Seth Worley is very open about the challenges of making a live-action family film that appeals to both kids and adults.
“We wanted so badly to make a movie that was almost more for adults and parents than it was for kids,” Worley, a Nashville native, recently told a crowd at the Belcourt. Attendees were gathered for the local premiere of his new film Sketch, which was shot entirely in Middle Tennessee. “But at the same time, acknowledging that we had a responsibility to make something that was going to be absolutely appealing to kids … and giving everybody in the theater something to walk away with.”
Worley added that he and the film’s producers viewed Sketch’s target demographic as “every human alive.”
That’s a fairly ambitious goal for any era, but especially amid the modern movie landscape — where the sort of four-quadrant movie the Sketch team is aiming for is viewed as strictly the domain of high-brow animation from studios like Pixar, or mega-blockbuster superhero movies. Long-gone are the days of ’90s-era Amblin, when live-action family films could reign at the box office.
Fittingly, Worley’s chief influences come from that era of filmmaking.
“The people I grew up watching and worshipping at the altar over were Spielberg and Zemeckis and all the people you’d expect from a 41-year-old white guy.”
Sketch’s story is pulled right from that pool of inspiration. Widowed father Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) and his kids Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence) are struggling after the death of the family’s matriarch. Amber’s way of dealing with her grief is drawing fantastically violent illustrations in her notebook — and when that notebook falls into a magical resurrection pond in the Wyatts’ backyard, her terrifying creations come to life.
Sketch was inspired by events that happened to Worley’s sister, who as a child had a counselor who didn’t ostracize her, instead letting her know that her drawings were “a much healthier choice than inflicting any kind of violence.”
“I thought, ‘That’s the adult I want to be in a kid’s life when I grow up,’” Worley said. “Cut to my daughter in kindergarten, and she starts bringing home these pictures that are inventively violent, like without precedence, and I’m realizing, ‘Oh, you can believe two things at once. You can believe that art is the safest place for violence, while also believing your daughter is a serial killer and it’s probably your fault.’ And that tension felt really funny to me.”
Hale — also a producer on the film — and Worley have been attempting to get Sketch made for nearly a decade. One of the biggest challenges was finding fellow producers to help fund a live-action, effects-heavy family film. When locally based musician and filmmaker Steve Taylor came aboard as a producer, he was able to connect the pair with other producers willing to take the leap.
Taylor, who is an assistant professor in Lipscomb’s College of Entertainment and the Arts, also enlisted the involvement of the university’s student-run production company Imagine House. Several current and former students ended up with key roles on the film’s crew.
“I have a lot of pride for my Nashville crew,” Worley said. “We’ve made a lot of things together that I’m proud of; we’re going to keep making a lot of things that I’m very excited about.
“This movie would not have been made without so many people in this room.”
Nashville-based musician and former American Idol contestant Cody Fry composed the score — it was his first feature-length composing gig. Fry even wrote and performed a laugh-inducing Kenny G parody song that plays a pivotal role in a Jurassic Park-esque sequence set on a school bus.
That iconic dinosaur film is one of many touchpoints for Sketch. Another Spielberg film that sprang to mind during my viewing was Minority Report — specifically the spider surveillance robots, which feel like older cousins to Sketch’s creepy-crawly “eye-ders.” Those creatures (aka eyeball spiders) were inspired by a line of Taco Bell kids’ toys from the ’90s.
“We wanted to figure out how to do goofy and threatening at the same time,” Worley said. The eye-ders nailed that balance.
Openly aiming for Spielbergian territory is a lofty goal for any filmmaker, particularly one making his feature-length debut on a small budget. But Sketch does a better job at walking the awe/thrills/laughs tightrope than even this summer’s dinosaur-featuring, big-budget Spielberg homage.
