45. 'Figure It Out' with Tim Kirkpatrick

INTRODUCTION: 

Brock Briggs  00:00

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt Podcast - the podcast for current and former service members who got gas who've got give a shit. If you don't, this probably isn't for you!

I'm your host Brock Briggs. And today I'm speaking with Tim Kirkpatrick. Tim is the co-founder of Condition One Media as well as the writer and director of the TV show ''Figure It Out'', which follows a recently discharged Marines re-entry into civilian life. Tim is a former Navy Corpsman who did a tour with the Marines. This is important, because during his time in Afghanistan, he actually recorded a video of Marines dancing. We see a lot of Tiktoks of Marines dancing overseas today. But that was far less common at the time. And it was actually this video that got him into New York Film School on his application. We talk about how the military has influenced Tim's approach to film. 

The thing we all have in common is that we've served and that it's okay for that to come out in the work that you do day to day. In fact, it should. Tim also shares some of the fundamentals of filmmaking, the economics of the business, and what the future holds for the TV series. One of the things I noticed while talking with Tim for the first time is the passion that he has for his work. You'll hear it in his voice throughout this conversation that he's working on the thing that he's been called to do. It's unbelievably aspirational! And what we really all should be striving for. Tim's got the gas that I'm talking about. 

I highly recommend checking out the pilot episode of ‘Figure It Out’. It's a fun, comedic take on getting out of the service that flies in the face of the conventional talk around service members getting out and anybody could identify with it. You can find it on conditiononemedia.com. It's not free. It's $2.99. But at half the cost of a cup of coffee for a 30-minute highly produced TV episode that goes towards a great cause. I think it's well, well worth it. I extremely enjoyed it. And I've recommended it to several friends already. You'll hear in the conversation. Tim talks about the costs that went into producing this. And obviously the more people that see this film, and the more eyes that get on it, the better for them in the long run. 

Tim wants to go on to produce an entire series and the success of this pilot will contribute to that. You can find the link for the pilot in the show notes of this episode. Other than that, you know the drill. If you get something from this episode or enjoy it, send it to somebody. That means a lot to me and goes a really long way. Please enjoy this conversation with Tim Kirkpatrick. 

Brock Briggs  02:52

We're gonna talk about ‘Figure It Out’ here in just a little bit but I want to kind of like get back to where your interest in film starts. You went to film school after you got out of the Navy. But I'm guessing it probably started a little bit earlier than that if you were willing to go to school for something.

Tim Kirkpatrick 03:11

Yeah, yeah. So actually, I was. I'm the youngest of five kids. So I got like zero attention, as you can imagine, because the littlest kid has no responsibility. No, I mean, it just looked over. And there was such an age gap between myself and my oldest brother, who is a 10-year gap. So I was always babysitted by the TV. 

And I was always watching TV and movies just to keep myself quiet. You know, my parents were just had other things going on. So I actually liked the movie, The Cable Guy - Jim Carrey movie, where he just relates to all the characters in the movie. He was in and memorized the lines. I quote movies all the time in conversations. And that kind of extends from the fact that I was always watching movies and TV. So I kind of started film school when I was like three or four or five years old. You know, the Ninja Turtles, all X-men, all that stuff, you know, growing up. So whenever I watched like a show where the underdog would win, I would always like, “I'm the underdog!” 

You know, I'm the guy who always had a flaw in him or didn't get the hottest girl in high school or, you know. Something was always going on with him that he didn't win to the very, very end. And that's kind of like how my path in life has been. But growing up in Kansas, there's no film industry. You either work in the medical field, or you work in the aviation with Boeing or Spirit or Learjet, Cessna. So, I went medical. 

My dad is actually a former corpsman who was in Vietnam, a Desert Storm. So I followed his pathway. You know, I started working in medical and the hospitals, cleaning instruments. I thought that growing up where I grew up, that was it, right? There was no other pathways. And then my brother, my oldest brother, who's a Marine, he was a recruiter for Marine Corps at the time. So he goes, “I wasn't doing anything special. Like in my early 20s.” He was wanting to join the Marine Corps. And I'm like, “Okay, you know, sure. What do you want to do?” I'm like, “Well, I like film and TV. What about doing that?” He goes, “Why don't you do Combat Camera?” So I'm like, “That's okay. Great! No problem.”

So I didn't have. I dropped out of high school twice, or actually three times, actually in sophomore year. So I did my sophomore year three times. It's just the area I grew up in. It was cooler, if you skipped school and did nothing. That was a cool thing to do. So my dad's like, “Well, why don't you join the Navy become a corpsman?” I'm like, “Hmmm. Okay.” 

So I went to the Navy office. They were closed that day. So the army almost got me as a Combat Camera guy. They're gonna, “Oh, we'll guarantee you this. But you may have to do 18 months in the infantry first.” And at that time, I'm pretty naive. I'm in my mid 20s, early, early 20, like 23 or 24. But I was just kind of looking for any reasons to leave, to go out of my hometown. So I almost did it. I almost signed up for the army. 

Until literally, I went back a couple of weeks later to check in with a recruiter. And the Navy office was opened. So instead of, so basically, the Navy, I poached the Navy versus the army poaching me. I think it's the army though. Now, I walked in and I told, “Hey, what about me sign up, become a corpsman and go with the Marines?” And they asked, “What’s your zip code?” And I told my zip code. And then there was another recruiter I didn’t go to because they broke up my zip code. And about three weeks later, I was on my way to MEPS in Kansas City, Missouri to go swear in.

