[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Rick Marshall of the Daily Gazette, and this is the martial arts podcast in which I talk to artists around New York's capital region about their work, their inspiration, and the experiences that connect us all, regardless of where we call home. In the last episode, I spoke to Troy based musician Scott Wilmer, the founder of the song City performance series and ink songwriter Retreat. This time around, I talked to Saratoga based filmmaker Spencer Sherry, writer and director of the Monkey, based on Stephen King's short story of the same name, which was filmed locally and premiered in May 2023. With the monkey headlining a slate of locally produced short films screening at Proctor's Theater on September 26, Sherry joined me for a chat about making movies, the local filmmaking community, and his own path to the big screen.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Spencer, before we discuss the monkey, let's talk a bit about your journey. Everyone seems to follow a different path when it comes to making movies. How did you find your way into filmmaking?
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Slowly and with plenty of pivots. So I went to school at St. Rose right out of high school. I grew up around, like, Cooperstown, Oneonta area, and loved watching movies back then with my friends. That was a big way that we bonded but never really thought that it was something attainable that we wanted to do and tried. School at St. Rose, rest in peace.
Went back to Oneonta for a little bit, dropped out.
Then I ended up back in Albany hanging out with some friends, and decided that I think that maybe the film thing's a little, I'll give it a shot. Why not? I'll go to school at UAlbanye. They don't have a great film program or any film program, but they have a couple classes, so I'll do communications. And one of my teachers there, Shira Siegel, was, she invited up a assistant director producer from the city to do a screening and a lecture for some kids. And he was on the board of the director's guild training program. And so I just globbed onto him after the presentation and was like, I'll take the test now. How do I get in? And he was like, well, it's not until September and it's may right now, so pump the brakes. And here's my email, though. Let's talk, and I'll let you know. And we batted some emails back and forth. And then he said, you know what? I'm working on a Netflix movie in New York. If you want to come down, if you can be there for seven weeks, I'll just give you a PA job on it, production assistant job and so I was like, first week of shootings, finals week. Okay, peace. I got what I came for. And so then I dropped out for the second time to run down and join the film circus in New York. And so that's where I started working on big budget sets for about a year. And then I came back upstate to the capital region to try to do my own stuff, because working on the big stuff is great, but the city is very expensive, and it's not really the ladder that you want to be climbing if you want to make your own stuff, it just makes you very good at making other people's movies. So I came back up here to try to do whatever I could to make my own movies.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: You know, what's amazing about your story is that I followed a amazingly similar path into journalism. So that's a story for another time. But still, I love hearing this because you and I followed similar paths into finding a way to do the things that we love. I do need to ask, though, do you remember the first film that made you say, hey, I think I'd like to try doing this because it feels like there was a turning point for you.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So, actually, one of my closest childhood friends, Ryan Jenkins, who wrote and directed the other movie, we're going to talk about anomaly.
We were sitting in his mom's house watching Ash versus Evil Dead, which is the new Evil Dead show.
And we were starting to get into directors and writers and who's making stuff and what else have they done? And so we loved the show, and we were like, but we know evil dead. We know Sam Raimi. He did the Spider man movies. Oh, that's right.
And then found out that the first evil Dead film, which is now a huge horror franchise, the first film came out when Sam Raimi was 21, and we were 21, and we were like, oh, okay, we better get our butts into gear if we want to try this. It is possible at this age. And let's just go see if we can find out a way to give it a shot. So the Sam Raimi discussion about how young he was when he started the biggest horror franchise in recent memory, that's what kicked us into gear.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Sam Raimi is not a bad person to hold up as the model.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Well, what made you choose the monkey as your first film project?
[00:04:59] Speaker C: A little bit of ignorance.
So Stephen King has been doing a program called the Dollar Baby program since the eighties, and actually, I think it just ended this year. And he lets young filmmakers adapt some of his work for free.
The only caveat being they can't profit from it.
So I thought that, I don't know how I got this in my head that all of his short stories were up for grabs for this program. So during COVID quarantine, started picking up some of his books again, I've been a big fan of his for a while and reading his short stories. Read the monkey. Loved it. Thought it was so cool, affordable. Cause the monster is just a toy. And it had some fun drama. And I thought of a cool way, I thought to adapt it and modernize it a little bit. And so I spent two months writing the whole thing out, developing it, and then I went to apply to the program. And turns out it's a very short list of stories that he allows people to do. And they're kind of like the c list, d list short stories. And so it's interesting because I thought.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: That it was all of the short stories too. I remember reading about the dollar baby program. I thought it was anything that wasn't full novel lengthen, this would be.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know how I got that in my head. I don't know if I just erroneously read that somewhere on an article or what, but yeah. So then I put it away for about a year and was like, all right, that was a fun exercise, writing exercise. And then I just kept coming back to it. I wrote a couple other shorts. I didn't produce any of them, but I kind of went through a little bit of a writing phase.
