The Thinking Project · 2026-06-23 · 29 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
20 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Lucas McGraw and Kara Jensen founded the Community Film Project to democratize filmmaking education by combining community theater's group-project ethos with contemporary film production. Starting with 18-20 participants teaching basic screenwriting principles via Zoom, they built a screenplay collaboratively - contributors from Sweden, LA, Cincinnati, and across the US pitched ideas and wrote assigned sections, earning assistant writer credits in the final film. The model mirrors startup dynamics: when specialized roles (production design, craft services, costume work) go unfilled, producers step in and learn on the fly. McGraw, a 20-year professional with cinematography expertise, partners with director of photography Neil Larsen (who has shot feature films and Cafe Rio advertising) to maintain production quality. The project balances creative standards against the realities of unpaid, part-time work - they've filmed for three months with another two planned, requiring cast to maintain continuity (hair, nails unchanged) while shooting nights and weekends. Kara manages content and script supervision but also scouts locations like the Beverly's Terrace Plaza Playhouse (owned by Jackie Florence) and handles craft services. The team keeps morale high through dailies screenings, production parties, and ensuring everyone is fed, acknowledging that the film business is fundamentally a people business requiring trust-building and clear communication about participant goals.
They use an online form on their website where interested people indicate their desired roles. Once on board, leadership assigns meaningful work tied to participants' stated learning goals, maintains open communication channels for questions, keeps people fed on set, screens dailies to show progress, and throws morale-building parties to sustain engagement over the 6-month to 1-year production timeline.
They taught basic screenwriting principles via Zoom, built a story outline collaboratively over a few Saturdays, then assigned each writer a section of the outline to develop independently. Contributions were combined into a 160-180 page draft, refined by Lucas McGraw to preserve creative elements from all assistant writers, and whittled down to a shooting script while crediting all writers in the final film.
Producers step in to handle the work themselves, which Lucas McGraw describes as 'assembling the plane mid-flight' - for example, Kara Jensen has filled roles in costume work, craft services, location scouting, and production design sourcing, while Lucas contributes artwork and production design when the dedicated designer is unavailable.
Neil Larsen, who has shot multiple feature films and directed advertising campaigns for Cafe Rio, serves as the project's DP and mentors volunteers interested in learning lighting and camera work.
They require cast members to commit to consistency in appearance (no hair or nail changes) and negotiate a general agreement upfront explaining the 6-month to 1-year timeline, working nights and weekends. They also give people access to dailies and celebrate milestones like halfway-there parties to maintain morale and accountability.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
This is a casual promotional chat about a volunteer community film project, not a substantive episode for B2B operators. The conversation is dominated by filler, anecdotes, and social pleasantries with virtually no transferable, non-obvious insight per minute.
we make sure everybody's fed, you know, especially on long days. We have snacks because that's the cheapest way to keep everybody happy
make sure that you love it. And if you love it, then everything else kind of like, you know, kind of like the score takes care of itself
Every idea surfaced - love your work, community builds connection, pre-production matters, advocate for yourself - is a recycled platitude with no contrarian angle or first-principles reasoning applied anywhere.
make sure that you love it. And if you love it, then everything else kind of like, you know, kind of like the score takes care of itself
I think it's really easy to forget how to, ⁓ you know, a number of cast mates that I've been in conversations with while we're on set is that we've talked about how it's so easy as you get to be a grownup, right? That you forget what it's like to just enjoy and create and play.
Lucas has 20+ years as a working filmmaker and some real practitioner credibility, but neither guest has operated at meaningful scale; the project is an unfunded volunteer production and neither is a B2B-relevant operator in any sense.
I've been working professionally as the video maker filmmaker for 20 plus years
our lighting professional who's made a couple feature films and used to do all the Cafe Rio ads. That's my director of photography, Neil Larsen.
There are scattered concrete details - 18-20 writers, a 160-180 page draft, a $3,000 lens kit, a specific phone number, named locations - but these are project trivia rather than evidence illuminating any scalable principle, and most business claims remain abstract.
our lens kit is you know, about $3,000
People put $20,000, $30,000 into film school, New York Film Academy
The host asks one genuinely structured question using a sales-process analogy for pre-production priority, but the rest is unchallenged affirmation, frequent 'yeah yeah yeah' filler, and no follow-up pressure on any claim made by the guests.
