NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
A podcast about acting, filmmaking, and the improv scene in New Orleans.
NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
Scott Nielsen: From 48-Hour Chaos to Cinematic Control
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A 48-hour film sprint on a horse rescue ranch. Cowboy kung fu. Seven hours of beautiful footage left on the floor. That’s where our talk with New Orleans filmmaker Scott Nielsen kicks off—and it only gets wilder from there. Scott breaks down the kind of pre-production you can and should do before you even have a script: scheduling people, page targets, asset wrangling, and designing coverage that respects the clock. He walks us through how tight lenses, aggressive blocking, and “shoot-for-the-timeline” thinking can turn chaos into a finished film that already breathes.
Sponsored by Jana McCaffery Attorney at Law. Have you been injured? New Orleans based actor, Jana McCaffery, has been practicing law in Louisiana since 1999 focusing on personal injury since 2008. She takes helping others very seriously and, if you are a fellow member of the Louisiana film industry and have been injured, she is happy to offer you a free consultation and a reduced fee to handle your case from start to finish. She can be reached at Have you been injured? New Orleans based actor, Jana McCaffery, has been practicing law in Louisiana since 1999, specializing in personal injury since 2008. She takes helping others very seriously. If you have been injured, Jana is offering a free consultation AND a reduced fee for fellow members of the Lousiana film industry, and she will handle your case from start to finish. She can be reached at janamccaffery@gmail.com or 504-837-1234. Tell Her NOLA Film Scene sent you
Follow us on IG @nolafilmscene, @kodaksbykojack, and @tjsebastianofficial. Check out our 48 Hour Film Project short film Waiting for Gateaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pFvn4cd1U . & check out our website: nolafilmscene.com
Hi, I'm Scott Nielsen. I'm a filmmaker based in New Orleans, Louisiana. And I am uh excited to do my first podcast on NOLA Film Scene. Breaking the podcast cherry with these guys.
SPEAKER_05:Welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ Play-Doh. I'm TJ. And as always, I'm Play-Doh.
SPEAKER_04:Welcome, Scott. Nice to see you.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks.
SPEAKER_05:Welcome, Scott. It's good to see you again. We haven't seen each other since the 48-hour competition this year.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Yes. That was my first 48-hour competition. It was cool. I am getting super uh just as a side note. I've been getting with everybody at the 48-hour film festival that team, our little team. Yeah. And I have been making a whole new strategy for pre-production so that things can be scheduled and organized and done in a in a in a more strategic manner, let's say. So we get some good results.
SPEAKER_05:It's what experience gives you. Not planning the story, you know, doing any part of that. Just what can we do for this kind of strategy? What can we do for lining up our assets? Good thought.
SPEAKER_02:How are we going to schedule people? How are we going to, you know, make sure that our pages are the right length? Make sure that we're there's you know, there's there's a lot of pre-production you can do with no script. Yeah. You'd be surprised.
SPEAKER_05:And not practicing the story itself, but you could practice writing a seven-page story. You know, because you I think yours was 15 this year?
SPEAKER_02:12. Not nine. And it was 12 minutes of video when it was finished.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And we had to cut it down to seven. So that's always slicing up your story. It's like your baby. You don't want to hurt it, but you gotta get it in the footing.
SPEAKER_02:What I was thinking is I cannot believe I was out there for seven hours shooting things that I had to throw out.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like from a mechanical standpoint, it's like, can you imagine if I had had seven hours that I could have fit in?
SPEAKER_04:I've always found that that's the hardest part about doing these time-constrained film competitions is paring it down because a lot of times you end up with a lot of really good footage and you have to be quick and decide, okay, what's gonna look the best, what's gonna tell the best story. And it's harder to get it shorter, I think, than it is to fill the space. I don't think we've ever done anything where there wasn't enough content.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And when you're shooting stuff, a lot of the time you want coverage, right? So when you're shooting stuff most of the time, you're like, I mean, unless you're like Wes Anderson and every single shot and every single second is pre-planned and pre-organized exactly the way it's supposed to. Most of the time you're looking for coverage because you need coverage. You know, but in in a 40-hour film fest, no, no, no, no, no. It needs it needs to be like a Wes Anderson movie. Like it needs to be so that on that day, you're just like bang, bang, bang, bang, every single thing is done so that you could basically just take your raw footage, throw it on a timeline in an order, and have a movie, right? That's about the right length, and then make it good from there.
