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Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White.
On this episode, I'm talking with director s K. Dale all about his latest film, Subservience. The film is.
About a family that gets a new robotic maid who's definitely not like Rosie from the Jetsons. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Can you tell me a little bit about your background on how you got into filmmaking.
I'm from Melbourne and where I grew up was way out in the woods. So growing up as a kid and telling people you want to be a film director pure laughed at a lot. But for some reason I stuck to that dream and went to film school here in Melbourne, but really wanted to focus on making genre films and making action films. And the films that excited me the most are the ones that I was watching
come out of Hollywood. So at a very early age, I was saving up for the whole year and then I would come over to LA and I would try to meet anyone I could. What I love about that place is the film community, the creative community and people. Every person you go to a bar who is someone's writing a script and you want to hear stories, you want to talk and I love that world. And yeah, and eventually, after numerous years, I found myself a manager and managed to get myself and I would actually do
a short film each year before I came over. So I would say, up, make a short film, fly over and I had done this one horror short that just went viral and got a lot of people talking about and everything and opened a lot of doors for me. And from that point on, Yeah, it was just a wild ride of getting people, people allowing me to film things and make my dream, my childhood dream come true.
Is that how Till Death came about? Was that kind of an entree to your first feature?
Yes?
Correct, Yeah, having that short film and going around they saw that, and it was actually because the short film itself was only three or four minutes. So once I was attached to Till Death, and it took a long time for them to finally say yes to me as
a person who hadn't done a feature film before. There was probably fifteen to twenty pictures with them on that, But once they said yes, having that short film really allowed them to show their buyers what my capabilities were director, And so we had Megan attached for that film, and they had a short film and it sold really well for them. So I think ultimately having those short films behind me helped my career even in the feature world.
It feels like you were Delta pretty lousy hand though. As far as Till Death coming out in twenty twenty one, did you actually shoot that during the pandemic? Was the background to that film?
Yes?
Yeah, So my goal was always to make a film.
By the time I was thirty and I was on set for my thirtieth birthday and they brought in the cakes. Actually we were prepping. We were a week out from shooting. They brought in the cake and I blew out the candles and I remember my first ad coming up to me and saying, Hey, I don't know what's going to happen with this movie, but I know you're going to have a nice, great career. And then he left the room, and I turned to my partner and said, what does
he mean? And I had been so focused on prep I didn't realize how much this was all spreading and everything like that. And then then producers came into the studios or came into my office and said we're shutting down the studios. You need to fly home tomorrow. This was the day of my birthday that we got shut down and we went back and it took a few months to reassess and to create these protocols for.
Health and everything like that.
But we were like one of the first productions in the world to start up again.
We all got back there because we had.
Such a contained location of a film and very minimal cast. It was the perfect well probably a bit of a test monkey for the studio, but it was, Yeah, it was the perfect film to start up again. So once we got everyone on there, it was getting tested. And in fact, I flew out the day before Melbourne went into lockdown and we went into one hundred and intense low down time restrictions distances you couldn't go past three kilometers, so like it was pretty crazy and we were just lucky enough.
To fly out.
But at the airport they were calling up every passenger, they were calling up their final destination and saying is this person approved to land there? So I had to get approval from them. I had to get approval from our government to be let out.
It was a wild time.
On top of trying to direct my first feature. But in fact, by the time we got back onto set and we were starting to roll again, winter was finishing. So we had to then completely reconfigure out this idea of how we're going to shoot in the middle of winter now in the middle of summer. So it was that was huge challenge within itself as well. So it was an exciting time, but it was also a terrifying time.
Do you think you'll ever use your birthday wish for a global pandemic? Again?
That's the one of no time.
Yeah, you said that, Megan Fox was already signed up for the film. Tell me a little bit about you and your relationship with her, because it feels like she may become your rabbit's foot here.
This is the second film I've done with her.
I didn't know her We're going into the first film and everything like that. I just knew her as Jennifer's body and Transformers. Megan Fox and I remember getting off the phone call for the first time when I heard she was attached to Till Death and the producer was, yeah, look, I think she's pretty interested to do it and all this and blah blah blah blah. Just be ready to fly out maybe Friday and said that to me and
hung up, and I turned to my partner. I was like, I think Megan said yes, and I was like, when I was in so much shock, I just didn't confirm anything. So having done that first film and we had a really excellent kind of relationship on set in terms of building that trust and everything and doing some you know, action sequences that were really exciting when we were doing.
