"Lucid" - Interview with Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall (2025 Fantasia International Film Festival)

Written by Mariane Tremblay

A few days after the world premiere of LUCID, Maria and I had the chance to sit down with the film’s directors, Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall. We discussed Montreal vs. Victoria, B.C., developing LUCID into a feature film, shooting on film, and all that jazz! 

Hearing them talk about the film was so interesting—we immediately understood how much this project means to them, and their passion for filmmaking is truly contagious. It was inspiring on so many levels. We’re beyond grateful for the opportunity, and honestly, we couldn’t have hoped for a better duo for our very first interview (or a better way for me to spend my 26th birthday — truly a memorable one). They were both so incredibly kind, generous, and easy to talk to! 

If you ever get the chance to watch Lucid, don’t miss it — it’s absolutely worth the (bad)trip (I mean this in the best possible way)!

Caitlyn Acken Talylor behind the scenes of Lucid

*Quotes have been shortened and lightly edited for clarity*

MARIA: Well, first of all, thank you for taking the time to chat with us! I hope Montreal is treating you well! 

MILLIGAN: We love Montreal, we have been wandering around, just enjoying the amazing people and beautiful architecture here [...] amazing food, and yeah, we love it here! 

FENDALL: Yeah, we’re staying a little outside of the festival in an Airbnb, and it’s just gorgeous too. Actually, the Airbnb [...] is like a strange mirror for our home back in Victoria, B.C. [...] and everybody feels very comfortable just to come and hang out. And so, we have this quite a large group of people in and out of the place all the time, and it's, it's been really nice actually. It's very homey!

MARIA:  Ah, we’re glad you’re enjoying it so far! I mean, I bet it's very different from B.C. 

FENDALL: Yeah, I mean, Victoria is a much smaller city, and it’s sort of a different deal.

MARIA: Yeah, I’ve been there before, almost ten years ago.

FENDALL: Oh really? 

MARIA:  Yeah, I loved it. I wanted to move there. 

MARIANE: I said the same thing!

MILLIGAN: We should trade, maybe!

FENDALL: We come out here and we're like, we want to live here [...] you know, Victoria [...] you'd think because of its proximity to Vancouver, that it's sort of part of it’s production machine, but really we're not [...] like there's some [...] movies of the week, TV movies, Christmas movies, Hallmark movies, that kind of stuff, but [...] we're definitely not a production hub, which makes [it] a unique situation for filmmaking and unique challenges as well. 

MARIA PAULA: I would think that since Vancouver is pretty close, that productions would be bigger in Victoria. 

MILLIGAN: It's far enough away, and there's a body of water between us, I guess. And the ferries are expensive. Now to go there and back is $300. So it's like it's a lot.

MARIANE: Oh really?

MILLIGAN: Yeah! It really isolates people more now, which in some ways I think makes it maybe even more of a reason to have like a small community, and I think it just made our film awesome because we all became a family while we were shooting. And I know that you guys were part of our amazing world premiere and our wrap party and got to witness all of the people that loved the film, that really wanted to see their contribution and their hard work on the big screen and at Fantasia. So yeah, it was quite a party!

MARIA PAULA: Yes, it was indeed! 

MARIANE: It was so much fun!

MARIA PAULA: Do you [Mariane] want to start with the questions?

MARIANE: Yes! I know you came to Fantasia a couple of years ago with the short film, which I really loved by the way, I watched it this week. I’m just like, fully obsessed with Lucid by the way! 

MILLIGAN: YES!

MARIANE: I haven’t stopped thinking about it since Monday. 

MILLIGAN: I’m so happy!

MARIANE: So, I wanted to know, how does it feel to come back with Lucid, but as a feature film this year?

MILLIGAN: Oh, well, it was it was something that we were dreaming of as, a place to exhibit the film the entire time that we are filming, we were we were imagining it for Fantasia and, and even in places when Caitlin [Acken Taylor] who plays Mia [...] breaks the fourth wall and and clocks camera [...] we were always talking to the audience at Fantasia, to girls like you guys and, female identifying people that, that are messy artists that, you know, that are like Mia. This is where we thought we would find our people. 

MARIANE: The response has been amazing!

MILLIGAN: It's been amazing.

MARIANE:  And, I think you guys have a very strong artistic vision, and I think you’re really committing to it, which I think is really amazing. So, I wanted to know, how did you approach the film from beginning to end?

Amber Dandelion in Lucid

MILLIGAN: Well, it's quite the process [...] there are several stages [...] like music, and the visuals, and the acting in each of those things are quite different. 

