Director James Ward Byrkit on the Cult Classic Coherence We welcome special guest and director James Ward Byrkit to OH!CAST. The James Ward Byrkit Coherence Film is the main focus of this conversation. We know him for his work as a creative consultant on Pirates of the Caribbean, demonstrating the art of crafting iconic cinema props and sets. Join us as he discusses the genesis of his low-budget 2013 sci-fi cult film, Coherence.
Making the James Ward Byrkit Coherence Film: No Script, No Crew, Five Nights
Jim Byrkit reveals how he created Coherence with next to no resources. For instance, he shot the film entirely at his house over just five nights. He explains his unique, stripped-down filmmaking theory. Consequently, this process involved having no script, no crew, and relying entirely on actors improvising the dialogue. Byrkit also shares the frantic timeline for the shoot, which his wife’s impending due date compressed.
Quantum Physics, Improvisation, and Alternate Realities in the James Ward Byrkit Coherence Film
The minimal-budget cosmic stories of The Twilight Zone inspired the idea for Coherence. He discusses the deep philosophical concepts at the heart of the movie, including quantum physics and the idea of decoherence. Furthermore, he talks about the complexity of editing the improvisational takes. James Ward Byrkit details how he managed eight powerful personalities without giving away the story’s twists. We also analyze the film’s fascinating use of alternate realities and the concept of Schrödinger’s Cat in detail.
Impossible Odds and Legacy of the James Ward Byrkit Coherence Film
Hear the unbelievable, freaky coincidence that occurred during the single night of exterior shooting. Byrkit had to film across the street from a gigantic Snickers commercial. He also shares the story of convincing the Screen Actors Guild that he was making a real film, despite having no crew, script, or schedule. Ultimately, the success of the Coherence Film showed that a micro-budget movie could reach a global audience.
Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)
00:00 Introduction to OCAST and Guests
02:33 James Ward Birkett’s Journey to Filmmaking
04:59 The Making of Pirates of the Caribbean
07:35 The Concept Behind Coherence
10:33 Improvisation in Filmmaking
13:00 The Unique Structure of Coherence
16:02 The Role of Quantum Physics in Coherence
19:01 Challenges During Filming
21:47 The Impact of Coherence on Viewers
24:39 Philosophical Themes in Coherence
27:26 Audience Reactions and Interpretations
30:09 Future Projects and Sequels
33:09 Final Thoughts and Reflection
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Cal (00:00.024)
way low budget for the win
Good to talk.
Okay and started. So hello everyone, welcome to OCAST, the official podcast of Ocon, the Comic Con of the Outer Hebrides. I’m your host tonight, Carl MacDonald, and joining me yet again, your third one in a week, Martin, how you doing?
I’m still here. The other two couldn’t have put me off. So yeah.
Great, and stabbing us going well. And joining us, a of sort of familiar face. We were on your show, so we welcome you back. And are you the main guy for the Scottish Clegons?
Rob (00:41.774)
Yeah, certainly as far as podcasting goes and obviously as you say you were guesting on ours a few months ago. That’s fantastic. So it’s good to be back on one of yours to repay that as well. So thank you very much for having me.
Yeah, great to have you back. So tonight, a very special guest and three of us were kind of, I know you two were really, your eyes kind of lit up when I mentioned to you got on with, is James Ward Brickett. He is, and I’ve messed up his name already, I can’t believe it. Brickett, why you on man?
Cal (01:23.144)
I don’t know what I want but I probably should be on more of it maybe. James Ward Birkett, yeah Birkett. Yeah so worked on, you’re a creative consultant for the Pirates of the Caribbean films, you’ve directed a few short films but the main one we’re here is your indie, kind of, it’s still a bit of an indie kind of cult film but it’s very, everyone I’ve met that’s watched this, loved this and appreciated it.
That’s it. That’s perfect. Thank you.
Cal (01:50.656)
It’s a 2013 film coherent. So welcome James Ward Burkett. And now I’m just going to call in you Jim after that.
Thank you so much. Great.
Martin (02:01.315)
Jim.
I’m used to it.
So just as we always start off, just a little bit of background on you. How did you, were you always passionate, was movie making always what you wanted to do ever since you could remember?
Yeah, ever since I was a little kid, I would draw stories and just completely lost in my imagination. And I loved any kind of fantastical story or science fiction story. And so I grew up in a small town in Arizona. So I just felt a million miles away from Hollywood. But I just kept drawing and drawing and telling stories. And it just all sort of
seemed to point to filmmaking. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just felt like it was calling me somehow. So I just kind of willed myself into, you know, working with other people who are making films. I started as a storyboard artist and working with Michael Bay and Ben Stiller and Gore Verbinski when I was out of school as a storyboard artist. I would take that money and I’d make little films with my friends, you know, kind of the way people do YouTube videos today.
Cal (03:03.862)
and wow.
James (03:11.374)
Just every weekend or every month we do some crazy new, you know, stop-motion animation or some kind of ridiculous story that we had just written and and we would take the sets from other Film shoots we before they threw them away. We’d go grab them put them in a truck bring them back to our garage and and shoot something. Yeah. Yeah, so I was just absolutely Driven I was just absolutely compelled
to somehow get in that world.
And good ass, but so was science fiction, always a passion I used as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Like so many kids, I was blown away by Star Wars when I was young. And then that kind of led me to more complicated things like 2001 and Philip K. Dick stories and Arthur Clarke stories and Ray Bradbury. So I just kind of got obsessed with where storytelling could go. It felt like it had almost a spiritual component to it that was very
mind expanding, consciousness expanding. And so that was very compelling to me in addition to just the standard robots and spaceships of TV science fiction. I really got just entranced by the possibilities of where science fiction could go and how it kind of rubs against philosophical ideas, existentialism and all sorts of ideas.
Cal (04:28.791)
Yeah.
Cal (04:41.027)
Yeah.
James (04:45.996)
The eternal recurrence of Nietzsche is basically a science fiction concept. So I just love the crossover between what used to be philosophy with what today is really dealt with in science fiction.
There we go.
It’s okay, it was Jim, wasn’t one of us, it’s okay.
