Ep. 79 - First Features: Cryo with Barrett Burgin

Barrett Burgin: 0:25

Okay, welcome to the podcast Barrett. thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Would you introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners? Absolutely. So, my name is Barrett Bergen. I'm a writer director producer. I went to film school with Ken Nana at BYU, proud alumnus of BYU. This is my first I've done a number of, of short films. Award-winning short films that, one of'em at least is on, on Amazon, to watch. And, and so this though cryo represents my first, feature length film, which I actually started while I was in school before doing my final. Kind of BYU capstone film. That was a bad idea. I'm glad in hindsight that I did that. But, but this, this film's been many, many years in the making, so I'm, I'm very excited to, to talk to you guys today about it. Yeah.

Kent Thalman: 1:17

We're really excited too.

1:19

Why

Barrett Burgin: 1:19

do you say that was a bad idea? I'm curious. oh, I mean, I'm glad I did it. It's just to, to make two movies at once. Yeah. with a, a feature length film with like, like hardly any budget and then jump into an intense BYU capstone, experience with potentially the most intense professor. At the university. it was, it was just very overwhelming. yeah, it was trying to jump and the films are completely opposite and tone. so one is like a dark thrillery scary kind of gritty sci-fi and then the other is this sweet musical family film. And so editing one while trying to shoot the other one was some whiplash in terms of, you know, tone, I guess. Yeah. Sometimes that's kind of nice though to, it was yeah. A break and, you know, do something different, but I could see it getting confusing too. And then you mentioned the award winning short. What, what was that? So, so my three primary short films have all won some awards, but, but the one that I put on, On Amazon videos called the next door. And it's a psychological thriller about, latter day Saint missionaries, who go on this investigation when this guy that they're teaching goes missing. And so, that's probably my most wide reaching short and then I have a couple of others. They're also just, they're, they're all kind of available everywhere, online. So out of the ground is a, is a sci-fi short I did. And then father of man is that musical kind of drama, BYU film that I made, which, can be found online and will shortly be available on a streaming service called Des Desiree video. and so I'm excited to share that one as well. That's great. That's great. Yeah, we've seen all of those and I've

Kent Thalman: 3:02

not seen father of

Barrett Burgin: 3:03

man yet. Okay. I've seen all of,

Kent Thalman: 3:04

I think you saw the, film festival mm-hmm that it showed at. And then I saw, so I was gonna mention that we've been driving back and forth across the United States and we go through Tennessee to get to Georgia every time we drive that route. So every time we're driving through those super green Hills of Tennessee, I just think of Barrett Bergens out the ground. Yeah. Cause I just home those last shots on out of the ground that you shot in Tennessee of those Hills, that just those huge rolling mountainous, green, green, green. I'm like, I don't know, like every time I wrote a drive through Tennessee, I'm just like, this is where Barrett shot. That really great. That's true.

Barrett Burgin: 3:42

That ending. That's really memorable. Yeah. Do you guys go near Knoxville? Are you in east Tennessee? The route that you go?

Kent Thalman: 3:48

I'm not sure exactly how far we always go. We always go through Nashville.

Barrett Burgin: 3:53

Okay. On our route

Kent Thalman: 3:54

Tennessee to like south of Atlanta is where we live.

Barrett Burgin: 3:57

Gotcha. So, yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure how that's a little ways from, from Knoxville, but the whole, just like you said, it all looks like that. Yeah. Very lush, very, very green. See, this just shows how

Kent Thalman: 4:09

dependent we've become

Barrett Burgin: 4:10

on GPSs and I'm just like, I don't even know where

Kent Thalman: 4:12

I went. I just, yeah, I just did what it

Barrett Burgin: 4:15

told me to

Kent Thalman: 4:15

like an OB OB swallowed the route. Yeah. Yeah. Soy. I don't know.

Barrett Burgin: 4:19

Well,

Kent Thalman: 4:20

and

Barrett Burgin: 4:20

then, and then, next door is also very good. And thank you. We've often said that could almost have been your first feature film. I know, I kind of wish I had done. I just didn't know anything about anything. Like, I didn't know that the film is like a weird length. I, to me, I just wanted to tell a story and then I got all this feedback when I was put it in festivals, like, ah, it's, it's like too long and too short, you know, it needs to be one of these two things. And, and so that, that has been a huge process for me learning, All sorts of things about distribution and like what, what you actually have to keep in mind when you're trying to write a story and, and make a film and whatnot, but, well, and it's really an arbitrary thing

Kent Thalman: 4:58

because the film itself works great. It was fun to watch. It was cool. We actually went and saw it in, I think it was the vineyard

Barrett Burgin: 5:04

where you premiered it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. and

Kent Thalman: 5:06

I remember thinking, like, I don't know, it felt right, but it's, it's odd because when we're going into festivals, they're either gonna program it as a short, which it was. Which it's very long for short. What, how long

Barrett Burgin: 5:19

was it again? 40, 34

Kent Thalman: 5:20

minutes. 34 minutes. Okay. Or it's, or they're gonna program it as a feature and it was too short to be that, but if it had been like a 80 minute feature, it would've been like, yeah, like, great. Yeah.

Barrett Burgin: 5:29

But that's right. So it's just for programming reasons that it was

Kent Thalman: 5:32

too long or too short, but it was not for pacing reasons that it, I mean, it was, I thought it paced great. And thanks felt, felt cool, but I mean, I've seen weirder,

Barrett Burgin: 5:42

I've seen like 49 minute shorts.

Kent Thalman: 5:44

Yeah. And like 67 minute features and like, you know, you know, mm-hmm so we'll see what our ends up being, but, it'll be a feature. We'll see how weird it is. So now that you've

