Film Courage: Do you believe it's better that characters drive plot or is it better to have
plot decide what the characters do?
Thomas Verrette, Director, Producer, Editor: Oh absolutely character,
character comes first. Their world is needs to be challenged and the like it has to be an organ like
if the plot if the characters are going through a movie just to service the plot basically then
I mean I guess that's fine if it's just a I don't know like a transformers or something
like that where like what you're getting into but like for the this the cinema side of it I
guess yeah like you want and in writing and edit editing in particular I mean all that stuff like
comes back into play where if the if you feel like the characters are doing things in service of the
plot for the plot to like develop the audience feels that and and so then they they kind of get
pulled out a little bit they might still like they might give you a couple of shots you may get like
like a couple of chances where like maybe the audience doesn't know exactly and so they go
along because there's one one little like shady plot point that you kind of have to get through to
get everything else to happen right or you need to cut a scene out and so now it gets a little
finicky but if it happens too much like that's where I think you kind of lose interest in the
movie kind of deflates by the end have you ever been attracted to a film because of the character
but not the plot but it held your attention so much that you were able to finish it and you
can name it as one of the films that you love or at least like yeah of course I mean I just
watched white lotus for instance which was like that whole series is basically a character like
study to me and it's not really plot driven at all it's not obviously not a movie but
just because I just finished it where I was absolutely engaged throughout the entire
series because of those characters and who they were so I think that that's absolutely part
of and especially sometimes it's the casting sometimes sometimes it's the writing it just
depends but of course absolutely I think that can happen and I think that those films also tend to
you tend to think of them as character studies where they don't have that much plot
in them but I feel like that's not entirely true they just may be disguised so well by the
character and the writing that you don't recognize that it is that there's still plot that it's
that's moving through that story and that's an important thing to remember as a writer and edited
in particular oh interesting okay so you're lumping those two together writer and editor
and they go hand in hand yeah and I think maybe that's just because of they don't always go hand
in hand but in my experience like the last four or five years have been primarily in documentaries
but before that it was almost an exclusively narrative for me and what I have found to be
similar even from narrative to to documentaries but in particular documentaries is that you're
really writing the story as an editor a lot of times and and it's not that dissimilar from
trying to write a script like often like I mean you still have to hit your plot beats you still
have to figure out where reversals can happen and what can change the direction of the film to give
it some new life when it gets stale like I mean all that stuff still applies in a documentary that
would as if you're writing a script from from page one what character do you love in white lotus I
love the hotel manager I think he's a fascinating fascinating character to watch what was it about
him like the color of his like personality I think all the characters are really really great
in that show because they both none of them are are good or bad like I mean they are and they
aren't they're they're so gray and and like sort of relatable but also like you kind of hate them
and it's just a fascinating like kind of place to be as an audience because you're not really sure
what you want even to happen you just like seeing their who they all are and then what
happens when they get in the same room together and like that explosion is just I don't know
I think that that's fantastic writing do you always have to love a character to be invested
no you can you can actually hate the character or or intensely dislike them I think that
well I mean like breaking bad is a great example I mean like a lot of a lot of stuff right now
I think is trying to toy with a that that line of can we can we have a just like a despicable
character that maybe gives the audience a carrot of hope that they might grow or be better
and then maybe they do maybe they don't but that's like there's like something that
that attracts you to wanting to find that out succession is another one for me that
it's like obviously all these people are terrible but they're also fascinating to see ex like
collide and what this like where that story might even go the acting of course like makes
a big difference in that too I think sometimes to be between whether the audience can can sympathize
even at all with somebody so despicable I mean that's that's I think really where the casting can
kind of take something to another level too if you were to make another sci-fi film would it be about
the characters or would it be about the sci-fi world well I think that if you asked me that
10 years ago I probably would have been more interested in the world part of it I think now
I am more interested in how the world can inform the story you want to tell with a character
but this but the character really still needs to happen kind of first I mean they the character
that you have needs to fit within the world to make a like for a reason I mean everything
everything has to be somewhat calculated in that in that sense but the character is still
going to take you through that story and it's really the world is really only there to help
either say something about the world we live in today or about the character
and what their struggle is that's relatable to us today even though it might be alien
in the context of what you're seeing and so I think just I think the character side of
things always wins out in the end over over world building I mean like
world building is tough though too to do and I've had a couple of cracks at it and I'm still
working through what's the best way to to get all this information in without stopping it or like
because people in general are don't care about the world building as much as a filmmaker does
what I mean like they just want to know if the story is going to captivate them
and take them on an emotional journey or a ride in some way shape or form and but the world
building is like kind of the nitty-gritty things that we get excited about sometimes just because
it may be what provoked the thought of even diving into a story somewhere along that line
