IFH 782: Turning Holiday Cheer into Chills: The Shaker Brothers’ Journey Behind Killer Christmas
01:11:47 Share

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineer to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

Carla only has the best tech. Can't connect to network. But she didn't have the best internet. So she got Cox Multigig Speeds to power all her... Now all her tech is... Connected. Exactly. Step it up with Cox Multigig Speeds. Available everywhere. Two gig download speeds, individual speeds vary. See cox.com for details.

You are listening to the IFH Podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork.com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, episode number 782. Cinema should make you forget you're sitting in a theater. Roman Polanski.

Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood, it's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, how to turn your independent film into a profitable business.

It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films. From predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them, the odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken and there needs to be a change.

The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the filmtrepreneur. In Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, I break down how to actually make money with your film projects and show you how to turn your indie film into a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and failures...

This book shows you the step-by-step method to turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content, the Filmtrepreneur Method will set you up for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course, audiobook.

If you want to order it, just head over to www.FilmBizBook.com. That's FilmBizBook.com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host, Dave Bullis. So on this episode of the podcast, I have two New Jersey filmmakers. Third film, Killer Christmas, with guests Peter Paul and Tony Shaker.

You know, you guys are from Jersey. I'm from Philadelphia. So we're about like what, like two hours, three hours away from each other. So, you know, it's always good to see filmmakers in this area because usually it's all from right. It's all from New York. Right. So I'm sure you guys have probably met a ton of filmmakers from New York. But how many have you met from Jersey?

I don't know if I know any filmmakers in Jersey. I don't know about that. Mike? No, I don't know. He's more of an editor. Yeah. I don't think I know any filmmakers from Jersey, honestly. Yeah.

I'll have to introduce you to some. We'd appreciate that. But yeah, it's like people can name Kevin Smith and once he left to LA, it's like... You meant like personally. No, no, no. Personally. I was actually setting up a joke. But I'm sorry.

See, this is what happens when I try to actually make a joke, you know? Nobody, no, trust me, I should have stopped. But no, but all kidding aside, though, but, you know, like, you know, personally, like, you know, and that's what I was trying to say was, in this area, you know, you have Philly, you have, you know, you have Jersey, and you have New York, and it's like everybody either goes to New York, or if they go to Pennsylvania, they all go to Pittsburgh, and, you know,

And then if they don't go to either one of those on the East Coast, they're all going to L.A. So it's cool to have you guys on this podcast because I like to hear about film communities that are around the area that people don't really necessarily think about. You know what I mean? I mean, you do this from anywhere you want in today's world, especially with the equipment that's available, the price points that's available. We're doing it from...

our basement pretty much from like a makeshift office. Like we don't even have to be in Jersey. We could be in the middle of nowhere. Like we filmed in the middle of nowhere, you know, we, yeah. I mean like it's, it's, it doesn't take much now to, to get something done actually. Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, that's becoming more apparent too, is that you hear about people like a famous rapper, like Eminem. He has a studio in his basement, and the reason is that way he can just make stuff at his house. He doesn't have to travel anywhere, and I think whether you make it in your basement, your garage, or where I'm at right now in my office...

I, you know, it's just, it doesn't really, we don't have to go to a studio anymore. You know what I mean? Like you don't have to go shoot in a soundstage or you don't have to go to out to LA or even to New York or so. You know what I mean? That you could actually shoot it in your own backyard. All the software now, like we use, I mean, we edited this film ourselves. We shot this film ourselves. We edited it ourselves, but the editing, like we use, you know, Adobe Premiere Pro and like we have like a monthly subscription and we get access to the stuff that they're using in real studios, you know, around, you know,

LA and New York so it's not it's not like we're using anything less you know our our equipment and our footage is all up to par and we're doing it because you can buy that stuff at you know like Best Buy or Amazon or you know anywhere really like at this point so it's not even uh

It's not hard to do stuff at a professional level. Obviously, the quality of our stuff, we're not saying is going to be – some of these guys have years of experience and they've got a dozen films under their belt. Sure, they're going to be able to do more with what they've got, but you can come in as an amateur. This is our first film. I thought it was – for a first film, it's like 80-plus minutes. It's not – it's nothing small and nothing like –

you know, to take lightly for us, at least like we put a lot of effort into just the whole thing, top to bottom. And it's like, you can do it if you, if you just want to, if you like are willing to do all the work. Right. Yeah. Plus, I mean, having, uh, things like, you know, some things like YouTube where every single person can tell you how to do every single thing imaginable. I mean, so, you know, in the stuff where you end up getting held up and not really knowing which direction to go, you,

watched a couple videos and people are like, here are things you can do that no one even told you about or you even imagined being able to do, you know, five years ago. Um, but here it is. And now you can do it from your own home. Yeah.

And I wanted to ask that too, is if this actually was your first film. So did you guys start making short films at first or even a quote-unquote student film? Or did you just go right into making this film? Nothing. Never made a previous film. And I've worked on a dozen sets in various capacities. And I've written five or six screenplays, but I've never actually produced anything.

not even a short film. So it was kind of like, you know, it's, uh,

I mean, Tony basically was like, let's just make a film. Let's let's just do it. So it was like, why not? Right. Yeah. Well, that's great, because I want to hear about the whole experience and everything like that. So so let's just go back to the beginning. Right. So let's go back to where all this started and where you sort of got the inspiration for for Killer Christmas. So you actually wrote the film based upon your own experiences, right?

no no no no no way dude if that was we'd be dead i mean i don't want to say we'd be dead but there would be some issues if that was our like experience no we we uh we go up christmas tree chopping with our family to like the same christmas tree field out in western jersey and uh it's a huge field and they've got like this old retreat house across the street and over like the last 20 years we've watched it go kind of abandoned decrepit and like boarded up and stuff and like

this last year we were just kind of shooting the shit and like throwing out some ideas and

Um, we kind of liked one of them, the one of them that basically became this film. Like we liked it, like, you know, the seeds of it. We're like, Oh, that'd be pretty cool, man. Like dude in a Santa mask, he starts slashing people up. Like it's totally something we could do like a holiday kind of fun thing. And like, you know, we love horror movies and like, there are some good Christmas ones, but it's still like very underrepresented. Um, and you know, it, we kind of just started throwing out ideas on a family trip, but like the, uh, the actual story, uh,

is not like true it's totally fiction it's just kind of a fun schadenfreude way to like introduce a dark character um but like the next week tony came in and was like dude i want to quit my job uh and make this movie like let's do it like why not and you know i'm i'm i'm a little older and more skeptical he's he's much younger and less afraid of anything so like

You know, we kind of, he put up the money and we just like did it, you know. It's kind of like the odd couple. Yeah. Yeah. But the reason I said that was because I remember in the intro email, it just said inspired by 2016 Thanksgiving weekend Christmas tree cutting trip. That's why I said it was extraordinary experiences.

