COVEpod | Carganilla Online Variety Entertainment Podcast | Storytelling, Interviews, Poetry, Music, Arts & Inspiration

Alexandra Boyd | Directing, Empowering, and Pushing Through | COVE Podcast 27

• Paul Carganilla / Alexandra Boyd • Season 1 • Episode 27

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Actress / Writer / Director / Producer / Podcaster : Alexandra Boyd
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Ballet. The U.K. Florida. Driving across the United States with her cat. Mister Holland's Opus. Titanic. Original Indie Features. Independent Documentaries. Filmmaking. Podcasting. Artemisia's Daughters. Volunteering as Paulie's new mentor.

Let's talk about all of it (in under an hour).

Imagine the courage it takes to be the only woman on the polo field, then transferring that grit to the grand stages of acting and later, the director's chair. Alexandra recounts her early days, from ballet to drama, and her first steps into American filmmaking history with "Mr. Holland's Opus" and James Cameron's "Titanic." She takes us behind the scenes of her debut feature film "Widow's Walk," shares the thrills of documentary storytelling with "Ship of Dreams Titanic Movie Diaries," and dives into the collaborative essence of the "Titanic Talk" podcast along with co-host Nelson Aspen. Her journey is studded with lessons of resilience and the relentless pursuit of dreams—a testament to what it means to carve your own path in an industry that doesn't always make it easy.

As our conversation wraps, Alexandra sheds light on the challenges of being a woman in filmmaking, yet fills the air with hope, guiding the next generation of female creators with her work at Artemisia's Daughters. She offers a candid reflection on the industry's hurdles and the wisdom she's harvested along the way. For those who seek inspiration or aspire to leave their mark in the arts, this episode is a heartening revelation of what it truly means to be a cinematic pioneer.

WEBSITES:
OFFICIAL - alexandraboyd.co.uk
SHIP OF DREAMS - www.shipofdreamsfilm.com
ARTEMISIA'S DAUGHTERS - www.artemisiasdaughters.org

EPISODE VIDEOS: www.covetube.com
COVE DIRECTORY: https://linktr.ee/covepod
COVE PATREON: www.patreon/covepodcast
CONTACT: covepod@gmail.com

POETRY PERFORMER: Craig Jackman
POETRY: “Like a Filmmaker's Lens" [ Nathan Squiers ]
VOICE-OVER INTRODUCTION: Jenette Goldstein ( Irish Mommy "Titanic", Janelle Voight "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", Private Vasquez "Aliens" )
SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM: Craig Jackman, Emily Thatcher, Christina Marie Bielen, Dary Mills, Amanda Benjamin
PATREON CURATORS: Jamie Carganilla, Emily Thatcher, The Faeryns, Charity Swanson, Krista Faith King, Kelsey B Gibson, Angelica Bollschweiler, Anna Giannavola, Gina Dobbs, Merrill Mielke, Susan Kuhn, Josefa Snider
INTRO MUSIC: “Papi Beat” [ KICKTRACKS ]
CREDITS MUSIC: “Fat Banana” [ KICKTRACKS ]
HOST, CREATOR, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, EDITOR: Paul Carganilla

Speaker 1:

You just talk about it all the time. Get people as excited about it as you are. They won't ever be as excited about it as you are, but just keep going and then eventually boom. ["the Carganilla"]. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Carganilla online variety entertainment podcast. Here's your host.

Speaker 2:

Paul Carganilla ["The Carganilla"].

Speaker 3:

Hello and welcome to Cove. This is the online variety show in which we aim to both entertain and inspire our podcast listeners and YouTube viewers through a variety of art forms, including music, poetry, storytelling, special guest interviews, travel blogs and so much more. I'm excited to introduce everyone here in the Cove community to a new friend of mine. She's an actress, writer, director, producer and podcaster. She's a cast member of a film you all know I regard as one of the finest movies ever made James Cameron's Titanic, and I'm so excited for this conversation. But first, of course, we have to say hello to my co-producer on this episode, producer Craig Jackman. Hello, producer Craig.

Speaker 2:

Hello Paul, I'm rubbing my hands here. I can't wait for this amazing interview that's going to take place.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and I'll tell you a little bit more about her before we officially bring her in. But after many years of working as an actress in film, television and theater in Britain and America, alexandra Boyd turned to screenwriting, directing and producing, which is her focus now. Her debut feature film, widow's Walk, won Best Cinematography at the Chelsea Film Festival, sold to Amazon Prime and currently streams on online platforms. It's currently available to rent or buy on Amazon, which I did last night. Back in the day, she co-founded a theater company in London in the 80s and worked in theater, film and TV in the UK and USA. She lived for 10 years in Los Angeles and found time to study interior design and architecture at UCLA. In recent years, she added screenwriting, film directing and producing to her skill set.

