To Dye For: Making a Documentary About Synthetic Dyes

Documentary First, Episode 232 · with Whitney and Brandon Cawood, co-directors of To Dye For: The Documentary · 63 minutes · August 28, 2024

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

How do first-time filmmakers make a documentary about synthetic food dyes?

When Whitney and Brandon Cawood removed synthetic dyes from their child's diet, the change was so dramatic that Whitney says she would struggle to believe it if another parent told her. Neither of them had ever made a film. Whitney wanted to understand how a food additive could affect behavior and to put her questions to the researchers directly, so she asked Brandon, a commercial photographer and videographer, to document the family's journey. The result is To Dye For: The Documentary.

In Episode 232 of Documentary First, host Christian Taylor talks with the Cawoods, a husband-and-wife crew of two, about splitting every job between them, deciding to put their own family on screen, and borrowing a vlog style from the YouTube channel Yes Theory to make heavy science easy to watch. Brandon explains how he built the film's '90s grunge, stop-motion style animation in After Effects and composed the music himself with Splice.

They also talk about the faith that carried them through, the dye-free Facebook group Whitney grew to about 570,000 members before the film was finished, what the film really cost, why test screenings changed it, and their plan to release it through influencer partnerships and virtual screenings on Kinema.

In this episode, you’ll learn

  • How one family's experience with synthetic dyes turned two parents with no filmmaking experience into documentary directors
  • How Whitney and Brandon split the work on a two-person crew, from interviews and marketing to shooting, editing, animation and music
  • Why the Cawoods put their own family in the film, even though Whitney does not feel comfortable in the spotlight
  • How a vlog style inspired by Yes Theory, reenactments and stop-motion animation keep a science documentary easy to watch
  • How a Facebook group grew to about 570,000 members and an email list of about 150,000, and what its data revealed about the film's audience
  • How the film was paid for with savings, two crowdfunding campaigns and a small local grant, and what a budget on paper would have looked like
  • Why test screenings made the film "completely different and so much better"
  • How Kinema and Splice fit into a small team's plans for music, screenings and distribution

Questions and answers

What is To Dye For: The Documentary about?

To Dye For: The Documentary follows Whitney and Brandon Cawood, parents who removed synthetic dyes from their child's diet and saw a change so dramatic that Whitney says she would struggle to believe it if another parent described it. The film mixes their own story, told in a vlog style inspired by the YouTube channel Yes Theory, with interviews with dye researchers and with affected families. Reenactments, cast with friends and family who resemble the people interviewed, bring those families' stories to the screen.

How do you make a documentary with a two-person crew?

Whitney and Brandon Cawood split the work on To Dye For by strength. Whitney set up the interviews, asked the questions and ran the marketing, email and social media, while Brandon shot and edited the film, built the animation in After Effects from licensed templates and composed the music with Splice. "We stay in our lane," Whitney says, though Brandon often pulled her into his office to ask what she thought.

How much did To Dye For cost to make?

The Cawoods say they put about $20,000 of their own money into To Dye For, raised about $13,000 on Indiegogo and about $10,000 on Seed&Spark, and received a small local grant. They first thought about $10,000 for travel would cover it, before learning they needed lawyers, E&O insurance and a consultant. On paper, they say, the budget would be about $250,000 if they had paid for all the work they did themselves.

How can a documentary build an audience before it is released?

Whitney Cawood started a Facebook group about dye-free swaps that grew from zero to about 570,000 members in the two years To Dye For was in production. New members could opt into an email list for free resources, such as her list of surprising places synthetic dyes turn up, and the list reached about 150,000 people. The group's analytics showed an audience that is 98% women aged 24 to 44, which shaped the Cawoods' plan to partner with influencers and screen the film for their audiences.

Why should filmmakers hold test screenings?

Whitney and Brandon Cawood did not know about test screenings until their consultant told them they needed them. Whitney says the feedback screenings were painful, especially for Brandon, but that To Dye For became "completely different and so much better." Host Christian Taylor adds that she held a year of screenings for her own film, which took it from two hours to an hour and a half and doubled as fundraising.

Chapters

  • 0:00 When Food Dye Changed Their Child's Life
  • 5:44 Who Does What on a Two-Person Crew
  • 11:13 From Security Guard to Photographer
  • 16:41 Should You Be in Your Own Documentary?
  • 22:32 A Vlog Style Inspired by Yes Theory
  • 27:39 Reenactments, Animation and Music
  • 31:10 Faith and Psalm 107
  • 37:36 Building an Audience Before Release
  • 43:16 Budget, Grants and Test Screenings
  • 50:17 Kinema, Splice and Distribution Plans
  • 55:26 Not So Pretty and Other Picks

DocuView Deja View picks

DocuView Deja View picks: Whitney recommends the series Not So Pretty (2022), which looks at cosmetics and the products women use all the time, and their "not so pretty consequences." She says it runs along the same lines as To Dye For, and believes it is on Max.

Brandon has two picks. Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of (2015) tells the story of how the group came together and later sued the man who put them together; Brandon, who grew up in rock bands but loves boy bands and band documentaries, calls it very nostalgic. OUTATIME: Saving the DeLorean Time Machine (2016) follows Joe Walser and his team as they restore the original "A car" DeLorean from the first Back to the Future, which had been stripped and sun-damaged on the Universal backlot.

Christian picks Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion (2024), which she started on a United flight and finished on Max. It looks at the Brandy Melville clothing brand, the girls who were obsessed with it, how the business was run, and where cheap, disposable clothing ends up. She also mentions The Movies That Made Us, which includes Back to the Future. Every guest pick is in one place.

About the guests

Whitney Cawood has a degree in education and taught for a few years before leaving her job during the couple's fertility journey; after two and a half years of trying, they had their son. She has worked as a freelance digital marketer, runs an e-commerce mockup shop with Brandon and does affiliate work. On To Dye For she set up the interviews, asked the questions and handled marketing, email and social media, and she started the dye-free Facebook group that became the film's audience.

Brandon Cawood played music in his late teens and early 20s and toured in a band. He was working as a third-shift security guard when he met Whitney, then took a video job at a rug company. A personal photo series of first responders styled as movie posters, Not All Wear Capes, went viral and launched his commercial photography business. He now splits his work about evenly between advertising photography and advertising video. On To Dye For he shot and edited the film, created the animation and composed the music.

