particularly. I did a lot of movies for TNT and for CBS. At that time, there are not very many made now, but at that time, it was easier to get to do something little bit different and really kind of interesting and each movie I did was vastly different from the other.

In the feature world, I found it difficult to try to anticipate what’s commercial and what isn’t. As a writer, I’m more attracted to sort of character-driven material. That’s very difficult to do in the feature world. I knew I’ve made a few features and I hope to make more features but mostly I’ve tried to stay in that indie sort of sensibility where you just sort of make new what they’ll consider small movies but to me are very big movies about relationships and people and humanity and how we all deal with each other.

Michael: Hey, John, I’d like to hear about your most recent film, “White Irish Drinkers”. Take us through that.

John: It was a script I had written about 10 years ago that I really, really wanted to make. One of the character piece, it was a very goody kind of violent look at growing up in Brooklyn. I could never get money raised to actually get it financed as a feature. For those 10 years, I just kept revisiting it and trying to figure how I can get this made.

A lot of people read the script in the business and liked the script and in fact, it got me a lot of work like writing work, but no one really wanted to make it. It even just felt like, you know, the character that’s small…so what happened during those 10 years then, really three things, I guess, one is that the technology changed so drastically in those 10 years. And then also, I was lucky enough to get a successful television series on CBS that lasted for five years so I had some more financial resources that I’ve never had before. The only thing was that I married Melissa, who’s a really brilliant producer and she kind of convinced me to not give up on this movie and so we have sort of teamed up. I realized that I could probably spend about $600,000 and make this movie digitally and call in on favors in people I’ve worked with for the past 20 years and that’s really how that came about.

We shot it for $600,000. We shot it in 17 days, all in Brooklyn. We have a wonderful cast Stephen Lang, Karen Allen and Peter Riegert and then some really exciting young actors Nick Thurston, Geoff Wigdor, Leslie Murphy, people I think that are going to be huge in the years to come. It is a wonderful experience. It was great making a movie just as what we wanted to make it. There was no studio. There was no network. It was just us.

The movie was released. We got a small release. We were out at about 25 cities. But that in itself is a miracle these days because the climate that the independent films in. It’s on DVD now and Blu-Ray and Netflix and iTunes and it’ll be on Showtime in the fall. It was a great experience. We got the movie out there and it was something I’m dying to do again.

Michael: And we do hope that you get that opportunity again. As you said, “Ghost Whisperer” allowed you the financing to make that film. Take us a little bit of the story of “Ghost Whisperer”?

John: It was really interesting because I’ve never done a series before. In fact, I’ve never even pursued a series. This opportunity just came to me because the executive I work with in CBS had wanted me to meet this woman who the “Ghost Whisperer” was based on. When I met this woman, I realized there was a way to maybe really do a series that for me to be really interesting in this was (meld) horror with emotional character-driven stories. That’s kind of how I pitched it and probably most people who get involved in the series is that they never believe they’re going to go and I wrote the pilot and I figured that that’ll be the end of that and then they said well, let’s shoot it. I thought, well, okay, I’ve never directed a pilot. I’ll see what that’s like and I’m sure that’s as far as it’ll go.

We made the pilot and they said, okay, why don’t you do 13 of them? I was like, “Oh no, I have to do this 13 more times. I don’t know if I could do it”. And they openly gave us a full season pick up and openly we went to do five years. I loved a lot of it. I wrote many, many episodes, directed many, many episodes and that was really fun because it was so fast. You get an idea for a show and then two months later, it’s on the air.

In that respect, it was very (heady) and we loved the cast and the crew’s really like family to me. That part was really great. The part that I enjoyed less was the kind of a show on her aspect of it where the first two seasons where it was really kind of dealing with more administrative things and creative things. Of course, writing, I guess were the biggest creative job but it was dealing with the network and dealing with the studio and dealing with agents and dealing with physical production and things that a producer does and things that I’d never aspire to do. I just consider myself a writer-director and that’s really what I wanted to do.

In that third season, we brought in P.K. Simmons to be the real show runner so that I could sort of step back and pursue other things but also keep writing and directing for this series and that was a wonderful change for me and that’s what openly allowed to write some of the pilots and also to get “White Irish Drinkers” off the ground.

Michael: So you have gotten one of your dream projects off the ground, you’ve had it made, you’ve had it distributed, but John, if you were a 20-something, just trying to break in to the business, what is the career path you would take? What advice do you have for the young filmmaker looking to get in?

John: I think the really advantage that young people starting out today have is again, the digital possibilities of cinema. When I wanted to make a movie, I had to do what I do it either in Super 8 or the Kid or 16mm. It was a huge expense but I mean, now, you see people making movies on their iPhones. To me, that’s really exciting and that’s what I really advice and I always advice everyone to do is get out there and make movies. Learn. Learn how to tell stories to the camera. Learn to how to work with actors.

That’s what I always emphasize because I feel like what’s happening with young filmmakers today is that they’re so involved with the technical aspects of it which are really fascinating and limitless. But I think what we’re losing a little bit is people being interested in storytelling and in creating performances with an actor and collaborating with an actor.

A lot of times, you’ll see a director on the set these days and they just hide behind the monitor and they never talk to the actors. That’s an art, I think, we’re losing and so that’s something I always encourage young filmmakers to learn. I encourage them to read not just scripts but read the great novels, learn storytelling in the best possible way, see every movie you possible can, and take acting classes. Learn what it’s like to be an actor. It doesn’t matter if you suck as an actor, but you have to learn what actors go through. And be a friend to the actor. Don’t be afraid of actors. To me, those are the best things to do. It’s a scary atmosphere today as it always do because the business is contracted and if you’re movie’s been made and there isn’t any longer that incredible reservoir of television movies where you can go cut your teeth and learn on. Now, I think, it’s just be who’s any young filmmaker to go out there and make your movie, make it as great as you can, learn from it, make another one, get it out in the internet, get it on YouTube, get it seen and just keep working that way. Just never rest. Just keep going.

Michael: Excellent advice, John for the young filmmakers. Now, as you said, you’ve seen in your lifetime the whole process of filmmaking change completely. Let’s go forward maybe to the year 2021, ten years from now. What do you see? What will filmmaking look like then?

John: It’s hard to guess because who knows what’s the next development is around the corner, but based on what I see now, I think everyone will be experiencing movies to their computers or certainly through the (ether). I think the idea of the DVDs, unfortunately, the hardware’s probably going to go away. I think that movies are going to get easier and easier to make, easier and easier to see, and I don’t know if that’s going to devalue them or if it’s going to make them more valuable. I’m not really sure how those all are going to shape out.

