Michelle Simone Miller:
All right. We're starting to see some participants coming in. This is so exciting guys. Thank you so much for joining us. This is going to be a fantastic event. Welcome to The Long Story Behind a Short Film with Arnon Z. Shorr, Class of 2005. My name is Michelle Miller. I will be moderating I guess, but also really just interviewing. So I feel like it's more of a hosting than moderating. As people start to trickle in, I just want to remind everyone, and I'll try to remind people later on as well, please put your questions for Arnon in the question, answer thing on the icon on the bottom just because the chat can get a little filtered with other stuff and comments, and it's going to be hard for me to scroll through. Oh, thanks. So yeah, now I can look at the comments, but in general, as it keeps going I'm not going to try to check either one.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I have an agenda. I'm going to definitely tell you guys about it. In the last 15 minutes we're going to do straight, just from the question answer. So I'm just going to go and look through the questions and answer and ask Arnon as much as possible. But welcome. Thank you guys so much for coming. This is going to be a really, really great event. We've been thinking about this for quite a while. The film itself is fantastic. If for whatever reason, you're having trouble seeing the film, which I don't think you should be because we tested it, everything is great. But if you're having an issue of any sort it's also available on Amazon Prime. So if you have that, that would be a nice alternative, but I think you should be fine. Yes. So I think I want to start off with a couple polling questions. This is what we did for our last event, was really, really useful and interesting. And it gets kind of thing started as people start to come in.
Michelle Simone Miller:
My first question to you guys, what is your relationship with the entertainment industry as a whole? So we have some different options. We have a producer and a director. I'm a creative contributor, so I'm an actress. That's mainly what I do. So that would be my thing. Also, if you're involved in production you're an assistant director, locations, catering, and then if you're an agent manager, lawyer, publicist in the industry, obviously that's different, super important all of them, or if you're just not in the industry, but you're just really want to support us, we really appreciate it. So just go ahead choose one of these options just because it's good for us to know, and especially in how we approach this particular interview, but also in general for how we start creating events in the future.
Michelle Simone Miller:
We have a couple of some great events coming up. I'll definitely mention the next couple that we're looking into. We did a TV film panel a month ago, which was really amazing. If you, for whatever reason, weren't able to catch that, you want to see the recording, shoot us an email. I'm going to give you an email for you to reach out to us. Yeah, so just choose one of these options, let us know. Let's see. We're going to get the results soon. Most people just enjoy. That's fantastic. That's really great. Thank you guys for coming. I'm glad that this is something that is just something you can support. There's also ... we have some producers, directors, we have some creative contributors. Excellent. Thank you guys all for coming. I hope you guys get so much out of this.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The next question I'd like to ask you guys is why are you here? I have feeling I already know this answer, but you never know. "I love Pirates." That's fantastic. "I'm interested in the film in particular." This is going to be a very interesting film that talks about a little bit of Jewish pirates, man. You can't really beat that. Also about history. I'm interested in learning more about filmmaking, just a general interest, or if you want to support Brandeis art, or maybe it's both, but kind of have just a general understanding as to why you're here. Is this something that you really wanted to see the film? Eric Hollander, thank you. "Love short films." Yeah, they're fantastic. I mean, when I go to some festivals, I try to just mostly see the short film festivals just because you see a lot, they're all varied, super interesting. This one's really good.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I don't know how many of you ... I didn't ask this polling question, but how many of you actually have seen this film already or checked it out beforehand, but it's really, really good. I've seen it now a few times and it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of film. So yeah, why are you here? What kind of thing? Let's see. "I'm interested in the film." Fantastic. "General interest as well. So a little bit of each. Mostly I'm just interested in the film." Fantastic. "Love the idea that Jews were .... " I'm only seeing part of this " ... were pirates." I know. I mean, that's not something that I really knew about beforehand and I teach a lot of Jewish history and stuff. So for me personally, I was thrilled to hear that sort of part of history. And I shared it with people who I teach as well.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And we're going to start guys. This is going to be great. So a little bit about me and then what we're doing here at Brandeis alumni. So I'm an actress in New York city. I've been in film, television, commercials. I'm not going to really go into the specific work, but I did graduate class of 2011 and I'm currently the New York City Performing Arts Network Chair, which is a mouthful. But really it's an affiliate of arts alumni. The Brandeis Arts Network specifically. And I wanted to give you a little welcome message from us because we're putting together all these amazing events and we really want you to learn a little bit about us. So the Brandeis Arts Network is a group exclusive to Brandeis graduates, and undergraduates and graduate alumni that enables anyone involved in the arts, both professionals and enthusiasts alike, to engage, share, and experience the vast array of artistic endeavors of fellow Brandeisians on campus across the country and abroad.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The Brandeis Arts Network also encompasses and supports the efforts of The Performing Arts Network and the Brandeis Alumni in Film and Television. So Courtney Suncar who's with us from our arts alumni and also Brandeis, specifically, she is posting all of our Facebook groups. So these are the groups that we're putting out all the events that we're doing. So events coming up, even other events sometimes that are affiliated with our networks, but definitely follow us on these Facebook groups if you want to hear more information about what we do. We posted, like I said, the TV film panel the other day last month. We have another event coming up in a couple of weeks, I'll tell you about, it's a networking event. And those are really the first place we've put everything. So if this is something you want to keep looking at, or just even talking to us as to what events you'd like us to throw, that's where it would be.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Okay, cool. So yeah, it's like Brandeis Arts is one. We have The Performing Arts Network Group. We have Brandeis Arts, New York City. We have Brandeis Film and Television. So this is also a great event because you'll meet Arnon and I, and we are spearheading on different coasts within the arts alumni community. So I'm very excited about this specific movie. We're going to play it in a couple of minutes. I just want to give you a rundown of the intended agenda. So in a couple of minutes, we're going to watch the screening of this beautiful film, The Pirate Captain Toledano. Am I saying that right? We're going to figure that one out. And then right after we are going to welcome Arnon. So that's very exciting. I really should say that with an Israeli accent, Arnon, because he's Israeli and my mom is, so I really should represent in some way.
