Comcastrodors, please welcome the Dream Writers to the Comcastro podcast. In this episode, Maximüs Groves and guest host Matthew Queen interview the Dream Writers, a team of four Atlanta film industry locals who learned how to crowdfund their way into producing an original television pilot. Nathan Back, Dalton Lilley, and Shea Castle pitch the story, detail their plan, and explain all of the barriers threatening to keep them out and why they won’t be stopped at making their dreams come true. Their talent as comedy writers really shines as we open up, crack jokes, and plot each others’ murders.
The Dream Writers Kickstarter was fully funded. You can check out the status and evolution of the project at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1357879823/dream-writers-a-television-show. Also their pilot premiers locally in Atlanta Saturday July 25th at the Plaza theater, tickets are available at http://dream-writers.ticketleap.com/dreamwriters/
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Well I don’t get anything internet speed a comet has to be a lot of the old man’s mac Springs and I’m happy to clean so Matthew was phoning it in today as we’re in the midst of snowpocalypse. Well phoning it in is nothing new for me but now I’m literally doing it but I think I’ll here I am today this is the interview we had with it between writers is meant to have to kick start a fund trying to raise one hundred thousand dollars to film a pilot here in Atlanta. You guys are so funny and they’re so much fun and really smart for God’s plan they know exactly what you’re doing. Fifteen everyone health care where they need to be absolutely you know love their vision you know love the idea and that’s it. That’s why I don’t want old battle no I don’t think so. Oh yeah you’d have to learn in the trailer that it made it just one which was my only everything over time when you know that the last ship is that it will Yeah I laughed about a virus and then everybody stopped watching for more yet in the world I had some with this book and suddenly I wanted something doing in it. Where are we in MS far as what we can say on here what I don’t give a shit. OK Well well you can let me out of the bag although you feel it introduces a risk right. You know in working on that for a while now like the first day Max is like no holds barred and I was like no that’s kind of a bunch of crap and I’m at this point I’m like fuck yeah it don’t matter how many kids are really going to listen to those random podcast you know I mean like some twelve year old listening and his mom hearing wait a minute I feel like the twelve year olds would care less than the parents right. Yeah well it’s funny is like I mean everything everyone in our generation does is record and you know you have no idea we’re going to be in twenty years. So every time I open my mouth on the show I’m like oh God I’m going to run for president one day and are going to hold it all against me. Not one time I made fun of crippled abortion kid gal that’s why I became an actor but I cannot. Well it’s never. A somewhat formal introduction Hello everyone welcome. Today we are talking with the creators of this show called Dream writers. Yes yes we have. So sure I don’t remember all of the I didn’t even know we were going to. My name’s Nathan Bach and the show creator Shea castle I am associate producer and I play Russell on the show. I’m Dalton Lilley executive producer and I play saying I’m OK I don’t want to start with you. Yeah that’s what as a producer. Yeah well that I think I covered it. I mean a producer can really be anything. And the further I guess I guess the further into it you get the more convoluted it can be because you can purchase an executive producer title. I mean you could have an investor that could be any level of producer. So you have associate producer co-producer producer executive producer you can have a consulting producer and all those can be any combination. Of what they actually do for the show. Or maybe they own some of the rights associated with the show. Or maybe it’s something that you just sort of favor too. Or maybe you sold it like we’re doing with a couple on our fund raising campaign now so really what we can to look at it as is that any type of producer credit. It just means that you have some sort of stake in the show and so you have a voice for what happens with the show doesn’t mean that there’s one person that’s above another person it just means that there’s a group of us. And any time there’s a big decision that needs to be made that’s the group that helps make that decision. Yeah on its most fundamental level I mean it really is as a producer you had some type of involvement with making the project produced. I mean that and I was an associate producer you’re just given all of the menial tasks the station of the day just good fellowship. Hey you know we need to know information about anything. How do you do anything that’s a research and development you just gracious that happened today actually it isn’t is matching the character you’re playing on the show too. Yeah basically a giant Sharlee were kind of all in on Honestly all I want you I thought you were going to tear you a bit of a compliment and shake can read about home. But really it’s about using the skill sets that we have and the time that we have and you know making the most of that time and I am good at organizing these things and putting them in whatever and looking things up and doing all that crap and so that’s the crap I tend to do and these guys are usually thinking on much higher levels and more important levels on the business side and make so many talents. Well yeah I’m all I’m hearing all this second hand so they might be just bullshit and you know it will and I was really were interviewing Jerry on Parks and Recreation but like for like a personal like appeal of how great government. No Really guys we can do it. We have trained him well I mean he’s obviously but I don’t think I mean I don’t think like you know I really love it if I say you know oh my god so associate producer kind of sounds like a line producer or like you know we need to have like you know X. number of things and with that I’m sure sure and really it’s kind of a meaningless title you know adult jokes about the executive producer title but not that it’s meaningless but that is kind of the label that we came to describe the stuff that I do that might be very different on an actual television show we don’t know because we’re making one now as we go along but associate producer seemed like the right fit for me. So you’re basically throwing shit a while here’s a look at what is your experience on the designs that she had I mean. Yeah well it’s been an interesting road I guess to go down and let me just first of all I’ll pitch you guys the show real quick and like fifteen seconds the show to happen all right so one of the ones we’re going to get off the floor. So you’ve got about fifteen so yeah. Yes exactly the other picture. What if your thoughts were just your own. What if someone else was controlling your subconscious or what if other people wrote your dreams and they weren’t very good at it. So dream writers is a story about three twenty somethings who write other people’s dreams and they’re terrible at their job. So in a nutshell that was you guys will understand how much Nathan loves to talk. So excited about the project and he’s just a genuinely nice person unlike myself and that was amazing. I think people you know we kind of radios by less than a week ago and the hosts made fun of him he said Well that was a seven minute sentence that has officially been long. On the radio history we now have no time in this world record that was amazing I was just too close to bed time is now making a national that I feel like this is comfortable I’m actually going to put in my rider from