Brock Briggs  06:41

Did you have the chance to exercise like any of that creativity or like interested in like, home films or kind of that muscle early on at all?

Tim Kirkpatrick 06:52

No, not at all. Well, I lived in a family. We had four brothers and one sister and my mom was a housewife. She used to be a nun as well, which is a whole other story. But my dad was working three jobs when we were kids. He was a trauma nurse at the hospital for like 40 years. So he had two jobs, one of the outpatient center, and then his trauma job. But he was also still in the Navy as a reservist. So he was never really around. But he has stolen time because we didn't really have the resources like I got all hand me downs. 

So I didn't. I would always see like my friends having like these cameras at the time that you have put your shoulder. And like, just be fascinated by that. But I would never get to touch them. Or you know, it's because it was just too expensive at the time. So that was one of the guys who broke like literally everything that was given to him. So I didn't really get to touch a whole lot of stuff. I broke everything.

Brock Briggs  07:52

Was your first experience like getting to start putting together films then like in film school?

Tim Kirkpatrick 07:59

No, I actually have a video on YouTube. I have a dance video that, we, if you go to YouTube and type in ‘Marines dancing in Afghanistan’, I'm on the thumbnail. That's actually my very first video that I directed and edited while I was at my patrol base in Afghanistan. And that's actually the video that I got into film school. So I had an audition to go to film school and, “I don't have anything.”

And then I realized I have this. What does this do? And that actually got me into film school was that dance video and long story short, we lost one of our brothers. And everyone was just like, super depressed. I shot it there, and then edited there. And then when I got to, when we didn't have electricity. So I had this power in my laptop up with a solar panel, when it wasn't being used by other Marines charging up their, you know, their mp3 devices at the time. So you know, to me a couple of weeks. 

And then when I got back to Camp Leatherneck on the way home, I thought I was gonna be a celebrity when I put it on YouTube of what we did. So I stood up on there. And then when I was working at SOI at Camp Pendleton after I got transferred to 3-5. I was like, I get an email from New York Film and they're like, “Hey, we need this information and some videos that you've done.” So I'm like, “Oh, crap!” So, I sent them a dance video. And about three or four days later, I got my acceptance letter and anything like that. I'm like, “It worked! Nice!” 

I didn't you know, I didn't think anything too much of that video but this is something we haven't seen before from that perspective. Because back then you really couldn't do video on your phone. This is in like, like to set like early 2010-2007-2012 timeframe. We didn't really have video on your phone as we do now. 

So as I look at the company film like they had to do back in the day, when people go to film school, it is still digital. But yeah, that's what got me to film school was a dance video. Who would have thought of Marines dancing in Afghanistan?

Brock Briggs  10:09

That's literally so crazy. 

Tim Kirkpatrick 10:11

I know.

Brock Briggs  10:13

Even more so now you think about, like, there are famous Tiktokers that have like, post videos and stuff of them in Afghanistan. And that's like, I don't know, like the distribution has changed so much. When I talked to Mark last week, we talked a lot about how media has changed in the last 10, 15, 20 years. And it's like, that the distance to reaching more people has just collapsed tremendously.

Tim Kirkpatrick  10:40

You don't have to have any connections anymore to create film or distribute film anymore. It used to have to be where you would go and pitch. And oh, yeah, pitch a network or pitch a production kind of doing pilot season. There's none of that anymore. I mean, people still do it, obviously. But you can post your own content, sell it. But I mean, there's a lot, there's several steps along the way. You got to learn and figure out how to do it. But really, streaming services are taking over how we consume content, which is great for guys like me, who all we want to do is produce content. And let people see it and have people connect to it. That's really our mission to do, is to have people see what we're doing.

Brock Briggs  11:25

People should want to be doing the thing that they can't stop thinking about. And so, it's cool to hear like another person that's kind of like, “Hey, I get to wake up and do the thing that I love every day.” And I think that should be what we're all searching for, really. Like talking about you working your way through film school, like obviously, the Marine dancing video is what got you in.  Do you think that like your time in service influenced in like any major way like the eye that you bring to film today? And kind of like that your inspiration, I guess, if you will.

Tim Kirkpatrick 12:05

Yeah. That makes it, that's basically part of my branding. Like the projects that I'm working on, the projects I've done, they're all basically military-based. They may not be in-your-face military, but the characters, in one way or another, connected to that aspect. So it's because that's the world that I know. Like I have other projects that we're working on and they're all true stories that I do. I don't do any fictional. We may bend reality a little bit but the stories that I tell they're based on a true story. So that's just who I am. Like, I have to know the characters before and I have to know the story before I could write it. 

Some people will just start writing a story and find the characters in the story on the page. Not me. I can, all at the jokes on the page, but I had to know how to get from A to B before I start writing it. But military is my branding. It's just who I am. You know, it’s just when you're in the atmosphere, as you know, you're never, you're never really not military, even when you leave. It's always a part of you. I don't care if it's three months, six months. I don't care about any, you know. That's a part of who you are. And then you can either embrace it or you can use it as an excuse to do nothing. I embrace it.

