CC: What would you say are the biggest challenges of being an independent producer?

BJ: What else? Money! There's never enough of it, but that's also where the challenges can inspire the art of creative solutions! For example, on "The Blood Shed," we shot in a photo studio in Paterson, New Jersey, and in the constant battle to find a good and cost-effective place to get lunch for the cast and crew, we found a great little Spanish restaurant that was able to sell us an abundance of great food, with a good variety, for about $5-$6 a head. The same food in New York would have cost much more. The first few jobs I had in film were doing craft service, and I learned early on the value of taking care of your crew. You want to give them every comfort you can without blowing your budget.

There's also the issue of time, especially when there's little money. If you're not paying your cast and crew very much, you'll probably have to work around their schedules, which means they'll probably have other, better-paying gigs on weekdays, and you have to shoot on weekends. That can end up making some costs higher than shooting day-to-day, but you have to weigh the overall costs with working with the people you want to have on your set and determine what's going to serve the film best.

CC: In addition to horror films, you have produced and directed several live concert films. What is it about concert films that make you draw certain attention to them?
 

BJ: I've always been a fan of music. When I was four years old, I'd have my mom's headphones on, listening to The White Album, or Tommy by The Who or the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. I was a choir and band geek all throughout school, and actually started college as a music major, and I belong to a national music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. In my college Broadcasting classes, I tended to gravitate toward entertainment-based projects, including one multi-camera live studio performance of an acoustic band.

In my last year of college, I interned at Batfilm Productions with the executive producers of the Batman films, Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker. On my first day there, the only one in the office was their office manager, Tom Walker. Within minutes we became immediate friends, and that friendship never ended. Tom is an amazing singer/songwriter/guitarist, and I quickly became a fan of his music, independent of our friendship. A few years later, he put a band together called Friday's Child. As soon as Friday's Child started to grow a following, I longed to do a live concert video for them. I had worked on a PBS concert for Steely Dan, and that was a big inspiration for me as well.

Finally, in 2005, the band had reformed and was planning a CD release show. Tom said he might do an audio recording of it - his bassist Rich Haddad is an incredible live mixer - and I told him "Why don't we shoot it?" He said, "I don't have the money for that." I said, "Dragon Rider does!" So we put together a five-camera shoot, and cut a few early clips that we posted on the internet. The response from the web alone inspired Tom to move forward with an idea we had discussed a few years before that - live music performances for the web. Digital Cafe Tour was born!
 

In 2006, DCT had a strong summer season with nine shows, and a few other shows in the fall and winter, spanning musical genres from rock to jazz to blues to country to classical. We approach both our video and audio quality with the utmost professionalism, which is rare to find on the web these days. DCT is now my full-time day job. This year we're planning full summer & fall seasons, plus we have three podcasts in the works. "The Official Digital Cafe Tour Podcast" will feature DCT news & updates, Clips of the Week, and behind-the-scenes interivews & documentary clips for a segment we call Broaden Your Band. Then there's a podcast called Broaden Your Band:Room 2, with Friday's Child enigmatic guitarist "The Professor" Don Regan giving beginner, intermediate and advanced guitar lessons. Finally, there's Broaden Your Band: Music Law with DCT partner/law professor Rob McNeely.

CC: What are the key aspects you look for in a script to draw interest in producing them?
 

BJ: First of all, I look for feasibility. If a writer has written something outlandish and has no idea how to shoot it or pay for it, like if Scene 1 is "EXT. ALIEN PLANET BATTLEFIELD - NIGHT," I'll probably turn it down. Then I'll look to see if it's well-written, if the story grabs me, or if I can see the film in my head and I say, "Yes, that's a movie I want to see!" The script doesn't have to be perfect for me to get on board, but if it isn't, I'll work with the writer and/or director (if they are not one in the same) to get them to make the script the best it can be. Usually the collaboration is very helpful and results in great projects, but there have been some projects that couldn't get off the ground because of some artistic differences between me and other people involved.

CC: Anything you can say about THE LAST DAYS OF FRANK WHYTE, which is in post production?
 

BJ: Yes! My running joke is that this film was originally made as part of the 48-Month Film Festival, but we were disqualified because we couldn't meet the deadline. In all seriousness, though, this is one of the films where collaboration paid off big time. Franklin Correa approached me with several projects, and they were all pretty good, but one short about a drug dealer trying to avenge his partner's death really intrigued me. Frank sent me a first rough draft, and he and I worked together to flesh out the story, give it an arc, etc. We were both happy with the result.
 

Frank wrote the main character with him in mind, so he played the lead. His friend Chiko Mendez was cast to play the friend, Boogie. As I mentioned earlier, my wife's cousin Julian Altbuch was cast as the villain, and we auditioned a child actor named Aron Briskin, on recommendation from my friend Jodi Etra, who was Aron's teacher at the time. I brought on a D.P. named Evan Langston, with whom I'd worked on another film I produced called "Cruel to be Kind," plus I recruited several crew members from Exit 131, such as Bill Clemis, JD Hartman, Tom Wieschenberg, Craig Clark, Lynda Lane and my long-time editor and friend Steve Maio. (Steve edited "A Taste of Better Days," the Friday's Child concert video, and is the Senior Video Editor for Digital Cafe Tour.) Filmmaker Jason Allentoff was on board as A.D. for the first day of the shoot, and my Dragon Rider partner Richard Legon stepped in on Day 2. JD brought his nephew Eric Simnor on as a best boy, and Lynda brought on Erik Labrador, whose make-up effects were so great, someone called the cops on us because they thought Chiko Mendez had actually been shot! Martin Cole was our sound mixer, and my friends Laura Leuter and Belinda Connolly were P.A.'s.

We shot it in two days, the first day all exteriors, the second day all interiors, this way in case it rained the first day we could switch days. Fortunately it didn't! As I mentioned before, someone called the cops on us on the first day, and they ended up shutting us down, even though we were on private property and did not need a permit, according to the City of Elizabeth, New Jersey. This was one of those "happy accident" moments, as we rescheduled our next scene, which was supposed to be in an abandoned parking lot, to the next day and we shot it in the basement. It was a much more appropriate location for the scene.
 

Part of the reason why the film has taken so long to complete goes back to my challenge about money. When you can't pay someone, you're at the mercy of their schedule, and if they have a lot of paying gigs, your project has to wait. A rough cut was made a few months after we wrapped, and we screened it at a wrap party. It still needed music, and I've gone through several composers who couldn't quite commit to the project for various reasons. There's also a tremendous amount of tedious image correction that has already been done by Craig Schiavone which has given the film an amazing look, and there's just a little more to do, but again, there's schedule factors, as we've both had a hard time putting our paying projects aside and try to get together. There's a little bit of sound effects work that needs to be done as well, and then we can release it.

Interesting bit of trivia - I named Aron Briskin's character Donald Jacobs, which we only see in a newspaper article, because my wife and I always planned on naming our first son Jacob. Little did we know that by the time we were shooting, our son Jacob had already been conceived. (I think that if this film isn't done by the time he starts driving, I'm going to have to force him to finish it!)