About the film

To Dye For: The Documentary follows the Cawood family after they eliminated synthetic dyes, alongside interviews with leading experts and heartfelt interviews with affected families. The title spells "dye" D-Y-E, a play on words that came from Brandon. The film uses reenactments, stop-motion style animation inspired by '90s grunge and MTV, and an original score; the song over the end credits is by a friend who also acts in the reenactments. Whitney and Brandon made it over about two years. When the episode was recorded, they planned to do a bit of the festival circuit, but their main focus was getting the information to the public through influencer partnerships, private and virtual screenings and live Q&As. It is now available to watch on Kinema.

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

This episode is sponsored by Artillery Sports. Use the code DocFirst for 10% off your first order.

Full transcript

When Food Dye Changed Their Child's Life

Christian Taylor: Hey there. If you're a frequent listener to our show, you already know that our show is brought to you by our friends over at Artillery Sports. But what you may not know is that Artillery Sports helps athletes of all types win on and off the course and court. They do this by selling quality, durable and precision-manufactured sports equipment that keeps you in the game, while also using a portion of the profits to provide the funding needed to care for our nation's veterans. With Artillery Sports, it's more than just a game.

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Welcome, everybody, to Documentary First, an inside look at a documentary filmmaker's journey. I'm your host and documentary filmmaker myself, Christian Taylor, and I'm joined today with a couple of very talented first-time filmmakers with a new, super revelatory documentary that they've just finished. Welcome to the show, Brandon and Whitney Cawood. It's really nice to see you here. Thank you so much for coming.

Brandon Cawood: Thanks for having us.

Whitney Cawood: Thanks for having us. We're excited.

Christian: So we've just become friends. You reached out to me in a unique way. Tell me about that.

Whitney: So we are at the tail end of making our documentary, and so distribution is a big, big thing on our minds right now. Distribution is that thing that nobody really fully understands or knows. And so throughout this whole process, like you said, this is the first time we've ever made a film like this, or made a film. So I have leaned on podcasts a lot. I listened to Alex Ferrari a lot for a while early on, and just started looking for podcasts about distribution, and happened to find your podcast on Apple Podcasts and listened to it.

And it was really cool, and so I listened to another one and another one, and at this point you've gone on, you know, 10, 15 runs with me. That's normally when I listen to the podcast, when I go on a run. So I liked the fact that you were coming from a first-time filmmaker perspective, and also that you were a Christian and you talked about that. And then hearing your story about your distribution journey and things like that, I was just really intrigued, and I was like, I really like her podcast. And I reached out to tell you that I liked it.

Christian: And then you reached out to me. You slid into my DMs.

Whitney: Yeah, yeah, on Instagram.

Brandon: I'm jealous.

Whitney: So I reached out to you, just initially telling you that I enjoyed your podcast, and letting you know if you ever wanted to talk to a husband and wife team that were first-time filmmakers to let us know. And you said sure, here's the email sign-up.

Christian: You invited yourself onto this podcast, basically. Well, it was beautiful. We do this podcast in order to help and inspire other filmmakers. It's absolutely the reason I do this every time I get on the show, and I really hope that it's useful. Sometimes I sit here and I think, gosh, is anybody listening, and does it really matter that we do this? And so to get a note saying you've made a difference in our lives and thank you for doing this podcast makes a difference to me, and I really wanted to hear more about what you were doing.

So I'm so glad you wrote. It really thrilled me, and I'm so happy now that I've gotten to see what you've done. It's just fantastic. So let's dive into this show, and let's dive into the film that you made. So I'm going to start by reading the summary of the show, and then I'll let you guys tell a little bit about yourselves. So, okay, here we go. "Parents turned filmmakers Brandon and Whitney Cawood embark on a fascinating quest after discovering their child's sensitivity to synthetic dyes. Their documentary journey delves into the profound impacts of these chemicals, featuring meetings with leading experts and heartfelt interviews with affected families. Through poignant stories and scientific evidence, they unveil the hidden perils of synthetic dyes, igniting awareness of their far-reaching effects on individuals and families."

And what I will say as well, this documentary was also a very personal journey. That's not really in that summary, but I walked away feeling like you shared a lot about who you were and what was going on with your family, and that really drew me into the story. So thank you for sharing a little bit about your lives and for the courage that it took to make this documentary. I know what it takes now. I didn't when I started out, and I know that filmmaking can destroy a family, and it can really stretch the fabric. Divorce happens. It's a real thing. But here you two are, sitting together, smiling and laughing, and both of you have your hair, and you have your noses and eyes, and so it sounds like you made it through that. So I applaud you. Congratulations.

Whitney: Thank you. I did start losing my hair, though. I do want to point that out. It has now stopped falling out, but that was a real thing.

Christian: Yes, mine too. You know, and I think we go through phases where our hair falls out and then it comes back. But anyway, don't worry, girls that are listening to that that are younger. It grows back.

Who Does What on a Two-Person Crew

Christian: All right, so let me get your bios. You both are different. We're gonna let ladies go first. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Whitney.

Whitney: Okay, so I have a degree in education, so I taught for a few years, and then we had a fertility journey. We struggled to get pregnant, and so in that we just decided to quit my job and just take a load off and just focus on trying to create a family, and that happened. So after two and a half years of trying, we finally had our son. And in that journey of staying at home, I knew I could not just stay at home. So probably six months after I quit my job, I started working, and I had several business ventures that I tried, and was just trying to see what fit. So I have an e-commerce business that I work on.

Christian: Say what that is.

Whitney: Well, it's actually a mockup shop, so it's actually something that Brandon and I work on together. Brandon takes the photos, and then I upload, and I'm the business side and things like that. And then I also do some affiliate stuff. So I am a creative, and so it has been really great to have that aspect. I also spent some time doing digital marketing, so I took some courses and I was a freelance digital marketer for a while. So I was the marketing side of our business, and we partnered...

Christian: There's a trend here.

Whitney: We partner on a lot of things, obviously. But we would have clients where we'd work together. We actually still have a client where we're still working on it together. But I really felt like through that, I love the marketing side, but I really wanted to market our businesses and our ventures. So that's where I'm at now. We also have a three-year-old at home, so I'm kind of the best of both worlds. I'm a working mom, but I'm also kind of a stay-at-home mom, because she's still with me. So that's where I'm at. I wear a lot of hats.

Christian: That's beautiful. I love that so much. Well, tell me what your role was in this film, because I noticed that there were not a lot of crew members on this film, and that you probably had a hand in a lot of what was going on. So tell me what you did.

