HERE IT IS, WORLD.
An art-house road comedy that is “very funny” and “perfectly cast” (Coachella Magazine), SHOTGUN follows three rebellious girls as they burn rubber and leave no survivors on an inexplicably wild and wicked ride that mixes French New Wave pastiche with pulpy, postmodern stylization.
Inspired by the playful approach to story and structure of Jean-Luc Godard’s early masterworks, we wanted to make a film that broke every rule—a film that was coolly simple, mischievously self-aware, and delightfully fun.
SHOTGUN has been screened at 38 film festivals worldwide (5 of which are Oscar-qualifying), picked up 12 awards, and played together with Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, when it screened at the Nashville Film Festival.
It has been an incredibly fun, awesome, and humbling journey. Hugs, hi-fives, and a huge thank-you to everyone that made this film happen – cast, crew, friends, family, fans, and festivals.
So, without further ado, we are extremely happy, thankful, and proud to finally present SHOTGUN.
Watch it, Like it, share it, tweet it, enjoy it! Cheers!
VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/152525130
FILM SHORTAGE: http://filmshortage.com/shorts/shotgun/
Shotgun gets the spotlight from Coachella Magazine as an Editor's Pick from the Palm Springs International ShortFest! Read all about it HERE.
Only so much of Coachella Magazine’s Q&A with director Maverick Moore could be printed, so much of Shotgun’s story was left on the cutting room floor. Click below to check out the full interview exclusively on this blog!
Can you tell us about yourself and your background as a filmmaker?
My name is Maverick Moore and I am a filmmaker and self-diagnosed cinephile from Texas. I fell in love with filmmaking when I was a little kid – I would always borrow my aunt’s camera to film my friends skateboard around town and prank our unsuspecting neighbors. I quickly grew serious about filmmaking, moving on to filming and editing skateboarding videos around Texas for several years, and later to directing and editing narrative films as a graduate student at Baylor University in Waco. The older I got, the more interested I became in telling stories. I’m currently based back in Waco, Texas, where I teach film classes at Baylor University and continue to nurture my passion for teaching, watching movies, and making films.
What were the origins of Shotgun?
The idea for Shotgun all started with Zachary Korpi, the film’s co-writer and co-producer. The idea was a mischievously fun little story about three girls on a road trip to revenge (to tell you any more would be a sleight of hand). I loved the idea so much that I would always pester him about making it. For whatever reason, he caved in to my nagging and told me to make it instead. So I did.
From there, we completely re-imagined the film and, with Steven Trebus (co-writer and co-producer), turned it into what it is now. Zachary’s story idea is still the skeleton of the film, but we re-organized several story events, removed some, added others, and turned all of it into a 12-minute black-and-white French New Wave homage with a firecracker attitude and a pulpy, post-modern, and self-referential style and structure. Why not?
Shotgun pays homage to filmmakers Tarantino and Godard. What draws you to their films and style of filmmaking? What did you want to say with your film?
With Shotgun, I wanted to make a film that broke all of the rules. I was really inspired by the playful approach to story and structure of many French New Wave films, particularly ones made by Jean-Luc Godard, and I wanted to make a film in a style that was reminiscent of those films – a film that was coolly simple, mischievously self-aware, and delightfully fun. The more stylistically rebellious and whimsical films of the Nouvelle Vague, such as À bout de soufflé (Godard, 1960), Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 1960), Zazie dans le metro (Malle, 1960), Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962), Bande à part (Godard, 1964), and Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965), really expanded my perception of storytelling. To me, these films demonstrate that a story can transcend formula and challenge its inherent parameters, yet still be engaging, entertaining, and full of ideas. Characters can break the 4th wall, stories can be out of order, and genres can be mixed. So, as an homage to Godard and many other French New Wave films, I wanted to cast away tried-and-true methods of filmmaking and storytelling logic as a way of exploring more ways to tell a story effectively on screen. At the same time, I was also inspired by the pulpy, post-modern stylization of many contemporary Quentin Tarantino films, which have many stylistic similarities to Godard’s early French New Wave classics. So, I wanted to make a film that was a radical fusion of the two influences – a black-and-white French New Wave pastiche with an explosive rock-n-roll attitude that’s a straight-up good time at the movies. It’s my bizarre love letter to cinema.
