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Demystifying The Indie Film Journey
Want you to reveal all of your secrets and leave no stone unturned.
Alan:Okay. Well, the the secret is, have a best friend who is an exceptional communicator and a therapist. That's that's all I got.
Garrett:And that's Alan Seawright, everybody. Thank you so much for being here.
Alan:It's been great being here, guys. Alright.
Daren:Can we book Jono? Get Jono on the phone, somebody. This is truly independent. A show that demystifies the indie film journey by documenting process of releasing independent films in theaters. Each week, Garrett Batty and I, Darren Smith, will update you on our journey, bringing guests to share their insights into the process and answer your questions.
Daren:Today on the episode, we are joined by Alan Seawright, one of the cohosts of the show Cinema Therapy on YouTube, and we dive into the question, what do you guys think about AI? Oh, we're tackling that one today. It's gonna be a fun one. This is Truly Independent episode 10. Garrett.
Daren:Hey, man.
Garrett:Hey. Welcome to my episode. How you doing, Darren?
Daren:Oh, I'm good. I'm stretching out. Oh, thank you. I, I worked out this morning and forgot to change my shirt before the podcast. So I'm wearing my, project red t shirt from, like, 10 or 12 years ago.
Garrett:What, educate me on the significance. What is 2 weeks? Parentheses.
Daren:Oh, Project Red was a thing that, it was a, like, a nonprofit organization that started, and they partnered with, like, Gap and Apple, and they had Yeah. Basically red versions of products that you could buy. And every time you did that, it would provide 2 weeks of, like, medical care for people in Africa. And so I remember I bought, like, the red iPhone, and I bought the red phone case, and I bought a red shirt that said 2 weeks and
Garrett:It was a red
Daren:I don't know. It was a shirt that looked good and there was a red iPad, and we're getting really back in the day. What's an iPad? But, yeah, it was, one of those things and now it's just a shirt that fits me well.
Garrett:So It's your exercise shirt. Well, good. Well, that's cool. It's speaking of shirts, we've just launched our Kickstarter. Our Kickstarter for Faith of Angels is still live and active and, there are shirts as one of the rewards for donating.
Garrett:So, get on there and we'd invite anybody who's listening to go check that out.
Daren:That was a brilliant segue. Nicely done. Well, awesome. We've got a amazing friend of ours, guest today, and we're excited to get to that. But, did you see any movies in theaters the last week?
Garrett:I did. Last week, I was invited to a premiere or a Yeah. I guess it's a premiere for an upcoming Christmas movie. An independent film called Christmas of Wonders and it was directed by a buddy of mine, talented, director named Nathan Smith and it'll release on Hallmark or Great American Movies or or, on one of those streaming sites, and it's fun. It's a cute movie and fun to see a lot of local talent, come together and just kinda get behind it.
Garrett:I love that these independent films can be smaller or or, targeted and it's still just as much as a party and a celebration of creative arts as, as something big.
Daren:That's awesome. I unfortunately did not go to theaters last week or see movies. Last week was like soccer tournaments and oh my gosh, life, you know?
Alan:Yeah. Yeah.
Daren:None of us are perfect here, so I wanted to say that out loud to just make sure people know. I don't get to see movies every week. I try, but last week did not work out.
Garrett:No. I get it.
Daren:It's okay. Yeah. I'll have to see 2 this week. That's just how it works.
Garrett:You can make up for it. You can repent. Let's look at the box office. This is, we're recording this after the weekend of July 12th through 14th. And just again to prove our model, we've got, you know, your top top film was Despicable Me, we've got Long Legs that came out, the, 22,000,000 and then scroll down, there's nice representation of Angel Studios, Sound of Hope is number 9.
Garrett:They're still on 2,000 screens, but the number 10 movie is a movie called the Indian 2, no distributor listed. It was on 525 screens, per screen average of $2,285 it made 1,200,000 and it broke into the top 10. That's
Alan:our goal.
Daren:So great.
Garrett:That's what we're trying to do. I mean, we should that that could be a case study for what we're doing.
Daren:Yeah. When I think it's interesting if you look down too from there is a movie called Touch that made 470,000 off of 316 screens, and that was put out by Focus Features. And so that's a distributor that people have heard of. So it's not only a strategy that works for us in these. Like, it's a strategy that works.
Daren:So when you don't have the big brand awareness of like this is the second or the 4th movie in a franchise that has already made. I just read that Despicable Me was the first animated franchise to cross $5,000,000,000 in box office because they have like 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever movies in that franchise. I guess it's just 4 because it's Despicable Me 4. I don't know if they count
Garrett:the minions. They got to count the minions. Yeah.
Daren:Yeah. But then you've got inside out 1 and 2. And so that makes sense. A Quiet Place, day 1, can go wide because it's the 3rd movie in a franchise. Right?
Daren:And so it's just really interesting to see that even bigger distributors are using this strategy because it makes sense. Right? You're not spending way, way, way too much money to have empty theaters. You're going out and saying, well, what's the core audience think about this? Let's really sit in a few hundred.
Daren:And if it's being well received, then let's put more fuel on the fire, grow the number of screens, number of theaters, reach more people. And that way, you're not overspending. It's really, really smart strategy.
Garrett:It's fun. It's fun to see it work. And we're not, you know, I the films that we mentioned, we're not necessarily endorsing the film. I don't know much about these films, but the model that we're talking about is building an audience, limited distribution, putting it on certain on screens, choosing a good, release date that we certainly endorse that. So we're, again recording this, in in July.
Garrett:We are 59 days away from the opening night of Faith of Angels, which is
Daren:Do you have a big calendar on your wall? You're just, like, ripping 29 days left.
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:13 days left.
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah. No. It's gray hairs. I'm counting gray hairs.
Garrett:I don't have any. So so, yes, 59 days, and, we've upped our distribution meetings to weekly now. And, our phase we've ended our, unlock the trailer phase. That was a great campaign. I think we talked about that last week, but received 1,000 of a 1,000 emails, from unlocking the trailer.
Garrett:We've now shifted into the Kickstarter campaign, which we will use those emails and our existing list to now say, hey. These these people were interested. These wonderful audience and supporters were interested enough to send us their email and unlock the trailer. And on that unlock the trailer, there was a survey to say, would you like to participate in promoting the film? So we will reach out to them and I'll say, here are ways you can promote.
Garrett:Either share this Kickstarter, either back this Kickstarter, or reach out and and and fund a a group screening.
Daren:Yeah. So that's where we're at in the process. We as we release this, it's the or as we record this, I should say, it's the day that our kickstarter went live. So we don't have, you know, really data to look at yet, but, you know, the strategy we're we're running the play as we structured it. Right?
