CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST

[music plays]

Hilarie Burton: Hi guys! It’s Hilarie Burton and you have tuned in to the Southern Gothic Productions podcast. It’s our weekly look into the inner workings of a production company. So sit back, hang out, and enjoy a sneak peak into our journey.

Denise Gideon: I want to welcome everyone to another edition of the Southern Gothic Productions Podcast. As always, we are joined by Hilarie Burton, Kelly Tenney, and Nicholas Gray. It’s going to be an interesting podcast this week. We’re going to be doing a little mixed bag of information. We’re going to be sharing a little bit of information about my recent trip to DragonCon and my introduction of Southern Gothic Productions into, hopefully, a different kind of genre, and a different fan base that, hopefully, we’re going to drag in with this new graphic novel, and we’re also going to be talking about the importance of social media, and talk a little bit about Kelly’s recent appearance on Say It Social Radio. But first off, we’re going to kind of turn the tables a little bit, because this is going to be a little different. I think, Hilarie, you have a few questions for me.

HB: Well, yeah! First off, thank you so much for my totally supreme blue velvet cloak that you got me at DragonCon. I’m a fan of cloaks. I wear them every time I can, you know. Sometimes at dinner, sometimes at the supermarket. Who needs sleeves in a coat, you know? [laughs] Where did you find that thing?

DG: There are a lot of different vendors and kiosks and things like that all over the convention at DragonCon in the various hotels. There are four major hotels that, kind of, host different parts of the convention, and I had a laundry list, I guess you could say, of things that I wanted to get for some people, and one of the things that was on my list was a cloak for you, Hilarie. I understand that you enjoy them quite a lot, and so I went through and looked for a cloak that kind of defined who you were, and we came up with the one that I brought back for you.

HB: I love it! It’s just in time for the holidays, too, you know! Yeah, but were there a lot of cloaks there? I feel like that might be my kind of people.

DG: I would have to say that, Hilarie, you would fit right in with your cloak. You probably couldn’t stir a stick without hitting at least 5 or 6 of them, and I was kind of looking through all the different cloaks, and I kind of got talked into this electric blue-type cloak that I brought back to you, like I said, and I think it fits you quite well.

HB: That’s dangerous. I wear it out in the moonlight. [laughing] What were other people dressed up as?

DG: I mean, people were dressed in, like, anything and everything you can imagine. Any kind of comic book character, movie characters, anything. There was a lady dressed up like the Geico lady from the Geico commercials. There was a person dressed up like Cookie Monster but he was wearing, like, a Thriller jacket and a white glove like Michael Jackson. There were the people that were dressed up like that character from “Night at the Museum.” Awful looking monsters. Anything and everything you can imagine. People… One of the big things, of course, was ‘Watchmen.’ There was a whole group of people dressed up like the people like ‘Watchmen.’ One of my favorites… It really wasn’t an intricate costume, but it was just the way they interacted and the way they, kind of, played these little skits, and it was the people dressed up like the cheerleaders from ‘Saturday Night Live,’ the Will Ferrell character, and the person dressed up like the cheerleaders in that. They even had a little skit that they did, and it was kind of a lot of fun to watch that, and we were up on the balcony part of one of the tiers of the hotel in the Marriot Marquis where we were staying, and we were looking over and watching them and they were hilarious. I think I probably watched that skit a million times and it was a lot of fun, but one of the more interesting costumes probably didn’t take a lot of money to make, but probably was kind of painful to take off, and there was a lady dressed in a bikini, but the bikini was made out of duct tape.

HB: Oh, that’s cool! I think I have one of those! [laughs] Nick helped me pick it out! Yes, Kelly you’ve seen it. Tell her. [Kelly and Hilarie laugh] Naturally. Duct tape. You can make a lot of things out of duct tape. [laughs] So wait, so okay. You did us a huge solid by passing out a bunch of Southern Gothic stuff. What was the experience like? How did you just walk up to people?