What was the journey like to go from an idea, pre-production, and to a finished film? What were the challenges and joys of the creative process?
Shotgun was an incredibly fun film to make, but we certainly had our fair share of hurdles and hiccups. The biggest challenge was turning our crazy vision into a reality without letting our practical limitations affect the story in a damaging way. So, there were practically infinite drafts of the screenplay to get the story just right. We endlessly debated the right language for the script, how the characters would react in their situations, and whether or not what we wrote would work on the screen. Then there was casting, collecting props, securing locations, and the all important task of finding vintage automatic Mustangs (and for free), all of which actually panned out very smoothly thanks to great help from Steven Trebus (and a great dosage of luck).
Production was, as always, riddled with its own set of bizarre and hilarious challenges, but those challenges turned into some of our greatest accomplishments. They are also some of my favorite memories from making the film. In the film, there is a single-shot 5-minute scene of the actresses speaking entirely in French, ...but the actresses and I can’t speak a lick of French, so we had to rehearse that scene extensively with our speech coach (and the film’s narrator), Margaux Halet. Also, Chynna Walker’s character in the film has a blonde pixie haircut, so Chynna had to wear a wig throughout the film, which she enthusiastically despised. She would always joke that it made her look like Miley Cyrus or Draco Malfoy. I’m pretty sure that there’s even a video of her wearing the wig and boy-band-rapping like Aaron Carter on Instagram somewhere. One of our highest hurdles happened the very day before shooting. Somehow or another, Victoria Nicolette (the girl in the backseat) ran into a wall and had to get stitches on her face. ON HER FACE! Thankfully, the cut was in her eyebrow so the stitches were well hidden. There also happened to be an ice storm on the exact same day as our studio shoot (which was where we shot 80% of the film). If that wasn’t enough, a mooing cow in a nearby field kept interrupting the long 5-minute French dialogue scene, which caused the actresses to have to start the scene over from scratch each time. The fact that I’m an advocate for lots of takes didn’t help. We ended up shooting 36 takes of that scene to get it just right. We also had to figure out how to blow up a watermelon, but I’ll let you guess where that is in the film. Good times.
But seriously, the joys from the creative process far outweighed the debacles. It’s always awesome to see an idea sprout to life in a film – that special experience produces the energy we filmmakers live off of.
Much of the film is dialogue driven — but it is very funny and keeps you engaged from beginning to end. How much time did you spend on the script and at what point did you think to yourself, okay, the script is ready, let’s start casting and move forward to production etc.
Writing Shotgun was a rigorous but fun experiment. We wanted to futz around with the conventional parameters of a film story, but also didn’t want it to be an endurance test to sit through. We wanted people to sit down and not be able to stop watching it, no matter that 80% of it consisted of girls talking about nothing inside of a car. So we catered to those goals. We wrote everything to draw the audience in and keep them guessing by fooling with their expectations. We wanted people to have a good time at the movies.
However, the writing process was also very intuitive and long-winded. The script bounced around for months, changing little by little with each major step in the creative process – casting, planning, storyboarding, rehearsing, etc. The biggest perpetrator was accommodating everything for the French section of the script, which was to be filmed in one-long take to mock the ebb and flow of French New Wave films. Because I can’t speak French, the dialogue was written in English first. However, because we only anticipated English-speaking audiences at that time, we wrote that section of dialogue (much of the jokes and banter) according to how it would be seen and read from the subtitles on screen, not how it was heard in French. However, the lines changed again during rehearsals. In order to allow the actresses to truly understand what they were saying and be able to naturally react to one another, the first rehearsal was entirely in English (they are not fluent in French). It was also an opportunity to let the actors improvise, to see what they could come up intuitively, so that we could alter the script if it was improved by their ideas. After making the necessary changes, we then had that scene’s dialogue translated to French by Margaux Halet, who also served as the film’s narrator and the French speech coach for the remaining rehearsals and production. At that point, the script was ready. It was a very flexible process, but it enabled a creative environment that was paramount to the film’s potency.
