Ex-JW Documentary on a $20,000 Budget

Documentary First, Episode 102 · with Scott Homan, director of Witness Underground · 69 minutes · February 18, 2021

Listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all apps · Watch: YouTube · Read: Full transcript

How do you make a documentary about leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses on a micro-budget?

For his first feature documentary, Scott Homan recorded three-hour interviews with five people from a music scene that grew up inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of whom later left the religion. He shot it in 10 days, ran the lights, sound and two cameras himself, and says he has a total of about $20,000 into the film. The result is Witness Underground. For Scott it is a personal story: he played music in that scene and also left the religion.

In Episode 102 of Documentary First, Josh Lindsay, Christian Taylor and Jason Rugg talk with Scott about building a story from interviews instead of a script, why he says he expects pushback from the organization, and what he says shunning has meant for him and the people in his film. He walks through the tools behind his remote edit during the pandemic, from Descript to Amara, and the festival strategy he wishes he had started sooner. Christian adds her own lessons on festivals, publicists and thinking about the business of a film first.

The episode opens with team news. Hunter Taylor leaves The Girl Who Wore Freedom Normandy Project for Navy OCS, Ben Feithen steps into his role, and Christian shares that a veterans group at L’Oréal has reached out about a talk and a possible screening. Near the end, Scott gives his review of The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• How Scott Homan went from a high school film program and a prototype feature in Vietnam to his first documentary feature
• What the music scene inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses was like, as the people in Witness Underground describe it
• How Scott built the film from five three-hour interviews, with no script, and cut a two-and-a-half-hour first cut down
• How he shot a feature in 10 days, doing the lighting, sound and two cameras himself, for about $20,000
• Why Scott says he expects pushback, and what he says shunning has cost him and the people in the film
• How Descript, Amara, Google Drive and Premiere powered a remote edit, and why he wishes he had used Frame.io
• What a festival strategy course, a stills photographer and a real trailer can do for a first film
• Scott’s three tips for first-time filmmakers, and Christian’s case for thinking about the business first

Questions and answers

What is Witness Underground about?

Witness Underground is a documentary by Scott Homan about a music scene that grew up inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Scott describes a culture where, as he puts it, you can’t really be in a band or pursue fame, and even financial success is looked down on, so the musicians learned to record and mix their own music. His logline says the artists “push the boundaries until they hit the bars of the cage they are in.” Scott, who left the religion himself, tells the story through interviews with five people from that scene.

How do you make a documentary on a $20,000 budget?

Scott Homan shot Witness Underground in 10 days and says he has a total of $20,000 into the whole feature. He ran the lighting, the sound and two cameras himself, recorded three-hour interviews with five people, and handed the footage to a remote story editor, who gave him a two-and-a-half-hour first cut to work from. He says his biggest challenges were the very small budget and not having a crew of people on set who knew what they were doing.

What does Scott Homan say about shunning after leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Scott Homan says that since he left the religion he has been shunned, and the silence from family has lasted about 10 years. He says the people in Witness Underground have already lost their friends, and some have had little contact with family for years. Scott says this is why he made the film: “This is not just my story,” he says, adding that more than two million people have this story.

What tools help with a remote, low-budget documentary edit?

Scott Homan built the early cuts of Witness Underground in Descript, which transcribes footage and lets you rearrange the film by cutting and pasting the text. He says it costs about $12 a month. He used Amara, a free nonprofit tool, for SRT caption files and translations, plus Premiere and Google Drive. He wishes he had used Frame.io, saying that if you spend money on one thing, it should be that, because it speeds up communication with collaborators.

What should a first-time documentary filmmaker do first?

Scott Homan’s three tips: shoot a trailer for your idea early, to test it and help raise money; find the people online who are already engaged on your topic and talk with them; and organize your film festival strategy, synopsis, logline, poster and trailer before you think the film is done. Christian Taylor adds that filmmakers should think about the business and the sale of the film first, because making a film means starting a small business.

Chapters

• 0:00 Hunter Leaves and L'Oréal Calls
• 9:10 Meet Director Scott Homan
• 14:55 What Is Witness Underground?
• 19:55 Scott's Own Story in the Faith
• 22:26 Interviews, Editing and a $20,000 Budget
• 25:50 Shunning and the Fear of Lawsuits
• 31:07 Dark Nights of the Soul
• 35:35 Descript, Frame.io and Amara
• 40:04 Festival Strategy That Works
• 51:35 Next Projects and The Brave Dutch
• 57:02 Scott Reviews The Girl Who Wore Freedom
• 1:00:15 Three Tips for First-Time Filmmakers

About the guest

Scott Homan is from the North Woods of Wisconsin. He made his first two documentaries at 17 in a high school film program, ran camera and audio for Channel 7 News, and went to photography school in Minneapolis during the transition from film to digital. He lived abroad for seven years in Ecuador and Vietnam, and in Hanoi he and two friends created the independent production company Banana Island Films, which he still runs. Before Witness Underground, he made what he calls a prototype feature in Vietnam, an anthology following musicians at a rooftop music venue in the middle of the city. When the episode was recorded he lived in Los Angeles and had a day job alongside his film work.

About the film

Witness Underground follows musicians who were born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and built their own music scene across several states, including in Minneapolis, Chicago and Madison. Scott’s logline: “Witness Underground reveals artists born into the high control Jehovah’s Witness culture who attempt to strike a balance between seeking truth and artistic self-expression. They push the boundaries until they hit the bars of the cage they are in.” Ryan, a key character who ran a music production studio, shared an archive of more than 30 full albums, which became the film’s soundtrack, and James shared about 30 short films he made in the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s. The film also uses reenactment footage.

Scott shot the film in 10 days and finished it during the pandemic with a story editor in Atlanta. When the episode was recorded, he had submitted it to festivals and had been shortlisted to the top 30 feature films, from about 200 submissions, at a documentary festival he did not name. According to the YouTube description, Witness Underground is now on Amazon, Apple TV, Tubi and YouTube.

About Documentary First

For people who make documentaries and people who love them. Discover how documentaries actually get made, paid for and seen with filmmaker Christian Taylor. Plus DocuView Deja View, where every guest recommends a documentary worth watching. One week, a long-form conversation about a guest's journey, projects and lessons; the next, The Deep Dive, Christian's short solo reflection on one idea from that conversation. Guests have included Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Christian directed the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Nearly 300 conversations. Listen Notes top 5% worldwide. 4.8 on Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

• Witness Underground (official site)
• Banana Island Films and its YouTube channel

Full transcript

Hunter Leaves and L'Oréal Calls

Josh Lindsay: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker's journey. I'm your host, Josh Lindsay, from The Movie Proposal Podcast. Hopefully you all are listening to that. And we are with our first-time filmmaker, Christian Taylor.

Christian Taylor: Hello, Josh Lindsay. It's an awesome podcast. I'm listening, so I hope other people are too.

Josh: Oh, good. And I see behind you, looks like he's kneeling on the ground, business extraordinaire Hunter Taylor.

Hunter Taylor: Hey, everyone.

Josh: Hello. And of course, couldn't do it without him, our trusty dusty research extraordinaire, button-pushing guy, Jason Rugg.

