This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 530 – I Shot 2 Movies On My Phone With Jamie Grefe.
Welcome to episode 530 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast, and a big Happy New Year’s to everyone. This is our first episode of 2025. I’m AshleyScott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger of itssellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing Jamie Grefe, who was on the podcast in episode 306. Jamie has had some success writing and selling scripts for a number of producers, so check that episode out if you haven’t already, as we dug into his writing beginnings, how he got some of his first credits, and really go into some detail on the start of his screenwriting career. But he’s back today to talk about some low-budget horror films that he’s been writing, directing, producing, and editing. It’s a fascinating model that he’s working in. He writes and produces and does a bunch of other stuff, too, creating these super low-budget films. And he’s found a market for them where he’s able to actually get them picked up for distribution. These are, again, very low-budget, so he doesn’t put a ton of money into them, but he has found some revenue stream from them. I love to highlight these sorts of niches in screenwriting. To me, it’s always incredible when someone has figured out a model on how to do something and make money with something as creative as making a movie. It really is just, being creative is always difficult, and finding an outlet for that creativity is always just a difficult, difficult nut to crack. So, I thought it was fascinating to listen to him and hear what he’s saying. So, if you’re interested in getting something completed, getting some writing credits, seeing one of your scripts made into a movie, you’re definitely going to want to hear this episode. He goes into a lot of detail about how all of this works, so stay tuned for that interview.
If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving 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.sellinyourscreenplay.com/podcast, and then just look for episode 530. If you want my free guide, how to sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to 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, 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 sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
So now just a quick few words about what I’m working on. So, I’m going to be launching the screenplay contest later this month. It’s the official launch date is February 1st, but I try and get it launched before that. So if you have a low budget screenplay, you’re looking to get some eyeballs on, stay tuned for more updates. But as I said, we will officially be launched by February 3rd but probably a little bit before that. The theater where the festival, the film festival was last year, it’s a great venue. It’s a great theater to screen movies at. So, I was very happy with all that. Everyone was super nice, but I haven’t heard back from them about costs. Obviously, I would be planning this way in advance. And I don’t think the theater necessarily likes to lock in a given weekend this far in advance. So, they haven’t really been all that eager to even get back to me, but I haven’t really heard what they’re going to try and charge me. So, I’ll be negotiating with them over the next couple of weeks and hopefully have something settled. But I’m still just trying to figure out that part. I may or may not run the festival again, just depending on what they’re going to charge. But again, for sure, I’ll be launching the screenplay contest by February 1st.
I’m also knee deep in my rewrite on my low budget rom-com I’m putting together. Right after Thanksgiving, I did a table read, which was via Zoom. And that’s something that maybe I should talk about at some point, because I find them very helpful. It’s just a pretty easy exercise and everybody is so used to Zoom calls these days. It was easy to put together. But again, I’m in LA, so I know a lot of actors. But basically, I just get an actors, I get actors for all the main roles. This is a low budget rom-com. So, I think I only had four or five actors. I had two main actors. And then I had two or three other actors that just played some of the smaller roles. And then I also had an actor who did the narration. And so I just went through the script, everybody’s on Zoom, you can hear it, you can see them talking. And the actors, it’s a cold read. So, for the most part, they haven’t read the script ahead of time. But these are good actors that I know. And I cast them sort of accordingly, knowing the role and what they’re good at. And so, it’s just very valuable to hear your script actually performed by an actor. Again, it’s not super polished. And sometimes the actors stumble on a line or go back. But it just sort of gives you a sense of the pacing. And then the other big piece of that is after the reading, people give notes. So, I invited some of my other writer friends to this Zoom call and they were on and listened and then also got some notes from them. So, it’s just a really good educational process. And there’s a lot of notes that come from that. So, then you have to sort of go through the notes and figure out how to address some of them, all of them. What notes are you going to address? Which ones are the important ones? And that’s never an easy process. And that’s sort of what I’m doing now. I’m going back through the script, I’m looking at all the notes and I’m trying to figure out what my next step is. But hopefully I’ll have a draft here fairly shortly and then I can really begin pre-production in earnest.
If you have a low budget screenplay that you want to produce yourself, drop me a line. I’d like to put together a mastermind of filmmakers who are working on low budget films. And perhaps there can be some synergy working at the same time. If we’re all working on a film together, we’ll be going through a lot of the same things. So, we might be able to just help each other a little bit. Maybe doing some Zoom calls to talk about sort of what we’re working on, help each other again, pulling some of our resources. So especially if you’re a writer in LA who wants to produce your own film, drop me an email and let me know what you’re working on. And just to be clear, this isn’t a call for writers to submit their scripts to me for me to produce. This is for writers to produce their own screenplays. And really it’s for writer producers like myself who have raised the money to shoot their film. As I said, I’m basically ready to go. I think I’ve got the financing of this thing figured out. So, once I get the draft done that we’re all happy with me and the other producers are happy with, we will then begin pre-production and hopefully production shortly thereafter. So if you’re sort of in a similar boat, and I think it could be a short film or a feature film. So, but if you’re in a similar boat, you have a script, you’re a writer and also want to produce and you’re working on a project, just drop me a line and maybe there’s some synergy there where we could help each other out. Just my email, just info@sellingyourscreenplay.com. I’ll definitely see it. It’s just an easy way to get in touch with me. Again, just info@sellingyourscreenplay.com just drop me a line and kind of tell me what you’re working on and sort of what your stage of development you’re at with your project. Anyways, again, a big happy new year to everyone. I hope everyone has much success this year and really get some projects finished, myself included. So anyways, those are some of the things that I’ve been working on. Now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing writer, producer, director, and editor, and many, many, many. He wears many, many, many other hats on his productions. Jamie Grefe, here is the interview.
Welcome back, Jamie, to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming back on the show with me today.
Jamie Grefe
Thank you, Ashley. It’s always a pleasure and an honor to be here talking.
Ashley
Thank you. So, you were on the podcast a few years ago and we dived into your writing background and kind of how you got your foot in the door and got your first few credits as a screenwriter. Today we’re going to focus on some of your new feature films that you’ve written, directed, and also produced. But if anybody listening to this wants to just know a little bit more about sort of how you got your start, I would recommend definitely check out episode number 306 and I’ll link to that in the show notes. But let’s start out today’s interview just sort of talking about these feature films that you’re writing, directing, and producing. You have two films out now, Sorority Girl Massacre, Black Static, Sorority Girl Massacre, Guts of Ecstasy. It sounds like you have two in post-production that are about to come out, Love Hurts, Love Never Leaves. Just in general, maybe you can just speak to this model in general. You’re kind of a one-man show on these things. You’re writing them, you’re directing them, you’re producing them. So maybe you can kind of just give us sort of a broad bird’s-eye view of this and then we’ll dig into some of the specifics.
