Delicate State

Hey Robb, what would happen if you got pregnant? It would probably be the end of the world. Well, at least wouldn't have to worry about giving birth. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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. And today we'll be talking about ingenuity. And today’s guest is Paula Rhodes, who made a wonderful Delicate

State. Hello, Paula. Hi. Oh my goodness, thank you for the flattery. Of course. You know, fun fact, you're the first guest that doesn't have a consecutive double letter in your name. Oh. Unless you have a middle name like Doreen or something. No, I got Jean. Not the right Jean. So well, you know what? That theme is out the window. Think of something else. You can add a second N to that Jean. I could, but you know, it's late.

Anyway, so Paula, you made this great movie, Delicate State. Please tell us real quick, for someone who hasn't seen it, What's it all about? So Delicate State is my husband and I, Charlie Bodin, Documenting our actual pregnancy, first pregnancy, in an alternate universe where the US breaks out in Civil War. And we didn't necessarily anticipate it being quite so close to a documentary when we started in 2015.

But it's definitely a cautionary tale. I think the genre would probably have to be a docu-fiction. Yeah, sure. It also, to me, had vibes of my life, the Michael Keaton movie from the ’90s, but without the cancer stuff. Because of the movie, he's leaving notes for his future kid about how to shave and what's like to be in a roller coaster on that stuff. But except yours has all that Civil War stuff in it.

It's not as funny as that. Is the cancer one? No. Yeah, we really missed out on that. It was-- oh gosh, it was such a wild ride. So I thought I'll talk about it and hopefully inspire other people to make their film. Because quite honestly, if we could do this during a pregnancy with just two people, essentially, as the entire production crew and most of the cast, then you should make your thing. I don't recommend making a film this way.

It is hard. It makes you appreciate the heck out of your crew and your cast. But it can be done. Well, I appreciate your dedication to the craft, getting pregnant just to make a movie about it. Yeah. I mean, that's true method acting. Watch out, De Niro. Right. Yes. I can't actually take credit for that order. It was a lot less altruistic in that I just was really scared and sad. I was happy to be pregnant.

We tried for years. But I was really scared and sad to start noticing auditions going away and opportunities going away. And I had that very actory, panic moment, moments, probably, of not having work. And my husband was like, oh my gosh, just make a movie already. And then I was like, OK, well, then you're making it with me. And then he did. He really called my bluff. Yeah, I really, really did. He might have come to regret that at various points,

but we sure did it. It was definitely a matter of looking around at what you have and what story you want to tell. Because I knew from just producing before short films, web series, et cetera, and acting in features that it’s such a labor pun intended, that you really have to want to do this. And you have to have maybe more of a reason to put it out in the world than just make a movie. So the fact that I was seeing all of these at the time,

news and other people toss around the term, are we heading toward a civil war? Just casually, in 2015, that I was like, gosh, they are really not kind of clocking what that actually means, what that looks like to a population. And I think especially maybe to women, who aren't usually the ones choosing that any of that scenario or getting us in the situation where it might be happening. And I wanted to show what that looked like.

And the fact that so many women around the world, getting pregnant is not a guaranteed outcome of ending up alive or with a child, just like it wasn't for here for so long. And women of color face even harder odds here in America still. So it's the first time that as a luckily healthy person, able-bodied person, I faced mortality. In a way where I realize like, I'm not guaranteed to get out of this or get out of this with a healthy baby.

And it was eye-opening and sobering. And to think about having to do that in a non-stable nation was more scary. So I wanted to bring that to light. Along with also just making myself some work. Yeah, that's what people don't realize that how dangerous it is to have children. My last child at the very end was real touch and go there for about an hour and scary as hell. And that's within a hospital.

It's in a hospital. And I mean, my sister dealt with preeclampsia and placenta previa, things that people, so many people, deal with now that we do have ways with modern medicine and the right facilities to help and get you through nowadays. I would definitely not recommend watching The Knick while you're pregnant if you're just dealing with-- Yeah. placenta previa, because that’s where they're in the 1900s of discovering

how to do surgery around it. And it was like, oh my gosh. It's eye-opening. It really is. And it really makes you appreciate what we have, but also how delicate and fragile it is. It's not guaranteed. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the worst part about pregnancy is I felt like every doctor's visit we had ended up with some kind of like, oh, your kid might be dead. Every visit was, oh, we found this thing testing.

And yeah, de, de, de, de, de, it could result in your kid doing whatever. So you've got to go get this special test. And then you'd go get the test. And it's like, oh, they're fine. The roller coaster was so insane to be on. And I know people who had way worse outcomes and had way more hardships than we had. But still, whoa, pregnancy is a joy. Gosh, it is terrifying. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, not unlike filmmaking, but in a more mortal way,

because it actually involves life. And so it was scary. There comes a part which I wasn't prepared for. But I don't know how you could be, really, until you get to that point. But toward the end, the last three months or so of pregnancy are so uncomfortable. And so you're in a different body. You have double the blood capacity. So much more weight. It hurts to take breaths. Sometimes where you just kind of like,

I just have to get through this. But it's not a pain of like, I have to get through it for a few minutes or a couple hours. It's like, I gotta go. Couple weeks, couple months here to do this. And it's gonna get worse. So I, and I remember it getting to a point where I had written in or kind of, we'll get to this, I suppose, but kind of outlined in action toward the end. And I got put on modified bed rest,

and I was like, okay, well, how do we adjust this a little bit? Because you get to the point where you physically cannot run for your life. And when I had that realization of like, I couldn't run. If somebody were chasing me, if a flood was coming after me, if something was happening, I don't have the ability that I've always had that I've counted on. I haven't even thought of before, of running, of climbing, of getting out of the way.

It's just a surrender to like, I guess I'm dying. Like it was so awful and morbid to be in that position and realize that, and realize that every mother gets to that point. So it was well. - And that's not the topic of this podcast, but it is amazing to me how flippantly people treat pregnancy. Like they're just like, ‘Just have the baby.’ It's like, it's not just anything, it's a big deal. And I'm so glad that I can't get pregnant.

