 Mr. Stink Tech Hawaii, the community matters here. Aloha y bienvenido to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm Richard Concepcion, your host. Today's guest is Ana Jimenez-Madamele. She is the executive producer at the Atres at Work on the film Natural Reaction and World Buffet. It was created and filmed here in Hawaii. Ana, welcome to the show. Muchas gracias. Buenas tardes. Let's start by asking you to tell me just a little bit about yourself and what motivated you to become an actress. Such a difficult film to do. Thank you. Yes, so I wanted to do something more creative. My area is in public health. Healthcare has kind of been my passion all my life. But there were little inklings when I was younger. I was in this little film in grade school that the teacher, she filmed it and I was all intrigued how she set up everything. And then I wrote to Lizzie Wagner back in the day and she was a very strong character. So I felt like, well, I want to be like her, you know. But then I got more into health in seventh grade and my path kind of led me there. But more recently, I just felt like I wanted to do something different than public health. So that's kind of how I got involved. And so I initially hired a team and the first team I didn't go with. So I went with the second team and I felt like I made the best choice to work with natural reaction. So you become the executive producer and the actress for natural reaction. So you do hot. Is there any conflict between being the executive producer and the actress in the film? Well, I think when you're trying to do two roles, yeah, it's challenging, but, you know, you just take it by the way you can handle it. And so by hiring the team, they said, Anna, just focus on your acting. Let us do the rest because I was trying to go, oh, what about the food and what about this? And it was just too much. So by hiring the team, I let them take care of that. And then I could focus on my lines and my character and doing my part as far as being the actress. And then the executive producer role was just basically doing the funding. Wow, that's great. Let me ask you about casting. And also I want to talk about the budget to create in the movie. So how difficult was for you to be able to find actors and actress to perform in the natural reaction? And how was the budget looked like? Well, that's what made it interesting. By hiring a team, I didn't have to worry about that. And they hired the best actors. Some of them was Jim Ina, who's an established theater actor. He's won some awards. And we have some Gen Z group actors, Landon Richards and Brandy Taylor. So their experience helped me get to my next level. So I didn't have to really worry about casting. It was another thing that took the stress off of me because we wanted good actors to make a really good movie. So talk to me about pre-production and post-production. How does it work as a executive producer? So pre-production, that's where you know you're doing your casting and you're finding the locations and actually the SAG office recommended that we do it at the Botanical Gardens in Kaneohe. So it really made a great fit. And post-production, of course, that's the editing. Then that's the marketing. That's really where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. So people think, oh, I'm going to make a movie and everything's going to be great. But if you want to sell it, now you're talking another realm. And it just, you know, that's a whole other chapter. Well, I want to ask you, what was the main natural reaction? What was the reason for that name? Well, that came out through the dialogue and just reading the dialogue. It actually weren't, they weren't my lines, but when I read it, I was like, hmm. Oh, and the original name was In the Loop. In the Loop. Yeah, but there was a movie that had a similar title. And so I felt like it was too close to that title. But in the dialogue, there was just something that came to mind and I was saying, how about natural reaction in what happens in the movie, how she reacts to what happens. It just all worked out. So natural reaction was a better title. So do you have a process like when you want to find a specific name for the movie, so make sure there is no copyright for another movie? Yes, you have to go through that process, but it's pretty easy because most movies now, and anything on TV is an IMDb9. So you can just go on there. But I've seen things with the same name, that's a movie and then a television show. So I think, yeah, you do have to talk to some legal, but we have legal representation or access to producers. I know it takes a lot of work to be the second to producer and also be part of the movie as an actress. So I want to take this opportunity to show the real, all natural reaction. Oh, and I wanted to quickly say too, I want to thank my husband, Eric, for his support because this wouldn't have happened without his love and support. Okay, let's watch the movie then. It was my sister who got me into painting. Always did things together, her and I. The cops don't know injustice, they know incompetence. What I did to your sister wasn't personal. It's just what I do. I'll kill everybody. I think she might have gone looking for two. Call back up and leave me there. Like that she died. That is natural reaction. Ana Jimenez-Mamelen, that was great. I watched the movie, wonderful movie. It kept me a lot suspended. What is going to happen? What is the name? What is she going to do? That's great, that's wonderful. So let me ask you where this movie was created? Where in Hawaii was that? Most of it was filmed in the Potamacal Garden in Kaneohe. And I wanted to mention too that my husband did the artwork. He did the artwork in this movie and the second movie that I did. So it's a family business to the film industry. So tell me where the movie was