This is a transcript of SYS 515 – Making Sci-Fi Comedy With L.E. Staiman and Cheston Mizel .
Welcome to Episode 515 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Myers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing the filmmaking team of Cheston Mizel and L.E Staiman, who just did a really independent film called Love Virtually. It’s an ensemble romance where they combine live action with a lot of CGI. Again, this very independent film and they’re very candid about how it all came together for them. And what they did to get this project finished. So, stay tuned for that interview.
If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by give me a review in iTunes or leave a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode 515. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free, you just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material, really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So just a couple quick words about what I’m working on. So this is the last episode for the year for 2023. I hope everyone had a good year, hope 2024 is even better. I definitely got some big plans for myself and SYS, we’re going to be launching the screenwriting contest again in January for sure. We’re still working on securing our location for the festival in October. Pretty sure we’ll get this worked out. But so far, we have not. But the contest for sure, we’re going to be launching that in early January. And I’d really like to get back into production on one of my projects. So that’s going to be another big goal as well, hopefully getting into production, at least pre-production on another project. We’re working on the budget list here at Selling Your Screenplay. That is our annual list of the best unproduced a low budget screenplay that have come through SYS. So, keep an eye out for that. I hope everyone has some big goals for themselves that they can achieve for the new year. I’ve never been one that sort of makes New Year’s resolutions. But I do always like to take stock of what I’ve done over the past year, and what I hope to accomplish in the next year. Anyway, happy holidays to everyone. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today I’m interviewing Cheston Mizel and L.E Staiman. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Lee and Cheston to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you guys coming on the show with me today.
L.E Staiman
Thanks for having us.
Ashley
So maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background? Where you grew up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment interest industry? And Cheston maybe you go first, and then Lee you can follow up?
Cheston Mizel
Well, you know, I grew up in Denver, and it’s kind of funny, because, you know, my background is in law and business and, and I really didn’t set out to be in the industry, although I had many years ago, written a screenplay and you know, but that was kind of like when I was much younger and thought that it was going to be easy to do something. And in fact, about six months before we started writing this film, L.E helped me, my wife had a documentary. And we brought L.E in who was it was a good friend of ours kind of helped us with editing and re editing it and kind of finishing it out. And the day we finished it, and you know, we finally got it done. And he looks at me says well, what’s our next project? And I said to him, I am never ever, ever making another movie. So you know, I mean, six months later, there was a pandemic, things change. But, you know, I almost, you know, got into this without really, you know, without really realizing what I was getting myself into. So, I think L.E has a much more esteemed career in the creative arts. So, I think he’d be a good person to answer that question.
Ashley
But take me back a little bit. So, you were working with on this documentary with your wife? And what motivated you to do that? If you have a background in law, what was the motivation to get out there and just try and produce a documentary?
Cheston Mizel
Well, it is really my wife, you know, she has an incredible story. Her mother passed away when she was a baby. And she really knew nothing about her mom until she was 36 years old. And it got to a point in time where she like, you know, it was like she needed to find these things out. So, I really encouraged her to go interview family members because it was really not ever spoken about, you know, in her family because it was such a traumatic thing. And her father had gotten remarried multiple times. And she really had a lot of questions that hadn’t been answered, so she went out on this journey of sort of discovery. And what we kind of found out about our mom was fantastic and really kind of amazing and really life changing. And we decided, well, let’s cut these interviews into a film. And so, it was really done for very personal reasons. Not and I think it really what we ended up with was is a really tremendous piece of art. But it just wasn’t done because we wanted to be “filmmakers” per se, if that makes sense.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So L.E, yeah, why don’t you give us sort of your two minute origin story?
L.E Staiman
So, I grew up primarily in South Florida. And I was a terrible student and wanting to do nothing but play guitar and write music. And I dropped out of high school started a band. And then the being in the band, we shot a bunch of music videos, and I got really into the filmmaking side of things. And I’ve moved out to LA and pivoted from trying to make music full-time to directing music videos, and then directing commercials, you know, all really low budget stuff. But really also spent a lot of time kind of trying to hone my craft as a writer. So wrote a ton of screenplays. And I wrote and produced a movie that came out a few years ago, before this movie. But this was kind of an opportunity that fell into my lap. I’ve never directed anything with any kind of real budget or any, you know, I’ve shot some stuff with like, a small skeleton crew, but this was like, you know, my film school experience just trying to figure it out on the go making this movie. Yeah, it was just something that fell into my lap.