Brock Briggs  13:35

I think it's very easy to be afraid of like becoming that guy, when you get out. That was kind of what my issue was, like I don't want to get out and be that guy and just kind of tried to downplay it a little bit. And that's kind of ultimately what led to starting this podcast so I was like, “Oh, I need to actually lean into this because this is something that like, actually is a part of who I am. And like, I need to stop like trying to pretend that it's not.”

Tim Kirkpatrick 14:07

Right. I mean, because of my background. I mean, there's some criminal things I can write about. But again, I'm not trying to ever depress the audience. I'm always trying to satisfy them, in a way. But I don't want to like completely satisfy them because I want to have a cliffhanger, you know. Obviously, that they weren't tuned in to the next time. 

But when you start, when you understand how to tell a story, you can basically start critiquing and molding those characters based on the story. Because you have to find that conflict within the story and that within that character, or people don't really relate to the story you're trying to tell. And that's actually a very hard lesson to learn. But luckily, as we start aging, start learning, if you want to learn it, learning how that your story can help somebody else.

Brock Briggs  15:13

I can't even imagine the time and work that it takes to kind of put together a script for a TV show or movie or otherwise, where you're trying to drag the audience through this journey and get them to feel certain things. I would love to hear what your process is and how you think about putting a story like that together and identifying these key points to get your audience through.

Tim Kirkpatrick 15:38

That is an amazing question! I've watched so many TV show pilots to find out what that little thread was. Not the whole sheet, but that little thread of why people give a shit about this character. To get the audience do that drain, you have to find a way to get them to connect to that character. Or give them that hardship right off the bat because everyone has gone through hardships, everyone. I don't care if you have multi-millions in your bank account, or whatever, everyone's had hardships, right. So I had to find a way to create loss to help people connect to the main character. So the show is about transition. So every character has to, we have to start playing seeds and every character and show the audience how they may be transitioning in the next episode.

Brock Briggs  16:36

It's interesting how you stand back and look at every single movie or story that you consume. And they all kind of follow the same formula, some sort of like version of hero's journey where, you know, there's the call to adventure and some type of problem and you're looking for characteristics that kind of align with the audience and say, “Oh, I've, I understand what that might be like.”

Tim Kirkpatrick 17:02

Absolutely. And that's really what grabs you in. Like I watched. Man, I would watch Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s stuff. I would watch just any comedy that I could, Jane The Virgin who had an influence on it. Just all these shows I watch, like you just said, there's this, you have to look very closely but they're all kind of flow in the same exact way. I mean, there's bunch of screenwriting books out there to read. 

And then the sequences, what happens within each sequence, you know, for a feature in your 3 act or 5 act thing, depending on what you're going for, for TV. Or your eight sequences for your feature films. But rarely does someone go off that rail for the story of screenwriting roles. I watched countless TV pilots to see why is it so successful? Why is it so relatable? But a lot of them, they would use the location of the scene as part of the character, which is something I really didn't recognize until I would see it as a trend. So even in my episode, the location is a character. There's goals within those locations. And there's obstacles in those locations.

Brock Briggs  18:26

Can you give us the pitch for “Figure It Out,” where the idea came from? I know that you've decided that a lot of this stuff is things that you've particularly experienced. But give us the pitch for the pilot. And we'll be sure to include the link in the show notes so people could watch it for themselves.

Tim Kirkpatrick 18:43

So actually, the pitch was pretty easy. At the time, when I was started pitching this, I was like, “Hey, we follow a young cocky Marine who gets out of military early. She doesn't know what she wants in life, like most people. And she's just trying to navigate her life and do different transitions to life.” And that was literally the pitch. And I've kind of learned through pitching, kind of like sometimes the less details you give, the more the person on the other side of the table starts to bring in their ideas to build upon that. 

So I actually learned that when I was deployed. Whenever we would have an interpreter who would come in on deck to interview one of the Taliban, the bad guys. And the contractor who would interrogate the Taliban guy would give him a little bit of information. And just the way they would do it, he would start filling in the blanks a little bit. So as I learned that, I'm like, you know, “Let me give him just the baseline and they start with some character.” You know, you have your fun loving older brother, you have the guy, the womanizer. And then you have the hippie who doesn't respect anybody. And as I was just doing that, the other side of the table would start filling in the blanks. 

Well, what if we have like this? Absolutely, yeah, we can, we can definitely do that. But when I would pitch the idea that would only last for maybe 30 seconds to a minute. And then the dreaded question would come up, well, how do I get my money back? That was the toughest in the beginning, especially the pandemic, people were very nervous about anything. The pitch was so simplistic because TV, from my learning, and the guys I've worked with at “We Are The Mighty'' and other places, when I would hear their pitches from people coming in, they would get way too detailed on it. And the more that you spoke on it, the more disconnected that the producer would become, because they don't really like the character or whatever. Well, I kind of reverse engineered it and said less. And I got more feedback on saying less.

Brock Briggs  21:00

You pitch storytelling and film production in this way that's kind of bubbling out of the ground. And like you need to kind of be ready to accept and take what's there without kind of suppressing anything? When is the time to be strict with what you're looking after? Say you have an idea and you feel really strongly about it. How do you differentiate when to really focus and when to be flexible?

Tim Kirkpatrick 21:27

That's a great question. So if a producer comes on, and they have an idea, if it affects the story, to something that's not inspirational, just be as cool, or it's gonna look cinematic, or whatever, the story is what drags people in. To give them more, say invested, they have to be able to relate to the character and find them interesting. You don't have to have a bunch of resources to create good content. 

