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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
No, no, no!
What is up, everybody,
and welcome to the United States
Department of Nerds,
where we are for the people,
by the people, and of the people.
And tonight,
we welcome back two friends of the podcast
and creators we've had the pleasure of
following for quite some time now.
Back in December of twenty twenty five,
Kyle and Aaron joined us to discuss
ZombieCon volume one.
In their journey through independent
filmmaking since then,
they've continued pushing the boundaries
of indie horror through big squid
productions and are now helping launch a
new era of mobile-first horror
storytelling with Autonomous.
What begins as a simple ride home inside
of a driverless vehicle quickly descends
into a nightmare where technology becomes
the threat
An escape may be impossible,
but tonight isn't just about autonomous.
It's about growth,
lessons learned since zombie con,
the realities of independent filmmaking,
and what it takes to keep building
original horror projects in an
increasingly competitive industry.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now in session.
Please welcome back to the podcast,
Kyle and Aaron.
Welcome back, y'all.
Hello.
Hello.
Thank you so much for having us back.
Thank you so much.
You've got the best intros, I think,
on the entire internet.
Oh, yeah.
I do appreciate that.
I'm pretty sure my team appreciates that
as well.
How have y'all been?
I mean,
you popped a baby and you were right
back to it.
And I can't imagine, like,
I'm going to have a baby.
I'm like, oh,
and we're going to go make another movie.
Like, how has that whole journey been of,
like, having the baby and then, like,
immediately jumping right back into doing
another movie?
Yeah, I got to say, luckily,
I feel like we've been parents for a
long time,
not just with our wonderful dog here, Mr.
Whipples, who is joining us,
but with ZombieCon Vol.
One.
It has been our baby for over a
decade and a very, you know,
beautiful long childhood and growth that
we have been developing.
that and seeing that launch at the same
time as having our first child anya our
baby girl it was a very busy time
but running a couple businesses before
zombicon and then the process of bringing
zombicon to life and launching it uh
really helped prepare us a lot for kind
of the the stress and excitement and like
i say organized chaos that is juggling all
of these things um a lot of lessons
learned still but that really helped
prepare us
Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.
I'd say that, you know,
having a child is probably the best thing
any indie filmmaker can do for upping your
threshold of stress toleration.
Although when it comes to the actual
filming part, it is best.
to have grandparents support and a lot of
grandparents support because, you know,
I would not feel comfortable taking her on
to an indie film set.
I probably wouldn't feel comfortable
taking her on to a big budget film
set right now with all the atmosphere and
machines and lights pulsing everywhere.
Yeah.
You know.
It gets a little hairy.
So grandparents support.
But having her has been obviously an
absolute blessing.
And I don't know,
it's it's it's been weirdly very cathartic
to have something to care so much about
that is like,
You know,
it's not just me working on a movie
with Aaron,
like in a house where half the people
think we're probably crazy after ten years
of working on it here.
It's like I've got to take care of
my child.
Everyone's like, oh, absolutely.
It's like the red carpets rolled out.
Go do your thing.
Like, it's all good.
Like, everyone understands it,
which is nice.
Nice.
I can imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's very funny to having a fifteen
month old around the studio as well,
because it's not like she's on our sets.
But, you know,
she comes up in Dada's office and she
wants to see what he's working on.
So she gets exposed to some of the
stuff.
We're not doing screen time with her,
but she has started very little here and
there.
The curiosity.
Exactly.
And her main thing that she loves right
now is this giant,
we're going to call her the big bad
from a movie that we'll be releasing.
It's watching.
We're still finishing the very tail end of
post-production because we got sidelined
with Autonomous, an amazing distraction.
But yeah,
she likes looking and is very curious
about the big bad,
this kind of statue-esque creature,
I will say,
that is in the corner of the office.
And she's not scared of her yet,
which is great.
Yeah,
we tried to describe it as just a
big doll.
She's a friendly big doll.
That's Stella.
That's so awesome.
It's like if Rob Zombie and Cheryl Moon
had children at their house and all the
stuff that he has there.
I was making this comparison the other day
in my head.
I'm like,
Is there a lot of like,
there's not a lot of like couples out
there that are making horror movies
together outside of that I can think of
Rob and Cheryl.
Her name's Cheryl, right?
Cheryl Moon?
I believe so.
I'm notoriously terrible with names.
Faces, I am a hundred percent perfect on.
Names, just for some reason,
it turns into like garbledy gunk in my
brain.
But faces, I'm awesome with.
Yeah,
I will recognize the face and be like,
and my wife will be like,
who is that?
I'm like, I don't know.
I just recognize their face.
Yeah,
that's why you need those Meta glasses.
Meta, who is that?
There you go.
There you go.
Maybe someday I'll get those in the
budget.
But...
Looking back now,
with all the success that ZombieCon has
had, and still to this day,
something ZombieCon related rolls across
my feed, which I absolutely love to see.
What was the overall response, you think,
to ZombieCon from audiences in the horror
community alike?
Because like I said,
not a day goes by that ZombieCon doesn't
roll across my screen.
Sorry for that.
Yeah.
that is absolutely nothing to apologize
for it is amazing to see because it
was such a fun movie and such a
good time that let it like every day
like this shirt's in rotation so yes i
i know we said before we went live
but i have to say for the audience
you're rocking that shirt it makes me so
happy to see it as well i'll rock
them both i got them both so i
rock them both
But with with ZombieCon,
I would say one of the things that
kept coming back over and over again in
the reviews and that meant the most to
me.
And so it stood out the most is
hearing how much heart people felt and
knew was put into it just by watching
it and not even knowing anything about the
making of Journey and it taking place.
just about a decade of our lives and
blood, sweat, and tears.
But hearing that that really translated
and that no matter if they loved really
more the horror aspects or were really
more into the cosplay and anime,
because it was funny,
this film got reviewed by so many
different communities and embraced by so
many.
People were pointing out different things,
but over and over again,
people were saying the amount of heart
that was put into it.
and see i here i thought you were
going to say i loved hearing about how
great aaron anya was as claire and the
incredible acting well i thought that went
that went without mentioning i mean come
on now anybody willing to drink themselves
in that much fake blood for the love
of the game has all my respect
Because I can't imagine how long it took
just to wash all that off.
Yeah,
it was a lot when you would know
that the set day was over,
the paperwork's over, you know,
I'm running around like a producer doing
six thousand different things.
And then at the very,
very end comes the all right,
now I got to go shower and dry
and all that.
And it's just going to be a whole
nother experience of looking down and the
bathtub is caked like Carrie style and red
blood.
Yeah.
It was its own thing that got normal
after a while, though.
Honestly,
it was just a part of the routine.
At the end of the day, you know,
all that's done, you go to, like,
scratch your ear or something,
you're like, damn, there's still blood?
Exactly, exactly.
But, um...
Since your last appearance,
have there been any major changes in how
you're approaching independent filmmaking,
storytelling,
or the production side of things?
I imagine your world's kind of like mine,
where if I learn something new,
a new trick,
else that I didn't know it could do.
So I get all excited.
And then I realized like, oh,
it's not that great,
but it's still kind of cool that it's
there.
You know,
one of those types of features that gets
added.
But how has that changed for y'all and
y'all's approach to things?
Yeah, that is.
I mean,
it's been like since we started with short
films and then to like many web series
and then obviously on to ZombieCon and,
you know,
into the future with music videos and this
feature film that Aaron mentioned earlier
and now Autonomous, of course.
each project i feel like you learn you
know one to ten new really critical things
uh whether it's the best placement for a
lav uh you know the best way to
frame a shot from a weird angle how
best to contort yourself in this specific
example with autonomous into the front
seat of a car as a six foot
two two hundred fifty pound man and trying
to make yourself invisible from all of the
reflections around you with a camera and a
lens
uh you know you're always learning
something new uh yeah and just trying to
then use all that new information uh in
concert with everything that you know the
foundation that you built to attack each
project uh in succession and i found it
both makes things easier uh allows you to
become a little more ambitious uh and
definitely more confident
with each and every project because you're
more affirmed with what you've known in
theory to be true.
But since you've been able to put it
into practice,
you've been able to see where the slight
flaws are,
where you can adjust and kind of make
it fit for your routine and best fit
for kind of our small, weird set.
yeah so it's just a constant evolution i
don't think it'll ever stop to be honest
yeah experience is just like you were
saying so much better than in theory i
mean that is the way where it cements
it gels and i would say for both
of us the number one thing i recognized
after shooting autonomous versus zombie
con was the amount of organization
that both of us really were prioritizing
organization and every aspect of the
things that we were responsible for and it
just was something drilled into us uh
learning what is after the comic-con and
really really helped just like
nitty-gritty the things that you know
small and big it just really helps yeah
absolutely
So for those who may have missed your,
your first appearance,
and I don't know how deep you get
on other podcasts, but, um,
for those who missed your first visit,
who are Kyle and Aaron and what is
big squid?
Oh, all right.
Let me try and... That's a great question.
Let me try and make it as brief
as possible.
Oh, I can start.
Yeah.
Crazy cinephile and anime lover who...
Decided instead of taking many more better
financial paths to follow the kid dream of
being an artist and has traveled that road
as a journeyman and sometimes succeeded
and a lot and more than often than
not failed, especially in the beginning.
All right.
I like this method of description.
So from kind of outside perspective
summary, I would say child actress,
somewhat semi-successful,
been on a ton of big projects,
big sets,
and got burned out at the ripe old
age of like twenty two and decided that
producing and having a hand in choosing my
own projects was definitely the way I
wanted to go versus sitting around and
endless auditioning,
waiting for things to happen.
So decided to go the producing route.
Partnered with my then-boyfriend,
then-turned-fiance, then-turned-husband,
and now father of my child.
Hello.
Here we are, I would say,
roughly fifteen years into our filmmaking
journey and got a couple projects under
our belt.
The biggest ones so far being ZombieCon
and the most exciting currently for
Screamify,
this micro-horror at the edge of
verticals.
And yeah,
here we are in the best place in
the world with you, the chairman,
in this awesome podcast.
So life is pretty good.
Yeah.
I always get excited when y'all hit me
up.
I know if y'all are hitting me up,
it's going to be something amazing.
And just to round out the answer there,
Big Squid is the package that holds all
of our personalities and all of the
friends that we've collected along the
way.
You know, people started through...
Exactly.
People start as crew,
they start as actors,
and we're huge on loyalty.
And we kind of build a family atmosphere
on set.
And we've just been really blessed with
the people that we've gotten an
opportunity to work with have all been
truly genuinely talented,
both in what they're doing and what
they're bringing to the table,
while simultaneously being amazing human
beings.
And
just created like a little filmmaking
family.
That's actually,
it grew recently with autonomous.
