Trenton Reynolds: this is room in the trees a podcast about storytelling authenticity crawling into holes. And berries.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And the poison in them.
Trenton Reynolds: The poison in the berries.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: The show is hosted by Trent Reynolds and myself, Sabrina Ward-Harrison. Show notes, including links and other information, can be found at roominthetrees.com. You can follow us on Instagram. Trent is at Trent Reynolds Art, and I am at Sabrina Ward-Harrison on Instagram.
Trenton Reynolds: We got some feedback. feedback from the last episode on composition and we also had some interest in the the idea of doing um critiques online critiques cool yes so uh we will continue to pursue that idea maybe can you share the feedback Tammy H said, I really love this episode. The talk of composition is interesting for sure. To watch for how several paintings can stay the same, even with different subject matters, is a good awareness. I like the rapport and respect between you two. I would love to have my art critiqued. I'm always looking for new insights from fresh eyes. Thank you. Thank you, Tammy.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Tammy's in Untethered, was in and took Untethered.
Oh, was she?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Yep, she's a great participant.
Trenton Reynolds: And then we have another message from Susie L. She said, "Loved this episode. I found the whole conversation surrounding composition interesting. I never thought of the edge of whatever surface I'm working on as being a factor."
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Cool. Oh, she's ready for a book. She's ready.
Trenton Reynolds: Is that what you talked about? Oh, making a book. Making a book.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And that, side note about that, people have been asking about when they can find out more information about Liberate, the book course. And so all of that comes out the last week of April, first week of May. So the registration and information will all kind of happen in one gust of excitement around the very end of April. And doors for registration will open immediately. for May 1st. So people can be getting, all that information is going to come out. There's going to be some videos that we'll be launching at the very end of the month. So stay tuned for all that. And be sure you're on my mailing list. you can go to Sabrina Ward Harrison dot info if you aren't on it and get yourself on the wait list by just putting your name in and in the window that comes up when you go to the site listen and we have our video coming out
Trenton Reynolds: next week next week oh decisive action cannot wait for your feedback everyone's feedback about
Sabrina Ward Harrison: that and we want to make more of them and do some classes uh you can see a trailer
Trenton Reynolds: on the website roominthetrees.com it is dynamite
Sabrina Ward Harrison: to be back in California. Dynamite. Dynamite, man. It is so good to be back here in the Bay Area. Wow. It's been so many years. What was I thinking?
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I just came back from taking an Explorer. I went back to my old art school, which I haven't been back to, and just roamed around. The school's expanded. It's California College of the Arts, and it used to be called CCAC, now CCA. I was there the first year that the San Francisco campus opened, so it was much smaller and expanded out to a big, big, beautiful modern campus. But I was roaming the old part of the building that I remember coming in for my critiques and I went into the bathroom I used to hide in. You used to hide in? Yeah, I used to hide in it occasionally, you know, just to try to ground myself and get centered before a critique. Yeah, so it's really great to be back and taking it all in.
Trenton Reynolds: Does it bring back not just memories, but just the... feelings of what you did there and the experiences that you, you know, just the energy of that time.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And what's in a full circle is that this morning I had a conversation with Sam Lamott on his podcast, hello human. And he was asking a listener question, which was about, um, I wish I could remember her name, but she was asking about a certain page that said, you know, with my bruised knee, messy hair, and chapped lips, I'm splendidly imperfect. Another bath it will be. And the question was, do you remember writing that? And it was actually, you know, I found that journal page recently where I'd written in my journal that. And I actually remember when I was telling him, I was saying I remember that feeling. It was during that being in art school and feeling like, well, feeling that way and admitting it. I hadn't really ever written about those, like, well, I'll just admit that I'm just kind of this way right now and I don't know if that makes sense, but to be then back on that land that I'm like, yep, this is where I was here with my chapped lips, bruised knees, and messy hair just making it through. And also just a learning environment of school, I'm sure for you with... The Art Institute, just walking around and seeing critiques going on and just be like, man, I want to be in there.
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah, it's hard not to be. So when we were there in Chicago in October, we went and walked through some of the buildings that Laura and I had gone to at the Art Institute in Chicago. Yeah, it's hard not to be jealous, like, just because it's it's it's expanded as well and there's, you know, new fab lab and like the studios are amazing and everything is like new cafeteria and I don't know. It's just like, you guys don't understand what you've got. This is amazing.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of worn in a bit more. It just feels like it's all cool and there's just more stuff. Yeah, it's kind of weathered. in a cool way. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That's exciting. It was great. It was really cool to be back. And I'm staying at my friend Bly's house, who I remember just, just, it's just, it's funny not seeing people for so long and how you can kind of pick up right where you left off and We're sort of talking in a funny voice. We used to talk. They're like, hello, hey, little people. And you had that recently with Emily Roberts, didn't you? You saw an old friend from high school.
