Show Notes

In this episode, Mormon Artist host Katherine Morris interviews film composer Robert Allen Elliott about his work on Errand of Angels, One Good Man, The Saratov Approach, and the upcoming Freetown.

• Interview date: November 26, 2014
• Robert’s website
• Music clips in this podcast: “My Decision” and “In God’s Hands,” from The Saratov Approach. Copyright Three Coin Productions, 2013.
• Podcast song: “Blackberry’s Hedge” by Secret Jane. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US

Transcript

Katherine Morris: Hello and welcome to the Mormon Artist podcast. I’m your host, Katherine Morris. Today we have joining us Robert Allen Elliott. Hi, Rob.

Rob Elliott: How are you doing?

Katherine: Good.

Rob Elliott is a professional film composer. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan and studied music composition at Cal Poly, where he graduated summa cum laude. His television work has included Bear Grylls, Great American Bake-Off, Survivor, and many others. He’s scored over eighty projects for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including a number of Mormon Messages. He is the composer for the films Errand of Angels, One Good Man, and The Saratov Approach. He’s currently working on the films Let It Go and Freetown. He’s been married thirty-six years to Kathryn Elliott and has six children and ten grandchildren.

So, Rob, I hear you’re pretty busy these days.

Rob: Yeah, gratefully so. You know, the world of a composer is sometimes you’re super busy and sometimes you’re not so busy, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of busy and great projects to work on recently.

Katherine: That’s great. So, tell me how you got into music. I know it started from an early age. Tell us about that.

Rob: Yeah. It’s probably similar to a lot of young children. I think I was three or four and expressed interest in the piano, and my parents bought a little Spinet upright piano. I kind of crawled up on the bench and started tinking away at the ivories, and really enjoyed that.

The interesting thing about how I started in piano—it should have been maybe a harbinger of things to come. I really didn’t enjoy taking piano lessons, because I would often change the pieces, you know, the little kiddie pieces that they would give you to practice. I would change them into what I thought they should be. And I’m sure they were terrible, but when you’re three or four changing music, you’re thinking that maybe they’re wonderful.

Anyway, my teacher was really frustrated with me, so that didn’t last very long. It was maybe on five or six months. She told my mother, “Some students just aren’t teachable.” So, I just started self-learning.

In the process of those early years, my piano was located near where our family television was, and I distinctly remember climbing up on the piano, my feet dangling from the bench, and turning the sound down on television programs and playing the piano to them—kind of like the old-fashioned organists at the old films. And just did that really to learn how to play the piano—and did that for a couple of years.

Like I say, you fast forward—years later, it’s what I do for a living, and I should’ve realized early on that’s what I really wanted to do. So, kind of a funny beginning, but that’s how I learned how to play the piano.

Katherine: So, how did you get into composing for television and film?

Rob: You know, I had done a series of ads here and there, which, initially piqued my interest. But the real first commercial film I did was Errand of Angels for Christian Vuissa. Before that time I had, mostly for my job, done ads. Then I started doing some student films. But that was the first commercial film.

It was a wonderful association with Christian. I worked on that film for him, and then a subsequent film called One Good Man. But it all stems really from Errand of Angels, and Errand of Angels was viewed at the LDS Film Festival—I think it was 2008. (Maybe it was 2007; I can’t remember).

Dale Jones from the LDS Church—he’s one of the senior managing directors of their video and entertainment—their connection via film and video with the world. He saw the film and liked the score; wanted me to come down and meet with him and some of his other producers, and that’s what started that relationship. And enjoyed a wonderful relationship with them, probably twelve, thirteen different production teams over there. And things have blossomed from there.

Katherine: Okay. Yeah, I was at that film screening, actually, and I really enjoyed that film. And I noticed the music—it was really lovely.

Rob: Oh, thank you.

Katherine: So, before you actually got into doing films, what was the process of graduating with your degree in music composition and then eventually getting to this point where you’re doing film composition?

Rob: You know, it is a long and arduous process. When you graduate, you have high hopes. But the reality is you’re doing a lot of freebies. You’re doing a lot of on-spec type of things with student filmmakers, or near-free ads or local ads for ice cream or butter or something like that.

I still joke about it now, Katherine. I love writing music to picture. And I truly get excited writing music to people buttering bread. I just love the collaborative effect that music has with what you see and hear. It’s a very powerful medium to me personally, so it’s just an enjoyable process to be involved in.

