Excuse the Intermission
Alex, and Max take you on a journey through film with this discussion podcast about movies.
Excuse the Intermission
Filmmaker Interviews LIVE from the 2025 Gig Harbor Film Festival
Five conversations. One weekend that proves short films can carry more than most features. We sat down at the Gig Harbor Film Festival with filmmakers who turned everyday pressure into unforgettable cinema—starting with a travel-phobe who literally becomes a shoe. That hybrid live action-animation pivot wasn’t a gimmick; it was a smart, budget-aware way to visualize dissociation, sharpened by a one-man animation army and razor-sharp improv that had audiences grinning at micro-expressions and airline absurdity.
We then move into a quiet chill that lingers: a brother and sister return home in The Graves, where delayed grief sneaks up like a reflection you’d rather not catch. Built from a deeply personal experience, the film embraces constraint as design—an Airbnb with character, a ghost born from a flashlight test, and sound that makes broad daylight feel haunted. The lesson travels beyond festivals: think audience-first, from thumbnails to retention, because distribution is a creative choice.
Around a campfire, I Hope You’re Happy maps the stages of grief onto friendship under the shadow of the opioid crisis. Tight writing, Zoom rehearsals, and a score woven from a diegetic ukulele tune create an “earned silence” when credits roll—proof that intimacy and careful sound can carry weight in minutes. Float and Fly lifts that intimacy into the sky with community-fueled aviation: first-time actors, wing-mounted cameras, and Gig Harbor vistas that remind you how place can become subtext for healing and courage.
Finally, An Old Friend delivers a cathartic twist: an imaginary friend assigned to a man at the end of his life. The crew let improvisation breathe, then sculpted time in the edit with sound design that thins the world to breath and memory. With a shelf of festival awards and an Oscar-qualification push underway, the team shares the unglamorous truth—DCPs, captions, qualifying runs, and the real costs behind a campaign—while still savoring packed rooms and new colleagues made along the way.
If you love craft talk, practical hacks, and stories that punch above their runtime, press play. Subscribe, share this with a filmmaker friend, and leave a review with the short you’d expand into a feature—we’ll read our favorites on the show.
How's it? I'm Alex McCauley, and this is Excuse the Intermission, a discussion show surrounding movies. Ahead on this episode, you will hear a compilation of filmmaker interviews from the 2025 Gig Harbor Film Festival. Before you listen to these conversations, I want to express my gratitude and appreciation towards everyone who joined ETI on the mics this past weekend, and of course a huge thank you to the Gig Harbor Film Festival for inviting us back into this space. We will be sure to tag the folks who we spoke to in the social posts for this episode so that you can search out their work and follow in their journey. But for now, enjoy the interviews that begin on the other side of this short break. All right, welcome back. I am now pleased to be joined by a filmmaker from the Rad Batch, batch of short films here at the Gig Harbor Film Festival. If you could go ahead and introduce yourself in the film that you're representing.
SPEAKER_06:Sure. My name is Ghendrahman, and I'm here with But I'm a Shoe.
SPEAKER_08:So I've already had the pleasure of seeing this film once and also moderating a QA with you from yesterday. So happy to have you on the microphone because there's so much more that I want to know about this film. But for our listeners, if you could kind of give them a brief synopsis of what the film's about so there's some context to our discussion.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, of course. So it's basically about this girl who hates air travel, which I think is something that might resonate with a lot of people. It's not the funnest of activities. We're not talking about the vacation, we're talking about the getting there part, right? So she decides to use this new experimental service that turns people into objects for the duration of the flight with the hope of avoiding all shenanigans that are involved.
SPEAKER_08:Objectifying travel, I believe. Is that what it's referred to in the film? I love that.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, FDA approval pending. And so she chooses to become a shoe, and it goes terribly wrong, as one would expect.
SPEAKER_08:Yes, the anxiety is not relieved. In fact, it might be heightened.
SPEAKER_06:Yes. I I think that's an accurate assessment.
SPEAKER_08:Aaron Powell So this film is very unique because it is split. I don't know if I'm getting the percentages correct here, but one might say 50-50 live action and animation. What went into the choice for making the film in that way?
SPEAKER_06:It's like 30-70 and 10.
SPEAKER_08:There we go. Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_06:But yeah, I mean look, it's it's I I think a lot of uh independent filmmakers will share the sentiment. When you come up with an idea, you know no matter what that your budget's gonna be limited. So there's a story you might wish you could tell, or a way you wish you could have told told its story, and then there's the practicality of it all. This is why a lot of us try to, you know, small cast, a minimal amount of locations. And so to really shoot myself in the foot, I decided I needed an airport. But I think initially, you know, if I had an unlimited budget, maybe I would have gone for a version when only the shoe is animated, maybe 3D animation, right? But you know, no without getting too much into union contracts and what that would have entailed we're still talking about probably two and a half, three days of having a full cast flesh and blood sitting on something that is either an airplane or mimicking an airplane. And that would not fly, no pun intended. So both practically and because she goes through a transformation, what seemed to be the preferable choice was to the moment she becomes a shoe, everything become animated. So she becomes a shoe once she she screens her she scans her boarding pass. So everything that was on the plane was already animated, so that definitely took some of the what would have been a financial and logistical nightmare off the table. Still needed an airport though. So that part, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And then you needed an animation team. So how did that come about?
SPEAKER_06:Yes, the animation team was one person. Probably why post-production took so long. Obviously, that's not his day job, that's something he did on the side. His name is Andrew Dittman, he's incredibly talented. I really recommend working with him, and a lot of his own visual humor made it into the film, which worked very well because I found that we have very similar humor. Uh so there's things I d I can't take credit for, but I do feel like vice versa. You know what I mean? There's some stuff that he just really got what I was trying to do. And I actually have seen his first film at a film festival, the Waco Independent Film Festival, which is also where we ended up shooting. And and I was like, that is exactly what I need. His first film about this bigamy hippo was ridiculous, was also a combination of live action and animation, and the style. I was like, that's what that's that's exactly what I need for this.
SPEAKER_08:I'm I'm glad that we're not on video right now because I've had the stupid grin on my face here for the last minute or so as as you've been talking about kind of this marriage of the animation matching maybe some of the humor that that is in the script already. I'm specifically thinking about it's Scott, right? The character that's sitting next to the shoe.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Some of the micro expressions that that character has where they just kind of stare down at the shoe, they stare off. So I get exactly what you're you're talking about here. When you when you see the film now with an audience, do you get the same reactions every time? Do you get different reactions each time? What how do the comic bits hit as you've been showing the film around? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:There are some stuff that are always a crowd pleaser, and it's not the stuff that I would have imagined. So it just goes to show you, you know. And got really lucky also with the cast because Scott, both Scott and oh, I forget the name of the uh of the TSA guard. They're voiced by the same actor. His name is Alexander Ferguson, he's amazing. He just finished Fears Run on Broadway on Hamilton. So he's an incredible well, hire him. He's an incredible uh imitator and a voice actor. And I had multiple friends actually voicing in this, including a small, you know, small I got the California girl, which was really funny, another TSA officer. But yeah, 100%. And even stuff like it's interesting because I I directed this one too, but directing is not my go-to. I'm glad I did it. I to me it was almost kind of like, you know, not trial by fire, but I knew that there's gonna be a limited amount of live action. So I knew that if I'm gonna do something I haven't done since high school, it would be like a great opportunity to s do a smaller amount of it. So it's more of a controlled environment, but it also meant shorter filming days because the portion was smaller, relatively speaking. And it's interesting because as a writer, I'm very visual. So often I would put a lot of direction in there. So that dynamic of director-writer is always like I'm still learning, and it's also different every time you work with someone new. But I would say that the one nice thing about being both is that you just don't need to consult with anyone in real time. It's like, you know, I want to add this line, so we will add this line because I'm the writer and the director, and so I wanna.
