The-Send Off writer/director John-Mitchell Powell began his career cutting comedy with Jerry Zucker at his company, National Banana, “which was kind of a Funny Or Die-type website before Funny Or Die was a thing,” he explains. “We had a soundstage over in Santa Monica and Jerry would shoot bits there and then bring them over to the edit bay and we’d cut them together.”
John-Mitchell Powell
Powell says this experience was essentially his film school. “Getting to watch Jerry conceptualize and direct on set, and getting to learn editorial rhythm and the process of making picture and sound work together to tell a story… for me it all started with Jerry.”
Around that same time, Powell cut his first feature, Obselidia, which was written and directed by Diane Bell. It premiered at Sundance and took home some awards. It was also nominated for a couple of Spirit Awards. “That was the beginning of my feature editorial career,” he says.
While Powell continues to edit indie features that play the festival circuit, he has also embraced episodics, including the Netflix series Dear White People. “In fact, right now I’m cutting a television project with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg over at Amazon, and I’m about to cut the Netflix docuseries American Manhunt about the Boston Marathon bombing.”
Powell clearly likes to stay busy, because as he continues to edit an eclectic list of projects, he has also been writing his own features with the intent to direct. “I’ve had numerous close calls when it comes to making my first feature, but the pandemic created a natural set of circumstances that made 2021 the right time to finally take the leap.”
That leap he refers to is the feature The Send-Off. The story is about an actor who throws an impromptu party at his home. What starts out as a fun time with friends ends up devolving into something much darker.
We recently spoke to Powell to find out more.
What led you to write and direct The Send-Off?
Frustration and anger. And I think I’m the type of person who handles frustration and anger with laughter. At least, the kind of laughter that translates to disbelief. The frustration was from spending years getting very close to directing my first film, only to have the house of cards topple at the 11th hour. A lot of the frustration just built from the process of development, which can be brutal. You’re spending much of your time waiting to have someone tell you no.
If you’re not careful, you’ll see a couple of years go by and you’ve really kind of gained zero ground at getting the project made. And that frustration boiled over during the pandemic, so I decided to stop asking for permission to make a film and just do it with the talented friends I’ve made over the years.
The anger that stemmed from society and our business was channeled into the major themes of the movie. The Send-Off is a film about Hollywood and how this industry can sometimes cater to narcissistic personalities. When I was writing the script, every day there was a new story coming out about yet another individual in our business using power structures to his or her advantage, and I just channeled that anger into the film — hopefully in an unexpected way. The challenge was always, “Let’s make a movie about a serious topic, but not take ourselves seriously doing it.” I think we succeeded in that.
Can you walk us through the needs of the project?
The major creative need for this film was finding and balancing the right tone. It’s a film that leaps between genres pretty freely — five different readers could read the script for The Send-Off and all five might say it’s a different genre. So going in, we knew the challenge was going to be creating something that felt cohesive tonally, while at the same time being a sandbox that was pliable enough to let the actors be challenged and unafraid to really go as far as they wanted to take the character.
It’s not easy to go big when you know some really dark and heavy issues linger beneath the scene. That’s a really hard target to hit, but the cast did an amazing job and our DP, Elijah Guess, did a wonderful job bringing everything together with the look of the film. Some people have compared the film to Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, which was certainly an influence on the film.
I’ve even had a few people describe the film as a really dark version of Can’t Hardly Wait, but instead of high school, it’s a Hollywood party. I think the beauty of The Send-Off is you can feel a lot of my influences in the final film. It’s the type of film that you can kind of find whatever you’re looking for in it. That’s something I’m very proud of.
What gear did you and your team use for the shoot?
The cameras were ARRI Amiras with Cooke Speed Panchros. We shot an underwater scene on the Sony A7s and one pickup day on the Sony Venice with Angénieux lenses. Everything was 90% handheld with a bit of tripod work. There was dolly work or Steadicam.
What about for post?
For post, we had a unique set-up. We cut in both Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer. Because I come from editing, I was pretty involved with the cut. Editor Mark Gasparo did his first cut and then passed the cut to me. I did a pass of that cut and then I passed it back to him and so on and so forth. We kind of did a ping-pong match for editorial.
I find myself leaning more and more toward Premiere these days as opposed to Avid, while Mark is still an all-Avid guy. So Mark cut in Avid and I cut in Premiere, and that somehow worked for us. It was not your usual post workflow, but I really enjoyed it. Mark did a wonderful job guiding the film to finish.
What were some of the most challenging parts of making The Send-Off?
The major technical challenge was time. This is one of the major challenges of any project, but this was a micro-budget film shot in 12 days. Some days we were shooting 10 pages of script with one camera and sometimes up to 15 actors in a scene. So having extra days would have been my big wish on this, but the challenges were more than time.
The film mostly takes place at a Hollywood house party over the course of one evening. Imagine the house party scene in Swingers, but instead of heading to Vegas, we’re hanging out at that party all night and getting to know everyone. So, a big challenge was just getting coverage. When you’ve got that many pages in one day and so many actors to get on camera, you don’t have time to do more than a couple of takes at most.
The other challenge that comes along with that is lighting. We were working handheld on this film, so we basically had to light the entire house so characters could move through the space and hit marks. Running as fast as we were — it got dicey. The finale of the film was essentially one 12-minute scene that involved special effects makeup, stonework and a dance sequence with every actor in the movie present. Try shooting that all in one day and not getting some gray hairs! Somehow, we’re still alive to tell the story.
