This is a transcript of SYS 489 – Making A Hit Web Series With Daniel B. Iske .
Welcome to Episode 489 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with selling your screenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing Daniel Iske, horror anthology series – The Dead Hour is being released on Tubi and Amazon. We talk about this series and how it all came together for him. This is a project that he and his partners originally bootstrapped with very little money. But after a few episodes, they were able to raise more money and ended up doing three seasons of this series, raising more money each time they did a season. So now they’re releasing the whole series, as I said, on Tubi and Amazon here in the next couple of weeks. And we talked through this whole process with him, so stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s six figure screenplay contest is open for submissions, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our final deadline is July 31st. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m 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 scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. We have a short film category 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means submit that as well. I’ve got a good number of industry judge producers who are looking specifically for short scripts to produce. If you want to submit to the contest or learn more about it, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Also, once again this year, we’re running an in-person Film Festival in tandem with our screenplay contest. It’s for low budget films produced for less than 1 million US dollars. We have features and shorts. The festival is going to take place here in Los Angeles, California in early October. If you produced a short film or know someone who has by all means please do submit it or a feature film obviously. The shorts are super easy to program. So, if you want to have a screening here on Los Angeles, this is a pretty easy way to do it. As I said short films are very easy to program, we have a nice theater in Glendale it’s called the Look Dine-In cinema it’s a really high-end movie theater I’ve been able to secure for this festival. So, it’d be a great screening for all the films the features and shorts that do get accepted into the festival. If you have a finished film, or as I said know someone who would please do consider submitting it. You can learn more about that by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival. Our actual page for taking submissions is actually on Film Freeway, and you’ll see a link on that sellingyourscreenplay/festival page. But you can also just go to Film Festival and search for SYS six figure Film Festival and screenplay contest and we should come up as well. So once again, if any of this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, definitely check out www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest or just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival if you have a finished film. 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 489. If you want my free guide How to Sell a screenplay in five weeks and 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 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 quick few words about what I’m working on. Haven’t done a real update in a few weeks. But I have been busy working on a few different projects. I’m still working on the Rideshare Killer’s NFTs, we’re going to be doing a big giveaway with the NFTs and I’m getting that all sorted out, we’re going to be giving away literally 1000s and 1000s of these NFT. So, it’s not a simple thing to just push them out, I’ve got to get quite a few things in place. And then you know, the whole thing has to ultimately kind of be automated because it’s literally going to be 1000s. So, I’m working through that this week, and probably another week or two. We’re hoping we can give away enough of these to kind of hit a critical mass that really create some buzz around the movie. And really, hopefully bring some eyeballs back to it. So really trying to do some marketing for the Rideshare Killer and just get more people interested in the film. And then the other big thing I’ve been working on I’ve been talking about this on a podcast now for probably a year but I’m still working on my rewrite with my indie rom-com. It’s going very slowly, needless to say, as I’m just pushing on so many different fronts and so many different projects going on. But I basically have the project ready to go in terms of the financing and stuff I still have to figure out locations and cast and crew and all that sort of stuff. But once the script is in place, I think I’ll be able to get the funding in place fairly quickly. And then, you know, we’ll be off to the races, getting locations and hiring crew and casting actors and all that sort of stuff. And obviously, you know, it’s just taking up a lot of times with the film festival and screenplay contest. So, those are definitely pulling me away from this rewrite. But as I said, hopefully, we’re going to be ramping up, getting that rewrite done. And then and then getting into pre-production here shortly.
I really would like to get into production. But I don’t want to rush through the script development, I do feel like with the Rideshare Killer, there was at least a little bit of rush. I mean, there were some good reasons for that, but I just want to really feel good about this script, not feel rushed. Even if it takes me an extra six months or even a year. I mean, at the end of the day, what’s really the rush, just try and make it as good as possible. So that’s kind of where I’m at with my indie rom com. Anyways, those are some of the things I’ve been working on. Now, let’s get into the main segment. Today, I’m interviewing writer-director, Daniel Iske. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome, Daniel to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Daniel Iske
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
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?
Daniel Iske
I grew up in Nebraska on a farm, believe it or not. My brother and I used to, you know, we’d be bored, so we would grab a VHS camera and just started making films, you know, just with Star Wars guys or GI Joe guys, you know, and just kind of goofy stuff. And I was just taken right away. I love it’s kind of the movie making business, the storytelling business, started making little movies with my friends in high school, went to film school at Nebraska, and then just kind of started making films after that.
