It can be intimidating to reach out for help to someone you’ve never met.
Julio Zepeda, Camera Assistant, shares how asking for help enabled him go to from PA to camera assistant.
Listen to Julio share his success story and how he found a loophole into the Camera Union.
Connect with Julio:
Show Links
Jason Roberts Episode
Astera Lighting
Zero Optic
Cine Gear Expo
Pancro Lens Cleaner
Teradek 10,000
Preston
Alexa Mini
Support the Show
Become a Patron!Key Points:
1:21 – How He Got Started
5:44 – Getting The FirstJob On Set
8:05 – Pivot from PA to Camera Department
11:20 – Horror Story
18:55 – Sets Opening
20:25 – What Has Changed Since COVID
26:21 – Difference between Digital Utility, Camera Utility, Assistant Camera, & Camera Assistant
30:37 – Mental Checklist
35:20 – Ask For Help & Be Honest
38:20 – Twitter DM
40:09 – How Do You Stay Updated with Latest Tech
44:30 – Renting vs Owning Gear
44:23 – Learning New Gear
48:05 – Unspoken Rule On Set
50:09 – First 4 Years in the Industry
Full Transcript:
Dan Brown Jr. (00:00):
I do buy things to break them. There’s a music store right up the street. I think most of their business is done online, and so they get a lot of returns, stuff that was damaged in the transport. I mean, I have bought guitars up there that have a crack in them but that’s it, for five dollars. I have all kinds of instruments just to shatter and break and bow and crunch and step through. I love it.
Tanya Musgraves (00:26):
Welcome to the Practical Filmmaker. An educational podcast brought to you by the Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today. On today’s show, CrimeSonic extraordinaire Dan Brown Jr. takes us into designing the sound and music for the shows of true crime. Find the full transcripts and more@thepracticalfilmmaker.com. I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave and today we have Dan Brown Jr., five time regional Emmy Award winning composer and sound producer at his company of CrimeSonics, a company dedicated to making the music [inaudible 00:00:59] fully and police chatter of crime TV come to life. You’ve heard his sounds on Netflix, Hulu, network television and more. Welcome to the show.
Dan Brown Jr. (01:08):
Yo, yo, yo. How you doing?
Tanya Musgraves (01:11):
I’m doing well. How did you get here? Tell me the story of how you ended up in a life of crime.
Dan Brown Jr. (01:18):
When I was young, I actually got in quite a bit of trouble. And so, when I’m looking at footage or I’m writing with a scenario in mind, it’s not something that I have to try to fantasize about. It’s something that I had had gone through as a young guy. I know what it’s like to lose my freedom. I know what it’s like to be… we won’t go into a whole lot of detail, but hung out with some rough kids and that made a major impression on me as a young kid.
Tanya Musgraves (01:49):
I was trying to be clever when I said, “Hey, about your life of crime,” but I didn’t know that there was an actual personal connection.
Dan Brown Jr. (01:59):
Figured there was a life of crime.
Tanya Musgraves (02:01):
You’re now CrimeSonics. And so I was like-
Dan Brown Jr. (02:02):
It’s interesting. I remember when I was in a detention home and I was young, I was a young kid, and my probation officer came in and he said something. I remember because I was sitting in this common area, and he sat down next to me and he said, “You don’t belong here. But see these other kids, some of them do.” And one could argue, well, no, none of them belonged there. Well, some of them did some really terrible stuff. I was hanging out with some bad kids doing some stuff. They didn’t really do a whole lot, but what he was saying to me was there’s something special about you, dude. You don’t belong here. And I’ll never forget that because he said that and I believed that, I believed it. I had long hair at the time and I remember getting out of there and cutting my hair for the first time. It was neat. It only took one person to really look into you and speak into your life [inaudible 00:02:59]. Pretty cool.
Tanya Musgraves (03:01):
… wow. With your background, do you feel like this is pretty much your redemptive arc?