Barrett Burgin: 5:53

done both, you've done some bigger shorts. You've done this feature. What do you think you'd recommend for someone trying to launch their career jump right into the feature film, if that's what they wanna do, or do you feel like doing shorts first is a better approach? Do you mean what I would recommend for somebody like where I am now or looking back? If I could tell myself if somebody just trying to kind of get started. Yeah. Looking back if you could tell yourself well, okay. So I think that shorts are, are really useful to like, to get stuff out, to just practice, you know, to like tell some stories. But, what a short will never do is it will never really open the kinds of doors that a feature film can. It's never going to make nearly as much money. I mean, you can land some form of distribution, with a short, a good example, you know, like Willam camp andhow took his, his capstone short film and, was able to work out some kind of thing with the CG bros. And, and by distributing it, I suppose, on their channel, it's gotten millions and millions of views, but I mean that movie's not really made him money, you know, mm-hmm or if, if they do see any profit from that, It's it's it's minimal. Right? Likewise, even with, with cryo my feature, I'm not making money off of this yet. Because we did it on, on such a unique, structuring where we did deferred pay and, and most everybody who was working on it were at the time, either students or really recent graduates. So they were just, they were happy to work on a fun project over the summer. Like they normally would, we set it up. So it's like, Hey, if we make money, we will pay you and you'll get paid first. but we made all our hard investments back by selling it and, and there's still potential for me to make money. And more importantly, it opened all these doors because it's more legitimate. So. I probably will not go back to making short films, unless it's just for fun or I just have a little thing I wanna do creatively. But I think something that's important is for young filmmakers to start thinking of it as a business, more than just an art. And that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be their main form of livelihood is like narrative projects, but they need to think about a, a feature film, like an asset, you know, like you're creating something that will, that will have value. And, a short film is not much of an asset. It just, it just take the story, take the creativity out of it. It's just like, what, what can it produce in terms of revenue? Something that's interesting to me is, most kind of distribution, like most of the industry when it comes to distributing features, do not care about your story or really your movie. That I think, I think most of the people on our market marketing team still just never saw the movie. They just know that the trailer looked good. The, the title was good, the poster, the, the, the key art, and then that's it like that's to them, it is just literally like, can I get somebody's butt in a seat or can I get them to press the rent or purchase button? And then like, they don't care after that. Hmm. So, so yeah, I would, I would do shorts to build. to build cloud, right? I could not have made cryo without having made the, the, the, the two or three previous shorts that I did. And then, and then shorts throughout film school as well. That is what allowed me to have the network and the people willing to work on my, on my feature. And they, they, they knew my work. They liked working with me. They, they knew it would be at least watchable, I hope. And so, so shorts are really important to like also establish your tone, to get your name out there, but you, you should use a sh you should use shorts or a number of shorts do as many as you can, like, get'em all out, you know, just get, get stuff out. But you should use those eventually to, to springboard to a feature. And then if, if in my opinion, once, once someone is skilled enough and let's say they don't have any money, but they wanna make something. If you could make six shorts, string them into a feature instead, you know, like put'em together and create some value. in, by creating an asset rather than just posting work out there. Hopefully that answers your question. Yeah. I love that. I totally agree. Yeah.

Kent Thalman: 10:05

Yeah. I, I, I think that that's, that's very similar to ours and, and many, many other filmmakers experiences. Obviously everyone has some unique stories and their exceptions to every rule. But, but that, yeah, that, that describes what sounds natural to me. I'm wondering, I wanna back up and, and ask you a little bit more about cry specifically. Now. It, it hit theaters. It theatrically

Barrett Burgin: 10:28

like two weeks ago was so June 24th. Yeah, June 24th. And then it, it hit digital June 28th. Did you think

Kent Thalman: 10:36

it was gonna get a theatrical run when you

Barrett Burgin: 10:39

made it. That's a good question. I mean, I, I don't know. I don't know that I was thinking of it that way. When we were shooting it, our plan was always to hope to like sell it, but I didn't know anything about selling the movie, like what that means to sell it. And then also, I think that we were just shooting it over the summer before my, my last year of film school, like Mason and I, we just wanted to make a feature. We just wanted to make something. So like if it had turned out and it was just a featured film that went to a few festivals and then I, like, I like showed it personally at a theater and then posted it online or. On Amazon or something that would've been fine with me in terms of, how I was approaching it at the time. I was thinking of similar films that were really low budget, like, and super high concept, like, like primer, for example, or, you know, Nolan had his, his very first films called following and he just shot it for six grand with some friends using like natural light and stuff. And so, so we were lucky enough to get it, to look as good as it did just by virtue of who got involved. And then from there, I think once the film was being finished, it became clear that we probably had something that we could, we could sell. We had no idea we would get the distribution deal with Saban. I mean, that was, that was bigger than I was anticipating. And. We got a few different offers from some notable names. But the thing about Saban is it only buys like 10 to 12 films a year versus, you know, some of these that are 200 and it would just disappear into their library somewhere. So, so no, and I should have been like my recommendation for sure. And what I'm gonna do in the future is begin with the end in mind. Like, you need to know, you need to know what distribution even is. And like that distribution is where you start a movie, not an idea in writing a script and stuff. It begins, it begins with like, how does this movie get out? But I didn't know that. And frankly, we didn't really focus on that in film school. I thought, you know, you, you come up with an idea, you write it down, you get the treatment, you write the script. And it turns out the industry which I learned over the last couple of years, functioned very, very differently. Than that it can, yeah, it can. Yeah. I think, especially when you're starting out, like you said, you know, Christopher Nolan also did not really know where his film was gonna go. Peter Jackson, all these great filmmakers, start out just making something and they add onto it and they just keep going down the pipeline until they figure out where it leads them. Well, and nowadays, I feel like there's,

Kent Thalman: 13:17

there's a distribution pathway for almost anything

Barrett Burgin: 13:21

you could come up with.

Kent Thalman: 13:23

Like there's someone who wants that kind of thing, because, you know, but, but what you're saying is you, you, I mean, but you, you talk about how, you know, maybe it's not all just about like the pure idea and everything, but I wanted to ask you about that. Like,

Barrett Burgin: 13:37

You said you did this and you, you,

Kent Thalman: 13:39

so you shot the feature in the summer and then you did the, your capstone short

Barrett Burgin: 13:44

after you shot the feature. Yeah, that's right.

Kent Thalman: 13:47

So, so with cryo, at what point did you and Mason, did you guys co-write it.

Barrett Burgin: 13:54

Yeah, we co-wrote it. So it was an idea I had come up with with a buddy of mine, not the whole twist and everything, but just the, just the setup is something I'd come up with a, a buddy of mine, like, like two or three years prior, just after my, my mission, I got home and we were spitballing ideas. And then Mason and I were going to do a big Western. And we had like half the funding secured. Like I think we had$750,000 or something, but, but, it wasn't enough and people were nervous. It's like, yeah, that's too low. Like sometimes investors wanna see more money put in to feel better about it. It's not like, like it being cheap is not, not sometimes impressive to a number of investors. And so we pulled the plug cause we were like, mm, we, we, we can't make this particular Western for that amount. And so we went back to the drawing board and said, well, we still just wanna shoot something this summer. We ha we blocked out the time. We've got a cool little team here together. And so, Mason, I proposed this idea to Mason and he said, oh, that sounds fun. That sounds super shootable. And so we wrote it, we just pumped it out over a few months, so that we'd have time to, to shoot over the summer. So we did principal photography that summer. And then I had my last year of film school with the capstone and everything. And then the following summer, we went back and did a bunch of pickups, for stuff after we'd gotten far enough in the edit where we were like, Hmm, we think this needs just a little bit more to, to really, to really work. Yeah. That's cool.

