Storytelling From Film Set to Podcast: Mason Greer on Continuity, Endings, and Hype
Introduction
Mason Greer had been back from a film shoot for three days when he sat down with ZADAN. Born in Iowa City and now based in Los Angeles, he works as a director, assistant director, actor and script supervisor, so he sees a story from several jobs at once. The conversation moves between what it takes to get a scene shot, what makes a finished film hold together, and why ZADAN wants this show to feel unedited.
Ten days, no prep
Around 5:17 Mason describes Fear Farm, a horror comedy he had just finished as assistant director. The schedule was ten shooting days with no prep at all. For contrast he points to Get Out, which he says had roughly 17 to 20 days of shooting and 15 days of prep for a simpler movie built around one location. Fear Farm had stunts, practical effects, big fight scenes and big trucks. It shot in Davis, California and around Sacramento, mostly in a cornfield so damp from recent rain that, as he puts it around 7:43, everyone's clothes were wet within an hour, in temperatures in the forties.
The person who keeps track
A script supervisor, Mason explains around 26:18, tracks continuity from shot to shot and scene to scene. When something breaks, he raises it with the director and leaves notes for the editor, and after that the call belongs to them. He is fine with that. Editors will "throw out continuity if it means that the performance is better," and as an actor and director he agrees. "Even the best directors have some of the worst continuity," he says, naming Scorsese. ZADAN pushes back on a different kind of continuity, the story itself. He wants a film to be bookended, with a start, a middle and an end, even when a sequel is coming. Mason calls that an industry problem more than a script supervising one, and mentions a documentary about how the economic crash changed the way movies get made.
Spider-Man 3 and too many stories
Around 34:33 Mason dates his distrust of big releases to Spider-Man 3, the first time he remembers a movie that "should have been a slam dunk" letting him down. It had the advertising, the buildup and two earlier films everybody loved. He rewatched it as an adult to work out why it failed. His diagnosis: too many subplots, and "it just didn't have the time or the real estate to execute any of them." Some of the stories even conflicted with each other, so he sorted them into pairs that could share a film and pairs that could not, and concluded that one had to go.
Building a reel, finding an agent
Around 41:43 ZADAN asks how an actor gets started. Mason's credits so far are small parts in two features, a lot of shorts, commercial work and music videos. He had a reel before he moved to Los Angeles, used it to land smaller parts that built the reel further, and kept his focus on filmmaking at first. Then he studied at an acting studio for about seven months while he looked for an agent. An agent, he explains, gets access to roles that are never posted publicly because an open listing would draw too many submissions, and relationships with casting directors do the rest. His strangest audition (around 45:03) asked him to turn into the devil on the spot, not in a flash but slowly, the way a werewolf changes, stretching his fingers and imagining horns coming out.
Why the show stays unedited
The podcast side of the conversation starts around 19:59, when ZADAN says he is thinking about live streaming his recordings. The show is built to be authentic, he explains, which is why he and his guests talk as little as possible before recording, and a live stream would let people watch it happen "start to finish." Mason, who says marketing is not really his thing, likes anything that turns a release into an event. When he puts a short film online, he sets it up as a Facebook event screening, so invited people get reminders and the post has a better shot at getting past the algorithm.
Conclusion
Later in the episode (around 1:07:29) Mason describes what the industry asks of performers: "you have to have thick skin, but also thin skin at the same time." His more successful actor friends, he says, are the ones who are comfortable being themselves. It is the same thing ZADAN is after when he keeps pre-show talk to a minimum, and the same reason Mason will forgive a continuity slip when the performance is better. On a film set or on a podcast mic, the take that feels true wins.
Listen to the Related Episode
"Making Films (On & Off Camera) and The Laws of Attraction" with Mason Greer