Cause we had to find all new people,
mostly new people here in Atlanta.
And we had a few recurring, uh,
behind the scenes roles,
Chad Tolson being a notable one.
And Nicole McCauley who played mama bear
and, uh, zombie con.
She's a local now with y'all.
Right.
I think we had talked about that last
time.
Cause she's such,
such a fantastic actress and person.
Yeah.
She's amazing and such a wonderful human
being too.
Yeah.
This is our Big Squid East Coast chapter.
Yeah, that's right.
That we're in.
So we still have our Los Angeles and
our West Coast,
but we were building out the East Coast.
And like Kyle said,
starting with some of our family,
we already worked with the four who are
already over here.
and a couple other friends and you know
colleagues that were already based close
to here that then we could actually rope
into our project so it's just been
building in the best way possible i mean
i can't even say how great our crew
and cast was on autonomous i mean just
like with zombicon it's when you're
working all of you putting everything you
have into every day and the energy is
right it just makes for not only the
best work but you end the day feeling
good and that's just as important as the
work being good
A hundred percent.
Well said.
Thank you.
I like it.
And a perfect answer for it too.
You know,
I always ask people that questioning,
they get that same look in their eye
every single time.
And I'm not looking for like this big,
huge, like, oh, you know, this and this.
I'm like, just, I love a wing dancer.
Just, just wing it.
The first thing that comes to your mind.
And that's always the best answers in my
eyes is I don't share questions.
Like I've seen people say that before,
like, oh,
I just give them the questions beforehand.
I'm like, no, I want genuine stories.
And you get genuine.
Yeah.
I've had one person ask and the answer
was like, no, I'm like,
you're going to have to respect my
journalistic integrity on this one because
I'm not going to throw something from left
field.
a project we're talking about the project
and i'm not going to like left field
you with something that i heard off the
internet i would you know we don't we
don't get down like that so but before
we dive into autonomous what would you say
has been the biggest accomplishment or
milestone for both of you since your last
appearance outside of the baby of course
you can't say the baby
All right.
Other than the baby, I'm pretty pumped.
I think we can officially say it.
It's not been released yet.
But well,
ZombieCon did get released in the UK,
which we've been super excited about.
I've seen that.
Congratulations.
That's so awesome.
Thank you so much.
We're very excited about that.
But upcoming as well,
it's going to be released in Japan
officially.
Let's go.
Let's go.
I love that.
That's such a cool market because they're
big on horror.
Some of the coolest,
most unique horror comes out of Japan and
now Korea too.
I get to go to Korea in that
same bucket as well.
So that is so awesome.
Slowly making its way across the world and
I'm pumped.
I'm happy for y'all.
That's amazing.
That was always kind of my, like,
not necessarily end goal with ZombieCon,
because obviously the end goal with
ZombieCon is to continue the story.
But in terms of a distribution angle...
I was really hoping that it found its
way over to Japan and the folks over
there were able to enjoy it from their
point of view simply because so many
things that were created in Japan,
mainly anime in this regard,
have shaped me as an artist and shaped
the story of ZombieCon in many ways.
I was really...
It's just an exciting,
exciting thing to be able to share in
some small way.
You know, I'm sorry.
I'm being attacked by my dog.
He's coming at me.
He's pumped.
He's pumped.
He can feel the energy.
I would, I would be remiss too,
if I didn't say,
I don't know if it's like the biggest
achievement,
which is why I didn't come first to
mine,
but the biggest milestone other than the
birth of Anya and everything has been,
the shoot for autonomous and partnering
with screamify partnering with,
which is an amazing, I mean,
the fact that they're basically building
an entire company and brand off of
supporting indie artists and focusing on
indie filmmaking and indie horror,
especially obviously,
but bringing indie artists to the
forefront, uh, you know,
they're a successful company.
They probably could hire people with a lot
of credits and people.
Y'all are the first
We were right up there on the first
wave.
Yeah,
we were in the first wave of their
kind of, I guess, new projects or,
I guess,
Screamify originals that they were putting
together.
And we were so honored.
And being in the industry for as long
as we have,
we've been sold a lot of tall tales
and, oh, yeah,
this project will come together or we'll
get this money together with this.
And it usually comes from people who are
meaning very well,
but
everything in this industry is a bit of
a crapshoot and well it's also it's
sincerely difficult to get financing
together for any project um big small
middle sized anywhere in between getting
the money on board is always the most
difficult part you can always find a group
of very talented people to see the vision
through but at the end of the day
everyone's got to eat and screamify
put its money where its mouth was,
or I should say where its scream was.
And not just for Autonomous,
but also with the behind the screams.
I don't know if we've talked about this,
but the docuseries that they made of us
making Autonomous.
They have been releasing the BTS of it.
And like, I've enjoyed seeing it.
It's been so cool.
And we were talking about a little bit
beforehand and we'll get to it a little
later in the interview.
about that but it was just so cool
i always enjoyed bts stuff yeah to me
you just get how like the it was
literally your garage no spoilers but
literally in in your garage downstairs you
know like y'all are filming parts of this
movie which is so cool
Well, I'll tell you,
getting that car into the garage and
parking it horizontally to give us enough
room to work around it because it's a
two car garage.
But it's not, you know,
garages aren't they're not warehouses,
right?
Usually you do something like this in a
warehouse.
You'd have plenty of room to maneuver
around it.
But luckily enough,
I measured out the entire garage ahead of
time.
Of course,
I didn't want to take a chance like,
oh, yeah, we'll get it in there.
So as Aaron was saying previously,
you learn that, you know,
planning details ahead of time much better
than winging it in regards to avoiding
catastrophic problems.
So I'd measured out the garage.
I had the specs for the car,
measured that out.
You know,
was able to get in there with a
laser ruler and make sure that we were
going to have enough room by moving some
stuff out of the garage and get it
fitted in there perfectly and then have
enough room on either side to navigate
with the blue screen and all the lights
because we did employ a poor man's
process.
That's the stuff that you saw in the
garage.
And it was so cool, though, because,
I mean,
it's not a lot and it gets the
job done.
And that's what we go for at the
end of the day.
me it looks like so much stuff it
looks like this huge massive like when you
see it the final product it looked like
it was this this just big massive project
that was taking place and no it was
literally mom and dad's garage which is
the coolest thing ever
It really comes down to lighting, right?
And just making sure that you employ all
those elements in a way that will
hopefully be invisible to anyone watching.
And then tying that together with real
sets,
like we had one of the greatest sets
that we had for this,
which was a learning experience for me.
uh was an awesome experience i think for
the entire cast and crew we shot out
on a road uh i think it's called
crook creek road out in coeta county
georgia and this road was actually most
it's known as the walking dead road
because yeah almost all of the scenes that
you see in the walking dead of them
walking on a two-lane road with double
yellow lines in the middle and woods on
either side sometimes they've loaded it up
with cars zombies sometimes they've had a
bear and just had characters walking on it
that's the road that they've used.
Mainly because... Well,
the city's there just right down the road.
Yeah,
it was about a two-hour drive out there.
So,
would have obviously loved for it to be
closer, but...
Unfortunately,
and it's both awesome that we found this
thing and we're lucky enough to be in
an area where this was available,
but it was the only road within that
I could find within like a geographical
two hundred mile radius apart from renting
out private property and getting a private
driveway as the problem of now we would
need to lay down chalk painted or spray
paint painted yellow lines to give it that
road feel.
that had a forest on either side was
a proper road and the most important thing
was that you didn't have buildings through
the tree line that would be illuminating
basically areas that you didn't want to be
illuminated
And it also had two turn offs at
the end.
So there's a small hill on one side
that hid the adjoining road.
And on the backside,
there was a small bend in the road,
which had that road as well.
So it allowed you to shoot basically,
you know,
wherever you wanted and get a clean shot,
which was obviously very helpful when you
when you're running and gunning,
you'll be able to spin the camera around.
It was so creepy out there too.
It really was.
Obviously we were late at night and when
all the lights were off,
which happened several times,
it pitch black and you just hear nothing
but woods and maybe one or two crew
rustling around a little bit,
shuffling nervously.
It was creepy.
It really helped acting wise to get into
the mode.
And our actor for our creature was
actually a friend of mine from college who
had taken one, you know,
acting class in college.
And I reached out.
I actually happened to know two guys who
are, you know, six foot eight plus.
And I wanted the monster to be super
big and intimidating.
Yeah.
And I reached out as a big boy.
yeah and I was like hey so filming
a new project here and looking for anyone
over six foot eight to play a monster
he immediately responded he's like I'm
your guy I'm in and he has such
a great attitude he was so game for
it because of course he had to have
these giant latex sleeves on with hands
and
You know, he had a mask on.
It was like a very ornate costume,
especially for a first time actor.
And he was such a good sport about
it.
He never complained about getting too hot,
even though it was freezing out.
Right.
Yeah.
When you're completely covered in latex,
it gets it gets a little bit steamy.
That stuff don't breathe very well.
no not at all and he was a
total trooper and uh really elevated i
think our monster to the level that we
wanted it to be at and having just
there's no real replacement for that
physical size right like especially when
you see him standing next to the car
and he's like three feet taller than the
top of the car yeah this is crazy
yeah i was like that's a big boy
i noticed like just how large and imposing
he was the creature was when really you're
sandwiched in that car as my character amy
was like looking up and all i see
is this entire creature filling just a
massive void of a human
Yeah,
and he was so sweet too because those
gloves were absolutely insane.
Yeah, those were creepy as hell.
Actually, you should get into the gloves.
This is a cooler story.
So I was looking for a solution for
the hands.
The script called for them to be,
you know, alien-ish, obviously not human.
And I had gone through a number of
iterations to see what it is,
what it was that I could do with
it.
Talk to a number of makeup artists.
Unfortunately,
our makeup artists on ZombieCon is not
local here.
And he had a couple of things going
on.
He couldn't make it out.
So I had to find a solution that
was going to be rugged enough to endure
the rigors of production fast enough to
apply that we could.
do it on that road uh so that
kind of struck out regular makeup and
trying to build out the hands off of
his actual hands just because that process
can take you know three five hours i
heard different quotes from different
makeup artists in regards to the length of
time that applying the hands would be and
then of course using them functionally uh
runs the risk of the makeup being slightly
destroyed or damaged so then you're doing
touch-ups in between the shots and we just
didn't have
the size of a production that would allow
for that type of time.
And I was looking for these latex gloves.
I think they're not latex.
They're actually silicone.
Extremely well made.
I can't remember if it was Immortal Masks
or CFX Masks,
but I was looking at both of their
websites and nothing that they had was in
stock.
Everything was made to order.
Could be there in eight weeks.
And I'm like, I'm shooting in three weeks.
I need these things now.
