337 Directing with Vanessa and Eric

337 Directing with Vanessa and Eric 

Vanessa and Eric return for another episode of Filmmakers Forge (dramatic music cue). In this episode, they delve into their experiences as film directors, sharing insights into the art and effort required to bring films to the screen. 

Transcript

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 Hello. Hello. How is the sound?

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 Oh, you sound good. Okay. How do I sound? Good. Excellent. Excellent.

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 Sorry about that drop off went really late.

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 You think after three months, my daughter would be happy to go to daycare. Oh, that kind of drop off. Yes. She, she is, she's a problem. She's a problem.

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 They haven't kicked us out yet, but I'm like, oh my.

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 Lots of yelling and screaming or something. Just lots of crying. She's just crying the whole time and they're concerned and yeah. Every time I drop her off, there's a lot of like pauses and like, we'll see how today goes.

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 I know.

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 Anyway. So, um, yeah, so it's running a little bit late today because they, they're going to try her out in a different class for a little bit. It's very fun. Hope it goes good. Me.

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 So, uh, yes. I'm stoked. I'm glad that we can make this work.

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 Yes.

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 Yeah.

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 You feel about the. Uh, nickname I gave this last time we did it, the filmmakers forge.

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 That. I'm trying to remember what it was. Oh, and we did the limey.

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 It was like.

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 Yeah.

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 Yeah. I'm just trying to remember what we, what the nickname was. Uh, no filmmakers forge. Oh, filmmaker filmmakers forge. Yeah. I don't know. That's fine. I'll throw that in the intro then, if you like. Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. Um, yeah, let me make sure all of my extra stuff is closed just cause I'm getting a little bit of. Um, I have a lot of tabs open, which is not ideal, but.

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 Quite, quite, quite need that one. Yeah, exactly. Like what all kind of clothes. Close you. Close you. Close you.

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 Close you.

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 A lot of bullshit.

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 Can tell when you open a.

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 Bright. Bright white. White. It really lights the whole thing up. It's ridiculous.

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 Okay.

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 Okay. Okay. All that can get close. Great. Okay. Hopefully that'll make things a little smoother.

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 Um, yeah.

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 Are you comfortable opening, opening us up?

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 Sure.

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 Sure, sure, sure. Any questions or wonderings about what we're doing? Um, no. No. Um, I came up with a couple of extra questions, which, um, Uh, I figured, you know, like I would sprinkle in as we go, if it feels relevant. Um, but, um,

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 Yeah.

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 Uh, do you have any questions?

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 No, I don't think so. Okay.

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 Whenever you're ready. All right.

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 And I'm good. Okay. Let's do the.

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 Completely ineffective, but somehow it works in a weird way.

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 To start. Mentally. Oh, and I've doing the back and forth on the thing. Somehow it. It's weird.

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 Okay. Ready? One, two, three. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

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 That'll work.

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 Welcome to strange eons radio. And we're doing another extra version of our. Filmmakers forge, as we call it. Cause why not? It's fun. And, uh, the idea of making movies. Uh, my name's Eric and I'm joined by the.

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 Vanessa. You might know us from strange eons radio. Yes. Yes.

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 And that's what we're doing. And we're going to get into our fine strange eons radio podcasts.

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 And, um, it's great to have, um, little, little interstitials here and there, where we get to talk about things that are a little bit off. The normal beaten path. And yeah, what are we talking about this? This time, Eric. Well, this time we decided to go a little more.

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 With our own experience. I'm talking about directing.

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 A much more detailed audience, features, whatever we've got in our arsenal of. History work. I guess you could say.

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 And. Just go back and forth. Like that's a question we both answered harder. Works. However it works out. This will be a very casual. You're looking for a structure. This is not it.

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 Our regular show is very structured.

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 This one is free form. A regular show has a timer. That's right. We will talk for 12 hours.

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 No, we won't. That timer is 100% my fault. I will do my best to refrain from going too long on this as well.

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 We'll start out like the basics kind of the idea. When you were looking at film, did you set out to be a director initially or how did you approach starting to make movies? Yeah. I did not ever really think about doing directing initially. I was much, much more interested in writing.

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 I had wanted to study creative writing. I was studying creative writing. I thought that screenwriting might be a really good fit because I loved movies so much.

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 I just wanted a career. I think it was around 2007 when the economy was collapsing. I was like, "I got to get a degree that's going to make me some kind of money, but have a path of any way, shape, or form."

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 I started doing screenwriting.

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 The school I applied to, it actually specialized in screenwriting and directing.

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 Actually the screenwriting class was horrible. It was really just a drop to your school. Okay. What about you?

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 I came from it more from the acting side. Really? Junior high, high school, and a little some independence. I did a lot of acting on stage.

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 Love doing that. I did the whole leads and stuff like that in high school and it was a lot of fun.

