From getting kicked out of his first year of film school to starting his own production company with no money in the bank to winning his very first Pitch on Tongal, life for Tucson-based director and cinematographer, Chance Roberts, has been a mix of scrappy, diligent, self-guided determination and, well, chance.
In the span of a year on Tongal, Chance and his production team, The Dog Days Project, went from making short 15 to 30-second social videos to directing two broadcast spots for BetterHelp, an online counseling service. They made a name for themselves by creating emotionally gripping and visually engaging videos. Here are just a few of the indelible videos they’ve created on Tongal in the past year:
Cage by Dog Days Project
Tight by Dog Days Project
From there, they went on to create two broadcast spots for BetterHelp, which aired at the beginning of this year.
New Year's Resolution by Dog Days Project
BetterHelp liked one of Dog Days' social videos so much, they asked them to remake it for broadcast:
Panic Attack by Dog Days Project
After such an amazing run on our platform, we couldn’t wait to ask Chance about what this year has been like for him and his team.
Maddie: Tell us a little about yourself and your production company, Dog Days, and what set you on the path to becoming a director.
Chance: I was really fortunate in that I got to be one of the weird video kids in high school — like the kind who eats lunch in class while they edit. It allowed me to realize very early on how terrible I was at this sort of thing, and how much time and energy it takes to be any good at it. After that, I tried the whole film school thing, but just after getting through my gen eds I was kicked out of my only film class. By then I had been working on sets around Tucson and was able to adopt mentors that were genuinely beneficial to helping me learn.
A few months after dropping out, some of my favorite filmmakers, Matt Cole, Jacob Gonzalez and I were sitting around my muggy, swamp-cooled living room kicking music video ideas around, all the while being frustrated at our self-inflicted poverty. We were all PA’s and grips at that time, but each of us aspired to be directors and cinematographers. So without any form of higher education and an empty bank account, we figured we’d start a production company: The Dog Days Project.
The directing aspect came later for me. I had spent my early years in filmmaker working as a cinematographer. I still do. I’m grateful to have been so passionate about that aspect of storytelling. I think it gave me an inside look into filmmaking that some directors are robbed of. I still shoot all of my own projects and appreciate how cinematography helped develop my visual literacy.
Maddie: What's the production community like in Tucson?
Chance: Tucson, like anywhere, is a double-edged sword, but I couldn’t see Dog Days anywhere else. It’s where my co-founder Matt Cole and I cut our teeth. There’s some real gold in the smaller, tighter circles of filmmakers.
I attribute my style to Tucson. This city encourages the ambitious approach and thanks to Justin Kreinbrink and everyone at Monsoon, our local rental company, we have the resources to pull it off. There are some real pros here. People just making it happen. Some of the most brilliant filmmakers and top-notch crew I’ve ever met live in this city. We unfortunately just don’t have much of a depth chart. Even with that, I would encourage other filmmakers to consider shooting here. The backdrops look painted and the diversity of landscape is inspiring.
Maddie: Over the past year, you've gone from making videos for Facebook and Instagram to directing a broadcast spot for BetterHelp. What has this journey been like for you and your team? How have you had to adapt creatively to each format?
Chance: I still pinch myself over this last year’s course. When we won the first one, the whole gang was riding a high. It was the first project I pitched on Tongal, so that validation sparked a lot of energy. The final product being well-received was even greater. We were all of a sudden hungry for more.
There’s no way I could have made so many if it weren’t for my closest friends and crew. The ideas being ambitious, and the budget low, meant nobody was making a killing. Yet they all showed up and supported the project as if it were their own. The broadcast spot came at such a pivotal time; it was a way to show the crew, the community, and our frequent lead, Summer Spiro, that all of the hard work was leading to something greater.
I don’t think the creative approach alters much for me when transitioning to broadcast. For the broadcast spot, I brought on my long-time co-director and producer, Jacob Gonzalez. We have identical taste and sensibilities when it comes to film so having someone to collaborate with was beneficial in a major way. This piece is obviously “lighter” than ones in the past so it was wonderful to have someone by your side ensuring you’re hitting the right tone and not creating something sub par.
Maddie: In your BetterHelp work, you've gravitated towards using visual effects to illustrate the emotional state of your characters, such as in "Tight", where the walls close in around the character to represent anxiety, or in "Panic Attack", where worries manifest themselves as heavy metal blocks. How did you hit on this unique visual style and have there been any effects that have been particularly challenging to produce?
Chance: From the inception of these projects, I’ve always found that a real person experiencing some physical manifestation of depression or anxiety adds weight to the subject matter in ways that are more resonant than wordy ads that talk at you. A great deal of the emotional manifestations in these spots come from either personal experience or opening a dialogue with someone who has felt something similar.
As far as challenges… All of them. Each one had a hiccup (or more) that we were able to save someway or another. The most challenging one was our latest: a woman carried her emotional burden in the form of two large concrete stones. The stones came out too heavy and took an entire crew to move. They also had words etched into them that were crucial to see, this meant we had to chase the sun in order for the words to be visible and we never really made it. So we covered it and replaced with VFX later. In the whole process of moving these stones, a piece broke off and scratched my eye, and because I am both the director and DP it meant the shoot was halted for an hour and a half while I dumped water in my eyes trying to regain any sense of sight, the rest of the shoot I lived with my eye glued to the viewfinder.
Maddie: Are you working on any passion projects at the moment?
Chance: Slowly but surely, I’m working on a short film that I’ve spent way too much time writing. It’s really just a story about a family. A boy and his mother and the humans along the way. As long as everything comes together in the right way, I’m hoping to shoot it mixed-format: Alexa, Super 16, and VHS.