It was inspired by a family trip, but the goings-on of the film are not real. They are all fake. I imagine there would have to be something else had to happen because

obviously I imagine you weren't chased by a killer or something, but they say in writing, when you're writing anything, write what you know. And the second piece of advice usually is, hey, you can bring your own experiences to it,

And whenever you bring your experiences to anything, like, hey, look, we got a crazy uncle, or hey, look, this thing happened to me when I was a kid, and people sometimes don't understand it. You know what I mean? That's because they don't have the context or the connection that you might have to it, which is why I imagined when you had this trip, this Christmas tree-cutting trip, you probably had an experience one way or the other, and then, of course, you took it and said, hey, this would be a really cool

cool intro to a horror movie. I mean, it wasn't that cool. Like if we had a story like that, it would be awesome. Cause then we could say like loosely based on true events or something, but we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

This holiday, BMW has reunited three members of the family at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. The Agile X3, engineered for any adventure. The plug-in hybrid X5, commanding the streets with unmatched presence. And the all-electric i4, charging into the future with impeccable performance. Hurry in to find what powers your journey at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

Thank you.

focus on you and not your wallet. Visit mindfultherapygroup.com to get started today. And now back to the show. No, I mean, we kind of were just spitballing. Like, it's a little too dark for us to really be part of our real lives. You know, not if that comes from personal experiences. That's all just from the

you know, the imagination just kind of like, I mean, personally, I like writing things that are like real to life, like not really supernatural. I know supernatural is kind of like hot right now, but like, um, you know, I think it's scarier when it's something that could be real. And like, you know, I think we've, you know, we live in a time where people are just fucked up in the head and, um,

you know, someone like this could actually exist if not does exist. So it's, it's not like inspired by life, but it's something that like, you know, based on just kind of what you see in the news and in the media and, and like what happens every day, it's almost like something that, you know, it's like, holy shit, I bet someone like that does exist or someone close to it. Who's just, you know, just fucked up in the head, you know?

Yeah, there was just that the guy in the news the other day where he I don't know if you guys heard about this. He was like a madman living in a house. Everyone had all the all these complaints against them. And he kind of like snapped finally one day and started driving around just randomly firing out of his car. Have you guys heard about that?

No. Was this the guy in Florida that shot four people randomly? Or is this a different thing? This is a different thing. Oh, man. Because there's just... Okay, then, yeah. No, I have not heard about that one. It's sad that that's the question, where it's like, is it this guy? Oh, no, it's a different one. You know, like... Oh, man. Yeah, I know. Seriously, there's so many of them. You're like, wait, which one am I talking about? I mean, it's just... Yeah. If you don't laugh about it, you'll cry. I mean, it's just...

But I mean, yeah, it's... And they described it in the article. His neighbors described him as a madman. And they were like, this guy was constantly... He was in his house firing off his gun. Like he would go through the roof and shit and the cops would come and they would knock on the door. He refused to open the door and they would leave.

And I go, I don't even know if that's standard procedure. I don't know. How do you know there aren't people in there that he's shooting? Yeah, so when I was reading this article, I'm like, it's just going deeper and deeper into this. And I'm like, how the hell did nobody stop this guy? I mean, my God. But, you know,

You mentioned, there's two things I also want to touch on really quickly here before we continue on your journey, because I want to ask Tony about quitting his day job. That's really, really cool. I want to ask, you mentioned some holiday horror movies. So what are some of your favorite holiday horror movies?

I think that the, uh, you know, when we're talking holiday horror movies, especially around Christmas time, I feel like black Christmas kind of stands out on its own, um, to some extent, just because that's a movie where you're in the perspective of the killer the whole time, which was, uh, such a unique thing that they did it, um, when the movie was released. Um, so you're the one sort of murdering people, um, at times. Um, and it's, it's just this whole creepy kind of mind fucking. And in that movie, you know, um,

for anyone who's seen it, you know, you just, you just, you know how it ends and you know how it progresses and you know the sort of twists and turns that go along the way. So I feel like, um, I feel like that movie is just, it's a, it's a good one to look at. Uh, how about you, Tony? Oh no, that was me. That was, Oh, I'm sorry. How about you? Sorry about that. Um, I mean, I liked Halloween. It was a nice slow build. Uh, you know, I think the, I think, um, Krampus was, I mean, it was scary. It was good.

I mean, I feel like there aren't enough good ones, honestly. Halloween. Halloween's great. It's like a legend. You know, it's classic. And ours kind of has, I hope it has a little bit of like a feel to it. Like we did a couple of little homage-y things towards it. And like we're, you know, kind of like, especially with the pace buildup and the...

You know, the type of individual. But, like, I know it just, I mean, I don't know. I'd say, like, Krampus and Halloween are probably my two favorites. Have either of you seen Santa's sleigh? No, I have not. So it's the...

It's just funny as hell. It's Bill Goldberg, the former pro wrestler. He portrays Santa, who's actually really evil in this film's timeline. And he's really evil. And he had a curse put on him, so he had to give out gifts for kids every year. But this Christmas, the curse ends. So now he can go around and just brutalize everybody. Nice. Oh, my God. We'll check that out then.

Yeah, I just, every year I make sure to watch Santa's sleigh. I held on by the thumbs, like, oh, how good is this going to be, man? You know, they just, you know, got a pro wrestler in the movie. Come on. It's freaking awesome. Yeah, I know. Did you, were you a big wrestling fan growing up? I mean, when I was in my much younger, younger days and then on and off after that. But like one of my, one of my good buddies like runs like a podcast as like devout to wrestling. So I still randomly keep up on it.

But when I was younger, man, yeah, I enjoyed it. But I was back in the 90s when it was just awesome. Like Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, all those guys? Yeah. I see everyone remembers those guys, like the 80s and the 90s. But today, you could hold a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you five people. No, I couldn't tell you who a wrestler was right now. I would have no idea. Now it's like Ultimate Fighting. I mean, now it's more like mixed martial arts because it's actually real, but like...

Back then it was wrestling and boxing. Like you could actually, you know, a big, a big primetime boxing match was awesome or watching like a cage match or like anything the ultimate warrior did or like, you know, Ric Flair, like anybody. I mean, wrestling was more entertaining back then and you knew it was entertaining. And if you wanted to fight, you just watch like Tyson and Holyfield or like any one of these, like Riddick Bowe or something.

I'm dating myself, man. I'm old. Older, at least. No, I mean, all those boxers. Yeah, I remember all those guys, too, man. And it's just like, you know, just growing up as a kid, you know, in the 90s, I remember Alter Warrior and Hulk Hogan and all those guys and Macho Man Randy Savage and everything. You know, people still remember. I had the whole scarf outfit going one Halloween with the bandana and the glasses and, like, the boa around my neck. Like, I did the whole thing, dude, with the boots. Like...

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it was, yeah, it was a fun time to grow up. Which, honestly, like, this film is, like, we tried to be as, like,

throwback classic. I don't know if it came across like that, but like, we really want it to be like one of these older kind of classic, like, you know, Friday the 13th, you know, Halloween, like eighties feel like even from like the color correction we put on it to like the, you know, the kids running down the halls to like certain like creeping scenes and reveals, like they're supposed to just be like old school throwback, like just kind of just like, you know, little kind of fun, scary, campy movie, you know?

Yeah, and I think, you know, 80s horror, that seems to be like, you know, the absolute epitome of horror, like the horror genre, because there was so, you know, there was slashers coming out, but they were all unique in their own way. You had, you know, Halloween, you had Friday the 13th, you got Nightmare on Elm Street, you even have a couple of the other ones. Yeah.

And, you know, and they all they all were unique, though. I mean, you wouldn't confuse, you know, Jason and Michael Myers, even though they both sound the same if I described it to you. But I mean, they're both and the movies are completely different, too, which is also a plus.