Is there a part of like filmmaking that should take longer than other pieces? And the reason I ask that question is, know, in my, so I'm like, I'm in sales, right?
Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ sorry. Kara, did you have something?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Dalton sits down with Kara J. Jensen x Lucas J. McGraw, co-founders of the Community Film Project in Utah, to talk about their mission to make filmmaking accessible through a community-driven, volunteer-based model. Inspired by the bonding experience of community theater, Lucas and Kara built a project where anyone, regardless of experience, can jump in and learn the craft of filmmaking, from screenwriting to camera operation to sound. They discuss their current film, Murder at the Lufferton Christmas Musical , which was collaboratively written by 18 - 20 volunteers from across the country (and even Sweden), and explore themes of creative community, self-advocacy, and the value of learning by doing.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Dalton Jensen: All right, perfect. Thank you, Lucas and Kara for being here today. It's so awesome. As I told you before, was like, ⁓ Dez is a dear friend.
So anytime Dez needs someone on the podcast, it's like, yes. So thank you for being here. Dez is great. Yeah, how did you guys meet Dez?
Lucas James McGraw: Thanks. Kara Jensen: That's the best. Lucas James McGraw: does this great. We've enjoyed having her on as our marketing lead.
She reached out to us. Go ahead, Kara. Kara Jensen: Yeah, she went back to our website. On the website, able to, we have like a form that people can go on and say, hey, I want to be part of the project.
And I went back and revisited it and I saw her name on there and she was like, oh, I do social media. And Lucas and I were kind of really heading up the social media side of things at the time. And where we were getting into shooting, we're like, this is too much. It's too heavy.
We can't do this. Dalton Jensen: ⁓ wow. Kara Jensen: And so I reached out to Des to see if she would be interested in coming on board and she's like all in and she has been, she has been a lifesaver. So yeah.
Dalton Jensen: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, okay. So the project is the Community Film Project.
I know you guys have done a movie, you guys have a movie coming up. ⁓ But what I really found interesting was kind of what you mentioned with Des, which is there's a lot of volunteers, a lot of mentoring. So people who want to get into film, but couldn't find maybe another way can do this. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Lucas or Kara? Lucas James McGraw: Yes. Kara Jensen: Go Heba. Lucas James McGraw: Yeah, yeah.
So the original structure was to see what community theater has been doing for years is taking a group of people and building community through giving them this huge group project, which is a show, which is, you know, something that they can take, you know, four months of their time. And I've done a couple shows. did theater for about seven years or so. was, I've I've done a couple shows and I've always been so amazed at the friendships I make, but also at the time people take to put this together only to have it just kind of fade off into the distance once we're all done.
We just strike the set and we're gone. Where I was like, I've been working professionally as the video maker filmmaker for 20 plus years and I've always had it in the back of my head. Wouldn't it be cool if we were able to kind of take that model but attach it to film? and you know, equipment's getting cheaper.
People, there are more and more people that have digital cameras that can make, mean, you know, top notch material. I see some stuff kids are doing in high school locally and I'm just like, I mean, it would be a dream for me where all we had was advanced photography when I was going to school. And you know, I took it three times. But, Dalton Jensen: Yeah.
Lucas James McGraw: The nice thing is we offer this opportunity for anybody to come. We start from the ground, from the ground up and we teach classes along the way. So when we wrote this film, we started at the beginning building out, you know, an outline and then we brought in and taught basic screenwriting principles to ⁓ everybody that wanted to. How many people did we have, Kara?
Do remember? Kara Jensen: Oh, I think 18, between 18 and 20 total. Lucas James McGraw: Yeah, we had about 18 classmates. And then at the end, we had this outline where like, here's the movie that we are gonna do.
Would you like to take a section of the outline and write it out as part of your, you know, assignment or final part? And then we did that all together and we read it as a script. I think it was 160 or 180 pages, which you usually want about 90 to like 110 for just basic feature films. Kara Jensen: Yeah.