And then I kept coming back to, it was like, this is really cool. And I started reaching out to some old industry contacts that like, basically the producers, the above the line people on stuff that I've worked on in the city, and just said, hey, if you were to try to get the rights to something, who would you talk to? What would that look like? And they gave me some tips and pointed me in the right direction. And so I cold called Stephen King's talent agent with a very vague voicemail.
My name is Spencer Sherry. I'm from New York. I want to option one of your client short stories. Call me back.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: I'm sure they've never received a call.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: Like that, never received anything like that. But I figured that they had to follow up, and they did. And I just, at the time, I wanted to know how much an actual option would be an actual contract, because I didn't think that you could do it for the dollar baby stuff. And after he realized who I was, which was a nobody, and what I wanted, which was a Stephen King story, he said, nope, no, thanks. Go do. We're not even gonna give you a number. Go do one of the dollar baby ones. And then, so I kind of tail between my legs, emailed him back and said, I thought that's what I was doing. I got into this cause I thought I wanted to do that the first place. I don't have money. You caught me.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: You appealed to the humanity.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Yes. Yep. And I was like, I'll do one of the free ones. If I could have the same contract. You give it for the dollar babies for this, I'd be very, very happy to do that. I just love the story and would love to try it. And the next day, there was a contract in my inbox from Stephen King's other assistant that runs the dollar baby program saying, congrats, good luck. We're not usually allowed to give this one out of. Have fun.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Wow. That's fantastic.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Well, before we get into the making of it, for anyone who might not be familiar with the story of the monkey, how would you describe it?
[00:08:19] Speaker C: A cymbal clapping wind up monkey toy keeps appearing in these kids lives, and every time it claps, it cymbals, usually on its own or unless you turn the key, somebody dies. Somebody around you dies. So it's very like talking. Tina, Twilight zone.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Creepy toys.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: That's a creepy toys. It's kind of like a harbinger or bringer of doom, depending on how you look at the story.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Well, when you decide to make the movie, what were some of the first big steps you had to take to build some forward momentum? It seems like just getting a film off the ground and rolling is a really big task for a lot of filmmakers.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah.
Was buoyed for sure by the Stephen King name. And being able to tell people that I got this opportunity and this kind of high profile, first ever, one of a kind opportunity. I'm the first person to ever adapt that story officially, which is very cool.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: You are beating. I know there's a feature film coming out.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: You're ahead of me.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Get in. I just barely beat out James Wan and Osgoode Perkins. Yeah, that was.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Take that, James Wan.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: That was an interesting day, hearing that. Cause that news broke three days after I premiered mine in Saratoga.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Really?
[00:09:37] Speaker C: And so it was very, very hard to process at the time what that meant for me and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing or what or nothing. And now I recognize it's a very good thing. I can kind of ride those coattails a little bit, but, yeah. So at the time it was trying to promote it, and I first tried. I had a weird summer that summer. I got the contract in June of 2021. And then I had a weird summer where I fell into a bunch of reality tv where someone knew I did landscaping for a living, and they needed a greens department for their reality home renovation garden renovation show in New Jersey. And so they asked if I could come down for a week and help.
And then that led to other weird reality jobs. And so while I was working, I started to kind of poking at people and seeing if any of these, you know, legitimate tv folks would want to take a crack at stuff with me. And nobody really bit.
So then I came back home in the fall and was like, cricket, if I can't get anybody interested right out of the gate, I'm just going to announce it to the capital region and my friends and family and see where it goes.
So I did that, and I started an Indiegogo campaign.
