South Georgia Film Festival Official Selection "Miss Responsibility" Director Clint Till
AFC Episode 365
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Intro:
Hey and welcome to episode 365 of the show. This week we have Clint Till, whose film Missed Responsibility is playing at the South Georgia Film Festival, which is taking place March 4 6th. Clint talks about the Memphis film industry, lessons he learned on the set of Missed Responsibility, how he got his start in the industry, and much more. Enjoy the episode and I'll see you in the intermission.
Chuck:
Hey, Clint, thanks for coming today. Hey, thanks for having me.
Clint:
Good to be here.
Chuck:
How are you doing today?
Clint:
I am doing great. Just kind of gearing up in pre production right now in a new short film and trying to get my previous short film, Miss Responsibility, out there in front of as many people as I can.
Chuck:
Yeah. So you're in the Memphis area, so I really want to know more about that area, the film industry in maybe Tennessee as a whole, but specifically Memphis. What's the pulse there?
Clint:
Well, I can really speak more to Memphis than in other places like Nashville. I was actually in Nashville last October for the Nashville Film Festival, and that was just fantastic to actually get out to an in person festival after coast and actually get in front of people and meet people and see live screenings. And it was great. Memphis is, I think, a really close knit film community. I think you have pockets of people all over the city that have their core group of people that they like to work with that are out there making things on a constant basis. There are some really active Memphis filmmaker Facebook groups where people can kind of hang out and post casting calls, crew notices, kind of showcase their work. And everybody seems to be really supportive of everyone else. And if I haven't worked with someone here in Memphis, more than likely I've at least heard of them. Or maybe you've seen some of their work. And of course, Memphis is home to the Indy Memphis Film Festival every November, which has been going on for 20 plus years. So I think it's a real vibrant community. And I think there's always some areas that everyone can improve. I think training is one of those things, training people in different types of crew positions so that they can be better prepared for maybe when outside projects come into Memphis, where hopefully some of these outside crews will be more willing to hire locals. But it's a real vibrant community, I think.
Chuck:
Yeah. That's been an area of focus here in Atlanta, just making sure because so many productions I mean, come into town and just having enough people, we want lots and lots of local people on these productions, cast, crew, whatever. So just having that foundation of just keep training, keep moving forward, get the next generation in there and et cetera, and keep the ball rolling. That's definitely been an area of focus the past few years here, too. Yeah. It's very important. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And speaking of 20 years, you've been working in the industry, the street, it says for 20 years. Is that all in Memphis?
Clint:
No, I'm actually from Birmingham, Alabama, originally, and was working as a production assistant when I was 16, kind of got thrown in and was able to get on board with some commercial shoots there in Birmingham when I was still in high school to kind of get exposed to the industry. And one of my very first jobs on one of my first days was to rake hay out of a barn for a shot in the middle of June in an Alabama summer. And then they said, okay, once you're finished with raking all the hay out of this barn so we can dress the set, I need you to go out to the back. We have this beat up old sports car that we need to wheel in here. But see all this tape, this duct tape or whatever that stuck to the headlights? Yes. Take this Exacto knife and just scrape all this off. So those were my first two jobs on set when I was a kid, and surprisingly, I came back and kept working. I think definitely it's not definitely not as glamorous as your Bluray feature at behind the Scenes would have you believe, but I love it. It's rewarding work. Now my day job, I'm in video production, so I'm a shooter and editor, and then I try produce right. Directly short films on the side when I can. So I actually have kind of a day to day office job in production work. So I'm not out there. I'm not doing any freelancing anymore.
Chuck:
Okay. Well, I mean, at least it feels like your life is centered around making content, whether it's for clients or whatever. Do you feel like they complement each other? Like you learn something on a client shoot or commercial shoot that you could then take to one of your short films or vice versa?