Kent Thalman: 15:23

Well, you know, I wanna ask you a little bit more about some of those logistics maybe later, but, but I want, I wanted to ask you kind of answered one of my other questions, but I wanted to ask, I know that you, I know that you made this film and then you ended up having to finish school. And then this obviously hasn't been your primary source of income. So you've had a job. In the meantime. And then I also know that you just had had, you've been married a number of years, but you just had your first kid.

Barrett Burgin: 15:52

When was that? Yeah, that's right. How long, how long ago did you guys? So we had our, we had our daughter, in December of last year. That's awesome. So she's about, she's about six months old now.

16:02

Oh,

Kent Thalman: 16:02

congrats. That's so awesome. Well, thank you. So, so my question was really,

Barrett Burgin: 16:07

how

Kent Thalman: 16:07

did you balance that? Because you've been on, in post, on this first feature, which is, this is normal, right? We make these features, we scrape our resources together, and we kind of tailor the film to the resources we have. And then you've gotta finish. You gotta finish life. You know, you gotta finish school, you gotta get a job and you gotta work that job, and then you gotta manage your family. And so how, how did you manage

Barrett Burgin: 16:29

post on this film? Yeah. Good question. Okay. So, well, first of all, we wrapped up post, Like shortly before my daughter was born. So, I mean, the timing, the timing worked out real, you know, even though that was six months ago, this past six months has just been working with making sure that Sivan had all the deliverables, making sure all our, our contracts were in a row. We, we stopped. We stopped kind of most post shortly after we had Roxy. So thankfully that hasn't been too much of a strain, but, so the post process was kind of this and it, and it, it, it took forever. It was in, it was in what we call post tell for a number of reasons. I think the first year is because I was still finishing school and working on another film. And that's why I say, like, it's not a great idea to take, to make two movies at the same time. It just one, one will be robbed by the other one. But so summer of 2018, we shot at. Summer of 2019, we did pickups. And then, the year kind of the rest of the year of 2019, I was still technically finishing school. I was in the, the honors program at BYU. I, so I was trying to write, I was trying to do this thesis that I had to, I had to go and defend before I graduated. And so December of 2019 is when I was really actually done and kind of had some more time. In the meantime, I was doing some of the editing myself because we had previously gone through two different editors that, we had to part ways with for just different reasons. And that's part of it is like life gets busy and these guys had jobs and these guys had, responsibilities and, and, just a lot that wasn't really working for their availability. So then I just did it myself. And then from, from 2019 to 2020, we had one more editor, Aaron Hinton, come on. And Aaron's fantastic, but he, he definitely took, took a while. And so, so that took about a year and by that point I was just getting anxious. Like I was just like, this is taking so long and also COVID hit. And so because of that, you know, his, his, his mom, I think is immunocompromised so we could never meet. So I could never just sit there right next to my editor and be like, let's just, let's just plow through this. And then he also worked, you know, on a number of different projects because he has to generate his own income. And so by 2021 kind of, kind of January 20, 21, we really pushed Aaron locked the cut. And then within a year from 2021 to 2022, that was our main post. And that was a very busy, very, rewarding, gratifying but hard year. But probably my favorite part of the project, because at that point, seeing how long it took, I realized. For me, at least, you can, you can plan a film with no money. You can shoot a film with no money, more or less. I mean, hard production costs, but people will come out and play and people will come, but post production, man, like, like you have to have money to do it. And so we raised about$30,000, as a final investment and use that to pay specialists, to do color and. Post sound and VFX and score all at the same time, which you also kind of shouldn't do that because sometimes one will inform the other, right. You should kind of do color and then VFX or VFX, and then color. We were doing both. And we were just kind of making it work every day after work because my wife and I shared a car, I would get on my, I bought this little electric scooter and I worked in Provo and Eric Nowman my post sound guy worked at in, in Oram. And I would get on my scooter and I would just scooter to his house. And we would, we would work for like four to five hours, two or three times a, a a week. So it was extremely demanding. when, when other people might be playing video games or watching a show on Netflix, I was out working on this, you know, this post process, reviewing VFX, sitting down with the colorists. We really just didn't have much of a social life, which is fine, cause this is what I would rather be doing. And frankly, when people say that, It's like it wasn't every single day. So we did, we did see people like we saw Jessica's family, Jessica, and I spent lots of time together. And thankfully she is also involved in the industry and so supportive that it just, it wasn't a strain because we decided it wasn't going to be a strain. So we're around October, November of, of 2021 is when we were finally locked on all of that stuff. And actually it might have even been over the summer now I'm honestly, it's, it's a little bit of a blur maybe August or September. It could have been about a, a, a little less than a year ago that we were more or less locked on everything. And so, Mason bought passes to the American film market. We learned a ton about distribution from AFM, which I recommend to anyone to do, whether you have something to sell or not, all of the panels and all of the seminars and things like he, he just, he, he attended every single one of those while I was busy, making sure all the creative stuff was completely taken care of. Cuz we did just mountains and mountains of QCs. I never wanna watch the movie again cause I've just seen it too many times. And. And so from there, we, we did a lot of research. Mason found a, a great, sales agent for the film. Mm-hmm you have to be careful in distribution, both with agents and with distributor distributors, because you can get ripped off, but Mason had read a number of books and this guy was recommended as a very honest, reputable guy. And so we reached out to him. He was flattered that we knew who he was. He was also impressed by the movie. And so from him, we landed some of our distribution deals. So we had one in Russia. We've had one in multiple territories and then Saban was our big one for the north America and us. And then from there, the rest is kind of history. Although. Even working with the distributor was a headache. This thing never ends. That's why I'm like so glad for it to be done. Is we just learned just more than I could possibly share about all of the contracts and the forms and the file types and every possible thing that you need to have lined up for giving liberals the, or giving delivers deliverables to a distributor, which is again, why it really helps to start with distribution in your mind and get all that stuff while you're going, rather than what we did, which was shoot it running gun and just be like, we made it, we have a story and then have to go back and get all the stuff and do all of that stuff for months and months and months. And then you'll never forget to do it. no, no, no. Never like I'll just give you an example of a simple one is provide 300. Maximum quality stills. Each still has a description that describes what's happening in the scene, lists the name of every actor and the character they're playing. And, I'm trying to remember what else, it it's like all of this information that you have to write for each still, and you have to provide at least 300 of them. It's just like, oh my gosh. You know, and that, that's just one of, of, of maybe 200 things that we had to just hurry and provide. And their lawyer was really aggressive. And, so yeah, it's definitely been a, a learning experience and that's the kind of thing you want happening along the way instead. Interesting.

