First-Time Filmmaker Elise Jaffe

Documentary First, Episode 76 · with Elise Jaffe, executive producer of Big Teeth Productions · 39 minutes · August 21, 2020

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

How does an experienced producer start her first feature documentary?

Elise Jaffe has been producing for 22 years, mostly commercial and sales pieces, through her Chicago company Big Teeth Productions. In 2020 she started pre-production on her first feature documentary, about people who reclaim their bodies after trauma or illness by getting a tattoo over their scars. She had been listening to Documentary First to learn from Christian Taylor’s first-time journey, and in Episode 76 she comes on the show to start sharing her own.

Josh Lindsay hosts this episode, with Jason Rugg, both of the Movie Proposal Podcast. Christian opens with news: The Girl Who Wore Freedom was selected for an in-person screening at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival at a drive-in theater in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and accepted to the Lady Filmmakers Festival in Beverly Hills. Then Christian tells how she first met Elise about 10 years earlier at the Midwest Independent Film Festival, when she dropped off her voiceover card at the Big Teeth Productions booth.

Elise explains how directing a short film for ghd about tattoo artist David Allen sparked the idea, and how pre-interviews turned a film about Jews and tattoos into a bigger story about scars, taboos and biases. She talks about budgeting to pay her editor husband and her animator, the contracts she needs for co-executive producers, the online community The D-Word, and why she is doing her title search early.

In this episode, you’ll learn

  • How a ghd film about tattoo artist David Allen and a woman Elise sat with during her tattoo sparked the idea for her documentary
  • Why a film about Jews and tattoos became a film about reclaiming your body after trauma or illness
  • How Elise uses pre-interviews as “discovery” to find five to six stories before she shoots
  • What I.O.U.S.A. and Far from the Tree showed her about graphics and weaving stories together
  • Why Elise budgets to pay her editor, who is also her husband, and her animator
  • What a producer with 22 years of experience learned from the podcast about distribution and fundraising
  • Why to do a title search and put contracts in place early, and how The D-Word helps
  • News on The Girl Who Wore Freedom: a drive-in screening at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival and the Lady Filmmakers Festival

Questions and answers

What is Elise Jaffe’s tattoo documentary about?

Elise Jaffe, executive producer of Big Teeth Productions, is making her first feature documentary about reclaiming your body after trauma or illness that has left you scarred, and how getting a tattoo over that scar changes your life going forward. The idea began as a film about Jews and tattoos, after she directed a short for ghd about tattoo artist David Allen, who tattoos women after mastectomies. Four months of pre-interviews changed the focus to people with all kinds of scars.

How do you find the story of a documentary in pre-production?

Elise Jaffe calls her pre-production “discovery”: she pre-interviews people now so she can figure out her story before shooting, instead of ending up with hundreds of hours no one touches. Watching Far from the Tree, which weaves about five stories together, showed her how she wants to structure her film around five to six stories. She watches at least three documentaries a week to learn from them.

Why should first-time filmmakers do a title search early?

Christian Taylor had a lawyer volunteer to do the title search for The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and the title was free and clear, but it was not done until the very end. If you do all the branding and then find the title is taken, she says, it is devastating. Elise Jaffe has five potential titles and does her own internet searches first, so she only pays an attorney to search the one she really wants.

What kind of contract do you need with co-executive producers who don’t invest money?

Elise Jaffe’s two co-executive producers are giving their time, consulting and appearing on camera, but they are not independent contractors, clients or talent. She wanted a contract in place before she even made her pitch deck, and her attorney can write one if she brings him a similar template. Through The D-Word she found filmmakers willing to share, and now has three templates that are all a little different.

What is The D-Word for documentary filmmakers?

The D-Word is an online social network of documentary filmmakers, recommended to Elise Jaffe by one of her college professors, a documentary filmmaker. During COVID it held Friday networking sessions of about 50 people, split into breakout groups on topics such as fundraising and distribution. Elise calls it a really good resource for new and experienced filmmakers alike.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Welcome, Josh Lindsay, Jason Rugg and a Greyhound plug
  • 1:55 Film update: Chagrin Documentary Film Festival and Lady Filmmakers Festival
  • 4:19 Meet Elise Jaffe, and a voiceover card from 10 years ago
  • 7:14 From a bourbon documentary to I.O.U.S.A.: how Elise came to documentaries
  • 8:51 A ghd film, tattoo artist David Allen and the idea for the film
  • 11:19 Pre-production as discovery: finding the people
  • 13:40 Finding the story: from Jews and tattoos to reclaiming your body
  • 18:48 Christian’s parallel: Generation Wealth and a basket of stories
  • 20:24 Budgeting to pay an editor husband and an animator
  • 21:10 What an experienced producer learned from this podcast
  • 25:10 Title searches, contracts and The D-Word
  • 30:37 Websites, social media and bigteeth.tv
  • 31:42 Will Elise get a tattoo?
  • 33:35 SCAD, animation and supporting the film

