How to release a Low Budget film - Theatrical and Streaming with Gabriel Foster Prior

#filmpodcast #filmindustry #standupcomedy 

This week on the podcast I talk to writer/director Gabriel Foster Prior about his debut feature 'The Bystanders' starring comedians Sean Walsh and Nick Helm. 

I spoke to Gabriel about how he funded the film, how he managed to release the film theatrically and the advantages of doing so. I chatted to Gabriel while he was in Cannes so also managed to catch up about this year's film festival and sales market.

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Transcript

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[Music] hi Jim here and you're listening to the honest filmmaker podcast career advice from people in the business this week I'm speaking to Gabriel Foster prior the director and writer of the bystanders um Gabriel's actually over in can at the moment so this is a great opportunity to chat to him about the film and also about what he's up to in can hi Gabriel thanks for joining me hey thanks for having me on good good good so I've seen the film loved it wasn't at all what I was expecting um so just so that people can find out a bit about it can you tell me what the film's about so now I really want to know what you're expecting but I'll ask you that afterwards uh but it's basically like um it's a comedy about Guardian Angels but they're I say Guardian Angels is kind of a Shand because they're not actually Angels they don't have wings and Halos but the idea is that we we all have one supposedly looking after us um and they're recruited from human world and the people that they pick to become bystand are the people that won't be missed if they vanish so it's a kind of a world of odd blls um the film's a a buddy movie between two of these bystanders as we call them um and one of them's been doing it for a while and he's quite jaded and the other one's a a newbie and he's very enthusiastic um but essentially these by standers are going to be looking after us but they're they're kind of they're lazy they're irresponsible they are sometimes drunk and uh and they kind of they kind of hate uh uh the humans that they have to look after because in general we're frustrating as humans you know can be but also especially at the moment we spend a lot of times looking at screens and on our phones and we've got kind of boring so uh so yeah that's the bystanders in a kind of nutshell in a nutshell um so what I was expecting I wasn't expecting to laugh as much as I did so was it it was funny it was really good because often you hear someone says comedy and comedies can be very subjective so you never know if you're actually going to connect with humor so I thought it was funny and also I think um you made a lot of sort of stylistic choices in it that I wasn't expecting so I think I was expecting sort of uh not a standard comedy but a comedy that goes a certain way but obviously you've got all the color the pinging in and out which people are going to see when they watch it uh so I thought that was really cool um the first thing that struck me though because I noticed you'd had a short theatrical release on it um so and I'll come to that in a second but the first thing that stuck struck me from a filmmaker point of you is comedy science fiction is that hard sell is was that hard sell in the funding end or and has it been a hard sale in the sales end so um the things with the science fiction is that me and the co-writer j h we never really talked about it as being sci-fi CU it was like angels are not you know even if they like Angels like it's Angels not aliens so yeah you kind of don't really think it's obvious to me now but it's like it was only once we started getting into SciFi film festivals I really clocked how much of it is you know viewed as a Sci-Fi um to be fair there was also some quite aesthetic kind of sci-fi elements I think the score we took a lot of inspiration from sci-fi in the score so um it was actually my dad did the score really um he's a musician obviously um but he did this score with loads of these like old instruments like 50s instruments like thein and stuff without going off on too much of a tangent that's just kind of the point being that um it has it has sci-fi Aesthetics than it has a Sci-Fi story but um and then it was always a com we kind of saw it as like a kind of yeah an indie kind of quirky comedy in terms of the your question in terms of like how that relates to getting financing and stuff it really did it would it does make it hard is something people tell you not to do so you're meant to make like lowbudget horror movies and you're meant to make you're not really meant to make low budget comedies because they relate to the cast I guess one of the only things I had on my side is um I know Shawn Walsh the actor and I know some other comedians kind of through him or through having done we did like a a web series together called the drunk where that's how I got marrick lard on board so it wasn't going to be you know it wasn't going to be a cost of uh you know people that were no one had heard of in the UK there's people in it that um you know got really good careers as comedic uh performers and so that kind of helps in that sense but I mean we did find that like you know in terms of like getting like we try to get like the normal streams of you know you go down the road of like um Public Funding and stuff and I think it was kind of people didn't really know how weirdly I