Review Fix chats with Brian Reilly about his role in “Play It By Ear.”
About Play It By Ear:
PLAY IT BY EAR explores how technology keeps people together — while driving them apart. The series tackles the messy nooks and crannies of modern love with a visual and emotional frankness seen in shows like INSECURE, GIRLS, and NORMAL PEOPLE.
Simon Kienitz Kincade, Emily Ann Zisko, Brian Reilly & Dillon Bentlage
— Executive Producers
Virginia Blatter — Producer
Emily Ann Zisko & Simon Kienitz Kincade — Writers/Directors
Brian Reilly & Dillon Bentlage — Editors
PLAY IT BY EAR was created and executive produced by Dillon Bentlage, Brian Reilly, Emily Ann Zisko, and Simon Kienitz Kincade. Zisko and Kienitz Kincade served as headwriters and directors on the series, while Bentlage and Reilly served as producers, writers, and editors. In addition to their roles behind the camera, Zisko and Bentlage star in the series as Mila and Lukas.
Review Fix: What was your inspiration behind this project?
Brian Reilly: The idea for Play It By Ear came from Dillon Bentlage, my partner at Karen Twins Productions. He felt inspired by his parents’ own long-distance relationship and wanted to create a series similar to it. In the 1990s, his parents dated while his mom lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and his dad lived in Utrecht, Netherlands. Due to the technological limitations of that decade, they really only communicated with each other through bi-weekly visits. Our idea was to bring that story into the modern age. We had the idea but needed a stronger set of writers to turn it into a compelling story, so we brought on our good friends and previous collaborators, Emily Ann Zisko and Simon Kienitz Kincade, to write the scripts and direct the series. About three months into them joining the team, Emily came forward with a six-episode outline and we all loved it. Being a longtime couple as well as a writing duo, they were the perfect choice for bringing this story to life.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Reilly: Dillon and I thrive on collaboration. Whether it’s the early stages of storyboarding or finalizing picture-lock in post, we always value working directly with someone else to get our projects to where they need to be. We view the filmmaking process as a highly collaborative environment, where all opinions, from both inside and outside the project, are welcomed. If we think a friend or associate may have the solution we’re looking for, we don’t hesitate to reach out.
As a team, we work on pretty much everything together. We live in separate states (I’m in Massachusetts and Dillon is in New York), so we meet regularly via Zoom to work together on our projects, such as writing a script, creating pitch materials, making promotional content, etc. This process also translates over to when we’re producing a project. We host weekly virtual calls with our production team so everyone can provide updates on their work, which keep everyone in the loop on the status of the film. This has always been an effective process for us as it keeps the momentum going. We find that collaboration keeps us as well as our partners’ accountable for our respective responsibilities.
Review Fix: What did you learn/are learning about yourself through this process/production?
Reilly: The biggest thing we all learned about ourselves throughout the course of this production was how far we’ve each come as filmmakers since our last big project. Before Play It By Ear, we made a feature film called Dilettantes, which came out in 2019. It was our first time making a film and we pretty much taught ourselves how to organize an entire film shoot throughout that production. Being roughly two years removed from that film when production began for Play It By Ear, we each entered this series with more professional experience. That really shines throughout this series. It looks more professional, the story is stronger, the production value is higher, and everything we did during pre- and post-production was more organized and better planned out. Since Dilettantes, Dillon worked at a professional post-production company and learned the ins and outs of managing an entire post process; I (Brian) got better experience in the marketing and managerial world, which helped us with promotion for the series and overseeing the entire production; and Simon and Emily honed their skills as writers and directors through their own projects and working on professional sets. When combining all our newly strengthened talents, we became an unstoppable team that was determined to get this series done.
Another important thing we learned from Play It By Ear was how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign. We estimated that we would need between $40-$45K to confidently film this series on location in both Los Angeles and Amsterdam. From there, we agreed to create a crowdfunding campaign through Seed&Spark with a goal of $25K, and we would supply the rest ourselves. We previously ran a crowdfunding campaign, but it was thrown together and very small in scope compared to what we were planning with Play It By Ear, so we knew we really needed to do our research. We spent about one or two months studying and planning out our crowdfunding campaign, which included creating a pitch video, establishing rewards/incentives for donors, and our outreach plan. The campaign lasted 30 days and, to our surprise, we raised 107% of our goal!
Our expectations for funding this series were far surpassed. We are very thankful to everyone who donated to Play It By Ear. We would not be here without their support.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for this for the future?
Reilly: Our main goal for season one is to establish a core audience, which is why we uploaded the series to our own YouTube channel. We put years of hard work into this, so we wanted to make sure anyone could easily access the show from anywhere in the world, as opposed to getting on a single premium streaming network.
We have ideas for two more seasons of the show. We’d like to get those made with a bigger budget and with a network or bigger production company attached to it, so we hope the success of season one will lead to the creation of those seasons. After four years of working on season one, we’re still not ready to say goodbye to it. Creating Play It By Ear has been a fun challenge, and we’re excited to continue exploring the nuances of both long-distance relationships and different cities around the world.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Reilly: We are currently working on season two for Play It By Ear, which is in its early stages. We’re also launching a new program called KT Short Shorts, which will be a yearly short film program where we have an open call for short film script submissions that are under five pages. We will select ten of them, and work with the writers to produce and edit them within the year.
We have some other projects in the works as well, but we are not ready to share those just yet.
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