How the BC filmmaker turned a series of Craigslist encounters into a psychological thriller
In Follow Her, Vancouver actor/screenwriter Dani Barker plays Jess, an aspiring actress who secretly films herself performing weird gigs she comes across on the internet—like getting tickled—and posts the videos for her followers. After a technical glitch in one of the videos reveals more than she intended, Jess finds herself in a cat-and-mouse game with a mysterious filmmaker (played by Luke Cook) who hires her to finish his script. Directed by Sylvia Caminer, the movie is currently making the rounds of festivals, including Vancouver Horror Show (Nov. 5-8), where it will make its Canadian premiere 4:45 p.m. on Nov. 6 at Marine Gateway. I talked to Barker about the film, her own experiences answering Craigslist ads, and the movies that inspired her.
Getting out of Salmon Arm
Q: When and how did you get out of Salmon Arm?
A: I got out as fast as I could. I left as soon as I finished high school.
Q: Did you know then that you wanted to be in show business?
A: I knew I wanted to act. I went to school for an acting for the camera program in North Vancouver then a theatre arts program in Edmonton at MacEwan. I did that for two years with the intention of doing theatre and then I was hit with the hard reality that it’s very difficult to make a living as an actor on the stage. I decided to take the plunge and move to Toronto and test the waters in the film industry. And I stayed.
Q: When did you move back to Vancouver?
A: I spent six years in Toronto, then New York for four years, then came back in 2020 just when the pandemic took off.
Q: So you filmed your webseries Starvival in Toronto. Was there a large pool of weirdos to pull from?
A: Yeah. Toronto is full of characters. It was a different time then. Craigslist was such an abundant platform to get jobs from. I was making my living going from job to job. When I’ve looked at the TV/film section of Craigslist now, I don’t see a lot being posted anymore.
Starvival takes off… almost
Q: How long did you do Starvival for?
A: Six years on and off. Maybe five years. Maybe four. I did it for a few years on and off. I started in 2010.
Q: It was picked up for a TV show but never aired, is that right?
A: It got picked up by VH1 originally. We went to New York and filmed a pilot. That turned out really well. Then VH1 sat on it, passed on the concept, then TBS acquired it, and we went back the following year and shot a whole season, and then essentially the same thing happened where TBS sat on it and the show went into hiatus. At that point they were planning on launching a digital network that never happened. Essentially the show just got canned.
Q: That’s a lot of ups and downs.
A: That’s why I left the industry for a while. I took a breather for two years. It was around the end of the two-year mark that I started writing scripts for people. On Craigslist! (laughs) Getting paid $100 for four-to-five-page scripts for a guy I found on Craigslist. What got me back in was getting excited about the concepts I was coming up with. Then I got excited about the idea for Follow Her, formerly called Classified Killer. I got so excited by this concept it gave me chills. The same thing happened with Starvival: “Oooh, there’s something here.” And I thought, no way am I giving this concept to this guy for a hundred bucks. Maybe half a year after that I dove in and developed it into a full feature. It didn’t take me that long after that.
A glitch in the system
Q: One of the interesting things about the story is the instigating incident, which is a glitch in the technology. But that would not have happened back at the time of Starvival.
A: The technology was completely different. When I started Starvival I was using old camcorders. Smartphones had barely come out. I was using this really cool hidden camera. I call it a “hidden camera.” It was this waterproof camera that looked like a smartphone. So when I would meet with people from Craigslist in coffee shops I would just hold it in my hand. At that time people assumed it was a smartphone. People weren’t as interested to know what kind of phone everyone else had, so no one asked about it. When I continued to do Starvival everyone else was in tune with everyone’s phone, and I couldn’t hold it in my hand anymore. It shifted a lot. I had to be more clever with where I placed it.
Q: Did you worry about technological glitches like the one that occurs in Follow Her?
A: Follow Her is livestreaming. There are different stakes involved. Her platform, the Live Hive app, does the face distortion for her. I would have to blur out people’s faces as I was editing.
Q: Did you ever get any blowback from anyone who saw themselves in a video?
A: No, I don’t think so. The first episode I launched, 50 bucks to get tickled for an hour, that guy found the video eventually because he’s part of the tickling community. And he was excited by it. I never put anyone in harm in that way, by exposing their identities.
