The Honest Filmmaker
Are you about to leave Uni with a filmmaking degree? Or want to change careers and work in a creative industry? We want to give you the tools you need to enter the real world of production or freelancing. Honest and open career advice from people in the business.
We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
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The Honest Filmmaker
How to Release your Debut Feature Film - Amazon Prime, YouTube Movies & Google Play
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This week on the podcast I talk to filmmaker James Chick. James recently finished his debut feature film 'Feet of Death'.
We talked about what it was like to work on a micro budget feature, how he gets such high quality results when shooting on a micro budget, some of the struggles along the way and about the sales and distribution of the film, he's recently signed with Indie Rights, but we talked about some of the offers he had before he made that decision.
Watch the film now on Amazon: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Feet-of-Death/0N4TDVVVZRCCNGJDNE07TD3B2L
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HONEST, OPEN ADVICE ABOUT YOUR FILMMAKING CAREER
Are you about to leave Uni with a filmmaking degree? Or want to change careers and work in a creative industry? We want to give you the tools you need to enter the real world of production or freelancing. Honest and open career advice from people in the business.
We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
Join the community: http://www.thehonestfilmmaker.co.uk
[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 filmmaker James chick James has recently finished his debut feature film feet of death we talked about what it was like to work on such a micro budget feature how he gets such high quality results on such a low budget we talked about the challenges of shooting on a low budget and he also talked to me about sales and distribution he's signed with Indie wrs but it was interesting to learn about the different offers he had before he made that final decision and why he decided to go with them enjoy so talk to me first of all about your route into uh film making um I like most filmmakers went to school to be an engineer and then after okay after about a term of engineering I realized I wasn't great at differential calculus and I switched to a liberal arts degree uh and started learning about my hobby which was I had a little Sony uh handy Cam that I played around with in high school and made little you know short videos and stuff so I was like you know maybe I'll play with making videos so learned the basics of editing and got uh it wasn't a film school so I got to kind of do whatever I wanted I learned a little bit about 3D I worked at the new station at College I uh learned about uh nonlinear editing you know back uh learned about Final Cut uh all that kind of stuff then out of college went to work at a local TV station making wonderful local commercials uh I don't know about over there but there's really cheesy local commercials at the news stations that they do here for like Mattress World another little lowbudget commercials but it was great because I cut my teeth on script writing interacting with clients uh learning how to edit because basically there was two of us in the whole commercial production department so I kind of got to learn how to do everything which was great uh and then slowly just moved up after a couple years to a bigger TV station doing more of the same stuff worked in news for a little bit realized I hate news uh but my passion was was always film making um and getting more into that higher end production So eventually I kind of learned that I was halfway decent at visual effects after doing a bunch of training on the side I don't know if you ever heard of video co-pilot but back in the day that's where I learned a lot of stuff uh back when Andrew Kramer was not a popular name in the bfx community uh but yeah learned how to do that started doing freelance stuff got a gig at a VFX house working on a an NBC TV show called Grim which they did a lot of creature stuff So eventually went from a junior uh compositor all the way to Leading my department after a couple seasons of that and did that for like 5 years uh and then I decided to do something crazy I was playing on YouTube and I was married at that point I had two kids uh the show ended and we sold our house bought a fifth wheel and traveled around the United States for three years documenting Our Journey on YouTube super random uh but then after doing that for three years uh the world fell apart and the pandemic happened so we bought some property uh settled back down and I decided really to focus more back onto uh film independent film so I started working as camera operator hooked up with some people that I knew from the past uh got uh VFX supervising gigs because you know I had my VFX pass uh just started writing because I realized no one's going to give me anything to direct if I don't start writing so I've written four or five scripts to my writing partner and then about year and a half ago I was like you know what I think I've got enough experience I'm just going to do this so I jumped into figuring out how am I going to fund this project I specifically wrote feat of death which is the movie that's coming out to know that I could shoot it on a low budget it's things in the script that I have access to and it plays to my strength of uh knowing visual effects knowing camera knowing knowing basically I wrote myself into a corner knowing I could do this so it was a uh lowbudget film but it looks in my opinion way higher