This is a transcript of SYS 486 – Movies, Books and Star Wars Fan Films With Jamison LoCasio and Adam Ambrosio .
Welcome to Episode 486 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter, blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing Jameson LoCasio and Adam Ambrosia who have been on the podcast twice before. They are East Coast filmmakers who are always putting together interesting projects. They come back on this week to talk about their recent feature film, which is another anthology of shorts they’ve put together as a feature film called 7 x 7. So, stay tuned for that 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 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’ll find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast, and then just look for episode number 486. If you want my free guide How to Sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.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. I teach a 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 www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing writer directors Jameson LoCasio and Adam Ambrosia. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome back, Jameson and Adam to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I appreciate you guys coming back on the show.
Jameson LoCasio
Thanks for having us.
Adam Ambrosia
Thank you. Always happy to be on, Ashley.
Ashley
So, you guys have been on the SYS podcast twice before; episodes 457 and 375. So, I would definitely recommend those to the listeners check those out, if you haven’t already. We get into your origin story a little bit more kind of how you got into the business and got to the point where you guys are now writing and directing these feature films. So today we’re here to talk about your latest feature film – 7 x 7. Maybe to start out you can give us a pitch or a logline. What is this new film all about?
Jameson LoCasio
It’s about seven stories about personal crisis, I think it’s the best way of saying it. And so much about I guess you could say the human condition, but about people’s relationships to each other. And it’s about people really ordinary people in extraordinary situations.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So maybe you can just tell us, what was the genesis like? Where did this idea come from? What was sort of the genesis of putting this movie together? What was the genesis of the story?
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, so we had made short films, I think we were even talking to you about this. Last time, we were on for a very, very long time before we went to tackle feature. And a lot of the shorts that we had made, we felt had stood the test of time in terms of quality. And we were able to remaster them to some degree in a very simple way. And we wound up sort of noticing, though more organically that a lot of the films that we had made were about a pandemic, we’re about a school shooting, we’re about nuclear war. And we had sort of touched on all these interesting topics that were either the idea of Lewis, Adam, you know, one of our members of our team, myself, they were all relevant again, you know, or even more so, it was like it was ahead of its time a little bit each one of these films. So, we wanted to put them two together in order to sort of celebrate all the work that was done by everybody who had worked on them, because in some cases, they were actually student films, even though they don’t appear to be, and then beyond that they were the work of film Valor, you know, for YouTube, or whatever it was. So, we wanted to really put them together and celebrate them as being relevant.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, let’s just dig into some of these stories, the 7 x 7 stories, maybe you can talk about just from a writing perspective. What do you see the difference is writing a short, how long are these? You’ve got basically like, what, 100 minutes to do these seven stories. So they’re going to range from five minutes to about 15-20 minutes. But maybe you can talk about that a little bit. Just in the writing of these. How do you approach it differently versus a short versus a feature?
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, so in terms of writing a feature, I feel like we both really want it to sort of come in concept heavy first. And with the shorts, you kind of have a little bit more room to experiment, I guess you could say. So, it is a totally different process, you got to think about what’s going to work for the entire 110 minutes, you know, hopefully or beyond that. So, you’re looking at structures and outlines and so many other things. What was great about these films is we just kind of took the small idea and worked on what that could feel like in 10-15 minutes, 5-minutes. And it became very personal, which we then brought into the future of filmmaking. So just in terms of writing, you know, these movies were all written one at a time with the small concept of whatever it was with the relationship of the people and in the movie being really the star of the show, which is; hey, what would it be like to be in this situation with these characters? And that’s really how we approached it, and then later learned how to write features, which was a totally different thing than it seemed.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, putting this together, did you do any additional writing? Like you had these shorts completely produced. Did you go out and do any other shooting; well, we could use a scene here, we could use a scene there, you just took them literally and put them together?
