This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 545 – Making a Movie Outside of Hollywood with Adam Burke and Jud Nichols .
Welcome to episode 545 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing filmmakers Adam Burke and Judd Nichols. They’re out with their first feature film, Wet Paper Bag. They’re filmmakers from outside of Hollywood. They did a few short films together and now have completed their first feature film. It’s an inspiring story for anyone who lives outside of Hollywood and wants to make movies. So, stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s Six Figure Screenplay Contest is open for submissions. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our late deadline is July 31st. So, if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than one million U.S. dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds. We’re giving away thousands of dollars in cash and prizes. We have a short film category as well, 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means submit that. If you want to submit to the contest or learn more about it or see who some of our industry judges are, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. 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.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcasts. 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’ll 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 sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
As I record this podcast, we just completed our Kickstarter campaign this past Tuesday. I thought this might be a good time to do a recap and give my observations, which might be helpful to anyone who’s thinking about running their own Kickstarter campaign. We set out to raise $5,000 for post-production and marketing. We shot the film in November. We ended up exceeding our goal by about $800. So, we raised about $5,800, although do keep in mind Kickstarter takes 5% and then there’s credit card processing fees that take 3%. So, 8%, I think a little more than 8%, is going to get pulled out of that $5,800 before we actually receive it. So, I’ll quickly go through my strategy to raise the money here on Kickstarter. I knew going into this that most of the folks who were going to be backers of this project were people who have been listening to my podcast over the years and were on my email list for my selling your screenplay email list. So, I knew that the Kickstarter campaign needed to be writer-centric and I’ll get into some of those details here in a second about what I actually mean by that. And I knew I only have so many people on my list, so there’s a limit to how many times I can harass people with these emails and I apologize if you felt like I sent out too many emails.
I really do try and think it through and keep these emails to a minimum. We did a 16-day Kickstarter campaign as opposed to the normal month-long or 30-day one. And because of, you know, I did this because I knew, again, that the people on my email list would either pledge money or they wouldn’t pledge money, but I didn’t really need 30 days to talk them into this. And I actually find, like, having a condensed Kickstarter, you have the first week and then you have the final week. And Kickstarter is all about that momentum. So, you have the first week, hopefully you get some backers, and then on your final week you can put the pressure on and say, hey, this is the final week. And doing the middle two weeks is just I found with my first Kickstarter I got no pledges. So, this just seems like a way more efficient way of doing it. You need content. You need some way of engaging people for the full 30 days. So, unless you have a lot of ways of doing that, I feel like doing a shorter Kickstarter is probably better. So, that’s what we did and it did work out for us. The other big thing I did was I created 20 short form videos on how I made the film. Like, literally I did a, you know, five-minute video on the equipment that we used. I did a, you know, a six-minute video on how I found this specific location. And so, I just did 20 of these videos and I started releasing them a few weeks before the Kickstarter to try and build a small audience beforehand to see if I can actually get some people interested in this film. But very few people ended up contributing to the campaign who found me through these videos. There were some, but when I say only a few, like literally, I think a few, like maybe three people. So, that’s one of the big lessons. I mean, everybody says that if you look up how to run a Kickstarter, but it’s definitely true. You need an audience before you launch your Kickstarter. It’s really too late if you launch it and then go about trying to build a following.
Again, I was trying to do this really as an experiment, but, and it worked, as I said, I got a few people, but it really was a lot of work for not a lot of payoff, if that was my only motivation for creating these videos. So, I did all these videos, obviously, to help the Kickstarter, but they are getting some views and I built my TikTok channel now to over 500 subscribers. So, and this is from zero, you know, I started out with zero a month ago and now I have 500 subscribers. So, slowly it is building and I’m going to try and keep this going right up until we release the film and then hopefully some of these folks will be invested by the time the film comes out, you know, another three, four, five, six months and so hopefully some of them will rent it. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have a few thousand subscribers and some of them hopefully will rent the film and review it and you need a slug of people. When a film releases, a low-budget film like this releases, you need a slug of people to help you go and review it and watch it and download it and just to kind of get it into the system and get these algorithms on Amazon, iTunes, anywhere it’s playing. You want to show, you know, people are watching it and giving five stars. So, again, you’re going to need an audience for that. So, that’s the bottom line is, you know, I created these videos, didn’t really work out too much for the Kickstarter, but it’s all in an effort to build awareness for the film. So, I’m going to try and just keep releasing these videos, as I said, right up until the film is released and maybe beyond. Maybe I’ll just keep that channel going and continue on with my next film as well. We’ll just see. I mean, creating these TikTok videos is not a five-minute job, at least for me. So, you know, time is always part of the issue, but that’s the plan anyways with these TikTok videos, but they didn’t really help a ton for the Kickstarter.
Okay, so back to the Kickstarter campaign. So, again, we created a Kickstarter video and I set the – I created a Kickstarter video. Obviously, we set up the Kickstarter page and that does take a little while. There was some back and forth with Kickstarter before it went live, but right when I finally launched the campaign, I text some of my friends – when I say some of my friends, like, you know, five or six friends who I knew would kick in a few bucks, 10, 20 bucks, just to get the ball rolling and have some support right out of the gate. Again, just only a few people, but I just – before I started marketing it and really blasting it out and trying to get people to go there, I wanted to show that there was at least some interest and have a few backers. I find when I’ve been to Kickstarter campaigns, if I’m the first one there and there’s no backers and no money, it just feels a little empty. So, that’s something that, you know, just have a few people in there so it’s not just a ghost town. So, after that handful of backers, that’s when I started sending out emails to the SYS email list. I waited a little while on that. But basically, the first week – so again, this is only a two-week campaign – but the first week, I sent out one email to the people on the Selling Your Screenplay email list, basically just introducing the Kickstarter. But the main thing – and I led with this – I had now posted a bunch of these short-form videos. So, I led with that. I said – hey, I’m posting these short-form videos. If you have any interest in making your own micro-budget film, these videos might be helpful to you. And by the way, our Kickstarter started yesterday and if you want to give to that. So, it was sort of, I felt, a soft sell. But I try and – when I send out these emails, I genuinely try and give value. I try and think about it as a person receiving this. And I do think – I mean, I spent a lot of time on these short-form videos and I do think they would be helpful. Like, if you’re thinking about making a micro-budget film, I think these short-form videos would be extremely helpful. I just go through the nuts and bolts of every aspect of making a film.
