Damien Chazelle’s film “Whiplash” won 3 Academy Awards this weekend at the 87th Academy Award for best supporting actor, editing and sound mixing. Chazelle wrote and directed the film.

“Whiplash,” is an intense film centered around two ambitious musician – a 19 year old drummer (Miles Teller) and his draconian music instructor (JK Simmons).  This tightly scripted film takes you behind the scenes and offers a rare glimpse of what it takes to make that beautiful music. Ambitions and dreams are sometimes shaped in very tough environment and that is what you get to see this film. The film is inspired by Chazelle’s own experience learning music as a high school student.

Chazelle was in San Francisco bay area last year for the screening of his film at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Lars Ullrich of Metallica picked “Whiplash” as his choice of film at the festival. It was a dream come true as Chazelle points out in the interview I did with him.

Here is a highlight of a longer interview I did with Chazelle. In the longer interview we spoke about how he got the idea for the film, working with JK Simons, how they made the film and edited it, his love for music especially big band music and his next feature film.

You can watch the full interview with Chazelle here.