About the guest

Elise Jaffe is the executive producer of Big Teeth Productions, the Chicago company she owns with her husband, a director and editor. When this episode was recorded she had been producing for 22 years, and her business was about to turn 15. Big Teeth makes commercial and sales pieces and documentary-style work, half live action and half animation. Elise is also a voiceover talent with an agent, has directed short films, and is from Cleveland, Ohio. This episode follows the start of her first feature documentary, which was in pre-production and had no title yet.

More from this series

Elise came back five years later with her finished rough cut and a Kickstarter campaign: Crowdfunding for Filmmakers: Lessons from the UnScarred Campaign.

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

Full transcript

Welcome, Josh Lindsay, Jason Rugg and a Greyhound plug

Josh Lindsay: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker’s journey. I am your host, Josh Lindsay, from the Movie Proposal Podcast, and with us is our first-time filmmaker, and I’ll say it, award-winning filmmaker Christian Taylor.

Christian Taylor: Oh, thank you, Josh. So nice to see you. I never thought I’d hear that again.

Josh: Oh, I don’t think anyone doubts there’ll be more awards coming to The Girl Who Wore Freedom and Christian Taylor and other people involved in the production. But also with us is, as always, our trusty dusty research extraordinaire, button-pushing guy, couldn’t do it without him, also on the Movie Proposal Podcast, Jason Rugg.

Jason Rugg: Hey there.

Christian: And an award-winning producer.

Josh: Oh, right.

[Laughter]

Christian: I think we covered that last time, is that right?

Josh: We did, yeah. Hey, before we jump in, you know, this podcast is about making The Girl Who Wore Freedom, a World War II documentary. I just want to promote: by the time this podcast you’re listening to now, the Movie Proposal Podcast will have released our podcast where we feature Tom Hanks’ Greyhound, the World War II film about crossing the Atlantic. And so if you like that sort of thing, check out Movie Proposal Podcast, Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks.

Christian: Yeah, it’s a great podcast, everybody. I encourage you to listen to it. Of course the film is, I’m a little mixed about. I think it’s a great film, but I think, Josh, you’ll review it much better than I on the Movie Proposal Podcast.

Josh: Oh, well, be sure to check it out then. So now today we’re talking about our first-time filmmaker, Christian, and your film, The Girl Who Wore Freedom. So we need, well, first I want to say we have a special surprise guest, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Christian: I know, I’m so excited about that.

Josh: Very excited. But before we do that, let’s get an update on the film.

Film update: Chagrin Documentary Film Festival and Lady Filmmakers Festival

Christian: Yeah, so just real quick, it’s been a super exciting week. If you are listening to this podcast, you’re going to hear some news, breaking news actually. We just found out that we have indeed been selected for in-person screening for the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. So that is just super exciting. I can’t even say how excited I am about that. That’s gonna be October 10th at 4:30 p.m. on a Saturday in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, at a drive-in movie theater.

Josh: Oh, that’s very cool.

Christian: Yeah, the whole social distancing thing. And it’s tentatively scheduled for them. We shall know soon when it’ll be locked in. And the other thing is, it is going to be geo-blocked, so it will be streamed online as well, but only in Ohio. So if you’re in Ohio, I would suggest plan to drive to the drive-in movie theater and meet us in person, socially distanced of course. But also, if you live in Ohio, you can stream online. So that was exciting.

Josh: So hold on, yeah, real quick. You’ve seen your film on a movie screen, on a TV, on an iPhone, on a computer screen. Have you seen it in a drive-in movie theater yet?

Christian: Truth be told, I’ve never ever even been to a drive-in movie theater.

Josh: Wow. Your film is going to be the first film you see in a drive-in.

Christian: Wow, isn’t that crazy?

Josh: Crazy. That’s incredible.