To graduate from people buttering bread to dramatic arcs over ninety minutes is a wonderful blessing in my life, and I don’t take it for granted at all. To be able to tell stories that underlie the written stories is a blast. It’s the best job in the world.

Katherine: So, tell us about how you go about doing composition for a film. That sounds like a huge project. What’s that process like from the beginning to the end? I realize that you could probably spend fifty minutes talking about that. But maybe what would be the condensed version?

Rob: Yeah. In a brief summary, I could tell you what the first minute of writing a score to a film feels like: It feels like ultimate terror. I don’t know how else to express it. Because music has unlimited shades of—blue, even—just one color. You can go in a million different directions, literally. There are twelve tones, and we still seem to keep hearing new songs and new themes and new scores. And yet—Western harmony, we have twelve tones. So, you kind of have this terror in your heart of “How am I going to come up with something for this film?”

The process is a lot of talking to the director, sometimes hearing temp scores, which are basically music from other movies to get a general idea. The very first thing—in fact, this is happening next Monday. We’re supposed to start on Garrett Batty’s next film, Freetown, which he’s the director and producer of The Saratov Approach.

We were actually supposed to start on it this last Monday, and he’s had a couple of things he’s wanted to improve even further on the edit. My experience with those kinds of delays is it’s always good, because it just further refines the storytelling of it.

In any case, next Monday he’ll come to my studio, and we’ll put the film in my studio screens, and we’ll watch it together. As we watch it, he’ll just make comments. He’ll say, you know, I love this scene, but I’m not sure (and this is a for instance, right?) that our lead actress is really giving me the exact emotion I want displayed here. She’s a little indifferent, and I really want it to feel like—and you just fill in the blanks.

The process of film scoring—I mean, you think of your own life, Katherine—you don’t have violins and horns and guitars following you around, playing different elements of music as you live out your life. And yet, we can’t watch movies or television without music, right? They feel stark and maybe a little dull. It helps create a subtext—what the innermost feelings of these people are. Because you sometimes can’t tell just by looking at them.

So, a big part of the first part of the process is understanding the director’s subtext. Not just what we hear, and maybe not just what we see, because oftentimes those elements might be missing, at least obviously, to the audience. We’ve all seen films where we’re kind of scratching our heads and saying, “I don’t really get there. I don’t know what they’re trying to tell me, but I don’t see love. I see something else” or “I don’t see hate; I see something else.”

Music is a very important element to make sure the audience gets what the director wants. Now, is it always right? No, because it’s storytelling. It’s a hard thing to do, to tell stories. But music helps ensure that at least the vision of the director gets to the final audiences in the theater.

We spend a lot of time, probably a day at least, on just talking about the subtext of what the story and message should be. I take a lot of notes, and then I’ll follow it up with, “Okay, just so I understand it, you want actress A to feel such-and-such at this point in the film. I just want to make sure.”

It’s amazing, the last film I just worked on, there was a part of the film where the director wanted to have something somewhat comedic. I questioned it and said, “Are you sure?” He goes, “Yeah, yeah. I want it to be somewhat comedic. Not boom-chuck circus comedic, but I want it to be somewhat lighter and comedic.”

I wrote that, knowing that I don’t think he wanted that—but, it was a short cue. I wrote it, and he goes, “Oh, that’s horrible.” He goes, “That’s horrible; I don’t want that. I want it serious.” I go, “Okay.” So, we worked it out. He’s a great director. And you know, it’s just a process. Sometimes I’ll make the same suggestion. I’ll go, “You know, I know you want action here, but could we do love here instead?” Or some other emotion to the side, and it doesn’t always work either. It’s tricky business.

So, we spend a lot of time doing that. Then, after that—that’s called a “spotting session”—I just get started. For seven, eight weeks, I get pencil and paper and do a lot of writing and a lot more erasing, and hopefully come up with a score that works.

Katherine: That’s interesting, to get a kind of insider’s perspective on that. Music is something that, like you said, if it’s not in a film, we notice. But if it is in a film, we kind of don’t notice. It’s so integrated into the storytelling.

Rob: Right. I agree, and I appreciate your understanding of that, because I’m one of those kind of film composers that really doesn’t like writing concert music for films. I’ve got some colleagues that struggle with film composing, because their music is sacred to them, and they want people to really stand up and listen to it.