budget than what we actually had I can attest to that I think it looks really good quality looks proper so what was the actual budget for the for the movie the production budget believe it or not was$112,000 so then my my first question and I want to I want you to tell me about the film itself in a moment but the first question is how have you managed to make that film for cuz to us over here UK money that's probably about 10 grand how have you managed to make a film look that good for that little amount of cash uh well a big part of it is I had done all the different departments so I knew what I needed crew wise what I could get away with um so number one mistake that a lot of people do is they don't which doesn't mean doesn't make it look good but they don't hire sound and sound is half the battle so I knew I needed to dedicated sound guy there at all times um and then I knew I had a decent camera we shot it on the Blackmagic uh 6K Pro uh that I I owned so I didn't have to rent camera so that saved a lot of money but I did rent lenses and that's key A lot of people don't think that lenses are that important but honestly they're more important than the camera so if you can get a nice uh quality Cinema lens that gives you that shallow depth of field that lets you shoot in low light that gives you that filmic love uh that goes a long ways and then actually lighting you're seeing you'd be surprised how many of these lowbudget indie films they just use natural lighting or they don't even think about like oh well let's turn down the overhead lights and just like they don't light it at all and that's that kills your cinematic look so spending a little bit of time uh I had my whole crew was my sound guy uh a PA and my DP and me that was it for the whole thing um uh and my DP actually uh my first original DP actually dropped out on me four days before filming four days before principal photography so I had never met my DP until the night before we started shooting and he was just a recommend from somebody else I had worked with so I was like okay versus my original DP I had been on like six different films with I had worked under him we had all this and then all of a sudden he had scheduling conflict so that was a nightmare but thankfully I I I kind of have I wouldn't call myself a DP but I can light and I know the I know the basics and I know what looks good so between this other guy and me our experience we're able to use our little bit of lighting equipment that we had to I think make things look halfway decent so so what I'm taking away from that is uh you own the camera perfect saved you a big expense you rented lenses to give it that high quality look you you cared about sound which I always go on about is so important if you get the sound wrong it just makes it the whole thing seem cheap yeah so you got your sound right um so tell me what's the plot of the film explain the film to me feet of death so feet of death is a mystery thriller monster film uh I wanted to write something that was in the horror genre but I'm not a big slasher fan so I wanted something that was more of a who done it you're trying to figure out there's these string of murders in this small town and there's this forest ranger that has lost his wife so he's spiraling into like depression so he's struggling with pulling himself out of that to doing what he cares about his career and looking into these murders and eventually uh you're LED down the spiral where this social media paranormal influencer and this uh usfs Ranger their paths cross and you're trying to figure out how they're intertwined and is it a person committing these murders is it a monster is Bigfoot real what's going on it's really more of this big who done it mystery film as opposed to your normal Bigfoot found footage or your slasher or any of the millions of other lowbudget indie films you've seen because that's again what I wanted to do is set ourselves apart from your standard sub micro budget film your standard found footage Bigfoot Film or just found footage in general or documentary or whatever you want to call it um I wanted it to feel different feel um of a higher quality than those things I get very distracted when I'm answering your questions I started giving the plot that I started talking about my film I'm sorry tell me the twist don't tell me the twist at the end um so then uh looking because I've chatted us to another American filmmaker who did a Bigfoot movie so when you decided that was going to kind of be the uh subject matter was that a commercial choice or was that I love it choice or was that a oh I live near a Big Woods Choice uh it was I'll be honest I am not a massive Bigfoot fan I haven't grown up loving Bigfoot but I I do live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where it's Bigfoot country I own five acres out in the woods so a large portion of this movie was actually shot on my property so I specifically wrote it to I know there's an audience for it I know it's a a genre in a Niche that will market and sell uh because I don't have the money for a name so it was very strategic in what I chose it was not like a I'm obsessed with Bigfoot and must uh make a Bigfoot movie it was business just de ision whilst trying to write something that I myself would want to watch and uh is was it all your own money you put into it or did you get we did do a crowdfunding campaign um I'll be honest most of the crowdfunding money was money that I had raised beforehand from friends and family and people I knew uh but we did get a little bit uh from the crowdfunding campaign from people who saw that we were doing it but I we raised 10 grand um and so yeah uh the rest of that