You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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Episode number three seventy Build your own Dreams. If not, someone will
hire you to build theirs. Farah Gray broadcasting from a dark, windowless room
in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the
Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you
how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your
humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on
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so we actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film,
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by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot com. Today's guest is
Susan Cachera, and she is a documentarian and the director of Living in the
Future's Past, starring the legendary Jeff Bridges. And I wanted to have Susan
come on to talk about what the movie's about, but also her process,
the importance of documentarians today, how she shoots and edits everything herself, and
the kind of work that she's doing as a documentarian, and kind of get
inside the process of a world class documentary filmmaker. So, without any further
ado, please enjoy my conversation with Susan Kuchera. I'd like to welcome to
the show, Susan Kuchera. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thanks for having me. So, can you first off tell us how
you got into the business. Oh my goodness, Well, it's kind of
a long story. I mean, I've been filming since I was nine.
I started on a bolex, you know, by my side of my father's
side on the Athabaska Glacier. He was a geologist, and we did a
lot of filming for Britannica Films. Cool. And then fast forward, long,
long time. I was getting a divorce and I was thinking, oh,
okay, what am I going to do now? And the only thing
I really knew how to do really well was film. The one camera had
just come out, actually it hadn't even come out. I got on the
list to get one. Okay, I thought, I can handle this.
This takes good old fashioned filmmaking. You can actually use cinematic lenses. It's
it was a lot like an actual film camera, not a point and shoot
camera. And so I got it. I made a documentary called Trading on
Thin Air, and I thought, oh, you know, I'll just see
if I can do this, and and it got picked up by Netflix,
and so I thought, okay, I think I think I can probably do
this. And so this film that I just did with Jeff, it's my
fifth documentary. One of the ones I did, though, was a nonprofit,
so that that didn't circulate in a lot of places, but it's been
it's been a wonderful experience the last what ten, ten, twelve years?
Now? Now, what made you get interested more into documentary filmmaking as posted
a narrative filmmaking? Well, I hmm, that's a good question. I
have written screenplays, and I know how difficult it is to get films made.
And when you're made, yeah, really, I know, surprise you
have a screenplay? What? Actually, that's how I have It's so funny,
all these little points that take you in these different areas. So that's
why I ended up with an agent, because that screenplay had gotten some interest
and I was still a full time mom then. But as I said,
divorce kind of forces you to get with the program, and I she she
was able to find a home for my first documentary, my my agent,
and that I just took off from there and I really enjoy it. It's
I I have one camera and I can move around with one camera much more
easily than a giant crew, and I film all the time. I just
love I love the act of filming and it's like hunting, right, You're
capturing things that only exist in a split second. And aren't there again,
So like the grizzlies in the film, you can't queue a grizzly, right,
So I happen to be in the right place at the right time.
You could try to queue that going to work real well for you? That's
right, that's right, And it's just a it's an interesting process. All
all of us documentary filmmakers just add to the cultural narrative the best we can.
And so it's very gratifying that way. And now what do you shooting?
So what do you should doing with? Now? You shoot with a
red epic or it's an epic. W I can't keep track of them.
There's too many, I know, I know, isn't that crazy? All
this dragon and monstro and whatever. I know. I guess. On the
upside, we get to recycle our hard drive, so there's no physical film
in that sense, correct, correct, it is. It is difficult.
You end up on a on this sort of treadmill. Absolutely, I'm done.
I think I have the camera that I'll just keep for the rest of
my life. So you say that now, I'm definitely done. As long
as it keeps working, you'll be fined. Yes, exactly, that's right.
Now do you also edit your own work. I do, what do
you cut? What do you cut on? And how do you feel that
helps you as a documentarian, because I know a lot of documentarians that don't
have that skill as far as documentary shooting or editing. How is it working
in the kind of work that you're doing? Well, My process is very
organic, and so I if I edit myself, which I do, and
I'm still on Final Cut ten, Okay, I'm not in the forward realm
of whatever they're using now, all the fancy stuff, but I'm assuming Final
Cut with the latest version of Final Cut ten. Yeah, the latest version
of Final It's a very powerful piece of software. Don't don't knock it's Oh
no, I'm not knocking it. I'm just I'm just laughing because a lot
of people's, oh, you know, why are you still using that?