Dan Brown Jr. (03:06):
Maybe. I don’t know. It’s interesting. There is all kinds of fanaticism, if that’s the right use of that word. There’s CrimeCon, which is awesome. And we’re going to hopefully be presenters at CrimeCon. And it’s all these wonderful people from around the world who are passionate about the true crime genre. But you got to juxtapose that to the real people who have experienced real crime. And so when people look at like me or CrimeSonics, I don’t want them, or I hope they don’t just think these people are all about the crime. It’s not about the crime, it’s about the solving of the crime. It’s about what happened and how was it solved or how is that case going? How is that investigation going? I’m very passionate about the process of solving it because these are real people who need real closure and deserve real justice.
Dan Brown Jr. (04:05):
You grow up, you mature, you start finding your way in life, and I knew I was always going to work in music. I didn’t necessarily know I was going to work in music for media until we lived in Denver and I met a guy who scored a movie, an indie film. He said, “Dude, watch this indie film. I did all the music.” And I watched it, I was like, “Wow, I never thought about that. That’s kind of cool.” And it was right in that moment I knew, well, if I’m going to work on a film or some sort of project, it’s got to be true crime. That’s what I watch, it’s what I consume, it’s what I want. I started seeking that stuff out and it’s was hard to find that stuff in Denver, so I moved out to Hollywood and it was just with that goal in mind. I’m going to figure out all the avenues and what it takes to write the music that you hear in the crime shows. That’s kind of how we’re here.
Tanya Musgraves (04:56):
Wow. Interesting. For indie filmmakers, I mean people who are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps too, if they’re just starting out and wanting to hire composers, what should they expect? We’re talking what point in the process to get in touch, price range, expected turnaround time. What’s the process?
Dan Brown Jr. (05:19):
That’s a super loaded question. It’s super loaded. I guess it just depends on a couple of things. Talent attracts talent, and I also think experience can attract experience. And so, first knowing, I’m talking to the filmmaker, knowing where you are in the process and where you are in your own experiences can dictate a little bit maybe of who you’re going to hire or maybe someone that’s right in line where you are in your experience level, or maybe someone just a little bit above to bring you along the way. Knowing where you are, having those honest conversations, and also knowing too, composers, they’re pretty artsy people at times, a lot of times. And so there’s some things that you might want to consider. One being, can you speak the language of music, but not even in musical terms, maybe? Do you feel confident trying to convey to a composer I want this kind of sound or this kind of tone or this kind of feel or this kind of emotion?
Dan Brown Jr. (06:27):
You always hear those stories about the director that comes to the composer and says, “I want my movie to sound blue,” that kind of stuff. We got to get past all of that stuff. I actually like, and most composers, I think they pretend that they don’t like, is the temp score. And that’s when you can find pre-existing music, other music, music from another film that it’s kind of the vibe of your film, or you’d like your film to sound somewhat like. I actually like that because that immediately helps me understand the mind of the director. Now I know, you put this music into your project, now let’s dialogue and let’s talk about what do you like about that. And then you’re going to start throwing out certain things. You’re going to say, “Well, I really like the driving drums of that.” I’m going to pocket that away. Or you’ll say, “It’s the string riding in this.” And it might only have a little bit of string riding and all this other stuff, but that’s what you pointed out. Now we’re focused on what is it about the strings that you like.
Dan Brown Jr. (07:32):
You also asked when to bring a composer in on the process. I can’t speak for everyone. I can only tell you my experience. I like being involved as much as I can. I like the story. I like talking with directors and producers. Bring me in as early as possible. Just let me get a vibe. What are you working on? Let me see stuff. I like it, you can bring me on as early as you want.
Tanya Musgraves (07:55):
About what timeframe is it to come up with an original score?
Dan Brown Jr. (08:01):
It depends on a few factors, and one being the style of music that’s requested. It’s quicker to write some ambient music than it is to write symphonic score. That’s going to dictate a lot of time. Budget. And then the other thing would be the length of the piece. Is it a short film? Is it episodic television? Is it a full length feature? There’s a lot of factors that play in. I heard another composer say, “If I don’t have enough time to do my best work, no matter how inspired by the project I am, I’ll graciously bow out of it because I want to give them my best as well.” And that is unfortunate that a lot of times that composers are brought in late. It happens, but speaking from the composer standpoint, bring us on early. That gives us time to massage things, move things around and really experiment.
