Artist and Filmmaker Ash Hamilton Shares Behind The Scenes Process of Creating a Full Length Film

Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices. I'm your co-host, Jeff Williams, in the studio with me today. Many of you will know out there, Ash Hamilton. Ash, how's it going?
Ash Hamilton:
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me here.
Jeff Williams:
I didn't really give you any particular reason why. I just thought it'd be kind of cool to come and just maybe some questions like for somebody who's like thinking, you know, they've been inspired by your work. Is that okay to kind of do that? Where it's almost sort of like an inspirational thing in a way.
Ash Hamilton:
I originally had a background in fine art. I was always interested in sequential storytelling, specifically comic books. So back in the day when that business was huge and booming, I did for several, you know, like gaslight presses, little small presses, and did mainly penciling work, did some preliminary work for some bigger companies, a company owned by DC, for example. So, I was really big into the idea of storytelling. And then the bottom sort of fell out of the industry. I blame Beanie Baby.
Jeff Williams:
My goodness.
Ash Hamilton:
Yeah. For those of us who know, I blame Beanie Beanies.
Jeff Williams:
Right. So, this is when you were kind of out on the east. Out east. Yeah. Okay.
Ash Hamilton:
Yeah. So I was in the New York, New Jersey area for about 12 years. And I loved it. I loved the idea of sequential storytelling. I'm a huge nerd. I love comic books. And this idea of sort of mixing that. That literary angle with the visual storytelling for me has always been a wonderful medium and I always loved it. But when you tell people that you've got a limited print run and the print run is 1,000,000 copies and it's going to be a collector's edition and it's in a big bold starburst on the cover, you might be a little dismayed if you think that that's going to be your nest egg after a few years. So, the bottom sort of dropped out of the industry. As we see now, the visual storytelling aspect cinematically still works for like Marvel. But there's not much there for the print anymore, sadly. So, at that point, I thought, what am I going to do? And then I started to get into animation, went back to school for animation, went back to school for those other sort of narrative... storytelling mediums.
Jeff Williams:
So still in the same field in a way, but you're still in the space where you feel passion, I guess is what I try to say.
Ash Hamilton:
Yeah, it was still the creative space.
Jeff Williams:
Right, exactly.
Ash Hamilton:
And being a fine artist, you sort of find that. And you can find it in the corporate world, even though it has its misgivings. You can still try to find it. I did that for a few years. And luckily, those skill sets allow you to bounce around a little bit. You can do freelancing for a little while. So, if you're not really all that comfortable with that traditional 9-to-5 cubicle work, you can sort of find a way around it. And I was always a huge fan of films and specifically genre films like horror and sci-fi. So, I was doing websites for a lot of people, and I was sort of helping them pursue their passions and dreams. And I thought, might as well go ahead and do a website for me and I'll talk about horror films because it's a huge preoccupation. Maybe do a podcast here and there. And that's what happened. And I was doing a lot of video work. I just sort of fell into doing a lot of video work. I was doing some work for some people involved with the New York Fire Department after 9-11 and just got more comfortable with doing video work, which had always been something that I had I had done little pieces here and there, but I don't think I had ever taken it as serious as learning, non-linear editing software like Premiere Pro and some of those other pieces. And then the more I did it, the more it started to basically mirror what I had done in the past, taking all these visual elements and then putting them on a timeline, constructing a story. And then I kept on doing that. And I would do that either commercially in higher education, I was doing a lot of Q&A interview stuff. And then eventually I started to get into crowdfunding and indie sourcing for projects. And then you start making these little commercials. And then the commercials end up turning into short films. And then once you do a short film, you lie to yourself and say, this is so easy, I'll do a narrative feature. You try to do it. You understand that caffeine does have its limits, but you've got the bug at that point, so you just keep doing it. That's kind of in a nutshell, sort of the progression over the years.
Jeff Williams:
So, let's jump back forward here. Full-length films, producing. I think a lot of people, they hear the word and maybe they don't know exactly everything that kind of goes into that.
