Noob School - The Sales Side of Cinematography with Chris White

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Today on Noob School, we’re joined by Chris White - an award-winning filmmaker of STUDIO 15. Chris has written, directed and produced short and feature-length films for over a decade, his latest feature film being “Electric Jesus”, a musical comedy-drama starring Brian Baumgartner. Tune in for his captivating stories, and a deep dive into the sales side of the film world. Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: https://SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

New School. All right, welcome back to the Noob School. Today I've got a relatively new friend. Only maybe, what, five years? Yeah, yeah. That's a new friend in my world, five years. But Chris White, I met at the gym. We were getting ourselves in this kind of shape.

It's clearly a CrossFit gym. High intensity. It was. It was. It was a competition. It was. But Chris approached me. We hadn't really met yet.

He approached me afterwards one day and said, I see you went to the Citadel. I think I was wearing my Citadel gear. And he says, you wouldn't know anyone who might know this Pat Conroy guy who played basketball at the Citadel and wrote all these books. And I said, well, I do, but why would you want to know? And he said, well, I'm thinking about doing a movie about Pat Conroy. And I said, wow, okay. So I hooked him up with Pat's former roommate on the basketball team, T. And that was really how we started our first.

That's right. That's right. Chris has become a filmmaker. He helps other people make and distribute films also. And his latest film is Electric Jesus, Electric Jesus, which... It's streaming everywhere. That is a physical copy. That's a Blu-ray copy that you can also order. I like to have the physical copy myself. Oh, yeah. And Brian Bumgarner, he was the office. Yeah, he plays Kevin in the office. Kevin. And then Judd Nelson from the Breakfast Club is also in the movie. Okay. And then a bunch of young people. that play the kids.

It's a rock band movie. Yeah, that's great. Seven the 80s. And most people don't know that Kevin, well, I guess if you watch the show, I mean, he plays guitar, right? He's a drummer. Drummer, okay.

And a golfer. Is he a good golfer? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh, yeah, he plays all the pro-ams. And does he live like in California or something? Yeah. Okay.

Well. But he grew up in Atlanta, has family on the East Coast. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how cool. We want to hear the story because, you know,

we're all about sales here on the Noob School. To hear the story of how you can, you know, go from where you started to where you are now required a lot of salesmanship. Sure. And it requires a lot of guts. And, of course, you have to have a lot of creative talent as well. So we'll start back, you know, where you grew up in Columbia, South Carolina.

Yeah, yeah. I was, you know, I grew up going to my church youth group, which is a lot of what Elector Jesus is about. Yeah. A public high school kid, went to Irmo High School. Oh, okay. Yeah. My dad was in sales. Mm.

And my mom was in radio. She was like a station manager, but also on-air kind of person. And so there was a little bit of showbiz and a little bit of sales in my family, certainly. And so, yeah, I must have, you know, picked it up. So what did your dad sell? He was, at the time, he was a pharmaceutical rep, but then he started his. own company home medical equipment, which grew and grew and grew and then he eventually sold that company. Good for him. What a great business to be in. That's wonderful. And so your mom was on

ear some. Back then, would it be like spending the records talking or was it something else? Yeah, she was more in the 90s, so it might have been CDs, but she was a morning drive time person in the Columbia market. So some people in Columbia will know her, Linda White. But yeah, But also, like, that was cool for me because I remember as a kid, I would always check out books in the library about television production or movie making or radio. And so my mom went to work in an actual radio station. So I would tag along sometimes or go along or just listen to records or just fascinated by, you know, microphones and the headphones and what did this thing do? And when I went to college at Furman, and at Furman, one of the first things I did, even before I declared a majors, I, worked in the radio station on campus and was, and loved it. Yeah. So communications has always been

kind of a part of what I was about for sure. And so how did you pick Furman? Well, they picked me, and I was flattered because I wasn't the best student maybe, but I had some other accomplishments in my life that I think maybe put me forward with Furman. I had attended the governor's school for the arts, which at the time was at Furman, you know, summer after my junior year for theater. And while I was there, I was like, this would be a great place to go to school, you know. So that's why I applied. But I also applied to a couple other schools and got in, but I, you know, it's 100 miles from home, so far enough to be away from home, but not too far, maybe.

And by the time I got into things at Furman, I had become a drama major and was really pursuing the art. in a way. Okay. So you liked that in high school. Yeah. And you continued that in college at Ferman. And then you worked the radio station. What did you do in the summers? I delivered hospital beds in the wheelchairs for your dad. Yeah, okay. Like many of us who have entrepreneurial parents too. Yeah. But but you know, also at Ferman, you know, my extracurricular work with, you know, I was in an improv comedy group with friends of mine. So even that was kind of an entrepreneurial pursuit. Like we like being funny.