Cal (05:11.053)
to you
Cal (05:14.936)
So, then, so like, you eventually, what’s your first kind of jobs working on those Pirates of the Caribbean films? That was kind of your first major job?
No, I had many, many millions, it felt like, of storyboarding jobs before that. I had done short films and low budget films and bigger films and millions of commercials. Over here, we have the Super Bowl, which is our big national event. And so to get a commercial on the Super Bowl is considered like a big deal. So I had done, I had storyboarded Super Bowl commercials and I’d sort of become at the top of my field in terms of storyboarding.
But of course, I wanted to be a filmmaker. And so I started directing commercials myself and making short films and doing some television. And Gore Verbinski, who was a friend by then, was like, look, I know you’re already directing your own stuff, but I have this crazy job has come to me. Jerry Bruckheimer wants to do a $100 million version of Pirates of the Caribbean. And I was like, absolutely. Let’s do it.
And that was a time when everybody else was like, don’t do that. That sounds like a terrible idea, know, making a movie out of a theme park. That’s just a money grab.
You gotta make some money to keep the game in level, haven’t you?
James (06:39.234)
Well, we knew that it would be a special movie. I knew that it would be much more than just a little flash there. And other people did not understand the vision that Gore had and that we had. And it turned out to be, it kind of changed everything for Hollywood.
Yeah, absolutely.
Sorry, carry on, Mark. Robert, useless with the names tonight.
Thanks, Carl. No, you mentioned philosophy, which of course we’ll get to when discussing the film. Did you study philosophy formally or was it just a sort of side interest that you had while you were storyboarding?
Yeah, I mean, in college, I took classes in it. I certainly don’t pretend to be an expert or an academic at it. But, you know, those were my favorite classes and that always sort of stuck with me. And I noticed the parallels to some of the best science fiction and how the concepts were explored in science fiction.
Cal (07:44.654)
So with that, we can lead up to what is kind of going to be the main focus of today. So coherence, like where did this idea generally, eventually, but this kind of melding of a dinner party and quantum physics, where do you get an idea like that from?
Uh, lack of money. That’s all based when you have no resources at all. You have to make do with what’s in front of you. And what was in front of me was a living room and some friends that could act. And I knew that that was it. That’s all, that’s all I got. And so putting those ideas together, I knew, all right, I can’t afford a location. It’s going to have to be shot at my house. So
How can you justify having people over at your house? Well, there’s a dinner party. So now we’ve got a cast. So it all results from limitations, which are sometimes the best thing to spur creativity. And I just had this idea, OK, the Twilight Zone made so many cosmic stories out of such small budgets. Every week, he would come up with some new great idea.
And I thought, let’s just use that as our guide. Let’s use the Twilight Zone as an example of what can be done. And I thought, all right, what if you looked out your window and saw across the street, you know, your own house and you saw yourself in the window. Isn’t that like the start of a story? And it all unfurled from there.
So did you read up on any quantum physics when you were preparing for this? yeah
James (09:20.048)
yeah, then you get into Google and you just start going crazy. And that’s how I came up with the term. The word coherence is based on the word decoherence, which is really the term that they’re using when you’re talking about the quantum states and the entanglement and these various theories that arise, the Copenhagen theory and the other theories that kind of compete with that. how Schrodinger was using his example
to say how ridiculous that was. Let’s just put a real world results if you do think of these two states existing at the same time. And he was saying, look, this doesn’t make sense because then the cat would be alive and dead at the same time. And then other theorists said, no, exactly. That’s exactly what it is. Yes, we love that. Thank you for that gift of the Schrodinger’s cat story. And meanwhile, Schrodinger was shaking his head going, no, no, no, no. That’s not.
It’s fantastic to see Schrodinger’s cat used in any film, be honest. I absolutely love that part of it.
yeah, they picked it up and they ran with it in the series Dark Matter, which is on Apple. That was clearly inspired by coherence and deep, you know, mentioned Strodinger’s cat many times and had shots of cats and everything. Kind of beat that cat to death perhaps, but at least they, you it’s now definitely in the zeitgeist.
Very much so.
Rob (10:50.432)
Indeed, indeed.
So what were, did you have any influences that you kind of looked at when you were planning this film? Because there’s again, there’s a bit of a Blair Witch vibe and I also get, I think you referenced this, but I got a vibe from Primer. There was a little bit of that thrown in as well.
Yeah, we weren’t trying to emulate those at all, to be honest, but those were examples, of course, that gave us a little encouragement that you could make a micro budget movie that could get to the world. really, as I said, the reference was Twilight Zone. And then this idea that I had, which was to make a movie very fast. was the main thing.
while I had been making movies and doing television and commercials, what I noticed is that most of filmmaking is not filmmaking, but it’s waiting. You’re waiting for lights to move, or you’re waiting for actors to get out of the trailer, but there’s very little shooting going on. And I thought, well, if I could just get rid of the script, and if I could get rid of the crew, then I could just really be free to be shooting the whole time.
because then it just be me and some actors and a camera. I had this crazy theory of stripping it down to absolutely nothing. And so if you combine that with Twilight Zone, you get coherence.
Cal (12:19.702)
Alright.
Does that mean that there was more time in the editing afterwards than normal or just the same?
Yeah, it was probably a much more complicated editing process because normally when you edit a film, you have a script and you know what is supposed to happen in each scene and you have a few takes of each line and you just sort of pick the best take, you know, your favorite angle or your favorite delivery. And this didn’t have that. This just had all these different versions, you know, of improv happening that none of them looked like each other in any way.
And so we had to cobble a coherent story out of these radically different paths that the actors ended up improvising and with no takes. You couldn’t find take two or take three to get a different version of the line because there was no line. It was up to us to invent the story in the editing.
Yeah, obviously the improv still works brilliantly throughout the film and it does feel so natural in the dialogue that the actors have with each other. Did you choose actors who you knew from before who were particularly skilled in improv or were they recommended to you?