SPEAKER_08:Right, right. So, what does that process look like to you then? Are you just do you have a script on site when you're on set and you're you're adding notes into the margins, or are you coming with a lot of that stuff already kind of in your head, and then you need to feel the space, so to say, to see what you can and can't do on the day of shooting?
SPEAKER_06:I think this one was so so my first film was very different. It was uh it was a family drama, historical fiction. So there was a point in sticking into what's in there. With Shoe, which is a comedy, like many comedies, there was a lot of ed libbing. You know, there's some stuff that I was like, I need us to hit certain beats that are very important for the sake of the narrative, or this is a joke I really care about. But also, English is not my first language. So one of the things that were crucial to me after I finished the draft and we got closer to production was to run it by not just any American friends, but the people were also like Andrew, my the my animator, as well as Janet Varney from The Legend of Korra, who's the lead actress in the film, and I wanted to see she felt comfortable with the language, and I was like, if there's something grammatically wrong, correct me. There were maybe a couple places. There's like, does that sound well like that sound okay to you? And they're like, I use this word instead. So first of all, put an ego aside for a second. But also, yeah, when when we got there on the day, when we I I tried to get there two days before because again, we didn't product producing remotely is challenging. Someone else is doing the scout, you come and you kind of like I have to work with what I have. And as a director, too, it's not just as a producer, it's also as a director. You don't didn't really get to see the location. So like the airport was under construction because they were delayed with constructions that were supposed to be done before we got there. So we had to take this construction area to make it work, you know? They were super accommodating. But yeah, I mean, there was some I I knew that having Janet also meant I have an incredible improviser. And when you have that, you don't want it to go to waste. So I think we both had a lot of fun in those what they call like gag rant.
SPEAKER_08:I was gonna say, is there like a blooper reel out there somewhere on a hard drive?
SPEAKER_06:No, but I probably should one of these days. And more than that, because I can draw for the life of me, I I think that my storyboard looks like a horror book. You know, we're talking sticky fingers with like pointy teeth, like out-of-proportion bodies, scary stuff. Okay, and I think one of these days that needs to make it out there, as well as the animatic, because I use like fun codels, sure, but I also use and shoes, of course. But I also use like containers of like laundry detergent, you know. And like paper rolls, like you work with what you have to make sure the DP kind of see what what and not just the deepy, because it's animated, I had to storyboard that too, you know. So yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Very neat. So when when you think about kind of the premise of But I Must Shoe, is there was there any sort of inspiration that you got from, you know, maybe your own travel? I don't want to label anything as like anxiety or or thoughts or anything like that, but like where I, you know, to to ask in a roundabout way, sort of like what's what is the motivation for tackling this subject in in a comedic way, but something that you know folks some folks have a real like phobia of.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, no, a hundred percent it came from, you know, well, my previous festival circuit, there was this one specific time, and that's when the the idea was really conceived. I think I was in San Jose. Well, I'm based in New York.
SPEAKER_09:Okay.
SPEAKER_06:So I was in San Jose, I think it was the Poppy Jasper Film Festival, if I remember correctly. Went back home to New York for like, I don't know, a week to nine days, then flew to Sedona. And flying to Sedona is like you don't fly to well, I guess you can fly to Flex, but that's not that most people fly to Phoenix and take like a two-hour shuttle. And so twice in the same month on the west side of the country with like very little time at home, and then I had to wake up at like 3 a.m. to catch a 4 a.m. van to get on for the flight back home to get there by 8, 4, 9, you know, it and I was like, as I was packing the night before, already knowing I have like two hours to sleep, I was like I can't.
SPEAKER_08:How can I disassociate from this?
SPEAKER_06:Yes, and pretty much. And there was this inner monologue, and like I usually people heard me talk about this before, but I call it hen A and Ken B or Gen 1 and Gen 2 having like a conversation about God, I wish I could turn myself into a small object for the duration of this life. I would not suffer from oh, it's hot, but now it's super cold, or the food is terrible, or like by the time they get to you, and you of course you're always like close to the bathroom sitting on the last row. They don't have the one thing that you actually eat with your restrictions and this and that. And so, you know, and I was like, wait, should I write this first at first? It was like, what would I turn myself into?
SPEAKER_08:That was gonna be another question was how did you land on a shoe?
SPEAKER_06:Well, very much like she says in the movie, I was like, I would split my consciousness into two shoes so I can step. And in my mind, I'm like, flip, flip, yes, flip, imagining this. And I was like, Yeah, and the DSA officer will be like shoes off, but I own a shoe. I really had this conversation with myself. And then I was like, Should I write this down? Is there something there? No, it's just a conversation you're having with yourself alone in a hotel room at like midnight. But a few days later, when I actually got home and like, you know after more travel, after more travel, I was like, I think I should put this down on paper. And then I started thinking, what are the things that really piss people off the most when they fly? And you know, I don't know if you encountered this, but I feel like it's very common when you know the day you get the most steps in are travel days because the airports are huge, right? And and I have been to airports when they're like distance to gate 18, 15 more minutes. Like it's it's not even an exaggeration. I mean it's like how big is this place? And if it's a 15 minutes walk, why don't we have some sort of like uh I don't know, car service inside like insanity. So it was that, it was the food, it was, and I think it's it's very much so, and also the older we get, it you really do become stiff sitting so many hours. So there is, when you think about it, being humans in the air is not a natural thing. Our digestive system is not built for it, there is muscle ache involved, there is like before we even talk about jet leg or just the lack of sleep, so flights are not fun.
SPEAKER_08:I think that there's so it sounds like there's a lot of you, I think there's a lot of humanity in in this film. So kudos to you for being able to capture that in a very comedic way, might I add. So i is animation something that you see yourself continuing to do with some of your films?
SPEAKER_06:You know, here it only happened because I needed a plot device.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_06:In fact, I was like, what business do I have making an animation? What do I know about making an animation? I'm like, well, if you get a good animator and you write a s the script that you write. If you know how to write a script, you you can write a script that is in animation, find the right collaborator to work with. So will I do it in the future again? I guess it really just depends on the project. For this one, it was a very natural, you know, solu like that was that was where like the wind blew, so to speak. Like that made so much sense. I can tell you that in my next one, there's no need for animation. There might be some need for like, you know, some sort of creativity when it comes to set design, but no need for animation. So never say never, but it just depends on what's the next story, you know?
SPEAKER_08:I think that's great for for other filmmakers to hear is sometimes just take that leap of faith.
SPEAKER_06:Do what you need to do for that specific project 100%.
SPEAKER_08:Absolutely. So so where is But I'm a shoe at right now in its festival run? And then, you know, where where's it going to one day live and how people can find it?
SPEAKER_06:Well, everything I do is under on Instagram, Grace Dragon Productions, or my website, which is my name.com. And then right now people can see my previous film called The Book of Ruth starring a Tony and Emmy Award nominee, Tova Felchew. So, you know, if people I you know it's it's online, very easy to watch. Shoe is, I guess, I mean, we're wrapping up a year in November from our premiere at the St. Louis Film Festival, and I think it probably has another year in it, or at least like eight months or so. So I think for sure, two years at a festival is a good, you know, thing. We are also playing the El Paso Film Festival this weekend. Unfortunately, it overlapped with gig, so you know. But we're going to Yofi Fest in the Yonkers in November. And what comes after, it's all on my website when when I know the people. Then the people know.
SPEAKER_08:Well, we're so happy that you you chose Gig Harbor and you came here to share it with us.
