In this episode of the Clone Cops Podcast, the filmmakers Phillip Cordell (Co-writer/Actor), Danny Dones (Co-writer/Director), Charles Royce (VFX Supervisor/Producer), and Corey Allen (Cinematographer) dive deep into the logistics of bringing Clone Cops to life.
Available to rent or own now on all streaming platforms - https://linktr.ee/clonecops
🎬 Clone Cops Podcast: How We Made Clone Cops – Pre-Production & Casting
🔍 Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Clone Cops Podcast, the filmmakers Phillip Cordell (Co-writer/Actor), Danny Dones (Co-writer/Director), Charles Royce (VFX Supervisor/Producer), and Corey Allen (Cinematographer) dive deep into the logistics of bringing Clone Cops to life.
They cover:
• The budget breakdown – How Clone Cops became a SAG Ultra Low Budget film with a $300,000 cap and what that actually covered.
• Funding the film independently – The team shares how they self-funded the movie and secured additional investment to make it happen.
• Navigating the Tennessee Entertainment Commission Grant – The surprising process of applying for and receiving a $50,000 rebate from the state.
• How casting unfolded – From self-tapes and agency submissions to last-minute role changes, they discuss finding the perfect actors for each character.
• Choosing the right crew – Why it was important to pay people fairly while also assembling a team that was passionate about the project.
• Finding the perfect location – How an abandoned mental hospital became the ultimate set for Clone Cops, providing production value far beyond their budget.
• The importance of pre-production planning – From breaking down the script to sticking to a 10-hour day schedule, the team shares how they avoided indie film burnout.
🎤 Notable Quotes:
• “We put our life savings into an independent film. Could be the best or worst decision ever.” – Phillip Cordell
• “If you’re waiting for someone to hand you your filmmaking career, it might never happen.” – Danny Dones
• “We didn’t just want to make a movie—we wanted to market one, too.” – Corey Allen
• “Happy people turn out great work. That’s why we ran a tight but fair set.” – Charles Royce
📌 Key Takeaways for Filmmakers:
✅ How to budget wisely for a micro-budget film
✅ Why pre-production is crucial for avoiding disaster on set
✅ How to secure film grants and incentives in your state
✅ The casting process and what to look for in actor auditions
✅ How location scouting can make or break your film
✅ Why marketing should be planned from the start
🛠 Next Episode Preview:
Next time, the team explores “Designing the World of Clone Cops”, covering the film’s VFX, production design, and sci-fi aesthetic.
📢 Today’s Episode Sponsor:
Brought to you by Nefaricorp. Visit nefaricorp.com for more.
#CloneCops #IndieFilmmaking #SciFiComedy #FilmmakingPodcast #BehindTheScenes
0:02
Music. Welcome to the clone cops podcast. My name
0:06
is Phil Cordell, actor, co writer. I'm Danny Dones.
0:09
I'm the co writer and director. I'm Charles
0:11
Royce, producer, VFX supervisor,
0:14
and I'm Corey Allen, the cinematographer. Welcome to episode two deuces. This episode, we're gonna get into how we actually made the movie, some of the pre production work, a little behind the scenes. Maybe talk about money, talk about casting.
0:31
Can also talk about spitballing, because, yeah, it is spitballing. Sorry, confirming. Confirmed. The Google says it is a spiff. Balling is a misspelling, and no one says that, but oh, I have ever since I came out of the womb. So
0:48
that's the the cliffhanger answer from episode one, yeah. Everybody was wondering. Sorry,
0:52
yeah. I was really on pins and needles. I wasn't sure.
0:54
I was very sure. I felt supremely confident that the answer was going to be spitballing. I was a show
1:00
ready to go. In your face. It's fifth ball spit balling. See how humble we're being beautiful.
1:12
All right, let's start with the first big question. When it comes to making an indie movie, where did the money come from, and how much money was it?
1:22
Yeah, great question. So it's a SAG, ultra low budget, meaning our budget was capped at $300,000 so everybody out there wondering, now what's what's it take to make a movie like clone cops took us 300k other people may be able to do it cheaper. We could not. And we should note, I mean, that includes none of the four of us being paid anything, right, right? And if anything being, you know, coming at a great personal expense for Chuck, who worked three months, 12 hours a day, non stop, non stop.
1:53
I turned down paying work to shoot clone cops. No,
1:57
I had to pay to work on you guys. I did the money come from? I mean, that is, I think every indie filmmaker feels like they're just a chunk of change away from their, you know, living their dreams, living their lives. And I know I did, right? And so that's I had a career in tech, worked for 13 years, had an opportunity to sell out of that business to a very small extent, and put a, you know, big chunk of that money into in the com cops. And then we had one other investor, Matt delicados, Executive co executive producer on the film. And so essentially, we bet on ourselves, and we put up the money for the for the film. And that could either be the best decision I ever made, or the worst decision I've ever
2:43
made available now on all streaming platforms. That's right, I think I messed
2:47
up. I put my life savings into an independent film.
2:52
So is that that's what executive producer means. It means you wrote the checks.
2:56
It can, you know, executive producer can mean that you put up the money yourself, or that you headed up the collection of the funds. A lot of times, people get that EP credit just for bringing in the money and not necessarily supplying it, yeah?
3:08
Sometimes just having a famous name is helping EP credit. That's right, yeah,
3:13
because that also helps get money. Yeah, yeah.
3:16
But so us, funding the film ourselves was great in terms of, like, I mean, the the real, you know, the big, large film industry as a whole is janky indie films. Money gets janky even faster, right and right, and so it was so nice when people were like, cool. So will I be paid within like, 30 days? Like, we'll cut you check right now. Like, let's, let's golden rule. Man, golden ruled everything that we could, where it's like, what's the right thing to do? How do we get this done quickly? You give us an invoice. We'll give you a check right now. And that was that felt very empowering as an indie filmmaker, to be like, No, the money's in the bank. We're ready to roll Yeah, you know, you can start buying what you need for the project now in pre production.
