Tripp and Jenna Watt
1.4: What better day than June 2nd – International Sex Workers’ Day – to showcase your film One Happy Customer. We’d love to get into the craft of the film, but first, how did the story come about?
Jenna Watt: Tripp and I were in Amsterdam with a friend who lived there but had never walked through the red light district. So we said, let’s go – you should see it at least once. You know, all the little vestibules with red lights and glass doors.
Tripp Watt: And every time we’d been there before, we’d never actually seen anyone go in. People just sort of hover, looking. But this time, a door flew open and out stumbled this really drunk older guy. He was zipping up his fly, hair all over the place – clearly very pleased with himself. And the whole street seemed to celebrate. We joked, is that the best customer or the worst?
Jenna: We landed on “best” because maybe he was so easy to please that all it took was a feather. That became the feather in the film – a symbol of her “magic move.” From there, we started asking ourselves: who comes through this space? What kinds of characters pass through this world?
Tripp: And then we read this article about a brothel in Pahrump Nevada – where sex work is legal – and this one woman, Beatrice, had worked there for 55 years. She retired in 2020. She was this total icon – super glamorous, still wore pigtails, glitter, pink lipstick… She claimed to have “serviced” three U.S. presidents and calculated over half a million clients.
1.4: Half a million?!
Tripp: Yep. Wild, right? But she didn’t seem broken down by it. She seemed proud. That duality was really compelling. We based our main character, Rosemerta, on her – this fabulous woman who never found love, but never lost her spirit.
1.4: So when did it become clear you wanted to turn this into a short film, and what medium were you leaning toward?
Tripp: Well, both of us started out as animators, and we’ve always tried to work animation or miniatures into our projects. We wanted to build a world that felt completely hers. So instead of shooting on location, we thought – why not create a miniature?
Jenna: We were inspired by Amsterdam and Paris, but shooting there wasn’t feasible. Building the street gave us full control over the aesthetic. We were living in a warehouse at the time and had space to really dig into it.
1.4: So how did that build process work? Was it spontaneous or carefully scheduled?
Jenna: Kind of both. We started with a concept artist we’ve worked with a lot – Edmund Liang. We can’t draw, but he’s like a mind-reader. He sketched out the street scene and added tons of detail.
Tripp: Then we brought in Jed, a friend and insanely talented miniature artist. We gave him the concept and script, and he said it’d take about four weeks. It ended up taking three months. Every brick, every parking detail, every scrap of trash was hand-crafted. He built it in his garage; we transported it to our house, lit it, and added rain, cigarette butts, all that texture.
1.4: Amazing. And how did you build the narrative? Was it more visual or script-based?
Tripp: We wrote it like a traditional screenplay – really fast, in just a few days. Then we storyboarded every frame and edited an animatic to lock in the timing and shots. Since we were compositing live actors into the miniature, we had to be meticulous.
Jenna: We only had two days to shoot the live action, so everything had to be tight. Our crew was small, and there were tons of VFX. We had to work smart.
1.4: Speaking of live action – you both acted in the film, in prosthetics. That’s a bold choice.
Jenna: Yeah, initially we were going to cast actors, but as we were writing and acting out the scenes together, we thought: why don’t we do it? Especially with the prosthetics, it gave the characters this weird, Dick Tracy-type surrealism. Real, but off.
Tripp: Plus, the miniature street was built on a ramp for perspective. That meant filming the actors on an incline. And we were nervous about asking older actors to do that – it was steep and maybe a bit unsafe.
Tripp: So we went for it. First time in prosthetics. Big learning curve. We underestimated the cost – we didn’t realize you need fresh pieces for each day. You can’t reuse them; they tear coming off.
Jenna: I had crow’s feet, jowls, cheeks, hands – the works. We initially planned to use foam latex to save money, but our prosthetics team advised silicone. Easier to apply and paint, but much pricier.
1.4: Production is just a string of compromises, right?
Tripp: Totally. It started as a silly little idea – “let’s shoot this funny short” – and it ballooned into this massive undertaking. The miniature took three months. The prosthetics. The VFX. But we’re so proud of how it turned out.
1.4: And the live-action shoot was two days?
Tripp: Yes. Two days for live action and two for the miniature, which we shot in our kitchen.
1.4: Did you do the edit yourselves?
Tripp: We started with a rough cut and animatic, then our friend Emilie Aubry did the main edit – she’s fantastic. I handled some of the VFX and graphics, Jenna did bits too. Then our friend Max Colt came in and polished the visual effects.
1.4: Did your collaborators influence the creative much, or did you stick closely to your original vision?
Tripp: Everyone brought something. Our DP, prosthetics team, the miniature artist – they all interpreted it in their own way. Like, my nose as the old man? That was originally a troll prosthetic.