Dalton Jensen: ⁓ wow. Lucas James McGraw: And it was fun though to read it all together and get everyone's perspective on the storyline. so ⁓ then we basically took it and just kind of whittled it down and I rehashed it a little bit and tried to keep as many of the cool little tidbits from every one of the assistant writers and they get an assistant writers credit in the movie till we got Dalton Jensen: ⁓ wow. Lucas James McGraw: a shooting script, or at least we got a script, a reader script that I could send out and then after that we whittled it down to what it is today for our shooting script.
Dalton Jensen: Alright. Kara Jensen: It was so cool. We were able to get people from, we had somebody from Sweden, people from all over the United States. We had a guy in Cincinnati.
We had a guy in LA. ⁓ And it just like anybody that came across it online, we're like, hey, do you want to help us write a script? And they're like, sure. So all they had to do was send us an email and we got them on board to just start throwing their different ideas out.
And man, it was cool. I think that's one of the coolest processes. Lucas James McGraw: It was awesome. Kara Jensen: of this whole community project.
A concept is that anybody that wants to help create something, there's so many more roles, I think, to fill as opposed to community theater. Because most of time when you audition for community theater, you're going to be an actor, right? Because they already have their artistic staff kind of picked out, the directors picked, and they know who they want to. work with for the choreography and the music direction and things like that.
if you're going to community theater, you're asking to be on stage. But with this project, you can you can show up and say, well, I want to learn more about the camera. We've had people do that with this project. I want to learn more about being on crew, how to run sound, all these different jobs to teach people about.
it's it's so cool to see people jump in and just be like, wow, I'm doing it. We're like, yeah, you are. Dalton Jensen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
when Yeah. Yeah. Like building, ⁓ being a part of something that to create things. think that is super powerful, especially for community.
⁓ We had something like that quasi like that in the podcasting community for a little bit. And it was just cool. We got to create something and you know, it didn't really matter if somebody saw it. We got to like have that experience and sing.
Yeah. ⁓ it was mostly like podcasting stuff, right? So we would be like, Lucas James McGraw: You made a film? Is that what you're saying?
Okay. That's okay. Dalton Jensen: Yeah, it's life. Yeah.
Yeah. And then just putting something together, like being with people and being in like a creative space. I actually think it's fascinating from like a, you know, when I look at a movie about the screenwriting process and like writing ⁓ a movie script, that feels like very cool to me. And like coming up with the story.
How do you, ⁓ how do you manage? Kara Jensen: you also made more connections, right? Like you networked with people. Yeah.
Thank Dalton Jensen: like 18 or 20 assistant writers. Lucas James McGraw: Well, I mean, the class days, I don't know, we're just over Zoom. And so we originally taught them the basic principles and then taught, you know, here are some of the things that you will learn in like a screenwriting course and just give them an overview, but then talk about, you know, basic screenwriting structure, story structure, but also know that you know, there are different voices. Like you'll take a screenwriting course and then that teacher has their favorite movies and they'll say every single one of these principles applies and this is why this movie is the perfect movie.
But then you don't, they never show you the movies that apply those principles that failed. You know, they never show you the movies that, ⁓ and so we had a lot of even philosophical discussions. Like for me, it's awesome. It's kind of a great way to sharpen the saw where it's like, I can, when I'm focusing on pre-production, I can focus on writing and start reading new books on screenwriting and hearing different points of view.
If all you've read is like, there's this famous one called Save the Cat, then I'd say you're not doing too well. That one makes it feel like you just math it correctly and you're immediately going to have a successful screenplay. And that's not, it's not the case. But what we did is we taught these principles and then we Kara Jensen: is to be able that.
Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: Introduced the storyline and so the storyline I pitched to the group and we accepted it and we built the outline together through a couple Saturdays and then once that outline was ready, I think we did one where we. Terrors husband let us go into a conference room at his office and we just. You know, sat down and clarified everything, got it ready right before we handed it off to these writers and so.
Kara Jensen: Yeah. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: the writers themselves, everybody took something on, but not everybody wrote something. And so the day where the assignments were meant to be turned in and I was piecing everybody's part of the screenplay together, we had to go in there and write their parts, because they didn't write their parts.
Kara Jensen: big part of that too is just like keeping communication lines open as well. It was like, okay, if you have any questions, like, please reach out and we can answer the questions as we go as well. And I, at least for me, I know I had a lot of people reach out. Well, what do I do about this?
