 and welcome to the show. Joining me today are filmmakers Thomas Doody and Trishal Tujasvi for Marensis Films. Thank you both for joining me. Thank you Ariana and you're welcome. Thank you. How did you both get interested in film? Well actually I remember watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit and that kind of solidified live-action filmmaking for me, but before that I was like obsessed with cartoons, commercials, anything on that television screen I was obsessed with. I think uh my mom didn't like to tell me I was obsessed with it until I got my first like job. Then she was like okay and I'll tell you how obsessed you were when you were a kid. When I was a teenager I was like I didn't know like what a director was or a filmmaker I just saw the actors on the screen. I thought they were the people making the stories so I got obsessed with being an actor. Then I found out stuntmen were doing the scenes and the cool scenes so I was like I need to be a stuntman. So like on 11 or 12 I'm jumping off stuff thinking that's how you make films. Then I find out about writers and cinematographers. I saw you know they say ASC at the end of cinematographers names I thought that was like a degree. So I got obsessed with telling my mom I'm gonna get a camera degree. So I got really good at physics. Then I found out you don't need a degree to become a filmmaker so I dropped out of school and that's the story. And how about you Thomas? I mean it's not far off. I mean it started when I was very young and like I think you know it's funny he mentions who for him Roger Rabbit is like live-action but of course it has animation in it and mentioned cartoons. I mean that's where it began for me too. But specifically I remember the day it came out I was in the theater to see the nightmare before Christmas and I was so fascinated with like the the style of animation stop motion and I actually thought like they I was like who do they cast to get that skinny and that like short and fat you know I was an idiot little kid I think I was four at the time and so you know I was so fascinated by that and so I got really into like film and animation and I mean it just it was born since then. You two are working together now so how did you two start working together and how did you two meet? He was coming back from LA during his break Christmas break to make a short film and he needed a camera long story short and he contacted me and I said I give you a discount. He sounded like a passionate guy. I went on set with the camera and the DP Sebastian Barron he had to leave halfway through for some issue so he asked me to pick it up and we kind of just worked well together. Actually I remember like the first time he took us to a coffee shop what were the biggies? Yeah we did meet at biggies which is no longer in existence. It meant to be a 10 minute meeting but we ended up seeing them for like two hours then we went to another bar. We just vibed clicked and it was good to like I was in this area like and I've met a few guys that I thought were really passionate about film but then when I went to see Thomas's bedroom I was like it's the first time I saw someone's bedroom that looked like mine back in England you know just posters tons of film stuff and I was like there's another guy like this in Bradenton I was like okay and we just had the same mentality about what film should be like and what art is and everything like that. So you both work together with Arendt's films now how did Arendt's films as a whole come to be? So when I came to America I was like it's a long story when I came to America but I was here I wasn't quite sure what I was doing I didn't move here to make films I moved here to get away from life in England and my parents had a condo so it kind of just worked out I just sat there. I was like I saw the filmmaking community here and I was like okay it's kind of interesting it's like seems to be growing and I was like maybe I need to start a new company something I can just a new identity something was fresh and everything and then the name Arendt's was always there since I was a teenager I don't know where it came from it just it was there so the name I don't know where it came from it just was there but then I was talking to my friend Yoni who's my partner in Drift for Pictures about writing a script and it was about a story where this guy's this illusion of life and he gets a letter said come back home he comes back home and finds out his sister his brother-in-law and his father have died in a car crash and he starts to befriend his niece who's left over and she's writes this diary to her parents as if they're still alive and it's like some fantastic imagination diary and he calls it the Arendt's Diaries and we scrapped that project a long time ago it wasn't going anywhere and then after my sister passed away I was here in America and I thought Arendt's I like that name let's let's get into that so I looked into the legality of it whether someone else had used it and I just broke the word down and arend means forever in Hebrew and then sis sister and it was like click it was like gotta use that name and yeah just pretty much stuck like that and I didn't know what the company was about in the beginning it was just a company just to have an LLC keep your liability away from me as a freelancer and then over the last few years I started to grow like Thomas came on board and we're getting other people coming on board now and now it's like the vision for the company is a lot more clear it's like just support original visions that's what the company's all about yeah I mean I remember like you know when he kind of won me over with the company's vision was when we were sitting on my patio late at night and you know we were talking about the short film that we had just shot and he you know kind of compared a Rensis to you know something like the BBS company back in the 70s that was putting out like Easy Rider and stuff like that you know going back to making films for the sake of making films and not for the sake of making money you know that's something you hope to come along to of course no one wants to be poor but at the same time you know it is about original vision and saying something new and expressing something that we haven't seen and we don't see on a you know weekly basis at the theater I think people want that now people are getting tired of people go watch this big tentpole like franchise film Marvel Star Wars everyone likes them but people are still hungry for something new we've seen everything and the problem with films right now is they're not coming from one like heart you know like how books or any great story you know about comes from one place one person's idea and the films we're seeing now in amalgamations of what people want to see we're not seeing films that people want to you know we're not sharing people's visions we're not sharing people's dreams we're sharing like a collection of weird like this makes money this doesn't make money so that's our goal is to try bring back the 70s and in the 30s in Hollywood is also that primary when people are just making films