Merry Heistmas

Hey Robb, what's the biggest thing you've ever stolen? I stole an entire college campus one time. When did you build the shrink ray? Well, I can't disclose that information. Otherwise, I won't be able to steal any more college campuses. Hello and welcome to the Indie Film Lodge, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of independent filmmaking from the bottom up.

I'm Matt. And I'm Robb and today we're going to be talking about locations, how to get them and when to steal them. And to give us some firsthand experience today is our guest, I, uh, let's keep you right. Robb, it says here that you are today's guest. It's fine. I finally, finally, finally made it onto the show. Hey, hey, the guest list for this place was so enormous. We have indie filmmakers of all ilks knocking down our door and yet somehow you got the inside track.

So, uh, Robb, what movie did you make? I made a movie called Merry Heistmas. Merry Heistmas. Very cool. What is, give me the 30-second pitch on Merry Heistmas. Uh, Merry Heistmas is about a small time crook who finds out that a rich jerk has a diamond at a Christmas party.

So he hatches a plan to form a Christmas caroling group in order to infiltrate the party and steal the diamond. Uh, the only way he can do this though is with the help of his estranged college-age daughter who doesn't know that that's what they're doing.

So then they go and they, you know, do stuff. Then they go and they do stuff. Do stuff. It's a pretty fun, it's a pretty fun Heistmas. I'm not just saying that because you're here and we're friends. It gave me real big Hudson Hawk vibes this movie. Yeah, there's definitely the beginning for sure. So what were your inspirations for this movie? Like, you wrote and directed this thing? Right? Yeah. So what did you, what are three sources of inspiration you have?

Because I know nothing is created in a vacuum, or maybe there was, but what inspired you along the way? Well, I've been inspired to make the a filmmaker. I'm first and foremost. By my, uh— Robb. Robb. Nobody cares about why you're a filmmaker. We care about how do you make this one? Well, I think every Heist movie now is somewhat inspired by Ocean's Eleven. Right? Sure. I feel like half of the films out there are inspired by Ocean's Eleven.

Not a lot of the, not a lot of people eating random things in this movie. No, because we don't have that kind of budget. So I was inspired by Ocean's Eleven Heist movie stuff. Like fun. Like the way that the Heist is presented is sort of inspired by Ocean's Eleven. I was inspired by the movie that I made before this with my, with Todd Norwood, who directed it.

Gap Weekend. That inspired me on the way to shoot the movie. And pretty much dictated how we were going to shoot the movie. And you weren't inspired at all. There's so many fun sweaters in this. So you weren't inspired by any Christmas movies. The whole process. You're like, just heist movies. Not a single Christmas movie. Yeah, just heist movies. I love Christmas movies. I actually really like even, well, like is a, is a strange word.

I appreciate Hallmark movies. But I, I mean, I love Christmas movies in general. I love Christmas and Christmas movies. But the Christmas movies that I like are some of the older ones. You know, I kind of think of it. It's a Wonderful Life. Of course. It's actually one of my favorite movies of all time. And it just happens to be a Christmas movie. And but I really do like Christmas movies. And isn't there some Christmas in When Harry Met Sally?

Another movie that has inspired me. I actually, actually, not yet seen it. Like, he meaning to. Keep trying to give it to me. I like to watch it with me. She's like, I don't know. I don't trust that Billy Crystal. Oh, it's, it's one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah. It's really, really, really good. I can't wait to watch it. I just, every time I'm like, hey, babe, you want to sit down and watch this?

Yeah. But yeah, also, so you weren't inspired by Christmas movie. But you know, movies rarely just appear in our brains or in front of us or,

or on our screens and especially independent ones. There's a big journey between the blank page and the silver screen. Regardless of the pictures, there's three events I feel that are universal to every movie

that gets made between inception and the premiere. And so this is our terribly entitled section called OPM, the obsession, the pivot and the miracle.

