Hollywood Film Coach

Bob Degus: 00:00

So I remember sitting in the screening room at the Academy. And this one year, we were judging short films to determine the five that would be the nominees. And this one particular film had captivated the whole room. Everybody in the room, you could feel it. Like there was this sense that, oh, hey, we found a nominee for this year.

Bob Degus: 00:24

And not only that with this film, we found what might be the winner. And so you're on the edge of your seat. And one of the things that happens for me in these screening rooms is that you obviously want every film to be great, and many of them aren't. And so when you find a really good film, you start rooting for the filmmaker. You're still watching it, but you're you, the filmmaker in you is like, Okay, great.

Bob Degus: 00:49

Keep going. Keep going. And you get to the halfway point. And usually by the time you get halfway through a film, if it's working, then like, Okay, this could be a nominee. This could be a nominee.

Bob Degus: 01:00

And I remember with this one particular film, you could feel the whole room just like on the edge of their seats, and everybody was was privately rooting for for this film to succeed. And you have to remember, everyone in this room, we're all filmmakers. We know how hard it is to to make a film, let alone a good film, let alone a film that could be an Oscar contender. And so we're watching this film and we get halfway through and I'm thinking, don't screw it up, don't screw it up. And we get three quarters of the way through and now I'm thinking that louder.

Bob Degus: 01:34

And then all of a sudden, right in the last thirty seconds of the film, the filmmaker made a mistake. And you could feel the room go, And the film was never nominated. And no one could tell the filmmaker why what we thought or why that happened. And that really for me, this was like ten years ago, became the genesis of this podcast, taking my experience sitting in a screening room where I've watched more than 3,000 short films and sharing it with people who are making short films. After forty years in Hollywood and watching more than 3,000 short films as an Oscar voter, I know a good short film from one that wins awards.

Bob Degus: 02:36

My name is Bob Degus. This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast where we'll help you create award winning short films. Episode one, why I'm here, forty years, 3,000 films, and What I Want to Give You. I believe that the stories we tell ourselves as a society shape who that society becomes. And one of my criticisms of Hollywood is that they make the same movies over and over and over and over and over and over again, just like they did another Superman.

Bob Degus: 03:14

And I believe we need to be telling better stories, stories that are from a more diverse, more interesting background so that we as a culture and a society can come together and understand each other better. And that's an important aspect of this podcast because I believe you have a story to tell that you want to tell the world. You want to tell it in the best possible way you can. And you don't want to make the mistakes that hundreds of other films make that keep them from coming out in the world and being seen. So this podcast is really dedicated to you to share with you the information that I've learned by watching more than 3,000 short films.

Bob Degus: 04:00

And yes, I counted them about five years ago. And to help you really share your voice and your vision with the world and the things that only you can say. Because there's a whole bunch of stories and perspectives that only you can share. We both could make the same film, but you making it is going to have an entirely different perspective and point of view than me making it. And so, that's the purpose of this podcast.

Bob Degus: 04:28

And I hope you enjoy it. So I grew up in Rochester, New York. And at the time, this is a while ago, Rochester, New York was the headquarters of Eastman Kodak Company. And Kodak made almost all of the movie film that was used to make movies. They made still film.

Bob Degus: 04:51

And my whole family, my grandparents and my great grandparents worked in some capacity for Kodak. And my great grandfather even knew George Eastman who was the founder himself. And so I grew up surrounded by those yellow Kodak boxes. And as a very young boy, really around nine or so, I started shooting photography. And by the age of 13, I had my own darkroom.

Bob Degus: 05:20

And for those of you who don't know, a darkroom is like the old version of Photoshop, much more primitive. It's literally a dark room and you have these chemical baths where you can develop film and you can make prints. And so I was doing that as a really young boy and I was really interested in photography and I was very interested also in theater. I found theater to be just mesmerizing. And I would go see opera.

Bob Degus: 05:49

I'd go see plays. It was very interesting to me. So it wasn't surprising that when I went to college, I majored in photography because that was a family, that was kind of like in some ways the family business or at least the acceptable business. And then I had a minor in theater. And it was in college I was taking this class in silent German expressionistic film from the 1920s.