Jamie Grefe
All right. So if I may, let me back up a little bit. Um, about a year ago, I started working on a screenplay, just a proper screenplay for a movie called sorority girl massacre. And this was, there were talks that I was going to direct this. Hey, if you can write it, direct it. We’ll get a few girls together. We’ll get a mansion. We’ll crank it out in about three days. So, I wrote the entire screenplay and I got it to the point where I really felt for the first time in my life. And I’ve been writing for about 10 years now, but really it’s so funny actually, because you can write, write, write, write, write for years, but you might not be writing like a director because when, when, and you know this cause you’ve directed your own scripts, when it really comes down to like, well, I’m going to have to shoot this, these are going to be shots that I’m going to have to put together in three days in one location. It really changed how I thought about this script and I really refined it. I got it ready to go. Everything looked like it was going to happen. And then it didn’t, and then it didn’t, it fell through, you know, the gears, the tides shifted, so to speak. And the producer wanted to do other kinds of movies, work with some other people. Hey, that happens too. I was left with this, um, feeling though. And this would probably be around, be around December. I was just this great kind of drop, you know, I was like, I need to do something. I was so ready to direct that script. The whole thing. I could see it crystal clear. I can still see it. So what I did is I start, I said, you know what? I’ve got a phone. I’ve got a really basic phone. I’ve got access to lights, I don’t know, like a ring light. I’ve got a place I can shoot. Let me get some people over here. Let me just shoot. I just need to start shooting. So I had some friends come over. I hired some actors to come over and just run some monologues that I wrote up, just some poetry that I just had to get out. It was like the space of pure necessity. I had a lot of footage. I started to build up and what happened was that footage became, and it was all unrelated. It would just be like simple physical actions that I would have people do along with these kind of really pointed monologues that were just completely separate from the sorority girl massacre script. They were actually touching upon a lot of things that happened in my life this last year, like losing my dad, going through a divorce, you know, just losing some things. And so I had all of this creative energy that I needed to discharge. What I did was I had this idea, like, okay, I have all these little short clips. Let me take them and put them together on a timeline. And let me see how that looks. What can I make out of this? Can I pull something out of this? Because you, you probably know this actually, but a lot of people don’t. The, the requirement for a feature film, like the runtime, it’s not an hour and a half. It’s not two hours. I mean, it’s like 48 minutes. Like you could kind of technically have a feature film set for digital, like under an hour. I thought, Jamie, just do you have an hour’s worth of footage? Is there something here? And then when I put it together, something was emerging, but it wasn’t right. Because I thought I need to be in this. I need to put myself as the slasher. So, what I did is I filmed myself and I did these monologues, so on and so forth. That became black static, sorority girl massacre black static. So, if you watch the trailer, you hear this voice being spoken, this really low voice. That’s me. If you see some kind of hazy figure in like a latex mask, that’s me. And that was all shot at my apartment right here in the Valley. What happened after that was I kind of was like, wow, that was really fun. Like I put that together. I did all the sound design, you know, I quote unquote produced it. I just brought it to life where I got it to the point where I was like, this is a movie. It feels like a movie. There’s a beginning. There’s a middle. There’s an end. It’s artistic. It’s art housey, but it’s a movie.
And then I got in contact with this model who was, um, she’s in Arizona, but she was said, well, she said, well, I’m going to be in LA for a few days with a friend of mine. We’re doing all these little shoots, all these kinds of photo shoots, video shoots. She said, I have an Airbnb. If you want to come. over for a night and shoot, like let’s work out a price, you can come over and shoot. So, we worked out a price. I never saw her stuff before. I never, I didn’t even know who her friend was. I drove to the place. I had a shot list. Now for this one, after I did Black Static, I saw the possibility that I could actually make a slasher movie and it didn’t need to have like Black Static, it’s sort of your own massacre, Black Static has no violence. There’s no violence. I’m never in the same room as one of these actors on camera. And I thought, well, that’s really fascinating that we can show the slasher from a POV. Because there was that, there’s that one movie in a violent nature that came out this last year. And I think it shows the slasher, like it follows the slasher through the woods, through like the entire movie. I thought, well, why don’t we do that, but we remove his body. What if he’s just a presence? What if the camera is the slasher? Okay, so that was Black Static. Now then I thought, so I knew I was going to shoot with Ziva and I thought, okay, let me just, I want to do another movie. It just was like, it was like just itching it within me. I was like, I just, I got four hours. I got two, two girls are going to be in the same house. God, I want to make something. I really want to package this into something. And so I went to the coffee shop. I would start just making shot lists, notes, sketches, whatever, like not even a proper screenplay. Like I haven’t, I did not write, I have not written a screenplay since that last script I wrote, Swordy Girl Massacre. But I started making lists of things that I wanted to capture. That’s all I did. I just listed it out. Not even like as a narrative, but I knew I have a house. I have two people, I can make a movie. There’s a movie there. So I showed up and I shot Ziva for two hours. And as I was shooting her, I started to feel the movie take form. And it was like, it was revealing itself to me as I was shooting her, doing all of these different things. And then after two hours, I shot her friend, another model who was there, Autumn. And by that point, I knew what I had shot with Ziva. I had my shot list and I started shooting with Autumn. And the cool thing that happened was, Autumn is a big horror fan. And so she would even say like, well, how about I crawl out from under the bed? Like, how about I do this? How about I do that? Now I wouldn’t listen to all the suggestions, but like anything good that was relevant to what I was doing, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s feed off of that. That’s very interesting. Let’s do that. And what happened was that night went on, went on, went on. And I ended up, I went home the next day and I put all the clips into the computer and I shot about 82, 82 different little clips, little scenes, right? 82 in four hours. And I put it all together, almost just verbatim from like shooting, you know. Oh, and I had them do some monologues. And in that whole movie, there’s only two scenes where they actually talk together. But those two scenes are placed in such a way where it’s almost like this could be like, you know, act one bridging into act two. This could be, you know, it’s somewhere around act three, act four, like something’s going off the rails a little more. So, there was an arc, there was an arc, but I didn’t insert my voice into that one. I didn’t need to. I did a little overdubbing, a little producing where I’m in the background of a couple of shots, but that’s just superimposed.
Anyway, an hour long movie did come out of it and that became Guts of Ecstasy. And I was really happy about that one because it was great to actually work with more medium shots, wide shots, closeups, people who, you know, not this apartment that I’m in, just like shooting on location. I was just getting just, it’s just all natural light. I’m just using the phone audio. Again, shooting all of it on my phone, completely gonzo, completely gorilla, in and out four hours I was back in my car, edited it, put it together. They both looked great. You know, I thought, and then I did a third one as well. I had enough footage to actually put a third one together.
