Mike Southerly is all of us. The writer-director has recently premiered his first feature, Lost With You, and it’s exactly the kind of movie so many fans dream of making: that small indie film with a big heart and a lot of elbow grease. It’s just a good story about two strangers who meet on a hike and unknowingly change each other for the better.

In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Mike spoke about how he made the leap from movie trailers to making his own film. He reflected on the creative process of Lost With You and what he learned from it. Plus, what are his goals as an independent filmmaker?

Brittany Frederick: What made Lost With You the project you wanted as your feature film debut? What about the idea clicked in your head to say this is the right one?

Mike Southerly: I’ve written a bunch, and it was the perfect opportunity [at] a time in my life when I had some time off and the script that I finally thought I could make. Those two things happened right at the same time, and so I just proceeded forward.

I hike a lot in Los Angeles, and the more I hiked with people and [was] meeting different people, I just kept thinking to myself, I could make a movie about this. I could bring a camera up here. I don’t have to worry about lighting, all this—I could come up here and just shoot a movie about two people talking on a trail, and I can do this.

That was the inspiration for writing the script. Because as I was writing it, I was just thinking in my head, how am I going to do this? I wasn’t writing it for someone else to make it. I was writing it for me to make it. And once that moment came that I had a break in my schedule, then I knew okay, now’s the time for me to make this movie.

You have years of experience in movie trailers, essentially helping to promote other people’s films, so did that help you when it came time to shape your own project?

I’ve been making movie trailers for over 25 years now. I started when I was 15. When you’re making a trailer, you’re still telling a story. You have to tell some kind of story in that amount of time. So what I say is that I’ve been telling stories for 25 years; it’s just that they’re only three minutes long. And this was an opportunity for me to tell a story that I had a little bit more time than a couple minutes. I think that’s something that really helped me.

What in the film resonated most with you as you were making it? What are you most proud of?

The performances of the two lead actors [Madison Shamoun and Jake Short]. I got really lucky… They just were both so professional, so good, so willing and they had all their lines memorized—which was a lot. A lot of times, an actor will get a script and the first thing they do is go through the script and see how many pages they’re on. And my first meeting with them, I said, I have good news. You’re on every page. [Laughs.] So they had a good 90 pages of script read and they just really came through. Every day, they were ready. No matter what I asked them to do.

Since you shot Lost With You in Los Angeles, where you live, do you look at the city any differently afterward? Especially since the city is a character in the film?

I certainly look at the places where I hike differently. When we were scouting locations, I was like well, I know this place and I know this place. And luckily, my cinematographer was also an avid L.A. hiker, so he knew all the trails as well. There’s so many places to hike in L.A., so you can always discover new places. But I still, almost every day, go back to those same places that I hike.

And I edited the movie, so I’m very, very close with the scenes in the movie. I feel like, oh, I’m back in the scene from the movie; here I am again. So that’s kind of neat—to have the memories, and they’re on film, of these locations where I still go all the time.

Now that the project is done, what’s the biggest accomplishment for you? Is it just that you finished Lost With You, or are there other things you were learning along the way?

That I got it done. it’s amazing when you talk to people—especially other filmmakers—and you tell them that you made a movie. They don’t care if it’s good, bad; they’re just like, wow, you did it. That’s amazing, that you just accomplished it and that you finished it.

But I’ve been editing movie trailers for so long, and movie trailers are so compressed, and they’re very fast. So when I sat down to edit my movie, I was nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to have the rhythm of editing a feature. That took a little bit of time to get, but I think I came through. So I’m happy with that accomplishment—to be able to say, I can edit a two-minute trailer or I can edit a 90-minute feature.

Do you set a different standard of success for yourself, knowing that it’s your first feature, and also as you said, an indie film? What will make you feel satisfied with the outcome?

What’s been the most measure of success for me is when I have people come to me and say wow, I was really affected by that, and I had a conversation with somebody because of the movie. Or it opened up this for me, and it had an effect on their lives. If it can have an effect on someone’s life, I think that’s a great measurement of success for the movie.

We would be remiss if we didn’t discuss your favorite Los Angeles spots. So after people have seen Lost With You, where should they go?

One of my favorite places since I’ve lived here is the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s so historic, seeing a movie there… Going to the Chinese has always been a happy place for me. And they converted it to an IMAX—so it’s one of the best theaters in the world, but it’s also one of the oldest theaters in the world. It’s a hundred years old, this theater, so you’re really getting some history. And the sound and the picture and everything is really the best. It’s the best moviegoing experience in L.A. as far as I’m concerned.

To watch Lost With You and learn more about the film, visit the website. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Magnify Public Relations.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.