They say "write what you know" to start your filmmaking career. In this episode, my guest, Jake Ringsell, makes the case to create films about subjects you don't know. If it works, that's great, but if it doesn't, he concludes, then you've learned something.
This is advanced, gutsy filmmaking, and I'm here for it with director-editor-musician Jake Ringsell. His new film, now streaming on YouTube, is called THE RALLY (2024). The tagline for the film is, "mortality is brought to the fore when a terminally ill woman goes on a camping excursion with her best friend."
It's more than that, though. It's something beautiful that will move you, and I'm so glad to talk with Jake for this episode.
In this episode, Jake and I discuss:
Jake's Indie Film Highlights: FESTIVAL OF SLAPS (2023) dir. by Abdou Cisse; OLYMPUS LOST (2025) dir. by Amadeus Redha
Memorable Quotes:
“I think [THE RALLY] is really relatable. I think anyone has their own story that it reminds them of or might remind them of.”
“We were just about to shoot the first shot, and this isn’t a joke, and we had a line of about 50 nudists.”
“If you’re too close to something, even if you’re writing a song, if you write something that hurts a bit too much, it’s not going to be as great if you can look at it with hindsight.”
“ If we'd made a film and they were like, that's not how two women...talk to each other, that's great because then we've learned something”
“Somebody is going to take this as an app idea, but you should connect musicians with filmmakers.”
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