← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
FreedomToons to Twisted Plots: The Future of Conservative Storytelling | Seamus Coughlin | Ep. 66
01:00:02
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- [00:00]
David Rutherford
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
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David Rutherford
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- [02:32]
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- [03:15]
David Rutherford
When I was a little kid, there was something just absolutely magical about Saturday morning cartoons. It was a time where you could just fade into oblivion, just start to enjoy the beauty of the art, the funny, the hilarity of the slapstick. And I think it was just one of these things that set into me, that stayed with me my whole young life and in, as in art school and college. But the problem was as I got older, I wanted to see more mature comics and out came the Simpsons and then, you know, south park and you know, as I got older and was in the teams and working for the agency and all that, I got definitely more conservative and there were just no, no conserv based cartoons out there that were worth a damn. And I'm telling you what, a few years ago I ran into one of the funniest cartoon strips and, and videos that's out there by far, Freedom Tunes. And so when I'm on X the other day and all of a sudden I see this advertisement come on that they're gonna turn this into a serious series, I lost my mind. I talked to Jordy, I said, that's it, right? All stop. We gotta get Seamus on. And I'll tell you what, the man who is inundated with being on Tim Pool's show every day, going on trying to raise money for this every day, he had the grace and the courtesy to come and spend time with us on the David Rutherford show. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the famous, the badass Mr. Sheamus from Freedom Tune. Seamus. Thank you, brother.
- [04:53]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I'm absolutely honored to be here. Thank you so much for the invite and for all of your kind words. I, you know, I love doing Tim cast. I, I love doing all the shows that I've had the opportunity to do on this circuit. I'm really excited to do this one, man. We had a conversation yesterday for a little bit and we talked before the show and I, I think it's going to be a fun one. You were mentioning that you had you previously considered being a cartoonist, which I found really interesting and really cool. Then you became A Navy seal. Pretty similar, you know, pretty similar fields there.
- [05:21]
David Rutherford
Well, when, when your dad's, and when your dad's an attorney and.
- [05:25]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Right.
- [05:25]
David Rutherford
I think I'm going to be a cartoon. Right. You know, the, the freedom ride. Yeah, the freedom ride ends pretty quick. So, you know, when I said, you know, all right, I'm not going to be a cartoonist. I'm going to join the Navy, he was a little bit more complimentary. But, yeah, I, I, I had this thing and, and if any of my college buddies, they'll remember, man, I came up with this character called Stymie, and he would, you know, sit around and rip bong hits and get rejected by all the hot, you know, sorority girls. Pretty much my lifestyle in. And, you know, so I, but I have this profound appreciation for the art, the storyboarding, the whole thing. Can you just tell my audience a little bit about how you got your start in art and why cartooning became the vehicle that you knew would be able to, you'd be able to tell the best stories with?
- [06:18]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Absolutely, I'd be happy to. Firstly, I just want to mention we had a conversation about this before the show, and I'll tell your audience what I told you, which is that it's a good position for you to be in, as opposed to the position I'm in, because a Navy SEAL who wants to become a cartoonist is going to have an easier time doing that than a cartoonist who wants to become a Navy seal. So I think you're set up for success if you ever want a career change. I probably can't. I probably can't cross over to that. That's going to be a little bit more difficult for me. But what I am trying to do is cross over into longer form content production. You know, maybe not necessarily as arduous as the SEAL training, certainly not. But the way I got my start, I began teaching myself to animate when I was about 12, 13 years old. And I'd been drawing since I was a little kid. And I started a small business in animation production when I graduated high school. And before that, I'd been doing little freelance gigs here and there. And so when I was 19, I decided to just start uploading these short little political cartoons to YouTube. And this was back in 2014, 11 years ago now, which feels insane to say out loud. One thing I've come to realize is that being an adult is just constantly being shocked that 10 years ago was 10 years ago. How is that?
- [07:27]
David Rutherford
I'm 53. Tell me about it, man.
- [07:29]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I got a 17 year old. Like 20 years. You're like, how was that 20 years ago?
- [07:34]
David Rutherford
Well, being in the SEAL teams is like dog years too. It's like every one year is like seven years. So I feel like I'm actually 103 right now, but. But that's why Freedom Tunes brings me back to reality, man. All right, so you're in there, you're driving forward. At 19, you start uploading. Did you see success initially?
- [07:53]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah, I saw some success early on. Nothing like the numbers that we get now or ended up getting over the years as our video started to go viral. But I remember the first one I uploaded at some point in the first month, it ended up surpassing a thousand views or something like that, or 2,000 views. And I'd never gotten views like that before. And so I was totally blown away. And I thought, I think if I keep doing this, I can make this a success. And so even though at that time my business and my time were basically oriented towards creating work for clients, I decided to shift more and more energy towards creating the cartoons. And so I started running Freedom Tunes. I started a Patreon. I started collecting money from that and it was just little bits of money here and there. But what I would do is I would like hire someone to just do the lip syncing for me, some of the smaller parts in the animation process so I could get more videos done. And so it ended up becoming a pretty significant workload. And I was in college at the time and so I was running the business while I was in school. And about the semester before I graduated college, it was finally profitable enough for me to make a living off of which worked out perfectly. So for that next year and a half, I was just constantly grinding at my apartment, working really, really hard on these cartoons. For a good chunk of time, I was working on every upload basically by myself with a little bit of help. And then I started accumulating more people and started growing a team. I had this one guy I worked with, call him Ghost Boy. Give him a big shout out. He's amazing.
- [09:24]
David Rutherford
Which is not Ghost.
