DIRECTED BY Mike Mildon
WRITTEN Mike Mildon & Jon Rende
On the 654th episode of the longest running Avatar-Fan Podcast, one of the hosts drops some very unexpected news.
ABOUT THE FILM
Navi Boys was created by the comedy sketch troupe, Trophy Husbands.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Mike Mildon is an award winning filmmaker and comedian living in Toronto, Ontario. His passion for film and comedy is the driving force behind each project he does. 2021 marked his TV debut with For Heaven's Sake, a true crime comedy series produced by Muse Entertainment and Funny or Die. He executive produced, wrote, and exploited his entire family for the series, which aired on Paramount+ and CBC. The series was nominated for 3 Canadian Screen Awards (which included 'Best Series - Factual' and 'Best Writing - Factual'). Before TV, his claim to fame was his comedy sketch troupe, Trophy Husbands, where he has written, directed, and released over 40 shorts onto the World Wide Web. His short films have attracted millions of views online and have been featured on some of the top websites including Amazon Prime, Funny or Die, and Huffington Post. He continues to implement his genre-bending style and sense of humour in the television and commercial spaces, having directed spots for some of the biggest brands in Canada (Tim Hortons, RBC, McDonalds, etc).
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH mike
Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your filmmaking background?
I’m a filmmaker and comedian based out of Toronto Ontario. I primarily write and direct comedic stuff, but I dip my toes into the dramatics every now and then. I got to make a TV show for Paramount + and CBC called For Heaven’s Sake, a real true crime docu-series with a comedic twist – very proud of that.
Before TV, my claim to fame was my comedy sketch troupe, Trophy Husbands, where I directed, co-wrote and released over 40 shorts onto the World Wide Web. It was basically like my film school (even though I went to film school). The videos themselves did pretty well, but never went super viral, but god did we have a couple die-hard fans. It also lead to cool things (like the TV show thing).I’ve also sold my soul to the commercial directing world, it’s pretty amazing if you can get your foot in the door, just working on bigger sets, selling your vision to brands, and finding great collaborators through that industry is all stuff that feels like great practice.
Tell us about the genesis of Navi Boys and the genesis of the project?
2 years ago, myself and a friend were laughing at this idea of two hardcore Avatar fans that host a weekly podcast in full Navi makeup. Cut to October 2022, the Avatar sequel was upon on us and I still couldn’t stop thinking about this bonkers idea. With this short I took the classic approach that all filmmakers do: book a day, location, crew and actors without a word of the script written. All I knew going in – we need a really good makeup artist and everyone involved deserves to have a goofy day on set.
We (Jon Rende and I) eventually ended up putting pen to paper with lots of room to improv on set. I think regardless if you know the world of Avatar or not, the idea of these friends having to move on with their lives is a pretty universal theme. On the Avatar side of things – we actually researched the heck out of our roles. The goal was to sell these characters as die-hard fans so that the first 2 minutes feels authentic. I even spent hours scouring forums to translate English to Navi. I’m sure the real fans will poke some holes in our Navi, but we tried!
It’s dumb, it’s hyper-niche, but god am I glad it exists.
You really nailed the whole Navi cosplay makeup - can you tell us about that process?
Irayo! (means thank you in Navi) The whole ideacame down to just: have incredible makeup, but never address it once. It’s all thanks to Dessa. I met the amazing Dessa Larocque on this vampire series I was directing and asked “heyyyyy, you ever do Avatar makeup” and she said “I’ve always wanted to!”. We stayed in touch and I would always tease her, “expect a call about that Avatar thing” So when the time came she stepped up big time. We we’re so pumped when we finished in the chair, we couldn’t stop laughing.
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making of Navi Boys and how did you overcome them?
The intention was to have a fun day and keep it simple it was a relatively easy and fun shoot. Just time on the day went by super fast, makeup was 2 hours per person and then there was a lot to shoot, so sometimes I felt myself removed from the fun because I was stressing about time. But we did! It went a little later than I’d hoped, but it was a tight knit crew that was having fun, so it was all good. Besides stressing about time there wasn’t too much too overcome. The bigger choices we’re in the edit and how much of a heavy lift that twitch style background took to make. Don’t get me started on that twitch style background. Also the choice to keep things in podcast world for the first 2 minutes was found in the edit.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences. Did you try a festival run with this or was it always destined for online audiences?
No festival run, which I somewhat regret, but also not at all. This was a race against the clock for release day of Avatar 2. In the short we say “In 2 days - Way of Water comes out” so we wanted the podcast to be accurate and the short to come out on exactly 2 days before Way of Water hit theaters. I thought with the subject matter and timing it would do a little better online then it did, that’s why I started to go to places like Kino and other online short film platforms to spread awareness. But it’s still early! There’s more Avatar movies coming.
What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?
Creatively restricting yourself in the writing process isn’t the worst idea. How can we be creative in one location, how can we be creative with 2 actors, etc, etc, etc. Unit moves, cool lighting setups, big set pieces, I love it all and I’ve done it, but it really makes your shoot days more complicated and rushed, and then the shot looks cool, but your performance isn’t quite there and you are behind by 2 hours. Not saying it’s always the way, but just someone who’s made 50+ sketches/shorts for YouTube, I’m very strategic with my favours now and how I chose to write passion projects.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
I think it’s just really hard to have your shorts seen. A short we did called “Super Intense Office Scene” won best comedy in My Rode Reel back in 2018 which is considered the “world’s largest short film festival” and I think even with the win it only brought like 3000 views to the actual short. It wasn’t till we had a reddit post blow up that it garnered closer to 25k. I’ve never done a proper festival run because I’m too impatient, but just competing against the mountains of content, you have to work your butt off to make the short, then you have to work your butt off to try and get your short seen.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Loved Blackberry if you haven’t seen it. Jared Rabb, the guy who shot that, was the DOP on our show. Just a lovely person. Huge fan of that whole filmmaking collective (Zapruder Films). They also did Operation Avalanche and the Dirties, both great movies!