INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER WineGame DIRECTOR VAHAN BEDELIAN

1) WineGame has a very interesting concept. As its primary filmmaker, what are your

procedures to choose a catchy concept for your films?

Concepts are tricky to form any sort of procedure around. That is the part of the story that

comes to you naturally. But I think my concepts start from setting. I ask, “what would be a fun and interesting place I would want to travel to?” For WineGame, I picked a timeless location that felt somewhat in the past and somewhat in the present. Then I wondered what kind of relatable problems a person from that world would experience.

2) Light and shadow are equally important to frame an emotional scene. How do you

establish a visual world for the creation of an emotional scene?

Lighting can be a difficult thing to achieve on a small budget, especially in an exterior scene. I think in that case you must lean into what you already have. For WineGame we shot it in the early morning in Los Angeles. I think, if anything, the audience subconsciously recognizes that look. It is the way the world looks when you have to get up early for work and you can feel the day slowly getting hotter.

VAHAN BEDELIAN

3)Film is an art. However, now film seems to be focusing more on business. What do you

think about that statement?

That is a double-edged sword. Certainly, the more business is inserted into a film, the more the story suffers. That is a general rule I believe in. The more corporate the storytelling process becomes, the worse the film is. But the good thing about film being business is that there are actual jobs to be had in the film industry, if you haven’t quite made it as a Hollywood director yet. I am an independent filmmaker, but I am also a freelance editor. I make all my money working in television, and I think I grow as a filmmaker from doing that in ways I wouldn’t if I had to get a normal office job. I think other art forms don’t have as many opportunities for people to make real money working in the industry they love.

4)Describe how you ensure that production stays on schedule. What steps do you take to

accomplish this in your productions?

I have a priority tier system for shots. I mark every shot with a number from 1-3. If a shot is

marked 1, that means I cannot finish the film without it. If a shot is marked 2, that means I could still have a finished film without it, but the scene will be severely compromised. And priority 3 shots are expendable but would make the scene better. Sometimes you fall behind schedule. I don’t believe in yelling at people if they are falling behind schedule, you can only negotiate with the time you have.And having a priority system helps a lot with that.

5) What is your dream project?

I have an incredibly convoluted science fiction concept spanning multiple feature films that

I’ve been going over in my head since I was six years old. I think many writers and filmmakers have some form of this, so I’ve never had delusions of being special in that regard. I think I recognized early on that I needed to master writing and filmmaking to turn this idea into something people would actually want to watch, so a lot of my career has just been trying to get to that point. I’ve mostly used the story as a sort of sandbox to go to any time I didn’t know what to write about. One day I hope to try and put the story down to paper and eventually film, but that will probably not be for another 20 years.

6) If the talent does not perform in a professional manner, how do you manage them?

All of film making is a matter of picking your battles. I think if someone is acting

unprofessional, they are usually frustrated. In that case, you can’t hammer them on everything, you might need to let some things slide and then sit down to talk with them before the most important shots.You need to remind them that you are just trying to make the best film possible. At the end of the day,it’s their image that will go up on the screen, and they will want you to make them look good.

7) Who is your favorite director? How does he/she inspire you?

Probably the Coen brothers. I love that they have a cohesive style you can see in some of their films, but they also venture out of that style in films like No Country For Old Men and still manage to make one of the best films of the decade. I feel like you should never let your style congeal, you should always be willing to change it up.

8) Given that so many popular directors all around the World did not attend any film

institute, is such study necessary in order to make a good film? Also, since you have recently completed your Loyola Mary mount University School of Film and Television Master of Fine Arts degree, what if anything, has become different for you in the entertainment industry?

It is not necessary to go to film school, but I’m also not one of those people who say it’s

pointless. I had a lot of experience before going to film school, but I still learned something in every class. I think what you get from film school that can be difficult to earn without some sort of institution is a more refined and critical eye for the subtleties of storytelling. It’s hard to describe, but a lot of what makes a short film critically successful comes down to these subtle choices that you can only really learn to make by analyzing your work with a group of peers.Nothing has changed for me yet because I haven’t started thinking about what I am going to do after film school. I am still catching up with films I had to push back because of COVID! During the pandemic, I started a bunch of projects because I had nothing else to work on. But when the Pandemic slowed down, suddenly all the school projects that had been pushed back were rescheduled. It created this sort of bubble of work that burst.

9) Have you ever used a visual metaphor for a scene? If so, explain how that metaphor

brought the film into its next level.

I do not use much metaphor in my film making; I am a very literal person. If I do use

metaphor, it needs to have a literal meaning that is strongly connected to the metaphorical meaning.WineGame is a good example. One of the problems Ro runs into is that he is trying to carry too many things at the same time. You can read this as a metaphor for my own life, I always try to do too many things (see the end of my above answer). But part of that problem is that it often leads me to literally try to carry too many things at the same time. The morning of the first day of shooting WineGame, I was trying to carry multiple props to my car, and I ended up spilling a box of screws and nails which all fell on the ground around my tire. I had to carefully pick up every screw, checking the ground on the inside of my tire, because if I missed any, I might pop my tire, and I already had a flat tire the day before.

10) What are your favorite film genres? Also, other than from Hollywood, which of the

World’s film production regions have most entertained and/or informed you?

I love science fiction and fantasy. I think Korea consistently makes amazing films. They have such a mastery of that art form in Korea.

11) As a bonus, is there any other thing that you would like to share with Film de Arte

readers?

Film making is really hard. The first two short films I made, way back in 2011, felt like getting punched in the face for the first time. I think that is because, like fighting, film making is one of those things everyone imagines they could do to some degree, but you don’t realize how hard it is until you do it. But you really do get better with every film you make. If you are just getting started and are feeling discouraged, just keep going. It’s hard because those first films will be physically painful to watch. But I can distinctly remember the first film I made where I thought “hey, this actually isn’t terrible"