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A revolution is happening in Hollywood. No longer do you need the budgets of the big producers, do you need someone sitting inside of a director's office or a big streamer green lighting your production.
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You can now go out and make the next blockbuster movie, the next great film yourself, and you can do it as an indie author. You could turn your book into a movie.
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Today, we're gonna be talking with Jennifer Yanez, the partner of Jonathan Yanez.
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Jonathan is a best-selling indie author of sci-fi novels, and he sold over a million copies throughout his career, and they've produced two incredible films by turning their books into Kickstarters, and those Kickstarters, once funded, provided the cash and the resources to create Infinity System,
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an amazing short film with 295,000 views on YouTube. Huge success, and it's produced so well. You can watch it. It'll be linked down below.
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And now Forsaken Mercenary, which is not public yet, but has been produced and is now being shopped around at various film festivals, and that short film may just be the gateway to a longer feature length film funded by a streamer.
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It's huge.
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Literally an indie author, a husband and wife team starting with just an idea and their keyboard, now turning into something that required film sets, dozens of people being involved, actors, set design, filming,
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post-production, and doing this all because their fans want it.
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It's so beautiful, and it's so exciting to see what happens when you go beyond the book, what happens when you take your story and turn it into something that is potentially bigger and more exciting than what you could have imagined.
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I hope this podcast inspires you, 'cause Jennifer really shares the roadmap that they used to produce
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their movie and how you can do the same thing with no money out of pocket, just a lot of heart and definitely a good bit of time, but something that is so achievable. I'm so excited to get into this episode.
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Just one last thing before we actually dive into the interview is don't forget to subscribe to Author Sidekick. It's my weekly newsletter where I help you grow your revenue and readership. It's totally free.
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You can get it linked down below. And with that, let's dive into this conversation. So grateful for Jennifer. This episode is a ton of fun. Jennifer, it is so incredible to have you here.
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Now, many folks have seen, I know I've been seeing for years, Jonathan's name on book covers, 'cause he sold literally a million copies of his books.
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But you are really the brains behind this all in terms of bringing this business together.
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So why don't you share with us what you do and how you work together with Jonathan to really grow not just your book empire, but a full on multimedia empire.
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Jonathan likes to say he's just the beauty or he's just the talent, and like I tell him what to do.
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And the other day on a, on a car ride with the kids in the car, uh, we were discussing some things back and forth and I said, "This is what I think we should do." And he said, "Okay, let's do that."
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And our four-year-old son in the backseat said, "Wait, is Mommy the boss of the business? Is Mommy in charge here?" And, and proudly Jonathan said, "Yeah, she is."
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But we reminded them that it's like a collaborative process. It would be nothing but hubris for someone to say, "I know everything, and I'm gonna run this my way."
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But we have just been blessed with such different dynamic and compatible skills and gifts that I think that's one of the ways that this really works. And my background is business, marketing, advertising.
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I worked for 15 years at ad agencies here in, uh, Orange County, California. And Jonathan, not only is he immensely talented with storytelling, but also, um, management and sales.
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And so with that experience, he's able to hunker down and focus to get done what he needs to get done, and then I can come in there with more detail and with nuance, and then also do the business stuff that comes more secondhand or second nature to me.
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So something as mundane as like filling out all the paperwork that we needed for our films to be SAG approved and be a union project, it allowed us to get a different level of talent, um, on board and to serve that community, right?
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'Cause they, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get so many hours with this, uh, union projects so that it helps them in their career, but also on a practical level of access to benefits that they get.
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So those were something important to us. Getting into the numbers of ads, paying IRS and whatever, that's what I do.
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I feel like it's the non-sizzly kind of work, whereas his is getting to be on Comic-Con panels and going to pitch meetings.
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We do pitch some pitches together, but like he's the one networking and on the phone because they recognize his name. And also there's a dynamic in the way we operate.
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He's dynamic, and he's ready for the risk, and he always thinks that the person, the answer is like default to yes. So he's gonna ask for some of those bigger things and dream bigger.
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But I'm pretty strong at getting it done and figuring out the how and getting to the practical application.
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And one way that comes to fruition is he'll write this grandiose script, wonderful script, feature film, one that's in the works right now for a deal, a $20 million film deal.
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So like soup to nuts, everything for that film would be about $20 million.
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But as a producer or writer, like he would get a part, we, he would get a part of that, and part of-What made that work is I was able to take that script full of action scenes and humor and heroes and mystery and thrilling moments, and break it down into a moment-by-moment or scene-by-scene budget and say, "Hey,
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this one calls for a bus driving down the highway with a bunch of motorcycle gangs and a man jumping in, people getting kicked out of the bus, and explosions and this and that.
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What can we do to bring this down and make it a little bit more controlled action sequence?" Because each one of these is a specialty stunt, [laughs] and that's a lot of guys, that's a lot of time.
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I'm gonna shut down a road. So what does that all look like?
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And being the creative that he is, he's able to find a solution that's as impactful, but fewer days shooting, fewer specialized stunts, and maybe a little more contained, and so helpful for the budget as well.
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[laughs] Yeah. N- Reigning in that budget, especially in film, is so important 'cause when it comes to fiction, like on the page, it doesn't... The greatest action scene costs the same to print. Yeah.
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But it's not the same way in film. Now, I'm super excited to dive into your experience, not only working with Hollywood, but also producing your own films, which are incredible, by the way. And they're...
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The, the big one that has, has come out, Infinity System, which has done incredible. I was like, 300,000 views is like incredible on something. That's down below in the description. But before we get there- Okay...
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I wanna ask something that I could not find online. Because Jonathan's done quite a few interviews, he's very well known in the community, and I was like,
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something caught my attention in y'all's story, and I wanted to hear your perspective on it, which is when he quit his job going back 11, 12 years ago now, to go all in on publishing.
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He was burnt out at, and you guys were like newly married relatively, and he goes to you and basically says, "I have this dream."
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And it, it looks like he wasn't making any money at that time, didn't have a book deal, didn't have any books published, and you supported him. What was that like for you as his partner to be like,
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"Okay, we're gonna do this"? It was a culmination. It was after like almost right at our one year of being married.
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And so if anyone has been married and remembers that first year, like there's a lot of growing, a lot of friction. You're bringing two very separate and sometimes very young individuals together.
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It was at a point where we knew we needed a change. We wanted a change for the better in our lives, separate and together, so to speak, so we doubled down on us.
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And one of those things was like the amount of hours that he was working towards something that he didn't have a passion or an interest or wasn't on fire to keep doing.
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He had been on fire at his job before that, but it began to impact just quality of life, quality of marriage, in addition to other things, right? And so there were a number of choices that we made at that time.
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I, I would say a pivot, 180, if you will. It was about that time we both decided to just stop drinking. We were no longer gonna pursue that lifestyle.
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We didn't do any classes or sessions or anything, it was just a conscious decision that we made together. The other thing was his job, was like there was no way he could do both.
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There was no extra side on the time, time on the side, excuse me. So we didn't have a mortgage yet. We didn't have children. My job was going very well. I was having a great time enjoying it.
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I was on fire for my career at that point, so I believed in him. And he said, "One way or the other, I'm going to make this work." So we agreed, one way or the other, make it work.
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And we didn't put a specific timeline on it, but, um, it was there at a certain point if this isn't progressing and it's prohibiting our lives, our marriage, our plans from progressing, then we could revisit it.
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But that never came to that point. I think it was only a couple of months, if that, before he got his first contract agreement and acceptance from a publisher. Incredible. I love that.
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I love the taking a leap of faith and really going all in on each other is one of the most beautiful things.
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And I know from just reading a bit of what Jonathan's put out there, I know he has the book, Get It Done, which I'll also link to in the description.
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It's a motivational book that helps authors really just get down and work harder. I know that you guys have put so much into this, and it...
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I love the arc of going from trad to indie early on, really crushing it in indie, to then going into short films, and now really spending so much time in, in the film space.
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And I'd love to talk about, like how did that start? You guys especially were really relatively early in terms of the Kickstarter platform, using that to fund a short film. How did you even get that idea?
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And then y'all raised like $75,000 over two short films. It's pretty wild. Walk me through the idea and then how you came to think, "Okay, Kickstarter's where we're gonna start with this."
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His main reader group, they asked, "Oh, this could be a film. This could be a movie." Those kinds of reviews, comments, and, and encouragements. And at one point it's, "Okay, if you fund it, I will film it.
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If you guys help bring this to fruition funding-wise, we'll get through it production-wise." And that was the idea of coming up with something.
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So in my advertising agency experience, I had done multiple sets, dual sets for film, filming, and still photography for like catalog shoots.
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But I knew set life and I knew set production, but it was all commercial and education. So I said, "I can do that. Like, I could do that in my sleep."The ironic thing is you don't get sleep [laughs] during that.