And it works? They just don't know. They just don't understand. And
so I've become obviously, I'm very familiar with the imagery that I have that
already I have quite a I've been filming for ten years, so I have
a lot of imagery that I that I can get, you know, at
my fingertips. So if i'd handed all of that to somebody else, I
think that would be very difficult for them to try to navigate. And the
the interviews. I used to transcribe all the interviews, and I found that
to be a little bit difficult because what people say when you read it,
it's different than when it's in person and how they say it, et cetera,
et cetera. And so I kind of gave up doing that, and
I just become very very familiar with what all of my subjects are saying,
and I do my best trying to weave weave a story together. And I
and I have I mean, Living in the Future's Past. It's it is
more on the poetic side, although it certainly has an impact on people when
they see it. Now, let's talk about that. Your latest film,
in the in the Living in the Future, in the Futures Past. How
did it come about? And what is it all about for people who don't
know, Well, it's a film, as Jeff likes to say, it's
a film that takes a good look under the hood of humanity. And we
we we had a great executive producer. His name is Jim Swift, and
I'd worked with him before and actually he sort of had the lot of,
well, you know, why do we do what we do in the face
of large environmental issues that we are, you know, have in front of
us. And so we wanted to work with Jeff And who is this Jeff
you speak of? Oh, Jeff Bridges? Sorry, is he a new
actor? I haven't heard of him before. I know he's one of these
supply by nights right. He is such an amazing human being. What a
what a great gift. He came on board and we started from scratch and
we created this beautiful piece of work and we did actually watch a lot of
other documentaries. Jeff was very involved. We didn't want to just contribute another
kind of doomsday or scary thing that gives you a lot of information but doesn't
sort of you know, you don't know, you just want to crawl under
your bed after you hear that. We'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor, and now back to the show. So we start. We
decided to look at the whole human meta story, where we've been, where
we are, where we're going, and we we have emergence in there,
and entropy and ecology and evolution all the ease right energy, We looked at
the flows of energy, how that actually works in our society. So it's
just a really different and usual film that you keep thinking about it days later.
Now, how how did you get Jeff Bridges, a legend like Jeff
Bridges to be involved in your movie? Well, as I said, we
wanted to work with someone who had a name, and so my agent and
actually it was Jim thought of Jeff actually first, which is kind of cool.
And the agent did reach out to Jeff, and Jeff watched another film
that I had done, called Breath of Life, and he liked it.
And so I got a call. I was walking up the road and I
got a call and it said, oh, hey, just hang tight,
I've got Jeff Bridges on the other line. And I said, oh,
I'm totally out of the blue. And we just kind of hit it off
on the phone and we just we just created this thing, and we collaborated
through FaceTime. We took our time because Jeff was working on a number of
films at the time, and so he would kind of disappear for a while
and I would do stuff, and then he would come back and I would
show him stuff, and we just went back and forth like this, and
then as the film narrowed down towards the end, and he lent himself to
the film too, so he's in it. He's in it as well.
Yeah, that always helps. It definitely helps. So he's just not a
narrator, he's actually on screen kind of taking you through a little bit of
the journey, right, And I should have given him a crew credit because
he actually carried the tripod when I filmed. Jeff's been just been doing this
for how many years? I mean since he was a kid. I mean
he's been around doing this stuff. So I'm sure he didn't mind picking up
a tripod. No, No, he really gave his all and it shows
and the film I think we're both very proud of. So what are you
hoping for with the film? What is your end goal with people who watch
the film? Well, we decided to shake things up a bit. As
I said, we approached this in a different way. And when you go
to see this film, actually learn a lot about yourself, and not in
a blaming way or or why are you a human kind of way, but
actually how your brain thinks, how interesting things like talking about capitalism in terms
of optimal foraging theory, which people often don't think about, like if you're
a if you're a wolf, you and you're spending energy, you don't want
to spend the same amount of energy getting a mouse if you could spend the
same amount of energy getting a deer. And so and we look at that
in terms of the stock market and just kind of how our whole society functions,
not not whether it's good or bad, just you know, this is
it and so so you know, interesting concepts like that. We're we're always
looking at ourselves comparing ourselves to how animals operate, and so you just you
just get an interesting eye idea of humanity this way. And it also allows
people who are feeling vulnerable. Sort we meet people where they're feeling vulnerable and
we kind of look at why things are the way they are. And as
I said, well for me, the whole energy aspect of it really opened
my eyes. And so now I'm thinking about my decisions differently, I'm looking
at the world differently, politics, everything. So it's just it's just it's
kind of eye opening, as I mentioned. And well, first of all,
how important are documentarians in today's world? I mean, there's so much
stuff going on, we live in a crazy time, and I think sometimes
the news is so busy covering the show that it's difficult for them to actually
do a lot of the journalistic things that they used to do back in day,
which aren't as flashy. And I think documentarians have picked up a little
bit, if not a lot, of that slack. Would you agree,
Oh, I definitely agree. If you can spend an hour and a half
unpacking a thought right or different aspects of something, you're certainly obviously going to
learn a lot more. And if you've just got ten or fifteen minutes to
listen to a SoundBite here or there, and so yeah, I guess documentaries
do. I mean, it's whatever turns our brain on right, and people
are unfortunately we're also busy. Sometimes it's hard to get the bigger picture.