Bob Degus: 06:16

And I remember this one class where we were screening the film Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks. And it's a German film, silent film. And I was watching this film and I became, as many people have been, mesmerized by Louise Brooks. And there was this one moment in the film where I realized that photography and theater come together in this art form called cinema. And at that point, I switched majors and I started studying cinema in-depth.

Bob Degus: 06:54

And I had a part time job in college as one of the projectionists who projected films for the classes. And I had access to the film library. And so I spent an entire semester on weekends, than going partying, rather than going to football games, rather than doing anything normal, I would get a projector and I would get copies of these silent movies from the tens and nineteen twenties. I kind of watched the whole evolution of cinema from its birth around 1911 through the beginning of the sound era. And it gave me a really good education in cinema, in the language of cinema, and how it's told.

Bob Degus: 07:43

And when I left college, I immediately went to New York City. And I really laugh at my 20 year old self going to New York City now because I had this idea that still that theater and film and commercials, it was all one thing. And it was to me, it was one thing. I didn't realize they were very separate businesses, very separate paths. And if you want to go into theater, that's a whole lifetime of study.

Bob Degus: 08:09

If you want to work in cinema, it's the same thing. And so for me, I went to New York and that was the beginning of my whole journey into filmmaking. So like I said, I like to laugh at myself, my 20 year old self affectionately. So I'm in New York, and I'm producing commercials. And I'm maybe 24 or 25, and I feel, know, hey, I've made it.

Bob Degus: 08:44

I'm in New York doing these commercials. And I read about a feature film that's coming to New York. And so I decide, since I'm producing commercials, I'm ready to go, you know, be a production manager or, you know, maybe even a producer on this feature film. So I send in my resume. And in those days, you used envelopes and pieces of paper and stamps.

Bob Degus: 09:11

And I mail my resume in and I get called in and I meet with the production coordinator. Now, the funny thing is normally a producer would be the one hiring the production coordinator. But anyways, I'm applying for this job as a producer or a production manager, and I'm meeting with the production coordinator. And she's very sweet. And she says, Well, you know, Bob, we already have a producer.

Bob Degus: 09:36

We already have a production manager. But would you be interested in being the driver to our producer? And so I said, Sure, you know, because it's the same thing. It has producer in the name, right? I could just be the producer or the driver to the producer.

Bob Degus: 09:53

It's kind of the same thing. And so I get this job and she explains to me. She said, you know, we've been through four or five drivers with with our producer, and he doesn't like to talk in the car. So please just be silent in the car. So I took that very seriously and I didn't say anything except at the end of the day, I would ask one question about film producing.

Bob Degus: 10:23

And producer would answer my question. And at the end of the first week, he said to me, he was from Germany, and he said to me, Bob, what do you want to do? And I said, Well, I want to be a producer. And he said, Well, okay, we'll change your job. And from today forward, you can come with me.

Bob Degus: 10:42

You can come in every meeting I go to. You can go everywhere I go. The only thing I ask is that you not talk in the meetings. But when we get back to the car, I'll answer any questions that you have. So I was still his driver, but I had this extraordinary mentorship and I really learned I was very fortunate because he was an excellent producer.

Bob Degus: 11:02

His name was Bernd Eichinger. Very, very, very famous European producer, but I didn't know that when I working for him. And I learned a tremendous amount. And I also learned that that at that point in time, feature films were not made in New York City or were only made there rarely. It's very different now, but then there weren't many of them.

Bob Degus: 11:26

And I had this big epiphany that, oh, if I want to work in feature films, need to be in Hollywood. And so I moved to Hollywood and I arrived in Hollywood. And again, I think I was expecting some great welcome. And I didn't get a great welcome. Nobody cared I was there.

Bob Degus: 11:46

I sent out 400 resumes, again with stamps and envelopes and addresses on them. I didn't get one anything from anyone. And it was a really I had had a very successful career in New York and I kind of got this bucket of ice water dumped on me when I came to Los Angeles. And New York and Los Angeles work very different cities. Their energies are very different.

Bob Degus: 12:14

And I also didn't understand that when I went there. Anyway, ultimately, I got hired and started working. And I worked at a company called Chanticleer Films, and that's very relevant to this podcast because Chanticleer Films was a really unique film company at a really unique point in time in Hollywood. There was a if you wanted to be a director, you needed to show that you were capable of directing. And the only way you could show that you were capable of directing is if you had a film.

