Do you want to play a game? The team behind thepedersonproject.net, a fan film inspired by the Saw franchise — particularly Saw X — certainly does, along with so much more. The 20-minute short film, which is now available to stream for free on YouTube, explores how Cecilia Pederson’s (Synnøve Macody Lund) medical scam affects young couple Sara (Miya Higashiyama) and Matthew (Nicholas Stevens) and delves into the healthcare system crisis in the US.
I spoke with Higashiyama, who wrote, directed, and edited the film in addition to starring in it, along with co-writer Kirsten Aucoin and A Wheeler, who served as a scientific consultant and publicist and took on the acting role of Coroner Young. They revealed how this project came to fruition, where they’d like to see these characters go in the future, what the response has been like from the Saw fandom (and some Saw franchise cast and crew), and more.
Miya, a lot of people are fans of a lot of things, but few people use that as a launching pad to make something of their own, especially on this scale. What made you decide you wanted to make not only a Saw X fan film but tell this story in particular?
MIYA HIGASHIYAMA: I like to describe myself as a shark when it comes to creativity, which is not always a positive thing, but if I’m not constantly being creative, I feel like I’m gonna sink. For me, the idea of a short film felt like an artistic outlet I hadn’t explored yet because all of my education and training is specifically in live theater. Saw X happened to be the inspo because I had started this Cecilia Pederson/Synnøve Macody Lund fan page, so I felt like it fit naturally.
In terms of this story specifically, there are so many reasons behind it. I think one of the primary ones for me was a commentary on and exploration of the downsides and theft and unfairness of healthcare. Yes, Cecilia is not American. Yes, she’s scamming people in Mexico. But this is an American family we’re talking about, and topics of healthcare and access and insurance and things like that all come up.
It’s tricky because I’m technically the daughter of an immigrant. I come from a mixed background, but I was born and raised in the States, so as an American citizen seeing the healthcare crisis, I think this piece touches on that wonderfully. I mean, cancer is at an all-time high, and I myself grew up in a very kind of medically intensive household. I have a sister with a lot of special needs, so my whole childhood was hospitals and treatments and insurance and seeing the dark side of medicine. I think there’s probably some personal catharsis going on in this project that I’m probably not aware of, but that felt important for me personally in that way.
I think it’s also just a very compelling storyline, and in the context of Saw X, we don’t really get to see the consequences of John Kramer getting scammed by Cecilia on a larger level. We really only see the sort of, “Oops, I got scammed,” and then the traps start. Not to make it super trite, but that’s kind of what happens, so the opportunity to explore this on a deeper level was very compelling.
Speaking of medical ethics and medicine in general, it is, like you said, a very big part of this, and I know there was really great care taken to try to depict all of those things really accurately. For you, A, why was it important to get those scientific aspects right? Obviously, it’s a work of fiction, but why was it important to you to have it so grounded in reality?
A WHEELER: I think it was so important for me as a scientist myself to have that be accurate — and a disabled person who is, to use a Saw analogy here, constantly riding the shotgun carousel. I feel like I’m always riding that, and my science background contributed to the idea that if we’re going to do this storyline, we should be accurate and not hold back on the heaviness and depth of it. I wanted this information to be accurate and very grounded in reality because the more grounded it is, the more impact I think it has. If you completely remove any realism from the science of the story, even if the science is only a support, then I think it has less of an impact. And because so much care was taken on my end —- and I know on Miya and Kirsten’s end writing it — I think we found a good place of realism while keeping the story centered.
Miya and Kirsten, for you as the writers, I found Sara and Matthew’s dynamic to be really interesting and rich. Obviously, we get to know a little bit about them — how they’ve known each other for a decade, and they clearly wanted a child and were excited about that. I’m curious if you fleshed out their background story beyond that. Was there anything about them that didn’t make the cut?
HIGASHIYAMA: Well, firstly, I need to shout out Kirsten because number one, she’s just an amazing human. And number two, she really cleaned up my script in the best way possible, so I’ll be very curious to hear her thoughts on this, too. But for me, I really struggled to write the main characters just because I wanted some distance from them. I wanted there to be a lot of representation in our cast —- queer representation, disabled representation, POC representation — but also, I wanted to write the story separated enough from my own self that it didn’t get into almost dangerous territory.