Speaker 3:

Her acting credits include everything from Shakespeare to British pantomime, prime time soaps, plays, tv series, video games and major motion pictures. Her credits include Mr Holland's Opus From Paris with Love, the classic Monkey Island video game series and, of course, james Cameron's Titanic, to name a few. I connected with her literally through the documentary she recently created, produced and directed called Ship of Dreams Titanic Movie Diaries, which debuted this past July at the Valley Film Festival in North Hollywood. My mother and I were thrilled to be there, and she and one of her best friends, nelson Aspin, host a podcast that is a companion piece to the documentary but also has a life of its own, called Titanic Talk. With Nelson Aspin and Alexandra Boyd Together, they recently launched season two of the podcast, and any Titanic fans out there in the podcast listening world absolutely must check out Titanic Talk. We have so much to discuss, as you can tell. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the Carganilla Online Variety Entertainment podcast, alexandra Boyd Yay.

Speaker 1:

Oh gosh, but you can tell how old I am by all the length of that bio, can't you? I must have been going for a long while, or I started very, very young, which I sort of did. I wasn't a child actor, but I was very keen to get going on my career.

Speaker 3:

I was going to say I wouldn't call it old, I would call it accomplished.

Speaker 1:

Oh, thank you. Yes, yes, lots of different things. I think actors now especially. I wish I was starting out now because actors get to create their own stuff and film their own stuff and write it, and we were never encouraged to do that at drama school. Really, we were encouraged to start theater companies and do Shakespeare or new plays or devise plays maybe, but there was no camera in your phone in your hand in 1984 or five or six.

Speaker 3:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

And so I'm very envious of young people now who really have all of that literally at their fingertips.

Speaker 3:

And I tell people all the time I didn't focus on. I knew I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be on stage and in front of the camera. But it was when YouTube became a thing and Facebook started. You could share something on Facebook and people could watch it. And I was growing up and I was making my own movies at home. I had three or four VCRs all connected to each other and I'd record on one and play on the other and pop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but now people walk around these kids, walk with these kids, these kids.

Speaker 1:

No kids for today. No kids.

Speaker 3:

A movie studio in their pocket.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

Yes, the blessings. They have no idea they have.

Speaker 1:

No, no, they don't know. They're born. No, it's quite, and I've said this many times too that I would have started directing much earlier if it had been. I walked around my acting career going well. I couldn't possibly be a director because I don't know about f-stops and that camera is way too complicated for me to understand and what I was doing was reinforcing that. It was a very technical thing and it was a very male dominated thing, because that's all I saw. That's all, and my entire career that you've just very kindly read through. I probably have been directed by three women total, and two were in theater, one was in television and she was having a horrible time. I was like I don't want that job. I could tell that she was really being watched and she felt watched this director on Coronation Street it's a huge prime time soap in the UK and it was all like, oh, we've got a woman directing this, it's a novelty.

Speaker 1:

It's a woman, yeah. And so I was like, no, I'll just stick to learning my lines and not bumping into the furniture. And then somebody asked me to direct something, and then it was all game over, because I was like this is the bomb, I've got to do more of this. How do I get to do more of this? And, of course, you get to do more of it by creating your own stuff. So that's kind of how that happened.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and I do want to dive back even further to what started you on the path to being an entertainer in the first place. But before we do, I can't skip over a little challenge that I present to each of my guests at the start of the episode, and so I've read through all like, as you mentioned, a list of your professional accolades, but we'd like to hear about all the stuff that's not on that list, all of the things about you that aren't professional, aren't about your career, just anything you can think that you can tell us, everything that we wouldn't find out in a bio or on paper in 60 seconds or less.

Speaker 1:

In 60 seconds or less. I would say that I am a pug lover. I have loved on pugs since I was about six and my godmother had a pug and it was the joy of my life to spend two weeks of the summer at her house. And now I have pugs on my own and if you listen very carefully, there's two snoring away in the background. Right now, and also in my 20s, I was sort of horse mad as well as drama mad and I played polo. My then husband and I had two polo ponies and every Wednesday we'd go and do chuckers and at the weekend we'd play polo and I was the only girl that wanted to actually get out there and play and not just be a groom. So I was very much sneered at, a little bit like I'm sneered at sometimes now as a director. But yeah, is that 60 seconds?

Speaker 3:

That's 50,. Close enough, let's throw it back to very, very early. Young Alexandra Boyd, and how did you get bitten by the entertainment bug?

Speaker 1:

I probably in ballet class. I sort of came from this middle class English background where all the little girls got sent to ballet and I loved it and I was probably quite good at it until I was about 10. And then your body dictates whether you're going to be a ballerina or not and you're, like I, really like tapping and modern dance as well. So that's it, and so I was on this path to be a performer and very much in the school plays and everything which again were very sort of in your lunch hour rehearsals. There wasn't anything specific at my school. It was a very academic school, no-transcript. And then I got a place at a theatre school, a theatre college, at the age of 16.

Speaker 1:

So all of my contemporaries at school were going on to a sixth form, or what you call high school, and you know, university, oxford, cambridge, they're all terribly bright and I was sort of just bright enough to be there, and so I was like you know what, why don't I just go and dance?

Speaker 1:

For three years which I did I went to a very well regarded theatre school called Lane Theatre Arts and so basically left home at 16 because I had to be there full time and graduated at 19 and taught a lot of aerobics because that was a big thing in the early 80s was aerobics and still sort of didn't have enough acting in my arsenal, if you like. I was very much a musical theatre performer and I really wanted to be taken seriously as an actor and so I went to a postgraduate drama school course called Drama Studio London and had the time of my life really and that's when I started the theatre company and we did the Edinburgh Festival and London Fringe festivals and that was how a lot of actors got started back then and it formed a lot of really good relationships and friendships that way.