Plus, you got these great scream queens who came out around then and built careers on their incredible vocals. You know, like the great screams. Plus, I mean, I think like with the film, what we were doing is, you know, we took technology out of it a lot because that's something you see a lot more push these days where you'll have like very technologically based horror movies. So like special effects and stuff like us has very little real.

real effects. There's a couple of blood things, but obviously, honestly, it's, you know, we did no practicals, no blood spurts. We just added a couple of blood things digitally, but yeah, but, but even like on top of that, like I remember there was a movie a couple of years ago, I think it was a unfriended or something where it's like a horror movie that takes place over people's computers kind of thing. And,

But I get the appeal when you're trying to do the appeal to the younger generation and the computers and the cell phones and everything. But there's something so unique about being detached from everyone and being in a place where you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and you don't have a computer. You don't have a phone. You don't have a screen. It's like that cabin in the woods kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, where it's, you know, that's it. You're stuck with your own wits about you and, you know, good luck. So I think that that makes it so much scarier when you take away the screens that are sort of the fiction in our own lives and you force people to sit there and see people without all these little distractions in them. Yeah, you know, it was funny because when I went to a screenwriting seminar one time, the instructor said, the first thing you have to do when you sit down to write a screenplay is...

figure out how cell phones won't work. Yes. Dude, that's actually like, I kid you not, that's a task in every screenplay. Like, especially if you want it to be scary, you want to like, you know, create ways for your characters to not get help. You want to put obstacles because every time they have a goal that they have to achieve, you have to put at least one or two obstacles in their way. And like, figuring out clever, real ways to not have cell phone is like, is an art. Like, it's not, it's not a...

It's not easy. You can't just be like, the world has no cell phones. That's not a thing, especially if you want it to be real. Yeah, I agree with you completely. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

This holiday, BMW has reunited three members of the family at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. The Agile X3, engineered for any adventure. The plug-in hybrid X5, commanding the streets with unmatched presence. And the all-electric i4, charging into the future with impeccable performance. Hurry in to find what powers your journey at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now, back to the show. I never heard that being taught in a course, but now that you say it, that's totally true. It really is a real important thing to do. Yeah, because everyone has a cell phone nowadays. And it's funny, though. Whenever I watch a horror movie and I get no reception, friends of mine are like, oh, come on, seriously? And I go, look, I'm in my office sometimes. And we're in the middle of Philly, right? Of course.

Of course. Oh, yeah. I'm like leaning out the window going, all right, I think anyone's got a bar here. And I have two phones. I have an iPhone and an Android. Neither one gets any service. And I'm like, all right. Well, actually, the place where we were filming had legitimately no service. We actually had no service. We had legitimately no service.

This place was, as you see in the movie, it's like a six-story, 155-room abandoned hotel in the middle of this little small town in upstate New York that no one's ever heard of. We'll shout it out, though. Yeah, yeah. Sharon Springs. It's where the sulfur bats are. Sharon Springs, New York. Don't get me wrong. Everyone there is awesome. Yeah.

But it's like really it's like two three and a half hours away from New York City at least at least yeah We also drove up in the middle of a snowstorm, so it took us closer to what eight hours maybe yeah like eight hours when we first got up there was great for the scenery like our all our stuff is snow-covered but in terms of like setting up like that first day of getting there was just literally an eight-hour drive through you know

a snowstorm, like 20, 20 miles an hour up 87 going all the way up, like past Albany and out towards Syracuse, this place. Yeah. Um, and then when we got there, that was a own number of scary events to begin with. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sorry. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, did you guys document this? Did you guys like take out a, like a mini handheld or anything to document some of this?

We did not. We should have, actually. Well, here's the thing. So we did get a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff when we were walking around the abandoned hotel because we started hearing noises pretty early on and footsteps were calling. Literally, like, when we first drove up there the first time, there was, like, a flutter of noise in the hotel and then it went real quiet. And it was us two and our cinematographer, Marco, and we...

We all right away looked at each other and were like, you heard that, right? It's like, yeah, we definitely heard that. We went in and we tried to get into this place because it was all boarded up. We had to undrill the doors and then put on a padlock so that we could go in and out. And

We walked in, we searched around, like you could hear some noise in different levels and then we'd go quiet. So like we kind of like were real creeped out. So we put like a listening to a microphone and we recorded a couple of hours of sound. And then, you know, we heard when we played it back later on that day, like we heard all kinds of shuffling, all kinds of random noises, but never any voices.

So then like the next day we went in and basically like walked around the whole place. And that's when we took footage. So we have like, you know, an hour or so of walk around footage on our YouTube page. That's like us literally just kind of walking around this house, kind of like telling whatever vagrants might be there that we'd be shooting a film and that they needed to clear out. And that like this was like in the three or four days that the three of us went up to kind of

prep everything to make sure we had our shots set up to make sure our generator was working to make sure we had everything good to go so that when like the rest of the crew and the actors came up you know we hit the ground running yeah um yeah like i remember that first day in the fresh powder of the snow i mean we found sets multiple sets of footprints all around the the hotel trying to get in so i mean like right away we were kind of like oh

God. Yeah. Like the landlords had told us like the real estate company that bought up the abandoned building and like they bought up a bunch of properties and we're fixing up a different one. They're like, look, some vagrant, even though they boarded it up, they're like some vagrants during the colder winter months kind of try to come through here and looking for shelter. If you see any, just show them away. They'll leave. We're like, we're not really like qualified or capable to do that. And like, you know, thankfully we didn't see any, but like, you know,

there were times people would come screaming around a corner cause like the wind in the window flickered the blinds and they thought someone was in one of the rooms and they come screaming around a corner. And now three of us got to go with flashlights and like holding up like a chair leg to make sure like nothing's going on, you know, like. Mind you, we were only filming at night. So we were filming from like 6 PM to like, you know, 7 AM the next day, obviously with lunch breaks and all that stuff. I mean, it was just, uh,

It was like, yeah, it was dead at night. We had like all battery operated, you know, lights with like blue gels on them for the moonlight. And then like we had a generator running outside that we ran like 200 feet of, uh,

taped together like uh extension cords through windows so that we could get our smoke generator like our smoke machine working because we wanted to haze the whole floors for every shot but we we had to have the generator outside because there's no like the whole building has like no sprinklers no uh you know no no uh no electricity and no power like so we couldn't have any kind of combustible stuff inside so like it was cold as hell you know people's breath was going up and like

I mean, it was a crazy, crazy, crazy shoot. It was really fun. It was awesome. But, like, you know, it was...

It was as cold as it looked. Like, it was definitely... And it was also pretty scary, just in general. Just being in that place, yeah. I mean, especially because there was one of the... One of the first days, we actually ended up finding a couple entrances wide open into this hotel. One of them ends up being the main entrance used by these kids in the movie. Literally, it was just a door that was just wide open that you could just walk through no problem. Well, you had to go through a little bit of a...

Little entryway in the back that was filled with litter and debris to get to the door But the door itself was open into the kitchen. So like if you knew about it like you could get in there Yeah, I mean we ended up chaining that up but then there was one day when we went back for the chains and like there was like Glass shards in the chain rope like someone had put it there To like booby trap it when we were trying to untie it and we're like dude, that's kind of messed up Like there was definitely someone Well, we think there could potentially have been someone in the hotel. I

It was a large enough place and we were pretty loud and noisy so they could always probably stay away from us. Plus, we never touched the basement. We never went to the basement. It was too scary. We went with the manager to check it out. We literally went to the bottom of the stairs, kind of like peek left and right. And even he was like, yeah, let's just go back upstairs. We all just went right back upstairs. None of us wanted to be there. The basement, because it has no windows, no lights, nothing. Like pitch black all the way through. And it's a maze. It's an actual maze. It's huge.