Christian: I know, so excited about that. Yeah, and I even talked to Co Bauer [unclear] and his niece, and they may end up coming, so it’s gonna be a really exciting experience. The other news we got this week was that we have been accepted to the Lady Filmmakers Festival in Beverly Hills, California. So that is very exciting. It’s one of the top 10 female-filmmaker-focused film festivals in the world, so we will have more news about that coming up. And then we continued our distribution discussions this week. Those are still moving along. We have interesting stuff to report about that, and we’ll have David back on to talk about that at another time.

I do not want to waste any more time. I want to get to our surprise guest. I’m so excited to bring her on. So Josh, tell us who we have today.

Meet Elise Jaffe, and a voiceover card from 10 years ago

Josh: Okay, today, drum roll please, we have first-time filmmaker, executive producer of Big Teeth Productions, give it up for Elise Jaffe.

Elise Jaffe: Hi, guys.

Christian: Elise, welcome.

Elise: So excited to be here, because I feel like I know you so well, but you’ve never seen me. Well, Christian has. So Josh and Jason, it’s so nice to be part of this today.

Josh: We’re glad you’re here. So you are a voiceover talent, you are a producer, apparently you’re an agent as well. Is that right?

Elise: I’m not an agent, but I sort of, actually I was recently, for my husband, who’s a director, and I had to be his agent. But my agents are the first thing that pop up on my LinkedIn, but it’s sort of my last job that I do. So, you know.

Josh: Well, she is a successful VO agent, VO talent who has an agent, is what I meant to say.

Elise: So yeah. I’m also really excited to hear about this Chagrin Film Festival, because I am from Cleveland, Ohio, and Chagrin Falls is a suburb of Cleveland. It’s like the very cute neighborhood where you go to see a little bit of nature, and there was a little custard shop there, which you’ll have to go to when you’re there. It’s just one of my favorite parts when I go home, to take my kids now. And so I’m so excited for you.

Christian: How crazy is it that you are from there? What a wonderful day for you to be on our show. I think that you should come and join us at the drive-in movie theater.

Elise: I mean, I don’t have to be here for my kids to be in school these days, so I can travel whenever I want, as long as they have a computer to learn on.

Christian: That’s right. Well, awesome, hopefully we can make that happen. Well, we have you here today. It’s just so incredible how this all happened, especially because Elise and I met about 10 years ago at the Midwest Independent Film Festival. I was a brand-new talent, a voiceover talent with a little shiny new demo, and I went to the film festival and I saw Big Teeth Productions had a booth. And I thought, I wonder if they have any voiceover jobs. And so I went to give them my card and tell them I did voiceovers, and the guy says, “Yeah, well, my wife does all of our voiceovers.” And then I never heard from them again.

Elise: So, we’re awful.

Christian: No, you know, you fulfilled all of your needs. But what’s so interesting is you just never know when things are gonna pop back up. And so about two weeks ago, Sandy Gordon, who is a consultant on our film, reached out to me and said, “Hey, I have a friend you might be hearing from.” And that started this journey with Elise. So Elise, why don’t you tell us the rest.

From a bourbon documentary to I.O.U.S.A.: how Elise came to documentaries

Elise: So the reason I had reached out to Sandy was because, well, I guess a few months ago I started the process of my first feature documentary. It’s been an idea I’ve had. I’ve always been interested in documentaries. In fact, maybe 14 years ago, maybe a little less than that, I went to Columbia College. They had a [unclear: “documenia”] conference, which was like all documentary all the time. My husband and I work together and own our company together. He had started working on potentially doing a documentary about bourbon in the United States, and he’s like, “Well, you’re going to produce it, so you should go learn about documentaries.”

So I went and I really loved it. It actually was the first, you guys in one of your episodes had talked about your favorite documentaries, and at that conference I saw, they screened for us, I.O.U.S.A., which was a documentary that put this idea in my head of, like, you’re gonna make a film like this one day. Using graphics, the graphical element made a topic, the national debt, which normally was not that interesting to me, although I should have thought it was, it made it interesting. So I learned that there, and I’m like, but one day I really am gonna do my own film.

And I’ve been producing for 22 years, but I’ve been doing mostly commercial and sales pieces, and my business is going to be 15 years old this September, next month, 15 years old. And we do a lot of documentary-style work, and one of my favorite things to do is interview real people. Last week I was talking to surgeons from University of Illinois at Chicago about a new lab they’re opening, and it’s fascinating to me.