3:56
When I've been doing film work for 15 years now, and I've worked on many a project where the question at the beginning is, so we're going to get paid on this one or, I mean, I agree, like knowing that we we were going to do the right thing from day one, was very fulfilling to me. I'm really glad that we were able to do that. And that was partly why the budget is what it was, is because we made a commitment to paying our crew as much as we could. We we could not pay them union rates, but we definitely paid them more than a lot of independent films that I've worked on in the past. Yeah,
4:30
I love that you guys took that experience for the from the projects that you've worked on and and said, we're going to do this differently, you know? And
4:39
it allowed checks every Friday. Yeah,
4:41
it allowed us to get a crew too. That was good. You know, we were able to get some really quality people, because while they knew they were working for less than what they were worth, it was enough that they could pay their bills. It was we weren't asking them to, like, sacrifice their finances to come work on our film. We were just saying. Like, hey, you know it's less than what you should be getting, but we acknowledge that, yeah, yeah, we were super upfront about it, like, we know you're worth more than this. This is just what we have, and we we want to make sure that we can pay you everything that we can. But yeah, I think it opened open the doors to a lot of folks that wanted to do something really cool, and we were definitely at that point in time, the most unique thing shooting in Nashville. So it was a really cool opportunity for a lot of people to come on and do something fun and interesting that they wouldn't normally get to do, and for a lot of people to jump up in position to performing, you know, a job that they want to do in the future. So we were able to give them a credit on a future film, as you know, then the next level for their their career path. The
5:47
other nice thing about having all the money in an account up front meant that we could apply for a grant from the Tennessee entertainment commission. Was going to ask about that. Yeah, plug that. Yeah. I mean, that's it. That seemed, I know Mike's my thought, my perspective on that was like, yeah, it's a bunch of paperwork and nobody gets it. And the reality was they were super accommodating and helpful in terms of navigating. I mean, it was a mountain of paperwork, and then it was a mountain of receipts and expenses and proving that it was qualified Tennessee expenses. But after two years, you know, I mean, we shot in October of 2022, and I think we got, got our check for 25% of all money that we spent in Tennessee with a minimum spend of 200k so we got about 50, 50k back, you know, from from the state, which was dope, again, dudes like, That's, you know, that's how we've been able to do a lot of the other things that we've been able to do on the back end of the project, on the promotional side, on the on the theatrical side, all these things kind of sprung from, like our willingness to not give up on that, because it would have been really easy to quit a few times during that process. It was, it's an arduous process that they recommend you have a CPA navigate for
7:03
you. And did you have a CPA navigate? So,
7:06
no, I did it all, but then I had to have a CPA, you know, review it and sign up that. Yeah, that is part of the deal. Is that you do still have to walk it through somebody, but I manage the day to day on that and pulled all that material together and classified it and tried to keep it in order. And of course, our first ad Nate and his Nate Eggert and his whole team, they knew the deal on the front end as well, so they did a great job at helping keep all that in order on the front end. So a year and a half later, when it was time to really dig in, we were good to go. Yeah, well,
7:36
we should mention too that Nate, before we ever even set the budget before we did any of that, we paid Nate a day rate to break down the script and to lay out a budget for us, and to say, like that, he actually did, like, three tiers. Like, if you, you guys have this much money, these are all the things you can do. If you, this is what you can pay. If you have this much money, this is what you can pay. And so that was super worthwhile. And I think really kind of set the roadmap for us,
8:01
right? And that's one of those things that as indie filmmakers, a lot of people don't think about, right? Which is like, I mean, I can get this kind of money together, but what's the actual budget look like? And I think I can pay people this, that and that, but bringing in, again, a third party who does it professionally, and maybe, I mean, Nate's still a homie, right? So he still hooked us up on a great rate, but added that experience like find the people in your community with this experience that you don't have, because we're already wearing a ton of hats without also having to get into areas that we have zero experience, right?
8:32
And speaking of indie filmmakers, is the the deal with the Nashville Film Commission was, that's what it's called, right? Tennessee entertainment commission, Tennessee entertainment so if they are, there other resources like that that people may can may take advantage of, or can take advantage of in their own states or in their own communities that nobody's ever really heard of, but they're out there, right? Yeah,
8:57
most states do have some type of entertainment commission with some type of grant program or tax incentive or rebate. It's just, again, I feel like the barrier to entry is typically the amount of work it takes, and it's just a huge pain in the butt, especially if, like, you're an indie filmmaker who's got to hold down a day job, you know, and you just don't have time to also deal with all these back and forth emails. And, you know, when
9:18
you had to have the complete you had to be fully funded to apply. And I think a lot of independent filmmakers are doing crowdfunding and that sort of thing, and they may only raise enough to shoot, and they don't have their budget for the Edit, and they don't have the other stuff ready to go yet, so they don't even qualify for it. So that was the real trick. Was like we had to show them the bank account. It was, it was not a gentleman's agreement. It was transparent here, yeah, we got the money here. You can, you can look in our bank account,
9:49
yeah, which loops it all the way back to like, yeah. So we took that ultimate kind of bet on ourselves, and we're still in the process of working to make sure it pays off for us long term. Yeah,
9:59
yes. So if you think back to that process from securing the funding, which obviously you secured yourself for a large part of it, what advice would you give to other filmmakers when it comes to like, pulling that budget all the way through, even beyond the release of the film? Because I know we've talked about that a lot, is being really purposeful with what your promotional activity looks like, dedicating a portion of the budget to that, how much consideration went into that for you?
