| Collaborate With People Who Know a Lot More Than You Do |
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| with Jeremy Podeswa | |
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Page 1 of 2 Jeremy Podeswa is one of the rare directors whose role on the business side of a film is to maintain creative control while others worry about the money.It’s worked for him. Starting in April 2006, he began shooting his third feature, Fugitive Pieces, based on the iconic Canadian novel by Anne Michaels. It has a budget of $12 million. Podeswa also wrote the screenplay. An unusual commodity Daniel McIvor and Mary Louise Parker in The Five SensesThe Five Senses, his second film, got a standing ovation at its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. The film, which he wrote and directed, went on to sell in 50 territories across the world and won Podeswa the Genie Award for Best Director and the CITY-TV Award for Best Canadian Film. It also landed him a Hollywood agent and turned him into an unusual commodity: a Canadian who is hot in the United States. But if his tale is not typical, it still has lessons for other aspiring writers and directors. One of the most important is to work with the right producer. The producer on Podeswa’s first two movies, Eclipse (1995) and The Five Senses, is Canadian Camelia Frieberg. Frieberg is known for working with filmmakers she believes in. She also produced Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997) by Atom Egoyan. Frieberg met both Egoyan and Podeswa while they were still in university. Soak up everything you canIt’s especially critical for Podeswa to have a supportive producer because he specializes in making multi-strand, metaphoric works lyrically shot with an ensemble cast. He has also written all his own screenplays.“Being able to get what I want on screen has gone pretty smoothly,” says Podeswa. “On the first two films, I had complete creative control. The producer really wanted to support my creative vision.” Sticking to your creative guns doesn’t mean being pig-headed, though, says Podeswa. He says if the same criticism keeps coming up from different people, it may be a sign that you need to be flexible. Next lesson: Collaborate with people who know a lot more than you do and soak up everything you can. He says it’s important to recognize that you don’t know everything and that you are dependent on the people you work with. I intuitively knew that it was all about who you collaborated with “I intuitively knew that it was all about who you collaborated with,” he says. “Even in school, I found people who would improve my game.” Once the project gets close to the time of filming, the key is to know the script better than anyone else, says Podeswa. It’s critical to keep track of how everything fits together. As well, he says, it’s imperative to retain passion for the film, even when things get difficult. You have to believe in what you’re doing. Continued... |
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