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[laughs] Yeah. But I knew how to do that, and so it was like... And he is a, a machine. He teases when we were doing some work on our house, he would tell Dad, "I could do the work of 10 men."
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So, but it is a, a far cry from the truth at times where we, you know, he has direction, "Okay, Jonathan, like, here's the production plan I need you to execute," or, "These are the areas that you can off- go make this happen."
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And yeah, he's great at that, and that's... We, we figured we can do this.
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We're in Southern California, so there's a ton of people here in different areas of filmmaking, but we made connections with one of my best friend's boyfriend at a barbecue.
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He went to film school, had made some films, was interested in getting back, but wanted to pair up with a strong team and work on something more narrative than documentary. And so we worked it out.
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So we leveraged his experience in the Hollywood kinda space in addition to in, in making contacts for, uh, the team. But the biggest one was the cinematographer and then all the crew that the cinematographer brings on.
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And then from there, fumbled our way, in some ways, through the rest. And because we were indie in terms of books, like we didn't do things the traditional way, that's how we approached the filmmaking.
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There was a TikToker and influencer on Instagram and TikTok, but in the comic space. So she's actually now has grown, and her name is Nikki Marina.
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And she gets invited to Sony premieres, Marvel premieres, Disney stuff, way into anime. But I knew she also wanted to be a... And she has acted, and she wanted to pursue that area of her, her dream and career.
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So we invited her, and I messaged her, and it turns out her agent grew up with one of my sorority sisters, and so, like, that kind of...
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It, we discovered it after the fact, but we didn't know better to not ask, so of course we asked. And we just put together a cast and a crew and filmed. And
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there was all kinds of levels of craziness that we have encountered. But it's to keep going and to know it's not a matter of, like, "How are we gonna get through this?"
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It's, "We have to find a way to get through this," right? You got 40 people plus on set today ready to film.
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If your head of makeup gets COVID and you have to send them home, you figure out a way to get everybody camera ready without losing the quality that you need to capture on camera, and you just figure it out and keep going.
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The idea to fund it came from the readers themselves of, "We want this film." And Jonathan said, "If you fund it, we'll make it." And so from there, it became a bunch of campaigns.
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So we put up the Kickstarter, tried to figure out through polls in the group what people wanted. Looked at, did some research what other people were offering. Of course, we looked at Veronica Mars and the Vox Machina.
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I think Zach Braff had something on there. What We Do in the Shadows was one of the early film groups on Kickstarter. And try to learn as much as we can from them.
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And then outside of Kickstarter, we had a lot of networking too.
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So we have a handful of contributions that were done directly, and they either got stake in the sale of the IP, or if we were to able to use the short film to leverage that as a proof of concept to a bigger deal, they have some stake percentage in that as well.
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And then of course, we put in a portion of our own money, as did our, uh, co-producer and director for Infinity System. So that 30-minute short, I'd say we did for somewhere between 70 to $80,000.
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And then also calling in a number of, like, favors from people who were just passionate about it, like some of the helicopter scenes that... We actually have a helicopter scene.
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The helicopter took our lead and director out to Mojave, so like, "Where did you shoot those sand dune scenes?" Like, they're live. They're out in Mojave, and some of them aerial.
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We had some drone sh- And these are people that they love the genre, and they're connected to the guys that, the different people that are working on the film.
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So it was like some sort of, like, sweat equity investment because they loved it. And I think that goes back to, like, how you treat people, how you interact with people, how you express gratitude.
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They, their request was that we host our screening at their location that was just opening, a creative space. They wanted to be able to show off their creative space and put their logo on stuff.
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So absolutely, that was so cool. So there's a lot of things that went directly on screen that, like, every dollar went to screen to make sure we could out- put out something that was as phenomenal as we could. Yeah. No.
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I
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absolutely love that, and I also noticed on, on the Kickstarter itself, 'cause for Infinity System, I think it was something like 55,000 on the actual Kickstarter, that five people were on the $5,000 tier, which is quite incredible that you had fans willing to back it at that level.
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And I know you gave them really cool perks, like being able to call themselves an executive producer on it, being able to come out to set. Really awesome stuff. So that's incredible.
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And I, my mind's going in two directions. The first is you brought on this crew, all these actors. How specifically did you do that? Are you going around to friends you have in Orange County?
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Are you posting things online? And if so, where? If you were to, let's say, go and build a film crew, I think so many authors don't know film people. So how do you go out and, and meet them? Oh, yeah.
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So, and there's multiple options, but one would be you can start in your area. You can search on Instagram.
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You can search on YouTube for film styles, cinematographer work that you like, and reach out to the people who made that content, right? Reach out to the people.
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Like, our cinematographer for that film is al- he's, he's always busy. So if you go to his Instagram, he's sharing what he's doing, what he's working on.
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Also it's networking in that if one person, you can be like, "Oh, hey, who do you know for this?" Or, "Who do you have in contact with that?"
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Another one, so if we're moving further away from Kevin Bacon, would be Kevin Bacon and the whole six degrees of separation, just-For any- Yeah... young folks listening, [laughs] is local film schools.
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And you can see who's not only, like, students. I don't want student film. That's fine. Find out who the professors are.
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Someone who's teaching to get their paycheck, but they'd also love to be able to do more actual, like, film work. Great. They might
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have more of a, just a passion for it and it's not as much about the money as opposed to, like, just building their body of work.
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That think that's how we ended up getting our special effects and CGI or special effects on the Forsaken Mercenary film, which I know you haven't seen that yet.
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It's 15 minutes, but the trailer's out on our YouTube channel, but the film is not out yet 'cause it's out for film festivals this year and maybe part of next year.
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That's how we got our special effects, our virtual effects, was it's a professor in Texas, and he was like, "Yeah, I'm in between class projects and I'm working on this, but this is what I really love, is doing this kind of sci-fi."
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So, like, he built out the ship and a town and all these amazing, cool effects on our film. Yeah. And so that's another resource to look into.
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And then film commissions, like your local city or, like, your bigger city, uh, depending on where you're located.
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A lot of the states and cities have film commission, film commissioners, and they have a network of filmmakers because that's what they're trying to do, is get their filmmakers work in that city or state.
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And while they can't recommend you who does what, but at least there's a list of someone you could reach out to, and those people are active in the community, so they're actively looking for work.
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So that could be something in your favor. Love it. No, that's ul- ultimately connecting with the different communities that you're around is huge.
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And quick plug for some friends that I have who are doing a cool event in Austin.
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They're working with Patreon to run Creator Camp Film Festival, which is when any YouTube creator, they s- have 12 of them who are basically having the first, like, YouTube native film festival.
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Pretty cool to check it out and see that. If you're in Austin, that could be a good place for you to meet people. And if you're not in Austin, wherever you are, there's probably... Like, LA has endless things in SoCal.
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There's, I know Chicago's got so much stuff going on. A lot of different cities that you're in, and even if you're in smaller cities as well, there's lots of opportunities to connect. Now,
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one other question I have when you're setting this budget, 'cause you mentioned, like, the budget is sitting 580K, which actually feels very, like, achievable and reasonable.
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Like, I understand it's a lot of money, like, just to come up from out of nowhere.
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But when you hear, like, the next Marvel, and then you look at the production quality, which again, I'll encourage everyone to look at Infinity Systems in the description. Watch that video. It's incredible.
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Watch all 30 minutes of it. You'll be like, "This is very high quality," right? Yeah. It's not like, this doesn't feel low budget, except again, 80K-ish, it feels like, again, reasonable-ish.
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But not to underscore that's a lot of money, but it, it's something that's possible. But with that, my big kind of question becomes how do you ensure what the budget is during it?
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'Cause I've been involved in an production [laughs] took place this year that went way over budget, I'll just put it that way. It wasn't my production, but it was a big YouTuber's production.
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Now, how do you manage that so that the unexpected you're planning for, because especially when you're doing something with a Kickstarter and it's relative budgets, you don't necessarily have a million dollars extra if something comes up.
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Yeah, how are you managing that? You go into it managed, and so, like, there's a spri- there's a scene breakdown you do. You break down your script so you understand in your script what everything is gonna cost.
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What are they wearing? When do they change? How much are you allocating to their clothes? How many people on set per day? How many hair and makeup do you need to get them ready for the each scene?
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So, like, we've got eight people. Great. Are all eight people on camera at once, or so do I need, uh, like how many hair and makeup do I need for that?
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Or do I just need two people so I can have hair and makeup, I can stagger them in and layer them in, so now I only have to account for two hair and makeup for a day. Um, wardrobe, same thing.
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Go by department, what you need to get everything executed. And then you have to take your scenes and put them into shooting order. So you have, you really figure out which scenes are being filmed when.
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And you break it down to such a n- degree. How many bags of trail mix do I need to have for crafty at, at each day? Okay, great. What's our budget for that?