One of my friends up here who makes films, Joe Gettle, who I methadore a couple years prior, he had made some films that the Times Union covered and the Gazette covered, and so he helped me get a little bit of that initial press, but, yeah, but then we ran an Indiegogo campaign that raised about $30,000 in two months. And then from there, I was able, I did so much promotion and so much engagement and trying to get people to really be a part of things I'm a big proponent of, especially after making these last couple films of the small town community and what you're able to accomplish and the audience you're able to reach and the support you have up here is just totally unparalleled compared to somewhere like New York or LA. And so I really learned to utilize that and to try to make people feel and truly be a part of the films that are getting made because they take so long. And a lot of the fundraising for movies is give us money for our film. Thank you. We'll see you in a year and a half, and then we'll charge you a ticket to see it. You know, and there's no engagement, there's no interest, there's no real investment throughout this long process for the people that are supporting you. And so, yeah, so I did a lot of fundraisers. I did a fundraiser at the funny bone because the manager there said, sure, we'll bring in a comedian, just like, we'll make this a benefit for you guys. We're trying to do more stuff like that. I was going to do a, a jeopardy game at pint size that I created, and then we all got Covid, and so that got canceled. But just trying to find best laid plans. Yeah, just trying to find a lot of ways and a lot of angles to get people aware of it and supporting it and to come be a part of it.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Well, it's a small pond here, but it is a very rich and fertile pond from what I have discovered over the time growing up here and now learning more about the communities up here. How did you assemble the cast for it? Because if I understand correctly, a lot of the cast were local, too.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: Yeah, almost the entire cast is. I think there was only three people that weren't for the leads. I did kind of do diligence and put out something on actors access and just tried to make sure that those were rock solid.
A lot of local people applied. A lot of people from New York applied. I ended up using for Melissa, one of the main characters.
Her name's Lily Moran, and she was the stand in for the lead actress on the first film I ever worked on in New York, and now she is my lead actress in my first film. So that was a really nice kind of full circle serendipity, and she was great, and she actually helped me with a lot of the actors access, posting, and audition process. And then we came around, and I was like, I had her audition for just for the hell of it. And then I was like, oh, you should be in the movie.
This makes sense. This is great. And she was wonderful.
And then, yeah, then a lot of local people I'd known kind of some already through. Through the film network, but I just put out local casting calls and would get submissions where I'd recognize some of the names and go, oh, yeah, I know you. And so, yeah, and I'd worked with people like John Romeo before on somebody else's film.
Dirty sweater Productions, which is Kyle Kleeg and Charity Buckbee, are making movies in the area, and they will. They met me, and they were like, can you act? And I was like, sure. And then, so I've acted in a couple of their films as big, brooding henchmen mostly, but I worked with John Romeo on that and met him there. And I said, I need you and your voice to be in this movie. But, yeah, so most of the cast is local. The whole crew is local.
Yeah. And then the other three, the lead, Mark Koenig, came from New York City, and now we are very good friends, and I am going to be a part of his wedding in June. So a lot of fast, fast friendships and. Yeah. And I'm still connected with everyone that worked on that movie with me.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: What about the shooting locations?
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Was it shot locally?
[00:15:04] Speaker C: All shot locally? Yep. Oh, everywhere from Amsterdam to Glens Falls to Grafton Lake area.
Troy, Albany.
Yeah, we went all over the place. Saratoga. Yeah. So there's about twelve or 13 locations in there.
And almost all of them. This is part of the community that I'm talking about. Almost all of them were nothing, were totally free. And the people that owned them or ran them were just so supportive of local art. And I'm sure the Stephen King name was fun, too, but, yeah. And it made the movie possible to be able to shoot all over this region. And the rich locations and backdrops and really cool places.
So, yeah, I'm very, very grateful for all those people that let us make the movie look as cool as it does.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Where was the lake shot? The lake scene shot the lake was at.
[00:15:59] Speaker C: Originally was at the Dunham reservoir out by Grafton Lake. And we had all pulled up there for the day to shoot in the beginning of July. And about 2 hours in State park, police showed up, because apparently it's not county property, it is state property, and it's attached to Grafton. And so they showed up, said, nope, guys, you gotta get permits and come back if you wanna do it. They were nice about it by the end.
And I coincidentally had kept a meeting right across the road with the abandoned camp Olam, the JCC Jewish community Center's day camp that they used to use. And it's been sitting there for a while, untouched. And I knew that we would need a less public, more controlled environment. For some of the shots we were gonna do on the water. So I kept a meeting with them for lunchtime that day. Figured I'd go over. And then I went over with a crew of 1520 people and said, hey, actually, could we be in here today and shoot this today? And they, to their credit, were just like, all right, whatever. Here's the key. Bring it back to the office when you're done. And then since then, I had to call them three or four more times to go back there. And every single time, they're like, great.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:11] Speaker C: Show up. Show up to the Albany office. We'll give you the key and just go have fun. Do whatever you want. Thanks for using it. This is so cool. We ended up doing a screening there after the movie was done, just to like, hey, come, come. And it was really fun to see a lot of their members come back and see the camp that they had grown up going to a lot of them are adults now, so that was really fun for them. That was another nice full circle moment.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's wonderful, because I knew that that scene, that picturesque landscape, there had to be somewhere local. It's good to know where it was. Many of the filmmakers I've talked to have told me that they learned some big lessons on their first projects. Often some difficult lessons sometimes. What were some of the big lessons you learned in making the monkey? What do you know now that you wish you probably could have told yourself back when you started this?
