Everything I’ve ever done has been powered by a desire to get better and by a shapeshifting curiosity that often takes the form of the phrase I Want to Try That.

What follows here is—for each of the five films I’ve written and directed—a brief explanation of how it came into existence, and then a timestamped vomit of opinions: what I like, what I don’t like, and what I find interesting. If the films carry a certain magic to you that you wouldn’t want dispelled, don’t read this. This is a peek behind the curtain. And it’s just my opinion. I don’t subscribe to the arrogance of assuming that the artist knows more about their own work than anybody else. The films are as unknowable to me as they are to you. What I do know more about is how they were made. So here it is.

Across the Universe (or: Jai Guru Deva Om)

Sometime in 2023 I watched Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and the concept of a town becoming special because of—and even naming itself after—a tragedy immediately struck me as profoundly emotional. I left the theater and instinctively wrote down “I was struck by lightning when I was three and was declared dead for seven and a half minutes. I'm an ordinary girl but people ask me about the lightning incident and it makes me special in a way. My car broke down once near Asteroid City and strangely I felt right at home.” Some time later I found myself in a Directing Workshop class.

There, the final assignment was to make a short film. Fully-fledged and all. It felt kind of impossible at the time to truly go and “make a film”, but I thought I Want to Try That, so I started writing about the girl who was struck by lightning and for whom it took a while to understand that it did not make her strange, or rotten, or wrong; only special. I designed two scenes in two locations so that it would be easy to shoot, and then had the idea of the matching circular movements to tie them together. I don’t remember why I chose to name the film after a Beatles’ song, but that checks out for me.

0:02 — I like this. The original plan was to shoot a full starry sky, but we couldn’t get more than maybe three or four stars in the same frame that night, so we decided to just get this one lonesome dot, and I’m thankful that’s what we did. The voice-over is properly mysterious, too, which I enjoy.

0:17 — Gosh, slow down, man! This title card drops too fast and the design is awkward.

0:26 — I think this single looks very good, but I had no preferred aesthetic at the time and definitely would light this differently today.

1:01 — I like this match cut. Nothing crazy, but things feel slightly more unified overall.

1:08 — These inserts are beautiful. The flowers were put in the microwave to look like that. I’m sorry, flowers!

1:15 — I shot this in my LA apartment at the time. I slightly wince at that.

1:16 — A cool push-in (birth of the dolly love?).

1:40 — James and Bella came up with the coat thing on the day. I like the staging of this whole one-take.

2:45 — Nothing really great about this exchange. They made it better than it was on the page.

2:46 — This I enjoy. Crossing the line, then pushing in as the voice-over comes back (I think that’s Y Tu Mamá Tambien influence), and finally tilting down to the circular motion again. Nice. (The careful eye will notice he takes her spoon and she doesn’t take it back.)

4:28 — Playing with the ring was Bella’s idea.

4:39 — I find the lightning strike here (on set: Oliver standing in the corner flashing a light) very satisfying. On the down beat. The song is super simple but a good vessel for emotion.

4:50 — The whole of these last thirty seconds are great acting on her part. The smile, Magnolia-style, and the glance up right on the last beat before cutting to black. I love it.

Dawn the Messier Objects

After Across the Universe, I discovered in the attics of my heart a movie-making addict who had suddenly been injected with unsupervised confidence, and he was rambling about a so-called “more ambitious project”. He paced back and forth spewing out gibberish that sounded like profound filmic excitement. He was me and I thought Ambitious project? I Want to Try That. It just so happened that in the previous weeks I had been introduced to Joanna Newsom’s Ys, and fell in love with it almost immediately, and was extremely inspired by the gorgeous, heartbreaking Emily.

The song read to me as an ode to memory and to the heroic, though fruitless, battle to hold onto it forever. It was the last thing I needed to put this story together—‘cause I already had a Dubliners-influenced basic framework in mind—and everything fell into place beautifully. On the page, at least. I’m forever thankful to my naivety of the time because if I were aware of how difficult it would be to shoot it, it might have discouraged me. Of the clashes it presented, none were as imposing as the Great Lead Actress Scare of Twenty Twenty-Three: in brief: the foreigner aspect of the character was written into the script (in Swedish originally), but I was ready to adapt it to the actor’s real-life background, so that’s what I did when we cast a Japanese-American actress. However, after a series of creative misalignments that culminated in a partnership termination, we found ourselves with no lead forty-eight hours before call time. That’s where the coincidence of coincidences happens: I DM an actress I don’t know but who has been an Instagram mutual for a few weeks, and she responds immediately saying she’s available and would love to do it. Huh?! And she’s Swedish. Huh?! And she has a sister named Emelie. It’s almost eerie. That was Lovisa and she saved the film.

