Orphans was made with six women in the middle of a blizzard. It was a completely independent effort with the intention of making a film on its own terms and without the ambition to sell it and make millions doing a little horror flick. That’s something we stayed true to in the process. Our process was lengthy and really took advantage of the fact that I was working with people I had a long history with and knew. We had about a two-month rehearsal process where we would all, me and the two lead actress (Lily Wheelwright, James Katharine Flynn) and sometimes the DP (Ku-Ling Siegal), would get together and improvise, play games; we kind of created a collective childhood for these two girls. We went around town and showed each other different locations that they had been to before and talked about memories from their childhood so they could hyberdize their two childhoods and make one...A lot of Orphans is its subtext, is what you don’t see, is knowing that there’s this entire life outside of the film that happened before, that it’s past, that it’s gone. I wanted to make sure that was really rich and really alive for the actresses and for me as well so that then when we got on set, we had a script—and the actresses knew their lines and everyone was very conscious of where the script was going, and we followed it—but the film was not dialogue heavy, so we didn’t have to rely on the logistics of getting every word right and every single line because there was such a rich subtext that they were working with that made everything much more fluid and playful on set. In a way, as opposed to throwing my actors into something and letting them rock-n-roll on their own interpretation, we were able to create a united life that then these two characters could exist within.

There’s something really beautiful about your first movie—at least for me—because I didn’t know much about selling my movie, distribution and all these things I know now. I really just had an idea of the kind of movies I wanted to make from my heart and sort of just did everything I could and used every resource I had and found people who could see the draw to this movie and what it was about and worked with them. Also, I didn’t realize what a long haul it would be. Making a feature—at least for me—took years, almost two years, and it’s an endeveour. And, now I know what I’m in for in making another one, but I am excited to make another but using slightly different—using the knowledge I have now."