The art of photography has always been defined by those most elemental of human concerns: time and space. Click your shutter a second too late or early, or with the light or framing not quite right, and you end up with a less-than-satisfactory representation of your subject. And what you choose as your subject is, from whatever perspective or angle, once recorded, forever frozen as a moment along the continuum of time’s history; existing – even if only on YouTube – as a spatial history of an observed and manufactured stage.
The visual stage that cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin has been recording on film and video over the past 15 years focuses on the unique architecture of habitat, including the space – time and distance – between home and other destinations. His efforts, be they as the DOP of Gary Burns’ oeuvre (Beerland, The Suburbanators, waydowntown, Radiant City), on the urban (Calgary) noir Six Figures (David Christensen, 2005) or the recent Regina-recorded River (Mark Wihak, 2007), contain an unsettling yet inviting tension in the image. His camera routinely discovers a playful push and pull within the hazy banality of everyday life, and the desire, albeit unrequited, for transcendence to an adequate level of communication and social interaction within this framework of lifestyle accommodation.

McLaughlin’s own works since his days in the early ’90s as a Concordia classmate with Gary Burns, Laurence Green (Alter Egos, Thin Ice) and Jay Ferguson (Posthumous), have carried the caveat title “A camera project by Patrick McLaughlin.” It’s a bit of a playful structuralist nod; his films often owe much to the experimental-observational cinema of icons like Michael Snow, particularly See You Later (1990), an 18-minute ultra slow-motion study of an office worker leaving his desk, putting on his coat, and saying goodbye to his secretary. McLaughlin’s Panorama (1994, 27 mins), also done in a single, locked-off take within a rotating downtown Calgary restaurant filled with fictionalized conversations, as well as IKEGAMI M245 (1997, 18 mins), a silent security camera-based creation of mysterious urban encounters throughout the city, share an obvious kinship with Snow’s exploration of potential dramatic tension within a static frame. 

Clearly preoccupied with the impact on the viewer of transformation from image to action, his other shorts directly challenge the role of the viewer in an even more structurally anarchic manner. The Fast Lane (1996, 4 mins) is a by turns hilarious and somber discourse on ‘Sunshine girls;’ the camera panning over grainy newspaper images of big city women on the scene, intercut with captions of the girls’ description, while a narrator reads the male author’s typically banal rendering of her aspirations – often including a supposed desire to live life “in the fast lane.” (A credit sequence that includes similar newspaper footage of car crashes around Calgary provides a darker contextualization on the preceding photos and text). And K2H40: Mutations of an Architectural Component (1994, 4 mins) is an incredibly unique re-imagining of a suburban house (or rather a suburban house’s style) as a radioactive isotope, represented via a collection of still images of identical structures dissolving between one another, from the same framing. A silent film, K2H40 is a fascinating contrast to Timber (6 mins, 2007), an almost silent short that features serene shots of the forest floor on Vancouver island juxtaposed with increasingly longer black frames filled with the sound of chainsaws cutting away. Timber offers a disarmingly thought provoking meditation on, yes, logging, but more significantly the tranquility of nature vs. the man-made machines and industries that reduces its inherent abundance and pollutes its sustenance.

It’s often difficult to separate the vision of a DOP from that of a director, and most good DOPs (and editors) willfully subsume aspects of their craft for the sole purpose of transparency. Fancy camera work or cutting can grab the audience’s attention, sure, but subtle, broad strokes often allow for greater reflection and longevity.

Gary Burns’ early short Beerland helped secure him enough money to make The Suburbanators (1995), and starting with those two films, he and McLaughlin have collaborated to reflect a truly unique portrait of Calgary’s ever-changing downtown and surrounding landscape. A meandering study of three different groups of harmless gangsters of suburban adolescence, The Suburbanators reflects a lifestyle in the Calgary area that can do no more than take the shape of what the city space awkwardly provides; the characters, drunks and manic obsessives, drive in circles, getting nowhere, as McLaughlin and Burns examine their everyman’s land via its defining dimension: the time between destinations on the roads of suburbia. Radiant City (2007), a documentary whose subject itself is suburban growth, expresses many of the same concerns as K2H40 and Don’t Worry Call Nury (1995, 5 mins, a re-creation of real-estate TV shows, with slandering voiceover of obscure facts and fabrications).

Both the recent River (2007) and Six Figures (2006) – along with Donna Brunsdale’s Cheerful Tearful (1998) – contain elements that are, despite his ability to adapt to a uniquely different aesthetic for each director, largely discoverable through McLaughlin’s keen eye for the absurdity of normalcy amidst the challenge of daily existence.

FilmCAN spoke with Patrick McLaughlin by email about his early cinematic inspirations, his education in Montreal and on the job, his work with Gary Burns, and recent work on Six Figures and River.

McLaughlin also contributed the accompanying recent photos of Calgary and area.

FILMCAN Chris Doyle (DOP, In The Mood For Love, The Quiet American, Paranoid Park) strongly advised me to avoid movies and books in favour of bars if I really wanted to be a filmmaker – where do you find cinematic inspiration?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I totally agree with Chris Doyle on that. The most unique filmmakers seem to be those people who have had little interest in seeing movies versus living life. But as a DOP (or anyone in a technical position) I think it would be difficult to make a career by avoiding watching movies. I try to watch TV, movies, music videos, commercials, check out photography, etc., whenever I can – though I can’t always do it as much as I would like. Some of the directors I work with (like Robin Schladt and David Christensen) are real cinephiles and I try to keep up with them and what they’re watching.

As for DOPs, there are so many great ones working today, and they’re all over the world – not just in France, Italy and the U.S. as they seemed to be for many years. I like all sorts of styles too – I try not to lock myself into any particular preference and try to be open to all approaches. And I’m willing to try anything. I would have to say the iconic DOP who I most identify with philosophically is Robby Muller (Down By Law, Breaking The Waves, Dancer in the Dark) – and Chris Doyle is also a huge influence.