Trenton Reynolds: Yes. Yeah, we had a really, really nice time. I went with her for a drive to Santa Barbara area, and we stopped and ate at this burger joint that was right on the ocean. It was beautiful. But yeah, it's like there's nothing like sitting down with somebody that you have that deep history with, you know, and you've seen them go through their life and seen their path.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And just people with inside jokes from a long time ago. You know, you and Emily have a lot of laughs.
Trenton Reynolds: yeah I met Emily in art class as well I met you in art class I met Emily in 7th grade Mrs. Sanderson's class
Sabrina Ward Harrison: okay
Trenton Reynolds: do you remember Mrs. Sanderson?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: yeah I think that's where I met I think I met your brother there a little crush on your brother back in the old days sixth, seventh grade, Sanderson's art class.
Trenton Reynolds: Anyway, yeah, it was wonderful to see her. I don't, she lives up in La Cunada, which is not that far away, but still, you know, just life, life is busy and it's hard to make time to just hang out for a bit. And it is gorgeous right now in California. It is perfect.
It is.
Trenton Reynolds: like the it's not too hot there's nice cool breeze and it's just perfect temperature everything it's just in the sun is shining the plants are green the hills are still like bright green from all the rain that we got and i don't know there's something just so glorious about these this past week yeah It's just been really beautiful. We just had, I think, four. Four new people joined the studio space. Oh, cool. And yesterday, I worked with two ceramicists who have joined the studio space to build out a table and some racks for ceramics in that front room. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah. Yeah. were the kiln is. So now that space is looking more like legit, like well utilized. And I don't know. I just, you know this about me. I very much enjoy things looking purpose built and everything kind of... you know, well organized. So, so I'm excited about that. And the people that are coming in are just really solid, great people. I'm excited for them to be there. And we were all over there today and there's, everybody's working and somebody ordered in a pie. Trevor did actually, he said, he started a new tradition pie Fridays and, And I guess there's a pie shop called Pie Hole and they deliver. So he had a pie delivered. What kind? I don't even know.
It was purple.
Trenton Reynolds: It was purple with pistachios on top. Really tasty. He told me it was not a usual, like a normal flavor. You know, I can't even hazard a guess. It was a strange name. Like Loganberry or something. who eats loganberry
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I don't know
Trenton Reynolds: where does loganberry come from
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I'll investigate Aren't they small, round, little berries? I wonder where they get the name. I've got to find that out.
Trenton Reynolds: But it is one of those berries that every once in a while, like you'll run across, you know, some product that has Logan berry in it. And you're like, what?
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I feel like it's like a sort of tart, but then really sweet. Yeah, Currant. Mmm, Currant's good.
Trenton Reynolds: You've got Currant's good.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Logan. I wonder where the name came from. Who's Logan?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Remember Mr. Logan?
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah, Logan was down by the river and found a berry.
Trenton Reynolds: Let's call it Loganberry.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Okay, the Loganberry is a hybrid of blackberry and raspberry.
Hey.
Trenton Reynolds: A hybrid.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: The plant and the fruit resemble the blackberry more than the raspberry, but the fruit color is a dark red rather than black as blackberries.
Trenton Reynolds: Who knew berries were so intermixable?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: The poison berry.
Trenton Reynolds: Maybe they aren't.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: It's across between the European raspberry and the European blackberry. The American dewberry and Loganberry.
Trenton Reynolds: Wait, they're all mixtures of raspberry and blackberry?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: The boysenberry is across among four fruits. Oh, four? The European raspberry, European blackberry, the dewberry, and the loganberry. Yes, it was the Knott's Berry Farm. That is right, correct. I hope he's a little bit of education thrown into the mix here with their program.
That's right.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Let's just finalize with what flavor of berry would be your favorite?
Trenton Reynolds: I have to admit, I am, like, when it comes to jam, I really do like the boysenberry. Like, I'll go to the store just for boysenberry, Knott's boysenberry. Really? I don't know if it's jelly or jam. I'm not even sure if I really understand. Maybe this is embarrassing to admit. I don't know if I know the difference between jelly and jam. Yeah, so jam has...
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I knew that came out like that. Just go ahead.
Trenton Reynolds: I'm sorry. You're good.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I felt really good that I knew the answer to that. I'm really good about it. So jam has the seeds in it and jelly doesn't have the seeds in it.
Oh. I did not know that.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: And I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that. Like the jelly consistency would be different, but jam is, you got the little bits and the So you prefer jelly, do you?