Jameson LoCasio
Yes, we actually went in and looked at each one of the movies for everything that we thought would be appropriate at this stage. And we did look at them a little bit without taking away from what was there. So maybe we cut some things here or change some things, they’re really the order was the concern, like, you know, where does this make sense. And we had talked a lot about the order. You know, one thing that was really redone was the movie called A Thin Layer of Ice, which is about two brothers who are sort of having an argument that was very simple idea had sort of degraded over time. So, we had to go back in and like really re-up the, you know, the files and everything else, and actually change them all. So, there was quite a bit of work done within that for a long period of time to really sort of bring the best presentation. So ,they were kept the same, but the order of them. And the message was very carefully decided, because we had other films that we could have put in, but ultimately decided these were the right ones.
Ashley
Gotcha. I’m curious, it sounds like you have a pretty good relationship with film hub who is distributing this film? I’m curious, when you talk to them? Do you get any kind of pushback on doing exactly what you’re doing taking shorts, putting them together in an anthology to make a feature? And I asked this sort of in the context, I know, now, it’s maybe been a year or two, but like Amazon, I think two years ago, they just got rid of all the shorts that were on Amazon Prime, because it was so much junky when sort of clogging up the system. So, I just wonder, it seems to me, a lot of filmmakers might have arrived at the same conclusion. And I wonder if there’s not going to be some pushback, ultimately from these services like Amazon that maybe don’t want people doing this?
Adam Ambrosia
Yeah, no, I mean, we’ve had a good experience with film hub. You know, so far, they’ve been very transparent in their processes and what they’re doing. And, you know, yeah, just like Amazon, Tubi, you know, they delivered and, you know, what they said and encouraged, actually agitate you, like, I say, we, you know, we’ve had more energy, or more of a push with 7 x 7 in our last couple of films more than ever.
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, they encouraged, they didn’t discourage, they said; Hey, this is something you guys should do. And we have so many movies with you, we feel you’re the types of filmmakers that we should see more from, I guess, is the way and so that was a level of trust. And they said, Hey, 7 x 7, that’s a great idea. You want to do this, and this actually didn’t work. They actually sort of worked with us on that. Not so much…
Adam Ambrosia
I think it was kind of we were talking to our representatives as executive and seeing what was actually going to stick. And I think, well, it was somewhere along the lines of anthology or, you know, the short film is really coming hot right now. And, you know, we were always a firm believer, you know, being sufficient and using what you have. And here we had, as Jameson said, you know, some of these files being degraded, or almost being lost a time you said, you know, it, you know, this is where we you know, put our teeth on, this is where we started. This is what we’ve been preaching on film valor and whatnot. This was the beginning of it. And we wanted to give it another life, you know, all these films that we did, it’s scary because we watched them, you know, these were done 10 years ago, and you hear language in them of Coronavirus and pandemics and you’re like good guy and then you know nuclear war and you’re like this…
Jameson LoCasio
Is it scary, that is relevant.
Adam Ambrosia
That is why it was important because we kind of saw you know, all the signs of the world and where it’s going like we wrote about this but only adding more energy and more fuel to you know, the fire that we wanted to bring 7 x 7.
Ashley
Yeah. And you tried to monetize just the shorts like had you tried to put these shorts on Amazon Prime and into Tubi and those sorts of platforms just as a short?
Jameson LoCasio
We had them on a couple of different things. Yeah, we had them on we did have them on YouTube, not all of them no to look away a few of them were just test marketed sort of on YouTube to help build an audience and things which was actually a great way to get introduced to the audience and everything else. And we did also have a deal with Direct TV that was not exclusive where we actually released the shorts through direct TV ad at the time, we had done that I think we had done six with them. But I don’t know if it was exactly these six everything was which ones, they weren’t is mostly the same ones but it was not exclusive. And that was when they were getting into a channel which I don’t even know is there anymore. Like, they had a channel that was just about shorts when they played them all day. So, we got a lot of played with that, actually, at that time. I think it was since disbanded, or they don’t do it anymore, but I don’t know. It was a long time ago.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, what’s next for you guys? What do you got in the cooker in the hopper now?
