How Markiplier Broke Hollywood | Ep. 051 Lemonade Stand 🍋

8:56DougDoug:So I had complete control for those projects anyway. And to be honest, like because they were choose your own adventures, they were so complicated that they didn't really have the ability to give notes. I'm not saying like I'm such a genius. It's a choose your own adventure. So they can't follow what the dailies are even looking like. So like we don't know where this fits into the entire story. So I was on my own for most of it, no matter what. I had a production company. I was working with Rooster Teeth. But by the time we did this movie, Rooster Teeth had already been sold to Warner Brothers.

9:22DougDoug:And right now, Rooster Teeth is kind of in, it's in limbo because it kind of went under. And then it got bought by the previous owner. And then I don't know where it stands right now.

9:32Aiden:So the independent aspect wasn't as big of a decision as I think people often read into it. Like you, this is just the way you've been doing things already for a long time.

9:44Atrioc:I kind of want to also ask on top of that, were people reaching out to you? Was any production company or studio after your previous success being like, Hey, if

9:53DougDoug:you're doing a movie, we'd be interested in supporting it. There might've been, but nothing really stands out. Cause even though it was a large project, it was still a YouTube project. So there, there is that level of respect that they just, I haven't met yet. Even if it was, I got nominated for an Emmy, but I didn't win. I don't even think if I won it would have mattered at all to them um because it just didn't have the same prestige which is why I wanted to do a feature because that has a level of prestige that even if it's deserved or undeserved it is still the pinnacle of an art form and it's like it is is in this temple that is a movie theater and it is respected right so to win and to gain some respect I knew that I had to do a project so no one was really bashing down my door to say like we want to make your movie.

10:35Aiden:Do you, do you have any window into like the cultural conversation within the movie industry of if this movie is changing that stigma at all? Because I know people like Freddie W talked about that for a really long time. It's like they come to this like traditional world of production and nobody really gives a shit, but is this something that's like big enough that you see something changing?

10:58DougDoug:Yes. Yeah, for sure. Uh, it's not, it wasn't my goal to set out to do it, but the number of people that are at least talking about it raises this conversation and kind of legitimizes this. It was something that they were, I think, willfully ignoring, at least a lot of Hollywood, willfully ignoring the potential of YouTubers here. And actually that reminds me because I got to catch up with Freddie W. I haven't been ignoring you, Freddie. I swear. I will. I've been sleeping a lot and vacations, taking my wife out to dinner. I'll get back to you really soon.

11:25Atrioc:He's our top commenter on every episode so he'll be there for sure. And weirdly only asking about Markiplier. It's like, it's Markiplier coming on. He's ignoring me.

11:34DougDoug:Yeah, yeah. But to answer your question, there is a bit of a shift here because I've had a couple meetings with some studios, some executives, some key people in the world, and they're all asking me the same thing, which is, how'd you do it? How did you do it? How'd you do this? And so clearly they want to know because... They want to steal it. They want to steal it. I mean, yeah. That's basically it. They try to model your blood. Exactly. They got money being made, and they can see the threat that's there. They see that, oh, if people can make this independently, that means less of the pie is available.

12:07DougDoug:So we got to be smart. And I think that's good. Like they need some competition. They need a kick in the ass because I don't want to destroy the studios. I'm not setting out to do that. I think that studios have made some really incredible films that are very important to people. But I feel like the kind of complacency and the fear there is, you know, it needs to be turned on its head. It needs to be turned into ambition and opportunity. And I think they're going to be looking out for other YouTubers to kind of take the talent from and get some people in to make cool things. I think that it is going to be good for everybody and I'm not out to destroy everything, but the change is happening.

12:41Atrioc:There's a kind of parallel with that between what's going on in the indie games industry right now, where a lot of indie games have been taking on the AAA Titans and outselling them and changing the cultural conversation. I wonder why it happened first and more often in games than in movies. Was this extra hard to make? or what, why? I wonder why this is so.

13:01DougDoug:No matter what, you can make a movie by yourself. You could, you could make a movie with you. Well, I wasn't by myself. And this is the distinction, right? So you can make a movie by yourself, but even this movie required a crew of about a hundred people. There were, there was a people that were building the set. You have to handcraft artists that are at the top of their game, the best of the best you can get to make it. That's why I say it's kind of a pinnacle of an art form. you still need even if it's all 3D you need CG artists that are incredibly good at what they do to be able to represent the vision that is being put forward even if I'm directing editing and acting in it there's still the set designer there's still the the creature designer was not done by me that was a Molly Brown incredibly talented without her the horrificness of the monster wouldn't have been come through wouldn't have had as much impact without the set designer having a plan to evolve the set over the whole course of the show and there was a plan and working in conjunction with the costume designer to have an evolution of like 18 different steps of the costume and the set to evolve along with the makeup having also 18 procedural steps.

14:04DougDoug:There's so much planning that goes into that whereas a game like David Zemanski can make a game by himself and release it and it'd do really well. There's other games. I think Ultra Kill is another one that's kind of published by, well Iron Lung wasn't published by New Blood but but New Blood has a couple of developers that I know now. That game has sold maybe over a million, two million copies, and I think that's a very small team that makes that. So you can get away with a lot, with less people, with games, but movies still need a lot.

14:40Atrioc:So this relates to something I'm curious about. The fact that you self-published means you're on the hook for all this. How did you decide what the limit is, right? Because, yeah, you hired 100 people. You could have hired 200. You could have done more CG. You could have done more sets. When you're going through this whole process of planning this thing, particularly given that you're putting your own money on the line with no guarantee of getting it back, how do you specifically decide that? What does that process look like?

15:04DougDoug:I already had decided that if I didn't make my money back, I'd be okay with that. That's something you've got to do if you're doing anything like this at this level. You cannot put everything on the line and be like, I'm going to die if I don't get my money back. This is everything. you can't push it all on black and be like, I hope. I accepted that it wasn't going to make any money because in the past projects, I have not made any money on them.

15:26Atrioc:Because the previous YouTube ones did not make a lot of money.

15:29DougDoug:It's like they made some in ad revenue, but actually I put less ads because I didn't want ads getting in the way of the people's experience. So I made that decision openly. For this one, it is limited, not necessarily by the budget, but by the scope of the idea itself. Iron Lung is a game. In order to treat it with the respect that it needed to, the movie had to follow rules that the game established, right? So it's inside the sub is one of the biggest rules. It's just there. I would have loved to be able to cut away to another scene in the ship above or in a space station. I would love to have been able to do that, to explore the universe, but that's not the game.

16:07DougDoug:So it can't be the movie. The movie, in my mind, there's other people that have different philosophies for adaptations, but in my mind, I have to adapt it to screen and I have to bend the rules. as much as necessary to be able to tell the story as well as I can, but I cannot break the rules. This game has a feeling, and there's a reason that people loved it. There's a reason I loved it, and I have to pay respect to that. But at the same time, I am pushing the boundaries as hard as I can with this flexible rule without breaking it. So we had to stay inside there, but like in a spoiler a bit, but in the movie we go up out of the ocean, but we stay inside.

16:42Atrioc:I was just going to say, yeah, I saw the movie last night, and it's so claustrophobic because they – you want the camera to go outside that window. You really want. I want to see what's going on there. And it won't. And I thought that was an interesting choice. I had assumed that was, well, I not assumed, but I was like, was that a budget thing that you didn't do more of these things? But that is really interesting to hear. It was very much, you know, focused on the creative.

17:02DougDoug:Yeah. So we, we made, we embraced that, right? He's a prisoner. So we actually designed the way the blood went over thing to look like jail bars, you know, like it had spacing there to give that feel of the, of the feeling like, and it's so obfuscated. the the voices are hard to hear there's a lot of noises bang it's like someone's with a wrench like banging on the outside of the drum um and it's it's intentionally uncomfortable because it's like you want to get out the feeling has to be through the whole thing of just like i want out i want out i want out i'm so tired of it i'm so bored of this i'm so done with this you know you got to feel like that you got to really feel what he's feeling so yeah i wandered a bit on the question but oh Oh, that's so cool.

17:44DougDoug:Okay.

17:44Aiden:I mean, you mentioned before the difficulty of you have to get all of these people at the top of their game in their art form to be able to even come in at this level of production. Yeah. And this was, I think, a similarity between us is we're really curious about the granularity of how that gets put together. Like when I watch behind the scenes of Lord of the Rings, I'm like, where do you find the guy that knows how to put together the orc makeup for 10 hours. And how does that network come to you? How do you get in contact with all these people that have such these unique skills to be able to do this?

18:22DougDoug:I think that you just trust the crew and you build a good relationship with the crew that you have. I have a philosophy that the set should be fun and the set should be a good time. When it's time to work, of course it's time to work. And that's what working with professionals is all about. But because I have a relationship with the people on set, say Ana is the head of the makeup department and art. Her name's Ana. She's great. She's fantastic. She's a beacon of sunshine on set. And she actually brings a lot of energy and joy to the set. And that's important on top of the skill. But it also is important because she takes her craft very seriously.

