Fred&Dan Productions Blog
The journey of two professional filmmakers building their business in the creative world. Welcome!
Big Oops! Coming Soon!
Welcome to a special edition newsletter of the Fred&Dan Productions Blog! We have an exciting announcement today and couldn’t wait until Friday to tell you.
We often talk about our journey as screenwriters but fun fact, Fred&Dan is also a production house! Along with getting our writing out there, we love to support other artists creating their own work. With that we are excited to announce that we are teaming up with our good friend Tyler Peterson, AKA Big Cookie Productions, to produce the webseries Big Oops! We made a short announcement of this a few weeks ago, but the name of the project has changed and we have even more info to share now!
This project falls under something called a micro budget film which is just fancy talk for truly indie, i.e. this type of project is allowed during the strike. We’re off the grid! It’s metal! Since corporate greed has shut down the rest of the industry, we are taking matters into our own hands! Because the show must go on, and just like Tinkerbell, if artists don’t receive attention they will die.
Last summer, a cohort of our good friends and writing group got together to produce and film the webseries Jennifer & Chicken, which is currently showing in festivals all over the world and even winning awards! Now the same group is back at it again to bring Big Oops to life.
As Giovana and Janette we are joining this project as Executive Producers, which will be in association with Fred&Dan Productions. For those who are new to the world of making movies, producers are the people who bring the team together. Along with the 4 other producers on the project we all have been in the throws of casting, location scouting, permitting, and script revisions. This phase is called pre-production and we are now entering our (drum roll please!) fundraising phase!!!
In response to what’s going on with AMPTP, we’re truly making this a grassroots effort and reaching out to our community to make art during a time where it feels nearly impossible to do so. We are fundraising through indiegogo to make Big Oops happen. We want to invite our friends, family, community, and supporters to be part of this fun project by donating! No contribution is too small and we have some really fun perks to convince you! Obviously, not everyone can donate but we wanted to extend this to our community who has been so supportive of us. Even a share on social media or sending the project to someone else goes such a long way in helping Big Oops come to life!
HERE IS THE LINK to indiegogo! And here is the link to the Big Oops Instagram and Facebook page.
Expect further updates on the project here on our blog and also on our socials as we produce and film Big Oops this fall. We’ll be working on this along with publishing our zine, finishing a few scripts in the works, bringing you our weekly newsletter, and of course we always have a few other things cooking.
Thanks again and we love you!
Actors, Welcome To The Resistance
Hope your crocs are in sports mode.
Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!
As you are used to by now, we have been giving weekly updates on the writer’s strike, and developments have happened over the past couple days so we wanted to dedicate a whole blog to it. The first big update is that yesterday, SAG-AFTRA (the actor’s union) joined the WGA on strike. Fran Drescher (yes, that Fran from The Nanny) is the president of SAG and gave an impassioned speech about why they are going on strike that you can watch here. This essentially means that all scripted productions or productions with SAG actors are suspended. This might work in the favor of writers, encouraging the AMPTP to come to the table quicker so productions can start again, but most likely, SAG will reach a deal sooner rather than later, and the writers will remain strong on the picket line.
Second, this headline.
The lack of self awareness of the AMPTP is so astounding it’s maybe impressive? Like, imagine working in movies and TV shows and saying that people losing their homes is a “cruel but necessary evil” and not recognize that you are in fact the villain in this whole situation? I am half expecting the scooby gang to roll up and reveal that it was a spooky skeleton doing this the whole time under the mask.
We’ve been giving the play-by-play of the strike on a wide scale, but to bring it home, this is how it’s affected us - writing projects that were gaining a lot of momentum have come to a grinding halt, and now, with SAG on strike, even our indie production projects are hanging in the balance. It’s hard to plan for the future and figure out our place in the industry when the majority of people aren’t working, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
We just did an interview with CEO Bianca Turner from UPBasketball that we are releasing next week, and one of the things she talked about was the moments in your life or in your business when you’re faced with a challenge and you have to pivot. Being able to pivot is what makes a good business owner/entrepreneur. We’ve been using this seemingly “downtime” to focus more on how we want to grow our business, putting more intention behind this blog and our zine, and also polishing old scripts and coming up with new ones. Last weekend, we rewrote an entire script in less than 24 hours, totalling our third script since the strike started on May 2nd.
We say this because it seems like the dark times keep coming -- two years in covid, a recession, nation-wide job layoffs, and now not one but TWO strikes -- and it’s easy to question everything you’re doing and want to give up. What if instead you saw this moment as an opportunity to think differently and get creative with your situation? These are the moments you will look back on and think, “I'm so happy I kept going” or “I’m so happy I pivoted and found my calling or my new passion.” Because like we said in our previous blog, our new selves lay waiting for us in the shadows, you just need to use your creativity to find it.
(btw - this is the studio lot where Dan usually works when her show isn’t on hiatus. Can’t beat the view of Henry Cavill on a billboard… c’mon guys this is serious!!! Stop looking at Henry Cavill!!)