now on that any interview has to be given and the living room. All right it’s a studio couch but it is a studio and I love it. Yeah I dig it. So yeah so that’s what the show’s about. And so from its inception which was an idea that I had like two and a half years ago I have been developing it on my own that I’ve been bringing different people on along the way. I can’t take any credit for what the show is now because it’s such a collection of different ideas and thoughts are different really strands of spaghetti that have been thrown against the wall. But yeah I mean really the show is a collection of six individuals who’ve had amazing ideas in amazing visions and it’s putting all of those ideas together into like a stew and just seeing what comes out. Yeah and to I guess take a little bit more the business side to answer your question of you know are we just kind of going gung ho and no idea what we’re really doing this. Short answer is kind of I don’t know. None of us have produced a television show before but you know from my background I really look at it as anything you want to try to do is an aggregate of much smaller pieces and objectives. So if we can break that down into its most incremental parts and figure out a way to solve each task and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to do something that anybody else can do and that’s kind of the approach that we’ve taken the whole time of OK if anybody can do it we can do it now let’s figure out how we make that happen and if we don’t have the capacity amongst our group then we’re very good about bringing in other talented individuals that have a skill set that we don’t to fill a hole so yeah we have no idea what we’re doing just in fancier words. Yeah. Sonja OK So you came up with the idea I like to have years ago where you work in film or T.V. at the time where you just like Sean and I like to tell people I was but not really. No no not a single real profession. Exactly you know one day people are going to figure it out they’re going to find out that I was fooling them for a long time. I do freelance I went to film school and where I went to Chattahoochee technical college I got an associate’s degree in television production Zokol boy Werman Right from here. Yeah man boring where you know high school. McEachern Well OK yeah OK I know last year high school from marching band. Yeah you know really good margin. Oh really know why would you play the trombone player. Now that’s not sort of lunatic. Yeah yeah yeah yeah just a bunch of local boys saying you know what I mean. Those half of the room where I was actually impressed because you had a big pitch in your Kickstarter and your lacrosse document was basically saying guys Elena doesn’t have to just be this thing that’s like exploited for attacks like yeah we have a community of brilliant people you know who have dreams and we think we should go after them. I was really impressed. You’re going to be in our pitch from now. Yeah really I mean we love that we love Atlanta and I’ve been you know I’ve been in the community for a while you know I guess ever since graduating I graduated in two thousand and eleven and so I hit the ground running after that but I love the community and I love what’s going on here and I do think that for a long time it’s been that it’s you know ever since the whole you know Sonny Perdue tax break thing happened jali would do you know exactly everyone’s come in here but why aren’t there shows that are you know being born here and really like raised here you know. Yeah and Nathan I’ll tell you this is one of my favorite questions to hit because so many so few people really understand what it is that’s happening in Atlanta. They’re just like oh well there’s a bunch of stuff going on here in two thousand and five to ten years ago there was one major project shooting in Georgia. Last year we had I think it was one hundred thirty four major television and film projects that shot in the state of Georgia. And it’s not by accident I mean you mention the tax incentive in combination with the geographical area of Georgia in that you can get mountain speech rural urban whatever you want you can get up to thirty percent off of your movie which if you shoot one hundred million dollars Hunger Games film and you can save thirty million dollars. It’s by something you want to consider but how it works is you have to use a quote a percentage of local talent for behind the camera and in front of it. Well that doesn’t really equate to the major roles. So what you get whether it’s as an actor or whether it’s on the crew side you get some of the lower roles and we’re getting more opportunities now but kind of where our focus is and what’s exciting for us is there’s production hubs that are starting to set up in Georgia and not just one or two but like fifteen building brick and mortar here that takes ten or fifteen years to break even on. So it’s here it’s coming it’s going to be our responsibility as as talent and as anyone associated with film of can we make the transition from hobbyists to professional because that’s the major problem right now. There are a ton of naturally talented people. All in the state of Georgia. It’s the perspective that is an issue in that it still like that would be cool. Whereas if you go to an L.A. or New York. Every single person is dedicated just like they would be in any career so for us going back to what Nathan was saying we feel like the next level. If people aren’t willing to give us the chance into originate and bring projects here for directors for leading roles for directors of photography then let’s just make our own and not give them an option to say no I mean right what’s the best way to get cast in something making yourself you know if you don’t work for yourself right actually in this you know in an artistic industry whether it’s painting or musicianship or whatever the better chance you have a succeeding and then making money doing it is if you make your own work and I was really hoping you’re going to break into quoting Patrick Stewart from extras just on I don’t care so I have no idea what he said about the Nathan apparently. Yeah I’ve seen everything yes. Well he starts out with something really impassioned things like I found that when you create your own opportunity you know he’s describing this but he’s working on is a professor expert in the real world and I see this woman I’m like I’d like to see her Coombs while she tries to cover up but I’ve seen everything. Patrick Stewart Yeah but that was so startling James Rolfe and he made a movie called and a video gamer and when I asked whether he was talking about like the problem with L.A. is that there’s so much infrastructure there for like post production that you like. You’re just kind of stuck with it like and they made it all a movie out outside of L.A. but they still felt like they had to use it. I mean is there any truth to that or does that land I have like a post production infrastructure. No I mean that that parallels what we were just talking about in that that is looked at as a very professional aspect of film. So when you go I mean you can fix a lot of things in post even even if you had say. Our actors in had shitty camera work you can make a lot of adjustments and post that’s where a lot of projects spend their money especially in this day and age with C.G.I. effects and all that type of thing. So if you want it done you go to the place you know is going to do it right now that jumps back to the production studios that we’re talking about building in Atlanta. I mean the Jacoby complex which is going up off of Jimmy Carter and Norcross is going to be the biggest production studio outside of L.A. in the U.S. and they even have in Ed they have a school that they’re building dedicated to educating students on the technical side of of camera work in film so to