• Our production company, Salt Cellar Films, picked up a few producing gigs to get through the summer, expanding into filmed, live event production as production partners on the incredibly exciting Footopia (post to come).

  

• We brought on the incredible Christopher Bell, editor of Strange Darling, to cut Gulf of America… and guess what? We have a movie! And one that, even in this warty, gestational stage, I’m in love with.

• I went on my honeymoon: the most glorious trip of my life with the most glorious person in it. And we got our Gulf of America red carpet looks, while we were at it!

Between international travel, producing three live soccer matches on the Santa Monica Pier, finishing our first & second Director’s Cut (!!!!!), and returning to the day job, I hope you can forgive the appalling lack of posts. If it’s any consolation, I at least have a lot more material, now.

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Still, enough chit chat and Vietnamese linen suits. Let’s get into it:

Okay, Google: How Do You Cast “Real” Actors?

Shortly after we wrapped filming, we got an announcement in Deadline about our film, and I still get a little chill reading it. It wasn’t that long ago that I was frantically querying every producer and search engine I knew “how do you contact actors for a low-budget film?” Then, just like that, I was directing not one, but several of my thespian heroes on set, each of them surprising me daily with their talents and dramatic choices.

But how, exactly, did we find them?

One of the key reasons I started this Substack (which I have, over the summer, admittedly abandoned… sorry, darling!) was to contribute some real world information to the internet about what it takes to make a NonDē film. Most online advice for producing a film is just over-promised, SEO-driven headlines and vapid, self-help book-style affirmations (big shout-out to Seed+Spark and Kinema for bucking the trend, however). The hardest parts of indie production, like financing or budgeting, are left hopelessly opaque.

To be fair, some of that obfuscation is just the nature of the business. As I’ve explored before, there are as many financing strategies as their are movies, and infinitely more deal points and negotiations. And, may I remind you from atop my high horse, I haven’t released my budget or cast deals for the world to see (though I hope to, when this picture is all said and done).

Why? Let’s be real: information is power, budgets are finite, and financiers are scarce. It’s hard to negotiate contracts or investment when you’ve already revealed what you’ve paid in the past.1 And you can’t take information back once it is on the internet. The generalizations are annoying, but they’re understandable.

So, to get it out of the way now, here are some things I will not be explaining in this post: the monetary amounts in our cast deals, the non-monetary deal points, or the ins and outs of negotiating with agents, managers, lawyers, and talent. The most I will say is this: honesty is a highly underrated trait, and trying to play games or outfox people to save a few bucks was never my bag… we told people what we could afford up front and found ways to make everyone feel whole.

Okay, Enough Hedging! What advice can you actually give?!

Share The One Year Feature Film: From Script to Set in 366 Days

Casting is one of the first big decisions you’ll make, and it combines your artistic and business priorities into one inseparable sludge. Your options aren’t exactly unlimited — your characters and budget only allow so much leeway — but they sure are daunting. Not every role requires the same “type” of actor, however, either in stature or resume. Which is why, if you have the budget, I’m going to let you in on the most obvious secret in the book, the secret that led to that Deadline article…

1. Make room for the budget for a Casting Professional

I can already hear you from the other side of your screen: “I can’t afford a casting director! I’m too indie! Besides, what do they really do that I can’t do myself?!” To be honest, I’ve said those same lines, before.

And I was dead f-ing wrong.

We never would have snagged the caliber of cast we got for Gulf of America without the indomitable Mia Cascio at the helm. And, while that should seem obvious to you, many independent filmmakers insist on saving some money decide to go it alone. Hell, I’ve been one of those filmmakers, and it makes sense on smaller projects, or projects where you want the rawer quality of non-actors.

Mia, however, brought an encyclopedic knowledge of actors from all budget levels to the table, many of whom I never would have thought about, from familiar faces up-and-comers currently blowing away producers in auditions. She knew who was working and who would soon be available, the agents hungry to get their clients work and those who would blow off an indie film without reading the script, and how & where to place casting announcements so the actors we really wanted would see them.

More important than all of that, however, was her role as creative partner. Casting directors take the script, my notes, and our artistic goals and translate it all into a killer slate of characters. They are no less creative partners than cinematographers, hair & make-up artists, and sound engineers. You don’t think you’re better at lighting than your gaffer, do you? So why do you think you’re better at casting?

I know, I know, quotes for casting agencies may seem astronomical. But I didn’t say you need to hire a casting agency, did I? Like scouting any other department head in the low-budget space, it never hurts to look for similarly hungry, talented, up-and-comers who vibe with your story. Referrals, LinkedIn, and the pages of casting agencies are good places to start.

But even hiring a casting collaborator is no guarantee of success if you aren’t ready to collaborate yourself. You need to also…

2. Act like a professional, not a beggar

Who here hasn’t written that sweaty email gushing how perfect an actor is for the role, how great the story is, and how cool it would be if they read it and I dunno maybe jumped on this film with an unproven director for half their normal day rate please and thank you by the way I loved you in The White Lotus.

The stories you hear about A-listers reading some hitherto unknown writer’s script and launching their career are the exception, not the rule. And even when that does happen, odds are good the writer has also done the unglamorous work first. As in, she…

• Starts an LLC for the movie. I keep saying this, because it keeps being important. If you want to work with SAG actors, if you want to be taken seriously, if you want to make a legitimate film, you need to run it all through a legitimate business. Do it early.

• Understands their SAG tier and budget. You’ll need to tell actors what rate they can expect before negotiations can begin. SAG’s established tiers are the answer. If you’re “Ultra Low Budget,” say those words in your emails.

• Learns how to use Breakdown Express (or other casting sites). This is one of those lessons that is best learned by casting short films, as the site is a bit wonky and you need to get your details right.

• Reaches out to agents and managers, not directly to talent. It’s amazing how obvious this advice is, and how little it is followed. The benefits are myriad (see the next section), and most of the emails are available on IMDb Pro. Moreover, it’s far more respectful of an actor’s time to, you know, contact the person they pay to be contacted.

• Raises some money first. Very few actors are going to sign on to something — and potentially close themselves off to something else — if there is no guarantee that you can follow through. When your email says that “we’ve raised X% of the budget,” however, you’ll start to be taken seriously.

• Sets a production date. Scheduling is really hard, and no actors will say yes to something if they don’t know when it’s going to happen. Set a date. Stick to it. Make yourself a viable option that can be planned for, not a wild gamble.

The above steps are, to me, non-negotiable, unless you’re going the Jim Jarmusch, truly indie, non-actor route (which I love, by the way — and there is a lot of amazing advice on how to do this from people like Punk Rock Producer ).

3. Clear Eyes, Full Roster, Can’t Lose

Internalize this now: your dream cast is not happening, even if you write the script of the decade. Many actors are booked up months, if not years, in advance, and unavailable even if they love your work. We’re working with limited budgets. Your dream actor may not even live in LA, and need to be flown in and housed.

You need an open mind, you need a lot of options, and you need to know in advance what you truly need, and what you stubbornly want.

• Do not get locked in on one or two “perfect” actors for each role. Make a list of 20-30 actors for every. single. role. Go wide, go weird, go into genres and formats that have nothing to do with your story (if you’ve somehow held onto the stigma that there are “TV actors” and “film actors,” jettison it right this second). Ask people who’ve read the script to tell you who they envision in the roles, consider if any of your favorite actors who are “wrong” for the role might play against type, and then (and this one is so important it gets its own bullet), you should…

• Look up the managers or agents of your top choices, and then add 4-5 other actors to your list that their agent also represents. If you haven’t sprung for IMDb Pro, yet, now is the time. When you reach out to agents (see above), you massively increase your chances of success if you note that they actually have a lot of clients that might be great fits. Mention multiple roles and, crucially, let them know that you’d be open to other options within their company. Don’t assume agents are just a layer you need to bulldoze through — make them partners.

• Find your story’s Hannibal Lecter. We all know that some financiers and distributors need to see recognizable names to grease the wheels. We also know the recognition costs a lot more money per day than up-and-comers. So lean into the Robin Williams strategy and figure out which role can be a) shot in the least number of days while b) still offering a major role to a major actor. Anthony Hopkins is in less than a quarter of Silence of the Lambs, and still got a Best Actor Oscar. Big impact doesn’t require big budgets.

• Structure your auditions for success with great sides. In casting, sides are the scenes used for auditions. They are rarely verbatim scenes from the film, because those scenes often have multiple characters talking. You want to give a potential actor the chance to show off the role, not their off-screen scene partner. Take your favorite 2 scenes for the character and re-write them to be duets. Cut as many lines from the other character as you can while preserving the drama of the scene. Consider what emotions / range you need the actor to showcase — if the role requires comedy, for example, make sure the sides contain a few jokes.

Finally, the only way to get the cast of your dreams is to expand that dream with an open mind and collaborative attitude.

I never in a million years thought we’d get the level of cast we did, but we only got there because I kept an open mind and trusted the process. There is no one else who could have played these roles, but I didn’t initially write a single character with these actors in mind (note: you should never write a character with one specific actor in mind). Every audition, even for people who didn’t get the role, changed my perception and revealed new avenues. Every conversation with Mia broadened my horizons. Open yourself up to surprise and you will succeed.

Of course, it isn’t just about finding great actors, it’s about communicating the project and role with them to ensure everyone is set up for success. That, however, is more than enough content for a later post.

As a young Georgia liberal handed Howard Zinn at far too young of an age, I have predictably mixed feelings on the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, as a work of prose, political philosophy and, at times, poetry, still awes me every time I read it. Our nakedly hypocritical implementation of that document, in the two and a half centuries since it was penned, impresses me a bit less.

On the whole, however, I have a deep intellectual and political respect for the Founding Fathers, and for the heart and soul of the Revolution they championed, however unevenly. Just because I know that Thoreau’s mom was doing his laundry and baking pies while her son sulked around Walden Pond doesn’t make his meditations on wilderness less meaningful, after all. On our recent honeymoon in Vietnam, I read letters from Ho Chi Minh gushing to a US President about Jefferson’s famous break-up letter, begging America to help free his people from the French.1

We (self-professed liberals, artists, self-loathing Americans) rarely give our nation the credit it deserves, too obsessed with improving to note how much of the world we’ve improved. There has never been a land more diverse, more pluralistic, or more inventive than ours, grievous sins and all. Today’s ugly nostalgia for autocrats, kings, and racial nationalism only underscores just how astoundingly improbable our national experiment is in the grand scheme of history. Our collective call, 250 years ago, for freedom and self-determination — for life, liberty, and property the pursuit of happiness — was a just and radical demand. And I’m enormously proud to live in the nation that issued it.