18:55DougDoug:And so she knows other people and the level of quality that her team needs to be at to meet her own criteria. So she knew Jason and reached out. Jason was the one that did a lot of the prosthetic design. And so a lot of the various practical effects that we did with the makeup was spearheaded by him. So she knew who that was. She would not recommend this job to someone she knew. Maybe she would if it's top of the game. But it's a lot easier to convince someone to say, don't take any other job. Do this job. Put your skills here because I like working with this guy. And I think that this he's going to have an idea that you're going to really enjoy and be able to fulfill your craft.

19:37DougDoug:These artists, they want to put their art out there, but they oftentimes don't get the opportunity to because working in these environments, which should be fun, making movies should be such an incredibly fulfilling experience for everyone. But, you know, they don't because the machine grinds things down. So the crew knows everyone in the crew probably knows someone else that is their competition in terms of being it. But when everyone's able to overlap and you're able to trust the crew to get there and having good producers, like finding the right people to fill gaps when there are gaps, you know, there's a lot of talent out there.

20:12DougDoug:There's not a lack of talent of people that want to fill these roles. So you just have to provide an environment that you hope is going to get more people that want to be on set. And that's how you get the best work. They want to be there. And that's sort of the feeding, by the way. feeding people well is the easiest way to make a crew happy i did my shows costco pizza you can

20:30Atrioc:get so much costco pizza ten dollars a five hot dogs no that was in the esports days yeah perry

20:38DougDoug:knows this is esports or we had no money yeah okay wait so that's the people but i want to talk

20:43Atrioc:specifically about the budget like how did you choose this three four million number or is it just you just like got exactly what you needed for the film and that's what it happened to be or like, okay, so beforehand you weren't like, this is my number going in. No.

20:54DougDoug:Really? Yeah. There's probably people that would do that. But when I'm writing, I had, this is the good thing about this one is like single location. It is only going to cost as much as, you know, a single location could possibly be. And we put as much money into it as possible with the amount of evolution they had. The only way that we could have spent more is by building two of them, which honestly I probably should have done. Because if you've seen the movie, it would have been really nice to have two of them to work with at the same time. One of the decisions that we made was, you know, how do you make the motion inside the sub look realistic?

21:27DougDoug:The original idea was we were just going to put on tires and we're going to have people bounce around, you know, fake motion. But then I heard about this thing called a NACMO, which is a motion control rig that can, you know, move like helicopters and trucks and they film movies in there. And it's a way to get controllable motion. It's a six axis, like pneumatic you know machine it's really cool uh it's expensive we needed it um either for certain days or the entire shoot and i said this is going to be instrumental for us to be able to make repeatable motion especially like the action of moving the throwing it'll make everything safer uh tires unpredictable if you the other idea was to float it in a pool the whole time and it's like that'll look good but it's so unpredictable of what the motion is going to be you can't do a stunt based on that.

22:12DougDoug:Um, so we were able to have stunts. Uh, and so the extra expensive, this was a decision to make. It is going to be expensive, but it will quite literally make the movie. Um, and so I just said, I will do every decision that is going to give the best quality to this movie that I can. And the number was where the number ended up.

22:29Atrioc:That thing sounds like it would cost$300 ,000 to rent.

22:32DougDoug:Like a day. Yeah, it was, I think it was like 25 a day, 25 ,000 a day. That's actually a lot less than I would have. But we, it's 35 day shoot. Oh yeah. And then we needed to hire their operator. He was very expensive, but he was also, Nick was his name. He's incredible. He knew what he was doing. He was programming so fast. Like you pay for the expertise. Yeah. And so it was very expensive, but it was so worth it. It was, it was worth it. So I didn't even think about it. It was just like, this is a necessary cost of making this the way that I want to make it. Okay.

23:01Atrioc:This is a true passion because I'm hearing the through line here, which is that you didn't care if it made money back. You didn't care how much it cost. Like these are things that would both scare the shit out of me and start. I've done, you know, I invested in an indie game, but I had a very limited budget going in. And like, this must have been something you've really, really wanted to do. But yet the gap between you playing the game and making the movie is pretty small. So like you just kind of jumped in on this.

23:24DougDoug:Yeah, I am. I can't deny I'm in a position where I can financially do these things. I am in a very unique position that I can make those decisions. I wouldn't recommend everyone. And there were like budget conscious decisions where we are trying to make sure that every dollar that we have to spend is wisely spent. There was there was times where it's like we needed to added more, add more shoot days. And that's a huge like every day on set is the most expensive thing you could have. The people, the feeding them, the time, the time and the personnel is like the most expensive cost. So but we need to be conscious about that.

24:00DougDoug:Like, when do we do an overtime day? when do we go over a weekend, which is going to cost one and a half, as opposed to renting this longer, we already have it here. There, there, there is some things to be smart about it. I wouldn't say just keep chucking money at it. Um, and all those conversations. I mean, that's

24:14Atrioc:happened in games and movies where they keep throwing money at a problem and the movie turns out worse.

24:18DougDoug:Like it's not, I'll give you an example of a moment when I said this is not worth the expense. Um, there was, uh, we were subcontracting a VFX company to do some of the simulations for the blood and the opening sequence in the movie. And the problem was the iterations that I needed because there was some translation differences between hiring them and what I would say I wanted and what they would execute upon. And the problem with simulations is they're incredibly computationally intense. They require a lot of hardware specialized for just doing simulations. It's not just about GPU power. It's about distributed CPU.

24:52DougDoug:This is for the visual of submersing into liquid, right? Yeah, the fidelity of that shot, the length of it, the amount of time that that blood is visible and it's from straight up all the way down. It is a really complicated shot to have movie quality, but the iterations that was costing way too much. And I realized it would be more cost effective for me to buy my own computer equipment and build my own farm, render farm to make this. It would just take time. So I spent about three to six months collecting old servers on eBay, slowly building it out I turned one of my bathrooms uh into a render farm I put another 200 amps into the bathroom air conditioners and all of this was cheaper than uh continuing to iterate because as soon as I had everything that I needed all the hardware I needed I could do it as many times as I needed and all I was paying for was the power right and so when that was a decision that I made because it just did not and let me tell you it was very expensive to keep doing these iterations and And it still wasn't quite what I was looking for.

25:58DougDoug:So it's like, if it's taken me this much to get this far and I'm still not there, it's like, I'm going to, even if I had to spend this all again to do it again, and that's what it took to build the rent farm, and it did not, it was still under that, I would at the very least learn something about how the VFX pipeline works, and I would have something that would be usable for future projects as well.

26:18Atrioc:You can turn it into a crypto farm now too.

26:20DougDoug:You can start mining.

26:21Aiden:And then you pay it back. Narrow. I'm imagining like Steven Spielberg in his mansion building a server room in his bathroom. Just like, no, no.

26:31DougDoug:Yeah, man. And I learned a lot about networking infrastructure. I didn't know anything about it before. And I still am not great at it. But hey, I learned a ton. It was working. It's what made the shots in the movie. All of them.

26:42Aiden:That is so cool.

26:43Atrioc:Yeah, something I remember chatting with you about months ago was that several of the tools that normally a Hollywood production would outsource to X, Y, and Z, you know, studio. And like here in LA, you see these all over the place that you just took in-house because you're like, this is going to be so expensive.

27:00DougDoug:Yeah.

27:00Atrioc:What other things were there besides this render farm? Because that alone is kind of crazy. I believe there's something about like the licenses for theaters, right? Something like that?

27:07DougDoug:Not necessarily. The licenses for the software for VFX were very expensive because Houdini, when you have a certain size of a company, they charge you more or, you know, when you have a certain scale. They have good deals for indie developers and like small teams, but I just don't qualify as a small team Even if I'm like I'm just one good. I'm just a little guy

27:35DougDoug:That being said I would like to do collaborations and I think there's a way to kind of exploit my youtube channel Be like I'll do a burn deal for some licenses, but we haven't gotten there yet what was your original question? Sorry, I drifted.

27:46Atrioc:What are other areas where normally a Hollywood production would outsource some key part of the process to a big studio and you instead said, I am just going to do this in-house,

27:55DougDoug:learn to do it myself. There wasn't too much more. I did obviously the editing myself and that was good because I like editing. I really enjoy it.

28:02Atrioc:It's funny you say obviously

28:03DougDoug:because that is a huge fucking deal. That's an extremely large deal. But yeah, I just... Obviously you did the editing, right? Yeah, I truly enjoy the editing. Oh, obviously you did the acting.

28:12Aiden:Yeah, obviously you did the budget. Of course. Right, right.

28:14DougDoug:Obviously.

28:15Aiden:I do like how you're one more thing that you were like, there's only one way the budget would go up. And I was like, yeah, I mean, you could have hired like Chris Evans or something like there could, it's like you did so much of the movie yourself. I realized that might not be out of like budget consideration, but it's impressive how many hats you took on for the project.

28:34DougDoug:Oh man, there's very thank you, but just very thank you. I'm very, very welcome. Yes. Oh man, very much. Thanks. So anyway, it's interesting because I look at that as a YouTuber and I'm like, I'm used to doing this anyway. That's what I've been doing. When when a lot of people are out there being a YouTuber and starting out, you know, a lot of them have editors by now. And I have hired six editors. I have a team of six other editors to help me out. Plus the 3D artist, Molly, who's working on all this. And so obviously I have other people helping me. But the main I have them so that I can focus on the bigger project editing that I like.