When we were developing this next project, she did pop up in the back of my mind and I was thinking about this darker path that we have in Subservienes, kind of the mirroring effect of Jennifer's body or playing into that element of Jennifer's body, and that the character arc there.
So that was exciting to me early on.
And I also felt like it was a completely different performance that we would have to do to till death, and that was a big thing for me. So I didn't want to do the same thing twice with the
same actor or actress. So I just was very excited by that idea of Okay, we've done this, now let's try to do this and ultimately we have these intimate scenes here that having that trust goes a long way with in terms of building an environment and making everyone feel safe and comfortable and creatively able to explore those aspects of that scene.
How did subserbiens come to you? How did you get the script?
It was through the same team that we did Till Death with, so I was kind of in production and you know, we just had such a great run with that movie that we were discussing a few other projects and everything, and they just happened to be developing that with the screenwriters April and Will and said, hey, would you be interested in just, you know, pitching on this. So I read it, and as a filmmaker, saying no
to some sci fi is just impossible. It's just so exciting that the things you can do with that genre, and reading that script, it was really there's a moment in that script where Maggie the wife comes home and realizes that her role as the mother has been replaced by this ai, and that to me was like, I
was like, that's it, That's the film. To me, that is the core element here that it really excited me, and if anything, in terms of developing the script from there, it was leaning more into that conflict and really building that third act to be into that these two women fighting to the death.
Megan's performance is fantastic and so much of her role is her and what she's bringing to it. Are you using special effects to deaden her even more?
You know?
We did a few things which was more like the motion of her keeping her completely still in certain shots, but also removing blinking. That was a big thing for me. And if we did have blinking in there, it had to have like a performance to it. If she's blinking, she's saying something, or she's processing something, or she's we see things happening. But ultimately, no, this was just her.
I think that performance that she was doing was Yeah, she just as soon as you call action, her face would relax in this way and her eyes, yeah, they felt dead in this certain way. That just was like exciting to watch. I don't think I expected this kind
of performance as we're going into it. And she said earlier on as well, she mentioned this idea of the physicality being like a ballerina and having this precise and slow movement, and I think that just informed everything from that point on in terms of the way she would speak and everything like that. So for me, the challenge was probably more allowing a certain level of emotion as we were closing in on the intimate scene, so that way they felt organic or real that we could buy
into them. And a particular scene for me that was vital for that was the Casablanca scene, and we really wanted to see how much we could lean into her and this kind of even this childlike wonder of her watching the film for the first time and going through that process.
I love even one of the first scenes that she's in where she's saying goodbye to the family and she has that big smile on her face, and then after they're gone, there's no reason for her to be smiling anymore, and the way it just disappears is so nice.
Exactly.
Yeah, it was something I always and I had that shot so early on. I knew exactly how we're going to shoot it and everything, and and Megan was really on the ball with that, where it was like, we don't want to there's no menace here. This is just you like allowing yourself to go, Okay, no one's here, I don't need to do this smile and it's gone, and then you turn away and you walk away, but there's something inhuman about it that feels interesting to look at, and I do.
I love that shot. That's one of my favorites.
Have you seen the film with an audience yet?
We did a bunch of test screenings during the editing process, but it was really just like family and friends and we would get them in groups of ten to come in. But I haven't watched the completed visual effects film with an audience yet. In fact, we are next Friday. I have like our first kind of family and Friends screening here in Melbourne with a one hundred seat audience. I once a film is completed, I hate watching it with
people kids. I can't change anything, but I really want to see how it goes with I got to just watch it once, as terrifying as it is to watch it with an audience.
Do you have your next project already picked out?
We're developing a few things currently, nothing set in stone yet, but yeah, it's exciting to look at potentially bigger projects and staying within the sci fi world. I love that genre and I'd love to play with in that sandbox a little.
Bit more if people would allow me.
But yeah, we're currently developing a few things, so we'll see which one kind of takes off first.
Having seen these two features, I am so ready for a third. So thank you so much for making these.
Thank you so much.
And I have to say I listened to your podcast, so hearing your voice as you're talking to me, it's quite soothing.
Yeah, you might be the first person that ever told me that.
Oh wow, that's good.
Number one, I like, mister Dale. Thank you so much for your time. This is wonderful.
Thank you, I really appreciate it.
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