Speaker 3:

And is that how you kind of what started you on the road to the United States?

Speaker 1:

No, an American did that. I married an American stationed in the United States Air Force in Suffolk which, if you've been paying attention to my film Widow's Walk, is somewhat connected. The stories there. There was a thing in Suffolk and Norfolk and it had come from the Second World War because there had been Americans stationed there since the war and they'd say, oh, they're Americans, they're oversexed, overpaid and over here and they were falling in love with women and taking them to the United States. And in 1989, that's what happened to me. So I ended up in Florida, which was not my favourite place. I'm sorry if anybody from Florida is listening. I'm sure you love your state, but I died myself to sleep every night because I was nowhere near any work. I was. We were at another Air Force Base near there, in the Panhandle of Florida, and it just it wasn't quite what I expected.

Speaker 3:

Well, how did you get to Los Angeles or New York or wherever your film?

Speaker 1:

I well, I went. I got to Los Angeles via Seattle because a friend of mine my marriage sort of was falling apart or it fell apart, and she said, oh, come to Seattle, there's tons of theatre here. So I I packed up a car and my cat and I drove across the United States of America. I probably couldn't have driven further from West Palm Beach, florida, to Seattle. I didn't go across the middle, I went all the way, the longest way, kitty corner to kitty corner, as you say here, and and I loved it. I loved Seattle two years here, which also falls into my why I'm back in Washington now, but that's like a 30 year journey that I have to tell you about.

Speaker 1:

And then I got apart. I got Mr Holland's Opus, which was shot in Portland, and I had a little conversation with myself, which was if you're going to have a film career and that was the other aha moment too Like being in a movie was so different from being on stage and in a play I was like this is great, I want to do more of this. And if I want to do more of it, I had to get my ass to Los Angeles. And so I packed up my cat and everything again and I drove to LA and was there for 10 years.

Speaker 3:

Wow. So how did that audition come about for Mr Holland's Opus up there in Portland?

Speaker 1:

Well, I had done a play with Richard Dreyfus, who's the star of that film, and he was in the Sun Valley, idaho, he had a home there and he would spend winters there, and there was this little tiny theater company and he said, oh, we're doing a movie in Portland. You live near there, don't you? Because I was in Seattle at the time and I said, well, yeah. So I got back to Seattle and I started going who's casting this Mr Holland's Opus film? And I sort of dropped his name very unashamedly in the audition and you know, anyway, I got the part and it was. I was supposed to be the another teacher's wife, and then they changed it and I was, you know, the English drama teacher, which, of course, is entirely appropriate.

Speaker 3:

Right, sarah Olmsted was your character.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And how was Richard to work with?

Speaker 1:

Oh, he's great, he was. He sort of was a bit of a mentor at the time, because I was. I remember one time we were all waiting to go to set and we all had age makeup on, because the story goes over like a 30 year period and we're waiting to go and he goes oh how's it going, you know? And I burst into tears of joy because I was having so much fun and I started to sort of ruin my wrinkle makeup and I was like I'm just having the time of my life and he's. And instead of laughing at me, he stopped and I think there was an element of envy in his voice when he said you know what your feeling is really valid. I could I'm tearing up now thinking about it because it was.

Speaker 1:

It felt so special to be part of that and his specialness about working in the industry was already waning and he was sort of done with it, I think. And and you know evidence by he did fewer and fewer films and now he's sort of thrown himself into civics and teaching young people why they live in a republic and why there isn't a king or prime minister, you know, because it's not taught well in this country and it's probably not taught well in my country either, but he sort of leaned, leant into that versus pursuing more acting. But I mean, mr Holmes, opus was 1995, so it's been quite a long time now.

Speaker 3:

I love that you that it's still. You can still tap into that emotion and feel that the how special working on a film is because you know it. Compared to theater, it's so much more tedious and meticulous and it is a whole different animal, a whole different beast, and we could talk about that for hours. But there is so much to be said for being a part of a cast and crew who are all working toward one creative goal, obviously being led by a director with a vision, and everyone trying to use their backgrounds, their skills, their, their hearts to create the best product they can, and it is a very special feeling to be a part of that. And it always blows my mind when people, when people ask me about Everly and her, her young career, and they say I don't know if, like people, just automatically think like where she's doing it for money or whatever, because people ask me all the time Does she enjoy it?

Speaker 1:

No, we have to handcuff her every morning for her call and drag her to the set because it's really, it's hard. Yeah, it's terrible.

Speaker 3:

I think it's just child labor laws that don't cover what she has to go through, and I think it speaks to the general public's idea of like filmmaking just being like a money grab or something like that, like people. Just they don't understand how, what an accomplishment it feels like and what, how special it is to be a part of that and how much love is in these projects.