So, okay, so then from that initial email, again, just one email that first week, I did get a handful of backers for the project. But I think after the first week, we were at like $1,500 of the $5,000 that we raised. So, then at the start of the second week, I emailed the SYS list again, this time telling them about the IMDb writing credit that they could get if they backed their project. Like I said, I knew most of the people who listened to my podcast are also writers. So, one of the rewards, if you pledged $100, you’ll get to write some of the social media comments that float by the screen, that are on screen as a protagonist, as live streaming. And obviously, you’ll get a writing credit at the end of the film’s closing credits, but you’ll also get an additional written material by credit on IMDb. And I think if you’re a writer, again, I try and think these things through where I can genuinely give some value to people. And I think if you’re a writer and you don’t have any IMDb credits, or even if you do have a few, this is a way to build your writing resume a little bit and get some written material on screen. So, again, I crafted this sort of knowing that my audience was mostly writers, and I felt like this actually had value for the $100 you get an IMDb credit that could potentially help the writers who are doing this.
So, again, I’m just always trying to think about what can I actually offer that does provide some value. So, the main thing, this is the main thing that got the Kickstarter going. As I said, after the first week, we were only at like $1,500. You can go look up at the ratio of what people chose as a reward, but this reward was far and away the most popular one. I think it was almost half of all the people that pledged chose this as a reward. So, again, just thinking some of these things through beforehand, I think, is probably smart and offering rewards that you know your audience might really respond to is probably worth taking some time and really thinking that through. So, then later in the second week, I created a poll for our tagline. Basically, and I mean, this isn’t anything super complicated. I just, using Google Docs, I created basically a survey or a poll, and we had a bunch, I think we had eight or nine taglines that we had come up with, and then you could just go and you could vote on them. This didn’t require a pledge to participate. I did link to the Kickstarter from that page, so if you’re filling out this poll, you’ll see, hey, we’re still doing this Kickstarter. So again, it was just sort of a soft sell, but again, I thought this was something that writers might be interested in. Obviously, if you’re a writer, hopefully anyways, you’re good with words and have read a bunch of scripts and sort of understand the writing, so it’s good to get some feedback on any project. So, I thought that was a good way to get some feedback. I thought this would be interesting to hear from writers. And I also put a space so you could actually suggest your own tagline if you had one, and I gave a logline and a synopsis for the film, so if you had your own tagline, you could actually insert that. And if we do end up using one of the taglines that was suggested, we would give that person a credit as well, and IMDB credit as well. So again, I was just trying to give something that I thought my writer audience might be interested in, and we did have dozens and dozens of people actually went and filled out the survey.
So, thank you everybody to that, because again, this is obviously hopefully something that is valuable to writers, but it’s also very valuable to us. We got a lot of feedback. As I said, it’s over 100, I think people actually went and filled out shows and then wrote, in many cases wrote their own taglines, and just gave us general feedback about this. So again, I think hopefully it’s a win-win, hopefully everybody gets something out of this. And again, you didn’t have to pledge to participate, but it was another email I could send out, and then I could link to the Kickstarter. And this did work. This brought in another batch of backers over that last weekend. And then basically we rolled around that Monday, the final few days, Monday and Tuesday. And we were pretty close by this point, up over 4,000, I think, because of closing in on the 5,000 mark. And I sent out one last email reminder the day before we ended Tuesday at midnight. I sent out Monday morning. I sent this out, sent this email out, and basically just telling people, hey, this is the Kickstarter campaign, it’s going to end. And again, that brought in the remaining backers and pledges. But that’s pretty much it of exactly how I was able to raise this money. I created a whole bunch of short-form videos. Again, they didn’t really work a ton, but hopefully they’ll still pay dividends down the road. And I sent out four emails, and literally that’s just four emails. But these are folks, I mean, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably on the list. You’re probably one of the people. But these are people that listen to my podcast and in many cases have been listening to it for years and have gotten value out of the podcast. So, it makes sense that those people might be willing to kick in a few bucks for a project like this. But again, I came to the Kickstarter with at least some audience already built. But that’s it. That’s pretty much how I was able to raise slightly more than $5,000.
Anyway, if you’re thinking of running a Kickstarter campaign yourself and you have some questions, just email me. I’m happy to answer them. Info@sellingyourscreenplay.com. I mean, if I can be helpful and I answer your questions, I’m happy to do so. At this point, I’ve run three of these Kickstarter campaigns. So, I’m certainly not an expert by any means, but I have successfully done this at least a few times. So, I’m happy to help anybody who is trying to run one and reaches out. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I am interviewing filmmakers Adam Burkeand Judd Nichols. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Adam and Judd to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you guys coming on the show with me today. Happy to be here.
Judd Nichols
Happy to be here.
Adam Burke
Hey, thanks, man. Thanks for having us.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment business? Judd, why don’t you go first, just a quick maybe two-minute overview, and then Adam will get your two-minute overview as well.
