Master filmmaker Roger Corman, who has discovered more film talent – writer, directors, actors, set designers, the works – than anybody else we can think of, is looking to discover another star – an indie filmmaker who can make everybody who sees their work go “Wow!” even when it’s shot while social distancing at home.
Even munchman’s gonna take a stab at this one. How about you?
We don’t usually turn individual podcast news items into TVWriter™ posts, but this one is special.
We believe the fact that a major film company like Steven Spielberg’s Amblin’ Partners is making Cynthia Erivo’s fiction podcast, Carrier, into a major film is a major leap forward for fiction podcasting (AKA audio fiction) in general.
Check out the deets:
Despite my being an incredibly dramatic person, drama tends to not be my artistic style. I’m a comedy person.
But then I met Colin Hinckley, who loves drama and, specifically, horror. And we decided to write a horror film together called Buy In, a tense character study about capitalism and power and desperation, so when it came time for me, the director, to make decisions about the look of this project, I was more than a little nervous. And then I had a few ideas and then we shot the film and now we’re preparing to release it into the world at the end of a crowdfunding campaign (more on that later, but spoiler alert- we’re 62% funded!).
…I wanted to share some of my directing choices, because I think it was a great educational opportunity for me, a person who prefers fast talking comedies, to learn how to slow things down and use the camera more strategically than normally.
BLUF*: Patreon. It’s not so scary. Mostly.
*BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front
If you want to make a fiction podcast, setting up a Patreon page is almost de rigueur. Most of the time, especially if you have a small audience, you can make more money with a Patreon account than you can with advertising. Plus you don’t have those obnoxious ads cluttering up your audio masterpiece. You’re not going to get rich, but you might at least be able to pay your cast and crew.
In November 2016, my good friend Colin and I decided to write a horror short film together. Colin had just finished a stint as Carl in season 2 of Brains (a web series I created and also starred in) and as Kevin in Ace and Anxious (a short film I had written/directed).
He was a big fan of horror and I had been wanting to try my own hand at it, so it was decided: a short film in the horror genre with an idea of our production restrictions in mind as they developed the script. We knew we wanted to keep the cast small, the location singular, and the horror psychological, and within a month we’d written the first draft of what would become Buy In, the story of a charming young salesman and a strange, lonely traveler who find themselves locked in a struggle for control over their own destinies.