Speaker 1:

It's absolutely right. And you're making me think of a moment in Mr Honzo Pus where he's, he's retiring and all of his students have come back to. You know, it's a very moving movie. As the cinematographer at the time said, it'sa, it's a full hanky movie because there's, you know, there's a lot of bugs at all the right heartstrings and and and he's, he's walking down the aisle of this auditorium, everyone's clapping, and you know, and every time, every time we do it, I get choked up at the emotion that was being evoked Artificially, but it was so artificially good that it would move me right.

Speaker 1:

And the first AD at one point saw me kind of get, get tears in my eyes and an extra. So why are you crying every time we do it? I said because, well, because we're allowed to, because we're paying homage to this character. But it was so easy. And the first AD said isn't it amazing that we are recreating reality in the most infinite? You know, when you do a play, every the conceit is there's a bunch of people on this side of a stage and the other three sides of the room are taken up by a bunch of other people acting. But the skill of movies is that you don't see or feel the acting at all and you're, you know we're re.

Speaker 1:

And there was another point where there was a. The camera was on a crane and it was following Richard up the steps of the stage where he was going to do a thank you so much for coming speech. And he was leaving little dusty footmarks that the camera would have seen because it was flying over our heads and onto the stage and I would watch the props guy watch the camera and then, when it was out of shot, when he was guessing it was out of shot, he was going up there with a little duster and dusting the footprints off and I said look at you. He's like, oh, did you see me doing that? Yes, thank you, because I, you know, I recognize the enormity. Like you said, everybody's, the sharp, pointy end of everybody's job is to get the shot. So his job in his mind was well, we can't have dusty footprints on the trends.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's just a large group working toward a common goal, and whether it's in filmmaking or entertainment, that's always something special to be.

Speaker 1:

A military, because it is like a military operation as well, but everybody knows their rank and their place. So it's, you know it. When it works, it really works.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and I can't wait to talk about your your experience as a director. But before that we need to get to another epic 90s film that you are a part of, and I learned about how you got involved with James Cameron's Titanic through whether it was Titanic Talk podcast or Unsyncable, where you and Nelson were guests. But can you break down and give us a 3,000 foot bird's eye view of how you got involved in Titanic?

Speaker 1:

Yes, I can. I had not been in Los Angeles very long at all, I didn't have representation, but my friend, matt Flanders, who's still a really great friend of mine, was working in a manager's office and he had seen the breakdown of they and essentially they were looking for British actors and he's like I could lose my job. If anyone knows that I'm telling you Because you remember, back in the day it was all cloak and dagger and you know you couldn't. You know the actors couldn't know what jobs were out there. That was for the agents to filter through. So I wrote and sent my head shot and called with my English accent, my best English accent, and Mali Finn called me in eventually and said come back next week please, because there are no lines for this character.

Speaker 1:

But imagine yourself on the Titanic in 1912. And that's how Nelson and I well, nelson and I already knew each other. We were very good friends and I was at a party at his house and I said I'm auditioning for the Countess of Roths in Titanic next week and he overheard it and he went oh, the Countess of Roths who steered the tiller of life, boat number nine. I was like how do you know that? He said come with me. And he had this shelf full of videos and books and a piece of coal that had come from the wreck. And I think even at one point his dad bid on a steamer chair for him or a life jacket or something, because he was obsessed with not just Titanic but ocean liners and disasters and you know he can tell you every frame of the Poseidon adventure as well as every frame of Titanic.

Speaker 1:

So he helped me put together a monologue and I went in and I did it on camera and then I didn't get the part somebody else did and I was like, ok, well, that's that then. And then I got. My pager went off when I was at my catering job and it was the. I had to wait till I finished my shift and go and probably get a quarter and go into a pay phone. No, I called and it was the casting office to say that, yes, that part had been cast. But James Cameron had said find Alexandra something else to do and it was the lady with the eyebrow for the lady going. Hmm, haven't seen that in first class before.

Speaker 3:

Well, we do see your character a couple of times, first boarding the ship with your dogs. They weren't pugs, though, were they?

Speaker 1:

No, they weren't.

Speaker 3:

And then we see coming down the staircase for that, that first class dinner scene. And then we see you as Leo is led into the dining room and you, as you just mentioned, make make some eyes at him.

Speaker 1:

That was a specific direction from Jim. It was like, look at Jack, because again we had a script, but we didn't you get slotted in slightly out of context. So he was like, yeah, just look at him, like hmm, haven't seen anything like that in first class before. You know that he certainly stood out, and I guess we talked about that a little bit too, about those layers of intention that James Cameron put into the film. It's like it's so small, it's so subtle, but he just catches one first class passenger going hmm, that's somebody different, even though he walks, she's up, nice, you know, he's got the suit on and everything. She hasn't seen him on the ship before and he gives us, he gives the audience, just a slight recognition of that. It's so, it's so clever.

Speaker 3:

Brilliant. And then you had lines in a scene that was cut.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I mean, I only know one scene that's deleted now. I may have had others, and I got it's 25 years ago, I can't even remember, but I do did have a scene just after the iceberg struck, where Ismae's running down the corridor and I'm looking for a steward to have a cup of tea, and and I said I thought I felt a shudder, but actually Rachelle says that as the Council of Ross, you got her to say it as well and she made the cut and I didn't. But it's fine because I'm still there and I still had a lovely time.

