A Conversation with Kristian Day – HuffPost 5.20.14

Mike Ragogna: Filmmaker, director, producer Kristian Day, what is all this slick stuff you’re doing with making movies on iPhones?

Kristian Day: It all started when I had some equipment stolen a couple years ago in the middle of a production while I was camping. I was licking my wounds and thinking “How am I going to do this?” because I couldn’t replace these cameras. I had this idea that maybe the iPhone had been developed enough over the years that there might be some potential there since technology changes so quickly; people are using their phones more than point-and-shoot cameras now. So I did a little research and found that there’s technological benefits to the iPhone, like being able to encode at fifty megabytes per second, and its portability, etc. It’s still a phone, though; I’m not trying to say that it’s the be-all-end-all by any means, but it gave me this idea for artistic freedom with being able to shoot anywhere. I shot a pilot for a punk rock cooking show called Crowding the Pan, with Sam Auen, who’s a big, bearded, burly, tattooed ex-Army motorcyclist. He and I had a lot of similarities and I said, “I don’t want this to be ‘clean.’ I want it to be rough and dirty and I want everyone to feel like they can watch it and not get bored.” So we shot his entire pilot with the iPhone, which was a trick because I was trying to figure out work flow and what I needed to do to make it work correctly. When you shoot on an iPhone it doesn’t always come out correctly. I had to get the right apps, had to convert the footage to the right format, had to have external audio, etc., but with a two or three man crew we shot the pilot, sold it and it ran for thirteen episodes. It was originally kind of a joke. I have a lot of buddies in the film industry in Iowa who would talk about trying to get sponsorship from various businesses for many thousands of dollars, and when I started doing the iPhone stuff I said, “You know what, I’m going to shoot a show entirely on the iPhone and it will cost me nothing and I’m going to sell it.”

MR: Did it literally cost you nothing?

KD: It cost me nothing, if you’re not counting my time. I didn’t spend any money. I did it all myself. I’ve always gone with the idea of, “DIY or die,” so we shot it, edited it, close-captioned and did the final encoding. It was a three-day process that was go-go-go.

MR: Did you get the “DIY or die” idea from somewhere else or was that your own idea?

KD: I’ve always been inspired by Roger Corman, so I attribute it to him. You hear about him making Little Shop of Horrors in two nights and three days, something like that… if I could be in charge, I could do this in no time, but that’s not necessarily how a production works. You gotta work with a team in most scenarios, and sometimes you run into the situation where everyone’s in the same place as you, with the attitude of “Let’s do this and let’s do this right and not mess around,” and that’s how Sam and I work. In the end, he and I were the production team and it was his and my show. We ended up going wireless with the mic; for the first couple episodes we had a boom, but we wanted to simplify it even more. When we got the show rolling, after the third episode we got it down to where we could shoot in two hours, I could start encoding, I’d edit in one day, close-caption and get the show to the Hearst affiliate that had bought it.

MR: Do you see this as something where other people will be inspired by what you did and try to do their own thing?

KD: I think everyone should do something like that. I don’t want people to be held back by technology, and technology has become more affordable. Even in the early to mid ’90s, in order to make a film, it would cost you seven to ten thousand dollars, but with the iPhone–and you still have to have some skills like framing and knowing what’s good lighting and audio–you can get decent quality, and the picture in the end is what really matters. It’s very possible for anyone to be creative and not be held back.

MR: Is the resolution good enough for people to be looking at it on a fifty or sixty-inch screen?

KD: Oh yeah, it blows up really nicely. You hear about DLSR cameras, which are a big thing. But a DLSR can only encode up to thirty-two to thirty-eight megabytes per second, I think. The iPhone can encode up to fifty. Obviously the lenses are better for the Canons and DLSRs, while all you can do with the iPhone would be to add lens filters and lens attachments, but when you start color-correcting it doesn’t break up. So I can blow it up on a giant screen and it still holds together, it’s not pixelated or anything.

MR: Rumor has it that you used a microscope for filming one of your projects.

KD: I did. It was a project called I See What Is Here that screened at the Mobile Innovations Film Program that played at the New Zealand Film Archives in Auckland. It went down to the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia. A lot of my films I really push into that market because some of the stuff I do is a little obscure and is testing the waters, especially the short films, and I can send them overseas and they do really well.

MR: You have a collection of short films and documentaries you’ve done, don’t you?

KD: Yeah. I’ve done two feature documentaries. One was Capone’s Whiskey: the Story of Templeton Rye, and then Brent Houzenga: Hybrid Pioneer. The …Ryedocumentary was probably my biggest release; it showed in forty-three theaters, and I had a television spinoff on Iowa Public Television; when Ken Burns’ Prohibition aired,Templeton Rye: Iowa’s Good Stuff was the sister film to it. And I’ve done a number of short films over the years. For a while there, I could shoot three or four or more a year. There were all different, and the microscope stuff was really an experiment. I’d gotten this microscope lens for six dollars on Amazon and I just wanted to see what it looked like. The things you could see with it were amazing. Six dollars on Amazon; and free shipping if you have Amazon Prime! [laughs]

MR: When you film, are you looking to innovate?

