On the banks of the Hudson, in record-breaking heat (started the interview with iced coffee but had hot coffee by the end), I had the opportunity to sit down with a promising young director who created one of my favorite shorts,?The Line.
Joe Petrilla (who also goes by the pseudonym, Oakjo) graduated from Northwestern before moving to New York to act. After working on a handful of films, he decided to transition from actor to film maker. As we can see from his debut short, he was rather successful.?
Me: How Did You Get Into Film Making?
Petrilla:?I formed a relationship with a couple of filmmakers who I acted for. One is a guy by the name of Alan Brown, who had a film go to Sundance a few years ago and I worked on a film called Superheroes, and I talked to him a lot about his first short film and he had a short that did well and went around the festival circuit and that kind of enabled him to make his feature, and then I did another part on a feature that was a lead part, the film actually ended up playing at the Cannes film festival. I flew out to Germany for the premiere and everything; it was a pretty decent scale independent film to be a part of. And I became good friends with the guy who made that, a filmmaker by the name of Hulk Ernst, he?s from Germany. And he just had the same kind of thing. He had a short that did well, and it opened the door for him to make a feature, a couple of shorts actually. Just from you know, from talking to them and hearing about their process, and researching online, finding other sorts of examples, thinking my ultimate goal is to make a feature and you know one route people go is making a short, making a few shorts, and having that eventually build them up, getting them to a place where they can make a feature, figuring well you know this is the kind of thing you can just start to do and write it if its decent you know hopefully if you can get people to help you make it, make it on your own time, as an actor my day job was working as a carpenter and I just started devoting all my time on the nights and weekends to writing, scouting locations, and you know planning to make my first short and figuring that that would be my plunge into being a film maker.
Me:?Where did the Name Oakjo come from?
Petrilla:The [simplest] explanation is it?s a combination of my favorite material, oak, and my name. I wanted something that was easy to remember. I didn?t want to just have joepetrilla.com. It felt like it was too simple and not that exciting. So I wanted a simple short name that would be easy to remember that would represent my work. And in a way it?s the seed of a production company. Right now its just my own personal film making site and it could and should be more fitting as the name of a production company some day.
Me:?What led you to make The Line?
Petrilla:?I started very thematically; I have a core ball of theme, ideas, thoughts, that I think are my main inspiration. One of them had to do with life stages. I started with a particular metaphor, allegory that I wanted to translate into a short film. And that is kind of where I started.
Me:?What inspired the specific story of The Line.
Petrilla:Let me think. My wife, then girlfriend, was in Asia for six months on a tour of The King and I (she?s an actor as well). So I was siting alone just hammering my brain trying to write something. And it was like three o?clock in the morning, and I was pushing and pushing and I couldn?t quite figure out the premise that was satisfying and contained, the images and ideas, the theme that I wanted to express and at one point I finally spit out this paragraph and the paragraph was: this boy is walking home from school and he finds this guy who has wrecked his car on the side of the road and the guy is banged and beaten up and he cant move his arms but he?s got a gun. He asks the boy to take the gun and shoot him. And at first the kid doesn?t want to do it, but then he does [do it] and the second he does, the boy becomes the man. And the old man becomes a small child who disappears into the forest. So that was this allegory that I spit out in this paragraph form and I slowly began to think how do I make this paragraph translate into a ten-minute short film? How would I translate it into a feature? How would I need to change it to make it span that time and remain suspenseful and interesting and work as a film? So I came home late one-night years ago and I started to slowly go through a few different drafts of the short film version of that
ME:?How long did it take you to get from coming up with the idea to production?
Petrilla:Oh it was probably two years between writing it and shooting it. We shot it in summer of ?10 and yeah I think I wrote it in ?08. It was a while before then. And then I took a year to edit it and then we started going to festivals in the summer of ?11.
Me:?Did you edit it yourself?
Petrilla:?I did and I did not. I worked with an editor. I set it up in kind of an interesting way. I wanted to edit it. I wanted to give a shot to editing it. But I hadn?t edited anything professionally at that point. So I wanted help. I gave all the footage to an editor, by recommendation and said look here?s the footage here?s the script, take it do whatever you want I?m not even going to tell you want I think, what I?m thinking. I?m going to take it and we will meet in a month and a half and look at both our results and see what we did. SO we both did independent cuts. We sat down and took a look at them. His was much better then mine.? And then we put them together. Made a couple different versions and then started some test screenings and then slowly mixed and matched. Blended the two together. You know over the course of three or four months before we locked it.
Me: What were your final goals in terms of where the film would go once it was made?
Petrilla:?Just you know you want to have the biggest, highest profile, longest festival run possible. You know just kind of meet some people see if I could get noticed make a start for myself. Definitely I think having James Reborhorn made people sit up and pay attention and give it a shot. I?m very happy with how we did. Went to fifteen festivals, won an award. I think it has now enabled me to make a living doing this so that was major check mark off the top. You know I definitely learned some things. This is my first film I wanted to stick to my artist guns and you know its kind of an experimental narrative. It?s a little definitely abstract. Some people don?t get it. Its not for everyone. Being my first film I wanted to not compromise make it just accessible enough so that some people would get it. And one of the things that held it back is that abstract quality. Its not just it?s not going to be on funny or die. I?ve learned form that now. In a way it?s a companion piece to the line. It?s the lighter half. It?s also about having to do with life lines. It?s the funny version though the not so dark and intense version.
