Jessica Ellis Interview

Interviewed by Fiona Underhill

Jessica Ellis is a writer based in Los Angeles, mainly working with her wri�ng partner Nick Sinno�. What Lies West is her feature film debut, a personal story based where she grew up in Sonoma County (Northern California) and starring her two nieces as a babysi�er and her charge, who reluctantly decide they're going on an adventure one summer. They overcome their anxie�es, face challenges and bu� heads but a friendship is formed along the way.

Let’s get started with the script. I know it was important to you that this be about two girls and for it be a hopeful story, so could you tell me about those ini�al ideas for the script?

I knew I wanted to work with these two actresses and I knew I wanted to set the script in Sonoma County (Northern California), where I had grown up and from there it became “what kind of story can I tell that shows off what this place looks like, that puts them outside a lot and takes advantage of what I view as their very different personali�es?”. So it became clear very quickly that it was going to become a hiking movie and that the conflict was going to be “how do two people who think about the world very differently team up and go on adventures? What is the core similarity between them that makes them work as a friendship and what are the obstacles in their personali�es that are going to cause conflict?” So, it grew very organically from the parameters of having the actresses in that par�cular loca�on.

An interview with JessicaEllis

On her debut featureWhat Lies West

The loca�on, as you say, is very personal to you. Do you think for a debut feature, in par�cular, it’s important to have a personal connec�on to what you’re wri�ng?

I mean, if you’re lucky, yeah! I think most people will take their debut feature however they can get it. But for me, being able to set it in my hometown and being able to focus on something that was so personal definitely made the experience of making the film so much richer, which I think is something that a lot of people overlook. They think of the final end product as the art, but I think because I come from a theatre background, I also have a lot of love for the art of the process, of the actual doing of the thing. So ge�ng to take my crew to all of these beau�ful places which I had been running around as a kid and ge�ng to think about what kind of scenes would be interes�ng there, that made it really special for me and I think that’s valuable too.

I know that our readers are definitely interested in how you get funding for a first feature and also how you manage to work within �ght budgetary constraints…

We raised about a third of our funding through two rounds of crowdfunding, then the rest of it came from some small investments and our savings. But it was s�ll a very �ny budget, everything was a balancing act: “of what is this worth? How important is this?” It’s really hard! But it makes you be more crea�ve, you have to find ways to shoot things you want to shoot, without shoo�ng them in the way you automa�cally envision them, which is probably very expensive. For example, the film opens up with a gradua�on scene, I couldn’t spend the money to hire 150 extras and spend $5000 a day on a school in LA to shoot a gradua�on scene. So, I shot it in the parking lot outside of a gradua�on, you can hear the band going on in the background and there are people running out in gradua�on robes to meet their families. But the budgetary constraints force you to think “how can I do this in a way that is unique and interes�ng and not a scene that we’ve seen thousands of �mes and is also much, much cheaper?”

This was very much a family affair. The two lead actresses are your nieces, the cinematographer is your husband. You’ve got lots of family and friends involved in your cast and crew, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier though or always plainsailing, I’m guessing? So could you tell me a bit about working with people who are close to you and the advantages/disadvantages of doing that?

It’s different for each person in that equa�on. With my nieces, it was easier for me, I had babysat both of them, so I already had an established rela�onship with them. For me, that was about giving myself trainingwheels, working with actors because I already had an exis�ng rela�onship with them and I knew I wasn’t going to offend them. Because we already had a loving, fun rela�onship, I was less nervous working with them. Working with my husband as my DP,

“I was most afraid of looking like a lazy-bones in front of my crew

Working with my husband as my DP, that’s a different story. You have a rela�onship as a husband and wife that doesn’t necessarily translate very well to one of you being technically in power over the other. You know, he’s a collaborator, but s�ll there were �mes where I had to be like “no Sean, we can’t do that” so that one was a li�le trickier to navigate.But ul�mately, my family love that this is a family produc�on. It is now a very special part of our whole family dynamic, which has been affected by this movie. It makes me really happy to contribute to my family like that.

What gave you the confidence to follow through with your vision onset, despite it being your debut feature? Did having your family there help or was it your American Film Ins�tute training?

It was seeing the work everyone else was pu�ng in. Once you see a crew of people swea�ng to death in the August sun to make your movie, it stops being about ego and starts being about the responsibility you have to honor that work and make it worth it. When it’s just me, I’m lazier! The second others put themselves on the line, I am part of a team and the execu�on of a vision is my job. As for AFI, when you’re a writer at AFI, you have to be on the set, but because the writers aren’t given much power (and the directors tend to not want them to be on-set) you tend to get shoved into doing cra� services. Which on a school set, is a very boring job, so I thought sets would be boring. Turns out, they’re FANTASTIC and the day flies by when you’re in charge.

You had a bigger challenge to overcome than most people making their first feature. Just remind me again which stage of produc�on you were in when you had your major health issue?

Jessicaonset

“We’re learning as we go...

It was about three weeks a�er we finished the first half, in August. We were scheduled to film our second half in LA in October. But instead, in the middle of September, I had emergency open heart surgery, they found a gene�c defect that needed to be repaired right away. So obviously we had to push the second half of our shoot. The really difficult part actually and I don’t think I’ve talked about this at all, the heart surgery was bad enough and I’d stayed at home and I’d had enough �me to recover and was doing OK. Five months into my recovery, so right before we started shoo�ng the second half, I developed a complica�on. The wires they use to �e your chest back together a�er heart surgery started hi�ng nerves and poking into my skin. So when we shot our second half, I was in agonising pain, I was mainlining Advil, I couldn’t pick anything up, I couldn’t li� my arms above shoulder level at all. So that made direc�ng the second half a li�le more complicated. Honestly, psychologically, I was most afraid of looking liking a lazy-bones in front of my crew, because I couldn’t pick up anything, I couldn’t help move things. I had to spend a lot of �me direc�ng while si�ng down because my energy levels were so low and I was in so much pain. But from the view of a couple of years away, I view it as something to be proud of. It was a challenge that I was able to meet, that maybe a year earlier, I wouldn’t think I was capable of mee�ng. So, I think it was a li�le badass, I will take a li�le credit on that one.

NicoletteKayeEllisandChloeMooreinWhatLiesWest(2019)

Would you say that the hardest stage has been since wrapping and locking, trying to find fes�vals and distribu�on for your film?

Yeah – the produc�on, amazingly, went pre�y smoothly. Our ini�al post, with edi�ng and sound took a while but mostly went smoothly. Distribu�on = nightmare. I have no idea how to do it, it’s new to my whole producing team too, it’s their first �me trying to sell a feature. None of us have quite figured out the equa�on yet, to get it out there. We’re ge�ng such great feedback and people seem to really like the movie, so we know we have a product worth selling, but it’s a very impenetrable part of the business that nobody really has a magic formula for ge�ng through, so we’re learning as we go.

Well we at JUMPCUT wish you lots of luck with it. It is rare to see such a joyful, hopeful film about two young women who are extremely recognisable and relatable.