Trenton Reynolds: - No, I like jam better. I like the bits. Like the seeds.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: - I would say I'm a raspberry. My grandmother used to make fresh raspberry jam and I love raspberry jam.
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, they're all so good.
Yeah.
Trenton Reynolds: If you know of anybody that has developed their own berry, I'd be curious to hear about that. Tell us about your berries.
Trenton Reynolds: what berry is native to wisconsin there there must be you know states have flowers do states
Sabrina Ward Harrison: have berries do states have berries okay what is the state what is the state berry
Trenton Reynolds: california must be boysenberry i can't imagine there's a more famous california native berry apparently there are no california state berries Governor Gavin Newsom declared avocados as the state fruit, almonds as the state nut, artichokes as the state vegetable, and rice as the state grain. There are no state berries.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: The Wisconsin state fruit is the cranberry. So California is the avocado and Wisconsin is the cranberry.
Trenton Reynolds: Well, there you go. New Jersey. Oh, I've got a whole list down here. What's the banana? Who's the banana? I don't know if anybody's got the banana. Okay, maybe I'm misunderstanding this list. But North Carolina, strawberry. Okay. New Jersey, blueberry. Okay. Kentucky is a glass of milk.
Shut up.
Trenton Reynolds: I don't understand this list.
Trenton Reynolds: Georgia, unsurprisingly, is a peach. Florida, key lime pie. California is avocado. And Alaska is salmon. So I guess those are just maybe state favorites or identifying fruits.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: So who are we? Tell us a little bit about who our guest is this week.
Trenton Reynolds: This week we invited a studio mate of mine on, and his name is Trevor Albert. Trevor is a movie producer who also paints, and really interesting background, and he runs a... comedy film school associated with Second City in Chicago, and just has a very unique perspective on art making because of, you know, a very different background. So in this conversation, we talk about his experiences in making movies, his history and how he came up through the ranks. We talk about his about film and his film school and Harold Ramis and, and he was the gopher in Caddyshack.
No big deal.
Trenton Reynolds: And here is our conversation with Trevor Albert.
Trevor Albert: Some podcasts are, feel like homework to listen to, you know, some educational ones that I listened to and, summer feel like people talking, but I really don't want to spend any time with them. And you guys are somewhere in between. I mean, I want to spend time with you guys, and they're sort of interesting. And I mean, the other thing is, I know Trent from hanging out with him in the studio, and he's, those hangouts are fleeting because he's rarely here for very long. So I feel like I know him much better listening to the podcast than I do from spending time with them here. So part of it is like me knowing somebody and then getting to know a lot more about them by listening to them, you know, talk extemporaneously.
Trenton Reynolds: And we've talked about that before. Just coming to the studio serves a very specific purpose in my day to day in my life. And it's not, you know, it's usually to unplug and unwind. So when I'm here, it's not necessarily in the same mode as being, you know, in a comfort on a podcast.
Trevor Albert: Where does the podcast fit into all that? I thought you meant the podcast is your chance to unwind.
Trenton Reynolds: It is in a way. I guess maybe the difference is between unwinding and unplugging. Yeah, yeah. Coming to the studio is a chance for me to get my hands dirty and just to focus on making. Yeah, yeah. It is much more kind of internal for me than whereas when I'm at work or even on the podcast, it's all about engaging and interacting so just different roles I guess
Trevor Albert: yeah anyway so yeah so I'm a fan
Sabrina Ward Harrison: do you have a website Trevor that I can look at while we're talking
Trevor Albert: yeah you can go to Trevor Albert just type in TrevorAlbert.com I think will take you probably to
Trenton Reynolds: Me or a football player's website? There's a baseball player named Trent Reynolds. Yeah.
Name Trent. Is there? Yeah.
Trevor Albert: I thought we were talking about me.
Trenton Reynolds: Now we're talking about you. I'm just saying. I was trying to relate to you.
Trevor Albert: I'm trying to create common ground here. There's a sports person named after all of us.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: There's some random girl in England named Sabrina Harrison.
Trevor Albert: Oh, wow. Does she play a sport or is she just- She's just some person.
Trenton Reynolds: I think a very good cricket player, I believe.
Okay. Okay.
Trenton Reynolds: so Trevor Albert very well known as it turns out for his starring role as Punxsutawney Phil the puppeteer and I thought you were oh am I going to get that wrong no but you're so close
Trevor Albert: this is so embarrassing I thought for sure I was going to get this right no a gopher who has no name in a different movie Caddyshack
Trenton Reynolds: I thought you were Punxsutawney Phil in Groundhog's Day.
No. Oh, man. Mm-hmm.