Judd Nichols
Yeah, I grew up in the Twin Cities area. I have a dual path in life, so I’m an attorney by day, and I guess I moonlight and take my vacations as a filmmaker. I got into it in the midst of an early career identity crisis, I suppose. I remember taking the Minnesota Bar Exam and feeling like I was signing up for a life living and dying within 20 miles of where I was born, and I guess in maybe the creative panic of wanting to do more with my life, I bought a camera and started auditioning for anything I could. I actually ended up on a reality TV show Surviving on an Island with Bear Grills when I was 27, so maybe like 12 years ago. And yeah, I’ve just been drawn to, I guess, I can summarize this in an interesting way, maybe, law is all about words, the rules themselves and the way they’re applied. What I love about cinema is there’s something so beyond words about it, so I feel like in my life, I deal in the business of words, and then I love also dealing in the business of images, which I think are worth, you know, what’s the cliche, a thousand words, so maybe I’m just trying, I’m trying to 1000X myself is what’s going on here, actually.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. What kind of lawyer, what kind of law do you practice?
Judd Nichols
I do criminal defense, so I work primarily doing conflicts cases at the public defender’s office, so multiple co-defendants. And then I do private cases too, but it’s been about 15 years.
Ashley
So, we’ll talk a little bit about that I’d be curious to see how your law degree and just your background in criminal defense plays into your writing up. But Adam let’s get yours, what is your sort of two minute elevator pitch, how you got into the business?
Adam Burke
When I was a kid, I loved movies, I mean, who doesn’t? And I just didn’t think that there was a realistic way, a realistic avenue to get into them. And so, I went to college and I became a chiropractor and then I ended up getting in trouble, had to go sit in prison for a few years. And when you’re in prison, you realize when you get out, everything’s going to be different and you have to reinvent yourself, whether you like it or not. And so, I was sitting there thinking, I don’t really care what anybody thinks at this point. So, I’m going to try some of the stuff that I thought would have been cool when I was a kid. And I started getting books about screenplay writing. I read Syd Fields’ screenplay. I had my sister send me some actual screenplays. And the first one I read was Judd Apatow, knocked up. And I read it like five times. I’m like, this is so cool to see it on the page after I’ve seen it so many times on the screen. And I didn’t understand structure until I started ingesting that information. And then I just read more and more books and eventually just started writing. And you meet some very interesting people in prison. And so, there’s a lot of stories floating around. There’s a lot of pain and there’s a lot of hilarious moments and just finding inspiration from that, putting it down on paper. And when I got out, I knew I wanted to give this thing a shot. So, a friend of Judd and mine introduced us to each other and said, you guys should meet. And we met, I found out he’s a criminal defense attorney, which is kind of serendipitous or ironic, if anything. And then we decided to make a short together. So, we made like a sketch comedy and it was a blast. And then we made another short and another short. And then we decided to take on this massive project of making a feature film.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So, let’s talk about that. That’s a good segue into the feature film. Wet Paper Bag. You guys co-wrote it and co-directed it together. That’s correct?
Adam Burke
Well, I wrote it, but we co-directed and co-produced it.
Ashley
OK, OK, perfect. And then so maybe to start out, you can just give us a pitch or logline. What is this film all about?
Adam Burke
It’s a psychological thriller. It’s about this journalist who’s looking for her sister. The last place that her sister was seen was at this therapy center. And it’s a psychedelic therapy center, which is very in the news a lot lately, where people are using these different psychedelics or psychoactive drugs to help with therapy.
So, these couples go there. Her and her producer Riley, which is the character that I play, they end up going to this really strange place. And it’s the Habermann Wellness Retreat Center. And there they find not only a lot of disturbing things that are happening and kind of cult-like behavior, but they also find eventually something that’s very, very disturbing that they can’t leave until they basically solve this issue. And there’s a lot of drugs. There’s some sex. There’s some violence. There’s great music. And it’s a vibing kind of cult classic type film. What we set up to do is make something that is very vibey. And I think we did that.
Ashley
Yes, so maybe you can talk like where did this story come from? What’s sort of the genesis of it? Where was the idea first came to you?
Judd Nichols
So, what’s cool about the story is I think the structure of the story I had sort of thought of. And then the theme and like the subtext underneath it is something that Adam had brought with him like since his time learning how to screen write while in prison. So, like the story itself of a couples retreat center, I think I had thought of because I had an ex-girlfriend that was always pushing me towards doing therapy. And I always had this suspicion that it wasn’t going to work at all, maybe because of the antagonism of our interaction. But I think I had thought of that idea, you know, you, for us, we, we wrote to shoot, we shot to edit and, you know, we edit to win. I guess I had never said that last part. I’ll not probably not keep that. But as far as like the subtext goes and the themes within the film, when Adam took the story structure and wrote in the characters and their backstories and what happens to them and the way this all unfolds, that was from him. So, I won’t take that from you, Adam.
Adam Burke
Yeah, we had actually, I’d written a different screenplay that we were moving forward on creating and we just kept hitting these walls with, and you talk a lot about this on your podcast, you’ve got a right to your production budget, you know, and so we knew we needed something more contained. And that’s when Judd said, well, you know, we need to have fewer locations, fewer cast and whatever else we can do to keep the budget realistic. And so when he said, you know, let’s do a couple’s retreat center, I wasn’t sure that that was like exactly what the type of film that I wanted to make. But then as you start falling in love with the characters and you start falling in love with the themes and the subtext, it just started to come alive. And the theme to it is, as Judd said, was something that landed for me in prison. There was a woman that would come visit me and she was in an abusive relationship. And it was something that was really, it was killing her, you know, is eating her up. It was very detrimental to her daughter and she couldn’t get out of it. She just, she wasn’t able to change, even though she knew this was something that was really damaging to her and the person that she loved the most, her daughter, eventually she was able to make that jump and to make, you know, that huge life choice to leave this person and to start a new life and to start over at a later age. And she now was thriving and she has, you know, this beautiful life. You know, I think that that’s a common theme that a lot of people can relate to, especially, you know, in midlife when you’re forced with this idea that, hey, maybe this isn’t the job or maybe this isn’t the relationship or maybe this isn’t the place geographically that I should be, but it’s just so easy to not change and to think it’ll just get better, you know, and oftentimes it doesn’t. And so that’s kind of the underlying subtext or theme to this film is the characters that decide to make that change, that decide to do the hard thing are the ones that come out the other side.