Michelle Simone Miller:
But yeah, he's fantastic. I'll give you the intro for him afterwards and some of the stuff he's done and we're going to talk about the film. I'm going to interview him. I have some prepared questions and stuff about the movie that I really want to speak about as well as the filmmaking process and the crowdfunding process. But like I said, please ask your questions in the Q and A box on the bottom here as opposed to the chat. I'm going to try to check the chat, but it's hard for me to do, especially once I interview him. So if you ask the questions in the Q and A box, it's easier for me to afterwards in the last 15 minutes just to go through them and be like, "Great." I can go to one place as opposed to have to check two boxes. So please ... Yeah, that'd be great.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Fantastic. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Support The Brandeis Arts Network, we're fans of you. We want to keep making more of these types of things. And yeah, I think we're ready to get started. So the powers that be, if at any time now we could just start playing the movie. Wonderful. So yeah, I got comments from a couple of you. I know there was a little bit of a lag, I apologize. Just happens, I guess, when you have this many people on a call, if for whatever reason it was a lag, definitely check it out on Amazon prime. If it wasn't, great. But it's a beautiful film, right? I mean, that much was very apparent and a lot that we can learn from it, not just about the history of the film, which we're going to go into, but also the process of making a film, how is it to make a film from beginning to end and especially how much Arnon has been able to do with it, which is really impressive.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So without much further ado, I'm going to introduce Arnon. He's an LA based filmmaker and visual storyteller graduating the Class of 2005. He has produced over a hundred short teacher films, web series episodes, corporate videos, and so forth. His shorts have appeared in various festivals all over the country, also all over the world. We'll talk about that. His work has even crossed the country as part of inflight entertainment, which is pretty cool. And then we're also very excited for this particular film, which he also has a book deal from, so we're going to talk a little bit about that. And we're going to talk a little bit about other stuff that he's done. But I actually think it's best if we just bring him out so we can talk to him about it directly. So Arnon, please can you come make yourself known here, magically turn on your video, unmute yourself. There you are. Hi.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Hi.
Michelle Simone Miller:
How are you? Welcome.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Thank you.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Hello? Hello? It was such a pleasure to see. It was a lag for you or no?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Zoom is wonderful for meetings. It's unfortunately not fantastic for video, right?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, and we did try it beforehand, but it is hard, I guess, with so many people that are attending, which thank you guys all so much. So thank you for doing this, for letting us show this, obviously. And I want to start off by asking you about your history at Brandeis. What classes do you take that you love? What did you major in? What kind of stuff do you do for fun?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
For fun. Well, Brandeis was fun, so I enjoyed my time there a lot. I started out as a philosophy major. At the time there was no film degree at all. So filmmaker was not an option. So I had to pick something. Philosophy was kind of interesting. I happened to start out with courses that were taught by Andreas Teuber who is fascinating and also has a very interesting and unusual history in the movie business. I don't know if you knew that.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I do know.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
But I mean, he starred in the film with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton if you can believe it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Hey, hold on. No idea.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. No, it's one of those bizarre things. For decades now he's been teaching philosophy. So I started out that way, but took courses in the film ... took film courses which were offered usually as part of the American studies department and a little bit part of the English department and they were scattered throughout. And later on, I cobbled together an independent, interdisciplinary major through that program. So I graduated with a film degree, even though the school did not have it at the time. I called it film studies, and it was film classes, and theater classes, and music classes, and some drawing classes and even things like economics, because that is relevant to filmmaking if you do it sort of.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. If you guys actually, I'd be curious, for those of you who are either still at Brandeis or graduated, if you can write down if you want what your major was because I am curious. I feel like a lot of people who geared towards the film studies stuff also studied American studies and other things as well. Personally, I studied theater. I was in a theater and English double major. They didn't create the film major until, I believe, 2010 or 2011, because I think it was a minor only if I remember correctly because I was thinking about doing it. Great. And so for fun, what kind of things did you? I love this, so I needed to bring it up.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
For fun. I was really busy at Brandeis. I was making movies throughout, so that of course was a lot. I sang with Jewish Fella A Cappella.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Hey.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And was the music director with them for about a year and a half. I founded Sundeis.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's a big one. I think that's a big deal. I do. I really do because I was very impressed with it while I was there and it's still going on. So you created ... what is Sundeis? Explain to those who have no idea what we're talking about.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
When I was there, it was a student film festival. I imagine it's something similar now. But an opportunity for students who make movies to showcase their work.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. And you co-created that with Adam Irving?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Adam was part of that too. Yeah.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And then I think Scott Feinberg. So Adam Irving, I will say just because I like promoting Brandeis people, Adam Irving has a fantastic film also available on Amazon Prime called Off the Rails. It's very close to getting an Oscar in life or like on the Oscar short list I think.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah, it got close.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And then Scott Feinberg inherited Sundeis almost the next year, I believe. Did you know this?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I ran it or worked with the team that ran it for two years. And then after I graduated, Scott joined the team and-
Michelle Simone Miller:
Scott took over and he's a big deal. Right?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
He's very good.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I love his podcast. It's one of my favorite podcast is Awards Chatter. He works at the Hollywood reporter. So I just love like plugging people as well. But cool. So that's a big deal in my opinion because that's a legacy that you left at Brandeis, for Brandeis film. I'll say it. So you started this in 2005. And 2020, it's still happening.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
The first one was 2000 and ...