SPEAKER_05:Right. I I loved our film, you know, it was a lot of fun. I got to play a bad guy, I got to play a real creepy guy. I made we hit cut, and it's one of those ones, and I've talked about it here a little bit, but everyone around shuddered, especially the lady who's like, oh, he's creepy. And just to watch that energy go through our crowd, I was like, oh, we got something here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that you definitely enjoy getting to block people. I don't get to work with you don't get to work with humans a lot. And even when you work with humans, or I don't get to work with humans a lot, even when I do, like I have some contracted work and there's some basic blocking, but it's more like setting up a set. It's cool to get to do like movie blocking, like that intro we did where he comes in and you come in and then da-da-da, and then I can set up those shots and I can sort of visualize all of the the beats as I'm going through it. It's a really good practice for that, because it's all on the fly, but you're like, okay, well, I need this to be engaging, so how am I gonna shoot these pieces all together? Which is which is really like normally that's all thought through, or it's much more simple. And it was it was cool to get to sort of be like, okay, here we're gonna do it, you know? It's a good practice. And I like the kung fu fight. I thought the kung fu fight was great. I didn't. I got my butt kicked.
SPEAKER_04:Talking about enjoying the kung fu fight, and I enjoyed it as well. I thought it was great.
SPEAKER_05:It was it was great. Our protagonist, uh, he had done it for many years, and I did not know he had that kind of range left in him. Let's just say he's an older guy, and you know.
SPEAKER_02:Also, if you shoot real tight and have everyone just take one quick fast step forward, yeah, it does give a lot of it does sell a lot of impression. For both of you though. Right. Both of you.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, oh I'm not I'm not like ha ha ha him because I'm old, fat, and out of shape. And I was watching him and when he moved, he kind of led with his face. He didn't mean to, and I was like, hey, look at this. And then my first time you turned the camera around me, first thing I did, led with my face.
SPEAKER_02:Well, but if you're only taking one step, I think I actually told you to. Because I need you to look like you're Goku running. Like I need you to look like you're like, you know, like lightning fast, which I didn't really even need you to take a step. I just needed you to go like, you know, so it's whatever I was supposed to do, I did it wrong.
SPEAKER_05:Just how I was telling him he was doing it wrong, because I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to action.
SPEAKER_02:And I loved the commitment of that kid who got roundhouse kicked and went straight onto the concrete floor with the horses and the straw and the horse poop. Yeah. I was like, man, that kid. Way to go, that kid.
SPEAKER_05:Wasn't horse poop, but I was in horse pee. I was like, oh, I can tell he's been right. Son of a we did it was kung fu. We were dressed as cowboys, basically, you know, kind of like if you grow up with your bullies, what would happen if you and your high school bullies when you're in your 40s and 50s? And it was on the Wind Dancer Equestrian Rescue Ranch. Almost said farm, but ranch. I got that out there. Oh, they had miniature donkeys, they had uh full-size donkeys, horses, they had their dogs. So in between takes, you had plenty of animals to, you know, play with and pass the time. It could be quite pungent down there on the ground.
SPEAKER_04:Did you have you ever run into or did you have bullies when you were in high school, Brian?
SPEAKER_05:Mine were first day of kindergarten through high school, and they mostly sang the Play-Doh theme song at me back in the 70s.
SPEAKER_04:I get it.
SPEAKER_05:You can make it with Play-Doh. Flashback, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04:So I'm sure it's probably hard to picture with my size now, but when I was a freshman in high school, I was little. When I got my driver's license in tenth grade, I was five, six, I think, 145 pounds. So I was shorter than that even in ninth grade. Excuse me. And there was a senior that was drunk in the gym. I I don't remember why we were in there. Maybe it was a break period or or whatever. And I walk I don't know why I walked up. I think a guy I rode the bus with was up there in his little friend group, and for whatever reason, he thought I would be a good target, and he hit me and knocked me down the bleachers in the in the basketball gym, and I tumbled and everybody laughed. And it was it didn't go well. And I knew I couldn't take the guy. I mean, he was twice my size.