The Shadow Self
Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!
STRIKE UPDATE
The WGA strike is entering day 60! Not too much to report until we hear more about what is going to happen to the SAG contract on July 12th. The LA City Council did pass a resolution to urge the AMPTP to come back to the table with the WGA. No idea what that means or if that will actually do anything, but hey! It is something that definitely happened.
Weekly Creative Inspiration Prompt:
Throughout the month of July and August we are going to keep delving into subjects that relate to the term “subliminal” - the theme for our second zine. Today, Gio and I talked about Carl Jung’s idea of the “shadow self” (these are truly the things that we talk about during our meetings because we are insufferable) and we thought it’s great inspiration for a creative prompt.
What is the shadow self?
“The shadow is the seat of creativity.”
The shadow self, according to Jung, is the dark unconscious side of our personality that we try to repress or hide.
We often shy away from the parts of ourselves we fear or feel shame around, but it is in walking through those “shadow selves” that we can become anew. In those shadows we have nothing but our creativity to rethink or reshape our image of ourselves to marry the light and dark, and become better for it.
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
Creativity is a powerful tool that can move mountains and reimagine the world as we know it. What if you met your shadow, made amends with it, and integrated it so see from a new lens? How might it shift the world as you know it?
“You can express your shadow self through art.”
A production company producing? Groundbreaking.
Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!
STRIKE UPDATE
As always we’ll start with the strike updates! Not too much to update you on, except for the fact that the strike continues. This week a whole bunch of famous actors (i.e. Meryl Streep, heard of her?) signed a letter urging SAG-AFTRA to stand strong on their contracts and go on strike if their demands aren’t met. And shoutout to this fellow Bay Area guy who showed up to strike with writers at universal this week!
FRED & DAN UPDATE
We are so excited to announce Can I Just Have A Minute? by Big Cookie Productions LLC, in association with Fred&Dan Productions! Can I Just Have A Minute? is a five episode comedy webseries created by our dear friend Tyler Peterson, who has worked with Fred&Dan on previous projects. This satirical comedy follows two disillusioned office workers who decide to try to start a “light” pandemic so they can return to lockdown. This comes from the same producing/creative team who brought you the webseries Jennifer & Chicken, and we are so excited to come on to it as Executive Producers! We’ll be bringing you along on this journey as we produce the series from start to finish. If you’ve ever been curious as to the inner workings of bringing an independent series to life, stay tuned and subscribe!
That’s all we have for today! We would love to hear what you have been enjoying about the blog and how we can best use this space to inspire or, better yet, entertain you! Feel free to reply directly to this email or drop a note to fredanddanprod@gmail.com!
We are accepting submissions for our next zine Subliminal. If you are interested in submitting or know anyone who is, let us know or follow this link!
Until next week, these two clowns are signing off. Happy Friday!
Our DMs Are Open...
Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week! So let’s get into it!
Quick recap on what’s happening with the writers strike! Wednesday, over 5,000 people gathered at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles in support of the WGA strike that just surpassed the 50-day mark. Not only were the writers out in full force but they were joined by union members from the DGA (Directors Guild), SAG-AFTRA (Performers Guild), IATSE (production crew members), and Teamsters (production drivers) - a very strong show of support across all unions in the industry! Have to do a special shoutout to Oakland filmmaker Boots Riley who spoke at the rally and said, “The whole world is looking at us, and we can’t let them down.”
Weekly Creative Inspiration Prompt:
This week on the blog we wanted to ask you to take a moment, a real moment and think…What’s the last creative endeavor you allowed yourself to dive into fully? How did it go? How did it make you feel? Did you finish it? If not, why? What would happen if you picked it back up and allowed yourself to make it happen?
If you have a project, an idea, or want some help keeping yourself accountable, email us! We’d love to hear about it.
On that note….
Fred&Dan is now open to submissions for our community zine!!
What is a zine you ask?
A zine is a self published small-circulation magazine. Zines started in the ‘70s and ‘80s as fanzines or pieces of media to define the culture of the time, specifically during the punk era, but it can be traced all the way back to the 1930s when people made science fiction and horror fanzines. Basically, it’s a way for people to put out their own form of media without needing permission.
Fred&Dan Productions LLC Zine is an extension of our mission to bring creatives together and allow space for fellow artists. You don’t have to be a “trained artist” to submit, everyone is welcome! If you’re not sure but curious, send us an email, we’d be happy to chat!
Til next week, we can’t wait to hear about all of your creative endeavors <3
Fred&Dan Recommend Things!
Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions LLC and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!
As we’ve been starting every blog over the last couple weeks, a quick update on the writers strike. At the beginning of the month, writers pivoted from picketing outside of the corporate offices to picketing on location of TV shows and movies, forcing a more active shut down of current productions. We also saw our first award show without writers at the Tony Awards! Ariana DeBose hosted the show entirely without a script, and she did a really great job despite the occasional snafus.