As a generalization I seem to have a preference for DOPs like Muller who come from a documentary background. I don’t know if Doyle does docs, but if not it’s probably our loss because he would undoubtedly be fantastic as a documentary DOP or director – he could probably make the ultimate doc on barflies. His Asian films are so organic and poetic – real works of art – yet when he works on Hollywood movies he seems to choose really structured and classic projects – if he wanted to work with Gus Van Sant on anything, you wouldn’t expect him to choose a less restrictive genre movie than the remake of Psycho.

FILMCAN What’s your take on the “genre” you work most within – Canadian cinema?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN Canadian cinema is very unique in the sense that most of its filmmakers are all so regionally influenced or defined by their location. You get that to some extent in American film (Scorsese with NY or Waters with Baltimore) but not to the same degree as here. There’s something about Canada and its importance of place. The Canadian media (especially the CBC) seems obsessed with where its citizens were raised, whereas that doesn’t seem as important to American media. Take Canadian hockey announcers – they will always comment on a Canadian player’s birthplace whereas an American sports announcer would never do that.

That whole “Where did you grow up?” seems like such a Canadian/Peter Gzowski kind of question; perhaps because the country is so large, sparsely populated and spread out – maybe the question somehow connects everything. If you look at Canadian reviews of Gary Burns’ films, the critics will always comment on which city the movie takes place within, and I know it kind of drives Gary crazy because he wants them to be these generic North American cities – even goes to great lengths to make them seem that way. But I like that Canadian cinema has this regional identity associated with its directors – I think it’s unique. There’s always a great sense of place – even when you’re trying to avoid it.

Gary (Burns) is a perfect example of a director who is inspired by his location. He tries set his films in an unspecified location – and mostly is successful, but it’s interesting because his movies usually come out of some very specific personal issue he has with the city he loves to hate: Calgary. You have to wonder what his career would be like if he didn’t live in Calgary, would he even be inspired to make movies? I think there are other Canadian directors like that too. What would Guy Maddin be without Winnipeg? But Gary can start with something very small that bothers him, like an architectural anomaly – the Plus 15 system in Calgary – and make a fictional feature film about it. That’s amazing!

FILMCAN What originally got you interested in cinema?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN In the early years – and I’m talking about when I was five – I was obsessed with a book I got from the library and would constantly renew. It was a kind of archive of the greatest old time Hollywood horror film stars of the day – the Chaneys, Price, Karloff, Lugosi and Peter Lorre. I loved the black-and-white photos in it, the portraits had a sadness about them and a sense of mystery (perhaps nostalgia even if that’s possible for a five-year-old to feel). You would think a five-year-old would like the photos of the creatures and the makeup, but those weren’t the shots I liked. I loved their real faces, especially Peter Lorre – what a great face! To this day I love great faces in movies – and you see them less and less in Hollywood.

But beyond that book I never was interested at all in movies or TV until I was about 11, when my family moved outside of the city and I left my friends, neighborhood and cable TV behind. On the acreage where we lived we only had two channels, one being the local smalltown station that played very weird movies late at night on weekends. Years later I would end up working there, my first real job (as a master control operator) and learned they played those movies because they had this unusually long-term contract with a film distributor that dated back many years, and despite the fact that the station used 3/4” and 1” videotape for all their programming, this distributor provided the station with 16mm film. So as a master control operator I would have to project these films through a telecine to tape. This distributor had nothing contemporary nor popular – it was probably some fledgling company that couldn’t afford anything that was in high demand. I know the station hated the material they provided, but they were locked into a contract and had to wait it out. But watching those strange European films and alternative American movies had an effect on me (as early as 12), including the types of movies I prefer today.

Originally I loved the challenge (and was frightened by) the strangeness of the European films. They had such an unusual quality to them that really disturbed me – even though that probably wasn’t the director’s intention. They looked different and sounded different. They had subtitles – sometimes you couldn’t read the text because it was white on white. They also had nudity – male and female – but a nudity that was not sexualized. It also didn’t help that these movies were being projected, had dust and hair dancing across the shots, and were scratched and occasionally broke in half and had to be spliced. Sometimes a reel was put on backward or they were run out of order! Although many of them were black-and-white, even when they were in colour they seemed colourless – probably on account of the age of the print. Anyway I think it all helped the atmosphere of these weird late night viewings – half the time I was drifting in and out of sleep so the movies and my dreams were a mash up. And this, for me, is an important concept – that movies are malleable and are completely dependent of the state of mind of the viewer. My experimental films play with this idea. One of my projects (Relinquishing Power to the Delicate Bond of Understanding) experiments with a video screening and a live on-stage actor explaining – poorly – the content of the movie.

The Euro movies were a great education for me. Before seeing these movies I didn’t have any sense of anyone behind the scenes any more than I would have thought about who made the pen that sits on your desk. In comparison, the popular Hollywood films and TV I was seeing at the time seemed bland, formulaic and had nothing of the personality and originality of these late night films from Europe and the fringe American films from the 60s and 70s.

At the end of high school – a terrible time to decide what to do with the rest of your life – I went to study filmmaking as a career. Naively I thought it would be an easy career to pursue because I didn’t know anyone who was interested in it or anyone who wanted to do it. In my mind there would be no competition. It wasn’t until I arrived in Montreal that I learned everyone wanted to make films. Everyone was film crazy in Montreal and wanted to study it or make movies. Montreal was where I fell in love with movies – not so much the production part but the film studies and history classes. While most of my classmates were busy making short films I focused more time on studying theory – and that stuff has really become ingrained in me.

