Archives May 2017

Download Indie Film Distribution Through the Decades with Sam Sherman

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-imperfect-podcast/id1107133885

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-129479778/indie-film-distribution-through-the-decades-with-sam-sherman

Welcome to Part 2 of our interview with writer, producer and distributor Sam Sherman. In case you missed it here’s Part 1: Indie Horror Icon Sam Sherman. In this part of our interview with Sam, we discuss how film making and distribution has changed, his relationship with director Al Adamson and how films like Dracula vs Frankenstein came to be.

Sam Sherman attended New York’s City College Film Institute, where he ran “Flash Gordon” serials and “The Mask of Fu Mancho” in the student film program and made the 16mm short “The Weird Stranger” in a single day. The first picture he distributed was a re-release of The Scarlet Letter (1934) in 1964. He also worked in the publicity department of Hemisphere Pictures prior to forming the hugely successful production and distribution outfit Independent-International Pictures with Do-It-Yourself indie filmmaker ‘Al Adamson (I)’ in 1968. Independent-International produced and/or released a slew of movies in such genres as horror, Western, science fiction, comedy, action and even blaxploitation for the drive-in market throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Watch Sam Sherman Discuss Indie Film Distribution Through the Decades

Sam Sherman Part 2  Interview Highlights

Whats your view of indie film distribution today?

I’ve been in contention with the major studios from the beginning. When I realized that I was not going to be involved with them. I wanted to be originally it made me declare my oath of independence. My opinion is they are to blame for everything that’s happened in this industry. As a result of the stupid things they’ve done the major studios have hurt the whole industry.

In the past year Paramount and Warner Bros fired a third of their employees on the west coast. They employ a lot of people that effects the economy out in Hollywood. As far as young people I try to encourage young film makers because when I started out I met veteran people in the industry. Whether it was Otto Preminger or John Wayne, they were always very nice to me and encouraged me. So I always want to encourage the next crew coming up.

It’s tougher today than it was because it’s tough to get into the major studios. They control 95% of the major theatrical market. When I look back the independents used to control 35% of the market. They hated to see when we were making all the money and they weren’t. We were making more horrific or sexy pictures and the studios were making old fashioned movies. The studios didn’t grow with the changes in the marketplace.  But they are certainly smart. When someone picks up on an idea such as Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity which is an awful picture. I had to walk out on it. It was a waste of time, yet there were 2 or 3 sequels and made mega millions of dollars. You can’t possibly understand why that is or even be influenced by it because its so freakish and impossible.

Can indie film makers compete the studios?

It’s like The Boob Tube (1975) in a way. As much as that was influenced by a movie called the The Groove Tube,  no matter what we tried to do to clone the Boob Tube we couldn’t do it. If you looked at Paranormal Activity and said that’s a great idea I’ll make a picture like it, you can’t. It’s just so weird and freakish that nobody has succeeded in copying it.

If you look at what pictures the majors are making today, they’re big production pictures like Batman vs Superman based on comic books or it’s a big Tom Hanks movie. They are well directed, shot all over the world. These pictures are costing $100 million dollars or more. It means film making is a very hard thing. Is it impossible? No, but one has to realize, especially young film makers that the cards are stacked against you.

At the time when I started out, it wasn’t an industry that didn’t want me. They didn’t care one way or the other about me. Couldn’t care less whether or not I wanted to do something. Today they don’t want you at all. You have to look at what is going on.

Today we are seeing things change so amazingly fast. We’ve seen the growth of the internet and internet programming. Not even the studios know where its going. One thing we can look at is where the stocks are going. Companies like Alphabet, Inc. that own Google and YouTube, their stock is worth over $900 per share. Amazon stock is over $900 per share. Disney owns studios, two theme parks and a great library of movies. Disney is a great company with branded entertainment and their stock is probably $30 per share. Who would believe that?

I can only give one piece of advice and that’s my credo. Never give up!

Tell us about your partner and director Al Adamson

I suggested you look at the film Nurse Sherri. Nurse Sherri was made for as next to nothing as it could be. I said to my director Al Adamson we have no money to pay you now but we have money that’s due. Go out and put a second mortgage on your house and we’ll do this picture. Who would do that?

Unfortunately if you know the story of Al Adamson he was sadly murdered. Al Adamson was like my brother. We started this company together and made all these films and did a lot of great things. Al was murdered by a man who was rebuilding his home in Indio, CA south of Palm Springs. It was a great tragedy. He went missing for a long time, we went looking for him and brought in the police and FBI. Eventually he was found entombed in his house.