I think that we’ll probably look at it in the future. I believe that probably the only big studio movies that will get made in the future are big ten pole “Planet of the Apes” and gigantic event movies. I think the smaller movies like “The Help” and movies like that, I think we’re probably going to see more on demand or in delivery systems other that theaters because I just believe that it’s not going to be cost-effective in the future to make those movies and market them in theaters. I hope I’m wrong. I really do, but that’s kind of where I see it going.

Michael: Now, there you make an excellent point. The accessibility, the ease of use, the quality of equipment, but it still comes down to the writing. Am I right on that?

John: I think it does. I think, at the end of the day, the things that last, the thing that live on to people’s memories “The Godfathers”, the classic films, the Tennessee Williams’ movies…it’s all about the characters, the writing and the storytelling. The other part that’s great too, I’m the first guy on line to see the big effects movies. They just don’t go away. They will live on in the history of film.

Look at the movie, “Rocky”, couldn’t be a simpler film, done for I don’t know how much money, million bucks, maybe back in those days. People still reference “Rocky”, they still talk about it. They still it was just that movie about people. I think those are the kind of movies that live on and I would hope that there are more people that wanted to make those kinds of movies even though in the future, they may not be as widely distributed as the bigger effects movies but we need those movies and I think they’re starting to be eradicated a little bit by these big effects extravaganzas, which I think, I’m not down on those, I love them. I’m always there for them. But I just don’t want them to have to be all there is.

Michael: I am in agreement with you there, John. Tell us what is next from John Gray?

John: Well, right now, I’m in New Orleans. I’m directing a movie for TNT called “Hide”, which is a terrific thriller, which I did not write, but Janet Brownell wrote it based on a novel. Melissa and I are producing partners have another low-budgeted thriller called “Slander”, which is about hate speech that we’re trying to raise money for right now. We’re trying to do some casting attached. That’s another movie we’re hoping to make independently as a feature. I’ve written another TNT movie and basically just trying to stay busy and keep it all going.

Michael: Thank you, John Gray for joining us today on Spidcast.

Next up is writer/producer/director Melissa Jo Peltier. Melissa continues to produce the “Dog Whisperer” and co-executive produced “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding”. And as you’ve just heard, she is a frequent professional collaborator with our previous guest and is also married to John Gray. Welcome, Melissa.

Melissa: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Michael: Tell us about your story and how did you break into filmmaking?

Melissa: Well, my beginning in filmmaking was due to my father who is 90 and literally just retired from teaching. He was teaching at Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement and he was at the time an audiovisual librarian but (by first-rated) filmmaker and he actually taught me how to edit films when I was 9. I made my first movie when I was 8 years old. I was doing plays when I was 4. He has basically taught me film theory before I knew what film theory was. I was bitten by the bug that young and I was just…the national storyteller.

The way I got into the business really was I went to Pomona College in Claremont, California, which I was a really wonderful school and I was an English major there but I was also in theater there. While I was a senior there, I got an internship on a documentary and that sort of sent me down the documentary path even though my goal has been to do drama. I got very addicted to doing documentaries. I got sort of caught up in the excitement of being a fly on the wall and being in people’s real lives and doing what I felt was making a difference because that’s how that social justice side of me show. That was my beginning and because our business was so varied and there’s no direct 1-2-3 path, you can take to do anything. I definitely geared from that over the years but that was definitely my start.

Michael: So you say that you learned to edit from your dad, you mean you we’re actually cutting film stock or digitally?

Melissa: No, it was a long time ago, there was no digital then. I was editing Super 8 film on little, teenie movie. I was with glue, cutting it with glue. I had small fingers so it actually made it even easier because I was only 9.

Michael: What a great experience.

Melissa: It really was. I think one of the things that I learned early off from my dad, but also my mother was a third generation English major and there was a lot of reading in my family. A lot of reading a lot of classic films and theater and I think just the building blocks of storytelling. One of the things that excited me about documentaries was I’ve never thought about how the building blocks of fictional storytelling can be used in telling real life stories. That was something that just thrilled me and took me off in that direction. And those are things I learned (mine) too.

Michael: Well, fiction or non-fiction, you’re still telling a story so it always comes back to the writing.

Melissa: I think so. One of the questions I know you wanted to ask me was advice to young filmmakers and want to be filmmakers and my main advice, I was thinking about this today is to learn storytelling and to learn it from the (great) tragedies, the real ones today to the most avant-garde methods of storytelling today and try to see the patterns because no matter what you can have the most original work in the world, you can be the most imaginative person in the world, but you still work hard about tradition and you will fall somewhere along that line even if you’re pioneering a whole new genre.

I just recently read an article about how there’s a lot of people who wanted to become writers who don’t think they should have to read and they don’t think they should have to read classic and there are…that way, but the truth is, you’re reinventing the wheel if doing that. Also I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to experience the pleasure of reading and singing classic songs. To me, that’s one of those natural highs of life.

I think learning the basics of storytelling is one of the most important things that any storyteller can do whether even if you’re a cameraman and you’re just going to shoot, you still want to learn storytelling, story (beads), how stories unfold and how it’s been done and the many, many different ways it’s been done over the years. Whether it’s a mini-story or reality TV or it’s an opera, it’s the same basic principles of storytelling and everything flows from there. I can’t recommend enough to young filmmakers to really study great things in every possible film all the way back to the great plays.

Michael: Excellent advice, Melissa. Now, you recently were involved in a project with a fantastic story, “White Irish Drinkers”, tell us about that.

Melissa: “White Irish Drinkers” came about because my husband, John Gray had been doing the “Ghost Whisperer” series, which he created for a number of years and that went off the air and he had written a couple of pilots for network TV and he’s really an incredible writer and the pilots stopped to that point where they were in the running…it was between his pilot and another pilot and which then that happened twice in a row and it’s a good way to make a living. It definitely pays the bills but he was getting frustrated about not being able to tell his own stories.

So he pulled this script out of the drawer and he said, this is what I wanted to make for years. Is it any good? I don’t know and I read it and I just said “I think that this the most honest thing you’ve written and I think we should make it”. We actually decided to throw our money, well it was really John’s money he made from “Ghost Whisperer” and make it and call in whatever favors we could. Nobody works free on it but everybody worked pretty damn close.

To really get out there and make and for me, it was my first experience. I’ve actually been involved in independent films before but it was my first experience really getting down and dirty on the ground making an independent film. And I had two other producers with me, Paul Bernard and James Scura. Jim was more of the guy watching the budget. He was not on the set. Paul was actually doing the first assistant director. John was there also.

But really, between the two of us, we were putting out all the fires our film that’s smaller than a lot of fires but it taught me first of all, that all my TV experience, learning how to do down and dirty and fast, actually paid off because we were able to a feature film in 17 days and do it well.