DG: I tell you first and foremost, Kelly was nice enough to be able to get us some swag, as you like to call it, things that you hand out with your company’s name and information at different conventions and things like that, and Kelly was nice enough to get some swag together for me to hand out, and kind of get the word out about Southern Gothic Productions, and we got some wrist bands and we got some tattoos. That we were going to hand out. And so, the package came on a Friday afternoon. The convention started that afternoon on a Friday, and so, picked it up, and we all took sort of a lunch break, and kind of had a game plan, and one of the first parts of my game plan was to go to panels and things like that that would have long lines and one of the ones that had a really long line that night, that Friday night, was a panel for a live version of ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog,’ that’s the web series… I’m sure if anybody’s listened to this podcast a lot, I talk about that a lot. It’s a really cool web series created by Josh Weedman, and it just got an Emmy, so they did a live version of that, and what that means is they had the show playing on a big screen, and then they had people that were acting out the parts, dressed up like the characters. And so… kind of like a ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ kind of…. And so there was this very long line because they had two showings, and so we were in line, of course, to go to it, but we had brought some… and I say we because I had some friends of mine help us out, so thanks guys for that. But, we had, you know… I had a basket full of stuff, and I had a bag full of stuff, and one of the things that I did was I just went around and would give to people in line, and would talk a little bit about Southern Gothic Productions and about the company. I’d hand them out a wristband, and we also made up these little… I took a whole page and cut it in fourths, and on each fourth I put information about Southern Gothic Productions, what you guys were doing, what we’re doing, what series we’re doing, you know, the graphic novel, and the short film and the feature film and the podcast and where you can find great music and all this other stuff, and then I put the web address, and a little bit of information about you guys. And then at the top part of it, I left it blank and I taped candy at the top of it, and so you go around, you hand out the information, you talk about the company, you give them the little… the candy fliers as I called it, with candy, and you’re sitting there and you’ve got a captive audience because they were waiting on something anyways, so here you are giving them out, you know, information about your company, and also candy, and they’re going to remember who you are!

HB: [laughing] It really was like Halloween, Denise! Trick-or-treat!

DG: Then we had a huge party on Saturday night. I belong to a group called Southeast Scapers, and we support the show ‘Farscape’ and we have since I’ve been going to DragonCon, and so we hosted a party that night, and these guys are my people! And so, I knew that we had that whole… we had a couple hundred people there. So, I was able to go around and talk to them. They’re very open to new projects, and so I was able to spread the word there as well, and it’s a nice niche market, which is what you start with, of course, right? You start with a niche market, and then you grow outwards, and so we got to be able to hand those out, and I found people that I felt would be interested in what I had to say, and so I was trying to spread the word as much as possible, but I think that part of the story that, I think, you guys really want me to get to, is how in the world that I started sending you photographs of me with actors and with stars wearing your Southern Gothic Productions swag!

HB: You were sending me pictures of you and celebrities! I was like, ‘Whoa! What’s going on?’

DG: Well, the first one I sent to you was Michael Trucco, and I kind of had an in with him because I did interview him for my other podcast over the summer, and we had made a joke that I was going to check on him when he went down to DragonCon because that was his first time there, and it can be overwhelming. It is not ComicCon but 60,000 people and when you’ve never been to something like that, it can be overwhelming. So, the story goes that I was outside of our hotel with some friends and we were about to head over to the other hotel to get some drinks and hang out, and I saw him and a couple of the other cast members from ‘Battlestar: Glactica’ walking into the hotel, because they stayed in our hotel as well. So I was going to try to find him the following day, but it seemed like it was fate that he was walking in. So, we walked back into the hotel, and I, very nicely, tapped him on the shoulder and I said ‘Hey Michael! It’s Denise. How is it going?’ And he just was really happy to see me, because we were joking about him coming to DragonCon, and I talked to him for a bit and I said, ‘Well, you remember that I told you I was working with Hilarie Burton and Southern Gothic Productions and I want to see if you could do me a favor. You see, I’ve got this swag and I’d like you to wear it and make you take a photo and put it on our Twitter, and you know, just have some fun with it.’ And he was… no questions asked, he was really gung ho for it, and so it was really cool because, you know, that part with him… I did have an in, of course, with him being on ‘One Tree Hill,’ but he was there at DragonCon because he was Sam Anders on ‘Battlestar: Galactica.’