Ashley
Okay, so let’s talk about that just for a second. I’m in Los Angeles. So, I run into a lot of USC grads, and this is just how would you, now, someone that’s been through film school in Nebraska, you know, it’s not USC. But there’s some great programs out there that are not necessarily as heralded as USC, but what is your take when someone comes to you now, you’ve been through the gauntlet a little bit, and they say, ‘Should I go to film school?’ What is your recommendation on that?
Daniel Iske
I mean, when I started at Nebraska, the film major was brand new, like we had like a storage closet with one that Mac computer. Now at Nebraska, the Johnny Carson fund has given millions and millions of dollars concerning Carson went or is from Nebraska, and his family. And so now the kids there have all these toys and all this stuff. So, it’s way different than when I went. Nothing is better than actually going out and doing it learning making mistakes, you know, having to overcome obstacles on set, just doing as many films as you can, working with the crew, learning how to work with actors could collaborate to take constructive criticism. So that’s kind of my take on it.
Ashley
I got you. I got you. So, let’s just talk about, so then you’re out of film school. And then you’re starting to do some films. I noticed on IMDb; your first film credit is one that you directed called The Wretched. And I guess you also edit it as well. Maybe just quickly, how did you get that? So clearly, you’re not super experienced when you’re doing this movie, maybe you have some film school experience. But how did you get that one into production? How did you get that film produced?
Daniel Iske
That was our first my first venture into horror, I had done some other kinds of genres. And then my writer Scott Coleman who co-created the dead hour with me, came to me and said, I have this horror script. You know, growing up on a farm, I had a location. And we just kind of went out and filmed it. It started as The Wretched. And then a few years later, it got picked up and became Fields of The Dead. So, it kind of morphed into a new title. And we got released on Redbox and on demand. And all this stuff, which was a mind-blowing experience. I never expected a little film that we made, you know, out in the country to be in bread boxes in grocery stores and stuff like that. So that was kind of our first or my first venture into horror. And after that, this is kind of going to set up the data where we wanted to do more kind of horror stories. But we wanted to do a series and so we kind of came up with the data or the horror anthology series where we wanted to tell different short horror stories, you know, kind of like campfire tales, urban legends. And so that’s kind of the genesis of The Dead Hour.
Ashley
Okay, so yeah, so that’s a good transition into it. So just give us sort of an overview. You did this for a number of years. It looks like there’s three seasons. There’s a bunch of episodes per season. You wrote some of them, directed some of them, produced some of them so just talk us through the end it was your partner Scott, maybe even take a step back. So how did you meet Scott? How was that? Where did you originally meet him? And how did you guys form a partnership?
Daniel Iske
Very young, we went to high school together. And then we went to the same college. He wasn’t in film, but he was always a screenwriter and I liked working with somebody, you know, let’s friends with had had a good passion, he was way more on the writer side. And I was definitely more of like the vision, coming up with concepts, executing them. And he was good with creating characters and writing dialogue. And so that’s always been a good collaboration. And so, we worked on the wretched – fields of the dead. And then we went into The Dead Hour. And so, we started really, with the concept, we said; okay, how do we tie these together, we were fans of, you know, Twilight Zone tales from the crypt, we kind of want we wanted to host and so we came up with the idea to have this, you know, mysterious late night radio DJ, who was in this little studio and was telling the stories to our audience. And so, she would introduce the story, and then we would delve into it visually, through the filmmaking part of it.
Ashley
Gotcha. Okay, so what was the original concept here, you were going to do a series did you have distribution, like as an independent filmmaker, this is something that I’ve wondered about. And I haven’t really seen a lot of examples. As independent filmmaker, myself, I know, when you start to distribute stuff, you know, every film project is basically a one off, you have to build a new audience, it’s a new title. So, your things and I’ve always thought, you know, doing something with some consistency, you might be able to bring that audience along over the course of many episodes to yours. So, what was sort of your thinking and going into this? Like, why not do another feature it sounds like the Wretched was fairly successful, you made a low budget movie, you got distribution made some money, why not follow that model, why go and then start doing episodic?
