Soundless encounters

According to Marshall Curry, a great way to learn how to make documentary films is to watch them. Check. Then watch them again – with the sound off. I decided to give it a shot with Encounters at the End of the World, the Oscar-nominated film by Werner Herzog, that I watched yesterday. Conclusion: it’s work, but it works. Here’s what I picked up.

As a director, Herzog is enraptured by the beauty of the underwater world beneath the ice. He opens the film with that. This is a foreshadowing of the visual goodies we can expect to see if we stay with the film.

Herzog then switches to linear chronological storytelling: we see a big plane in the air, establishing that the filmmakers are on their way to make a film. Briefly he cuts to a shot of Lone Ranger riding his horse and footage of jungle ants milking sugar water from captured prey which, combined with his narration which I couldn’t hear, establishes his feelings about the journey, the questions he’s here to explore, and shares his perspective.

Then we see something often repeated in the film: a steady succession of storytelling shots which make use of different focal lengths and approach, but combine to establish what’s happening: 1. plane landing, medium shot. 2. plane taxiing into frame (closer shot). 3. plane taxiing away (wide shot).

Cut to historical footage. This allows more musing on the part of Herzog about what has gone before, and what is here today. Next shot is a fine example of a contrast cut: he cuts directly from shackleton’s team pushing sleds over ice ridges to close shot of the wheels of a giant “terra bus” used to ferry arrivals to McMurdo Station. This powerfully illustrates how far we’ve advanced since Shackleton’s time.

To get us into the first interview, he set up a tight shot of the stairs being lowered on the massive bus, from which the driver descends. Then we get into the first interview. It’s a nice visual bridge. It’s a “first step” into the story.

He uses a similar one-two edit on the next interview: 1. tight shot of caterpillar claw raking earth. 2. wide shot of caterpillar driver parking, dismounting, and walking over to the camera.

Interviews follow convention of positioning interviewer between key light and camera (most often the sun or window, although some scenes, even outdoor ones, appear to have been very subtly lit – but most are natural light throughout film).

Another 1-2 editing sequence: 1. Zoom out from ice cave (on sticks). 2. static shot of icicles inside cave.

Slow pan over McMurdo shows what the place looks like (and gives Herzog plenty of time to talk about his reaction to the place). There are many slow pans and zooms throughout the film, which does seem a bit amateurish – but presumably they were traveling light. It works.

In next interview, the detail of the scientists iceberg simulation is shot right off the screen, rather than captured in a quicktime file. This leads to one of the rare dissolve edits in the film (most are simple cuts)  in which the simulation dissolves into one of the recurring visits to Shackleton historical footage – a shot of a man floating on a smallish chunk of ice while paddling furiously.

From there we have a brief interview with cook – showing off the McMurdo ice cream machine, which seems bizarre in such a climate. A lesser filmmaker wouldn’t have noticed the irony, and including this helps establish that some things really don’t make sense down here at the end of the world.

Another wide establishing shot of McMurdo, followed by slow zoom into city. One thing I noticed about the zooms is that they are always consistent speed – and the camera is usually on sticks when the zooming is happening.

The survival scene is priceless: it works visually as a metaphor for people blindly clawing their way around following each other despite having no idea where they are going. And it’s just plain funny. It’s all shot off shoulder, which, like most of the shoulder and handheld shots in the film, looks unsteady relative to what you’d expect in a film made by a filmmaker of Herzog’s calibre. I’m guessing the choice was deliberate, or at least a deliberate choice to live with the limitation so they could travel light and work fast. The camera work explores the subject in a lot of fairly lengthy cuts, complete with camera turns, approaches, and sweeping shoulder pans. The pans end crisply – no noticeable wobble. That takes practice. Nice mix of shots: detail shot of boots, bucket with face scrawled on it, contrasted with wide and medium shots of people.

From the simulated whiteout, we cut to a real whiteout – a nice transition to next sequence. This was some of the only whiteout footage that happened on the trip, though, and he gets back to nice weather with a nice scene of snowmobile overtaking another snowmobile, with camera pointed at nice, then you see that we’re on a snowmobile, then we overtake the one ahead, and now we stay abreast of it for second until the cut. For shots taking from a moving vehicle, it’s nice to shoot another moving vehicle that is moving a slightly slower or faster speed to give something interesting to look at and illustrate what’s going on.