SPEAKER_02:I was beat up. I was a I was a big kid. I was always a big kid, so people pretty much always left me alone. But I got beat up in, I don't know, middle school, I can't remember what year, by the tiniest little fucker. He was like, he was like four foot ten and all like wiry like iggy pop for a kid. And it took him it took him an entire period, an hour, to beat me up in gym class because he was real fast. So he would like run up behind me when I wasn't looking and punch me in the back of the head and run away. And then I'd be like, oh like Godzilla. Oh, I'll try and grab him, and he'd be gone. And eventually ended up with a big strawberry in the back of my head. So it does not matter necessarily if you are big. Now, if I grabbed him, I probably could have just broke him in half.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But I couldn't catch the little guy.
SPEAKER_05:You were gentle giant. So now that we've we lived all our trauma.
SPEAKER_04:Wait, well, I just I wanted to there's a second part to the story. No, that's all good. So fast forward, I came home from the military when I was, I don't know, 26 or 27. I moved back to my my hometown, and I came home jacked, ripped in the best shape of my life. You know, 230, just shredded. And I ran into him at the movie theater. And he came up to me with his girlfriend at the time, and he's like, Man, I hope you don't remember that. And his eyes were like saucers, and he was the same size he was when he was a senior, you know, probably five, nine, yeah, 160 pounds, not not very big compared to me at six foot two thirty. And he apologized. He said, Please don't hold it against me now. And it kind of felt good to get a little bit of redemption later to get that apology.
SPEAKER_05:Totally.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway, sorry, I digressed a little bit. No, no, no. But it was the your film was a story about bullies and totally.
SPEAKER_05:I don't I don't think you went too far. We've touched on our trauma, and you can look at comedians and actors, and they take that trauma, and that's how they get inspired to get into the biz. Yeah. So, Scott, what got you into the biz?
SPEAKER_02:So when I was a kid, I wanted to be Danny Elfman.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I wanted to write music for movies. And then in high school, I was a theater nerd. And then in college, I was a music composition major with a minor in theater art. And I did that for a while. And then I well, I mean, I worked in theater. So I worked in Cincinnati and Florida and Seattle uh in theater. Then I met a girl that wasn't an actor. Well, she was an actor, but she wasn't an uh repertory actor. She was like in college, what do they call like a towny? She lived in the city, she wasn't part of the repertory, she was in the thing. And then we fell in love, and then it was like, but I don't want to go to so and so in four months and somewhere else in six months, and then have five months with nothing to do and go somewhere else for nine months. That sounds terrible. And so I needed another thing to do, but I have very little skills. I am skilled in making art things. That's what I've got as a thing, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I was like, okay, well, I'll go work in TV. So I worked in TV news for a while and I had a fishing show. I shot for I was a director of for a while, eventually. And then when I quit working in TV, I got a job as a corporate video editor trainer, did video edit training that way. I did that for a while, and then during COVID, I had a lot of downtime. So I was like, oh, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go learn Unreal Engine because I've already got all my framing and blocking and lighting skills and all this stuff, and I'll so I maybe I can make films while I'm trapped here. So I made this, I'm gonna be on okay monster movie show called Spoopy Movie Time. It's you can see it, it's all if you if you Google it, it's there. Where I just did, because of course I couldn't make a whole show. I didn't have that, like the amount of time to animate something is a lot, right? So I just took like public domain films and made little intersegments that were animated, and I got better at it. And then, you know, that just sort of started growing into something. And then uh, you know, I went and got my drone license. I got a couple, and then I ended up with a couple of subcontracts. So I have a couple creative uh commercial contracts that I do, and essentially, like those those commercial video production contracts, I basically take that money and put it back into movie making.
SPEAKER_05:Nice.
SPEAKER_02:And some drone stuff like uh real estate drone footage and that kind of stuck stock footage of skylines, that kind of thing. And then that movie kind of that stuff all goes back into my filmmaking, my personal filmmaking projects. Cool so that I'm not that's really cool. My money I'm not m wasting the family money, right? The the corporate money is paying the the mortgage, and my commercial business is business is paying for my films.
SPEAKER_04:That's incredible. I mean, that's brilliant, actually. That's the way to do it. Yeah, for sure. I I'm gonna geek out a little bit here. What I thought thought the visual quality of your 48 was incredible. What camera body did you shoot that on?
SPEAKER_02:I shot it on um I got two black magic 6Ks. It's not the camera, it's the format that beat and the lens. I mean, there's two really okay. There's there okay. There's six. Wait, no, seven.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:There's a lot of shit you gotta keep in your head that's fundamentals, but you don't really think of them as as things, like because they're just what you do, right?
