8 Found Dead

Hey, Robb, what would you do if you got to an Airbnb and discovered it was double-booked? Well, that depends on if the double-booking was, like, sexy coeds or some kind of... Freaky theater people. Does that mean you'd hang out with the freaky people? I'm a married man.

Hey, hello, and welcome to Indie Film Lodge, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of independent filmmaking from the bottom up.

I'm Matt Jackson. And I'm Robb Padgett. Today we're talking about sound design and mixing, and, you know, other things too.

But we're gonna focus on sound, and with us to talk about it is Travis Greene, Director, producer and sound designer of the fantastic 8 Found Dead. Hey, Travis. Oh, fellas, thanks for having me on.

It's an honor. Of course. We couldn't do this without you. So... So, I've seen 8 Found Dead. I know Robb's in 8 Found Dead. But I'm gonna guess somebody listening hasn't. Can you give me a quick pitch of what 8 Found Dead is, basically?

It's one tale of four different stories kind of intersecting over one long, bloody and horrific night of

Carnage and mayhem. It's um What happens if you double book an Airbnb and kind of like a It's Goldilocks, a messed-up version of Goldilocks. You know, people trying out different spaces and

What fits. And it's basically a whodunit, but we don't really care whodunit. We care who survives Because we know who's done it We tell you within the first 30 minutes whodunit, and then you have to sit with that for the next 60 minutes. Kind of they're just slow dread of like how does it happen? It's very Alfred Hitchcock showing the bomb and then letting the people kind of exist with it Well, you show part of the bomb because it's 8 Found Dead. We see I don't want to spoil the first five minutes of the movie

We see somebody die in the first couple minutes of the movie. They're not part of a couple, and then there's three couples. Somebody will live somebody will die. Yeah, I think there's 10 cast members in it Which, if you're a filmmaker, aspiring filmmaker listening to this, and you're doing your first feature, Don't have 10 cast members stick to like three to five Yeah, Robb and I talked about that a lot because, you know, I had a cast of, I think officially, it was a thousand.

It was—you had 25 credited characters. Yeah, plus the thousand extras. And Robb did it where he had like six. So I think, yeah, the advice is, you're correct, Travis. Fewer is always better. 8 Found Dead: start with eight dead people and just two people. Just one found dead.

Well, there you go. My favorite review on Letterboxd is: '8 Found Dead, one found dead in front of the TV.' I love the bad reviews Even though I'm proud of the film, I really respect the creativity of the negative reviews around the film. Sure, yeah, those man those Letterboxd reviews can get real real harsh and you know god bless them people are offended

Yeah, offended they are yeah, how dare you show me this movie I can't believe I just spent 299 on this piece of crap and I'm like well, thank you for your patronage, you know Mine was free and they still complained So, you know, watching 8 Found Dead, it reminded me of, you know, the Hitchcock movie, but also, like, Barbarian.

Even though I know Barbarian came out afterwards so obviously they were inspired by you No, no, no, no. While I was editing the film, a dear friend of ours... Showed me the trailer to Barbarian, and he was like, 'Hey, they're doing your movie.' I was like, 'Cool, that sucks.' I should just uh Should we come up with a whole new subgenre niche of Airbnb, you know, Cabin-in-the-woods-type films? There's Airbnb-in-the-woods-type films, right, falling into that. And, you know,

We did look at things like The Rental um What was another one? I mean The Rental wasn't an inspiration at all. We're like, uh We can still do that. It's not totally the same But the biggest inspiration not to get ahead and I know you're no no no get ahead. I was gonna ask Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the main inspiration for this film. Which, you know, I'm gonna really show my butt here: I have never seen...

Yeah, I never make the film. I've watched it in college. So do I remember? Not really, but I remember how witty and banter-y it was. That's what my writer Jonathan Buchanan said. Bantry that is what my writer Jonathan Buchanan said We were like looking to do a film and I sold my house in LA in July of 2020 and was like wow um

I finally have money and I can make something. And I put it all on black, Basically, which was this horror film so I put everything that I made off of that house into this film Because I didn't think it was gonna go anywhere. I didn't think I you know is the height of COVID And I thought might as well now or never and so I just rather than saving the money I just kind of um he had an idea he could fit

The story within the budget constraints and he was like if it's talky if it's more kind of Psycho thriller mystery we can save costs and expense on like big set pieces and kind of you know blood guts and gore and just make it more kind of a mind

It's a heavy trip. He's like, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is that. It's just like one night of people just Bantering and arguing with each other, using their words as knives. And I said, I watched the film and then I go, 'I get what you're going for here. Let's do it.' I fell in love with it. And our two antagonists,

They're named after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, so Richard and Liz. Wow. And they're set on Albee Road. Oh, nice. Edward Albee wrote the play. Oh, yeah. That's theater degrees coming in handy. I'm telling you all right So I want to put a pin in that because that is a really interesting nugget But I want to ask you first Are there any other movies that you used as inspiration for this, as opposed to just Virginia Woolf, or was it just Virginia Woolf and you're like,

'Bing, baby, let's go'? Virginia Woolf for the dialogue, and kind of the Interpersonal connections of, like, in Virginia Woolf it's always two people going after another person.