Yeah. He was like, yeah, if you want kids to get lost in here, I'm sure you can make that happen. And we're like, no way, dude. We're not trying to get anyone actually lost. We're trying to get everyone back home. It'll become like the Blair Witch Project. We're like, what the hell? How do we get to this basement? We kept being afraid that suddenly this would become a found footage movie. Yeah. That was the joke. Yeah.

Yeah. And see, like filming in a place like that is a journey of itself. And I mean, so I wanted to ask, you know, and also this is a two part question here. I wanted to ask first, you know, Tony, you mentioned earlier about quitting your job to make this film. So what was that like? I mean, and I want to ask, too, about how you guys went about producing this and even writing this. But I mean, Tony, at first, you know, you said you wanted to quit your job. And so did you just decide one day I'm literally just going to quit my job?

I mean, so we went Christmas tree cutting. We always go the weekend of Thanksgiving. So that I think we might have gone on a Saturday. And I think literally the next Monday or something, I came home from work. I was like, yeah, I'm quitting my job. So we're we're going to make this movie or something like, you know, you know, let's do this.

And for me, it was something where I've always loved movies. I've been binging them instead of doing real schoolwork and stuff like that when I was a kid, and then that carried on into adulthood instead of doing other stuff. So just a real passion for movies. And I guess...

At some point I had the itch to try to see what it was like on the other side of things. So it was something that was in the back of my head. And then, you know, well, we were coming up with this idea on the Christmas tree farm and and I sort of was toying with the idea over the weekend. I was like, you know, this is this is doable. Like this isn't something where, you know, like this isn't this this crazy blockbuster film that needs to be done where it's like, you know, insane special effects and stuff like this is a movie that we could actually make.

and hopefully make well. And I think it came out pretty good, especially for a first movie. So that to me was what was going through my head. And I said that, you know,

I have plenty of time in life to do the responsible quote unquote move and not quit my job and make a movie. But I don't know how many opportunities I'll have to really jump on it. So I figured, you know, might as well strike while the embers are hot and see what happens.

You know, I really like that sentiment, Tony. I really like that sentiment because I think sometimes it happens, or actually most of the time it happens in reverse, where they do the responsible thing first and they go to make their movie and they're like, well, maybe I'll make it next year, next year, next year, and then it never actually happens until, you know, they reach, you know, the age of, I don't know, you know, whatever you want to be, fill in the blank. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, now I have a wife, I have kids, I have a mortgage, I have a car payment. How the hell could I quit my job to go make a movie?

Yeah, exactly. I think there's a great line. I want to say it's someone like Bill Burr or someone, I can't remember exactly though. He says, you know, the scariest thing in life isn't sleeping on a futon when you're whatever age. It's waking up next to a wife you don't love with kids you hate and a mortgage on your head and a dead-end job that you never want to go back to. You know, that's the scariest thing. You know, I take sleeping on a futon every single time over that. And I think that's a line that sort of stayed with me ever since I first heard it and it

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now, back to the show. I think it's a great line because, you know, that's the truth. Too many people get roped into this sort of

you know, rat race we call life. And they end up in a position where they can't take a gamble or take a chance on something, you know, because they've sort of put so many external, you know, things on. And I feel like that to me was my mentality. I said, you know, I'm in the place where I don't have all this baggage, all these different things on me, where I can take this opportunity and not have it negatively impact, you know, all these people like a wife and the kids and all these things. So I said, screw it. You know, like...

If I want to do the responsible thing, I'll do it in 20 years, but I'm going to take a chance right now. Yeah, and that's the thing too. Now it's almost – in today's world, it's almost if you don't take a chance, that's even riskier than not taking a chance. Yeah, the grind sucks when no one wants to do like the regular – I mean it's – yeah. Like I had a regular job for a while and it sucked like –

Being a creative person and chasing stuff is definitely better. It's definitely, you know, it's more stressful. It's less financially secure, but it's definitely satisfying. Yeah, you feel like you're actually making, you know, you're actually making a difference. You know what I mean? It actually feels good. You know what I mean? It's not like, oh, I'm just going to work to make, you know, to do this, the job I really don't want anymore. Yeah, where you put like 40% effort and you surf the web all day. Like, what's the point? You know, it's not, you know.

It's not a way I just want to do things, you know, spend the next whatever amount of time.

Yeah. It's, and I mean, Hey, the reason I started this podcast, man, I mean, I was working a, a multimedia job at the college I graduated from and they passed me over for a promotion one day. And I was like, listen, every day I get the shit kicked out of me here. And I was, and I have, and like, you guys aren't going to like reward me for it. Like, I mean, I, I literally, to be honest with you, Peter, like, and, and Tony, I was getting like ever, I was floor from the time that I got in there to the time I left, I was just getting like ding like shit. And,

And I was like, where's the reprieve here? So like, you know, and I mean, finally you just got it. I started having to do something creative because I couldn't make any movies because one, I didn't have the time. And two, I was just, it was like non, because of the job, it's like nonstop. You go home and you're like, you're carrying it with you. Like, God damn it. I hate that guy. You're sitting there. Yeah.

You don't have time when you're working 40, 50 hours a week plus the commute plus like you're not getting a full night's sleep because you got to get up early in the morning. It's hard to do things when you get home in the evening. And then Saturday, Sunday, you just want to chill. You don't want to like say, OK, I'm going to go have a 12-hour day on set now. Like I'm going to go do something like creative because you just don't have the energy for it. You need to recharge. Like it's super hard. Yeah.

I've been writing for a long time and I used to try to write on nights and weekends and like you just don't get as much productivity as you do like when you give it your good hours during the day like you're you know 10 to 3 p.m. and you're like in a zone and you're energized and you're focused and it's like you know I'd rather have those hours for myself than like give them away.

Yeah, very true. It's just, it makes you, it's more fulfilling, you know, it's, it's what, what you want to do. And, you know, that, that's why, you know, you guys, you know, Tony, you quit your job and you guys went out and made this film. So, so just to, you know, continue along with, with actually making, um, you know, killer Christmas, did you guys, uh, you know, when you were writing the script, you know, was there any sort of, um, did you guys read, you know, did you grab a book, you know, from, you know, the, the 10,000 screenwriting books out there? Did you grab a book or did you just, you know, just start writing? Yeah.

I mean, so like we came up with the idea on like a broad stroke level. But like in terms of writing it, like, I mean, personally, I've written seven or eight scripts at this point. A couple of them have made some rounds and like, you know, I've learned how to write a script in terms of like, what is the.

you know, the three act concept plot point one, plot point two, the middle, you know, uh, kind of defining moment that changes things. Like there's, in terms of structurally writing, like it's something I've been working on, you know, for the last about 10 years now, I started in those seven seriously writing. Um, so like writing the script was something like once we got the idea, it was, we, we, we punched it out in about a month. Um, writing, um,

you know, three or four hours a day, every day, almost every day, five, six days a week. Um, and then we had a first draft from, we had a first draft by new year's we, and then we kind of like polished it up at the very beginning of January. Um, but like in terms of writing, it's more of like, it's like at this point, you know, it's, it's like once you know what you, you, so like,

The way I write, at least, and the way we've kind of written together is that, like, you know, we build our storyboard. We build our concept. We figure out who our characters are. You come up with the moments in your script. You've got, you know, your introductory act one, who is everybody. Well, first...