Jameson LoCasio
So, we’re working on a book on that, yeah, that’s actually just about to be completed that we’re hoping to release, you know, in the summer. It’s a very fun James Bond book about making movies, it’s called The Script Is Not Enough. And it’s got 10 to 11, 12 sections about each section of filmmaking. And it’s really sort of our philosophy of making films, because it’s just weird. It’s just unconventional. And it’s a lot of stuff that young filmmakers can look at and say, well, wow, I don’t have anything, you know, either in this situation, oh, maybe I can do what they did. Yeah. And when we were coming up, those things were so helpful. So, it’s a book about…
Adam Ambrosia
It’s a little window into what young filmmakers, independent filmmakers could use, you know, and hopefully just, you know, enlighten them a little bit of the things or resources around them. We found a lot of good resources that we feel that we couldn’t have done without.
Jameson LoCasio
Right. And it was a lot of stuff that we wish we were told. There might be someone that reads this and say, Oh, that’s what I’m in for? I don’t know. And but yeah, maybe that’s positive, too. But at the same time, we are encouraging it. And we talk about the real like being in the trenches of what it actually means to do it, no contacts.
Adam Ambrosia
We’re not saying you know, we made a mistake so you don’t have to. We’re just saying you’re going to make mistakes, but here is some more situations, and possible solution, a lot of good solutions. You know, and a way to just keep things going. I think it’s been tough on everyone, you know, for independent filmmakers, it’s easy to get discouraged.
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, exactly. That’s a book about just like staying with it. Even if you have to completely change up the table every single time.
Adam Ambrosia
You know, it’s not written by some 80-year-old person who done millions of films, or whatever. It’s two filmmakers, young filmmakers now.
Jameson LoCasio
Right, and like, these are here’s four features and how we made them. And here’s how this one was different than that one in the script here. This one was different than that one in the budgeting, you know. And so that’s why we think it’s valuable because it’s actual tangible stuff. And then, of course, we’re always working on the next film or the next project for film valor or YouTube channel.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, I’ll have to have you back on the podcast when your book is published, we’ll have to come back and we can do a deep dive into that and really dig into some of these lessons that you guys have learned. Now, tell me just a little bit briefly about your Star Wars fan film. I saw you guys emailed that out, maybe you can talk about that. I’ve never quite, I’m a big Star Wars fan. I’ve never quite been inspired to go do a fan film like this. But what is your motivation for maybe you can just talk a little bit about the production and then writing it and then ultimately producing it?
Adam Ambrosia
Well, I think we’ve been doing this for years. It really has been just something for fun. Jameson and my good friend Matt. Who plays the Mando man, are bigger Star Wars fans than I. But I like Star Wars. And we start doing, we did a you know, short little Star Wars thing years ago.
Jameson LoCasio
2016 – 2018.
Adam Ambrosia
Then we, you know, we kind of set as a group up, said; what if we do this, as like, a little ritual. We do it like, one Star Wars film every year, every other year, you know, when we can direct films? And it turns out, we did what, three or four. Yeah, and, you know, this is, the newest one. And it’s fun. We do it, because it’s just fun.
Jameson LoCasio
It’s funny too, because it’s like taking, it’s not like it’s taken seriously or like, you know, really stressful, it’s taken very seriously in the sense that we approach it with incredible detail. So, like, it took us like six months to do the VFX on that video. And you know what, like, that’s the type of dedication we have to it. And we were willing to be like; hey, you know what, let’s do this. But like, let’s do it right. We’re going to do spaceships, we’re going to do everything else. And it was definitely an overhaul on like VFX and like learning how to do everything the right way. But it was so much fun. I mean, we got to do stop motion. We got to do model, you know, shooting models and everything, that just straight up visual effects. You know, we got to do a spaghetti western style. So, it was all these different things that we had wanted to do for years. And it’s just like in my book, at least, it’s like checking off things like; hey, I want to do that. Oh, we did that. And it’s a lot of fun to watch.