So what about Merry Heistmas, excuse me, made you want to take the plunge? What, was it about the script or what specific scene did you just have to see on the big screen? Like, what, what was it? You tell me. Well, I like the premise of the movie a lot. When I thought of it, originally, it wasn't a Christmas movie and it wasn't Christmas carolers. That's weird. It was called Merry Heistmas and didn't have all this.

Yeah, it was like, why didn't I think about Christmas? That was called Band of Thieves. Yeah. And it was people who formed a band to get into a party, an exclusive party in order to steal a diamond.

But they played instruments. They played a band. And in that movie, which had a larger budget in my mind, most of the movie was them learning how to be a band. Like, they would level up through these gigs. You know, they would have an open mic and then they would do something else. And they actually was a, at one time it was a series in my head, like a web series. And so every episode would be them, like leveling up.

They'd open mic and then they'd get maybe a bar mitzvah gig. And at all those gigs, they would like try to do something criminal, like steal a thing. Like, it was practice for the robbery or practice for the band. Which is a great premise also, but a little beyond what I can do with the budget that I did Heistmas with. And so then I thought, well, like, you know, music, I have to have all these instrumentalists and all this

instruments and it becomes a big thing. So I came up with the idea of Christmas carolers. And it's like, well, Christmas party. I mean, I Christmas movies. So Christmas carolers, they go to the party and nobody has to carry an instrument. They're just themselves. And it could be something that I could shoot. Like I could figure that out. So instead of leveling up through the gigs over the course of a long movie, they had to go out and recruit kind of like in Ocean's Eleven.

There's the Ocean's Eleven thing again. They had to go out and recruit. And so like, what would they do for recruiting? And again, because of my budget, I was trying to keep things simple. And maybe I kept things a little too simple at times. That was the idea. I wanted to see them go out and recruit people. I like the idea of shooting a little, that opening robbery, which changed a lot from the inception of my mind to what we shot.

Even though I think it turned out pretty good. You know, it's my mind, the budget's way bigger than reality. So I had to do some changes. Well, I got it. Well, so I guess, how did you pivot then? And I don't know if this is your big pivot. If you have a different big pivot, I want to know. But at what point did you decide like it's going to go from a band of robbers to Christmas caroling? Like why Christmas caroling?

Well, because Christmas caroling, because I had sung in college, you know, I'm a singer. And we would do gigs. And I thought, you know, it doesn't have to be Christmas carolers. But I was like, well, a Christmas party. Make a Christmas movie. I wanted to do a movie at a holiday. I like the idea of doing that. It's easy to sell. It's easy to market. It's easy to conceptualize. You know, and it's identifiable.

It already has some things built into it. So then once I figured out that they could be singers, you know, like, barbershop or something, I kind of toyed with. But then I was like, well, Christmas caroling would be a thing. I didn't know anything about Christmas caroling at the time. Don't. I mean, it's much easier to buy a traveling gang of Christmas carolers than it is a barbershop quartet. I mean, it's not.

Unless you're making the Hall & Oates biopic. I don't see those guys as criminals. I mean, you shouldn't see Christmas carolers as criminals either. But I mean, it does make a lot more sense for them to be Christmas carolers. I was like, oh, well, there's that. But, you know, I wasn't... I don't want to jump to the end of the story here. But I didn't know anything about Christmas caroling other than

singing in jazz choir and going to like old folks homes and singing Christmas music for old people. I didn't realize what Christmas caroling would entail. But I had an inkling. Sorry, this is just a thing that I will know. Because I know that you do Christmas caroling. I don't know if you want to call it professionally, but I will say professionally. Oh, it's professionally. I mean, it's... So, did you not start singing professionally

until you were making the movie? Because that's wild. I didn't start until before I made the movie. Yeah, I so I had this movie in my pocket for a while. Well, more than seven years. Because I started Christmas caroling seven years ago. Crazy. It's been a long time. So, that was the big pivot of the movie. Actually, it was turning it into a Christmas movie. From its conception. I mean, there's, again, every step we took was a pivot.