James (13:40.158)
No, they were all just friends that I knew I could call up and say, trust me, I can’t show you scripts. I can’t really explain what’s happening, but just show up at my house and we’re going to have some fun. And I picked people who felt like they could be couples. Very few of them had ever met each other. They didn’t really know each other. They just knew me. And so when they arrived, I said, OK, you two are married. You two are boyfriend and girlfriend. And it was just.
sort of an intuition of who would be easy to work with. But none of them were, well, Alex, Alex who plays Amir, who kind of co-wrote the story, he was an improviser. He was in a troupe. So I knew he was great. But the others, I think it was really the first time they had done anything like that.
Okay
Thanks for watching!
So literally like once he started filming that was them, they just met a few minutes before that, it? Once he started rolling the camera. Wow, that’s just… You would not think that at all.
James (14:45.75)
It seems so natural. Well, they got to be good friends very quickly. it bonds you very quickly to be thrown into a weird situation like this. what you’re not seeing is the hours and hours of just joking and laughing and trying to make each other laugh. And it was exhausting to me because I was like, you guys, got to shut up and just let the story. You can’t be talking the whole time because their sole purpose was to make each other laugh.
Yeah.
That’s the point each purpose.
Yeah
their own self-appointed purpose.
James (15:23.734)
Yeah, exactly. That they took upon themselves, exactly.
It’s very strange because…
you talking about coherence and then, you know, coincidences, realities. We did two other podcasts this week and one was about improvisation actors doing a Doctor Who stage set, which was completely improvised. the theme of this is obviously a lot of improvisation. You got actors and friends, first of all, first and foremost, I guess.
who were all into improvise improvisation. then the second podcast we were doing was about the Back to the Future trilogy. And Des mentioned on that, that Back to the Future trilogy was one of the very few sort of time travel, strange time travel movies where they stay in the same place. And that was one of the things that made it easy for people to understand and therefore easy.
like they didn’t travel in time and space they just traveled in time and now this one which I’m going to say is possibly not as easy to understand as back to the future. They don’t travel in time and space I guess they just travel in space and this one is not really in time maybe a little bit of time but maybe half an hour here or there. Very strange that this would tie into other ones.
James (16:52.142)
See ya.
James (16:55.502)
But that is a good observation that there’s something about the familiarity of the location and that’s the tiny little variations between them that is fascinating.
Yeah, because like usually when films are made about all these alternate realities they go full on and with you it was just like one item is different in the box each time or the roll of the dice is slightly, it was just tiny differences and I think was that your intent that they would just build up and you wouldn’t notice them at first but then eventually become more apparent, was that a plan you had as well?
Yeah, the original plan was that it was going to be more of a horror movie, that they would be like finding, you know, dead bodies outside and then come back inside and realize, oh, no, that person is still alive. And the confusion that would result. And then I said, wait, wait, that’s I can’t build that. That actually doesn’t make a lot of logical sense. Let’s let’s just back up and say, what would people do? And some people would be nervous.
Some people would say this is no big deal. Some people would be very stressed about their own version of themselves, but they would basically just sort of stop and try to figure it out. And I thought, okay, let’s just let them do that and see what happens. And that ended up being a much more satisfying story because it just kept folding back on itself and revisiting clues.
and clues that show up in the first act are actually explained in the third act, and then it all feels like it’s one thing. So I think, yeah, actually by staying there and just by drilling down on what is happening right now with us, it allows this feeling of satisfaction, I think, where everything that is sort of presented in the first part of the movie has an answer in the second part.
Cal (18:54.03)
Yeah and I read this online when I was looking up this is this true that you were sort of working against another time limit when you were making this that your wife at the time she was eight and a half months pregnant and you had to that was another reason why you had to do it in five days in case another emergency occurred.
Yeah, yeah. She was my wife at the time and she’s my wife at this time as well. right. And.
I was just covering my bases there.
And I told her, when I said, honey, think I want to make this movie in the house, she said, absolutely not. We’re about to have a baby. That is not going to happen. If you want to make the movie, you can make it now, and I’ll give you five days. And I was like, what do you mean now? So yeah, make it in the next three weeks. I’ll give you five nights. And I thought, what? What in what? What are the odds that these actors are going to be available? What are the odds that I can throw this all together?
But it almost felt destined to happen because within a day or two, all the actors said they could do it. And then little by little, things started falling into place. And I thought, OK, I’m going to make a movie in five nights, which is insane. Like, don’t ever do that. If anyone’s listening, I hope it’s not encouraging someone to try to make a movie in five nights because that is a terrible, terrible idea. But in this case, just all the right elements came together.
Rob (20:21.166)
Was it true that you were also up against in the same neighbourhoods they were filming something else at the same time so you had the lighting coming in from another film shoot and also was it a Snickers commercial?
Yeah, I don’t know. Have you seen the video I put up about that? You can actually see it. Yeah, yeah. You want to list that in. I don’t know if there’s a way to list so that people can see what you’re about. But yeah, I’ve got a link to that. So the night that we were supposed to go outside, the one night we’re going to be outside and shoot the actors in pure darkness, which every night in my neighborhood was absolutely pitch black dark. That just happened to be the night that they were shooting a gigantic
gigantic Snickers commercial right five houses down the street. And so the entire street was lit up and there were horse trailers and there were dozens and dozens of crew members and dozens and dozens of extras, little people dressed up in Halloween costumes, a headless horseman with a pumpkin head riding around in the horse. Right outside, literally in, right outside my house, there were horse trailers. You could see the actors standing there looking at the horses.
and just marveling at it. And at one point in the video, you can hear me call action at exactly the moment that the commercial calls action down the road. And the AD, the assistant director for the commercial looks over and to the camera person, which is my producer, and says, hey, can you be quiet, please? We’re shooting. And she says, actually, can you be quiet? We’re shooting.
What are the odds?
James (22:02.242)
course, whenever you make a film, it’s gonna be, you’re just asking for the universe to tour.
When you say what are the odds, are the odds actually slightly more stacked there? Do you live on a film set or near to a film set because you know what are the odds of somebody being shooting outside? Are you living in a normal residential area or like in the middle of some sort of community?
No, I live way off to the side where I had lived there for eight years. I’d never ever seen a commercial shot.
Yeah.
So that’s kind of freaky in the style of coherence itself, is it not?
James (22:42.752)
Everything about coherence is impossible odds. Yeah, I could go on and on and on.