Herzog’s cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger used very little shallow depth of field in this entire film (possibly because it was shot on an HDV camera which likely had 1/3″ sensors – at one point you can see what appears to be a prosumer video camera reflected in the sphere at the South Pole). Most of the interviews have a lot of background visible at beginning, then cut to a medium shot, and zoom in for emphasis at key points, or cut to tight shot. I noticed that on the medium and tight shots, the person was positioned close to center but just to one side. So he didn’t really follow convention of putting person clearly to one side or the other, and it works fine.

The scene where the scientists are listening to the ice is a great example of how he anticipated the edit, and then went out and got the best quality recording of seal sounds he could get (the Wikipedia entry for the film says it came from Douglas Quin, a sound expert.) But the visuals he pairs the incredible sounds with are really quite simple, and in fact, not well exposed (the faces are very dark). Herzog mentions what a bitch it was to shoot in the bright sun and ice, and I’m sure that’s true.

Another well-crafted transition: 1. Face of scientists pressed against ice listening to sci-fi seal sounds. 2. Cut to torch being ignited with a loud “pop.” 2. medium shot of him soldering pipe with torch. 3. cut to interview tight shot of face and hands. This is great way to get into the interview, and he uses it throughout the film as a way of introducing us quickly to the characters while moving the film along lyrically. For the interviews, when the camera is on sticks (about half the time) the camera operator stays on top of the action, and isn’t locked off – there is reframing.

Lots of helicopter footage bridges the sequences. Then wide establishing shot of hut where divers dive from. I mentioned the dive scene previously, so I’ll skip to this memorable scene after the dive, with the characters at rest in their hut watching a movie. This scene was obviously staged: the camera walks in slowly to the room, approaches one of the guys, then turns slowly, on cue to where they had set up the dvd, and then walks toward the small screen on which an old sci-fi film, “They,” was playing. Just at the moment the camera gets close to the screen and pauses, a nuclear flash detonates on the screen. And we hear horrible shrieks and drama with insects attacking people. It’s perfect match for Herzog’s narration.

One interesting technique: I noticed that in the interview with globe-traveling woman, he rolls on the hallway of her place for a good 10 seconds, before turning and walking slowly into her room, where she is painting. The next cut and we’re into the interview with her, of course. But the conscious decision to roll extra time at beginning of interview allowed Herzog to use that to set up the interview with his narration. I’m guessing he had his dp do that for all the interviews, and it’s a technique that I am going to adopt in interview situations to provide maximum flexibility in editing: roll 10 count BEFORE interview, and 10 count AFTER interview.

There are a ton of really WIDE shots in the interiors during the film. So much, that you see the world distorting when the camera pans – the straight lines are bent. It’s a little distracting, but clearly, this film was more about story and less about perfect cinematography.

From the interview with the guy who always has a pack ready to go (which includes a raft), he cuts to Shackleton’s ship pushing through icebergs. Interesting non-linear cut, because we’d already seen Shackleton’s ship founder on rocks in previous historical footage. But sets up next scene: we visit Shackleton’s camp, which is almost perfectly preserved by subsequent explorers and the cold air.

Next is a sequence dropped in (and lower film quality) of odd dude who aims to break weird records like walking with milk chocolate on his head, or doing most number of miles via summersault, in strange places like Antarctica. The whole sequence is created from archival footage – Herzog just needed the freakiest freak possible to carry the narration, and somehow got the footage to support it, and didn’t mind that it brought down the technical quality of the film. Archival footage you can get away with a lot, apparently.

The most memorable sequence in the film, with the sound ON, was this next one, of the penguin. Specifically, the one who wanders away from the pack to certain death. But I noticed with sound OFF, that it really doesn’t have near the arresting power as it did with the narration. In fact, it could have easily been camera angle trickery, it seems, so we trust Herzog to be telling it like it was. I was surprised just how much depended on his narration when I watched the same sequence without sound. Just goes to show that you can make good footage a LOT better with supporting sound and narration.

Another 1-2 cut: flying over volcano’s rim, to standing on the rim. This 1-2 editing works great to get us into the interviews. Herzog uses footage from the cameras to show eruption, as it wasn’t erupting when he was there, as well as dramatic footage of first explorers, who were injured by eruption while attempting to descend into it. His narration again makes the footage look MUCH more dramatic than it really is when you watch with sound off.

