Our guests today are alums Shelby Grady and Gavin Fields, filmmakers and founders of the Lil Cowboy production company. They will be coming to the University of Mississippi March 6th and 7th to screen their recent film BRUTAL SEASON and host a filmmaking workshop. We talked about all that and so much more!
Our guests today are alums Shelby Grady and Gavin Fields, filmmakers and founders of the Lil Cowboy production company. They will be coming to the University of Mississippi March 6th and 7th to screen their recent film Brutal Season and host a filmmaking workshop. We talked about all that and so much more!
To see the Brutal Season trailer, please visit: https://vimeo.com/722273848
And to learn more about the film: https://www.brutalseason.com/
For more information about Lil' Cowboy, please visit: https://www.lilcowboy.co/
Also, Shelby was previously featured in an article about some of our graduates who are doing interesting things: https://news.olemiss.edu/choose-your-own-adventure-with-a-degree-in-theatre-arts/
From the Department of Theatre & Film at the University of Mississippi, this is Stage & Screen.
Katherine Stewart
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Stage & Screen. I'm your host, Katherine Stewart, and I really could not be more excited to introduce today's guests, Shelby, Grady and Gavin Fields. They are both Ole Miss grads and both did our cinema minor. Which you may know has now evolved into our BFA film production program. Since graduation, the two of them have formed a production company, produced a film, among many other projects, and most recently gotten married. Gavin and Shelby will be visiting the University March 7th and 8th to screen their film brutal season, as well as to host a filmmaking workshop. We had such a wonderful conversation. I know you're going to love them. So stay tuned. Shelby, Gavin, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today. Love those.
Shelby Grady
Thank you for having us. We're so excited to chat.
Katherine Stewart
With you. So just to kind of get us started, if you would introduce yourselves, tell us who you. Are where you're from. What you do and a little bit of background with with the department.
Gavin Fields
OK. So I'm Gavin fields and I'm from Jackson, Ms. And came to miss 2010 and majored in theater with a minor in film that was right at the beginning of the film Minor program and did a bunch of plays and short films and stuff like that. And graduated in 2014 and with a couple of other alums, started a company, a video production company, right after college right out of college and. Just have been sort of doing that for the past 10 years.
Shelby Grady
And I'm Shelby Grady. And I came to Ole Miss in 2011. I also got a theater degree with a film minor, and I ended up graduating a year early in 2014. And and then I moved to New York to pursue acting stuff. And was there for four years and then moved back to Atlanta, where I'm from, to be closer to Gavin and then we. Ended up during the pandemic working on this feature film brutal season, which just sort of brought us to where we are now. And then in the last six months, we've established a production company together called Little Cowboy. So yeah, and also we're married.
Katherine Stewart
To talk about all of that, so. First and foremost, you have this film, brutal season, which you are bringing to the University of Mississippi to screen and also do a workshop. While you're there. Can you talk about that film a little bit?
Gavin Fields
Yeah, so it is. Is a screenplay. Well, I've been writing screenplays for a long time and had probably, what, three or four that I'd written. And all I you know, I just kept writing and writing because that's all I really knew how to do as far as making a feature film. And then one day it was just like, OK, I just need to write one where that's affordable that we can raise. The money for it and decided to kind of put some restraints on myself to make it affordable. So I was like, OK, it'd be cool to do a chamber drama where it's an ensemble cast. It all takes place in one room and that should make things pretty affordable. And then of course I had to put it in the 1940s. And make things more expensive again, but there's always that. But it was. It was definitely the most, you know, realistic screenplay that we could do on a shoestring budget that I'd ever written. And then we had no idea how to begin that journey. And then Shelby kind of decided to put the producer thing on her shoulders and kind of guide our our direction. Now we start logistically making it.
Shelby Grady
Happen in February 2020, and then, of course, as we all know, the world. Shut down. And you know, we had sort of been like tinkering with the idea of how we would get this made. But once everything really shut down, we had nothing else to do. That was when I was like, I really think that we could figure this out. Like, let's just start doing some pre production work and kind of see where it leads. Yes. And you know, here we are 2 1/2 years later and the film is finished and it's in film festivals and hopefully, you know, signing the deal on a distribution deal very soon. So it's just it was kind of a. The the pandemic, like weirdly offered somewhat of an opportunity for us to like really focus on which was. A positive and all of the.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, for sure.
