Muse Storytelling

No email. No agent. Just postcards and phone calls. That's how Spike Lee built one of the most important films in American history.

Three years of writing postcards before his first feature got made. He didn't pitch strangers he enrolled people who already believed in what he was building. $175,000 raised that way turned into $8.5 million back.

Mid-production on Malcolm X, the money ran out. He made a list and called every name on it, cold. "People responding. No one I asked declined."

If you're a filmmaker sitting on a project you haven't asked anyone to believe in yet, you don't have to figure it out alone.

Comment CALL and I'll guide you through building your own enrollment conversations.

A studio owner asked me the best question I've heard all year.

"How do I change the engine while the car is driving down the highway?"

Twenty years in. Forty-five percent of his week in an edit bay.

Here's what's really happening. He doesn't see the engine as something he runs. He thinks the engine is him.

My friend, you are not the engine. You were never the engine.

Comment MACHINE and I'll show you how to build the hybrid.

One hour of my time makes $1,250. I spent this one on bourbon.

Read the slides. Your buyback rate is what you pay yourself per hour divided by four. Mine is $18.75. Anything under it is not my job.

My help costs $16.81 an hour blended, 70 hours a week. With a system doing half the work before a human touches it, $8.41. Every hour I hand off at $8.41 is an hour I can sell at $1,250.

Comment BUYBACK and I will DM you the free interactive guide with the calculator, the 20 task audit and the VA hiring playbook.

Fully functioning app, no subscriptions, nothing to buy.

Just take back that time…

Thanks Dan Martell for your brilliance in the Buy Back rate. Changed my life.

Before you judge a filmmaker for using AI, read this.

AI will never make you a better filmmaker. It can only make you a faster one.

Meet Rourke. Consults for North Face, Mister Beast, Vans, Timberland. 100+ million views teaching AI to filmmakers.

His take: "Creatives don't want an agent to make something for them. AI can help tell your story, but not automate the whole thing. The thing comes from within."

North Face won't generate someone on a mountain real human feats stay real. AI's used for preproduction only. "The human part is never going to go away."

He shared his full story live on today's bootcamp. A lot of people walked away seeing AI differently.

Comment MACHINE and I'll help you take back half your time in post. In one hour.

Filmmaker, I know you're skeptical about AI. So was she.

Madeline Salazar built videos that hit 90 million views. Newsweek called it AI.

She corrected them. The concept was hers. The lighting was hers. The Photoshop came first.

She protected her craft when the machine would have given her the better story. Think about how rare that is right now.

Story and perspective. That's what's more important than the AI. Always was. Always will be.

The ones winning with it aren't using everything. They're using the right things, built the right way.

Comment JUDGE and I'll send you the cheat sheet.