A ghd film, tattoo artist David Allen and the idea for the film

But about a year and a half ago, I was hired to direct, not just produce. Actually, I had to give someone else the producing job so I could focus on directing. And I beat out six other, five other directors for a job about a tattoo artist who was designing the design that would be on a hair straightener, for a company called ghd in London. And he’s a tattoo artist who specifically tattoos women who have mastectomies and have survived breast cancer. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever seen any of this art, but it’s amazing, ornate work that makes people feel really good about their bodies after having lost something really important to them. And ghd was giving a chunk of money from each of the sales of these products to breast cancer research.

And the woman being tattooed, she was not the focus of the film, or of the documentary short that we were doing. She and I became friendly because we had spent time together before her tattoo. I sat with her while she was being tattooed, and it so happened that she was Jewish, and I am Jewish, and we are taught when we are Jewish that you do not get tattoos. Tattoos are totally taboo; the Torah tells you not to do it. And I was very interested in knowing why she was doing that. So that sparked my interest, and a year and a half later or so, I said, I’m gonna make a film that’s about Jews and tattoos.

And as Christian will tell you, stories end up changing, as she’s talked about her script changing. We’re lucky that in the time of COVID we have been able to meet and talk to so many people that are willing to give me their time to be pre-interviewed, so I can figure out a lot of my story now versus shooting it and having hundreds of hours that no one ever touches. I’m sure I’ll still have a lot of hours that aren’t, but I’m trying to figure out my focus now before we go into shooting. And it has completely changed from when we started talking to people four months ago. So now my film is about reclaiming your body after trauma or illness that has left you scarred physically, and how getting a tattoo over that scar has changed your trajectory forward in life. So that was a long answer, but I know that a couple of weeks ago Flo was on and his answers were very long, so I think that wasn’t quite as long as his.

Pre-production as discovery: finding the people

Josh: So yes, we have gotten used to long answers, so you are in good company. So it sounds like you’re in pre-production, is that right?

Elise: Yeah, so I’m calling this, like an attorney would call it, discovery. I’m typically given the topic that I’m doing my work on, and I’m given an article about each person I’m interviewing, and I create questions for them. But this is starting from scratch. Right now we’re in the process of finding the people. So Molly, who is our main talent, and her tattoo artist, David Allen, if anybody has ever heard of him, he’s very famous for doing this work. He’s actually had an exhibit in the Chicago surgery museum, which is a thing. And they’re my two main stories, but I want there to be five to six stories that we’re focusing on that are all going to tie together.

And I don’t want this just to be about breast cancer. I don’t want this just to be women. I am looking at stories that have all different types of scarring. So if anyone’s listening to this podcast and either is a tattoo artist or knows someone who has been tattooed over a scar, please reach out. We’ve talked to a lot of people with varied stories, and it’s emotionally draining to talk to them and hear about their story. But I think they’re very excited about the chance of their story being told in order to inspire other people who might be feeling self-conscious, knowing that this could be an option.

But also knowing that whatever taboos or biases their family members or their community, religious community, has, perhaps their story could inspire those people to think differently about it. Modernity, you know, throughout our times things have been interpreted so many different ways. So I’m really interested in finding out if people’s views change based on who the person is who’s going through it. So yeah, we’re just finding our stories now, and going through some of the legal stuff that Christian helped me realize I needed to do before I got started. So I have no titles now, because we have no title yet.

Finding the story: from Jews and tattoos to reclaiming your body

Josh: There’s a whole book that can be written on the things Christian has learned about what to not do, or should have done, and so it’s good that you’ve learned those things. So one thing that Christian has talked about, especially working with Bill Ebel, is finding the crux of the story. Because, you know, when I did a year of film school, my first film, I decided to make a documentary because I thought it would be easier than telling a narrative story, because the documentary is just supposed to be, like, here’s the story, you just tell it, one, two, three, four, five, six, in order. But that’s not how it works. You have to find the story and the trail you’re gonna tell. So how is that [unclear], because you even alluded to it earlier, you had something in mind and then it morphed into something else. So can you talk about what you’ve learned in that process of finding the story in this documentary?

Elise: Absolutely. So when I wanted this to be about Jews and tattoos, first I searched that. And it’s funny, because we thought about that being the title, but somebody had started a documentary 15 years ago with that title, but they never got it made. So that was one of those days where I was like, nope, can’t do it anymore, I’m throwing in the towel, someone’s doing this. But then I realized that that shouldn’t stop me, and I’ll have a different spin on it. I do like that rhyming thing, though.