The film was inspired very much by music. And when we were developing from the short to the feature film, the first thing we had to do was establish more dynamic characters — characters had to be more complicated, so that they could go longer in a story. We turned to the mother first, because the mother character wasn't developed enough in the short. So we created a backstory for Mia's parents, that they are in a folk rock band from Saskatoon, called Sweet Bird. And, Mia's life has been with this traveling rock band that's sort of falling apart, and her mother's really intense, emotional, it’s kind of meltdowns that she has. 

And [...] we cast Amber Dandelion, who plays Solange — Amber is a psychic medium; she had never been an actor before — it’s her first time. So when we met Amber,  we knew she was a singer and she is psychic, and so we thought, “wow, she's so amazing.” And maybe we should test to see what it would be like for her if she could perform as an actor. And we did a [screen] test with her, and asked her to silence a child just with her eyes [...] and she just sort of snapped her head really hard and looked at this toddler, and we [...] got goosebumps. She had this amazing ability to go into her shadow side, and that was really beautiful. That kicked off that part of the storyline for us. And, we shot all the flashbacks sequences first and then started building Mia's character. 

And then [...] Caitlin, our actress, moved into our house with us, and lived with us for four months [...]

FENDALL: Five months!

MILLIGAN: Five months, while we filmed the movie. That gave us also a lot of really amazing opportunities where Caitlin started to help us with some of the production design elements of the movie. 

We built the bedroom set for Caitlin's character, Mia, in our house, so that whole room does not exist anymore; we had to take it down. The city that we live in thought it was an illegal suite, so they made us take it down. But we had made it with street vines, with windows, a couch [and toilet] that we pulled off the side of the road, and Caitlin painted all the walls. And while she did that, she was using her wardrobe, so the wardrobe got all painted and her hands and everything [...] And Caitlin, as an artist herself, was able to contribute so well with her amazing work [...] which fed her creatively as a character. 

Caitlyn Taylor Acken in Lucid

We rehearsed with the actors quite a bit because we shot on film, and when you shoot on film, you have to be kind of ready to bang off that [...] Our plan was, one or two takes [...] so we'd have many, many rehearsals, for certain scenes that were important, especially the scenes between Mia and her grandmother, where we discovered lots of, you know, more interesting dialog for them. And also [with] John Luna, who played the art teacher [...] 

So, we just dug in really deep for character development and tried to let the actors bring their own really interesting, unique personality to the role. So, taking the role and just kind of turning up the volume on the amazing qualities of these already really dynamic performers. 

I’ll let you [Ramsey], you speak to the film… 

FENDALL: We shot, not entirely, but we did shoot a fair bit of film. And we were [...] very excited to shoot on film, because it's beautiful and amazing. And we wanted it [particularly the flashbacks] to feel like a memory. We wanted it to feel like a sort of family album, a kind of scrapbook where they could look back on the parents, and see [...] this ancient world where people were shooting family albums, and it was all on film. And so we wanted it to have that sort of feeling, like a memory, and the best way to do that, the shorthand to do that is with film [..] we shot the all the flashback scenes on 35mm, and we also shot for the 90s stuff, we shot on 35mm as well, but then we also mixed it up with some other formats, like 16mm and Super 8 [...] 

The Super 8 camera was operated by Jo Gaffney [...] while she was actually performing in the film. It's sort of like a film within a film — we're actually seeing what she's shooting, and so, it was a surprise in the sense for us to get that material because we didn't actually know what she was shooting at the time. And in addition to that, we also had Lesley Marshall, Les666, who plays the character of the performance artist Titania [...] who was shooting on a vintage high eight camera from the 90s. That kind of gives off a beautiful analog, slightly VHS feel to it [and] we thought that all of that would impart this very… you know, we love grain, we love texture, and we thought for a character who was an artist, this was sort of like the perfect visual component [...]

Jo Gaffney in Lucid

MARIA: I just wanted to know, [since you] could not actually see in real time, did you run into any complications [with film]?

MILLIGAN: We didn't lose anything.

FENDALL: [...] shooting on film is a very interesting, [...] because you shoot, and you don't really know what you're getting. On the other hand, and I'm quoting somebody when I say this  — I don't know who said it  — but when you shoot on film, it's not “if it's going to be awesome”, it's “how awesome is it going to be”, in the sense that it's just going to look amazing, because it just imparts this. It has a sort of veil [...] a more painterly vision of the world. Whereas, you know, digital cameras now are so incredibly crystal clear and there's just no imperfections — and this is a movie about imperfections and messiness. So, the thing for us is that if anything goes wrong with the film, we had to make a point of just embracing whatever it was. But the thing is, with film, if something does go wrong, it's still cool. It's still a really interesting thing. 