was going to do it like you said about your expectations so I think people were more expecting it to be a more standard kind of comedy and I think they thought it was too commercial for the public world so when it came to like those kind of schemes you know and then in terms of of of private Finance yeah maybe it's not exactly the right genra to do on a low budget um I know the first-time filmmaker it's always really hard to get private Finance because people want a track record which is completely fair enough like if you're investing a lot of money in a business you want to see it how a track record so yeah we did kind of find ourselves in a bit of a rock between rock and a hard place in that kind of regard and in the end we just decided to do it with whatever we could get together and do it for much less budget than we originally had planned and just it was just one of those like let's just get it done kind of things let's just do it like let's not just wait for the perfect you know situation to come about we just decided to just go for it you know yeah good move and and so so completely self- financed is what what how the film was made yeah there's not completely there's a few private finances uh but with with small you know in our kind of Realm of of uh Indie like small amounts and um yeah basically and I'm and I'm a an editor film editor as my job so I was editing a film and trying to save some money from the editing yeah and then um we also did like like had take some breaks Force breaks just to well actually it was originally for Co um but then also that was a chance to like work more save up more do some more shooting I'd wholeheartedly support that uh methodology because I think with any project you can only get so far definitely with uh sort of Public Funding um and the private investment stuff if you can't just keep beating that and beating it forever you've got to at some point say right we've just got to make this thing happen um and unfortunately if that doesn't mean you your own money it's you know you just have to go for it um so I'm I had I had meetings with producers and you just kind of get bored of hearing these uh obviously there's loads of really good producers out there but there's also a sea of kind of uh less legitimate you know and you just get bored of hearing these like fairy stories you know what I mean I'd be like listening to a producer telling me he was like how he got a friend in a friend of a friend is Ryan Reynolds and he's going to get Ryan Reynolds film and I had years of people telling me these stories I just got really bored of it like let's just make the film and just stop like waiting for these is I I describe it like sometimes when you're listen to these producers it'sit it's bit like listening to a kid talking about how he's going to be an astronaut when he grows up yeah like it's not it's not not it's not 100% not going to happen yeah but then ironically you've gone to can which is riddled with people like that yeah you bump into them everywhere I'm just as much of a chancer as anyone else um so so then the bit that uh I was really interested in when I looked at it because I didn't realize until after I'd sort of done a bit of digging would you add a theatrical release on it so how did you manage that so us got a sales agent screenbound International and they uh H me that with a company called Blue Dolphin and was really really really happy with blue dolphin uh I thought they did a really great job um and it was a small release like a boutique you know we just did a handful of like independent Cinemas we do q&as with them and you know it did well enough um like we it hit our expectations so we were happy with we were happy with how it went um and it was a chance for people to see it on the big screen that there was people that that you know obviously there's a limit to how many people we could reach to actually know about it but anyone that that hadn't already kind of known about it or that we managed to reach out to it gave people a chance to see on the big screen which is really nice because obviously I've done a year of festivals and it is really nice seeing it on the big screen screen um but it also if you know if I'm talking to other filmmakers and you know the honest is the honest truth is it's not about you know making money from selling tickets for us the the honest thing is that we're doing a release because we want to be able to get the reviews that you wouldn't get if you didn't have the release MH so we saw it as a kind of break even exercise where we would you know uh but by getting ourselves out there we would hope to get some extra kind of exposure yeah so obviously um and it did really work out like we we I was really happy like you know we got a really nice uh you know fourstar total film and sfx magazine as well and we got a really nice review in the guardian and there were people that were like you know they just treat it like it's it doesn't matter if you're a a lowbudget movie they they your film's getting released in the cinema they treat it like they would anything else and it's really that's really cool because you see we have like the physical magazines of total film sfx I went to wh Smiths and you know saw my my uh lowbudget Indie that I'd made like in the review section next to um you know the the biggest films of the day and it's that's just really really cool feeling so um and then people kind of I think the reviewers also did like factor in that it is a lowbudget