All the actresses in the film are talented and perfectly cast. Can you tell us about the casting process?
Casting is where the screenplay first comes to life, so it’s a very delicate process. Thankfully, we got extremely lucky with our actresses. They were the bona fide femme fatale characters we had written. All of them were absolute knock-outs. They were all actually theatre students at Baylor University, which was where I attended graduate school. That added convenience made it an even sweeter deal.
Devin was cast early on based on our working with her on a previous film. She escaped the auditioning process, but she fit the unique look attitude for her character (the driver) and was noticeably very talented and versatile, so it was a no-brainer. Soon after, Devin was telling me over and over about how her best-friend Chynna Walker would be perfect for the film, so we had her audition for the girl riding shotgun. Sure enough, after a few callbacks, it was unanimously evident that she had a ton of charisma and delightful catty sass that really commanded attention. She was so good that we were even (blindly) okay with her having to wear a wig throughout the whole film. Victoria Nicolette was an obvious choice for her character, the girl in the backseat, the minute she walked in the room. She had the look, the mannerisms, the attitude, the skill, and really studied up on who her character was.
Along with ability and appearance, I also cast Chynna, Devin, and Victoria together because they were all friends with one another in real-life. In the film, the characters are all good friends and openly chat, joke, and bicker about random topics like any great friends do. So, I wanted very natural, organic, and honest camaraderie amongst the characters - for the girls to actually be friends with one another in real-life so that it would translate to the screen.
How much of the film was shot on a green screen? On location?
Much of the film features very long scenes with the girls chatting, bickering, and goofing around in a car. With the acting and technical difficulty of the shots we wanted to achieve, and the skeleton budget and time we were working with, it wasn’t safe nor practical to shoot these scenes with the girls actually driving the Mustang at a real location. To account for that, and to add to the self-reflexive nature of the film by mocking the way older films used obviously fake backgrounds, we decided to shoot those scenes with a green screen in a studio. Only the exterior shots were shot on location.
Did you feel any pressure to meet the expectations of today’s audiences in the modern digital world of Netflix, Youtube etc.?
We honestly had no idea how people would react to a film like this, but we never got discouraged or felt any pressure. We were really excited to experiment with the principles and parameters of storytelling to try and tell a story in a different fashion. We wanted to give away the ending at the beginning of the film, constantly break the 4th wall, have the characters talk about nothing for 5 minutes (and in a language that the actresses and I can’t speak), and even mix genres somewhat. At the same time, we had to make sure the audience would be able to connect with the characters, love them or hate them, and that the story would be consistently engaging, uproariously entertaining, and completely surprising. We were pretty determined to break down the conventional barriers of storytelling, but it was all in hopes to discover new ways to tell a story effectively on screen.
What was your experience like screening Shotgun at the Palm Springs Short Fest and other festivals? What was the audience’s reaction to the film?
Seeing Shotgun with an audience at a film festival is a very surreal, exciting, and rewarding experience. It is a very different experience than watching the film alone - the audience really gives the film a new kind of energy and makes it come to life. With Shotgun, we wanted people to have a good time at the movies, plain and simple, and that’s what it seems like most audiences get out of it. Every now and then, someone will even notice the obscure film nods and references we hid into the film, which is also cool to see people recognize and enjoy. Overall, the audience is what makes Shotgun, Shotgun. I am very fortunate for the festivals that have played my film in front of an audience and given it life. I will be forever appreciative of that.
What have been some of the rewards so far, from screening Shotgun at festivals?
There are lots of benefits of screening a film at a festival – attending the festival and seeing your film with different audiences, meeting different filmmakers and networking, receiving press coverage for your film, and visiting all kinds of cool places. It’s also cool to see a community gather simply because of a film screening. The spirit of filmmaking is alive and well.
One of the coolest things that happened to Shotgun, specifically, was opening for Jean-Luc Godard’s newest film, Goodbye to Language, at the Nashville Film Festival. It was a very humbling and unforgettable experience - the inspiration and the inspired got to share the same screen.
Are there any funny or interesting moments that happened on set that you can share with us?
