Master Mariama Diallo Interview

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

what's going on guys that's austin from with FlickDirect talking to the lovely mariama diallo on her first film as i recall master first film yes my first feature-length film first of all congratulations uh so that leads to my first question so from when i looked up on your imdb you've primarily done shorts before this whole thing so what was like taking that big leap because i can imagine how terrifying it is to go from 10 12-minute shorts to making an hour and a half feature so talk about the process was it easier was it hard or and why did you come away from it all yeah so um it was definitely daunting to make the leap from shorts to uh feature length uh interestingly enough actually i kind of had to learn how to write a short after writing features uh writing features came more naturally to me but in terms of directing the thing that was really intimidating to me at the outset was you know i had done a few shorts and they're you know they'd be three day shoots and by the end i felt exhausted you know and like i couldn't go on so when i was looking ahead to this much longer shoot i didn't even know how i would be able to survive it but you know you just you get on set the first day it got there and it just takes you you know and you're just going off of adrenaline and momentum so i would say um so what did you take away from making your first film all together that i want to make more that's a terrific answer for that one so one thing i want to ask is this so i went to this film completely blind i didn't know anything about it which i recommend you do go on to fully blind and i heard witch trials and i am obsessed with the salem witch trials to no end so there have been ip out whether it's tv or film that have told stories whether they're inspired by them or relate to them and this is a completely different take on that period in historical fiction not fiction but non-fiction so what encouraged you to tell this story that related to the witch trials so the which element of the story was uh you know it was an early element but even before that i was thinking about the character of guild bishop and i was thinking about you know the space of ancaster i knew that i wanted to follow gail as she ascends to this new position and i knew that i wanted to set it at a school in the northeast and i just started thinking about emotionally the feeling of being in the northeast in one of these sort of new england colleges where you know you're you're heading gradually towards winter and darkness and what that feeling is like and what it brought up for me as well was this imagining of you know these early american winters where you have this uh you know the puritan cultures and then inevitably the salem outcropping of it and just this sense of bewilderment and loneliness and isolation in the woods it all felt very emotionally true to what the characters were going through so speaking of characters there is a really really good cast in this film starting with regina hall who's primarily known for her comedy she does dabble and the psychological thrillers here and there zoe is terrific in this movie and you also have ella hunt massive fan band the apocalypse so talk about getting those specific actors and monster mentioned how did you find zoey because she is a star in the making from this movie thank you so much and yes i agree zoe is incredible um so we found zoe through an audition process zoe sent in a tape and um and she nailed it in the tape and we had been seeing a lot of people who were also amazing actors we we had been seeing them in person because this was pre-pandemic so when that was still possible oh god yeah um but even just on a tape zoe blew us away more than anybody who we saw in person so she flew out to new york to meet with us and i had since seen her film jen uh that she starred in that played at south by southwest the same year that i was there with one of my short films so i was aware of her and we just immediately hit it off and i could tell that she brought this vibrance to the character that felt very important and difficult to manufacture and i agree i feel so grateful for the ensemble working on the film it's really you know really a blessing to have been able to work with all of them and a true credit to our casting director jessica daniels um but yeah i mean everybody from you know obviously regina zoe amber ella noah there's so many incredible um actors we have two talias both of whom knock it out in the park we we just really were working with some amazing people so one thing i want to ask is this so i'm uh i whenever it comes to watching a new horror film a thriller horror film i always do a deep dive and seeing what happens on set so given how this is a film that takes place within certain time periods or relates to them was there anything particularly that happened onset that happen to freak you guys that or scare you guys at all i mean the thing that really scared me was the location for belleville house um that is a now abandoned college in upstate new york uh pace briarcliff was its most recent iteration but when it was built it was called mrs dow's school for girls and when we got there i mean it's like they just left there was still the portrait of mrs dow in in the stairwell and she's kind of like looking out really freaky so that was a very scary experience it was also as you can imagine since it was abandoned we brought in our own electricity but it wasn't really heat everything was like cold and dark except for in the parts where we were shooting oh my god now speaking of the cinematography this is a beautifully shot film and there are specific parts of the colors are very vibrant uses of blue and red can you talk about the visual influences of the film yeah so um charlotte hornsby and i are great friends charlotte is the dp of the film and so for months leading up to the shoot we watched a lot of films and kind of talked about the color palette and what felt meaningful to us i think that you know the shining certainly is a classic horror film that found its way not only you know kind of stylistically but also you know in terms of the color in the film and and then there were a lot of things like let the right one in the original version that i think that ultimately our color palette is not very influenced by it but it's a film that we had so much admiration for and so it was just part of our conversation about how to create the mood of ancaster and how to best represent you know the world that the characters were living in how much the film changed like in terms of runtime like is the film that we see did that change at all like just a couple of frames being trimmed from your assembly or from your rough cut so our assembly was three hours long and uh the finished film is you know a little bit more than an hour and a half so yes there was a lot there's a lot that uh that went uh and beyond you know just kind of trying to distill scenes and trim them down um there are there are certain uh story lines even that uh that didn't make it into the finished film well i gotta say in terms of editing standpoint that was such a refined cut that it moved that's such a great flow and trust me i i believe that assembly cuts they're the worst to deal with now the last thing i want to ask you is this so there is you do a live tyra blocking you balance social commentary historical horror super natural horror before i leave you today can you talk about the um more than impressive i guys say can you talk about the blend of how you introduce the commentary aspect with the witch trials along with the supernatural horror month that you have with you this week yeah so thank you so much first of all um i think that that was definitely a balancing act and it's something that you know that took a lot of work in the script stage but um for me they they're very complimentary in a sense because i think that as the you know as the characters uh waking life worlds get more tense and more oppressive these supernatural occurrences begin to bubble up to the floor that much more so i think that there's a there's an emotional truth to particularly jasmine gayle as well to all of their experiences of the supernatural that is um inextricable from their daily experiences in the academia and the horror of you know everyday life well thank you so much for talking with us today the film was great i cannot wait to see it again you have a great voice i want to see more from you when i see more from zoe guys go see master great flick you