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:You so there's rules to follow unless you choose to break those rules. And when you choose to break those rules, you do it on purpose. So right, so like a very obvious one is the rule of thirds, right? You sure follow the rule of thirds always. You follow depth, you know, having making sure you establish depth of field. So I don't know if you remember when we were doing the 48, I'm like, I gotta change lenses because I couldn't like in the fight in the beginning when you guys are bullying them, I don't have the ability to use an F-stop to have a real aperture because I'm shooting at a distance and you guys are going into the image is flat. But people don't like that and they don't like to watch it and it doesn't feel intimate. So as soon as we got closer, I was like, sorry, everyone, I know it's 110 degrees out and I'm dressed completely in fucking black, but I have to go fix this. So then I went and I changed out my lenses to a cinema lens so that we get separation in the background and the foreground, right? These are all just rules that you know and you just follow them, right? And then making sure your lighting is adequate, right? You can't always, you can't always have always the best, but make sure you're following some kind of minimal lighting rules, super important. And then like your film formats, right? So like I'm using, I'm shooting it at 24 frames with the shutter at 180, which is basically film. It's the motion blur that you get from film. And then I shoot in a format called B-Raw, which is uh has a lot of color depth. So one of the things is like when I was editing that 48-hour film, coloring is part of my process. Unlike say if I'd shot on a normal camera, I'd have been able to just put that all up. But if you put up raw, I don't know if you've ever seen what raw video looks like. Yes, but it looks almost like black and white with like highlights. Yeah. So I had to go through and literally like recolor that movies, and then you sort of build a template and then you color the film. So that's basically that because of theater. I I don't like like if I have choices, I don't light anything naturally. People tell you, oh, you know, you gotta have every light has to have a point, and every source you have has to have a reason for the source. Look at this, look at me. There's some pink over here. What the what the fuck is this back here? There's a thing over there, there's a red thingy over my corner shoulder. Because I want you to have things to look at as I move. I learned a lot in theater. Like there is a whole thing in theater where they'll tell you if you can figure out where to put a blinking light somewhere in the back of the stage and just have it go in some kind of trick, it will improve the attention of your audience by like 50%. Because people need something to look at when they're not looking, right? So I light like stage lighting, which again, like when we did the nighttime video, right? What did I do? I made it blue with like tree branches coming through against the window. Like night is not blue. In no world is night blue, except like old sitcoms and theater, right? But subconsciously, the second you see that you go, Well, clearly it's nighttime because the uh blue is there to tell us that it is in fact nighttime. So I really like that. And like, yeah, you follow the rules in case you unless you don't. So I followed the rules, except for when he was having his weird little mental breakdowns, and then I did a Dutch angle, or I changed the lighting effect, or I did something because I feel like here's what here's what I mean. Your light should always have an intention, but your intention doesn't always have to be real. Your intention can be emotional. Like when you go and you stood there and you're like, dang, I did the double snap zoom and I put that under light, right? That's not a motivated light, but it's a motivated light to express your character.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, cool. Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:But I'm just kind of weird. Like I like bright colors and weird angles, and I like this part is not normal. So when I when I when I take this and I put it in, it's like uh who is Sakura Blue of was it Van Gogh? No, it wasn't Van Gogh. Yeah, it was Van Gogh. Van Gogh and also the little guy.
SPEAKER_05:To Latrec.
SPEAKER_02:Letrec, Toulouse Latrec, right? Their art is very amber, and there's this whole idea that possibly because of all the absinthe that they were using, it caused cataracts in the back of their eyes. So so they're in here, was it right? So even when like Toulouse Latrec, he's drawing the ladies, and the ladies look beautiful, but it has and and relatively accurate, it has this weird amber hue or whatever, because they're he's seeing whatever he's seeing through his eyes. He's not interpreting genius, he's interpreting what he sees.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's kind of what happens in here. Like I'm just expressing what I'm seeing, but what I'm seeing looks weird. But it's I I hope it's engaging, you know, at the end. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But you have to interpret it whether it's your eyes or not, in your style. Because if it was just something bland, something everyone could do, who needs you?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I'd say there is a real I mean, being able to just make something that is a news story that makes the thing look like the news story and follows all of the laws and rules required to make things feel real is a whole skill in and of itself that I absolutely do not have. I like things to be expressive, you know. I like that Nazis look. I like I like things to look like they're in a sound stage. I like things to look like John Carpenter films where you've got like you know you're in a sound stage, so like the outside world behind what you're in isn't there. Like, like if you think of like like the Batman movie, the first the Michael Keaton Batman movie, right? You see everything that you're supposed to see, and there's nothing else to see. Everything else is black because he built it inside the studio and he didn't give the impression that anything else was beyond that, because this it probably goes back to doing theater for so long. Because what's important is in front of you, and I like that.