answer you question long winded but that is fair and that is true in regards to staying in L.A. But George is making every stride that it can to bring the exact same opportunities in Jordan with technology. It’s much easier to do today than it was where you could kind of kind of build a safe haven around that and build a fort where nobody else could get it so like people think this is going to last like this whole Georgia deal. Absolutely yeah well here’s the thing and I feel like I’m talking a lot but that’s because that’s what normally happens because domineering. The one thing that Georgia has going for it which Atlanta and New York in a lot of the other major markets do not is a sense of community and a sense of banding together and we’re going to take on everyone else if you go to an L.A. or New York. It’s every man for themself every woman for themself every animal for themself. Here it’s very much of we know that we’re the underdog. We know that we have to work together or we’re not going to get the opportunities. So if we can maintain that perspective I look at it like a Wal-Mart in an Amazon right. So Wal-Mart’s going through a lot of problems right now because they basically came up with an ingenious product and then they continued to grow and expand at it. Nobody else could keep up and then they kind of were happy when you look at a business just like with entertainment. You have people which are the most important and you have the processes that you and still and then you have the finished product with Wal-Mart they make the product and not to bash Walmart it’s like Oprah they could just take me out if I disappear it was Wal-Mart and you know Oprah can take out the Texas we love it right. They make the the most inexpensive product and then place the people there that can execute that and that’s how they operate. Whereas if you have an Amazon who is taking over a lot more of that kind of big box retailer without doing it in a big box store that’s because they originated with people they instilled the processes to make the products happen in the most accessible way to the consumer so we’re trying to bring out the greatest talents of Engineers and things the sorceress reach to that level as opposed to just diminish as a commodity right the lowest price by L.A. has the best right they have the better product. But what Atlanta is trying to do is to put the best people in that situation to hopefully end up with a final product that’s even better than that as a complete aside not to cut your point I have heard that Amazon is treat their engineers like Walmart employees they might be I don’t know I don’t know. The thing is that they handled the legalities I think it was like careers like there’s like oh no I paid my dues and Amazon No Everyone wants them you know like it demonstrates your talent capability and what you can go leading forward from. Yeah well thank you thanks for shit nominally but that’s about you know you got a little bit more to the point but going back to what you were saying about that like post production side that’s actually the world that I came from that’s like my bread and butter is post production and huge huge post-production nerd. So what I mean. Yeah for those of us who don’t know what post production so basically it’s the first part of your production is shooting the stuff you know to go out there and shoot in you know get all of the footage that you need post-production is basically taking all of that footage and making some. Nothing happened so I kind of I like to think of like the editor as being you know kind of like the one of the artists and that you know his timeline and the program that he’s working with is the canvas and so he puts it all together and if you don’t have a good marriage between your director then the project and whatever the product is going to suffer because of it so I think that it is an extremely vital piece of the puzzle and I know that I’m biased because that’s where I came from. But I I like it. I really love Atlanta. From a post production side of things. Mainly because as far as technology goes you can do like you can edit anywhere you know especially with like the way that Adobe Creative Cloud has set up like Adobe anywhere in and the way that Premier Pro works now like you can edit it any point any place any time. But you can only shoot in certain places right. You can only shoot either in a studio or in the location that you need. I’ve I’ve heard stories from friends of mine like secondhand of you know like hey you need to get up get get out to L.A. Man I’m doing so much stuff you’re making like eighty thousand dollars a year. But what they’re editing are like reality shows and that’s like that’s like you went to school you got like a four year degree some people have master’s degrees and like you’re editing you know commercials and Smurfs. And he’s like yeah that’s great because I get to be on a feature is fantastic I was like you know and then you got to think like the cost of living in Los Angeles as opposed to the cost of living here in Atlanta like it’s probably not that much different if you’re making like forty to forty five thousand dollars here in Atlanta as an editor or making like eighty thousand dollars in Los Angeles as an editor and I guarantee you your subject matter as an editor in Atlanta is probably much better than what it would be in Los Angeles. Here’s here’s the thing on on these major projects I mean. It is a tight knit group right it’s a relatively small industry especially when you’re talking about key players. So as long as the directors and the producers and the writers are still coming out of L.A. they’re going to work with people that they trust that they’ve worked with before that are recommended personnel to be able to do the post production so it’s not so much a matter of you know do they have a lockdown on on even providing the most technically sound product it’s really more about are you going to work with someone that you don’t know and don’t trust or are you going to go to your go to and nine out of ten times you’re going to go who you trust you know please go home. Well you remind me a little bit of what I was here in Richmond quitter say about getting started Dazed and Confused which is you know he made his own work he didn’t wait for you know Awesome take off I mean as I understand it he made that that whole movie like right there and you know and he was a you could argue that he was one of the founding fathers of the modern Austin scene you know. Absolutely and now I mean you see like there’s there’s L.A. New York and there’s old Austin like thrown in there and all of the exciting things about Atlanta Snelson is so intriguing. Austin so amazing to me the way that that they’ve been able to build up there. You know build up their market to be competitive with an L.A. and New York even in Atlanta in some ways because it is not a huge city. You know I love Austin and I love everything is coming out of Austin like the eighty X. festival that they’ve been putting on in Austin which is going on its fourth season is what they call it. Interestingly enough it’s amazing and there are people like I listen to a lot of podcast two or all L.A. based that are all talking about the eighty X. possible and how much of a celebration it is of television and Boston born and bred. That’s so interesting to me but also with us up a Southwest is yeah you know he gets up and southwest out there you know and I think a lot of it has to do with like the college scene that are out there but it’s just such a celebration of creativity out there and I just love it. It’s about opportunity to write because not that L.A. doesn’t have pitch competitions or festivals or anything like that because they certainly do but coming out of in Atlanta or in Austin you know you have the Austin pitch Festival which is probably top