Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello, Petey the Beaver here. This is an interview by my human counterpart, Sean Kelly, interviewing Mike Cheswick, who co wrote and directed this very cool movie called hundreds of beavers. The film is on DoD now. So after checking out this interview, go watch it and see my kind take over the world.
Oh, and like. And subscribe to see more content like this.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: So, uh, how did you get an idea to make what is essentially a live action cartoon?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: I think it just always liked silent film and slapstick comedy. And, um, always just thought of it as one of the main genres and always wanted to work in it. And so it's just for some reason, it hasn't been done for 30 years. But I don't know why. I don't know if it's 30, but it hasn't been done for a while. But since childhood, this was always the plan to make some slapstick movies. So it's coming at a time when that's unique in the marketplace, I guess.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Okay, well, I have to ask this. Being canadian, every time I see a film with an old timey style, think of guy Madden. So are you influenced at all by his films?
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I love Guy Madden. It's definitely like I've seen all his films and I had them on loop during the editing of Lake Michigan Monster. And the biggest thing that those movies gave us is just permission to work in an archaic style. And that just because a style is old, it doesn't mean it has to be abandoned. But also, Guy Madden's films aren't just imitations of films from the twenties and thirties. They are modern. They're modern films. They bring the language forward. So in that way, we're huge guy Madden acolytes.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: So you mentioned them. How would you say that hundreds of beavers differs from Lake Michigan monster? Other than you swapping directorial roles of Riley and Brixton coaches?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, hundreds of beavers. It all takes place in these master shots where things aren't covered from different angles.
I guess to some degree, Lake Michigan Monster is a series of shots that Ryland planned out, but even more so in hundreds of beavers were letting the action play in wide shots more often and choreographed wides where the character is small and screen like Buster Keaton or Mario. So it's sort of a. It's a new aesthetic, but using a lot of what we learned on Lake Michigan monster.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: So I think, well, you mentioned Mario. I did notice, like, that hundreds of viewers has kind of like a video game aspect to it with Jean kayak getting like, points and upgrades based on how many animals he kills.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Totally. Yeah. It has, like, a Metroidvania structure, and it has the super Mario world map. You know, I love the inventories, and, you know, you're not strong enough to go in the castle yet. And the fact that you keep track of his inventory is like, I don't know if that's been. I can't think of a movie that has that. I mean, obviously, in Scott Pilgrim, it keeps track of how many evil exes he's fought. Can't think of another movie where it, like, keeps track of what the protagonist has acquired.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So if I move on to a bit more of the technical aspects of the film. So there wasn't actually hundreds of beavers. So how many beavers were there?
[00:03:32] Speaker B: There was six. Six beavers. And now there's, like, two and a half left. They've all been destroyed through action and through the live show.
[00:03:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So I heard that one of them was stolen from the Toronto screening.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Canadian thieves. A nation of thieves, I assume.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: So how difficult was the film to edit?
[00:03:52] Speaker B: You know, the after effects stuff was extremely time consuming. And the hardest part for me, but the editing, you know, because there's no coverage, you know, when you get the shot, you're really just dropping it on top of the. Of the animatic. So things. Everything's boarded out. And then you're just putting the. Putting the elements just on top of where they go. And you're not actually making a lot of editing decisions, except in the few instances of coverage like the wolf fight or the shot reverse shots of Ryland and Olivia. But other than that, it's just a matter of picking the endpoint and the outpoint and the speed of the shot and then doing the compositing work. But there isn't, you know, coverage. We're just counting on getting the one shot we planned correctly. So in the traditional sense of editing, the editing was simple, but the actual post work was extremely complicated.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Well, I can only imagine the amount of compositing you did for the Beaver dam sequence towards the end.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's funny, because it's a lot of just Shutterstock images of logs that I'm then building in, like after effects. And some of the most complicated looking shots toward the end are really cheap because it's just like Shutterstock and like, one beaver on one green tarp. Other things in the snow were more complicated, but nothing was especially expensive. But, yeah, the hardest compositing shots were in the lodge, especially when John Kayak goes off a ski jump and he lands on water that's iced over. Do you remember that shot?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: I haven't seen it since Fantasia, but oh yeah, okay.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Some of these shots, they were just open on my computer for like two weeks. Just me working on one shot. I mean other shots took an hour but that was just a puzzle for a chunk of my life.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: Did you always intend for like hundreds of beavers have like a very interactive theatrical experience of like Ryan running up on stage and like fighting the beaver.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: And it developed during the festival run. We just started doing that at fests to make it entertaining and make it more of a party. And then yeah, that just kind of turned into the show that we toured through the midwest and then did some LA and New York screenings. We wound up doing the show 26 times commercially. But you know, we'd been screwing around at festivals for I don't know, 60 fests or something. I mean we just keep fighting beavers in theaters.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Yeah, that was definitely very entertaining. Screening was like my, it was actually my final Fantasia screen before I took the train back to Toronto, so.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Oh great. Yeah, that was a good one. I think that your movie sucks guy was at that screening.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: What is next for you?
[00:06:21] Speaker B: We're going to take the style forward. We're going to add a little more. We had a lot of fun doing the fight sequence in beavers so we're going to be doing a lot more of that with our fight choreographer John Trey. He's really talented and he really made that. He designed that fight and really made it his own. I tried to, you know, keep the state, the kind of the blocking somewhat in the style of the rest of the movie, but that fight is really John's baby. And so I'm excited to work more with John to do more combat. Not just slapstick, but bring a little more Hong Kong into the style we're establishing.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: Yeah, actually I heard, I was actually talking to Peter Kloski yesterday. He was talking about how you were like playing a martial arts film or something.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Love Hong Kong. Love eighties martial arts especially.
But yeah, I'm a huge admirer of that whole other wing of physical comedy. And I think with beavers, you know, we've clearly made a very american film and hoping to bring in a little more Hong Kong influence.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Are you happy with the success that hundreds of beavers had?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been very grateful for how much people appreciate it and I don't know, this is not usual for an indie film. So we're extremely grateful and everyone's been really nice. And even the people that don't love it are like so respectful and polite about it. So, yeah, I don't know. It's been great. But I am excited to get back to work because it's been a year and a half of releasing the movie and talking about it and, you know, eventually you just. It's fun to have a little mission in life and, you know, a goal and then it's time to dig into the next project more soon. So, yeah, I'm excited to get back to work, actually.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: So hundreds of beavers is going, is on streaming now. Do you plan like a Blu ray release?
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I love Blu rays. And I want to do a really nice Blu ray release for this movie.
[00:08:09] Speaker C: Actually, I have my leg Michigan monster one here.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Oh, very nice.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: The zoom is kind of erasing it.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: This is like, this is one of my favorite releases ever was the criterion, Medved, Medved world, which is our posters based on this. I don't know why I pulled this out just because. I'm just saying, look at how many special features there are. Look how good a Blu ray release can be. It's like, this is like, this one is like the gold standard. This and the Lord of the Rings box set, of course. But we won't even hush. We won't get anywhere near the quality of that.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Okay. So thanks for talking about the film.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Sean. I really appreciate all your kind words over the years. It's been so sweet. Thank you so much for your support.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. I saw both your films at Fantasia, even though I live in Toronto.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. Love, love Toronto. Love Montreal and fantasia. Can't wait to get back soon.
We've just been doing so many fasts. I'll probably take a. A break from fess for a little bit, but yeah, once we're digging into the next movie, I can't wait to get back. Well, thank you, Sean.
