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Hello there, and welcome back to the disc Connected here with Alan Maxon, who is an actor, director, editor creature affects everything extraordinary. Alan, thanks for coming on the show with me today.
That is like the most gracious title I've ever heard. That makes me sound like I'm awesome. Thank you.
I mean, if you look at IMDb, there's a lot of stuff that you've had your hands and it's hard to sum all that up properly because a lot of it takes years of mastering the craft. And so here we are to catch up on the disconnected.
All right, here we go twenty years of chatting. Let's go.
We'll get into physical media a little while, because that's what brought you and I together. But we've got had a handful of things to discuss that are important. One of the things that people will most know you for, which you've already mentioned to me, is the thing that you had a lot of questions about. So we're gonna knock it out early. Let's talk about Godzilla. What'd you do for Godzilla?
I've never heard of this movie.
I'll send you the link in the private chat one second.
Yeah, So I played King Godora from Godzilla King of the Monsters in twenty nineteen via motion capture. Myself and Jason Lyles and Richard Dorton all played our respective heads. As if anyone is not familiar with the franchise, Kingadora is the three headed dragon, the big, the biggest arch nemesis of Godzilla. He's you know, the Godzilla fans are gonna hate me. I don't know the exact number, but
he's a lot taller than Godzill. He is like the big, big bad and so yeah, basically in the movie when you see Godzilla fighting Kingadora, all of those stunts, all of those action scenes, we did them in real life usual most motion capture. There is an actor who played Godzilla and then the three actors of us that played Kingadora. We choreographed every fight and we just worked it out with the director and made some awesome monster scenes for everybody.
And here you are now a part of the Monster Verse history. That's that's got to feel pretty special.
I'm honored. It's a huge franchise. Not only is it you know, I think it's like it's over sixty five years at this point. Yeah, but it's not just a domestic franchise. It's worldwide. Obviously Japanese, but like every country knows about Godzilla, and particularly right now, you know, it's a very hot time for Godzilla. You have Toho doing it, you have legendaryes doing it, you have Apple doing it. There's a lot going on. So I'm honored and grateful
and it's cool. It's super fun. And Godzilla man.
You you've you've acted in tons of things and then to step into a mo capsuit, do you feel yourself preparing differently for that?
Yeah, so that's a great question. Good question, Ryan, So a lot. I'd say ninety percent of my roles are suits or prosthetics, Like I'm in a physical suit playing a non human character. But for Mo cap and then particularly for Kingadora, not only is it it's just a different beast where.
The way.
Yeah, exactly. So with motion capture in a physical suit, you have to lean into the restrictions of the suit. If the character is humanoid, you you can lean into it easier. If there's more things like a tail or, long extended claws, giant snouts, things that make you have to change your perspective and your your awareness of your surroundings. You really have to adapt your physicality to that to
make it not only work, but make it believable. On camera, mocap is a little different because it's capturing your data of your skeleton. So some mo cap you'll see they do add things like tails or extensions. You know, Plant of the Ape still had the arm extensions, but something
like Kingadora. There's three heads, so there's three actors, Jason, Richard and I. We basically they Originally we tried tying us together like potato sack style, like a sack race, but then they tied our ankles and then we were just like with because the stunts, as you saw in the movie, there's a lot of smashing and crushing into buildings and smacking and biting. It just got too clumsy being tied. So what we decided to do was we just trusted each other. You know, Jason was in the
middle because he's the tallest. Richard and I on each side. We put our hands on Jason's back and that was kind of our support and he could feel our momentum like when we're moving, so we could all move as one. But then also the way the character is physicality wise. It doesn't have six legs and six hands, so we kind of have to, you know, imagine our hips are the shoulder of the character, so our whole torso is
the neck in the face. Obviously, for facial capture, we did a lot of performance with with biting and snarls and emotion. That was a big thing was the emotion. Each head has a different personality and so he wanted us to lean into that. And if you watch the behind the scenes of what Mike's direction was for each personality, it comes off on screen. I thought it was very clever for him to do that because all of the practical versions of Kinkodora, you don't get emotion in the
face like you did in the CG one. So I thought it was cool to see you know, the curious, the alpha and then the angry and you can tell and a lot of stuff. You'd be watching it like, oh my god, I definitely make those faces or you know Richard does and j like you can just see so that there's it's different. It's a different technology, different performance that you have to put forward. So long winded answer turn short. Yeah, you prepare.