FILMCAN What got you started working in the film industry? Any great PA stories?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I do remember the first union job I did as a camera apprentice. On my first day the very experienced camera operator from Vancouver asked me if I knew why people in the camera department got paid so much. “It will take ten years off your life,” was his answer. That always stuck with me. And it wasn’t long before I started to realize he was undoubtedly correct.
As a camera assistant working in Alberta I was only doing terrible American MOWs and TV series. Sometimes it was stuff that the city of Vancouver didn’t want or was sick of – like the car show Viper. From my perspective it was all cultural pollution and was doing nothing to help indigenous filmmakers. These were service deals and you just knew that as soon as the dollar came to par or close to it, the work would fade away (and that’s been happening for the past few years.) I believe we were known in L.A. as “Mexicans with toques” (or winter snow hats to use their terminology) because we worked for so cheap and “took their jobs.” Anyhow the hours were long and unhealthy, and at times the jobs were dangerous. There was also a lot of summer/fall film work in Calgary around the mid-to-late ’90s. It wasn’t hard to get a job or an opportunity to work on one of these productions. They were basically construction sites without the safety equipment. It was like being a carny – going from site to site with loads of portable equipment, setting up for a day and moving on; getting out of town before you piss off all the neighbours. All that was missing was a fortuneteller to hang out on set just to complete the atmosphere (though in a way that describes a 1st AD, I suppose).

FILMCAN What was your first big break as a DOP?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I don’t think I’ve had my first “big break.” I’m still waiting… but in terms of what I really wanted to do, I’d have to say the most important and influential break for me was shooting a reality show (more of a documentary series) in Taiwan. Dave Hansen, the director, contacted me to shoot a feature film in Regina, which, in the end, I couldn’t do because of the tax credit situation. But we had a nice chat and got onto the topic of documentaries, as that was what I really wanted to get into – particularly travel docs. I was based in Montreal at the time because I knew more documentary filmmakers there than in Calgary, and was trying to get into the stream. But it was a real struggle finding work – not only did I have to change cities and reestablish contacts, but it was a change in form (narrative vs. doc) and also a change in format (film vs. video). Anyway, Dave had this series in development and needed a DOP. He ended up hiring me to shoot his doc series in Asia. At the time I thought the material was uninteresting, and for me it was more of an opportunity to travel. In fact, it turned out to be a great little doc series that ran for three seasons (The English Teachers; 2001 – 2004). 

FILMCAN What’s the important lessons you learned from it – framing, movement, focus – that you kept refining, unconsciously or not, since then?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN It was great because I could actually bring a lot of my narrative training into the doc world. You wouldn’t think that’s possible for a reality show (especially at the time, it was quite novel – now you see the crossover quite a lot in shows like The Hills) but I was surprised how visually interesting it could be. And also in terms of editing and structure, Dean Evans and Hansen really made some interesting decisions in cutting and made this cheap little show quite cinematic. It actually received very positive reviews, which is pretty cool because it’s nothing more than a real-life melodrama that had little substance.

I got a lot of camera time with this series – I was always shooting and I loved it because so much of it was reactive, rather than planned, kind of like doing sports, where it involves a lot of muscle memory and practice. And you’re always having to be so in the moment, so present and aware. You had to shoot scenes that were taking place live, but you still had to come out of it with all the coverage. It made me a much more confident operator. And it was also an opportunity to be a field director.

I remember the first job I did after it was shooting Six Figures (David Christensen), which was a feature narrative. I hadn’t done one in four years, as I was focused on docs, but I was shocked by how boring it was – how lacking it was in spontaneity. I was conditioned to a very different world by then and going back to features was like some kind of culture shock for me. David and I had spent weeks together in pre-production drinking tea and working through the script and how we would make it. That’s the part of feature filmmaking I really enjoy – the preproduction, massaging the ideas with the director. Once you’re on set, if you’re prepared, it basically comes down to execution and that can be dull in comparison. For me it was a real change of pace. Even the lifestyle from Taipei to Calgary – sure Calgary was booming, but compared to Taipei it seemed like everything was happening in slow motion. But then not all features are as structured as Six Figures was; waydowntown was different, and certainly River, too.

In general, my approach to cinematography has always been to try it a different way – to not imitate others or yourself. An important lesson I learned – in regards to low budget filmmaking – is to try to find a way to make it look unique, to make it stand out. I would never try to compete with the “Hollywood Movie of the Week aesthetic” without the money to back it up. Besides, it’s boring. So I’ve taken risks with most of my features, to try and make it look unique. Some viewers and other filmmakers really hate my films, but I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been mostly working with solid directors who have been on-board with the ideas and the approach.

FILMCAN How did your relationship with Gary Burns grow? How have you made each other better over the projects?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I’ve always had a great deal of respect and admiration for Gary as an artist – and this all started in film school. He was the one student in our class that really interested me – I always had the sense he had unique ideas and I just wanted to be a part of his trip. In fact after school I just followed him back to Calgary because that was where he was going – that was his home. In school I wanted to be an editor but somehow ended up doing more camera than cutting, and when he began making films in Calgary I ended up shooting them almost by default. Personally I find it tough to shoot something I can’t relate to or something I “don’t get.” I try to avoid those projects if at all possible. On the other end of the spectrum, for me, is Gary – I “get it.” I just have that kind of relationship to the material – I think I really understand what it needs visually, but I’m not sure I could say why. I think it’s more or less unspoken now – I just feel I know what Gary likes and dislikes. It doesn’t take me very long to get into his head and see his vision.

FILMCAN Whether it’s his personal aesthetic or not, Gary seems to have a very contemporary, almost digital/Web sensibility – to his comedy, style, etc. How do you guys approach the visualization of a script?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN One of the great things about working with Gary is how early he wants to involve the DOP – and he’s a great collaborator. My role as a DOP is more fluid with Gary than anyone else I’ve worked with – I’m really welcomed to bring ideas to the table – not just for the cinematography, but in every aspect. I even did some writing on waydowntown and got a co-writing credit. I generally know about Gary’s projects very early on, often from the point of conception, so by the time they get green-lit there has already been a lot of discussion.