At least the way this one is, is you have an inciting event at the very beginning, which kind of sets the tone. And then after that, you have act one, which tells you who the players are. And then you have plot point one, which establishes a goal for the players, something they're going to do. And then you have act two way, which is essentially.

you know, the players on their journey. And then you have something crazy that happens in the middle that flips the journey on its head. And then you've got act two B, which is the reeling period where, you know, shits in the fan. And then you have plot point two, which is the movement to regroup and like the re-energized, you know, a new goal is set and, you know, stakes are heightened. And then you have plot, you know, the act three where it's, you know, now you got to go, you know,

do what you're setting out to do, whether it's escape or, you know, kill or be killed or whatever it is. Right. And so like in terms of structure, you know, we build out our outline, we figure out who the characters are and what they're doing in each one of these moments of the script. And then you kind of plot it out and like, you know, we come up with like a 10, 12 page outline that basically lays out every single scene. So we have just a whole, you know, kind of

from beginning to end, we know scene one is going to be a scene two is going to be, you know, B scene three is going to be whatever. And then in each one of these scenes, who the characters are, what their motivations are, what their intents are, what they're, you know, what they're trying to get, what's going on. Um, and then like, what are, you know, what is the purpose of the scene? Like this scene is to, you know, establish who people are or to lay kind of a red herring or to give motivation or to whatever. Right. And then after that's all kind of laid out,

And you know your whole story and you know your characters and you know the way the plot line is going to work. Then you start writing. Then you say, okay, act one, scene one, page one. You know, I know that in this seat I need these 10 things to happen. And now you just write it. And then after you write the scenes and you get it all down, you're

you know, you start polishing, you start working the dialogue, you ask friends to read it, you know, you get people's feedback, you see if people are, you know, characters or plot lines are believable or not. Like we, you know, we are lucky that we have a large family and siblings who are interested in our creative pursuits. So like, they'll give us pretty quick feedback. And I've got a few friends who are readers who, you know, I'll send them a script and they'll, they'll, they'll, you know, within a few days, they'll tell me what they think of it. And so, you know, then we do a couple rounds of polishing and like,

By mid-January, we were already in the casting process and our script was pretty much done. But then when we went to filming...

Obviously, we gave our cast the script for rehearsals, and we had one rehearsal where they all got to do a read-through and kind of work with each other a little bit, and then they take it home. But our whole thing was like, you're not married to the words on the page. We want you to get the moment. We want you to be there with the character. So even if it's a couple words off or even if you bring something to your own little flavor –

granted some of the actors brought stuff we didn't like and it ended up on the editing room floor but some of the actors did things we didn't expect so like there's a give and take there you know as long as you're hitting the main points of the of the script and like you know 90 of it was as written but you know there's some liberties taken here and there and you know putting a button on the scene or like you know just giving it your own kind of like creativity so you got it you know we we

you know, this, this script is like a living thing. It's never going to be, you know, if you, if you right now transcribe the film after the fact and what you have right now at the end product was probably never what it looked like at any point along the way. Yeah. And that, that, by the way, that was a really good, you know, screen, that was almost like a screenwriting quiz in of itself, by the way. That was really good. Thanks man. No, I've, I've, uh, I mean, I'm a self-taught screenwriter. I mean, I, uh,

my training is as an attorney. So like I worked, you know, really boring jobs and, you know, I've looked, I know how to write. I'm a formulaic writer, but like in my mid twenties, I knew I hated being, you know, I hated the track I was on. And, uh, and, um,

I basically decided I wanted to be a writer. I got all the books. My first couple screenplays suck. They still suck. It's all about repetition. It's about exercise. It's about doing it over and over. There's no one way to write it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now back to the show. You get, you know, five different people's information and then you kind of build your own your own method. And no two screenplays you write are ever going to be the same anyway. So they're not going to follow the same method. They're just kind of generally going to have the same bigger picture. And then you just, you know, you work with your specific details as they go as they, you know, on each one.

Yeah, and I think when we get into writing, finding your own voice is really key to all of this. I know there's, like I said, there's like 10,000 screenwriting books out there, but until you actually add your own voice to all of this and actually start to make your own special sauce, I mean, you're just going to, it's almost like a boilerplate template, you know what I mean? It's almost like, well, you don't want to have something where somebody reads and goes, well, anybody could have written this. Then you're just sort of like a face in the crowd. Yeah.

Sure, but the boilerplate template – like you have to know how to write before you can like write freely. So like the boilerplate template is good to just say, OK, I can't be doing act one things in act two. I can't be laying out – introducing new people for the first time halfway through the script because no one is going to be able to – people are – there's no foundation for it. So like there are certain formulaic things that definitely –

I mean, yes, you can be a super creative avant-garde director and throw everything on its head, but 90% of films that actually reach the audience follow the generic act one, act two, act three template. Yeah, you've got to bring your own flavor all the way through. You've got to

your characters have to have life, they have to have purpose, they have to have their own individual voices. They can't all be the same kind of analogous person. Yes, there's a lot of art to it and there's a lot of form, but I think they're both just as important when you're talking about getting a 100-page work or a 90-page work. There's a long...

There's like a very big picture you have to put together and then you got to be really artistic within it. Yeah. And it's like, I, you know, I've said before in the podcast too, I think like the templates, the boilerplate, uh, you know, templates and stuff. I think it's a kind of like training wheels, you know, you have to, you know, get used to riding a bike and then you can take them off and go, okay, now, you know, now I've had experience riding a bike and now I don't need these training wheels anymore. Yes, absolutely. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

So as you actually wrote this draft of Killer Christmas, you sent it to some people, you did a couple more drafts, and you finally had a shooting script. So now how did you guys, once you finally had that draft that you were ready to shoot, you were ready to go, so how did you guys go about...

Getting the location because this is just a note before you answer. I always say locations are the hardest things for filmmakers to get. And sometimes filmmakers are aware of it and sometimes they're not. Because if you have a big contact list, it makes location getting a tad bit easier because usually locations want insurance. They want to ask you like 10,000 questions about stuff, which is all understandable. But how did you guys go about getting this whole entire Christmas tree farm?

So the Christmas tree farm and the hotel were actually two different places. In our mind, we actually went into this and we were like, oh, sweet, we're going to use this location that we've been to God knows how many years for how many Thanksgiving weekends to cut the tree. So we approached them and they were like, yeah, no, no, we're not a big fan of having people running around screaming being murdered around here. Shockingly, so

From there, it was a lot of online research. For the Christmas tree one, we were just looking up different farms all over the place. We started visiting a couple within a couple-hour drive of us. Then we ended up coming across this very nice couple who had a great farm, but it was right by a highway.

And so you were getting a lot of background noises, which was something that we hadn't really thought about going into it because, you know, we thought that the farms would be more secluded. Uh, they gave us a pamphlet of a ton of tree farms and we just started hitting up a bunch of those guys. Yeah. It was like a directory basically. Yeah. Of like tree farms in the Northeast region. Oh yeah. And so, so we started contacting a bunch of these guys who start going to different farms. Um,

For some reason, every single time we visited a farm, I just – I really had to pee and couldn't find a bathroom. So – He literally – yeah. He literally pissed on every – we visited like 9 or 10 tree farms and he found a way to piss on every single one. Every single tree farm I had to go pee. Yeah.

