Episode 102: "Thank You for Your Interest", a short film, with Ethan & Carmel Barsh

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcript

Larry (00:00):

Today's episode of specifically for Seniors is brought to you by Memory Lane tv. A streaming service made just for people living with dementia. It's full of calming sensory friendly videos that help reduce stress and lift mood and science backs it up. Memory Lane TV is available for both home use and in professional care facilities. More information and links to Memory Lane TV are in the show notes. Below

Larry (00:30):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh. Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (01:03):

We're going to take a break from politics and the voices of older adults on today's podcast and talk with a younger generation that keeps us inspired. I've got a real treat for you guys today. I was recently introduced to a compelling new voice in filmmaking, a bold young screenwriter and director whose creative vision and storytelling instincts make him as one to watch at this year's New York City short film Showcase. At New Plaza Cinema audiences were treated to his standout debut with his sharply observed short film. Thank you for your interest with a confident voice and keen eye for detail. Ethan explores the awkward, often observed dance of job hunting in today's world, delivering a story that is as poignant as it is darkly funny. Wanna say hello? Isha Ethan?

Ethan (02:12):

Yeah, thanks for that lovely introduction Larry, and thanks for having Carmel and I on this podcast.

Larry (02:19):

Front and center in the film is the talented young actress, a compelling new face whose performance is equal parts raw, relatable, and refreshingly real. Carmel brings the lead role to life with quiet power, capturing both frustration and hope that defines so many of life's transitional moments. A breakout performer whose screen presence is impossible to ignore with nuance and death far beyond her years. Carmel live as a performance that anchors the film and lingers with the audience long after the credits roll. Right now you wanna say hello? Carm.

Carmel (03:05):

Hello.

Larry (03:07):

Together, Ethan and Carmel, mark, an exciting new chapter in independent film, two emerging artists with voices Worth listening to. Stories worth telling. Alright. Alright. Full disclosure, today's guests are very special to me, not just because they're incredibly talented, but also because they happen to be my grandkids. So if I sound a little extra proud today, well, I really am, and I apologize in advance for any grandparent gushing. Thank you for supporting new talent and for indulging me just a little bit. Welcome to specifically for seniors, Ethan and Carmel Barsh.

Ethan (03:53):

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah.

Larry (03:57):

I'm gonna ask you to introduce the film and then we'll show it to everyone. Okay.

Ethan (04:02):

So yeah, thank you for Your interest is a film about the cycle of the job hunt. It follows an applicant that Carmel plays and it was inspired by my many years of job searching. Not just this most recent bout, but really what's been the past six years of my life and what has consumed it. And I wanted to make it because it's a, you know, process and series of emotions that I feel are pretty close to me at this stage in my life. And at the time we shot it with Carmel, it was a set of emotions that were very close to her life at the time as well. So it just felt like a good moment to make something that told this story. And it, on top of that it was just, you know, a easy story for us to, a natural story for us to tell. So,

Larry (05:02):

FILM DIALOGUE

And I just want to tell those folks who are just listening to this on the podcast in audio only, the film has very brief and limited dialogue. So if you're listening in just audio, you might wanna skip ahead about 11 minutes and we can pick up the conversation on the other side.

Larry (16:34):

Carmel. What drew you to the character? Did anything about her feel familiar?

Carmel (16:39):

Everything about her felt familiar. As Ethan mentioned, I was going through exactly that at the time. I was very frustrated with the job search and to have it enhanced by these visual effects that Ethan introduced. These practical effects, I should say, was it just felt right with the nosebleed and the tooth falling out. I was like, this is just the cherry on top of what I'm already feeling. And to be able to express that on camera was just right.

Larry (17:13):

You, you had a lot of acting parts with no dialogue. Was that tough to pull off?

Carmel (17:20):

You know, I think at first it was a matter of me just getting comfortable being in front of the camera and doing things in a few takes. But Ethan was great with his patience and holding the camera there and saying, let's do it again. Let's do it again. And each time I think I unlocked something a little bit more that got me closer to the actual character and just feeling the, as you mentioned before, the raw emotions of what I was already feeling from the job search. And it, it kind of just fell into place. It was a lot of patience and a lot of, let's do this again. Let's do another take. And just having to have that, you know, open attitude about it. And slowly I feel like I was able to find the emotion without dialogue just through all the takes that we did.

Larry (18:13):

We'll be back right after this message when you get to my age, forgetting names and trying to remember why you went into a room. A pretty common occurrences. Unfortunately, you also realize like I did, that a family member can develop a more serious cognitive problem. That's why I am really happy to introduce you to Memory Lane tv. A streaming service made just for people living with dementia. It's full of calming sensory friendly videos that help reduce stress and lift mood science backs it up. Care centers using memory lane TV report, big improvements and less need for medication memory. Lane TV is available for both home use, by family members and caregivers and in professional care facilities. More information and links to memory lane TV are in the show notes below. Check it out. And we are back. Ethan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show a brief clip without sound of that tooth falling out thing. Do you wanna describe it as we go along? Sure,

Ethan (19:41):

Yeah. So

Larry (19:43):

Let me get it, let me get it up on stage. Okay, there we go.

