Starring, co-written, and co-produced by Canadian YouTube star Lilly Singh, Doin’ It is the story of a sheltered Indian-American virgin who lands a job teaching high school sex ed – and is determined to make up for the teenage experience she never had.
How did you first come aboard Doin’ It as the 1st AD?
1st Assistant Director Daniela Barbosa: This was a fun one. It was a little out of left field because we squeezed it in right before the strikes.
At the end of April 2023, I got a call saying, “Hey, there’s this movie. Do you want to do it? They gotta get it done before the strike.” Derek Rappaport was the Line Producer and told me we needed to get something together before May 1 because the script was registered with the WGA. So we went back and forth to finalize the script right before the deadline to call the strike hit. It was challenging in that sense, and it wasn’t a higher-budget film. But the Director was a lovely human being. Her name is Sara Zandieh. She’s a Persian director who grew up in Iran and then later moved to the United States. She just had a baby nine months before, so we had some great conversations about being moms.
One of the big challenges was that the bond company was sensitive about us scheduling SAG actors too close to the strike deadline. They wanted some padding because we had one main actor, Lilly Singh. So, if Lilly got sick, that would be it. But I pitched a plan that worked in which we took some roles and put them at the end of the schedule (ACTRA) so we could get the SAG actors off the clock, and everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. We had such a great team.
What was it like to shoot in a high school? Is that tricky logistically?
Daniela Barbosa: Our Location Manager, Tristan Plant and his team were amazing. We shot when school was still in session, and when that’s the case, usually, you can only shoot on the weekends. Originally, we were going to shoot in an abandoned school, but we found out it was getting demolished. But Tristan worked with the TDSB and found us a school that was changing hands and becoming a different school, Scarlet Heights in Etobicoke. Peter Cosco, our Production Designer, did an incredible job on a shoestring budget.
The film is kind of like a modern-day School of Rock. It’s about an Indian-American girl who grows up in the Midwest, and she’s sent back to India due to an “embarrassing incident.” I don’t want to spoil it because it’s funny. In India, she’s raised very strictly, gets a bunch of university degrees, and becomes this straight-arrow kid. When she comes back to the States, she wants a job in IT and tech, but the only job she can get as a sex ed teacher – and she’s never had sex. So, she’s teaching kids about stuff that she’s never experienced.
That’s the basic premise of the movie, and the ensemble cast of the classroom was amazing. I’ve worked with some of them before, but they were so good, and it was a joy to have them. For our exteriors, Tristan pulled his magic, and we got to shoot in the field where they shot Mean Girls. It was it was a lot of fun, in a very condensed, pressure cooker way. Our New York Producers, Anthony Bregman, who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind years ago, and his producing partner, Erica Matlin, were so great. They walked in, and they were like, “Alright, we’re doing it. We know this is kind of bananas, but let’s go for it. How can we support you guys?” Everyone put the pedal to the metal to get this done. We all had a common goal, so we jumped in. Let’s make this movie before we can’t work.
We shot for about 24 days, which was pretty fast. The DP, Jason Oldak, came from LA, and Sarah had worked with him before. He’s up for an ASC Award for Lessons in Chemistry, actually. We also had amazing Lighting, Grip, and Camera teams. Ciaran Copelin was the first AC, Michael Hall was our gaffer, and Christian Drennen was the key grip. It was a solid team.
Lilly Singh is the lead actress, co-writer, and Executive Producer. What was it like working with Lilly, as someone who got her start on YouTube and is now transitioning into feature films?
Daniela Barbosa: She was very heavily involved with the project. She produced it with Unicorn Island, her production company. It was a lot for her. I mean, there are actors who work for decades and don’t have to drive a movie by themselves, and she was in 95% of the scenes. It’s a lot on anybody. The movie I’m working on now, Vicious with Dakota Fanning, is the same thing; she’s in almost every scene. I don’t know why I get called for these projects, but I do!
Lilly was lovely, gracious, and funny, and she was a joy to work with. I think there was a bit of a learning process for her, but she was very collaborative with the crew. Everyone was really happy to be working, and it was such a great environment to work in. Stephanie Beatriz is also in the movie, and she is hilarious. I love working on comedies as a genre because there’s a lot of improv and exploration, and we had the opportunity to explore with Lilly. Even when she wasn’t working, she was involved in the process. If she was done for the day, she’d get out of her makeup and costume and come back to set and listen, and she brought her mom along to experience it. So it was a very warm, welcoming environment. We all kind of knew SAG was going to strike, but the intent was to have a good time. Derek Rappaport, our Co-Producer and Line Producer who’s also a DGC Ontario Member, plays guitar. During lunchtime, a bunch of cast and crew would go hang out in the stairwells and he’d play guitar, or some of the other actors would play guitar. It was very high school but without the drama.