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So every single expense is budgeted, and then you add a 5% to 10% contingency to the bottom line so that way when those things come up, and it's not if things are gonna come up, it's when things are gonna come up.
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'Cause inevitably they are. You have so many moving parts, there's absolutely gonna be something that changes. And that we, on our Infinity, nope, the other one, Forsaken Mercenary, we were filming.
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We had everything sorted out with the location, or so we thought, and when we were moving, first day of shooting, we moved, getting ready to go to our... The next night was gonna be a night shoot.
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Tuesday night was gonna be a night shoot, and there was gonna be some fake guns, right? We're sci-fi. We have to have blasters.
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It turns out the people who had given us permission to shoot on their property shared a quad outside area with some other entities, and those entities said, "Oh, heck no, you cannot shoot here, so much the police come by here.
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If you don't have a permit for this specifically, then you cannot shoot here." And that became a major problem.
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We had to move set where we were gonna be filming that night and improvise, which we didn't have our art team set up for, so they had to change up what they were gonna do on the fly.
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And then in addition, while all that's going on, everyone's eating dinner. Everyone's eating dinner, and I'm on the phone and on my email going up to the city, had to beg-Plead, offer them a role.
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"I'll put your kid in the film, like whatever you want." They said no.
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So I had to call some guys that we had scouted their locations and see if they had anything available, find out, get pictures from them, so that way our art team can figure out what they were gonna do to dress that set on the fly like that with less than 24 hours notice.
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And it ended up costing more to rent that location, so we got a little bit of a reimbursement back from the one we were supposed to film at, but the one we were ended up having to film, especially since it was last minute, calling our insurance to get additional permits, and like insurance certificates and all of this stuff.
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Then we had to move it because it was in like deep LA and meth heads are walking by, pausing. We were in a gated... It's one of those places where like when everyone gets on set, close and lock the gate.
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But we made it work, and it could have very much so gone below in our budget, but we moved some things around, we had some negotiation, and we said, "Okay, we have the contingency to take this on, like we have to do it.
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We can't not film tomorrow night." We have people coming in. We had an actor, we flew him in from Georgia. He's been in a ton of stuff. He was just in, uh, Bad Boys 4, he was in Jumanji
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1 and 2, 2 for sure, and The Rock's latest Christmas film. Oh, wow. I... Yeah, I saw. Yeah, it was really cool to see his big old face on screen. What? I didn't know he was in this. But we already got him in town.
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He's here. We're not gonna not fly him back out where he has to go and film with Mr. Dwayne Johnson. Yeah, he's got- Yeah... a packed schedule. It's like they need to- Yeah, there's no makeup here. Yeah.
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You make sure, yeah, you budget it, and then you... That's part of producing. Someone's, "I don't know where this money..." Yes, you have to know where that money went.
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Everybody that you assign to spend, you give them a budget. Make it work within this budget. I've researched, and I know that you can execute this within this budget.
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And if you're not, that means you're not doing, like your job properly. Like you're not doing due diligence. I need you to work a little bit harder to achieve this. Of course, all said with love and grace.
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But yeah, we didn't like willy-nilly make up budget line items. We researched it and had expectations. Yeah. No, no, no, for sure. So cool. I love, like that last minute problem solving.
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It, there's sometimes like those moments of like good stress in a sense, 'cause it's like, you know, when you look back at it, it's, oh wow, that was a moment.
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And in the middle of it you're like, you're not even thinking. You just gotta figure it out. That is amazing. Now, you mentioned starting this whole venture into film. It was really fan-driven, which I love that.
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Like I love that it was like, okay, yeah, they wanna do this. Like we'll figure it out. Like that, we're here to serve our readers. Now, you know, you do Infinity Systems, Forsaken Mercenary, you're...
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I, I know Jonathan's doing, writing screenplays behind the scenes. You guys are getting these things.
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I know part of the strategy too is to try and create these shorter films to try and get them option produced, which seems like it's now happening for y'all, two streamers, which is incredible.
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It seemed like something started out with like literally just a fan wanting some film, and you guys serving that, and now it feels like you're building this bigger empire. Where do you see that going?
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And, and maybe even more aptly, how do you see like other indie authors in this broader space of self-publishing interacting with film? 'Cause you guys are certainly at the forefront of this.
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I, I get so excited when I think of all the possibilities to come, not just for us, but for all the other indies who are operating at like a professional level. There's two, two things on that.
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Well, one for us, we wanna do more of the same but bigger. Mm.
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So instead of relying on this company that we're working with to get the funds, we wanna have that relationship to the funders and the investors to, so that we can have more creative control and more control over what's next on the slate.
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And it's not that, oh, I wanna take all of Johnson's books and turn them out into film. Like all of them are not film-worthy, right?
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As anyone who's written like that many books, there's like some that are just knocking it out of the park, and they have this amazing fandom, and some that could be iterated or you can use nuggets.
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But also to bring on and be the conduit, the sort of connector of good content, and doing it in a sort of indie way, like a mini major style, like an A24, where there's no lack in amazing storytelling and character development, and it, just stories that like take you through this rollercoaster of an emotional adventure, but leave you on the other side just feeling better for having gone through it.
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That's what we want to do more of. And so that's like what it is for us, but part of that is being able to show indies, like you didn't wait for someone to give you permission to pr- publish your book.
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Why wait for permission for someone to make your film? And I cannot express how simple it would be for someone in a contained storyline to execute this.
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I don't take for granted my background and my skillset and my gifts. Mm. So I'm not saying, "Oh, anyone can do this," 'cause I've tried writing.
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I've written, I've gotten like Amazon bestsellers and all that stuff under a pen name. I get it. It just takes so much effort. So that probably is what it's like for someone who's a storyteller and a writer.
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Oh, I could write stories all day. Producing, that's, get those spreadsheets away from me.
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So I get it, but teaming up with someone who has that ability or has that gift or experience, if you get quality cameras, if you get quality actors, you can very much so execute your like period piece sweet romance, or any of that kind of stuff, right?
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Some of the more risky stuff's gonna be harder, 'cause there's a lot of things you have to be careful with. You have to have an intimacy coordinator, like that's like a trickier area. There's more risk.
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There's a little bit more risk to it, so you wanna make sure like you have an, a solid knowledge base and experience. But some of this other stuff, like-Vampires without making it cheesy.
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Obviously shifters is gonna be tough, but anyone who's ever gone to any of the cons, like the Comic Cons and all that, and you see some of these costume pieces people put together.
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If they can use that to function and walk around downtown San Diego or LA or Austin or what have you, you can have that for... They wanna make it. They love making it. They wanna make it for your movie, right?
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The way we rented our lenses from is like the same place in Burbank that the studios are renting their stuff from. Like, we could- we're- where we filmed part of Forsaken Mercenary is where Batman Dark Knight was filmed.
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And we could access to the same thing. We have access to all the same thing Hollywood is, and they think, "Oh, it's too expensive," or I need this or that.
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You just need talented, interested people, and like at least one person on there who has that eye for the professional quality and, and great editing.
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And within a very reasonable budget, like I see some of these Kickstarters, especially for the special editions, you can do that same thing, make a 20, $40,000 film. A feature even. Yeah.
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If, if you're thinking, if, if you are at the point where you're thinking of doing a Kickstarter for special editions, you're at the same point where you could also be considering doing that for...
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You could be doing similar funding for film. That's amazing. When it comes to your role and your day-to-day, I know you mentioned how y'all work together.
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It feels very much like visionary integrator, which I don't know if you've read EOS.
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If anyone listening hasn't read EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System, yeah, there's a book called Traction by Gino Wickman that goes into it. That is- Highly recommend it... on my list.
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I have been recommended Traction so many times. I'm working with another coach right now, Dan Martell, and he even mentioned it during one of our coaching calls. Oh, Dan Martell's incredible. Yeah. He's- Yeah. Yes.
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But so, like Traction's like working its way up the TBR. I, I think that will probably be the audiobook I pick up next. Yeah. Traction's great, and then Rocket Fuel is like part two to it- Okay...
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which is shorter, which is probably even more applicable to y'all because it's all about, it literally is just about visionary and integrators working together. Um, which is literally I think what you're doing.
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And I'd love, through all of your years working together, what advice do you have for other authors, whether they're working with like their actual like partners or whether they're working with any operator in their business.
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What would be your advice for authors working with operators? And I guess in turn, operators working with authors. Yes. That's a great question. It's very intrapersonal and high EQ.
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Well- Hence the first year of marriage really helped us to [laughs] figure that out.
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But the end game is no matter what happens with the business, like we're in it to preserve the relationship, and we are in agreement that we have the same, we're working towards the same goal. And so- Mm-hmm...
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having that in mind every time reminds us that if we have opposing views or opposing agenda, like agendas as in short-term project based, we come to it with the understanding like the other person is just trying to make the boat go faster.
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And so we use that term when we bring up different ideas. Does this make the boat go faster? The other thing is there's no feelings involved.