Tanya Musgraves (08:54):
Is it something where they would budget by the minute? Do you budget by the minute of just like, hey, this is going to take me a week and it’s going to be around this much. This is going to take me a month, or I could get this to you tomorrow morning.
Dan Brown Jr. (09:11):
Yes, no, it all depends. Every composer is different in how they structure their pay scale. I have a lot of other skill sets other than music, so I like to come on and offer other things as well. Like the sound design or overall mix. I would, and I’m saying this on recording, so should I regret it, but sometimes I’ll take a lower pay if I move into an associate producer role, stuff like that. And so it’s kind of all over the map.
Tanya Musgraves (09:44):
For wardrobe, I remember somebody saying that you need at least three textures. You have leather, you have metal and you have cotton, or what have you. Is there one aspect of music and sound that might actually usually get swept under the rug by amateurs, but if you heard it, you’d say, “Now that’s some good production music or good sound?”
Dan Brown Jr. (10:05):
Let me personalize it and talk about CrimeSonics specifically since we do one thing, but then we have all the sub genres of the one thing. You can think crime, investigatory, procedural drama. Real quick, cyber crime doesn’t sound like Southern justice. That doesn’t sound like forensic science. Forensic science doesn’t sound like ’80s Chicago detective music, which doesn’t sound like gumshoe sleuth kind of music. There’s all of these different sounds that could be considered crime. Internally, we have a really strict bifurcation of our libraries, and when I’m working with our composers, I’m telling them they have reference material, they have our pre-existing stuff. We’ll do this kind of thing as we’re doing now, I’ll dialogue with them, bring them in, really hone them in.
Dan Brown Jr. (10:59):
And so when the tracks come in, we have a weekly portal that our composers submit to, I bring them all into the DAW, I just put everything into Pro Tools. And the first thing I do is I look at it visually. And I’m looking at the wave file, and if I see brick wall limiting, or the audio just looks like a brick and it’s like a big block of cheddar cheese, I don’t even listen to it and it’s immediately rejected and it’s usually permanently rejected. Because I know I can tell right now that that particular composer, if they’re new or that particular artist, they’re not at a spot yet where they’re even producing what could be usable. I can’t even… Next.
Dan Brown Jr. (11:42):
And then the next thing I look for is if I see audio that looks good is I’m looking with the video editing in mind, just visually. And this is before I ever hit the space bar to listen to the music. I’m looking to see is there ebbs and flows, starts and stops, sinkable moments, edit points in the music. If it’s just a continuous musical thought and it’s just a big composition thrown on the screen, it’s very, very difficult to edit with. If I see something that looks like an interesting audio file, and it’s not clipping, I will then hit space bar. And this is where it gets a little tricky. I need to have immediate genre recognition, no ambiguity, immediately. If you submit to me a forensic science track, I want to hit space bar and I’m in the lab. I’m watching DNA analysis. I’m watching luminol get poured in, I see latex gloves. The music is tight, modern, sophisticated, glassy. It’s sitting on the table and we are watching the forensic science process happen immediately. And if I can’t hear it immediately, it’s probably not going to be a go.
Dan Brown Jr. (12:54):
The next thing is, is if I hear that immediately, we’re in a forensic science track, I stop it, I scan right over to all the breaks and the stops, and I’m listening to how those moments crescendo, break, leave space, come back in. Is it clean? I’m looking for really, really, really good production. It has to be the absolute best or I am passing on it. It is not a personal thing at all. Feelings do not matter, I’m not even going there. It’s I’m looking at the track and is that commercially viable? Does that represent CrimeSonics? Does it sound like crime television? Is it clean? If it doesn’t, it’s got to go, really fast. And then the other thing too is, I’ll just throw this out there to composers if they’re listening, it does not matter if you can write the most incredible John Williams Star Wars sounding score if you can’t produce it in a way that, for one sounds realistic if it’s not being recorded by a real orchestra. If it doesn’t sound realistic, I can’t use it.
Dan Brown Jr. (14:05):
And I really shy away from, this is a personal framework that we work in, if it sounds like software. Unless it’s cyber crime which kind of should, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear software strings. I don’t want to hear software instruments. You can use them for us, but they need to sound amazing. You’re always better if you’re doing string riding. If you’re going to use software, hire at least a violinist to top line so the top highest frequency that your ear is going to be drawn to, you hear it, it’s emoted. It’s a real musician who has listened to you, has looked at your music and now is performing it and your actual musical intention is being emoted, if that’s a word, if I’m using that right, into the music.
