My Old Ass, from Amazon MGM Studios, is a coming-of-age story about free-spirited teenager Elliott (Maisy Stella), who encounters her 39-year-old future self (Aubrey Plaza) after a mushroom trip during her 18th birthday celebration. Written and directed by Megan Park (The Fallout), the film challenges viewers to consider whether or not they’d take their own advice. In addition to Stella and Plaza, the film features Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler and Kerrice Brooks.
I recently spoke with Megan Park about the film, which was shot back in 2022 on an actual cranberry farm in Muskoka, Canada. Here, she shares insight into the production process, including the challenges of shooting outdoors, as well as the film’s post production and the importance of original music.
Hi Megan! As the writer and director, you must have had a very clear vision of what this film should look like?
“Yeah! When I was writing the movie, I didn't actually start with the mushroom trip. That came later in the process of figuring out how I was going to tap into more of the fantasy idea of talking to your older/ younger self. But I always knew that I wanted it to be super grounded and feel like you could watch the movie and (be) like, ‘Did that actually happen or did it not?’ It's kind of in that gray area, where it's a buy in. You know? I referenced the movie 13 Going on 30 a lot when I was talking about the movie because she goes in the closet and sparkle dust falls on her head, and all of a sudden she's 30. The buy-in is there because of the tone of the movie, and because of the concept and the themes. You aren't going down the path of the logistics of how that worked or doesn't work?
I think that was sort of the main focus. If people walk out of the movie trying desperately to figure out the butterfly effect of older and younger Elliot, we've messed up somewhere along the way because it's not the point of the story or the heart of the story. So it was a really delicate line to navigate, from the writing of the film to making it to editing the movie.
“The mushroom trip was sort of a later thing that I kind of came up with that just sort of seemed like something Elliot would do on her 18th birthday, and was a fun way to get these two characters together.”
What was the timeframe for the shoot, and was it all in Canada?
“The shoot was about six weeks. It was all shot in Muskoka, Canada, where it is set, and on the actual cranberry farm in town. We actually stayed at that white cottage that, you see that's Elliot's house - me and Maisie. It's a not an area where a lot of productions are, if ever, so the logistics of getting an entire film crew up there — it's about two hours north of Toronto — were definitely tricky. It was amazing to get to shoot it where it actually takes place, but shooting on boats, everyone says that takes twice as long. I would say it takes four times as long as the regular scene.”
There are quite a few scenes on the lake. How complicated was it?
“It was about four boats following our characters boat, always. We had one boat for hair and makeup, wardrobe, producers. And then we had the camera-follow boat. Then we usually had like the police/water boat there, and then our actual cast boat. There was a lot. It was a whole boat parade every time we went out on the lake. And it was very annoying. It was so fun and beautiful, but logistically, I would barely have service in the follow boats. [Most of the time], I could not see what was going on. There was a lot of trust. (I’d) talk to the actors after. ‘Did you guys get it? Did you feel good about it?’ I lost service halfway through because we got too far from the boat, so it was tricky. And Maisy really had to learn how to drive the boat and actually get her boating license, which was very funny, because you couldn't legally be out there, ripping around without it. The boating stuff, although it paid off visually, was so tricky.”
Did you try to group all the lake shots together?
“You know, it was actually more about the land location we were near. So we would try to lump together when we shot at a marina. We would try to do some boat stuff, tacked on to that marina day. But then we needed different looks of the lake. Elliot's dock was one location where we also shot the campfire stuff, because it was actually a private lake, so it was really quiet. When we need still water and really quiet scenes, we need to shoot it all at this property. But then we're out on the big lake, so we need to kind of have that kind of wide open, going fast kind of shoot. It really depended on what we were trying to get out of the scene more than, actually like having all the boat stuff condensed. And then there was weather (that) came up. We'd have to shift stuff. ‘Oh, it's going to be storming?’ And now we have to swap out everything, so we were very much at the mercy of the Canadian weather as well.”
How far back does this go for the production?
