E70 • Build It Small, Release It Smart • GILLE KLABIN, dir. of ‘Weekend at the End of the World’

Gille Klabin discusses Weekend at the End of the World, his follow-up to The Wave, and the deliberate choice to build a second feature that didn’t require waiting for studio permission. Shot in 12 days on a sub-$300K budget, the film was designed around creative, logistical, and financial control. Gille reflects on the lessons he learned from The Wave’s release, where traditional distribution left him frustrated by opaque marketing spends and limited transparency, and how that experience reshaped his approach to ownership, equity, and rollout strategy the second time around.

Gille discusses the current indie landscape not as a lament, but as a tactical puzzle, and breaks down the realities of aggregators versus distributors, the economics of digital-first releases, and why he chose to prioritize transparency and direct recoupment over a conventional deal. Drawing comparisons to films like Shaun of the Dead, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, and The Cabin in the Woods, he discusses the balance of tone, heart, and genre - and how surprise and emotional whiplash can be a strategic storytelling tool.

He also outlines a 50/50 equity split between investors and cast/crew, a flat-rate pay structure on set, and a belief that if independent filmmakers want a more just system, they have to build it at their own scale first. The conversation closes on preparation, resilience, and the long game: make the movie you can actually control, learn the business as deeply as the craft, and let your specific weirdness become the thing that carries you forward.

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Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:28)
didn't require waiting for studio permission.

Shot in 12 days on a sub 300K budget,

Gil Clabeen Gil Clabeen

where traditional distribution left him frustrated opaque marketing spins limited transparency, and how that experience reshaped his approach to ownership, equity, rollout strategy the second time around.

Gill discusses the current indie landscape not as a lament, but as a tactical

drawing comparisons to films like Shaun of the Dead, and Dale versus Evil and The Cabin in the Woods. He discusses the balance of tone, heart and genre and how surprise and emotional whiplash can be a strategic storytelling tool. He also outlines a 50-50 equity investors and cast and crew.

a flat rate pay structure on set, and a belief that if independent filmmakers want a more just system, they have to build it at their own scale first.

Make the movie you can actually control, learn the business as deeply as the craft, and let your specific weirdness become the thing that carries you forward.

Gille Klabin (01:28)
I've always said Mizzell, but is it Myzel?

Marcus Mizelle (01:31)
It's weird because my growing up, my dad would always like his answering machine would have been would be thanks for calling Brad Myzel. But then when we would say the name by itself, we would always say Mizzell or if I'm in class, it would be a variation of the two. So I really don't know. I know that it's French German and it comes from, believe, the Mosel River Valley over there in the French German border. So that's all that's all I really got for now.

Gille Klabin (01:52)
Yeah, because German would be Maisel

and French would be Miselle.

Marcus Mizelle (01:59)
exactly. Now, is it it Clavin or is it Klebieny?

Gille Klabin (02:02)
You know, it's weird, I have responded to so many variations of my name. It is technically Gil Clubine, but absolutely nobody's going to say that. So it's Gil Clubine, but I usually in England and in America, they say Claibin. And because of how my name is spelled, I get everything from Guile, Jilly, Geelay.

Marcus Mizelle (02:19)
Okay.

Gille Klabin (02:24)
I respond to all, I don't even correct people anymore, honestly. just, whatever somebody says, I'm like, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (02:25)
You were, yeah.

Yeah,

didn't you say one time you had a meeting with The Rock and he, or Dwayne Johnson now, and he kept, no, and some executives kept calling you Jilly, and then you guys had a little moment together.

Gille Klabin (02:34)
Yeah.

So,

I was, he's such a sweetheart, it's unbearable, but I was just directing some promos for the second Jumanji movie. And you've got The Rock and Jack Black and Karen Gillan, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover there, Nick Jonas. promo shoots are hell for everybody involved. Everybody gets two or three minutes to pull off all the stuff they wanna do. The actors are there, they've already been paid, the movie's done. They don't really wanna be there, but they have to.

Marcus Mizelle (02:43)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (03:07)
So you're really, really moving. And I was being introduced to Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black and Karen Gillan for this sort of cross promo spot with Uber. And the exec who was introducing us called me Jilly. And he was like, so this is Jilly. He's going to be ⁓ directing a thing. I was like, ⁓ it's Gill. And he was like, right, right. And then he kept talking. And I mean talking, like not saying anything, but just like, I think just wanted to talk to the famous person.

Marcus Mizelle (03:31)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (03:32)
And then he goes, okay, well, I'll leave you the capable hands of Jilly. And he walks away and Dwayne turns to me, he goes, twice. He said it wrong twice. And I was like, God, you're just so sweet. Which is crazy because your arms are the size of my entire torso.

Marcus Mizelle (03:44)
Hmm, yeah.

And I told you I worked with him on that movie Snitch like, years 2011, 2012, and that's where I met my child's mother on that shoot. So, you know, it was all just in middle of fucking nowhere, well, Shreveport, Louisiana, in the wintertime. And it sounds terrible, but it was probably the best shoot I ever worked on because the right people were there. It was so fun. And like, he was part of that. He was so cool and

Gille Klabin (03:52)
Mmm

Mm-hmm.

such an important thing and I really feel like that's, you know, I've worked damn near every single position on set and it's not a job when you're appreciated and everybody's remembering that we're making a movie and that is fun as hell and it is rare, we're lucky. And it doesn't matter how hard the work is, you're having a blast. Whereas some of the like better paid jobs I've done.

I'm working for such insufferable ghouls and being taken advantage of and being underappreciated. You're watching other team members get treated badly and it just kind of sours the whole thing. was like, no matter how much money you're getting paid, it's not enough. It's not enough to suffer like just the incredulous inhuman treatment of your fellow filmmaker.

Marcus Mizelle (04:36)
Mm.

Yeah.

No, yeah, it was a tale of two movies where I did Snitch and it was like, I was a grip, know, and it was great. It was just the right people. And then I went over to this movie, Percy Jackson, the second one they made, and it was this huge movie and it was, learned so much, but it was like, it could have been fun except for the crew, the fellow workmates. Sorry guys, y'all sucked. I mean, it was just nobody, everybody was very serious.

Gille Klabin (05:05)
Mmm.

Marcus Mizelle (05:18)
I'm just like, we're making here. The lighting is great. Everything's checked. The boxes are checked. Why are you still so serious? And then it was just one of those things where, like what you just said, it's just like sometimes it's, you know, the right batch of folks that just can get over themselves and move on about their day. I'm gonna read your bio.

Gille Klabin (05:18)
Mmm.

Marcus Mizelle (05:37)
Klebeen grew up in a combination of the USA, Israel, and Austria. I didn't know that. Eventually ending up in England where he began making videos at the age of 11. With stop motion toy films in his past, Gil graduated from Westminster University's film school and worked as a production assistant in Location Scout while directing music videos for unsigned bands.

Your colorful, energetic work, which I can speak to, eventually got him directing videos for several major labels. You did that Aoki video. That's what comes to my mind. The first one with... Yeah, what's the first one you did? The shots were amazing where you had like, you and Aaron Grasso, your DP, you had like this camera rigged, I believe, to like the... It was like to the front of... ⁓ Body mount.

Gille Klabin (06:04)
I did a bunch. I did a bunch of those.

We had a body mount

on Steve and we had him crash onto the hood of a car and then match that same composition and had him fall into a swimming pool and then mass those two cuts. It's one of my favorite tricks we've ever pulled off. But yeah, that was a video called Singularity. That had Ray Kurzweil in it as well.

Marcus Mizelle (06:34)
Mm-hmm, nice. Yeah, and just that. ⁓

that's right. Yeah, just also just a cut between like a solid thing and then and in water. did that once too. Actually, Grasso helped me with that little $300 video we did for Aloe Black. But it was just this this idea of this guy jumping, stepping into a water puddle. And then right when his foot hits the water, he cuts into him falling into a pool. It's like this just the solid to water, also the solid to liquid, but also just that that edit that cut is so.

Gille Klabin (06:48)
We're done.

Mm-hmm.

Marcus Mizelle (07:01)
That notion of that cut is very powerful, yeah.

Gille Klabin (07:02)
Transitions, transitions

to me are, they're such an important thing because at least for me, like I like to make quite sort of kinetic moving things. And I look at it as one of the central tools to sort of taking your audience through an emotional journey or through an emotional moment. And when you can create a transition that dictates the mood they finished that one scene into and go into another one or

subvert their expectations and surprise them by taking them into something new. It's such a great way to sort of buy another few minutes of their undivided attention and also like keep your hand on the wheel of the emotions and the feeling and the energy, the central sort of vibe that you've been carefully crafting. You're trying to take them on a very controlled journey through.

Marcus Mizelle (07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (07:51)
feeling and thinking different things and that transition is such a powerful tool to launch them into the next one the way you want them to be.

Marcus Mizelle (07:57)
I think you're really good at story world, like creating story world, like especially, like where you just pulled into this world that I've never seen when it comes to The Wave, your first movie, and also Weekend at the End of the World, which is your new movie. And both of them, to me, it's like just this visually arresting space, know, setting this world that totally makes you forget about the seat you're sitting in. For me, that's like my first take. And by the way, let's tell them how we met.

2011, 12, something like that. I needed a DP for, I a camera package and a DP for a music video and then long story short, Craigslist and then, and you guys, you and Grasso came on and knocked it out of the park for this video that I, this very small budget video that I did. And that's probably one of my favorites still, to be honest with you. But you guys, you guys' eye and framing. Yeah, thank you for that.

Gille Klabin (08:24)
Thank you, I think it was 11, yeah.

all.

That was a great shoot, man. was, it was wild.

cause, well man, thanks for hiring us. You know, I was, was freshly in Los Angeles. I just moved here from London and me and Aaron were, were basically working together as a camera team with this little red package we had. I think it was a red one back then. I don't think it was the Epic yet. Epic was 2012.