So at first, I was like, “Oh, all right — Sara is this lesbian woman who’s married to a woman and maybe they’re doing IVF.” And it got very specific to what I would like for my life or elements of my life, and I was like, “That’s a little too close to home.” So it was actually quite complicated. I toyed around a lot with the sexuality of Matthew and Sara — if they’re married, if they’re just in a domestic partnership, if they’re polyamorous. The reason I ended up landing the way I did was because the actor who plays Matthew is also one of my dearest friends in the whole world. He’s so talented, and we have a lot of acting and life rapport together. When I thought of who I wanted to be my partner, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, he came to mind. He’s also gay and married to a man, so we’re playing total opposites here.
I love it.
HIGASHIYAMA: The whole time, we were like, “Are we convincing that we’re straight?” But in our discussions together, I was like, “Okay, this is someone I trust very much.” So it became this blossoming of a very heteronormative couple, although I do think they have very bi energy. I love children, and I would love to have children one day, and I thought the story would be even more devastating if there was a literal infant in the mix. So yeah, I kind of took parts of my life and also the other actors playing the other people, and that kind of informed this family. I don’t know if this is explicitly in the movie actually, but she was a part-time attorney before she had Liam, and he works in HR. That’s actually really dry, but maybe that’s interesting. [Laughs]
It’s a bit of a traditional gender role reversal, which is cool.
HIGASHIYAMA: Yes! Yes. Actually, we did a lot of gender role-reversing. In fact — hopefully, this isn’t too explicit, although it’s in the movie in the opening scene — where there’s hotness and sexy time going on, we actually had Sara be the dominant one and not Matthew just to kind of switch the narrative of it. It was a lot of fun. But yeah, I was just kind of looking for a typical young couple in Chicago, and the vibe is that they love each other very much. I did have a theory earlier in the process that maybe they got married a little too young or Liam was a surprise, and I kind of wanted to explore that more, but we just ran out of time.
KIRSTEN AUCOIN: I don’t think I gave a ton of thought to their backstory, but I did have a similar thought of thinking they got married really young. But a lot of when I was going through the script was making me think of the fact that my mom, my sister, and I all have chronic illnesses, and my mother is currently going through treatments for ovarian cancer. I did a lot of thinking about how my parents’ relationship is and how my dad is dealing with my mom going through cancer treatment. And then thinking about myself and my situations with exes that I’ve had who have had to sit in emergency rooms with me. My sister currently has a six-month-old, so again, it’s little aspects of my life where I’m like, “Oh, that’s a situation with someone with a chronic illness, and her husband does not have any physical health problems, and they have an infant.” I feel like a lot of it, for me, was thinking through all these different relationships I’ve seen in my life and connecting them to the characters.
Absolutely. I think that shines through the authenticity for sure. Miya, I know you mentioned a little bit about casting and obviously wanting to be very diverse and inclusive. What was the casting process for this project?
HIGASHIYAMA: It’s funny — I knew I wanted to make it like a global film project, but I just wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to do that, to be frank, because it was so complicated. It was actually A who DM’d me first, and they were like, “Girl, are you casting?” And I was like, “First of all, yes. Second of all, oh my god — they’re onto something here. I should do something formal.” I think I have almost 1,700 followers, which I know isn’t massive, but with that amount of people, DMs get very flooded very quickly. So I ended up making a little Google form — love the Google Suite — and I basically put, “Write your name, your pronouns, and check what you’re interested in: script writing, acting, editing, producing, PR, whatever. I collected said forms over a number of weeks, and I utilized everyone who applied. I switched around roles within that, but I did utilize everyone because I didn’t want to leave anyone out. I think our team total has 10 or 12 people.
In terms of the acting, I actually wrote side characters in accordance with how many people I had interested in the acting piece. So the reporters, for example, were not in the original script. But then, when so many people were like, “Oh, I really want to be in this. I love Saw,” I thought, “Let’s add these cool, interspersed reports about Zep and Tapp from OG Saw.
It actually worked out so beautifully — I had basically one person interested in each crew aspect. Kirsten was the only one who was interested in helping with the writing, one person was interested in assistant editing, and one person was super invested in cinematography. It just kind of organically worked out beautifully, and then I made a little group chat for all of us, and the rest is history.
