This is a transcript of SYS 471 – Making Kids Vs Aliens With Jason Eisener .
Welcome to Episode 471 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Myers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing Canadian writer director Jason Eisener has done a number of horror and thriller films over the years. His latest film is a cool horror sci fi film called Kids vs. Aliens. We talked through his career this film working with children actors, and how he got this film produced. So, stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s a six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our early bird deadline is March 31st. So, if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for the best a low budget shorts and feature film screenplays to finding low budget as less than six figures. In other words, this screenplay could be produced for less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. We’ve had a number of options and sales from the contest. And this is only our fourth year. So, we’re getting a nice bit of traction from these scripts with these producers. There’s always lots of producers looking for high quality low budget film. So, I think we found a nice niche for this contest. We have a short film script category as well 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means, submit that. If you want to submit or learn more about the contest, or check out some of our industry judges, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leave me 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 episode number 471. 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. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide, teach you how to write a professional logline inquiry 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 just a quick few words about what I’m working on. Still plugging away on this NFT project for The Rideshare Killer. I’m just slowly contacting a lot of crypto blogs and crypto podcast and pitching this as a new story for their audience pitching me as a guest on their podcast, you actually spent some time writing some articles on this project and having those articles published. We wrote a press release. So, that press release has been published in a few places. I mentioned this last time, but the reception I’m getting from the crypto community is actually much warmer than the filmmaking community. And frankly, I think this gives me a lot of encouragement because the crypto folks understand movies a lot more than the filmmakers understand crypto, one of the guys that runs a crypto podcast that interviewed me, he was talking about his favorite movie was super bad. And he was very much he sort of put it together and he’s like, wow, I would love to own a frame and NFT frame from super bad. And again, he really understands crypto and NFT’s. So, he could sort of see the value in this whole thing. So as I said, it’s giving me some sort of encouragement to kind of keep going and just keep pushing away at this. You have any interest in checking some of this out, just Google The Rideshare Killer, NFTs, and a whole bunch of these articles will come up and kind of just see what the progress looks like. So that’s good. As I said, I’m getting a lot of these article just published. And as I said, I’ve been interviewed on two podcasts, but it’s just quite time consuming. Just you know, getting all the contact information and reaching out and frankly, just emailing back and forth with these folks. You know, a lot of times they want money upfront to be published in the article, we’re doing this, you know, it’s a low budget film. So we have no budget for this. So, there’s a lot of back and forth with these folks. And I’ve given away some of the frames of the film, as you know, in lieu of payment. Some of the crypto blogs have been willing to take some frames from the film, and then publish our press release and that sort of stuff. So again, it’s just it’s slow going time consuming, but I am making some headway slowly just plugging away on this. So that’s the main thing I’ve been working on the last week or two. Now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing Canadian writer director Jason Eisener. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Jason to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Jason Eisener
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background where you grew up, and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Jason Eisener
Oh, gosh, it’s a long story. I’ll try to make it short but I grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, very far away from the world of Hollywood and moviemaking. But the way I guess I first picked up a camera was through skateboarding. I grew up skateboarding and I wanted to film me and my friends skating and one summer me and my best friend, Jeromy and Arsenal, we like we took over my parents backyard shed, and he introduced me to like all these horror movies I’ve never heard of like, return to Living Dead and The Evil Dead movies. And we spent all summer this living in that shed and just like renting out every horror movie, sci fi movie from the local video store. And then when we weren’t skateboarding, I just like would start filming little shorts, like with my friends. And by the time I got to high school, I was convincing, like every teacher I could, because I struggle with academics and but I could visually like, get my point across. So, I was like making every project to film. And then this my high school actually had had noticed me and my friends running around with a video camera. So, they developed a filming video programmed by the time I got to the 12th grade. And they had a teacher who is still probably the most like, influential person in my life and probably helped set me down a path and gave me the confidence was my high school film, video teacher who was also the art teacher of the school. And he had never taught a film and video class, but he was just one of those guys that like a great teacher who, like I would see kids in class, like try to get a rise out of him by drawing like offensive stuff. And he would come by and he would see it. And he would pick out like all these like amazing things. And I would watch him leave like a kid and they’d be kind of perplexed and or maybe were inspired. And so he never pushed his own artistic, artistic on us. He just tried to get it into what we were into and help to try and get us inspired to dive into it more. So, he helped me apply to a community college, it was called the Screen Arts program at the Nova Scotia Community College, which was like a two-year program where they like taught you how to do everything in the film industry because it’s like a trade school. So, they like taught you how to grip, gaff produce, ad script, supervise. They didn’t teach you like how to necessarily, like, write a story, but it just gave you the tools and gave me the tools to learn kind of every aspect of the film industry so that once I got out of college, I could I could make my own movies and not necessarily have to like depend on all these other professionals to help me get my stories made. I was able to do it with my friends and direct them. So that was kind of the beginning how and from then on, I just like I had never looked back like I’ve been chasing the dream of you know, my whole life.