Yeah, I can't take a chance that,
you know,
maybe they'll be there in four weeks and
we might just make it.
So I eventually call them and I was
talking to someone and I, you know,
they had a couple hands that kind of
worked,
but I was going to have to heavily
modify them to make them appropriate for
the character.
And as I'm having this conversation,
the sales representative is like, hold on.
And she sends me a photo of a
pair of hands that are not up for
sale yet.
They're planning to go on sale,
but they have them in stock,
but no one in the country has them.
They're totally just on the back shelf
waiting to be put in circulation,
but have not yet.
And she's like, would these work for you?
And I'm like, no.
yeah, that's exactly what I want.
And so at the time of filming,
and I don't know if they've gone on
sale yet or not,
but at the time of filming,
those were the only hands like them in
the entire country,
which was kind of cool and a nice
little, you know,
kind of make you feel like a big
Hollywood movie at that point.
We got a custom of no one else
has these things.
It was necessary then to break the rule
that
We have been employing since ZombieCon,
speaking of lessons learned,
which is one is none, two is one.
There was no chance with this one.
There were literally only one pair
available in the entire country that we
could have gotten.
So Kyle especially,
but we both were protecting those hands
with our lives on set.
Like nothing can happen to our big bads
hands.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Really cool.
And I can't stress this enough.
Like how unique they were when the moment,
cause he has his hands in his pocket
at the beginning,
but when he reaches for that door handle
or to put,
I think it was tapping the glass or
something.
I was like, I'm like,
they're almost like nose for rot two hands
almost from the original Dracula a little
bit,
but then not quite because his hands are
massive and,
And I was like, geez.
And they were like,
your boy's got some hot dog fingers.
Like, no kidding.
Like he's got some, some balls on it.
I was just like, geez.
Like,
cause at first he doesn't seem as imposing
or as big,
but then when he walks up to the
car, you're like, Oh damn,
this is a big dude.
And then when his hand comes out of
his pockets and tap the glass,
I was like, geez,
he's got some paws on him.
and um and they were just so unique
in just like the color the color was
really cool that
deadish gray blue color like a body that's
been in the ground for a little while
how you imagine like the blueness how this
the blood starts to rise to the surface
but but anyways but yeah it just yeah
it was really cool but we we just
went a long way around to get to
the part where i ask you for people
who are just now discovering what
autonomous is what is autonomous
So Autonomous is one of Screamify's
original micro horrors,
which is a couple series so far that
the platform has funded and is putting out
of micro horrors.
So it's horror content,
but made and shot vertically,
specifically to be watched and binge
watched, hopefully, on your phone.
Shot in nine by sixteen format.
And it's.
in little bite-sized chunk episodes so
that it's just easy to scroll on to
the next one and consume the entire season
in one sitting.
Ours is sixteen episodes.
I believe it's around twenty-six minutes
long total.
And so it hits that sweet spot where
you get the full satisfaction of getting a
whole season out of it.
And you can't, hopefully,
you can't stop watching and putting it
down.
And yet it feels totally fresh.
Yeah, that's a straight watch.
fresh and new right there on your phone
versus needing to go to a TV.
And it's something different, you know,
made for the cell phone and shot that
way.
It fills the entire screen.
So it's definitely funny enough that AI is
a big part of the topic of this
series, Autonomous, you know,
technology being what it is now and
verticals being a new thing that people
are adopting readily made for TV or made
for phone content.
Mobile first content.
It's just it's very fitting that this
series taps into both Truly.
Yeah, it was it was a really interesting
I guess a confluence right of events where
the script itself is dealing with this
emerging technology that's brand new and
is just being introduced to the world.
And it was just alien enough where,
you know,
I had to ride in one of these
things in order to kind of get the
feel for what's happening.
And it's freaky,
like the wheels jerking around by itself.
And like,
it feels like you're in a science fiction
movie.
and producing a story with this element in
a absolutely brand new way like aaron was
saying for a brand new type of
distribution in terms of vertical you know
micro r's it's like it just it just
felt like a perfect unison on the cutting
engine it was cool right yeah yeah so
was that shot on a cell phone or
was it a camera
No,
we shot on an Ari Alexa thirty five.
We inverted it vertically.
So that thing was basically shot with the
same camera that all but the absolute
biggest films are shot on.
There are you know,
there's an IMAX camera, of course,
which I mean,
turning that thing vertical would be like
turning a Volkswagen vertical.
I don't think you're doing that.
And then, you know,
there's also there's a higher end Alexa
that's a larger
format,
but this is like the top of the
top camera that we used to shoot a
vertical on, which was really cool.
And we had a special vertical integration
plate that Ari had designed and actually
couldn't find one of these for sale either
and had to have one machined in Germany
by the company and had it shipped out,
which took like two months for them to
get it to us because it's got it.
Yeah.
Another thing that's so cool about
Screamify, too,
was when we were discussing making this,
it was
part of the thing that they said
absolutely we're going for it we want to
make sure that when you shoot at the
camera the whole thing is turned
vertically there's no going back you know
let's shoot it regular typical you know
and then cut in no no this was
all in and i love that kind of
attitude with it too it's like we're
setting out on a mission this is what
we're going to make this is how we're
doing it we're going for it there's no
looking back yeah it's
If you don't have a Screamify account,
by all means,
go check out these micro horrors shot in
vertical display.
I cannot stress enough how cool of a
concept this is.
Was it released episodic or was it
released all at one time?
It was released all at one time, but,
you know, segmented into episodes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because it's literally one of those where
you go on a break at work and
you only got like five or ten minutes.
You can squeeze in like two or three
episodes in that time.
And it's just a cool concept to have
out there.
And I'm like,
why are we just now doing this?
Like, why isn't this been a thing before?
Yeah.
I mean,
I feel like I in nine sixteen before,
but not to this degree.
Well, I feel like it's well,
first and foremost,
I think there's always hesitation to
change with everything.
I think that's why, you know,
we were kind of at the cutting edge
of YouTube.
We grew up at the time when YouTube
was, you know,
when Burnham was like doing his songs on
YouTube way, way,
way back in the day when Charlie bit
my finger and all that stuff.
and we watched it grow and of course
when we were doing our first basically
streaming service which was a misinformed
attempt to compete with google and youtube
with our own meager budget um you know
which didn't obviously go great it totally
flopped but it taught us a lot
you know,
there was a lot of hesitancy back then
for people in Hollywood to get involved
with YouTube,
whether it was a big budget production.
I know Aaron was involved with one or
it was just a regular YouTube content and
actors that I would go to class with.
I would tell them we were doing a
streaming service and they'd be like,
what is that like YouTube?
Like, yeah, it's like YouTube,
but we're going to try to elevate the
art form and try to make it like,
you know, like a real,
real films and stuff on this specific
streaming service.
And so,
everyone was kind of like no i'm not
interested in doing that uh you know it
wasn't it wasn't super negative but there
was no real positivity of their brand
exactly way back and like let's say look
at it now and now look at it
oh yeah now people would jump over
themselves to get in a mr beast you
know competition show right it doesn't
even need to be acting they'd be like
Mr. Beast, anything he wants.
Does he want me to run around the
world eating a chocolate bar while jumping
on one foot and take whatever it is
they'd be all in for?
And I feel like this is just another
kind of nexus in time where we're entering
into this new age of.
digital streaming in regards to and i
guess netflix is another thing to bring up
during this conversation because you know
there was a time where people looked down
at netflix before it started you know
coming over netflix did dvds in the mail
i do i'm ashamed to say i do
and i'm even more ashamed to say i
never bought stock because that would have
been very nice same same
But I think, yeah,
this is just another one of those times
where this is a new thing, right?
We're kind of taking the vertical format
from these vertical dramas that, you know,
I don't want to put anyone down,
but can be cheesy at times and aren't
necessary.
They're shot quick and dirty.
They're multi-cam shoots.
It's basically pretty static camera
angles.
They're not shot with the cinematic intent
that we went for with Autonomous.
And we had more time to do this.
It was a, you know,
a shorter story than most verticals.
It was a super well-written story by Sean
Overbeak,
who's actually the founder of Screamify.
And he wrote it in such a way
that it made our jobs extremely doable
within that contained setting for this
particular type of shoot within the
constraints that we had.
So it was kind of a perfect marriage
in multiple respects.
And I think that the art form on
its own will grow into the future
because...
As you said, it's, you know,
it's not going to replace a movie.
If you want to go see a movie,
you're going to sit down.
You're going to turn the lights off.
You're going to kick on the sound system.
You're going to totally,
you're going to have two hours of time
and you're going to fall into that movie.
This isn't for that.
This is for, like you were saying,
it's a break at work.
It's kind of, you know,
you're on the bus.
You got to get here.
You're going there.
You're in the back of a Lyft or
an Uber or maybe a Waymo.
I don't know about all that, dude.
yeah if anyone actually drives in a waymo
and watches this series please let us know
somehow because i would love to imagine
this watching autonomous in the back of a
waymo
yes on the way while having an argument
with your significant other not i hope
that you're not having an argument with
your significant other you know that's
funny that y'all brought that up and this
whole when the thing started it felt like
because i mean i kind of had an
idea what the movie was but when you
come out of the bar your your husband
or boyfriend comes out of the bar behind
you y'all get into this waymo and they
start arguing it sounded like uh
like almost like a mother-in-law from
hell, you know, Reddit post.
And I was just like, this is cool.
I like this.
Okay.
I'm like,
we're acting out almost like a
mother-in-law from hell, you know,
subreddit.
I'm like, okay.
And then you start seeing the little cues
from the car and what the car is
doing.
And you're like, oh, okay, let's go.
Yeah.
It was such a cool concept.
Yeah.
I have to add a little story here
too.
And I haven't even told this one.
You just brought back this memory,
mother-in-law from hell.
Like I was sitting the day before we
started shooting,
getting my nails done for,
as the character.
And I'm,
I'm thinking about Amy and I'm processing
everything.
And I just had this idea that was
nagging at me being like, I just really,
when Amy is imitating his mom,
I know it's based in Atlanta.
I grew up in Atlanta.
I want the mom to have this really
annoying Southern accent.
And I knew the one.
And I was like, like, like as Amy,
like it's like nails on a chalkboard.
I could just hear it.
And then all of a sudden a lady
sits down beside me getting a manicure and
pedicure and she's got this thick Southern
drawl.
It's just really annoying.
I was like, oh my God, this is,
it's, it's a sign.
I've got to go for it.
So the mother-in-law from hell,
that came together in a couple different
ways.
But from real life, my experience,
you never know when you're going over
ideas for acting and you're out in the
real world and little things just hit you.
That's got to be now incorporated.
You know,
it's funny because I can now hear that
in my head.
I grew up in the South.
So this road you're talking about,
the Southern voices, I hear those.