- I had to not know that going in to make a film during this. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, man, I, listen, I'm a big proponent of having a lot of ignorance before you get into anything major. 'Cause if you know how hard it's gonna be, then you're just not gonna wanna do it. - I've heard that before. - How you had two kids, I don't know. God bless you though, your kids are great. - Well, if our second kid was like,

if the second kid was the first kid, we wouldn't have a second kid, does that make sense? The experience we had with the second one was awful. Like the pregnancy was harder at a certain point, but the first one was so easy, we were like, "Oh, this isn't that bad." But no, it was a big deal. - I think we just were surprised a little. Our suppose a surprise of like, we tried for so long to have the first one that it was like,

"Oh, I guess this is something you don't have to worry about not having one, 'cause it's hard to wait." What do you mean we're having another one? So, and that it was, you know, you're already on the roller coaster. So I was like, "I guess we'll just get this done and they'll be close to age." And that's fine, right? - Yeah, that's what happens when you teach your body how to be pregnant. (laughing)

- I'm not sure that I'm not. - But there was a moment of like, "Oh wait, we can get those pickup shots." (laughing) - Yeah. - 'Cause we were still at that point trying to get through post because, as it turns out, being a parent takes a lot of time and bandwidth. So yeah, took us a little longer to finish. - So let's take, sorry, I was gonna bring it back to the movie itself actually. 'Cause let's start talking about like,

so we asked for some inspirations for the movie. I know you were inspired to make it from events, but were there movies that you looked at, like a few movies that you looked at, you're like, "We could do it like, kind of like this movie and inspired you to actually do it." - Well, you know how Matt said you have to like, not know to jump in. I was definitely heavily inspired by ignorance, I think. So while I, yes, should have completely immersed myself

in research and watching all of these others, I did not. I can say in hindsight that it probably had a lot of influence just from movies I'd loved. Like a lot of Spielberg's movies have those long shots with no coverage, and I knew doing this style was gonna have to kind of be like that without having the language to clarify that. I knew that's what I was going for. I would say probably the one we discussed during filming

was Cloverfield, just like, oh, it's like found footage. We can use little VFX if we need more of it. It's gonna be focused on your reaction and what you hear off screen, then what we need to see. And I probably was influenced a bit by Brit Marling, and that was on a selfish endeavor of just like, her creating vehicles for herself with what, you know, she was like, I wanna tell this story, but it's an immensely doable story

her first couple films, right? Like Sound of My Voice and things. So as seeing her success come out of that, and it was one of the first times I was seeing a woman be like, oh, I made this film and I'm in it. Because before that, every time even for web series or short films that go in and pitch things, you'd get a lot of like headpats like, okay honey, and don't take on too much. And despite, you know, like, you being like,

it's based on my life or something. And I wouldn't see that with gentlemen that I'd go in and pitch with. They'd be like, yeah, bro, you should totally play that character. Now, I'm thankful that it's definitely less so now. I don't think they were saying that to Bradley Cooper, Taika Waititi or anything, but you have, you know, the Natasha Lyonnes and Quinta Brunsons and stuff showing that multitasking is something some people,

regardless of gender, are good at. And I knew that I was pretty solid in those arenas. So I guess I didn't have a lot of research going into it. We had a very set timeline because I think we started production where we were about three months pregnant. So I was like, okay, we gotta get this going. And I took it into SAG to try to get the contract all set because very by-the-book kiddos that we were.

And initially they were like, okay, well, you're gonna need to give us all this money. And I was like, but to pay ourselves, 'cause it's just us. And I go, you can't make a movie without a script and this and this and this. And I'm like, I mean, I can, here's the test footage. And then eventually I was very thankful that they worked with us at the time and helped me figure out which contract to land on.

At the time, it was a new media contract, which I was like, we can do this in XYZ to make it work. Now it would be a micro budget, probably. That would make it-- - I’m a strong proponent of that under-20 micro-budget contract that they have. - It would have eventually gone over that with deliverables and post and stuff. - Just a real dumb question from the guy not in SAG, but why would you go to SAG to talk to them

about a movie you're doing? Like why involve the guild at all? - I think my A-type wouldn’t let me. - Yeah. - But also I knew which actors I wanted to maybe ask to do little appearances. I knew I would need them to have that. I knew my husband, you know, a full disclosure for all of you watching and listening at home. Has been on the negotiating committees and different committees for SAG now. So yes, now I definitely would.

It is an easier phone call for me. If we run into roadblocks, we can kind of call other people to get help, which is a wonderful resource. And they're definitely gotten a lot better over the last years at being able to answer indie filmmakers and people who are making your own projects questions. In 2015, it was still a real challenge. It was like you run into roadblock after roadblock and then they would try to produce

for creators as like the enemy. And I initially ran into some of that, but having done enough, I was already a signatory for different web series and things. I knew the lay of the land. I knew how to do the basic paperwork and play by the rules. And I was kind of happy to do so 'cause I knew it could open extra doors for me. - And make sure you pay yourself overtime. - Well, yeah, they had, so that was the contract similar to the micro

where you can negotiate any amount, even if it's a deferred amount sort of or like your paid upon. If X happens, this is when you get paid. So it made it doable in that situation for us. - Nice. (laughing) - Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you, you know, I've just had I’ve just had a complicated relationship with unions. They do offer a lot of protection and benefits and structure and all that stuff is so good,

but there's an element of just, I just wanna make a movie and I promise I won't take advantage of people. Please trust me. - Absolutely, yeah. - And they've gotten better about answering that call, right lately, but yes, it's still, it can always use improvement and I encourage others to help make those improvements. - You know, continue to grow in and grow. (laughing) - That's great. Yeah, it's okay.

All right, so you weren't watching stuff to get inspiration from, which is impressive because the movie has such a confidence in it. You used the found footage and a real commitment to it that I don't see in a lot of other found footage movies that are out there. I think you guys just did a really excellent job with motivating the camera and also making sure to pick the right spot to get those little bits

of storytelling, like the flyer from the door with a big gas mask warning on it, which is really great. Like, at no point did I question why the camera was running and why they were bringing the camera with them. Like it was just, it was really well done. - Thank you. I think creators, filmmakers in general, I've found have to come from one of probably three main camps, right? You're either coming from the super tech side

where you're like all about the angles and the shots and the cameras and lenses and blah, blah, blah. Or you're coming from the writer side, which is part of my brain, for sure, the crafting of the story. Or you're coming from the actor side, right? Where you're really all about the character and those are gonna kind of motivate and guide you. So I kind of had two out of the three that were kind of guiding me,

definitely had a learning curve on the tech side. But I knew character wise what we needed. I also knew that pregnancy and the state of our nation were really unpredictable. So I didn't feel that writing a script to adhere to would be that beneficial. I kind of felt we needed to be more fluid. And I knew Charlie and I had one of our strengths was improv. So I was like, well, we can improv a scene. If I just give us, you know,

we need to get to this point, this point, in this point. - It's sure. - And then we had an end here. And then we had, in Rachael King, we had a really wonderful editor who could take that and make magic out of it and sometimes makes adjustments later. Like, hey, we really could use a transition scene, something like maybe this or this and that would get my brain going. And I might hear like, oh, they're closing the streets for an early marathon

or a president's in town or whatever it is. And we'd like go and take advantage of those moments. We kind of ambulance-chased, you know, across the nation because we didn't have to get. Like, oh, this convention's going on. Or this fire happened. We should go check it out. Or this protest is happening. Let's go get footage. And we did, which was crazy. - Yeah, you got lots of feet and butts. - Yeah, well, I also was very aware,

I'm like, we're not gonna get people to sign off on this necessarily. So we should make sure it's shot to the shoes. - See, but that's one of the advantages to our over militarized police force now. Is their faces are covered a lot of the time. You can just go ahead and shoot. - They work back then, you know, cheese. - Put them, put them, put them on camera. - There you go. That's a real silver lining, Robb.