Whitney: Oh, yeah. Okay, so, well, really, this, To Dye For: The Documentary, came as a passion project, really, to both of us. But I felt almost like we had a golden ticket. Eliminating dyes transformed our family, transformed our child, transformed the trajectory of his life. And it was so dramatic that if you were to tell me that this was your experience with your child, I would struggle to believe that it was completely true, because it is that dramatic of a shift. So we knew that we had something. We knew that there were families that were struggling like ours, and so we felt almost an urgency to get this information out.

So I was just kind of obsessed with the science and trying to figure out how could a food or an additive affect our behavior. And so I wanted to speak with researchers, because after reading all the jargon and the abstracts and the research, I didn't understand it. So I wanted to interview these researchers and ask them my questions. And I asked Brandon if he'd be willing to document our journey, and with reluctancy he eventually said yes. And so we've just tackled it. I've been the marketing side. I've set up all the interviews. We worked on the questions together, but I actually asked the questions during the interview, so I'm directing in that way. Brandon and I tag-team that, but I was kind of the main one spearheading that.

And then the digital marketing side: I've worked with social media, I'm doing the emails, I built our audience. And I mean, Brandon has done all the heavy lifting with the filmmaking. That's obviously his baby. But it's been really cool to also have him pull me in his office and be like, hey, what do you think about this? And so we've really tackled that together as well. So our roles mesh, for sure. We stay in our lane. I know what I'm good at, and I know what he's good at, and I default to him in those areas, but it is a little bit meshed together.

Christian: That's beautiful. Well, Brandon, talk about, then, what your role is and what your lane is. And by the way, I just realized, Whitney, when you said the title... we haven't said the title. So, Brandon, why don't you tell us the title and explain. There is a different spelling there, so you'll need to clarify that, because we're not really visual. Tell us the title and a little bit more about why you chose that title, and what your role is.

Brandon: And so the name of the film is To Dye For: The Documentary. You spell that D-Y-E instead of D-I-E, dye as in food dye. And I guess, I don't know, I'm a big fan of play on words, and thinking of titles for the film, I threw that out there, and Whitney's like, yeah, that's good.

Whitney: So he's really a wordsmith. He toured in a band in his 20s, so he's so good at songwriting and wordplay, and I felt like that was genius.

Christian: Yeah, I like it too.

Brandon: What's funny is one of the very first things we did, because, well, my background... So when me and Whitney first met, I was in a weird spot in life. I had played music...

From Security Guard to Photographer

Christian: I'm so insanely curious. It doesn't matter, but on the podcast: how did you meet? Tell me that.

Brandon: Well, we met at...

Whitney: Be truthful.

Brandon: Okay. So I had a buddy who had gone to college for a little while and then stopped going to college. But we have a college in our city called Dalton State College, and it's a university system college, but it's very local. And so he's like, you want to go to the BCM?

Whitney: The Christian, you know, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry.

Brandon: Collegiate Ministry. "You want to go to BCM today and get some free food? They have lunch today." And so I was like, sure. So we went, and Whitney was there, and they had known each other from college, and so they talked to each other, and Whitney didn't even look at me.

Whitney: Creeper vibes.

Brandon: Yes. I mean, it was just a weird interaction.

Christian: Maybe it's because his tattoos matched his shirt, and you're like...

Brandon: I didn't have any tattoos at the time.

Whitney: At the time.

Brandon: I didn't have any. But yeah, so later on, maybe a week or two later, he said her name, and I didn't know who he was talking about. So I looked on Facebook to see who he was talking about, and it was her, and I'm like, I'm gonna add her on Facebook.

Whitney: So he slid into my DMs.

Brandon: Yeah. Then I reached out to her, so then we started talking. And I had also seen her before, too, because we went to the same church. We have a pretty big church, a multi-site campus church, and even the one in our city had two separate buildings at the time, two different venues. And so I'd seen her on occasion, and so that was kind of my first line: hey, don't you go to Rockbridge? And so we started talking, and she was actually kind of dating somebody at the time, and told me that, and I was like, that's fine. And then we just talked more and more, and eventually she decided that she liked...

Whitney: No, he actually sent me a music video that he was in, and he was the lead singer, and I'm done. This guy, I don't know, what was his name?

Christian: Awesome.

Whitney: Well, we were actually... I do want to clear the record. We weren't dating. I was talking to someone. We had never even kissed, so it was not serious.

Brandon: But, and so I was in the middle of this transition between my late teenage years and my early 20s. I had been in music and played music, and that's what I'd wanted to do, and it didn't work out. And so I had worked with my dad through that whole time, and got to a point of my life... I had a marriage that was not healthy, and a very, very, very short marriage. And so when that ended, I went through a transition and stopped working for my dad, and I had some money saved up, and I spent all that, and I had gotten a job as a security guard. So I was a third-shift security guard when Whitney met me.

Whitney: But he had such potential.

Brandon: But I had been doing photography and a little bit of video stuff on the side, and my dream was to work for myself and do that. And I ended up getting a video job at a rug company, just a one-off job to come film their market and do a highlight video. And I did that, and they offered me a job on the spot. I almost didn't take it. She talked me into taking it, because I was in that "I want to work for myself" mode. I don't want to take a job where I make so much money, and it was a really good pay raise, and I was like, I might get comfortable there. I didn't want to get comfortable with how much I was making.

And so what it did was it allowed me to... because I was living way under my means at the job that I had before, so all of a sudden I had this big pay raise, but my standard of living didn't change. So I was able to invest in equipment and spend time investing in my craft and do work on the side. I basically had two full-time jobs.

Whitney: And he saved up like 20,000 so he could eventually...

Brandon: Like half a year's pay or something. And so I did a personal project that ended up going viral. I did a photo series of first responders, like police officers and firefighters, but it was movie poster style pictures. It was this project called Not All Wear Capes, and it really blew up. And Yahoo flew us out to New York to put us on the Weekly Flickr, and Meredith Vieira talked about us on her show, back when she had The Meredith Vieira Show. So it was really cool. But what that did was kind of kick off my commercial photography business, and I was eventually making more on the side than I was at my job.

And so two weeks before we got married, I quit my job and started working for myself full-time. So for a long time I focused primarily on photography, and I ended up in the commercial photography world, like advertising and things like that. And then eventually video work started creeping back in, so now I kind of do both. I do about 50/50, advertising photography and then advertising video work. So it's nice that they make those awesome DSLR cameras where you can do both. It makes it pretty easy.

Christian: But I do know that once you start doing both, you do want to do a little more. Oh, well, let me get another camera. You know, once you're a gearhead, always a gearhead, and you just keep wanting to expand your craft. You need a little bit more equipment. I know how that goes.

