A blue-collar outsider who was disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance in Director John Patton Ford’s dark comedic thriller, How to Make a Killing.

Loosely inspired by Robert Hamer’s 1949 British feature, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ford’s film tells the story of Becket Redfellow, who launches a campaign of manipulation, betrayal and calculated violence to eliminate the multiple heirs standing between him and billions.

On February 28, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Ford discussed the making of How to Make a Killing during a Q&A moderated by Director Kobi Libii (The American Society of Magical Negroes).

During the conversation, Ford spoke about creating a flow and a sense of motion through sound.

“I love sound, it’s my favorite part of the filmmaking process. I think a lot about sound with scene transitions. So, when I’ve got to the mixing stage, I’ve got like a billion ideas and mixers hate me, because the notes that I give them are just this giant novel. I think with a movie like this, that’s so dense — there are 216 scenes in a movie that’s 104 minutes long — it’s really reliant upon sound and telling the audience the story with sound. There are scenes that have diegetic sound: they have music that’s pumping, and they have a voiceover, and then the voiceover will dip down and there will be dialogue on screen, then the dialogue will go away and the voice will come back, and the music will transition to another sound — all that in 6 seconds! It’s sort of like you’re either completely hands-on with the sound or it becomes an unlistenable mess.”

Ford’s other directorial credit is the feature film Emily the Criminal. He has been a DGA member since 2024.