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[Nancy Guppy] Filmmaker Jesse Harris
 got his start as a video

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production student
 at Ballard High School. At age 17,

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he directed his first feature film,
 "Living Life," which got national

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and international distribution.
 After graduating in 2004,

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Jesse founded NFFTY,
 the National Film Festival

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for Talented Youth, and in 2014
 he moved to Hollywood.

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Well, I caught up with Jesse recently
 on Zoom to talk about his new film

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"BORREGO." Jesse Harris, so great 

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to see you and congratulations
 on feature number two.

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[Jesse Harris] Hey, thanks so much
 and thank you for having me on here.

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[Nancy Guppy] So
 "BORREGO" was about Elly, 

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a haunted young research botanist
 who encounters danger

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when a drug smuggling plane crashes
 nearby in the California desert.

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[Elly] Are you OK?

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[Man] Stop. [Nancy Guppy]

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Why did you want to make this film?

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[Jesse Harris] The idea really first
 started with a true story from my dad,

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who he's a volunteer botanist,

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and he was working out
 in the California desert

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like during his breaks
 from the Seattle gloomy weather.

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And he had some other people 

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discovered this plant
 that was growing out in the desert.

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It was like an invasive species,
 and it wasn't supposed to be there.

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And he told me that idea. 

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I instantly got this
 whole kind of concept.

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It was such a great setup
 for why someone would move to

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this tiny little town
 of the middle of nowhere.

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I did some research
 and I found the story 

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of a small, ultralight plane
 that had crashed

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trying to bring drugs over the border
 like that was a real thing.

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And I kind of put them together and,
 you know, I didn't want to make a drug

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or a cartel movie,
 but it was like just a 

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a cool way to kind of start the action 

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and kind of tell
 more of a story of survival 

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and kind of the choices
 that people have to make 

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both on both sides of the border. 

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[Nancy Guppy] There are
 a lot of thrillers

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based on drug smuggling, and often
 the bad guys are stereotypes.

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In contrast, the two "BORREGO"

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characters involved in the drug
 trade are complex with back stories.

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So how important was it to you
 to show their humanity?

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[Jesse Harris] Yeah. 

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Again, you usually see these
 these total stereotypes.

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I mean, I have friends
 that whose family are from that world,

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like it's just it's just 

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you just know that
 just kind of a way of life sometimes.

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It's not everyone is just some bad
 evil person, you know?

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And so, yeah, I thought it was really
 important that they kind of had these

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kind of conflicted sides of them. 

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Where it wasn't they were just
 doing this because they were bad,

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because they were forced to. 

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[Nancy Guppy] Lucy Hale plays
 the lead character, and she

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is an executive producer on "BORREGO,"
 she's a name actor, for sure.

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I know she kind of broke through 

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in the TV series "Pretty
 Little Liars." How did Lucy Hale

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get the script and what happened
 once she committed to the project?

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[Jesse Harris] ICM reps Lucy,
 they read it and they put her name up

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as someone who was looking,
 I think, for a more serious role

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and who might actually be
 interested in doing this. 

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And so she read the scripts. 

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And then I met with her 

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and she was so excited and passionate
 and ready to kind of dive into it.

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This movie would
 have never gotten made without Lucy, 

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and she really put her her weight
 and championed it.

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And yeah, it was, 

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it was amazing to have her,
 and she did an incredible job.

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[Nancy Guppy] Well,
 the setting for "BORREGO"

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is the desert, it's a beautiful
 and foreboding place.

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Can you talk about the importance
 of that landscape

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to the telling of this story? 

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[Jesse Harris] I really wanted 

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the desert to basically be a character
 in the movie, you know?

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And I think it became that
 and I shot purposefully, you know,

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to kind of keep the focus very deep. 

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So, you know, a lot of
 times in movies, 

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it's very shallow depth of field.
 You don't really see the background.

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And so I wanted the opposite of this
 and I wanted to really feel the desert

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and feel that landscape. 

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So we kind of were with the
 with the characters out there.

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[Nancy Guppy] What was

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the most difficult moment,
 if you can choose one of the shoot?

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So much of it was
 the limited time we had.

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So many scenes, for example, where, 

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you know, you see it in
 like one long shot.

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Sometimes it was an artistic 

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choice, a creative choice,
 but a lot of times it was like, OK, 

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this is the only way we could pull
 this scene off is with this one long

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take with them walking through
 finding the bodies, for example,

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like the sheriff
 and leaving, you know? 

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And in the end, it
 probably added to the intensity

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felt like you're with them. But like,
 that was a case of like, we have like

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an hour to film the scene. 

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We can't do the 20 shots and different
 angles I was planning for, you know?

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[Nancy Guppy] Are more doors
 opening for you as a result of "BORREGO"?

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[Jesse
 Harris] I mean, hopefully, 

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I mean, it's just been a few weeks now 

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since it's come out,
 but it's it's doing really well.

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It's it's in the top
 ten on iTunes indie

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charts, you know, it's consistently
 been since it came out.

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So hopefully at the very least, 

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it'll make "it a lot easier
 to make the next movie. 

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It won't take another
 20 years between movies.

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[Nancy Guppy] "BORREGO" is available
 now on digital and on demand.

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Keep up with all things
 Jesse at JesseHarris.tv.

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And catch Art Zone

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Friday nights at 8 and anytime online
 at SeattleChannel.org/artzone.