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Like I know that can sound rather harsh and a little stoic, but it's when we come, we talk about the business, like the purpose of the business, the goals of the business, the must-haves of the business.
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Those are pretty objective. Like we have those set in stone, so it's no longer like how I feel about that today or tomorrow, whatever. Every initiative is driving towards that same thing.
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And so it doesn't matter how I feel about a project. If that project isn't working towards those goals, that purpose or that vision, then it has to be set aside until there's a time or space to do that.
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And the other one, big one is being able to see and respect each other in the way we communicate, and having grace in understanding we're working towards those same goals.
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And in our seeing, acknowledging, and encouraging our genius zones. Jonathan isn't gonna come to me and tell me how to run, implement my heat mapping on
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the website and what I should do with this, that or the other, no more than I'm gonna tell him how to rewrite a chapter. That's his genius zone.
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We collaborate and, again, with each of our stuff and we build each other up in those spaces. And the same thing happens, again, it's like, "Oh, you guys are married, of course."
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One of the films, Matt- Matthew Charles Hall, I never worked with him before. I barely knew him even though, was dating one of my best friends. We just hadn't met and hung out much.
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It was, again, during COVID, so nobody was really hanging out. And I had to like... This is happening. One way or the other, we're making this film.
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And so as I as a producer needed to do everything I could to support him in his genius zone, right?
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Even if I felt like we had some delay one day, all these people on set and we're waiting for a fog machine, something as silly as a fog machine. Can't we just push through and move on? Now we're hours behind.
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And the reality is like if I was too aggressive about that, wouldn't have been conducive to his creativity, to his genius zone, right?
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Nobody can work super creatively and during an amygdala hijack because you got a producer screaming down your neck telling you that we're behind and now we're going into double and triple overtime, or whatever it is, right?
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We gotta order a second dinner. We didn't have the $20 burritos on the budget or what have you. Like that's not gonna help anyone. So being able to say, "How can I support you? What can I do to help you?
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What can anyone do to help this? I will go make it happen so you can do what you do." Or as they say, you do that voodoo that you do so well.
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Knowing that at the end, like I wanna preserve the friendship, I wanna preserve the relationship, and we're working towards the same goal of having an amazing project we can all be proud of and that just honors everyone on set too.So it's a long-winded answer
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It's beautiful. People first, always. It's great. My last question is,
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looking back, you've shared so much incredible insights about how authors can really turn their books into film and start getting out there, and it's such a, I think, inspiring call to action, 'cause it's one of those big things that feels like a dream.
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But you're even helping me conceptualize how it can turn from a dream into a goal, and a goal into a plan. But I'm curious, as y'all did that process and have crushed it,
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there's bound to be some things you've learned along the way. If you could go back to that first Kickstarter you did for Infinity System, maybe what are some things you'd do differently now that you're so far into this?
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Yeah. That's a good question. I might need to ponder what we would do. So Jonathan did, he managed the Kickstarter. So he, like I did the content creative for it, and we collaborated on what the items would be.
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Some of the items I think just weren't that appealing. One thing he did really well that I don't know that many people who do Kickstarters do perhaps is, um, it's like you're running for mayor.
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Every day he would message 10 people. So I think I would message more people and invite them to participate. Not that I didn't think we didn't hit our goal or anything like that, but
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I didn't have in mind that I was inviting people on an epic journey. I thought I was asking them for a favor to help me realize my dream. And instead, to be able to say, "We've got this really cool thing happening.
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Come on. I want... Here's an opportunity for you to be a part of this cool thing that's happening."
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I'll recommend anything, like all these good things I find from Trader Joe's all day, take a picture and send it to a friend and be like, "Oh, have you tried this maple butter?"
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But I didn't talk about the project with that same gusto, and I think that's something I would change in having confidence in what we were doing. That would be one thing.
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And Jonathan's not interested in doing another Kickstarter, but I, I don't think this would work for everyone in terms of the credibility, but we might build something to do a fundraiser, like a pre-order type of deal on our website instead, because you have to give a share of the money to Kickstarter.
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That is something- Yeah... I might reconsider. But I understand, like there, there, there's risk involved in doing that, so maybe don't know that I'd recommend that to everyone.
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And I don't know, I feel like it went as good as it could have along the way. I don't feel like there's anything too glaring for...
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So we've done a couple of others with other people since, but just really going into it knowing what your budget needs to be is good. It's huge. Yes Theory definitely has done
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a few of the direct w- you know, more less, um, you know, scripted, but doc- docuseries or docu-style content.
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But they've also had high budget videos that they've funded direct through their website, and I know one of their models was like pay what you want for one of their documentaries that was like uncovering Mayan ruins.
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It was pretty cool. And it was like pay what you want, but a minimum of like X dollars to access it. Yeah. And then it eventually went for free on their YouTube channel.
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And then Sam and Colby recently did something interesting where the video eventually came out for free on YouTube. They're quite large. They have a lot of distribution on YouTube, close to 20 million subscribers.
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So they did a sort of feature length film in m- in a set of movie theaters across the country for one weekend. They just ran it very limited time, and they did about a million dollars from that.
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And o- obviously that covered what production that was, and then they gave it to the fans for free on YouTube after.
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So there's a lot, a lot of these things are, you have to level up to it, and I think you guys are at the level now where you can start to get really fun and creative.
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But there's definitely a lot of opportunities beyond just like Kickstarter. I agree with you.
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So the audio cut out in the recording for this next section, so I'm gonna give this short little transition and mention that Jennifer then started sharing some of the Kickstarter benefits that she would give her fans, and some of the benefits that didn't go as well with their fans.
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Right up next. They wanted to be a part of it. Their names are there in the credits. Depending on their giving level, they were able to get some IMDb credits to be able to say, "I'm an executive producer.
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I was an associate producer on the film." But they just wanted the film. They didn't care about the stuff so much, and to be, they mostly just wanted to be part of something bigger.
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And I like that idea that you've shared where eventually they're gonna get it for free, but pay what you want, and at, at a minimum of a certain amount. That's really cool. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting model.
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Of course, if you can get distribution from one of the streamers and that sort of funding, that's huge.
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And I know that Prime Video and a lot of these other streamers are looking a lot more at like independently produced content, and looking to invest more heavily in that.
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So it's the best time to be doing this, 'cause I think a lot of eyes are open. The work y'all are doing is opening eyes, and it's very exciting times ahead. So I'm so grateful for you coming on the podcast.
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I'd love for you to share where we can find you and Jonathan's work. Like I said, an Infinity System will be linked down below in the description.
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But please share with us wherever we can find you online, where we can read your stories and more. Yeah. The biggest thing would be following us on Instagram. So you can do author Jonathan Yanez, or Yanez, Y-A-N-E-Z.
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Or you can find me at Jennifer, J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R, _rose on Instagram, and that's where we post updates or what we're doing.
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So depending on what you're interested in, uh, if you want the more fun sizzle stuff and the stories, definitely follow Jonathan.
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[laughs] Uh, for more of like chill behind the scenes, what's going on-Day-to-day life kind of stuff, you can follow me as well. And we're both very open to anyone reaching out and messaging us.
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We do respond to the messages because, uh, some people will say, "Oh, remember me when..." Like, I wanna remember you now. [laughs] Uh-huh. It's all about the people, right? Like, we're...
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No man is an island, and so we're very happy to connect with folks if they reach out on Instagram. Y'all are so sweet. I am so excited for what's to come. Can't wait to see the next mega blockbuster
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written by Jonathan and produced and managed, and everything made possible by you. So I know that future is not too far away. Thank you so much.
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Yeah, we're, we're just excited to give back and, and share all of our experience there with the world we grew up in of this indie nation here. No, it means the world. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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And that's it for this podcast episode. I'll be back next week with another episode on how to sell at events, and I also have a very special episode coming up where I visit David Forguts' headquarters, the ScareMeOut!
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HQ, and show you it live. Now, if you want to learn how to go beyond the book, upcoming I have the Beyond the Book Accelerator.
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It's gonna teach you about all the opportunities that lie for you beyond the book, how to grow your audience, how to grow your revenue by putting your readers first.
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If you'd like to join the Beyond the Book Accelerator, you can find the wait list below. I'd love to have you part of our founding cohort.
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And if you ever need my help, if you have any questions for me, if you're doing something exciting and going beyond the book, I wanna hear from you. So don't be shy. Email me, DM me, whatever it takes, get ahold of me.
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I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to learn what you're doing. Please let me know any guests you wanna bring onto the podcast, 'cause I'd love to reach out to them. If you know them, even better.
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We're really starting a movement here, bringing in all these wonderful people with different viewpoints, different exciting things they're doing to hopefully expand our minds and show us that storytelling is just the beginning.
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It all starts with a story, but it ends with an empire. So let's go together. Hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. And as always, don't forget, together we are boundless.