It will surprise few to note that this pride has been routinely and violently tested over the last decade. So it goes when lofty ideals meet lowly reality. There was always going to be a fine line between the high-minded, society-focused philosophy of Liberalism and the “I should be able do whatever I want and no one can stop me” bastardization that is Libertarian-tinted individualism. The evolution is readily visible in the origins of America’s flag du jour. The original “Don’t Tread on Me” didn’t depict a single snake, nor use the word “me:” it pleaded for collective action:

These days, it may feel like America is a lot more like the first snake, except every one of the pieces is screaming at the others that “I’M DOING JUST FINE ON MY OWN, THANK YOU, THE UNSTOPPABLE BLEEDING IS A GOOD THING.” But that’s just ne: Twitter talking. We’ve still got a hell of a lot going for us — Minneapolis’s collective repulsion of ICE this winter and the international World Cup Watch Parties in the streets of Houston are closer to the norm than we often remember. I believe deep in my soul that people would rather love their neighbors than loathe them, and that all of us die, in a very meaningful way, when left alone to rot. But I also believe, with great fear, that there are many people who see that love as an impediment to their own power.2

It is so easy to abandon and dismiss patriotism these days. A long succession of governments has given us ample reasons to do so. But the President does not define what it means to be Patriotic. We, the People, do. And my feelings of pride, love, and loyalty to my country hew closer to Twain than to Trump:

“The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”

-Mark Twain

Making an independent film is not quite the same as declaring national independence, but they share a few fine threads. It’s tough sledding in the NonDē New World, but thereu are like-minded, freedom-loving artists out there to explore it with you if you’re willing to join them.3 The greatest artistic rewards, the words that still awe 250 years later (and, hopefully, for 250 more), always emerge from the furnaces of non-conformity, reaching up from the muck to aspire and inspire us to dream bigger, wider, and wilder.

But we were never meant to dream those dreams alone. We hold these truths. We assume the power of this earth. And, whether cinephiles or private citizens, We might do better if we remembered that, 250 years ago, we made a promise not just to Britain, but to our neighbors. We declared that “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” That, more than any State Fair or Arch, is a patriotic (and filmmaking) philosophy I endeavor to spend my whole life championing.

Had we upheld our promise to each other, I never would have directed Gulf of America. Yet, however meager the offering, I suppose we, the crew, had something to declare.

It’s been a few weeks since I popped up here, my head too full of edit points, post-collaborator negotiations, and easing back into the waters of the everyday life to write coherently about making Gulf of America. Like one taking tentative steps into the frigid Pacific, normality came back to me on tip toes, alternating between slow acclimation and bracing charges into the sea. I’m only now growing comfortable enough to splash around again.

It will shock few to admit that I was, and still am, bone-tired. Exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t quite ameliorate. I did not have the luxury of taking a personal break after production ended — the pile of work from my freelance clients certainly didn’t stop growing while we were shooting — and even if I had such luxury, there was still 20+ hours of footage to watch and organize. Two daunting phases down (writing + production), two more (editing + distribution) to go. The early days of each phase, when the distance left to travel seems impossibly long, always invoke a uniquely dull terror that, for me, presents as a deep desire to curl up in bed.1

But the One-Year Script-Set Pipeline this blog is named for will not stop when set wraps, and neither can I. Nor do I want to! It didn’t take too long to get excited about post-production again, just 2-3 weeks of sleeping eight hours a night and the occasional jog. But, as I catch my breath and the hard deadlines of production are no longer looming in the distance to set my pace, I’ve started to appreciate just how hard I’ve been running for the last year and a half.2

Making a film in a year, it turns out, is pretty tiring. Doubly so if you’re holding down a day job. And while I don’t have all of the answers for you, I have yet to cover one of the more under-appreciated aspects of this entire process:

Building the physical, mental, and creative stamina necessary for making an NonDē film.

I spent one season on the track team in middle school, mostly to try and make friends after moving to a new school. My events were short — 200 meters and under, plus one of the jumping ones — but we had to do everything in practices, including the 800 meter dash. For those lucky enough not to know, the 800 is two full laps around the track. It’s technically not a distance run, like the mile, but a sprint. Two laps. As a sprint. And I’ll never forget our coach’s advice for running it:

“You gotta get out the gate as fast as you can. Then you gotta go a little faster through the middle. And then, at the very end, you run your absolute fastest.”

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Cool! Don’t mind me, I’ll be over in the corner, puking into the long-jump pit.

While I never once ran the 800m in competition, Coach’s words still ring true to me — not as a failed track star, but as a filmmaker. Making a movie feels like running a sprinters pace for a marathoner’s distance, and each new leg demands that you find a higher gear to shift into. I knew that intellectually when I set out to do this, but there is quite the gap between knowing and feeling.

Yet… it doesn’t matter how fast you run if you can’t finish the race. You don’t hit your fastest pace right off the blocks, you go as fast as you can. There’s a difference. Running a great race requires listening to your body, adapting to the context (the weather, your budget, the other runners, last-second story notes, the cool upperclassmen you joined the track team to get in with, etc.), and saving just enough energy for the big final kick.

I’m not going to pretend like Gulf of America didn’t push my limits. But it didn’t push me over them, either (though there were days where I got close). I’ve long seen the process of filmmaking and athletics as more related than they often get credit for and, in many ways, the strategies for building and maintaining stamina are the same. So are the ways in which it can all fall apart.

Conditioning, training, and proper rest all play factors. Here’s what worked for me (and what I wish I’d tried) to get me through the film:

The Fantastic, Fit Filmmaker

It doesn’t matter how cliche it is, but you have to take care of your body or your brain will not be as effective. It’s not about your weight, your image, or your strength — it’s about taking care of your entire self.

1. Move your damn body. Whenever I’m in a funk, either emotionally or creatively, I’ve usually stopped working out. Too often, this time, I let that happen. Physical activity makes you more creative, improves your mood, and has that added benefit of helping prepare your body for 12 hour days on set. I’m not saying to go get jacked — but a long daily walk is well worth it.

2. Stop bragging about how little sleep you’ve gotten and go sleep. The quasi-pride Americans evince when comparing sleep schedules is one of my least favorite cultural quirks. There will be days on set when you’re truly too busy for a full night’s sleep. But those days should not be the norm — neither you nor your crew will succeed if they are.

3. Resist the urge to eat like a racoon and find a way to balance your diet. AKA, shoving your mouth full of whatever is on hand in the dim light of the refrigerator. One of my most cherished set memories was when my brother, who was shooting BTS, came up to me with a sandwich and a glass of water in between takes. “You haven’t eaten,” he said, “stop being an idiot.” Similar to sleeping, there is nothing cool about ignoring basic nutrition, but the temptation is real when there are a million things to do on set.

4. Hydrate or Die-drate. My glorious wife put an enormous box of powdered electrolytes in the middle of our kitchen two days before our pre-production, and I downed one every single day, first thing, before going to set, and it did more for my mood and effectiveness than my daily coffee ever could.

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Keeping Your Head in the Frame

Don’t listen to me, listen to David Lynch: making art about suffering doesn’t require you to suffer. A good mood is infectious on set, and the work will be better for it.

1. Schedule a few day-cations, and stick to them. I know you don’t believe me — I didn’t believe me! — but your movie will not fail if you take 24 hours to stop thinking about it. You think professional athletes practice every single day? Hell no. And if you’re someone who needs a “productive” reason, don’t forget that the brain often does its best problem solving subconsciously.

2. Delete your social media, and ditch your phone. I leave my phone at home for my morning walk every day, and put it in another room when I’m writing. That square in your pocket is a drug, and not one of the cool ones. Yes, I know we need social media for marketing and promotion — 2-3 weeks away from it (and I mean truly away from it) will make the film you’re actually marketing better, and no one will care that you haven’t posted or commented.

3. Solve for your day-to-day problems first and reap the mental rewards for the movie. For a long time, I thought getting a regular day job or client would impossibly distract me from fully exploring my creative potential. As it turns out, not having to worry about where my paychecks were coming from every week (or forcing all scripts to be commercially successful to pay the bills) unlocked more artistic freedom than I could imagine. My wife and I had long, detailed conversations about how our schedules might shift as production intensified, and built out workable frameworks for chores and travel. Making that initial investment meant I could spend time worrying about when I’d handle day-to-day issues, and more time on the film.

4. Keep the pressures of “success” in perspective. This is one of those ones that I probably needed to learn sooner but, in short… if you tie all of your personal and professional success into the success of the film, you’re in deep shit, man. Professional success, however you define it, is too mercurial and, frankly, random to attach personal stakes to. Getting caught up in making the film “successful,” without fail, led to decision-making paralysis and, often, the fetal position.

Creative Collaborations Need Creative Collaborators

You have a million creative decisions to make, and a lot of very smart, creative people looking for you to make them. Don’t let those muscles atrophy now.

1. Broaden your artistic diet beyond movies. By the time I got into rehearsals with our cast, I referenced novels and plays far more often than I referenced films. Personally, the closer I get to production the more I turn to poetry3. It helps me see the story different, but it also provides a much-needed emotional release: I can’t compare the movie I’m making to the movie I’m watching.

2. Find outlets for creation in the midst of logistics. This is less relevant during production, when you’ll be making the damn thing every day. But in the months prior, I always felt best when I made time to write new things, cook, or play music. So much of pre-production is business… I needed to remember to keep the artistic impulse nurtured, too.

3. Keep your ego in check by remembering that the ultimate arbiter of creative value is not you, but the film. A TV writer once told me, when I asked how he settled disagreements with his writing partner, “the best idea wins, not the best writer.” And the best idea can come from anywhere, so long as it ultimately serves the script. Being able to “hear” what the movie wants is a skill I won’t pretend to have fully mastered. But when things get heated between collaborators, or I was pressed with a particularly difficult creative choice, I reminded myself that I was not doing this for me or my career, but for the film.

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If nothing else, I hope this entry reminds everyone that no level of creative genius, technical ability, or preparation will save you if you do not take care of yourself. Audiences don’t care how little sleep you got, and the box office doesn’t reward burning out. It is impossible to fathom how many works of art never got finished because their creator couldn’t finish them. Don’t let yourself be one of them because you’re too proud to take care of yourself or, worse, hung up on some romanticized notion of the tortured artist.

The past year hasn’t been a marathon. It hasn’t been a sprint, either. It’s been an 800m dash, and I’ve still got a lap to go. If I’ve followed my own advice as well as I hope I have, I should have one more gear left in me to complete it.

I keep promising “this is the last time I’ll talk about the financing for a while” and then of course, my posts about investors end up being the most popular things I write. I shouldn’t be surprised — my own search history is littered with near-frantic queries ranging from “how to pay for a movie” to “how to raise money fast” to “bulletproof investment strategy for feature film with examples and advice.” So let’s bring it all home, shall we? Let’s cut some checks. Because the point of today’s post is to, finally, turn a “maybe” to a “yes” by nailing your meetings with investors.

Fundraising is the hardest of pre-production, and it may even be the hardest part of making a movie, period. Asking for cash always feels grubby, there are a billion ways to go about it, and there’s that pesky fact that films are famously terrible investments (and if you pretend otherwise, I hope you’re talking to a real sucker). But there is one piece of good news I can give you, one that hopefully cheers a few readers up:

Everything gets easier after the first investor.