But the big pivot early on was turning it into a Christmas movie. And I, which I really was excited about. Because I really do like Christmas. I listen to Christmas music all year long. I'm one of those type of people. Gross. Everybody else thinks it's gross. But I really like it. And so, if you want to talk about the miracle, that was sort of it. We have mutual friends, you and I, Matt and Beth Newcomb.

Sure. I was at their house one day for a party. And mutual friends were there. And we'd met these people over and over again. And one of them casually mentioned at one of the parties, her Christmas caroling group that she owns. And I said, "What? You own a Christmas caroling group?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Like, one that pays?" And she's like, "Yeah." I said, "Do you need any other carolers?" And she said, "You can come and audition for me."

So I did. And that was seven years ago. And I was like, "Well, hell, I'll do that." Because now I have this movie. And I could learn a thing or two about Christmas caroling and put it in this movie. And maybe I could meet some people who Christmas carol and they could also be in the movie. Well, that's crazy. Did you mean carolers who were in your movie? Yeah, all the people in my movie are people I carol with.

Oh, shit. Even the people who don't sing. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, this is Los Angeles. We're all actors. I'm not an actor. I just, I'm just a complete ham when I'm in front of some kind of media. Shit. But no, that's great. I mean, I think that's really the thing, right? It's a good lesson that whenever you're doing something, you should tell people because you never know who has some kind of connection.

But also, like, you know, you never know what you're going to run into. That's why I always like asking what the miracle is. Because there's always, there's always a thing that shouldn't have happened. But did. You know, bumping into a bunch of carolers who also wanted to act or could act is crazy. That's awesome. Yeah. And the movie, movie is great. It's super fun. I really enjoyed it. I've seen it a couple of times now.

And yeah, I'm really taken with the interplay between the actors and the overall scope of it. And, you know, of all those things, blew me away about it. Was the production value was right there. You talk about how this movie was shot for, you know, it was shoestring. Shot for a shoestring. Shot on a shoestring. On a shoestring. There you go. Shoestring if we were lucky. But there's scenes at the Long Beach Pier.

There's some on major college campuses. You seem to have shot all over town. But you did so without the budget exploding. So that's why I really wanted to do a deep dive on how you did it. Your advice for somebody in the midst of their own filmmaking journey. And generally what to look out for. So there's multiple scenes at the Long Beach Pier. And so I guess my first question is how much did the permit cost to shoot at the Long Beach Pier?

I'm sure that the permit to shoot in Long Beach costs something. But I don't know what it is. I know I know how much it costs. I know. I know it's very hard to believe. But we just kind of shot. Yeah, we just kind of went down there and shot stuff. Well, how did you shoot stuff? and not get stopped by the cops? Because I've worked on movies before where you step out of line. You hear the stories about Baywatch and Venice.

Those guys are getting stopped even though they have permits. So how are you able to avoid the fuzz? Well, the Baywatch people have, you know, a lot of movies have things like crew. Sure. Cars. They're not just like five people walking around. I think I see five of us walking around the pier with a little wagon. I had a wagon full of like snacks and I guess I really want to take a quick sidestep. How big was your crew?

There's two people. Two people in the crew. Yeah, including me. Including me. Well, I was in it. Yeah. So, and they were running camera. And I guess, well, I guess we had three some most of the time. Because Jeremy, my friend Jeremy helped us out. Well, a nice friend helping you out. He was also in it. Yeah. He was, uh, he played Legbone. Oh, nice. The guy who doesn't get the part. So he helped us out too, but he wasn't there for Long Beach.

Long Beach, we went down in November. I looked up when they'd start putting out Christmas decorations. Sure. And so we went down there then for three days and just kind of, we all went down in a van and like I said, hauled a wagon around and just kind of shot around. So you shot around, you have one guy with the camera. So I understand how that could be easier to conceal. What about mics? How do we hear all these people?