Ashley
So, just for one minute. Can I just hear sort of the story? How did hobo with short gun got involved with Grindhouse? Just give us that. Was that something you guys you heard about, so you made the short specifically for that? Or was it something you guys were just working on anyways? But just maybe just give us that real quick, because I think it’s a fascinating story.
Jason Eisener
Oh, cool. Yeah, like, well, at the time, there was another contest put up by Steven Spielberg, I think it was called like on the lot. It was like another show for filmmakers to submit short films. And then they would go through these trials of making more short films on TV. So, we were thinking about submitting for that. And then we saw the posting for the Grindhouse competition. And John, my writing partner, who also still to this day, we write all our movies together. He told me about the contest. And at that point, we were just so inspired by exploitation movies and horror, like we were into like Italian crime movies, we were just like going down like a path of just getting into like that 70s world of exploitation films. And so, it was just the right time for us to like, do something like that. And then we just assumed like you had like two weeks, I think, to get it like from the announcement to delivering it. So, I think the next day we just went out and started shooting and the idea for hobo with a shotgun was when we first heard about the contest, we were sitting in this pizza shop, called Ronnie’s pizza where we always go and jam ideas. And outside of that, there is a street in Dartmouth called Main Street and it’s there were like pawn shops and strip clubs and like it’s just like this really like intense like area and then we just started envisioning, like a heightened world of it. And then like I said, next day we went out and started shooting and I don’t think anything from that day made it into the trailer, but it got the it just kind of going, you know?
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So perfect. So, I know you’re very short on time. So, let’s dig into your most recent film, Kids vs. Aliens. Maybe to start out, you can just give us a quick pitch or logline. What is this film all about?
Jason Eisener
Yeah, well, Kids vs. Aliens is very much based on like my childhood and experiences being John had growing up and making movies and it’s about a kid named Gary and his older sister, Samantha, and they make movies in their backyard. And Samantha is older, and some teenagers come into her life that she really wants to impress. And she is made to feel self-conscious about herself. And because of that creates a rift between her and her brother, and she gets convinced to have this crazy rager of a Halloween party. And during the midst of this Halloween party, Aliens Attack, and try to abduct the kids. And Samantha ends up having to become almost kind of like the superhero character and go save her brother from these aliens that abducted her, her friends and her younger brother.
Ashley
And what’s the genesis of this idea? Where did this story come from?
Jason Eisener
Well, originally it’s like, based off a short film, I made called Summer part of alien abduction that was part of an anthology called V/H/S/2. And so that was like the spark was to try and make like the feature film version of that short that I made like 10 years ago. But what got me into it and got me like, re inspired was like a chance to tell like my own like, personal story, like the things that Samantha and Gary go through are things that me and my siblings like did as well and then the story of aliens attacking is childhood nightmare that I had. Reoccurring childhood nightmare because in where I’m from a Nova Scotia, there’s a great UFO story. If you look up the story of shag harbour in 1967, there was a UFO that crash and the opening of my movie pays tribute to that story, where a bunch of fishermen saw this UFO crash. And so that’s always been in the backyard. And growing up, you know, that really fuelled my imagination.