To get the juices flowing this week we each have a list of recommendations from Dan to spur your creativity and from Fred to inspire your business. Enjoy!
Dan’s List of Recs
I will forever & always recommend the podcast You Must Remember This from Karina Longworth. It’s in depth Hollywood history that is amazingly researched.
For a fun, escapist listen try the audiobook Dungeon Crawler Carl! There’s a talking cat named Princess Donut who shoots missiles out of her eyes… need I say more?
Other newsletters I subscribe to and love (most about writing/creativity): how to be a woman on the internet, An Irritable Metis, Maybe Baby, Subtle Maneuvers, and for fun, gossip, and celebrity fashion I <3 Mess.
Shameless plug! If you’re looking for a fun quick watch, check out Jennifer & Chicken on YouTube!! Only 8 episodes that you can watch in an hour. Bonus: I directed 4 episodes (;
Fred’s list of recs:
Book on business I love: Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. I could rave about this book all day long. You will come away from this book empowered and with nuggets of wisdom on how to lead a team and grow a lasting business.
Save The Cat by Blake Snyder. This is technically a screenwriting book, but I have heard it referenced so much outside of that. Learn this like the back of your hand and not only will you be able to tell funny, captivating stories at your next dinner party, you’ll be an expert on how to create a lasting brand story to draw customers in and keep them coming back for more.
Podcast to inspire anyone to get into entrepreneurship: How I Built This. I am ride or die for this podcast! Talk about the hero’s journey! Each story is the ups and downs you’d never know of from your favorite business or brand.
Podcast that all screenwriters should be listening to: Scriptnotes. I’m looking at you fellow screenwriters! If you’re new to “the biz”, or have an interest in the life of a screenwriter, check out this pod. It is heavy on the inner workings of writing but I love how the hosts always talk about the business side of being screenwriters.
Subliminal Messaging
Welcome to this weeks edition of Fred&Dan Blog! We have an update on the WGA strike and a fun preview of what’s coming up at Fred&Dan!
Hiya, it’s Dan here! Before we get into it, we wanted to give a quick update on what’s going on with the WGA strike.
Most recently, the DGA (Directors Guild) reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) so they will not be striking. The strike authorization passed for SAG-AFTRA (Actors Guild), which means that if the union leaders can’t reach an agreement with the AMPTP they will strike starting July 1st. What does this mean for writers? Well. If the WGA had the full support the DGA and SAG it would probably result in the AMPTP coming to an agreement with all the guilds faster. But since now it is just SAG, and the strike in general seems to be losing some momentum, it looks like we are in it for a long haul. It’s predicted that SAG will reach an agreement after a couple weeks and the writers strike will last into the fall. No matter what happens with the other guilds, writers are standing strong and fighting for their contracts. For more info on the strike, you can read this article!
Now onto some Fred&Dan news! We had such a blast creating our zine Subversive that we are bringing it back babyyy! Issue 2 of the Fred&Dan zine will be called Subliminal. Here’s each of our take on what that means:
Dan: Subliminal is something happening below the surface. Things that are constantly occurring that we might not consciously be aware of. As a writer when I think of subliminal my mind immediately goes to the writing term of subtext, or what is happening within the dialogue or action of a script. What are the characters saying and revealing without putting it into words? There are so many things we do subconsciously every day that reveals a deeper truth to what we actually say and do. For the visual part of my brain, when I think subliminal I think, “what’s lurking underneath?” I imagine bold colors that are hidden right beneath the surface. I hope in this zine we can delve deeper into our psyches and encourage anyone who reads it to look closely at what’s actually being presented. There might be something else there.
Fred: A frog dropped in hot water will jump out, but a frog placed in lukewarm water that is slowly heated up will boil. I truly hate that sentiment but that’s what subliminal means to me. IIt’s a continual consumption of something that overtime we become conditioned to accepting, praising, or even numb to all together. I find the concept of subliminal messaging incredibly interesting because it can be hard to see, but once you do, you can’t unsee it. I do feel somewhat lucky that we live in a time where critical thinking is more (sort of) the norm than it isn't. What I love the most is that with effort, we can unlearn and relearn things. It gives me a sense of power knowing the subliminal messaging we see everyday from ads, to society norms and generational traditions hasn’t fully brainwashed me. As artists we not only capture the human experience but we aim to help process, and sometimes rage against it in an effort to push society forward. Certainly a lofty goal, and not one I’m particularly striving for, but it’s a nice thought anyway. And it makes you think a little doesn’t it?…
We want to ask you, our dear readers, when you see the word subliminal what do you think of? It could be one sentence, an image, or a full meditation on the word.
(Or if you just want to pop into our inbox to say hi that’s cool too. We love messages.)
On The Magic Of Sparking Creativity
Welcome to this weeks installation of Fred&Dan Blog. Coming at you live from Fred and Dan, we’re so excited to start your weekend off with some creative sprinkles.
Dan, how do you spark your creativity?