Marcus Mizelle (08:52)
Same.

I believe so, but then we paired it with Grasso's Super Speeds, which, fuck, those lenses, woo!

Gille Klabin (09:08)
Yes, yeah, those

Zeiss Super Speeds. I love those lenses. I think he's his, it's his dad's and I think he's just, or his uncle's, he's just about to sell them. they are from 1983 or 84. And it says on the glass, on the camera housing, it says, either fabricated or built in West Germany. It's before the fall of the wall.

Marcus Mizelle (09:30)
Mmm. that's

right. Wow. Well, he's about to sell them for real. We have a shoot coming up on Saturday he's gonna help me with so I might have to get them it. He was gonna...

Gille Klabin (09:36)
Yeah, I heard, I heard. I think you guys are, he's

gonna come out with some cook anamorphics for you as well.

Marcus Mizelle (09:42)
Well, we were gonna

do Cook. I might hit him up though, because I mean, the thing is, it's like, I don't want to be nostalgic, I mean, maybe those, how do those super speeds look on the Alexa? I'm sure they look great, right? I mean, yeah.

Gille Klabin (09:52)
insanely gorgeous. The only reason

to bring the Cooks is if you want anamorphic, but the downside of that is they're this big. They're from the head to chest. They weigh an absolute ton.

it's the anamorphics, mean, all anamorphics, but the cook anamorphics, these two ones, they are burly. And that's what we shot Weekend at the end of the world on just because I love, love how they look. They are.

Marcus Mizelle (10:14)
gigantic god damn it

The cook look

is a real thing, right? It's kind of a, what would you say, like a creamy, what would you take the on the cook look?

Gille Klabin (10:26)
I,

there's something for these anamorphics, I don't know if like, you know, your standard S4s or any other cook lenses look a certain way that you can pair, but I find short of like Panavision anamorphics or Hawks, these ones give me, give this beautiful like softness that almost feels like you're using film, but still sharp enough.

Marcus Mizelle (10:41)
Mmm. Yeah.

Gille Klabin (10:50)
that you can pull off like laborious visual effects without being like, okay, well, everything's so morphed and everything's so distorted and rounded that I can't actually get a good track. know, like I can't do a 3D camera track because everything's so distorted that the laws of physics that a 3D camera tracker is trying to adhere to just aren't sticking. So the cooks are that beautiful middle ground.

Marcus Mizelle (11:01)
Mmm.

Yeah, it's like a three dimensional,

it's more immersive. mean, I would say Panavision G series for me, I love that we're talking about lenses for a moment because why Panavision G series, I just remember like if I see a movie and I'm like trying to guess what lens it is and sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. But it seems like every time I'm like, ooh, that might be a Panavision, which series?

amazing look on that. Those like for me, I had a gun in my head, that's what I would say I'd want to shoot on if I had all the pictures.

Gille Klabin (11:32)
Yeah.

I have

never had the luxury of shooting on a Panavise camera body and Panavision glass. Every time I'm watching a movie and I'm like, God, this is unbearably gorgeous. I'll go to like, what's the website called? Shot on what? Or something like that. And I'll look it up and nine times out of 10, it's Panavision glass. Because I don't know what they're doing. Like, I mean, again, every time I see something that hurts me with its beauty, it's being Panavision glass.

Marcus Mizelle (11:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.

All right. All right. So back to your movie and

so you did The Wave. When was The Wave with Justin Long? Great movie.

Gille Klabin (12:11)
shot it at the end of 2017, finished all of post probably like around springtime 2018, maybe into the summer and then submitted it to festivals like Crazy and then it had its festival premiere at Fantastic Fest the following year, 2019. So there was a long, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (12:20)
Mm-hmm.

Just before COVID.

Gille Klabin (12:33)
There was a long,

Marcus Mizelle (12:34)
Perfect.

Gille Klabin (12:34)
long, long dance of, at first, so we were entered into a bunch of festivals and we were trying to find a distributor as well, because we were panicked. We were trying to make money for our investors. And I also, it was my first film and I come from that British sensibility of sort of like, you earn your way up and you don't really speak out of turn. And so I didn't know anything about film distribution. I'd had feelings about it. It seemed quite predatory to me, but also I was just.

Marcus Mizelle (12:53)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (13:01)
not equipped or experienced enough to offer anything else. So we were just taking meetings with any distributor who was interested in us, but we were waiting on a festival premiere, which we hadn't had. a lot of people loved us at South by Southwest, but I was another straight white male director and they didn't want another movie like that. And I was like, honestly, fair. It was also at the time, you know, where I mean,

I'm Israeli Jewish, anti-Zionism, but nonetheless, to the people who care, I'm a Jew. So I was getting the white man treatment while also being increasingly scared of being a Jew in America. But either way, so we didn't get into these festivals and I was getting kind of worried.

Marcus Mizelle (13:38)
They didn't have a

box for that specific situation though, right? When you were submitting, you

Gille Klabin (13:41)
Yeah,

it has been so imbalanced in favor of the status quo for so long that we needed not only a correction, but an over correction. And honestly, if you look around now, like it seems like most of Nefair's forces are back in play and just doing things as they were. I, know, any one of my filmmaker friends who are people of color, you know,

Marcus Mizelle (13:47)
Sure, yep.

Mm-hmm.

It does. Yep.

Gille Klabin (14:06)
some of them were saying, I had one from being like, I feel like I'm only kind of getting in the room because like, I'm a gay black woman. And I was like, the door has cracked open for the first time ever. Don't think, run through it. Run through it right now, because these guys will slam it shut the second they can. So like, whatever, it's an overcorrection. It just got a little bit harder. And that's also like what informed my second movie is basically long story short.

Marcus Mizelle (14:17)
Mm. So. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gille Klabin (14:33)
We premiered at Fantastic Fest at the end of 2019 after a long dance with all these different distributors. We didn't have a festival premiere. We then, in a panic, signed with these distributors for the wave. Two weeks later, we found out we were premiering at Fantastic Fest, which is a bit of a bummer because, yeah, so we arguably wouldn't have signed with a distributor because then we would have gone in as a free agent to Fantastic Fest. But that's also under the assumption

Marcus Mizelle (14:33)
Mm-hmm.

wow. That's how it went. ⁓ wait, know, no crystal ball though.

Sure.

Gille Klabin (14:59)
that the old model still works where movies sold at festivals, which I think is really only just happening at Sundance. yeah, and there's also like movies.

Marcus Mizelle (15:05)
And even now, it's not so much, apparently. But 2019, it

was like the last, last, I feel like, little bit of just that old world that was fading, you know, as far as selling it. Because Fantastic Fest is legit, it's a huge festival. mean, for this type of film, it's perfect for this movie.

Gille Klabin (15:15)
Mm-hmm.

was massive. mean, it was there.

Our film was premiering next to the premiere of, I think it was Jojo Rabbit's premiere. I think it was Parasite, Knives Out. There were huge movies and obviously, yeah, My Impostor Syndrome was just overwhelming. I'm just on the red carpet and there's Taika Waititi and Rian Johnson, Bong Joon-Ho. was like, what the fuck am I doing here? ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (15:28)
wow.

⁓ Damn, Studio films.

Unnaturally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's go, baby. Yeah.

Gille Klabin (15:47)
Either way, it was incredible.

Marcus Mizelle (15:48)
But so, yeah, I didn't know that. So you had two weeks, so you signed two weeks before. I mean, again, you yourself a crystal ball and it's all about just like trying to anticipate. But yeah, you can't command Z real life, you know? It's not a so anyways, The Wave, kick-ass movie, by the way. People can watch it wherever, right? Just Google it and it pops up. What, is it on SFOD anywhere?

Gille Klabin (15:52)
Hmm

we go, my god, can you imagine?

Yeah, think

it's on Prime, it's on Peacock and some other places. It's also on Avod. You can watch it on 2B if you can stomach commercials.

Marcus Mizelle (16:15)
sweet. Which,

briefly, how do you feel about Avod and just the current state of how one watches a movie? And I'll just say this real quick. I have no issue making it as easy as possible for people to just simply push play to watch my movie versus pay $2.99 for a T-Vod or pay for a subscription that you might not have. What are your thoughts on Avod, I guess?

Gille Klabin (16:36)
I mean, look, at the end of the day, I make stuff because I want people to watch it. the joy, I mean, I remember the first music video I did when I was in sixth form in England, which is, I think you called junior year in high school in America. And I made a music video for my media class and an auditorium full of my peers at school watched it and they laughed at all the bits that I was trying to make funny. And that high has

Marcus Mizelle (16:41)
Mm.

Okay, okay.

Mm.

Gille Klabin (17:03)
not scratch the surface of any substance I've tried. Like that rush, still now when I get messages on like Reddit or YouTube where somebody has seen my movie, you will rarely find a comment on the internet that I haven't found and responded to because it means the world to me. I love it. So in regards to how the movie gets seen, like look, I want the people who put money into the movie to make their money back and I want people who own...

equity in the movie to get a you know, a drip feed of money here and there. But ultimately, I want people to watch the movie. Like I've seen, I found the wave fully ripped in HD on YouTube. And I just went into the comment section and thanked them for sharing the movie. Like I just, you know, I'd rather, I'd rather people see this thing that so many of us worked so hard on rather than just sort of stand my ground and be like, no, you have to rent it for 99 cents. Ideally, if you can afford to.

Marcus Mizelle (17:40)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Gille Klabin (17:58)
You know, if you put money in, if you pay money for a movie, you're gonna enable filmmakers to make more films. But hell, watch it for free, and then if you enjoyed it, come back and rent it.