Adam Ambrosia
And we really wanted to make everything bigger and more, we really wanted to, like test ourselves, and I made that a point. I think we all made that a point, you know, while we were on set, or what we were all going over the script or whatever that, you know, okay, there’s going to be more effects, there’s going to be more dialogue, there’s going to be more action, more character, more music, more choreography. It was more of just like, taking all those things. You know, if you don’t have under control, they could start by themselves in the iPhone. Yeah, I mean, we use the iPhone.
Jameson LoCasio
The whole thing and 4k on your iPhone, which was actually, because we did it in DS, we did it on a DSLR canon 600D, which is really not the best thing by today’s standards, even though it’s a good camera. So, we said, you know what, we think we can up this with an iPhone, even though it’s going to be harder to do. So that was our mentality. And we made that iPhone as beautiful as possible. And that actually had a lot of technical elements to it. Like we went out and bought an anamorphic lens for a moment, and like, put it on, it actually was fixed onto it. And we shot it an anamorphic was the first time we ever shot anything in anamorphic. And so, to get that look of like return to the Jedi, but also the spaghetti western, you know. And so, we’re always pushing ourselves in some small ways that are meaningful to us. And we’ve always found that something positive comes from that, you know, we even got an offer, somebody wanted to send us gear, because we obviously now know what to do with an iPhone as it’s known as phone as filmmakers. So, it’s like, okay, so we, you know, so those types of things happen. And we embrace them, I guess we embrace that part.
Ashley
And what do you do with it? You put it up on YouTube, like, there’s not really any commercial viability is something like this, because you don’t own the rights or whatever. So, it goes on YouTube. This is part of your film valor brand.
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, we don’t monetize, we promote, like, a lot of times, we’ll run promos on it, like; Hey, we’re just promoting the channel. And we’ve had a lot of people start following us just from those Star Wars things like, ‘Oh, these guys are interesting. What else have they done.’ So, it’s just one of those things that we got film valor off to such a level that we had gotten invited to go to Sundance from it, which was ridiculous to be on a panel to talk about how we do films and distribute them a certain way. So, we had seen a real tangible value and just doing things for free and putting them out there. And it’s also something we’d love to do.
Adam Ambrosia
Then we got to stay busy. Yeah, we got to, as I said, cut our teeth in some.
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, always learning to do things. And like, that’s what we encourage others to do.
Adam Ambrosia
No budget. I mean, to tell you the truth, I think this is the only one of the very few instances where one of the actors actually put more money into their…
Jameson LoCasio
Yeah, for his own costume. Because we have the budget. We shot fast. We shot like, how quick was this show? 40 shots in like two hours.
Adam Ambrosia
We have one, you know what, ot was just three guys, four guys. And when we had Nicole…
Jameson LoCasio
And shout out to our cast, because they were excellent and as non-professional actors, they just went there and said; Hey, let’s do this and have fun. And then let’s listen to what they want to also, you know, make it convincing. And Tom Coughlin and Matt Painevich, and Dave Limbo, all did such a great job. Like doing it as not being actors, but stay committed to it. So, we ADR the whole thing. Yeah, so that was interesting.
Ashley
All right. Well, I like to wrap up these interviews, sounds like you guys got a lot going on. I just like to wrap up these interviews by asking the guests is there anything you guys have seen recently, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, anything you could recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Jameson LoCasio
There’s one that I’m going to say which relative sounds stupid almost because like we’re like genre filmmakers, and it sounds weird. But I really like, there’s a couple of things on masterpiece that I really love. And I think some of the British shows really have that the greatest writing sometimes and they’re so simple, you know, it’s about people in the house, whatever else. There’s a couple of them I could recommend, but the Durrells in Corfu was an excellent series and that’s something that’s not new, it’s been around.
Ashley
Where do you find these?
Jameson LoCasio
This is on prime and then you go to PBS, met with masterpiece and all their shows, but boy, the Durrells was an extraordinary show and what a like a masterclass and like waiting just a family and a house. You know, like what could happen to them and like, I feel like we can all learn from sometimes how well those shows are executed.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. I have not seen that. So, you got anything for us?