- [09:25]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Ghost Boy. He's the absolute man. And he's, you know, he's moved on to other things, but he's, he's an awesome dude. And I remember like probably 2018, 2019, him and I working together really hard and we would pull all nighters all the time to get these videos out. And then I also got to shout out Caleb Black, like he's my right hand man. And I've been working with him since around Then too. And over the years, I've had to accumulate this team because what a lot of people don't realize is animation takes a really, really long time. So for example, an episode of the Simpsons takes nine months to make. And people go, how do they do an episode every week? It's because they have a bunch of different teams working on different episodes at the same time. But yeah, it's like up nine months for an episode. And so that's basically why there aren't other channels that upload animation on a weekly basis, whether they're political or not. And YouTube even disincentivizes animation because they pay you based on the amount of time people spend watching and not the number of views. So if you do an hour long live stream, it takes you an hour and you get like an hour's worth of ad revenue per view. If you're making an animation, it can take 100 to 200 hours for like two minutes. So you can imagine it just doesn't work out to a great ratio with ad money. So we've been very reliant on fans, sponsors, crowdfunding clients, that kind of thing. We have an awesome, generous audience. And after 11 years of doing that, 11 years of making these shorts and also seeing a lot of different organizations try to make conservative films and conservative TV shows, I've just had a number of critiques about how they're doing. Even though I think their hearts are all in the right place, some of them are doing a great job, some of them, I think there's more to be desired. And looking at it, I went, I know that myself and my team, with the experience that we have doing this, with the workflow that we have, with the artistic chemistry we all have together, we could make something a lot better than a lot of these groups are making. And we can make something that our audience and a general audience is really going to love. And so that's basically what we're doing now. We've launched a show called Twisted Plots and it's an anthology series. So each episode is like a completely different story. So it's similar to Freedom Tunes in that sense. Like, each upload for Freedom Tunes is a different story. For Twisted Plots, each episode's a completely different story. And it tackles a different modern issue or a different moral perspective. And we just make it as. Try to make it as funny and zany and cartoony and crazy as possible. So our first episode, I don't wanna spoil too much of it. I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's 25 minutes long. We got the whole 25 minute pilot finished before we launched the campaign. It was a really big lift. It was really expensive to do, but we were able to do it. It was an awesome learning experience. I think it turned out great. And people who donate, people who go to twistedplots.com and support our campaign at the $25 level, they'll get to watch the whole 25 minute pilot. They'll also be supporting the show because we're not going to release the pilot for a while here. And we, but we want people who are supporting the show to like, be able to see it ahead of time. So we're really. And we've been getting great feedback. That's one of the really heartwarming things, is people are watching it and they're really, really loving it. Which means a lot to me. Which really means a lot to me because that's the whole point of this, right? I wanna make something people enjoy. And the goal is to make something that people can enjoy even if they're not right wing, even if they're not conservative and it has a conservative message and it'll maybe make them think about things differently. But, but they're not going, oh, the lib got dunked on, the lib got owned. They're just going, this is a really entertaining story. And oh, you know, I never thought about it that way. That's, that's the goal.
- [13:04]
David Rutherford
Well, I think that's the hardest part, right? There's so, I mean, thank God there's, you know, an unlimited supply of social issues, political issues, right? Religious issues. I mean, you know, I mean, there's we, you know, and I, most people I talk to who are in this business, they're like, you know, this is the best time to ever be in content creation because there's an unlimited, you know, way to disseminate or to topics to pick. You know, some people hate it because I think a lot of the audience hates it because they don't know where to direct themselves. Right? They don't know which stuff is going to be legit, which stuff isn't, which stuff is crazy, which stuff, you know, whatever. I love it all personally because my favorite thing about the human condition is just creativity. I think if more of us were doing what you're doing, we'd probably be able turn that dial down to where, you know, according to, you know, Tucker Carlson's latest message with interviewing Nick Sorter out in Portland for getting arrested for, you know, being disrupting, you know, antifa protests you know, we're going to be in a civil war here soon, right? And you know, one of the greatest things is talking about all these different forms of media and how we're going to access those and how we're going to get our message in there. But before I do, I just want to give a quick interruption and I want to talk about one of our badass sponsors and that's Patriot Mobile. I realize there are many choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service and there are tons of new ones popping up all the time. But here's the deal. There's only one that boldly stands in the gap for every American that believes that freedom is worth fighting for. And as I just said, I have fought for that and that's Patriot Mobile. For more than 12 years Patriot Mobile has been on the front lines fighting for our God given rights and freedoms while also providing exceptional nationwide cell phone service with access to, get this, all three of the main networks. Don't just take my word for it. You can ask the hundreds of thousands of Americans who've made the switch and are now supporting causes they believe in simply by joining Patriot Mob. Listen, here's you gotta. I mean switching is never been easier, right? You can activate in minutes from the comfort of your own home. You can keep your number, you can keep your phone or upgrade across the board. All right, Patriot Mobile's all US based support team is standing by to take care of you right now. Call 972-PATRIOT-DOM today or you can go to patriotmobile.com Rutherford use promo code RUTHERFORD. R U T H E R F O R D for a free month of service. I repeat my last, that is a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com forward/rutherford or call 972 Patriot. Make the switch today. Hoo ya. God bless America. All right Seamus, let's get back at it. I want to talk about the different types of patriotic influences or opportunities in the various forms of mediums within media, Media itself. Better songs. Right. Better content, whether it's interviews. Right. You know, and for me I love the art piece. I just, I just love the fact that art has been opened up and it's not controlled by Disney, it's not controlled by, you know, Sotheby's. You know, I mean when you got Banksy able to go, I don't know if you saw his latest piece. He did English one.
- [17:00]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah, yeah, was great. And you know what? They actually made it better by removing it because you.
- [17:09]
David Rutherford
Negative release.
- [17:09]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Good job proving his point.
- [17:11]
David Rutherford
And so that's the thing, man. It's that creativity that lifts people up, that, that forces people to be, you know, maybe laugh a little bit about some serious. But then it. What it also does is it just can reallocate focus away from all the madness towards something that tells a story in a much more positive way. And that's what you're doing, dude.
- [17:36]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Thank you, man.
- [17:37]
David Rutherford
Is that the intention? Like, when you guys sit around and you storyboard an idea? Can you just walk us through that process a little bit, how you pick stories?
- [17:46]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah, absolutely. And firstly, before I even dive into that, I just want to seize on something you mentioned here and make a comment. You said, as somebody who actually served in the military as a SEAL, and you've seen a lot of this really ugly stuff. Stuff, you're the first guy to say you don't want this to happen. It's all the Internet tough guys who go, I want, I want a civil war and I want to be a part of this. It's like, bro, I'm a cartoonist. I need to stop the civil war from happening. Like, I need to make sure that this never occurs, you know, in all seriousness.
- [18:13]
David Rutherford
And that's why, that's why, that's why special operations in cartoonists need to bond. Right.
