We quietly entered the mid-sized soundstage on a lot in Glendale. Vanishing from the garish outside world we find ourselves on the set of GRUMMY, a new short film from wrtiter-director’s Micheline Pitt and RH Norman. The film tells the story of a young girl played by Violet McGraw, whose imaginary friend Grummy assists her in escaping the violent realities she is faced with.
The quiet, dimly lit space is home to two sets. One is the attic bedroom of young Sarah, played by Violet McGraw, and the other is an expansive hilltop fantasy world. Echos of Guillermo Del Toro are evident as we inspect the sets by Construction Coordinator Kyle Wilson and his wife, Art Director Nicole Balzarini.
On how she got involved in the project, Balzarini recalls, “Micheline’s one of my best friends. We’ve been friends for over 13 years. I read their short. It’s a beautiful story and yeah – wanted to be a part of it.”
Construction coordinator, Wilson recalls the hard work of building the sets at home and says, “I want my yard back.” Balzarini adds, “And his workshop.” It is easy to believe that these sets would take up so much time and space to produce. “It’s pretty intense,” Wilson admits, “building in such a small space. Something that’s so far away from the camera. And also bringing 2D image into 3D space. Then you got miniatures, painted drop, painted flat mountains and you’ve got the foreground which is so intense, but what I think brings it all together is, Nicole’s ability to bring all those different textures and get them together to make them look like the actual distance that it is.
Writer, director Micheline Pitt added, “Absolutely. I think this is one of those cases where they exceeded expectations and even the concept design when we got to the fantasy world – like Doug’s art is amazing and I can’t wait for him to see this, and how exciting it is to see that brought to life on a whole new level. No special effects. Even the fireflies are real and they’ll go off when we turn them on, all over the set.”
We focus our attention on the cluttered set of Sarah’s bedroom. A cold space, we stare at the collection of clutter that screams “kid’s room.” The overall color is a depressing blue, yet there are warm pops of yellow, amber, and fuschia. We asked who collected the set dressing and look and it happened to be none other than Pitt. “I spent the last year shopping,” She explains, “And buying all of the toys and hunting down the actual Sears 1980s girl’s bedroom furniture. And the dollhouse I found was a Ventures dollhouse I gave to her that was an empty shell. And she art directed the entire dollhouse there’s even a miniature Grummy in it. I mean, we really spent the attention to detail even if not knowing what will or won’t be on camera sometimes until we’re really here and put it all together.” This is exceptional world-building here.
Scanning the set for the room, Micheline says, “There are a lot of things in this room, that I had as a little girl, because this is an autobiographical story, based on my own childhood. They have a lot of elements that are in this room that were in my childhood bedroom as well as the characteristics of Sarah. I wanted it to feel really authentic and I spent like two years really digging deep and going through and processing everything and figuring out how I could tell such a hard story in a way that would feel whimsical and like beautiful and but also still get the message about of heartbreak across. Because not every fairy tale has a happy ending. And sometimes it’s bittersweet. And I feel that’s very much what Grummy is – it’s a very bittersweet fairy tale.”
We pointed out the parallels between the monochromatic bedroom set and the hyper-saturated fantasy world of the hilltop. The room features faint echoes to what we see in the fantastic world of Sarah’s imagination. “The other thing that we really wanted to do was make it so her room, was, like the elements are all there, in what she uses to create her fantasy world. So like you see the wisteria throughout her room, the purples, the colors, but this is sort of the dead version, you know like all the light and color has been sucked out of it but when she goes into this fantasy world it’s vibrant and alive ‘cause that’s what she ideally wants. But this is what she has. So it’s a combination of those two.”
Balzarini chimes in, saying, “The real-world transfers over you’ll see the wisteria on her walls and the trees and that transfers into reality of her world and you go into her closet, she’s built little baby trees and there’s stars and planets in there that she’s kind of stuck together, and her room and her walls. So she’s really taken little broken pieces from her existence and life and made it something really beautiful that she could escape to. And I think that if people look you’ll see some Easter eggs that if you really pay attention that crosses both worlds.”