Ethan (19:48):

All right. So what you're seeing here is Carmel or the applicant flossing her teeth after waking up from a, a daze, a slumber that is maybe drug induced, maybe stress induced. And I guess what this is trying to convey and what the entire sort of day in the life of the applicant is trying to convey is the how it deteriorates your body. So what we did here was do you, do you want me to explain the practical side of it or

Larry (20:22):

Yeah, tell the folks what it's about and how you managed the video

Ethan (20:25):

So yeah, we did it by,having Carmel hold a dice in her hand while she's flossing and put a blood capsule in her mouth. And then when she goes to floss, we only show the top her top set of teeth and when we want to have the effect of the tooth falling out, she drops the dice bites down on the blood capsule and then shows her bottom teeth where we blacked out a tooth,to sort of misdirect the viewer from looking at healthy teeth to unhealthy teeth, even though in reality, you know, she wasn't picking at her bottom teeth. So it's not realistic in that sense, but it sort of fools the viewer and is effective in, you know, making it seem as though her tooth is really falling out. And I think the audio aspect of a dice dropping in the sink and the visual of bright red blood and that cutaway to the blood dripping down in the sink sort of,locks in that idea of a tooth falling out and that sort of deterioration.

Larry (21:37):

There was, there was another scene that was a scream scene way you superimpose two videos mm-hmm <affirmative>. On one another. Let's show, show that, and you can talk about that a little bit too.

Carmel (21:54):

Yeah. So this is sort of the inciting incident, I guess, where you are informed that this is a job applicant and this is the source of her misery is scrolling on Indeed or LinkedIn or wherever you look for jobs. And I just wanted to show that sort of mania and nightmarish scenario that it is applying for jobs and going on the same websites and seeing the same stuff every day. And the way we achieved this was doing one long take with her walking down to the computer and scrolling and kind of nodding off, and then a bunch of takes of her screaming and freaking out with a strobe light on. And then I just sifted through the footage and found little bits that I liked and kind of moved them around until they fell into a place that I felt it was an effective nightmare sequence. But really I think it was the strobe light and carmel's performance that made it so effective.

Larry (23:06):

And Carmel, speaking of your performance, that opening scene with you laughing in front of a fountain out in public in New York City I'm gonna play that clip as well and you can talk about that. Totally.

Carmel (23:25):

Yeah. We as I mentioned before, we did a bunch of takes not in this location, and then we landed on the fountain and it was just incredible. I honestly couldn't even see what Ethan was seeing on the camera. I was just sitting there cooking, doing my thing. The guy in the yellow checkered, whatever that is, was just absolutely serendipitous. He was not planted there. I so I, you know, I was just laughing. I was just trying to make myself laugh as much as possible and not thinking about anything that was going on around me. I feel like I'm lucky in the sense that I'm not bothered by people watching me or looking at me. And we really capitalized on that when trying to shoot this opening sequence. I was of the mindset of if people are looking at me and thinking that I'm weird or strange, then they're weird or strange because I'm just doing my thing. There's a dude with a camera over there, I'm doing my thing over here. You can connect the dots or you cannot. But I was just kind of like, anything that happens is just added to this experience. I was very in my zone again, Ethan there with the camera. My mom was there as well, so I was like, I have my people. They know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. I just need to do my thing.

Larry (24:54):

If, yeah, I don't know, we got the courage to do that just in public.

Carmel (25:01):

I mean, like I said, I I'm not bothered by that. If I have my purpose, all that matters is that I know what I'm doing and I just sort of let it go from there. It's really fun for me, honestly. It's, it's silly.

Larry (25:18):

I, I I've gotta, I gotta ask Ethan, what was it like working with family? Did it make things easy or was it hard

Ethan (25:27):

Oh, yeah, it definitely made things easy. It was a blast. There was a lot of laughs while we were making this. And it's sort of the way that I, I've made things in the past and it's also just the people that I've, you know, bounced a lot of creative ideas off and had a lot of creative conversations with in the past. So it just felt natural to work with my dad and my mom and Carmel because that's people that I speak creative with creatively with quite frequently. In terms of casting also, it just made sense in terms of how they fit into their roles. You know, Carmel obviously a job applicant at the time, so that was an obvious casting choice for myself. My mom, you know, encapsulated a character that is maybe familiar to her maybe in within her somewhere or somewhere in between, however you wanna balance that out. And then similarly with my dad, you know, I think everybody who's worked a job in their life has had a blood sucking boss of some kind or a blood sucking hiring manager or been on a Zoom call with somebody who they feel has maybe become a zombie towards their in their career. And so, and I, so I knew that my dad had experienced that and that would be a character that he'd be able to channel. So that was the choice there. I

Larry (27:00):

What was the biggest thing you learned about making this film about storytelling and directing and even about yourself?

Ethan (27:08):

I think this was really just a confidence booster for me in terms of my ability to create things because I wanted to just, I wanted to make something that was sort of low friction and that we could do in a day and there wouldn't be a huge time investment or monetary or material investment and just see what we can do with as few resources as possible. And that was the goal, and I had no real intentions with it. And then seeing the finished product and getting to screen it in front of an audience a few weeks ago and getting the reaction that I did was really big in terms of my, you know, confidence in creating stuff like this. And I would say just what I learned is to trust myself in that process. Yeah.

