This is a transcript of SYS 475 – From Production Assistant To Filmmaker With Corey Deshon.
Welcome to Episode 475 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Myers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing writer and director Corey Deshon. He has a great story. He was just a kid with a dream when he moved to Hollywood, and just started networking, getting low level jobs in the industry, worked his way up and started writing and television. And now he has a new feature film out called Daughter starring Casper Van Dien. 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. If your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low=budget shorts and features. And we’re defining low=budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading the scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. I had the winner from 2020 Richard Pierce on the podcast and episode 378 He won the contest and was introduced to one of our industry judges, Ted Campbell, who took the script to Mar Vista Entertainment and got the film produced. And we’ve had a number of other scripts option from the contest as well. So, it feels like we’re getting some good traction. We do have a short film script category 30 pages or less. If you have a low-budget short script, by all means submit that as well. Once again, if you want to submit to the contest, or learn more about it 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 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 can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast, and then just look for episode number 475. If you want my free guide How to Sell screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free you 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 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, now let’s get into the main segment today. I’m interviewing screenwriter and director Corey Deshon. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Corey to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Corey Deshon
Thanks so much. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ashley
Hey, sure. So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Corey Deshon
Yes, I grew up in Tampa, Florida, under the impression that there really was no path between Tampa and Hollywood. So, I was there. They were here. And that was it. I was not pursuing being a filmmaker as a career really. I grew up as a musician played a lot of instruments piano drums, saxophone, I would write and compose that I got into creative writing, I used to do stuff like that painting, photography, drawing, always in the art in general is just something that I would do because I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t really until later in life, the idea of actually becoming a filmmaker professionally struck me. It was just the interest that I always had. I grew up loving movies, wanting to write. But in the idea of making a film would be just something I went out and did in my backyard, not released in pursuit of a career. I got to high school. I started studying computer technology started to work in that field immediately after high school while I was in college, I got my degree in it. And after nine years of study, but even high school and college, five years of working in the field, that’s when it hit me ‘maybe now’s the time, I should just try to do this filmmaking thing.’ Just that backyard version of it. And I took some time off work after getting my degree and raised some money on crowdfunding and hired some people off of Craigslist and set out to make this little short film. This one I live in Orlando, Florida and just was going to UCF and nobody will ever see that film. But the process of doing it just the experience of like finally getting to say I’m on my own set. I’m directing actors, I wrote this, I’m producing it. That was the realization for me that this is what I was supposed to be doing for my entire life. And it was that culmination of every all of these other creative pursuits. Even the music side of it. I wanted, you know if there was would have been a version of me as a composer professionally, I would have been writing film for music and writing music for film. And it was at that moment that I realized I’m going to be miserable for the rest of my life, if I don’t go do this for real. Now, if I don’t at least make the attempt to do it. And this was October of 2012, I went right back into work told my boss, look, I got to go, I got to move to LA. I got to live there before the end of the year. And so we’ll take the next two months train my replacement, but then it’s time for me to go. And I didn’t necessarily know what I was walking into. It was just that realization that I would rather fail at this, trying to do what I love than anything else that did not try.
Ashley
So, I’m curious, maybe you can just give us some quick tips. 2012, you’re, I think in a position with a lot of people that are interested in film, you go to college, you get a degree, maybe not in film you’re working, you sort of realize this at whatever, age 25, age 28. And you make that move. Did you save money? How much money did you save? Did you have friends in LA? How did you know where to start looking for apartments? Just give us a couple quick tips on sort of your transition from working in Florida in IT to trying to be an aspiring screenwriter in LA.