Six months before he died he said something to me that was so strange. We had a little gag where I’d ask Al to do something for me and he’d ask what is it and I’d say I’m not telling you. You have to agree first. Who would do that? What a relationship we had. Only once did Al say to me he had something he wanted me to do. He made me agree first and said I want you to do three things. First I want you to tell my story to the world, what I’ve directed and my career. Number two I want you to keep the films that I directed in distribution so that people can see them. Number three I want you to finish the UFO film we were working on. I haven’t finished that film which bothers me especially because I gave my word on it.

In the case of tell his story to the world I worked on a book called Schlock-O-Rama The Films of Al Adamson by David Konow. It’s a great book that tells the whole story of this. Then we had an E! True Hollywood Story about Al. I was following the background of Ed Wood. He had a book written about him, then he had a documentary done about him and then he had a movie done about him. We are working on a movie about Al and myself making films together for a number of years.

How did you make Dracula vs Frankenstein?

Dracula vs Frankenstein was very popular. It went through several levels of shooting and edits. It started as a spinoff of Satan’s Sadists with some of the same people involved and it was originally called The Blood Seekers. The picture was rushed into production and Al wasn’t really ready but he was being pushed by other people. Al sent us the work print for a screening in New York with myself and some investors. Everyone hated it. They said better to take your first loss early, we don’t want to release this film.

I asked if they would mind if I tried to fix this thing up with my background as a film editor and writer. I belong to the school of waste not, want not. The main doctor was played by J. Carrol Naish, a two time Academy Award Nominee and 5 or 6 other well known actors in it. A concept had come to me that Dr. Durray, at least that’s what he called himself, was actually Dr. Frankstein, the last of the Frankensteins. I decide to change the picture in that direction. If we could put Frankenstein in, we could put Dracula in for good measure. I had to find a good editor to fix up the original material and then re-shoot the whole thing into what became Dracula vs Frankenstein.

The film is still around, still playing, it’s just now on Blu-Ray and wentthrough TV distributors MGM Studios. It’s one of those weird things. It became a great cult film. There are producers also working with us to remake it.

What’s in the future for Independent International Films?

Continuing to keep our library in release. Making new films, working with young film makers and encouraging them while figuring out a way to deal with this stranger market that exists today.

How did you get films into distribution?

We came in off the street and didn’t know anything. I had one film, The Scarlett Letter that I brought to a regional distributor in Boston that don’t exist anymore. There were probably 500 regional distributors around the country at that time. Denver Dickson, Al Adamson’s father knew some of them in the south from distributing a Western him and Al had made called Half Way to Hell which helped but he didn’t know every area.

I thought going up to New England, where the Scarlet Letter took place that I’d get some distribution. It never played in New England and they had no interest in my picture. They told me they had no interest in old pictures. They had interest in horror films and others. That was the turning point for me. I realized we’re forced to go into whatever the market dictates.

What’s different or the same about film making today?

Number one, the thing that’s always interesting to me is how cheaply can you make a film. At the time if you were shooting a film on 35mm if nobody else got paid, you still had to pay for the film stock, the lab to develop it. Today you don’t have that. Back then we had films shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm because that would cut the cost up front way down. Satan Sadists was shot in 16mm. Dracula vs Frankenstein was shot in 16mm. Pictures that were popular were shot on 16mm but I didn’t like that. I wanted to shoot on 35mm. Today digital is digital. It doesn’t have to cost anything.

The one thing all movies have in common and that’s the secret. That great thing is ideas. Ideas are more important than money. If you have a picture that costs $400 million dollars and it was stupid idea who cares. If you shot it on digital and it cost zero dollars but the idea was great.

How do you protect your ideas?

Anybody can steal anything or change it a little bit. The one thing you can do that costs nothing is the Writers guild of America allows you to register written materials with them. You can take a script, a story, a one page idea and register it for free with the Writers Guild. That’s respected in this industry everywhere.

Download Independent Horror Film Icon, Sam Sherman Interview

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-imperfect-podcast/id1107133885

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-129479778/indie-horror-film-icon-sam-sherman-part-1

This week we take the Imperfect Podcast on the road with horror icon, Sam Sherman. Sam is has been a writer, producer and distributor that continues to work in the film industry today. We were fortunate enough to be introduced by our friend Ethan Marten who you may remember from our podcast about Eyes of the Roshi.