Larry (28:03):

I know you were taking some improv courses and doing some standup comedy. Did that help acting in this film?

Carmel (28:13):

Absolutely. I, I think those classes have boosted my confidence in just trusting what I do and what I put out there. If nothing else, it was just a confidence thing of like, if I give this enough time and effort, and again, I'm super lucky that Ethan was patient the way that he was and was like, let's do another take. Let's do it again. I think what I grabbed from those classes was just a confidence in what I was putting out there. And it felt really good. It just complimented, you know, what I had already learned.

Larry (28:50):

Talk. Do you wanna talk about the standup bit that you do?

Carmel (28:54):

Of course. I, so I did stand up for a while. I haven't done it in a bit, but I've been dabbling more in the improv world, which I really enjoy because of the no planning aspect. I love seeing just what I can come up with on the spot and what whoever I am performing with comes up with on the spot. I love the idea of working with what we have. Very similar to what Ethan was saying about this film, where it's low monetary, low material investment. Improv is very, at its core, doing as much as you can with absolutely nothing. There's no props, there's no costumes, there's no script, no planning, none of that. And I think similar to this film, it's making the most out of pretty much nothing. And that's what I love about improv, and I was able to bring a lot of that to this film, which is incredibly low if no budget at all, and just using what we had. And I think that the skills that I had been learning slash I'm still learning complimented this whole production very well in that way.

Larry (30:08):

Yeah, I, I know it, I've been taking a couple of improv courses myself, so it, it is a lot of fun. It is a challenge, but it's great when, when one of these little episodes comes together. Yeah,

Carmel (30:25):

Definitely.

Larry (30:27):

Ethan are you planning any other films?

Ethan (30:29):

Yeah I have an idea that outlining right now and planning to shoot actually on August 2nd is our tentative shooting day. And it'll be a similar situation where, you know, we, it's another very low material investment time investment also using family members as the cast. And the general premise is that it's about a subletter moving into an apartment and the way that that affects a long-term tenant of that space and his journey through cohabitating with somebody new.

Larry (31:19):

Where are people gonna be able to see it?

Ethan (31:21):

Do you know yet? It should be the same YouTube channel that I posted. Thank you for your interest on, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with the film, whether I'm gonna try to do festivals, do the short showcase again, or just outright post it. It really all just depends on when I finish editing it, how much I like it.

Larry (31:41):

How do, how do people get to the YouTube channel?

Ethan (31:45):

Just go on YouTube, type in Broom Tree films, three separate words and it should pop right up. If you see a white tree and a black background, that's us.

Larry (31:56):

And people can subscribe.

Ethan (31:59):

Oh, they can definitely subscribe. I can't promise a ton of uploads, but I can promise that they'll all be unique, original short films like this one.

Larry (32:09):

Oh, this has been great. Anything else you guys wanna comment on?

Carmel (32:17):

Just how much of a joy it was to work on this. This is not the first time that I've acted in one of Ethan's films, and I hope it's not the last. I think for anyone out there listening, no matter what age you are, if you have an idea it can be put to work. You know, I like Ethan's whole philosophy of doing as much as you can with as little as possible. I think there's something big to be taken away from that. And so again, for anyone listening or anyone who knows anyone who's trying to make something, it can absolutely be done with what you have. And it's really exciting to see what comes of it. And this is a great example of that.

Ethan (32:57):

Yeah. Thanks. Carmel,

Larry (32:58):

Ethan? Yeah, Ethan Carmel just brought up another film. Do you want to tell people about it?

Ethan (33:05):

Sure. I made a film called Skiff a number of years ago. It was sort of my, one of my pandemic projects. I was sent home from school, didn't have an internship or a job or anything of real substance to take up my time, so I adapted my dad's short story skiff into a script and a made a film of it, which you can also find on the internet on Vimeo, if you just Google skiff, Vimeo should pop right up. And yeah, it, it was fun. It was definitely more involved. And I think now revisiting this endeavor of making more things, again, I definitely am more focused on just creating and less focused on making a whole production out of things. Because right now, really I just want to make things, I think is a very satisfying process this time around and a part of my brain that I want to continue to exercise and I don't really know exactly where this is going or what the next step would be, other than, you know, just keep making things like this and define a clearer creative voice for myself.

Ethan (34:32):

And, you know, I hope that a direction will become clearer to me as I continue to do this, but right now it's just for fun and creative exercise.

Larry (34:44):

Hey guys, this has been great. Thanks for coming on. I love you guys.

Ethan (34:52):

Thank you for having us. We love you and we love your podcast. And hello to everyone listening.

Carmel (34:59):

Yeah, this is a big moment. We've, we made it onto specifically for seniors. Been a long time listener.

Larry (35:05):

Thanks guys.

Ethan (35:07):

Yeah,

Ethan (35:08):

Thank you.

Speaker 8 (35:12):

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