Daren:Build up the email list, make sure that we've kind of warmed up that audience by sending them about 2 months or 6 weeks worth of emails up to this point so they understand who we are and they're getting weekly emails from us. So that when there's an email, it doesn't come out of the blue of, like, hey. We have a Kickstarter. Hey. We need your help.
Daren:Hey. Go check this thing out. They're kind of like, oh, they're on board. They're following along. And so we grew the email list by about 15, 1600 people over the last month.
Daren:And it's been really rewarding to be able to interact with so many people and get such great response from everything. But that's the play. Right? We spent the previous 6 episodes building up to the point where, as we're recording, you know, episode I guess this will come out as episode 10, but it's like the I don't know how many we've recorded at this point. But yeah.
Daren:Yeah. We've done the work to where now we can kind of rely on that audience and use that audience and work with that audience rather than begging and pleading out of the blue. Like, wait, who's this guy? What's 3 coin? Like, so that's that's how we've done it.
Daren:We'll show you we'll tell you how it works once the Kickstarter gets going and once we have some data coming in and some donations coming in, people backing the project, but really excited to see. And it's so fun to have the 2 releases coming out within 2 months of each other, basically. Because on one, we're a little more hands off, but on this one, it's very hands on. And it's so rewarding to be able to interact with the audience every day and to see the excitement and the desire to support and to to go see this movie. It's really fun.
Garrett:I can't wait, and it's been fun to be on this journey with you. Okay.
Daren:Alrighty. We do have a guest today.
Garrett:Let's let's bring him on. Right, Alan?
Daren:Yeah. We've got a great guest today. So Alan, and I go way back. We're I we talked about this in the, the interview, so I don't wanna belabor it here. But we go way back.
Daren:We're all friends. We've known each other for over a decade, the 3 of us. And so I'm really excited because they built a really big audience for the stuff that they're working on. So I'd say we just get into it.
Garrett:Let's do
Daren:it. Hey, indie filmmakers and movie lovers. This show is sponsored by Purdy Distribution. Since 2011, they've been bringing incredible independent films to theaters, like Garrett Batty's The Saratov Approach, TC Christiansen's Love Kennedy, and McClain Nelson's Once I Was A Beehive. They've worked with top notch directors like Mitch Davis and Mark Goodman, specializing in family, faith based, and funny films.
Daren:This year alone, they've released hits with JK Studios like Go West and Villains Inc, and have even branched out internationally with films shot in South Africa and Japan. Purdy distribution works closely with indie filmmakers designing personalized distribution plans whether it's a theatrical release or straight to streaming on platforms like Amazon, Itunes, Google, and more. If you have a PG or PG 13 film ready for the world, think about reaching out to Purdy Distribution. They're approachable and knowledgeable, ready to help you visualize your film's distribution. Even if your film isn't fully polished, they can offer valuable guidance.
Daren:Plus, if you need that crucial distribution piece for investor packages, Purdy Distribution can provide a letter of intent to distribute, helping you secure funding without locking you into a contract. Mark your calendars for Purdy Distribution's upcoming releases, Tokyo Cowboy on August 30th, the digital release of Thabo and the Rhino Case on September 1st, Faith of Angels in theaters on September 12th, Villains Inc on Amazon and Itunes on October 1st, and The Carpenter on November 1st. To stay updated on these releases and more, sign up for their newsletter at purdiedistribution.com. That's purdiedistribution.com. Now, back to the show.
Daren:Rolling.
Garrett:Alright. Here we go, guys. What's up?
Alan:Everybody's feeling good. I feel great. How do you guys feel? So good. I'm gonna try to I'm gonna try to look down the barrel, but sometimes, Garrett, your face is so pretty.
Alan:Oh, yeah. Don't get distracted. Also, what are all those little what are all those little guys behind you on
Garrett:the hall? Oh, is my face in the way? These? I was hoping I I wasn't sure I I didn't think oh, those old things?
Alan:Oh, those those little guys? What no. Seriously, what are those? I don't know what they are.
Garrett:Those are those are awards. Each movie has, an award shelf on it. Right? Oh. Scout camp.
Garrett:Okay. Freetown, and then Sarah Taub was well recognized at the Utah Film Awards. Okay. And who won't park her? Very cool.
Garrett:Poster hung up, so that's what this one's about. This is the
Alan:closest I have is a fan made poster, and there there's no award above it. That's just a prop from the movie.
Daren:Where's your Emmy?
Alan:Because I've only ever made one movie. Yeah. Those aren't for movies. You don't need they're also they're out in my set where I make my show.
Garrett:You don't need an ego trip space like, I do. You you know what you I need reminders. Like, what am I even doing? I'm like, okay.
Alan:Well, at least Oh, no. Gary, I'm the one who needs therapy. I'm I need the ego trip more than anybody.
Garrett:Any rate and so that in order to figure this out we have guests that know what they're doing and, that brings us to you, Alan. We're so excited to have you here. I know that you've done some podcasts in the past, but I don't have an intro or anything like that. I also know you've made vocal appearances in my films, and that's really why I'm excited to talk to you.
Alan:It's true. Just 2 of them so far.
Garrett:That's true. That's true.
Alan:Just 2. I gotta we gotta turn this into a thing. I gotta show up more.
Garrett:I know. It'd be fun. Right? Just you'd be the Easter egg. Okay.
Garrett:So anyway, let's get serious on the podcast. Sorry, Darren. Go ahead. Yes. Allen you invited Allen.
Garrett:You guys are business partners and dear friends, and please introduce and fire away.
Alan:That's true. Darren, we met, jeez, nearly 20 years ago now. It's 18 years ago. Yeah. You were running sound, like live in a theater sound for a comedy troop,
Garrett:at our alma mater, and I made a movie. I didn't graduate. Did you graduate? I don't No.
Alan:No. We both did. My alma mater. Hey. We went there.
Daren:We went there for many years and gave them Lot of years.
Alan:I went there more years than you did. I went there probably as many years as you and Garrett put together. But, Yeah. I had I had made a film with a bunch of the members of that comedy troop and you, through a series of pestering, text messages, and whatever else managed to to let me know that you did post sound on movies. And so I I called you up, and you ended up being the largest part of the budget of CTU Provo, my feature directorial debut.
Alan:Most of which was paid in ones and fives out of a plastic bag in a in a In a Smiths parking lot? Luxury store parking lot.
Garrett:That sounds pretty shady. That sounds really shady.
Daren:It was pretty shady. Cheren Provakker is a mutual friend of all of ours. Paid me my initial down payment with his tip money from working at Sundance over the summer.
