Your new movie War Path
- in a few words, what's it about?
War Path, in a few words, would be this: A
contract killer goes on the run after failing to do a crucial task:
killing a corrupt cop. His wife is kidnapped as retaliation and he finds
himself hunted by the police, his friends, and a litany of bounty
hunters looking for his head. Over the course of a very long weekend, he
must come to grips with his past, save his wife, and take revenge!
As far as I know, War
Path had its origin as an entry into a Linkin Park music video
contest - care to elaborate, and what prompted you to turn the video into
a feature film?
Sure thing. Its origin as a Linkin Park video, to me, really shows
the domino effect of where life can take you. This is circa 2012, I was
down in the dumps, working a 9-5 and unsure what to do. I was a weekend
warrior when it came to filmmaking, making shorts and music videos
occasionally but often too tired to get much done when I did have that
free time. I happened to come across a contest from Genero, which was
hosting a contest for Linkin Park where you would make a music video for
their song Burn It Down, and would get cool prizes if it
was chosen. Wanting to have fun and influenced by my love of crime films
and action movies, I came up with the spine of the video that largely
mirrors the plot of
War Path. Hitman refuses to kill a civillian, hunted
down by his friends, wife kidnapped, etc. I had pitched this to Gary, an
actor friend of mine who I thought could nail it, and we all got really
excited by it. We managed to get it shot fast as the deadline was
approaching and with the sizable help of friends.
My movie didn't get chosen but it got an amazing response from the film
community, and the seeds were planted. I left my job a few months later,
chancing it as a freelancer and haven't turned my back once. I was
really motivated to do a feature film and there was something very
interesting I saw in the premise and where to go with it, especially on
an indie level. If you read the script, it reads like a 5 million Dollar
but being young and dumb, you just plow through with it. It's impossible
so let's get on with it.
What were your sources of inspiration
when writing War Path? When writing
War Path, it came from a lifetime love for crime films,
action movies, and the fact that Steven Spielberg movies were the
Netflix of my childhood. Movies like Goodfellas and The Departed are
pretty obvious inspirations alongside a host of documentaries, which
subtly informed the camerawork in the movie. As I was writing it, Spring
Breakers hit the theaters and that was a similar mindblow, especially
when it came to approaching montages and the ways I could play with time
and the pace at which we learn more information. I've never been in
organized crime, as you could imagine but to make the story relatable, I
kind of approached the main group as akin to my freelance life. A lot of
disparate friends trying to find work, occasionally getting gigs from a
shady manager and always stressed when a dry patch hits. How a
downturned economy can compel you to do things you'd normally turn down
just to keep the roof over your head and the consequences that follow,
but injected with a fair amount of Adderal and adrenaline.
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What
can you tell us about War Path's
approach to the thriller genre Thriller-wise, I was trying to do a few things to increase the
tension and make it standout from others in the genre. It hits the
general beats of a revenge movie, but I wanted to make the storytelling
feel immediate and a bit messy. We shot the movie mostly handheld and
very rarely above eye level so it would feel more immersive, you are
there. Because so much of the movie stems from the fallout over the
failed murder, everyone is working with only fragments of information,
no one has the full puzzle, and accomplishing one's own goal can mean
death or worse to people close to you, which is something I was very
tickled to find you point out in your review! It was also a trick to
exploit every opportunity for tension, whether it was with sound design
and music to build the tension to a boil or a shot of a water heater to
alert the characters that someone is lying. War
Path does feature its fair share of action and violence - so could
you at all talk about that aspect of your movie? Regarding the action and violence, it's always something a
filmmaker should approach with care, especially given the world we live
in. I don't think action and violent movies make people MORE violent but
I think rampant glorification can make the worst among us see themselves
as action heroes, justifying abominable acts and risk dehumanizing other
people. As such, I approached violence to be as honest, relatively, as
can be. It's brutal but can also be flat as opposed to movies with giant
geysers with fake blood shooting everywhere. There are guns in the movie
and people do die in vicious ways, but no one really comes out a better
person in the end, there's no freeze-frame celebrations at the end.
Violence does have a consequence, and as artists in a genre that features
violence, we have to show those consequences. A few
words about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
Directorially, I think the best thing you can do is to know what the
vision is but especially what it ISN'T. There were some times in the
shooting of it that I didn't know quite how I wanted to shoot a scene
but I knew what I didn't want, and if you start from there, you can zero
in on it pretty quickly if you have collaborators who know your mindset.