Ashley
Mm-hmm. So, what was there any thought like why a psychological thriller, why not a horror, why not a drama? It sounds like you guys did a comedy first a sketch comedy thing so why not continue in that vein with comedy I’m just how did you sort of get a grip of what genre you wanted, why this genre, why this particular project?
Adam Burke
I can key you up on this, Judd. So, we talked about continuing on with like comedy, rom-com, those are films that we felt very comfortable doing. I don’t watch a lot of horrors. So, we talked about that, but that to me just felt, I didn’t want to write something that I don’t really, you know, watch myself, but psychological thriller was kind of in the vein of what we both enjoyed as far as things that we would watch, but also it played to the thing that Judd and I kept talking about and that he was very, very adamant about from the beginning. And that is how cinema is a medium that’s ripe for certain stories more than others. And Judd, you can kind of elaborate on that.
Judd Nichols
Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I think the genre was a consequence of choosing the different tools we wanted to come together more so than an, like, what is it, an a priori decision. So yeah, I think Adam and I knew that it’s like you can write stories that are ripe for books. You can, some are maybe, you know, through poems and oral traditions, some are in a single photograph. But I think the best movies are the ones we wanted to make are ones where the different tools, meaning imagery, music, writing, sound design, where they all come together and say something as one. That’s like the, is it called like a gestalt? Like the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So, in my opinion, I think this is kind of true with horror, even though Adam doesn’t like horror as much. I feel like psychological thrillers and horror films are so well told through the cinematic medium because they weave the confluence of all the tools so tightly together and at once. Am I making sense?
Ashley
No, no, I completely agree. I completely agree. And that’s exactly what they say about comedy is it just doesn’t play as much, but you’re right. The tropes and the expectations, everything in these psychological thrillers is potentially good for low budgets
Adam Burke
And we also, we went and met with a distribution company before we started production. And that was one of the things that he told us, he’s just like, oars and psychological thrillers are easier to sell. And I know you’ve mentioned that on your podcast before that that’s not always true. But that’s what we were told. And so, we knew that we have a better chance of making something in our budget that could feel that could evoke more emotion and potentially be able to, you know, find a bigger audience. And with, you know, low budget and no name to actors, it just felt like the right decision for us.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, Adam, just take a minute here and just give us sort of an overview of your you’re in this situation where you have to redefine your life. You’ve never written a screenplay, but you’re interested in pursuing this. What were those steps? Just quickly take us through those steps. Did you? It sounds like someone sent you some scripts. You got Syd Field. But what were some of those actual steps? Were you in jail while you’re doing this? Did you have access to write? Are you writing on a notebook? Just talk about some of those first scripts you wrote. What books you use? What other resources you use? Just for someone who’s stumbles into this podcast and they’re in a situation like you. They want to redefine their life. What are those steps that they need to take to get to the point where they’re going to write a feature film?
Adam Burke
I read a ton. You got a lot of time sitting there looking at a cement wall. So you can read or you can go sit and watch TV and I chose to read as much as I could. Joseph Campbell’s got a great book. It’s called The Hero’s Journey. There’s another one with the Save the Cat or something. You know, some of them landed more than others. But I think that the thing was is eventually I knew I just had to start putting pen to paper and I did have access once in a while to a typewriter. But other than that, it was pen and paper. And so yeah, I have notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of stories that I brought back. And then I eventually set a goal for 30 shorts in 30 days. So, I wrote 30, like five-page shorts in 30 days. And that was challenging. You know, some days I just, I’d wake up, I’d be sitting in my bunk and they would just blow out on me. And some days I’d be sitting there staring at a blank page for an hour or two. And, you know, I have to go for a walk or something and try to figure out what it was that I wanted to get into. And some of them were trash, you know, so some of them I thought were pretty good. And a couple of those Judd and I ended up making together, which was fun. But the real moment that I knew that it was something I really wanted to do was, I was in there during COVID. And we got to a point where it had been like a year and a half since anybody had seen their family. And the mood in this place was just very depressing. People were moping around and you know, people hadn’t seen their family in a long time. And Christmas was coming up and I got the ear of a guard who allowed us to put on a play in a little theater that they had on at the prison. And so, he got us, you know, approved by the captain and the warden. And I wrote the screenplay for an actual play. And the screenplay wrote a play, it was a three-act play. And we had three musical acts in between; we got to perform it in front of all the inmates. And it was eye-opening, you know, I got I performed a little part and I directed and I did the casting and I got to work with these actors in a couple different rehearsals. And then at the end, there’s this huge applause and everybody walks out and it was this moment that like, the mood totally changed in this whole place because of something that happened between me and a pen and paper. And I knew I wanted to do more of that for sure.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, that’s like a Shawshank Redemption moment what you’re describing it. That’s awesome. So, let’s talk about your collaboration. How did you guys actually…So, Judd has this idea and then Adam, what do you do you go back and you start churn, do you do an outline first, you start churning out pages? Do you give them to Judd does he give you notes? Maybe you can just talk about sort of your writing process how it actually works?