SPEAKER_05:Interesting inspired the animated series, which is this whole groundbreaking thing. It was you know drawn on black paper just so it would be the night. And speaking of styles, you and I were talking about a film you've done, and so could you describe that for us?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I have made a movie. This is my third movie. Well, I made two shorts, and this is my first full-length film, and it's animated, and it is called Night of the Otter, and it is inspired by 60s hammer films. So, you know, the vampire and Frankenstein films done in Britain where it's like they're like salacious and sexy, but it's not like they're horny, but they're not like raunchy. You know what I mean? Yeah, they have that that salacious inappropriateness, but not necessarily like graphically salaciously. It's not nudity, it's the the thing off the shoulder. Yeah, or it's like or or there's some boobs, but they're not in it doing anything. They're just walking down the stairs, or they're you know what I mean? It's it's like that that you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, or they're wearing something very sheer. Yes, then those boobs are attached to people. It's not just two boobs walking down the stairs.
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, no, no. I just mean like nobody's having sex or anything. It's just or if they are having sex, then then you don't they're fully clothed, right? It's that sort of weird, that sort of weird in between. But like sometimes like there's one, it's got a lot of there's a lot of Dutch angles, a lot of bright colors, a lot of not necessarily motivated lighting, right? We're we're we're lighting for mood, we're not lighting for reality, right? So yeah, it's it's it's like that. It's animated. Um, it took me like two years to make. It's got that's what I'd say. I would say it's like uh it's like a hammer film mixed with well, I mean it's it's a musical. Because like it had one musical number in it, and I was like, well, this is good. That's great. And then I saw, have you seen RRR? The Indian film RRR?
SPEAKER_05:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so like halfway through this, I saw RRR.
SPEAKER_05:Let me let me follow you, Scott. RRR is an Indian movie, TJ, and he's not a superhero, but he's an action star. And so the story I can't even remember the story.
SPEAKER_02:There's two of them. Imagine the Fast and the Furious in India, set in 1900s as historical fiction, but it's a musical, and it's like three and they just break into the music out of nowhere. It is excellent, it is an excellently crafted film. And I I was so inspired by that. I was like, wow, they could do all this drama and action and crazy, and also have wild, he can fight a tiger bare chested, and then three minutes later they can do a number about him getting his head cut off or whatever. I can't remember what they were gonna do to him, but they were executing him very awful way. Yeah, and he's like, I'm so sad, my head's gonna be cut off, and it really sucks, right? And I and it just sort of inspired me. I'm like, well shit, if he can write a musical with that, I mean I have little critters and some naked people, I could absolutely throw some musical numbers in here, and it'd just be so much better. So it's like RRR and a hammer film, but animated.
SPEAKER_05:Interesting. Blew my mind. I thought you had a question too, but anyway. So the animation process, I know it's usually done. You record the script and then you do the animation after. Because it was just you, did you start animating first and then have some people voice things, or how did that work for you? No, I had people.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, there's one more thing about this movie, too. No, no, no, no. Well, yeah, because it is gonna be at the Lake Charles Film Festival, October, I don't know, whichever, I don't know. They haven't told me when it which day it airs, but so the first move two movies I did, one was called Ulfednar, it's a werewolf movie, and one was called Shadow Man, is like a seven-minute short, and they're all very dark dark and bleak and sad. And when I submitted them all to Film Hub or Film Film Freeway, I won all kinds of things. I won like Best Cinematography for the Canadian Cinematography Awards for a short. I mean, I just won. It was and and like half the like I would say Ulfidnar, about about a third of the things I submitted to, I got in, and about half of those I won. And Shadow Man was even better. And then you know how many people watched it? Zero people, zero people. So this time I was like, Joe Bob Briggs, Blood Breasts and Beasts. I'm gonna try, I'm gonna make a 78-minute-long exploitation film from my favorite genre of exploitation films, and I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna I could literally do drive-in totals on it. Now, nobody seems to be, it's not a big fan with the festivals. I've been rejected from everything except for like two, but I'm hoping that that will translate into eyeballs. It's an experiment, basically.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Interesting. Keep on plugging. Yeah, we're all out of breath.