The third one’s called ritual examination, but those two, I’ll pause after I talk about these sorority girls, those two, um, black static and guts of ecstasy, uh, I showed them to a producer, mentor, friend, comrade of mine. Greg Hatanaka who was like, yeah, there’s definitely something here. Like I can see that, you know, you, you did this all and we had dinner. We had drinks and we talked a lot about how I did this. And he was just fascinated that I could do a movie in four hours. And the second movie is again, it’s like, it’s like 56 minutes long. So both of these movies, like I think the first is 52 minutes. The second is 56. And again, I edited them. I did all of the audio work, like all of the ambiance that you hear. I have a history of doing a lot of ambient music. So I guess things that I did in my twenties are now catching up to me in my forties and I’m using it. I’m very frugal. I’m very efficient and I, and I, and I just keep learning more about what I’m capable of. So, Greg was really, he was really excited to put those out. So actually where they’re at right now. And I know people are going to be listening to this in the future, but right now they are actually like going out to the streaming platforms. The trailers are on YouTube. They’re going out to the, to the streaming platforms under a distributor. So beyond me, so it’s not like I’m just putting them up now. Like they’re going to be pushed out, you know, from here to eternity.
Ashley
Yeah, perfect. So, a couple of follow up questions. And just so we know, like what version of your iPhone was it like an iPhone 12 or I’m just curious if there’s any …
Jamie Grefe
Bro, it’s not even an iPhone. I’m rocking Android on this. I’m rocking Android because I use Linux. So I used Linux has open source video editing software. So, the video editor that I use to cut these two movies and the other two that we’ll talk about after this, we’re all done on open-source software.
Ashley
And what’s the name of that software, the editing software?
Jamie Grefe
I used two different programs. So the first program I used for the sorority girl movies is called flow blade F-L-O-W-B-L-A-D-E. It’s very good. And then the program that I use to edit the other two, the love movies is called Kdenlive, K-D-E-N-L-I-V-E. These are both open-source free Linux programs. And then I composed a lot of the audio. Some of that I composed on, I guess you could say open source audio synthesis programs. Super Collider is a programming language that you can learn.
Ashley
Are there any settings that you need to tweak on your phone? Just in terms of light or how you’re capturing high res? Are there anything like that that you would warn people?
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, warn people. I mean, I would definitely, definitely say lighting is so key because you got to set the light, you know, play with the exposure, play with the lighting, see where you’re working. See what kind of lighting conditions are around you. I use for the Android though, I do use open camera. I do like that one. Somebody had recommended that one years ago as a slightly, you can, you can tweak the quality, you can tweak different things. It has a nice grid like system on the interface. And so, I just use open camera. But again, actually I don’t overthink it. I didn’t pay for it is free. Everything’s everything here is very, is very DIY, if you will. There’s a term called Bricolage. Bricolage is a French term and a Bricolure is somebody who uses what they have available to them. They don’t set out to accumulate a lot of unnecessary things or things, or if they don’t have the thing, they’ll try to figure out a way to make the thing. And so I think this last year was me just using that idea of Bricolage, B-R-I-C-O-L-A-G-E, Bricolage, to just do what I needed to do, just to hit it, you know, if I’m going to go to, if I’m going to go to this house that I’ve never been to and meet these two girls that I’ve never met in person, and I’m going to shoot a movie, I have to put myself in a certain frame of mind. There’s, there’s just certain things I can’t think about. I can’t overthink anything. I have to be completely ready to go and tapped into that.
Ashley
Do you put it on a tripod? Do you put it on a little handheld gimbal to make a little steady cam thing? Just what does that look like?
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, I used to, I mean, I have like a, I don’t know, a gimbal. Yeah, I have a gimbal, but I don’t use it. I’m very steady or I’ll place it. I like, I like certain angles, you know, it depends on the angle. I’ll put, you know, sometimes I’m setting it on the floor. Sometimes I’m, I’m up, but, you know, I think the main thing that a lot of screenwriters need to think about is, you know, do you exercise, get your biceps in order, get your triceps in order, hold the camera steady, focus on it’s kind of a joke, but hold the camera steady and get the shot that you need to get, hold the camera steady and get the shot that you need to get. Now, of course I’m not working with a huge budget and we can talk about the love movies because those were done at a slightly elevated level, but for these movies that I shot on my phone, I mean, look, Ashley, you can go on YouTube. You can go on all these places. People are making movies. People are making content with phones every day. Like it’s just, that’s where we’re at right now. I mean, look at Blair, which project, look at all of these old school movies that were shot with found footage and just, you know, they’re so shaky that makes you want to vomit. I mean, I’m actually composing shots that I think look really good. Like I’ll set up the shot that it looks good and then I’ll hit it and I’ll just hold it and I know I get it. And I think, I don’t know if everybody can do that. I’m sure they can, but I’m able to know, did I get that shot? Was that did that look how I wanted it to look? Did it come off the way I wanted it to come off? Now, of course, it helps when you don’t have a script.
Ashley
Yeah. What is your pitch to the models? So, these were models that you’ve never been in person. And what is your pitch? I’m an independent filmmaker. I’m going to show up with my phone and just shoot some footage. How do you get models to even agree to that? I mean, I’m sure they’re potentially afraid to just be in a house with some dude that they don’t know making a weird movie.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, well, I mean, I’m very transparent about who I am. So this is like, this is who I am. This is like a link to some stuff I’ve done. This is me. This is my phone number. This is my real name. All of that stuff is usually given pretty quickly. And then the pitch is just like, to be honest with you, actually, a lot of it is just like, here’s how much I’ll pay you. And it’s like, this is how much I… you know, and a lot of people, not everybody, but like, some people are like, I think they’ll vet, you know, they’ll do a little vetting, like, is he legit? Okay, what do you want to shoot? And I’ll say, well, I just, you know, I’m going to get some monologues, I want to get some close ups, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do this, I want to do that, maybe I’ll give them some shots from the shot list. Like, these are some things I’d like to get. And there’s probably going to be some other things, but no surprises. And everything that we’re doing is going to be consensual, like, I’m not going to do, I’m not going to force anything upon you that you don’t want to do. And I think after that, it’s just a leap of faith for these models. I mean, you’d be surprised a lot of models or actors, they do, they operate on these levels that are, you know, you got to be careful, obviously, like, anybody has to be careful out there, especially if you’re a young woman. But yeah, and I might have a little bit of reputation, I have references to like, if somebody wants a reference from somebody that I’ve worked with, I’ve got, I’ve got references.
Ashley
What is your contract look like? Do you have some sort of a boilerplate contract that you got these girls to sign just so you could actually distribute this film? I would think the distributor is going to want to see some of that stuff.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, I have like a release form consent form. Yeah, a general form. Yeah
Ashley
Yeah. How about like with the house? I mean, you’re shooting there. I’m sure the Airbnb people probably didn’t know it. Did you contact them? Is that ever an issue?