“It was 2022 actually, but we kind of went summer into fall. We missed the Sundance deadline that year because we shot it until end of September, so it was too quick a turnaround, really, so we had to hold the movie for a year before we submitted to festivals. We had a finished film for quite a while.”
Was it an advantage to not have the pressure of a festival date on the horizon?
“100 percent! We always knew with where we were shooting, we were never going to make Sundance the first year or so, and we knew that was our objective, so yeah, it was nice to have the time in the edit and the whole post production, although time is money. They weren't like, ‘Take all the time you want to finish this movie.’”
Tell us about working with your cinematographer Kristen Correll?
“Kristen Correll goes by KII, who I had worked with on The Fallout, my first movie. And I'd also worked with her on some of my first music videos when I started. That's how I knew her, when I started directing and experimenting with directing, and she's amazing. We obviously had a rapport from The Fallout, and we both work in a really similar way.
“It was a very different movie than The Fallout, and it was very different challenges. When we shot The Fallout, it was the first movie back post-pandemic in LA. It was September 2020, so it was extremely strict COVID regulations. I was directing most of the movie from like a backroom with a monitor. Luckily I'd been on many film sets before because, of had been my first experience, it would have been very tricky, talking to the actors over a walkie. KII and I were often in separate locations, so that was a very tricky experience. But we got along so well, and it was such a great rapport that I knew I wanted to work with her again.
“This one had its own set of challenges. She barely got to put a light up half the time because it's outside, on a boat and working with the natural light. But she's so good at that, so I have so much trust in her. She was a part of the process every step of the way - scouting locations and production designing, because we knew we wanted to lean into the natural elements as much as possible. For me, it was really important to get her intel and insight.
“Fun fact: I don't think I've ever told anyone this publicly - I am colorblind, which is rare for women, but also probably rare for a director. Although I see color, I am red/green colorblind confirmed. I see red. I see green, and it's my own version of that. And but it's oftentimes wrong. I heavily rely on KII to be like, ‘Oh, that color of that shirt with this is really throwing me.’ And I'm like, ‘Wait, what do you mean?’ Because I see this color. It's funny because, obviously in the coloring process, there was a day I couldn't make it to one of the final color sessions. And I was like, ‘Well, honestly, who cares if I'm there?’ As long as KII is there, she's the one who's really fine-tuning things in that regard.”
Are relying on her for camera and lens choice?
“I rely so much on my DP because A) I didn't go to film school. That was my whole insecurity with stepping behind the camera. I don't know lenses. I don't know the technical stuff. I mean, I had an idea of what I liked as like an audience member and as somebody who was watching films, what I thought looked good and interesting, but I didn't know how to get it there. Luckily KII and I really speak the same language, and she now knows what I like.”
Did working in a remote location affect how soon you could begin the edit?
“They were working on a rough director's cut, exactly by the script. With The Fallout, I didn't see dailies. I didn't see anything until we got in there. We only had three weeks, I think, to edit that movie. It was very fast. And this time around we were seeing dailies, although the producers were great about watching them more than I could, just because it was such a tight day-to-day turnaround. Sometimes I didn't I didn't have the time to always look through everything, so they were really checking and keeping me in the loop on what we were getting and what we were missing. But they had sort of a rough director's cut by the time we finished the movie.
“[Editor] Jennifer Vecchiarello and I turned the movie inside and out in the edit because so much magic happened while we were shooting. Although we obviously did get everything that the script had on the page, there was so much more that we got and we would lean into what was working, what wasn't working. We’d be out on the boats and you'd think you're getting something, and it wouldn't work necessarily, so we had to go off script a lot, and just lean into what was working. In the edit, the movie turned into something. It was definitely what the script reads, but also, there was a lot more that we had that we wanted to lean into. Even though we had the director's cut immediately, we were like, ‘We want to get rid of the first scripted ten pages of the movie and start here.’ So there was a lot of changes we knew we wanted right away.”
Where was editorial taking place?
“We did most of the edit like I did my first movie — 100 percent via Zoom. This time was, I would say, 60 percent remote, online via Zoom. And then we got together for the last couple weeks in LA in-person and edited at her home studio.”