Sam Sherman attended New York’s City College Film Institute, where he ran “Flash Gordon” serials and “The Mask of Fu Mancho” in the student film program and made the 16mm short “The Weird Stranger” in a single day. The first picture he distributed was a re-release of The Scarlet Letter (1934) in 1964. He also worked in the publicity department of Hemisphere Pictures prior to forming the hugely successful production and distribution outfit Independent-International Pictures with Do-It-Yourself indie filmmaker ‘Al Adamson (I)’ in 1968. Independent-International produced and/or released a slew of movies in such genres as horror, Western, science fiction, comedy, action and even blaxploitation for the drive-in market throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Sam is a humble, intelligent film maker who gravitates toward “the weird.” We couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to learn from someone who made his mark in the film industry as an independent for decades. Part of 1 of this interview discusses Sam Sherman’s background and early career. Stay tuned next week for Part 2.

Watch one of Sam Sherman’s classic films: Dracula vs Frankenstein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjQP_eaFVuU

Watch the Entire Interview with Indie Horror Icon Sam Sherman

Sam Sherman Interview Highlights

Where did your love of movie making come from?

It started with a love of still photography then in whole movie photography. I had been given my uncles 8mm camera and projector. I started making my own 8mm movies and also started collecting movies like Charlie Chaplin and westerns. When I started going to the movies at the age of 4 I always had a love for it. First time I was in a theater, what impressed me was how enormous the screen was and that was before TV or home movies.

Television started running old films that I took a liking to which took me in that direction. I basically started as a collector of movies. Regular 8mm, short 5 and 15 min films and then I got a 16mm projector for movies that ran longer. At that time there was no home video and I wanted to have certain movies I could see and preserve. I thought a lot of them were so obscure that if I didn’t have them nobody would have them.

Through all of that I became a film historian, studying the history of films going back to the late 1800s. I was hired by James Warren who produced the Famous Monsters of Film Land as a writer and film historian. He had an editor but couldn’t keep up with everything so they would farm out articles to me. Along the way I got to interview many directors, producers and actors.
I was always interested in the more obscure films but I did get meet famous people such as John Wayne. John Wayne liked me because I knew all about his early work as a young man starting out. He couldn’t believe I had all of his films on 16mm prints. At that time actors or producers would have 35mm screening rooms in their homes and didn’t even know these 16mm prints existed that you could run yourself.

I got to meet John Wayne over a dozen times in different circumstances. I sat with for an interview article from 8am until 1pm. No acting, just shooting the breeze about old 1930’s pictures. He couldn’t believe some of the facts I knew about those old films like the time they were shooting live ammo on set.  I had a good friend Joe Franklin who had a television show in NYC and he helped me with a lot of things whether it was getting to do a film or meeting someone. He knew just about everyone in the industry.

What was the first independent horror you filmed?

It’s a funny how that happened. Things like that don’t get planned. If I had said I’d like to make horror films it doesn’t happen like that. There’s always a million impediments to you doing something. I was a big fan of photography and I subscribed to a popular photography magazine. There was an article about City College Film Institute that seemed interesting. A place to learn about making films, use equipment, and meet people. To get into the film program you had to have top grades and be a science student which I was.

That gave me an in because I was a step up from the average student in the New York area. It was a free school if you got there. At the time, other schools that taught film were on the west coast like UCLA & USC and it was too costly for my family to send me to California. I was also very young because I skipped two grades. I was 16 and looked like I was 12 which was hard to get people to experience me.

I was going to college and working as a film editor, projectionist and teaching audio/visual use at Hunger College, plus making my own little movies. The fact that I liked horror films came from two areas: One was comic books and they always had horror and in addition to that I would listen to radio programs. Most of the dramatic shows were in the mystery or horror genre. The weirder the better for me. That background and working for Famous Monsters of Film Land Magazine pushed me into horror.

The Weird Stranger: Sam Sherman’s City College Film Project

I was in charge of programming at City College and they came after me in the school newspaper and called me the ‘Horror Man: Sherman is lowering the standards of City College.” The head of the film institute was teaching a course and we had to make a small film to pass the class. It took most students almost 6 months to make their short films. Everyone else was pretty artsy and I was low class. The end of the semester was coming and I had nothing. He said to me I should make a horror film about a vampire who robs a blood bank.

I end up making a film called The Weird Stranger. It was a crazy horror satire and it was technologically way ahead of what the others were doing. I had a full synchronized score that matched the moods and sound effects. As much as he hated it, the professor had to give me an A. What he hated the most was that I wouldn’t put the City College logo on the film. I shot my film on location, with my own equipment and had my own logo. It turned out to be the best film of the class and years later my sister was taking a course at City College and invited me to a screening. They announced they were going to show their favorite student film and it turns out they start showing my film The Weird Stranger. People loved it. Since I made the film, peoples taste changed.

