0:00:56 – Speaker 2
Greetings and salutations. Thank you for joining. Embrace your Storm, everyone. We have an awesome, exciting episode. I say that every time, but I actually mean it every time, and don’t forget August 27th. We have the Tornado Music and Film Festival coming up. We have Amazon Smile that you can help donate literally donate cash to Tornado that isn’t your cash by shopping on Amazon, so that’s kind of a no-brainer. There’s going to be links in there. And so let’s get to the interview. Today I have on two guests and I’m going to introduce the film and everything. But today I have on two guests and it’s. This movie is called Guilty and you’re going to find out kind of how Guilty is spelled and what we actually mean by that. So I have on Bob and Ollie Guys, thanks for coming on today.
0:01:45 – Speaker 3
Thanks so much for having us.
0:01:46 – Speaker 2
Thank you, it’s my pleasure, my pleasure. So I always talk way too long before the interview, but I don’t know if. Ollie or Bob wants to go to maybe explain the premise behind Guilty before we dive into it.
0:02:03 – Speaker 3
Do you want to?
0:02:04 – Speaker 4
Yeah, so essentially, guilty is a short horror film, but it’s a lot more than that. It is basically a teapot is hell bent on getting the perfect owner and we follow sort of what he does when certain owners don’t meet his requirements.
0:02:23 – Speaker 3
There’s plenty of dark humor and gore splatter throughout as well.
0:02:28 – Speaker 2
And before we get too much more into it. I wanted to tease everyone with that, because the second me and my business partners saw this come in. We were like guilty and we saw, so we watched. It might have been the trailer, but we’re just like is either the trailer? Actually, we saw like a music video, which was also insane. Did you guys do that?
0:02:48 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so we had a new song written for the film. We had a new theme song done by our friends the real cheesemakers, which are really fun and weird and stupid. Band Dude, that music video was crazy.
0:03:01 – Speaker 2
That was awesome. I was like holy crap, this is insane, Like it was so cool. But before I get to the movie, I’d like to dive into this first. How did both of you guys even want to do films like this or get involved? How did you get started? Because I like all the listeners to realize, guess what? Everyone starts in the same place, the bottom. So what did you guys start doing to get into this and what are some of the other projects you worked on that kind of brought you to guilty? And how did you guys meet and everything?
0:03:34 – Speaker 3
So I’ve been making films about six years now. I did it in college and then I sort of worked my way up to help tell on different people’s films. I’ve made several short films before and a feature film. And then three years ago I met Bob, my lovely partner, and then we wrote toast together, didn’t we?
0:03:55 – Speaker 4
Yeah.
0:03:57 – Speaker 3
So we’d been dating for two, one or two years.
0:04:00 – Speaker 4
Yeah, I think it’s about a year.
0:04:02 – Speaker 3
I’ve been trying to get a more into, put a bit more into film, because we both love films.
0:04:09 – Speaker 4
I tend to have some pretty weird and wonderful ideas as well about things.
0:04:13 – Speaker 2
There you go.
0:04:14 – Speaker 4
That’s what good teammates do, right, yeah, and I would say it was just like bouncing off of that, wasn’t it? We realized that we like to make films that other people don’t like as well.
0:04:25 – Speaker 2
Well, you know it’s funny. I mean I wouldn’t say other people don’t like it’s just like. Here’s the funny thing about you know, independent film, like you guys are, you know anyone else kind of submitting the festivals and stuff. And this is kind of the point I want to make, kind of within tornado is Look, you guys made guilty right and like you, you know you made. I get the comment. You make it kind of being funny but like serious at the same time or whatever, but like, yeah, there’s gonna be people that don’t like you know guilty Right, like just because maybe it wouldn’t be played on Netflix does not mean it’s not a great film.
And I and I think a lot of people have that problem right, like they think, well, no, I have to be on Netflix because if I’m not, then I didn’t make it. Or, like you know, I need to be on the big screen or I need to be on some other you know maybe who or whatever, but it’s like I Guess, if that’s your motivation To to want to me, that your motivation is is more than just why and someone to watch your thing at that point.
0:05:24 – Speaker 3
Hmm, you know, on your fit, you want to sell, right, but if your motivation is I want my fan base.
0:05:31 – Speaker 2
Or you know, I enjoy this movie and I hope other people do too. Like, yeah, that’s kind of the creators, you know attitude, I believe you know like a real creators attitude sort of you know. So like we live in a day and age now where you know, hey, we have the internet right, so like if you can harness the internet sort of speed, then guess what man you guys could totally fine. I mean, what if you found a million people? A million people is not alive, and then not a lot of people with six billion people in the world? So what if you guys got at least a million people watching guilty? I mean, that’s kind of crazy. So that’s a big fan base. So don’t, don’t sell your shelf store. That’s what I’m trying, you know that’s, yeah, I think I.