Speaker 3:

And let's talk about that. What was your overall takeaway of working on the what I consider to be the last Hollywood true Hollywood epic with an iconic director like James Cameron?

Speaker 1:

Well, of course, you don't know at the time, do you really? You're working and you're in the moment, so you're you're like, oh yeah, this is a great job and I'm getting paid well and I'm having really a fun time and making all these friends Many of whom are still friends, as you can see from my documentary and I, yeah, I think what was mind blowing was the was the set and that 90 percent replica of the ship. There was one point when we were doing the gangplank with the dogs and the first day, josh, he'd get on the bullhorn and he go OK, everybody look up at the ship Like you've never seen anything like this before. And I looked at Michelle and I said what is he talking about? I've never seen anything like this before.

Speaker 3:

That's going to be tough.

Speaker 1:

Right, it was, and everything you know famously was flopped, so all the signage was reversed. So that was a bit of a question and all the extras and it's. I can't. That's. All I can say is that there was nothing about it that wasn't fantastic. There was nothing about it that wasn't fantastic and amazing to be there. And I get chills now when I watch the opening sequence of Ship of Dreams Titanic movie. Darius, we've got Titanic, honor and Glory gave us all that amazing footage and it starts as what I call a seagull's eye view and it flies in through the door and we go spiraling down the staircase and then it ends with that, with the entryway to the first class dining room where I was standing on the left of frame, and every time I watch it I feel like I'm right back there again. And that's testament to Titanic, honor and Glory, of course, but also to those feelings that are so easy to re evoke.

Speaker 3:

You're also keeping it going and branching it out with the podcast with Nelson Aspin. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 1:

Yes, well, we did a little sneak peek release online, which is when you saw it in April. And as independent filmmakers, you're always looking for a way to sort of publicize and get people to watch your stuff, and so it was very natural, a very natural decision for Nelson and me to go well, why don't we just talk about it and call it Titanic, talk and get, and initially get the actors to come and talk to us and sort of spin out more of the story of their experience? Because when you watch the film it's only 93 minutes and you can't put everybody's entire diary or there. You know, we interviewed everybody for at least an hour or so each, and then you cherry-picked to edit the film. So we thought, well, we'll just get all the actors to come on.

Speaker 1:

And then he was finding authors like Gareth Russell who'd made a whole book, a novel about. It's not a novel, it's a historical book about the Edwardian era and Titanic. And it was all connected to that because of course, it was just before the First World War when everything changed for Europe. And so we spoke to Gareth, and then we speak to a descendant, and then we you know, it just expands, you know, and now we're in season two thinking, oh you know, we have 24 episodes of season one and we've already recorded 12 episodes for season two, and unless we, you know, get really bored or die, we could probably keep just recording people because there's somebody's somewhere. It's like cocktail, isn't it? Somebody somewhere in the world is thinking about Titanic right now.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and you say there is already a wealth of Titanic material out there and podcasts are already happening. But there's room for all of them because people just want to keep talking about it and hearing about it.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, and we're having each other on each other's podcasts as well. The cross-pollination is quite wonderful.

Speaker 3:

I love it and that is, of course, Titanic Talk podcast. For anyone out there listening to this podcast you must at least visit and check out and drop in on Nelson and Alexandra over there at Titanic Talk in your podcast.

Speaker 1:

Well, because we've had you on your you and Lovely Everlier are two of those charming guests ever so.

Speaker 3:

Well, it was an honor to be on your show and thank you again for being on ours before. I want to be respectful of your time, but I do, as an independent filmmaker, as someone who has written, directed, produced his own feature film, I want to talk to you about Widow's Walk, and was that your first? Was that your directorial debut?

Speaker 1:

It was. And for all you young filmmakers out there, I did not. That was not my first script. I was.

Speaker 1:

I was dragged into directing a short film which was like a teaser pitch to the BBC for a boxer from the East End of London, and it was in 2011. And in 2012, we had the London Olympics, so they were building the Olympic Park right here in the East End of London or there I'm not there anymore right there in the East End of London, where this Olympic gold medal winning boxer had grown up, trained and won two Olympic medals 100 years prior to the 2012 Olympics. And so this producer had found the story of Harry Malin, this boxer, and he wanted to do a pitch to the BBC and he asked me to direct it. And that's when I went oh, I know about this stuff.

Speaker 1:

I I've been acting on that side and now I'm directing, and it's like driving on the other side of the road, isn't it? It's just, it's all the same stuff, it's just in reverse, anyway. So I did that, and then I expanded that story into a feature film, which was this epic boxing Olympic and then the First World War happened. So the boys all go to the trenches and then they come back and you know 50 million pound starting price for this epic script. And I'm in Cannes and I'm with another mentor of mine.

Speaker 1:

You know, sometimes a mentor only has to say one thing to you and you get it. You don't need a whole six month experience with somebody who's way ahead of you in the industry. And Ian Smith, it was an executive producer of Mad Max Fury Road, killing Fields, the other Olympic running movie, charites of Fire. So this man was like I'm at lunch with Ian and he had read my script and he was like well, alexandra, I think you're on to something. I think this is good, but they are not going to give you 50 million quid for your first film.