10:29
Oh, a ton, right? Because I think again, the first thought is, like, we just got to make the movie, and then we'll put it out, and it'll get traction on its own and take off and like, that's not how it works, man, the biggest movies from any studio still have a tremendous amount of marketing money put into them, you know. And they have to do that, or else people don't care, you know, you kind of have to keep beating people over the head with the thing before they're like, Okay, I guess I'll check out Barbie. You know, it was everywhere for so long, and that's, I mean, it's stoking the fire. I think, obviously it's great to have a phenomenal product, but got to have some money set aside at the end, which is not, you know, again, I think it's as independent filmmakers, we're just trying to get our thing made. And it really is this, like, scary, sad thing at the end for so many of us, where it's like, Oh, damn, we don't have, we can't even run Reddit or Facebook or Instagram ads or whatever, you know, we just don't have any money
11:19
left. But we do, right?
11:23
We have, I mean, like, a couple bucks. I mean, I mean, we can't pay for this podcast, but, yeah, sorry, bro, but phenomenal job. First cinematographer, Corey Allen, yeah, man. I mean, a lot of that money has gone into supporting our theatrical release, which we would not have gotten to do otherwise, and and just the amount of marketing. And, you know, I mean, some of it is free, and you do it yourself, and if you're lucky enough, I mean, we didn't want to make a movie that we didn't know how to market, right? We wanted to be true to ourselves and to be funny and to be a reflection of us. But also, it's like if, if your film is two people talking, you know, in a coffee shop for two hours or whatever. How you gonna get that to take off? You know, how you gonna, especially if you don't have name talent, right?
12:09
Yeah, well, I would say, you know, in terms of making the most of what you have, this podcast is a great example of, we've looked for opportunities where we can the investment is sweat equity. You know, what are the things that we can do for free that that will help the movie and help with publicity and that sort of thing. And so we've shot tons of content. We've, you know, we're doing this. We I cut almost everything, all the promotional content. I've cut almost all of that for us. I think our trailer was the only thing that we cut. Had somebody else cut. So we definitely looked for opportunities where we could just put our own time into things, because that's like, our time is free, and I'm more than happy to put that in. And I think you have to be willing to really commit a lot of time after the movie, in a lot of ways, making the movies the easy part,
13:05
which sounds crazy, right? Because, again, for most you know, we've been in that boat where you run out of money, it's like, how am I going to finish this thing? I've got two thirds of a movie done, right? So us having and sticking to a shoot schedule and actually getting it across the finish line there at the at the top end of the process, did make it well and that,
13:25
yeah, and that would be another thing that I would say too, is, you know, you got to do a lot of pre production. You got to do a lot of planning. If you have a limited resources and limited time, then you want to make sure that every second you're on set, you're working the plan. That is not the time to make the plan. You know, you've got plenty of time if, even if you're working a day job, you know, like when on your on your lunch break, sit down and knock at some storyboards. You know, there's time. Or don't. Well, I was building props instead of making storyboards. But you know that that is the thing I just to that point, though. Well, I would wake up every morning at like, four in the morning, and I would do our shot shot list for the day, and then come in and shoot or 10 hour days. So that was, that was my way of being, making sure that we weren't showing up and be like, what are we doing today? Is like, Hey, I know what we're doing this. These are all the things we have to accomplish today. So, yeah, I mean, when you have limited budget, you have to do a lot of pre production and a lot of planning. That's, again, that's free work. That's only going to make it easier for you down the road. Yeah, I
14:36
would say, with my producer hat on seeing you and Corey and Nate each morning, getting the plan for the day and then sticking to it. Was just incredibly impressive. It was it was so cool. I was like, Man, this thing is moving like a well oiled machine, because these three people are first ad Nate, cinematographer and director, were all on the same page and made it happen. And
14:54
if you think you're going to get to relax at lunch, you're not no
14:57
because Nate requires the. Exact same thing, planning for the next day. Yeah, during lunch, yeah, which
15:03
you know, hey, it's, it's, that's the job. And when you're working with people that you enjoy working with, and it's super fun and easy, yeah?
15:11
And I remember I'd come by and be like, cool, can I sit with you guys? And you'd be like, seats taken. Seats taken. You gotta go sit with the actors. Yeah,
15:17
I think you can
15:22
talents over there, that table where all the giggling is happening, that's your table.
15:29
Done. Table, it
15:31
has been a lot of work for you guys, though, and the stamina it takes to even after the film is out and you have the distribution and you guys are still hitting the pavement, and it's a lot what you guys are doing, and I've been super impressed with the stamina again. Why? Thank you film. Filmmakers, thank you filmmakers. Filmmakers who put their movie out have to realize, like, it's not over, you know, and that's
16:01
a producer that I'm friends with. He was talking about the movie that he worked on, and he's had so much trouble getting the director of that movie to come out and do press and to, like, talk about the movie. And I'm like, Man, that's, do you not want it to be successful? Like that? You have to do that stuff. You have to think you might not be comfortable doing it. But heck, I mean, that's you stepping out of your comfort zone. Is Art like you. You know, you can't expect to just sit back and wait for the accolades to roll in. It's doesn't work that way. Maybe it leave. Don't work that way. For me. Last
16:34
episode, you know, I made the bold claim, right? Have Have you heard the news the film industry is dead, but it's, it's not actually, right? And it's just that it looks a lot different. And yeah, this idea that, especially in our position as first time indie filmmakers, that I get to just make the movie and then go on with my life if I want this to be successful, man, that's just not how it works anymore, right? I mean, it's, it does, and I know we'll get into, I know we got a whole pod lined up to talk about our marketing efforts, right? And publicity, but, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not just showing up for the film anymore, from an independent standpoint, you know, like, I'm committed to doing everything that we can do to make this thing successful, because this is the career that we want in the movie industry, correct?
