‘Echo Point’ Interview: Evan Marcewicz Talks about His Feature Directorial Debut

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Echo Point is a thriller following Sawyer (played by Evan Neal) as he inherits a cabin owned by his estranged father. Very quickly, Sawyer realizes the cabin is not what it seems, and that those from beyond may be trying to contact him through the cabin’s old radio. As uncertainty grows, Sawyer realizes his time may be short to learn the truth.

I chatted with writer-director Evan Marcewicz about his film, how he got started in the industry, and what he has planned in his future projects.

The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. For the full, uncut discussion, click the video below to watch on the ScreenAge Wasteland Exclusives YouTube channel.

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Valerie Morreale: Echo Point is available now on Amazon Prime. Is there anywhere else it is available, or just Amazon Prime?

Evan Marcewicz: As of now, sadly, Amazon, but hopefully we’re getting somewhere.

Cool, cool. Awesome. I want to start by asking how you got into film and what started your interest in film? Like, where did it all begin?

So my journey is kind of interesting because I started as a YouTuber. I just had a small gaming channel that took off a little bit, but I was just so tired of making content every single day. So I was like, no, I’ve got to stop. But what really drove me to film was the stories. I love developing stories and ideas, and even when I was a YouTuber, my friends and I used to make skits for the channel. We just had a blast, and that developed into a love for film. Also, when I was doing YouTube, I kind of had a feeling that this was not the end, and it wasn’t.

Eventually, my parents wanted me to go to college, and thank God COVID happened because I basically had to drop out. Mainly because there was no theoretical way you could learn how to use a camera on Zoom. At that rate, just watch YouTube, and you’re saving hundreds of dollars.

From there, I just really drove deep into it. After the fact, I learned hands-on to work with cameras and worked with people in that lifestyle. And I was just like, man, I want to continue my career in this. And so I did and now I’ve created a whole movie.

So did you work on other film sets, or what was your experience with learning?

In a sense. I volunteered at a local community television station, and they really taught me a lot of what I know about cameras, settings, lighting, and all of that. I just went into nerd mode and learned as much as I could.

After that, I got hired at my old high school working in their theater. They hired me to be their technical director, which, in a sense, in film is like their video director. That’s kind of where most of the knowledge came. It was just picking up stuff over the course of time.

Who are some filmmakers who inspired your style of filmmaking for Echo Point and your other projects?

Henry Hathaway really inspired me. It was honestly ironic that I never knew his name until I really saw all the films he made. He’s made a lot of John Wayne westerns, the classic ones that if you Google his name, you’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that movie.” He was more of a director who was the factory style. Back in the day, when it was “Okay, we have to make these three movies,” he was like one of those kinds of directors, so I think he’s very underrated. One of my favorite directors.

John Ford is another one. Total douche of a guy, but I loved his directing style. I would also say, Michael Landon. He’s a very quiet director, but he directed a few things. Iconically of course he directed Little House on the Prairie, which he also starred in. He was the main character and it’s very interesting because if you look at the behind-the-scenes of it, it’s very interesting how he directed. He was very nice, but he was very like… this is my way or the highway. He was very particular, like, I need to be this tall on screen, very narcissistic type. But he was a great director, so I liked him for that.

That’s very interesting because Echo Point is very different from these directors you’ve listed. It’s much more of a horror/thriller. What kind of drove you towards that genre then?

I would say Echo Point is more thriller/western. I grew up on Westerns. Most of the films I watched as a kid were Westerns. The black and white TV shows were iconic and I just loved the hero characters. I decided that if I made a movie, I was going to make sure it was an iconic one.

What also drove me to it was… Hey, we have a low budget. You know, many Westerns are low budget, so it kind of fit the style of what I was going for. I threw in horror elements because having a modern-day horror western really doesn’t exist. Unless you’re going full western cowboy, that doesn’t really exist.

One thing that’s funny is that I am getting a decent amount of heat online, which is really funny because I laugh at the haters. That’s what you just got to do. They’re saying things like the colors are off, and I’m like, “It’s a western!” So it’s really kind of funny how a lot of people don’t see the Western elements. They only think of horror, but it really is both.