Clint:
Yeah. I think one of the biggest things I've learned just in my day to day job is how to work quickly. I'll give you an example. In my day to day job, I work with actual patients at a hospital. I work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Oh, nice. And when you're working with real patients who have real schedules and real appointments to keep, you want to maintain production quality to raise funds and awareness for the hospital, but you also have to be respectful of their time. And these are not actors. So I think being able to come in onto a location, evaluate what you want to do, how you want to light things, how you want to stage things, and being able to kind of make those decisions quickly has helped me in my film work where I can try to keep the cast and crew going, keep them on schedule, keep them on time, and wrap at a decent hour and give them some of their time back. Because I'm able to kind of quickly evaluate what I want to do and make decisions quicker.
Chuck:
Tell me all about your creative work. You've got the film in the South Georgia Film Festival. It seems like it's getting some attention. So tell me all about the story and the origin of the story and all that kind of good stuff.
Clint:
Yeah. So the film that's going to be screening coming up at the South Georgia Film Festival is a comedy that I wrote and directed called Miss Responsibility. And Lauren Cox is another filmmaker here in Memphis. She bounces back and forth between Memphis and Nashville. She's kind of a little bit of everything. She's a writer, an actor, a director. She kind of does it all. And she and I had met at a film competition a couple of years ago, and we're just chatting about projects we could possibly work on together. And we had a project that we wanted to do. And then, of course, covet happened and things got derailed. So we actually postponed that. And we're going to pick that back up here this year and work on it. But in the meantime, we both wanted to do something. And she had this story idea for kind of this rich socialite who's just out of touch with the everyday world. She's not very independent. She really can't do things for herself, but yet she has to prove that she can. She has to prove herself. And so based on this character idea and the story idea that Lauren had, I wrote a script which became this responsibility. And it really centers on kind of a Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton party girl type whose dad, whose wealthy dad has kind of had enough of her antics and kind of gives her ultimatum to either get her life together and grow up or she's cut off. And that's kind of how it all got started. So it's just lighthearted, it's fun, and we hope that people find the character likable. That was the challenge, I think, in writing for this character, is that we wanted to make her out of touch, but we didn't want her to be disagreeable. We didn't want audiences to hate her. We kind of wanted them to just kind of laugh with her, laugh at her a little bit and have fun with it.
Chuck:
That is difficult because you can't have your characters be one dimensional likable, at least all the time. Maybe you can get away with it occasionally, but threading that line of having a character that's not maybe the best person in the world, but still relatable and likable is tough. Maybe talk about a little bit about that, like the creative process in crafting that character. Did you do character back sheets and stuff just to make sure you got that line right or how did it all work?
Clint:
Basically, it just kind of came through different drafts of the script. So an earlier draft, she was a little bit more abrasive argumentative. She was a little bit more she was definitely more unlikable. And it kind of came out that way in the dialogue. And I think because in the very first scene when we first meet her, she's obviously been out all night partying. So in the earlier draft, she was much more hungover and therefore very grumpy and irritable and just didn't want to have anything to do with anybody. So I said, well, on subsequent drafts, I kind of stripped some of that dialogue out and made her a little more absurd and ridiculous such that such that you can tell it's not that she's mean, but it's just that she's just completely out of touch with how other people feel or how other people live their lives and other people's experiences. And I think one of my inspirations for that was if you look at a show like 30 Rock and you look at the Jenna Moroni character, if you're familiar with that show who you know and Jenna Moroni was very unlikely. She was absurd and you laugh and you couldn't help but laugh and have fun with her character because she was a little more cartoonish. And so I think with Claire, our main character in this responsibility, I kind of took that as a little bit of inspiration to kind of make her a little bit more cartoonish but still have some similar authenticity. It felt real.
Chuck:
Yeah. And I imagine a lot of that came maybe after you hired your actress and working with her and figuring out more about the character during production. Is that accurate, would you say?
Clint:
Yeah. And actually, this responsibility came together pretty quickly because once we had to delay production on our other short, we were kind of scrambling because we wanted to do something quickly because we were entering it into a film competition here in Memphis, and we had a deadline to meet. So when we found Amelia, Amelia Sutherland is our main actor that plays Claire. She was fantastic. She comes from the theater world. She had done some camera work as well. But I saw her audition tape and her audition tape. Her performance is a little more understated, I think, than what I wanted the character to be. So it really didn't take much directing on my part to kind of push Amelia in the direction I wanted to go and kind of make it bigger and make the performance a little more outlandish. And she just kind of took it and ran with it and did a fantastic job. And it was great because I had some specific ideas of what I wanted to do on set. But then we'd get a few takes, and I'd say, all right, you try something. What do you want to do here? And she would just kind of improvise a few things, and so she gave me plenty to work with.