How tough was it to shoot outdoors with all of the production sound challenges?
“God bless the sound department on this movie. That was one of my biggest anxieties. It's so interesting that you bring that up because I was thinking, ‘None of this is going to be usable.’ I hate when you have to go in and ADR the whole scene for something. It's such a bummer.”
You had motorboat engines to contend with.
“We did have to do a hefty amount of ADR, but they were also able to salvage a lot of the original production audio, and a lot of it ended up being shockingly usable. We did have a really low electric motor. We tried to get ahead of it before we started filming. We tested out different motors. Which was the quietest? The little, tin-can boat she drives on a remote control some of the time. And we knew we'd have to get audio, so it was almost silent. We were able to do some things ahead of time. It was very tricky most of the time, but they were able to salvage a lot in post, which was a miracle. There ended up being a lot of ADR because of the phone conversations between young ass and old ass, which we ended up changing a lot to suit our needs creatively versus what we had actually recorded. Most of it was just me talking to Maisy off-camera, just for the sake of ease, because it was hard to do the pre-record with Aubrey and get the timing right. And also, we were changing things and improving things. So there's a lot of ADR because of that element, but we were able to salvage a lot . The trickiest part, funny enough, was the wind and the final old-ass scene because it was such a fucking windy day and such a key scene in the movie that we did have to ADR a lot of that, which was frustrating. And also finding the right wind tone. I feel like we spent three days finding the right wind tone.”
That last scene, with both Elliotts and Chad, really makes use of music to amp up the emotion.
“Interesting you bring that up because that was sort of the moment we had to get right in the whole movie for it to work. And the music, I knew, was going to be a huge element to that. My husband (Tyler Hilton) and his producing partner (Jaco Caraco) actually scored the film, so, luckily, I got to be really annoying and have them try a million different types of (music). I didn't know what type of music I wanted underneath the film, to be honest. I had this idea that maybe it's like a kind of Canadiana, like campfire/bonfire feel. And then that didn't seem right. And then I kept going back to the movies that I grew up on, like Casper, and these sort of coming-of-age, really iconic, ‘90s, John Williams-esque scores. And but they're really heavy handed when you go back and listen to them. They worked so well in those movies, but when we tried to go full on, it was it felt a little too much in our movie.
“And we wanted there to be a ‘Chad’ theme. That piece of music that plays later on is actually also in the scene where they go under the bridge. A lot of those older movies have the themes, musically, with like a certain character moment, and they just killed it on that.
“It was actually sort of a take on a lullaby that had been on our daughter's mobile that he had thought about. He didn't obviously rip that theme off...And then he went in and wrote this 16-piece orchestra music, which I didn't even know he could do. He's surprising with that, and it was incredible. We got to go in and see it scored live to picture, and it was just so perfect. I feel like the music really does so much of the work, emotionally, in that scene. It was just stunning to see it all come together.”
It really has an emotional impact.
“Thank you. Honestly, it was such a team effort – (from) the actors to the DP. We were losing light that day. It was windy. There was a lot. We only had one afternoon to film that whole thing, so it was, probably the most stressful day for me on-set because I knew it was probably the most important scene in the whole movie. Thankfully, everybody really came in on a ten and delivered, and we were able to get it done. But it was scary for me as a director. That was the day I was most nervous.”
What about the sound mix?
“It's in Toronto, and it was an amazing team run by our post supervisor, Alex Ordanis. We went in. The producers, flew in. It was a full deal. We were there for like a week and a half or maybe two weeks, doing the final mix. The scene we spent the most amount of time on (was) probably the Justin Bieber scene. (That) was a really interesting one also to play around with in the mix.”
What’s next for you? More directing?
“Definitely. I probably won't be in front of the camera again if things continue to go well behind the camera. I'm writing a feature right now with LuckyChap and Indian Paintbrush, the team who I made this movie with, and I will be directing that as well. And then I also just sold a TV show also with LuckyChap that I'm writing right now.”