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This podcast dives deep into what different careers are really like—what the day-to-day looks like, how much you can earn, and what it takes to succeed. You'll hear firsthand job advice from professionals who've been there, done that, and are eager to share their stories.
If you're curious about your next move, or just exploring career possibilities, you're in the right place!
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How Much Can I Make? - Discover Your Dream Job.
Indie Filmmaker - Blood, Sweat, and Tax Incentives
Indie Filmmaker
Filmmaker Ben Sottak tells us about his journey to making his first horror film "Hallowarrior" amidst challenges while sharing the financial and creative realities of independent film making.
Seven years after writing the first draft of his script, Ben finally brought his vision to life through private equity funding and state tax incentives. If you ever dreamed of making a feature film but wondered what it really takes? This is the episode for you!
Topics
0:00 Introduction
1:29 Ben Sotak's Path to Directing
3:39 Why Horror Is the Perfect Genre
5:18 Thinking of budget while writing
7:05 The process with actors
8:54 shooting out of sequence
10:50 length of pre-production
15:35 Financing and Distribution Strategy
19:02 Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers
24:23 The Rewards of Feature Filmmaking
Resources
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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation
There's all these sort of tax incentives. You can make a movie for a million dollars and then get 60% of that budget back. So you have a million dollar looking movie. After the incentives come back, was made for $400,000. Wow.
Speaker 2:Hi, welcome back to how Much Can I Make. I'm Eravu Zeri, and today I'm joined by filmmaker Ben Sotak, who just finished shooting his very first feature film. It is called Hollow Warrior, a take on Halloween. I was introduced to Ben by Robin Feldman, a producer that we featured on our February 11th episode. It's really a good episode. Definitely check it out if you haven't already. Anyway, back to filmmaking. Plenty of people dream about making movies. It's sexy, it's nice, but very few actually do. Only about two and a half percent of NYU grads go on to make feature films, and the number is even smaller with UCLA and Columbia. So the fact that Ben has actually reached this milestone is a big deal. So let's just dive right in and hear what it really takes to start a career in film. First of all, thank you for doing it. I was really looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Of course. Sorry, I was a little hard to track down. No, it's fine, busy couple of months, but I'm glad we were able to connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, and I'm really curious to hear your story. So why don't we start by telling us how did you get into filmmaking?
Speaker 1:I went to NYU film school, knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, wanted to be a director. Going in, made a bunch of short films, as one does in film school as director, but those were all sort of like student films and then when I graduated I needed to find a job, were all sort of like student films and then when I graduated I needed to find a job and a friend of mine recommended me to be a post production assistant on on like a big studio comedy. It was like an MGM barbershop movie with Ice Cube and Nicki Minaj, and he was like, do you want to do this? It's at the time, in 2015. I think they're offering me like $750 a week, which, for I, was like that's, I can live like a king. It's like $500 after taxes, that was, but that was 2015.
Speaker 1:And I was, you know, fresh out of college and living in East Harlem. So I started doing that. All the like technical stuff that I've learned over the last couple years, from starting as a post PA and working my way up to an apprentice editor and assistant editor, even though it wasn't the path that I wanted to be on professionally, I still wanted to direct. It's actually really helping me out with my direction now.
Speaker 2:So your dream is to be a director? Yes, that's what you want to do. So I looked, by the way, the commercials on your website. You directed them or just edited them? Yes, you directed them.
Speaker 1:Everything on my website I directed.
Speaker 2:How do you get gigs like this? It's not that easy.
Speaker 1:So it's very, very new and I didn't really I considered myself a director and a filmmaker because that's what you have to do for like the last 10 years. But it really wasn't until the last three, four months that I've actually gotten paid as one. But essentially, you know, I always wanted to make a feature film and I did finally, after many years. We shot in in November and then we actually shot a little bit of footage for it last week. So now it's officially like and you wrote it, I wrote it. Yeah, I wrote the first draft seven years ago. You know I've been lucky that, even though I've worked professionally as an editor, even though you know, I've just been sort of like self-generating a lot of my stuff, I've I've gotten representation because of my and because of my short films. So my manager has been sending my stuff out over the years and you know we've tried to get this movie made for like seven years and finally, just through private equity, pulled it together and made it happen this past fall.
