5 Questions with Tony Oswald
Introducing our new feature, 5 Questions — filmmaker interviews with the people behind the premieres — it seems appropriate to start with Tony Oswald, the veteran editor (we’ve featured five of his previous projects) talking about his directorial debut, the mysterious and unsettling, “Great Light”. We asked him about the origins of the project, the lack of exposition, and what it’s like to direct his own mother…
1) What made you decide to make this film?
I had been researching for a feature film set in my hometown (Glasgow, KY) for years and had hours of interview recordings I had done with my mother Kimberley Glass to that end. I’d always imagined her as the protagonist. One day I was in the shower at CRUNCH gym in NYC thinking about how I wanted to go see the solar eclipse in Kentucky, but realized sadly it was on my mother’s birthday. Initially I got worried that my Mom would be jealous or upset that I wanted to go see the eclipse and not visit her on her birthday since they were happening so close to one another on the same day. I began to imagine a scenario where she was so jealous that during the 45 seconds of the eclipse she would do something that would divert all of the attention away from this once in a lifetime event to her. But when coming up with reasons why this might actually happen, I began to reach back into our interviews and the story became much more personal, more pressing. I felt like I finally had an idea good enough, so I had to run with it as those ideas are few and far between for me.
2) How was your experience witnessing the eclipse while filming at the same time?
The eclipse sequence was actually shot over the course of three shooting days. One angle at dusk the first day, the second angle at dusk the second day and the third angle under the eclipse in a 45 second window. Because we had scheduled our shoot around the eclipse we shot everything we needed before hand, so the eclipse was our last shot of the film. Brandon Colvin, my forever collaborator and one of the producers on this film was instrumental in making that schedule. I’m 32, this was my first movie as a writer/director so I was a nervous wreck and quite emotional. Tensions were high because none of us really knew how it would look or whether or not we would get the shot but I felt like I had to break the tension so I gave a little pep talk beforehand to the crew where I told them all it didn’t matter if we got it or not, I was forever indebted to them for helping me make this thing. I started to tear up. They all started to laugh because they had all made movies before. But I really was so grateful and nervous as shit.
We knew the exact minute the eclipse would happen and none of the other actors were present so my mother stood on an apple box in the middle of an empty field overlooking a valley, the sky went dark around us and she pulled out this incredibly convincing fierce performance screaming at no one. She later told me it felt biblical, like she had lighting bolts coming out of her finger tips. I knew we had gotten what we needed in 15 seconds. I looked up and took my glasses off. The eclipse was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen. I said “Ok everyone look at the moon!” We all took our glasses off and I have raw footage of us howling and celebrating under the blacked out sun. It was genuinely one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen and the movie doesn’t even come close to capturing what it was like in person. I’m very happy we got to see it not through a monitor or a camera. Afterward, when the sun came back out, I was so dazed and tired and happy, I looked at the partial eclipse without protective glasses. For the next three hours I thought I had gone partially blind but was too scared to tell my mother because I didn’t want the experience to be negative for her. By the next day I was fine.
3) What was it like directing your mother? She's a great, natural presence. Has she acted before?
She had never acted before, but I wrote the part for her. It’s very much oriented around elements of her personality I’ve seen in action, so I really never had a fear she wouldn’t be able to pull it off. We did rehearse several lines and she was instrumental in some changes to the script that enrich the film in ways I could never have thought of myself. But we never rehearsed the emotional climax. She just killed it every time. She’s an incredible force, an open book, and I think the movie would have been terrible if she wasn’t in it.
4) Talk about your background as an editor in terms of how you approach directing?
I think my experience as an editor really helped me in the writing of the film, as I’m averse to overt exposition, it’s often the first thing I cut, and I am capable of writing pretty tightly because of it. I guess I’m somewhat proud that the film is close to the script in the end. But my experience as an editor meant jack shit when I was in pre-pro and on set. It only convinced me I THOUGHT I knew how to actually physically make a movie. I found it incredibly physically demanding, mentally draining and I wasn’t prepared with half the answers. I broke down in tears the night before the shoot because I take this shit too seriously and I was scared. My fiance Pisie Hochheim calmed me down over the phone. The film quite literally would not have been finished that weekend if it weren’t for the experience of Meghan Doherty and Brandon Colvin telling me how to solve the problems I hadn’t accounted for when daydreaming in the shower at CRUNCH.
5) I assumed Cassie and Nathan were married, but in the synopsis he’s listed as her boyfriend. Is Nathan not the father of the little girl, Katie? Can you talk a bit about the decision to keep that relationship vague while making some heavy insinuations?
Yeah, Nathan is technically not the father of Katie. In the original script there were lines that made that relationship more clear, but none of them were sitting right with my mom. I wasn't exactly sure why and she basically explained to me that it didn't matter if he was her blood father or a new comer, that if he is a stand in for my mother's trauma then the particulars of his relationship to this girl weren't important. I thought that was extremely wise insight and now the vagueness kind of adds to the overall mystery of the film I think.
Bonus Question: What's next for you?
“Great Light” has to my sincere surprise done very well with festivals thanks to the vote of support from Hammer to Nail early on. It was also accepted into Jim Cumming’s Shorts to Feature Lab where I was able to further develop a script I’ve begun with my fiance Pisie Hochheim. It’s set in Glasgow, Ky and features my mother as well but doesn’t include any of the events in the short film. We hope to be shooting that in the winter of next year. We also just wrapped production on our next short which is in post now, we just picture locked a cut of Brandon Colvin’s feature A Dim Valley which we edited and produced, and we are consultant editing on another feature for Asantewaa Prempeh.
Contact Info
Email: anthonyoswald@gmail.com
Social Media
Instagram: @Tony_Oswald