Indie filmmaking is challenging when you don’t have a big budget and when you’re working with people in all different areas, and I think you did a really great job of using voiceovers and stock footage as a way of expanding that world to really stretch that money and make it go far and make it feel very big and cinematic. What was your biggest challenge and then the biggest thing that you learned throughout the process?
HIGASHIYAMA: Oh boy — great questions. This is gonna be awfully abstract, but I would say the biggest challenge was I think I wore too many hats, which was, funny enough, kind of the original goal. I wanted to try out everything just to see what I enjoyed. But I think that ended up actually being my vice. I had a visceral moment when we were shooting, specifically the scene where Matthew draws the knife, and it’s very emotional, and there’s blood, and it’s just one of the hardest scenes to watch and to act. I remember that day so vividly. There’s fake blood pouring out of my nose, and it tastes like BO. It’s so disgusting. And I’m trying to direct the cinematographer because he’s not quite getting the angle. And I’m also trying to stay in character, but I’m also directing Nick. There was just way too much going on, and I remember I was like, “I need a time out right now. My brain is in absolute system overload.”
So, while I am so grateful and excited about the finished product, I do wonder how it would have shifted had I not worn so many hats. But that’s also weirdly the part I’m the most grateful for, so it’s very much going both ways. I guess I learned that there is a reason that in filmmaking, one person does one task each because no one person should do everything.
That leads really well into my next question. A, I imagine that you had to do a lot of scientific research. Was there anything that you learned throughout that process that you found particularly interesting in terms of the science and the medical aspects of this?
WHEELER: It started out with, “Oh, what kind of cancer does Sara have?” Miya told me we had the motif for the bloody nose, and Leukemia was my first bet just because you bleed a lot — especially your platelets. So what I basically did was backsearch on how to get to that. It’s not listed, but she has APL Leukemia, which is a very specific subtype of AML Leukemia, and it is very prone to nosebleeding and a lot of the physical symptoms we see.
I also did some research on how just in case it needed to be included in any of the medical script parts. It was really funny — when I took my histology class in undergrad, I was like, “I’m never gonna talk about hematopoiesis,” which is how blood cells are made, and here I was working on a film talking about that. I literally have a diagram in the document that’s trying to break down hematopoiesis for anybody who wants it. And then I was researching cancer statistics for our credits, and I wasn’t particularly surprised by any of them, but I was very interested to see the different ways that cancer rates have changed over the years and different types of cancers are more prevalent now versus then. For example, I remember breast cancer is a lot less dangerous and prevalent. Not to say it’s not dangerous — all cancer is bad — but it’s a lot less prevalent than, say, colon cancer is now. So, I found some of that data very interesting.
I do think it’s beautiful how you ended the film with all of these facts about cancer and dedicated it to people who have unfortunately been lost from it or are fighting those diseases right now. Kirsten, what is the one thing you hope audiences take away after seeing this film?
AUCOIN: I hope it makes people think a lot more about the situation with US healthcare. With doctors seeing so many patients, there’s a lack of connection sometimes that can happen. And I can understand why it happens because, when you see oncologists, they see people constantly who are in these situations. But when you have the very set ways of medical treatments with the attitude of, “This is what we’re used to doing,” sometimes they’ll say, “This is all we’re going to look at.” And that, combined with people who don’t have insurance and all these other situations, there are so many people that get stuck and get very desperate, and there’s a lot of people that, due to that desperation, look for anything. And there are people who take advantage of that. And that was a big thing that I loved about Saw X is that they talked about that. So having this short film that delves into that a lot deeper, I’m hoping that can kind of spark a discussion there, and it can be something that people can either relate to or they can think about if they haven’t before.
Well said. Miya, obviously, you have a pretty intense role, and you did wear a lot of hats. How did you prepare to delve into such a dark place and get into this character? I’m assuming it’s very emotionally taxing. What was the process of that, and did you find any differences between going to film from theater?