Ashley
So, talk about some of those early, you’re moved to LA, you’re starting to write sounds like you’re directing some music videos, commercials, where you starting to do the sort of the typical screenwriter things you send it to contest to the blacklist, just sending to agents trying to network, maybe you can just walk us through that a little bit. What were you doing and what did you feel like was having some success? What were the things you did that maybe you didn’t feel like were successful?
L.E Staiman
Yeah, I don’t know that I really followed the typical route that one should follow if they want to be a writer, I was also, I really wanted to make stuff. So, I wasn’t trying to get stuff produced as much as I was trying to produce stuff myself. So, if I wrote a screenplay, we would maybe shoot scenes from that to try to get people interested, or shoot fake trailers for things. And that’s how we got the movie Knife Corp that I wrote and produced, made was we shot a fake trailer for it and had someone who decided he wanted to put some money into it and but a big turning point for me, I was also acting a bit so I was going auditions and really not finding any level of success at all. Until I made in that same spirit of making stuff, I made a just spec audition for I saw that they were making a movie about queen. So, I made a spec audition for to play, Brian May in the movie. And my manager at the time track down the casting director and got to her. And so there was a while where I was a front runner to play Brian May in Bohemian Rhapsody. And that like Bryan Singer, who was directing the movie, loved the audition. And it got to this point where I was like, oh, I think this is actually happening. And then I didn’t get I didn’t get the role. And that really motivated me to pivot from acting to – alright, well, I really need to take control of my career, and not wait for opportunities to do things like I need to make things. And that was a huge turning point for me. I was like, I’m just I want to direct I want to like, I want to be in control. So that was it.
Ashley
So, walk me through this fake trailer that you did, that eventually led to this feature film. I mean, we hear those stories of someone doing a short version and it gets turned into a to a feature or doing something that you’re talking to picture, so just talk about that a little bit. Once you had this big trailer, what did you do with it? Did you have it, you’re doing acting? You’re doing these? You know, low budget music videos and commercials. Did you have some network at this point? You could pass it to did you just cold send it out? Did you go to network events? This How did you get that fake trailer to the person that could greenlight the movie?
L.E Staiman
First, I’ll say is like, I’ve been operating very much outside of the Hollywood system. So, like, so Greenlight is like, technically it was greenlit, but it was all you know, like as indie as you can possibly imagine. It’s like, you know, a real estate guy from Boston who wanted to get into filmmaking who was like, Yeah, I’ll throw some cash into this and like, let’s see what happens. So like green light is such a very loose term.
Ashley
I got you.
L.E Staiman
So, we brought on my buddy Zach and I who wrote the script together brought on and another friend of ours to produce it and that’s what he did. I mean, he brought the script and the trailer to this, you know, real estate investor who had an interest in film. And the guy’s like, if you can make a couple of revisions here and you change the ending or whatever, you know, I’ll put some money into it. So, it was a very anticlimactic story in terms of like, you know, we sweat it out for it was just kind of like we read the script, and some guy gave us some money to make it.
Ashley
How did you take those notes? You got a real estate guy that doesn’t necessarily know anything about screenplay development, giving you notes, but he’s got the money. Was there ever any friction there? And just how do you appease those things? If there’s some notes that maybe you didn’t necessarily agree with but you want to get the movie made?
L.E Staiman
I don’t think I had anything to do with those revisions, because I was producing other aspects of the film. So the director who was the Co-writer on the movie, I think made those made those changes. And I was kind of like, if he’s this guy’s you know, putting up the money. Like, we don’t have anything else going on right now. Like, you know, and I don’t think there was anything that was that was like compromising the integrity of the story. It was a ridiculous horror comedy called Knife Corpse starring Kane Hodder, who is famous for playing Jason and the Friday 13th movies. So, he is like a pretty iconic horror figure. But yeah, it wasn’t like, you know, we need to make sure that we’re maintaining artistic integrity or historical accuracy or anything like that. It was like, this movie is about door-to-door knife salesman who get murdered, you know, like, yeah, sure. Let’s hear your notes. You know?
Ashley
Okay, so just out of curiosity, how did you and Cheston meet? Maybe you can just fill us in on that. I just always sort of like to get a sense of sort of the scope or the depth of the relationship with these sorts of partnerships.