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A revolution is happening in Hollywood. No longer do you need the budgets of the big producers, do you need someone sitting inside of a director's office or a big streamer green lighting your production.
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You can now go out and make the next blockbuster movie, the next great film yourself, and you can do it as an indie author. You could turn your book into a movie.
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Today, we're gonna be talking with Jennifer Yanez, the partner of Jonathan Yanez.
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Jonathan is a best-selling indie author of sci-fi novels, and he sold over a million copies throughout his career, and they've produced two incredible films by turning their books into Kickstarters, and those Kickstarters, once funded, provided the cash and the resources to create Infinity System,
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an amazing short film with 295,000 views on YouTube. Huge success, and it's produced so well. You can watch it. It'll be linked down below.
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And now Forsaken Mercenary, which is not public yet, but has been produced and is now being shopped around at various film festivals, and that short film may just be the gateway to a longer feature length film funded by a streamer.
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It's huge.
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Literally an indie author, a husband and wife team starting with just an idea and their keyboard, now turning into something that required film sets, dozens of people being involved, actors, set design, filming,
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post-production, and doing this all because their fans want it.
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It's so beautiful, and it's so exciting to see what happens when you go beyond the book, what happens when you take your story and turn it into something that is potentially bigger and more exciting than what you could have imagined.
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I hope this podcast inspires you, 'cause Jennifer really shares the roadmap that they used to produce
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their movie and how you can do the same thing with no money out of pocket, just a lot of heart and definitely a good bit of time, but something that is so achievable. I'm so excited to get into this episode.
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Just one last thing before we actually dive into the interview is don't forget to subscribe to Author Sidekick. It's my weekly newsletter where I help you grow your revenue and readership. It's totally free.
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You can get it linked down below. And with that, let's dive into this conversation. So grateful for Jennifer. This episode is a ton of fun. Jennifer, it is so incredible to have you here.
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Now, many folks have seen, I know I've been seeing for years, Jonathan's name on book covers, 'cause he sold literally a million copies of his books.
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But you are really the brains behind this all in terms of bringing this business together.
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So why don't you share with us what you do and how you work together with Jonathan to really grow not just your book empire, but a full on multimedia empire.
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Jonathan likes to say he's just the beauty or he's just the talent, and like I tell him what to do.
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And the other day on a, on a car ride with the kids in the car, uh, we were discussing some things back and forth and I said, "This is what I think we should do." And he said, "Okay, let's do that."
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And our four-year-old son in the backseat said, "Wait, is Mommy the boss of the business? Is Mommy in charge here?" And, and proudly Jonathan said, "Yeah, she is."
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But we reminded them that it's like a collaborative process. It would be nothing but hubris for someone to say, "I know everything, and I'm gonna run this my way."
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But we have just been blessed with such different dynamic and compatible skills and gifts that I think that's one of the ways that this really works. And my background is business, marketing, advertising.
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I worked for 15 years at ad agencies here in, uh, Orange County, California. And Jonathan, not only is he immensely talented with storytelling, but also, um, management and sales.
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And so with that experience, he's able to hunker down and focus to get done what he needs to get done, and then I can come in there with more detail and with nuance, and then also do the business stuff that comes more secondhand or second nature to me.
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So something as mundane as like filling out all the paperwork that we needed for our films to be SAG approved and be a union project, it allowed us to get a different level of talent, um, on board and to serve that community, right?
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'Cause they, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get so many hours with this, uh, union projects so that it helps them in their career, but also on a practical level of access to benefits that they get.
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So those were something important to us. Getting into the numbers of ads, paying IRS and whatever, that's what I do.
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I feel like it's the non-sizzly kind of work, whereas his is getting to be on Comic-Con panels and going to pitch meetings.
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We do pitch some pitches together, but like he's the one networking and on the phone because they recognize his name. And also there's a dynamic in the way we operate.
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He's dynamic, and he's ready for the risk, and he always thinks that the person, the answer is like default to yes. So he's gonna ask for some of those bigger things and dream bigger.
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But I'm pretty strong at getting it done and figuring out the how and getting to the practical application.
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And one way that comes to fruition is he'll write this grandiose script, wonderful script, feature film, one that's in the works right now for a deal, a $20 million film deal.
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So like soup to nuts, everything for that film would be about $20 million.
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But as a producer or writer, like he would get a part, we, he would get a part of that, and part of-What made that work is I was able to take that script full of action scenes and humor and heroes and mystery and thrilling moments, and break it down into a moment-by-moment or scene-by-scene budget and say, "Hey,
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this one calls for a bus driving down the highway with a bunch of motorcycle gangs and a man jumping in, people getting kicked out of the bus, and explosions and this and that.
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What can we do to bring this down and make it a little bit more controlled action sequence?" Because each one of these is a specialty stunt, [laughs] and that's a lot of guys, that's a lot of time.
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I'm gonna shut down a road. So what does that all look like?
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And being the creative that he is, he's able to find a solution that's as impactful, but fewer days shooting, fewer specialized stunts, and maybe a little more contained, and so helpful for the budget as well.
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[laughs] Yeah. N- Reigning in that budget, especially in film, is so important 'cause when it comes to fiction, like on the page, it doesn't... The greatest action scene costs the same to print. Yeah.
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But it's not the same way in film. Now, I'm super excited to dive into your experience, not only working with Hollywood, but also producing your own films, which are incredible, by the way. And they're...
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The, the big one that has, has come out, Infinity System, which has done incredible. I was like, 300,000 views is like incredible on something. That's down below in the description. But before we get there- Okay...
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I wanna ask something that I could not find online. Because Jonathan's done quite a few interviews, he's very well known in the community, and I was like,
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something caught my attention in y'all's story, and I wanted to hear your perspective on it, which is when he quit his job going back 11, 12 years ago now, to go all in on publishing.
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He was burnt out at, and you guys were like newly married relatively, and he goes to you and basically says, "I have this dream."
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And it, it looks like he wasn't making any money at that time, didn't have a book deal, didn't have any books published, and you supported him. What was that like for you as his partner to be like,
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"Okay, we're gonna do this"? It was a culmination. It was after like almost right at our one year of being married.
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And so if anyone has been married and remembers that first year, like there's a lot of growing, a lot of friction. You're bringing two very separate and sometimes very young individuals together.
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It was at a point where we knew we needed a change. We wanted a change for the better in our lives, separate and together, so to speak, so we doubled down on us.
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And one of those things was like the amount of hours that he was working towards something that he didn't have a passion or an interest or wasn't on fire to keep doing.
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He had been on fire at his job before that, but it began to impact just quality of life, quality of marriage, in addition to other things, right? And so there were a number of choices that we made at that time.
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I, I would say a pivot, 180, if you will. It was about that time we both decided to just stop drinking. We were no longer gonna pursue that lifestyle.
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We didn't do any classes or sessions or anything, it was just a conscious decision that we made together. The other thing was his job, was like there was no way he could do both.
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There was no extra side on the time, time on the side, excuse me. So we didn't have a mortgage yet. We didn't have children. My job was going very well. I was having a great time enjoying it.
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I was on fire for my career at that point, so I believed in him. And he said, "One way or the other, I'm going to make this work." So we agreed, one way or the other, make it work.
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And we didn't put a specific timeline on it, but, um, it was there at a certain point if this isn't progressing and it's prohibiting our lives, our marriage, our plans from progressing, then we could revisit it.
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But that never came to that point. I think it was only a couple of months, if that, before he got his first contract agreement and acceptance from a publisher. Incredible. I love that.
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I love the taking a leap of faith and really going all in on each other is one of the most beautiful things.
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And I know from just reading a bit of what Jonathan's put out there, I know he has the book, Get It Done, which I'll also link to in the description.
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It's a motivational book that helps authors really just get down and work harder. I know that you guys have put so much into this, and it...
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I love the arc of going from trad to indie early on, really crushing it in indie, to then going into short films, and now really spending so much time in, in the film space.
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And I'd love to talk about, like how did that start? You guys especially were really relatively early in terms of the Kickstarter platform, using that to fund a short film. How did you even get that idea?
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And then y'all raised like $75,000 over two short films. It's pretty wild. Walk me through the idea and then how you came to think, "Okay, Kickstarter's where we're gonna start with this."
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His main reader group, they asked, "Oh, this could be a film. This could be a movie." Those kinds of reviews, comments, and, and encouragements. And at one point it's, "Okay, if you fund it, I will film it.
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If you guys help bring this to fruition funding-wise, we'll get through it production-wise." And that was the idea of coming up with something.
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So in my advertising agency experience, I had done multiple sets, dual sets for film, filming, and still photography for like catalog shoots.
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But I knew set life and I knew set production, but it was all commercial and education. So I said, "I can do that. Like, I could do that in my sleep."The ironic thing is you don't get sleep [laughs] during that.