17:15
Yeah, all right, so money is secured, movies funded. Next steps, we got to get a cast. So talk us through what that casting process looked like.
17:29
Yeah. I mean, on this one we there were a couple roles that we had already filled that we knew were going to go to certain people. Phil being one of them, right?
17:38
Because we knew, if we ran out of money, that you and I could go shoot the rest of, you know, we could pick up the rest of the film. People are like, How'd you get the roll and com? Like, well, we wrote it for me first of all. But part of that, part of that equation, was like, seriously, if we run out of money and just need to go do pick up shots with the clones, I'll just make it happen. You
17:57
know, yeah. And that was always part, yeah. We felt like, hey, we could rent green screen if we had to, and just throw you in front of green screen. Green Screen and get get pickups and
18:04
stuff done well as you underwater the whole second half. Yeah, I
18:09
think that was, that was part of it. And also, like, we knew that you had a singular presence on screen that was going to be perfect for the clones. And I we knew what you could bring to it. And so that was the other part. Is like that, that part's a part's locked in. We know we've got the comedy of all the clones ready to go. And we wrote, we wrote that in your voice. I mean, the clone copy is, you know, definitely Taylor fit, suited for your style of coming. So that was one we had Justin who played thong daddy, 420 spice J. Spice J. He and I have been friends for a long time, and he was in Nashville dad's club with us, and just did such a great job in dad's club. And we had so much fun working with him and another person who came up with a lot of funny stuff when when we were shooting, we knew we wanted him to be in there, and thong Daddy was written for him in his voice as well. And that's we've certainly seen that play out, as people are saying, like so it's just Justin it's just spice Jess, yeah, which I don't think is true, because he's such a sweetheart and thong daddy such a scumbag, that I don't think that's true at all, but their their comedic styling is very similar.
19:25
He is literally the sweetest guy. Like, he's such a sweet, nice, absolutely,
19:30
yeah. And then the rest of the cast, we maybe a couple couple off roles here and there. We went through the casting process with agencies, three agencies in Nashville,
19:43
yeah, that's, I mean, from an indie film production standpoint, the realization that that we as independent producers can reach out to these agencies and say, Hey, here's here's the role, here's the sides, here's the character breakdown. Send us tapes. You know, was super empowering. We had never been through. That process on this side before Danny and I are both actors as well, and are rep, you know, on that side. So we get audition requests, and have been through it from the other end, but is really cool from the producer side and and we had reached out to a couple casting directors, and because of kind of the price of our budget, you know, again, it's a SAG, ultra low budget thing, we didn't have a ton of money to throw their way. And so it came down to like, so do we even go that route, or do we just see what we can get done on our own? And thankfully, Nate, our first ad also had some experience in navigating that world. And so it was a really cool thing to send out the sides right and then to see those tapes start rolling in, because it feels so much more real. You know, it's like, now we got actors, you know, that can we see this person as kinder?
20:47
Yeah. And then then the challenge becomes doing my least favorite thing, telling people no to their dreams. You know, that's that's a challenge. It really is a challenge in the in the auditioning process, and so much of it is self tape now that you aren't in the room with the person, so you don't have to crush their dreams to their person. But, but it really is a challenge for me to I want, I want everybody to get to do the thing that they want to do. So it's, you know, to have to pick and choose can be a little heartbreaking on on my side as well.
21:21
Yeah. So we did, do you have some self tapes, some live auditions, some web auditions? What all was the mix, what that looked like
21:30
we were, we were still under COVID protocols when we were auditioning. So we had no in person auditions. There was 99% tapes. I think Quinlan Ash was our only zoom audition, and I already had an inkling that she was going to play that part, because I we were friends, and I knew her, and she's a phenomenal actress. She's a fantastic actor, and we'd seen her in Ozark, and, you know, we kind of knew that she she could do it. We knew she had the chops for that, and so she, I think she might have requested a zoom audition, actually, which was great, because we were able to give feedback, and we were able to make adjustments and, and, yeah, and Charles was in on that as well. I was
22:15
never forget it. I just thought she was brilliant. Yeah, it was really cool to see what she brought to Farah, yeah,
22:22
yeah. It's, I will say, the self tape thing. You kind of got to be careful on a casting side of that and go into it knowing that they got as many takes as they wanted to make that tape. So you know you as you're watching them, you know it's something to consider is you don't get you don't get a chance to you don't get a chance to give feedback. You don't get a chance to see how they can make adjustments. So we were very fortunate in that everybody that we cast was fantastic and very professional and knocked everything out. But I could see other filmmakers getting in a position where maybe you cast somebody that it takes them 20 takes to get to get to that point, which, which, when you're trying to get stuff knocked out in a hurry, you know that that could be problematic, but
23:14
it's, you know, again, it's super cool to see it all come to life, and it's just a really cool process To get to be a part of. And I think sometimes we only see as far as our little world and as independent filmmakers. Okay, I'll plug in this guy is this and that person is that. It's like man, doing your own casting call could not be simpler. Agents are out there. Look waiting for your email. You know they want your email to come through so they can send out an opportunity to their roster. So don't feel weird about, you know, casting your film. And please don't just put your buddy in it because you think he's funny in real life. Like, if they don't have any on screen experience, a lot of times that stuff doesn't translate. You know,
23:55
as someone who is very funny in real life, I, I can tell you, it is does not translate well all the time,
24:03
well. And we didn't set out to cast our friends in the film, but it did turn out that some of our friends are some of the best actors in Nashville and and the film was cast entirely with Nashville talent, with the exception of Skylar till it, who came up from Atlanta, but had submitted through his agent as well, and was was willing to travel up here to work on the project with us. And yeah, what a cool experience that was having, having him come up and do his thing,
24:25
yeah. And so let's talk about casting for some of the characters. Specifically, I know originally, one character was written as a man, and then that evolved into a female role. What was that like? So
24:41
Porter originally was, was supposed to be a male kind of like a father figure, but not necessarily related to anybody in the crew. And then as we were going through rewrites, we thought, man, what? It would really raise the stakes. And wouldn't it be a cool dynamic if. Uh, there was somebody. There was like, a parental and child, you know, team going on here. And so we changed Porter to a woman, and had cipher be the daughter. And as we if
25:14
you watch it now, it's tough to imagine in any other way, because that relationship is such a crucial part of the emotional core of the film. Yeah, it's crazy to think that we didn't have that starting out, it was just to do, you know, just the gang boss. It was a lot more what you'd expect. Well,
25:28
and Porter was still like, you know, they were that they had a lot of the same beats. There were a lot of that same, like, parental kind of figure stuff. But we made, took it made a literal thing, and that, yes, and that created a lot more tension, and it created a much more interesting dynamic and made all those characters more three dimensional, I feel like. So in the auditioning process for that, what we ended up doing there was kind of taking two separate roles and making it so that we had to cast them as a duo, because, you know, we needed them to kind of match up in certain physical aspects. And we were very fortunate that Laura and Allison were probably, you know, the two strongest auditions for those roles. And they also happen to both look similar, so they both have red hair, and we Laura, Laura would want me to mention that she's too young to be cipher mother,
26:21
and she has, she's an actor. She acted, but she acted old.