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 I went and I was like, "I am moving out of Idaho as soon as I can." So when I hit 18, I moved to Seattle.

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 I've been back a lot, but to Seattle and went to the Art Institute, which was a training of filmmaking overall and audio production, which was not really my area of interest, I learned how to sort of run a 24 track studio, but I wouldn't say I was good at that.

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 That's where I met Kelly because his brother's band was recording in the studio there at the school and they were actually good. So I was like, "Oh, let's go see what this band's like."

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 Because a lot of bands that recorded there were okay.

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 And they were looking for music videos for their new band Nightshade.

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 So that was the first post-school projects I did. I did a bunch of stuff in school, of course, and then got in the real world and that's what started me directing. What was your film school like? Was it like a one-year program or like what?

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 It was a two-year program? Two years, it was all kinds of stuff, production and business and pre to post and everything in between. So it was a lot of that because it sounds like yours was much more specialized. I mean. Yeah, mine was, I don't want to say a scam. That's not great. Well, you know. But it did not actually produce any sort of real degree or have any real certification as it turned out later.

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 Yeah, mine was a one-year intensive film school based out of Ealing Studios. It was this little place called The Met Film School. It was basically like, I don't know, it had two or three rooms and two classes would be running at any given time. Two years were running at the same time.

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 And yeah, there was 20 of us all together.

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 It was very, very focused. It was five days a week plus weekends. You were expected to do the assignments every day after school. You were expected to socialize with the other people in your school. So it was very, very full on and it was one year straight. So it was a September to September course. So it was like just through the fire. It was a lot, a lot, a lot of work, even though it wasn't really official and not really certified. There was a lot of real lessons happening. Our equipment sucked though.

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 It was truly godawful. I mean, like so many camcorders and really if you try pods and eventually once we did the lighting workshop, we got to go into one of the studios and like all the equipment got a lot better because you're working with like real production stuff and they're like, you can't touch the light bulbs because you'll make it explode. And you're like, oh, this feels very different. All of a sudden. Yes, I don't miss those days. Yeah. We had three quarter inch tape was the gear they had. So the cameras were freaking gigantic.

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 But no, it was all still video.

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 Yeah. We were in mini DD. So we were at that age where things could suddenly get a lot smaller. And yeah, so, you know, we were learning to edit by, you know, recording, like pressing play and pressing record on the mini DD tape to tape.

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 And then, oh yeah. And then we were using a, I don't want to say early Final Cut Pro, but it was like Final Cut Five or something. It was very, yeah. That was all tape to tape for me.

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 What was your first directing creation?

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 Yeah. Well, just like you did a lot of film school projects.

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 And then when I graduated from film school, I started working at this place called Net One to One, which eventually kind of became Film One to One. And it had hundreds of websites. And my job was to just make film for the websites. And one of my old teachers from the film school who, by the way, I was one of like three girls and I was the only girl who spoke English in my class. So it was very male oriented. Everybody wanted to be the next Tarantino, but it was in England. So everyone's British and they're all like, you know, Tarantino is awesome, but I'm England. I don't understand action films that well.

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 One of the tutors was this Australian guy. He ended up working at the company I was at. And he put together this initiative where we could pitch to make a film, a short film and that they would pay for it. And so I put together some pretty good pitches, one of which you know of. It was a short film about a girl who had antlers and she was basically very different than everyone around her.

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 And the guy didn't choose me. He chose a South African guy who was not even at the company full time. And it made me so mad. And I was so frustrated and pissed off that I decided I was going to make this film no matter what. And just to stick it to these dudes who just passed me up for really not a good reason, not a solid reason.

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 And my film got made and they actually never spent a dime on that guy. The guy never got his production put together. So my first film was a little thing called, my first film outside of film school, a little short called Heart, which ended up doing okay. Did some festival stuff. It was a silent film because I couldn't pay the audio guy. But I couldn't pay a musician.

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 Yeah I think that won an award at a festival I was involved in. Yes. I still have it. I still have it around somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. The first short film to win best short film at Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival. It was with the first? Yeah.

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 It makes my heart. I still have the poster for Maelstrom as well. That's where I met Eric was at Maelstrom. You can see most of the, some of the videos we're talking about here and some of our work at Strange Eons TV and YouTube. We've got a bunch of our shorts posted. So let's move away from nuts and bolts. I was thinking when you're directing, do you have like a philosophical way of thinking of directing or a style that you work towards achieving when you're working on a set? Yeah. That's a really good question because I think a lot of directors have different methodologies

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 and some are trained in a really specific way and some people kind of pick things up intuitively as they go.

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 I was very heavily trained because of the school I was at. So the directing program was actually really, really good.

