A.T. Sharma Interview

A.T. Sharma is a film producer director and writer. He tells us about his film Hypnotica.

How did you get the idea for the movie Hypnotica?

I got the idea for the movie Hypnotica, actually, quite a few years ago. I was watching a kind of like a docu-drama, about Sigmund Freud, and there was an actor playing Sigmund Freud, and there was an actor playing the patient, and it was just the two of them in a room, and Freud was hypnotizing the patient. It was really interesting and fascinating. We were going into this man's mind and his past and his psyche, and it felt like we could have been anywhere. And it felt like, you know, who knew what any of us had inside of us, or where our minds could go. So, that was the original kind of genesis of the idea, and I just had that in the back of my mind for years. Then, I started looking up stuff, and there's a lot of interesting stuff about past lives and reincarnation and past life regression. There's a lot of that, and I live in Los Angeles, and there's quite a bit of that, that people pay to have. There's been a lot of interesting work done on past lives and reincarnation. It originally started with a professor at the University of Virginia, Ian Stevenson, in the 50s, late 50s, and in the 60s. He really started pioneering work into reincarnation, past lives. He was the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He actually went to India in the 60s, and they started looking at children, and they found out that there was a lot of children, especially between the ages of three and seven, without hypnotism, that had alarming detail about another life. One of his first patients was a little girl named Pumpkin, and she remembered in very specific details another life where she had a pet snake and she fed it milk, and she had a Gurkha dagger above her bed on the wall, and all these other little details. So, they went around villages, and they found another village many miles away, where a woman with every single detail, and there were many details that this girl recalled, and this woman fit every one of those details and had died five years ago. It was the beginning of doing more and more research into this. This little girl had no exposure to that village at all. So, there's no way for her to know anything about it, and this wasn't the only case. Then, he actually published in the journal, the American Medical Association, and in the head of the journal, in I think it was like 1975 or 76, he said, “There's no other way to explain these specific things, other than something paranormal or past life or reincarnation.” Even Carl Sagan in 96 felt that there was no other explanation, because there were several papers published by them about this and these unique phenomenon. Then, of course, this has been found to be the case under hypnosis with adults, and adults have incredible recall about past lives and know things. So, that was the past life regression part of the film. Then, as far as other aspects of the film, there are a couple of prominent psychiatrists, one of them is still alive at New York Medical, and they also are involved in possession, and they've worked with the Vatican. And there's another one, M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, Harvard trained, a Harvard graduate, who's also published a lot of books and things about possession and exorcisms. And again, he's witnessed it, and he's witnessed levitation, all these kinds of things that you just can't imagine. So, that's some of the research that went into the film.

What is the most difficult part of being a new director?

Oh, everything. I don't know that there's anything that's not difficult. You know, you just, you want the film to turn out well. You're gonna make a lot of mistakes. And, you know, I'm not technically a new director. I've done short films, and I've done other films, but not like at the level of this film, with a professional crew like this and stuff. But it's about really learning, learning how to create something that's engaging, that's interesting, and when you're shooting to recognize when it's not really getting your attention, and it's not really what you want. Then, understanding what you're going to cut in the editing room and how you're going to cut it and all those sorts of things. There's a lot of things that you're constantly learning.

Was there any reason why you chose to make a horror for your first film?

Oh, because life is a horror. So, I think I chose horror, because it's - you know, technically Hypnotica, isn't a horror film. It's more like a suspense thriller that kind of melds into horror. So, I just was intrigued with the idea of where it could go, and it ended up becoming more horror. But there's a lot of horror films I really love, so it's something that appealed to me.

What's the most enjoyable part of directing?

I think the most enjoyable part of directing is that you have this extended family and that all of you are going on this mission together, and you're all going to try to make something that has a shelf life that will probably survive us all. And the camaraderie and the companionship, and doing something as a communal effort is really cool.

Were there any scenes in Hypnotica that were particularly challenging to film?