What makes horror films so unique and likeable?

It’s because it’s different. Everything in life today, seems too similar and uninteresting but when you get to horror, you have the undead coming back to life or zombies or whatever. Way back when, not many were made. People wanted to see something different.

How did you start making films professionally?

I was friendly Irwin Pizor who owned a company called Hemisphere Pictures. They were located in New York with offices in the Philippines who had made one horror film but at the time I met them they were making war films because there was a big demand for them overseas in 1963. Make them in the Philippines and sell them around the world but they were making no money in the United States. I had bought a picture from Irwin Pizor based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and I wanted to re-issue it.

This week’s Imperfect Podcast guest is Manon de Reeper, who is the Editor in Chief and founder of independent film magazine Film Inquiry. Manon is also a screenwriter currently shopping her Screencraft Fellowship quarter finalist MORAL TREATMENT. She has two academic degrees and currently lives in beautiful Perth, Australia. Starting as her own personal blog, Film Inquiry has grown to having over 100 contributors.

Film Inquiry is an independent, crowd-funded magazine with which purposefully steers away from the current online journalism trends of meaningless click bait. Instead you’ll find long-form reviews and articles, as well as in-depth resources that are interesting to cinephiles and filmmakers. Film Inquiry also supports women and minorities in film and behind the camera.

Since December ’16, Film Inquiry is a Rotten Tomatoes approved publication and all of our reviews are counted towards their tomato-meter. To support Film Inquiry, you can join the Film Inquiry Society that will grant you complete access to all of their archives, as all posts older than 30 days (aside from a few freebies) are locked. Once a member, all the content is ads-free. Members also get a 10% discount to the Film Inquiry shop, and more.

Keep up with Manon de Reeper and Film Inquiry:

https://www.filminquiry.com/about/
https://www.facebook.com/filminquiry/
https://www.instagram.com/filminquiry/
https://www.twitter.com/filminquiry/

Watch How To Get Your Independent Film Reviewed by Film Inquiry

Interview Highlights with Manon de Reeper Editor in Chief of Film Inquiry

How did Film Inquiry get started?

I founded Film Inquiry as my own personal film blog where I was doing my own amateurish film reviews. I had just graduated from university and was doing some research while studying criminology. It’s still the most geeky thing ever, where I studied how a science fiction film effected the future effects of real life policies.

It was the best time of my life and I wanted to keep doing it because I always wanted to do film. Film was my biggest passion but friends and family recommended I not go to film school but I ended up making everything about film anyway.

I moved to Australia with my partner and he got a job here and I was hoping that I’d be able to do something with my criminology degree and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I’m not one to sit still so it was my chance to jump into the whole film thing.

People liked the blog and I wanted to involved more people so we could do more. The ball started rolling in early 2014. Every since, we’ve been steadily publishing. I don’t want to publish too much because I get too overwhelmed with how some of these magazines push out content. We want to keep the content schedule minimal but the actual articles bigger. It gives us the opportunity to go more in depth and explore one film more. More and more people are joining us to write.

People have told me they are pretty disillusioned with the current online film journalism. We really want to be able to talk about film in a context more than Marvel’s easter eggs. It’s fun and more people are picking up on it. I’m stoked an excited that all the hard work is paying off.

How do you decided which films you write about?

Honestly, at this point I have the luxury of having a team of 100 people so I have a combined amount of a time. I personally don’t review many films anymore. I’m trying to get a YouTube series going for myself but even choosing the films I’m going to watch every day is becoming a challenge. It’s starting to get so busy but I feel like I have this responsibility to watch movies.

What does a typical day as editor in chief at Film Inquiry look like?

I have to say I set it up pretty smoothly. What I do is coordinate when film makers ask us to review films, then I make sure that my team knows this film is available for review. They let me know if they want to review it, I request the screener, send it to them, they write the review and it’s reviewed by a few editors. I’m always the final review before publishing. We have a pretty strict schedule we adhere to so I make sure all the time slots are filled in. For general feature articles, its mostly all the writers pitching their good ideas. It’s a lot of work but it’s also fun.

Where does your love of films come from?

My Dad was very much into films and my Mom too actually. They would always take me to the movies. For instance, on Christmas we wouldn’t go to church, we’d go to the movies. That was our thing and it just stuck with me throughout life. I started exploring film myself when I got a little older.