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 They would throw, there was a period where we got actors, just really random people they would hire thrown at us day after day after day after day. And we would have to work through things and they would tell us things like use adjectives, don't result direct, don't say, okay, I need you to cry. I need you to scream, say it like this. Like that's, that was all like a no go. So I think I just kind of naturally leaned more and more into the style of trying to manipulate the actors into an emotional space and try to lead them spaces rather than push them in them and allow them to have room to develop characters as they go. So I like to have a lot of conversations ahead of time and really like, you know, I think in the auditioning stage, really make sure that it's the right fit before I get anywhere near set because I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to make somebody something that they're not.

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 So once we're on set, it's a lot more like, hopefully we've gotten prepped enough to, for them to find that character to find that space, especially with all the, the set dressing with all the other characters around them. Hopefully it's a lot easier to touch into. But my, my approach is a little bit more hoping that they, they develop and they find this space rather than me pushing, pushing, but I'm there to guide them for when they get lost. You know, I'm there to answer any questions that they have. I'm there to, to, I feel like I'm more of a spirit guide than I am, than I am a SAR on the set. What about you, Eric? How, what is, what is your style of directing? Well, you know, actors, they're cattle, right? Just kidding. I freaking love actors. I absolutely love working with actors because they can be in the best way possible, absolutely batshit crazy. Oh yeah. And I love that. That's what I like about working with actors.

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 And that's a lot of where it comes from is I just enjoy being around them and working with them and figuring out even on most of the, like the feature I would and stuff like that. We did rehearsal times. We came in and we did weird stuff and just generally worked together.

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 I've got an actor that's probably been in everything I've done since my first big short.

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 And so he's shorthand. We work great. I just say something and he flies with it and makes it so much better than I was saying. He's like, yeah, that's great. And that's where I think it's really cool when you work with somebody to that. And that can happen in a short film in a couple of days or hours, however. I mean, it's amazing how quick that can happen when it sounds like you do it too, where you're open to just being there with the person, with the acting and understanding that acting's the hardest part of acting I feel is to make sure, or the hardest part of directing actors is to make sure they feel protected because nobody wants to come off as being bad at what they're doing. I was going to say, no one comes off an asshole unless that's what you're going for. Then yeah, you want to. But I mean, they don't want to look foolish. They're the faces of what's going on. And they're the front end of where everything happens.

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 And my technical knowledge is good enough to get me in trouble.

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 I can run a camera. I've de-peed some stuff. I've done that. But man, it's so much better when I get like, well, you know, Stefan from the connoisseur I've worked with several times. Incredible. Yeah, you have such a good find with some of your crew is absolutely exceptional. Right people.

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 I, again, that's the whole idea for me is this should be a fun, relaxing environment.

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 If there's something intense when the camera's on, it doesn't translate into uncomfortable tension on the set.

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 As directors, we set the tone, you know, intentionally or not. So I think I need to be really aware of what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it.

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 The, I don't know, maybe this happens to you on set too. Like when I'm on set, I tell my AD or whoever it's like, you need to call lunch because I don't pay any attention to breaks or lunch. I get lost completely. Do you do that too? Um, yeah, I 100% am not going to be keeping track of time. And that is not going to be my job. That's what an AD is there for. Yes. But that is why I have them there. I definitely that was like one of those hard lessons learning pretty early on that, oh, okay, this is not where my headspace is going to be at. I'm going to be sucked into the scene. I'm going to be, you know, I need somebody to come up. Don't whisper to me like, okay, you, you only have a few more takes of this. We got to move on. You know, I need that because I don't know for sure. And I like what you were saying a lot about, um, how it's such a big risk for actors to, to put their trust in you because I feel like so many actors have been burned and I, and I get this, especially with actors who, um, I haven't worked with a lot who are newer to a production that I'm on, who are more experienced. A lot of times they'll be like, I've never heard of this girl. I don't know who she is. Feel like I'm doing somebody a favor. They kind of come in with this like shell of like, it's going to be bad or, um, I'm going to get fucked or, you know, they're going to not feed me. They're not going to keep me warm. Um, I'm going to have a long night and then it's such a joy to watch them open up and realize that it's not going to be like that. And it's like, Oh, okay. I'm in safe hands. This person knows what they're doing. They have a vision. When you earn that trust with them, there's something really, really special about that. Yeah, exactly.

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 Well said.

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 Um, what were, what were some of your bigger challenges as far as, um, like projects that you've worked on, have you run into anything that like was a really big struggle on set or for, for projects where you were just like, Oh God, how am I going to make it through this?

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 Sort of, honestly. Um, uh, there's been stuff, but to me, that's part of filmmaking is you're going to have stuff go wrong. So a couple instances, there's one that I think helped shape me as a director in that first night shade video we were shooting. We had a shot that we just couldn't figure out how we'd do it. And our PA said, this seems like a good idea. Like, be open to listening to everyone on your crew. Cause you never know where the great idea is going to come from. And it solved our problem and that helped a lot there. Okay. There was one big one. One really big one. When we were shooting our feature, uh, the thing on the doorstep, uh, we were shooting at the Everett library.