Kent Thalman: 23:53

Yeah. Well, that's so fascinating. And you know, like, I feel like that's in so many ways, I

Barrett Burgin: 23:58

feel like so Anna and I

24:00

are

Kent Thalman: 24:00

on post on our feature and you have to make a film.

Barrett Burgin: 24:06

To learn how to make it better. Yeah, that's right.

Kent Thalman: 24:08

And so like on the one hand, you're like, oh, I wish I'd done this all differently, but it's like,

Barrett Burgin: 24:12

I could

Kent Thalman: 24:13

have gone to school forever and never learned it. And I, and school is great. I value my education a lot, but, but there's just some

Barrett Burgin: 24:21

things

Kent Thalman: 24:21

I couldn't learn. I mean, I've even tried to take classes on distribution and, or like glean stuff from that. And I've learned some things, but then there's some stuff where it's like, I'm only remembering it

Barrett Burgin: 24:31

because I'm having to like walk the

Kent Thalman: 24:34

Fiery road, you know? And then I'm like, oh, I seem to remember something vaguely about that, but now I actually have to

Barrett Burgin: 24:39

learn it, you know? And I don't know, you just can't always learn how to do it without just doing it. And it doesn't stick as well when you haven't, you don't have something to apply it to. Yeah. I remember learning about markets and festivals and I was like, oh yeah, but now that sounds nice. Yeah. I completely agree. Well, and, and I, I definitely don't regret the educational process of it. I mean, I don't. Resent it, it was just, it's kind of a trial by fire. And to some extent, unless you're, you know, kind of Hollywood royalty or you have some in, your first feature is going to be that mm-hmm I, I, I feel like in film school, I learned how to tell a story. And by making this movie, I learned how to make a movie, if that makes sense in terms of like how to actually, how to actually make films in the industry or sell them to the industry or whatever. I learned far more from making this one picture than, than four years of film school. I just, the reason I wanna be careful with that is I want to qualify and, and say, I could have never made this without the lessons that I learned in film school. About, about story, about producing, about directing, about the, the magical wing witness and how you like keep, keep track of everything or the visual elements or all of that stuff, all informed, the film, but. But you have to, you have to do it to, to know it or to learn it, I think. Yeah.

Kent Thalman: 25:58

Yeah. That's well put, I like how you said that. No. Yeah. That's something that Anna and I have talked a lot about how, we can get wrapped up in some of the technical aspects of film, but the history and the theory will actually inform you as like, like a linguist in this medium. Yes. Whereas, However, we're also huge proponents of, I mean, that's like kind of like all we harp on, it's pretty much spoiler alert for every podcast episode we'll ever do is that the beginning, middle and end is to convince people to make their first feature because mm-hmm, that's, that's really just this, I think it's this scary thing that everyone tries to avoid or prepare for, or

Barrett Burgin: 26:33

somehow, or hope that it'll be handed to them or that there's a roundabout way. And there's just

Kent Thalman: 26:37

nothing like, like walking

Barrett Burgin: 26:39

through it, I guess, to your, your question earlier than Kent. Like I think the only reason we were able to get, as far as we were with cryo is we weren't trying to get this far. It was just making it to make it. And so like, I, in some ways it's hard to consider it my first feature, because I still see this as sort of a student film. You know, I was a student when I wrote and directed all of what's on camera besides maybe some inserts. And. And I'm proud of that, but like, like to me, if I had sat waiting for it to be the perfect opportunity or the perfect movie or whatever, it never would've been made. And so it's, it's to some extent, better to just go out once summer, be like, let's just try it. Let's just make something. If it's a colosal failure, then it's not a failure because you learned all this stuff and you can do it again. And, and if you don't, you know, Especially doing it so low budget, there was just not very much to lose. I mean, one of the things that made us made it possible for us to take so long is we just didn't have investors breathing down our neck. You know, we didn't have like a, a massive amount of money that we owed that if we, if we messed it up, we, you know, like it would really hurt our reputation. There was nowhere to go, but up with this movie, because it was so, you know, like shot at a garage kind of thing. And so, so I think it's really smart for, for, especially like, if, if said filmmakers are, are talented or well networked or whatever. People who like working on movies, like working on movies. And as long as they know that they're treating it like a passion project. And then if anything comes of it that they'll get a, a piece of the pie, so to speak. I think that it's absolutely worth doing, you know, I, I don't know the exact story. And I can't even remember who it was or who told me, but it stuck with me that there was a filmmaker who kept remaking his film over and over again. And he was submitted to festivals every year. And like, he just remake the movie until. After iteration seven or something, it was a masterpiece and it like launched this guy's career. And it's because he just kept trying it again, you know, and, and the first version sucked, but, but by version seven, he learned all this stuff and, and then there, the door was opened, you know, so absolutely worth it to practice and grind something out. Yeah. You look at most feature filmmakers and who have successful careers now and their first films. No, one's even heard of that's their film school. Yeah. And sometimes they even do remake it like Damien and Chael made guy in Madeline on a park bench Uhhuh, which is essentially Lala land, but it was in its early form of him figuring out that medium sands money. And no one sees that anymore, but that was his film school. And then he went and made Lala land and brought all the. Everything he learned and all the passion to that literally remaking

Kent Thalman: 29:33

like the same particular film is so interesting. Cause I know Hitchcock did it once or twice. yeah, that's true. But the, the interesting thing is, is that many people say that all filmmakers just make the same film over and over again. And like Ozu is like a good example of that, where you watch it. And you're like,

Barrett Burgin: 29:49

even like

Kent Thalman: 29:49

COTA now who's like kind of a child of Ozu in some ways. Maybe a, like a nephew or But he's like, There are things that were deeply interesting to us, but like, I don't know. Yeah. You're just gonna have to fail. That's I'd never, I'd like to know who that is.

