The Vision Maker Podcast
The Vision Maker Podcast
EP 23 - Filmmaking in the Fast Lane with Anthony Natoli
Strap in for an unforgettable adventure between the music sheets and film reels, as we unravel the fascinating journey of Anthony Natoli, a melodious musician turned visionary filmmaker. Anthony offers an intimate look into his initial foray into music, its evolution into a fervor for filmmaking, the intriguing tales from his musical career, and unique insights into audio engineering and lighting. As the pandemic scripts a new chapter in the world of creativity, listen to Anthony's enlightening perspectives on the transformation of music and film industry, and the pressing need for artists to don a range of skill sets.
Join us as Anthony unfolds his unique approach to directing and filmmaking, revealing his philosophy of adapting to the project, situation, and the people he works alongside. His experience of directing different actors, extracting their unique contributions while navigating the ever-changing industry landscape due to digital advancements is a testament to his adaptability. The conversation takes a deeper turn as we explore the shift towards independent filmmaking and how digital technology has empowered filmmakers to produce larger scale films with limited resources.
As Anthony shares his exhilarating experience of filming a backyard concert, we touch upon the essence of rhythm, music and rapport in creating a high-budget feel. Finding a supportive tribe in the film industry and adaptability are highlighted as crucial attributes for success. In this constantly evolving era, Anthony's tips for aspiring filmmakers coupled with our discussion on fostering relationships and treating people with respect are key takeaways. Immerse yourself in this insightful conversation, brimming with wisdom, experiences, and tips, and see the world through the lens of a filmmaker who's been on both sides of the creative spectrum.
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And welcome to the Vision Maker podcast. I'm your host, victor Miranda, here, and I have the pleasure to be with today's guest, anthony Natoli. He's a director and filmmaker and, anthony, would you introduce yourself to the audience, give them a little more of your background?
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm a filmmaker. I've been doing this for a better part of a decade now. I started off as a musician, producing music for the most of my teens and my 20s and then started getting into filmmaking, and it seems like there's a lot of correlation between filmmakers and people who used to be musicians in my circle as we figured out from you as well, so you're part of my group of musicians that turned filmmaker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting that seemed to be something that happened also pretty exceptionally during the pandemic. I love audio engineer. Friends I know now do a lot of video work yeah.
Speaker 2:I think in this day and age you kind of need to be everything. We don't have producers and directors. In the same way that we used to 15 years ago, you're sort of in charge of your own destiny.
Speaker 2:So if you're a musician- you got to probably produce your own records at this point. If you are a filmmaker, you probably got to produce your own stuff. If you're a musician, you're probably going to produce your own content visual. So it goes hand in hand, I think. So I think we're starting to see a bigger coagulation of different mediums coming into this chefs, people that are big on TikTok or getting good with lighting, because they have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would love for you to expand actually a little bit to our previous conversation earlier today. I would love for you to dive into your background actually as a musician and how it kind of led you into filmmaking and that journey, those kinds of trends that you've seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I've been playing guitar since I was about four and I grew up in a very musical household. My uncle is a professional guitar player. We drove race cars. We had always things on a trailer going somewhere to go fast. So music and racing were always a big part of my life, and I think how that connects to filmmaking. As a musician studying guitar, playing drums, recording you tend to see that there's a lot of commonality between all of those things.
Speaker 1:On parallels.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a car engine wants to be happy, balanced, needs a mixture of air and fuel, and it's the same thing with cooking, Making something it needs a certain combination of stuff. Music too much, too little of anything could ruin a mix or whatever. But I grew up with mechanics and musicians and artists in my household, so I went down the path being a musician. I always raced go-karts and dirt bikes and race cars, but by the time I was in high school or leaving high school, I should say I was drag racing at English Town Raceway Park in New Jersey and I wound up becoming the track champion there for the high school division and that's pretty sick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was Drive past cars at that age. It was fun.
Speaker 2:It was definitely a blast. But at the same exact time my band was doing very well and we played a show at CBGB's one night, got a lot of interest and went up sign in the capital records. Right at the same time I won the championship and I also was about to go to college.
Speaker 1:You must have felt on top of the world at that moment.
Speaker 2:I guess not really, because when I look back, I mean I definitely felt good, it was fun, but I was very conflicted because I was like am I going to keep drag racing? Because I think I could probably take this further as a musician. I was like this is the path that I really want to do.
Speaker 1:It was a very pivotal moment then for you. Because you had on the surface it sounds like a lot of really great accolades for anybody in any one of those singular fields would be looking for, but to have them across a couple of directions is like you could have took one and ran with it in several directions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I could sense the tension.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I was a terrible student. I was not an idiot, but I would do really well on tests.
Speaker 1:But I would never do my homework.
Speaker 2:I would go home and play guitar all night long. My parents would think I went to sleep. I'm still working out of solo for Metallica. Homework never made sense to me. Yeah, I'm good at retaining information, for the most part.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you show me a movie I can probably site back Precisely.
Speaker 2:So I didn't really want to go to college although I did. I went to Nassau Community College for a little while, but it really was very short lived. I did go back because my band, we were recording, we were doing trying to tour and stuff like that. But that was the same year, pretty much, that iTunes dropped and the whole world imploded. Nobody knew what to do with anything. So we kind of got shelved as the term goes where they weren't sure what to do with us. So we started producing music and writing ghost writing for other people, wound up doing like a Delta Airlines commercial for the holidays where we had all these cups with water different amounts of water in there and we're using them as an instrument. So we did a lot of cool stuff that was outside of our artistic expression of ourselves, but it was kind of not rewarding in my monetarily. To some degree it could be rewarding.
Speaker 1:And you started to do the work of musicians but not really doing the original artist side of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that kind of caught up with me in my late twenties where I was just saying to myself I'm really hating this and even though we were getting cuts, we were having huge songs in Korea and all these places and I was like I'm feeling nothing from this and that was a signal to me to start something different. And my filmmaking journey started right around then, where I had started this song on a ukulele and it was during the winter and it just felt like dualistic, Like you think?
Speaker 2:ukulele. You think you're on an island in Hawaii. But I was writing a song for the snow, because it was snowing, it's pretty cool. And about the same day or so, I got my first iPhone and had the slow-mo in it and I started filming the snow just for fun, and I was like, wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:Like I never really picked up a camera before that. I mean not trying to do anything ever. Yeah, you know, I would film my dad's race car going down the track. You know I would pick up a camera if somebody needed a photo of them. But like I actually used to make fun of photographers and because I'd say, what are you doing here pushing a button? You know I'm over here playing every note I can and not thinking that it's that impressive until I started doing it and I went. I retract my statement. This is extremely difficult. How do they do that? How are they drawing so much emotion from a camera?
