Exceeding Indie TV Show SEXPECTATIONS

In this episode, host Candice Bloch talks with the creative team behind the hit indie TV show, ‘Sexpectations.’ Writer Jenna St. John and Director Kevin Good shed light on how they took the series from story concept through production, post-production, and eventually out to audiences on major streaming platforms. They talk about their multi-year journey including self-funding, casting, the show’s message, technical aspects of using CGI, and more.

‘Sexpectations’ centers on an aspiring romance novelist and her quest to lose her virginity for the sake of her writing. Season one of the adult comedy is available for rental or purchase on AppleTV+ or Amazon Prime.

To learn more about the show, visit https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9470422/
Follow the show on Facebook and Instagram at https://www.facebook.com/SexpectationsTVShow and https://www.instagram.com/sexpectationstv/?hl=en

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Transcript

00:01 - Speaker 1 (Host)
Quiet on the set All together and action. Welcome to Media Monuments presented by Women in Film Video in Washington DC. Media Monuments features conversations with industry professionals speaking on a range of topics of interest to screen-based media makers. 

00:28 - Candice (Host)
Getting any television project not only completed but out to audiences is no easy feat. I'm your host, Candice Bloch, and today I'm talking with the writer and director team behind Sexpectations, a newly released comedic indie television show available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. Sexpectations centers on an aspiring romance novelist and her quest to lose her virginity for the sake of her literature. In this episode, we're going to learn a lot more about how it went from story idea to major streamers. Let me quickly introduce you to our guests before we dive in and learn more about how they got it made. Joining us is Jenna St John, a Korean-American hopeless romantic born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She moved to the United States at age 16 and was a professional ballet dancer before an injury led her to pursue writing professionally. Jenna loves writing female-led stories and, in addition to writing and co-starring in Sexpectations, currently has a feature in post-production with Epic Pictures and is penning a new film for a major network. 

01:24
Also joining us is Kevin Goode, a visual effects savvy director. As a young hospitalized kid, he saw Star Wars for the first time on a TV, rolled into his room at Children's Hospital in Washington DC and got hooked on the power that movies have to transport people into new worlds and experiences. He is currently working as an Unreal Virtual Production Specialist for Electric Entertainment, making spaceships fly around and creating new worlds to discover. He aims to create content that can make people laugh and cry, hopefully at the same time. Welcome to the show guys. 

01:54 - Jenna (Guest)
Thank you, Candace. 

01:55 - Candice (Host)
Thank you for having us. So you two are the writer and director of Sexpectations and you're also a married couple and you've worked together on more projects than just this one. How do you think your partnership in life has strengthened your creative partnership and informed which projects you choose to tackle together or separately? 

02:13 - Jenna (Guest)
You know, I think being creative and working on creative stuff is our love language, so it's really important. It's really important to be able to support each other on that. Obviously, we work very, very closely with each other. We're literally I am directing this TV show that she wrote, but I think we see it in our friends and those who have supportive maybe it's a spouse or maybe it's a writing buddy or maybe it's a part of it Like that stalwart in your life that can be a champion. It's really different. And then we see maybe other people, who will not be named, who do not have those champions, really struggling. 

02:56 - Kevin (Guest)
Yeah, and when we do decide which project to pursue together, we do have to be on the same page. So I do find myself pitching a lot to Kevin, like what do you think about this next? What do you think about this next? And if he's not sold or he is not in love with it, then they can't move forward. So it is like finding that thing that we're both you know we're both in love with. 

03:18 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, and that doesn't mean it's a bad project, it just means that, like it doesn't have that special thing in me, it doesn't speak to my core, you know. 

03:26 - Candice (Host)
That's fantastic that you guys have each other for that collaboration. It's important to have that, as you said, whether it's an actual couple or like a writing partner or just a creative collaborator, so that's awesome. What was the initial inspiration? Let's just start at the beginning. What was the initial inspiration for Sexpectations like this particular story? 

03:46 - Kevin (Guest)
You know I was talking to Sophia Medley who plays the lead. She played Katie Lawrence on the show. This was 10 years ago, on a different side, and we were just talking about women in comedy and awkward sex comedies and how it's so prevalent with men being in awkward sex comedies, you know, and how none of it feels accurate. And, yeah, it kind of just spawned all of this and I told her I can write this and she's like yeah, go do it. 