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 Luckily we had just enough budget to have insurance.

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 Because the grip truck got stuck in the entrance to the, uh, garage.

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 So, so it came in and got thunk and they're like, okay, so we're in the process of like letting air out of the tires and people standing on the back.

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 There's two exits.

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 Some dumbass decided he had enough room to drive around the truck. And at that point, the truck, I think, I don't remember exactly how it happened. Like the truck released, but then the little thing that covers the gate fell and hit this guy's car. Oh my God.

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 And, uh, luckily we had insurance because we, I was talking to the insurance company and they were trying to, he basically was trying to say that his entire car was totaled and he wanted an entire payout for the whole value of his car. And the insurance company went, you got a dent in your hood. Yeah. Here's $300. Go get it fixed.

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 So, um, that was probably the largest.

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 Not related to what's in front of the camera problem. I've run into, I'm sure you have a story or two. There's a lot, there's a lot. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the first like really bad one I ran into was on an early short film. It was my, I think it was my senior film in film school where I was shooting in a park and I didn't think about things like bathrooms. Oh, yeah. We lost so much time having to ferry people back and forth to like the nearest bathroom, which was, we were shooting in a park that was like a cemetery. It was maybe, oh my God, it was like five blocks away. So I was just losing hemorrhaging time with people going back and forth and back, you know, it was just that little practical stuff of, you know, feeding people, you know, taking care of the people who are around you, thinking of somebody other than yourself and your actor, like, okay, what else do I actually need to worry about logistically?

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 Um, but I, I definitely have been known to sort of push the envelope as far as, um, what I can get away with just because I've had such low budget projects.

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 And so beg borrowing and stealing have become, I think I know a little more than I would like to. Um, I had one project where literally everything was absolutely, uh, going wrong and it was like, okay, I've got a, I've got to borrow a person here. I've got to, um, you know, lie about this. So I've got to see if I can get away with this thing. But I think the thing that worked out the best for me was also again, on heart where I couldn't find a deer enclosure and I needed deer in my film for my deer film. Sure. And I was just out of ideas. And what you said was so good about listening to the people around you. And I, I was like, okay, there's this big park in England, in London called Richmond park, I'm going to go there. Um, there might be deer. There's known to be deer. I maybe we'll run into some deer and that was my best lead. And I had this guy who was a grip and he was like, Hey, um, me and my girlfriend just went to this really weird, it was basically like Northwest trek for like England's he was like, yeah, and there's this guy there. He just kind of collects deer and they're just like all this little area and they like follow him around, maybe give him a call. And I was like, okay. Called up this guy and he was like, Oh, how much money do you have? And I was like, well, what would you say if I told you I was a student? And he was like, okay, well like a hundred quid. And I was like, okay, great. That's what we can work with. I wasn't a student.

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 Right. Yes. Graduate.

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 I just said, what would you say if I was a student?

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 And so this guy gave me an absolute banging deal. Turned out that the deer thought he was their like leader. Like they, um, had just big, he was like their alpha. And so they would follow him wherever he went. And so he just had to walk behind camera and they would just all follow along at a distance and go back. And so we got like five or six takes of these deer just going from one part of the next. Yeah. And like, they were willing to come up and eat out of my actress's hand on camera. And like, I've never been able. I mean, you're told not to work with like children or animals. And I've definitely worked with both, but, um, just little, little stuff like that where it's like, I should not have gotten away with any of that. There's, there's no way, there's no way I should have gotten away with it. But, um, sometimes that kind of stuff does, does work out. That's pretty cool.

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 That is really cool. I cannot begin to sit, I don't know the production value on that is out of control. Yeah. Yeah. That is.

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 Wow.

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 Um, let's see. Well, one way to make sure things do go well.

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 Do you have a pre-production working style? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I have a notebook, um, that I usually have where I break out all the script. Um, I have, I make the world's worst storyboards like on player. They're. Truly. Challenge that.

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 Yeah, we got, we got a fight, a ruin. Um, yeah. So like, I'll, I'll either have like, I often will go to, um, locations and take the pictures of the spaces and then I'll, I'll have like a whole book where everything is just broken out to all hell. And then I'll have each line written down, like directing terms next to it of ways that I can maybe get them in people's head space pretty quickly. Um, I just really, you know, I break everything down as much as humanly possible ahead of time. And I, I carry that little notebook around with me and the hope is that I don't even have to open it, you know, but most likely I'm going to be really referencing that and making sure, um, I have all the tools that I need ahead of time. So for me, it's, it's all about getting into the script ahead, um, visualizing everything ahead, figuring out the spaces I'm using, figuring out what props I've got, what costumes, what, what people are going to be around, like how I can make all that work and then showing up and hopefully it just works. But so far it has not just worked. Okay.