SPEAKER_06:And you guys are so you're pampering us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:That's that's very kind of you to say you're you're treating us with great art. So thank you so much, and thank you so much for joining us here on the pod to talk about it a little more. Thanks so much. You're welcome. All right, so I'm delighted to be joined now by Colin Simpson, the uh director of a wonderful short that played in the locally sourced block. I'm here today. Colin, if you want to introduce yourself, your film, and then if you have sort of like a log line, I think it's always helpful to give the listeners a taste of sort of what we're talking about before we get into the details.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, sure thing. My name is Colin Simpson, and I'm a Pacific Northwest native, now Seattle-based filmmaker. And the film I produced was called The Graves, and it's about a younger woman who returns to her childhood home after many years after her mother's passed away, and her brother's still living in the house, and she's essentially she's essentially moved on from her past, but the past hasn't moved on from her type situation, and then spooky stuff starts happening.
SPEAKER_08:So I I'm so curious about the family dynamic in this film. Was it always going to be a brother-sister grieving the loss of a mother? Is that the way you saw it from the beginning? Because as I was watching it, I think it's wonderful the way you took it, but I couldn't help but think this could go a lot of different ways. You could have, you know, a couple grieving the loss of a child, perhaps. You've seen I've seen that done before. So was that always your intention to have it be to have it be starring a brother and sister?
SPEAKER_04:It was for some reason. That's what jumped into my head. The actual background of the story, or kind of what I was thinking of when I was putting it together, is that my partner and I had had a miscarriage, and it was a first trimester miscarriage, which are actually very common. It's like 50% of pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester. It's just we were very good about testing and and trying and all that stuff. So intellectually, I was very like, oh, okay, this is just something that happens. You know, I was bummed for a day or two, but then kind of told myself, like, this is the thing that happens, it's time to move on. I'm fine with it. I understand it intellectually. And then, like, maybe six weeks or two months later, I was watching everything ever Everything Everywhere All at Once in the theater with some friends of mine, and there's just one shot for a couple seconds where Michelle Yo is pregnant, and something about seeing that scene like emotionally really disrupted me. And I actually started crying a little bit, had to kind of like pretend like I was going to the bathroom or something. But it was really weird because I was like, Well, I told myself I was fine. Why is this still bothering me? And then it was one of those moments where you realize, like, oh, the body keeps the score. So the idea was to do a story about a character who had told themselves that they had moved on and told themselves that they were, had made peace with something, but really were in denial about it. And it felt like the best way to do that would be to move the situation away from a couple with a, you know, pregnancy that didn't work out or deceased child into a brother and sister dynamic. Because actually I did think at first about doing it about a couple with a child that passed, but it was just that was too kind of emotionally close. And also I was like, God, that's such a bummer for a movie that I want to be fun for people to watch, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_08:Wow. I mean, I I appreciate the vulnerability so much and sharing that. And I'm I apologize for for mentioning oh, it could have been it could have been parents grieving a child.
SPEAKER_04:No problem. It's actually something I think we were because a lot of people go through it, like once we started telling people that's what happened. I mean, my mom was like, Oh, yeah, we had a miscarriage before we had you, and actually the due date would have been before your day of conception, so you're only alive because that happened. Oh wow. So there was a lot of this. I think we we wanted to be very open about talking about it because we realized the commonality of that experience. And that also was sort of the inspiration for turning it into a movie in a way, even though it's only laterally connected.
SPEAKER_08:Right. No, it makes total sense. So, what is what does the process look like for you? I know during the QA session you talked about being opportunistic and and having this house made available to you that then all of a sudden wasn't, but you still wanted to make it work and this kind of all-in-one location setting. So, d does that then mean you bring in the actors, you do blocking, is there a script read before everybody kind of gets on site? Because it sounds like you had a lot of this kind of in your in your mind before it actually went to screen.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it was kind of an interesting kind of two parallel things were happening at once because I I read Robert Rodriguez's what is his book called? It's the 10-minute film school is like a section in his book about making El Mariachi for seven grand or whatever. And a big thing he talks about with independent filmmaking is like think of the resources you have first and then use that as your jumping off point. And I think probably a lot of people will agree, constraints breed creativity. So being able to say, like, okay, we want to do a project that takes place in this setting, that's it's almost like a 48-hour competition. You get your constraints that build the sandbox, and then that actually allows you to be more creative in your thinking. So the house situation was a friend of mine that had bought an old house and was going to be moving out, and knowing that he was gonna be moving out so it could get remodeled, I was like, that's our opportunity, we'll shoot in the house. And so originally we were trying to think of a story that would take place in a house that was unfurnished because he was gonna have all his stuff moved out, and it uh unsurprisingly became very difficult to schedule a shoot when you have a family moving out of a house and a construction crew coming in and being able to say what weekend is there gonna be in between those two things where we could shoot this movie. So I think what happened, if I reflect back on it, is we felt confident enough about shooting in a house and wanting to do this family story that then I just went on Airbnb, and out of probably 50 houses I looked at that were all kind of bland, kind of generic, typical Airbnb rentals nowadays, there was this one house in Des Moines that just had a lot of character, had a really great look to it. And we I called the homeowners and they were like totally fine with us shooting a movie there. I thought there was gonna be more pushback, and they were like, yeah, do whatever you want, okay, as long as you rent it for the weekend. Right. So then it was kind of like once the house came into place and we actually had that lot locked in, a lot of the story then came together from that. How the characters were moving through the house, what we wanted to do with the ghost moments and things like that. So it became this there was this symbiosis between emotionally the type of story we wanted to tell, the location, and then also knowing we wanted to make a story that had the most opportunity for just different visual and auditory things to try out, because this was our second short film. Our first short was essentially just two characters talking in an office building for 10 minutes. So I was really like, okay, let's what's a story that can have smaller dialogue and instead music, sound, VFX, props, practical effects. You know, all those the tools of filmmaking could we put into one short just to learn how to do those things.
SPEAKER_08:That's awesome. And I I love you mentioning the the ghost moments because along with everything else that you've already detailed, this is a ghost story as well. And there's two or three really unsettling moments in the film, I think. You know, the the shot with the sheet moving, and then that there's uh some fun stuff with reflections being done. Did you always have in your mind I want this movie to be unsettling as well as these other things?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think it was I was really inspired by the 1961 movie The Innocence, which is based on Henry James's uh, yeah. That is one of the scariest movies that the little girl.
SPEAKER_08:I love I love the shot. Um she's by the pond and she sees and it's broad daylight, right? Has no business being as unsettling as it is, but again, when when you can create the mood.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, exactly. That was that shot in particular, I just always marvel at. And what's so great about The Innocence is it's scary when you watch it. It's even scarier for me when I think about it later, and I think back to those scenes and that house, and and so it was really inspired by that in the sense that it was like, what's a story where the psychology and the character and the drama comes first, and the sort of spookiness comes after? And we our intention was to make a horror film, and I think what we ended up with is more of like a spooky drama, uh, which I'm totally happy with because I think it is such a a fun way to show what a character is going through emotionally and dramatically, but in a way that's a little bit more visual and a little more entertaining for the audience than just you know them sitting around talking about their problems.
