Follow Her Sylvia Caminer & Dani Barker Interview

What's going on guys? I'm Austin from The FlickDirect talking to Sylvia and Dania on their film Follow Her. How are you guys doing tonight? Awesome! So good! So, had the opportunity to watch this. This creeped me the heck out on multiple occasions, so well done on that. So, first of which, what was the main inspiration on coming up with the plot of this film for you, Dania Speth?

[laughs] Ah, I mean, there's a lot of inspiration from my real life in this movie. I did a web series online about taking Craigslist jobs and filming them with hidden cameras and I did that for six years on and off so there's a lot of real life stuff that I pulled from that that eventually made its way into Follow Her. And then I think the impetus for the idea was to write something that was a one or two person cast in one location so it really started there and then it just evolved and evolved when Sylvia came on we evolved it for another whole year in the script and and it became what it is today.

So this film has to do a lot with social media and how we interpret things how we've gone through connecting the people to how we've used it to monetize certain things so how do you think this film interprets that in your eyes? Well I think social media plays a huge role in a lot of people's lives maybe too much in some and I think this movie makes you maybe question your own presence, your own footprint on social media between who you're trusting online that you don't know, how much time you're giving to complete strangers and then also maybe being more thoughtful with what you put online and not taking advantage of people maybe, you know, being a little more...

It's also about what is the line around going too far was a big theme in it and finding that balance because I think even just us as everyday people, it's really easy to slip into that of going too far, of spending too much time on it like Sylvia was just saying, and so I really wanted to tread that line with with the character of Jess around just that one moment in time, that one moment that might not have been the best decision and slips over the edge and then the consequences of that.

There's a lot of Hitchcockian references throughout the entire film. Was there a specific Hitchcock film that was an inspiration that you had to do in terms of how you move the camera in terms of her storytelling? Well there was a lot of Hitchcock early on for me trying to figure out how I wanted to keep the thriller portion of the film alive. How to keep the tension always building because it was a big part of it was two people in one location and I thought Hitchcock is a master at always keeping the tension alive a lot of times by winking to the audience and letting them no more than the main character.

So for me that was almost more than where the way I was gonna set a certain shot or the camera or keep it moving was really just introducing things like that. And there's even a bit of meta in there when Dan you say wait we're in the climax of this thing was that intentional as you were writing the film? Yeah those those were all intentional because the whole meta aspect of it was I mean it's very purposeful from beginning to and in terms of referencing the, like even the Save the Cat, the Blake Snyder, screenwriting stuff, I was really, really purposeful around putting all those beats in of like, okay, now we're in the middle section when the audience is getting bored, and now we're leading up to the climax, and calling to those moments.

- On set, things, unfortunately, do tend to go wrong a lot of the time when you're filming. Was there a particular shot, was there a particular shot during this film in which it may have gone wrong, but you figured out a way to improvise it to make it better as you were shooting it. Wow. That's a tough one. I mean, sometimes the littlest things and I can't really, the ones I want to tell I can't because it's too big of a...

No spoilers of course. It's a spoiler. It's a big spoiler. I'll just say, I mean, there's the first day of filming, wasn't what we were supposed to film. We were supposed to, I thought it would be lovely to have day one of filming be two actors outside in a beautiful park, just meeting each other for the first time. We all get to meet each other, the crew, the DP, we're all getting comfortable, the actors.

And then at like 8 p.m. I check the weather and we've been checking weather, there's a huge storm that just appeared. And so by nine, and we have like a 7 a.m. call time, by nine I called the production designer and I say, "Holy shit. The huge set, which I know is not ready, we have to shoot tomorrow. What can we film?" And she says, "Well, the only film, the only set that we can have ready is the bedroom." And I said, "Wait a minute." The sex scene.

The sex scene, which is rather unusual. Yeah, so I- Some directors intentionally start with the sex scene. And I would probably do that again. It's not that often, but yeah. It gets the actors warmed up and it breaks all the barriers. - That was about what I was just gonna say. No, that's why it was a happy, when you said that it made it better was because of that.

- Okay, at least it made it better. - We all had to jump off the deep end and Danny had her feet in Luke's mouth on day one. - So one more thing I gotta ask you guys. So there is a section, I was sitting around the 45 minute mark and let's just say things get really dark. I mean, there was a part where your character just gets scared shitless, I'll say that right now.

Sorry, I'm playing with your brother, How was the belt filming that scene? How did you go preparing for that scene? How was that? that is also such a good question because that scene deals with a lot of Blackouts on screen and so we were trying to make it as dark as possible on set so that I wouldn't have to act as hard and you can only get it so dark when you're dealing with windows and natural light and everything else and so I unfortunately could see a lot of what was going on.

So I was pulling out a lot of my own triggers around things that I have found to be traumatic in my life to try and react to it. Like spiders are a big fear of mine. So I remember trying to use spider inspiration to provoke that fear for myself of like what would it feel like if there was a massive spider crawling down my back right now? Because I couldn't because I could right because seeing it and trying to act like you can't see anything is It's really difficult.

So yeah, I just found my own triggers to kind of pull in those moments. (dramatic music) (air whooshing) (thunder) [BLANK_AUDIO]