Speaker 2:And that's where my journey really began and I produced some music videos for a couple of songs that I wrote that I was just learning. I was like, oh, I'm just going to put together something that feels like winter, right, and produce this song with my friends. It came out great and from there I decided I was going to do one for each season of the year and did that. And during I kind of did that because I had the script that I wanted to make at some point maybe, but I didn't know if I could. I didn't know if I had the talent, the ability. So this was sort of my film school, was like all right, I'm going to take this year and learn on an iPhone how to make a music video and see if I can do it. And I jumped from that to making a feature length film and the rest is history. Now I'm doing, I can't stop. I'm doing this stuff professionally all the time.
Speaker 1:So oh yeah, I've seen, I've seen, I've been keeping up with you and you're doing now major brand shoots and, like you just got off of the Wells Fargo commercial, yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I'm being chased by mascots in my sleep.
Speaker 1:Oh, are you able to talk a little bit about that or some of that experience?
Speaker 2:I could, I could talk to the experience of it, I guess, because I don't want to, is that, was that? I don't know if legal is watching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're definitely keeping up with our podcast. Yeah, who is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you know the commercial work is like it's very fun. It's. It's interesting, you know, flying down to Georgia, florida, south Carolina, doing these commercial spots for some colleges and this company and it's it's amazingly fun work. I know you've had James Morano on here, who's my partner in crime. We do a lot of crazy stuff together. He helped me out with my film and we're working on a sequel to that film now together. Amazing, and yeah, you know it's, it's interesting to watch. And I know you had Tom Flynn on here. There's also a buddy of mine and we all kind of grew into this field at similar times and different tangents. But Actually I think we're all gonna be on a set next month together, which is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's music video.
Speaker 2:So I'm excited for that. You know, first time, all three of our brains are on something now, so I'm looking forward to that Is it, keith Buckley thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a big fan of every time I die. So when he posted that you know he was looking for extras, I was like yo.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, help. Yeah, honestly that's because I am.
Speaker 2:I very rarely do anything like that, but just because it's Keith Buckley, I was like, yeah, I kind of want to see this, I want to hear, I just want to hear it more than anything. I'm like I can't wait to hear what he's working on.
Speaker 1:Oh man, there's no. In a parallel universe we're actually. When I saw that too, I was like about to jump on it. It would have been so crazy if all of us were there. Oh yeah, but we actually have our next round of guests on that that day too.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, but I have a shoot that morning, for I shoot for the Ronald McDonald house as well, I do their social media. That's just a great, a great charity.
Speaker 1:How'd you get connected with that?
Speaker 2:my wife. She started volunteering there about over a decade ago and Drag me to an event one night. I was like you're gonna help move chairs, I don't care what you're doing tonight, you're coming and helping. I was like all right, so I came and I Move chairs and got to know people and it was a great experience. And then I really got to understand what Ronald McDonald house is about. Yeah, for those listeners who don't know, it's an organization that keeps families close to the To their children while they're in the hospital, fighting off whatever anything from cancer to and they go up to like 21 years old. So it's just a great Opportunity to help out people. That really need it.
Speaker 1:So did they do it? By providing resources, by providing financial support or a mix of it all?
Speaker 2:Yeah, not not as much financial, but there they help them with housing housing transportation Transportation which goes a long way, and especially when they're right next to the hospital, it's a huge thing. So we have a shoot coming up for them where we do a family interview every year and we tell their story and James and I usually, you know, partner up on that because I'm usually interviewing and yeah, whatever, and I kind of it's tough to do everything yourself.
Speaker 1:So really nice thing about like working with nonprofits. We have the opportunity of working with a few out here, right, and it's like Getting to kind of hear the stories and in a lot of ways, I feel like you know we're doing our part too, because it's really it helps the nonprofit themselves Expand their mission, because video is such an important thing for nonprofits too. Yeah, because you know, it's like I think a lot of people give a flag to nonprofits because they're constantly asking for money, right, but I mean, at the same time, it's like when you finally get to know like what the missions are and like the actual direct impacts and your capturing stories, it's like then you understand what they're trying to do and what they need. From that, you know yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:I Worked there as a house manager for a while, so I would check in families during the pandemic. Check out families where you know sometimes they're having the best day of their life and they're taking their baby home.
Speaker 2:Hmm as I was just the worst day of their life and I have to help them, and it's not really the most dualistic thing I've ever done, where one minute we could be smiling and happy and then brought to your knees, you know, and it's important to share those stories Because it allows people to see exactly what their don't their money is going towards when they do round up. You go to McDonald's. They say, hey, you want to put your 90 cents of change to the Ronald McDonald house? This is where it's going. It's going to toilet paper and coffee and tissues and whatever it is that keeps the house running.
Speaker 2:And so, as a filmmaker, this is like my favorite stuff to do because, yeah, it it helps them, it helps the families, it helps me as a person, you know, to know that I'm doing my part in this world with talent and gifts that have been given to me. Yeah, so very synergistic Relationship that I have. And I just came on as a volunteer yeah, I wasn't even a filmmaker yet and then I kind of worked my way into that world and they were like, hey, you want to shoot this for us?
Speaker 1:and I was like, yeah, let's do it and it was great. So, as a, as a filmmaker, now, what we just say is your Philosophy when you approach a project, like, if you're especially as a director, as someone who is the creative in the process, like, what is your philosophy as far as tackling it, be it the goals, who you're shooting it for, and this and that?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess my philosophy changes based off of the project, understandably so. Sometimes I Do a lot of prep work, sometimes I do no prep work, sometimes I give direction, sometimes I don't. You know it's. It's really dependent on the situation. Like I'm not really gonna direct a Person to say something that they don't want to say or or isn't true in an interview.
Speaker 1:You know, depend more on the people you're working with.
