This is the second and final installment of FilmSchool.org's interview with writer-director Seabold Krebs (AKA Patrick Clement), whose feature "Bury Me When I’m Dead" releases July 18 on digital platforms and VOD. In this installment, Clement/Krebs reflects on his experience at Columbia's MFA film program, from the pressures of prestige to the reality of post-grad life — and how those years informed his creative ethos.
Read part one of the interview here:
PC/SK: I went into film school wanting to accelerate my abilities as a creative professional. I thought it was really interesting when I got into an MFA [...] at Columbia, which you could argue is a top five film school. And I was shocked at the number of students that thought they had already made it, that the film school was the goal. I always felt like this was just a part of a thing to get me to where I really wanted to go.
So, I worked hard. I tried a lot, and I failed a lot on purpose because I viewed film school as a place to try things and fail. If I had a reputation amongst any of my other classmates, I heard a lot that, ‘Oh, Pat takes things too seriously.’ When we were doing exercises, I really cared. Unfortunately, I [...] didn’t do a lot of the social stuff around film school because I was working and writing scripts. I was trying to make sure that my work was the best it could be.
My goal was always to make my first feature. I think that my time in Columbia was spent making sure I was ready if an opportunity came. [...] Because we don’t get to decide when that opportunity happens. So, I wanted to go in knowing what I felt passionate about, what I liked, and what I could put on a screen and feel like I could live with it for the rest of my life. Maybe I wasn’t placed as high in the hierarchy of students in my class because I didn’t really care about getting into big festivals. I didn’t get into Palm Springs or Sundance [...] with my shorts, in part because they were meant to be experiments.
That’s what film school was to me, but it’s different for every person. Some people I went to film school with had never been on a set before; they...
Read part one of the interview here:
“The Blood Is More Conceptual”: Exploring the Vision of Seabold Krebs (AKA Patrick Clement) in “Bury Me When I’m Dead” (Part 1)
If you’ve been following Seabold Krebs’s rebellious path through the world of indie film, you might not immediately connect him to Patrick Clement. Krebs is Clement’s gritty alter ego, a rule breaker who gleefully shows his characters spiraling under the weight of their poor decisions and the...
- Alexa P.
- Category: Filmmaking
In what ways did your time at Columbia shape how you approached filming “Bury Me When I'm Dead?”
PC/SK: I went into film school wanting to accelerate my abilities as a creative professional. I thought it was really interesting when I got into an MFA [...] at Columbia, which you could argue is a top five film school. And I was shocked at the number of students that thought they had already made it, that the film school was the goal. I always felt like this was just a part of a thing to get me to where I really wanted to go.
So, I worked hard. I tried a lot, and I failed a lot on purpose because I viewed film school as a place to try things and fail. If I had a reputation amongst any of my other classmates, I heard a lot that, ‘Oh, Pat takes things too seriously.’ When we were doing exercises, I really cared. Unfortunately, I [...] didn’t do a lot of the social stuff around film school because I was working and writing scripts. I was trying to make sure that my work was the best it could be.
My goal was always to make my first feature. I think that my time in Columbia was spent making sure I was ready if an opportunity came. [...] Because we don’t get to decide when that opportunity happens. So, I wanted to go in knowing what I felt passionate about, what I liked, and what I could put on a screen and feel like I could live with it for the rest of my life. Maybe I wasn’t placed as high in the hierarchy of students in my class because I didn’t really care about getting into big festivals. I didn’t get into Palm Springs or Sundance [...] with my shorts, in part because they were meant to be experiments.
That’s what film school was to me, but it’s different for every person. Some people I went to film school with had never been on a set before; they...
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