Different well, and one of the words that you brought up, which I'm so glad you did because I was going to use it in this next part. Is it when you're doing mocap, You know, you mentioned that you're capturing data, and it's all about that emoting and the way that you emote from OCAP, the way that you emote in a full blown creature suit or something, you know, with the tail or, long arms or snout or whatever is going to be very different than somebody just acting because
you don't want to overact, of course. But now we throw in a fourth thing in your movie, which we'll talk about more in a little while. You also did a voice which brings on a whole other different version of emoting. So, as somebody that's going into all of these and trying to do your best to capture this realistic take on it, what's the most difficult one for you to emote properly? For what's the most difficult one for you to get into.
Being a human? Because I play so many monsters and creatures and it's rare when I get a humor ole. I played one in a film very recently. I think it comes out at the end of this year, if not the beginning of Next and I played a human and I had to really focus on toning down because when you're in prosthetic, you have an inch stick barrier between your face and the camera, and so you have to over accentuate, but you don't want it to be like I'm acting. You have to play big but realistic bit.
So it's like this fine line that I've honed into over the last you know, decade of playing these type of characters that I just drop into naturally. Whereas when I don't have it and it's my face, I really have to make sure I'm not I'm a human because then it's not only is it not even what, it's dumb and you don't want to watch that. So that's the hardest for me. Luckily, when i've done it, either the directors are good liars or they're very gracious and
tell me that I've done well. But but I think, you know, I'm so hyper focused to make sure that I do good because I don't play them so often, so I definitely I put an extra foot forward. When those happen.
There's a little more reputation mistake because they can see your face too.
Yeah, I can't blame.
With with alien planet. That that is your baby, that that is something that was all you from the ground up, and it's out in the world. Now, how how have you felt releasing that to the world and allowing yourself to get feedback on it? Because I know for a lot of directors that the first big one is kind of a difficult step to take.
Like that, Yeah, you know, you go through waves because it means a lot to you when you put in you know, I put in three years making this. I had a huge amount of help from the cast and crew and the backers and everybody who helped make it happen. But at the same time, the amount of hats and hours and days that I personally wore, it's hard to sometimes see negative feedback because you just go, oh, I'd
like to see you do it better. But you know, it's it's one of those things where you just you roll with the punches and everyone has their own opinion. And and while it's easy to say things like, you know, I had a budget of about eighty grand versus a lot of big buddon movies have millions. Yes, there's a huge difference, but at the same time, you have to learn to work with what you have and not use it as a crush to say, well, it sucks because of this. You have to lean into your strengths and
hide things and get creative. And I think a lot of film buffs, you know, the stereotype, so you hear like Sam Raymi and stuff like that. It's a very common thing you put out and say, oh, Samuraimi didn't have a budget and he did great. You know, so it's true and you have to do that. But I think because Alien Planet is a very specific genre one there's no human characters, it's all aliens with prosthetics, makeup.
There's puppets, there's monsters. It's very over the top blood but also very serious social commentary, like Star Trek style. So it's super genre. And I think if you are into that, the critics and the feedback has been spot on and they love it and they get it. I think the people that don't like it, we're expecting something different or it's not their their style. And I know even movie buffs tend to not always like that genre.
You know, there's sometimes there's pretentiousness, yeah with movie buffs. But I think you know, if you like Star Trek, enemy mine Alien Nation, that style of movie. I mean, you're gonna like Alien Planet. And then the blood in it is so over the top. It's almost like Renfield level of blood where it's just one one smack to the head is just a gallon of blood. It's it's visual eye candy. And so yeah, the reception has been interesting. It's been highs and lows. I think it's very rare
to hear a middle ground. I don't think I've ever heard anyone be like that was okay, Like it's always like I loved it, or that was garbage.
Well, and thankfully, if you if you look through your IMDb credits, you've kind of been playing in the sandbox for quite some time. There's a lot of low budget films here. There's a lot of stuff that many of these pretentious people would scoff at. But there's also lots
of fans of these things. I mean, when you're in the Evil Bong franchise, when you're playing around in the Puppet Master series and with The Asylum and Full Moon and all these other companies that are dealing with you know, four day shoots and less than one hundred thousand dollars, you kind of get used to that. So do you feel like, you know, say, in the next ten years of stuff magically takes off and you're suddenly doing incredible,
you know, million dollar movies every single month. Do you think that that helped hone where you're going to be because of the abrasiveness of that low budget world.