I think the other think that it taught me in terms of filmmaking was it taught me about the honesty of a filmmaker’s voice and if you can stay connected to that how it really comes out in every aspect of the film, I believe John’s so connected to this film that it was infectious for the actors, the production and to all of us. Everyone up to the last possible minute was amazing, actors like Karen Allen and Stephen Lang were going out on their own with no money, nothing, just going out promoting this film because they believe in it so much.

I think that’s something that I kept with me about the strength of your commitment to a project can really be infectious. There’s part of me I do have to just do it for a living and film it in but when you’re passionate about something and you get the right people behind you, you can really make miracles.

Michael: Passion certainly is what draws many people into this business. What would you tell a young, passionate filmmaker about how to go about breaking into the biz?

Melissa: It’s such a different time when I started in the business because the technology has changed so much. I think that modern technology right now is very important. I think learning the building block is very important. I think being flexible is key. I think in owning what we want is important but there’s people out there who don’t know exactly what they’re going to do in this business are still going to find that by working. You don’t necessarily have to get an MSA to do that. You can get out there and get on the set and work and be a PA and work your way from bottom and see what you really connect with. That’s something that was true when I was starting and that’s true now.

You have to find something that will make you stand out if that’s the only the way you want to get in. knowing your craft better and once again, some of the basic rules of just being a good employee really apply in the business. There are a lot of people and I’ve had this experience because I have a company for 15 years and there’s a lot of people who come out of film school who are very bright and kind of big fish in a small pond and they’ll start out as somebody’s assistant and then they’ll three months later will say, when do I get a chance to produce. It doesn’t work like that. You still have to earn your way just like in any field.

It’s important to really work your butt off. Work hard. Have a great work ethic. Have a great attitude. Don’t expect your dreams to come true tomorrow. Keep dreaming them and keep working toward them but work hard and people will notice your hard work and your attitude, there’s no question. Still, even in our business, it’s not that common, by starting out. People will notice that.

Michael: So, what is next for Melissa Jo Peltier?

Melissa: Right now, I’m looking at a couple of writing projects my book projects, but I’m also working on a film with my husband, another independent film that we’re trying to raise money for. It’s being read by film actors right now and actor’s reps rather. We can’t name them right now but we’re hoping that we’re going to get a pretty important name to play this role. The name of the movie is “Slander” and it’s a small movie but it’s a really, really powerful story that John’s written.

We want to put our whole team together that we have on “White Irish Drinkers” again because that was such great experience for everybody who worked on it and this time, we had a little more money and maybe a few more days to shoot. Everyone who worked on the film was like us we just love the process of filmmaking. So it doesn’t matter that we don’t have (players) and all the perks that you might have on a network television show because actually, it’s more fun to have less money. Once you’ve actually worked with money, it’s sometimes a lot more fun to just do it the way that you did it when you were 9 years old.

Michael: Well, certainly things have changed since then including what we’re doing right now. Share with us your thought about Spidvid and what impact it has on future filmmakers.

Melissa: I think what’s exciting about it is that…and I like this about Twitter which was how I found Spidvid and I liked the fact that you can communicate with people who share your goals and also some of your values and your tastes who might be very far away from you and I think that that’s an important aspect of the organization that you have which is that people can reach out to others and they have a vision that nobody near them connect with their vision. They may just not connect, but somebody 2,000 miles away might absolutely connect and might be the piece of the puzzle that they need to get it finished. I think that’s a really nice thing about today’s technology.

We were isolated starting out when I began and I remember writing letters literally…typewriter and typing letters to producers trying to get meetings with them and it’s much more comfortable to reach out in other ways.

Networking is easier and I think that if you use it right and in a discerning manner, I think that’s a real advantage to the technology.

Michael: Speaking of networking, how can folks get in touch with you and learn more about you?

Melissa: Well, I’m on IMDb, so if they want to see everything that I’ve done, pretty much everything since IMDb started. I’m on Twitter @MelissaJPeltier. Whiteirishdrinkersthemovie.com is the website of our movie. My television production company is called MPH Entertainment. MPHent.com is out website. We’ve done a lot of non-fiction TV including the show “The Dog Whisperer” which we still do. That’s probably the best way.

Michael: Melissa Jo Peltier, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us today.

Melissa: Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate talking to you.

Michael: That’s it. Thanks for listening to the Spidcast Show. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at Spidvid.com or on our Spidvid Blog. And you can join our collaborative filmmaking community at Spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.

Jeremy Campbell community, interview, podcast actors, conversation, Dog Whisperer, feature films, film conversation, film discussion, filmmakers, filmmaking, films, Ghost Whisperer, John Gray, Melissa Jo Peltier, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, new media, podcast, podcast show, producers, screenwriter, screenwriting, show, spidcast, spidvid, TV, TV show, video creators, writers

We are back with another exciting Spidcast episode this month (listen in below and subscribe on iTunes) with a focus on collaborative filmmaking. For July’s show we feature two filmmakers and actors who have both created original web series. These two individuals are doing interesting things within the new media space, and it was our pleasure to have Gavin Leighton and Mike Lawson (both featured below) on the show.

Enjoy July’s Spidcast show, click play below to listen in

Our Guests

Gavin Leighton is a co-creator behind the web series Hitting the Fan, he also works in the creative and business aspects of acting, writing, music, producing, and collaborating.

Mike Lawson is also a co-creator of the Hitting the Fan web series, is behind Idiotscreen, and has appeared in a few feature films including “Friends With Money, Fast Track, and American Pie Presents Band Camp.

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show with a product or service you sell that’s filmmaking related, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Gavin or Mike talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from its content!

Full Show Transcript Below

INTRO

Michael: Hi. I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the future of collaborative video production brought to you by Spidvid.com. On this episode, we’re visiting with Gavin Leighton and Mike Lawson, both actors living in Los Angeles and both now blazing their trail to non-traditional video production and delivery and worldwide collaboration as well. They have, in fact, worked together but also separately both with great success. I’m certain you’ll enjoy their similar but quite unique stories as well.

First up is Gavin Leighton. Gavin, welcome to Spidcast.

Gavin Leighton: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here and thank you for the opportunity to get to speak with others that are like-minded who want to do what they want to do.

Michael: Gavin, tell us a little bit about your story?

Gavin Leighton: I live in Los Angeles. I moved to Los Angeles about 7-and-a-half years ago. I moved out here specifically for acting, music and writing. During that time, I’ve worked some as an actor and booked things which have been exciting, but I’ve also have, most excitingly, been able to work on projects where I helped to create or I was just a part of the process with a group of friends and getting to wear lots of little hats on various projects over the course of time that I’ve been out here, which for me, have been really fulfilling. It’s a different experience that just booking something and moving on. You actually create something which is pretty exciting.