Daniel Iske
So, when we didn’t get the film fields with the dead, which was originally called the wretched, you know, we did the festival run. And we didn’t have distribution at the time, it took us about six, seven years before we finally did get kind of picked up. Well, about five years before somebody kind of found us. They picked found a screener at one of the film festivals that we were in approach to so we actually started filming or creating The Dead Hour before we ever thought, oh, we could get distributed, you know, we just did the film thinking, oh, we’ll do the festival thing and maybe put it on disk on ourselves and move on. So, when we started the Dead Hour it was originally supposed to be and was just a web series that was going to be on our website. And we would just, you know, try to push it and see if you know, we could catch someone’s attention. So that really, you know, when we were filming the original. We’re filming most all of these episodes, a lot of these streaming platforms weren’t even, you know, in existence for us. So, the show has kind of, you know, we were, I don’t want to brag, but a little bit ahead of our time, where we were kind of trying to push our own thing. And now with these platforms, it allows filmmakers, we filmed everything in Omaha, Nebraska, you know, with local talent with pretty much no budget, you know, is just basically food and props, and, and things like that. And, you know, we’re able to next week hopefully reach an audience that may like our shows, so that’s pretty cool, I think.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about just your writing process. In general, we can talk specifically about some of these episodes that you watch. So first of all, as you guys are coming up with this, did you and Scott both have some ideas and so, you went off and ran with those ideas? You would write a script, he would write a script?
Daniel Iske
Yeah. So, for about maybe a year, we would just have like creative powwows where we would spend a week, or a week or two, just coming up with first just random ideas. You know, one of the things I’d like to say is one of the episodes, it was called The Hole in the synopsis was a man is digging a hole in his backyard. Why? And that was it, you know, we just wouldn’t throw something, just a random idea. We come have no books full of like, hundreds and hundreds of ideas. I would pick the ones I like to his you know, and he pick a few of mine. And then we start kind of like fleshing them out with a little bit more of a one-page synopsis. And then, you know, we pick the ones from that that we liked. And we go in, Scott did most of the full-blown script writing so he would take it from there and say, okay, and get a script, I get a script back, we make revisions. And then we would have maybe, you know, 20 scripts and we’d say okay, let’s do these five. I think these you know, are the best. These are ones I think we could pull off because there was at least one episode or more in the second season that I was like; we love this idea, but we just don’t have, you know, the capability of pulling this off. So, in season two, we kind of had a budget, we had more people, we had more crew, people were kind of digging what we were doing and wanted to help. And so we were able to this, our lead episode in Season Two called Fright Fest, it’s like a, this couple goes on a date, overnight, you know, horror movie marathon walk in, in this old movie theater with a bunch of extras and stuff like that, because things are coming to life off the screen. And we were like, this is so cool. We never thought we’d be able to pull this off, you know, and we were, you know, really stepped it up. And that’s when we were like this is, you know, we’re really finally telling the stories that we want to tell in a way we want to tell them.
Ashley
Yeah, and maybe you could talk to that a little bit, and maybe even talk as a director, you know, what are some tips for screenwriters that want to watch low budget or want to write low budget films, obviously, there’s the normal stuff, you can’t have helicopters, big crowd scene, stadium scenes, but there’s some other some other things, tips that you could give us that are maybe not quite as intuitive that you could tell writers, you know, what, as a director, as a producer, these things are going to be costly, and you don’t get the bang for your buck out of them, that’s going to for a low budget production that you can really afford them.
Daniel Iske
That’s a great point. Because, you know, you want to, as writers, you know, because I’m a writer too, but as a director, you want writers to have no limits to be as creative as possible, and really not put constraints on because you don’t want to put constraints on creativity. But I mean, writers do, you need to kind of think about the logistics of it, because I remember the Fright fest script was great. But I told Scott at this moment, like we just can’t pull this off. So, I think going in kind of knowing, okay, if this is has a realistic shot of being made by a director or producer with a really low budget, I have to be conscious of that. And I have to keep that in mind how is this going to be made? If I have these scenes, well, that’s not going to be possible to do. so, I kind of do have to think a little bit like a producer or director with a budget in mind and locations in mind. And if you have a scene where there’s 300 extras running down the street, is that really possible? How you know, how are you going to get 300 people to willingly show up and do this for a day? And things like that.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So, another thing I’d be curious just to get your opinion on. Again, I’m a low budget filmmaker here in LA. So, I see the LA scene. And there’s a lot of advantages to being in LA, you have access to a deep pool of talented cast and crew, I’d say that’s probably the single biggest advantage. Whereas when you get outside, but the disadvantage is you show up at a restaurant, tell them you’re shooting a film, they want $5,000 a day because CBS was just there yesterday, paying them $5,000 a day. So, you run into permitting issues there. There’s sort of a negativity that comes with trying to shoot on streets and yards and stuff. But what do you find is some of the advantages like you talked about you had this farm? It sounds like your first one. But what do you find with cast and crew? Are there some tips? How do you find the talented cast and crew in Nebraska?
