Taylor: A friend had written "The Magician" as a short story.
It had a lot of cinematic qualities that we believed would easily lend
themselves well to the screen. When writing the screenplay we felt very
strongly that we didn't want to simply adapt the short story to a
screenplay form, but instead start somewhat from scratch. Almost all of
the beats that you see in the film are present in the short story, but
we made a point of telling the story through picture and performance as
opposed to text. The narration required the most reshaping. We had to
pick and chose what would be said in voice-over versus what would
simply be seen. Since the story is so grounded in a single POV, in a
sense the voice-over and the images are the same thing.

Q: How did you choose your locations?

Valentina and Taylor: Not really. We deeply trusted
our cinematographer, Matt Lloyd. We decided to shoot 35mm black and
white very early on, and gathered mood images. From there we mostly
just worked off of image references.

Q: The narrative begins at the mid-point of the story, facts
unravel gradually, and indeed by the end of the piece the characters
still remain largely anonymous. As a result the film is very
elliptical. The magician is an especially mysterious presence. Was this
approach designed to privilege atmosphere over plot?

Taylor: I think the plot really exists within the atmosphere,
and therefore we knew that if the world was not precise, then the
narrative aspect would most likely fail. Whereas if the world
succeeded, we still had room to play with the plot points.

Valentina: Absoutely.

Taylor: Yes and no. I'd like to think some people out there aren't quite as indifferent as the characters in the film.

Q: There is some palpable tension between the characters' views
on death, the dead, and then scepticism over magic--what is the link
between these in your opinion?

Taylor: Rather than making any sort of concrete statements,
the intention was simply to present questions about the real versus the
unreal, and leave them purposefully ambiguous so the audience would be
forced to participate. We definitely attempted to maintain this
enigmatic quality in the film.

Valentina: The link is the way in which people react.

Valentina: We tried different music pieces looking for
something enigmatic and playful It engages you right when the Magician
engages the audience.

Q: For a short film there is a large cast with a great variety of ages. How did you meet/choose your actors and actresses?

Q: Tell me about your next project?

Valentina: I've just wrapped on my latest short about
premature sexual awakening, and I'm currently developing my next movie
which is set to shoot May. Its an hour long film about a possessive man
and his blind girlfriend.

Taylor: I'm finishing my first feature script. It's essentially a post - apocalyptic love story.