- [18:20]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Well, and I will say one of the really important things is having a robust pro peace branch of the right wing. And I've said this before because this is something I've noticed when it comes to left wing anti war activists, how do they approach the subject? They go, well, these young men were told that if they went and fought in this war, they were gonna be protecting and preserving Christianity and the United States and they'd be honoring the flag. And those things are stupid. And they go out there and say, you're an idiot for wanting to fight for those things. You're a brainwash fool. Whereas firstly, that's not ever going to persuade the kind of brave young man who's going to join the military. Dude. Like, he's not going to pick up Andrea Dorkin and start reading your women's studies crap and go, oh, my gosh, I thought, I thought I was a warrior, but it turns out I'm a feminist. But more importantly, guys like you are able to say, hey, dude, our flag is a wonderful representation of an incredible nation. It's good that you want to protect your family. It's good that you want to protect Christianity. Those are great things. That good desire is being manipulated by bad people.
- [19:31]
David Rutherford
Bad, bad.
- [19:32]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And that's what's important, that's what young men. So someone like you can actually reach the young men who would be considering enlisting for something like that or, you know, agitating it. Not even necessarily on the warfare front, but just in terms of the heightened tension we're seeing in this country in general and all this talk of like, insurrection and civil war. It's really, really important for young guys to hear from men like you, who do love your country, that, that there are peaceful solutions we got to seek out here before we let things get crazy.
- [20:03]
David Rutherford
Well, it, I mean, it's, it's, it's such a. In intense thing, right? The drive towards division and all the different ways they're doing it, driving division within the left, driving division within the right. I mean, you know, for most of my buddies that, you know, have 5, 6, 10 combat deployments in the GWAT, they're telling their kids, don't sign up. I don't care what, I don't care what Pete Hegseth is doing, you know, push ups and all that. But, you know, you're gonna, they're gonna send you to war that you don't wanna go fight. That's not unjust, you know, and, and I think you can even see like there's. They're pitting in our community. They're. We're pitted against each other too, and tearing each other down to negate that influence, I think to say, hey man, no more stupid wars. We're not gonna go sacrifice. The most valuable asset that we have in this country is young men. Right? And I don't give a damn if you're black, you're white, Hispanic, Jewish, Christian. I don't care, man. All young men have a value because the country is built on their backs. And so my thing is, you don't want war. You don't want this. We want peace. You want, you want to be able to, you know, laugh about things. You're. You want to realize that you're being pitted against each other.
- [21:23]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
That's right.
- [21:23]
David Rutherford
Like, that's it, man. And that's, that's what I'm trying to do. A lot of other. My friends, Sean Ryan's trying to do it, you know, a lot of other guys out there are really trying to say, hey, listen, young guys, man, have a voice, you know, believe in what you believe. Be, be true to those beliefs, stand up for your beliefs, but don't get sucked into the other stuff as well, too. Like we did.
- [21:46]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Well, and that's what I love. There's a great quote From Saint Mother Teresa. If you want to change the world, go home and love your family. Ultimately, that's what a lot of this stuff is about here. It's about finding, like. And part of what loving your family is, by the way, is faithfully executing the duties relevant to your career, doing your job well. And so that's another part of what I'm trying to do here and what I'm trying to inspire people to see with the content that we're making. It's a show that, again, it's zany, it's all over the place, it's funny, but at the core of it is, like a very Christian, very, very pro family message. And. And on the first watch, it won't, like, smack you in the face necessarily with every episode, but here's how Hollywood took control of the culture. They told stories that taught you a lesson, because that's how people taught lessons through all of history.
- [22:31]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [22:31]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And when everyone was sitting around the campfire in prehistoric times and the shaman was telling a story, he didn't have a clumsy set of dialogue where, like, the SJW got owned or whatever, or the conservative got owned or whatever. He just told a story. And through the story itself and what happened to the character, you learned a lesson about how you should behave about morality, about life. The problem is, so much of our media tells a really, really bad story and gives you a really bad moral lesson, but they're so good, and they have this art perfected at making you buy into horrible stuff. So an example I love to use. This is one of the most popular films of all time. Titanic.
- [23:16]
David Rutherford
Yep.
- [23:17]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And I love using this as an example because it is a masterclass in this exact kind of emotional manipulation. If I just lay out the plot for that story on paper, completely black and white, it is about a woman who is engaged to be married to a man. They're traveling to the United States. While she's on a ship with him, she begins cheating on him with a homeless man. And then she fornicates with this homeless man in the back of a car, in the bottom of a ship, has him draw a picture of her nude, wearing her engagement present that her fiance got her, puts it in the safe that he owns just to insult him. Then when the ship is sinking, she jumps off a lifeboat to get back onto the ship. And then even the homeless guy ends up dying trying to save her. Like, on. And sorry for the spoilers, if you haven't seen it right on paper. On paper, you do not hear that story and root for that woman. You do not hear that story and go, that's so beautiful. Right? But listen, man, I am man enough to acknowledge that movie draws you in. The special effects are phenomenal. The music is like gut wrenching and heart wrenching. The cinematography is executed brilliantly. They're able to hypnotize you into celebrating the horrible actions of this woman who by the end of the film, by the way, when she's in her like 90s, is still a really selfish person. Because what does she do? She like drops the diamond off the side of the boat. Instead of giving it to the people who were searching for it or her granddaughter or like giving it to the poor or whatever, she just throws all this wealth away. So the reason I like bringing that up as an example is cause it's like a perfect case study because you don't know, no one thinks like Titanic. That's leftist propaganda. But that film is pro adultery. That film is pro fornication. That film is pro licentiousness. That is how Hollywood has done this for years. By having a person who does really, really bad things either not pay a consequence for it or for you to actually appreciate and celebrate the bad things that they're doing. So what we, and this is a big part of what we're doing with our show is we're just telling really good, really fun, really interesting stories where we don't celebrate people who are doing bad things. Like we don't like. Yes, there are some jokes and there are people who do bad things, but we don't celebrate it. And we make it clear that that's not the winning strategy by the end of you know what we're trying to say, but again without it being heavy handed. Just because you saw what happened to the characters, you saw where the story went.
