- We were looking for a location that could double as the artist studio and the nursing home.

And we spent a lot of time on Airbnb, and Peerspace, and looking around, 'cause of course, we didn't have a budget for a location manager.

And my DP actually found this beautiful old Victorian home that a couple from the city had purchased, and they're both artists.

The couple is renovating it, so there's all this old wallpaper that's peeling off, and you know, it's this beautiful house that's in disrepair and it kind of is a reflection of where our main character is.

She's this beautiful artist who, her mind is betraying her as she ages, And that's kind of where the challenges and the tragedy of the story lie.

We took everything out of the dining room and we created this artist studio, which was really important to me because I wanted to sort of recreate my mother's artist studio.

And it was always a really magical place for me to go as a kid.

I would go after school and she always had knickknacks, and you know, just things she collected that she would make art out of.

She loved to collect little pieces like doll heads, and puzzle pieces, and bits of paper, and she would make paper, and she would make jewelry, and she would take photos and just, it was just a place of creativity.

So I wanted to recreate it.

And we actually lost our production designer three weeks before shooting, which was really stressful for me.

(chuckling) And my husband, who also was producing the project, he's a filmmaker too, just said, "I'm gonna production design for you."

So he came and saved the day, he did an amazing job.

I had all these old canvases of my mom's and he mounted them, you know, he built frames for them.

It was like around Valentine's Day and I was like, some girls get flowers, (chuckling) my husband makes me canvases for my film.

He built the shelves.

So it was really wonderful to work with my partner and also really amazing to use the art from my mom in the studio, 'cause I think she was very talented and it's an homage to her.

Also, our lead actress, Jane Ives, around that time contacted me.

We had just cast her, and she sent me an email, and she said, "You know, I kind of am this character.

I collect all the things you have in your script, like bird cages, and doll heads," and all the things that I've written.

You know, I had just paragraphs and paragraphs of the things that were in this artist studio and she owned a lot of them, so she lent them to us.

She has an amazing studio in SoHo, New York.

And we took all these, these amazing pieces she's collected in her life and those also were a part of the set.

The casting process was during COVID, and you know, we were trying to cast an an older actress, and so we had to do everything over Zoom because it was still in the COVID times.

And we did online auditions with a friend of mine who's a casting director, Michael Walsh, and Jane, who we ended up casting, just, she was the one.

You know when you just kind of see the right, she really got the story and she had set up kind of an artist space and she seemed to know how to interact with the canvas and the paintbrush.

It wasn't an easy audition because there was no dialogue, so it's kind of like, pick up a paintbrush, try to make, try to take a stroke of the paintbrush.

There's no paint on the paintbrush.

Put the paintbrush down.

(chuckling) And a lot of people had a hard time interpreting it.

Also, the nuances of having a disease like Alzheimer's is hard to embody, and Jane's father had Alzheimer's disease, so she really got it.