Interview With "Whalefall" Filmmaker Brian Duffield

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SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

You are listening to The Next Best Picture Podcast, and this is my interview with the director, co-writer, and producer of Whalefall, Brian Duffield.

SPEAKER_1 (1:13)

Son, what are you going to do? Just accept your fate?

SPEAKER_3 (1:18)

Think. Think.

SPEAKER_1 (1:29)

Remember, survivors survive.

SPEAKER_3 (2:34)

I've noticed a real progression in all three of your films where you seem to be up in the ante with each one challenging yourself.

Deliberate choice, I imagine. What was the biggest challenge on this one for you?

Brian Duffield (2:47)

Everything's a challenge on this one. Yeah, I guess it's a deliberate challenge. Like, I don't know. Like, I always feel like every move I make, I feel like I got away with something. And like, I couldn't believe they let me make the first one and then the second one. I couldn't believe they let me do it. And then this, like, so part of it was probably being like a glutton for punishment.

And then also, like, just really feeling, you know, like, there's not, holistically, there's not that many of us that are afforded the opportunity to direct a movie, especially at a studio level. And I don't know, I just never want to feel like I'm half-assing it and doing, like, the easy thing for the sake of it being easy. Like, I definitely believe we're in, like, it should be hard. Like, you know, we're professionals in the A-list of, you know, however Disney releases, like, six or seven movies this year, and I get to be one of those directors. Like, that's an insane statistic that I don't take lightly. And, yeah, so I think now I can't go harder. And so, I am sure whatever is next will be, I don't know if it will be cheaper, but it will be easier, because this was, you know, even just Austin sitting by himself in a stomach is something that takes months of planning.

And so, you know, I can't imagine I'll have another project where, like, I don't know if I can use a camera on the set, which was a constant struggle that we had on this one. Like, usually it's not a problem. The problem is where can a camera go? What's not can a camera fit? So I think I've probably maxed out the challenging ante and now I need to somehow figure out what's next. Yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (4:41)

Well, I want to talk about that because one of the things that really impressed me about this movie amongst many things was the production design.

Brian Duffield (4:47)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (4:48)

You have this whale's stomach, which needs to breathe as a living organism. So I'm watching this and I'm saying to myself, okay, animatronic perhaps maybe, combined with visual effects, how are they flooding this thing? How is the set not continually breaking down?

Brian Duffield (5:06)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (5:07)

How did you achieve this man?

Brian Duffield (5:08)

It's everything, man, it's the thing, one of the many aspects of the movie I'm most excited to talk about, which is Ramsey Avery's work, where I don't think a production designer has ever been asked to do what he's done in this, and there's no blueprint for this. It's really not like, and it always sounds like I'm being dismissive of production designers, where I'm like, usually they build buildings, but usually they build buildings and neighborhoods and worlds. They don't build something that's alive from the inside out, and that also you have to have an audience go, I believe it's alive. So man, we have everything going at the same time on this.

The set is the set you see in there. Sometimes there's CG enhancements, especially with the bioluminescence, which is them removing our LED light noodles and making it look like bioluminescence. But the set is the set. Austin is acting in that whale stomach set. Sometimes it is very mechanical and on a gimbal and very, very technical. Sometimes it's like when the stomach is chewing him, we tried pistons and we tried electronics and we tried all kinds of things. The thing that gave us the best results was just having large men jump on top of the set and compress Austin.