- [25:50]
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- [26:25]
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- [27:26]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
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- [27:57]
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- [28:52]
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- [29:25]
David Rutherford
I love that. And so that's. That's why. I mean, for me, developing storylines is the funnest aspect of what you're doing. Right? Like, you start with an intention and. And then you all. You build this. This whole thing around. I. A few years ago, I got a film crew together and I was trying to put together a reel to try and sell about the Second Amendment. And it was really, all right, like, what's the storyline going to be? And, you know, and that was the fun part, right? Trying to figure out what the end result in the individual's mind is going to be. Can you kind of talk to us about your process of picking a topic, breaking it out? And, you know, there's this really great video that always kind of recirculates on the interwebs there. And it with Trey Stone and Matt Parker talking about the development of plot lines like, this needs to go. This. This needs to go here. Then something needs to happen to rebuild it here. Can you just walk through how you guys do it 1 million percent?
- [30:27]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah. And I just want to mention about the Second Amendment first, because I think this is a really strong point and it relates to something you and I were talking about before the show. One of the most pro Second Amendment films ever made. One of the films that inspired Americans to say, we need to hold onto our firearms. Silly as this might sound, but I am being serious. It was not Second Amendment documentary. It was Red Dawn. Like, I am. I am so serious about this, by the way. I really mean this.
- [30:52]
David Rutherford
Spot on.
- [30:53]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I know. I love. Listen, I know. I've seen the 80s version. It is silly, it is cheesy, it is ridiculous. And I don't think it was. It was trying to be a pro 2amovie or anything like that. But what you got to remember is like, in the same way that Titanic promotes fornication or like, you know, a film like Philadelphia promotes homosexuality, Red dawn was promoting gun ownership, whether it realized it or not. Because the story puts in your mind, oh, like actually the purpose of the Second Amendment is to fight a tyrannical government or a foreign invasion or something along those lines. So as. And that's kind of what we're just trying to tell. Oh, yeah, go ahead.
- [31:32]
David Rutherford
I just gotta tell you, I love your brain.
- [31:35]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Thank you, brother.
- [31:36]
David Rutherford
Your ability to see those things and those narratives, you know, and I. And I. Just one quick note before you get into the details of. I think everybody who is waking up to this stuff, right, they're seeing it now, like it's not camouflaged anymore. They know that we've, you know. You know, you've been propagandized. You know, you've been led down this very long, very arduous path of what you're consuming for inspiration, right?
- [32:07]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And that's.
- [32:08]
David Rutherford
That's why you. That's why you consume media in the first place, is for this, this, this, this. This. It makes you feel something, right? Like everybody remembers, you know, their first major breakup and what song you listen to on repeat, right? Everybody remembers, you know, that movie that, like, yeah, for me, I was in college, I watched jfk. I was like, holy, the government's bad.
- [32:32]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
You know what I mean?
- [32:33]
David Rutherford
And it's like. And it's like, you know, and. And that's the thing about this. That's the power of what you're doing.
- [32:40]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Well, thank you. And this is the thing, because I know that there are some people, on occasion, will scoff at this. Well, the documentary is much more important. Listen, there are great documentaries, but let's face it, as brilliant as you think you are, Mr. Smarty Pants who only Watches documentary, this is me talking to the hypothetical opponent I have in my head. You are more influenced by a narrative film than you are by documentary, whether you realize it or not. And the documentary is still important, by the way. I'm not dismissing it. I'm not dismissing it, but I'm saying conservative conservatives have done a lot of that. We need to make narrative stories. And so you were asking about the process we have here, and you mentioned Trey Parker and Matt Stone discussing story, and I know what you're referring to. They were saying, when you make a story, you need to ensure that your plot is so then and not and then. In other words, this happens. So then this happens. So the character does this. So then that happens. Not this happens. And then this happens. And then this happens. And then this happens, because then it becomes disjointed and you don't really care about what's happening. A bunch of things are just being thrown at you. And when we were working on the pilot for this, actually, we had the script written. We were working on it, and a couple months ago, as I was watching a draft of it, I went, all right, there's a lot of this. That's really strong. I think the ending is strong here, but the beginning of it Felt very. And then it didn't have the right. So then build that. I felt it needed to. So I added new scenes, we redid some of the animation, we modified some things. Because it's very important for the audience to be able to follow a thread through the episode and feel like they've been told a cohesive narrative instead of just seeing a bunch of different things happen on screen. And that's one mistake that a lot of big action films will make is they'll. They'll throw a lot at you. It's very important to just remember that thread because at the heart of it all, you are telling a story. And when you do tell a story, there's a. There's a reason. There's a reason. Like when a little kid tells a story, it's very funny, but. But part of why it's funny is because their method doesn't work because that's what little kids are going, and then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened, and then this happened. But to tell a story that's really gonna captivate a wild. A wide audience, it has to be like, this happens, so this happens, so this happens, so this happens, so this happens. It's a very clear line connecting everything. And then if you know, if you're a really creative director and this is something Christopher Nolan has done, a good amount is like, you have that line, but then you kind of break up the ordering in which you tell it. Or like Pulp Fiction famously did that.
- [35:03]
David Rutherford
But, oh, remember Memento? Remember Memento?
- [35:06]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Y. That's a great film. But that film, and that's a very clever film, and the way it breaks it up and shakes the order, but it's still just a very straight, clear narrative. It's not a bunch of stuff happening. And so, yeah, it's really, really important for your story to have a cohesive narrative where the characters choices affect the world around them. And for the first episode, as we were writing it, I was so glad that we were able to nail that and make that work, because it's an episode about a lot of things happen. I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. But it's an episode about a character reacting to a lot of things happening broadly in society. Let's say it touches. I'll put it this way, it touches on like, the question of ETs and extraterrestrial life. You guys are going to love it. I actually think it's. You guys are going to love it, but it's part of that is like, okay, okay. The so then is like, how does he deal with this? How does his perspective change what is happening in the world around him? As opposed to, like, aliens do this, Aliens do that. This happens. That happens. That happens. Right? It's br. And so there were a couple moments where I was watching it in the production process where I was like, I think we need a scene where we see our protagonist doing something here. I feel like we need an extra moment there to really sell that this is still like a story about this guy and what he's going through. And we were able to get it to a place where it. It just balances and you get a good feeling for the story thread with all of this awesome, crazy stuff still happening.
- [36:40]
David Rutherford
I love it. I love it. Like, I got this great advice from a writing class I. I took in college, and, you know, the.