We like writing funny sketches or doing improv comedy. But I wonder if somebody would pay us for it. I wonder if we could go to other schools and do that. So my last two years at Furman were really devoted to a big way, like how do I sell my art to people? Or how do I sell this group of friends and us performing? And again, we pursued that and met with some success for sure. Cool.

Did you keep doing the improv work? Yeah, man. Here's the thing. When I grew up in South Carolina at that time, with an interest in film and television, writing, acting, all those kinds of things, there was Hollywood and there was New York City, maybe Chicago, you know,

but there wasn't an Atlanta, like what Atlanta is now, which is the number one city in the world for production now. Atlanta, Georgia is the biggest place in the world. And so that didn't exist. So all those things felt far away. And I didn't know how to, there was, I didn't have a mentor to say, well, here's, here's how you would pursue that. So instead, what happened soon after I graduated was, you know, needing to make money and have a job. I became, you know, I got into advertising and marketing because that's where, at least my generation of creative kids, a lot of us found ourselves.

marketing company. Yeah. Yeah. So, and again, somebody like me, I can imagine now a 22-year-old me walking into your ad agency, lots of energy, lots of ideas, throw me in anywhere, coach, I'm here. So I started taking advantage of those opportunities. But at the same time, there was always this kind of longing for something more like an artistic life. Or, you know, I'll do a play on the side or I'll,

you know, maybe make a little video with friends, you know, like I was always kind of pursuing it, but I was fully immersed in that creative world of advertising and marketing for a long time. So just, I must tell you, I went to a one-day seminar on improv comedy. Okay. With alchemy people. Oh, yeah, they're great. They're great, yeah. And I loved it.

And I remember one thing that's really helped me in sales, which is how to communicate with people to keep a conversation going, which is the yes and. Yeah, yes, and. It's just don't have to go to class. Just remember when someone says something to you, don't say, I don't think so. Or what happened with that in Buffalo?

It's just kind of, it's like the conversation is coming. You just stop it. Yeah. Or just saying, yeah, yeah. And then what happened? Yeah, if you're improvising a scene and somebody says, man, it's so hot. and the other person says, no, what are you talking about?

It's freezing. It's over. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's the incongruity of that makes you chuckle. But if you said, yeah, it is. It's burning up and we've got to get out of these snowsuits. Yeah, we do. Snowsuits, yeah.

And you keep going with it and that becomes funnier. And that is true. That is something totally that doing improv has come into my own sales life. it's the actual ability to not write the narrative. Like don't go into the meeting or don't go into the moment where I've got the story and I'm trying to get this other person to just get on board with the story I'm telling. It's like letting go of the story a little bit and figuring out where their narrative is going. And that has definitely helped.

Man, that'll help you in just personal relationships as well. Yeah. You just have to take a breath and think about your response and say something that lets them talk again. Yeah. Like, where would you like this conversation to go? Right. What do you think a good next step is? Because I, being a seasoned sales dog, I want to say, listen, the best thing we can do here is you just sign this.

And if you don't like it, we'll send it back later. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. I just want to push it on you. Yeah. Because I'm lazy, right? and I just want to get it done, and that's not the right way to do it. No, no.

Yeah, I like to think, I'd say this for my wife, if you get into the right room, which it takes a lot to maybe get into the right room, it takes a lot being in the room to know you're in the right room. But when you're in the right room, good things happen. Yeah. So you just, you've got to take your foot off the gas, let the moment go, get into their story,

and then suddenly, you know, it's always been good things happen. at that moment. How many times have you seen, and hopefully you've never done it? I've done it a few times, but like you're calling on a prospect. Maybe there's a couple of you and a couple of them. And you sit down and someone on your side says, well, before we get started, I thought we'd start by telling you guys a little bit about us. You know?

We've been around 27 years, and he's been out of firm in four years where he was the best person never in the drama department, by the way. You know, and just, and the people you can see on their faces, they're just going, they're just going, their eyes are starting to close. They don't care. Yeah, yeah, they don't. They don't care. If you just said, why don't we start by you guys telling us, what's going on?

Yeah. And why don't you call us in here? What can we help you? Yeah. It makes sense. It makes so much. And sometimes it's just anxiety, you know, you're in the room. You have this big opportunity, but I've found in film, I see this a lot with people that are pitching a

film maybe to private equity or something. And they start the pitch by saying, let me tell you about our film. Yeah. And they got their deck and their slides and 20 minutes later, everybody is checked out of that pitch. Right. Out. It's almost like not even about the film. The film is at the end of the meeting. Yeah. When they're kind of, everybody's viving and having a good time and like, well, tell us about this film you are making. Right. And then even that is like two minutes. Still too much. Yeah. Two minutes. Yeah. Yeah. The elevator. pitch and like I'll send you the screenplay or you know like that's not that's not how successful like what kind of things let's want you guys start by tell us what kind of things you like to invest in

where have you seen your successful movies right what levels are you guys typically shooting for what you know whatever you might at the end of all that you might say I don't think we brought you the right film and they might say then wait a second wait a second that's right yeah um Some of the prep of the meeting would be maybe that you know a little bit about the question. But still, by starting with the question, let them define themselves. If I go into the meeting and I have all this understanding of somebody from their website or their LinkedIn page, but I'm translating that through my filters. I'm making that what I think that means.