But I realized that as a director, this is not my first time directing. I’ve directed short films, and I’ve directed some of these pieces that we do internally for clients. But one of the things I really like to do as a director is talk to real people about their emotional stories and their paths. What I don’t particularly like, this sounds awful, is historical pieces. I like to watch them, but I am not a history person. This is crazy, I know, which is crazy because I loved Christian’s film, and that is how I learned so much of my history, by watching documentaries. I’m just not gonna make that documentary, because that’s not my…

My husband is also a director, and he was a history minor in college, and that’s the stuff that he loves, so he actually got mad when I veered away. I should also add that my husband is an editor, so he’s gonna be editing this piece, so I do need him to be invested in it. But it’s my film. We’ve had those conversations: this is my film, this is what I want to do. I don’t want to do a philosophical story about all of these different rabbis’ perspectives and religious people’s perspectives. That’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to tell a religious or historical story, which also saves me from having to find lots of archival footage and worrying about licensing it.

But so when I got to that point and said, I want to tell these stories, that’s when it became more about all the different types of experiences and types of people that this could help and inspire. And from talking to the religious people about it, I realized that this is not a Jewish subject. Many forms of Christianity also felt the same way. Islam feels the same way. And so it became a bigger-picture item. So now it’s more the biases that come into it. I mean, you also have the biases of tattoos, of, like, people are thugs, people are criminals, this is dirty, all of those things. Sorry, I keep bumping my table.

All of these things, I mean, I felt this way too. I have a totally different perspective about tattoos. I should also add, I do not have any tattoos. I do have scars on my body, and doing this project was the first time I ever thought, oh, well, maybe that would be something that I would do. So everybody I talked to asked me if I’m gonna end up getting a tattoo at the end, so that’ll be interesting. But yeah, so the story changed from that. Now, funny enough, a lot of the people that I’m talking to happen to be Jewish, or there’s somebody Jewish in their life, so they bring that up without me even bringing it up.

But the story’s gonna change when I lock in who those people are, because I’m gonna have to figure out how they connect, and I don’t wanna do too much. I just watched a film recently called Far from the Tree, and it was about people who felt a little different than their families. They were like an odd man out in their family, whether they had a physical disability or an emotional disability, and/or they were adopted, and how they fit into those lives. But what they did was they took, I think it was five stories, and they weaved them together. And watching that made me go, this is how I want to do it. And that’s what happens every time. That’s why I watch at least three documentaries a week, because I want to learn from them and figure out what’s going to be best for mine, while doing it in my own way. I’m sorry, Josh, again, long answer. Did I answer your question?

Josh: No, it’s all good. Yes, go ahead, Christian, you had a question.

Christian’s parallel: Generation Wealth and a basket of stories

Christian: Well, I was going to say, again, it’s a very similar journey to mine, where you do start off with an idea, you think it’s going to be one way, you get into it, and all the facts change. And it’ll change even further based on access you get, or just different things along the way. And ultimately I found I did the same thing. I watched so many documentaries thinking that it was going to be one way, and then I hit onto one, if you’ve never listened to the podcast before, it was Generation Wealth. And it was the first time that I watched a documentary where a female told her personal journey of discovery, wrote it herself and narrated it. And it gave me a vision for what people told me my story should be, that I had fought for such a long time, because I heard Ken Burns and Peter Coyote in my head.

And so, you know, I hear Elise talking and I think she will have to cross that bridge at some point: is this a personal journey of discovery, where in the end she does get a tattoo? She’s not there yet. But we had the same issue, where we had all of these stories, this big basket of fascinating stories, and to try to figure out how to weave them together took time. And I do think that it is wonderful you are so far ahead of the game from where I was. I mean, you’ve produced much more than I ever produced, you’ve been in this industry, you have an editor that you’re married to, so that’s a built-in cost I didn’t have.

Budgeting to pay an editor husband and an animator

Elise: Do we have to pay him? I do have to pay him.

Christian: Oh, well, okay. Do you really?

Elise: Well, yeah. I mean, I have a budget. That’s the other thing: I go into this as a producer. I have a very detailed budget, and it includes all the post-production, because he still works for, I’m gonna have to pay my company for all the weeks that work. I want to prioritize this. So I mean, he’ll do it in his free time if we don’t raise the money, because I’m going to force him to. But I also need him to help with my children. I’m not going to be like, go, you go edit for the next three weeks, I’ll handle them. So there’s gonna have to be compensation on that. And I have an amazing animator who’s gonna do the graphics for this, which to me is a huge part of it, and she’s gonna be like everyone that works for me: I’m paying them anyway, so I’ve gotta pay them. But it is certainly a little bit easier, because I can…

What an experienced producer learned from this podcast

Christian: Well, you just have so much more experience. You have so much more experience than I have in general, and now you’ve listened to all my mistakes, so hopefully you won’t make the same ones. Which brings me to my next question, which is, you know, it is interesting to me that you have found this podcast fascinating, given the fact that you do have so much experience. I mean, I’m incredibly humbled, because I’m thinking, what in the world could I possibly offer you?