Well, I could tell you I’ve seen coherence a few times and the other night I thought I’m going to watch this again, a joy to do because, you know, I forget things quite easily. I’m not going to I’m not going to deny that. I thought I want to refresh this in my mind and I started watching it. couldn’t I couldn’t find my my drive of movies. I thought I’ve streamed it. So I started streaming it and
about three minutes in, it just went blank and cut and then reset to the start and about six minutes in it did the same thing and then like for the first half hour of this streaming I was like resetting to the start I’m like there’s something freaky in a way happening here and then
in a
It groundhogging you. It wanted you to really, really understand the beginning so that we could…
Cal (23:45.582)
I was scared.
Yeah, but Jeff, horn crack as well. Phone screen.
Oh, my phone didn’t crack. Thank goodness. Otherwise, I’d be bleeding to death.
Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, and sorry. No, just saying, you were shooting at nights in California. So that means you didn’t have a lot of nighttime to work with. No, we’ve It’s just going right.
James (24:08.174)
We would shoot from about 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. It was in the winter. So luckily it got dark early. But we only shot about five hours a night and then the actors would get sleepy and I’d let them go home.
it’s just, if you tried shooting in Scotland, you would have eternal darkness.
Yeah, yeah. I could have forced them to work later, but you know, they were such good sports. again, they had no idea this would even amount to anything because it felt such, it just felt like an exercise. It just felt like doing a favor for their friend Jim. And even when I was calling, you know, they’re all in the Screen Actors Guild, all eight of those people. And so I had to call the Screen Actors Guild to get permission for them to do a super low budget.
and some parts of it.
James (24:56.952)
thing where they were barely being paid. And I was trying to describe to the Screen Actors Guild what we were doing. And the woman is like, OK, well, why don’t you send your script over? And I said, had to say, well, there is no script. OK, well, why don’t you send your schedule over from the assistant director? And I said, well, A, there is no schedule, and B, there is no assistant director. And she said, well, how big is the crew? And I had to say, well, there is no crew. And she said, sir, you’re not making a movie. This is a YouTube video that you’re
soon.
You don’t need our permission at all. So I had to convince her, no, no, I’m making a movie. I don’t want this to be ready to go. This is going to be in theaters at some point. So I want all the paperwork to be in order. But she could not get her head around what I was asking.
Yeah.
I suppose since you were in the industry already, you knew in your mind that it was going to be a real thing and not just a YouTube movie, but trying to explain that to somebody else could be difficult. I was going to ask you, you know, where are your friends? Where are they getting paid? Are they still your friends because they didn’t get paid? Did they stay at your house for five nights having dinner every night and that was the payment or did they live near enough to go home at night and then come back?
James (26:13.964)
They had a great time, A, and B, they did get paid. We paid them actually more than we had to pay them than we were contracted to pay them by the Screen Actors Guild. And they got deferred pay, which means all these years that money has been coming in, they get a cut out of it. So every few months, they get a check that pays them for their work and will continue to the rest of their lives.
Did they get dinner out of you every night? I just a ruse.
Yep. Yeah. I hope, you know, I love them so much and I’m so grateful for them and I hope they all agree that it was well worth the five nights of making each other laugh.
Yeah.
Cal (27:00.088)
So see whether it’s not been scripted and that was it also quite difficult to control the flow of the conversations like you must have had moments where they just all started talking at once because they were probably quite keen, weren’t they?
Yeah, and that’s the hardest part as a director because you’re used to having a vision and making it your way. But when you tell your friends that they’re allowed to improvise, you can’t control that. And if you start to control it, it’s going to make them very irritable. And at some point, they’ll say, look, you should have written a script if you wanted it a certain way. So you have to let them do their thing. You have to let them get it out of their system, even if they’re going down a path that you know is never going to be used.
let him go, let him go, let him go. And then say, okay, this time, how about we do it this way and just give them a tiny bit of adjustment and see how that affects things. And it’s all a big psychological experiment. You know, you’ve got eight very powerful personalities, extroverted personalities are very creative and they all want to do something interesting. And
you’re trying to guide them down a story and not tell them what’s going to happen. So when there’s a knock at the door, you don’t tell them there’s a knock coming out the door. And so they react in a very realistic way. So it’s all about sort of seeding each actor with just enough information about their character so that they know how that character would respond. And you’re trying to keep an eight-legged monster sort of on the track that you’ve imagined.
knowing that there’s eight different jockeys that are going to try to pull that monster in a different direction.
Cal (28:47.106)
So I see that you go Robert.
us.
No, sorry, I’ve always wondered with the idea of an infinite number of houses in which each of the people are living and of course their interactions with each other are different in each one or slightly tweaked in each one. Was it the case there was only one happy house which appears in the ending? I appreciate that the individuals in that house had never been outside.
Was that right? And that’s why that was the only happy scenario.
Yeah, it was the only happy one that she saw. You could argue theoretically there’s still an infinite variation within the house. Yeah. But we were trying to keep it, you know, in terms of probability, what are the most probable houses? And if you had a hundred of the most probable houses, there might be only one of them where they didn’t go outside out of a hundred. Yeah. And there might be still infinite houses, but only one out of a hundred.
Cal (29:36.461)
Yeah.
James (29:57.934)
And so at that point, yes, she realized that that perhaps would be a better place for her to end up.
Yeah, I loved that. loved that. There was one, you know, the place that they spot they hadn’t been outside and that changed the whole dynamic of their interaction with each other. So,
Yeah, and really what happened in that house is that the lights never even went out. They never lost no power. So they didn’t even know that there was some other crazy thing happening outside.
going on. I’m aware of the comet as well.
Well, no, they knew about the comet.
Rob (30:34.542)
because yeah so went outside to see it yeah
went outside to see it so that there had been stories about it, but they never worked themselves up to any level of anxiety. They were just relaxed the whole night.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Just always see for each of those houses at the end. Did you have like a little story in your heads written out for what happened in each one? Just a little backstory.
Yeah, I did. I did. This is part of what you’re not seeing is like just how much laughter is happening with the cast where they’re trying to go, Jim, what is next? What are we doing? I’m just trying to explain it to them so fast. So I’m just like, you guys are tied up. You two are yelling at each other. You’ve got a knife. OK, go. And they’re like, what? And so they would just sort of, again, improvise based on very limited information because I’m outside the window. I can’t even talk to them. I’m shooting this with my camera outside the window.