the other two grand was own money and then I paid myself nothing the reason why the film was so cheap is because I did all the editing I did the sound design I did the VFX I was the director DP I literally did everything the only thing post we hired out which actually we got a guy to volunteer it because he's an old friend was color everything else deliverables poster design whatever no one touched it but me you must hate this movie do you or you still in love with it poster up in my office so I still it so have you got any good money saving hacks that you've leared uh in doing obviously you you talked about um designing the film based on what you have at within your means but are there any other little things you learned along the way to save cash uh learn how to do everything yourself um yeah no definitely it goes back to scripting um I did have some uh help from uh another filmmaker who kind of helped mentor Joshua Caldwell who had done multiple films and he read through the script and was like do you really need like one big thing was do you really need this location like there was a whole another office location it's like we're only in here for one or two scenes but you could totally put this in another place so when you once you're done writing your script where all writers are probably like me where you start writing and you write a multi-million dollar script then you got to go back and be realistic I can't shoot this so you consolidate you remove you figure out okay uh I don't I didn't want to shoot this all in one room that's another thing lowbudget films do is like one location but then it makes it feel like a small one location film but if you can find that happy middle ground of have locations that you have access to or locations that you can get for free uh while also if you can keep it contained like uh on my property alone we shot in I think three or four locations so there was no company moves there was no driving and that saves a ton of time and money so if you can get if you can minimize the amount of time that you're having to pick up everything and go even if you only have a crew of two people you and your actor you still have to get up and drive to that other location and that just eats up your day so uh consolidating locations is a big cost-saving tip because time is money um other than that uh I guess really just being honest with yourself figure out what Can I Do by myself what do I need to hire out like I could have not hired a sound guy I have a you know a road mic Pro Wireless whatever I could have put on people but to me that was worth the money to pay someone to do that because I feel like that was a uh that was beyond the point of diminishing returns it wasn't quite there yet so but maybe if I want I didn't hire a boom op to go with my sound guy because that would have been worthless in my opinion so my sound op ran the boom and he mixed at the same time just one guy so just kind of figuring out with yourself honestly like okay I can do this I don't need this where can I cut costs um and then again in the reason post it probably would have cost an extra 30 grand if I would have hired an editor hired a sound mixer a sound designer someone to do 51 if I would have paid someone to do color if I would have paid to have all my deliverables done my DCPS all that kind of stuff that I would have tripled the cost of the film but I did it all myself and what about there's a lot of cool drone shots in it is that your footage is that stock footage where what is that and how did you get that done my DP did have a nice New it it was not like the big one but it was the mavic pro the one with three lenses uh that was cool but honestly the majority of the Drone footage was actually on my my old drone that I went back out just me getting some stuff on my mavic Pro one so it's like a 10-year-old drone camera but it shoots 4K and it looks phenomenal as long as you are making sure that you're not shooting on auto and you know where you're shooting and like you're shooting not directly into the sun uh it looks great so I would say 70% of the Drone footage is probably on that camera and 30% was his the the dp's Drone footage yeah no it looks really really good that's why I said is it stock footage because I was like oh this looks amazing but if you manage obviously lives somewhere that's uh quite piit yeah we we literally shot it like in the film we we reference Mount St Helens that that is actually Mount St H I live at just outside of the national park or the national area and um what were what were the sort of struggles making that film that you hadn't anticipated well my DP dropping out four days before we started shooting that was pretty big um one of the big struggles we had so we had one location day uh there's a cave scene that takes place in this really cool big cave practical location we didn't obviously build it but it's a 2hour drive from our uh home base and so it was like we driving out there we're spending the day shooting and then we're driving back when we got out there there's no power we're in this remote area I brought a generator but my generator wouldn't start so we had zero power thankfully I have a little electric generator that basically it's just a battery bank with an inverter on it unfortunately we made the mistake of Brewing our industrial coffee size coffee on that was drained our battery Bank all the way down to like 40% or something like that so we had this one little battery uh Bank to run all of our lights on in this cave scene and when I plugged it in and turned it on to see what it was it was like going to give us an hour of run time so after like uh trying to scramble to figure out oh my