filmed. Okay, so it was filmed in the Potamacal Garden. And so we used a house that was there for the scenes. And then we used different areas in the Potamacal Garden to film the different scenes. So they weren't just all kind of in one location. But you know the magic of cameras and everything. You think there's somewhere else and it's like close to the house and other scenes were further from the house. But yeah, it made for a perfect location. And my car was actually in it too. By accident kind of. And then we did have other scenes that were up in Halapa Valley and at another house for one of the background crew gave us a family member's house. So there were a few other locations. And oh yeah, there was a location in Kailua at the bookstore. So that was kind of nice to have that. Well, that is great that we created film by filmmakers and actors and actresses here locally. And that's great for the business, for the community and for the future talents and future filmmakers. But if you have any tips to give to any executive producer or producer, what will you tell them? Well, stay within your budget. And everyone knows now you can make a movie with your phone. But if you want to have more polished look and you want to not worry about every little thing, yeah, you can hire a small crew to help you. Like I did the first movie. I ended up having a lot more crew. And I even had a stunt person, which is very unusual for an indie movie. And we had the drone at the end. And that time the guy was making his own drones. He said, oh yeah, they're going to be mass produced. And sure enough, everybody has a drone now, too. I wanted to mention, too, Theo Comis was another actor who's very established. He also does coaching. He was excellent. So I was very privileged to have gotten him on my movie. And stay within your budget. And it's just like any budget. Like I took some savings working capital, which means capital I'm making now between the husband and I. And just stuck with the budget, basically. Quickly to what you can afford. All right. So what was the best or the worst part of working in the movie as an actress? No, I said second to producer as an actress. The best part in working as an actress is, you know, you get treated like a queen for the day as far as hair and makeup. All girls love that. And, you know, dressing up and being somebody else, you know. And the worst part was, I mean, for this film, because this film is thriller horror drama, was there was a lot of emotion. And that's actually hard to play without, you know, not getting into it and how to get out of it and, you know, it weighs on you. But, you know, it comes with experience. I'm still a new actress. So I think seasoned actors, if they can get in and out of their emotions quickly. That's true, you know. So as an actress, you know, how do you prepare for that kind of, you know, talent to go into feel sad, to become happy, to laugh? How do you prepare for that? Well, the best way is to, you know, be yourself and let the character come into you. And you might have to think of a strong emotion if that's what it requires. But, yeah, you know, feeling the emotion as the best way and let the character come into you. Is there any benefit of creating your own movie? Is there a benefit behind that? Yes, you get to star in it, for one. Okay. And it gives you more footage for your real and more experience. As casting directors that came here from LA recently, they said, get into everything, you know, make your own movies, make movies with people who do play, keep going to class. That's how you get better. It's just like with any profession, you know, like with my public health. I mean, it didn't happen overnight. But, you know, I've been doing health care all my life since, you know, seventh grade, starting as an EMT, eventually getting my master's in public health, you know, start a health center, you know, et cetera. You know, it takes time, you know, and you keep perfecting your profession. And even like with my surfing, you know, I mean, I wish I was better, but I'm better than when I first started, you know, first five years, you know. So it's just, that's what, you know, that's your passion. And some people are naturals, you know. My one acting coach said that the person, they're natural, you know. But that's just how it goes with a lot of things, right? That's true. You're meant to be something and you're more better at it because you're more better because you're natural. Also, you got to continue practicing your skill, right? Exactly. So let me ask you, when the pre-production and you go through all the different phases and then you go to post-production and the film is complete. What do you do from there? Where do you go to play the movie? You just take it home and watch it and give it to your friends? What is the next step? Okay, like I mentioned before, the rubber meets the road. So my producers worked really hard on the editing and so now what we want to sell it, we want to make movies, money. So in addition to me, increasing my acting skills. So my one producer worked hard to get it on Amazon. It's in the second year now and it's on Prime, so if you got Prime, it's free. We also got it on Roku. We had it on two channels, but we took it off one channel because Roku, actually, a lot of people don't know about Roku, but it's another TV. It's like Hulu. But anyways, it was on two channels on Roku and we had to take it off a one, I think, because now we're going to be on Artemis streaming live channel and they require that if we have it on any platforms, it needs to be for sale, which is a good thing, right? Because you want to hopefully break even, but if you don't, I mean, you know, down the road, it'll come back to you. I mean, if you keep persisting. But anyways, so we're excited about that because Artemis is actually a film festival, which I mentioned to you. Okay. And so now they're doing a live streaming channel and so whoever got into their film festival gets to be on this channel and it's international. All right. So we're helping for the best. All right, that's perfect. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come by and we're going to continue talking story with Ana Jimenez, my member. My friend, mother, what big eyes you have. She said, all the better to see you with my dear. What are you doing? Okay. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah. This is the starting line. Posh. This is over. You're dead. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. We're here with Ana Jimenez, my manager. She is the executive producer and actress that work on natural reaction and World Buffet. Welcome back. We're going to continue talking stories. All right. So let me ask you, tell me a little bit about the casting, the actress and actress that came and performed for you and they sat and after union or they are no union? Well, we had union and non-union but we only had three union because you have to pay them. So they get residuals from when we sell the movie but they did get money up front but it was like the minimum because we're, you know, ultra low budget. So 20,000, that's not a lot of money. So they've gotten some residuals because we've gotten some checks from Amazon and Roku actually. So you was telling me about the procedure getting the movie to be playing in different locations in order for you to sell it. Tell me a little bit more about that. That was no very clear. Is it going straight to Amazon? You have a middleman who will set it up for you? How does it work? Yes, you have a middle person. And there's many platforms you can use. We went with one particular because that's the one we knew about. So yeah, there are different venues that you have to go through them and then they set you up on Amazon and it's a process. So you have to pay to be on there for the initial and then closed captioning and then the yearly is much lower and it still was a couple thousand, I think for 1500 or something like that between initial and then the closed captioning and then the yearly is really low. And then of course there's a quarterly or whatever, but yeah. And then Roku, I think there's like a monthly or something be I'm not really sure and then they pay you through the advertisement. I think that's how that works and Amazon, they take their percentage and I think with the new streaming, the Artemis streaming channel, that's going to be a little bit better deal because it's going to be 50-50 I believe. And actually I wanted to mention that Artemis, that's A-R-T-E-M-I-S film festival, there are women in action that kick butt and I know Raquel Welts one of her movies is on there. So that's that genre. If you have a movie that's like that, that's why we got onto that one. But we actually got picked up by a distributor, but we thought it was in our best controlling interest monetarily to go with these three platforms for now. Oh wow. So you've done natural reaction which is done well and still going. A lot of people are still watching it. So you are creating a new movie. Tell me a little bit about the new movie. Okay, so World of Fae is different from natural reaction as far as genre off because natural reaction again is thriller drama horror where World of Fae is comedy, a little spoofy and has heavy dialogue, has these like monologues that go on and on and it also has a little bit of a political backdrop. But nothing like too, you know, too controversial. Yeah, nothing too controversial, nothing too heavy. It's just light, but it's nice. And that's another thing about making your own movies is doing different genres so they can show your range and you can see what you're better at. But it's good to play whatever you can to get better. So as an actress you continue taking classes, you continue to prepare for different roles, right? Exactly. And so how do you prepare from being, you know, thriller to now comedy? Is there any major preparation or did you just like you say before just go with the flow? Well, yeah, I had, there was a lot of heavy dialogue in the first movie they're like, you know, it's your first movie, maybe not so much dialogue. So this one was a lot of dialogue. So yeah, I prepared for like over a half a year for it. So learning my lines, that's the most important thing then, you can get into your character. So yeah, it was a little bit different. And it was nice to be, you know, like quirky and funny and not have to have the all like bad and upset and all that. So it's more relaxing when you're doing something funny that doing something they had to do with the thriller. Yes. I mean, I had to still, there's parts of the movie where I do get upset, but I don't want to give it all away. Okay, great. So let's, let's watch. Let's watch this movie real quick. Okay, let's watch it. How do you choose from between Maine Lobster? Lausta. Shhh. Focus. How do you choose from between Maine Lobster or Georgia Peaches? Or whether your pizza is deep to Chicago or New York original? There's Cajun Shrimp from Louisiana or Kahlua Pig from Hawaii. Do we take the fish from Seattle or Clouster Bay? They're all... Can we just... Clouster Bay. All right. That is the world buffet. So tell me a little bit what was happening the other day and what you get was laughing, you know. Okay. So that's, it's actually world buffet bloopers, you know, takeouts that the things that didn't quite work out in the movie filming. So that's what was going on. But it was just trying to say the words right and I couldn't say it right and took forever and so that was one of the part of the bloopers because it's online right now. So it's like almost five minutes but we just took that part. So that's what was going on. That's what was going on. The