Adam Ambrosia
I mean, I’m in time war, for me is the time bubble. I haven’t really watched anything new lately. I would say the last thing that kind of got me thinking, or really just a good story all around was animation or a stop motion animation called Mad God. Yeah. It was really dark imagery. A totally silent. Yeah, it’s been a nightmare before Christmas on acid.
Ashley
What was it called… Mac?
Adam Ambrosia
Oh, Mad God.
Ashley
Where’s that point? Where did you guys catch that?
Jameson LoCasio
Its exclusive on shutter. Yeah. And Phil Tip is the guy who did all the little visual effects for Return of the Jedi and like a lot of Spielberg, stuff like that. I think he did it like with his really small team, like 60,000. It took them a long time. It took them a long time. Like years. So, yeah, that’s a good choice.
Adam Ambrosia
Yeah. Kind of gravitated to me because it’s very similar, you know, small team minutes to like, you created it from the ground up. And, you know, it has its own little cult following. Which I think …
Jameson LoCasio
Any horror fans could get into that.
Ashley
Good. Yeah. So, if there’s some great recommendations, and how can people see 7 x 7, what is the release schedule like that? And for that, and where’s it going to be available?
Jameson LoCasio
So, 7 x 7 is available on prime for rent, is available for free to stream on Tubi. The other content that they want to see from us is available on film valor on YouTube, which is really the best home for people who are both filmmakers and just audiences alike.
Ashley
Okay, perfect. Perfect. So, I’ll get that film valor. And I always just wrap up the interviews. Is there any Twitter Instagram you guys use any of that? We can put those in the show notes as well.
Jameson LoCasio
Yes. So, we’re Film Valor on Instagram, Film Valor on Twitter. Perfect. Film Valor on YouTube. Film Valor on Facebook.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. Well, I appreciate you guys. coming on and talking to me today. Good luck with this film and good luck on your future films as well.
Jameson LoCasio
Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to be on.
Ashley
It’s good talking to you. Bye.
SYS’s from concept to completion, screenwriting course is now available. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse, it will take you through every part of writing a screenplay, coming up with a concept, outlining, writing the opening pages, the first act, second act, third act and then rewriting and then there’s even a module at the end on marketing your screenplay once it’s polished and ready to be sent out. We’re offering this course in two different versions, the first version, you get the course. Plus, you get three analyses from an SYS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get to analyses on your first draft of your screenplay. This is just our introductory price, you’re getting three full analyses, which is actually the same price as our three-pack analysis bundle. So, you’re essentially getting the course for free when you buy the three analyses that come with it. And to be clear, you’re getting our full analysis with this package. The other version doesn’t have the analysis. So, you’ll have to find some friends or colleagues who will do the feedback portion of the course with you. I’m letting SYS select members do this version of the course for free. So, if you’re a member of SYS select you already have access to it. You also might consider that as an option. If you join SYS select you will get the course as part of that membership too. A big piece of this course is accountability. Once you start the course, you’ll get an email every Sunday with that week’s assignment. And if you don’t complete it, we’ll follow up with another reminder the next week. It’s easy to pause the course if you need to take some time off, but as long as you’re enrolled, you’ll continue to get reminders for each section until it’s completed. The objective of the course is to get you through it in six months so that you have a completed power screenplay ready to be sent out. So, if you have an idea for a screenplay, and you’re having a hard time getting it done, this course might be exactly what you need. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It’s all one word, all lowercase. I will of course the link to the course in the show notes and I will put a link to the course on the homepage up in the right-hand sidebar. On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing writer-director Elizabeth Blake Thomas. Next week she comes on the show to talk about a new action thriller she directed called Hunt Club, which stars Mickey Rourke, Mena Suvari and Casper Van Dien. We talked through her career and how she’s gotten to the point now where she is directing feature films like this, so keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening