The Sheep Detectives with Kyle Balda and Jonathan Goldstein (Ep. 614)

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

Directors Guild of America

Tv & Film

4.6 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Director Kyle Balda discuss his new film, The Sheep Detectives, with fellow Director Jonathan Goldstein in a Q&A at the DGA theater in Los Angeles. In the conversation, he discusses making the jump from animation directing to live-action directing for the first time, carefully balancing the tone with humor while handling themes of grief, and studying the movement of real sheep to recreate body language that could be used in the visual effects. The film tells the story of a shepherd named George, whose only friends are the sheep to which each night he reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending that they can understand. When he is found dead, the sheep suspect murder, and attempt to guide a bumbling policeman into solving the crime. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://www.dga.org/events/2026/july2026/sheepdetectives_qna_0526

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the sort of rule that we had was just that we can't do anything that a sheep can't do.
0:05.3	Graham Page at Framestore and his team shot hours and hours of sheep.
0:10.9	And they would always say, like, well, this little movement that happens here could be really great when Lily's upset and she like stomps.
0:18.0	You know, and so we're constantly referencing those types of things and then
0:21.3	trying to, yeah, just find the interpretation between what a human would do and what the
0:25.4	animal would do.
0:49.1	Yeah. Hello, and welcome back to the director's cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.
0:55.3	In this episode, a flock of sheep take it upon themselves to solve the mysterious murder of their shepherd,
0:59.4	and director Kyle Baldow's whodunit comedy, The Sheep Detectives.
1:09.5	The film tells the story of a shepherd named George, whose only friends are the sheep to which each night he reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending that they can understand.
1:15.3	When he is found dead, the sheep suspect murder, an attempt to guide a bumbling policeman into solving the crime.
1:18.5	The sheep detectives is Baldi's live-action feature debut.
1:22.4	His animated directorial credits include the features, Minions, Despicablee 3, and Minions The Rise of Gru.
1:30.3	Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Baldes spoke with director Jonathan Goldstein about filming the sheep detectives.
1:40.3	Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation. So first of all, congratulations.
1:53.0	Thank you.
1:54.0	It's a fantastically fun movie.
1:57.0	As I understand it, it started with a German book that was written 20 years ago.
2:02.1	How does that make its way to you and interest you in a way that you have to make this?
2:07.6	It came to me actually through the script first.
2:10.6	I didn't know about the book originally.
2:12.6	Lindsay Doran heard about the book and she just knew that that was going to be a great premise for a film.
	...

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