What was the first article published on Film Inquiry?

I think it was a review of the film Elysium, by the South African director Neil Blomkamp. Everyone was raging on how incredibly poor it was and I thought it was pretty good. I wrote a little essay on how the criminological aspects of it were interesting.

How does your degree in criminology influence your writing?

It definitely taught me to look further than just the actor’s performances or the visuals. I always want to explore the idea of the film more. What are the film makers trying to tell us. We learn so much from film. Most of the situations these characters find themselves in, we wouldn’t ever find ourselves in. Seeing those things it teaches us a lot about life.

The way a camera is used and how a scene is framed adds to an idea. If you shoot someone from below, it elevates the person and adds meaning.

What is your screenplay Moral Treatment about?

I wrote a story influenced by academic background. It’s about a woman who is a British Royal set in the late 1800’s. It’s a Victorian era script. She has the privilege of receiving education in the UK and is married off to a rich guy in the US, an industrialists son. She starts to work at a local asylum because she’s a psychiatrist. It’s quite fascinating to me because there are so many terrible horror films set in these type of asylums. I wanted to do the opposite and give a very realistic portrayal of mental health and how these people were treated back then.

How does it differ from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

In a way, it was quite influenced by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I personally really love that one because it’s a realistic portrayal of mental illness and what a mental hospital was like back then. It does have a big twist in the end like Moral Treatment does. I say it’s a mix between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Shutter Island.

Is Moral Treatment your first screenplay?

No it wasn’t but it’s the first one I fully completed and edited. It was a challenge for me specifically how do you get into the mindset of writing. You need to put a lot of creative energy into writing which I did for 30 days. If you don’t keep at it every day, it’s easy to get out of that again. I adapted the National Writing Novel Month for my own needs. I was traveling and working during that time but because I had this goal of writing 3 pages a day, which is doable, I finished writing 90 pages in that month and had 30 pages before that. If you’re just focused on writing you don’t have the time to go back and edit it constantly.

Watch Manon’s video on “How I Wrote a Script in One Month”

I had seen the deadline for the Screencraft contest and gave myself that concrete goal. It was my first complete script and I wasn’t thinking I would ever win. Considering there were over 2000 submissions I was completely stoked to have made it to the quarter finals. It doesn’t even matter how good your screenplay is at that point. It’s more like a game of luck because there are so many people that submit great work. I still think there may be an audience for my script and winning one contest isn’t going to win you the Hollywood game.

What did you learn as Editor in Chief of Film Inquiry?

I learned it’s more about the people you know. I feel for the people that believe they need to win a contest to make it because that’s not the way it works. I’m in Perth Australia and trying to get to know people in Hollywood. Film Inquiry has definitely helped with that in a very casual way. Knowing people is the most important thing.

How can film makers get coverage at Film Inquiry?

Everyone can send their request to info@filminquiry.com and I will always put their requests in front of the team. It’s up to the team whether they pick it or not. It happens sometimes that nobody is interested. We also cannot guarantee a positive review.

I try to put everything out there. There is an audience for every film so I don’t filter it. I offer it up to my team for them to decide.

This week’s guests on the Imperfect Podcast are Trish Rainone and Katie Uhlmann. They are the writers and producers of the new hit web series, My Roomate’s An Escort. The web series is an off kilter comedy about two polar opposite roomates who influence each other’s lives for better or worse. Trish and Katie personally bonded over break-ups and roommate stories and began writing together two days later and haven’t left eachother’s side’s since. The two share a lot of laughs together on the screen and in real-life. Trish is thrilled at how My Roommate’s an Escort came together and can’t wait to make more!

We had a great time chatting with these ladies who are super funny and clever. They talk to us about funding the web series through crowd funding, investors and sponsors. Like many other talented people in the entertainment industry, they needed to create their own path to showcase their abilities. Fortunately for Trish and Katie, My Roomate’s An Escort seems to winning over audiences with over 69k views in less than 4 weeks.

Writers, Producers & Actresses Katie Uhlmann & Trish Rainone

Katie Uhlmann is an award winning director, writer, and actor and was born and raised in Trenton, Ontario, Canada. After graduating from Queen’s University with a degree in drama and psychology, she started pursuing a career in film and moved to Toronto. Katie has acted in countless shows (Workin’ Moms, Just Passing Through, Paranormal Witness), commercials and independent films (Kingdom Come). She is also known for her work as a host on her web show entitled Katie Chats where she completed over 3000 interviews with guests including David Cronenberg, Tatiana Maslany, and oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche.