Financing Follow Her
Q: What kind of a struggle was it to make the movie?
A: A lot. There was a lot of struggle. Financing was definitely the most challenging part and the reason it took as long as it did to make. We split up the budget into three parts so that it was more attainable to raise the money. As the film grew the budget grew with it and that was a whole other challenge in itself. I would go about things differently in the future. I wouldn’t allow that to happen. I would lock the budget and stick to it. I would lock the script and stick to it. We were making a lot of changes as we went because we were learning as we went. I learned for financing that you really have to lean on your friends and family. I started there. I gently harassed my family, which is very Starvival-esque. I was fortunate to get support in that. That’s what launched it. As an independent filmmaker the hardest part is getting that first money in. Once you get that, it’s easy to move forward with confidence and approach other investors.
Q: Has your dad see the portrayal of Jess’s father in the movie?
A: No. And the reason I’m so excited about the Vancouver Horror Show is because it’s the first time my dad is going to see the film. My dad and brother were both huge champions of this project. I think my dad is more a champion of me than the film itself. But they’ve been involved since the beginning. I’m really excited, and nervous, for them to see it. I’m only nervous because of the promiscuous element in the film. But I’m more proud than anything.
Q: There’s that scene towards the end where you’ll probably be blushing.
A: Well I will get the hell out of the theatre! I want to warn them to close their eyes but I can’t do that without giving it away. You have to separate yourself being an actor from being a sister and daughter.
Finding director Sylvia Caminer
Q: How did you find your director? Did you want a female director?
A: I made a lot of decisions kind of on a whim. Sylvia came to me through a bit of a legend in the New York underground film scene, John A. Gallagher. He was the first champion of the project. What an amazing guy. He’s one of our executive producers but never got to see it. He passed away during COVID. He’s the one who put me in touch with Sylvia. He initially wanted to direct it. I was all for that other than that I wanted to film it within a month of when I pitched it and he was busy with another project.
Q: How good were you at taking direction, especially since you’d written the script?
A: Sylvia is a great director in that she’s not pushy and she doesn’t demand anything from you. She gives you a lot of freedom to be however you need the character to be. I felt a lot of freedom to bring Jess to life in the way that I wrote her. We didn’t butt heads. I think what was really challenging for me—I didn’t realize it until I was on-set—was that, having written the script, you don’t realize sometimes how many images or ideas that you have around the story until you’re watching someone else direct it. It wasn’t her directing me that was ever a problem but when I was I was witnessing her directing other actors, that’s when I realized I had my own vision around things. I think that’s why writers do end up directing their own projects.
Influences on Follow Her
Q: Are there any particular movies that inspired the tone of Follow Her?
A: There were a lot. I was really studying Hitchcock films at the time. The other movies that I looked at were films like Don’t Breathe, because it’s primarily one location and a small cast, to understand how they keep the stakes so high. Other films like Berlin Syndrome. I’m not sure if it hit mainstream media but it’s a fabulous film. Again, it’s two characters primarily in one location.
Q: Follow Her is primary a thriller, but it’s in all these horror film festivals, and it does have a few horror tropes.
A: We never intended to make it a horror. It was always an erotic psychological thriller. Since we’ve been showing it at festivals, people tell us how scared they were. We knew some of the parts of the script were pretty freaky.
No, that’s not Dani’s cat in Follow Her
Q: One thing that drew me immediately into the movie was Jess’s cat. Is that your feline?
A: I was going to have my cat. But when I was in New York the cat passed away. Sylvia, who is as much of a cat lover as much as I am, volunteered her cat immediately. I didn’t have to think twice.
Q: Do you have another movie in you?
A: Yeah, I do. I have a few projects in development. I’m going to be working with Tall Pines Entertainment, one of the companies that supported Follow Her. We’re putting together a slate of films for the next few years. I have two scripts written on my own, one is a thriller/horror, the other is a sex comedy I wrote before Follow Her. I’m pushing those into development. I’m hoping to shoot the horror film early next year and the sex comedy in late fall. On top of putting together other projects. That’s the plan.
Q: Finally, Starvival pays off!
A: Yeah. Well, we’ll see. It’s a tough industry out there for independent filmmakers. Send us some prayers, please.