James (31:25.046)
So I can’t even communicate with the actors to give them any direction and just sort of letting them wing it.
And did they come up with any scenarios for the houses themselves, the actors? Or was it all your…
Yeah, they had one where they were doing some kind of crazy seance where one of them was lying on the table and they had candles all around that person and they were doing some kind of ritual. That didn’t make it into the cut, but maybe on the special features when we re-release it in a couple years.
I also really liked the fact that it was a very brief intro really to the film. The set up happens quite quickly with the arrival at the dinner party obviously and then we’re almost straight into the action and the twists and the wondering if it’s the same Hugh who returns to the house and I think it was presented with five Hues and Amirs.
at least five different heroes. Because the first time they come back, it’s not them.
Rob (32:27.982)
No, no, and that’s such a great twist. So early on in the film that you think, wait a minute, something’s completely off here. Yeah, that’s so well done.
I’m glad to hear that you think it starts quickly because there’s a lot of people who are like, why is there so much talking for the first 14 minutes?
I want to see that.
I thought that was a very, to me in a film, that’s a very brief intro and set up for Blast. That’s quite quickly into the meat of it.
I love to hear that because everybody has a different sort of gauge of when they need that to kick in. And we were already kind of on the edge of going, all right, can we go 14 minutes without the lights going off? Does it have to be eight minutes? And some people get very antsy, like, why are these people just talking?
Rob (33:26.478)
No, I think there’s a sense that you feel you get to know the characters within that 40 minutes. They’re so well rounded and so well developed even in that short time frame. And of course, which is such an important hook for any story or film, where you think, want to know what happens to these people now. And I think, you know, so many films that you may watch and within the first 15 minutes, an hour.
That’s it.
Cal (33:39.416)
Yeah.
Rob (33:56.586)
You’ve lost the thread and you think, I don’t really care where this goes, I’m going to switch off. But that is so not the case with coherence.
Amazing that’s great to hear. It’s it’s always a trick of how much to set it up, you know
Absolutely.
both sides, I would argue both sides of that argument at the same time and to coherence style because I’m to make a confession. You can close your ears or keep them open, Jim. When I watched it the first time that I thought I’d watched it and I thought I watched it in for the past the 15 minutes, Mark, kind of thing. I thought, this is getting good. And I was slightly more alert that evening.
and the mood for paying attention to something. And I realized within the first five minutes, I’d actually watched it not that long before when I was in a less attentive mood. And I thought, I’ve watched the wrong, I’ve clicked on the wrong movie or it’s got the wrong synopsis for this movie. It said there was a sci-fi on and I’ve stumbled upon a 30 something drama where they’re all just at a dinner party and I’m like, I don’t know where.
Martin (35:17.102)
and I had stopped watching it the first time thinking I had clicked on to the wrong thing for what the synopsis had given me. The second time I watched it, thought, I was more alert and I thought 15 minutes in, yes, there’s the hook. And I know that it’s popular now for any story or movie to try and hook you within the first five minutes to give you that hook because people don’t have an attention span. But I thought the 15 minutes on one time.
Exactly.
Martin (35:47.052)
seemed great. And when I watched each subsequent time after that, was a little bit worried, that could have been a clue there because I knew what was happening. But the first time I was like, why are these guys?
Yeah, I totally agree. And I’ve watched it with only sort of half my attention once. And I thought I could remember thinking, my God, this is terrible. Like, if you’re not paying attention, it’s really not fun. It’s not enjoyable at all. unless you are truly sort of watching it and ready for it, can totally accept that people are not hooked by it. Yeah.
And when I’m recommending it to people after that, I would say to them, make sure you watch it up early enough in the evening. Don’t be sitting there after you’ve had a drink or two thinking, you’re going to sit back and relax. You’re not going to sit back and relax. You’re going to pay attention.
There you go.
James (36:43.522)
That’s right. You got to lean forward and get as tense as possible.
Yeah. So this is one question I’ve always had. When does the actual decoherence start? Because I’ve had this discussion. Some people say it’s when their phone cracks or it’s when the lights go out. And it’s like, there’s always arguments made for either or. So can you give a definitive on that?
No, because everybody’s allowed to have their own opinion. I only have one opinion of many. So even if I tell you mine, that doesn’t mean it’s the right one. But what Alex and I decided was it does start with her phone cracking. Because if her phone wouldn’t have cracked, Kevin could have primed her for the conversation he wanted to have with her, which was
Will you go to Vietnam with me? And then she could have answered yes, because she could have had more time to think about it and wouldn’t have been surprised minutes later. That was sort of a crucial moment for a divergent timeline to happen. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s the answer, but that was just our guiding principle when we were talking to the actors.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve had a few friends and they’ve always wondered it. So yeah, something to be debated on and on.
James (38:05.102)
Everybody’s right. Yeah. It’s heartbreaking. I learned my lesson not to tell people that they were wrong with their theory because I could really see that people had thought about it a long time. It was very, very meaningful to them. So I’m never going to take away that that personal interpretation.
Sorry, sorry Robert.
Do you get quite a few, I imagine you will do, but quite a few questions on social media or even emails now still coming in from fans saying, well, this is my theory, was this correct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s always great to see. loved seeing sometimes I’ll someone will tell me that there’s some conversation on Reddit or whatever and someone will send it. So I love seeing that. And mostly I get filmmakers contacting me and just sort of asking for advice. And I try to encourage them to, you know, find their own way to do it just like we did and not not be daunted. But
Yeah, it’s nice to see that it’s affected a generation of younger filmmakers and giving them some confidence that you don’t necessarily have to go through the Hollywood system to make a movie.
Rob (39:19.576)
Yeah, sure.
Can I ask, mentioned the Hollywood system there, not having gone through the whole process. I know that some budding filmmakers feel a little bit ousted, not just filmmakers, but every industry, say a startup business might not do the normal way or the trade guild or whatever. Did you find any opposition or animosity?
to you for not doing it the right way? Do you feel that held it back from getting out there because you hadn’t followed the normal routes?