In school Gary was inspired by Altman, but more importantly Jim Jarmusch, because Jarmusch in the early days had no money. The Suburbanators had that kind of Stranger than Paradise (1984) style – which felt correct, but also came out of a complete lack of cash. It was a no-budget sensibility. We worked on Suburbanators right after his short Beerland, and the feature was more or less an extension of that project – which was kind of a lost film. I don’t think Gary spent much effort into getting it seen, but he didn’t need to because he already had the money for the feature. Anyway, the style was to keep it simple – it had to be done that way whether we liked it or not. And we did like it – or at least we didn’t like what the other movies being made around Calgary, at the time, looked like. We wanted a dirty aesthetic with lots of strip malls, parking lots and ugly cars – basically locations that no American producer would want to shoot. There were no wheat fields, or mountains, or badlands or shiny downtown buildings. But there was a cowboy – looking bored swinging a lasso trying to attract shoppers to come to a suburban mall. We worked with a crew not much larger than a doc crew. Beerland was the same and there was one scene in that movie that required us to film a bed mattress flying off a city bridge and landing in the Bow River. We didn’t have permits or anything, but it didn’t keep us from getting the shot one Sunday morning. A couple crew members stopped the truck in the middle of the bridge (a major artery) and threw the mattress over the railing while we were filming from below. We even did it a few times! You could never get away with that today in Calgary – I know that for a fact because we tried something similar last summer for a movie that had a budget and even a permit of some sort and still got shut down. Curiously, that shot was just up the road from where the bridge is. Today, in Calgary there’s just too much traffic – too many drivers, too many sets of eyes. Before there was a lot of tolerance for filmmaking in Calgary because it was a small city with no industry; filmmaking was pretty novel, so as an indie film crew we had a fairly long leash. Even the police tolerated a lot of our nonsense.

FILMCAN Was it much different working with Gary and Jim Brown on Radiant City, a doc/fiction hybrid?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN Jim and Gary worked great together. They co-wrote the project and were very complimentary as co-directors. Generally I dread the co-director assignment; typically it’s a “too many cooks” kind of deal, but I never felt that tension with Jim and Gary and even from the beginning I was completely confident that they were on the same page with everything they needed to do. I think the difference from most co-director situations is that they both had their own expertise and they kept focused on their own assignments. Gary is a narrative filmmaker and Jim is a journalist so the project perfectly suited their unique talents. The shoot was a lot of fun and went very smoothly. There were never arguments between them and they seemed totally prepared to step into or away from a scene when necessary.

FILMCAN Can you discuss the 2nd (lower quality?) camera in Radiant City?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I sometimes like shooting interviews with multiple cameras so you can more seamlessly cut the material. We didn’t have the budget to rent two Varicams so we brought in an affordable digital camera. Which seemed to work, theoretically, as a device, because it fit in with the duplicity of the film – another clue for the audience.

FILMCAN In Radiant City there are a lot of great square, locked-off frames, occasionally with in-camera movement (I’m thinking of the bus rides which must have been shaky; time lapse lock-offs; zooms out of billboards, etc.). I see this strategy coming up again in River, where a lot of the art gallery-related stuff feels very square/stuffy, largely due to the framing of the master shot – which is often held for its duration in such scenes.

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN An art gallery, for the most part, is usually a quiet and still place. I don’t particularly like art galleries – they remind me of graveyards or mausoleums – where the art goes to die. So if it feels dead or stuffy it’s perhaps my bias coming through. Usually art itself is static (unless you’re looking at a mobile or moving sculpture or video art.) And the idea with those scenes was to frame the characters in such a way as to make them seem as still and frozen as the art itself. In a way it’s a mise-en-a-beam, where the movie audience is watching characters look at more art.

As for playing out whole scenes in master shots, I think Six Figures has much more of that style than either Radiant City or River. But you’re right it does exist in those films as well. And there is certainly a connection between all three movies in that they are, in many ways, about the location where they are set and how it impacts the characters. In fact many of my films place a lot of emphasis on location – certainly The Suburbanators, waydowntown and Solitude (2001, which took place in a prairie monastery).

The directors I work most closely with are either from Alberta or Saskatchewan and their approach to their art and how it relates to their environment is radically different. My “beautiful” films are all shot in Saskatchewan (directors from there love their land), while all my Alberta films have a harsh eye and don’t steer clear of showing the ugly, hateful side of the province. A DOP friend once commented that the Calgary Chamber of Commerce will never come knocking at my door.

FILMCAN How do you work with the director in pre-production – shot lists, storyboards, etc.?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN Totally depends on the project and the director. They all like to work differently and I try to respect that. I prefer to plan – make shot lists, etc., but I’m not married to the approach either. For some films it’s not even necessarily a good approach – especially in low budget world – you could spend a lot of time making storyboards of how you would like to see it but then the reality of the finances hits and you can’t find the right location to accommodate your vision.

FILMCAN You recently shot Six Figures and River – both of which have a serenely fluid style in their construction, and a tendency to keep the camera moving in an interesting way. In Six Figures it feels more about how you’re trying to place characters at the edge of frames, whereas in River, particularly in scenes with conversation, there’s a nice floating quality. What was your visual approach to those films?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN Both those films were approached so differently. Even my relationships to the directors were quite different – with David (Christensen) I’ve worked with him quite a lot in the past and we’ve been friends for many years now, and I really know what he likes and dislikes. He’s a true cinephile and sees every alternative film from all corners of the planet. I had only met Mark (Wihak) a couple times before and I didn’t know his work or his style. And the amount of planning in pre-production was completely different. David and I had mapped out the whole movie in advance – went through each scene in great detail and picked the shots we wanted to try and the approach to the scene. We looked at a lot of movies together and spent a great deal of time talking about the project. Before going to camera we had six months to talk about the script and our visual approach in detail. And I probably read the script a year before that. We left little room for accidents or discoveries. The curious thing for me is that when I read the script I was convinced he (Warner, J.R. Bourne’s character) did it. But when I watch the movie I’m sure he didn’t. Of course I don’t know the answer – and David, if he knows, is not telling.