L.E Staiman
Synagogue, I think, yeah. I think that’s yeah.
Cheston Mizel
I brought him home, basically, for a meal. And he never left. And he’d come over, and you know, and he just really kind of became part of our family. And he became my little brother kind of, and, you know, he comes to sleep on our couch. And, you know, he was a single guy and the community and we just became really good friends over a period of time.
Ashley
Great, great. So, let’s dig into your recent film, Love Virtually. Maybe to start out, you just give us a pitch or logline. What is this film all about?
L.E Staiman
I mean, the logline is about for couples navigating their relationships in a virtual world. You know, much in the vein of Love actually, which I don’t think actually watched Love Actually, until after we shot. I don’t think I’ve actually seen it.
Ashley
Where did the idea come from, what was sort of the genesis of this story?
Cheston Mizel
What really kind of started, you know, with, you know, we were brainstorming, what could we do under the restrictions of COVID? And so, it started with, Okay, well, something happened to an online relationship. And the first idea that we started talking about was this idea of reverse catfish people pretending to be who they’re not. But what if you took instead of taking not attractive people pretending to be really attractive? What if you took really attractive people who for some other reason, had a motivation to hide their identities, and then they were pretending to be sort of like nobodies. And we just thought that was an ironic twist. And then from there, it was like, Okay, well, what other couples and what other sort of ironic twists on relationships are sort of motivated by the technological changes that our society is going through and the cultural changes that our society is going through? And sort of ultimately, that’s how we cannot came up with these stories? And then we kind of came up with what was the through line that can keep put them all together? And how do they also ultimately meet up given the fact that we were planning to film this in a time when we couldn’t get everyone all in a room together? So, it was a combination of sort of, like, you know, thinking about what are the sort of absurd realities that technology sort of creates in relationships, or can create relationships combined with the very real limitations that we faced at the very beginning of the pandemic, not knowing how long it would last, not knowing what the conditions would be? So, we really wrote it. The original script had no scene that had more than two actors in it. There were a couple scenes that were added, like a year later, that had a few more people in the room. But I mean, it was really, you know, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So that’s kind of how we ended up with this kind of a crazy format.
Ashley
Okay, and so let’s talk through your writing process a little bit. How did you guys work together in terms of your collaboration, were you guys in the same room? Were you in different rooms? You doing zoom calls, maybe just walk through sort of some of these logistics of how you guys work together and wrote this?
L.E Staiman
We were other sides of the country. I was, I happened to be in Florida, right when the pandemic broke out. So, I ended up staying with my parents for a bit before going back to LA. And Cheston was still in LA, at the time. So, we would, my process was I would go on like long walks around the neighborhood, we’d be on the phone kind of just iterating on these ridiculous ideas and scenarios. And then I’d go sit in the backyard and write, but yeah, it was a lot of zoom calls and using software where we kind of look through each other’s work and rewrite.
Ashley
And then how does this move along, in terms of the writing process structure? Do you guys do a lot of outlining index cards? Do you just get into something like final draft and start actually writing script pages? Maybe just walk us through that process? What did it look like for you guys?
L.E Staiman
There was one secret weapon that actually really helped a lot, because of the complexity of like, How does everybody know each other? And how do they interact? And so, I kind of drew a graph, like a very weird looking graph, but I just put all the names of the characters, and then just sort of started drawing lines, like I was trying to solve a murder, from person to person, just figuring out like, alright, what is the connection there? What does the interaction look like? When does it happen? So, I had this very messy looking graph that kind of helped work as an outline. And then we did some, we did some outlining, right?
Cheston Mizel
Yeah, we did. I mean, I think a process that you kind of, you write some stuff, and then you got to kind of figure out how does that fit with this, and you change it. And it wasn’t, like, you know, since then, we’ve worked on some stuff that we were more deliberate from day one, you know, stuff that hasn’t been made yet. But like, we’re in terms of outlining and graphing and mapping it out kind of a process, I think that’s really a very useful process. It always works better when you’re in the same room. So, when you’re on the other side of the country, you know, there’s a lot more passing stuff back and forth, and then just talking it through.
Ashley
And then what about just once your writing is it just did you divide up scenes, you take this scene, I take this scene, or one person writes a scene and the other person rewrites the scene? How does that work? Just maybe, again, walk through that process for you guys, the actual writing of the script pages.