Marcus Mizelle (18:06)
And it gets to a point where it's like, what's 99 cents or 199 or 399 going to really do more? What's it going to help more than hurt? Because it's kind of a paywall. Psychologically, we've been conditioned to not wanting, not having to pay for movies now. I will, but I'm a filmmaker. But most people will move along to the next thing, you know? And it's like, here it is for free. Watch it.

Gille Klabin (18:25)
Well, look, with

Avod, yeah, look, with Avod, it's free, but you have to watch commercials. Which is funny, you know, like we've come full circle, yeah, we've gone full circle, but now, well, I guess it's, yeah, free cable instead of paying for cable. But I'm all for it. I wanna make my film as available as possible the world over.

Marcus Mizelle (18:32)
It's like free cable, you know? It's wild.

Yeah.

Which we'll come back around to like the conversation that I'm most excited about the topic I'm most excited about with this, which is how you're planning on getting your film out here, right? With distribution, a hybrid model, and as well as the marketing strategies, creative marketing strategies.

So it's an interesting space right now, 2026.

Gille Klabin (19:00)
I

it is, look, I feel like we're navigating this weird thing where everything's gotten harder, everything's gotten less lucrative for the filmmakers. What we're expected to pull off is bigger than ever before and the budgets to facilitate that are smaller than ever. And the way in which we can make money feels more trampled on, like distribution deals feel more predatory and streaming deals feel more predatory and everybody's up in arms about bonuses and payouts to talent.

Marcus Mizelle (19:09)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (19:28)
when big movies go to streamers. But in the same regard, there is a sort of a more egalitarian opportunity in terms of like, anybody can put a film out and anybody can run an effective marketing campaign and raise awareness for the movie. And anybody can actually pretty comprehensively find the exact people who will enjoy their movie. It just means more work, which of course, every junction, I feel like our generation of filmmakers has.

Marcus Mizelle (19:37)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (19:54)
come up to has basically meant like, okay, well, to get what the previous generation got at this junction, you're going to have to do at least five times the work.

Marcus Mizelle (19:55)
Mm.

And it seems like the shift has gone from it's not who you know more so now that's who knows you, right? Because we can get through the gates, but then it's like, okay, we're available everybody, push play. And then it's like, well, so was so are a million other films, you know?

Gille Klabin (20:17)
I feel like the who you know is evergreen, you know, it's still important. Who knows you is very, important. you know, there are... Like, look at these two movies that just came out ⁓ or are coming out, like Iron Lung from that Mark something, that YouTuber. He had a following of what was it? 30 million YouTube subscribers. So he is the flagship for... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (20:21)
It's of course, absolutely, Yep.

yeah.

Gille Klabin (20:43)
who knows you, because he is in and of himself a series of digital billboards. Like your fan base is there, your film is coming out to a hungry audience.

Marcus Mizelle (20:48)
Right. It's there.

Plyer,

Survivors of the apocalypse sent a convict in a small submarine to explore a desolate moon that's an ocean of blood. That's Iron Lung, and he has had a full theatrical release across America, I believe.

Gille Klabin (21:04)
which

his fan base petitioned AMC to put the movie in the screens. He he created the demand for the supply, which is great. Like that's, again, I'm a firm believer in anything to do with the arts. There are examples, there's case studies, but there's no blueprint, there's no roadmap. You can do all sorts. Like the movie, Hundreds of Beavers.

Marcus Mizelle (21:15)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (21:29)
got its cinematic run and is still booking theaters, like in the same way like Rocket Horror Picture Show is still booking theaters. It's still booking theaters and this all happened after it was already released. And people show up and costumably do stuff. Like it's inspiring, but it's just also like, it doesn't apply. Like I don't have 30 million YouTube subscribers. I have never pursued getting followers. I've been one of the only few things I've been sort of like, I guess, traditional in my approach of like, I want to make

Marcus Mizelle (21:40)
It's so crazy.

Gille Klabin (21:57)
good stuff and I want that stuff to live, to operate on its own merit. But then, you know, it's, it's, there's just a thousand ways to do it. It's just, it's just which one, which one has the workload that you're happy taking on.

Marcus Mizelle (22:10)
And I share that with you as far as I think we just both want to make stuff where we can look back at it and it has rewatch ability, replay ability, right? And like where we're proud of it and it stands up on its own. And it reminds me of like the Sean Baker's path, where it's like even just about the takeout in his first three or four micro-budget films where they got Criterion releases and having all these retrospective screenings now.

But it took 20 years to, or maybe 15, 20 years to get to that point where people had to go back. But the films were already there. It was just a matter of time until they were kind of cultureized. yeah, it is.

Gille Klabin (22:47)
I feel like

everybody puts pressure on these. yes, when your movie is brand new is pretty much guaranteed to be the time where you can hope to recoup most of your money on it. But it doesn't mean that's the end of your film's life. I literally yesterday responded to three comments from people who had found my first film, The Wave.

Marcus Mizelle (22:58)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (23:07)
⁓ randomly through an Amazon Prime suggestion and liked it so much that they found a comment thread on Reddit where I was talking about the movie and sought me out to tell me, which makes my whole week, but it just shows that your film doesn't go away.

Marcus Mizelle (23:21)
You know, I think there's a lot of ageism when it comes to film sells, especially if you're talking to a buyer or whatever, you know, me going to AFM or where EFM or wherever and trying to talk to these people. a lot of them are like, if it's descent, what is it? If it's, if it's only a month old, but it's January and your movie is December, 2024, that's a whole year later. That's a whole year. That's a year older film and it's hard to sell. You know, I that's a ridiculous example, but

I think there's an ageism in certain aspects to the film business when it comes to your movie, but there's also such a wonderful, think there's a retrospective movement more than ever, maybe right now too, because of the lack of material. Like you've seen a lot of theatrical retrospectives coming, like a lot of old films coming back, which I'm able to, at least in LA,

Gille Klabin (23:56)
Why, I think.

Yeah.

I'm all for it. If you want to re-release The Mummy in theaters, do it. That's so much better than remaking it again and just regurgitating a piece of IP. Re-release this thing that's already good. There was a mandate from all the studios, I think it was a couple of years ago, that said no original IP. With all the movies that they're considering to make for that year, was like, are not.

making an original movie, we are only making something that has an existing fan base, an existing piece of intellectual property. And that's a recipe for people not giving a shit anymore, because it's all just garbage.

Marcus Mizelle (24:37)
They want, what do they want to get? The dad and the son?

They want to get double quad, they want to get the quadrants, they don't want to just take the chance of something unique? What is it?

Gille Klabin (24:45)
I I think these, I think by and large, these, these studios and everything has largely become in sort of unbridled capitalism. It's just, it's just become a game of risk assessment and returns. So they look at it as like, do we roll the dice on something and then market it and spend, know, spend twice the budget, the movie marketing this thing and trying to find a fan base, or do we, do we put a little bit of money or do we put

Marcus Mizelle (24:56)
Right. Yep.

Hmm.

Gille Klabin (25:09)
are lot of money into this thing that already has a fan base that basically has marketing apparatus already deployed and then their risk is lower. And also these people's job security is frightful. An executive can have a two year shelf life at a company before they're booted.

Marcus Mizelle (25:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's crazy how quickly they got to move these days. It's almost like how I, you know, welcome to being a crew member, fella, you know? But anyways, at end of the day, the shareholders own the studios, right? That's kind of what it is. It's corporate owning. But where there's like front door where it's jammed up, there's always this side door that kind of comes into play, right? Where it's like, where is the space that we can play as maybe more of a niche.

Gille Klabin (25:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (25:49)
What do you call it? Low budget, micro budget, non-studio, independent system, independent filmmaking. know, there's always good things that come out of the,

Gille Klabin (25:53)
Yeah, it's just independent film. even so,

there's always gonna be the outliers, there's always gonna be people like us, and by us I mean probably millions of people who want to make something and will just do it outside of the sort of afforded opportunities. But there's also just incredible movies that are made within the studio system, they're just made in spite of it. I remember listening to a story that super bad,

Marcus Mizelle (26:05)
Lots.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (26:20)
was rejected. I can't remember what it was Seth Rogen in a podcast who's saying like rejected like 30 odd times, which you know, at the time it was made meant going back to studios that had already rejected it, but there's new execs there and trying and everybody just saying like, this is not going to work. This is not going to work. And it's the highest grossing high school movie ever made. yeah, and like look at incredible movie like everything everywhere all at once does not.

Marcus Mizelle (26:34)
Okay.

Is that right? Yeah, okay.

Gille Klabin (26:46)
feel like a studio film made by committee, but also they scrapped and fought for years to get that film made. that's, things that move the goalposts, things that affect the of the landscape as a total, they're never, I don't think they ever have an easy ride. I don't think, you know, somebody shows up with a script that's sort of out there or different or ends up being something loved and right away the execs go,

Marcus Mizelle (27:04)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (27:14)
Yeah, I'll roll the dice on you. Of course I will, why not? You know, they're just, I don't think they have the job security.

Marcus Mizelle (27:15)
Right. You got to work your way inside the system

in some way too, right? You got to be, you can't just be some stranger off the street, right? I mean, would you do that? Would you put millions of dollars onto somebody if you didn't have a little something to grab on? I don't know.

Gille Klabin (27:27)
Yeah,

mean, it's a simple business. I remember I was a PA on a movie in England and it was a working title movie. And I remember looking at the paperwork, I was an office PA and it said like, oh, working title was, I believe it was owned by Universal. And then I was printing something off for the line producer or something in it. And it said like, Universal, a general electric company. And I was like, wait, so this movie studio is just owned by a power company? It's

Marcus Mizelle (27:30)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Gille Klabin (27:55)
at that point then it's just a business. in business, you're not sitting there being like, yeah, but this film got my teenager through a tough time. You're sitting there being like, what's the ROI? How much growth do we maintain? You know, it's boardroom shit, which is the antithesis to art.