Ashley
You know, one of the things that just struck me, especially with the poster, it seems to be sort of homage to these 80s films, kids films, was that sort of part of the tone in the field that you were going for?
Jason Eisener
Yeah, partly, it’s like, I wasn’t so much inspired necessarily by like, 80s kids movies, but I was really inspired by 80s toy lines, and the toy lines that I grew up loving, like Masters of the Universe, and Shiva and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I have spent years like the past few years developing some like properties that were some of my childhoods, you know, favorites. But like, if you know, those ever, like turned into anything, and you spend like so much time, you know, working on someone else’s like IP. When I came out of it, I was just like, you know, I’m going to make my own. Like, I want to make my own universe that like I can live in for multiple films, like I just see Kids vs. Aliens is like the beginning of something that can be so much larger. And so that’s what really inspired me was like creating my own idea, my own universe and getting to play in that rather than playing in someone else’s.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let’s just talk about your collaboration with John Davies. How does that work? How do you guys just typically work? It sounds like you go to a pizza place, you spit ball ideas? Do you divide up scenes, you write a scene, he writes a scene and you bring them together? Just maybe go walk through your process, what is your collaboration actually work like?
Jason Eisener
Yeah, it’s interesting. I remember when John and I were kids, because we grew up together. Like, I’ve known him since I was five years old. And I can remember in the fifth grade him coming to me and being like, I’m going to be like a writer. And I thought at the time, he was going to write like books, and he was running all these short stories. And then I got into like, the visual side of like, telling stories. And so, I feel like that’s how or like, I don’t know. And partly it’s like our styles like matchup good because like, he takes over the he’s like, in charge of like the writing like process and like, I take over the in charge of like the directing visual style of it. So usually what happens the way we’re doing it, is we just open like a Google doc like a shared doc and Davies just starts writing. And then I just jump in alongside of him and we’re just real time back and forth just like going through scenes together. And because we’ve known each other since we were kids, like, we can easily like, you know, shoot down on each other’s ideas and you know, go back and forth on them like pretty quickly without there being like, any ego I was involved or have to do the dance around, you know, having anxiety about telling somebody you want to like change an idea. You know, we’re just like so much of this like same brain because we grew up together.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And you guys are what you’re doing this Google Doc, are you in the same room? Or you’re just remote, you’re on speakerphone?
Jason Eisener
With Kids vs. Aliens, I was in Los Angeles, and he was in Niagara, Ontario. So, we never I think there was one time during the whole process of developing and writing that we got to be in a room together for like, maybe a day or two, but we just put on like a FaceTime chat. So, we’re constantly you know, it feels like we’re in the same room, like we’re doing what you want me are doing here. Like, we’re just, we’re like hanging out and just got the Google doc out. And we’re just jamming on ideas and, you know, sending each other pictures and stuff and just getting inspired. And yeah.
Ashley
Okay, so once you guys hammering out this draft, you had a script that you like, what were those next stages to actually getting it into production? How do you raise the money? Do you find a producer or production company? Walk us through that a little bit.
Jason Eisener
Yeah, well, it’s interesting. I’ve had like a different kind of, like road to getting my films made. It’s never been having like, I always like, kind of sell the idea before we dive into writing the script. And the same for Kids vs. Aliens. When we pitched it to RLJE with Mark Ward, he just believed in me, like so much. He just like greenlit it with other without me having to do the song and dance of making pitch decks and like, you know, pitch reels and all this stuff. It was just like, let’s do it. And we wrote the script. And we were in development and then production almost within like five months since we like decided this, you know, but most of my films in the films I’ve sold, like, over the years, the studios have been just like been in the room and just like pitching an idea. And it’s just like pitching like a like something. It’s usually something that like, whenever I get like, so nervous about like an idea, it always, I always go into the room and it comes across like flat. But when it’s something that this really comes from my heart, I don’t know, there’s something about the energy of it that I think like people are attracted to. So, I’ve been lucky to sell like a few pitches, but I’ve never, like sold a script, like hadn’t written a script and gone out and sold it. It’s always been the pitch first.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. What sort of notes did he give you? And I’m just curious, sort of in the context of like more of a business II type of a sense. Like when I saw this movie come across my desk, as a low budget producer, myself, I steer away from movies with a lot of kids, for instance, you know, for low budget definitely makes it difficult. So, what kind of notes did he give you? Like, what was it that attracted him to this project? What were some of the things that he just really glommed on to that he liked?