Speaker 2:It does. It has also to do with what the project's about. Like, if it's my project, if I'm working on my movie, you're my movie or something my direction will be hey look, I want you to give me what I want, yeah, and then you're gonna do whatever you want and we're gonna see what happens. Because I Don't believe in, I think directing is Is a two-part process where you have to have an idea of what you want to get and then you also have to be totally cool and understanding that you're not gonna get that and that there's stuff in the ether that you wouldn't. You didn't even know you wanted. But if you're too, if you're holding on too tight to something that you want, you might not get it and you also might miss out on the great thing that's on the in the eeth and beyond. You know I, whenever I work, like we just shot, we're working on a sequel to my first film, and you know we were shooting up at the race track and I had these two actors, jesse Lyons and Joe Pantillo. They're both comedians, essentially. They're hilarious people and I'm like, okay, here's what I need. I wrote a script, you know, I had my script. And then when we're standing there. I'm like these guys can't say this. They have to give me this information in their own way, because they're too, they're too good, they're too funny to chain them up that way. So I said to him hey, look, I need you to say I need you to get this point across, this point and this point, and if you can help him by making sure that you pose this question and pose that question, do it how you want.
Speaker 2:And Every take was different. Now, some people would freak out if that was happening on their set, but it's like you're gonna get something Spectacular out of them because you're letting them be free, you know. Then there's other moments where I'm like, look, I really need you to deliver this line and not move your head and go nice and slow, bring your voice down here, because I'm telling you it'll play good and that's, that's the, that's the. The wide, the width of directing is like there's. Sometimes you really need to tell the actor and say, like, just trust me, I'm here with you, let's try it, let's try this route and then there's the other end where it's like I'm just gonna throw the ball, see if you can catch it.
Speaker 2:And and I think they both work. And then there's all this Medium. You know, there's all this play in the middle and I think, like for interviews and stuff like that To direct and coach people, it's probably not a good interview. Then you know it should be. You know, I've done documentary work too with that kind of stuff and it's like I think the best Documentaries are the one where it's just super natural.
Speaker 2:Super people are just authentic cells and relaxed and so, yeah, I think, as it it's a we, it's a weird thing to say you're a director on a Document documentary, because I'm like what are you directing? Like, okay, I can understand artistic color direction camera Sure. Yeah, but like it's not director, like Steven Spielberg's on the other side of this and Twittling his fingers and the actors mimicking everything. I don't know if you ever saw that in Indiana Jones.
Speaker 2:Yeah but in the first one the guy didn't really know what to do, I guess. So Steven Spielberg's on the other side of him and he's like just mirror everything I do, and he's, you know then, and the guy's just mirror and it looks that's what's in the shot, and it's amazing, you know. So it's like that, that level of directing, I never knew that. Yeah, that's amazing. I spent more time as a kid watching the making of things than Than the movie themselves, and I've always been like that. I mean, as a kid I took apart my guitars, I took apart my toys.
Speaker 2:Everything I was like what is making this happen. You know and, yeah, I have always been interested in beyond the veil you know what's happening around that curtain Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like who's pulling the the levers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Pinocchio, How's he moving, you know yeah where are these strings attached to?
Speaker 2:Right, and, and I think like that's what's so fun about filmmaking. It's like there's so many different avenues you can go down. I don't have a personal preference on which one I like more. I mean, I like doing documentary kind of work, but then when I'm done with it, I'm like I want to Paint with my eyes closed and just throw it on the wall and see what happens. Like there's this, I, I'm never I'm. I wouldn't say I have a niche, because I don't know. I wouldn't even know what that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my thing is I like to work with people. I like to draw things out of people that they perhaps wouldn't have known. They could you know, or or even myself, you know. It's like, oh wow, we work together and now I'm able to express myself in a way that I didn't know I could. Yeah, so I. That's really where I Gravitate towards you having a lot of nice cameras up here, everything, a lot of nice lighting. I Know almost nothing about that, yet I've been doing this, yeah, professionally, for years now. I am probably the best example of a person that's like that's gonna tell you anyone can do this, because I Still don't know. Like, thank God, I have an audio engineering background that I can like correlate a lot of this too. But like shutter speed stops. Like my James Morano, who we just discussed before, like he is oh he's like a technical genius man.
Speaker 1:He's a wizard, yes, I.
Speaker 2:I like you wizard. I'll be like oh man, how do we do that? And he's like well, we can do this. I'm like how did you know we could do that? Yeah because he has that insane ability to understand the technology at a high level. Yeah, and I think where where we work well together is that I don't, and it's almost like a beginner's mindset. They talk about that being like, how, like a lot of great people have always been students, women, masters sure, I never want to be the master.
Speaker 1:I'd rather be a student. I read the dumbest person in the room because I'm always learning. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I recently heard the rest of the statement. But oh, jack of all trades, master of them, yes, still always better than a master of one. So I my grandfather was a carpenter mechanic, my father was a mechanic could do build anything, my uncle same thing. You know, like I come from a long line of Jack of all trades. Yeah, and people that can get it done and do a nice job, and uncles, and you know, I Feel like I'm carrying that lineage in a way, so Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it helps in filmmaking for me to be able to to understand it enough, but not too much to stop me from being creative with which reminds me of something that, like we even mentioned briefly before Because at first, so like first off, like I relate so much Because I feel very similarly with my team in the sense that like I think my guys on a technical sense, on a cinematic sense, they they know the D movies, the classic cinema mastery movies to watch, and they know this and that and they definitely have a Keener ear down to the floor about that and I know my fair share amount, but like, nowhere near to that level in the sense of like someone who's like, like someone like James or some of my guys, in that sense Like I've never seen.
Speaker 1:There's certain like just regular classic Spielberg movies or stuff like that I still haven't seen and different things like that. And I, you know I don't have a have an audio background as well, musician background, but I've always been the type to. I Am a quick starter. I can get basically the foundation to get it really well, yeah, and and then I can push from there. But I am more of of the creative and higher level, like I, like I rather put systems together and get like the people who really know and like Everyone you know, building something up together in that sense and I think I work well with them in that sense because they keep me grounded as far as limitations and possibilities.
Speaker 1:But I also think that, like as a creative it, it keeps you shackled free in the sense that you don't maybe necessarily know all the ins and outs, but you also aren't a hundred percent fully aware of your limitations either. Yeah, so you'll, instinctively, may ask for things outside of the limitations, and then sometimes someone comes to you like you know that can't happen because of this, and this is like well, why not, maybe if we try, from this unorthodox angle or this or that, let's figure it out. And I think that that's a, it's a very much a collaborative you know, I think human species are like that.