The shot of ice-covered machinery, and crashed helicopter (explored from several angles by camera) is great visual for narration.

The scenes shot under the pole in the dark tunnel are truly alien. Lighting them by using scientists flashlights to illuminate the objects – sturgeon, popcorn covered shrine, adds to otherworldly vibe.

I noticed two sections of the film fading to black and fading up, presumably indicating an act change or significant new part of film. And yet I didn’t feel like the film was really composed of acts.

One thing I wondered: did they film some of the helicopter stuff at 60p and then conform it to 24? That would probably help smooth out the shots, which do look slow mo in some cases. And explain why some of the helicopter footage is lower quality than the rest of film (assuming rest was shot at 1080p).

Another beautiful cut: After climbing around in fumaroles, there’s a wide shot of the snowy fumarole, and the camera tilts up slowly, until we see the sun filling the frame (which causes light to stop down, narrowing the size of the sun). Bang! We cut to big snow machine carrying a piece of aluminum that the sun is reflected in, which carries us forward into the next scene of the film – the helium-filled balloon launch, to study nutrinos – the films last sequence.

There’s the last interview with the handsome nutrino researcher who waxes philosophical about nature of existence, hinting that we’re coming to end of film. He describes an explosion at end of his interview and we cut to scene of the doors where balloon was stored opening to let sun shine in for one brief second – great edit. Then it’s over, fade to black.

Up comes three words in simple white Times font (which all text in film is set in): “For Roger Ebert.” I did some Googling, and it turns out that Roger Ebert has been a huge supporter of Werner Herzog, helping his films receive a wider audience than they might otherwise have achieved. In this open letter to Werner Herzog, Ebert says this, which is the highest form of praise any documentary filmmaker could hope for:

You have the audacity to believe that if you make a film about anything that interests you, it will interest us as well. And you have proven it.

After watching Encounters at the End of the World last night, I think the film’s subtitle should be: filtered through Warner Herzog’s brain, things get strange.

Synopsis: German filmmaker Warner Herzog visits Antarctica, lured by haunting images of divers swimming under the ice shot by a friend. While there he makes some arresting images of his own, and meets some unusual characters, both animal and human. Apparently taking it as an article of faith that humans will one day go extinct as a result of global warming, he trains his camera on what aliens might one day learn about us based on the well-preserved evidence left behind on this beautiful, brutal continent by explorers dating back to Shackleton.

Story and Structure: The film is a personal narrative, a travelogue that follows a roughly chronological structure, beginning with Herzog’s arrival by plane in Antarctica, and concluding somewhere near the end of the trip (we don’t actually see him leave). Herzog narrates the film from beginning to end, explaining why he came here, complete with details about how the film was funded, and what interests him about the place and the people he finds. In between the narrated bits, the story is advanced by interviews with the characters Herzog meets, whom he questions (with his voice clearly audible off camera). The interviews often give way to scenes of the people doing their thing – exploring volcanos, diving under the ice, harvesting seal milk. Herzog supports his story with a few archival clips from Westerns, as well as historical footage from Shackleton’s voyage. And ultimately his story is this: man goes on a quest seeking things, sometimes finding them, sometimes not, but ultimately bearing witness to the incredible misery, mystery and beauty of the universe, which is itself completely impervious to us.

Cinematography: This is a beautiful film. And yet, it’s full of handheld, jerky shots that at first made me think: how come he didn’t steady that? On second thought, it’s perfect – the world as Herzog sees it in this film is imperfect, conflicted, and a less-than-perfect camera work emphasizes this point. Shots that would have used a steadicam or dolly in a slicker production are simply walked into with the camera shoulder carried.

Another interesting thing I observed was that a few of the interviews used direct address: with the subject talking straight into the camera. It’s not a convention, though: many of the interviews are conducted with the person looking off axis. The interview with the Apache plumber is an utterly fantastic example of why great camera operators always leave the camera running after the person appears to be finished speaking: the guy just stands there with his fingers together, and then goes back to work. The camera operator keeps the camera on him. The guy sees the camera is still on him, so he feels the need to perform. He grabs the torch, and says “I call on the spirit of my ancestors! Let there be fire!” It nails his character. Takeaway: Always roll at least a 10 count after you think the shot has ended. Always.

