RZA, Ernest Dickerson, David Moreau & Renee Zhan on Sampling Death, Weaponizing Silence & Giving Jim Henson’s Puppets a Dark Side

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[SPEAKER_01]: It always helps out so much. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, we've had some great guests drop them by lately, including just talked with the entire cast of carry, including a Matthew Lillard and the showrunner. [SPEAKER_01]: Mike Flanagan, Lorraine Newman was here, SNL original, she's back in the second season of The Sisters Grim, we hung out with Wolf Parade, Black Angels, Theo Rossi, to talk about his new right or his new movie, come with me, modern English, Paul Cook of The Cess, Sex Pistols, Peaches, Superchunk, Dead Milkman, David Dostmology, and he's going to be playing M. Bison in the new Street Fighter movie.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just an example of what you get when you subscribe [SPEAKER_01]: And that's me Kyle Meredith today. [SPEAKER_01]: I get to talk with four incredible filmmakers. [SPEAKER_01]: Rizza, who you of course know from a Wu-Tang clan he directed the man with the Iron Fist as well. [SPEAKER_01]: He's Wu-Tang and filmmaker Ernest Dickerson, who did Jews and tells from the Crypt Demon Knight and Bones and Bulletproof, just to name a few of those, but we're also going to be talking with David Moral.

[SPEAKER_01]: He made them and Mads and Renee Zahn, who's done a lot of work across live action and animation. [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, she works with Jim Henson's Creature Shop in this new edition of VHS MixTap. [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, let's read all about the official synopsis here. [SPEAKER_01]: VHS MixTap cranks the franchise's signature found footage horror up to 11 with an electrifying new anthology where music and sound become the source of terror.

[SPEAKER_01]: United by a theme that explores the power of music, rhythm, and audio to hunt, possess, transform, and destroy the film blends cosmic horror, psychological suspense, outrageous splatter, and groundbreaking practical effects into one unforgettable mix tape of nightmares. [SPEAKER_01]: It does feature all new segments from the legendary filmmakers Ernest Dickerson, hip-hop icon risa visionary director David Moreau and a claim filmmaker Renee Zahn, the latest installment pushes the boundaries of found footage with four wildly original stories that each put a unique spin on a terrifying relationship between sound and fear.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Guar hosts it, sort of late night to MTV style, just to add another element onto there. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we're all going to be talking about this. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to hear how each of them was approached and how the theme landed in their labs. [SPEAKER_01]: So each one of them, you know, of course dealing with sound and music.

[SPEAKER_01]: and rhythm, and so I want to hear about developing their ideas, Renee, of course, working with Jim Henson's creature shop, her feature is called Dance Dance Dance Dance, a studio attempts to reboot a long canceled puppet show with a mysterious past, then with David Muro and Hartbeat, a pair of YouTube, Erbex influencers, find themselves trapped in a decommissioned [SPEAKER_01]: With Ernest Dickerson, it's the music of Dr. Sees, and a college film student's documentary project, Uncovers, the reclusive life of a tormented musician, and with Riza, his is called Death Tone.

[SPEAKER_01]: A young sound engineer follows her late dad's instructions to create the ultimate track. [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to talk about all of that and a whole lot more, let's go ahead and get into this VHS mix tape out on shutter. [SPEAKER_01]: It's Kyle Meredith with Renee Zon, David Moral, Ernest Dickerson, and Riza.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hello, Kyle. [SPEAKER_01]: It's great to have y'all on here, I guess I just had a lot of fun with this new VHS entry into the series with MixTap. [SPEAKER_01]: It's always a fun concept. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see, I should probably, since everybody's on a different camera, I'll throw this to each of you individually.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I would love to know how this concept comes along, like [SPEAKER_01]: Is this something where they have a pool of people they want to work with and they figure out a theme afterwards or did they come to you all and say hey we've got this idea for sound and music you seem right Renee you want to take that one [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_04]: So for me, it was, I got involved through the Jim Henson Creatures shop. [SPEAKER_04]: I sort of knew them from before because I have a background animation, so they came, they had been talking to Josh, VHS, and they said, we're going to, the plan is to shoot something in the Creatures shop featuring our puppets ideally, and they asked if I had any ideas.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that's how this idea was born. [SPEAKER_01]: So it really comes along with an earnest kind of the same thing to you too because like you've done these great films in horror obviously, but music's always seem to be a part of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Where is that inner of the conversation when you get pulled in?

[SPEAKER_05]: I just met Josh, Josh Skullblum several months ago, and he knew my work and said we wanted to do something. [SPEAKER_05]: As if I knew VHS and I said, yeah, I'd seen him, you know, because I've been watching him on shutter. [SPEAKER_05]: So he said, let me know once they got the concept together.