Marcus Mizelle (28:11)
Right, right,

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we could talk about it all day long, but it's good to visit it and it's good to talk about it. And you know what the bottom line is? We're filmmakers and we can make films. And the technology's gotten great. mean, that part's gotten easier as far as we don't need some sort of massive footprint. It's one of the good parts with it came over saturation. But either way, here we are. You're still making movies and I'm so glad you made your second movie because I feel like the second movie is harder than the first movie for sure.

Gille Klabin (28:16)
Yeah.

That's one of the only good parts.

Marcus Mizelle (28:40)
You know what I mean? Where the first movie you're like, it's like, you know, it's I'm just you have all the hope in the world. You haven't been destroyed yet. And I feel like the second one, you know how hard it's going to be. and to still do it anyways is

Gille Klabin (28:41)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And the second one was so informed by the many pitfalls that I fell victim to on the first one. you know, chief amongst them like, the second film was by design gonna be something we didn't have to wait for permission to do. It was very much like, I've got the gear

Marcus Mizelle (28:59)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (29:11)
enthusiasm and the lack of self-preservation skills to endure making another movie. And because I'm a, you know, as well as writing and directing, I also, I know cameras and I know editing and I know visual effects, all of them to like a high enough degree to actually charge somebody. So I mean, we were very much gonna do this movie entirely by ourselves. And I'd learned brutal lessons on my first film in regards to

Marcus Mizelle (29:29)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Gille Klabin (29:38)
distribution and marketing. And one of my many day jobs is working as a trailer editor and making social media assets for other, for like, you know, Netflix movies or Amazon movies. So I was like, okay, I think if we make something very small, that leans into our strengths and take on distribution as well, then we can actually get our film out to people. Because the biggest problem with my first film is that nobody heard of it because our distributors

Marcus Mizelle (29:48)
you

Gille Klabin (30:05)
They, you know, I don't think it was with malice, but they put money in marketing efforts that didn't raise enough awareness for the movie. So 90 % of the comments I get about my first film is like, I've never heard of this, I love this. Like, it's crazy, I've never heard of this. And so that was on the second one. I also on the second one wanted to make something very broad and commercial in a sense that as we were navigating this hellscape of

Marcus Mizelle (30:14)
Mm.

Right.

Gille Klabin (30:33)
an American chapter, I was like, want to create something that is a small, explosive piece of escapism that has heart, but that doesn't, it doesn't stop the train to lecture you on something. It's just moves and it's fun. I wanted, I needed and wanted to make something fun. Some just like a wild ride you go on and.

My writing partner, Clay Elliott, we'd done all these short films together and like sketches and we'd won some festivals with him and he was considering giving up acting and I've had such a good fortune to work with some incredible actors and Clay is up there. He just doesn't have the name recognition or the body of work, but I've worked with enough actors to know when I'm working with somebody who's special. So Clay was my secret weapon.

Marcus Mizelle (31:20)
Sure.

Gille Klabin (31:28)
And I compelled him, was like, look, we need to write something that we can pull off by ourselves that if I have to do it all by myself, it can be done. And I knew from my first film.

Marcus Mizelle (31:37)
And it's going to look way

more than it actually is, right? Which nobody knows how much. No viewer, unless they've done some deep dive behind the scenes deep dive, they don't know how much you didn't have, right? So, and you know how to shoot, you know how to do visual effects. Like not just know, but like it's up there, it's top tier. So that right there, yeah. And you have a good actor, slash friend, and you have a good script. It's like, you do have a chance. Why not just pull the trigger, I guess.

Gille Klabin (31:47)
No, mean, is...

Yeah, I I think it's, I think it was for me just a lesson of working within your sandbox. Like my sandbox was, we're not going to have much money. We don't have the money to put crew up. We have to be able to pull this off in Los Angeles. And it's like leaning to our strengths. So, you know, I don't think my VFX looked that great, but they lend themselves very well to the sort of suspended disbelief world of the movie. And

Marcus Mizelle (32:20)
Went for probably how much

volume you had to do too, I'm Like it's a workload.

Gille Klabin (32:23)
Yeah, that was the really embarrassing

part because I basically stayed awake for four months doing the visual effects on my first film. And my wife said to me, never again. And I was like, yeah, look, this new film, I'm really going to have to do all the VFX alone, but I'm just going to make it a smaller load for me to carry. Turned out to be 100 more VFX shots than the wave. Yeah. But I did manage to do it quicker. I didn't end up like

Marcus Mizelle (32:43)
You had to trick yourself almost in a way, right? And her. Damn you.

Gille Klabin (32:50)
I mean, on the waves, VFX, I was really getting like an hour and a half to two hours of sleep a night. And on this, I was getting, know, five or six hours a night, not watching the sun come up and, you know, I knocked out a lot more VFX and I was also just better at

know, things got things got so much better, like beyond beyond, you everybody talks about AI in terms of like generative video and generative images. But ⁓ AI is an umbrella term that encompasses a lot of things like even things like camera tracking is using artificial intelligence or even things like I don't know how nerdy I can get here, but like roto brush, right? So if you're an after effects and you're trying to

Marcus Mizelle (33:17)
Mm-hmm.

go. ⁓

Gille Klabin (33:34)
rotoscope, a character on screen, the roto capacity capabilities of After Effects these days, and this isn't like an additional plugin, this is just comes in the box with After Effects, that roto brush is using artificial intelligence to recognize the human form, to recognize motion blur on a passing hand. And so I was cutting characters out on a background that was defocused, you know, like pretty brownie green

Marcus Mizelle (33:45)
Okay.

Wow.

Gille Klabin (34:03)
woodland and we've got hair being cut out. Now again, don't get me wrong, it's not perfect, but that tool allowed me to to rotor them out like they were on a green screen.

Marcus Mizelle (34:04)
Mm-hmm.

Right? But...

Damn, yeah. Let me read your synopsis before I forget. at the end of the world, when Carl's girlfriend rejects his proposal and shatters his dreams of happily ever after, his childhood friend Miles takes him away to his Mimol's cabin to regroup, come together and help flip it before the property bubble bursts. and Miles and Carl are forced to face both their metaphorical and very real demons. After opening a portal to the honest,

the realm between realities. A week and Mimol guides her here as through various trials to help her gain the strength she needs to close the portal forever and save our world. You have Thomas Lennon in here of Reno 911 fame, correct? Well, many, many, many, many things. I mean, I think about Night of the Museum. He's a great screenwriter too, isn't he? He's a good screenwriter. I love how you use him, but you don't like lean on him unnaturally.

Gille Klabin (34:50)
I mean, yeah, that's the show he...

Yeah, incredible.

it's crazy. we, so Cameron Fife who came on to produce and he plays Miles, he had done a movie, he had done a movie with Tom and Tom is just, he's so pure. He, he loves doing stuff, right? And he loves working with people who he likes. Cameron sent me a screen grab. He sent Tom this like long email basically saying, Hey, I'm working with this director, Gil. This is his previous film. We're doing this movie. We're hoping to shoot in September time.

Marcus Mizelle (35:06)
He's great.

Hmm.

Mmm.

Gille Klabin (35:27)
We'd love

you to play this role. Here is the script. Here is the pitch deck. Here's links to previous work, et cetera, et cetera. Sent it. And then two minutes later, two minutes, and I don't care if you're the fastest reader on the planet, there's no way you looked at any of those materials, Tom just responds and says, I'm in. Because he had a gap. He had a gap in his September. So he was like, OK, I'll play around. And I'll just do so. I'll have some fun. And then he read the script and he dug it.

Marcus Mizelle (35:43)
That's crazy.

Gille Klabin (35:54)
And what's more is, you know, he's such a good writer and such a good performer. When he came to the table read, he pitched stuff that, you know, I don't think he realized just how easy sell everything was going to be because everything he would pitch was just a brilliant idea. And he pitched, for example, Hank, his character basically gets possessed and then gets turned in initially in the script. He gets turned back to like a split between his possessed

Marcus Mizelle (36:11)
you

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (36:22)
demon sort of what's called a herald and the old version of him and he had lines so like he was like a very friendly neighbor and he would talk about all the things that the demon would talk about but he would do it in a really friendly neighbor way and Thomas after the table read he said you know I think it would be funnier if I was stuck more in the demon and I was it was much more grunting rather than sort of eloquent sentences and I was like whatever you want man like if you want to if you want to play this

Marcus Mizelle (36:34)
Okay.

Gille Klabin (36:50)
completely frozen, like you're Thomas Lenny, you can have whatever you want. But the guy slashed his line count by 60 % all in favor of doing something that he thought would be funnier and he would have more fun performing.

Marcus Mizelle (36:56)
Mm. wow.

And that comic gag

is funny. Just even the notion, also it seems like more real, well, realistic, I use quotes, meaning he's transitioning from like, right, a normal human to like a possessed one. So why wouldn't he be trying to deal with it? But also it's funnier probably with the grunts. I don't know what the initial would have been.

Gille Klabin (37:14)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

It's so much funnier

and he had a lot of fun with it. And there's a shot towards the end of the movie where we cut to a room and Hank is pushing a sofa away. And we're going for a second take and Thomas just calls me over. was like, hey man, what's up? He's like, I think I should be pushing the sofa with my head. I was like, well, that's hilarious, but I wouldn't ask you to do that. And he's like, no, I think at this point Hank is kind of like,

Marcus Mizelle (37:44)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (37:47)
coming undone and I think, you know, his actions that he does in these different moments, and I know it'll be funnier, but I think it makes sense for him to do that. And I was like, yeah. And it's genuinely still gets a laugh every single time it cuts that shot and it's just Hank pushing a couch just with his head and it looks hilarious.

Marcus Mizelle (38:03)
Nice.

What would you say your directing style is? I know that's probably a weird question to have to answer, but what would you say? You seem very considerate, very polite. Do you break for tea? I know you don't.

Gille Klabin (38:11)
I'd say like, I'd say,

I'd say bordering on childlike enthusiasm. look, I mean, I come from low budget music videos and I come from making something with nothing. So I really love and care about every single facet of it. But also I'm one of the fortunate or unfortunate people who's been wanting to do this since he was 10, 11 years old.

Marcus Mizelle (38:36)
Hmm.

Gille Klabin (38:37)
And that's not lost on me when I'm on set. talking to an actor whose face I've been watching for decades in movies that I've dreamed of making, that surrealism is not lost on me. So I'm living out my childhood fantasy while at the same time doing something that I've diligently worked at, getting good And it's very exciting for me. look,

I think I'm an excitable, passionate director. I care a lot. I'm very nerdy about every aspect. Like if an actor wants to sit down and break apart every line of dialogue and why each syllable is what it is, I will do it with a smile on my face because I love doing that. And in the same way, if one department wants to pitch something to me and they're as passionate about this story I'm trying to tell as I am.

Marcus Mizelle (39:00)
Mmm.

Gille Klabin (39:21)
I will sit there with a smile on my face and get into it as well. There is no department that I'm just like, yeah, you just do your thing. Everything is a decision. Everything can affect an audience. that, again, that high I felt when I was 17 and I was with an audience watching my creation and seeing my intentions have an effect on them, it was divine, it was magical. And so I'm just always in pursuit of that.

Marcus Mizelle (39:39)
Hmm.

Yeah, and I'm sure it's such a fun, enthusiastic experience for people working with you too, whether it be cast or crew. And like anybody out there that hasn't made their film yet and they're thinking about it or they've made one or they, you there is an unmatched high that you get when you do experience it. Whether it be like whenever someone, like an audience of people are reacting to a moment where you intended, when you were initially sitting there by yourself at the edit or

maybe writing or even being on set and then just having those moments of collaboration with a cast member or a DP or whatever and just feeling that energy and feeling in the moment, feeling in that present moment. you just, something happens cellular cellularly like deep down where it's like, it feels, it's very exciting. ⁓

Gille Klabin (40:29)
Yeah. I remember

this moment for I think it was day three of the wave back in 2017. And it was like, we cut a shot and I had no less than seven different departments come up to me, ask me a question, needed an answer, I gave the answer, I turned another one talking, I turned another one talking, I turned another one talked and

None of it was getting to me. I felt like what I'd seen athletes talk about in movies where they talk about being in the zone or being in like a, in a flow. And I remember having this very calm moment of like, this looks, this must look so stressful, but none of this is getting to me. I have answers for everything because to overcome my own anxieties going into the project, I had to understand everything comprehensively.

Marcus Mizelle (41:07)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (41:27)
just

to feel confident enough walking onto set and to ask people to do things. remember I was wearing black shoes at the time because I looked down and it was a white stone floor and I'd done little like rubber, like, you know, when you skid to a stop or something like that, like when the rubber of your shoe comes off on the ground, like I was spinning on my heels to the degree that I made little rubber marks on the ground.

Marcus Mizelle (41:43)
Sure, yep.

Gille Klabin (41:48)
I was just turning around because like I would say something to make up and then an actor would turn around and I would spin around to talk to the actor and I would spin around and talk to my DP. And I was like, I was like, wow, this is my little like basketball, basketball court flow moment.

Marcus Mizelle (41:52)
I see, see, I see. got you. huh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

You were probably so stimu-

Perfectly sti- like you-

Gille Klabin (42:03)
I was having a blast.

It

was the only moment of like athleticism I'd ever felt. was like, this is for whatever chaotic reason, this is my sport. Like this is something I can do where I can be in a very high stress situation and it doesn't get to me. Whereas I liked playing basketball as a kid, but if the pressure is on, I'm not gonna sink the shot. I'm just not going to, because I'd be like, no, no, not for me.

Marcus Mizelle (42:14)
Love that.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

It's like the,

yeah, inside of chaos and like what it takes to the mental stamina and just the presence of mind, you know, but it's also, you're the one that knows this film more than anybody. And it's like your moment to flex kind of, right? mean, for me, like whatever it might be, whether it be, I know I have a Q and A that night or I have a, ⁓ something that I'm anxious about that, cause I want to get it right. filming or whatever it might be, the day before school feeling that you get before any big shoot every time, it seems like.

But my point is, it's like the anticipation is what fucks with me. And I can't, I'm to the point now where I cannot wait to be inside the thing that I'm anticipating because then I'll be okay. But it's the lead up that tends to, less and less now, but tends to get me a little more anxious. And so in a moment like that where there's people coming at me and I'm like, I feel like happy to be in that space. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Gille Klabin (42:57)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, It's

like, same thing, because I always cut what I make. I've worked with Lana Wilverton, who's my editing partner on both my films. And we cut the films together because I love her opinions. But also, editing to me is central to, I mean, it is the bottleneck through which your story comes out. there is, it's not one of the elements of the story. It's the final element.

Marcus Mizelle (43:22)
yeah.

Gille Klabin (43:42)
of how the story is told. And I edit so much that I'm editing in my head while I'm shooting. And it's a weird thing, like somebody was asking me about it. They're like, how do you get ready for that? It's not like an athlete who goes off and raises their stamina or drops weight for a fight or something like that. It's like, this just so happens to be what works well for my strange broken brain.

Marcus Mizelle (44:06)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (44:07)
that this is my

thing, this is my thing not, not necessarily, well, earned it through experience of having done it many, many times, but I did it so many times because I love doing it. And now it's easier and easier for me. And then also, you know, the other thing is, is preparation. Like for the wave, I worked with this incredible storyboard artist, Peter Beck, took all the storyboards, digitized them all, put, well, they were already digital. They were done on an iPad.

Marcus Mizelle (44:22)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (44:33)
And then I made an animatic, a 2D animatic with me reading every line of dialogue. so there was a very horrible 60 odd minute version of the wave that's just cutting from 2D pictures with the occasional picture moving. And then I did a bunch of VFX tests for some of the more ambitious crazy scenes and transitions. And so there was, I had kind of watched my film in his best way I could before it existed. So that when I was on set,

Marcus Mizelle (44:46)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (45:03)
This is a world I'd lived in a fair amount. And I shared all those things I've made with the rest of the crew, anybody who wanted to see it. And that level of preparation allows you to navigate whatever disasters occur on a shoot where it feels like you're not... There's a lot of stuff that's outside of your control on a shoot and you have to...

Marcus Mizelle (45:24)
You're already above your base. You're

not just doing the base level thing by not knowing. You already know what you're trying to do and then you can build on top. Yeah.

Gille Klabin (45:27)
Yeah, I'm not building on the day. Yeah, exactly. Like I'm adapting and

it worked so well on the wave and that's what informed my actions on weekend at the end of the world. I leveled up the mania of my preparation. Like I did, we didn't have the money to hire anybody to do storyboards. So I was doing all the storyboards myself and then I was trying to like, I was trying to use elements and then I even tried to use AI to like take my stick drawings and turn them into something

Marcus Mizelle (45:55)
Anything good there?

Gille Klabin (45:56)
prettier. I ended up spending so much time trying to get various different AI tools to do something simple. Like I was like, I want a wide shot of the woods. I want it lit by the moon from the right hand side. And it would just be like the moon in the middle of a shot into medium. And I was like, okay, so this but wider, they're like, you're right. It's not wide. Here it is again. Same shot. I was like, okay, the moon is in the shot. I don't want to see the moon.

Marcus Mizelle (46:10)
And he was like, mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (46:23)
And it was like, oh, you're totally right. Here it is from the side. Moon's still in the shot. And I eventually got to this point where I was like, I'm spending more time trying to reprompt this one bit of AI that it would, think it might be faster for me to make this from scratch.

Marcus Mizelle (46:36)
It wants to please,

but it ain't quite there in many aspects, And when the AI takeover fully happens, they're gonna come for me first because I am not very polite once a.

Gille Klabin (46:39)
Look, it has in many ways.

always very careful. I'm never mean to the going to come back and get us. But moreover, I think they're a great time saving tool, but they're not good for hyper specificity. So what I ended up doing is as we started getting locations on weekend at the end of the world, I would

Marcus Mizelle (46:45)
dare you.

I love you AI. I love you. I love you.

Gille Klabin (47:03)
go to the locations and I would use a photogrammetry app on my phone and I would capture 3D scans of the actual rooms and then I would bring those into Blender and I would make 3D models of my actors and I would basically make my film in an incredibly haunting, poorly done animatic in 3D.

Marcus Mizelle (47:11)
Mmm,

That's what I wanted to say

because I say this first step is probably what, well, besides the script is like location, right? It's space that you're gonna shoot in to know geography of the space. And then you're putting, you're taking that and you're putting the scans into the computer and then you're working from there on like what you can do, what you wanna do, figuring out how you wanna capture.

Gille Klabin (47:41)
Yeah, mean,

look, we shot this movie in 12 days, right? The entire shooting budget before post was $235,000. And so we had 12 days, and they were going to be 12-hour days, just out of respect for the crew. And it was all within the 30-mile zone of Los Angeles. it was hard.

Marcus Mizelle (47:46)
Mmm, nice. Okay.

12 and 12, that's impressive. It's fucking impressive. 12 is crazy

tight. It's crazy tight.

Gille Klabin (48:07)
Yeah, and the whole crew, I think, at its most swollen was like 26 people, it was done, it was done out of, it was at the end of September and the first couple of days of October in 2024.

