This is a transcript of SYS 456 – The Truth About Movie Distributors With Brandon Rhiness .
Welcome to Episode 456 of Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing Canadian screenwriter – Brandon Rhiness, who’s back on the podcast to talk about his new horror feature film – Grotesque. Brandon was on the podcast before in Episode 225 and 318. We talk about how he got his start in the business in 225. And then we talked about sort of some of his career achievements and 318 some of his writing assignments. And he had gotten a bunch of films made at that point. So, we go through all of those and 318. He’s a real hustler, and is building a nice career all while living way outside of Hollywood. As I said, he doesn’t even live in the United States. So, it’s a great template for people to kind of listen to and understand how they can build a career, even if you’re not going to be moving to Los Angeles, so stay tuned for this interview. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode, in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for this episode, which is number 456.
If you want my free guide How to Sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. Just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. Teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, a quick few words about what I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks. I know it’s been a few weeks since the festival. But this is the first episode I’ve recorded since the festival wrapped up this past weekend. So, I’m still getting caught up from that this week. That was a bunch of things I had to do just sort of, as I said, just sort of catch up. I put some things on hold over the last couple weeks as I ramped up for the festival. And so just playing catch up this week. Big thanks to everyone who came out it was really nice to meet some of the listeners of the podcast is really a lot of fun. I got to meet some great filmmakers see some really cool films and just hang out with other cool filmmakers who are making movies. So, I’m definitely planning on doing it again next year. So, stay tuned for those announcements. I announced the winners of the screenplay contest earlier this week in the out and the winners of the film fest festival. You can find the screenplay winners on our website at selling your screenplay.com and all the film festival winners are listed on our festival website which is www.sixfigurefilmfestival.com, all lowercase, all one word sixfigurefilmfestival.com. We have a few pictures from the event as well, if you kind of want to see what it looked like. I had Michael Baumgartner on the podcast a few weeks ago to talk about his film Hollywood Laundry Mat. It ended up winning a lot of the awards at the festival including our best picture honor and also Best Director for Michael. It’s a really fun film very artfully done. Well put together well directed good music, good transitions, well edited, great acting. Really, Michael did a fantastic job is a real ensemble piece. Obviously, there’s a protagonist sort of one main guy, but there’s a lot of actors in this piece. And especially for a low budget film. Michael did a really great job casting this, lots of lots of interesting characters and interesting actors in it. So again, just a really fun film. Definitely check this one out once it hits the VOD platforms. I don’t think it’s quite done yet, but it will certainly by the end of the year, it will be available on all the VOD platforms. I also did a screening of the rideshare killer. These screenings are some of the best parts of independent filmmaking, I can tell you, someone who’s made some independent films, you know, when you do these cast and crew screenings, they’re just super fun. Because there’s so much energy in the room, it’s the cast and the crew. Everybody knows the jokes, they laugh at the right moments, you know, they’re scared at the right moments, they cheer at the right moments. So, there’s just a great energy when you go to these cast and crew screening. So, it’s just a lot of fun. We had a lot of the cast and crew out there as well as some just some folks from selling a screenplay, other friends, you know, came out and just a really fun time and for a lot of these films, right for the Rideshare killer that’s kind of at least in terms of the exhibition of the film. That’s pretty much it. You know, obviously, we’re going to continue to market and promote it on the VOD channels and hopefully get some deals that way. But it’s probably the last time that we’ll be screening it at a theatre so it was just fun to do. You know, just fun to see everybody see the cast and crew. It’s been almost three years since we shot that now. But as I said, these cast and crew screenings are super fun. So, I’m really glad I was able to do that. And I’m bring everyone together one last time. Anyway, I know we’ve been talking about the NFT project. I’ve been working on for the Rideshare killer, I am back on that. Now I did get sidetracked with the festivals, just a lot of little details. You know, I just was working hard on that over the last month or so. But now I’m going to kind of get back on this NFT project, hopefully wrap that up here in the next couple of weeks. So, stay tuned for that announcement.
Anyway, those are some of the things I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks. Now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing Canadian screenwriter, Brandon Rhiness. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Brandon to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast really appreciate you coming back on the show with me.
Brandon
Thanks for having me on. Once again, Ashley, I always love being on your show. I used to listen to it before we ever actually spoke. I listened to when I was first starting. I listen to all your early episodes. And it really helped launch my career, I basically just copied exactly what you said to do. I’ll do exactly the same thing. I’ve been working and I kind of mold it into my own methods. And then here we are, we’re both making movies.
