The Jeff Crilley Show

Jeff Crilley sits down with three key figures behind the Dallas International Film Festival — Artistic Director James Faust, Dallas Film Commissioner Katie Schuck, and Creative Director Austin Flores — as the festival approaches its twentieth anniversary....

Show Notes

The Dallas International Film Festival is turning 20, and Jeff Crilley brings three of the people running it into the studio to talk about what's in store this year — and where Dallas filmmaking is headed.

James Faust, the festival's Artistic Director, has been involved since the beginning. He recounts the early days of partnering with AFI and rattles off a guest list that includes Robert De Niro, Charlize Theron, Jeremy Renner (who showed up with The Hurt Locker before anyone knew it was an Oscar film), and Adrian Brody. Dallas Film Commissioner Katie Schuck explains how Texas's newly funded incentive program and the Taylor Sheridan effect have turned DFW into the state's top production hub. Creative Director Austin Flores breaks down this year's industry conference, featuring keynotes from Warner Brothers co-chair Michael DeLuca and Sing Sing director Greg Kwedar, plus 11 panels on producing, funding, documentary filmmaking, and more.

The group also gets into the AI question head-on — where it might help with color correction or sound sweetening, and where it crosses a line into replacing real people on set. James shares a specific example of a Swedish film that used AI to clone actors' voices for an English dub, and why that felt like a step too far.

This year's festival screens 100+ films from around the world at Cinematopolis and the Texas Theater, with the conference hosted at the Virgin Hotels Dallas. Opening night features The Last Shot with Jaime Pressly, Baron Davis, and Dallas native Johnny Simmons.

diffdallas.org

What is The Jeff Crilley Show?

Jeff Crilley is a former news reporter, who spent more than 25 years in newsrooms across the country. He’s an Emmy Award winning journalist, who decided to make the jump from news in 2008, when he founded his own PR Firm, Real News Public Relations.

Today, the firm has more than 100 clients, and Jeff continues to tell the stories of interesting people he meets along the way.

These are those stories.