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[laughs] Yeah. But I knew how to do that, and so it was like... And he is a, a machine. He teases when we were doing some work on our house, he would tell Dad, "I could do the work of 10 men."
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So, but it is a, a far cry from the truth at times where we, you know, he has direction, "Okay, Jonathan, like, here's the production plan I need you to execute," or, "These are the areas that you can off- go make this happen."
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And yeah, he's great at that, and that's... We, we figured we can do this.
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We're in Southern California, so there's a ton of people here in different areas of filmmaking, but we made connections with one of my best friend's boyfriend at a barbecue.
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He went to film school, had made some films, was interested in getting back, but wanted to pair up with a strong team and work on something more narrative than documentary. And so we worked it out.
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So we leveraged his experience in the Hollywood kinda space in addition to in, in making contacts for, uh, the team. But the biggest one was the cinematographer and then all the crew that the cinematographer brings on.
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And then from there, fumbled our way, in some ways, through the rest. And because we were indie in terms of books, like we didn't do things the traditional way, that's how we approached the filmmaking.
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There was a TikToker and influencer on Instagram and TikTok, but in the comic space. So she's actually now has grown, and her name is Nikki Marina.
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And she gets invited to Sony premieres, Marvel premieres, Disney stuff, way into anime. But I knew she also wanted to be a... And she has acted, and she wanted to pursue that area of her, her dream and career.
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So we invited her, and I messaged her, and it turns out her agent grew up with one of my sorority sisters, and so, like, that kind of...
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It, we discovered it after the fact, but we didn't know better to not ask, so of course we asked. And we just put together a cast and a crew and filmed. And
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there was all kinds of levels of craziness that we have encountered. But it's to keep going and to know it's not a matter of, like, "How are we gonna get through this?"
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It's, "We have to find a way to get through this," right? You got 40 people plus on set today ready to film.
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If your head of makeup gets COVID and you have to send them home, you figure out a way to get everybody camera ready without losing the quality that you need to capture on camera, and you just figure it out and keep going.
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The idea to fund it came from the readers themselves of, "We want this film." And Jonathan said, "If you fund it, we'll make it." And so from there, it became a bunch of campaigns.
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So we put up the Kickstarter, tried to figure out through polls in the group what people wanted. Looked at, did some research what other people were offering. Of course, we looked at Veronica Mars and the Vox Machina.
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I think Zach Braff had something on there. What We Do in the Shadows was one of the early film groups on Kickstarter. And try to learn as much as we can from them.
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And then outside of Kickstarter, we had a lot of networking too.
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So we have a handful of contributions that were done directly, and they either got stake in the sale of the IP, or if we were to able to use the short film to leverage that as a proof of concept to a bigger deal, they have some stake percentage in that as well.
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And then of course, we put in a portion of our own money, as did our, uh, co-producer and director for Infinity System. So that 30-minute short, I'd say we did for somewhere between 70 to $80,000.
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And then also calling in a number of, like, favors from people who were just passionate about it, like some of the helicopter scenes that... We actually have a helicopter scene.
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The helicopter took our lead and director out to Mojave, so like, "Where did you shoot those sand dune scenes?" Like, they're live. They're out in Mojave, and some of them aerial.
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We had some drone sh- And these are people that they love the genre, and they're connected to the guys that, the different people that are working on the film.
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So it was like some sort of, like, sweat equity investment because they loved it. And I think that goes back to, like, how you treat people, how you interact with people, how you express gratitude.
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They, their request was that we host our screening at their location that was just opening, a creative space. They wanted to be able to show off their creative space and put their logo on stuff.
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So absolutely, that was so cool. So there's a lot of things that went directly on screen that, like, every dollar went to screen to make sure we could out- put out something that was as phenomenal as we could. Yeah. No.
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I
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absolutely love that, and I also noticed on, on the Kickstarter itself, 'cause for Infinity System, I think it was something like 55,000 on the actual Kickstarter, that five people were on the $5,000 tier, which is quite incredible that you had fans willing to back it at that level.
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And I know you gave them really cool perks, like being able to call themselves an executive producer on it, being able to come out to set. Really awesome stuff. So that's incredible.
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And I, my mind's going in two directions. The first is you brought on this crew, all these actors. How specifically did you do that? Are you going around to friends you have in Orange County?
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Are you posting things online? And if so, where? If you were to, let's say, go and build a film crew, I think so many authors don't know film people. So how do you go out and, and meet them? Oh, yeah.
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So, and there's multiple options, but one would be you can start in your area. You can search on Instagram.
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You can search on YouTube for film styles, cinematographer work that you like, and reach out to the people who made that content, right? Reach out to the people.
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Like, our cinematographer for that film is al- he's, he's always busy. So if you go to his Instagram, he's sharing what he's doing, what he's working on.
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Also it's networking in that if one person, you can be like, "Oh, hey, who do you know for this?" Or, "Who do you have in contact with that?"
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Another one, so if we're moving further away from Kevin Bacon, would be Kevin Bacon and the whole six degrees of separation, just-For any- Yeah... young folks listening, [laughs] is local film schools.
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And you can see who's not only, like, students. I don't want student film. That's fine. Find out who the professors are.
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Someone who's teaching to get their paycheck, but they'd also love to be able to do more actual, like, film work. Great. They might
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have more of a, just a passion for it and it's not as much about the money as opposed to, like, just building their body of work.
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That think that's how we ended up getting our special effects and CGI or special effects on the Forsaken Mercenary film, which I know you haven't seen that yet.
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It's 15 minutes, but the trailer's out on our YouTube channel, but the film is not out yet 'cause it's out for film festivals this year and maybe part of next year.
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That's how we got our special effects, our virtual effects, was it's a professor in Texas, and he was like, "Yeah, I'm in between class projects and I'm working on this, but this is what I really love, is doing this kind of sci-fi."
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So, like, he built out the ship and a town and all these amazing, cool effects on our film. Yeah. And so that's another resource to look into.
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And then film commissions, like your local city or, like, your bigger city, uh, depending on where you're located.
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A lot of the states and cities have film commission, film commissioners, and they have a network of filmmakers because that's what they're trying to do, is get their filmmakers work in that city or state.
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And while they can't recommend you who does what, but at least there's a list of someone you could reach out to, and those people are active in the community, so they're actively looking for work.
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So that could be something in your favor. Love it. No, that's ul- ultimately connecting with the different communities that you're around is huge.
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And quick plug for some friends that I have who are doing a cool event in Austin.
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They're working with Patreon to run Creator Camp Film Festival, which is when any YouTube creator, they s- have 12 of them who are basically having the first, like, YouTube native film festival.
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Pretty cool to check it out and see that. If you're in Austin, that could be a good place for you to meet people. And if you're not in Austin, wherever you are, there's probably... Like, LA has endless things in SoCal.
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There's, I know Chicago's got so much stuff going on. A lot of different cities that you're in, and even if you're in smaller cities as well, there's lots of opportunities to connect. Now,
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one other question I have when you're setting this budget, 'cause you mentioned, like, the budget is sitting 580K, which actually feels very, like, achievable and reasonable.
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Like, I understand it's a lot of money, like, just to come up from out of nowhere.
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But when you hear, like, the next Marvel, and then you look at the production quality, which again, I'll encourage everyone to look at Infinity Systems in the description. Watch that video. It's incredible.
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Watch all 30 minutes of it. You'll be like, "This is very high quality," right? Yeah. It's not like, this doesn't feel low budget, except again, 80K-ish, it feels like, again, reasonable-ish.
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But not to underscore that's a lot of money, but it, it's something that's possible. But with that, my big kind of question becomes how do you ensure what the budget is during it?
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'Cause I've been involved in an production [laughs] took place this year that went way over budget, I'll just put it that way. It wasn't my production, but it was a big YouTuber's production.
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Now, how do you manage that so that the unexpected you're planning for, because especially when you're doing something with a Kickstarter and it's relative budgets, you don't necessarily have a million dollars extra if something comes up.
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Yeah, how are you managing that? You go into it managed, and so, like, there's a spri- there's a scene breakdown you do. You break down your script so you understand in your script what everything is gonna cost.
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What are they wearing? When do they change? How much are you allocating to their clothes? How many people on set per day? How many hair and makeup do you need to get them ready for the each scene?
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So, like, we've got eight people. Great. Are all eight people on camera at once, or so do I need, uh, like how many hair and makeup do I need for that?
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Or do I just need two people so I can have hair and makeup, I can stagger them in and layer them in, so now I only have to account for two hair and makeup for a day. Um, wardrobe, same thing.
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Go by department, what you need to get everything executed. And then you have to take your scenes and put them into shooting order. So you have, you really figure out which scenes are being filmed when.
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And you break it down to such a n- degree. How many bags of trail mix do I need to have for crafty at, at each day? Okay, great. What's our budget for that?
