Filmmakers and Film Independent Members Canyon Prince and James Thomas both recently completed their debut features with their own production company, Two Guys and a Film. Both of them were experienced in the web world, and had a number of web series and music video credits under their belt, but each had a feature they wanted to make, so they decided to start their own production company and make the movies together.

“It was sort of a now-or-never situation,” Thomas said. “The reason we decided to kind of go at it ourselves, instead of trying to pitch the films to studios or trying to get a major financier on board, is that we knew that, for us as filmmakers, we needed to actually get these done, and you can just get stuck sometimes in development. So we put our minds together, and went and did it.”

“We just figured out, since neither [James nor I had ever] directed a feature before, that that was the important thing,” Prince explained. “And you know, once we each had a feature, then we could go after bigger money and bigger names and stuff like that, but that kind of became the prime focus of these first two films—just getting out and getting it done, so then we’d have that calling card for the next round.”

Creatively, Prince and Thomas have a loosely but effectively structured collaboration process: whoever comes up with an initial idea is that project’s point person throughout development and production, eventually directing. The other guy gives notes and feedback throughout, and when it comes time to shoot, he’s producing.Two days after wrapping Prince’s indie drama Hard Sun, Two Guys began shooting Thomas’s action horror film Run Like Hell. “It’s hard building that momentum,” Prince said, “but once the momentum gets going, it’s really hard to stop. So we decided to just shoot them straight through—we used a lot of the same locations, a lot of the same actors, a lot of the same crew—and that even gave us a selling point when we were going to raise money.” Prince and Thomas found that the double-or-nothing financing appealed to investors: if one movie flopped or fell apart in production, they still had their money on another.

Prince and Thomas faced some obstacles in finding distribution and getting traction on the festival circuit. “We realized that this town is built and runs on name actors,” Thomas said. “Trying to sell the film, it’s all about who was in the movie, so it’s how do you still sell a really good indie film, or a really good horror film with no names in it?” Both films did sell, but the lack of star power made for a more difficult process. Prince added, “one thing that we find in this town is that everybody’s so closed off with how they did it and how they got there and things like that…From the company side, one of the big struggles was having to learn all of it. The information isn’t readily available. It was a lot of James and I just figuring out how and what to do.”

After making these two very different movies, Prince and Thomas had to really think about their company’s identity and the films they were trying to make under this united banner. “We were trying to figure out, what was this company?” Prince recalled, “and we decided it was more about this gritty, realistic, indie kind of vibe—[that’s] what Two Guys is. You know, in your face, not pulling any punches—because that’s the element that both films have in common.”

When asked what advice they would give to other independent filmmakers, Thomas suggested they turn their shorts into features, and also insisted on the importance of knowing that “you really can’t be married to anything. You know, if it’s going to make a better movie to cut a scene that you really love, you have to do it.”

After finding a great location during scouting, Thomas and Prince rewrote almost 60% of the Run Like Hell script in order to shoot it there. At the film’s premiere, Thomas said, “the biggest note we got was how amazing the location was, and how much of a character it ended up being in the film, and that really is just a testament to not being married to one idea.”

Prince noted, “As a director nowadays, you really have to be a businessman. You have to understand the business of film. I see so many people who kind of just refuse to accept that, and those people are not as far along as they could be if they just started looking at this as a business and learning.” He admitted, “we probably spent more time doing that than the creative stuff, but that’s part of the game if we want to be successful.”

And for those who hope to start their own production company à la Two Guys? Thomas advised: “You know what? Don’t be scared. Just go do it.”

Mary Sollosi / Film Independent Blogger

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Run Like Hell is now available on VOD: Watch it on iTunes / Facebook / Twitter
Hard Sun is currently available on iTunes, Google Play, MGO, Sony Entertainment and XBOX.  Facebook / Twitter