three if not the best pitch festival for television in the nation and it’s that same sense of of opportunity as opposed to entitlement where they just want to see the best stuff that’s out there. Does it doesn’t matter who’s making it let’s give everybody a shot and bring the best to the table. That’s not that political life style which I think is why it compares really well to Atlanta because you know you hear often in Atlanta a lot it’s because Austin just like Atlanta they band together you know it’s a team of people don’t make this stuff and they come close to the beginning of the alphabet. It’s true. Although Atlanta Spurs just just before Austin. Interesting times ahead of those festivals work so if we if we have one for Atlanta for something like South by Southwest or the other one you mentioned. If you act like they understand how Dragon Con works I understand how like the other smaller festivals work but like what would you do if you were an attendee. Yeah I mean there’s a ton of stuff the cool thing about these festivals is you can look at it from our perspective which would be so you submit a product and the goal is to get as many eyes on the product and as much feedback as you can so it’s really a competition. I mean you submit and then they select semi-finalist So for us we had to submit a ninety second pitch video can be whatever you want to but you’re really selling yourself and you’re selling the product and this is for Ajax which is a festival as a whole they have a portion of it that it’s a it’s a pitch competition so all of these independent content creators who have an idea for a television show have an opportunity to pitch their show at eighty X. and they get all these submissions every year they wade through and then they choose fifteen semifinalists and then ten finalists those ten finalists go to the eighty. It’s festival and they pitch their show in front of seven Network executives and then the winner of that gets basically a guarantee it’s not really the big prize is just an opportunity to continue development with that whatever network. So like echoes of Austin is that is there something about it to the networks that live there or is that you know it is a powerful holding people like the eighty X. as I as I’ve come to know it and I don’t want to try to speak too much for it but they text festival is just a their board of executives which actually includes Richard Linklater interestingly enough they are all about they’re just T.V. lovers and it’s just a celebration of television so much like Dragon Con is very much a celebration of comic books in that culture. Phantom of capers but I don’t know to get great creators out of a Dragon Con Sure well that’s a Comic Con and I don’t just say anything that’s like a celebration of that little niche eighty X. is a celebration of television and just really great television and they do a lot of stuff actually throughout the year as well so like this Friday night they actually have a viewing party a big viewing party at I think it’s like the Alamo theater or something like that which famous they were. Yeah they’re doing it they’re doing a big. Viewing party for house of cards so they’re just going to have a big house of cards possible and then Bo What is his name William and or the creator of House of Cards will be there as part of the Q. and A session so I mean it’s a big deal you know and they just do it all throughout the year. Yes not talking I’m just like seething with jealousy I’m not about I know it makes me want to go so badly and all these things start with the passionate creators like at the ground floor is making their own up to him salute me and I mean you guys are going really hard with a fake it to make a merit of but really two and a half years is a long time at some point you’ve kind of at least major Still professional enough to like. Well I mean here’s the thing about that is you know I was I give the analogy of puddle hopping where really the goal is to hop from one puddle to a smaller cleaner puddle if I don’t by the way told me yeah it’s not about analogies and it’s just like moving up the rungs of the ladder I mean you start off and it’s really kind of everything you have you have everybody trying to like acting is a very easy one to look at of you know on I.M.D.B. there’s over six million accounts. I mean you have probably a million people that would call themselves professional actors but at the end of the day people that are sustaining their life just off of acting you know it’s probably one percent of one percent. Where we go in this question just about don’t know there was a question of what you call it total from pot All right I don’t rain water is no god. I’m going to go spend some puddles any part of the shell experience was my favorite band is actually part of the MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD but know that the Fake it till you make it thing I mean there is some truth to that for sure and we’ve been going you know the idea the genesis of the project from Nathan has been that long in the making and we’ve really been developing it for the past I guess fourteen or sixteen months. How do you mean Nathan. Through casting for the web series actually so much so the show started as a web series that was what the original idea was was I was going to do five episodes of the web series and then just see what happens but I knew that I was going to have to cast my characters I’m not an actor I don’t plan on ever becoming an actor I just like to work with creative and engaging people. So luckily I found a group of people who happened you know I felt really good about them and they’ve kind of turned into my. Family so I cast a cast. What do you think eleven am going I think you just started talking really talking about. Yeah. So I you know I cache Dalton and Ben who plays Quinn on the show. Lovely British friend of mine you know I was wanted to have a British friend and I want to be just amazing. So I cast them and that’s where we all met I didn’t know these guys all in America have your black friends or gay from your British room would you need a black friend. Oh no that was I don’t I don’t know much I cannot explain. It’s going to be great as well but it is a funny though never sticks but at the races and it’s actually a good topic though because we have been running into a little bit of. So we shot the Web pilot and that was obviously a group of creatives that got together and put something down well over and redeveloped it for television. It’s ors visuals we use some teasers from the Web pilot and we’ve received feedback of you know I’d like to see more diversity diversity is a really important aspect for us and it’s hard to sell with you know being being three white mid twenty’s to late twenty’s guys as the main cast and then having a creator that’s in the exact same position. But for us it’s just like building a team in a business of you get the best product whether it’s in the writers’ room whether it’s on set whether it’s in development is if you have a bunch of different perspectives. So for us it’s not about filling a quota of like yeah right well we’re going to make sure that we get an Asian person in there. It’s really about you know writing we need a female perspective on set like we want all of the different cultures to bring something up and be like hey you know I think this will be good and it’s like oh well I don’t I never had that experience. So isn’t the idea of a quota like almost fundamentally disrespectful to what we think. Yeah it’s possible as I actually had to do a debate high. School on reverse discrimination which is a little aside from what we’re talking about but it is I mean if you could reset if you could just reset time and start all over. Who holds the power to make everyone back to the stand. Yeah this is it wouldn’t exist at all right there were