Marcus Mizelle (48:12)
When did you shoot this? What was like the actual month and year about?

you're still under 300 K across the board right like including

Gille Klabin (48:23)
Yeah, right

now, all said and done, I think we're at 296, 296,000. And we're probably gonna spend an additional almost 50K on distribution and marketing costs.

Marcus Mizelle (48:38)
I'm

excited about this part for sure. What are your plans, I guess, generally or specifically,

Gille Klabin (48:41)
Mmm.

this is the thing is like, no shade to distributors. just think that the model that we used to operate on, is a filmmaker makes their move. They raise money from investors. The investors have a huge ownership of the movie. Filmmakers break themselves making the best movie that they can. And then they go on a festival circuit to try and raise awareness and get some PR. And typically, they'll sell to a distributor because a distributor will take on.

Sales, which is everything from getting you onto the platforms to trying to negotiate a deal with a streamer for a second window of distribution, going to film festivals and trying to sell to foreign territories, all forms of putting it on DirecTV, everything, that's all sales. Then there's marketing, which is nine times out of 10, most distributors, especially at a lower level, are hiring marketing agencies. And that's really an umbrella for two things, which is one, is...

Marcus Mizelle (49:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Gille Klabin (49:36)
you know, the actual making of marketing assets, be that your poster, your trailer, or social media, short videos, Instagram, real stories, all that stuff, creating all the marketing assets. And the other branch of that is media planning and buying, which is, I'm going to buy advertising on Google, on YouTube, on all meta platforms. And I'm planning it to be like, okay, for the month leading up to the thing, I'm going to spend

this many dollars and I'm going to target these people and build up my audience profile of knowing who's responding to the movie. And the other aspect is PR, which again is typically a distributor hires a publicist and they will get you right up some magazines or appearances on podcasts or YouTube reviewers, any form of publicity, which you're not actually at the reins of, right? So those, so sales, marketing and PR, they're kind of like owned by these distributors. The problem is,

Marcus Mizelle (50:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (50:29)
these distributors, and we'll be talking forever if we get into it, like a record label advance, right? They used to do this thing where they gave you what's called an MG, a minimum guarantee, and they say, here's a chunk of money, this is us having skin in the game, but we recoup that money first and we own a percentage of your movie. The problem is, you don't really get to audit how they're spending that money. So a distributor will say to you,

we're going to spend $50,000 on marketing, which on the surface, you're like, well, shit, that's great. That means you're going to spend 50K making the dopest assets you can. And you're going to spend so much money on social media, cleverly targeting the exact people who like my movie, that we're destined to see a return. The reality is, most of them, because they have overheads and costs, they're going to go to the lowest bidder. They're going to make the cheapest assets they can. And they're going to buy

advertising as cheaply as possible. And then you're going to get this bill saying we spent 50k and then they have to recoup their 50k before you see a penny. And none of this is transparent. So that leaves

Marcus Mizelle (51:36)
They're incentivized to do

the bare minimum almost to put more in their pocket.

Gille Klabin (51:40)
Absolutely. And they have overheads and they have employees. They've got big machinery to move. So my thinking right out the gate was like, okay, I'm going to make all the marketing assets. I also got this incredible company, Paradise, that I worked for many times in Los Angeles. And they came on board. They're like, look, we're going to cut a bunch of stuff for you. It used to be Max's, Mikey Prudensky. And he...

Marcus Mizelle (51:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm. Hmm.

Is that Max's company? Max?

Okay. Okay, okay.

Gille Klabin (52:05)
They did our teaser that's out and they also did our trailer that's coming out very soon. also Mikey's just like, whenever I'm making assets, I'll send them to Mikey and it's like he's in the room with me. This dude has given me so much of his time, I'm forever in his debt. But basically the considerations being, I'm gonna take over marketing, I was at least resigned to learning about media buying and planning. We'd already entered into festivals and...

Marcus Mizelle (52:09)
nice,

Amazing. Amazing.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (52:29)
I knew domestically, and I also knew that most distributors are using aggregators to get their films onto the main platforms. don't, yeah, I mean, look, I don't have 30 million subscribers. I don't have a million subscribers. And so.

Marcus Mizelle (52:37)
Just they're middle manning it. That's it.

And whether they get you on or

you get you on yourself, it's not going to be any difference as far as where you get to and it's just how you get to it.

Gille Klabin (52:49)
Yeah, I mean, well,

I'm more speaking to the point of a theatrical run, right? Like, I don't have the following to warrant a theatrical run. So I'm not trying. Instead, what I'm doing is a very, very focused digital release. I want to make the film affordable I want to target the audience like crazy. And I want the kind of people who are going I'm not trying to do a bait and switch. There's so many movies, they're like...

Marcus Mizelle (52:54)
Okay, I

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (53:15)
buy it today for $25. Like, but that's that to me is an advert saying, I want to get the most I can because this film doesn't have a long shelf life. Whereas I'm backing our film.

Marcus Mizelle (53:17)
Right.

Yeah, which is the opposite

of I care about you the viewer in your experience in a way

Gille Klabin (53:27)
Yeah, ⁓ I'm instead

like, look, when our film comes out for the first month, you can buy it in 4k for 10 bucks and can rent it for five. And then after a while, we'll see how that goes and we'll bring those costs down. But because we're using an aggregator, that purchase, that $10 purchase is split between the platform and us. There's no other distributor. That means our investors will get

Marcus Mizelle (53:35)
Hmm.

Yeah, that's great.

Gille Klabin (53:53)
The second we start getting dollars back is the second our investors will start getting dollars back.

Marcus Mizelle (53:56)
Yeah.

Question for you equity wise, what is the equity situation? it, yeah, what's your setup? What's your waterfall look like?

Gille Klabin (54:06)
So this is pretty standard. They're called producer's points and investor's points, but let's just call it percentages, right? So 50 % of the movie is owned by our investors. And our investors is 17 different people we managed to get money from. Each one of them at a different level. Some gave 100,000, some gave 1,500.

Marcus Mizelle (54:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, nice.

Gille Klabin (54:28)
So we had all these different levels. And so that's 50 % owned by them. And the other 50 % is owned by everybody who got involved in making the movie. And when I say everybody, I mean, apart from people who day everybody who worked on this movie in an earnest way has a percentage or a fraction of a percentage of the movie. And I think a lot of them don't.

Marcus Mizelle (54:48)
I love that.

Gille Klabin (54:53)
know that yet and they're going to find out hopefully when the movie starts making money. ⁓ And those presenters...

Marcus Mizelle (54:54)
very cool. Didn't the Duplass brothers have done things like

this, right? And also the new Matt Damon Affleck, didn't they? They did some sort of kind of situation, similar.

Gille Klabin (55:04)
Yeah,

and I don't know how, I know that movie on the rip they did that, but I don't, I guess in the sale to Netflix or if they figured out performance bonuses, because I think the whole problem, the whole point of the like the 2023 strike is they're saying like, there's no performance based payouts happening here. So I understand that there's a split, but I mean, I don't know how a split works when you're selling directly to a streamer. But with us,

Marcus Mizelle (55:21)
⁓ okay.

Yeah, what

are the details of the details when it comes to that deal? Yeah, but either way the notion of the crew I love this so much especially spending seven years being a crew member and it's like you just feel like you swept under the rug for $238 a day when really it's like but I lit that I helped make you feel something, you know, anyways, so it's Right

Gille Klabin (55:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, this film doesn't happen without the crew. And also

to that point, look, we didn't have money and it was unreasonable to pay everybody varying scales on such a small budget. So we just said right out the gate, we said to every single person on the movie, like, look, everybody is getting paid the same from the top-billed actor to the PA to everybody got the same paycheck.

Marcus Mizelle (55:53)
Mm-hmm.

Right, sure.

Love it.

Love it.

Gille Klabin (56:10)
the things that would...

Marcus Mizelle (56:10)
because there's such a class setup,

isn't there in this film structure? There's literally a below the line above the line. Yeah, that's so nice. That's so cool. And everybody feels fair.

Gille Klabin (56:17)
Yeah. Well, look, man, mean, it's still, it's still

a, it definitely creates an atmosphere of respect and admiration. But also it's like, it's not a lot of money. It's not enough money to survive. So if everybody's not going to get enough money to survive, they're going to get the same amount of money. And there are like, and there is differences in equity. Like the reality is that the star power of Troy and Belisario and Thomas Lennon,

Marcus Mizelle (56:26)
Hmm

Sure.

At least

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (56:42)
brings substantial impact to the viability of this movie making money and their equity reflects that. And I, you know, like I, I co-wrote storyboarded, produced, directed, you know, did all the visual effects, worked with Lana and did cuts and even sound beds of design. I worked my ass off and I'm overseeing all the distribution and I'm doing all the marketing.

Marcus Mizelle (56:45)
Sure. Sure. Sure.

And you're forgetting about stuff

that you did Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Right. Of course. that's still a it's still fair across thing. But but let's just say as far as by how many days or whatever hours you put in, it's fair across the board. Right.

Gille Klabin (57:08)
Yeah, and I don't have the time. So I'm getting more of a percentage than the PA is. But I'm also one of the only people who didn't get paid.

I mean I've given five years of my life to this movie.

It's just

like, it's just logical. if we don't, if people in our position don't operate on a meritocracy, then like, if we don't do it, you're never going to get to experience any sense of justice. Cause if you're waiting for a big studio movie with inbuilt mechanics that don't support you to suddenly treat you fair, you're going to be holding your breath for a long time. So if we don't do it on our tiny little budget, then it just doesn't get done.

Marcus Mizelle (57:35)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

you using?