for the sake of making films do that with a sensibility that we will try to make money like obviously we want to make money like I'd like a big house and um yeah trying to make money but make good films at the same time it's like then why one wants to do but you know I think the big thing that has been forgotten is the importance of script you know the importance of your story from the get-go you know and everyone's fascinated by the end product and that's why we have producers who come in and take a script and say well that's that's not for the audience the audience doesn't want to see iron man die you know I don't know if he died I haven't seen the last one but like you get what I'm saying they come in and they destroy these stories and we've forgotten the originality of vision we've forgotten that everything starts with the writer um and that's not to give the writer any more credence than any other crew member on set you know that goes down to the gaffer to the pa you know but at the same time it does start with that singular vision of somebody who wants to say something and I think artists these days have forgotten that you know the job is not far from being a profit and saying something and communicating ideas and being able to take all the knowledge we've learned and relay it in a new way to modern society and hopefully they'll learn that take something new and keep relaying it yeah films and documenting dreams that's why I look at it so okay so you mentioned the aransas diaries which never really went anywhere and you both talked about making films from your heart basically are there any current projects that you're working on right now uh I guess the biggest thing we're working on now is the dread town documentary that's been going for a few years now a few yeah um but yeah now it's like starting to really get to the end point uh we're just raising finance for the post production which is a lot more expensive than we anticipated it always is yeah because you gotta get rights for all the music and all the stock footage and then sound mixing um yeah the the documentary is about a reggae band called steel pulse from the 1970s in england um yeah it's about a band that went through prejudice in england with the police and the system and you know the music is very political and very charged but at the same time it's really fun to listen to and it's a band that I didn't like reggae I got into reggae music videos because my friend yoni I wasn't a big reggae fan but obviously after being around a lot of musicians and artists it's like now I really love reggae and steel pulse was the first reggae band I actually liked and I think that's why this documentary is going to be pretty important about for music so along with current projects like dread town you've recently been working on monty comes back do you want to talk a little about that Thomas wrote a script a couple years ago called monty comes back and he wanted to make it into a film uh I read the script and I really liked it I was just concerned about is this something it's not got any car chases or anything like that and I was like I was just concerned about is this gonna have a market yeah budget was 15,000 overall um and yeah we got an actor from New York called Brandon Tyler Jones who killed it amazing actor I mean really amazing actor and we had a lot of I think there's 40 speaking roles right or 40 I think there were like literally 49 roles in it and I think like you're right like 42 or 43 we're actually like had at least one line at least like one line that was integral which is that was the challenge when you think about like a lot of low budget independent films have a small cast for a reason because it you know logical this had 40 four roles in it including chief O'Keeffe who's sitting in the back over there chief O'Keeffe and pretty much every actor in this area that we like and let me let me tell you how difficult in Florida sorry Florida it is to find older actors good older actors I mean like we found young people we found teenagers we had so many the age of Monty was 27 years old you know and we're willing to work within that age gap but we had so many 17 18 year old 19 year olds applying for the role in the area it was amazing then as soon as you put out a call for like his parents here about 65 73 it's like come on this is Florida there's got to be more retired actors here you know I guess all of them are hanging around the graveyards in LA but so Monty is a semi successful thespian who you know found minor success by doing a one-man show early in his his life and he's working at a community theater of all things in Detroit when we find them at the first part of the film right before he has a immediate blow-up and kind of ruins everything that he has up there for himself verbally assaults his boss his boss punches him in the face and he has no other real choice other than to come back to Florida under the pretense of being on a creative hiatus so coming back it's about the story of a man coming for a second coming of age just finding himself again and learning to appreciate family and the things are important in life it's basically knocking his delusions out and the film is like a really sweet funny drama about this young man is a real jerk um that's what I loved about the script is this anti-hero I love anti-heroes and like it doesn't play to the conventions of this guy needs to do this or that it'd be like the conflict isn't as obvious as you think it is it's not on the surface it's not like I've lost my job I need to get another one it's not about that the conflict is something more internal and real and I think people are really going to enjoy it because it's funny plus it has something to say and for I think this area is going to be really proud of the film once they come once we're done with the edit and we'll put it out there I think people are going to really be impressed by what we did for 15,000 dollars it looks like 150,000 dollars yeah it looks good looks pretty good we had the best team in the area that's what we are I'm looking forward to it and along with your own personal projects you've recently been collaborating with students at bob gray's dvp course do you want to talk about that no yeah no they're not cool enough no no well I mean you know uh bob gray contacted tricia and you know uh was like hey could you come and do like a lecture or a workshop or something and tricia called me and we're just going to be like a one-day thing but then we figured that you know why not extend this you know um and so we ended up you know coming in every you know you know how often we came in every friday most often um to just kind of talk to you guys about what it is to be filmmakers and like how you're going to have to do it and you know what you should do I guess but also to workshop scripts with you and develop them and bring them to fruition and we shot one of them that tricia directed and I produced that taylor teague aka megan teague wrote um and now and we started shooting overcooked but by viviana lopez but we're looking to readjust that nonetheless we have because we're rushing into it