Or do you just, do masterful ADR the entire time? We just, just AI it now. I say AI. Give us a voice. And it does. No, we have a lot of lav mics. The ones I use are these Tascams. You can see them, but nobody else can. I still have my character's name, stickered on it. They are really, really, really amazing. So the downside of them is that you can't monitor them while you're using them. So you have to check them every once in a while,

make sure they're rolling. And you have to be careful about where you put them. But honestly, if you're, if you're even halfway careful about where you put them, they're good enough that you with modern technology can clean up the audio. And they sound really good on their own. I mean, they sound like lavaliers, but aren't they lavaliers? They are lavaliers, yeah. But the mics, they're really good.

They're about 200, well, who knows now? They're probably about $240 a piece now. So they all record locally in some kind of digital format and then you? They record on their own little cards, little micro SD cards, and then you have to pull them off of there and sync them up. I have a Bluetooth add-on on them, which I think will jam a signal if you wanted to time code it. But to be quite honest with you,

the way we shoot, I don't trust that the time code will work. So I just like, you know what, screw it. Just give me some claps, I know or not. I'll just have to, I mean, doing it today actually. I'm syncing footage by reading lips. Or how do you mark your scenes? We don't. You do them. I'm doing all the posts, so I can only yell at myself. Yeah, I don't mark it. I have no idea. And in fact, there's definitely, you know,

what's the word I'm looking for? Pitfalls? It's a trade-off. It's a trade-off. Trade-off, to shooting this way. And this way is you keep it rolling. These things can record like eight-hour audio files if you wanted them to. I don't recommend it. So you'll come back from the shoot. You've got all your little clips from your cameras. We had two cameras. And then sometimes four-hour audio files that you're just like, OK, where in this audio file is the scene?

Oh, it's about here. And so then you have to sync it up. Hope that it works. I'm syncing up some footage that we also shot in a long beach a couple months ago that's so windy that it won't sync automatically because the camera audio is just-- [GRUNTS] Oh, sure. Sure. So I have to read lips and like, I think he said this thing here. And I think that's in this part-- it's taking me a long time and it's a pain in the ass.

But it sounds good. Sure. It's done. It sounds really good. But it's still cheaper than getting a permit. A permit or a whole other person to run like a boom or to watch your audio. So the actors are kind of in charge. And they don't-- I mean, they're not always great about it. But I mean, you've heard the movie. It sounds good. It sounds great. But was there ever a moment that somebody forgot to record?

Or lots of times. Yeah. So did you just do regular ADR for those? Or were you able to grab it from other mics? I'd grab it from the other mics. The mics are good enough. And I tell the story a lot. So it's kind of dumb. But when we did Gap Weekend, the movie Gap Weekend, they shot a scene. I wasn't there next to the ocean sitting in a picnic table. And it's two actors sitting next to each other at a picnic table.

But they're literally on the beach. And his waves crashing as much noise. And her, the actor's mic wasn't on. And her, the actor's mic wasn't on. from the person sitting next to her. And that's what you'll hear in the movie. This was before we had Adobe Enhanced and all that kind of stuff. Sure. So the lavalier is good enough that I didn't hear the ocean. But I heard her lines. And I could crank them up.

And I could clean them up. And so they're in the movie. And I guess you mentioned Todd's movie earlier about how it inspired you. How did it inspire you the way you shot this? Was that also shot without permitting? Yeah, he shot this. So he did this first. But when I came on set for that movie, I wasn't involved with any of the pre-production or any of that stuff. I was just on there to be an actor.

And I came on set and we all had the lavalier mics, and Art, His friend Art, who was starring in the movie, was running 'cause he does audio stuff. And so I mic'd myself up. And they had a guy with a boom, but he clearly didn't have any clue what he was doing. And I knew that boom audio was going to be garbage. I could just tell. I'm sitting there watching it going, OK, all right. Well, I hope these lavalier mics work because that's not going to.

And when we got done, I listened to it. I offered to do the post-production because I saw something in the movie. And I wanted-- since I do post-production, I really wanted it to be good. I was like, this could be good. And actually, he said movie. So I did it. And I was like, man, these audio-- these mics are great. And they're shooting in locations where I tell this story a lot too. They're shooting at a-- they went into a wine bar.