At times when I'm stuck in a creative rut, it feels like I've never been creative once in my life (even though that is undeniably false). Sometimes, as a writer, you can't necessarily wait for the bolt of creativity to strike you - if you have a deadline or pages due you just have to rely on your instincts and muscle memory to churn out something. But when I do want to supercharge my writing I turn to other creative pursuits to get there. My current favorite is collaging. I have a plethora of film photos, magazine cut outs, stickers, and other ephemera that have been sitting around on my desk. Now to get in a creative mood, I'll collage these together in a journal. It's a great way for me to stop thinking about what I have to do and instead focus on what's in front of me and how to match these things together to create an image. I keep it incredibly low stakes for myself, it's only for me in my journal and I usually surround these images with a normal journal entry. Sparking creativity is going to look different for everyone, but sometimes switching gears and doing a different creative activity without any pressure is just what I need to unlock the writing part of my brain.
And Fred, how do you spark your creativity?
Believe it or not I decided to go to college and pretty much major in creativity, I know, a great way to spend my money. But all jokes aside, I loved majoring in Theatre because one of the many wonderful things I learned was to think different creatively. I learned how to conjure up creativity at the drop of a hat, and to see it as one of the most useful tools in my arsenal when going through life. Creativity has served me in so many ways. It continually feels like a well I pull from that only goes deeper the more I cultivate it. My shortcut to sparking creativity for myself is simple: talking it out. When I want to do something creative I’ve found that if I can get to the root of “why it is important to me” and/or “what feeling am I trying to emote/evoke,” I open the flood gates. I find a safe person who allows me to be myself, no judgment, and I bounce ideas off them. When I don’t have someone to physically talk to, I talk it out by making a mood board with picture or words. It’s so fun because through my writing or pictures I talk about it as if it’s already happened and my creativity takes the wheel showing me what the end result will curate.
Creativity is not just for the artist, it’s for anyone looking to be the change they want to see, to see behind closed doors, and all those other really inspirational quotes about changing your life. Truth be told, to me, creativity is the little bit of magic crackling in the air all around just waiting for you to see it so it can flip your perspective of the world around you.
This is just how Fred&Dan spark their creativity so we’d like to know:
How do you spark your creativity?
On This Season Of...
Welcome to another edition of the Fred&Dan Blog! Hope you’re ready for the gossip this week, in which HBO attempts to destroy a brand they’ve been working on for almost 40 years. (We still love you HBO, pls hire us)
In all seriousness before we get into today’s blog we wanted to address the current state of the writer’s strike.
SAGAFTRA (the actor’s guild) just voted to authorize a strike vote, which means if their contract isn’t agreed upon by June 30th they will also be on strike. And the DGA (director’s guild) seems to be following in the same path, especially after HBOMax (now just Max) got rid of credits in their descriptions and lumped everyone together as “creators.”
Credits aren’t just about accolades, they also determine your pay and how you can potentially move forward in the industry. We as creatives are paid for our creative work and all creatives should be able to be recognized accordingly. Basically, what we want to stress the importance of is that credits and title is a type of currency in this industry.
Back to our regular programming:
On this season of…
Just kidding! But Fred here to tell you all about some really exciting news we have going on over at Fred&Dan Productions.
We’re revamping!
Janette and I have been doing a lot of thinking about what Fred&Dan Productions stands for and what we hope to continue to build and bake into our business. Our mission has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before. To spark creativity, and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways and we want this blog to evolve to be just that. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!
In the spirit of our rebrand we decided to change the name of the blog and after a long and very thoughtful brainstorm session we settled on the incredibly creative, Fred&Dan Productions Blog!
I know, it’s groundbreaking.
For all our loved ones who do like to get our updates on writing, building the business, and selling our scripts, don't worry those will be sprinkled in because this year is really turning out to be a big one!
Before we part, we are concocting our next zine to be published this summer - if you’re interested in participating, feel free to reach out!
SeriesFest Blog!
Hiya! Welcome back to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? It’s Dan here again, reporting back from the week I spent in Denver at SeriesFest.
Let me start off by saying, SeriesFest is the best run festival I’ve ever been to. If there were any hiccups with the festival, it was completely unknown to all of us there in attendance because it really seemed flawless. Coincidence that the festival was founded and run by women? Hmm. I'm going to say no.
I’ve never felt so valued and validated as a creator like I did at SeriesFest. My biggest takeaway from the festival is how much talent is out there existing in the world in the independent space! In our category of Digital Short Series alone, there were 14 projects screened and they all had such high production value - I know soon we’ll all be watching them on TV. I left the weekend humbled and grateful for all the amazing people we met.
The reception for Jennifer & Chicken was even better than I could imagine. When Meg walked out into the lobby after the screening, she was met with applause! We also did a fun Q&A after. I hope they put the Q&A online because I was so nervous I don’t remember anything I said, except for when the moderator asked me how I hope people feel after watching the project and I responded, “horny.” lol.