Ashley
Yep, exactly. Perfect, perfect. That’s just a great success for and it just tickles me every time I do talk to you. Because I know that you know doing this podcast, I’m just here in my room by myself. And you just you never know if there’s actually anybody out there on the other end actually assuming that. So, it’s good to know, there’s at least one person that’s getting something out of this podcast. So, you’ve been on twice before. And I’m just going to tell our audience, Episode 225 was the first time you came on. And that was really your background, we talked some about that sort of how you launched your career. So definitely check that out. If you want to learn more about Brandon’s background, and then you came on about two years ago on Episode 318, to talk about your feature film hotbox. So, you can talk to people can go back and listen to that episode as well. And now today, you’re back, you have another feature film a low budget horror film called Grotesque. So, we’re going to talk about that film. Maybe to start out, I’d love to just kind of get an update. Where are you at with Hotbox? You know, with my own films with the Pinch, I’m in sort of the throes of distribution with the Rideshare killer. I’m still pushing that one out and getting things so I just be curious to hear how are things going with Hotbox? And what have you learned from the distribution of that one?
Brandon
Yeah, I learned quite a bit. It’s it was released. It’s on streaming services, but it? Well, to be honest, we haven’t made a single penny at it through streaming. The distributor, you know, gets all that money. And I don’t understand it. It’s hard, you know, we made it’s like Canadian made low budget stoner comedy with no big stars in it, I knew it was going to be a hard sell. And it’s kind of disappointing because people love the movie, white people that have seen it, even if you’re on Amazon Prime or whatever, it’s got good reviews, it’s got like a very high ranking on IMDb, people seem to really like it. But it’s just it’s hard sell. We’re just one of a million other movies out there for people like us making it. So, it’s hard to stand out. You know, so the distributor, they basically just dumped it on streaming. You know, I could have just done the same thing myself through film hub.
Ashley
Did they give you some support. I mean, the one of the big arguments to go with a bigger distributor, or more traditional distributor is that they can you know, they have contacts, and they have potentially an arm to do some marketing and stuff. Do you feel like they’ve helped at all with that, just the marketing some of their contacts?
Brandon
No, I think they did. You know, they made a few Facebook posts, but none of them even got as much engagement as when I do my own. I think what they were planning, I think what a lot of these distributors are planning, they want you to market it. Right, you market your own film, you promote the hell out of it, they collect the money until they recoup their costs, and then you get some sort of split afterwards. But they’re not going to, you know, invest their own money into something that doesn’t have likely to have a return. So, I was I’m overall I just don’t like not having that control. And you know, the first movie was supposed to be called cold comfort but our distributor, they change the title, change the artwork, and then release the movie without even telling us. I didn’t find out until someone messaged me on Facebook and said that he’s like, I found your movie in Walmart. But it’s like it’s called something else. And I’m like, what? So, we went looked at. So yeah, they changed the title to the project, which doesn’t really make sense. And of course, we haven’t made a cent on that one either. So basically, I put all the effort into raising the money, a lot of being self-funded, and, you know, through crowdfunding to make these movies and I got two in a row that just have had absolutely no return. Even though like hotbox is like it’s even to this day among our small crowd here in Edmonton. It’s a popular movie, right. And it could be big if it was just, you know, some way to push it but now I have no, I don’t want to put money into you know, Facebook advertising, when any profits go directly to some other company, right. Is this like it’s not worth my time? Yeah, so it’s kind of disappointing. So, I’m altering my strategy. It was basically an expensive lesson learned and a lot of other filmmakers have learned the same thing. And a lot of others are going to learn. Hopefully they can avoid the mistakes that I’ve made. But yeah, going forward the on taking a different approach.
Ashley
Gotcha. And we’ll get into that with your new film Grotesque. So, let’s dig into that real quick. Maybe to start out you give us a quick pitch or logline, what is Grotesque all about?
Brandon
Its basically young woman born with a massive nose. She’s been ridiculed her entire life. Finally, she’s had enough. So, she tries to get plastic surgery to fix her nose. But of course, you know, she’s poor, so she can only afford this unlicensed doctor who works out of a strip club basement. And of course, the operation gets botched. She’s left disfigured, and she finally snaps and goes on a rampage killing anyone in her life that ever offended her in the slightest way from co-workers to old teachers and ex boyfriends and in doing so she kind of finds find yourself and it’s a definitely a horror comedy. It’s very ridiculous. But it’s, it’s been well received. So far at the premiere, we had a couple of weeks back.
Ashley
And where did this idea come from? What was sort of your Genesis for it?