Daniel Iske
I think you’re definitely right. There’s pros and cons, you know, being in LA and there’s pros and cons, you know, here like doing local in Nebraska where maybe we’re able to get into some locations, because most restaurants or places are like, once they’re like, you’re doing what, and then they’re like; Well, that’s pretty cool, actually, and then kind of excited, and they’re like, oh, this will be kind of neat and it’s a story to tell. And, you know, we have city locations, we have rural locations that are really cool here, we have cornfields, we have abandoned barns and kind of cool locations that maybe are a little unique to the Midwest and then maybe other places. And there is great talent I mean, there are a lot of actors and especially you know, kind of the younger actors who maybe haven’t moved to the coast yet that are looking for you know, projects to be a part of to put it on the reel before they move out so you know, there’s a chance to kind of capture lightning in a bottle with some actors who are starting out who are looking for a good project.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And what about the crew? Can you find experienced sound guy and experienced makeup artists, you know, especially for something like horror, you are going to need that makeup, probably. But you certainly you want experienced sound guy, experienced cinematographer, you know those sorts of technical chops you need.
Daniel Iske
Right. So, I mean, it’s not like we have the union crew, and stuff like that LA can offer but there are a lot of talented people that are working on their own projects on corporate stuff so you actually can’t find a really good camera person, really good sound guy, good makeup artists, you know, I mean, some people are just doing it for fun, some people are, you know, I mean, there’s not enough horror work to have a full blown, but there are many different kinds of horror makeup crews that just like love doing it. They’re just kind of a fan of film and fan of horror, and they’re around. Once we got the word out about the show, it was amazing to see people like just coming from everywhere. They’re like, yeah, this would be cool to work on.
Ashley
Yeah. And so, what does that actually mean getting the word out there? Do you go to place like a Craigslist ad we’re crewing up. We need a cinematographer. Are you involved with some local film communities that, you know, you sort of network that way? But what are the actual logistics of actually putting word out there in a place like Nebraska?
Daniel Iske
Yeah, I mean, we just have a really great local network here in Nebraska, of just a lot of people, you know. Especially over the last, I mean, it’s grown so much over the last 10-15 years of especially with the equipment, and people being able to just shoot a lot, we have a great Omaha film festival here in Omaha. So, there’s an outlet for people and the films that were 15 years ago at the film festival to where they are now is just incredible. There’s a lot of different talented people who, you know, most of them, they don’t do it for a living, but they’re interested, they want to tell films. So, there are people out there, there’s Facebook pages, and networking events. And like I said, the film festival, has really brought people together and people that want to be a part in either acting or crew. You know, they hear about your projects now. And so, you get a lot of people that can pick, you know, and choose and say, yeah, I’d like to help out this weekend if you guys are filming.
Ashley
And so, what is your recommendation to a young filmmaker? Do you recommend they go and be a volunteer at the film festival, just show up and try and network and see as many films, try and do a short film and get the short film and so your filmmaker, just what is your recommendation?
Daniel Iske
Absolutely. Go to every networking event, you know, every mixer, go to the film festival, talk to other directors, you know, crew on as many short films and things that you can and then start making your own, you know, get your team together. And with a camera and film for maybe a weekend or two and put a short film together that you can submit it to a couple festivals, you know, and just start from there. And you got to plant the seed to watch it, to get it to grow.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let’s just dig into your writing process a little bit. I’m always curious just to hear how just the process of getting through a script. When do you typically write? Are you a morning guy, you’re your late-night guy? Do you go to Starbucks and you know, ambiance noise, what is just your writing process look like?