- [36:48]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
The.
- [36:49]
David Rutherford
The. This. It was this old guy too. He'd been teaching at Penn state for, like, 50 years, but he was brilliant. Been published. And. And he would say, because I would write these fantastical scenes and all this stuff, and he'd say, hey, never, never forget that your reader wants to feel what your main character is feeling.
- [37:09]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah.
- [37:11]
David Rutherford
And.
- [37:11]
And that was huge for me to realize that. And so, you know, I. I worked on my first fiction book over the last year, getting ready to release that coming up, but it was like, all right, it's about the evolution of this individual. Right?
- [37:26]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And.
- [37:27]
David Rutherford
And that's what you. What I think grounds you in that. That development of the narrative. If you yourself back in their shoes, that's where the magic happens.
- [37:38]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And, you know, there's two kinds of story structures in that sense that are really popular. Firstly, and the most common one is a character changing throughout the story. So he starts one way, and by the end of the film, he's a different way. A Christmas Carol is a great example of this. There's other kinds of stories, and these are less common, but they're probably more difficult to pull it off. But if you pull it off, it goes really well. And those are stories where the character stays the same, but the world changes around. They're able to change the world. So I think a good example of that might be. Be Forrest Gump or Shawshank Redemption. It's not to say Andy or Forrest don't have any character growth, but they clearly shape the world around them in these really incredible ways. Whereas again, in other stories, that's not how it goes, but you need some kind of narrative arc in that way. And this is Funny, this is just occurring to me now, actually. Our protagonist in our pilot episode is a veteran. And part of the subtext. Again, I don't want to spoil too much of it. I don't want to spoil too much of the story, but part of the subtext of that first episode is. Is, again, this is subtext. It's not like a big theme that we. But part of it is, you know, we sent these people to fight in these wars and make these sacrifices, and then they come back home, and all of our media is totally nihilistic and telling them that nothing matters. So not only did you send people to be involved with something that was absolutely horrible and difficult to cope with, but that when you took away the number one coping strategy from our culture, which is to believe that things do matter, that there is a right and wrong. And like, even if the particular war, for example, wasn't a war we should have been fighting, that doesn't mean that there wasn't some real good moral reason for your own development. Maybe it brought you closer to Christ. Maybe it helped you experience something, learn something was part of your mission. Right?
- [39:27]
David Rutherford
But we.
- [39:27]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
We as a society have just stolen that from people. And that's the theme of the entire show. The theme of my entire show, of the entire anthology series that we're making is life matters. That is, the theme is like, life matters and morality is real, and you matter and your actions have consequences because you're important, because you actually matter.
- [39:51]
David Rutherford
Dude, I'm like, I am chomping at the bit for this now. It's crazy. You know, you have logged in the time, right? And that's what so many people don't get, right? Like, you don't just wake up and you're able to generate a framework of understanding narratives, plot lines. Character development just doesn't happen overnight. It takes, you know, countless, countless, countless hours. You know, writing something that sucks, scrapping it, starting it over, writing something that scraps, drawing something that scraps, starting over, refining, tweaking, refining.
- [40:27]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yes.
- [40:28]
David Rutherford
And you have done that over the last, you know, 20 years of your life, since that first strip you ever did. You know, one of the things that I always find interesting, you know, because you're so intimately connected to that it's personal to you, right? What. What the audience member feels is personal to you.
- [40:46]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah.
- [40:47]
David Rutherford
How does it work now for you? Because now you're going. You're. You're scaling, you're going to the next level where you're. You're moving into that, you know, Lucas level Where you're. You're going to be in charge of the whole production. You're. You have to take a step back. You have to give ownership to people who are doing, you know, different aspects of sound or, or artwork or background work or whatever it is. Right. In the production dynamics. Is that hard for you? Because I hear you talk, man, Seamus, and I'm like, man, that believes what he's doing, and, like, that gets me all fired up. Like, there's nothing that gets me more fired up. And I don't care if you're passionate about something that I don't believe in, as long as you believe it and you're passionate, you're willing to speak about it intelligently, right? I'm. I'm. I'll like, all right, let's hear it. But, man, that's in you. Is it hard for you now as you're scaling to. To kind of get a. Above it a little bit and, and be the, you know, you're. You're raising the funds, you're the face, you're the director, you're the main executive producer, you're hiring staff. Is that becoming, you know, you're doing a thousand interviews, you're like, tell me what that's like in this transition for you.
- [42:00]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I actually appreciate that question because it's something people probably don't consider or think about, because, as I mentioned, your average person doesn't really know how much goes into animation and how large of a team you usually need in order to make it. So what happens is the visionary behind the project or the person who initially created it usually does end up having to step back and take on a larger team in order to scale it. And that has been a slow, purgative process. It's painful to a degree, but it's also great to a degree because you're able to step out and expand and focus on other things, and you're able to get people on your team who are great. And I have the. I have the best team in the world, by the way. That's also why I'm really confident about this show. I have the best team, and you have people who are really talented and really good. And where the humility comes in and where the pain and the process comes in is going, that's different than I would do it. And it's actually better. Better. I. I have a rule, and I've. I've had a rule for a long time that, like, I don't hire someone unless they're better than me at something that's Genius, man. Because. And everyone on my team has, like, something they're able to pull off that I'm not as good at. And because of that, the quality of the videos has improved immensely over the years. And we were still able to keep it in a consistent style where you look at that and go, that's Freedom Tunes. If you look at our videos from 10 years ago, you'll still be able to tell that it's Freedom Tunes, that this is work that I'm behind. But the stuff we're doing now looks a lot better. It looks a lot better. And the show we're making looks even better than the videos that we're doing now. And so it is a slow process and it's taken a while, but I've got enough experience now with it that, you know, I'm still going to be. I'm still going to be very much in the production, but my role is going to be, you know, yes, animating some shots here and there, but a lot of it is going to be. Be going. You know what? If you really want the comedic timing to land for this scene, you have to cut, like, four frames out of this, and you gotta squash this a little more, stretch this a little more. There's things like that that you start to have to do as a director. Here's the right music that we need. Here's how we want to cut this sequence so that, like, the audience feels it in their chest when they see the video aligned with the music. And so my role has more or less transitioned into that, and it's been a slow transition over the years. But that's also also part of why I feel confident that we're gonna be able to pull this off. Because I have had experience delegating and stepping back and managing the team. I've got a really good friend, actually, my best friend. He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a former military guy. And one thing he used to tell the guys who he was in charge of, which I absolutely love, and I quote all the time, is he said, you will never rise to the occasion. You will always default to your level of training. I love that so much. And it's been a model to live by. And that's why I was like, I feel we've gotten to the point where our default level is to really quickly and competently churn these videos out. So I know that we're capable of taking a project like this on. Like, I would not be attempting something like this if I didn't believe that we were in a place where we were consistently rising to the occasion to deliver content and it's been 11 years now, so since we've been uploading this stuff consistently. So I. I really believe this is the time for us to expand.