Jamie Grefe
I was never really there. Did I say I was at an Airbnb? Oh my God. Was that an Airbnb, Ashley? I’m not even sure now. It was someone’s house. It was a house. I mean, they just, they were in a house. I mean, what do I do? I show up at a house. I’ve got a phone and I’m just shooting some stuff. Come on.
Ashley
Yeah. Okay. So now take us to these next pair of movies, love hurts and love never leaves. Um, so you had these, and maybe you can sort of bridge that just in terms of the relationships you have with the producer. So, you made these two films and then how did you find the distributor? And then ultimately how did that leave to love hurts, love never leaves?
Jamie Grefe
Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. So, I mean, this distributor, so this, so my network is not super huge at all. Like we’re all limited by who we know and what we’re able to, you know, who we’re able to get, you know, to work with us. But cinema epoch, Cineridge Entertainment, Greg Hatanaka has been a mentor, a friend, a comrade for, for many years. And I’ve written a lot of scripts for him. Some produce, some not. I’ve done assistant directing for him, whatever. I’ve been in the trenches with him now for years. So again, having some drinks, having some dinner, he was very impressed with what I was able to do. And, um, as kind of like a Roger Corman-esque figure, he’s very, and actually he’s very interested in this idea of directing as performance. And so I saw him direct and I helped him direct a couple of movies this last year calledvone’s called Backfire, the other is called Boiling Point. And they were all, they were both unscripted. So, I saw how he was able to operate in an unscripted context. But his, he had like, like 30 people on set, like huge, like actors and producers and just tons of people. So, I saw how that was able to be done. And I knew from that, you know, how he could, he could kind of do that. So I knew I could pull it off. And when he, you know, was kind of joking with me like, okay, you know, let you do something. Let’s do something. Let’s do something. And he’s been prone to throw out ideas that are a little bizarre. So, you know, the fact that he even said, okay, I’ll let you do it, but can you do two movies in one day?
Ashley
Up the stakes a little bit.
Jamie Grefe
It’s like, damn it, you know? It’s like, Greg, I wanted like, like three days. Like, can I have two days? But I didn’t say that actually, because the minute he said it, I was like, I really was like centered myself. And I was like, oh my God. I was like, dude, I can do two movies in one day. Are you kidding me? I can totally do two movies in one day. I did Scuts of Ecstasy in four hours. I wonder if I can do two movies in one day. And you know, you let yourself kind of think about that and you let yourself get into like, what is, well, what are the limitations on this? Let’s talk about this. Like, what is this going to be like? I said, Greg, I can’t operate off of a script. Like, I have to go in unscripted. He’s like, I don’t care what you do. Like, make it like I saw what you can do. You have one day. Choose a location. You know, I have it like, let’s talk about the crew. Let’s have a real tight crew. This is the amount, these are the, this is the number of talent we can have. And let’s work with it. Like, let’s work within these limitations. So suddenly it becomes a game of limitations and it really starts to take shape, right?
Ashley
So, what do you, you say is unscripted, but you have this shot list. So, what does that look like and how much of the story do you have a beginning, middle and end? Do you have sort of character arcs? Do you have some dialogue written? Like, what does that actually look like? If it’s not a full fleshed out screenplay, though, there is something there that you have.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, yeah, I should be clear. I should be very clear on that. Actually, I have the I have the shot list. It’s around here somewhere, or it is right now. But when I say shot list, so what I’ll do, yeah, this other creative process. So what I’ll do, like in a moment where Greg will say, Okay, it’s going to be two movies in one day, I’ll have to think, Okay, what are these going to be? So first of all, I’ll think who do I have? So how many actors are we going to have? And so we decided upon two, two women, and possibly a third, which could be me, or the ad slash producer Chris Spinelli. So that leaves us with a basically three talent on camera that we could play with right three actors. So okay, I got three actors, two women, one man, okay, these are going to be slashers. I always start from a place of what I’m what I know what I love. I love the idea of a of a slasher. Remember, I just did these sorority girl movies. So, I was like, Okay, well, I’m in this space. I’ve got this mask. I’ve got this. I’ve got this energy flowing. One of these is going to be I’m going to be in one of them. So I knew that and so I’ll just craft out like I always go my imagination will always hit into like this idea of like, it’s like things don’t have to make complete logical sense. You’re right. Does it have a beginning, middle and end? Yes. And then as I’m making like this shot list, I and I stayed out like, you know, I have, you know, storyboards. This is different. But, you know, I’ll sit down and, you know, do things like this, where it’s all storyboarded out, right? You can see that kind of
Ashley
Yeah. And for our users are just getting the audio. Yeah, he put up the story. Oh, yeah, you’ll be able to get that on YouTube. Yeah, if you want to see that. So, you’re an artist, you have some background, to be able to draw.
Jamie Grefe
Well, yes, a little bit, but let me let me be clear that will never make it into a movie, the drawing, a storyboard drawing will never make it into the movie. What I will do is I will make a shot list like a girl looks into the mirror and cries, you know, whatever. It’ll just be like some action that happens. She walks across the room as if she’s moving as if a great force is holding her back. She moves across the room as if a great force is holding her back. OK, that’s a shot. I can shoot that. That’s something I can shoot. She moves across the room. A great force pushes against her. OK, then she has to do that. Now, I love slow cinema, so I love things that are slow. So as we do it, I actually talk very fast, like on this podcast, for example. But when I’m shooting, I like to enter into a space where we’re going to do this very slowly. We’re going to do this very just simply, but take your time, you know. And so, I feel like there’s a great unfolding of creativity in that moment. So, I’ll have a lot of those, actually. But. We had one day. I can’t be bothered to be checking my shot list all day if I’m trying to shoot two movies. And I’m getting in there at nine and I’m getting out of there at nine. And we have a mansion that I’ve never been to. And we have people coming in. I’ve never met. I have to think on my feet now, luckily. And, you know, not everybody has this luxury when you’re playing with somebody else’s money. But I had my producers complete faith, right? Complete trust, complete faith, complete trust. Go do whatever you want. Like, I don’t even care what you do. Make two movies. It’s like, OK.