Michael: Well, it sounds great. Now, tell us a little bit about how you broke into the business.

Gavin Leighton: I’ve had the honor and the good fortune to work with some really great people out here in Los Angeles. I’ll name a few as I go along, but just name some, I’ve had the good fortune of working with Peter Atencio, working with Jen Ci, and Elisia Skye and these are all people that have made some really incredible video content and had gotten some attention with their work for numerous reasons specially with the quality of their work.

One of the things kind of most notably for me was I produced something called “Barackula: The Musical.” We did this several years ago, long time towards the end of ’07, long before it was cool to jump on the Barack Obama bandwagon and making videos about him. We created this 12 minutes—I call it a short political-horror-rock musical and basically Barack Obama fighting vampires at Harvard Law School. It’s totally fun and two musical numbers and dancing which I composed for, I helped produce, I also starred in.

That was kind of my first experience with collaborating with others in creating video content and it got a lot of attention. We were featured on CNN, Fox, MSNBC. We were discussed with VH1 and MTV. We’re in newspapers. It was really cool. We got a lot of great publicity and it was all kind of unintentional. We were not aiming to get that kind of publicity. It just kind of fell into our laps because we released it at the beginning of February of 2008 like around Super Tuesday, just for fun, and it just kind of took off from there for awhile which was cool.

Michael: Now, I’m going to guess on that production that you took advantage of collaboration?

Gavin Leighton: Absolutely. So, what had happened was, some friends of mine, Mike Lawson who I work with quite a bit, Brooke Shirey, Justin Sherman—they were just making a short film and they wanted to know if I wanted to produce it along with them. It was just really a story about Barack Obama being at Harvard and that’s all it kind of was. I like the idea of collaborating because you get to spend time with friends in a really special way, in a way that you get to do something that you love to do. You get to create something. But then somebody came up with the idea of making it a musical and that really got my attention. I was really on board from that point on and then they decided to make it a vampire musical.

We just had a great time. The four of us working very closely together and we created a great script and we made some really great music and the script and music and the idea that inspired and rolled others to kind of be a part of the project.

We kind of enlisted a guy named Mark Mannschreck who had a RED Camera and it was the first time that any of us got to use or even see a RED Camera in the beginning of ’08 when it was really just kind of coming out. This guy Mark allowed us to just use his camera. He was just being a part of it just because he enjoyed the idea of it and so he got himself inspired to be a part of it. That’s kind of how it happened.

And something very, very small an idea that we had that we didn’t have these big, high hopes for, it was just something we just wanted to do for fun, turned out to be something much bigger than any of us expected and I think that got me really into the idea of collaborating with others.

Michael: Well, you’ve certainly whetted my appetite. Where can we see that?

Gavin Leighton: Thank you. It’s Barackula.com. People tend to misspell it but it’s just like the President’s last name. It’s B-A-R-A-C-K-U-L-A. Like Dracula but Barackula. Just Baracula.com and you’ll be able to see how press and all that but you can also watch the full 12-minute video in HD on there. Again, everything there, just so the listeners can know, it looks really good, but we shot it I think for about 2,000 or less and a lot of it was just from favors that we got from friends. We got food donated to us. It was really just one of those things where we know the right people.

We’re in that community of making video content and by knowing others and by being a part of that group, they come in and they help you with the thinking that at some point, you’ll return the favor and it’s kind of like a family that produces these projects and we have. Barackula.com. I hope people go and check it out.

Michael: I’m sure they will as will I. Now, you mentioned limited budgets, tell us how to get the most from a limited or even sometimes a no-budget production?

Gavin Leighton: Sure. I’ll speak to it with some experience. Most recently, we’ve produced a new comedy series called “Hitting the Fan”. It’s very, very small budget. The first place to start when you want to create something like a web series or just a show or just a single thing, the first place to go is have that clear idea of what you want.

Before you start calling friends over, before you maybe even start writing, you really want to think what is it that I want to create? How can I do this cheaply? Who do I know that can help me on this? People sometimes think that when you hear the word resources, you think in financial terms, but in this kind of world, in this kind of arena, with making video content, your resources are the people around you. If you associate with people that make video content or know people that do, they have a great wealth of resources for you that you may not even be able to imagine. At least start sending out emails or making phone calls and starting from there to see what people can do.

We had asked a friend of ours that the sound—our friend, Josh Bissett, he joined us on “Hitting the Fan”. It was all just a favor to us. We didn’t pay him pretty much at all. He should’ve take more, but he did it simply because he’s a part of that group and at some point, I assumed that will help him with something as well. That’s one way to begin.

Michael: Okay so you got the project done and now you’ve posted it. How do you get people to find it?

Gavin Leighton: Okay, once you’re past the production aspects and you’re now on post-production, maybe editing or even past that, what do you do now? Once again, I would say, look around at the world around you. Follow the right people on things like Twitter. That’s certainly an amazing resource because if you follow the right people on Twitter, you can learn information that you really wouldn’t get unless you spend hours digging up online. These people are doing it for you already and you can do it and kind of live streaming in action.

Other ways to figure out how do you benefit others? Where does your content belong? For instance, you made a series, would a company like Netflix or Xbox, would they have any interest in having some original content? Is the quality of the audio and the video quality up to par with what they want if you’ve done some good planning on your end in pre-production and production? Maybe you have some really phenomenal quality of writing, of performances, video/audio. If you have all the four magic things all in place together, there’s a lot of places where you can go. Right now what we’re doing is we’ve shot two episodes of our show and we’re kind of on that same place, we’re reaching out to places where it might belong.

Another example, maybe check in with a website or a product or something—I’m just going to Target, I don’t know, for some reason, it comes to me. You contact Target and maybe for some reason, (pay) their own show on their website. Who knows the reason why, but they just might. Maybe your show has that original content that they’re looking for which they can also advertise on as well. All of the sudden, out of nowhere, you have some great financing that you never would’ve expected. It’s simply, once again, a matter of collaboration, but this time with a company.

Michael: Well, you’ve given us some wonderful insights into the whole process from idea to completion. What do you foresee now in the next say, five to ten years?

Gavin Leighton: It’s funny when that has had a hand in making video content. Now, people know that it’s an exciting time to be doing this because look at where things were five years ago? You never would’ve imagined the kind of advantage that we see with video equipment and all your equipment that we have access to now. Not only do we have access too, but also really cheaply. There was never anything like HD cameras. It would’ve cost a fortune five years ago, but right now, and there’s no excuse for anybody to not be able to make something that is worthy for a big screen, with lots of people watching it or worthy of having 10, 20,000, 30,000 people following it.