L.E Staiman
I think it was a combination of that. Like, I think there were scenes where like, I didn’t want to write, you know, or the scenes that Cheston didn’t want to write, and we’ve kind of divide and conquer. And then we’d also like, write and rewrite each other’s scene. So, it’d be like, I just wrote this, take a look at it. And stuff would get just passed back and forth.
Cheston Mizel
Yeah, I mean, there was one scene we were writing on set five minutes before we shot it. So that was kind of an interesting experience as well, because we realized a change needed to be made. So, it was pretty much a dynamic.
L.E Staiman
There were also rewrites after the fact, like, we had our first version of the movie, and then we, you know, wrote a bunch more, like we did reshoots, and had stuff that we just kind of realized after the fact that we’re like, Alright, I think we need this to, you know, I think we need some more connective tissue here. We didn’t really didn’t explain this relationship enough where this doesn’t quite, you know, so there was there stuff that got shot, like a year and a half after principal photography, that was written later.
Cheston Mizel
I was going to say, also, like, the whole introduction to the movie, the movie starts totally differently, then originally what we’d written. So, we kind of, you know, between the new scenes that we added and redoing the beginning, we were able to kind of fix a lot of the stuff that maybe we didn’t have the vision when we first wrote it to realize needed to be done.
Ashley
Gotcha. And how do you guys approach screenplay structure? It sounds like this has a number of storylines going on simultaneously. But there’s sort of that Blake Snyder, Syd Field real clear paradigms with act breaks beginning, middle and end. What is sort of your approach to something like this. And as I said, it sounds like it’s a little bit unique. It’s not necessarily one, a story that really controls that structure. But how did you guys approach structure was something like this?
L.E Staiman
I mean, for this one, we didn’t really use the Blake Snyder beat sheet, which I ordinarily do for like, most projects, this because this was an ensemble piece, and it’s, you know, like, the structure doesn’t quite work to fit into those like, rigid parameters. But I do think that there’s some rhyme and reason to it. I don’t know. You know, I don’t know where it comes from, necessarily. I don’t know how you’d categorize what our structure is.
Cheston Mizel
We actually did at one point in time, try to go back and fit stuff in to the Blake Snyder paradigm. And like, there was way to get this to happen on that page and this to happen on that page. But we did go back and kind of like, okay, like, let’s at least make sure that some of it like, you know that there’s the process of meeting everybody, then there’s the process of everyone getting into the club. And then there’s what happens in the club, and towards the end of the film, and each character had to have their arc. So, like it you we did, actually, we were informed by that. But that wasn’t until we’d already finished the script, you know, you know, we really just kind of like we broke the rules or didn’t pay attention to the rules, whatever it is, I think that the extent that it works, we got very fortunate that we managed to make it work. But it was a lot of slicing and dicing and chopping. I mean, we were even reorganized, putting reorienting scenes and the editing process of moving things completely around and getting rid of scenes. And so, I wouldn’t say that we would do it the same way, again, going forward. But it was a very creative, and you know, it fit my sort of more entrepreneurial style of doing things generally, which is you try things and if they don’t work, then you try something else, you know, and so there was a little bit, you know, I don’t know that I recommend to screenwriters necessarily to do it the way that we did it. Although I’m very happy with how it worked out.
Ashley
What is your development process looks like? So, once you guys had a first draft, or even a second or third draft that you kind of liked? How do you start to get notes? And how do you move it beyond that? Did you have some trusted actor friends, some trusted producer friends, you sent it, you got notes? And then maybe we can talk about a little bit about that? How do you then interpret those notes and execute those into your screenplay?