Brandon
It was just I want to, I’ve always been a fan of kind of slasher type movies. And I was just brainstorming ideas. And this is one of them that came about Originally, the original idea was going to be like an older woman who wanted to look younger. So she tried to get plastic surgery and it got botched. But after working with Elizabeth Chamberlain on some other films, she was in one of the main characters and hotbox. All sudden, something clicked and I was like, oh, Elizabeth could play this killer because she just has a look to her. She’s very tall, and has no long red hair. So, you throw the mask and the costume on. And she’s just a very great character, right? So. So then I changed the story that instead of trying to look younger, she was trying to fix some sort of abnormality. And that’s where we came up like, oh, let’s just buy a prosthetic nose and then put that on and then the whole thing kind of went from being very serious to being much more comedy. So, the movie itself is very absurd. We got probably as many laughs as we did you no shock reactions, because there’s a lot of very, very disturbing violence and stuff in there. We kind of we tried to really overdo that. But there’s a lot of comedy mixed into.
Ashley
Now as you were describing sort of the premise, you have this woman going on this rampage, sort of an antihero. You know, who is the artist, just as a writer, like who was the audience supposed to get behind? That doesn’t seem to be, I guess, I guess if it’s set up properly, you’ll she’ll be a little bit sympathetic. But obviously a mass murderer is typically not that sympathetic.
Brandon
It’s kind of what makes it interesting is that we play it absolutely sympathetically you’re supposed to cheer for, I think I even use that. On the back of the DVD we’re making that like you’ll find yourself cheering for. And people even said they kind of do even though obviously what she’s doing is horrible. And you’ll and the people that she’s doing it to like some of them like an ex-boyfriend from 10th grade who kissed another girl. You know, it’s a slide Yeah, he gets murdered for that. So, these things that she’s, you know, avenging really don’t need, need avenging, but we just play it kind of like if you’ve even crossed her in the slightest way, like she’s coming for you. Which just kind of makes it absurd. But you can’t help, she’s so lovable, that you can’t help but like cheer for her. But in reality, if this was a real situation, obviously, it’s terrible. But it is in the in the world set up by this movie. It’s entertaining. And she’s definitely an antihero.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, let’s talk about your writing process a little bit. How long did it take you to write this script? And how long did you spend with the outline? How long did you spend actually in Final Draft cranking out pages?
Brandon
It actually came about fairly quickly. And funnily enough, we were actually in production, or we were in pre-production on another film, called one night drunk that was supposed to be a follow up to hotbox was kind of in the same vein, we are actually late, we started having a few meetings about that. We’re trying to get that going. But during the brief time, before that, I had written the first draft of hotbox. I showed it to my producing partner, Julie Whelan, and she’s like, oh, my God, this is great. Like, let’s do this one instead. And I was like, can you can you do that? Can you use switch movies? And I guess we can, you know, it’s our choice. So, we just kind of put the brakes on one night drunk, and we’re like, okay, we’re switching gears, and we’re doing this movie instead. And it went through many, many drafts. Some of the when I go back now look at the old draft, like it’s, like, oh, I forgot that it used to be something totally different. But we would change it as you know, new actors came on, and it’s like, well alter it a bit to kind of fit this new actor and, and you know, location will pop up. So, we changed that some things will be too hard to do. So, we get rid of them. But then other things that we could do. So, we’d add that in so it kind of just kept changing even as we were shooting, it kept changing. But you know from the point of, you know, I tend to write very quickly. So, from just going from outline to treatment to scripts, I can’t remember exactly this is, you know, two, three years ago now, but it was very, it was very quick, I’d say, like, couple months, probably. And then we just did revisions constantly. And I refined it down. You know, a lot of times when we start shooting before, almost before I should, even with hotbox, I watch it now. It’s like, Man, I should have done like one more rewrite, like, it could have just made it a bit better. But for this one, like we refined it to make sure like every single word counts. And I think I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.
Ashley
How do you approach screenplay structure with a film like this genre requirements, were there some other films that you were looking towards as sort of a template?
Brandon
I don’t really look at template, I kind of, I mostly just do my own thing, I kind of have my own style, especially when I know I’m going to be shooting my own script. There’s a lot of corners, I can cut, you know, especially with descriptions and everything, like I know who’s going to be cast in this part. So, there’s no point in me describing the character because it’s just, I don’t know who’s going to play the part. So, I kind of just have my own bit of a shorthand version that I do it when I get hired to write for other people, I tend to write a slightly more traditional type, screenplay, or I write it in the way that they asked for it. Sometimes they ask for more detail or things that I would normally do. But if it’s like writing for higher job, I’ll do that. But I kind of just have my own system that me and everyone on my team have kind of grown, grown used to, and my scripts, a lot of them tend to, they tend to be shorter because of that. Like I get right to the point I think Grotesque was like 80 or 82 pages. So, it was a very, it was a short movie, but it’s a very short script as well, because, you know, I just don’t waste a lot of time formatting things, a lot of description, I just like, this is what’s happening right to the point, one sentence is enough description. And you’ll see when the movie comes out, there’s it’s not like we’re losing a lot of information. It’s still well done. But it’s just, you know, you don’t need to describe a lot of things that you know, if it’s unnecessary.