[00:32:48:14 - 00:33:26:15]
 What about you? Like, do you, do you have like a similar method? Do you have like a notebook or do you have ideas or is it just that you've done a bunch of rehearsing? I have one weird thing that I do. Some people said is weird for a director to do. I love breaking down the script, like an AD, like going through and underlining the hairstyles and circling the effects or what I forgot the exact terms and doing that full breakdown to know where everything's needed for every scene, this scene needs these props, this scene needs this special effects. Uh, this scene might need a dolly or something.

[00:33:27:18 - 00:33:54:15]
 And, uh, I almost, that's pretty much where I start. And then from there I take that and I break it down. I do the one eights page thing to the page counts. I break down what I think, uh, we should spend an hour shooting this scene. Cause I, the, my other favorite thing to do on set is being an AD. So I kind of mesh those together, pretty pre-production and, uh, then

[00:33:55:19 - 00:33:59:03]
 storyboard with my little stick figures and all that stuff.

[00:34:00:19 - 00:34:08:14]
 Luckily I've got a really good friend of Kelly's is a super fast artist who just likes to make these look nice.

[00:34:10:06 - 00:34:18:16]
 It's easy when it's like three page scripts or something. That's no big deal. Um, then I get on set and that's when I have like Camille, my

[00:34:19:21 - 00:35:04:01]
 eighties most of the time and Kelly, a lot of times sitting there going, you're missing a shot, dude. You forgot this cause you know, that was the own thing we were talking about earlier. I will forget that. Here's my pages. Here's my shot list. Oh shit. I skipped that shot, went down to that shot. They're like, you need to go back. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Let's get those. But, uh, yeah, just every aspect of the script, breaking it down to every nuance you can have going on. And then if I can have rehearsal time, then I'll get that in. But, you know, again, I got three page script. You're not going to let's get together. And rehearse this.

[00:35:05:20 - 00:35:07:05]
 I think you can do that on set.

[00:35:09:18 - 00:35:18:24]
 So yeah. Oh, you're so funny. You're the way your brain works. I think is so different than mine. And as far as like to me, AD is a special circle of hell.

[00:35:20:15 - 00:35:47:07]
 My management is, oof, I hate it. If I, when I have to start breaking pages down into eighths where, um, I don't know if you still do it the old school style where you just keep folding the pages and then you've got your ruler and you mark down the, like the eight sections, which I've never folded the pages, but yeah, I get the ruler out. And I, you know, one page is one eighth. And then you go through and go, the scene is two eights, a scene four. Yeah.

[00:35:48:21 - 00:35:50:08]
 I like doing that.

[00:35:52:01 - 00:36:16:22]
 Man. Yeah. We're a different beast to me, which is, which is awesome. Part of why I like it is they're two entirely opposed jobs. Yeah. You know, if you're directing, you can't be an AD, you really should have an AD on set. And as an AD, your creativity is like zero, you know, except for figuring out how to work time.

[00:36:18:05 - 00:36:20:08]
 So that's why I think there's so much fun.

[00:36:23:11 - 00:36:28:20]
 Is that the other role that you've had the most on sets? Do you think like, they did three or four times?

[00:36:29:20 - 00:37:50:05]
 I did, um, a lot of script supervising and it's funny because I, part of why I was doing it as again, I was trying to get more to the writing aspect, but also learning a lot more on set and trying to figure out how to become a better director. And I will say that it did me no favors at all. All it really did was teach me to becoming like the set punching bag because everyone's frustrated. Everyone's mad. You're communicating with everybody in every department. You're trying to, you know, basically you have to be the bearer of bad news to everyone where you've got to tell the director, Hey, you have in your story board or in your shot list, these things and you didn't shoot them. Do you air oftentimes they're like, no, we got it. Don't worry. Move on. And you're like, you didn't, but okay. Bye. Like, you know, you're just this bad messenger a lot of times. It's very related to AD. There's a lot of similarities there. Yeah. Though I hate the ad is that y'all and get all angry. I don't understand that, but I did the feature that I did on. I had fun with the director. At least I thought it was fun. I don't think he thought it was fun, but I go, okay, this is what time it is. This is when we wrap. You have five scenes left to do. Tell me which three you want to cut or you're going to start after working faster.

[00:37:51:09 - 00:37:56:19]
 It's like, so which three do you want me to cut? He's like, what? No. Okay. Then go faster.

[00:37:57:21 - 00:38:13:04]
 You're not going to get them. I had the worst experience I ever had was, um, I had an AD who came up to me on set. We said, okay, you lost the scene. We have to move on. There was no, Hey, we really got to the minutes. No warning.

[00:38:14:17 - 00:38:40:23]
 Yeah. Just came up to me and said, um, and I, uh, ironically, again, that was for heart. There was a lunchroom scene, which is all done in a one-er, uh, that happened after I started crying and my incredible DP at the time. This guy named Mike Doxford, who's now just an incredible director and, and, um, DP out in the UK, um, I've worked with so many people have gone on to become so famous. It's ridiculous. Anyway, it's fine.