Jason Rugg: Hey there.

Josh: Hey there, Jason. You got the nice camera going again, right?

Jason: I don't know. This is actually, I had to swap to my laptop because my camera kept zooming in and out for no reason. [Laughter] It was great. Stupid camera.

Josh: Yeah. Okay, well, Christian, I know you have some updates. We have a guest today, so let's jump right in. Hunter has been promoted, is that right?

Christian: Well, that's not exactly right. Not in the Normandy Project sense, anyway. I'm going to let Hunter give you his update himself.

Hunter: Well, fortunately and unfortunately, I will have to be tendering my resignation with The Girl Who Wore Freedom Normandy Project, because the Navy got back to me and they drastically moved my timeline to leave for Navy OCS very soon. So I'll be heading out within the next couple weeks.

Christian: No, no, no, no, no. Days.

Hunter: Sure. For OPSEC, I'm not going to tell them exactly when.

Christian: Okay, that would have been good to know.

Hunter: But regardless, it's a very quick timeline, let's say. And Mom has been crying for two days straight.

Christian: And that's, we're not going to dwell on that. That's going to be a hard thing, personally and for Normandy Project. So Hunter, we appreciate every single thing that you have done to help us, and your spirit will continue. Thankfully, you're in our film. And we wish you well. We know that you will do well. And we can't believe you're leaving the Army to go to the Navy.

Hunter: Yeah, it is what it is. But I will say, I'm very confident with the Normandy Project team. I'm confident with the Documentary First team, the team that we've put together, the different strategies that we are starting to put in place. I'm quite confident that you guys won't be able to pull through without me.

Christian: Yeah. Why don't you tell who's going to kind of step in and take your place?

Hunter: So we actually have another soldier from the 101st, Ben Feithen, who will be stepping into my shoes. He's also helping Christian start a new company, which she believes will help her continue to make films in a much more expedient and efficient fashion. And so Ben Feithen will be kind of taking the reins from me. He's very confident, very qualified, and he's actually a bit more charismatic than I am, so that's good too.

Christian: Yeah, we'll have to, when we can, and everybody can get to know him, and we'll start that new relationship. So he's been with the company now since, I guess, December, and we're looking forward to getting him a little bit more integrated now that Hunter's stepping away.

Josh: Well, congratulations, Hunter. Very exciting. How does the Army feel about you going to the Navy?

Hunter: Oh, I haven't asked them yet.

Christian: He's still trying to get officially released from the Army.

Hunter: That's true. That's not true, I'm teasing. There's an issue with me getting my separation papers. I'm out of the Army, that's why I have it here.

Christian: That's true. All right, well, Hunter, I just drug him in here last minute. He was in the middle of packing, so he's got to go, and he's got a lot of things to do, and I will let you go.

Hunter: All right. Well, thank you guys so much for having me. I'm glad to have been a part of this.

Christian: All right, bye, Hunter.

Josh: Well, Hunter, bye. All right, you need to, like, play, what's that song? Taps?

Christian: Yeah, appropriate to my heart.

Josh: Okay, yeah, that's a little bit too dramatic.

Christian: I'm very... Let's shift gears, then.

Josh: We can move on to, let's talk about what's going on with the film.

Christian: Yeah. So we've had a lot of stuff going on. I have a lot to update you on. I think, of course, following up on the news of last podcast, that we have distribution now through Factory Film Studio, we have had a lot of things to turn in, and there's things to be decided as to when we're going to release. I did get an email today, and they're looking at right at the end of May, 1st of June, and so I can't wait to hear more about what that looks like.

One of the things that we have been working on with Brad Stehr, our new podcast producer, is starting a Patreon page. So if you are listening to this, we would love for you to join us once we get this launched. We hope that will be launched in the next week or two, and it will be a Patreon that does help this podcast, but it will also help my larger projects, sort of creative endeavors in general. So we'll have more information about that. Hunter's been putting together a brand new donation package with incredible challenge coins. I don't know if I've talked about this yet, but that's progress. We've ordered the coins, so we can't wait for that. We're still just trying to generate some sort of consistent income to be able to pay our bills and pay people.

And the latest exciting news is that L'Oréal reached out to us, and they are interested in me coming to speak and maybe doing a theatrical screening there. We retained our theatrical rights, so that gives me the ability...

Josh: Is that like the shampoo woman named Lori?

Christian: Yeah, somebody said, "Do you mean Lori L?" I'm like, no, L'Oréal, the makeup. Yes. So it's a really interesting partnership, and it came about because I went to high school with this girl who then joined our high school Facebook group, and we got to know each other, and she saw the postings about our awards, and she works for L'Oréal, and she thought, I think this would be an amazing tie-in, because it's a French-American company. And so we had a call about that yesterday, and they were super excited about our film and the possibilities of sharing that with their audiences. They have offices worldwide, and so it's an incredible opportunity for us, and I'm excited to see what that holds. Never would have saw this coming.

Josh: Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, Colgate called me the other day. They want to promote my film.

Christian: Really? The toothpaste company? Okay, that's great. Well, the thing is, what I've learned is that every big corporation usually has these little independent groups, and like at Michelin they were called business resource groups, or BRGs. It's the same thing at L'Oréal. They have another thing that they call them, like tasks or something like that, but what they do is try to create some sort of culture with the people in it based on what they're interested in. So you may have a car group or you may have whatever. But in these two companies in particular that I've been associated with, they have veterans groups, and so these veterans groups are always looking to partner with outside stuff.

And so this veterans group at L'Oréal wants to bring education, awareness and advocacy. Those are some of the pillars of their veterans group, and that focus really pairs well with our film. And it would be veterans that sponsor it, their veterans group sponsors it, but it does extend the invitation to view the film and learn about these veterans groups and French groups, explains them to the wider L'Oréal community. So it's an exciting opportunity. I can't wait to see what happens.

Josh: Awesome. Well, congratulations.

Christian: Yeah, thank you very much. So yeah, that's the update for me. Another great thing that's been happening is we've been having first-time filmmakers reach out to us that have been helped along by our podcast, and asking if they could kind of come on and share their story. So Brad and I think that might be something really fun to do. We had Elise on a while back with Big Teeth Productions and her film, and that kind of kicked things off. So that's led us to today.

Meet Director Scott Homan

Josh: Well, we have a special guest, another first-time filmmaker, as Christian said. Why don't we go ahead and bring him on. His name is Scott Homan. Scott, welcome to Documentary First.

Scott Homan: Hello, hello, everyone.

Christian: Hello. I'm going to share your bio here with everyone. Scott is from the North Woods of Wisconsin, in the heart of the Great Lakes. The northern culture is fiercely do-it-yourself, and he was taught by, I like this, eccentric parents to defy cultural norms. Not the house I grew up in, but we'll leave that for another day. He created his first two documentaries at 17 in a high school film program. Very cool. He worked for Channel 7 News running camera and audio, and went to photography school in Minneapolis during the transition from film to digital. I actually did the same thing. I had that same problem. We'll talk again about that later.