26:26
And we should point out, I mean, we got a lot of phenomenal tapes from from talent in Nashville. There's, like, we're so fortunate to be in a market that's got a giant untapped pool of of great actors of all ilks, you know, yeah, it wasn't super easy. No, it was tough. Yeah, it was tough, man,
26:44
yeah, it was, it was definitely tough. But no, I think, you know Laura, she the way we even met her was we were already I think so many of these people, like you had mentioned before were, we kind of already knew them. And it's small town, so it's kind of hard not to and I've been working here. I've worked on set with a lot of these actors as a props person, and just happened to, you know, make friends with them. Henry's a great example of that, Henry, haggard, who plays Frank. He and I worked on something years ago and just hit it off, and we would chat, and we became friends. So he was another person that we were just like, we should get Henry to do this, because he'd do great, and we did have him on Nashville dad's club, so that was another kind of bonus for us. We'd already shot two seasons here in Nashville with different guest stars. I think our whole second season of Dad's club, we had a guest star on every we did. So we we'd already cast some really great people in town for those roles, so we kind of had a leg up, and we knew what was available. We knew,
27:43
you know, knew we wanted to use Dion. Shout out, Dion Harris, Dion's hilarious and
27:47
fantastic. He's great, yeah, that was, that was such a great opportunity to get to bring him in. He's such sweet guy,
27:58
yeah? And it was just perfect,
28:00
yeah, yeah. He got to ad lib all of his lines. And, yeah, it's just it was so fun to bring those people in that we already had a working relationship with. And but Laura, to go back to what I was saying. Laura was our acting coach. Philip and I were taking acting classes with her, and we worked in the same building. We were doing
28:20
Skyway production, or Skyway studios, and she has a studio over there, and we had set up our pre production studio, and she would pop in from sometime, be like, Hey, what's up? Great. And then we got a tape, you know, and she crushed. I mean, it was incredible.
28:33
It was yeah, it was great. And she, she understood the she got the assignment, as the kids would say,
28:39
she understood this, yeah,
28:41
she
28:43
that to me, when we were doing the auditioning process, the stuff I was looking for was probably, probably a little deeper. I was looking for people that understood that the purpose behind the scenes, you know, like, what is the scene really about? It's not just about delivering the lines in a believable way. For me, it was more about like an internal process. And do they actually understand what's happening in the scene? Are they really like living this moment? And if Is it a really truthful performance? And you know, we got some really great tapes with some really good stuff that in those moments as well. But that was Laura's the death scene in particular. I was very I guess I gave some away. She in that scene. I was like, that was a really personal scene to me, which is why I included it in there. And watching her performance. I was like, she gets it. She knows exactly what I'm trying to say right here. And that was that, to me, was super important. And same with Skyler, when we would do the comedic stuff, he was one of the a handful of tapes we got where they really understood the comedic part, and they they really brought some great comedic timing to that. Part,
30:01
yeah. And from back to image broadcasting, you know, we had a few roles that we stunt casted, right? If you're indie filmmaker, maybe you've heard that term. Maybe you haven't, lots of films do it, and that's where you, you bring in a couple of larger names, you know, and maybe you put them on the poster. Or maybe you, you know, whatever you advertise, that Nick Cage is in your movie, right? And there's that he's done a lot of films where it's like, yeah, you pay him a million bucks, he'll come do your thing. He's there for a day or two, and then he's out.
30:27
Nick Cage is not in this movie. Sorry, I should have just let that to
30:31
specify, right? I mean, if he was, y'all would know. But one of those roles was for was for one tank Frank, played now by Henry Hagar, and Danny had envisioned that as, Oh
30:46
yeah, I wanted Henry ziprowski. He was in Wolf of Wall Street, and he also does the last podcast on the left. He's great. He's hilarious, and definitely had a different energy than what Henry brought to the role. He's more frenetic. But yeah, that was, that was someone we had reached out to. And, you know, we got a lot of very polite nose.