Only with the big film festivals. Everybody else was amazing, but Sundance and Toronto, they want you to have celebrities, because those festivals are about celebrity. And so there is definitely resistance just in those festivals, if you sort of sidestep that aspect of it. Because in their minds, a perfect indie film is a radical new voice.
but it’s loaded with celebrities so that when you go to the film festival, you’re surrounded by celebrities. That’s how they sell tickets, you know? So that was literally the only place we had resistance was the big film festivals. Every place else was just so helpful and so ecstatic and so supportive.
Cal (40:50.156)
Yeah.
because you had the low budget thing and perhaps now also because you didn’t get the acceptance from these film festivals. Probably we were talking about Back to the Future again the other day and it was something like then in 1985 for a big blockbuster like that it was like 50 million or whatever it was to make it and then they said for that value of movie they would then spend another 25 million.
on marketing to make sure that the new people would like it, but to make sure that they flooded it out there and got it out there. Do you have any plans or could I suggest that is there any possibility in the future of having some kind of marketing promo to get it out there more? We’re doing our best telling people to watch it, but I feel that a lot of people don’t know about it just because it didn’t get up there with the high numbers to start with.
Yeah, you can suggest that all you like, but if you’ve unless you have $25 million, how would I possibly do that? I’m open. I’m all ears. OK, yeah, because we don’t have the $25 million. That’s why I do things like this, because this is we only have word of mouth that that is the only reason coherence made it around the world. It’s the number one American independent film of all time in China. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of
people in China have seen it and that’s all word of mouth. We didn’t have any marketing budget and you know, the biggest, the most common comment by anybody writing about it today is that it is criminally underseen or criminally under known or under marketed, like you said. And you know, there’s nothing, there’s nothing I can do about that. Unfortunately, all you can do is
James (42:48.408)
Get it in a film festival and then let word of mouth by people like you, know, tell your friends. That’s it. That’s all we have.
We’ll try and bring pressure to bear. We’ll try and bring pressure to bear. Our local cinema sometimes shows movies that are in theme with our suggestions.
Thanks.
James (43:11.458)
great, I’ll zoom in. just, you know, I can FaceTime in and introduce it if you do that.
Oh, yeah. Fantastic. We’ll definitely be up for that.
Yeah, yeah, that’s something I do all the time is that someone will sort of organize a local screening and then, you know, I’ll come in for a minute or two minutes and say, hey, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Cool. So Robert, I think you were going to add a question.
yeah, let me know.
Rob (43:37.23)
When you first came up with the conception you said, know, imagine waking up one day and looking outside and there’s a house across the street and you see yourself there, which is a great germ of an idea to get you started. Did you at that point have a sequel in mind or a series in mind that would or something could even spin off or was it always intended to just be a fully capped
It tended to be just one shot and it’s done. I did not realize, of course, that as soon as it got out, that everybody would say, hey, you should remake it or you should make it into a TV series or you should make it in a sequel. I was really not at all prepared for that. I have been asked many times to consider making a sequel and producers would come up to me suggesting it I’d say, great, what’s the idea?
And they’d say, no, no, you come up with the idea. And I’d say, well, then what do I need you for? What are you talking about? But last year, I did have a producer come to me with a great idea. Her name is Kate Andrews. And she had this Netflix movie called It’s What’s Inside come out. You get a chance to watch What’s Inside. It’s really fun. And she pitched me an idea for a sequel. And I loved it. And so right now, we’re trying to see if someone wants to make that.
you know, a built in with a built in audience, you worldwide, you really can’t go wrong. Like you’re not going to lose money on that. So we’ll see. We’ll see if someone has has the courage to make that.
Big hits?
Cal (45:18.134)
One question, see that first bang on the door, did the cast know that was coming? Because the way they react.
They did not know. They didn’t know. In fact, was Alex who plays Amir. He sneaks around to the side of my house. And I can’t remember if he texted me or not to tell me he was ready. I don’t even think I triggered him. think it was literally just like, I didn’t even know it was going to happen. Because I just told him wait a couple minutes and then do it. But yeah, that was all real.
And there’s one other, I think it’s a scene where they’re standing talking and in the back window there’s a light. Now was that, is that just a goof or was that always intended to be maybe you’re seeing the other folk wandering about?
A little more context what what? We’re talking
jeez. I didn’t scribble
Martin (46:19.36)
have to watch it again and make a note of exactly how many minutes in that.
describe it where are they are they in the house or outside yeah
They have gathered round the table and they’re just talking about what’s going on. And it’s like a shot just from the side and he’s kind of side of his face when he’s talking to them. And then you just see the back window and there’s a light shining in the background. You can see it’s always bothered me. I could see and I’ve always been wondering, is that intentional or water?
Gather around the table.
James (46:51.68)
Is this not a reflection of a candle or something?
It’s a psycho-god map.
Maybe. it’s gotta been a Snickers bar. Is it? mean, there lots of reflections. There were lots of reflections in the windows of the candles. that what you’re talking about?
It looks like some kind of light source outside and I was always wondering is that a mistake or is that like maybe the other folk are kind of wandering up the other house?
I gotta see what you’re talking about, because I don’t know. I mean, there’s a million continuity errors, and all of them, you know, we let them go. We’re like, okay, great, let it be. Let the audience have fun with that. But that one, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a weird shot that I can’t believe people have not commented on where it’s Mike is talking and the lights are supposed to be out in the house, so you can see candles, but you can clearly see like this glowing ball.
James (47:45.418)
Not outside the window though. It’s not outside the window. It’s in the house.
Okay, that’s I’ve probably got confused. I think that’s what it is. Yeah. Yeah, what is that?
That way you’re talking.
James (47:58.04)
That’s a China ball that was lighting up the room secretly. Yeah. But you got to tell me if that’s what you’re talking about, because you would be the, literally the first person in 11 years to bring that.
Okay, alright
Cal (48:11.734)
All right. I might just fight off. If you guys can ask a question right now, I might quickly scan the film.
I got that. You guys, okay, guys get something.