Ash Hamilton:
And I think a lot of people, when they hear the word production, they easily get it confused with investing. So, I think when people feel that they're finding a producer for a project, they feel that they're finding someone who's a money man or they feel someone has those connections for them and they come in. When often what that producer role in film anyways is doing is it's allowing you to meet certain people. So, there is a huge networking aspect. But not only that, it is being able to capitalize on the resources that producer has. And some of those resources might simply be advertising and marketing. They might be putting you in front of the right people. You might be getting more podcast appearances, or you might be getting more print web pieces, depending on what you're shooting for. And especially with indie film, it really is the sum of all parts. So, if you in a producer capacity can talk to someone and say, listen, I've been doing this for 15 years. I know all of the top 10 websites and I've got friends there. So, if we are issuing press releases, we know where it's going to hit. And that can sometimes be gold for a really small film that might not have those resources yet, especially for young filmmakers who have the passion, they have the bug, but this might be something relatively new. This might be a new journey for them. So, finding someone who's a little seasoned as a producer I mean, just recently I've come in on a couple of films as a producer in that capacity. My studio, which is Horror Fix, came in with a film called Human Hibachi, which is pretty self-explanatory, actually. It's an artsy piece. So, and what we were able to do is we were able to give a little bit of funding, but also then say, we work in tandem with another marketing agency that they also worked with. So, when you're releasing press releases, we're pushing it through the same channels. It might get a little more visibility. There was a film off of the West Coast called Body Count. These are mostly going to be horror titles, so.
Jeff Williams:
I'm just giving you more.
Ash Hamilton:
And it was an anthology that had a little bit of money behind it, and it was well produced. But as what happens with a lot of films, if you don't necessarily have all your ducks in a row, and it's not really always the fault of the director with the people involved, it's just the name of the game. You know, if something can happen, it will happen, and then you have to do your damage control. But they had a lot of sound issues. And I'd been doing sound engineering on films for a few years. So, I said, listen, as a producer, I can not only do some press releases, put the right channels for you, but I can help you out with the sound.
Jeff Williams:
Nice. Yeah.
Ash Hamilton:
If we put it under the umbrella of my studio, then it's both, you know, working out for both parties.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Ash Hamilton:
So, as a producer, I think a lot of it is just how can we push this through the right channels, get you that visibility, and put you in a better spot where the filmmaker's not having to do that. They can concentrate on what they do best, which might be post-production, might be principal photography, but allow them to do that.
Jeff Williams:
Great information, for sure. Thank you very much for that. Writing, developing something, when I like working on a song, you know, something like that. Sometimes it can be just some quick thing that I see someplace and I'm like, that has triggered something that I feel I could extend into at least 3 1/2 minutes or two minutes to 5 minutes, maybe something like that. tell a quick, tell a little story like that. It's a different thing, like you're saying, like with a full length film. I'm not going to try to speak to it as if I really know. I can just, I can imagine, but you've got to be able to somehow tie mini stories together. Or if you've got this overall projection of what's going to happen, have mini stories that carry along in a way, I guess. Now I'm going to shut up about it because I'm just guessing kind of at that point.
Ash Hamilton:
You got some people that can just sit down and write. And for them, it's very fluid and it's very linear and they can just sit down and do it. And I wish I was one of those people, I'm not necessarily like that. I have to start with some really small pieces. So usually if I have an idea and something that I think merits 80 to 90 pages for a script, the first thing that I have to do is I have to sit down and try to recognize the three act outline. what happens in the first half, what happens in the middle part, and what happens at the end. Okay, yep, and then what I try to do is, and this is like, this is my cheat code, is that I try to make sure that each act has 10 to 15 parts. Okay, If I can get 10 parts for the beginning, the middle, and the end, then I've got 30 parts. Hopefully each will consist of three minutes and I've got a 90 minute film.
Jeff Williams:
Nice, okay.
Ash Hamilton:
So, for me anyways, I have to be extremely structured and I have to say, okay, I know I, and plus once you start writing scripts, there comes a point where you know how many minutes you've written. When you're on page 75, you're like, okay, we might be at that 85, 90 minute point.
Jeff Williams:
Gotcha.
Ash Hamilton:
And you can take a look at it and you can take a look at all these different components, all these little parts. And then you can say, okay, aggregated, this is a film. And I think this is a 90 minute film. And then of course, it's the painstaking process of looking at it and going, can we afford any of this? What do we have to write so that we can't afford it? And when you're doing any projects, you are writing for a budget, no matter how fantastic the idea might be, no matter how big of a splash you want to make, you really have to write for what you can do because development can take years. And we don't know how many years we have. I also take a look at how long is this going to take to film? How much money is it going to take? How much of this do I have to self-finance? How much can I get from external parties? And then does it all fit into those 90 pages?
Jeff Williams:
Right. Wow. Now, when you are casting, picking a person and having it come down to a couple of people and sometimes it's got to be close sometimes.
Ash Hamilton:
And that's the hard part. That really is the hard part, especially because you might become more friendly with one person than another. You might have a social rapport with one person or another. And you've got to take a step back and understand that kind of influence might be detrimental to the character. And you might find someone that is great for the part but there's something about their schedule. There's something about their enthusiasm. There's something that just screams; I don't think it's going to work. And it's also difficult to back away from that once you're so deep in that process. Especially when you find someone that hits on so many cylinders, they fire on so many cylinders. that you just look at them and go, now I can't think of anybody else.