Chuck:
That's interesting. So you're a pretty open director just to say, hey, I've got my ideas, but let's try some stuff and just see what sticks accurately.
Clint:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm all about collaboration. I think in my opinion, if you want to work on your own creatively, then you probably should be an artist or an author. Yeah. But if you choose to be a filmmaker, you have to be collaborative, and you have to surround yourself with people that know a little bit more than you do and can offer up their own ideas. And that was the thing, too, with Miss Responsibility is that I approach the shoot a little bit differently than I normally do. Normally. I'm very detailed about my shot list and how I'm planning everything out and my schedule. And so I come in prepared. And with this, I approach this much like I would approach something that I did when I was in College. It was a little more spontaneous. And I kind of liked those days when you didn't overthink it too much where you could just kind of call up some folks and say, hey, let's just get together and make something. And so I wanted to kind of get back to that. And I wanted to come on set with Miss Responsibility with kind of an idea of how I wanted to shoot it, but have my DPS chime in and say, why don't we do this? Why don't we put the camera here? Why don't we shoot it this way? Or have Amelia suggest something or have anybody suggest something? So once I get my ideas out there and get my ideas in the can, I'm open to trying a bunch of different stuff and see what works.
Intermission:
Hey, and welcome to the Intermissions. Chuck is breaking in with some quick announcements. The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival kicks off today. This episode goes up February 16, runs to the 27 February. And again, it's all virtual this year. So while it's a bummer, you can't go hang out with people and go see films in person. This also means that you can see all the films from the comfort of your own home. So that is exciting. And we'll also have more coverage of more films at the festival coming soon. And as mentioned, the South Georgia Film Festival will be in person in Valdosta at the Valdosta State University March 4 to the 6th. We will be there doing interviews, hanging out, having fun. So if you feel safe, come on out, see some movies, go to some panels. They've got some exciting panels, including a film impact. Georgia panel should be great. And, of course, head over to Patreon.com AFC any film where you can get Clint exclusive content. He's been in the business for 20 years, so he's got some advice for people who are looking to break in, maybe some early lessons he learned as a youngster and lessons learned. Now, again, that's Patreon.com/afcindiefilm. You can get it for as low as one dollars a month. It's other options, including a shout out on the show. Thanks to Ken Merit for getting that one. But if you're not over there over Patreon, you're missing literally hours of content from all these great guests giving advice. If you're looking to make films, they have it. They know what they're doing, and they're going to tell you how to do it real quick. Before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about our friends over at Element, certified public accountants and consultants. If you need help with money, it's tax season. You know you do. You're running a production company. You're on set, you're doing both. You're very busy. You don't have time to do your taxes and figure out production accounting and figure out tax credits and all this kind of stuff. What you need is someone over at Element to help you out. Elementcpas.com. Speaking of people over at Element, they need people. Element, in its sister company, Storyboard Financial Services, are hiring production accountants. They are looking for entry level clerks and production accountants, assistance and keys. Fulltime positions include health benefits, retirement benefits, and immediate room for growth. If you're interested, please contact Element by visiting them at elementcpas.com, which again, is also where you should go if you need money, help. Life is complicated. Make it less complicated by going to Elements, either to get your taxes done or maybe some production counting done or to go work for them. Either way, Elementcpas.com thanks again to them for sponsoring the show. All right, I'm going to get you back to the interview with Clint. Really like the point he makes about reaching out to people in case you need help deciding which festivals to go to, send your film to. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. Sometimes it can seem scary to reach out to people like that, but I found just doing the show, most people are receptive if you get them to them personally. If you go through their people sometimes, honestly, more often than not, it doesn't end too well. But if you get to people themselves, most people are willing to help. It's a very small industry. Everybody knows each other. We're all in this together. All right. Back to the show. See you next week.