Let them talk about it. It's a great lesson for the newbies out there to let them. them tell their story and you jump into their story with them. Don't tell your story. Back to the timeline, you got a firm and you went to work for an ad agency marketing company in Greenville? No, I was in Texas for a while. Texas, okay. Yeah, Dallas area. Okay. And, but, you know, and, you know, would jump around and take advantage of, oh, there was a, if I got a job offer somewhere. And then eventually I wound up, I did my own thing, had my own, like, branding agency. But what brought me to Greenville was a marketing job.

I had a client that I did some branding marketing stuff, and they wanted me to come into their house and do work for them. So that's what brought me to Greenville in the early 2000s. And what company was that? Jeff Dees and Public Relations. Okay. Okay. And you came in the early 2000s?

Well, I came right after I'd done a documentary about the South Carolina Clemson Football Rivalry. It's called Bragging Rights. Yeah. And I made it with a guy named Jeff Somerall, who was a Greenville-based filmmaker, a longtime friend. And we had raised money for that, and we made this documentary and released it all over the state,

all hard media at that time, DVDs and VHS tapes. And just through that, you know, met people, had opportunities, did different things, and an opportunity to move to Greenville came, and I've been here ever since. Now, did you know, Jeff, from some? school? Well, so when I was in college, that is when I met Jeff. He was, we're different ages. He's older. He's like a big brother, maybe. But he was doing performance and stuff. And me and my friends,

you know, would go and see him do super cool stuff in town and kind of raised our hand one time and said, hey, we want to do stuff with you. And he kind of adopted us for a little bit and encouraged us all. I saw him do some stuff at the coffee underground. Yeah, yeah. We used to go in there sometime. Yeah, for sure. It was so funny. So you came back here, and you've kind of been doing these documentaries and side project kind of things,

and then you get a marketing job back in Greenville. And again, for the people watching that don't know, I mean, marketing job, you're selling companies on doing their marketing for them. by rebranding their site or helping them get leads or whatever. And back in the day, it was so weird the way it used to happen, but you would call in different marketing companies, and they would come and they would pitch you, right? Well, this is what we think you ought to do.

Yeah, right. Which it seems kind of dumb because now nobody would do that. They would just say, no, if you want me to show you a new website, you've got to pay me, you know? It's true. It's true. You'd almost have the whole thing built out in a pitch, right? Yeah, yeah. We're going to stay up all night and show these guys.

and maybe they'll pick us. I remember one time us in my agency pitching a children's museum and we built this binder out of Legos. It was incredible. It was like a Lego binder for the pitch meeting, you know. And we didn't get it. And they kept our Lego binder. Yeah, yeah.

It's like we should at least keep this beautiful binder made of Legos. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like that business model. Anyway, you obviously know how to do that well and you had your own firm doing that. You have morphed full time. Yeah.

Is there anything in between here I'm missing? You're more full time into Studio 15? Oh, yeah. So like maybe happens a lot with people in creative fields or especially advertising and marketing. I just had a moment of crisis. I just kind of burned out on selling other people's things. And I kind of felt like I wish I was selling my own things.

And again, that dream of something, an artistic life was there. And I did a thing that was, I mean, maybe crazy, but I quit the ad job. It was at a different firm than we talked about. And became a teacher, a public school teacher, a drama and film teacher at a local high school, J.L. Mann High School. And, you know, went and loved it. You know, I loved it. Yeah.

I wrote original plays. and had incredible experiences with students. But I could, what happens in that, John, and this is a problem for, as we think about education, I think. But again, three kids, you know, 35, 36 years old at the time, I could not see a path towards really building wealth for me and my family. I just couldn't make the money part of it work. Yeah.

And so I would almost, you know, on the sly, I would like maybe gig a little, like pick up a writing for a website here and there or, you know, I couldn't do client meetings. I'm in school a day. But I'd pick up something here. Maybe in the summer I would direct a commercial or, you know, I'm still trying to keep some gigs going so I can make some money. But it was a real struggle. And a moment came where I mean, I know what's the moment. the moment was. The moment was high definition video. It became consumer level. Around 2009, 2010,

I told my wife, Emily, I said, could we maybe try to be independent producers of movies? Because they have now HD video. They have cameras, not unlike these cameras here. I mean, way more primitive than that, but that shoot movies and you change the lenses on them and it looks like movies. And if I don't take this shot, I think at that time I was 40. Yeah. Okay. If I don't at least try, I'm really going to feel sad someday that I didn't try. So I went to Target.