Speaker 1:And Speaking about being in jack-of-all-trades, you were talking to me a lot about how you were seeing the industry go, like you know the fall of Rome, as you put it before. But I love the parallel you made to the music industry. So you mentioned just earlier about how iTunes and Napster kind of made this quake across record labels and stuff like that. There's no one knew what to do. We're going to. Digital. Cd sales became a thing of the past, like overnight, you know, and and that was the whole point of a record deal was to get you on printed material and then you were getting out there and tours were secondary. Tours are the way to promote your CDs. So you made your money in CD sales and now it's completely flipped nobody's tours anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or if anything. Your streaming is to help you get the audience in the tour, so you make some money on that.
Speaker 2:What do you have to tour when you can tour from your living room and hit a million people on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, like what do you need the big company for? Anymore you don't. Yeah and I want you kind of to revisit that and see and talk about how you're seeing the parallel in the filmmaking world.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm no expert, I'm not an industry person, so whatever I say can be taken at face value, of course. But of we, I grew up in a Moment in time where you can go to Staples and buy Acid music pro, which was, like you know, early pro tools, q base, kind of stuff that you can just go and Buy and start recording yourself, and I started on a task cam for track tape thing, you know and Figured, oh man, I could bounce, I could do all this on a computer now and Was really part of that revolution of DIY home Producers and we were writing and producing and recording our own records and essentially got a record deal because we were doing that.
Speaker 2:We did that at a time where it was just before iTunes Taking back Sunday kind of just broke right ahead of us and they were like the last Band to sign like a big deal and like take it all the way. Yeah, I don't think anybody kind of did that after them, because the world changed, it imploded.
Speaker 2:They're really at the tell end of that boom in music at that time and once we signed to capital records, it was right around that same time and I watched the whole world Crumbled because they were like, oh my god, how we're gonna sell albums. People could just buy one song and they were worried about money. They weren't worried about artists and they didn't know how to like wield it as an artist's tool. Because it wasn't about that. It was about making money. And I've never got into this to make money.
Speaker 2:I wasn't Like a kid that was like I want to be rich and famous. I was like I just want to make music. I want to be able to make music whenever I want that. I don't care if I make, you know just enough to be able to do that in my life. I don't need more If I get more, correct, you know that was that wasn't the thing. Yeah, and so I took a you know backseat with my band and said, okay, let's, let's start writing and producing for other people and Seeing how that goes.
Speaker 2:But we watched the industry like studios were closing and what was happening was people were taking the power back. I mean, look at today. It's amazing that you can produce and record a song on your iPhone and it could be on the radio. It could be all over the world. It doesn't? Yeah, it doesn't take. It doesn't take a lot. And the biggest lesson I learned in my life is that the it's not the tools that you have. You know, it's what you do with those tools. You know if, if you wind up figuring out how the iPhone Microphone really works and where it works best, you could record a beautiful guitar Track on your phone in your living room and that could be part of the record. If I had that when I was 14, I would have been doing that. I would have been recording songs on my iPhone because I really didn't have a lot.
Speaker 1:You know, A good example is like Billy Eilish sure did her whole first record look at Bonnie very.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, one SM 57 and you know a cabin and Great songs and that's the key. It's like it's not about what you About the gear. Yeah, it's what your output is, it's what's coming out of the speakers, it's what's coming off the screen that really counts.
Speaker 1:And now you got streaming, disrupting the filmmaking industry.
Speaker 2:You could put your movie on YouTube and get a million people watching it. Could you have done that 20 years ago? No, yeah. And so what you're seeing today from the movie industry is Exactly that. People are freaking out because, unfortunately, their jobs are gonna be taken away from them. I've been going to McDonald's over the last few years and dealing with no cashiers, because I have to. I could do it on my phone. I could walk up to the counter and push a couple buttons and my order goes in. That's part of the reality of life. It's not me being, like you know, negative about it, it's just the reality.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like. It's like you said. It's not that the industry is evaporating, but it's shifting. It's shifting to us.
Speaker 2:Yes we're able to now and Again. Another example that I can prove is someone like me can pick up their iPhone and shoot a feature-length film. We did 20. We got 24 nominations and 14 wins in the festival circuit last year. I Would have been happy to maybe get accepted to one yeah, but I didn't go and do this for that. I just did it because it felt like the right thing to do with what I made. Yeah, but it's amazing to Stand back and go Wow. We were able to achieve so much with very little. My movie cost $5,000 to bank to make. Really, you know friends, family that's who we made it with, you know and favors called Sunday, sunday, sunday correct.
Speaker 2:Sunday, sunday, sunday, and it's a culmination of kind of everything. I scored the film, I Wrote all the music.
Speaker 1:Oh, you did all the music, yep, oh, so is that like some, some stuff from your band, or it's just all Original stuff, all original stuff that I'd make for a soundtrack man.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man. I it was a lot of fun. It was actually one of the most exciting Aspects of it for me, because I was like I always wanted to score a film and I don't think anybody's just gonna give me that chance without ever doing it. So I was like I'm just gonna make my own movie and score it.
Speaker 1:Well, I will say too it's like for people who haven't had a chance to check it out, is that I?
Speaker 1:Actually, even though I knew it was on an iPhone originally, I completely forgot going into the film and no, it's great because, like I Actually didn't think, I was thinking like, okay, oh, maybe he had some classic I know James is super into the classic lenses and the classic film making year. This looks like a super 35 in some points. It looks like they got a couple different style old style cameras going on from time to time, outside of the drone shots, of course, and controlling with an iPhone.
Speaker 1:So yeah, but it had a great look. The story is great. I learned so much about drag racing and dude, the cars are beautiful. You had um, I guess that's great. But, like you said, you come from that background, you grew up in that community and it was. It was just well done. And to see that it's like, yeah, you did that with five grand, a couple years in your belt and some good friends and family. And then the interesting thing see, looking at the at the behind the scenes, that Somehow the whole movie was exclusively filmed on Sundays, uninvertedly yeah, for the most part.
Speaker 2:Not everything, but like a good percentage.
Speaker 1:Percent of it was pretty much.
Speaker 2:It wasn't on on purpose, it was just that everybody was available on Sundays usually and drag racing takes place on Sunday. That's why the back in the day there used to be a commercial on the radio all over the country the.
Speaker 1:Sunday.
Speaker 2:Sunday, Sunday.