And in this we kind of kept it There's a lot of scenes with four people in a scene and there's always two people or three people People ganging up on the other And so I thought that that was interesting. That was an interesting kind of dramatic motif Um as far as classic horror it would be of course The Strangers because that's just bleak and nihilistic Misery was another one, where it was all contained, even though it wasn't, you wouldn't look at this home

And be like, 'Oh, they're ripping off Misery.' Like, I like the nuttiness of Annie Wilkes. I'm kind of modeled her after our antagonist Liz Played by Rosanne Limeres, and Remember And the merisemic and I you know is giving her like play that cool calculated Unhinged Kathy Bates Yeah, now that you say Misery I can totally see the the performance connection. There's even some mr. man Going on in the in the movie you hot it that yeah she brings in the mr. man. Yeah, that's a direct grip

I just dropped that as an ad-lib. Um, trying to think of anything else. Score-wise, The Shining and Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood and Just the isolation of I love the desert aesthetic you know growing up in the southwest

Originally the film was going to take place in a cabin in the woods, like outside of Lake Arrowhead, but when I sold my house I was living in a ranch in Twentynine Palms. And I thought oh this would be a pretty good when I first You want the whole story? I mean we're here for yeah, yeah Basically sold the house. I had nowhere else to go So my dog and I moved out. I just wanted to get away. It was in the height of COVID. I wanted to get out of LA

So I moved to Twentynine Palms and I'm staying in this ranch that is on acreage And it was gorgeous, in this area of Twentynine Palms called Wonder Valley. And um when I first got there with my dog I was checking out the place lovely mid-century modern kind of ranch-style house. They had a record player. They only had a few

Actual albums, and one of which was Guardians of the Galaxy. And I'm not a big fan of that, well, Nor the soundtrack to it's all they had so I put it on sure I then was just kind of—I rolled myself a joint, poured myself a glass of bourbon, and then went out to gaze under the stars in Wonder Valley.

And I'm getting nice and toasty, a little high and a little buzzed, and all of a sudden I hear this faint sound of music Coming from inside the house and I for a moment had this kind of petrified mortified Feeling of dread that someone was in the house, like I double-booked this place, like someone... I'm in the wrong house, you know? That's where the Goldilocks thing comes in. And After praying for the aliens to kind of zap me away and I was like no idiot you put on the record player

That's just Guardians of the Galaxy on low... And as like no one's here, but then when Jonathan said he could come up with a one His biggest inspiration is Tape. I've never heard of Tape. Ethan Hawke. A Linklater indie film from the early 2000s. All right. It was just three people in a room and he was inspired by that and he he was trying to write something like that I said well, I have this ranch and I have this idea about like

Double Airbnb being booked, and, like, friends trying to meet each other, and someone actually accidentally got murdered,

And the other friend is trying to like cover it up even though it was an accident That's not what happened in the film. He kind of took that and kind of morphed it into his own narrative Which I loved using my space my ranch as kind of the setting And they kind of just went from there. Like, he loved the idea about mistaken identity, double-booking an Airbnb.

And you show up and someone's already there. What do you do? So did you guys come up with the idea together? Did he come to you with the idea? He went away when I said that I was looking for a film I gave him some Things in my life that were happening some of the character relationships between the cast the main Three couples that's based partially on my life partially on our lead actress Carrie, her name is Aly Trasher. That came from her life and friends of hers.

She knew certain people like that and then Jonathan's just own twist on it He created the whole cop situation. He created the killers Like kind of now those are all part of his Brain and imagination. So we kind of made an amalgamation of that, Wipped it up in a blender and came up with this non-linear motif because he knows but like he he basically did this thing when he was pitching

The idea of the film. I didn't know he was writing it, but he had beaten it out on three-by-five index cards And started like doing this like dog and pony show where it's like you This happens then this happens and it was all color coded so I could track the journey or the arc of each couple and how They died. Because that was the toughest thing filming it, is we did block shooting, and I had to know

Multiple who, what, where, when and whys, like, what's my motivation for this, where are we in the story? That the whole chess game of it all and I had to do that out of order So it was those color coded cards really helpful for me to kind of track and remember where we're at in the Story. So when you said block shooting, you'd block by location, not by actor? Correct. Just shoot everything out here shoot everything out in the kitchen shoot everything out in the den shoot everything outside

And so it was like constantly like Having everyone on set and did you do that because of the jib arm? Oh A little bit. I thought that I could. We mismeasured the jib. I had shot a short about like three or four months earlier with this great jib operator name

Sean Mulligan, and he has this 20-, 30-foot jib that he can break down to nine feet and put it on dolly track and basically do a faux Technocrane. I guess what they call it is a China dolly, where you have the articulating boom arm and you're on track. Like, I shot a 12-minute short film in, like, six hours with this jib because I was able to go anywhere and everywhere and just roll off multiple camera...

Yeah If I wanted to close up immediately I could push and get it I could swing, I could dolly, and I could boom up and down. Like, I could knock out a shot list that would normally take,

You know, I seem to take three or four hours. I could knock it out in an hour with this thing And he's like how tall are your ceilings? I measured them. I said 10 feet. He's like perfect. I've got a nine foot arm Oh, there's there's a two or three foot jib that you have to give for like the mast or like the back anchor

I don't know what it is, but like We, you know, I thought that I could shoot this entire, you know, 77-, 83-page script, whatever it was, in seven days,

Which is what we allotted for and we did not bake it on that first we shot in an actually 16. There was 11 Principal, or nine principal, and then six kind of pick-up... A seven-day shoot is aggressive. Well, we've been shooting ours, like, I make these little movies with a producing partner of mine,

And they we shoot like seven days Six days eight days, but it's all handheld and it's real Simple stuff. It's all, you know, talky-talky mumblecore style. Yeah, that's what our film actually ended up becoming, and

Because I was pissed when we Assembled the jib in the living room and it was like we don't have any give we can only shoot this way We can't give you the full access that you want, and it's like, what? We're screwed, because I had spent three months

Shot-designing and storyboarding this with the help of my cinematographer Ryan Valdez, and we wanted a smooth, kind of milky,

Floaty experience and then it kind of turned into a handheld on the shoulder Vérité, improv-y kind of feel. There's moments where it's like there's some cinematic

Language or execution, but then a lot of it's just the most interesting part are actually just when it's handheld and it's right up

Two three feet away from the actor, you know like that's where the bet is and that's what I've learned as a filmmaker for the past

Ten years, is getting closer, closer, closer. Like, establish—don't need to do three or four takes of a wide shot. Do one or two and then get into the meat into your coverage in my opinion Oh, no, what you want and know you're blocking and and this by the jib not fitting into the space all my blocking went out the window