Alan:Yeah. It was pretty great. Like, I cut him a check from the the movie budget, and then he was like, here's the here. Just take a bag of all my singles. Anyway, it was awesome.
Alan:But then we we launched a production company together, and we were business partners for, what, 8 years?
Daren:8 or 9 years. Yeah.
Alan:Yeah.
Daren:It's a long time. Alan was the best man of my wedding. We Yeah. We've done a bunch of short films. We've written a bunch of scripts together.
Daren:Like, we go way, way back. Our kids are friends. My kids call Alan uncle Alan. So, like, that's who we're dealing with today, one of my best friends. Alan Seawright, thanks for joining us.
Daren:What we're here to talk about today, I'm so excited because, Alan, we need to give a little bit of context, people. I'm not sure how much we will have covered in the intro by this point, but maybe we'll leave it out as we record the intro after we do the recording of you. But Yep. In 2020, you ventured off and started a little Internet show called Cinema Therapy with a friend of ours, John O'Decker, and it blew up faster than, like, almost any YouTube channel I'd ever seen. And within a year or 2, you had a couple 100000 subscribers.
Daren:Now you have nearly 2,000,000 subscribers, you know, 4 years in. So we're here to talk about audience. How do you build an audience? What's the value and the importance of an audience? And we're just gonna pick your brain until there's nothing left.
Daren:Does that sound alright?
Alan:Well, it's not gonna take very long. There's not much in there. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was a wild ride.
Alan:Like, Jonathan actually approached me and pitched the idea for the show about 6 months before we got started, and he got literally 2 sentence 2 sentences into his pitch and I cut him off. I was like, I know exactly what the show is. It's going to be a 1000000 subscriber show. My thinking was it would take 4 to 5 years to get there. We started publishing in April of 2020 because you know COVID people were stuck at home watching movies and having mental health crises, and I was like, we got to get on this because it's only gonna last 3 or 4 weeks and then lockdown's gonna lift and everything's gonna go back to normal, And then in late November of 2020, we went from we had sort of very steadily been gaining and and we had gotten up to about 3,000 subscribers.
Alan:And I remember we had a conversation on November 13th when we hit 3,000 subscribers and Jono and I were like, wow, 3,000. Okay. We're really doing it. And then we went to this weird thing where we just kept doubling subscribers and viewership every day for 10 days in a row essentially. Wow.
Alan:And at a certain point during that, we were like, I guess this is just the new normal. I guess we're millionaires now. We're gonna be making 3 or $4,000,000 a year. That's not what happened. But, for a minute there, it was it was crazy, and we went from 3,000 to 300,000 subscribers in about 3 weeks.
Alan:And then since then it's just been a nice steady growth. But as far as like the the secret, how how do you build an audience? How do you grow a show? The best answer I have for you guys is be really good friends with a therapist who's an exceptional, public presenter of therapeutic information and then ride his coattails.
Daren:Well, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit here, but I appreciate the the context for people because I'm sure most people listening to the show know who you are. But if they don't, they need to go over and check out Cinema Therapy. It's an amazing show. So let's dive into some questions because we've got questions.
Garrett:It sounds like, though, what you're saying, from a filmmaker point of view is that content plays a part in it. Right? So I mean, Jono Jono and you have created content that people want to watch. So that's like an initial thing. We have to create Yep.
Garrett:From an independent filmmaker, is there an audience for the type of content I'm creating?
Alan:Yeah. Yeah. And and the the secret of the internet and YouTube is there is an audience for like, no matter what your content is, no matter what it is you want to make, there will be an audience for it. Okay. It may be really, really hard to find that audience, and that audience may not be huge Right?
Alan:Like we it's it's really funny you know, people ask us all the time like, oh boy, how did you get so successful? Because obviously we have 1,600,000 subscribers and we're like north of 200,000,000 total views at this point. And and it's, you know, by by any metric, we've been a very successful show But you also have to determine what success actually is for you and how to like, if you're a filmmaker, like, how to right size your production to meet the audience that you can access. So, you know, doing the work to build an audience is important, and Garrett you've been doing this work for you know 10 or 15 years now of building an audience that is willing to come out for faith based but not punch you in the face with it movies, which is the Garrett Batty genre as far as I can tell.
Daren:You say the Carpenter.
Alan:Except the carpenter, which literally punches you in the face with it.
Garrett:Literally? Like, literally?
Daren:It's like a
Garrett:3 d, 4 d It's a
Alan:it's a 4 d thing. They actually hire ushers to walk around and just back people. It's a it's a wild experience. It's It's
Garrett:one of these movies we're gonna build an audience.
Alan:It's the new cinema. But, you know, so so there's an amount of, like, rightsizing your stuff to meet the audience that you have and then taking that right size thing and like what can you do as a creator to expand the audience with the content? Because like, I don't know. I see a lot of filmmakers online who are trying to grow an audience because obviously everybody wants to grow an audience. Right?
Alan:If you control an audience, then you control your destiny. And so people are trying to do that. But a lot of filmmakers that I see are trying to do it the same way. Like, they're talking about filmmaking. And that's you're a filmmaker talking to filmmakers.
Alan:It's just sort of a snake eating its own tail at that point. Find find the stories you're passionate about telling and start telling those stories while working on your film would be my I don't know, 2 bits of advice.
Daren:Yeah. So diving into that a little bit deeper though, like, you could have made a show where you and Jono get on and talk about movies for 30 minutes and then release those movies. And I don't think you would have the audience you have now, but you definitely had conversations along the way to say, here's how we're gonna do the audience building aspect that pairs really nicely with the content. So what were some of the strategies that you guys talked about as far as how do you engage the audience? How do you interact with the audience?
Daren:How do you grow the audience? How do you monetize the audience? All those things come into play, It for us
Alan:For us, we've we've always been very and and this is gonna sound sort of tawdry or cheap, but like we've always been very analytics driven on our show. We pay very close attention to what people are responding to, and the YouTube provides you a little retention graph of, like, a lot of people are watching here, and then we said this word, and people dropped out. You can't say moist on the Internet. Don't say it.
Garrett:I can't.
Alan:I just said it.
Daren:Get Alex.
Alan:Lost a third of the podcast audience.
Garrett:Lost the audience.
Daren:He just trojan horse dust.
Alan:Yep. You you can't say ending you can't say ending words on YouTube. If you say in summation or, like, end to end things, people just drop off. Even if you're halfway through the video, they'll be like, oh, because this video is over. I don't understand it.
Garrett:Okay.
Alan:But anyway, that's so that's one thing to keep in mind. But so we've been very analytics driven, which means we have leaned into the types of movies that our audience wants us to talk about. Like, Jonathan and I love animated films and animation. That's a big part of our show. It's a lot bigger part of our show than we had initially expected it to be.