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So every single expense is budgeted, and then you add a 5% to 10% contingency to the bottom line so that way when those things come up, and it's not if things are gonna come up, it's when things are gonna come up.
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'Cause inevitably they are. You have so many moving parts, there's absolutely gonna be something that changes. And that we, on our Infinity, nope, the other one, Forsaken Mercenary, we were filming.
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We had everything sorted out with the location, or so we thought, and when we were moving, first day of shooting, we moved, getting ready to go to our... The next night was gonna be a night shoot.
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Tuesday night was gonna be a night shoot, and there was gonna be some fake guns, right? We're sci-fi. We have to have blasters.
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It turns out the people who had given us permission to shoot on their property shared a quad outside area with some other entities, and those entities said, "Oh, heck no, you cannot shoot here, so much the police come by here.
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If you don't have a permit for this specifically, then you cannot shoot here." And that became a major problem.
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We had to move set where we were gonna be filming that night and improvise, which we didn't have our art team set up for, so they had to change up what they were gonna do on the fly.
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And then in addition, while all that's going on, everyone's eating dinner. Everyone's eating dinner, and I'm on the phone and on my email going up to the city, had to beg-Plead, offer them a role.
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"I'll put your kid in the film, like whatever you want." They said no.
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So I had to call some guys that we had scouted their locations and see if they had anything available, find out, get pictures from them, so that way our art team can figure out what they were gonna do to dress that set on the fly like that with less than 24 hours notice.
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And it ended up costing more to rent that location, so we got a little bit of a reimbursement back from the one we were supposed to film at, but the one we were ended up having to film, especially since it was last minute, calling our insurance to get additional permits, and like insurance certificates and all of this stuff.
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Then we had to move it because it was in like deep LA and meth heads are walking by, pausing. We were in a gated... It's one of those places where like when everyone gets on set, close and lock the gate.
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But we made it work, and it could have very much so gone below in our budget, but we moved some things around, we had some negotiation, and we said, "Okay, we have the contingency to take this on, like we have to do it.
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We can't not film tomorrow night." We have people coming in. We had an actor, we flew him in from Georgia. He's been in a ton of stuff. He was just in, uh, Bad Boys 4, he was in Jumanji
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1 and 2, 2 for sure, and The Rock's latest Christmas film. Oh, wow. I... Yeah, I saw. Yeah, it was really cool to see his big old face on screen. What? I didn't know he was in this. But we already got him in town.
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He's here. We're not gonna not fly him back out where he has to go and film with Mr. Dwayne Johnson. Yeah, he's got- Yeah... a packed schedule. It's like they need to- Yeah, there's no makeup here. Yeah.
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You make sure, yeah, you budget it, and then you... That's part of producing. Someone's, "I don't know where this money..." Yes, you have to know where that money went.
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Everybody that you assign to spend, you give them a budget. Make it work within this budget. I've researched, and I know that you can execute this within this budget.
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And if you're not, that means you're not doing, like your job properly. Like you're not doing due diligence. I need you to work a little bit harder to achieve this. Of course, all said with love and grace.
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But yeah, we didn't like willy-nilly make up budget line items. We researched it and had expectations. Yeah. No, no, no, for sure. So cool. I love, like that last minute problem solving.
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It, there's sometimes like those moments of like good stress in a sense, 'cause it's like, you know, when you look back at it, it's, oh wow, that was a moment.
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And in the middle of it you're like, you're not even thinking. You just gotta figure it out. That is amazing. Now, you mentioned starting this whole venture into film. It was really fan-driven, which I love that.
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Like I love that it was like, okay, yeah, they wanna do this. Like we'll figure it out. Like that, we're here to serve our readers. Now, you know, you do Infinity Systems, Forsaken Mercenary, you're...
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I, I know Jonathan's doing, writing screenplays behind the scenes. You guys are getting these things.
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I know part of the strategy too is to try and create these shorter films to try and get them option produced, which seems like it's now happening for y'all, two streamers, which is incredible.
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It seemed like something started out with like literally just a fan wanting some film, and you guys serving that, and now it feels like you're building this bigger empire. Where do you see that going?
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And, and maybe even more aptly, how do you see like other indie authors in this broader space of self-publishing interacting with film? 'Cause you guys are certainly at the forefront of this.
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I, I get so excited when I think of all the possibilities to come, not just for us, but for all the other indies who are operating at like a professional level. There's two, two things on that.
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Well, one for us, we wanna do more of the same but bigger. Mm.
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So instead of relying on this company that we're working with to get the funds, we wanna have that relationship to the funders and the investors to, so that we can have more creative control and more control over what's next on the slate.
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And it's not that, oh, I wanna take all of Johnson's books and turn them out into film. Like all of them are not film-worthy, right?
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As anyone who's written like that many books, there's like some that are just knocking it out of the park, and they have this amazing fandom, and some that could be iterated or you can use nuggets.
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But also to bring on and be the conduit, the sort of connector of good content, and doing it in a sort of indie way, like a mini major style, like an A24, where there's no lack in amazing storytelling and character development, and it, just stories that like take you through this rollercoaster of an emotional adventure, but leave you on the other side just feeling better for having gone through it.
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That's what we want to do more of. And so that's like what it is for us, but part of that is being able to show indies, like you didn't wait for someone to give you permission to pr- publish your book.
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Why wait for permission for someone to make your film? And I cannot express how simple it would be for someone in a contained storyline to execute this.
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I don't take for granted my background and my skillset and my gifts. Mm. So I'm not saying, "Oh, anyone can do this," 'cause I've tried writing.
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I've written, I've gotten like Amazon bestsellers and all that stuff under a pen name. I get it. It just takes so much effort. So that probably is what it's like for someone who's a storyteller and a writer.
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Oh, I could write stories all day. Producing, that's, get those spreadsheets away from me.
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So I get it, but teaming up with someone who has that ability or has that gift or experience, if you get quality cameras, if you get quality actors, you can very much so execute your like period piece sweet romance, or any of that kind of stuff, right?
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Some of the more risky stuff's gonna be harder, 'cause there's a lot of things you have to be careful with. You have to have an intimacy coordinator, like that's like a trickier area. There's more risk.
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There's a little bit more risk to it, so you wanna make sure like you have an, a solid knowledge base and experience. But some of this other stuff, like-Vampires without making it cheesy.
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Obviously shifters is gonna be tough, but anyone who's ever gone to any of the cons, like the Comic Cons and all that, and you see some of these costume pieces people put together.
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If they can use that to function and walk around downtown San Diego or LA or Austin or what have you, you can have that for... They wanna make it. They love making it. They wanna make it for your movie, right?
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The way we rented our lenses from is like the same place in Burbank that the studios are renting their stuff from. Like, we could- we're- where we filmed part of Forsaken Mercenary is where Batman Dark Knight was filmed.
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And we could access to the same thing. We have access to all the same thing Hollywood is, and they think, "Oh, it's too expensive," or I need this or that.
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You just need talented, interested people, and like at least one person on there who has that eye for the professional quality and, and great editing.
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And within a very reasonable budget, like I see some of these Kickstarters, especially for the special editions, you can do that same thing, make a 20, $40,000 film. A feature even. Yeah.
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If, if you're thinking, if, if you are at the point where you're thinking of doing a Kickstarter for special editions, you're at the same point where you could also be considering doing that for...
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You could be doing similar funding for film. That's amazing. When it comes to your role and your day-to-day, I know you mentioned how y'all work together.
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It feels very much like visionary integrator, which I don't know if you've read EOS.
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If anyone listening hasn't read EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System, yeah, there's a book called Traction by Gino Wickman that goes into it. That is- Highly recommend it... on my list.
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I have been recommended Traction so many times. I'm working with another coach right now, Dan Martell, and he even mentioned it during one of our coaching calls. Oh, Dan Martell's incredible. Yeah. He's- Yeah. Yes.
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But so, like Traction's like working its way up the TBR. I, I think that will probably be the audiobook I pick up next. Yeah. Traction's great, and then Rocket Fuel is like part two to it- Okay...
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which is shorter, which is probably even more applicable to y'all because it's all about, it literally is just about visionary and integrators working together. Um, which is literally I think what you're doing.
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And I'd love, through all of your years working together, what advice do you have for other authors, whether they're working with like their actual like partners or whether they're working with any operator in their business.
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What would be your advice for authors working with operators? And I guess in turn, operators working with authors. Yes. That's a great question. It's very intrapersonal and high EQ.
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Well- Hence the first year of marriage really helped us to [laughs] figure that out.
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But the end game is no matter what happens with the business, like we're in it to preserve the relationship, and we are in agreement that we have the same, we're working towards the same goal. And so- Mm-hmm...
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having that in mind every time reminds us that if we have opposing views or opposing agenda, like agendas as in short-term project based, we come to it with the understanding like the other person is just trying to make the boat go faster.
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And so we use that term when we bring up different ideas. Does this make the boat go faster? The other thing is there's no feelings involved.