He lived abroad for seven years in Ecuador and Vietnam, where he primarily focused on developing skills to run a boutique documentary production studio, and he and his two friends in Hanoi created an independent production company called Banana Island Films. Great title, great logo, by the way. That he runs to this day. So he's got two feature films that are in the film festival circuit, which is, I think, fantastic. Scott, again, welcome to the podcast.

Scott: I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for that. Thanks for the intro.

Christian: So Scott is also a first-time filmmaker, got introduced to the podcast, and let's start with that. How did you get introduced to Documentary First, and how have you found it to be helpful for you?

Scott: I listen to podcasts a lot, and so I was on Stitcher and I just did a search for documentaries. I probably stream like five to six hours, maybe even longer, of podcasts a day while I'm working, because I have a day job that's beyond my film job. And I thought, wow, this is perfect. This is the only thing I could find about starting, running a new film, running through the film festivals. And it was incredibly cool to just, you're about six months or a year ahead of me in a bunch of different ways, and so I was like, wow. And every single episode, I just learned a ton about how the entire market works, really. There's so many mistakes that you've been very open about having made, and I've been making some of those same mistakes. A few of them I got to skip and not make, thanks to you first.

Christian: So happy. I've always wanted to be, to sort of see myself as that, like, don't do what I did, let me make it easier for you. So that makes me happy to hear.

Scott: Yeah, and I just binged it all the way through. So yeah, your journey's been incredible.

Christian: That's pretty great. Thank you very, very much for listening and for reaching out to me. I love meeting you. I saw your film this past week, as did Jason. So we're going to kind of dive in, just a little bit about how you got into filmmaking, what your journey's been like. We're going to talk a little bit about your film, what tools you found helpful, what your film festival run has been like. So we have a whole bunch of questions for you. So I'm going to give the first one, I'm going to pitch it over to Jason. Jason, why don't you ask him the first question?

Jason: All right. So Scott, what led you to become a first-time filmmaker? I would love to know. Like, I know how Christian stumbled into hers. How did you become a first-time filmmaker?

Scott: Well, the bio kind of touched on my background. I kind of had done one, the other film that's in film festivals right now. I actually haven't submitted it to any. I've tried, and then I paused to let this one run. But I made what I think is sort of my prototype feature in Vietnam. It's more of like an anthology following musicians and bands that are a lot like live musicians there, and a music venue that's on a rooftop, a tower in the middle of the city. It's a really amazing place, and a bunch of friends and artists made it. So I made that, and I got all the skills, I guess you would say, to make a film.

But I'd already been kind of prototyping out this feature, which is also about music and musicians, but in a religion. And I've just been working on this idea, because it's a really personal story and I wanted to be able to tell it in a really creative way, because there's a lot of media out there already and there's nothing quite like what I created. So I just got ambitious. I actually went to film school when I got back to the States in 2017, and I took a couple classes, like one or two classes, and realized I'm much more of a do-it-and-learn-it kind of person. Do it first, just rush into it and learn, trial by fire. So I quit, and just decided to run a crowdfund campaign and build up some capital so I could go shoot. And then if I did that, I figured I would be able to just cut it over time. So that's kind of the rough intro.

Christian: That is, you know, everybody's road to their story is different, and some people do go to film school, some people just, like me, jump right in and think, ah, how hard can it be? I can figure it out, or I'll get some friends who can help me. There are many, many stories to becoming a storyteller. And I do think our experiences kind of lead us there, and just like writers write what they know, it's easiest for us, I think, to jump in and tell what we know, or show it.

What Is Witness Underground?

Christian: So we haven't yet talked about the name of your film and what it's about. So why don't you tell us first all of that information?

Scott: The name of the film is Witness Underground, and it's about Jehovah's Witnesses. It's about a music scene in the Jehovah's Witnesses, essentially, and a community that grew up inside the culture, and they weren't really allowed outside of that culture, and so they kind of had to do everything themselves. There's a strong community bond that they've had together, where they knew other bands and other musicians outside, but they weren't really friends with them. They had to kind of develop it themselves and just learn how to run and mix audio. They had a lot to rebel against, and they didn't necessarily know that, I don't even think. But they created music, and it was sort of off limits to be able to do that in that culture. You can't really be in a band, you can't really pursue fame, you can't really pursue success of any kind. Even financial success is looked down on. So they were pushing on the limits of the culture in a lot of different ways.

Christian: Yeah. So the name of your film is Witness Underground, and if you wanted to give us your logline, do you have a logline? It's always so important. If you're a first-time filmmaker, you've got to work out that logline, and you've got to be ready to know it right away. So when somebody says, "What's your film about?" the first thing that you need to give them is that logline. So tell us what your logline is.

Scott: Okay, I should have been ready for this. Witness Underground reveals artists born into the high control Jehovah's Witness culture who attempt to strike a balance between seeking truth and artistic self-expression. They push the boundaries until they hit the bars of the cage they are in.

Christian: Excellent. Great. It's short, to the point. I love that. Jason and I both watched this over the last week. Jason, I want to start with you. Tell me what you thought of the film, and what impact did it have on you?

Jason: It really broke my heart in a lot of different ways, because, you know, growing up Christian, it's not as constrictive as the Jehovah's Witness, but there was definitely a part of that that really resonated with me, of how being a youth and trying to find your own way and being artistic in some way, and it not being really accepted by a lot of people. And that really resonated with me, the running into the bars that they were running into. It really sucked me in, and I loved it. It was fantastic.

Christian: Yeah, I thought the same thing, Jason, because I was raised in a Christian home, and in particular in the South, where it is more legalistic and formulaic and overarching in your life. There were a lot of things that I could relate to in this film, albeit it is not as dramatic, clearly. And like you, it broke my heart. I found myself praying for these people in the film over the last couple of days, because there was, for me, a sadness there, in that after they've come out, there's a real rejection of all things spiritual, period, which I think is sad, because I think we're made as spiritual beings, in a sense. And there was just a lot of hurt and pain that overshadowed anything that could have been good.

But I will say, the same as Jason, I did feel completely engrossed in your film. I think the production value is high. The story is compelling. I learned new things. It made me very compassionate and understanding of the people growing up in the Jehovah's Witness environment. But there was also the element that I find when I watch anything like that, on Christian Science or Scientology, all the Scientology coming-out things. I cannot stop watching those, because you cannot get your mind around the culture and how it is so controlling and pervasive. And so there was that element there. As you heard people talk, you just can't believe that, in your situation, someone is not allowed to go to his brother's funeral because he had left the faith. I mean, it's just heartbreaking. So big kudos to you. It seemed like a very personal journey for you, and I think the thing that I didn't understand is the connection. So how did you end up with this story yourself?

Scott's Own Story in the Faith

Scott: Okay. So I played music. I had a very light experience with this religion, where a lot of the people in the film had a very strict kind of standard experience. My parents, like I mentioned, were kind of out-of-the-box kind of thinkers. They did things their own way, to the beat of their own drum kind of thing. So I had the ability to play music, and all my heroes were Nirvana and Soundgarden, these old grunge bands from the '90s. I wanted to be a rock star, and I played in a band in high school. So I had these friends outside of the religion, which is usually off limits, whereas people in the religion didn't get to have that experience.