The most interesting moment on set also happened to be our biggest hiccup. On the first day of production, after shooting the opening scene of the girls leaving the cinema and walking to their Mustang, we were on-time and driving to the next location when we got a phone call telling us, “the wheel fell off the Mustang.” Sure enough, when we got there, we found out that the wheel had literally come off the vehicle as it was being driven on the highway. When the wheel was finally fixed and back on, we were a little behind schedule, but we all intended to carry on with the shoot. The owner of the Mustang had different ideas. As the crew all pulled back onto the highway to continue on to the location, the owner of the Mustang did a U-turn and tore off down the road in the opposite direction. We never heard from him again. So that was a pretty awesome start to the shoot.
In retrospect, is there anything you would do differently?
When I would tell people that I was making a French New Wave pastiche, I received some pretty crazy looks. For this reason, I self-financed the entire film, start to finish. No Kickstarter, IndieGogo, or any kind of public funding. Not a good idea, kids.
Thankfully, we were blessed with very generous friends. We were able to borrow equipment from Wooden Camera and Baylor University (where I was still a graduate student) for free. Our studio shoot was also free-of-charge, thanks to Ben Ranzinger in West, Texas. Waco-locals Scott Hubbard and Steve Long let us use their vintage Mustangs for the film completely for free and even remained on set to coach us how to drive stick-shift and to also serve as stunt drivers when needed. We were extremely lucky to know such awesome people.
Are there any plans to make Shotgun into a feature length film?
No, Shotgun will live and die only as a short film. The film’s story and structure is not meant for a feature-length film, so I don’t think it can or should be adapted into one.
After going through the whole process, what advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers?
There are no definite guidelines for telling a great story - a great story just has to be great. That’s the only rule. Make the film exactly how you want to make it. Compromising your film and story to be in a way that you think a specific festival or imaginary audience would enjoy can be very disheartening. Make yourself happy with your film – don’t depend on others to confirm your success.
Also, watch films and learn from the masters. Learn what works and what doesn’t, as well as what has been done and what hasn’t. Negligence doesn’t result in originality – it results in a film being stale, bland, uninspired, and uninformed.
What’s next? What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on the story for my next film, which I plan to shoot sometime next year. For this project, I’m really inspired by screwball comedies like To Be or Not To Be, Palm Beach Story, and Big Deal on Madonna Street, so we’ll see what happens...
Shotgun wins the Best Southern-Made Film award at El Dorado Film Festival.
Shotgun wins a 2015 Gold Award and director Maverick Moore is recognized as an Award-Winning Filmmaker in the Spotlight for the Spotlight Short Film Awards.
Cinematographer Brynn Sankey gets kudos for Shotgun in the Toowoomba Chronicle.
El Dorado Film Festival - El Dorado, AR - September 18 & 19
Knoxville Film Festival - Knoxville, TN - September 19
Guam International Film Festival - Hagatna, Guam - September 27
Shotgun wins the Best Short Film award at San Francisco Frozen Film Fest.
Shotgun gets a nomination for the Best Narrative Short Film Jury Prize at RiverRun Film Festival.
Get a glimpse of Shotgun in the TV spot for the Palm Springs International Shortfest.
Director Maverick Moore gets an alumni (’14) shout-out for Shotgun in Baylor Magazine.
Director Maverick Moore talks Shotgun, film festivals, and future projects with the Waco Trib.
Shotgun will be released and available to the public January 2016!
Shotgun wins a Manny Award (“Outstanding Film”) at the Take Two Film Fest.
Shotgun awarded Audience Choice at the Texas Independent Film Festival.
Shotgun receives a great review from UK entertainment site, The Upcoming.
A look into Shotgun’s journey with Baylor University paper, The Baylor Lariat.
Director Maverick Moore discusses rebellious storytelling with Story Rhetoric.
Co-writer/co-producer Zachary Korpi and cinematographer Brynn Sankey each land a spot in Variety’s “110 Students to Watch”.
Walnut Creek International Short Film Festival - Walnut Creek, CA - May 1
Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival - Seattle, WA - May 4
Festival de Cannes - Short Film Corner - Cannes, France - May 13 - 24