If you already have your first investor, congratulations! It’s time to adjust your pitch a bit and let everyone know that this thing is off and running. “First money in” is always the hardest to find, and other investors will feel safer knowing that they’re not alone. And if you don’t have an investor yet, don’t fear— lower the bar. Stop trying to worry about financing the entire movie, and focus on finding the very first financier. It doesn’t matter who it is (or if it is a lot of people on Kickstarter1) or how much it is, move your goal posts in and put some points on the board.

Prior posts have focused on the steps needed to find your investors, including:

Preliminary Budgets:

Writing a Pitch Deck:

Finding Investors:

Writing Your Financial Prospectus:

But today we get into the final (jk, this part never ends) stage: How to Talk To Investors In the Room. Which, crucially, should turn into how to seal the deal. You’ve got your materials, you’ve got your un-signed contracts.2

Let’s go get you some money.

Walking into a meeting, picking up the phone, or logging into a Zoom with an investor who has expressed interest in funding your movie will never not invoke that giddy-terrifying emotional combo punch usually reserved for action sports. You have something you desperately want to make. They have the means to make it possible. The stakes can feel life or death and chance of success minuscule.

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But take a deep breath and remember that, if you’ve made it this far, you’re in great shape. This person likes you, trusts you, and enjoys the vision. They’re interested in making movies. In general, if you’re well prepared, it shouldn’t be much more complicated than that. But first, a few broad tips:

• Practice, practice, practice. Get a friend or partner to act as a potential investor, read the pitch, and start an interview. Ask them to grill you. Ask them to be brutal. Ask them to remain skeptical. Look for friends/relatives outside the film industry, preferably those in a business-related field.

• Send materials in advance… This has probably already happened, but it doesn’t hurt to tee things up again in a clean email a few days before. The financial prospectus, investment terms, and SHORT creative pitch should be at the top of their inbox, and let them know what else is available (such as the script) if interested.

• … but assume they haven’t been read. If you’re in person, bring your laptop and pre-load all of the assets you may need to share. Ditto on Zoom. People are busy — you may need to be ready to start these meetings from both square 1 and square 50.

• Be honest without being self-deprecating. The truth is that most films don’t turn a profit. Distribution has always been hard, and it’s harder than ever. You may not have ever actually tackled a project this large before, and you may not have a ton of accolades to back you up. But that is no excuse not to walk in with the full confidence that you and your film is going to kick ass. Now is not the time for false modesty. Making and selling a movie is hard. You’re harder. Remember that.

If you’ve done all of the legwork, your only job now is to come in so well-prepared that you feel as comfortable as you can. That means more homework. And while I cannot prepare you for every single personality you’ll encounter or each interaction, I can offer you a list of questions you’ll likely be asked that you can use to get ready.

1. Have Your Financials & Returns Down Cold

This part likely won’t come first in your meetings — talking about the story, your experience, etc. usually kicks it off. But if you aren’t ready for this step, you’re not ready to meet investors. Get ready for:

1. What is the likelihood that a film like this will turn a profit? It depends on your genre and budget (do. the. research.), but if you say anything higher than 10%, you’re a liar. According to some research, 5% may be pushing it. Be honest — this is for the art, not the money — not misleading.

2. How much money do we need to make to break even? This must factor in distribution costs, not just production budget.

3. Is there a minimum investment? Is there a maximum? We had neither, but a good friend set his at $5k and it worked like gangbusters.

4. How long until I see a profit? Be honest — this could take years.

5. What is my share of the profit? And, if it comes down to it, will you budge on this number?

6. What is the proposed waterfall? Look up “Film CAMA.” Tell investors you’re going to hire one and mean it.

7. Who else will get a cut of the movie? How big is that cut? You need to understand various distribution costs (theatrical, platform fees, etc), agents, residuals, and explain the range possible.

8. What happens if you don’t raise the full budget? Are you willing to escrow funds until the budget is accounted for (we did this) or set minimum investment levels to trigger funding? How will you return funds if not? Is there an even cheaper version of the movie you could make with their blessing?

9. What will you do if you’re over budget while on set and going to run out of money? My answer was simple — I am an editor, and know some VFX, so I could offer to cut the editing budget and do it myself. If that wasn’t enough, then it meant cutting shots or scenes. If that wasn’t enough, then cutting days and re-writing to ensure we have a story.

10. Are you offering a completion bond? We didn’t — I went with escrow and my track record of staying on budget. But it’ll come up. Ditto insurance.

11. So… taxes? Are their tax credits funding the film? And what is the investor’s tax liability? They will ask about K-1s, for example. My advice, as always — get a lawyer and accountant, man!

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2. Don’t “Defend” Your Film, Champion It

Talking about the creative aspects is fun. Talking about yourself… less so. But don’t shy away now. They are not investing in a product as much as they are investing in a person: YOU. Expect to answer:

1. Why you (creative)? This one should be “easy” after all the work you’ve done, but you should still be ready to briefly share your passion for the project.

2. Why you (logistic)? You’re about to be in charge of this person’s money and you’re going to use it to run a small business full of employees… are you really ready for that? What relevant leadership, budget, and personal experience do you have to ensure them you can handle the enormous amount of stress and decision making.

3. Who are your collaborators? Flaunt all of the awesome people who will be working on this with you. Talk up how they cover your weak spots. Strength in numbers!

4. What are some similar films that you admire or hope to emulate? Again, this should be one of the fun ones.

5. What are you most concerned about. I was honest — time. Our budget necessitated a 14 day shoot, and that ain’t a lot.

   1. Follow up this question by immediately mentioning what you’re going to do to alleviate this concern in advance.

6. Why should I invest in this film? There’s a million answers to this, but they all come down to a combination of:

   1. Because you should invest in me / my team

   2. Because this story is important and needs to be told

   3. Because, even though most films don’t make money, this has X% better chance due to X factor

7. What are you personally hoping to get out of this film? I wanted to make a great movie, and I wanted it to be so great it allowed me to keep making films. I wanted to interrogate our climate of distrust and division. And I want it to help me pay at least a month or two of rent.

3. Provide the Roadmap

1. When will you start production, when will you finish? I personally believe setting a date is better than saying “whenever we get funding.” Create urgency and a deadline to invest.

2. What are the next steps once funding is secured? And, do you have people lined up to help you take them?

3. How long will post-production take? How complicated will post be (i.e. lots of VFX or not)? When can they expect to see some footage or a rough cut?

4. What’s the plan for selling this? You should prepare for this one more than any other on this list. I came in with three rough plans (please note, this question will get a dedicated post at some point):

   1. Self-distribution with full control of roll-out and marketing but also full profits.

   2. Unaffiliated festival run where we try our luck in the circuit, backed by our recent success at Tribeca as proof we can produce high-enough quality work.

   3. Direct Sale or Acquisition by leveraging my previous connections with several potential buyers as an in-road.

5. How do you plan to get the word out? What’s your marketing campaign (yes, you need one of those)? Do you have behind-the-scenes footage accounted for? An audience already built in? PR strategy?

4. Be Ready to Start Negotiating

Not all of the questions are going to be for investor edification. Some are going to be the beginnings of negotiations— and you should have a stance in advance.

1. Can I come to set? Can I come to editing? Yes, for us, but only with advance warning so we could ensure enough food/space.

2. What is my credit or title? How much do I have to invest to be an “Executive Producer,” “Producer,” “Co-Producer,” or “Special Thanks?” We set these at specific investment tranches.

3. How do I know you won’t change the script on me without script approval? Can I have script approval? What about budget approval? Can I have approvals over cast? I insisted on full creative control, with the caveat that investors had a right to ask for inclusion on decision-making rationale. I also provided new drafts to investors if major changes were made.

4. Can I have approval over any distribution deals or sales agent contracts? Ask yourself if this person is a value add in these discussions. If they don’t trust you to make the right call, it may not be a good fit. Too many cooks can kill a deal.

5. If you go over budget or increase your budget, can I have right of refusal to invest first? Can I veto any budget increases to protect my equity? An investor will be rightly furious if they think they have 10% of a movie and end up with 1%. Avoid this by having a budget locked and sticking to a hard cap on any increases.

6. Will you give me right of refusal on any sequels or spinoffs? I personally think this is a show of trust and bridge to build a long-term relationship, but do you.

I wasn’t asked every single one of these questions in every single meeting. But over the course of the year, they all came up. Sometimes I had ready answers the first time, sometimes I whiffed and learned for the next round. You’re not going to be perfect.

But you can be prepared. And you can be you. Walk in well versed in your movie and confident in all the work you’ve done, and you just might walk out with money.

If you want to make a feature film in a year and your parents aren’t hyperlinked on Wikipedia, you don’t have much of choice but to learn this stuff. At least, I didn’t. And honestly, it’s the best thing I ever did for my career. Because…

In order to successfully approach investors, you have to learn how to become a businessperson without forgetting how you became an artist.

And that doesn’t just take a change in mindset, it takes a lot of hard work. It takes months of research. And it takes a 35 page business plan.

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Unlike 95% of the population, I don’t relax when I watch films and TV shows. It’s not that I don’t enjoy going to the movie theater or have fun pretending that I’m too high-brow for my wife’s current Dawson’s Creek binge (#TeamPacey), it just means that these things don’t soothe me after a day at work like they used to. Watching films is a massive part of my job, and while I am exceedingly lucky for that fact, it’s harder to shut my brain off while still thinking critically/educationally about the scenes on screen. Thanks to the internet, there is also an endless trove of data to learn from after the credits roll — shot breakdowns, budgets and box office returns, production stories, etc. It’s my favorite topic in the world, so even this minutia thrills me, but it’s not the best form of decompression.

For true decompression, I turn to the long-running strategy computer series, Civilization, acting out my long-running musical fantasies on guitar, and baking bread. And the one thing that unites all of these energetic outlets, is that I have zero chance of ever doing these things professionally, and I have zero desire for that to change.

It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy a career as an e-sports legend, touring folk troubadour, or flour-dusted baker. At some point in my life I took tentative step onto all three paths. But I quickly learned that my enthusiasm wilted the minute I needed to do the minutia of each discipline. Whether studying the “meta” of the current video game, memorizing the fretboard, or accurately weighing out my measurements, I looked at what it took to be a master of the craft and said, “meh.” And thus hobbies they all became.

But I was never content to let storytelling become just a hobby, and that meant getting comfortable doing a lot of small things that made me uncomfortable. It meant slogging through the shitty parts of this career with a smile, knowing that they were necessary steps towards professional fulfillment. And the biggest slog of all in this industry is raising money. I avoided learning how to do it for years, because I thought it “wasn’t me” to think about business. I assumed my creative genius would naturally draw the money in like flies to glorious 4k honey. And then I finally grew the hell up.

And therein is the first tool you need if you want to raise money for a movie: a clear-eyed, money-oriented business persona.