gosh what are we going to do there's nowhere around here to buy it like we weren't near a Walmart or something where we could go buy another generator uh so we ended up plugging that battery Bank inverter into this cigarette lighter of my diesel truck and ran my diesel truck for 10 hours straight to charge the battery Bank to then run an extension cable 200 feet down into this cave to charge our or to run our lights and then we just had someone there that would turn on and off the light when we weren't shooting to try and charge it up but I I like to say that my my big Ram truck was the most expensive and largest generator on an indie film that there's ever been so that was a that was a fun challenge uh this was my first time directing the full thing I've done some second unit stuff and I've done bfx supervising but I've never actually directed anything so really the whole being the one to talk with actors from start to finish and just the the world of directing was a new challenge for me it wasn't a bad challenge I loved it but it was all new and uh un unforeseen uh ground for me so that was a exciting and talking about actors um uh how did you handle the casting process and any tips for uh doing that when you've got no money to play with uh so yeah that was a struggle to be able to find good talent that was willing to work for very very very little money um we did pay them and it was an agreed upon right from the beginning it's not like I tricked them or swindled them or whatever but it was nowhere near like your sag rates or anything like that so we did a combination of there's website called backstage I think there's casting calls something or what another uh I started out there and like on Facebook groups there's lots of Facebook groups that have local film actors for your different cities no matter what city you live in there'll be a actors of Portland Oregon or actors Seattle whatever so just posting those Seattle's a couple hours north of Us Portland is just like an hour south of us so we're right in the middle of those two big cities so I would post on that but actually I got probably three or four of my actors through I hired one and he he or she I don't remember who it was was represented by a casting agency uh just like a uh it's called pacif Blue Big Fish Northwest and she was great I then talked to his his manager and I'm like I'm looking for like these three people and she sent me like a list of like 20 people who are available who would probably do it for that rate and I actually found a couple people through an actual agency and she worked for basically just her cut of their fees so she made 10% of what they made which was not much so she did a lot of work for very little which was great so it was a combination of a whole bunch of things social media uh backstage casting which allows you to cast worldwide if you want to and then also a legit uh casting agency who represents a bunch of people and I also notice you work with your wife on the feature films and and I do I myself do that my wife Laura is my producer um and I know a lot of couples that work together on Films so why does that work for you because it has to I couldn't pay anybody else uh no uh my wife Ashley is great she uh was kind of like the Jack of all trades to help me with things she did catering she uh helped me figure out location stuff she helped me with wardrobe she was sewing the bigfoot costume when it got ripped uh she she basically was just my supporter so no matter what I needed she was there to help me out she has zero film background and she to be honest doesn't really want to be in film uh but she loves me and supports me and does whatever she can to help me perfect and and I noce also am I right in saying your daughter was also your Pi set she did come for a couple days uh at the beginning she was not going to but then she was there one day and she was like oh this is kind of fun I let her run slate and then she got she got really into that so then she's like can I come tomorrow can I come the next day can I do this so uh after like the third day of filming she she was there as much as she could in fact she even was like uh she wanted she would rather have come to set than she was going to do some sort of play date with her friends and I was like well that's up to you but uh I was excited that she kind of got the bug on that because she's she's 10 at that point and so she's super little but she was really getting into it and and you're now at the stage where your film's finished have you how are you handling sales and distribution have you got that locked in are you are you looking for that what's your sort of strategy at the moment that's a whole that's a whole another can of worms uh again that was my first time ever dealing with that because I've worked on multiple feature films and a variety of capacities but I've never done the money side the sales side the paperwork side I've always been more of the the Hands-On creating side so that was a steep learning curve of basically I got a list of like 30 or 40 uh Distributors sales agents whatever just from scouring the internet uh the different list and groups and stuff and just kind of cold cold emailed them the the trailer I had the poster the log line that kind of thing and I did get bites from a handful of people both Runing to represent uh and eventually I actually did get some upfront cash offers I got one that was a really small mg with a red split I got some buyout offers for in perpetuity I got some I eventually got one down to a buyout offer for like 15 years um but just it's such uh I'm very early stages so whether or not I made the right decision I don't know but I eventually