This ASU grad produced a risky short film with no script or actors. It won an Oscar in a tie

When the Oscars celebrated the best in film last week in Hollywood, there was a rare tie for Best Live Action Short Film.

In fact, it was just the seventh tie in Oscars history. And that first winner for "The Singers" went to director Sam A. Davis and David Breschel, a graduate of Arizona State University’s film school.

He and Davis have collaborated before — but this project was different. "The Singers" is about an impromptu singing contest in a rather depressing dive bar and it was inspired by Davis’ reading of a 19th-century Russian short story by the same name.

On top of those obscure origins, it was shot on 35mm film with no script and no actors. Everyone on screen they found on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

It was all a rather risky proposition for a producer like Breschel but, he told The Show, it is exactly the kind of risk that needs to be taken today. The Show caught up with him recently on the set of his next project to talk more about it.

Arizona State University

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Full conversation

DAVID BRESCHEL: We're shooting in LA. We've only got a few more days left.

LAUREN GILGER: Probably down to it. OK, so I want to begin with when you heard from your collaborator on this, from the director, Sam, about this idea, right? Like he had read this Russian short story and had an idea.

Did it, what did it sound like to you at the time? Did you think it was nuts?

BRESCHEL: Yeah, it was. It was definitely nuts. And that's what I loved about it. You know, I was, both Sam and I are driven by the same thing, which is we want to make something that feels like something we've never seen before.

There's so much out there, and especially now, it's just, you know, I feel like, you know, you can go to the streamers and scroll forever and see something that just doesn't feel like it's worth watching.

And so for us, we feel like it's only really worth doing if it feels like you're stepping into unknown territory and trying to make something kind of new.

So I was making a documentary in Scottsdale actually, when he reached out to me and he said, hey, you know, I read this 1850 Russian short story and I want to make a short film out of it, but I want to make it without a script, with all first time actors. And I want to shoot it on 35 millimeter film.

GILGER: Right.

BRESCHEL: You know, easy.

GILGER: Easy, no big deal.

BRESCHEL: But you know, Sam is a really special filmmaker. I think anyone else were to make that call, to me, I think they were insane. But I truly think he's, when it's all said and done, he'll be considered one of the most important filmmakers of his generation.

And when we made this, we didn't have a script, not because we were unprepared, but the intent was to make it feel as handmade as possible and as human as possible. And so by shooting on film and going the analog route versus digital was a huge part of that. And all of these first time actors without a script.

You know, Sam has a background, if he has any kind of niche, it's as a cinematographer shooting on film, which is pretty rare. And so he, he's developed this ability to, you know, you can't just roll film forever because it's so expensive and there's a finite amount of it. So you have to know when to pick up moments when something really special is happening. And that means you have to be really present.

And so what he wanted to do to create this very human feeling film was to find these incredible people from around the world and let them be themselves, let them have real conversations. The two veterans that are speaking to each other at the bar are real veterans.

GILGER: Real veterans.

BRESCHEL: Yeah, different generations. And they just, they'd sit there for over an hour speaking to each other and they'd know the camera's on them but we're not rolling the whole time. And we wouldn't call action or we wouldn't slate like with the clapper because we didn't want them to know when we were filming.

Sam would just be listening intently and then he would have his finger on the record button on the camera. And when the whole facade of the filmmaking component went away and it was just two people talking to each other, he hit record. And we're all on the crew looking at Sam's finger on the button to know when we're rolling.

GILGER: A non-traditional filmmaking approach, to say the least, it sounds like.

BRESCHEL: Yeah, definitely. It was, it was an experiment. And the, the fact that we ended up on the Oscar stage is unbelievable.

GILGER: What did that feel like? Was this your first time up there?

BRESCHEL: Yeah, it was my first time at the Oscars, first time on the stage. You know, it's a dream come true. I especially once we were playing at film festivals and it was received so well, it became clear that this was a possibility when we were on our festival run.

And then once you start realizing that that's a possibility, it's in your dreams all the time. And yeah, it played out even better than I could have imagined with the tie. It just, it made it so much more special.

GILGER: Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. One of the few ties in Oscars history.

So I mean, as a producer, you're kind of the who has to pull the strings, make this happen, get the right people on board, secure funding, like all of these things that are so important to getting a film to come to fruition, right. I mean, this sounds like it was a little risky.

Did you have to convince people in a way that you might not have had to with a more traditional project?

BRESCHEL: Definitely. And you know, a lot of short films are made with the intent of being a proof of concept for a longer film. And this one was not this. We think of it more as a poem than a story. And its intention was to always be what it is.

But what it is is a proof of concept for a style of filmmaking. So that in the future it will be a lot easier for us to go out and advocate for making a film that doesn't have a script. First time actor shot on film, this unique experimental process and we're now able to show you can get to the Oscars stage with it.

It's not just a risk, it is a necessary risk in order to have a much higher ceiling for how special of a film that you can make.

GILGER: All right, well, let me ask you lastly, David, about the final, I guess, scene in the film. And I don't want to give away the very ending, but there's a hug, kind of a group hug, right.

How did you facilitate that in terms of a non-scripted thing and this moment that just felt so touching? How do you make that happen?

BRESCHEL: Yeah, you know, there wasn't a script, but there definitely, there was a director on set guiding everyone and he was improvising with them as much as they were improvising with each other. And to have this fully improvised film, you have to speak a lot in pre-production with each other about what the film is and what it isn't. So you just know if you're going down the wrong path.

And one thing we love about this film is that it opens with a fight and it ends with a hug.

GILGER: Yeah.

BRESCHEL: And the difference in the space that you're in is there's a bunch of people, men specifically, who built up the courage to express themselves and get vulnerable, and in particular, through art.

So Sam came up with the idea, but he originally thought just one person would hug the bartender.

GILGER: Right.

BRESCHEL: So we, we shot that, and then he just kind of realized maybe this wouldn't work on paper, but through what we've experienced on set and how kind of just like, romantic the whole, and absurd the whole experience has been, we were, you know, trapped in this bar with no windows for four days straight.

We, like, we really had felt what you feel in the film, and it just felt like maybe we've earned something way out of reality where every single person in the bar hugs each other. And so he asked everyone to join in on the hug one by one. And it just was, we knew right away that that was the ending and that we had found something special there.

GILGER: It had to be special or it would have never worked, right?

BRESCHEL: Yeah. If it was written on the page, you know, everyone would have rolled their eyes.