SPEAKER_03:No, sorry, I'm I'm checking something technical. I'm paying attention, I promise.
SPEAKER_05:But no, we know. I'm just I was gonna say something. It's like, wait, you are you gonna talk? You want to talk? Can I talk? You want to talk?
SPEAKER_02:I have wild and crazy ADHD, so I just keep talking.
SPEAKER_05:That's okay. No, no, no, you're doing great.
SPEAKER_04:No, it's all good.
SPEAKER_05:What's next for you? What what would you like to do next? You know, you've done I know we're talking about getting ready for the next 48. You've done animation, you've done live acting. Anything that you really want to do next?
SPEAKER_02:I want to make a how catch'em. Are you guys familiar with the term how catch'em? I know. Okay, well, you know who done it.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? Okay. So the how the how catch em is the opposite of that. So uh poker face is a how catch em. Columbo is a how catch em. Okay. Where you spend the first like and I'd like to do more live action because I I I I enjoy doing live action and it's great practice. It makes all of my other contract work better too. Because most of my contract work is live action. So if I'm making things that are live action, it's helpful. Essentially, the premise is like the first 20 minutes or so, you follow the ver the murderer and you get the motivation, you get how they do it, why they do it, you know, everything. So you understand it. And then like a third of the way in, right? Natasha Leon or Peter Faulk come in and okay. I know, you know, I'm a smart guy, and I'm really stupid, but I just don't and then you watch him solve the crime, and you're really still just always following the murderer, right? Like if you think of like Columbo, you don't know where he comes from, you don't know where he went to, right? He just appears in the guy's door. He's like, ah, yeah, and then you have to and you watch the murderer sort of squirm. Yeah, as um, I think it was once described as they're eaten alive by a duck, right? Just right away with no, it just you know, never. And I really like that idea because it allows it, it really gives actors a lot of ability to like ham it up, right? You get people who really can perform.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's not as hard as a who-done it. Like who-dunits are kind of hot right now, right? Because like knives out came out and they're much back at the Christie ones, and now a lot, oh, you know, only murders in the buildings, and then like a lot of other people started at doing them. And the writing mechanics of a whodunit really hard because you have to keep track of all the facts, make sure you give the viewer the proper information so that they may so that they can be able to solve it, then make sure they can't solve it, and then right, and then it also has to pace boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all the way through, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And I was like, Well, I'm not, I'm not, I have ADHD in autism. So, what I would rather have than trying to figure out that George R. R. Martin, everything has to have its own place in this endless string of accuracy, perfection, and organization, right? Is feelings, vibes. You get the idea of what happened, and then it's clever as you watch whoever it is slowly pick up pick pull the strings of the sweater, and you get to watch the murderer as their sweater comes un undone. Unraveled. Unraveled teaser there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's you see what I'm saying? Like that's yeah, I and I I think that would be more interesting, and you can build the anxiety, right? All those things can like you can watch all those things happen in real time as it's moving along. And I've kind of like got the original, I've got like the first, I've got whatever that three sentences is that c encapsulates the beginning of your script, you know, like who them who the characters are and what they're doing and why. And then I I but that's where I am right now. Yeah. So that's what I'd like to do next. But really, I'm just trying to get more more gigs, more work. We're gonna try the gang that fence post productions. They're gonna try a set. I hope they're gonna do the seven and seven. Yeah, we're gonna test out this new pre-production structure, right? But all these things, you know, they give you an opportunity to meet new people. You guys, nice to meet you. And and you know, you people get to kind of see your work. Like you said, you saw you saw my film or our film, which I appreciate, and then you're like, wow, cinematography was really good. Thanks. So, you know, if you think, oh, I want to do a commercial, well, that one guy that did that kung fu scene, he was pretty great, right? But that just you know, I guess I want more work. That's what I want to do. I want more jobs because that's what I do. Yeah, that tracks the same way. That's right.
SPEAKER_05:That tracks. TJ, how many times have we been talking to someone who's like, Oh, you're working on something? I'm there. I volunteer as tribute.