SPEAKER_08:Well, it's certainly visual. I mean, you have this amazing, you know, representation of the mother spirit not being able to move on. What was the process like getting that and your visual effects team together to create that image?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so one of the biggest uh besides the innocence, another huge influence for this was Nightmare on Elm Street and just all the really imaginative visuals that Wes Craven came up for came up with for that movie. So when we were putting this together, I was really like, no visual effects. We gotta think everything through practically because VFX in independent films can sometimes show the scaffolding a little too much. Sure. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. So we did some camera tests with a light, a flashlight on a stick. Actually, it was gonna be a flashlight on a drone, and it was gonna kind of fly around the room or some kind of light rig to a drone, and I thought it would give it this cool ethereal floating beauty, but manning a drone in a small space is really difficult, especially when we have actors and camera equipment around. So then we just put a light on a C stand and we're sort of wiggling that around. And we did a couple camera tests where it looked okay. We're like, oh, this will this will work, this will be cool. And then on set, when we were putting it together, I think the actors even admitted, like, yeah, like later, like, I'm I'm not sure about this, I don't know how this is gonna look. And when we wrapped shooting and I started looking through the footage, as soon as I saw the shots with our ghost, which again was just a flashlight on the end of a stick, I was like, I'm in so much trouble. This looks so terrible. Like, what am I gonna do? And what was really cool is I found a After Effects VFX pack with all like 200 different kind of cloud swirling formation type.
SPEAKER_08:The tracers and everything, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And then because we had but because we had the light on the stick, we had a very natural-looking lens flare, and we had this natural kind of bobbing movement, and there was a little bit of ambient reflection that we got from it too. So basically, I just motion tracked to the flashlight and then added in these layers of clouds and wisps and sort of smoke and things like that. And that is basically how that effect started to build, and then our sound designer did a really great job taking sort of different scraps of audio and of uh a voiceover actor we had hired and little growling sounds and some other things like that to put together the audio side of that creature. But really, it was it was a it was a way to save a what potentially could have been a very terrible looking effect. And at that point in the movie, too, it's not like you can just cut it out. Like the scene with the sheet moving, we were kind of like, yeah, if we can't make this work, we could just cut it out. With the end of the movie, you can't I don't know what we would have cut to. So I it I'm really glad that worked out because I was quite nervous.
SPEAKER_08:Well, it looks great. The one other thing I really want to ask about is there's a moment between the brother and sister character where the emotional registration really ramps up and they're going at each other. What and there's it's an incredible dramatic moment in the film. What sort of environment do you as the director, the filmmaker, try to create on set when you know it's going to be one of these moments that requires the actors to really kind of dig deep and and do their thing? Or is that something that you're like, I'm gonna let them handle it themselves, they're they're the actors?
SPEAKER_04:I mean, I think the first thing I want to acknowledge is that it's it's the people you work with that really make that happen. And I had really lucked out where our actors, one of them I'd worked with before, of the brother, and then the sister was someone that he has been friends with for years who we saw in a couple shorts and just really thought she had a great presence on screen. So they had a pre existing dynamic, uh, a relationship with each other and all of that, which really helped. And we only really did probably two rehearsal sessions. That was actually kind of another thing that was cool while we were developing the story was that we did a few rehearsals with them where we were. We were able to flesh the characters out a bit more and flesh out the dialogue a little bit more. And that line the brother says, where it's like you didn't move on, you ran away was actually something he came up with during rehearsal. But as far as shooting that actual scene, we that was the first thing we shot when we when we made really yeah and I think it would part of it was just the the logistics of the shoot and we sh we started on a Friday night, sat shot all day Saturday, shot all day Sunday. So we knew for starting off Friday we had to do one of the night scenes. And the thinking was like, okay, well if this is the if this is the highest moment of them emotionally in the movie, we'll shoot that first, and then that way all of the other scenes we know how much to play them down versus working the other way where you know if you start and you shoot the quiet scenes first, it's hard to tell how loud it's gonna get later. So there's sort of a strategic side to it. That's a great strategy. Yeah, and then what I think really helped too is so shooting making it the first thing we shot helped a lot.
SPEAKER_08:And them also having that the familiarity with each other to where they can go to that place right away, I think.
SPEAKER_04:Totally. And then I think with you know, anytime you make a short film, anytime you anytime you do anything, whether it's making a short film or building a staircase, if you have eight hours to do it, you start by spending way more time on the early stuff, and then as you get closer to your deadline, you start rushing through things. So I think doing such an important scene first helped also because we we took our time and went through it really slowly and gave the actors the space to prepare between takes, to have a moment to themselves, to take all the time they needed to get themselves into that headspace without worrying, like, oh, we we've got so many pages to get through, or you know, we're running out of time and now we're cutting lines out. So I think the scheduling was a huge part of it. And then during the actual shooting, you know, I'm kind of like a loud person and I don't love awkward silences, so I'm kind of, you know, I'm trying to sort of fill the silences a little too much. But the DP on this project, who was also my co-producer, he when when we started shooting, he just started kind of whispering a lot of the camera commands out. And I it set this tone of like, this is about us receding from this scene. We sh the the crew shouldn't have a presence here. If we need to talk to each other, it's just hush hushed whispers. And everything is about letting these actors uh respecting the space they're in, the space they need to get into, and us just is it okay to swear on this? Or absolutely us just like shutting the fuck up, yeah, getting out of their way. And I think that was really pivotal to it too, and something that I've tried to use rolling going forward with another short we worked on is in those in those quiet moments, being as silent as you can or as quiet as you can and just getting getting out of their way.
SPEAKER_08:That's great. I mean, it it sounds like from you know, you so this was your second, this is your second short as a director. Yeah. You're wise beyond your years. It sounds like Colin. Um so talk about the Graves now, where it is, where it's going, where you're at in the festival run, and kind of the the legs that you that you see this film having.
SPEAKER_04:Sure, yeah. So my my first goal with this distribution-wise was to try to play it at some local festivals because it's just such a great way to meet other, you know, Puget Sound area based filmmakers. And so submitted it to a lot of local festivals. The Seattle Film Society does the locals-only screening.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, shout out Marcus Baker.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, hey, shout out Marcus Baker. I love what they're doing, it's it's a great resource for for filmmakers. So getting it to be seen by locals, seen around the area. Like I'm a big believer in the uh Seattle Metro or Puget Sound film community and feeling like a part of that. But I think kind of beyond a regional festival run, the next step is putting it on YouTube. Because YouTube hor horror short films can do great on YouTube. My day job is running a YouTube channel. It's a mattress review YouTube channel, so it has nothing about really filmmaking as a part of it. But through that, I've learned a lot about how you can how you market content on YouTube and how from that you can actually get a great audience. And that wasn't the initial plan when working on the graves, but halfway through during the post-production process, I had put kind of a V1 cut of the movie onto my YouTube channel as what I thought was an unlisted video, so I could show it to some different people, and I wanted to watch it on a TV, and I wanted to watch it on a projector, and I wanted to watch it on my phone. But I'd accidentally left it on public mode and I had thrown a thumbnail on it just to kind of complete the package. And that rough draft version ended up getting like 16,000 views, which is cool. But I also was like, this isn't the version people should be watching. But it did kind of remind me like for independent filmmakers, YouTube can be a great way to get an audience for your for your movie and get some interesting feedback through the comments they might leave or looking at like for me, it's like the retention data, like when did people tune out? When did people are there scenes people rewatched again? So for the short we're working on now, we're we started with kind of thinking of like, well, what's the the poster and the thumbnail image for this? How would we kind of sell this movie? How does the movie start in a way that makes it interesting to people? And I think whether a filmmaker wants to put their movie on YouTube or not, I think that's a great way just to think about a movie because it's so audience first and audience forward. And I think as a director, your job starts before anyone's watched your movie. Because part of your job is to convince people to watch your movie. So having a great log line, having a great thumbnail, those are skills I don't think anyone could ever be too good at. So it's something I want to focus on with subsequent projects.
SPEAKER_08:They're also really hard things to teach, too. Yeah. Right? Like you almost have to do it yourself, figure it out along the way.
SPEAKER_04:Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's one of those things where you almost have to sit down and write out a hundred log lines and 99 of them you throw away. And then there's one that works. And I still don't, I still haven't fully crafted one for Graves yet, but I'm still working on what's that log line and what's that thumbnail, and what's that poster. And then hopefully when this this sort of final draft version goes on YouTube, it can cat capture an audience there.
