Persistence of Vision Journal

 AFS' journal, Persistence of Vision, explores a wide range of issues relevant to cinephiles and filmmakers alike. PoV is available FREE to members and also on a limited basis at a number of local coffee houses, theaters, and eateries. 

Read the Creative Process column here from the latest issue, written by Sundance award-winning filmmaker David Zellner.

On Making People Sit Through Your Movie

By David Zellner 

In considering the potential for an audience, I find myself looking at the ways I've been engaged by my personal film experiences, taking into account my prior conceptions of what exactly a film can be. From an early age I grasped the standard trappings of the three-act structure, the crystal-clear delineations between the good guy and bad guy, and the happy, concrete ending audiences are taught to anticipate from watching a film. It was only when I was exposed to work that broke this mold that I really began to comprehend the infinite possibilities that film had to offer, and varied ways the medium could engage with an audience.

When I was seven years old and saw Monty Python and The Holy Grail (age and time period are obvious factors here), it absolutely blew my mind. I had been happily accustomed to nice and tidy Star Wars-type fare and had never before seen absurdist humor, blatant anachronisms, shattering of the fourth wall and an abrupt, nonsensical ending. That euphoria of leaving the theater after seeing something new and engaging is why I love film. Those wonderful occasions when for the past two hours you've forgotten about everything else in the world, and have become wholly invested on an emotional level, whether it's through humor or sadness or fear or even ambiguity. Seeing something like Robocop when I was in junior high; Aguirre, The Wrath of God when I was in college; or something like The Mother and The Whore or Irreversible or 2001: A Space Oddysey, they're all extremely different films that I have had a visceral response to. But as an unreformed cinephile, if I were writing this on a different day I'd have an entirely different list. 

I make movies with my brother Nathan, and although we're still rookies we've had a fair amount of exposure on the film festival circuit. We're usually sick to death of our films by the time they're shown to an audience, so we focus our attention instead on studying the audience as it watches our movie (otherwise we'd be pacing the lobby like expectant fathers at the hospital). One way or another humor ends up creeping into a majority of our films, which makes it pretty easy to tell if something fails or succeeds when watching it with an audience.

When starting a new project, whether the impetus is a particular scene, plot point or line of dialogue, it initially stems from something that we personally would like to see on film. From there it's nuanced into something that hopefully at least a portion of the audience can relate to or identify with it in the same way that we have. The one factor that we try to be most conscious of in regards to the audience is the way we choose to reveal information. We've had different goals with the shorts we've done. Some, like The Virile Man, Foxy and the Weight of The World or Redemptitude were straight-forward narratives, with a mix of funny, absurd or uncomfortable moments.

Other times we've tried to play with the audience's preconceived notions as to what the film is supposed to be, ideally trying to add another dimension to it in the process. Flotsam/Jetsam is one-half dreamy black and white art film, and one-half behind the scenes "making of" documentary that ends in a disastrous shark attack. Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane takes a heavily-stylized, over-the-top familial confrontation and couples it with the real-life, much more grounded version of the actual story it was based on. With Who Is On First?, we took the all-too familiar "Who's On First" sketch by Abbot and Costello and had it performed by a pair of even-tempered non-actors (one of whom didn't speak English as a first language) who had no comic timing or prior knowledge of the source material. That, combined with careful editing, made for a wonderfully laborious, cringe-worthy fiasco. Some people "got it" and some people hated it, which is exactly what we were going for.

This past year we'd reached a stopping point with the shorts and felt comfortable tackling a feature called Goliath, which premiered at Sundance in January (and has since been picked up by IFC.) As with the shorts, we set out with specific goals based on our budgetary constraints, the particular aesthetics we were going for, and how that affected the way information would be conveyed to the audience. Unlike some of our previous work, which was more dialogue-driven and structured through editing, for Goliath we wanted to have long, static shots with more emphasis on composition; to try and convey as much information with as little exposition as possible. We wanted to try and balance the fine line between humor and pathos, without going to extremes of being either condescending or maudlin.

The main character in the film displays some behavior that is often questionable, particularly during the climax. It's been really interesting watching the film with an audience and seeing their alliances shift. Some people view his actions with sympathy, others find them absurd and despicable, the reaction has varied from city to city. Although in the end we hope to entertain and engage an audience for the duration of the film, we'd much rather people react in extremes than some middle-ground indifference. If we can do that then I feel we've done our job.

David Zellner was a Featured Extra in the coming of age drama Salò