Yeah, there were scenes where, because we didn't have a lot of money, scenes where we were going out without permits, and I probably probably shouldn't even be saying this, but trying to capture stuff, you know, and putting up our signs for the movie on a street corner and getting the natural traffic in the background. And scenes like that, you just don't know, because you can't control the environment. You don't know if you're even going to be able to get the shots and things like that. So, those were challenging, but those are kind of fun, because you're kind of figuring it out as you go, and you're kind of making it up as you go along, and that's always fun and exciting.

What lessons did you learn from directing your first film and would you do anything different if you were doing it all over again?

Great question. I think I would do everything different all over again. Not everything, but, you know, look, I think Adam did a great job. I think the all the actors, to be honest, were terrific in the movie. So, that part I wouldn't do over again at all, but I think that I would probably re-engineer the way I told the story, because we kind of did that somewhat in the editing room. I would probably have it have a little bit more urgency to it. And there's a few other things that I would do differently, and they mostly involve the writing of the film.

What budget were you operating on, and were there any challenges associated with that?

Yeah, the budget was miniscule. The budget was really small. It required a lot of favors; it required friends. It required locations that were almost donated to us, in one case, donated it to us. And so, the thing about having little to no money is that you can't throw money at a problem. So, if you don't pre-plan properly, if you don't have everything laid out, then you're going to have issues you can't solve, and that's big problem. So, you always want to be really pre-planning everything. And even then things obviously go wrong. Then, you just have to live without what you wanted and sometimes live without things that were in the script that you couldn't do.

What's the most challenging aspect of writing a screen production?

I think the biggest thing is the original concept. I think, first, for me, at least, you have to come up with a great original concept that means something to you and that you're willing to spend months and years of your life with, because that's literally what it's going to take. So, it's that original concept, and then executing it. It's all the details, the specifics. You know, every minute you see on screen requires hours and hours of labor. So, writing it, you want to first have a concept you really want to do and then that means something that has subtext, at least for me, that has a value. There's a raison d'etre for the movie, and all that sort of stuff. Then, to try to execute it and have the film play out and have the plot and the subtext play out in a way that they're intertwined, is very difficult.

What metrics are you using to determine the success of your film?

That's a good question. I think I'm gonna make that up as I go along and just kind of say, “It was successful, even if it was the shit.” I don't really know. Each kind of movie is different. Like if you have an A list actor in your movie, and the budget is much, much higher. It's a different metric. It's a different distribution strategy. It's a different set of people you're working with when you're doing a movie with really no big marquee names that draw people to the theaters. You're talking about straight to streaming and things like that. Then, you're talking about different kinds of marketing strategy. Look, the metrics would be, did the movie make its money back? Did people like the movie, people that I don't know that aren't family? Did we get to where we were going more or less? And those would be some of the metrics I would use. That's a good question.

Why did you decide to make movies?

Oh, yeah, great question. Well, I'm a physician. And so I always knew I wanted to do something in the arts field. Actually, initially, I wanted to study metaphysics and philosophy, and then I got into medical school. Then, while I was in medical school, my girlfriend's girlfriend was going to film school. And I thought, you know, at some point I wanted to write and things, but I thought, films, I'd always always loved films. And like anybody, you always see films, and you think, “Oh, man, I think I would have done it this way.” Or maybe, you know, “it would be interesting if they took it in that direction. What would happen there?” So, I just thought, “I'm wanting to do films as well.” So, as soon as I graduated medical school, I was working in the emergency room in Toronto, in downtown Toronto, and then I took a like a two month sabbatical, and I went to NYU film school at the SCE there, the School of Continuing Education at Tisch, and I got a film certificate. So, in two months, seven days a week, we worked like 14 hours a day. We learned how to make full movies, you know, not features, but short films. So, then I came back to Toronto, and I made a couple of short films that did really well, and then I moved down to LA after that.

Who are your favorite horror directors and writers?