04:23 - Jenna (Guest)
You mean like there's a lot of like. You're thinking like American Pie and like there's something about Mary and like these. 

04:31 - Kevin (Guest)
The four year old version. 

04:32 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, there's a lot of like the male gaze, male perspective, male protagonist. 

04:37 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, and there's been kind of a little bit more of a recent rise of kind of women doing more quote unquote like raunchy or things like bridesmaids. But yes, that's the sort of awkward sex experiences and initial things that tends to still always be, you know, a guy's first time or losing his virginity. 

04:53 - Kevin (Guest)
Right, and in those movies, when they do finally have the experience, they tend to be successful, and that's not. That's not always accurate. 

05:06 - Candice (Host)
So for listeners. I personally don't like spoiling anything. I do encourage you to watch the show. It's fantastic, but so we'll try not to give too many spoilers if you haven't seen it yet. But Sex Spectations season one consists of six episodes that average about 30 minutes in length. I've personally watched the whole season twice and really enjoyed it. But all in all, from concept to available to the public, how long did the series take to get made? 

05:34 - Jenna (Guest)
And then let Jenna answer that question. 

05:34 - Kevin (Guest)
Let's just say years. 

05:37 - Jenna (Guest)
It's years Okay. 

05:37 - Kevin (Guest)
Multiple years. 

05:39 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, more years than we'd like. 

05:40 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, Well, with any production, there's some leaning on friends and personal connections to help get things made. How much of that element was a part of this particular series and getting it made? 

05:53 - Jenna (Guest)
100%. You know, yeah, I mean it's an indie project, it's a passion project, and so we there are. You know we called up a lot of favors from people that we know to come out and work for us. You know there are limitations on that. You know it's a SAG production and we're following those guidelines and some other things like that. But I don't know, I think it is that, and even the people that we met that are new to this, you know we met some. We got intro to some people over the course of this and started working with them and like they're good friends now. You know. So I think even the people who were kind of like new to it kind of sort of become part of the tribe by the time we've gone through the gauntlet. 

06:39 - Candice (Host)
We hear time and time again through this series and just in this industry, you know you find sort of the people you like working with and you work with them again and you collect those new people on projects that you enjoy and it sounds like you gathered a few new great ones for your core crew of people. But yeah, so, speaking of a lot of those people and the characters and your cast and crew, how did you go through your casting process? Because not everybody, it seems like, was a friend. You were asking for a favor. So, yeah, what was your casting process like and when did you finalize and lock in your main core cast of characters? 

07:17 - Kevin (Guest)
The majority of the roles were. We held auditions for Sophia Medley. The role of Katie was written for her, and the only other person that we didn't hold auditions to cast is Gabe Urr, who plays Levi. So he plays the bartender and we brought him out as just a reader, a reader during auditions. 

07:46 - Jenna (Guest)
He was doing auditions and a table read with us just as a helper friend, and he was just so funny. 

07:55 - Candice (Host)
That's amazing. So if he continues on and does greater and greater things, that's such a hilarious. 

08:00 - Jenna (Guest)
that's a really cute origin story, yeah and when we talk about using the tribe and using your friends, I would like to say that we are trying to use people that we trust, but not because we think that they're the people who will do the thing for us, but because they're people that we trust and that we've worked with and the quality is so important. And, like Jenna said, regarding the casting, there's just a lot of open casting calls and we would invite people in that we had worked with before and people that we really liked, people that we would absolutely love to work with again, and then not cast them because that fit wasn't right. 

08:35 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, ultimately it's finding that right fit for that character in that project. 

08:41 - Jenna (Guest)
I think we try to be pretty brutal about the quality you know and really do whatever it takes to get the right cast in there, and I'm really glad we did. You know, some of the people that we consider friends now again, that we kind of built a tribe with, were open casting calls here in Los Angeles, which is a little exhausting. I don't know if you've ever heard of Los Angeles, but there are a lot of actors here. 

09:08 - Candice (Host)
You don't say you know it can be cumbersome. 

09:11 - Jenna (Guest)
Like I get a little anxiety if we're like, okay, we should put up a casting call. Like my anxiety level goes from here to here because it's like cool. 

09:19 - Candice (Host)
He's raising his hands for those listening. Yeah, yeah, he's raising them high. 

09:23 - Jenna (Guest)
Who's going to go through the 30,000 submissions to call it down to the people that we can call in and see or request tapes from, or whatever? 

