Originally from Minneapolis, MN, Brain James Crewe is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. He has directed numerous projects including the award-winning short films “Far,” “Une Libération,” and “Electoral Emissions” as well as commercials for Princess Cruises. He also co-produced the zombie-cult-classic “Dance of the Dead,” which was released by Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Underground through Lionsgate Films. We caught up with him to discuss his work, including films currently making the festival rounds.
Thank you Brian for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. Congratulations on your career to date. How did you get into the industry?
Film has been part of who I am since I was a kid. My family often jokes that we didn’t always have Sunday night dinner, but we always had Friday night at the movies. Still, the idea of being a filmmaker didn’t really occur to me until I was 20. Growing up in Minnesota it wasn’t presented as an option. After High School, I worked for two years at Suncoast Pictures, a retail video store chain. After my time in retail, I knew there had to be something better than being stuck in a mall all day.
I enrolled in a film program at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. There I had the good fortune to have Bruce Mamer as my instructor for two years. He provided a wonderful knowledge base of the basics of filmmaking. After I earned my Associate’s Degree, I transferred to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to get my bachelor’s degree in Film Production. Thankfully, Bruce Mamer’s book “Film Production Technique” was required reading at USC so I was well prepared. The teachers at USC are of course the best, however, I really found my most consistent mentors to be my fellow classmates. They continue to this day to be some of my best advisors and collaborators.
Who are your biggest industry influences, and why?
Like every child of the ’80s, I was mentored by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. They defined what a movie was for me growing up. Reading their biographies and watching “making of” specials provided a wonderful link to cinema’s past. Video stores gave me access to all the films that influenced them.
However, it wasn’t until the early 90’s that I felt like filmmaking became accessible to me. That was when indie directors like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino emerged from convenience and video stores as award-winning filmmakers. As I was working at a video store at the time, I felt a kinship with their stories. So, they illuminated the path for me to become a filmmaker.
Tell us about your experiences working in the industry. Undoubtedly every project contributes to your career trajectory, but can you recall a milestone or experience that has significantly changed your appreciation of the industry and how you approach directing?
Hard to narrow things down to a single milestone, but I’d say the summer of 2006, when Sara’s Song, a feature film I had been working toward directing for several years was 10 days away from shooting only to have the financing disappear. It was crushing. I could have quit being a filmmaker at that moment. Like, I tried, gave it my best, and it didn’t work out. However, instead of quitting. I partnered up with two directors and produced two feature films the next year. USC classmate Gregg Bishop’s ‘Dance of the Dead’ and Marion Kerr’s ‘Golden Earrings’, which I also edited. My failure with Sara’s Song only made me a more determined producer on those films. The success of those two films really cemented my commitment to being a filmmaker.
You’ve directed numerous projects including the award-winning short films “Cabeceo,” “Far,” “Une Libération,” and “Electoral Emissions” To date, as an artist what would you say is your proudest achievement?
At the moment, my proudest achievement is the double act of Cabeceo and Flat Earther, which my team and I recently pulled off. Cabeceo, a dance film with no dialog, and Flat Earther, which is nothing but dialog staged as a nine-minute single take. Both films were shot by the same crew in the same location over a five-day stretch. It was so wonderful to switch gears creatively in such a short time with two unique films. It’s been a great experience to go out to film festivals with two such unique shorts and see the audience reaction
Photo Credit: George Feucht
Please tell us more about your latest projects titled ‘Flat Earther’ and ‘Cabeceo’. What can audiences expect?
Flat Earther is based on a stage play by one of my USC classmates, Mario Rivas. Joe Holt and Amy Sloan star as a couple on a second date. They make the mistake of allowing their conversation to drift into the realm of conspiracy theories, which can be deadly when you don’t know your conversation partner very well. We staged the film in a single nine-minute take, with no edits. It starts outside and moves into a restaurant. So, once the film begins everything happens in real-time just as it did on set, with no safety net.
Cabeceo is an Argentine Tango Fantasy. The goal was to tell a story and illustrate a character arc, entirely with dance, lighting, and music. This film was all about lush visual design, original costumes, and intense, sexy choreography from our dancers Jennifer Berry and Claudio Predieri set to original music by our composer Darren Dung.
Both films were produced by Matt Keil and photographed by yet another one of my USC classmates, George Feucht.
Photo Credit: Blythe Kala
What is your strongest asset as a director?
Listening to the people around me. I always come in with a strong premise and idea. However, my ideas can always be strengthened by the people on my team. If a film is 100% my idea and my point of view, it’s very limited. Opening myself up to the ideas of the actors and crew gives my films an extra layer of depth that wouldn’t exist if it was just me.
The productions were shot in the same location, by the same crew, with largely the same gear over a single five-day period. How did this come about and what challenges or opportunities did it provide?
It happened because I had the goal of making these two films and I realized that both could be done in a similar location space, which made the production much more practical. It’s a lot of effort to secure a location, rent gear, and organize a crew. Cabeceo was four days of production. Flat Earther was only one. Since we needed everything to do only one film, it only made since to do both and get more bang for our buck. One of the biggest schedule killers for a film is loading gear into a location and then packing it back up at the end of the day. For these two films, we only had to load in on day one and then load out at the end of the fifth and final day. For the two films, there was no company move, which saved a lot of time and effort.
The challenge came from the fact we were an LA-based crew. It’s very hard to rent a bar location in LA for five straight days. So, our co-producer Regis Terencio looked to the city of Pomona, just outside Los Angeles. There he found a dance club called Fuego, which was only open Friday and Saturday nights. Meaning, we could move in Sunday and move out Friday morning without interrupting their business. The only downside was that our cast and crew had a pretty epic drive to set every day.
The other challenge was that bars and restaurants require extras to look lived in. For Flat Earther and the first day of Cabeceo, we had 30 extras on set. This was Valentine’s Day weekend 2020, three weeks before the COVID travel ban went into effect. Hiring and organizing that many people on the verge of a global pandemic was a challenge I don’t think we appreciated at the moment. Thankfully, no one got sick. As an indie production, I don’t think even now we could pull off organizing and paying to test all those people to make our set safe by 2022 standards
What other projects are you currently working on?
I have a TV Pilot called ‘Keystone’, which I am shopping around. It focuses on silent film actress Mabel Normand, a legend that unfortunately many have forgotten, or worse misrepresented. She was the biggest female comedian of her day. She acted, directed, did her own stunts, and taught Charlie Chaplin how to be a filmmaker. She owned her own production company and in 1916 produced ‘Mickey’, a feature film that was the highest-grossing feature film in Hollywood history until the mid-30’s. I’m really excited to tell her story.
I’m also working on a feature script called ‘Calypso’, a sci-fi film about the crew of the first faster-than-light ship and the dangers they find while exploring a new solar system. I’m co-writing that right now with Tony Cammarata and Abel Peña.
Where can our readers find out more about you and your projects?
My website www.FilmCrewe.com has links to many of my previous shorts and behind-the-scenes videos on how they were created. I can be found on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter under the handle @FilmCrewe
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