5 Questions with Nick Ehart
Demi leaves her husband and meets a HR rep for Rite Aid swilling from a flask in a park in San Diego. We asked director Nick Ehart how “Demi” began, what the biggest challenge was, and what comes next for him…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I've kind of come into all of this backwards. I started out doing comedy in Chicago as a performer. When my friends and I started making videos, I taught myself how to edit rather than rely on people whose sensibility or timing might be way different than my own. So it was more of a practical decision to start learning about things behind the camera but I loved it right away. As I went along and kept picking up new skills-using a camera, doing audio, etc-I figured I could direct and be a one-man production unit, just as a way for me and my friends to make things that we enjoy. Once I made my first short films, I became fascinated with the whole process and really began to dig in.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
Mollie Merkel and I wanted to work on something and in the prelude to actually figuring out what we wanted to do, Mollie told me how funny she found certain tropes in films about lesbian romance. So the initial idea came from that combined with my desire to write about someone who makes a drastic course correction in life and goes full throttle in the new direction. I wanted to see a very narrow segment of someone's life right after they've taken a huge step and are now in that excited but very vulnerable stage of starting over; a place that if you're in it, you might ignore some pretty huge red flags, just to tell yourself that you're doing it, you're making the change.
Once I started fleshing it out it, I came up with the other main character, Margaret Konstantinov, and immediately thought of Blair. I really admire Mollie and Blair’s unique chemistry and wrote this after a lot of discussion with them about both the characters and the way to tell this story. Since I, a hetero dude, really have no business writing a lesbian romance, it was great having their insight into the emotional waters I was trying to navigate. Plus all of us got started in Chicago and improvisation is still very central to how I work. With Megan Cody coming in as DP, myself and three lesbians set out for San Diego to shoot our way through a cemetery, a tide pool and a public park next to an airport.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the best, and the least?
The biggest challenge was shooting in a public locations with no control over almost every variable.
I love the bookends; the writing and envisioning of it and then the editing. I enjoy shooting but with absolutely no budget, very little time and no control, it's nerve wracking. I'm constantly terrified that something catastrophic to the shoot will occur.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I just saw Parasite recently and it blew me away. I like anything that can so smoothly tell a story that makes me laugh while highlighting some of the more dismal aspects of the human experience.
5) What’s next for you?
Right now, I'm writing something longer than the shorts I typically work on but in general, I'm just going to keep making things and continue learning.
Contact Info:
Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/user11686955
Instagram: @nicholasehart