09:31 - Candice (Host)
So were you all doing that yourself? 

09:33 - Kevin (Guest)
So did you bring in like casting direction assistance for that, or we had people helping, so we had people that work with us, help filter through, filter through actors. We did make out calls for referrals like hey, we're looking for this specific type, and we would make those posts on Facebook and the people would recommend actors license those. That process would turn out great. 

09:59 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, so even if we're having like an open casting call, I'd say over half the time the person who we ended up casting will come through a referral, through someone we know, because they'll see that casting call and they'll say, ah, so and so. 

10:12 - Candice (Host)
I know that helps filter and have someone like kind of vouch for them. You said this took several years to make. Was the casting done before COVID Was? Were? Were there in person ones, or all virtual or how was the mix of that? 

10:26 - Kevin (Guest)
So we had two chunks of filming. We had free COVID filming and then we had peak made COVID. Yeah, I think it was during the Delta peak. Okay, delta, or maybe Omicron. I don't know it was one of, it was there's so many peaks. It was in one of the peaks that we filmed the second chunk or the last chunk of filming. So we had both where it was, in-person auditions at some small studio in Burbank and then all virtual. 

11:01 - Jenna (Guest)
Then the first time we would meet those people was when they had to show up for their call time on that day after having gotten their COVID tests, which is nerve-wracking because then part of the audition process is like light vetting of people. Will you show up to an appointment Without that? That was one of the myriad of challenges filming during that big wave of COVID, particularly a show called Sexpectations where a lot of people are making out with a lot of people. 

11:31 - Candice (Host)
It's just a very stressful time Hard to do that. 

11:33 - Jenna (Guest)
Six feet of distance, yeah, that's all visual effects Everyone is making out from six feet apart, and then they're just. 

11:42 - Candice (Host)
Yeah Well, we are going to dive into some of those visual effects later, because I know this is a visual effects heavy production. We'll get to that in a little bit. It does sound like you've finished your principal photography or whatever before COVID was over and then you've been working doing all the post stuff after that. Exactly, if anyone's keeping track of the timeline, without giving specifics, that's already. Yeah, you can see how it takes a while, especially if you guys are doing it yourselves. Doing it yourselves. Did you seek external funding, or how much of it was self-funded? How did that all work out? 

12:21 - Kevin (Guest)
Oh, it was all self-funded. 

12:29 - Candice (Host)
Given that it's a passion project all self-funded, that's probably also part of why it takes a long time to create, because I am assuming neither one of you are hidden gajillionaires. 

12:40 - Jenna (Guest)
We are not. We are not. We live frugally in some ways and we share a car. This is important to us. It's important to make our art and put it out into the world and share it with people. There are compromises. Personally, quite frankly, I would love to have a bigger place, I would love to have a second car, but you have to look in the mirror and think about what's valuable to you and what's valuable to us is being able to do these things. If we have to tighten our belts elsewhere and live more modestly, let's do it. I'm not going to be on my deathbed thinking we shouldn't have made creative things. I should have instead upgraded to a luxury sedan, exactly. 

13:31 - Candice (Host)
That thought will not cross my mind. Well, that's very important for a lot of our listeners, who tend to be more independent creators. You're doing it because of the passion and, yeah, you've got to make sacrifices, but you're doing it for your art and you want to get it out there. Speaking of getting it out there, when the show was first released in late October, it shot up as high as number three on some top comedy charts, nestled between well-known giants, the office and parks and recreation. I know you hope for success, but don't necessarily expect it when something is released. Can you talk to us about those first few days of when the show was actually out there publicly? Was it a relief, exciting, surreal? 

14:09 - Jenna (Guest)
Yes, talk us through those first things. Yes, yes and yes. 

14:13 - Kevin (Guest)
Yes, it was all those things. We did not expect it to get to top three of TV comedy. It was just a little surreal and we because we didn't expect it, we were just living in the moment Sophia was actually out here and sleeping on our couch during that time because we were having our cast and crew screening, so she was in town. For that it was just fine. It was just fine to get photos of people taking the comedy chart, I guess like seeing it pop up on their television. We had a lot of, I guess, new viewers because of that, people that were just giving it a shot, Then getting messages from them, and that was just fine and great. 

