a portrait of madison
I first met Madison on an evening Zoom meeting. Principled but open and wrapped in a soft light that came from behind her screen, she debated the use of AI in her industry: filmmaking.
“Ultimately I would rather work with humans making movies about humans, than humans using AI to make movies about humans,” she exclaimed to twenty other peers on the call.
Frank but open-minded, her voice bled clear through the screen. Waves of delayed nods followed and the odd message in agreement came through the adjacent chat window.
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Just prior to my time at the Foundation, Madison was accepted into Protostars, our micro-grant program for young people with passion projects, to develop her surrealist short film “Er Du Med?”.
The short sat in the tension between repression and exploration of innate sexual desires, explicitly those felt by young women. It follows a young protagonist, Iria, into a remote Victorian field where her experiences at a heavy metal gig distort into a cacophony of subdued human urges.
Even while writing this piece, I myself have had a bit of a revelation.
It’s easy to reflect on the last couple of months and see how “Er Du Med?” was the perfect other-worldly precursor to her newest project, Heretica - a very real crewing platform for women and non-binary people looking to find jobs and get exposure to the filmmaking industry.
As the name suggests, the site is something of a heretic itself - a rebel, challenging the status quo and building a movement for women and non-binary people in the industry.
Laced with a sense of urgency and impatience for the current standard, Madison has been led by her own experiences to tackle this much larger cause. After many conversations with her, I’m so excited to share just a snippet of her work. So without further ado, Heretica.
Bella: I’ve really loved the content that you’ve been releasing in the lead up to launching Heretica. There was a real emphasis on movement, the people on set, the textures, the lighting. So, I'd really love to kick off with, what's it like being on set as a producer? Talk me through the sounds, the smells, the vibes.
Madison: Yeah, there's this great reel that we orchestrated when we shot our content for Heretica. It’s a tight shot that slowly pulls back revealing everyone moving around.
Bella: I watched that. It was beautiful.
Madison: Honestly, that's how it feels. Everyone is so hellbent on doing their own thing because we only have, for smaller shoots, you know, an hour to get everything ready. So when that hour ticks over, cameras are up, actors are in, lights are set and we're all behind it, ready to shoot. We often have such limited time.
Bella: So is it pretty quiet then, having everyone focus on their own job?
Madison: Oh no, sets are so loud. Sh*t’s getting dropped on the floor. Poles and things are going up. Everyone is talking. Set dressing and lighting will be setting up in the same room, so you'll have someone on a ladder, someone making a bed, someone you know in there discussing the shot, actors are in costume, we've got people talking on the walkie-talkie.
Like, it's just chaos, chaos, chaos, and then we call action and it'll go completely silent.
Then it's just 30 of us standing still behind this monitor that we're not supposed to look at. Some of the guys might go out for a smoke because they've set up for the day. You know, someone's opening a snack really quietly. That's what it's like, it's just all hands on deck and then you let go, and then you run, and then you let go.
It's like a pulsating machine, it's like alive, it's a real thing. It’s breathing.
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