My job is to be as sneaky as possible. I don’t want people to be crying because they hear violins. I want people to be crying because they hear something. To me, that’s the clever part of film composing—is when I can get people to really not notice the bassoons, the horns, the violins—but feel what the director wants them to feel. Then that’s exciting to me. And I think that’s exciting for the directors I’ve worked with. I think it’s important to them as well, because they’re not doing a music video. They’re doing a story about people. Sometimes scores can take us out of a moment. My job—at least what I try to do—is not allow that to happen in writing too much or the wrong kind of writing. That’s important to me.

Katherine: Yeah. It sounds like there would be a lot of challenging artistic choices you’d have to make. When in the film you don’t put any music in at all. And when you put some in how it can enhance the emotions that those characters are feeling but not hijack the audience’s emotions while they’re watching it.

Rob: Right, exactly—to be heavy handed. In fact, one of the things I enjoy doing is what you mentioned just a few minutes I go. I call them musical breaths. Sometime the note not played is the most powerful note. So, if something is left hanging or even just discontinues sounding—a violin, a piano, a guitar—and it just stops at that moment of the emotional arc; sometimes that’s even more effective than bringing on the band, as it were.

Then the other thing is that when it comes back in, it’s almost an emotional release. It’s a very effective thing that I like to do, and many composers do it today. It’s just a device that we try to use as often as possible to create the dramatic breath, as it were, in the film.

Katherine: That makes me think of—there’s a moment in The Saratov Approach. It’s the climax, the resolution of the conflict. You have that final conflict—and I don’t want to include spoilers for those who haven’t seen it—but you have this final conflict, and you’re waiting to see how it’s going to resolve. The music does pick up gradually, and you hear, I think there are some strings and some vocals—really subtle vocals come in a little bit stronger. Then the vocals stop. And then eventually this synthesizer, I think, comes in, and you get a little bit more of a beat as the falling action of the narrative structure comes in.

[MUSIC CLIP: “In God’s Hands”]

I just thought that was really, really beautiful, the way that that worked. But I didn’t notice any of that when I was watching the film. I just thought it was an incredibly powerful moment and was brought to tears—not because of the violins, but because the moment, all of those pieces, the way it was resolved, the characters—it was just a really beautiful moment.

This morning I was actually going back and looking at it, kind of more technically—what was he doing with the music there? So, is that what was going on with the music there?

Rob: Yeah, in fact, a funny story about that scene is that the film was in delays. That scene—I think the music was written about 48 hours before the Theater Guild of Owners, or whatever, watched the film. I was around the clock. You know, it was one of those moments where there wasn’t time to do it twice.

So, like we all do when we get to those moments in our life—we pray like crazy, right? Because it’s beyond our ability to do some tasks in life. That was one of them.

The only feeling I had on that scene was “this is power—pure power without music. I’ve got to make sure I don’t kill this with music.” If anything, just to underlie and enhance as much as I possibly can, and I was really happy with that scene. It was a daunting task, not just because of time. If I’d had a month to do it, I’d still—in fact, a month may have been a problem. I maybe would have over-thought it. It was one of those important scenes where you just had to get it right. I was pleased with the way it turned out. I’m glad you liked it, and I think Garret liked it.

It was one of those special projects to work on. I remember the first time I saw The Saratov Approach without any music. I really felt terror because I knew the story was just so good. For me as a film composer, it’s all about the story. Yes, it has to be well executed and directed and shot and lit, and the sound has to be good, and all those, which I think that film was in any case (but, considering it was a low budget film). But the story just galvanized within me something that made me dig deep for something.

I will tell your audience that I worked on the Freetown trailer and really got excited working on that little short two-minute score—but since then have seen a few scenes of Freetown (I still have not watched it). I will tell your audience that as excited as I was about Saratov, I may have found something that is even replacing that excitement. This next one—Garrett just gets better and better. Every time he does a film, it just gets better, and I’m really excited to be part of his creative team.

Katherine: Yeah, I saw that trailer before Meet the Mormons, and it looked like it’s going to be a phenomenal film.

So, going back to The Saratov Approach, I want to ask a bigger question. What are some of the challenges—and maybe they’re not different challenges from other kinds of films—but, what are some of the challenges of working on religious films as a composer?