15:06 - Jenna (Guest)
We don't have a million dollar PR campaign behind this, like Parks and Rec and the Office. I'm sure did. It's very heartening to know that it got up there, because the only way it got up there is because people watched it and then told their friends about it and said you got to watch the show. Because that's it. We posted it on Facebook. That was how we put the show out there. Then for it to be a week later bumping up and charting on Apple TV, was it? Warmed my heart. 

15:39 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, it sounds very validating as well for the type of work that you do and encouraging to keep working, because what you're doing is you clearly have something if people are responding so favorably. Speaking of that response, what has the response been like now that you're seeing, with more people watching and reviewing Specifically, I've heard you've been getting some great responses, from women in particular. 

16:01 - Kevin (Guest)
Yeah, I feel like the responses that Kevin gets and the responses that I've gotten and I know that Sophia I've gotten has been very different. I'll get DMs of personal stories, people's own expectations, stories and just that. You know. Thank you for making this. I haven't seen anything like this out there yet and Kevin gets complicated on his craft. 

16:30 - Candice (Host)
Yeah it looks really good. That effect was really cool. 

16:32 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, oh my god, this looks really good. It's so polished. You guys did great on this, that and the other, and I love the score and the visual effects and the whatever. And then, yeah, the women that tend to reach out to. Sophia and Jenna are kind of saying I feel heard, and that again, is also wonderful and warms my heart, because that's the goal is to make a show that's generally entertaining for people, but that is also specifically talking to a group that maybe doesn't feel heard. 

17:02 - Candice (Host)
Was the sort of sex positivity and the empowerment and having women feel more seen and heard. Was that one of your goals in creating the story or is it just kind of a happy side effect? 

17:12 - Kevin (Guest)
It was 100% my goal. So anytime I write I am standing on a soapbox. Every single time I don't know how to motivate myself to the end of a script otherwise. So that's usually my first thing is what am I trying to say here? And then I fit that story surrounding it Like what's the most entertaining way this spoonful medicine can go down. 

17:37 - Candice (Host)
So yeah, so what is the takeaway that you want people to get from this? Is there like a specific way to boil down, like what the message is? 

17:47 - Kevin (Guest)
The message is that sex is not bad, there is no such thing as virginity, and women are whole people, just like men. I agree with you there. 

18:02 - Candice (Host)
That's awesome. Maybe that's part of why I really enjoyed the show. You mentioned in the intro that you do visual effects type stuff, so can you talk to us a little bit more about the visual effects of this show and getting those made, because I know there's a fair amount of like fantastical elements and dream-sequency type things in this show. 

18:20 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah. So I always tell Jenna when she's writing you know, don't be encumbered by what we can do, just try to write a great script and then later we'll figure out how to produce it, or we can rewrite it to make it producible. And usually we never do that rewriting pass, usually we just try to make the thing. So in this one, you know, the main character is kind of living in her fantasy world and she keeps having these like breaks from reality, as do some of the other characters, kind of like scrubs structurally. How, like in scrubs, jd would kind of like go off into his mind for a bit and then we'll be back to the scene. 

18:51
And so for a lot of those things we had to do, you know, big virtual sets, we had to do some aging and de-aging, we had to do a lot of complicated stuff that I think you wouldn't necessarily find in an indie. But the cool news right now is that I think many of these tools that the big players are using, like Unreal Engine, which has gotten a lot of press for being used in Disney's the Mandalorian and a lot of other big shows Unreal Engine is free. It's literally free. They just give it to you. 

19:24
And it takes a lot to figure it out, it takes a lot of expertise to use it, but you know, indies can compete in a certain way with these bigger shows. That's not to say I could pull off the Mandalorian, but I can pull off snippets of it. You know, likewise, the aging and de-aging. You know we're using like these machine learning, ai kind of things to be doing that. There's like a lot of new tech that's just really, really accessible to indies and frankly, I think some of the bigger studios and bigger productions are probably shaking their boots a little bit, thinking like oh man, any like? 

20:00 - Candice (Host)
any YouTuber, anyone can come for them now. Yeah, I will say, the aging and the de-aging were very well done. Thank you I remember seeing the particular aging scene. I kept looking and I was like wow, that's really well done. 

20:15 - Jenna (Guest)
Thank you. Yeah, that's probably my favorite scene in the whole thing just coming together in terms of like the visual effects complimenting the story and their performances. 

20:26 - Candice (Host)
So was that all visual effects, by the way, because I was looking at it going. Is that any aging makeup? Because that looks too good almost to be makeup 100% visual effects. 