And they're doing a scene at the bar in this tasting room. And the bartenders, like every once in a while, come up and talk to them because they had no idea. They were shooting a scene, literally right in front of them. And not like a dark bar. It's a wine tasting room. People everywhere. I had to go in and post and blur some faces. But I was like, man, if they can do that, we can do anything. In the next movie, we shot before Heistmas, which I'm just finishing now.

We shot downtown at, like, a grand park right outside the police station, right outside City Hall. And cops walked out and they looked at us and they went, what's going on over there? And just left us alone. I'm like, oh, we should-- wherever it happens on Heistmas. Shooting on the campus. Campus police rolled past. Did one of those things where they come up and they start rolling real slow. I go, fuck, OK, guys, if they stop us, you guys look young enough,

you're students, Natalie, this is your movie. You're making a student film. But then they just kept going. I was like, OK, I mean, I did look up the film teacher's name just in case. That's great. I mean, it's a good lesson of like-- I can only really speak for my own experience. But when I had the dreams of being a filmmaker, and it was the idea of having the huge crew, you know, you want the sound team of 16 and the camera up and a DP and a gaffer

at a grip in the huge grip truck with all kinds of things and the video village and all that. But all of that adds up and becomes a way bigger footprint. And with the cameras being so small and microphones being so portable, you can kind of shoot anywhere if you're smart enough about it, which is a real boon to everybody who's down to a business owner. So-- And in reality, like, it sounds like, oh, well, now they're just being sneaky.

But we're not bothering anybody. Nobody's in the movie who isn't supposed to be in the movie. And nobody-- we shot on that campus right out in front of the executive, you know, the main office-- Right. --for the daytime scenes. We're just sitting at clearly shooting a movie. Yeah, I mean, I think every great independent feature has some kind of cheating element to it.

And there's a moment in the graph of the budget where you get enough money where you can start doing stuff.

But as you start adding people to the production,

the amount of free stuff you can get kind of plateaus. And if you come in with a huge crew, you're going to get-- you're going to have to pay for it. And not just the wages of the people you're with, but you're going to have to pay the places to put you up. And they can make sure their things are protected. But you know, film is meant to be dangerous. And, you know, like, go shoot it. The worst that happens is they say, hey, stop.

And they kick you out. Right. You'll figure something else out. I mean, it's-- I shot-- and somebody's backyard in Burbank. And they shut down the production because they didn't have a permit to shoot in Burbank. And that was-- that was on private property. That they owned. Burbank is notorious, though. Like, they're the worst. But they're going to get you no matter what. So like, yeah, you can make it work.

I mean, that's part of the miracle of making movies. I did want to ask you really briefly, before I get into shooting indoors, because I do want to ask you about shooting indoors. It's the actors. So were you giving them sides every day? Were you-- how hardcore were you about the script? Because everything feels pretty naturalistic in their performances. And I don't notice any jarring cuts as we're

going between actors and scenes. How did you keep your continuity straight? And how did you prepare the actors to do this? When you shoot this way, continuity sometimes can be a battle in post. Yeah. I mean, try to keep it on set. And some actors are just like-- I don't know if they've got a fetish for it. Some actors love continuity. Like, they'll do the same thing over and over and over again. I'm not one of those people.

Sure. I can't do it. Those like theater actors are always pretty strict in their movements and all that. You're a stage guy. Yeah, I was. Yeah. But not anymore. Now I like to be free. If anybody's improvising, it's me in the script. And that's partly because I don't remember my lines, even though I wrote them. Of course. But those guys just were good about it. They were the professionals and you were the amateur.

And I was the problem. I mean, I was trying to direct at the same time. But I don't know. I never bothered to ask them. I don't know why. I just knew that they would do it. Like, Amy, who plays Dizzy, I just knew she's going to get her shit together. Natalie, super talented. She's going to have her shit together. Ken, he's missed her responsible. Kian, he's Mr. Responsible. Then I will fuck up in Tanya.