It took career desperation (caused largely by the post-strike Hollywood contraction) and the failure to fund several projects to finally get me to focus on the art of raising money. And I belatedly realized that speaking to investors is no different than speaking to any other group of people you’re not native to— it helps to learn their language. And that language is decidedly NOT the language of film:

Film financing has less to do with cinema and everything to do with starting a small business. You must think of your movie like you’re trying to open a new restaurant or tech company in order to succeed.

Your vision of cinematic genius should get people to open the door. In many cases, this vision helped me walk out with a signed document. But 95% of the discussion in between these moments were far more akin to a interview with your bank than with The Hollywood Reporter. In the eyes of your investors, films are small businesses: they come with staff, costs, production schedules, legal risks, and (hopefully) revenue.1 If you haven’t thought out these facets in significant detail, they will not give you your money. Period.

And we’re talking way deeper than a few slides on your pitch deck, here. After you have a solid budget, you need to prove you know how to spend it. You need a financial prospectus, which includes:

1. Writing up a detailed, honest market analysis. When I pitched Gulf of America, I knew the exact box office dollars of the horror genre for the past five years, the sale price of at least 10 similar movies at festivals, the number of indie horror acquisitions at Shudder last year + the service’s subscriber count, and the projected change in markets for indie film both online and in theaters (thanks, Harvard!). I knew how likely it was the investor would make their money back (not very), and I was brutally honest about it. I spent a month researching this alone, and was asked 5-10 questions about it by every investor.

2. Providing a mathematical breakdown of at least twenty comparable films’ rate of return. What percentage of the budget did the film make back? Perfect numbers are hard to find, but estimates are not impossible (try BoxOfficeMojo). And don’t just include the movies that made massive multiples — honesty about the possibilities is a crucial way to build trust, and very few investors are going to believe that films are “sure-fire” investments anyway.

   

3. Detailing several potential distribution plans, and the costs + revenue forecasts for each. “We’ll go to Sundance,” is not a strategy, it’s a prayer. I used my twenty comparable films to make a series of businesses cases for how investment would be recouped, including streamer acquisition, traditional distribution, and self-distribution. I took the “percentage of budget made back” for each comparable film above and multiplied it by my own budget to get low, medium, and high estimates. Then I outlined the additional costs of each strategy, including festival fees, distributor’s P&A charges, the budget for self-marketing, and the percentages taken by sales agents and aggregators.

4. Developing a risk analysis and contingency plans. I was asked, in a meeting, “what happens if you die mid-film?” And I actually had an answer (Bennett, you’re up!). First-time directors are a risky bet… how do they know that I can handle the pressure, and what support systems are in place? What happens if it rains during the five-day outdoor shoot? How do you know that your budget is correct, and what happens if you’re half-way through the shoot and you run out of money. I was asked every single one of these questions multiple times. Come up with answers now.

5. Working with a lawyer to draft the investment terms and a contract. The last thing you want is to actually get someone interested, then tell them you don’t have any paperwork to sign. Getting that paperwork requires professionals. You might trust Claude and Google, I did not. These terms can be simple (“50%-50% split of all profits”), or they can be complex (“investors recoups 130% of pro-rata share of investment, after which future profits are splits 60%-40% between investor and producer groups with tiered box office bonuses for high performance”). The one certainty — these will be heavily negotiated. Hire a pro.

I don’t say all of this to scare people (okay, maybe I say a little of it to scare people). I say it because the honest truth is that most people online are more focused on wowing investors with their artistic genius than seriously grappling with the the financial legwork needed to finance a film. But I promise you that, if you get asked about any of the above points and do not have a well-reasoned answer, you will never get the check needed to make your dream come true. I should know— it happened to me many times.

More importantly, though, doing this legwork will make you a better filmmaker down line. Because you need to understand your market, your budget, your contracts, and your business to succeed long-term, especially as a Non-Dē filmmaker who prioritizes self-reliance. Just ask Mr. Herzog:

“Self-reliance means, among other things, that as a filmmaker I work on my own budgets … I have a clause in my contracts which allows me to look into the cashflow. Every single day I spend [time] with an accountant and the line producer just looking at the cash flow, because that’s where you’ll notice that something is going wrong.” - Werner Herzog

So, part one got a little long in the tooth, and there is still a lot more to talk about. But I want to stop here and see where I missed things, too. Got questions or want deeper dives into stuff? Sound off in the comments below!

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After calling cut on the final shot on Friday, the long weekend was spent juggling rest with wrap-out priorities. There’s a whole lot that goes into buttoning up a film that rarely gets the attention it deserves — but if you want to make one of these things yourself you better save a little money to pay your crew to:

• Return cameras, lights, and grip equipment to their rental houses

• Back up all data, including footage, audio, and BTS

• Sort out the props and set decoration that you bought, rented, or borrowed, and bring them back to their respective homes

• Ask for refunds and returns any costumes, props, or gear that you did not use (KEEP. ALL. RECEIPTS.) to see if you can get a little cash back

• Log all expenses and pay final invoices to cast and crew

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It’s not glamorous, but it has to happen — and it’s nearly impossible to do on your own. That said, on a film of this size I know fully well I’m going to be chipping away at some of these tasks, and I opted into a day of prop returns on Monday in order to cut down on some costs. My first job in LA, ever, was driving the prop truck for a KFC commercial, so it felt fittingly full-circle to end my first feature film in the cab of an Avon five-ton. Of course, I didn’t count on the flood.1

I’m bring dramatic (it’s my job) but Burbank was not a dry place this Monday. God bless our Art Department, who had to sort through a full truck’s worth of goods in the deluge before I even arrived. It took a few soggy hours to get everything sorted, but soon enough I was off on a 2 hour drive to Laguna Beach to unload a whole lotta cargo at a very generous benefactor’s house.

After a few grueling hours on the road, I landed in that perfect little beach town to find the sun peaking out and a rainbow over the hills. I wish I was making this up, but sometimes cliche stuff like that actually happens! Norm, the prop benefactor mentioned above, told me that must be a sign that our movie is good. And I believe him.

The logging of receipts is about as exciting as it sounds, but hey: it has to be done if you want to do this right. And we’re still doing it! But I think any log of the effort needed to make a feature film would be incomplete if I only mentioned the fun stuff. And your own attempt to make a film like this will conjurer up some very nasty headaches in the midst of your post-shoot celebrations if you’re not preparing for a strong wrap out.

But production — that messy, wonderful, never-enough-time-or-money all-out sprint to produce a film out of literally nothing — has wrapped. The extraordinary amount of space Gulf of America held in my head throughout this process has now been cleared. It’s both wonderful and a little bit unsettling, like car seat warmers or waterbeds. It’s going to take some time to get comfortable.

The final week put every skill we’d developed as a crew to the test, encompassing four locations in five days (including one midday company move and three separate set builds and strikes), practical special effects, the opening, closing, and climax of the film, stunts and intimacy coordinators, and a much-deserved wrap party thrown by my kickass wife.

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It also contained two of the hardest days of the entire shoot, days that I honestly think might have broken any other crew:

1. The “Big Horror” Day: Our second day in the basement set was the one day where we needed specialty shots, not just scenes. We had a custom made “flesh wall,” and exploding mock head, lots of fake blood, and several to-the-second precise camera movements to sell the biggest supernatural set-piece of the film. But it doesn’t matter if one of those shots is 2 seconds long or 2 minutes, it still requires the same amount of time to prep and light. On top of that, we needed to stop shooting and hour and a half early to give the crew time to get all of our gear back in the trucks and clean the set.

2. The “Three Days of Footage in Two Days” Day: The climax of the movie required, by far, the most coverage of anything we’d shot. On a far higher budget movie, we would have spent an entire day, if not a day and a half, on that scene. We, however, could only spare the morning— there were still two other scenes in that location we needed to get. It took hours of preparation, and a couple of creative midday solutions, but we got all we needed and more.

The good news is, we didn’t just get the shots, we got them without devolving into stressful in-fighting or resignation. We didn’t compromise our vision or let the ticking clock create resentment. Time and time again this crew showed up with creativity and kindness, and maybe that spirit, more than the logistics or the vision, is what my brain is missing so much today.

This final week also featured a whole lot of play. For a horror-tinged drama about toxic men and political polarization, shit sure got silly on set. I have always believed that even dark films should be made with joy, and that if you have fun on set the audience will have fun in their seats, and I know Gulf of America is going to prove me right. Every burst of giggles when fake severed fingers fell into frame, the awe and cheer at hearing a new actor nail a half-page monologue on the first take, and the endless in-jokes and summer camp vibes have all suffused this film with an irresistible energy. I am the luckiest director in the world to find collaborators who brought such love for their craft and for each other.

I’m already scheming the best ways to bring everyone back together for the next one. This cannot, will not, be the last thing we shoot as a crew. I’m proud and sad and exhausted and ecstatic and a little bit confused to have finished production, but my feelings for this gang of artists could not be clearer: we had the best goddamn crew in Los Angeles. And they made one hell of a movie.

Thursday night, right after “lunch” (at 5:30PM) we started rehearsing the single most complicated moment of the film— a one minute and forty-five second single-shot scene moving through two rooms and then outdoors, with four action cues, two VFX coordinated plates, heavy prosthetic makeup, and a timed car driving by. It took us over six hours just to set up the lights (during which we shot with nothing but sunlight), and four separate rehearsals during the day that slowly increased in speed. By the time we got to lunch, a anxiously excited buzz emanated from the crew… by the time lunch was over, the sun had fallen and it was time to see it in action.

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We took a few PAs and slowly walked through every single step of the shot with the camera, tweaking the lights each time to make sure the whole thing looked good. Halfway through, we decided the back section of the shot was too dark, and we needed to tweak some camera settings to check the lights anew. Shortly after that, we put our actors through the paces for a rehearsals. And shortly after, we called action.

I’ve been planning this shot for nearly 8 months— in drafts as early as last May I’d noted “this entire sequence will be one continuous shot” in the script— and we’d come back up to this location twice to practice it with an iPhone. All week, the moment had loomed over our schedule and psyches. And, just like that, we were ready to roll.

By the second take, we’d nailed it.

We got a third take of it, just to be safe, but all it took was two. Two attempts, cumulatively lasting less than 5 minutes, and nine or so months of preparation all clicked into place. The crew cheered, we checked the footage on the monitor, and we moved on.

I’m not going to lie, the rest of the day was a bit hard to get through. When you’ve spent so much time and energy preparing for something like a “oner” (thanks to The Studio for bringing it into the popular lexicon), there is a bit of an inevitable deflation when you’re finished with the shot, but not the day’s work. We had four more scenes to get after that shot, and had already put in four huge days out in the desert, over an hour from our homes. The crew was tired, I was tired, and I think it’s worth admitting that days like these are bound to happen. If you don’t, you can’t prepare for them, and they can really bite you.