So I was in this band, and then later I kind of left the religion, kind of came back for family, and then I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I'll find a Witness band. So I got all these people to play my music, so I recorded another album, and eventually met all these other Witnesses in Minneapolis. Because the Witness circuit, once you know, they're spread around, and people drive. Like, I had friends three, four hours away, and we'd have parties. We'd drive across the whole state or from other states to just hang out for an evening or a weekend. But some of these other Witnesses in Minneapolis and Chicago and Madison, there's sort of a network. I discovered these people as a Witness in the religion, and we were friends. We partied and did all kinds of stuff and broke some small rules but got away with it.

But eventually all these people left the religion, and it was within a few years, we all sort of had left the religion. But I didn't really get back in touch with them until like eight or so years after having left, and it was for a totally unrelated project. I was working on my first 48 Hour Film Project in Vietnam, and I reached out to Eric and Cindy, and they made the soundtrack in like eight hours. It was amazing. And so me and my French filmmaker friend in Hanoi, we started asking Eric to make music for corporate gigs and paid gigs. And then since that relationship was sort of building in this commercial sense, in a creative sense, I was like, what if I was able to tell my story through them? I was like, that'd be really cool, because it sort of connects the music for me. Their story of playing music in the religion was like the only way I was able to keep going in that culture. I was able to have a way to express myself. And so they have this beautiful thing that they created that spanned multiple states.

Interviews, Editing and a $20,000 Budget

Christian: So what was your journey like? If this really is a personal experience for you, what was this personal journey like for you? And then, did you write this? How did... The writing part for me was really challenging. Talk to me a little bit about your journey, how personal it was, how it affected you, and then how you were able to write the story.

Scott: That was really challenging. I didn't write it. I went and just did interviews, and I had a friend who also had never done anything like this help me with the interviews. So we focused really on the religion, and like what the religion is like and how the rules work and how the culture works. But after the end of every interview, I would take back over, because I would let him do the interview, with someone on the outside giving the outside fresh perspective, with the goal of the general public being the audience. So he did the main interview, and I would come in and do a music interview about the culture of the music. And my friend didn't even have an idea why I was doing that, why you were spending another hour interviewing people on this other seemingly unrelated topic. But I knew that that was the connection piece, the piece that made it personal.

And I had like three-hour interviews from five people that I just let sit. I was so exhausted. It's a very emotional journey, but it was also exhausting to shoot and capture and do the whole process. So I let it sit for like six months, and then I found an editor, and I was like, here's a pile, here's this mountain of stuff, please sift through it and find something interesting. So she handed me like a two-and-a-half-hour cut, and she's like, cut it down, here's something to work with, cut it down. So I spent like two months finding pieces that could be deleted, which is always hard to do.

Christian: Yep. Sacrificing your babies. We've talked about that.

Scott: Yeah, I did like seven sessions of that. It took forever.

Christian: Yeah, that's challenging. So what other challenges did you face in this? There's so many. Talk to us about some of those challenges.

Scott: I think I had built up the skills to do this, to do everything as a small filmmaker, doing everything: the lighting, the sound, the cameras, running two cameras. I could do the whole thing by myself. But I found out that, I mean, if you lose batteries on one camera, I'm not able to watch that, or if the color's not just right. I would say one of the biggest challenges is having a small crew of people that know what they're doing on set, because I spent three years working on this, and it's okay, but it's kind of mediocre and a little bit amateur in some ways. So it only took 10 days to shoot, total. One of the challenges was doing it all myself on a super, super small budget. I have a total of 20,000 into this whole feature so far. It's like an extreme micro-budget kind of thing. I would also, yeah, raise more money. That would be awesome.

Christian: It makes everything easier. It does, for sure. For sure. What do you think, Jason and Josh? You have other questions about the film and how he made it?

Shunning and the Fear of Lawsuits

Josh: I'm just curious about the personal side of it, with you or with your friends. Was there any pushback from family or the community when the film was being made or came out?

Scott: So there's some pushback. You know, I'm expecting to be sued by this religion. They're just like Scientology. They're just as rich as Scientology. [unclear in the recording] company every year. And they litigate. They've won 48 Supreme Court battles. They like to squash media and silence people, and they're just as aggressive as the Scientologists are. So there will be pushback. But in terms of family, I kind of made the decision to just go really public with it, because once they, like, they take everything away immediately. I have nothing else to lose, I guess, in short. So it's not like, I don't hear from them. They're not happy that I'm making media about it, but I'm not happy that they have TV evangelists telling people really bad ideas that sort of trap people that I love.

So there is, I mean, I don't know how to say this. They shun me, so there's silence. There's no more that you can take away than silence, and it's been silent for like 10 years. So that's the entire reason why I'm making it, is because this is not just my story. It's like two-plus million people have this story.

Christian: Yeah, that's why I think it's so powerful. And you're right, I mean, I do think it's scary to think, I'm going to take this risk, I'm going to make this exposé piece of work, and I could be sued, and things could go beyond. Are you worried about that situation, and what will you do?

Scott: The only thing I've learned that I can do, I actually called the lawyer that you had on your show, because he's on your show, and that was interesting. Trevor. And he said, really, you can't stop someone from suing you, but you can just protect yourself from what that might mean. Like, they can sue you, but it doesn't mean they're going to win, or they even have a case or a leg to stand on. So just become an LLC.

Christian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about as simple as that. Hey, Trevor, shout-out for Trevor. If you guys need an IP lawyer, Trevor Schmidt or John Scanlon, we've had both of them on. They're super helpful.

Jason: What is the fallout going to be from the people in your film, do you think, with their connections? Or have they already sacrificed all those by coming out?

Scott: Yeah, I think they've already sacrificed everything that you can sacrifice. I mean, Ryan has barely had any contact with his family since 2005, and the same is true for Eric and Cindy. James luckily has family that have left as well, so he sort of got to keep all of his relationships. And then there are a lot of them, and Chad. You know, you lose all your friends. That's an absolute given. But family, some people get to have some. So I feel like Chad and James maybe have it easier than the rest. But especially, I think, probably Eric and Cindy, because they were at the heart of the music scene, and Ryan, they were sort of the poster children in Minneapolis, in the Jehovah's Witness community, for what not to do.

Because they rebranded this word called apostate. So apostasy just means that you've left the religion of your childhood or your youth or your culture, but they teach that it means you have a mental disease that's contagious. So they think that if they talk to you, you're going to spread this disease to them. And that's all the more top of mind with the pandemic going on. But that's what they teach. I don't know that everyone believes that, but they know that if they talk to these people, and it comes out that they talk to these people, they could lose the relationships they have now. And that's in the immediate world, and they'll be treated how they're treating us.

And then in the abstract, they're also taught that if they have these relationships with people that have left the religion, they will lose their ticket to heaven. But their heaven isn't the heaven that Christians have. Their heaven is living on earth forever with an immortal body, with other perfect people, perfect body, perfect land, whatever. They call it the paradise earth. So they believe that you won't be able to live on earth forever, and it's not worth risking that. That's their abstract fear, because they're going to lose that.

