“Lights, camera, action!” are three words 2005 Tech graduate, Lisa Dooley, never thought she’d be saying. Yet her film, “Ben is Dead,” which she directed and wrote, opened at the Carmel International Film Festival in 2017 and was recently screened locally at the St. Cloud Film Festival.
It all began when Dooley was studying to be a journalist at New York University (NYU) and was dared by a friend to audition for its nationally renowned acting program.
Dooley was surprised to be accepted, and thought, “Ok, I guess I’ll try this.”
Her career path changed at that moment. She graduated from NYU and spent the following year living in New York acting in small plays.
Dooley then moved to Los Angeles, wanting to expand her work into film and television.
It was at that point she founded a comedy sketch group with two of her NYU alumni. Though they were not filmmakers at the time, they were making digital short films. The group would bring in guest filmmakers, and it wasn’t long before they realized that Dooley was directing most of their work. That’s when she discovered directing was her passion. Within a few years, she took a step back from performing with the group and began directing all of their shorts instead.
“I didn’t really miss acting,” shrugs Dooley. “I liked being the director and developing those worlds and putting them together.”
It was while working on the set of HBO’s popular television series, “Big Love,” and speaking with actor Bill Paxton that it dawned on her that she needed to be a director. Something on set was going wrong and Paxton, also the executive producer of the show, wondered what was happening. Dooley looked at him and her surroundings and decided she needed to fix it.
“I’m really Type A,” laughs Dooley. “That’s when I really got into directing.”
Dooley went back to school at the University of Southern California (USC), currently the number one film school in the nation, where she has spent the last three years honing her skills.
Since then, Dooley has directed several films. Most notably, her recent film, “Ben is Dead.”
One night she had a dream.
“I had a dream of jumping. It’s the opening scene here at the Quarries [for ‘Ben is Dead’],” describes Dooley. “I had a dream of it being fall and I was fully clothed and jumping in off the big jump. And, I was like, ‘oh, that is really pretty.’ So, I wrote it down and thought this would be a scene one day.”
Dooley knew a lot of people dealing with grief. She feels that in film and television, the focus is primarily on grief felt immediately after death. Instead, she was interested in what grief looks like years down the road. Her idea was to explore how a character deals with death 15 years later — the little things that trigger memories.
Keeping true to her dream at the Quarries, the cast and crew shot half the film “Ben is Dead” in St. Cloud.
Currently, Dooley is writing a feature film of her short film “Persephone.” The short has had success, and Dooley was named in the top five female-directed shorts of 2017 for ScreamFest.
Within a year or two, Dooley hopes to be doing her first feature film. Her long-term goal is to direct film, and her niche right now is horror.
“It’s fun,” says Dooley. “There’s an independent audience for horror that’s really excited about it, and they really engage with you as a filmmaker. Personally, in the long run, I’ll probably be doing family drama. I really like family drama, slightly funny dramas. That’s what life is about.”
To all the young filmmakers out there, Dooley advises, “Just make films! I’ve made some bad films that I’ve never shown anyone. Write fun sketches with your friends. If you think something is funny, write it down.”
She notes everyone has access to technology now and filmmaking capability is at their fingertips.
“The biggest part is not letting in fear,” says Dooley. “Fear stops you from doing something.”
So pull out those phones and tablets, start filming, and one day, “lights, camera, action,” may kickstart a career.