- [45:19]
David Rutherford
Oh man, I'm so fired up, dude. I. And your, but your, your buddy, man. He's genius.
- [45:24]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
That is. He is a genius. I love him, dude.
- [45:26]
David Rutherford
Greatest lesson you can ever learn. Like, it's about your preparation, it's about your training, it's about your team, it's about your unity, about your motivation, about your mission. Focus, man. That is genius. And I love that more than anything. All right.
- [45:39]
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- [49:23]
David Rutherford
What I want to do now, Seamus, is I want to talk about how we gonna get people to open up their wallets, get out their credit cards and, and why should people come in and then give us like the, the stages of what they'll get based on how much they invest, the whole thing. I, I mean when I read through these, I was pissing myself when I was reading through the descript. They're absolutely awesome. So take us through. All right, what? Give us the general framework of what's taking place and then how people can contribute, how they can get behind you, what they can do.
- [49:57]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah. So firstly, one thing I wanna mention for people who love Freedom Tunes. We have no plans of stopping Freedom Tunes or anything like that. This is an expansion project. This is not like we're done With Freedom Tunes, we don't wanna do it anymore. This is another bigger project that we're trying to take on to grow as a studio, find an even larger audience, make something that again, your average person who maybe isn't as tapped into the political news cycle will be able to enjoy and learn from. So TwistedPlots.com is where you can go. It's gonna take you to our GoFundMe page. And basically we've got a number of different perks set up. If you donate at the level of 25 or more, you will have access to our first episode. And it's again, 25 minutes long. This episode took us about eight months to make. We were working on it with a smaller crew, basically, as we were producing Freedom Tunes, myself and a smaller team of people were working on that. And so we believe with the funding that, that we're raising now and what we're asking for, with the per episode cost that we're gonna have, we're gonna be able to get each episode done, we believe, in about three months. So we're gonna be doing. It's gonna be a five episode season. Episode one's already done. So the plan is three months. If the first episode has some production stalls or something like that, it might take a bit longer than that. And if you, if you donate, by the way, we're going to keep you updated on all of it. Like, we're going to send updates to the people who are donating so they know what's going on with the episode. They know how their dollar is being stretched, because we are really, really stretching people's dollars here. I want to give everyone, like a little bit of perspective on how much animation costs, because this is confusing. And I don't blame them. When you say, like, we need this much for this project, they go, well, I don't understand what makes animation cost that much. So if you look at an episode of sales park from 1997 and you see the animation quality of that one episode of that show cost $250,000 to produce in 1997. With that level of quality? Yeah, with that. Very like, respectfully. But they were trying to do it low quality, right? That was part of the joke. With that really low quality, choppy animation back in 1997, adjusted for inflation, it's. It's something like 510,000. Like we are going to be able to do our entire first season for less than it cost to do one episode of South Park 30 years ago, basically 28 years ago. So we're really stretching the dollar. But it is expensive because we basically have to hire a team of eight to 10 people for about three months in order to get these episodes done. But because I believe in this project so much, because I want it to exist in the world, I invested company savings into getting the pilot produced. And now we're at the point where. Where, listen, it was expensive. It didn't cost quite as much as the episodes we're gonna be producing now are gonna cost. Cause again, we wanna turn them out more quickly. We want them to look nicer, we want more of the team on them. But it was expensive. And so now we're at the point where we have this proof of concept. We know it's great, we know it works well. We know the audience that has seen it has really loved it. And so we wanna be able to get the rest of these episodes funded. The actual wage it works out to. And I have a little pitch video where I explain this is.
- [53:13]
David Rutherford
Yeah, we're gon at the end for everybody.
- [53:15]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Perfect. Yeah. So. So maybe I can. Maybe I can allow you to play that at the end. And for now I'll just sort of explain to people why I think this is so important. The reason this is so important is because again, for years and years, the left has completely and totally dominated the entertainment landscape. And my. My good buddy Tim has been doing a news show. And that's extremely important because we need news shows that aren't controlled by the left. And it's a reason why a lot of information has gotten out there. But we also need entertainment shows. We need shows that are just there for you to watch and tune out and enjoy and not necessarily think about the world, but which can give you a positive moral at the end of the day. So here's what your dollar is going to be doing. If you donate to our cause and help us make this show. Firstly, you're going to be getting good content out of this. We do have perks, you know. Again, if you're at the $25 level, you'll be able to see the first episode. Even at the $10 level, there are perks that you'll be able to access and we can go through some of those in a bit. But you'll also be hiring an awesome. You'll be. You'll be helping to support a really awesome team of animators who I've worked with for a long time, who are good people who have been churning on freedom tunes for a long time. I'm just gonna say this. There are a Lot of people in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry and in the animation industry who are not willing to work with me because of my values. The people who are working with me are really, really, really cool people. And I believe that they deserve an opportunity to work on a big cool project. And some of them have like, we've got former Disney animators with us. I mean people, yeah, people are waking up to how awful the woke culture is. People are waking up to how awful the left is. And so what I' coalescing a lot of those people into a studio to build this all out. One problem I think a lot of conservative groups that have tried to make media have run into is in my humble opinion, they've taken on too much at once. They'll go, we're gonna make 12 movies and 15 TV shows. And you go, that's gonna be more than you think it's gonna be. Even with that huge amount of funding, we again have 10 years of experience making these cartoons. And we wanna expand out into the next logical step, 22 minute long episodes. And then from there, if that's successful, what we're going to do is we're going to start expanding out into making other shows. Another season of that show or other shows.
- [55:51]
David Rutherford
Or we want a movie. We want a movie.