But if one can spend the time, put in the time, new ideas
emerge. And I think that's the role of documentarians to an art also,
I mean, this is an artistic film too. Art can sometimes shake us
up and make us jolt us out of our sort of typical way of thinking.
And so that's another thing that we tried to do. Now you you
you did, you were the cinematographer on the film as well. Yes,
yes, images are gorgeous in this film and they're really really stunning. I
mean, how did you learn? Who taught you? How did you teach
yourself to make these amazing images, which are for most of them, for
the most part, with natural light. I know, well, uh,
money, money did you did you pay the sun? How did? I
would have loved to have had a crew right, all lights, everything and
made everything perfect, But then you're making a documentary and you're on a budget.
I have to get really creative, and so the film. I didn't
go to China and I didn't go to Dubai. There's some shots you little
shots from there here and there, and there's obviously a lot of archival footage
in there too, and some stuff from NASA. But the rest is just
when, as I said, when I see things and they're unusual, I
have my ca and were with me, and so I've been able to capture
things that you would have a hard time putting together with a crew, right,
Because you said quickly, yeah, I utilize my daughter. You know,
there's I usialize two dancers, so we could kind of whenever I was
trying to just show humanity and different aspects. I don't know. You just
get creative and you and it came out well. But I think just because
I've been filming since I was nine, I just I guess I just have
an eye got it, got it? Now. There is a lot of
archival footage in the film. Can you talk a little bit about the process
of getting archival footage if like for documentary documentarians listening to finding archival footage,
dealing with the legalities of it, buying it, the whole, the whole
process, because I think it's a little mysterious for a lot of people.
Yeah, it's it's not so bad. If you get to the level where
you're actually releasing a film like we did in the theater. It's out in
the theaters today, then you have to pay a little extra that's for for
the license license. But a lot of that archival stuff, I hope they
don't mind me plugging them. They're called Critical Past and a lot of their
footage is from the US government. It's in the public domain, and you
pay them. They've done all the work finding all of this stuff and making
sure that it's broadcast safe, because a lot of it's obviously very old and
so that's a very good resource. And what's the name of the Critical Past
Critical Past okay dot com. Yes, I will definitely put that in the
show notes because it's it's rough. It's rough looking for footage, especially archival
stuff for documentarians. Did you ever see the movie Atomic Cafe? No?
I didn't. Have you ever heard of it? I have heard of it.
Yeah, it's I saw it in my video store when I was working
there, and as a movie completely made of archival foot really, the entire
movie is made. They told a narrative story with archival footage of the bomb
dropping and it's kind of like a satire. Oh interesting. Earl has to
check that out. Yeah, I know. I would go on their website
and sometimes I'd just get lost watching stuff. Wow, this is fascinating.
How long, by the way, how long did it take you to shoot
this? I put it all together? Well, let's see, from the
beginning of working with Jeff is that was about two and a half years ago,
maybe a little longer. I mean the film came out in festivals in
February and it's been infestivals since February. It traveled all over the world,
not me, but in the film. I know it would be nice if
they would, they would let you go to and the So yeah, I
get a little fuzzy on the time. So yeah, I would say about
two and a half years. It probably took a year to edit. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
And in doing so, as during the process of editing, obviously I
didn't have all the footage that I needed, so I thought, Okay,
I'm gonna have to get other stuff I need. I need something, you
know, just just something just right. So I would I would do that.