20:36 - Jenna (Guest)
Wow, we've come so far typologically. 

20:41 - Candice (Host)
That is episode five. 

20:43 - Jenna (Guest)
For those of you listening wondering when you're going to see this in the show, yeah, yeah, because everyone's going to rush out and watch it now. 

20:49 - Candice (Host)
They better be seeing it now. I mean, personally, I love how all these different little snippets and dream sequences and things. I always get a kick out of that because even if it's a few seconds on screen, there's still a huge amount of production that goes into having that happen and still you still have to make it. So I mean kudos to you on having to do that so many times throughout this. 

21:11 - Jenna (Guest)
You know what we can do when this episode drops, I'll also post a before and after of that shot on the socials so that everyone can see Nice, so everyone keep, yeah, keep an eye out for that. 

21:22 - Candice (Host)
We will share that everywhere because it is very, very cool to see and Sophia is a very attractive young woman. So, like for the de-aging, I wasn't sure I was like, is that what she just looks? 

21:34 - Jenna (Guest)
like. 

21:36 - Candice (Host)
I don't know if she knows that, but I wasn't even sure that there was much de-aging there. 

21:40 - Jenna (Guest)
It's really funny with aging and de-aging because you get used to. When you're working on those shots, I would get used to looking at the people with the age adjustment and then, if I'm doing the aging shot, I turn it off and I'm like they look like babies, they look like they're 13 years old because you get used to them old. And then the other way around, when I was doing the de-aging and I turn it off, I'm like, ooh, you know. 

22:06 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, well, so but speaking of that, it sounds like you've got some like in-camera type things, because you know, from a directing standpoint, how different is this style when a lot of things aren't physically there for the actors versus when they're in a physical scene. 

22:23 - Jenna (Guest)
you know, with all that visual effects, I think you just have to keep that in mind. You know and there's a and I've done probably hundreds of green screenshots in my life at this point and I'm still not great about it about like remembering to immerse the people in the environment and I think, just like before you roll, taking that moment with the actors and trying to let them know where they are, what is the floor going to feel like to walk on? Where are interesting things around them that they might look at? Because I think when you're on a green screen and two actors are doing a scene, their instinct is to latch on to the real thing they have, which is their scene partner, and it's very like isolating, where there's like nothing else in the world. There's just like a lot of eye contact between two people and it doesn't matter if there's like a volcano exploding right next to them. They're just locked in on each other. So I think it's just you just have to remember, take that moment right before you roll and try to immerse the actors. 

23:22 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, keep setting the scene. 

23:24 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. 

23:25 - Candice (Host)
Do you ever put more physical things in that environment, if possible, to help with that? 

23:31 - Jenna (Guest)
A little bit. You know we do. We have one fantasy. We call it the gauntlet scene. If anybody watches the show you might know what that one is. You know I'm always trying to trick the eye and that's one of the things with VFX is like keep people's eyeballs guessing right. And so it's like this very candlelit room in a castle, and so half of the candles are real candles, half of the candles are virtual candles. But it's that kind of like just trying to trying to mishmash it. So if somebody's eye is scanning the scene, like you do, you can't like be like, wait a second, we're in a virtual set. No, that candle is very real. You know, you're basically trying to. 

24:04 - Candice (Host)
You're trying to fool somebody's eye. That's great advice right there and also a fun challenge for more people to go watch and see if they can tell what you're really doing. 

24:12 - Jenna (Guest)
Well, now that I've said that it's going to be obvious, I want to watch that again now to see. 

24:19 - Candice (Host)
So, moving from visuals, because you know we want to cover a few categories, at least in our short amount of time here there is quite a soundtrack for this series and you know acquiring rights to music is one of the many hurdles in production. Can you expand more on how you got such a great score and fun songs that enhance the vibe and maybe any tips or tricks for filmmakers wanting to put such great music to their project? 

24:45 - Jenna (Guest)
Thank you. It takes a lot of work. I think the score. We found a composer who was totally obsessed with making it great and I will say as a I don't want to come off the wrong way to composers out there, but like there are a lot of talented composers out there and there are not enough projects for all of them. So if you're an indie producer, don't be afraid to like reach out and try to find those people that are going to be able to support you and really, really put all of their heart and soul into that craft and do a great job. You do not have to settle for your cousin's nephew who just bought a new piano and wants to. You know what I mean. Like reach out, do that work, and then sort of likewise in terms of the pop songs. 

