Comedian and actor Eva Victor had previously been hired to write screenplays, but sitting down to write “Sorry, Baby” during COVID lockdown was different. “It was a little bit rebellious, it was the script that no one was asking me to write,” said Victor while a guest on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “This is the movie I want to write if I die tomorrow. I just kind of needed to get this out [of me], and it was becoming more painful to not write it, than to write it.”
It is very personal film, one that Victor (who uses she/they pronouns) long saw themselves also starring in, as the protagonist Agnes. But Victor feared that simultaneously starring in and directing their first feature film would compromise both roles. Conversely, initially entertaining the idea of bringing on another director brought clarity to the dilemma.
“I realized that I desperately wanted to direct it. I just felt scared of not knowing [how], I never went to film school. My only time making stuff on my own had been videos with my iPhone,” Victor said.
Victor’s iPhone comedies built an online following, including director Barry Jenkins, whose Pastel Productions would produce “Sorry, Baby.” One thing Jenkins saw in those internet videos — although Victor didn’t at the time see it themselves — was that they were already demonstrating a strong directorial sensibility.
Jenkins and his partners at Pastel, including Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak, would become advisors to what they called “The Eva Victor Grad Program,” which started with a question posed to Victor: What do you need to prepare to direct? “I have an issue,” explained Victor. “If someone asks me a question, I come back with like pages and pages of an answer.”
The result is what universities might call a “self-guided” course of study, which Victor walked us through while a guest on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
Starting Point: A Vision and Time
No course of study will give a director “a vision” for a film, which is an essential ingredient.
“It was about slowing down and being like, ‘Look, I know how I want this to look and feel. I need to surround myself with like geniuses to help me execute this and to help me understand why an image feels so important to me on a technical level, so that I understand what story we’re telling and the vocabulary of the film,” said Victor.
It would take time for Victor to learn the tools and process. And while unemployment is stressful, it supplied Victor a year-and-half of immersing themselves in the steps to get to the point they felt confident they could direct “Sorry, Baby.”
Film School Curriculum and Books
“I would go look up the curriculum of a bunch of film schools,” said Victor. “I would watch the films and I would read the books, [which] were these technical books.”
There are so many facets to filmmaking, and filmmaking books can lead to falling down overly comprehensive rabbit holes. It’s here, in retrospect, the self-guided nature of Victor’s deep dive wasn’t always the most productive use of time, as the scope of the discussion was beyond what they felt they needed to know. What became important from this process was understanding what tangible steps and exercises Victor would need to do next.
Explained Victor, “I read the books that I think make sense to read, and now obviously I need to do something different because this is very heady and it’s a not impractical, but non-practical, it’s not the action of doing something.”
Scene Analysis
“[Reading filmmaking books] became, ‘OK, now I know what a shot list is, how do you make a shot list? How do films that I love shot list?’ So I analyzed films,” said Victor. “I went through all of ‘Certain Women’ and took a screenshot of every setup, and [said], ‘OK, so let me guess at [director] Kelly Reichardt’s shot list.’”
Victor realized there were limitations to reconstructing Reichardt’s actual shot list, as aspects of the coverage were likely left on the editing room floor, but it became important to get inside the thought process behind the choices.
“It’s an attempt at understanding the scope and the reasons why the camera is where it is, and how you can edit things together,” said Victor.
Storyboarding and Agnes’ Cottage
Victor’s transition from scene analysis to storyboarding was seamless, as analyzing films like “Certain Women” “quickly becomes, ‘OK, that’s how she did it,” explained Victor. “But how am I going to do it?’ ‘Why does this coverage make sense for her story and what kind of coverage makes sense for my stories?’ And that became storyboarding.”
Victor spent five months storyboarding. It would prove to be one of her most valuable schooling steps. “[I] finally put to paper the images that had been lasting in my mind, so that I could show people the wide [shot] of the house at the beginning, and even just to show myself,” said Victor. “It was almost like editing the film once, to see if I liked the edit.”
One of the big visual challenges Victor would start working through was that 70 of the 84 scenes in “Sorry, Baby” take place in a small New England cottage. Practical locations with tight interior spaces are often where low-budget independent films go to die, and Victor would need the cottage to visually express distinct phases of Agnes (Victor) and best friend Lydie’s (Naomi Ackie) lives. Victor would have to prove to herself, but also make the case to her savvy producers, that she could pull off what could be a significant, self-imposed limitation.
“The cottage has to do a lot, and it has to go through a transformation on its own,” said Victor. “I wanted the cottage to be able to exist on the spectrum of a warm cozy nest when Lydie is around, and then sort of this house of horrors when Agnes feels lonely.”
“Sorry, Baby” is a non-linear film, moving between the time Lydie and Agnes are grad student living together in the cottage, and then later when Agnes stays on to teach at their university. While Agnes is isolated and feeling stuck in the cottage, Lydie is off living her life in New York City and growing (discovering she’s gay, falling in love, and having a baby).
“It’s really about showing someone how time passes in the same places,” said Victor. “A cottage in the woods is like a horror movie thing, and it’s also a rom-com thing, so it’s helpful to have our associations with images to then use them to tell Agnes’ subjective experience of how this house transforms in different moments.”
The Job: Apprenticeship
The five months of storyboarding was beneficial, but it triggered a new fear in Victor: How does set work as a director?
“I took five months to make storyboards, I don’t have five months to make [the film], so I asked my friend Jane Schoenbrun to go to their set and shadow,” said Victor.
The most valuable part of shadowing Schoenbrun, was watching them prep “I Saw the TV Glow.” Victor acknowledged they are a very different filmmakers, but in a way that was for the best — seeing how Schoenbrun’s distinct and clear vision was translated to the “TV Glow” department heads was helpful.
Prior to that, Victor did not understand what happened during pre-production, and was comforted that there were so many meetings where every aspect of the film was discussed in detail. By the end of the “I Saw the TV Glow” shoot, Victor called the Pastel team with news: they were ready to direct “Sorry, Baby.”
An A24 release, “Sorry, Baby” is now in limited theaters, with a nationwide release to follow on Friday, July 18.
To hear Eva Victor’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform