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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.