Barrett Burgin: 30:05

I'll I'll, I'll look into that. I can't remember where I heard it, but I'll, I'll find it somewhere cuz it was that'd be great. Yeah. I'd love to intriguing story. So the other question I have for you is, is just getting into the specifics of how you approached the finances. And you did talk about that a little bit, but if we're allowed to know, like, what was the budget of the film? What have you made on the back end? All of that sure would be really interesting. We, we shot everything for 11 grand, and that was our original budget. And that 11 grand was raised the same way that people raised similar to that amount for a short film. I put a few thousand dollars into it. Mason put several thousand, we found generous. I, I would almost call them more donors than investors. I mean, we're gonna pay them back, but, but they, they never intended to see that money back. So it was like a grand here, a grand there, 500 here, 500 there, some parents helped. And we just kind of pulled that. I didn't do a Kickstarter because I've done that once. And I, I think that, Kickstart's amazing resource that, I wanna be careful not to overuse, right. Because when you put it out there, it becomes like, okay, here you go. And so we kickstarted the next door, but since then, I've usually gone off of sort of the, the clout of whatever my previous film was. And so we were able to raise 11 grand for, for cryo. And that covered really like our hard costs that covered craft that covered our location, our production design, you know, that crazy location where we shot was kind of pre preset. Roman, a lady who we hired brought his own area, Alexa classic. He had his own lights, you know, we rented some stuff, but so much of it was just, was just either donated or pooled or whatever. And then of course, as, as. Mentioned nobody was paid, on the front end, none of us. And everybody knew that was the, the risk going in. And, and I preferred that most of them thought, well, we may never see money from this. We're just doing this for, for fun. And, and because people have jobs or school or whatever, we had a lot of day players. We were just, we were just kind of rotating through people. It was like, Hey, do you wanna come work three days on cryo? And we, in fact, at the time in 2018, we kind of almost tried to create a certain mystique about it. And that worked. We purposely did not put out calls to anyone. We didn't post about it. We would just call individuals and say, Hey, if you can work, can you find somebody for the next thing? And, and our, our tactic worked perfectly, which was that after like five days of shooting, we were getting Fu like, Hey, what, what's this thing what's going on? What, why aren't I on the shoot? And sometimes. Utilizing FOMO works so much better and begging somebody to come do something because they're like, well, I don't know. But if it's like, what, there's a shoe, Barrett's doing something. What is the secret project? You know? And, and that got us tons of people to come and play for a day. And we could just hold the line. And our, our key people is who kind of maintained the vision and, and kept it going. And so that was all the budget that we'd spent. I mean, there were. Only hundreds here or there that we didn't really count the cost of, you know, that was, that was just gas or food or dinners for actors or whatever. And I don't mean on set. I mean, just, you know, yeah. Kind of whining and dining. And then. Once we got to that point where I mentioned where I was super stressed about post, because we finally locked the cut with no budget. And like that alone was just, it just took so long that I was like, I can't do two more years of this. Like I can't do, you know, begging people to work on VFX shots and whatever. I, I came up with a number in my mind. I was like, I think I need like 30 grand to finish this properly, you know, to, to, to buy out a sound editor, to buy out, VFX artists and whatnot. And even then having to stretch it and still not everybody getting all paid at the same time. The thing. Those people got paid up front, so they will not have any deferred pay when it comes in the back end. And so, because of that, while none of our rates were extremely high, the deferred pay rates were a little higher than the upfront rates kind of balancing if that makes sense. Yeah. And, and sure enough, I, I found a generous investor who watched half the film and decided, yep. I, I have the money. I can do it. I'm gonna dump 30 grand into this. That's not that much to have to get back if we're able to sell it. That definitely made it very real in like, we need to find distribution for this, but even doing just some of the crunching, the numbers, it's like, we could have made that back. If we had, have done our own theatrical run, like that's just not anything for making a movie. And so, so the total budget was about 41 grand. And so that, that money went quick, just kind of spread to different, different places, different people. And then. And then once we sold it to, to Saban, I'm not sure that I'm, I'm able to say exactly how much, but it covered all our hard investments. And so, and like I said, I'm, I'm not gonna see any money from this until we've paid back our whole crew. Then, if we keep making deals, then I'll be in profit. And like the four of us who are up on the above the line, we'll be in profit. But, but yeah, it, it easily covered our 41, which was great. And so, and then, and then paying our sales agents as well, a percentage of whatever we make from those deals. So the important thing is that nobody lost money. It's very, very good to make your investors, their money back. The people who worked for deferred pay are. Have mostly forgotten about it. you know, they just moved on with their lives. If we make that money back, they will have a nice windfall later on, which only in increases their, their confidence in, in working with me. And they are all aware as I sent out on an email being very transparent about what the sort of the, the, the financial process is going to look like. They're aware that my director's fee, since I had to charge one for step's paperwork was$1 and that I'll be the last person to make money. And so, so they'll eat first. I think that's only fair, especially given the fact that I stand to win the most from this movie. Like, it's my name on the poster. It's me getting in the articles and whatnot. And so I wanna make sure the crew is recognized, taken care of and know that if, if, if anything happens with it, they'll, they'll, they'll benefit from it. That's great. And did you predetermine with them what the deferred pay would be? So you kind of have that number Uhhuh yep. We know our actual budget. Yeah. So our actual budget, which included includes that 41, of the hard investments is somewhere closer to like between 150 to$200,000, which is actually kind of what it should be for, for a movie of the size mm-hmm And so, however, that's not our budget, that's not what we write down because that that's money has never been spent. That's just money that will go into their pockets if we make money from it. But that if, if I were to do this again, well, I guess when I do this again, cuz I'll never do it to Fred pay. Set up again. I think you have one of those, like a Kickstarter, like yeah. If you become like the deferred pay guy and people are just like, no, man, like I'm not working, but you can do one. And when you're a student, you know, so for, for, for my next film, I know I need at least that much. I mean, I have some, some treatments and some ideas that are more in the five mill range, but like there's one I'm working on that would probably need a budget about 500,000. And then we could just pay everyone up front set. Some of that, aside from marketing, it would still be a really tight, small picture, like, like cryo is. Yeah.