I used to drive on roads like that
all the time in Alabama.
Yeah.
i know exactly like i i feel that
every which way and this is this is
great because y'all actually didn't write
this when it was written by the uh
the guy from screamify which is really
cool and you know i i was going
to ask where the original idea came from
but you were against that which
in the the concept a driverless vehicle
literally taking you to your demise like
it's such a unique thing to build a
story around and it's like a new fear
unlocked like you never thought like hey
well i mean i'm the type of person
if i'm like behind the wheel of the
car i don't really want to be in
or around or near a car unless i'm
controlling it but um
like in a lot new fears and new
themes of horror that haven't really been
explored yet in this situation.
Cause claustrophobia,
the whole nine is being played out here,
you know,
in front of us in this fantastic,
like three to four minute episode of a
horror movie.
Um,
and y'all got to do like record this
thing.
How long was like,
was how long was the shoot for this?
So I imagine a night or two,
you know, in my head,
like they probably shot this in a day
or two.
The shoot for this was originally planned
for about a week.
And then we had a nasty winter storm
come through Georgia that severely
sidetracked a number of elements of
production.
So we ended up having, I think,
two or three.
three,
I can't remember exactly how many we had
a couple of makeup days about a week
after two weeks after the initial
shooting.
So in total, I'd say, you know,
nine or ten, nine or ten days total.
yeah but it was amazing the difference the
difference you know different shoot days
for example i know kyle mentioned off uh
live chat earlier waymo hunting you know
this winter storm significantly impacted
the waymos that were available in atlanta
there were none and this was very early
in the rollout already so there weren't a
lot already just free rolling around
atlanta
that you could call.
And even when you do call,
like Kyle said,
you call through the Uber app and you
can't actually specify, no,
only a driverless vehicle.
So we were Waymo hunting for,
I don't know,
a night and a half of burnt time.
Because they also were pulled,
like we're saying, from the storm.
So there were just no Waymos in Atlanta.
And we're sitting there literally in a
giant SUV with Dominic and I, the actors.
And we're all lobbed up.
We are in our costumes.
We are ready to go.
Kyle, the director,
with our Alexa already hooked on,
ready to go.
The sound's on.
Like the AC, Thin, has got his monitor.
We're all ready.
And we're just calling Ubers,
all of us on our cell phones, nonstop.
And every single one that was getting...
picked up was a driver and you'd have
to cancel immediately start the whole
process over again and we went to
different spots all around buckhead
because it's only in two parts of atlanta
that they currently are servicing and we
were just burning time yeah it's like the
most frustrating thing in the world
But I will say on those reshoot days,
the storm had passed and the Waymos were
back in circulation.
I had really found a great spot where
it was safe to kind of operate.
Obviously, the permits covered it,
all that stuff.
And we got there, got to the spot.
We called the Waymo.
Waymo shows up.
And now the trick is, okay...
before we annoy any other motorists
because this was a dead end street.
So there was no real pass through traffic.
We were pretty good on that.
But, you know,
you've got a lady walking your dog over
there.
We don't want to scare anyone.
So we're out there like, you know,
guy with a boom pole and it's me
with the camera and everyone's trying to
look nonchalant.
And the Waymo comes down and it's like,
OK,
we had written out all these schematics at
the house and gone over it, you know,
like a military plan.
Like, this is our plan of attack.
Like, we're going to set the lights.
Someone's going to jump in.
We have our AC is going to jump
in.
He's going to set the lights up in
the Waymo.
We're going to let the Waymo turn around.
We're going to hope it doesn't drive away
with our lights that we just set up.
okay great now we get the actor set
up on the other side of the street
okay you're in position great okay now the
camera's set up shot shot set up okay
focus are we in focus you know we're
pulling focus uh with you know the motors
and there's a guy in a car like
fifty feet away we've got little radios
and stuff and we're all trying to
communicate without screaming in this cul
de sac and
You know, this process,
it probably took a total of four minutes,
but it felt like with the adrenaline and
you're going and you're doing it and
you're like, we have to get this shot.
We finally hooked our Waymo.
We can't mess this one up.
And it's like, you know,
I think we had a couple of mishaps
because, you know,
it's just like anything.
Well, the well-made plan,
like man proposes and God disposes.
It's like even the most well-made plans go
up in smoke when you're in the middle
of the fire and it's like,
As soon as the Waymo gets there,
everyone's asking me, wait, what do I do?
What do I do?
What do I do?
I'm like, guys,
we went over this and I'm trying not
to freak out because if I freak out,
that's it.
Everybody.
So I'm having to calmly as I know
that we only have like, you know,
a couple minutes before this thing peels
off and is like no rider found or
something because I, you know,
I never really tested the longevity of how
long a Waymo would sit.
I assumed it was similar to an Uber.
So wait, like
maybe five or ten minutes before it
decided that, you know, we were fake.
We're fake writers or something.
And so we go over everything.
Everyone gets in their positions.
And, you know,
by the grace of talented actors and
talented crew,
we pulled it off and we got these
beautiful round of shots.
And yeah,
that was like a huge victory moment for
the entire team.
One thing that was crazy, though,
was Dominic and I were in the back
and they're shooting like the exterior of
the car driving away with us in it.
But it's important to get, you know,
all of us,
our coverage in this one shot.
And the way it suddenly just like stops
right as it's just started going.
And this voice,
this ethereal sounding voice comes from
nowhere.
I get everywhere.
It's the speakers.
They're like.
attention, attention, please remove,
please do not be sitting in the front
seat.
You must be sitting in the back seat.
And Dominic and I are looking at each
other like, I said,
we're sitting in the back seat.
You must not be sitting.
And she repeats it.
And I'm just like, no, no,
like we're in the back seat.
We're following the rules.
Like, please just keep driving.
I didn't say we're filming.
You need to keep driving.
And it's because I'm sweating bullets that
I didn't realize that it must have
registered because we just placed a little
light in the very front so that we
were illuminated.
The door opened.
It triggered it.
That's what it was like registering.
But honestly, like Kyle said,
like chicken with the head cut off,
I was so nervous already just thinking as
an actor, like, please, Waymo, keep going,
that I wasn't even registering.
That's what it was talking about.
Yeah.
It was it was a very surreal experience.
You also can't really get them to go
exactly where you want them to go because
they decide to do their own thing.
But doubling back on the difficulty of
getting away,
this just poured salt in the wound of
the entire story.
Literally a week after we closed
production and I'm editing and I've got
some stuff going on in the background,
like some YouTube video or something's
playing and a new segment comes up from
Atlanta.
Street attacked by Waymo's and autonomous
vehicles.
Will this street takeover ever end?
And apparently there's a street not too
far away from where we are that has
like a hundred Waymo's all the time on
it.
And they're just,
it's one of their circulation routes.
So when they don't have a driver,
they go back to this pinpoint and they
just go up and down the street.
It's like a parade of Waymo's and it's
like annoying all the citizens that are
living over there.
And I'm like,
this couldn't have come out a week before.
We would have been golden.
We would have gone down there.
We would have had our choice of like,
what Waymo does everyone want?
You want that Waymo or you want that
Waymo?
Because we also had to try to match
the upholstery of the Waymo.
with the jaguar that we rented to be
our kind of faux waymo for the matching
interior shots and we luckily got one with
a tan interior but most of them have
a black interior and it's kind of like
hit or miss in atlanta in la apparently
they have different color schemes for
different cities i know way too much about
waymo's uh i had to i've been on
all imagine though a week earlier
you could have got a whole bunch of
B roll off of that street.
Oh yeah.
The only thing that wouldn't have worked
for B roll.
And I have thought about that.
Cause I thought about going out there and
getting some B roll.
I was like, well,
the one issue with that is it's going
to look pretty suspicious.
If every car in the background of this
B roll is way more,
cause that's going to be like,
are there any other cars on the road?
i i have to interject when you're talking
about shooting with the jag that i can't
believe we didn't think about this on set
so the faux gomo should have been called
the fomo that would have been a missed
opportunity yes true true but um you faced
a lot of challenges well i'm saying you
i'm saying both of you it's better than
me saying y'all all the time
There's a lot of challenges and a lot
of things going on to make this movie
happen.
What were like there was there one
specific scene or something specifically
that was just like, what the hell?
Like just this extremely difficult thing
that happened along the way or anything
like that.
Well, I'm trying to get away, Mo.
Yeah.
Outside of trying to get away, Mo.
You have all of your regular problems that
come with any kind of film set.
So I won't go into any of the
regular nitty gritty special difficulty
points.
I'll probably stick with the night shoot
on the road,
which was just a logistical difficulty.
Right.
You've got to get all of your equipment
out there.
You've got to get everything out of the
trucks,
get everything set up a small base camp
because it's going to be pitch black in
an hour.
Get some tertiary lights set up, then get,
you know, the real lights set up,
get the car in position,
get the actors in position.
And of course, you know,
we're burning through.
It's not like we've one scene on a
road.
we're using this road for multiple
locations.
So we also had to reposition everything
for the multiple locations.
And that takes a tremendous amount of
time.
You're also shooting late at night.
And after you get done shooting, you know,
in the back of your mind, okay,
the last job of the day is to
re box up everything we did,
try to get it back into the,
you know,
trucks that it barely fit into B to
begin with and do that all again.
in complete darkness.
And with each light you remove,
you remove your visibility.
So, you know, that was just a
a logistical difficulty we had another uh
issue with the location where we had
rented a and this is in the behind
the scenes documentary we had rented a uh
uh basically a restaurant venue to have
our couple exit the restaurant and i love
the exterior of this restaurant which is
set into a large office building and i
thought this could be a perfect upscale
place for the waymo to arrive at
And I talked to the folks over at
the restaurant and they assured me that
they had cleared it with the property
owner.
So we had paid for that space.
We get out to the front of the
building,
we start shooting and immediately we're
descended upon by security.
And this becomes a back and forth with,
you know, multiple people where we're,
you know,
I'm calling the guy who rented us the
space and he's like, oh,
I cleared it with him,
but he clearly hadn't.
And it was this huge issue.
And we ended up losing like two hours
of filming time at that location.
and getting more or less told to leave
politely we were very polite as well i
think had we been more brash we could
have faced arrest or something like this
guy the security guard was taking his job
extremely seriously and i'm of course you
know the indie filmmaker in me is like
surreptitiously telling people to like
yeah box that up over there stuff that's
not important box that up over there
Aaron, Derek or Eric and Dominic,
you need to get into the car that's
about to arrive.
OK,
it's I know it's our FOMO or fake
Waymo,
but you need to you need to get
into this thing and I'm going to shoot
you.
But don't don't look.
Just act regularly like you can't talk too
much like there's going to be no action.
So just go when when the car shows
up.