Good job. I'm fine, one silver lining and that awfulness of now. Oh boy. - So you kind of may already answer these questions, but we always like to ask with the OPM of your movie was, because every movie has certain elements to it. Every movie starts with an obsession. Then there's some kind of pivot. And then there's some kind of miracle that shouldn't have happened. So you kind of talked about why you wanted to make this,

but I guess. - You're more the pivot. And I mean, probably the having to be on modified bed rest toward the end was a big like, okay, we're gonna scratch that running scene. And what if we end up finding a place to like bunk or down, kind of like, you know, we're looking for a manger at this point? Like we have a find a place and we were, - Well, yeah. - Well, if you were kind of improvising and mapping it out,

but at what point did it go from this, this kind of baby diary of what it's like to raise a kid and the specter of a maybe civil war to having the actual footage of actual unrest? Like at what point did it become more of a fable of the modern world? - We knew it would always end there. Like that, I went into it wanting to show the terror that can happen if even for these characters, unlike ourselves, are rather apathetic politically.

Right, they're not necessarily very committed to either side, quote unquote, they're just kind of like, whatever, just leave us alone and do your political thing over there. And I think showing that that affects, that this, the world's not gonna leave you alone because you left it alone. - Yeah, yeah. - It was important that it's important to engage while you can. So it was interesting because the scene where the,

I mean, spoilers, but we hear people celebrating in the streets because the president's been assassinated. It hit real different in 2015, 2016 and 2020, right? And you see different people, when we've done test screenings, react very differently to that, based on how they would view our characters, because I kind of like that either quote unquote, side that people come to on this, they assume we're on theirs,

which was great. And so they were appalled with us, usually, regardless because they assumed we're on their side. And I think I needed that because I needed to go along and see like it doesn't matter if somebody's not terribly politically engaged. It can still, if society falls, we're all affected. - Well, that's one, that's one of the things I really liked about your guys' characters actually politically.

The politics aren't real clear. They get a little clearer at the end. - Yeah, at the end we start to have to clarify. - Right, but when it first starts happening, there's no real politics. It's more like, what the fuck is happening? What's going on? Like this is madness, this is crazy. Can everybody just calm down? We don't know how you feel about the president being assassinated other than somebody got killed,

and people are celebrating about it. And it's a weird thing that people shoot off guns in the street and celebrating, like you feel something happening, but we don't get the sense of where you guys stand politically. I mean, until the end and even then, the politics are thrust upon you more than anything else. - Right, but even the idea of like, you know, there's that big joke right now about how certain presidents pass away

because of whatever there'll be celebrations in the street. But, you know, I don't think it would be out of bounds where people question the... - Tactfulness? - Yeah, the tactlessness. - Yeah, exactly. The tacklessness of celebrating someone else's death. Like, I get that, but it's like... - I think that's most people. - Yeah. - Right? Most people are kind of like, "Oh, don't celebrate that." - Yeah, I mean.

- This is very much so in 2015 and '16. We all felt that. So, it was eye-opening to me too. And I think to your question, I don't know if I clarified it before, of when we realized that the world would kind of crumble beneath our feet, like when we actually have to go and run and we're on our own. We kind of had... Post-it notes on the wall because we didn't have a script. And we would move those scenes around as things would happen.

And as we'd start to get rough cuts together and be like, I think it needs to kind of happen here to make it more interesting. So, what if this happened? And we'd just kind of play with shooting scenes of like, what do we do tonight? Let's just go try to do this. What if we did some sort of scene where this happens? And we had the room to play an experience together which was magical for the most part.

I mean, on occasion, it would result in arguments because, you know, married. But mostly it would be like, "Oh, this is great." Or let's explore this moment. What if the protests take a turn and your business is destroyed? That affects you more, even if you were kind of like on their side ahead of time. Like you start to see through a human lens how people are affected by the downward spiral. And it was wild.

It was wild to actually see it kind of come together. The very, most of this, like I said, was shot over the course of our first pregnancy in 2015. And then a little bit over the second pregnancy in 2017. And then the very last shot we got, as we're piecing it together, like, "Oh, you know what's missing?" We need something in the car as we're running. And so we got some car footage going out of town

and then we also got to see some destruction and stuff too. And then we also got a shot when COVID closed, everything down. Our very last shot was going through the grocery store and just seeing the empty shelves. I was like, "Oh, this shut's down the supply chain." - That shot was so real. There were some questions I wanna ask you later about pulling all these things together. Because, no, it's great.

You told me that you shot this in 2015 and I was like, "There ain't no way because it's so clearly a COVID movie." But knowing all this, it's incredible. - It was wild. It came out, it was supposed to actually premiere. We got sort of a soft premiere for Slamdance was doing a special LA thing before it moved here. And that was in 2020, but like March, April. So we got the word that never mind. And I was like, "Okay, it's fine.

"We have a little more time to do some polish on the VFX." And then so we ended up premiering at Dances with Films in 2021. And we won the Audience Choice Award there, which was crazy surprising and wonderful and glorious. And ended up getting global distribution, which was also amazing, but also not as amazing as I think indie filmmakers go into it thinking. - Yeah. - I think filmmakers go into this being like,

"I'm gonna get distribution and then I get a check "and yeah, I'm gonna go this money." That is not the case. That is, you don't make money on indie films. Just full stop. Maybe if you have a horror film that costs nothing or you have a Christmas movie, maybe Robb can answer that later. (laughs) - I have made no money. - It's possible you will make money on those two genres. Otherwise, you're not making money.

You're making a calling card. You're making your first feature film. You're making a wonderful opportunity for yourself and networking. But other than maybe lightning in a bottle, Blair Witch, I don’t know, Sound of My Voice or something, you're not making money. You're making a film. - Well, it's so funny because I guess maybe because films are such a costly endeavor most of the time, they don't have to be.

But I mean, they are. So the first thought still a lot of people is, who's the audience and how are you gonna make back your money? It's like, you know, they don't ask these questions of other artists and other genres. Somebody's not painting a painting and you're like, what? Well, who's this painting for? And how much money are you gonna make? How much time you spent painting this painting? Are you gonna make that money back?

Like nobody does that to painters, but they do it to filmmakers all the time. - Well, but it's less of a painting and more of a business, right? Like it's less of a, let's take this thing and hang it on the wall and more of a, look at the store and what you can, that you can go in and buy stuff. Like you come out and open a business because you're employing people and then you're doing all this stuff.

Like, yeah, how are you gonna make money with your business? - Definitely a team sport, right? Or it should be. - Should be. - Like I said, this is a endeavor. - Yeah, yeah. - It was an endeavor to do with this small crew. But you're absolutely right. Having to reverse engineer those questions, right? It's hard. So I would definitely encourage any filmmaker to really clarify the business side of it going in.