Dan Brown Jr. (14:54):
I think about samples, it’s just a moment in time that’s captured and you play the note and it might have a few of the same note, but after a while it’s just the same note. And then to have a cellist use vibrato that’s in time to the music and it’s playing and crescendoing and it’s human and it’s breathing, software does not do that yet. I can tell you that much. What am I looking for? Immediate genre recognition, incredible production, cleanliness. It’s got to sound dope. It’s got to sound dope. You just asked the most important question ever to me. That is it.
Tanya Musgraves (15:36):
You did mention a little bit more about your process, so I want to dig into that a little bit more because do you have a certain process for hitting emotional beats, like working backwards, starting with high points and picking out those, this is when I need to hit something or this is where I need to pull back? But using all of your life experience, but then also as a musician, hitting emotional beats. What’s that process?
Dan Brown Jr. (16:05):
The spotting session with the directors and producers, that would be so crucial. You know your story. Let’s pretend that it’s your project, you know your story. If you wrote it, you know it. You know those characters. And it’s so important for that story, your story, to get into my head and into my heart and into my soul. I need to know it. I need to know the characters and know the ins and the outs of this process, because all I want to do as a composer is serve it, serve it emotionally. Transparently, humbly, my ego’s out of the way. I want to help you tell your story. And so that initial when we go through the project, that is you telling me and showing me and I’m watching, you and you’re talking about this character in this, and I’m making all these mental notes or I’m on my laptop and I’m making actual notes on the sheet, a time code.
Dan Brown Jr. (16:56):
And then while that’s also going on, I’m also just paying attention to the visual. Great editing and great DP work is incredibly inspiring. It’s its own symphony, it’s its own music. And you’ve probably experienced this too, great editing, it’s got a tempo. Even if there was not a click track in the edit, it has a vibe. And it’s important that I know that vibe and see that vibe and then manifest that tempo in the digital audio workstation, in the DAW. That way I know I got the click going and we’ve figured out the tempo map from this hit point to this hit point, this thing’s riding at about a 100 beats per minute.
Dan Brown Jr. (17:44):
And then from here to this hit point, ebbs and flows a little bit around 95 or up to 110 or something. Physically mapping it out where you’re hearing this against the edit and the dialogue, that’s so crucial. Personally speaking, that’s the funnest part because it’s the technical part and there’s no stress yet of having to come in and write stuff. It’s just figuring out the framework. It’s very easy to play the game when you know the framework and you know all the rules.
Tanya Musgraves (18:15):
Is that the most fun part for you is mapping that out, or is it actually what’s the hook for this one? Or is it actually playing the instruments? Because you play a ton of instruments.
Dan Brown Jr. (18:28):
What is the funnest process? Honestly, the funnest process is when it’s all done and it’s all approved and we’re finished. That is the best part of this. I’m really inspired by the criminal and investigatory content. I did a wonderful documentary just a couple of years ago now, which is crazy. That process from beginning to end was just wonderful. It was just wonderful. And the filmmakers were wonderful.
Tanya Musgraves (18:53):
What made it that way?
Dan Brown Jr. (18:56):
Well, I truly believed in the project. It was about systemic racism in the police force and criminal justice reform and governor Gavin Newsom is in the project and it was pretty awesome. And I was the only Caucasian crew member, I think. Maybe there was a colorist who was a white girl. I was working with these wonderful African-American filmmakers and I felt honored to be a part of this thing that was like touchy. And this one was two or three years ago. Things are so different even now, and so it was just really wonderful to be a part of it.
Dan Brown Jr. (19:33):
And something that was important to me was if we’re going to work on this thing and it’s crimey, I also want to use sounds and colors that are from indigenous Africa. And it was just so cool to learn about the history of African music and then try to pull sounds and instruments and use them into a modern score that also has this crime kind of thing. It’s just a weird process, but let me tell you, it’s very rewarding. Still love that film and it screens all the time still, all over the country. It just won some big award and it’s awesome. Walking While Black is the film. Walking While Black.