Gavin Fields
That's like a very first production because we were talking about how we'd sort of start the workshop on how we didn't really know what we. We're doing and our first production notes are like a few lines that we're like, we'll meet every Sunday. We'll figure it out and we're shooting in November. That was it.
Shelby Grady
It was like people to call and then it was like we're starting in March and we're going to shoot in November. What else is there? We don't know. We did, yeah.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, so, so can you tell us a little bit about the film itself? What's the just some plot storyline? Stuff like that.
Gavin Fields
Yeah. So it is a 1940s period piece that is sort of inspired and and consciously you know derivative of 1940s noir films and classic American theater plays written at the. Time and so it takes place 1948 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and it's about a family, a low income family and their struggle to sort of make ends meet at the end of the month. And then what happens when an estranged son comes home after a 12 year absence? And start sort of. Ruffling up some past traumas and debts and issues that the family have been, you know, working on putting behind them for so.
Shelby Grady
Long and one of the things that Gavin sort of touched on was when he was writing it and thinking about how we could keep costs low, was that it all takes place in the family's kitchen. So there. Sort of a like we always said that it's trying to marry theater and film like in the beginning we have this conscious opening where you can see the sound stage where we filmed, you see the, you know actors be introduced and then you land in the kitchen and you're. There for the. Rest of the so it's. It's taking elements of a lot of different things and hoping to keep the audience interested despite the fact. That it's all in.
Gavin Fields
Yeah, the way it's shot and written is that at the beginning, it feels like a play and it's also sort of shot like a teleplay, where everything's in white and and we tried to use these continuous shots and then as the film goes on and the plot develops, things get a lot more norri. And and the lighting becomes a lot more artificial looking and shots. You know, the edits cut quicker and it feels more like you're getting. More developed and involved into a movie than a play as the as the.
Shelby Grady
Plot developed. Yeah, we kept saying we wanted it to start as leave it to Beaver and end as, like, a a murder mystery kind of thing.
Gavin Fields
Dublins in the data.
Shelby Grady
Double indemnity.
Gavin Fields
It is.
Shelby Grady
We go on a big journey.
Katherine Stewart
So you, uh, you mentioned that you have several Mississippians and or Ole Miss grabs, maybe that you were in school with while while you were in our. Program involved in the. Can you talk a little bit about? How you involve those people and.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, definitely. So there's so many actually one of the lead characters, Junior is played by Houston settle, who was also a major. Did he get a film minor? And a film minor.
Speaker
I think so.
Shelby Grady
And he did a fantastic job. And then we had several of our crew members. We're from Mississippi and Winterville Miss Garrett Henderson was in the film.
Gavin Fields
Oh, right, yeah.
Shelby Grady
He got a film minor.
Gavin Fields
And he was a camera operator and he works professionally now as an AC. He and he does cinematography work for us a lot, so he graduated at the same.
Shelby Grady
Time like props master set decorator. He was also an Ole Miss grad and we were sort of pulling from because our budget was so low. We were pulling from friends as much as possible, even our. Like catering Manager is a just very close friend of ours. You know who was an old miss? Grad no. Oh, never mind. He was.
Gavin Fields
He was a Middle S grad, but then of course, you know, we.
Shelby Grady
He's not tough. He's from Mississippi.
Gavin Fields
Yeah, like we touched on so much of a network that we we created down there so. The set designer decorator and just helped with every design element. Really it was. Yeah, and.
Shelby Grady
Designed the whole set. He was the person who came in and was like, OK to make it look period appropriate. You know, you actually need 1930s like furniture instead of 1940s because they're. Or and they wouldn't have the money to buy.
Katherine Stewart
Have new things, sure.
Shelby Grady
He had such an incredible eye and just made our site beautiful, which was.
Gavin Fields
So important, we learned a lot from him, just like.
Shelby Grady
We did.
Gavin Fields
With him and then Alan helped it a lot. They helped a lot with the script. He saw the first draft and the second draft and gave notes and helped me sort of like challenged the things that I really like, wanted to keep. First things I couldn't really argue for. And what other?
Shelby Grady
Composer was uh, you know Jackson, miss from went from Jackson, Ms.