Daniel Iske
Sometimes it’s nice to be out, I mostly like to be left alone. And I’m a notebook guy, I can’t type very well, you know, it’s just like, I have just notebooks. And I keep on on my nightstand next to my bed, because I’ll wake up with an idea. And my brains kind of crazy like that. But yeah, I’m more just scribbling in a notebook, and then, you know, typing it out later. So, I’ll have the whole episode when I do mine. I know, Scott types more than I do. But when I do mine, I have actual 14 pages of scribbled, you know, dialogue in a notebook done, so. And then you know, I like that process from going from the notebook to the computer and the actual script, because then I make a lot of my adjustments and things. It’s like, giving it a second look for me. And then obviously, me and Scott always trade back and forth and get each other’s feedback, you know, because we miss things or add things that the other person isn’t seeing. So, we have a pretty good process through that.
Ashley
Gotcha. And you call it The Dead Hour? Are these one-hour episodes, each episode was one hour?
Daniel Iske
No. So, The Dead Hour just refers to 2am, which is when like her show is, so each episode is there between like 15 and 22 minutes. So, they’re pretty short. But we’re able to do that because, you know, we write DJ Raven, who’s the host of The Dead Hour Show played by Melissa Holder, we write her a little, you know, paragraph intro opening in this kind of unique voice that she’s really taken on. And it’s able to set the story up, she kind of gives us everything we need to know so that we can just jump right in to the episode, we don’t have to have a big build up. So, it’s a little bit different than you know, writing a regular screenplay, where you have the acts one, two and three and either, you know, most of the first set, we get the first act done in the intro in that first minute. And so that’s a little bit unique in the screenwriting process for us to get all that done in that paragraph. And then we start writing basically with actor to have this short story after that.
Ashley
And so, what did this look like as you guys are going through this process, it sounded like you did a bunch of scripts realize some of them you just couldn’t shoot for that first season. So how many scripts did you actually have once you said; okay, we’re going to go shoot these?
Daniel Iske
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, we had way more…I mean, we maybe had 20 scripts going in to the first five, and then we pretty much pulled in the second season from the ones we just weren’t able to do but really liked. And I think we may be added one or two new ones in the second season from just new ideas that we had kind of come up with during the process that we didn’t have originally. Yeah, there were a lot of episodes that we still haven’t done yet. There are episodes that we filmed the intro for with Melissa, that we haven’t even done yet. And, yeah, so that’s kind of unique too.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, once you sort of settled on a couple of scripts, what is that next step for actually raising some money, and actually putting the crew together and getting into production?
Daniel Iske
So, the first season, we just did out of pocket, the second season, we held some fundraisers, some mixers and things, and a lot of people in the community showed up and wanted to help out. So, you know, we were able to have a little bit of a budget to pay some makeup artists to get some better equipment, you know, get into some locations with some fees that we were able to pay to get in. And then we would have our open casting calls for local talent, you know, and then we would say, okay, these are the scripts we’re doing, you know, we need to start pre-production, we need to cast, start finding locations and start setting up filming dates.
Ashley
So just real quick, describe these events that you’re talking about. When you said fundraising, the first thing I thought of, of course, was like Kickstarter, Indiegogo. But it sounds like you set up some sort of, they’re like little mixers, you meet at a bar, you rent some space, you try and do a presentation. What did these mixers actually look like? And how do they work?
Daniel Iske
Yeah, one was like in a local brewery that was big. I can’t remember where the other one was.
Ashley
You just invited people in your network friends and family, you told me was your family to tell everyone?
Daniel Iske
Yeah, just like through Facebook, and different ways, we would say, we’re having this fundraiser event, you know, it was after the first season, we design these, like, cool vintage, 50 style, like posters of the episodes, we would have options to the crowd, we had a couple 100 people there. So, people would donate, they could buy the posters on auction, and different things like that. And so, it was really cool to have that kind of support locally. It’s just people who wanted to see the show, keep going and be a part of it.
Ashley
And so, what is your pitch to them? Like, when on Facebook, are you saying; okay, we’re going to watch some of these episodes, and you can build this community. And by the way, there’s free beer, like, what is the actual pitch to get people in the door?
Daniel Iske
Yeah, I think it was probably beer, it was, come be a part of this, you can meet other people, we’re going to be there, we have the cast and crew of the first season. You know, we just basically said, this is just going to be a fun night for an hour or two. You know, even if you don’t want to give anything, if you just want to come out and be a part of it, that would be cool, too. You know, and so, we always had overwhelming support on stuff like that.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so now there’s three seasons that you guys completed, and there’s four episodes per season?
