Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 1: pop popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, don
Speaker 2: it off.
Speaker 3: Like Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The
Speaker 3: Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode,
Speaker 3: I'm talking with Jeffrey Saint Jules all about his new film,
Speaker 3: The Silent Planet. It is a sci fi film that
Speaker 3: is filmed up in Canada. Amazing landscapes and a really
Speaker 3: compelling story. Thank you so much for listening and I
Speaker 3: help you enjoy this interview. How did you even decide
Speaker 3: to become a filmmaker?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I guess it's what I wanted to do
Speaker 2: since I left high school, and I think it just
Speaker 2: had to a great way to build worlds and grew
Speaker 2: up making Like I grew up in roll Nova, Scotia,
Speaker 2: and I didn't have a video camera anything, so I
Speaker 2: didn't grow up making films. But I would always talk
Speaker 2: about ideas and things I would want to make with
Speaker 2: my friends, and it just seemed like, why do people
Speaker 2: just do this? Why don't they do this? And then
Speaker 2: once I started making it, I was like, Oh, that's
Speaker 2: why people don't do that.
Speaker 3: But I like that spirit of.
Speaker 2: Always asking yourself, why can't I just do this and
Speaker 2: then try so. I guess it goes back to that,
Speaker 2: and I just love being able to create a world.
Speaker 2: That's what really excites me about making a film is
Speaker 2: you get to live in this other world for a
Speaker 2: little while.
Speaker 3: So tell me a little bit about the Silent Planet
Speaker 3: and how this project came to you.
Speaker 2: It goes back to childhood as well. I used to
Speaker 2: fantasize about living in outer space. I used to pretend
Speaker 2: I was from outer space and that I was going
Speaker 2: to one day go back to my home planet. But
Speaker 2: I used to have kind of a hermit fantasy, which
Speaker 2: I think some people have, where I just want to
Speaker 2: leave everything behind and go live by myself in the
Speaker 2: woods or if possible, like on a distant planet. I
Speaker 2: don't believe I could have ever done it, but the
Speaker 2: sort of idea came from that impulse and that question
Speaker 2: really of can we really leave everything behind? But if
Speaker 2: you were to go by yourself to another planet, knowing
Speaker 2: you had never returned to Earth, does anything that happened
Speaker 2: on Earth matter anymore? Does who you were matter anymore?
Speaker 2: Are you still who you were? Can you move beyond
Speaker 2: who you were? Like? Those kind of questions were interesting
Speaker 2: me in the film.
Speaker 3: Do you always write what you direct? Yeah? I have
Speaker 3: so far.
Speaker 2: People don't send the scripture out there.
Speaker 3: You talked about the hermit fantasy and living on your
Speaker 3: own and everything. That definitely informs this. But where did
Speaker 3: you come up with these characters?
Speaker 2: I just had a very simple image of this guy
Speaker 2: on a distant planet daily doing this task he didn't
Speaker 2: know what was for. And I just wrote that little
Speaker 2: image down I don't know when, many years ago in
Speaker 2: my document of little images. That sparked something, and then
Speaker 2: I just came back to it, and then I started
Speaker 2: building a story around it.
Speaker 3: Where did you actually shoot this one?
Speaker 2: We shot in Newfoundlands? Are you? Where are you based?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 3: I'm just outside of Detroit, Okay, so you're You're not
Speaker 3: in Canada, but I'm almost in Canada.
Speaker 2: I'm almost You're pretty much a wind bowler. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So shot in Newfoundland, which is kind of northeast Canadas.
Speaker 2: It's an island, and they just had some really great
Speaker 2: scenery that the place we shot, like the land where
Speaker 2: it's all orange, is this place called the table Lands
Speaker 2: in Grossmorn National Park and it's actually one of only
Speaker 2: two places in the world where the Earth's mantle is
Speaker 2: exposed deep in the air. Somehow, a long time ago
Speaker 2: this got opened up and exposed and created this really
Speaker 2: interesting orange rock and it looks like a desert, but
Speaker 2: it's not like a dry desert. It's that way because
Speaker 2: that it's toxic. The same things can't really grow there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just a really unique landscape. So that's that,
Speaker 2: and then other places around Newfoundland which just has tons
Speaker 2: of interesting unique scenery.
Speaker 3: I was surprised to see some of the special effects
Speaker 3: that are in the film. How is that getting those together?
Speaker 2: Our special effects people are Mars, a company called Mars.