My favorite horror directors and writers. You know, I love Robert Eggers, who directed The Witch. I think The Witch is really an amazing horror movie, absolutely amazing, and the detail and the authenticity of that film is fantastic. He's a real talent. Hereditary. I loved Hereditary. I love Carrie. Brian De Palma did an amazing job with Carrie. I couldn't sleep for nights after Carrie, several nights. Hey, I even got scared by Blair Witch, and I couldn't sleep for a couple of nights. So, I thought that was really inventive. I love the film. And those are some of the horror films. You know, there's quite a few, but those are some of them.

How does it feel to have your first movie out there, and have you been pleased with the reception?

How does it feel? Look, it's pretty cool to have a film out there and to see how different people react. Some people that have reviewed the film, some critics have been really, really very flattering, and I think they understood what we were doing. I think a couple others didn't really. I remember one reviewer said, “Well, how would the psychiatrists just let a guy bring a gun into his office?” And I thought, well, “this reviewer didn't even watch the film,” because the psychiatrist never knew there was a gun in the case. He thought it was a piccolo, and he had never had an idea that the patient brought a gun with him. So, I kind of took that review with a grain of salt. Then, I just stopped looking at reviews and stuff. But, overall, I remember when we first screened it for an audience in Westwood in the theater. The film works way, way better when you have surround sound and stuff, because we did so much work on the sound, and we spent a lot of time on the details of the sound. And that reaction was really really really good for for me. That was the first time that I was able to see an audience reaction. It was somewhat of a biased audience, no question, but still, you could tell that there were people that actually really loved the film. So, that was that really a great, incredible feeling.

What kind of productions do you want to do in future?

What kind of productions do I want to do in future? Well, it depends on the nature of the story I'm telling. I have a script, which is a very - you know, more than one script - which is a much, much bigger budget production, that would be extensive, and it wouldn't be a low budget contained movie. And I don't necessarily have a particular genre that I feel I have to stick to, and if I'm able to make more movies, and we can get them financed and get them out there, then I probably am less likely to just stick to one genre. I definitely would go back to horror or supernatural or some level of suspense thriller mystery. So, that would be something I would definitely want to revisit. But I've written quite a few screenplays. Some of them are more contained; some of the more sprawling, but at the end of the day, for me, there's got to be a reason to make the movie. There's got to be something under the surface of the story that is compelling you to spend so much time trying to get it out there. There's got to be something that you want to say, and in some ways want to connect, with a broader audience. So, I want to make movies that have resonance, that have a shelf life, that have something that I can look back at in a few years and say, “You know what, everything may not have been perfect, but at the end of the day, the effort was noble, and we were trying to do something that was unique and something specific, and that meant something, that was about something, not just for the sake of making money or telling some random story.”

If you had an unlimited budget, what kind of film would you want to make?

I think I would want to make something that incorporated science fiction and incorporated the future and involved - you know, the greatest stuff for me is where, through the course of developing and writing the script and telling the story, that you're researching, and you're learning, and you're actually trying to solve real world problems, all as part of it. So, art meets life, and it meets science, and it meets all these things. So, that's probably my scientific background and my inclinations to understand the world more and understand myself more and all of us, and everything. And I think though that would be where I would want to be heading, in that direction.

What's the best way for people to follow you?

I’ve got to update my IMDB. So, that's one way. A.T. Sharma. Terror Films, you can follow the film, this film is available, I think everywhere. It's on Amazon, it's on YouTube, it's on Apple TV. It's I think it's pretty much any platform. You can Google it and find it, but I think, I'll update my IMDb with the next projects we're doing. And directly, the next project we're planning to do is called Creature, and it's how I met Adam, the lead actor in Hypnotica. He came in and did a table reading for Creature, and he was so good that I kept him in mind. We couldn't do Creature at the time; we didn't have the financing. So, our next step is Creature, and I've written a novel called Creature, and I also have the screenplay, and we've also done a graphic novel, and so on and so forth. And the script did really well at some top screenplay contests. So, I'm hoping to be able to get into pre-production on Creature soon. So, look for Creature as well. To follow me you could probably find me there.