Speaker
Oh yeah.
Shelby Grady
friend of Gavins.
Gavin Fields
Windows apps, yeah.
Shelby Grady
There were. Just there's so many and we really. Always touch on the fact that, like the film, would not have been made without people film. Which was awesome.
Katherine Stewart
It's so exciting to hear about this too, because you know, this was before our current film production program, which is like a really expanded version of the cinema Minor. It's incredible that so much has come. Out of that, yeah.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, and it was. It was cool as well. We ended up shooting in a sound stage that was part of a College in opposite. And we used a couple of their students as part of our crew and it was just really exciting to see this sort of like next generation of film makers coming out of any school. And it was exciting to think about how that's going to be reflected at Olness as well.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, so you're. You're coming in to screen this film and also. Do a workshop. You talk a little bit about the workshop and about that.
Shelby Grady
So our plan is to hopefully do kind of a crash course in the logistics side of making a movie isn't, as you know, appealing as talking about the creative process because that's really fun. But there's so many things that we've learned through this process, things that. We did not know. Before this, that would have been really helpful to know going into it just in terms of like things you don't think about like where to start when you feel stuck fundraising, like thinking about film festivals just. Touching on a little bit of everything on more of the like nitty gritty side. Of making it.
Gavin Fields
Yeah, I mean. There's so many different ways to get a film made, and we can only speak from our perspective. But the I think when I was a student, what I'd love to hear is how you just get started, you know with the. Logistic aspects that seem sort of impossible when you kind of look at it at a on a higher level, but when you just start breaking it down with very very simple steps, how it becomes possible. So we're we're going to try and that's our guide post. We'd love for it to be more of like a conversation and you know. Any you know any sort of questions anybody has, we'd love to just talk about it and and be more conversational. With it.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, again with our low budget like we had, we both ended up wearing so many hats. And I think you know something when you're in in college, you. Who often are very laser focused on one creative element of, you know, whatever you're trying to pursue and thinking through, you know, as early as you can different skill sets that you might have and other things that you might bring to the table in order to accomplish whatever your goal is, I think is something that I would have loved to hear in college.
Speaker
Thank you.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah, absolutely. So. In addition to. That you have formed an actual production company, yeah. Tell us a little bit about that and what are some? Of the products that you're doing with that?
Shelby Grady
So we established little Cowboy in July and we were just sort of laying a lot of groundwork for a while. But we do. Like I just completely lost my. Train of thought. Do you want to?
Gavin Fields
We do with concept to delivery video production. So we do, you know some kind of aspect work that a creative agency will do. We do copywriting and we do. Concept and development script, writing all that stuff all the way up to edit and delivery. And we're also. Really trying to incorporate our own personal projects and little cowboy as well, so we are. We are very, very early in the pre production part of our next feature film that we want to make and we want to just continue fostering this company as something that feels not just commercial but kind of an umbrella for independent creative.
Shelby Grady
Commercial work. And on the commercial side. We're doing all kinds of things. Most recently we were doing some documentary style work, one for Tuskegee University in Alabama as a fundraising video for a new scholarship there. We did like a diversity, equity and inclusion training series. Uhm, for a large company we do brand work as well. It's really a little bit of everything, which keeps it really interesting, yeah. And yeah, like Gavin said. Hopefully as we grow, it will continue to be an umbrella for all of our creative work, not just commercial or, you know, brutal season.
Katherine Stewart
Do you have any advice for aspiring film makers or any students who are in our BFA film production program now?
Shelby Grady
We have so much you go ahead.
Gavin Fields
I mean, I think one thing that we try and do. And always have tried to do is continuously make new things and sort of encourage yourself to be restless about that and agitated about that and embrace it a bit. And so you know, we're always trying to think of the next. Project and write something new or edit something new or film something, or come up with proof of concepts and don't belabor past works you know. Try to move on from them when you know the time is right.
Shelby Grady
The time is right.
Gavin Fields
You know, come to terms of the fact that you can work on something and the entire world might not see it, and sometimes it's better to just put it out there and no one else sees it and you move on to the next thing. So I think we've learned the most from just continuously trying new things.