We, so about 20 years ago, we actually shot a short film That was all on a jib arm, but we it was that thing you'd go anywhere It was just like having—it was like having a Steadicam, is the way we were treating it. That's how I treated it on my short film is like with the track with the arm. It's almost just like just go wherever you want

Well, so uh one of the things we we like to ask Travis and you've kind of answered this question for us. I mean part of it

I always like to ask what the obsession, the pivot and the miracle are on every film, because every film

Involves, doesn't matter how big they are, how small they are, they always involve these three moments. And so you said that you were In the desert and you wanted to make a feature or you you had the money But the piece that I want to ask you about is like what made you take the risk? Especially like July of 2020 like we're all thinking about a mortality. We're all like close to death

And you've shaken up your life like it what was it about this idea that you're like yeah I want to bet literally the house on this. I'll be alright Yeah, you know that was 38 and I was getting divorced and I was drinking heavily because of the

Pandemic like you could just drink any you didn't have to go out to the bar and no one What's in here? But um, I'm three and a half years sober FYI. I got sober after this film. Congratulations. By the way. Thank you so much

Um, I was drinking on set. I don't recommend that. I was just I was depressed. I made it out of spite and hate I didn't have a good time on the film. Sure. Um, it was mainly just like I thought the world was ending so might as well go out with a bang why save for a future if I could go back in time I would have tried to shoot it for what I set out to do But then because I was not in a great mindset or state of mind

You were just saying yes. Yeah, we can spend that. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let's just get it. You know, you like I was paying for problems to go away Instead of sticking to my guns, being like, let's shoot it for this. Like, I doubled what I wanted to shoot it for. It's easy to do. Yeah, you're not you're definitely not alone. Yeah On that podcast with Adam Green and Joe Lynch, I said I was drinking every day on set, and like a couple times

I like teared up in the morning feeling sorry for myself only in front of trusted people and then Adam Green was like Oh, so you're a director like you were directing Well, like welcome to the club. Yeah, right? It's crazy. It's crazy. Well, how that feels although I will tell you Most of my career's built on spite. I met so many people when I was coming up when they were like what do you want to do and I was like I want to direct and like how you idiot

And I was like hey fuck you. I'm gonna do this and I You know that that spite really like turns the engine for a long time. It's not healthy, but it turns you know

I don't know I think spite is slightly underrated because I became an actor Sort of that for the same reason because people like now you can't do that like well hell yeah I can and became a singer for the exact reason like you can't sing I'm like hell yeah I can I became a film director for that reason too. We didn't have a film program like I'm gonna I'm gonna make a movie that people want to watch here at this this college sure did I did I do that?

I don't know but I tried I mean I was motivated by spite a lot There's still a little bit of spite that drives me now. I want to show people I can make a movie for the next to nothing Sure got a lot to prove And my yeah, I had done like I think 12 or 14 Short films and people have been saying I think Matt you would oh yeah Future do a feature. God do a feature. You know And a couple of my other friends had always been pushing me that way

I never had I was like how do you get the money for that like and you can do it under $10,000 It's just you have to be a little more crafty and a little more strong willed and Now you're more but like um, I didn't need to spend what I spent on this film and I I'm glad that I went through that to know

And avoid the pitfalls what you do need what you don't need what I'm lacking Which kind of gets into You're Next bit of like right? Yeah, I mean listen We're gonna we're gonna get to a lot of things, but yeah, go for it I mean if I could go back and do it again I would pare down the cast, even though Jonathan was adding to his... It's making it more interesting because it's giving you... And I said he initially called it Found Dead.

And it's like what is that from that's cool title and he's like, you know like you're on Yahoo And you see, like, '8 found dead on the side of the road in Utah,' and it was like, that's cool. So a news article put the number in it that way we can I didn't think like oh if we put the number in it It's we're gonna fuck with people and make them guess, but like that's kind of what happened Sure up because I thought like the number eight sounded a it puts us up if you know like

In festivals if you have a number in your title you go to the top up. Yeah So that was my cheat. That's what I was thinking. Because I had just done a film called Ten Essentials and it was playing festivals, and we were always at the top. Is it really that good? Oh, no, it's a badical, you know, it was really that good trash Yeah, I like tennis because it is the is my most favorite thing that I've done. I don't know if you can see it

I have it because I'm a terrible friend. That is pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Is it available somewhere? Ten Essentials is Um, no, I kind of hid it. It did a festival run. It's on Vimeo, but I'm not gonna say go to... I'm trying to get off Vimeo. Like, Vimeo's getting off itself. Hopefully. I only use it for my reel and stuff, my professional stuff, when I'm like, hey, Don't go to my YouTube check out this

I'm trying to move everything over to YouTube to create kind of a one-stop shop of all my short films, Plus Whatever crap I have out there and Ten Essentials was just it was the smartest thing that I've done It was the most kind of measured and disciplined because I rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed on that. And I applied that to 8 Found Dead. We had the time to Do rehearsals and backyards and living rooms and

Give ample time to do it right and I've never really rehearsed Any of my other short films that were just like, here's the script, you read it, okay, let's just workshop it. I'm gonna say yeah Yeah, um, and that's what I learned about making a feature film is it is making Like 40 short films every day like you're the constant wave of just like you're not You're not done. You got through yesterday, it's gonna get worse tomorrow. And I had good encouragement on this set from

Trusted Friends and veteran actors who are also producers who were reminding sending me little text messages in the morning before we would shoot

Being like doing great. There's no muni yet You know, like, a three-hit guy thing you strive to do. Many directors either yank or quit, storm off.

There was some like some of the cat some of the crew members who weren't friends but just day hires They were just like hey these conditions are kind of rough dude like You know and I said What I'll do is work your eight to ten, go to bed, and then anyone else who wants to stay and continue making the movie, We'll go into what was called—and Ryan Valdez, our cinematographer, actually titled it—homie hour.