The ultimate moment is when Meg won Best Comedy Performance in a Digital Short Series on the final day of the festival. We were both in shock! We didn’t even know it was a category we qualified for! I was so overwhelmed while Meg was giving her speech I burst into tears. I mean, I was watching one of my closest friends who has been pursuing acting for as long as I’ve known her (over 10 years) get recognized for her acting. It was emotional!!!! And it was the end of a long week.
From getting kicked out of a festival party (lol, true Jennifer style) and the final night of the festival that took place at Red Rocks Amphitheater in the pouring rain, my time at the festival is one for the books, I can’t wait to share more.
I’m so grateful that Meg to have directed four episodes of Jennifer & Chicken and I’ve loved watching all of the accolades it's garnered over the last few months. We still have a couple more festivals to go (and hopefully more) and I can’t wait to see where this project goes!
Festival Season!
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This blog is coming at you from your girl Dan this week.
This is a big week for me as a producer and director! I’m jetting off to Denver, Colorado for the 9th annual SeriesFest! The webseries I produced & directed last summer, Jennifer & Chicken, is screening in the festival’s Digital Short Series. Jennifer & Chicken is a mockumentary comedy following toxic party girl Jennifer in a DIY reality series co-starring her sweet best friend Chicken. All eight episodes are available on YouTube! Myself and the series creator, Meg Kelly, are going to be networking and doing a Q&A at the festival, while also attending a bunch of other events. If you’re in the Denver area and interested in going you can find more info about the festival and buy individual tickets to screenings here!
I am going to do my best at cosplaying as an extrovert who is not terrified to talk to strangers for the whole next week (AKA I’m going to be channeling my inner Gio the whole time), while spreading the word of Jennifer & Chicken and, of course, Fred & Dan. We have new F&D business cards that I’m excited to pass out! Look for our blog next week about how it all went down, I’ll be spilling all the juicy gossip!
As this is a blog on all things growing a business, film, and the journey through the film industry we wanted to also address what a big week it’s been for our fellow writers. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike this week and consistent crowds of hundreds of people have been picketing outside major studios like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, CBS, Paramount, NBC, and more. Basically, writers aren’t able to make a living wage anymore while CEOs are raking in millions of dollars every year off of writers’ creativity. A corporate greed tale as old as time.
If you’d like to see specifically what the WGA is asking for you can follow the link here for a comprehensive breakdown of WGA “demands” and the AMPTP counter offers.
We, of course, stand with the members of the WGA and we are grateful for their continued fight to not just create a better industry for writers but for all entertainment workers. This is the most popular strike in the union’s history with over a 97% YES vote. What’s more, there are even other unions that are refusing to cross the picket lines for studios, bringing production to a grinding halt faster than studio heads naively anticipated. (quick aside: if one more CEO says that they have “plenty in the can” to wait out the strike I’m going to scream).
I work on a non-scripted CBS show so the strike doesn’t affect us directly, but we film on the same lot as the main Netflix offices and I proudly honk my horn in support of the writers every morning on my way into work. I’ve been frequently posting videos, photos, and strike info on my Instagram if you’d like to see just how strong the support is for this.
If you want to learn more about the strike you can go to the WGA website that offers resources and information.
Thank you for sticking by us these past few months, we can’t wait for you to see what we have planned next. 2023 is turning out to be a big year!
Xoxo Gossip Girl (AKA Dan AKA Janette)
Happy Birthday Dan!!
Welcome back to this weeks installment of Why Aren’t You Famous Yet?! A blog where Janette and I bring you along the journey of writing, building a business, and wading through the film industry. This week’s blog is coming at you from me, Fred, in honor of our very own Dan’s birthday! Enjoy!
Today is the day! The day we at F&D get to celebrate our Co-Founder Janette! Writing these blogs has been such great fun, and there has been so much rapid growth here at Fred&Dan that we haven’t been able to write blogs every week. But this week, this blog came early! This blog is an ode to my best friend and business partner. I’m so lucky to have her and so grateful we’re on the journey together.
People often ask me for advice on having a business partner because Janette and I have been through a lot in these 7 years and still remain best friends above all. The best piece of advice I can give anyone going into business with someone they know or don’t know is to pick someone you can without a doubt say you admire.
Admiration for someone to me means you deeply respect them, you trust their instincts, and you are inspired by them. Janette has always been that for me. When we’re in the thick of hard decisions, second-guesses, or disagreements, I always lean on that. I trust without a doubt that she has my back, that her instincts will catch something I don’t, and that we will always make the best decisions together.
So thank you, Janette, for inspiring me to be the best writer I can be. I’m so glad we are always there for each other when things get hard. Oh and thank you for always laughing at our scripts. Years can go by, and I will still text you to ask, “I’m crying, did we really write this? Damn, we’re funny.” Happy birthday, my Dan!