The complication for us was that when shooting —we were shooting on Vancouver Island — [but] we had to ship [everything] here in Montreal, to MELS — thank you, MELS — shout out to MELS for helping us, as being one of two labs that exist in Canada still. And then we didn't scan with MELS, we actually had a relationship with a guy who lives on one of the islands off of Vancouver Island that you have to take two ferries to get to. So, to have the film scanned, you have to go to an island, off an island, off an island, and [then] a five-hour drive up Vancouver Island  — I mean, it's completely crazy, but it's fun. 

And so we went and we stayed [...] in this treehouse and we were scanning all our film. And then it's the rush of excitement when you actually get to see the film for the first time, which is this totally magical experience. You know, digital is instantaneous gratification, there's not really [surprises] — there are surprises, but the surprise of film, it's also the fact that you kind of have forgotten what you were actually shooting. 

And then the thing that we loved for the sake of this film, too, was that when you shoot on film, you get these rollouts at the beginning and the end where you get these flash frames and artifacts, and when the camera slows down and the camera speeds up, you get all these like amazing light effects from the camera running at a different speed before it kind of comes up to proper speed. [...] But all that stuff, we wanted to use that. And so we ended up using like almost every every frame we shot, because it just has that magical kind of tactile quality to it.

MARIA: [...] the movie really feels very magical, so I guess the film also brings that, [it] just made it perfect. 

FENDALL: Oh, it’s awesome, yeah!

MILLIGAN:  There was, a really magical, little section in one of [...] the film that we had that was like an emulsion had worn off or something, but it came out like sort of [...] deep red, and it had these sort of specks on it that look like flowers — and that was a gift from the film gods — and we took that piece of red kind of layer, and it looks sort of almost like jello or something [...] and then we just layered that over a lot of the dream stuff to get extra punch of color when we wanted it. And I was obsessed with this really interesting layer. But it was it's one of those magical things that film gives you that you can't plan for. And it just depends on light and the chemistry and what happens. 

It was really wonderful to be able to use that, and a privilege for us, because we happen to have a film camera collection that Ramsey had started years ago when people were giving up on film cameras and using digital, and everyone's just getting rid of them really cheap. He picked up a bunch of cameras back then that is benefiting us now because again, everyone is shooting on film, so the film cameras are expensive. I think we were we're really lucky because our low-budget punk rock movie — how would we be able to be able to do that otherwise?

FENDALL: We laugh when we're like, “yeah, we're really low budget.” [because] we shot on 35mm, which is usually not the case. But you know, we had collected a lot of old film stock as well [...] you know [how] over time it begins to expire, but we were very lucky that it all worked out great [...] sometimes you get these older films and you actually don't know how they restored or how old they are, but the film gods smiled on us [in] it all [...] And, and then our dear friend Doug (who’s on an island off an island off an island), gave us [a] wonderful rate on scanning all this stuff, so it really made it possible. And in a way, it's sort of simplified production because we end up with less takes. You know, we can commit to the choice that we make during production rather than, you know, shooting ten or twelve takes and then having to figure out where we're going to go in post-production.

MARIANE: I was wondering, how was it like to direct a movie as a team of two? And how do you guys complete each other? 

MILLIGAN: [...] we chime in on everything together, we plan our shots together and storyboard together. And creatively we just we work really well with each other because [...] our aesthetic is very similar [...] Ramsey and I met working on a film and when we go out and do things together, it's usually with a camera — we're shooting stuff for fun all the time, and creating a film library for ourselves of things to pull from — which I totally recommend. You never wait to have to shoot a movie [...] you don't have to know what the images are for when you're collecting them, just keep them, you're a filmmaker, you make your own library! [And] when you go to one day make a movie, you can pull from these images that you have. And some of the actors that we know that are in the movie, like Bobby Cleveland, who plays Papa in the movie — we've been shooting stuff with Bobby for years and years, and we used all of it in the film. So, you know, for fun, we would bring him over and light something on fire behind him in the backyard — just Bobby and Ramsey, and I. 

We’re [also] playful with each other, I think that's our secret sauce — if we were children and 12 years old, we'd be in a lot of trouble playing together, blowing stuff up. I think that's our secret!

