NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
A podcast about acting, filmmaking, and the improv scene in New Orleans.
NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
Brooke H Cellers: Crafting Horror, Community, and Creativity
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What does it take to turn a childhood passion into a thriving career? Join us as we chat with Brooke H. Cellars, an inspiring writer, director, and producer whose love for horror films catapulted her into the filmmaking world at the age of 34. Brooke's journey is filled with determination and creativity, from her days at the University of Louisiana to her hands-on approach in every aspect of film production. We touch on her current collaboration with actress Olivia Peck and reflect on her acclaimed work, "Violet Butterfield, Makeup Artist for the Dead."
Follow us on IG @nolafilmscene, @kodaksbykojack, and @tjsebastianofficial. Check out our 48 Hour Film Project short film Waiting for Gateaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pFvn4cd1U
Hey guys, I'm Brooke H Sellers. I'm a writer, director, producer. I'm so happy to be here on NOLA Film Scene with TJ and Plato. I don't know how they talked me into this, but here I am. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Hello, welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ and Plato. I'm TJ and, as always, I'm Plato. We are back with Brooke Sellers. Director, writer, producer.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for joining us. It's such a pleasure to meet you. I've been following you online on social media for a little while now and you're doing some pretty exciting things. Really appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3:One of the mutual friends I think we have is Olivia. Olivia Peck, haven't you worked with Olivia?
Speaker 1:I haven't worked with her as of yet, but she is supposed to be playing a part in my new movie. It'll be my first time working with her. Gotcha, she's great and she's a wonderful person.
Speaker 2:She taught us both to sing.
Speaker 1:Olivia Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 3:One of the questions that we like to ask our guests is what inspired them to get into either acting or filmmaking in your case, filmmaking. What got you interested in that and how did that kind of unfold for you?
Speaker 1:Initially I always wanted to be working in horror because I loved horror movies. As a kid that was like my go-to thing. Me and my brothers and my sister would always watch horror movies, horror movies all day. We would rent a VCR in the 80s and just go fill up on horror movies. And I never thought that would happen because that seemed like a crazy pipe dream kind of scenario and, living in Louisiana, I didn't think that would ever be. A seemed like a crazy pipe dream kind of scenario and, living in Louisiana, I didn't think that would ever be a thing. And so I kind of lived my life wanting to do it but never actually had the confidence or anything to actually try until I went back to college when I was 34.
Speaker 1:I found out there was actually a film department at University of Louisiana and I finally met people who made movies, because before then I never knew one person who made a movie down here. And I started meeting people and it was just like a bright light saying, hey, go, go for it, you finally get to do this. And I made my first student film when I was 37. And ever since then I've just kept making movies because it was just always something that I wanted to do and never thought I would be able to. So I don't take the time for granted, and I adore every aspect of making movies. I learned how to do everything from cinematography to special effects, to lighting and screenwriting, production design, you name it. I've done it. I love it so much and I'm so happy to be able to do this now, you know.
Speaker 3:Nice. So, as a filmmaker, do you write as well, or do you just direct and produce?
Speaker 1:I guess writing and directing mainly for sure. I love writing because I get to make up the story, I get to create the world, I get to have control over the actual story that's being created, and I think that's one of the things that I've been doing since I was a kid was writing stories and writing dark horror stories. I always went to that. My father was a writer. He wrote Louisiana Crawfish man superhero children's comic books in the 70s and 80s and he had five kids and I turned out to be the only one that was a writer. I would have to say writing is probably my favorite part Just creating that world out of nothing, like out of thin air, out of you know, pulling stuff out of your brain and put it on papers.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably the best part.
Speaker 2:Very cool, Do you find? Because I haven't done too much writing, maybe not too much directing, but with the podcast I've had to do a lot of editing. That's kind of all the same. You have to know your vision and then, like a sculpture, chip away at things that just don't fit. I don't even know if I have a question in there. Do you agree with that statement?
Speaker 1:I also edit my movies too. So I'm there from like when I'm writing, I think about how I'm going to edit this, like later on, and I'm part of the whole process, from beginning to end, from pre-production to post-production, like the initial spark of the idea, to the very end when we put it out there. The film festival is like I'm part of all the entire process. I like to have, I guess, the creative control from writing, directing, producing and editing One of the other things that I really really enjoy doing on my movies. And I've worked on others, like I worked on Sam Fox. I was a production designer on Sam Fox's Fucking Nuts, that short film with Vincent Stava. He was also in it. So as much as I love writing worlds, I like creating them physically. I love designing spaces. That's always fun, that's always great to do, but that's another favorite.