Absolutely. And it's interesting because I don't actually equate myself with the low budget world. While I have done a handful of them, I've also worked on the high budget world as well as an elder and also roles in performing, So I have this good, well rounded observation of how it's done correctly on a professional level, but also how you can correctly cut corners when you don't have the money, and I try to that's what I attempted. I guess you or the audience can tell me if I'm right
or wrong. But what my goal was with Alien Planet was to do the professional level that I work in as an editor and performing while cutting the necessary corners to make it fit within you know, a seventy five eighty thousand dollars budget. And I think the biggest thing for that that I'm most proud of was the fact that there's no humans that many practical effects and prosthetics and everything on that budget.
That's all.
I have yet to see it done on that budget. So I try to walk the line and to answer your question of doing more things, that's also ultimately the goal. My first film that I wrote and directed was a budget of one thousand dollars and it was called Christmas with Cookie. And it's a bad movie, but it got a huge quote following for being bad, and every Christmas,
the streaming on that movie just spikes. But we lean into it because I was like, if you're going to make a movie for a thousand bucks, you have to lean into it.
Yep.
And it even recently got, you know, a physical media release with lunch Meat vhs, so it has a scratch VHS colored green and red that you can order from them. And so after that, I wanted to make Alien Planet, but I knew because Christmas with Cookie was so low budget and campy, it's very trauma, it's very bad. It's meant to be bad. I didn't want that to be what people thought I could only make, so I had to make another show of work on a higher quality level.
So I invested about five grand into a short film called Patina and this is It was a ten minute short about an AI robot that goes wrong. I don't want to spoil the ending, but you know it's basically it's like The Terminator meets the Twilight Zone. And I made it serious and I tried to make it actually a well made ten minute piece on that low of a budget. Once I did that, I was like, Okay, cool, Now I have a show of work that shows I'm not just Christmas with Cookie. So then I moved forward
with Alien Planet. I shot a spec trailer we shot in one day. We made basically a concept of what it would be if we made it, and then I raised the money on Indiegogo and then we went from there. And so you know, I went from one thousand to five thousand to give or take eighty grand. So that's the goal of each movie. I want to up the
budget production deal. Just keep going and yeah, maybe one day I will have a multimillion dollar budget and I'll look back and like you're Ryan, remember when you ask.
I hope it pans out. The budget The budget ballooning comes with expectations, of course, when you're going to be making something like that, How how you know, trepidacious? Were you for the Indiegogo? I know that's been a big, you know, question mark for a lot of people that need the fundraise because the world's changed dramatically.
It's a means to an end. So I will say it was one of the toughest things I've ever done. I did a thirty day campaign. I didn't have a team. I had cast and crew helping. I had a handful of people that were fantastic sharers and they shared and promoted and reach out to others. But a lot of Indigogo people like hire a full time team of five to ten people that they're ten hours a day, that's all they're doing. That job was basically up to me,
so it was a lot of work. Honestly, those third days was harder than the three years of making the movie, right. But I'm not a person who comes from nepotism or privilege, so I don't have any connections to reach out to someone to say, hey, you won't be my investor. So it was my only means to get the movie made, and I support it. I say, if you're a filmmaker and you don't have a way to have money, do it because unfortunately, filmmaking is the most expensive art and
you can't do it for free like you can. But it looks like Christmas with cookie when you do that well, and you know, one thing to take the heart on top of if you are.
You know, supporting a filmmaker, actually support them and use your wallet to support them. But the other side of that is through all of this, this is a very inspiring story. I mean, you've been in la for almost two decades. You have worked your way up from smaller things to being in the Monster verse and directing your own film. That's not necessarily the normal story for a
lot of people that go to LA. So in that like, what was there ever any point in the last two decades that was like, well, time to go back, time to head back to Michigan.
That particular sentence. No, sorry Michiganders, but I don't ever want to live in that state. I'm not one for the snow. But no, I don't think there's ever a thought of that's it or this is the end. The entertainment industry is hard. I will not lie if if someone is fresh out of school or from a a state that's not California and you're looking at moving out. It's gonna be hard. It will not be easy by any means, and I don't think it ever gets easy.
I think you'll hear a lot of even very successful people when you think, oh they're they're doing this, they acted in that or directed this, They're fine.