Speaker 2: Then we had a couple independent guys as well who
Speaker 2: are just at a school, Francisco and Enjoy, who helped
Speaker 2: us out with some of the stuff as well. Because
Speaker 2: we're shooting in a national park, we couldn't bring our
Speaker 2: whole spaceship there. They wouldn't let us. We had to
Speaker 2: protect the land. Of course, we built the sort of
Speaker 2: spaceship in the studio for some of the exterior stuff.
Speaker 2: But then we made it. A production designer and our
Speaker 2: team made it so the door was portable so we
Speaker 2: could just bring the door to the location so that
Speaker 2: I was coming out. It's just a door, and then
Speaker 2: the special effects team built the whole spaceship around it.
Speaker 2: Weird inspired by old We want to just have a
Speaker 2: flying saucer look old retro feel to it. But CGI
Speaker 2: and everything.
Speaker 3: They talk about how movies are made what three times,
Speaker 3: the writing, the directing, and the editing. So what were
Speaker 3: those different phases like for you?
Speaker 2: Once your actors come in and start inhabiting these characters,
Speaker 2: they transform. Actually, the opening of the film initially had
Speaker 2: in the script a lot of voiceover, unreliable narrator type
Speaker 2: voiceover with the O, But as we got into it
Speaker 2: and Elliot sat a certain tone with the he played
Speaker 2: the character, it just didn't feel necessary. Again in the edit,
Speaker 2: it just felt nicer to just watch this guy. He
Speaker 2: was just fascinating to watch. So that was one way
Speaker 2: I'd like to be a little bit ruthless in the
Speaker 2: editing room and not be afraid to cut things. The
Speaker 2: general's structure of it stayed intact. There was we moved
Speaker 2: stuff around mea chop stuff Like it starts and ends
Speaker 2: pretty much how we had it, but there's some stuff
Speaker 2: that had to be adjusted or taken out or along
Speaker 2: the way, as I think there always is usually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so much of this movie relies on your two
Speaker 3: main characters. Can you tell me about the casting process
Speaker 3: and how you got these two?
Speaker 2: We made an offer Tellius, and luckily for us, he
Speaker 2: connected with it. It's just got so much pathos to
Speaker 2: him so much. You just really feel for this guy
Speaker 2: and you feel like he's lived a life. He's one
Speaker 2: of our great Canadian actors. So I was just really
Speaker 2: lucky that he and it meant a lot to him,
Speaker 2: like he really I like, he took it very seriously.
Speaker 2: It wasn't wasn't just a job for him. So I
Speaker 2: was very felt very thankful for that. And Branda I
Speaker 2: wasn't familiar with before, but her name came up and
Speaker 2: then I like watched she's only had done two movies,
Speaker 2: but and like not the main characters, what sort of
Speaker 2: main character in Sharper. She's got this very nuanced way
Speaker 2: of acting that is very compelling, and she on set
Speaker 2: she was like for some of you who I had
Speaker 2: only done to films. She was so confident and so
Speaker 2: just would nail nail it the first time, take a
Speaker 2: little direction, nail that, and just so easy. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: would just I would just think about what I wanted
Speaker 2: to change, and it seemed like she would do it.
Speaker 2: So I was like, yeah, very like very lucky to
Speaker 2: have her on I think, but no for her for
Speaker 2: the casting, we just but we didn't do an audition.
Speaker 2: I just watched her stuff and we met over zoom
Speaker 2: and talked and she seemed to really get the character.
Speaker 2: Luckily she agreed to do it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the performances are top notch, just and it's great
Speaker 3: to hear that she was almost psychic when it came
Speaker 3: to your direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were times when I like, we're maybe thinking
Speaker 2: all on the same where rave length and what to
Speaker 2: twitch out?
Speaker 3: But yeah, with something like this too, the sound design
Speaker 3: is so important because you have some swats where there's
Speaker 3: nobody speaking. Can you talk about your mix and your
Speaker 3: sound designer?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bryson, I would have loved to have a lot
Speaker 2: more time with sound, but the short time we had
Speaker 2: he did a great job just capturing We really wanted
Speaker 2: to feel the planet. There's like thirty minutes of music,
Speaker 2: so it's not tons of music that a lot of
Speaker 2: times when you're just like with the two of them
Speaker 2: and it's quiet, and I really wanted to feel the
Speaker 2: creaking and groaning of it, and also that feeling of
Speaker 2: like when he's just by himself in his cozy little place,
Speaker 2: you want to feel there's a planet out there. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talk about what the planet would
Speaker 2: sound like, a lot of tweaking and playing around with
Speaker 2: what the aliens would sound like. That was a big thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this sound was a lot of fun in
Speaker 2: this film.