And I talked to my friend Chad Tolson,
who's driving the car.
He's like he's just literally picking up
the car because he doesn't know what's
happening.
And so I'm like hoping that he doesn't
like peel off with the actors in the
car and all this stuff.
And so we have them
Walk over to it.
The security guards kind of eye on me.
He kind of knows what's up,
but he doesn't say anything.
And we ended up getting that shot.
Now, in the end,
we ended up not using it, right?
We ended up using the actual Waymo because
we were able to actually get one.
But that was a little hairy.
Those security guards, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was serious.
Now, he was polite.
He was very polite.
And I have no bad feelings.
He's a guy doing his job.
I'm a guy doing my job.
And really,
it came down to the business owner who
assured us in a legal contract that he
had control over this space.
And he didn't.
So we found him in breach of contract.
And they were very apologetic about it.
They offered us other locations.
Unfortunately, they didn't work.
uh and you know of course they refunded
the money that we had lost within the
you know of doing this and they were
something good came out of that right yeah
a hundred percent no they were they were
complete gentlemen about it really have
nothing negative to say about anyone in
the entire situation it was just difficult
situation and sometimes those things
happen wires get crossed yeah
You got to talk about the woods.
Yeah, I could talk about the woods,
but I will say first off,
and this is similar to zombie con as
well,
but this one was the entirety of the
shoot.
We were shooting night shoots and some
were much later than others.
Some, you know, well,
I guess some of them we would start
more like three PM and it would go
on,
but a lot of them were night shoots
and that's all fine and good when you're
the actor and you ended a certain time
and you know that you're not going to
have a call time.
That's earlier than twelve hours
separated.
That's sad rules.
But when you're producing, um,
That's not the case.
You've got paperwork to do.
You've got to help with it.
I mean, equipment cleanup and everything.
Luckily,
Kyle and the guys were really doing most
of the equipment, everything with that.
But we all had jobs and tasks to
do with the crew.
And so you've got hours of that.
And then the showering and this and that.
It was my first time without my daughter
being separated from my baby for more than
like two days.
I think that was the longest stretch up
at that point.
So this was going on a week without
her.
I was, you know, the hormones were...
picking and making me like crazy and then
you you're still wanting to unravel a
little bit at the end of the night
and have like you know two minutes to
relax and talk with everyone and at the
end of the day you're waking up and
boom you're getting right back into it
there is no break so it's it's a
grind production always no matter if
you're doing day shoots night shoots
anything
but definitely the woods um the woods amy
running through the woods was pretty clear
barefoot and it was made all the better
if you will um by the fact that
it was in low thirties weather said winter
storm and it had been misting all day
so everything was wet
And it was so cold, in fact,
that Kyle insisted, and thank God,
that I was only out there shooting the
running through barefoot in like two
minute segments.
Because then I had to go back inside
and get heated up.
And I had hand warmers, toe warmers,
right by the fire, heaters,
the whole thing.
Because my feet were literally going numb.
One time they were so numb that I
was like, Kyle, I can't walk.
And he just hands off the camera to
one of the guys,
scoops me up over his shoulder like a
fireman and sprints away.
back to the house the whole way.
It was pretty romantic.
I was kind of happy about it a
little bit.
I wish we had gotten some footage of
that.
I could have been a contender.
It was not the day that Austin behind
the screens was following us.
That would have definitely made for your
heroes moment.
It was pretty awesome.
All the more reason to have you run
in frozen weather again.
I will say though, it definitely,
I can't all the way say that that
was the most difficult for me because as
an actor,
it was a part of me just celebrating
going perfect.
My job is that much easier.
I'm actually freezing.
I'm a little bit terrified.
I'm definitely not feeling great.
You know, this is making for some easier.
Did y'all use the same woods right there
along the road?
So basically we split that location.
We used the woods location alongside the
road for the woods entry and woods exit.
And then we had a separate woods location
that we had more control over.
And that was closer to base camp that
we could use for all the tertiary shots
of Amy running through the woods and kind
of, you know, calling the Huma,
which is the human version of an Uber
in this story.
um did she sorry i just thought i
heard my baby cry so i was like
my ears just was that uh so it
you know a little bit of camera a
little bit of movie magic in joining those
two pieces together and uh obviously we
didn't have a ton of time at the
road and that series of shots with amy
did take i think a full night uh
we were shooting out there and then some
actually a little bit of pickups here and
there
I kept thinking that I'm done.
And then it's like, Ooh,
got to get all dirty.
You've got to get the bloody makeup on
again,
get back in the cold for a little
pickup here and there.
And one of the more exhausting aspects of
it as well was for the Huma,
the Huma.
When I did get in that,
that was actually shot sequentially at the
very end of that super long night of
already having run through the woods and
barefoot through the cold for hours off
and on.
And at the very end,
then we got my coverage inside that car.
And so, again,
the actor and me happy because I was
absolutely exhausted.
I was emotionally spent.
The tears and everything were flooding out
as the character.
It, you know,
it happened really more easily than not.
But definitely the producer me was like a
little overwhelmed, thinking, oh, my God,
after all that,
we still need to get this coverage.
It's definitely daunting.
That was that was challenging.
He did a fantastic job.
I was really happy with how it went.
And I love the way that Kyle shot
that,
because that was one of the few where
I didn't really see storyboards on that.
I didn't know how he was going to
shoot that.
And I felt the way you did was
so intentional and raw and emotional and
being trapped there with her.
Like, it's a moment of relief.
The character's also pouring through with
her grief.
But it's so different from the coverage,
the previously, the other car,
the Waymo that I had been in,
where it's really claustrophobic feeling.
This one,
you're just almost uncomfortably close
watching Amy just completely lose it and
process all this grief.
And I just,
I think it turned out really, really good.
Yeah.
I mean, that ending was something special.
I was like, yes, she made it.
wait, no.
Like, damn.
Like,
you gotta give the bad guy one or
two here and there.
Yeah.
She was so close.
So close.
Poor Amy.
Oh, well.
It was a great swerve, though.
I'm not gonna lie.
It was such a cool swerve right there
at the end.
Like, you always, you're waiting to, like,
how's this end?
You know, like, that's, like,
your moment for me, like,
heroin wins yes and then he looked up
and i was like well all right well
we know how this is gonna end it
but the ending was perfect nothing else
had to be done nothing else had to
be said she processed that grief and then
he looked up and you're like and then
the credits i was like
Like that is that's it.
That's that's the money right there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm happy that it ended that way as
well.
I think it wrapped up the story nicely.
So nicely.
And the whole time you're trying to
process what is this thing?
Like there's no hints.
There's no nothing.
There's no rhyme or reason for this card
to, you know,
bug out and do its own thing.
Like you never get any of those like
details that you would get maybe in a
fleshed out horror movie.
We're talking twenty five minutes,
four minute segments.
And it was just perfect.
You don't need those fine tooth details to
explain the story.
There's a beginning, a middle and the end.
And
It's just absolutely just all work so well
together.
And I am loving like this whole new
concept of storytelling from this kind of
angles and perspectives and that you don't
have to flush it out like an entire
story like that.
You can just.
just, yeah, drop in.
Yeah.
Like you can even have watched,
pick this up from like episode three or
episode four,
if you want to call them episodes and
still been able to jump in and like,
Oh, what is this?
This is kind of a unique concept.
And it would, it still just worked,
you know,
the last ten minutes versus the first ten
minutes.
It still works.
And that's such a cool concept to grasp
a hold of.
And, um,
this whole idea of micro horror that
screamify is is working on in in doing
right now like they have this whole
microverse planned out
Which is such a cool thing because I
like these types of things because I don't
get a whole lot of time to watch
TV, to process TV like that.
But however,
if I'm going outside to make a phone
call and then I'm like, OK,
I'm going to take a breather away from
my desk.
I can pull up Screamify and watch two
to three minute segments of something
that's actually interesting versus
something.
watching myself on YouTube,
which I do from time to time.
I think you have to.
It's like a rite of passage.
I don't want to say a rite of
passage,
but you're giving yourself the views, yes,
but
Just you watch yourself and you go,
and I'm sure it works the same way
for y'all.
I mean,
you're watching yourself act on a screen
and just like, oh,
I wish I would have done that different.
I wish I would ask that differently.
You know,
and I know I pick up those things
now before I wouldn't pick those things
up.
But now I'm like, I'm a hand talker.
I know that.
And it's you just kind of pick up
nuances of yourself by watching yourself.
And I do a lot of that.
is what I'm getting at with that.
Oh, yeah.
I usually watch anything that I make.
I've had to watch probably six hundred
times in the edit, so.
Oh, sure.
And the same.
I will watch the same clip seven, eight,
nine,
ten times until I get the timing just
right.
And which is funny because I use two
different
programs,
one to pull the clips and another program
to kind of polish them up.
And sometimes the endings that you were
aiming for would get clipped by like a
half a word.
So as the clip ends and before it
goes into my promotional type stuff for my
podcast,
It will clip out right there.
And I'm like,
there's nothing you can do to fix it.
It's just the natural thing that happens
as you go from one program into another
program.
You can't fits it.
I've tried.
I've banged my head up against the desk,
and I'm just like,
it just is what it is.
Well, actually, I did fits it kind of.
I added just a few extra seconds at
the very end.
That way, when I do pull it,
it's not clipping as bad, if at all,
anymore.
So little nuances you learn as you start
to edit your own stuff.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It's a constant learning process like we
were talking about earlier.
You're always learning from yourself.
You're learning from your mistakes.
Hopefully recreating the successes along
the way.
This is one of those where it's two
different worlds in my eyes.
ZombieCon is like this phenomenal cult
classic that and then this is something
new, something different.
we don't know yet what that's gonna be
is this gonna be a successful adventure
for screamify i hope it is because this
is just a cool way to ingest like
cool concept horror and being a horror guy
and loving horror this is just it was
really funny and a really cool concept
that they're attempting to do um
For this, though,
did you have to approach it differently
from a vertical versus a horizontal film
perspective?
Because I know they kind of was like,
hey, here's the camera.
We will make sure everything's ready for
you just to pick up and go.
Did you approach it differently,
knowing that, A,
this is less than thirty minutes versus
ZombieCon,
which I think was like an hour and
thirty-ish?
I can't remember.
Hour forty-five-ish, something like that.
You know, everything is totally different.
I mean,
even even if it was an hour and
forty five minutes shot horizontally,
every story has to be attacked in a
unique way.
You know,
obviously every character is different.
The tonality of a story is different.
This obviously is very different from
ZombieCon tonally.
uh this is a slow burn right you've
got a dynamic relationship that's very
grounded and real zombie con our
characters are a bit bigger than life
they're in obviously in love with these
pop culture elements that you know make
their world seem more colorful and bigger
and crazy and this is very much you
know any couple that you could know or
see on the street and just yeah you
know
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Like this could happen to anyone.
