Aaron Moorhead Justin Benson Synchronic

Production

Aaron Moorhead: We did an episode of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone, and something that we actually are instigating after Synchronic is called an elements meeting. It’s like a focused version of the production meeting, where it’s the AD and the producer, and we identify choke points. What’s going to be that stupid thing that slows you down, because you didn’t talk about it enough? And you just go through that with every department, and you just say, OK, who’s bringing this to set? Who’s bringing that? Who’s cleaning it up? That kind of thing. Because you realize that at a certain point, when things are moving really fast, and you didn’t talk about it, departments sometimes forget to talk to each other. And then suddenly, somebody says, I thought the other person was doing it. On our Twilight Zone episode, the meeting really saved us.

I’m sure everybody says this, but taking care of yourself is so important. That goes for all three of us. Just even getting the right amount of sleep is one of the most weirdly important things, especially if you have a longer schedule. If you’re shooting your first indie feature in 12 days, eh, I don’t know. But, once you enter 20-days plus, you’ve got to start treating it as if it’s your nine-to-five, and you’ve got to take care of yourself.

Justin Benson: Except that it’s your 5 a.m. to 2 a.m.

David Lawson: One thing that we’ve always instituted is a no-yelling policy on set. The three of us feel like that’s a top-down kind of methodology. I’ve AD’d some of our projects. We’ve also brought on ADs for some of our bigger ones, and that’s a big thing for us: respect across the board for everybody. We probably end up being a lot closer than most crews — it ends up being kind of family. So for us, respect is the number one thing and making sure that everybody, all the way down to the PA who’s cleaning up trash at the end of the day, or the security guard who’s watching it overnight, feels respected and knows that you care about them as a human.

That’s our number one goal always.

Synchronic Justin Benson Aaron Moorhead

Anthony Mackie as Steve in Synchronic

Moorhead: We’ve never had a situation where a lot of the heads of department don’t basically live together during the film. And that’s not a necessity. If we’re working in a foreign place, we’re not going to say, hey, sorry, we all have to camp out together. On all four of our films, at least the three of us, and then often about three more heads of department, have all been in the same building at the very least, and spent a lot of time together. I would never make somebody do that. But I can’t tell you how useful it is, in ways that are hard to quantify, both on a team building/family building level, and also on just a logistical, “Hey, we need to work this out, meet me in the living room or the lobby, or wherever you are in five minutes.”

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Lawson: On Synchronic, the three of us lived in a shotgun house, which means I had to go through Justin’s bedroom to go to the bathroom. Aaron had to go completely outside to go to the bathroom. Our AD, our editor, and our camera operator were at the attached shotgun. So literally, we were in a six-unit compound.

Benson: Something I just realized from this conversation that we’ve never quite expressed: There is something about all of us coming from doing a lot of do-it-yourself films, oftentimes together… while we’re all also simultaneously working on sets where we’re oftentimes the lowest person on the totem pole. So when you have that, and you get to make your own movies where you’re higher up on the call sheet, you respect everyone so much more. You understand that every single person on set has an insanely hard job.

Moorhead: Having come from relatively blue-collar production backgrounds has definitely helped our general interactions on set.

Benson: If you didn’t come from the bottom like we did, I could see how you might walk onto a set and go to video village and look over and there’s a PA stand- ing there on their walkie: “What’s that person doing?” Well, that person got here before the sun was up, and they’ll be here until five hours after you, cleaning up gum.

Moorhead: And they’re going to continue doing that so they can barely pay their rent.

Lawson: So there’s one time I’ve seen Justin and Aaron disagree on something over the course of four movies. It was about a location on Spring.

Benson: I thought you were going to bring up the flat-earth thing. [Laughs.]

Lawson: We were disagreeing on two dierent locations for the scene. And we’re like, okay, timeout, let’s put a pin in it. Let’s walk around. And then we continue to walk around this Italian town, and as soon as we turned a corner and saw this one location, literally both of them simultaneously were like, “That’s it.” Even when the two of them disagree, they still agree eventually, on what is the actual correct answer.

Benson: There are a lot of discussions that happen in pre-production, not even necessarily disagreements. We’ll just say, “Devil’s advocate. What about this? What about that?”

Moorhead: The devil’s advocate is in the room all the time.

Synchronic Justin Benson Aaron Moorhead

In Synchronic, Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie play EMTs who keep witnessing the deadly aftermath of a brand new designer drug.

Continue for Synchronic moviemakers Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, and producer David Lawson on Post-Production

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