CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST

[music plays]

Hilarie Burton: Hey everyone! This is Hilarie Burton, and you have tuned in to the Southern Gothic Productions Podcast, a weekly look into the inner workings of a production company. So sit back, and enjoy a peek into our journey.

Denise Gideon: Welcome to another edition of the Southern Gothic Productions Podcast. As always, we’re excited to welcome in our Big Three: Hilarie Burton, Kelly Tenney, and Nicholas Gray. Before we get into our conversation for the week, which we’ll be talking a little bit about the short film for Southern Gothic Productions, ‘The True Love Tale of Boyfriend and Girlfriend,’ we want to talk to Hilarie a little bit about the band that just opened up the podcast, Radio America. Hilarie, again, you sent me out to look up and get a band that you enjoy on the podcast, so won’t you share a little bit of information about the band, and your connections to them.

HB: Yeah, no, they’re actually… the lead singer, Tom Stuart, is somebody I’ve known for a very, very long time. When I first went to college, I was going to, like, an artsy-fartsy school, the straight male population was really, really limited. We had, like, a talent show during freshman orientation, and he was a rock-star and he was cool, and we became friends, and we’re a team, Tom Stuart and I, and then, you know, went our separate ways, after two weeks, from hanging out with different crowds and everything, but always kind of in each other’s peripheral. You know, I always kind of respected the music he performed, and so cut to a couple… when Kevin Federline came on ‘One Tree Hill,’ and he was supposed to be playing a lead singer for a rock band, but Kevin does not sing rock music. He is a rap star. So, they got a different band to perform the music that Kevin would be lip-syncing too. So I listened to this song for, like, 3 days, and then I get an email from an old friend from college that’s like, ‘Hey, check out this myspace’ and I look, and it’s Radio America, and it’s the band that performed for Kevin Federline, and they just thought I would really like this band. And as I was looking through I realized, it’s my first-week-of-college-boyfriend, Tom Stuart singing this song! No wonder why I recognized the voice! So, I talked to him and it was, you know, fun to reconnect and very strange that the world is so small, that this band would be performing on my show, and yeah, I guess they thought it would be a hard sell for him, you know, when they approached him with the deal, like, ‘Hey, you want your song to be Kevin Federline’s song on ‘One Tree Hill’?’ They thought they were really going to have to twist his arm, but he just thought it was so funny. He was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah!’ So, I actually just talked to him the other day. He’s excited that we’re playing some of their music, and they are a fantastic band. Tom’s a wonderful musician, a really good showman, and you know, they’re starting to do different stuff, and of course we’re creating more things where we need soundtracks and background music and stuff like that, so we’re working together in the near future. I’m excited about that. It’s good to reconnect with old friends!

DG: Exactly. And it’s always having those kind of people in your pocket.

HB: Yeah, he’s still a total babe! You know, all you girls out there, check him out! [laughs]

DG: Well, talking about things that are going on, I think that one of the things that we want to talk about a little bit in this podcast is one of the things that people probably have been sending you questions and emails about for the last, what, months?... is your little short film, ‘True Love Tale of Boyfriend and Girlfriend.’ So, I’m opening up the podcast here for you to give everybody a down low on how that’s going, and what’s going on.

HB: Well, I think that’s Nick’s forum. You know, what I think we should do is explain every single little step it takes in putting something together that we feel confident in putting out there, and Nick has kind of been in the captain’s seat for all of this stuff, and it’s been a lot of stuff, so I’ll let him walk you through it.

Nicholas Gray: Ay yi.

HB: Ay yi, captain! [laughs] You’re so swarthy!

NG: I know. So we started this all right at the very beginning. You know, Hilarie had come up with this idea that… just create something as a thank you for all these fans that were coming and visiting us every single day, and so, I had a dream… [yells] He had a dream!

HB: Really. That’s cute.

NG: I had a dream, and it was just… In this dream, I was this really awesome pop star [Hilarie bursts out laughing] named girlfriend, and I just had an international following and I woke up in the morning, and I said, ‘Eureka!’ [Hilarie laughs] Also, my friend has a dog named girlfriend, and then I just wrote this little tale. This little tale of a guy named girlfriend and a girl named boyfriend. I still get confused, and I’m the one thinking of that. And just how serendipitous their love was. And I sent it to Hilarie. I said, ‘What do you think about this?’ [Hilarie agrees and Nick laughs] And what did you say?

HB: I said, ‘It’s super-duper! Just neater than hell!’

NG: So we sent it to Austin, and he was for the clouds.

DG: And again, that’s Austin Nichols for the people that haven’t followed before.

NG: Yes, and then we were off to shoot!

HB: [laughing] And then Kelly was in charge.

NG: Yeah, then Kelly was in charge. Kelly said, ‘Well, go get some locations!’

HB: Oh, yeah!

NG: So, me and Hil when out one day and did some scouting.

HB: We drove every back road in Wilmington, and we ended up in, what? Cemeteries, in old construction sites, places that had very large signs that said, ‘No Trespassing.’