Whitney: That's a constant conversation.

Brandon: Yes.

Whitney: Like, "the job will cover it," and I'm like, that's not the point of the job. The point of the job is to pay our bills.

Christian: No. Well, that's awesome. So it sounds like you guys are very fortunate to find each other, and that your skills are very complementary, and they came together to culminate in, A, solving a problem for your child, and B, being able to document it.

Should You Be in Your Own Documentary?

Christian: I have to tell you, just my own experience watching the film: I didn't really know what to expect when I watched it, and I was a little bit skeptical, simply because I have children on the spectrum, and I've heard about this food dye thing. And of course this was back in the early '90s, and there was so much misinformation back then, and so many people who were talking about weird things causing all these children's behaviors. And so I didn't give it very much credence. But I was really looking forward to talking to you today, and of course I needed to watch the film. And very, very, very early in, I was like, oh my goodness, I need to watch more of this.

And I was very impressed with all of it. Incredibly impressed with how you put the story together. It was beautifully shot. It was super creative, very, very creative in the ways that you did the transitions, or just the storytelling mechanisms that you used and how you used them. I love how you involved yourself in the story. I remember this decision I had to make when I first made this story that kind of was about me. I didn't want to be in the story, though, because I didn't want it to be about me. I wanted it to be about the subject matter. So I tried to take me out of it, and it wasn't until we tried to make the movie and everybody's like, this movie sucks, it's your story, why aren't you in the story? And I had to then redo the whole film. So I know that push-pull conversation of should I be in the story.

Well, you guys hit that part out of the park. I think you were right to make that decision, and I think this is an incredibly important film. I think that everybody should see this film. I don't think it's just for people with children who need to understand color dyes. I think everybody needs to understand this. I mean, the fact that we are still eating food with dyes that can poison and give us cancer, even as adults, and the government knows it, and everybody knows it, and we still have it going on, is just beyond my comprehension. And so I do think many, many, many more people need to hear this.

So I was super excited to hear you say it's really not about the documentary, it's really about creating a community and a movement, and we want to make sure that people hear the story. So I do want to talk a little bit about the movie itself. We want to talk about how you put the story together, because I want our audience to understand the details of the story and the way you decided to tell it. And then I want to talk about the mechanisms, like how you told the story. So first, give us the meat of the story.

Whitney: Yeah, well, thank you, first of all. Everything you said, wow. Thank you, thank you. That felt good. I mean, we don't have very many people that have actually seen our film, and we've had three filmmakers now, you're number three, that have watched it. And so thank you. That's very kind of you to say.

Christian: Also, I don't tell people things that I don't mean.

Whitney: So thank you. We had that same tug and pull, or I had that same tug and pull, with being in the film. We very much wanted a film that was like the content that we liked, and something that Brandon especially loves is vlog style. So we were like, I kind of want to pull that in there. We wanted to tell our journey, and I for sure knew that that was the best decision for the film, but putting myself out there personally was not something I wanted to do. I do not feel comfortable in the spotlight. I don't feel comfortable with people knowing who I am, or my kids. But at the same time, I grew to feel comfortable with it, because it felt very inauthentic to not put our story in there, to ask people to be in it and to tell their stories. And knowing that our story could impact so many people, it was important that we made that decision. So I get that tug and pull. But as far as speaking to the question, Brandon definitely would be better to answer that.

Brandon: Yes. So, like she said, I wanted to do a little bit of vlog style. I'm looking at my phone right now because I can't think off the top of my head what the name of the YouTube channel is, but there's a YouTube channel that I really love. My mind is just gonna blank. I'm trying to find who they are.

Whitney: He loves it so much.

Christian: Now that you said you wanted it to have that vlog feel, now I get what you were doing. It did have a very fresh, kind of younger generation feel to it, which maybe that's why I felt like it was so different. It is more of what you would see on YouTube, or what the younger generation is doing.

Whitney: But kind of a mix. We wanted it to feel very professional, but this is heavy content, and it's a lot of information, and we wanted it to come across in a very easy-to-listen-to way. I mean, people spend hours on their phone, but watching a documentary about just science, it would be very difficult to listen to 80 minutes of just science. So we wanted to make it feel easy.

A Vlog Style Inspired by Yes Theory

Brandon: Yeah. So the YouTube channel I'm talking about: there's a YouTube channel called Yes Theory, and they're a group of guys that do these challenges where they'll find a stranger and take them traveling, or visit a... This has nothing to do with the film, but it's just the way that they tell their information, the way they engage with people. I was really drawn to that, so I kind of wanted to bring some of that style in. And we didn't do a ton of straight holding a camera, because I thought, you know, us talking with the... We didn't do a whole lot of that vlog style, but like you said in our pre-interview, breaking the fourth wall, we do that from time to time.

And so we wanted it to feel like people were going with us on this journey, because we feel like we had a cool story in the fact that we had never made a film before, and our experiences, what inspired the film. And so we kind of wanted to have that vibe. And then, like she said, we wanted to talk to the researchers and all the science side of the film, but we also wanted to talk to families. Because, yes, people in the science community could watch our film and get something out of it, but we kept a lot of the science stuff where it was digestible, you know what I mean? But the meat of our film really is families who have been affected similar to our story.

Whitney: Because that's what people remember. I mean, you could spend an hour in a seminar just about facts, and if they tell one story, you're going to remember that story. So we tried to do a mix of the two.

Brandon: Well, what gave us comfort, and especially what gave Whitney comfort when we were going through our journey, was when she would find a mom who was going through something similar. She would find a family, and, okay, we're not crazy. This isn't something that we're making up. This is a real thing. And so the way I look at the film is, we're telling these people's stories, and then we have the science and the research to back it up, to show, okay, these people aren't crazy. This is a real thing.

Christian: Yeah. What I loved was there was a sense of fun, particularly in the beginning. The colors were bright, because you are talking about these dye colors, and it really was interesting, because the colors that you use, they are beautiful. They're bright, they're beautiful, and the film has these beautiful colors in it, and they look wonderful for you, right? And so, but here we are talking about how these bright colors are killing us.

Whitney: That's exactly what it is. That's marketing. We did our marketing well. We knew our audience. And that's exactly what synthetic dyes are. They are used to market food and to make them look appealing so that we buy them. They're cosmetic. And so that's so funny that you made that connection, that that was appealing, because you're exactly right. Bright, beautiful colors are appealing, and we just need to know what they're doing to us.

