Life & Work with Patrick Skeyhill

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Skeyhill.

Hi Patrick, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started off in my school days studying linguistics and languages. I was fascinated by the grammar and syntax that made communication possible. How can a person connect to others? Sadly though, the deeper I got into this area of study, the more I learned how impotent words really are. There is just too much translating that happens, even between native speakers of the same language. But it didn’t take long to discover a more powerful communicative tool: the moving image. The brain interprets images more directly and unbiasedly than it does words. There are stronger and more universal imprints that an image can hold and deliver. Cinema itself has its own grammar and vocabulary that are still vastly underexplored in this relatively nascent medium. I’ve spend the majority of my career in directing and screenwriting trying to discover unused or underused grammatical tools to help grow the language of film in hopes of helping more people communicate the complex thoughts and emotions that are inside them.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I’m not sure if any career in film is ever smooth. I started off in Boston in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. Money was tight back then for a lot of industries and I worked with very tiny budgets. But the MA film commission was still pretty strong back then. They were even beginning to build movie studios out there. However, things didn’t take long to change. The studio project ended up being abandoned shortly after its ground-breaking ceremony. The film commission office started to pull back on tax incentives and other ancillary aid. I’d been in the business for around a decade by then and a lot of the people I came up with had decided to settle down into more stable careers, so my network shrank considerably. It became hard to get any work or even any personal projects off the ground.

Around this time (probably as a large result of it), I fell into a deep depression. In being treated for it, the doctors diagnosed me with a few mental conditions, one of them being autism. This revelation shook me to my core. My whole identity now was in question, but so was my ability to create movies. My viewpoint and world view is so different from the mass market of neurotypical viewers. Would I ever be able to create something they would be interested in or could relate to? I had been studying linguistics most of my life in order to better communicate and connect with others, but with this diagnosis, it seemed that such connections would prove impossible. My brain just wasn’t wired that way. Even the doctor had recommended that I look for employment opportunities elsewhere; the social tools and communications skills needed for such a career were something that I lacked and were likely something I would never be able to develop strongly. This devastating news made my depression even worse. But then, somehow, someway, a thought grew into my head… ‘F*ck ’em.’

I took control over my life again. And I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I decided to move to the west coast, where the film industry was still strong. I went to graduate school to help introduce me to other young filmmakers and grow a new network. I started accepting and leaning into the autistic aspect of my identity. I am now making films displaying a world the way it looks and sounds to me. Stories about people trying to reach out to others. Characters who want to feel connection in an overwhelming and hostile world. These may not be four-quadrant tales, but I’ve always felt that honest, personal stories do have a strong effect on specific audiences. And if there are others like me (autistic or not), then I’d like to think that they might find something helpful or hopeful from my stories. That would be good enough for me.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In recent years, I’ve often billed myself as ‘The Next David Lynch.’ My style leans more into the surreal. I have a strong distrust of words these days, so I try to emphasize behavior over dialogue. I’m not interested in displaying the world as it looks but rather as it feels. Sound design and color play a large role in externalizing the emotions of the characters. My characters are people trying to find a place in a world that feels largely isolated from them. A world that is not hospitable to their personality and goals. They struggle to connect and even to just survive, hoping to find the place where they belong. I’m more interested in the experience of time. I let the character exist in a moment.

Letting a scene unfold in real time to pick up nuance in behavior and emotional responses. I don’t rely on close-ups too often. Because of my autism, I don’t really recognize or respond to people’s faces, so close-ups aren’t super powerful to me. I prefer body language to a facial expressions, so my shots are usually wider, showcasing a character’s relation to a space or to the other characters. This doesn’t mean I never use close-ups, but I feel like TV and low-budget films often rely on them out of efficiency or laziness. I know that neurotypical people have strong reactions to faces, so I pick my spots where I think a close-up would have the largest impact and wait to use them in those few key places. Film is only a 120 years old; compared to other art mediums, like painting or sculpture, it’s practically a toddler. There’s a lot to explore in what film grammar has to offer, and with each project, I like to push the boundaries of how cinema communicates.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Fortitude is probably my strongest quality. In life and in film. It’s something really anyone trying to make a career in film should possess though. This is a business that tramples on self-esteem and self-worth. It requires us to be vulnerable while rarely rewarding us for doing so. Bad news and discouragement are more common than success and recognition. But this is all par for the course. My life has been filled with ups and downs, both in and beyond my career. I’ve been working in film for almost 17 years. Most of the people I started with have all given up. I had to move across the country to keep my career alive. I had to work my way up from the bottom here in Los Angeles and rebuild a network from scratch. If I didn’t find the will to keep standing while enduring all the setbacks, failures, and self-doubt along the way, I never would have made it this far. Without my drive and determination, I would not be here talking with you today. In every sense of the phrase.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.quixoticunited.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quixoticunitedp/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QuixoticUnitedProductions/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/quixoticunited
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/QuixoticUnited
• Other: https://vimeo.com/quixoticunited

Image Credits
Alberto D’Agostino, Kristen Gao, Ziyu Wu, Lucian Jin, Shannon Van Durme