So a lot of the film was actually made in homie hour, where people were there because they like or love me. We're just like let's get it done. We're down. We're out here. Let's shoot so we would go 12, 14, 16 hours Sometimes and I'm just trying to be mindful of that because it was night shoots and the days were weird and about halfway through I was like shit. We're only gonna get to like maybe seven

50 60 minutes of content like we're shooting a fucking 70 minute trailer right now I didn't think that it was gonna be made and I had great encouragement from My writer Jonathan saying we can do it. We push that rock up the hill before on other projects Laura Buckles, who plays Officer Blake, Oh, yeah, uh, fine Climb yeah, she was the Production manager slash AD, and she was like, 'I've been through this before. You're doing great. You're on...

Pickups. You've heard of pickups? We work with pickups. We'll pick this stuff up.' I picked a lot of things up that didn't require us being 90 miles east of Los Angeles in LA, you know But smart I I love the B-roll in in the movie like they really it really sets the Sets the scene sets the the tone Of it in a way that I I was always Of the things I've disappointed in that that I've done in the past is is not focus on B-roll and because you don't think about it

When you're in the moment you're like B-roll. Yeah, it's just like we need the meat, and then you forget that, like, what makes the scene is the garnish.

The be yeah, and with intention my whole thing in this film was especially I think the acting was very good and and my direction with the actors was great because I didn't really direct them They came prepared, you know, and they got it as much as I got it from Jonathan, you know, we were all kind of in sync and

I allowed them to kind of Carve in or shade their characters however they saw fit. And they would bring up ideas on set, and it was all—we were all going towards, striving for the same thing.

I was like I if they had a question or were on the fence about something I'd be like answering what the intent was like

What is the motivation behind what are we getting to what are we trying to get out of this scene rather than it just feeling like Occupying real estate or blank space like have some purpose And the B-roll was shot purposefully, with intent and focus, Rather than just sitting there to be like look at this like so that's sort of what you know We're running into with these very low budget movies that I'm making is we don't have a lot of time to capture B-roll

But like when you're scrolling through Stock footage to find some drone shot that matches your location Because you got nothing else and you kind of need to cut to something You know it can get kind of depressing. I'm like why didn't we you know, but the intention is the thing if you if you can think about that Actually when you're writing now I think even encourage people to write their B-roll into their script

Like what do we see why are we seeing it why are we here why you know instead of just Here's the valley. Spielberg's blocking is with intent. Like, he's moving a camera purposefully, not just to show off, at least in my opinion.

And not just to tell you we're in the valley now we're in downtown You know what's just the purpose right this is great. Don't mind me why I go back to the uh my little checklist of things

I assume that the pivot, the big pivot, was obviously the Technodolly into handheld stuff, which, by the way, I couldn't really tell what was on the dolly and not. The camera work is so still and purposeful in the picture that, like, there's times

You can tell that it has a little bit of a wiggle because we're running away from a table being flipped or whatever, but It all Fits cohesively in that—in the stillness of the Airbnb, which I think didn't feel like a pivot to me. I've felt you know some people use dollies and jibs and some people use handheld together Does it you know I would never have known if you hadn't mentioned it in the behind the scenes footage

Two days or a day before we were set for principal, I called my therapist and I go, 'Well, We're fucked. The jib doesn't fit and I spent three months storyboarding this.' He goes, 'Hold on.' You can always get your way out of this like I said the only other thing is handheld and that's just gonna just There's no style to it. It's just like in your face even though I love like things like 21 Grams where it's like it's very handheld

And it's very raw and it's that wasn't what I was trying to do. I was trying to do some magical. I was trying to do you know kind of like Sterile and and Sterile and floaty, and that didn't happen. And he goes, 'Didn't you say that you're with the best cinematographer you know?' Didn't you say that he's been at every rehearsal? Didn't you say that he knows the script and these actors intimately like you do didn't you say that he's fine with just throwing the 30 pound rig on his shoulder

And he's like, 'Use this accident to be like, no, we fucking wanted it,' you know? And it was a bold choice that was the biggest pivot that and he he pumped me up And I wouldn't have made it through this film without like checking in with him every other day. That's great advice The biggest pivot after that was the music. Oh, I had hired a composer, and we submitted a rough cut to Screamfest, got into that.

And I checked him with my composer saying how are you doing with the score? He's like I've got like the first 10 minutes. It needs to be done in three weeks. Where are you with the rest of the cues? He's like, 'I can't do that in three weeks.' And I love this dude, Alexander Julius Wright, and he's a phenomenal Composer, worked at Bleeding Fingers with Hans Zimmer for a little bit, and he couldn't do it. So I

Told Jonathan, and the writer's like, we got into Screamfest, but we have Like 80% of this cannot be exhibited at a festival without I mean it could You technically could play it, but we can't sell it with all this, like, you know, popular music and Temp music from original soundtracks. And so Jonathan said, 'Well, can you do it?' Because I have a background in music, and that's how I met Jonathan, as I was recording his band. I'm a record...

And so I was like, yeah, I guess. Like, I can just dust off the keyboard and play with some drones and some sounds and stuff. And it was great that we had that

Music in there so I could model off that make it a real kind of minimal the dude Very German and basic kind of attempt of a score. And, um, I I love Native Instruments. I love this library called Thrill that'll make you sound like you know how to score a horror movie, and just use

That ad nauseam while a now I'm scoring another film because of it and I've gotten into beat production again and like recording stuff

I use Thrill quite a bit, actually. Thrill? Yeah. That's fun, right? Yeah, yeah. It's fun to use too, if you can figure out, yeah, moving the little thing around. Yeah, there's some spooky vibes. Now I'm Bernard Herrmann. Yeah, and I'll stack them all up on top of each other and just kind of, yeah, it's fun.