ended up saying no to the buyout offers no to The Upfront uh mg stuff and I went with Indie rights so I have assigned with uh Linda from Indie rights uh I just actually had a meeting with her yesterday um and they have all the streaming rights and whatnot and I believe it's a three-year contract which is great no one else is anywhere near that the shortest other one I had I think was 10 years as an offer um of course there's no upfront money but I retain ownership and it's a 8020 rev share split which is just standard for them so it's not like I got anything special from them that's what anyone they take that's usually the kind of gig or the kind of uh contract they offer you uh and the reason I did that as opposed to just accepting that money because the mg I would have got would have covered our costs plus some I would have been able to pay myself but I just had fi in the film in that I feel like we would be able to make more than this especially in the 15 years or the Imp perpetuity that some of them wanted than that buyout was and so uh we decided to roll the dice and just go for it and hopefully fingers we didn't have because we crowdfunded and it was our money we didn't have any investors that we needed to pay back like in six months or anything so I'm hoping that in three years or at the very least Le 15 years we will make more than we would have if we would have just gotten that one lump sum agreed and I think the when I hear imp perpetuity there seems it seems like such an unethical thing to offer someone an imp perpetuity to take that away forever um doesn't seem like that should be legal to me um and hopefully you've made the right choice so I've I've just released a film with Indie rights and so far so good yeah so fingers crossed with that um and I've I've heard very good things about them which is one of the reasons we sign with them um so that's interesting to hear um I also noticed on your uh website you edited a feature film called The Most Dangerous Game starring Tom Behringer um how did you get that gig what was that like uh so I've worked on a handful of features with a director um named Justin and we actually met back when I was working at the VFX house um and we were both playing around with YouTube back then and we collaborated in a couple shorts uh back in the day and then when I went and started traveling he had moved down to LA and made connections and started shooting some indie films and then we both kind of moved back up here to the Pacific Northwest in 2020 when Co happened and the world fell apart uh and we reconnected and so I started working on his projects that he's the one that I was doing camera operating for I bfx supervis some of his stuff uh then I did J in uh AE on one of them and then after that he's like oh dude you did a great job cutting this just in the dit room and so then he was like do you want to edit this I was like heck yeah so that was the first I think can't remember if the most dangerous game was the first one I cut but then I cut two more one and a half more after that so I've cut multiple of his films um and I'll be honest they aren't the best films in the world but they are films with a budget with you know the list actors and they got distribution they got they were in Walmart they were in the Best Buy you know there was physical media out there uh they were in Redbox back when that was a thing sad day rip Red Box um but yeah that was how I get it basically I had made a connection with him back when we were both Nob buies doing fun YouTube videos you know little video game shorts and things like that um and then we both which is honestly like how it works is you you raise up together not going to reach out to Spielberg or whatever you know you're going to find someone who is at your same level uh whether you've done zero films or one film you reach out to someone that's your peer and then you move up together and you guys help each other out and you grow at the same rate um that's how it happens in my opinion or in my experience agreed and then I was going to touch on your so you traveled America in this RV did a bunch of videos and I noticed on your YouTube channel they got pretty good views by the looks of things so did you did you you make any money out of that was that a do you know I mean were you selling advertising were you paying for the trip with that or was it not a lot I mean is that something you're happy to talk about yeah yeah we did we were on YouTube for a long time uh we before we even traveled we were doing just you know the the family vlogging thing back when that was you know people actually watched that uh we never got massive by any means I think our Channel got up to like 880,000 subscribers um which is great but it doesn't pay the bills uh we made a little bit of money from you know your AdSense and we had a few brand deals uh actually we had a really great we were just about to do a big deal with Camping World which is a big RV uh sailor in the United States over here and that's when Co hit and then they slash their budget so then that disappeared uh but uh we did make a little bit of money but no it didn't I still on the road would do freelance visual effects and freelance motion graphic stuff and whatnot with my connections that had before so I had a laptop and I had a internet hotspot and so I would just do freelance work on the road uh in between uh the Youtube stuff I hope you enjoyed that episode if you'd like to hear from more industry professionals how they got into the business and how you can do the same or you just want to listen to some cool stories from movie sets around the world then please do subscribe to the honest filmmaker podcast