[00:38:43:14 - 00:38:55:17]
 You'll lose your shit. She was like Beyonce music videos. But anyway, um, Mike, um, I know, I know Mike, uh, was like, Hey, it's going to be okay. You're eight of D's and 88.

[00:38:56:20 - 00:40:23:13]
 Let's not say we lost the scene that you need for your story to make any sense at all. Let's shoot it in one. Let's just shoot it in one. All these shots, we're going to kill them all and we'll just shoot it in one. And I was like, okay. And, you know, it took a little bit longer to, to step it through, but instead of taking, you know, two hours, I think we got the whole thing in 15 minutes instead. So it, yeah, it was, but a D's can be, they can make her bait break a production. Yeah. I mean, that's what an ad should have done. Like here's your options. I'm not going to tell you what to do as your director. It's your job, but here's your options. Not, well, having people I knew as a D's has ruined friendships for me. Like it has literally ruined that guy. I'm vaguely friends with him still, but there was a period where I was so mad. I was so mad at him and I had another ad on a more recent project who was a friend of mine who showed up stoned every day, stoned out of his mind. And I was like, this doesn't work. It did not work. And people were like, what's wrong with this guy? And I was far enough along in my career to be like, okay, I guess I'm going to take control of this production. Or like, I think I grabbed one of my film students and was like, Hey, I need you to step up and mind the time because this person can't do it.

[00:40:24:15 - 00:40:24:20]
 Yeah.

[00:40:26:11 - 00:40:32:15]
 Along those lines, I'm going to be talking a little bit about philosophy of working with cast. What about, what about crew? What about working with crew?

[00:40:33:22 - 00:41:10:14]
 Yeah. You know, it's really tough because personalities in the film scene can be really diverse. Most of the time I try to surround myself with people I know and trust and really respect and sometimes they might not have the most glowing personalities, but they're very good at what they do. And I will take that in a heartbeat over somebody who's nice, but can't, you know, can't do the job very well. Sure. So I've, I've had some pretty solid crews, but it's amazing how just one person who can't do their job very well can be such an impedance on the whole production.

[00:41:12:03 - 00:41:46:23]
 So I've, I've, the most recent project I did, I definitely had a situation where we were pushing things. It was tight. It was hard. It was the biggest budget I had ever put towards a project, but still people were really feeling it. And we were all staying in this cabin. We were all pushing towards this. I mean, the shots were great. Everything's mostly coming together. It was a lot of people I've known for years, but I still remember when I got into my sleeping bag at night, I could hear the crew talking shit about me. Oh shit.

[00:41:48:15 - 00:41:57:23]
 Like, all right, I gotta pretend I didn't hear all that because it was another day and we got, we got stuff we got to get done.

[00:41:59:01 - 00:42:57:04]
 So, you know, um, you know, you are, when you're directing, you are the, the ship mast and the good and the bad is going to come your way when things go great. People are going to praise you for it. And when things go bad, people are going to blame you for it. And, um, that, that could be tough. That can be a really tough pill to swallow. It can, it's a really, really difficult job. Uh, it's not as creative all the time as you might want it to be. And it's also not as, um, linear as some people might want it to be. It's a final. It's definitely not that. No, for sure. Um, what about you? Like, do you have a philosophy of working with crew members or with choosing your crew? Uh, um, collaborative, uh, is the main thing. Somebody that wants to work with you has also has no problem going.

[00:42:58:13 - 00:43:06:10]
 That's not going to work. Yeah. But, but we'll follow it up with, and here's how it will work. Yeah. Here's what we can do instead.

[00:43:07:13 - 00:43:47:15]
 Um, because even though I have DPD, I'm not the greatest DPA. I know that I can operate a camera. I can do this stuff, but I know much better people at it. I know much better people at sound. I know I don't want to worry about a being what I'm directing. So yeah, I want those amazing people are just, just the people who run around in the background and just do amazing stuff. And, uh, okay, I'm going to take a side real quick because I keep wanting to praise him. We're blanking his name. The guy who did the, he was our run around in the back of the connoisseur. It's also a local director who did the Christmas stuff.

[00:43:49:01 - 00:43:49:11]
 Tie tie.

[00:43:50:13 - 00:43:51:12]
 That sounds right.

[00:43:53:01 - 00:43:58:23]
 I just do a really, really, really quick. Um, I'll show you a picture and you tell me if it's him.

[00:44:01:09 - 00:44:07:16]
 Tie huffer. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Good. Okay. All right.

[00:44:08:16 - 00:44:31:13]
 And so you've got the people that just kind of run around in the background. Like we had on the connoisseur, we had tie, who was a great filmmaker in his own right, but just did stuff. And, you know, uh, pay attention to what's going on around. So they're there and available for whoever needs them. And those people are priceless. They don't get the credit they deserve usually.