Adam Burke
This one was a little different because I think at first I said, I didn’t want to do this. And Judd went to another buddy of his who wrote a 19-page short, something like that, a 20-page short. And Judd handed that to me and I looked at it and I was like, you know, this has some fun moments in it. And I went and met with this guy, his name is Zach. He’s a good friend of Judd’s. I don’t want to, you know more about this whole process than I do, but at a certain point, he’s got a new kid and he didn’t want to pursue making a feature film out of this thing. And so he just said, if you guys are going to make a feature, just, you know, use whatever you want. I think we ended up primarily using like the premise of it being a couples retreat center and a couple of the names. That’s kind of all that stayed, but it was enough to get me motivated to actually dig into this thing. And for me, a lot of like the screenwriting process is sitting there and coming up with these moments, right? And so it’s like, people call them trailer moments or whatever, and it’s just these like small little nuggets, these little, you know, dots that eventually, well, you have got to try to connect. And it’s like, this is a moment that I would love to see between two characters. And this is another moment that, you know, I have no idea how it could work into this story, but visually this would just be incredible. And that’s kind of how it started for me. And then eventually just breaking it down into, you know, acts and then breaking it into moments within the acts. And of course, the character development. We knew two really good actors that we knew were going to be in this. And so, writing to their strengths was a big part of it. And the villain in our film is a character that I don’t think a lot of actors could pull off. And so that was really fun, knowing that we had that ace in the hole with Mike Breeden to play this wild character. And being able to write something that felt very, almost surreal, but we knew that he was going to bring some reality to it.
Judd Nichols
I think I can kind of touch on the last two questions. Another thing is like Adam is extremely self-motivated. And so, like there, I mean, there were a snafus. There was a moment we sat down and just did a table read with the two of us and we were about halfway through and Adam was like – how do you think this is going? And I was like, do you want to go for a walk? And we just kind of like broke down like maybe, you know, maybe something’s missing. Maybe it’s not quite there. I think he wrote like rewrote more than 50 pages in the next week. Not that volume is anything, but you know, it really took some perseverance and an honest look at where we were. And I think neither of us had any interest in placating each other throughout the process. And so, there were many iterations and Adam took a lot of like good ideas and re-implemented them and reworked this thing, you know, to the bitter end.
Ashley
And how do you guys… so you mentioned Syd Field and Blake Snyder, maybe you can touch on that a little bit. How do you guys approach screenplay structure? I know there’s always a lot of pushback. It’s sometimes it could be too formulaic. Some people just like having that sort of guidepost in your script, but maybe you can speak a little bit to that. How did you guys approach screenplay structure with this?
Adam Burke
I definitely leaned into the hero’s journey, the 12 steps in Joseph Campbell’s book, the hero’s journey. And I don’t feel like it’s formulaic because there’s moments where the hero denies the journey and then he eventually or she has to jump into it. There’s things like that, but how do you make them so they don’t feel tropey? And what I realized in this whole process is, no matter how you try to avoid tropes and get it to be right on film or on paper, it’s going to look different and be different when it comes out the other side. There’s just so many things that are left on the cutting room floor. There’s so many moments when you’re shooting that you think are going to be great and they don’t work. You’re on set. It’s just like, this isn’t working. How do we do this? How do we redo this? And so, yeah, as far as the structure, I would say I definitely leaned into Joseph Campbell’s 12 points, but it’s a feeling. I think the best thing that we found was table reads. Judd and I did a few of them together at the beginning and then eventually we brought in a couple of actors. And then towards the end, when we were in the last few iterations, we would bring in real actors from theater and from screen actors from the area. And we just paid $20 for the evenings for them to come in and do a read and some food. And it was great. Everyone had a blast, but to be able to hear the words come alive and what doesn’t work is extremely valuable. And then also just the flow of the story. I think the table reads were extremely helpful for me anyway.
Ashley
How do you guys approach genre requirements and where was there some things you studied and learned writing a psychological thriller, are there some things that you’ve noticed in the genre that you can pass along to us? Again, just how do you approach sort of genre requirements?
Adam Burke
I think that we didn’t want to write anything that was so super genre specific. We wanted to be, like I said earlier, vibe was really important to us and it’s such a kind of a generic word, but the aesthetic and the feel and the sound of this thing was something that we knew we had in our heads. And Judd, you can probably talk more about this as well, but I remember when there was a scene that we shot first because we knew that if we could nail this scene, we could get the look and the feel of this right, then we had something. And that was, it wasn’t necessarily a psychological thriller moment. There was like a horror-esque feel to it, but it was also just like the coloring and the sound design and the pacing. Like that was something, there wasn’t even any dialogue in that moment, but I think that that was something that was extremely useful for us, if that makes any sense. Judd, you can probably elaborate more.
Judd Nichols
Well, I think, and maybe this is just my personal theory, but I think when it comes to a psychological thriller, it’s not just that the characters undergo a psychological freak, it’s that the audience has to as well. And of course, sometimes you can use the characters experience in hopes that the audience is following them closely enough to have that sort of psychological trip. But we wanted the story and seeping through the aesthetic for the audience to be tripped out in their own way or to undergo something that was psychologically impactful or even subversive themselves. In my opinion, it’s when that leaves the story itself and enters the audience. I think that’s what makes a psychological thriller specifically.
Ashley
Are there some specific psychological thrillers films that you guys watched leading up to this? Was there anything that you could sort of like look back on in the you know, the canon of psychological thrillers? Just in-terms of tone or genre or anything like that?
Judd Nichols
We saw Salt Burn together in the theater, and I mean, thematically, it’s very different. But for us, there was something about the feel of that film where it lives in between emotions, and there’s almost something bizarre and mysterious and confusing about it. And then there’s moments where you’re like, oh shit, that’s what’s going on. I feel like between the look and the pacing and the purgatory, adjacent emotions that exist in that film, at least during moments of it, I feel like that was maybe our most immediate inspiration for things we were going for.
Ashley
Gotcha, okay. So, once you guys had a script that you like you were happy with what was the next step to actually getting this into production?