Alan:We're also children of the 80s 90s, and we expected a bigger part of our show to be, you know, the movies we grew up on and no one cares. Apparently no one in our audience wants us to talk about the Terminator or Back to the Future or Indiana Jones. Nobody cares.
Daren:Oh, that's so unfortunate. I do. We care. We're raising our hands.
Alan:I know.
Daren:Raise your hands. Yeah.
Alan:You guys are both middle aged white guys like me.
Garrett:So okay. Well, you bring up a good point then at, in in building an audience or in maintaining audiences. There is this dilemma of the what comes first, like the content or the audience. Am I am I developing content to serve the audience, or am I trying to fight an audience to serve my content? Sure.
Garrett:I think it's a question relevant to filmmakers or or It's a question relevant
Alan:to any any artist or creator. Right? Like if you make a thing and people really love it, is that the thing you make now? Or are you bigger and broader than that as a as an artist, right? And you know, we occasionally feel pigeonholed and it can be a little frustrating.
Alan:On the other hand, you know, we can talk about Inside Out and get millions of people to watch, so it's like, I guess we'll talk about Inside Out some more. And there's we also try to strike a balance, right? Like we we don't exclusively make the things that we know we're gonna perform. We still test, like, can we, you know, do an episode about something else? We just, we're releasing an episode as we're recording this tomorrow about Scott Pilgrim versus the World.
Alan:We have no idea if that's gonna perform or not. I really hope it does because I wanna talk about every Edgar Wright movie forever.
Garrett:What's interesting is that No.
Alan:Yes. Darren, I see your I see your, Cornetto Trilogy backdrop.
Garrett:Mhmm. So you'll This
Daren:is why we're friends.
Garrett:There is that balance then where you have the freedom because you have an audience. Now you get to introduce them into to something, new. Not that you're not not that you're discovering Edgar Wright, but,
Alan:No. But there there is an amount of that. Right? Like we we did an episode just a few weeks ago about Speed Racer, which I've got behind me over here.
Garrett:Yeah.
Alan:See it. But, that is one of my favorite films of all time and just criminally under seen and underappreciated. And, we had it did not perform particularly well for us. It still got, you know a lot of views and we got a lot of comments on there like Wow I never really thought about watching this movie. I'm going to check it out now.
Alan:And again, it's not that the Wachowskis need the money, but it's an incredible movie that I find really emotionally impactful, and these people are gonna have a cool experience watching it now. So that's kind of why we do that. But it you know, that can translate to your own obviously, we're commenting on other people's movies. So our show, even though we have our creative spin on things, it's ultimately not our own creativity necessarily. But, like
Daren:So that's a good segue to the next bit. Right?
Alan:Okay. Sorry.
Daren:I didn't mean to cut you off, but you were thinking about, well, how am I gonna wrap this up? So
Alan:I was I was scrambling, and you've saved me.
Garrett:Thank you. Don't say in summation or conclusion.
Daren:Nope. We're not gonna say any of those words you
Garrett:just No.
Alan:That would be terribly moist.
Garrett:Oh, gosh.
Daren:So, Alan, you know, the premise of your show is you've got a filmmaker that needs therapy and a therapist that loves movies. And so you went into this and, you know, as we talked about at the very beginning of this, interview, it's like we go way back. So I we've had many conversations about Cinema Therapy over the years. So you kinda went in going, okay. But how do I parlay this into my directing career?
Daren:Because you're a writer director, you are also an actor, visual effects guy, and all so many other things, but really you want to be a director. And so you have successfully done that. You've parlayed that audience. I'm going to keep saying that works. It's great.
Daren:But you've taken that audience and you've brought them over to your world and said, hey. If you like the films that I'm talking about over here, you might like the films that I'm directing and writing over here. So tell us about that aspect and how did you do it, and what are some of the things that have come because you did it successfully.
Alan:Yeah. It's it's actually been really exciting. So we, as many creators do, we have a Patreon. And initially, our our Patreon was kind of just a way to we shoot long on the episodes because Jono and I like to talk, and this was a way to give people, like, an extended like, a director's cut of our episodes. We also create some additional material.
Alan:Some of it's therapeutic. Some of it is, you know, filmmaking driven where, like, we have a whole series where I'm trying to teach Jono how to use film gear, and it's fabulous. He's so technically adept. It's magic. That's funny.
Alan:Super fun. So you know, just just goofy stuff like that. And then we do like little comedy sketches and stuff sometimes just as a creative outlet. But what we have done in the last couple of months is we've actually rebranded our our Patreon as Cinema Therapy Studios, and the money that comes in on that Patreon, we're using a a big chunk of it to just make original films. So in holy crap 4 weeks, we we roll cameras on an original short film that the idea was submitted by one of our patrons, so one of our fans.
Alan:She submitted this this great idea for a story that was actually it's it's pretty much just a story from her life. And then we, you know, changed some characters around and, you know, did a rewrite. But it's I'm calling this an inspired by a true story because I think we've changed enough of it that it's no longer a boats like, based on a
Garrett:true story. Story.
Alan:Yeah. It's not a boats movie. It's an I Bats movie. But, yeah. It's we're making a 22, 24 minute short film shooting here in Utah and in California, and this is a thing we get to do because of our patrons, and it's going to be first for them, like we'll release to them, we'll try to do a festival run, we'll see how that goes, and then eventually it will release, you know, publicly on YouTube so anybody can watch it, but the the patrons also get a whole bunch of really in-depth behind the scenes stuff about making the movie, but also because of the therapeutic focus of our channel, we're doing a bunch of, like, therapy deep dive stuff where Jonathan is going to be talking about how we develop the characters because he helped with writing.
Alan:And then he's going to be interviewing the actors to like talk with them about like, okay, here's the therapeutic stuff that your, you know, character is dealing with. How did you approach that? Was it therapeutic for you? What did you learn about yourself? You know, like stuff that you don't get on a normal DVD or Blu Ray behind the scenes thing.
Alan:Like, we're going a lot deeper.
Daren:Yeah. So that's where you're at today. But, like, over the last 4 years, you've had a couple of iterations of of that, right, where you've told your audience I'm making something. If you wanna support it, come over here. Can you talk about the other projects as well?
Daren:Because we I think as this episode releases, we're still in the middle of our Kickstarter for Faith of Angels. And so we wanna tap into a little bit of your experience with how you've taken your audience on one platform and brought them over to another to make short films.
Alan:Yeah. So, Darren is being modest. He produced a short film that I directed, 2 just over 2 years ago.
