I interviewed Sasha Sibley, a Filmmaker
This post is the last (for now) in a series of posts about Sasha Sibley and his works. If you’re curious, here’s the order they appeared in:
On 26th February 2025, I interviewed Sasha Sibley, the talented 27 year-old filmmaker from Los Angeles who made his feature-film debut in 2021 with “The Box” and his theatrical debut in 2024 with “The Painted.” The story of how and why this came to happen is scattered across the other 3 blogposts but in short: after watching “The Painted” at a local cinema, blogging about it and then failing to create a Wikipedia article for it, and learning that it was produced, directed, and written by someone who was about my age, I decided to reach out to him and be one of the first to ask him the real questions. I emailed him, we set up a call and the rest will one day be history.
Tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in the DC area, Maryland, Rockville, but I always just say DC. Just kind of simple, suburban life. My parents were divorced, and I jumped around a bit between their houses, but didn’t move around too much.
How did you get into filmmaking?
I always had the interest or the itch to do movies for whatever reason. I just really loved movies. My dad showed me a lot of rated movies when I was a kid; rated action movies like The Matrix etc.., which my mom was never happy about, but they were just the coolest things I’d ever seen, and I wanted to emulate that somehow. My dad had this tape video camera and I just started, filming stuff. This was early 2000s.
When I was 10-12 I started getting my friends together and we started making movies and putting them on YouTube to maybe get 56 views or something. So, that was my childhood. And then I wanted to pursue it professionally so I kept building to the extent that I tried to apply to film festivals. I was set on moving to Hollywood, so I only applied to colleges in LA and ended up getting into LMU — which was a great experience, a great film school. I went there for four years and did a dual degree in screenwriting and production. I learned a lot.
I had an award-winning short film (The Painted) and nobody cared because it was the pandemic. I made The Box. I don’t like to talk about it as much. It’s not that great.
I watched it today. It was great.
Thank you. I think there were a lot of (production) limitations on that film. I made it in college and, the script was one thing and what I shot was another and then I had to edit it and it kind of found its final form in the editing room which was not what I had originally written.
If you read the script, you’d be like, “Whoa, this had very different things going on.” But so many things I was just like okay we can’t shoot this. We can’t do that. There was supposed to be more going on in the box that he’s in. It’s funny because now with AI and all this stuff, maybe some of those weird ideas I had could have been realized.
About that: What are your thoughts on the latest advancements in AI within your industry, and how do you plan to leverage them?
You can’t ignore it. It’s definitely taking over. I am already playing with some of these tools. All the VFX that I had to do for The Painted, I learned myself. I had to do Houdini and Maya. I’ve always used After Effects, so that was easy. I’ve been using that since I was a kid. But some of the 3D software, was a trip. I took a couple classes and there’s some real, geniuses that work in visual effects. I don’t claim to be one of them, but I had to learn. I was like, All right, I’m gonna focus on fluid simulations and try to get decent at that so I can do some of the effects in the painted. because it’s like the low budget mentality.
I think you’re pretty good at the editing part. I would assume that you edited the short film yourself but hired professionals for the feature-film?
No, I still edited the feature as well.
From the sound of it, you never wanted to be an actor. Why did you rule out acting so early on? I did my fair share of acting and cameos in the early days when I was a kid. But — I’m not sure why — I just didn’t really see myself on screen as much. I think I get a lot of joy from being behind the camera and putting something together. Performing in front of the camera is a different skill, and it draws people in in a different way.
About The Box: Was any of that based on yourself, or your life? Was Tyler based on you?
It wasn’t based on me but I wrote about some of the things that I felt in LA. The frustrations. I was never an actor and I was never auditioning so I sort of extrapolated what the LA experience would be like when you’re stuck in that cycle and not getting anywhere. I wouldn’t say I’ve experienced the level of success that Tyler experiences at the end so I cannot tell you if you end up feeling empty or what.