there’d be no making up for past harms there would be no one person is better than the other. That’s where we all want to get to but it’s so hard because even if you try to adjust for it it’s like if if you if you swerve off the road right. A lot of people the worst accidents happen because they swerve off the road and they overcompensate. Then I feel like that’s what happens a lot in any culture when you’re trying to adjust to something like this criminal I just had one of the onion that said a man completely fails to exert his white privilege by working at Best Buy. We don’t learn is like you know when you when you say you know diversity wanted things your money is in high like last year high school I had to read something by Amy Tan and you know I just found myself reading this short story it might have been some an excerpt from like the Joy Luck Club which is about like a young asian girl and her struggles and I just found myself like connecting and bonding with it and I was like I have nothing in common with you but the truth of the matter is any chance arguably one of the best writers America ever produced. So I mean like the truth is like if you have quality talent that’s all that really matters quality talent going to transcend any anything else and that’s what we want to the show like you know we have you know full discussion know full disclaimer what is disclosure disclosure just why were you not closure. We’re going to be you know we’ve actually had like we have had people it’s like you need more diversity on the show and it’s a little frustrating for us because I can’t help my skin color I just I can’t you know I’m a well I’m a middle you know mid twenty’s white male that’s who I am. And my friends I’m not going to say like unfortunately because they’re my friends are you know the same skin color than I am but I don’t like I don’t want that to define me and so I’m not going to I’m not going to go and cast someone on the show just so that they can be like the person that we need to fill for the show you know. Well yeah I mean you saw on our list I don’t know if you’ve seen are you aware of a night of the Living Dead. Yeah OK so they very famously cast an African-American man in this one thousand sixty’s horror movie and everyone sit there trying to unpack it like so what was the message what are you trying to say about the civil rights movement and again the director Romero is disliked is the best oh yeah yeah we had a doctor he was the right fit. I mean it’s the same thing for us whether it’s whether it’s writing or whether it’s just funny you know we talk about the for example the character breakdowns none of our character breakdowns have this person is white this person is black person is Asian whatever. And we also throw around a lot we’re getting ready to go into the casting process of how you have to have some type of defined breakdown so they don’t get everyone for every role. But after that we want the funniest person and the person that makes the show the strongest end of story and what you’re getting to is sometimes you’re almost put in a difficult situation to make that happen. When you feel like you have to fit a quota or certain parameters well like don’t dream skit really messy anyway and like a Freudian concepts you know. Like sex and race can almost American a boy and constantly. Yeah like it almost sounds like you have this opportunity Bill terms like one character suddenly jumps to a village style to another actor. Right and that’s what we wanted we you know in our show and this is why we’re so passionate about it why we love it so much we love this idea so much as because the floodgates are completely open for us and it all plays all make sense much like you know like you know Family Guy will cut away to these little vignettes and it’s kind of funny because most of the time they don’t make sense. I truly feel. It’s the first time and you know I don’t want to sound very internet it which is one of the times word actually does and it could make sense because our dreams are completely crazy so it’s going to be like almost like a Battlestar Galactica story arc of just like insane moments that don’t seem to connect. Yeah for one episode right now in the next episode it’s something completely different and they’re all connected and we get to embed that within a reality. I mean what we end up with is an office space comedy that has a lot of heart and relationship development but we have an opportunity written in to where we can take it to an insane level in every single episode if we want through the dreams that we run thing that I really like I love on community community makes you know they make fun of that’s such a great example because Dan Harmon every time he comes back to write he keeps saying guys are going to have grounded stories where the characters and sort of lackeys. Yeah but then that then they’ll do it like an entire episode like a Law and Order S V U episode. I think that’s amazing like I love that and that’s what I really hope we have an opportunity to do where it’s like you know what I really want to make like a chase scene like with you know like Lynn’s players like J.J. Abrams Lin’s players like to run into the alleyways depending your dodge and I want to do something like that and I want to do it for this show so how can we make that work. Well that’s right a dream where our dreamer is running through the streets and he’s getting chased by the CIA or whatever and it makes sense it always makes sense if it’s in the US we have to make the show. So someone somewhere someone who is broadcasting to our dreams is this an evil corporation is this like well it’s the government so the government go in for what you will however you want to do that. But really the comment more than well it has covered employees you definitely have to have a diversity. Yes they’re sort of I thought it was a quote out there and that’s why I don’t know but we and we talked about this for a while of what makes the most sense. Or that to be the backing of why are we writing dreams why are we trying to affect these people in kind. The short answer of why it’s a government because that answers a lot of questions. If you look at the movie Men in Black you can just kind of say like always how are all these aliens able to live on Earth and do all this stuff. Oh because the government’s hiding them and that’s just kind of you just kind of accept that. So that’s part of it for us. Yeah it answers the funding questions and all that kind of stuff but on on a larger scale it makes sense that the government would want to invest in this kind of thing for nefarious purpose purposes or for good purpose and also makes sense that they would be incompetent employees. Absolutely yeah so I mean like you guys been thinking our dreams for a while now. I mean like I mean this is that it. I mean like like if you were to sit down and explain to a kid who never slept before what the rest of us go through it makes no damn sense right. You’re awake for about nineteen maybe eighteen hours a day then you go to sleep and you’re talking to your dead Aunt Harriet who’s half dragon and then you wake up and you know you just can’t remember you need to go make it so no big deal. We constantly accidently reference X. case the illness if you guys are fans of the comic. Because it is amazing but there is a mom it was like oh what are you going to do later. Oh I’m going to go comatose hallucinate and then have amnesia about the entire experience. Oh have a good time. Yeah yeah yeah well that’s what you bring up a valid point though in that you don’t have to explain dreams to anyone on this planet. Everyone knows what dreams are and no one explores it like other than inception and like I guess a handful of weird indie indie movies waking life going pretty good yeah they had I tried it I was a scientist leader hardbound