Christian: Yeah. And then there was this sense of, we are going on this journey with you. You broke the third wall in that... I mean, there was this one time where you're talking and you turn the camera directly to yourself and are talking about what you're doing. That kind of feel was definitely there. But at the same time, you had interviews there with experts, you had interviews with families. But the other thing that softened it, I think, is that you had some pretty good reenactments, and these reenactments were really just to augment the story, so we're not just looking at someone sitting there telling a story. And I thought you did a beautiful job of that, where you were thoughtful about how you cast the actors to look similar to the people you're interviewing, but at a younger age. And it was just really, I thought, genius, and it looked like a memory. You shot it in sort of a shadowy memory style, and it melded beautifully with the interviews.

So I thought you did a remarkable job with the shooting of that and the way that you edited that. And it was so interesting to me, because I knew in a way that nobody in there were actors, including the two of you, but everyone was so well-spoken, was so interesting to listen to. They were very, very interesting people. They were just a joy as people to watch. They all drew you in. That's what I felt like. I wanted to lean in and hear more.

Reenactments, Animation and Music

Christian: The sound was great. Usually in documentaries where people do things by themselves, the sound's not so great, so you did a great job with that. The other thing that was so interesting to me were the transitions you decided to use between things. So tell me about that choice.

Brandon: Yeah, you know, a lot of times I would do an establishing shot, a drone shot, into an interview, like for somebody's... where we would use a transition into a... my brain went blank... an animation. So, a transition to an animation. The one shot you're talking about, where I broke the fourth wall: at that time I was editing something, and something that the guy was talking about was happening in the news. There was something in California literally happening at the time, and I just thought, I'm going to try this shot out where I do a pause video effect, and I'm gonna pull the camera out, and that's when I turned the camera on myself. So I was in the editing station and pulled it out and kind of talked about what's happening in the news. I didn't know that was going to work, but it worked.

Christian: It really did work. And you had this animation where it was like a piece of paper, and it would kind of wrap up, and then you would be pushed into the... Yeah. So what was that? How did that work, and why did you choose that?

Brandon: I just, we wanted to have kind of a... we looked into ways that we could introduce stop...

Whitney: So with this film, we had to be creative a lot. We have a small budget we're working with. It's just the two of us. We would have loved to have worked with an animator. That would have been great. But we're like, how can we do things on our own and make them look good? So we kind of figured out a style, kind of like a '90s grunge MTV vibe, and we both love that style. You have the Teen Mom style, where a lot of times it's animation or stop motion. It's so much a mix of everything that we love, and the shows that have shaped us.

Brandon: Literally Teen Mom.

Whitney: Love Teen Mom, like the OG.

Christian: That's so cool.

Whitney: We went back and forth. We would talk about that quite a bit, and we landed on that. And Brandon was able to create such a cool style for himself. And he is not an animator, but he is obviously a creative genius.

Brandon: Luckily, I know my way around After Effects well enough. I licensed a couple of templates that had this huge library of these assets, like the opening paper and things like that. And so I was able to take my ideas and use that and build out kind of that stop motion. It's not as complicated as building out a cartoon or an animated thing, and so it was pretty neat. It was pretty fun. And like you said, we were able to put a little bit of humor in from time to time using those things. So, yeah, I'm kind of a jack of all trades when it comes to... I know the Adobe Suite pretty well.

Whitney: He also built our house. Like, he remodeled it. He literally is like Superman.

Christian: You really, you really hit the jackpot, my friend.

Whitney: Oh, I know. I mean, he was just a security guard with gauges. Who would have known? I also want to point out that Brandon even composed the music. We didn't have it in the budget to pay anybody to do any of the animation, or the music, or the casting. We did all of that.

Faith and Psalm 107

Whitney: It's interesting that you were talking about the characters and how they did such a good job, our actors in their reenactments, because that has 100% been a God thing. I could tell you a God story with almost every aspect of this film, honestly. It has become a film that we could not have crafted. And each of the people that are in it, it's just been crazy, the fact that we have friends and family that could do this and that look like our characters. It's just been amazing. And I could talk literally the entire podcast about God and how he has worked through this and how cool that's been.

Brandon: It's just been a series of doors opening, one after another. We would think, this is going to be really hard to get this person to agree to be in our film, but then we'd get one person: oh, well, I already know that person, I can reach out to them for you. So there's been a lot of stuff like that. It's been really cool. I mean, that doesn't mean that it's been easy. The time commitment, and the strain on our family, and so many late nights, since we're both working. It has not been physically easy. But actually putting it together, the pieces coming together, have come together very easily, and that's 100% God-ordained. We do believe that he wants us to use our talent, our gifts, the equipment that he's given us, to help people. So, glory to God, for sure.

Christian: Absolutely. That mirrors what I say on this podcast all the time. I know what you're saying. It's the experience that I live myself, and I do know that he works through our work. And as a Christian, I am not a quote-unquote Christian filmmaker, but I absolutely am a filmmaker that is a Christian, and I want to do good art. I want to make beautiful art to the best of my ability that touches people and that affects and changes their lives in a positive way.

Whitney: Amen.

Christian: And I know that you do too. I see that in your work.

Whitney: Yeah, and I love that you said that, because our God is such a creative God, and that's so cool that we are made in his image, and that he made us as creatives to glorify him, even though this is not a Christian film. There's so many people that we have talked to on this journey about our relationship with the Lord, and even mentioned it in podcasts. Sometimes as Christians, you kind of feel like a second-class citizen because you don't work in a church. But if everybody worked in a church, who would talk to the rest of the people? So I think that's really cool that we align in that.

Christian: Absolutely. I was talking to somebody about this the other day. When I first started out in this industry, I was scared to death to tell people that I was a Christian or to talk about my faith. I just did not want to be hated or ostracized or made fun of. I also didn't want people to think that I was judging them, and I kept it all to myself and very quiet. And then I was traveling with a theater company, and everybody was doing drugs or sleeping around, and it was just such an uncomfortable environment for me as a 20-year-old, 22-year-old. I didn't know what to do, and so I just left.

And of course, as I got older, what I realized was we are all created with gifts and abilities in so many different ways, and we do not have to be in the church or a missionary or some sort of divine work in order to be doing God's work. Wherever we are, he puts people in every single place to do his work. And if we weren't doing that, who would know his love? He loves the world through his people in every single industry. And I think that is our calling: to be who we are in the midst of this world, doing what we're doing in a way that honors him. That's my calling. It sounds like that's what your calling is.

