Hollywood Film Coach

So for the first nine episodes of this podcast, we've been build building sort of a framework of what it is that makes a successful award winning short films. We've looked at things from story, character, how to work with actors, what the first ninety seconds of the film are about, what Oscar voters look for, how to look at a film through the producer's eye. In this episode, I wanna share with you a film that I particularly love where all of these elements come and work together simultaneously to create a film that is extraordinary. The film is called The Phone Call. It won the Oscar in 2015.

And by the end of this episode, you're gonna understand why and how all of these elements that we've been talking about up to this point come together to make a truly successful and amazing film. After forty years in Hollywood and watching more than 3,000 short films as an Oscar voter, I know what separates a good short film from one that wins awards. My name is Bob Degus. This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast where we'll help you create award winning short films. Episode 10, everything we've learned so far, all in one film.

So the film we're gonna be exploring in this episode is called the phone call, and I think it's really important that you stop listening to me right now. And in the companion Substack piece to these podcasts is a article that includes links of where you can go and watch this film. I think it's really important that you watch it first before we talk about it because there's some extraordinary things in it, and I'm gonna be talking about those extraordinary things. And in doing so, I'm gonna spoil the film for you. So go to the Substack, the Hollywood Film Coach Substack, check out the film, and then come back and continue to listen to this podcast.

And you really are gonna see how everything that we've been talking about in the first nine episodes is really coming together here to make a truly extraordinary film. So for those of you who did not go and watch the film, let me explain to you what's happening in this film so that there's a context for you to understand everything else that we're talking about. The film centers around a woman named Heather, and she works in a suicide prevention hotline in a phone center where people who are thinking of committing suicide call in. And shortly immediately, when the film opens, someone named Stanley calls. And the story centers around her trying to get Stanley to speak and to share with her what is going on for him, and Stanley is talking with her.

And the powerful thing about this film is that we never see Stanley. We only hear him over the phone, and we spend the entire time with her in this phone center talking to this man who she's desperately trying to stop from killing himself. It's a very, very powerful film. It's very haunting. And one of the strongest things about the film there's many strong things, but one of the things I really like to share, especially with people who are thinking about making their first or second short film, is that it there's a whole bunch of production issues with this film that make it extraordinary to think about.

It's one set, the phone center. Now it's not quite one set. There's some small little pickup shots around it, but it's essentially one set, which is the phone center. It's three actors, one of which never appears on screen, and then there's a supporting role. So it's very simple.

All of the complex things that sometimes make movie production very complex, a lot of sets, a lot of actors, a lot of extras, lot of costumes, that's all been stripped away to tell just a very pure story about this woman trying to get this man not to commit suicide. So I wanna explore something that we discussed in episode three, which was this idea about what is the film about. Right? Not what happens in it, but what is it about. So I've been telling you what happens in it.

It's about a woman who works at a suicide phone center bank, and she's trying to keep a man from killing himself. But the question is, what is the film about? And the phone call is about a woman who discovers that accompanying another human being through their darkest moment without being able to fix it is perhaps the most profound act of courage and connection that she has ever performed, and it changes her life forever. So that's a very powerful thing that this story is about, and it's one of the reasons that it's so compelling because as an Oscar voter or an audience member, you immediately connect with it. You know?

And it it takes you on this journey, and you wanna see what happens between these two characters, one who's on screen and one who we never see. So I think it was in episode five we talked about the importance of telling a story that only you can tell, a story that's very unique to you personally or that you have a very deep connection to. And in this case, the phone call clearly, clearly demonstrates that purpose. The director, Matt Kirby's mother, when he was growing up, worked in a suicide prevention hotline center. So he knew firsthand the struggles through his mom of what it was like to be a woman who was talking to people who were suicidal.

That personal connection that he had gave the story this tremendous vividness in reality. And again, it was a story that only he could tell. You or I could direct the same script, and it wouldn't be as powerful. What was powerful about it was he was able to draw from all the experience he had observed of his mother helping people not commit suicide and bring that into the film and bring it into the film in a way that keeps you sitting on the edge of your seat through details of how he shows how she's trying to figure out where he is and how to help him. And that's that's just such a a key thing.

And I think if you did go and watch the film, you saw how vivid this was and and what a powerful telling of this situation Matt created. So I wanna use this film to, again, underscore some of the things that we've been talking about in the first nine episodes of this podcast. For starters, in episode two, we talked about that great one of the things that all great short films share is that they earn every minute of their runtime. This is a twenty minute film, and it it keeps you it's so tight and perfectly drawn. It keeps you right on the edge of your seat, and you keep leaning in to find out what is going to happen.

