'Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting' | Sundance Studio 2025 - video Dailymotion

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00:00Emma and Son Will Go Griffin Hunting tells the story of a mother, played by Paulina McIntosh,

00:19who brings her daughter, played by Millie Shapiro from Hereditary, on a sacred rite

00:23of passage hunt to kill a mythical creature because her daughter can't be accepted into

00:27society as a quote-unquote proper woman until she's fulfilled this dogmatic ritual.

00:33And tensions ensue when it becomes clear that mom wants Millie to do it one way, and she

00:38has other ideas about how she wants to carry this out.

00:41Awesome.

00:42So the first thing I want to point out is that the effects on this thing are studio

00:46level.

00:47It's a short film, but they're studio level.

00:48I mean, it's Game of Thrones and beyond.

00:50Because of that, this took you four years to complete to reach that quality.

00:54So in that stretch of four years, what kept you motivated to keep this thing alive?

01:00I mean, once you're in it deep, there's no turning back.

01:03You know?

01:04I mean, a lot of people worked really hard on this film, and I owed it to them to make

01:08sure I saw it all the way through, even if it hurts sometimes.

01:11And thankfully, I wasn't alone.

01:12I had an amazing team, mostly hand-picked visual effects artists from every continent

01:17but Antarctica, basically.

01:20Worked all sorts of crazy hours with a wonderful lead animator in London, flopped my days for

01:26six months to accommodate that.

01:29Andy Frazier.

01:30Andy Frazier.

01:31Phenomenal animator.

01:32And yeah, you just figure out a way to do it.

01:35And I wasn't alone.

01:36I had wonderful people, but I knew that I had to be the cheerleader and the ringleader

01:41and the coach and all the things.

01:43And I was happy to do that because it taught me a lot, and I wanted the film to be the

01:47best it could be.

01:48Because I'm a director.

01:49That's my job.

01:51Excellent.

01:52And then Roger, for you, how did you team up with Alex?

01:54How did you guys find each other?

01:55Well, the first time I met Alex, we were at a party, and the man ate about 14 hot dogs

02:00because he was a starving artist.

02:02I remember he just sucked down one hot dog after another.

02:04It was really kind of weird.

02:06And then we just had a long conversation, and we both realized how much we loved the

02:10same type of cinema.

02:13We really engaged each other in our love of what we loved.

02:19I'm a cinephile.

02:20He is a cinephile.

02:21And it really just came from there.

02:22And I know he was trying to do the movie a couple of times.

02:25It was a stop and start kind of a scenario.

02:28And then finally, you know, even after Veronica turned you down once to make the film, a good

02:32friend of ours, Veronica Radaelli.

02:34But then he came to me, and I just said, fuck it, let's do it.

02:37And then we did it.

02:38Height of the pandemic, too.

02:39And then it was during the pandemic, and we went up into a place near Big Bear called

02:45Crestline.

02:46And in spirit of making the film, it was a camaraderie that was instantaneous, even with

02:56the crew.

02:57Because we all had to bunker together in all these little rooms, right?

03:00And everybody was sharing bunk beds and shit like that.

03:02And I'm telling you, it was a team spirit, the G&E crew and everybody that worked on

03:09that film.

03:10It was a labor of love.

03:11And, you know, not enough of the BTL, below the line people get credit in films.

03:15You know, it's all about ATL.

03:17And I'm telling you, the BTL in this was fantastic.

03:20We got really lucky.

03:21I love those motherfuckers.

03:22I love them to death.

03:23Yeah.

03:24And they loved working on it, too, because they knew it was someone's baby.

03:27You know, it was more than just a paycheck.

03:29It was like, oh, this is some weirdo's, like, obsessive, like, 10-year-in-the-making thing.

03:33And that just brings a special energy to the set, you know?

03:37And I was very, very grateful that we had the people that we had.

03:40So, Pollyanna, so you're acting with Millie Shapiro.

03:44It's very grounded, and it's very real.

03:47And you're acting against not only each other, but the CG creatures.

03:50So how do you accomplish that feat?

03:53Well, Millie is such a pleasure to work with, and I admired her work before.

03:58I actually think that they identify as they.

04:02And, you know, there was some cruelty in what I was doing, but it was well-written, and

04:08I felt the character was well-rounded.

04:10So I could feel grounded in that world.

04:12And the CGI stuff wasn't so difficult for me to imagine, because Alex was so passionate,

04:17and he'd drawn all these, had these wonderful storyboards done.

04:20Also, the cool thing is, is you know what a griffin looks like, you know?

04:23It's a known mythical beast.

04:24So I could imagine the wingspan and the lion-esque claws and the, you know, the big beak and everything.

04:32And also just knew exactly what she wanted to do to these creatures.

04:35So that kind of grounded me in the story as well.

04:38Yeah, it was a real pleasure.

04:41It was a bizarre world that we stepped into, but it was such a joy.

04:45And again, I just want to echo, like Roger brought together an extraordinary crew, and

04:48they were really cool.

04:50So Alex, there is a title card in the end credits that says no AI was used in the production.

04:59Can you tell me your thoughts on AI and filmmaking?

05:02I know it's a big question.

05:03We don't have all the time in the world.

05:04No hot takes.

05:05No hot takes.

05:06Look, it's a tool.

05:08It will eventually, we'll find a way to integrate into the pipeline in a way that's meaningful,

05:13that's efficient, that's artistically meritous.

05:17Right now, no one really knows what that means.

05:20I'm excited by some of the possibilities, but also I want to approach cautiously.

05:26I don't like the idea of not being able to have some of the, my animation team, right?

05:30We talked about Andy Frazier, but a small team of unbelievably gifted animators, I got

05:34to work very closely with them.

05:36They work on Marvel movies by day, and on weekends and at night, they'd work on my crazy

05:40little movie.

05:41I mean, our creature designer, Gabriel Beauvais and Greg Stranges, they were my lieutenants

05:46in this, throughout this crazy process.

05:48And it really is like working with an actor just across an extremely distended timeline,

05:54where if you're lucky, two seconds of usable animation in a week is like a great week of

05:59work.

06:00You definitely see the personality in the creatures.

06:03I saw the finished product for the first time last night, and you really see their personality

06:07and it's nuanced.

06:08And I just don't think you can create that with AI at the moment.

06:12Yeah.

06:13And I like being able to evince a certain degree of autonomy over the choices we're

06:17making.

06:18And in the case of the creatures, I'm asking the audience to buy into a world that feels

06:23completely lived in.

06:24The way I like to pitch the movie sometimes, half-jokingly, is like, if Igmar Bergman took

06:30a stroll through Jurassic Park as rewritten by John Steinbeck, that's kind of what this

06:33short film feels like.

06:34And so I wanted this to feel like a world that felt lived in, that felt organic, that

06:38had a kind of neo-Western patina to it, hence the black and white.

06:42And I wanted you to believe from the jump that, oh, these creatures are just part and

06:46parcel with this reality.

06:47They're not movie monsters.

06:48This is not a creature feature.

06:49These are biologically plausible animals that inhabit this world.

06:54And we're using them as a metaphorical fairy tale storytelling device to explore the themes

06:59of the story.

07:00Perfect.

07:01And final question, what comes next?

07:03We'll see.

07:05There's a whole bunch of feature things that have been gestating for a number of years

07:09with different companies.

07:10And I'm hoping that the arithmetic on getting those financed will change in the wake of

07:15this.

07:16But we will see.

07:17We will see.

07:18Congratulations.

07:19It was great.

'Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting' | Sundance Studio 2025

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