The mansion, huge mansion in the valley. This actress, Mariana Carvajal, I had met her before at a social function, at a premiere. And she was great. And she had specifically mentioned to me that she liked slashers. So, I got her number. And I remembered her. And when it came time to shoot these movies, I was like, I’m going to call her. I need her to be in these movies, right? She’s like slashers. She had a really good energy. But pitching and that’s the hard one, dude, pitching somebody. I’m like, hey, so like I got this movie. I want to shoot. What’s going to be is it’s going to be two movies, but we’re going to shoot them in one day. And there’s not going to be a script. You know, that’s actually harder than shooting somebody like the sorority girl movies. You know, models are more used to modeling. They model, you know, do this, do that, do this, do that. An actor, I feel like that’s where it’s like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, who are you? Like, what have you done? You know, like, what is this? And her manager was like, can he at least send you like a breakdown of what it’s going to be? So that actually forced me to kind of write out a bunch of shots. So, I did. And I was not deceptive. You know, I wrote out from my heart two different projects. I said, you’re going to be the lead in one of them. And we had another girl from an agency. I said, she’s going to be the lead in the second one. She’s going to make these two movies. They’re very similar. But, you know, so it goes with 12 hours. The day of the shoot, we everybody showed up. So, I had one camera. You’re wondering about the crew, right? So we have one camera guy, Louis Di Stefano. He’s a Greg regular. He’s a great guy. He’s operating the camera. Microphone is on the camera. So, we don’t have to worry about a boom mic. Don’t need that. All-natural lighting. I don’t want any lights. Just we’re going to use whatever natural lighting is available to us. Now, we brought a light. We didn’t use it. We didn’t touch it. Brought some props. And the funniest thing is the night before I was at the producer’s house and there was this wig in his garage and I gave it to Chris Spinelli, the producer, and I said, put this wig on. Chris put it on. I was like, wow, you look pretty cool in this this this long black haired wig. I said, let’s bring it with us. And I said, well, this here’s a fake machete. I said, let’s bring this with us. I mean, Jesus… might use it, right? So we had a box, one box full of props and catering. You know, it’s easy, some food, camera, microphone and camera. No lights. One camera guy, one producer/ad, Chris, me, Mariana showed up and then we had another girl, Amber. She showed up. I shot Mariana for like 30 minutes in the garage. I just shot some of these things. I’m getting into it. I can start to feel the movie. OK, I know it’s going to happen. She’s going to encounter the slasher in the house at some point. This is going to be like the Shining. But I’m going to be there. It’s me. It’s going to be me. You know, shot her. Then I switched to this other girl, Amber. Now, listen, Amber is like she’s like coughing, sneezing. I’m shooting her. Same kind of thing. Okay, do this, sit down, act like you’re scared, act like you’re sad, be scared, be sad, put your arms like this, do this. She goes, I have to call my agent. It’s like 10 o’clock, 10am. And I’m all like, okay, we’re doing this, we’re in it right now. It’s starting to reveal itself to me. Didn’t even look at my shot list. She calls and I’m like, oh, shit, not a good sign that somebody wants to call their agent when you’re on set with them.
So, she calls her agent. I like the agent a lot. So, I’m not going to name his name. And I hope to work with him again. But here’s the situation. There was cat hair in the house. And she was allergic to cats, like big time, like super allergic to cats. So she goes, Jamie, I’m so sorry. She’s like, I can’t be here. Like I got to go. Suddenly, Ashley, I was like, you got to be kidding me, like to myself, right? Like, okay, you it’s 10:30am. You’ve got until nine. You’re one of your girls is leaving. I said, you know, we go, we’ll work again sometime. It’s okay. It’s okay. I knew now this is where I knew in that moment that these things happen, right? Like, it’s always there’s something there’s some unpredictable thing that happens. I called a couple people. But then I said, I can’t do it. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s going to come. The agency couldn’t send another person. It was just like, okay, I’ve got Mariana. And she’s 100% in like she was like into it. We’ve got me, I said, it’s going to be her showing up to this house alone. And she’s going to encounter the presence, you know, like, that’s me, whatever. Let’s just do it. Let’s just do it. Right? So, we did it. We shot, we shot, we shot, we shot, we shot until about 4:30. The story revealed itself to me. Every shot was set up. Everything flowed middle. Okay, this is going to be the end. And we shot the end. And like I said, it was about 430. We broke for lunch, about 30-minute lunch. That’s the moment actually where I was like, okay, I shot one movie.
Now, what am I going to shoot now? I checked my shot list. It was almost like I couldn’t read in that moment. Like I looked at it and it was just, it was just, it didn’t make any sense to me. I was like, what is this? I don’t need this right now. I put some music on and I was just moving around and I said, we got the wig, we got the wig, put the wig on Chris, put the wig on and I brought these gloves, these black gloves, put the gloves on. There was a cane. I said, take the cane, put your black suit on. You bought a black suit. Now I want you to start limping around for me. Just start limping around, put the hair over your face so you can’t see anything. I don’t want you to see anything. Okay. So, you see what’s happening right now. The movie is coming to me. You know, this is just me. It’s like maybe other people can’t do this, but you know, whatever. And I said, this is it. Like you’re, you’re, you’re something, you know, like you’re going to be it. So, it’s you and Mariana in this second movie, no title. And we started shooting, you know, and I realized right away that he was very lonely and he’s waiting for someone to come see him.
And it’s like a rental situation. Like she said, Hey, I’m new in LA. This is the room, room for rent. You know, like, hey, I showed up and he’s so happy because he’s this, he’s, he’s not fully human. You know, he’s got this entity, you know, whatever. Okay. So, as you can see, Ashley, the movie, thank God, reveals itself, revealed itself to me. And in this movie, that second movie love never leaves. I’m simply the director. I just directed. I’m not in it. I’m, and actually we shot an hour and 20 minutes’ worth of footage for that one. So, the first movie love hurts, we shot about an hour, but I trimmed, trimmed, trimmed. So, it’s about 56 minutes. But the second one, I think an hour and 20 minutes. And I think I kept about an hour and 14. We wrapped it up around 8, around 8 30 at night. We cleaned up the place and we were out of there by nine. So, everybody was happy, you know.
Ashley
So how did you get this location? How would your producer had an in and was able to get it?
Jamie Grefe
No, this just came from one of those kind of websites where you can rent locations for productions. Yeah. I mean, that was money spent on that.
Ashley
And what was the camera you guys shot this on?
Jamie Grefe
I don’t know the actual brand, but it’s a 4k camera. Yeah. Everything was, yeah. Like the camera, like that’s the thing. So like, you know, there was a camera person, Lewis, you know, doing the camera for every shot. So actually, that was a great experience for me to work with somebody because I had talked to him on the phone a lot and he had seen the sorority girl movies and people who see those movies, they’re like, bro, this is like crazy, man. Like I can’t, then not him, but like anybody who sees them, they’re like, wow, like this is kind of erotic and uncomfortable. It’s kind of weird. Don’t really know what it is. It’s a lot of point and shoot kind of stuff. I said, yeah, it’s point and shoot. I said I’m going to, I like the camera set up out of the way. And I liked that. I liked the actors to do the movement. So I said, actually it’s really easy from a cinematography point of view, like put the camera here. They’re going to move. They’re going to do their thing. And that’s going to be the shot, you know, so I’m able to see the shot that I want. And I think that’s a good skill to have. Again, I’m learning how to direct. So, you know, maybe some director out there is going to listen to this and go, well, yes, of course that’s like one-on-one directing, you know, but it’s, it, yeah, it’s crucial. It’s vital, you know, knowing where to put the camera as David Mamet says, that’s one of the key questions is that you’ll be asked on set is, you know, where do I put the camera? And the answer is always over there out of the way. So, I stuck to that on that day. Where do I put the camera over there?