Editing: I like how simple editing conventions are used to get us into the various points in the story: for example, the scene in which the milk is harvested from the seals, opens with the seals being milked. Then we cut to a wide shot of the ice-perched lab where the results are studied. As soon as the shot changes from the seals to the wide shot of the lab, Herzog’s narration begins. Then we cut to a medium shot of the lab. Narration continues, and we cut to a shot inside the lab, where a scientist is preparing the sample for analysis. Narration ends, and the woman’s voice begins: “This was just collected today…” Great storytelling device. We get from there to the next sequence by cutting from face of scientists listening to seals below ice to a close up of a blowtorch being lit by a plumber.  The ‘pop’ of the flame igniting is matched with the last ‘pop’ of the seal sounds. Lots of beautiful cuts like this in the film.

Editing interviews: I noticed that reframing on interviews worked well in many cases. That is: Set up the interview, get the person talking. Then reframe between questions (zoom in to medium shot). Also, roll on face of person when they are not talking. That worked great because Herzog had time to finish his narration before the person picks up talking.

Music and Sound: Sounds is very important to creating the mood of this film, and haunting music carries the long underwater sequences and ice cave sequences. But most of the time it’s subtle and in the background, contributing to the mood. Chanting begins and ends the film, always in a different language than English. I watched the film with my friend Oksana, who is from Russia, and she told me the chanting at the end was Orthodox priests chanting in Russian about forgiveness and begging God for mercy. How perfect is that? But for everyone else, it’s just weird chanting with words that might as well be from another planet creating an eerie sense of mystery. One thing that surprised me: there’s virtually no sound of wind in the film, which I would have expected to hear in such a harsh place. Apparently they did a great job blimping the mics, probably a little too good. But the audio is of exceptionally high quality. Also they did a great job recording and incorporating found sound – the scientists who play guitar to celebrate finding a new species, for example.

I’ve never seen Hoop Dreams before. Surprised? Me too. It comes up frequently in conversation with other documentary filmmakers. And despite being famously snubbed by the Oscar committee, it is “the most successful and critically acclaimed documentary in American history,” Roger Ebert wrote in 1995 (obviously prior to Michael Moore’s blockbusters). I finally sat down to screen the nearly 3-hour film for myself last night.

Synopsis: The story of two black kids from low-income neighborhoods in Chicago, who dream of one day playing in the NBA. The film follows their separate paths  through high school, chronicling their personal and professional challenges that include low grades, money problems, unexpected fatherhood, crime and drugs in addition to the main conflict, which happens on the court in a series of high-school playoff games culminating in state championship game.

Story Structure: The film begins a few moments before the film’s climax: in the final moments of a high-school state championship game. This let’s the audience know that something big is going to happen in the film – someone is going to make it to the playoffs. At this early stage there’s a great line from one of the characters: “When I get in the NBA…” This tells us he WANTS something, and provides the classic ingredient of a character-driven plot. It starts the story train in motion. And we’re willing to stay in our seats to see what happens.

We then flash back to pre-high school, where the story really begins. We meet Arthur Agee, who gets recruited by the same suburban high school that Isaiah Thomas played on before going pro. The film switches back and forth between the two main characters, using a mix of cinema verite and interview-driven storytelling. There’s also a limited amount of narration, provided by director Steve James, to guide us through key points in the story.

The story is helped by one incredibly powerful element: conflict. It is always palpable, arising from the gap between the reality the boys come from and the success they aim to achieve. Everyone plays a part in blocking them: their coach makes their life hell, and fails to see the talent in one of them. Injuries threaten to detail the other. Tuition costs force one of the boys to drop out of school briefly. One of the boys fathers leaves the family. One of them gets mugged. Friends become drug dealers. And of course, the opposing team is out to beat them every time. Perhaps the biggest conflict, though, comes from inside – with both boys struggling to barely maintain their grade point average at a level that will give them a shot at going to college.

Overall, this story follows a classic hollywood storyline: act one sets up the heros for their journey with a series of tests that show us they are up to the challenge. Act two shows them either overcoming or failing to overcome a series of increasingly difficult tests, which sets one of them up for the final  showdown in act three. After the climactic final game, the film wraps up quickly. We learn what happened to the two major characters in college in epilogue text prior to the credit roll.