I bought a camera. I went to, I started a Facebook account so I can start talking to the world. well and I left my teaching job and you know me and my wife started gigging so I would get creative gigs

if you wanted me to film you're we didn't have podcasts then but if you wanted me to make your corporate video I could do that but the hustle was all in service of we want to produce our own movies and sell them to the world we want to have that movie in existence. So 13 years ago, we just started, we made a short film,

shot it down at Bergamo's downtown. Yeah. With my daughter and me as the actors, with a little handheld, you know, Canon 5D camera, just little by little, short film, feature film, another short, another feature. Now we got a budget. Crowdfunding is a big part of what we did. Can we raise $10,000 to make a movie, okay?

Yeah. Can we raise $25,000 to make? You know, it just grew, grew, grew, until about 2017, 2018, we went for the big one, which for us was this movie Electro Jesus, which we knew would be at least a million dollars to make. It's got, it's a coming-of-age movies set in the 80s about a Christian rock band,

Christian heavy metal band. We knew it needed to have a couple of famous people in it. We knew it needed to have a rock and roll soundtrack. We knew it was going to be a, huge endeavor and we started pounding the pavement and trying to raise a million dollars. And so that became, you know, a next level of growth and development for what we're, what, you know, what we're going to do. Yeah. That's awesome. And how, how did you like the outcome? Do you like the movie? Oh, I love it. Yeah. People liking it. Yeah. It's, it's, um, you know,

once you're finished with a thing, I think Rick Rubin says this in his creative book, it becomes, it's no longer yours. It belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people that watch it or see it. And so no matter what your intentions were for it, it becomes the thing it is. And so it's been exciting.

I mean, it's been distributed all over the world, and we hear from people all the time who, it's their favorite movie. Or it really, it's about, like 80, it's set in 1986, it's about Christian rock band, it's got some of that, I don't know, if you grew up in evangelicalism,

even, you know, U.S. evangelical Christianity, you'll probably, people that grew up that way watching her and like, dude, that was my life. You know, like people, and, and if you didn't, I mean, it's still for you. It's a coming of age movie.

I'll watch it. It's a band movie. Should have watched it last night, but I'll watch it tonight. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's cool. That's cool. And I would say, just in terms of lessons learned here,

all the work you've done to get to the part where you can make a serious, serious movie, a million-dollar movie with legitimate stars who were on the office and stuff like that. And selling, you know, international distribution and all that. So the next one is going to be a lot easier. You can probably, I'm saying, you can probably, no, you'll be able to raise $10 million. Sure. And you'll be able to get maybe Kevin, maybe some even better. better people. And the distribution will be a snap because you've already done it. And there you go.

Well, no. I mean, yes, there'll be new problems. There'll be new challenges. And the thing that I think you can take away from that experience is remember when this challenge happened, you know, when we were fighting with a labor union over, you know, some, you know, or remember when the first edit came back and I cried because it wasn't going to be, what I thought, you know, all those things that feel like, how will we ever overcome this? Yeah. We overcame. Yeah. So when you go back into a whole new set of challenges, you will remember that.

Now, some mistakes you won't make the next time, but there will be new mistakes you make. Well, let's talk about movies for a second. I love a good movie. What would like Pulp Fiction, what would that have cost to make? I'm guessing at the time Pulp Fiction was probably $10 to $15 million. It's not really out of range, really. I mean, well, I have some theories about what movies should cost right now in the independent space. That's different for maybe 1994, I think it's when Pulp Fiction came out.

Or 95, 96, somewhere in there. But, yeah, I mean, there are opportunities with the streaming. world that are incredible. They're just exponential. Just skip the movie theater, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The movie theater is pretty much used as a lost leader for the streaming at this point. So funny. It just went, yeah. Yeah. Though I have, you know, the Oscar nominees and all that stuff that's, I don't know when this will come out, but when we're talking, there's Oscars, things in the air.

I've seen as many of them as I can in the theater, you know, because I just like the experience of going to a cinema and seeing a movie. Have you ever looked at a website called Best Movies by Far? F-A-R. Oh, no. Check it out. I found out two summers ago there's this guy named John Farr, lives in New York, and he's a movie critic, and he's like on the TV and all that stuff.

He's my cousin. So he came to a party in our house. He was just in town. He lives up in New York, and he said, hey, I'm John Farr, you know, I'm your second. cousin, Aunt Virginia or something, and so whatever. He goes, it's always like he said, you don't understand. I'm John Farr. He told me the site, and I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a great site.