L.E Staiman
We were in go mode, like, like draft one. And again, not something I recommend but like v1, we’re starting pre-production. You know, like we got like, you know, fade out and it’s like, alright, like this is happening. We’re making this movie now. So, like, I sent it out to some people for notes. People were like, Yeah, this isn’t ready to shoot yet. And I was like, shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And, and that was our note. And then and then when we shot the whole movie, and then we were like, they were right about a lot of these things. Like this wasn’t quite like, there were things that we needed to iron out that we just didn’t during the writing and principal photography. And I sent the first cut out to a producer friend of mine who’s like, like, made huge movies, like he produced inside man with Denzel Washington and whatever. And he watched the movie. And I was with my family as my wife and her family at Epcot. And we’re like taking a picture in this guy. I’ve been waiting for this callback for this guy to watch the first cut of the movie. And I was like, He’s going to love it and whatever. And he’s like, hey, yeah, so I watched it. And it’s like, maybe we should cut it down to like a five-minute short film. And I was like, sitting there, like, and everyone like smile. I’m like, this is the worst news I’ve ever gotten in my life. And so we ended up going back and kind of rewriting, like, figuring out how to retool it. And we created a whole new intro for it and redeveloped some of the characters and shot some more stuff. And then I sent him a newer cut of it, he’s like, cool, you, you made the movie work now. But there was that moment of like, okay, we’re missing some really key elements, just oversights in our writing, where we just didn’t realize how crucial it was to give the audience something to connect certain characters to and to like to be rooting for certain characters, like the Rody character was just underdeveloped when we wrote the script. And we didn’t realize that, oh, we didn’t need to, like develop this character more.
Cheston Mizel
I think there was another problem that I think writers you know, are going to run into. And that’s that we, in our own brains had made all these connections of all these narratives, and it all made perfect sense. But just but that’s a bias that we have as the creators of the stories, because these characters are fully developed in our own minds and our own brain. So, when this one says this, the subtext and all those other things are just obvious, but it’s not obvious to the audience, but it’s because the audience is just getting to know these characters, and they’re just figuring out who are these people and what’s going on. And there’s also subtleties and nuances, which you’re not going to catch, you know, the first time you watch something. So I think we learned in some of those kinds of lessons the hard way, you know, but I think that’s a pitfall that any writer could potentially fall into is just, you know, knowing the character so well and assuming that the audience is going to make the connections just because they’re there in in subtle terms, when in reality, sometimes you have to you just have to lay more of a foundation and you know, you can’t rely on the audience being so like, on top of everything.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, it sounds like from the very start your intention was to write this script and then go mute yourself. So maybe we can talk about that a little bit. Once you had a draft that you guys were at least happy with, what were those next steps? How did you go out and start to raise money? And how did you go out and start to bring on cast?
Cheston Mizel
There was a little more than that. It was like, part of it was like, how are we going to make this? You know, like you know, raising money for any movie is an impossible thing. And it’s usually like a chicken and egg thing. And, you know, we could spend the whole time talking about that, let’s just say I was willing to take a certain personal risk that was substantial in order to get the ball rolling. But I think don’t think that it was about just that, I think that we were like, Okay, we don’t know anything about animation. So, you know, I was literally, you know, putting on a face. But does anyone know anything about VR? And someone’s like, well, here, talk to this guy. So, I’m like, asking him about VR. And then somehow, we made it to a guy who is a computer guy who worked on a project to hook this in with the producer, and we met this producer, and he had worked on a lot of animated projects and things like that. And, you know, he read it, and we’re like, well, we can’t really afford to pay you what you’d normally make. But you know, would you do it for x? And he was like, you know, he had nothing else going on, it was COVID it was a pandemic, and he was like, okay, you know, and so and then once that happened is like, Okay, now we’re, you know, L.E was, you know, actually, he came very close friends, my wife’s cousin who was housemates with this fantastic production company and production team, and L.E reached out to them like, and so we started picking out what would it cost for them to do Chris principal photography for us? And then we, you know, had to go through, you know, a whole process of how are we going to get cast when no casting directors would talk to us? So, you know, we had very entrepreneurial people involved and we hustled a lot, we did a lot virtually. And, you know, it was definitely not literally…
L.E Staiman
Casting directors literally would not answer our, there was a neighbor, who was a casting director and worked on like Boogie Nights and a bunch of other and whatever. And I was like, struggling with her, you know, and she, I was like, was it something you’d like, you know, be interested in working on? Just like, ‘No’, just flat out like, and I was like, can you point me the direction? It’s like, no, with your little tiny budget, nobody’s going to, like, no one’s going to cast this, like, you’re not going to get and she was right. No, like we, I brought on my manager at the time was literally the casting director on it. And he’s just a bull in a China shop. And we just, you know, was really good at getting agents to take him seriously. And that’s how we cast this movie. But yeah, like the traditional casting director, like, like, no one would take our calls. It was a little disheartening at first…
Ashley
So, that’s ultimately your manager was able to get Sherry Otero and Steven Blusky he was able to get some of that name those names count on because of his relationships or whatever.
L.E Staiman
Totally. Yeah.