[00:44:32:16 - 00:47:25:21]
 Um, but I think they do in productions like we do, where you've got the, you know, six crew people, 10 people or whatever. Uh, and that's the most important thing to be collaborative people. I can, uh, work with, uh, the, the one time I felt apparently from the crew afterwards, they didn't think I lost it, but cleared the set. Cause like JD and I, the actor could not figure out how we wanted to make this thing work. So I just, everybody go, go, go, go, go. And, uh, cause that's one of those times when people are giving you ideas. Like I, I just need to not, I just need to talk with my actor for a little bit. And I noticed while I'm talking to JD, this was the first time, I think the first time I worked with Stefan in the background, uh, corner of my eye, I seem sneaking back down the stairs and start working, but that's awesome. If that is so cool. Thank you for knowing you still need to do this stuff. And, uh, that's the kind of thing I think is great in a crew member to. Work with you completely, but also know they've got their own stuff to do. Even if occasionally as a director, you kid in the way. No, there's, um, I think that's the difference between local like Seattle people and LA people, this is, um, there was a director who, um, it's become like a, she's become a thing in her own, right. Um, Megan, I always want to say Griffith as Griffin. Anyway, Megan, who she coined the term for a local Seattle crew as crew topia, and I knew a lot of the people that she was referring to. And there were some really solid people there, but in LA, everyone kind of maintains their lane and it's very, you know, there's unions there. It's very important. You don't go outside of the thing that you're focused on. And there's so much value to that, but there's also so much value to having a small crew, a small team of people who, um, like I said, on the last thing I worked on, I had that film school student who she was a student of mine. She just rose to every occasion. She was there with, you know, blood packs. She was there watching the clock and timing things. She was there focusing, helping with like, you know, focus when the, um, uh, AC had to step away for a minute. She was just there and there and there and there. And you're just like having those superstars around you where you're just like, if I didn't have this person stepping up in every moment to fill in the gaps that just no one would have seen were arounds, that's, that's just an incredible, incredible thing. And I think that is very specific to these smaller careers where people really care about the vision. Yeah.

[00:47:28:02 - 00:47:28:20]
 Very true.

[00:47:31:16 - 00:47:55:13]
 So what, out of all of the projects that you've worked on, what do you think has been your favorite, um, out of, out of everything you've done? I mean, I feel like you've done much bigger projects than me. I don't know if I've done more smaller things, but you've done more large scale things overall. So yeah, you've done a feature. I have not done a feature.

[00:47:57:00 - 00:48:18:22]
 Two technically. Jeez. Uh, the, the other one was a documentary about a 19 late sixties Yale summer high school called walk right in. So it's very different. I was given a co-director credit on that for some stuff I did, but that was, I was more producer on that one, producer editor.

[00:48:20:01 - 00:49:07:10]
 Uh, I mean, um, there's, that's the problem. There's, that's the problem. I'm my own worst critic. The connoisseur is probably my favorite fully realized from the way it looks to the things that happen short. I've done features are tough. There's just so much going on that you watch for what all the stuff that went wrong. It's, it's, it's tough. Um, the Lovecraft we did was also a lot of fun, which is a parody of the love boat for the with Lovecraft. Um, but, uh, yeah, it's hard to say. It's just so, how about you?

[00:49:08:18 - 00:50:21:21]
 Um, yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think it's really tough because each project has, has its own shining moment. Uh, yeah, that too. Yeah. Yeah. I remember at the end of shooting heart when we had it all done. I had this moment where I was like, you know, I could be struck by lightning and die and be fine because I did what I wanted to do. I finished this thing and I'm really proud of it. And, you know, even though there was so many things that went wrong with it. Um, and when I was shooting, I had a slightly similar feeling when I shot, um, I can't remember the name of it now, the alien short film that I did, uh, um, where it just really came together so much better than I even thought it would. That was another one where I don't think I had a single crew member who wasn't incredible. Every, everything just came together. We were on time. We were ahead of schedule. Um, everyone was fed. Everybody was happy. It was a weird, we were shooting out of the place I grew up, which is a scary cabin at night in the woods. Oh, everyone got to get freaked out by my mom's strange dog collection.

[00:50:23:07 - 00:50:40:15]
 I had my, my friend of mine named Adam who was like, um, uh, he was, uh, DP'ing on that one and he, he had a ladder up on my roof and I'm like, so he's not a ladder on my childhood roof attaching a light into my mom's bedroom. Wow.