SPEAKER_03:That's right. And if I don't say it, Brian will.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, definitely. I've inspired you to start start saying, like, oh, come on, come on, give me a job.
SPEAKER_02:The answer is yes. Yes, very I'm bad at marketing myself. So I was hoping maybe if I do things like this a little bit more, I could do a little bit better.
SPEAKER_04:I am I'm bad at it too. That's why I've got Brian.
SPEAKER_02:Brian is excellent. Brian is excellent at it. I am terrible at it. That's what says, like, I have no because I would rather just work. Like I just want to make stuff. Like I don't wanna, you know, I don't want my I don't I don't care. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_05:I thank you. Thank you both.
SPEAKER_04:If it wasn't for Brian's marketing, uh there wouldn't be a single person except for maybe my family listening to this podcast. Hick would listen to it. Maybe enough. Yeah, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_05:Watching wrestling all my life, you see how to do a promo. They cut a promo on somebody. I didn't watch much much NASCAR. Let me try that again in English. I didn't watch much money. I didn't watch much NASCAR, but those guys do the same. Plus, it's all advertising on their jumpsuits, but promote, promote, promote. And then I can look back in my life and I used to do sales. I sold encyclopedias door to door. I did telemarketing for a little while, and I sold cutlery, which you can't do door to door. It's by appointment. So if I have, you know, I get to see you, Scott. I say, you know any people, I'll give you a I'll give you this free pair of scissors or whatever. Oh, here's TJ's phone number. So it's referral because you can't knock on somebody's door and go, Would you like the French chef knife like Jason had?
SPEAKER_01:I'm uh deadly nightshade salesman. I sell cyanide, arsenic, and deadly nightshade. I know would you like me to come in and uh show you the aerosol version of it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_05:So I learned I'm very good at demonstrating, but when I'm selling a$600 set of knives or a$2,000 set of encyclopedias, kids' encyclopedias was the internet before it was all electronics.
SPEAKER_04:Paper version of the internet.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And people would go, oh, I can't afford that. I love what you did. It was great talking to you. I love what you Yeah, I understand. I didn't have the heart, I wasn't cutthroat enough to do that. So basically, those skills have now turned up to be let me tell you about my podcast. I take I had took an Uber today and have this card. Talks about the podcast. Do you like podcasts? Boom. Here's a QR code, here's our stuff, here's some people we've talked to. Oh, great. You know, and through that conversation, same thing, push, push, push. It has backfired a few times. I can go too far. You know, and on social media.
SPEAKER_02:Grandpa was like 90. He hit, he flirted with everyone. Everyone. And I was like, dude, you're like 90. And he's like, yeah. So at my age, you gotta cast a wide debt, right? So I'm gonna get rejected like 85, 95% of the time. But if I don't take the shot 100% of the time, then I miss that 5%. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, grandpa.
SPEAKER_05:All right. And to grandpa's credit, nursing homes have become, let's say, a hotbed of activity and leave it at that. It's something to look forward to in our old age.
SPEAKER_04:I think I'm not totally a lot of stuff just came into focus, Brian, with your last couple of stories there.
SPEAKER_05:There you go.
SPEAKER_04:Things are starting to add up now.
SPEAKER_05:And since they've added up, we're gonna have to subtract by shutting us down. It's time to go, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Scott, we've had a great time talking to you.
SPEAKER_02:It was been really cool. I've I've not done this before, so I it was cool to do something fun and exciting.
SPEAKER_05:Broke your second cherry for the year of 2025. The eight-hour film and now a podcast. And Night of the Otter. And it's going to a festival in October.
SPEAKER_02:Will it be No, yeah, it's going to Lake Charles Film Festival in uh October 3rd and 4th. And then um I have it set for release on the 15th, which means probably to be an Amazon, but I don't know and some other things, but almost guaranteed leave them, and then you see what happens after that.
SPEAKER_05:We will put that in our notes and say where people can find it. And of course, when I post it on social media, I'll put all the links you you give me.
SPEAKER_04:All right. Well, Scott, thank you for joining us. It's been it's been a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_02:Nice and it was nice meeting you. And if you ever need a stupid guy to make comedy, non-ending comedy rambles, it's what I do. Or filmmaker. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also I am I what I should have said in the podcast, in case you ever have questions or why not, I was my basic function almost the my entire career has been a video editor. So news, shows, everything is video editing. So yeah, I suppose if you ever need a video editor expert or you want to talk about like Da Vinci versus Premier or something, I uh I'm pretty good at that.