In one, small way, it did. As the clock ticked, and everyone moved a bit slower than usual, I found myself combining shots and coverage to speed us up a little bit, turning 4-5 shot scenes into 2-3 shot scenes (remember: each new shot requires re-lighting, testing, and rehearsing). This is standard set work — and in most cases I’d already made these decisions in pre-production by prioritizing the shotlist — but there’s always the nagging fear that you’ll miss a shot you really want or need. In many cases, these combinations end up making shots better, too, forcing you to link moments in-camera in surprisingly and meaningful ways.

But around 11:30PM, on our last night in the desert, I cut a shot I shouldn’t have. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, because I loved the shot I replaced it with (it might be my favorite frame of the film so far), but when I woke up the next day and finally started to process the day, I knew I missed a layup. It’s a simple shot, too — the camera isn’t moving, the lighting was mostly set — but it was a key part of the storytelling and made the most of our incredible prosthetics work that Gabby did. The movie still functions without it, but it’s a little worse without it. Not much, but enough to make me squirm.

I moped for about 2 hours, took a shower, and then made a plan…

… And, once again, the movie is better for our limitations.

I called up all the relevant department heads, and we got to work. I explained the shot I wanted, apologized for my mistake, and outlined how I thought we could get the shot back in another location. It wasn’t easy — the prosthetic work needed on the actor takes almost 2 hours to apply, but in the midst of this discussion, we realized something incredible… that same prosthetic work could play in the rest of the scenes that day. Originally, I had scripted only one day of special makeup, knowing it took so long to get on. But, now that I’d pitched getting one more day with them to fix my mistake, the whole crew realized that it was better for the story to use the prosthetics in multiple scenes. Somehow, in my tired hazed, I’d stumbled into an even better decision.

Or, rather, we did. A key truth of directing is that the only people that think directors should get all the credit for a great film are those that have never worked on a set. Our cast and crew have striven tirelessly to make this movie amazing, and no one out there should ever assume the words “Directed by Nicholas Geisler” mean I made all the decisions (other than the bad ones!).

Shortly before the missed shot moment, we were setting up a scene that showed the aftermath of a car accident. The shot worked just how I drew it up, and we were getting exactly what we needed. And then Jill Otte, our costumer, came up and asked if she could put a shoe under the car, since the character had gotten their shoes knocked off in the accident. And suddenly, a good shot became a great one.

We only have one more week to go. Five days to wrap this film up and get into editing. But this team has proven itself 25 times over already, and I have little to worry about as we barrel towards the finish. I couldn’t trust these people more. And I can’t wait to show you what we’ve concocted.

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Moving “on-location” can be an incredibly tricky proposition, and doubly so when you’re way outside of town, in a hostile (but stunning) biome, and working at a set that has no running water or electricity. But that’s why you hire incredible producers, and Peter Heres, Bennett Cordon, Marcos Sotelo, and a whole army of production assistants built a bustling film hub in about 2 hours on Sunday morning. Our plan that first day was to show up around 8:00 AM and starting shooting by 10:00. I called action for the first time around 9:50.

Of course, every shoot has its pain points— busted light, a car that wouldn’t start (which we ended up pushing out of the sand and getting into gear— manual transmissions rock), a frigid first evening— but all were swiftly handled.

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Once those first challenges were handled, the incredible opportunity to expand the visual language of the film opened up. After week 1 was spent in cramped, claustrophobic motel rooms that trapped our characters with each other, shooting against the wide open and sandy planes and gnarled Joshua trees felt like we were taking the ankle weights off.

Day one featured a swooping, soaring 27’ Technocrane courtesy of Moose Media, and allowed us to get massive establishing shots and unnaturally high angles on our characters that had the entire crew (at least once) cheering once we called cut. Working with natural light has it’s disadvantages, of course (for some reason that pesky sun won’t just stay in one place), but it also allowed for stunning blue skies, soft golden-hour scenes, and unbelievable color. Big open spaces created chances to really run characters around the set, playing with when and how they close (or create) distance from each other.

With that, we’re officially past the halfway mark on Gulf of America, at least by number of days. After yesterday’s monster 9-page shoot, however, we’re well past the halfway point in the script. Today is another big one in terms of page count, but we’re moving indoors to the incredible diner set and thus a little less exposed to that meandering sunlight. I doubt you hear much from me until we’re back in the City of Angels… if we come back at all. I think the team is starting to like it up here.

Every battery cell in my body is plugged into the wall for a much-needed recharge, but all of the energy expended on Week 1 of Gulf of America was beautifully spent. And, while I cannot share any of the footage or production still just yet, I can tell you that everyone on set can feel the magic pouring into our gorgeous lenses. A big part of that is due to the wonder-trio of Cinematographer Matthew Lynn, Gaffer Nick Schulte, and Key Grip Matt Seeste, who have consistently photographed scenes that, to the trained eye, look like they cost 25x our budget.

But it is more than just the production stills that showcase how special this movie is… it’s the peels of laughter as crew set up and test the “bed eating monster,” it’s the boom operator noticing I just put my headset on and whispering the most graphic line I’ve ever written into the microphone to get a rise out of me, it’s Jill, our costumer, running upstairs with new shirt because she just knew I’d want a different option the minute we saw it screen before I even knew it myself, it’s the three-way conversation between the DP, AD, and actor to find an unexpected angle for a key line of dialogue while I was huddled with the producers, it’s the collective gasp when our “blood shower” special effect worked even better on camera than any of us had ever seen in the tests and practice shots.

The magic isn’t just the film, it’s the joyous hum that reverberates through set when incredible artists and even more incredible human beings come together.

Not everything went perfectly every day — I’m not sure it ever has in the history of movie-making— but the week was still, in this director’s estimation, perfect. We had to punt a scene on the first day, because we ran out of time, but on the second day we moved so efficiently we were able to film that punted scene with ease (the aforementioned blood shower, actually). Incredible new ideas from our actors inspired a change in blocking so drastic that we had to throw out our entire lighting and camera plan and build back it from scratch… allowing us to find the core of our characters in the process. We filmed a psychosexual dream sequence, and brutal bedroom drama breakup, and practical effects horror death scene all in the same day without missing a beat or losing the visual language of the film. My gorgeous, incredible wife surprised the whole crew with breakfast tacos and the production office turned a box of Cup O’ Noodles into a canvas for the culinary arts.

Shit hit the fan more than once, either with timing (we lost internet for a half hour, which sounds like a small thing until you realize all of our lights were rigged to the WiFi for quick control) or with logistics (that amazing dolly master shot we planned three weeks ago is tough when the track doesn’t fit through the bathroom door at the start of the shot), but there was never a point where the team had anything short of 100% belief that we’d overcome the setbacks. Guess what: we always did

And sure, maybe I have some blinders on — I’m fulfilling a lifelong dream, after all — and maybe people are more likely to flash a smile when I’m around then show their true feelings. But I know my way around a vibe, and the truth is that everywhere I turned on set their was a smile, a joke, and a great idea. Whatever the cause, I’m the luckiest director in the world to be able to say that.

The last two days of prep were wildly busy - with shifting schedules, our first set builds, final rehearsals (and the associated re-writes after incredible input from actors), contract signing, budget tinkering/testing, and accounts opened at prop houses, camera shops, costume depots, and supply warehouses all across town. Very little of it was easy; all of it has been handled.

Last night, our phenomenal cinematographer Matthew Lynn came over to watch some films (hopping around Under the Skin, Paris, TX, House of 1000 Corpses, and No Country for Old Men) and bat around final ideas, because new script lines = new blocking and shooting ideas, and pour over our inspirations. I got a rental car to take the burden off the pour Subaru and an entire village of friends and loved ones jumped into action to help coordinate the 10,000 things that needed to be picked up all over town. More rehearsals, more ideas, more rewrites (smaller ones!). I rented a hazer (the machine that makes movie fog) from Burbank, sides and call sheets were set up, revised, and sent. I know I did more than that, too, but for the life of me I can’t remember what.

Then, about an hour ago, I got to visit our sets. Our working, gorgeous (in a creepy way), ready to shoot sets. And time slowed down, the moment started to settle, and the realization began to dawn. We’re shooting a feature film in about 10 hours. And the vibes are immaculate. You know you have a good crew when the site representative at the location takes the time to tell you how much he enjoys the people you’ve put together…

But I could wax poetic about those people forever. The truth is, they are the ones begging me to put the damn laptop down and get to bed. And they’re right to do so. We’re about to spend a lot of time together, after all. Wish us luck!

The morning cruised by — I attended the costume fitting and hair/make-up tests for our lead, Abe Reeves, and we spent 40 minutes finding the character through the clothing (our costumer, like all of our department heads, absolutely rocks. I approved some more props, donated a ton of my own stuff to the art department, and met our lovely PAs who were driving around town picking up our production supplies. It’s pick-up day! Deposits sent and stuff acquired…

The middle of the day was spent in editing land: prepping project files, unboxing our beefy hard drives, and hooking them up to a cloud backup system (“if you don’t have the footage saved in three places, you don’t really have it”). I barely remembered to eat, but I did eat!

Around 2:30PM, the first rumblings of worry chimed on the text threads, but I had rehearsals scheduled with actors and our fabulous stunt coordinator, and we spent two glorious hours blocking the climax of the film for safety, cameras, and character-driven movement. Any time we can take two hours to honestly land in a Caravaggio painting, I’m having a good day — and they nailed it:

And then, the call came in…

Our second week location had to push our dates. Not by much, but when you’ve got a Swiss watch of a schedule, even a day of swing can leave you with a dirty Swatch.

And maybe, if we’d never been here, it would have. But if you think for a second that a group of passionate filmmakers afforded even that second’s worth of despair, then maybe the NonDē life isn’t for you.

Since that call came in just five hours ago, our 1st AD re-built the shooting schedule, our UPM secured new dates, our casting director cleared all actors’ schedules, I wrote two new “back-up” versions of scenes to handle any new scenario, our DP combined several scenes into similar coverage, and our production designer shifted the prep and strike day calendar, and you know what…

The movie is already better for it.

That’s not a coping mechanism. It’s the truth. We took a hard look at what might be jettisoned to fit our new dates, and suddenly several new opportunities opened up. What we lost in the old schedule was more than made up in better use of our current resources (you mean to tell me I get to use our Stedicam for three scenes now, and that the previously unavailable 27' crane is suddenly available?! Bring on the curveballs, please).

I cannot stress enough — every single person on this crew knew that this pitch, sooner or later, was coming. There hasn’t been a film made in the world that hasn’t had to deal with it. And you can either use the issue as an excuse to make a mediocre project, or you can treat the issue like the broken shark from Jaws and turn problems into opportunities.

Gulf of America, then, is going to need a bigger boat. Logging off now to go build it.

Morning - A tough start to the day: my wife’s and my car needs significant work done. Not only is this our one car, it’s supposed to be the family’s car in the movie (I’ll let you figure out which one worries me more, and which one should worry me more). No time to dwell, however, because it was off to meet the DP, Gaffer, and Key Grip for a carpool to Palmdale.