29:08DougDoug:I like the creative part of it. And I think that a lot of directors and even writers would benefit from doing some editing because it is the final step, the pulling of all the pieces together. It is the laying it in. It's the finishing touches on the painting. It is everything that really, really gets to screen is through the editing process, is the final pass. Now, some might say the sound is the final pass because, you know, they wait till all the visual effects are done to do the sound. Brad's great and he did the sound mix in this, but, you know, I don't want to inflate his ego anymore. So I guess editing would be the one to do it and what editing allows me to do And I think that this is where a lot of people could benefit from learning it is like the the reason Adobe Sucks, can I say that?

29:52DougDoug:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, don't be fucking blows

29:55Atrioc:This time is great the sponsor just ended cinema cinema i i i can say good time in there because i worked in premiere

30:07DougDoug:for 10 years and i watched it just get worse and worse with every version and as soon as i jumped to da vinci resolve i realized oh my god this is what it can be it was so freeing and da vinci's great because it has editing visual effects color and sound mixing all in a single program the post-production pipeline even if you need a big team for making the movie and I don't think that will change and I don't want that to change because I want more people to do that but the post side I believe can be consolidated down more if it takes advantage of these things that are combining them so one of the things I want to do is kind of like cultivate you know this kind of build out and refine some of the inefficiencies that I saw in the process of the feature project much like the render farm if I have my own way to do it and I have a pipeline for it then I can make the next projects happen a lot smoother and with less bumps because I've learned all the problems in this one.

30:57DougDoug:So I hope to make in-house, not just as a control freak, but just because it is just, it'll make ideas come out faster if I can, if I know the process of how to do more of it. Yeah. Can I ask business questions now, Doug? I want to ask business questions. Yes.

31:12Atrioc:Okay. One more, forgive me. One more final thing. I think, so the process of you have a hundred people working on this thing in a set that you've designed with a budget, with a script, you have the thing that turns the sub around. You've got all the fake blood just with the average person. What's a, what's a day of shooting look like? You said it was 33 days. Like what are key things that are happening throughout that day? What are the things that everybody needs to coordinate on? What are the hard parts? What are the easy parts? And is there like maybe a moment or two that you were like, holy shit, this is hard or crazy?

31:43DougDoug:Oh yeah. There was plenty of that. Uh, so the average day, uh, started with breakfast. Um, So I provided breakfast for everybody. I think that's very important. Costco pizza? Costco pizza. No, no, no. We had a catering trailer there the entire time. So we had a company that joined us for this. The company, the name of it is right here. It's Dunkin' something, but I can't remember. So I'm going to put it in there. Dunkin' Donuts? Wow. No, no, no. They're a lovely family. They joined us for the whole thing. Didn't know it was family owned.

32:15Aiden:Didn't know it was family owned.

32:16Atrioc:I can't wait for their sponsorship. Next time though, you could set up a donut shop in your bathroom. Yeah, yeah. I can do that. Yeah, why didn't you just do that yourself? Why didn't you do that for the catering? There's money bags over here paying for food.

32:26DougDoug:It was integral because it allowed everyone to show up and at least have warm, freshly cooked food. And we had buffet style, so we had all kinds of options. Eggs, gluten-free stuff, like vegetarian options. And that was both for breakfast and lunch. And then if we needed dinner, we needed to go over, we would provide that as well. But big meal for breakfast. People walk in. It's early in the morning. usually call times like seven or six some days. And that's pretty typical. The days are 12 hour days or were, I hope to do 10 hour days in the future. I think 12 is just a little too much. But you, you get in.

33:00DougDoug:And so we have a production meeting. First thing I have to get in costume right away because obviously I'm acting. So I get in costume as soon as I can. I usually eat breakfast as I'm getting makeup put on. And then we all meet at what we had was a battle map, right? So we had a big whiteboard table that was about the size of this if it was rectangular. And we had different squares for the shots that we wanted to get all day long. We had a mini model, which with a cutaway, a 3D printed model of the interior of the sub with a little me and camera blocks that we could put where like, we're going to first set up here, we're going to next set up here, the next setup is going to be here and here and here.

33:38DougDoug:So we'd plan out the day based on the script. And the reason this was important is because the time it takes to bring the whole thing up on the NACMO, get it activated is like five minutes from step in, take the stairs away, screw the door shut, well, screw the door shut, take the stairs away, and then lift it up. And then we're ready to go. And that's if everyone who needs to be in their camera or otherwise is in there. If it's a heavy motion scene, we usually would lock down one of the cameras inside. We build like braces for it to stay so that the cameraman wasn't going to be a problem or wasn't gonna you know get hurt uh but then we would so each one had to be a custom plan so we had to we had to know exactly how we're going to do it exactly how long it would be so the the efficiency of knowing what was going to happen next had to be planned out from the beginning and even though we had an overarching plan throughout the from the beginning of the shoot every day we would go through and tell exactly what we're going to do so then as soon as we knew what the first thing was going to be we'd everyone go off and start setting up for that shot while i'd get finished up with costume and makeup whatever other touches I would need or I would talk to Amy and the script supervisor to to know exactly how this was going to go and what to look for because if I can't be behind the camera I'm telling them what I'm hoping to achieve in this scene and the biggest problem for all this is I'm acting and I have not had time to rehearse so then I go and like practice my lines and make sure that I'm getting getting into the character that's one of the big detriments of acting and directing is you spend so much time directing you don't give yourself as an actor enough time to be the actor that you need to be in that scene.

35:12DougDoug:And so, um, I think I did a good job on this one. I think I did well. Uh, I think I would have done better if I had just been acting or just been directing, you know, I think that there were certain scenes that I was like, I'm going to need time. I need you guys to give the marching orders of where we're going to set up. I need to go into a dark room and I need to be this character. And so this, the scenes that were super intense that needed that, I took the time to, to have that. Um, you do that until lunch, the earlier you get a shot off in a day affects the entire day it is it is a weird thing on set is if you it doesn't matter what you get so long as you get a shot of anything insert nothing the sooner you get it the better that day is going to be if you are wasting time trying to perfect a shot trying to get the right angle setting something up it doesn't work is whatever so long as you're recording you get a shot in the can and you move on to the next thing your day will be much better otherwise it'll be like 11 o 'clock you get your first shot lunch is at 12 or 1 or whenever it is you got a break for lunch people come back from lunch everyone's already sleepy from lunch your whole day's fucked process starts again exactly so it's like getting the first shot is as intense as possible then you have an end of day meeting deciding you know how the day went what we got what we didn't get if we have extra time which never happened we'd be like let's get set up for the next one or let's do the battle plan for this next one so we get started sooner tomorrow never happened maybe once or twice it happened but you know everything's always behind in set but so you have to account for that and that's a average day it's interesting to the

36:44Atrioc:part by the acting i think the movie was really good and i really liked your acting in it but i did notice from the beginning of the movie to the end and i heard you shot this chronologically yeah you you clearly get more invested in the character you get like by the end i i as a viewer I'm like more invested in the performance. So I wonder if you, was that a deliberate choice to shoot chronologically?

37:03DougDoug:How did that work? Very deliberate to shoot chronologically. There's certain things that we could do. This is the whole build two sets thing. Is there certain things that we had to make permanent modifications to the set to be able to do some of the effects that we had? Literally cutting into it and changing up things and waterproofing it for when it floods. So chronological was from the beginning because it's like, we just have to do that. and yes there was a lot of me in the beginning you have so many decisions to make because this plan as good as it is changes every day every single day you have to adapt to something else and if you can't adapt you can't make a movie if you're so steadfast like it has to be this way and I will die before I change it it's like you're you're never gonna make anything you'll be stuck there forever and you'll end up with nothing so you have to adapt and try to make every problem work So I spent way too much time directing instead of focusing in on what this character was supposed to be.

37:59DougDoug:The advantage is the arc of the story works that way. It does fit. So it's like, it's not like I did such a shitty job in the first ones, but I know you're thinking that. I know you're, I hear you. But it also works because the stiffness and uncomfortableness was part of that character arc. It wasn't entirely just like I couldn't do it. I had confidence that in the beginning, this guy is finding his footing he is not comfortable and the whole thing about the monotony of survival which was a big part of this is as you get bored you weirdly get more comfortable the tension does slip in it has to slip into boredom so that as a character i did get that but also i got banged up while i was filming it because i did a lot of my own stunts uh so the aches and pains that the character felt were my own aches and pains also in a day like 31 of 12 hour days or whatnot and my and by the time it gets to the end and there's a scene in there where i've just like the characters lost it like just losing it is like i am it i barely had to act in those scenes where it's just like i am just screaming at the exactly it's just like so those were when i was really really starting to feel uh a deep connection with that and and actors have a really really tough job and they they're always trying to elevate their game and so i i i think that I'm a decent actor, but you know, I, I do in the future projects want to be more of a director side of things.

39:20DougDoug:Um, cause that's where I'm most comfortable with. And that's what I like the most. Um, acting is extremely stressful and very difficult and it's an art form that should not be taken lightly. I want to do it to the best of my ability, but my God, actors put themselves through some crazy shit to do their, their craft and huge respect to them.