So kind of like Jordan Peele’s Nope, having those Western elements alongside the horror?

Mm-hmm. Exactly. It’s a different movie where even my family was asking, “Why’d you do this movie?” But I also want to expand the story. If I can make another sequel or prequel, it’s a movie with a lot of potential and having the ability to expand the story which I ideally want to do. So I intentionally left stuff hidden or ambiguous.

Most people watch a movie, and they get A and B. They get the problem and the solution. This story has A, B, C, and D. In Echo Point you’ll get A and B, but you won’t get C and D. It’s very interesting because I feel like I always have to tell people, “Watch it again.” Because it’s one of the movies where you’ll find something new each time you watch it, which is really fun.

So when you started kind of pre-production for this film, what was that like? Did you have the script done, then you went to casting?

It was honestly really quick. I was originally in development of another movie, which I had to cancel because I was laid off from my job. Basically, I needed to make the movie cheaper. Luckily, I found the main actor, Evan. Ironically, his name is also Evan. (laughter) He was going to be like a small, you know, day player character that was much more a first time role and that’s it. What’s interesting was that he had no acting experience, but I was just like, I want you as the main star. He was shocked; I was too! Everyone was shocked he got the main lead. I just had a feeling he was going to work out great.

So I called him up, told him that. We developed the character, and this is why Evan’s character, Sawyer, doesn’t have a lot of dialogue. He’s a new actor to the screen, so he hasn’t developed the conversation skills yet.

The casting process took… Maybe two, three months. It was very quick. Once I had an actor or actress audition, I knew right away if I wanted to cast them. A lot of actors and actresses came in with a background already.

We actually partnered seasoned actors and actresses with some cast members who were very new to acting, which is ironic because you can’t really tell on screen.

You mentioned that you made Sawyer’s character low on dialogue because Evan was newer to acting. So did the script come after you had a cast?

More or less. I kind of like that because I always work with actors and actresses on the script. I’ll tell them this is the story I want. This is the structure I want. But I get their opinion, and I want their opinion. I tell them, “You know the character better than me.” They’re the ones playing the characters, so I ask them, “How would your character feel?” Ideally, I’ll have situations where a cast member will ask if they can change or add a line. I’m like, “Sure, you’re the character!”

Even on set, the cast were rewording a few things because it just didn’t feel right and stuff like that. I love working with actors and actresses. I did the same thing with Evan. We were like, nah, this line doesn’t work. We sat in Zoom calls just like this, and we worked together to develop it over the course of time.

It sounds like the scriptwriting then was a very collaborative process between you and the cast.

Yeah, I feel you have to. I work with directors where it’s like, “Nope, my way or the highway,” and it’s like, “Dude, your movie fails because you don’t get other people’s opinions.” Even when I do script reads, I’m always asking the actors and actresses, “How do you like it?” I actually hate it when they don’t give me feedback because I’m always looking to grow. So I’ll do a script read with 20 people, and I’ll be like, “Somebody tell me something,” because if you get other people’s opinions, it turns out to be a better film.

That’s definitely an interesting perspective. I did some research before this, and you shot Echo Point in four days, which is really a breakneck pace.

Technically five. Technically five.

Five days is still an incredibly short amount of time. It’s very ambitious. Because of that, I wanted to ask what was the energy like on set, trying to shoot everything in five days?

So the fifth day was all reshoots, and honestly, I’d say half the footage in this film came from the reshoot. Anything that you see that’s very green and luscious and lively, that’s the reshoot when we went back and shot it again. It’s one of my favorite parts because so many of the good shots came from that.

During the other four days though, it was something. It was overall very fun, but it was definitely stressful. I think one day we were up to like one o’clock in the morning trying to coordinate parking because where we shot the cabin, we had to park so the cars wouldn’t be in the background of certain shots. I was like, “This is a nightmare.” I actually love this blooper; in one of the shots you can clearly see all the cars lined up down the mountain right when he walks into the basement. It’s honestly amazing.

Ideally, I would have added two or three more days if I had more budget. It probably would have helped with continuity errors, and we wouldn’t be as hassled and running around in craziness. But it wasn’t like I wasn’t doing anything either. I was a cinematographer. I was running around trying to get everyone coordinated. And it worked.