Cinematography: I spent the better part of yesterday shooting 4th-7th grade kids shooting hoops at Eton School, for whom I making a series of short promotional web videos. So I can say with authority that it’s HARD to shoot basketball handheld in a way that isn’t blurry, shaky or out of focus (for me anyway). I was consistently impressed with the fact that Hoop Dreams made it look simple and easy (even in clutch situations during playoff games where they had only once shot at getting it right). They are helped by shooting wide, with what appears to be shoulder-carried cameras. Other cinematic standouts: tracking shots shot from car windows show the neighborhood, and the kids walking to school (with camera traveling a little faster than the person walking – as if they are falling behind perhaps). A pan down from the sky to the outdoor basketball court is how we first get into the narrative, from the early set up of playoff game. Nice tough! Remember to get shots like that – you’ll love yourself in the editing room.

I liked how the interviews were a mix of set up interviews, and off-the-cuff interviews, for example, Agee’s mom talking on her bed with arms under her staring at ceiling. Nice mix helps weave it all together into one storytelling experience. Also, I loved how they included the live camera shots of the orthoscopic surgery – that was very dramatic and made me wince. Also, there are two places in the film where big games are introduced with a shot from up high in the stands with the camera moving through a narrow doorway into the arena. This is a visual metaphor for getting through a “tight spot” and adds great dramatic effect to introduction of game, even though these are very brief shots.

Editing: This film was cut from 250 hours of footage, shot over a 5 year period. That’s a LOT of editing. In addition to just plain brilliant work in finding the thread of story in all of that film, there are a lot of techniques that I observed in this film. For example, one convention that we return to throughout the film is a stock evening shot of the outside window of Agee’s home, against dark blue evening sky. Night is falling. Darkness is gathering. And the editor is both setting the stage for some drama to unfold and telling us where the action actually happened at. A nice extra is that the editor could begin the sound of the family talking before we cut to them, which pulls us into the conversation at same time as informing us where it was taking place without having to use narrator to do so.

I also really liked the cuts that move us seamlessly from practice games into real games. This establishes the rationale for the practice – it really does pay to practice hard – or, in some cases, it doesn’t pay because you didn’t practice hard enough. Narration is subtle, with just enough to tell the story. I like it. Finally, I like the frequent mixing of closeup, medium and wide shots used throughout the film.

Music and Audio: There’s frequent use of music in the film to introduce dramatic moments and cue us that something important is going down. A lot of the dramatic effect background music is repetitive, interestingly. But there are a lot of great cuts in there too by performers like Snoop Dog. Audio is recorded well enough that I can’t remember much about it, which is exactly what well-recorded and -mixed audio should do.

This film, more than any other I’ve screened to date, incorporates most of the storytelling devices available to documentary filmmakers: narration, cinema verite, interview, still photos, news casts, newspaper headlines. Without feeling chaotic or unstructured. Together it all adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. No wonder everyone’s still talking about this film 16 years later.

Stanless Steel

I saw Strongman at the 9pm showing of it’s opening night at NW Film Forum here in Seattle, with director Zachary Levy in attendance. Just a handful of people showed up. Which surprised me, because it won Grand Jury for best doc at Slamdance last year.

Synopsis: An aging strongman, whose specialty is bending pennies and lifting trucks with his bare hands, struggles to hold his life together and earn a living in a world more interested in flashy showmanship that “true” strength.

Story Structure: The film is organized on a linear timeline, which follows events in the life of “Stanless” Steel, the main character in the film. We see him rehearsing for performances, with his family in New Jersey, and performing at events that vary widely from private weddings up to a trip to London where Stanless performs on a TV show with other strongmen. The film closely follows his rocky relationship with his girlfriend, Barbara, and the challenge of living with his low-income family and drug-using brother. What really works wonderfully well is the fact that his struggle to bend steel acts as a metaphor for his struggle to keep his life together. Add that that the fact that it’s also a metaphor for how difficult it is to make a cinema verite film, and you have a perfect storm of cinematic synchronicity.