I’m not gonna lie. It was a very pragmatic film. It was like I don’t have a big budget. How many locations can I use like my school? Can I get a deal? This sound stage where it’s a box: The house that he’s in. I had to figure out how to get that. And then the mirrors were just insane luck. Somebody had already sunk 60-100 grand into making these huge 8x6 mirrors. Mirrors are exponentially more expensive to make once you get to that size. But someone had already sunk the money into it and then we just were renting them from this company, used, for a couple hundred bucks. So, I wouldn’t have even been able to make the movie if someone hadn’t already made those props or those flats. So I was like all right, I got to write this into something that I can actually make. I was like, let me see what am I experiencing in LA?
The girl and the director don’t represent anything?
It’s not based on anybody specific, honestly. But I met a lot of people in L.A. It’s not based on an ex-girlfriend or anything — it might’ve just been something someone told me. I met a lot of people at that point, and I think I was like, this is such a common experience. Everybody moves here, they leave their hometown, they leave everything behind, and then they expect to become stars on day one.
But the reality hits totally differently.
Exactly. So I think it was more like, this is a pattern I keep seeing, if that makes sense.
The whole thing with the dream and the script being identical, the director calling him and saying, “Hey, I feel like I’ve met you in a dream.” Does it just represent that two people with similar ideas came across one another and decided to work together?
I think you could say, on a surface level, yes. It’s about the symbiosis that happens when I find the right actor for the right role. There’s this feeling — like I’ve been dreaming of this script, thinking about it for so long — and then I find just the right person.
Yeah, I think I made it kind of mystical and trippy. I probably sprinkled a little bit of David Lynch in there and just tried to make it weird. I felt like I was experimenting with a lot of different things. The Painted is such a different movie — it’s more of a straight-up Hollywood horror film.
What was the budget for The Box?
Oh, it was low. It was like 20k.
What about The Painted?
That one I can’t disclose but it was under a million dollars.
About The Painted: How’d you come up with it and what led to its being developed into a feature-film?
So I’d been writing it for, I’d say, several years — probably seven in total. It went through so many iterations. It started as a feature screenplay, and I thought, Okay, this is a cool idea — you’re summoning a painting, and the painting’s coming to life. I hadn’t seen a horror film that really used that as its central concept.
I liked the idea. The only similar one I could think of was Velvet Buzzsaw, but that was more of a satire — a critique of modern art. I wanted this to feel different, more about old Victorian portraiture, the kind you find in old houses. When I was a kid, my dad had two portraits of his ancestors from a couple generations back. He told me, they’re painted so the eyes follow you around the room. And that always creeped me out. So I thought, let me draw on that — you’re in a house, and this painting… is it looking at you? Is it alive? Is it not? That sense of uncanniness felt really cool to me. That was the origin of the idea.
If I go way back to the true beginning, it actually started as a love story — a supernatural love story without any horror. It was kind of a weird version of the script, but that eventually morphed into the Ivor and Cassandra love story — a kind of tragic backstory that’s now just a small part of the movie, but honestly, one of my favorite parts.
The script went through so many permutations. Then I got a budget for it and realized I had to rewrite it, because the version I had was super expensive, with a bunch of things going on. So I simplified it — made it about just one family. That became the final version.
So again, working within budget constraints, you kind of have to adapt. But yeah, that’s the one that got greenlit. I edited it, did the VFX, produced it — it was a trip.
One of your family members was an executive producer here. I thought initially that maybe it’s a family trade, but from what you’ve told me, I think you are the first person to actually go into it.
So, I produced it with my mom, and it was great — we had the same vision. She handled more of the producer-side responsibilities — the business side, the contracts, all that — and I was more focused on the creative producing. So there was definitely a lot of synergy. This was actually her first time producing as well.