Rob: That’s a good question. I think, for me, when I watch a religious film—There’s a recent one, and I won’t even mention its name—it’s pretty popular; it’s more of a general religious film—it felt like I was being fed a little too much with a baby spoon. I don’t know how else to word it.

To me, a religious film needs to breathe organically from cradle to grave. And that is all the elements. I don’t like to see cheesecloths on angels. I don’t like to see overwrought violence through the whole thing. Because it’s such a personal thing—our spiritual journey—that forcefeeding or on-the-nose kind of filmmaking in that regard just feels out of place to me, to be honest with you.

It’s one of the reasons I love working with Garrett and others at the Church. It’s really developing into some wonderful, subtle, this is a slice-of-life, this is some real stuff, and this is how we’re doing it.

To me that’s the biggest challenge of working on religious films—is to make it—well, two things: (1) not so much on the nose, and not so syrupy and heavy-handed. And (2), as Garrett has shown, when we’re not watching a religious film—let’s say we’re religiously-minded—we’re watching Lord of the Rings, and we’re watching something else, like Star Trek or The Hobbit. Quite frankly, religious films have to be entertaining. They can’t just be religious. I think that’s important.

So, that’s the other step that I think is very important—that I think religious film better be entertaining, or we won’t watch it. We’ll know it’s good for us, but we still won’t watch it. So, that’s important to me. I think those two are the things that are the big challenges: is it entertaining, and is it subtle and not heavy-handed.

Katherine: Okay, so I’m thinking of a scene in The Saratov Approach where Elder Tuttle is—it’s a significant moment for him—he’s talking to his companion (this is after they’ve been captured), and he’s telling his companion that he originally didn’t want to go on a mission, and then how he converted to that idea.

Then he talks about this experience he had in a class where he was reading the Book of Luke and realized that Jesus Christ wouldn’t have gone through with the Atonement if there had been any other way. He felt like if Jesus Christ could honor his Father in that way, then he would honor his father by going on a mission, because he knew that his father really wanted him to.

[MUSIC CLIP: “My Decision”]

It’s this very significant moment, and I’m sure that Garrett and that you probably didn’t want it to feel like a testimony meeting, or something heavy-handed and over-the-top. And I think that it makes it through without doing that. So, how did you do that?

Rob: Thanks for asking that question. The first thing I knew I needed to do was to make the music as personal and as subtle as his very moving performance, and a really well-written script at that point in the film.

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this, but I just let the film go, and I just improvised on the piano. A lot of times, I don’t get pencil out, and that was one of them. I watched it once, and then I watched it a second time—and that second time I believe is the track you hear on the film. It’s just me playing the piano. It’s funny—it goes back to our original thing about how I got into the piano when I was three or four. I just liked to play the piano to people talking or doing something. That just happened to work in that case. Later on I just added a little bit of a cello and very subtle strings at the very end of that cue. But it’s primarily just a simple little piano improvisation.

Katherine: Okay, so you watched it and then you obviously felt something while you were watching it, and then that emotion from the piece kind of drove your improvisation, and then that’s what we hear.

Rob: That’s right. That’s exactly what happened on that. It was a neat experience. And it was one of the few times—I’m quite a deliberator on music and, like I said, I erase more than I write.

That was one of the few cases in the score where it was pretty much a first take. It doesn’t happen like that; it never does. If anyone tells you it does, they’re lying to you. It’s a process of blood, sweat, and mostly tears. But that one just kind of worked.

I sent it over to Garrett, just saying, “Hey, I got this sketch. I loved this scene, Garrett, and I was just kind of tinkering on the piano.” He said, “Done. I love it. It’s done. Don’t do anything else to it.”

Katherine: Okay, so, when you’re in the middle of scoring a film, it’s pretty intense. I know when I emailed you, you said you get up at four or five and start writing. That sounds like a pretty busy schedule. So, what are three things that you couldn’t do without?

Rob: Um, wow. That’s a good question. I would say the first one is a grateful disposition. It has nothing to do with music. The schedules and the work itself. You’re talking about something that comes out of you. You create, and in many cases your client is going to say, “It sounds like good music, but it’s horrible for this project.” That’s the life of a composer.

Katherine: “I love it, but I hate it.”