Speaker 2:You're doing a horror film, right? Yes, why did you choose that genre?
Speaker 1:I love it At film school. I went into film school loving all types of movies but not really having like a focus for the types of films I wanted to make Tried out comedies, tried out trying to do something a little bit more dramatic. Found out that I didn't really have that interesting of a life story or something that interesting to say, so I had to kind of get creative with it. And I think horror is like the genre to be able to be creative in for not that much money. Like if you have talented people and I'm lucky enough to work with really talented cinematographers and makeup and production designers you don't need a lot of money. I would say horror relative to say like fantasy or sci-fi or like historical epics the things that we think of when we think of like cinema and and things being epic.
Speaker 1:I think horror is relatively inexpensive because people in a house, the house can look like a house and the people can look like people, but then you spend the money on one thing which is like the monster. You know you don't. You don't need like a whole bunch of other crazy extras or production design. It is relatively inexpensive genre to work in and really I think it's like one of the only genres that is still expressive, Like it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not a literal genre. You can make moonlight look blue and cold, which is not what moonlight looks like. Blood can be bright red. It's almost experimental in that way. It's almost like an experimental painting. So that's that's why I love it, and you don't have to spend that much money for people to be like oh, that was a really cool effect. How did you explode that guy's hand? And then you tell them like it's just makeup artists with a fire extinguisher, hose of blood into a fake hand and two people on either side pulling People are like, oh, that looks amazing. Like, yeah, it probably costs like $30 worth of materials at Home Depot, but we hired talented people and they made it look cool.
Speaker 2:So when you wrote it were you constantly thinking oh no, that would be too much money to shoot a scene like this. And you change the scene.
Speaker 1:I wasn't being too budget conscious when I wrote it, but I was thinking like scale wise, what am I good at and what can I do with my first feature? The first third of the movie is just this one actress alone, so that already was a budget saver. Most of it takes place in one house. That was a budget saver. And then, when the people do show up, the rest of the cast is only about eight people. But we allocated the budget, I think, smartly on good actors and then putting them in cool makeup and giving them some cool kills.
Speaker 2:But they're SAG actors. That's not so cheap. You have to pay them scale right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you have to pay them scale and if you go over time you can feel when you're. You know you go over whatever the allotted time is on set. Everybody gets kind of stressed out because it's like every minute is like that's money. There's just so much chaos and like the minute you show up to set the clock starts ticking and then you have 12 hours to shoot. In our movie it's all set in one night. So movie it's all set in one night. So we were shooting overnights so for a month and change we would show up at 4 pm to work and leave at 5 am and go sleep for a few hours and then come back and do it again and you just get there.
Speaker 1:Just wasn't time to like sit around and kind of ponder and be like, yeah, what if you said it this way? Like you're under the gun and everything's going wrong and there's blizzards and like gear isn't working.
Speaker 2:So you're like let's just shoot it, like if we shoot anything it must feel great when you hear the actors say the lines that you wrote, that came out of your mind it definitely is.
Speaker 1:Feels even better when they um, improvise and come up with better writing than I did. That also feels way better. You're like yeah, because I get to take credit for that so what was the process like?
Speaker 2:tell me you. Send them the script.
Speaker 1:My lead actress, millie, who's is phenomenal and she and I connected about the project like five years ago she liked the script. Every year I would try and get the movie made and we would get a little bit closer, and then something would fall through and it would be like, oh, maybe next year, but I would just keep her in the loop. I'd be like, hey, you know, just checking in, I think it's gonna happen. You know, here's the latest script and she was very sweet and went right back be like oh, I love the new script.