HIGASHIYAMA: About every three business days in this process I’d be like, “Why did I write such a messed-up story? I’d be so into it, and then I’d be like, “Oh my god — what am I literally doing?” Because the story really doesn’t match my aura, but I feel like all theater kids love dark stuff. [Laughs] I’m definitely in that category. We like our dark stuff. This was not my first role that involved very serious content. I have played some roles on stage involving really triggering, heavy topics before, so I’m grateful for that in the sense of this not being my first rodeo. I do remember the first time I played a role that involved a lot of violence and domestic issues, and that was very hard, so I’m thankful for my theater training in that way.
However, yes, there are a lot of differences with film. I remember my old director at Northwestern where I went to grad school, who has worked in film, told me once in this process, “Less is more. You’re not projecting to 5,000 people — it’ll be the cameras right here.” And so the whole time, that was really the mantra. Not less is more emotionally, but less is more from a communicative standpoint. On breaks, Nick and I would be going, “Less is more.” So that was a huge mantra for everybody involved — including the cinematographer, actually. He’d be like, “Should I switch?” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no — stillness. Stillness.” We’re all tempted in our era of life and social media, where everything is changing so fast, I think stillness is valued a lot.
I had to take a lot of healthy breaks. I probably didn’t take as many as I should have just because I was loving the process so much, but when we were done shooting, I would put away the content, not work on it at all, take a bath, call my friends or my mom — something just to not think about it for a hot minute. I’m a huge advocate for therapy and psychiatry and mental health advocacy, so I talked to my therapist about it, and I instilled a lot of boundaries within myself.
I will say, from an acting perspective, we’re still in this world where people use a lot of dangerous tactics to act and dangerous methods. I very strongly feel that I hope we reach a point in our acting world — whether you do theater or opera or film or whatever — that we don’t need to go that route because I think we’ve seen the consequences of that. I just want to publicly say that it’s always better to go a safer and more boundaried route for yourself and your colleagues because the other way can be very devastating.
No need to go method and actually bleed from your nose profusely. There’s a satisfying ending that fits into the overall lore and timeline of the movies, but for each one of you — because I’d be curious if the answers differ — what do you think happens to Matthew and Liam after the movie in your mind?
WHEELER: Miya and I were joking about this a couple of days ago, actually. I love a good silly little Saw story, and like Miya said, I’m a theater kid, so I love the dark. My first thought is Matthew apprentice era — apprentice to Jigsaw. He’s entering his reputation era to avenge Sara. That’s my little headcanon. One of the prominent locations in Saw is the Gideon Meat Plant, and we were joking that Liam grows up reading engineering books so he can make traps. That’s a little bit silly, but that’s my fantasy answer.
My second, more realistic answer is I think it would be this huge process of grief and anger because Cecilia is — and we kind of see this in Saw X — very good at hiding herself and getting away with it. It’s canon that she’s been doing this for over eight years. Even if he wanted to go kill her or get revenge, she would be gone. So I think it would be this massive grief process and learning to kind of…not to be a theater kid, but in Into the Woods at the very end when the Baker is like, “Fuck, what do I do without the mother of my child?” I kind of see that learning to grieve and learning to parent and move on with your life happening for Matthew and Liam for real. But, of course, in my little fantasy world, he’s a Jigsaw apprentice.
AUCOIN: I had a bit of a similar thought. Realistically, it’s grieving and stuff. But then I started thinking, and I was like, “Matthew could become like Tapp where it’s obsessive.” I was thinking about comic books where you have the Avengers and then they had the Young Avengers of the new generation, and I’m like, “It’s going to be Liam and Diana Gordon and a couple others, and it will be like the Young Jigsaw Apprentices — a whole spin-off.”
HIGASHIYAMA: I don’t know if this was conscious or subconscious because it’s been so long now, but I wrote Matthew’s dialogue as we get closer to Sara’s ultimate death saying, “I can’t function without you. I can’t do this without you. I can’t live without you. I can’t raise him without you.” I kind of wanted to explore this idea not that necessarily Matthew is overly reliant on Sara — I think this couple loves each other very much — but they’re young, and Liam is not even a year old, and they’ve had a lot thrown at them in a very short period of time.