Christian: Yeah, it's super powerful, just how you kind of educate your audience about what that is and what the cost is. And that's why Jason and I both say it's really heartbreaking. So we applaud your bravery for doing that, and we do wish you the best about that.

Dark Nights of the Soul

Christian: Tell us what your journey has been like, the highs and lows. You finished it now. I want to ask you what that has been like, and then after that we'll ask you what tools you've used. But start with telling us, since you finished it, tell us how long it was, when you started and when you finished it, what you've done and where you are now.

Scott: I'd like to quote Christian Taylor here: there was a dark hour of the soul. Did I get that?

Christian: Yes.

Scott: There's a couple of those. One was right after finishing it and just sitting on this mountain of content, like, oh, what did I do? Now I have to do this crazy, crazy task of creating this movie. So I let it sit and just kind of wrapped my head around that. That was the first one. Another one was when my editor handed me back the first cut, super excited, and I handed her back a revision. But that process happened so many times, and you know what it's like to rewatch your film after an edit. It's an hour and a half long. It started out being over two hours long.

Christian: Oh, trust me, it is a time-consuming process. And you just wait. I mean, well, you've been through it, but we are still, now that we have distribution, I had to rewatch it for the captions. Like, the closed captions, you have to deliver an SRT file. Like, if I have to watch this one more time, I think I may kill myself.

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

Christian: And it's funny, it starts out with just talking heads, and you're like, well, here's the story. Like you said, writing the film, you have to write the documentary. You have to know that this part of the story flows into that part of the story, and then this sentence is more powerful than that one, and you're rearranging all these cuts, and it looks awful, and so you're just watching it. But it really is paying attention to the story. And then the next set is putting on B-roll, or coverage footage. In your case, you had a lot of reenactment footage. It was really, really cool. I was very impressed. I had no idea you did that.

Scott: Oh yeah. You only watched the movie last night?

Christian: Yeah, I watched it. It's very fresh, very top of mind. We have a lot to say about it. It's really good. We'll ask you that. Well, you can review it for us.

Scott: Yeah. My dark night of the soul was getting a full cut that just looks awful, and having to rewatch it the eighth time. Like, ah. And my editor's great, she's a great story editor, but the process took forever. We were remote anyways, because she lives in Atlanta, and I was in Denver, and I was living in L.A. when I was doing all this. So I'm in L.A. now. But yeah, just like, how long will this go? Because we haven't even started putting photos and videos on top of this yet. And we did the whole thing basically during the pandemic. We went from raw, rough dialogue to a fully finished film, which is one of the amazing silver linings of the pandemic, having time to really just get head down. I'm working full time, but there's nothing else to do, no distractions at all in life, so I was able to finish it.

So the lowest was when I started submitting. I wanted to submit to Sundance, and especially South by Southwest, because I feel like South by Southwest would be an amazing festival for this. But it's very much a work-in-progress version I submitted to them. So I'm kind of really starting my run. I submitted to a bunch of festivals that I thought were really great or decent fits in November, that all have spring and summer and some fall screenings.

Christian: Okay, yeah. So like almost one full year behind you. Yeah, oh well, it's a ride. Get ready for that.

Scott: Yeah, I want to know all about your experiences with how the festival screenings went.

Christian: Yeah, during the podcast, but I'm just really, you can talk about that. But I mean, it's changing. The festival experience is changing, and I think it will continue to change. I've been very thankful to have these in-person experiences that I have had, and I'm thankful I haven't gotten coronavirus, even though I've been traveling. And I've actually been blessed, I think, by hardly anybody being there, because it's very small, you get more individual attention. But at the same time, there are not distributors there, and there are not a lot of press there, and there are things that aren't there that usually are at film festivals. So there have been pluses and minuses.

Descript, Frame.io and Amara

Christian: But one other thing I wanted to ask you about was the tools that you found most useful. Talk to us about those, because we're a remote company too, and we've shared in the past that we use Trello and Slack and Frame.io and Google Drive. Those are the main tools we're using. What about you?

Scott: I've thought about Frame.io hundreds of times during this process, because that's such a great tool. Without that, we would have a transcript of the film and we'd time code it, and then it would change. We'd have moved the blocks of text, using Google Docs, as we know, moving pieces around. I mostly organized that myself, and then we'd have a bunch of people listen, watch, and then they'd comment, and then we'd do a new version every single edit.

Josh: Oh, I could never.

Scott: Yeah, that's the right reaction, Josh. That is my biggest, if you're going to spend money on something, spend money on Frame.io, because it's just so much easier. It speeds up the whole process of communicating with collaborators.

Christian: Yeah, oh man, that's a brutal process.

Scott: One of the first tools I used, which I think is a fabulous tool, is called Descript, and they auto-transcribe content, and then it basically allows you to cut the film with the text itself. So you can say, oh, this paragraph, or this one sentence, or this half sentence, I'm going to copy it, paste it over here, and now the film is rearranged for you. And that allowed me to really quickly prototype the story out, and I very much built the early, early cuts with that. But they don't quite have it built so you can export that into Premiere and have it linked to the raw file. They've been working on that, or they've been talking about working on that, for like three years.

Christian: And how much is that service?

Scott: I think it's $12 a month. It's actually quite affordable, and their transcription service alone, I think, is amazing. I use it for every corporate thing I do.

Christian: Yeah, that's great. I used Rev, which works, and I think Happy Scribe is another one I used at some point. But I hadn't heard of Descript. That's really great.

Scott: I use Amara as well, for SRT files and CC. It's really cool. It's a nonprofit, so it's free, and it's a collaborative tool. You have your film up, and then you can have people translate it. I translated our original prototype video into like 47 languages, because our film has a huge global reach, where I'd imagine for you, French and English should be the primary, and maybe a couple other regional languages around Europe.

Christian: Yeah. How do you spell the name of that tool, just so people...

Scott: A-M-A-R-A. Amara.

Christian: A-M-A-R-A. Okay, that's a great tool to know about. What else? Do you have other ones?

Scott: I use Premiere, of course. Google Drive for all the shared stuff. Like, we had basically Ryan, the key character in the film. He's a guy who ran the music production studio. He had all the archive audio from cassette tape, CDs. And so he put this entire archive into Drive day one, so I was just going through those before I even decided to make the film. He dumped this archive on me, and I was like, this is amazing, I had no idea. There's over 30 full albums of music that they've recorded, and I used all that. It's all soundtracks from their own music. And then another guy, James, who's a filmmaker. Back then they made student films or amateur films, some shorts, and it was pretty funny stuff, usually comedy, goofing around. But there were about 30 pieces that he had done, cut from back in the day, in the '80s, '90s and early 2000s.

Christian: That's pretty awesome. And you were a part of that community, right? That's what you were talking about, kind of.

Scott: Yeah, I was. Right. I moved to Minneapolis, and I knew quite a few of the people at the core of the scene. I lived with some of them. But at that point, I had already done my band thing, and everyone in my band had moved away to different places, including me. So I sort of started selling my music gear, and they were kind of closed. They're like, who's this new guy? We don't know if we can trust him. And they wouldn't really let me into the music scene. But I was going to their shows and parties, and I was kind of working on their other stuff. I went to camera school, so I was transitioning into more visual arts rather than audio at that point. But yeah, I knew them.