Speaker 1:Keep me posted. Finally, when we were about to go, she and I met up and you know we didn't get to do a rehearsal, but we'd at least met in person ahead of time. She showed me her script that she had broken down and I showed her mine, and you know we just talked a little bit about the characters. She's so talented and, like she's won a Tony, she comes from theater, yes, yeah, from um. She was Matilda on Broadway. Yeah, she was just incredibly prepared, which was really what I needed so okay.
Speaker 2:So you knew she came from theater, she got one, a Tony, and all of that, so she must be good. But how did you know that the other people will be good?
Speaker 1:the second lead, ajani. I had worked with them before they were in my short film. I just knew that they had a different process than Millie. Like Millie's very analytical and and works with with her acting coach and is really trained and like knows how to break down a script and like you'd be like Millie, I need you to sorry, I need you to just start crying, like in this field and it's cold and I should be like all right and just do it. You know, ajani is like a movie star and like somebody who you point a camera at them and they look incredible and like if it's a different sort of process and it's sort of like more a conversation thing of like getting them to a place where they feel comfortable opening up. The other actors, aj and Shannon I just seen their movies. They're a little older than me and they've worked on a bunch of films, so I just kind of knew to trust them.
Speaker 2:Since it's happening in over one night, do you shoot in sequence? No, that's very difficult.
Speaker 1:It's totally difficult. What saved us? Yeah, it's one house one night. Every scene has like, well, they carry this prop into this room and they fire this crossbow, so then they can't use that crossbow, so then they have like a knife in this room. It was a continuity nightmare. Fortunately, we had an amazing script supervisor, a gentleman named david b jacobs, who's brilliant. He just kept me honest the whole time, like we'd be shooting a scene that we'd started like two weeks earlier, and he was like you know, that's supposed to be over there and this door was closed when she came in and this prop is. But he was the only reason that the movie actually like cuts together.
Speaker 1:And then you have stuff like there's. There's the continuity of props, continuity of makeup and costume, and then there's the eyeline debate. There's the concept of like the one 80 degree line where, like, you have to have the eyelines consistent, of like where each character is looking, otherwise it gets confusing and like the audience has a hard time following and doing that. We're like we'd shoot one part of a scene two weeks before and then like the other part, but one of the actors had left, so it's somebody just like reading lines. It's a testament to the crew that, like all the eye lines in this movie are are on point.
Speaker 2:How many shooting days? In total, 20.
Speaker 1:That's not bad, it sounds not bad. And then it just you show up at 4 pm and then it's like all of a sudden 4 am and you're like where did 12 hours go? And we've already pushed this, we've pushed the scene to the next day because we couldn't get to it. It's not bad, but it's. I thought I had written a pretty like easy first, not easy, but like like I'd set myself up for success with the first feature. But you know it's set in after sort of civilization collapse, so there's no running power, so it's nighttime, but all the light has to be motivated by candles. So, like the house that we were shooting in, we like you could kind of see into every room if you flipped around. So you had to reblock things like little things like that. It's 20 days sounds like a lot of time, but it went very fast.
Speaker 2:The pre-production took how long?
Speaker 1:I've been in pre-production on this movie for like years in the pandemic like shot a proof of concept a year and a half before we were gonna maybe possibly shoot it on film. So like we did like a film test, I'm glad we didn't. That would have been a fucking nightmare. It's been years of me location scouts to pennsylvania to like maryland, to like places that we didn't even end up shooting and storyboarding, talking with my DP trying to get the cast on board. It's like it's it's years and you have to really love the script and you have to really love doing this and that's why a lot of people talk about by the wayside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly and even after we wrapped and I like I share this anecdote all the time, but but like we were basically like putting up the crew at grad student dorms up in Syracuse that's where everybody was staying and like the day or two after we wrapped, there was a variety article, kind of like a first look announcement, announcing the film and, like you know, got so many texts and messages on Instagram like, wow, congrats, like must be so nice, blah, blah, blah. I'm like wow, congrats, like it must be so nice, blah, blah, blah. Even while that was happening, like me and my partner, emma Jane, who produced it, like we were just cleaning out rooms and scrubbing toilets and like like there was no rest. It didn't feel like wow, you've made it. It's like nope, it's still like the same same nonsense as when I was shooting my student films, but on just a bigger scale. It like scratched an itch and now I want to do it again.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now you come to the editing. Were there scenes that while you were shooting, you said oh, I'll fix it in the editing? You were compromising.