When I think about grief and when I think about the five stages of grief — and I know they’ve kind of been debunked and you can feel them out of order or whatever — I do think there’s a lot of traits that play into how we feel and process things. For me, I really wanted Matthew in particular, as we see the end of this film, to come to a very raw grief response that I don’t think we typically see a lot. For example, the knife-pulling scene — to an outsider, maybe that’s kind of an awkward scene, but you do unhinged shit when you’re going through grief. Real grief, not necessarily like movie grief, which is not necessarily the most accurate. I wrote Matthew in a way where there’s a lot of denial, there’s a lot of anger, and there’s a lot of fear.
So there are two answers as the film concludes. The happy answer that I don’t think is realistic is that Matthew and Liam live a great life. They go to therapy, Matthew gets remarried, maybe Liam has stepsiblings. They heal, and Cecilia is put in jail, and everything’s great. I don’t think that’s very realistic, though. I think the more realistic ending is…you know what the example I’m thinking of? Tara and Brent in Saw VI, which is the health insurance Saw. We see the aftermath of her husband’s death from William Easton’s insurance policy, which caused this extreme jadedness — and rightfully so. This bitterness and anger. That’s kind of where I see Matthew and Liam headed, with maybe a little revenge moment if Cecilia continues to get away with it. Our movie insinuates she does, and so does Saw X because she lives. But it’s a really good question. I love that you asked that because I was sitting here like, “That’s a really interesting thought.” Sequel, question mark?
I’m very interested to hear what the reaction has been after announcing this. Obviously, Saw is a big fandom with a lot of very passionate fans — you guys are living proof. What has the reaction from the community been, and has anyone involved in the films reacted at all?
HIGASHIYAMA: Saw fans are, like, unhinged, but I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. They truly are just so vivacious and love anything involving the fandom, which is awesome. I get DMs multiple times a day from people being like, “I’m so excited for this! This is so cool. You guys are so great.” Which is so sweet. The good has certainly outweighed any trolling or negative comments for sure.
In terms of the franchise folks, Synnøve follows my page, which is so sweet. It’s been almost six months, and I’m still not over it. She is very involved and sees everything I post and has engaged with a couple posts about the film and watches my stories. The actor who plays Finn Pederson, Donagh Gordon, reposted our cast announcement. He’s liked everything we’ve posted about the film. It’s been overwhelming. It’s been so sweet. It’s been a beautiful example of the internet. The internet is a fire cesspool of absolute hate and atrocity right now, but this — not just this film but the fan page I run — has just been such a huge testament to the good powers of the internet and this idea of global community in a time where our world is so divided. Not to sound cheesy, but I genuinely do mean that.
AUCOIN: We’ve had five of the actors acknowledge the film in different ways — Synnøve, Donagh, Shawnee Smith, Joshua Okamoto, and Paulette Hernandez. Josh Stolberg, who was one of the writers on Saw X, has interacted with a variety of things, as well as James Wan, who is one of the two co-creators of the entire Saw franchise, who directed and came up with the story for the original script with Leigh Whannell. It’s been really cool to see it getting all of this attention from different areas. The Saw fandom it’s definitely a thing, and they’re very, very involved and very enthusiastic with everything having to do with Saw, so it has been a really cool experience to be involved in a project that is getting that kind of attention and enthusiasm.
WHEELER: The experiences that I’ve had are very similar. There are two things that made it feel very real for me, and it ties in with the love and response from the community.
One is that Shawnee Smith has a Discord server. I didn’t even mention the name of the film in it — all I said was ‘film’ — and someone was like, “Oh, are you a part of thepedersonproject.net?” Someone recognized me. And I went, “Yeah, I am.” And that made it feel very real because there was so much love behind that — that someone knew me. Sometimes we do tea and feels group voice calls with Shawnee, and the film came up completely by accident, but her son Liam off-camera was like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that.” And Shawnee said, “Tell me about it.” She was very supportive of it.
The second is that Michael Emerson, who plays Zep in the first film, is an alumnus of my university. I actually spoke with him, and he asked to see the end product, which we sent him. He was very supportive of the idea, and he was very kind. I’ve had more people recently in my DMs telling me that they’re excited —- not as many as Miya because I have a measly 600 followers [Laughs] — but it’s just been wild, frankly.
thepedersonproject.net is available to watch on YouTube.
— Taylor Gates