Jason Eisener
Yeah, well, Mark Ward. Like he, like, I think we’re like, he’s probably a little bit older, but like, he grew up loving, like, kids movies from the 80s. And he had always wanted to see like an 80s. Or like a kid’s like, R rated like movie. And the short film that I made Summer Party, you know, alien abduction, he said that it was like his favorite short amongst all like, the V/H/S film. So that really, I think this like, sold him on, you know, the vibe that I was going to get into it.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So how can people see Kids vs. Aliens? You know what the release schedule is going to be like?
Jason Eisener
Yeah, well, it’s coming out on January 20th. And it should be like on video, VOD, like everywhere, and there’ll be like a theatrical in the States as well. So probably like, you know, a few cinemas, like spread out over the country. So, but yeah, hopefully we will soon be posting up the listing. And then, yeah, you can check it out on VOD as well, too.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with you and your career? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing I will put in the show notes.
Jason Eisener
Yeah, I’m on Twitter at Jason Eisener. And I’m on Instagram at Jason Eisener. And yeah, I post mostly like on my Instagram, and try to give like a, you know, a cool view into the things that like I’m working on.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. Well, Jason, I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to come and talk with me. Good luck with this film and good luck with all your future films as well.
Jason Eisener
Yeah, thank you so much, Ashley. Take care.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
A quick plug for the SYS screenwriting analysis service. It’s a really economical way to get a high-quality professional evaluation on your screenplay. When you buy our three pack you get evaluations at just $67 per script for feature films, and just $55 for teleplays. All the readers have professional experience reading for studios, production companies, contests and agencies. You can read a short bio and each reader on our website, and you can pick the reader who you think is the best fit for your script. Turnaround time is usually just a few days, but rarely more than a week. The readers will evaluate your script on six key Factors; Concept, Character, Structure, Marketability, Tone, and Overall Craft which includes formatting, spelling and grammar. Every script will get a great pass, consider or recommend, which should help you roughly understand where your script might rank if you were to submit it to a production company or agency. We can provide an analysis on features or television scripts. We also do proofreading without any analysis. We will also look at a treatment or outline and give you the same analysis on it. So, if you’re looking to vet some of your project ideas, this is a great way to do it. We will also write your logline and synopsis for you. You can add this logline and synopsis writing service to an analysis or you can simply purchase this service as a standalone product. As a bonus, if your screenplay gets a recommend or a consider from one of our readers, you get to list the screenplay in the SYS Select database, which is a database for producers to find screenplays and a big part of our SYS select program. Producers are in the database searching for material on a daily basis, so it’s another great way to get your material in front of them. As a further bonus, if your script gets a recommend from one of our readers, your screenplay will get included in our monthly best of newsletter. Each month, we send out a newsletter that highlights the best screenplays that have come through our script analysis service. This is monthly newsletter that goes out to our list of over 400 producers who are actively looking for material. So again, this is another great way to get your material out there. So, if you want a professional evaluation of your screenplay at a very reasonable price, check out www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/consultants. Again, that’s sellingyourscreenplay.com/consultants.
On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing screenwriter director and fitness expert Barry J. Came to Los Angeles in the 80s to be a songwriter eventually found fitness founded Barry’s boot camp which has grown to over 90 locations. But he always loved horror films. So, now that’s what he’s doing. He’s writing and directing horror films. And I have him on next week to talk about his latest film drama thriller called The Way Out. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.