FENDALL:  I think that's the secret [...] as adults,  we've discovered that to preserve the sense of play [...] we don't typically disagree about stuff. I mean, every now and again, we'll be like, well, I like it, I like it this way, and you like it that way. And then we'll do it both ways. And then usually Deanna's right [...] But to keep the exploration going, we'll defer to each other in that sense. But actually [...] when we first started working together, it was our dear friend and camera operator who said to us, “I think you two share the same brain.” And, and from that point on, we're like, you know, I think that actually might be true. And so [we] kind of maintained this kind of common collective consciousness, for as long as we've been working together.

MILLIGAN: And when we're on set, we divide our responsibilities; Ramsay's usually with the camera, and I'm with the actors, and then we just come together on it when we're [...] actually ready to shoot the scene. So in prep, we that's sort of how we separate things.

On set of Lucid

MARIA:  So you guys kinda answered another question [...] if you were inspired [by] another type of art, like, music or books or, like, more movies. You kind of mentioned that the music had to do, a lot [with the film] [...] I love the way you approach all [the] music; the scenes with the band and all of that, maybe [if you’d] like to talk a little bit more [about] how you approached the music blending with the film. 

MILLIGAN: Yes. My best friend's an amazing musician, and her name is Marta Jaciubek-McKeever; she's our composer, and she did all of the music supervision. She's been in bands for years, and she's in a really cool band called Van Death — people might know her from that. She was with us from the very beginning, before we even started writing, and we had some music that we wanted to use as inspiration…

FENDALL: And we worked with her on the short.

MILLIGAN: Yeah! And once we finished the [feature] film and she was ready to score it, she got hit with some terrible news, and [...] we all just were devastated, and it was so upsetting and scary. And Marta went into the hospital immediately. And Dan, [...] our sound guy, brought, keyboard to the hospital for Marta, so that she wouldn't go crazy when she was there in the hospital doing nothing but [...] a lot of invasive tests [...] — just to get her mind off of everything, he brought her this keyboard, and she scored the movie in the hospital. 

A lot of the music you hear in the [film] was was done when Marta [was in the hospital and she] didn't remember some of the songs that she did [...] She was working out stems that we recorded more of later, but for the most part, a lot of that stuff that's in the, in the film and the ambient music is music that Marta recorded in hospital, to the point where when we were doing our Telefilm papers, we had to say where that music was recorded, and we told them it was in the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. 

But [now] she's okay, she actually got it, a complete miracle [...] and we're planning on doing another film with her. But it was just a terrible journey going through that because it was so scary. But I think she did a magnificent job on really matching the emotional journey that Mia had. The music is everything because it's partly like it's some parts of [the film]. We play the full song almost like [in] a music video. 

And, she brought in artists who were friends of hers. So we have the Dishrags, which are a legendary punk band [...] and lots of great local bands; Hush Hush Noise, KCAR, we've got Dielectric. Dielectric is like our production designer, Lesley, and our sound recordist, Dan Taggart-Hodge. Those guys have an incredible band, and we have two tunes of theirs in our film. And one of them, they're, they're singing live in the show. And then we had the Bar Tarantula, stuff I don't know if you [Ramsey] want to tell that story about the kids on stage.

FENDALL: Yeah, when we shot the Bar Tarantula scene, Marta had showed up for that, and, again, they were playing live, and [she] was in the back and [...] she’s like, we could dub it, you know, we could make this sort of reenactment of the song and we're [all] like, no, we have to do this for real. So we just shot it for real. And it was! [...] All of that was just like a live performance. It was really fun. It's like it's exactly the thing that they tell you not to do, that you should all do in post, [...] but in fact, for the spirit of this film, it felt like it would be crazy to try to actually recreate this. And, so it was Elaine Thrash [Oliveira] and Ayla Tesler-Mabé who were the goth girls who are playing [and] singing this song Karmic Mirror, and Elaine Thrash [Oliveira] sings like [she’s in] a crazy death metal band. And she was rocking out! 

And Ayla Tesler-Mabé, who was playing bass, which is again, that was all live bass. She's, like, a guitar legend, if you like. She's a person that can play like Jimi Hendrix [...] she can play anything. She can play [...] like the most legendary classic rock guitar solo. She can do any of it. Like, she's an absolute, she's like a guitar genius.

MARIA: It's very inspiring!  Do you have any plans for what you want to do next?