Cinematography: The film was shot entirely by Levy, who used a hefty digibeta, shoulder-held video camera. Nothing about the way it was filmed really jumped out at me, which is a testament to the filmmaker’s intentions: to put all the attention on the events as they occur, rather than on how they were filmed. The quality is “good enough” – standard definition, much of it was shot in low light at Stan’s home. Levy told me that to light the scenes, he replaced the standard 65-watt bulbs in  the home with 100-watt bulbs, which provided just enough light, while keeping the scene appearing exactly as it otherwise would have had he not been filming. Great trick.

Editing: Levy edited the film himself in Avid. The editing is simple and straightforward, and calls no attention to itself, in keeping with cinema verite tradition. My only beef with the editing comes about 3/4 of the way through the film, where I think a much tighter edit of the final quarter of the film would have improved its story and mainstream audience watchability. I was ready for the film to end sooner than it did, and the ending really just trailed out, rather than ending with any finality or in keeping with classic story arc. But that’s probably how Levy intended it: because life itself doesn’t follow story scripts.

Music and Sound: Levy is a cinema verite purist. He wanted what actually happened to provide the soundtrack for the film instead of adding music himself. Music in the film happens in scenes where the characters are playing the radio. Levy claimed “fair use” to reproduce them in the film, rather than paying expensive clearance fees, which I think is a great strategy for documentary filmmakers. To take this approach, of course, reproducing the song has to be truly part of the scene and therefore the quality is going to be limited. But it’s very authentic.  Levy did use one song for this film, and it plays over the credits at the end, not during, the film.

He had just one crew member with him on all of his shoots: a sound guy, who used a shotgun mic on a boom pole to record the main characters. He hooked up the main character to a wireless lav, but almost always had the boom operator there as well to catch his interactions with other characters.

While Levy was in Seattle for the screening of his film, he was gracious enough to accept my invitation to dinner, and I learned a lot about the challenges of verite filmmaking and DIY film distribution. I met up with him at NW Film Forum, where he was asking staff to make a bigger sign announcing his presence in an effort to boost flagging attendance. When a man walked in to buy a ticket to another film, Levy unsuccessfully tried to talk him into seeing Strongman instead. That’s what I call working hard to promote your film!

Levy told me it took him 9 years to make this film – 3 years shooting, and the rest in post. I hope it doesn’t take him that long to do his next one.

New Brow, a film by Tanem Davidson, just finished a short three-day run at Northwest Film Forum. I caught it last night on it’s final evening in town.

Synopsis: Through more than 40 interviews with “low-brow” artists, gallery owners and collectors, filmmaker Tanem Davidson explores the cultural roots and evolution of popular art through the work of graphic designers like Shepherd Fairey, cartoonists and street graffiti artists. The film chronicles their DIY rise from the streets to the place where today they are poised to break into the “high brow” world that has until recently been unwilling to accept them as “serious” artists.

Story Structure: This film is a straightforward, interview-driven documentary film. There’s tons of visually interesting b-roll and always the voice of an artist in the background talking us through the story. Still photos are zoomed through, panned across, or pulled back from before cutting back to the person being interviewed. The film tries to cover the entire movement but sacrifices a clear story arc in the attempt. Some elements of conflict arise from artists describing their outsider status from big NYC galleries who until recently have not been interested in showing their work. But I left the film wishing more thought had been given to taking me on a journey with a clear beginning, middle and end.

Cinematography: The production value was not high. The interviews appeared to have been grabbed in a scattershot way without any stylistic cohesion, and most disappointing, some were just plain poorly lit. But one thing worked well: there’s a ton of great art in the film. And that really helped make it visually interesting. In particular, most of the art is shot up close, so it’s really in your face, which works for the subject. I found myself wishing the camera had moved more slowly on the pans – you can hardly pan or zoom too slow in my view. Side note: the cinematography in Up In The Air, which I saw Saturday night, was so powerful, in part, because the camera work was so subtle. There’s all these wonderful super slow tracking shots. I had to watch the edge of the frame to determine whether the camera was actually moving, and it almost always was throughout the film, which worked very well for a film about travel.

Editing: This film could have been editing a lot more tightly. A lot of the material felt repetitive to me, and I didn’t feel l like I was being guided through the huge amount of material by a master storyteller. There wasn’t a clear beginning, middle and end of this film, just a lot of interesting and historically significant material, that I think could have been focused much more sharply to greater effect.

Music and Sound: Audio was distractingly bad in some of the interviews. There didn’t appear to have been any attempt to control the setting of the interviews, resulting in cuts that transition directly from a quiet office to an echoing gallery so that you really notice the difference. And in some cases the audio was too loud relative to what came before and after – levels weren’t normalized.

What happens when filmmakers make a film about the same topic as another set of filmmakers at roughly the same time?  I’ve always felt that it’s best not to worry about it, because no film can be YOUR film. But this film is one thing that can happen. Similar material was covered, faster and with higher production values, in Beautiful Losers, which was released in 2008. I guess this goes to show that it pays to be first, or that if you’re going to come after, you have to find a way to put a new spin on the material. I don’t think this film achieves that. But what the filmmakers DID achieve is, they made a film! And that’s always an achievement worth celebrating.

Synopsis: Tarnation is Jonathan Caouette’s dark autobiographical film, which draws on home movie footage, phone messages and conversations with family members to recount his abusive childhood and his awkward relationship with his mentally ill mother, who herself was a victim of abuse. The film follows her losing battle to stay sane, and the filmmaker’s struggle to face his own fear that one day he too may suffer the same fate.

Structure: While this is a chaotic film, filled with disturbing and repetitive visuals, there is definitely a structure that propels the film forward. The film opens in New York, where Caouette establishes that he’s gay in the opening scene of the film by showing himself chilling with a male lover. Then he learns his mom has overdosed on lithium, which launches him on a trip to Texas to be with her. While on the trip, he uses footage of the passing landscape to begin flashing back to family footage from much earlier years. He uses a final transition in which the present-day passing landscape becomes pixelated and dissolves into the old family footage and we pull back out of an old TV where we find ourselves in his disturbing past. The film follows a mostly linear progression from the time of his childhood and catches up with the point where the film opens, then continues briefly past that to the present day, concluding with Caouette finally making an appearance as narrator speaking to the camera, giving voice to his fears.

Cinematography: This was an extremely low budget film. According to the film’s IMDB entry, it cost just $218 to make this film, but cost $400,000 to license the music and video clip royalties. But the fact that the quality is crap adds to the nature of the story, which is about someone whose life is pretty crappy. The footage looks super saturated and in many places solarized throughout the film, which helps it look stylized intentionally, rather than just plain low-quality. Stills and moving images are freely and frequently mixed together and that works well.

Editing: This film was edited on iMovie. It uses an array of simple editing tricks to create a sense of dislocation and disassociation. Highlights are blown out, pictures zoom in and out and multiply, and characters seem to disappear into mirror reflections of themselves, as if being turned in a kaleidoscope. There’s a long sequence of still photos early in the film that show Caouette’s early childhood, and they simply “flash dissolve” one after another (that is, one picture gives way to the next by quickly fading up to white, and down to the next image).

There is HEAVY use of text to narrate the story, and despite my general aversion to narration in films, I found myself wondering whether narration would have been a better choice. We learn later in the film that the filmmaker doesn’t trust himself to let go in front of the camera, which explains the awkward and repeated use of text to move the story forward.

Music and Audio: Lots of music in this film (which explains why it cost $400k to get all of it released) playing in the background while an endless number of quickly cut stills and short clips play on the screen. Lyrics like “I fell down the stairs, I wished you were dead, he handed me your head…”  support the mood of the film. One nice audio transition that I’ve heard before: a sudden change of scene behind which a sound like a plane landing that is suddenly cut off as the volume rises. I want to find a sound effect for that and use it somewhere some day. There’s a nice found music edit which begins with a scene in NY subway where a street artist is singing. The visuals quickly move on to something else, but audio stays with the street performance for awhile. Great reminder to keep that camera rolling on stuff longer than you think you’ll need it – and remember that the camera is basically a rape recorder, too, even if you’re not getting any visuals at same time.

This film was a huge hit at festivals from Canne to Sundance, not because of it’s technical prowess, but because it is an authentic story told in the way only this filmmaker could tell. The subtitle for the film is also an important message to documentary filmmakers looking for ideas: Your greatest creation is the life you lead.

Here’s a really great in-depth interview with Caouette about how this film was made.