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3 Important Lessons From Producing Over 30 Films by Passionflix CoFounder Tosca Musk

Watch the video interview on Youtube here

Film Courage: Looking at your IMDB [page] you have 31 or so producing credits. I’m sure there are going to be more by the time of this video release. Which production taught you the most?

Passionflix CoFounder Tosca Musk: Wow! Well, I’ve learned a lot on so many of the different movies that I’ve done, so it depends on what did I learn?

I’ve made a lot of movies and I think that the ones that have taught me the most are I made a movie called HAVENHURST (that one taught me a lot). It was a horror to me, it was horror film. It was very difficult and I realize there are many things that I will not do again, so that’s a great thing to learn. Great movie, the movie ultimately ended up being very good, but the experience for me as a producer was not a great one.

Photo courtesy of Passionflix

The things that I’ve learned the most, I mean I’ve made a lot of movies. I think ultimately the best lesson that I’ve learned (which is from making the Passionflix movies) is that I need to enjoy the experience from start to finish because it is very hard to make a movie and it costs a lot of money. And if you’re not enjoying it, then there is no reason to do it. So I learned that from making these movies prior to this (prior to Passionflix) realizing that (from hindsight) I did not enjoy making a lot of those movies and I do enjoy making the Passionflix movies. They’re fulfilling, they make me happy, I can’t wait to make the next one.

Whereas prior to that I was not enjoying them, it was more of a job. Not to say they were bad experiences, I made some great movies and I really enjoyed the people and fortunately now with Passionflix I get to bring so many of those people on to my productions. But sometimes when you are working for other people and you’re getting notes from them, they’re not necessarily the notes that I would probably…how can I say this? Sometimes their interpretation of what the movie should be is not my interpretation of what the movie should be and that is filmmaking. I mean that’s the creative process. I don’t necessarily want to show women in a certain light and so I didn’t enjoy that specific film. And now I get to show a woman in the light that I like to show them, so it makes me happy. I just like to have positive experiences in film, I think that’s the important thing.

Photo courtesy of Passionflix

The Tiki Bar TV which was a podcast that I did (a video podcast that I did) was a perfect example of making something and really enjoying it every single time you made it because it was funny and the people were great and so now I get to do that again.

Please do come to one of our sets when we make the next one. We are laughing and joking and having the best time. The crew that I have on all of my movies are almost the same crew for the last year. They just come, they transplant back, they all come to my new sets because we have great experiences and it’s just so much fun.

Film Courage: Environment is so important.

Tosca Musk:  Environment is vital. Especially it’s high-pressure, it’s time-sensitive, and you have to be creative within these confines. And we don’t have the luxury (yet) of being able to say “Oh, we’ll just do it tomorrow. We’ll just pick it up and let’s just lengthen the time frame of this movie.” We need to shoot these movies in 15, 16 days and we need to get them out and we have fans that we release the movie on one day, the next day they say “Where’s the next movie?” It takes 5 months to make a movie at minimum! And so we are trying very hard to get them out as quickly as possible. So we need to make the experience fun and we need to make sure that we are all in this positive, creative environment so that we can create the best movie.

Photo courtesy of Passionflix

Film Courage:  Sure and too if you are doing sensitive scenes where you know maybe they [the actors] are not nude but still it’s sensitive for an actor to have it where you feel safe [on set]. That’s what I was saying [earlier], I felt that when I watched the [Passionflix] behind the scenes footage, just kind of a feeling of being safe.

Tosca Musk: Thank you! Yeah, it’s very important that the actors are comfortable on our set and my crew is extremely respectful and every single time we come to any of these intimate scenes, I have a conversation with my actors. I need to make sure that they are comfortable. We will rehearse everything with clothes on, we will then move forward to starting to take clothes off. The sets are closed and we’re constantly talking about where a hand should be, what it should be. This is not just willy-nilly “Go ahead and try things!” We’re very specific on where the camera is, what we’ll do, where we are following hands and what I want those hands to do. And I have to make sure that both my male and female actors feel comfortable with the intimacy that I need to portray.

Question for the Viewers: What’s the main lesson your last production taught you?

 

 

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