I think usually you have to do that. There's always an exception to the rule where you may not need that. But. - If you want to and I will encourage filmmakers also, throw your money away, if you want to. Go ahead. I mean, I go ahead. I threw my money away. I had a great time. - Look at it so far. - I love the movie that I made and that's what I paid for. I paid for the experience of me and everybody else to make this movie

knowing that that's what I was paying for. - I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I definitely thought like, oh, we're spending a little money to get this big reward. And we were spending a little bit every year for six years on post. But looking back over it, it becomes a bigger chunk, right? And then what I really didn't know going into it is a thing called deliverables. Which if you do happen to get distribution,

they will then give you about a week or so to turn over those deliverables. Which if you have an entire team might be entirely doable. They might have done it along the time. I'll lodge you went and be big, bobbie, bobbie, boob, that's an email. But if it is just you, that will not be the case. So I relied heavily on the other women who happened to have one, or gotten distribution at that particular festival,

Dances with Films and their experience to gather what a list of deliverables was, as well as Brenda Bradley gave me a lovely list to start to gather that ahead of time when I was starting to be in talks with distributors. And what to compare, how to decide on one, what to gather, which I think was immensely helpful 'cause I got a little bit of a head start on that. It was just a learning curve extraordinaire.

And you're paying, you're paying for that pleasure to amass things like a quick poster in your, you know, QC and your legal clearances on everything and your subtitles and all the stuff that you're like, wait, what? And the hundred stills. Oh yeah, what was that? The E&O insurance and all that? Like, yeah. Yeah. We really lucked out because Katrina, my wife, spent years as a post sup. So at the time we were assembling things like that,

she was like, yep, I'm on it. And it was second nature for her to put all that stuff together. So then all I had to worry about was the fun part of the deliverables. Like, you know, make sure we had the deleted scenes, make sure we heard of the commentary, stuff like that. And then Katrina. It sounds delicious. I had to worry about the actual like music QC's and all the paperwork and, ugh. Isn't having a team nice.

You got to marry better Paula. Yeah. Find someone who can do all that paperwork. But like gathering, I will say for any sort of filmmaker out there, whether or not you are doing it by union contracts, so otherwise, get all of your talent releases as you're filming. Get all of your crew releases as you're filming. Get your music releases as you're filming as Robb knows. Sometimes I'm like, all right, can I get you to sign this

real quick so I just have it? Yeah. Scan it in my folder, ready to go. In case any festival or distributors like, do you have this? Then I'm like, I do. You can find templates online. You can find them from various resources. But just make sure you have your tuchus covered. If you have your script, make sure it’s copyrighted, not just WGA’d. Make sure you have the chain of possession accounted for.

The chain of title. Gosh. I like counted. Oh, chain, it's so funny. When you get distribution, they do ask for all this stuff. Like, I've had to do-- I have to deal with this stuff for a minute. It costs more if you have more than two words in your title. Did you know that? Networks are real demanding, but then you distribute yourself and it goes to the same places that the network stuff goes to. And guess what they don't ask you for?

None of that. Any other stuff. Yeah. Shut the front door. None of it. I would probably self distribute, if I were to do a super indie again, just because my goodness. So what they don't teach you is even the transparent, well-reviewed distributors will then send you a quarterly or biannual bill, essentially, that breaks down what the movie made, across various platforms or whatever. And then it also will show you what you owe,

because they quote unquote spent on marketing or whatever. And you're like, what marketing did you do? And they're just-- The operating concoms. The operating concoms. So there's actually never any way to get out of the hole. The hole just gets bigger as far as what you owe. Now, at the end of the term that they distribute it for, they probably won't ask you for that money back. Most of them don't.

They just write it off. But still, it's not like you're making money on it. So there are ways to self distribute and get around it. Yeah, that was our experience with the distributor. We got an MG, a minimum guarantee of like 5,000 or something, and it immediately went into the void of the debt that we had. But our contract for them just ended. And they didn't come how into us for the money we owed them.

But they did send us all the DVDs that they couldn't sell anymore, because they now belong to us. So they sent Andy a couple boxes of the movie, who then sent me a couple. And then they used all the digital rights before the contract and so the digital rights now belong to Tubi. So when it's on Tubi, it's nice, but it's not always on Tubi. And then Tubi could sell it around and make money off of it.

But I haven't seen a quarterly earning in forever. I think the last time we got one, we were still like 16 grand in the hole. That's not the worst. And you know, they were like, we got a big Jeff to make the movie posters for something else. And you know, part of me gets it, like if I was a distributor, I understand that there are operating costs and you need to - Sure. Amortize those costs across all the different things, but yeah, thank you.

But it sucks. - Right. - Because you're not making money for yourself. Like we can buy DVDs from them wholesale for five bucks and then sell it for 20 so you're making 15, but you're still fighting against the whole thing. Yeah. - Your effort. - Yeah, it's tough. It's really tough. - Yeah, I like independent distribution, by the way. - I think I'm gonna have to, yeah, I would love, I'm diving into that more.

Helena Santos has had a lot of success with her film going her micro-micro-budgets going on Tubi and getting some really nice returns. - I’m on Tubi right now. I have made back, I just did the math, an estimated six percent of my purchase. - Hey! - Hey! - That's something! I don't know where we've made any. - We've made nothing, but six percent is really good. On a hundred bucks, what is that like?

Six? - No way, that's where this case comes way more. - A lot of those Christmas trees went back. Yeah. - Can you return Christmas trees? - They're fake Christmas trees. - Oh, they're fake. Okay, nevermind. - I'm just gonna see what happens with the Christmas movie the second year, because Tubi put it on Tubi, but after Christmas. - Okay, you haven't had the seed. - And that's where we've made most of our money.

It’s on Tubi. - I think you have good luck for Christmas. And you let us know. Circle back, do a Christmas episode because I think if we did like a bloody Christmas movie, you'd probably be like the best bed of making your money. - Yeah, everybody's doing them now though, so let's see. So to get back onto the OPM of it all, the pivot, you talked about the bed rest, was that the biggest pivot? And is that why Charlie was hiking out

to Ruins by himself with a camera? - No, he was going 'cause he was going on a hiking trip that just happened to be passing through Detroit with his friend and they were like, oh, we'll go check out this political convention 'cause it'll have a big police presence. And then they come back with this footage of them like crawling through decrepit buildings and I'm like, what were you doing? And it was things you do before children.