Corey Deshon
Yeah, totally. I mean, well, one of the most immediate things that I realized about the business when I got out here is that at the end of the day, the film industry is a privilege burgeons pastime. Like it’s not something you just come out and do without some kind of financial security, financial stability, whether you’re coming from that or building it on your own, you have to have some kind of plan. And I had kind of a plan at the time. But what worked in my favor is that I wasn’t coming out in debt already that I had gone to school on scholarships, I had been working in tech, already I had a salary, I had a little bit of money saved up to float myself for about six or seven months until I was able to start working out here. But that was the deciding factor, I could come out here and incur some living expense debt to make myself last, because I wasn’t bringing that burden with me already. And that’s, you know, a position that made this possible for me that in coming from a mother who was very supportive, you know, we don’t come from money, my mother is a public school social worker in Florida. But she believed in me in this and had my back and there would be months where I would get help paying rent, or I’d be paying rent on a credit card or things like that, like just the last out here long enough because it was productive system work when I got out here. Something that I did sort of orient myself was I took a producing program at UCLA, they have this graduate certificate program, just this 10-week intensive course. It’s you know, pricey yet, again, you got to have some money coming out. Not too expensive in terms of like film, school kind of thing, just one little course. But that gave me insight on how to orient myself here, it taught me a little bit about what the business was, I started to learn the basics of producing as a concept like the physical, you know, scheduling, budgeting, things like that, just to have a little bit of a loose understanding about how sets work, how studios work, so that I can try to navigate finding jobs for myself. And then the sort of the benefit of being in LA kicked in, and then it became a networking game. And just for making friends in that class, I ended up at some party in LA somewhere where I meet some other people and we become friends. And they invite me to some other party and at this party, I meet a director who’s about to make his first film at the time. And I said; Hey, look, I just got out here, can I come volunteer assist for you? And this was within the first five or six months of moving here. And that became my first like, real onset experience. Like that was a set that I went on to and learned how to do the job of production assistant. And to them, it’s like free labor, sure, come on out. And for me, it’s just it’s a free education. I show up, I kind of do the job, do the job, do it as good as I possibly can bust my ass on that set. And then suddenly, the first AD is calling me back further work, the line producer calling me back for work, that production designer call me for other work, the production coordinator call me for other work. And that’s how it started just expanding that network of being able to support myself as best as I could as a production assistant. Well, I figured out how to navigate the creative side of it.
Ashley
So, I’m curious. So, you said you moved out in 2012, when did you make this short film that nobody’s ever going to see. And I assume that’s not To Police, the short film that’s listed on things and so where it will just bring us up from that moment where you made the short film in your backyard to making To Police. Well, how much time and distance was in that was To Police in Los Angeles by this time?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, To Police. I want to say I shot in 2014 or 2015. And then yeah, that the other story was, it was called Standing Up which I found in Orlando in the summer, or late fall. 2012. Yeah, that was October 2012. And I came out here. This short was okay. There were some pieces of it that I didn’t finish just like scheduling and stuff like that. One of the actors didn’t show up or like the last day of shooting like one of those types of things. We didn’t have a completed piece of work, and I ended up cutting a little show reel out of it. Just to show that I could, like, competently compose a scene, that sort of thing. And that was it, what served for me was that I read that became the basis of a feature that I wrote, I rewrote the short script as a feature. And that was my one writing sample. And that first year that I would just try to put in front of anybody that I could, and to police came directly out of that. And even one degree of separation away from that first assistant job that I had. So, the production coordinator of that set invited me a couple months later to be an office intern, and then became I became the office pa have a different production, slightly higher budget. I meet a production coordinator there, who was going to be my direct boss. So, on the first stage, you know, you’ll hear the basic Hi, how are you? Where are you? What are you doing here? That sort of thing. What brought you to LA? I was never the type of person to say, I’m here to be the best production assistant I could be. I was like, “No, I’m here to write and direct. I came here to be a filmmaker.” And she said, Oh, that’s interesting. Have you written anything. And at the time, I had completed that one first feature length version of standing up. So, I gave her like, not like a formal elevator pitch, because I didn’t know how to pitch at all. I still barely know how to pitch. But it was given a logline. And she was interested, she’s like, Oh, that’s, that’s kind of cool. I’d like to read that someday. And I thought, Great sent balls in your court, if I had never hear back about it, you know, whatever, that’s fine. But it was, you know, just getting myself into that moment where someone would ask to read me. And, to my luck, that luck, skill, timing opportunity thing the planets have to align. But she really liked the script. She ended up referring me to another filmmaker who was about to make his first film was a director, and who needed some work on the script, I ended up getting hired to do that. And by hiring, I meant, like $500 cheque or something like that. But it was a real writing job within, at this point, the first year and a half or something like that, I’m moving to LA. And that film did actually end up getting made with my credit intact, not the script that I wrote. But part of the deal of getting paid next to nothing was I just had a guaranteed co-writer credit on it. So, for better or worse, my name is on it,
Ashley
And that’s the movie Shine. I just looking through your IMDB credits.