Speaker 2:Very cool. We all have to make plans, from storyboard to the shot list, to what you want from your actors, but it never goes right, does it Not completely?
Speaker 1:There's always something. There's always something.
Speaker 2:Your last movie.
Speaker 1:Violet Butterfield, Makeup Artist for the Dead.
Speaker 2:Oh, I should know that, my old man brain. I'm so sorry. I see that all the time in my feed. I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see that I didn't put it together. That was you. So our mutual friend, uncle Bobbo Vincent, never said his last name. Yeah, I've never said his last name out loud. It's always texting Me either. That was Vincent.
Speaker 2:We didn't work together on Wheel to Heaven, but we're both in it. We're just different times. That's cool. Yeah, he wanted us to get together to try to help you with your Kickstarter, but we just couldn't make it. The timing happened. This, ladies and gentlemen, this will come out after the Kickstarter is done and well, well-deserved and Bravo. We know, we know you raised all your funds. Basically, to get back to the question I was trying to think of on your last movie, can you think of something that went really wrong and then led to something very creative? Oh, you know what I mean Something that you never would have thought of, but you had to do in the moment and it came out better than you could have expected.
Speaker 1:Gee yeah.
Speaker 2:Not to put you on the spot or anything.
Speaker 1:I guess, like that was the movie, that we shot that movie on 16 millimeter film and that was like the first time we did that and it was a different process.
Speaker 1:I guess it wasn't something that went wrong, but it was definitely something different that my DP suggested because of the look of it, because it was kind of 1960s and I didn't know how it was going to go. But it ended up being like the smoothest working film set because everybody had to be at their positions and everybody wanted to be there and everybody was excited about it and I really didn't know how it was going to be shooting on film because, you know, you don't have the monitor to look at and everything and you only have a few takes because you only have a limited amount of film. You can't, you know, digital. You could just, okay, scene one, take a thousand. You know let's go with that. It's like three or four takes at the most and I actually enjoyed that because I don't like to do a lot of takes and if I don't get it in the third take I'm not going to get it.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't be that complicated to get a shot.
Speaker 2:You're not trying to be Stanley Kubrick.
Speaker 1:Absolutely not, no way. But my shots are usually not too complicated. I usually set them up to where the camera doesn't have to do as much work, it just has to get it. There's some movement and it's more about the story than crazy camera work. I don't know if that's something that went wrong, but it was just something very different that I you know. It was unexpected how it went and I really enjoyed the turnout and I always want to do it and we're trying to do it on this feature, which is, you know, crazy. But you know, I want to get that Violet Butterfield on a larger scale because I just thought it turned out so wonderful and so lovely.
Speaker 2:Right right While you were talking. It made me think of because it's film everyone had to kind of concentrate. No one could take it for granted, like maybe they did in the past. Right, and everyone. It sounds like they knew we got to shit and get. We got to get it done. We have to be serious, which most of the times people are, but we all have our bad days and it didn't go wrong. But I love the answer.
Speaker 2:I had been thinking about a just did for the LA Film Prize and we were running out of time and we wanted a shot in a door of someone coming in and silhouette. We couldn't do it. So our cameraman or he's a DP cinematographer, he's all of it and he did something with the lights and he was able to adjust it and when it came in it was even better than you could ever imagine. The regular being and we all saw it in the camera, haven't seen it on it, not even a computer screen just went. Whoa, that's so great, you know. So that was my awkward way of trying to get that out of you and you delivered, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's so cool when things like that happen. I love that. That's definitely magic right there when things like that happen. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, magic on a good day, it's magic on Bad day. I don't know what the opposite of magic is, but I've gone through some of those.
Speaker 1:We're cursed.
Speaker 2:It's a curse. It's a curse, movie curse. Take five, let's go to Crafty and get some coffee, the ever magic of coffee.
Speaker 3:Can you tell us a little bit about your latest project without spoiling anything?
Speaker 1:So our first feature film that we're making is called the Cramps, A Period Piece, and I had wanted to write this for a long time. I've been working on the script because it's my first feature length script and I had been working on it for like at least three years just getting the story right. And it was inspired by my real life struggles with endometriosis. I struggled with it for over 20 years and it was kind of like a monster, you know, inside of me, creature taking over my body, and I wanted to bring that to the screen like as a horror monster and inspired, I guess, by creature features like the blob and stuff like that. And it's inspired as if John Waters meets Federico Fellini meets Mario Bava Giallo horror kind of Wow. And it still has that 1960s feel.
Speaker 2:My brain is exploding over here. Just go ahead. I'll just, I'll be okay.
Speaker 1:But those are my kind of favorite films that I want to mesh together and bring something like give homage to, like classic filmmaking and but bring something a little more modern within it. It's a world of its own, like creation. It looks like a period piece but it's kind of its own Twilight Zone world that anything can happen. I think it should be pretty fun to me.
Speaker 2:It sounds wild.
Speaker 1:And crazy.
Speaker 2:And crazy.
Speaker 1:We want to film the Cramps somewhere in South Louisiana. Hopefully we're looking for locations like in Lafayette or the surrounding areas. We've had offers from places in New Orleans but we feel like a lot of movies are being filmed in New Orleans already and one of our most important things is getting eyes on Lafayette and getting more films to be shot down here, so just kind of developing our film community that way, shooting this movie so we're trying to shoot it towards the end of June, which is going to be hot down here.
Speaker 2:So need some AC for sure Some cooling packs and wet towels around the neck.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, with all that tungsten lighting that we're going to be doing, that hot tungsten lighting, it's going to be extra, extra hot, but we'll get through it.
Speaker 2:I'm sweating already. I'm not even in this movie.
Speaker 1:We've launched an Indiegogo trying to raise funds right now. So we're in the middle of raising funds for this feature, which is it always makes you feel like a used car salesman trying to ask people to donate to your art project. But you know we've raised over $15,000 for the Indiegogo, so we're pretty excited about that. We're in the middle of auditions, getting crew and a lot of people are really excited to work on it with us and a lot of people that we've worked with before actors and crew members. As always, we have our awesome DP. He's from New Orleans, levi Porter. He's shot all of our films and I just can't work with anybody else. He spoils us, he spoils me, as you know. Director DP. It's difficult to work with other people after that.
Speaker 2:Would you say you have the shorthand that two people have worked together forever. You can finish each other's thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can finish each other's shot lists.
Speaker 2:Nothing better on the set.
Speaker 1:Our first film that we did, the Chills, which is my first film that I just got a few people together and it was the first time I worked with Levi and we just got together 15 minutes before and made the shot list before we shot and that was one of my favorite projects that we did. That we just shot at my house. I kicked everybody's spaghetti and it was just like six of us working and I had my husband and his sisters who are not actors be in it. It was just the funnest project. It's still one of my favorite projects today and just I love doing that. That's what made me fall in love with actual filmmaking, is that project.
Speaker 2:Sweet. So with Andromed Andromed, I can't even say it with you highlighting Andromediosis.
Speaker 1:Andromediosis, endometriosis.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and I speak for a living Oy vey. So I'm trying to get to the question and spit it out. Horror movies, it seems, should have a message. It doesn't have to be very heavy handed, but I don't feel like they can just be blood and guts. That's OK, but it's just not interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, blood and guts is fun, but you know it's interesting if you get involved with the story to get into it.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like it has to have a message Like the old times, like, oh, you better not have sex or you're going to be the first one to die, but that might not be the best match, but any thoughts along those lines?
Speaker 1:I think when it does have a message, it kind of comes through and connects with the audience and maybe they want to watch it again and maybe it felt like they were part of it. I guess if it had something to say maybe it's not quite, you know, a message or a moral but it said something to you and it made you want to go back or maybe it made you feel like you connected with the film and it didn't make you feel alone or something like that. You know something, I feel like. Horror is a really good genre to have. You can tell a story and it can be, you know, dark and bloody, but it can also be our underlying real life monsters and horror stories and somehow be peeling and cathartic and sometimes beautiful and bloody at the same time. Blood and Guts is always fun too.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I have a story. I'll tell you about it offline, but I wanted to earn the ending. You know what I mean. I have in my head oh, that's such a good twist, but if that's all you have, I felt like it would be crap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're just going for that one Shock moment yeah. Yeah, that shock moment Exactly.
Speaker 2:How do you and I just want your secrets. How do you go about making sure that doesn't happen in your story? What elements would you add to a story to make it worthwhile to have the shock?
