Tessa Blake Directed Over 50 Hours of Television Before Embarking on Her First Feature. The Experience Paid Off

Director Tessa Blake‘s “If I Tell You” is one of the more assured feature debuts in recent years, a subtle and confidently staged drama where each visual decision is as precise as it is emotionally expressive. In telling the story of a 12-year old boy (Etienne Kellici) who becomes witness to and investigator of an assault he can’t completely comprehend, Blake carefully links the camera to her young protagonist’s perspective for an absorbing, haunting drama that lingers in the mind long after the film is over.

That Blake’s first feature is so impressive becomes a little less surprising when one looks at her resume; while “If I Tell You” may be her debut in terms of theatrical filmmaking, it’s the culmination of dozens of hours spent behind the camera directing episodic television. Currently the producing director on “Matlock,” where she’s responsible for supervising guest directors when she’s not directing key episodes herself, Blake has a deep filmography that includes horror (“American Horror Story”), action (“NCIS: Hawai’i”), dramedy (“A Million Little Things”), and just about any other genre you can think of.

“One of the great things about working in episodic is that you become a cinematic linguist,” Blake told IndieWire. “You speak in all different styles and genres, with different visual storytelling opportunities.” Blake credits her television career with building a cinematic vocabulary she was able to apply on “If I Tell You,” a film where she tried to strip down her tools to get at the essence of the story.

“We were really trying to capture intimacy,” Blake said, explaining why she and her crew tried to keep their footprint small and relied largely on handheld camerawork and a limited number of lenses. “We really narrowed our perspective and narrowed our lens choices to share the main character’s perspective. This is a sadly familiar story, but it’s not familiar told from the point of view of a 12-year old.”

Telling the story from the young boy’s point of view meant that Blake had to rigorously remove any temptation as both a writer (she coauthored the script with Jennifer Manocherian) and director to show anything on screen that would be outside that perspective. “I kept disciplining myself,” she said. “If there was something the audience might need to know, but Michael doesn’t know it yet, I took it out. Except for two cases where I break form intentionally, it’s all from Michael’s point of view.”

That approach forced Blake to abandon the sensibility that had characterized her work in television procedurals, where a lot of time is typically spent on the villains. “It was very intentional to withhold the expected third act, which is to say we don’t really spend time on the bad guy here,” Blake said. “By taking away the time we normally spend on that kind of storytelling, it allows us to focus on the human beings who are impacted by these things and explore how we heal and find hope and come together as families and communities with resilience.”

‘If I Tell You’Suncatcher

Although there’s plenty of crossover between her work in television and film, Blake notes that there’s one major challenge when it comes to independent films: simply making people aware the movie exists and getting them into theaters to see it. “The amazing thing about television is that it just comes to the audience,” Blake said. “They don’t have to go anywhere for it, in fact it just comes at you from everywhere — it’s hard to avoid it. But it’s so hard too get an independent film into theaters, which is where you want people to see it.”

Blake and her partners have been working with AMC and other exhibitors to give “If I Tell You” a grassroots theatrical release, and though she says theatrical distribution has clearly been challenged since the pandemic, this year has given her hope. “I’ve been really gratified to see that this is a year when people are really hankering to have that experience again,” Blake said. “And I have to credit my producers, who found this wonderful distributor Suncatcher, which is working really hard to bring the movie to audiences.”

As hard as it is to make and distribute an independent film, Blake is excited to make more and has seen the hunger audiences have to see smaller movies on the big screen. “There are people who have seen all the blockbusters, or aren’t interested in the blockbusters, who want to know, where’s the next ‘Coda?’ Where’s the next ‘Ladybird?’ I hope there’s beginning to be a trend toward a wave of those kinds of movies coming back to theaters, and that we’re a little part of that.”

For information on screenings and tickets for “If I Tell You,” visit the film’s website.