Rob: Yeah, “I love it, but it’s not good for this. I mean, Elliott, what were you thinking?” So, it’s a very personal thing that we put out there, and rejection is just a part of it. But if you’re grateful for what you do—if your disposition is leaning toward just gratitude in your circumstance and not because of the circumstance, right? We’ve heard that spoken about recently. It’s true.

If you’re just grateful to be a film composer, then you’ll get it right. You’ll do it a different way, and they’re going to love it, and you’re going to love it. You’re going to do it a different way, and you’re going to say, “Yeah, that is better.” So, that’s number one. That would be number one.

Number two is I’ve got a wonderful studio that’s equipped with all the latest sampling and mixing and tracking gear. So, I have the tools I need to get what’s in my head on a film. So, that’s important.

And then my third one’s going to be another non-working-related one. I’m happily married. Without being heavy-handed and sappy, I have a wonderful companion who’s also an artist—who understands the process and is very supportive. She’s a very honest person that I can show things to and will have an honest opinion.

It’s just the whole thing—I think all three of those things together makes this a really wonderful life. It’s not easy. There are lots of 4:00 a.m. wake-up calls, and working till 2:00 a.m. But we wouldn’t do anything that we didn’t really love. After a time no one would continue to do that if they just didn’t love it. So, I love it, and I have those three things, and so it all just seems to work.

Katherine: What advice would you give for other artists who would like to eventually be scoring films like you’re doing?

Rob: It’s just live in the moment and love what you’re doing. Hope it leads to other things—it doesn’t always. If I had been a composer for ads and artists, and producing artists as I had been doing for many years, I would have been fine. I would have loved it. If we were talking about the latest artist I was producing right now instead of films, I would be just as enthusiastic.

I’m grateful that I now do films, because I did that. I know what films are. And to compare the two, no comparison to me, but not always to someone. A lot of people that get into film composing don’t like the rigors of it and don’t like the rejection and just the hours that are involved. But I happen to love that. It fits my personality.

The only thing I could say to those that are looking for a career in music is find something you’re passionate about—any element of it. It doesn’t have to be film composing. Even if your final goal is to film compose, find other things that you love doing and see how it leads. It could very well lead to exactly what you want.

When I first started out in music, all I wanted to do was play the piano for The Tonight Show. I’d been on tour for a little bit, and I had some contacts. I was looking at auditioning for the band. That’s all I wanted to do—was do that and write arrangements for the band. Then an ad happened; then I wrote to an ad. I can’t even remember—it was just an ice cream ad or something, and I go, “Oh, no. This is what I want to do.” And enjoyed that for many years.

So, one thing let to another. I always did what I wanted to do. I didn’t do something just because I had to have a job or I thought it was what people expected of me—teachers, professors, parents. I just did what I felt I would do every day and enjoy doing it. That’s the key, that if you enjoy it, it will lead to other things. Just by natural occurrence things will happen. You’ll have contacts that will lead to this, that will lead to that. My association with Garrett was because of Christian. Christian had me do a film. Christian’s film festival had Dale Jones see it, and Dale Jones introduced me to a producer.

Four years later, a new producer was hired on at the Church by the name of Garrett Batty, and I did a couple of short Mormon Messages for him. We just hit it off, and a year-and-a-half ago he said, “Hey, I’m really thinking about doing this feature. Trying to figure out how to do it and still have this day job as a producer at the Church.”

That’s how it worked out. My association with Garrett has led to other associations and negotiations now that are just as neat. One thing just leads to another. So, enjoy the moment, work hard, and things will work out.

Katherine: Okay, so then that leads into my next question. I think a lot of Mormon artists are afraid starting out, especially, that they can’t be artists and have a family, support a family, nurture their family in the way their family needs to be nurtured, do their work in the Church. It’s not just Mormon artists who have this concern. This is a concern for I think artists just in general. But I think in Mormon culture, because family is so important, and we don’t believe in waiting till you’re 40 to start your family while you’ve built up your career since then. What advice would you have? You have 6 children, 10 grandchildren. How did that go?

Rob: Well, here’s the deal. Here’s the deal, Katherine. On the surface, in black and white, it shouldn’t work. But here’s the honest truth of it. As we are properly balanced between the physical and the metaphysical, the spiritual and the physical, everything works better, right?

We hear it in Church, and we hear it in Sunday School lessons, and we read it in the scriptures: As the life is balanced, everything just is better. We’re more of an instrument in a proper way and are just more effective. I learned that long ago, and it kind of took me a while.