Jenna: That’s the fun of collaboration – when people go above and beyond. We were supposed to shoot the miniature first and comp the actors in later, but the schedule didn’t work out. So we filmed the live action first and built the miniature around that.
Tripp: Backwards, but it worked!
1.4: And I’m guessing you couldn’t go back for pickups?
Tripp: Nope. Once the studio set came down, that was it.
1.4: Were there any major differences of opinion between you two on the film – and how do you usually resolve creative disagreements?
Tripp Watt: Honestly, we’re usually pretty aligned. I think when we do disagree, we tend to go with whoever feels more strongly about the idea.
Jenna Watt: Yeah, if one of us is really passionate, the other usually steps back and says, “OK, you care more, let’s go with it.”
Tripp: And we’re good at recognizing when we’re getting caught up in something silly – like arguing over the texture of wallpaper.
1.4: Was One Happy Customer your first personal project?
Tripp: Pretty much. It’s our first proper short film – first time pulling a crew together and really going for it.
Jenna: We’d done smaller things, but this was the first one that felt like, “OK, this is our film.”
Tripp: What I loved about it was just being able to do whatever we wanted. This was pure freedom. The only limits were time and budget – which made it kind of fun.
Jenna: We moved fast too – like 36 shots in a single day. Almost 40 on one of them, with practical effects and prosthetics. It was intense, but exhilarating.
1.4: What were your shoot days like?
Tripp: Ten hours, officially. But Jenna and I were in the chair for four hours before call each day getting prosthetics applied. So… long days.
1.4: Are you working on another personal project?
Tripp: We are! We just finished a feature script – it’s a Christmas movie with a twist. Set in a town of lumberjacks.
Jenna: And we’re doing it in the same style: miniature sets, real people, a bit of stop motion. We’ve really fallen in love with this hybrid style and want to keep exploring it.
Tripp: We’ve also been experimenting with Unreal and LED volume stages in our commercial work, and want to blend that with miniatures too. That’s kind of our next creative push.
1.4: How did the two of you meet?
Jenna: We met in high school in Tennessee. I’d just moved there and we were in the same English class. We had to perform a poem – most people sang theirs, but Tripp made a video. It was really good, especially for high school. That’s when I was like, “Who’s that?”
Tripp: I was a terrible student. Jenna sat behind me and basically helped me pass. She gave me answers on test days – I’m not proud, but I’m grateful.
Jenna: You were creative though. You had a camera and made funny videos with your friends. I’d never touched a camera, but we started doing stop motion together and just kept going.
1.4: Did you both go into film school?
Tripp: I got a scholarship to SCAD for animation, but dropped out. We moved to New York, started working on sets, and eventually made our way to LA.
1.4: Do your skill sets complement each other?
Tripp: Yeah. Jenna’s got more of a performance background – she’s trained in theatre – so she’s amazing with actors. I lean more to technical – editing, VFX, that kind of stuff.
Jenna: But we do everything together. There’s a lot of crossover, and we’re both pretty hands-on in every part of a project.
Tripp: On set, we’ve been described as an octopus – always running around, involved in everything.
1.4: So how did your early DIY work evolve into the high-end commercial directing you do now? Was it just practice?
Jenna: Totally. We kind of grabbed any opportunity that came along and used each one to try something new.
Tripp: We’re like dung beetles, collecting bits and learning as we go.
Jenna: We never sat down and said, “Here’s our style.” It was more like, “What excites us? What haven’t we tried before?”
Tripp: Years ago, we asked a rep how to get into commercials and they said, “Just keep making stuff and eventually it’ll line up with what people are looking for.” At the time I thought, “What BS.” But… they were right.
Jenna: We never felt boxed in by needing to pick one thing. If a project calls for miniatures, great. If it needs Unreal or something else, we find the right approach for that idea.
1.4: Do you ever fully switch off? Do you have any rules or boundaries between work and life?
Tripp: We’re not great at switching off. But we do have one thing that pulls us out of work mode: party planning.
Jenna: We throw these big, themed experiential parties every year for our friends. It’s like producing a mini event – three or four days long, completely immersive.
Tripp: The last one was in Somerset, in this old English manor where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once stayed. Everyone flew in. We had surprises – like a harpist and a guy playing a hurdy-gurdy.
1.4: So your off-time is basically… more production?
Jenna: Exactly. But on our own terms.
1.4: Final question – do you have a dream brand to make a film for?
Tripp: I’d love to work with Apple again. We did miniatures for them a while back, and I’d love to return as a live-action director.
Jenna: For me it’s about the script – if there’s something fun or unusual in it, we’ll find a way to make it exciting.
Jenna and Tripp
