Last year, I got the chance to shoot a few days on "Daredevil: Born Again", directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. I've wanted to talk about this one for a while, but had to wait... because my episode is finally airing tonight!If you watch, you'll see I play a narratively integral, but small role.
As such, it would have been easy to be treated like an after-thought. I've been on smaller projects doing bigger parts where directors and producers have done just that. But not here. The moment I got to set, both Aaron and Justin introduced themselves, shared they'd watched our tapes, and were psyched to have us there.
Now, an important piece of context is that most people know these guys from the work they've done with Marvel, but I was familiar because of their early indie work. As a matter of record, BRIGHTWOOD is regularly compared to THE ENDLESS, positively by people who liked our movie, and as being a pale imitation by people who didn't, so I was already ready to fan-boy a little bit.(I *can* and *should* tell everyone that Dane hadn't actually seen The Endless when he wrote Brightwood, but that's neither here nor there for the purpose of THIS post).
There were easily 250 people on set, and more moving pieces then I usually have on a whole week of a film I'm producing, but even as an indie producer, there were tons of key takeaways -- the first and simplest being, "Be cool and don't be a dick."
It's amazing how much goodwill one can engender just by saying "please" or "thank you" or offering constructive feedback and having a good sense of humor, especially when it's a long and physically exhausting day. And that's exactly what these guys did. And it didn't interfere with us making our day, or the quality of the work captured.
A project's tone is set by those at the very top of the chain: producers, directors, department heads, etc. and in my personal opinion, a project never suffers from a positive attitude. That's true on a Disney TV show (with Disney money behind it), and even truer on an independent film (woefully without Disney money behind it 😉 ).
At the end of the day, what we are making is entertainment. Yes there is a lot of money and effort and time that goes into it. And a lot of dreams and fantasies connected to how it turns out. Sometimes it seems like the vast differences in scale between huge studio productions like Daredevil and small indie productions like Noble Gas Media mean there aren't things to be learned from one about the other....But I disagree.
I believe it is partially the indie spirit and wherewithal that Benson & Moorhead brought to the table that made working for them an experience worth writing about a year later, and believe me when I share that I'll be thinking about their example when we're on our own (much smaller) set this fall.
Thanks to everyone on the team and hope that anyone who watches is enjoying the show!