I love the accident changed there by the way that was perfect. You see the people over there.
Well, those god American Hollywood, they're all drinking their avocado juice, which I would if there is such a thing as avocado juice, I would totally try it.
Yeah, but after those twenty years you've been in a you played the opposite Godzilla like not many people can say that. And to go from Michigan to Florida to la and be able to stay there for that long, that's that. It's a lot of perseverance.
That's the key word is. I think you can't go into the entertainment industry. You know, you hear it as a stereotype. You can't go in it for the money or fame or whatnot. You really have to that's got to be your passion because it's going to continually test your patience and if you don't enjoy it, you will for sure not want to keep going. It's perseverance. And also I don't know, it's at a certain point it's almost like too far to go back, you know, like
what am I going to What am I going to do? It? Am I start over at a minimum wage job somewhere else? It's just no one's my resume says you know, a decade, two decades long in the entertainment industry, no one's going to hire me. I'm uhiable. So I have to I have to stay in film and TV because it's you know, at a certain point, you're in too deep.
Film TV and now streaming as you are premiering in Shutters VHS beyond this fall. Obviously it's not out yet, so there's not much that can be said. But I mean, this is pretty damn exciting. Like this is one of the biggest franchises and found footage over last five or eight years. How cool is this?
Oh, I'm very excited to be part of it. Not only is it another cool franchise, but for me, he has a little personal connection with the directors, So Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart, they were the creators of ThanksKilling, and I had the honor of working with them on
ThanksKilling three. I went to South Dakota with them for it was either two or three or four weeks or something like that, and we film Thanks Killing three and I got to wear a suit on set, and I credit them as the first like monster suit that I wore. And I was their on set editor as well, and we just stayed in touch. And that was Jesus and ten twelve years ago. And then they called me one day and they're like, Hey, do you want to be in our movie for Shutter? And I was like, hell, yeah.
So it just kind of worked out that, you know, we stayed in touch and we're buddies and they had this great opportunity, which is well deserved. They're so talented and I really enjoy working with them. And yeah, so it's a little for me. It's kind of like a full circle of like, oh, a decade ago, guys on this silly little movie, and now we're we're connecting again on a cool franchise that what is this number ten or something from that franchise.
It's not quite that many. It's like five or six, I think, though it's gotta be.
Yeah, there's enough of them.
It might even be seven cheez. I meanin they since they made the Leap to Shutter like they've been knocking them out I think the last four years, So yeah, maybe it is number seven's that's a lot. And you know, when that first one came out, it got good feedback, but it wasn't like, let's be doing this for the next nine years as a franchise.
Feedback and lobably will I bet you they'll keep going like it's very successful and a lot of people love it. And you know, found footage for a while kind of got like an oversaturated bad rap, but I think that one's kind of stayed strong in that genre.
We well, that is true, But on top of that, it's also really good way to bring filmmakers together to collaborate. It's a good way to have them create something for less budget because they're not doing it for eighty five minutes. And then on top of all that, it allows people to prove themselves. I mean, through Found footage and anthologies, we've gotten some of our best creators ever that were able to knock something out and make a big splash.
Another Monster Verse director came from there, and I think Justin Long is directing one in this movie that I'm in. So it's like, really, and I don't know if he has directed before, but obviously he's known for being an actress. So it's like you said, it's another chance to prove himself as a filmmaker. So it's cool.
It's very good with all of this on your resume. You mentioned the word proud earlier. I got to ask you, you have hit so many different sides of the acting and entertainment world. What is the one thing, we'll say, other than Aline Planet and Godzilla, what is the one thing that you're like, Damn, I really did that, and I feel incredible that I was able to put that out of the world.
I would say a film that's not out yet called Oranga Khan. This Oranga Khan translates in Indonesian to fish Man, and it's a movie that I filmed in Indonesia last year in October. I was in there. I was in the jungles of Indonesia and a very hot and heavy monster suit fighting and killing some actors for thirty two days. And it was a hell of a time. And the performance and what I got to do as a as an actor in a suit was. I think it's gonna be my greatest work yet, and I'm very proud of it.
I got to do heavy, heavy stunts WI your work, fleeing me through the air twenty five feet up, a soul suit and an animatronic helmet with all the gears going. And it's gonna be a good movie too. It's the script is fantastic. What I've seen so far of the footage looks great. So when that comes out, I'm gonna I'm gonna be very, very proud to say that I played the ring acon.