Yeah. Let's not overcomplicate it. Coming up next on The Jeff Crilley Show, we are just days away from the Dallas International Film Festival. We'll be talking to three of the driving forces behind this year's big event next. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company, and we now have over a 100 clients. And we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, this is an annual event for The Jeff Crilley Show. I like to invite the folks behind the Dallas International Film Festival on my show to talk about this year's event, and and we're just days away. And so I have three of the driving forces in the studio. To my left, Katie Schuck. She is the Dallas film commissioner. James Faust, he is the artistic director for this year's event. And then Austin Flores Flores, who is the creative director. Thank you for coming on the show. So why don't we start with you, James? Because you were there at the very beginning. Yeah. I'm old. Yes. Alright. Twenty years ago, what what was it like? It it was it was different when we we got into this thing with, our founders Michael Caine and, Lanier Timberland. And the idea was to work with the city to create a festival, an event, a city festival and working with them, and we hooked up with AFI, American Film Institute, and created AFI Dallas International Film Festival, an idea to bring people and show the greatness of film and film production and the world of film from all over the world in Dallas. And so it's been it's been an amazing journey to see where we started as these three guys trying to figure something out to, oh my god, it's been twenty years. Alright. This is staying with you for a second. Do a little name dropping. Who are some of the celebs who have come in over the last twenty years? Oh my god. Let's see. Well, let's see. Marvin Hamlisch, Charlize Theron has been has has been through here. The Wilson brothers, Owen and Luke Wilson have come through. Robert De Niro has has came out one year. It's been I think there's been so many, Jeff. It's it's kind of almost scary. Jeremy Renner, we actually had Jeremy Renner in 2009 with The Hurt Locker. He and Captain Bigelow came out before that movie was even thought to be this Oscar quality thing. So in oh, yeah. Adrian Brody, I mean, I I before he gave long speeches, Adrian Brody was with with Ryan You didn't have to play him out. Play him off this thing. Yeah. It was. He's just he's just happy to be here. But yeah. So it's it's been it's been great to show the, you know, the amount of celebrities we've had over the years as well as introducing new people, new filmmakers such as David Lowry started with us career, and now he's doing Disney movies and Star Wars things. And he's got his new movie coming out this week with Anne Hathaway. So, yeah, it's been it's been a great journey to have to see the top and who's next. Alright. Austin, why don't you piggyback on that? What what can people expect this year? What if they if they attend, it's a how how many days is the event? So for the festival itself, I believe it is seven days. Mhmm. For the conference, it's gonna be the first weekend, so three days. So we have, believe, 11 panels programmed. We have two really great keynotes. One with Michael DeLuca, who is the co CEO of the Warner Brothers Motion Picture motion picture group. Chair, And then we also have Greg Kadar who directed sorry. Directed Sing Sing, co wrote Train Dreams with Clint Bentley. So we are super super excited to have both of them, but we also have several other panels focusing on like production producing on locations, on finding money in terms of like grant and producers helping find money. Yes. But then also a writer's room and a couple other things focusing on like documentary side of the world. So we're super super stoked to have all these people come in. Alright. Katie, what is this? What does this mean to Dallas? Oh, everything. It's so wonderful to have a festival of this caliber here in the city. You know, twenty years is is really impressive and we've had such wonderful turnout. And Dallas is really known as an exhibition city. We are really full of a lot of theater goers. Cinephiles are alive and well here in Dallas and we turn out and come to the movies, and there's nothing better than having this type of programming in your backyard. We're gonna pull up the website, and as we scroll around the website, you guys got a a really nice honor, about a year ago. It you qualify for the Oscars if if Yeah. The so the Dallas International Film Festival is one of and I believe it's maybe 80 festivals in the world that are qualifying for short films. So if your short film, which is the Oscars, how did how does a short film get nominated? Well, they play a film festival that is qualifying of the 12 to 13,000 festivals in the world, and only, again, 80 of them are qualifying. You win that festival in narrative short, documentary short, or animated short, and that makes your film qualified for a nomination, which is amazing. But then there's also a different qualification happening that this Katie could speak more to. That's right. So the Academy actually named Dallas as one of their six qualified cities. So filmmakers are actually able to screen in Dallas for there's rules, of course. There's a seven day run three times a day. One of them has to be prime time. And that qualifies you for the potential of being nominated and doing a four year consideration campaign and then the road to the Oscar. So we're really excited that we had so many things qualify in our backyard last year. And are there still opportunities for sponsorship and tickets are available? Yes. Tickets are available. Diffdallas.org, you can take care of it. It's also I I like to say that, you know, we're not gonna turn