Interview with multi awarded filmmaker Sugey Cruz
Welcome Ms Sugey Cruz, we are very excited to have you today and discuss about your work. Who is Sugey Cruz and how did the passion for filmmaking start ?
I’ve always been passionate about films, but didn’t get to be more involved in them until about 5 years ago. I started first by attending an acting class and getting involved with local filmmakers in my area-like Vidjam Harrisburg, and more frequent collaborators like Chris Ruppert and Tony Marion. I’ve always been a student of “people” and enjoyed classes like psychology and sociology in college while minoring in Film. I even graduated from law school and specialized mostly in family law looking at divorce, custody, and abuse. Observing the human condition and speaking about it is a passion of mine and generally, I relate most to other filmmakers that like exploring those themes as well. As both actor and filmmaker, I believe in researching your subject matter and creating a rich world for them to live in as much as possible. Whether that’s me playing a special needs mom, a drug addict, a crime boss, a psycho girl, or someone who is dying of a rare but fatal condition, it’s just important to know and empathize with that condition and make the person you are portraying as real and human-fallible but hopefully understandable and likable-as possible.
Can you tell us about your previous work as an actress and producer ? A very familiar and multi-awarded face at AIMAFF.
I have been acting for the last five years in features, shorts, commercials, etc... While working as an actress in an area that isn’t maybe well-known for cinema, it became clear that I needed to be more active in filmmaking process if I was going to get a reel and have my voice be a part of things. Probably around a year after I actively started my acting journey, I wrote my first short, On Turning 16, which I also starred in and produced. My approach to producing is definitely much more hands-on. In my most recent collaborations with writers/directors, I have been involved from the beginning and helped with production design, scouting, script readings, and so on. Choosing the color palette for costuming and the props and design that go with each character is such a fun way to create the world of the film and allows the actor to feel a part of it. AIMAFF has been very kind to the work I’ve produced like On Turning 16, Dirt, Merry Pawmas, and Foxes.
CONVERSATION ABOUT: Merry Pawmas
What inspired this short drama? Does the scenario have an importance to you on a personal level ?
“Merry Pawmas” is a slice-of-life tale in the universe of a larger storyline. In the fall, Writer/Director, Chris Ruppert, and I produced the film Transient, a sci-fi/ psychological thriller about a tech entrepreneur, David, who loses his family after a tragic accident and isn’t coping well with his grief. The family in that film is seen in glimpses and memories most of the time. In that film, I play David’s wife, Claire. To prepare for our roles in the film, Greg Poppa, who plays David, and I worked on a backstory for these characters and created all these “moments before” the events that happen in “Transient” so that we could inform our performances and how we interacted with one another. A lot of that normally gets ‘missed’ in films themselves because they are choices actors make but are not really ‘seen’ by the audience. For Pawmas it was great to be able to go backward and with our screen daughter, Lilly, be able to show what that relationship was like before the events in Transient. It’s basically a rare glimpse into how these characters interacted before and some of their ups and downs.
Talk to us about our characters, Laura, David and Claire. Who are they ?
David, Claire, and Laura Blakely are husband and wife and their daughter. They are the “family” in the aforementioned Transient film. In many ways, we felt that more could be explored both from a marketing standpoint and a character development standpoint with these characters and their relationships with one another. As a team, Chris, Greg, and I had been talking about a Christmas movie since I love those and had wanted to make one for some time, so we decided to combine this idea of a Christmas film with letting the relationships between these Transient characters breathe a bit more and show the audience a glimpse into their lives BEFORE what they will see in that film, which will be much darker in tone. David is a tech entrepreneur who is consumed by his work to the point of neglecting his family at times. Claire is his wife who is trying to find a balance between being an “understanding wife” and seeing the effect of not having David around the house is having on their daughter Laura. Laura, played by the talented Lillian Ruppert, just wants her parents to stop fighting and to be happier together again. She perhaps imagines that her favorite tv show personality, Borphy, a life-sized adult guinea pig, comes to life to help her bring them back together and thus save Christmas.
How would you describe your directing autograph ?