Okay, that sounds fun. It's kind of like the old Netflix thing when you could, that thing where you could search easily and find the movies that you like, if it's like Pulp Fiction, you don't like this one. Oh, that's good. And it's free, so that's good. Yeah, I like an app called Just Watch. Okay. And the reason I like this app is I never know where to see things.

Like, is it on Hulu? Is it on Disney? Is it on Netflix? So I just type in the movie name and it tells me where it is. That's perfect. And if I got it read it, that's all it does. Okay. That's all it does.

Yeah. Okay. I'm sure John Farr knows about that. He might have that as part of his offering as well. I need to talk to him again. My famous cousin. Okay. So.

I'd say you've broken through a big barrier with this movie. I mean, this is a legitimizing movie, isn't it? Yeah. This isn't the around town kind of thing. Yeah. It's definitely, it's, it's, it's, opportunities come with this. Like, I can't even, just interesting, you meet different people. Interesting things as far as raising money to make movies and a vision for your company changes because you just,

it's very expansive, you know, and one of the challenges of this film was it came out during COVID lockdowns. It came out in, well, it was ready to go in 2020, but we moved to 2021 for the release. And so we ended up spending a lot of time in film festivals. I was in 40 film festivals. The cool thing about that is you can say, ah, 40 film festivals, you know, 50 prizes or whatever the number, you know, you win things. Yeah. But when what that did was

we started getting a lot of buzz about the movie. People would see it, right about it, and we would have experiences where we could hear from our audience. Like people are not quiet about movies.

They don't like it, they tell you, if they do like it, they tell you. And it just, and then once the, they started having physical events again, going to a film festival and seeing Electric Jesus

with a crowd around was like just an incredibly useful both for the artist and the business person. One thing that Emily and I, my wife, Emily Reach White, who produces with me, one thing we learned going to the movie is, and it's a comedy drama, a dromity, we liked when people laughed. We liked when people clapped or thought something was great in the movie. And we were like, hey, the next one we make, let's make the whole thing like that.

What are the whole thing is people laugh? And so our next movie is a total screwball comedy that should be laugh. You know, there should be 10 laughs per minute. You know, like we want to be just a crowd-pleasing comedy. Not that that's not crowd-pleasing, but that has dramatic aims in it. You know, so it's so. Give them what they want. Yeah, yeah.

And even though we're still making a piece of art and even though I'm not really, I'm making things that make us laugh, I guess. I'm not worried about what everybody thinks is funny because then it would turn into a mashup of every funny film ever. But I know this film, I know the tone of the next film, and when we get on set, we start making it, we will put together a film, the next film,

that is just a screwball comedy, like crazy, you know, fun movie. Yeah, yeah. I feel good. Yeah. Like meatballs. It's one of my favorite Bill Worry movies. The monologue in meatballs, it just doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter.

Yeah, yeah. He sold that pretty well. Yeah. Godly, what an actor. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about one thing in particular with sales we talked about earlier, is when you're pitching a movie and you're trying to get it green lighted. Yeah, yeah.

You have the money, you have the distribution, whatever. Yeah. Talk about those stages of different people you have to sell to and how you sell them. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this is really, I mean, I think this might be helpful for people, not just filmmakers. So when I, when I'm selling a movie, when I'm making a movie, I've realized that there are really five sales moments that happen in that process. Five moments where I am trying to persuade somebody, convince somebody, bring somebody along to my side, my way of thinking, to say yes. and each one is totally different.

Not only the audience, but the whole tone and tenor and everything about the sale. The first one is I have to sell my business partner who happens to be my spouse. I have to say, hey, this is an idea or this is a screenplay. Another one?

And I'm like, I think we should do this. Yeah. And sometimes that takes a longer time to warm up to or sometimes she's out of the box like, yes. But I know because I love and respect her and she loves and respects me, and I think her taste is great. If she says, yes, I agree. This seems like an artistic and business risk worth taking. And that's my first sale. And it builds confidence.

and it also means I got my partner on my side. The second phase of that is the one that maybe people think about most when you think about film is like, you know, it's capital raising. Like how are we going to pay for it? You know, just like any product, you know, if you've created the best rake anybody's ever seen in the lab, well, you've got to make them, you know, and you've got to have some capital to do that.

to scale it up and do it. And that means talking to private equity, sometimes banks, sometimes, you know, grants, state film incentives all over the country. You have to start talking about your film, the film you're making as a, not just some product or not just like a great movie

or a feel-good, fun night out for the family. You have to say, this fits in the market here, and this is how it works. And sometimes that means what kind of stars will be in it, if they're going to be famous people in it. What's the genre? What style of movie? What's your track record? How do we know you can even finish this?