River was quite the opposite – it came up very suddenly and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because there was no script to discuss. There was a loose outline with the intention being to improv the dialogue and see where it would take the scene and the movie. My approach to it was to be as flexible and fluid as they were with the acting and script. Using the camera I would “look” at what I found interesting within the scene – and react to what I found interesting. It was like shooting a documentary and the sense that I would have to really listen closely to the dialogue and react accordingly and create an atmosphere that complimented the tone of the scene – more or less on the spot. We left little room or time for structure and planning.

The styles are therefore radically different. River is all hand-held, with lots of movement, and Six Figures is very static film. I don’t think there’s a handheld shot in it, and barely any camera movement. Even the actors don’t move very much. Six Figures is really distant – the camera is usually far from the action. River feels very close, abstract and choppy. We made River very colourful and Six Figures very colourless. Six Figures – which I think is a really great film and as a whole really works – is one of those projects that has nothing useful in it for a DOP’s demo reel. Probably it is also very hard to cut a trailer for the movie. (Ed’s note: Mark Wihak claims cutting a trailer for River would be pointless.)

FILMCAN How was the transition from film to digital video for you?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN It was great in the sense that I experienced that transition while making a movie: waydowntown. On that movie we used both film and video – whenever the camera was interior we used Digibeta and whenever the camera was exterior we shot 35mm. When we came up with this idea – one that suited the subjective experience of the main characters who were involved with a bet to see who could stay inside the longest – we tested HD. And although it was still quite early for HD filmmaking, we found the image, even in 1999, was too close a match to 35mm. We wanted the difference to be more pronounced and found that Digibeta suited our ideas better. Of course we could have degraded the HD image or even shot 35mm, but that video look was exactly the look we wanted – and video had all that baggage that accompanied it and the generation that watched the movie completely understood, consciously or unconsciously, the history and meaning behind the video image and how it was related (or not) to film. I think today it the audience’s reaction would be quite different, but at the time it was perfect. And the decision to embrace (and love) digital video (instead of film or HD, the latter being very expensive at the time) was appealing to budget as well.

But pretty quickly I understood the advantages and disadvantages of both mediums.

As an operator I loved Digibeta and its portability, the ergonomics of the system, the weight, the fact that you didn’t have to have your eye against the eyepiece, etc. But it was hell to outfit with a follow focus and other camera accessories, to find a lens that wasn’t ENG style. My focus puller had some challenges with it. As an operator it was great – as a DOP it wasn’t because you’re looking at a black and white viewfinder and this electronic interpretation of the scene. I also was new to video and was concerned about all the buttons and switches on the camera. Based on tests I picked my settings and taped them off – including the white balance. I wanted to treat it like a film camera because that made sense to me at the time – it was a world I knew. Video wasn’t. At the time film production crews weren’t familiar with the technology, so we hired a video guy who came on as an advisor during tests and the first day of shooting. He thought I was crazy – the way I treated the camera – picking one white balance for the entire show. But that was how I needed to work.
I’ve always loved video and never had a problem with it. I was never a film snob – and just saw it as another choice and perhaps a useful one under the right circumstances.

FILMCAN How do you frame the digital vs. film divide, both from your practical working experience (how to deal with natural lighting in both, in particular) to your feel for the aesthetics of both?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN I have never felt digital video was about us, filmmakers. I’ve always felt that it’s all about the audience and what they will accept. You can’t underestimate the viewer. You know when HD came onto the scene, and you would see it on the big screen TVs at the Sony Store and everyone would gather around the set and remark how strange it looked? Well, now it looks normal – because it’s everywhere – and I think, for the next/this generation film, too, will look strange to people. At least film as we know it. But film is not static either, and it’s always “improving,” although I sometimes find that the film manufacturers are trying to make it look like HD now rather than holding onto that filmic quality – but there again it confirms that the consumer will decide.

It almost seems like there are too many choices now. The thing you hope for is not to have to make that decision based on budget. For waydowntown the decision to shoot Digibeta wasn’t based on money (or the lack of) it was a choice based on the content. But the decision to shoot Six Figures on HD (vs. 35mm) was made for such budgetary reasons. And who knows if it suffered… but the same could be said of 16mm vs 35mm. I’ve shot projects that have really suffered because they had to be shot on 16mm when the story and style dictated a 35mm approach.

FILMCAN Mark Wihak mentioned that with River, and perhaps particularly because it was HD, you didn’t want to operate the camera, though you ultimately did.

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN This is where there’s a complete reversal between film and video. If you have a monitor with a film camera, in my experience, you’re usually resigned to watch a small black and white grainy image, which, besides the framing, has little to do with the end result. This is generally what the director and non-operating DOP is left to watch as the operator gets to see the movie unfold for the first time, through the colour viewfinder, through the glass. With HD or video it’s the operator that has the black-and-white video monitor experience that tells you a lot about composition but nothing else. Meanwhile the non-operating DOP and director can see the scene how it was intended on a high-rez HD monitor.

River was shot on HD but it was exactly the kind of production that I would feel it absolutely necessary to be the operator. I would have found it very hard to work with an operator on that show because it was mostly handheld and so improvisational and instinctual. I needed to be with the camera on that show. But it was a very unique movie in that there wasn’t a script – the scenes were improved based on an outline, and I really had to be in the moment – I had to be hyper sensitive to the scene and the way it would develop and how the actors were feeling at the time.

So it depends on the project – for example I think it was a mistake to operate on Six Figures. My time would have been better served at the monitor. Keep in mind too that David Christensen wasn’t at the monitor – he’s the rare director that wants to sit under the lens and be his actors. That’s great, and it shows in performance. But I do believe there is something very different about operating with HD and film. With HD there’s an electronic interpretation of what you’re seeing – whereas with film you’re looking through (an eyepiece).

FILMCAN Advice for shooting on the cheap – mostly aesthetically/visually?