Kent Thalman: 37:59

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. So

Barrett Burgin: 38:01

are you, you're still, working with the sales agent to sell different rights off, right. It's or that totally done. He's still that's right? Yep. He's still landing deals. And I think we just got one in, Australia. We don't even really. We don't even really see these. I mean, we, we, we see the money come in, but that's the funny part is like, I think you guys asked me how it's been doing in theaters and I, I just don't know, like so much of that information is no longer relevant to me. And it's not that I don't want to know. It's more that like, They don't need to tell me, and they wouldn't be cagey about it, but it's, it's, they're not going out of their way to report to me like what their financial earnings are, right. Like how it's doing at the box office, I'll find out if they post it to box office mojo, or like, maybe ask them at the end or something, but they don't send us other than like, they'll send us press so that we can help promote the movie because that, that helps both of us. Right. We're not seeing any of that money. Oh, by the way, I think you were kind of asking this earlier is, we did, we did a high upfront deal and more or less gave the film away for them to do what they want to, and it. At least in our us deal for, for in perpetuity, right? We were not counting on rev share and we, weren't gonna try to finagle some rev share deal. Okay. Because this is how most independent filmmakers get completely screwed out of their money. And they'll make something for a bunch of money and never see a cent of it. Because if the distributor promises you like 50% rev share on paper, They the extra on marketing, they continue to market the film and then eventually declare it a loss. Even though they have made all this money, they're spending your half of the rev share. And so, because we know that they do that, especially to young new filmmakers, we, we kind of bargained for a, a strong high amount. That's still paid off. And I mean, they're, they I'm sure they were like, we're getting a steal. Like we are paying these guys so little for their movie, but it was more or less cost of entry. And because it covered our hard investments, it was like, Hey, this is, this is good for both of us. Yeah. Because nobody's lost money. We're we get this prestigious distributor and they get to get a movie for cheat that they're gonna make some money off of. And we're not doing some rev shared joke where, you know, like we never see a, a scent of it back. Right. And so, I don't remember what made me pivot to that, but that's just a, that's just, I guess, a warning for any listeners is just be really careful with those rev shared deals. We didn't have the money or the council, the lawyers, to be able to work a deal like that out where we have to check their numbers every year, every like quarter or whatever we just had to just, yeah, give us this. We'll give you that. We'll never worry about it, you know? Well, that's smart. Yeah. There's all kinds of horror

Kent Thalman: 40:52

stories. Well, and, and that's something I've learned. I mean, I wrote a book by lit wack called, deal making in the film and television industry. And he talks about that exact thing that you described where they, they they'll they'll write the costs off on another

Barrett Burgin: 41:04

movie as a business expense. Like not even your film, you know, and then they'll be like, right. And, and,

Kent Thalman: 41:08

but then he said, but if you have a good, entertainment lawyer, you can easily crack those numbers open. Do a good accounting on it and, and call them out and you'll get your money. And I'm like, okay. So what you're saying, Barrett, I think is really wise where it's like, well, we didn't, we didn't have a bunch of like late people. We didn't have that. So we just said, all right, you guys,

Barrett Burgin: 41:30

and we couldn't afford that. We, we would have to be banking. We'd have to spend more money that we didn't have to find a lawyer. At the, at the chance that the movie might do well, and, and I mean, some of, you know, it's, it's just, from what I see, like reviews wise, it's done. Okay. It's like, it's like a, it's like a five out of 10 for a lot of people, which I can completely live with. Like, to me, I'm just happy it's done. And it got made and is out there, but that's a big risk. If you don't have the capital versus, Hey, here's a bunch of money. It's not nearly maybe what you could make, but it's enough to pay this thing off. And so that in the future, that's where I was going with this in the future. I have more negotiating power to like, okay, I want this, this is my actual budget. We're like delegating some of it to finding an entertainment lawyer who who's really going to cross their Ts dot their eyes. We do it with distribution up front. We have the budget, it's all done, very by the book. And then. Then it's really on you, if it doesn't work because you have all the resources at your disposal, you know? Right. Yeah, yeah. One

Kent Thalman: 42:35

and if, if nothing else, I feel like that people putting all the money up front just makes it so that you have to do it faster. cause you're not that's right. Balancing like a day job and you're not like, you know, you're like, okay, we gotta get this thing done and make something out of it. But,

Barrett Burgin: 42:49

So when you raised that additional 30 K with that investor, did you use that for the American film market to attend? And, and did you do any festivals at all too? Or was that just, I don't remember. we did use some of it for festivals's festivals and there, and there's festivals, if that makes sense. Yeah, by the time we were kind of getting into the festival surrogate, we'd already found distributor, so it was more for, it was more for networking and connecting and like, I think, I think a lot of filmmakers. Don't quite know how to use the festival circuit. Or they think that like that, like by putting it in a festival, somehow there's a deal is gonna come outta that festivals in my experience, unless they're the, like the big ones, are kind of just a bunch of film, friends getting together and, and, and watching stuff. And, and I learned that on some of my shorts where I thought like, wow, you know, it's in this big festival, like, this is a pretty good one. I'm excited. And then at the end, people watch it and they clap and somebody walk up to me pat me on the back and be like, well done, bud, you know? And like, what's next, you know? And, and it's like, oh wait, I thought something was gonna happen, you know? Yeah. That's not true of the big festivals, right? Like there are some big, important festivals that, that a lot can come out of and it can help us. That's right. Yeah. But more or less. At every level, festivals are good for just collecting laurels. If you can put laurels on that thing. And it's like a fun, cool, you know, trendy festival, and it's got those laurels to, to, to somebody looking to acquire the film and distributed, they might know the difference, but they know the audience doesn't know the difference and it just looks good. You know, it's, it's like it like helps it. So three of our big festivals are not huge festivals, but they've looked good on press. Our, our sales agent is putting them on a version of the poster to help sell it in other territories. So like, I don't mean to poo poo festivals. It's just that. They're not necessarily the, the route to distribution, at least that they once were, you know, unless it's like Sundance slam dance, Berlin. Yeah. Huh? That's right. Yeah. Toronto, like, you know, there's, there's a few yeah. Uhhuh that's right. and then, and then as far as like what money we spent, I can't remember. It might have been Mason's personal money because he's the one that really attended it. Okay. We've kind of mixed some of those things, but we always keep track of our receipts. So like I spent a bunch of my own money putting it into festivals. I just wanted it to be in like my hometown festival, the Knoxville film festival. I don't know if it'll get in, because now it's out everywhere. But there were a few that it's like, I want to go to this. I'm willing to spend the money and I'm gonna keep the receipt and send it to, you know, our accountant basically. And, and then if we ever make that money back, it'll just be in a reimbursement later down the line. It's like, everything we've spent, we kept track of. So that in theory, we could get paid back, but it'll be, it'll be after all said and done maybe, and it's a cost I'm happy to absorb because you know, it's worth the, it's worth the trip, you know? So yeah, the bulk of'em we did, we did spend out of that amount, but special ones, I've spent a few hundred bucks on'em and, and I'm happy to do it. Cool. Well, I have

Kent Thalman: 46:00

a quick question and it maybe has to be somewhat of a concluding question. We are getting close, close

Barrett Burgin: 46:04

to

Kent Thalman: 46:04

time, but yeah. I wanna ask, so you've described this experience and I really think it's been a valuable thing to, to hear how you've walked through it. I wish we had more time,

Barrett Burgin: 46:15

but it's

Kent Thalman: 46:18

clear that that a big cash payout is not the value of making this film, even though that's always a possibility and,

Barrett Burgin: 46:27

and you weren't financially.