So those private equity conversations, which often are with high net worth people, man, that's a language that a lot of artists don't know how to talk. I didn't know how to do that. We spent three, four years kicking around meetings with rich people trying to get, yeah, And what we found in that is we found a way. This is kind of cool. Over time, what developed is we started going into the meetings playing different characters. So with like Electro Jesus, well, Chris is the artist that wrote it. He's going to direct it. He's got this vision that sounds fun and exciting and he can drop names and it sounds like a legit thing. Emily, well, she's

She's the suit. She's the corporate person. We're not going to get sued. If we do, this is what we're going to do. Here's how the paperwork's buttoned up. If you're going to wire us money, here's how it happens. Here's all the paperwork assigned, reporting through the process. Behind the scenes, we both know both answers to sets questions.

But we even got to where we dressed differently for the movie. I went in while kind of looking like this. like, hey, I'm ready to go to set. And she walked in looking like a banker. And so we played those different roles, and what we ended up finding out is that people, even high-net-worth people, they have different motivations for becoming involved in a film project.

But you just simply have to listen to know what they are. And so we had to tune our ear. We had a meeting with a person. I don't know if I should say their name, but they're a famous South Carolina money person. Like maybe the richest person in the state kind of thing. We got an audience of this person. And we went in guns blazing.

I mean, we were ready for that presentation. We were given an, you will have 20 minutes in person. They gave us an hour, right? They were jamming with it. They loved the whole thing. We were going to shoot it kind of in a city that they are trying to support and build for the arts. and at the end they passed.

And the reason they passed is ultimately because their objectives were like they didn't need to make any money. So here we are these artists trying to justify it. And we're like, here's how we're going to make all this money. It's just going to be great. And they were like, we're trying to just serve our community. And we have enough money. We don't even talk to me about the small money. Yeah.

Yeah, your goals, our goals weren't aligned. Yeah. And, you know, of course, there are probably other reasons that went into that decision. But I remember coming out of that going, we should have shut up and just listen and really paid attention to what that person was telling us. Now, we're very happy with the way the movie went and we're glad we filmed it in Columbus, Georgia. And that was an incredible experience. But, you know, it was two years after that. meeting that we were standing on set.

Right. Well, what a great lesson though. I mean, when we talked about this a little bit earlier, it's just we don't want to drive the story. Right. We don't want to assume that the lady or the man with all the money wants to make more money. They might not even care. That's it.

Like sometimes people would come to us when we had a big company. They'd say, we've got this idea to partner with you and we can make it profitable. And it was such a small amount that was just what even worth having the appointment. We got to stay focused on the big money. So anyway. Or sometimes people just want to put their money someplace. We want to put, you know, in real estate. We're going to put money in this thing.

And we're just looking for a little return every year. Like a lot of filmmakers, like the first thing out of your mouth is, you know, if you give me, you know, $100,000, let me tell you how you're going to get your $100,000. thousand dollars back with your preferred return in the next 18 months and and that is not necessarily what a high net worth person or a person that can do a hundred thousand needs to hear from you yeah okay so you sold your partner next sale as to the money people what's the next sale my collaborators okay my creative collaborator they would come in and spend their time with yeah yeah um because when we make a film, I have to have the most talented people I can afford with me in an intense creative

collaboration. And the thing is, is really talented creative people that I can afford or I can't afford are busy. They have their own things to do. Why do they want to come and work on Chris's movie? And maybe I'm doing my movie in April and they can do it in August. They can't do it in April. well, I got to decide if I'm going to wait to August to do it so I'm going to have this creative person or I'm going to do it in April

like it is such a crazy balancing act tightrope thing especially then you start casting actors if you're dealing with a celebrity actor you know somebody who's even somebody who's not a celebrity just somebody that's on TV a lot

well you have to deal with their schedule too so getting the right people and the right positions and being able to manage that team and manage that team through, you know, you shoot a movie, you're working a month to six, six weeks, maybe less, but right around that amount of time. So you have to get that career. And then when you get into post-production, editing a movie, the post-production, you've got to find a partner who's going to work, I mean, it's hard to edit, it's time-consuming to edit a movie,

making music a score, the VFX, the visual effects, like there's so many elements and they're you're working with disparate companies and individuals. And so that's my next sale. And the thing about that sale is that everybody's in it for different reasons. Some people are growing into the business and they're just glad to have a job that pays them $400 a day maybe for 21 days, right? Yes, I'm in. Some people are like, well, I've been working at this level, but I'm going to offer them a job at this. this level so they're like a career advancement.