Mid-day - An hour in the car and one Subway 6” gas station sandwich later, we were at our key set in the desert, the 4 Aces Movie Ranch. God bless the owners and site reps there, because they have allowed us hours of essential prep time with each department, all in the midst of cleaning up after the biblical flood that cleared out the desert less than a month ago (the Old Testament vibes are strong).

With the cinematographer leading us, we went through every single shot of every single scene up there, in the order we’re shooting. We talked lighting both practically and creatively, time needed to pull off shots, and shot footage of complex movements and angles. It is little exaggeration to say the 2+ hours we spent up there planning will save us 20+ hours of worry on set in two weeks. And we inevitably created new shots, or improved ideas, by dint of just being together with the time and freedom to get creative.

Early Afternoon - I spent the whole car ride back on the phone with our Stunt Coordinator, who broke down the script and offered advice, shooting ideas, and guardrails for major scenes. Beyond feeling safe, a great stunt coordinator (like we have) is a huge creative partner, helping dictate how movement can reveal character and tell stories in ways big and small. Our final “fight” scene, in particular, has several nuanced and motivated maneuvers that cannot be explained by dialogue. Our coordinator showed the way.

Afternoon - Costume fittings for our Isaac, and tons of prop approvals. Once again feeling very lucky to have collaborators who want to tell stories with their work — whether it is a fake knife or a wardrobe change.

Evening - What was supposed to be an unholy movie night double feature (Paris, TX & House of 1000 Corpses) turned into 4 hours of scene work with two of our actors. To say the script and story are already 10 shades richer would be understatement — the entire tenor of the project has been amplified by to the courage and wisdom our cast is bringing to the pages. It’s still new, and still fresh, and trying to describe it all might spoil the still-gestating ideas… but I think again of the voice in my head telling me, just yesterday, not to hold too tightly to this project. It is all of our story to tell, now. I just have to get out of the way of the telling.

8:00 AM - Discussion of shotlist scheduling is tabled for various reasons, not the least of which is that we (me, DP, and 1st AD) are already a week ahead and all have little work to catc

h up on in the interim.

8:30 AM - Character discussions with actors, and some logistics about set travel and transport.

9:55 AM - UPM Bennett Cordon shows up, we hug like war veterans. Head out for…

10:15 - Location Scout #1

Is >1 week cutting it a little close to still be scouting new locations. Yes, Substack Bob, it is, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. After feeling a little underwhelmed as a team with our first selection of “INT. FRONT DESK” sets last week (it was on the second floor, which kills morale/time/ ability to light through windows; the space smelled funky in a bad way; crew parking sucked), we finally found a ground floor set for the same price with far better bones.

We spent the first hour with Bennett running through parking/logistics/availability/site necessities, DP and Gaffer checking power and lighting options, and PD and Art Director building blueprints and discussing furniture and art needs and costs. About an hour in, I polled everyone to ask if this set was worth pulling the trigger on. It was!

The second hour, we came back together to test out the blocking for key scenes and see what it exposed. Where do we need practical (i.e. in world) lights? What walls will we see? Where are essential props or pieces of furniture going to go? What areas do we need to avoid on screen, and how can we do so? Ultimately, we decided most of the blocking needs to be designed from scratch, but for a good reason— this space offers way more artistic capabilities!

12:45 PM - Burritos with Bennett at Las Palmas in Highland Park. Chicken Tinga and Chicharron, con todo. God-send.

1:25 PM - Location Scout #2

You know what is riskier than switching up a location this close to shooting? Not having one in the first place!

In our defense, the only location we didn’t have yet were roads to drive on. Since we’re not mounting cameras to cars or using a process trailer, our initial goal was to put our camera op in a car and just drive along the desert. That would have worked, but our awesome 1st AD knew of a private set of roads up north that you can own, cheaply, for a day of filming. Suddenly, we had more options — we could put up our own signs, film from the side of the road, and never worry about traffic.

That is, if the set looked good enough to be worth it…

Good news, everyone! Our awesome site rep drove us around the 130 acre property recounting the story of how his rescue llama farm has netted him over $500,000 (I wish I was making that up) until we found this lovely gnarled roadside tree and setting.

And would you look at that, folks, we have all of our locations!

3:45 PM - Finally get home to walk Luna, who was overjoyed to see me.

4:32 PM - One of those hot showers that is so overdue you’re not sure you will ever get out. Glorious.

5:15 PM - Catch up on emails and texts, especially approvals of all the props purchased today. Contract review and budget check-in. Approved as WGA signatory and SAG Deposit received and discussed. Slight script revisions due to new set constraints / opportunities.

7:40 PM - Built out the data management plan for our DIT and organized the editing workflow, and prepped drives for set. Bought hefty online data back-up plan because this shit makes me so nervous and you can never have enough copies of your baby out there.

10:25 PM - This Substack finished. Little feeling of peace and happiness. I truly believe this film has some magic to it, some ineffable sparkle permeating the cast and crew… Remind myself not to grip it too tight, and just let it keep on shinin’

Yesterday, I gave a minute-by-minute breakdown of my time. Today was chunked out a little more, but was no less busy. There were basically four blocks, and the first two are 1st AD specials.

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1. The Page Turn

Thank god I came up on writing on a TV show, or else this three hour morning would have left me curled up like a lil’ pillbug. The Page Turn is when the 1st AD goes through every single scene on a Zoom with the heads of each department and opens the floor for questions and concerns. A great AD, like we have on Gulf of America, leaves absolutely nothing to chance. Best to solve now, not on set. And the director is expected to have or facilitate answers for every question, because time is money out there and we’d rather save it now, while it is still cheap.

Some questions that were lobbed include:

• “How many days have passed since this character’s last manicure?”

• “Why did our mosquito budget double?”1

• “Are you in charge of the blood shower, or are we?”2

• “Does the vibrator have a light on it? Can it?”3

• “Are these mosquito bites real or a psychological manifestation?”4

• “Do you think the 2nd AD can pass as a body double in this scene?”5

• “Seriously do we really need live mosquitos.”6

Despite some of the necessary tedium, it is a fun exercise where lots of collaboration springs up and little details determined. And it is often the first time different departments can meet and weigh in together, though most certainly not the last.

2. The One Liner

The gang refilled coffee and emptied bladders and came back to discuss the call times, schedules, and scenes of every single shoot day, all raising flags when needed. Does the art department have enough time to dress the set before we shoot and clear it before we leave? Can electric start lighting later scenes in advance, or will the necessary lights be in use when shooting earlier scenes? Will Hair and Make-up be able to execute any change-overs or special prosthetics in between scenes, or will we need to take a break? When does the sun set, and what scenes need sunlight? There are billions of variables to juggle, and we did our best to help the AD keep them in the air.

3. Character Work

We finished the script and schedule around 12:30 PM, and I walked the pup and fielded some props questions before getting on the phone with a few of our actors to break down scenes until roughly 4:00.

One of our chief goals as a filmmaking team, and the overall goal of the first half of this day, is to be so dialed in with logistics and creative decisions in advance that, when we show up, the actors are free to bring the scenes to life. Our work, by then, should be invisible.

But actors need to prepare, too, and it is always my great joy to do it with them. While I am always free to text ideas and interpretations back and forth when lighting strikes, today we hopped on the phone and just read down the lines, asking each other questions and digging into the how and why of key moments.

There are no “answers” here, no prescriptive notions of the role or the line readings. We shared a lot of personal stories, discussed the initial sparks of scenes, dove off on wild tangents… all of which we’ll have to draw on once we get to set. Aligning on the macro now to handle the micro, later.

And, with the caliber of our actors, I am one lucky director…

4. Everything Else

After 2 hours of catching up on emails and texts with department heads, the wife wisely pulled me off the couch to go grab dinner down the block and reset. It helped enormously, but I still came back to:

• Buy our data storage solutions (3x6TB SSDs, 2x24TB RAID0 HDD, for all you nerds)

• Approve first batch of props

• Approve blood color and consitency

• Schedule location scouts for driving shots

• Finalize 2 investor contracts

• Help a buddy self-tape an audition

• Listen to the following song on repeat 16 times

It’s midnight. I’m “tired” (body yes, brain nowhere close). I’m out.

A lot of very talented and generous people had to come together very, very quickly to make this happen, and they deserve their flowers. But it’s 10:30PM, and I still have paint colors to approve. so I will hold for the day where I can give this crew and our investors the due they deserve…

For now, I’m going to just lay today out as it occured. No analysis, no notes— just a clean look at what goes into making a movie. My goal is to this every day, after we wrap, so that you can see it all — every nut and bolt! — as it happens, but forgive me when fires alight and sleep schedules take a hit if I miss a day or two:

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1st Day of Pre-Production (January 18th)

8:15 AM - Started a load of laundry, and a pot of coffee. Did 10 push-ups for some reason.

8:30 AM - Producer Peter Heres arrives at the house, contacts and to-dos split up.

9:00 - 11:00 AM - Shotlist Timing call with 1st AD and DP, running through every shot on the first week of filming to determine order of shooting and if schedule needs re-arranging (none!)

11:00 - 12:30 PM - Production Design budget review and art department labor calendar discussion, including finding adequate pre-builds and strike days.

12:30- 12:55 PM - Walk in the sun with our dog, Luna. Picked up burgers and salads at the Win-Dow for lunch (standing)

1:00- 1:30 PM - Rehearsal schedules and actor logistics with 1st Team GOD Peter Heres

1:30 - 2:13 PM - Revised script to fit new “monster wall” gag that we landed on in the production design meeting (so much better) and review of alternate locations for driving shots thanks to recommendation from 1st AD in shotlist call.

2:14 - 2:28 PM - Laid in bed and called it a nap.

2:30 - 3:00 PM - Zoom with VFX consultants and DP to plan out necessary coverage for two big special effects scenes.

3:00 - 4:20 PM - Tested and picked up the “trap door” necessary for a practical effect of a man-eating bed (no, not the Nightmare on Elm Street version, it’s different). Geeked out heavily over how cool it is.

4:20 - 4:45 PM - Call with costumes to discuss wardrobe changes suggested by actor to fit direction of role — love ‘em — while walking Luna.

4:45 - 5:30 PM - Dropped of the car at the mechanics because of course all the check engine lights went on yesterday and of course it’s a picture car that has to play in the movie. Also, got my hair cut!

5:30 - 5:45 PM - Chatted with a friend who specializes in film PR to build a schedule of necessary assets to get on set and timelines for their release

5:45 - 6:30 PM - Showed my wife the cool practical gag. Ordered take-out and recounted our days on the couch.

6:30 - 9:00 PM - Caught up on production emails, wrote up game plans for a) new monster wall gag described above and b) next steps on bed eating gag for the entire production team.

9:00 - 9:54 PM - Call times meeting with PD, DP, 1st AD, and Producers to discuss when all departments need to arrive to set, and any necessary scheduling changes necessary (some!)

9:55 - 10:21 PM - Reviewed auditions for final role and sent decision to casting director.

