"Will, that was INSANE! You nailed every single beat!"
As soon as the director yelled "Cut!", Joey came sprinting across the field like she'd just witnessed the Second Coming. She looked two seconds away from doing cartwheels.
The scene they'd just shot was the big turning-point game: the whole team fighting tooth and nail, Will's character having to show the gap between dream and reality, pure stubborn fire, and that "I'll die before I quit" energy, all while the crowd boos, whistles, and hurls racist garbage at him.
And Will didn't just hit the marks; he owned the damn stadium. By the end of the take he wasn't acting anymore; he was radiating that untouchable king energy he's famous for. Like the field belonged to him and everyone else was just renting space.
Joey was internally screaming: Thank God I cast this man.
Emperor Smith for a reason.
Will, sweaty and breathing hard, just gave a humble chuckle. "Come on, director, it's just doing the job. Compared to Denzel or Jamie? I'm still miles behind."
Joey rolled her eyes and smacked his shoulder pad. "Quit the humble-brag, Will. They've got their lane, you've got yours. You know why America loves you? That fearless, screw-the-haters swagger. Nobody else in this town can bottle that and sell it like you do. Nobody."
She spun on her heel toward the monitors. "Let's keep rolling, people! Will's out here conquering souls; don't waste it!"
Deep down she was patting herself on the back hard. Casting Will Smith was the single best decision she'd made on this movie. That defiant, larger-than-life spirit was the exact DNA of the kid in the script: someone who refuses to stay down no matter how bad the world wants to keep him there.
Morning shoot wrapped. Joey plopped herself on a barstool in the fully dressed Mars Bar set she'd had built on location, legs swinging, humming some random tune while flipping through the shot list.
Will slid onto the stool across from her and ordered a mocktail. "Joey, you're a straight-up workaholic."
She didn't even look up. "I wasted way too many years in my last life. Now I'm on double-time trying to make up for it."
He tapped the bar top. "Earth to director goddess."
She finally glanced up. "What?"
"Don't you ever… take a day off? You're young, gorgeous, and rich. You're supposed to be out falling in love, not living inside a shot list."
Joey grinned and leaned back. "Been there, done that. Started dating at sixteen, didn't stop till twenty-three. Half of Hollywood still thinks I'm some serial heartbreaker."
Will laughed. "Yeah, well, when I was your age I was juggling girlfriends like it was a sport. Life's dry if the only thing filling it is work."
She bit the end of her pen, tilting her head. "I have stupidly high standards. Most guys can't even get in the ballpark."
Will raised an eyebrow. "Standards like 'must be a Paramount heir'?"
"Shut up," she laughed. "No. Just… really good at what he does, and emotionally grown. That's it. Apparently that's asking for a unicorn in this town."
Will shook his head like she was a lost cause. "People who make checklists like that end up alone."
Joey just shrugged, totally unbothered. "Then I'll be alone. I decided a long time ago I don't need a man to feel whole. I've got dreams bigger than any relationship. The loneliness hits sometimes, sure, but career highs fill the tank pretty damn well."
Lunch break got called. Before everyone scattered she hollered, "Jane! Get the afternoon lighting dialed before you eat, okay?"
Joey's got three signature weapons when she directs, and she wields all of them like a samurai.
Weapon #1 (we already know): her camera moves and framing that hit harder the longer you sit with them.
Weapon #2: she refuses to color-time on a digital intermediate like every other Hollywood movie.
Yeah, you heard that right. In 2006, when the entire industry is obsessed with DI, Joey says "nah" and goes full old-school photochemical timing. It's borderline insane, and the tech bros lose their minds every time she does it.
Why? Two reasons normal movies do color timing:
1. Fix inconsistencies between shots taken on different days/lighting.
2. Give the film a specific look.
Everyone else scans the negative, does everything digitally, tweaks in real time. Easy.
Joey? She wants colors that punch you in the soul: vivid, saturated, clashing in the best way. Digital can't get her there. So she and her colorist Jane Darin sit in a lab doing it the 1940s way: adjusting the red, green, and blue exposure chemically, printing test strips, watching, tweaking, printing again. It's slow, painful, and glorious.
Because Joey controls exposure and color balance like a dictator on set, Jane finishes the entire movie in half the time a normal DI takes. Grinding the blade ahead of time pays off.
Weapon #3: she treats the VFX team like actual collaborators instead of the red-headed stepchildren of Hollywood.
Most studios shoot everything, toss the footage over the wall to effects houses, and call it "post-production."
On Joey's movies (starting with The Blind Side), the VFX supervisor is on set every single day. They fly to every location, sit in on script readings, shoot reference, run previz on laptops so actors know where the invisible CGI truck is exploding, or which direction the imaginary crowd is running.
Result? The performances sync perfectly with effects that don't even exist yet. Magic.
Five weeks of principal photography—done.
Joey flew straight back to United Artists HQ in L.A. and dove head-first into post.
Because UA is hers, she's got the whole machine at her fingertips. While the film's being timed the old-school way, she's already in distribution meetings.
Marketing wants a teaser yesterday.
Problem: no digital dailies exist. Everything's on film. They literally can't cut a trailer until the movie is fully printed and conformed the analog way.
Distribution guys were tearing their hair out for a minute.
They didn't have to wait long.
Four months later (record time for a film handled like it's 1970), The Blind Side was locked, timed, mixed, and ready.
Joey sat in the theater, watching the final reel, that ridiculous candy-colored, heart-exploding look glowing on screen, and just smiled.
This one was going to wreck people.
In the best way.