The Human Art of Filmmaking: A Conversation with Colin Eckardt

 Miah Massaro | Writer

If you've spent any time on TikTok, there's a chance you've come across Colin Eckardt, where his videos have introduced him to a growing online audience as a man born in the wrong generation. But while social media may be how many people first discover him, it's not how he hopes they'll remember him. Fresh off graduating from The New School in New York City, Eckardt has his sights set on a career as an independent filmmaker and actor, one built on a deep respect for craft, preparation, and all the people who bring these beautiful stories to life.

In this conversation, Colin and I discuss the lessons he’s learned while making his short film Downbound Train, how acting has shaped his work as a director, why collaboration is at the heart of every great film, and his unwavering belief that filmmaking remains an inherently human art form in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. 

Read my interview with Colin Eckardt below.

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Your short film, ‘Downbound Train,' was the first film you ever shot on 16mm film. What did creating this short teach you about yourself as a filmmaker? 

Eckardt: Downbound Train, for me, was a film that sort of was born as a short and sort of, I think, will always be a short, and I was very glad going into the film with that mindset. I think that I struggle with feeling like a lot of my ideas can be longer, feature-length ideas, and this one was very clearly a short. Which was a great endeavor, because it was a place where I could sort of jump in, and really “trust my gun,” so to speak, and go all out.

I shot it during a 16 millimeter class that I took at The New School, on a non-reflex Bolex that I had recently purchased the winter before the spring semester. My first ever role of 16 millimeter film that I shot on film–that I knew would turn out–was in that film, and is in the final cut that you can watch on YouTube. 
What it taught me was really to, one, trust your storyboarding, trust your prep. Also, it taught me how important pre-production is and just figuring out where and how you want to shoot certain scenes. 

There was the inside, the interior stuff is pretty much line for line, page for page, exactly what I had written down on the script and what I had sort of outlined in the storyboards. 
The external stuff, though, on the subway and on the street, a lot of that was improvised and that was because I quickly realized that I was without a substantially large budget and a lot more lighting equipment, so I was not going to be able to get the shots that I wanted. So that sequence taught me a lot about just following and trusting a sort of instinct. Seeing something while you're on the street, seeing something while you're on location and just going with it, but also then how to communicate that idea and communicate it well to the wonderful peers that you're working with. 

All in all, I think what it really taught me was how to better communicate ideas in a vision that I had in my head and communicate it in a way that all of the actors– or anybody who was on set–could understand and know what each of our roles was in making that come alive. It was a very, very good introduction to the filmmaking process, and specifically a filmmaking process where you're shooting on film and you don't have the instant feedback of what the image looks like. You have to sit and wait and trust that you were on the ball. 

Colin, you’ve dipped into different aspects of creating a film, and you’ve even acted in a handful. Projects such as, ‘The Legend of Dewey Winslow’ by Benji Tucker and ‘Familiar Strangers’ by Michelle Coppola have been added to your filmography recently. Has acting in projects influenced the way you might direct your own films? 

Eckardt: Tremendously. It has influenced my direction tremendously. I think acting has been paramount for me in understanding how to approach characters, whether it's writing or whether it's actually directing a short, or directing anything. It's taught me that, oftentimes, I will have a preconceived notion of what or who the character is on the page, obviously. 
But you make casting decisions, you cast your actors, and the person who really knows who that character is, is your actor. It's your job to sort of work and find out where that character resides within them. And where it really resonates with them, and that's how I've found that I'm able to bring these fictional characters into the real world, so to speak, or at least on screen. 


But I think about acting all the time. It was the first sort of exposure that I had to any sort of theatrical process, whether it be theater or film. It was the very first sort of performance art form that I was introduced to when I was in middle school. 
Not a day goes by–in pretty much all aspects of filmmaking–that acting does not appear in. It is always on the forefront of my mind.

You collaborate closely with your fiancée, Jessie Keogh. You’ve worked with her on films such as ‘Downbound Train,’ your own short film where she portrayed the main character, ‘Sunday Girls,’ a beautifully shot project she directed, and ‘Double Exposure’ created by Yishen Wang. What’s it like creating art with someone you also share your life with?