[SPEAKER_05]: So a couple of months later he hit me with the idea of music and I'm like, okay, horror and music. [SPEAKER_05]: So what am I going to do? [SPEAKER_05]: So that started that process, you know, started working that out. [SPEAKER_05]: And that's really how it is. [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I met Josh and everything started working from there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It almost seems like very obvious to go to a musician that just happens to also be in the directing thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Like when someone says, you do music, you're like, yeah, that's me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, definitely. [SPEAKER_02]: It's called mixed tape. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so, um, he hit me up.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like we got old fame. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a music based and, um, my been done already. [SPEAKER_02]: He had so for me, it was like a chance to dance and open up my grave [SPEAKER_01]: David, I'll throw it at you as well, since we've got their stories, how did you find yourself in this situation?

[SPEAKER_03]: Steven Schneider, who is producing the movie of Josh Godwom, sent me a text just like with the basic outlines of what they wanted to do and I had like a project with a picture of him that I never did for many reasons that there was like something very, very, [SPEAKER_03]: about the sound that I always wanted to tell and to direct.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I took a scene of my old movie that's never going to be a movie. [SPEAKER_03]: And there is one little movie that I really love that I made. [SPEAKER_03]: And it was like really a music process. [SPEAKER_03]: just like having fun together and it's just no issue with me. [SPEAKER_01]: Alright we're going to take a quick pause if you like what you're hearing right now please do hit that subscribe button and keep up with the entire series.

[SPEAKER_01]: It helps out so much and we'll be right back right after this. [SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back it's Kyle Meredith. [SPEAKER_04]: We're talking VHS mixed tape. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'll stick with you, David, since we're here too, to dive in further into these wells, because with heartbeats, with your film, it's such an interesting thing, because we're placed inside one of these, like, zero sound chambers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, your entry, someone says, let's work with sound and music, and you say, cool, I'm gonna use the absence. [SPEAKER_01]: like like these things can really mess with people like that's what's great about how much research did you already have on one of these on one of these rooms? [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if any of you ever has been in a manicure chamber but basically it's like a sound to you but with zero zero the finance is almost perfect and after 15 minutes you start hearing your hobbies you start hearing the blood in your veins you start [SPEAKER_03]: And, basically, because it's the science, perfect science, you hear the sound of yourself and it's, it's really fucking disturbing and I know that it was a great, I never saw that on movie, in a movie so I thought it was a great, great, great, great and fun things to show, you know?

[SPEAKER_03]: I recommend you to try it because it's really aware of where the experience is. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've heard people doing it, and friends of mine in radio and everything, and they say, you can only really stay in there for a few minutes, because it really starts messing with your head very, very quickly, which is, which is interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Renee will come back to you, because this idea of a children show. [SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about that, like, there's something uncomfortable about most children shows, anyway, the mood of it. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that is. [SPEAKER_01]: heading back for the 60s and 70s and even into like the teletubbies land or whatever what is it about you that said oh I can take a children show and completely make that a war [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I agree with you.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think there is something creepy about these shows. [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's like the kind of the positivity, the joy, the kind of it feels forced, it feels not real. [SPEAKER_04]: So I really wanted to kind of, I thought it would be a nice contrast to have this really cheerful song that's playing over and over again and when the puppets here, that's when they do their worst.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it is a revenge, you know, story as well. [SPEAKER_04]: short starts when they're kind of reboot the show, but the puppets, but they want to do it without the actual puppets, they want to make a CG version of the puppets, so they feel like they're stealing the soul of the show and trying to profit from it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I felt like it's relevant to today as well. [SPEAKER_04]: So that's where that was the idea. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, working with Jim Henson's creature shop and these things, where there are any issues because of the content, like, you're going to do what with our creations? [SPEAKER_04]: They were really up for anything, no issues, no issues like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think puppeteers have sort of a secret dark soul inside each of them, but so often they are making stuff for kids, so I think for them this was like a really a nice fun opportunity to do something a bit darker. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think we can even go back to dark crystal and see some of that stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: You really start seeing like, oh, we can go in that direction. [SPEAKER_01]: That's a fun thing to work with. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Ernest, did I rewrite because, you know, as we're talking about music here, your uncle was a jazz musician who was also the first person to put the camera in your hands?