39:36Atrioc:Now you have the money for Chris Evans. Iron Lung 2. Iron Lung 2.

39:42Aiden:Iron Lung 2, Captain America.

39:46DougDoug:There are so many good actors out there. I'm not saying Chris Evans is not worth it. Mark and Pires. I gotta warn you, Chris Evans does also comment on our YouTube videos. He's not as nice as people. I've never met the guy. It's just like, I understand the reason for names out there, but there's so many really talented incredibly hard-working actors that are out there that are waiting for their chance and i'm not saying that you shouldn't hire a big name for a certain project if it works for it but at the same time it's like there's a lot of actors out there i want to give a lot of people a chance to to do some incredible things i like troy baker obviously was probably the the biggest actor on this project he's done tons of things incredibly uh incredibly popular franchises he's worked in and he's done a ton of work so it's like i i only because i had a personal relationship with him did you know i thought he even gave it a time of day to be part of the project and it's so nice working with like these incredibly talented actors uh where it's just like you put a script in front of and they're like yep and they just smash it immediately incredible it's like i'm in tears the greatest thing i've ever seen in my life um but yeah i think that um there's uh there's just such a wonderful world of talent out there and i'll never get through it all this episode is

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41:25DougDoug:K-pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

41:39Aiden:It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop.

41:47DougDoug:You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

41:53Atrioc:Participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

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42:26Atrioc:This is real sick. Okay, we're getting into business. Mark, you finish filming and making this thing, and then becomes, as far as I can tell, the incredibly long process of getting this actually in theaters. So for people to watch it and spend, queue up for you. Money! Human money. Okay, I'm serious. So you finished this movie in early 23?

42:48DougDoug:Yeah, probably March. I think we were wrapped at the end of March or beginning of April. I can't remember.

42:54Atrioc:So, okay. So March, April 23, it's a 35 day shoot. And there's this massive gap between then and when it releases now in early 26. Almost three years. Three years gap. What is going on in that time?

43:04DougDoug:So at the same time that we did this, there are a few things happened. I got a Spotify podcast deal. And so that came with some obligations. I had to make like three to four podcasts a week. So we were recording all the time. Some weeks I had to record like five. And we can agree,

43:19Atrioc:a lot harder than making a movie, right? Yeah.

43:23DougDoug:I think anyone who makes a podcast is actually a hero. And I think the Nobel committee should consider this day out.

43:32Atrioc:Yeah. It's just a grind. You know,

43:33DougDoug:it really is the toughest job there is. Have you guys watched the studio? Yeah. Did you get through the episode where he's dating that doctor? He's at the, you know, I think those doctors, those uppity bastards should like step out of the way for the entertainment podcaster shoes.

43:47Atrioc:and see if that compares to time at LA General.

43:51DougDoug:Yeah. But so I had that, and then obviously I have a YouTube channel, and then the clothing company that I have, Cloak, I was working on it, and then I had to take it over because I wanted to change some things. So all of these things are happening. I worked on the movie on weekends because that was the only time no one would bother me. This is editing? Yeah. Okay. Everyone else takes weekends off, so I didn't. and that's when I made the movie. Okay. Runch it.

44:20Atrioc:Love it. So when does editing finish?

44:23DougDoug:Editing? Editing was, well, see, the way I edit really pisses off the post house. Was it the day before the movie came out? Pretty much. No, not necessarily, but it was a couple months before the movie came out because it's really difficult, especially as someone with ADHD, to jump back into something after it's been a week. And so it was very hard for me to get the ideas flowing consistently every weekend. So it took a very long time to get there and ideas would like I would come up with alternate things and I had the set in Well, not the set the front of the ship in mind so I could get like coordinates and things I was double checking make sure all the coordinates makes sense making sure the pathing of the map actually worked There was a whole thing where the the way the proximity worked from when we filmed it to the post side was We filmed it incorrectly uh and it's not even a thing the developer was on set every day and you know we had talked about it and being like because the way in the game works is where the arrow points is forward constantly and so the proximity isn't just like north of the ship always constantly it's west and east isn't always constant it changes based on or it doesn't change based on the arrow we filmed in a way that it did and even that's confusing to say because if basically if in the game if you're going this way and something's in front of you would beep at the tip of the air would beep it.

45:40DougDoug:We filmed it so that it was constantly north because in my mind, I was like, oh, the angle is going to change in the camera inside it. So it would make sense to have the front of the ship be the north would be always a pure reference no matter what, but it's front of the ship and filmed it wrong. So we had to change it for the whole fucking movie. Well, in post? In post, yeah. So I would be filming either inserts of the front console to change up the insertion shot.

46:06Atrioc:Is this just YouTuber brain like seeing the comments, like this one nitpicky comment and you're like preparing? Because there's no way I would have been able to track that as a viewer of where this... It mattered that it made sense.

46:16DougDoug:It didn't matter which one it was. It was a matter of what told the story better, right? And so there are times in there, especially in the front, the shot of the creature going over the sub when I'm looking up like... It's in the trailer. If you notice the trailer, the air is going a different way. And then in the movie, it's going north. because I realized from that shot it didn't make sense because the arrow should be pointing north because the creature's going over left to right. And if the lights are going west to right, so it made more sense to really teach the audience that this is how the proximity works because there's such a small window to teach them.

46:52DougDoug:And so it doesn't matter for most people. They get the idea. But consistency in those things, the attention to detail will matter in the long run because then there is a logic to how it works. And again, the game was correct in how to do that. And I don't want it just to be nonsense. I had to make sure every number made sense, every position on the map made sense, and the way the ship works makes sense because then you can put it in the back of your mind and you don't question it. It just becomes the universe. And if the universe is more accurate, then people will not pay attention to it and it won't distract from the story.

47:26Atrioc:That makes sense. Okay. So here's the question I'm trying to, I'm teasing out because I'm trying to figure out is like in between you finishing the movie maybe you're editing during this you have to get a bunch of theaters to agree to show this movie because you don't have a distributor yeah i want to figure out like the distributor approach you did you think about going that route did you have to like how did this go because i could i yeah

47:46Aiden:could i jump in real quick because i think i talked to another a couple friends who are more embedded in the film industry and this is one of the things they were most curious about because from their perspective this is one of the great like gatekeeping things in film of if you were to pursue a project like this independently, it's very difficult to actually distribute and get the movie into a bunch of theaters. So with that context in mind, I'm very curious how you managed to do that.

48:11DougDoug:Theaters, theater owners, they want to make money no matter what. And that is the bottom line way that you know you can get in with them. You can rent a theater screen if you wanted today. You could go to a movie theater and you could be like, how much to rent theater number nine, right? I want to do a private event there. They do that all the time. They want to make money. Oh, we had the help of this company called Centurion Films. And they're effectively, they're basically a communicator between the movie people and the small independent theaters, the not AMC, not Regal, not Cinemark. They go to these independent theaters and they say like, hey, we will help you communicate with the movie industry to get you movies.

48:57DougDoug:But also, So if there are smaller things, we can communicate and go back and forth. And they take a very small percentage compared to what some of the bigger studios do, because the work is just purely just like they're going to go to a theater and they're going to do that asking, hey, can I rent a theater? So they previously did, you know, small releases. This is by far the biggest release they've ever done, because we started this with just being like, we're just going to try to have an individual relationship. We either call them ourselves or we hire someone to call them. And we basically hired them to call.

49:25Atrioc:uh just to be clear you're calling theaters and saying hey will you show our movie that's what

49:31DougDoug:they're doing yes yeah okay and so they have a they have a really sales pitch though is it like

49:35Atrioc:hey this movie's gonna be big it's got a youtuber it's like yeah okay so you're just trying to convince them this is gonna not be a waste of their time yeah exactly do you have to like pay

49:43DougDoug:them up front of like a guarantee so it could work that way or it could be how the studios do which is just be like ticket share and so the way that you have a more you know it depends on the circumstance if you're doing an eventized thing where you're only going to do one weekend or something it might be better to uh do do the buying out the theater if you know you can sell it right if you know you can fill a theater you might make more if you do that if you don't know what the scope is going to be doing those individual deals might be very difficult to pay up front and and rent all those if you're not going to fill yeah you don't know but the theater owners don't always want to do the split share because they run the risk of well if no one shows up and we're not going to make anything off of this where we could you know sell you this whole thing uh and you buy it you know wall to wall um uh in each theater at a time so the nitty-gritty of that is down to the individual project and the person who decides what approach they're going to do better the theater obviously likes to make money so they're probably going to be like oh we're into the whole thing but if you want a distribution in this company they bring this theater uh bring the movie to the theater and they're like hey we think this can go this is who the guy is.

50:53DougDoug:And thankfully, you know, there's a lot of theater owners who may know who I am. They look at my numbers and they'd be like, okay, this might work. So we had about, he wanted to do three theaters to start with. The guy from Centurion Films wanted to do three. And I said to him, like, I think that, and don't take this wrong way, I think that's an insultingly low number, not to me, but to my audience, because my audience is very large and they're going to feel bad if I tell them, Hey, buy tickets, the people in these three cities, uh, everyone else and even when we got to 56, I think 60 is how many theaters 62 or something like that, that eventually were there for the day that we launched the sales of it.