As my directorial debut, I needed help with some of the technical standpoints so I am indebted to Chris Ruppert, co-director, and our DP, Jamie Root, for helping put the image I had in my head and actually getting the footage we needed. Assistant Director, Tony Marion, gave me a crash course on the shotlist, again getting what was in my head onto paper. I also shared with the team films that inspired some of the aesthetics I wanted at points. Communicating with the actors about their performances and creating the “world” is where my strengths as a director currently lie. Having that open communication and seeing the story clearly helped when I had to communicate with everyone including the composer, Mitch Hood, and our AIMAFF-winning editor, Rich Everts. Listening to these collaborators to help tell the story and foreshadowing some of Transient was a big motivator story-wise for us. When the couple finally makes up, there’s this Romeo and Juliet balcony perspective of Claire looking down adoringly at David, that was Greg’s idea. Rich added this foreshadowing layer as well by using a filter used for memories in “Transient” at 3 pivotal moments in Pawmas.
What is the target audience of your project ?
From a marketing standpoint, our target audience for Pawmas was expanding the audience that thinks they might want to check out Transient later this year when that feature film premieres. Including a slice-of-life film that explores the relationships between 3 key characters in that film was a major motivator for our team. We want people who like drama and exploring the human psyche to come to check out a movie that they might have dismissed because they assumed it was ‘just a horror flick’. And obviously, anyone that likes happy endings and Christmas films will like Pawmas.
Talk to us about your collaboration with Greg Poppa? Producing, Acting and Directing. What went down behind the scenes?
Sometimes you get blessed with finding kindred spirits who align with you on most of your shared goals as a filmmaker. I met Greg 4 years ago when we were both starting out. We had no real interaction until Chris and I saw a short film our DP for Pawmas, Jamie Root, made called The Signs. Greg WAS David for us. Greg and I got into this industry at the same time and are at similar places in that journey. We created a quick friendship and mutual respect which has aided us in our work thus far. It’s been great to help his short film Foxes through the film festival circuit and get to work with him again on Pawmas. Currently, we are co-writing partners and have a few projects in development. We’ve both had disappointing film partnerships in the past, so that has helped us communicate better about making sure that no one’s voice gets lost on the way to achieving our goals as filmmakers. We also believe in the power of ‘haze’ in a scene and along with Chris Ruppert have a blast on set making magic out of mayhem.
FUTURE WORK AND CLOSING LETTER
What is the message the audience should convey leaving the screening of your film ?
Merry Pawmas is an odd one because it can easily be a standalone cute film about a family in a Parent Trap like scenario or it can be seen as part of a larger body of work that informs a better understanding of the humanity behind complex characters who are messy and tormented and who make decisions that make us question who is good and who is not and what those words even mean within the context of humanity. It really depends on if you are someone that is only going to watch a sweet, Christmas film or if you are invested now in this family and want to know how it makes a hard turn to the dark in Transient. We obviously hope that audiences will see both and go back and forth and see even the subtle decisions we made as actors to foreshadow events that happen later on. Our intention as filmmakers is to have audiences look at the whole body of work and have conversations about the characters and look inwards at how they handle their ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ emotions. Even Borphy has another story, so this is just one tale within a larger cinematic universe.
Any future projects incoming ? Along with personal aspirations.
There are 4 projects that are in either Post-Production or some version of active development. Transient by Chris Ruppert and After Sophia by Crescentia Volz, which I produced and starred in, and The Rest of the Money by Tony Marion which I produced the short proof of concept for and we are going to talk to investors about to hopefully make into a feature film. Additionally, Greg and Jamie made a short film called “Score” that like “Foxes”, I will aid through the film festival route. Those will obviously consume a lot of my time later in the year in terms of finding a distribution home for them. As mentioned before, Greg and I are co-writing a few projects together. Probably the one that is most ready for production talks is one that he’d direct and I would star in currently titled “Cold.” Right now it’s been great to work with other filmmakers and actors like Chris, Tony, Greg, Jamie, and our Borphy in Pawmas, Austin Greene, to develop films that we want to make and showcase our talents more than we would on someone else’s projects. Those other projects pay the bills but these feed our souls.
That was the interview with our beloved creator Sugey Cruz. Our community is rising everyday, new talented filmakers and screenwriters get onboard. Be sure to check the rest of our interviews and why not schedule one for yourself to promote your work. To publish an interview simply submit on the INTERVIEW OF YOUR FILM category on our Filmfreeway page.