Eckardt: Jessie and I have a very, very fulfilling creative relationship. I mean, obviously a fulfilling relationship, but a very fulfilling creative relationship because she really is like the... What's the analogy here? 
She's really a bouncing board, she challenges me and pushes me. We challenge each other and push each other to fully flesh out our ideas and fully delve into a scene or a script or a world when we're prepping. 

I do a lot of cinematography work when I'm not acting or working on my own projects, and I just feel like we are both very good at helping each other get into the right headspace to fully understand a project and fully understand another person's vision that we may not have fully realized yet. 
I think that each of us allows ourselves to go to that place and go to, “Okay, what is this script or this idea really calling for?” And then continuing to sort of push beyond the initial answer to find the deeper meaning and something that you can really emotionally resonate with while you're on set or working on a project. I think that has been incredibly, incredibly important in my life, and I am very, very thankful to have such a person and relationship in my life.

When you’re stepping into someone else’s project as an actor, how do you balance bringing your own instincts while still serving another filmmaker’s vision?

Eckardt: When I’m an actor, I’m an actor. I am here, I am on set, I am yours–in a very simple way, that’s how I approach it. I don’t have any thoughts in terms of any other aspect of the filmmaking process, and if those thoughts do arise, they are shut down immediately. What I find interesting about acting is getting to jump into a character's shoes. I get to find and feel the emotional resonance of the character on the page and try to find that resonance inside myself and allow that to synthesize for the duration of the filming process. As an actor, I have dedicated myself to someone else’s vision, ideas, thoughts–I trust in you and I hope that you trust in me.

You’ve very evidently built your work around craft and collaboration. Do you worry that AI risks replacing not just jobs in the film industry, but the relationships and shared experiences that make filmmaking such a uniquely human art form? 

Eckardt: Here’s what I think about AI–it’s application does not lie in the arts. The arts are a uniquely human thing, and it’s the way that we as humans make sense of our existence in this world. Whether it be a spiritual or physical existence, art is how we make sense of our lives and our time on this planet. 
AI has absolutely no business in that world. It just doesn't. 
It does not carry and cannot carry the things that you and I walk with every single day and the weight of what those little things mean to us. It's impossible, and I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you're outsourcing your vision to AI. 

You have plenty of people and colleagues around you that you can work with to help bring a vision to life. They can bring their own experiences as a human being into your work and into their work. 
AI is simply a mimic–it's mimicry of what it's seen posted a bazillion, trillion times online. It is all within us as humans, and it has no business in the arts. I will stand on that hill and die on that hill. There's a quote that Kane Parsons [the director of Backrooms] said a couple of months ago where he was like, I am immediately turned off from interacting with something if I find out that what I'm watching is generative AI or AI. Because it's like, where's your experience? I'm not feeling that coming through. 
And I agree wholeheartedly. 

Your talent stretches across various genres—acting, writing, directing, and producing—but when you picture your career ten years from now, what role do you hope you’re known for most?

Eckardt: I hope, I mean everybody hopes that they're known for being a director. And I also, well, I hope for that. 
Obviously, I mean, you gotta shoot for the stars. But I think more so than that, I want to be able to say to myself that I have made a career and I make a living as a filmmaker, whether that be as a cinematographer, a director of photography, a director, a writer, or an actor. I just want to.. I want to be able to say that I am making a living as a filmmaker. That is the role that I want to be most known for.

Without giving too much away, what are you creatively excited about right now? Is there anything you’re developing that you can’t stop thinking about?

Eckardt: I am currently finishing up a rough cut of a proof of concept that I have made for my first feature script. 
I've been working with those two things–the proof of concept and the script–in conjunction for the past year and a half. I'm very excited about one, getting a proof of concept done, also having the script, and then prepping it to be pitched, and eventually getting the process of my first feature going. That is what is creatively exciting me right now. 
It's been a long… It's been a very, very big learning process over the past year and a half of my life, and I feel like I'm starting to turn around a corner on that and things are starting to pick up, if that makes sense. 