But but I again, I'm just lucky. I since I've had this
camera or you know, this type of camera for some time, just being
able to dig into my own library was extremely helpful, right, And what
I find also fascinating about your story is, you know, to find someone
like Jeff, who's obviously a legend and an Oscar winner and all this kind
of stuff to be a part of a movie like this, you literally just
had your agent call them and and call his agent and go, hey,
this is a product. And people never think of just calling up and saying,
hey, I've got a project. Maybe they'll be interested. Right,
Yeah, I don't know. We'd have to ask her. I don't know
what her secret is, but she was great. Yeah. And then he
again he watched something that I had done, but he was really turned on
by the subject obviously, and the subject that we were interested in telling,
which was a little more in depth, and just here's all the bad news,
you know what, crawling to your bed. Now we've had we had,
We've had plenty of those documentaries. I've watched many of them. I'm
like Jesus no, I yeah, it doesn't feel very well. Of course,
information is helpful, sure we need that. But also I think there's
a quote in the film it isn't so much what we're thinking about the world
we live in, it's how we're thinking about the world we live in.
And there's all sorts of interesting philosophy through this film about how to just to
see things slightly differently. But then it's but there's also a hardcore here.
Here's the reality, and we're obviously stuck with resources the way they are.
Energy it is, and so it's it's sobering, but it's also exciting,
very cool. Now I'm going to ask you a few questions. I asked
all of my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanted to break
into the business today? Make a film. That's what I did. I
invested in myself. I just decided I would Trading on Thin Air was my
first film, and I didn't know if people would like it, but I
gave it a try and it was definitely low budget, but it worked out.
Okay, So that's one option. Obviously, hooking up with interning with
people who are working in this field is really helpful, but getting out and
doing it very good. Now, can you tell me what book had the
biggest impact on your life or career? Oh my gosh, that's hard.
Aside from the books that I've been reading lately, who are that are mostly
from the people who are in the movie? Right? I was like,
I don't know if I can even think back that far. Oh my gosh.
Any any book that comes to mind that really had I? Okay,
So there's a there's a book by Timothy Morton that I actually read as I
was sculpting this film, and man, I'd have to look at what it
was. It's his latest book is called Being Ecological, But there was enough
one before this one shoot. I don't have it handy in my mind.
But he the reason it was so powerful, his pros in there. It
really made you reach your You really had to think and it was a challenge
to get through. And but when you come out the other end, you
have all these aha moments. So yeah, I guess I just have to
plug Timothy Morton's work. Okay, very interesting. Yeah, Now what lesson
took you the longest to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
Oh well, the moment I had my daughter, I realized that I
really didn't know Diddley squads. The kids have that effect on you. And
so yeah, she's twenty four now, she's working on her PhD. And
I would say the process of watching another human being develop gives you some pause
as to well, gosh, it puts you in a vulnerable situation where you're
having to reevaluate everything that you learned, everything in your life. And so
I would say that that had a big impact on me. Where can people
find out about the movie and more about your work? Well, the movie
is in theaters today. The next few days we had Trafalgar released it in
eighty theaters, and then we are still in festivals after that, and then
I believe it's out vod and everywhere. You'll be where you see movies typically
in a month and a half or so from now. Okay, very cool
and anywhere and people can find your work. Yeah, Breath of Life is
available. I think it's on Amazon and Hulu. I'm not sure all the
places that it is, but it's easy to find and trading on thin Air
was on Netflix. It came out in two thousand and eight. It was
on Netflix for six years, and then I was asked if I wanted to
reput it out, and I didn't because it was my first work and I
thought the sound was not well fixed. I don't really want people to but
it was actually a good It was a fun, fun, good movie.
It's very good. Susan, thank you so much for taking time out of
talk and thank you for making such a wonderful film. It's a very important
film that needs to be done with days without question. But thank you so
much for sharing your process with us. Oh, no problem. Sorry for
my lack of memory in the moment here. It's been a wild ride with
this theatrical we're all just kind of fried. Not a problem at all.
Thanks again, all right, thanks. I want to thank Susan for coming
on and sharing her process with us. Thank you so much against Susan and
you guys. I've seen the movie if you haven't seen it, Living in
the Futures Past is a wonderful documentary about the world, about where we're going
or where we've been. And hopefully you'll do some good out there. And
if you want to get access to the movie, check it out in theaters.
It's out today and it will be about in a vod in the next
month or so. But if you want to go to the show notes at
Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward Slash three seventy. Thank you so much for
listening, guys, as always, keep on writing or what I'll talk to
you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting dot tv.