Gille Klabin (57:56)
So we, I did a ton of research on this stuff and look, and we were still speaking to distributors up until about five months ago, just because as sure as I am, like all this decision is all based on data and previous experience in my last movie. The thing is you don't get access to other people's data, so you don't know, you know, the veracity of these efforts in other people's regards. Having said that, you know, we decided to go with an aggregator just because distributors I was speaking to,

Marcus Mizelle (58:09)
Mm-hmm.

you

Gille Klabin (58:25)
who were offering to buy the movie, they also used aggregators. And you can use a bunch of them, but the one we went for is Bitmax, B-I-T-M-A-X. And the big reason I went with them is it is very much a service. They don't take equity in your movie. They don't take ownership. It is a hands-off. Yeah, it is like, this is how much it would cost you to put your movie on iTunes, Amazon, and Google YouTube. And then we will send you hyperlinks.

Marcus Mizelle (58:33)
Mm-hmm.

Just, okay. Just upfront cost. Nice.

Gille Klabin (58:54)
and then you run your own campaigns and then here is a link to our PayPal and you can see transparent bookkeeping and how much your movie is going to make. it's hands off and that's what I wanted. that's, this was the promise we made to our investors in the first place that facilitated even making this movie. You're saying to investor in typically in movies, you're like, okay, invest in this. And if the movie makes this much and we'll a distributor, blah, blah, you can't promise them anything on that money. Whereas now I could say to investors like, look,

If you put in this money, I am going to oversee it with my team. This is our previous work and there will be nobody standing between the movie making money and you getting your money back. There is no distributor. There is no anybody else. Bitmax gets the hell out of your way. They're running, they run a great operation. They QC, they create your captions. They're reasonably priced and you can get your money on the, on the big platforms.

Marcus Mizelle (59:33)
Hmm.

Hmm?

Yeah, it's just taking it to market really and getting it ready so people can see it. And you know what, I was doing a hybrid with the last doc that we did and I was able to go right to upload to Amazon directly. I think you still are. Like Amazon, am I using Prime Video Direct? You know, it's, you still want to go through a Bitmax and get all that QC, that quality control and get, know, and you get all the other platforms because you don't have direct access to them. But it was like a wonderful kind of realization of, I don't need, it's almost like getting it out of your head that

Gille Klabin (59:59)
I think yeah.

No, mean, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (1:00:16)
You don't need somebody else to do that for you when you can do it yourself, right? That's that kind of notion.

Gille Klabin (1:00:20)
Mm-hmm. But like, and also like,

all these things, they operate, like all these distributors are operating on a reality that filmmakers are tired, scared, and desperate. You know, it's predatory. And again, I don't think a lot of these distributors, I don't think they're bad people. I think it's just the way it is. Like, they just, I've had distributors say stuff.

Marcus Mizelle (1:00:35)
It's predatory in a way. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then people do want that. People

are tired and scared and they don't want to continue on, or they don't want to maybe do that angle and they want this person to do it for them or this company.

Gille Klabin (1:00:51)
Dude, like, not everybody...

I cut nine different six-second bumpers, I've cut four different 15-second spots, I've made two 30s, I've been doing variations in different things and making all our assets, doing all our laurels and our festival announcements. I'm making assets like I do for some of my day jobs. Not every filmmaker wants to do that and I don't... Okay, of course.

Marcus Mizelle (1:01:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Gille Klabin (1:01:14)
doesn't mean you have to go with a distributor. You can still self-distribute and then hire a marketing agency to make all your assets, to do your media planning and buying. Like I ran some test campaigns on Google ads. I'm running one right now, trying to attract more people to subscribe to our YouTube so that when we do release more stuff, we already have eyeballs on it. And so I'm learning Google ads and I'm learning meta ads.

Marcus Mizelle (1:01:16)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Gille Klabin (1:01:37)
And I just now found a guy who works in media planning and buying, and he's now educating me. It's incredible. And I don't think everybody has to learn that stuff to be independent. I'm doing it because we cannot afford to spend more money. anybody can do it. Just hire a marketing agency instead of getting in bed with a distributor who will charge you for that marketing agency, and you'll never get to see the books.

Marcus Mizelle (1:01:43)
Nice.

that they're gonna capture all of your potential income or return. And also it's just plug and play, right? You don't have to do any sort of exact thing this way, this way, this way. You can still say, hey, maybe I do want somebody to help me with this component, but over here I can do that myself, et cetera. Maybe what are my strengths as a filmmaker? And also the analytics, I mean, I'm very curious once you have that data looks like.

Gille Klabin (1:02:11)
Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (1:02:19)
and then being able to then reposition your marketing probably.

Gille Klabin (1:02:20)
mean, already.

So I did, so on the wave, for example, at about, you know, three quarters of the way through the year, I was getting really frustrated because it was very clear to me that our distributors were not, were not spending smart dollars. They were not targeting our audiences and stuff. And it was 2020, COVID was rampant. I think the new wave had just dropped. was Omicron or Delta or something. People were going to be back in their homes, you know, trying not to die. And I wanted to...

I wanted that film, I wanted my movie to be seen. I was still desperate to pay back our investors. I ended, yeah, yeah. And I, so I ran my own campaign. I spent like five grand of my own money. I hired a friend of mine who worked in marketing PR and I actually ran a targeted campaign and I started learning stuff from it. And I was like, okay, average viewer retention was only six seconds. So I made a whole batch of new spots that were all,

Marcus Mizelle (1:02:54)
And was a good time to have a movie on VOD, right? mean, yeah, yeah.

wow.

Gille Klabin (1:03:18)
only six seconds long. And then I saw that spots that were opening with Donald Faison's face were outperforming other spots. So I made a new batch that were all six seconds, all started with Donald Faison's face. And then I saw horror was outperforming comedy and so on and so on and so on. And I was just adaptive. I just kept going. And I let, you know, as a creative person, you kind of don't really want to be restrained too much, but honestly, the constantly, the ever shifting,

Marcus Mizelle (1:03:30)
Mmm.

key information.

Gille Klabin (1:03:45)
arena in which I was playing in just became a fun game. was like, okay, I need to make six exciting seconds, six second spots that are exciting. And they have to open with Donald Faison's face. And they have to be horror. And okay, so that's, that's those are rules of the game. So then I just played within that game and kept trying to outdo myself.

Marcus Mizelle (1:03:56)
Mm-hmm.

What were the results you saw? Uptick?

Gille Klabin (1:04:07)
⁓

they outperform by 90 % every single time. Every time you leaned into the data, it just did better and better and better. And there's like, you know, there's entire marketing agencies, like, again, working with Mikey at Paradise, you know, like, I'll pitch him three or four different six second spots I've made. And he'll just say like, look, you want to open with a famous person's face because you want somebody to have something human they can connect with and familiar that attracts them.

Marcus Mizelle (1:04:33)
Familiar.

It opened, yeah, people just, we're all that way, right? It's like, that you can just kind of grab ahold of it and have an understand, a familiarity, which does let your guard down. And then you, all of a sudden you start to consider the movie more. Maybe I will push play on that. Unless you're like, I don't like that actor, which never seems to happen too much. Not at all. And the thing is, if an actor has a market value, then they're probably just pretty fucking likable across the board anyways, usually.

Gille Klabin (1:04:41)
Yeah, it's something else, something to anchor into.

but nobody's saying about Thomas Lennon. So we're good in that regard.

Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (1:05:01)
past films, any past films that most inspired you in general as a filmmaker and any films that inspired weekend at the end of the world

Gille Klabin (1:05:09)
You know, it's really funny. for me, like, yeah, I like I loved dark comedy and I like stylish visual storytelling. ⁓ Again, I grew up in an era of like Michelle Gondry music videos and that stuff is just so playful and fun and different. And also Terry Gilliam, like, you know, his kind of like almost campy surrealist stuff was really, really fun for me.

Marcus Mizelle (1:05:18)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (1:05:38)
I think particularly for Weekend at the End of the World, I think the two movies that we get compared to a lot, certainly the movies that inspired me the most would be Shaun of the Dead, and from being in England, which was like very silly, but the stakes were still high, and there was a ton of heart. Yeah, yeah, it was dripping in style, and it had...

Marcus Mizelle (1:05:48)
Okay.

And the filmmaking was very high as well. Like, whoa. Yeah.

Gille Klabin (1:06:02)
lovable idiot protagonists, but the stakes were high, the danger was real, and above all else is like the heart was there. You really, you cared about these guys. And I think in a slightly sillier way, I think Tucker and Dale versus Evil achieved that really, really well. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (1:06:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

you

Okay, nice. I

never saw it, but I know of it.

Gille Klabin (1:06:25)
It's good. don't think it's as punchy and stylish of a movie as Shaun of the Dead is.

Marcus Mizelle (1:06:32)
But

a very small movie, or a smaller movie

Gille Klabin (1:06:35)
yeah, smaller movie. but yeah, I think Shaun of the Dead's budget, I think was roughly six million pounds. Yeah, so that's, mean, that's not nothing. It's pretty substantial.

Marcus Mizelle (1:06:37)
I you.

okay.

Let's see what Tucker and Dale's was,

five million. So they're very close. Either way, doesn't mean, whether I saw it or not, doesn't mean it's good or not. just didn't, for some reason, some of those movies just, you know, sneak by.

Gille Klabin (1:06:56)
There's

so many, there's so many. But then, you know, and other movies like Cabin in the Woods, I thought was a really, really fun, subversive, dark, stylish, cool thing.

I love surrealism. ⁓ The big thing for me is I'm desperate to be surprised. I think one of the biggest things that really pushed me, like I really, really enjoy, I love silly, I love dark. I love the combination of dark and comedy together because I feel like it just yo-yos your emotions so well. Like I'm enjoying this piece of levity, I'm having a good time, I'm giggling and laughing and then suddenly something dark happens and it yanks me the other direction and I'm tense.

Marcus Mizelle (1:07:12)
Okay.

