Director Natalie Camou had her short film “#1 Bad Dad” as a part of a special screening for Film Independent Project Involve Films at the Slamdance Film Festival held in Los Angeles last week. A native of Santee, Camou graduated from West Hills High School.
Film Independent Project Involve is a robust, exclusive program that provides invaluable hands-on filmmaking experience from project inception to completion. Participants are paired with mentors at the top of their respective fields and receive personalized guidance to help move their projects and careers forward. Each year, 30 filmmakers from diverse backgrounds are given the opportunity to hone skills, form creative partnerships, create short films and gain industry access needed to succeed as working artists.
“#1 Bad Dad,” written by Kyle Selby, uses comedy and animated elements to playfully explore some of the most delicate emotions of the human connection between father and daughter. The production team also includes producer Bofan Zhang and executive producer Shakera Robinson, with the cast including Peter Pasco of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” and Liliana Bonilla in “Bunk’d.”
Camou said in short, the film is a father-daughter redemption story.
“An ex-supervillain just got out of a detention facility, is kind-of on the low, and his daughter, who he did not know who existed shows up on his doorstep asking for help with her powers,” she said. “He is kind of a curmudgeon, so he has to decide if he is going to be a bitter old man or if he is going to help her. Then you see what unfolds.”
Camou said she normally goes towards more grounded, more dramatic stories.
“But I was really called to have fun with this project,” she said. “It just felt like just a delight to, for the first time, take on a project with comedic elements, special effects, and even a puppet. I have always wanted to work with a puppet, so I was really excited to do that with this film”
Camou said the film had a special screening at Slamdance and is still hoping that it can get into the San Diego Latino Film Festival, or another film festival in San Diego, so that local San Diegans can see it. She said the film received great reviews in its Los Angeles screening.
“We were in a shorts block of six short films, the only thing screening at this theater. It was at the DGA Theater Complex which seats 600 people. It completely sold out, so much so that they had to spill over into a second neighboring theater,” she said. “After the fact, I was completely flooded with positive reviews from the audience. People were saying that our community really needs this kind of story right now. There was also just a positive reception of having a comedic super story. You know, like Marvel and DC Comics have changed in such a dark turn. It is not like the feel-good Spiderman of the 90s.”
Camou said people said that the film was fun and heartwarming, and silly, which was a wonderful change from superhero films of today.
Camou said she “gratuitously” got involved in directing. She worked in hospice care at Sharp Grossmont Hospital, and although she loved connecting with people in this way, she continued studying, and learning the hospital atmosphere, she began receiving many recommendations to not continue working in the medical field. So, she switched to economics, public policy, and politics, doing study programs in Hong Kong, and Washington DC.
“I got to see a lot of conversations from the left and the right and realized that I was just not cut out for politics the way that I naively thought, and just started all over again,” she said.
This led Camou she realized in canvassing, that whenever people changed their mind on a particular topic, it was usually connected to hearing a story from realism, or film.
“That is when I started. I first started in documentary. I got an opportunity to do a documentary immersive photography project in Spain and worked at that project for three consecutive summers. It ended up having an exhibition at Foto Week DC. It was the only exhibit to be given its own room. I was kind of becoming a filmmaker without realizing it. I had still photographs displayed on the walls, then I had audio soundscape that I created, and was intercutting excerpts of interviews I had with subjects with international politicians from both sides of the isle talking about immigration and really displaying the disconnect from both sides of that conversation,” she said.
Now, Camou is developing her first feature, “Zaza Boom,” a dramedy about a young girl learning to read amid her family’s assimilation.
