TBT: Bad Parenting for Good Child Performances

Babies can't act; they can only be honest and authentic with their current emotions, and they're always in the moment. 

Case in point, "Sling Baby" by Kevin Willson, which shot in my backyard. If for one split second, a mother in the audience thought that baby wasn't happy, the filmmakers would have received so much hate email (even more if it involved a dog, just ask Kevin). So, how did we get that baby to fly through the air and grab that chip with a smile? By keeping him happy, of course. Paying attention to his comfort and safety (even while being puppeteered on strings), meeting all his play and nutrition needs, and good ole Pavlov's conditioning. I'll save this for another post.

But if the child actors are a little bit older, how do you get the performances you want? Same thing (because they're still too young to want to learn the craft of acting): keep them playing, know their hunger and sleep needs, and practice bad-parenting manipulation. 

And cast your own children. Now that our children are in high school, and seem well adjusted, I feel I can share some behind the screen secrets of "Who Wants Lemonade?" The original idea was to shoot the scene of Jackson (age 5) and Kiran (age 3) right before lunch, when they'd be most hungry for Doritos' snacks. Jackson was typically a mean older brother, so we (my wife Clarice and I) hoped they'd run out of chips, then get greedy and hopefully start arguing, and then Mom would come out to break up the fight and lean on the table, which would flip into the air and throw the lemonade everywhere. 

Why? Because this was for Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" ad competition and all the best spots had a surprising twist at the end. So, I rigged the table to have a fulcrum so that everything would toss into the air and cause chaos. The lemonade jug and the bowl of lemons were lightweight plastic.

I knew with child actors, I would not be able to repeat anything, so I had three cameras overing the wide and an angle on each child. I coached the actors to stay in character and knew I could always turn the camera around on them to get an overlapping, continuity shot for editing. All was going swimmingly and on the 3rd take, Kiran said the most adorable thing; "Who wants lenomade?" 

Then on take four, Kiran leaned on the shaky table and spilled the ice-cold lemonade all over her!

No big deal, we rescued her quickly and got her happy again in another outfit. But we only had one of that pink dress and I loved that 3rd take. So we rinsed and dried it, which took 45 minutes. By then both kids were hungry and we had to feed them. Now their attention spans were gone. And Kiran was cranky. By the time we got Jackson and Kiran out to the set, neither were too cooperative or collaborative.

So, I skipped to the second half of the spot where they needed to be upset. You know what I did, I made _____ out of ___. The new plan was to do reshoots in a week when they would be happy again. Kiran was tired so we knew it wouldn't take much to set her off, and we gave her some cutie orange slices to persuade her to stay in her chair. With all three cameras rolling, we asked Jackson to take an orange slice from Kiran and hop on his go-cart and ride off. To his credit, Jackson knew this was wrong and didn't want to do it. We, the Bad-Parenting Filmmakers, persuaded him to do it. For the art! Amiright?

The rest is history. Kiran only lasted long enough for the Lady, Joanie Marx, to try cheer her up with the dog. A week later, we shot the missing parts with happy Jackson and happy Kiran. There's one line that I tried to ADR with Kiran, when she tells the lady "No," because I had too much road noise from the freeway near our house and she was so quiet. I got her to repeat it a few times outside her daycare, and it's better but obviously replaced audio.

Joanie asked for an extended take for her reel, so I extended Kiran's crying to make this really dramatic spot. Not for the art, for the laugh!

Bad Parenting to the rescue!

Ian

Cancelling CANCEL CULTURE with LOOR TV

Ever heard of Shark Tank-like pitching for Faith Driven Businesses? I just spent two days in Dallas with the winners of the Tampa Lion's Den pitch competition, LOOR.TV. The Lion's Den connects investors with faith driven entrepreneurs. LOOR.TV is creating a game-ified, equity-crowdfunding, streaming platform aimed at funding and sharing movie, TV and documentary content that young people actually want to watch.

The business model for independent filmmakers is broken. It's a winning-the-lottery mentality where they beg, borrow and steal to make a movie that's hopefully not too compromised in apparent production value (making $100K look like $1M) and then sells for a profit at film festivals or to streaming channels. The chances of making money this way is super low, and I keep meeting exhausted filmmakers that are sad when they can't find a distributor that will spend the same kind of sweat equity selling their movie as they spent to make it. So, they give their precious baby away, but at least the movie they slaved on for years is out there for people to see. Repeat after me: It's a movie BUSINESS.

The smart (and Biblical) way to finance a movie is to count the cost in advance and pre-sell the movie before making it. Kinda like a high-rise apartment complex will determine a need and start pre-renting apartments first. Ideally, filmmakers copy the model of Angel Studios and raise the fans in advance who pre-purchase tickets to the movie. LOOR TV is pursuing this model. This is hard work. I helped produce two features that are upside down for the investors. I intend to remedy this.

The problem with most Christian movie distributors is they don't know how to reach young people, nor do they even try. So we have generations of film goers who are being spoon fed junk food by a Hollywood world view that is in conflict with Biblical values. There's some good content out there, some neutral, but tons of woke content that clearly contradicts God's truth, goodness and beauty.

