#greyshading

Can you tell us more about yourself as an artist, musician, and creator? Who and/or what inspires you on a daily basis?

Sure! Ever since I was young I was always creative, and I wrote short stories in high school, but I soon fell into music and left writing behind for a while. I played in Kid Lucifer and other bands for several years starting in 2015, and while I still wrote occasionally, it wasn’t until the pandemic when I started getting into film more deeply and began writing scripts.

In early 2021 when I couldn’t play shows and Kid Lucifer was disbanded, I made the decision to move back from Montreal, where I had been living for the past few years, to Vancouver. When I moved back, I was fairly disconnected from the music scene, but quickly fell into a group who I started making short films with and shifted my focus to writing and filmmaking.

I’m constantly inspired by so many artists and creatives who are so much better than I am! It might be the only case of imposter syndrome actually working out for the better! I’m constantly writing down little bits of dialogue and ideas that come to me and trying to shape them into full stories. Sometimes I get ideas stuck in my head and they’ll just rattle around there and drive me crazy until I can put them down into a script or story. So in a sense writing is really healthy for me, I guess!

I’m also consistently inspired by my friends I’ve been making films and podcasts with. Nothing inspires creativity more than surrounding yourself with creative people.

What inspired you to create Q19 Media?

The idea of Q19 Media was born out of a frustration with the process of filming. In 2022 I helped make three short films, and while they were super fun to shoot, the pre-production and especially post-production process can be quite taxing. It tends to move slowly and involve a lot of people, all of whom have jobs and lives, and waiting can be frustrating. I had a lot of experience in recording and figured working on a narrative podcast – a medium I had been a fan of for a while, dating back to the original release of the Homecoming podcast – would be a great project that I could control almost all aspects of.

Once I started making Greyshading, I fell in love with the process and the creative freedom of it. I realized so many story/script ideas I had could be created in this medium for cheap and without having to rely on anyone else. It was very liberating creatively, and I’ve got plenty more stories I want to tell, which I why I created the Q19 Media name.

Greyshading is your first narrative podcast. It's an anthology series, so each episode is self-contained. As the writer and director, what went into your design and creative process (format, themes, sound quality) for the podcast?

The single hardest aspect of the project was the writing. It was an interesting challenge to create stories where the audience could follow and understand the location, characters, and storyline without the benefit of visuals and without the writing being overly expository and obvious. This challenge was partially what attracted me to the concept initially, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult at times.

Once the scripts were done the process was fairly quick. I was blessed to find and work with a wildly talented group of actors who understood and made the most of the material. We recorded the episodes with wireless mics, so the actors could move around, use the space and record sound effects (knocking on doors, pouring drinks, etc.) live as we recorded. It felt almost like having them perform a one act play, but just for me! I honestly didn’t have to do a whole lot of directing; the actors were great, and they brought some ideas and takeaways from the scripts I never would have come up with.

Appearing in your first two episodes are your friends and Vancouver actors Johnnier Mejia, Sabrina Valana, and Liam Tait. For many of your actors, this is their first voice role. How did you find your cast and work with them to tell your stories using only audio as a guide?

I was lucky enough to run into and connect with Liam Tait last year, who was a friend of a friend. It turned out that he was transitioning from acting into working behind the camera right when I started dipping my toes into screenwriting. Pretty quickly we started meeting up to talk concepts and developed what turned into “Detour,” the first episode. We filmed it originally as a short film, and when I was conceptualizing the podcast I realized I could rewrite and rework it for an audio only medium.

Through the process of filming the original short Liam introduced me to his circle of friends, an incredibly talented group of people he came up with. Through him I met Johnnier (they worked together on Riverdale) and a bunch of other actors including Vince Song and Lauren Tagliafierro, Sabrina, who also linked me up with a ton of her actor friends, and everyone else. If there’s one thing I know for certain now about actors, it’s that they all know a lot of other actors.

Was any of the dialogue improvised?

