Filmmaker Jamin Winans has become something of a hot property after his 8-minute short Spin took off. This is the full text of the question and answer session I had with him. To see the film, click hereor visit DoubleEdgeFilms.com. To see the story write-up on Spin, click here.

You made Spin to create extra buzz for your other film 11:59, right?

Yeah. It was a couple things. We spent so much time working on 11:59 - a total of seven years ago. Once we had finished shootingand editing the film, it was a year period where we were submitting to film festivals and distributors. We were at a point where we had time to kill and said, "hey, let's make a short film to keep ourselves busy." We thought we'd put it on our website to keep our small fan base on the hook. It turns out it ended up taking off in about a week. It took off far more than we expected and far more than 11:59 ever had.

You made Spin on a $500 budget. How is that even possible?

We had our crew from 11:59. We called everybody up and everybody was willing to work for a couple weekends for free. We ended up getting all of our equipment for free. We paid for tape stock and catering and a couple other little things. You look at it and it's funny because we have a little car crash and that was done for free. The car we got from myspace. We put a bulletin out that said "hey we're looking for a car we can wreck - anybody have a car?" A girl replied and said "I have my ex boyfriend's car that you can wreck. I don't want it anymore." We had a stunt guy who did it for us and all the actors worked for free.
We shot it hi-def (digital) which is kind of our format of choice now. It's not only the cheapest but the most practical.

Spin has been distributed on Youtube and other free video sites- do you support this kind of distribution? Is it good for filmmakers?

Yeah. I don't not support it. What our attempt was is to keep it on our site because we're trying to get people to check us out and see what we're doing and what we're up to. We don't care if people are downloading it for free. That's not our concern. Ideally if they like it, they sign up on our mailing list. It's like a band. You're nothing without your mailing list if you're a band. To get people to come back to our website is kind of important, so I guess that's the only thing I don't like. Ideally, as long as they put a link to us on their website, that'd be great. But no, I'm thrilled actually. There are a lot of people who get bent out of shape about "oh they stole my movie or our song off the Internet" and I guess I understand that, but it's a really great thing. I think it's a good sign when people want your stuff that bad.

I'm blown away actually. It's been out a while. It had an initial hit because it was on atomfilms and ifilm and actually crashed our server and then it was really strong for a while and then it died down until a couple weeks ago and it took off again. So I thought "well everybody had seen it by now" and suddenly a ton of people see it new.

How much of the cast, etc, did you get from myspace ads?

Just a handful. Most of the cast were people that we worked with on 11:59 or other films that we'd done. I guess we cast like 3 or 4 people from myspace, 2 or 3. It was interesting. We've been on myspace. We were really early on myspace in like 2003 right when it was starting. We invested a lot of time into myspace, so there were a few guys that we got to know and said "hey do you want to be in our movie?"

I'm not convinced that it works real well for promoting purposes. It's not bad. We got a lot of attention through it for Spin, butwe had thousands of friends on myspace but only a few showed up for 11:59. I think it works for different purposes. It helped us a lot for production. We found lots of things we woudn't have found otherwise. We found the car, the bike we ended up wrecking, a few of the guys. You just have to know how and when to use it.

People read this guy, Scratch,different ways - what are we supposed to take from it? The video is billed lots of places as "God is a DJ"

The God is a dj thing came about pretty early on because of the song ["God is a DJ" by Faithless]. It's something I think someone came up with when they saw it early on. I think it's referred to as "God is aDJ" more than as Spin. Which is interesting premise - kind of fun. I looked at some message board recently and I saw a lot of reactions were really different. My intent was that he isn't necessarily God, but I left it open for a purpose. I wanted people to find their own meaning. My intent is that he is sort of - the DJ who I call Scratch is like an angel who likes to party too much. He's sent on various missions to fix little kinks in the system. Sometimes he doesn't always get it right the first time around. He frequently kind of half-asses it so he has to do it a few times before he gets it right. I see him as that guy who probably just snuck into Heaven and while there doesn't take it as seriously as he probably should. He has a good heart. The reason I wrote the character the way he did is I see him like us. A good portion of us have good hearts and we don't always put our best foot out there. He has a good skill with what he does but he doesn't always apply himself.

Some people have asked me "Did he get kicked out of his apartment 'cause his girlfriend was mad?" The intent was that he fell out of the sky. The actor and I talked a lot about what happens before the first shot of the film. There's a lipstick mark on his face. He's probably out partying somewhere and God, not being too happy with him, dropped him off and said "hey, you're going to Earth to fix this problem" and instantaneously dropped him.