[00:17:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I wish I had.
I produced and directed at the same time, and that was challenging. I went into the project actually being so overwhelmed by both of those jobs that before we started shooting, I was like, I'm never directing again. I'm just going to put stuff together. I like the producing, I like the back end of things and the organization of it all and the structure and the puzzle, piecing and trying to make things work and figure, solve problems, put out fires.
And directing was just closing your eyes and imagining the whole movie in your head beforehand and then writing it down and drawing out storyboards, which I'm very, very bad at. I draw like a child. And so, so, yeah, so going into the movie, I was like, I'm not directing ever again. And I did it because it's a Stephen King movie. I'm not just gonna write one. I wanna really make it mine. And then about three days into shooting, it was going very, very well, and I was having a lot of fun and I went, oh, okay, this directing's really fun and I get it and I like it. So now moving forward, I don't wanna do both jobs ever again. Worrying about how a specific take is coming out and how an actor is delivering a line and thinking in the back of your brain, where's everybody parking tomorrow? What are we eating for lunch today? Who's doing it? Like, it's exhausting.
So, yeah, so I would say for sure that's one of the bigger, bigger things that I've learned.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Hi, it's Rick again. The rest of this interview is coming up, but I just wanted to take a short break to tell you that if you like this podcast and want to support it, please make sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and leave a review.
This isnt the only Gazette podcast either. Gazette sports editor Ken Schott has been interviewing people in and around the Capital region sports scene for more than 400 episodes now in his parting Shots podcast. And if youd like to stay up to date with everything happening in the region and beyond, be sure to subscribe to the Daily Gazette or sign up for the Gazettes newsletters, which deliver links to the top stories across the Gazette family of newspapers directly to your email. Okay, now back to this episode of the martial arts podcast.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: The old wind up cymbal smashing monkey toy is such an important part of the story here. How did you acquire this monkey for the film? Because it's not like these old toys are sort of readily available and you can find them anywhere. And it looks so very authentic to that erade.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: Sure. Well, because it is, because they're real ones from the fifties. They're called Daishin Jolly chimps. I think that particular brand. And I was just, I went on eBay, I was just looking through the creepiest ones I can find, found that particular style, and said, this is for sure the one.
So my first one I bought off of eBay before even the Indiegogo campaign started, because I needed to make a video and I needed to try to entice people with it.
I bought one.
I bought one before all that started. And then originally what I wanted were three or four of them. And to have a prop person or production designer subtly change all their facial expressions to one will look a little bit angrier, want to look more menacing, want to look plain, want to look happy. And so that was my original plan going in.
And then a guy in Schenectady, where we are now, who works over in the tech, one of the tech park, he reached out to me because he saw a casting call and said, I'm not an actor, but I do have one of these monkeys kicking around, and I think that I can probably get it to work. I'm a mechanical engineer, and if you have any other monkeys that you have, and mine at the time didn't work, he was like, bring him in and I'll see if I can make him work. And so I went to his office, his laboratory, and he cracked him open. And the one that he had was perfectly beat up. It had a little bit of rust and a little hole in the head. Its eyes were all glazed over, its clothes were a little bit more torn and just looked crappier. And so I was like, oh, okay, well, this is, what if you dropped this toy into the bottom of a lake in a bag full of rocks for 30 years, it might come up looking like this. And so rather than all these minute facial expressions, just thought, let's just use three different monkeys. And I ended up getting three, two of them worked, so I creatively knew where to put the ones that worked to make the scenes work. So, yeah, so all of the actual clapping that you see in the movie is just real monkeys working.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: The film's been screening at film festivals and such since its release. What's that experience been like for you, seeing this project you labored over for so long on a theater screen in front of audiences?
[00:22:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been amazing. It's been so cool. A lot of it has been kind of self produced, so to speak, screenings and tours, because the movies. And it came in at 60 minutes, which is a very, very strange length for any film.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: I was thinking about that because it's not quite what I usually gauge a short film at, but it's not full feature length either.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Technically, it is a feature at 60 minutes, but it was not supposed to be. It was supposed to be 45 minutes or less. And then I put it all together, thought that I would hit that mark, and then it ended up being an hour, and I was like, I don't know what I would cut out of this. I don't know. I feel like you take one scene out and then everything else kind of is dependent on that.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: It's a tight 60 minutes.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think it moves pretty quick. It doesn't feel like 60 minutes when you're watching it, but, you know.