0:06:14 – Speaker 4
I think I didn’t mean, like you know, we make, don’t like it.
0:06:18 – Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:06:19 – Speaker 4
We, we have our ideas and we’re not willing to compromise on them because, like, if we did, that wouldn’t be, that wouldn’t be.
0:06:27 – Speaker 1
That wouldn’t be who we are. So we do tend to you know.
0:06:31 – Speaker 4
Yeah, that’s exactly pretty out there.
0:06:33 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I get. I get what you meant. When you’re like we don’t think, like you’re kind of saying you know commercially or whatever, but still I mean you know, that’s why I love talking to guys.
You know, guys like you that are doing independent stuff and everything because, you said it, you’re in more control and if then you can do what you want to do and get your the picture in your head out onto, you know, whatever it is, the vehicle it is that you’re using to create on you know so now. So, bob, and it sounds like what all you’re doing is you’re doing, is you’re doing something that’s not really what you’re doing. So, bob, and it sounds like what Ollie said were you not necessarily into film too much before you guys met? Then did he kind of get you into all of us? Oh, were you, or did you like films before, but you never actually got into like creating them?
0:07:20 – Speaker 4
um, I liked films a lot before, um, and I’ve never really got to creating them. I was a theater student in college, that’s cool. So you know I was very well versed in like that sort of area of things and I always enjoyed writing as well. Um, and I think I just like never had an outlet to get my ideas into anything. That’s sort of, you know, like a solid thing, and Ollie was just not bothering me all the time, but, you know, persistently being like let’s, let’s do something together, let’s do it. And I was always very hesitant because I’m like, oh, you know, I’m not sure I’m gonna like it. And then, I don’t know, we just found this one I did, and we well, two ideas for Toast and Guilty and that was it.
0:08:03 – Speaker 2
I was just like I love this, this is brilliant and well, actually, now that now you mentioned kind of toast, I think you should maybe talk about that a little bit before we get to guilty, because you said it’s sort of your guys are kind of working on like a little mini series kind of thing, right, yes, that’s how you would word it.
0:08:19 – Speaker 3
We’re sort of planning what we call a breakfast trilogy of short films. They’re gonna be they’re gonna be like three short, mostly comedies. We got well, toast is mostly a comedy, guilty is, I’d say, a horror comedy, more more on the tone of comedy than horror. Yeah then our next one is gonna be a a drama with some quite dark humor in it.
0:08:41 – Speaker 4
I wouldn’t give too much away on that. We can’t really talk about that yet.
0:08:45 – Speaker 3
We haven’t filmed that, yet but toast came about because when we first started dating I had a. I had a bad streak of I just somehow break every toaster I touched.
0:09:00 – Speaker 4
And I got through like.
0:09:01 – Speaker 3
And I got through like.
0:09:03 – Speaker 4
Yeah, I think it got to the point where, when you came to my house because we weren’t living together- at the time I wouldn’t let you use my toaster. Oh my, oh, my god, I’m not on purpose.
0:09:13 – Speaker 3
I just buy a new toaster, put a piece of bread down and it would jam and break and I’d just like You’ve got quite a few.
0:09:21 – Speaker 2
It must have been like four or five. Yeah, oh my. So was it all your house, bob, or was it some of Ollie’s too?
0:09:27 – Speaker 3
No, that was all at my house, yeah, now.
0:09:30 – Speaker 2
I see why she didn’t let you serve us.
0:09:35 – Speaker 4
Yeah, I suppose, like I just said, oh, wouldn’t it be great if you know, you have, like you know, your character like Midas, who, where everything he touched turns to gold, but actually, like you know, everything he touches.
0:09:48 – Speaker 2
All the toasts in spring.
0:09:49 – Speaker 4
Yeah, and then we sort of just rolled with it, didn’t we, and wrote it and mulled over it for a while and then somehow made this amazing, wonderful film.
0:09:58 – Speaker 2
Because what I find interesting is you got that one’s a silent film, right.
0:10:02 – Speaker 3
Yes.
0:10:03 – Speaker 2
So yeah, was that more due to like the way you wrote the script or was it more of a stylistic thing that you chose when you wrote it, because I find that interesting also. But you made a silent film.