So when ideas get tossed out, they may be too big for the story. And that we don't need that. So if it affects the character and flies them off a different path, then really the main rebuttal or main objection to them won't work for the story. Because of this. I know the story so well. I mean, I spent three years writing it. And then producing and editing it, all other stuff. I know it very, very well. So every line of dialogue that's in the show, I can tell you why it's there, for what reason. Everything's there for a reason. A lot of times, as you probably know, people with resources want their voices heard. So they want to be heard. And I'll listen cool. Sometimes the pressure doesn't work out, which is okay. It happens all the time. But it's to cater to the story, not the producer. It's something that I won't bend on. 

And sometimes, it just doesn't work out. But if we can find a way to organically add in those ideas. As long as the audience doesn't question, “What they really do that?” Then that's when you know if you have a winner or not. Like if you can predict what's about to happen, that's a failure. If you cannot predict what's going to happen, and you don't second guess the motive of the actions, the reaction, then you have a winner. But if you can predict that, and that's kind of how I write my speech, each scene. When you're introduced to a scene, the scene cannot end on the same emotional beat as it begins. If it starts out super happy, it cannot end super happy. 

You know, it just has that and there has to be a turn within it. So there's a structure to every part of the scene. There's a turn. There's a twist, everything. But once you start learning the character, like I wrote. I wrote letters. When I was in development, I would write in some school. When we develop characters, we would write letters in journals in that character's perspective to somebody and “Hey, Mom, this is so and so yada, yada.” Would they say that? So you really start learning who the character is before you actually write the script. So but in the case of some of the characters in the show, they were split, like Tick tock who was this female character played by Natalie Galdamez. Great actress!

Originally, that was supposed to be a guy playing that role. And we named that guy Playboy because everyone has, as you know, we have nicknames in the military. Everyone in my unit had a nickname. So that's where I got that from. Because I'm a huge Tarantino fan and Reservoir Dogs and all this, so people have nicknames in that. So originally, it was supposed to be Playboy. But who cares if a guy gets kicked out and goes homeless for a night? But if a female who does it, you're gonna feel a little worse for her and want her to win, eventually. But does she win is the question. So it kind of extends to, if the idea that the “producer” whoever has resources comes in with it, typically, if you can discuss with them why it's not a good idea, but you hear them out, they feel satisfied. And like, oh you know, it's pretty woman. Well, absolutely, this is my thing.

Brock Briggs  25:30

Hearing you talk about like having too much going on in a show. I hit reset and rewatching Seinfeld from the beginning, and they're going through the part where they like pitch the show about nothing. And they're like, do the whole script and everything and then it's just kind of reminding me like how little you need to kind of like put something together and it can be kind of drowned very quickly.

Tim Kirkpatrick 25:54

Well, TV is the structure to a TV show. It’s completely different than a feature film, even if you're using the other resources to do a trilogy, which unfortunately happens all the time, which I can't stand. But TV has nothing to do with really the plot like when the runner on the show. There's a plot A, plot B, plot C, plot runner for the structure of a TV show. Typically, the pilot episodes don't go off of that because you're just introducing the world to the audience. And the way in to the audience is when you air the episodes too soon, we start writing all that stuff out, we're gonna start developing the other characters more because we have our way in a race to the show. But it's funny because you don't really need to have a strong plot. You have to have a strong story, but not a strong plot, which is completely different. People get that confused with this between story and plot. 

The story is about people transitioning in life. That's the story. The plot is how they do it. That going through the narrative. Seinfeld is a great example of that, because there is a show about nothing. But it actually is a show about something. They're all navigating through life in New York. It's almost like Friends, there's a certain aspect to it. It just takes forever to get there because they have so much time to develop the characters over the seasons versus a feature film when you have 90 to 120 minutes to go and one person can character arc, if you're lucky. Some writers can do that. But in TV, to do, you want all your main characters to character arc within that season and in the series arc, as well. 

But we were just we're just over here a couple of weeks ago. And we have a board up. We have all the postcards over there. The whole seasons mapped out now of what each character does for the episodes. We actually wrote the ending of the season before we started working on 2,3,4 all the way up to the final episode of the season. Because it cannot end the way it started, obviously. There has been arc. 

So we know that arc already now we have to map how to get to that arc, which is literally the funnest thing in the world. So it's quite exciting to get people on board left and right, once they watch it. Because we get emails all the time from people who critique the show, and sinister in their ideas. And of course, we get scare tactics as well. People from, you know, veterans will reach out who don't like it, but they could like it if we did this. You know, like, “Hey, thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it.”

Brock Briggs  28:40

Don't make any show.

Tim Kirkpatrick 28:42

Yeah. Well, that's actually what you just brought is excellent because most people will never do what we're doing. And it's not because they can't, it's because they don't think that they can. And they absolutely can. It takes a lot of time. But you can absolutely do what we're doing. It just takes a lot of time to map out how you want to do it. It's you know, it's that trifecta - it's good, cheap and time, right? Do you want it fast? Do you want it right now? How much money you have to do all that stuff?

But people will reach out. And of course, they will get ghost stories and we'll get like dream stories emailed to us. “Hey, if I come on board, I can get you this XY and Z.” 

“We're good. And thank you so much for watching. You know, thanks for the feedback.” But a lot of people, they'll give us scare tactics to come on board. And I'm like, we're really not interested. But we don't say that. But every so often is a good idea that we get emailed over. But we will never use it because we're not going to pay them for that idea. We will never use an idea from someone that we're not paying. It's just not gonna happen.