Michelle Simone Miller:
2004?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Was it 2004, 2005? I mean, I have-
Michelle Simone Miller:
I read somewhere, 2004. Yeah. What do you have?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I got this thing here.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's very cool. So look at that. Look at history right there.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
A program from Sundeis 2005. This was April 9th, 10th and 11th, 2005, which was the year we brought Stan Brooks in.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Which was great because he was in our last film TV panel. Hey.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah. And I think this was the ... was this the first of the second year we did it? I don't even remember.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Sounds like it's great that you've created that legacy. And for future and for current Brandeis students. Amazing. So, all right, let's go with this films, it's a fantastic film. I have already gassed you about it. I've shown it to many people before we decided to do this, but take us back to the idea because I think this is a fantastic story and it's inspiring to those who have ideas to create films and then really have no idea where to go from that. So take us back, how did this originate?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So this started at a friend's house. A friend of mine said, "Hey, I've got a book you should read. It's about Jewish pirates." And I said, "What?" I read it, it was a fascinating book, and it's called Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. It's got a lousy title, but fascinating and very much unexplored history. I read the book and I thought to myself, "Gee, someday when I'm rich and famous and have lots of clout in Hollywood, I'd love to make a movie about some of these characters because it's fascinating." And I just kind of set it aside, assuming that as a little independent filmmaker I wouldn't be able to get anything pulled together yet. But the idea kind of hogged at me and wouldn't let go. So at a certain point I was thinking, "Well, maybe I should make a short film and do something productive." And a concept for a short film about Jewish pirates somehow wormed its way into my head. I sat down, wrote it out. I was really quick to write, sort of wrote itself as the saying goes.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Your inspiration.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And yeah, immediately I set it aside and thought, "Well, okay, that's great." I just broke all the rules of independent filmmaking. I mean, they say never shoot on water. Never shoot period pieces. These are all things that just cost a whole lot extra. But I still couldn't set it aside. So I decided, "You know what? Instead of me telling myself no, let me ask some questions and have reality tell me no." So I started calling around and figuring out where there are tall ships because that's a big expense, is how are we going to choose it ...
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's important. Yeah. You need a tall ship.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
You need a tall ship. I called the Ocean Institute down in Dana Point. That was the closest big, tall ship to where I am in Los Angeles. And I explained to them, "Looking to make a movie and did you allow filming on your ships?" And they said, "Yeah, absolutely." I thought, "Oh wow, that's exciting." They said that the Power Rangers have shot on here, and Spielberg shot the Amistad on one of our ships. And I thought, "Oh, okay, what's the deal?" And they said, I think at the time it was something like $13,000 per day plus you had to have all your permits and insurance squared away. And I thought, "Well, that's a lot more than I can raise. So well, there goes that idea."
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I hung up the phone, thanked them for their time and everything. And on a whim, I sent them an email right after I ended that call. I sent them the script. I said, "Here's the script. It's really short. Here's what it's about. And I mean, there's no way I'm going to be able to raise enough money to be able to shoot this thing on your ships. But do you happen to know anybody else with tall ships who might have a lower price or who might be willing to kind of ... "
Michelle Simone Miller:
Friends with tall ships.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. I mean, because I figured people would talk with other people with tall ships.
Michelle Simone Miller:
No, you're right. You're absolutely right. Yeah. It's a good thought.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And they read the script and they emailed me back, and they said, "Part of our mission is maritime history education. And if you can shoot this at night when we're not open, and because your story is maritime history related, and we like your script, so how about ... " And then they quoted me a price that was a whole lot lower than what the original requirements were like significantly, significantly lower. And because of that, I decided, "You know what? It's still a lot. I would still have to raise this money."
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, you would still have to raise it.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
But I'll give it a try. Let's see what happens. And from there it was crowd funding.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And didn't they say, "We're going to help you with that, with the crowdfunding as well"?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Not right off the bat.
