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'Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting' | Sundance Studio 2025
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2/12/2025
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00:00
Emma and Son Will Go Griffin Hunting tells the story of a mother, played by Paulina McIntosh,
00:19
who brings her daughter, played by Millie Shapiro from Hereditary, on a sacred rite
00:23
of passage hunt to kill a mythical creature because her daughter can't be accepted into
00:27
society as a quote-unquote proper woman until she's fulfilled this dogmatic ritual.
00:33
And tensions ensue when it becomes clear that mom wants Millie to do it one way, and she
00:38
has other ideas about how she wants to carry this out.
00:41
Awesome.
00:42
So the first thing I want to point out is that the effects on this thing are studio
00:46
level.
00:47
It's a short film, but they're studio level.
00:48
I mean, it's Game of Thrones and beyond.
00:50
Because of that, this took you four years to complete to reach that quality.
00:54
So in that stretch of four years, what kept you motivated to keep this thing alive?
01:00
I mean, once you're in it deep, there's no turning back.
01:03
You know?
01:04
I mean, a lot of people worked really hard on this film, and I owed it to them to make
01:08
sure I saw it all the way through, even if it hurts sometimes.
01:11
And thankfully, I wasn't alone.
01:12
I had an amazing team, mostly hand-picked visual effects artists from every continent
01:17
but Antarctica, basically.
01:20
Worked all sorts of crazy hours with a wonderful lead animator in London, flopped my days for
01:26
six months to accommodate that.
01:29
Andy Frazier.
01:30
Andy Frazier.
01:31
Phenomenal animator.
01:32
And yeah, you just figure out a way to do it.
01:35
And I wasn't alone.
01:36
I had wonderful people, but I knew that I had to be the cheerleader and the ringleader
01:41
and the coach and all the things.
01:43
And I was happy to do that because it taught me a lot, and I wanted the film to be the
01:47
best it could be.
01:48
Because I'm a director.
01:49
That's my job.
01:51
Excellent.
01:52
And then Roger, for you, how did you team up with Alex?
01:54
How did you guys find each other?
01:55
Well, the first time I met Alex, we were at a party, and the man ate about 14 hot dogs
02:00
because he was a starving artist.
02:02
I remember he just sucked down one hot dog after another.
02:04
It was really kind of weird.
02:06
And then we just had a long conversation, and we both realized how much we loved the
02:10
same type of cinema.
02:13
We really engaged each other in our love of what we loved.
02:19
I'm a cinephile.
02:20
He is a cinephile.
02:21
And it really just came from there.
02:22
And I know he was trying to do the movie a couple of times.
02:25
It was a stop and start kind of a scenario.
02:28
And then finally, you know, even after Veronica turned you down once to make the film, a good
02:32
friend of ours, Veronica Radaelli.
02:34
But then he came to me, and I just said, fuck it, let's do it.
02:37
And then we did it.
02:38
Height of the pandemic, too.
02:39
And then it was during the pandemic, and we went up into a place near Big Bear called
02:45
Crestline.
02:46
And in spirit of making the film, it was a camaraderie that was instantaneous, even with
02:56
the crew.
02:57
Because we all had to bunker together in all these little rooms, right?
03:00
And everybody was sharing bunk beds and shit like that.
03:02
And I'm telling you, it was a team spirit, the G&E crew and everybody that worked on
03:09
that film.
03:10
It was a labor of love.
03:11
And, you know, not enough of the BTL, below the line people get credit in films.
03:15
You know, it's all about ATL.
03:17
And I'm telling you, the BTL in this was fantastic.
03:20
We got really lucky.
03:21
I love those motherfuckers.
03:22
I love them to death.
03:23
Yeah.
03:24
And they loved working on it, too, because they knew it was someone's baby.
03:27
You know, it was more than just a paycheck.
03:29
It was like, oh, this is some weirdo's, like, obsessive, like, 10-year-in-the-making thing.
03:33
And that just brings a special energy to the set, you know?
03:37
And I was very, very grateful that we had the people that we had.