Brock Briggs  29:54

There's certainly no shortage of people looking to throw rocks at people for doing their own thing because they can't. That's kind of a bummer. And part of something that I've talked about quite extensively on this show before in the past is how being in the military kind of feels like you have a weight on you creatively, and you don't. It's hard to do like start a business and do things like this. I'm not sure what that is or why it is, but it's tough.

Tim Kirkpatrick 30:29

Well, I think a lot is jealousy, to be honest with you. Like, whenever I see someone doing something great, of course, I'm not a hater. “Hey, that's awesome, bro. That's nice.” Or, “Man, that's great. You're doing that.” And in my mind, why didn't I think of that? You know, a little bit of that aspect comes into play. 

But if when people reach out, we're not like saying no to anybody. But it's just the way they reach out. I don't know if it's just their desperation. I don't know. I don't even know. To be honest. I don't I can't really pinpoint what it is. But some people are very gracious on their emails, and others are just like, “Oh  man, what did you do with this character? So off?” Okay, “Well, thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it!” And then they'll end with like, “Well, I can share this with my friends, you know, who are in the industry” and like, “Hey, thanks for your support and please by all means share”. But we never expected any of that to happen. 

To be honest with you, we're just three friends who want to make content and work. The show doesn't need a big budget. It's just a simple, simple story. I mean, we're never going to blow up the White House like the Independence Day or do any of that stuff. That's not what the show is about. It's like you know, it's like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” type of thing. You know, I'm saying it can be done virtually anywhere, can be filmed anywhere on really anything. But it's just amazing to me on the incredible feedback we get. 

And then those 2 or 3% people who just because they don't they don't relate to it, because that's not the experience that they had in the military. They had like, we were saying in the pre when we're chatting. I had it pretty tough. It is not because it's something that I did. It's just the situations I would put in being in Afghanistan, seeing certain things, being a part of certain things. Like I know for a fact that some people aren't treated the way they should be treated. And some people are treated much, much better because of the rank that's on their collar or their sleeve. So they have a different experience. 

And it's the producers, we are all enlisted. We are all infantry guys. So we got the best experience you can possibly imagine, for our future, not for the experience during the moment. But when you take a step back, and you see “Oh, I did this holy crap, like I was in the battle in 2010, 2011.” Right? At the time. You're like, “Crap, this sucks. Like this absolutely sucks, right?” Bombs are going off. IEDs are everywhere. You're getting shot out by snipers, left and right. This sucks. But now that look back on that, I'm so privileged and honored to do what I did when I was deployed. And now I'm taking those experiences. And I'm using them as a narrative for my cathartic measure, right? Because that's what it's really about. 

It's my transition out because when I got out of the military in 2012, I went to film school, my biggest mistake was, I would try to correct people that I had no business in correcting. Like me and my wife would be out to dinner or we would go out to the mall or dine out to see someone or I would be in film school and I would see another student messing up or doing something, I would try to correct them. Just because that's what I would do when I was in charge to call out others, the supervisor in the military. That was part of my transition, which I had no rights to do certain things, but I did it anyway. So it took a long time for me to realize like “Hey, man, I'm a civilian again. I don't have any reason to tell others personally what to do anymore.” And that's part of the some of the things that we're going to look at down the line in the season. But everything that takes place in the episode actually happened.

Brock Briggs  34:44

You've talked a couple times about the difficulty of resource constraints on putting a film together of sorts. Can you maybe walk through what the economics of putting something together like this is? What are the costs you might encounter? And maybe if you can provide numbers for ‘Figure It Out’, that might give some interesting context. 

Tim Kirkpatrick 35:06

Yeah, absolutely. So, when I was in development, I knew that it was, we were in the mid and we're still in the pandemic, covid not going to go anywhere. But we were in this part where we heard those constantly, constantly. So we were even pitching different companies to have their logo in the show, you know. And I mean that the permits alone, we shot in four and a half days, and the permits alone cost 1000 bucks. 

So when you start, when you take a look at these little nickels and dimes, of all these costs to add up, right? As a producer, this is what I learned in film school, when I was producing my short films. You may think it may cost one thing, but you better double it. Because every vendor out there, in the very, very beginning, they're gonna give you the lowest number to you know, throw that piece of cheese at you. So just the permits alone was 100 bucks. And then the insurance to go on there was like 6500 for workman's comp, and then all these aggregating sub waivers and all this stuff got thrown out. The insurance came out to about like 7200 bucks, just for the insurance for a 12-day short term sheet. So we ended up, just the four half days alone was over 60 grand. Just to do that. 

The actors were the ones who got paid the least because they actually benefit the most from all of this. But nobody, and now expect them to do this. I mean, no one hooked us up for any crew, no one hooked us up, but like, “Hey, I'll give you half time.” You know that stuff. It was full price for everyone. But whatever would do, I knew it was going to happen. When they would send over you know, of their quote sheets for their costs, it was always the lowest number possible that they could generate. And then they would tack on their kit fees and all this other stuff and just start building up. But I knew it was gonna happen. 