That's the creepiness about autonomous.
Exactly.
Because like we've been chatting about it
because this technology is so brand new
and yet it's already out there.
It's on the roads.
People are using it.
Maybe you've used it.
Your friends are using it.
And now you could totally see, Oh shit.
If I was in that situation and you
really realize you've given over all your
freedoms.
If this car decided to go,
everyone thinks about the traffic.
Oh,
if it goes in the middle through the
middle,
it's going to drive itself off a bridge
or a mountain.
Right, right, right, right.
And who has control?
Exactly.
Who has control over that technology?
Because if, you know,
and that was one of the things that
was, you know,
really taught in the script,
it's very obvious and it's something I
thought about through the entire creation
process.
If you were to upset the person who,
you know,
could overwrite basically the car,
you
I mean,
who's to say what can happen to you?
And of course, you know, they'll say, oh,
you know, that can't happen.
And we've got safety protocols to protect
against everything like that.
And I'd say, I've seen Terminator.
I've seen Terminator two.
I've seen Terminator Genis.
I've seen all the Terminators.
There were safety protocols on Skynet,
too.
That's what we're walking right into that
future.
So it is slightly terrifying.
And the fact that we give all we
give so much of our lives to technology
in ways that I think, you know,
would be totally alien and foreign to us,
you know, maybe ten, fifteen,
twenty years ago, certainly twenty.
uh and now we kind of take it
for granted i know aaron's spoken a lot
about a class she had in college where
the teacher was talking about location
pinging for posting yeah and her and all
of her friends were like who's gonna be
dumb enough to post their location on the
internet when they're actually there and
obviously the metadata is built in
Right.
And now everyone does it.
It's not seen as a security risk.
It's just kind of a normalized piece of
our society.
But it does put you at risk.
And these techno technological aspects of
our world that become a part of us
almost because
it's normalized no one really brings up
the fear factor in it apart from
autonomous i guess right it's not really a
general conversation obviously people's
not out there being like hey think about
if our cars decided to take you on
a different path what was the uh the
stephen king movie um what about the car
I'm not sure.
I do know we've got, of course, Drive,
the Steven Spielberg movie,
with the truck that chases the car.
Is this the one that came out a
couple years ago?
No.
I think it was Redyne.
Christine.
Oh, yep.
This is Christine, but the future version.
It's like the demon that possessed
Christine is now...
demon possessing your car and autonomous
only you know it's a little bit nicer
instead of just killing you itself like
christine did this one delivers you to a
monster yeah very very very thoughtful you
know what you're getting your demise right
yeah yep but um
Do you see this vertical form of
storytelling as a trend or do you see
this as a legitimate way to tell stories
going forward?
I think your opinion on it.
Yeah, no,
I think it's just like we were speaking
about prior.
I think right now it seems like it
could be a trend,
but I see a future where this is
very much a normalized thing.
I think we're just kind of in that
part of the process where new technology
gets introduced,
where it's so new and it's kind of
like Aaron was saying, it's cutting edge.
It's like everyone who sees is like, oh,
I've never seen anything like this before.
But when you've seen ten or twenty things
like this,
it will become a more normalized viewing
experience.
And from there, you know,
the gates are open because this is also
very accessible,
especially for the indie filmmaking
community.
You know,
obviously we shot on a very high end
camera and we had a lot of
very good equipment and gear but looking
into the future with the evolution of
obviously the cell phone the cell phone
cameras uh their ability to capture
footage in low light and the shrinking
down of basically hollywood tools which
has been happening and continues to be
ongoing uh with new lighting companies
like i know it's not new of course
but aperture for example replacing a lot
of the re sky panels and uberly expensive
lights with a lower
a lower cost high-end alternative uh and
then going down from that you've got their
uh i forget what their uh amaran right
is the brand below that which has just
come out with all these fantastic lights
which beats their price out and all these
different lighting companies doing these
amazing things to shrink down hollywood
powered lights into a consumer you know
accessible format
is fantastic and of course it's not just
about the cheapness of the product it is
literally about the shrinking down of
these things in terms of their weight if
you can shrink a light down to the
size of your fist well now you don't
need a fifty pound piece of scaffolding a
c stand or you know a combo stand
to hoist it up on you don't need
you know a hundred pounds of sandbags to
put on that thing and the guys to
move it all around and get it positioned
into the proper place so
think that you'll you'll only see more of
these in the future and it will be
seen as more or less a i don't
want to say a new youtube because it's
not a new youtube and it's not the
same thing but it will open the floodgates
of creativity uh for artists
Big and small,
new and old across the entire web and
basically film ecosystem to a relatable
form of media that can be immediately
delivered to audiences because
distribution is also something that is
very difficult for films to get.
It's an expensive,
litigious process that it serves as a
bulwark against there being more movies
than there could be.
and this doesn't necessarily cut that out
we obviously went through sag after we
pulled permits with the city of atlanta
but i don't think there's anything
stopping a group of friends from you know
telling a haunted horror story with their
cell phone you know in their house and
if this becomes when this becomes a more
normalized format
those folks will have an audience.
And I think it serves, you know,
basically,
if you want cinema to succeed in the
future, you should watch Autonomous.
I'll end with that.
I won't say cinema, I'll say media, media.
In the way that I look at it,
you know,
you're on your phone and you only have
certain amounts of time,
like you were saying earlier,
that's free time where you can consume
things, where you can watch things.
Everyone's watching things on their phone.
Maybe they're scrolling on social media or
maybe they're pulling out an app,
a streaming app and actually watching
things.
But there's clearly the need for something
to watch,
What better way than if you want to
get something cinematic and you only have
a little bit of time or you're just
watching it on your phone than to go
and watch something that's designed to be
watched that fits the exact frame so you
don't have any wasted space.
You're not turning your phone sideways.
It's also uncomfortable to hold your phone
sideways.
I'm resettling my daughter all night long
when she wakes up and I am turning
it sideways and the brightness down low.
It's, it's much,
would be much more easy to be watching
a vertical,
but I just think there's an immediate
need.
It makes sense to have things that's high
end,
that's approachable and that shot for that
format.
And I think as long as that exists,
people are going to be watching things on
their cell phone and they want to be
watching something good.
Hopefully people consider it autonomous
that, and not just, you know,
scrolling social media.
Yeah.
There's a need for this.
And the fact that Screamify is on the
cutting edge and attacking this the way
they are, I think is just phenomenal.
And I do think it's here to stay.
Not replacing movie theaters or anything
else,
but it's another way to view it that
I think absolutely is here.
I got to step away for just a
second.
But while I'm stepping away,
can you answer what's next for Big Squid?
I'll be right back.
You got it.
Yes.
We do have a couple different projects in
the wings.
Some we could talk about more than others.
Oh, we're taking over the podcast.
All right.
We're in control of the starship now that
we're in control.
Yes.
You're on a ride with us.
OK, so we got a couple different projects.
Some we can talk about more than others.
But I guess the one that we have
the most freedom to talk about is
definitely wrapping up.
It's watching.
It's a feature film that we shot about
a year and a half almost ago.
And Kyle's almost done with the edit,
like literally the very end of
post-production.
And we can see a perfect segue into
Autonomous with the camera that's
obviously set on tracking.
That's watching the people in the room
unbeknownst to them.
But yes, going back to It's Watching.
The fact that the movie's called It's
Watching and you're getting distracted by
the camera watching.
All right, that's a double.
It's watching.
We're watching.
You're watching.
It's watching.
We're all watching.
What are we watching?
Well, okay.
so but we're never going to be allowed
to take over the podcast again no uh
so it's watching uh is a a bottled
horror film uh following a frustrated
filmmaker who moves from los angeles to
atlanta i know that all of you are
thinking oh wow this is sounds somewhat
familiar to what you've been telling us
and that's because we patterned it over oh
hello welcome back okay we'll relinquish
the controls back to you now we we
took over for a second
No, I love that.
To me, it's so cool.
I do apologize.
I'll just finish up by saying it's a
horror film that'll be coming out in the
near future.
We haven't decided on what distribution
method we'll be using.
We're either going to be going with
traditional distribution or we may do
something different and put it directly
onto YouTube and do a compendium series
with
basically breaking down how it was made
because it was shot for basically a zero
dollar budget apart from you know feeding
the two-person crew we had which one of
those crew members was me and i
unfortunately rack up a bill when it comes
to eating so
It was probably a little bit more than
it should have been,
but we had a great time shooting it,
and we shot in a very unique way.
So we're playing with that,
and we'll see kind of what it does
in the festival circuits,
and we'll go from there.
We'll keep everyone updated.
All right, back to the chairman.
Sorry.
No, y'all are good.
It's one of those where I know with
certain people on the podcast,
I know I can step away if I
need to step away,
and they will just like...
carry it until i make my return and
uh y'all are two where i could probably
just walk away and let y'all just have
at it and be like okay cool i
know that's gonna be great whatever was
said it's gonna be amazing and it's gonna
be a great and uh i don't have
to worry about it there's nothing that's
been said that i'm gonna have to edit
out later so it's really cool
I don't know.
Erin was getting very spicy with what she
was saying.
I don't know if it was a hundred
percent appropriate.
Hey, that's fine.
I mean, it works for me.
I mean,
I probably have said and heard worse.
Would y'all be open to exploring more
things like Autonomous and shooting in
that vertical format again?
Whether y'all write it yourselves or you
get another opportunity with Screamify,
which I think Screamify is doing something
absolutely amazing with this concept.
yeah absolutely yeah i'd be i'd be i
would be a hundred percent down filming a
vertical was very freeing as an artist
because it totally allowed me to reimagine
right something that i've been working on
for the past fifteen years uh and i
found it to be a very fun form
factor to kind of shoot in and honestly
once you get through the first day of
shooting vertically
it just kind of clicks like your brain
just kind of flips over and you're like,
oh, okay, I get it.
So we're maximizing, you know,
the horizontal aspect ratio.
So you're looking for things that are
taller, things that, you know,
usually you'll have sprawling landscapes
in a horizontal,
uh you know aspect ratio and you'll be
looking for things to kind of frame your
actor with in order to create a beautiful
shot and here you're doing the same i
gotta go oh sorry sorry go on a
baby i'll be back give her a kiss
for me okay uh so now hold on
wait
Alakazam.
Oh, Aaron's been changed into a dog.
I don't know how that happened.
If I was going to get it post-production,
I would make it happen.
But that was actually which is funny that
I brought that up is
From editing a standard movie to editing a
vertical formatted movie,
was there different approaches to that?
Because I imagine,
like I'm used to editing that way.
I make clips that way.
I do that on almost a daily basis.