Speaker 3: Is Fantasia your World premiere?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it'd be really exciting to play it in
Speaker 2: front of an audience. My last film was the festival
Speaker 2: circuit during COVID, so I didn't get to go experience
Speaker 2: my film with a live audience, and the only time
Speaker 2: I did it was like nobody was coming out to
Speaker 2: films anymore. So I'm really excited to actually have an audience.
Speaker 2: I'm going to see some films here so far and
Speaker 2: their audiences seemed great, So I'm excited to.
Speaker 3: As you're putting together the film, as you're doing your editing,
Speaker 3: are you showing up to other people and giving their
Speaker 3: opinion to making adjustments based on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did a few screenings for people we know
Speaker 2: and trust, and I wanted to only give enough information
Speaker 2: so that people could get who these characters are and
Speaker 2: where they're coming from. I didn't want to go beyond
Speaker 2: that and get muddled down and bogged down in all that.
Speaker 2: So a lot of it was like, do you understand
Speaker 2: that her mother was an alien? Do you understand that?
Speaker 2: Just making sure that people got it in that way.
Speaker 2: But no, I feel like that's an important part of
Speaker 2: the process, not to go get a market and score
Speaker 2: market wise, but to just make sure that what your
Speaker 2: intention is coming across to an audience, because you can
Speaker 2: get you can easily lose track of that. It's like,
Speaker 2: by there's so much world building, so you want people
Speaker 2: to grasp the world without being inundated with too much
Speaker 2: information about the world.
Speaker 3: As I was watching the film, and you've got the
Speaker 3: aliens and you've got their language and everything, did you
Speaker 3: see him sort of parallel between the aliens and some
Speaker 3: of the actual like Inuit or natives of Canada.
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking too much in terms of indigenous people,
Speaker 2: any group who's marginalized, and it's a little more immigration themed,
Speaker 2: so I correlated a little more to the way people
Speaker 2: are often treated when they're immigrating, just looking to have
Speaker 2: a better life somewhere. So yeah, it's definitely thinking about that.
Speaker 2: In earlier versions of the script was a little more realistic,
Speaker 2: but I was thinking a lot about immigration and refugees
Speaker 2: and that kind of thing, which is essentially what the
Speaker 2: Oeans are, although I don't get it go into too
Speaker 2: much detail, but their refugees from their planet which was destroyed,
Speaker 2: who are misunderstood and feared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing I appreciate about sci fi so
Speaker 3: much is that you can have these metaphors for other stories.
Speaker 3: You can with so many genres. But that's what I
Speaker 3: like about sci fi specifically.
Speaker 2: It's a great and kind of being at a bit
Speaker 2: of a distance from it gives you some a different
Speaker 2: perspective buy it. I think that's interesting. I agree that's
Speaker 2: what's great about good sci fi is when there's correlations
Speaker 2: to our world.
Speaker 3: I know you haven't even had your premiere, but do
Speaker 3: you have an idea for your next one in mind already?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pushing on a few scripts now. I got
Speaker 2: a Focorps set in like nineteen oh seven, and Prince
Speaker 2: Dred Island, which is where my family is from, where
Speaker 2: I'm from, about this guy who's trying to start a
Speaker 2: fox farm. And I have two more kind of sci
Speaker 2: fi related ideas, romance sci fi. So yeah, I've got
Speaker 2: I've got a couple of things brewing. Hopefully they'll pull
Speaker 2: together some money and make them.
Speaker 3: Is there a good place for people to keep up
Speaker 3: with you and your work online?
Speaker 2: I have people ask me that and I don't have
Speaker 2: a good answer because I'm not great with my online presence.
Speaker 2: So I really got a I really got to create
Speaker 2: something for Pole look at. But no, I don't have
Speaker 2: Google my name.
Speaker 3: I guess that's fair, that's fairy. I just hope more
Speaker 3: people will be able to see this once that comes out,
Speaker 3: because I had a really good time with that.
Speaker 2: We're just premier and now we don't we have our distributors.
Speaker 2: We have distributors quick there. I will be getting it
Speaker 2: out there. We don't have release dat as of yet,
Speaker 2: but yeah, we'll get all that stuff up online.
Speaker 3: Mister Saint Jules, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: This is wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for having.
Speaker 1: Me taking not an an