[00:50:41:21 - 00:52:10:23]
 Coming true. You know, like there's just, there, there've been some really good moments where, um, things, things really worked. Um, I think, you know, and then there's the disappointments where, uh, one of the things I recently did, I never managed to make into the, its final product because it was a pitch product and I got it in the edit and realized that it just wasn't functioning and I cut it like six different ways and it just never really functions and, you know, I never really got what I wanted out of that, even though that project had such an incredible crew on it. So, you know, there's the heartbreakers too. Yeah. You bring up a good point. The most, what I was mentioning there is the post once it's done. Yeah. I've had. Chlorase times on set. They've largely all been good. That's again, great crew, great cast. I don't, I'm sure there's been some, but the, the focus in my brain for those times when I've been directing has been what's been, what's been going good because you don't get to do it very often. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. It's such a joy because it's like so rare because having the funds and having everything fall into place, it's, it's a, it's a little, you know, it's lightning in a bottle. It doesn't happen all the time.

[00:52:12:07 - 00:52:50:18]
 Yeah. Yeah. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up. Yeah. Any other little questions or wonderings you had micro questions. You know, I feel like you and I are both very experienced in the post end of things too. And I think that's what a lot of people know us for or realize that we do a lot more of, and I, I'm wondering if that has helped you or given you a leg up in any way as far as directing or filmmaking has gone. Absolutely. I'm sure it has you too, where you're like, okay, I've got this, I've got this shit. Oh shit. How am I going to go from this to this in post?

[00:52:52:01 - 00:53:56:06]
 And you realize I forgot storyboard. I didn't storyboard the transition or the cutaway or whatever you might need. And yeah, I think it does for you. I would imagine as well. Yeah. I think that is done. You know, I have spent so many years trying to figure out how do I become a better director, you know, script supervising and being on set and, you know, I've done just like you have done sound work and camera work and I'm terrible, terrible at those. No one ever hired me for that. I will not do you justice, but getting, um, further and further into post, I did realize going on a set, it was the first time where I was like, Oh, I know what I'm, I can visualize this now. I understand how it works. I understand how everything's going to happen. I understand why I need the shots. I need them. I understand what is missing in the moment and how to fix that in the moment. It has definitely made me a much better director coming from that brain being rewired to understand shots. Like it just, it filled in a huge gap for me.

[00:53:57:13 - 00:53:57:21]
 Excellent.

[00:54:00:20 - 00:54:18:17]
 Well, I think you're hit the end of our strange eons filmmakers for. About all your experiences on site, Eric. And, you know, I'm really looking forward to whatever your next directing project ends up being. And yours.

[00:54:20:04 - 00:55:00:11]
 Yeah. That's just like, I've got one I would love to do, but it is a feature. So yeah. Ooh. Is this a collaboration with Kelly or is this one of his scripts? Yeah. Ooh. So good. It would be really, really cool. I would love to see you guys put something out there again, but. Yeah. So if anybody's listening here and you've got a spare giant chunk of change, let me know. I like what's the amount you're not like 10.2 million or 1.5 million. You're like money. That's right. We'll make that something we'll see where it's at. Yeah.

[00:55:01:12 - 00:55:09:19]
 Exactly. I know. I had to really scale back and directing because I am always footing the bill, so yeah.

[00:55:11:24 - 00:55:13:22]
 Oh, well. Oh, well.

[00:55:18:00 - 00:55:25:21]
 Alrighty. So this is there. We'll be back next week. We've got the episode I expect to take a lot of crap for.

[00:55:27:16 - 00:55:31:06]
 Oh. The, the Lifetime.

[00:55:32:14 - 00:55:54:07]
 Oh man. What do you think? The Lifetime original movie episode. Yes. Which I'm excited about, even though I went slightly off topic for mine, in that I didn't do a horror or a thriller. Well, it's kind of a thriller. Anyways, they'll just have to listen. Yeah. They'll have to find out. Tune in. That's right.

[00:55:55:10 - 00:55:56:04]
 Next week.

[00:55:57:06 - 00:56:10:06]
 And then we've got some really good stuff coming up on the calendar past that. So, you know, everybody pay attention to the socials. Check us out on our Facebook page. Strangey and radio talk. Follow us on YouTube.

[00:56:11:09 - 00:56:19:22]
 Uh, strange yons radio TV. No, strangey on TV. Strangey on TV. Yes. Tell our your friends find their phones.

[00:56:21:02 - 00:56:29:19]
 Oh, find their phones. Make sure it's unlocked. Find their podcast app. Add us. Yes. Don't tell them. Just add us. Go to your parents house. Open their phone.

[00:56:30:22 - 00:56:52:06]
 Unsubscribe them from Fox news and Comcast and subscribe them to strange yons radio while you're at their house, change their settings on their TV. Please. So we don't need that. Uh, extra sharp soap opera look. That's right. Yes. You're not turn off smoothing or whatever it's whatever it's called. Yes.

[00:56:54:09 - 00:56:55:19]
 Everybody a favor. Yes.

[00:56:57:10 - 00:56:57:20]
 Sounds good.