25:31
You know the show actually has like a lot of pop songs in it. Some of them were just licensed through some of these like subscription licensing places like Artgrid and Audio with two eyes, but then a bunch of them that we just couldn't find. Something I don't want to say generic, because the people putting songs on those services or songwriters, just like anybody else and they're making. They're making their passion and their songs, but we couldn't find something like specific enough for a scene. Then again, it's just like reaching out to bands to. 

26:03
You know, I used to work in a recording studio. I literally reached out to a band that I recorded in the 90s because I knew that they had a certain vibe, that I wanted for something, and I wrote them an email after not having communicated with them for 20 years, and said, hey, can we license a song for the show? And it was a lot of work, you know. It was just like a lot of these little emails and then working out contracts with all these different people and all these things and paying licensing fees for a whole bunch of these songs. But again, I think it's worth it. I think it shows in the show. I think it did end up taking us years to make the thing, but if we had shortcut all this, then what would we have here? We would have had a show that was out a few years ago, that would not have charted on Apple TV, you know, and would not be getting this great response. 

26:48
Exactly, yeah, so write lots of emails and listen to lots of music. I think that's the shorter answer. 

26:57 - Candice (Host)
Well, and also it sounds like patience is important. If you're committed to the quality, it's not going to be a quick or easy process. 

27:07 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, and like listening to. I listened to like hundreds of pop songs. There was one sequence in particular the hand holding. 

27:15 - Candice (Host)
Which I loved. I loved the hands. Are you talking about in the taxi? 

27:20 - Kevin (Guest)
Yeah, the hand holding song. 

27:23 - Jenna (Guest)
It's a music video, you know, and it just had to have like the right energy and we listened to so many songs and then I settled on one that I wasn't too happy with and then that song lived in the cut for like a couple years Because that was in the earlier episode blocks. So while we were shooting the other stuff and I was like I am not happy, I have to keep looking, and I actually started like writing a song to fill that void and thankfully I found one before that, before it, because again, every time we're doing something really time intensive, it's like okay, great, well, there goes our release date by another six months. 

27:55 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, oh, man. Well, and writing a song. Another of your many talents, it sounds like, but okay. So getting back to the fact that this is an adult comedy with lots of sex, there are some pretty hilariously awkward and authentically relatable scenes, so perhaps Jenna can maybe even take this one to talk about. Are there any that stand out to you as that were the most fun to shoot and you were in some of them, so as a couple. Was there any particularly bizarre ones to film with you know, you there being in saucy situations? 

28:30 - Kevin (Guest)
I think most of them you know when you're, when you're in it, it doesn't. It's not as bad as it appears. You know it's not. It's not the same experience as the viewer. A really, really fun scene was a sex scene. That's episode three. It was just so hard not to laugh. Which sometimes is true in real life situations as well. It is, and I had like Samra, you know, hung up just above my head, so I'm just staring at the camera during the entire scene and it was just fun and hilarious. 

29:12 - Candice (Host)
Well, it sounds like that also speaks to the environment on set, that you all had a lot of fun making this as well. I mean, it is a comedy after all, but it's also got all that sensitive content, so how important was it to have like intimacy coordination for this? 

29:26 - Kevin (Guest)
You know, we did not have an intimacy coordinator. We offered it to our actors, but I think I think if we were to do to do any shoots today, we would absolutely have one and it wouldn't even be an option. You know, we wouldn't ask at the time that we were filming. Intimacy coordinators are still kind of new, you know. We're just hearing about them showing up on sets. When I write, I write everything out. So there was never a scene where it's and then these characters kiss and then they make love and it's like and then what does that mean? The camera pan away to some curtains. Are we seeing them make love? You know so. 

30:14 - Speaker 1 (Host)
I write everything out. 

30:17 - Kevin (Guest)
So I think the actors always knew what they were doing, what was expected of them. 

30:23 - Jenna (Guest)
And it's clear on the script page like what is seen or not seen, right. So the script we see. We see them from the waist up and with their clothes on and so on and so forth, you know, or whatever. 

30:36 - Kevin (Guest)
Another thing that we agreed upon very early on is that there would be no nudity, and we were already asking so much of our actors that that would just be. It was just off the table. 

30:49 - Jenna (Guest)
They know, going into it like we're not going to show any no-nos. 