mistakes of filming which is funny too, you know. So I don't want to say how many mistakes you guys made but it seems like it's fun what you're doing is something they had to do with comedy. How many hours does it take to just create let's say five minutes? Does it take a lot or do you spend two hours a day, five hours? How long does it take when you go film? Well it depends on the director. So a very famous director Clint Eastwood he only wants to do a couple of takes and he's done and so my director was the same way. We didn't want to do a bunch of takes unless we had to because you know we're on a two string budget so to speak. My second movie was only $18,000. So yeah you don't want to have to take a lot of time so it's important that you have people that know their lines and are ready to go because you know and the facility you have too so it might depend on that too you only have so many days or half a day to use you know your location. So what is your recommendation for the future actress and actress or filmmakers here in Hawaii that they want to create their own film what is your recommendation for them? Well I say go for it I mean there's a lot of people that want to make their own movie and that's all they want to do that's great there's some people that want to make their own movie and make money out of it that's where I'm at and increase my skills that's another level because like I said it's you know it's apples and oranges just to make the movie to sell it is another full enchilon because you know these big budget movies they have you know multi-million dollar budgets just to make the movie so that's where they get you know So talk to me about the marketing I want to know a little bit more about marketing how do you market your movies? Oh and I wanted to mention some of the actors in World Buffet so we have Wendy Pearson who's also an established theater actor actress and Starla Marie who happens to also be a singer-songwriter so I just wanted to mention a couple of actors in World Buffet so getting to making a movie here what was Oh talk about the you know the marketing part of the movie you created the movie you finished it how do we market this movie? Okay so I learned a lot in natural reactions Talk to me about that If you can have the budget like I said multi-million or even like maybe ten thousand twenty thousand because some people will do it for cheap maybe five you've got to do the social media that's worth that right now too right but then there's other people they like do you know LA Times they do all this other stuff that they can keep rotating it or on TV which is very expensive so if you don't have that kind of budget you can't advertise on TV right so they're paying a lot of money to do that so I did do the LA Times digital for us I didn't think it was all that successful because we didn't have the TV to match it so to speak so you got to kind of pick and choose like what will work for you but if you're doing media yourself you know you're talking you know Instagram Facebook Twitter but now there's ways one of my similar photographers said that you know just do through Instagram and it does both but so yeah you just have to decide it's really about your budget and time so the first movie I was doing it all myself that it was like I did for the it was like the first month or two when we got on Amazon yeah I was just like but you know now I've figured out some of the tricks oh I don't know about that but I mean it's just you know overwhelming that happened when you create a movie when you perform and you start using all the different platform to promote and then you get all these emails and you got to manage all these emails coming in and trying to respond to each and every one of them so it's become very very difficult let me ask you what is the future for Anna Heeman I said actress or producer is it good to produce her yeah so I actually hooked up my producers with another person that's up and coming actress she's actually better than me and she wanted to do her own movie she already had an idea of you know some storylines for what she wants to do and so she was actually going to go with somebody else and I talked her into going with my producers and so yeah and I thought she was just going to do it for really small people and so yeah so I'm going to be in her movie it's a small role and then I just got asked right now to do another movie by the way when we were out in the lobby somebody else asked me to do a movie that's great they wrote a novel and so I said oh okay but yeah so I'm going to concentrate though I really want to concentrate on improving my acting big time and I do want to make another movie so I have some it may not be an indie though and then the one that I just got asked about so actually I have two now on the burner turns out that's great just keep going don't stop one more question final questions you know students you know maybe they in high school or they're going to college and they want to continue I say producer and filmmakers what would you tell them from your personal experience? I would tell them that it is work it's the job take it seriously if this is what you want to do and more power to you youth is on your side and listen to those around you you know and even with me you know I got to listen to other people because you the more advice you can get the better you know I mean of course you got to pick and choose but yeah go for it guys a limit I say the worlds are oyster anyway you are right the sky is the limit and we want to say thank you so much for watching Spaniard Hawaii we had a great time here talking about natural reaction and World Buffet we Ana Jimenez Matt Miller and we want to say if you want to continue watching the show be back next Tuesday or you can go to thinktakehawaii.com to re-watch this program and Aloha gracias thank you