What do I do about this? And it's like, you know what? All it's all open. You can do it this way, do it this way.
And we just, would give them ⁓ ideas for like, you could, you could take it here or you could take it here. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Right. Kara Jensen: and then it still kept it open for their creativity.
Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Is there a part of like filmmaking that should take longer than other pieces? And the reason I ask that question is, know, in my, so I'm like, I'm in sales, right? And if you're, if I look at a sales process, majority of your time should be spent doing like this part of the process, because doing that will make everything else so much easier, right?
Is there something like that? And of course there's many examples, like that's not the only one. Is there something like that in filmmaking where you just, ⁓ this is the one that if you get this right, it's gonna make everything else easier, but if you screw this up, you're gonna feel it later and there's not much we can do about it after. Lucas James McGraw: think a good portion of people would say the screenplay, get that right, then, you know, everything else.
And we had to write the screenplay and cater it to what we could do. so, I mean, even then, like, we had to exactly build it around the resources that were available to us. So during the outline process, while we were trying to figure out, okay, there are a couple of things that are theater specific. Dalton Jensen: All right, you're gonna build it around the resources you have.
Lucas James McGraw: So we did an early location scout and we went to the Heritage Theater and we went to the Beverly's Terrace Plaza Playhouse and met Jackie, the owner there, Jackie Florence, and she was amazing. And she was just like super excited to help us out. And the space was exactly what I had pictured. And we just kind of settled on that and they agreed.
Kind of let them know it's gonna be a process. ⁓ Already we've kind of filmed there for three months now. It's probably gonna be another two. So we put together a general agreement when people join and just kind of let them know, know, especially if you're an actor, this is anywhere from like six months to like a year, it's worth the process.
So you can't change your hair, you can't change a few things, but we're gonna be doing this on nights and weekends to make a feature film. Dalton Jensen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. ⁓ sorry.
Kara, did you have something? Kara Jensen: ⁓ no, was just putting my nails, because I haven't changed my nails in like five months and it's driving me nuts. I didn't want to, you know, about to be consistent. And I did want to add onto that, that, ⁓ my gosh, what was it?
⁓ the prep, the prepping going into it. It was funny when I jumped on board, Lucas is like, we're going to have two really big parties. And one of those parties is shooting, right? Like actually getting on set and getting that done.
And then like a really big premiere too. And so. Dalton Jensen: ⁓ because you have to keep it's got to stay consistent. Yeah.
Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: Yeah Kara Jensen: It's like, it reminds me of any time ⁓ my family, we go to Lake Powell, the amount of prep that goes into going to Lake Powell and making sure that we have all the food that we need. And we know what's happening each day. Right.
And then you get there, you get the houseboat out and you have to like get that out, get that camped and make sure everything is done by the safely. And then you can relax. Then you can have the best vacation ever. But then once you're done with that, you have to like get back into work mode.
and clean it all up and get it all done, right? So you've got to do like all of this work to get to the fun. And then once the fun is done, there's still, you got to get back into work mode. So that's kind of what it reminds me of the amount of prep that we've had to do in getting ready to shoot is actually like, I would say it's been a good year of prep, but that's also, that's also because we're working around so many different people's schedules.
And that is one thing that when I signed on, was like, Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, that would be nuts, Yeah, because you're like, yeah, it's just like, how do you balance, right, the community aspect? Because that's the double-edged sword of doing something community-wise is like, we get to do it as a community, but then we have to do it as a community.
Kara Jensen: Yeah, that's a really great way of doing that. Yeah, because we always we kind of say like real life more important, right? Because nobody's nobody's getting paid. Nobody's showing up.
And you'll have to forgive my voice. got to know it's just like it keeps coming through. ⁓ But it's it's definitely a delicate balance of, know, we need we need to hear on this day and we need to hear and we need you committed to be here. We communicated that from the very beginning.
And overall, Lucas, would you say like we've had Dalton Jensen: Yeah, get that, ⁓ you're good. You're good. worries. Kara Jensen: We've had people be really, really awesome about, you know, really interesting.
Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: Yeah, our cast is amazing. Our DP, he's amazing. ⁓ We've just had a great bunch of people that love making movies that want to put together this fun script.
so, yeah, back in October is when we had everybody fully cast and we did a full script read and we set up tables and set up cameras and everything kind of made it feel all Hollywood. And we read through the script and everybody was just. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: I mean, there were so many laugh out loud moments.
were all just getting into it. I think one person couldn't make it, but overall it was great to kind of have that first introduction. And then we just kind of hit the ground running. A lot of times it feels like we're assembling this plane mid flight.
I've said that a couple of times, but I mean, we, we tried to get a full-time production designer. had a couple of people interested, but when those people don't show up, it's me. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. ⁓ of course.
Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: Kara or any of the other producers. We've got right now five leads that are also producers. ⁓ We all have to step in and then we have to figure it out.
It's like, okay, we just got to put out that fire. We got to find the right extinguisher. What do we need? And it's been fun to kind of explore and build things out.
I don't normally do a lot of production design, but it's been fun to kind of add the last place we filmed. Dalton Jensen: Right. Yeah, I am. Kara Jensen: Thank you.
Dalton Jensen: Right. Lucas James McGraw: I was able to make a beautiful painting on the wall and kind of add a few pieces of my artwork, you know. Dalton Jensen: Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, so you kind of get to know, I think that's the other cool thing about doing something like this is ⁓ if you were going to go maybe a traditional route, you might not get to see everything and how it works, like different positions.
when you're, to me, this feels a little bit like a startup in a business world, right? Where if we go to a corporate world, you're only going to see your lane, right? But if you're in a startup, we get to see everything. ⁓ Kara Jensen: Yeah.
Dalton Jensen: because that's just the nature of what you have to do. Like if you want to be in a startup, you have to be like, yeah, I don't really know that, but I guess we're going to learn today. Or you know what I mean? Lucas James McGraw: Yep.
Kara Jensen: Yeah, and we figure out how to step in where something is needed. my role as a producer is I'm over content, right? So I worked a lot with the script and just whatever is going on, what's going on screen, right? So I'm heavily involved in that, but I have also stepped into the role of craft services.
I have stepped into the role of costume work. For the latest set that we had to build and put together, I went and picked up a desk for that. I found a mini refrigerator for that. Dalton Jensen: Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Kara Jensen: And it's just like, what do we need done?
Okay, this is how we get that done. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead.
Lucas James McGraw: And they do say like great movies are made in pre-production like the best movies and and then that's true I feel like we're shooting stuff and then we're pre-production for the next spot for the next spot. I mean we've done We've kind of done things a little bit out of order, which is fine. I mean you can make a movie any which way I mean what Jaws took 120 days to shoot and a whole bunch of people do different things and I always do Kara Jensen: Thank you.
Dalton Jensen: That's crazy. Kara Jensen: You Lucas James McGraw: pickups and tell you get to the vision that you want. I'm not saying I recommend it. I'm just saying that's how we're doing it right now because that's what we can do.
And it's, it's been great. Like the hope is to keep this going, to raise enough money, to be able to give us that time to hire a production designer and do all those like six months of pre-production upfront before we even roll cameras. But we had Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: A lot of things figured out like costumes and where we're filming. just were like, okay, what's in this scene? What do we need to dress?
What needs? So. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Yeah.
When I think about ⁓ the interviews I've done in the past with, you know, creative people. So one that comes to mind is like Jack Carr. ⁓ I got to interview him. Jack Carr.
Yeah. The what is it? His books are ⁓ the terminal list. Some stuff in that.
Yeah, there you go. So he was on and we just, you know, talk about like what you're talking about. Kara Jensen: ⁓ yeah! Lucas James McGraw: ⁓ yeah.
Dalton Jensen: ⁓ because just putting the story together, everything that has to come together to put like a film or a theater or like any kind of creative thing that you're doing. ⁓ a lot of people just don't realize it sometimes, right? I think we kind of stepped away from that creative side and, ⁓ it's something that I definitely don't want to lose because it's really, really fun. So I'm, I'm super happy to be, you know, involved with this a little bit, just to get to meet you guys and try to spread the word.
Kara Jensen: Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: We should come be in the next trailer, come on set. We have a big shoot coming up. Kara Jensen: Yeah, no kidding.