SPEAKER_04:Oh no! Excellent. Yeah, we use uh we use Premiere for our editing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Might I suggest DaVinci?
SPEAKER_04:So I've used I started in DaVinci. My closest friend from the military is a game streamer, and for a little while I was editing some of his streams on Da Vinci because it was free. So that's how I got my feet wet. But when we started doing this, we were having some issues cleaning up the audio. So I tried audition, it was just night and day different for me.
SPEAKER_02:Though there's been a lot of improvements, but I I'm a certified premiere trainer.
SPEAKER_04:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02:Because I I try I teach video editing, right? It's one of my one of it's my corporate job. I'm a certified premiere trainer. Brian's eyes just went to it's fine, but I switched to DaVinci about a year ago and I have it looked two years ago.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's almost necessary running a black magic camera.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, DaVinci's kind of what sucked me into the black magic camera. Um now I have also have the the black magic cloud store, this high-speed storage. I've got a like a 10 gigabit, eight 10 gigabit throughput, eight terabyte high-speed storage drive that I keep everything on. I've gotten complete I've bought the Kool-Aid. I am in the Kool-Aid, but I will say, if it doesn't cost you$600 a year every year to have, it gives you more money to do things like buy hardware, you know? That's basically why I quit Premiere in the first place. And then I stuck with Da Vinci because of the color tools. The color tools are so yeah. We just got into that, right? I had to I recolored all of the film. Like, oh, it looks all cinematic. The reason it looks cinematic is because I have Da Vinci Color to recolor everything that I did.
SPEAKER_04:So have they improved their audio tools any? Yeah. I like being able to export straight to audition, clean it, fix it, and then it automatically populates back into Premier.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, so I'm right using the bridge.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I it has its own audition now built in. Huh. DaVinci. And it also has Fairlight, right? As Fairlight, which works very, very well. And it has a lot of now, a lot of the same stuff that Premier had, like the AI ducking and and noise canceling and all that kind of stuff that has improved immensely. And it's$300 for two licenses. So and that's it. It's not$300 for two licenses, and then next year it's$300 for two licenses. Like I got a license from buying my camera, and I bought a license beforehand. So I have four seats, but I don't use four seats. And I started at DaVinci 17 and I'm now at DaVinci 20.2. Those are the only times I paid for anything. So that's a good plus. The hardest part is the after effects is fusion. Fusion is hard to learn because it doesn't use timelines, it uses nodes. It actually works a lot like Unreal Engine does, where their version of their C coding, but no, it's see. I told you, if you want a nerd who can talk about color or video editing, if you watch a move, if you see a movie like uh what's that really good movie with Ewan McGregor? And it's total shit, but then you watch the director's version, it's brilliant. It's the sequel to The Shining Doctor. Oh, Doctor's sleep.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:The movie that came out, hot garbage. But if you go find the director's movie, the director's version, I highly recommend it. It's a brilliant fucking movie, but the color is awful. They colored it all, and it looks like he's got liver spots, and because they didn't get their the color space right and all this stuff. So yeah, if you ever need a nerd to explain things that look bad, yeah, good at that.
SPEAKER_05:Or good. Maybe a little bonus content we can have.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, like oh man, I love to talk about sinners for like an hour. It's fucking beautiful film. And I even talking about the cool Michael B. Jordan, Michael B. Jordan. I mean, the references that they use, they use like impressionist paintings from like the 18th, from early 19th century to frame their stuff. They have all these references to John Carpenter films. They have, I fucking love that movie. I mean, the movie is great, but like I just got sucked into like, oh my god, look at this framing. Oh my god, look what they did with the colors. Oh my god, look what they're doing with the costuming. Oh look, that's a reference to a John Carpenter movie. Oh, look, like, just loved it. So, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:If you like Sinners, you should go back and watch our Kevin Cheatham episode because he was in Sinners.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I definitely should. Good play, good, good sell, too.
SPEAKER_05:I was gonna say, that's how you promote.
SPEAKER_03:See what you did there, Brian.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you. Thank you. Lesson learned. Great talking to you, Scott. Everyone else, we'll see you later. Come back next week. See you next time. Bye.