Callum if you get this I’m going to make you a badge saying you
Martin (48:37.646)
Yeah. Jim, love it. At the start, you mentioned, you know, a little bit of a nod to the Twilight Zone and that kind of thing. And you also mentioned 2001, a space odyssey because you were a sci fi guy. I’d known, I would have worn my top, which has the big red eye of Pal 9000. And it says on it, I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
But I wear it outside, the amount of kids and stuff that look at it and they’re like, ooh, what’s that? Is that off like Squid Game or something? I’m like, no. You have to be a certain age to appreciate. This was Alexa before she was called Alexa. We didn’t even know we were going to get that kind of thing. And you said, Alexa, can you play Bob Marley, whatever it was? And Alexa says, no, Martin. I’m afraid I can’t.
That is so freakishly ahead of its time and so perfect in its depiction of AI and depiction of how AI can actually start making its own decisions that are not what you intended. And there’s even a scene in 2001 where he’s basically looking at an iPad. He’s got that flat screen that’s got a video chat happening.
And it’s in 1968. When did that movie come out?
Yeah,
James (50:13.974)
It’s bananas how prescient it all was.
You guys will know this, but at the end, towards the end of that movie, there’s the bit where he’s in his mind or his reality, he’s kind of flying over the surface of a rocky barren landscape planet and it’s kind of orange one minute, yellow, purple, and you’re just seeing it’s just the noise and the continuous landscape of rocks of this. That’s actually here. That was taken over.
Her rocky landscape in Harris on the south side of the island is so rocky and barren.
my gosh. That’s amazing to think that you live in a place that is so alien looking that you used to depict an alien world.
It had one
Martin (51:02.295)
Back then, now it’s just CGI and then green screens and stuff, but back then, yeah.
Okay, Cal.
Now now picturing all these houses with the same people in them and some of the houses they have access to AI and in other houses they don’t and the AI affects the different paths that the same people will take. don’t know where’s AI going?
I’ve not been able to find it so I’ll message you after this. I’ll take a wee screen grab and send it to you. I’m certain I saw this. Unless I’m having a coherence moment of my own.
great. I gotta know I gotta
Martin (51:47.392)
I feel I’ve been hogging him for the last minute. Robert, is there anything you you’re burning to ask, ask Jim for a minute before, before I ask?
No you carry on Martin you carry on saying this.
Okay, Jim, you know, when you go to a dinner party or something and there’s people that you know, or you know them a little bit or to see, and then you get the chance to talk to them properly. And then after a couple of drinks, you’ve got to get to the stage where you say, you know, either, are you religious? Do you believe in God? Or, you know, do you believe in aliens? Or one of these subjects? So I’ve got to ask you, did you ever experience
an actual event where you think that there could have been like a timeline divergence before coherence happened or if you didn’t experience that do you believe that you know the likes of coherence could entirely be possible we could be living in alternate realities every day.
I feel it all the time. As a conscious being, you can’t help but wonder what would have happened if you would have made a different choice or if something would have happened slightly differently. And you look at these key moments in your life, if you wouldn’t have met your wife that moment, if you wouldn’t have had the accident, or if you would have chosen a different school to go to, and how those tiny, tiny choices led to giant
James (53:20.366)
changes in your life. So yeah, I think about that all the time. Thought about it all the time as a kid. Just the enormity of these micro decisions and how they change everything. So yeah, I’m burdened with that, unfortunately. I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know if there’s literally another version of me out there, but if I can imagine it, then there is. Because clearly, the…
the situation did arise where a different choice could have happened. I often think about this time in college where I was working on a band saw, know, a saw with a continuous blade that’s just going and going. And I can’t remember, but I reached out to move the manifold that held the blade, but I was reaching for the blade, you know, as if it was off, but it was on. And just by some…
crazy piece of luck. My fingers grasped just next to that blade. But really what should have happened was that all four of my fingers should have gotten cut off at once in that moment. That would have been the normal thing for an idiot to reach out and try to pull that little housing. But they didn’t. So I’m living in the timeline constantly where I did not cut off my fingers.
That’s a nice one, that’s one of the nicer timelines, I’m sure.
you
Cal (54:53.326)
you
That’s a happy house.
And so I do think I might be living in my best timeline right now. mean, it’s so unlikely that coherence could have gotten to you guys and so unlikely that we would be having this conversation right now. think I must be living in the one out of a billion timelines where I actually made this weird movie that got to Scotland.
Yeah, and it all worked very well.
I’m so glad that you gave that reply that it’s definitely possible and you thought about these things. think a lot of sci-fi enthusiasts and a lot of philosophers, I think, go there and go mad because they find out they need the answer and if they can’t have the answer, they just go mad and it disrupts their life. I think they were in a generation where
Martin (55:47.822)
sci-fi thinkers and geeks and nerds are in there somewhere, right? They think about these things without going mad and I think they are absolutely possible. When I woke up this morning, I could be in a different timeline than yesterday. When you go to sleep, that’s a cracking point for a divergence to occur. You would never know. You’d be none the wiser.
You’d be none the wiser, you woke up in one today where your shoes are just one inch different than where you left them last night. That’s the only difference.
Absolutely. I’m certain that a lot of people have had points in their life where they’ve thought, you know, not necessarily a huge deal breaker, but they just thought that this is weird. I’m sure this wasn’t like this yesterday, but you know, crack on. Yeah. it’s entirely possible it was not like that yesterday.
Absolutely.
absolutely it’s one of the beauties of coherence of course that it really leaves you thinking for a long time afterwards yeah about these sort of things but also i mean it brings in the whole element of course of as you said free choice that we all have throughout our lives and if we just diverge ever so slightly and making one of those choices then life goes down a a completely different path potentially so it really it goes against any idea of fate
Rob (57:13.396)
or predestination, would you say?
Right. It is a sort of butterfly effect universe. Any micro change, especially that’s based on human intention, is in a separate physical set of rules than the physical universe. The physical universe might, you know, every version of it might be the same, but you know, if you factor quantum physics into that, even that might have random chance in the way that
where
James (57:45.582)
Certain things can’t be predicted. But especially if you put human thoughts and human emotion into it, you really are mixing that up and it’s impossible to predict. And you could have exactly the same situation play out two different ways and go alter everything. Everything changes because of that. You have a new president and therefore you have a different war and therefore you have a different amount of
Millions of people killed you know that that’s all because of little micro micro changes in the timeline
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I was reading something there, wanted to ask. When that character says that he was in Roswell, but there’s no character in Roswell with his name, was that a clue that this was something different going on, or was that just a mistake?
