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A debut feature film is a huge feat for any director. For Dave Green, the stakes were higher, but the reward is sweeter, as the director unveiled his film Earth To Echo yesterday. Coming from the world of music videos and short films, Green is paving the way for young directors by staying true to his unique style. I had the chance to talk to Green (on the day of the film’s release, no less) about his experience working on a high-budget studio film, as well as his hilarious reaction to finding out he was going to direct it. We begin:
WHAT WAS THE TRANSITION LIKE, GOING FROM MAKING SHORT FILMS TO YOUR FIRST FEATURE?
I think the transition, from making shorts to making this movie, was interesting for me. Because even though this was a feature film, there were things that got scheduled a little bit differently than even on a short film or a music video- where you can spend a lot of time on one shot, just like you had planned, and you kind of cross it off the list.
Because this movie was shot in twenty eight days and it was kind of made at a break-neck speed, there were certain cases where you’d have even less time to spend on a particular thing. So I’d say that part of the learning curve for me was having to actually let go of certain things. For example, I had storyboarded something in a particular scene, and letting go of the idea that it had to be done exactly [was difficult], which is usually my M.O..
Also, walking into the production as a “young director,” I wanted to be sure I was clear in my communication to my crew. So something that I did for better or worse, was I kind of, I like to stay on message, I was like, “I want to run this movie like the first Obama campaign,” which is like, incredibly on-message all the time. I didn’t want to waiver from what I originally told people when we were walking the scene.
But at the same time, there were all these people around me who had dozens of years of film experience above me, and who had been in the business for so long. That was also part of my ‘letting go’ process- just looking at those people on the set, saying “Hey, they know what they’re doing, I’m gonna let go, and let them do their thing,” and the result is always much better, so I learned from them.
WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO FINDING OUT YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE THIS FILM?
(Laughter) Well, ok. Henry [Gayden, Screenwriter] and I, we pitched the studio the movie, and that was pretty cool, but at the same time, we were kind of used to, not in a negative way, but we’re totally used to hearing people say “no,” which is totally cool, it’s just the nature of the game. So, you pitch, you pitch, you pitch, you pitch, and you don’t expect “yes,” you never expect it…
So Henry and I had done the pitch, and without even thinking about it, we’re like, “OK, well that’s not gonna happen, there’s no question.” So we had ordered some sandwiches, we were ready to kind of wind down from the pitch and just kind of spend the rest of the afternoon working on other projects, cause we were like, “Yeah, of course, that’s not gonna happen,” like every project doesn’t happen. And we were on the way to eat and we got a call, like, ten minutes after the pitch. And the producer called us into his office, and we sat down, and he’s like, “So, they said ‘yes’.” And we were very confused, so we were immediately terrified. And then like, I was very scared. I was like, “Oh shit, now we have to actually go and make this.” This is terrifying.
And then we had a couple of weeks where we were literally thought that it wasn’t real, like they were joking, where you know, they would knock on our office door a couples days later and just like come in and be like, “Hey sike! This is not for real.”
DID YOU WATCH ANY MOVIES FOR VISUAL OR DIRECTORIAL INSPIRATION?
Well, I know Henry watched basically every first person movie there is. He watched REC, he watched all the Paranormal Activity‘s… I didn’t really dive into those movies very deeply. But I do remember a couple things- Like one, I was watching Stand By Me at the New Beverly [Theater] when we were very close to the pitch stage on this movie, and we watched a double feature of The Princess Bride and Stand By Me, and I was like, “Oh, this is a great time.”
But, I think it’s more like accessing that hard-drive in my brain; little pieces of production design and little pieces of fine art photography, or little pieces of reference from all over. I had this wall in my office that was big- I asked to get this material called ‘celotex’ which makes your wall a huge bulletin board. And for the first, five days, on the movie I was just- I had a color printer in my office, and I was just printing out stills from anything that made sense for the movie, just kind of throwing them up on this wall. Some of the images were from photographer Gregory Crewdson who does all the Spielburg-ian neighborhood shots, and some of them were this guy named Joel Sternfeld, who is this other fine art photographer, he takes pictures of like, Americana. And then we had robot references that were from Wall-E, and yeah, there were production design pieces from Close Encounters (of the Third Kind), and all these things kind of went up on the wall, and I could just kind of stare at them whenever…and it was easy when I had production designers and DP’s that I was meeting, because they would just go into the room and they were like, “Oh, yeah, ok. We see what you want it to look like.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE FILM BEING COMPARED TO ET ?
Well, it’s always very humbling to be mentioned in the same sentence, because obviously E.T. is a masterpiece, even though certain people aren’t bringing it up as an equal comparison…I mean, E.T. is a movie that is about a friendship between one boy and one alien, and it’s like a love affair. And it takes place over two or three weeks, and they fall deeply for each other, and they depart from each other. And our movie is about a group of four friends who are, ebbing and flowing from each other. And the fact that they find this little alien is kind of- these kids could’ve easily found a baby bird [ in place of Echo] on their last night, which is something that one of my friends said when he saw the movie, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s true.” This is a story about the friendship between the kids. And yeah, it’s flattering to be mentioned in the same sentence, and if it’s giving people even a smidge of those vibes, than that feels great.
WERE THERE ANY CHARACTERS IN THE FILM THAT YOU PERSONALLY RELATE TO?
Yeah, for sure. Henry came up with all the characters and pitched them to me, all comes from him. There are pieces of him in all of them too- like if you asked him, he would say that he relates most closely to Munch because Munch is like the actualization of all of Henry’s insecurities in one little guy.
But yeah, I connect to each of the kids in a different way. You know, even if you’re a twelve year old boy and you see the way Emma’s parents are treating her in the movie, even though you’re not a girl, you can take the leap and put yourself in those shoes and feel the things that she’s feeling. At like twelve, thirteen years old I was a lot like Tuck. Meaning, I was the one with the video camera, pressuring my friends to do a short film, or you know, get covered in fake blood or something. So as the kid with the camera who’s basically the group motivator, I guess I would be the closest to him.
DRIVING AROUND L.A., I MYSELF HAVE SEEN THE FILM’S POSTERS EVERYWHERE. DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE BILLBOARD THAT YOU’VE SEEN AROUND TOWN?
Oh yeah, it was super weird! I was out of town doing press in Arizona and when I left there was nothing up, no billboards up in L.A. When I came back, like three days later, I was in my car coming from the airport, and it was like somebody painted the town with these things, and it was completely surreal. It almost feels like when I drive down the street I’m like, “Oh, there’s that movie that someone else made.” It feels a little out-of-body.
But yeah, my friend actually sent me a photo the other day of graffiti art that someone did, that’s beautiful graffiti art, all over an Echo billboard he found in North Hollywood, and when I saw that I was so stoked! I’ve seen graffiti artists do that on Transformers billboards, and Godzilla billboards, and stuff like that. I don’t know if it’s one guy, or if it’s a couple guys who do this, but they manage to blend in the graffiti to the key art of the poster in a way that makes it feel like, “Oh, we’re not tagging this billboard, we’re actually just making a cool piece of art that actually integrates with the poster design,” which is so cool. So it’s just this kind of awesome, elaborate, just beautiful lettering that kind of just envelops Echo. As soon as I sat that I was just like, “I need to go there! That’s amazing!”