MILLIGAN: Yeah, I mean, we've found this incredible group of artists, and [..] they've definitely inspired us. We're thinking about something in the world of where we live is like the epicenter of the satanic panic, in Victoria, B.C. [...] something late 80s, a satanic panic that has like, a cult aspect. We're kind of leaning towards that. So it'll be like Midsommar meets like Mandy, but wet and full of wasps. So that's where we're going.

MARIA: I love Midsommar.

MILLIGAN:  Yeah. Me too. [And] the movie would probably be called “Lucky” at this point [it’s] what we're kind of thinking.

MARIANE: That’s interesting!

MARIA: [...] Last thing, it kinda sounds a little cliché, but do you have any advice for beginning filmmakers like ourselves? We’ve been wanting to do a short film for so long, but we’re alway like, maybe we need this and that, and [then] it’s like you know what, maybe we should just do it, and got for it, but [then] sometimes you don’t know where to start, and you feel like you don’t have what it takes to do it, but you actually have, so yeah [if you have] any piece of advice. 

MILLIGAN: [...] You're never going to feel totally ready — you'll never have that moment where you're like, “Okay, everything's done, we're ready to go. Perfect.” And then you're not going to roll into the movie and everything is going to be as you planned — and when [...] you feel crazy when you get into filming, because things are falling apart, [and] you have to constantly problem solve, remember, that's how it goes. And that [it's] this kind of [the] thing with filmmaking [it] is a problem-solving art form. You are supposed to come up against obstacles and embrace them, because if we got everything we wanted, we wouldn't have the film we have now. And it was the conflicts that actually helped us. It was the really difficult moments of like [wondering], “How are we going to cast this person?” “How are you going to make a hair monster on Vancouver Island?” [...] But these are the things that made us unique — to push into the places that we had to come up with an original creative solution for. 

So that's my thing [...] don't worry, the problems are good and nobody's going to come save you. You just have to come and do it and work through the problems. And grab a friend — like if you guys can do it together — having a friend makes it much easier!

FENDALL: Yeah, I would definitely say that having a friend, having a small [...] community of people, and] if those people share this common goal, it makes all the difference. It's very hard to do alone — it's hard enough to do in a group — but it's very, very hard to do it alone. Find your people, people [...] who can rally around an idea and make it playful [...] you want to get into something, [well] you think, “I have to make it? This has to be important. I have to be able to do this, or I have to be able to do that.” but you can be very playful as you get into these things. And I think to maintain that sense of play throughout is absolutely vital because, otherwise, you start worrying about things [...] then [those] things start to get very constrained and you start worrying about a lot [and] it becomes problems. 

I mean, literally, we did this movie — a lot of people, you know, after the fact, people said, well, you can't just go make a movie — we were literally told that on the number of occasions you can't just go make a movie.

MILLIGAN: But you totally can!

FENDALL: You can just go make a movie [... but] it's hard, I won't sugarcoat it. These things are very hard [...] we had some tough nights [...] we had a running joke that sometimes we would wake up in the middle of the night like “What are we doing?” And then we would point to each other, “Whose fault is it? Yours! No! Yours!” [...] but that's the thing [....] it's not going to happen unless you try. And if you try, you know, let yourself fail and just keep failing upward [...] that's [...] what you've got to do. And that's really what [...] the film is about — how you have to be able to find these strategies for yourself to overcome these obstacles. And if it's messy, that's okay. And if it's using the roughest materials or the most limited materials you have around you, that's okay. You just have to keep doing it. So that's our that's our advice!

MARIANE: Those are such inspiring advices!

MILLIGAN: I can’t wait to see the movie you guys make!

MARIANE: We really have to do that!

MARIA: Yes, you guys will be in the special thanks!

MILLIGAN: Yeah. Awesome! 

MARIA: Thanks for coming, talking with us, and sharing these amazing things about the movie.

MARIANE: Yeah, thank you so much! It’s just inspiring to hear you talk about the movie!

MILLIGAN: It’s really been great meeting you guys. Thank you for this!

FENDALL: And you know, just to say this too, this movie is for you guys [...] we know it’s really hard to be a young person in this world right now. And we really need people who are questioning this terrible system that's falling apart all around us. And you guys just have to keep forging ahead, and to start making stuff  [...] we want to hear your voices. And that's the most important thing.

MARIA AND MARIANE: Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do. It!

FENDALL: Rebelle, do it!

MILLIGAN: Awesome. Thank you guys.

FENDALL: Thank you guys.

Read our Lucid review here and watch the interview here
You can also watch Milligan’s [amazing] short film here

Photo credits: Sublunar Films