I wouldn’t say we improvised necessarily; we stuck fairly close to the script for the recording of the episodes. That said, throughout the process I always encouraged the actors to make whatever tweaks they wanted to the dialogue to make it sound more natural. I wanted the acting to feel very naturalistic and reflect the way that person would actually talk. One of my biggest pet peeves in writing is stilted, unnatural dialogue. I had the actors make small changes to the wording to make it feel more real and authentic, but overall we stuck to the scripts I had written.

Did you go through a lot of re-writes? Were there any episodes that stood out to you as a favourite, or one whose message resonated closest with you?

I certainly did rewrite a fair amount. Both “Detour” and “Divebomb” (episode 3) were originally written to be filmed, so I had to restructure the story to make sense in an audio-only medium, and while I rewrote, I was able to sharpen the scripts as a whole. I tend to do a lot of rewriting - all four of these episodes have first drafts that are significantly worse than the final product.

Plus, for the two episodes I recorded with Sabrina Valana, I had to do a fair bit of rewriting. She’s very in depth and analytical with her preparation process, so she always dives deep and by asking me questions, ends up exposing all the flaws in my scripts! It’s not the most fun process in the world, but it’s worth it.

We listened to the first 2 episodes, and it's very heavy material and intense dialogue (former partners, priorities, panic attacks, estrangement and responsibility). How would you best describe your target audience?

Honestly, I try not to think too hard about the audience for what I’m writing. I find it’s easy to get distracted and lost by trying to imagine the reception for something you’re creating, and you can never know who will and won’t be affected by it.

I hope all kinds of people can relate and appreciate these stories, because while certain perspectives in them are certainly specific, storytelling can be so universal even when it’s specific. But I can easily drive myself crazy thinking about this kind of thing, so I like to just put it out there and hope for the best.

What do you hope listeners learn and take away from Greyshading?

All these episodes are about very different things, so each one has its own themes and takeaways. That said, overall, the idea tying all these stories together is that the idea of things being black or white, or having a grey area ITSELF is never black and white. Some things are black and white. Sometimes there is a grey area, and right and wrong isn’t clear. Life is messy and complicated and if we try to box everything up the same way, we’ll miss the bigger picture. It's important to see things for what they are and take each problem that arises as it comes.

What plans do you have for Q19 Media? How about future seasons of Greyshading?

Q19 Media is a banner under which I hope to host all my fiction and non-fiction podcasts. I’m very excited about my future podcast projects – some of my next projects include a mini-series focused on monologues rather than conversations, a fantasy western audiobook style story with music accompaniment, an adaptation of a science fiction short story I wrote years ago.

I’m certainly interested in doing more seasons of Greyshading. Seeing as it’s an anthology series, it’s a perfect place to house shorter self-contained stories, and I can see myself releasing multiple seasons, but I don’t have any set plan. I see it as something that will continuously be updated when I feel inspired. I’m focused on other projects right now post-release to refresh my creative brain, but I’ll certainly keep updating it with new episodes and seasons when I have some more ideas!

You also co-host The Cine Club with Lauren Tagliafierro. What can you share about that podcast and your love for all things film?

In the last few years I’ve gotten very (unhealthily, you could say) into film and filmmaking. I watch movies constantly, horror especially, and it fuels my creativity in so many ways.

The Cine Club is really just an outlet for me to express all my thoughts about movies so I don’t bottle them up and go crazy! Lauren (another actor I met through Liam and have worked with on multiple projects including Greyshading) and I connected through our mutual love of my favourite film podcast – The Big Picture – and basically just decided to do our own version.

I almost don’t even care if anyone listens to it, I just have a blast recording it and love having the chance to get all my opinions out of my brain. Plus, Lauren and I have very different taste, so it can be fun to argue sometimes!

What films or television series are you looking forward to this year and why?

Too many to count, but to name a few:

TV: I’m really hoping we get a new season of Barry this year, season three was leagues ahead of the already great first two seasons. I also CAN’T WAIT for Yellowjackets season two. Yellowjackets RULES.

Film: Scream 6, I absolutely love the Scream series but came to it late, so I’m super excited to catch one in the theatre for the first time. I’m also super excited for Dune part two, the Boston Strangler movie due to my undying love for Carrie Coon, and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, of course.

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Thanks to Quinn for taking the time to chat about his new projects!