Seth Worley, Bianca Belle, and Kalon Kox discussed the new Angel Studios film “Sketch,” which was released in theaters on August 6th.
The synopsis is: When a young girl’s sketchbook falls into a strange pond, her drawings come to life—unpredictable, chaotic, and dangerously real.
As the town unravels, she and her brother must track down the creatures before they leave permanent damage.
Their father, racing to find them through the fallout, must navigate a town in crisis to reunite his family and stop the disaster they never meant to unleash.
Worley on his inspiration to write and direct ‘Sketch’
On his inspiration to write and direct “Sketch,” Worley said, “Well, I, you know, I’ve wanted to make a movie since I saw ‘Jurassic Park’ in theaters at age nine and I’ve always really wanted my first feature to feel like those movies that I grew up with.”
“I had trouble for a long time writing something about two people sitting in a room talking. There needed to be something chasing somebody and some kind of big emotional journey for a character,” he said.
“I found inspiration when my daughter came home one day having drawn pictures that were just inventively violent,” he said. “It was just an unprecedented amount of like blood and parent death.”
Worley continued, “I was looking at that and remembering back to when I was a kid, and my younger sister got in trouble for drawing a violent picture of her teacher and she went to see a counselor. The counselor asked my sister, ‘did you really want to see this happen to your teacher?’ My sister said, ‘I did when I drew it, but I don’t now’.”
“The counselor said, ‘Well, I think you did the right thing.’ I think drawing this was a much healthier choice than doing it. As a kid, remember thinking that was the coolest thing anyone had ever said to a child,” he acknowledged.
“This thing that made everybody in your life scared is actually evidence that you’re a good person and making healthy choices. That’s the adult I want to be in some kid’s life when I grow up,” he observed.
“So, there I was, looking at these drawings my daughter had drawn and thinking, ‘oh, you can believe two things at once.’ You can believe that art is the safest place for violence while also believing that your daughter is a serial killer and it’s somehow your fault,” he explained.
“That tension felt immediately writable to me, and that was the genesis of ‘Sketch’,” he added.
Bianca Belle and Kalon Kox talk about playing their characters
Young actors Bianca Belle and Kalon Kox were drawn to their characters for several reasons. “I love that she doesn’t care about what anybody else thinks because she wants to be free to express herself,” Bianca said.
“Also, I remember that point in my life where I just didn’t care about anybody else’s opinions, and I felt free to be myself. I guess that a lot of kids my age don’t really feel that anymore,” Bianca elaborated.
Kalon remarked, “I love the annoying aspect of Bowman. He is like that one mosquito at 3 a.m. that constantly buzzes in your ears. Then, you smack it away and turn to the other side of your bed, and then, it’s on that side.”
“I just loved playing Bowman; he is the comedic relief of film,” Kalon added.
Lessons learned from the screenplay
On the lessons learned from this screenplay, Worley said, “Writing this movie taught me that I need to trust my kids with their emotions.”
“Also, I need to provide them with a safe space to process their feelings and not be afraid of the more complex and darker things that we feel when life happens to us,” Worley elaborated.
Bianca said, “I learned that you shouldn’t shove your emotions down into a deep pit and bury them six feet under. You do not belong in a deep pit. You just need to actually feel them, talk to people, and get them out in the open.”
Kalon remarked, “Bowman has taught me that if you’re going to be a b-hole, be at least a slightly courageous b-hole. Man, I can’t think of a better takeaway from our film. Be a courageous b-hole. All of those words will make sense when you see the film.”
Worley on his writing process
When asked about his writing process, Worley responded, “I usually write with a thematic goal in mind. I mean, it really depends. When I get an idea, I don’t just get one idea. I get a pile of ideas, like a thousand ideas.”
“There’s that lightning strike section of getting ideas where it’s just the ideas are coming to you and you’re just writing them all down, and then it all stops and it’s up to you to make sense of all of them. I’ll have scenes and I’ll have thematic payoffs,” he explained.
“I’ll have just loose pieces of a movie and I’ve got to connect the dots. I have my own process for that. On this one, it took us almost eight years (six to seven years to get the movie made and then a year),” he expanded.
Worley on the filmmaking process for ‘Sketch’
On the filmmaking process, he said, “It was a long time trying to get people to believe in the movie and let us make it. The thing that kept me going — besides Tony Hale’s dedication and belief in the film — was this idea of telling a story centered around a character that everyone else in the movie thinks is broken and needs to be fixed, which is Bianca’s character, Amber.”
Worley continued, “Getting to a place where we can flip everything over and reveal that Amber is the only one doing what everyone is supposed to be doing.”
“Everyone else is broken in the movie and she’s the one processing her emotions. Then this is the most important part, letting her go to town, where she can kick ass and be her dark, cool self,” he acknowledged.
“That scene, I don’t want to give anything away — no spoilers — but that scene where we attempt to do stuff like that, that was the scene that kept me going. I wanted to see that movie in the world. That scene in the world and that movie in the world,” Worley explained.
Closing thoughts on ‘Sketch’
For fans and viewers, the young actors expressed, “Feel your feelings! Don’t be afraid of the darker stuff, and use art as a way to express it safely, process it, and talk to the people in your life.”
“We especially want parents to walk away from the film feeling empowered to provide a safe space for their kids,” all three concurred.
“Even if you’re not a parent, we want adults to feel like they have a responsibility to themselves and to the people in their lives to create a safe spaces for each other to feel things,” Worley concluded.
To learn more about director and filmmaker Seth Worley, follow him on Instagram.