Elise: It’s funny, because at first when I started listening, I was like, oh, well, maybe if there’s one that I feel like I know some of this, I’ll just skip it. And then every time, well, first of all, I want to hear the updates on everything that was going on with you, even though I knew a lot of the updates, since I started listening to podcasts from over a year ago and I’d already talked to you. And I ended up not really skipping very many, because there was something in each one that I wouldn’t have thought about.

The main things that I was learning: I mean, I know about the paperwork and the rights and clearances and stuff, in terms of everything I’m using. I didn’t know about the book that I have to have for a distributor. I knew going into this that I knew nothing about distribution. And that was one of the things that I also, I should also give a shout-out to our assistant here, Cecilia, who has pretty much kept me going on the path the entire time, and she has also been listening to the podcast. So she’s been incredibly helpful. But I wanted her to listen to everything too, so we could discuss it, and she could say to me, “Oh, did you know this?” And I’d say, “No, in fact I didn’t. Now let’s go learn more about how that’s going to impact us.” So I did have a partner in crime to, like, book club it with, I guess podcast club it with.

But all the distribution stuff, I knew on a higher level what was involved, but not the intricacies of it. So all of that has been incredibly interesting to me. The other thing, it just was nice to hear other people’s suggestions for films to listen to. And just the fundraising part of it too. The fundraising and the distribution stuff, I think, is probably the biggest, most important, most impactful stuff to me on everything I listened to, because I want to do it like you, and I don’t want investors. And I just have to figure out the best way to go about it. And I’m not sure if I’ll do as many screenings as you have done before COVID hit, and I wasn’t thinking about the film festival circuit, even though I know that it’s part of it, and I’ve been to a few film festivals. But now I know a lot more details about how you as a filmmaker approach all of it. So I mean, there was something in every episode that was…

Christian: Well, that’s super encouraging. I’ve always sort of felt like my role is a trail guide. Even in the voiceover world, I would end up coaching, because I would make so many mistakes. I would just dart out of the gate, make all the mistakes, and then I’d want to be like, oh, I don’t want anyone else to make all these mistakes, I’d better give my cautionary tale. So I mean, it does mean a lot that it has been helpful. I think what I’m hearing, though, I think it’s going to be fascinating, and I think we should continue to check back in with you, because your film is so different. Your experience is going to be different. You are going to stumble upon things and issues that I didn’t, and that you’re going to have to learn, that are going to be completely new. So I do think we can kind of now follow you on your journey as you, you know, discover new things or make mistakes.

Title searches, contracts and The D-Word

Christian: I think one thing you told me that we talked about early on is the title search, and figuring out a good title that you can stick with early on, as well as making sure all your life rights were locked up and all of your paperwork was in order in the beginning. If I could save anybody a headache that I’m going through now, that would be it. And you were like, “Oh, I’m glad you said that.”

Elise: Yeah. And my intention with the two other people that are my co-executive producers, that aren’t giving money, they’re just giving their time, they’re consulting, they’re gonna be on camera for me, it was always my intention, before I even did our pitch deck, to have some kind of contract with them. But this is such a different situation. I have so many contracts on my Google Drive of different templates that I’ve used for business. They’re not an independent contractor, they’re not a client, they’re not a talent. It’s so specific that I’ve been trying to get a really good template.

Because my attorney also, they have a department that’s for entertainment, but he doesn’t focus on entertainment, and it’s going to take a lot longer to get answers from the entertainment team. So he’s like, “If you get me a template, I can help you write it.” I’m used to doing this, I give him a list of bullet points that need to be in there, I give him some template that is similar to what we’re trying to do, and he’ll help me write it. But I haven’t gotten the right template. Everything I look at, it’s different for every person.