In that we do we know any details about the release that we can talk about yet or.
I know, let's see, let's see what's on IMDb. What can we say about it? I don't know. I know they they did release a poster the synopsis, so on IMDb I am dB. It says uh set in the Pacific nineteen forty two, A Japanese soldier and a British prisoner of war are stranded on a deserted island, hunted by a deadly creature. Two mortal enemies must come together to survive the unknown. So that's what it's about. It's great.
I'm going to be excited to be able to eventually talk about it, and I think monster lovers are going to love it. I think it's going to be a big, big favorite for interesting.
With the kind of stuff you've done, it's inevitable that there's going to be some injuries. Any fun stories of stuff that's happened to you over the years to me i'm around you, perhaps.
I'll tell one fun story for mine. I'm always very careful, so I have luckily never hurt myself because I'm always very aware that if I break something as the creature stunt actor, I'm done. I'm very cautious and I'm always talking everything through with the stunt team, the coordinators, the directors, and making sure that we have it down before any actions roll. But there was one fun moment that I
can talk about where. It was a movie called The Woods, and this was done by a group called Sugar Pine seven. I don't know if it still exists, but they're a big YouTube group and it's full body prosthetics head to toe. They wanted me to grab a guy by his throat, snarl, have a bunch of blood go everywhere, and slid his throat.
So they put the fake blood in my mouth. And this happens often, so eventually you learn to go cool, just give it to me in a cup and when you say rolling, then out down it and toss the cup. But they had me drink it, and as anyone who's been on set knows, it's always hurry up and wait. So I had a mouth full of fake blood and they're like cool and holding and I think we waited
fifteen maybe twenty minutes. It was a long time, and I'm just Liva growing all the fake blood and then they go, all right, we're ready to roll, and I was like, I'm gonna have a lot of blood to spin out. So he calls action. We do the scene and as I grabbed the actor's throat as you would as a human being grabbed by a monster, you're gonna ah scream. So he's screaming with his mouth wide open, and I go and the blood doesn't go everywhere, it just goes straight in his mouth. I felt so for him,
but he was such a trooper. He was like he laughed it off and spit.
It out, and that was the take that was in the cut. So that was a fun little accident and a funny story.
But Yeah, it's just it went straight into his Unfortunately.
We uh we mentioned prosthetics a handful of times already. What is like the most elaborate prosthetics you've found yourself in so far.
That I've been in. Yeah, well, I would say two answers for that one for me, almost all of them, because I would say, if it's if it's a suit, you know it's you put it on, you have a helmet and zip up and up. But if it's prosthetics, usually you're glued in all day, so it's face, owl, chest, arms, fingers, legs, everything. So when I'm a full body creature, there's been a handful of them. So I guess I'm just so used to it that I don't know if there's one that's
like stands out. That was hard because you know, sometimes you just fully glued in. The orang of Con suit was it was tough because it was very very hot, and if anyone's ever been to Indonesia, it's very very hot, so it was just layers on layers of sweat. But I think Only Planet is something that I'd like to mention for that too, is because there's no human characters and we filmed for fourteen days. We had in prosthetics can't be reused. You have to have a new one every day.
Yep.
When you take it on and off, it just you know, it gets ruined. So we had I think it was like fifty five or sixty prosthetics made for that film. And that's a lot to go through and manage. And our makeup department head on set Alexis Paanessa, She's so fantastic.
She basically wrangled all sixty of these prosthetics, had them organized and categorized who wears what on what day, and she had to prepaint all of them and just logistically be having all of that ready for fourteen days of shooting was a lot of pre production and it took a lot of planning and communication. And I think that was that was a huge ideal to do.
So what's next? On the directing side? You got your next idea? Cooking? Yet?
You think I do? I have a couple? I think one is I do have more ideas in the alien planet world. It's a world that I've built that I have a handful of stories that I think are worth telling. I also have another one that is actually a musical, So I got a couple things cooking. It's all a process of not just time, but also which ones can get correct funding, which ones have to wait for larger funding because you can't do everything on a very low budget.
If it's a grand, grand movie, you really need to make sure that you have a certain amount to hit a certain level that the goal is. And I think particularly things are so different right now, at least in Los Angeles. I couldn't make Alien Planet today for my budget. Would it would genuinely be double if not more?
Oh wow?