And then, funny enough, the one that we found and that we ended up using was the only one I didn't have to pee at. So maybe it was a sign from my bladder. This was the one. And then, you know, as far as the...

Abandoned places. I mean we want visited all sorts of places all over the place You know, I think there was like a girls. What was it like an old girls school? I think one of them was a penitentiary one. Yeah, like we found like a something called like the art of abandonment a website of like it's like an urban exploring thing where People sneak into abandoned places and they take pictures and they post it up so like we found a bunch of places on this and then we started tracking down the owners of

Because like some of these places were, you know, in liens or in bankruptcy or completely abandoned. And like then we started setting up meetings and driving around to places. And like we were really lucky to find this hotel, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we ended up finding this hotel, which is actually owned by this group that owns a couple different big areas.

plots of land in that in that sharon springs area um you know trying to build uh bring the sulfur baths back because that's a big thing in sharon springs and uh so they had just started work on one of the plots of land and we had approached them thankfully they hadn't touched the adler hotel which is where we filmed yet and uh we said hey you know we're interested in filming here and uh

They were a bit hesitant at first because obviously the whole running around people getting killed and all that stuff seems like not the most ideal way to go about it. But they were super cool with it. We ended up striking a deal with them, a combination of cash. And also we bought them this awesome 4K drone that they could use to track the progress of all the sites that they were building up upon.

And yeah, so they ended up letting us go up there and film there and really make the place our own.

And that is absolutely freaking fantastic, by the way, that you guys were able to go to all these different places and also look them up online. Because I'm telling you, that's what I mean by locations are the hardest thing to find for filmmakers. Because just finding a place that's cool with this stuff. See, that's what I mean. And like I said to Alex Ferrari on Any Film Hustle, there's two things they usually ask.

They ask, but beyond if you have insurance, but they usually ask, is there nudity and will there be blood? And, you know, if, and usually if it's, we actually had to get, because of the insurance things, they asked us those things and we, we didn't do any nudity or any practical blood effects so that our, so that we could get insured for these things. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and yeah, because I've dealt with insurance before, and I remember one of the questions on the actual form we were filling out with the law firm, which actually dealt with the insurance, they were like, there was actually a box that said, will there be nudity? And there's another one that said, will there be practical effects like a la gore, et cetera, and they were listing it all out, and I'm

Like, wow, I've never seen this before. But that stuck out my mind because now every time you go to film somewhere, that's like the two big questions they always ask. Will there be nudity? Will there be gore? Yeah, and we had to make sure that

You know, we didn't do any blood stuff that you know, the weapons we got were were not real weapons So like the weapons you see we actually had them made at some at a place called the specialists in brooklyn like they do uh custom like props for all kinds of sets like real big movies and they've got like a big kind of armory with all kinds of weapons and you know, they do manufacturing of um, like they basically did our big slasher knife and our little uh bowie knife and

And both of those things, as real as they look, are like rubber on plastic with like, you know, really nice paint and like fine edging and trimming and stuff like that.

So, so, I mean, yeah, we had to do all that stuff to make sure insurance was like, you know, would, would actually ensure the production. Um, we couldn't use any blood spatter, even, even like little like blood packets. We couldn't use those, anything that was attached to an actor that could potentially pop on them or burn them or like, you know, all, all kinds of stuff. So like, yeah, it's a real, it's a, it's a real concern. And like, you know, obviously the locations, um,

told us that we needed to provide insurance which we knew right away um so like you know as long as you get that done and you do everything by the book you know you can you can do it and like you know add it in later in post-production and shoot it in a way that you don't need as much blood like it's really not as gory as it's like it's not gratuitously gory you know yeah we're not looking at saw here we're looking at more classic halloween more yeah more

Yeah, and I imagine too, because as we were talking about gore and stuff like that, it's kind of hard to go into a place and be like, hey, we're just going to spray blood all over this place. Maybe you could have did it in the basement there. No one would have been down there. There would have been blood already. She mentioned Alex at Indie Film Hustle. We wrote an article about

for them that was just published last week. It's called How We Made a 4K Feature Film for Under 50 Grand, and it has our whole budget breakdown in there. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit a Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now back to the show. And it has like, you know, we kind of just wrote an article a step by step on like the things we're talking about now and like all kinds of different, you know, things you need to be looking out for and like how much how much we spent on like different line items and whatnot. So like that's out there. I mean, you know, Alex is a cool guy.

person that you know really helped us out and like let us put our story up so it was it was it was nice yeah alex is a good guy uh and by the way everyone i'm going to link to that in the show notes that's really freaking cool awesome thank you thank you it's on our it's on our facebook page that's that's that's that's the only place we know obviously except for it's on indie film hustle and our facebook page so if you want to anywhere you want to find it so yeah

Cool. And I'll make sure to link that in the show notes, but, and which is really, really cool. Cause actually, uh, you know, Alex and I were, we're really good friends. We talk all the time. Awesome. And, uh, yeah, so, so it's good. Cause you're the, us indie film podcasters, like we all stick together, like we all know each other. But, uh, but so, you know, as you guys are making this, you know, being this being your first film, was there ever a point at a time where you just said, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

A lot, yeah. A couple times a day.

You'd hit something and you're like, holy shit, bro. We're never like we couldn't find a choir for the longest. And then suddenly we found a choir and then it was expensive. But it was what we wanted. Right. Like it was these kids. They're out in Utah. We wanted this. Like we want them to sing these creepy Christmas songs. Like, you know, we got to do it. It took us three months just to find them. Let's let's do it. Right. Like.

you know, the location stuff, like it was tough to do. It was a drag. Like, I mean, we were talking like there are days we'd drive an eight hour round trip in the day just to go check out four places. Right. Like, you know, and like eating lunch on the road and just being exhausted and be like, dude, we're never going to find a fucking place that we can use. Like, especially cause we were trying to get something in that winter time with the snow. So, you know, we were on a tight deadline with that. So yeah, like we were doing it. Yeah. Like we were like basically like, yeah, we want to shoot a month from now. And we were like, um,

Okay, no. No one had that availability, but we luckily found places that in February were dead. Like a Christmas tree farm after Christmas doesn't really do much until, you know, this one has like a flower, like greenhouses and stuff, and they make like

flowers that they send down to New York City. They're up in Red Hook, New York. They're called F.W. Battenfeld and Son Christmas Tree Farms. But they do all kinds of flower things and they send them down to New York or up to Boston. And that's kind of what they do to make do in the winter. And they're like, yeah, man, no one sees the Christmas Tree Farms. I mean, dude, half the time there are people out on snowmobiles. They had like 130 acres and big

like, big hills and stuff, and we'd be shooting on one hill, and there'd be snowmobiles chilling out, ripping around on the next hill. And we got to, like, be like, dude, can you guys keep it down for, like, an hour so we can just, like, keep shooting? Because you'd hear it in the background, and it's like, you know, we're trying to, like, do... Yeah, it was... Sometimes it was awesome. Sometimes it was like, you know, we're not... You know, we're on the brink of not... Of collapsing, right? But, like, it never...

you know, once you're in it, like there's no turning back. Like there's, you know, there's no, like there's no quit like at this point. So you gotta, you gotta just keep doing it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The only, the only way out is through. So yeah. So what, what, what you guys committed, you just had to keep going. So, and, and,

Again, this being your first film, what was just the number one biggest production issue, whether it be a location, whether it be weather, whether it be something that happened? What was that one biggest obstacle you overcame? Sound. Sound, yeah. Sound is so underrated. Because we were shooting...