Dreaming Up A Whole World
Hello and welcome back to this week’s installment of Why Aren’t You Famous Yet, a blog where Janette and I bring you along the journey of growing as artists, and entrepreneurs in Hollywood, without being famous lol. This week you’ll be hearing from me, Fred, on how I came up with my idea for my pilot In Time. Read on friend and thanks for being here!
I often have really intense and vivid dreams that usually scare the hell out of me, but also give me ideas for scripts. That’s how my idea for my pilot In Time came around.
I had a dream that I was mid lecture from a man in ceremonial indigenous garb, around a large campfire. He moved his hand in the air in a circular motion and it stirred up the forest floor. When he finished an image appeared, perfectly frozen in air. I asked him what it was, he told me that as carbon rests in the earth it holds the footprint for what it once was. With his abilities, that all people in his time had, he could recreate an image like holographic teleportation. I woke up after that.
I started to see the story unfold in front of me. A future world, so far in the future that the AI wars all our sci-fi media predicted has come and gone, like modern people remembering the fall of Alexandria. A world where we went further than using technology to help us as a species, where instead we learned to manipulate our biochemistry to do more than technology ever could.
We progressed so far that we became reconnected with the earth around us. We learned how to hone it and work with it on a level a Homo Sapien in the 2020’s couldn’t conceptualize. It would resemble an indigenous culture, because industrializing is too detached from the elements this new species needs. We not only unlocked the laws of physics but learned to master them.
I also wanted this script to be grounded in real physics around the current spacetime conversation. I got a bunch of lectures, papers, and books like Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain to help fill in some gaps. You know, I may have even unlocked the secret of time travel… but you'll have to stick around to find out. It’s been a really fun journey learning about a subject I’m super interested in.
After I created this world I had to figure out a way in. A plot line that would allow this world to be built and in the same breath, decimated. By page 10 of a script, you have to completely rip apart the world you’ve built to make room for the adventure to begin.
So I thought about ripping time apart completely. Here is my into for In Time:
Dr. Tayen Bender is always exploring new concepts of time and space as a theoretical physicist in 2023, but recently her dreams have begun to cloud her waking thoughts about what time means. She soon realizes that her dreams aren’t figments of her imagination but rather, messages sent from the future via a mysterious woman named Willow.
On the heels of another apocalypse, Willow’s people may have learned how to master the elements of the earth, possess the ability to manipulate their biochemistry, and bend physics to their will through evolution and unlocking Elementalism as they call it. None of it matters though because with Elementalism came the realization that their time is the end of time as we know it. As her world begins to rip apart literally, Willow resorts to her last option that just might save her and her species. Tayen Bender, a homo sapien from the year 2023 is the mother of Elementalism.
I can’t wait to share more. What’s been so fun is taking a stab at building a whole new world. Janette and I build little worlds for every script that fits into our reality (more or less) so letting my creativity run wild was a real treat.
I know we say this a lot but we can’t thank you enough for being a part of this writing and producing journey with us. We have so much in store that we can’t wait to share. As they say in Hollywood, we’re raising the stakes.
Write What You Want & Write It For You
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? For our next couple blog installments Gio and I are going to be talking about our individual pilots that we’ve been working on! Also, in case you missed it we finally dropped our proof of concept trailer that we were working on for Mean Streak! We sent it out on Tuesday and you can watch it here. Happy Friday <3
Why write individual pilots when we normally do everything as a team? Well a big goal for us as writers - besides owning our own company, making all the movies we want, and generally taking over the world - is to get into a “room.” A room is Hollywood slang for a “writers room” AKA the magical places where writers convene to give us the TV shows we all binge watch! Ultimately we would love to run our own writers room as showrunners, but we should maybe be in one or two before we do that, I guess.
Both of us don’t necessarily feel the pull to TV that other writers do - we love writing features and we think we’re pretty good at it by this point. But it’s a TV world people! And after being told constantly that we need at least one original pilot spec script as part of our portfolio, we decided this would be a project we could tackle as individual writers. An exercise where we could really deep dive into subjects and genres that we are interested in. Of course, we still read our scripts to each other and give each other notes, because we are writing partners and best friends and the success of one of us is the success of both of us.
When Gio and I decided to embark on this journey, I racked my brain for what I could write a whole-ass TV show about. That’s what I love about features, you write your two hours (about 120 pages) and then you type The End and it’s over! But a TV show seems like such a daunting task, a story told over numerous episodes that can rack up to hundreds of hours of TV. Luckily, just like it’s a TV world it’s also a miniseries world! And tackling a miniseries feels so much more doable to me than an ongoing series. And who knows? Big Little Lies and The White Lotus were supposed to be mini series that were so popular that they gave them another season. Which is obviously what’s going to happen to me.
Okay enough rambling Janette, get to the point! When I was 22-years-old I borrowed a book from the library called Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys. Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine. Yes, that is actually the title. Halfway through I went online and bought my own copy, I needed to own it myself. And it is probably my most loved book I have on my bookshelf. It is full of underlines, highlights, and my own quips and observations.