Festival Strategy That Works

Christian: You talked to me about some other tools that you've been using for your festival run.

Scott: Yes. Okay, great. So the film festival, what I really, really want to do is connect with other filmmakers like yourselves, and with a pandemic it's basically just not happening at all. And so this is an incredible opportunity, you guys running your podcast and us being able to communicate this way. And I also found an agent through my neighbors that live in L.A. Like everyone, a stone's throw away, has a script they're working on or a short film they want to make, or they're an actor. All my neighbors work in media. And so I just started hanging out with them, because it's a pandemic, and I got a recommendation for an agent. So I got a sales agent. But even that, he sort of isn't really going to be turned on until I win, I get into a festival, and then he can start talking to people at the festival. So he's helpful, but not as helpful as I need.

So I decided to look online for something. I found this group called Film Festival Mastery. It's a course run by the founder of Slamdance Film Festival, John Fitzgerald, and another guy called the Kickstarter guy, Justin Giddings. He's a film director. They both direct. And it's kind of expensive, I thought, so I held off for a couple months, and I wish I hadn't done that, because they probably would have saved me the 500 just in strategy and their smart ideas, and I would have put that money towards something else. But instead I submitted to like 20 festivals that are probably not even a close fit, like long shots.

And so the tools that they recommend, basically, I'm going to give away all their secrets, but the key ones are getting on the radar of the festival programmers. One of the key pieces to running your festival is getting in touch with them. You write your cover letter, but then you might send an email that has the cover letter paraphrased, like, hey, this is my film, this is why you should watch it, and thanks for watching, thanks for programming, it's a hard job, that kind of thing. Rephrase your cover letter. But also the other key thing that they help you build is, you're absolutely sort of, excuse me, branding a whole new business. It's maybe the worst business idea possible, because you make one sale and you have one product and you're never going to do it again. And you guys have really expanded, because you have stuff to sell.

Christian: But yeah, it's what I say over and over again, and this is what filmmakers don't think about, and if I could challenge the filmmakers to think about this: it is the business part that needs to be thought about first, because you are making a product. And so you need to think about selling this product. Yes, you want to tell your story, but at the end of the day you also want to get paid, and you want to make another story, right? And so most people think, oh, I'm going to make this movie and get discovered, and then I'll be able to make more. But that's not the reality. It does happen sometimes, lightning in a bottle. But really, I would love for filmmakers to be retrained to think about the business and the sale of your film first. And that means, who is your target market? Who are you selling to? How do you make that sale? What's that process going to be like? And realize that you are starting a small business, and all of the same things that apply to starting any other business apply to you selling your film.

Scott: Absolutely, for sure. Some of the key things are being really active on social media, finding the community that is engaged on the topic already, because there's a community for everything. And there's a few ways to do that, but the classic ones are just use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and Facebook being primary. And then you need to put something out. So one of the key things that they recommend is having a stills photographer on set when you're filming, because you have this amazing raw content that people love to look at, and it's easy to share, and it costs so little to have a photographer for one day or a couple days on set. And it's so useful in spreading the message of your team to the audience. And then of course, having a real trailer, getting a trailer editor to do an actual trailer. I've cut teasers, but they're nothing compared to a legit trailer. So one of the resources that they like to give out is a guy called Robert Hamilton, at trailerden.com. I hired him. I haven't seen his version of my trailer yet, but it's coming this week, I think. I'm pretty excited to see that.

Christian: How much is this tool?

Scott: Well, they start at 500 bucks.

Christian: That's a very affordable place, a group, to have someone make a trailer for you.

Scott: Film Festival Mastery? Oh, it's 500 bucks. What's cool is that they have a course laid out on how to do this. You can go back to the course and revisit it and come back. I've learned a lot from the 20-minute modules, and they're just really concise, well taught. But then they do, every week or every other week, a group class, and they have a Facebook group. So I'm in a group with like 140-plus directors and producers on Facebook, and we chat and connect. And one of them used one of the composers, Eric in my film. He composes for my corporate stuff. So I gave this one other filmmaker him as a contact, and he soundtracked her film for her, and it's awesome. It sounds great. It's sort of like the film fest thing you wanted at a film festival. We get to have that in the group every single day if you want it, and everyone's very active. It's really cool.

Christian: Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, that is a highlight of these film festivals, meeting other filmmakers. I remember the first time when I met Tim at the Chagrin Doc Fest. I forget his last name at the moment, but I started talking to him, and after 10 minutes I was like, I found my people. Like, oh my goodness, these are my people.

Scott: That's exactly the feeling.

Christian: Yeah. So that's great that you found that. In my situation, I was so fortunate to have David Patterson stumble into my life, and the great thing about David is it didn't cost me money for him. In fact, he ended up coming on and supporting us a little bit, not only because of his previous festival experience, we were given waivers, but then he also helped financially a little bit. And the plus for David is now he has a producer credit on his IMDb. So there are times where you can partner with another producer that's more experienced. And truthfully, I would be open to that. I mean, I've gotten to the place now where I could be a consulting producer, or any sort of producer, and bring a lot to the table to help other people with their film festival run or stuff like that. So that's also another thing for filmmakers to consider, which is just bringing on somebody a little more experienced. They get the producer credit on IMDb, and they're actively working.

Scott: Yeah, I think that would be very valuable. I asked a lot of friends that are sort of somewhere in the film industry. A lot of them just have no experience at all. And I think just having a few people, even just one, that has some good experience to come on your team is really wise. Yeah. One of the things I learned from this podcast was your editor saying we shouldn't have this opening title screen with the director and editor. It's like 30 seconds or 45 seconds. You guys moved it to the end. I remember that being an episode, and I got to see that last night. And as soon as I heard that on the podcast, I was like, we created one of those in the final hour, and I like it, but is that going to resonate with the audience? And I love the idea of just putting it at the end. Just get straight into the story immediately.

Christian: Yeah, it's so crazy, because Helen Patton, she's in our film, yes, she's General George Patton's granddaughter. She was helping me, and she said, I'm going to send this to John, and I forget his name at the moment, but he's an L.A. documentary film producer. We sent it to him, and he's like, she needs to do this one thing and it would be great. And so I actually called him to talk to him about this, and I loved our opening so much. It was beautiful, and our names are there. And he's like, nobody cares about that, nobody cares about that, take that off, because people want to get right into the story. And that's actually a relatively new storytelling device, because if you watch older documentaries, or sometimes a lot of films, they still do it that way. So removing all of that and putting it at the end is a relatively new thing, but it does make a huge difference, just to jump right into the story. Our culture now has gotten accustomed to that. They don't really care who makes it. They want to hear the story.

Scott: Right. That's cool that you learned that. That's a neat little trick.

Christian: Well, so we're getting closer to the end. I'd like to see if Josh and Jason have any more questions, and then after that I want to get to advice that you'd like to give other filmmakers, and then I'd love for you to give us a review of our film. So yeah, okay. So Josh, Jason?

Josh: I just wanted to ask, is there a website or somewhere they can go where they can learn more about you or your film, or where they can see the upcoming trailer or something like that?