Speaker 1:I remember hearing it. I remember that like it was like in grain of my head. When I hear it I always thought it was like wrestling, or yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, they use it for like monster trucks and monster trucks and stuff like that, like I just remember the generic Sunday, sunday, sunday.
Speaker 2:I mean that was the easiest part of the movie because If you watch the making of, I kind of go into it a little more in depth. But I got I before I even had an idea of making a movie I dreamt I had. I lose a dream often, like where I'm in control of my sleep and I'm where I'm just dreaming and. And I had this dream where I was in a theater Watching my movie that I made with myself and myself was like walking me through it and I woke up. I was like that was pretty awesome and I wrote it all down, but I had never really picked up a camera.
Speaker 2:This was that movie and essentially, yeah, I became that. But the one thing that, like I woke up and knew is like at the end of the movie they went what it's Sunday? Sunday.
Speaker 2:Sunday I was like that's the name in the movie. That was the easiest thing to get because I was like what a perfect name. You know, and the type of racing that's in this movie it's not like Fast and the Furious, where it's like kind of absurd. You know, tasting something extremely authentic is like it's kind of hard to do, you know, with film, because a lot of times it's over exaggerated. And not to say that we didn't do that a little bit. But coming from a drag racing background, like this is a type of racing that anybody can do.
Speaker 1:You can take out your Honda Civic and go win it was amazing to see that, that particular part of it. I would have never really known that, but like seeing that it really revolved around a level of control and consistency between machine and person, yes, and and Really like go to show, it really did not matter what you came in with, but can you stay by your word? Essentially it's this is the test, this is the number right, and I suggest watching.
Speaker 2:That's the film itself, was exactly the parallel, because the test was we have the slowest car on the track? Well, we have the slowest camera, we have the littlest thing. I mean there are people out there that are raising $500,000 to make a movie and they're renting a red and they're doing and I'm like I'm like no offense, but like, do you think you should be doing that for your first film?
Speaker 2:I Do what you want. I'm not knocking anybody, I'm just asking you to ask yourself a question. It's like can you get it done with this? Yeah, can you squeeze all the juice out of this lemon, because I tell you what it's pretty sweet when you really get this dialed in right. We used filmic pro, which, which is an app that turns your phone into a DSLR, essentially gives you full control.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable car camera features on the phone.
Speaker 2:We went to London, james and I, and we were in the International Motor Awards over there in and, which is like a film festival for cars.
Speaker 1:Oh, they had them.
Speaker 2:That must have been sick. Oh, it was amazing. It was one of the best festivals you guys were nominated were nominated for best independent film.
Speaker 2:Which I couldn't believe and we're sitting next to Ferrari and Porsche and Lamborghini and they all have horses in the race and we're sitting there like a Bunch of bums from Long Island, new York, going why are we here? This is crazy. And they played our trailer and you know they're playing the category and they defend. The trailer finishes. And it's a shot on my phone. You should have heard the place. They were like it was amazing and we didn't win. But just to be in the circle in the arena.
Speaker 1:Was amazing players.
Speaker 2:Oh, with big players. And what really happened was we went back to the hotel after that and we were like what if we had one more shot at this? We just saw what's out there. Can we, can we, can we beat these guys? And now we're making a sequel. And now we're taking the iPhone a little bit to the next level. Could I shoot it on a black magic, which I shoot with all the time? Absolutely yeah, but that's, there's still meat on the bone.
Speaker 2:You know, a friend of mine said to me like why are you making another iPhone movie? You just did that. You hit a home run and I said to him well, the home runs different than at a grand slam. I want to bring everybody. I want, I want to hit every note that I missed. The last time it took us five years. The last time I was learning, I never made anything like that in my life. I went from three-minute music videos to a feature length film hour and 50 minutes. It's a big jump, oh yeah. And so after that I said, oh well, let's I. I always equate it to like playing guitar. You know, you pick up a guitar, somebody shows you a C chord and you take a strum right, it might not come out great.
Speaker 1:You might get it.
Speaker 2:But that's what the first movie was, was just the first drum. So it's like I kind of want to see if I can get a little more Music out of it, you know, and squeeze it a little bit better and get some more notes out of there, and so that's what this whole thing is about. It's like just showing our growth as filmmakers and that it doesn't matter what you're shooting it on, it matters what you're shooting, and I think the story is good. So I'm really excited for for us to share that when we Cross that bridge. You know it's coming out pretty great. We got all these vintage lenses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys already in middle production of the sequel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're probably like More than halfway done filming Awesome, which is exciting. We spent the whole summer pretty much going back and forth to the drag strip doing all that stuff and Now we're picking up the last pieces of the puzzle and then, hopefully through the winter, start editing it up and getting it all. I already started doing the score for it, because the first movie there's no car after 1975 in it, yeah, and so that's to give it a period piece.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know and then so, rather than go to 1976 to keep continue the story, I said, well, I'm gonna jump. 10 years later, 1985, it gives us new music, new cool cars, cool neon, looks that we can go for. That's kind of gonna. So it's almost like a Way to like test ourselves as filmmakers and we're trying to make it feel like a movie that was made in the 80s that maybe you missed. Yeah. So that's kind of the yeah, the idea there and as independence it like.
Speaker 1:It really goes to that point of how, like, really, hollywood, the film industry is going from these big production companies to smaller ones, yeah, these small teams similar to ours that are now the we're working with the bigger brands and this, and that, like you, you and you and James are essentially a team and you guys are now, you know, doing these different high-level brands, commercials and stuff, because the technology is there, the resources is there and there's no need for Overinflated things as far as those things. I guess there is an occasional need for a big set or something else, depending on what you're trying to do, but it's definitely like a shift. It's a major shift from, like, these huge and mega production houses and and as a shows is like being able to do a festival worthy film, you know, on a minimal, minimal budget, you know, and being able to work on it. I think you guys made a great example of that well to your point.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of people don't like people like James and I because we cut the legs out of some office, so many people that are basically spending a client's money. I mean, I'm not gonna name names or anything like that, but I can't tell you how many times James and I have come into a situation and they told us about last year's project that they did, how much money it costs what they did. And then they see what we produce and they go how does this look better? And you guys showed up with backpacks and I go it. The world is the world as you know. It is over that. You can't play by yesterday's book because it's already obsolete.