Come be with us. I think it's really easy to forget how to, ⁓ you know, a number of cast mates that I've been in conversations with while we're on set is that we've talked about how it's so easy as you get to be a grownup, right? That you forget what it's like to just enjoy and create and play. And so with something like this, I texted Lucas after one of the shoots one day and I just said, listen, Dalton Jensen: Yeah, yeah.
Kara Jensen: What you're doing here is so cool because I am looking forward to hanging out with my friends. I get to go act and produce and do all these things, but I'm to do it with my new friends. So it's kind of a, it's a cool thing. It's a cool thing.
Dalton Jensen: Right. Yeah, yeah. And just like I said, I think earlier, I just, I've had a little taste of this in my life where you have this idea in your head, this story in your head, this thing that you want to do, and then going through the steps to like bring it to life and then see it in life, you know, come to life. And ⁓ it doesn't matter who I interview in that space.
⁓ The best, the best advice I get and the most common advice I get is make sure that you love it. And if you love it, then everything else kind of like, you know, kind of like the score takes care of itself. But is that how you guys kind of approach this, especially as a community? How do you get buy-in?
How do you navigate some of that? Because I would imagine that some people probably have different ideas, but at the end of the day, you have to build that consensus maybe. ⁓ How do you guys navigate that to make sure that not only it's what you guys want, but at least the majority of what the other people want, you know, bought in, because you can tell, right? But I'm just curious.
Lucas James McGraw: Yeah, that's an interesting question because I feel like there's constant hyping up the project, negotiating. just had a, we're over 60 % in principal photography right now, but we had a halfway there party. It's throwing parties, it's keeping people, letting them have access to the dailies and seeing what we did has definitely given people some excitement, especially some of the actors get to see. Dalton Jensen: Yeah.
Lucas James McGraw: how they performed, but my director of photography, think he really appreciates it so he can go back and, you know, polish his skills a little bit. ⁓ That's been helpful when someone first comes on. We've had, we've seen a couple people show up and then just never come back. And that's fine.
there are people, I remember I was the punk kid that would show up at 18 thinking, walking on like movie sets, be like, Dalton Jensen: ⁓ yeah, probably. Lucas James McGraw: I should be touching that camera, You know, where it's like, you know, you gotta build a relationship. And I think if you talk to us, we probably would let you touch the camera or shoot some one or two angles. But the issue is, like, you gotta come in, build a relationship of trust with people, because the film business is a people business.
And you gotta just, you know, I'm not saying you have to start at the bottom, but tell us your goals. Tell us what you'd like to do. And we'll see if we can. Dalton Jensen: Right.
Yeah. Yeah, you kind of get it. Lucas James McGraw: help you out on our next shoot day, right? Be like, all right, you wanna learn lighting.
We've got a lighting professional who's made a couple feature films and used to do all the Cafe Rio ads. That's my director of photography, Neil Larsen. So he's amazing to work with. But it's also like, all right, without like temporal like rewards just yet, it's hard to kind of keep people going.
And that's why we. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. ⁓ Very cool. Lucas James McGraw: try to do a few things.
We make sure everybody's fed, you know, especially on long days. We have snacks because that's the cheapest way to keep everybody happy. And ⁓ we try to make it fun. Dalton Jensen: Yeah.
Yeah, heck yeah. Well, yeah, go ahead, Kara. Kara Jensen: It's a great situation to... ⁓ sorry.
I was just going to say it's a great situation because, you know, we have all these people there. Thank you. They're ready to help and ready to teach and things like that. But it's also very much so you get on set.
And if there's something you want to learn, you really do have to advocate for yourself and say, hey, teach me this. Right. So it presents this opportunity for someone to also in a safe space, kind of be able to be like, yes, I want to know that. Please teach me that.
Whereas sometimes in a professional setting, you know, it's like, okay, when's the right time, when's not the right time. Whereas in this situation, you know, it's a little bit more like, yeah, sure, come on over. It's good. Dalton Jensen: Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think you bring up an interesting point there. ⁓ This is something that comes up quite frequently when I talk with, you know, business owners or anybody. And it's this idea that we've kind of lost and I don't really know why I can't really pinpoint it, but we've lost this idea of like taking a step out of your comfort zone to do something that you want to do, like advocating for yourself. even more than that, or, you know, even a little subtler than that is like You just want to do something.