For the most part, I just enlisted the help of people I knew, to the extent that I could — actors I knew, friends. My friend Mike was actually in the short film, and we became really good friends after I made that in September 2020. A few years ago, he told me his whole story — he’s like, “Yeah, I do construction in Australia.” He splits his time between Australia and the U.S., and he actually works for a luxury construction company. He’s really talented, and I realized, Wait — so you can build sets. He was like, “Easy. Easy!”
So I was like, we could do The Painted. It was about finding those kinds of people. He ended up building a lot of the sets we used — we had these false walls where we could have someone actually stand behind and reach through, grab someone, things like that. He helped us tremendously. We couldn’t have done the movie without him — he had the skills.
Overall, I’d say that’s kind of how I approached it. We had a modest budget for an ambitious project, so I thought, All right, how can I use the connections I have, or bring in people who have the skills I don’t?
And in some cases, I just had to learn the skills myself. With the VFX, for example — I took some classes and thought, Okay, I’ve got to get good at this, because I’m going to be the one doing it.
Do you still work with your mom or was that the extent of it?
I think I’d say, for the moment, that was our big project together. It was fun to work with my mom and have that experience. I don’t know if she wants to be a film producer long term — but you never know. We might do it again.
So, who did the art for the movie?
So we had Yun Nam — she’s an artist, and she did some of the special effects makeup. Some of the portraits were actually AI-generated, because by the time I was in post-production, all of that was already happening. And I remember thinking, Jesus, this stuff has been around this whole time? I could’ve saved months on visual effects by using some of it earlier.
Yeah, it was kind of a bummer — because if I made the movie now, it would probably be much creepier, at least aesthetically. What AI can do these days… I mean, this isn’t a dig at human artists at all, but human artists who paint portraits are trained to make people look healthy and attractive. And it’s really hard, as an artist, to go against all those instincts — to try to make someone look horrible and horrifying.
So about your career: What exactly do you want your trajectory to be like? Where do you want to be?
I stopped planning my career a long time ago. things just don’t go according to plan is what I found. I think I would love to still be making films and, I’d love to make bigger budget action films and other genres, in addition to horror. it could be…
Comic books?
It could be, yeah; it would have to be hopefully something that hasn’t been done a thousand times.
So, no Spider-Man?
I’d do Spider-Man, why not? Spider-Man’s great!
Who’s your inspiration? Like filmmakers or directors?
There’s a lot. I mean, the big list that always comes to mind is James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, David Fincher… I’d say Ridley Scott — I love those filmmakers. I aspire to make those bigger movies, obviously. I haven’t necessarily had that opportunity, but yeah, there’s a lot. Oh, and Stanley Kubrick!
So, are you editing or writing these days?
I frankly didn’t want to be an editor after editing for so long on The Painted. I don’t want to do any VFX or editing. I mean, I applaud the people who can do all that stuff. Yes, I still write, and I still have some scripts, and I pitch them — I do what I can in the Hollywood sort of sphere.
Waiting for your big break?
Potentially. Yeah.
Do you know that I’m sitting in Pakistan and that’s where I watched your movie in a local theater? Did you even know your movie was being screened down here?
That’s crazy! I didn’t know!
I had a feeling you might not know and that it might please you to know that?
I love that! I saw Qatar and UAE but I didn’t know it was in Pakistan, but that’s amazing. I honestly think more people have seen it in the Middle East than in the US.
Thank you. This was really fun.
Hopefully this interview reaches people. It was fun doing at least one interview for The Painted, so I’m happy.
This is the first? I think I’ve read one before — Nevermind, it was about The Box. It said The Talented Mr. Sibley. I love that title.
Yeah, that was very flattering. Thank you again. I hope it’s not too late in Pakistan right now — I wasn’t sure what time it is there.
Anything for my favorite director. I hope we talk again soon. I don’t know under what circumstances. Maybe I’ll make up an excuse to interview you again?
If I make another movie, then we’ll definitely set up another interview.
That I would love more than anything!
Thanks again — and yeah, we’ll keep in touch.
All right, man. See you.
Have a good one. Bye.