PATRICK McLAUGHLIN Make it look different, make it look unique. Know your limitations – make them work for you rather than against you.

 

Mise-en-scène is a refreshingly reductionist concept of all that really matters in cinema: what’s in the frame. That frame has changed over time – gone extra wide to CinemaScope, extra large to IMAX, and is now settling in, after over 60 years, as anamorphic HD at home.

But the sense that the rectangular view of a movie screen is somehow limited, or limiting, despite its sustenance of the most fantastical worlds is often a concern of master realisateurs. What happens off-screen – out of sight, perhaps on the soundtrack – has long been a source of interest to the audience, too, and the careful interplay between director and viewer in this shared ‘outer space’ has led to the shocking power of purely imaginative violence, love, and imagined happy endings; whether within (or without) a particular scene, or when the film concludes with the fade, cut, or still image of a final frame.

Of course, personal vision, or point of view – not the movie version, attached to a perspective or character by the act of photographing anything – is also naturally constrained by forces often out of our control. So it is with Ryan Knighton, the lead character – or subject – of Scott Smith’s latest film As Slow As Possible. Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa on his eighteenth birthday, the Vancouver writer turned his slowly devolving visual limitations into the book Cockeyed, an open memoir on the loss of a sense; and, recently, 15 years into his transformation, unearthed an inner mission: attend the note change of the John Cage composition “As Slow As Possible” in a monastery in Halberstadt, Germany, where the four-page piece will be sustained over the life of the organ – 639 years. When Knighton told his friend Smith about the trip only four weeks prior to leaving, Smith immediately sensed an opportunity to document the slow change soon to rapidly unfold in the life of Ryan and the organ.

Smith’s two previous features (Falling Angels, 2003; Rollercoaster, 1999), were highly regarded festival fare with little box office shelf. Together, they show more promise (and production) than the majority of work by Canadian filmmakers of the past decade. Sharp moments of transgression are recurring themes in a Smith film. In Rollercoaster, a tale of juvenile delinquents invading an abandoned amusement park, Darrin, their leader, jumps to his death from the top of a coaster, shocking his family of cohorts, yet also offering an absolute closure that cements a new start and demands fresh perspective. For his Barbara Gowdy adaptation Falling Angels, Smith had an ample budget and cast to take his filmmaking to another level. The three daughters who are the focus of the film each explore adulthood – and in particular sexual consciousness – in different ways, while collectively putting together the pieces of a hidden family secret: an infant brother who was dropped into Niagara Falls. Coming to terms with this incident has been impossible for their drunken father Jim (Callum Keith-Rennie) and his since-then comatose wife, Mary (Miranda Richardson); the girls, though, use this uncovered history as a way of understanding their parents’ predicament, and as a way to graduate from their dysfunctional childhood into a less crippling adolescence. As with ASAP, both of Smith’s previous films explore transgression as an important way to reconcile the past within the present, to establish a non-nostalgic foundation for forward movement along (and often against) life’s long, moving walkway of a road.

While most documentaries today skew far too close to the traditional structure of expert and personal interviews to avow heightened insight and context of their subject, in ASAP Smith simply walks alongside Knighton, observing his unyielding optimism within the complex mental transformation from sighted to blind; note to note.

FilmCAN talked to Scott Smith over email about the distance between his features, the benefits of making ASAP as a one-person crew, why it took so long to edit, and what the experience taught him about hitting refresh on the senses’ perspective button.

FILMCAN Your last feature Falling Angels (2003) was a heavily art directed adaptation of a Barbara Gowdy novel. After completion of that, could you ever have envisioned turning to a poetic documentary for your next project? How did that end up happening?

SCOTT SMITH On one hand, you're right, I couldn't have envisioned this, and on the other, a part of me goes, well why not?  I will say that I had been looking for a doc subject, mostly because I really missed shooting (more on this later)... but this project came about in its own particular bit of happenstance.

Ryan told me about the organ and the note change over drinks about four weeks before the note was scheduled to change. The film idea just struck then, a little lightning bolt told me there was something there, and that we just had to go. And, I fell in love with the idea of just going off and doing something. I liked the spontaneity of it all.

The idea itself was enough to intrigue a couple of people (Robin [Cass] and Anna [Stratton] at Triptych, Gary Marcuse at the CBC) – they gave us the money to go. The rest just unfolded. We had no real idea what it all meant, we just felt we had some good cards.

FILMCAN Can you talk about that genesis for the story, and how the narrative in particular changed/adjusted to flesh out that initial idea; and then once you got into post-production too, which I understand was – perhaps on purpose – a fairly slow process.

SCOTT SMITH This is going to be a long answer.

The initial idea was just to follow the metaphor of a note change – one thing giving away to another – as the ultimate dramatic metaphor. Everything else was attached to that – Ryan's cane would literally tap out each new note, and a road trip/documentary was the perfect medium to explore our relationship to the 'next note'. I hope, at least, that as a filmmaker I am trying to find the universal in any subject, and I remember at the time it really felt like there was something universal in the incredibly specific elements of Ryan's oncoming blindness; and in this crazy gesture of an organ playing a really long song. I also liked the mystery of it all – though that proved a challenging thing to communicate in the edit.

So, at the beginning, it was conceived around three things: Ryan's relationship to losing his eyesight, his cane (and what it discovered as he tapped his way to his destination), and the promise of the note change itself, which sounded like a fairly intense and as pure an experience of something new 'happening' as anything else we could think of. All of these things had to do with the uncertainty of the future, I thought.  By the time we got to Berlin – after missing a flight, losing our bags, and having our 'plans' re-directed by the things we couldn't predict – it started a conversation about the role of chance/accident in our experience. For example, how do you make God laugh? You tell him your plan. It was much later that I discovered that Cage was exploring the same thing in his music.