Trevor Albert: Sorry. You ruined my whole intro.
Oh, wow.
Trevor Albert: Well, maybe it's going to help your whole intro. Yeah, I think. Have we started yet? This is embarrassing.
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah. Oh, wow. We started half an hour ago.
Trevor Albert: We're going to have to cut this part out because I got this horribly wrong. This may be the best part. This is the way people actually remember stuff.
Trenton Reynolds: Exactly. It's true. Okay, so Trevor Albert. Wow, you got my name right. Well, that's a start. I feel pretty good about that. Well known for his role as the gopher in Caddyshack. Right. Which is a favorite movie of anybody born in or you know, I guess conscious in that time. Yeah. Okay, so now that I've bungled your introduction, why don't you, let's. You want to start again? Well, can you tell me how you'd introduce yourself?
Trevor Albert: Oh, how I would introduce myself? Yeah. Hi, my name's Trevor Albert. Nice to meet you. But you are, you are famous. Well, I don't know, famous. No, I was a. A celebrity. I was a production assistant on my first movie that I ever worked on. and the lowest person on the movie. And there was a point in that movie, Caddyshack, where they were trying to figure out how they were going to get the puppet to appear from the green on the golf course. And some stuff on movies is sort of... fly by the seat of your pants. You know, you sort of find solutions during the time you're shooting. And this was one of the things they hadn't really quite figured out. And so the prop people on the movie started digging a huge hole in which they were going to have, you know, the puppet was going to appear out of the behind the green. But the hole got so deep that nobody was willing to go in the hole to hold the puppet. And for various reasons. And eventually I saw everyone pointing at me. And the next thing I know, I was getting... you know, the puppet was put on the end of my hand and I was getting pushed into the hole. Awesome. And so, so fame was really thrust upon me. I did not go looking for it.
Right.
Trenton Reynolds: Is that, did you get a credit for that?
Trevor Albert: I did not get a credit for it.
Trenton Reynolds: They just. put you in that hole made you endure that for no reward at all
Trevor Albert: no I don't think anyone knew that anyone would be speaking about that puppet ever let alone 40 years later the assistant to the director left after about a week of pre-production and again everyone looked around to see who could be the assistant and they pointed at me and I became an assistant to Harold, in that the director was Harold Ramis.
Trenton Reynolds: And that is where your relationship with Harold Ramis began. It is. For those that aren't familiar with who he is, he was a Ghostbuster. He was one of the original, the nerdy one.
Trevor Albert: He was, well, he wrote Ghostbusters and then was one of the actors in Ghostbusters. Right. And he wrote a bunch of movies. Before he wrote Caddyshack and directed, he wrote a movie called Animal House. Oh, yeah. And then something called Meatballs and Stripes. Legendary.
And many other.
Trevor Albert: Yeah. Yeah, those movies came after Caddyshack? Yes.
And you were in?
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah. you were involved in all of those.
Trevor Albert: I was not involved. I was only involved in the movies that he directed.
I see. I see.
Trevor Albert: So he wrote some that he didn't necessarily.
Yeah.
Trenton Reynolds: Um, you'll have to excuse me for not having that very deep knowledge of how
Trevor Albert: movies or the movie industry works, but. Oh, I don't have a very deep knowledge of it either. So,
Trenton Reynolds: but you have, excuse me, you have a, we could go to IMDB, which I should have done before this. And you, um, have been involved in many movies beyond that. And that was only the beginning of your, uh,
Trevor Albert: your career in movies, right? It was, yeah. Although I worked with Harold for almost 22 years. I worked as an assistant on that movie and then I worked up my way up the old-fashioned way in Hollywood. So I became the production associate and then associate producer and then producer and then we're producing partners for, like I say, probably 15 of those or 18 of those 22. two years.
Trenton Reynolds: And the majority of the movies that you've been involved in were in partnership with Harold?
Trevor Albert: I would say maybe two-thirds of them, and then I went on to do my own stuff. But it was a long, very... exciting, collaborative journey with him.
Trenton Reynolds: And you're currently working, helping to lead a school in collaboration with second city in Chicago.
Trevor Albert: I am. So Harold, Harold passed away way too early.
And,
Trevor Albert: about six or seven years ago and his wife was asked by Second City about a year after he died if she would let them use his name because they wanted to start a little film school and she was not sure if that was you know sort of appropriate use of his name, she wanted to make sure she was protecting his legacy. So she called me and said, would I come to Chicago and meet with the Second City people and just hear what they were planning on doing? And I knew a little bit about film schools, or I should say art schools, because my daughter at that time was interviewing, going around looking at art schools around the So I went to Chicago and they sort of pitched this idea of a film school, a one year sort of conservatory. And I was fascinated by it and sort of liked the idea. And they sort of asked me for my idea. thoughts on what in a perfect world I thought a one-year film school focused on comedy studies would look like and shared my thoughts and then left and then a couple of days later they called and said would I be interested in consulting and that consultancy led to me going back and forth to Chicago over six months and then eventually they said would I like to help run the school and so because I by then I was so invested in it and and I love the idea of having a school that was just focused on comedy filmmakers which is kind of a rarity doesn't exist in the country yeah or the world
Sabrina Ward Harrison: as far as I know I was interested to hear about like what your idea was for one year, like how, what that looked like?
Trevor Albert: What I felt like having visited film schools with my daughter and even gone and shown movies at film schools around the country in my career was, first of all, comedies were in short supply. Most film schools think of comedy as sort of the, they tack it on somewhere, you know, towards the end of their, you know, presentation of film students. They're, they're not really taken seriously in film school or even in, you know, in most circles. And so I love the idea that we would focus on that. And when I started working for Harold, I was 22 years old. And although I liked comedy and I liked to laugh and make people laugh, I didn't really have a great sort of history. I didn't have great knowledge of the history of comedic film or TV or literature. And in the course of my working with Harold that first year or two, he would occasionally come up to me and say, have you seen a movie called Sullivan's Travels by Preston Sturgis? Like, no. He said, watch that movie and then, you know, we'll talk. And then a couple of weeks later, he'd say, have you seen Marx Brothers movies? And no. And so my relationship with him, certainly in the early years, was, you know, him exposing me to all this great comedic literature and movies and TV. And so my joke is I was the first graduate of the Harold Ramis Film School. So when I was thinking of doing this school in Chicago, I had that sort of memory of him sort of mentoring me and, and, exposing me to all these wonderful things. And I thought, well, boy, it would be great if young people are interested in comedy, being comedy filmmakers, storytellers more specifically, could get that same immersion in those things. And so I said, I think if we're going to do it, we should, it should be focused on storytelling because that's what Harold was. He was really a storyteller more than anything else. He wasn't that interested in where the camera went or, you know, how things looked. Eventually got more interested, but he was really interested in telling stories and and in a comedic way that had heart and humanity. So I wanted to infuse all those things that he had sort of passed on to me into the school, and fortunately we've had the ability to do that. So it's a one-year conservatory, 12 months, pretty intense, and the students learn. They take a class in the history of comedic literature from, you know, Shakespeare and Aristophanes to, you know, David Sedaris and, you know, TV from, you know, show of shows all the way to, you know, friends and right up to, you know, Insecure, whatever's on now. And same with movies, you know, from Chaplin movies and Keaton all the way to Adam McKay.
Trevor Albert: So it's pretty immersive.
Trenton Reynolds: As they study those precedents, are you talking about... Are there like... Is there an aesthetic or is there like a practical approach to making a comedic film that's different in how you would approach other subject matter? Or is it...
Not really.
Trenton Reynolds: It's just an awareness kind of the conventions or the history that...
Trevor Albert: helps you to tell your own stories. Yeah, I think like most art forms, understanding what came before you sort of, you know, somehow gets in your DNA and affects how you, you know, create art. And I would consider comedy is, you know, part of that. I think, foundationally, a good comedy has to follow the same dramatic structure of a conventional movie, you know, beginning, middle, and end, and, you know, interesting, compelling characters. And the comedy stuff is sort of, you know, the sort of secret sauce that You know, if you're gifted enough as a writer and then a director or performer to be able to pull that off, that sort of, you know, adds to that foundational thing, you know, that, again, dramatic movies have to have. So there's no formula, really. And I'd like to say if you come to the Harold Ramis Film School. you know, at Second City, you'll learn that formula. It really is just a combination of historical understanding, immersing yourself in everything that's come before, and the practice of actually doing it and being mentored by, you know, people who've done it.
Trenton Reynolds: Right. So you yourself are a mentor to students there. Oh, yeah. And there's, I imagine there's a whole system of of mentorship is that Second City is also involved in that actors or?
Trevor Albert: So the students study the historical sort of theoretical stuff, and they also study screenwriting and they also study filmmaking. So they get to do they get to do sort of a broad variety of things. Foundationally, everything is about storytelling. In other words, that's the thing we really emphasize, that fancy cameras and all that stuff is still not something that I think is that important. But at the end of the year, they all make short films, and some of them are, you know, exceptional. And when they're making their short films, they have access to the people under that Second City roof, which is where our school is in Chicago, which is the same stage that, you know, Steve Carell and Tina Fey and went all the way back to Belushi and Bill Murray, that's the place they all started. So it's also kind of an exciting, interesting thing to be at a school where the classroom is 100 feet away from the main stage at Second City, where the next generation of performers are doing their, seven nights a week, they're entertaining people in Chicago. So it's like a very dynamic atmosphere.