Daren:In 22. Yeah.
Alan:Yeah. In 2022, we shot it. It it released in early 2023. But yeah, we made a little horror movie that I've been kind of noodling on for a few years, and that was instead of having our patrons who are like monthly subscribers to our content, this was just a Kickstarter pitch, and we put together the pitch, posted it on our Cinema Therapy YouTube channel, and we were asking for do you remember, was it 15 or 18,000? I
Daren:wanna say 15.
Alan:I wanna say it was 15 and we hit that in the first, like, I think we hit it was 15,000 and we hit it in 18 hours. That's what it was.
Daren:Yeah.
Alan:Which totally blew us away. We ended up raising something like $36,000 to make this, you know, little 10 minute short film that all takes place in my house. So it was one of the higher budget per filmed minute things I've ever gotten to work on, and you know, we shot the whole thing in my house in 2 days, which was great. We got to work with an amazing crew on that because of the money that we raised. Sorry.
Alan:What was the question? I have ADHD.
Garrett:Well, it I mean, it's it's interesting. It's kind of the trajectory of the the stepping stones to get to now where your patrons, your your audience is essentially you've you've unlocked the next level. So your audience is just supporting your creator your creator. They're basically Because you are serving the audience.
Alan:Right. They're basically directly supporting that. And the the goal with that is to get to the point where Cinema Therapy Studios is making feature films that we can then, I have been voraciously consuming this podcast because the goal is to get to the point where we're making features and distributing them ourselves, And we have this built in audience of, you know, our cinema therapy fans. And then how do we take that and grow it and expand it and and reach other people as well?
Garrett:Yeah. How do you expand it? That'll be the sequel to the podcast is after build your audience, how do you expand it? Or so we need to have you on
Alan:for a whole How do you not get canceled by it eventually?
Daren:Yeah. How
Garrett:do you rebuild your audience?
Alan:Yes. After the scandal, how do you do it?
Daren:Well, we've kind of been going in reverse order then. Right? So we're like we talked about where we're at today. We're talk we talked a little bit about how you got there with the Patreon, and then before that with Kickstarter and kind of the early stages of a membership with the audience. But what are some of the things that you've consciously done to get people off of like social media, for example, into your ecosystem?
Daren:I that's the term I use at least for, like
Garrett:Sure.
Daren:They're on your email list. You can contact them. You have permission. You know who they are. You have their contact info.
Daren:Like Yeah. What are the things that you've done to do that? Because there are plenty of filmmakers out there who have built up an Instagram of 2, 3000 people, but that doesn't mean that they can then go to them and say, please help support my next thing. Right? So what did you do to make that
Alan:happen? Yeah. Being being on social media, I think we're all learning more and more. It doesn't mean you're connected with people. It means you're at the whim of a giant robot overlord that can shut you off at any time if they want to.
Daren:To put it lightly.
Alan:To, you know, to put it in terms that are not scary at all. The main thing that we've done is, because Patreon is a creator built platform, they're very very open with, like, if if someone signs up for your Patreon, Patreon gets their email address, and so do you. So that's essentially how we're building our email address, and it's not it's not paid only. They have a free tier on there as well. So we have we're around through, almost 4,000 paid members, but we have more than 10,000 free members, which is great because those are all people that we can just talk to anytime we want.
Alan:Even if we don't go through Patreon, we can just send them an email.
Daren:And
Alan:those are people who are engaged enough with our show on YouTube that they took the time to go to a completely different website and put in information, which means a shocking amount on the Internet. Like, it's so hard to get people to do anything that's not just, like, swipe. And so the the fact that we've been able to do that is is huge, and that's, like our mission with our show and moving forward is to, as much as possible, try to bring people into that that ecosystem, the way you put it, Darren, because then we can reach them with any of the other stuff that we want to do, not just pray that the YouTube algorithm puts our next thumbnail in front of them on a page of 19 thumbnails.
Garrett:It's very much the same consideration that we're taking as, you know, as an independent filmmaker saying, the distributors are they have the key. They get to be the gate keeper and as much content as we make, the distributor has the audience and we hope that they'll say yes to take our movie. And you're saying, now you YouTube or or social media whatever it is might change tomorrow. But so we need to make sure that we have a way, to stay in touch with our audience. How big how big of a, role does, like all the little side videos, you know, TikTok and Instagram and everything like that.
Garrett:Your primary audience is YouTube, but you've got all these other things.
Alan:We do. Yeah. We're on TikTok and Instagram, and we're not really on Twitter anymore. We're on threads, though, until threads also becomes terrible.
Garrett:It's now called X. Technically, nobody's on Twitter.
Alan:I will not call it x. I don't care.
Daren:Okay. Let's call it moist.
Garrett:I sorry.
Alan:That's our new social media platform coming soon. Moist. Derailed. Send a like, my
Garrett:own people. So as an independent filmmaker how much do I need to pay attention to, yeah hey I put my trailer on YouTube and people are watching it. Or, no, I need to do cut ups and put it on shorts, and then I need to do reels and stories.
Alan:They're so, you know, reels and TikToks and and sort of short form vertical video is life. Yeah. Hey, that.
Garrett:Yeah. That's enough to get me to unsubscribe.
Alan:It's there's a place for it in in film marketing and and independent like, I'm not sure that putting cut ups of your trailer on there is the right move necessarily. In those places like TikTok and Reels in particular, what you're gonna probably want to post is, if you've got, you know, real punchy funny stuff or sort of a shocking scene if you're making a horror movie, you know, and you've got a big gasp moment, maybe put that on there. It seems
Garrett:like a great element too for, like, BTS stuff. Like, you're you're great out of
Alan:for BTS stuff, particularly if you've got, like, big feels or big laughs. Uh-huh. That you can get in one minute. Right? That's that's the place to post those.
Alan:Now that being said, those two things are not going to do a whole lot to drive traffic off of those sites. We have found and a lot of people have found that, you know, if you have a lot of success on TikTok, it's not going to translate to much of anything else. And people don't people don't create deep relationships with TikTok and Reels creators. They found this at VidCon. They, VidCon over the last couple of years, you know, sort of did a big pivot to like, hey, we're going to get these big TikTok creators and these are people with 16, 20,000,000 followers on TikTok and they'll show up to give a talk and there will be 20 people in the audience and they'll have YouTubers with 200,000 people, 200,000 subscribers and the room will be full of, you know, 400 people.
Garrett:Why is that?
Alan:Because they have because they have a deep emotional relationship with YouTube creators. It's parasocial, which is weird, but also kind of nice in a way. Like, you know, there's apparently and this is the strangest thing in the world to me. 100 of thousands of people who have a deep parasocial relationship with me. I don't know who they are.
Alan:You know, it's just the nature of the Internet. The the cool part about that is there are people who, you know, approach me on the street and stuff, and I can absolutely make their day just by being a kind person, because they're like, the world is good. And it's like, I I guess just don't catch me on a day when I'm hangry. But but the the problem is with sort of the vertical platforms because of the length of the videos and the fact that people don't click through and then just watch every video from that creator or get, like, a long story of a thing. You you just don't develop the same kind of relationships.
Alan:So for, like, film marketing, if people are seeing, you know, 8 or 10 touches from your movie, that's like, oh, here's a funny BTS thing, and here's another funny BTS thing, and here's a little bit from the movie. And, oh, my gosh. This Jesus just watched this guy punch out another dude, and he was like, good job. Like, you know, in the case of your movie.
Garrett:I don't think I've seen it, but, I get you what you're saying.
Alan:Oh, I know. He never actually spectates, does it? Spoilers for the Oh, we've anyway.
Garrett:That that he never goes to a match. Like, he wouldn't go to a football game, but we still give him credit for making a touchdown.
Alan:Exactly. Touchdown Jesus is real. But, yeah. So I don't know. I'm I'm It's opining wildly at this point, but like, I I don't see how effective that stuff is going to be in terms of marketing.
Alan:That being said, it's it's a low cost of entry to do it.
Garrett:So So and that's maybe what we have to balance out as far as looking. You know, we're we're doing this marketing campaign for these 2 movies. One is coming out September 12th, and then the other is November 1st. Yep. There's only it's Darren and me and a small team that are doing this.
Garrett:So we probably have to determine, like, how much what is the risk reward or the effort reward?
Alan:It's a time consideration even more than a dollars consideration, which I know is, you know, you're not swimming in money for this. But
Garrett:Yeah. Right. Exactly. So to yeah. You're exactly right.
Garrett:We're not at all. So do we take the time to cut up BTS stuff and do it on TikTok or whatever it is, or is that building an audience? And it sounds like you're saying that might create awareness, but it's not necessarily building an audience that you are going to be able to engage with.
Alan:I don't yeah. I don't think it's gonna build because I mean, ultimately the goal is to build a relationship with these people. Right? You want them to trust you. Like Yeah.
Alan:You want them to think about Garrett Batty, 2 coin productions, 3 coin, 9 coins We're up to 300 coins. You're up to 3 now. Okay. Good. 22 bit productions.
Alan:Sorry. No. That was that was,
Garrett:I've heard it all. I've heard it. I've heard everything. I challenge you to come up with something I haven't heard about 3 coin productions.
Alan:I I can, but none of it can air on your podcast. The
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah.
Alan:But but you want people to to, like, have the same feeling when they hear Oh, a new 3 coin movie that I get when I hear Oh, a new Pixar movie. Right? Like Yeah. I I for decades have had an emotional relationship with Pixar that is, you know, like, why? It's just because they make great films that I really like.
Garrett:Which is an interesting side conversation. And when one I'm gonna ask right now, are there other distributors that we have that relationship with? Do we do we hear I mean, you got a 24. You're like, okay. I know what I'm gonna get.
Garrett:If it's a oh, it's a 2 Warner Brothers movie or, oh, this is another Universal film. It's not like I'm in line to buy a ticket to Universal.
Alan:The the big studios generally don't have a brand. I would say, like, strong brand equity. You've got Pixar, obviously, top of the heap. A24 is getting up there. Blumhouse has pretty strong brand equity, particularly in their, like, niche of horror fans.
Alan:It's like, oh, it's a Blumhouse movie. It's probably pretty pretty good. Yeah.
Daren:I would add I think Angel
Garrett:Studios Angel Studios is trying to is
Alan:Yeah. Not a problem. Angel Studios is definitely getting there in the faith based space. Yeah. Yeah.
Alan:Darren was saying working title. Amblin?
Daren:Maybe? Kinda sold it.
Alan:Kinda sold it.
Daren:Yeah.
Alan:Yeah. I don't know if your average movie goer is like, oh, an Amblin movie.
Daren:Like Your average movie goer isn't thinking about working. Title.
Alan:They're not thinking about working title either.
Garrett:So then, I mean, to relate it to this podcast that in building an audience as a filmmaker, where do I put my effort? Do we say, I wanna build 3 coin productions as, you know, whatever the the brand that people are gonna recognize or is it, I wanna build a film by Garrett Batty or I wanna build a film you know, it's the Brian Grazer, Ron Howard duo. Right. And we know they're gonna be awesome. What do we
Alan:So that's that's the that's the question is where do you put your where do you put your marketing dollar? Right?
Garrett:Right.
Alan:Right. The studios are spending $100,000,000 plus to market a movie every time because every movie is a new brand. This is why they love, you know, sequels and prequels and and requels and whatever else. How much of my dog is coming through, by the way? Just just enough to
Garrett:know you have a dog. Excellent.
Alan:But, like, because there's already brand equity. Right? So their $100,000,000 goes further Yeah. Than, you know, what the heck are these blue cat people? Like, how do I sell this?
Alan:Which is a, you know, franchise now. But,
Garrett:As avatar for the un uninitiated.
Alan:Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
Garrett:That was a
Daren:Took me a second. I was like, what?
Alan:Blue cat people? Blue cat people in space? So that's you know, the the question is, do you wanna build brand equity for the movie? Do you wanna build brand equity for the filmmaker? Or do you wanna build brand equity for your company?
Alan:Yeah. And if you're building it for your company, then the movies all have to have a general feel that fits. Right? A24 makes you know, they make comedies and and horror movies and thrillers and high art films and stuff, but they all kind of feel like A24 movies.
Garrett:Sure.
Alan:In a way that, you know, they've done a great job of of building a brand equity that's like, oh, this feels like an a24 movie.
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah.
Daren:Studies have even shown that, like, people follow people, not businesses online. So if you look across any industry, you know, Richard Branson has more followers than all of the Virgin groups combined. Ronaldo and Messi have bigger followings than, like, the top 30 MLS plus plus plus all the other league teams combined. Sure. Tim Cook has more followers than Apple does.
Daren:Elon Musk has more than Tesla. Like, doesn't matter in the industry. People wanna follow people online. And so that's an interesting thing that I think deserves Garrett and I talking about it offline and going, hey, we're gonna start all these new social media channels for our movies, and then they're gonna go away. Are we should we instead, or in addition to funnel some of that effort and that extra firepower behind your brand so that people are following Garrett Batty, it's a Garrett Batty film and, oh, this is another Garrett Batty film that's coming.