Ashley
So, you said your producer here, the guy funding these, he kind of gives, gave you carte blanche and said, do what you want to do. But just as you just mentioned, there is sort of a sexy erotic horror angle to these. I mean, obviously just the name sorority girl master getting girls and, and shooting them. It was there anything like, are there some sort of things for this genre, you know, that you do need to lean into or that your producer does want, not just the sex and the girls. I mean, that seems like one, but was there some of that and are there other things?
Jamie Grefe
I mean, yes and no. Like, I mean, I think, I think from a producer standpoint, nudity still can sell. There’s no nudity in these movies, but there’s always the option to nudity. But I think a movie can be sensual without showing nudity. So, he knows me and he knows that I can do something that is sensual and I can shoot a female in a way that’s, that appreciates her beauty or that shows the beauty of the person without a way that’s just like, oh my God, this movie’s now it’s moving into the sexy. Now it’s moving into the obligatory shower scene. I’d like to move away from that. Now, of course, like I think from, what I’ve heard, those things can still get, you know, view, it can still help with views if you can get them on streaming platforms and whatnot. But he, you know, he was pretty open to like what I was able to give. And remember, we lost one of those girls who came at, like I said, at 10:30. And I probably would have shot some, some skin on her if the day went by, but we weren’t able to. So, we had to pivot. I had to make a decision then and there like, okay, well now the game changes. It’s going to have to be this way. And, and is what it is. I mean, you’re getting two movies in one day. And like, that’s, I mean, I think that’s like the kicker too. It’s like, and I cut these things, dude, we shot this on October 1st. I cut it all October and I turned it in on Halloween, turn them both in on Halloween. So, that’s a pretty good turnaround time.
Ashley
I’ll say so let’s talk about that a little bit in terms of the actual production the post production do you have a background in editing have you ever go to film school did you had to get do some editing there how do you even know how to do editing.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, I mean, it’s just like, you know, you pick it up. So, like years ago, when I used to live in Japan, I used to shoot little things for fun, and I would put them together. And at that time, I was just playing with iMovie. But I mean, the principles are still there, right? Assembling something. And even if you go back to my childhood using, you know, VHS and kind of editing things on like a little camcorder, like I’ve done it actually, like, it’s probably somewhere within my muscle memory, that it’s just there. So now I can put something together on a timeline. And I can go, okay, this fits together nicely, you know, and I’ve worked in like tech adjacent positions before, where they’re like, do you know Adobe? And I’m like, oh, yeah, I guess so. And then I would do something in Premiere. And I just realized it’s a lot of drag and drop chops layer. It’s a lot of fun. I like it. I like playing with editing software. I actually really enjoy the editing process, because that’s the chance where you can take this footage. And you can make a movie. Like, it’s pretty fascinating. You know, it’s as fascinating as a screenwriting project, the screenwriter sits down, and it’s all in the imagination. And then you direct it. And it’s just like, blah, it’s like a performance, right? But then when you sit down and edit, you have this chance to see the footage as it was shot. And now you can really put it together. And again, I’m not using visual effects programs or anything like that. I’m very basic, very basic editor, but movies have been made for hundreds of years with just simple cuts. So, I like that the style of filmmaking that’s like the cut tells the story. So if I have a bunch of shots, and they’re all different, there’s going to be a story there in the audience’s mind. So, I don’t need to work with tons of visual effects or anything like that. So my limitations are my strength in some
Ashley
Now, what about the sound mix? You mentioned that you did have a background in some music or something. Um, how do you go about doing that? Is there some sort of a sound mix? Do you have to go something? And is there like, when it gets into this distribution, ultimately you probably have to pass some QC. Was there some concerns about that? And I think the sound is always, I mean, obviously drop frames, but sounds like you’re editing stuff together. So, I mean, you’re not, you’re not doing a lot of cuts. So, it’s not like the droppings, but was there any issues with sound and how do you go about that and making a sound mix?
Jamie Grefe
I mean, I just I go about it. I just I just use my ears. I just mix it together. I watch the levels. I keep things under the red. If it hits red, that’s not good. If it hits a little yellow, even you got to pay attention, go back and produce it, pull it down a little bit. And I’ll make sure that as I’m watching the movie, you know, what I’ll do is I’ll do a whole pass of the movie, export render it, watch it, watch it just completely like I’m watching a movie, and then I will just see everything, not wrong with it, not like in a frustrating way, but I will see like what needs to be done, you know, and then as I go back, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, I’m like a sculptor who, that’s like the raw material, and then I’m and then I’m carving it out. And then finally, I get it carved. And I don’t know how I know, but I just know is good, you know, it’s good. So, in terms of like technical like going to film school, or technically paying, you know, paying attention to certain procedures that I’m sure people who are working on higher budgeted movies are absolutely strictly paying attention to, because their job depends on it. That’s not these, that is not these are very different animals, right? These are these are, I guess you could say modern, very low budget movies, Gonzo, Gorilla, just like Roger Corman, do it, make a movie, you know, and yes, QC it passes QC. Yeah, it’s shot in 4k. Sounds really good. Looks really good. I mean, the audio mix was good when it was shot.
Ashley
Yeah, you mentioned Roger Corman, but to me, when I watched, I think me sent me the link to one of the sorority girl mask removes and they’re sort of almost an avant garde sort of the Dario agenda from that 60s. There are those sort of 60s horror movies and some of them got pretty far out. And that’s the sort of the vibe that I felt yours had more than like a Roger Corman Roger Corman was very like that. I mean, there wasn’t a lot of artistry to it is and I don’t I don’t say that in a bad way, but he wasn’t really going for anything. And I’m just curious, like as a creative as an artist. What do you say to that? Like, what are you trying to put in here as an artist? Because again, I have utmost respect for Roger Corman. I’ve interviewed a number of people on the podcast that came through, worked with him and got their start with him. So, I mean, I have nothing but respect in terms of what he did in terms of his movies. And so, I’m not throwing shade on it, but they were commercial. He had a commercial sense. He knew how he knew how to make stuff that he could sell. And so just as a creative as an artist, what are you going for with these types of films?