If it had been a forty minute version of the same story, it certainly wouldn't have been as effective. And, also, if it had just been a ten minute telling, you probably wouldn't have had enough time to get to know the characters and really care about them as deeply as you do in this film. So in episode three, we talked about the concept of a story knowing what it's really about. And this is very clear in every frame of the phone call because it's not a story about a woman who's working in a suicide prevention hotline, and she's talking to this guy trying to get him to stop this a much, much deeper level. And it's a story about grief and about human connection across distance that really, again, brings you in because that's something that touches our heart and connects us to each other.

So it's very clear from the beginning to the end that the phone call knows what it's about and knows what it's trying to communicate to its audience. I think it was in episode four that we talked about what it is that Oscar voters are looking for, and this film exemplifies that. I remember the first time I saw it sitting in the theater, and I remember the silence in the room after the ending. And all of us just sitting there having had this experience and processing it and taking in what we had just seen and feeling for the characters and feeling the arc again of this of this film from how it takes off at the beginning, how it, you know, travels along through it, and then the landing of the ending, the really beautiful, powerful ending that this film has that really could end no other way. And it just leaves you with this tremendously satisfied feeling of a beautifully spent twenty minutes of your life watching this story unfold.

So in episode five, we talked about how story is everything and how important character is. In this film, we immediately, in Heather, have a character that we identify with, we sympathize with, we care about, and whose situation we want to follow. And if you think about the the arching of the film, the majority of the film is between her and Stanley and her trying to convince Stanley not to kill himself. But then there is the bookend of the story, which is the hope that love can continue on and that or new love maybe can be born. And that ending is incredibly important because if you think about the film ending with the death of Stanley and how that's going to leave you feel versus the way this film has you feeling where you go through Stanley's passing and the realization that he's dead, and then you have the hope of love being reborn with Heather and her office mate.

Is very, very powerful. And it's a it's it's such a simple ending, but it's so profound, and it leads you to that place again of silence that we all experienced in the room when we saw it. In episode six, I think we talked about working with actors, and this is is just an extraordinary film for looking at acting and performance. It's really all based on one woman, Sally Hawkins' performance in in this role that's so extraordinary. And it's even more profound to think that her costar was never Jim Broadbent was never seen on camera, which makes it all the more poetic.

So the whole performance has to rest on her being able to carry the entire movie for the full twenty minutes, and she did so extraordinarily well. And what was interesting when I was researching this film and found out that Jim Broadbent was actually there performing across from her so that she had his line readings and his energy to respond to. And that's, again, something that's a case we talked about in the last episode where we talked about producing where it obviously would cost more money to have Jim there, and it's gonna take more of his time to be there. He could have just, you know, recorded gone to an ADR studio and recorded his dialogue lines. But to have him there where he's saying his lines and she's saying her lines and they're responding to each other in a real way is what makes that performance so exciting and electrifying.

And especially just hearing him is is this voice really conveys the feeling that these women who, like his mother, who worked in these suicide prevention centers, they don't get to see the other person. They're just hearing the voice. And so to use that detail of how it really is for people working in those centers into the direction of the film so that you're getting the experience of all you hear is a voice. You don't know anything else is really powerful and one of the reasons that you're on the edge of your seat while you watch this whole unfolding of the film. We talked about in one of the episodes about the film I produced with Brad Pitt, and I wanna contrast the casting choices that were made in the phone call because, you know, Sally Hawkins is a well known actress, but she certainly isn't as famous as Brad Pitt.

And what if they had made a different choice for the lead actress in that film? What if they had gone and cast Margot Robbie in it? And how would the film have been different? How would it have been different if they cast somebody a 100% unknown? There would be three different films.

So I think casting and the choices of who to put in the roles is is so well done in this film because it's the perfect balance between an extremely accomplished actress who has the gravitas to pull off the performance and yet isn't so famous that she's going to distract. Oh, look. There's Margot Robbie, or, oh, look. There's Sandra Bullock, or, oh, look. There's Julia Roberts in the movie, but gives it a professionalism and a grounding that really is successful and makes it work.