And that movie came out last year. So it's like a lot has changed economically and just financially in the film industry. And I think, what is what is balloon so much? The cost of everything, cost of locations, the you know, the minimum wage of an employee, and because Hollywood has had a very tough time the last two years, I think in order to get certain things like makeup and prosthetics or props, everybody's bare minimum of what they can charge for stuff. It just continues to go up
because mortgage goes up, rent goes up. Is you know, everything's through the roof, and yeah, I think it's crazy. In the last you know, three or four years. Just the the cost of everything is so high that you really have to be aware of it. You know, we tried shooting at the same location we shot Alien Planet app About a year later, I directed a short for an anthology film and I wanted the same location because
it was a beautiful spot. And it went from eight hundred dollars a day to thirty five hundred dollars a day. Holy four it's a huge jump, and I was like, holy crap, fourteen days. I would not have been able to afford that, so it'd be my whole budget of the movie, so.
Especially Jesus.
Yeah, so there's a lot to consider when it comes to what projects to choose to put your time in, because also, you know, someone like me, since I don't make you know, some filmmakers will put out multiple films a year or one every year. I'm really trying to focus on making each one step up from the previous, and so I think taking budget and money into consideration is a huge thing. I'm deciding which one to move forward with as I'm right, because I'm writing and conceptualizing
a handful of right now. It is just a matter of as they get to a point where I go, Okay, I can move forward with this one. I just have to think of monetarily too. So it's a game. It's a business thing on top of creative, which is unfortunate because I would love to just let the creative juices flow. But of course it's a business as well.
Speaking of things that have ballooned over the last couple of years, physical media is what brought you and I together, and you're a big fan of that.
What is that? What's physical media?
It is this novel concept that not many people understand, but I'm glad you do because it allowed us to spark a conversation. So what's your history of physical media overall?
Well, you know, MAC, when I was a kid, that was the only option. But I also found it was very quickly, and I think people who like genre movies tend to notice this is early on. The biggest tell all of reasons why physical media is good is Star Wars because every time it was released, something was altered. When you went from LaserDisc to VHS to DVD to Blu ray to the four K Blu rays, every version had a different change, and I think that was an
early notice. And then there's little things like special editions of other stuff. I think maybe you can tell me, or maybe the Internet will tell me how dumb I am. But I believe there's a point where Aceventura had from the DVD to the Blue rays, something was removed from a scene. And I believe Grimlins at a certain point you could only buy a special edition which had I think it was the keyboard music scene. And then et was notorious for another one, you know, the guns versus
walkie talkies. Uh So, stuff like that made me realize how important it is to keep your copies and don't get rid of them. And then once we get into once we got into you know, the days of streaming, not just you know, DVD to Blu ray. Once streaming actually took off, the movies that I liked weren't on any of the damn streaming platforms. Like what am I gonna do? Buy it again on digital? No, I already
have it. And then on top of that, the quality, and then particularly now with four K Blu rays, you can't get a four K streaming that looks as good as a four.
K Blue ray never literally never.
And also for filmmakers extra features. I know now Apple will do stuff like there's behind the scenes on some of them, but not always. And then I think even the New Kingdom of the Plant of the Apes, it comes with that cool rock cut where you get to see the side by side. I don't think you can get that on streaming.
I think I.
Don't think it's added on the extra features. So I think our age range, we are already well aware of all the reasons of why it's a positive to have physical media people our age and particular potentially younger. Obviously a lot do know and some do know, but I think we have to just continue advocating and educating and telling reasons so that the people who are watching streaming only might look up and in their twenties go oh, I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, I
buy this, and just keep it alive. And I think what's cool is people like you having groups in a community in a post where you're like, hey, there's a new release for this and a new release for that. A lot of times we're seeing stuff we didn't even
know existed before. And what's cool too is because it is so niche with the collectors, I'm finding the movies that you're getting four K releases are so obscure before we're getting like the original plan of the Apes doesn't even have a four K Blu ray, but like they they recently released Vincent Price Cooking Show on Blu Ray, and it's like, yeah, but of course I pre order it. Yeah, physical media is a good thing, and I think it's
it's great. You know, you said it's how we met, and it's because of your your page, you know, disconnect is just it's it's a great community. And I look at it as news. I mean I checked your site more than then I'll check the actual news.
I'm honored uh with with Alien Planet? How how did that feel to hold a Blu ray of something that you created and be able to stare and look at credits on the back and read a synopsis and feel I'm imagining just a men's pride over something that you made through and through.