She will kind of fuck up a little bit because the stakes are a lot lower for us. We don't have anything to prove. It's our movie anyway. Plus, being loose like that, I'm sure it drives other directors crazy. I'm sure it drives Todd crazy. But I just can't do it anymore. Can't put me in a box. I can't memorize my lines beforehand. I middleize them. You need to go a couple times to the scene. I got it.

Well, so did you ever have a moment where you needed to adjust their performance or adjust your performance? Are you giving notes while you're trying to shoot this thing undercover? Well, so most of the notes would be for when we were shooting not undercover, like when we had time. But even some of the times, there was a lot of direction that went into a scene. There's a scene in Heistmas that we shot right outside

of the Long Beach Civic Center. And it was all dressed up for Christmas. There was a thing going on. And you could pay money to get into part of it. So they had security gates and metal detectors and stuff like that. And we found a little corner where we could see all that in the background. But we were off the beaten path. But we were standing next to a lot of decorations. So there's this giant lit up deer in the back of the scene,

which is what we lit the scene with. We just lit the scene with whatever. We stood next to the deer. And we were able to shoot a whole bunch of takes of that just without anybody bothering us. I mean, if they're going to bother us, at one point during that scene, there was a fucking flash mob of literally 100 fucking kids on motorcycles and scooters and e-bikes that just swarmed the fucking place. I believe it was called a gang.

Yeah. I don't know if they call themselves a gang. It was kind of scary. They took the whole fucking place over. And they were there for about 10 minutes until they finally got ran out. Or they just left. They got tired of it and left. So we had to stop for that. And it's like, they're not going to bother us with a couple cameras freezing our ass off in the corner, shooting some intimate little scene.

And we're just going to care. Let's see a scene about-- it wasn't a love scene. A love scene makes it sound like you're-- It was a break up scene. It wasn't that kind of movie. Listen, and there's nothing wrong with that. Shoot that kind of movie. But it's not the movie that you made. Yeah. And we don't have intimacy coordinators, things like that. So you're trying to keep things contained and not noticeable.

You shoot outside. How are you setting up lights? So you're bringing around a portable generator or a low LED lights with a big sun gun attached. What are you doing for lights and scenes that you need lights for? We are using the lights that are already there. So we would find locations where there would be lights. And now Google is perfect for this. So a good example. I mean, there was a ton of lights outside the Civic Theater.

It's lit up like daylight with all the shit that was out there. So these little-- the Sony cameras that we're using, which are really good in low light, they would have no problem. But you find a street light. You find a store light that I found something down in the harbor. And I looked on Google Maps and checked where the street lights were. OK, we could-- there's parking spaces that nobody's going to use at night.

We'll go there. We'll shoot the scene under these street lights. We'll have the harbor in the background just for something. And it'll be the exterior of our wine bar. And nobody bothered us there. Couple cars came drove by and looked at us funny, but that was it. We did have one light. It was a little light the size of a cell phone. And we lit the first-- the opening scene of the movie, Mike shot some lights through the window.

But that was-- that's all the lights we used. That's incredible. And it's another testament to how powerful these-- these new fangled digital cameras are. Especially the Sonys, the FX3 and the a7S III. Those Sony's will do anything. Sure. I remember hearing the stories of when I remember hearing the stories of when they were shooting Swingers, that they shot Swingers on 16, They'd wrap pillows around it because they're so loud.

But that's how they go shoot these scenes. And now you go shoot at the Dresden tonight and probably sneak in there with an iPhone and figure it out. I could shoot a scene in the Dresden right now. And they probably, if they weren't paying attention, they'd have no idea. Which is incredible. It's an incredible time to be able to do this. But speaking of shooting indoors, if you're not shooting at the Dresden, you did shoot at a winery.

So that seemed like a real location, not one that you stole, unless it was a really, really-- Unless it was a set of oblivious bartenders. That was the most expensive set we rented. So we rented through Peerspace. And that was the most expensive one. The main area one we rented was the house, that Legbone's house. And then in the back, they had that garage that we shot in. So that was the same place.

