JJ Pollack Discusses Jettison his Short Film Production and Distribution on DUST

To be perfectly honest, I had a painfully boring childhood growing up in a suburb of Boston. One of the earliest memories I have is getting to stay up late (on a school night no less!) to watch Blade Runner with my dad, and being absolutely enthralled with the visuals and mood of it (even though, let’s be honest, I had no shot of understanding the story).

And too early for me to personally remember, my parents like to tell the story of me watching Back to the Future so many times that they purposefully broke the VHS, just so I’d stop. Suffice it to say, movies have always been a part of my life, and served as an escape for me into a more exciting world. I studied film in college, moved to the indie-film utopia of Austin, Texas, and have been trying to form a career out of making my own movies ever since.

Watch the Jettison trailer written and directed by JJ Pollack

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indieactivity: Describe your recent film, through pre-production and post production?
JJ Pollack (JJP): Jettison is a short sci fi-drama film I wrote, directed & edited, currently out on DUST and Film Shortage. It’s about a restless young woman who ships off to fight an interstellar war, only to struggle with the effects of being cut off from her home by both time and space.

The script was completed back in 2017, just in time to secure part of our funding from the Other Worlds Film Festival’s O’Bannon Grant. Cassie Wineland and Carrie Cates were attached as producers, and after the usual pre-production preparations and some not-so-minor bumps along the road with costuming, shooting happened over four days on two weekends in April 2018, mostly in Austin with one day along the Texas Gulf Coast.

David Gutierrez oversaw sound recording at our slew of noisy locations (certainly no easy task!), and Garson Ormiston captured some stunning visuals as Cinematographer, as well as the brilliant performances of our lead, Madison Wilson, and supporting actors Lauren Bonetti and Zachary T. Scott.

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Due to a backlog of projects yours truly needed to finish editing, plus the usual COVID-19 related delays, post production took much longer than I would’ve liked. But eventually we got it across the finish line in May 2021, with post-sound mixing & design by Hansdale Hsu, beautiful monochrome coloring by Alex Winker, and wonderfully haunting music by Alex Cap, all of whom I’ve worked with previously and completely trust to produce quality work.

What do you hope audiences will take away from watching the film? 
JJ Pollack (JJP): I like to think of Jettison as a war movie without the war, in that instead of showing the usual gory horrors of  combat itself, we wanted to depict the experience as a slower and more existential kind of death, and more subtly capture the feeling of alienation that many veterans experience when sent overseas.

By using the scientific phenomenon of time dilation, my hope was always that viewers would ask themselves how the fictional soldiers of the film could possibly cope with a conflict of this magnitude and time scale, and hopefully reflect on the conditions of their real-world counterparts as a result.

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Talk to us about your concept of collaboration?
JJ Pollack (JJP): To me, a director’s job boils down to hiring and guiding the right set of cast and crew for a project, and  unifying all their work into the most effective aesthetic vision possible. Put simpler: find people who’re really  good at their jobs, cut ‘em loose, and bring it all back together in the end.

How do you find the process of filmmaking as an indie filmmaker? 
JJ Pollack (JJP): One word: Exhausting! But in all seriousness, working at the independent level has its pros and cons. Obviously, there’s a huge degree of freedom when budgets are low or self-funded, and there’s more room to play and experiment and take risks. You can get weird with your ideas and execution, and there’s very little pressure to conform or target a mainstream audience. 

On the other hand, not having that larger budget can add the pressure of not having enough time or resources to get the project made properly. It’s hard, for example, to burn ten or twelve takes exploring your actors’ performances when you only budgeted enough time at the location for three. Obviously, if you’re intentional and realistic about what you can pull off, you can mold the story or shooting style to fit the resources you do have.

But, I don’t think it’s ever possible to make a film without some compromises along the way, and the less money you have, the more of those you have to make. We filmmakers love to say that constraints breed creativity, but the flipside is that if the constraints lead to unacceptable working conditions for the cast and crew (or, god forbid, skimping on crazy) you’ll have a mutiny on your hands (and rightfully so). There has to be a balance between getting creative when problems arise, and making the proper preparations ahead of time such that you don’t need to.

Is there anything about the business of making independent films that you still struggle with? 
JJ Pollack (JJP): Using social media as a tool is still something I’m trying to get comfortable with. The internet can certainly make connecting with other creatives and finding talented people to work with much easier. And building an audience online seems like an important step to developing a sustainable career in the arts, one that you can’t afford to skip.

But at the same time, it’s hard for me to view announcing my film’s successes as anything other than cyber-bragging, or calls to watch my work as desperate pleas for attention. I’m sure I’m not the only filmmaker who fantasizes about having a dedicated marketing team, one that would let me focus  purely on the crash and artistic side of moviemaking.

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Why do you work with certain actors or producers? What do you look for?
JJP: I’ve found that there’s usually a sweet spot great actors will instinctually hit, somewhere between overly theatrical and overly wooden. Put another way, you don’t want to be too big or too small with your performance. But what’s even more important than their instincts, in my opinion, is versatility.

If someone comes into an audition and has a terrible first read, but can produce multiple interesting takes after being given some direction and more explanation about the material and their character, I’m way more likely to cast them than an actor who has a great first read but can’t do it any other way on subsequent takes.

Through the process of script revisions, rehearsals, or just on-the-day shooting conditions, the performances I seek from my actors will inevitably change, and I need to be able to trust them to adapt appropriately. As for producers…well…that’s still something I’m trying to figure out. Any talented producers who might be  reading this, please hit me up! Seriously, not joking! 

What do you think indie filmmakers need in today’s world of filmmaking?
JJP: Acting classes and a brutally-honest editor. The most common complaint I have about indie films (and I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment) is that the acting performances are often mediocre-to-terrible. Or that the pacing drags and the film continues for way longer than it needed to to communicate its ideas. Or both.

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Directors can always benefit from taking classes and working to understand the process their actors go through, in order to get better at casting, working with and communicating with their actors (especially if you’re like moi and don’t have a performance background. Trust me, it helps immensely!) Just as importantly, an editor who’s willing to be honest about their opinion and advocate their point of view, rather than remain passive or continually blow smoke up your but, is going to be your last line of defense against boring your audience to death.

What are your future goals?
JJP: Practically speaking, I’d like to have a sustainable career in writing and/or directing feature films. More ethereally? I’d like to bring some measure of visceral entertainment and intellectual stimulation to anyone willing to watch my work, and make movies that can still find and connect with an audience long after I’m gone. Lasting art can be a form of immortality, and who doesn’t want that?

What else have you got in the works? 
JJP: I wrote a dramedy 2-hander play about modern dating that’s being performed next month at Frontera Fest here in Austin. It’ll only be a portion of the script, but hopefully if that goes well we’ll have the chance to stage the full version at some point next year. It may also be something I keep in my back pocket to eventually shoot as a dirt cheap feature film.

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But my main focus right now is finding funding to shoot a grounded sci fi-thriller feature I wrote. The story’s about a slowly deteriorating social media moderator, and how we as a society are handling (or rather, failing to handle) the sheer volume of negative information we’re constantly bombarded with on the internet. Think Taxi Driver, but instead of the Vietnam War and urban decay, it’s conspiracy theories and the 24/7 news cycle that’s wearing on our collective psyche.

Where can we see other films you’ve written and made? 
JJP: Feel free to check out my website. If you’d like to keep abreast of my recent work.

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Tell us what you think of the interview with JJ Pollack. What do you think of it? What ideas did you get? Do you have any suggestions? Or did it help you? Let’s have your comments below and/or on Facebook or Twitter.

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