It’s just a really phenomenal, exciting time to be doing this because cameras are going to be getting better. Sound equipments are going to be getting better. They’re also going to get more affordable. Even this month, I think, final cutbacks with Apple (has got) software coming out, I believe, this month if I got that right. Even advances in just software can really take people’s production to a new level that they would not have imagined five years ago.

The exciting thing is in five years from now, it’s just going to be the same thing, but it’s going to be exponential. I see in five years now, everyone having cameras like the RED camera or better. Being able to make something that looks beautiful for under a thousand dollars or whatever it might be.

Once you have these resources available to you, the first place to begin is a good, proper planning. What do you want to write? What kind of script do you want? Get out there and speak. I suggest people to give their scripts to others and let them do a table read because technology can get better and you can have access to really phenomenal equipment that’ll make you look good. But you want to make sure that the content is good too. It’s all equal in form.

Michael: Well, there you make an excellent point. The accessibility, the ease of use, the quality of the equipment, but it still comes down to the writing.

Gavin Leighton: Absolutely. Every single time. Again, another example with our show right now, “Hitting the Fan”, we did a table read with a group of friends that we were not asking to help us. We just wanted to hear how it sounded out loud with me and Mike Lawson and Ron Fallica, kind of production he might have out here. And we liked having this table read but once people read the script, there are actors with great credit, people with great talent, people that their time is valuable. They said to us, how do we be a part of this? We just want to be a part of it. We’ll help any way that we can. This is a great script. It’s very funny. It starts with that. From that point forward, because we had a good product before the cameras are turned on, more resources became available to us and also for free. We got free location and things like that in nature.

Michael: Gavin, tell us a bit about how Spidvid has impacted collaboration and production for you?

Gavin Leighton: Absolutely, when I first learned about Spidvid, not too long ago, is impressed with the idea. It’s essentially just a place where people like myself and others, the same who’ll be listening to this, can really connect with others and it’s another great resource out there. That’s what it’s all about. You go online and you put out a video idea and before you know it, the world brings you something that you would not have expected yesterday. And now, all of the sudden, your project is jumping to new great heights which built the excitement and built the, I think, the production value as well.

I think it’s a great form for people to connect and learn things about themselves as video creators and also learn things about others and to produce even better content in the future. Jeremy’s is also just a pretty nice guy.

Michael: He is that indeed. If you could just wrap this up with a few easily digestible nuggets, what would they be?

Gavin Leighton: The four things that I think that are most valuable is that they’re your four pillars for a great project and that is great writing, great performances, great video, and great audio. If one of those pillars is missing, I feel like the foundation of what you’re trying to accomplish will fall apart if you’re trying to go for something grand. If you’re just wanting to make something just to make it and show friends on Facebook or YouTube or whatever, then you have a lot more freedom but if you’re trying to take it to a next level, you are getting financing or want to place it on a network, you really need to take under consideration, I think, these four very essential aspects to video creating.

Michael: Excellent. Now, Gavin, one more time, where do we see your stuff?

Gavin Leighton: You can see my new show, which I’m the star, the writer and composer of this as well, Hittingthefanshow.com. You can watch Barackula at Barackula.com and I can be emailed from any of these sites. The best one out is Gavin@hittingthefanshow.com.

Michael: Thank you so much, Gavin Leighton for joining us today.

Gavin Leighton: Michael, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

BREAK

Michael: Next up is an actor, writer and editor of Idiotscreen.com. He’s Mike Lawson. So tell us a bit about yourself and what’s your story?

Mike Lawson: Well, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in a small town right outside of Dayton. I always knew that I wanted to be a part of films. I started making films when I was around four or five and my parents played different roles and I would direct them and write them and make remakes of movies that I really like, like “Red Dawn” and a movie called “Daryl”, which is a cheesy movie about a boy robot.

I write and I just continue to do that through my childhood and I moved out to L.A. like so many other people primarily to be an actor and a writer, but I really focused on writing first and (I was) in the acting first. I started working at casting offices just to intern and learn the other side and worked in script development in a couple of production companies also to learn that side. Slowly, I booked like kind of bit parts on TV shows and then the parts started to go a little bit bigger and did some independent films and started to write more and I started to produce my own stuff because I got tired of waiting around like so many people do.

I produced a couple of short films and web series and then I thought of the idea to kind of create my own site like a blog featuring interviews and panel discussions in our own content that my friends and I would do and have a hub for it. I created Idiotscreen.com and now it brings me to greater than right about now. That’s basically my story in a nutshell there.

Michael: So take us to the process from your idea to script to the finish product?

Mike Lawson: Well, my friends and I, we thought of an idea originally for like a half-hour comedy show and we wrote a pilot and we were like where do we take this? We didn’t have many connections with inside the big network studio system so we said let’s do this on our own. At that time, the people were, of course, creating their own content for the web, and we thought we can do this. We have the script and then we have to add the outline for the rest of the series. The show is called “Hitting the Fan” and we basically kind of pooled our friends together. We had a sound guy friend of ours that we said can we get work (cheaper too.)

We started creating the website just this WordPress site, found this WordPress theme and started learning that so you’d have the color scheme and then we just called all our friends and Facebooked them. Between the three of us, my friends Gavin and Ron, and we basically put in money we had into it, which was very little and created a test pilot shot on a HV20 camera this little mini DV camera.

We used China lanterns because they were super cheap. We used other kinds of light fixtures from Home Depot and when our sound guy couldn’t be there, we had the other actors kind of boom that first episode. We shot it and it took several months to edit it. We had a guy editing it, a friend of ours in New York. We were editing out here between our computers. Had a lot of bad luck as far as like computers crashing and there’s probably like five different computers that was on. Then we had a friend do the sound mix.

We created it. We had a screening and then we decided let’s do a second episode before we air anything. We went out and we put a little bit more money but not much but we have learned a lot from that from that first one way shot on the T2i Rebel and the Canon 70 DSLR HD cameras and we got our other friends involved and we used again, mostly China lanterns, not really any traditional film lights but we went out and we shot it and same thing, it was a lot quicker because we didn’t shoot as much footage. We improved a lot more that first one. We were a lot more efficient with our time and our schedule and the second episode and we kind of put it out there.

That’s kind of how that happened for that show, “Hitting the Fan”. And then another series that I did was a lot different. That panel show for Idiotscreen. Basically, I just contacted various people that I’d want to interview and schedule a day at a friend’s house and had the basic China lanterns and borrowed a couple of lights from friends and set up three cameras, two T2i Rebels and the one 70, had some friends come. We just shot interviews all day and then had another friend edit and put it out on the web and try to send it out to the influencers out there, the people that who’s opinion seem to matter, which I believe is everyone, but we send out to everyone and also those who have even more influence as far as views on their site whatever.

Michael: Now, through what you just said, there was a continuing thread—friends, friends, friends. Tell us about how friends and Spidcast and others have helped you?

Mike Lawson: Well, Spidvid and Facebook and them together are basically—for us, I can speak at least for how we do it. They need resources to find talent because like a lot of the people that I work with, I come mostly again from the acting background and at the time, I didn’t have a lot of friends that were—I have one sound guy friend, which was a blessing, but the other people, I didn’t have many DP friends or editor friends or grips.

In certain cases for acting’s sake, one of my friends are kind of playing the similar age to me, kind mid to late 20’s, but there’s not always, maybe like someone in their 40’s or a teenager. It was very helpful to find people who I didn’t have in my inner circle then and who wanted to do the same thing. Of course, by them helping us out, in turn, we owe them our help on their passion projects. It’s just a way to find people because very often, in our case, we didn’t have the funds and even so, even if we did, we would want to have a place to find them that we could trust, that we would have like obviously, if we have people who’ll vouch for other people in person and online, we can trust them more than if we just got a resume through Craigslist.

Seeing someone’s profile page and their example work all in one page, I think, is very helpful and on Spidvid and Facebook and Twitter in a completely different way, but for as far as connecting, Facebook, Spidvid and some of the other places out there are huge resource to filmmakers and they definitely were for us.

Michael: Well, you feel your collaborators have certainly helped to bring the future to reality. What do you now see in the near and distant future?

Mike Lawson: Well, I see it going on the direction that it is. It’s becoming, of course, more digital and that gatekeepers once were at these networks and studios. They, of course, fight on to it to keep their place but it’s slowly slipping away. If you think that when it comes to collaboration, there’s going to be more and more content and more and more avenues to watch it and it’s already happening the way everyone is watching on different devices, mobile and of course, on internet, on television and vice versa. We’re just going to see more of that.

What I don’t think is going to change too much or I hope not is the medium itself. I’m a huge fan of collaboration. I think that that’s an incredibly important thing, but I also think that having a specific vision, it was the one creator or a couple creators and of course listening to input is very important but what I hope that it doesn’t change is that personally, I’m not a big fan of interactive content. When I’m watching a story or reading a book, I want the writer or director to take me into certain place. I don’t think that’s going to change except for a couple of gimmicks here and there, but where will change and get better, I think. There’s more and more sites and keeps growing. We can find more people and we can monetize the content online.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has that hitRECord site which I believe just sold a first book from someone coming up with an idea of that site and they have a book deal, I believe, I just saw. I could be wrong. We’ll see more and more of that where the gatekeepers are going away and the gatekeepers are just you and me and everyone else who are have an internet account. That’s just going to continue to grow and get better. Unlike where the actual storytelling itself despite a couple of gimmicks and niches here and there, I hope that doesn’t change too much because I think there’s something to be said for classic storytelling. Pushing boundaries is one thing but that’s basically kind of what I feel about.

Michael: Mike, you’ve mentioned the phrase “gatekeepers” several times and is it that a wonderful thing that the process of those “gatekeepers” that their influence has changed.

Mike Lawson: Yes, it’s a great thing. It doesn’t cost as much to create something now that you used to. The gatekeepers are not as important they once were. We now have the ability to go out there and create what we want to create at a cheaper rate. That’s inspiring. You can also use that with the cost going down and more content out there, it’s harder to monetize, but I believe that the ones that really stand out—the films, short films, the web series, whatever it may be—the ones that are truly great will find a home and will make money and we’re going to make some money on their next one. I think that the good ones will eventually be found.

Michael: Now that we’ve had a chance to visit with you Mike and folks have gotten to know you, I’m sure they’re going to want to see your stuff. Where do we go find some of your work?

Mike Lawson: You can go to Idiotscreen.com or Hittingthefanshow.com and you can watch the panel shows and interviews that we’ve done and also the original series “Hitting the Fan” and then we’ve got a feature film called “The Deadbeat”. We’ll be shooting later this fall and there’ll be more information about that as well. Idiotscreen.com and Hittingthefanshow.com as well.

Michael: Excellent. And do you have a parting shot for all listeners?

Mike Lawson: No, I mean, other than I guess the typical, just set a due date and go out and do something, I think you’ll find it be the best thing. As Seth Goden says, “Ship it.” Just go out there and ship something out into the world and then keep and go out and ship something else and constantly we’ll better each time, but the important thing is to “ship it”.

Michael: Mike Lawson, thank you so much for taking the time to visit today.

Mike Lawson: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.

Michael: Thanks for listening to our Spidcast show. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at Spidcast.com or on our Spidvid blog. And you can join our collaborative filmmaking community at Spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.

Jeremy Campbell interview, podcast, resources American Pie, Facebook, film, filmmakers, filmmaking, Friends With Money, Hitting the Fan, Idiotscreen, IMDB, interviews, learn, marketing, new media, new media production, online video, open video, open video production, podcast, promoting, show, social media, twitter, video, video collaboration, video production, web series, web show, web video

We are back with another exciting Spidcast episode this month (listen in below and subscribe on iTunes) with a focus on collaborative filmmaking. For May’s show we feature two filmmakers and actors who are both actively producing original web series. These two individuals are doing interesting things within the new media space, and it was our pleasure to have Cooper and Brendan on the show.

Enjoy May’s Spidcast show below!

Cooper Harris is a talented actor and web series creator of the pilot RELAPSE (embedded below) which won the Top Audience Award at the recent Celebrate the Web competition. The RELAPSE web show has been rumored to be fully produced in the near future, which is exciting news to its already established fan base. Cooper discusses her show and Squatters, and how collaboration means everything when it comes to getting things accomplished.

Brendan Bradley is the creator and lead actor of break out hit, and award winning web series Squatters (episode 1 embedded below). Season 2 is in full development now, leaving viewers anxious for its release in the upcoming future. Brendan talks about appreciating team members, how he leveraged collaboration to create his entertaining show, and gives a sneak peak into Season 2 of Squatters.

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show with a product or service you sell that’s filmmaking related, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Cooper or Brendan talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from its content!

Full Show Transcript Below

INTRO

Michael: Hi. I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the future of collaborative video production brought to you by Spidvid.com. On this episode, we’re visiting with Brendan Bradley from New York City. He’s a writer, director, and creator. I bet you’ve seen some of his work and probably not known it. He has some interesting insights to share. And we’ll also visit with Cooper Harris. She’s an actress and producer of web content as well, including not one, not two, but three web series, plus some feature film work she tells us about as well.

First up is Brendan Bradley. Brendan, welcome to Spidcast.

