Rome Was Not Built In A Day

Shut Yo' Mouth - Trailer from Andrew Parkhurst on Vimeo.

It's nothing less than empire building. With 5 shoot days in the bag on my newest webseries (Shut Yo Mouth), I can't help but feel that I'm at the beginning of something great. And while I think the sky is the limit with Shut Yo Mouth, I'm talking about an epic working relationship I have with the co-creators of the series.

The guys I created the show with are my friends, but as we all know, friends don't always make good business partners. And that's exactly what this is, a business. But Will and Andrew are amazing at what they do - Andrew is the director/DP/editor, Will is the writer, and I am the actor. We each share in the writing and producing and where our roles overlap, we improve each others' performance at those tasks rather than step on each others' toes. 

What excites me the most is how well the director (Andrew) and I work together. We are almost always on the same page and when we aren't, it's instantly clear and quickly remedied. I know exactly what he needs from me for each scene and I trust him to tell me if he didn't get it. I feel completely comfortable asking clarification questions if I'm not sure about something and Andrew always entertains at-length discussions about character, backstory, shot setups, scene essentials, etc. I know I have license to improv and some of our best material has come from improv'd moments.

We are all the kind of people who do things right if we're going to do them at all. For example, we spent 5 shoot days getting the footage for the 1-minute trailer you hopefully already watched, and as you can see, we brought our A-game. Of course we didn't have unlimited resources, but for the minuscule budget we had, we are all rather proud of our product. We're pushing ahead with production on our first 3 episodes and we couldn't be more enthusiastic about it.

And this is what I mean by building an empire. Shut Yo Mouth is only our first production and I'm sure it won't be our last. We work like a well-oiled machine and that is difficult to attain in any profession, especially a creative one like filmmaking. Andrew and Will have already written two features together, one of which Andrew will direct when it's sold. We'll keep writing episodes for Shut Yo Mouth together as long as the ideas are fresh, and I'm sure along the way, we'll come up with our next big project.

I am excited to say the least. Excited about what we are doing, excited about what we will do. We are making movie magic, one shoot day at a time.

 

What are some of your best film-related working relationships? Worst?

-- Gabriel Voss