Scott: Yes. So everything you just mentioned is available on witnessunderground.com. So the full two words spelled out, witnessunderground.com.

Christian: And there, I saw that you had a podcast there now, and you have a blog, and you have a Patreon page. So kudos to you.

Scott: Yeah. Patreon I started a while back, but I've definitely been inspired by The Girl Who Wore Freedom and the Documentary First podcast. There's so many things you're doing, I was like, you know what, I should just do all those things. Why not? I want to do all those things. Sounds fun. And I think it's the reach that you get. Like, obviously I would probably never have heard of your project if you didn't have the podcast. So yeah, I'm filling it out, definitely. I love your updates. I think it's amazing to have the festival updates.

Christian: Ah, good. Well, I do like that. So what about a festival update for you? Have you gotten into any festivals yet?

Scott: I have one I can't say, and I probably shouldn't say what it is, but I got shortlisted from about 200 festival submissions down to the top 30 feature films at this one. Pretty, pretty important documentary... No, I think it's a documentary film festival, a regional one in the States. So I'm really excited about that.

Christian: Yeah, I can't wait.

Scott: That was so validating, to have a festival programmer say, like, no, of all these other ones, we're keeping this one. They only screen 10 a year, but...

Christian: Right. And it's down lower because of the pandemic. But I remember, the first festival acceptance I got was the Chagrin Doc Fest, and I bawled my eyes out. I thought we would never be accepted to a film festival, and it was very overwhelming. You're right, it was great.

Scott: I sent it to them immediately after hearing that.

Christian: I hope you get it.

Scott: Yeah, me too.

Christian: So Jason, what about you? You got any other questions for Scott?

Next Projects and The Brave Dutch

Jason: Yeah. So we've talked a lot about your current project. I'm curious, do you have a next one planned? Are you going to do another one? What's your thinking right now?

Scott: I think I'm not quite ready to take on another huge project. I am thinking about it, but I don't have a story that has been driving me quite like this one has. This one was like a burning ember that I knew eventually became a huge raging fire that had to happen. And I don't quite have a story in mind. How about you as a team?

Christian: Yes. So Jason and Josh, I was going to ask you guys what's going on, for your own updates. So can you give us anything about what's going on with The Movie Proposal Podcast, or what's going on with your project, Jason?

Josh: I'll go first, because it's the least interesting. We're still waiting to do our 100th episode. We haven't done that one yet, so that's coming, hopefully tomorrow.

Christian: Do you know what's going to be on that episode?

Josh: It's the film that we're talking about. It's called In and of Itself. Frank Oz directed a live, what do you call it, off-Broadway one-man show that ran for a year and a half. And so this is the film version of it, or it's not the film version, they recorded it. And so it's as if you're getting to watch it in the audience. It's on Hulu. Highly recommend it, In and of Itself. Actually, Stephen Colbert is executive producer. A lot of strange cameos in it.

Jason: But yeah, I'm just laughing because I haven't watched it yet. It's my thing I have to do tonight before we record the episode tomorrow. So I'm excited to see what it is.

Christian: And what's your something borrowed, something blue?

Jason: I have no idea. I guess we're going to have to tune in.

Josh: Well, yeah, if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. But I'll be honest, I don't know.

Christian: So The Movie Proposal, is that on YouTube? Do you guys video that, or is it just on podcast platforms?

Josh: It's just on podcast. However, the first, I don't know, 10, 20 of them are on YouTube, so if you want to go see those, they're still there. But I guess there isn't really a reason we're not doing video on those, because we're just doing it over Zoom, so we could do it, but we just haven't.

Christian: Let's do it, Jason. Why not?

Jason: Yeah, that's going to be on my plate.

Josh: Why not? Come on. Well, we'll talk about it tomorrow.

Christian: What about you? Can you give us an update?

Jason: Yeah. So I can't go super specific, because we're still in the figuring-it-out phase, but we've kind of decided to just make a short animated miniseries. So we're not exactly completely lined up on what it's going to be and how it's going to be done yet, but we're going to just make something, just put it out online, little episodes of a thing. So we're kind of in the writing process, kind of in the development process. We're still figuring out art and things like that. So we're very early in pre-production here, but it's going to be fun.

Christian: Awesome. Yeah. And so my project, there's really two things happening right now. One is this project that Hunter and Ben and I and a couple other people are working on, to try to figure out how to make things easier for independent filmmakers to fund their films and to distribute their films. And we've been doing a lot of industry research, preparing our pitch to go before some pretty wealthy tech investors, to pitch that. I'm super excited about the idea. I think filmmakers are going to be thrilled with it. Hunter has come up with something that is not being done anywhere that I think is really industry-shaking. So I'm super excited about that.

And then we're still working on The Brave Dutch. It's still sort of a passion of mine, and I'm very excited about it. We've brought on a writer who I've been working with to try to divide it up into eight or 10 miniseries episodes. And I do think the series is kind of the way to go these days. I've mentioned that before, just from my distribution conversations and festival conversations, and what people are buying and looking for, the end users. So we're looking to do The Brave Dutch as a documentary docudrama miniseries, and we're working on that on a regular basis.

Although yesterday I had a call with an investor who used to be a military official in France, who was in charge of the southern landings, just like David Chapman was in charge of the D-Day Normandy landings. And he's like, have you ever thought about doing a film about that? And I was like, oh yes, because I have. I've thought about it. The southern landings, nobody knows about it. It's super interesting. I'm like, do you want to fund it? Because I could do it tomorrow. I've got all the resources and a team. Let's go. So that really started me thinking about maybe I could find a way to do that story as well. So those things are kind of burning on my mind. And anyway, so give us a review of The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

Scott Reviews The Girl Who Wore Freedom

Scott: Okay. I thought the interviews were all incredibly authentic, and drew me in completely. I absolutely loved hearing from these people. I didn't want to turn away or look away, and they're just lovely people in general. I thought what Flo is doing is incredible. What an incredible person, what an incredible project. There's only so much time left for that. And then, a couple months ago I watched the teaser or trailer you guys had done, and got super emotional, and I was thinking about why that was. And the entire movie is such a roller coaster of emotions for me. I'm guessing other people have some kind of similar experience.

Christian: Yeah, it's fair. People tell me that all the time.

Scott: Not a lot of films do that, so that was very special. I think it related to my, I've met, my grandpa's brother was on TV. So I was really thinking about that, what he went through. I only met him one time.

Christian: But yeah, we get that a lot. I mean, it really brings up a lot of memories. And I remember writing the script. This is why I said, I mean, the script was super hard for me, because I really wanted there to be an emotional journey. I didn't want it to just be one or two notes. And if you haven't seen the film, we do start out with some curiosity, and then we go into pain and problems, and then we kind of come out of that grief and start to build towards the gratitude and the joy, and then there's the tenderness, and then we sort of leave you on an uplifted note.