Daniel Iske
Well, we had five in the first season, five in the second season, and then two in the third. And then we kind of halted production for various reasons. And then we were trying to get season three kind of back up and running. And we’re just kind of running into some problems. And I guess we were all getting a little bit older at the time, and we were kind of had lives and kids and stuff that were taking a little bit more of a priority. And we were always looking to kind of start things back up, and then COVID hit, and then, right, I think after COVID is when terror films came in, and Joe kind of reached out and he had heard about the show, and watched it and said, I think we could do something with this on the streaming platforms that exist. So, we’ve kind of been in that kind of holding pattern and getting these ready for the release the last two years. So that’s kind of been our journey.
Ashley
Gotcha. Did you originally publish these on like YouTube on your channel, as you originally anticipate?
Daniel Iske
Yeah. They just lived on our website, you know, and so I mean, we wouldn’t really get I mean, it would be like 1000 views or something like that. So, they just kind of live there for a while. And then when we, you know, obviously we had a we took them down about two years ago. I think it was in preparation for the release. So yeah, I mean, they just kind of lived as a web series. We were just kind of had them out there. But you know, we never, unless you stumbled upon it, you know, or saw something, mostly just local people that knew us that would watch.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And do you know how Terror films found you? Like just found on the website, but was it a recommendation? Did you guys send them a cold query letter saying check us out? Was there anything?
Daniel Iske
It was, I knew this guy, Aaron Parks who produced our Fields of The Dead movie, and he was in LA. And just, I think the story was, he just ran into Joe somewhere. And Joe’s asked him if he knew of any kind of horror projects, and he goes, actually how you should talk to my buddy, Dan. So, he set up a phone call with us about two years ago, I think it was and he’s like, you should talk to this guy. I think you’re going to really like them. And he’s got a plan for this that could reach a much, much wider audience than where we’re at now. And so that’s just kind of how it went down. So, we had a conversation and I did like Joe, and I liked what he was pitching. And I liked what he thought the show could be on these platforms. And so that was pretty exciting.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah for sure. So, I always like to just end the interviews by just asking the guest, if there’s anything they’ve seen recently, obviously we’ll pitch The Dead Hour here to our audience. But is there anything you’ve seen on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, that you can just recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Daniel Iske
So, I’m pretty sure it’s on Netflix. But 1899. It’s a series I think it’s only I don’t, it’s definitely one season. I don’t know. It just came out in November. It was really incredible. And the way it ended, I don’t know if there’s going to be more seasons, or if it was just a limited series. But it really reminded me of what the old series Lost was and could have been if they hadn’t done the later seasons the way they did. So, it’s definitely like this mystery. And I think it’s a German. I think it was filmed in, I think it’s like a German Studio series, but 1899, dubbing is really good. You can barely notice it.
Ashley
Perfect. Yeah, that’s a great. Yeah, I haven’t seen that. That sounds like a great recommendation. How can people see The Dead Hour? Do you know what the release schedule for The Dead Hour is going to be like?
Daniel Iske
Oh, next Friday, May 12th. Is the streaming release date. It’s going to be on a bunch of streaming platforms; Tubi, Amazon, Google Play, watch movies now, kings of horror. I can never remember all of them. There’s a whole bunch.
Ashley
Yep, yep. Perfect. Perfect. And what’s the best way for people to just keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will round up and put in the show notes.
Daniel Iske
I’m not on Twitter, which amazes everybody, but I’m on Instagram, The Dead Hours Show has a page on Facebook with followers, it’s Dead Hour series. It’s easy to find.
Ashley
Perfect. Yeah, I’ll round that stuff up for the show notes, people can click over to it. Well, Daniel, I really appreciate you coming on talking with me today. Good luck with this project. And good luck with future projects as well.
Daniel Iske
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. 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 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 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 actor-writer-producer, Annabel Monroe. She also runs the ethos Film Awards here in Hollywood. She’s originally from Germany, and started her career there as an actor, but then moved to New York City, and then Los Angeles where she lives now. She started to write and produce her own material, which was her own material so that she could act in it. So that was really her start. We talked through some of those early projects, and then some of the later projects that she’s gone on to write and produce. So, it’s very interesting. She’s very candid. And I think it’s a great story for a lot of writers to hear because she took on that producing hat to make things happen for herself. It wasn’t like a natural fit or something that you she set out to do. And I think I find myself in sort of a similar situation where I’m doing a lot of producing and getting things off the ground as a producer, just really to get my own scripts into production. So, I was fascinated just to talk to her and hear her story. Hopefully, everybody that listened to this will as well. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.