51:35DougDoug:And even then my audience was like, Oh, I got to drive, uh, two hours. Okay, I'll do it. And they were willing to do it. Um, so the, the, the difference here between this and the traditional model is you don't have a guarantee of how many you're going to get. There's no network. There's no like AMC has so many theaters. They're going to put it in these things. They're going to evenly distribute it. Uh, they're going to work out a consistent deal. You don't have to individually make deals with these theaters. Um, so it is a bit more complicated, but by hiring this company, we don't have to do all that ourselves.

52:09DougDoug:Uh, my wife, Amy built the website to show where the theaters were going to be. And so this is a long winded way of saying there, there is a system in place for other people to get their movie out there. And even if it's just, you call one theater and be like, Hey, I would like to show my movie. I have this many things. I will put a pre-order up for sales. This is how we're going to do it. Hey, do you think that we, you have a time where I could do this? Right. And they could, you could set it up in a completely unrated, you don't need to submit it for rating if you want to and they could do sell the tickets unrated we obviously got a rating for it and i knew it was going to be r so i didn't even question ask was it arc is yeah is your main

52:52Atrioc:channel more family friendly because you curse a lot you're angry in this movie i curse all the

52:56DougDoug:time on my channel no no i curse all the time yeah all right uh yeah and that's that's basically it it it is a little complicated but thankfully there's a company like centurion films and i'm sure there are other companies out there that are willing to help out with the uh smaller steps to get there and then because if it does well these other theaters they get fomo really easily they

53:16Atrioc:go like is that what happened to you is it did it scale up because i know you had like 1300 theaters but yeah because now it's in amc's right like i look at listings now okay so you started with 56 you said right yeah 50 60 years i saw the website and then by the time i opened it which was like i don't know two hours or something after you guys launched it already it was in like hundreds of theaters yeah what what is like how do you specifically add theaters to that list Are they calling you or is your company reaching out to them and saying, look, now we have 100, add more. Now we have 200.

53:44DougDoug:It was a logistical nightmare. This is actually where things started to almost break down because we did not have a bookings email. We did not have a way for these theaters to really get to us in mass. Even Centurion Films was kind of overwhelmed because not all the theaters knew to reach out to them. So they were trying to reach out to me personally. YouTube comments? Yeah, YouTube comments, like random email addresses. Wait, actually, this is YouTube comments. I'm not lying. Oh, it's so funny. People are posting on my subreddit. There was a ton of, and it was very difficult because we had to manually converse with each one of these and send them to Centurion Films.

54:18DougDoug:And then we had to get the theater information as soon as it was booked. And then we had to manually put it in the website. There's literally a big spreadsheet because Amy, who built the website, did not anticipate making 4 ,000 entries. So it's a gigantic spreadsheet where it's the theater name, the address, the gps like like location of it the coordinates of it so that a pin can be put on the map and then a website right uh and it had to scale and scale so every day we were adding manually just like adding into the spreadsheet more entries while centurion films was talking and making arrangements then by monday when all the other bigger chains were like hey something's happening i got a call from cinemark and they were like hey well we would love to get it we'll get in 50 theaters and then i get a call from regal like every theater we're gonna put in all the theaters legitimately regal was so down regal was very very excited uh then amc joined up because all of them are just like hey it's just selling we want to make money and that's what i mean theaters want to make money if you can get that that momentum going even if and the momentum doesn't have to be to 4 000 or all international at all it could be like one theater spills over suddenly you've got, they've got a lot of showings at that theater and you could saturate a theater pretty hard, but you know, all of your audience isn't going to be there.

55:33DougDoug:Then you do like coast to coast, you could do one LA, one New York you could do. And a lot of my audience was actually rural. So there was a lot of smaller theaters in the middle of the country that filled up really quickly. Um, so like if you've got, if you've got any kind of fan base, you don't need 38 million to 38 million, that'll get you 4 ,000 theaters. If you want to scale up like that, if you had less, you can fill theaters because people want also the theater experience people want a reason to go out have a date night they want a reason to go people like movies and so yeah it's uh it's that's the

56:02Atrioc:interesting thing most because you say 38 million will fill 4 000 seaters but this is the first time that's been proven like if i'm a skeptical theater owner when you're doing this pitch i would probably say three months ago yeah you have a big youtube audience but they're not gonna they're not gonna show up and go butts in seats there i that's what i would have thought as a person three months ago. So you've kind of changed that. I wonder, do you think this will lead to other, at least people, maybe not exactly your size, but of that larger class trying to do this? Like I, this is the first, this proves the point that a big YouTube audience can translate to real seeds.

56:35DougDoug:Yeah. I don't think everyone's big YouTube audience can. There are certain YouTubers and there's no discredit to them, but there's certain YouTubers that have an audience that is there for the content more than the person. And so like you have certain audiences that just aren't going to because they don't care enough about...

56:50Aiden:And they might be... And their name might be Ludwig. Like, they could never do this.

56:54Atrioc:Ludwig could never do this. They could never do it. It doesn't matter how big... He doesn't have the acting ability. Unless there's some video game there. Unless it's Minecraft is in the movie. I don't think they're going to show up for Ludwig. They would sit down to watch Minecraft, the movie, but... Who's Ludwig? And that's a great... I'm sorry I haven't brought it up. No, I know Ludwig. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm saying.

57:14DougDoug:I know Ludwig. I know. I hear he's a nice guy. not even that I just cut that out from the video

57:21Aiden:but you think there will be a movement with a certain tier or audience of creator that could make a move like this that has that support

57:30Atrioc:I mean I got to imagine from a business side Hollywood sees this, they're trying to suck your blood like a vampire they are immediately sending their drones out to find other YouTubers of similar size and offer them, hey you want to do a this has got to be happening right now because they're seeing the opportunity I actually have a huge

57:47Aiden:huge question with this because I wonder, you seem to already weigh through your answers the part that your fandom plays in marketing or built like some of the success of this movie, right? And so if I'm an indie filmmaker looking at the landscape right now, I'm looking at the indie game landscape where there's a number of like influencer pack developers and they're going like that route. or if I'm looking at the success of a movie or a project like this, do you think, and there also seems to be kind of a movement of directors, maybe in the movie industry, cultivating fandom around their work as individuals.

58:35Aiden:So people are just excited to go see their next piece. If I'm an indie filmmaker watching this world of business unfold around me, what could you give me as like my number one takeaway from this project like what how if I wanted to pursue my dream what what is my best course from your experience uh I think the most

58:58DougDoug:important thing for people to realize is the power of people on the internet is real and tangible even in the day a day and age of like chatbots and AIs taking over every social media and dead internet theory and all that there are still a lot of real people out there that want to see cool things, new things and new ideas. Even if you are not the type that is, I don't want to build a big YouTube channel. I don't want to get a million subscribers. I just want to make my art. That's great. Because if Iron Lung didn't have something for people to like about it, and that's why it's like, I'm super happy with where it landed because some people hate it.

59:30DougDoug:Some people really love it. There's something, there is something polarizing there. And there's an interesting discussion to be had for there. And it wouldn't have done well if people didn't actually enjoy, at least some people didn't enjoy watching it. And some people watched it again. It's not entirely just because I have that many subscribers. The content is king above all else, right? And so that applies to movies too. So if you're an indie filmmaker, you have to understand that I have been working on my craft at the same time I've been building my own. I've been doing both. I've been making sketches since I started.

1:00:05DougDoug:I have been learning about camera cinematography and editing and I've been learning all the disciplines to do this. I did not approach this from an amateur standpoint. I think that at the same time, it's like, I'm not amateur in terms of my audience. I'm not amateur in terms of my skill. So I have a long way to go in terms of moviemaking, but there has to be a recognition there is like, as a filmmaker, you cannot expect that if you have not made a movie yet or several, you know, which I have, even if people don't think it like YouTube original things that I did, those are longer than movies. The, the in space with Markiplier was a much more complicated and involved shoot than Iron Lung was.

1:00:41DougDoug:It had more people, more cast, more locations, bigger budget. Uh, it had everything going for it to make it larger than, uh, Iron Lung was and in a lot of ways harder. Um, and so, uh, we, we, we, we have to recognize there that like, there is still a road for people to travel and they are not at the pinnacle of the mountain yet for their skill. And so one of the greatest things that you can do is recognize that YouTube is a beautiful place to put your projects that are building those skills because there is an audience there. Even if you have no subscribers, if you've got a good short film, people are going to find it.

1:01:16DougDoug:People are going to talk about it. Other YouTubers are going to be like, I found this fucking great because, and they're going to want to make a video about it because content, they're going to be, I found this great hidden gem of this short film from a director I've never heard of that you all are going to like. Here's my review of it. They're going to link the video. People are going to find it. And then you have to realize that there's a difference between 38 million and a few thousand, yes. But a few thousand can fill a theater. If you have a thousand views on your movie, if those people are really interested in this concept and there is a movie theater near them, if you get 10 ,000 views, that's a lot of people.