Tanya Musgraves (20:09):
Wait, I’ve seen the doc around, for sure. One of the things that you do is help people or show runners is create a signature sound. We think of TED Talks and the water drop, Netflix’s ta-dum. How do you approach designing a signature sound for somebody, just that sound?
Dan Brown Jr. (20:35):
Believe it or not, that comes from you. It really does because when you are telling me about the project, let’s say it’s a Southern justice, Texas kind of thing, I already start thinking about sounds, instruments. And when you start telling me about emotion and tone, and I’m already thinking about instruments, I just need to use those instruments to create your emotion and tone.
Tanya Musgraves (21:02):
What instruments? I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know what instruments come to mind right now when you say Southern justice?
Dan Brown Jr. (21:10):
Southern justice, on the wall you see back here, there’s some Native American flutes. They have a wood sound. Slide guitars, dulcimer, that Johnny Law kind of sound. You get what I mean? Shakers that are earthy, not real pretty but like more rattly, stuff like that. Stuff that just has that really Texas sound. High drums. I don’t think I have any of those floating around in here.
Tanya Musgraves (21:40):
For all of the sound effects that you use for crimey type of things, I remember seeing a picture and you were bowing a symbol. I assume that it sounds creepy, but it just made me curious. What is the most random instrument you’ve recorded not how it was intended, go?
Dan Brown Jr. (22:00):
Without offending instrument collectors, because I am also an instrument collector, I do buy things to break them. There is a music store right up the street. I think most of their business is done online. And so they get a lot of returns, stuff that was damaged in the transport. I mean, I have bought guitars up there that have a crack in them but that’s it, for five dollars. I have all kinds of instruments. I have purchased a ridiculous amount of instruments just to shatter and break and bow and crunch and step through. I love it.
Tanya Musgraves (22:42):
Oh, my stars.
Dan Brown Jr. (22:45):
Don’t be offended.
Tanya Musgraves (22:45):
My mom’s a violinist and so I think of her bow. I mean, I remember her telling me once that it was specifically her bow that costs more than the actual violin itself. I have this holy respect for crunching through any kind of instrument.
Dan Brown Jr. (23:03):
They sound so good when they break.
Tanya Musgraves (23:08):
But what kind of situation would you use a sound like that?
Dan Brown Jr. (23:14):
I’ll give you a great example. Right now we have several thousand sound effects inside of CrimeSonics, and we have done all of what you would expect, the big epic promo risers and the hits and the downers and all the stuff that you think. But since we are very crime focused, we also have things like vandalism sound effects. That was a fun process. In shattering glass, here’s a fun factoid, at the dollar store or the Dollar Tree, you can buy cups and plates for a dollar a piece. And they all sound a little different when they shatter. And so we have gone up to the local dollar store on many occasions and bought two or $300 worth of plates and bowls and cups and pitchers, and we’ll have boxes of glass, and then we bring it back and we’re just chucking it and throwing it. And then we have this mound of broken stuff in our garage or wherever we’re recording, sometimes in the other room.
Dan Brown Jr. (24:18):
And then we have a bunch of instruments that we bought which are already half broke, so then we’ll throw that stuff in there and it becomes wonderful sound source material. You can layer this all together and start creating what we would call like the sounds of vandalism or the sounds of burglary or the sounds of destruction. Never a dull day. And I’ll give you another great example. We have coming out right now, this guy. What is this guy?
Tanya Musgraves (24:42):
Oh my starts.
Dan Brown Jr. (24:42):
That is a seven million volts stun baton. We have several stun guns and stun batons and all this stuff and we order in the craziest stuff and sample it here in the studio. Someone’s getting tased on a cop show, I want them to use our sounds.
Tanya Musgraves (25:01):
Interesting, interesting, interesting. That actually segues really nicely into one of our listener questions. If you want to ask your listener questions, you can find us on Instagram @practicalfilmmaker, but one of them was, how do you store and present your sound library? I have a drive, but don’t know how to start selling my sounds.