31:09
We got some very impressive, incredible nose. But probably my point in bringing that up is like, we, once it became clear we weren't gonna get zabrowski, we were like, man, you know, who would crush this role? Henry would absolutely I mean, he's just such a phenomenal actor, and he's got so much experience. So probably the flip side of the coin to don't just cast your friends, is like, if you've got somebody in your community that you know has got the chops, but maybe isn't a big name, give them a chance. Because, I mean, you know, as reviews are rolling in, a lot of people are pointing out Henry Haggard's performance in clone cops, because he brings such a frenetic energy, and there's the ups and the downs and the betrayal and, I mean, he just such a wide range of emotions, and the way that ended up being shot really, really worked to his advantage as well, right?
31:57
Yeah, well, and I think we, we've talked about this before too, is the the set that we built for the lab in the way we lit it. It was very much a stage. It was, it was three walls. It was pretty much, pretty static lighting. We moved some stuff around here and there, but so it was staged as though it were, you know, a theatrical production, really. And we wound up between Rashad and Henry. We had two of the finest theatrical actors in Nashville playing those roles. So it turned out fantastic, because they knew how to work a stage, and they they knew that, like, if I we never had to ask them to, like, open up the camera or anything. They just knew, like, nope, my the crowd is right there. This is where I'm directing. They
32:39
crushed. Yeah. Rashad raford, incredible actor, a friend, worked on Nashville dad's club with us currently in the mountaintop AT T pack playing, playing MLK Junior. I mean, just a phenomenal actor and super talented dude all the way around, Rashad the poet and, yeah, between he and Henry. I mean, what a cool experience getting to see two of Nashville's best just kind of going back and forth and building out this world. I mean, it's just them, for the most part, in this lab, and it just feels so vibrant and alive. Thanks also to Charles's VFX works that brought that, that space to life. I
33:11
love Henry, haggard and everything he does, he's so versatile. And not only is he versatile between characters, but in the character, like you were saying, he brought so many different emotions and nailed every single one. Henry haggard, yeah, that's great.
33:27
So once we had the cast assembled and some really amazing talent that we talked about, next step was pulling together a crew. How did that come to life?
33:41
I mean, so I've been doing this a long time, 15 years i i knew a bunch of people that I wanted to work on the movie, and we got a lot of them, the ones that didn't do it, didn't do it. It wasn't because they didn't want to, it's because they weren't available. You know, that's, that's always the struggle when you're trying to put a crew together, is your availability and who's who's working on what at any given time is always changing. So that was definitely a little bit of a challenge. Just in like we were talking about earlier, we didn't have full rates to give out, so we we reached out to some people that we liked their vibe, we liked what they brought to set, and we knew they did great work and offered them the chance to kind of step up into the next thing. Yeah,
34:27
yeah. And, and, I mean, we can flip that question right back at you, because we happen, you know, as cinematographer, you put together the entire lighting and camera team based, you know, from people that you knew and had worked with here in Nashville, right? What was that like? Were people into it
34:42
or it? You know, it was an interesting conversation with everyone that I reached out to, because it was Hannah. You do this because you want to make movies, but I also know you don't want to make movies for a couple $100 a day when you're working on commercials and music videos. Was in town making three, four or five times that. So it a lot of it was, hey, we can give you consistent work for three weeks. You're in the same location with the same crew three weeks straight, and just that, yeah, exactly. And that stability, I think, was a big selling point for a lot of the crew. And again, you know, I pulled every one of the department heads like the first and the seconds, all were from the film community here in Nashville, and they're all some of the best at what they do. And you know, forever grateful for them carving out three weeks of their life and their work in their typical day rate to come make something super fun with us, and it was great well,
35:44
and that was a strategic advantage we had right where it's like, you may not get to make another weird sci fi comedy in Nashville for the rest of your life. Yeah, I know. And
35:53
I think the other thing you got to take into account when you're crewing up for any especially independent film, is to remind yourself that for the vast majority of your crew, this is a gig. It's just, you know, it's, it's not their life, yeah, like this. They don't have the same mistake in it that you have. So you can't expect them to come in and put, you know, put themselves on the line the way that you're going to. You can't expect them to work a 1516, hour day, and then come right back in without a, you know, not even an eight hour turnaround, like so many people want to do, that's just not going to fly. And you're going to start losing your crew, and you're going to, you're going to have to replace them, and then you're going to get people in that don't know what's going on, and you're going to bring them up to speed, and you lose time. And I think in the end, the product suffers. So that was definitely why we chose to do 10 hour days. It would have been great to have those extra two hours every day. We could have, you know, shot some inserts, maybe. But I think we we knew that by doing that, we were buying so much goodwill, and we were allowing our crew to get some rest and spend time with their families and eat dinner at home. And people, you know, by the end of the first week, I could already tell a huge difference, like, usually on a Friday, everybody's just dead, and people cannot wait for rap to just go home and be done with the end of the week. And we had, you know, it was jovial, and people were laughing, and laughing, and we were cracking jokes, and everybody was having a good time. And that carried through the whole, the whole three weeks. I feel like everybody had a great time. And I certainly did. I had a blast, and I was probably on less sleep than anybody,
37:35
yeah. And as Chuck said, I mean, it was such a good vibes crew. I mean, everybody was so cool. And I do think that sticking, you know, given our word that we're gonna stick to 10 hour days and actually executing on that. I mean, we had some people are like, yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah. You know, how you gonna shoot a movie doing 10 hour days for three straight weeks?