Ashley
Do you find when you’re writing, like you just said it was at 81 pages? Do you find that that does translate at the end of the all of this to a movie that’s at 81 minutes?
Brandon
Yeah, it always somehow works out to a page a minute, roughly. But you even the first like the first edit the first cut of grotesque, I think it was like 90 minutes. And then just through chopping things out and refining it. It ended up being at one minute. So somehow between editing the script and editing the video, the movie, it always roughly ends up to one page a minute. So, I still use that as a very rough guideline. But yeah, I’m very, like, generous with my editing. Like I cut out any unnecessary words from the script and make sure it’s as tight as can be. And then the same with the movie, I cut out anything. That’s if it drags a little bit, it says cut it, cut it, cut it in, just to make sure like every second as entertaining as it possibly could be.
Ashley
What were some of the lessons you learned writing this, where there’s some difficulties that you encountered with a low budget horror movie? Maybe you can speak to that a little bit?
Brandon
Yeah, there was a lot of things, a lot of it too, is I’ve never done we’ve done some kind of like blood effects and that kind of thing before but nothing on this level. And I just flat out did not know how to do it. And we had a very small crew, and actually our makeup artist who did a lot of the effects, Jamie Clark, I mean, she’s amazing. But she was right out of school. And she actually missed her final exam, she had to reschedule it because she was working on our movie or teacher let her do it early or late or something because she was getting a job on a movie. And since then, she’s worked on a bunch of other movies and stuff. And she’s a part of the team. But she was still kind of learning to. And we’d never worked with there. So, I would I could write a beheading in the script. But I’m like, can we really do that? How is it going to work? And there was some things that worked better than we thought there were some things that didn’t work. And so, a lot of it, I kind of had to write it in the script, as you know, a guy getting his head crushed. But we have to be prepared to do something simpler or cheaper if we can’t do that. So, there’s a lot of rooms we had to be flexible. And of course, you know, there was one part we had a main scene that was supposed to take place at a hair salon, where she kills a bunch of people in this hair salon. And it was you know, a day or two before we supposed to shoot all of a sudden, the owner was worried about getting blood on the floor. So basically, we lost that location. And we were in the middle of production so we didn’t have time to look around. So luckily Julie Whelan was on the phone trying to find another location. She finally found a massage place that would let us shoot in there. But of course, it was completely different setup. And instead of being one big room like a hair salon, it was like a tiny little lobby. He, with a bunch of small rooms, which didn’t work. So, we had to, we had to show up, and then rewrite the script. Like, while we were there, we were already behind, and we’d already been shooting for eight hours. And also, we show up to this place. And we have to shoot all these death scenes. And you know, everyone’s like; Hey, where are we setting up? Where are they standing, I’m like, I, I have to rewrite the whole story, because now it’s different, right? And we basically just had to wing it. And even as we were shooting it, I was like, Man, this is not good. Like, we’re going to have to redo this because like, it’s like, you can be rushed to a point, but you can’t just make it up as you go. But once I cut it together, it’s it worked well enough, it’s it kind of worked. And you just have to be on the ball like that and be prepared for, you know, changing things as needed, you have to be able to move quickly. Because, especially in any film, things always go wrong. You know, like, people don’t show up, you lose a location, it’s raining, it’s snowing, it’s, you know, something will happen. And it’s like, well, you still have to shoot because you’ll come back the next day, it’s going to you know, we got to pay the whole cast crew for another day of work, and we just don’t have the budget. So, there’s so many things like that we had to just be able to be prepared to maneuver around and in the end, it all worked.
Ashley
How in the world did she talk a massage parlor into letting you guys shoot there the same day like that?
Brandon
We felt we gave the owner a small role in the movie.
Ashley
I got you. I got you. So, what is your crew actually look like on a film like this? Maybe you can kind of just tell us how many people you have you have a cinematographer, AC, maybe just tell us like, what does a crew look like on something like this?