Jamie Grefe
And let me specify, I think the Corman thing came from when I talked to the producer and the distributor, like I think he’s more business minded because that’s the end he works on. Yeah, with me, I think that’s why it’s been so hard for me to ever sell any of my spec scripts, which is that they are products of my imagination. They are fed off of my very unique tastes, whatever that may be. And I don’t even know what you want to call it if they’re obsessions or just things I have to do or just how my imagination works. I mean, for the first time in my life, I really felt like that whole decade of writing screenplays that were whatever they were, whatever kind of, is it avant-garde? I mean, maybe I enjoy avant-garde, I also enjoy just like a good movie, I can feel I can resonate something that resonates with me. And I think at the end of the day, that’s, that’s what I had the chance to do that in my life. I mean, remember, none of these movies have any violence in them, really, even the love movies, that’s kind of a spoiler for all of them. But there’s, it’s not like the slasher even wants to attack and kill. He doesn’t, you know? So that’s something that like, probably as an artist came from, came directly from my heart, which was like, this is not going to be that, but I’m going to work within this framework, because I have a deep appreciation of trash. I have a deep appreciation of ugly things. I have a deep appreciation of confrontational things, things that are uncomfortable. You know, when somebody, a director friend of mine saw a sorority girl massacre, black static, he said, this is erotic and uncomfortable. Another director friend said, this is icky. He said, this is icky. He said, I respect the hell out of it, but it’s just icky. And I was like, man, okay, that’s fine. You can have whatever opinion you want. But to me, they’re very pure expressions of my art, of what I want to do. And at the end of the day, like there’s no other, there’s nothing beyond that. Like, like I said, these love movies literally were born almost like performance art on that day. I didn’t reference the shot list. I realized that the next day I was like, I didn’t even look at it. But making the shot list, making the log lines, making those pictures in the storyboard, writing poetry, all of that led up to the ability to trust myself and to trust the process that was unfolding on that day.
Ashley
So, if there’s a writer out there listening to this podcast or a director listening to this podcast who wants to take a shot at shooting a feature film in one day, what are some tips? Just give us a couple of tips on that. Where should they begin?
Jamie Grefe
I think beginning with the limitations is, it was everything for me. I had to think from a space of limits and the limits defined what was possible. So you don’t have two locations, you have one, but within that one location, you have multiple rooms. Within your rooms, you have multiple parts of a room. So actually, you have a lot of locations and a blank wall is a blank wall. So that’s always a location, that’s a location. So, you see how that works already? You have one location. Some people go, oh man, I got one location. Dude, do you know what I did with one location? I made two movies. Imagine if I had a hospital, imagine if I had two days to make two movies. So that limitation, and then who are you working with? So, what I really loved was that, remember I told you those movies I worked on with Greg before, he brought like there were like 30 people on set and all this, yah, yah, yah, yah, yah. Okay, I made it very clear and he agreed with me, dude, this is a closed set, 100%. It’s going to be boom, boom, boom, boom. Nobody in, we’re in, okay, lock the doors. Nobody’s even allowed in the house. Nobody, you know, unless it’s an emergency obviously or something like this and that. No, no surprises. So like having that like space with those people in that moment created that, you know, I was almost like a conductor, don’t do this, do that and do this too. And you’re just, you’re so in it that it’s like a theatrical, it’s like, it’s very theatrical on that day. So you feel, I think you feel, I mean, I can’t speak for Mariano or Chris, but I mean, I can tell you when Chris started embodying that character from Love Never Leaves with the wig and he became, he gave, I’ve seen him in like 20 movies. He gave a performance that was just so different. I have never seen him go into that space of acting before. He went into it and he was there. So, there’s that. So, it’s like, who are you working with? You know, what location do you have? But then you’d get, you have to know like, I’m going to be doing this and I’ve got to accomplish it. So, you have to think in terms of time, like you have to think like, like I got to get my shots. Like if I don’t get my shots, the movies don’t get made. So you cannot overthink things. You don’t really have time to do more than one take. You do it in one take, dude. How can you do two takes?
Ashley
How did you meet this producer you mentioned, um, and this is sort of the next part of the equation. So, if someone wants to write and produce one of these films, I think that’s a good sort of encapsulation of it, but on the other end of the sales end, how do you meet these people that could potentially sell this? And just like very specifically, how did you meet this guy? It sounds like you did a bunch of movies for him. Did you just submit a cold script to him years ago? He liked it. You met. But maybe you can talk to that about how did you meet this guy and then cultivate that relationship over years.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah. This actually might be, I don’t think I don’t even know if I knew Greg when I did, what was it? Episode 306. Yeah. I don’t know if I talked about him in that, but actually I’ve, I usually operate, you know, so sometimes people come to me and I think in life I had this one person come to me, Christopher Cajones. I don’t think he’d mind me saying his name, but he was an actor used to act a lot, but he approached me at one point in my life and was really adamant about doing something with me or reading my work and giving me comments on it. As a producer, I think he was trying to produce at the time. He introduced me to somebody who worked with Greg. So again, it was all, and that took years to cultivate though. Like it wasn’t like just like, Oh, here’s Jamie. Oh, Jamie meet this person. Oh, I need a writer dude. Here’s something nobody ever says is like, “I need a writer”. You know, it’s like, it’s like people are like, whoa, you’re a writer. Like don’t pitch me something. Please don’t send me something. Like, you know, I’ve already got like, be careful with that. At least that’s my, I’m, I’m always very like hesitant to kind of put, push my work on other people. Cause I know how quickly those things can get pushed off. But with Greg, it was just a long, slow process. And you know what solidified it, is that we went out for dinner one time. We said, like, you know, let’s meet for dinner. And I think it has to come from that producer. Like that producer, there has to be a need that producer has to need something. They have to need a screenplay or somebody who can write or somebody who can write their ideas or somebody who can give them things that are going to make them money. And then that person, it has to be, yeah, it has to be able to do it obviously, but you have to be able to like resonate with the person. You have to be able to laugh with them, talk with them, understand each other. I mean, it’s a business relationship. It’s a friendship. It’s a mentorship. I mean, that’s how it was with me. So, it was like meeting and then slowly writing things for him. And then once that started, I think once he, once he saw that I could do things relatively quickly and then up to par, you know, we just, and I think like minds will, we’ll keep, you know, we had a bond, right? We have a bond. So, we stuck together.
Ashley
Yeah. Now you mentioned that you met your, you mentioned that you met your actress at a premiere. Maybe you can talk about that. Do you have sort of a, a bunch of people you’ve now met in LA. So, you’re always trying to go out. If they have a screening of their movie, you try and go out and check it out. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit, just doing those networking events in LA and meeting people like this actress.