0:10:18 – Speaker 3
It was. It was bit of both. Okay, we’re both big fans of long and hardy. So we love classic and slapstick comedy, sure, but also I’d had a really rough time shooting my feature film, which was it was like a big no budget thing we only had like two grand spend on it and I was having a really big headache with getting the sound design sorted and I just at that point I was filled up with using sound.
0:10:45 – Speaker 2
So, I wanted to challenge myself. That’s so funny, so I want to give myself a challenge of like cannot.
0:10:59 – Speaker 3
How can I do this just? Totally no talking whatsoever, and it’d be much cheaper to film.
0:11:07 – Speaker 2
So yeah, so cool. I love how you thought you’re just like oh, your sound issues. This movie’s without sound, no problem, and I think as well.
0:11:16 – Speaker 4
The guy that we cast for toast as well is a guy called Paul Cooper, who’s he’s quite well known where we live. That’s cool for a TV series that was on. You know, like one of our big TV channels.
0:11:28 – Speaker 3
That’s cool. Yeah, three is this country. I think it one of you backers. He’s just getting the plug in there.
0:11:39 – Speaker 4
He’s just one of these people who’s so like physically funny, like in what he does and like his facial expressions and like I don’t think we were planning on doing it like 100% silent. But when we like got him cast, we were just like, oh, we can really play with this and he was just fantastic. Like you know, he fit it 100%.
And so we sort of like added bits to it and all the elements, because he’s just such a brilliant guy and, yeah, I think he wanted to be challenged. We wanted to, you know, challenge ourselves.
0:12:16 – Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:12:17 – Speaker 2
So, after, after you did toast. Did you already have like the idea for guilty while you were doing toast or did after toast was done? We’re like, oh, I have part two to this, like that unfold.
0:12:28 – Speaker 3
Well, we guilty came about with wrapped on toast and the guy who did the theme song for toast, professor Elemental, who’s like a big indie rapper in the UK. We got very well with him we’re still our good friends of him so we thought like we want to, we want to do a film with him and we’ve got this breakfast idea trilogy idea floating around. The other one we’ve written is based around Marmite, so like the profit is really known for being British and rapping about tea and that sort of stuff. So like what can we do to get him in a film that involves him and tea? Ah ha, I know Possessed teapot.
0:13:14 – Speaker 4
And I think it was more. It was more like haunted teapot, wasn’t it? We were out walking in like beautiful English countryside in the middle of summer, and I like we just both turned to each other and like you know, what can we do? And we’re not looking at the scenery, we’re talking about what film we can make next. And then, randomly so, we had the idea for haunted teapot. Randomly, one of our friends mentioned like demonic tealy freeing, and then we were like, okay, all right, we can play on that. And then we were like, well, actually, what if it’s not like that at all? What if it’s just, you know, a sentient teapot, and we just don’t explain it and we let people make their own minds up.
And then I love that just led to us writing and the thing is, is all the way through writing. We always knew we wanted Professor Elemental to be the voice. So I think it was easier for us because we like knew what he would sound like. We knew.
Yeah, totally, and then we were so lucky with him as well, because we would send him like a bit of the script off. He would send it back with some amendments and we hadn’t even asked for it, but he just like added additional dialogue in and we just like this is perfect, like we can’t change this.
0:14:29 – Speaker 2
Yeah, you could tell he’s into at least like writing back, though it’s like, oh, I should do this or check this out, or you know, like that’s pretty cool.
0:14:35 – Speaker 4
Yeah, I remember when we got like he recorded the first read-through from us and like the first two minutes, I was just like in a immediately in stitches because I was loving so much. But I was just like. I was like this is a much made, an absolute heaven.
0:14:54 – Speaker 2
He couldn’t have played it any better. That is so cool. So what was it? What was it like kind of doing, you know, guilty as opposed to toast, because obviously you have sounding guilty. So that did that bring, like I mean, I’m not not more complexity, but you had more to worry about this time around, you know.
0:15:11 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yes and no. We know he’s got a home studio set up because he records albums from home. So oh Much easier for us, record this for us and then pretty much the rest of guilty is is silent. There’s no other characters talking anything like that.
0:15:27 – Speaker 4
I think it was quite bizarre filming a film, you know like, where your main character is not actually there, it’s just an inanimate object. Yeah, voice over behind, it’s a bit.
0:15:38 – Speaker 3
It’s a bigger challenge to try and get character and emotion Out of something that is just an object right, right I can’t, I can’t manipulate it in any way, apart from wiggling it around. It’s got nothing to move, or it’s just thinking of different ways to film it, which was a good challenge.