I don't understand your Music composing stuff you jerks. It's like two samples And then there's a little grid in between and you can kind of choose the intensity and the mix, like yeah,

You have like violins on one side and like a cello on the other, and you have this little XY wheel that you can move

Like across your mousepad and it starts to Bring in these phrases of instruments and tweak. You can tweak the phrasing, you can tweak the key, you can tweak how much of a blend it is.

So you can just really orchestrate your own stuff. Yeah, and you can play it like an instrument almost you can sit there and just kind of Showing it down. I want it up. I want it down. Cool. That's in that's incredible You know, I saw your credit as as music and I I didn't understand the

Level of music that you did Travis. That's incredible. I had 22 tracks in three weeks to get it right How's the note process on that on the music? It was from the director. I assume that the war actual is a real case of shit. No, no, no So basically we flipped roles like Jonathan was watching me edit. I had three editors on it I had Neil Evans who did the first rough cut and then my father took it over and did another pass

He didn't change like he he brought it some life and then I did a final pass on it where I added sound design and kind of just a little polish and

Jonathan was over my shoulder for that So he was kind of playing executive producer to me the editor so like Just so I could stop being director and just be like, 'What do you think? You tell me if I'm geeking out or going over the cliff.' Bring me back in yeah, and same thing happened with the score. I would show him. Does this work? Is this weird? Is this feel he's like that works feels good to me like feels like a movie, you know nice nice

I mean, it's it's really a testament to how filmmaking is a team sport like you can do it all by yourself

But it always helps to have a pair of eyes or extra ears, just somebody else to Bring it back from the ledge if you're going to the ledge. I was actually thinking I was talking to my wife about that actually It was like why don't I score my own movies because I score people stuff But I don't like to score my own movies And it's because I don't have that person going you know what even when it annoys the hell out of me when I'm doing it

They're like, yeah, I don't know if I like to can try something else But I won't do that to myself. I'll just endlessly wonder if what I'm doing is what I should be doing You know, like I've checked—a heat check—to be like, 'Does this sound good?' Like, I mean, I like what I like but I want to know if it resonates with you And I think that's why we make films for the connection of like did that plan right and the choices are endless

And so I need somebody to kind of narrow it down for me Yeah, he was very open to me giving notes on the script like because he did toss it into a blender and and made it non-linear as fuck

And I would say can we go harder this way? Can we soften this area and he was very amenable to the notes and I tried to do that when I'm Editing with him is just kind of serving the story and to where we're both landing on yeah, that's it You know that's when you know you have something that it's shared Hold on, hold on. Should we talk about the sound? Yeah, I mean what or did you have something else you wanted?

No, I wanted to ask what the miracle was but we could just start always the miracle Yeah, is there a miracle on this set because every there's always that moment when you're making the movie where it's like This shouldn't work and then something happens that like Like It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Was there that moment that you can think of? Yeah, it wasn't on set. Does it have to be on set? No, I don't think so

Oh, it was when we showed up to the—getting into Screamfest on a rough cut was amazing, because I was making the movie to get into Screamfest.

I've been to Screamfest. I know that Screamfest broke Paranormal Activity, it broke Human Centipede. It's... John Carpenter was awarded a Lifetime achievement or honor, you know, an honorary... I had seen him posing with this really cool golden Skull, and it was like, that seems nice. And it's like the oldest horror film festival in the United States. Denali people show up. It's at the Chinese theater. It that'd be great

That was kind of like a goal to try to like Finish the film to submit to them and then when we got into that I was like blown away that I was like the film's working Like got enough of a rough cut and then when it was a packed 300 person audience And I had people that I don't know coming up to me saying we're gonna buy your film I was like what oh we're doing that okay, that's incredible. Yeah showed up to the the award ceremony party

Just to schmooze, just to get drunk and schmooze, try to find a sales agent, try to find a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. And as I'm getting like shit faced in the back of Jonathan We hear our name called for best director my name called and I'm like what I don't win. And I'm like

I don't win like I come in second or third and Jonathan goes absolutely bonkers and he's normally um The adult of our friendship and like you know kind of just look low key in mild mannered and he's like

Like I can hear him. It's like that embarrassing I'm like Let me just and then as we're like being the loud kind of obnoxious Drunks off in the corner being like can you believe this is what happened? We hear our name called again for best picture Then like we both kind of shut up. We're like we were speechless and we were like we didn't show up here We didn't make this movie to win awards or to be celebrated or lauded.

We just wanted to get it out there. We wanted to um just say that we did it Yeah, or if it got theatrical, which, you got a three-week theatrical window. I didn't care if it got streaming. I just wanted to say that finally after setting out to be a filmmaker I did a feature and yeah, this mission accomplished and um Yeah, it was that was my miracle month I mean, that's a pretty good pretty good miracle. I mean getting into

Get into film fest is one of those like really Hard things that you don't quite realize how hard it is to get in To not only get into one that you are angling for and then to also win is Is incredible. It's the dream It got into like its first three out of four, and that never happened with any of my short films, and then Dark Sky Bought it and then they started placing it in festivals. It was like that. Yeah, I mean, that's...

I mean, that's that's we got into a fast because We got a sales agent and the sales agent was like oh, we're gonna make sure it's in It's in a good festival, but we had applied forever and just it request Didn't get into Cinequest. Yeah, you were telling me about Cinequest. I always wanted to play Cinequest. I didn't get a chance to submit it to Cinequest. I remember you had a great time. Yeah, I mean, it's a film fest for filmmakers. It's incredible.

Um, but Anyway, um, but when I hear to talk about your rewards and your Your Trials on set, although I'm glad to hear them because they're always good to hear but The Thing that we'd like to really dig in with you about is the sound design Now it's fairly common for indie filmmakers to wear multiple hats And I feel like every other indie filmmaker is a writer director But what struck me about 8 Found Dead was your prominent credit as a sound designer.