But you're playing this game with everybody called guess what's in my mind, right? You know what I mean? Like, can you guess what I want to do? And it's like, no, man, like you have to go do it.
You got to earn that. And when I say earn, I mean it loosely because part of earning it is just like, hey, can I learn how to run a camera? I've never done it before. then like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then. Kara Jensen: Yeah, I hope to show it up, right? Dalton Jensen: My favorite piece of this, by the way, is because I coach wrestling and so I'll tell my wrestlers like the question, how bad do you want it is not the right question. The question is, what are you willing to do to get it?
Like, what are you willing to give up to get it? Right. Because if you want to learn the camera, like you can learn a camera. Right.
Like this is a community film project. You're not getting paid, dog. But I'll show you how to use a camera. Right.
What do you want? Right. Lucas James McGraw: It's technically free film school and you can get fed on our set and you don't get that. mean, people put $20,000, $30,000 into film school, New York Film Academy and all these other schools.
I can't remember, like, it's like you can come and you can learn. Our DP is very open. He'll show you what he's doing. But yeah, we are dealing with thousands of dollars worth of equipment and you know, our lens kit is Dalton Jensen: Wait, shoot, that's not- Isn't that nonsense?
See. Yeah. Lucas James McGraw: you know, about $3,000 and you can't just say, okay, yeah, go ahead and go juggle a lens over here for me. It's just like, can we trust you with this show that you can be trusted with some of this equipment and sure we can, we'll, we'll let you shoot a shot.
We'll let you do a few things. Dalton Jensen: Yeah. He's here. Yeah, that's really cool.
But thank you guys again for being here. You've been more than generous with your time. I do want to say ⁓ this is all volunteer driven. So how do people get involved?
How do they reach out? What's the best way to do that? I heard you have a fan club, but tell me more. Lucas James McGraw: Yeah.
Go ahead, Tara. Kara Jensen: Yeah, so the fan club is just, ⁓ it's just ⁓ a phone number that you can text and you can text ⁓ Luff, L-U-F-F, because Murder at the Lufferton Christmas Musical is the name of the movie. So you can text that and then that kind of signs you up for all of the behind the scenes information, like our giveaways and what marketing has going on and things like that. Dalton Jensen: That's very sweet.
Kara Jensen: And we've already done a few and it just, yeah, it's all the behind the scenes info. We don't do anything with the information. We don't share it. don't, you know, anything like that.
So, I mean, do you want me to put the, do you want me to say the number or I don't. Okay. Yeah. The numbers 209-703-7104.
And it's just got updates, exclusive offers, and we can even put future casting out on that. Dalton Jensen: ⁓ yes, have a number. I mean, I'll write it out there too, but go ahead, man. People are listening.
Lucas James McGraw: You Kara Jensen: It's just a way for us to communicate in mass. ⁓ Because ideally, once we're done with this, we've already kind of been talking about, you know, what are we going to do next? Do we go into a short next? Do we start pitching ideas for our next feature film?
Do we do a short while we're getting ready for our next feature film? Right. And so it's like, what are we going to do as we go forward? And we're going to need we're going to want more people.
Right. We want as many people that want to like, try this part of ⁓ create Dalton Jensen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kara Jensen: creativity as possible so that they can broaden those horizons. Dalton Jensen: Yeah, very cool. Well, thank you so much. how do people ⁓ besides the fan club, how do people follow you guys?
Kara Jensen: We have social media. Lucas James McGraw: we have, yeah, ⁓ I'm just Cinny McGee. So just Cinny and then MCG, ⁓ for McGraw. But, ⁓ we do have one, a community film project, Instagram.
I think it's community film project, UT at the end for Utah. And then on Facebook, we're on Facebook and then it's just community film project.com has just a regular web and Des has been updating that. So.
Dalton Jensen: something. Kara Jensen: UT. Dalton Jensen: Let's see. Very cool.
Awesome. Well, thank you guys for being here again. And it was great talking to you. Thank you.
Kara Jensen: Yeah. Great, thank you so much for coming. Lucas James McGraw: Thank you, man. It's pleasure.
Have a good day.
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