Trenton Reynolds: And just proximity, it seems like the students in the film school would just be going and watching the performers and getting a lot just from having that so accessible.
Trevor Albert: Yeah, that is true. They do. Obviously, they can go to those shows and watch that stuff. It's different because if you've been to – have you ever been to – did you go to Second City?
Trenton Reynolds: No, I'm ashamed to say because I was there for three years and I never did. go to Second City. Is it too late?
Never too late. It's never too late.
Trevor Albert: Anyway, that is performative sort of, not sort of, it is improvisational comedy. Right. And what we do at the film school is different in that it's more traditional sort of narrative storytelling. You know, they're writing pilots and you know, TV pilots and feature films. Right. So it's a different form of comedy, but it still is, you know, obviously comedy.
Uh huh.
Trenton Reynolds: But it seems to me like in comedy, especially like improv, you want that feeling of of like unforced or natural, uh, interaction or dialogue or whatever like that. In film, you have to do that, create that feel without the improv, right? It's got to be, you got to create that, the illusion of that freeness or looseness without the structure of... improvisation.
Trevor Albert: Yes, that is true. But if you've been to, have either one of you ever been to an improv show? Yeah. Right. So the experience is moments of hilarity and moments of cringe worthy. Oh my God. Yeah. They missed it. Yeah. Yeah. Getting it right. Right. the reason to have a screenwriter is to avoid that those moments of cringe worthy. Oh wow. They went the wrong direction. Right. It's kind of exciting. You know, it's like a type of fact and really good improvisers are unbelievable. Right. But if it's not working, it's really painful. But that's, that's,
Trenton Reynolds: I think that's, it's like going to a, like a, a fight or even, even going to, um, like a live theatrical performance that the, the stakes are higher because you know that there could be failure, right? Totally.
Trevor Albert: But going to a theater performance, well, the actors have no lines, you know?
Right.
Trevor Albert: Yeah. I mean, the stakes are even higher. Yeah. Yeah. But that's part of the enjoyment I've always found in,
Trenton Reynolds: in improv is like you understand the difficulty of what you're trying to do and it's just
Trevor Albert: no the audience is in on it yeah so so certainly having those kind of people who are able to do that work on your short film for these film students is unbelievable because yeah they they we encourage the students to have scripts obviously and for the actors to at least do a version of a scene with the scripted line and then which is what happened you know something that Harold encouraged in movies I've encouraged is that do the line as it's written and now try do your own version of it. Make it broader. Do it sillier. Improvisational actors have the ability to come and bring additional stuff besides what's in the script.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Oh, and it's just seeing genius in a genius happening. It's just the speed at which the ideas come and are developed and problem solving comedically is just, even in high school I remember, Trenton don't you remember the comedy sports with Mrs. Healy? Yeah, yeah I did
Trenton Reynolds: that. Wait, were you both in it?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: No. Don't you remember the, I did it a little bit.
Trenton Reynolds: I was in comedy sports when I was in high school. Yeah. You were the quarterback I believe. No, no I wasn't. on the bench. Wait, did you guys go to high school together? We did. Yeah, that's where we know each other. What the heck? We did. We go way back.
We went
Trevor Albert: back to high school art class.
La Cunada High School.
Trevor Albert: You both grew up in La Cunada? Yeah. Wait, weren't you the gopher in the... Does this does this ring any bells?
Trenton Reynolds: Yeah, yeah. The majority of my time, the reason I met you is because we both occupy this space in the art studio, which has nothing to do necessarily with your, you know, the majority of your career. So I'm interested in hearing how you found your way to visual art and what effect that has or what relationship that has to your career. to filmmaking, if anything. Right. It's just a side thing.
