“It’s a hell of a drug, storytelling…” Amy Scott takes us on her journey of storytelling through cutting and directing the messages that the world must explore! Her tenacity and fearlessness in pursuing the films she wanted made, her ingenuity and painstaking detail, her drive and talent, and the fact that she taught herself how to expertly fine tune her narrative and lovingly portray her subjects while editing and directing is beyond inspiring. This conversation explores the subject of her Sundance nominated film “Hal, her life in Los Angeles, motherhood, 70’s cinema, invaluable how to’s, getting those creative chills, crowdfunding, and why she wouldn’t be in any other career.
Amy Scott is a Los Angeles based filmmaker and editor originally from Lawton, Oklahoma. Throughout her twelve year career she’s created films, shorts and music videos. After receiving her BFA in Film Studies from University of Oklahoma she spent a decade in Chicago, Illinois working as a documentary filmmaker, editor and as media producer for the University of Chicago, the head digital archivist at the Chicago History Museum under Studs Terkel. Scott also taught as an instructor of documentary film at Chicago Filmmakers. Scott is best known for her work as editor on projects such as The History of Caves, Me, The Beast & The Angel, and Fully Loaded. Her Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize nominated feature-length directorial debut Once I Was: The Hal Ashby Story follows the life and career of filmmaker Hal Ashby.
Tune in
Resources
LINKS:
- Amy Scott IMDB
- http://hal.oscilloscope.net/
- Hal Official Trailer
- https://www.amyelizabethscott.
com/ - https://www.kindlinggroup.org/
QUOTES:
“I just needed to know that there was something outside of the four walls or the city limits that I lived in, and I needed to know that there was a giant world out there of culture that I could go and explore.”
“Most of all I loved interviewing people, and so that kind of stuck with me and I think that’s the route I took with journalism and then crossed over into documentary films.”
“In documentary it is a complete snake on its tail.”
“You think you know the story, but then you get in, and you start watching every frame of footage that you shot and inevitably a different story will emerge and that’s when you can really dig in and kind of really craft what it is that you’re trying to say with your film.”
“Cut to what you want to see when you want to see it. And that’s it. It can be that simple.”
“We were wrapping up the film, and then I had this dream that I’d smoked a joint with Hal and he was telling me, he’s like, “There’s more archival, kid. You gotta go find it. You’re not done yet.”
“There’s nothing more fascinating to me than other people’s stories, and I think as humans we look to each other for support and knowledge.”
“It’s a hell of a drug, storytelling.”