Luckily, we didn't go over budget. But I mean, even when we screened at Warner Brothers, there was always these hidden costs. That of course, no one was ever told to us. Because the screen of Warner Brothers was brand new to us. The filming aspect was not. I did this in film school, commercials, music videos, that's the easy part. Right? But just to screen at Warner Brothers for the premiere, there were so many hidden costs that we didn't know until we got the quote sheets about a week before we actually signed it and had it. I mean, we don't have staff at Condition One Media, we don't have that. 

But the insurance to screen there and you know, just things of that nature was just things that we didn't expect to happen. But ultimately, it was a great learning. I mean, I learned stuff every single day. There’s no learning that stops ever. But like, it costs. It was 14,000 to screen at Warner Brothers for the premiere and we got hooked. That was a hookup price because we were only there for two and a half hours and it was a four hour block that we blocked it off for. But if we paid for the trash liners, was it was a fee. Ice was a fee.

Brock Briggs  38:44

Oh, and there is room for everything.

Tim  38:47

There and we don't know that information until the quote sheet comes up after. We like okay, because we were looking at Digi or the DGA theater. We were looking at other theaters to screen at. Ultimately, we decided Warner Brothers, it’s the nostalgia of it, right? And the people who showed up to Warner Brothers, wasn't gonna be the same type of people who are gonna show up to like AMC, if we simply are Regal Cinemas that we screen there, right? People wouldn't have come to a theater that they can go to on a weekend with their husbands or girlfriends or whatever they call it. But going to Warner Brothers provides a different demographic, to getting people to show up. 

But ultimately, we had a packed house during the streaming. We blocked up a couple of rows in the very front to get some space just because of COVID purposes. But ultimately, that was probably the biggest curveball because I've never produced a screening before on my own. So that was but after a while my partners, they started learning the business aspect to it. 

So now I'm backed up off the business aspect of it now. I'm back on Creative. And they're doing all the business side of it now. And that's one of the things I'm very excited about. Because the whole goal of what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring on the right people, put them in the right spots for building a team up, right? Because a season is very, very expensive. Most production companies, when they have a TV show out, they have a pilot out, you'll never see it. Right? You'll never see it. But we decided, “Let's have people see it. Screw it, because we're selling the show.” But we're also selling the episode of the first pilot, which no one really does that. So that's why we're also getting, every day the business model is changing because of all the cells that were getting on Amazon and on the website for the first episode. 

But most of the feedback is, “Hey, what episodes to come out?” “Hey, we're working on it” We didn't expect any of this. So we weren't really prepared for it. This actually happened, which is a blessing in disguise. But we're super, super excited. But this is the biggest thing I’ve ever been a part of. Biggest thing.

Brock Briggs  41:08

That's gotta be such a good feeling. And like I said earlier about, like, so excited to be getting the positive feedback and reaffirmation while you're working on something that you really love. It's cool.

Tim  41:20

We've actually had a couple of actors, big actors reached out via their managers and agents, who reached out to us, which we actually for the most part, we have connections to their management aces already. We just didn't know it. 

Because you know, over a year, you know, you start your social media, right? People request you as a friend, or they follow you, and you don't know what they do. You know, there's just a friend of a friend of a friend who thinks you're doing cool shit. And then because of social media, and manage that call, when they posted that stuff. All of a sudden, now we're getting more introductions to people. And we've had a couple of emails from these actors, managers who, “Hey, we saw your show. It’s pretty cool.” 

Of course, they won't reach out and waste our time unless they're interested in one way or another. Again, this is just supposed to be a web series that we were doing because we were bored. Like, we're going to film or we're going to record all the sound on a hockey stick, and then zoom. And that was supposed to play when the roll is gonna get cheaper. But then, when the resources started coming in, we were like, “Dude, I cannot play this role anymore. I'm not good enough. I'm not.” So, that's the reason why we hadn’t started doing the auditions, which We Are The Mighty, hooked us up big time using their office in LA to do the auditions. 

Salsa, Mark Harper and Augie, and all those guys over there just opened their doors out for me. And like, because I used to work for them. I was interning for them when I was in film school. And they actually hired me on full time. The week I graduated film school, I actually couldn't go to my graduation because I was working, which is a great problem to have. I was gonna go on a reservation anyway, because I don't want to miss it. The hair that I had at the time, it’s kind of receding now. But yeah, they helped us out big time. And just the audition process was so much fun to do. 

Brock Briggs  43:19

And you maybe give us a ballpark about like what it costs to put together a pilot like this. Like all-in costs, you don't have to give specific numbers, but give me a ballpark. And then maybe contrast that with the economics of like what you make when you go to sell, like either online or going with a streaming provider like Amazon or Netflix. 

Tim 43:45

So, the costs to do everything for the show, and it's still growing because of the marketing that we're doing behind it, were over 60 grand. Which is nothing for a TV pilot. Which is absolutely nickels and pennies compared to like your real TV shows that are out there. They're on like, you know, NBC and CBS. Right? It's just but when it comes to Amazon, so as you know, on the website, you can buy the episode for 2.99, which is super cheap. And we get good conversions that way. 

On Amazon, it's a higher conversion rate on Amazon because you don't have to whip out your credit card. It's right there. You just hit buy. But Amazon takes a huge cut of everything. But we're not really out there to make money off of the episode. We're out there to show people that we can tell a story to bring on partnerships and sponsorships and stuff like that to showcase what we can do. 

