Episode 37: Tessa Blake

Tessa Blake: And I just remember thinking, I cannot believe I'm going to die in Montenegro. This is not how I saw this going.

Josh Caldwell: Atypical daydreamers, welcome to the show. My guest today is Tessa Blake. She's a filmmaker and director based in Los Angeles. Tessa's work takes her around the world, and today she shares two stories from the road that reveal exactly what it takes to get the job done.

Tessa Blake: I was directing a commercial in Scotland. It was for a brand that sold these like old fashioned sort of lemonade and traditional British soft drinks, like rhubarb and ginger. Very traditional. And they wanted it to look very quintessentially British. So we found ourselves in this little village in Scotland, and there was a cricket green in the center of the town. Very picture perfect. And so we were like, great, this is perfect, we'll shoot here. And we spent about a week in this town.

And I loved it. It was so charming. Like genuinely one of my favorite places I've ever been. There was a pub in the center of town that was the heart of the village. The whole village basically ran through this pub. The old men would come in and have a pint in the morning. And then at lunchtime, the workers who were working near the village would come in and have lunch. And at night, everyone would come in and have dinner. And then it would be buzzing until late at night with locals and with us. And I loved that pub so much. We were shooting on the cricket green and it was a very pastoral, beautiful, idyllic set.

And we had the most bizarre problem, which was that there was a man in the village who had, I think, maybe he had some kind of mental illness, but there was a man in the village who would come out of his house every time the sun shone. And this is Scotland. We're talking about a very narrow window of opportunity where the sun shines. And every time the sun came out, he would come running out of his house and he would stand in our shot and he would just howl at the sun. Howl at the sun. Head tilted back and howling. He was so happy about the sun. He just wanted to be in it. He loved the sun so much. And we obviously, we can't have a man howling at the sun in our shot. So we had to problem-solve, right. We needed, somehow, to get him out of the shot. Not away from the sun, because of course everyone is delighted by the sun in Scotland.

Tessa Blake: But here's what I love about this industry, it attracts such good problem solvers. My first AD, who was Scottish, was like, okay, I've got it. And he went and had a conversation with this man and he basically set up a chair for him just outside of frame. So just on the edge where we couldn't see him but he could still see the sun and feel the sun on his face, he set up a lawn chair. And then we brought him a cup of tea. And every time the sun came out, he would come and sit in his chair and drink his cup of tea and feel the sun on his face and not howl because he was sitting down and happy and comfortable.

And honestly I thought that was such a lovely solution. It wasn't trying to take something from him. It was just redirecting it slightly. So that felt really good. We became friends with him by the end. He was very sweet, actually.

So that commercial was really beautiful. And I remember at the end of shooting it, we went to the pub that night for a wrap party. And it was so beautiful. It felt like such a sort of contained little world and it was just so lovely. And that's one of my favorite shoot experiences.

Tessa Blake: Okay, so now we move into a more harrowing territory. I was producing a documentary. It was an independent documentary about an athlete. And we were following this athlete in Montenegro. And so we were in the mountains. This athlete would train in the mountains. And we were in a very remote part of Montenegro. And we were shooting a very specific shot where this athlete was going around these mountain passes. And we needed to get ahead of him to capture him coming around the pass.

So we got in our vehicle. Now, the vehicle we had was like a mid-size SUV. It was not a mountain vehicle. It was a passenger SUV that we had rented for the trip. And we're starting to go up this mountain road to get in front of the athlete. And the mountain road gets narrower and narrower and narrower. And at a certain point, it's like a single lane road. And there's the mountain on one side and a sheer drop on the other side. And I'm in the passenger seat and I'm looking down and it's like hundreds of feet down. And there's no guardrail. There's nothing.

And we were in a stick shift vehicle. And the person driving, the local fixer who was driving, was not particularly strong with a stick shift. And they were stalling. And every time they stalled, we would start to roll back towards the edge. And I just remember thinking, I cannot believe I'm going to die in Montenegro. This is not how I saw this going. I did not think this is how my story ended. And we were genuinely terrified. Like it was not performative. It was real fear.

Tessa Blake: And then somehow, and I do not know how, they managed to get the vehicle going and got us up over the pass and we were safe. And we did get the shot, which is the other part. We did get the shot. And it was beautiful. And it was worth it. But I will not forget the feeling of sitting in that car and looking down and thinking this is it.

The thing I find so funny looking back on it is that fear fades. Fear genuinely fades from memory in a way that joy doesn't, I find. Because I can tell you about the beauty of that place, the incredible light, the way the mountains looked. And I can tell you about the fear. But the fear doesn't land the same way anymore when I tell it. Whereas the beauty still kind of takes my breath away when I think about it. Which I think is a really beautiful thing about how we're wired. We're wired to move towards beauty and away from fear, and I think that memory functions the same way.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Tessa for sharing her experiences. Be sure to check out her work. You can find her at tessablake.com. This podcast is created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. And if you know someone who you think might enjoy this show, send them this episode. The support really helps. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next time.