I won’t explain the title because I’m proud of the magic it elicits.

0:09 — I find this really lovely. The animation by Ara, the voice-over by real-life Emelie, Lovisa’s sister, laughs I recorded from an exchange between my own sister and her best friend, and the soft piano notes. It’s cute.

0:38 — “Don’t forget me.” gives me chills knowing Joanna’s song and where the film is going. It’s so sad!

0:58 — I’m a fan of the title card and the hard cut. Then the city sparkles and the main melody on the flute. I like it. The only thing that bugs me is that I should’ve repeated that melody at least once more here.

1:48 — We shot at magic hour, so these city shots look nice, but I don’t love the lack of framing intention in the first one.

2:15 — We didn’t have a designated sound recordist for this film—can you believe that?—so let’s just move forward disregarding the uncomfortable sound design.

3:30 — I’ve always loved this shot. The framing itself is nice and I like how the American flag separates Bella from the rest.

3:36 — Oliver cooked with this single.

3:52 — This is something good actors do. I didn’t think there was a beat here to explore, but I love how Lovisa made Bella feel slightly awkward or ashamed for not having another project in the works.

4:38 — Maybe the best single image in the film. It’s quite nice.

5:03 — Love this guy going on his morning jog. But this whole sequence lacks energy and originality. It feels bland to me, watching now.

5:31 — The posters are cute. And I like Lovisa’s single that follows.

6:30 — I appreciate the fact that we really went for this music sequence here, which was always in the script.

6:46 — Not a fan of the cut to the poster image here.

7:00 — This sequence was a blank canvas for Oliver, Lovisa, Merritt (courageous focus puller) and I. It was an experiment brought about, as you know, by the good phrase I Want to Try That. I’m proud of having done it, but it doesn’t spark the wonder I wish it did. And at that point in my career/life I remember not really knowing what I did “wrong”. But Oliver was a champ with the handheld here and I really like Gabe’s music.

8:12 — The closing four shots are the best-looking, for sure.

8:58 — This is an insane crop-in from a shot that I didn’t like the edges of because we tried a lightbulb thing that didn’t really work.

9:19 — This wave is the only opportunity Noah had to shine. And what a wave. I feel bad that we took him to this mountain four hours away and he had one line that was eventually cut from the finished film. The man's an MVP contender.

9:40 — Oliver isn’t a fan of this single but I like it. I like Lovisa’s too. Plus Harry’s performance is great; he got to the essence of the character so easily.

12:23 — This shot is one of my favorite things in any of the films I've made so far. It’s one take, slowly zooming in on Lovisa talking to her sister on the phone, whom she’s been away from and whose place in her mind has faded throughout time. I love the performance and I find it pretty heartbreaking. Especially the way she says “I forgot.” It was freezing that night and by the time we shot this it was probably 1am, so I’m not quite sure how Lovisa pulled this off. Maybe the exhaustion helped?, says the optimist.

15:37 — A good shot to end on I think. We had a tough time lighting it but it’s the right tone I believe.

Lady in Rainbows

After Dawn I was tired and scared like a cornered rat, so when pondering what to do next my mind was going to those two-people-in-a-room-talking films and I thought I Want to Try That, so I read some plays to spark inspiration and the two that really hit me were Venus in Fur by David Ives and The Weir by Conor McPherson. I took the play-within-a-play thing from Ives and the lost-love monologue from McPherson and Lady in Rainbows was born. Or almost. The first and second layers were then easy, but I wanted something really beautiful and ethereal for the third layer, so I contemplated and I researched and eventually I found an exchange of letters between the poet Allen Ginsberg and his then-lover, Peter Orlovsky. It struck me to my core and I stole from their letters a bunch. (I suggest everyone go and read what they wrote to each other. It’s overwhelmingly beautiful and if you disagree I hereby question your humanity.)