I guess I see it as this happens to him a lot. He's a little bit hung over and not real happy to be there. He's a local guy - he is a real DJ and a rapper and he scratches in different places around town. He's actually a friend of mine. I didn't really know him as a DJ. He was in 11:59 - he played a small part in it. He invited me to see him DJ one night and that's actually how I got the idea one night. I saw him deejaying and thought this a great image here - how can I use it?

During that scene with all the hallucinatory effects, it looks like he's digging into the sum total of these people's histories to figure them out. What's the deal?

A lot of people don't get that. Some people do and some people don't. I think you have to see it. That's exactly what he's doing. He's kind of half-assing it and what he should have done from the get go is learn who these people are. I guess I see it as a metaphor for mankind. We try to change people without knowing who they are. He tried to change the situation without really knowing who they are. There's a rapid analysis of each person's life and he figures out what makes them tick. Thus he understands what way the ball needs to roll for each person to be affected.

And you shot this in a park in Denver?

Riverfront Park. There's an apartment complex right there. I think it's called Riverfront Apartments. It's right by the big flagship, mast I don't know what that thing is called. I wrote the whole concept around that location hoping I could use it. A lot of people don't realize it was shot in Denver - they think it was shot in Europe because it's such a bizarre location. Not a lot of places like it. It's received an enourmous amount of international attention because there's no dialogue. I'd say for a time most of our hits were from France and Germany.

I just knew the location when I was thinking of where to set the film. It was the first place I thought of. I guess logistically I wrote it around that location. It was tough logistically. The way the film is shot you can't just shoot it on any city block. You need something that's unique and doesn't have an enormous amount of traffic. I thought about shooting on 17th but the streets are way too busy to have a car wreck.

And this has dwarfed the attention 11:59 got?

It's interesting - we basically created just to put it on our Web site and we ended up getting far more mileage out of it than we intended. With festivals, you send your film out and apply with 20 dollars. We weren't even planning on submitting it to festivals, but so many contacted us so we were willing to give it to them. We're playing a total of 45 festivals and won about 75% of the festivals where it's played including some of the bigger festivals like Santa Barbara. We're working on a new feature called Ink. Spin has been a good way to get the door open. It's an official selection at 45 festivals and won 28 award so far. It used to be a really big deal when we got into a festival and there's so many now that it's hard to keep up with. It's a good problem to have.

What can you tell us about Ink?

Very little. We're very hush hush about it. It has a similar thematic vibe to it. It has a similar kind of look on life as Spin does. It's a really dark film. I'd call it a sci-fi thriller. We hate calling our films sci-fi because they get grouped into a cheesy sci-fi category that we don't want to be. It's a sci-fi treated very realistically. The actual storyline I'm very quiet about right now.

The hip-hop scene really seems to dig Spin. Did you make it for them?

It wasn't really my intent to go after that community. One of our producers, Joe, is a DJ. Both of us really enjoy not necessarily hip-hop, though I like hip-hop, but both of us enjoy electronic music a lot. I think the crowd has really gotten into it a lot. Which I'm glad - I think there's a huge negative connotation with deejaying. There's a stigma that goes with that community with electronic music. I think people enjoy seeing a positive light reflected on that community - not just partying but there's some good people there. I think they appreciated the film. I'm glad it's big with that community - it's cool. We've been approached by various companies that are producing commercials and they like it a lot because it's really modern. Very contemporary. It's very hip. I think a lot of people like that. That's why we get approached to do various commercial jobs. They think we can bring a new, hip flavor to their product. I was saying to somebody that we're really not just into the hip-hop scene at all. The last short film we did before Spin was about a 54 year old physicist who's trying to find the theory of life and this equation called M theory, a theory really prevelant in physics right now. The point being that we really jump from one to the next. The big thing I want to do next for a short film is about the elderly and how society forgets them. I guess that's the danger of a big fan base from the electronic scene. They're expecting more deejay movies and we're probably not going to do more deejay movies as far as I know. Maybe we will. Maybe I'll get another great idea.

Anything else you want to leave people with?

If there's room left, if they want to, one thing our website has that other places don't has a director commentary on our website. It's kind of pointless but if people want to hear more about the production - there's a lot of filmmakers out there - a lot of people want to know how we did it for 500 dollars. People are welcome to come to our website for more information. We'll certainly let people know when ink is out. It could be a few years. It takes a while, especially on a really low budget.