Cheston Mizel
He at least got it to Steven and Steven liked it. He also got a lot of people got thanks to a lot of people who didn’t, weren’t interested. So, you know, it really took a lot of, you know, footwork and Sherry, you know, came on really because she wanted to work with Steven. So, you know, it’s kind of like, it’s the same chicken and egg thing in anything in Hollywood, like once you get one person who someone else wants to work with, whether it be a name, so that you can get money or a name so you can get another name. And it’s, you know, it’s really getting that first person who is the people will take seriously attached to the project. And then it’s not easy, but it allows you the opportunity to open other doors. And I think that was for us, big way that we got this done is just through, you know, brute force, and you know, and just keeping, pushing and doing whatever we could to make this happen.
Ashley
And then once you guys had a finished film, what were some of those next steps? Did you do the festival route? Did you start contacting distributors? Maybe you can talk about that a little bit? How did you actually bring this film to market?
L.E Staiman
Finished film is also a relative term because we’ve had there been so many iterations of it, and it took a very, I mean, animation, VFX I mean, that’s that just took so long to get done and to get right and then even when that when most of that stuff was done, there were still okay, is this the tightest version that could be do that are the jokes landing are things you know, the things that we can cut out or the things we can, you know, so we did…Cheston, you want to take that?
Cheston Mizel
So, we along the way, like we did show it to some people might be in that space, we did at some point take on a like a producer’s rep. You know, who, who was going, you know, a group that was going to, like, introduce us to distributors, and things like that, but you know, they and they brought us several offers, but the offers that we got were incredibly uncompelled Because you know, that right now in the distribution game for a small independent film, even if you have a couple of names there, they’re not the biggest names in Hollywood, the distribution game is pretty broken. Because basically, what we found was, look, no studio is going to take on a film like this, it’s too small, you’re not going to be able to go to… no streamer is going to pay in advance for it if you didn’t get into festival. So, we applied for a few festivals, not a ton of festivals. But we didn’t get into the big ones, because there they weren’t taking this kind of content. You know, we didn’t have any political, we weren’t calling them we didn’t have political people trying to get us in. And we were with satire that pushed a lot of buttons, when they were looking for something that was a little bit more, you know, a little bit more in line with a certain ethos that the films were having, and not something that was sort of going to be controversial in the way. And so, we just kind of the one festival, we got into out of the four or five that we applied to, we won Best Picture. And that was the Los Angeles Comedy film festival, because they wanted company. But you know, to have so we got it. So that was a nice boost to get best picture. And so but nevertheless, the offers we were getting from distributors, and this is really, I think the case that this is the state of affairs for independent film is they’re like, no Ng, and by the way, you know, we’re all the expenses are charged back to the account, and then they’re going to take 2025 30%, and all they’re going to do because no one’s doing theatrical for this kind of a film, all they’re going to do is they’re going to get you up on all the platforms. And then, by the way, you’re probably still going to have to spend money to market it yourself, you’re probably still going to have to get your own PR. So, what are they doing? They’re not really in most of these distributors nowadays, at least for things that are going straight to online aren’t doing much more than aggregators. And except for they’re taking a piece of the action in a significant way. So, you know, so we, and I was fortunate that I had a relationship with someone who knew the people over premiere digital, and we ended up going with them. And we’re very, very happy because, you know, we were able to maintain control of, of, you know, the PR and the marketing and things of that without kind of bringing someone in, who wasn’t really going to make a real commitment to our project and expect quite a bit of our upside for having done very little. And so, I think that’s the reality a lot of independent filmmakers are facing when you go to a distributor nowadays, because if you don’t have an MG, if the thing doesn’t take off, they have no real reason to invest all that much in marketing or your film. Now, some of them have some skills, some of them will be really helpful. Some of the distributors might get you get you into doors and things like that, that you may not get other ways. So, I’m not saying I mean, everyone advised us against doing it kind of the way we did it. But you know, but the truth of the matter is, if we listen to what any normal person would advise us to do, we would have never made this film.
Ashley
Yeah. And believe me as someone that’s been on the front end trying to find distribution for independent films. I second, everything you just said there. And I hope people really listened to that if they’re thinking about making an independent film. So how can people see Love Virtually, what’s the release schedule going to be like for it?
