Khoa Le is a visionary film director, producer, and owner of Kvibe Studios, whose journey from a refugee immigrant from Vietnam to a successful entrepreneur is a testament to his resilience. As Director and Executive Producer of Christmas Cowboy, Khoa’s passion for storytelling is evident. His vision for Kvibe Studios is to provide a fully integrated filmmaking solution—raising funds, directing, producing, marketing, and distributing films—while promoting transparency and fairness.
Additionally, as a technologist, Khoa is building platforms that will revolutionize distribution and licensing, ensuring filmmakers are protected while delivering high-quality content to audiences.
Lastly, Khoa firmly believes that storytelling is at the heart of life itself. If you have the gift to tell stories visually and with passion, there’s no reason not to pursue it. He emphasizes eliminating excuses and is convinced that there are countless pathways to success, no matter the industry or sector. For Khoa, the key is to seize the opportunities in front of you and make the most of your creative abilities.
Making a feature is no easy feat. It requires a lot of focus and passion to make something good with what you have. I make indie films that are micro budgets to hollywood standards. Everyone says that script is king, it is until you face budget, logistics, and team capabilities issues where you would need to adjust the script to accommodate the criterias. Because if you don't, then that scene or movie does not get made.
Anyone that would have read the Christmas Cowboy script would have said what we did was impossible. We filmed this movie in a total of 13 days, 1 day in NY, and 12 days in Vermont. We had to deal with a pretty decent size cast, had to work with horses, kids, disabilities, and work under the pressure of "borrowing" locations where our usage of the locations were very limited.
Everyone says "the script is king," and while there's truth to that, the reality of filmmaking often demands adaptation. Budget constraints, logistics, and the limitations of your team can significantly affect the story you're trying to tell. If you don’t adjust your script to these real-world challenges, entire scenes—or even the whole film—may never come to life.
Flexibility is crucial, and being willing to compromise on paper can be the difference between a film that gets made and one that doesn’t. This was especially true during the production of Christmas Cowboy. With limited resources, securing locations became a major hurdle. By the time we arrived, only about 50% of the locations were locked down. It’s nearly impossible to communicate proper blocking to your crew when you don’t even know what space you’re working with.
I couldn’t tell the cinematographer or direct the actors with any certainty until I physically saw the location. In some cases, locations were still being secured within 24-48 hours of shooting. Once on set, I often had less than five minutes to figure out how to block the scene in a way that was visually engaging and pushed the story forward.
I’ve directed five feature films so far, and none have been created under ideal conditions. For Christmas Cowboy, we shot over 50 setups per day on a shoestring budget, cramming it all into a 12 day schedule. On average, we’re filming 10-12 script pages daily, and our actors usually only get two takes per setup.
Our technical crew may spend an hour setting up a baseline to shoot the scene, then are given 15-20 minutes to setup the next shot to continue the coverage. As the director, I’m usually only given 5-10 minutes to capture per setup and so the full scene is captured within hour to 1.5 hours.
For me, I can not move any scene forward if it doesn't look good so I work under a certain mindset to get these shots in 1 to 2 takes and in real-time, I am preparing my mind for the next 2 or 3 scenes so I can prepare to communicate to crew on what we are doing after shooting the scene we are working on.
There is no storyboard or a shot list in these situations because it goes out the window with the unpredictable production environment due to the lack of resources and limitations that's needed to shoot this film.
Anyone can say, "well spend more time preparing." That sounds logical, but the reality is that with a large cast, if you want specific crew members, actors, and locations, you have to work with that schedule and all the pieces you thought would be prepared for mostly all break apart. My job is to troubleshoot and ensure these pieces are repairable and still usable.