I think in episode eight, we talked about festival strategy, that giant topic that almost could be a whole podcast in itself. And this film, The Phone Call, premiered at Tribeca, I think, in 2014. And so its world premiere was at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Tribeca Film Festival is one of those festivals that automatically qualifies its winner of the best short to be considered for in the Oscar category. And so that their festival strategy really paid off by getting into Tribeca and then, obviously, getting it to win and then getting into the Oscars and having us like it and nominate it and ultimately having a whole academy vote that it was the best short that year.

So, again, this shows about thinking through how to maneuver your film from when it's finished to getting it into film festivals. And then finally, in episode nine, we talked about this idea of of looking at the film through the producer's lens from both a director's standpoint and a producer's standpoint. And this is a extraordinary example of a film that is extremely efficiently with very limited resources. It needed a room that looked like a suicide prevention center. That was the main set for much of the movie.

It needed the interior of his house. It needed an exterior shot of his house, and it opens with with her in in a city so you get the context of where she lives. Very efficient, and it really, from a producing standpoint, just three actors. So minimizing, again, all of the chaos that would come from you were shooting a a short film about the American Civil War, and now we need soldiers from both sides in period costumes. And all of that stuff takes energy to put in your movie.

But in this case, I think what they did was was it was extraordinary and so poetic in its simplicity. I hope what you're seeing from this conversation is that all of these elements came together to make this film extraordinarily successful. The constraints that they had or the limitations of a few sets, a few actors, and being clever with how to use those actors really helped to amplify the film. There would be a version of this, I suppose, where you could have been the person directing it and felt frustrated that you didn't have more sets or you couldn't have more actors or you couldn't have more women on the suicide hotlines. You know, you could picture a a scene with a whole bunch of women talking to people trying to get them to not commit suicide.

But there was something very poetic about it just being one person because, again, it mirrors the experience of his mother, I'm sure, about being on the phone with this person going through a very dark period, and you're alone with them. It's just you and the phone. And having Jim Broadbent only appear by voice heightens exactly what the experience would be for women who and men who are doing that job. And so I think the film uses its production constraints extraordinarily well to craft something that is is just really, I think, perfect in every single way. I remember where I saw this film and when I saw it the first time and how taken with it I was.

I also remembered seeing it when we voted on the shortlist a second time and the film got better. And then, obviously, it got nominated, and I watched it again when I looked at the nominees to pick which film would be nominated. And I've seen it easily another 20 times with students when I was teaching. And I just think it's a film that you can watch multiple times and really look at all of the elements that we've discussed so far over this podcast and look at how they're playing out. And when you watch it, and I hope you watch it a second and third time, think about it through the lens of a producer.

What was the producer in your imagination thinking about, and what were those choices? What were the choices the director made? Why are they so effective? Look at it for that way. Look at the the extraordinary dialogue or listen to it.

I guess you can't really look at it. That is being used to tell the story, the choices of when we go to his house and what we see in his house. All of those things are things that you can study by watching the film multiple times. And one suggestion I have for you is watch it again. Just watch it.

Then watch it another time and turn the sound off so you can start to look at what's happening in the film visually. And then watch it one last time where you have the sound on, but don't at all watch the picture. So you're listening to what is transpiring in the soundtrack. That's gonna give you a tremendous ability to break apart how the language of cinema works visually, how it works in your ears, and then also if you're thinking about it with your producer hat on, what were the issues that they had to solve when they were making the film. I think that'll be an extraordinarily helpful exercise for you.

I started this podcast series out with the suggestion that the gap between what makes a good short film into an award winning one is very small. And I think in the phone call, you can see that there was there could have been a very good version of that film, but they made a series of choices that allowed them to make a great version of that film. And that's what we're looking at, and that's what we're exploring. In the continuing episodes of this Hollywood Film Coach podcast, we're gonna continue to look at issues with craft and cinematography and editing, and we're also gonna go do deep dives into different films that I've seen while on that committee that I just think are extraordinary. And I think you're being exposed to them and getting to see them will help you be able to take your work to a deeper and more robust and vivid version of itself.

So I look forward to seeing you in Episode 11. One more thing, if today's episode sparked something for you head over to hollywoodfilmcoach.substack.com for the companion piece. It's original writing that goes deeper into the most important idea from today's episode and includes links to every film we've talked about so you can watch them yourself and form your own conclusions. The gap between a good short film and a great one that wins awards is smaller than you think. I'm Bob Degus.

This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, follow us and check out the next episode. I hope you'll join me in episode 11 where we'll continue our journey.