Adam Burke
I mean, for a long time we were location scouting because we knew that, you know, there’s just a handful of things that we’re going to make this thing work. And whether you have a good screenplay or not, you’ve got to have a location that’s interesting. You’ve got to have actors that can pull it off that, you know, really can perform the way that you need them to in a tight period. Because we shot this thing, you know, we didn’t have a ton of extra take. So, we needed people that could step in and really make it happen. And then we knew wardrobe and sound were going to be really big. So, we started trying to figure those things out early on. There’s a moment when these people take this drug and they use the masks when they’re in this tripping state and, you know, finding those masks right away and then doing some like camera tests with them just so that we could say, yes, this has the feel or no, this doesn’t. Those were things that we started doing, you know, probably a couple of months before we started shooting the film. Don’t you think, Judd?
Judd Nichols
Yeah. And then there’s a stuffed squirrel in there. We also had that, I feel like. Sometimes you got to take strange financial risks in order to lock yourself into getting this thing to the finish line. We knew there was no stopping once we had the squirrel.
Ashley
What is this squirrel?
Judd Nichols
It’s a little stuffed squirrel with, what do you call the hat on top of it, Adam?
Adam Burke
It’s like a fez. It’s like what the Shriners wear. But it’s this bizarre thing that’s in multiple areas in the house and there’s hidden cameras throughout the house and they’re all hidden in these little stuffed, not stuffed animals, but like taxidermy style animals. And so that was, but Judd and I were trying to figure out what’s this animal going to be in this room. And then he found this little taxidermy squirrel and pulled the trigger out and it was like our most expensive prop.
Ashley
$12,000 on the taxidermy, it was the biggest part of the budget. So, then how did you guys raise money? You have a script, you’re doing these tests. It sounds like, and I’m just, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. So, correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you guys are in the scene. You’re doing shorts. So, you know, local actors, you know, local film and crew, you’re bringing this together, but what was, how were you able to raise the money to pay for it all?
Judd Nichols
The way we did it was Adam had read and recommended independent AD. And so our, you know, our attempts to raise money, it’s just so, I felt like we were going to, we were either going to mostly self-fund this or not get it done, especially because I told them, and maybe this isn’t the right thing to say, but when I scroll through and see all these like medical disasters needing money on GoFundMe, it’s just, I don’t feel right necessarily asking people for large amounts of money so we can make art. So, our strategy was not viewing this, like some tried and true industry thing that’s going to happen. If you give us money, you’ll get it back. We were just completely honest with people and told them we’re self-funding this and we’re offering some money for our actors and then we’re giving them a portion of ownership of the product. And we told them, this is a lot more like a startup than, you know, a factory job. That’s just the reality. As far as I can tell, unless people are keeping things from me, I just think that’s more realistic and more true to what exists in the Minneapolis film industry, and I’m putting that in air quotes because I just don’t know if it exists. So we knew we weren’t building a project that has like any guarantees. It was like, either we swing for the fences and hit this thing out of the park and we, you know, pour champagne together with our grand slam, or we’re going to self-fund it and try and work within all the barriers that surround us. And like I said, I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say, but that’s what happened.
Ashley
No, no, I think it is the right thing to say. I think a lot of them that’s the inspiration for a lot of movies. And I mean, that’s just the bottom line. It’s art. So exactly where you’re going to create something, you’re going to put it out in the world and see what happens. And I do think especially Hollywood in this day and age, you know, there is a sort of, you know, the tail wagging, the dog type of a thing constantly chasing what they think is going to be popular or successful. You know, the really interesting stuff comes out of a place from what you just described, just somebody that creative who wants to put something out in the world. So, I don’t think it is the wrong thing to say. And I do appreciate the honesty, just telling people what how it happened.
Adam Burke
And we did raise maybe 10% of the budget just from friends and family and it was the same thing that Judd said. We were extremely honest with them and didn’t come into it as, this is an investment, you’re going to make your money back. And then some, it was more of, there’s a good chance you’re not going to get anything back other than we want you to be a part of this film and we will give you an executive producer credit. And if you give us X amount and anything below that is just, we’d love to have you out on set. We’ve got a scene with a bunch of extras. If you can make it to that, we’d love you to be there. We’d love it to be at the after party, the wrap party. So, it was more pitching them on the fun of being involved with the process of making the product. And I think that we both felt really good about that because we weren’t trying to sell anything other than what we knew we could accomplish, which was having a good time.
Ashley
Yeah, and truthfully, I think that’s exactly what I try and sell too. And I talk about this on the podcast these little budget movies, every now and then, one is a home run and you make a lot of money but 99.9999999999% of these things don’t make a ton of money. So, exactly that’s hopefully how I’m selling my film, and I to the investors you’re going to be a part of something cool, it’s going to be a cool experience but the ROI is not guaranteed and very, very, you know, it’s risky. Let’s put a deal like that. It’s a risky investment on a purely ROI basis.
Judd Nichols
And who knows if that could change? Because I keep telling Adam this and you know, I remember I got a text from like a colleague after he saw our private screening of the movie and his text just said to me – “Keep making the movies!” and I thought that was perfect. I mean like we it’s something we believe in like it’s something that we want to thrive in our culture and yeah for now I’d say the ROI as you put it pretty abysmal but we can’t lose it like it’s something that has to perpetuate and there has to be a way to keep it going and maybe it isn’t through money this time around but it’s just it’s if it’s something you really believe in I just don’t know how to turn my back on it then you know once you realize that.
Adam Burke
ROI doesn’t have to be, as you put it, Ashley, it doesn’t have to be money, it doesn’t have to be monetary. It’s like, how many people pay a ton of money to be a part of something cool, whether that’s a vacation or an experience or going to the sphere for a show. People want to live a life that has these crazy fun moments and how many people can say I was a part of this film, this short, this feature, and I got to be a part of that and it was wild and it was super fun. People want those stories when they’re sitting around having to be with their friends. So, it’s not that there’s not any value there, it’s just that pitching people that there’s going to be monetary value on the back end. Yeah, it can be, I think that feels a little salesy. Unless you know for sure, but who does? I don’t know.