In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with everything battery-operated, we were using a shotgun on a boom. Our sound guy...

We also had a mic on the camera set up, so we had two potential versions of anything that was said. And we're lucky we did because sometimes one wasn't on, one wasn't working, one battery did this. One of them had bumps on it because we were in the middle of nowhere and someone would hit something. So sound is definitely something that in hindsight we probably...

We I mean, it's good now because we got like, you know, sound engineers to level out, you know, all kinds of things. And like that itself is obviously a whole process, the post-production process and then getting arrangements for music and everything like that and then doing Foley. And then like, yeah, sound is definitely something that I think, you know.

On the next one, we will give more focus to before we even start filming. Yeah. Yeah, because sound is the one thing where it's – if you watch a movie and you don't recognize the – or like you're not paying attention to the sound at all, that means it's done well. If you pay attention to the sound, that means it's done poorly. It's one of those things where you only notice it when it's bad but not when it's good.

And so it's tricky. It's tricky because, you know, too many people underappreciate it. And, you know, that's something that we definitely want to focus more on going forward.

Yeah, sound is one of those things. I had Kelly Baker on here and he's a sound designer for like all Gus Van Zandt's films. And he actually wrote a book about sound design and he said it's usually one of the last things that filmmakers think about. And it's so true because even when I was, you know, making films and stuff, you know, you just never really think about it until you actually need it. And you're like, oh shit, what am I going to do? You know, I really haven't.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a very, very, very true statement. So like, that's definitely something like, you know, in hindsight, we would have put more resources towards and like, you know, but I think overall, it turned out fine. But it couldn't have it was it could have been easier. It could have been easier. Yeah, it could have been easier process. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's the thing. You know, you got to take, what is it, two steps forward, one step back. I mean, now when you guys go to your next project, you know, sound, you'll remember that the sound was important, you know, and plan for that ahead of time, you know. And honestly, we've all been there, you know. Yeah, and also...

coordinating special effects in the pre-production process. Because some of the VFX guys, we went out and found a young kid from Brooklyn who did a lot of our VFX and color grading for us, and he gave us a few suggestions, and he had questions for the DP that it would have been good for them to have a conversation before

before we did the lighting arrangement so that they could get the same page about what we were trying to do to get certain right, the right type of color. We got to the color we wanted, but there could have been fewer steps if they were coordinated before we shot stuff,

Yeah, I think for us we looked at it as a three-phase thing where it's pre-production, production, post-production. It is true that you have those three steps, but really they're so intermingled in ways that you don't even think about in the beginning that –

that, you know, at least for me, I'd say, I wish that we had known some of the post-production things in the pre-production spot just so that we could have everyone on the same page and make sure that we could, you know, keep things as tight as possible. Yeah, so like, I think that the, the, the,

The lesson learned is anyone who's going to touch it in post-production should be involved in the pre-production process. Absolutely. So they know what they're getting into. And so the person who's handling the actual production knows what to be giving them, knows what they're expecting. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And that goes in with the deliverables too and stuff like that, you know, where it's, you know, coordinating everything, you know, coordinating the effects and stuff like that. I was on a shoot one time and the cinematographer and the set designer were not on the same page.

And the cinematographer walks into the set and goes, what the fuck is this? He goes, this is completely wrong. He goes, I told him not to paint the walls this color. He goes, because, I mean, and him and everyone, like, all the people who were, like, the director, the cinematographer, the producers, they all went outside. And it's like, I guess they had to have this big meeting because...

I guess the shit had hit the... Well, I know the shit had hit the fan. And it was like, you know, this is because... And the cinematographer, I remember passing him, he goes, see, this is what happens, he goes, when the set designer doesn't fucking listen. And he's like, this is what happens. And they ended up having to... Just to, like, really...

what's the word I'm looking for here? Just think on the fly, I guess it just, they had to sort of Jerry rig something else completely, but, but, you know, stuff like that, you know, and, uh, but, you know, you know, I, but see, again, two steps forward, one step back, you know, and that's why you guys are going to take it into your, into your next project. But I wanted to ask, you know, as we already talked about how you edited it and how you, you know, put it, put this all together, you know, here's the big key now is distribution. So what do you, what do you guys plan? Where can we, we'll see killer Christmas at?

So we used an aggregator called Juice. It's like one of the recommended aggregators by iTunes. And what they do is they're kind of like the new way to do do-it-yourself indie distribution. You pay an a la carte fee. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now back to the show. It's about $1,300, $1,400 for the first platform you submit to and then maybe about $250, $300 for each subsequent platform. So as long as your movie is up to spec in terms of all of the technical stuff, you submit it to Juice.

And then they go through a whole QC process to make sure that it's going to be something that is going to be approved by the platforms. And these platforms don't accept direct submissions from us lay people. They basically only accept it from big time people.

studios and like, you know, reputable production houses as well as these aggregators. So like it was a back and forth process to make sure, you know, we had to do a couple of corrections to get it up to spec for them like in their QC process. But then after that, it was like, you know, we paid a few thousand bucks and we will be on cable video on demand. So about 75 million cable boxes in the U.S.,

And then we'll be on iTunes. We'll be on Google Play. We'll be on Amazon Direct. We'll be on Microsoft Network. And we'll be on Sony PlayStation Network. And it comes out November 22nd, so the Wednesday of Thanksgiving. Yeah, something to watch with the family. Yeah, man. It's a family treat, bro. Exactly. Kids will get something. Adults will get something. And everyone in between. Yeah.

And everyone, I'm going to link to that in the show notes, by the way, wherever you can check out Killer Christmas. And I also, I'm going to check out Juice, by the way. That's interesting. I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well because I have Jason Brubaker on here a lot and he works for Distribur. We always talk about different aggregators and stuff like that. Haven't heard of Juice yet, but I'm going to check it out. We'd researched a few of them and we'd had conversations with their customer service people and they were the ones we felt most like

comfortable with like they're very hands-on they're based out of Canada they work with view biquity and ubiquities is essentially the clearinghouse for cable on demand so a lot of the aggregators have to go through ubiquity anyway to get on cable boxes but ubiquity based

basically picked one of the aggregators last year and purchased them. So if ubiquity bought juice, so we went with juice because they are basically the, the, the, like the, the child company of the, of the cable clearing house. So like, plus every interaction we've had with them, I mean, they're really good notch. Yeah. Very professional. Um, you know, they, they, they're great at like great responsiveness. I mean, they're constantly getting, you know, questions back and forth and even their website. I mean, they've got, uh,

Something that we really liked was they've got so much information on their website that is open for anyone to pick up and look at. So if you're someone who's considering or if you're someone who's going through the process and trying to get more clarity on things, it's very out in the open and there's no restriction of information. Yeah. Their FAQs are really very thorough. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think also, too, I think that's where we're going, where is is it's more of open and honest data, I think, especially for guys in our industry. You know, I think for for stuff like this, I think, you know, there are places like that where it is an open, open and honest where, you know, it used to be so closed, you know, it used to be everyone had would have just everything was behind closed doors.