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Like I know that can sound rather harsh and a little stoic, but it's when we come, we talk about the business, like the purpose of the business, the goals of the business, the must-haves of the business.
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Those are pretty objective. Like we have those set in stone, so it's no longer like how I feel about that today or tomorrow, whatever. Every initiative is driving towards that same thing.
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And so it doesn't matter how I feel about a project. If that project isn't working towards those goals, that purpose or that vision, then it has to be set aside until there's a time or space to do that.
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And the other one, big one is being able to see and respect each other in the way we communicate, and having grace in understanding we're working towards those same goals.
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And in our seeing, acknowledging, and encouraging our genius zones. Jonathan isn't gonna come to me and tell me how to run, implement my heat mapping on
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the website and what I should do with this, that or the other, no more than I'm gonna tell him how to rewrite a chapter. That's his genius zone.
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We collaborate and, again, with each of our stuff and we build each other up in those spaces. And the same thing happens, again, it's like, "Oh, you guys are married, of course."
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One of the films, Matt- Matthew Charles Hall, I never worked with him before. I barely knew him even though, was dating one of my best friends. We just hadn't met and hung out much.
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It was, again, during COVID, so nobody was really hanging out. And I had to like... This is happening. One way or the other, we're making this film.
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And so as I as a producer needed to do everything I could to support him in his genius zone, right?
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Even if I felt like we had some delay one day, all these people on set and we're waiting for a fog machine, something as silly as a fog machine. Can't we just push through and move on? Now we're hours behind.
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And the reality is like if I was too aggressive about that, wouldn't have been conducive to his creativity, to his genius zone, right?
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Nobody can work super creatively and during an amygdala hijack because you got a producer screaming down your neck telling you that we're behind and now we're going into double and triple overtime, or whatever it is, right?
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We gotta order a second dinner. We didn't have the $20 burritos on the budget or what have you. Like that's not gonna help anyone. So being able to say, "How can I support you? What can I do to help you?
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What can anyone do to help this? I will go make it happen so you can do what you do." Or as they say, you do that voodoo that you do so well.
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Knowing that at the end, like I wanna preserve the friendship, I wanna preserve the relationship, and we're working towards the same goal of having an amazing project we can all be proud of and that just honors everyone on set too.So it's a long-winded answer
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It's beautiful. People first, always. It's great. My last question is,
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looking back, you've shared so much incredible insights about how authors can really turn their books into film and start getting out there, and it's such a, I think, inspiring call to action, 'cause it's one of those big things that feels like a dream.
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But you're even helping me conceptualize how it can turn from a dream into a goal, and a goal into a plan. But I'm curious, as y'all did that process and have crushed it,
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there's bound to be some things you've learned along the way. If you could go back to that first Kickstarter you did for Infinity System, maybe what are some things you'd do differently now that you're so far into this?
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Yeah. That's a good question. I might need to ponder what we would do. So Jonathan did, he managed the Kickstarter. So he, like I did the content creative for it, and we collaborated on what the items would be.
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Some of the items I think just weren't that appealing. One thing he did really well that I don't know that many people who do Kickstarters do perhaps is, um, it's like you're running for mayor.
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Every day he would message 10 people. So I think I would message more people and invite them to participate. Not that I didn't think we didn't hit our goal or anything like that, but
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I didn't have in mind that I was inviting people on an epic journey. I thought I was asking them for a favor to help me realize my dream. And instead, to be able to say, "We've got this really cool thing happening.
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Come on. I want... Here's an opportunity for you to be a part of this cool thing that's happening."
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I'll recommend anything, like all these good things I find from Trader Joe's all day, take a picture and send it to a friend and be like, "Oh, have you tried this maple butter?"
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But I didn't talk about the project with that same gusto, and I think that's something I would change in having confidence in what we were doing. That would be one thing.
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And Jonathan's not interested in doing another Kickstarter, but I, I don't think this would work for everyone in terms of the credibility, but we might build something to do a fundraiser, like a pre-order type of deal on our website instead, because you have to give a share of the money to Kickstarter.
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That is something- Yeah... I might reconsider. But I understand, like there, there, there's risk involved in doing that, so maybe don't know that I'd recommend that to everyone.
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And I don't know, I feel like it went as good as it could have along the way. I don't feel like there's anything too glaring for...
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So we've done a couple of others with other people since, but just really going into it knowing what your budget needs to be is good. It's huge. Yes Theory definitely has done
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a few of the direct w- you know, more less, um, you know, scripted, but doc- docuseries or docu-style content.
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But they've also had high budget videos that they've funded direct through their website, and I know one of their models was like pay what you want for one of their documentaries that was like uncovering Mayan ruins.
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It was pretty cool. And it was like pay what you want, but a minimum of like X dollars to access it. Yeah. And then it eventually went for free on their YouTube channel.
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And then Sam and Colby recently did something interesting where the video eventually came out for free on YouTube. They're quite large. They have a lot of distribution on YouTube, close to 20 million subscribers.
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So they did a sort of feature length film in m- in a set of movie theaters across the country for one weekend. They just ran it very limited time, and they did about a million dollars from that.
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And o- obviously that covered what production that was, and then they gave it to the fans for free on YouTube after.
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So there's a lot, a lot of these things are, you have to level up to it, and I think you guys are at the level now where you can start to get really fun and creative.
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But there's definitely a lot of opportunities beyond just like Kickstarter. I agree with you.
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So the audio cut out in the recording for this next section, so I'm gonna give this short little transition and mention that Jennifer then started sharing some of the Kickstarter benefits that she would give her fans, and some of the benefits that didn't go as well with their fans.
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Right up next. They wanted to be a part of it. Their names are there in the credits. Depending on their giving level, they were able to get some IMDb credits to be able to say, "I'm an executive producer.
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I was an associate producer on the film." But they just wanted the film. They didn't care about the stuff so much, and to be, they mostly just wanted to be part of something bigger.
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And I like that idea that you've shared where eventually they're gonna get it for free, but pay what you want, and at, at a minimum of a certain amount. That's really cool. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting model.
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Of course, if you can get distribution from one of the streamers and that sort of funding, that's huge.
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And I know that Prime Video and a lot of these other streamers are looking a lot more at like independently produced content, and looking to invest more heavily in that.
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So it's the best time to be doing this, 'cause I think a lot of eyes are open. The work y'all are doing is opening eyes, and it's very exciting times ahead. So I'm so grateful for you coming on the podcast.
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I'd love for you to share where we can find you and Jonathan's work. Like I said, an Infinity System will be linked down below in the description.
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But please share with us wherever we can find you online, where we can read your stories and more. Yeah. The biggest thing would be following us on Instagram. So you can do author Jonathan Yanez, or Yanez, Y-A-N-E-Z.
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Or you can find me at Jennifer, J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R, _rose on Instagram, and that's where we post updates or what we're doing.
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So depending on what you're interested in, uh, if you want the more fun sizzle stuff and the stories, definitely follow Jonathan.
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[laughs] Uh, for more of like chill behind the scenes, what's going on-Day-to-day life kind of stuff, you can follow me as well. And we're both very open to anyone reaching out and messaging us.
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We do respond to the messages because, uh, some people will say, "Oh, remember me when..." Like, I wanna remember you now. [laughs] Uh-huh. It's all about the people, right? Like, we're...
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No man is an island, and so we're very happy to connect with folks if they reach out on Instagram. Y'all are so sweet. I am so excited for what's to come. Can't wait to see the next mega blockbuster
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written by Jonathan and produced and managed, and everything made possible by you. So I know that future is not too far away. Thank you so much.
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Yeah, we're, we're just excited to give back and, and share all of our experience there with the world we grew up in of this indie nation here. No, it means the world. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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And that's it for this podcast episode. I'll be back next week with another episode on how to sell at events, and I also have a very special episode coming up where I visit David Forguts' headquarters, the ScareMeOut!
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HQ, and show you it live. Now, if you want to learn how to go beyond the book, upcoming I have the Beyond the Book Accelerator.
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It's gonna teach you about all the opportunities that lie for you beyond the book, how to grow your audience, how to grow your revenue by putting your readers first.
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If you'd like to join the Beyond the Book Accelerator, you can find the wait list below. I'd love to have you part of our founding cohort.
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And if you ever need my help, if you have any questions for me, if you're doing something exciting and going beyond the book, I wanna hear from you. So don't be shy. Email me, DM me, whatever it takes, get ahold of me.
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I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to learn what you're doing. Please let me know any guests you wanna bring onto the podcast, 'cause I'd love to reach out to them. If you know them, even better.
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We're really starting a movement here, bringing in all these wonderful people with different viewpoints, different exciting things they're doing to hopefully expand our minds and show us that storytelling is just the beginning.
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It all starts with a story, but it ends with an empire. So let's go together. Hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. And as always, don't forget, together we are boundless.