Cheston Mizel
So, on November 7th, that’ll be available on it’ll be iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, DirecTV, Dish Network EchoStar, all the cable channels, Hulu and Fandango. And it’ll be available for pay per view and to purchase on November 7th, and, you know, will the subsequent windows will happen subsequently down the road, but that’s really what we’re focused on now.
Ashley
Perfect. And I just like to end the interviews by asking the guests is there anything you guys have seen recently that you thought was really great? HBO, Netflix, Hulu, anything you’re watching TV or movies that you just think our screenwriting audience might be interested in checking out?
Cheston Mizel
I’ll give this one to L.E. This he’s an expert on these things.
L.E Staiman
I’ll plug a few movies. They’re not like the most recent but just in other independent, smaller creators who have done exceptionally wel. I Love My Dad was great. I liked The Art of Self-Defense. I thought it was great. And cha-cha real smooth, I thought was awesome.
Ashley
Yeah, those are all great recommendations, not films I’ve checked out so I’ll put those on my list. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you guys are doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will round up for the show notes and people can click on to it.
L.E Staiman
Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok. I don’t know if we have a Twitter but it’s Love Virtually movie on all the socials.
Cheston Mizel
Okay, yeah, and we’re just getting those rolling. So, anything people do come follow us will help us kind of get some momentum because we really want to get the word out there.
Ashley
So, what are you guys doing on your Tik Tok channel. I’m looking for some actual tips here because my Tik Tok channel really isn’t doing much.
L.E Staiman
You got to check out the Tik Tok.
Cheston Mizel
We really just started that stuff because we really want to you know, in this day and age people are their attention is too small. We didn’t want to invest too much too far ahead of the launch, and want people to be able to see something and then go watch it. And so, over the next week, there’s going to be a lot more rolling out on those channels.
Ashley
Perfect. Well, congratulations, getting this film done. Thank you, guys, for coming on and talking with me for a little bit. Good luck with it. And good luck, all your future projects as well.
L.E Staiman
Thank you very much.
Cheston Mizel
Thank you. Thanks very much.
Ashley
We’ll talk to you guys later.
I just want to talk quickly about SYS select. It’s a service for screenwriters to help them sell their screenplays and get writing assignments. The first part of the service is the SYS select screenplay database. Screenwriters upload their screenplays, along with a logline, synopsis and other pertinent information like budget and genre, and then producers search for and hopefully find screenplays they want to produce. Dozens of producers are in the system looking for screenplays right now. There have been a number of success stories come out of the service. You can find out about all the SYS select successes by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/success. Also, on SYS podcast episode 222. I talked with Steve Dearing, who was the first official success story to come out of the SYS select database. When you join SYS select you get access to the screenplay database along with all the other services that we’re providing to SYS select members. These services include the newsletter, this monthly newsletter goes out to a list of over 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays. Each SYS select member can pitch one screenplay in this monthly newsletter. We also provide screenwriting leads, we have partnered with one of the premier paid screenwriting leads services so I can syndicate their leads to SYS select members. There are lots of great paid leads coming in each week from our partner. Recently, we’ve been getting 5 to 10 high quality paid leads per week. These leads run the gamut. There are producers looking for a specific type of spec script to producers looking to hire a screenwriter to write up one of their ideas or properties. They’re looking for shorts, features, TV, and web series pilots all types of projects. If you sign up for SYS select, you’ll get these leads emailed directly to you several times per week. Also, you get access to the SYS select forum, where we will help you with your logline and query letter and answer any screenwriting related questions that you might have. We also have a number of screenwriting classes that are recorded and available in the SYS select forum. These are all the classes that I’ve done over the years, so you’ll have access to those whenever you want. Once you join the classes cover every part of writing your screenplay, from concept to outlining to the first act, second act, third act as well as other topics like writing short films, and pitching your projects in person. Once again, if this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, please go to www.sellingyourscreenplayselect.com. Again, that is sellingyourscreenplayselect.com.
On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing screenwriter and producer Brian Cantrell. He just produced a cool low budget horror film called Abigail, which stars his daughter in the lead. He’s got an interesting story. His daughter, as I mentioned, is an actor. And he actually did a lot of networking as he would drive her around to various auditions. And in fact, this film, this horror film that he just did called Abigail, in a roundabout way came from that bit of networking. So, there’s a lot of great lessons in here that he brings to this episode. And also, he is a writer with a number of his own projects in development. So, we do talk about that as well what he’s doing to push his own projects forward. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.