0:15:57 – Speaker 2
How long did it take you guys to do this film? Like to do guilty, can I?
0:16:01 – Speaker 4
Isn’t it like two weeks while filming it was two, two weekends okay. But the actual like post-production, like yeah, like editing and sound, probably took us like what five, six months.
0:16:15 – Speaker 3
Oh, that’s pre-production and post-production, I think okay. Sound took a long time because everyone on our films works is like our volunteer work.
0:16:25 – Speaker 2
We only have like yeah, no, totally, we have a budget of like 700 quid to for props right. Do you put that together for 700 bucks? That’s pretty good, man, like it’s it’s. I mean, it just shows you we get, we can do with. You know, you know some money and some work and you know scrapping some stuff together.
0:16:45 – Speaker 4
I think I love the day and age we live in, like look at what you guys did, you know so lucky as well, because we have a lot of friends in the film community and they’re just like the most generous, wonderful people.
And you know, like like most film people, we always want to pay people, but sometimes, you know, it’s just not just not an option no so you know, like we’ve had them involved in our projects and we really want to help them with theirs and we’re just constantly grateful for how much they’ve helped us, because it’s just so cool becomes such a good you know good project.
0:17:20 – Speaker 2
Absolutely. Um, is there anything guys? Or oh, I know you’re working on some stuff, but I don’t know if you can say it or not. But if you, I’m kind of running it rounding third base, so to speak somebody they’re here rounding up the interview. So, like, are you guys working on anything in the future you can talk about? Speaking of help, do you need help? Like, give a shout out, give your websites, give help people in the whole of you and all that stuff.
0:17:43 – Speaker 4
So we do have a new project coming up next year. We’re not really sure when that’s gonna be yet, because we’re actually getting married next month. No, this month so like everything sort of just been really busy.
0:17:56 – Speaker 2
Everything’s on pause.
0:17:58 – Speaker 4
Yeah, so I think the working title for that’s gonna be spread, so that’ll be next year. We’re also taking over our hometown film festival next year, which is super exciting, and we’re really looking to not only represent our town but also to give neurodiversity a voice as well. But both Oli and I have ADHD and dyslexia. Well you’re dyslexic.
0:18:23 – Speaker 3
I’ve got ADHD.
0:18:24 – Speaker 4
So we’re really keen as well, so if anyone listening is into film or just reach out to us and give us a shout if you are.
0:18:34 – Speaker 2
Do you guys have a website or a Facebook, instagram PageFace, anything you use like your production company or anything?
0:18:40 – Speaker 4
Yeah, so we have a website which is wettoeproductionscom.
0:18:45 – Speaker 2
I’ll put a link in the show notes people.
0:18:47 – Speaker 4
Thank you, thank you. We do also have an Instagram, which is at wet underscore toe underscore productions, and we’re also on Twitter and with at wet underscore toe underscore prod.
0:18:59 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I was gonna say I don’t think that’s gonna fit on.
0:19:03 – Speaker 3
Twitter no. No people can reach out to us on any of those mediums or quite responsive. We’d love to hear from you if you wanna get involved in making a film or if you’re a diverse.
0:19:14 – Speaker 4
We’ll just wanna talk to us about film.
0:19:16 – Speaker 3
Yeah, we’ll just say I love to film or just say if you hated it, I don’t care, just let me know what you think.
0:19:26 – Speaker 2
I’ll feed back as welcome, oh, of course, but guys seriously like Kilti is amazing Now that I know, I mean, I’m so impressed with you guys and I really look forward to seeing what you do in the future. I’m looking to see the trilogy get finished off here. Thank you, everyone that’s hearing this podcast. You’re gonna miss a pretty awesome film if you don’t see Kilti. So you need to come August 27th this could be a Foxwood’s Casinos, it’s gonna be a Saturday that starts at noon and, bob and Holly, I thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your submission, because without your film, there’d be no tornado film festival.
0:20:04 – Speaker 3
So thank you so much.
0:20:06 – Speaker 4
Thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure Thank you guys.
0:20:09 – Speaker 2
Is there any other final words for the audience?
0:20:12 – Speaker 3
Keep on making films. Hope you have a good Kilti. Thank you.
0:20:18 – Speaker 2
Alright, everyone, thank you.
0:20:21 – Speaker 1
Tornado with Jonathan Nadeau. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe now. See you first to hear new episodes with more stories of inspiration about the highs and lows of life and how embracing the storm is so much more fulfilling of a life than being crushed by the weight of the world. And until then, we hope you’re inspired to do something, whether it’s creating, participating or learning, whatever leads you to your personal passion.