10:22PM - Remembered to fold my laundry

I’m sure I’ve missed things… it was just that kind of day. But I am going to bed ecstatic that I have the right team to make this movie really f-ing good. Of course, this isn’t really the first day of pre-production. I’ve been prepping this since last January. But for a first full day of prep, it was a spectacular one. Progress made on all major issues and outstanding questions, and spirits high. Might as well keep it going!

Since the last post, we’ve made huge strides, including…

1. Locking all but one principal cast! Announcement to come…

2. Re-writing the script one more time (yeah, right) to get down to 82 pages, with 8 smaller scenes either omitted or blended into previous scenes. The amount of scheduling headaches this alleviated, and the time it frees up to have more fun in other scenes, was astronomical.

3. Freaking out over a flooded set… and then finding out it was ultimately okay to us. See picture above. We only had to push those scenes back one week. I, however, lost far more than a week on my lifespan due to stress:

4. Completing our first all-hands location scout. And, good news, everything should work! Including the scene shot at a working oil derrick (which, having written it, flies in the face of all my “write for the budget” advice but… meh!).

5. Finished the shotlist and camera plots. More to come on this later but… if you’re not shot listing and plotting out cameras in pre-pro, and you get a NonDē movie made on time and on budget, I think you might be a warlock.

Now… on to my inspirations!

I first contributed to the FilmStack Daily Inspiration series 120 days ago.

In that long-ago era, there was no Film Category on Substack, Gulf of America was still missing over half of its budget, and there still was no wedding ring on my finger… Suffice it to say, I think the positive momentum in all of the above categories owes it’s success, in large part, to the NonDē community that is being built with such love and intention here on Substack.1 Thanks, , for keeping it alive!

Production begins on our feature film Gulf of America in a little over two weeks (!!!) and, while the pile of work ahead of us is massive, it is far from overwhelming. That I feel so calm and confident this close to our start date is thanks to incredible team of producers and department heads surrounding me. Any and all credit that this film gets will be thanks to them. And while the deluge of inspiration that’s flooded into my life since that I wrote that first Inspo post has been astounding, it’s mostly flowing from my collaborators. I have them to thank first and foremost.

Brilliant works of art, too, have fed my soul and shot list in ways great and small, including the Fred Hoyle’s novel The Black Cloud, a Michael Curtiz double feature of White Christmas and The Breaking Point, bootleg clips of the Philip Seymor Hoffman / John C. Reilly rendition of Hard West, and far-too-late deep dive into Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s album F♯ A♯ ∞ (thanks, Bennett).

But I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge a far thornier, but no less essential, well of inspiration, especially for a horror film like Gulf of America…

Rage, and its curdled cousin, Impotence.

If the title and genre didn’t give it away, I wrote this film in a deep swirl of negative emotions and existential fear. Last December, as the fever that inspired the opening scenes gave way, I returned to a Los Angeles that was literally on fire. That the blazes overtaking the city felt both real and metaphorical only added to the terror. Shortly afterwards, we inaugurated a criminal conman as President who threw gasoline on those flames in the form of heavily-armored military occupation of the city. Somewhere in there, he also felt it appropriate to take a tiny-fingered sharpie to our maps in feed his own ego and spark endless division and debate by renaming the body of water under Alabama. Thanks for the movie title, I guess…

I won’t spend the rest of this post listing out the ways, big and small, that global events only further deepened the depressed rage that overtook me through the first half of 2025, but I will speak to my initial response to it… Nothing.

For a great many days, I could hardly pull myself out of bed, much less write. As I doomscrolled with the rest of the world, and as I delved deeper into the web of division and darkness so brazenly ensnaring us, I succumbed to the hopelessness so commonly tied to modern political awareness. That this numbness was no accident, but the entire goal of “flooding the zone” strategy the Administration too, is the only thing that eventually woke me back up (that stubborn, “if you want me to do it, I hate it” teenage punk ethos saves me once again).

Then, as I finally woke up, the same rage and depression that caused those feelings of impotence helped me break through it.

Pouring those emotions into Gulf of America quite literally saved me in 2025, but this week was a brutal reminder that the forces inspiring the film are is far from destroyed. The murder of Renee Good at the hands of the federal government once more submerged me the icy water of feeble hopelessness. Write and create all I wanted, I still felt hollow, inadequate, and unable to make sense of the vast circumstances that led to her death, and my own place and complicity - as an American, as an artist, as a human being - surrounding it. Who the fuck am I to speak to these issues, anyway? What the fuck is the point of speaking at all? Better to just burn something down, isn’t it?

It was, once more, the rage that wrested me back. Anger is a difficult emotion, but I have never believed it is a wholly unwarranted one. All feelings, even negative ones, have their place and purpose in our lives. And as I watched a U.S. Cabinet member gleefully slander a mother of three using bold-faces lies even George Orwell would have considered “narrative overkill,” that initial inspiration roared back. Because not all inspiration can, or should, be “inspiring.” The world is not yet a fair nor perfect place, and our desire for it to be so should not blind us to the challenges and horrors that we must endure to get there.

We’ve since seen the videos, we know that the government is lying. And yet even in the face of the terror she was confronted with, Renee Good did not stoop to her tormentors level. She did not succumb to their horrors. She fought for what she believed in, but she retained her empathy and humanity throughout the fight. And I can think of nothing in the world more inspiring than her example, as sad as I am over the circumstances that exposed it.

Her example will not placate my rage, my fear, or my sense of impotence. It will not excuse or ameliorate what happened to Good in even the slightest way. But it will challenge me to overcome my fears and depression and empower me to push a little farther each. And I pray that, the next time I write a Daily Inspiration, we’ve used her inspiration to be a little bit better.

In the meantime, we’ve now hired all but one of our department heads, are either closed on or in final negotiations with the principal cast, conducted several hours of camera and lens tests, and are two rounds deep into scene-by-scene shot lists/diagrams/per-visualizations:

It’s quickly becoming apparent that I will not be able to keep this blog going “as it happens,” but rather looking 2-3 months back with each post. Still, the time spent ruminating on each decision and it’s impact feels far more valuable to anyone else chasing the “One Year Feature Film” path I laid out a few weeks ago. So, with the tantalizing flash-forward of production out of the way, let’s travel back to early May, when I first sat down with my producer, Bennett Cordon, to sketch out an investor-friendly budget for this film…

Before I sought out financing, I had to know what that financing was paying for. As I’ve said before, there comes a point where you must remove your artists’ beret and put on the businessperson’s puffy vest, as douchey as it may feel.

But you’re going out to investors, so it doesn’t hurt to remember that you’re asking for an investment. Not a loan, not blank check, but a chunk of capital in exchange for a percentage of returns. You can bet your Patagonia-wearing ass they’re going to ask if the $100,000 check you’ve requested covers fifty percent of the film or five. That answer, of course, depends on whether you’re making a $200,000 or a $2,000,000 film.

When I first started producing, all I wanted was to see a real film budget to understand how the hell people estimated these things in advance. I felt like I was more or less pulling number our of thin air and praying they held… But no one posts their budgets online (to be fair, this is for a few very good reasons).1 The only real way to learn how to create a film’s preliminary budget is research, practice, and persistence. The good news is, getting that practice isn’t that hard.

And, for your producing pleasure, Salt Cellar Films even has a giant, free Google Sheet to get you going!

So crack your knuckles, whip out the abacus, and let’s get to number crunching:

1. Use the union minimums to set a reasonable range for your script and financing opportunities.

Look at the SAG tiers, then look up a few movies in each range. How similar, in both tone and scope, are your scenes and available resources? If you plan to use SAG actors (which we did), use these minimums to get the budget started (but be sure to add 30% for agents fees and union contributions… you’ll thank me later). Look at that, you have hard numbers for something!

Now, you may want to budget higher than minimum, especially if you’re planning to try and attract more popular talent. That said, don’t be afraid to set a number and stick to it— these minimums exist for a reason, but so do the ranges— knowing your upper limit for each union helps shape your budget and can also help ensure investors you won’t balloon over a certain number, which protects their equity percentage (and yes, I’ve been asked this exact question many times).

2. Overestimate your crew size now to save money later

Films have been made solo, of course, or with nothing but a Producer, Sound Operator, and Director of Photographer. That may be the route you take, but more crew on set usually means more time to shoot (an extra grip may cost money, but the scene will be lit faster for you to start rolling). If you’ve got complicated shots or high-page count days, having more crew may end up saving you money if it allows you to cut down on total shoot days. Just a thought… And, no matter how talented you are, talented collaborators will inevitably make the film better.

Plus, some crew members are non-negotiable. Are you shooting sex scenes? You may need an intimacy coordinator. Shooting at the beach? Most states require a lifeguard. And, while it should go without saying, don’t expect to get an animal in the picture without an animal trainer, unless you’re the forward-thinking geniuses behind Good Boy.

3. List out every single item that will cost money in the script in a spreadsheet.

When in doubt, add it to the list, then Santa Claus the hell out of it (check it twice). This list should include: locations, props, number of outfit changes (remember – a new day in the story usually requires characters to change), cars that appear on screen, stunts, animals, special effects or practical lighting gags, story-specific pieces of set decoration, all speaking roles and estimated extras (even if you don’t pay them, you may want to feed them!), production insurance and payroll fees (2% of payroll, usually), local film permits, extras to make public scenes feel real, specialty equipment (such as jibs for high angle shots, car rigs, fish-eye lens, etc.), lunches for crew, walkie-talkie rentals, printer paper for scripts and sides, etc. etc. etc.

Overdo this now, and worry about where to save money later. The point isn’t just to save money, it’s to…

4. See what you can get for free, or heavily discounted, from friends.

Hopefully you’ve already written a shootable low budget script, but I highly recommend that you don’t start by cutting costs, but by building your cinematic wish list for the “if money was no object” film.

You’ll lose a lot of this list down the line, but you never know until you try. Two years ago, I had a director who wanted a very high, straight overhead, rotating shot for his short film. Our initial quotes were $10k, which was going to be impossible. Still, I called up a couple of crane companies, explaining how low our budget was, and the last one cut us a deal for 80% off, so long as we let him package it with a new crane operator who was training to use the equipment. Showcasing savings like this can also help entice investors by proving you’re putting high quality work on screen – telling people I would edit this film for free was a huge boon when I was pitching the project around, because I could promise more of the money went to crew and cameras.

5. Get on the phone and price out your wishlist item by item.

Call up friends who have produced shorts or have worked in certain departments (department heads are best) and ask them what reasonable rates are for each job and the equipment / crew they may need. Go to a few rental houses, tell them your budget, and get ranges on camera and lens packages. Scour Sharegrid, Gigster, and Peerspace for prices on equipment and sets. Do your homework and, this is crucial, always start with the highest estimates in your range—it’s always more fun to lower the number later than to raise it.