How was that for you having worked in
film and editing and then just to kind
of literally just turn it sideways and now
you're editing from this format?
it wasn't it wasn't difficult at all uh
just set the aspect ratio in da vinci
uh to to be a vertical and i
mean yeah i mean i've been i filmed
the whole thing so i've been obviously
seeing everything that i was shooting and
knew what i was getting myself into and
i already had everything pretty
storyboarded like pretty much storyboarded
completely uh from the onset i like to
deviate a little bit from storyboards but
i try to stick generally close to them
especially when you have limited resources
uh for you know onset personnel just to
keep everyone organized it helps for
people to have a visual cue um
but yeah it just it kind of just
felt like editing a horizontal film to be
honest i didn't really see much of a
difference with it it restricts in some
ways uh your ability to reframe shots
right so yeah okay i've had an issue
right it's a little bit more difficult
because
you're really just going to get closer.
There's no real like reframing when you're
kind of chopping off the sides.
And, you know, you do have max headroom.
You've got a lot of, you know,
vertical or vertical space like we were
talking about.
So a little bit of difficulty in that.
But we shot with a variety of lenses.
We had a great lens kit on this.
So we were shooting with
uh, sixteen up to a hundred mil.
Uh, so sixteen,
I think we had a third, twenty four,
thirty five, a fifty,
a sixty five and a hundred.
And I may be missing one in there,
but it allowed for a ton of flexibility.
And because we had enough time to and
we had control over the set,
especially for those interiors,
it allowed me to get
full coverage from every angle of the car,
because I knew that the editing of the
conversation,
I wanted it to be
you know,
pointed and specific while also being
invisible to the viewer.
I didn't want to call attention to
anything unless I wanted attention to be
called to it.
But I also was very acutely aware of
the fact that we're in a car for
almost the entire duration of the entire
show.
And I didn't want to just go,
you know, medium, close, medium, close,
medium, close, medium, close, medium,
close, medium, close.
I wanted to kind of move.
around the car almost as the car is
like the observer of this conversation it
worked it it a hundred percent worked and
it
I've never seen anything like this before.
I mean, the concept, yeah,
maybe a little bit outside.
Like, you know,
you're driving down the country road and a
big monster comes out.
Yep.
Seen it.
Been there.
Done that.
Almost hit many of cows driving home at
night.
So, yep.
Been there, done that.
But the concept was so unique,
so original.
And which leads me to ask,
are there any trends right now in horror
that you are excited about?
Well, generally speaking, I saw one.
I was trying to look this up earlier
haphazardly on my phone,
and I keep forgetting the name of it.
I couldn't find it.
It's the new A-Twenty-Four movie that is
about a podcaster.
I don't know.
Have you seen it?
No.
Let me try to look it up real
fast.
I feel so terrible that I don't remember
the name of this.
It was a fantastic film.
undertone undertone thank you that's it i
can't believe i keep forgetting the name
of it i keep thinking it starts with
an n and i'm thinking like necromancy and
i'm like that's definitely not it uh but
i saw it recently i had to actually
stop it uh ten minutes before the ending
because it was just it actually had me
pretty spooked and subject matter is very
difficult especially having a small child
in the house and i just you do
a lot of podcasts too
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
And this but this film,
it captured a lot of the elements of
what I'm kind of seeing emerge in a
number of different spaces when it's kind
of the immersion of horror with the modern
day.
of sensibilities slash approach slash
technology where I think, you know,
we've gotten a lot of,
it's difficult to write.
I, for me, I'll speak for myself,
difficult for me to write, uh,
a horror without just knocking out the
cell phones, right?
Knocking out all the technological
advances or creating a setting where
you're in the middle of nowhere, uh,
from the get go, uh,
like a cabin in the woods thing.
And no, everyone's like,
you got their phone up.
Where's the service.
Um, and so it is fantastic.
Uh, but it, it's, uh,
it's great to see horror kind of
embracing, you know,
that technology and then taking that
technology to where it can go and an
undertone, right?
I won't spoil anything, but it's,
a manifestation of horror through
technology,
which obviously coming off autonomous is
similar to that, right?
It's the manifestation of horror through
technology.
And so I think that telling those type
of stories,
it gives us more ground to play with
because it's not necessarily been trod as
much as other things like, you know,
like you were saying,
monster in the middle of the road,
seeing that, you know, vampire movies.
We've all seen a million different vampire
iterations, werewolves.
So we're kind of getting a new boogeyman.
that is part of our everyday life, right?
It's not like it's an alien foreign
concept.
It's not, you know,
Freddy Krueger showing up in your dreams
or Michael Myers is super powered.
Like, you know,
I don't even know what he actually is
when you break it down,
but he always terrified me as a kid
just because you could not take him down
or like it or aliens or predator.
You're getting something that you
physically interact with on a daily basis
and the skewing of that and showing you
what happens if that goes wrong.
and a little bit more realistically than
another one of my favorite movies.
This is my first rated R movie I
saw in theaters, Virus,
which also dealt with the same concept,
although maybe in a less realistic way.
But I was looking at my computer when
I got home that night after watching that
movie,
and I was kind of wondering if it
was going to get up.
Yeah, this is it.
You had mentioned something,
and it reminded me of Lawnmower Man.
Which was that?
Lawnmower Man.
Lawnmower Man.
No, I don't think I've heard of that.
It's a horror movie.
I think the original one.
So the second one come out in nineteen
ninety six and it was called Beyond
Cyberspace.
So dealing with the same type of subject
there.
But shoot, my bad.
Let me.
Apparently the first one come out in
ninety two.
So it's a mentally disabled gardener.
in the Pierce Brosnan's and he plays a
scientist who uses virtual reality in
drugs to enhance the person's
intelligence,
turning him into a superhuman with
dangerous psychic abilities.
So this was back in the early nineties
when VR was like the big thing, right?
But yeah,
basically the dude gets loose into the
power and the grids and all this stuff.
It was a really dope concept of a
movie back then.
It was very new at the time as
well,
with VR being the newest technological
thing out there.
Yeah, that sounds fantastic.
it just made me like the randomness of
that thing you've mentioned.
I'm like, Oh, that's kind of like,
you know, lawnmower man back in the day.
I couldn't remember.
And I forgot it was Pierce Brosnan as
well,
which is kind of wild that he was
even in that movie because it was very
much a B horror movie.
hey they all they all have to start
somewhere and sometimes they start
somewhere they get to the very top and
then i mean i can't remember if he
was um i can't remember if he was
a james bond before that or if that
was after the fact but and it seems
like after this he was a great james
bond he really was and then he did
um the movie with robin williams um
Oh, that was Mrs. Doubtfire.
Mrs. Doubtfire, yes.
And then there's been a few other ones
where, you know,
he was just like absolutely amazing in,
but like the dude was like the
psychologist from Lawnmower Man, you know?
That's awesome.
I'll have to watch that.
It's really good.
It's such a cool concept.
I love cool concept movies like this.
I think the number one horror movie in
the United States or in the world right
now is the movie that YouTuber shot.
Of all things,
a YouTuber has the number one
i think i forgot what the budget was
but it was like the number one horror
movie like seven hundred fifty thousand
dollars uh movies called obsession i i
don't with a small daughter it's hard to
get to the movie theater so i'm eagerly
awaiting its digital release and can't
wait to check it out at home um
i've heard nothing but absolutely amazing
things about it too like everybody my
daughter watched it and she said it was
amazing
It makes total sense.
I mean,
YouTube has been a great place to foment
talent,
and I think people have split opinions on
how media has evolved in the last decade
or so.
I'm not here to make a broad
generalization or judgment on anything,
but I think it's fairly reasonable to
state that
You know,
a lot of people that may have made
their way through the Hollywood system if
we had been in the eighties chose to
become YouTubers because it is more
accessible.
There aren't those many hurdles and bars
to entry that are traditionally in
Hollywood.
It's something that you can just start
doing.
You don't need a ten million dollar budget
or something crazy.
And
maybe they didn't go to film school i
think that this individual did go to film
school or i can't remember i cannot
remember i think he was doing some sort
of film school i mean honestly i think
youtube could be a film school that's how
i learned how to make movies was by
watching tutorials on youtube but
regardless it you know it doesn't change
the fact that a lot of people that
i think are going to be you know
you your next
flock of incredible filmmakers actors
special effects artists cinematographers
you're going to see more and more of
these people coming from youtube because
this is the next guard generation this is
the kind of creative class uh that's been
built and quite frankly i think with the
amount of footage and work that youtubers
do i know we were talking previously just
about your release schedule like
it's prolific, right?
This isn't something that, you know,
a regular, like,
let's say like Larry King, right?
He's doing a show.
He's talking,
he's not doing all of the other stuff
with his show.
And again,
nothing against anyone who doesn't do
everything.
Uh, but, uh,
It's one of those things that trains you.
It lets you look at it from every
angle.
And I think if you're perceptive and
patient with it,
it will only further and enhance your
ability to do the thing that you're doing
primarily.
So I think we're going to see more
and more of these folks come from YouTube
and come from basically a social media
background.
And now that Hollywood's caught in a win
that I think two of the most successful
movies, Back Rooms and Obsession,
came from YouTubers,
it'll also be seen for them as a,
oh, well, you know,
if I hire a YouTuber,
it's going to definitely make money,
which was similar.
I don't think that's going to be the
case at all.
Oh, no,
I'm not saying that it will definitely
make money, but it's generally,
I think it's kind of how Hollywood plays
things where it's a big corporation.
If we look back at like Lord of
the Rings, right?
Lord of the Rings comes out.
We don't really see a ton of movies
adapted from books.
Lord of the Rings blows, you know,
the world wide open and there's like this
absolute masterpiece of a film.
I mean, I think the trilogy,
to be quite frank,
is three of the best movies that have
ever been committed to the film.
Hands down.
And then you get Harry Potter.
Now,
Harry Potter just happened to hit that
Nexus sweet spot where it was in the
right place at the right time.
It engaged the entire youth of the world.
I'm a big Harry Potter fan.
I know my wife is.
And it did amazingly well.
And then all of a sudden,
every book gets made.
Percy Jackson does pretty good, right?
It's a pretty good movie.
I think that movie was cheated.
That movie was definitely cheated.
It deserved a good...
trilogy or whatever that was originally
planned for it the TV series has been
phenomenal in my opinion but definitely I
think they got robbed I would have loved
to have seen that all the way through
I would have as well,
but that was also a casualty, right,
of the drop-off in box office returns from
these book kind of conversions because
that came later, right, in the cycle.
So I think that this will be seen,
and I think that, quite frankly,
it will...
we're going to see some great movies from
it.
There are going to be some not so
great movies too,
but it'd be a lot of great movies
that come from it.