Chuck:
My friends and I that started around the same time, trying to break in and make stuff. This was 15 years ago. We talked about it all the time. We just missed I think I've even mentioned it on the show. We missed just running around the woods. And I mean that literally making movies. We would do like a 48 hours film festival contest, whatever. And we would just go out in the woods and make some silly stuff. And maybe it wasn't the best, but it was way more freeing where, like you said, you literally call someone like, hey, come meet us at this place. And then you just do stuff. And there's so much planning and foresight. Now maybe a tiny bit of the magic is gone. I don't know if you can ever get it back, but yeah, it's definitely a great time. So anybody that's listening to the show, maybe you're in that stage right now, just enjoy it.
Clint:
Yeah, it's great when you are in high school and College and you're making your own films and you can be spontaneous. You can just walk in with a couple of friends and a camera into a local shop and say, hey, man, we're making this movie. Can we use the corner of your store for a little bit? And most of the time, at least in my experience, people wanted to help out students and they would say, yeah, that's great. And so now at my age, when I walk in, people look at me a little bit more suspiciously and they want to know a little bit more like, okay, who are you? Do you have insurance? What is this? Yes, you're right. So you kind of lose some of that as you get older. So, yeah, if you're young and you're just making stuff, definitely don't waste that time and opportunity.
Chuck:
You've wrapped Miss Responsibility and it's ready to go out there. What was your attack plan to get it out to the world? Did you come up with a list of festivals or did you have some very specific ones you wanted to make sure you got it into? Talk a little bit about that.
Clint:
Yeah, I definitely zeroed in on some niche comedy festivals. There are so many festivals that are out there that are genre specific. And so the comedy stuff is definitely on my radar. But also to one of the criteria is just stuff that's kind of in my region. I want to be able to if possible. I know a lot of festivals are kind of opening back up now. Some are kind of going with a hybrid virtual in person model. But for the most part, I'm looking at festivals that are in my region that I can get to and maybe make an appearance and network and meet some people. And also festivals that I have screened where I've screened prior, I'll go back to those festivals and just reach out and say, hey, I screened here in 2020 or 2019. I've got this new short I'd love to submit. And for the most part, those festivals where I've screened before have been really receptive and say, oh, yeah, that's great. We want to see what you have coming up next. Definitely send us your stuff. And that's worked out really well. And then a lot of times it's just kind of talking to other filmmakers, especially here in Memphis, people that I know and trust. When I see some of their posts and I see that they've screened at certain festivals, I'll reach out to them and say, hey, what was this like? Did you enjoy the experience and kind of learn a little bit more about the festival and kind of go that route? But I'm realistic because I think you always have to know what your goals are. Right now, I'm happy where I am. So for me personally, I'm not going to submit to a festival out Los Angeles or anywhere on the West Coast, because for me, moving out there is not on my radar. Like I said, I'm happy where I am. So I think you have to be strategic because as you know, you could spend a small fortune in submission fees if you just shoot from the hip.
Chuck:
That's a great idea you mentioned about just asking people other filmmakers or just maybe just reaching out to people you don't know and saying, hey, I've never heard of this festival. What's it like? Because it seems like there's so many, especially a few years ago before Covid, at least there was tons of them popping up. People are very excited. They're like, oh, we're going to start this festival, and it's going to be specific about this type of film, which is great, but then they're new, so you don't know what they're like. So that's a great idea. Just reach out to people and say, hey, we're all in this together. Help me out a little bit. Yeah, I'm very pro that.
Clint:
Yeah. And that helped me out, too. A couple of years ago, I had a film and a local filmmaker that I know. I saw that he had submitted to a particular festival, and I just reached out to him and said, hey, I saw that you screened here. What was it like? I'm thinking about submitting. And he just told me honestly, it was a good experience. It was a smaller festival. And his reaction was kind of like, you could take it or leave it kind of a festival. So that was huge advice for me. So I could kind of better understand which festivals would be right for me and which ones I could pass by.
Chuck:
Talk about a little bit about production and anything that you learned along the way. You've made so much stuff over the years, but something specific to this film that maybe surprised you, that on the day you thought I've never thought to do it like a shot like this or something like that. It was either maybe a positive experience or maybe something to never do again.