Michelle Simone Miller:
No, not right off the bat.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
As I was putting the crowdfunding campaign together, I reached out to them and said, "Hey, I'm raising money for this." And they were happy to throw in some membership and whale watch tour and stuff like that as perks for the crowdfunding campaign. So they ended up being really involved.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Valuable. Wait, so that's the next step? So I love that story personally because I feel like a lot of people, like I said, have ideas for films and it's hard to execute. You always think to yourself, "Okay." With anything, with any creative project, you're like, "This is going to be too hard. I can't set the thing in motion." And those were your initial thoughts too, but I loved the idea that once you started in a way it's kind of ... there's still a lot of obstacles, but some things started falling into place, them being like, "Okay, I'll give you this massive discount." And that's all on you. I mean, you did that for yourself.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
The only thing that I think I can take credit for is realizing that I could say no to myself or I could let somebody else tell me no. And I figured, "Why should I say no to myself? That's silly. Let other people tell me no." And nobody did. At the end of that, there was a movie.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. So, okay. So the next step now, we have this crowd funding stuff. So talk a little bit about that. Where did you decide to crowd fund? Why them?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So I set out to raise the amount of money that I thought it would take to get this thing made, which was $18,000, which was a lot more money than I've raised for anything else.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, short change.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It's a big undertaking. I chose to raise the money using a crowd funding platform called Jewcer, which is-
Michelle Simone Miller:
Jewcer like as in a Jew?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yes, it's specific to Jewish projects.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I don't want people to confuse it with juicing. I don't know.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. Right. Part of the thinking there is that the internet is so segmented and specific when it comes to audiences and demographics. And the more finely you slice that pie, the easier it is to reach very specific people. And I knew this project would be of primary interest. People who are interested in Jewish stories, especially kind of unusual off-beat Jewish stories. So I thought, "Let's try a crowd funding platform that caters to that demographic." Rather than trying to do a Kickstarter or GoFundMe, which those platforms are huge. They've got lots of people browsing. But it's very easy to just kind of get lost in those whereas when I was running the campaign on Jewcer, it was one of only a handful of campaigns on the site. So anybody browsing that site was likely to spot it.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And we did get some contributions from people who were just kind of browsing. In fact, we got our biggest contribution from somebody who was just browsing. It was the last day of the campaign, the last hours, we were a few thousand dollars short. And I thought, "Okay, we're falling short. We're not going to make it. I'm going to have to figure out a way to cut the budget. I'm going to have to eat some of the costs." I didn't know what to do. My wife and I decided after a month and a half of banging the drum, we were exhausted. I was exhausted. We went out to a bar, which is something that we hardly ever do. But we decided we'd go out, just have a drink, take a breath, and take it from there.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And while we were at the bar, we're sitting at the bar, there was a live band and I felt my phone buzz. And my phone's been buzzing all day because it was the last day of the campaign. People were throwing in a few bucks here, a few bucks there. I checked it and I nearly fell off my bar stool. Somebody had contributed $5,000, which brought us over by a lot. And we had the money. I could make the movie. And the crazy thing is, I didn't know who the person was. There was a name and I looked her up, and couldn't figure out who she was. And I sent an email thanking her. And at that contribution level that entitled her to an executive producer credit, and they're entitled to come visit the set. I offered to take her out to a meal if she was in LA.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And I never heard back. I never got a response to any of my emails. There's never any communication from this mystery person who just happened to stumble across our campaign on the site. And we know that because the folks at Jewcer contacted me and said, "Hey, we saw you just got this really big contribution." And they can track the links and who's clicking on what link. And it was somebody who was just browsing Jewcer and clicked on our campaign from ... it was one of the recommended .... just when you're browsing a campaign, you see a bunch of other campaigns listed also. So she just kind of clicked in. And to this day, I don't know who she actually is. I just have a name and no other information. That was one of several miracles that kind of brought this project to life.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. That's amazing. If you have any additional questions, guys, about the crowd funding process, just definitely send us a question in the question and answer thing on the bottom. I'm going to move on from crowd funding, even though I think there's a lot we can talk about with that.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I can spend two hours talking about crowd funding.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Right. Pros and cons, all of it. So how long did you film for?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It was one night.
Michelle Simone Miller:
One night.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
We filmed for one very, very long night. It started during the day. We had our art department come to the ships. There were two ships at the Ocean Institute, they were The Spirit of Dana Point and the Pilgrim. Unfortunately, the sad news from about a month ago, the Pilgrim sank. It took on water overnight and keeled over, and they're actually auctioning off artifacts from it in a few days, which is, which is heartbreaking. It's a beautiful ship. But at the time there were two ships at Dana Point and our art department showed up in the middle of the day to start dressing the sets, and move all the stuff that was out of period off the ships, and put props and things onto the ships.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I got there about four o'clock in the afternoon. We filmed in December. So it got dark early. And then it was shooting, shooting, shooting, filming, filming, filming, filming, filming until dawn. We were done. We came up out of the ships as the sky was starting to get a little bit orange. So it was a long night, longer than we expected, longer than we wanted it to be. Yeah, that's it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I just saw chat as someone asked, "Are you going to show us the film?" Deborah, we actually showed the film at the beginning. So I don't know if you came in late. We showed it in the first 20 minutes.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
But it is available on Amazon Prime.