- It was like, he's gonna step on a name. - But what do you weren't thinking like, I could die? - Yeah, it's the things you do when you're not sure that you wanna be a dad. I don't know, maybe just for caution of the win. - Yeah, who knows? - Who knows? (laughing) - So that was a pivot. There was a lot of just happy accidents. So I'm like, oh, I don't wanna say that because some of it might be like,

oh, we're looking at a fire or something, but a happy accident in that we kind of just went with whatever life threw at us. Like, oh, there's a protest. Let's get some footage, see what we get. The pivot, yeah, probably was the bed rest. And maybe availability of different actors, if we were like, hey, Glenn Morshower, when are you in town, when can we do this? And he shot in our darn decrepit garage

that we were remodeling in like 105 degree day. And at one point, he actually did fall asleep. (laughing) The BTS one story. Like, get out. 'Cause he's like, done for a while, it is so hot. And I was like, is he okay? Is he okay? And he was such a trooper. But we got some amazing people to just come by and do just a cameo for us, which was pretty fun. - Nice. You know, a bit of advice they got when I was shooting my first short film was

that your movie should always take the audience places. And I really appreciated with Delicate State that I always felt like it was going somewhere. Like, I didn't feel like I was just in and around your house the entire time. Like, the garage felt so different than the interior of the house that felt different from the backyard of the house. And like, the blown out building was like, is this incredible production value?

And even when you walk past that burned out house, which, yes, an unequivocal tragedy for those involved that's, yeah. - Well, I think it was abandoned. - Well, let's hope, at least now it is. - Yes. But we would find places because, you know, scrappy filmmakers do that. Like, we'd drive around and be like, oh, what about this railroad bridge? What about this little, what if we go back here in this little cul-de-sac?

Maybe we could film something here and just kind of brainstorm guerrilla filming. I guess we definitely didn't maybe follow all the permitting laws that we should have. - But. - Who should? Who cares? - But we didn't have a tripod. We had just a handheld. So maybe we got to get around it anyway. It depends on your cops. - You're right. - You're asking the king of running around town and filming stuff in front of the police.

- So it was, it was an adventure and then we got a little shot with Lincoln. We'd had ideas to shoot him in the hospital, but we turns out there's always people coming in the room. - It's really ding it. - Okay. And so we literally, I think you go back like a few days later, right, so maybe check out. We literally like snagged a shot of Charlie. We like found like a very quiet hall of the hospital.

We put up and shot in a window. We're doing a lot of ask forgiveness versus permission. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But when you have a baby, people don't question you having a camera. - No, right, yeah. 'Cause that's what you do with babies. Take video. - Right. - That's the way you gotta do it. Yeah, I mean, especially now, like having all that footage is, even if you didn't make the movie, just having all that footage of you being pre-kid

to having the kid is just an awesome artifact. - Like it's about factors that it's so wild to see them do like, I cannot delete off my computer. It just really needs me to clear space. Like a couple of slates of them at like two and four or something being so freaking adorable. We're like, oh, but I can't. - I'd say you should buy an extra hard drive, but hard drives are like a billion dollars now, so.

- They are and did you know they don't last forever? They actually, I think this from the VFX teams, they start to disintegrate after a few years. So you can't count on them just storing, this was great advice from an amazing VFX, like Oscar winning gal who was just on this film, the summer they came with us, who was awesome actor. But she's so fantastic and she was like, don't keep everything on a hard drive.

Like back it up every two or three years on a new hard drive because they are disintegrating. - My movie, my high school, Miss Mary, high school, Miss is gone. - It's gone? - The hard drive, I think. - Oh no. - I have the backup footage, but I don't know what's left of it. I haven't had the hard to try to see what I've got. - I have hard drives around that I still need to plug in. I just have an old one from college

that I don't even know if it works, but he still have it just in the barest hope that sometime in the future, someone's gonna figure out how to save that stuff and then I'll have it. Oh yeah, in the future, somebody will hold your phone over a hard drive platter and all the data would be there. - But now phones are so amazing. Like we had to do, you know, pick the brains of so many seven photographer friends

being like, what camera can us dummies use that will auto focus, that we could just like touch the screen and it will keep us in focus as we move. That's okay in low light. Like, there has a decent microphone 'cause I don't know if what necessarily always be running sound, which sometimes we work. Sometimes we work. And so I think we found the Samsung NX1, which now they don’t make anymore, but it was great for what we needed then.

There's so many better ones out now. (laughs) But yeah, it was, you know, because we didn't come from that tech side, there's a lot of tech learning curve. - But your footage looked really good. Like, I don't know if you shot stuff that didn't work or stuff was under exposed or anything, but I mean, the cinematography of it all, for you guys doing it yourselves was really good. - I mean, we weren't newbs in as far as,

like, you know, composition and lighting, I suppose, because we'd been doing, we've been on sets for so long and film lovers. - Right. - But also, we'd been doing self tapes for, you know, 10 years prior to that, because we’d been bi-coastal. So before other people were doing it, we were doing almost daily camera setups and being like, you know, this looks better if we have the light here. What if we put one here?

And just kind of trial and error learning. - Yeah. - What worked. And then, you know, there's this thing called YouTube, which you can actually watch and find out, like, oh, this is how you light something. I mean, we definitely utilize that. Like, how would we light it better? - How do you spell that? You do. - But it's not the letter you. It's the Y-O-U. - You do, with a U. (laughing) But with, you know, sometimes you can make something

look real nice with the concept of lighting and stuff, but it's hard to translate it to the physical camera. If you don't, if you're not super familiar with it. - Sure, and like, you know, wardrobe is a consideration. Colors are big for me, so I know how, like, colors affect things. I'd have to make sure that I set dressed a little, cleaned a little bit, so I wasn't like, "Here's my laundry back here."

And last, I needed that to be back there for a scene. So there was a fair amount. - But your house looked lovely. - Only in the size of a pretty nice. - But you guys have good taste, and that's your house. And so it looked really nice on camera. - Yeah, and it felt like a house that child-free people live in. Again, I kept assuming you shot it during COVID. So I was like, it's incredible how they were able

to clear all the kid stuff out and still have this great looking place. - Just to pick up shots we had too. - Yeah, but it still looks great though. - You had to track it whether Paula had red hair or blonde? - Yeah, they were the red shirt. You can't dye it when you're pregnant, so it starts to definitely fade, right? Back into the blondies. But I think you see Lincoln as a toddler in one of the shots as we're trying to like,

make our way into the hospital. - Yeah. - He's being held by somebody, and he's like, no! (laughing) - Yeah, I was like, wait, I think that's the real kid. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughing) - Well, yeah, that's great. Well, let's get into the ingenuity of it all. And you talked about this a lot already, which is great, but I mean, and I don't mean to be super stodgy about our stupid structure, but what's wonderful

about our stupid structure, but what’s wonderful about Delicate State, and the thing I keep hinting at, in a different space because then we know each other outside of this, but I forgot when your kids were born. So I was like, clearly it was Elliot was born in 2020, and you guys were like, oh, I remember the first time we were going through this, so, but that's not the case, which is even crazier, and the motivation to keep it going