The book is the memoir of Viv Albertine, the lead guitarist of an all female punk band, The Slits, in late ‘70s England. This book is radical to me. It has a lot to do with the timing of when I read it, I was 22 when I picked up the book and Viv was 22 when she first picked up a guitar. I was at a crossroads of my life, I was trying to decide just exactly what direction I was going to take in the entertainment industry. Was I going to go the “creative executive” route, try to get a job as an assistant somewhere and work my way up, or go for broke and go all in as a writer? After reading Viv’s memoir, the choice was decided - for better or for worse I was going to be a writer.
The idea of turning this book into something - a film or tv show - has been on my mind since the first time I read it. I even wrote an opening 10 pages for it all those years ago after I first read it. The problem is, I don’t have the rights. To the book or to Viv’s life or anything. So even if I wrote the script, what would I do with it? I shelved the idea. Until Gio mentioned that we should write our own pilots.
I unshelved the idea of turning Clothes, Music, Boys into a screenplay and have since launched into a very fun journey. It’s very surprising to people, but I actually really love punk music and the mythology and history that surrounds it.
Punk was a flash in the pan. A movement that burst out onto the scene, made a lasting indent on our culture, and was over within 5 years. Viv was there for it all. She saw the Sex Pistols perform to 10 people at Hammersmith College. She was the on and off again girlfriend of The Clash’s guitarist Mick Jones. She was best friends with Sid Vicious before he joined the Pistols and met Nancy. Not only that, but she was a part of one of the most influential female punk bands of the time!! The Slits are one of the few bands from that era who still sound “punk.” The Slits were not as commercially successful so their music hasn’t been tainted by the mainstream. While listening to them, you’re transported to the time of youth unrest in England when bands were a cacophony of sound and music was for everyone.
Punk is a passion of mine in case you couldn’t tell.
I still don’t have the rights to the book. In fact, there is a British production company that bought the rights before the pandemic with the goal of turning it into a TV show, but I haven’t heard any other news about it since. And also fuck it! I’ve been itching to tell Viv’s story for almost 7 years now. I don’t know if anything will come from this pilot, if it will ever get made. But it’s what I’m passionate about and it’s the story I desperately want to tell. People always say “write what you know” but I think it’s so much more important to write what you want and write it for you! The “know” will come through in the emotions that you inject into the characters and the dialogue.
So that’s what I’m currently working on. Along with the dozens of other projects that Gio and I are tackling, of course. I can’t wait to keep you updated and thanks for coming along!
Witness the Impossible - girls pay off their loans in their 20s
It's heeeeerreeeee!
We are so excited to FINALLY be able to share with you our trailer for Mean Streak!
This is a project we started in 2019, and then we took two years off of it (covid, the world ending, general millennial disassociation, etc.) but we decided to pick it back up with the encouragement from all of you to see more of our content! Thanks for that :’)
Reviewing the footage after so much time has passed we thought turning this into a trailer, á la American Pie and Can’t Hardly Wait, was the best way to cut this together and tease our script! Thank you for being patient with us as we put it together… we got some VERY EXCITING news about Mean Streak last week that we can’t share too much about yet, but hopefully there will be more good news soon!
We want to thank everyone who helped us make this! First off, Giovana’s parents who let us film in their house all the time! Second, the good fellas at We Can Swim Productions - Cam Louie and Sven Wikstrom who were our DPs for the project. And also big shout out to Rebecca Pierce, our creative collaborator who helped us look past watching footage of ourselves so we could actually have the courage to edit. Finally, thank you to Kevin Fortney for the incredible voice over for the trailer!
And of course, Caesar the dog. The true star of the show.
Thank you so much for being a part of the ride so far… strap in because it’s about to get even more wild!
In the meantime though, please enjoy and we can’t wait to hear what you think!
Hurry Up And Wait
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? First I would like to apologize for our tardiness in the blog, we really like to be consistent and send things out at the same time every week but sometimes life happens… as I will explain further. In the meantime, we’re happy you’re here!
Maybe you’ve heard of the phrase “hurry up and wait.” It’s an old adage in Hollywood. Basically you need to work fast and put in a lot of hard work, to then wait & see what happens next.
I’ve been working on TV sets for the past two years now and this is a phrase frequently used by the crews - you hurry up to set up the shot, get the lighting right, make sure the props are set, the set is on “lock” (no one is going to walk in and out of the scene who is not supposed to be there), and then you sit for the next 30 minutes to an hour while the scene is actually filmed, the director works with the actors, and we pause in between takes.
I bring it up now, because basically Gio and I spent this week hurrying up to edit together this POC that we have been promising you and we did it! It’s done and it looks great and we have the blog for it drafted and ready to post, but unfortunately we have to wait.
We can’t/don’t want to spill too many beans at this moment, but once we know for sure we can’t wait to share with you everything that’s been happening at Fred & Dan this past week and show you the POC!! We’re hoping we’ll at least be able to share that with you by next week.