Corey Deshon
Yeah that became Shine, I doubt okay, that all happened relatively quickly, that film wouldn’t get made for another couple of years ago. But that same person, same producer, then also like we started working together a lot we I worked on like studio films as are in existence, she brought me on that world with her, and also ended up producing To Police story, when I was ready to make a real attempt at a short film out here, help me put that together.
Ashley
Talk about your transition a little bit, I noticed you had two writing episodes of the TV show a Million Little Things, talk about that transition. And also, at what point during this whole process did you start to get an agent or a manager and start to really pursue screenwriting?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, well, I had been doing a lot on my own. So, I signed with my agents at WMV in 2020. And that was the first time I had been repped at all. And so that was after I’d already shot Daughter, I had to finish kind of that it was after having trespassers made after having shot. And after having quite a few writing assignments on my own, just from building this little indie, you know, hopping around lifestyles that I was doing. I was working in production until 2015-2016, or something like that, when I sold the Trespasser script. And that was when I stopped taking production jobs is pouring everything into writing. And a million little things came about actually by just, you know, fostering relationships very early on. Again, maybe 2014 not too long after moving here. I connected with a producer, I was an assistant for him, I did some camera jobs for him and stuff like that. And he came out of the stand-up comedy world writes and produces for a lot of that, on that side of stuff. And I was in his office one day, kind of just kicking around ideas, not in the nice formal sense. But he mentioned an idea for a character he had that I thought was really, really cool. And I for whatever reason, I went home that weekend, and I wrote out this 15 page treatment of a short film of like, what this character story could be brought back to him on Monday morning, and he read and he’s like, “Oh, shit, so you can like write – write.” And that became this, the start of a creative like collaborative partnership. Again, not necessarily in a formal sense, but just like; let’s keep doing this, let’s just kick some ideas around. He had some pilots that he wanted to write on his own. So, I helped them like develop some of his stuff, just organizing ideas, things like that. That eventually evolved into us writing some pilots together. And that was my bootcamp into TV writing is at the time I was only really pursuing features just writing and directing features, but because as he asked me to write with him, I was like, oh shit, I got to go figure out how to write for TV. And that became our out of that came a little comedy pilot we wrote together and a drama pilot we wrote together. This is maybe 2015. Let me say like, I’m, like, fuzzy on the timeline at this point. Yeah. But we didn’t really do anything with the scripts then. But we continue this creative partnership, not to necessarily be dedicated writing partners, because we, you know, we do our own things. But every once in a while, we’ll come back and just develop some ideas together, that led to selling a feature page together a couple years later. And so, we just kept going down that road. And by the time 2020 rolls around, I’d finished Daughter pandemic is in the middle, you know, we don’t know what the future is going to look like. It was him who got an invite to write on a million little things since he was already in that circle with the showrunner or something like that. He knew that I had never worked in TV before. And so, he actually sent DJ NAS, the mental things creator, the script that he and I had written together four or five years prior, and he didn’t even tell me he was he was like, just check this script out. If you like it, I want to bring this guy with me into the room. And that’s how I got on a Million Little Things.
Ashley
Gotcha. I’m curious, I’d be real curious to hear your take, I see on a lot of the screenwriting bulletin boards, you know, producers asking writers to write a treatment for free or asking to do a spec, you know, things and, and it sounds like you’ve done an enormous amount of writing for free. And that’s part of sort of this baseline that you created for yourself and just fostering these relationships. What is your advice to writers that come and say; well, I want to get paid or I don’t want to write for free or this producer needs to pay me like, just what is your and at some point, I mean, there is a there is a moment where at some point in your career, you have to just say, I’m not going to take free work. But where do you land on this? And sort of what is your policy? What was your thinking at the time? And what is your thinking today?