Speaker 2:People like us are coming in and undercutting huge jobs because the speed in which we can achieve the black magic Camera which I, james and I both shoot on yeah, 2400 bucks, it's not not a small pen, not a small amount of money, but for the what you're getting out of it, for a cinema camera, putting a couple of good lenses on it, shooting raw, you don't need a lot to come home with something that feels big budget, and that's the key is being, and also you're able to work faster, thus keeping time down leading less crew. So does that hurt the industry? In a way, yes and no, because people are losing their jobs, because there's no need for that many people on a film set anymore, perhaps, but then more people can go out there and work on their own.
Speaker 1:You can go, essentially, and buy a camera and pick up your own clients and Then some way, in a different way, in some ways you can make even more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I, I do editing work. People just send me stuff now because I'm as a musician I think that's my biggest thing is like I understand right where the downbeat is yes, maybe we want to understand rhythm.
Speaker 1:We want to be after it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understand music. So also when I'm shooting, especially like taking back Sunday, I do a lot of work for them. I know those songs Like the back of my hand because I've been, I grew up with it, but also I've been shooting them so long so I know when Adam's gonna spin, I know when he's gonna flip the mic like, and I know when to track it. So when you, when you build a rapport with something and then you really get to know it, you streamline all the processes. I'm editing as I'm shooting. I know I'm gonna edit it. So I already know what I want to shoot and I James is the same way. We're editing. While we're shooting we're like, hmm, let's just do that again, because you would that in your mind, face yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I, and, and when you're in this day and age, like what we're talking about earlier, it's like gotta have all those faculties. You got to be able to edit color sound. You got to have it all because Very soon you'll see like it's gonna be less and less where it's like you send it out to a colorist, you send it out to a sound. Good, it's just, it's the way the world's going. Go to be an H, you can go and buy a whole kit with everything you need to start making films and it's actually pretty good, you know. Same thing with guitar, you know. Or recording. You can go on Musicians friend, in order of a bunch of mics and a little mixer and all that you need and use your DAW and produce a full record and Something that sounds like maybe, if you're good enough, if you really have tuned ears and an ability to write good music, make a record that holds up.
Speaker 1:So pretty much you know. Find your, find your tribe, in sense, find your small team, like you know, you get that. That's solid editor, a solid shooter, sure, it's. Maybe one guy's the creative one guy. You know you want to play to your strength, yeah, and then find people who fill in your weaknesses.
Speaker 2:Don't get me wrong. I don't think I'm good at anything in particular.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm good at like a lot of things. My biggest strength, like I said, is Watching the whole play. I like, I like being the coach, encouraging the players to play their hardest. That's kind of my favorite thing about this aspect of creativity filmmaking. If you asked me to shoot something, I could do it, but I'd rather James shoot it, because he's the best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, you play to the strengths You're watching everything unfold. You're keeping tabs Totally.
Speaker 2:We mixed, we did a music video for this band, the Sleeping. They're from Long Island.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, sleeping's a great band.
Speaker 2:They haven't been with this lineup for a long time. I was a big fan. They were kind of coming up when we did too my band, and just out of the blue, without a phone call, they were like we had this guy. He dropped out. He was supposed to direct it. Can you shoot this video tomorrow? Essentially, james and I were like let's go, and we shot this music video in like 24 hours, edited, cut it and we edited together in like four and a half hours and when we sent it to the band, colored everything, no notes. I've never in my life had that in mind. It was like that moment for me of realizing like, oh, we've crossed the threshold, like now we are well, at least for me I'm not going to speak for James, but like I'm at a point where I believe in what I'm doing, that like I trust my taste. If I do something, it's all purpose, you know.
Speaker 1:And these guys got affirmation, you know like, from a client like.
Speaker 2:A band like that that I respect so much at going. We have no notes. It was perfect. I'm like I felt that way, but I can't believe you did yeah, and it was such an affirmation for me. And again, we threw it together in like a day. It was literally like no thought to it. It was just like we're just going to go and paint and see what we draw, and see what we put on the canvas.
Speaker 1:That's so cool.
Speaker 2:And we literally did that. We had Doug in a pool, a little pool, and we don't paint over his head in slow motion. So great and we sped the music up so he was singing in regular speed, but it was coming out in time in slow motion, and then the paint was dripping down his face in slow motion.
Speaker 2:And then at the very end of the edit, I was like James start zooming in on him and turn him upside down and reverse it and so he starts flipping and all the paint's dripping and it was just like a crazy wacky thing. That wound up being like that's the dopest thing I've ever seen, and the band flipped. They loved it. And so for me, what my favorite aspect of this is that whole thing of just throw paint on the wall and see what sticks. Like you could plan all day. You make plans and God laughs 100%. That's my thing, that's my mantra out there. So be prepared for him to laugh as much as you're prepared for you to get what you want.
Speaker 1:I truly believe that life, more than anything to make it in life, it's all about adaptability. How good are you at pivoting? How good are you, like a football player, making down the field? How good are you making split second decisions to dodge these tackles of life? And life is like that constantly.
Speaker 2:I was on the road with John Nolan playing guitar for him. We were out in the middle of nowhere and we're on the road trying to get to this gig I think in Denver and I had been shooting just for fun, like for whatever, just to put a little tour of the dock. And we're coming down the highway and we come to a dead stop for like 10, 15 minutes, to the point everybody's getting out of their cars, the car trouble, or traffic no traffic.
Speaker 2:And we're in the middle of the desert and I'm like this is crazy. And the sun setting, I'm like we're never going to make it. And so I was like John grab the guitar and he had this song about going home and wanting to get home and I was like let's record you playing this. The traffic was miles, you could see it. And I put him right in the center of the road with all the cars and he performed the song and then throughout the rest of the time I kept filming him in all these different locations playing the song and it came out amazing. We did. This music video Turns out a truck full of spaghettios flipped over and burnt. We could smell it all the way from there, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:But it was like uh-oh spaghettios. We made a music video and you turned an obstacle into an opportunity. When are you going to get to shut down a road with miles of traffic and the sunset?
Speaker 1:When are you ever going to get the perfect chance to say uh-oh, spaghettios.
Speaker 2:I got it I could retire now.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone would get that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it worked out really well, but that's an example of making the most out of what you've given.
Speaker 1:And I love like. For me personally, I think it's so sick that you get to work with a band like Taking Back Sunday, especially like us being from Long Island. They're like essentially Long Island heroes. They really are the most recent mega band to really make it break out of the island realistically.
Speaker 2:It's fun to say you know they're friends now.
Speaker 1:Because it's like.