Ashley
Exactly who knows, I’m not sure anybody. So, how did you guys did you guys do the film festival route? How did you ultimately find distribution for the film?
Judd Nichols
Well, we had someone at the front end who ended up not being our distributor. And then we were contemplating whether or not to seek distribution because some festivals have the requirement of it being like unreleased. And so that’s why we originally did a private screening. But then, I don’t know, we looked into the festivals and the timeline for it and a lot of times festivals, it seems like you’re with the other filmmakers that have been selected for the film festival. So, we just reached out to as many distribution companies as we could. And then X4 got back to us and we also met with a few other people. And then when we met with X4, Ryan, just like the straight, we really got like the straightforward, thoughtful vibe from him. And I think he sees our project for what we hope it could be seen as. Am I summarizing this well, Adam?
Adam Burke
Yeah. You know, we had meetings with a handful of distribution companies after we sent screeners out and just emailed a ton of people. We talked about maybe going to the film markets. We talked about doing the festival route. And I don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way to do it. It’s just a matter of how long you want to be in that cycle. We knew that if we were going to do the film festival thing, we were pushing distribution back by a minimum of six months. And I think both of us were kind of thinking that could be fun, but it also puts six months between us and the next project. And we are excited to start something new. And so, then when X4 said, we want to pick you guys up, and this is what we’re offering. And we had a few different offers on the table. In fact, we were, the day before, almost assigned with a different group. But this guy, Ryan, that runs X4, he was just, like Judd said, super straightforward. And he gave it to us straight and said, this is what we’re going to do. And they’re putting some money in for marketing, which was part of our deal with them, which was great. And a lot of distribution companies weren’t willing to do that. And then coaching us through a lot of the steps. So, they weren’t just like, I’m familiar with an aggregator, like a film hub, or some of these companies basically take your product, they package it, they push it out to these streaming platforms, and you never hear from them. And that was our biggest concern. And he basically said, we’re a smaller boutique place, and we don’t take on 500 films. This is how we do it. And this is how we roll it out. And this is how we see a rollout for you guys. And they were fans. We talked to a couple of these people, and they would say – oh, well, your film would be good here because there’s no drugs or violence in it. We’re like, what are you talking about? And there’s things that the whole place that they go to is like rooted in psychedelic drugs. There are tons of drugs throughout this thing. So that was discouraging, to see that some of these people were trying to pitch you without even having any idea what your movie was about.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. So, when you first email me, you mentioned that you got this regional theatrical release. And maybe you can speak to that a little bit. Do you think it was an advantage not being in Hollywood? And just what does that actually look like getting a regional theatrical release? You’re going to be able to do marketing in your local area and trying. Is that just like the jumping off point? If it’s successful there, you’ll expand out to other screens. But maybe you can talk a little bit to how that works. I’ve honestly never heard about like a regional theatrical release like what you’re talking about.
Adam Burke
Yeah, well, we had a private screening, which we called it a private screening because we wanted to maintain our eligibility for film festivals. And we had, I think, a screen with 150 or 170 people. And then that immediately filled up. And so, then we had to get another screen. I think we had 400 people there. And so we knew that because of the feedback that people really enjoyed this. And it was like, well, seeing it in the theater would be so much better, obviously, right? But we had this thing mixed to 5.1. The music in it is up for two. It was nominated for two Hollywood Music and Media Awards. So, the music is fantastic. So, we wanted more people to have that experience before it went to streaming. And when we talked to our distribution company, we asked them if we could maintain the theatrical rights. And they said, that’s no problem. And then we just reached out to some of the theaters and told them what we’re doing. And we’d love to do a profit sharing with you. And some of them said no. And some of them said yes. And so, we just booked a few different theaters. And then everything kind of goes through our website and routes out to their booking pages.
Ashley
And so how do you market something like that locally as a newspaper-ads, PR trying to get on radio shows? Like how do you go about actually marketing that that screening?
Adam Burke
All of the above. I mean, we’ve reached out to, I don’t know, probably a hundred media sources. Some of them get back to you. Some of them don’t, you know, whether it’s, you know, the, the, the usual ones like TV, radio, podcasts like this, but then there’s, you know, the things that we were kind of thinking outside the box, like what about if the professor at a college that teaches this film, you know, would he be interested? Would he be interested in bringing some of his students? You know, so we really like just pay for the whole city. And then of course a lot of social media, like we talked about before we get on here. I mean, that’s where everybody’s at. So, if you can have a social media campaign, and this goes back to what Judd said at the beginning, we needed, we needed those trailer moments. We needed stuff that we could stop scrolling when people are scrolling. And I think we have that. We have some very visually arresting stuff that, uh, people are like, whoa, what’s this about?
Ashley
So, what’s your guys’ take on AI? Did you guys use AI at all in this film, even for poster, trailer, anything? And just in general, what is your take on AI for indie films and the future?
Judd Nichols
As far as using it during the process, there were times where the large language models were so new that we would put the script in there and ask it for feedback. I feel like we wouldn’t do that now, but it was kind of new and just seeing the interesting things that came up with as far as feedback. But we didn’t use anything directly in the right thing in AI, we didn’t use any AI imagery other than we did some image removal during some of the static shots in post. But yeah, I would say this film is free of AI to people’s general definitions of what it is.
