Emmanuel Itier: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, John. Really enjoyed In/Significant Others, which is a great follow-up to your first film, Among Brothers.  What was it that you felt you were you trying to express with In/Significant Others? What did you want the audience to take away from it?

John Schwert: Well, thank you for having me.  Since the film mostly deals with relationships — husband and wife, boss and subordinate, siblings, friends and/or lovers, I wanted to explore how manipulation influences those relationships and to expose it in such a way that audiences could see two different types of manipulation: direct or overt manipulation as well as unintentional or subconscious manipulation. In writing the script, I came up with a handful of realistic characters that I could introduce manipulation to and follow its effect on their relationships: a soldier that returns from Iraq to discover his wife was raped, a brother who struggles to keep up with a successful sibling, a nurse with a drug-addicted sister, and a woman having an affair with a married friend, as well as a set of circumstances that bound all of them together — the homicide investigation. I also thought it was important to manipulate the audience in how they follow the characters and interpret the story, hence the cameraman and sound boom guy who interview everyone as the story progresses.  The way in which we cut between their “video” interview footage and the main “live-action” narrative is a continuation of the manipulation theme.  The key was to avoid becoming melodramatic or cheesy but rather to keep it truthful, interesting, and in the form of a dramatic thriller. I really want audiences to take away from the film the fact that manipulation does exist in all relationships, whether someone is directly lying to someone else or their manipulation is masked in fear, or even in their subconscious and they can’t acknowledge it -- it still exists.  This is, of course, in addition to the idea that it is possible to make great narrative films without spending millions of dollars…

EI: Tell us about your directing style with actors and crew, as well as the choice to mix video style interviews with a regular narration…

JS: The choice to inter-cut the video interview footage along with the main narrative footage was made early in the writing process, and we actually have many more interviews that didn’t make the final cut but I’m sure will be on the DVD features.  To prepare to direct In/Significant Others, I watched films like Steven Soderburgh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape and Full Frontal, along with Michael Haneke’s films, among others, to get a sense of how other filmmakers had pulled off inter-cutting video footage with the main narrative footage. With regards to working with actors, I like to work closely with them as they prepare and create their characters, allowing them to use the script as a story outline rather than them being word-perfect on it.  I allow enough room for improvisation in rehearsals as well as on set and think of directing in a left-brain strategic way, and always push for realism and truth in the portrayal of the characters.  I really enjoy directing the actors the most out of any of the jobs a director has to do, and I think that shows up in the work. During pre-production, I also really enjoy working with the department heads. I invite and allow a lot of suggestions, and they are also given the script along with a “creative brief” sort of outline that conveys the mood, the tone and suggests the way in which sets, wardrobe, make-up, and lighting schemes should operate in terms of the story, again operating in a very strategic and tactical way.  It’s just such a collaborative effort that, if you plan and prepare well in pre-production, when you’re in production, it becomes just knocking down the tasks day-to-day, and then in post-production, you have so much good stuff from which to choose.

EI: What was the biggest challenge for you to bring this film to life?

JS: As with any feature film project, the most challenging part of In/Significant Others was raising the money to shoot the film.  Even making it as a SAG Ultra Low Budget film, under $200,000, and knowing that we had a good cast and crew to produce it in North Carolina, getting those funds were as difficult as raising $10 million to make a film much larger in scope.  But I am extremely happy and thankful to get as much support as we did and in getting as much production value on screen as we did.

EI: What are your expectations, distribution-wise, and how hard is it today for an independent filmmaker to survive in today’s shrunken marketplace?

JS: It is very hard. There will always be a market for the large high-concept studio pictures, but the economic downturn has hurt so many production companies and distributors that a cascading effect has occurred from the mid-sized studio and independent films, which are now getting pushed into film festivals and smaller distributors, in turn pinching micro-budgeted features that would normally go through those channels, into self-distribution or squeezing them out of the market altogether. However, we do feel like we have a solid enough of a film, in terms of story, production value, and performances, that we can succeed critically and actually do well in a limited theatrical release in the US, obviously not on 4,000 screens, but with a few hundred screens and targeted marketing and advertising, we feel we can actually turn a profit.

EI: Cast-wise, what were you after?

JS: I think a good film can be broken if you make bad decisions during the casting process, which is why it is so challenging.  We had meetings and auditions in Los Angeles, New York and Charlotte, North Carolina, where we planned to shoot In/Significant Others, and coincidentally cast actors that all had Carolina roots in some way.  During that process, I found what I felt were the best actors and re-worked some of the scenes and characters to make the actors work flawlessly in those roles.  Again, I look for realistic and truthful actors with some improvisational skills that can give you various options that could be called for in any scene.

EI: What’s coming up next for you?

JS: Right now, I’m putting together another feature film project entitled Southbound Crossing, which is an original screenplay by Thomas Torrey, who produced the behind-the-scenes for In/Significant Others.  Southbound Crossing is a character-driven dramatic thriller that explores the weight of guilt and isolation as two men form a unique bond while covering up the accidental death of a young female drifter in the Carolina countryside.  It’s one of the best scripts I’ve read, and I really think it can attract A-list talent, even on a modest budget. In addition to that, I’ve optioned the rights to the book Two Souls Indivisible, written by James Hirsch, the bestselling author of Hurricane, about the boxer Rubin Carter. Two Souls is the true story of two American soldiers shot down during the Vietnam War and the heroic bond they formed sharing a cramped cell in a brutal POW camp.  Fred Cherry, the first black officer to be captured by the Vietnamese, was severely wounded after the plane he was piloting crashed in North Vietnam.  Porter Halyburton, a young white navy flier born and raised in the segregated south, was thrown in as Fred’s cellmate, their captors hoping the close quarters would inflame American-bred racial tensions and break both men.  Instead, a powerful and heroic bond was created between the two that would sustain them through the war and throughout their lives. It’s not a low budgeted project, so it would require some form of studio partnership to get it up and running, so we’re plugging away at the story outline and script until we connect with someone to work with on it.

EI: Where can people get more information about you and your films?

JS: Our official website is www.4wproductions.com, where you’ll find links to the pages for all of our film projects.