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, at the time, and today’s really, it’s if I’m, this is an unintentional Ryan, if I’m writing for free, I’m writing for me. So, in these scenarios, he’s not asking me, “Hey, will you work on this thing, will you write this thing?” It’s, “Hey, let’s write this, this is an interesting idea. We can explore maybe there’s something there’s a commercial element to it. Let’s just do this. And we’ll see what happens next.” And there were several instances along the way where those types of things did come to me as jobs like, hey, I want you to write this script, and then I’ll see about maybe trying to do something with it, that those sort of things I would never do, because I don’t control those. It’s the work for hire minus the work aspect of it, where they’re actually paying you. They want your labor to then control the thing that you create, and go to try to jumpstart their career with it. I’m not interested in that. Now, I think the decision of whether or not to do that should still be an individual decision. You know, wherever a person is, in their mind and their career and their life, like sure, because at the end of the day, it is all about relationships. A lot of people do get taken advantage of that. We shouldn’t be careful of it. But if you’re in that position, and someone’s like, hey, would you be interested in writing this thing? And you actually want to? And then go ahead, why not? …like tempering your expectations and how you go into it. And there’s been other times where I’ve gotten what became a good job by being willing to hear someone else who was looking for something to be written for free. So, I had one of the last writing assignments I had, like on the job paid assignment, prior to making Daughter was somebody who found a script of mine on the blacklist the public website, they reached out because they wanted somebody to do a, like a polished pass on a feature they were trying to get made. And it was like an unpaid sort of thing. And I really liked the premise of the feature. So, I was willing to, you know, read it and meet with them and just see, like, proceed in good faith, you don’t know what will happen. And there is a version of it, where the script only needed a polished pass. And for me a Polish, just like on a day and a half of work. If I like when I’m sure there’s a scenario where that could have worked. This was not that this was significantly more work. And that is what I went back to them and say, like, look, I would love to do this. But the time commitment that it’s going to take is not something I can do for free, because at the time this was I’m using these types of little jobs to flow myself to pay rent, I wasn’t doing production work anymore. So, I can’t afford the time commitment. It’s going to take me to rewrite this script to actually turn it into something that would be proud to put in front of you with my name on it. And they’re like; Okay, well, we’re not looking for that. So that’s fine. You know, we part ways on good terms. Not a month later, a month and a half later, they come back to me and say actually, maybe we want to take you up on that rewrite. And it became a real job at that.
Ashley
Yes, sound advice for sure. So, let’s dig into your latest film Daughter. You’ve been mentioning it a couple of times here in the interview. Maybe to start out you can just give us a quick pitch or a logline. What is this new film all about?
Corey Deshon
Yes, Daughter on the surface is about a young woman who is kidnapped into this very bizarre family to be inducted in as their surrogate daughter. And she’s told as long as he plays along, she will not be harmed. But if she rebels, then she might be met with an uncertain fate.
Ashley
And where did this idea come from? What was sort of the genesis of this story?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, it was, at the time knowing that this is something that I was writing for myself to direct. So even already a little bit of a different headspace than I would otherwise be in with a script, because I’m not writing this to put in front of somebody else, I’m not writing it to sell, I’m not writing it to give someone else the power of what happens is, ‘I’m writing this because I’m going to make it with whatever amount of money I can raise, whether it’s $10, I’ll make a $10,000 version of it. If it’s 100,000, $100,000 version, like whatever this film will be made.’ So, knowing I’m going and do it on a micro budget scale, I knew that meant certain creative constraints and a lot of locations, and then a lot of characters and like start working backwards to what could be possible to do. Having worked on, you know, that sort of budget, then the second ultra-low budget range, as a production assistant, I was so familiar with the flow of those sets and how they work. They’re like, okay, I can reverse engineer what needs to happen on a production sense to make this work. I know 12 shooting days, I’m like, somewhere around there. And just as I’m approaching what kind of story I could tell, keeping that in mind that I’m not going to be writing outside of that box, because again, this is just going to go get made. And then at that point, came the creative side of it. What can I do in that construct? That’s actually interesting, or that hasn’t been done times before? Or even if it has been done before? Is there anything unique that I can bring to it? Is there any unique perspective I can bring to it, or unique exploration within the story, and then finally became the director hat? Well, at the end of the day, this is not only just to be a writing sample, for me, what I need to do is create a landscape where I can do something visually interesting experiment, as a director, try to develop them find my own style in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to do if we had more money, and somebody breathing down my neck saying, No, you got to shoot it like this, you’re going to get that code, you’re going to get that close up. Here, I wanted that opportunity to just go out and take a huge swing, and maybe a huge mess, but if not, who knows?
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So, take us through your writing process. And we can talk specifically writing Daughter, but just in general, where do you write when do you typically write? Do you have a home office? Do you need to go to Starbucks with the ambient noise? You write in the morning, you write at night? What is your writing schedule look like?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, so I prefer morning work. I write from home. I have a little like home office setup. Now previously, I was just in a studio apartment and the Home-Office meant, facing my computer in a way that I can’t see my bed. And that’s the home office. But that’s where I do think my best work where I can just sort of concentrate and relax and spread out a little bit down the neck to really break it down. Because I used to work in tech, I developed a workflow of working from desktop computers with dual screens, so dual monitors, where I would separate two documents on each monitor just because of like what I needed to do on the tech side of stuff, it just made sense to organize a workflow that way. And so, when I came into this, it was picking up right from that place of organizing that workflow. So I have four windows open at any given moment one of them might just be you know, research things I want to look up another one would be a general notes doc I just call my brain dump anything that comes to mind as it relates to the story goes into that document then I might have an outline up or a beat sheet depending on how intricate I want to get before I go to script and then it’s the script itself could be open at any given time just as a way for me to easily organize information and I think even the morning work of it all came a little bit from doing it work where I would show up at a really early like 5 or 6am shift and realize by the time I’m fully awake half the day is over. And for whatever reason that sort of translated into this to where I just like to work in the morning, I’d like to get up be productive, see how much I can do before even noon maybe I’m done with my writing for the day, or maybe I can move on to something else or have to move on to something else. That all went out the window a little bit once I started giving writers room because then I’m on their schedule that anything else I’m doing has to fit around that time. But generally speaking, if I’m carving out a block of time for myself to sit down and write a script, it’s morning work and my coffee and I just going to go for it
Ashley
Gotcha. What is your development process look like? Especially something like that sort of indie like Daughter. Do you have a trusted you know, bunch of friends that are writers, directors, producers, actors that you send the script to and get notes and then just how do you work through that process with notes that you don’t necessarily agree with, notes that you do agree with, maybe can talk about that just quickly.
Corey Deshon
Yeah. In general, I do have certain people that I would send a script to, if it’s any feature that I’m writing for myself or professionally, I’ve got a friend who’s you know, on development or creative exec on the studio side, someone who does on the indie side, someone who is an actor like that, just so different perspective, different ideas, producers to just see what the feedback is, I did not do that in the case of Daughter. Because in the case of Daughter, I wasn’t really interested in it. Because it was going to be really, really out there by design, and intentional by design into something I’m going into make, not necessarily impress people with the writing of the only people who ever saw or people that were part of the creative team. So, like the doctor producer saw our cast thought, and I got feedback from them. But it didn’t really go outside the story. But like maybe one other person, one other friend of mine read it. But it was all got pretty contained. And we were just rolling into let’s do this thing. And then when it comes to the feedback, I think it really depends on you as a writer, what your intention is for the script, because I don’t think every script needs to have the same intention, if you’re if your intention is not to sell this script for somebody else, or, whatever, you don’t necessarily need to take feedback the same way that you would, if that was the point. If the point of it is for you to go out and make in your backyard with your friends, then you know, it’s a different, it shouldn’t be a different kind of mindset with it. And so, if I’m writing for, let’s say, it’s a it’s a work for hire, it’s somebody else’s thing, I’m rewriting a script or whatever, and there’s going to be these a bunch of executives or producers that are going to weigh in, then the way I approach it is, you know, stay true to my own creative vision, in the sense that they all trusted me with just this job in the first place. And that does mean something, even when the notes might be overwhelming, or if there’s a lot of them at the end of the day, you’re here because you wrote yourself into that room. And so, stick with those instincts. But in good faith, you know, try to make whatever work-work, you know, try to make, make sure everybody’s still on the same page about what you’re doing and give them confidence that they will be heard as a part of this process, too. Because they also have a stake in this. When it’s a more personal thing for me that’s not really like that.
