Writer/Director/Creator Veena Sud talks to The Inside Reel about structure, visual style and technology in regards to her Quibi series "The Stranger" recut as a feature film for Hulu.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 >> You wanna know what this story is?
00:15 I will break you.
00:17 [MUSIC]
00:26 >> I'm an NYU alumnus as well.
00:28 So I love that fact.
00:30 But it's also the one thing I learned there at the film school that always
00:35 comes back to me no matter what is structure, is looking at the structure of
00:39 story.
00:40 And obviously with this specific project, both in its inception but
00:45 now with the recut, you have to look at it in terms of structure because you wrote it.
00:50 And the way the structure, the act and the progression works.
00:54 Can you talk about that and how that transformation helped you make it more
00:59 sort of dynamic in your mind as you cut it to a feature?
01:02 >> Yeah, I mean, that's a great question because structurally what I usually
01:08 like to do is unfold stories quite quietly and quite soberly.
01:12 And with 10 minute episodes, that requires a lot more propulsion.
01:19 And so when Jeffrey and I first talked about the idea of 10 minute episodes,
01:24 there were so many things that were interesting about it,
01:28 especially the platform that it was going to be on.
01:31 And the idea of the vertical versus horizontal.
01:33 But I think for me, as someone who tells quiet and
01:37 kind of stories that breathe a lot, to be able to just go, go, go, go.
01:43 And then to find material that fit into that high intensity structure was
01:48 really important and new and exciting and novel for me.
01:52 [MUSIC]
01:55 >> Hey, what happened?
01:57 >> My passenger from tonight, he pulled a knife on me.
02:00 [MUSIC]
02:02 He attacked me.
02:03 [MUSIC]
02:04 If he finds me, he will kill me.
02:08 >> Did it create like certain character beats yet?
02:11 Because I remember talking to Jeff and I think it was to Sue,
02:14 I think about Quibi and about how you have to make story work.
02:19 But obviously, a lot of what you do is all based on character,
02:24 finding those moments, finding those things that'll jump out.
02:27 And you found them in these specifically with Micah's character.
02:32 Could you talk about that and sort of seeing that path, but
02:36 making those notes work?
02:38 >> Yeah, I mean, I think more than anything I've ever done,
02:43 the palette, the actual thing that I got to create a painting on,
02:49 completely determined the story.
02:51 So because it was vertical, we had to talk about Z depth.
02:56 We had to talk about moving the character constantly,
02:59 the camera behind the character, so that we would feel kind of novelty as viewers
03:03 and not wise things being cut off left to right.
03:06 But we would never feel kind of a lack of information.
03:09 And then with 10 minute episodes again, coming out of it,
03:14 I tried to not repeat.
03:16 There's a lot of, my God moments, right?
03:18 When you come out of a story and then you're asking audiences to come back
03:22 after 10 minutes when you barely know a character, you barely care.
03:26 And there's so much material out there, why should they come back?
03:29 It had to be plot and it had to be knowing what comes next for sure.
03:34 There's 10 of them within 10 minutes.
03:37 So if I had an hour, if I had 60 minutes, I could repeat an episode out.
03:44 I could repeat the DNA of an episode out and maybe people wouldn't notice,
03:49 but within a 10 minute span, they will start noticing really quick
03:54 that I'm doing the same one trick pony kind of thing.
03:57 So what it meant was I had to think about what's the environment
04:03 that's really interesting for someone watching.
04:06 What's a reversal that's really interesting and unexpected?
04:09 What's the hero reversal?
04:11 There's a moment and I'll spoiler alert, mid-ish,
04:16 a little bit before mid-ish season where the hero, our hero,
04:22 our narrator is not reliable.
04:25 And that becomes this moment.
04:27 I think that I love that moment so much and her performance
04:30 is so extraordinary in that moment.
04:33 When you realize the person you're watching and rooting for
04:37 may have made it up all in your own mind.
04:39 I'm an open book, ask me anything.
04:43 Are you famous?