Me: So how did the production team come together?
Petrilla:?A lot came from my producer, who is a guy named kit bland. Who I met on this, he was ADing the feature that I did on the feature I did that went to Cannes. He has worked as an AD in the city for years on Rescue Me and a bunch of feature films and television shows. At the time we were making the line he was getting into producing and hew was producing a couple of short films and he wanted to produce mine and has since produced a couple of features. He produced this film called Now Forager, which just screened at the Lincoln center at the New York Film festival. And its been doing well. It premiered at Rotterdam. He has been in the business so long he has worked with so many people. 60 to 70 percent of the crew came through him. And then another 30 were friends. A couple of them are film people. My AD and my art guy are film folks and they are sort of multi faceted guys who can sort of do anything and I brought them on as AD and art. And then a couple people were just hands, PA?s.
Me: Why did you choose?NY over LA?
Petrilla:?Came here first, I have a network set up. Have a network of people that I know here. When I left school I had an acting agent out here and that kind of gave me the reason to come out here as opposed to LA cause I had someone working for me. So I didn?t really have anything set up in LA. I started to expand the circle of people I know in this city first. I would love to do something LA. Its in the cards in the next couple of years. There is definitely things about this city, the reasons I came out here for acting that hold true for film making. With acting In LA it?s all film and TV, so if your an actor that?s what your doing that?s what your putting yourself out there for. But here there?s independent film and tv, theater, stand up comedy, improve, performance art. There is wider range of ponds to throw your hook out into and I think its maybe a little bit similar in film too. There?s a strong independent film community in New York. Its strong and it?s a little bit smaller and a little bit tighter knit. And that?s really great. And from what everyone says about LA, from the little bit of experience that I?ve had. Everyone out there is in the business. Its super saturated. Its easy to get lost. It?s easy to drown in the sea of industry out there. I like the little circle I?ve got going here. And if eventually it burns bright enough to get me a plane ticket out to LA . I?m content to just try to continue to try to do this ? continue what ive got going right here.
Me: How did you decide to shoot on RED?
Petrilla:?DSLR, I wasn?t even aware of DSLR at the time when we shot this in 09, but KTI introduced us to our DP, Til Newman who teaches at the New York Film Academy and he teaches the RED camera and he red camera was all the buzz at the time. And he was like I can get us a RED camera?I teach it and I know it well and it looks beautiful. So I was like why not. I think my aesthetic is a little bit more suited to it than DSLR. I like very kind of classically composed or sort of smooth shots. I think the red is very good at those. Its sort of indistinguishable from film and the shadows and the contrast and the dark kind of stuff it does really well.
Me: How did you get to work with James Rebhorn?
Petrilla:?James came through largely through my acting manager, a guy by the name of Bill Tresh, who has been in the business for years and years. He is a legend among the world of agents and managers. He knew James through another one of his clients and was able to get the script in his hands. He responded to it immediately, you know like I was saying a lot of people don?t get it. James got it immediately. He was into it. I think it gave him a chance to flex an acting muscle that he usually doesn?t get to flex playing the stereotypical roles of lawyer or doctor or bad guy of some sorts. There is something about his soul that it resonated with him. Getting to know him more. I think I have more of an understanding of how it worked for him and so we were just fortunate. He was the first guy we pitched it to and he just said yes.
Me: Was he easy to work with?
Petrilla:?A dream. You will never work with an actor as easy to work with as James Rebhorn. HE is such a gentleman. He?s already to go first take. And that was something I was so impressed with and true with all good actors and when you work with a good actor you appreciate the people who have it at their fingertips. The people who are real and ready to rock it every single time form the beginning. And he really and it?s the folks like him who have been doing it for their lives 20, 30 years. He?s been doing it so long he just has it. It?s always there. He is always ready to be in it. From an acting standpoint I learned so much watching good actors like him.
Me: Was it intimidating to work with such a seasoned actor on your debut film?
Petrilla:?You know I got a little bit of a chance to rub elbows with some people as an actor. The film that I did that went to Cannes was with Melissa Leo, who stared in that. I was kind of working with her in some scenes. I guess because I come from an acting background I get actors I think I relate to actors in a way that?s probably my strong point?I was kind of just nervous for the production as a whole.
Me: Do you have any good stories from on set?
Petrilla:?We had a couple of hurdles that were overcome like lickety split. We were shooting on this bridge over the Delaware River at the del water gap on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania line and there is this footbridge that spans the river. And the shot that I wanted was a wide shot of the whole bridge where the gunshot goes off and you cant see the guy. Its just a shot of the bridge. So there is a spit of land that goes out into the river down stream of the bridge that I scouted. So I was like we can hike down through the woods and bring the tripod out here and set up. Unfortunately in the week prior to shooting it rained every day. So the river was like four feet higher and this spit of land was underwater. We didn?t know that till we got up there the night before the shoot. There is a highway that goes over the water like two hundred, three hundred yards down stream from his spit of land. So my producer did some last minute calling and finagling and we were able to shut down the road for ten minutes. Roll the truck out there, wiped out the ting. Zoomed in and shot it. It was one of those last minute things that could have gone terribly wrong. So that was a nice little last minute negotiation.
Petrilla is currently working on his next project reConception, and as soon as we get the chance we will be sure to share it with all of you!
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Source: http://blindmouseentertainment.com/2012/07/24/interview-with-oakjo/
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