Speaker 1:Yes, not by choice. There were definitely moments where it was like we're just going to have to figure this out in post, but it wasn't because of like laziness. I can give you an example. Okay, there's a scene in the movie where a character with a lighter and an aerosol lights another character's head on fire.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, horror is right.
Speaker 1:We were planning to do it practically, meaning all the actors playing these characters who are getting killed off are our professional stunt actors, and we were going to light this girl's head on fire. For for real, it was as planned out as we were able to get it um.
Speaker 1:You know it involves like contacting the local fire department, oh my god, with a fire team that makes like a special cream that goes on, that makes it safe. And then, of course, the actress has, like she like, sent her real and she's like I've been lit on fire like 10 times like her. The first thing in the reel is like we're on 10 times Like her. The first thing in the reel is like we're on fire, like all these stunt people. The first thing in the reel is like them being lit on fire. They're crazy. And we found out to like do it practically, to do it the way when it was gonna take like eight hours for like one shot.
Speaker 2:Oh no, that's impossible. Just to do it all safely.
Speaker 1:And, like me and my partner who's my producer, we just kind of made the executive decision of we can do this, we can try and figure this out with VFX. I basically shot it in a way that was like we can either do this well with VFX or we can cut around it and it'll still be effective and still have a payoff. But that was. You know, that was disappointing because I wanted to safely light someone's head on fire. It would have been spectacular.
Speaker 1:But the decision was made because that was like our second to last day and we were owed so much coverage for the rest of the movie. We had so many like incomplete scenes, little moments where like, if we didn't get those the movie would literally, you know, it would be like a cartoon where it's like insert shot here because we just didn't get it. So it was a compromise, but was one that I I'm glad we made and I'm I was thinking ahead to just like, look, I can cut around and compromise that, but like I can't compromise like elements of the story that are just going to be like incomplete, like we need to go shoot that stuff and we can't waste eight hours on one shot how long do you think the editing will take?
Speaker 1:for for independent films where there's no like set studio like it needs to release this date. It's general rule of thumb is like all of post-production, so not just the edit but like vfx color, sound design, it's usually like nine months to a year after principal has wrapped. It takes a long fucking time. This is not a long movie either, like gonna be like basically an hour and a half, but but it's so much a year, nine months to wow.
Speaker 1:I spent a look. I spent I started cutting at 7am this morning, emailed with you once and then it was. I looked at the clock and I was like, oh, it's seven, like are we still? Are we still talking? And I just been working on like the opening, like title sequence, but you want to take your time with it and I like want to understand the footage. I want to be able to, like when I watch the final DCP of the movie. Never be like looking at me like this insert, do we have a better, did we have a better version of it? And I just didn't use it. I want to know it inside and out and, like, even for a movie, that's not that long. It takes time to sit there and watch and try things, not that long. It takes time to sit there and watch and try things. I'd like to at some point screen it before we've blocked the cut so that people can be like, hey, this doesn't make sense, this wasn't so before it's like too late and then you're like well, yeah, that would be terrible.
Speaker 2:How did you get the money to produce a feature film?
Speaker 1:Part of how we were able to get the budget that we got and a lot of filmmakers do this is by stacking like state incentives. So we shot new york state, we shot upstate and then we shot in onondaga county and there's all these sort of tax incentives. You can make a movie for you have to get the equity up front, but you can make a movie for a million dollars and then get 60 of that budget back. So you have a million dollar looking movie that you only after the incentives come back, was made for $400,000.
Speaker 1:Wow it helps mitigate your risk.
