Meet Dan Hertzog

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dan Hertzog. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dan below.

Dan, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

My parents. It’s something that was instilled in me from a very young age. Maybe it was my father encouraging me to always finish my homework before going out to play. It might have been from helping my parents at indoor and outdoor flea markets on the weekends. Perhaps it was holding down two part-time jobs on top of an already overloaded high-school schedule. Regardless, it was 100% from my upbringing and two incredible parents. In fact, later while at USC, I ended up writing a paper on the history of our family; it was titled Diligence Over Intelligence – a theme that rings true to this day.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

To this day, I typically ask people I meet, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I suppose I take comfort in the fact that most people aspire to be something more than they already are. For the better part of my life, I’ve only ever dreamed of becoming a filmmaker. While this goal has always been clear, the route I chose to get there is quite another story.

I saw STAR WARS for the first time in 1978. As a nine-year-old, I was instantly hooked. Like many kids that age, I immediately started collecting action figures, trading cards, and anything else from that galaxy far, far away. Still, my fascination didn’t end there. I was particularly curious about what went on behind the scenes and became obsessed with uncovering those cinematic secrets.

Growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family with absolutely no connections to the entertainment industry made gaining knowledge and experience somewhat challenging. Nonetheless, even before I was old enough to work, I found odd jobs to support my addiction to filmmaking, eventually coaxing my parents into making the three-hour drive to New York Camera where I purchased my first Super 8mm movie camera and projector. With the means of creating my own movies now in my possession, I soon came to realize without a worthwhile or engaging story to tell, my early stop-motion film would have been nothing more than an exercise in technique.

In my senior year at USC, it was a course entitled Designing the Nonfiction Film that ironically put me on the path to a career in advertising. Likely influenced by my father’s years in education, I had previously investigated the potentially harmful effects of television advertising on children. From that initial research, I then delved further into the ad world to write a treatment for a documentary on the subject. In researching the topic, I interviewed one-time child actors, agency creatives, ad executives, educators, and the targets of such advertising, kids themselves. Simultaneously, I was toying with the traditional model of television ads in another course, shooting a spec spot for Hershey’s Milk Chocolate under the guise of an experimental film. My intention had been to see how effectively I could promote such a product merely by telling an intriguing story.

Personally, I like to think that I live life collecting stories for my grandchildren. Why? Because stories are what move us emotionally. They tie us to our past, giving us direction for the future. Since we all have our own collection of stories or experiences, no two filmmakers approach the same scene or situation in exactly the same way. As an inclination, I tend to lean more toward naturalism. I feel that the lighting and any movement of the camera should be organic and unobtrusive. As with visual effects, the art form should not draw attention to itself. Often less is more. Even in my commercial work, I’ve found that this approach places the focus on the performance, which in turn allows the story within each scene to elicit some kind of emotional response from the viewer.

While decades of producing TV commercials has granted me a vast amount of production and post-production experience, I feel it ultimately sidelined my narrative filmmaking career. After all, the opportunities for storytelling in commercials are relatively limited. That is largely why I want to shoot and direct features – to collaborate with artists equally as passionate about interpreting stories with light and shadow. It is in sharing these stories that we will continue to spur our audience to think and grow as a society. Today more than ever, we must work to bridge the gaps separating humanity’s many disparate cultures, be it by creating moving images with some socially redeeming value or those that simply serve as a means of escape from the harsh reality of today’s world.

As primarily a commercial director/dp and feature cinematographer specializing in visual storytelling, I’m eager and poised to make my feature film directing debut with the coming-of-age thriller AU PAIR GIRL.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Patience, passion, perseverance. That’s what I live by. Even now as I struggle to make time for this interview, I’m determined to complete the pilot script for my haunting series DOMINO SPRINGS. This, while finishing two commercial campaigns and location scouting for another narrative project. But I try not to go to sleep until I complete everything on that day’s to-do list. Of course, little did I know 27 years ago when I named my production company In the Wee hours, that the name would turn out to be so prophetic as I routinely toil away until three or four most mornings.

Thirty some years in, I feel I still have a long way to go to get to that next level. To others embarking on or in the midst of a similar journey, I just want to say never stop. Never take no for an answer. On New Year’s Day 2023, my wife Ganna and I made a resolution to produce and finish three short films in one year to kickstart our narrative careers as a formidable producer and writer/director team. The results of never quitting, no matter the strain, are the inspirational drama THE SNOW IS ALWAYS WHITER, romantic comedy DATING AUDREY, and mystery thriller DOMINO SPRINGS, collecting a combined 83 wins and still counting.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

As I move from shooting and directing commercials into more narrative projects, finding those who believe in you enough to support your dreams financially is always the challenge. Largely it was us investing in our passion projects, in ourselves, our careers. But if I had to name the one person who has made the single greatest impact on my career growth, it would have to be Andrew Martin.

I was reconnecting with a high-school friend and describing what we were working on next. At the time, we were in pre-production on THE SNOW IS ALWAYS WHITER and looking for an executive producer to match our investment. As I shamelessly tend to do, I asked my friend, “You don’t happen to know anyone that would be interested in investing in our project, do you?” Much to my surprise, he said, “My cousin might.”

After an initial zoom call with Andrew, and so much mutual respect and admiration for each other’s positions in life, it was clear we’d found our needle in the haystack. Without his support, I could never have finished, let alone shot, these three particular short films in one year, and we’re proud to carry on our working relationship into future projects.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://intheweehours.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intheweehourstoo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intheweehourstoo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intheweehours/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/intheweehours/