Speaker 1:

Have you got this? Is what I see independent filmmakers or people wanting to get on the bus and being invited to the, you know to the party, and what I see is one location, five characters, genre make it a horror or something that is that is sellable but it's also cheap to make. Have you got that kind of script? I said no, I don't. And even if I was going to do that, that's a two year conversation between now and saying action. On the first day he went yes, it is. So I packed everything up from Ken and I went home and I opened my computer and I started writing a ghost story because I knew he was right.

Speaker 3:

And how was the experience? I know I remember so the first thing I directed was a short, an original short film, but I like have this vivid memory of being on set the first day I wrote it, produced it. So everyone who's there on set is there because I asked them to be in.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

They wanted to be a part of it and we started filming and I remember just the first scene we were shooting. Questions would come up and people would look to me for the answer and, as an actor, like it was the first time that that had ever happened, and I was just like I knew it was like the director's job, it's your job to carry out your vision. But I'd never considered what that feeling would be like, that you're, you're actually able to for lack of better words direct. And so, as an actor turned director, was it immediately a feeling of wow, I love this, this is something I want to do, or did you have some like growing pains?

Speaker 1:

Less so on the short films. I had done a couple of short films prior to to that. Less so on the short films, but the feature film was a roller coaster of knots in my stomach for sure. I mean, I was very confident of the script because I knew it so well and I written it and rewritten it and re, re rewritten it, and I was very familiar with the location because I actually found the location first. I found the house first, and then I had to. I had to charm the owners into letting me shoot there. Writing them a check really helped, and I had raised all the money myself.

Speaker 1:

We had done a bit of a Kickstarter for the underwater sequence, which was very expensive, and I just felt, oh my gosh, the money is just evaporating and the time is evaporating, and if we don't make the day, and then I'm in the edit and I've got a big hole in my story, what are we going to do? So there was, there were tiny moments of oh my gosh, I'm living a dream come true, because I had lived the script and I had lived the images and the colors and the sound and the music, and I you know everything, from choosing a cello as the main tone of the music and the, the, the landscape was a character, because Suffolk where I'm from again. So I was back home and I was very, very familiar with this bleak wintery landscape and the mist and and the weather. All of it was, you know, like a vortex. Every day was.

Speaker 1:

This was this film, and that might sound like an over dramatic explanation, but it really was not. It wasn't fun, but it was pretty amazing to have done that and you don't realize what an accomplishment it is until and until, fast forward to the very first screening which we did at BAFTA. One of the oh, the thank you to all of my Kickstarter contributors was like you get to come to BAFTA in London and sit in that cinema and watch the film for, as the first, very first audience, proper audience, and oh my gosh, that was. That was very special. Walking down from the back, you know, watching people on the jump scares, that was really fun. And my producer and I would just be like, yes, we got them, we got them. And then, and then walking down and looking back and Dan went, look, look, they're all standing. They were all standing and I just he said, stand there and take it, I'm going to watch the game. He said just stand there and take, take it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you have to, and that's why we do this right.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

People ask me, you know, as a writer, director, producer, editor, actor, what is your favorite part of the process? And I, like I can't narrow one down Like I think and I say this often is like my favorite thing about it is starting with a blank screen on my computer and then seeing the finished product, and would you say that you feel similarly, or do you have a favorite part of the process or what keeps you going?

Speaker 1:

I do enjoy writing. I do, and I will say this to writers out there Write everything. Write a crap first draft, just get all of your thoughts out. None of this writers block, nonsense, not having it, just you've got an idea, you've got some idea, so just write rubbish. And then you'll go back and you'll see the next day oh my God, this is rubbish. But I know how to fix it.

Speaker 1:

Oh, because I wrote it down, because I have something to start with, and so I like doing a light, writing rubbish and correcting it. And then I, yes, I love shooting. I thought that would be my absolute favorite bit, but I actually really enjoy the edit because I love now, as I sort of touched on, I love now adding the sound design and adding the music and and Choosing a take or a performance that I get to choose, not the actor, right, the actor may have done it a few ways in independent films, you may be only get two or three choices anyway, because you know other things come into play and you have to move so fast. But I isn't it Martin Scorsese who said in that trailer for the masterclass he did Um.

Speaker 2:

If you don't get physically ill seeing your first rough cut, something's wrong.

Speaker 3:

We on this podcast always encourage our listeners to try something scary. Stretch their wings, try new things, push the comfort bubble, and I think that is something that you have done throughout your career. Even though things are scary you you know and daunting and tumultuous and you've got knots in your stomach, you still do it because you, you're a creator and it's obviously something that's in your heart and to do. What advice would you give anyone out there who's afraid to take the first step?

Speaker 1:

First of all, I'd be like why are you afraid? What? What are you afraid of? A number of things are coming up to me recently about failure, that failing is actually a good thing because it's how you learn and and. So that that's. You got to ask yourself that question why? Why you haven't leapt off into the abyss? Because you know it's not, we're not curing cancer, it's not rocket science. There's that. You know. There are enough people around you, enough warm breathing bodies. Somebody can hold a camera. Your friend can say the lines you know, even if you haven't got a script, you might have an idea. You, okay, get people to improvise it. Actors love to act. Guess what? Yes, they'll come and do it for free. That's why we're striking right now.