37:54
That's funny that we kind of, yeah,
37:55
we, we've all been told those lies. Yeah. I
37:59
mean, that's dude again, just as indie filmmakers, you're as good as your word, right? So whether that's about the money or the work, it's it's crazy to me how shady some producers are, frankly, you know? I mean, it's just a real bummer, because it gives the rest of us a bad a bad rep. But the nice thing is, cool. Just be a good a good dude. Be a good hang. Do what you say you're going to do, and all of a sudden everybody wants to work with you, and it brings that man, it was such a great vibe. And as Danny said, like the best three weeks of life, right? That's our biggest hope around this whole project, right? Everything we do revolves around man. I hope we get to do this again, because that was such a joy to get to do like, man, surely we didn't have such a positive experience to only get to do that once like we can bring this model to the forefront. You know, again, if the industry is changing in dramatic ways, one of those ways should be that we're not doing 16 hour days and burning people out with high stress, high tension sets that can't help but be toxic, because everybody's stressed out. Like, I don't want that. I don't want to work in that environment. We're
39:05
making, we're making, make believe. It's, you know, if we're not having fun, then what are we doing like this? It should be fun. Yeah. And I think the other great thing about what we did there too, and we experienced it, we kind of knew going in that it was going to be this way, because we did it with dad's club as well. Was the first time we hire somebody. We get that dubious kind of, like, all right, I don't know about you guys, like, Sure, I'll do it. And then why is
39:30
Phil used so many exclamation points in his email? Makes me feel weird. Is he really
39:34
that nice in person? He
39:36
is He is that nice in person? It is exhausting. No, but I think we, but then once we we've worked with them, everybody, almost. I mean, it's, oh, when's the next thing? Can't wait to do the next thing with you guys. You know, it's like that when you do earn that goodwill, and then people are excited to work. To you in the future, and you get they turn out great work. Happy people turn out great work. Yep,
40:05
yep. And, well, how rewarding was that for you guys, like having those, everybody kind of show up. You know, great
40:13
question, Chuck, thanks.
40:17
I said it twice.
40:19
It was dope, dude. It was, I mean, you create the environment you want to work in, right? I think so many people feel powerless going into work and like, Oh, I'm just here, and I'm, you know, and people may be higher up on the food chain, set, set the tone, and then everybody has to deal with that. And we were like, I mean, that's the bizarre thing about kind of being, you know, at the head of the of this independent film, it's like, cool. What's up to us? What's the vibes that we want people to have? And we had some crazy, you know? I mean, it's all low budget productions. We had some crazy stuff go down on set. And instead of stressing and freaking out right before we shot the lab, we had our production designer Ben Johnson, had a giant 55 gallon drum with a sauce. And I can't remember how if I poked a hole or whatever, but, you know, and he was like, what do we do? And I was like, just get it out of here, which was the bad call. I'm sorry, Ben, that was on me. Just get it out of here. And of course, he takes it out and it busts, yeah. And we flood our lab set an hour before we're supposed to begin shooting in there for the next two to three days. And it's, you know, again, the way you deal with those things, I personally tried not to flip out. And she's like, All right, well, we got water everywhere, more water than we can clean up with the current amount of paper towels on hand. So what are we going to do?
41:32
I don't remember that at all. Oh, we're working. I
41:37
remember it happening, but yeah, okay, the floors looked
41:40
great. Yeah, got an unintentional mop, and they were pretty clean. That makes sense now, I guess so. Here's
41:45
the nice thing about shooting in an abandoned mental hospital, lots of beds. All the beds had those zip up P guards. And what's inside the zip up P guards basically giant, six foot by four foot sponges. So every one of those bed mattresses became a sponge out there were these 50 gallons of sauce, yes, comically oversized sponges, you know, but it soaked up the water. And comic
42:07
oversized sauce can a lot of water. But
42:12
again, that's just an example of something where, like, I think some sets people would get pissy and and anxious and whatever. And for us, it's like, cool, here's an opportunity to either we're cool and we figure stuff out and keep a cool head about it, or not, if we're going to be those guys, we need to be those guys. So we we figured
42:28
out So Philip, right, like he is the best guy. Well, and
42:32
that's probably not an example of this, but there were many examples of times when things went wrong and it turned into something great that is in the movie
42:41
The giant sponge scene, you guys are in love with
42:44
giant sponge. Is that in the director's code, yeah,
42:47
all the clones get sponge baths. But the
42:51
location, for instance, that we didn't always plan on shooting in an abandoned mental hospital. We were one time going to shoot in an abandoned normal hospital, that's right, and we were going to shoot the whole thing in the boiler room of this giant hospital. And that fell through, and we went to the location we ended up shooting, and we ended up with like, six different looks in that location where we would have had one, and it, I think, would have been arguably a much more diminished product. Yeah, hadn't been out
43:18
there so much production value out of what appeared to be a major setback. And the funny thing is that hospital is like, No, you know, there were demolished in the hospital in the next three months, or something, two and a half years later, it's still there, still there. It's fine, still
43:32
there, just full of asbestos, just hanging
43:35
Yeah, so let's talk, let's talk about the location. So we got the cast, we got the crew who are all amazing to work with. How did you guys come up with the location? And was that, I know there are multiple scenes that all look very uniquely different, so all one spot, multiples tell the people what they want
43:55
to know. Yeah. So that's all one location. The whole thing was shot in one area. We didn't have to do any we call them company moves, and that's when the entire production company has to go to a different location. It takes a lot of time, and can really burn up your days. It's, truthfully, the reason why so many movies takes a long shoot. So it was a major factor for us in keeping our budget low and keep and it allowed us to do a lot of the fun things that we were able to do, because we didn't have to factor in those moves, and we didn't have to factor in the time that it was going to take to move around all over Nashville. So a lot of the weird, fun stuff in the movie is there because we were able to shoot it in one spot.