Shelby Grady
I think also like finding the joy. In getting to do the thing that you love, even if it's not exactly the thing that you want me looking at each like stepping stone as this is an opportunity for me to learn and grow and do what I love the most, even if it's for a day instead of a month, or even if it's, you know, this kind of project. I really want to be heading in this other direction, like really embracing where you are. I think that's a big one for me. And then also. Like, really pushing the boundaries of what you think is possible for yourself. I know at the beginning. Of brutal season like we said, like we truly had no idea what we were doing and. Just continuing to move forward with the process, even knowing that we were kind of fish out of water or we would need to ask for help or we'd need to ask someone like, hey, what do we do next? How do we do that? Who do we talk to? You know, like pushing through the discomfort of not knowing what you're doing. And it is so.
Gavin Fields
Yeah, and knowing what you bring to the table and. What kind of? Where you need the most help and allowing those you know, allowing yourself to learn from those kinds of people and being like, OK, I have, this is my skill set. I can trust myself here, but I need like a huge confidant when it comes to, you know. How it's lit, how it's, you know, the set design or whatever and just allowing yourself to learn from them and encourage them to be creative in, in their field.
Shelby Grady
And I think too, when it comes to being on a set like. Making sure to make every single person there feel like they're important. Their input is, you know, valuable and valid and and just, you know, treating people with respect in general. I think you know, unfortunately, sometimes in this industry that gets kind of lost in the intensity and stress of what you're trying to do. And you know, just making each person feel like their time is as valuable as it is, I think is such an important thing to, like, carry with you as you go through.
Katherine Stewart
And that's that's actually something that I've heard over and over interviewing people about their experiences in theater and film. One thing I hear is you can have all the talent in the world, but if you're a jerk, nobody's going to hire you.
Speaker
It's so true. It's.
Katherine Stewart
Just you don't be nice. Be respectful.
Shelby Grady
Yes, let's show up when you're supposed to show up, you know.
Katherine Stewart
Yeah. Be on time. It's it's really really simple but.
Speaker
It means a lot.
Gavin Fields
We joke about how the fact that you know, if we have a we double our budget for the next movie, we. Aren't going to be able to do something much bigger because we would have to just pay people more better because. Like a lot of, we had a bunch of people who worked on it for free and they're people. Who we've. Worked with forever and we owe.
Shelby Grady
Close, close friends.
Gavin Fields
We owe them favors or they vote us favors. We did music videos for them or I will be doing music videos for them forever or whatever. You know, we like build a trust that way, and those are people who, you know, they're in your network. You'll be working with them forever. If they do a favor for you on this project, you'll do a favor for them later. And then that kind of gives you the ability to, OK, I don't, I don't know. I need a best boy that I'd and I don't have people in my network who's that's their skill set. So because I'm going to, you know, I have favors being, you know, phoned in here, I'm going to pay this person. Right, you know, I'm going. To like really. Feed them well. We're going to feed them really well. We're going to pay them what they deserve because this is their this is a job for them and don't want them to show a show up to set miserable every day. And so it's sort of. Like a checks and balances that way of making sure that everyone feels like they are getting something out of it, either financially or creatively or you know. Favors that they can.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, it's like obviously walking that fine line where you never want to be taking advantage of Someone Like You.
Speaker
OK.
Shelby Grady
Want everyone there to want to be there? Whatever that motivation is, you know, if it's your best friend and you're calling in a favor and they're doing it for the creative joy of it, but you're not paying them, you want to make sure that the project is in. Fact a creative joy for them. You know, it's just like knowing why each person is there. I think when you're working on something like small scale like we we were.
Gavin Fields
You know.
Katherine Stewart
And speaks very much to the collaborative process and how many people it. Takes to make something happen.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, it takes so, so many people and you know, ideally you want those people to want to. Work with you again.
Gavin Fields
We really underestimated how many people we would need. I mean, I remember at the beginning thinking, wow, like. All the movies I watch, you know credit scroll will last four or five minutes. There's no way are ours will ever last that long. It'll be in our 20 people and then things just build on top of each other so fast and you start needing so many different hands and so many people's, you know.
Shelby Grady
Skills and our cast and crew is still relatively small and it. Was so much bigger than. We initially anticipated it would be so you know you just you need so many talented people to make a. Project with them together.
Katherine Stewart
Well, and you touched on this just really just kind of as I mentioned, but do you have any new projects coming up that you can? OK.