Daren:And, oh, it's an interesting conversation. I'm glad we touched on that.
Alan:Yeah. Well, it's
Garrett:very awkward to have right here on this podcast.
Alan:It is. Well, and it's We'll take it off. Like, it's we're we've ventured into a brave new world. Right? Like, my my whole life, I wanted to grow up and be a filmmaker that was poster famous.
Alan:So you see a poster that says an Alan Seay right film and people go, oh, I want to see that, but nobody knows what I look like. Right? So that's that's, like, name on poster famous is what I always wanted to be. You're famous. And now I'm I I completely failed.
Daren:Everybody knows what you look like. Well,
Alan:everybody in a certain niche demographic knows
Daren:what I was. Saying you failed because people know your face, not because you're not a filmmaker. Yeah. Nobody knows nobody knows my name
Alan:on a movie poster because I haven't done that, but they do know my face. So I failed miserably, but and it's it's a thing I've struggled with is, like, okay. As I'm working on building up, you know, the the film career being able to leverage, and I'm very, you know, privileged to be able to do this now, is, like, I have an audience. Now I'm just moving them over here. But as I'm doing that, do I try to build the brand equity of Telekinesis Entertainment, my company, or do I leave it just with me, or do we promote the film and telekinesis and me?
Alan:How does that split work? It you know, these are questions that I'm also trying to figure out, so hopefully we can figure them out together and achieve world domination.
Garrett:Well, by by building our audience.
Alan:All 6 coins.
Garrett:You're you're yeah. We'll add some more coins and increase the budget. Darren, I think your point is really interesting about the people following people rather than businesses. And and, Alan, I mean, you are the only Alan Seawright. Like like telekinesis could be anybody or it could be, you know, involved with people.
Garrett:If if I get a an email, marketing email from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment or Warner Brothers Distribution, yeah, I know what it is. If I get an email that says, here's the name here's the director's name or whomever, like, oh, I'm I'm clicking on that.
Daren:Can you imagine getting an email from your favorite director?
Garrett:Edgar Wright.
Daren:They have a one to one relationship with you. I would read every single Edgar Wright email ever, and I would probably frame some of them because he sent it to me and I'm so special. Like, that doesn't happen. They use social media, which is great. But Yeah.
Daren:Yeah.
Alan:Yeah. It's I think there is a a world that's wide open that hasn't been tapped yet by filmmakers building an, relationship with their audience. And, I mean, it's there are dangers in that too. Right? Like I
Garrett:was just thinking about that. You have
Alan:a strong relationship with your audience, and then you make a movie that's really personal to you, and most of your audience hates it.
Garrett:It doesn't resonate. They're like, oh.
Alan:Yeah. Yeah. And and they feel personally betrayed, which is, you know, a thing that can happen. You know, it's it's tricky. It's it's gonna be an interesting thing to navigate going forward because I I do think that's the sort of the future of at least the independent side of our industry.
Garrett:Yeah. I think I think so too. And I think it's bleeding into even the bigger, you know, Hollywood side of it when we see even last summer. You know, you look at Barb and Hymer and you go Christopher Nolan and Margot Robbie were the faces of those campaigns. And Yep.
Garrett:Certainly by those are by no means independent film. But my goodness, Guadalupe can put her name now on any film, and there's a very broad audience who would say, oh, I'm familiar with her. I wanna see that. Yeah.
Alan:Yeah. Well, and Christopher Nolan is one of the few, you know, I would say that he's as strong a brand name at this point as Pixar. Right? And the and the evidence is Oppenheimer. Like, he made a 3 hour movie about people sitting in rooms talking to each other, and it made a $1,000,000,000.
Garrett:Man, that's so great. Yeah. Yeah.
Daren:Yep. I think Arby and Oppenheimer both owe each other a little bit of credit, though, too.
Alan:Oh, they absolutely do. I I I've I've read some stuff, and obviously, you know, you can't prove a negative, but, like, I've I've read a lot of stuff where people are trying to figure out what the Barb and Hammer phenomenon did to both movies, and the estimates are it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000,000 for each film. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.
Alan:Just from the the crazy, you know, weirdness of that weekend, which was such a fun weekend of filmmaking. Did you guys do the Bob and Hammer thing?
Daren:Yeah. Yeah. It was so fun.
Alan:It was it was a blast. That was one of the best days of moviegoing I've ever had.
Garrett:Yeah. It's easy to see why you've built an audience. You're fun to talk with, and your insights are insightful.
Alan:Oh, thanks.
Garrett:So yeah. And thank you. Yeah. And for sharing those with us. Yeah.
Garrett:It's cool. So where can we find more of what you're doing with your with your indie film? Where can we see that or what what
Alan:join my Patreon. No. You can go sign up for the free tier on our Patreon. It's Cinema Therapy over on Patreon, and then you'll get, you know, updates as they come in and as all of that happens. Otherwise, just follow, honestly, the best place to follow us is on YouTube, at CinemaTherapy.
Alan:I'm at Allen Seawright on most of the social medias, and I'm really terrible at posting on there. Yeah. Okay. Like we just talked about, it's important to build, you know, personal brand equity, and I'm real bad at it. Or if
Garrett:you wanna catch, Alan's, very sonorous voice, you can see Faith of Angels in theaters and, listen for that Easter egg.
Alan:That's true. You yes. I think we should give away a prize. I will say it right now. If there are any listeners to this podcast who can spot my voice the day it opens in movie theaters, you can't go to a pre screening, and you can't jump the gun.
Alan:You got to wait for it to be publicly available. Write into to Darren or Garrett, and, I'll send you something. And what? What? I don't I don't know.
Alan:I just wanna know. Cookies. I'll bake you some cookies.
Garrett:I wanna know if I just start a fake email and and No.
Alan:We'll get you'll get it. You'll get, some cinema therapy merch, and, yeah, we'll we'll send you a bunch
Daren:of stuff.
Alan:It'll be fine.
Garrett:Doing it. You're gonna get an email from
Alan:g b You can't you can't do it, Garrett. You know where it is.
Garrett:Oh, gb@2bitsfilms.com. And that'll be the one that you're
Alan:filled has gotta be like, once you have a giant, you know, mega conglomerate, 2 bits has gotta be your, like, little indie label.
Garrett:That'll be the next LLC. You know, for every movie I make, I have to create an LLC, and then there's always some sort of behind. So it'll be 2 bit films. 3 coin productions presents a 2 bit film.
Alan:A 2 bit films?
Garrett:Oh, okay. Wow. Well, these are things of what not to do to build an audience. Alright, man. Thank you so much for joining us.
Garrett:Say hello to your your therapist friend, Jono.