Adam Burke
We talked a lot about this because, you know, at the time chat was pretty new, you know, like when we were developing this thing and AI has come so far, I was like vehemently against it. Like I just, I did not want anything AI in this thing at all. But when I’d send like different iterations, Judd would run it through and just say, you know, compared to all these other scripts, like where does this land? Can you rate it? Can you tell us if there’s any weak points? And it would give like general, you know, I think we went from like a 70 to an 80 or something like that, and it’s rating. And it would just say this act could be could have more tension or something like that, you know, so it wasn’t like changing dialogue or changing scenes by any means, but it and we probably did that what, three times, Judd, something like that. And then we also used it once for like a storyboard. So, we knew what this one shot and what we wanted it to look like, but it was a new DP that we were working with. So, we told it what we wanted it to look like, and then it showed us these pictures, and we were able to show that the DP and I think that that kind of sped the process up and helped us to get the shots that we wanted.
Ashley
Gotcha. So just as we wrap things up, maybe you guys can both just give us sort of your two cents on this next question. Just what advice do you have someone living outside of Hollywood, they want to get invested, you know into the entertainment industry. They want to start creating projects like this. Just quickly, you know, what is your advice for some of those first steps? And maybe Adam you go and then Judd maybe you go, and we’ll just get a real succinct 30 second clip on this.
Adam Burke
Meet as many people as you can, go to film festivals, start creating, get your stuff into film festivals, and that’s where you meet other people that are going to have the cameras and the gears and the gear, the talent, and surround yourself with people that are better at it than you are, and just soak it up.
Ashley
Mm-hmm. Yeah, sound advice.
Judd Nichols
Flex and strengthen and atrophy and rebuild your creative muscles in any way you can. We all need it and want it.
Ashley
Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Great advice. What’s next for you guys? What are you working on now
Adam Burke
Judd, you’re working on a boxing documentary, right?
Judd Nichols
Yeah, I’m working on a short film with a boxing coach who’s kind of prepping for his first fight. So, I’ve been shooting and following that journey, which has been super fun.
Ashley
Yeah, that sounds cool.
Adam Burke
I’m writing. I started writing a new short today and I’m working on another feature that hopefully will be able to jump into this fall.
Ashley
Perfect, and I’d just like to wrap up the interviews by asking the guest what have you guys seen recently that you thought was great? And it’s a mostly screenwriting audience So is there anything you can recommend to our audience that you’ve been watching, HBO, Hulu, Netflix anything that’s out there?
Adam Burke
I just started watching Margo’s Got Money Problems on Apple, and it was referred to me by so many people that I trust. Otherwise, the title, it just didn’t seem like something I would want to watch. It’s really good. It’s great writing. It’s really tight. It’s got a lot of drama, a lot of comedy, excellent performances. But yeah, I think it’s based off of a novel, but it’s very good.
Ashley
Okay perfect that’s a great recommendation. Judd, what about you, what you’ve been watching?
Judd Nichols
The last thing I watched was, Sleepers, do you know that one? A lot of people haven’t heard of it. I hadn’t heard of it. It’s got De Niro. It’s got Ethan Hawke. It’s got like a star-studded cast. It’s from like the early nineties. And it’s like Shawshank Redemption meets Stand By Me. Yeah, it was awesome. And I think it was even up for an Oscar, whatever year it was up. But I will say I can kind of see why it hasn’t stood the test of time, even though I really liked it. It’s like almost perfect when you, it’s like when you get a whiff of, like a cleaning product and then you smell why the cleaning product exists or something, no offense to Sleepers.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So that’s a good recommendation as well. How can people see Wet Paper Bag? What is the release schedule like for that?
Adam Burke
It’s on TVOD June 2nd, so June 2nd it will be on all of the streamers and they should go to our website, wetpaperbagfilm.com, and you can see the trailer there and some of the, you know, all of our socials are linked there. So that’s probably the best resource, wetpaperbagfilm.com.
Ashley
Okay perfect yeah, I’ll get that in the show notes people can click over to that. But do you guys do anything on TikTok Facebook Instagram you have handles there you can say them now and we can put those in the show notes as well people can click over and check out that.
Adam Burke
Yeah, it’s again, all of that’s on the website, so that’s probably the one stop shop. But I think our Instagram is wetpaperbag_film and our Facebook is Wet Paper Bag Film.
Ashley
Perfect. Well, Judd and Adam, thank you guys for coming on the show and talking with me today. This is a great interview. I love these interviews where people are just really honest and really tell how they got their film made. So, I think this is inspirational. I hope people listen to it and go out and make their own films as well.
Adam Burke
Well, thank you very much, Ashley. We’re excited to see your film when it comes out as well.
Yeah, perfect. I appreciate that. So it’ll be a few more months, but we’re getting close. Well, thank you, guys. And, you know, when your next film is ready to go, just look me up and we’ll have you back on to hear your second story.
Adam Burke
Sweet. Thanks so much.
All right, man. We’ll take it easy.
Adam Burke
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Ashley
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So, Adam, who was on the podcast today, actually reached out to me. He had heard a few episodes of the podcast, and then he just sent me a cold email, kind of pitched his project, told me what he was doing, and I thought it sounded like a great fit for the podcast and to bring him on.
So, if you’re making an indie film and you want to come on the podcast to help promote it, just drop me an email. I love highlighting these sorts of stories. I think it’s inspiring. Just two guys going out there, and they really, you know, this is why I like to promote stuff like this, because this is really how indie film works. They did a bunch of shorts, they met a bunch of local film people and actors, and then slowly that gets to the point where you’re at a feature film. Hopefully, anyway, that doesn’t feel overwhelming. If you’re not in Hollywood and you don’t know a lot of film people, hopefully these sorts of stories can help you think, “Hey, maybe I could do that. Maybe I could take some of those steps.” So that’s my hope with these. But for sure, if you’ve done an indie feature film and you want to promote it on the podcast, just email me and maybe you’ll be a good fit for the podcast as well. Anyways, that’s the show, thank you for listening.