Speaker 1:It's like what's shocking, cause we've seen so many things and I see people trying to like shock people by trying to do the most disturbing or disgusting or vile thing, and it's almost not shocking. I don't try to shock people, but maybe surprise them with something different, I guess something they may not have thought of, but not oh whoa, like that crazy or that's oh my God, like want to vomit or something, or Right, right.
Speaker 2:If you're going to behead somebody, that you have to have a purpose.
Speaker 1:Or do it like a really fun way. I don't know. You've never thought of decapitating somebody this way.
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't know how would you do it with a Starbucks coffee cup. I don't know how would you do it with a Starbucks coffee cup Really hot, acidic coffee, very acidic. Would that be a grande no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I've been doing this in auditions, so I'm trying to think of a way to explain it. We had an audition recently and we kind of gave direction to put themselves in the character's shoes. Instead of saying, hey, can you do this more angry, Instead of saying that maybe. Hey, this person just stole your shit, Like how would you react to that?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Would you be nice to them? Of course you wouldn't. You would be pissed. What is this character want? What is this character going for? Why is this character even talking to this other person? How are they feeling right now because of this person? How are they reacting? What is your reaction to this scenario, and maybe a different way than what's going on in the movie? I would try to pull them out that way, give them like a different kind of curveball and maybe make them think of something else before going in deeper to the actual scenario.
Speaker 2:Getting out of the actor's head of what I have to do and back into the character and the reasons for every action, which it always comes down to that. And, as an actor, there's so many balls we got to keep in the air and we're juggling and you're like no, no, I got this, I got this, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And as much as I love dialogue and writing dialogue, I always say don't think of the dialogue. I am not a stickler word for word. I love crafting dialogue, but it's not about just word for word dialogue. About just word for word dialogue. Like just get off the dialogue and what would you say, Like, what would you say to this person? You know, just the dialogue. I love writing fun, quirky, crazy dialogue, but you don't have to like stick to it word for word. I'm definitely not a perfectionist. I'm rather chaos than perfection, for sure.
Speaker 2:There's so much more life when, the way you describe it, I had worked on a different movie which I can't really get into yet. Hopefully, by the time this podcast comes out, and and I did my lines and that was good.
Speaker 2:The second take, and you know, as I got more relaxed, they were like loosen up a bit and instead of saying I can't even think of examples, but instead of just going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I was like, well, blah blah said this instead of that. You know what I mean. Yeah, so I totally understand. I would love to be able to communicate these thoughts with younger me, who never thought a career in acting was possible because I was in New Orleans and some other things you know. But on that side of the camera, on that side of the TV, I would look at the screen and see, oh, look, they're making themselves cry, they're doing this. What an actor you know. But on this side you realize they're not really making themselves cry, they're living it, they're allowing themselves to feel it and to cry.
Speaker 2:You hear, oh, actors are liars, kind of, but not really it's. We find the truth and bring that to people and let them experience. In a horror movie, you can feel fear in a safe way, like a roller coaster. The same thing. Or, and my favorite I always bring up, is Meryl Streep and Sophie's Choice. We're probably not going to have to go through that, but just the emotion that it lets us feel that and it helps us express it in a safe way.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, I agree, Yay me, yay me.
Speaker 2:So we asked a lot of our guests two main questions what inspired them? And I think we've covered that with you. It almost sounds like we've got your dream job, like you've already had it, but a little outside the box, is there an actor, famous, brand new, who you would just love to work with? Like, if I get to be in Star Wars and I get to be an action figure, that's my dream. I don't need an Oscar, I don't need millions. I do need some money. I want to be an action figure. You know what I mean, because I also want to be a voiceover artist. So, person, genre, established film, something that would just say it's your dream, it's the secret dream in the middle of your heart.
Speaker 1:If I could work with somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Besides John Waters oh gosh, that's a loaded question I guess some of my favorite actors. I really like strange character actors like Caleb Landry Jones, michael Pitt, fiona Dourif, Chloe Sevigny the list goes on and on and put on the spot just trying to think of people I'd want to work with. Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Not that you deny anybody. Just because you haven't listed them here doesn't mean you won't work with them.
Speaker 1:I mean, I want to work with a lot of local people too. I really like working with like new not new, but like people I've never worked with locally. Yet I always enjoy working with new people. Working with old people I've been working with for years and then getting to work with new people who I've never worked with is my favorite thing in the world, because it's a whole new set. It's a brand new set. Even if there's one new person on set, that's always delightful.