In finding the lead actor, that special kid that would be able to carry such a layered short, Pitt muses, “Well, it’s funny. I knew going into this I wanted someone really young. Because, in my story, I’m even younger than Sarah’s character. When her story starts and when my story happens but I know that was going to be impossible, so we had to go a little older. And when I watched The Haunting of Hill House, like, Violet just completely lit up that screen and I went to my husband and I just said that is her, like this is her. And he said “I don’t think you can get her” and I said, I’m going to try. So, I followed her in Instagram, and I saw that her mom ran her Instagram and I’m like, okay, I going to tread in deep, engage with her there and I just coldly like messaged her mom and I said, I’m sorry if this seems really strange, I have a project we are doing, here’s a link to it, I saw your daughter on Haunting of Hill House. I think there’s something really special about her, and I’m sure you hear this a lot. I really think she’s Sarah in this story and if you wouldn’t mind reading it and letting me know if you have any interest. I mean, I probably sound a little bit more professional than I do right now, and Jackie was so warm and welcoming, and literally wrote me back the same day. Said that the script made her cry, that she loved it and that‘s she totally wanted to have Violet to get involved in this. And it definitely is challenging because of the subject matter, so we have to communicate with her mom and figure out a way to communicate to Violet, how to help her understand and break the story down so that it still protects her. Because she’s a child and she’s impressionable.”
With a wisteria-topped hill basking in the crimson light of a blue moon at one end of the stage and the stark attic bedroom set on the other, we asked what was going through Pitt’s mind seeing all of this come to fruition. “It’s been two years of my life.” Pit began. “I mean, when you see Grummy, I saw Grummy for the first time and I cried. Because it’s just like, amazing to see something that you’ve collaborated with people with for so long, and that we’ve all sacrificed for, come together. It’s been really awesome. And it’s hard telling a story that no-one has told and it’s also hard to come from a complete honesty perspective as well and collaborate with so many other people on this, and voices. I feel like there’s – this has been such a big project and people have gotten so committed to it, because we’ve let every voice be heard and really just listen to our team. As well as them listen to us.”
Still, we wanted to know what inspired the approach. We asked, “What did you use in order to really make this something that would stand out?” Pitt thought for a minute then said, “Well, really listening to some of the people we respect and love and how they approach projects and they completely immerse themselves in it.” Pitt continued, “I have a notebook. I kept notes. I wrote like, really detailed background character stories for them. Who they were, what would be in her space and why. And what would be in that world. And I spent a year on that before I even gave it over to Doug and broke everything all down. So I picked out all of the color palettes with all – everything, story colors, character colors, I costumed designed all their costumes. So I picked everything out and it just – I don’t know many directors that have been that committed and obsessive over little details. I mean, the greats like, honestly, I learned so much. I took a master with Guillermo that he did in LA, listening to him talk for 2-3 hours was probably one of the most educational moments of my life. And just how immersive he is, how committed he is to his characters, his project, I knew that’s how I need to treat this if I’m ever going to create something really special.
“I wanted to just go about it in a way that would be very respectful for anybody that might have had trauma, that could watch this and process it, in a way that wouldn’t be too triggering, but hopefully making them feel like they weren’t alone.” Pitt took a moment then added, “There’s a lot of people that have donated time to this project, that have been victims of abuse. People that are parents and this has meant a lot to them. It’s been powerful because it just feels like this is how children survive sometimes, is just by going someplace else. And how they are able to deal with some of the hardest things in life. And I think that, even if you weren’t abused in the same way this character is – maybe it’s verbal, maybe it’s physical abuse, maybe it’s neglect – anything. And I think that children can relate and people can relate to going someplace else and surviving in that place and existing in that place and finding a home there. So I think that’s why it’s special.”
It is clear that there is a catharsis happening here that is manifesting with a dazzling creative triumph.
You can now view the new film GRUMMY here.
