'Extraction 2' Director Sam Hargrave Explains Why It's Important to Make a Bad Short

Here at No Film School, we're big believers in making short films. Not only will they challenge your writing and directing muscles, but they're usually easy enough to make that you can get together with some friends and shoot it, providing an incredible on-set experience. 

Short films are often the lifeblood of any budding writer or director's arsenal. 

That's why it was so exciting to hear Sam Hargrave on our podcast talking about "making a bad short film." 

For those who don't know, Sam Hargrave is an award-winning stuntman and stunt coordinator, second unit director for films like Suicide Squad and Avengers: Endgame, and director of the film Extraction and its sequel, Extraction 2, which is now available on Netflix.

When Hargrave and NFS Podcast host GG Hawkins spoke, Hargrave was so wonderful and open about his process. During the conversation, we took some notes when he said, "There's so many questions that come the way of the director, it feels like you're a switchboard operator on methamphetamine."

But the main thing that stuck out to me was his casual line about "do a bad short." 

Hargrave's point was that you should just making anything that you can for the learning experience, and he told us he leaves all his old work online, so he can go back to it to learn lessons and also see how far he's come. 

Hargrave also has said in the past, "The most important thing is to recognize how important it is to market yourself and make connections." Making these shorts are also amazing ways to meet more people and network. You will make friends you work with for years just by creating new things and challenging yourself. 

I found his 2013 short Game Changer on Youtube, and you can see some flashes of brilliance there on his way to Extraction. 

You see a lot of those early flashes of his fighting style and even some longer takes that have become a trademark in his feature career. 

We know from covering his 22-minute oner in Extraction 2 that Hargrave is an excellent planner who tries to think of shots in advance and go over things with his teams in person and then on set. This is stuff he surely learned making action shorts. 

And his collaborations on these shorts show how much respect and familiarity he has with his crews. 

Again, these are all lessons you can get yourself the more things you make. And you can embark on bigger projects as you go if you set up the small blocks now and gradually move toward creating a huge career you can take anywhere you want to go. 

Let me know what you think of this idea and the interview in the comments.