Speaker 2:I grew up not too far away from them and I was on tour with a band called Gabriel the Marine and they were. They had opened with John or on his solo stuff, so they took him out, them out with Taking Back Sunday and the first time I met John we were hanging out and he's like we're in New Orleans. He's like you want to go to the oldest bar in the country, I'll buy a beer.
Speaker 2:I was like hell, yeah, let's go. And talked to him all night, had a great conversation, and then one thing led to another. I hit him up like a few months later. I was like hey, I'm scoring, I'm doing the song for a movie. You want in on it? You want to work with me? He's like yeah, let's do it. That's sick and the first thing we ever did came out awesome, and then he would ask me to play guitar with him, and then music video and then Taking Back Sunday.
Speaker 1:And it's like it always goes back to just how you treat people.
Speaker 2:You got to be cool. That's the thing about working in this industry. I don't care what you're doing. We did this big commercial shoot, James and I. We were with a group of people. By the end of it, I missed them.
Speaker 2:We had a good time. We had fun, we were all normal people to one another, we respected each other's abilities and craft and we also had to hang out together for like two weeks. And it's the same thing in a band where it's like you may not be the best guitar player in the world, but you might be the best guitar player for this project because you can hang with these people, you can spend time with them, not make anybody feel uncomfortable, and produce what needs to be done, and that's honestly more important than how good you are at anything.
Speaker 2:It's what you're bringing to the table on a personal level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you follow through on your commitment? Of course, the job you're there for. But, more importantly, how do you make everyone else feel? Because, at the end of the day, you can give them an amazing product. But if everyone just hated the feeling they had being around you, that's probably the last You'll get your money, but that's probably the last time they'll ever call you Totally. But if you give them a product, maybe it's not the best thing in the world, but it's good. You follow through on your commitment. But they felt amazing around you. They felt like they could have spent all the time in the world with you. I guarantee you you're probably going to get a call back every time because it's like, hey, I love spending time with you. You gave me what I wanted, what I asked for, and you just made the process feel good, easy and it works both ways.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of people I worked with where I'm like. I will never work with that person again. I don't care if they call. I don't care how much? Money you've. I've done it plenty of times because it's like why am I chasing you down for what you owe me? I delivered.
Speaker 2:Or man, you made my life hell for no reason. Just because James and I always make a joke. It's like everybody's got to touch it. If you just painted your car and put the first coat of wax on it, somebody wants to come over and put their finger on it. I don't care what it is, and that's just. It's the same thing with film production. The bass player wants his bass louder. The person at the top CFO, wants more yellow in it. That's like the why am I.
Speaker 2:Somebody's got to touch it, Even though it's everybody's happy it's working. They got to touch it, which I get, and it's fine. But when it goes too far is when I'm like I'm out, I don't need to deal with this anymore. I got other people that appreciate and work work in a productive manner that I want to work in.
Speaker 1:It's so true. It's like because when you're like this close to something, you also, at the same time, you don't see what is happening around it and what it's going to be. Totally, you're like. It's like the common example for us, at least in the filmmaking world, is raw footage versus delivered footage, which a lot of clients struggle with Because it's a new concept for them. Understandably so, but to really get the best outcome, you need things to be very raw in the beginning. But if sometimes they struggle like, oh, they want to see it immediately, every step of the way, and so it's like you're this close to it, you really lose.
Speaker 2:I don't deliver anything without a LUT on it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:I refuse.
Speaker 1:I don't care, I don't. Let them look at the monitor unless the LUT's turned on the monitor.
Speaker 2:No, it's like recording too, like sometimes you know somebody hears a guitar soloed and they're like, oh my god, sounds terrible.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah but that's not.
Speaker 2:It's doing a purpose. It's serving a purpose within the mix and you know you can't change it because then you take it out and there's some lackluster thing there. And I think in the corporate world it's even worse because these people don't understand that they're pulling out pillars that are actually holding up this whole thing by tapping, having to touch it.
Speaker 1:The most recent thing I did when my band were currently recording a record and I was like we lay our tracks down and then you don't touch it until you hear the rough mix. Right, like you're laid down, you will trust the process. You know, just make sure you perform it well, but after that doesn't exist. Yeah, do we get to the rough mix and then we can start going on to mixing decisions and we can revisit things, but nothing sounds going to sound right and I don't want any perfectionism happening before there's anything that actually needs to be corrected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I've heard stories, and I've experienced it myself, where big bands are recording. They do a scratch where the whole band plays and then the bass player goes in and rerecords his bass because when he heard it soloed it didn't sound great and he made a mistake and then everybody hated it.
Speaker 2:And then they solo up that, bring that bass back in from initially and they're like it can't move. Now it's part of the and I think imperfection is such an important part of filmmaking. When you watch any great movie, like working on a period piece you're always concerned oh there's a satellite dish back there or that cars from 1991. Yeah, I've watched so many movies that like I was watching Rudy and I think it's like 1965. And I'm watching it and I see a Toyota Tercel drive in the background and I'm like if it can happen there, it's okay if it happens in my movie. And when you have those little moments, actually I think it makes it more honest, better. I think Ford vs Ferrari as far as car movies really crushed it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Perfect, I thought I was I would actually say this is a perfect car film.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, fantastic movie, fantastic actors, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Everything.
Speaker 1:But I even heard the Game of Thrones thing. They had that Starbucks cup Right One of the scenes.
Speaker 2:Hey, it happens. So I think you have to be able, as much as you are about getting what you want, you have to be able to let go, so key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was just. It's like when those things happen and you don't notice it till it's out there, it's like understand, you did your part and if it doesn't hurt a multi-million dollar project, it's not going to hurt you Totally.
Speaker 2:You're going to see the strings on the puppets. It's just going to wind up happening.
Speaker 1:And especially if the creative is there, people aren't going to be taken out necessarily. I would say when I was watching your film, even though you guys only established the time, it felt very cohesive. It felt like the period, the way you filmed and everything. And you guys didn't have a big budget and I love hearing in the behind the scenes that you guys had so many friends parking your cars on the neighborhood. They gave a little bit more of an ambiance. I didn't even notice that until you mentioned it and I started thinking back to it and I'm like, oh snap, because the whole time everything felt cohesive and everything. Because everything felt cohesive and it didn't take me out in that sense.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a conscious effort there.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like you don't realize that in that one scene, where it's not really a big pivotal scene of the movie, but for some reason there's something magical about this gold nova pulling up and in the driveways of all the other houses because my grandma's neighbors were cool, we parked a Buick over there and the viewer doesn't understand, maybe not get it, but I'm like you don't understand. This shot mentally puts your brain in 1975 and it didn't take too much. It took three, four cars and avoiding as much as you possibly could that would take you out of it.