Brendan: Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be on the show. It really means a lot and it’s been great having “Squatters” actually on Spidvid. So for all the fans out there that has been watching the show, thank you so much for tuning in.

Michael: Tell us a bit about you and your story.

Brendan: I’m the creator of an online series called “Squatters”, which you can find on Spidvid and at Squatterstheseries.com. You can also see me in the recent “Video Game Reunion” on Comedy Central’s Atom.com, “Jeff and Robbie Fail History”, which is a “Subway” web series, and a new series called “The Game Room”.

Michael: And how did the collaboration benefit “Squatters”?

Brendan: Michael, film’s an incredibly collaborative medium because they’re just so many moving parts. There’s this great expression, “it takes a whole village to raise a child”, which I know is kind of cheesy but “Squatters” is my baby. But I couldn’t have begun the project without my incredible team that supported me every single step of the way.

I made “Squatters” because I wanted to have a calling card as an actor and a writer, but the further in the process I got, I realized there are editors like Scott Turner and costume designers like Jenny Green, and cinematographers like James Rhodimer, and composers like Morgan Pearse; all these people who also want to make a name for themselves in their own departments, in their own creativity, and so let them. Bringing a larger team and collaborating with them and letting everybody bring their vision to the project just helped everything rise up and raise the bar.

Especially in the web area, it is so tempting to just do everything to just do everything yourself and act like a one-man band, but I always try to surround myself with these many talented and intelligent people as I can and allow them to put their stamp on the project and then take credit for it. But seriously, I think that’s ultimately what helps “Squatters” stand out, is so many phenomenally talented people all bringing their vision and putting their stamp and having their own ownership over the project.

Michael: Great managers hire the right people and let them do their job. So tell us, Brendan, how did you attract the big names that you had in the first season?

Brendan: Over the years, I have actually been very blessed to work with some extremely talented actors who I have been lucky enough to stay friends with. There’s just nothing more satisfying than creating an opportunity to play with your friends or people that you respect. So most of the roles in “Squatters” were actually offered to people that I’d worked with before or I wanted to work with.

I met Erik Scott Smith who plays Alex Selkirk on a short film and we’ve become real life best friends, which really helped with that banter between Hank and Alex. Sandeep Parikh from “The Guild”, he actually hired me for my first commercial in Los Angeles and my first web series, the “Legend of Neil”. I really just returned the favor to him. But then there’s people like Christiann Castellanos, who plays Ramira or Matt Moy, who plays Hung, the delivery guy, who we actually held auditions in Los Angeles and New York and they had practically no credits on their resumes at the time and immediately after they shot “Squatters”, they really just started exploding, which makes me feel really good that I’m not the only one who noticed how talented they are.

To tall the actors out there, the advice I can take away with becoming involved especially in the web world, but even in the independent film world that I’ve experienced is, be reliable and fun to work with and just stay in touch and you will get hired again. But it’s all about cultivating those relationships.

Michael: An absolutely great lesson on networking as well. What did you learn from the first season that you’re applying to season two?

Brendan: God, we learned so much during the first season of “Squatters” that really just helped the show kind of evolve as we went. We shot off and on for over a year basically whenever I could save up enough money to continue shooting. And in that time, everything changed, with the web space changed, new media contract’s changed, the cameras that everybody was using changed. It’s such an exciting and fast-paced medium and I’ve really learned something new every single week.

The first thing I’m bringing to season two from the experience of season one is just to shoot everything all in one chunk with a set budget just to make it less stressful for my entire team—the cast, the crew and everybody. Just get everybody there for a month and do it right.

The other thing is people don’t necessarily find your show on the first day or the first episode. It’s something I’ve really learned that I’m trying to apply to future episodes is that the second season of “Squatters” will be a lot more self-contained and really push the boundaries of Alex squatting in that office and Hank really exploring New York City and really driving those two-story lines as far apart as we can.

Michael: What did you find was the best way to promote and get attention for the web series?

Brendan: I have to credit Felicia Day here who I worked on “Legend of Neil” and she said to tell a story that is true to you and make a show that you want to see and instead of trying to cater to what you think an audience wants. I personally love shows like “Psyche” and “Scrubs” and “Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, and “Squatters” is a hundred percent my sense of humor the way I like shows to look, the characters I invest in—all of it. I think that allows me to be totally honest with the audience. If you like what I like, you’re going to love “Squatters”. And if you don’t, no hard feelings. There’s a lot of other great shows out there.

We’ve had some support from sites that we uploaded to like Dailymotion and Blip and Stay Tuned TV. My entire PR strategy was allowing a hundred people in the cast and crew to just promote their work and feel proud of the final episodes because I really think that personal touch is what matters.

I get dozens of emails, Facebook invites, tweets, you name it, every single day and they’re all so vague. When a friend really reaches out to me and says, hey, I’m really proud of this, will you check it out? I will always take the time to watch and even comment or vote or whatever it is that can help that video and that creation. That’s been kind our key in promotion, as just being completely sincere about “we love the show”, “we’re proud of the show”, and we think the people who are like us and our friends and family will love it. It’s really helped us kind of find even a wider audience beyond our immediate circle.

Michael: Alright, Bradley, here’s the million-dollar question and of course, all pun intended, what are some tips to get the most out of a limited video project budget?

Brendan: I have to say be good to your people. I cannot stress it enough. I don’t think there’s a project in the world that couldn’t use more money or more time. The budget is always going to be limiting. If you treat your team well, they will work with you and they’ll bring their A-game every single time.

“Squatters” was burden. No one asked me to make that show. Everyday the people even showed up, paid or not paid, that was a favor to me and I really tried to honor that as much as possible by respecting what each department needed on the set and trying to give them a feeling of ownership over a piece of the project. I think that is ultimately the key to collaboration. You choose the people who bring out your best and want to bring their best to the work.

Michael: And can you give us a bit of a sneak peek into season two of “Squatters”?

Brendan: I would love to give you more than a sneak peek. The fun part about the internet is, like I said, it’s always evolving and we’re always kind of seeing what’s next. I’ve been involved with a lot of other projects over the past six months, but “Squatters” is still happening and still being worked on and I think at this point, all I can safe-fully say is we’re going to really try to keep going bigger, faster, and funnier. Really getting both Alex and Hank to fully explore those environments more like I was saying earlier. Let the love interest develop, get Alex really exploring the office and that environment, get Hank really exploring New York and a lot of other temporary housing solutions not just the comfortable pillow tops of a lot of ladies all over the city. And hey, drum roll please, maybe even resolve the bet. We’ll see how far we want to go with that.

The recent exposure like the Indie Intertube Awards and the Clicker Awards, we hoped that those will help us find financing or a sponsor that will really help us bring that next level of production to the show and to our fans. Fingers crossed everybody, for the Streamy Awards to hopefully get some love to my amazing team that just made the first season happen and really had supported me every step of the way.