so I think it's just about trying to find the balance because you can't really do one or the
other I mean I think they always they kind of it's like you get here with the world but then
you get here with the character in a sci-fi sense like it's a I think they have to inform each other
but my my vote would always go like I think now in particular to the character and that being
the source of the journey that you're really going on what questions are you asking yourself
when you're creating characters I think the the one that I'm asking myself most is how um
like sort of like especially with the amount of content that's out right
now or is coming out constantly I think it's hard to kind of reinvent the wheel
right but and and I may be a little bit doubtful to some extent about about what I'm working on
at the moment because I'm not really sure where it's going just yet but I'm constantly asking
myself is this good enough and I always almost always think no and it's like a little bit of a
because I as I'm striving for something that I know I want to hit and so I'm like just
really trying to hold myself accountable to can have I seen this character or storyline
before like is there a way I can make their introduction more more appealing
in a sense of like is that interesting is it something new does it tell me who they really
are can I do this without dialogue all those types of things I think is really more where my head is
at right now versus then like just like keeping it that's that's simple I guess with the with
with what am I asking about the character it's a little bit like what can't I do with this
character and where do I want them to go I mean I think I'm a little bit more of an organic like
writer in that sense because as even though I mentioned character is the most important thing
I still have to work out everything else for that character to be valuable
too what I mean like and then I can kind of reverse engineer and then if I if that takes me
down a different direction I follow it but I'm not it's a it's it's a constant process of of
rewriting and rethinking and and until you kind of get to the end and again it's like at a certain
point I guess you have to just believe that it's going to all work too to go into production but
that's where I hope to go next I want to get I've been doing docs for
the last like four or five years and and I'm really itching to kind of do a narrative again
so I'm in the middle of this struggle right now and of course we're just coming out of
of a just an insane year where everything sort of feels like it's changed
and that's a struggle because this idea that I was working on like kind of like was something
that was older but I'm i'm even asking myself well is it is it worthy of a of us being a story now
given the the way it's almost like we had like a 9 11 moment where there was like you just know
that that the industry has changed audiences have changed what they want to see has changed
and I have to remind myself that that all that does matter is at the end of the day too because
you want to make this movie and then the next one also and if you and I want to take into account
that audience and who they are and and what they want to see too do you become obsessive
with certain characters that you've written that you've created no I don't think so I am obsessive
in the in the sense of like like it's hard for me to not think about what I'm working on sometimes
even like if I'm like right before bed like say I want to turn my brain off but it just keeps going
and going going like that kind of stuff but I'm not obsessive nothing I think as an editor you've
just kind of learned that like everything can get cut it may not be your decision but somebody
can cut something that you love and you have to do it maybe or whatever what I mean like that's
just part of the process like it's never going to stay the same on the page that it does by the end
really and knowing that I think just helps me kind of deal with like that kind of stuff
like oh my god this isn't good enough like oh like what let me combine these two characters
into one because I don't know why I have two like they're like those even though maybe
if when I was younger and I was less experienced with so many different aspects of the process
I may have been like like well yeah but they're but we're going to cast them and
then it's going to be it's going to work I think right now it's like the script has to sell itself
too in order for it to get made so I'm kind of way more in the the camp these
days of of like really don't be precious too much with certain things notes are valuable
and one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got was from another director who basically told
me that whatever the note is more than more than likely it's actually like just doing that
isn't going to solve anything it may get you to the next point in that process but really
most people don't know how to really give you like a really critical note that's valuable sometimes
it's up to you as a receiver of those notes to figure out what they actually mean and then make
those changes and that's that's that's something that has proven to be invaluable for me like since
since he basically gave me that that advice because every time I ever get a note it's like
what does that actually mean because if I do the notes I it's it's almost never like really like I
so there's one time actually where I got a bunch of notes did them all they they
liked it and I hated it with a passion and and I asked like to go into like a hole for a weekend
to like try to figure out how to fix the notes but not do these notes exactly like I knew that there
was something wrong but I hadn't cros it hadn't like I hadn't figured out what it was and and
so I went in down down this hole and basically all these notes were about shaving this character down
like they didn't like her let's say and what I ended up doing is putting all those things back in
that I shaved that they got addressed and cut out this character's introduction and apparently that
like and I actually thought it was better too but it took a lot of what does that mean why are they
why are all these no because I don't not like this character but the introduction was off-putting
enough that that if I just introduced her in the next scene it changed everything and then
all the other notes went away and that was that's so that's a really good example of at least as an
editor but I know that happens in writing and all aspects of of the filmmaking process where taking
the note that you're given and and trying to to figure out what exactly is the root of of that is
I think really where your work can can be can can really excel and you can still play in the game
basically because you're you're solving everything and making it better and so everybody wins.
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