Brandon
Yeah, we had, like our director of photography, James Hastings was a he’s a machine, we, for the most part, we had no AC, it was just he was doing absolutely everything. He was doing his own focus, doing his own lighting, just by himself. So, we had him we had the sound guy. First add makeup. And then the art people to kind of set that props, they were kind of all art department was basically, James and Laura doing that. And they could even be there all the time. And we were also doing it during COVID. So, we had to limit the number of people. So, sometimes they would, they would just deliver the props and everything and set back and we do it ourselves. So yeah, you know, it was five or six people, everyone else kind of filled in one day, we didn’t have a first ad. So, one of our actors actually stepped in and kind of filled in for a day. So, it was basically all hands on deck. And everyone was kind of doing everything. But I had never worked with such a small crew. Usually we have at least you know, two people in the camera department. So, it’s a testimony to how awesome James is to be able to do that himself and do it so quickly that we were able to keep the schedule.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so, um, once you guys had a script that you like, what was your steps to raising the money? How did you go about actually putting the financing together?
Brandon
We shot a trailer, it’s probably three years ago, now. We filmed that, we spent two days and we just filmed the trailer like two, two minutes long, maybe three minutes long. And I’ve got quite a bit of attention just on YouTube, and just, you know, in our general area, you know, people liked it. And we use that to kind of just get the ball rolling. And then you know, then of course, like COVID happened, kind of slowed us down a bit. We eventually got to the point. You know, we had a few 1000 obviously had enough to like shoot for two days. And you know, it wasn’t enough, obviously. And we were trying to wait. And then finally Julie said like, it’s like we’re going to be waiting forever. Like to raise the money. Why don’t we just shoot two days, because as long as we have Elizabeth Chamberlain, like who’s the main role, a lot of the other people are only in one scene, you know, the people that get killed, so we could shoot, we have an actor shoot all their stuff in those two days. So, as long as we have Elizabeth, we could take you know, as long as we want to shoot this, but we got to get the ball rolling. And I was like, you know what, you’re right. Like we, we just have to start. So, we shot for two days. And of course, as soon as that happened, and people saw what we were doing. Then we started having just people, you know, either on the casting crew or people that they knew people in the filmmaking community here, and you’ll their family and friends were like, you know, I can kick in 500 bucks, I can give you 1000 bucks. And then it’s like, oh, we have enough for another two days. So, we did another two days. And then of course, once an oh, this movie’s happening. And this is this is for real. Then all of a sudden, we started having more and more people donate larger amounts of money, until it’s like holy crap, we have enough to finish. So, we actually raised enough to finish shooting. And then of course, you know, last day of shooting, we were like, flat broke. So, we did a crowdfunding campaign to raise another like $6,000 that we used for post-production. And we finally got it done, but it never would have happened if we just didn’t start doing it. It’s one of those things to where obviously, you need the money to shoot it. But if you don’t start, like you’re going to be perpetually raising money, and I have some scripts that have been optioned, you know, four years ago, and they’re still trying to raise money. And it just, I’m starting to think it’s never going to happen. And it’s like, you know what, like, instead of trying to raise like, half a million bucks, we could raise 50, grand, you know, several years ago, this movie would already be made, we’d already be out there, we’d be on to the next thing. Instead of just, you know, waiting around years on end to kind of do it. Like, sometimes you have to jump in. And I know not every project, this will work for. But sometimes, once you announce like you’re doing this, people will come out of the woodwork to help, of course, after the Grotesque premiere a couple of weeks ago. Also, everyone’s all excited. They watch it, they love it, and like, what are you doing next? And all of a sudden, people are just like, I think I can give you five grant, I need you to Grant and I’m like, holy cow, like we just premiered our movie, I already have like, 1000s of dollars raised for the next movie. So, it’s like, okay, well, you know, we have enough to at least start on that. So, we’re doing the next one called horror show starting end of October. So, it’s kind of good this to develop that, just that reputation of being able to get things finished. And part of it, you have to believe in yourself. And it’s like, I don’t know where the rest of the money is going to come from. But we have enough to get a lot of it done. So, we’ll just start and then we’ll figure the rest out as we go.
Ashley
I’m curious about your premiere. I mean, obviously, I’m in Los Angeles. And when I mean the other producer called around local theatres. It just it was really prohibitively expensive to do like a cast and crew screening. How do you handle that? Is it a little easier, maybe up in Canada?