- [55:55]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I, I have multiple like 120 page long screenplays that I've read from movies that I want to. I have, I have a children's film which has like 20 minutes of it storyboarded in animatics that I don't want to reveal too much. I've been working on a lot of really cool stuff in the background. But like right now, I believe this project is our next step. So we're full steam ahead out of it, on it. And once we make this, once we release this, I think it's going to be a gigantic hit. I think that people are going to love it and it's going to help a prove to the establishment that shows like this can be successful, that studios like mine are able to churn out really great content. Normally, because animation is so expensive, only big studios and big companies are able to finance it. But with grassroots funding from a crowdfunding campaign, what you guys are saying with each dollar you give is your average regular person, not your network executive, not, not your giant political donor, but your average normal person wants this.
- [56:59]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [57:00]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And that sends a really clear message. And so the way crowdfunding campaigns generally work is you want to raise as much of your budget as possible early on because Usually you raise a big amount right at the very beginning, a big amount at the very end, and then in the middle, it's sort of slow and steady. And I just want to thank our audience. This is probably going to be airing a couple days after we recorded it, but in our first 48 hours, we raised a third of our total budget, which is massive. I mean, that's an explosive start for a crowdfunding campaign and especially for an entertainment. For like, an entertainment crowdfunding campaign. For entertainment crowdfunding campaigns. You're lucky if you can get to like, 20% in 48 hours. So the message that has already been sent, I mean, you're lucky if you can get to like, 10%. Honestly, most of them fail. So the message that the audience has already sent is this is the kind of stuff we want. We want grassroots. We. It's not. We want, like, content that's not degenerate, that does have a good message, but we also want it to be produced by people who really, really care about it and really have a vested interest. And that's where what I have. I've got an awesome small team of some of the hardest working animators in the industry who are putting the hours in because they love what they're doing and they want to spread this message.
- [58:13]
David Rutherford
Dude, Seamus, you are on fire right now. And listen, if you're listening to this right now, my. The one I want you to direct to is I want you to check out the $11,000 one, because they will design a caricature of you and put you in the background in this series. All right? So that's the money one right there for that. I also love the Elon Musk one. And Elon, please give these guys a million bucks, right? God bless. You know, we want the whole colonization of Mars going on. Right? Like, go. Go for it, man.
- [58:44]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Yeah.
- [58:44]
David Rutherford
So I just.
- [58:45]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah.
- [58:46]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And I just want to mention for. For information about the one we're doing with background characters. We've been so surprised and, like, humbled, frankly, by the amount of people who have given for that. I think when we saw at the end of the first day, there were like. And I was like, oh, man, we're have to, like, figure out a lot of background characters. So at some point we, like, may actually have to limit that, but we haven't limited it yet. And even, you know, our first episode, we have the donor version finished, but it's not out yet. Like, you. You might. We might even put your character in the first episode because we have a couple of crowd shots there. So again, if you guys go over and donate, there's a lot of really cool perks. And I want to mention, are you able to put our campaign on the screen so we can show them the Elon Musk issue or should I read it out loud to them?
- [59:26]
David Rutherford
Read it out loud for them.
- [59:28]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
All right, so we've got a number of different donor levels. If you Support at the $10 level, your name is going to go in the end credits as a founding supporter and you'll get instant access. Well, you, you would get instant access if you donated within the first 24 hours. And then for the, the $25 tier, which is the in the know tier, you'll receive updates to production, like information on when scripts are completed, when storyboards are done, and when we're entering the animation process. And you'll also, again, again get access to the pilot. Excuse me. For $50, you'll receive early access to all episodes up to 48 hours before they're released. You'll also get behind the scenes updates about when we move into certain parts of production, that kind of thing. We'll let you in on a little more of the process. You get to the $100 level. I mean, this is very, very generous. We really appreciate any amount that people can donate. But obviously at this level, this is really generous. And so you'll get access to like commentary tracks from the cast and crew for each episode as they air at un listed link online. And we want to do two commentary tracks, one which is like the writer track where I'll be talking about this, and then one where it's like an animator's track where I'll also be on that, but with the whole animation team. So in the writer track, I'll kind of be talking about how I flesh the story out and what the moral is. And then in the animation commentary track, everyone's going to be talking about like the production and how we did this. And so at the $250 level, you'll get access to animatics and storyboards so you can give figure, you know, feedback early on in the process for that level. You, you know, you'll want to have you sign an NDA just to be like 100% certain that the episode doesn't leak or information doesn't leak. But listen, we trust you guys. I don't think you're going to do anything like that. And it'll let you in on the process. You'll also be able to give feedback. Like, I really like this this scene. And by the way, listen, I'm not some diva. If enough people, if enough people are like, this was confusing to me or I didn't like this. I want this show to be good. I want this show to be something you guys like. So I really take audience feedback very seriously. That's brilliant. Then at the $500 level, we're gonna give a poster for the pilot episode which is gonna be signed by core members of the crew who worked on the pilot. And when the first season's finished, you'll also receive your choice of like either a collectible DVD with behind the scenes content for season one or if you're like a hipster. We're also gonna do VHS tapes of the first season after it's released.
- [61:46]
David Rutherford
Awesome.
- [61:47]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
The thousand dollar level is we'll design a character you which we'll use as extras or background characters that might be used in backgrounds for different shots. And we're gonna keep that folder open.
- [61:57]
David Rutherford
Gonna.
- [61:58]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
We're gonna like put you in the library of background characters that we draw from, which is really cool. I think it's really cool.
- [62:04]
David Rutherford
We'll probably my favorite.
- [62:05]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I think that's super awesome. And we'll have to get like, I'm sure we'll have to get some kind of creative release from people, but that's fine. I mean, people are cool about that. Absolutely. Now if you're, if you're like, if you're a wealthy person, you know, and you, you have this kind of money to spare, again, this, if you're donating at this level, this is extremely generous. We have tiers for people who are willing to, to donate 10,000 if you have that kind of cash. And what we'll do is we'll make and send you a poster for every single episode. And each poster will be signed by the crew who worked on the show. And you'll also receive all of the above perks if you're really wealthy. If you're really wealthy and you really believe in this and you want to contribute 25,000, we put the option there as well. You get all that stuff plus a signed VHS tape and DVD containing the first season, all that signed and a printed and signed screenplays for every episode. Episode. And then we have one final tier. And this tier is for $500,000 and it's named Elon Musk. Elon. If you pick this, I'll do a whole episode where white South African farmers colonize Mars and make the land farmable. And listen, you can't, you can't blame me for trying. You know, maybe. Maybe Elon Musk comes in and funds the whole season and then we do that episode. That would be fantastic, bro.