for six years while raising two kids is crazy impressive. Even more impressive than just shooting while you're pregnant. - I mean, we were mostly done by the end of 2019, 'cause Elliot was born in 2017. So in the 2019, you were pretty much done. We kind of got the word from Chimaera that we were selected for the slam dance thing, and we're like, okay, how can we speed through all the way, I got this grant from Chimaera

to get some of our finishing funds together for our VFX that we needed to add in the planes and some smoke and explosions and stuff. And this amazing big day came on, Dave, maybe, was our just Jack of all trades and could do those for us, and he was able to do it, but it still, you know, very crunched him out of time. You know, fast, cheap, or good, and we needed, you know, cheap and good. So, but we lucked out with, I mean, not lucked out COVID,

but we lucked out, I suppose, and that we were able to get that extra year of polish time. So much of the delay was not chosen, but rolled with, like you kind of have to have, and just having children, as you guys know, requires, you're like, it's fine, no, go to bed, and then I'll still do all this stuff at night, like I usually did, like, all right, and I'll be so productive, and instead, you're like, I am exhausted, good night.

And so there was, you know, some plenty of times of doing that. (laughs) Yeah, I don't, I don't think I wrote anything for the first 18 months, the kid was alive. Like, I was all fired up about writing right before she was born, or taking meetings on some script we had, and we were feeling great, even though they rejected it for dumb reasons, or started to work on something else, until the kid was born, and then it all dropped out.

And I was finally put it all back together, getting out there, and it was March of 2020. And I was like, yeah, I got the wheel back on the bus, here we go, and then the world exploded. And I was, ah, my gosh. I will say something though about COVID, which, you know, COVID obviously sucked ass. It sucked so bad. Bold stance, Robb. I know, I know, I know. It's a controversial take, but the one thing it did,

though, was it did kind of make you just kind of go, okay, what the hell are we doing? Like, we all took stock. We didn't necessarily like what the stock said, but we all, like the movie, you knew you had time, because nothing's going on. Like, you're not missing out. There's no FOMO. There's no-- - Well, we thought we had two weeks, extra, right, initially. (laughing) So I go, okay, two weeks, so we can do this.

It was a real eye opener, and I feel incredibly lucky, because it hit at a time for us that wasn't nearly as hard to deal with as it was for many others. In hindsight, it was a lovely, weird capsule for us to just be together and to focus on like, okay, well, when they're napping, let's try to, like, make steps towards this, and be creative, but it, oh man. And I think not knowing how long it would be

as we started that made it more doable and then beginning. But let's, you know, I don't know, a crazy idea. What if we didn't have another? What if we like, listen to science? That would be cool. - Oh, that would be good, but, you know, we'll get the measles thing coming up. - Yeah, you know-- - And what happens again, we'll be ready for it. You understand? - Yeah. - The lock of the doors will keep us inside,

and this time we'll know what's going on. - I really trust the people who are in charge. - I already got my big bucket of horse paste. I'm all ready to go pull on into the grip for everyone else. - Oh, yeah, I'm sure. (laughing) - Don’t manifest another pandemic. - I like my toilet paper so much, you guys. - Yeah, my toilet paper's still so expensive, too. - Let's talk about something fun, 'cause, you know, we have this weekly topic on here

that we're talking about, the Found Footage Stuff, and we've talked about ingenuity. The ingenuity of you just taking advantage of your, the situation you were in personally and the global situation to like, came together for this movie. - What's that? What's your name? It's like, there's like a way of thinking of brainstorming, and I think, is it Always Sunny in Philadelphia? It's one of the guys that's like, they had a name for it,

and it was brilliant, I've shared it before, where you just spit ball ideas. Like, all the ideas, you put, there's no bad ones, right? You're just putting 'em all on a board, and you're like, looking at 'em, and then you start to arrange 'em, and kind of organize 'em into groups, and it just kind of starts to come and do a clear picture of like, oh, this is what we're doing. It's sort of what we-- - So when you say ideas, do you mean like,

scene ideas, or like larger ideas, or-- - Like, yes, anything, yes, I am, right? So it's like, okay, well, we have us, we're the main characters, okay, cool. And then, well, I'm pregnant, so we're gonna add that on there, so we have to build that in somehow. Unless we hide it, do we wanna hide it? We'll put hide it over here just in case, and you start putting everything on the board to see what it is, and like, what speaks to me now?

What am I concerned about? What am I worried about? I'm worried about all these people talking about civil war, like, it's no big deal, like, that could be fun, maybe it'd be worth it, I like my guns, poo-poo, and like, putting things up, and like, maternal mortality was up there, and we just kinda looked at it, and started to like, organize 'em like, well, there's some overlap here. What if it's our story, and it's just us?

Like, that's doable, right? Just documenting, and then we don't have to worry about coverage, and necessarily, fancy cinematography, it's just, you get a lot of forgiveness with that footage. And then, you have this global thing happening, and what if that encroaches? I was like, I like that, because it starts to tell the tale of how it affects us, because I think people so often disassociate and don't realize

how these things that they flippantly talk about actually would affect all of us. And sometimes people just don't think about until they affect them personally, which are-- - Yeah, it's so frustrating. - But to have that, for those lacking creativity and empathy, maybe to show them how that spells out, right? I think that's sort of the magic of storytelling, that's what I love, and is worth it to me,

for all these blood, sweat, and tears we pour in to filmmaking and storytelling, is because you have this magic to change minds by changing hearts first. So you always come at it through the heart, and then people sometimes have that moment of sitting back and going, oh, which I really loved seeing in a couple of theaters, especially playing in the Midwest, certain areas, where they start associating like, yeah, they're on our side,

and then as the movie went on, sitting back, more on their seats. And some of the best compliments I got about this film was somebody saying, this is an important film. This is something that I hadn't really kind of fought about or realized, and now I can't unthink about it. And so I think that was like, well, good, that's why I made this. - We take so much stuff for granted, that the hospitals and health, and even with our

crappy healthcare system we have now, we still take it for granted. - We don't add toilet paper, food. - Yeah. - Schools. - Electricity. - Yeah, having your house not affected, which people all over the world is really when I, when I was pregnant, was I started to really pay attention to realize like, oh, these women in XYZ nations right now are not guaranteed that their house won't be bombed, are not guaranteed that, you know,

rebels won't show up and kick them out of their house or rape them or kill their kids or whatever, like take them to be child soldiers, like they're dealing with so much more than we ever, even really. - Yeah, and morning sickness. - And morning sickness on top of all of it. All of it. And all the little things that make pregnancy hard, and then the big things that make life hard at the same time. - And it hit on a different note when I was living in that.

So I wanted to share it. - It's really fascinating, 'cause, you know, it's crazy how it all came together, because watching it, it felt like externalization of what it's like to be pregnant, where you become aware of the world and the dangers that exist in it. Before we had a kid, I would never think about things like someone sticking their hands in a electrical socket or just stuff you don't see until this thing happened.