04:45 I mean, you don't have to tell me if you are.
04:47 Why would you think that?
04:49 You live in a mansion and you're my age.
04:52 Oh, no, that's not my house.
04:54 Oh, OK. Do you live with your parents?
04:57 No.
04:59 Actually, I have no idea who lives there.
05:01 What do you mean?
05:05 Did you have to have that trajectory within her psychology
05:11 from the get go?
05:12 Did you have that as sort of like a pinpoint?
05:15 And how did that change once you figure out the environment
05:19 that you were making each one in?
05:21 With that, I obviously don't give too much away,
05:23 but the over structure, arching structures really need on that.
05:27 Yeah, I mean, you know, as you know, when I was directing it
05:31 as a writer, I kind of knew as when I was finished that this
05:36 you know, this midpoint would become
05:38 narrator's not reliable midpoint.
05:40 But for the actor, you know what Mike and I talked about
05:43 was simply this has happened before to you.
05:46 You know, this has happened.
05:48 It really happened.
05:50 No one believed you then and no one's going to believe you now.
05:54 You know, and so and he's smart enough,
05:58 the guy who's chasing you through the night to know that
06:01 and to play on that.
06:03 And that is what he's going to be using to make you kind of
06:07 collapse in on yourself, which he does.
06:11 And she kind of tries to reel herself back, you know,
06:13 and there's this moment where she's like, it happened.
06:16 It happened, you know, and you can see that in a part of her
06:19 doesn't even believe that it did anymore.
06:23 So.
06:24 About 40, 45 minutes ago, a sharing economy driver,
06:30 much like yourself, dropped me off and I rang the bell.
06:36 When the woman that lives there opened the door,
06:37 I shot her in the face.
06:39 That's it, that's funny.
06:45 No, not being funny.
06:47 Now, the whole tech element of it,
06:52 obviously that plays into it and sets something more completely
06:55 surrounded by which we weren't surrounded as much by even 10
06:58 years ago.
06:59 But it brings into this aspect perspective and perception.
07:02 You know, you always think back to the Matrix and the Matrix
07:05 did certain ideas of what perspective and perception
07:08 means.
07:09 But so have you in some of your projects.
07:11 Could you talk about the importance of using,
07:14 as you say, there's a switch perspective,
07:16 but a perception, whether you're talking about Carl,
07:18 whether you're talking about JJ as a very specific character,
07:22 but then obviously when you go to Micah's character.
07:25 Right.
07:26 I mean, in terms of the technology that exists,
07:29 I mean, we're moving at a breakneck speed,
07:32 as we all know with the whole AI thing.
07:34 And so a part of me was conscious that, you know,
07:38 when it came out, even though the timeline was very quick,
07:42 I didn't want it to feel dated.
07:44 So I took some obvious fictional liberties
07:47 with what is possible with AI.
07:49 But a lot of it was also based on Cambridge Analytica
07:54 and what happened.
07:55 And so I spoke to the AI programmer
07:57 who dealt with a lot of that,
07:59 analyzing kind of what's happening.
08:01 At the time we were like, oh my God, you know,
08:03 our contacts are being shared.
08:05 And she said, it's far worse than that.
08:07 The algorithm, you know, and the moment she said this to me,
08:10 I said, okay, we got to put this in.
08:13 The algorithms now on social media
08:17 are getting very close to be able to predict.
08:20 For example, if someone goes into recovery
08:22 from alcohol or drug addiction,
08:24 the algorithm looking at your feed,
08:27 looking at your friends, looking at your everything
08:30 is going to be able to predict whether or not
08:32 you're actually going to recover or not.
08:34 So it's a version of minority report
08:37 that's probably already here.
08:39 I wanted that to be baked into kind of the entire story
08:44 that technology's out there, it's coming for us.
08:48 She uses it at the very end, you know, to her benefit,
08:51 which I loved.
08:53 You know, she was able to kind of flip it on the bad guy
08:55 and use the technology against him and figure it out.
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