Ashley
I’m curious. Okay. So, once you had your script, you had it the way you liked it. What was those next steps to actually raising the money? How did you actually put the funding together for this?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, so I had started with a little bit rolling over from a different project. So, there was a different film that I thought was going to be the first film that I directed in 2018, that I had a little bit of money for, or from just like private investors that were really in this case, they were investing in me in my ability to like, go out and do this thing that I say I can do. That project didn’t quite get off the ground. So, it was able to roll a little bit of that into here. And then even getting some from my own family. Now not talking huge sums of money, but just a little bit like just like piece together. Because again, if it’s $10,000, that’s what the budget is, at that point, knowing it was going to be a bigger collaborative thing. The strategy was, internally within our team of producers, what can we go out and get and try to bring to the table. And with that came a little bit of additional equity, even like one of the actors putting in a little bit of money, I was able to find another like equity investor. And at that point, we had roughly half of what our budget ended up being in the end. The other thing that was a key part of the strategy from day one is knowing that any dollar that we got was going to go on screen we were going to crowdfund for post production, because I like myself would have been the post production safety net. Like if I had to sit there and do all of the sound and like an even VFX like whatever it was, that we couldn’t afford, I would have been the safety net and out, figure out how to do it on my own just been resolved, that sort of thing. I mean, I’ve done but it wouldn’t be like green going into it. But the idea was always to crowdfund for whatever some we felt comfortable with, which would have been a large sum because we had a huge team. And that was going to be our post budget and in part kicking off the marketing of the film. Because we’re also going into this knowing that we’re taking a creative risk. We’re doing something a little weird, a little different. We don’t know what the response is going to be. We don’t even know if it’s going to be good yet, we have to pull it off first. But should we find ourselves in a situation where we have to self-market or self-distribute the film, a great way to do that is to have a bunch of people who’ve already invested in you completing it, and that is crowdfunding. And so, we knew, whatever we get, we’re putting on screen. We’re going to crowdfund for the rest. And then whatever’s left, we’ll, we’ll see what happens with that, in the idea of scaling up a little bit by pitching to other production companies or other investors. Because when you have money raised already, and you’re going to go out and make your film are ready. That’s a very different conversation that you can have with an investor or with a production company, because you’re not knocking on your door on their door, saying, “Please help me make a film.” You’re knocking on their door saying there’s a film being made trains leaving the station, do you want to get on it? Here’s our business plan. Here’s what we are, here’s the maximum that our budget will be because we’re staying under sag ultralow. Here’s the maximum our budget would be, here’s the genre, here’s what I want to do creatively, visually, here are some comps and other films that have been made for around this budget, bigger budget, here’s what they’ve made, here’s what they’ve not been able to do. And do these numbers make sense? Does the worst-case scenario we can barely break even over the course of five years, because we got to selfish or whatever. Is it a small enough to ask for a small enough investment on your part, we’re kind of can make sense for you. And that’s a different conversation, that you’re presenting to them really an investment opportunity, but it’s a business conversation. It’s not really do I like your script creatively? Do I blah, blah, blah, whatever. Do I have notes, it’s not even that it’s did the numbers make sense. And in this case, for a company that we found, do another producer that we brought on to the project to be the UPM. We found one with entertainment, which is a company based out of France, they were into it. You were like yeah, actually, I can we can see this working, we can see this selling internationally, it’s going to be tricky, because you know, tiny little indie film, and this was still looking at pre COVID numbers to was that changed a little bit. But they’re like, yeah, we can do this. And they, they put some money in. They donated in kind VFX versus like, part of that budget was taken out. They even brought another equity investor to the table to put some more money in. And we ended up doubling the budget. After we had our shoot dates, and most of our cast, everything was gone. We know we’re making the film, the budget doubled. And then we can at that point, we can stretch out a little bit be a little bit more comfortable in how we do it. And then at that point, we can afford Casper Van Dian.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, that’s a great story. And I hope people really listened to that. It was a lot of work and a lot of patchwork, putting that together. And that’s how a lot of independent films get made. We are running out of time, just quickly, how can people see Daughter what’s the release schedule like?
Corey Deshon
Yeah, we’re coming out on Friday, depending on the city that you’re in, we’re going to play a couple of theaters around we’ll be here in LA, it will be a theater in Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis. And the schedule should be online on Instagram and Twitter and stuff like that perfect, perfect theatres. And then we’re going to be out on pretty much every VOD service anywhere you would normally go to rent films or buy films or should be out February 10th. Needs coming out during the summer, we’re actually getting a physical media too.
Ashley
Nice. And what’s the best way for people to keep up keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, anything you’re comfortable sharing? I will put in the show notes so people can click over.
Corey Deshon
Sure. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. I’m just at my name CoreyDeshon. Okay, posting like some behind the scenes stuff about Daughter at the moment and some other cool projects I’m working on.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. Well, Cory, I really appreciate you coming on. This was a great interview. Congratulations, getting this film done. And I look forward to following your career and seeing what else do you do.
Corey Deshon
Well, thanks so much. It was a pleasure to be here.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
SYS 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 SBS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get two 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 us 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 a 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 producer Mark Berman, who just did a cool action thriller feature called Ambush starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Aaron Eckert. We talked through his career he started out just by being an onset pa working his way up to producing and now he is writing and directing feature films. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.