Maybe it's not so much about the money, but it means that I'm no longer going to be a grip, I'm going to be the gaffer. A grip moves things in movies, a gaffer lights things, right? So they're trying to move up. Some actors, Brian Bob Gardner, Kevin from the office in this movie,

he liked this movie because it was a character unlike anything he'd ever played. He wasn't like Kevin in the office in this. And that definitely appealed to him. You know, so you have to think of that sale also requires listening

also requires like a vision a field vision where you're trying to hire all these people at the same time and how do we get them all together and make this thing and it's a miracle that you get all the team together

and then you hold them together and to the end you can't do it remotely either, right? They have to be there. Some you can do remotely. But like the production, no. Everybody's there. But in post production, sometimes you can do that. But I mean,

it's an intensive physical I always tell people like filmmaking is blue collar work. So what's the, I'm trying to, this is really interesting to me. I love movies. Would you have been the producer and the executive producer on this film? Okay, so in a

I don't know what the difference is. Okay, in the motion picture world, executive producer is like my wife, Emily. That's a, that's the money person, the legal person. So if you see credits, an executive producer, however many people, those people were involved in the financing of the movie and managing the money of the movie. A producer is a, can be a lot of things. Basically, the producer is everything from hiring to finding locations to just, sometimes famous actors get producer credit. Producers share in the profits of the movie. Now, in television, totally different. The executive producer of a TV show is almost like a director.

They have an artistic stake in the movie, so it's a little bit different. But when you go to see a movie, the EPs, the executive producers are money people, and the producers are, you know, like those are people that are rolling up their sleeves doing the work of making the movie. Well, it's fascinating to me, because I've just been a movie watcher and probably most of our audiences too. Yeah. But, you know, done me, I was just thinking a producer, it's just got the bullhorn and the special chair. That's the director.

The director. Director. Uh-huh. Are you doing that too? Yeah. So I'm a writer-director who also produces. That's what I do. You're the full package.

I'd say I've got to have a voice in the production. So the producer is pulling everything together. A director is the one telling people how to look at the camera and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I'm learning a lot here. I'm learning a lot of. Well, let me ask you this very important question. a few more questions.

And we still got two more people I got to sell to. I thought we were... Where are the three? Okay. Go to four. Okay. Bring me Quatro. My fourth audience at Seltro is consumers, like the people that watch the movie.

Okay. So that's also a part of my job is figuring out how I make this film we have made. Now appeal to the widest part, a niche maybe, a focused audience, but as many people as possible. How do I get it to them? How do I make it? how do I get their money, you know, even if it's streaming and supposedly to them it's free? What are my ad revenues that I'm getting from that?

And once you have somebody, this is a lot of filmmakers don't think about once you have a fan. Now how can I engage with that fan? How can I give them maybe merchandise to buy? How can, you know, like a record or a T-shirt? How can I get them engaged in talking to other people about the film and spreading love the film and really developing an audience. And that's a totally different thing, you know, than any of those steps before. Is that a social media thing?

Social media is a huge part of it. It's also like learning the various algorithms that sell us media content. You know, so there's, you know, but it's also like making sure the films on airplanes or making sure it's playing in, you know, South America because South America loves Striper, so they're going to love Electric Jesus. And that means that we have a Spanish language version of the film, you know, like it's all those kinds of things that are involved in that phase. And then the last one, the fifth one,

is going back to my wife and saying, let's do this again. So no matter how difficult and how many problems there will, we have to have enough success to where we sit down and go to a good dinner in downtown Greenville and say, you know, have a glass and say, what's the next one going to be? Crank it up.

Crank it back up. Who's your favorite director? Oh, man. There's so many, like, there's so many people's work that I respect and love. And, you know, right now I'm loving the big, you know, American masters who are in their golden age, you know, like the Spielberg's and the Scorsese. And, like, I think those guys are just inspiring to me. Francis Ford Coppola is about to release a movie.

he's that sounds amazing they filmed in Atlanta recently I mean I do tend to gravitate towards directors Alexander Payne who made the holdovers who I think the holdovers the best movie the year Paul Giammani stars in that I mean just so many and then I could go back and say well I love Alfred Hitchcock or Charles Chaplin or you know so I do think there's some film literacy that's required to maybe direct a movie. You know, I just directed a short film slash music video that will be coming out soon,

that we film in Greenville, that stars Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live in Portlandia. And that, I don't want to say too much about it, but because it's about, it's going to be a surprise when it comes out and everything. But in that, it was kind of an homage to a French director, Jacques-Tat-Tat-E.

You don't need to know Jacques-Tat-Tat-E. You don't need to know Jacques Thetie, you know, but he inspired Jerry Lewis and a lot of, you know, American, you know, he had like a very specific style of comedy. And so even in that, I'm kind of channeling a little Jacques-Tat-Ti. So I love a lot of directors. Yeah. I like Tarantino. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Once upon a time in Hollywood is like just, that's my favorite, I think, of his.