Trevor Albert: When I was probably maybe six or seven years into trying to make it in the film business, I started, after I did my time as an assistant, working my way up, eventually I was in a position of having to try and develop ideas for movies. whether they were my own ideas or books or scripts that I would find. And I would find ideas that I was very passionate about and start rolling those ideas up the Hollywood Hill. And I very quickly learned how frustrating it is and how long it takes to get movies made. I mean, years and years and years. and many of them never get made. And so probably after seven or eight years or six or seven years, I was so frustrated that I didn't have a creative outlet that I just looked for something new and I'd always been interested in visual arts and I'd studied art in college a little bit and I thought, all right, I'm gonna just start doing something so that I don't have to ask permission to create something. Because to make a movie, you need permission. You need a studio or a financier to say yes, and then all those people to collaborate on it. And so I started painting, I don't know, 30 years ago. just in my basement, you know, occasionally. And in periods where I felt like I was stuck creatively or frustrated, I would, you know, always resort to just, you know, painting as an outlet. And so I've been doing it, you know, that sort of motivated it. And I would take classes mostly. Just because I was very used to being in an environment where people were, you know this expression parallel play? You never heard it? It's an expression I love. So my wife and I often do it. She's a graphic designer. And so we're at home and she's doing her graphic design and I'm drawing or something. And that's parallel play. We're not talking. Oh, yeah. Like side by side. We're both doing our thing together. I like that phrase. Yeah, it's a lovely phrase. So I realized painting in my basement by myself was not enough for me. So I felt the need to want to be around other people. So I started taking classes and that was another community of totally different people from, you know, Hollywood, you know, people who, you know, it was all about story and narrative and verbal and stuff and sit in a room or stand in a room with a bunch of people painting silently, talking, whatever, but, you know, using a totally different part of your brain and exercising totally different creative muscles. And I just loved it. I love the, I'm not going to call it distractions, just some other thing opened up in my brain that I felt was nourishing. And again, there have been years. So from the time I started painting, I then met my now wife and we had two children and life got in the way and I stopped painting for years. And then every once in a while I would dabble and stuff. But my oldest, my youngest daughter left for college about a year and a half ago. And I thought, all right, I want to spend more time doing this thing I love. And so I started taking more painting classes and then found this space and then found Trent.
And here I am.
Trevor Albert: And then I found Sabrina. So now I, you know, whenever I can, I paint.
Trenton Reynolds: So painting was kind of an immediate, there's immediacy to that, that isn't present in the process of making movies. You know, that ability to have an idea and then immediately act on that idea and see
Trevor Albert: some kind of result, right?
Trenton Reynolds: But do you find that that process informs or changed your perception of movie making? the kind of creative outlet that that is?
Trevor Albert: I don't know that it changed my perception of movie making, but I think when you say you have an idea and you can just do it, part of the beauty of, I'm an abstract painter, so part of the beauty of this is I don't have to have an idea, or at least it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to go through that sort of intellectual sort of filter and meet the metrics of, does the story work? Is this, you know, it's like, you know, when you're working on a screenplay or developing a story, it's, you know, complex set of, you know, metrics that by now I probably, you know, it's sort of somehow in my DNA when something's working or not, but it's still like a, you know, mental exercise. left brain, right brain, I don't know, is it the right brain that sort of the more analytic and the...
Trenton Reynolds: Left brain analytic, I think right brain creative.
Trevor Albert: Right, so the left brain analytics are important in filmmaking because it's what makes... I mean, movies are... sort of a mathematical aspect of making movies. People think of it as, you know, purely creative, or maybe they do, but it's not. There's a lot of things that you have to get right to make these things work, unless you're an experimental filmmaker, and that's sort of, you know, meet some different criteria. But painting, I could just turn off all those filters and just purely get into the flow. You know, people talk, artists talk about getting in the, you know, the state of flow or whatever it is. You don't get into that when you're making movies.
Trenton Reynolds: I think that's so interesting because Sabrina, a lot of art, you're in my conversation in terms of how we each approach art. It seems like one of the ways that you operate is, it feels like you have a freedom from this need to intellectually justify what you're doing. Whereas I feel like I've through going to art school, you know, where you're constantly being asked to justify what you know have some kind of you know cultural context that you're trying to fit your artwork into or some concept behind it. It's so concept heavy, right, that you almost can't start doing anything until you have some justification. which is something I feel like I've had to try to overcome. And part of why I think I've ended up in abstraction these past couple of years is, A, I haven't had the time to try to intellectually justify anything. So the time I do have is just, I've got to do something, you know, so... it's on the action first and then, you know, any kind of justification or trying to understand what it is has to happen. Anyway, I think it's interesting to hear you talk about, you know, this being a relief almost from having to spend time intellectually justifying before you create, you know, you just jump into the creation and thinking about it.
Trevor Albert: to later if at all when i'm working on a piece and i start getting stuck like we all do and then the intellectual stuff starts to seep in and what's this and what does it mean why am i doing it you know how is somebody else going to perceive it then the flow state is over and you're back in sort of you know the knots of figuring out why and you know justifying it all but my happiest time is when i'm i'm sure most artists when they're in that sort of heightened state where you're just moving forward without questioning. And that I never had making movies. Right. It's a different thing.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: I grew up with a father who's a filmmaker, so... watching it, watching the, like, we think we got the deal. No. And then yes. And then like, you know, and all the elements of it. So, but then also then when the film does happen and you get that, that flow of it, of really creating and that's, that is so exciting. And there's a sort of level of improvisation that has to happen as well as at least with directing that, that, that. occurs. But I think that getting into the flow state, yeah, the euphoria that results from getting into that flow space that we all want to get into and in our busy lives, how can we drop down into that place as quickly as possible when our time is limited.