Are there any logistical challenges involved in shooting a high school movie like this, where there’s a large ensemble cast and many extras?
Daniela Barbosa: I’ve worked on movies like this a couple of times, and it’s all about casting. We were fortunate enough that our principal Casting Director, Jason Knight, found us these talented actors who were over 18, so we didn’t have to tutor them, which would have lengthened the shoot.
It was very nostalgic in a way for all of us. If I stepped off set to go to the washroom, I’d go and put my sides and hang my backpack up in a locker, so it was fun to relive the high school experience. My high school was in the middle of New York City, so it was not like that at all, but it was nice to be in the high school environment. We tried to think of things like, “What do the posters look like on the walls?” Sure, there’s a chemistry club, but there’s also a coding club now. I haven’t been in high school for a long time, so we had to think about what high school kids do these days. We talked to our cast, and I talked to some of the background actors: “You’re closer to this than I am. What do you guys do?” I even reached out to my daughter’s babysitter. It was interesting to shoot at the Mean Girls high school – we were only using the exteriors, but we used the inside for holding. I walked the halls up and down just to get a sense of the place. It was fun creating a high school, and we were very fortunate that we didn’t have to deal with an operating school’s schedule because it would have created extra work. In this case, we lucked out. Whatever higher power you believe in wanted us to make this before this strike.
What do you think the audience’s reaction to this movie is going to be?
Daniela Barbosa: Watching Lilly’s character’s journey really speaks to the idea that we have this perception of how our lives are going to turn out. She comes back from India, and she decides she’s going to be a software designer and make lots of money. Everyone has these expectations, and whatever path your life takes, it’s not exactly what you envisioned. Your plans didn’t actually manifest entirely on the other side, but in the end, maybe you’re better for that. You look back and think, “I thought that that’s what I wanted, but I actually am pretty happy with what I have.”
I’m older than Lilly’s character, and it’s a coming-of-age comedy, but it made me think while we were filming it. We have an established process, and we need to get this film done, but we shift, mould, and sculpt everything as we go along. The journey is not always necessarily about the end goal. It’s sometimes about how you get through that process and working with a great team. My AD team killed it, as always. Filmmaking is a beautiful art, and it’s so collaborative. You might think you have the most minuscule role, but it’s all part of a unified whole. One day on set, it was our craft services person, Ophelia’s birthday, and she was serving popcorn. I love celebrating people’s birthdays because I love celebrating people, so we got her to come to set, and someone took this huge bowl of popcorn from her, and we sang her happy birthday, and she cried. We all just wanted to do this little movie before the strike, but it became this big mutual appreciation society. We knew this was going to be quirky and weird, and we did have our challenges. It wasn’t always easy. We lost a location very close to the tech scout, but Tristan was able to pivot and found us an even better house. There was the stress of the oncoming strike, but look at the positives – we’re here, and we’re making an amazing movie. Challenges happen, but when we get stuck in negativity, that’s where the process stops. Filmmaking is like improv – there’s a lot of “yes, and.” “Yes, we can do that.” It might not be the way the writer envisioned it when they had this brain spark a billion years ago, but look how great it is and how we pulled it off with this budget and this scope. For example, we didn’t go to India. We shot in Toronto for India. Who does that? Peter Cosco is amazing.
Is there anything from the Doin’ It shoot you’re especially proud of?
Daniela Barbosa: I don’t want to give away too much because the gags are worth the price of admission. But there was one day when we had a scene and then a montage in the same location. I built an eight-hour day where we started with the scene and got that out of the way before the montage. There are about 20 little pieces to this montage, but we must stop at eight hours because that was the deal. We’re going to stop at eight hours, and we have to give the store back. It was like counting down on New Year’s Eve. I’m looking at my watch, and we made it with less than 10 seconds to spare. We ended with this little stunt, kind of like Jackass, and it was so much fun. We’re all counting down the seconds, like, “We’ve got one minute left. Can we go one more time? We can go one more time. Okay, great. Let’s go one more time.”
All of us are filmmakers. We’re all fans of films. And even if we’ve only done television or commercials, we’re storytellers. Movies, shows, commercials, and YouTube shorts are all made because people want to hear stories. Stories are what make us human, going down from generations of elders telling younger kids stories. We foster the future by sharing our stories, and that’s the beauty of what we do. I’m so proud of our work on this movie, and I’m so happy that it’s going to South By Southwest.
Doin’ It premieres at SXSW on March 12, 2024.