Jeff Williams:
Right, and especially, like you said, if it is, and it's like, God, they're going to be perfect for this part, and they just happen. going to be in a position where they're kind of, for whatever reason, either like, I got to work too much or something you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're not feeling the same thing.
Ash Hamilton:
Because the business part always creeps into the fantasy. It always does. As much as you don't want it to. And as much as we love what we do, those things that we're passionate about, that aspect will always creep in there. budget always creeps in; schedules always creep in. As much as you want to push it aside and hope that you can just rely on fate and lady luck will step in. Yeah. And that's when it does become sort of heartbreaking. It really does. Because you have to leverage it. And then you have to bounce back. And you have to say, okay, I didn't get him. It's just the way that it works. This person… maybe we tailor the character a little more to this person that was a great second fit. And then before you know it, you can't imagine anybody but them doing it. Right, or you're just lying to yourself, which I am a huge fan of too.
Jeff Williams:
Sometimes you have to.
Ash Hamilton:
I'm a ‘fake it until you make it’ and see a naked kind of guy. In the indie world, it is not uncommon, and I say that with great hilarity, for people to call you at the last minute and just be like, I don't have a car. I cannot make it.
Jeff Williams:
To do anything that's going to be problematic. Okay, now, another thing, scouting locations. To me, I feel like that would be kind of fun, like getting out there.
Ash Hamilton:
A lot of it is a kindness of stranger scenario, like it really is. Because you really don't know what's out there, especially when it comes to interiors. There are so many buildings you've never been in. And you see something from the outside that might look perfect, and you get inside and the interior is all wrong. And with Me, I always start with the exterior. I'm like, I know what we need. I know that we need to get the cameras in and out of here without always looking at cross traffic if we can't get rid of the traffic. Just how heavily trafficked is the area to start with. So, a lot of that is you have this vision and you're always like, okay, I know that it's got four buildings surrounding it, a sort of a quad area, not many sidewalks. You've got this weird sort of preposterous vision of what you have. And then you'll find something that's close enough. And then the close enough is kind of great because at that point it forces you to use things that you didn't maybe think you were going to have to use before. It's the interiors that are the hardest problem for me because you just don't know until you're there. And sometimes you can't get permission. Sometimes it's not always open. Sometimes you have to be You have to rely on a trust that you're going to get in there. And then you're going to, especially when you're doing horror films, you're going to clean it up.
Jeff Williams:
Right.
Ash Hamilton:
So you've got people looking at you like, is that bucket of dark red stuff exactly what I think it is? And you have to be very assuring. Like, believe me, it has soap as a major component of it. It's going to clean up just fine. Luckily, we are in a part of the country where we see sort of different of where commerce has come in, where it's left, what's left of it, what's happening that's new. So, where you've got a lot of areas that are sprawling in urban exclusively, and you pretty much know what you're going to get, luckily we are in an area where that looks like it's colonial. that looks like it's Depression era. That looks like it's 50s deco. You start getting all of this stuff that you're like, it's still here. It's just the capacity to which you can utilize it. That's always the rub.
Jeff Williams:
I can see in that capacity being somewhat advantageous here because it's more or less quicker trips to get to Scout.
Ash Hamilton:
And less dictated by permits. When you start shooting in bigger cities, it's a financial concern and sometimes a strain. No matter where you're at, you're probably going to need a permit. And when I again talk about the kinds of strangers, a lot of it here, these are buildings that are owned by a single person, usually it's not a board. You're not having to contact 10 people. It's somebody who's owned the building for 50 years and somebody has their phone number, you call them at home and they just say, Saturday after 7, clean it up.
Jeff Williams:
Once again, we're in the studio with Ash Hamilton talking films behind the scenes sort of thing. Have you had to do that where... And is it problematic shooting the outside scenes, but the interior scenes are at a different location? We're doing that right now.
Ash Hamilton:
We've got a shot that should be very simple. It's a group of people going into a building. The interior of the building looks a little gutted. And then they go into one of the interior rooms within that building, and then they're down a flight of steps. So the problem with that is that the building that we found that has a great interior for that just doesn't work the exterior. So there's a building that we can, with some crafty camera play, we could take the exterior from one building, go into the interior, and then we open the, what would be like the interior chamber to another room, we're cutting to get another building. So that scene, which does not comprise a whole lot of screen time, is probably one of the most challenging because we've got to make sure the lining is correct. We've got to make sure that some of the ambient sounds and everything are similar. And we know one might be in a port of town that's a little more congested. One might be in a port of town where we're getting different sounds. So it's always a patchwork quilt, you know, to get it to work and locations very much that way.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, right on. Once again, in here with Ash Hamilton, Disc Talking Films. We've covered a lot, so I don't want to try to make you cover every detail of things. How about this? I'll give you both of these and you can either one. the directing approach or acting, your own acting, whichever way you kind of want to go with that. Talk about either of those.