Jamie Grefe
Absolutely. Yeah. And let me give him a plug to let me tell you. So the movie that I met her at was called We Are Wolves, which is directed by Rich Mallory, who is another director who worked with Greg and Rich was like, and I and I assistant directed on that movie. So, he did the premiere of that movie. And I went and she was there. I think her friend VMA was in that movie at the end, and Mariana was just her friend. So, it was just very serendipitous. Now the question do I go out to movie premieres and all that? I mean, actually, I don’t. I mean, would I? Yeah, I mean, I would if I was running in those circles. I think it’s fascinating. You know, it’s a really fun experience to go see your thing you’ve worked on, on the big screen, there’s that. And then second of all, when you go to a premiere, I mean, you are going to meet other actors, you’re going to meet maybe producers, you’re going to meet writers, directors, you don’t know who’s going to be there. And that right there alone is very satisfying. You know, so these, these are smaller premieres. I mean, remember, there’s movies happening all the time. And there’s little premieres happening. They’re little like premiere parties, really, if you think about it. So, I mean, I would go if but my network is just not that huge either. Like, I can’t always be going out. For the most part, I don’t go out. I don’t push myself out into projects that I guess I’m not a part of unless I’m invited. Even then I’ll really think like, you know, what is it? Do I really want to go? But I do see the value. Absolutely. I see the value, if you’re social, and you want to get out there. But I think the thing that was really key with me was, I wasn’t looking to sell something to Mariana on that night I met her. I wasn’t looking for anything. I wasn’t even looking to really meet anybody. I was going to go see the movie, you know, say hi to some people. And just like, yeah, that was really cool. Like you did a great job on the movie. I can’t wait to see it. But the fact that that you can serendipitously run into people at these events, and it does give you a chance to talk about like what you’re working on who you are, because especially in LA, I mean, people are… I mean, everybody’s always up to something. Am I right? Everybody’s always up to something, they’re up to three or four things or five things, like you have to be up to something. So you get a little better at communicating what you’re up to in that moment, you know, in a really real way, you know, and just in feeling people out to like, who’s this person? Okay. Most people you meet on your day to day, you tell them you make a movie, they just don’t even really care, you know, so that’s another thing about living out here. It’s like, shot a couple movies like, oh, that’s great. You know, and then they’ll just move on to the next conversation topic. So, the premiere is a good chance to hone in on the idea that that these could be working actors that I’m meeting or producers that are looking for something.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, I like to wrap up these interviews just by asking the guests, if there’s anything you’ve seen recently that you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience, I’m always looking for things to add to my list. Is there anything you’ve seen recently, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, that you can recommend that you think maybe is a little under the radar?
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, so I don’t watch Netflix. I don’t watch Hulu, I don’t watch any of that stuff. I usually dip into the internet archive. Or I’ll go through different channels to find things that are just really, I’m very particular about what I watch. But I did see a movie that is directed by Kyoshi Kurosawa. And the movie is called Chime. He was just in LA recently premiering this movie and another movie that he directed. He directed two or three movies in the same year. He did this movie years ago called Cure. And he did another movie called Pulse. These are fascinating movies. Actually, I’m really happy this movie came to my imagination because the day I was going to go shoot the love movies. So, Chime is 44 minutes long. It’s a feature film. It’s shot in Japan. 44 minutes long. The morning of October 1st. I did a yoga class in the morning. I came home as I was getting ready, like I’m going to go to the mansion, whatever I put in Chime. I put it on. And it was just like exactly what I needed. It’s this slow, quiet horror experience with a couple really good, you know, moments of intensity, and then a lot of slow dread. And it just felt so good. So, I would definitely recommend Kyoshi Kurosawa.
Ashley
And where can you find something like that. Where is it? Where is it streaming?
Jamie Grefe
Well, it’s not streaming. It came to me through a back channel, but it is available on… I could look it up for you. I’m not sure. Google around. You’ll see it. It was done through this thing and this distributor that used crypto to kind of put it together, but… Chime. Chime.
Ashley
Yeah, Bitcoin’s about to hit $100,000. I don’t know for all of our Bitcoin fans. So how can people see Sorority Girl Massacre? How can they see those movies? And then ultimately, how are they going to be able to see? Is it available on the typical space, Amazon in demand, Tubi, iTunes, all that sort of stuff?
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, well, so like right now it’s actually like as we’re shooting this right now actually you and I like it’s going to those regular players like I would check if I were you and you’re dipping into this maybe not I don’t know when this is going to come out but if you’re dipping into it. Probably in December or January definitely check to be check for Prime, check plaques check Pluto just Google the title my website and Jamie-grefe.com. We’ll probably link to it, you know, if it goes up on to be but it is it is industry is set to go to those platforms. And again, I don’t know when this is going to air but again, the love movies, it’ll be the same. So check those kind of big players on the on the lower digital space, not lower digital space, but you know, there’s so many different platforms now it’s like, you know, where do you go? Who knows?
Ashley
What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I’ll put in the shownotes.
Jamie Grefe
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anybody who wants to add me on Instagram, it’s protected, right? I protect it, but you know, whatever, but you can just, you can just find that instagram.com slash Jamie Grefe. And you can always send me a message there if you want, like, hey, heard the podcast or whatever or not, but I’ll probably add you Facebook. I don’t check so much anymore. Twitter, I don’t have that many followers, but I do check in with Instagram quite often. Yeah. Or shoot me an email. The email’s on the website, you know, if you want to do some damage, let’s shoot for three movies. Give me two days. I’ll do that. Let’s do one movie in two days. Come on.
Ashley
So, well, Jamie, I really appreciate you reaching out and coming on this show. This has been fascinating. I really find this sort of stuff inspiring. I think, you know, in this day and age, there’s no reason for us not to get out there and create stuff just as creatives and artists, especially with, as we have this impending AI coming and replacing and things, there’s just really no replacement for creativity, a human creativity, and just putting that stuff out there. So, I really applaud what you’re doing. And I look forward to having you back on the podcast shortly and talking about your next bunch of films.
Jamie Grefe
Ashley,from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
Ashley
Thank you, man. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing actor, writer, producer Joe Cornett. Joe was on the SYS podcast over a year ago on episode 506, so check that out if you haven’t listened to it. Joe has written and produced and starred and he’s also an actor, several low budget Westerns. And we go into that. If you listen to my podcast regularly, I really champion low budget films. And so, one of the things that Joe and I talked about on this episode 506 was, you know, if you’re going to do a low budget movie, why do something with horses and costumes and guns and all that stuff. And it was just sort of his passion. And so that’s where he began as a writer, producer. And again, he’s an actor as well. So, he starred in many of these films. So, we talk about all of that in episodes 506. And that will give you some good background about what we’re going to talk about next week. He’s back on the podcast to talk about a fictional book he’s written. It’s a collection of Western stories. And I know there are a lot of screenwriters that want to novelize their screenplays. So, this is a great look at how writers can publish books and how that can ultimately help them get their movies made. So, keep an eye out for that episode next month. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.