On other days, it was fully storyboarded and we matched them, so you
need a broad set of organizational skills to excel. My day-to-day work
life is as an editor so when writing the script, I was writing it much
in the same way as I intended to edit it, especially with cutaways. It
might've been a labyrinth to read for others, but it was all there and
the trick was to keep that house of cards steady. Deviating too much
risks that the wind would blow it over.
Do talk about War
Path's key cast, and why exactly these people?
With casting, in my experience, if the casting works out, everyone
gels, and you get a solid relationship with a diverse set of people,
about 85% of the work of directing is done. From the outset, I knew that
Gary Nohealii [Gary Nohealii
interview - click here] was about the only person who could pull off Joel (though
I still had him audition because I'm an emotional terrorist). He had the
chops, the look, the gravitas, and the vulnerability that would make him
sympathetic even if he's not the most pleasant of characters. A few
people from the original music video cameo'd in the movie, but to build
out the cast, that was the craziest undertaking in all of
pre-production. We were casting in the Bay Area, and the cast was a mix
of people I knew or had seen in other productions, a few that Gary knew,
and others we discovered through casting websites. Gary was invaluable
throughout all of production, but one of his biggest contributions was
filling out a number of supporting roles via his acting class at the
time and others he knew in life. Erik Sundquist, one of the chief
villains, was his biggest find as they worked together all the time. The
role of Eric was also the hardest to cast as they'd need to have a good
rapport with Gary, believable chemistry, the range to convey the
transformation that Eric goes through, and also be a believable physical
threat to Gary. No easy feat!
Many other roles were cast via websites and auditions, like Liz Clare as
Sabrina, Johnny Gilligan as Abbot, and Lissa Keigwinn as Elena. There
was also a lot of shuffling around as well, where many who had
auditioned for Eric ended up in smaller roles and last second ideas paid
off. Liz actually came in to audition for Elena originally but my
producer recommended her doing a cold read for Sabrina as well, just on
a hunch. It ended up being one of my best decisions as that was not an
easy role to cast either.
What
can you tell us about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere?
Shooting
War Path was a trip, simultaneously a marathon and a sprint. The shoot was 21
days in mid January 2014 spanning into February, and as with any indie film
has its own share of crazy logistics. The script called for a large number
of locations, and the time it takes to go from place to place can put a
dent in any schedule so we had very little margin for error. Our first
week was a tough one as we all had to find a workflow and laying track for
the incoming train, as it barreled towards us. I had an amazing cast and
crew who rolled with it, a mix of people I had worked with consistently
and newcomers into our traveling circus.
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As much as possible, I tried to foster a fun environment where everyone
can get creative and connections can be made. It was a trip to say the
least, but I still hear from cast and crew reminiscing on it to this day
on the injokes, spontaneous dance parties, and memories of that time.
Funnily enough, I was always in the other room when a lot of those fun
times were had since there was so much to take care of day to day, so it
felt hard to enjoy it in the moment. But I’m always thankful to
everyone for coming out, kicking ass, and getting the best they did on
the screen. Without them, I’m just a guy shouting dialogue into the
sky.
Honestly I could go on and on about the shoot, but your article will
likely have a word limit. More details can be heard on the audio
commentary on the forthcoming DVD!
The
$64-question of course, where can War
Path be seen?
Availability-wise,
War Path will be available April 6, 2021 to rent
or purchase on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and I believe YouTube. As of the
moment I’m answering this, it’s available to preorder on iTunes, and
Amazon will be forthcoming.
There will also be a DVD release on most online retailers though I
don’t have the exact release date currently. It’ll feature an audio
commentary and the original music video that birthed the moviem though
it’s with a commentary instead of the music. Audio commentaries were a
big inspiration to my film career so I wanted to make my contribution. I
always joke that that’s why you make a movie in the first place, to
hear yourself talk for two hours :D Anything you can tell us about
audience and critical reception of War
Path? The overall reception to
War Path has been pretty stellar and
humbling through this whole experience. Between the first official
screening and its dozen or so festival showings, while I’ve always
been nervous, the reaction was pretty consistently positive and effusive
in some cases. Moments I feared wouldn’t work in the long years of
editing worked just fine, and moments I was always confident in went over
like gangbusters. My favorite memory of its festival run was a screening
at the Golden State Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater, where it
was a packed house on a Wednesday night. The reception was amazing and
the decompression with friends after was pure euphoria.
Any future projects you'd like to share?
Project-wise, I’m all over the place with what to do next. Since
wrapping
War Path, I have written a few feature scripts in the thriller/action
genre, entitled Getaway and Transfusion. I’ve directed a
number of short films in the interim so I don’t rusty, one of which is
a BDSM romantic comedy, Avocado. It was completed recently and my
goal is to wait for in-theater festivals to open up to start submitting.
Like so many others, Covid-19 put a lot of career progress on hold, so
development slowed down. Paradoxically, I’m busier than ever with
editing, but getting
War Path out into the world was priority one when
things slowed down. What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you recieve any formal
training on the subject?
I can pretty much pinpoint the exact moment I knew I needed to be in
film: opening weekend of Jurassic Park in 1993. I was with family and
when the brontosaurus was revealed to Alan Grant, that was it for me.
Being an accountant or lawyer just felt way less sexy to me after that,
and one of my bucket list items is to someday meet Spielberg so I can
thank him, in between me sobbing.
Being able to visualize and tell a story of what’s in your
imagination, your viewpoint on the world, and to unveil it for a mass
audience, that’s a helluva drug. I grew up on blockbuster movies but
getting exposed to indie films, foreign films, old classics, all of it
plays a factor in it.
Training wise, a lot of it was reading a TON of screenwriting books
growing up, fiddling with mini-DV cameras, learning to edit on iMovie,
whatever I could get my hands on but I didn’t actually attend film
school. I was able to get a lot of hands-on experience on set over the
years, but
War Path became my own film school. Additionally, working in retail
for ~9 years was also a huge source of training. That’s where my best
training at working with people, organization, and leading people toward
a shared goal originated from since that’s what the majority of
directing and producing really is. What can you tell us about your
filmwork prior to War Path?
Prior to
War Path and after, my film work is all over the map. I’ve
never been content to just work in just one genre, so I started with
comedy, did a lot of drama, action, and whatever else came to be. I
directed a lot of music videos starting out, so I got to experiment with
different moods and with my background in editing, I got to play with
storytelling in other genres and styles. About the only genre I
haven’t directed is horror, but that’s near the top of my list of
what I want to tackle.
A few of my own personal favorite movies I’ve directed are all on my
YouTube and Vimeo channels, ones that opened a lot of doors for me. Black Hearts about a bank robbing posse that have their own social
media channel, The Epilogue, which is a pseudo-sequel to
War Path, and Fallen
Angels, a noir mystery revolving around a mass
shooting. I’ve often been attracted to telling stories about
outsiders, the people on the fringes, and with a propulsive momentum. How
would you describe yourself as a director? I wouldn’t know how to describe myself as a director, but I know
what interests me and what I fixate on when a project is presented.
I’m always looking for creative ways to shoot as much as we can on a
given shoot day, sometimes to the point where I might be the only one
who knows how it’ll all fit together. That happened on
War Path quite a bit
as it reads like a hugely expensive movie but knowing how I want to
cover it and my internal counter for how long it’ll take, we were able
to make our days 95% of the time. I do try to be collaborative and open
to my cast and crew, approachable, and honest. Imaginative but also very
pragmatic, so I’m not the type to try and shoot 50 takes of a closeup
or into double overtime. I have a lot of regular cast/crew members who
come back for more and it’s definitely not for the lucrative
paychecks. Filmmakers
who inspire you?
There's a large list of filmmakers who inspire, some of which won't
surprise the viewer upon watching
War Path. I grew up watching Steven
Spielberg and James Cameron movies, with Terminator 2 as my childhood
bible and Jurassic Park as the movie that got me into filmmaking.
Directors who were able to blend action with a winning story would
always get high up on my list in addition to several less profile
filmmakers like the Coens, William Friedkin, Kathryn Bigelow, Alex
Proyas, and a host of others. Your favourite movies?
1) Goodfellas 2) The Godfather 3) American Beauty 4)
Lord of the Rings
trilogy 5) Dark City 6) The Third Man and 7)
Jurassic Park
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Feeling lucky? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results? (commissions earned) |
The links below will take you just there!!!
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Your/your
movie's website, social media, whatever else?
For me:
Instagram: @capitalff
Twitter: @capitalf
For the movie:
Instagram: @warpathfeaturefilm
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/WarPathFilm
Anything
else you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask? Everything was pretty much covered! More than anything, I hope
people give it a watch, enjoy it, and let themselves get enveloped in
it. In my ideal world with a thousand seat theatrical release, people
would come in, watch it, and go to the bar afterwards for a stiff drink
with friends and talk all about it. It's an action film with all ages
and genders in mind, so check out the trailer, give it a shot, and rock
on! Thanks
for the interview!
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