Yes, absolutely for all the reasons that I described. Because on streaming, I have I have distribution for Alien Planet on all of the platforms. You can watch it on Apple, Amazon, to Be, YouTube, all the like eleven or twelve sites that I'd never heard of until they said we're distributing your movie now. So it's everywhere. But the Blu Ray
itself not only is the quality better. Yes, it's a Blu ray, so it's ten eighty, but it's made from a four K master, so when you pop it in you can tell the compression is definitely better than the streaming because the streaming for most, not all, but a lot of independent films, they don't release it in four K. On streaming, a lot of it goes straight to ten eighty, and they don't put the extra features. I delivered two making of featurettes with the streaming services, and none of
them took it as just movie and trailer. So the Blu Ray has that. The Blue Ray has an eleven minute like making of with me talk about it while it's showing all the behind the scenes stuff, and then it's like a seventeen or nineteen minute behind the scenes just vomit of footage and me narrating what's happening and going to do it. So it's it's giving you an insight on how we made it, where you wouldn't have
that without the Blu Ray. And so I'm proud to have that for all those those reasons of giving out to the world the stuff that I like from it, you know, being part of it, and yeah, just something who about holding it? You can't hold a digital file in your.
Hand, It's true, and taking it off and feeling like, you know, you're looking through the shelves and rummaging through a video store essentially to be able to pull out tonight it's Aleen Planet Night. I mean, it's gotta be great.
Yep, no, it's it's it's definitely an honor, and but it sucks because you know, I think particularly and you see, I'm curious if you've witnessed or heard other people mention this. But because independent films aren't seen the same as major releases, it's harder to get people to buy a physical copy. I find even streaming they don't even want to pay for it. On streaming, they will wait till it's on
tub or YouTube. Even those commercials they're like, I'm not paying for it, which is funny because you know, if you think about it, like business wise, it means consumers are happy to give their money to rich, corrupt billionaires, but not a mom and pop shop. Like it's the same concept if you're willing to give your money to Deadpool versus Wolverine but you don't want to give your
money to an indie filmmaker. It's like, it's just it's very interesting the mentality of consumption of entertainment in modern day. It feels less like art and more like trying to fight the thought process of being entitled to free content versus, hey, we put a lot of time and effort to this art. What do you think? You know? And you see that with reviews too. If someone loves it, they'll write, this was a great work. You can tell what people put
into it. I can't imagine all the effort that they went into this and that, or you'll get a reviewer it says Garver, dark hero, garbage, thumbs down, emoji, you know. And it's like you can tell them the thought process of consumer when you read the reviews and stuff too. So it's very interesting to be so connected to the distribution process.
Yeah, And I mean there's a bunch of quirks of the consumption community that changed to I mean, there's so many people that will not pay for any film that came after a certain year because they don't like it, because it doesn't look filmic enough. There's plenty of people that simply don't like things that are low budget and they're against that whole world, which I don't really comprehend either.
Be could I'm a little more ingrained in it than others, I guess maybe, But there's just so much out there to discover and to turn your to turn your back on all of it that I couldn't do that. Like that sounds that sounds awful to do.
I mean, this is just a hunch, but it feels like I think someone like you and I we look at it as a show of art, the same as if we went to go see a local band play, or if we went to go at an art gallery and be like, Oh, our neighbor down the road painted this, that's awesome, you're talented, Whereas I think a lot of people do look at entertainment less like an art and more like what is for me? This is It's required. It's like water like watching TV after work is as
essential as getting free water. Like It's almost like there's a weird disconnect because the type of art that it is.
So it's a good point. If everybody was interested in your work, where do you want them to go seek you out? Yeah?
So, I guess if you want to see what I've done as an actor my website Alanmason dot com. I also have if you can't spell my name correctly, just creature actor dot com. We'll take you there as well.
Wow, good ur l lovely se oh very good.
Straight to the point. But if you want to watch my films alienplanetfilm dot com. It has links to all the streaming, It has links to getting the physical media on Amazon Christmas with Cookie is all so on there. You can get that on the thing too is. I have it set up so that if you buy any of my film's Cookie or Alien Planet, I'm going to send you both, so you'll get both in the package. So don't don't buy buying both, you'll get them both in.
One unless you want to be extra supportive that obviously.
