A psychiatrist takes an unexpected journey into the twilight zone in Director Parker Finn’s horror feature, Smile.
Based on his own short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept, Finn’s feature tells the chilling tale of Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), who after witnessing the bizarre suicide of a patient, goes through increasingly disturbing and daunting experiences, leading her to believe what she is experiencing is supernatural.
On October 9, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Finn discussed the making of Smile during a Q&A moderated by Director Zach Cregger (Barbarian).
During the conversation, Finn spoke about the process of editing one of the most prominent jump-scare scenes in the film.
"When we got into the edit, the real challenge was building the right amount of tension. We kept experimenting with how much we were going to do it and we did not shoot that yet when we got into the schedule. My 1st AD (Tony Phillippe) is off to the side reading the lines that are on the script and that ended up being close to what we had but it ended up changing in the edit. We kept going back and forth with what could draw people in and we even experimented with different versions of the whisper. That had a whole evolution and we wanted people to be in their seats like, 'What? WHAT!'"
Smile is Finn’s feature directorial debut. He became a DGA member in 2021.
You can listen to Finn's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.