NG: Absolutely, and we found a crack pipe!

HB: That’s true! And a bunch of condoms, and what else did we find?

Kelly Tenney: [laughing] Oh, right.

HB: We found something else that was totally creepy.

NG: The letter.

HB: Oh, we found the letter. We found a letter in a tree. We found a love letter that was so romantic, we actually did a vlog about it a couple months ago.

NG: Because we like romance.

HB: We’re romantic people.

NG: So, then we shot the darn thing. We had two days of shooting.

HB: And we wanted to do it for, like, no money.

NG: Just 3 days.

HB: … just to prove that anybody could do it, you know, you don’t need thousands of dollars, you know? We just had a little camera we bought at Best Buy.

NG: Kelly was the man behind the camera.

KT: By accident. [laughs]

HB: Not by accident! You were great, Kel!

KT: [laughing] Our camera guy didn’t show up!

NG: I know.

HB: [laughing] Oh, yeah!

NG: There was a look of terror written on your face that day, Kelly. [him and Kelly laugh]

HB: You were so brave, though! [laughs] You just, you know, took it in stride and picked up the camera and owned it.

KT: Yeah.

NG: Yeah, we did do this for absolutely nothing. The only thing we paid for was the darn fish.

KT: That fish.

HB: Oh yeah!

NG: Hilarie went off and bought us a real huge fish as a prop.

HB: From the fish market… What did we name it?

NG: Kevin.

HB: Kevin. [Nick and Hilarie laugh] Kevin the fish.

NG: And then, once it was all done… [sighs] Then the horror starts.

HB: Then it was hard! [laughs]

NG: Then it was the harder work! The thing I think I dislike most about editing is logging. When you go through all the footage, and you’re writing down the time codes, and it just…

HB: Explain what that is to people, because a lot of people don’t even know what that means.

NG: You have to go through and you have to look at all your footage and know what your best takes are, and you know, you need to make sure all your audio… well, we actually didn’t use audio on this little project.

HB: Thank god!

NG: But for ‘Friendship Union’ you know, you need to go through and make sure all your takes are great, and it’s just really tedious. You’re putting down the time codes. You’re watching every single second, and we, you know, for such a little production we did shoot a lot of footage, and almost all of it ended up being used, which is really cool.

HB: Well we got so damn excited once we were out shooting. We were like, ‘This is neat! No, this is neat! This is neater!’

NG: And then I just started piecing it together for a little bit, and then, you know, as we said, editing is not my favorite thing in the world, and so we kind of got a hold… not only because of that but because of ‘Friendship Union,’ which then became really our priority to get out there.

HB: Do you think it’s because once we shot stuff we realized that that’s our favorite part, and then everything else is kind of like, ‘Oh yeah, we got to do this too.’

NG: Yeah.

HB: So we wanted to start shooting something again right away after ‘Boyfriend and Girlfriend.’ Because it is, that’s the fun part. That’s when you get to… it’s like coloring with crayons!

NG: I think you’re right about that. That’s why we’re building our team! So that those people that think editing is the fun part, and logging, and lining [Nick and Hilarie groan, then laugh] You know, and then, maybe about 3 weeks ago, I got back up with Mick Shane, our editor who worked with us on ‘Boyfriend and Girlfriend,’ and just for the record, I would like to say, our final cut of this is not too far away from my original cut.

HB: It’s not! You just picked him for a little polish. You had it pretty done.

NG: Yeah. I refuse to put my name on there as a credit, but he tried to put it in, but I said, ‘No, don’t Mick.’

HB: [laughs] No! You shan’t!

NG: And then, we got some wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful music from our dear friend, Andy Balinski, and it’s going to knock your socks off.

HB: It is so catchy!

NG: It is. It’s so good and there’s bells in it, which is what I think I like the best.

HB: Well, I think he had understood the aesthetic we were going for, you know. I mean, it’s a whimsical tale, we had talked to him about gypsy/jazz kind of stuff, kind of spunky, spunky/jazzy, but you know, but like, folk-artsy music, and for whatever reason, he understood all that jargon, and he, and then his friend Brian, put it together and it is just sharp.

NG: We do that all the time. We just shout out words to people, [Hilarie laughs] and we hope that they’re going to get it.

HB: Like when we go to dinner at restaurants, ‘Fish! Delicious! Green Beans!’ [laughs] and then dinner shows up!

NG: Yeah.

HB: It works! [laughs]

NG: And usually it all comes together, and besides from the music, also, our friend Stephen Jones and Audrey Creegan who have been doing a lot of design work for us, and together they put together these really awesome title cards, and then there’s also… the film kind of has a little modern silent film element to it, and so there’s also some…

HB: Some dialogue cards.

NG: Some dialogue cards…

HB: Cards!

NG: … that are just really, really nice.

HB: Charming.

NG: I love them!

HB: We had Cullen record the voiceover. That was fun.