down money. So so there's also also the sponsorship opportunities, still that are available. So you can reach you can reach us out at diffdallas.org or, you know, find me on any Instagram, and I'll point you in the right direction. Well, and let's talk about kind of the the state of the union when it comes to film in Texas. And, you know, they've been making films in Texas at you know, Giant comes to mind from you know, sixty, seventy years ago. But we've really caught fire, haven't we, Katie? We sure have. It's you know, Texas has always been a recognizable destination for filmmakers, but it's actually because of the new team program and the revamping of that SP 22 that got passed last year has really given us a fully funded program to able to offset some of the cost for these filmmakers that are looking to make their films in our backyard. And so we're really, really lucky to have, you know, the Sheridan universe and the Metroplex and have some of the shows that are looking at us right now. You know, we're we're taking a little break because of World Cup fever. Sure. But we're expecting to have a lot of pickup after that. Well, since you mentioned Taylor Sheridan, I mean, that's a big brand stamp on Dallas Fort Worth as a great place to to produce movies or or television. What makes us so Hollywood friendly? Do you wanna talk about that Austin? Yeah. I'll say that it it really comes down to our locations, our crew, and the premonition from both Metropolitan centers. Especially in Dallas, we have incredible crew that have worked on, you know, shows since the eighties, since, you know, our Robocop, True Stories, even original Dallas. But those crew members have trained the next generation crew, and then they have trained the next generation crew as well. So it has been this passing knowledge for the past forty years that if you have a if you have a question, if you have something that you wanna do, this crew knows how to do it. But also Dallas is uniquely Dallas. We look like Dallas, but we can also look like anything else as well. And we are so close to like these rural areas. If you want to go out and get some Prairie Land, you don't have to go that far. Right. And we have everything as well. And if you want a permit, our offices are very easy to work with and they actually pick up the phone compared to some other metropolitan centers. So this is something that we're really proud of and I think that allows us to be kind of like this lightning rod of if people wanna make something, they can make it here and it's super easy to do. And just a lot of talent and it's much more affordable than filming in LA, I imagine. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Katie, let's let's talk about I'm sure you get phone calls all the time from filmmakers saying, okay, I'm thinking about like a nineteen twenties film. It needs to be in a small town. It needs to we need to redo their storefronts. I mean, you you say, oh, I know. Waxahachie or you know. There's dozens and dozens of cities that are very friendly. Yeah. So a lot of what Austin and I are focused on is Dallas and Dallas County, but we softly pitched the surrounding metroplex because we understand that filmmakers don't see jurisdictional boundaries like we do. So we understand that, you know, a rising tide raises all boats. Yeah. So we work really closely with all of the camera ready kind of point, you know, point of context for all of the other cities that are around us. We work really closely with the Fort Worth Film Commission. And you know, d f this has made DFW the number one production hub in the state. So we're we're just rocking and rolling and really happy to have so much film production here. Oh, really? We're number one? We are. Yeah. She's like, I love learning this. This yours. This is great. Like, thank you, Taylor Sheridan, and it's been a chosen. North Texas is where it's at. I'm gonna introduce a controversial subject, AI. Who wants who wants I want you all three to jump in on that, but who wants to start? So I always say that workforce development disguised as tourism. So we're always going to be advocating for our real jobs of real Texans on the ground in creative roles. So we understand that AI is a tool, but we don't like anything that's going to replace somebody on a set. Yeah. So that's kind of our unofficial point of view on that. Guys? I'll say with especially just to go back to the industry comments this year. It's programmed by real people. And the this put it it was just a lot of thought, but the thing that we wanted to do, especially at the conference, was just be authentic and authentic to Dallas and the people of Dallas. So AI is something that is going to be part of this world from now on. I don't think the the cat is gonna go back into the hat. But where we're going for the future, I think it'll become a tool set, but not a replacer. And I think with this conference, we're hoping that that is something that will just be kinda driven drive the point home. Yes. Yeah. James? I can't. I'm not staring at the camera here. I will I'll say this, and because we had a conversation about AI recently as well. It is I as long as we're using it as a tool to the point and it that again, to that point, that cat is gonna be in that it's it's out of head. It's nothing we can do about it. But as long as we can continue to be in control of it, prompting it to a point that it's not controlling us, I think AI is great. From a filmmaking perspective, like, there I I was just talking to somebody the other day and about a film that they say that's too much where they used AI to recreate the voices. It was a Swedish film, and they had the actors who were in Sweden, and they said they well, this is gonna take their voices and dub it in English, and