QUESTION 1: What about your film excites you the most?

What excited me most, probably, was capturing the shimmer of possibility in Wes Jackson's vision—an invitation to imagine a future where humanity learns from and grows in step with the living world instead of against it. Each day of filming felt like brushing up against prophecy, watching science, soil, and spirit braid themselves into a story only the prairie could tell. we also had an absolute ball out in the field filming. As serious as the subject is, we practically never stopped laughing. The crew was amazing and we all felt honored to capture this fascinating subject.

QUESTION 2: What is it about your current movie that will influence your next film?

I’m now more drawn to narratives that unfold with patience, that honor place as much as people, and that search for the deeper systems beneath the surface of our daily lives.

QUESTION 3: When youre shooting a film do you think of time as something you capture or something you construct?

When I’m shooting a film, I don’t really think of time as something I capture or construct. Honestly, time feels more like a mildly uncooperative coworker—always present, rarely doing exactly what I ask, and occasionally slipping out for a smoke break when the light is perfect.

But on a deeper level, time isn’t a thing I hunt down with a camera or a thing I manufacture with edits. It’s more like a dimension I’m allowed to borrow from. I step into it, poke around a bit, and hope it doesn’t notice I’m rearranging the furniture.

Documentary filmmaking, at least for me, is the art of politely asking time to hold still while also accepting that it absolutely will not. So I gather what it offers—a glance, a shift in weather, a sentence that arrives three seconds late—and then with the help of a whole team of talented folks and a brilliant editor like Matt Nothelfer, we shape it into a story that feels intentional, even though the universe improvised half of it.

So if I had to choose, I’d say time is something I collaborate with under suspicious circumstances. I don’t capture it, and I don’t construct it. I just try to keep up while it performs its ongoing magic.

QUESTION 4: Whats a limitation you wish you had on your next shoot that would force you into making interesting creative decisions?

Honestly, I think what I need is a good, solid limitation—something that will force me into creative acrobatics rather than just meandering around with too many options. Preferably something absurd, like: ‘You may only use one lens, but it’s from 1973 and has a permanent smudge on the glass.’ Or: ‘You may shoot for three hours a day, but only when it’s raining sideways.’

I’ve found that constraints turn desperation into invention. Take away a normal workflow, and suddenly a fluke reflection in a puddle becomes a metaphor, or a squirrel running across a field at exactly the wrong moment becomes cinematic gold.

So yes, I’d love a limitation that’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, and a little ridiculous—because that’s exactly the kind of thing that forces me to stop trying to every variable and start listening to what the film wants to be. Bonus points if it makes the crew laugh...even if it's at me. The best ideas almost always arrive from somewhere you didn’t plan to look—and a little enforced chaos is the perfect compass.

QUESTION 5: If a film shoot is like a living organism which department do you think functions as its nervous system?

If a film shoot is a living organism, then the nervous system is whatever chain of communication keeps everyone pretending we know what’s happening. Usually that’s the walkie channel—a glorious stream of half-finished sentences, cryptic updates, and the occasional accidental poetry of someone sitting on their push-to-talk button.

It’s not elegant, but it does keep the organism twitching. The moment that signal stops flowing, the entire production immediately forgets why it gathered in a field at 6 a.m. and begins drifting toward the craft table like confused plankton.

#prairieprophecy.com, #perennialfilms, #landinstitue.org, #agriculture, #regenerative, #tallgrassprairiecenter.org, #newperennials.org, #newperennialspublishing.org, #wesjackson

5Q's w/: MJ "Prairie Prophecy" Director, Producer