Kent Thalman: 46:29

Like, oh, we don't care about money. Like you didn't throw that out. You were responsible

Barrett Burgin: 46:33

about it. Right. But how would

Kent Thalman: 46:36

you describe as a filmmaker career wise, but also personally, what was the value of making

Barrett Burgin: 46:44

this film for you? That's such a good question, Ken, because you, you, you hit the nail in the head and that like, we, we built it around making money, but making money on this particular movie was never, my that's not what I'm getting out of. It, it, it, I considered an investment because I do wanna make money making movies, but, I'm willing to trade some of that now for more later, if that makes sense. It's, it's very much a law of the harvest kind of thing. And that, like, I consider this a seed that I can sew and, or, or like real estate. It's like just rolling it into the next thing, you know? So, for me, I guess, How did you phrase it? The, the last part of what you just said, is like, how do I see this? What's the value? Did you just put it Ken? Yeah. What the, the value, what was the value

Kent Thalman: 47:36

as a, for your career? There it is. And

Barrett Burgin: 47:38

personally, yes. Okay. Good question. So the value for me was the, the notoriety, the connections that, that it, that it made. I mean, the fact that you guys invited me onto your podcast, It's just like, that would not have necessarily happened without a project to merit it, you know? And there are, there are some other large podcasts that have reached out to me, other filmmakers, even if it's just local, the, the, the, the notoriety and the recognition and the doors that have been opened by making, by just simply making something are not calculable, you know, like if I want to go and direct some local ads at places, or if I want to go pitch something to by TV or whatever, I have a movie that I can be like, Hey, sorry, there's a train. I hope that's not missing my audio. you're good. I can go and be like, Hey, I have this movie that I made and I sold to Saban and they know it, you know, some of them have reached out to me and be like, wow, how'd you do that? That's really cool. And these are people that work for a, for a studio, you know, that puts stuff out all over the world. And so I think, I think the value for me personally has been. Also not tying, like you said, not tying all my financial resources to it. I think, I think the old saying of like, don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Right. I, I have gone into this assuming I will make no money. And so my financial. Endeavors have been, disconnected from cryo while still treating it like an investment that it's like, Hey, if it doesn't make me any, actually like, you know, hard cash, it will open the doors to make, make money and make more movies in the future. So that can't be everyone's value. You can't promise everyone exposure. You know, and we all know kind of the jokes about paying people an exposure, but you can pay yourself an exposure for sure. If you are, if you are the director, pay yourself an exposure because you will get the most of it. And kind of everyone above the line benefits like Mason has benefited enormously. Matt has benefited enormously, like those who are kind of in the producer director, writer, positions can write a check to themselves and exposure and it, it will pay off, And so, and then of course the value has just been the education, I would say. So like, it also allows me, if I, if I, if I make money doing this, doing another feature, I can actually write myself a day rate now, you know, because I'll have the money up front, up front to do it. So I think, I think it's good not to get too greedy on your first few things. And also why it's good to have other sources of income that for me, our media related, like I use my directing skills all the time for making money, but it's not just, it's not just going betting the whole farm on, on, on a narrative picture if I hope that makes sense. Yeah. Answer the question. Yeah, no, that's something we. Advice like, well, yeah, I mean, don't necessarily quit your day job right away. And, or, or you might be

Kent Thalman: 50:38

freelancing doing non feature narrative stuff and, and, you know, it's whatever. I mean, like some people might even be day playing on other projects for money. Like they might be like a contract worker for features and

Barrett Burgin: 50:50

especially where we, any of those, any of those I think work and all of them have their risks and their rewards. Right. I think a risk of freelance or, or doing like lots of advertising or a reward is that you're working. In the industry still like you're on set, you're doing stuff. It's, it's, it's adjacent to making a movie. The, the risk is that you can get burnout, right? It's like, oh, I just spent all day on set and now I have to go home, work on my script. I have a nine to five. That's really, really flexible with me and flexible with my time. They're proud of my movie. So that's really helpful. It's media related the reward is that I don't get burnout. I can go home and I can keep working on my creative projects. And it's not as connected. The risk is because it's a nine to five when, and if I do my next picture, there's some finagling and some working and I'm not completely in control of my schedule. And so all of those have inherent risks and rewards, but I think, I think unless, unless you just know you are a total genius and you're crazy enough to go after it, and then you have like a 5% chance that your thing is gonna be the one, I think for most of us practical filmmakers and especially those of us who are married with families who cannot just throw everything to the wind, but are kind of living, I wouldn't call it two lives, but there's kind of two communities, two kind of overlap. Right. And then you, you add, you add married family and then high demand religion into that. And it's very, like, there's a lot of overlap there. I think, I think it's very smart to, to treat this with all the sincerity and seriousness of an investment of a business, but also with the financial reservation of a PA passion project, you know, that it's like spend some money on it, spend money on this instead of a vacation or something, but don't, you know, I, I, I was never gonna take out a second mortgage. Right. I was never going to, go all out unless I knew for sure. That by betting the farm, I was gonna make, make a return. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's good advice.

Kent Thalman: 52:54

That is really good advice. And, you know, and, and so we've, I mean, we both are in very similar situations

Barrett Burgin: 52:59

Famili

Kent Thalman: 52:59

and career wise and, and whatnot. But however, what we, what differs is what you were explaining the difference between having a nine to five and being kind of freelance and, and so Anna and I work for ourselves and, and, but you know, the, the, the pros to that, like you said, like, I can, we can just say, let's go shoot pickups, this day, next week. And we don't have to negotiate with anyone, like to give us permission to do that. But at the, at the same time, we can have a bad month and it can be like, oh,

Barrett Burgin: 53:25

okay, halt the movie. You know, right. Which luckily still under our control, because like you

Kent Thalman: 53:30

said, it's that first feature is very, like, you don't have anyone breathing down your neck. So it's like, all right, just pause. But that can be why some of these first features can take a very long time, even no one was following. He talked about

Barrett Burgin: 53:41

how that was. Long production, a new long process of just shooting on weekends. Yeah, yeah. You know, with friends like mm-hmm, like, but it's also, it's also encouraging because I think the reason we don't see more of those is just not a lot of people do it. Not a lot of people like finish that's the thing is when all is said and done cry is not a perfect movie. There's some problems with it. There's some things that frankly, and I won't go into this, but there's some things that were kind of outside of my control too, you know? But at the end of the day it's done, you know, like it's, it's over it's it's behind me. And anyone who's listening, if you finish that first feature, most people who really matter who you're trying to get on their radar, aren't even gonna watch it. They just wanna know that you made it right. They just wanna be like, oh, you finished something. Huh? Okay. And that sets you apart. You know, the fact that no one, no one did what anyone could do. Anyone. His age at that time. And frankly, anyone now even cheaper could go out with their friends over the course of a year and shoot a mind bender, contemporary black and white thriller using windows as they're light. You know, it was just scrappy and smart and consistent. And you don't have to be freaking west Anderson or Quinton Tarantino to do that. You just have to make something and chisel away at it until it makes sense. And that's super encouraging, I think. Yeah. And I think that's why it is so beneficial to your career is because so many, so few people actually do it all the way through, right. Like you said to the end. And so that alone is like, and oh wow, you it's right