Dan Brown Jr. (25:22):
We were distributed globally by sub-publisher. I have recently ended that deal and we are just now signing with a another one, but I won’t say who yet, because we got to sign a deal. I would highly recommend that route, and I won’t say first, but I highly recommend that route because they will have pre-existing relationships with show runners and producers and editors all around the world. And so, how to get a deal like that, you got to make something awesome. Now having said that, you can go the other route and do like the eCommerce thing where you build your sound library and you can have digital downloads. And so I would highly recommend Shopify.com because we run a whole second other business, which I won’t even talk about, but we use Shopify. Digital downloads every day and people use different type of content we create and it’s amazing. I wouldn’t go it alone in the beginning. I wouldn’t go it alone.
Tanya Musgraves (26:22):
And we actually have one more listener question. What’s the difference between a good mic and a bad mic, and does it matter much these days?
Dan Brown Jr. (26:32):
No, it really does. It really does. I remember when I was young, I’m 38 at the time of this taping, and I remember I was recording at 11 or 12 and I had little $100 mics that you can get at a Guitar Center or something and I really remember we’d try to record stuff and we’d listen to it back and it just sounds awful. And then you’re tweaking and you’re trying to fix all the time, and you’re like trying to do… With really nice microphones, the nicer the mic really, the more they start acting like the ear and they just start picking up the way things sound. That is my ultimate goal is when I’m recording anything, I want it to sound pretty much done, pretty much correct coming in. That way it’s a very little corrective surgery on the audio. There’s always anomalies. There’s always weird stuff that happens. You’re always looking around, but there shouldn’t be real sonic reconstructive surgery on what you’ve recorded. Probably did something wrong. Highly recommend good mics. If you’re going to ask me which mics, I’m a big fan of Neumann mics. We have a whole bunch of Neumann mics here in the studio. They sound wonderful.
Tanya Musgraves (27:43):
Wow. I used to work at a radio station in college. I have not heard that name for like 10 years, I don’t think.
Dan Brown Jr. (27:51):
They’re really good.
Tanya Musgraves (27:53):
We’ve been Facebook friends for a while and every Friday I’ve noticed that you always post, how can I help? What is the story behind that?
Dan Brown Jr. (28:04):
When I moved out to LA, no one helped me at all really, and it was really difficult to figure this stuff all out. And I’ve not arrived at all. I’m still figuring this all out. And I just remember, I was younger, I had a very young son, hadn’t been married that long. Being full disclosure, full transparency right here, I felt so lost and so scared and so nervous. Like how am I going to figure all this out? It’s such a big city. I don’t want people to feel like that. I don’t want people to feel the way that I felt. And if I can help anyone, I want to. Having said that, people do get a different version of me too. That person, I am that person. I do genuinely want to help people. And that comes from a true heart. If you’re working for me though, there’s such a high expectation. I really demand a high, high level of output. I think there could be people too that are like, “He don’t seem that friendly when you work for him.” Everybody has different facets of who they are.
Tanya Musgraves (29:11):
You can still demand excellence.
Dan Brown Jr. (29:13):
I will never apologize for excellence or standards. Never. Never. Our excellence does not care about your feelings. But I don’t want people to feel lost or confused about our industry, or that they can’t make it. A lot of my friends who were out here when I first moved here, they’re all gone. They all gave up or just somewhere else. I want to help people.
Tanya Musgraves (29:39):
No, that’s awesome. The more that I talk to artists and filmmakers and people in this industry, there’s been one or two pretty strong experiences that stand out for everybody when somebody helped them or when somebody was gracious enough to give them a peek behind the curtain and say, “Actually, these are my rates.” I ran into this all the time in photography and I respected more the people who freely gave that peek behind the curtain, as opposed to saying, “Well, you’re my competition now so I can’t.”
Dan Brown Jr. (30:14):
I get it.
Tanya Musgraves (30:17):
I have a high respect for people who are mentors, the people who stress bringing and building other people up. I think that’s really cool.
Dan Brown Jr. (30:26):
I think it’s fun to watch other people grow and learn. I mean, I’m also a dad though, and so that’s what you do as a dad. You are always pouring into this other person and trying to teach them. The dad part of me doesn’t shut off because I’m working. My assistant in the other room right now, he’s 10 years younger than I am. I mean, the guy is still 28, he’s almost 30, but my son’s in the other room, so when I’m talking to him, I know my son’s hearing. And so it’s like, there’s always a certain amount of check the ego at the door, stay committed to excellence, but also help people. There’s nothing wrong with helping people. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Tanya Musgraves (31:08):
What current project are you excited about now?