And what's fascinating about all the screenings that we did early on was that I realized, when we were at the two-hour mark, it was too much of an emotional roller coaster. And I realized that audience members, I mean, if I was going to give a piece of advice to filmmakers, I would say learn this right away: there is a finite amount of emotional capacity that we want to spend in an hour-and-a-half period. Also, along with that, people have to go to the bathroom, they get hot or they get cold. And so when you're making a film, you really need to take the viewer into consideration. And so if you tax them too much emotionally, they stop watching. If you make it too long and they have to go to the bathroom, they may lose interest. So you really do need to think about what you're putting your audience member through. And so I just think that's a very important thing when you're writing and making a film, to consider those things. So we tried to pull it back.

Scott: Yeah. One thing that helped me cut pieces of my film out was that I had my Patreon, which is more like short bits and little pieces of, I call it a series, but it's not exactly a series. It's like little short stories. And I knew that I could always use any of those pieces I cut out on this other platform.

Three Tips for First-Time Filmmakers

Christian: Yeah, that does help. We've done the same thing. That's why we've had deleted scenes, and we use them on social media. So yeah, that's perfect. Okay, so last thing: three pieces of advice, real quickly, that you would give other filmmakers.

Scott: So I wrote a couple ideas down. One is just to go shoot your idea and just try it. Like, try to go make a trailer for your film, because that'll, A, help you crowdfund if you want it. It'll help you raise money in general. It'll help bring awareness to your project early on, and also help you make sure you have an idea that is strong. You can get feedback quickly on it. You won't just be filming and filming and filming and never have anything to show, and maybe have been making big mistakes early or something. And then you'll also learn to run sound, you'll learn to run cameras, you'll learn to edit. You should always edit your own things that you shoot. And then hopefully you'll find people to do all these things for you, and then you'll build, you need to work on projects with people and build a collaborative team that builds your relationships.

Another one is find the people online who are already engaged on this topic and connect with them verbally, because you want to engage with these people and talk to them and get to know who they are and what they care about, because they're going to probably be the people that will help spread your film around the world, or to whatever greater audience. People might call them influencers, but just any human being that is writing or talking about these things.

And then what I've learned the hard way is to organize your film festival strategy early. Know what film festivals you want to get into. Learn how that whole system works, how to participate to the fullest extent, and how to market your film for that purpose, because you're going to have to build the synopsis, write the logline, get a poster, get a trailer and start spreading the idea around. It's just better to do that way before the festival run, before you think your film is done. Don't wait till you finish your film to start all that stuff.

Christian: Yeah, and that's why we hired a publicist. Going back to Acacia and Morgan Harris, you brought on the film festival strategy, and they've helped you there. I ended up choosing to pay a publicist, which was 2,500 a month, which is an expensive thing. But they then help you package your product to then sell to the festivals, to then get in. And we're at a 20 festival rate still, which I think is a very healthy festival rate. But we did too tailor our film festivals to where we had a high percentage chance to get in. And what you're talking about is super important. Those are three awesome tips, and we really appreciate having you on. This has been super encouraging, and thank you for sharing your journey with us.

Scott: Yeah, it's been a pleasure. When you mentioned me and my email in the podcast, I was taking a walk, put on the podcast, and I was like, she's reading what I wrote just the other day. I was amazed. I got stopped in my tracks. [Laughter]

Christian: You were actually the first filmmaker that reached out to us that said, hey, I'm doing this, you've been really influential, I've learned a lot from you. Actually, Elise Jaffe was the first one. I get that wrong, sorry, Elise. You were the second one. But I kind of knew Elise. I had a connection with Sandy Gordon, and so... But you were the total random person that wrote me. So, asking for someone to write, just write us on social media, write us an email. So again, if you are a filmmaker and you want to come and talk to me about your experience and you want to share your film, write me at Christian, Normandy Stories, or we're on all social media: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. You can reach out to us there. Also, if you have questions, we're going to start doing a mailbag issue, so you can send your questions and we'll try to cover those online. So thank you so much for coming.

One last plug for donations. We really are in desperate need of donations right now, so if anybody can afford, every little bit helps: TheGirlWhoWoreFreedom.com, Donate. If you want to pick up any items from our store and help us spread the word about our film, you can do that. And then right now there's really only one way to watch our film, and that is through the Flathead Lake International Cinemafest. You'll be able to watch it through March 4th, and it'll cost you five dollars just to watch our film. So that's a great way to see it and support that film festival. We unfortunately don't get any help from that, but at least you'll get to see the film, and I recommend it. You should pay those five dollars and watch it.

Scott: That's incredible. Thank you.

Christian: And then I'm so excited to let everybody know, the next time I come to you, I'll be in Beaufort, South Carolina. We're going to be at the Beaufort International Film Festival, and I'm hoping it's really warm there. We're nominated for the Duty and Honor category, so we're really hoping for another win. And I'll be there for a whole week, so I'll be sort of reporting from that. I'm going to take my son Jacob, since I've lost my son Hunter, to go with me. And I think we're going to try a new thing. I think we're going to try to vlog this film festival. I bought a GoPro camera yesterday. They've got this new one that's come out, so if you're looking for some really inexpensive equipment, go to GoPro.com. Right now you can get the brand new camera in a package, a bunch of different stuff. Normally it's super expensive, but you can get it for like 350. And I ended up getting a light and a microphone and a tripod. But we're going to try vlogging and see how that goes.

Josh: So, and yeah, yes, question. I have one more question. I wasn't abundantly clear at the front end of the episode: is the Patreon for The Girl Who Wore Freedom, is that a thing yet? What's going on with that?

Christian: Yeah. So we have halfway filled out our profile. There was a listener, his name is Jim, and Jim, I really appreciate this. He found me through Facebook and wrote to me and said, you know what, I'm a listener, I really would love to support you in your creative endeavors, you should think about a Patreon. And that really inspired me. He actually was the one that said you should get Josh and Jason to talk about their projects and what they're doing, because I'm interested in that too. So thank you, Jim, for your suggestions. We're halfway done with building our Patreon. We have to figure out the reward levels, so that's the last thing. So we hope in the next two weeks we'll get it launched.

Scott: I highly recommend Patreon. And I didn't plug my thing, but you can support Witness Underground by going to XJWDX. That's how we originally branded it. But we have a bunch of stories on there. There's some free ones that are on YouTube. You can watch through Patreon, or on YouTube at XJW Documentary. But Patreon is an incredible platform, and I definitely will support you when you launch, when you're ready. I will actually go and support you.

Christian: Thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on, and we would love to check back in with you. We'll have you back to let us know how things go, so keep in touch with me.

Scott: And when I build mine, I'll get you online.

Josh: I just like the idea of you two passing the same five-dollar bill back and forth and giving a little percentage to Patreon. [Laughter]

Christian: All right, Josh, what have you learned?

Josh: Every time you say that, I want to start singing the VeggieTales song.

Christian: I know, it just popped into my head. Do you remember how it goes?

Josh: Yeah, but I'm not going to sing it.

Christian: You... We want to end on a high note.

Josh: Okay, so we'll just give kudos to VeggieTales. We all know what we're talking about, and we'll move on. But no, I appreciate you, Scott, being here. It's great to see how Christian's film and what she's learned has helped you, and I hope that this is doing this for other filmmakers. And so, like Christian said, please write in and let us know how it's impacting everyone else out there. So on that note, I will say thank you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell and you can be the one to tell it.

Christian: Bye, everybody. Goodbye.