Michelle Simone Miller:
There you go. There you go.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So again, anybody who missed it at the beginning, feel free to pop over to Amazon Prime. If you don't have Prime, I believe it's a 99 cent rental.
Michelle Simone Miller:
There you go. 99 cent.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I mean, I would have liked to make that price lower, but it's the lowest that Amazon gave me the option to offer that. So yeah, it's there. Available.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So we only have a few more minutes. I mean, these things are gonna be fly by, but we only a few more minutes before the question and answer period. So I'm going to just skip right to a question about film festivals. So this obviously went to a lot of film festivals, some internationally, right?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yep.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Some internationally. So it we went to Israel, Russia, I think Italy as well.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah, I think there were a few festivals in Italy.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah, sure. So I started out doing what I had typically done with my short films, which was spending awful lot of money submitting to a few notable film festivals. And those festivals like Sundance and whatever, they get thousands of submissions, thousands of short films.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And they cost money.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. It needs submission is a-
Michelle Simone Miller:
Did you budget for that when you-
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I did budget for it. And they get thousands of submissions and they screen a couple of dozen films. So even if your feeling was really excellent, very, very hard to get into those. You're rolling the dice. So I did that a little bit, but thought that this can't be, this can't make sense. This is not the way it needs to happen. So I figured out that there are lots of other smaller film festivals out there, and many of them charge much less.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
On FilmFreeway, which is one of the submission portals, the websites that you can ... sort of like a common application for film festivals. You can do a search for festivals. And one of the features of that site is you can do an advanced search where you can search by submission fee. And so I pressed the submission fee to between one and $5, and I saw a bunch of festivals, submitted a handful, and I thought, "Well, what of festivals that cost less than $2 to submit?" And there happened to be a bunch. I pushed the slider all the way to zero. And it turns out there are hundreds of film festivals all over the world that do not charge anything for a submission. So in the end, I was able to submit the films to over 500 film festivals all over the world for really very little. I think I spent about $200 on 400 of those submissions.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And these are little film festivals, usually in small towns that are trying to create a little program for the local community or trying to have a little tourist event that draws some tourists in. Especially in Europe, these are paid for by the municipality. So they don't need the submission fees to make their money. And that way we played in Macedonia, we played in Morocco, we played in these towns and cities where there are no Jews or no Jews anymore, but they found the story compelling and they chose to share it. And at the end of ... I think when all is said and done, it was a two year festival run.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Wow. That's a long time for a festival. Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
At the peak, there were weekends where the film was playing in two or three different places around the world on any given weekend.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And how did you decide which ones to go to and which one you can't?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Well, I'm in LA. So anything that was driving distance, I went to. Anything beyond that, of course I'm not going to fly to all over the world as much as I'd love to.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Did you fly to Israel? Because you do have a family-
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I wish.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I wish.
Michelle Simone Miller:
In that. Yeah. But that's amazing that now, I mean, you have all those laurels right now on the photo. We used that one, I think, to promote this, but there's an incredible amount of laurels and all these you can now say you won at this festival, this festival, you were nominated here, you won here. But that's a great thing to know. So FilmFreeway, that's where it is?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
FilmFreeway was one of the sites that I used. There was another site. I believe it was called festhome.com. That one had a better selection of international festivals.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, good to know.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So their structure was a little bit different, but also fairly inexpensive festivals or free festivals to submit to. And we got into a bunch of festivals through that site as well.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And before we go into the question, answer period, I did want to ask, because I don't even know that much about this, but your current book deal. Right? So it's current, but congratulations, that's a big deal.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Thank you.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So tell us a little bit about that.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Sure. Well going through the festival circuit, especially when the screenings that I could go to, there was always a Q and A after the screening. And the first question of the Q and A invariably, somebody would ask, is there going to be a feature film? Can we get more of this story?
Michelle Simone Miller:
Which is a great question to have asked. Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It's an elaborating question.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's very flattering. Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
But of course I would always ask, "Well, if you pull out your checkbook, we can arrange something." But most people did not have many millions of dollars to spare. And that ultimately is the sad reality of this is that a feature film about Jewish pirates is going to be expensive. And it's a matter of finding the people who are willing to bankroll something like that, which is a very hard thing to do. But there definitely is more of a story. And at a certain point, it occurred to me, "Wait a minute, maybe there's another way to tell this story. Maybe not as a feature film right away, but as something else." I started poking around graphic novels and trying to get a sense of whether maybe that is a direction that this could go. And right around when I was starting to think about this, I saw a post on Facebook from Josh Edelglass who is an artist, but I didn't know that. I knew him as the guy who would hire me to teach a week long film program at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Massachusetts.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I used to go there every other summer and teach and he oversaw that. So when he posted some artwork that he had done, comic book style, I reached out to him. I said, "I had no idea that you illustrated." It turns out that that's been his passion. That's something he does. He has illustrated some comic book stuff over the years, has been recognized for his work. So I mentioned him. I said, "Let's collaborate. Let's talk about doing stuff." I sent him a whole lot of material, a whole lot of scripts and films I had done. And he really sparked to the pirate project. So we put together some sample pages, five sample pages. We got them in front of a book agent who-
Michelle Simone Miller:
There you go. How did you get that? How did you get in front of the book agent?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So he had worked with his book agent on a different project a while back. And interesting, it seems in the book, you work with agents on projects. At least, this agent works on individual projects rather than signing an author in a sort of broad sense. So he had worked with her in the past on other things, but for her to take this book out, she'd have to agree to this book. So we showed her the picture, went back and forth, refined it a little bit. Then she took it on, sent it out to publishers. And eventually, we landed a book deal...