film into their opinions as well and like saw it for what it was which is cool um yeah and we just like we did some radio we did some uh uh you know you just get to do you just get to put yourself out there a little bit more um so yeah I would recommend it if you can um if you think you're GNA because no point if you're not going to get anyone to come along and it and also you have to do the work you know like blue Dogman did a great job also I had to do my own like social media and other things and just like texting you know spreading the word literally and so but yeah I think if you if you can I would say it's definitely worth it yeah that's good advice um and I was going to ask you so you had a pretty good uh Festival run and obviously festivals are something that filmmakers struggle with because there's so many of them and it can be super expensive entering them all not knowing whether you've got a chance in hell um any advice for that is there any are there any secret tricks you use to get into festivals or is it all been I've entered and I've managed to get in well I'd made short films before and I think that any most people who going to make their first feature have done that so hopefully you've got some experience of festivals from that um it isn't as different as I thought it would be doing a feature to a short in terms of the festivals but maybe if you uh were a bigger film let's say you might get more invitations but for us it wasn't so much getting invitations as it was submitting just like you would anything else um towards the end once we' done a few you know you have like maybe a programmer who goes hey I think you'll be good for this one and I know the other program and they're going to message them so I did have some like some nice moments like that where people just like got us into other festivals but a lot of it was just me paying and and you know I just did what anyone else would do I just was like Googling what are the best oh you kind of go with the flow as well you know you have to kind of be a bit like pragmatic and reactive like I said with the Sci-Fi thing like I don't think our plan was initially to to do sci-fi festivals as much but then we started to see that kind of genre Festival World being a really good place for it and even if it was like a kind of horror more horror film festival there's one I went to in Brazil called fantas Spa which I loved and I had a really good time and you could see that as more like horror festival but actually it's not it's a all genre fantas Festival but even if you get horror fans they seem to be really good crowd in terms of like you know they're like really engaged with films and really like films and so if it was even if it was a more kind of horrory Festival if you've got a Sci-Fi for example I wouldn't write that off um and then yeah just kind of I guess just go with whatever seems to be working out so for us it was that it was the Gen we did you know we did the world premier in Austin which was great and that was not that's not a genre Festival um but then following on from that it was like Boston scii um and then yeah we did the the UK Premier and the London sci-fi and we did um Sydney sci-fi so it was yeah it was that was kind of obviously a track do you did you go to all of these festivals I didn't go to Boston actually but I went I tried to go as many as I could yeah and is is that again is that is there a lot of shooing to be done there do you think to help with promote the film what what do you do when you're at the festival is there anything you can do sort of take advantage of it I think yeah I don't know how much you actually you know I don't know how much really really really comes from it but in terms of you know like in terms of like meeting like business you know I'm not sure but like you meet other filmmakers who are in the same situation as you and you share stories and I think that really help help with your development of yourself as a filmmaker in terms of knowing how everything works and you know like we're doing now you kind of just you sit around a you know but you're doing it like sat at a pub in Brazil so that's nice but you know you just s around with other filmmakers hanging out and sharing stories and sharing tips and that's a really really has its own value um and then yeah I think uh I think it's also like emotionally it's there's not often like a moment where you can actually celebrate you cuz film making just kind of carries on like it never feel there's never like you WRA the shoot sure but then you've got to do then you've got to set up the edit and then you wrap the you lock picture but then you still got to do Post then you finish post you still got to do Festival rather and then so it's like really hard to to actually have that feeling of like okay we're done I'm done like Well Done me let's have a beer you know that moment doesn't really happen unless you like choose okay this is I'm going to celebrate this and I think festivals are a really good time to do that just to allow yourself a little moment of emotionally going and walk into a cinema it's playing and people clap at the end this is a moment for me to try and absorb think about what I've done and be happy with myself so yeah yeah I think I think it's definitely something you should try to do if you can cool cool cool and then so you're in cans at the moment um have you been before and what are you what are your sort of aims for the FES on the market um yeah I've been a few