Sandman comic book and yeah yeah but that’s a thing like on television like there’s nothing that’s really doing it right now and we’re trying to give a creative answer. But we feel like it’s our best interpretation of why people dream right and the thing that well I guess one of the things that we’re very proud about is the amount of development that we put into this and how deep we went with really establishing this world. And that’s a big part of it is we feel like we have an opportunity to explain our science behind dreams and we get to do it in a very Communic way through these people that write dream so we get to explain the choppiness of dreams why they change direction so drastically we can explain things like deja vu. We have answers to all of these things that you know once we get an opportunity to make the show we’ll get to explain to people and people will say all that you know that that’s not how it actually is but it would be kind of cool if it was. Well you mention the opportunity like oh what’s going to take for you guys to get started on a lot of money so if anybody has that that would help the easiest way. So it’s going back to the analogies I heard a good analogy having was and they told me but the entertainment industry is kind of like a castle with no doors in that it’s extremely difficult to get into but once you actually manage to scale the wall or find your way in you’re kind of in and that’s the stage that we’re in right now is. There’s a great quote by I believe it Steve Martin and I just going to get the genesis of it was I don’t know the actual quote but he essentially said you have to be good enough so that they can’t say no. Oh yeah it was undeniably excellent so yeah yeah yeah. Something of that regard and that’s where we’re at because you’re really selling credibility and trust which we don’t have any of in relation to the industry. So we’re in the process of force feeding what we believe to be a very powerful and strong product to key industry players that can make a difference. And lately we’ve been getting a lot more traction with that so it’s exciting. So where are you on scaling or east on the moat like fending off crocodiles when you know I know. Tom I think it’s sometimes like I feel like it changes from day to day like sometimes I feel like we’re kind of close to the top and then maybe like something happens and we fall back down to the most Yeah climb back up or build wings on their way down and hang glider I think at first we kind of walked up to the front and knocked on a door that didn’t exist and I don’t know. He really answered so we took a second and say OK let’s try to climb the wall. We’ve got we’ve got your e-mails like Warner Brothers and I don’t know I don’t know. Animaniacs Oh my God how could it be that I could climb the wall a little bit fell down a few times and now I really believe that we’re in a stage where we’re comfortable with standing outside of the castle and we’ve spoken to people on the inside that say hey let me get back to you. Thursday at midnight I’m going to lower a rope down and that’ll kind of where we’re at as this is turning into a Rapunzel still more like a plea for money but we are going to me. I lay a reverend I don’t I guess I don’t care you know I was going to not give references you know look at the reference to Captain America. You know I missed it but I understood that reference. So what is so how do you define inside the castle is that like on a major network or can’t see it but that that’s a great question. I don’t think anyone can really define that right now because it’s evolving every single day so there’s a podcast let’s just say you just make it your own way down every child. We try not to. We try not to put ourselves like in terms of like we don’t look at it like what. What makes us successful like at what point are we going to say that we’re a success. I actually think we’ve already passed that just in the sense that we’re going after it at some point in the next ten years regardless of what happens with the show. I never have to look back and wonder what I could have done to make dream writers happen. It’s already happening you know. So I don’t have to worry about that anymore I’m already successful in that sense but like as far as getting in the castle. There are so many different ways that we can get in now and there are so many different ways that we can kind of thrive once we’re in the party you know and that it could be a streaming platform it could be partnering with a production company and actually going the more traditional route of like. Producing a pilot with a production company and a pitcher for you there’s a million different ways that you can go about getting in Broad City route with a Prius as a web series Amy Poehler happened to catch you came on and as executive producer and others it was an illusion another on Comedy Central. There are so many amazing stories there are so many amazing examples of how you actually get in and for us we’re just trying to figure out how to get in and for a lot of people better I think in our same position you know not to knock anyone but I think that they they give up pretty easily. OK Well we tried we put our idea out in L.A. and no one bit so I guess that’s it. We said no that’s not us we’re not just going to give up that easily. Did you guys do the L.A. thing we did and then by the L.A. thing I mean I don’t know I just sat on it. Well yeah I like very little Los Angeles. Yeah but it’s kind of like the Charleston but a different one. So did you take a trip to L.A. and if so what did you do there. So we didn’t actually take a trip and there’s multiple stages for us when we started this process we said hey we’ll never know unless we give it a go in and go and reach out try to get someone to pitch it and see if we can just get this thing picked up right from the beginning we had the traditional materials that you need to kind of get started on pitching in Los Angeles. We had a show bible we had a pilot script we had a bunch of you know outlines in you know one pagers and all this stuff that you kind of need to put together in a package. We already had it. So we kind of thought you know let’s just give it give it a shot. We didn’t know anyone out there we kind of found some people that were interested in the idea but then you know we just sent him our stuff and then they kind of took it so yeah I mean we have we had one guy in particular that was showcasing some of our stuff around and he’s a producer out in L.A. and I showed it to some people and we really got the feedback that we expected which was hey you know this seems like it could be. Really cool but aka come back when it’s done or come back when it’s completed and for us you know that was failure and that’s what we expected or come back when you have representation and we don’t have to take a flyer on you. Right right right liar I mean basically like give us more credibility because that’s the hardest thing here like if you think about it the traditional way that you go about getting your show in front of a network. Your concept or you’re a kid you’re able to pitch in front of a network. A typical network during pilot season will see anywhere from like two fifty to three hundred pitches and from those pitches they’ll take forty. They’ll take forty of those and they’ll develop those into pilots and they’ll shoot like what is it like well well like ten well you had ten to twelve pilots some are lower some are higher and then of those they’ll take three or four and send them to series two yet I think there’s a there’s a large vetting process but even to get in the room all three hundred of those people are locked on with some sort of studio. Which has gone through a process of getting a group of people together based off of different production companies. So you got to you know I think there’s