Speaker 2:And when I talk to young filmmakers I'm like you got to make something you think you could do. I know cars, I know car culture. Am I the best mechanic? Hell, no. But I do know enough that I can get the viewer to actually feel like they're tasting something authentic when they're watching my film. And I think that's what you have to do. If you grew up and your parents worked in a bowling alley, make a movie about bowling. If you have access to a convenience store or whatever, just do that. You have to make something that you think you can deliver.
Speaker 1:So the last thing I want to hear from you right before we wrap up is I just want to hear a little bit of also the story behind this backyard. Taking back Sunday concert that happened recently that blew up on social media and everything, because no one year was happening. And then I come to find that you and James are behind filming that. It was for a music video, right, or?
Speaker 2:something like that.
Speaker 1:So just a little bit about how that came about and how that actual experience was doing something like that and prompt to kind of a little backyard fest and then yeah, Taking back Sunday is like a staple around these parts, for people of our age for sure.
Speaker 2:And I was called a few weeks before, two weeks before the shoot, and they're looking for a location. I was like, oh okay, I'm not really sure, let me dig around a little bit. It was kind of like everything was changing around them and they wanted to have behind the scenes stuff. And so they call me and we're like listen, can you make sure to get the making of this? Essentially, I was like yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was brought James with me and while we were there we were kind of confused because it was kind of up in the air what was happening almost the whole time.
Speaker 2:We weren't sure if the cops were going to show up and shut it down. So I just told James. I was like, listen, shoot everything. Like just shoot your own music video, forget what's happening, just do your thing, I'll do my thing, these guys will do their thing and we'll see what we get, because the cops could show up and we might need to stitch this together with every little bit they got, or we'll get it all in, who knows.
Speaker 2:It wound up working out perfectly. We did the shoot at a house in Lindenhurst and I was on vacation. I was out in the Hamptons with my wife for like a couple of days on, just like a taking a couple of day breather, which we haven't done in a while. And of course, this landed on that weekend. So I told my wife, I said, listen, I'm going to bring my camera and stuff. I'm going to leave that afternoon. I'll come back at night time. And I left there and left the shoot, came back to the Hamptons, woke up the next day and my wife goes you're on a video that has like five million plays on Barstool. I see myself on them. I didn't even I had no clue what was going to happen. I was just showing up to help and to be a part of it and do my part, and it came out great. I mean like they used a bunch of our footage in there and it was just such a cool experience to be in one of those backyard shows. It felt very old school.
Speaker 1:It felt so punk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was very punk rock and those guys are the best. I really enjoy spending time with them. I did said summer fest with them this year. I went out on tour with them for a little bit and got a bunch of social media stuff and I guess the biggest thing I'll say from that is like what we were talking about before is like you got to be somebody that you can hang with. I've sat there and talked with these guys for hours and hours and hours about everything other than music and filmmaking. You have to have more than what camera and lens you're shooting on to bring to the table with everything, and I think that's a big part of it. When you're getting brought in on these things. It's like you have to have more than what you're being hired to bring in. And yeah, we had a blast, it was just so much fun, man, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, that is so cool and I feel like we can just keep talking and talking.
Speaker 2:We'll have to do it again. Yeah, I'll interview you next time. That'll be good, that'll be good.
Speaker 1:I think the last thing I want to hear is like now, for people who may be watching this just getting started Is there any particular thing from your experience going into filmmaking and everything that a young filmmaker should know, or should keep in mind, things that you wish she knew when you were starting the long list? Well, pick one that really sticks out to you.
Speaker 2:I'll say the one that sticks out to me the most is I wish I had lav mics. When I first started, when I first started making my movie, I kind of had this stupid idea we're going to make it like the Godfather, we're going to have a boom mic and that's it. And worst mistake in my life, but that's my. I had an idea and I should have been more open, because somebody had mentioned me, like what about lav mics? And I didn't do it and that's what we're doing this time.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you mentioned that, because that was probably, like my only note.
Speaker 2:Oh, dude, it was a nightmare and you know what happened was not to make a long story longer, but I had edited so much of the movie and it was pretty good and I was driving home from work one day in the dart and I'd made a left turn and the door of the dart opened and my computer went flying out and had to recover the hard drive, like everything was on there. Thank God we were able to, but it actually threw the whole thing off kilter and it was one of those things at the end where I was just like I must have been questioning life at that moment.
Speaker 2:Yes sir, yes sir, but you know we live and we learn, and you know. I guess the other thing is just listen to those who've come before you. You know, have mentors, find people do things for free. Free is not a bad thing. Music freedom is like a different thing. You know, when you help somebody else out, it's going to come back to you. You're also building your resume. So do things for free, Learn your craft. Pick up a friend that needs a music video, Do it for them. Like learn before you decide you're going to just go make a feature film like Star Wars. It's probably not going to happen, so test the waters first, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard it once before. As soon as you're only going to succeed after you get past the suck, so get to the suck part as fast as possible and get through it.
Speaker 2:It always sucks because you look back and go. I could have done that better, yeah, but you're going to get through it so you can get to the actual success 100%.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming down.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me being on today.
Speaker 1:Now for people who want to follow you. People maybe want to check out Sunday, sunday, sunday and check out where the sequel is going to be. How should people keep track? You know? How should people follow you?
Speaker 2:Obi-Wan Natoli. That's my handle on Facebook Instagram. You can, my name is Anthony Natoli, if it makes it any easier. But Sunday, sunday Sundayfilmcom. That's where we have copies of the movie you can purchase to support the film and support the sequel. Not sure when the sequel is going to be done yet, but on my YouTube page we have the making of and a bunch of other little clips and stuff that you can check out, get a taste of what the movie's about, check out the trailer and yeah let me know what you think.
Speaker 2:If anybody out there needs help or questions, I always answer. So we're here to teach, we're here to pass along information, so open door 100%.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much and, as always, you can find us at Vision Maker Podcast to keep track with all the episodes and keep track with our other adventures at Over at Vision Maker Productions. And again, thank you so much and catch you all later. Please make sure to subscribe.