Sound next to the post-production is the element of filmmaking that that is so important But is also the last thing on anybody's mind when they're making a movie So try to say I just wanted to talk to you about Why sound design is so important to you tips and tricks that you learned and anything that help People keep in mind as they're designing a soundscape because I think one of the reasons we're doing this podcast

Especially for me is that for lower budget filmmakers they often skip Stuff like sound design and they don't have the budget to hire big sound designers And so it's nice to show how important sound design is in a movie like 8 Found Dead. Like, you hit them with sound design

Like right away And when you hit them was so hard with sound design in the first couple minutes Then people trust the movie it's sort of you know That's why your first scene is so important. They trust that they're going to hear something and you're gonna be able to understand What's going on? It's not gonna be garbage. It was at least crafted well even if they don't like the movie Yeah, it would it elevates the quality in a way that like you can it can be shot in

8k and be You know like broadcast it on the dome and but if it has shitty sound it's gonna feel shitty, but yeah frame one

Of 8 Found Dead sounds great, and you're like, oh, this is somebody who knows what they're doing. And it's this invisible Craft so what what start because you Sound designed? Sound design? Sound designed? It's not—that's good English. Yeah, I... Know words good. And so Travis I know that you have a career as an editor is that where it started or did it start somewhere else? It started before that. It started with just playing guitar at 14 and using Cubase at

17, 18, and then graduating to Pro Tools, and just being like... I get um I do like—like my dad's a photographer, and he gave me a 35-millimeter camera, and I started getting into 35 and visuals and all that.

I do love visuals But I also get a lot of anxiety with visuals, and sound to me is extremely important. It's half the picture and it evokes the mood.

And Like you guys so eloquently said like if you can have the most beautiful camera or image in the world But if the sound is Like you're out. I'm done like Nothing tells me something's cheap without good quality well recorded audio And furthermore, I like I've been sound designing probably since like 2004 or 5 and it's gone hand in hand with my editing

And I've utilized my background in Pro Tools when I'm picture editing and so I'll deliver a rough cut That's already kind of like got a base sound design and then I'll enhance it further in Pro Tools But I also And As I'm getting older, I'm starting to realize the importance of silence and the dynamics of silence with really Powerful sound and Um I'm trying to practice more of that with my intention of sound and and sound

Especially, I learned this from a sound designer, Jeffrey Pitts. 'What is your intention with the sound? Like, sit and listen for a second.' What do you hear? There's like the rumble or the hum of the refrigerator. There's the buzz of the light. There's a car driving by there's You know the crickets outside and really try to Immerse yourself in the scene so that you can give an experiential experience to the viewer, so that it feels authentic and it feels real.

I had Jeffrey who has credits. He's Adam Wingard's sound designer. Oh And he became a friend because I was watching the remake of Blair Witch. I loved the sound design of the creature so much. I was staying through the end of the credits, And I find his name in the credits and I cold-call him on Facebook. I direct-message him. And he's like, 'I live in Van Nuys. We can meet at The Local Peasant.' I'll share anything that you want to know and I'd already been known as like a guy that loves sound and can do sound design

But like this dude's a master and like he takes My stuff and he goes further because it's his sole job I'm a picture editor and a sound designer and a director and when you're doing all of that you're like you can't pay all You can't give a hundred percent focus to each Area or facet right when I'm sound designing. I'm not I'm relaxed. I'm not Overthinking. I'm not feeling anxious. I'm just experimenting. I'm playing in the sandbox and Jeffrey when I showed him this film

He gave a critique, and he threw me a bone. He did a couple scenes with me. So I'll show you what I would do here. I'm not gonna do it for you Take it back to the lab and work on it But there's a scene in the beginning. It's a basic apartment, and it's when Sam and Dwayne,

We first meet them, and she's like, 'I need you to model. I need you to try the CBD gum. It's for, you know, PMS.' Yeah. Um, it's a frustrating moment for him and it was shot downtown and it's like okay, you shot this downtown The dude is aggravated the chick is pissed like what what's the story with the sound he taught me to think about the sound the story of the sound

Which answers the story of the scene and I was like well, you know living downtown I couldn't get away from sirens because I was fighting sirens, so we put in a siren. I like I couldn't get away from drilling and jackhammers like let's put that in to just enhance the agitation of the moment

There's another scene where Sam her big secrets revealed by the killers Um, and she gets up and she storms off and he's like where did she go? Well, I don't know He's like well she went to the bathroom. We know that and later scenes so let's have a door open Slam and then turn up faucet that's distant in the background so that you could hear Life is happening. He's like keep things alive even if it's not

Big and in your face. Like, have nuance there that keeps the viewer interested in things happening. And I learned this as an editor in reality,

Which is like even if you have a slow Emotional scene have something interesting that's going on in the background or around the scene that keeps people

That doesn't allow them to tune out. So you're like a duck sitting on top of the water, but your feet are kicking underneath. You know like you're just constantly working Well, so I don't know if you've found this but I find this because I'm doing a lot of the post-production on all these like

I'm doing all the stuff for these movies that I'm working on um and I'll do the edit and it'll play and I know I have to You know clean up the audio because the audio is not optimal And I'll clean up the audio and I'll get all the the dialogue edited and all that stuff and then the life just falls through the floor Just dead like So you have to add so much life back into the movie and I you know I used to fight against full M&E tracks just because my movies weren't—they're not getting distribution.

You know note who's gonna need a full M&E track it takes months Sometimes to finish these things, but it's like I need those details of chairs being pulled out Need somebody walking into the other room and opening a refrigerator, or, you know, because that's what I had on the scratch track. It was just there Because that's what people were doing and now that I've cleaned up the dialogue It's not there anymore and I need to put it back right where else the movie falls to the floor

Well, and it's not just uh it's not just room tone. It's like It's adding the intentionality of it. Yeah You know Travis you said you said you had to find the story of the sound what can you unpack that a little bit like what does that mean?