James (58:44.546)
that’s not a mistake at all. That is very intentional to say to the audience, just to the ones that are paying attention, just so you know, you might be in a different alternate reality than where this movie came from. And it’s just an inside joke for people that know that Nicholas Brendan was on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but not Roswell.
So it’s a little bit of layered, a little bit of layered inside baseball talk there inside.
James (59:23.973)
Right.
When I was talking about the start of the movie, seeming a little bit like a 30 somethings drama when I first watched it, I thought that was part of that. thought that she was winding him up by doing this. That was part of her character. She’s like, no, are you sure you were on that? Just to wind him up in a true drama. Like mean girls, we’re going to start off fighting and…
first you all up kind of way and then on subsequent watchings I realised that this was you know one of the clues not just part of a
Yeah.
Well, and there is debate about whether or not she’s doing that intentionally or not, because she says she’s a fan of the show. So she should know that he’s in it. And she just might be making a point of like, wow, you are so unimportant to me that you are actually not even making any impact on me right now. Literally right now, I don’t acknowledge you.
Martin (01:00:21.378)
Yeah, exactly.
Martin (01:00:26.158)
But now I believe it’s the coherence one where it’s not him that’s in the one she’s been watching.
I love that.
Yeah.
Sorry, I can’t interrupt you there.
So no, it’s all right. I’m just saying we’re coming up for the hour, Mark. Martin, Robert, have you got any final questions for him before we wrap up? Or comments for him?
Martin (01:00:52.302)
I know about Jim, I’ve got to say, I confess, my favourite little scene in the movie, and it’s hard to pick them, but the one where the boys pull out the red glow sticks out their pockets and you’re like, they are! They are!
They know they know what’s going on they’re like not even telling them. They’re like keeping it a secret
I love that that’s so effective on you. Because I didn’t know when we did it. I was like, is this too subtle? Is anyone could even notice when we’re using?
That’s fantastic. That was seen. That’s one of my favourite scenes of all time.
thank you.
Martin (01:01:38.094)
I would like to ask the guys, do any of you have a favourite scene or is that too hard to
I think it’s when she’s looking at the numbers and she’s, you can see it just dawning, and then it dawns on us what’s happened there. And it just goes like, you know, so many horror films, it’s like gores, but just simple tension. It sticks in your mind a lot longer than any kind of special effect ever could just a simple kind of tense moment like that. And when a character is just dawning on them and the big implications of it.
love to hear you say that because that was exactly the intention. We’re trying to get away from these movies that rely on someone explaining it for you to go, my God. And we thought, what if it could just be visual? What if it could just be like the audience has been taught what things mean. And so just seeing something gives you the information. it’s very heartening to hear you say that.
These were
Cal (01:02:36.918)
Yeah, because it’s, so it might have sounded, but it’s like almost like very much, it’s always very much an American trend, I think, in films to over explain. And you just seem to have, whereas you seem to just genuinely trust the audience that they will understand this and figure this out for themselves. They don’t have to have it spelled out, which probably a reason why I come back to this film so often. And Robert, your final
that’s great to hear.
Rob (01:03:05.678)
Favorite scene? Favorite scene as I said earlier, think any film that has a mention of Schrodinger’s cat and utilizing it so effectively. I spent years studying philosophy. I still know next to nothing about it, of course, to fit in with that, which is part of the beauty of philosophy. just to see that reference, I was
wow, know, the first time I saw it I was blown away by it. I this is this is ramped up a few notches, a few levels. I was enjoying the film up to this point and I just love this and I really want to see where this goes now.
Interesting. I wonder, you know, let me know if you watch Dark Matter on Apple. Yeah. If that does it for you. I’ve also got so we did a show called Shatter Belt that is available on Apple and Amazon. Hopefully, hopefully where you guys are. hope Shatter Belt has some of the same actors and some of the same kind of cosmic themes going on. If anybody liked Coherence, if you can check Shatter Belt out, there’s very short.
Yes.
Rob (01:04:03.416)
Yeah
James (01:04:14.926)
Twilight Zone style episodes, just half an hour each.
Yep, I can confirm it’s available in the UK just now.
amazing
Nice.
get on to that. of Moose
James (01:04:29.368)
Yeah, all we got word of mouth.
Absolutely.
I push in a comment here? On behalf of us four guys, right? Us four guys having a metaphysical pain in our chat here, right? Can I push in one for the girls? Well done. Well done, Jim. Having the hero being a female, a female figuring out the numbers, sussing out what’s going on and all that, you know? Well done.
She’s the smart one, right?
Yeah
James (01:05:04.27)
Bye.
Yeah, just I think we can wrap it up there. Jim, any thoughts if anyone’s got any questions?
No, thank you. Yeah, thank you. You go to my website, JimBurkett.com if you want to see other, you know, storyboards from Pirates of the Caribbean and stuff like that. So just, really appreciate it guys. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. That’s been absolutely fantastic.
Cal (01:05:31.384)
Well, we usually ask if you would come along to a Comic Con, but it’s a bit of a stretch for you, California, to the outer Hebrides.
I would, if you can get a theater to fly me out, yeah, I’ll be there.
You
I like this idea of having a metaphysical kind of pint in the pub and just talk about these things for a few hours. That’s what I’m most interested in.
Yeah.
Cal (01:05:55.458)
Robert, you might be the man to maybe figure that out at End of Board, or someone might be able to just willing to do that.
absolutely, a few pubs do host these metaphysical discussions here. During the festival, during Edinburgh Festival. Yeah, This time of year.
Fantastic.
Well, at least myself and Martin are probably going to talk to our local cinema to see if can do a coherence event and if you’re to help us out Jim, it would be fantastic. You got it. My pleasure. All right. Okay. And with that everyone, thanks for listening and see you all again next time.
you so much. Goodbye, everybody.
Martin (01:06:35.704)
Thank you.
Bye.
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