1:01:50DougDoug:It's a lot of people. And so the metrics of success even in Hollywood are distorted because a billion dollar movie can seem like the standard. That's a bullshit goal. No one's going to get there. It's not for the individual filmmaker at all. But if you can level the playing field with the technology that's available, not even AI, but I'm talking like with DaVinci and the editing software and the more accessible cinema cameras and the more accessible cinema lenses, you have this opportunity to make really high quality stuff. But unless you have the skill to do it and the practice and the constant drive and desire to do it, you're never going to get anywhere.

1:02:25DougDoug:I'm 14 years into my career. It took me 14 years to go from zero to 38 million. And it's like if I had to look at other, if a filmmaker would be like, if I told you it was going to take 14 years to get your movie in theater and have it be a success, would you take that deal? Would you work 14 years to get there? And I think a lot would. I think a lot would be like, that might be not a bad thing to do. So it's like, yeah, I think that there's a world of opportunity for other filmmakers to do things. Sorry, I rambled. That was a fucking amazing answer.

1:02:56Aiden:That was a fucking incredible answer. yeah I see this is my problem I've noticed in interviews if I'm stunned locked by the answer I'm like I just want to get lost okay wait so so there's a

1:03:20Atrioc:question that I had watching the movie and I did a little research because the movie made me interested in the game yeah I watched part of your let's play and then I watched a video on the lore of the game afterwards to try to get a better understanding. You've done an absolutely, like the field you can mine from in terms of your gaming history is pretty large.

1:03:40DougDoug:Yeah.

1:03:41Atrioc:Is that, you talk about next projects. Are you thinking about other games? Are you seeing other games as ideas now? Are you like, is this a lens you're looking at the world in?

1:03:50DougDoug:Yes, but also I have to be careful with that. There's a trap there, right? If I only do game adaptations, then - You become the games guy. I become the games guy, right? And especially if I do horror game adaptations, I become that. Everything I've done before this has been original writing that I've done. So my YouTube originals, obviously they were just like me writing about myself. But it's like I did the writing and I came up with all the sets and ideas and the story behind it. So I feel like I could probably do another game adaptation next and that'd be fine. But if the next one isn't an original idea, then I am hindering myself as an artist.

1:04:24DougDoug:I see. and and to be taken seriously as i move forward you know um it becomes like you know you'll be the five nights at freddy's guy if you only play five nights at freddy's and here i am um and it's not the worst thing in the world but it becomes harder uh to be taken more seriously as and it it stifles your own growth as an artist to only take the the i hate to say this word but It's like crutch of a pre-made universe. There is a lubrication to the process from having the universe already built. And therefore, if you just need to adapt it, that is actually something. It's what Hollywood really likes because it's built in fan base, but it's not challenging as a writer to say, like, I am just going to adapt something.

1:05:08DougDoug:And coming up with something entirely novel and entirely new isn't probably the most difficult thing like anyone could ever do. Is that what you're thinking? Is that like your next, you're trying to do an original world or original story yeah maybe not next but definitely it needs to happen yeah and i don't think i need to jump straight into uh making a movie about it i could write a book first and then uh see how that does and then be like okay just write a book everyone can write a book whether it'll be everyone can write it and including duck yeah

1:05:40Atrioc:it's written a book esteemed not really not that hard have you seen it i i heard that you wrote it i have a copy to show you later it's right back there i have a question um for like so it's two part one what's the name of your next project and then two how does the success of this change it just strictly monetarily do you feel like okay now and i don't know of the 50 million in box office how much goes to you i imagine a huge chunk of that is not flowing to you but in theory you have you know a bigger scope right for the next one is do you feel like that's going to change i mean there's part of me like having when i worked in production, what I found really frustrating is like, as you increase the scope of it, the, the, the contrast between I have a creative idea and implementation just gets bigger and bigger and harder and harder and more expensive and slow.

1:06:26Atrioc:And so there's this, I think, creative freedom in being really limited and small. Um, yeah, I'm curious if the success of this is making you think

1:06:35DougDoug:bigger. Uh, I think that there is in the same way that I knew that I needed to make a movie to be taken more seriously, you have to tackle something eventually is going to be of a big enough scope that people will go, how the fuck did you do that? That that's kind of a longer term. If I'm looking at YouTube, like the 14 years, as I've reached basically a point where maybe I'm not the greatest YouTuber that ever existed, but I think I'm pretty good at what I do. There's suddenly a new mountain to climb with movies. I've started from a spot where it's like, I recognize Iron Lung has plenty of flaws and I've learned a lot in the process.

1:07:08DougDoug:And I, if I did it again today, I would make a much better movie, I think. But that's kind of the whole thing is I'm happy where it is and I'm not regretful of any of the decisions that I made because they were the best that I make at the time. I've got another, hopefully, you know, quite a few years to make future projects. And if I'm not getting better, then I'm not happy, right? And that's just me as a creative. Like if I'm not improving, I'm not happy. So eventually I have to make something that is, that scares me, right? That is so big. Chris Evans. He scares me so much. He's so handsome.

1:07:40DougDoug:A huge guy, yeah. He's a huge, oh man, he is huge.

1:07:42Atrioc:Terrible actor I heard from Markiplier. Yeah, well that guy's an asshole. I know what you're looking at.

1:07:47DougDoug:But yeah, you have to do things that kind of scare you because that's how you know that you're being challenged enough to grow. And so I could be comfortable in the, I'm just gonna make small horror movies and I could do that forever and it would be very rewarding and I would be very happy and I'd probably make a good bit of money. But as an artist, I don't think that I would be creatively fulfilled if that's the only thing that I did. So you have to push yourself at some points. And the scary thing about that is like it's pushing yourself in such a way that the logistics of it become greater and the risks of it becoming a disaster grow exponentially.

1:08:22DougDoug:The number of talented artists that you – that are trusting you with your vision and working, putting their names on the line, working on something becomes more because suddenly there's more people. And it grows from 100 crew set to up 300 crew set with a splinter unit of 100 people working on another part of the movie. You know, it's just like the risk is there. But I think the creative fulfillment and the reward for the audience there is definitely just as big and just as important. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

1:09:05DougDoug:I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox.

1:09:30Atrioc:The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war.

1:09:51DougDoug:I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

1:09:57Atrioc:Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

1:10:24DougDoug:How is Trump's psychology having an impact on the great power conflict?

1:10:28Atrioc:There were folks who for years could never imagine the U.S. carrying out limited strikes on Iran, right? If you go back to the 12-day war, he dropped those bunker busters, right? And you had presidents through multiple administrations who never would have gone to full-scale war with Iran, and here they are. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week CNN's chief national security analyst Jim Shudo joins me to discuss the Iran war, our fraying alliances, and the rise of Russia and

1:10:52DougDoug:China. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

1:11:01Aiden:On the on the revenue, I had heard if you're comfortable speaking about this, I had heard that you had a unique profit sharing model with the cast and crew. I was wondering if you could explain that a little bit. No, not unique.

1:11:13DougDoug:I'm just giving them a bonus book. And what sucks is like that's apparently rare. That's unique. So if you look at the numbers, like 50 million, right? That's what the box office is. But you have the, it's a split with the theaters, right? Like 50-50 split, I think, is what we mostly have. I don't know what all the international splits are. I think some of them are 60-40. Some are not as good. 60-40 to them. And so some might be 60-40 to me. I really don't know because it happens. Why do they get a better deal internationally?

1:11:44Atrioc:Why do they have leverage for 60-40?

1:11:46DougDoug:Because there are a bunch of foreign... There we go. No, no. It's back to our roots. How racist can I be here? No, it's just different territories. Okay. And kind of the speed with which you need to, like you need to work with this company, and we have no other options. It's like we got to move fast. So it's like you got to take a deal where it is. And so most of those are just subcontracted through this company, Centurion Films. So you have the splits. It probably averages out to about 50-50. And then you have, so you cut that into 50 in half. You got 25. The Centurion Films takes their cut. You chop it down.

1:12:23DougDoug:And then you're left with the amount that's going to be repaid for the budget. And it's like that is repayment that I put into the production company. So that gets repaid, possibly with interest. And so that gets paid off first. So it could be like, thank you, fuck, I'm breaking even. Right. So as soon as you're like, okay, I've broken even. Then everything else is basically profit. So things are based on profit. So the people that have points in the movie, obviously, David Zemanski, developer of the game. Yes, he gets points in the movie. and this would usually be where the studios would have a big percentage but in this I don't have that so because I don't have that I'm able to give a bonus to the crew so I basically I took their salary that I paid them for the production days and I said like I'm going to apply that again as a bonus and so just like whatever your salary was it's now doubled and so that bonus given that you know personnel and and payroll costs are the probably the most expensive thing that you have on set that's that's a huge thing um and then the actors get paid and give them bonuses um and then the editing team you know gets gets i've given bonuses to everybody basically and then whatever's left over is mine goes back to me um as you can see the number goes but i didn't do this to make

1:13:32Atrioc:a lot of money it didn't sound like you made it for the money yeah even even though i make i'm

1:13:36DougDoug:making a good deal of money out of it uh i i think that it's it really has to be recognized that it's Like it's, I'm so happy to be able to give the crew a win, you know, a reward for their hard work and their trust in me. It's not even like I paid them poorly on set. I like to pay people well and I like to treat them well. And I believe that without them, this movie never would have been made. So of course I'm going to give them a bonus. And I wish the industry actually would do that.