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Their parents company is Learner Publications, which is a pretty big one. Learner puts out like 400 books a year.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
And it's going to be a 96 page, middle grade graphic novel, which is really exciting. I wrote the script because for graphic novels you write scripts, kind of like you're writing for movies. I wrote a script for the book a few months ago. I had to finish it while it COVID quarantine started-
Michelle Simone Miller:
You were productive.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
... sitting in the closet, hiding from the kids, writing the book.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And are your kids middle school grade? Are they going to be able to enjoy this?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
My son is just entering that window. Middle grade is considered roughly between ages eight and 12. And by the time the book comes out, which is currently we're anticipating June 2022, my son will be I think nine years old.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Right in it. Right in it.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah. Right in there.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's pretty special.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
He's super excited.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Right. I'm going to get into the question and answers because we only have so much time. We obviously got questions about, will there be a feature length film?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yes.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So if the book does well.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes, which it will.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
That's always the way it goes. When it comes to feature films, the money follows money. So I mean, if by some miracle we get more people to see the short film and suddenly it blows up on the internet, and everybody is seeing it, it'll be easy to get a feature film after something like that. If the graphic novel does really well and everybody buys it and reads it to their kids or has their kids read it, then it becomes much easier to go to a studio and say, "Hey, look at the success of this thing. Let's adapt it as a film." But I'd love to make a feature version of this.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. Okay. Good to know. Awesome. So somebody asked what is the original language of the film? Obviously it was English, but the language itself that was used.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. I think part of the reason for that question is because the film was a little out of sync with the audio. It kind of looked like bad dubbing. But it wasn't originally English, except for that one bit in the middle where the captain speaks with the stowaway in Ladino. Ladino is the Judaeo Spanish that was spoken by Jews of Spain and Portugal prior to the expulsion and the language traveled with them to various communities where they ended up, and it's still spoken today.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So someone wants to know, Judith Weiss, how did you learn about Toledano?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Toledano. Toledano is made up.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Made up character. Hello.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
This is historical fiction. It is grounded in history. It is grounded in the world of Jewish pirates, which is a world I only found out about in that book by Chris Schweizer that I've mentioned earlier. The characters themselves are fictional in the way that so many pirate stories feature fictional pirates. You read Robert Louis Stevenson. Those characters are not by and large historical figures and neither are these, but the history around them is a real history. The Jews who fled the inquisition, who fled to the new world, which was only recently discovered by two European. So the only reason he came into the European consciousness, and who saw in this new continent an opportunity to possibly get away from the Catholic church and away from the inquisitions.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I mean, I think that's an amazing thing to know, because like I said, I really didn't know that there were Jewish pirates. And so when I was looking at the history of during this time, it didn't occur to me that there were people who fled and traveled the seas and plundered the Spanish gold.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
At West instead of East.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, exactly. Someone wants to know if you are related to one of their classmates in '73, Ken Shorr?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It's not likely.
Michelle Simone Miller:
But your mom does work there.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
My mother does work at Brandeis. My mother has been teaching Hebrew at Brandeis for almost-
Michelle Simone Miller:
What's her name again?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Esther Shorr. Yep.
Michelle Simone Miller:
There's a very good chance I took her ... She was my teacher. So go figure. I love that story.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Go figure.
Michelle Simone Miller:
There we go. Right away, right away. Someone wants to know, how did you estimate the cost of the film? Did you hire like a line producer before?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
No, I did that myself.