Trevor Albert: I was thinking of the analogy of the movie business, you know, of trying to get a movie made compared, it would be like, I need a canvas. Yes, I got it. No, I can't get the canvas. The canvas, I thought I had it, but I can't get it. It's not available. And then, you know, it's like, okay, I got the canvas. I'm going to start painting. Oh, the paints are gone. I don't have paint yet. I need somebody else to say yes to get the paints. and it's endless, you know, and then I have the paints, but I look over and the person who gave me the canvas has decided to take it back. It's like, yeah. And it's like that way the whole time it doesn't end. Right. Until.
Yeah.
Trevor Albert: Right. Till what, what kind of stuff did your father do? Is he a director?
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Writer and director.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Um,
Trenton Reynolds: Trevor, before, uh, Before we wrap up, I'm wondering if you have any, as we talk about, I guess, authenticity or developing some kind of authentic storytelling or expression, you've been involved in a school that... that I'm sure is trying to teach that very thing. It's like an approach to storytelling that comes across as authentic. Do you have advice or things that you've seen or that people struggle with and instruction on how to, I don't know, pursue that?
Trevor Albert: I don't know. I mean, it's a hard one to sort of reduce down to like, you know, a couple of lines. I think the best thing to do is come to the school for a year and then you'll know everything you need to.
Trevor Albert: I think the notion of authenticity is the thing that I have to say important enough for me to stand up straight and have people listen to it, you know? And I think a lot of stories that get pitched from young students or even older students feel like they are authentic. something they've heard from a they've gotten from another movie or another TV show so even though I think it's important for them to know what came before for all of us to read great literature and watch great movies and TV I think at the end of the day what's your own story? What is the stuff that does is meaningful to you? And that's not the natural instinct I think for a lot of young filmmakers now they're so immersed in the media culture that's everywhere that it's very hard for them to sit back and think alright, what was that family vacation like just with our family in that cottage somewhere they're extrapolating it and combining it with the last episode they saw of Black Mirror combined with the last superhero thing and that tends to get as far away from authenticity as you can imagine. So sort of trying to figure out what those things are that are interesting. And the last thing that's for me which is important is what's important as a society, you know, there's a certain responsibility that we have as storytellers, certainly young filmmakers, and I tell them this all the time. You know, you think you're just, you know, a kid in Chicago making a movie, but you could ultimately one day become somebody who is in fact, having a significant voice in the cultural dialogue through your movies and what is your responsibility, your social responsibility. And you can make a movie which is an irreverent movie about nothing and that's fine, making people laugh, but also is there something about the society, about the way people are treating each other right now about this sort of... country in the world that feels a little out of control or more than a little out of control that's worth commenting on and unfortunately a lot of our students are paralyzed by what's going on in the country now and even we're paralyzed and don't know what to make of it and so they their stuff is sort of dystopian or comedic without any sort of social it doesn't feel like they have enough social awareness. So I'm, I'm a big believer right now in, in encouraging students who have any inclination in making work about, you know, our culture, our society, what's going on and trying to comment on it. And, uh, you know,
hopefully, uh,
Trevor Albert: shift the oil tankers slightly from the direction that it's turning. Well, fantastic.
Trenton Reynolds: Appreciate your time. Sometime I want to get you and David on. Oh my gosh. Together, that would be fantastic. Excellent. We've had David on the show before. I think it'd be great to hear you guys talking.
Trevor Albert: I would love it. Sabrina, enjoy your travels.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: Thank you very much. It was nice meeting you, Trevor, and I'll hopefully see you in the studio one day.
Trevor Albert: Definitely. I look forward to it.
All right.
Trevor Albert: All right. See you guys. We'll see you.
Bye. Bye.
Trenton Reynolds: You're done. Thank you so much. Not at all. So, uh, checks in the mail? A sesame cracker? A sesame stamp? I guess. Did you get a sesame stamp? That's one thing that I could have. You can do that? Alright. You've got me addicted. That's good to hear. thank you Trevor for spending some time it was really really really great discussion I always enjoy talking thanks Trevor and we look forward to talking
Sabrina Ward Harrison: and laughing again next week go out and find yourself some berries have a wonderful week y'all that was funny yep that was great