1) Can you talk briefly about your backgrounds, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

To be honest, neither of us grew up inclined towards filmmaking or even really as cinephiles. We grew up in a house full of artists, so it was more or less expected to get your hands dirty. Initially we studied in different mediums - with backgrounds in sculpture and painting/animation. But after a few years we realized we wanted to make things together. Film seemed like the most collaborative medium to do that in, so we took a blind leap into making movies together.    

2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?

Our work consistently, and more often than not subliminally, navigates the relationship between family, love, and resentment. For us writing develops in really random and organic ways. We’re very interested in juxtaposing realism and mundanity with the supernatural. Because of this our projects tend to begin with very literal ideas, and over time they break down and push into stranger spaces. I’ll Be Here For a While was initially inspired by a news article about identity loss. Our own experiences then began to influence the project. We used the news article to explore our personal understanding of how family can present pressure, and how in specific scenarios that pressure can force us to walk the line between love and resentment. By the end we had made a short that was completely different from the original inspiration, but underneath it we were still engaging with the same concept of identity loss.

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?

The biggest challenge we faced making this film was actually a technical error. We shot a decent portion of the film in a hospital setting, which was extremely hard to produce in NYC. During initial production there was an error with our film and 400’ of our hospital scenes didn’t come out in processing. After about four months of “what do we do?” we planned reshoots. Luckily reshooting was probably the easiest and most fun part of the whole thing. We edited an assembly together and were able to objectively identify the shortcomings. Being forced to re-shoot allowed us to find new inspiration in the writing and build on the original foundation. Overall we found the reshoots were an informative process and our greatest challenge came with a silver lining.  

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

The two of us watched My Own Private Idaho for the first time the other day. We were pretty blown away at how weird that movie is, structurally and narratively. The movie makes absolutely no sense, but at the same time you totally get it. We had been thinking recently about only writing things that inspire us to shoot, regardless of how ‘cleanly’ they create narrative. That seems obvious, but it’s super easy to get caught up trying to approach your project like a math problem. The idea had been hard for us to discuss tangibly, and My Own Private Idaho serendipitously provided us with the proper language to do so.

5) What’s next for you?

During the quarantine we’ve found our work shifting from being about the pressure of caretaking and towards the themes of isolation and mental integrity. We just wrapped up production on Monday for a new short film called Afternoon of Dying Trees. The film is our stab at writing a modern folktale. It’s staged in the backdrop of Upstate NY at a decrepit labyrinth-like farmhouse, where we follow two estranged siblings in their 60’s as they pack up their parents house.

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www.56bones.com

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