In the meantime, I hope everyone will go check out episodes on Spidvid and Squatterstheseries.com. Make sure you let us know what you think and we’re also at @squattersseries on Twitter. Follow us and harass us and we just are so appreciative that people are out there watching. Thanks for having us on today.

Michael: You are so welcome and thank you, Brendan Bradley.

BREAK

Michael: You know how challenging it is to produce quality videos without the help from others who have the skills and talent you need. Well, Spidvid let’s you find the individuals you need for your video production project so you can create the internet’s next big viral hit. Visit Spidvid.com. Click the signup link and reserve you spot within our collaborative video production community today.

Next up is actress and web producer, Cooper Harris. Cooper, welcome to Spidcast.

Cooper Harris: Absolutely my pleasure. I’m excited to be here.

Michael: Tell us about how you broke into the web series world?

Cooper Harris: I broke into web series world kind of on a fluke. I and my producing partner had done numerous online commercials basically and we sold in to companies like Post-it Notes, Kimberly-Clark, Krazy Glue, and from there, since we’re both actresses, it kind of made sense then to transition into scripted content. That was right as the whole web series thing was really breaking two years ago. That’s kind of how it happened.

Michael: Cooper, how has collaboration help with the web series pilot?

Cooper Harris: I think collaboration is key in any project or any thing, but especially for web series, especially if you have a lower budget because to try to do everything yourself, it never turns out as good as what we’d hope. So I think bringing out other people whose creative vision fit yours is a really good idea. That way, you can all just fill in the chinks that inevitably will come from not having as much money as you’d want. “Squatters” was created by Brendan Bradley and I jumped on board and we produced the whole thing together from start to finish. I remember the very first reading, it was a really exciting thing to be kind of just put together and then from there, a year and a half later, we have the show.

Michael: Do you have some tips that you can share to get the most of out of a limited budget project?

Cooper Harris: Favors. That favor thing. I really do think also time management and planning, they say you can’t have the whole (league) trifecta production. You can have a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of quality, but if you’re missing one, you have to make up for in the other department. We do not have a lot of money for “Relapse” the kind that we just did (which won) “Celebrate the Web”. We also do not have a lot of money for “Squatters” either. So it was really crucial that we really planned it all out kind of even to the minute and also collaborated with people who had exceptional vision and equipment.

Michael: Now, you’ve mentioned “Squatters”. Tell us a bit about that.

Cooper Harris: Yes, “Squatters” is a web series created by Brendan Bradley and produced by myself and executive produced by Frank Kramer, who came on at the end and was generous enough to give us some finishing funds. Another example of, at least, monetary collaboration. It was really great to have him.

It’s a story about two roommates in New York who made a bet to live without paying rent for a year. It’s really fun. It’s a comedy. Dailymotion picked us up. We are to date, I believe, their number one original comedy, which is really exciting. We have everybody in there from Ryan Sypek from “Wild Fire” to Sandeep Parikh of “The Guild” and “Legend of Neil”, Tony Janning, and of course, I’m in it as Julie, the female lead, and I play an up and coming—actually, she’s a lawyer and she is kind of the girl who’s always getting away from Hank.

Michael: What did you find was the best way to promote and get viewer attention to a web series?

Cooper Harris: First of all, you want to have a really kick-ass show. That’s just kind of the basics so that when people do watch, they feel excited and not like you’re wasting their time. At least for “Relapse”, “The Celebrate the Web” pilot we did later, we were able to get a lot of kind of big YouTube personalities and people with large Twitter followings, definitely influencers, to watch the show like it and then tweet about it, which got up a huge number of votes which was how “The Celebrate Web” competition worked.

I think that was really successful for us. But again, it all hinders on having a really good and intriguing product that you’re showing people. Definitely Twitter. Facebook’s great. I actually send around good, old-fashioned email chain to my mother and all my tradition fans and North Carolina. Definitely drawing on the families, the old friends from back home who get excited to seeing what you’re up to out in California.

Then we had amazing success with “Squatters” in terms of—Tubefilter was very generous on their coverage and took a keen interest. They actually kind of broke the original sneak peek of “Squatters”. They were the first publication to do anything on it. We had a lot of feedbacks from that. Definitely targeting the online web media places. It’s really good .New Teevee, of course, Tubefilter, all of those, they’re really good.

Michael: You just mentioned something exceptionally important, that is that it all falls back in the writing and a good product.

Cooper Harris: Yes, definitely. It’s really important that when you’re pushing something, it’d be good. That sounds so basic but if you’re going to (inaudible 00:15:15) you want to give them something back. You want to reward them for the six minutes they’re spending by great writing or release fun, maybe unexpected casting choices, stuff like that. People they’ve seen in other places. Humor is always good or that tension. You got to give back.

Cooper Harris: Cooper, it’s been a bit of a challenge to pin you down for this interview. I mean that in a good way because you’ve been so very busy. Tell us where do we see you next?

Cooper Harris: I have so many different things going on. It’s a hard thing to juggle in my mind. I have a really exciting show coming up called “Mighty Woman” and that will touchdown, if you’d like to say, because she’s a superhero, in a couple of months. Of course, I also have “Relapse” coming up which is “The Celebrate the Web” pilot, which is very exciting. It sounds like it’s going to be a show. We can’t announce anything officially just yet, but that’s definitely in the works.

And a really fun, not on the web series field, but in traditional film, I have a romantic-comedy coming out called “Amy Alyson Fans”. It’s really fun because I think it’s one of the first films that really pays homage to the online phenomenon. It uses real YouTube video bloggers, like real YouTube stars in a film talking about this actress who is quickly rising to fame on the internet. It’s kind of a fun, blending, cross-platform project. I play the actress, Amy Alyson, so that should be really great. We’re screening at the (DCA) in two weeks.

Michael: Art imitating life there.

Cooper Harris: Exactly. It is kind of art imitating life.

Michael: And how about your web address? Where do we see you online?

Cooper Harris: Cooperharris.net.

Michael: Cooper Harris, thank you so much for being with us today.

Cooper Harris: Thank you so much and I really appreciate all that you guys are doing for the online video space.

Michael: Thank you for listening to our Spidcast show. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at Spidcast.com or on our Spidvid blog. And you can join our collaborative filmmaking community at Spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.

Jeremy Campbell community, podcast Brendan Bradley, Cooper Harris, Facebook, film, filmmakers, filmmaking, interviews, learn, marketing, new media, new media production, online video, open video, open video production, podcast, promoting, Relapse, show, social media, Squatters, twitter, video, video collaboration, video production, web series, web show, web video