30:52 - Candice (Host)
It's still just as enjoyable without seeing any more skin. You still get. It's still a sex comedy and all of that. So I think it's it's. Nothing is lost by not having, you know, bare chest Right and I think we go there. 

31:06 - Jenna (Guest)
Just you know, there's plenty of skin and we go there in other ways. Right, we're going there with the content, we're just not going there with with showing. No-nos, there are plenty of shows out there. That's what you want to see. 

31:20 - Candice (Host)
So, once you have everything made and you need to get it out to audiences was was TVOD, or transactional video on demand, where audiences rent or buy through platforms like Apple or Amazon, always the goal, or what was your specific idea going in and did it shift at all when you were trying to get it out to eyeballs? 

31:41 - Kevin (Guest)
It shifted a bit I think. We talked to countless distributors considered seriously three. One of the problems that we kept facing is that a lot of distributors for any filmmakers do features and weren't really experiencing releasing a television show. So we talked to a few that said that they can handle a television show. The one that we went with has a specific model where they release on TVOD first and then AVOD advertising. Yeah, ad supported video so we are expected to be on more platforms coming up. This is our initial release. 

32:26 - Candice (Host)
It's nice that there's a lot of options out there for people to get content out, and especially that you can kind of hop onto bigger, more well-known platforms and not just necessarily have, like, a website where someone can download it or something so it's great that there are more options there, even if it does mean that we have to keep paying more and more as people to buy things individually or pay more for different streamers and things like that. But it's great. And the seeking of the price. This is a very affordable thing to get for people looking to rent or purchase this show. 

33:01 - Kevin (Guest)
It's less than $9. And it was the cheapest that they would. Let us price it. We're like more down more and finally you're like this is as low as you can go. 

33:12 - Jenna (Guest)
We would like to recoup our expenses. Making a profit seems like a dream, but more importantly, and again going back to like why we're doing this is like more importantly, it's to make our art and reach an audience. If we wanted to be really profitable, I would have gone to law school or something instead of making television shows, and I don't regret this decision. What is? 

33:35 - Candice (Host)
next with this? Is a season two a possibility, or what would it take to have that happen? 

33:41 - Kevin (Guest)
I think it making number three on Apple TV is huge and I think if people continue to watch it, a season two is very possible. We're talking to a couple of production companies about either expanding season one and possibly season two. It really comes down to the viewer and the audience. Like, is there an audience for this show and so if everybody listening to this goes out and watches it right now, then it increases our chances quite a bit. 

34:14 - Candice (Host)
So yeah, go watch everyone, because then they'll be able to make a season two or extend one. You were saying even we would love to. 

34:24 - Jenna (Guest)
This is our happy place and this is our love language. What we're trying to do is make something that makes you laugh, cry, you know, and does speak to people. So we would absolutely love to. We're gonna keep trying to do this or things like this, but I think the viewership is gonna determine what happens with season two. 

34:45 - Candice (Host)
In addition to renting or buying on Apple TV or Amazon Prime? Where can listeners go to learn not only more about sex expectations, but maybe about each of you and your work? 

34:56 - Kevin (Guest)
Sex expectations. We are pretty active on social media. You can find us on Instagram at at sexpectationsTV. On Facebook is SexpectationsTV show, and you can find me on Instagram and that's at JennaSTJohn Jenna St John. And that's my only public social media platform. 

35:22 - Jenna (Guest)
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram as crisis lab or on Twitter, if Twitter still exists. I used to Twitter a lot and I don't know what's happening with that place right now, but I'm at KevinBgood On X. 

35:33 - Candice (Host)
Yeah, yeah, x for Twitter? I don't know we'll see, but we'll put all these handles in the show notes as well, so people have easy access. So, yeah, I mean excellent. As a genuine fan of the show myself, as you've seen, I highly recommend listeners check it out once again, and thank you so so much, both of you, for joining us today and sharing more about how you got this show made, how you got sex expectations from just an idea all the way onto major platforms. So that's amazing. Congratulations and thank you, thank you. 

36:03 - Jenna (Guest)
Thank you, it's our pleasure. 

36:06 - Speaker 1 (Host)
Thank you for listening to Media Monuments a service of women in film and video. Please remember to review, rate and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. For more information about WIF, please visit our website at wwwwifasenfrancvasenvictororg. 

36:29 - Jenna (Guest)
That's a wrap.