[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: What’s your process for creating character?
R.J. Hanna, Filmmaker: Character for me, it’s all together the same thing of trying to write them and see how they talk. I know everyone’s different. When I’m writing the characters they talk to each other and have their own voice.
Something that I’m interested in is how people speak. It’s something I keep track of when I meet people. I’m interested in everyone else’s dialects I guess. I often get it through talking, through how they talk to each other. Then there is that sense of going back and trying to figure out what is happening underneath. I do try and go back through and be analytical in the sense of:
-What are the wants/needs?
-What is their surface level goal versus the thing that would actually give them satisfaction in life or or actually fulfill them?
-How are those in conflict with each other and try to think about their psychology in that sense?
Because it’s a visual medium, we’re outside of the characters…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Maybe it was growing up in Arkansas as a Canadian, or the summers in rural Ireland with his grandparents, but Daniel has always been drawn to out-of-place characters, strange environments, and the unique rhythms of how people talk. He just completed post on his horror film “Succubus,” starring Ron Perlman and Rosanna Arquette, to be released in 2024. Crossing over 500 screens in the U.S. and beginning its run in the U.K. is his feature “Hard Miles,” starring Golden Globe-winner Matthew Modine and Oscar-Nominee Sean Astin, which has won multiple awards and screened at prestigious festivals including Chicago International, Heartland Film Festival, and Cinequest. Prior to that, Daniel directed the true-story feature “Miss Virginia,” starring three-time Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba, Oscar-Nominee Aunjanue Ellis, and Vanessa Williams. The film was listed as a New York Times and USA Today Must-See Fall Movie, won the Audience Award at The Naples Film Festival, and received a limited theatrical release, cable premiere on BET, and streaming deal with Netflix. As a writer, Daniel is a winner of The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, as well as the Slamdance, ScriptPipeline, and Screencraft writing awards. He also explores storytelling as an editor, with ten features under his belt, including horror film “What Lies Below,” starring Mena Suvari, which hit #1 on Netflix, and “Supercell” starring Alec Baldwin, Anne Heche, and Skeet Ulrich, which hit #1 on Hulu. Daniel hopes to continue telling cinematic, character-driven stories long past the time any sane person would have retired. He lives on the east-side of L.A. with his excessively-vocal cat “Dottie.”
MORE INFO ON HARD MILES MOVIE:
https://linktr.ee/hardmiles_movie
MORE VIDEOS WITH R.J. DANIEL HANNA
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