Incidentally, those people are the same people who rented the studio to the Obsession movie, which I haven't seen yet. But those are the same people. And I'm sure their asking prices are going to go up after obsession. But they were really great. They were awesome. That's amazing. They were very flexible and very nice. So that's where most of my budget went, was to those few locations that we rented.

But in those sets, were you setting up the same kind of lights, or were you just going off of the practicals there, too? Well, the garage had-- I don't think we did any practicals in the house. We may have turned on one light LED light panel, maybe. And in the garage, they had hanging lights up above. And then Mike had his little fill light. So we turned on the lights in there. And then at one point, we dressed it with Christmas lights.

And those cafe lights put out a lot of light. Nice ambient glow. Yeah, because the whole Christmas tree lot was literally just lit by those lights you see in the shot. Sure. There's nothing else. There's no other lights. It's just the cafe light. By the way, where did you find a Christmas tree lot in November that you shot at? The one in the back of Matt and Beth's house. That's incredible. Every time I see that, it's that.

I know this story, that it's our friends' backyard. But man, it looks so good. It looks like a full Christmas tree lot. And I'm-- I'm always like-- I'm always like-- Yeah. It's a incredible production design. Whoever your production designer was deserves a raise. I should. I'll give him one. Yeah. He just has lots of raises. So then just to recap. So while you're shooting in these public locations,

you just kind of kept an eye open for cops and you figured out a story ahead of time. Was there any space that you went to your shoot at that? You're like, oh no, we can't do this. Or you had a bail early. Or you just scuttled as you got there because it seemed too busy or not busy enough, I guess? No. Well, here's the thing. I'm a nervous person about this kind of stuff, because I don't like confrontation.

So I'm really worried about it every time. I'm like, oh god, oh god. And I get kind of stressed out about it. Like, shoot, let's go. Fucking, let's go. We're going to go, guys, before somebody comes and tells us to get out of here. And nobody ever did. But we got to go, go, go, go, go, go. We're going to shoot like this. We're going to shoot like this. Because I don't necessarily know how we're going to shoot it

until we get there. Some of the spaces we just wandered around and stumbled into. It's like, what? Get something here. Get something here. So there's a big montage in the middle where we're carol around town. That was all shot on the same day, where we just-- we literally just-- we watched for miles just walking around. And since these real Christmas carolers, we don't hear it in the movie. But we would actually just bust out a carol.

Sure. OK, we're going to sing Jingle Bells. We're going to sing 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.' We're going to whatever. So we just would sing. We all knew the music. We'd all been doing it for a while. But nobody ever kicked us out. But I was worried every single time. The college was the closest we got. And even though they just didn't give a shit. I guess not. I hope they don't give a shit now. Because I mean, technically, they could probably

say something about it. I don't know. I think it would be hard to prove damages after the fact of all you did was shoot on the sidewalk. So you know-- Well, they just-- So if you want to shoot for free in a location, just don't blow anything up. Right. Yeah, don't hurt anything. Don't be like, you guys are the ones that broke that tree. Right. It's funny, too, because we shot that college and that's the one thing that I'm worried about.

Is ever is that somebody from the college is going to be like, what the fuck? You guys didn't have permission to shoot here. And again, we didn't disrupt anything. Nobody even cared. Nobody cared. But I was in the Sherman Oaks Film Festival. And we didn't have a very big audience. And afterwards, there was a Q&A. And there was a group of three people in the back. And they stood up. What's your connection to the college?

I don't have one. I just found it on Google. I was like, this looks good. We went to school there. I go, OK. You don't know anybody there? I'm like, no, we don't. Oh, it was really cool to see our school in your movie. We were all very excited about it. It's like, well, that's cool. But it's like-- I mean, it's Long Beach City College. What are the chances? Honestly, I thought it was UCLA. No, it's Long Beach City College.