Lady was the easiest shoot in a way but we had trouble with the lighting setups, and this turned out to be the film that I like the least visually. Maybe it was the too-rigid formal plan, maybe it was the overabundance of control, maybe lighting is just hard and you have to get it wrong a bunch before you start getting it right. This title’s origin too I will keep a mystery…....hehe...

0:07 — This intro was kind of an instinctive thing, but when I look at it now I know it came from my memories of 60s Bergman, specifically Persona and The Silence. The bells here I took directly from Breaking the Waves, and the whispering is……a secret…..

0:37 — I love moving the camera, but up until Lady we hadn’t had the necessary control over the location or over the light to shotlist much movement, so all of the dolly stuff here was a joy to conceptualize. Still my favorite shotlisting work I’ve done.

1:10 — It’s not like The Wizard of Oz was massively influential for me or anything…

1:20 — I’m a big fan of this shot. The dolly left, the slow reveal of the dress, the way her handbag drops into frame, and the final foreground/background two-shot.

1:56 — I’m moving the camera as much as I can afford to here before the audition begins haha.

2:40 — This is the moral of the story with Lady: I love this shot conceptually, but it looks incredibly amateur. It makes me a bit ill. I think “What’s up with that?” The answer is that we did the best we could with what we knew at the time.

2:54 — At the risk of sounding redundant: I like the dolly stuff.

3:40 — I feel a lot better about the film when we’re in the 2nd and 3rd layers. I like these singles (mostly), I like the writing (mostly) and I like the performances.

4:40 — I could watch Natalia act for days on end. I love what she does here.

6:57 — Shots like this one allow me to forgive myself a little bit. We were going for something! This is unfiltered Bergman influence.

8:02 — I mean…..come on…. she’s brilliant.

8:31 — I’m a fan of this shot, too. It’s cool and feeds into the form. I think Oliver said it best: It’s bumpy af but I kinda like that.

9:18 — oof not a fan of whatever we did here for these singles.

10:33 — This flare should’ve been better, but… here comes the form nerd, guys! And I like him.

11:12 — The “big ending”. I am proud of what I wrote and in awe of Steve's vulnerability, but again the lighting bugs me.

14:56 — Applause! I admire this choice.

15:11 — I spent quite some time on this title card, and I really like it. Originally I had used Land of Dreams by Aretha Franklin here and it was miles better, but there’s copyright on that and copyright’s a bitch.

Sound and Vision

After Lady, I felt like I was using the script—and all the complexities it can hold—as a crutch. I felt a little embarrassed to be so reliant on the written (and acted) word and on rigid formal construction, so I wondered if I could make a film that was nothing special on the page but that would still deliver a satisfying experience for an audience. Then rang the old I Want to Try That bell and I got to work. I threw out notions of plot and narrative payoff—though there’s some of that in here—and just asked myself: as an audience member, how would I like to spend [running time] minutes? It just so happened that, at the time, the audience member presently speaking was obsessed with David Bowie’s Sound and Vision, and with an acoustic cover of the song by Inés Adam and Santiago Blanco (still up on YouTube for anyone curious): less so the guitar playing, though that is beautiful— I was entranced by the body language, the eye contact. Their video is evidence of the incredibly infectious energy—romantic or otherwise—that flows between two people when they play music together. I must’ve watched that video about a million and three quarter times, and decided I was going to write two people into that situation.

I like this film for many reasons, but one that’s really special to me is that it was shot in the exact same location as Across the Universe, so it’s easy to see how I’ve matured as a director; two completely different ways of seeing a location. (In fact—in fun fact—when we shot Sound and Vision I had been living by myself in the four-room apartment for a couple of months, so we were using all rooms to store equipment, crafty, etc, and just on that day a new tenant came by to check out the place. He was furious and I was reported to the housing company, but we kept on shooting and prayed that nobody would shut us down. Nobody did.) Something else that makes Sound and Vision different is that when shotlisting it I was way less concerned with form and way more connected to the visual experience. There’s still some form play with the cold vs warm sections and the French New Wave scene recreations, but the shots were crafted to flow with ease into one another and to give the film a musical quality that over time I have discovered resonates with me. (A game-changer in my filmmaking journey so far has been hearing Cuarón say that cinema owes nothing to literature. He’s so right.)