a there is a very long line of vetting that has to take place just to get into a network room. Now that’s not to say that there are not shows that have just kind of bypassed all of that. The most notable is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. They went through they just kind of got in front of some people because a lot a lot. And then also obviously a lot of talent and they locked on that fact right out of the gate man you know it’s kind of just like it happened very fast for them but of those three hundred pitches that go into each of the major networks during pilot season. All of those have gone through a very long line of pitching and vetting and so by the time they get into those networks they’ve already. Like they’re already pretty legit. And so we knew that there was a really really rare chance that we were going to get in those rooms and it’s two separate issues right I mean the first one is actually having a connection and getting someone to look at your stuff. But the second thing you know talking about taking a flyer and just taking a huge risk on an unknown name you have to think about. We’re producing a sitcom here so we would need to build a set. Right so let’s say that Season one is going to be will say ten episodes to make it easy. Well we have to build that SAT which is probably going to be at least a half a million dollars and then realistically two hundred fifty thousand dollars per episode. So worth three million dollars. Talking about network television to be able to produce season one so it’s not just a matter a lot of people come in and see it as like oh well they you know they don’t like my idea that they might love it. They just don’t trust you to make them their money back and that’s a pretty fair when you think about it. Yeah well so I saw online you guys are just making your own right. Yeah yeah this is a crazy thing that’s happening for us right now so we are currently doing a crowdfunding campaign we kind of put together a budget that we thought we needed to produce the pilot. At what we thought was a competitive level for festivals and competitions and to showcase what we could do creatively under the expectation that if it were picked up we probably need to reshoot it. So we are shooting it on a full budget. Then we said OK here’s the budget we need for everything and X. is going to be attributed to the pilot and we have one angel investor and we went through a little time where we had to swallow our pride because we actually have a decent number of people interested in investing in the project which is you know we’re really grateful for that especially with the amount of risk that goes with a media project but we were going to have to give up equity in the project or creative control and for us that’s not the reason that we’re doing that. So we said OK why would we not do crowdfunding and the only answer was Well we just don’t want to try it. Yes prideful I don’t want to beg. Yeah we don’t want to be. That person and why you because there’s such a stigma with it. You know like the general public thinks that when you’re trying to do crowd funding you’re just asking for free money that was my mentality for a really long time and I’m happy to say that being on the other side of it now I could not have been more wrong in my narrow minded stance on that. Well and that’s the thing I mean is long is it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. That’s that’s all that you can ask for in what we didn’t realize until we really got into the process is whether it’s the incentives or the rewards that you give in exchange for somebody backing your project or if it’s the feeling of of philanthropy or just being involved in something that was created from the ground up or being part of the community that’s involved in this project. People get a lot of value out of back in these projects and we don’t really understand that until we got into it. But the crazy thing for us is we started this campaign with a priority and then to be priority a priority was we need to raise this money so that we can make this thing happen. The B. priority was this is a good way to expand our reach about dream riders. Well we’re now twenty days in and it could not be more opposite this is been a phenomenal marketing tool for Dream writers and the future potential success of the show and it’ll be nice if we raise the money. But we’re in such a different position now where it’s even if we don’t raise the money. We’re still going to be OK and we feel like we’re in a great position to make three miners happen that basically answers the next question I have because every Kickstarter thing I’ve seen the only time you actually make money is the first and final week. Yeah and so it’s as if the entire Like gap in between that is nothing but anxiety. We’re just thinking I’m going to have is going to happen. I honestly I think that we talked about this last week on another podcast sorry it wasn’t as good as yours. No yes it was really good at what we did. I’m comfortable just saying studious but that’s one thing that’s true you get a great place you know we if you’re like manic. If you’re bipolar you never want to run a Kickstarter because it is nothing but just like staring at a screen and thinking like you could be at the highest hyra like there have been some days we’ve raised like four grand and it’s like oh my gosh we’re going to do it and then next day there is like one hundred ten dollars. OK this is going to be a little more difficult than you thought but it is been so interesting to be because as of this recording we’re still in the low period or what Kickstarter calls the trough period if you look at like the line graph is like it starts off and it spikes and then it dips down after the first week and into the second week and then it builds right back up towards a splash like seven to ten days so we’re still in that period right now and it’s yeah I mean it’s. We’re all pretty anxious but we like Dalton said we know we we can at least rest on the fact that we know the show is going to happen. We’re at least going to be able to make our pilot episode which we feel really good about and we kind of feel like after we get that in place everything else will fall behind it. Well and I would encourage anybody else out there that’s doing a creative project and doing any type of crowdfunding is to prepare long term for how the crowd funding fits into the success of your project not just monetary early. So that’s one thing that we’ve been very good at is coming up with a strategy and a plan of no matter what happens this is beneficial to us because so we have a low period. But some of the things that are uplifting in keeping us going in the low period are relationships and contacts that we’re developing that are outside of the crowdfunding campaign that whether it’s dream writers or it’s our future careers. You know there’s a much bigger picture that everybody should have going into a crowd funding campaign of what it can do for your project for your careers so to say don’t focus on the money as much although we really do want that money so he was saying back off that I’m going to take a minute so isolated as random freaking message you know. Yeah how did you find it DID YOU JUST LIKE search on Kickstarter. Someone send it to you. So I think. There was Kevin he said I’ll cabin. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Kevin to chase I don’t remember but he said like at the very start he helped you out with something. OK changes. Erickson quite possibly because right now so you know the breweries take on staff but yeah I’ll volunteer for beer so that brick. Yeah it was Red Shea chase I love you buddy. So yeah I was in so I was just I did contract work for Anthony for redbrick like a few years ago just for the website and so I was like well we just need to talk to people right. That’s what we’re looking to do folks and so right now House bill what is it sixty three thirty six one of the two jobs that yes that yes there are jobs out there trying to expand the power of crafters to do their thing. So which is great. It’s more community development more person involved with the city stronger you know and I drink a lot of beer so I’m on board. And so as an avenue I can talk about is it OK And so some guys like chases like so when you talk about we got to show a watch this you know stream writers I would love that. Yeah so would you think like when you first saw it what did you like what was your initial reaction. I thought these guys are a little practice in like the pitch thing that’s cool however the story seems amazing you know like I said I’ve got the fuckin salmon hardbound in my area fan. Yeah yeah. Any sort of exploration of what I tell you. Always looking on the bright side of psychoanalysis. No I absolutely sing it my Python stuff because you all can relate to that. Yeah I think what caught me about it when I when I watched your pitchers just out like polished like each of you were in like it was like I think it’s like I never know when I’m going to mak sense with something like I like me and I’m going to I’d like you just like I don’t know I don’t know what he said to me so I stuck a man out of the weird one of the group but the same time you’re the one who since the more fucked up shit and I don’t like a cat that light is made up a pop tart. It’s raining so it’s weird but you know wait until you see the show because we’ve got something like that. I’m excited about it. Yeah it was like it was like it was one of things we could telegraph that I was like all right if you’re going to potential is there to be a monster built out of sort of all three of your mothers as one for one like you was a trimmer. There should be a play that would be an interesting episode for sure. No but it’s interesting you say that about our pitch video and looking professional because a lot of it you know we did script it out and try to figure out what point you want to hit and kind of giving them up amongst us but once we got there on the day a lot of it just became which is kind of talk and make sure we hit these things but let’s just kind of do it and see what happens and see what jokes happen and when we were there Nathan was in a certain kind of mood or he was just in a weird quirky mood and so we’re like hey let’s play with that and after watching the video for ourselves we’re like you know what it’s the three of us actors and Nathan and he’s the one people are going to want to see on the show. A funny story. If you don’t have experience of sketch comedy right. Oh yeah yeah you know all the other three guys I’m the only one that doesn’t. Yeah maybe it was you made it up on the spot not a single dick joke you know you know you really are doing twenty minutes and mostly just there’s a twenty second floor and you know it’s true but it is funny when you do talk about that and I love to hear that because it gives me hope because dick jokes never let you down you know you’re never going back to what you’re saying about like it being Polish because in the moment I felt like it could not have been more unpolished very top of the circumstances because we’ve been running at such a breakneck pace I don’t know how much time you spent on our You Tube page but on that particular day not only did we film our Kickstarter video we filmed a round of interviews with each cast member and we also filmed a series of roundtable discussions that talked about really just that this sort of thing of just talking about how the show got started and what our process is like so we have that it’s called the dry. Writers around tables which is on our You Tube page. We filmed all of that in one day and we filmed all of it. Dalton and I are running off of about two hours of sleep. Yeah I mean that’s the gritty side that nobody gets to see that you see the end product is like oh that’s cool you know it’s like making a show Yeah well we’ve also been developing it for you know fourteen months and that shoot that you’re talking about. Combined we actually had five and a half hours of sleep make and I had to I had three and a half. Wrote the script the night before so none of none of us had seen it. We’re all trying to get it down. Monks trying to set up production and then film a fourteen or fifteen hour day to get all this promotional content on and that’s just like one of the days we had going on not only that but it was the week before Christmas like I left there and went Christmas shopping and then the very and then the very next week I was out of town and in like the very next day after coming out of town we had to move out of our production office as our lease was up so it’s just that some of that the stuff that people don’t see but it is nice to know that we can at least fake it and make a really good show you make a baby all the way this is so funny you’re just starting off in production and it sounds like you’re already on the on the cusp of a giant coke binge. Just absolutely. Sometimes I like Wilson the car will be like it would be a lot easier if I did drugs I thought I could just get into some drugs. Maybe this whole thing would be just a lot easier than anything that remotely mentioned drugs in literally every time I passed. I’m going to release someone tomorrow we interview this band this new age rock band and they talk about the empty for a full hour tomorrow so will that then be three days ago. It’s when it’s going to be you know one of those again this is something you that you just never sleep again whatever you hallucinate you just say OK that’s our conscious dreaming that we’re going to make it a lot easier to you know it’s so funny I I really I was thinking about this today I can’t I can’t even think of the last time I remembered my dream you know from the night before I actually had a dream. It is very early on in development before I was super anxious about everything. I had a dream and a dream for an episode where the three main characters go to like a high school and then Sam gets mistaken for a substitute teacher. Green gets mistaken for like the college or like the jock kid and then Russell gets mistaken for like a little nerdy like new kid and they all like get lost in this school for a day and there’s this whole dream of this episode I had I woke up I was like oh my God I have I have to write this down and it’s going to be if we have a chance it’ll be one of our episodes. Thank god for google docs is really what I call my you know any time any one of us has an idea about anything even if it’s a really dumb stupid joke like mostly what Donna comes up with those gnashers just doc it put it in the dock as we have come back with thousands of ideas for this show just and various googlebot. Yeah like a hundred episode ideas which have you know more meat to him and could carry on a story and then like he said thousands of situations and gets everything down from funny phrases to character interactions I mean that’s the exciting thought as if we get to make multiple seasons of the show knowing that one we already have a foundation to start off of so much material to work with but to just what we can do with it I mean it’s yeah it’s going to be crazy. Right now go back to the show happen that we haven’t slept a lot so that’s where I know you want to edit out the bad jokes that Lieberman who think Oh mostly if you get the more immunity you can see there.Good evening Internet city evening Viva Comcastro Viva la revolution Max Groves Matthew Queen. Right now we are introducing the second half of our interview with Dream records. If you recall from before this man opening a television pilot together. Funny if you can start these guys have a plan and they had an outstanding concept that we j