- The dangers it is, yeah. And how many children didn't survive for grandparents, great grandparents even? - Yeah. - So one of the things I really liked about Delicate State was that essence of like, oh, you get pregnant, and you're in your honeymoon phase, where everything is all great, until you slowly start hearing the rest of the world. - Till it affected us, right? Until it starts to affect us, we started to have to.

- Yeah, but I think a lesser movie would make that, and this is gonna sound weird, a lesser movie would make that way more upfront. And I really appreciate how slowly it built in relation to how the pregnancy was moving. Like, we didn't see the complication outside until it wasn't pretty clumsy. What was that? - The medical issue, the-- - The previa. - The previa, yeah. Like, it happened, and then we started seeing

the external stuff, and I thought it was a really great parallel as it was happening. - Yeah, that's when you start your eyes start to open. - I didn't even think of it that way, but that is a good way, this is a really great way to analyze this movie. Although, you're gonna, I do want people to get pregnant ever again, are you trying to terrify people? - I want them to, if they want to. I want them to be aware, and to appreciate

all that goes into making a human, because I think it really helps you make better choices for the humans that are here. I don't think women are getting us into wars, because it's really hard to make a human, and you don't want to waste the humans. I mean, maybe granted, yes, per human basis, there might be some that we could see go. But most humans-- - Paula, we establish it is tactless to celebrate the death of certain people, remember?

- Right, there are people on a person basis that you might later, after the reactions, as adults, make you have to re-evaluate that on occasion. But as a general group, we're not wanting to endanger groups, we're not risking like, okay, yeah, send that bomb, even if it's a school, whatever, it's worth it. Like, we know the human cost of that, the heart cost of that. And I don't think it's brave, I don't think it's strong.

I think it's weak, and it ends up making enemies for generations. So it doesn't make us safer either. And I think I needed to also kind of highlight that. - Well, it does a really good job of that. - Yeah, all of this, you know, small lifts, small lifts, come on. - Show people that can make a movie of "Available Pregnant" and with no resources, and also open our eyes to the impending doom before we fall.

- Yeah, no, I think any time you, some of the conversations I had before we got pregnant and during the pregnancy was to talk to other women who were pregnant. My whole gimmick, as I was becoming a dad, was to talk to other parents about how they did things. And I glued together all that advice into a wider whole for me, because, you know, for a long time, pregnancy had been this girl thing. And I say, "Girls specifically,"

that men didn't have to worry about. Like, ladies did that, and all men had to do is-- - Show up and get us a go. - Exactly, show up and get us a go. Like, make sure there was money coming into the house, but increasingly, I was like-- - But I think that's really only been the last hundred years or so. Before that, well, more than a hundred, but like feudalism, right? - Yeah. - Before that, it wasn't quite so segmented and gendered.

- Well, because if you wanted your children to survive, you kind of had to work. You had to work at it. - But it was a lot more collaborative pre-futalism. Because before when it was working your land, everybody had to work, women had to work men had to work. When it's working for the boss, you're required an output, which also requires somebody else to then be home, taking care of stuff. So there was then a split in what gender roles were.

So that's where you really start to see a divergence. But yeah, definitely modern history, you're right. It was from, you know, Victorian era on. It was definitely a, "Boys do this, girls do this." And don't talk about anything gross, la la la. - Exactly. I talked to a friend of mine who had a real, harrowing pregnancy, and she was telling me the story. - Yeah, and it's awesome. And I love that she told me, but, you know,

And I had a full-on panic attack while she was telling me the story. And I had a full on panic tech while she was telling me the story. But I'm so appreciative that she told me, because it really opened my eyes to the dangers and what could happen. And I think that this age of dads becoming more enlightened about child-rearing and how it works is so beneficial to everything. Because if we somehow can't get women in charge,

at least we can have men in charge who know what's involved in having children. - I'm a proponent of having women in charge, just to put that out there. - But don't just a clever lot. - I'm not subscribing to your newsletter quite yet. (laughing) - So it's wild times, it is. But like the tool we have is storytelling, right? It's sort of our duty. It's what I feel like. Like how do we keep getting out of bed

and doing this when it's exhausting? And like maybe not the rewards we thought would come. It's because we have to use our voice. We have to use our special powers to get these stories out there. - Can I ask just one nerdy question about the movie itself? - Absolutely. - Where did you shoot that stuff on the next to the docks on the, you know, with the bad people taking over the car? - I want to say it’s like Van Nuys-ish.

It was literally finding the railroad tracks and following along until we found the bridge. And then if you go around that industrial area, there is a little cul-de-sac area that just driving around there were like, "Hey, what about this?" Did you light it or was, or you using the lights that were there? - We went at night to, well, first we found it the day because yikes. And then we went back at night to see how sketchy it might be.

And it was pretty well lit at the time. And we had a camera with good low light. - That, 'cause that scene, for anybody who's listening who is going to watch the movie, and hopefully that's everyone. That scene is a really good example of economy in filmmaking. Like it's a tense scene. There's a lot of people in it. It's one shot. And it doesn't need to be anymore. And that's all it needed to be. And the location does a lot of work.

And the actors do a lot of work too. But like you even mixed it so you can barely hear them. I had subtitles on. So I knew exactly what they were saying. - I had to make it, yeah, we had to make that decision of like, "Okay, they're gonna be outside. I'm in the car filming. This is what I would hear." That kind of makes it scarier to not know exactly what's being said. - It does. The subtitles were definitely undermining the tension

by showing the exactly- - And the two Charlies, my Charlie and Charlie Halford. He was excellent and really broad. And he was like, "Well, how much do you want me to really "like rough them up?" And I was like, "I'm gonna let you two talk about that. "But I need it to look real." And I was a polling favors of getting friends out there that night. And I wanted to make sure it didn't look like just, I wanted there to be white people causing trouble.

That was a conscious choice of like, "No, I think you would have people taking advantage of this." - Well, you do have the pink mohawk. - Oh, like, yeah, I'm Andy. - Which is a nice throwback to A.D.'s thuggery. - She just came with that and I was like, "Let's go, let's go." (laughing) Yeah, and just seeing how people would take advantage of a deterioration in society because so many would in chaos, people can steal.

- Well, and directly I thought it was really well done. I just wanted to say that. - Yeah, it's another one of those like, I never questioned the position of the camera or what it was doing. I mean, I saw this found footage movie years ago. That was always coming up with the most contrived reasons to bring the camera out into the action. It was always so forced, but this was, you know, like, yeah, you wanted to get all these faces on the video

because-- - Why did they not take the camera? I don't know, maybe, whatever, but we just kind of like kind of ran with that to figure out-- - But even if they did, I'm not questioning the final destination of all this footage. I'm just, I'm in it. - That was very thoughtful of them to let you finish your business. - It was. We really tried to work through all that of like, "Okay, well, we could lose the car.