Brandon
Yeah, I imagine it probably is that there’s a theatre in Edmonton, they’re the one theatre, we have the Garneau. It’s like an old theatre. So, it’s some sort of what the word is like, heritage place or something like, I think it’s like funded by the city or something. They’re like a nonprofit. And they do a lot of like, indie screenings like this of local people and art films and stuff. So, it’s very cheap. I think it was, I don’t know, how would you compare it to, but I think it was, like five or 600 bucks for the later slot. And then the primetime slots are like 900 bucks, we kind of lucked out that they kind of botched our premiere in that they brought, they showed the wrong copy of the movie, they showed the one that I sent them as a test, there was like missing some effects and everything. So as an apology, they refunded our money. So, we ended up not even having to pay for the theatre. But there is I don’t know if there’s things like that in Los Angeles or any other city. But you know, we tried other theatres too. And some of them like they were just, it was too much work to get through, or they had to go through some process. Or it’s too expensive. Whereas this theatre, they’re, you know, like, very easy to work with. They’re very cool, very willing to help. So that worked. And we set our own prices. They collect the money, and you know, they sell popcorn and all that stuff, but they even let us sell our merchandise in the lobby, like my comic books and everything. So really let us put on a show like that. So yeah, it’s, I’ve never done a premiere in Los Angeles. So, I don’t know what that’s like. But we found that it’s actually quite profitable. I think we made a couple 1000 bucks profit on the one show, and then we’re doing another one. Two days from now, so it’s worth that if you can find a way to make it profitable. It’s definitely worth it.
Ashley
Wait, give me some tips. How do you get people to show up? Do you have some marketing tips? Is it just all hands-on deck? You tell all the casting crew to tell all their friends and family like that? Or how do you get people to fill in the seats?
Brandon
Yeah, basically, we all kind of we kind of assume because most of the cast and crew are going to want to come they’re on the list. Obviously, anyone involved in the movie gets in free. But most people they’re going to bring, you know their husband and wife, you know, brothers’ sisters, you my brother came out my parents came out. So, let’s people are going to come and then you know, there’s local horror, like horror fan groups in Edmonton. So, we would like you know, pitch it to them, like come see this locally made horror movie. So, they’ll kind of do it as their event. And everyone, everyone just kind of invites everyone and then we you know, pay for a little bit of advertising on Facebook just to target horror fans in Edmonton. So, we ended up having a fairly unfortunately, the last one we did was on a long weekend, which we didn’t plan for. So, there’s a lot of people we lost a big chunk of audience because people were away camping or whatever. So, in hindsight, we won’t do that again. But we still had a very decent turnout and it’s just a matter of like, yeah, all hands-on deck. Everyone invite everyone you can because it’s only going to benefit our staff more people there, so yeah.
Ashley
Yeah. And what is your pitch to these in bed? stirrers as people are approaching to; hey, I’ll kick in, $500 1000, what is your pitch to them? And what just from a legal standpoint, what do you have set up to actually accept these investments?
Brandon
We do, as I’m always like, absolutely upfront with them. That way, there’s a good chance you’re not going to get your money back will try. But the thing is, my first two films were not profitable. So, I can’t make any sort of promises. So, I make sure the absolutely understand. And most of these people, they’re a bit older, they have more disposable income. So, I’m not taking advantage of anyone like anyone that was struggling, I wouldn’t do this. But let them get something out of it. They want an acting role. They like it’s been my dream to be in a movie, like if I could just even have one line, like, I’ll give you 2000 bucks. Like, all right, well put that in there. And you know, they get to have a little bit. Some of them, they just love to be involved with one guy, Curtis Davis gave us some money for crowdfunding. He’s an older guy, but he was so excited about the whole thing. He was at the premiere, you bought a movie poster, and he was going around and getting everyone to sign it. And everyone was calling him the poster guy, because he was like a kid in a candy store, right? He’s just, I want to be involved in any way I can. So, I was like, alright, well, we’re doing a new movie, you know, if you can help us out with some money will give you a small role. And you can be part of the producer team. And so, he’s ecstatic, you know that he’s part of it now. So, make sure they get something out of it. Elizabeth’s dad, you know, he put in some money, he’s obviously you know, it’s helping out his daughter a bit, you know, getting helping them get her movie finished. So as long as you can find a way to make it worth their while other than paying back the money, in case that never happens. And your as long as you’re completely transparent. And I usually make a deal that like once the money starts coming in, then we’ll start paying you back. We’ll work out some sort of deal that everyone will be paid back equally until that and then we’ll split