And when you're in that stream and you're doing your best to glorify the Lord in what you're doing, there is such a peace, even though it is hard, and even though you feel like every day you're going to die, and are you doing the right thing? I would not trade the difficulties with my film for anything in the world, because it is those difficulties that cause you to seek help, to seek God. And also, in the deep is where you see him work.

This is not a Christian podcast, I'm sorry, but I cannot not talk about these things. There's a psalm, Psalm 107, that is my favorite psalm, and it talks about how all of these people have these troubles, and they cry out to the Lord, and he comes to their rescue. And my favorite one is the last stanza. It's sort of written as a stanza, as in a song or something. In the last one it says these sailors went out in ships, and they went out into the deep, and this storm came up, and they were at their wits' end, and they called out to the Lord, and he rescued them, and they saw him do his wonders in the deep.

And that is how I felt pretty much every time making my movie: that I was at my wits' end, I cried out to the Lord, and I saw him do his incredible wonders in the deep. And what it taught me was that in those dark places and those difficult times, we have to learn to be thankful for those, and think, okay, on the other side, just hang in there. There's going to be something beautiful, and you will learn something new, right?

Whitney: Very true. Very cool.

Christian: Cool. So, speaking of that, we talked earlier about your process. We talked about working together as a married couple. We talked about just some of the things that you wanted to talk about that you don't normally get to talk about. Usually your podcasts are more about the medical part of it. What do you really want to talk about about this film that was fun or different?

Building an Audience Before Release

Brandon: I really want to highlight... you know, Whitney is humble about what she's done, but she has done an incredible job. One of the things that is unique about our film, and unique about our process, and one of the selling points, I think, to a lot of distributors that might end up being interested, is we have built a pretty decent-sized audience, completely organically, on her own. She's combined a bunch of different strategies. When we first started this journey, she was in a dye-free Facebook group, but she decided to start her own Facebook group, just as a different angle, and kind of focus on what we call swaps and stuff like that, where people come on like, I really like this particular item, is there a dye-free version of that?

And so we could go ahead and start helping people and hearing stories, to share what we had learned and to get the word out there. And that group exploded. Within the two years that we've been working on the film, it's grown from zero to 570-something thousand people in this Facebook group. But the cool thing about that is it's really shown us our audience. It's kind of shown us who we should be focusing on. So we have really good analytics with Facebook that show us that group is 95% mom...

Whitney: 98. Well, the group is 98% females, ages 24 to 44. And we know where they live, where they come from, what goes viral, what they think, how they speak. And I am in that age demographic, obviously, and I'm a female. So it's been really cool to, one, help people, obviously, and then to just really get to know our audience and really get to know their pain points. We have been students of people that are affected by synthetic dyes.

And one interesting thing that we did: after we reached about 77... or 7,000, sorry, after we reached about 7,000 in the group, I made a list of synthetic dyes, and I made a list of surprising places that you can find dye, like in marshmallows, [inaudible], just these random places you'd never expect. And that seemed to be really helpful with people. So I wanted to create resources to give people so they could go ahead and get started on their journey, and I created a blog to help people eliminate dye. So before they join the group... Facebook has an option where you can ask them a question before they join, and so I asked people if they want to opt into our email list and get those freebies. And so through that we've grown. We have 150,000 people on our email list, and so that's been pretty powerful and been pretty cool.

Because in each of our newsletters, we post updates about our film. Obviously a lot of it is dye-related, which any good marketer knows: a good 80% of what you give your audience should be what's useful, where you're not asking for anything. So we haven't had a big ask. Obviously our film hasn't come out, but we create lists and things like that. So we have really been students of our audience. And that group is more broad. It's not focused on the film, but it is brought to you by To Dye For: The Documentary, so that's in the banner.

Brandon: We do have a Facebook group for the film, and we've seen some crazy stuff happen on that Facebook...

Whitney: Facebook page.

Brandon: Yeah, Facebook page. So we have 37,000 people, I think, in that group. And we had a post... we were at 12,000 people, and we posted a picture of just me and Whitney, kind of telling our story while we're making the film. And I don't know what happened with that, but within about four days it went from 12,000 to 34,000 people. It was crazy. I guess that's probably the biggest thing we've seen actually go viral.

Whitney: It has gotten a lot of attention, too. Like, an influencer that I had reached out to, to be in the film, it just didn't work out. We just stopped communicating, I guess, with her personal assistant. After she saw the post, they reached back out and were like, we're ready. And she has been just incredible to work with. And also we had a company reach out to do a free podcast tour for us. It's just been so crazy. And even we got a grant, and that just came out of nowhere. It was just a God thing.

Christian: How did you get that grant?

Whitney: We applied. It's actually a small grant, and it's not a grant that we can say the name of. You have to be asked to apply. We're a big industrial town, so it's one in our community that we applied for. And we applied for it in, like, January, and didn't think that we got it. And then December rolled around of last year, and they were like, hey, we're ready. Like a week after we finished our second crowdfunding campaign. It was crazy.

Christian: Now, who did you do your crowdfunding with?

Whitney: Our first one we did with Indiegogo, and that one went pretty well. And then we decided that we wanted to do... So our first one was just kind of, can we even make this film? Can we raise enough money to get us from city to city? We thought that's all we needed. Since we were doing all the work, we thought all we needed was the funds to cover our travel. So the first one did cover our travel to all but a couple. And initially, to film the fundraising video, we spent quite a bit of our own money to put together a video, to give people a proof of concept, for our trips, for our very first interviews. And so we probably personally put $20,000 into the film of our personal money.

Budget, Grants and Test Screenings

Christian: And what was the total budget?

Whitney: Well, we thought it was going to be 10,000. Honestly, I'm going to be real honest with things like the budget and how much we need. We honestly thought that all we needed was to cover our travel. So every time something came up, we were like, okay, well, we're gonna have to figure this out, and we just magically have had exactly the amount we needed. Just like last week, somebody just randomly gave us even more funds on one of our fundraisings. I think it was Indiegogo. So she got producer credit. So we wrote a budget, but you would laugh at my budget. We had no idea we'd need lawyers. We had no idea we needed E&O insurance. We had no idea that we would need a consultant, and our consultant has been super helpful. So, yeah, our budget's laughable.