Sure. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (1:07:34)
or I'm in a tense

situation and I can barely breathe and then just like one moment of levity hits and it's like my entire body just untenses for a second. It's such a sad, it's a ride. that's oftentimes when I'm watching a movie, I want to be taken on an adventure if that's the kind of movie you're tuning into. So I was, I feel like that's the movies, that's the movies past wise that that affected me a lot. And then a lot of the considerations were just budget, know, physical reality, temporal reality and

Marcus Mizelle (1:07:49)
Nice.

Great.

Gille Klabin (1:08:04)
fiscal reality.

Marcus Mizelle (1:08:05)
Sure, yeah, amazing, nice. That makes sense. Okay, last question. Give me like a life, a filmmaking life lesson. know, if you could go back in time and tell your younger filmmaking self anything right now, what would it be?

Gille Klabin (1:08:18)
I like, so I have two and I think I said this when we did the video podcast, like for me, so a practical one would be, should never be work shy when it comes to pre-production. And you should really, even if you can't draw, draw badly, try to make your movie as many times as you can before you do it the expensive way. like film it with toys, draw it, make an animatic.

Marcus Mizelle (1:08:22)
Yeah.

Gille Klabin (1:08:42)
Learn simple programs like Blender, fuck it, play with AI if needs be. Put your movie up on his feet. Do table reads for the love of God, do table reads. Get there's so many actors happy just to get involved and like to sharpen their tools with a table read. Get your film up on its feet as many ways as you can. Watch your movie as many ways as you can so that when it gets to the time where there's a ticking clock and money is burning and every single minute you're on set.

you're working off a knowledge base that already exists rather than sort of faking it out on the fly. Like I cannot tell you how many times I've been on set working in different departments, working in a camera department where the director will show up and be like, so how should we cover this? And I'm like, before you showed up, motherfucker, that's how you cover this. Not when we're all here sweating and suffering. You don't figure it out now. You figure it out before so that you can pull off something cool.

So that's my technical one. And I think the more artistic one is got to make a bunch of stuff. And there is so much pressure. And I definitely experienced it too. There's so much pressure. And we've talked about this. So was talking about this with some of your earlier movies to like to do the thing. You should make this high-end looking Apple commercial or you should do this punchy, cuddy Tony Scott style or this Nike commercial thing. There is some weird in us.

Marcus Mizelle (1:09:36)
Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (1:10:04)
And I think the more you make, the more you find out your own idiosyncratic weird. And you've got to cherish that and honor that in my humble subjective opinion. The more I listen to the very strange frequency of weird coming out of my brain, the better my work has gotten. The stuff I'm most proud of is the most honestly, for better or worse,

Marcus Mizelle (1:10:10)
Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (1:10:32)
honest, silly, vulnerable, experimental, ambitious stuff I've made that is, that was true to the strangeness that is whatever chemical my brain is. And the more I've tried to do what I think people want and what I think people expect, the more I've made lifeless trash that has barely covered my bills.

Marcus Mizelle (1:10:43)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Same girl. And you know what? That's the value

of going through these things. I think, you know, it's not about just, OK, I tried, I quit. It's like, OK, I tried. That's not really a great thing that I like to look back at. But I'm going to now tweak what I do moving forward. mean, without my experiences that I won't name here right now, I wouldn't have had the good experience, know, the successes or the things that I look back at finally now because of that. It's the same thing as somebody who shows up and isn't prepared to shoot.

Maybe because they never had to be prepared. They never valued the dollar or a few dollars that they had because they always had it. And that's the value of having no money or having to struggle to then take that on and appreciate and then make more out of what you have later on, right?

Gille Klabin (1:11:33)
Well, it's also just

like this, there's just no substitute for time. There's no substitute for experience. Don't beat yourself up. You're meant to suck. If you start off great, that's incredible. But you you're still starting off. So presumably you want to get better and you're to get better over time and experience. So just don't be afraid of sucking. Yeah. Like I was I was terrified of I'd learned every facet of filmmaking before I finally took a chance on writing and

Marcus Mizelle (1:11:37)
Mmm, sure.

progress.

Marathon, take a breath, relax.

Gille Klabin (1:12:03)
only in like accepting that my brother actually gave me some great advice. was just like, just do a vomit pass. Just throw up a pass of your script. It's gonna be a lot easier to come back to it and edit it. And then I did, I think 13 drafts of my first script that gave me the confidence to believe that maybe I could write. Then I made the wave and I essentially like saw what translating my thoughts from.

Marcus Mizelle (1:12:13)
Get it out.

Gille Klabin (1:12:29)
a page that was written for me into the final product that there was a through line. And then I wrote a script last, last, no, two years ago that I actually, sold a script and that was just before we went into doing Weekend, which I had co-written with Clay. But it was only all that process of writing embarrassing drafts and having people throw back stuff at me that made me believe that I could even write. And then I sold a script and then made a script that I'd written.

And now, like, I don't have any delusions about my capacity to write. But that didn't happen right away. That happened through a series of humbling.

Marcus Mizelle (1:13:01)
There's million, bajillion,

resilience of it all is really the thing that we always keep coming back to with every guest that I have resilience. Try to just keep on keeping on

Gille Klabin (1:13:10)
Yeah.

got to love doing it. And, you he talked about my directing style. I remember on the way Donald Faison came up to me, he was like the end of week one, he was like, man, I hope you don't change. I was like, what do you mean? Change what? He's like, you're just so enthusiastic. You're so passionate. You know, it just reminds me like why I got into doing all this. And I was like, buddy, I don't, this is not going away. Like the world, life has told me

Marcus Mizelle (1:13:13)
Well, that's for sure.

Mmm.

Gille Klabin (1:13:37)
Seek financial aid elsewhere, many, many times. I do this because I can't not do this. is nothing gets me as excited. Shit, man, when I was doing the VFX on this, I remember I was walking around my house, I was brushing my teeth, and I just figured out something to do with the particle engine that I could make particles on the edges of the portals look better. And I was just standing in my bathroom smiling and brushing my teeth. And my wife comes up to me, she's like, what are you smiling about?

And I was like, I think I just figured out how to, you know, how to doctor the particle system to get exactly what I wanted. And she was like, you are a fucking nerd.

Marcus Mizelle (1:14:11)
Well, it's

a you fucking nerd. No, but it's like the moments where your brain just kind of where you don't force something like putting together a puzzle or something. It's just like your brain just gets in this probably a different state. I'm sure, you know, where like you then whatever you were trying to figure out just kind of comes to you in like a most wonderful way.

Gille Klabin (1:14:20)
Mmm.

it's always when I'm trying to fall

Marcus Mizelle (1:14:30)
you know a lot of times for me too it's been when I'm waking up, like right when I'm, but I'm not completely awake yet where I'm kind of, but I'm still in that probably, I don't know, what would you say that state is? that beta?

Gille Klabin (1:14:34)
Mmm!

The twilight, like the twilight

of consciousness, know, it's like, I'm sure it's yeah, it's called like delta or theta wave or something.

Marcus Mizelle (1:14:43)
Yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, that's a whole other thing. Hey, it's a fucking good conversation. I appreciate you.

Gille Klabin (1:14:50)
mate, thank

you so much for having us. this is, you know, to get the word out of a movie is many, it's myriad efforts in all sorts of different ways. And I love your podcast. I love the stuff you focus on. It's the stuff I care about so much. And I, you know, I admire so many of the filmmakers you've had on and I feel wonderful that I took all those compromising pictures of you and I got to exploit that into, you know, getting to join the ranks.

Marcus Mizelle (1:14:53)
course.

Thank you.

You've

sent me all the copies, You promise? Damn it. what we just did, you know, every week. It's like, it's a literal fair trade exchange every time I have an interview,

Gille Klabin (1:15:19)
⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah,

Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (1:15:29)
really speak about our process. We get ⁓ a few Q &As and a few interviews maybe and that's it. But it's like, no, we have more to say.

Gille Klabin (1:15:35)
But there's

also like this weird thing where I feel like, because oftentimes as a director, you're pitching to get a job, let's say on something, and you're told you're pitching against somebody else. So there's like this weird skewed idea that we're somehow in competition with one another. And the reality is, we're not. Marcus and Gil are never going to make the same thing. We're not ever competing. And you're not competing with even if there's a similar filmmaker who makes similar stuff than you.

Marcus Mizelle (1:15:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm, right. Yeah. Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gille Klabin (1:16:03)
still

gonna be their own stink on it and your own stink on it. It's like we're just not in competition so that's why I love speaking to fellow filmmakers.

Marcus Mizelle (1:16:07)
Yeah, which you know, totally,

totally. it's just, yeah, it is all love. And you know what, it'd be an interesting exercise. I don't know what the apparatus would look like, to give two different filmmakers the same script and just see what kind of movie they would make, But they would be different.

really be inspired than than than envious. You know what I mean?

Gille Klabin (1:16:25)
I think that's a beautiful way to put it. And it's literally just a shift of a perspective and then you're using one source of energy instead of another one, but all of it is still using energy. So I would rather be inspired and have part of my heart get driven and be like, well, you know, for one day, hopefully somebody is gonna watch one of my movies and think the same thing of like, damn, I wanna make something like that. That movie just made me feel and I wanna make somebody else feel the things that this movie made me feel.

Marcus Mizelle (1:16:35)
⁓ yeah.

That's all.

Gille Klabin (1:16:52)
certainly been conditioned to compete and to there's very few things that that have been taught to me that was like celebrate, you know, find joy in other people's accomplishments. Anything else told me just like, you know, you got to work while everybody else is resting and you got to dominate and blah, blah, and all that led to was me going me going gray in the hair much earlier than I should have done because I was working myself into the grave.

Marcus Mizelle (1:16:55)
sure.

Right, this conditioning. ⁓

as opposed to what's helping each other