So, in that scene in the apartment, it's the two people talking. She's trying to do a a story bit. He's just frustrated that she's not paying attention and doing whatever Yeah, and it's great, but you know typical story would be you know an inciting incident some kind of twist and then a resolution

How do you do that in sound? It's just more of an embellishment It's like, to show and enhance his frustration, I could just have blanketed that scene with just ambient New York traffic Then just tucked it and kept it like negative 20 dB, and it's like, well, there's ambience in there. But he's like find the color and like the color is like the fire engine going by right as he's getting super pissed

But it's so subtle you don't realize it It's kind of like sometimes empathic phrasure a dearly beloved colleague of ours of course he finds a perfect pocket of silence that he placed the most

Exquisite, excellent crow caw. He's done for the day and it's so subtle and like it just landed or a dog bark The wind was musical in this film. Like, I had certain wind that I would use for flash... And it was derived from like The Shining they have a very muffled angry wind that's always constantly creating anxiety and

Pressure That's like buried and muffled That like it it just enhances kind of the drama and kind of the agitation of the scene I know that I also am a big fan of Dunkirk, which Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan's or in a sound design he wanted it So he uses something called the Shepard tone, which is a tone that goes up and up and up and up and up and up and never resolves, But just keeps recycling itself over and over and over. And I thought that was parallel to what Jonathan was doing in the story of, like,

Get in get in late get out early and Have have each scene move us to the next theme Even though it's not chronological, but it's just Propelling the story forward And I thought I wanted to do that with sound. So whereas you think you're done, but you're not, it just ratchets The tension a little more, so you're always uneasy and nervous, feeling like you're just climbing this roller coaster With no sense of relief sure sure I hope that ends

No, that that does that does it actually It sounds like it's punctuation on on the emotion In a way that that's not necessarily a music sting I have a tendency to just isn't about me

But I would tendency to use the sound design as a score Sometimes, you know, I will get, like, 'Stay away from my shit, man!' from the composer. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's why it's nice when the composer and the sound designer are the same person Because yeah, that does and sometimes you'll be like I left that blank and I'm like it's empty Like well, that's the composer's job right like I'm trying to stay out of their lane And now I'm getting in trouble because this is dead come on So you know you have to really communicate with that composer when when they're not the same person

Yeah, and I guess, like, what is that conversation like? When do you decide when to use music and when to use sound to help ratchet up your

Emotion? I mean, it came, like, after this film. I've done, I think, four or five films since, just as an editor.

And it's attractive to people, and they know that I also sound design as well, because that saves the cost, of course. And so I was hired on a film after this called Are You There?, which is also picked up and distributed through Dark Sky Films. And the director, Kim Noonan, trusted me because he knew me as an editor and as a sound designer to kind of, like,

He would spot with his composer and then anywhere he felt like I could take it to a certain space He would allow me to play in there now the composer on that was like I wanted to play music here And I came and I would discuss, like, 'Kim, this is your movie. You decide where you want music to happen.' You know to me and I get that the composer is the heartbeat of the film But, like, you're driving the bus, and Kim stood up for me as the sound—the lowly, meek sound designer—to be like,

Don't use your slip there, you know And it gives it a nice kind of dynamic and an ebb and flow where Like sound is heightened when there is no sound and I went deaf In June of 2020, I lost the hearing in my left ear in the two-to-six-K range, And that's like human speech in like jets and babies crying and stuff and everything's not but powerful focus

Wild. And I thought it was a cruel joke being a sound designer. Like, I guess I'm a... now, you know? Oh, no And the hearing did come back but being Slightly deaf for those three weeks it Silence is deafening and it hurt it's heavy silence is very heavy and And I want to try to do more of that in the future. It's like play with The color of blankness, you know of of silence. It can be oppressive Like my wife and I moved out to a remote lake cabin for a little bit of our lives

And the first week I couldn't sleep Because you could right you could feel it you could feel the silence. It was so quiet After we had lived in Los Angeles it was so quiet that it was just you could hear your blood in your ears It was like being in some kind of chamber, hyperbaric chamber or something. Yeah, if you go into a studio that's acoustically treated sometimes it's it hurts because it's so quiet

Crazy. This is great. Uh listen, I have I have real nuts and bolts questions because these are the things that that I always run into is

Where do you get your sound effects from? Are you recording all those? Are you stealing them from somewhere? Do you already have a library, or what are you doing? Some of it. On this one I did a lot of re-recording, mixing, Especially doors door knobs. I was like I have a nice chef XMC XMC I forget the model It's a really nice kind of alternative to a synthesizer for 16 shock and might bet a lot of sound designers to use for

Just collecting real world sounds. I do a lot of like Worldizing. Which, worldizing is if you want to put—if you have a music cue playing on the radio in a car,

Go into the car and record that sound rather than just putting an EQ plug-in on it. You know, and it sounds like the perspective, it becomes a realer... Yeah, if I had a record player in here and I would just go mic the cabinet and re-mic it Um It's re-recording that it's um I use something called Soundly which is great. I use something else. Oh yeah Soundly is phenomenal. I also then will take those sound effects and, so that they're a little more

Kind of, I guess, bespoke to the project, will pitch-shift them, EQ them, layer them,

Uh play with a lot of or reverb is great and Low-pass and high-pass filters will shape. I love something called a plug-in called FutzBox. It's a speaker emulator. Um I do Within some of the synthesizers that I have I can do a lot of sound design within there which is like weird textures that are both granular and lush

Um I can kind of take any you can take any signal like a signal generator and you can tweak it and shape it into anything that you want through

Like synthesizers, like just like Moog-style, like Oscillation and Warping and degrading. I love degrading stuff. Um, I like re-amping and re-miking things, as I mentioned. Did you have a lot of time to do because we never had the time to do any why uh you know get any sound on Location location sound yeah, yeah, and I was just using my iPhone sometimes because it was that's what I noticed when I was living out there is like

How unique inherently unique it was um the kind of Insects that are out there, the sparseness of the wind. The wind is really scary At night especially like it's really hollow and empty and and just unforgiving um

My actor Eddy Acosta, who's a friend of mine, he came up to visit me in the ranch before we had filmed,

And before we even had the idea and he's like why'd you move out here dude did you move out here to die like So then again, for indie filmmakers, the advice would be to capture some location sound if you can.