44:36
Yeah, and so inside baseball on that, we didn't know how to find a spot, so we engaged a location manager that Danny had worked with before, Dee Butler, right? And Dee was phenomenal. And we told, you know, I said, Hey, man, here's what we're looking for. Here's the thing. And he said, Man, I got a spot that could be perfect for you guys. And of course, once we went over and toured it, I mean, there was so much production value in the building we shot in, you know, you figure the atrium, the hallways, the lab. The classroom, the basement, the basement, right? The boiler room, we still got a boiler room. And then that smokestack, you know, with the catwalk, that's great. That brick, yeah, occupies for a portion of it. I mean, it made our movie so much bigger than it would have been otherwise, if we had been stuck in a, you know, I mean, that's, that's the indie film hack, right? For first time filmmakers, it's like, find, find a script that you can shoot all in one location. You know, make it in a house, and then make it really interesting, better, not be boring in a house. Yeah, and some people are able to pull that off, and that's incredible. But we were so fortunate to get all this added production value, and I'm very comfortable. I mean, you want some inside baseball. We paid $7,000 and had use of that facility for four weeks, right? Nuts,
45:46
That's so cheap, and I think that's partly the state, right? The State of Tennessee allows you to because it was state owned property. So it was like 100 bucks a day from the state. And then we paid the caretaker, and he was awesome. And the other great thing about that location is the state troopers, Tennessee State Troopers, use it as a training facility. So now, yeah, yeah. And they were just kind of like, do whatever you want the just paint, you can paint the walls. You can do whatever you want. You move stuff around. Like, we don't care. We don't care at all. And so we were able to completely like normally, you would have to reset your location after so if you're going to paint the walls, you have to paint them back. If you're going to move furniture, you have to move it back. And they did not care. We were able to just pack up and leave. We were done.
46:33
And that is how the herb and the bean came to be. Came to bean, but
46:40
and painted on the walls,
46:41
and stayed there all the way up through the current production of Scarpetta by Blumhouse, which is also shooting in that location. It's
46:50
plum house. Allen, yeah, so he's back in this in the in the same spaces, right? That we did our thing, yeah? Which is a trip. Wow, that's crazy time, but yeah, get yourself a location again. That's that area of expertise that we didn't have. You make one phone call to somebody in the industry, hopefully that's a friend of a friend that's not, not going to hit you with that full rate, you know, I mean, and, and today's credit. His first question was like, Cool. What's your budget, man, you know? Because that's, people want to work, and they want to help. And so if you know what you're if, if you don't have any idea what your budget is, it's going to make it real difficult, because usually people want to work within your budget, if they
47:30
can. Yeah, and he did. He filled out all the paperwork for us, and got the light, you know, got the permit permit, yeah? So he definitely helped us out a ton with that, yeah, definitely, definitely a choice. But
47:44
I had not worked with a location manager before, and I thought, Oh, we're a small, little indie film. I'm gonna have to figure this out myself, right? As opposed to who does this professionally and knows every spot in town. And then my mind tells me, Oh, you won't be able to afford him. Like he's just a regular dude. He does this every day. It's no skin off his back to be like, Yeah, dude, here, here's number. I'll make call. And
48:03
yeah. And so you you recall what the location fee was? Do you remember what it cost to work with D? Like, just in general,
48:12
I don't remember what we paid him, a flat rate, because he didn't stay with us through the whole production. He pretty much just set us up and then his part was done. I don't remember what we paid him. It was, it was less than he was worth,
48:25
way less. Again, he is nothing. Guy that came and unlocked every No, that
48:29
was Mike Reeves, who was caretaker though property, yeah, and, and again, the cool thing about the property, we keep referring to it as a mental hospital, and it was, it was like, basically, it had been forced to shut down, and it was a school for mentally challenged kids, and so some of these rooms just had very strange vibes. And a lot of our cast and crew were like, I won't go down that hallway. You know, the paintings on the wall, you know, at Children's height scare me. And we're shooting one of our multi clone battle scenes, and I'm laying down and bricks next to me, and I'm like, Dude, look at this. Because I look over and there's a giant file folder that we're using. So much of the stuff that is in the movie was just on the location, and it's a file folder, and it says Death Review files. And I'm like, oh, no, you want some light reading. You want to read about how everybody died here. I mean, dude, it was
49:20
a, it was a VOD, just a mild HIPAA violation, yeah, no, thank you.
49:27
Violation to leave the paperwork there,
49:31
yeah. So that's probably 95% 98% of the movie was all that one location. Then we did a day with the toy commercial, yeah, at Phil's house, and then
49:42
we did a day on green screen at Skyway. But yeah, most of the movie was shot there, and those were those two days were shot much later. We ended up doing a couple pickup days in
49:54
March and May. So we did principal in October of 2022 we shot the toy commercial in either February or. March of 23 so about four months later, and then picked up Robbie stuff in May. He was the last piece of the equation. I think we did that
50:06
on my birthday. Happy birthday to you. Pretty sure it was, that's
50:11
what we got. You work
50:14
for free, yes. So work with Robbie Patel, yes, absolutely.
50:19
And again, to, just to stress how, I mean, I know we keep harping on it, but like that boiler room, the way the paint was, was peeling off the wall. I mean, to get that level of production value, we could have spent 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and you just, you find the right place, and it's got
50:36
it, yeah? We walked down to that location was like, this is dressed. We're good, yeah. The hardest
50:41
part was for Barrett and Chris Dyer to go in and figure out where we wanted, these little pockets of light for everything but, and it really was, what can you do to accent the dirtiness and the griminess that's already here and like, that was fun. It
50:59
was beautifully wet down there. That's great. We'll
51:02
talk more about that in another episode. But I think that pretty much wraps it up. From like pre production, getting us cast crew, finding locations like maybe next episode we would love to talk about designing the world of clone cops. So make sure you tune in for that one. We'll get deep into some all Chucky work.
51:27
Quick shout out to Nate Eggert and his entire crew every single day.
51:33
Weren't they great and Chris Dyer buddy,
51:40
great work. Rapping, you want it. Y'all heard it down for the kid, though, got some love I could show him. Heard the talk was to hold up. Got some weight on your shoulders. I mean, I could admit
51:50
that, and we're clear. You.