And young people get all the content they want on social media for free, so why should they pay for my movie? What's my value-add to them?

Eyre Films and LOOR TV have a lot in common. How to cancel Cancel Culture with slightly irreverent movies that appeal to young people (likely mostly to young men, but niche down to find those super fans). As I reactivate the fans who have watched "Run Cholo Run" 2.2M times, but with music I didn't license :(, and promote the digitally enhanced re-release of Vengeance Trail, I will be learning to find superfan audiences for Prey For Mason, Smash and Run, and Puberty From Heck! all in various stages of development. Stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, here's Jason Farley and Marcus Pittman enjoying a pitch I made for a Romans 6:23 monster comedy that might have to be hosted in Finland, lol! It will definitely cause Cancel Culture to get triggered!

Ian

Vertical Filmmaking Madness

I'm finally embracing vertical filmmaking with "Be Brave, Daddy!" #Shorts. 

I used to joke about wanting to go into someone's house and see the TV mounted to the wall vertically. Actually, someone should make a TV wall mount that you can remotely rotate 90 degrees, depending on what you're watching. Because seeing an HD video squeezed vertically with those massive black bars on the sides seems like a waste of a large screen TV.

I once stunt coordinated a vertical format show, and it drove me crazy when they had a nice car and you could only see some fraction of the car in a wide shot. Unfortunately, my episodes got cancelled before they streamed, but you can check out the show SOLVE here.

In my first blog post, I talked about one of my videos that sat on YouTube doing next to nothing, then took off for the stars. Well, after reaching 24M views, it flatlined and the last 18 months looks like the first 6 years. But, YouTube has recently launched Shorts, their vertical, under 60 seconds, video channel for the landscape challenged. 

So, here's "Be Brave, Daddy!" revisited as a #Shorts. Throw Back Thursday is perfect for YouTube Shorts.

And if you want to know how the sausage was made, here's a BTS look at the stunt rigging of "Be Brave, Daddy!"

My only frustration is that I didn't scout the location and when we showed up to shoot I realized that my computer monitor was the exact same color as the wall, lol. I guess I could have paid a VFX artist to change the color.

BTW, yours truly made those pajamas. What do y'all think?

Ian

THE HUNT Movie

When The Hunt came out (original trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tzgfDLJUhw), my first reaction was; Yes! I do believe some liberals want to wipe out conservatives, but the conservatives in this movie fight back and win!

As per usual, the uproar came from people who hadn’t seen the movie. Would conservatives rather the roles were reversed and conservatives were hunting liberals a la The Most Dangerous Game, and the liberals then righteously killed the conservatives in self-defense?

I want to see a movie where conservatives actually fight back!! As compared to the lame conservatives in DC politics who lie down and give up (not all of them, and certainly not as often as before the Trump era).

I just watched this interview between Jason Blum and Ben Shapiro regarding The Hunt. I actually celebrate Jason Blum for doing this interview, and both he and Ben made some really great points. Start with these soundbites, then watch the whole interview: https://youtu.be/kQ3Yb3nYVyY?t=623

This: We have to laugh at ourselves when we laugh at the other side, then listen to each other.

I once heard Brian Coley of Art Within speak at a Faith in Film Breakfast in Atlanta. My understanding (paraphrase) of what he said is: If Christians want to tell stories that gain cultural acceptance, we must start with cliches so that people recognize our subculture (Hey that's me - aka Christian exploitation) before we can reach a tipping point and leave our subculture for mainstream (and be heard outside our choir). The way to do this is first through comedies, Coley says, but where are the Christian comedies? Mom's Night Out, Believe Me, and Blue Like Jazz are not enough. 

I moved to Atlanta from Toronto when I was nine. I was a fish out of water and didn’t sound or dress like anyone in the South, so I got made fun of a lot. My defense mechanism was to make fun of myself before others could (maybe that’s why Canadians are considered to be so funny). Christians have plenty of material to make fun of. The world makes fun of us, partly because the Gospel is foolishness to those who don’t understand (1 Corinthians 1:18), but especially because we don’t recognize how crazy we act and how confusing we make the Good News of Jesus.

I don’t know if Christians made the movie Saved! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiV-pvjOc_w), but that was a funny movie! Best line, as Mandy Moore throws a Bible at a classmate while judging her; “I am filled with Christ’s love.” The Hunt had two writers, one on the left one on the right. It makes fun of both groups and has authenticity toward both groups. Where are the Christians making comedies, admitting to the world that we’re broken, messed up, stupid at times, but learning to reflect the Messiah who calls us, forgives us, saves us, and perfects us?

I can’t wait to announce my teen abstinence comedy and my monster comedy, both self-mocking, speaking to culture, and outrageously funny. Meanwhile, here are a couple of short comedies inspired by Scripture for you to enjoy: “Don’t Talk About Jesus!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tmt1r4LpHI, “Joseph’s Wheel of Destiny” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJPWoAtUmXI

Ian