"We could lose this. "How do we not lose the camera?" I mean, they just decided to leave us like camera, I guess. - They had empathy for the pregnant woman. - Yeah, or I just took it and ran. They're like, "Take what you can and go." - Well, what's really funny is that like, there's nobody in this movie and tell you look at the credits and there's like a billion people in this movie with nobody in it.

There's so many people in your movie with nobody in it. - I didn't even do solids for us. I know, we just lost Dee Freeman, who was one of our doctors in the final scene. She passed away of cancer just so I think this summer, but yeah, just last summer. - I just saw that, but it was, it was so many talents that had crossed paths with us from like plays and web series and just all sorts of voiceover.

And I was so touched that everybody that I asked was like, "Yeah, yeah, I mean let's go." And I will say that is the secret to filmmaking, even some of my more recent films, never be afraid to ask an actor. I don't know that you will get a no from any actor if you say, "I wrote this for you." If you give them an opportunity to play, actors, and I say this as an actor, probably the easiest part to attach.

If you can get a hold of them, and they're not just a total like Kuntberger or something, they will most likely be like, "Yeah, let's go." Especially if they know you as a person or someone you know, right? I mean, yes, it is a profession, we do it, we deserve to be paid for it. But we also love to do it. - Yeah, there's no point in being an actor if you don't act. You gotta act to be an actor. - Right, so don't let worrying about not knowing

the right actors or being able to get a hold of them stop you. Reach out to the actors. - You know, when we did Litton, we didn't know, came. But we somehow knew as manager or something, but, and I think that's the other trick, is to go through the managers not through the agents, 'cause the agents want money while managers think about what the role can do. And so also if you want someone big in your movie,

like the trick is to give them something they don't normally do. - Like Doug Jones getting to do something without special effects in your phone. - Exactly. - You told us even in holding you, I was like, this was so magical, I get to be me. And I was like, I love that, Dougie. And I mean, he's just a glorious human anyway. But yeah, even for Burned, which was one of the films I just recently did, that edited by Robb here, and acted in,

and all the things, music. But it was wonderful to reach out to people, like just cold Instagram them, being like, this is gonna go to the other box, and not gonna see it at all. Sissy Jones was fresh off like a bathtub in, and I just messaged her at like 10 o'clock at night, knowing like friends of friends, but being lazy and not getting her email and be like, I don't know if she's gonna say no. And emailing her about my film, and within seconds,

she messaged back, and was like, I literally am sitting here with my family talking about this book that you mentioned, and also I'm a witch, let's make this. And I was like, okay, and that happened again, and again, with so many people that I knew, you know, maybe from various friends, or I'd worked with once or twice, all of them were a yes. So that is your signal, your bat signal, if you were a film maker, so you reach out

and ask the actors, they almost likely say yes. - Yeah, again, I think we just, we all wanna help each other. I mean, even if you can't help, 'cause I have tons of people who reach out, they're like, hey, tell me if you hear of anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I can't help them, but it's a community, and it's like, I like to say it's a team sport. We're all in this together, and we all wanna do stuff because you never know.

There's no money in it, but any movie could be the next obsession, but there's-- - But there's magic in it. - Magic in it, that's a way better way to put it. - So when I just finished the short film that Robb thankfully did the music for me, was completely a labor love, and I haven't done one of those in years and years. So it literally was just happened to a friend of mine, and I was like, I need to make a film about this.

I reached out to a few people, and every single person was like, yeah, let's do it. I'm on hiatus this month, let's go. And I had so many people come to the table with amazing equipment with their skills, and I was able to make this beautiful film that I just wrapped yesterday, and it's all set in the show. - Day! - I think it's crossed for still here. - Congratulations. - Thank you. So do you have anything else, Robb?

- No, and it's getting to the time to end it, but that was a nice breezy conversation. I think we covered so much stuff. - This was fun, you guys, thank you. - Yeah, thank you for being on. - No, thank you, but before we wrap up, we do have a couple of final questions for you. If you could go back to the very beginning, yes, it's 2015, you're pregnant, and all your roles are drying up, and you're about to start this road.

What piece of advice would you give yourself to either warn yourself about what to watch out for or to make it easier for yourself? - Well, we already know that we shouldn't warn ourselves certain things that might dissuade us. Real butterfly effect here, or drier-cut record. I would get that list of deliverables earlier. I would start to amass all the things that I could during production. My releases, my stills, all that stuff,

I would start to organize it ahead of time, because now I do that, and now it makes it immensely easier. I found my organizational flow, I guess, in my own age. But I would give myself a little organizational help, but I think I would have to jump into it just as blind and crazy to get it done. - Yeah, there's no way, there's no way to know. - No. - Yeah, you would just dissuade yourself of all of it, you would not have it.

- But I'm so glad I did, I'm so glad I did, Past Paula, good job. So do make your thing, tell the story. - Absolutely, but I think that take away that there are vegetables with everything. It can't all be the Sunday dessert of the production. You gotta eat your Brussels sprouts, and the Brussels sprouts here are all a fucking paperwork and dealing with the guilds and all that stuff that sucks, but it's important for the process.

- But it's not impossible, and dumb our people then we are, do it every single day. - I did it, and I'm definitely dumb, or do you are? - There you go. I think you're smart guy, Robb, but I'm pretty dumb myself. - It's not, it's not. It's not as bad with all the skills. There's skills, and then there's smart, okay? - I have one more question for you, Paula, the last question. So this movie, Delicate State, is great,

and we've been talking about it a lot, but where can people see it? Do you have distribution? Is it online? Do you have a physical release? And then more importantly, where can they find you on the interwebs to see what else you're doing? - I do indeed have all of those answers. So depending on when they're listening to this, I have a distribution for at least another, I think two years, you or two.

So you'll be able to still find it on Amazon Prime. You can find it on all the streaming, so I believe. You could get it on Apple TV, you can get it on Tubi, you should be able to get it on Roku. There's a library one, I'm forgetting the name of, and I think 36 countries, it has various subtitles. So hopefully you can find it all over the place, just where you like to watch movies. Or if not, you know, message me.

You can find me on Instagram. Probably easiest to find me there, should you need to, but also TikTok on occasion, although I keep deleting it and re-putting it on my phone, we'll see. It’s @paula_rhodes because I use my creativity for other things, guys. (laughing) Oh, I also have a website, you can find me at officialpaularhodes.com. No, we'll lead you into everything. - There it is. - Thank you Paula.

Thank you Paula for the great conversation, for the wonderful movie, for everything. Thank you so much. - It was a delight. - Yeah, and that does it for us. If you have any questions about filmmaking or movies in general, please email us at indiefilmlodge@gmail.com. We'd love to hear you and maybe we'll even use your question on a future episode. - 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 Matt. - I’m Robb. - And we'll see you next time. - Yay! (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)