Speaker 2:As long as you have people bringing in that good energy, it mixes with other people's good energy.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, we always make sure of that. We're bringing good people with good energy on the sets, for sure.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about asking about bad energy people, but let's not talk about that. Well, because it wouldn't be fair to you, because I don't want names, I'll give you an example of something that happened to me and then see if you want to go on with that or you don't have to. So I was in a class, a workshop, and we were all writing comedy sketches, comedy jokes, just jokes and one person came in and they were angry at life. They had. I don't know what the situation was, but that person had some trauma that hadn't been dealt with, and and comedies not only don't punch down, but this was even more. That's all they wanted to do, and in one specific way. And then we paired up in teams and so you'd write your thing out and you'd talk to your partner. This person would not even talk to their partner. That person was sitting there, had to do the work alone.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Didn't want to do the assignment, didn't want to work with anybody, was angry, just bad. And when that person the teacher turned around person got up and just left without saying anything and the energy in the room changed, everybody breathed, relaxed. You know what I mean. So it wasn't just a one sided thing. Is what I'm trying to say without saying it, right? Any experiences like that that you'd like to vaguely talk about without naming names?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was one project that we worked on that it was just very different vibe. There was me and other people that I've worked with and then there was this person and like a few people that they brought to work with and they kind of kept to themselves and worked in their own you know world, even though it was a small short film in one room, and they wouldn't communicate with us. It felt so strange that they weren't communicating with us. When I was directing and you know they weren't communicating, it was and you could yell. You know you could yell in this room and just say, hey, we're doing this, and everybody in the room could know. And it was just like they were just talking to each other and not us.
Speaker 1:It was just so strange and I never wanted to work in that situation again, because we always yell at each other and just you know, especially if you're in one room, everybody knows what's going on. You know, because you're one team and you should be communicating with everybody. Everybody should know when we're going to be on time, when we're shooting something, when the camera's rolling, what shot we're getting next, and we were just like lost. It was not a good vibe, it was not a good time. We tried to make the best of it, of course, and we got a good film out of it, but it's kind of, you know, I didn't really want to work with this person again and I was looking forward to working with them, and it was very unfortunate and very disappointing.
Speaker 2:And it sounds horrible. Yeah, I can see if me and two friends and during breaks we might kind of congregate. I'm more of the social butterfly, I love talking to everybody, but I can. I can kind of relate. But while you're trying to work, if, like in one room, if they're not talking, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:I'll hit you with an example of something so weird and I have to be vague because it's not my story, but I know a director and independent film and he was making room for other people and this person who he was making room for had never been on a set before, had never worked background, had never done anything. But let's just say they were friends. Because, without going into the whole story, he said okay, you'll be here Monday at 3 pm. Okay, cool, well, director's on set does his morning shoot breaks for lunch, 2 pm. Haven't heard from the person. 2.30. 3 pm when they're supposed to be there. Not even there, not even a call. 3.30. Finally gets the person on the phone and person's like, well, I don't know, you know it's kind of a long drive, yeah, but you were supposed to be yeah you were supposed to be here, I'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:Have a nice day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That person is never going to work with that director again. Probably never anywhere. No, it's just amazing that people forget not only just the basic politeness.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But that you're making a reputation every second of every day, on every set. You know that bad reputation, like wildfire, will spread throughout the industry.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good reputation might take a little bit longer, but it's deeper. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because, well, I don't know about that guy. There's going to be people who don't like you for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, but yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to bring it up, but yes, I wanted. We're out of time. Are there any socials or anything that you would like to share with us? I don't know, I can't speak. Is there anything you'd like to share with our listeners? Socials where they can find your movies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:You can find Violet Butterfield, Makeup Artist for the Dead. It's streaming on Alter on YouTube and you can find us at Warped Witch Cinema on Instagram and the Cramps Film on Instagram, for sure. If you want to see more about the Cramps or Violet Butterfield Film, If you want to learn more about Violet Butterfield or any of our films, you can find on Warped Witch Cinema on YouTube. We have most of our short films up there Our old one. We did about seven short films.
Speaker 3:Sweet Brooke, it was so great sitting down with you and talking to you, getting your insights on this stuff Really, really grateful that you joined us today.
Speaker 1:I'm grateful to be here. I really, really grateful that you joined us today. I'm grateful to be here. I had an awesome time. Thank you for talking with me.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate it. It's been a blast, brooke, you know, we thank you for coming on the podcast and, uh, I can't wait to see cramps. Thank god I don't have them, but I can't wait to see your movie. Thank y'all so much.