03:40
So, Pollyanna, so you're acting with Millie Shapiro.
03:44
It's very grounded, and it's very real.
03:47
And you're acting against not only each other, but the CG creatures.
03:50
So how do you accomplish that feat?
03:53
Well, Millie is such a pleasure to work with, and I admired her work before.
03:58
I actually think that they identify as they.
04:02
And, you know, there was some cruelty in what I was doing, but it was well-written, and
04:08
I felt the character was well-rounded.
04:10
So I could feel grounded in that world.
04:12
And the CGI stuff wasn't so difficult for me to imagine, because Alex was so passionate,
04:17
and he'd drawn all these, had these wonderful storyboards done.
04:20
Also, the cool thing is, is you know what a griffin looks like, you know?
04:23
It's a known mythical beast.
04:24
So I could imagine the wingspan and the lion-esque claws and the, you know, the big beak and everything.
04:32
And also just knew exactly what she wanted to do to these creatures.
04:35
So that kind of grounded me in the story as well.
04:38
Yeah, it was a real pleasure.
04:41
It was a bizarre world that we stepped into, but it was such a joy.
04:45
And again, I just want to echo, like Roger brought together an extraordinary crew, and
04:48
they were really cool.
04:50
So Alex, there is a title card in the end credits that says no AI was used in the production.
04:59
Can you tell me your thoughts on AI and filmmaking?
05:02
I know it's a big question.
05:03
We don't have all the time in the world.
05:04
No hot takes.
05:05
No hot takes.
05:06
Look, it's a tool.
05:08
It will eventually, we'll find a way to integrate into the pipeline in a way that's meaningful,
05:13
that's efficient, that's artistically meritous.
05:17
Right now, no one really knows what that means.
05:20
I'm excited by some of the possibilities, but also I want to approach cautiously.
05:26
I don't like the idea of not being able to have some of the, my animation team, right?
05:30
We talked about Andy Frazier, but a small team of unbelievably gifted animators, I got
05:34
to work very closely with them.
05:36
They work on Marvel movies by day, and on weekends and at night, they'd work on my crazy
05:40
little movie.
05:41
I mean, our creature designer, Gabriel Beauvais and Greg Stranges, they were my lieutenants
05:46
in this, throughout this crazy process.
05:48
And it really is like working with an actor just across an extremely distended timeline,
05:54
where if you're lucky, two seconds of usable animation in a week is like a great week of
05:59
work.
06:00
You definitely see the personality in the creatures.
06:03
I saw the finished product for the first time last night, and you really see their personality
06:07
and it's nuanced.
06:08
And I just don't think you can create that with AI at the moment.
06:12
Yeah.
06:13
And I like being able to evince a certain degree of autonomy over the choices we're
06:17
making.
06:18
And in the case of the creatures, I'm asking the audience to buy into a world that feels
06:23
completely lived in.
06:24
The way I like to pitch the movie sometimes, half-jokingly, is like, if Igmar Bergman took
06:30
a stroll through Jurassic Park as rewritten by John Steinbeck, that's kind of what this
06:33
short film feels like.
06:34
And so I wanted this to feel like a world that felt lived in, that felt organic, that
06:38
had a kind of neo-Western patina to it, hence the black and white.
06:42
And I wanted you to believe from the jump that, oh, these creatures are just part and
06:46
parcel with this reality.
06:47
They're not movie monsters.
06:48
This is not a creature feature.
06:49
These are biologically plausible animals that inhabit this world.
06:54
And we're using them as a metaphorical fairy tale storytelling device to explore the themes
06:59
of the story.
07:00
Perfect.
07:01
And final question, what comes next?
07:03
We'll see.
07:05
There's a whole bunch of feature things that have been gestating for a number of years
07:09
with different companies.
07:10
And I'm hoping that the arithmetic on getting those financed will change in the wake of
07:15
this.
07:16
But we will see.
07:17
We will see.
07:18
Congratulations.
07:19
It was great.
Recommended
10:27
|
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