What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with your next project or just in general as an independent filmmaker—whether that’s writing, financing, casting, or simply finding the time to make it? Do you have any advice for people finding themselves in similar situations and it causing them to feel held back creatively?

Eckardt: This is a great question. I was kind of talking about it in the prior answer–the proof of concept, which is titled [for the feature script] its titled: Only Make Believe. I have been working on that film in conjunction with a feature-length script in order to use the short film as a sort of pitch material for the script itself.

I think the biggest challenge for me was sort of realizing, very quickly, it takes a village.  Filmmaking is the most.. I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I'm going to argue just because it's where I sit and where my art experience lies, but filmmaking is easily one of the most collaborative art forms. It is very, very hard to make a film without the help of numerous people. When embarking on something like a feature, you quickly realize how much help you actually need, and I think that has been something that I haven’t necessarily been challenged with, but it has been on the forefront of my mind. There's just so many elements that go into even making a short film, but a feature is a whole different beast. 

Another challenge also is just sort of using the short film to figure out what I like or what I am really resonating with in the script and where I want the script to be tonally so that it's ready to prep and ready to go into production. Once the budget needed is acquired, so to speak. There's a lot of elements, but I think juggling all of them is the challenge. I think mentally juggling that, but that's why you have producers and other people [to help you]. 
Just having awareness. These two projects have been very, very eye-opening in terms of sorting out the things that I'm good at, the things that I'm not great at, and where I need the most help in. And I think that these two processes have been literally, like… it feels like a third eye has opened throughout my journey with these two projects. 


Do you see yourself staying in independent filmmaking long-term, or is the goal to eventually direct studio features?

Eckardt: Obviously it’s always great to be paid for the art that you make in the career that you have set out to do. 
I’m honestly not entirely sure if I am fully able to answer this question because with where my interest lies, I do happen to lean more towards independent films than studio pictures. I think it would depend on the project. I don’t like setting a limit on that at any point because obviously, if the project is right, that's always an option, and I think that I would be thrilled–absolutely thrilled–if I was offered a budget to make a project that I truly resonated with for a studio. 
But independent filmmaking is beautiful. It is a great, great thing. I wish people would put more money towards supporting independent filmmakers, and I think we're sort of reaching a point where we are seeing more of that, thankfully. But we'll see how the next decade unfolds. 

We’re in a time where it’s easier than ever to make a film, but arguably harder than ever to get people to actually see it. As an independent filmmaker, how do you cut through all that noise while staying true to the stories you want to tell?

Eckardt: I spent a lot of time, especially my freshman and sophomore years [of college], and in high school as well, looking outside myself. Looking… yeah, just outside myself, and not really understanding what I was trying to say. I knew of images that provoked me. 
I knew there were films and other things that I found appealing and I wasn't sure why. I didn't know the answers to the why until I started really listening to the internal whispers, so to speak. 

There is a quote, which I feel like is a pretty popular quote, but it’s, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I struggle with that to this day. I think that… especially once I moved to New York… New York is a place where there are so many talented people in one location–in one city, and it’s incredible. It is an incredible thing. But for me, cutting through the noise was looking within. Really listening to myself, to the things that I found appealing, to the things that I found myself thinking about when I thought my brain wasn't doing anything. That's how I cut through the noise.

If I'm going to say one thing, I think it's to remind yourself that–despite all of the people you will meet in your life that you feel are super similar to yourself–you are the only person who will ever live your life. 
You are the only person. And in that life, you have felt things and known things that are unique to yourself. Trust that.
If you're an artist, trust that the life that you lived is worth hearing. Your story is worth being told. I think it's hard, but it's all in you. 

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Colin Eckardt’s feature script and project titled, It’s Only Make Believe, will have more content releasing soon. For now, you can watch the teaser trailer for the project on Eckardt’s film instagram Northeast Motion Pictures, and you can watch Downbound Train on his YouTube channel. If you’d like to stay updated on his future projects, you can find all his information on his website.