When I first started, I thought it was just hours. But I realized that as I nurtured a relationship with a companion and nurtured a relationship with children, that my music got better. It got deeper.

Your audience is probably the same as me. I’ve been in a bishopric for 7 years, and now I teach Institute on Tuesday nights. But I don’t do it because it’s a box to check; I do it because, frankly, my music’s going to be better as I keep my life balanced. When my life is out of balance, everything just seems to kind of unravel.

Do it for good reasons. But I personally feel that a Mormon artist will be more effective and will, frankly, be more of an instrument in God’s hands if they are balanced in doing all the things they need to do. Now, is Rob Elliott perfect? That’s a joke, okay? We don’t have enough time to talk about that. But the desire to have your life balanced and to see the value in things other than music or art (or whatever the artist’s expression is)—it will help.

I remember my music before I had all that. I’m a convert to the Church. I don’t remember the same kind of music that I’m currently doing. It could just be a function of years, of just working your craft—I don’t think so. I think right now my music is a little more purposeful. It’s for something bigger than I even anticipated.

The challenge that I have is not messing it up and still being a proper instrument and vehicle for it. Because, you know, through agency, we can kind of muddy the waters. So, we have to continue to choose right. It’s tough. I understand your question. I understand the difficulty, but I think I over-thought it as a young man.

My only recommendation would be to keep things in balance, because you’ll be better at it. Does that mean that the person who has lost his spiritual center is not talented and not successful and famous? Yeah, but my feeling on that is how much better could it have been? I’m just saying, from my personal experience, it’s just gotten better as things stay kept in balance.

Katherine: I’ve known a lot of young Mormons at BYU who are very interested in art and are quite good, and a lot of them end up majoring in business or something along those lines, going to medical school. Hopefully it’s because they love it, but I think sometimes it’s because they think, “I can’t be an artist and be a good Mormon dad, or a good Mormon mom.” I think it’s actually more of a pressure on young men. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Rob: Yeah, those same thoughts pass through every Mormon artist. I don’t know. Maybe just to be really bold and frank about it, you know, “If I can’t be the world’s best, I’m not going to be anything at all.” To me that’s steeped in pride. Artists are by nature pretty prideful people, because they’re putting it all out there. I think pride sometimes can stall us up. I think it can be done. It’s been done by lots of people. Is it easy? No. Is it harder than going and being a CPA? Maybe not.

I guess the only advice I would give to someone if they asked me was, “The chances of you being successful not trying is always going to be zero percent. It’s always going to be zero. The chances of you being successful by trying is something greater than that. What it is?—it’s talent meets opportunity. That’s all it is.”

Katherine, we know artists that—we’re scratching our head going, “How is that person so successful when I know Joe Blow with ten times more talent.” Well, they had a level of talent that met the right opportunity at the right time. But the point is, Katherine, if that person didn’t wish to jump into that pool and try it out, they wouldn’t have even had that success.

So, if you keep things in balance, and you have some courage and follow your dreams, there is some probability above zero that you will be successful. What it is no one knows. No one knows. It depends on how passionate you are about your art.

I know a lot of artists who just don’t like to fail. Everything has to be a success, and the thought of doing it for my living is too much possible failure. But again, I’ve told everyone the same thing: Well, it’s going to be 100% failure if you don’t even try. So, which one do you want? Do you want five percent probability or zero percent probability of success?

I think five percent is always worth it, especially if you’re passionate about your art and you feel you have a voice in whatever art form that is. I think it’s always worth it. Provided you keep things in balance and you don’t lose your spiritual core, that’s important. So, I hope that helps.

Katherine: Yeah, thank you so much for saying that.

Okay, well, I won’t take up any more of your time. Thank you for answering those many, many questions.

Rob: Oh, no problem, Katherine. I always enjoy talking about it. I hope I wasn’t too wordy for you, and I hope your editing skills are profound and excellent.

Katherine: Thank you so much. It was great talking to you.

Rob: Yeah, great talking to you, Katherine.

Katherine: Good luck on the film, and have a great Thanksgiving.

Rob: Okay, well at least I know one person is going to see Freetown. Make a promise that you’re going to watch it.

Katherine: Oh, I am very much looking forward to it. I think many people are going to see it.

Rob: All right, we’ll count on one.

Katherine: Okay. ❧