Well, hey, that's good for them. It's almost free advertising. Almost. Yeah, you should go to Long Beach City College. It was a very beautiful campus. Very beautiful. Nobody there is going to give you a hard time. Yeah, they're all chill. Super cool. So Robb, as time's kind of running low here, So I wanted to land this plane. The whole process is incredible. A lot of great tips, a lot of great things.

Do you have any other advice, either that you give yourself-- if you go back in time to give yourself advice, or give your future self who's listening to the podcast, give them advice about shooting their first feature. What would be that piece of advice would make the process easier in the long run? Sure, I got a couple of things. If you're going to have Christmas carolers, do have a boom mic.

Don't just use the lavs because it's harder to edit. I wish I had a boom mic for when we sang. I also wish we would have known, because there's a couple songs we didn't. I'm faking the arrangements in post. I'm arranging music to what we kind of faked it on the set. And so I wish I would have had those arrangements done beforehand. So do your homework before you go shoot. I'd say, yeah. It's good advice.

Have all your arrangements. But the big one-- here's the biggest one from this movie, because we did lose a location, because it was given to us as a favor. If you're going to accept a location as a favor, make sure that your relationship with the person who you're getting that favor from is tight, like Matt and Beth. They'd probably get mad at us. They probably were mad at us. But they weren't going to kick us out because they're

good people and they're good friends. But we had another location that we lost, and he just got tired of us being in there. And it really fucked up the schedule. So make sure that you have control of the locations or that you don't need that location. Do you know what I mean? Don't make your production dependent on that particular location. I didn't have a backup. I had one option. I mean, I had to pivot after we lost the location

and shoot some of it in my house. But luckily, we shot the majority of what we needed to at that place in the four hours that we were allowed to be there. Don't bank on a miracle. Yeah. And favors are great. But favors can be taken away as easily as they're granted. So be very careful. But luckily, he let us come back and shoot a few pickups. So we were able to pick up a couple scenes that the movie needed.

And so that was nice. But it was a big thing. I would have rent-- if I had to do it again, I'd rent that location. Oh, yeah, because money-- the nice thing about money is that once it exchanges hands, it changes the relationship from this is nice. And they can pull it back at any time to, well, there's a contract written. And it's tough because it cuts both ways. Yeah. I'd spend $1,500 to not have the stress

that I had for that. And so the stolen locations, we don't control either. But like you said, somebody kicks you. Yeah, you just go someplace else. We'll do it over there. Well, so I mean, that's all I got, Robb. Thank you so much. You've been wonderful. And I hope everyone goes out to see your movies. Where can they find it? And where can they find you? They can find me on social media if you have to.

Everything's @RobbPadgett, R-O-B-B, P-A-D-G-E-T-T, like everything. The extra B is for best. Yes, the best. I guess Instagram threads-- one of those threads type people. You're the guy on threads. And you can see Merry Heistmas on many, many streaming platforms to be awesome. There's a platform called Christmas-- I can't think of it now-- but there's Christmas streaming platform. That's really cool.

They were good to us. Do you have a physical release for Heistmas? There's a purely futuristic digital stuff. It's all future-- well, I did this under a SAG under-$20,000 budget. So I can't sell copies of the movie. So it's all AVOD. So anything that's advertising based-- but we're streaming on like 14 different platforms. So that's great. Merry Heistmas, so we're pretty easy to find. And it's great.

I think everybody should check it out. It's a great hour and a half. To watch with a fam, I don't think there's too many swears or whatever in it. Not that it matters. I think that's the worst-- Yeah, that's the worst swear word in the movie. I would show it to my kid, but she doesn't like too much jibber-jabber. And the movie's all jibber-jabber. So yeah, it's all jibber-jabber. That about does it for us.

So if you have any questions about filmmaking, movies, in general, you can always email us at indiefilmlodge@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. And we may feature your question on a future show. In the meantime, tell your friends about us. And remember that the only thing holding you back is you. So get out there and definitely shoot your feature. I'm Robb. I'm Matt. And we'll see you next time.

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