Michelle Simone Miller:
You did that yourself.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah. I've been making movies since I was a kid, lots of short films, web series, even some small feature films. For most of them I've done my own budgeting. And yeah, the budgeting process is really just a matter of thinking through those steps of making your movie and figuring out what everything's going to cost. And everything has a price. Just had to figure out what that price is, put it into a spreadsheet, and that gives you your answer. That tells you how much it would cost.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So an anonymous attendee, but I also really wanted to ask you this anyway, so I'm going to definitely ask you this, how'd you find the music? The music in my opinion is such a ... it's a character of the film. I felt like it was such an important part of just the history, especially with the quotes at the end that ties it all up. So can you tell us a little bit about how did you find music?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Well, I didn't ... That's not true. I was going to say, "I didn't find it. I got a composer to compose it." But the piece of music at the very beginning is a Ladino folk song. It's a choral arrangement of a Ladino folk song that I came across when I was just researching music, trying to figure out what tone to give the film. And the composer of that piece who owns the rights to that particular recording gave me permission to use it. I reached out to him. I offered to pay him usage rights, whatever, but he liked the film. He liked what we were doing and said, "Go ahead, use it in the opening." And the rest of the music was composed by a friend of mine. His name is Hauk Heimdallsman.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. I saw that. It just said Hauk. It was pretty cool.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yes. Great guy, very interesting composer. He has a particular interest in medieval European instrumentation. So I mean his band plays contemporary music and he does a lot of contemporary music. But when I told him I was doing this, he got very excited. The string instrument that you hear for a lot of this is called a bouzouki, which is an instrument that was popular in medieval Europe. And Hauk was so excited about this thing. He actually went and bought himself a bouzouki-
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's so nice.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
... to use to record the score. And also, he incorporated another Ladino folk tune into a section of the score. And that was a request for me to try to weave some of these traditional melodies in the little bits and pieces that we have from Spanish-Jewish culture, especially from pre inquisition Spanish-Jewish culture. And we have very, very little of that stuff. But I sent them as much music as I could and he went to town.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It was amazing because you hear it throughout. So it really is like, in my opinion, a character in the story. You get thrown back into a certain time, just the strings playing in the background. It was one of my favorite parts is just right away you're like entranced in the story. So a couple things, one, my sister, she loves Esther Shorr. So there you go.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
There you go.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. And then someone wants to ask what the festival website was called again. It was FilmFreeway?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. So FilmFreeway is the big one. That is kind of the go to for just about all the American festivals and a whole lot of international ones. The other one where I found more kind of smaller international festivals that didn't make it onto FilmFreeway is called Festhome, F-E-S-T-H-O-M-E.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Great. Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Those were the two sites that I use primarily.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Cool. And in terms of the equipment or like how did you edit, how did all that happen? Because people keep asking about equipment. Yeah. That kind of thing.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
On this, it was pretty straight forward. I hired a director of photography who came with his own gear. We rented a few additional pieces. We rented a small smoke machine. We rented a few lights I believe. We got a gaffer with a light kit to show up. But the equipment on the whole was straightforward.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Great. So those people came with their equipment? Yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I think that's how it went. We didn't want too much equipment because the ships may feel big, but there really isn't very much space on the deck. Not much space to move around. So we want it to be kind of judicious about how we use that space. And what viewer we plopped down. When it comes to the post production I edit. It's one of the other hats that I wear.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, good. Did you use a particular program?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
My cutting premiere. I did the premiere. I didn't take an editing credit because at a certain point when you see the same name in the credits over and over again, it starts to look cheap. So I chose not to take a credit for the editing, but I did cut the film and then the director of photography offered to do the color grade. So I brought all the files over to his house and we sat down together and did all the color correcting. And then I brought it back here and I added another layer of a little bit of a texture, a film kind of something to it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It looked beautiful. So, I mean, it makes sense that there's so many people kind of had their hands in it because you could tell it was like-
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It took them a lot of layers.
Michelle Simone Miller:
... layers. Yeah. My mother writes, "Toledano is a famous family from Morocco border of Spain." Is that what you pulled the name?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I knew a Toledano at one point and figured it's a town Toledo in Spain.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It's a good name.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It's a good name. It works. I mean, there are any of a whole bunch of other names that I could have probably picked, but it was the first name that came to mind.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, this is so hard because there's so many good ... Okay. Audrey Crane Hersh asks, "How did you find the actors?"
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Very good question. This is actually one of my favorite stories about this because it's another one of those bizarre kismet sort of things. So I wrote the script and I found out that I could get these ships and I thought, "Okay, this is kind of interesting." There's one actor I had worked with, the older gentleman who plays the captain.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The captain.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
His name is Stephen DeCordova. And I'd worked with him before on actually a Jewish parody of Madmen that I had done for a comedy web series.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, I have to look at that.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
... awhile back. It's on Facebook. It's there.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, good, good, good.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
It's called Madmen. So I've worked with him before and I really liked working with him. And I thought, "Well, this could be interesting." I must have posted something about Jewish pirates because he responded to my Facebook post and said, "Whatever you're doing with Jewish pirates, I want to be involved." I thought, "Okay, that's great." So I invited him and Dan to my apartment. Dan plays the stowaway. I didn't know he was going to play the stowaway, but I was just reaching out to some actors.
Michelle Simone Miller:
He was just another actor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I wanted to hear the script read out loud. I brought them into my apartment and we sat around, we did a little table read in my apartment.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It always starts with a table read.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Yeah. And it was really just like, "Let's hear these words, and Stephen wanted to be involved, let's bring him in." And Stephen had read the script and he saw there's a Kiddush cup in the script. And I just always assumed, "Oh, I've got an old Kiddush cup at home that it'd belonged to my great, great grandfather. And maybe that'll be our prop or something. Yeah, but he came in with a Kiddush cup.
