Slamdance Director Zoe Eisenberg Breaks Down Crafting An Inverse Coming-of-Age Indie Hit

Perfect Score, Teeny Budget

Notes on The Intricate Ukulele-Based Score

"Taimane Gardner is a ukulele virtuoso from Hawaii. She's ridiculously talented human being, and she's a star musician. Everyone's so proud of her here, just a force to be reckoned with. And so I had seen another film that she scored, and so I had her earmarked and I sent her the script, every finger in my hands crossed that she would connect with it. We didn't have the money to pay her what she's used to being paid. She loved the script and she agreed for a fraction of what she'd charge to make some original music, and then also to allow us to use some of her existing music to create the score."

On Sourcing Louisville's GRLWOOD

"One of our eps owns a record company and he's set out of Louisville, so he was like, Hey, if you like any of our artists, here's a database. So I actually did quite a big deep dive of artists from there trying to find something that fit. And I love GRLWood."

Working with Animals? Zoe Has Some Tips 

"The Humane Society has a grant funded program. I didn't know that when you're working with Humane Society, you don't have to pay them and they just show up. It was a huge learning experience for us, and we're, again, very bootstrap production, very DIY, and they sent a humane rep from LA who came out who works on tons of things, and he was like, what is this tiny little place, where am I?"

"It's just a bunch of broke ass filmmakers running around this house that we've rented. The main picture house, not only were we shooting there, but we are housing our cast and crew there as well. So he was like, what did I just walk into? But we did. We worked with him to make sure that the humane society checks out, but also the cats owners were on set with us as her handlers and the cat. She passed away this year, which is sad, she was 20 when we were shooting with her."

"She was completely deaf, but she was a pleasure to work with and the fact that she was deaf made her so chill because she wasn't startled by noise. So she was able to be around this really busy environment and remain cool.They were friends of mine, and I've known that cat for a while, and we did a lot of test shoots with the cat of just being like, these are the things we're going to need her to do, not a professionally trained animal the way you would normally work in a Hollywood production. So we spent quite some time bringing her to new places, testing how she responded to certain things."

"The cat really needed to seem like she wanted to get out a huge plot point. So that was an area of focus for us. So we did a lot of bringing her into a new room and closing the door and seeing what she does, and she just was perfect. She would just immediately be like, let me out of this room. So it was easy to work with her, to be honest."

"They say don't work with animals and children. And I've worked with both a lot at this point, and what I've learned is it's actually never the animals or the children that are difficult to work with. It's the process. If you're a union production, it's the processes that are built around them to keep them safe that are really intensive and sometimes expensive for good reason, but it does add a lot of headache, but working with animals and kids is fine."

Practical Thoughts on Age-Appropriate Casting

"[When casting Jake] I thought of it a lot when I was watching May December when they were casting the kid, I remember those videos and how uncomfortable they are because they all look 12 because they are 12. And Natalie Portman's character is like, yeah, but they have to kind of have this confidence."

"You've met him. And we went through a very similar process where we had narrowed our Jake decision down, so we had a lot of check marks we needed. I was like, this kid needs to be from Hawaii. I'm not casting a kid from LA. He needs to be from here so he can authentically play that. So that automatically limited our windows down and we're looking at the local theater scene. And so we found two potential Jakes that we loved, and one was Laird, who doesn't look like he's 19, even though he was 21 when he shot."

He looked kind of maybe 24. And then the other kid that we were in love with was 20 and looked 19. It very much looked like a babyface high schooler. And so we filmed Mitzi doing a chemistry read with each of them. And then we showed that chemistry read to a bunch of women in their thirties and forties (our target audience basically)."

"And we were like, which couple do you want to watch? It was unanimously Laird as Jake because he looked so much older and because that automatically made them understand Misha's headspace. Whereas when you're watching someone who actually looks 19, you just have to do a lot more legwork to really think about why she might make that choice, and it would've made the film feel a lot more ominous from the inciting incident."

Thoughtful Advice From One Indie Filmmaker to Another

"I think it really just comes down to community."

I mean, this was–every film is community-based. I've been making films now for 10 years. I've spent 10 years cultivating relationships with all of people in the Hawaii film scene because I truly believe that that's how we're going to grow and move forward."

"And so I was just truly digging my feet in to be like, okay, how can I support this community and help them grow? Because I know that's going to help. It's going to boomerang back into my own work, and that's kind of the way that we should all be working, I think. And so film school, from what I understand–I didn't go–creates that community for people where they can then have their cohort of folks that they love and they want to work with. And 20 years from now when they're all successful artists, they're still working with those folks. So when you don't have that kind of incubation where you meet all of your folks, you have to go out there and really find them yourself."

"Chaperone is truly the outcome of 10 years of cultivating relationships."