we're trying to get a deadline for the south stone phil festival uh but then we realized we're rushing the films we're compromising the films and the whole point when we came to the class was trying to teach the students how to make an indie film the indie process um no and that's something I don't think a lot of film schools retouch on is like how to make an independent film how do you work in that world where there's no rules in terms of like union like 12 hour days or 10 hour days um and how do you work with no budget how do you get actors interested how do you uh literally make not something from nothing and we're rushing it basically and yeah that's why we're taking time off now to make sure the scripts are right and we get the right cast for the films because one film festival is not going to dictate the success of a film yeah absolutely I mean and that's that's my biggest frustration and seeing like after going to film school you know and being kind of forced that Chapman especially is that studio oriented film school you know so after being forced into this like regiment you know and knowing the proper way um I think that prepared me for you know doing independent film but it certainly is frustrating when you know you give so much leeway to the things that you know you know aren't necessarily you know going to vibe with that studio mentality but one thing that you always have is time for the most part unless you're going to die tomorrow which I hope isn't the case but um you know nonetheless you always have time so you never want to rush and I you know I see that too often in like younger people a lot of young filmmakers they they want to they want to get to the production point they're bored by writing the script and developing and pre-production you know but honestly if you do all that correctly your movie makes itself for the most part you know um any director will tell you and like just pass off like the work on to their cast because they've done the pre-production and casted right and done enough rehearsal that like that's where their job was mainly and at the end of the day they're probably just tweaking if they're even there all Woody Allen you know so um I think you know that's the most important thing these days is you know people get too caught up in camera and production they want to be around the lights and everything and it's not necessarily like a Hollywood spectacle mentality but it is like you want to be doing something and it's hard to sit there in a chair and write and care about this thing that's going to take longer when you're sitting in a chair you know but it's the most important aspect yeah I learned that the short film which was technically my graduation film um I learned that lesson hard like I thought the film was a failure because the script wasn't as good as it could have been um it looks great we did that I was so obsessed with the look of everything the special effects and you know the lighting the actors but the script was the big thing and that's what I learned from that do not do that again make when you make a film just get it right before you even start doing production so what's next for both of you what's next for Arendt's films as a whole um a few things I mean you know we have these these projects that you guys are doing and that's um you know gonna be the next you know kind of shorts coming out of Arendt's that's you know mutually that we mutually worked with you guys on out of STC or SCT STC I got it right the first time okay um and then you know we don't want to mention exactly what it is quite yet but um we're working on developing Tricia's first feature film that he wrote and directed um which you know hopefully we'll be shooting by the beginning of next year um but we're working on that I just finished a feature script that I'm pursuing to shoot hopefully right after Tricia's feature um we both have a few short films of our own you know in the lineup that are just you know kind of a mix of exercises for us just to keep things going and keep us you know working but also projects that we've wanted to do for a little while um I mean what else I'm I think the biggest thing is the a new subdivision we want to start off which you want to call Arendt's academy but the main aim is to have I want to say the videography department inside of Arendt's films Arendt's films we're like kind of focusing on narrative and those personal projects but Arendt's academy is going to be more of a workhouse and we're hoping to like have a lot of students a mix of students and semi-professionals and professionals working on projects and literally being the number one place to go to in Sarasota or this side of Florida to get any video or film project done you come to Arendt's films and we'll put the stamp of quality on it but any budget you have you come to us and we'll get it done basically from a few hundred dollars up to several thousand that's the next this is this year's main goal is to take this company to make it into something real in this area and so at the same time as this department we'll be doing a lot of the videography and kind of branching out from narratives it's hopefully going to you know be an avenue for a lot of younger people in the area to be able to work on films be able to work on projects and get that experience that you don't necessarily get on a day to day in this specific area you know it's not Los Angeles and even it's hard to get work out there sometimes too so this will be hopefully you know that way for them to be provided not only you know a small income from the projects they work on but also the experience literal you know moving stuff and learning what the things that you use on set like what's a C-stand right you're going to figure that out I hope you guys know what C-stands are but nonetheless you know it's going to be that kind of mix of both worlds you know it's going to be business you guys are literally going to be you guys you know people who come in will be literally getting experience in the real world the profession of the film industry the profession of the film industry that sounds so weird you're learning how to invoice learning how to chase up you know all these kind of business break some kneecaps if you need to but you know at the same time you'll be learning you know it'll be a school be kind of like the ghetto film school of Brighton it'd be like a genuine internship for people like that's that's our goal and we're trying we're literally going to be working that out in the next week or two but that's the goal for this year so if people want to get in contact with you where should they go? Arensisfilms.com or Arensis.com just go to their website and you can pretty much see everything that we're revamping the website for this new direction we're going to do it's constantly being updated you can also find us on facebook at Arensisfilms at facebook.com slash Arensisfilms you can also find Monty comes back on facebook or on the web do google search or Monty comes back.com I look forward to everything that's to come from both of you thank you both for joining me I'm Irene Hellman and this is the show