Dan Brown Jr. (31:11):
It’s cool to send an email to somebody who’s like someone that you know and that you’ve watched and you want to be like, and you fire an email off and they immediately reply and go, “No, I know exactly who you are. I’ve been watching what you’re doing.” Wow, that’s amazing. I can’t answer that yet. Next question.
Tanya Musgraves (31:31):
Well then how do people follow along? How do people find you, follow your work? This is your time for your shameless plugs.
Dan Brown Jr. (31:36):
Oh, I love it. Well, a couple of them. First, the Clubhouse thing has just blown my mind. That’s crazy, so that thing is going real well. And I just got on this whole Clubhouse app and we’re getting a 100 follows a day on there. That’s pretty cool. You can follow us there, just CrimeSonics. I’m on there. Crimesonics.com. We do have an Instagram, same thing. It’s @crimesonics. We have a Twitter. Funny thing about our Twitter, the only thing we ever tweet is funny, goofy, investigatory type of jokes. If you want top dad jokes, that’s the only thing we tweet and there’s a bunch of them. Go just scroll through because they’re funny, they’re always funny. That’s it.
Tanya Musgraves (32:20):
I would’ve never guessed.
Dan Brown Jr. (32:22):
Follow us on Twitter. It’s a hidden gem. If I’m on the elliptical or I’m on a walk and by myself, let me search some funny cop jokes. Go on there.
Tanya Musgraves (32:33):
No, I got look one up right now because this just has to happen.
Dan Brown Jr. (32:39):
You got to do it.
Tanya Musgraves (32:39):
Hold on one second.
Dan Brown Jr. (32:40):
And then we have a YouTube as well. You have to follow the Twitter.
Tanya Musgraves (32:46):
The first one, a thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
Dan Brown Jr. (32:53):
And they’re all that bad. Every one is bad.
Tanya Musgraves (32:54):
That’s horrible.
Dan Brown Jr. (33:00):
They’re the worst. I take no credit for these jokes. I find jokes on websites. If they’re your jokes, they’re all your jokes. We just repost it. You got to read another one.
Tanya Musgraves (33:12):
Oh my word. Robert runs into a real estate agent’s office and shouts, “Nobody move.”
Dan Brown Jr. (33:17):
Oh man.
Tanya Musgraves (33:23):
There are horrible. These are horrible, but they’re so totally worth it.
Dan Brown Jr. (33:25):
If you’re bored later, whatever.
Tanya Musgraves (33:31):
On that note, what questions should I have asked you?
Dan Brown Jr. (33:35):
How can you help me? Because I want to know how I can help you.
Tanya Musgraves (33:41):
Well, consider the question-
Dan Brown Jr. (33:44):
Or how can I help you?
Tanya Musgraves (33:47):
… consider the question asked. How can you… Man, I’ve never had that turned back onto me.
Dan Brown Jr. (33:51):
That’s what I have found in our industry. It’s so interesting because we’re so, when I say we it’s many in our industry, be it the composers or directors or writers or whoever, we’re all trying to get heard. We’re all trying to sell ourselves. How can I help you? You don’t have to answer that now, but that’s something we can figure out. There is some way. You got a project coming up, at some point in time, you’re going to need some help and I want to help.
Tanya Musgraves (34:22):
Now you’ve prepared me for any subsequent guests to throw that question back on me. I’m going to be like, “Okay.”
Dan Brown Jr. (34:28):
It’s so good.
Tanya Musgraves (34:29):
Well, I have appreciated your time that you’ve given us today. Thank you so much.
Dan Brown Jr. (34:36):
Always. Anytime.
Tanya Musgraves (34:37):
If you enjoyed this interview and are curious what Dan’s favorite gear is, subscribe to our Patreon page, follow us right here and check out more episodes at Thepracticalfilmmaker.com. If you have comments or know someone who would be a great guest on our show, send in your suggestions to tanya@thepracticalfilmmaker.com. Thanks for joining us. Be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on the Practical Filmmaker.