Cause there's a lot of pent up creativity.
That's been not necessarily held hostage
on YouTube,
but hasn't been necessarily accessible to
the entire world.
I just hope that they go for folks
that are, you know,
everywhere in between the person with
twenty million followers and then the
really talented kid that maybe only has
two hundred followers.
And I hope that they're scouting that
talent with a fine tooth comb.
I mean, quite frankly,
it'll make them more money and it will
give us better movies.
And that's a lot of untapped like talent
out there.
And you see it all day on YouTube,
Instagram.
And it's just like,
you see it and you're like, man,
they would be phenomenal in this one movie
over here or something like that.
And they're just writing their own skits.
They're acting in their own skits.
And
They're having a lot of fun doing it.
It's not costing them money to really make
the skits.
I mean, at most it's costing them time,
you know?
Sure.
But no,
it's really cool when you find one you
really like and you're like, I like this.
I really hope to see this person in
something one day on the big screen.
And maybe if they will, maybe they won't.
But only time tells that, right?
That's true.
And I also like we were talking about
previously with the shrinking of
technology and the closing of the gap
between what's accessible to the,
you know,
and I will say like the everyday person
simply because usually the everyday person
doesn't have a hundred million dollar
bankroll or a twenty million dollar
bankroll, right?
Yeah.
I think if they did,
they wouldn't be necessarily the everyday
person.
But when you shrink down those gaps,
The thing that will allow filmmakers,
YouTubers,
anyone who wants to pick up a camera
and tell a story to be successful,
it will come down to the thing that
movies started with.
And it's the thing that's been the
lifeblood of them forever,
which is creativity and story.
And at the end of the day, right,
a pencil costs, what, a penny?
and the stack of paper costs a couple
bucks and the story that's on that paper
that's the thing that should be the most
important part of the entire process and
that's something that's accessible to
everyone and i think that we might see
a rotation back to something like that as
opposed to
I don't know anyone that generally works
in the halls of Hollywood just using mass
appropriation of information and trying to
channel it into a navigable argument or
conclusion.
I think we might get back to even
more creative stories than necessarily
reboots and remakes and sequels.
That would be amazing.
There's some things that should not be
touched.
Some trilogy, some books, some TV shows,
they were great.
Don't touch them.
They were perfect as is.
Don't mess it up.
It's funny you're saying that.
I said this recently on a podcast.
Of course I said it on a podcast.
It was my podcast.
I can't remember who I was talking to.
I was like,
I can't imagine the amount of fantastic...
artwork stories movies uh book concepts
you name it that are just sitting in
people's homes whether it's on a shelf in
a notebook laying next to some teenager's
bedside right now just waiting for one day
to get a light shined on it and
um
And it really,
it made me think about it, you know,
like somewhere out there,
the next big movie is just sitting on
a shelf.
Yes.
May never see the light of day.
It may never get made, but it's there.
I'm holding up a metaphorical spotlight
and shining over to my desk and there's
a pile of scripts.
They could all be great.
just need that one brave financier with a
very large bank account exactly my point
you know and it was it's another thing
i said recently i'm like you never know
who you live in that store to like
i talked to a lot of independent you
know comic book artists and i'm like
do your neighbors know you write comic
books?
You know,
do people know what you do in your
spare time, in your free time?
And he's like, probably not.
So it's like, it's wild that, you know,
the person next door to you, like,
do your neighbors know that you just shot
a movie in your garage?
Yeah, they do.
The doors were open.
We had lights, you know,
and we had to get also in order
to qualify for a filming permit,
you have to get the surrounding neighbors
to sign releases and basically got to turn
that into the city.
So they all know and they are all
super supportive.
I think we had one neighbor text Aaron
recently,
and it was about a dog that was
loose in the neighborhood.
And we had found the restaurant.
I get like the whole neighbor thread and
then he's like, oh,
is this dog for a movie?
Is there a part for me in it?
Like, can I be an extra?
Can I jump over?
And Aaron came back with some quippy
response.
That was great.
But generally speaking,
everyone is super supportive,
especially here in Atlanta.
Hollywood was a mixed bag because they're
so exposed to it and it happens all
the time.
It's usually more of a handout situation.
uh because usually it's a big studio
shutting down a street and they actually
there's a known thing in hollywood i
forget what the name of it was but
this was especially prevalent in the
nineties and early two thousands and
eighties and seventies but basically if uh
big production came to town and you saw
the big grip truck uh neighbors would get
out of their house set up lawn chairs
on their front lawn and sit out and
basically be active on the street and in
the shots
which then forced production to come up
and say, Hey, you know,
we're shooting on this street.
We really need like, you're,
you can't just be sitting here drinking an
iced tea.
You know, you're, you're in the shot.
They'd be like, absolutely.
I'm happy to go inside.
I'll take some money.
And of course they'd pay the money and
that would be it.
Yeah.
No, I mean,
a dollar is a dollar at the end
of the day, right?
You make it how you can.
Oh, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah.
And they got probably a couple hundred
bucks placed there.
And Hollywood has so much money to throw
around.
It's, you know, it's it's crazy.
I mean,
and now the cost of some of these
movies that like upwards of two hundred
million dollars.
I'm like thing I'm looking at,
like my budget breakdowns,
even for my more like.
a couple of movies that we're working on
in the background and they're, you know,
in the seven figures and, um,
like nowhere close to like the,
I don't even know how many figures that
is.
What is nine figures for a hundred million
plus.
Uh, and I'm thinking like, I mean,
I guess if you hired the rock,
Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
and like, you know,
you spent a hundred million dollars on
actor fees.
I can see you getting to two hundred
million.
I just, um,
I'm not sure how they get there,
but I would love to see behind the
door and see exactly what that paperwork
looks like for that line budget.
I think it'd be very interesting.
A line by line.
Yeah,
that would be very interesting because I'm
not sure if every dollar makes it to
where it's supposed to make it to.
But hey, that's neither here nor there.
it's just like government right it's the
leaky bucket until there's so many holes
and there's exactly the bucket's just a
cylindrical vessel for the water to travel
yeah exactly exactly but kyle i know
you're a busy man but let's wrap this
up and why don't you let everybody know
where they can find autonomous and where
they can find you and aaron at online
absolutely so everyone can find autonomous
on the screamify app uh it's available on
ios android uh basically anywhere you get
your apps you can find the screamify app
it's a fantastic resource even apart from
micro budgets that they have micro
vertical budget or i'm sorry micro
verticals that they have they've got a
host of other content including zombie one
So if you haven't seen ZombieCon yet and
you want to check it out,
if you sign up with them,
you'll get access to that movie as well.
So if you support indie filmmakers and you
love horror, it's a perfect home for you.
In terms of finding Aaron and myself,
the easiest place is at ZombieConMovie.
Basically everywhere that's been our
handle for so long as like kind of
our company handle.
We use it for everything now.
Of course,
you can find us personally at...
I don't even know what our personal
Instagrams are,
but if you go through ZombieConMovie,
you'll find us somewhere.
I think it's all linked below.
Yeah,
and Aaron's usually the one who does this.
I'm covering right now,
so I'm going to fish out of water
explaining all the ads and where we're at.
But in closing,
I just wanted to thank you, Chairman.
Thank y'all for giving me another shot to
talk to y'all.
And it's always fun to have you on.
Even if we continue to do this every
six months,
that would be a pleasure because it's
always fun to talk to you.
I think I told y'all last time.
any like having y'all on is just like
reconnecting with two old friends and it
just feels like we pick up where we
left off from the last conversation and it
just keeps moving forward you know and
it's always fun to get to talk to
people that way
I feel exactly the same.
And yeah, absolutely.
Let's pick it up in six months.
I'm sure we'll have something new and
interesting that's going on and probably
causing me to go gray at a perpetually
faster rate than I should be.
I know how you feel, buddy.
It looks good on you.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate it.
Um,
and hopefully I just don't pull my hair
out.
That's the one thing I'm like, you know,
as long as it just goes gray,
that's fine.
Uh, let's get it together.
And I just have one more thing.
I totally forgot about this earlier when
we're talking about poor man's process.
I wanted to give a big shout out,
uh, to driving footage, uh,
dot com who provided our plates for the
autonomous.
They gave us a huge discount and they
just asked that, uh,
We let all the indie filmmakers out there
know that they're willing to work with
budgets.
These things are notoriously expensive.
I was shocked when I saw how expensive
they were, actually.
And the folks over there are really
fantastic.
And they'll work with you if you've got
budgetary restrictions and they've got a
super high quality product.
If you got their link,
if you want to shoot me their link,
I will include it down into the
descriptions again when I... Well,
I'm not going to re-upload,
but I will update the description.
later with the actual topics that we did
cover and also go back and put in
chapters and stuff like that.
So if you want to shoot me that
link,
when you shoot me that other stuff that
we were talking about earlier,
I will make sure that makes it in
there.
And who knows, you know,
Yeah, absolutely.
I'll definitely send it over.
And I have one small request for the
chairman himself.
When you are going through the chapter
titles,
when you get to the point that Aaron
and I were taking over the stream,
if we could have a cool title for
that.
Whatever your creativity is.
Oh, a hundred percent.
And you know I always deliver on the
cool stuff.
Like the cool intro, the cool post.
I will...
I will make it definitely worth it.
Yeah.
Awesome.
I try not to do that kind of
stuff, but it seems like it never fails.
Like something like the cat will get out
here.
My cat coughing up a hairball.
I'm like, okay,
let me go check on the cat and
make sure he's not, you know,
dying in his own hairball, you know?
Yeah.
Well, we love our pets too.
And that's definitely a very,
very valid reason to take care of
something.
But that's it.
I'm going to bring it home for y'all.
And Kyle, Aaron, both of you,
thank y'all so much again for joining us.
And just any time I get a message
from y'all, I'm like,
I don't even care what it is anymore.
It's just like, yep, let's do it.
You don't know what we're talking about,
but I don't care.
Let's do it.
I really appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
Same.
Anytime y'all are ready to come back,
even if it's just to sit around for
thirty or forty-five minutes and just
bullshit about stuff, hit me up.
We'll do it.
again it's good to me thank you all
so much for joining us independent
creators are constantly finding new ways
to tell stories and autonomous represents
exactly the kind of innovation that keeps
creative industries moving forward
Whether it's comics, film, games,
emerging formats,
it all comes back to passionate creators
willing to take risks to build something
original.
Council,
if you've enjoyed tonight's discussion,
be sure to support Kyle and Aaron,
Big Squid, Anonymous, and Screamify.
Shout out to Screamify for bringing out
just this phenomenal concept to tell a
story.
Until next time.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this has been the USDN Podcast,
where indie comics and film come to life.
The council is now adjourned.
Y'all be safe out there.