Yeah, then feel free then I'll send you for I'll send you four, but no you can. You can also follow me on social media, where I post all of my acting and directing stuff constantly, So I guess on all of the social media's it's monster maxim. I have Instagram, Twitter formerly known as Twitter. I don't have a TikTok, but you can pretend to do.
I can't imagine somebody as busy as you making the time to do TikTok stuff.
Well, it's also I barely wanted to do the other social medias you can off tune modern day, so at a certain point I was just like, I'm cut off because of TikTok. It Also, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it's less about promoting your work and it's more I'm gonna dance to a song or something MIDI that could be wrong. I don't know.
Let's not go to it a detail because we'll sound very old speaking about it. Alan, Thank you so much for taking the time today. I know this is the middle of the workday for you. This is great. I really hope that a lot of people are interested in check out your work, and many of them have already seen it in Godzilla, and now they just get to know the man behind the suit.
Thank you. Yeah, and for the people who like Godzilla, this is another behind the scenes thing. If you don't have the Blu Ray, Godzilla has a little featurette called Creating Godora, and you can see us in the mocap suits doing all the work. I think it's on YouTube, but if not, go get the Blu.
Ray or the four K promises.
Four K even better. Yeah, and I also and I'm curious if you see this being so deep in the physical media world, is are you noticing that even brand new releases after the initial release don't continue as much like I'm seeing major releases. They get a first push, but then once they kind of sell out, then you start seeing them on eBay for like seventy to eighty bucks, and you go, that movie just came out last year, What the heck.
There's quite a few examples of that, especially like not of course, the special edition releases will always have that, but there are you know, a lot of these that are either selling out because the print runs are shorter, or on top of that, they're just well, the collector's market will buy up what we have, so let's only plan I don't know, ten thousand, and based on that,
they're gone. And when something like Oppenheimer can sell fifty four k's in week one, but other stuff can't even sell ten thousand over like a year or two, that's kind of telling about the size of what we're dealing with here.
Yeah, I'm also noticing the thing that's fun about it is packaging. So back when we all made the first jump to DVD, like from VHS to DVD. The fun thing was the packaging. They were so creative, like I remember they had to that looked like the necrocomic con and like multidisc sets and like colorful cases. And then Blu Ray came and we're so captivated by the quality, and it was just a boring ass Blu Ray case.
But now that play is back and it's collectors, I'm seeing we're getting awesome things like Umbrella makes some badass cases, and Narrow does it too, and and steal books and you're getting things like that, and it's just it's fun to see the actual item on the shelf being fun to look at, like, oh, I can look at this book before I watched the movie, even though I already know the movie about the lot, but it's like meds to it. I'm I'm happy to see that kind of coming back a little.
It's a big deal now. I just wish we could emulate the DVD menu because that was an art form in itself.
I might be the one who disagrees, Oh, it took way too much time to fly through space land and have a little design. I just want to like, get to pick what I'm.
On now, I just want a fun picture in the background.
At least fair enough. Yeah, because blue rays or four kblers are now just it's just still yep. So you're right, it's very simple. Some of them took a while. And I also know, like I'm a big trekky and things like Deep Space Nine's DVD. You can't even hit play all. You gotta go manually through every episode to and you're like, I just wanted to play all and sit back, so you meet in the middle. Have a cool menu, but like get to the point a little bit more.
And have options. Yeah, options are fine with me. All right, Alan, thank you so much for the time. I'm sure we'll be talking more. If there's anything else that comes out, I'll be sure to let everybody else know about it. But in the meantime, check out creatureactor dot com. Check out all of the socials we mentioned all the links from the description below. Thank you, sir.
I hope you have a good this is fun.
Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one big thing that you could do to help the show, and that is to leave a rating and review on the podcast service of your choice. Thank you tell me Hello.
My name is Kevin Tudor and I'm one of the three hosts of Almost Major Film Podcasts, dissecting many major indie studios in the films they release. Every week, Myself, Charlie Nash, and Brighton Doyle discuss overlooked, forgotten or bona
fide classic indie films via studio specific mini series. We've previously covered numerous films from Artists and Entertainment, Lionsgate films and Newline Cinema titles, including The Blair Witch Project, American Psycho, Dogville, But I'm a Cheerleader, Saw Recording for a Dream, and Ring Master you know the Jerry Springer film. Anyways, we have a fun time every week and we hope you.
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