Speaker 1:

So I ran this damn mess we're in because because everyone's so keen to be creative and choose me. Choose me so, so that you know you'll have no lack of People to work with. And again, if it's rubbish, well then just do it again. You know, just be, do not be afraid to fail. What I think?

Speaker 1:

What happened to me? To me, because it took such a long process to get widows walk made and my lovely friends. I was in this gospel choir and we would all go for a drink after rehearsal. And, alexandra, how's the how's your movie going?

Speaker 1:

I said, well, it's going about the same as it was two weeks ago when you asked me that question and I just knew that I had to keep going, that I there was a point of no return at one point, like I got enough people involved, or I'd raised just enough money that I couldn't give back, or I'd started to spend it, that you just had to keep plowing forward. So what I would say is like, get yourself to a position where you can't stop or go back. And it's quite an easy thing to do. You just talk about it all the time, get people as excited about it as you are they won't ever be as excited about it as you are but Just keep going. And then eventually, boom, you're at a film festival or at BAFTA showing people what you did, and they are Immensely impressed. And then they look at you like how did you know how to do that?

Speaker 3:

Learned along the way, and so you're also Running a nonprofit right now, or your kid? Yes, tell us about that.

Speaker 1:

Yes, well, our Tameesha's daughters is a nonprofit. That's encouraging, inspiring, empowering young women To make films, because it's very lonely on my own sets sometimes, and also, as I touched on before, I did not see women directing, coming up or doing sound design or Running the camera, or, and you know, we want to expose young women to the, not to the notion that that's not just a man's job. And so last summer we shot a short film in London and it's almost finished. You know like it takes forever because you're asking for people's free time and so forth, but we had an almost all female crew, so the young actresses in the film Got to, were shot by by women, and then, when they weren't in a scene, I made them hold the boom or work the clapper or or whatever. So they learned how to upgrade the to the next scene or to the next take or whatever.

Speaker 1:

And I just know that. You know you got to see it to be it and we're called Artemisia's daughters. I don't know if people are familiar with Artemisia Gentileschi. She was a. She was a baroque painter and a contemporary of Caravaggio and you know, just after the Renaissance, and her paintings are amazing and she's still and I have done it myself. She's still mistaken for her male counterparts.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow and so I feel like we're standing on the shoulders of Artists like Artemisia Gentileschi, who there's another whole story how she was raped by her art teacher and she went to court and and accused him and everything, and so she's got this amazing origin story herself, and I felt like we are the daughters of women like, like her and many more that have come before. And if I can do anything, it's it's tell my story. I didn't start directing till I was like 49 or 50 and that's too late for me now. I wish I'd started a lot sooner, but I Didn't see it. So I'm making sure that if there's young women out there who have an inkling to be Filmmakers, we are part of that Process for them.

Speaker 3:

Where can people find the information on that?

Speaker 1:

That's um um Artemisia's daughters dot o r g because we're non-profits, so we've got an org at the end of it and, again, subscribe to that and you'll find out. You know, we're always raising a bit of money. We've got a go fund me going and I did do a podcast for that. I am archiving women in the industry, asking them what their job is, how they trained for it, how they were inspired to do it, what it's like being a cinema, a female cinematographer, and the stories all interconnect because we're all Working in a man's world and that you know.

Speaker 1:

But if you said, oh I, what does a script supervisor do, you can go and listen to Sylvia Bellito, who is a script supervisor on, you know, television and film in the UK, and she describes how she didn't go to school. She said I found somebody, said we're making this short film, sylvia, you can be the. We just need somebody to make notes as we're going along on each take with scripts advisor and she and continuity, and so she found a little booklet that was called continuity and and learn to do it. She read this little booklet and showed up and now she's working on killing Eve and Atlanta and All these amazing shows.

Speaker 3:

Wow, and so is that podcast called Artemisha's daughter's podcast.

Speaker 1:

It's called fierce female filmmakers.

Speaker 3:

I love that and I can't thank you enough for joining us today on the show. I encourage everybody out there to check out widows walk this journey that Alexandra plowed through through the point of no return, and it's out there for you. You can find it on Amazon and other streaming platforms. I check out Titanic talk podcast, of course, and ship of dreams Titanic movie diaries. Where, where is that right now?

Speaker 1:

I don't know when people will be listening to this, this podcast, but it's about to go to market, to the American film market next week. So, although I don't have anything to share at the moment, if you subscribe to us on our website, which is ship of dreams film, calm, or follow on Instagram, which is at ship of dreams film, or follow me, which is a Contraction of first-class woman, which is my character in Titanic, fst, cl, ss, wmn I just took all the vowels out, so it's physicals, woman and Titanic talk. Is Titanic underscore talk, underscore podcast. All of these, all of these Places will bang the drum when it first becomes on a streamer or first.

Speaker 1:

You know Well what. You know what it should be the film and not to spin it out, but what we know we've done is make a 93 minute commercial for Titanic. So it should be right next to wherever Titanic's playing, which is, frankly, everywhere. It should be the companion piece on your menu, because you I say this because it's been said to me over and over when you watch ship of dreams, titanic movie diaries, you then have to go back and watch Titanic because you, you won't watch it the same way again Once you know these backstories and so forth.