And I’m also part of a group called The D-Word. Have you guys heard of The D-Word? So The D-Word is an online social network of documentary filmmakers. One of my professors from college, which is, behind me, Indiana University, he’s a documentary filmmaker, and when I was starting this, I immediately reached out to him and I was like, will you just talk to me about your process? He’s retired now from teaching, but he’s still making films. He told me about it, and I immediately signed up for an account, did a small profile. But because of COVID, they were doing these Friday networking things. So it was a group of like 50 people. You’re all on at the beginning, the people who run it talk about a few things, and then they break you up into breakout groups, and some are fundraising, some are distribution.

It’s really a really good resource for new filmmakers, and even experienced filmmakers, because those are the people that are answering the new filmmakers’ questions. So I did meet a handful of people from that that I’ve been communicating with, and have asked them, do you have a template? And most people are saying, “Oh, no, you just have to write one up.” And I’m like, no, just give me, if you’re okay, just share one, I’m not going to copy yours. So I’ve got three that now are all a little different. But again, I would suggest The D-Word. It’s d-dash-word, I think, is the website. So, super helpful.

But that, and then the titles, and that’s gonna cost money, obviously. And then the title search: I did not realize how expensive that was. And I have like five different potential titles, so now I have to decide on one that I really want to do a search on. And I’ll do preliminary searches, because I thought of a new title yesterday I was really excited about, and then I searched it and there’s a book by that title. So then I’m like, well, can I make it a plural? But I’m not going to spend the money on the title search with the attorney if I already know. So My Body My Canvas, which was our original title, is already being used as a hashtag, but it’s not, as we can find on a basic title search, like our own personal internet search, there’s nothing that’s copyrighted to it. But it’s a hashtag, which could help us. But is it the right connection?

So those two things are my new legal next steps, which is why I’m hoping I can do an email out to all of the people we’ve already done Zooms with, tattoo artists, some of these other documentary filmmakers, a few other people, that I can give them an update of what’s going on, ask them if they will be on my mailing list for when I actually start a mailing list, and say we’re trying to raise, right now, between five and ten thousand dollars just to do this prep. I originally budgeted 20,000 for pre-production. If I can get 5 or 10, I can get some of these things done.

Christian: Well, I would say, you know, the reason I really emphasize that she work on that now is, I was very fortunate. A, I had someone volunteer, a lawyer volunteer, to do the title search for us, and my title was free and clear. But we did not do that until the very end, and we were just unfortunately blessed for those reasons. But like she said, if you go through this whole process, you do all of this branding, and then for the rights bible you go to have your title search done, and it’s taken, oh, it’s just devastating. So, you know, if you are a first-time filmmaker listening to this, again, we really stress the importance of doing that title search early on.

Websites, social media and bigteeth.tv

Elise: Well, and then you can get your website. I’m gonna probably buy like five URLs anyway, because then at least I’ve got all those options. But I wanna build our website, I wanna start a Facebook group. I think our main source of social is gonna be Instagram, because visually there’s gonna be so much that I think people will gravitate towards. But I wanna be able to start all those things, and I want them to be with the actual title. So hopefully that will happen soon. I mean, for now, anything that we are trying to share or post will probably just be on the Big Teeth site, or on the Big Teeth Facebook page or Instagram. So at least, if someone’s hearing this and they’re like, well, how am I gonna know whatever happens with this? Well, you can follow up with Christian, or you can look on the Big Teeth…

Christian: Yeah, so why don’t you give us that URL.

Elise: So Big Teeth is www dot Big Teeth, Big Teeth because I have big front teeth, if anyone wants to know. It’s nice to be able to do this on Zoom. bigteeth.tv.

Christian: Yeah, so that’s how you would find Elise and her company. And then I wondered, you guys, if you have any questions for Elise.

Will Elise get a tattoo?

Josh: Yes, I do. So, Elise, it’s just a hypothetical: you do decide to get a tattoo. What are you gonna get?

Elise: Okay, so the reason I don’t have a tattoo now is because there has not been anything that I’ve really thought is the right thing to get. So if I get one, I don’t know, I think it’ll hit me. Molly, who’s my main talent for this, she said that she and I should get matching tattoos when it’s over. So maybe it’s gonna be something that represents the film, I don’t know. I’m definitely not gonna get someone’s name. I’ve heard way too many stories throughout this process of people getting tattoos that have to get covered up. Not that anybody important in my life isn’t gonna be there at some point.

Josh: But you could get the title of your film, if this ends up getting made and you get distribution, you know.

Elise: Yeah. But also, what I thought was such a funny thing: she was listening to the podcast the other day, and she texted me, “Oh my gosh, you’re talking about tattoos.” And I was like, we’re talking about tattoos? Are you kidding me?