But, I mean, I've, I watched that in a movie theater when we're just about, to shoot Electric Jesus with my editor. We sat in a theater in Columbus, Georgia, and watched that thing, and we're just my... It's so amazing. All right, so we're about out of time, so we'll ask you a few clean-up questions here. We've got your favorite directors. How about your favorite book? I like that Rick Rubin book.

Okay. I've got that book. Oh, yeah. I think it's good, especially sales, whatever you're in, it's written in short little sections. You can just kind of read it and kind of meditate on it, but I do think it opens your mind a little bit. I'm going to give you this book recommendation. I read it this year. It's a novel. It's by Tom Hanks, his first novel. And it's called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. And I don't know if you're an audiobook guy. It's a great

listen. But that, if you love movies, I highly recommend that. It takes the production of a movie, a fictional movie all the way from its earliest inspiration in a child making a comic to releasing the movie into the world. And I think you particular would get a kick out of that. Good, good. All right. And then favorite band? You too.

You too. I just took my oldest daughter to the sphere in Las Vegas and stood there on the floor. It was like walking into the future, John. Wow. It was insane. It was, well, we can do a whole podcast.

I got to go. I got to go. And favorite word? Forgiven. As used in the sentence, you are forgiven. I think so much of our time is spent in our lives, going around trying to somehow prove ourselves

or be enough or to prove that we're, overcome mistakes by being gooder and better. And I just know that when I receive forgiveness, I am relieved. And when I give forgiveness, I am also relieved. And so I think the idea of that, of releasing, I don't know, that makes me free to be a creative person. It makes me free to be a business person. It makes me free to walk into a meeting and knowing if I screw this up or if Emily screws it up and they pass or we didn't, we should have known this, then we can walk out of the meeting and get in the car and just be like, okay, we learn something. And we're not grudge holders and we're not pissed off and angry.

You're forgiven. How long have you felt this way? How long have I felt this? where you've been comfortable with forgiving and all that. Oh, that's definitely a grown-up thing. That's probably been a last five or ten years thing. Okay. Because it's not,

it doesn't come easy when you're young. No, no. It's, I think it's easy to let that emotion get the best of you instead of thinking logically that, you know, if I hold a grudge with somebody else, the rest of my life,

it's just hurting me. It's not doing anything to them, you know. And I'm competitive. Like, my wife and our incompetent. Like, if we're in a film festival, we want to win. And when somebody else wins, we're like, oh, man, we should have won. You know, like, so, and that can lead, if you hang on to that,

that can lead to grudges or bitterness or, well, you know, we're never going to enter another film festival again. It's stupid. Yeah, right, right. And that just becomes childish in a more mature position. It's just like, let it go. And we can't work. We can't create with, like, this heavy burn.

Hurtain hanging over us or just an annoying Frustrating So anyway, I like forgiveness Well thank you for sharing your story so far with us You got a lot more of your story But you promised I could ask you a question. I have a great I have one question for you What's the best movie about sales? And there is a correct answer for those

There's several there's movies that I required myself people to watch Okay, what are they? Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Oh, okay. I didn't think of that one. Tommy Boy. Tommy Boy. Another one that's a little less watched about sales is called Used Cars.

Oh, yeah. Which is a great, great funny movie about selling cars, obviously. Those are my top three. Okay. Well, the one that came out this year, Air, which is about the development of the Air Jordan. Oh, I did see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did see that.

But it's a sales movie. Yeah, the salesperson in that film was Jordan's mother. I mean, she was unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. They weren't going to make the, Jordan wasn't going to do anything unless his mom said, we're doing this shoe. Yeah. And then the contract they got, they get 5% of the profits or profit of the gross, I think it was.

So he's getting, what, a billion dollars a year or something? Yeah. Yeah. And Nike's happy to pay him. They're buying it because of him. Right. Well, listen, that's a good question. And again, thank you so much for spending time with us. I want to have you come back when the next movie comes out.

Let me do a little screening. Dude, I would come back anytime. Okay. And I'd love to talk about even Studio 15 and what we're doing the upstate and what our vision is for developing film. Emily and I are not headed to Hollywood. We want to be here. So Studio 15 is, I guess we didn't get to it,

but that's the name of what you've established here. Yeah. to develop your own movies and to help other people develop movies and get distribution, right? Exactly. And also, we have this cool part of it that's, we want to develop a retreat center in the upstate that is a corporate retreat center. We don't have any of that in the upstate, but also that's rural, but not rustic. So a nice place. But we also want to use that as a talent incubator. I want to have artist retreats on a musician retreats. I want to, you know, I want to do things to give back to the arts in this area that has definitely grown and given me opportunities.

Good. Well, if they want to find you, Google Studio 15? Yeah, Studio15.us. Okay. That's how you find us. All right. Thanks again. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you.