Kent Thalman: 55:13

enough. Like, you know, you hired a mixer and a colorist and like you watch it. And you're like, this

Barrett Burgin: 55:17

feels finished. It's it's good. You know, it's not just like, oh, this is like, Right. Yeah, that's true. Before we leave, tell everyone how we can go watch cryo so we can see what you've made. Oh yeah. Okay, well, it's, it's available to rent or download on a number of, platforms that's on apple TV and. iTunes, Amazon video, voodoo, Google play YouTube. Like you can buy it on YouTube and watch it there. Let me see if I'm missing any, there's just, you know, if you have like direct TV, it's actually on direct TV. Nice. They put it all over the place. Microsoft movies and TV spectrum. So all of those are ways to, to, to rent or download it. It may in the future go to streaming or be streamed. It, it might bounce around Netflix and, Hulu and stuff, but I really don't know that'll be up to Saban, but it's definitely rentable in a number of places to, to watch.

Kent Thalman: 56:14

Okay. Is it, is it doing any theatrical run in Utah

Barrett Burgin: 56:17

anymore? It is. Yep. So, so today is the last day it will be in. Kind of my era of Utah county, it will play for a few more days up in, a couple more Megaplex theaters, Jordan commons and valley fair mall, I think, it was also, I think it's done and it's theatrical run in some of these other places, but it was in LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit. And then, like I said, those three theaters in, in Utah, so it had a nice little local theatrical, kind of limited theatrical run, which was, which was really cool. I'm going tonight, actually on its last night with my now mentor and old professor Jeff paren. Oh, to watch it together cuz he hasn't seen it and he's gonna gimme notes, you know? Like that's great. live, I guess.

Kent Thalman: 57:04

I dunno if that sounds exciting or horrifying. Yeah.

Barrett Burgin: 57:07

I mean it's both, but it's it's I wanted it. I asked for it cuz I wanted some. Some notes on how to, how to improve. So, oh, that's great. Love Jeff. I have, I have one more piece of advice and you can cut it out if you want, but I have to be honest about it and give credit where credits due. Mm-hmm so, so this might just be for you guys and this might be for your listeners. But in attempting this film, I'm, I'm very religious. I'm very involved in my faith and, I just think there's value in, in petitioning a higher power in what you do. Like I was, even though this is a dark. Twisted thriller that frankly might even, depending on how, how the viewer interprets it, they could even read it as a, a critique of religion. It's not. And I can explain my themes for those who watch it, but, but so this isn't like some family friendly, inspiring film, but that said, I think it's valuable for, for anyone who, who believes in God or a higher power or, You know, vibes or the universe or whatever, whatever it is. For me, it's God, to, approach your projects in prayer. For me, there are so many things that happened on this film that are not my doing like there, I can't take credit for it, cuz it was just serendipitous. It was just lucky or to me blessings, like it was just something that just happened. And so my recommendation is if you are a young kind of scrappy filmmaker, you need to acknowledge that there's a big world out there. That's bigger than you are. And so it is healthy and whether it's from a spiritual. Angle or for a, from a, just kind of an internal mindset angle. It is healthy to pray for help, look for help, petition something higher and holier than you are. And so throughout this film, I, I was prayerful. I considered this sort of my crop or my blocks, I guess, and was extremely prayerful on this picture as I've been in the past and prayed for really specific things like prayed that the lighting would be right or that we would finish our day on time or, or we were not, we did not have, what we needed for our location. So like actually praying that we would find the location that we needed and then crazily finding it in some, some pretty unique ways. And so rather than, rather than being generic in general of like, oh, I just hope this really goes well. And that it's the right thing to do. My advice would be to get specific in one's, in one's seeking and. And praying and sort of contemplating what it is that needs to be achieved in the film. Yeah. Thank you so much for adding that. Oh, we're, we're definitely cutting that out. No stop. it's definitely staying in I, I don't know exactly what your, your demographic is, but I feel wrong when I don't acknowledge the help. That was not my own, you know, so our demographic get over it. no, it's true. It's something we talk about a lot. Just the idea that all films are faith films, first of all, just because you have to believe in it when no one else does that's. And I love your,, pointing out the specificity and, and praying for specific things is a really a good point that all films

Kent Thalman: 1:00:15

are face. Films is actually something that, Todd Todd Gardner said he had a great podcast called the producer's guide and he,, I, I don't know how religious he is personally, but he,

Barrett Burgin: 1:00:24

He produced

Kent Thalman: 1:00:24

movies like triple X and Pearl Harbor and all these things. And, and he was just like,

Barrett Burgin: 1:00:29

as a producer, as an independent producer in Hollywood, he says, my job is

Kent Thalman: 1:00:33

to believe in something and just hear the word no, all day

Barrett Burgin: 1:00:37

long and he's, and

Kent Thalman: 1:00:39

he's like, so you have to have faith to be a producer. Like, yes, I appreciated that he's all films are

Barrett Burgin: 1:00:44

faith films. And it is such a big machine with so many little tiny, teeny, tiny little parts that have to all be working. That it is miraculous. If it, if it turns out and to your point, like it's finished. That alone is a miracle.

Kent Thalman: 1:00:56

Like when you, when you know, when you've walked the road, you go, oh, this guy finished a film. Like we, we will all look at people who, you know, in 10

Barrett Burgin: 1:01:03

years, 20 years as we keep making films. And when someone

Kent Thalman: 1:01:05

comes up to say, Hey, I finished a future. We're gonna go,

Barrett Burgin: 1:01:07

okay, you finished? Congratulations can die. Now, I, I did what I wanted as a little kid and it's like, I did it at least once I, I, you know, I can go into that. The, the gray, the gray CS, you know, or whatever, I can sail away. yeah. That's awesome. Well, congratulations. That is a major accomplishment Barrett. And thank you so much for all your advice. And we will stick a link in the show notes too. Probably the IMDB page, so people can find the film and figure out to watch it. And thanks again. We, we really appreciate it. Thank you for having me and congrats to you guys on love and lost, and I hope I hope everything continues to come together. I, I can't wait to see it. I'm I'm sure it's gonna be fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks for you too. Welcome. Okay. See ya. Bye bye. Bye bye.