Christian: I had no recollection of that.

Elise: You talked about the addiction of tattoos, like once you get one, isn’t that, you said, like, isn’t that the thing?

Christian: I can’t remember what you’re referencing.

Elise: But you’re like, isn’t that what happens with tattoos? Once you get one, then you just can’t stop. I don’t know. I have a very low pain threshold. It’s very interesting. I mean, I’ve had two children, but if I get a cut on my finger, I’m in excruciating pain for days. So the idea of that is… And I mean, I sat there while Molly was being tattooed, I held her hand, and she got massive tattoos across her chest, and I was like… And she was fine. So I might not be the right person for it. I don’t know.

Christian: I don’t know. Well, it’ll be fascinating. We will certainly have to follow your journey, that is for sure.

SCAD, animation and supporting the film

Elise: Oh, the other thing you mentioned, by the way, I should note, is that you guys had two different episodes where you talked about SCAD.

Christian: Yes.

Elise: And my animator who works for me went to SCAD. She’s not, like, super SCAD-y, based on what you said in that one. Incredibly, incredibly talented. She’s such an incredible designer, and I’m very lucky because she helped us build a look and a feel for what the film is going to be, as well as a very detailed description of what the graphics are going to be. I should also add that a lot of the work that I produce is animation. My company does half live action, half animation, and I focus a lot more on the animation when I’m not doing documentary-style work. I don’t do as much scripted work. And I love doing animation, so to me that was a really good way to enhance the film, especially when we’re talking about art. I do want it to be kind of like an art film. But anyway, it was just funny that you guys mentioned SCAD.

Christian: Well, so for those of you who don’t know what SCAD is, that’s Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. And we were talking about that because David Patterson is on the board of the Savannah Film Festival, which is now partnered with SCAD. So we still have to hear back from SCAD as to whether or not we get in their film festival. We’re pulling for that.

Jason: Yes. Josh, they also rejected me from film school.

Josh: That’s right.

Elise: All right. Oh, I’m sorry to have brought that up.

Josh: Just ripped that Band-Aid off the old scab.

Jason: It all worked out. It all worked out.

Christian: Well, Elise, thank you so much. It’s wonderful to meet you. I can’t wait to follow your journey now and see where it leads you, and it’s going to be super exciting. And you know, while we’re here, if anybody is listening to this podcast that is a first-time filmmaker, we’d like to hear about your journey too. So why don’t you email me at christian@documentaryfirst.com. It would be really cool to find out if our podcast has helped you as well. We can have you on, just like Elise, and follow your journey. So yeah, email me at christian@documentaryfirst.com.

Also, I wanted to throw this out there: if you’re listening and you care about our podcast, we are in dire straits financially. Over the last month we’ve had 300 donated, and that is way far short of our monthly expenses for the Normandy project. We have so many monthly expenses and overheads, such as, you know, different subscription services to edit our things, and people that I still owe back pay to for lots of stuff on the film. So if you are able to help us in any way, you can make a donation at thegirlwhoworefreedom.com/donate. If you can’t remember that, just go to our website, thegirlwhoworefreedom.com. You can also purchase anything in the shop. That does help offset costs for us, and we would just really appreciate it.

The film festival run is exciting, but it too has inherent costs, as well as the distribution deliverables. Elise, let me just tell you this right now: I don’t know if your budget for distribution costs are in there, but I was shocked by how much it’s going to cost us to put together everything we have to put together to give to our distributor. And I’m going to have to pay my editor to do work, so it was far more than I budgeted for, I got to tell you.

Elise: Yeah, when you mentioned that in one of the episodes, I was already like, I gotta prepare for that. Yeah, I don’t want to adjust my bottom-line number, or top line. I don’t want to adjust the number now, so I have to figure out what I would take from, which likely will just be Craig’s editing fees.

Christian: Well, you and I will have to do more and get paid less. You and I can talk about that later, and I’ll give you some suggestions.

Josh: All right, well, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Elise: It was great, for having me.

Christian: And I’m excited to keep following your journey.

Elise: Thanks.

Josh: Hey, Jason, you’ve been awfully silent this time. You have any questions, anything else to add?

Jason: Ah, nothing specific, no. I’m looking into your website. Probably next time we have you back, I think I’m gonna have some questions.

Elise: Okay, I’m excited.

Josh: Awesome. Well, again, Elise, thank you very much, and also want to thank everyone for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it.

Christian: You sure can. Bye, everybody.

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