Brandon: Honestly, I don't know that we... our budget on paper, if you wrote out our budget, our budget's about 250,000. But of course we did so much on our own that we haven't made anything. I've worked a full-time job doing this whole thing, and we've put money in, and we've also had to stop taking some work so we can finish the film. When we say we've done everything, we literally, other than being on the other side of the camera, we've done everything: the editing, the... Luckily, we did that Seed&Spark. We had a successful campaign on Seed&Spark, and a couple weeks ago we got an email that said, because you had a successful campaign and you got this many followers, we have a limited amount of all these things. So we ended up getting... there's a company called Endcrawl.

Christian: I know that company, yeah.

Brandon: So we get, like, a pro level of them for free, which is pretty cool. You can just upload your credits to them and it spits it out, and it's not something we have to spend a whole bunch of time on. And then we got, like, five hours of consulting from, I think it's called Picture Motion. But yeah, so we're doing everything. We're trading our time. So would we suggest it? I don't know that I would suggest doing every single thing by yourself.

Christian: I mean, if you don't have the money, then it is pretty remarkable. I mean, can you tell me what you've actually spent, money-wise?

Whitney: Oh, yeah. So we've spent like 20,000 of our own. We've raised 13,000, and then we got a [amount unclear in the recording] grant.

Brandon: We've raised 13... somebody do that math. I think we raised like 13 on Indiegogo, and of course they get a percentage of it, and then we raised another 10 on Seed&Spark.

Whitney: See, this is what's embarrassing. We don't even know, honestly. We just know... And then we got a [amount unclear] grant.

Christian: Well, it's actually really remarkable that it was just the two of you, that it didn't cost... I mean, it doesn't sound like it cost more than $50,000, $60,000. And how long did it take you?

Whitney: Two years.

Christian: Two years. I mean, really, truly...

Brandon: Forever.

Christian: In my opinion, that is remarkable. You've done a remarkable job. You really, really have.

Brandon: There could be expenses coming up, like you said, that we don't know about.

Christian: Now, that is the thing. You know, there will be expenses. And when do you stop counting what the film cost? I mean, how long am I out, five years out? We were doing the theatrical distribution and I spent $4,000. Well, does that count as part of this film budget? It's distribution. Right now I'm doing these events. I'm doing seven events through the end of the year, and I've got to spend money to do X, Y, Z. Is that part of the film budget? Who knows? I mean, I'm still spending money, and it just does not seem to end if you're going to continue working with your film.

Some people just give the film to the distributor and they walk away and they hope they make money, I suppose. But with my film, and I'm assuming it's going to be even more true with your film, it has become much more than that. It is something that moves people. It brings people together. It is for a community. It's talking about something that's more than just an entertainment thing, and it's something that I care passionately about. So I am going to create these events and be a part of these events, because I care about touching people's lives and making a difference. And it sounds like that's going to be the same for you guys.

Whitney: Yeah, we're excited to start doing [inaudible].

Christian: I can't wait to watch.

Whitney: I mean, we've done some test screenings and some feedback screenings. It's important to know: if you're a filmmaker and you have not done test screenings... We didn't know about this until our consultant told us we need to do it. Our film is completely different and so much better. I mean, it's painful, especially for Brandon. It was really painful. But at the same time, it was so, so, so helpful.

Christian: Absolutely. I did a year of them. I did a year of them, and that took my two-hour film down to an hour and a half. But I also used it as a fundraising thing, because I did need both of those, and it was incredibly helpful. But the first time you see an audience watch your film, there's nothing like it. There is nothing like it.

Whitney: I'm sure you had a lot of tears in yours. I cried at least 10 times watching your film, and I'm not kidding.

Christian: Really?

Whitney: Yes. I was so moved by those cute little men. They were so sweet, and every time they cried, I would cry.

Christian: Yeah, I had some wonderful people in my film, for sure. And to watch people watch the film, even now... I mean, I wish I knew how many times I've seen it. It's got to be thousands now. But just to watch them laugh at the right times and cry at the right times, there's a communal experience. I mean, that's what I would say to filmmakers: gosh, get your film into a theater, even if you have to four-wall it and invite people yourself. Because watching a film together with a group of people, and having this experience and talking about it afterwards, there's just nothing like it. Just nothing like it.

Whitney: That's... we're excited about that. We're excited because, like you said, we've done mostly feedback screenings, so everybody comes in there knowing that they need to be kind of critical. Everybody wants to find something to...

Brandon: We invited critical people for a reason. We asked for it.

Whitney: We're excited about actually just, this is the film, this is what it is, enjoy it, and seeing that.

Kinema, Splice and Distribution Plans

Christian: And so what are your plans from here on out?

Whitney: So we are taking a very unique approach. I mean, we will do a bit of the festival circuit, but our main focus is to get this information out to the public. And so we're creating a strategy that we've never really heard of. I guess I'm combining influencer marketing and social media strategy. We know that this is in the news. People are talking about it. It's obviously viral. A lot of our content has gone very, very viral. Our posts have gone very viral. So there's a lot of content creators and influencers on Instagram and podcasts and whatever that are wanting us to talk about this. So we're partnering with influencers that already have a built audience, and we're going to share our film with those audiences. We're gonna set up private screenings with their audiences and things like that, do live Q&As, do a virtual...

Christian: You mentioned a service that you had used. Let's talk about that service.

Whitney: The service we're going to use. We've had a meeting with them, and looked... we haven't actually done a virtual screening yet, but they've talked to us, and our consultant knows them really well. And it's called Kinema, like cinema with a K. And I think the girl who started it, she was originally the founder of Picture Motion, which is an impact strategy organization. They help films come up with their impact strategy. And then I think she moved into this. But they have a really cool platform. And there's also [inaudible]; they have another virtual screening platform.

The cool thing about Kinema, though, is it's a monthly fee. I think it's around $40 a month, and there is no limit to how big the audience can be, and you can do virtual screenings. They have it set up where you can do a window, so you can have your film available for a three-day window. So if it's not an event, an organization could license your film for their audience and give their audience a three-day window to go and watch it. So there's all these different ways. They're kind of the middle person to connect you, to license it to organizations and influencers and things like that.

Christian: That's wonderful. Do you have any other tools or suggestions for filmmakers that you've discovered in this new process? You guys sound like you're kind of on the cutting edge of figuring out new tools and things. Is there anything else you've stumbled upon that you would recommend?

Whitney: I would say I think what has made our film unique is that we have looked at it like no one has ever done a documentary before. We're kind of pretending like we are the first people that have ever done it, and just creating the ship as we are in it, kind of thing. And I think that creatively is a really good strategy: just to pretend like you have never seen the standard of what a film should look like, and just really stretch your creative muscles. I know it's not necessarily what you're asking, but I do think that the most interesting films that I've ever seen are like that, where I've never seen anything like it. So I think that would be a tip that I would give.