1:14:04Atrioc:Disney Bob Iger, if you're watching, and I know you are. Next time you leave a comment on our YouTube video, Bob, Think about this, Bob. Think about that answer. That actually brings me to a question because, okay, after you're a hit, you've done very well, and the studios are interested. From what you're talking about for your motivation, it doesn't sound like being purely indie was a big part of it. You just wanted to challenge yourself. If Disney showed up and said, we're going to give you$50 million to make... Avatar 4. Captain America. Mouthwashing. X Avatar. Yeah, Captain America. Markiplier plays Chris Evans' role because we get him out.

1:14:37Atrioc:Right, yeah, yeah. Save money. Whatever. They give you an option for this. Are you taking it down on principle because you want to go indie? Or like, where's your head on that? Is that something you would be interested in or no?

1:14:46DougDoug:They wouldn't give me control. Really? No. Directors never get control. Not full control, the control that I want. Even Christopher Nolan doesn't get full, full control. Maybe now, like on his projects.

1:14:58Atrioc:How many YouTube subs does he have, though? You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying, too. I think he's a bad director.

1:15:04DougDoug:I think that it's very rare for any studio to give that to you. There's studios that will be much more friendly to work with, but they'll still have notes and opinions and you are contractually obligated to follow them if they really put their foot down. They get final say. I don't like that because I don't, I'm a bit of a control freak in that regard. And I don't like being beholden to anybody else's opinion besides the creative team. I listened to the creatives that are part of it. Like if, if, if Anna say had some strong opinions about what she believes in it, I will, I will take her input and I will apply it to the movie.

1:15:38DougDoug:If an actor feels like I want to change this dialogue for the sake of, I believe this character would say it differently. I am absolutely going to take that and I'm going to implement it if I feel like it will benefit the story. I'm not saying that there aren't executives at studios that are creatively fulfilled, but if they're not on set with me, seeing it happen, I don't trust them. So I don't like the idea of taking a deal like that because it just means that there's going to be difficulties in the post process. and I won't be able to make a decision like, yeah, I'm going to just work on it on weekends, you know, whenever I want, whenever I have free time.

1:16:12DougDoug:I'm going to take three years to get this out because that's all the time I got. They're not going to accept that. They're going to be like, you need to get this done. Q1 of 2027, we're going to kill you. You know, so it's contracts are fun and all and big dollar bonuses.

1:16:27Atrioc:Does it have to be a lake of blood? You know, can we get, can we lose the blood, Mark? It's just so much. It's just so dark. because if you branded it dr pepper same color yeah huge brand you could make some real money on this oh wow okay you're talking about the fact that you took three years because you're still doing youtube merch all this other stuff you i mean you don't have to do youtube anymore you don't have to do the podcast right i mean you've probably technically had that option for a long time but i'm curious like how do you think about the balance of all these different things going forward that's something i mean for all three of us have wondered at times you know it's like between our movies and our right but you know it's like how how much do like even you know i like semi-retired my youtube channel kind of and like that was hard to be like i'm gonna intentionally let go of this thing and i still couldn't fully let it go and what's going through your brain is you weigh all of the things you do i like making youtube videos that's it that hasn't diminished or even let's say less that you dislike it but more hey i'm gonna need 90 of my time in order to make this next thing even bigger Sure, sure.

1:17:31DougDoug:I've done that even with this project where it's like, okay, I got to work a sprint. Something's got to sacrifice. I guess I'm not putting up daily videos on my channel. It's gone, you know, maybe a month, a little longer than a month in between some stretches where I wasn't able to post a video. For sure, that happens. But I really find a lovely, you know, like catharsis in the cycle of content creation, the simplicity of it. It is like, I found a lot of peace in the process because it's like an instant gratification. You get a product you work on in a day the next day it comes out i mean i know your videos take long because you do long streams and building up like that no i thought like my my brother spent seven

1:18:08Atrioc:years working on his most recent indie game and it's just like i told him multiple times like there's no way i could even remotely do a timeline like that even the three years for iron lung or for whatever it was tough yeah the feedback loop of youtube and streaming is so easy and gratifying

1:18:23DougDoug:it is it is and so that's why i don't want to give it up it's you know it's rewarding it's that audience is also important because it's like I wouldn't have had the success without the ability to do this exactly and but it's not necessarily about that if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't do it you know unless there was a bigger reason like a greater goal to do something because I can't say the process of making this movie over the three years wasn't fun or was fun the entire time because it was not fun many times it was arduous and it was it was hard I pulled so many all-nighters I got so many more gray hairs because of it I lost so much sleep I lost time with some people that were very important to me that I will never get back again.

1:19:01DougDoug:And I had to postpone even my wedding to work on these things. And my relationship, you know, if Amy wasn't so incredible to me and so understanding with this, I, you know, I could see a world where if I was with someone else, I would have lost that relationship. There are sacrifices that come into all of this. And there are deep, deep, deep scars that can run from doing these huge sacrifices. It doesn't happen easily. but because I believed in the end goal of it, I believed that it would open up an entire new chapter of my career. It would open up a door that I could then step through and I could be confident in my ability to say like, yes, I can stand toe to toe with another director or a studio entirely and I could make a project and I would have the skill that no one could ever take from me.

1:19:45DougDoug:And I would have the accolades that only I can give myself that matter the most to what I want to do. And so because I believed in that so much, it was rewarding. The process was arduous, but I also believe that arduous processes and things that terrify you and are way too hard are the things that you need to know your limits so you can actually grow. YouTube is very different from that. It is so relaxing. It is so gentle. It is so nice and smooth. And, you know, occasionally you'll make a video where you'll really kick a hornet's nest with Poppy's Playtime. But I've never been bothered by any kind of negativity online.

1:20:21DougDoug:It's just like, oh, it's so nice. hey you know my opinion is getting out there it's fun it's really fun um and there's very few parts of the youtube pipeline that i don't like um and so i think that it's you should start a youtube politics channel oh yeah yeah i should do that uh it's just you know it's just fun so it's it's a rewarding kind of break from the cycle of making a movie where do the other pieces outside of

1:20:48Aiden:YouTube and making a movie come in. Like the, the clothing brand, uh, was something I was curious about, like how much presence that business has in your life now, if there's other pursuits that you're looking to, to build, uh, and in the same vein as the movie, how much, uh, the financial opportunity of those things even plays a part in that anymore.

1:21:16DougDoug:Oh man. I would say that the financial is not a motivation for anything I do really. Um, it's kind of a, it has happened. And so anyone that's like a super business acumen and asking me like, Oh, did you make your money? And I'll be like, I don't know, man. I, cause I've never been focused on it with the clothing. The reason that I took it over, it was a very expensive decision because it was working before, but the quality wasn't where I wanted to be. And I was a majority owner. So I had to become majority owner if I wanted to make a decision. It's expensive. And then I had to basically take the whole business and build it up from new.

1:21:51DougDoug:That's expensive. I'm paying people and we're not selling anything basically for a year and a half. But it was necessary to be like, this is going to be better for the end consumer, for the, my audience, for people actually buying the clothes, if they're of higher quality, if we can actually make sure that they're more ethically sourced, whether we're doing things right, we're doing things honestly, it's going to be more difficult on the long run. It may, it may not make, you know, profit like it used to, it probably will, but it won't. But I believe that if you make something of a higher quality that you can be proud of, and you can understand the process more by learning about rebuilding it, then you can be more confident going into the future.

1:22:30DougDoug:And I think that reflects on, on the people that want the clothing and then more people want it because they're like, Hey, they're doing something right. I, and that's kind of the philosophy I've applied to everything that I've done is just like the, the decisions that I make are not about the money that I want to make. It is just incidental that success follows doing something of quality. And I feel like that is somehow lost on a lot of businesses. Like if you, if you put quality into something, it may not be absolutely a financial success, but the people that are going to, that you're trying to sell to are going to enjoy it more and have a more rewarding experience.

1:22:59DougDoug:And then the intangible benefits, the non-monetary benefits of like having a very supportive audience that is willing to put their trust in me when I say, Hey, I made a movie. And they have no reason other than just me saying that to be like, all right, I'll go to a theater. All right. I'll ask a theater that if they can show this movie, I'll email someone, I'll call someone, I'll go there and I'll physically ask for the manager and I'll say, Hey, I wanted this movie here.

1:23:23Aiden:Um, do you think that, do you think that kind of markiplier stamp is something you've intentionally cultivated? Your process here is, is very intentional, but understanding that that exists. And it's like this premium sign off on all of these things that you do. And then it's now it's, it is proven itself effective in so many ways. Is that something you were like conscious you were building or is it just, this is a by-product of being me? Yeah.

1:23:51DougDoug:I'd say calling it a rubber stamp is probably what it might be in the future if I'm working with other people, but because I've always approached my YouTube channel as being like, this is me and this is my journey. This is how I have built myself up. This is what I wanted to do. I didn't like where my life was, and this is basically just me making stuff that I think is fun, and I think, and I will try bigger projects all the time, and I'll go forward to there. The Markiplier stamp in that regard wouldn't necessarily be something because I'm not putting it on anything that I'm not already doing, that I'm not already there.