Bob Degus: 12:50

But you couldn't have really a film unless you had made a film. And you couldn't make a film unless it became this sort of catch-twenty two situation. And what Chanticleer Film did is sponsor making a series of we did 10 short films a year, and we would hold an invitation where people who were film industry professionals so maybe you were a screenwriter, maybe you were a cinematographer, maybe you were an editor, and you had a passion for directing. You could pitch us on a project, and we would make your film, and we did 10 of those short films a year. And during the period of time that I ran the company, because I started there as an intern, and then several years later I was their head of production, running production for them.

Bob Degus: 13:40

And during the period of time that I ran the company, we got five Oscar nominations and two wins. Over the whole period of time that the company was in existence, they got 11 Oscar nominations for short films, and we were very successful at making these. And one of the things I learned, which will be very helpful in this podcast, is because we would do 10 films a year, we would take a film, we'd conceive how to make it, we'd go make it, and then we would learn from what we did right, what we did wrong. Then we would make another one and try to improve the process of making that film. And so for me, it was this really giant education into how to make films, how to take them creatively from the idea that's in your head, get it on film.

Bob Degus: 14:34

And these were made on 35 millimeter film and take it into the world and take it to festivals and see how audiences responded. We would regularly go to Sundance with these projects, so it was a really great experience for me to gain a tremendous amount of knowledge. After Chanticleer, I went on to New Line Cinema where I worked as a production executive there, and I oversaw a number of movies. The most notable would be Austin Powers, I was an executive on. I worked on the Friday movie.

Bob Degus: 15:11

Worked on close to 25 movies at New Line. I left New Line to go produce the film Pleasantville with Steven Soderbergh and John Killick and Gary Ross. Reese Witherspoon starred in it with Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels. And that really took me into my professional feature film producing career in Hollywood. But all the while I was doing that, I still had this passion for short films and I had been invited to join the Academy and that's when I started on the committee that reviews short films.

Bob Degus: 15:49

And I go every year and it's like 160 films that we watch now. And you get a real sense of what it is that makes a film work, what it is that doesn't make a film work or causes a film to fail. And that's what I'm going to be sharing with you in this podcast. As soon as I was invited to join the academy, of course, did, and I became very active. I was on the executive committee of my branch.

Bob Degus: 16:18

I was on the foreign language Film Committee nominating the foreign language films, and I was on the Animation Committee, and I was on the Short Film Committee, or the Short Film Nomination Committee. And I want to just give you a sense of what that feels like to be in that room. And at that point in time, you would go to a screening room and you'd screen the films. They were all on 35 millimeter or 16 millimeter, most were on 35. And you would watch them in a room.

Bob Degus: 16:50

And the, you know, committee I was on, we were the first wave of where we really would look at 125 short films, and we would narrow it down to the shortlist. And then the shortlist, there would be a much bigger group of people that would pick from the 10 that were on the shortlist to get to the five. But we were on the committee that was looking at the 125 or 160 short films to pick those, the group that would be the the nominees. And you really the thing that so impressed me about everyone else on the committee was how seriously they they took their role and responsibility, the respect that they would show to the other filmmakers' films who they were looking at, and also the really the reverence for the process and really wanting the process to have integrity and wanting to give the films that we were looking at the same respect as if it was our own film that was being viewed. And that was really inspirational to me.

Bob Degus: 18:03

And it's something that you take very seriously. In that era, we had a list of the films that we were going to see that day. The only thing we were ever told about them was a synopsis. And so as you think about writing your synopsis you know, or your logline for your film, really spend a lot of time thinking about it because in the case of our case, that sets up the film that we're going to watch. And if the synopsis points you in a different direction than the film is going, it takes you a minute to kind of, as a voter, recover from that.

Bob Degus: 18:40

So we get the synopsis and then we'd screen the film. And then also with the Academy, I know some film festivals are different, but with the Oscar voting, it's not a discussion. You're not discussing with your peers which is the best film to vote for. That's why I always get annoyed with the press that say, you know, people snub films because that's not the case. It's each individual person in that room sitting with a private ballot, and you're scoring the film from one to 10.

Bob Degus: 19:10

Obviously, a 10 would be a film that this is an Oscar. A nine would be this could be an Oscar if everyone else really thinks it's great. Then you'd have eight, which would be, yeah, it's a good film. I really like this film. And then obviously seven would be, you know, it's it's this isn't a film that's an Oscar, and then you would go down from there.