times before I worked for a a sales and Distribution Company a while ago so I used to come on work and then I've come more recently last few years I've been I I just like have other like filmmaker friends who come here as well so it's like a nice kind of social experience but I'm also um trying to find a producer for my next project yep so again you know we'll have some of the same teams from before and I'll be doing some of it myself again as well but I want to have a new I want to attach a new producer so um you know I'm not say that it will definitely happen here but it's as good a place as any need to to do that I also think that you can just it's it's you don't know what's going to come of it but like um sometimes things happen like unexpectedly that are good from just being in this environment so like I remember a few years ago I was in Li at a bakery and I was like I was in the middle of working on a film at that point an edit and I was just talking loudly on the phone about editing like yeah yeah we need to lock the picture by July and you know the assistant editor's on it now and like all of these things and then the guy behind me just tapped me on the shoulder and was like oh you're an editor I'm like yeah and he's like oh I need a re-edit of my film and I got a pretty pretty hefty job out of that oh amazing a very lucrative cant yeah that's cool and also like you were saying with film festivals because I love can I'm gutted I'm not there um but what I found with it it was a really good Energizer for like getting yourself back into it CU you're suddenly surrounded by all these filmmakers if you managed to get some screenings of the films in competition you're seeing cool films you're seeing all the posters you're seeing everything it really gives you a bit of a boost um when you've got a bit of low energy having either finished a project or in sales or any sort of stage of it um so I say I'm going over there uh trying to find a producer what's your advice what have you got with you are you literally just chatting to people have you got a book have you got uh how you know what tools do you use um well I've got a PDF like a deck yeah of of the new project and I've done a promo video which is basically they're really weird things but I'm not other people do them as well they are very odd odd things they're like basically they're little edits but they use footage from other films and you try and give a flavor of your film like cutting together shots for other films and adding some text cards and some music I don't even know what the name of them is they're kind of Sizzle reels I guess Sizzle real yeah I've seen a few of them they on when I first saw one in can funny enough and I just I didn't know what they were but someone was playing one on a sales stand I was like that's from Jurassic Park 3 that's not yours do you know what I mean I was really like indignant about it was like no no no you can for that sort of thing you can you can kind of poach Bobs I guess because I'm an editor I'm just doing it because I can and face I want to do it I don't know proba pay I want to do it but um so yeah I just arm myself with like little bits like that have a script like ready like don't be like go you know if you've got a script you're trying to get something from yeah it might not be 100% perfect but have a a draft together because there's no point going out me some want and then like convincing them to read your scripts the big but actually I need two weeks because I'm still BL so I think yeah I just have a draft ready of some kind and then yeah for me a deck but I don't know if I'm um yeah I don't know how strategic I'm being in terms of uh in terms of meeting people is more just it's more just going to the place it's more like yeah if I meet someone it will probably be through someone else so more spending time with the people I already know MH and then like your network sometimes expands because through hanging out with the people you already know they know other people and um yeah do you have any advice how do I meet what do I do um I think well I did a video recently on can uh and unfortunately my main piece of advice was to set your meetings up before you go um which is difficult in itself and with especially with a producer it's easier if it's a sales agent or distributor because you know where they're going to be and they're going to be there where like you say a lot of meetings are coincidental or a party or an event you just happen to bump into someone who can really really help you um I think I think you're right and I and I didn't do that because I didn't know I was definitely coming into quite late but there's a there's Sando right which is like the website where everyone registers if you have accreditation um I know that's a really good way of booking meetings and stuff that's what I would would have done if I was a bit more dando or even IMDb Pro is a good one you get your free month for that and you can rinse that of contacts um the other thing I was going to say was doing your uh PDF lookbooks whatever you want to call it even if you don't show someone that for me personally sometimes the mere Act of doing that means you know what you're talking about when you actually pitch it um and sometimes it's just the poster on front that's the thing that that gets people's attention um so how long have you been in can uh three days three days so so give me the what's what was your takeaway from the festival has it changed much since