1:24:22DougDoug:So I am the stamp right now, and I think the trust that has been built up with my audience is that I'm going to put everything I have into it. I'm going to, I'm not going to half-ass anything, and I'm going to try it to the very end. If it fails, it fails and I'll crash and burn with it. That's usually what I like to do. And I think that understanding from my audience has been reached many, many years ago. And so it's important to also cultivate that belief so that it can't fade. So I can always show that I'm willing to show up and put in the hard work that is necessary. So in a way, yes, but also in a way, it's not even that something that I have thought about.

1:24:58DougDoug:It's just like, I have a duty to myself and my audience to do everything I can. God, I sound good in these answers. God, this makes me sound amazing. Let me ask, I think long-term,

1:25:12Aiden:because it sounds like you had this very understandable goal of I want to prove something to myself. I want to open this door for myself in this future path I'm looking at with making movies and continuing to do that. do you but you seem to want to stay independent is is your goal to be a recognizable indie director these people aren't necessarily indie but like if i say ryan kugler or if i say christopher nolan yeah people will just go see their next movie and they're a director and i want to go see their project or like the safeties right now i feel like is that who you want to be more so than the YouTuber you've been for recognizes for a long time?

1:26:00DougDoug:I think it will be, uh, it will be impossible not to, because I've put my name forward on it. And clearly I've, I've stuck with Markiplier because I'm proud of where I've come from. And also it's just like people know that name. Um, so it will be impossible not to aim for that. Um, because I do want to have a reputation of quality and I want a reputation of, of at least I will be swinging very hard for whatever project that I'm going for. So yes, but also again, it's not what I'm specifically chasing because my goals are sometimes very selfish, self-oriented. I want to be good at what I do. I want to be good for me.

1:26:35DougDoug:I want to be happy with the projects and I won't release a project until I'm happy with it. And until I know that it was the best I could do at the time. And I will be very hard on myself if I know that it could be better. And I have not put in all the effort that I possibly could. That will probably kill me someday because I will just do too many all-nighters and my heart will give out and I will die on the floor of the editing room. And I know that's probably where I'm going to end up, but yeah, it's good with the bad, you know?

1:27:02Atrioc:Worthy trade off. That's going to be a great clip for the obituary. Good with the bad. Art of Blatter dies in his editing room floor and we're playing. You know, it's interesting to me because I think hearing your story, it's actually more unique than this question would indicate i want to talk about creator-led businesses which are on the massive rise right now and how culturally it's changing the idea you didn't spend a lot or any marketing this movie is my understanding it was just happenstance with the audience and trust you built up but i you know when i was buying snacks for this movie i took pictures of the options available to me there was mr beast original jerky and there was uh joy ride which I believe is someone else's YouTuber.

1:27:42Atrioc:Oh, Ryan Tran? Ryan Tran's candy company. So I'm just seeing these pop up in stores and I'm seeing creator-led businesses rise more and more. And it does feel like the advantage of their ability to market, because it costs them nothing once they have that audience built, is so astronomical over what like a established company has to spend on TV or online ads to get to that same level, that it's changing the whole industry. It seems like you're doing most of this just because it's a passion project and what you want to do. but have you noticed how, like you've had 14 year career. Have you noticed how that has changed and opportunities have become available to you?

1:28:16Atrioc:I do.

1:28:16DougDoug:Yeah. It's impossible not to see the amount of, of different, you know, companies that are partnering with creators to make products and things like that. Making products is very difficult, honestly. So any, any kind of attempt to do that is, is brought with troubles through the entire process. I think that the important thing to recognize though, is pretty much everything, even in those of free marketing. It's just a different type of currency, right? So your audience has a trust and you have taken their time and given them content and entertainment and you have this transactional, that's a very business way of putting it, but in a way they are giving time the most valuable thing they have to you.

1:28:59And this trust is built up to not abuse that exchange, right?

1:29:04DougDoug:And if you're going to ask them to do anything else, They're either going to give up their time or they're going to give their money for the product. It's the exact reason that I took Cloak and I wanted to transform it into something better because it's like if I'm going to ask them to pay for clothes, I want the clothes to be as good as they can be. And so with these other companies, it is, again, very, very cool that other of these creators have this ability to have marketing. But it's never free. It's not free. A million people in my audience had to go and go out to theaters, physically spend money.

1:29:37DougDoug:And I hope and I think that it was worth their time to do that. But if you don't have a constant positive contribution towards that time and paying respect to that, you can't just tap it unlimitedly. Even for Mr. Beast or any of these other bigger creators making these products like Feastables, you know, and things like that. They won't just last on goodwill alone. The goodwill does dry up until you start contributing back into the fund. And I'm not saying he's not. I'm not saying some are. I'm saying that it is still, it's just a different type of currency. And it's sometimes an invisible currency that people don't even know exist.

1:30:12DougDoug:But it does. And recognize it at the first step to understanding that the numbers behind those subscribers are real people with real lives. And if you don't treat them with respect, you're never going to go anywhere. I really like that answer. Yeah. I think you're totally right.

1:30:27Aiden:I, there's a video I have a, I think I have a very different outlook on like content and success than he does. But Graham Stevens, who's like a finance YouTuber talked about canning his coffee business. He did for a few years and the way it has these, he's talked to a bunch of people that have these types of businesses in this space. And for every like, you know, feastables, maybe that's going crazy. Right. But most people are giving their crack at launching a product, accessing an audience that tied back to what you said at the beginning might not be even the type of audience that really wants to engage with them in that way.

1:31:05Aiden:And then it has this initial spike of interest and then immediately stagnates and starts falling off. And that's kind of what happened with his coffee company that he got rid of. And I think a lot of people, you have to be at this unique cross section where people believe in you because of all the things you've developed and accomplished, but also truly deliver on what that product is in order, like to give Ryan Trahan some credit, the candy's pretty fucking good. Like I've tried it. And I think a lot of these products that I've seen or tried from different creators over the years are ultimately pretty bad because they're the quick cash grab.

1:31:42Aiden:You're trying to get it out there. You're not working with the right people.

1:31:45Atrioc:No, the way you put it, and just the terms clicked with me, the way about currency, because it's like a promise, right? You're making a promise to them. And if it's not good, then you're just trading your trust. You're just draining that. That's a really, yeah, it's an interesting way to put it. That's that. That's yeah. I think I've tried to get that across to my editors about videos where it's like, Hey, if they're clicking on this, we have to give them either a laugh or learn something every time, or they're going to eventually not click. That's the point. That's the promise. There's a counterpoint to that.

1:32:14DougDoug:It's just like, sometimes I, sometimes I mess with my audience because they deserve it. Sometimes they get a little too uppity and sometimes they, get a little too full of themselves and you just gotta you gotta smack him down you know it's not always perfect

1:32:28Atrioc:noble you know sometimes I really love one in a thousand theaters doesn't show the right movie exactly yeah it's my let's play

1:32:39DougDoug:they're like it was just a long let's play they paid$30 to watch the list

1:32:44Aiden:they go on the subreddit did anyone was anyone else upset it was just a normal YouTube video

1:32:48DougDoug:oh man no I think it can't be too pure because if you try to be too pure, they know bullshit. You know, they're like, you're not really that good. And I tell people all the time, I'm an asshole most of the time. Like I say, it's selfish. A lot of it, I want to succeed. And they know that. It's like, you're not human if you don't want a little selfishness. And so reminding them that I'm better than all of you, I'm better is important for the podcast. Let's clip that and loop it. We'll put that right at the end of the nail contact.

1:33:16Atrioc:All right, we're wrapping up. Mark, this has been awesome. I have one final quick, simple question. anything you did to treat yourself after having a wildly successful indie movie or is it just back to the grind?

1:33:26DougDoug:No, I mean, I've, I've slept, which has been really cool. That's nice. I've been reading some books, which have been great. I haven't had time to do that. I've been starting to watch some TV shows. Like I said, I was watching the studio, which I haven't watched any kind of hilarious. It's great. I really love that. The pit has been, you know, depressing, but you know, kind of fun. It's a good show. I've been, you know, enjoying some time to actually breathe. and talk to people because it was 16 hour days for about three years and that's no good for anybody sandy i mean you saw me at the parties that i would show up to over at ethan's and i would just be like yeah i'm i gotta work on stuff after this and you're like covered in like knives

1:34:06Atrioc:and stuff too because halloween party you also looked the part of like an angry pirate yeah yeah

1:34:10DougDoug:that was only because amy said it all for me it's like i i flew in the an hour before that party by the way i don't know if you know that like an hour or two and i sprinted home all my costume was laid out i put it on then i i drove to the party right after that it was like and that was all the time i had and i had to make that work but that built trust with me and now you can spend

1:34:31Atrioc:that currency i came there for you man for you mark thank you so much for coming on i hope you guys enjoyed this conversation we'll see you next time be sure to check out iron line only in theaters.

1:34:43DougDoug:Well, by the time this comes out, probably, yeah,

1:34:45Atrioc:but maybe in theaters. Thanks, everybody. Thanks. Bye.