SPEAKER_08:Amazing. Well, Colin, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us today. Yeah, thanks, Alex.
SPEAKER_04:This was awesome.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, appreciate it. Best of luck to you in the future, man.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:All right, welcome back. I'm delighted to be joined by a filmmaking team behind the short film I Hope You're Happy, which played in the With Friends Like These short film block here at the Gig Harbor Film Festival. If the two of you could introduce yourselves and your role in the film.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thank you so much for having us. I'm Gretchen Maycorn. I'm the producer and director and one of the actors in I Hope You're Happy.
SPEAKER_03:And I'm Allie Galbraith. I am one of the actors in I Hope You're Happy.
SPEAKER_08:So, Gretchen, I'll kick it to you then to sort of paint a picture for our audience. What's what would you say is like the log line or the theme behind your film?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so under the shadow of the opioid crisis crisis, four friends come together to grieve the loss of their friend from high school. And it's kind of all of the emotions and the grief and the unexpected things that come up around that.
SPEAKER_08:So, my first question then, because I know you're a little bit off Mike alley just meeting you now, but you're both very cheerful, happy folks in in I am IRL. And so I'm I'm curious where does the divide begin and end for you on a project like this that can have some really heavy themes, but also has at its core the message of like friendship and being there for one another and those in your life?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I think like friendships are always very complicated no matter what. But I collaborated with our writer on this to kind of explore the different stages of grief. And so each of the characters kind of go in and out some of the archetypes of the different stages of grief. And we also wanted to look at the opioid crisis and what being in recovery meant for one of the characters and their how their friendships overlap, but we also wanted to look at it not just from so many films and stuff are about like the person who is in addiction and their struggle, but we really wanted to kind of flip the film on its head and be like, well, what about all the people who are left behind? And what are those ripple effects and what are the emotions around that? And kind of, I guess from an actor's point of view, kind of diving into that and having friends who are in recovery or knowing people who have lost people to overdoses and things like that, kind of getting to explore those themes in a safe environment with an amazing cast and crew who are talented artists in their own, but also my friends.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a lot of the things that I am used to being in or being seen for are like comedic and commercial. And so early talks of the film, we were discussing the different characters and the different stages of grief and the different ways people display grief. And I, you know, was sharing with Gretchen that I'm very pragmatic about it. You know, I've experienced loss in my life, some that were unexpected and far too young and, you know, more tragic. And then there are, you know, things like this that can happen to people. And I'm I'm a very matter-of-fact, like, you know, that's why Eileen kind of came from the denial side of things and a little more serious and cut and dry about it, because that's genuinely how I handle grief in real life. So being able to explore that character in a more like in-depth situation was was really exciting. And I just thank, you know, Gretchen and Erica, of course, for writing such an awesome character to play with.
SPEAKER_08:So, with such heavy emotional themes at the center of this film, one might think that this is the kind of idea that would be explored maybe over that could be best suited to be explored over like a feature-length runtime. When this is a short film, how does that affect the writing process and then the pacing as a director as far as like I don't want to hit an emotional beat too soon, but also I only have so much time to play with, right?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. That's a great question. I mean, sometimes I even think I was talking to another filmmaker about this yesterday. Sometimes shorts are harder than features because you have to jam-pack so much exposition without making it sound like exposition in like five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. So I think a lot of it, one, having a really solid script and, you know, going through multiple drafts of it to making sure everything is tight. And then also we had the luxury too, because all of you know, we knew who the actors were ahead of time, kind of curating the script to them so it would sound natural, and also being able to have Zoom rehearsals too with our actors. And because we all knew each other from the film scene and from being in classes together, we all were very comfortable riffing off of each other. Not that we were necessarily improvising the script, but we could be like, okay, let's try this again. You know, how do we find this beat and this pacing? And also like having a great crew. Like we had an incredible DP, Marco Guterres, and he just knew how to like punch in on these very intimate moments because the whole thing kind of basically takes place around a campfire. And so, how do you create this intimacy between four different characters and making sure we had the lighting and creating that very intimate environment, but still keeping it interesting?
SPEAKER_08:So you mentioned Zoom rehearsals, Ali as an actor. What kind of process have you found works best for you? And is that something that you were used to going into this process or into this production?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Zoom rehearsals was a new one for this, definitely. I mean, I think when the pandemic started, some of my classes had moved online, so I had an experience of having a class environment, but rehearsal is a totally different monster. And then, you know, not being able to connect and like I we both come from a theater background too. So like having, you know, those tools to pull from definitely helps to get there. But like when you can't rehearse with the people, you can't connect with them, you know, you can't look into their eyes and kind of that that sort of part of the process, it definitely I don't know, it almost made being on set a little more special because it was like, oh, now there's that spark. Like I know that the earnest is there, I know the characters are there, but let's like put some put some life into it. And that's how it felt. So it was a new process, but I I didn't hate it. It it worked out pretty well.
SPEAKER_08:So when you're dealing with such heavy emotions, you know, as you mentioned, Gretchen, the casting crew and every single department on the film set plays a part in creating this atmosphere. You already talked about your cinematographer. Is there another part of the production that you're really happy with? I'm sure you're gonna say everyone did an amazing job, but like when it comes to sound, when it comes to lighting, it could be anything that after seeing it on a big screen, you know, and however many screenings you've now gotten to see of it that you're really proud of.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm gonna throw credit to uh our post-production team too. I had an incredible editor that I actually hired out of Los Angeles through a connection, Chip Farnum. He really did a great job job too of like connecting and making all those intimate moments work. And also, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with our sound design because we still we wanted, we didn't want anything overpowering, but I knew that sound, you know, and music is such a key component to creating the emotion of a scene. So I was able to get my friend Joshua Schmidt, who's a brilliant composer. He just came off of being the musical composer on The Musical The End, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, starring Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton. So he just finished up a festival run on that, and I kind of was like, Hey, can you do me a favor? Can I hire you to do the music on my short film? And he agreed to do it. And what he did was just so more mind-blowing than my idea, is he took there's a song in in the in the short film that was composed kind of on the fly on the ukulele by one of the our actors by Jason Francisco Blue, and he took the chords from that, completely rearranged it, but still had the like melodic essence of it, and used that to kind of flesh out the rest of the film at both the beginning and for the end credits. So that just kind of blew my mind because it's something subtle, but you notice it.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, and it bookends the story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it bookends the story, exactly.
SPEAKER_08:That's great. That's great. So then when you're seeing the film as a part of a film festival, and you're not just whether it's an editing process or you're just watching the screener at home over and over and over, was there something that maybe spoke to you at this particular film festival, seeing it sort of in conversation with other shorts that you hadn't seen before?
SPEAKER_02:Ooh, that's a great question. I think this festival was really fun because all like it wasn't all of the shorts in our blog, they weren't just drama. So it was kind of fun to see how each one had its own arc and had its high moments and low moments. And it's always been fun hearing the audience's reaction. Ours isn't necessarily a comedy where we're getting laughter, but sometimes you do get like a or a gasp or like a oh, or sometimes you just even like the silence at the end of people are so taken back that they don't know oh, I'm supposed to be clapping now, but they're still just recovering from what they're seeing.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it's almost like an earned, an earned silence.
SPEAKER_03:An earned silence, exactly. You got a laugh last night. I don't know if you remember between you and Blue after my character stormed off, there was a moment that I forget what exactly the line was, but there was a joke. Oh, I make I make a joke. Yeah, you make a joke. Oh, yeah, you make a joke about the it's sobering, and there was a couple of chuckles there. But like, you know, even though it is a heavy drama, you guys did such a great job finding those moments of levity because that is what grief is about, you know, finding at a funeral. Yeah, just finding any spark of anything to deal with the like and the the nonstop craziness of you know grief and loss.