then they made the mouths look and go, that's that's a little far for me because all of sudden, how these actors getting paid, what's going on, like, there's a whole another subset of rules that we need to get into. So as a tool to maybe sweeten your sound or maybe, you know, we need to maybe adjust the color a little bit on something that we couldn't do on set, I'm still involved. Like, I think that is a way to go. Again, a controllable tool that may save you time on the back end, but as a beginning, as a starter tool and an end tool, I think we can just stay away from that, because otherwise, we're gonna end up in Terminator Skynet world, and we're not gonna be in control of anything. And all of us will be doing this. It'll be creating us on a set, and we'll have Chuck Norris kicking everybody's tail and on this thing thinking it's funny, but it is funny, but it's also gosh. We we need real things. Yes. And so famously, well, a couple years ago, writer strike, writer strike, and actor strike, and they were fighting over these very same things. Things. Is the camel putting its nose into the tent? I mean, instead of hiring extras to, you know, be in the background, you could certainly do AI actors in the background. Yes. Are are is Hollywood pushing it a little bit? Yeah. I would say yes. I I it's it's a mixture because I know right now the the unions are in negotiations with the studios. And the WGA, the Writing Guild Writers Guild of America came came to a consensus and agreement with the studios, and they're usually one of the last to come to an agreement. So I I don't believe I've seen the full breakdown of what they agreed to, but I'm sure that AI protections are in there. Yes. For the other ones, I know that SAG AFTRA had a lot to say about the last negotiation around, and I'm sure they will have a lot to say this negotiation around. But again, I think that will just continue to be a point of contention and a point of just trying to find the middle ground without replacing potential jobs. Well, I'm I'm gonna speak for myself. I I feel like AI lacks a soul. So, you know, the the you know, those famous scenes and movies that we all remember. I guess you could teach a computer how to do it, but the you know, just that tear welling up in the eye. I mean, there it's it's kinda soulless, isn't it? Yeah. It it is, and it it is a computer. I mean, in essence, the scary thing is it's there it's learning. And that's I mean, it does like that bit of humanity, but it's making pretty dang good copies of humanity. So that's the further down this route we go without, I don't wanna say there needs to be government regulation, but there needs to be some regulation at some point before it gets really out of control. And we should point out that all three of you are AI generated. So it's it's you're not actually here. Changing. Yeah. Alright. Let's go back to the the festival and and give some closing thoughts. Why don't we begin with you, Katie? I would just encourage everybody to come out to, to Jeff this year, and if you're one of the types of people that really enjoys going to panels or to, listen to filmmakers speak about their work, the conference is a perfect, you know, parallel program for you to attend. And if you like going to movies, this lineup is really fantastic. We have even a couple ones that shot locally or have some hometown heroes that either directed or produced some of the works that are in this year. So, yeah, I I hope to see you there. I love it. James? Yeah. To piggyback the films that you were talking about, One in a Million is one of the films that we shot here with Ashley Green and Flavor Flav and Wayne Wayne Knight. It's pretty amazing. Also, I'd like to we have a lot of great large films that are premiering, like the Blue Diamond films. We're honoring him at the festival this year at a luncheon and throughout the festival. He's got three films, including one in a million, but the North American premiere of his new film, Keep Quiet. And in our opening night film, we're very happy to have Jamie Presley coming in with Baron Davis and Johnny Simmons, who's an actor from Dallas, who's done some great things. That movie is called The Last Shot. It'll be our opening night film, and we have a great film on Deep Ellum that has everybody ever been in Deep Ellum, including Mark Cuban and Billy Bob Thornton, and it's just it's incredible. So, yes, diffdallas.org is our website. You can find so many things, 100 plus movies from all over the world, and I won't stop talking about it for three weeks. So Remind us about the venue. Yeah. So this year, it's at the Synopolis. Mhmm. And then also some of the premiers will also be at the Texas Theater. And then the industry conference will be exclusively at the Virgin Hotels Dallas. And to just kind of piggyback off of that, like, again, I'm just I'm really excited for Dallas to have this kind of opportunity for these panels, these educational moments of just being able to just hear from industry folks who have done it, and they're in their own backyard. And again, I just wanna just extend just so much gratitude to DIP, so much gratitude to the team of volunteers that are helping put this together, especially for the conference side. This is brand new for everyone including myself. So we're all learning together and there's so much, there's so many other folks that I just cannot name that have been such an integral part of making this come to life. And we are just super excited for you all to see what's about to happen. Outstanding. Thank you all for sharing your heart and your wisdom with us. We're gonna end with the website which is diffdallas.org. Guys, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you for That's it for now. We'll see you next time.