So, yeah, so we did a lot of just self produced stuff, and especially, too, is that you can't make any money off of it. And so had to rely on, again, back to the community of people that are down to show it for no money, for no tickets, and just if they're a theater, take concessions.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: That's part of the stipulations in the dollar base.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Yeah, part of the stipulations is it's just non. It's non commercial, so no one can profit from it and raise money for the production and pay people, which I did, and marketing and props and everything that goes into a movie. But, yeah, couldn't personally profit, so I'm the only one that didn't get paid to do it. And, yeah, and if we were to screen it, I couldn't charge people. So we did.
We premiered it at Saratoga Arts, where we had three screenings back to back of 100 people each. It was like a wedding. I mean, everyone in my life, all the way from Texas down in the city, like, people came out. It was so cool. We put people up for the weekend and found hotel rooms. And I also work at a Holiday inn up in Saratoga, bartending. So they gave us a great deal on a block of rooms for all the monkey guests.
And then since then we've done the Malta drive in, has played it. That was an unbelievably cool experience getting to see it on that biggest drive in screen in the region.
And then the first real movie theater it played in was the magic lantern up in Maine, Bridgeton, Maine, where the Shining premiered in 1980. And so that was a cool experience that I got to share with little Stephen King history and bring it to, he's a Maine guy, so bring it to his people in his neck of the woods. And then because of that, someone from Maine PBS was in the audience and she asked if they could show it on tv and broadcast it through the whole state around last Halloween. And so that was another just momentous occasion for the film and an opportunity. Wow.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Have you been able to get a copy of the film to Stephen King?
[00:25:42] Speaker C: He's got it on a desk and a pile of mail somewhere. I have not gotten a thumbs up or thumbs down. So I'm hoping that the James wan version coming out in February will shake the tree a little bit and maybe, maybe he'll fall out.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Well, you have a screening of the monkey coming up at Proctor's as part of a celebration of locally made short films. Does it feel special when you bring a film home like that?
[00:26:06] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It feels great. I know that a lot of people here have been following along, if they haven't seen it already. A lot of people came out for the local screenings that we've done.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: You did one at UAlbany as well, right?
[00:26:20] Speaker C: Yeah, UAlbany film Fest last year, which was fun, which is, they invited me again. I haven't gotten into a lot of festivals because the length is weird programming. An hour long movie takes the place of between four and six other shorts or it makes it weird for the block. So I think that a lot of places just didn't program it. Salem horror did, which was awesome. We got to go to Salem, New York, Salem, Massachusetts, creepy capital of the world. And so. Yeah. And then you, Albany, around the same time, reached out and said, hey, we would love to have the special thing and invite your movie to play. And so, so that just felt great. It's really, really cool when people in this region, they helped it get made and now they're coming out to support it again and seemingly like it, which is also very nice and validating.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: That's a nice bonus. Well, switching it up here. I know you also produced another short film that you just mentioned anomaly, can you tell listeners a little bit about that project? Because you were on the producer side of this one and didn't take a all of the other aspects, which felt great.
[00:27:26] Speaker C: It was really great to do all the prep work, all the legwork, and then on the day action. And I go, oh, okay, I'm good. Make the movie. I'll be downstairs putting together something else right now. I'll be on laptop working. And so no. So anomaly was written and directed by my best friend from high school, Ryan Jenkins, who is the aforementioned friend on the couch. And he developed this story. It's about a magician. And he developed this story with a particular magician we've seen on tv in mind. His name's Eric Mead. He lives out in Colorado, one of the best coin magicians in the world right now.
And he was on Penn and Teller's fool us years ago, and we did a deep dive into magic and the show and watched all these episodes. And Eric's performance just really stood out to us. And so Ryan started writing this character with Eric's style and pattern impishness in mind. And then when he was done writing and he sent to him, because his emails just were on his website, and a couple weeks later, he got a response back, and Eric was like, hey, this is really cool. And I would. I'm saying yes to some weird stuff lately, and I would love to come out and be a part of this if you'd have me. And so he flew out from Colorado, and we shot in the cahose music hall for three days. Another just amazing playhouse stage company. Owen Smith, who runs it, just gave us free reign. Thought it was so cool. Had helped that he heard of Eric Mead and was a fan, but yeah. And so we were crawling all over that music hall for three days, transforming their lounge room off of the bar area into a magician's lair dressing room. And then the final night, we threw a show.