6. Add a contingency fee, and mean it.

If you’re an experienced producer with confidence in your numbers, something like 15% is fine. If you’re greener, give yourself as much buffer as possible: 20-25% of the production budget. Trust me – even if this “inflates” the final number, it tells your investors that you’re serious about making the film correctly, ensures you won’t run out of money mid-shoot, and insulates you from making very difficult phone calls when some of your preliminary estimates inevitably end up short. Salt Cellar always budgets a 10% contingency fee into our final budget, too, to ensure we have enough money for surprises like overtime or broken equipment… Living life on the edge is fun and all, but I honestly consider this non-negotiable.

7. Adapt your prelim into three separate budgets – the dream scenario, realistic option, and bare minimum

When crafting our budget for Gulf of America, we set the maximum at $500k (the top range for a WGA Low Budget Feature), the sweet spot at $400k, and the bare minimum at $250k. For the dream budget, we left in most of the bells and whistles and planned to shoot for 18 days. For the realistic shoot, we cut to 15 days, but preserved SAG Moderate-Low Budget rates and 1 day with a Technocrane for a key specialty shot. For the $250k, we cut to 12 days and planned to use an old Black Magic camera and cannon lens set we already own, plus only 1-2 known actors. While you can shoot a film for far less than a quarter million, I personally believed that raising at least $250k to shoot this story was worth waiting for, even if money didn’t come in quickly, for both the quality of the film and experience gained pitching the story to investors.

8. Revise, revise, revise.

Your budget will change as you dive deeper into production, but you’ll be shocked how often it changes for the better, too. A location may end up being free, your writer may realize an “essential” prop is not actually a key part of the movie anymore, your DP may have a friend at a rental house and can get a big discount on lenses and cameras. The goal here isn’t to get the budget right, but to have a well-reasoned, deeply researched, and viable estimate from which to base your fundraising. You won’t get the number exactly right — no one expects you to — but you can pitch investors with confidence that, if they give you the money, you can make the film.

In the 1-Year film plan, it’s only April, but it’s high time to start pulling in some investment. Step 1 is determining how much of an investment you actually need. Step 2 is convincing the rich folk of the world this is an investment worth making. To do that, you need a plan. So Cue up Flight of the Concords and get ready to dive into “Business Time…” next week!

Share The One Year Feature Film: From Script to Set in 366 Days

My strike friends and I have traded countless drafts, staged table reads, frequented (too many?) happy hours, and formed political action groups for protests and elections. But only one of them (so far) has produced, directed, and premiered a 22-minute short film featuring two fight scenes and extensive VFX with us… Kor Adana, a writer on Mr. Robot and Dune: Prophecy and incredible up-and-coming director.

“One Last Round” is a grounded, family-driven sci-fi drama starring Jake McDorman and Ana Cruz Kayne that touches on grief, love, and artificial intelligence. When Renee receives news of her terminal illness, she and her husband debate an impossible decision: aggressive therapy to add a couple more years with loved ones, or sacrifice herself now to create a “Ripple”-- a digital snapshot of her consciousness that she can leave behind for her daughter. It’s a haunting, lovely story that is becoming less futuristic by the minute…

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I could write an entire Substack about everything we learned on this short (I both produced and edited it through Salt Cellar Films), from working with stunt choreographers and studio teachers to blocking and editing complex VFX shots and fight scenes, but suffice it to say I wouldn’t be capable of making Gulf of America next year without working with Kor this year. And why would I tell you what I learned from shooting OLR when Kor does it so much better?!

Compromises are inevitable. Either due to budget, cast/crew, locations, or other unforeseen road blocks- you’re going to have to pivot to keep the train going. The one thing that helped me navigate all the changes and challenges is being super clear about the heartbeat of the film. I had to identify the emotional attachment between the viewer and the story and once I did, I didn’t compromise on anything that would jeopardize that connection. For “One Last Round,” the top priority for me was to make sure that you fell in love with this family… that you could empathize with them and invest in their future. Even though I had to compromise on other aspects of bringing this story to life, I kept the family bond as my north star. My advice to anyone making a film is to identify those emotional/thematic “non-negotiable” and be very clear with your cast and crew about why they are essential. Keeping that thread alive will help you accept the other concessions you will invariably need to make.

-Kor Adana, on his advice for short filmmakers

I am not at all surprised, but incredibly proud, to say that “One Last Round” has gotten so much well-deserved recognition since our premier at Hollyshorts. Earning that recognition was no accident, however, and I have a lot to be thankful for in watching Kor navigate distribution and PR even while we were on set, including grabbing key art, casting the right talent, looping in agents and managers in pre-production, and diving deep into festival targets and potential interview opportunities before shooting. He led a masterclass in passionate, intelligent, and persistent advocacy for his art, and I am overjoyed to see it paying off.

So, if you happen to know a person, or you happen to BE the person voting for the Academy, it’s my turn to advocate… WATCH. THIS. FILM. It is a brilliant, tragic, and prescient look at an all-too-familiar future, but the grounding in love and family, to me, undeniably sets it apart. I’m honored to share it, and to have had a small part in making it.

If you’re able, please find ONE LAST ROUND in the Academy Screening Room… I’d love to discuss it with you!

• I got married! You’re reading the words of a kept man, and a happily kept one at that. The weekend of our wedding was the happiest weekend of my young life — filled with family, community, good food and even better music. And it was a prescient reminder that, no matter what happens in my professional life, true fulfillment comes from loving and being loved. I’m a lucky man.

• We reached 85% of our financing. Don’t tell the new wife, but there were a couple of very exciting financing phone calls leading up to the big day that I absolutely did not take. I was 100% focused on the wedding.1

• I changed the name of this blog. And all of that is because, barring the sort of calamity that blows away our plans…

We have set the start of principal photography for January 26th, 2026! We’re shooting this film!

I’m not going to lie, it still feels awfully surreal. I’ve had so many projects get close, so many near misses and dashed hopes, that it doesn’t quite feel real to say this one is actually going to go.

But we have enough money for production. Budgets are tightening up, department heads being interviewed and hired, locations scouted. Much coffee has been shared with actors discussing the roles and nearly 1,000 audition tapes have poured in. I plan to cover all of it in the upcoming posts, in depth, but first I need to convince myself that it is actually happening.

As I’ve detailed before, I got the idea for this film last December, during a noxious bout of food poisoning. I didn’t know if it would lead anywhere for a few weeks, turning it over in my head to figure out if it was worth pursuing. By January 15th, I had enough scenes to start playing with a structure. By February, apparently, I was ready to write:

Now, just over a year later, I’m about to be on a film set bringing this literal fever dream to life. One year from script to set… It’s manic, it’s reckless, it’s joyous. It’s the most fulfilling creative endeavor of my entire life. I couldn’t recommend it more. The schedule, in hindsight, reeks of an undergraduate’s sweetly innocent, drug-addled ambition.

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The “Bulletproof” One-Year Film Framework

January

• Story and scene beats written

• Half of an outline written, then abandoned when I realized I had no third act.

• Despair.

February

• Blindly begin writing first draft.

• More despair.

• Idea for third act comes in middle of night, despair temporarily banished!

March

• First draft completed!

• Overwhelmed by first draft’s mediocrity.

• Yeah, you guessed it, more despair. But that’s the rule of threes for you.

April

• Second draft sent to my wife (Reader #1!) for notes and thoughts. She becomes both supportive and worried for my psychological well-being upon reading, then suggests the craziest, nastiest scene in the whole film. I write it.

• Third draft sent to my producing partner long-time collaborator, Bennett Cordon.

• Three days spent waiting for notes, sure Bennett thinks I’m a total hack. He, luckily, does not!

May

• First investors approached about interest in the film, script sent.

• Bennett and I sketch out feasibility of several budgets using the numbers from the last few short films to extrapolate.

• Continued re-writes and notes passes on the script.

June

• More re-writes, this time to cut costs and hit our proposed budget (under $500k)

• Writing of financial prospectus, including investor terms, comparable films, short synopsis, etc.

  • This will be the next post, by the way!

• First two investors agree to partially fund the film!

July

• Many, many more re-writes, especially as the movie begins to take shape and trusted partners send in notes and considerations.

• Budget “locked” at $450k.

• Massive list of potential investors drafted and pitch deck started

August

• Visual pitch deck created, iterated on, and sent to investors.

  • This is the first time in nearly 3 months I got to be “creative” again, as I’d spent the last months writing legal and financial documents. It feels amazing.

• Rejection. So, so much rejection. Then…

• Second and third investors agree to help fund the film!

• Hired an entertainment lawyer to begin drafting contracts and investor notes.

September

• The LLC for the film is created, including operating agreement, draft investor notes, and rights ownership.

• Bank accounts opened and business credit cards established.

• First location scouts spark more re-writes, as I attempt to fit the script to our sets wherever possible.

  • So. Many. More. Re-writes. It truly never ends.

October

• I GET MARRIED!

• Also, more investors, more rewrites, and a LOT more rejection.

• Style guide drafted to share with potential department heads.

• Associate Producer brought on board as tasks begin to pile up

November

• Financial and legal hellscape (for me) as contracts are negotiated, investor notes squared away, the operating agreement entirely re-written.

• Script re-written, with goal to cut 5-6 pages and ease production and budget concerns

• Desperately wondered when the creative part of this endeavor starts again, as I’ve been stuck on the business end of filmmaking for the better half of the year.

• Interviews scheduled with Cinematographers, Hair & Make Up, Costumes, and Production Designers. Talks with them re-ignite the creative spark immediately.

• Casting call goes out on Actors Access, auditions reviewed and callbacks scheduled for early December.

After another amazing call, financing threshold (85% of production funds) crossed to green light the movie!

December (Planned)

• Department heads hired.

• Location scouts begin in earnest with deposits hitting the bank accounts.

• Lead roles fully cast.

• Rough shot list created.

• Rough production schedule created.

• Final $25k raised for production (anyone out there interested?!)

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Just writing this schedule out makes me giddy… and not a little bit concerned that I’m not actually sitting in a padded room somewhere dreaming all of this. But, and I truly mean this, the one-year feature is eminently doable if you just chip away at these pieces month by month. It’s been fast, but at no point was it unbearably so.2 I believed in this film, I believed in this script, and I found collaborators who felt the same way.

And, if I can give any advice on how to get through it, I would say that my commitment to making this film in a year was crucial to getting it done. At some point, I said “we’re shooting this no later than Spring of 2026, no matter how much money we have.” And what do you know, it helped the money come in.

To be sure, this movie came together faster than most— both creatively, financially, and logistically. I stumbled into the right idea, one that leveraged my current opportunities and strengths, and felt thematically rich enough to devote three breathless months writing. I’d spent a year meeting financiers for another (failed) film, and had a Rolodex already primed for this one.

But no matter the context, I’m spending today celebrating. I get to do the thing that makes me happiest in the world — direct a film — in just over two months. Come January 26th, a few loose scribbles will become a few terabytes of scenes. Welcome to the One-Year Film, Substack. And if the schedule above looks as fun to you as it does to me, you’ve got a month left to make up your mind and take the plunge, too.