HB: Dude, he’s such a sci-fi stud! I love it! He’s honestly such a nice guy. When he was here in Wilmington, I had a lot of fun going out with him.

DG: Though I had a few other, like, celebrity encounters and we got quite a few other people to wear those wristbands, including Karen Allen, who played, of course, in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ and that was kind of a big coo for me, because I had no connection with her, and she was just so very gracious, and it was kind of cool to have Karen Allen be wearing a wristband for Southern Gothic Productions. I mean, she’s just Marion from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ It’s no big deal, right? The other one I really had an in with, and plus I wasn’t sure how… if I was even going to do it, was of course, Malcom McDowell.

HB: Oh, sweet Malcolm! Real quick. That’s my baby, baby. I love Malcolm. You boys have heard me talk about him.

Kelly Tenney: Oh, yeah.

HB: He’s actually somebody who we want to include in some of our projects, and so we love him. He’s on our dream cast list.

DG: So yeah, I go up to him and when I finally decide I’m going to do it, I’m like, ‘what’s he going to say? No?’ and I’m not going to get, like, killed for it. So, I did go up and at first I got a poster because I wanted it to sign it for my sister. He’s in, of course, the new ‘Halloween,’ ‘Halloween II.’ My sister is a huge horror fan, so I went ahead and got all that taken care of, and had him sign that. Prior to leaving the table, I kind of said ‘Hey, Mr. McDowell, I just want to tell you that I work with Hilarie Burton and her company, Southern Gothic Productions.’ And when I mentioned your name, Hilarie, his whole face just lit up, and he just said ‘Oh, I adore Hilarie.’ And I was like, ‘Well, then, sir, maybe you can help me out?’ I said, ‘I’ve been going around and getting different actors and stuff like that to wear this wristband and kind of help support Southern Gothic Productions, and I’m wondering if you would be willing to do that?’ Oh, there was no question! And what’s so funny was, he wasn’t taking any photos at the table. They were doing a photo session each day and he you had to pay for it and everything like that, and I was like, ‘Well, we really want to put it on our Twitter, and we want to do this.’ And so I had to do it by myself because I had left my friends because they were out doing something else, and I had walked across the street and so this lady was very nice to take the photo, and that was how we got Malcolm McDowell to wear Southern Gothic Production’s wristband, and so it was really cool.

Nicholas Gray: Denise, what I want to know was who refused to wear our wristbands?

KT: Yeah, what actors?

DG: Absolutely no one. But, also, I was very choosy and very selective about who I asked because I knew who maybe I could and couldn’t get to do it, but it was a lot of fun to be able to go down there and spread the word of Southern Gothic Productions.

HB: Well, I mean, you sent us pictures with lots of celebrities, but I think, you know, our big thing is we want to get the word out there to our fan base. That’s actually something that Kelly has been working on recently, too. Kelly just did an interview… what was it for? Say It Social?

KT: Yeah, SayItSocial.com. Denise set this up for us, thank you, and she introduced me to Tim Moore and Ty Downing. They own a company here in Wilmington, and they’re basically trying to get the message out about social networking, and using Twitter as I like to do.

HB: It has become the, you know, the driving force of our company. Our entire company exists through the internet and through Twitter and Facebook and all that kind of stuff, and all of our content, you know, we share through the internet, and it’s made our company so tangible for our fans. It’s not just a myth or a rumor anymore.

KT: By the time this airs, Hil, I forgot to tell you… we’re going to hit a million page views.

HB: Awesome.

KT: 95,000 page views, we’re going to hit a million sometime this week.

HB: That’s bonkers!

DG: I think there’s one more thing you want to do in this segment, and it’s kind of asking for a call to arms from your followers and fans to spread the word about Southern Gothic Productions using social media.