Talk about community being a part of your work. We threw a show where we charge tickets and you could come. And it was like any other kind of entertainment where we would make a movie around you because we needed shots of audience members. And so to get extras, said, come, we will have a magician and escape artist there entertaining in between shots instead of the usual background actor sitting for hours and hours and hours waiting for something to happen.
And, yeah, so he did about a two and a half hour long show where I gave Ryan five minutes from action to cut, moving on to get the shot that he needed. And then they would have to go set up in the balcony or go backstage or wherever it was to set up the next shot. And then an escape artist would come out on stage. And so it was just this cool rolling show. Eric was acting. We got to interview him a little beforehand and after, and, and, yeah, we ended up getting 140 people to come out and raised half the budget in one night. So that's the kind of producing I enjoy doing and I'm able to do when I'm not also worried about how to make the movie and how to make shots look good, so.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Well, that is a win. Last thing I want to ask you about here is your involvement with the local film community, because I know you have taken a big role with the local film community, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: Yeah, the 518 film network, which is a. Started as just kind of a. Well, that. A network, a database that other filmmakers in the area, Michelle Polysinski and Micah Khan, started back in, I think, in 2020, just looking for other people to make movies with in the capital region. And then what they thought was a small little group of friends that they could tackle projects together with turned into upwards of 200 people that turns out are in the region. And then we became a nonprofit in 2023. And I'd been a very active member up until that point, co hosted some fundraisers and helped them engage with the community. And we took a little break after getting nonprofit status to, well, form a nonprofit and reorganize ourselves. And it was me and about seven or eight other people and formed a board, and I was elected board president. And so now I am kind of running this now. I think since our relaunch as a nonprofit and new website and new membership stipulations, I think we've got about 100 people now and getting everybody back, and we do monthly members mixers. As long as you are.
As long as you have a credit on some film, could be an indie film, could be a big budget film. And you are a resident of the 518, and that is kind of loose. It goes down to Kingston, goes up to Lake George, goes out to Amsterdam, maybe a little farther. As long as you're a resident of our upstate New York area and you've worked on films before, you can join us. And all it is, is four volunteer hours a year of just maybe sitting at a table. Basically, it's a, if we call on you, please answer and please be active and help the community. But yeah, and so we do monthly mixers with our members. We're setting up screenings right now to show some work. We have a kind of a fun partnership with Lake Placid Film Festival. They give us a block every year to go up and show our kind of best of the best in the area. And we're starting workshops that are going to be open to the public to get more people interested in how to make movies.
Yeah, there's just so we're growing strong and hopefully we'll continue to make stuff in the area. Show off. Show off what we got.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Well, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for talking with me here. I'm looking forward to doing so again for your next film, as long as you promise to give me a shout out in your Oscars speech.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: Deal.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: All right, well, what's next for you, and where can people find out more.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: About what you're up to?
[00:33:14] Speaker C: I have the Instagrams and facebooks for there's the monkey. There's anomaly. I think the monkey is the monkey official film on Facebook or, sorry, on Instagram. And anomaly is anomaly short film. So if you want to follow along with either of the movies, the 518 film network is at five one eight, Filmnetwork. Five one eight, filmnetwork.org. if you want to check out our website and for me personally, we might go into production on something this winter. Ryan works commercial construction and landscaping, and so his winters are very dead and that's when we try to make movies. So we might do something of his. But also there's an anomaly feature idea kicking around in a pitch deck and a script. And so we are trying to get that off the ground, maybe get some eyes on that if anomaly keeps doing as well as it has.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: Thanks again for talking with you, Spencer. This has been a really enjoyable conversation.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Thanks, Rick. Appreciate it.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: This has been the martial arts podcast with guest Spencer Sherry. You can find more information about the monkey and anomaly short films on Instagram and Facebook, and you can learn more about the local film community at five one eight, filmnetwork.org dot Proctors theater will screen the monkey as part of its local lens event on Thursday, September 26. Thanks for listening to this episode of the martial arts podcast. If you like what you heard and want to hear more, make sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. And for more coverage of the region's arts and entertainment scene, head to DailyGazette.com and Nipper Town. This episode was produced by me, Rick Marshall for the Daily Gazette. If there's a local art story or artist you'd like to hear more about on this podcast, you can contact
[email protected] or via social media.