[SPEAKER_05]: That is correct. [SPEAKER_05]: Yep. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so when you get to the thing like this, I mean, I guess I'd love to hear a little bit about that story too, because this seems like one of those culminating moments of that seed that was planted. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, my uncle, you know, he was a world traveler, traveled all over the world played with Ken McIntyre, he was a trombonist and a, and a, and a Congo player, who was excellent at that, and, but you know, whatever he came over to house, we would [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we would sit up and watch old movies, you know, we watch movies late at night and so he introduced me to so many films that it came key texts in my growing up in the cinema world and, you know, a lot of them were old horror films and

[SPEAKER_05]: you know a lot of people frown down on horror and science fiction but my family growing up you know my family was always into that my family were always readers you know it was a heavy reading family so so I grew up reading science fiction reading got into horror later but started reading science fiction first [SPEAKER_05]: Um, and always went to movies, and so my uncle just started this thing.

[SPEAKER_05]: He started my visual education by helping me with my first camera, and I like to tell the story how I realized movies were photographed by watching David Leans Oliver Twist with him. [SPEAKER_05]: Because he was a, he was a dad's musician, but he was also artists and residents of Wesleyan University in jazz history, but he also took still photography, and I just loved his black and white work, and I just loved telling that story how, [SPEAKER_05]: Sitting with him watching that movie made me realize movies the photograph that started that whole journey.

[SPEAKER_05]: Do you do you write to music do you use it like that music and sometimes I just have of something playing in the background, you know, but it's it's it's hard for me to write anything writing anything is hard. [SPEAKER_01]: So for the music in the short, like, who composed that? [SPEAKER_01]: It's self because it's such interesting sounds that you're making.

[SPEAKER_05]: Actually, I was able to get flying lotus to do the music for me. [SPEAKER_05]: So, and it just so happens that he lives about a five-minute drive for me. [SPEAKER_05]: We're practically neighbors. [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, I know that he had done a couple of horror films, and I felt somebody could really give me an alien, [SPEAKER_05]: and alien sound because it is a it's about a musical battle it's about an earthly viola playing against an alien music music is a weapon you know music sound vibrations uses a weapon you know there's a Mr. Z in the title character he uses music to drive this cosmic horror away to keep it away and and so I just felt that the resin was I mean that

[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, we're going to take a quick pause if you like what you're hearing right now, please do hit that subscribe button and keep up with the entire series. [SPEAKER_01]: It helps out so much and we'll be right back right after this. [SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith. [SPEAKER_04]: We're talking VHS mixed tape.

[SPEAKER_01]: Riza, let's talk about you in the studio too, where is the idea for the song come from? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, the idea is like, well, how do you make something so original that is yours and that is great? [SPEAKER_02]: And, of course, a character being deranged, she thought that that's the sample, the sample life itself, the sample death itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, be my buddy, magic. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we took us a long time to figure out what we was going to do, maybe about four months, because he was, first thing about it, just maybe make an instruments out of human skin. [SPEAKER_02]: I thought that was [SPEAKER_02]: some crazy stuff, but we ended up on just realizing that there's the tone and there's the tone in depth and what happens when you sample that tone and try to make your own track and that's my character that's driving the bill.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting too because you talk it here people and then I've been part of it too where some of the best music to write by like trains running is heartbeats. [SPEAKER_01]: That's where it goes from. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, for me, as a producer, I always incorporated fully silenced, strains, stunned the light and the sound of me, you walk this all in my music.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think my character was like, what if I get something that don't exist, something that's so authentic? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, David is, you know, then you hear the heartbeat, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But my character's going to go inside your lungs to try to get a scene open and like his leg is crazy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a, is there a full finish track that, that you have of, of, of this and by the end of it? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think at the end of it, yes, she's, I think she succeeds. [SPEAKER_01]: Then I've got to have you try to write over that track yourself or have you like, oh, I can put versus at this now.

[SPEAKER_02]: You might just walk that I do for. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll buy it. [SPEAKER_01]: goodbye as well. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to hear that one at the end of this. [SPEAKER_01]: Seriously, to all four of you, what you've done is so original, and by the end of it, even with all the garst stuff in the middle, and the way it works together, every one of these is such original ideas.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for something in this anthology, it's still be pulling that off as a no small feat, it just goes just say so much to the talent and all four of you have. [SPEAKER_01]: So I will say again, congratulations to all of you on this one, and it's been such a pleasure. [SPEAKER_01]: I get to talk to you all about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks, sir. [SPEAKER_01]: My thanks to Riza Ernest Dickerson, David Morau, and Renee Zon, VHS Mix tape is out now on Shutter. [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to you for checking out the episode. [SPEAKER_01]: Hit that subscribe button before you get out of here to keep up with all the interviews that I've put out every single week.

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RZA, Ernest Dickerson, David Moreau & Renee Zhan on Sampling Death, Weaponizing Silence & Giving Jim Henson’s Puppets a Dark Side

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