Because I know that you know we we filmed a movie up in wine country and uh you know it doesn't sound the same When you try to go on Soundly, you're like, I need a sound of a countryside. It's like well, I don't need a sound of a countryside in Japan or type right or tropical Yeah, like I need I need Los Angeles or you know I need California at least I want to hear the birds that we hear in California and you can't always get that stuff which is kind of well

So my my um My sound designer guru, mentor Jeffrey Pitts, When when I first met him and I was trying to learn the tricks of the trade He'd done, you know, Blair Witch, he'd done A Horrible Way to Die, he'd done You're Next. I've seen done um The Grudge, and I'm looking up this show. I think it was Once—or it was, what was the show on ABC? It was like a take on Grimm's fairy tales. Oh, wait... Everything in one spot of time. Hey, I think it was that he he wanted to test me out and see what kind of sounds I had

Because the big first sound designers to have their own sounds right like their own library to kind of stand apart or be

Unique, and he wanted to see what kind of fight sounds I had, what kind of hits, impacts and whooshes, And rustles and he was putting me to task on like 'Hey, on that grab there, you're using vinyl. Now this guy's wearing cloth. Like, on that door opening, You just repeated that front door and you put it on the back door like if if you don't have a different Unique sound, pitch-shift it a couple of semitones up so it sounds different,

And gives it character like those guys think it's in the way a colorist thinks about coloring Informing or enhancing the story sound is coloring and enhancing the story through its choices And through its authenticity and like color we take sound so much for granted. Yeah, that's great

Listen, I don't have any more questions Robb. Do you have any more questions? I'm sure I have a ton But we know can't be here forever. I mean we could we could be here for as long as you want But uh we Travis this is uh wonderful. I mean I I purport to understand sound design and post-production and I've learned so much. It's incredible. Thank you so much. I would shout out Jeffrey Pitts and all the wonderful sound designers

Still doing films But I just like to play yeah, they sound like an editor who does sound design. I know a little bit about that But still I mean just just the idea of the nuance and the The value that sound can bring like there's the You said it earlier and I like to say it all the time too is that sound is half the picture and you know a lot of times You think sound's just half the picture. Oh, just make sure you have room tone and make sure you

Yet hear the alarm clock in the corner, but not the intentionality of yeah Make sure each part of the room sounds different make sure that if somebody leaves the room can still kind of hear what they're doing and

And dialing in those sounds, and not so much in a flashy way, just in a world— Worldly kind of measured way. But on The heels of that, and I'll say this is the last thing I'll say, is, like, Edgar Wright, a huge influence for me, And he does it in a brash kind of open way like if you mute his films They don't have the same impact he puts a lot of as no he's known as a cool flashy Fluid camera movement type dude

But he also puts a lot of time and work into his sound design and and those sounds kind of Motivate or inform the camera movement and they're like they're in your face and they're like part of the story So, well, and you can see it at the beginning of your movie. There's a very yeah a great sort of some stuff Montage-y stuff happened. I didn't know if it worked, but Ryan and Jonathan signed off on it,

So I was like okay, I'll leave it you know one reviewer was like why the fuck is he doing all these flashes in a car drive like it's like All right, because it's cool, Damn it. I mean you do reality so you know this but like it's amazing how many times a director wants to hear a camera move Which is weird I need to hear that camera move a little bit Like throwing a punch, you don't hear any kind of whoosh, but we've just been so trained to think

It sounds better if you have the... Yeah. Yeah, I just thank you for letting me be on of course. Yeah, of course. Thank you for coming on But Travis I've one last question for you You kind of answer this at the start, but I just want to see if you have any other any other answer But if you go back and warn yourself about one thing with this whole movie that you made what would you Warn yourself about make it for what you want like have an intention like don't just do it

Because you think it's the end of the world to make it for the price that you want to make it at Stick—be stalwart and stick to that. Three, smaller cast, better. Sure. Although four found dead doesn't sound as cool as it isn't it is hard, but at least I would have money in my bank account right? That's it's it's the problem with the horror movies that you want the body counts and so you add it to up the cast

John was right so like he makes it more interesting and it gives the audience the opportunity to kind of play clue and guess at home Yeah, so before we let you go Travis Where can people find you on the interwebs and more importantly where can they find the movie? The movie's streaming on Amazon Prime right now and it's also on Tubi. Great place. I love Tubi. Tubi is a great home for a lot of independent filmmakers. World—make—fans. Yep.

Ton of content, and if you get past the weird-place ads, you're fine. And then I'm at 'the Travis Greene' on Instagram. You are. But you have a physical release on disc, right?

On disc, yeah. We had a DVD, Blu-ray, and we actually did a signing at Dark Delicacies, rest in peace.

The news on yeah, I was there. I got my My shit signed by everybody in the cast and you it was pretty awesome. We've been long Procelses. I missed that place. Well, thank you again Travis This has been wonderful as the best The best it could have been the you're the best guest who wasn't us. We've ever had yeah like in terms of our guest list

You are number one nice and not just because you're the first I actually best of like and hopefully it grows and I'll be I'll tune in and I'll subscribe. There you go Well, and that about does it for us. If you have any questions about filmmaking, movies in general, please write us at

Indiefilmlodge@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you, and we may feature your question on a future show.

And in the meantime, tell your friends about us, and remember the only thing holding you back is you. So get out there and shoot your feature. I'm Robb. I'm Matt. And we'll see you next time. [Music]

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