Trish Rainone is an actress, writer and producer from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. She initially studied Film at Carlton University, but moved home to The Soo after some horrible roommate experiences and a bout of home-sickness. After working on several commercials, short films and the odd pause-or-you’ll-miss-her roles in popular films such as The Void, she decided to begin creating her own content with people she connected with and respected. Her first short film, Constance, (which she Produced and Co-wrote) had a successful film festival run in the States and Canada. She earned a Best Actress Award at the Horrorizon Film Festival in 2016.

Watch How to Make Successful Comedy Web Series

Interview Highlights with Trish Rainone & Katie Uhlmann

How Did You Meet?

Drunk at a bar where all of our relationships begin. We met at a friends birthday party in January of 2016 and hit it off and seemed to have the same sense of humor and the same angst towards exes. At the time, we were both going through “something.”

I had just gotten out of a 3 year relationship and crying a lot. We were both frustrated actors because we weren’t getting opportunities for roles that we wanted so we decided to pursue the dream.

Why did you choose to produce a web series?

I think because we had good chemistry we decided to do some writing together. We both had produced some short films and put them in festivals. With short films you do festivals and then wonder what has changed. We thought tackling a web series would be a better approach to tackling stardom. (just kidding)

We are still taking My Roomates an Escort to festivals but it was the idea of getting something out there immediately and distribute ourselves online. Although I do have to say there is something about being in a theater with an audience and seeing what jokes they laugh at. That’s something that’s nice about festivals. On the internet you just have a bunch of assholes attacking you.

Has My Roommate’s An Escorted offended anyone yet?

We took some heat early on when the trailer was released but now that it’s released everyone knows we aren’t making fun of escorts. Both of these girls are just girls. When you’re figuring out your life in your 20’s you go through some ups and downs.

We started with reality since we both had disaster roomates and branched out from there embellishing things and making them more absurd. The hope is that it’s relatable on some level.

Some people no matter what your job is you might not be great at it. You can be a low achiever in any field is what we’ve learned from our experience. We can be fired from almost every job. That’s something we talked about for Heather’s character because we never explored. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in life. As an actor you go through a lot of jobs because you want to keep acting the priority and for some reason bosses don’t like that at day jobs.

What was the creative process like for My Roomate’s an Escort?

We wrote the series over 7 months. We both have day jobs, I work at a casting studio and at the time Trish was working at a bar which she’s likely going back to. Whenever we weren’t at our day jobs we’d be writing and sometimes I’d go sit at the bar when she was working. Other customers would be like what’s going on? Did you say escort?

We had no lives for 7 months but really still have no lives. We crowdfunded on IndieGoGo and raised $20k and we threw a big party during the Toronto International Film Festival where we sold tickets to the party and got free alcohol from sponsors. Then we charged people $30 to go to the party that went directly to the IndieGoGo campaign but they got free food and drinks. A local business Adrenalin Tattoo gave us $5k and they were in the show. Our executive producer also contribute a lot of money.

Crowd funding and asking people for money was very stressful. Some people don’t like it and get offended. I had one person actually say I’ve tried chatting with you and you never write me back and now you’re asking me for money. My Mom got mad at one her friends for not supporting the campaign.

It’s one of those things where you can’t hold it against people if they don’t support you. A good approach is being grateful when they do support you. Have low expectations but be appreciative when people do pull through. What’s interesting is that the people you least expect are the most generous.

How long did it take to shoot each episode of My Roomates an Escort?

We did a block shoot and shot the whole series in 6 days. We ended up with a few pickup days.

How much PR & marketing was there leading up to the release of My Roomates an Escort?

We had $10k left we saved for marketing. There was a very strategic social media scheduled where we pre-planned our posts for every single day.

What was the web series filmed on?

We shot it on a Canon C300. I directed the series and come from a performance background so I don’t know a lot about lenses. Our director of photography helped and collaborated with us a lot. I kept it pretty simple. It was a very efficient set but super fun.

How did you get sponsors for your events?

Katie is really good at writing emails but we also found that going in person is successful. Getting a personal introduction is also helpful.

What did you learn from shooting My Roomates an Escort?

Build your own success.

What’s next for the series?

We are taking meetings. It’s doing what we hoped it would do and grabbing network interest. Our dream would be to have a half hour comedy but we are proceeding with guarded optimism because a lot of things would have to line up for that to happen. We are just going to keep asking people to give us money until it works. We just want to be paid to write and create our show.