Clint:
Yeah, I think probably a couple of things on that one. That's a good question. I think one of the things is to always get the most out of every location that you possibly can. I say that because in this responsibility, most of the film takes place at an outdoor campsite, but we had a scene written where our main character, Claire, goes up into the attic of her house to look for camping supplies, camping gear. And when we got to the set, we were working on the campsite location. Getting towards the end of the day, as it goes with these things, you're starting to get pressed for time. And I was thinking, man, we're going to have to wrap here. We got to drive to the next location where the attic is supposed to be. We got to unload, we got to shoot this attic sequence. How can we save time here? And just so happened that there was a location, like the property owners that owned the campsite location had a spot inside that could double as an attic location. Oh, nice. So that was one of the things, like, just kind of take a second because I went to that location and talked to the property owner really specifically just for the campsite location. That's the only thing I was thinking about when I was location scouting. But the day of we're actually shooting it was kind of a spur of the moment. Like, oh, my gosh, I'm not going to make my day and get this attic shot in. So I go back to the property owner, say, and talk to them about what we're doing. And we were able to get the attic sequence that we needed there at the same location. So that was great because that saved us a ton of time. So I think when you're location scouting, you may have an idea of what you want out of a location, but while you're out there scouting, look and see. Is there anything else here that I could also use in my film that I could talk to the property owners about and maybe line that up? So I think that was fortuitous for us.
Chuck:
Yeah. And that comes with, like we mentioned, just keep thinking on your feet and harkening back to those days of just like, well, we're making stuff. Why don't we do this? And I feel like it's easy to stick to that. You've got like a plan in your mind of how everything's going to go. And if you stick a little bit too rigidly to that, you don't want to go all flying off the rails. But if you stick a little bit too rigidly to that, you might have missed that opportunity to do that and save yourself some headache, heartache and migraines later.
Clint:
Yeah, for sure. And also, too, if you're working in low slash, no budget film making, there will be times where a location completely flakes out on you. So that happened to us. When you're asking people to be generous and help you out and do you a favor, you have to have Plans B and C ready to go. And that was the case for us with this responsibility. We had a location that we thought was firmed up. It was going to be a perfect location for us. And then I started calling all of my contacts about two weeks out just to firm up everything. And this one location owner just would not get back to me, just kind of went off the grid. And fortunately, I had kind of a Plan B location in my back pocket I was able to use. But stuff like that happens. So, yeah, when you're dealing with I guess even if you have big budgets behind you, you got to prepare for that kind of stuff.
Chuck:
Yeah. We learned that the hard way. We were shooting a web series, and it was going to be on the campus of College here. And the web series was centered around a student at this College. And I think it was like two days before we had some issues with some contract stuff that they're like, oh, we came up with all this new stuff that we have to figure out. We're on the way there. Oh, no. Luckily, the night before the shoot, we got everything signed and we were able to shoot there no problem. But until we had that signature, we were calling and looking like, why don't we go to the library and use some we can make it look like a classroom. Like we're coming up with all these backups. It's really something we should have thought of beforehand. And now we do that. Like, let's have some backup stuff just in case there's some weird contract stuff that comes up that we didn't know about and we have to figure it out on the fly.
Clint:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chuck:
Well, tell everybody where to find more information about you and the film and I guess information about the screenings you have, including the South Georgia Film Festival screening.
Clint:
Yeah. So you can connect with me on my website, which is Clintill.Net, and you can see all of my work there. The short that is coming up at the South Georgia Film Festival is Miss Responsibility. It's a comedy screens Sunday afternoon, March 6 at 130. But definitely reach out to me through my website. Connect with Me because I know that there's probably some people out there that may be looking for an editor or director or cinematographer or whatever. I'm here to help out and love to connect with people.
Chuck:
That's great. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing the film at the South Georgia film festival because this show will be there doing some interviews and whatnot. So everybody come on out. If you feel safe, if you're in the area and you feel safe or if you want to go see it at one of the other festivals, go check it out. But thanks again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it and good luck with this film and all your future project.
Clint:
Awesome. Thank you so much.