The new short film Sidekick is, at a surface glance, a superhero story - one that also boasts a familiar cast to superhero adaptations these days, given it stars Josh Dallas (best known as Once Upon a Time's Prince Charming, but lest we forget, also played Fandral in the first Thor), Emily Bett Rickards (Arrow) and Tom Cavanagh (The Flash).
However, the story is actually quite different than one might expect, as we meet a husband (Dallas) and wife (Rickards) who have something important to tell their son (Christian Michael Cooper) – which we see manifested as a superhero adventure, featuring Dallas, Rickards and Cavanagh.
Sidekick was written and directed by Jeff Cassidy, who’d worked in the camera department in the first two seasons of The Flash, and I spoke to him about the making of the short – which you can watch below.
Cassidy discussed working with his cast, the impressive superhero costumes in Sidekick and more.
IGN: How did you first come up with the idea for Sidekick?
Jeff Cassidy: It was a friend, actually. A friend of mine pitched the kind of vague glimpse of the concept years ago and it just sort of stuck with me. I had a couple of things that I was working on then and I needed a break to sort of reset my brain and so I called up my buddy and I said, ‘You remember that idea? He's like, "No, not really!" and we talked about it. "Are you ever going to write that?" He said no, and I said, "…Can I?" He said yeah, I said thanks, and that took up the next year and half of my life!
IGN: You've been working in Vancouver where all of these TV shows film, including the ones your cast comes from. You worked with Tom before, but how did you come to cast him, Josh and Emily?
Cassidy: I did the first two seasons of The Flash and that's where I kind of got to know the cast. But first, I was the focus puller on the pilot for Once Upon A Time way back when and Josh and the rest of the cast and I just got along really well and kept in touch and then I ended up on the same flight as him a year and a half ago right after I had written the short and I emailed him the script and he messaged me back - we're both on the same plane messaging each other. He messaged me back 10 minutes later saying he was choked up and he was 100 percent in and wanted to be involved and he loved the script. Anything he could do. I worked on The Flash with Tom and you know working in the camera department you're standing right next to him watching the guy act and you can just tell he's an incredible actor and just watching him do this stuff... he can switch it on and off in a second and I was like, “Tom, you have to do this thing." And he's like, “Okay, I'm in.” It's really as simple as that.
Emily Bett Rickards in Sidekick.
I've known Emily for a couple years now. I guess I probably met Emily probably the first time her character came over and did a crossover episode of The Flash, and then we sort of just hit it off and became friends. Emily is this great actress and she's beautiful and she's young... I didn't think my first instinct was to think of her as a rundown, blue collar, life’s been beaten out of her, mother, right? And then when we started putting the family together more and more and trying to keep the story grounded and I just kept coming back to a younger family and I called up Tina Teoli, who is the key makeup artist on The Flash, and she was the key on this project as well. I said “Is there any way that if we cast Emily you could age her up a little bit and give her the kind of working class look that Amy Adams had in The Fighter?” She was like, “Yeah, I think we can do that.” And that was that. Then I sent the script to Emily and she was like, “Yeah, I'm in. I love this.”
IGN: How long was actual production?
Cassidy: Because the cast is in Vancouver and in L.A., and everybody's working during the week, we shot on weekends. We shot basically a few Saturdays in a row for several weeks. It was probably five or six days spread over a course of a month and a half, just trying to figure out all the different... it's like scheduling a crossover, right? Trying to figure out all the different casts' availability and then put them together so yeah, it probably took a month and a half to shoot the thing. But only for six days!
Josh Dallas in Sidekick.
IGN: The visuals are much bigger than people might expect when they hear it’s a short, including with the costumes. How did you go about putting all of that together?
Cassidy: I've worked in the film industry in Vancouver, in the camera department, since I was 19 or 20. I just sort of blackmailed enough people! I basically know a good chunk of the entire industry there. I was able to just call up literally kind of the best people in all their different fields and be like, I'm doing this and this is what it is, and they all got behind the script and they all got behind me. They really came out and supported it. The costumes were done by Betty Dubney, who is The Flash superhero costumer. We chatted. She was one of the first people to get involved. She was like, “I will do this for you, but if we do it, we have to do it right. We can't skimp on anything.” I was like, “Yes, of course -- that's what I want to do.” She worked for months building the costumes. She had a team of people and it took probably a good four months to put the costumes together. She worked over Christmas. I owe her a huge debt. I will never pay that off!
IGN: We have a lot of superhero stories these days. Was it cool for you to take a very different direction into this kind of content? People might see a glimpse of it, with Josh and Tom in costume, and think it's one thing, only to find it's a different kind of story.
Cassidy: Yeah, I never set out to make a superhero story. It was not a mandate of mine. It was not something that I would normally even [lean towards]. So it was kind of the other story… I don't want to tell people too much about the story, I want to keep a little bit of mystery, a little bit of surprise in there. It was the real world story that sort of attracted me to these characters and how they deal with the hardship that they're confronted with and how that affects the relationship of the parents, and how a father chooses to tell his son that. That was kind of the really cool story. The superhero stuff was extremely fun to shoot, it was probably the most fun to shoot. It's elaborate and you get to play a little bit more, but it was the other world that actually attracted me to it.
Tom Cavanagh in Sidekick.
IGN: For the cast, who have all worked in traditional superhero material, do you think it was kind of cool for them to get to have a foot in that world yet also be doing something quite different?
Cassidy: I think that was one of the big reasons they jumped at this, especially when you're in a TV show that runs for a couple of years. You're stuck in one role perhaps for years and years and years. I think they were all really excited to be able to explore something different and they all seemed to really relish getting out of their character and getting into another character, especially something that's a little more heavy then they normally have to deal with.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at http://ift.tt/LQFqjj.
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