the last time you came are there any sort of themes you're kind of detecting um it's very busy like as really a lot of queuing to get into to the market and as somebody who has a film that's being sold by sales agent here I was that's always good and they seem to be quite choc block with meetings and stuff um so I mean I'm you know someone that's more in the kind of sales marketing world might know more about the the business side but it from the outside it seems like it's quite busy um so yeah I think it's you know I think hopefully it's a good one for the for the people but yeah um yeah I don't know really I don't really know um yeah I couldn't really say like it's yeah what about um so you walk through the youve walked through the pet bit the market is there any um because I always whenever I go I go oh look this this year's thing is Eric Roberts Thrillers or something is there like a thing that you're seeing lots of in that pet I know those films sometimes are genre films maybe lower budget is there anything you've seen pop up you're like oh seems to be a lot of that this year that's a good question um weirdly I feel like I've seen slightly more Western posters than I usually see that's interesting yeah no that is interesting because that is that's that's sort of kicked off in music hasn't it everyone's doing Western in music maybe that's the new uh remember always you always see horror you obiously sci-fi um I think there's generally obviously this is quite obvious but there's also generally a lot more like Tech stuff AI stuff you know every year there's a bit more it becomes more and more of a thing there's a lot of seven hours about you know whether we will or won't get our jobs taken by robots yeah basically how do you feel are you happy for a robot to take your job or are you just do you think that's gonna happen um yeah I was talking about with a friend the other day I think it's more the assistant editors MH yeah well it's more like yeah management and you know file management and but I think actually it will just you know like I what this is more my friends take than my take but he was saying he works assistant editor he was saying that actually it's good when technology comes and speeds things up it's not bad no one like it used to be that you had to do an export and it used to take you all day and a lot of this is editor's jobs were just sitting there while exports were done and now we've got ways of getting exports out much quicker it's not like they're complaining about that uh it just means that that one part of their job is now smoother and people find other things for them to do yeaha yeah and and he said and I hope this is true that you know a lot of like for example in the world of assistant editing there's a lot of like you know overtime and people can be quite overworked and all these kind of so if we get to a point where people you know where the AI is doing some of the work and assistant editors don't have to be you know exploited in that way and have a little bit more of a good work life balance then that would be a good thing yeah uh yeah I don't think editing wise I don't did you see that did you see that film The Paris film like a train to Paris the AI film did you see the tra no I haven't I haven't is it or good orious it's hilarious to look that yeah yeah it's really bad but I mean obviously it's like a kind of like a you know what's it called I always say is it Hallmark film or yeah yeah yeah is that the word you like a romance yeah yeah yeah like one of Romance by numbers but it's all very un Valley and it all bit kind of like slightly unintentionally creepy oh cool I want to see that um yeah the other thing I was going to talk about or ask you about because I know this is something people always ask me about is parties have you been to any have you got any advice for people to get into them parties even more so than meetings I think you've got to book it in advance honestly like yeah sometimes some some of those I did manage to actually get my act together with but um a lot of them I didn't and you have you have to get uh you have to get the RSVPs and you have to kind of share them amongst your friends and uh yeah that's the kind of who you know thing but you know you have to ask people hey do you know about anything and then you have to RSVP before it's not this whole thing is not very good for someone that isn't like good at planning in advance but yeah you know even even your parties are affected by that so yeah you you have to get all that organized beforehand or as much as possible um oh I mean I think do you know what actually I came here for years and I didn't know about this film filmmaker accreditation so you get the main Market accreditation which is like quite expensive but there's a filmmaker accreditation which is actually quite cheap especially if you do it in advance M um you can just get a filmmaker badge and as soon as you got one of those badges and they really are very affordable I like 25 crit or something as soon as you've got one of those badges to come into the maray to actually go into the pet then there's the each country has like a um forgot what they're called now Pavilion I think that's what they called like like a little tent where they have you know they're trying to you know sell the idea of shooting in that country and they they have banners up explaining what their tax credits are and all this kind of thing and each of those countries have a like cocktail at some