The title here is massively complex and layered, and this margin is too narrow to contain an explanation for it. (This one is for my Fermat fans out there.) (And for the chance it might assure my immortality.)

0:07 — Nothing transcendent here but it’s a fine opening: drum roll plus the wide composition sets the tone well. I love the 2.40 aspect ratio! (How he yearns for anamorphic...)

0:33 — This whole sequence is nice. You’re setting up the warm room for later, you’re using all the angles you have, and Alec understands how to move in front of a camera.

0:42 — Massive Punch-Drunk Love influence for the next few minutes. I like the car crossing the frame that draws your eye to Anna coming into view.

0:58 — That’s Marina and Sam bringing out a chair I found on the street a few blocks away the night before. It was heavy af and I carried them (both!) all the way to my apartment (one at a time, mind you) but I thought it was just perfect and a sign from the Film Gods.

1:16 — It’s gotta be no secret at this point that I love music sequences. This is just a basic drum loop, but the next sounds you’ll hear are all foley from my kitchen lol. Banging silverware on glass, hitting a knife on a cutting board, etc.

1:42 — I love that he holds the hug for slightly longer than she does. haha it’s great.

2:09 — Alec trying to force open the door is gold, too.

2:25 — They’re both so good in this scene. I love how Anna takes him seriously.

2:40 — “All my super valuable stuff.” haha I love that. This was all improvised. I think I had one or two lines in the script, and the rest they came up with on the spot.

2:43 — The semi-fall here usually gets a laugh from me.

3:25 — When Alison and I were editing this sequence we called it the HAL sequence. I always think of that. It was the right way to look at it, I think.

3:44 — “Dining room… thing.” is so funny to me.

3:59 — This is a nice composition but I told him to turn around and say whatever he says and I regret it. It feels a bit unnatural to me.

4:18 — With this final drum hit I get a feeling of Okay. Mission Accomplished., which makes sense for the story and for the film’s two-part structure. I like it.

4:25 — I’m a fan of this shot but mostly I’m a fan of this wall. Marina and I built it together just for this film and it brings back so many amazing memories. Plus I think it looks badass. No wonder Anna was impressed.

4:43 — I love how we end on her pointing to the poster, then the music starts, we cut to the poster, and then to the scene recreation. I think it flows well, which is what I wanted.

5:02 — It feels so good to wear Truffautian shoes for just a few seconds. I love this. And Anna looks beautiful in costume.

5:10 — The film has already set up the form of these cutaways so here it really sparks curiosity for me. I like it.

5:15 — Love this too. I left in Alec getting ready for the shot, and we added this dolly forward which is not in Breathless, of course.

5:49 — This is my least favorite shot in the film, but it was hard to get it right because the room was so small and hey it doesn’t look terrible.

6:22 — Incredibly small detail but I appreciate this cut. This is film logic at work: her guitar case should still be on the bed—I mean, she hasn’t even begun to remove her guitar from it, much less had time to then set it down somewhere or push it to the side—but the next shot is him sitting on the bed and her guitar is magically on her lap already. I remember seeing this in The Royal Tenenbaums, in a scene where Anjelica Huston is talking to Gwyneth Paltrow while she’s in the bathtub, and right when she turns off the to-the-radiator-tied TV with her foot (haha) we cut to a few seconds later when her leg is already entirely underwater and Anjelica is sitting closer. It’s a jump cut that doesn’t feel like a jump cut because the sound of the previous shot carries over into the current shot. It’s a small thing but it’s surprising how well it works.

7:03 — I love how kind she is to him.

7:21 — I don’t like the plant in the corner. I understand why it’s there but I just don’t like it.

7:54 — This is where all of this was going (kinda). We did a full day only of song takes. I like what we got here; how he progressively gets into it, how they find the rhythm together, the glances, etc.

10:55 — A lovely moment too. Feels very genuine.

11:02 — This was only found in the edit but I think it wraps up his arc nicely.

11:10 — A nice closing image, I believe.

11:16 — I love this song. Tozoco called it something I don't remember but I misheard it as Take Me to the Fire, so that's what it's called now, which is much more evocative than whatever he had.

Untitled 5th film

This film hasn't been released yet, but I'll have quite a bit to say when it is.

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