And I don't think that everything's going to be out in the open, but it's going to be a lot more about, you know, Hey, look, you know, this is how the process is going to work with us. And we're not just going to buy your movie and then throw it into, you know, a pile or put it in one of those DVD packs or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, or what have you. And I know we've got a great dashboard. Like they show us like the different platforms, the exact revenue streams, the number of sales. So like, it's a very, like, it's really like a lot of info and like, that's great. Cause you get to really track what you're doing. And like,

The same thing goes like we're doing a whole marketing effort with YouTube. We're basically like putting our trailer before videos like so you have to wait a certain amount of time to skip it. And then we're doing like display ads on like Google with just a poster where it like pops up in the sidebar or like as a recommended whatever. And then we're going to – we're like boosting ads.

those two things we're doing now and those two things basically give you like all kinds of metrics and information like the same thing like you could see like your you know everything from cost per view to like the average time people watch to like all these different measurable stuff and then like we're as of the 22nd the day we launch we're also going to be doing like you know Facebook boosting and like Instagram ads like where the video art like we'll have a couple of gifs from the like from the film like nice little scare moments that'll be

popping up at people's video feeds. So like all of this stuff is like, you know, accessible through very user friendly like dashboards where, you know, as long as you're putting in the right kind of media and you can, you know, navigate around a little bit like you could run your own ad campaign and then on the distribution platform with juice, you could, you know, run your whole distribution campaign. And this is all do it yourself at this point. Like, you know, it's really like, yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Like it really is crazy. You can start your own

production company and make your own film and all of these tools are accessible to you. Yeah, and that's something that, you know, we were approached by a number of sales agents about Killer Christmas and, you know, something that we

we noticed and that we were hesitant with was, you know, we were asking about the availability of a lot of these metrics and a lot of these numbers. Like, you know, once it goes in-house, you know, you won't really see the specifics, you know, and that to us was like, that's the most important piece of information. You want to know who's looking at it. You want to know how much people are watching it. You want to know all this data so that way you could target audiences better and also make sure that you get your bottom line paycheck. Sure. Plus they also take

25% off the top plus they take up to like 25 to 40 K and marketing expenses and other you know going to road shows and going to like the the film marketplaces and things like that and you know It just becomes something where once you read like you dig in you pick their brains you figure out what they're trying to do and then you look around the web and you're like well we can do every single one of these things ourselves without

you know, basically getting gutted by some shark. So like, you know, and having total control over it too. Yeah. And that's sort of where it comes in is, you know, somebody does buy the, buy the movie, uh, and this is for anybody out there. Someone does buy your movie, you know, how, you know, what is the marketing for, you know, how are they going to get the word out? How are they going to get people to not only just not even just buy it, but just go to the landing page, you know, and that's sort of, you know, I was talking about this to a couple other filmmakers last week. Um,

not even on the podcast. And they were saying, you know, we just don't want to, to sell our movie to somebody. And then it just, they just put it up on, uh, you know, uh, or some site. And then it's like, nobody says a word about it. And it's like, you know what I mean? It's like almost like a, so it's almost like a low risk for them, but it's a high risk for you. Cause you're like, well, well now I'm my own marketing team and hell I could have just did what you just did. So why did I even cut you in the first place? That's exactly what, that's, that's, that's what went through our minds. Oh yeah. So we've really just done like, we,

We do all our own marketing or all our own PR. We reach out – every day we reach out to new people. We're tweeting at people or we're like emailing people or looking up like going through IMDb Pro and finding another dozen people.

You know critics or like whatever so like ever, you know If you're constantly doing your own work No one's gonna work harder for you than you are like that's just kind of the truth, you know And these people are happy to just buy a thousand of these films because one of them will actually just hit organically But everyone else kind of loses out and like they get paid no matter what on the aggregate So like, you know as an individual filmmaker like no one no one cares about you more than you do So you got to do it yourself

Yes, very, very true, guys. And I think that's an excellent way to sort of put a period at the end of this whole conversation. Guys, where can people find you out online? KillerChristmas.com and ShakerProductions.com. We also have a Killer Christmas Facebook page and a Shaker Productions YouTube channel. As well as an Instagram. Oh, yeah, as a Shaker Productions Instagram as well.

So we're on all the socials and whatnot. Cool. And I will link to that in the show notes, everybody. It's at DaveBullis.com. Twitter, it's at Dave underscore Bullis. And by the way, I'm going to follow you guys. I'm sorry. I'm going to subscribe to you guys on YouTube. I'm getting more and more into YouTube. So I'm going to subscribe to you guys probably tonight. Because I think YouTube is really...

is is i mean honestly that's like the social media for for guys like us you know if you're in the film industry you have to be on like something like youtube youtube or vimeo or something you know yeah yeah so it just behooves you know so uh you know and i want to say pete and tony thanks you so much for coming on the show guys and uh you know yeah seriously you're like the man we really appreciate your time oh thank you i try guys i try

but no, it's great. And again, um, I'm always glad to talk to filmmakers who actually out there doing stuff. And again, you live probably what, you know, uh, four hours from me, maybe less. Not even, not even. We could probably make it to like under three, maybe two, two and a half hours, depending on like, you know, if it's the middle of the night and there's no traffic. So yeah, we'll get up for a drink, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Let's meet up for a drink. I got other friends too. I got a,

I have in Jersey and New York. I got to go meet, uh, get me up some with someday because, you know, you meet all these people and I'm like, man, I got all these, all these people I got to go talk to. And it's like, or go meet and eventually cause you talk to them or something. You know what I mean? It's just, you know, cool. Awesome guys. And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll grab a drink sometime and, uh, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

And now, back to the show. You know, we'll go to a pizza place in Jersey. Yeah. He knows, man. Yeah, right. We're down at the Litch, some cheesesteaks, too. Yeah, dude. Little Pat and Gino's. Yeah, well, I'll take you to the real places. Let's go.

The real ones. Oh, yeah. And gyms and places like that. You got more of those. Yeah, yeah. You got to go to like Steve's Prince of Steaks. You got to go to like John's Roast Pork. Oh, I've never heard of these. Yeah. These are where the real Philadelphians go, man. Oh, my God. All right. We'll do that. We will do that, though.

Guys, again, I wish you the best. And have a great Thanksgiving, by the way, as we're talking about our movies. Thank you. You too, Dave. Happy Thanksgiving, man. Oh, thank you, guys. So everyone listening to this, have a great Thanksgiving as well. And check out Killer Christmas, by the way. It's fun for the whole family. Check it out. Seriously, the kids will love it. So everyone, I'll link to it again. I'm going to link to everything in the show notes. And have a great night, guys. Thank you. You too. Take care.

I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com forward slash 782. And if you haven't already, please head over to filmmakingpodcast.com, subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at IndieFilmHustle.com. That's I-N-D-I-E-F-I-L-M-H-U-S-T-L-E.com.

Whatever the adventure, there's a BMW engineered to take it on. The X3 delivers a striking design with agile performance. The 100% electric i4 packed with pure electric energy. Or the plug-in hybrid X5, an impressive versatile SUV granting full control on every journey. Choose what powers your next adventure during the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.

This holiday, BMW has reunited three members of the family at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. The Agile X3, engineered for any adventure. The plug-in hybrid X5, commanding the streets with unmatched presence. And the all-electric i4, charging into the future with impeccable performance. Hurry in to find what powers your journey at the BMW Road Home Sales Event. BMW, the ultimate driving machine. Visit the Valley BMW Center today for attractive lease and finance offers.