As we got closer and closer to Halberstadt, something else emerged as well. It occurred to me that the organ carried an additional metaphor – that the music of the piece was not the notes themselves but imagining all the people who would (or, god forbid, wouldn't) carry this piece of music forward into a future that was bigger and longer than any of us could conceive, let alone experience. This presented a problem of two metaphors –an extremely specific one in the changing of the notes, and another ridiculously broad one: the umbrella of a 639-year-long performance that begged the question, "What does the year 2639 look like?"

As Ryan talked of his experience of being handed along elbow to elbow, vine to vine, though, I discovered that Ryan was the organ – that the same uncertainty in the future existed for both of them in the question, 'Who would carry it on?' I think that's what made the early events in Halberstadt (which I'll save for the film itself) so profound, at least to us. We'd arrived in Halberstadt with a series of real questions about the future, and in one simple event, those questions seemed to be answered. The whole thing seemed ordained, to be honest. It was no longer about me trying to figure out what it all meant, it was just up to me to communicate the experience that had been handed to us.

Post-production was all about trying to tell this story – pulling the pattern out of the chaos, so to speak. [Editor] Jeremy [Munce] and I never wavered from that goal, thank god. The intention of every cut was the same. But I learned eventually that editing documentaries is 10 times the job of editing dramas, where the development of a script answers all the questions of “what are the scenes?” and “what is the structure?” My analogy for documentary editing is someone gives you five packs of those fridge magnets with words, and says, “Arrange the appropriate twenty per cent of these, in the best possible order.”

The most challenging aspect of the cut, beyond the simple questions of what the scenes were, or who I was in the film, pacing and rhythm, etc., etc., was trying to make the film about Ryan, but also about the organ, and about Cage – since all these things were key to our experience. Our curiosity about the organ was the catalyst for the film – not Ryan's blindness. He had already written a terrific memoir about going blind, and I didn't want to remake it. The more I learned about Cage, the more he seemed to be speaking from the grave about our experience. And the organ – how could I not acknowledge that this destination wasn't among the most significant artistic gestures we'd encountered. And yet, for better or worse, when people see a blind character in a movie, they expect to learn about their blindness. They expect the film to be about blindness.

So, the challenge of incorporating all of these elements was truly immense. It was hard to set up the trip in a way that played with the mystery we had set up for ourselves, but that got the audience on board to go (the eternal question of 'why?'). We didn't really know the meaning of it all when we left or why we wanted to go, so I felt we couldn't really set it up as if we did. It was also hard to know what pieces were missing, or yet to be discovered. It took me a year to discover the idea of using Cage's voice in the film, which was kind of the final piece of the puzzle for me.

And yes, the film forced its title on us at every turn. Slow is the way to go. Non-linear editing allows you to do so much, so fast, that you can ruin something before you even realize you've discovered it. Big breaks from the cut are always key, if you can get them; and in this case, we could. I knew I was never going to get a chance to make a film this way – so organically – again, and as hard as it was sometimes, we embraced it. The film would tell us when it was done. It took me a while to trust that, though, and I thought I was finished several times before actually finishing.

FILMCAN Most directors shooting their own feature sounds like a recipe for disaster, yet ASAP is an incredibly accomplished visual film. I noticed that you’re credited as the 2nd unit DOP and camera operator on Cube (1997), though, so you must have some experience in this department. How was that experience and would you do it again?

SCOTT SMITH Well, as it turns out, I've shot a lot. It's how I got into filmmaking in the first place, through the camera. The biggest reason I was looking out for a documentary was because I missed shooting and I wanted to do it again. It was the best experience for me – hard as it was, since I was recording sound as well. We had an assistant for the Halberstadt portion but it was just the two of us for the most part. I didn't even have time to clean my lens (though I figured we're playing with the notion of sight, so why not remind viewers of the lens?). I think I used everything I've ever learned about filmmaking so far on this one, technically and otherwise, and I loved it. It was a big juicy shot in the arm, and I haven't stopped shooting since. It's funny, I still consider myself a better shooter than a director. And the experience of shooting, discovering the story as it emerges, was a much purer form of writing for me than actual writing.

FILMCAN Did you find your own sense of sight heightened by your forcing yourself to act as DOP, as well as from the film being about a subject losing his sight?

SCOTT SMITH In fact, it was the opposite. I discovered quickly that because I was spending most of my time staring carefully at a three-inch LCD screen, that I was susceptible to the same kinds of intrusions that Ryan was – especially sandwich boards. I probably ran into more sandwich boards than Ryan ever did, because he had a cane. It didn't take long for me to start orienting myself using the three dimensions of sound, as Ryan does. I hadn't ever really paid much attention to the three dimensions of sound, but on the shoot, I figured it out almost immediately. That was fun and I hope we incorporated some of it into the film.  Visually, though, I was always stuck in this contradiction created by photographing that which Ryan couldn't see. I knew I was never going to get out of that contradiction, though, and had to embrace it.

FILMCAN From a technical point of view, what camera did you use, and can you share some digital video solo production tips (or horror stories)?

SCOTT SMITH I used a Sony PD170 – mostly because it was the camera which for me was best suited to handheld verité-style shooting, and that I knew fairly well. We shot in standard def DV, and did an upres to HD in post. I'm pretty shocked how well that worked, actually. I briefly considered shooting in HD, or HDV, but didn't know enough about it, and we left on short notice, so I just went with what I was most comfortable with. The hardest part was not having a sound person – though I'm torn because a big part of what I think makes the film was that it was just the two of us. A bigger crew would have prohibited a lot of what happens. But I did pay the price on sound, for sure. Just ask the guys and gals at Tattersall (Sound & Picture, Toronto). Having said that, a wireless lav and a good shotgun mic attached to the camera does pretty well in most situations, and I will continue to use it.  And a monopod – monopods rock!

FILMCAN Can you speak to the decision to really ground the film in Ryan’s POV, so to speak? I really appreciated not seeing a talking head interview with Ryan’s wife, wailing about his/their situation, or a doctor describing his condition, or even a Cage or organ expert describing these things.