Now, Amazon, their analytics and their dashboard? They don't update until 30 days after the month has posted it. So when the show went live on Amazon in August, so we won't know. Because it was like mid August. It was a three week process from getting approved as a licensee on Amazon. So it took a little bit of the interview process. There was a tax audit, to make sure that we were legit company. A whole bunch of stuff. 

And then when you submit your packaging, it may not get approved for licensing. Luckily, it did. I knew it was. I did my research. But they take 40% of all your revenue from there. So we're not even remotely close to making back what we've produced. But that's not what we're after. I don't care I'm making a single dime off of this. I want to produce more episodes. 

So, but we won't know those true values until probably about a week or so. We'll know what August's numbers are. Because you can go on there now. And it says it's an estimate. And it shows you the amount of number of times streamed and sells on it. But it says estimates. So and as I refresh the screen every day, even August’s numbers are going up. Even though it says, when I refresh a couple days later, the numbers go up because they don't update as often as you would like them to. Because you start seeing numbers increase, it really motivates you, right? Such an optimistic. You know, wow, this is doing great! We're doing very well. But we still have a long ways to go if we want to produce this thing independently, just from those sales. Because Amazon does not sponsor the show at all. 

So it's up to us to create the market. So part of the business model is to sell the show, and then get like, you know, reverse equity on it to keep continue working on it and using other assets. Because I was always told in film school, never use your own money. Well, when I was in pre pandemic, though. But since I had the ability to reach out to people with these resources, of course, since I haven't sold any projects before, that halted a lot of the resources that I could have gotten, because I don't have a track record of it just yet. And I'll get there. I'll get there. It's not. I'm not there yet, but I'll get there. But the fact that I have a distribution platform set up, really increases the value. And it legitimizes what we're doing because Amazon did not have to license the show. But they did, which was a tedious process.

Brock Briggs  47:44

I think one of the hardest things about pursuing what you love and like chasing after your dream is like, really not knowing when its right to maybe pivot or go a different direction. And so you're constantly looking for these steps and validation. You know, you're like seeing sales come in. There's a certain amount of validation that comes with that. Maybe earlier on in your journey. Were there points that you saw where you're like, “Oh, this is a good sign to keep pressing forward?”

Tim  48:19

Absolutely. So I have some really strong instructors in film school. When I was doing my MFA in Screenwriting at New York Film, I kind of created a bond with so many instructors out. And one of my instructors actually introduced me to his brother who's a huge TV director. And I sent him the script. And he, of course, they're trying to hold on to your film as well that you know, they're filming your films in mind when you write something. But, hey! These guys don't do that. “Hey, this was funny, but this has to get corrected. This is not you know, yada yada yada”. So that’s constructive criticism. Now, when you see them, adding the amount of notes to your script, they could just say, “No, I don't like this. Change this.” 

But when they're adding their ideas to it, you know you have something because they become emotionally invested in your script. Because they have other shits to do. These guys are DGA and WGA, and PGA. You know, they’re union of filmmakers. But when they take time out of their schedule, and they're adding notes to your scripts, like “Oh, wait!” You know, they actually cared enough to take the time out to do this. Maybe I do have something there. So that was kind of the boost I needed a little bit. Coz again, it was just a web series for like, versus the whole thing like 500 bucks. Easy day, in and out. Nobody gets hurt. I was looking at new iPhones to shoot it on. We have set up two cameras because the budget came in for that. But that validation started coming in when those first well, I mean. I was probably like on the 20th round of edits on the script because we were going to shoot it more vlog style, like on a camera with the main characters holding their phone up and talking. But that was too generic. 

So I started changing it up. But once I started getting those first couple rounds of feedback back, they weren't talking about story. They're talking about plots. So I was like, “Oh, so the story works for these guys.” Because no one said that. The feedback was never about, “Oh, your story doesn't make any sense.” And that's the green light in my brain. “Oh, shit, okay, the story makes sense to them.” But it's just applying to work on some stuff and beats and moving around. But the biggest thing I did was for four months, I put the script away. I locked it up. I didn't even, it was on my computer, of course. But I never opened it back up. 

A couple of months later I opened it up. And I'm seeing all the flaws in it. Because I'm now, I become a jet objective to my own story. Boom, worked it out, locked it, back up, come back. So it was almost a two year process before we even started doing auditions for it. So it was. And then when the actors, everyone showed up. All the actors showed up, and they got their sides, which of course, we pulled the best scenes that we could with at least we thought that they're the best scenes for the actors to come in to read. We had zero no shows. So you're like, “Huh, that's interesting!” And work. We have these. We have union actresses and actors coming in to replace parts who have agents and they're coming in no one no shows. I'm like, “Huh, interesting. Interesting.” 

But yeah, it was just one of those things where we, I mean, we had a bunch of losses. Things that didn't work out. You'll never know that when you watch it. You'll never know what our losses were. You only see our wins. But we had so many small wins. It just couldn't get to it to a bigger win, bigger win. Just things started to land. Locations fell through 24 hours before we're supposed to film. It was just one of those crazy journeys that I'm so glad to have the opportunity to be a part of. And again, me and my two best friends did together. So it was just a way for us to bond even more. So it's pretty awesome.

Brock Briggs  52:26

I think that story really like presses home the importance of like, like we're talking about going after and trying to do something that you love. And it's always interesting. You can tell that and quantify that in another person when they talk about the failures. And it's like, it just didn't even matter that those were happening. And there were so many of them. Like you always look back and you're just like, “Yeah, we went through a lot.” But like, the thing that we're striving for was so much more important than..