SPEAKER_08:We laugh so we don't cry. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Or sometimes we do both at the same time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So Ali, what's it like working with someone who's wearing so many different hats on set? Not only is she sharing the screen with you, but also giving direction, speak to that process a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:I am constantly in awe. Gretchen is one of my very best friends. I I paid her to say that. I absolutely did not. Not a cent, not a red scent. No. And at the same time, like she was also helping me like plan a bachelorette party. And like I just I think there might be four of her walking around the earth, like functioning as one person. I think she might have duplicates.
SPEAKER_08:No, but this sounds like a short.
SPEAKER_03:She's so gracious and so talented and so kind and so friendly. And people just want to work with someone like that. And so I think that like everybody she meets, there's always some kind of connection there. And like I said, it's just it's a wonderful thing to watch somebody who is confident in their skills and their abilities. And even when you feel like you aren't the expert in the room, you're like, you're so invested in making sure that you understand where people are coming from. And you also make sure people get what they need. You know what I mean? You're not just like it's not a one-sided relationship.
SPEAKER_02:So well, the feeling is very mutual. And again, I just think I just go back to surround yourself with really, really amazing talented people. And I think as a director or producer, it's more about being like a creative facilitator, you know, because you're like the point guard. I want people to know more than I do. I want my camera, you know, I want all these people to be able to do what they need to do and to shine and be more of like, okay, I'm the creative container for that. How can I help, how can I help them and do the best at their job to create this overall creative vision and part of my vision and how can they make it better? Because sometimes their ideas are better than mine. And so I was just very blessed to have an incredible group of people, incredible cast. Allie was amazing. So yeah, and also at the end of the day, if people want to work with me again, that's that's my biggest compliment of like, yeah, like everybody's like, let's do this again. This was such a special film. And so everybody's been saying, like, you know, as we've been going through the festival circuit, like, when's the next one? And so that's like the best, that's the best compliment.
SPEAKER_08:Well, I before we came on, we were talking about intangible skills that you sometimes have to learn through osmosis on a film set or wherever it may be in your life. And leadership, I would say, is certainly one of those that you can't necessarily learn in a class or read about in a book. So kudos to both of you because it sounds like this project was a great example of everyone coming together and really giving it their all. So, what is the rest of I Hope You're Happy's future here on the festival run? Where do you hope it lives one day? Kind of tell us more about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, we've had an incredible festival run so far. We premiered in Atlanta, where it was filmed at the Atlanta Shorts Fest, and then it went on to Milwaukee, which is my hometown. So that was very fun. And then we're very excited to be here at Gig Harbor. It has played in some of the awards things too. One was in Toronto and one was in California. We're still waiting on a couple more festivals, so we'll see where that goes. But hopefully, then after our festival full run, we'll, you know, hopefully have some sort of online release and see where things go from there. And, you know, starting to work on what's next. My mom's been asking for the link, so that's good. We'll we'll get her a private link, don't worry.
SPEAKER_03:Perfect.
SPEAKER_08:That's awesome. Well, thank you both so much for taking a little bit of time out of your busy schedule this weekend to chat with us about the film.
SPEAKER_03:Oh my gosh, so excited to be here. Thank you for having us. It's been wonderful.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so I'm now delighted to be joined by the filmmaking duo behind the short film Float and Fly, which played during the locally sourced block here at the Gig Harbor Film Festival. If the two of you could introduce yourselves and your role that you had on the film.
SPEAKER_05:I'm Kristalline Simmler, writer, executive producer, and co-director and big sister.
SPEAKER_07:That's right, that's my big sis. She was nice enough to ask me to be the director, Joey Hawkins. Happy to be here.
SPEAKER_08:Big sis, maybe the most important credit I've heard mentioned. That's fantastic. So float and fly, if you could just get our listeners familiar in case they missed it this week with kind of the premise of the film and what they can expect if they are to see it down the road sometime.
SPEAKER_05:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, sure. It's actually, I would call it a sweet, family-friendly aviation film that focuses on PTSD, dyslexia, and empowerment.
SPEAKER_07:It's a lot of narrative packed into those 13 minutes.
SPEAKER_08:I mean, I think that that's one of the most interesting things about making a short film is that with this limited amount of runtime, how filmmakers are able to put so much into a short runtime. So what does that look like for the two of you in like the pre-production process? Do you have this big vision board of everything that you want to cover and then start to shrink it down, or what's your process like?
SPEAKER_05:So we I had a script already written, but then the City of Gig Harbor has a creative arts endeavor grant. And Joey sent that to me randomly and I was like, hey, should we do this? And we just let it sit. And then the day before it was due, I filled it out, changed part of my script to be more Gig Harbor centric. I do love my hometown, and so uh changed a few sets to boats, planes were already in it, and then uh we just went from there. There were no vision boards, there was no you had read the script, and once we got the grant, we're like, okay, this means go, so we should do it. This was our very first film.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so we've both written a lot, features, pilots, she's written books, shorts, shorts, but this is the first time we had the ability and and the to start and actually make a film. And so we hit the ground running, having absolutely no idea what we were doing. So when you're talking about packing all that narrative into a short space, I mean, I think we filmed three four days. Day one, we had four hours of footage from ABCD cams. And so that's just day one. So you want to talk about cutting things out and condensing things, and and really that's just the beginning. The magic happened at the end with in the editing room, I think.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and we also just we had a great team behind us, uh, Chris Flink and the Tie Guys said yes. I had met them on a previous set, and they are superheroes and champs, and they filmed it beautifully and gave us great ideas and grace and flexibility, and we did an awesome first film.
SPEAKER_08:Well, I've always heard that you make three films the one you write, the one you shoot, and then the one you finally edit. So when it comes to float and fly, is there maybe a longer story to be told here? It was it hard to sort of say we have to stop the story here and maybe not follow our protagonist any further into her life?
SPEAKER_05:I think it it's a short story. I think it's a short film. Sure, we could do a series later on of her, you know, ruling the airport, attack wherever you want to go, which but for right now, I think it was just a really just a hit-home story for people that whether they have a veteran in their life or they've had a learning disability and having to overcome that and then having people around them that feel empathetic to what they're going through, and then that way they feel empowered to go through the healing process, the learning process, to go through the process because life isn't easy, but if you have people cheering you on, it makes it a lot easier, a lot more fun, and just like making this movie was a lot more fun and actually in some ways easy because we had a great community surrounding us.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, I mean that this art form is already obviously so collaborative, right? Writing, directing, editing, costumes, makeup, lights, sound, the whole thing. It all has to come together. And I mean, this one really highlighted it. Our whole community came together, our locations were killer for this little short film. And the guys that filmed it were-I mean, they are insane. They're so good.
SPEAKER_08:I I'm very happy that you brought that up because it is a film full of scene-stealing moments, thanks in large part to the locations that you're able to use. I was trying to put myself as a Gig Harbor native myself. I'm trying to put myself in someone else's shoes. You know, maybe they grew up in the Midwest or they live in the Midwest or traveling here to Gig Harbor, to the Pacific Northwest, and they see a film like this. I can imagine a location scout, a director, they watch a film like this and they think, how long did it take you to find a place that like that? And it's just right here in our backyard. And so as Gig Harbor locals yourself, was there something special about being able to showcase the city in that light? I mean, because there's some incredible overhead shots where you can grow up your whole life here and not have seen Gig Harbor from some of the angles and perspectives that you showed in your film.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, it's easy to forget how spoiled we are in this insanely beautiful place, the ocean, the mountains, everything. And so really the the question I'm getting from most of the other filmmakers here have to do with the locations, and they're like, How can I score such sweet locations? And really, it was just a lot of relationships, but also we reached out to a few people that we did not know previously, and it was just a lot of generosity in this community, especially out at the airport. So yeah, very thankful for that.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and I would say even the people at the airport that didn't know us, they asked about us, and because other people knew who we were, we were they were able to say yes. So just a shout out to the Gig Harbor Vintage Aero Museum right there at the Tacoma Airs Airport, because they stepped in big for our last well, the jet that we needed.