SCOTT SMITH I didn't know for sure I wasn't going to do those things until after the trip was over. I'm sure I had plans to interview his wife when we got back, and we did shoot an interview (albeit pretty casual) with Christof (the old man with the tree) about the Cage project itself, but by the time we left Halberstadt after the note change, I had a feeling that if it wasn't shot on the trip, it wasn't going to be in the film – that on some level the film was going to be about what happened, not an info piece about the organ, or retinitis pigmentosa. This was confirmed months later, when I shot some footage with Ryan and Don McKellar riffing on the organ – hilarious stuff, but totally rejected by the film. After that, I knew the shooting was done. And, really, the movie is about change, not Ryan's condition. I guess I figured everything that needed to be learned about the effect of his blindness could be learned from him, or simply observed by watching him make his way in the world.

FILMCAN What was your biggest realization regarding sight and the perception of accomplishing goals, transgressing physicalities, that the film taught you?

SCOTT SMITH “It's going to happen to all of us – everybody's body is going to betray them at some point, you just don't know how, and you don't know when. There's going to be a moment... and you can live in the nostalgia of the thing you were before, or you can find a way to let it go.”

"Desire is the thing that guides you, but that you never get. You're not going to the North Star, you're not trying to have it, it's just the thing that guides you, but you never get there."

Both quotes are Ryan's – one is in the movie, and one is not, but those are the two things that he said that pretty much summed it up for me.

FILMCAN Ryan seems to come to terms with it, but do you share a similar optimism (or frustration) with the inevitability of another season, another year, passing you by? Do you think it makes it harder or easier if you can see it?

SCOTT SMITH Well, here we get into a separation between relationship to change (or aging or death) and relationship to sight – I certainly recognize the universal challenge of the former, especially as I get older and time seems to move faster, and my knees don't work in the moguls like they used to. I keep waiting for the “switch,” where I'll finally be okay with the fact that I'm going to grow old and die (or rather, am growing old and dying), but I now see this as a process of understanding, rather than a moment of one, and a long process at that. I think I see that process to be vital to the enjoyment of the second half of one's life – i.e., if I spend too much time clinging to the past (the old note) I will only resent the future for what it cannot be, and at the same time if I spend too much time worrying about the future (the coming note,) I will resent the past for not fulfilling my expectations. My only choice, then, is to be in the present, which is not a new idea, but also isn't always easy...

I've never thought about this vis-à-vis being able to see it. When Ryan talks about not being able to see his own face grow old, I'm torn. It sounds like a wonderful thing, actually, and yet I understand it when he says that the face holds the record of the impression the world has made upon you. Maybe sightlessness brings one closer to the present, out of sheer necessity. It's hard for me to say. I do know we live in a very sight-specific world, but that's not the end all and be all of our available experience, and that we do miss a lot of that available experience because we are too busy looking for something.

Also, I think what I learned from Ryan is that it's not useful to think of things in terms of what else could have been. He doesn't spend that much time thinking about “if I were still sighted,” at least anymore. For him, it's become less about losing sight and more about becoming blind. And being blind has made him who he is – it's what made him a writer, it's what gave him his unique and valuable perspective on the world, and I think he'd say it's what made him an adult. Having said that, of course there is emotion involved in losing your sight, and while he has been going blind for 15 years, the emotion that built up for him on the trip to Halberstadt came as a surprise to him, and largely because he was talking for four days solid to me about it, dredging up all those thoughts again. These were things he thought he'd put behind him, I think.

FILMCAN How do you and/or Ryan feel about him not actually being able to see the finished film? Aside from the Cage fans of the future, whom do you think this film is for?

SCOTT SMITH Well, this was a very interesting challenge – it was important for me for the film to be experienced simply as a soundtrack too. I spent a lot of time in the editing room not watching the monitor, but somewhere else in the room, just listening. While I was doing that, I discovered for the first time that the emotional experience of any film – the structure, the pacing, the emotional map etc. – is ENTIRELY carried by the soundtrack. It made sense to me, but it wasn't something I'd noticed. It's really the best way to gauge the pacing/content of a scene, is just to listen to it.

Whenever I talked to Ryan about the cut, it was very odd, because he understood the structure of it and could experience the emotional arc and all that – it was no different than discussing the cut with any number of sighted people, and deceivingly so. Then, I’d tell him about some visual thing in the movie, like the fake nose on Fredrik the Great, or the colour of Justus' T-shirt, or even that the record that he pulls out of the box to play has a great big eye on it, and he'd discover that for the first time. Only then was I reminded that there was an entire element of the film he was, of course, missing. In a way, it works with that contradiction I mentioned earlier, that the sighted and the blind are listening to the same film, but for the sighted it takes on the additional layer of being able to see what Ryan cannot. Sometimes, I wonder if this is distracting from what the film is really about, but who am I to say what the film is really about?

Despite the heavy sound work and focus on the organ’s note change, I don't think the film is for Cage fans at all – though I know there's something additionally special in it for them. I'd like to think the film is for those who are looking into the future and trying to figure out what their relationship to that future is. That could be about illness, or faith, or anxiety about making rent, as far as I'm concerned. The grandest thing I'll say is that for me, the specific problem of Ryan – of being neither sighted, nor completely blind; not this, not that – seems to be universally true of the collective “we”, as well. Aren't we in fact shedding an old identity (spiritually, sexually, politically, industrially) while we wait for a new one to emerge? So, I hope that's the universal theme of the film. All this in a short story about a blind man walking to a church. Maybe I'm crazy.

FILMCAN Where can people find the film in the near future? And what’s next for you?

SCOTT SMITHWell we have just put it out in the world, so it has a significant festival run in front of it, I hope. We're working on getting broadcast deals in this country, so we can at least produce a DVD that can be sold on the website. We're also thinking about experimenting with direct download, since the web is the most common point of contact with the audience. Finally, I'm sure we'll have a theatrical screening here and there –though we're still working on that too.

For further information, visit www.as-slow-as-possible.com