A short interview between Chris Collins and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan about casting, team culture, and her filmmaking practice. Morgan emphasizes authentic acting (living the experience), valuing team members who speak up and care, and the importance of communication shorthand developed over time. She also briefly promotes her completed erotic-thriller film Bone Lake, which she says will be in theaters in October.
Questions this video answers
In October.
Yes — 'We're done with it.'
Chapters
This time on books. That changed my life as a director. What have you learned over time about people and casting? People like, what do you look for when you're like, hey, we're gonna spend two months or three months together making this movie?
Yeah.
What are the things that you've learned about casting and totally that process.
Yeah. I think that bad acting is acting how you think a human would act in the experience of something. So if you think someone would gasp at this point or turn away at this point, whereas good acting is actually living the experience in your body at the moment. And I think we as humans are very smart. Someone doesn't have to be a moviegoer to know what's good acting or bad acting. We can see when someone is being what we recognize as human or not. And so I think that's a huge part of the casting, is finding that.
What about the people you surround yourself with? How do you go about determining whether they're a fit or not?
Yeah, a lot of people I've worked with, I've worked with for 10 years, some of them. And so I think it's really finding your community and sticking with them through going through really intense things. And so I think it's that. But it's also just people really, really caring, because what we do is very hard. And if someone doesn't want to do it, that's okay. But that's probably not the right person to go on the journey with.
If I was new coming into one of one of your projects, what is it that I would learn by the culture of the team that you have.
About being able to be your own creative voice and speaking up? Because I don't like people that are just yes men. I want people to bring their own ideas to it. But also knowing that you're going to be put in an environment where a lot is asked of you, and so bring yourself fully and be ready to be asked.
A lot of what do people, new people coming in, what do they usually struggle with the most?
I think that when you know someone really well, you develop a shorthand with them. And so I think that I would say 80% of problems are usually communication lapses. And so I think it's just. That's just about knowing someone and getting to know someone better.
And so that's to your point of speaking up?
Yeah, exactly.
Communicate. Talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's fun. What are you working on right now?
So I have a movie coming out in theaters called Bone Lake. I know you don't like horror movies, but it's a funny one.
And killing is funny?
No, I don't think killing is funny.
How many people die in this movie?
I can't answer. That would give things away.
But more than one.
Yeah, it's fun in seeing people make good or bad decisions about their life and then have to deal with the consequences of that.
But. Yeah, and so you can find it in theaters in October. And so that's the next thing.
Is it done? Are you done with it?
We're done with it. Yeah.
That's gotta be a pretty good feeling.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's erotic thriller, so it's for also people who like an erotic experience.
Nothing.
Nothing funner than eroticism and death.
It makes it, you know, it is a lot of driving force of humans. So.