Speaker 2:How did you learn all of those ins and outs?
Speaker 1:I have good producers who I work with, who, who, who I like literally ate, like. There came a point where I got like so frustrated, like a toddler, when we were trying to like put this together and I was like, Can you explain this to me? Like I'm four years old, like slowly, what does this mean? Go to the chalkboard, drop out. And they were nice enough to do that.
Speaker 2:Robin told me that you got distribution.
Speaker 1:No, we have sales agents and they pre-sold a few foreign territories for us.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:That's a success? Yeah, no, it's. I mean, and a lot of that was based on the strength of the cast, but no, we don't have distribution yet and we won't until we start exhibiting the film.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's what I want to know. Where will you exhibit it?
Speaker 1:Ideally we premiere at a festival. It's not necessary because we are lucky enough, through my representation at Cinetic, to have both foreign and domestic sales, so they could in theory just take it to market. But it is important to me that once the film is complete, at least try to screen at a festival, because I think it'd be nice.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know it's a holiday movie, it's a Halloween movie, so like ideally, if it does get a release, whether that's VOD, ideally it would be released in October.
Speaker 2:Around that time Will you get to see it on a big screen or, because it was shot digital, it will be streaming.
Speaker 1:Movies shot digital do get theatrical releases. We don't know what kind of release it will get, but I will get to see it on a big screen when you go in to do like the color grading and the sound mix. You watch it on like a big movie theater, calibrated screen, which is great. And then the part of why they have to like watch something on a big which is the dream festival you want to get into I don't want to say because I don't want to jinx it.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's very smart, very small I'm superstitious about it I'm the same way.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I would like to know what is the biggest challenge for a director the biggest challenge as a director is appearing to be calm even when nobody else is prepared and we have the wrong prop crossbow or the wrong prop gun and like the makeup effect isn't working, the actor doesn't know their lines, everybody's complaining, there's a blizzard. Robin, when I gave good advice when I was going into pre-production that you know the attitude comes from the top down, so she was like you have to look calm, you have to look confident. I would say that's the biggest challenge. I feel like I'm decent at that. There's other parts of directing that I'm pretty bad at, but I am good at at least appearing calm and disassociating through the experience until I get home and I'm like pouring myself a whiskey and like what the fuck just happened for the last 15 hours on set.
Speaker 2:What advice would you give somebody who want to become a filmmaker?
Speaker 1:Do they have to go to school? You definitely don't have to go to film school. You definitely don't have to pay to go to college. You can make connections by going and working in the industry and not going into student debt and going into debt trying to fund your own films. But I mean, this is like annoying advice, but it is true, like if you want to be a filmmaker you have to make films. With whatever resources, connections, crew, props you have available. For me, like working a day job in editing and earning my health care through, through that, and I was still always, whenever I could, making films and they were just getting better and better. You know whether it was like little spec commercials, short films right.
Speaker 2:So how many short films did you make before you tackle the feature?
Speaker 1:Probably like 15?.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, if you're counting like music videos and right like since I like wrote the script every year that it didn't get made, I was like this sucks, like this I should, we should have made it this year. But I'm actually like I'm grateful that it took as long as it did because, like in that time I was just like honing my craft. It's been said before there's no prodigies in filmmaking. It's not an art form like where you can just be naturally gifted like. It just doesn't happen and you have to make a bunch of bad to mediocre to good films before you start to realize, like, okay, this is what works, this is the mistakes I've made.