SPEAKER_07:So we definitely had some home field advantage in this film.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, absolutely. I was happy to see Discovery Elementary School represented on screen, a school that's near and dear to my heart. So, what was it like working with multiple generations on this project? You have child actors, you have I don't know if they're seasoned actors, but you have older folks in this film as well. So, what was the mood-like onset? How do you go about getting maybe first-time actors and people with experience kind of all on the same playing field before you shoot?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so they were all the main two mains, the little girl and the grandpa, both basically first-time actors. So really, uh I would say I was taught like I basically got on-the-job training for this. I had an amazing DP and my first AD were were so good and so experienced that it allowed me the space to really be with the actors and spend time with them, especially in the downtime, you know, when you're moving cameras and lights and things like that. And just spend the time like talking about the script and talking about what we want to see, and it was cool to have that space to work with very, very raw actors and get some pretty good stuff out of them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:It's true. Just a shout out to Jeremy Kent Jackson from Actorcraft as well, because you met with him to learn how to direct kids.
SPEAKER_07:I did. I took a I booked him for a class, and I'm like, I'm not here to act, I'm here for you to talk to me like an actor would want a director to talk to them.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:It's really smart.
SPEAKER_05:And we also just trust, I communicated a lot with uh Ella's, that's our little girl, Sylvia, her mom a lot, or and she trusted me right away because we had another trusted friend that introduced introduced us to them. So it was just again a one-off, like, oh, so-and-so know actually Sheila knows me, and Sheila knows Ella, and Ella trusts Sheila, so Ella trusts me. So it was very sweet. And also Ruben, our main character, uh, he was the wrestling coach for our director of photography.
SPEAKER_07:So And he was just perfect for the part. And he came late. I mean, we're talking days before shooting, is when we landed him, and he look he kind of became almost a mascot for the film. He just brought so much fun energy and excitement to the project.
SPEAKER_08:So, what has the experience then been like showing the final product to some of these folks who maybe have never acted in a film before? What has their response been?
SPEAKER_05:They've been beyond thrilled. They have filled an auditorium uh full of their friends and family because they were so excited about the process that it was so joyful, and they're actually it wasn't a bad experience. They were fed well. It was it was sunshiny every day in the harbor. I mean, it was just an A plus type of setting.
SPEAKER_07:I mean, what you couldn't I mean, they were long days, three really long days in a row, and we had fun the entire time. It was a blast.
SPEAKER_08:So it sounds like the bull the two of you have been able to sort of take a step back, I guess, and reflect on this process already. Now that it's playing at a film festival here in town, do you have any other plans? to continue its run to you know to take float and fly out of just Cig Harbor and spread the spread not only the film but its message which I think is so important.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you. Yeah we applied to another film festival and it's the Cine del Latino del Norteamericano in Texas. And so we're excited to take it to a big audience that will understand the characters and hopefully relate to them. Maybe not the scenery perhaps but just the the story and the struggle and you know and the excitement of like because we want kids of all colors and and I'll just say it and women especially to be like yeah I can do that. I can be a pilot I can overcome whatever I've gone through and ready or not here I go.
SPEAKER_07:So yeah so that's one festival that's already booked and it's out there applying for a few more as well.
SPEAKER_05:We'd like to make a few more sound edits perhaps and then and see where it goes.
SPEAKER_08:That's a fun thing right and it never has to be over right you can keep tinkering. What have the reactions been like really just this week I know you've gotten a lot of comments about the location and things of that nature but just kind of around the community because it has been such a it was such a gig harbor production is there is there anything that you're particularly proud of maybe it is the response of the first time actors that they've given you but if you could kind of take a step back and tell our audience maybe something you're most proud of from the production.
SPEAKER_07:Because the guys that shot this film are so good and have made so much other quality stuff the fact that they're proud of this makes that's what kills it for me. Like those guys are so awesome and if they think this project is was worth their time and is worth their name on it, then I I believe them. I mean I I'm a pro I'm very proud of it.
SPEAKER_05:I'm very proud too and just if you see our credits they're pretty long because we had a lot of people help us a lot of our friends my personal friends our family members and everybody just said yes and for them to see it and be like oh my gosh I had no idea that makes me super makes us super proud.
SPEAKER_08:Something that I saw when watching the film that I have a great admiration for is there was a lot of practical filmmaking in this story that you might not think could have been cheated by the use of like a drone for every single aerial shot. It almost reminded me of you know like an 80s or 90s action movie where you can really tell like there's some mentally unstable cameraman hanging out the side of a helicopter with a camera like filming this sequence. You can tell that when you're up in the plane you're really up in the plane in this film.
SPEAKER_07:So what were some of those shots duct tape best days okay was my and my luckily I have a friend that has a small airplane and so I have a friend that has a small airplane. He's my friend what happens when you get siblings on the mic together we put together a rig on the wing spar there was a camera attached to that wing spar and they hadn't the only way to do it was for the pilot my friend Scott he had to reach out the window push record before they took off and then close the window and then we just prayed that it would stay on there. It was a pretty shitty rig, but we made it happen.
SPEAKER_08:You certainly did yeah turned out great thank you so much for taking the time out to chat with us here and just continue to spread the word of float and fly it's one of my favorite films that I've seen here at the Gig Harbor Film Festival.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks for all you do man. Yeah love the show big smiles right here so thank you.
SPEAKER_08:You're welcome all right we're back and we are discussing another short film that was in the film block with friends like these here at the Gig Harbor Film Festival. If you could go ahead and introduce yourself and the film that you were a part of the hi there my name is Chris Flink.
SPEAKER_01:I am the producer production manager and actor in An Old Friend.
SPEAKER_08:So my first question is when a film comes to you and you start to realize that I'm going to be very involved in this project how do you begin to then limit how many hats you're going to wear on set interesting question.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah it's it's it's a challenge for sure. Budget is the first thing that you realize that if you can wear many hats, you have to wear many hats because we did this on a SAG micro budget. We had you know a limited amount of money to do this with so when you do that and you have expertise you just sort of have to take on all of the things that you need to do because you can't afford to pay anybody else. So that's definitely a factor for sure. And then you know you have to be realistic about what you can handle as well. And I wasn't originally going to be an actor on this but I was free. So and we didn't have a budget to pay anybody else so there you go. So you know it's it's kind of one of those things where you have if you have experience and you have expertise in a lot of things and you're making a short film like this with the caliber of people that we had in it, you really have to everybody wore multiple hats and we're as happy to do it because we have a great group great cooperative crew that just really can do almost anything.
SPEAKER_08:That's fantastic. So for our listeners if you could describe an old friend what's kind of the elevator pitch of the film?
SPEAKER_01:In a nutshell our lead Jason Font plays an imaginary friend who pops into existence and is waiting to be assigned his child and little does he know that when he is assigned his child he finds out that his child is a 90 year old man basically on his deathbed in the final stages of dementia. And you know what ensues is the relationship and the friendship and what happens when you get put in that situation basically.