Brandon: Yeah. And I don't know if a lot of filmmakers use this tool, but, like we said, I would have loved to have hired a composer or licensed a bunch of music. But the more we looked into that, the cost of that was so much. And so I have a musical background, I've been in bands, and so I thought, I think I can make this work. And so there's a software called Splice, which is pretty cool. It's subscription-based, and you can buy loops, and so you can build songs from these loops and create your music. It's a really cool tool, and it gives you a starting point. You're not having to come up with a song completely from nowhere.

And the way the licenses work, you own the rights to whatever you make with it. You might have somebody out there in the world who has used that same loop in their song, and there's actually really big artists who make their songs using Splice too. So it's a pretty cool tool. The music world uses it all the time, like producers when they're producing songs, they use Splice tons of times. But I don't know how many filmmakers are making their own music that way, because music is pretty expensive if you have to license it and stuff like that.

Christian: It really, really is. Not only is music expensive to license, but to find out who owns the licenses of the music, and all of that, trying to track all that down, man, and know what the standards are. It's nuts.

Whitney: We did license one song, but it was from a friend. She actually was the actress, the blond actress, but she's also a singer and songwriter.

Christian: Okay.

Whitney: So the song that goes into the credits, that's her song. So we did license that one song from her.

Not So Pretty and Other Picks

Christian: That's awesome. Well, you guys, our time is up, and I'm sad. Well, let me say this: did you bring a documentary to share?

Whitney: Did. Okay.

Brandon: You can go first. I gotta remember what the name of mine is.

Christian: Okay, okay. Before you say that, I have to say, now it's time for everybody's favorite section: DocuView Deja View. All right, Whitney.

Whitney: Okay, so I think I really like a series called Not So Pretty.

Christian: Okay.

Whitney: It kind of is along the same vein, but it looks at cosmetics and just products that women use all the time that have not-so-pretty consequences. So I really like that one.

Christian: Do you know where you...

Whitney: So hard. It's on HBO, an HBO original, right? Or Max.

Brandon: Max.

Whitney: We're gonna say that. I think that's what it is.

Christian: All right, Brandon, are you ready?

Brandon: Yes. I'm trying to remember the name of it.

Christian: While you're looking, I'll give you mine.

Brandon: Okay, yeah.

Christian: I got one. So I'm really excited to talk about this, actually, because I couldn't believe it. I was traveling last week. My son Jonah, he's my third son, called me out of the blue and said, hey, Mom, can you be at Fort Campbell on Thursday? I'm having my reenlistment ceremony. Of course, these kids give you so much time. And of course I went, and on the way down there I watched a movie on United, which my movie is on, by the way. In case you're flying United, make sure you watch The Girl Who Wore Freedom. I didn't watch that movie, though. I watched another one called Brandy Hellville. Anybody heard of that? You guys heard of Brandy Hellville? Did you ever wear Brandy Melville clothes, Whitney?

Whitney: Oh, no. No.

Christian: Okay. Well, this documentary is about Brandy Melville, the clothing store, the clothing brand, and about this trend that girls in middle school and high school were obsessed with, this clothing. And it's called fast fashion. And these girls were, I mean, just killing themselves to try to get this brand. And it went into this controlling nature this brand had that began on Instagram, and how this obsession with this brand kind of took over, and what was behind the brand was just awful: what the owner was doing, and how he was running the business, and how it played out with the girls that worked there. It was something that I could not have imagined.

And I didn't get to finish it on the plane, so then I was like, okay, where can I find this, on my phone later that evening. And so it's on Max. And it really is just very tragic, because it went into the fact that it's not just a bad owner hooking girls on fast fashion clothes, but it showed the detrimental situation where we are in this disposable society, where we don't really treat anything as precious. It's all here today, gone tomorrow, whether it's our phone for a year, or our shoes, or our clothes. It's like, well, we'll just get another one. And a lot of the clothes are not well-made enough, where we'll just get a cheap thing and throw it away, because I'll get another one when this one runs out. And there is actually a plan behind the designers who use cheap fabric and things like that, so that you'll go and buy another this, that or the other thing.

But a lot of that stuff is ending up... when we donate it, it then gets sold, and it gets sold and goes to other places, other third-world countries, then it gets sold again, and then it ends up in our oceans and everything else. They showed just where it's all landing. So it was very eye-opening, and as you can tell, I was hot under the collar about it a little bit. So anyway, all right, that was mine, Brandy Hellville. What about yours?

Brandon: I have two, but I'll talk briefly about both of them. So the one that I had to look up the name of: I was in rock bands and stuff growing up, so this might discredit me, but I also really liked boy bands. And so a few years ago, the Backstreet Boys documentary came out, Show 'Em What You're Made Of, and it dove into their story of how they came to be. I mean, there's a lot of different documentaries now about that. And how, what's his name, we just watched another documentary, the guy that put them together, and how they ended up suing him eventually. It's a pretty cool story. And I love band documentaries. I talked before about the Goos documentary. I love that, and I've seen a few others. Band documentaries are really cool. It was good. It's very nostalgic. It's right around the time, the late '90s and early 2000s, that's when I was in high school. And so, yeah, it's cool to see.

And then my other one: since you've seen my documentary, you know that there's a brief section there about me and Back to the Future. I'm a really, really big Back to the Future fan. So there's a documentary called OUTATIME, and it's about this guy named Joe Walser and his team. Basically, it's their story of the original "A car" from Back to the Future, the first one. The main DeLorean that they used ended up on the backlot of Universal, and over the years people would steal pieces off of it, and the sun damage, and the car just got totally trashed. And so it's the story of them restoring the A car from the first Back to the Future film, and it's super cool. And now when I go out to California, I always have to go to the Petersen Museum, because now it's in the Petersen Museum, the big car museum. I have to go see it.

Christian: I love Back to the Future too. I love The Movies That Made Us, and Back to the Future is in the documentary series The Movies That Made Us. That was a great film. Well, it's been a delight having you guys on the show today. I really appreciate you coming on, spending the time, opening up your marriage and your faith and your filmmaking process, and sharing that with all of us. I really do wish you the best with this project. I think it's remarkable, and it needs to be out there. And so I will be praying for you and cheering you on from the sidelines. And we'll have you back when you've gotten down the road a year or so, and you can tell us how everything has gone.

Whitney: Sounds good. Sounds like a plan.

Christian: All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everybody has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it. Bye, everybody.

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