Speaker 1:You got to start shooting stuff and to that end and this was something that was in my head while we were shooting the difference between somebody who says they want to make a movie and doesn't, and then Steven Spielberg or Paul Thomas Anderson or even, just like me, joe Schmo, who, like made a film is like there's going to be so many obstacles stacked against you doing it, like permits and weather, and like acts of God and actors who don't know their lines and like all sorts of crazy shit. But the filmmakers that you respect are the ones that like had all that shit thrown at them. Spielberg trying to like make jaws, and the shark was sinking into the ocean oh, I didn't know and yeah, it was a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 1:The people who are filmmakers just kept shooting anyways and and any. There were so many days where, like the old me would have shown up to set and like something disastrous was happening and I would have just been like let's just fucking go home. But during the film I was like we're still shooting something. We got to get like at least one of these scenes down and some of the stuff that's in the cutter from those those days, and I'm glad we just kept shooting. Oh, here's another piece of advice.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of filmmakers who say too much post on social media like big project happening, watch this page, and then nothing ever happens. And I've almost done stuff like that in the past. But I've learned from like how this industry works and how difficult it is for things to get off the ground Like don't talk about it until it's like happening. Like I didn't say anything about the movie because I was so worried. You know, we were going to do like a press release in like the weeks leading up to it and I'm like what if something falls through? Because stuff always falls through.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right and then, like we don't talk about it, just go do it. Find good producers who are type A and have that kind of like mindset of how to run this like a business, so that you can go off and make your crazy art.
Speaker 2:That's a good advice. What's the biggest misconception about independent filmmakers?
Speaker 1:That we're all pretentious, um, most are, but some are like me who are just like here to make a fun horror movie. Um, and that's that's our creative expression. I'm not trying to win an oscar, but make something that people think is cool, um, and that I find cool is that the genre you want to stay in?
Speaker 1:yeah, I want to always be making horror movies, but I don't only want to be making horror movies. It'd be cool to do something still genre I don't see myself making like manchester by the sea or something about like a strange brothers in boston fall asleep while doing it exactly like there would have to be, like an alien or you know sea creature or something that shows up, uh.
Speaker 2:So yeah, definitely want to stay in genre filmmaking for the rest of my my time okay, before we go, I want to know what advice would you have given yourself before you went to film school.
Speaker 1:I think about this all the time. I should have been more ambitious in film school and been like, let's just take this gear and try and shoot a feature, even if it's bad. One thing I really appreciate about the NYU education they did drill into you that you have to take this somewhat seriously and it's a safety thing. You're dealing with long hours, heavy and expensive equipment, heavy and expensive lights. If you're doing something with stunts or something with makeup, that's like stuff that's going on a human being's body you have to take that seriously. So that got drilled into my head and I was very cautious and I have been, have been very cautious and like if I'm going to do something, I want to do it right.
Speaker 1:That said, I would give myself the advice that you and all your friends are like in college. You have very little overhead now, you know, trying to put this movie together, even though I was hiring a bunch of my friends like they're all late 20s, early 30s, trying to like make a living in filmmaking and you have to pay these people because it's weeks and months of their lives. But if I had done that back in film school, like would have been free. Yeah, you could buy your friend's pizza. I probably would have made a terrible movie. But I would say I would give myself the advice to like just go for it. But that's also sort of what I did at 31, just like on a slightly bigger scale, when we shot this movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it must feel good. What is the biggest reward for you?
Speaker 1:It's like twofold, like it's pretty cool to do it with like people that you love and like do it with your friends. They lift you up. You lift them up because it's a collaborative medium, so like we all sit around and like look at the image and it's like you shot this beautifully, you lit this beautifully, you production design this. The makeup looks so cool, this acting is so great. So it's cool like when it all gels and you can kind of see like where everybody did their best. For me, honestly, it's just like the bragging rights to all my other filmmaker friends who haven't made a feature is to be like yep shot the thing. We'll see, we'll see how it goes, we'll see if anybody likes it. But, um, it does feel like I've cleared a a hurdle and of course not everybody makes a feature film yeah, and and I'd always said too like I just I could really like see this one in my head.
Speaker 1:I really cared about these characters and I'm still saying it like if this is the only one I get to make, it's, it's the one I wanted to.
Speaker 2:That's great, and I hope you make a lot more Well. I want to thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for having me All right, of course, thank you. All right, have a good evening.
Speaker 2:You too. Bye-bye, okay. That's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at howmuchcanimakeinfo. We would love to hear from you. And, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.