KD: Yeah, I’m trying to see more things. I want to see what else I can do. I shoot footage all the time; I have collections of things, and sometimes I’ll make short films and cut things together because I always figure I could use it. I think if you can do it this way and find a way to make it work, you can really create new worlds, see new things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, and you’re not really spending any money. It’s up to you to and, you have this piece of technology that can do wonderful things.

MR: Are you like this naturally, or did you have mentor or were you inspired by anything in particular?

KD: I was always into a lot of SciFi movies when I was a kid, like Forbidden Planetand any of the Godzilla films. And Barron Christian was kind of my mentor; he’s an actor, producer, director and voice actor. He lived the Hollywood life in the ’60s and ’70s. He was in a lot of different stuff, and he taught me a lot about creativity; he said “The rich have a lifestyle that comes with being rich, but you shouldn’t necessarily go that route; you’ll probably live a happier life if you pursue creativity,” which is something that he didn’t. He’s always inspired me to do films and he’s narrated a number of them like Templeton Rye and Hybrid Pioneer. I’ve snuck his voice into different things I’ve done as kind of a “Thank you” for pointing me in the right direction.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists, filmmakers or screenwriters?

KD: I like to tell people to first be realistic. I’ve worked a lot with the the David Lynch MA film program producing films, and I always just say don’t be held back by anything, but also be realistic about what you can do. You can be realistic and still be very creative with everything that you pursue. Also, the first project for anybody is sort of an “Ego” piece – you know, they want to have all this expression. I encourage that, but in the end it’s not necessarily what it’s all about. You can create amazing films and you have to decide what you want out of it. Do you want to be “Mr. Hollywood,” or do you be the creative artist? I always tell people to ask themselves that before they do anything. Figure out who are trying to be. If it is to be that Hollywood playboy, admit it to yourself first.

MR: What does Kristian Day want to be?

KD: I don’t know! I went from making films to having this theater. I’m still making films and producing television shows, doing post-production work. Again, I go back to Roger Corman; he never won an award until he got an honorary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy. He had never won anything. No one said anything to him about any of the things he did, except word of mouth from the people that worked under him. He’s made more movies than anyone in the world at this point, I think. And I look at that as maybe the more grounding way to do things.

MR: What are some projects you would like to make to feel even more fulfilled?

KD: There are a few other documentaries I’d like to do, and there’s this one scripted piece that deals with understanding mental illness. I’ve always had an interest in whether people who have a mental illness realize they have a mental illness. I had one of the worst dates in my life back in 2009… first date/last date type of situation. I was asking this girl, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if people who have Down Syndrome or some mental illness don’t realize they have it? What if you and I, who think we’re living a normal life, had something wrong with us and we never realized it, and we were living a life thinking everything was normal to us?” I wrote a script that deals with a fantasy life of a young man who’s unconscious throughout this film. He dreams of a romance, but he has Down Syndrome. It’s about how he sees things. Everything’s very simple, but the emotions are very powerful. So this is a project that’s been sitting on paper for far too long, and I’d like to make it.

MR: Where do you think film is going these days?

KD: I think it’s really going short subject, such as with the Youtube generation and people’s short attention spans. Like an album going to a single. There’s so much gold on Youtube, but I don’t know where the money is with it yet. You know, you can have a million Youtube hits and make two dollars. They need to find a way to monetize it to make it work. Also, as much as I love choice, I feel like choice destroys economy, too, especially in the entertainment industry. What made old television shows work? That was the only thing that was on. You had four channels, you watched what was on. But now everything’s on demand and there’s so much content.

MR: You can also argue that that’s what hurt the music industry. People say it’s the MP3, but I think it’s also the delivery system antiquating.

KD: Totally. I’ve been making music for over ten years. I’ve done soundtracks and things like that. That’s what got me started were soundtracks. Now, I can tell my albums on iTunes right next to anyone else. In the end, it doesn’t necessarily make me much money, but it could potentially hurt someone who needs to sell X-number of records. And I think a lot of it is that the industry has pumped so much money into these things and they’re looking for a return faster than they can get it.

MR: Is there any advice you would give to yourself at this point?

KD: Chill out! I’m twenty-eight years old and I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to do what I’ve done; personal, relationship, family, financial; and part of me wants to go backwards and say, “Maybe I need to take a few minutes and not do it this way.” As much success as I’ve had, some things have happened that may have hurt people, or put me in precarious financial positions. I wish I could go back and just say, “Calm down, it’s not a race.”

MR: I think a lot of that could be myelination. A brain isn’t done forming until it’s twenty-five, so sometimes you probably just can’t help it.

KD: Absolutely, and that gets me on a whole other subject about people who experiment with different types of drugs and they do it at such a young age. I almost want to tell them that if they want to do that, at least wait until after their brain is fully developed. You’re just causing so much damage. If you want to trip, I aencourage you to trip, but do it after you’re twenty-five!

MR: [laughs] Have we covered absolutely, positively everything?

KD: I’m working on a small project right now. I do what some consider fancy film work, but then I also do very behind-the-scenes stuff, including closed-captioning and final encoding for delivery, etc. So we have a show that aired Friday, May 9th on FOX KDSM 17 called What’s up with WOZ. I do enjoy doing that stuff, because I forget there’s all sorts of nuts and bolts that go into these things. And even though closed-captioning is a slow death for me, I do enjoy it insofar as it reminds me of all the things that go into this.