- [63:26]
David Rutherford
I. I just. Everything about what you guys are doing is cool, man. You know, from the content to the delivery of the ask, you know, and then you. I mean, you. I mean, this is what, in my mind, like, this is the kind of person that I want to support. This is. You're the kind of person that believes in your staff. You're the kind of person that's humble and you're creat creative process and you're. I mean, you're super funny, man.
- [63:56]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And thank you, man. Wow, that's a. That's a very high praise.
- [64:00]
David Rutherford
So I. I just can't say enough about what you guys are doing, you know, at any time, any, any moment, if you guys want to come back on. You want to come back on whatever, at any process, we would love to have you. Seamus. Freedom Tunes, Twisted Plot. I just. You guys can find them on Instagram, on YouTube. You can find them on. On X or everywhere, just at Freedom Tunes. You're. I just. You're the real deal. And I just can't thank you enough for coming on, Seamus.
- [64:35]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
I wish you.
- [64:36]
David Rutherford
God bless you.
- [64:37]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And I. I just want to mention it's. It's Twisted Plots with an S. So in your browser, if you just type in twisted plots.com, it'll take you right to the. The GoFundMe page. We have, like, again, a custom page set up there. So if you want to help support what we're doing, go to twisted plots.com. thank you, dude. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this. I want to thank you for having me. I also, I want to thank your audience for taking the time to listen to me. You know, every now and again someone says, I really want to support this, but, like, I don't have any money. Listen, man, I totally get it. The fact that you want to support this at all really means a lot to me. What people can do if they're strapped for cash, but they really like this. They really want to see this. Because a show, just share it. Just share the link, share our pitch.
- [65:17]
David Rutherford
Video, share the shit out of it.
- [65:19]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
And a share means so much more than an ad does because people, you know, are like, think about this. Are you more likely to donate to something you saw in an ad or that you saw? A friend shared trust, share something someone shared. Yeah. So if you guys, if you're not able to help financially, but you want to see this become a reality. Just share our link out, please.
- [65:40]
David Rutherford
I'm going one more deeper. Seamus. I want everybody, everybody who loves the show. I want you to share the. The Twisted Plots, a promo with Elon Musk. I want him to get 50,000 shares a day for the next. Like I want a gorilla slam that. And I want him to see this and put his money where his mouth is because this is exactly what he supports.
- [66:09]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Oh, I guess we'll have to make an episode of the show. The South African farmers are going to go to Mars. The West, west west will make the show then. $500,000. Of course, that's. I, I think I have that in between my cushions somewhere. Let me in here. Yes, we have 500. We'll do the white South African episode.
- [66:27]
David Rutherford
Oh my God. Yeah. God bless you, brother. Keep on.
- [66:33]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
Bless you, man. Thank you. You're the man.
- [66:35]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [66:37]
Seamus (Freedom Tunes Creator)
After over 600 animated videos subscribers and a quarter billion views, all with $0 spent on marketing, it is time for me to answer the question my wonderful audience has been asking for years. When are you gonna make something big? When are you gonna graduate to making shows and movies and that kind of thing? And the answer to that question is now. And with your help, I have been developing a comedy anthology series. It's a social satire. Each episode is over 22 minutes long and explores an insane and hilarious premise which conveys our values not through ham fisted preaching like a lot of quote unquote anti woke shows have attempted, but organically through fun and engaging storytelling. The show has a conservative angle. You won't have to be conservative to enjoy it. That's why it's going to show shape culture. These episodes all range in tone. The pilot's much goofier and zanier and more off the wall. Other episodes are darker and more serious with a dry sensibility. Others are somewhere in between. Now here's the thing. Animation is extremely expensive. I can't afford to fund this whole show out of pocket. For a little bit of perspective, an episode of The Simpsons takes nine months and costs $5 million. For Family Guy itself, six months and it costs 2 million. South park does each episode in a week on a 502 million dollar per episode budget. So they can hire a really big crew. But with tight budgeting, an extremely dedicated team, and the very efficient pipeline I've worked out over the years, we're going to be able to produce the entire first season of our show for less than the cost of one episode of South Park. In fact, we're going to be able to make our entire first season for the amount that it costs. Cost to make one South park episode in 1997, our entire season for $500,000. Now, I know some of you are asking how and others are asking how. For each episode we're going to need eight to 10 people, myself included, working 40 to 60 hour weeks for about three months. Once you factor in payroll taxes, that 125,000 per episode budget works out to about 15 to 30 an hour, depending on the animator and their level of experience. Seamus, you did bad math. Silly cartoonist. At $500,000, that's 100,000 per episode, not 125,000. Well, I guess you weren't counting on me putting my money where my mouth is. We've already made the entire first episode and I paid for it completely out of pocket. How much did you pay for it? Well, actually, that's none of your business. But I can assure you certainly wasn't cheap. It didn't cost 125,000. I wish I had that kind of cash to throw around. I'm not Tim Poole. Okay, so we had to cut a couple of corners and it took a good while longer to make than we want the show to, but it still turned out great. And we've already produced the first episode of our show without any outside funding. But now I'm strapped for cash. I can't make this whole season out of pocket, which gives gives us the opportunity to make it together. Help me to make something good. Something that takes the audience seriously. Something that you'll be rewarded for contributing to, not just with a great show, but perks like artwork from the production, virtual premiere parties, getting put in as background characters, getting to watch the pilot. As soon as you donate, it's not gonna be on YouTube for another couple months. Please come join us. This is our time. We don't have to wait around for big studios to decide to start to serve us, or for big investors to put money into some conservative startup. We can do this now. I've got the equipment, I've got the team, and I've got the experience. Give me your support and I will have everything I need.
- [70:24]
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- [70:59]
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- [71:29]
David Rutherford
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- [72:03]
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- [72:59]
Jacob Goldstein
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- [73:43]
David Rutherford
This is an iHeart podcast.