SPEAKER_08:So once once as you've watched it now as an audience member and you've been on the set of course and and from the production side of it all once the story starts to take place are there certain emotional beats that you're almost anticipating during pre-production that then carry itself over to the film and that you feel like come full circle once you watch it with an audience?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah definitely I think we didn't think emotionally there's there's two pieces to that the first piece is there were some funny moments that we didn't actually think were going to play as funny as they ended up playing because we had such fabulous actors and you know their their comedic timing and the freedom that the director Nuke gave them to you know play with things ended up coming up some pure comedy, right? And then you also have these moments that you think are going to be super emotional and they end up hitting so hard for example there I don't want to give away the the twist at the ending but when you hit that twist I as a producer and as an actor in that film it it's very personal for me. And I cry every single time there has not been one time and I've seen this so many times and we all do the entire cast and crew cries every single time at that moment it's that went that realization and that twist and it's we've we've seen that from the audiences we didn't think it was going to be as powerful as impactful as it has been and the audience you can just we collectively almost wait because we hear people crying in the audience and that's incredibly rewarding that we were able to bring that element to the table on such a a really difficult subject of dementia and memory loss and family.
SPEAKER_08:And with the runtime afforded right I'm always so curious when it comes to a short how you decide to pace some of those emotional beats. So when you think about you know the runtime of this film which is only 14 minutes that includes the credits.
SPEAKER_00:And that's with credits we have lots of people so there's lots of credits.
SPEAKER_08:Right, right. So so for the message to get across in such a short amount of time is that something that that the whole casting crew you know feels really accomplished with?
SPEAKER_01:We really do. And that honestly speaks to our sound design and post-production team and how they were able to really find those nuggets and those elements and edit together. We had four days of shooting and we had so much content and we had so many cameras going. So we had so much to weed through and they did an absolutely phenomenal job of finding those beats and putting that story together. And you know I had said in the QA um after the film it's you know people were asking you know how much did your film change or what changed about your film and I sat there and I realized everything so many things changed about the film. So there was also that additional challenge is there was a lot of script that wasn't followed and a lot of improv that happened because of that emotional time including our star who had lost his father a year prior and he was really taking it very emotionally as well and had some had some difficulty in a good way though. So it was like all of those things you know changed so much. So that again is a credit to our editing team of you know taking the improv and how do you follow your script supervisor notes when you you know you were creating as you went which we unfortunately or fortunately all love to do anyway improv. So there was a lot of that so that I think that speaks to it quite a bit.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah and just to go back to you know what you talked about there at the beginning of that response with the sound I feel like the sound is so palpable in mom in in certain moments um especially towards the back half of the runtime here where it almost feels like time has slowed down and you're like milking every second for like a half a second in the best way possible to really let people sit with some of the thoughts and emotions. So kudos to the film for that.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you let's I want to shout out to Maxim Ermenko who is our sound designer who is phenomenal and truly we've actually won a few awards for sound design for this film and festivals already and that sort of speaks to his talent as well.
SPEAKER_08:Well there's the perfect segue to to awards talk because I there you and I were speaking yesterday actually at an event and I'm so curious to know because of the hopes and the aspirations for an old friend how you're going about marketing this film and and where you could see this this short film potentially going because this could become its whole podcast episode obviously to talk about right getting Oscar qualified and things of that nature. But yeah, if you could just kind of start to to talk about what that process has been like.
SPEAKER_01:Right. I mean it turned out so amazing and when you have stars like Jason Font and Tom Scarrot in your film and you realize that you've ended up with such a beautiful film, we s decided that we wanted to take it on a festival run a little bit more than we thought and planned because we just thought we had such a great film. So we have been on a festival circuit now this entire year so we're nearing the end of it and we the film has won both in the United States and internationally probably 50 plus awards for the film. So from Jason's won four best actors we've won best international film in multiple markets. We've won I've won producing awards I mean we our entire crew from top to bottom has won so many awards and really great festivals. And so we we just were like Jason who is who is our star also it's really important to him as well and we started talking about this is done so well. What's our next step? Do we just want to let this go or do we want to try to see if we can keep qualified right so we started talking about it and we were like okay we think we're gonna do this and starting to dig into we're really under the gun because we have to submit everything to the academy by October 9th. So we are in currently in the process of getting it closed captioned for the Oscar requirements very specific then a new DCP which is a digital digital cinema package that's closed captioning and all the paperwork and everything we have to submit you also have to do a a seven day run in a major market. You have to advertise in a major market. You it's expensive it's not cheap. I was gonna be my next it's uh just for this phase of it I believe you know our directors and has spent 5K just on the little things right so and there's more to that because then if you if we are officially do get the notification that we are qualified then there's a whole nother section between then and December 16th I believe when they tell you whether you make the shortlist which is the top 15 films in the world. Now let's be realistic you know how realistic is that you know but if you decide you want to campaign then that's a whole nother thing you have to hire a PR agency and you have to decide how much money do you want to spend on your campaigning before you find out if you make the short list. So there's so many things that you have to do that we're just finding out about right now as we dig further and further our executive producers and us are talking about what do we want to do. And we do have some people that potentially might jump on to help with that if we decide to go that route but you know it's a lot. So for you know it's like winning the lottery what are your chances right like there's and and and it's a it's it's political there's a there's a game it's a game right of course if you don't think it's a you know kind of a a game trying to become Oscar qualified of course it is you have to pay your dues so to speak and there's many things that you have to do. So but if nothing else it's been very very interesting to to see what that's all about.
SPEAKER_08:Because you know then next time around I'll be like you know when I do this again right I'll just be like oh hey I can we can do this no well I I hope I hope that in you know kind of the breakneck pace of having to do all that and at the end of your submission window and everything it's not lost on you. I don't want to call the Gig Harbor Film Festival a little moment, but some of these small victories that you're able to claim like seeing it in a sold-out theater with a with a really engaged crowd and amongst a block of films that I think all sort of speak to each other in different ways. So I hope that you know these moments aren't lost on you as someone who is really in the thick of it as far as campaigning for bigger aspirations.
SPEAKER_01:Right. No not at all. I mean who we didn't start out thinking you know we don't think anything other than I think this festival's amazing I've been literally trying to get to this festival even just to to as an attendee for the last four years but it's always conflicted with a schedule that I had and once we made it in this year we were so excited this is a beautiful festival. I'm so happy that I came they treat their filmmakers well their attendees it's so well attended it's hugely supported in the community you can see that absolutely so it's I'm just happy to be here. I've been to every screening and everything that they've offered this is the first festival that I've not only had time for but wanted to attend everything that they had to offer. So I think that says a lot about the festival and I would highly recommend it for any filmmaker to be in. And we've made such good you know connections here too with other filmmakers, you know so that's it's not lost on me and I'm just always very happy to be here for sure amazing amazing well on that high note I'll get you out of here on that thank you so much for taking the time out to speak to us. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_08:I appreciate it all right that concludes our filmmaker interviews from this year's Gig Harbor Film Festival. One more huge thank you to the artists who took time out of their busy schedules to chat with us and also a huge shout out to the countless other filmmakers and new friends who we met over the weekend between the amazing parties, the QA sessions and the wonderful screenings there was so much to do this weekend. We hope everyone had a time to remember a final thank you to the Gig Harbor Film Festival board and their incredibly hardworking director Pamela Holt. Max wasn't able to make it up for this year's festival but I know I speak for him as I celebrate how cool it is that our hometown of Gig Harbor has such an impressive and well-run film festival. We truly look forward to it each year and are honored to be a part of the fun. As for what's next on ETI, Max and I will be discussing the hottest film of the fall one battle after another and talking about what that means for the cast and crew. In the meantime be sure to follow ETI on Instagram and myself and Max on Letterboxd so that you can track what we are watching between episodes and we will talk to you next time on Excuse the Intermission where movies still matter