Michelle Simone Miller:
To the table read?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
To the table read. He came to the table read with a prop, and I thought, "Well, that's nice." And he said, "No, no, no, you don't understand." Stephen DeCordova's mother was born in Kingston, Jamaica before she came to New York. She was the last in that family line to be born in Jamaica, the last of a long line of Jews to be born in Jamaica, Jews who to Jamaica in the, I believe, 16th century fleeing inquisition era Spain. And this Kiddush cup, they don't know how old it is. They know it's been in the family longer than anybody can remember. And so it was an authentic piece of Caribbean Judaica that had been in his family for who knows how long. It was like he had reached into the pages of the script and pulled out the cup that I wrote about. And that is the cup that you see in the film. He allowed us to use it.
Michelle Simone Miller:
What about when the cup falls on the floor?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
We bought a silver plated cheapo thing.
Michelle Simone Miller:
To protect the cup?
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. Now we definitely had a stunt cup.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Good, good. But that's beautiful. Wow.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
When the actor, this is even crazier, the actor, Stephen, playing the prior captain is looking at this Kiddush cup, it is actually Stephen looking at his ancestors silver Kiddush cup, that is actually a piece of Judaica from the Caribbean from God knows how long ago.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's so beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that. I hate to end this. I really don't want to. It's exactly eight o'clock. Oh, man. I really want to ... Yes. He actually wrote the script. So I'm going to ask about that. I do have one more question. Normally I would just end it exactly at 8:00. So don't kill me guys, but this is super interesting. Anita Williams wants to know, COVID has changed the film industry, just in your opinion, this is a very tough question to end on, but in what ways do you think that will change for an independent filmmaker? Maybe pros and cons, but what do you think if you ...
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Okay. That's a really good question. I can tell you what I'm seeing on the ground right now. There's a lot of questions about how production is going to resume, when production is going to resume. What I have been seeing is there's an increased interest in small contained narratives on the movies side. I can't speak to TV.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, on the movies side.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
But on the movies side, small contained narratives. If it's got just a few characters in just a few locations and you can shoot it with a really small crew and keep it local, so you don't have a lot of travel to deal with, it's easier to maintain social distancing. It's easier to try to keep a healthy set and to keep your team healthy under those circumstances.
Michelle Simone Miller:
The big Blockbusters are a natural.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
The big Blockbusters are tough.
Michelle Simone Miller:
They are going to have going to figure it out. Yeah
Arnon Z. Shorr:
They're going to figure it out. I think it's going to take a little bit of time for them to figure it out and those movies are going to cost a lot more money because they're going to have to spend a lot.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Right. You can't have extras, you can't have the same type of effect in some ways.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Or if you do have extras, you have to isolate them for two weeks before you have to shoot. It becomes a complicated, logistical process. So while the studios are working on figuring out how to do that, there's going to be a bit of a content famine because we still have Netflix, and Amazon, and Hulu, and TV networks, and eventually movie theaters are going to open up and they're going to want to show stuff. So there will be a need for new content in the kind of medium term, in the next six to 18 months I would say. And I mean, speaking for myself, the screenplays that I had written that I've been trying to put out there for the last year and a half are suddenly getting a lot more interest because they are contained, because they are smaller, because a few characters is achievable on a smaller budget.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
So that I think is where we're going to see ... We're going to see more horror films because horror films tend to be small and cheap. We're going to see more contained thrillers. We're going to see possibly more dramas, which would be interesting because those haven't really been made in a meaningful way for a while. And we're not going to see as many big action movies.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, I think that's going to be a little scarce.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
I think that's got to be a little harder. I think we're also going to see more stuff like they're doing with Mandalorian where they keep the big sci-fi adventure, but they're shooting it all on a sound sage with very heavy visual effects to paint the background.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And contain that. It's different.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Right. So I think that technology is going to start to see a lot more use for the companies that can afford it. But for the scrappy little indie film, that's a tougher sale.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great positive thing to end on, just this idea that there's hope for indie filmmakers and there's a different space for them, but that's available. Guys, thank you so much for attending. We are going to have, I think it's going to be the 22nd, but we'll send out the event on the Facebook groups, a networking and entertainment event. So all of you guys, if you want to network with each other, we're going to be doing this great networking event. Please join us at our Facebook groups. Like I said, they're in the chat box at the top. So we have the Brandies Film & TV, which Arnon runs. And then I run The Performing Arts Network Group. There's the arts alumni group. And there's a couple other events that are coming too that I definitely want you guys to attend. One related to the fine arts. I'm not going to give you too much, but it's going to be really good. And yeah, thank you guys for coming. Thank you, Arnon, for letting us watch this film and talking about it.
Arnon Z. Shorr:
Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much. Before we sign off, if there are people in the audience who are in the industry, if they're filmmakers or actors or any of that sort of stuff, please drop your resume, or your link to your IMDb, or to your demo reel into the chat box. I think it'd be really fun if we just kind of started to see what we're all doing and sharing a little bit of our work with each other in this Brandeis network.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I love it. Yeah. I mean, I'll try to find my IMDb page. It's that there, but it's coming on right now. Thank you guys so much. If you guys have any questions, I mean, I think we're going to end really now. But thank you guys also for the great feedback and we appreciate all the questions and for coming and watching the film. If you do want to check out the film again or send it to other people, like we said, it's only 99 cents if you don't have Amazon Prime. Yeah. Thank you guys so much.