the profits, you know, it changes each time. But I’m always upfront, because I know a lot of filmmakers try to talk a big game and we’re going to make all this money, this movie is going to be huge. And it’s like I kind of know and I can’t honestly, I can’t honestly tell someone that when I know it may not be true. But a lot of people just want to get involved. And then you know, they’re not given me a million dollars any sum of money that’s going to potentially, you know, cripple them financially. Yeah, you know, no one’s going to lose their house because they kicked in your 500 bucks. So as long as the thing is, I put in a lot of my own money over the years. And you know, I basically do all this for no pay, too. So, they can kind of see that I’m, it’s not like I’m taking a big salary myself. It’s just like, nah, man, I’m putting up big risk, and I’m getting things done. And I think once they see a movie in the theatre, they know for sure that like, this guy can do it. Because there’s so many other movies, I’ve even optioned scripts that have just been languishing for years and never get done, a lot of people don’t even shoot movies. And then three years have gone by, it’s still not released. So, I think once they can say, like, this guy can say he’s doing a movie, and have a haven’t shown in a theatre in a reasonable amount of time. That’s someone that like I can give some money to, and it’s going to pay off down the line, they’ll get to see their name on the screen. So as long as you kind of develop that reputation, people will start trusting you. And it also gives you the more courage, like when you’re starting out, you have nothing to show, you know, you ask for money. And it’s like, well, you know, I got a couple of short films, whereas now it’s like, I got three features, you know, and all these short films, you can Google me and find me. And so, if they go in, they start listening to my interviews and everything, they can get a good sense of who I am and decide whether or not they can trust me. And then you know, I keep everyone part of the process, a lot of them just want to be part of it. Like they want to read the script when it’s done. It’s like, okay, we got some pictures of the killer in costume, they sent me the pictures, I want to see that. They just want to like, kind of be part of this thing that the general public is not a part of until later on, right? And you’re kind of in my inner circle, and you get to be part of this. And a lot of people find that exciting.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I talk to a lot of European filmmakers, and frankly, filmmakers outside of the United States. I think I was talking to Australian or New Zealand a couple of weeks ago. Is there anything in Canada where their government, you know, supports the arts with some sort of film grants or film, you know, money to go through? Is that anything that even exists in Canada?
Brandon
Yeah, there is. I’ve never been able to access it. But we do have grant aid. There’s the city of Edmonton grants. There’s the province of Alberta grants. And then there’s the federal government, the Canadian grants. I’ve applied for all of them. I’ve never gotten them. And part of that they say they don’t judge it based on the content. They judge it based on like the filmmaker, but I kind of doubt whether that is true. I imagined they kind of look at the kind of stuff I do whether it’s stoner comedy or you’ll slasher tight and they just they’re turned off I just had on the back of my mind and, and I know there’s a lot of it too is that people complain that all the money goes to Toronto and Vancouver, it goes to all the people that already have the money, you know, it goes to like, you know, it was a theme like Steven Soderbergh or whatever his name is, you know, that guy that makes these multimillion dollar movies, you know, you’ll get the money. And the indie filmmakers in Edmonton bliss get screwed. But it’s like, yeah, all the Katie money, it’s like 80% of that goes to Toronto and Vancouver. And then you’ll get one out of Calgary one out of Montreal. And it’s I know, that comes up that it’s always been an issue of doesn’t have an access to that money. And they do have their whatever their tax incentive is, it kind of changes all the time, depending on the government. But a lot of it, you have to have a budget of at least like 50 grand or something. Before that you can apply for this 30% Tax Credit, I came up with the exact rule is Yeah, but you know, we usually have budgets of lower than that. And so, we just can’t access it. But that’s kind of the next step. Even for grotesque, we applied for a grant. And we got denied for, for some stupid reason, I think they said, like, we didn’t demonstrate that we had the ability to finish the project or something. And I was like, I’ve made so many movies before, like, I’m probably the number one guy to finish this damn thing. But, but of course, they can reject you for whatever reason they want. So, I’m probably going to continue trying to get those. But I’m going to forge ahead, assuming I’m never going to get a sense from anyone like that. And I’m going to have to just fight and raise the money myself.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, that’s probably the right attitude. I think. So, you mentioned that you’ve been doing some of these rewrite jobs. Maybe you can talk to that a little bit. What have you been working on? What do you been hired just as a screenwriter recently, you know, aside from these independent films that you’re doing?