Tim 52:57

All filmmaking ever is, is problem solving. That's all it is. It's problem solving within the story, which would this character really do this? Do you believe that? And then when you're actually filming it, there's problems that pop up all the time when you're working with the RA lighting vendors. What lighting do you need? It’s just there's just so many, there's millions of little things that you have to take into account before you make, what we think is, a simple decision. 

But literally, it's tons of hours goes into making one small decision. But it's so much bigger than just a small decision, even though. Do you want a 5k light? Or do you want to read a 2k? It's just crazy when you think about it. Like I don't know what it like so we have, again, all this problem solving. Do we want to get this angle with this lens or stuff? And I'm like, “Hey, that's his job. Go figure it out.” 

Literally, “figure it out” is like a staple in my vocabulary now because we're still trying to figure out the next step of what we're doing. So in transition in your life, you Mr. Brock, you're still learning. You're trying to figure out your next steps and what you're gonna do. You figured out that you wanted to create this content that you're doing now because you figured it out. When you didn't know how to do it, probably three years ago, you didn't even know you wanted to do this three years ago.

Brock Briggs  54:29

That's pretty, pretty close to right.

Tim  54:33

I didn't know I wanted to do this. I didn't know I wanted to do this until I was in a fighting hole in Afghanistan. When I hand wrote a TV show or another TV show in a fighting hole. I was handwriting on a waterproof piece of paper in the rain coz I was bored. We were doing movie trivia back and forth and I just started writing away. I mean, you don't know what you want to do until you figure it out. So literally the concept of the show came after the title. I knew the title of the show before any of the characters because I'm still trying to figure it out.

Brock Briggs  55:08

And I think if there's one resounding lesson there, it's like it's okay to be in that stage. What do you think has been your biggest lesson and takeaway throughout this whole experience?

Tim  55:22

Man, that's a great question! I have to say, this is a great, great question. I have to always remind myself, I can't control everything. I have a control, the kind of reason why I got into the military was try to correct people from trying to control things. When I have, these past couple of years, I have taken a step back, and trying not to being that person. 

I cannot control everything. Things are going to happen, if they're gonna happen. Things will happen, if you work hard enough to your goal. It'll happen organically, you just don't know when. So that's the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn was if it's meant to be, it's going to happen when it's supposed to happen. When the show first launched on the website, I was constantly logging into the website to see how many cells we were getting. Refresh, refresh, refresh. 

And of course, they weren't flooding it as much as I wanted them to. And they're like, really the first couple of hours, because I'm like, “Oh, I must be terrible at this.” But when I stepped away from it and I would log back in, boom, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, just because I stopped looking.

I’d get emails with opportunities, when I'm not paying attention to them. The opportunities do not come in, when I keep hitting refresh. I cannot control everything. Literally, I don't control anything to be honest with you. Because the team is getting so big and diverse and so strong and solid. I don't have to control everything anymore. I'm actually beyond that. Because my partners are now there. 

They've done their research on what they have to do to make people out because the first sales we got were just from friends and family, right? Because that's within your social media network. Now we're seeing sales come in, people we don't know. Because we're in Europe. We're in 44 countries. We figured it out. But we're not trying to over control it because we can't control what we can't control. So once I learned that it, I probably learned that with the last couple of weeks to be honest with you. 

And now, I feel so much happier. I was over depression for a little bit. Because I thought once this went live, it would just go viral. Because it was my baby. It wasn't doing well enough to where there's so much opportunity that's posting up for us, as long as I stopped trying to check everything every second. So my biggest lesson is “Tim, stop checking everything. Stop.” And I'm not. It'll be if it's gonna. It'll happen if it's gonna happen.

Brock Briggs  58:18

One of my all time favorite quotes, I'm not even sure who it's from is “Impatience with action, patience with results.” It's funny how things kind of like veer away and don't really mean as much when you just kind of focus on getting the work done.

Tim 58:36

I mean, luckily, the work that I do for my daily, it's so tedious every day because I work in the SEO space in digital marketing. So I'm constantly auditing websites. I film and I write music videos, and I maybe get to do that maybe five, six times a year, which is not very much. And most of the time, I do it for fun because I love the art of media and doing this. But my work is so tedious. 

When I get slammed, I get slammed. Like I get all these. I have 400 and 12 accounts, they work on their websites and stuff like that. But when I forget about the show, three hours later, I look at my phone, “Hey, you have a message from so and so productions. Oh shit!” because I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't looking at it. But you have to surround yourself with good people who care about you. I watched a lot of reels on Instagram. 

And I watched this one guy who said if people don't light up, if people you know don't light up when they see you, they're probably not the right people to be around. So I took that. So Brian, Daniel, with my other partners, when we first see each other, it can be the next day or a month later. Whatever they're doing, they stop and they rotate towards. And that's how you know. They stop whatever they're doing to go. It's very, very rare that your friends will actually stop what they're doing to give you a big hug when you walk over. My civilian friends don't do that. My veteran friends, all the time.

Brock Briggs  1:00:24

Tim, this has been a very, very fun conversation.

Tim 1:00:28

Yeah! Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I hope I didn't ramble on too much.

Brock Briggs  1:00:32

No, no. It's incredibly inspiring to see somebody like pursuing their craft and I think that, I said this before, but very aspirational. But then, thank you so much for your time.