Ash Hamilton:
I'm an actor by necessity.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Ash Hamilton:
But a lot of people are like, why are you in your movie? It's like, because I'm there. That's the most simple way that I can put it is if I did a pickup shot at 3:00 in the morning, I'm there. I would rather not. I would rather have the finances and the means to be able to call somebody and go, hey, we need you in for another day. But especially in this business, if you're flying someone in from LA, which we did for our film final days, we had the actor Rob Losardo come in and he's based on the West Coast. So all of a sudden, once you start having that, it's per diem for them to eat and get around. You've got to have essentially transportation for them. You've got to provide a hotel and then you've got their day rate plus airfare on top of it. I don't require any of that. I require an alarm clock and maybe a little bit of go-go juice, something to get me going. But yeah, I'm an actor by necessity. Luckily, I know what I want. And I also am objective enough where I can be like, why am I wrinkling my nose like every three seconds? Why am I clearing my throat? Like it's a thing where luckily I can look at it and I can go, man, I'm not doing that the way it should be done. I know my limitations, luckily. So I know what roles I can go, okay, I can do that. I'm pretty sure I can do that. Then there are others where I'm like, I can't get near that. Someone else has to do that. And I think that it's helped me first of all, because from budgetary concerns and constraints, you know, I'm paying myself in sweat equity. But it also helps in that I can say, listen, I'm going to shoot on my parts. So I know that even before we get the first actors come in, we might be 18% of the way through principle if I've got all my parts done that I can do when I have the time. And that's extremely, extremely helpful.
Jeff Williams:
So that kind of did, in a way, get into directing some too. You know, I mean, in a way, decisions that fall into the directing side of things. casting yourself at certain times or not casting yourself at certain times falls under the director's hat.
Ash Hamilton:
Yeah, and you've got to treat that persona as something sometimes completely different, especially if you're getting all of your stuff done, all of the stuff that you're doing as far as your acting parts, you might start editing it and going, I'm just not, I'm still not the guy.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah.
Ash Hamilton:
You almost have to assume that idea of like Daemons. it's like, this sort of is my idea, but maybe it's just being channeled through me. And if it's being channeled through me, I'm doing the best possible, but maybe the inspiration is where it's at fault. So there's ways around the psychology of it where you can put yourself on the side. I tend to mention my character's name a lot when I talk about what I'm doing. That way I'm just taking myself out of the equation and I'm like, I don't think Henry would do that. Yeah, this isn't a Henry thing. That way I'm not sitting there going, I have failed. You've got to be a therapist. Yeah, there's a lot of self-therapy.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah. Do you want to talk about the project that you're working on right now a little bit?
Ash Hamilton:
Are you sure? in audio drama, which is something a little bit different for me that I'm directing and that I also wrote. But these are 30 minute episodes that are like old time serials. So think of listening to The Shadow. Yeah, This is something that the first episode is already up on YouTube and we're creating more episodes. It's a very large cast. It is pretty ambitious, but I'm having a ton of fun with it because you can create Star Wars without having to create it visually. As long as you have the sound of a blaster, you don't have to show the blaster. you're able to do some bigger things or I'm able to do some bigger things with it just through audio. So that's called Dislocated. That's currently out if people want to listen to it. That'll be an episodic thing. It's a serial. And we're doing something called Mangled, which again, very emotionally impactful drama. It is not. It's more of a take on true crime. And sort of the obsessiveness of true crime and how before it, you sort of become a character in your own play with it. And it takes a little bit of a turn on what podcasters and documentarian filmmakers sort of do. And we're doing that right now and we're doing it in bits and pieces because Illinois is hot. and we got to try to figure out how to shoot when it's not so hot.
Jeff Williams:
Well, right on. Well, Ash, thanks a lot for coming in the studio.
Ash Hamilton:
I'm trying to.
Jeff Williams:
Kind of give a little bit of maybe inspiration or maybe scare some people off if they're thinking about like some of the behind the scenes right behind the scenes things of what go into making like a film, be it short or longer, full length. Once again, Ash Hamilton, thanks tons for coming in. It was great information.
Ash Hamilton:
Thank you so much. Much appreciated.
Jeff Williams:
Community Voices is a production of NPR, Illinois.