NG: Yes! You guys were aware of that, Cullen Moss.

HB: We sat here in my living room, where we’re actually recording right now, and had to wait every time a plane flew over the house, and we made Cullen do it, what? Like, 20 times? [laughs]

NG: Yeah, and he just did such a great job because Cullen… I don’t know if you guys, you know, who know him from ‘One Tree Hill’ would know this about Cullen, but he is an incredible comedian. You know, when we went to him, I was a little bit nervous that… because we wanted, like, this Southern voice to narrate the story and I was a little nervous that he would be…

HB: too joke-y with it?

NG: … too joke-y with it, and I just kind of gave him a small note, and the product was incredible!

HB: I mean, he sounds like a 90-year-old man telling this story.

NG: Yeah.

HB: He’s such a good character actor.

NG: If you did a line-up of people, like, guess who was doing this…

HB: Yeah, nobody would ever guess him.

NG: …nobody would ever guess him. And so now, we’re nearly done! The product is done. We’re going to do a little color correcting on it, and perhaps a little bit of filters here and there, but for all due purposes, it is done! And now, we have to wait for…

HB: Rendering.

NG: Yeah.

HB: Kelly knows how much rendering we do. Kelly, explain while we render.

KT: Well, we’re using a company called Tunecore to actually distribute our music and this short that we’re doing. It won’t be up and running till November.

HB: Yeah, it takes, like, 6 weeks to protect the product.

KT: Yeah, it’s kind of like iTunes. Well, it works through iTunes. You’ll be able to download it and use it on 2 computers, maybe 3 computers, and that’s it. It’ll have a code attached to it so you can’t share it with the world. It’s good.

HB: Because as much as Nick is the captain, and we love seedy things, pirating is not cool, kids! Not cool. [laughs]

KT: And so this company Tunecore is actually going to get it on iTunes, Rhapsody, Musicnet, Amazon, and Limewire, etc. It can reach out to places that a small company like ours doesn’t have the resources to do.

HB: So yeah, that’s ‘Boyfriend and Girlfriend.’ November is our drop month.

KT: Our drop month.

HB: Just in time for the holidays! Just a little gift from us to you.

DG: I guess everybody can get ready for the holidays with ‘The True Love Tale of Boyfriend and Girlfriend’!

HB: Everybody loves a little love at the holidays!

DG: Hey, thanks guys for spending a little bit of time on the podcast telling everybody the process of making the short film, ‘The True Love Tale of Boyfriend and Girlfriend.’ I think it’s fascinating to see and hear the process that you guys went through, and how you’re kind of perfecting it and trying to make it ready for viewing for your fans, because, like you said before, it’s kind of like a love letter to your fans for all the support they’ve done, so it’s really nice to see a step-by-step process of this short film, and it’s going to be a great way to catalogue how you guys whipped through this, and be a great tool for other people down the line!

NG: Your welcome, Denise!

HB: Yeah, I mean, it’s been a long process, but, you know, we got focused on our graphic novel, and on ‘Friendship Union,’ so it’s good that we have finally a date in sight, and we can get that out there, because it’s a fun little project!

DG: Our fan question this week comes from Ashley Martinez, and she asks, ‘If any of you could play one of Nick’s quirky characters, which one would it be?’

HB: Oh, man! I mean, there’s so many of Nick’s projects that we’ve read, that you guys haven’t read…

KT: Yeah.

HB: … that it’s tough because we could say a name, but you guys wouldn’t know who that was. I mean, I love… did you ever talk about Edison Strange?

NG: Not really.

HB: If I had a dinger, I would play Edison Strange, for sure. Nick knows how to write both male and female characters. He really, you know, creates colorful people, but your men are so layered. I love your men.

NG: I think that I would like to play… here we are, revealing other characters to you, Ashley.

HB: I know! What a sneaky question!

NG: I think that I would like to play… there was a really cool motel attendant in ‘Pedestrian,’ [Hilarie laughs] and it’s a really funny part. I remember, there’s a particular monologue that he has that I wrote on the subway. It’s one of the few things that I actually remember where I was when I wrote it, cause it’s really good! [Hilarie laughs]

HB: What about you, Kel?

KT: I like Lulu in ‘Pedestrian.’

HB: Right on! [both Hilarie and Kelly laugh] Yeah, I mean, that’s a real feisty character. That’s someone who’s real naughty! You trying to be lippy with us, Kel?

KT: Would you fire me? Yes.

HB: [laughs] Yeah, we have a lot of fun with the content that’s created within our little company. That’s probably why we’re trying to so hard… it would be easier to do stuff that’s already been, like, a New York Times Bestseller, or you know, is somebody else’s work that we just optioned, but creating our own stuff is really important to us, and you know, that’s going to show through in the final product. Thank you, Ashley. That was a fun question! [music starts] Thank you guys so much for listening to the Southern Gothic Productions podcast. Make sure you come and check us out every Wednesday.

[music plays till fadeout]