Alan:I will do that.
Daren:Oh, man. I love that guy. So good.
Garrett:Right? What and, and how kind of him to come and join us on this podcast. He's got a million Yeah. Other things to do and a and 2,000,000 followers to tend to.
Daren:Yeah. It was very generous for him to take some time and to come chat because he's I mean, I didn't wanna say this is a problem because he would embarrass him because he doesn't like the spotlight. But, like, Patreon, the company has literally flown him out to talk about the strategy they've used to build an audience on Patreon because it was one of the fastest growing. They have one of the highest average, donations per subscriber of any other Patreon channel account account, I think, is what you would say. So, like, they know what they're doing.
Daren:He's being very humble about their strategy. But, like, if you wanted a playbook to follow as a filmmaker, granted you may not be able to build a 2,000,000 or a 1,600,000 follower channel in 4 years, but you don't have to. You can use the same strategy to say, how are we gonna build something that allows us to get more of what we want? And for him, it's the ability to make movies on his own without needing permission, without having to wait for investors. So now every couple of months, if he wanted to, he's got an audience of people who are funding his movies, his short films.
Daren:And at some point, probably in the next year or 2, they're gonna start funding features. You know, we're talking 6 figure budgets to be able to go out and make a movie on his own terms, and he already has the distribution laid out because he's got, at that point, probably 2, 2 and a half 1000000 followers. So it's such a great strategy that they've laid out, and you can follow every step of it.
Garrett:Yeah. The principles are the same, and they just need to be scaled. And it's either building it from the from the the end, like the distributor who has access to the audience. So these guys are circumventing that by just building their own audience or the beginning is, the investors who are gonna fund. These guys are building that with their audience.
Garrett:It's it's awesome to see, and I'm I'm so glad that he would share those things with us.
Daren:Yeah. Oh, that was a good one. I hope people share this episode with their friends because that was really, really good. Listener questions. Do you get any listener questions into that?
Daren:I got one. The question is, what do you guys think about AI? This could be an entire episode, I think. But, like, the context of it was, you know, an AI film trailer has been released. The TCL has put out that they're they've made an entire movie with AI.
Daren:And we saw in both strikes last year and this, the potential strike this year, the negotiations this year with ATSI that the concern of AI replacing filmmakers and film workers is really a prominent thing. Like, that's top of mind for a lot of people working in our industry. So, you know, within that context, how are we feeling about AI and film and the future of this industry we love and work in?
Garrett:I am certainly very uneducated on AI and the processes and the steps, and that's probably a risk, because, you know, I hear the stories of, oh, AI is gonna replace my me and filmmakers and every job out there. So I am uneducated on it.
Alan:So
Garrett:as as yeah. I don't know if I have a an intelligent answer. Maybe that is the answer. How do I feel about it? I'm too focused right now on these movies that we have to release, to really dive into it.
Garrett:I do think in my I've dabbled a little bit in, like, hey, AI help me write a press release or help me, you know, whatever it is. Put together a distribution agreement or take a look at this contract AI and see can you tip you know, parse this contract and tell me in simple terms what it means. And I've I've appreciated that. It's been very, very helpful. I haven't yet see it, replace a a shot that I need.
Daren:Yeah. Yeah. It's true. So my thoughts on it are ever evolving, but I try to pay close attention to what's happening in the industry. And one of the key things that I think all business owners and entrepreneurs and especially filmmakers need in their arsenal of, like, characteristics is this ability to anticipate what's coming.
Daren:Because if you're kind of just siloed and you're doing your own thing, that's great and it might work out, but you could miss some things if you're not paying attention. And so I I always look at incentives and your your big studios, your 8 companies that are, like, running the film industry. They have incentives to drive costs down. Like, that will always be a pressing incentive for the big companies. And so you're constantly, whether it's every 3 years during a negotiation with the guilds and unions, or whether it's more frequent than that, you're gonna have them trying to sneak in AI whenever they can because it costs less.
Daren:And if they can produce what now costs $300,000,000 to make for cheaper than that, that means their upside goes up and their profit margins are better, and that is better for their quarterly reports. Right? It's all financial driven. It's all driven by shareholder value. And so you gotta look in the incentives and realize that, like, they're not gonna give up on that.
Daren:They're not just gonna go, oh, we didn't get what we wanted this time, so I guess we'll never try again. No. 3 years from now or 2 years from now, it's gonna come up again, and they're gonna try to do more with AI. And so one thing that I'm really big on, though, or bullish on, I should say, is that true, like, craft, You'll never be able to match it. And so you you can feel something that's made by a human.
Daren:Art it's a language, and you're able to communicate through the way you direct, through the stories you tell, through the shot choice, through the actors, the way they choose to portray a character in a moment. Those things are never gonna be, replaced by AI. They could copy it pretty well, but you'll always be able to tell a copy from the real thing. And so if you if you're an indie filmmaker like us, like, keep telling great stories and use as much of the human element as you can. That's what I intend to do, but I'm never gonna take my eye off the ball when it comes to AI because you don't wanna just get wiped out because you weren't paying attention because something took over something that you've been doing, and you weren't.
Daren:You didn't Yeah. Yeah. It was a blind spot.
Garrett:I'll consider that a warning. It yeah. I did I do need to pay attention to it. The question that, was submitted was how important are film festivals in your distribution plan? And it's a great question and one that we will use to tease an upcoming episode with.
Garrett:Where we'll talk to a film festival director, and get their take on film festivals. In in short, I think they can play an integral part of securing distribution or being a promotional element for a film that we're distributing ourselves.
Daren:Yeah. I would just double stamp that, like, a 100%. It's great strategy, and I'm excited to dive in. We do have that one queued up in the future episodes. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast.
Daren:Go over to 3coinpro.com/podcast. Subscribe. We'll send you a cool couple of welcome gifts, and you'll get the opportunity to ask questions like these. So please do that. And tell all your friends, thanks for listening today.
Daren:Gary, another great episode. I'm loving this, man. Very excited for what's coming down the line for us. We got a couple of months until our movies are out, and I think we're gonna have the overlap where at some point for, I don't know how many weeks, we're gonna have 2 movies at theaters, which is super cool.
Garrett:Let's keep our fingers crossed. Yeah. That's a good point. That's very likely. K.
Garrett:Thanks. Thanks, you guys. Thanks for listening.
Daren:Thank you for listening to this episode of Truly Independent. To join us on the journey, be notified of and ask us questions about today's episode, head over to 3 coinpro.com/podcast, and put in your name and an email address. If you're a fan of the show, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and be sure to share this episode. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. Our intro and outro music is Election Time by Kjartan Abele.