Thank you all for staying by us these past few months and for all your feedback on the blogs! We wouldn’t have even had pushed ourselves to put together this POC if it wasn’t for all of your encouragement, so thank you for that :’)
Until next time sweet friends!
Subversion, A Visual Compilation
Hello friends and welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? I know we promised you a Mean Streak POC drop this week but unfortunately mid way through our editing our Dan experienced a tragedy in her life that she needed to take time off for. So instead you’ll be hearing from me, Fred this week about a hugggggeeee announcement we’re stoked to share!
Being an entrepreneur means having an eye on the big picture, being 3 to 5 years ahead while working on what small things will get you there, today. One of Fred&Dan’s pillars is to uplift the voices of creatives that haven’t traditionally been spotlighted.
Enter stage left, the newest addition to our business. We are proud to present a Fred&Dan Production’s ZINE!
Girl what is a zine, you ask?
A zine is a self published small-circulation magazine! Zines started in the ‘70s and ‘80s as fanzines or pieces of media to define the culture of the time, specifically during the punk era, but it can be traced all the way back to the 1930s when people made science fiction and horror fanzines. Basically, it’s a way for people to put out their own form of media without needing permission.
At the end of last year Janette and I sat down and without judgment, filter, or explanation went through any and everything we’d like our business to become. Remember, eye on the big picture. We talked about how we could give space for more artists as a small boutique production company, because at the end of the day, whatever the medium, that’s our goal. One of the things we also talked about is how we love that certain businesses see their lane and say, let’s also do something totally outside of that as well. We love a company that doesn’t subscribe to social norms. Companies like A24, Magnolia, and TeaTime are all trailblazing that going outside of their own boxes type of thing.
So four times this year we will be releasing this virtual zine here and on our website! The zine is a compilation of artists showcasing what the zine’s prompt means to them. Our hope is that this zine will be a curated vibe (as the gen z’s say) that Fred&Dan throws into the ether. We want it to make you see the prompt in a new way, and wholly entertain you. For our first Zine we decided the prompt is subversive.
To subvert is our jam. We may write irreverent scripts but we always write scripts to make you think. To take the constructs that Janette and I find interesting, stupid, or important to exploit and undermine them in an entertaining way. That’s why you can always find a deeper layer to our scripts, yes even the one about the plight of millennials.
We have gone so far as to say that Fred&Dan is irreverent media for the subversive mind. I mean our logo is two old men on a beach eating ice cream! We hope it undermines the men who think they run Hollywood because that is what gets us up in the morning, people!
We’re so excited to show you this new aspect of Fred&Dan and hope you find our chosen artists as awe inspiring as we do.
If you have any questions, inquiries, or want to chat with us about the zine please don’t hesitate to reach out! You can email us through our contact page, or email us at fredanddanprod@gmail.com
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRED!!
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? Today is a very special birthday newsletter for our very own co-founder Fred AKA Giovana! This is truly one of the hardest newsletters I’ve had to edit because I have SO MANY photos of G that I love and it was so very difficult to pick which ones to include. Everyone go wish her a happy birthday!! @gii_mami
January 20th is a very special, important day here in the Fred & Dan offices because it is the birthday of our very own co-founder Giovana!! To speak quite candidly, I have had a very tough week personally but if I learned anything from the past few days it’s how important it is to celebrate and honor the ones we love. Unfortunately, Giovana and I can’t be together on her birthday this year so I thought I’d take a walk down memory lane…
First starting at meeting at LMU and all of our college shenanigans -
To living together post grad and throwing Gio a rager birthday party -
To becoming writing partners, and then business partners, and to all the sets we’ve worked on and been able to call our own -
My yogi goddess and forever favorite yoga teacher -
I love running Fred & Dan with you, but I love being your best friend even more,
Happy Birthday, G! Can’t wait to take over the world with you and celebrate so many more in the future <3
A Tasty Treat (The Script For Mean Streak's Proof Of Concept)
Welcome back to this week’s blog about Mean Streak (A Fred&Dan feature screenplay). This week you’ll be hearing from Fred!
When we last left off Janette and I were in the throes of our Proof of Concept (POC) for the Mean Streak screenplay. As a refresher, we filmed this POC back in 2019 – a real minute ago I know. If you want to read more about it we’ve got past blogs all about it :). You all have made us realize we should really finish the damn thing.
So Janette and I have given ourselves the deadline of Jan 26th to have the POC done to show you all for a blog post. Going through and making edits ourselves has been a real journey… I think we can all agree that hearing your voice played back is like your own personal nails on the chalkboard experience.
As we like to bring you along the winding road of our projects, currently we are pairing down what we filmed all those years ago. In preparation for the Mean Streak POC drop we thought it would only be fitting to first show you the mini script we wrote specifically for this POC. It isn’t part of the Mean Streak script but a smaller script to capture the essence of the screenplay, the main characters Denise and Angel, and the plot. Here it is, enjoy!