Bob Degus: 19:38

And so you'd score these films. And then you'd to have a way to think about, because you'd screen them over a number of weeks, because there were quite a few of them, how to balance out your scoring from the beginning to the end. And for me and everyone I think had different systems they used but for me I used a plus and a minus. So I might score something at, let's say, night two, I watch this film and I give it an eight, but I really kind of liked it. And so I might put a plus with my eight.

Bob Degus: 20:09

And then at the end of the process as I was looking through all of the films, maybe that eight plus might become a nine or the nine minus might become an eight so that you'd balance out the total number of films to reflect how you felt about them. And so that was my process for doing it. And I think, like I said, it's something that we all took very seriously because it's a tremendous commitment of time to watch all those movies and to score them. And one of the things too when you're turning in your final ballot, especially after you've watched 160 films, is the films that you can remember that left an impression on you, you tend to score higher. Because if you're looking at a film and you have this title and then you're thinking, Wait, what was that about?

Bob Degus: 21:01

And you can't remember it, then it's probably not a memorable film. So that was the thing for me that became the way to really look at these films. And then like I've said a couple times in this podcast, really seeing the common themes across all these films over many years that the successful films shared and the mistakes that the films that weren't selected often had in common with other films that weren't picked. Each year that I would sit and do these screenings, I would keep a journal of ideas and things I learned from watching all these films, things that worked really well, things that I might want to bring into my own work. And I also really had this idea way back then of how to communicate these ideas to filmmakers who are submitting their work to be viewed in this situation.

Bob Degus: 22:06

Because it's one thing to make a film as a filmmaker and you have your perspective on a film. And it's a very different thing to be a voter who's evaluating a whole group of films and trying to pick a film that or a set of films that you think are worthy of consideration for that year. And I really, for a number of years, have thought about how to communicate this idea to filmmakers and share this knowledge with them because I'm very dedicated and believe in supporting people who are starting out in the film business and sharing that idea. For a number of years, I've been a mentor in the Academy's Gold Rising program, which helps new filmmakers get a perspective and insights into how to navigate their careers in the industry. I've been a university professor for a number of years, teaching, directing, and producing, and screenwriting.

Bob Degus: 23:06

And I think all of those things are important because I had people who mentored me as I was coming up and how to do the same thing for the next generation of filmmakers because if you are able to learn from the mistakes and things that I've observed, you're going to be that much ahead of the game in your own filmmaking because you're not going to make those mistakes. You're going to actually just make your own mistakes. So that's really what I want to share and bring to this podcast is this knowledge that I have in a way that's hopefully concise and entertaining and interesting so that you can bring those things into your own work. So thank you for listening to the introductory podcast of The Hollywood Film Coach. It's my intention to really give you insider information from my thirty years as an Oscar voter watching movies, to give you honest practical coaching that's going to help you develop story, craft, make better films, talking about festival strategy, how to send films to festivals, how to think about it, at what point in the process should you be thinking about it, and sharing specific mistakes that I've seen in films that you should really learn from.

Bob Degus: 24:42

And over the long term, I hope to have guest conversations with other filmmakers, both short film and feature filmmakers, to really share and discuss the art and craft in cinema. And like I said at the top of this episode, I really believe that the stories we tell ourselves as a society shape who that society becomes. And I think it's really important that we hear storytellers from diverse and different backgrounds than the same stories that we keep hearing over and over and over again. And that's where you come in because you have a unique and distinctive voice, and you have a voice that's really important to share because it's a voice that only you have. And if you don't share it, we're not going to hear it.

Bob Degus: 25:33

And so I'm very hopeful that this podcast is a tool and a way for you to share your voice and your films that I get to see while I'm looking at them in the Oscar voting, and that will be a really exciting thing for me. So thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next episode. One more thing, if today's episode sparked something for you, head over to hollywoodfilmcoach.substack.com for the companion piece. It's original writing that goes deeper into the most important idea from today's episode and includes links to every film we've talked about so you can watch them yourself and form your own conclusions.

Bob Degus: 26:19

The gap between a good short film and a great one that wins awards is smaller than you think. I'm Bob Degus. This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, follow us, and check out the next episode. Please join me for episode two, what I learned watching 3,000 short films.