“Unveiling Secrets: Jon Gunn Reveals the Hidden Truths Behind Storytelling in SYS Podcast Episode 532!”
SYS’s six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our early bird deadline is March 31st, so if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low-budget shorts and features. I’m defining low-budget as less than six figures, in other words, less than $1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds. We’re giving away thousands of dollars in cash and prizes. The winners for both categories, we have a winner for both categories, shorts and features, and we even have some producers that are specifically looking for short scripts. So maybe we can find a home for some of these short scripts. If you want to learn more about the contest or enter the contest or see who some of our industry judges are, just go to our contest page at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mention in the podcast can be found on my blog and the show Notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode 532. So just a couple words about what I’m actually working on. So, I know I’ve been talking about this for a while here on the podcast, but I am gearing up to make another indie film this year. I finally have the script where I feel it’s good and ready to shoot, which notably does not necessarily mean other people aren’t very critical of it for a whole variety of reasons. But as the artist, as the producer, as the director, I’m satisfied, pretty happy with it. So, I’m moving into pre-production. The first thing is making sure all the financing is in place. I have some verbal commitments from various folks, but that’s not the same as actually having the money in the bank and being able to start. principal photography, so that’s step number one, I’ve got to get that all squared away but I’ve also got to find the bar where we’re going to shoot. Probably 50% of this movie is going to take place in this bar, as written it’s a dive bar in the San Fernando Valley I mean the actual San Fernando Valley part is not that important but it does just for the story it does need to be sort of a dive bar. If anyone knows or owns or know someone who owns such a bar and they are very indie friendly, meaning they will rent it to us very cheaply, please drop me an email I do sometimes get some really interesting emails from folks that listen to the podcast and it’s oftentimes very, very helpful. So, if you know someone or know someone who knows someone who might be able to rent us their bar for a couple of weeks to shoot this film, please do drop me an email just info@sellingyourscreenplay.com getting the right location is going to be a big part of this production because as I said so much of it takes place in this one location I mentioned this a few episodes ago but I’m going to be I’m going to be putting together a podcast of other low budget filmmakers and we’re going to talk through the various stages of production pre-production, actual production-production, post production and then distribution I’ve got two other filmmakers lined up for this and then obviously my film will make three I’m hoping to get one more filmmaker so there’ll be four of us basically all doing very different films in terms of genre and in terms of sort of how we’re doing them but they’re all very low budget and they’re all very sort of manageable on sort of a low budget so it’ll be interesting again it’s just going to be us talking we’re going to talk about the different stages and it’s going to be a hopefully a great way to share some of our knowledge and show other people how to make their own indie film but also it’ll be a way for us to start to wrote our films and get our films out there into the world and just get a little get a little press hopefully so if you’re working on a film or going to shoot something in the next few months drop me a line or perhaps you can be a part of this series as well all these films and I think sort of keeping them in the same scope is important all these films are going to be in let’s say that you know 25 you know thousand dollar range in terms of budget. So, these are pretty low budget guerrilla films some of them be a little higher some of them be a little lower but it’s definitely going to be you know I would say ultra-low budget you know a lot of sort of guerrilla filmmaking is going to be needed anyway that’s the main thing I’ve been working on lately just gearing up, I’ve just been polishing the script and that’s the other piece to this I’m going to once I get my location locked this bar I have some other of the locations you know this house that I’m filming this or you’re recording this podcast and will be used heavily as one of the locations, so some of the locations that are in the script I already have but once I get the bar I really got to take a hard look at it and then I will go back and try and rewrite the script a little bit. really to accommodate the specific bar we have and in some cases it’ll just be you know more of just sort of the location using it using all the rooms maybe not having some rooms like I wrote a dish room where they are washing some dishes in the back and this and you know some of these things might not actually be available in our location. So, I’ll need to probably do another quick pass on the screenplay, not so much to change story or character or structure anything like that but just to sort of hone it for these location and especially this bar location because as I said so much of our film is going to be shot there so anyways that’s the main thing I am gearing up for. Do stay tuned for more updates as I get further into pre-production hopefully I’ll have some nice updates as this thing moves along. Anyways that’s what I’ve been working on so now let’s get into the main segment today I am interviewing writer and director Jon Gunn. Here is the interview.