Brandon
I started getting some bigger projects. I got a wrote a draft of a movie, they just finished shooting. I think last week, a feature here in Edmonton was a pretty big one, nice, funded by a guy who had, older guy who had no experience making movies, he was just independently wealthy, decided he wanted to make a movie, had this idea. And he’s going to fund it while I was on money. So he hired me to write a draft of it. And then, you know, he rewrote it himself and hired other writers. And I don’t even know how it ended up…Yeah. I think that was only like, two months ago, maybe two, three months, he went from basically I have a movie idea that I want to get me to finish shooting his first film in like, two, three months. Like it was very quick. I know, there’s a lot of people that are like, I even recommended a first ad to him and she read it. She’s like, there’s no way we could like, we can’t start this in three, three weeks. We got to like we need to prepare. And he’s like, no, we’re doing it. We’re doing it. So yeah, so I did that one that was a bigger one. There’s a new studio in Edmonton. That opened up and they hired me to write a couple of drafts of a horror movie for them. That was a pretty big project.
Ashley
And how are you meeting these people? Are these just by being in the local film community? These people are hearing about you?
Brandon
Yeah, I think both of those was someone recommended, or they Googled me or something. And that’s what another thing I found too, is that like, as a writer, like you’re not as high profile, if you’re strictly a screenwriter, your name doesn’t get out there more. But as a filmmaker, it’s way easier to promote my name. And since I write and direct everything, it’s kind of like my screenwriting is riding the coattails of my filmmaking. So, I’m very well known as a filmmaker. So, when it comes time that someone wants a writer, if they Google me or ask around, I’m kind of a more well-known name. But it’s only because I’ve gotten the publicity of constantly doing these movies. If I’d never made my own films, I doubt I’d be anywhere near as successful as a screenwriter. So, I think even if you write and direct your own short film, that’s going to give you publicity where people are going to notice you more when it comes time to hire a writer. Because I always say Written and directed by Brandon Rhiness. So oh, he’s a writer. So, I’ve always kind of found that.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s excellent advice. So, I always like to wrap up these interviews just by asking the guests if there’s anything they’ve seen recently that they could recommend to our screenwriting audience, Netflix, HBO, Hulu, is there anything out there that you’re currently watching that you think is really great?
Brandon
Actually, I don’t watch a lot of TV like that. But I have been watching if anyone’s heard of the old British sci-fi show red dwarf. Oh, no. I recently, it started in the 80s. And it’s still going to this day. I recently just bought the box set and I’ve been going through and watching that that entire series so it’s a comedy, comedy sci fi. It’s mega popular. It’s in the same vein as like Doctor Who, and I know over there in England they have you know, they have annual like conventions all about red door. Apparently the I think in the 90s, they tried making an American version of it that just didn’t, didn’t fly. So, it’s kind of well-known over here. But it’s a distinctly British thing. If you like that kind of thing, check it out, because it’s a reminded me growing up and watching it when I was a teenager.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. How can people see Grotesque what’s the release schedule going to be like for Grotesque?
Brandon
Well, in two days from now on, we’re filming a showing or second screening. Basically, the day after we’re going to announce where it’s going to be. So, I think by the time this interview airs, it will be passed that so it is available in the US on Amazon Prime, if you just look up, Grotesque, just make sure it’s the one with Mildred on the cover that has my name on it, because there is a Japanese movie with the same name that came out to 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it’s not available on Amazon and Canada, which is stupid. I don’t know why they do that. But. But in Canada, it’s available on Plex. If you look up Plex, it’s available to watch on there. So yeah, just Google it and you’ll have it. Of course, if you just follow me or you follow Grotesque on Facebook, I’ll be sharing those links if that’s easier for you. But yeah, the movies out there. And actually, for the first time, we’re releasing DVDs. I spent the last few days burning my own DVDs. And so, we’re going to have hotbox and grotesque available. And it brand new found footage movie called All Haunted. All available on DVD. So, if you want one of those, just check out my Facebook page and find out how to order one of them.
Ashley
So perfect, perfect. And that leads to our final question is How can people follow you? What is your Facebook page Twitter, Instagram, anything you comfortable sharing? I’ll round up for the show notes.
Brandon
Yeah, just look up my name Brandon Rhiness just look that up on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and then my company is Higher Universe. So, if you look up higher universe on YouTube. I have all my short films, you can actually watch hotbox on there. I just uploaded it to YouTube basically hoped the distributed and saying didn’t say anything, and I haven’t so you can watch it on there. All my short films and other projects I’ve done so yeah, check it out. And you’ll send me a message if you want to reach out and if you have any questions or anything I like helping people explaining my process and how I get the screenwriting jobs and everything. So let me know if you have any questions or anything.
Ashley
Perfect. Brandon. Again, I just really appreciate you coming on and taking some time to share your journey. It’s always inspiring talking to you. So, I look forward to having you on again. I’m sure you’ll be done more movies to come and tell us about very shortly.
Brandon
Yeah, I definitely hope so. Thanks for having me on.
Ashley
Perfect. We’ll talk to you later.
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