Even like my actors and actresses were like “What? How did you do that?” I worked in warehouse jobs for years and plenty of fast-paced environments, so I’m used to getting my hands dirty. I like to stay active on set.

What would you say then was something you learned from developing your first film that surprised you?

Give yourself more days to work with. Don’t shoot a production in five days (laughter). But also, you know, just be a person that everyone wants to be around. We were just having a blast on set. We were joking in downtime and just having a fun, amazing time. It didn’t feel like work. And I mean, even our last day. We were pulling twelve-hour days, fourteen-hour days. We got up at, you know, eight in the morning. We went to the cabin at around eleven, and we shot till like eleven or even one AM. And I mean, hey, that’s movie life for you, but at the end of the day, it was a blast.

I had my cast and crew say this was the best set they worked on, because I wasn’t trying to boss people around. It was more like, “Hey, look, you’re my friend; I’m not here to give a shit.” We’re in the same industry; we have a lot of fun, and let’s just have a blast. And me, the crew, and Evan, we were all in the same Airbnb. So, I mean, I think one day we took some time off and just hiked the trails right behind the house.

One thing that’s great about shooting in the very remote area is we were able to all sit down and eat affordably (laughter). We were able to sit down at a restaurant with like 10, 20 people, and it only cost like $400 for a meal.

What would you say is your favorite shot or sequence from the film?

My favorite shot was actually not shot on the fifth day. It was shot, I think, on the second day of filming, and it’s when we have The Axeman and Sawyer facing off each other, and I just chose that to be the signature shot.

I just love it because the lighting, the atmosphere, everything worked really well. It’s just a really fun shot.

My other favorite shot would probably be one of the other stills of Sawyer. If you look up the movie on Amazon or IMDb, you’ll see it. It’s the shot with the green in the back, and he’s looking off to the camera side a bit. It’s just like a perfect shot you couldn’t ask for, and we would have never gotten it without the reshoot.

I just want to give you the floor to talk about what you’re working on next. I did look at your IMDb page, and I saw that there were like eight projects on there.

So, I always say if this movie does well, that this is definitely not the only one. It’s going to be a franchise. Echo Point itself is more of the middle of a much bigger story. We know who Sawyer is, but what’s his story? Who are the ghosts, and who is his father? All of these questions are still out there, so the world’s going to expand massively.

We’re talking about people with abilities, people that could talk to ghosts or how criminals could talk, you know, what happens if a criminal could find out a person could talk to ghosts? It would still center on Sawyer and his personal connection, but the world would grow.

I do have a lot of other movies because I always find that I can’t stick with just Echo Point if, God forbid, it doesn’t do well enough for a sequel or prequel. So, of course, you know, I’ll be around in the directing industry for a very long time. If Echo Point works, I have some other smaller movies I have coming up. A lot of action, family dramas, all that kind of stuff. So it’ll be definitely fun.

So which chapter do you think you’ll work on next in the Echo Point kind of trilogy?

I’m already working on the sequel. It grows the world even in the opening, and I think it’s very, at this rate, just seeing how much a lot of people like this movie and seeing how good it is, I think it’s going to do very well on Tubi and other streaming platforms. I already contacted the cast, and everyone’s very interested in the sequel.

The prequel is going to be different because it’s going to follow the father, William, which is going to be interesting. I’m still working out kinks on that, but that’s kind of where we’re currently looking.

Well, I personally am a big Tubi fan. Would love to see you hit Tubi.

What’s interesting is, and I was talking to just people in general, Echo Point is only… like 63 minutes, and there has never been a movie like that in almost a decade, I think. That’s what’s different. And that’s why I think it’s going to go very well on Tubi because they basically base everything off of how long people watch a movie. So compared to an hour and a half long movie, which is standard, I think it could do very well.

That was really all the questions I had. Did you have anything else you wanted to just like tell people about Echo Point?

I would say, you know, if you want to check out my studio, my studio is called Vibrolix Studios online. I’m on YouTube at Evan Marcewicz. I’m on Instagram too. So if you want to check out my other work, of course, IMDb, there’s always going to be updates on there.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it. And to the screenagers, we’ll see you all in the Wasteland.