Interview: Searching for Truth Through Film

Owen is a film student studying at Boston University. He spent six weeks with Obstacle during his final semester. He shares with us his passion for truth within storytelling, and how he achieves it. 

What drives you to direct?

I think what drives me to direct, to make movies in general, is the same thing that drives any artist to create. Namely, I am interested in communicating what I think it feels like to be alive on this planet and to share relationships and experiences with other people. The complexity of these experiences and relationships is something that I do not have the requisite skills to translate into words, so I make it my task to translate it into images and sound. I am endlessly fascinated by the immediacy of film, and in the way I can dislocate its form in order to create certain effects in the mind of the viewer. It is the only artistic medium that moves at the speed of life.

What is the responsibility of a director?

As simply as possible, the responsibility of the director is to tell the truth. I don’t mean truth in a factual sense, but more in a poetic or a philosophical sense. Every single element of a film must be molded to this end, from the photography to the performances to the editing. More importantly, this truth-telling requires the director to put something of themselves into their work, to make truly personal films, which is an incredibly frightening prospect. I don’t mean this as an exercise in navel-gazing, but in translating experiences into cinematic form.

What common theme do you always return to?

In a word: insecurity. I think that the truth is that we can never really fully know the person across from us. More frighteningly, we can never even fully know ourselves. I think that these two truths cause us a great deal of distress and this is compounded by the fact that we’ve set up systems of communication for ourselves which isolate us rather than connect us.

Can you walk us through your creative process?

I’ll start with a situation or set of circumstances and then decide how many points of view I’d like to explore this situation from, which gives me the number of characters I’ll need. I’ll then go to a group of actors who I think would work well in my set of circumstances and, if they say yes, I’ll have a number of conversations with each actor individually where we’ll build out the history and personality of their character. 

Then we move into the rehearsal stage. I’ll come up with a list of events or situations which I think are important in either the history of one of the characters, or in the history of their relationship with one or more of the other characters. The actors will improvise a small scene based on each of these situations. 

From there, I build out the script, which is still not a script in a traditional sense as it is made to be changed on set and I will continue to try to surprise the actors and encourage them to improvise while filming. This improvisation aims to make everything as real as possible so that the actors are not performing premeditated emotions and reactions at predetermined points. The goal is create emotions in real time.

How do you approach developing an idea from the first spark to a finished piece?

I guess the real nitty gritty process I describe above can give some idea of how this happens, but basically I just think of real periods in my own life that I’d like to try to represent in a film. I’ll then keep changing around the actual plot details, until I get close enough to what comes close to a shared or universal experience. Really, the most important part of this is getting my central set of circumstances to the point where what is in my head as an idea or a mess of emotions can be expressed in words to the actors. And I cannot overstate what they and my other collaborators - my cinematographer, my producer, etc. - really add to my initial idea. They are the ones who are truly responsible for bringing the film to life, even if each film always starts from a very  personal place.

Who are the directors you’re currently excited about?

Mary Bronstein and each of the Safdie brothers have new films coming out this year, all three of which I am very much looking forward to. In addition to them, there is Kelly Reichardt and So-Yong Kim who both routinely turn in very challenging, personal work. Other than them, I really liked Sinners, and I’m excited to see what Ryan Coogler does next.