different point um so even you don't get a good list of you know exclusive parties that you've managed to rsvb to you can just go down get into the maré go to The Pavilions on the you know have a look at what countryes drinks and you know maybe you watch a little video about you know the benefits of shooting in that country for five minutes and but then you just get to kind of walk around and mingle and you know have a glass of champagne yeah which is nice nice which is nice which is nice no that's good advice yeah would yeah free yeah yeah I've said this on the last video I said the thing that Brits do unfortunately and I've done it in the past is you get in there and you're like this beer is free if I get this beer over the road it's about a tener so I'm going to have as many of these as I can in the next two hours and then you just don't sort of take advantage of meeting people you just go into guzzle mode um it can be tempting when everything's so expensive yeah so the film's out and streaming where can people watch it where's the best place to watch it right now you can uh you can get it on iTunes uh you can get it on Microsoft Store uh you can get it on YouTube or Google Play It's kind of the same thing right like the uh to rent and buy cool and it will also land other places soon I think Amazon soon but to for right now I think uh YouTube's the place to rent and buy YouTube and you can yeah you can uh I think it's like3 p50 to rent it bargain bargain definitely I'm I've done no reviews on this channel but I I'll give you I'll give you like a four and a half out of five does that sound good that's how much that's the best we've got then we've got loads of fours I've never got his filmmaker review four and a half's officially the best review I've ever got super happy it was really good on the poster man you we filmakers man we're a bunch of chances we're going honest honest filmmaker podcast four and a half out of five four and a half out of five put it up there um yeah because like I say and I was quite surprised I'd not seen Shawn I'd seen Shawn stand up but I hadn't seen him act like that and I when I again when I saw your poster I was like I bet he's in it for five minutes I bet he's not in it he's in it isn't he he's in almost every scene yeah and I think he's a really good physical uh like a really good Screen Actor because he's a really good physical comedian yeah when he does stand up it's all very physical he does lots of act outs so I think that works really well for you know for screen acting and there's a lot of crossover there and he's also just quite um quite dry which is always to me like you know that kind of over-the-top big comedy acting that sometimes actors do when they're doing comedy if that makes sense yeah sometimes a comedian is going to be embarrassed by doing that so they'll be he's he's quite dry and and uh subtle with his you know and in yeah he was very supportive and he was very cool and um you know helped as well as being in the film helped a little bit by like you know we went over I went over to you know read some of the pages with him beforehand and he told me what was good and what was less good and you know also kind of brought on helped me bring on board a couple of the other comedians stuff we've got um yeah Mar lwood who's I think Absolute Comedy genius uh you know marrick lwood is he the guy which bit which part is he oh the ball guy oh yeah I love that his little training video how good is he awesome so good I want to see him in a film of his own oh yeah yeah yeah he's got to be the lead I've been trying to work out yeah that's got to happen um yeah I think he's incredible and we've got like um Nick Helm who's also really big video he's a he's got a um one scene Wonder uh David Shaw who's like Jay's dad in the in betweeners yeah um Jake Lambert and uh yeah they've got quite a lot of um you know good comedy talent and then in terms of the up and cominging kind of casts as well I was quite happy with with who we got and what you know it's I was saying this on another podcast it always sounds like you're bigging yourself up too much yeah you know but then it's like now what I'm saying is I think they are really good I'm not saying I but then there's a certain amount of pride you take that you cast them and you found them do you know what I mean yeah I take PR in that and and undirected them but mainly it's them and mainly yeah mainly I'm just like impressed and lucky that they're in the film but I'm really yeah I am really happy with the casting casting director is Alex felski and he did a really good job and I'm really yeah I think for me that's um it's I really like what you said about the film because what you mentioned are all the things I like about it too good so I think the cast yeah the cast have really done a really good job for me and and that's so important with comedy you know like um and the more kind of quirky Arty elements like the rotoscoping and the mixing of color in black and white and all that kind of stuff I was that was really fun to play with when in terms of the film making but I also think if I was a viewer and I didn't hadn't watched this film myself I think that's probably some of the stuff I would have engaged with as well more hope you enjoyed this week's episode if you want more advice from industry professionals who are out there at the moment working or you just want to listen to some cool stories from film sets from around the world then please do subscribe[Music]