HB: Yeah, I mean, what you were doing down there at DragonCon, you know, meeting people face-to-face, shaking their hand, handing them Southern Gothic information… you know, that’s what we’d like our fan base to do. We are creating an online army, and in order to get our bigger projects done… you know, so far it’s the community that we already have that has facilitated our smaller projects, you know. ‘Boyfriend and Girlfriend’ and ‘Friendship Union Community Theatre’ and the graphic novel, you know, are a result of our t-shirt sales, you know, people buying products online, all of that. So in order for this model to continue to work for our bigger films, what we need is for our army, if you will, to help us boost our numbers, you know. So that means post ‘Friendship Union Community Theatre’ on your Facebook page so all of you friends can see it, you know. Post links to vlogs that we do that you like that you think are funny, and try to draw in as many of your friends as possible, people that you think will be interested in what we’re doing, because, you know, the core of our company is that it’s not just about the finished product, it’s about entertaining you all along the way, you know, giving you access to the entire process, instead of the just the finished product.

KT: We’re an interactive company, absolutely.

HB: That’s why we answer questions that the fans send in, and you know, we talk to people downtown. We see people out, you know. We, you know, employ people that are fans. You know, we have them help up with stuff. We’re very interactive, so yeah, post our stuff up on your social networking tools, and it would be huge for us. Our investors and people that are, you know, actors that might potentially want to sign on, anybody that we potentially want to work with, looks at this tool, this social network that we’ve created, and it inspires trust in them to work with us, so you guys are really pushing that. It’s an important, important part of our company.

DG: Well Hilarie, you just mentioned about giving back to the fans, and that brings us to the fan question for the week. It’s a fan question from Valerie C. and it’s going to be a 2-parter because the first one is really interesting, I think, and it’s going to be interesting to hear what you guys have to say, and the second one is… I’m kind of interested in. So, the first part of the question is ‘Talk about the negative and positive experiences of running your own production company.’

HB: We don’t have to get out of bed till, like, 10. That’s pretty cool. [laughs] What do you think, Nick?

NG: I think the most exciting part is, kind of, watching it grow. It seems like from month to month we have, you know, a new chapter that’s being written about this production company, and just to look back on to February, which is when we really starting documenting this process, there’s been so much just leading up to now. That’s kind of crazy.

KT: I think the creative process, of course, is the best part for me. I love watching Nick… read what Nick writes. The way you write, and I love that part of it. I think the part that I don’t like is trying to get people to stay outside the box, and you know, it’s just in raising money and stuff, they have traditional ways and things that investors put their money in, and just to get to see that the real estate market has crashed, banking has crashed, all these have crashed, and yet the film industry still makes money, and that’s the part that frustrates me about this business, is just getting new investors to check us out.

HB: Yeah, I would say that’s probably, yeah, definitely the most frustrating part is educating people to feel comfortable with our little gypsy job, you know. I mean, we get things done!

KT: We do.

HB: And, you know, the film industry… yeah, it’s glitzy and it’s all smoke and mirrors, but it’s smoke and mirrors that makes the money, so yeah, I would say that’s the toughest part.

DG: That takes us to the second part of our question from Valerie, and she wants to know ‘Kelly, when are we going to see you in front of the camera?’

KT: Oh, no! You mean the film camera?

HB: Yeah, Kel!

KT: Oh, no!

HB: You’ve been in front of the camera!

KT: I have. I’m always the fat cop, so unless we want to write…

HB: Oh, shut up!

KT:… for a fat cop, then we probably won’t. [laughs]

HB: You are so full of it! That’s not true. When we do the Lance Armstrong story, Kelly’s hero, Kelly’s going to play his best friend who he’s confiding in.

DG: There you go.

HB: Yeah.

KT: Alright.

HB: It’s going to be awesome!

DG: Well, thanks guys for answering Valerie C.’s pair of questions, and it’s always fun to get a question in and get your guys views on fan and follower questions, and again it’s been great spending a few minutes with you guys, and learning a little more about Southern Gothic Productions, and we’ll see everybody here next week!

HB: Thank you guys so much for listening to the Southern Gothic Productions podcast. We hang out on Wednesdays so be sure to check us out! See you next week.

[music plays till fade out]