Speaker 3:

You'll look for all the new friends you made in the watching the documentary. That's right and I can attest first-person Witness to how amazing Alexandra is. It stay in in touch if you give her a follow on Instagram and thank you for being so generous with your time and tie in this whole community together. You have been a huge piece of glue to and to bring everybody together around around Titanic, but just the love and support in the whole community is amazing and you are at the heart of that. So thank you.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm going to say to you again, mr Carganilla, that you must not put on the shelf your directing career If that's what you want to do. You can have gaps in between and I know you have a family and all that stuff and you know life takes over, but you're never, you're clearly never too old, because you know I'm old and and you, you, if you've got stories to tell, just tell them, and and don't think like you have to put that aside because there's these other things, just keep, keep it rotating.

Speaker 3:

I Appreciate that and I expect to see some.

Speaker 1:

You know some evidence of that.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, you tell him, alexandra, you tell him.

Speaker 3:

I won't you down.

Speaker 1:

Right, see, I'm your mentor. Now, see, I'm paying it forward. That's all you need. That's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 3:

Lesson taken. Good, marvelous ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Alexandra Boyd.

Speaker 2:

What a fun interview, paul. Oh my gosh, she is a bundle of energy. You could learn so much from her. I mean anybody could, because she's engaging.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely and just so kind and with an open heart and an open book with an open heart, she's, she's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Oh, she is and what's. If I may go right into this, because, wow, when I was listening to the interview, of course I I select my poem based on a little bit of research of you know what the topic is about, and I think I found another gem, if I may be so bold to based on what she is about. What I'm going to honestly say you are about as a director, producer, filmmaker, which is important because that is part of the title. I found this on HelloPoetrycom and Nathan Squires is the gentleman who wrote this back in 2014. And it's a great overall poem and you'll see why in just a moment, because it's the title of it is called Like a Filmmaker's Lens.

Speaker 3:

Can't wait to hear it. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Craig Jackman interpreting Nathan Squires like a filmmaker's lens.

Speaker 2:

Fade to scene palette blue and green, wide shot. Mood serene, establish view a stock or few. Pan right to view a distant two, a hazy rim. We cut to hymn, so clean and prim. Just as we hear the hymn, a tear rolls down his chin. The brightness dims, music shifts to grim. Cue the screams. Cut the scene. We're back in the now and the mood is mean. He's back in a view palette black and blue. The shot a skew. The moods muted, sounds of shooting, cue dialogue. Look what you did. Camera jerks extreme, close up a smirk. Let the antagonist work. The wirecrew's here. Hero sheds a tear signal stuntman on the tear.

Speaker 2:

Orchestration on my mark, deliver line, then cut to dark Lights. Back to reality. The view won't change. You see, there's no crew or doubles, just a wide sea of troubles. No second shots, no calling cut. It's all open, shut. It's not like a filmmaker's lens, it's just not pretend. Let me script this out what you're all about. An overconfident, loud but backlit with doubt, all part of a cast, direct you like I did the last. I see that you're ferocious, but you're hardly fast. Now I'll produce the fear as the shoot draws near. I've got the schedule set. You're not finished here. You're calling cut, but I'm just cutting you more and then I'll edit you out on the cutting room floor. I appreciate that you feel you've come so far, but never forget, this is my movie and I'm the star.

Speaker 3:

You get into a conversation with anybody and it always turns to what do you do? I'm an actor. Oh, have you been in anything that I have seen? Yeah, I was in Titanic, and they eyes absolutely light up.

Speaker 1:

I've had the privilege of working on some really great productions, one of which was James Cameron's Titanic. Everything about Titanic was different than other films.

Speaker 3:

My first day on a multi-million dollar project and I have a speaking role.

Speaker 1:

Diaries written 25 years ago full of stories and memories of what it was like to be on that incredible film. I just got a lot of goosebumps too. I'm dying to read this now.

Speaker 2:

I'm like it was terrifying. My screens were my own, not my characters.

Speaker 1:

I could really kind of forgotten that moment. I think that we all had times of being disturbed by the truth of this story and also had times where we simply had to force ourselves not to think about it or telling the story would have been much more difficult.

Speaker 3:

I was standing there with Kate Wingslet in my arms, James Cameron giving me direction, losing my absolute shape.

Speaker 1:

Dreams totally do come true. I tried to think what might have happened had I been sober.

Speaker 2:

If you've survived a Titanic, you'd survive anything.

Speaker 1:

Because I didn't go to film school. I had a front row seat watching James Cameron put his film together, not just any old film, that film.

Speaker 2:

I'm always happy to share the fact that I was in Titanic with people because it makes them light up.

Speaker 1:

The film gave me so much hope as a young gay kid. It gives you hope, hope that things are going to get better. Can I hug you just?

Speaker 2:

the back that you're in, and I knew, actually, I knew One thing that I wanted to step back about when we would talk about how was it would it be a flop or not? We knew that we would never experience anything like this again.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to put the coat on her.

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Paul Carganilla

Host