Shelby Grady
So we like, as Evan mentioned, we are in very, very early pre production for what will be the next feature. And right now we're just. It's such an interesting time to be doing this workshop because we're sort of back in the beginning phases again and like reviewing what our process was for brutal season because it's been a while at this point. You haven't been in product. In a, you know a few years so.
Gavin Fields
Oh, we started it being like, how do we do this? We are still just as lost. But you know, now we can think about, OK, we've been here before. It's not that scary. Let's break it down. But since brutal season, I think. Is it finished? There's like 3 1/2 screenplays that I've written, and it was the same thing. It was like there's one that's affordable.
Shelby Grady
We're more affordable than the others.
Gavin Fields
There's one that's. And it was part of, I guess, a series or something. I don't know. That includes brutal season. There are three screenplays that I wrote. That, yeah, yeah, trilogy.
Speaker
Kind of.
Shelby Grady
Thematic truth there's no brutal season 2.
Gavin Fields
Dramatic trilogy.
Shelby Grady
Coming, but this is completely different.
Gavin Fields
It's another chamber play that's an ensemble cast, but it all takes place in a car. So it's a little more uh, there's that cute cat. It's a little more. More challenging than it all taking place in the kitchen.
Shelby Grady
Yeah, it's Gavin. The way Gavin wrote it is it's sort of all told from the perspective of the car, it's kind of the the journey and death of a car.
Katherine Stewart
OK.
Shelby Grady
You know how that changes with different owners? Genres might change as you have different owners. So it's it's another like you go on a journey with it, similar to brutal season, but you know that's kind of one of the only concrete ties to it. It's just that takes place and kind of 1 central area and you know where you start is not the same as where you finish, yeah.
Katherine Stewart
So aside from, I'm sorry, Gavin, you were about.
Gavin Fields
To say something I was just going to say. We touched on it, but it's at at different times of different people's lives. Your life can feel like a like you're in the sort of generic identifiers of, you know. Yeah, right. So like, you know, at times, it feels like you're coming of age or at times, it feels like you're in a romance movie. Feels like your life feels like a thriller. It's times of high anxiety, so like it could be interesting to see all these different kinds of people and different parts of their lives and mix genres.
Shelby Grady
Right.
Gavin Fields
Consciously throughout the movie. So it's sort of like, feels like a series of shifting many movies, yeah.
Katherine Stewart
That sounds fascinating.
Shelby Grady
Well, hopefully it will turn out as. Fascinating to tell.
Katherine Stewart
So in terms of brutal season? Aside from your screening that you're doing. At the university next week, are there other ways that people can see that film? There, there are some things you can't. Talk about but.
Shelby Grady
So we are taking it to the Fargo Film Festival. If anyone's going to be in March 21st through 25th and then we turn around and go to the Phoenix Film Festival March 30th, April 2nd, it's really exciting.
Katherine Stewart
That's exciting. That's really exciting.
Shelby Grady
So that's that's big for us. And then yeah, we are getting very, very close to signing a distribution deal and to our understanding, once that's completed, then we'll start navigating. And just strategy in terms of where it lands, the distributor will start pitching it to different streaming platforms and cable and you know getting it available to rent. So once we have like all of those plans kind of locked into place, we can update the OS community on where they. Please we definitely want. As many people as possible to you know, see it cause we've worked so hard on it, yeah.
Katherine Stewart
That's so exciting. That's so exciting.
Shelby Grady
How are you? Hey.
Katherine Stewart
Well, it's been wonderful chatting with you both. Is there anything else you would? Like to share? With our audience.
Shelby Grady
Think so?
Gavin Fields
Yeah. No, I'm.
Shelby Grady
We're just, we're very grateful to all this community and just misses a general for really opening a lot of doors to to be where we are now.
Katherine Stewart
It's it's been great. Yeah, yeah. Well, again, thank you so much.
Shelby Grady
Thank you.
Katherine Stewart
Once again, that was Shelby Grady and Gavin Fields, 2 alums. For a department who have accomplished. So much since they graduate. Please check the show notes for more info about their film brutal season, their production company, Little Cowboy and their screening and workshop at the University of Mississippi next week. Until next time this is Stage & Screen.