Film Interview: I CAN SEE YOU director Graham Reznick

Saturday, 21 August 2010 18:08

Film Interview: I CAN SEE YOU director Graham Reznick

Director and sound designer Graham Reznick discusses the making of his psychedelic horror film, I Can See You, as well as his recent foray into 3D production

Graham Reznick’s I Can See You is a psychedelic freak-out that comes at a time when such fare has been all but forgotten; following a harrowing weekend trip for three city boys in the middle of the woods, what should have been a simple work-related getaway instead devolves into a fury of hallucinations, fear, and murder as strange forces push the three men over the edge and into an unknown mental abyss. I recently spoke with Reznick as the film has just come out on DVD, accompanied by his new 3D short The Viewer.

In addition to his directorial efforts, Reznick is a noted collaborator of both horror film maestro Larry Fessenden (who also co-stars in the film) and Ti West (The House of the Devil) doing sound design work for their projects, which he also addresses in part here. What follows is the transcript of our conversation detailing the film’s production, inspiration, and Reznick’s views on the current 3D craze.

Vegas Outsider: First off, I was impressed by the film's sound design which is very dense and really carries much of the film's sense of dread & foreboding like Clean, Shaven. How did you come upon the particular mix that the film employs?

Graham Reznick: Well it’s interesting that you mention Clean, Shaven; I actually saw it for the first time while I was finishing I Can See You and absolutely loved it. That movie is really another densely layered and beautifully edited film and actually there are a couple specific choices I made in I Can See You that were inspired by Clean, ShavenI Can See You that I can see are directly inspired by that technique, which I really enjoy in his work. But as far as sound design, that’s a good question; I don’t really know where it comes from except it’s kind of my impulse and I’ve been lucky to work with directors, as a sound designer, who have just let me follow that impulse. I think because of that I’ve gone in directions where if you were a studio sound designer or working at a post house on assigned projects you may not have the opportunity of leverage to try those kinds of avenues. So because I’ve just developed these things I liked over time, I just get more and more entrenched in these surreal layered soundscapes. But no one has told me not to do them so far so I keep doing them. but they were minutiae of editing; I found that (Lodge Kerrigan) did some really interesting things with editing where you’re just about to see a character open his mouth, make a frown, or some other exaggerated motion and just at the first indication of that action he cuts away. There are a couple little insert shots in I Can See You that are inspired by that.

VO: How did the initial concept behind the film come to you and how long did it take to flesh it out into something that was filmable?

GR: I Can See You came out of two things. I had the opportunity to pitch a movie to Larry Fessenden, our benevolent producer, who had produced The Roost for Ti West, whom I grew up with, and Ti and I were talking about doing a movie the summer of 2006, either a co-production or some double feature which turned out to become Trigger Man, Ti’s second feature, and I Can See You, my first film. We both shot sort of similar premises of three guys from the city going out into the woods, just really archetypal horror premises that we were going to take in vastly different but interesting directions. And so we came up with that very simple premise of three guys in the woods as an element and he and Larry came up with Trigger Man, which was likely influenced by the rash of sniper shootings by the D.C. snipers that were happening at the time.

I was influenced by my experience with Waverly Films, which is a production company in Brooklyn. They are friends of mine from NYU and have all worked on dozens of music videos, commercials, etc. and in mid-2005 there was a terrible experience with a particular music video where the company who financed the video, who also represented the music artist, hated everything they did. It was just a nightmare scenario where they had approved all the choices before hand and then when Waverly went out to shoot the video and brought it back they were like “Why did you make this? This is not what we asked for; this is not what we want” and it really amplified this sense of being taken advantage of as a young creative person in the industry, which totally goes on rampantly and always has to an extent. It’s sort of what you have to do as a creative person; you have to pay your dues and pound the pavement for a while, do a lot of stuff for free, and get a lot of experience.

But it can really suck a person dry after a while if you get stuck doing it or have a really bad experience; luckily everyone involved completely bounced back and in fact the video that Waverly Films made ended up becoming one of the more popular videos for this particular label in its native country. I find fascinating though that because the job market right now is not so great more and more young creative types, either out of film school or art school, are basically being asked to work for free. Everybody is doing it because they’ve got to get experience, they’ve got to get work and credits, and that’s sort of where the impetus of I Can See You’s story came from.

VO: Because the film becomes increasingly visually complex, how much preplanning was there in terms of setting up specific shots and sequences as well as being able to cut them together effectively? Was most of it decided before hand or were there instances of coming up with interesting ideas on the fly as you were shooting?

GR: Well there’s certainly a multi-part answer to that because I think all those are true. But, I guess in an overview the film has a very specific script that we went off of as we were shooting however I did improvise a lot in regards to changing the story. At one point, I just completely threw out the old ending and built something new. But probably from my experience doing sound design and music, I’m really interested in motifs and building on motifs and using them almost like a language. For example, there’s this guy named Scott McCloud who wrote a book called Understanding Comics, which is a weird reference for a film but it ties in with graphic storytelling. He talks about building a toolbox of language that you can use and draw from, and I think if you build a world of a film that has a really strong sense of motif language you can improvise and then allow that motif to continue to tell your story in varying degrees of situations; if you change a scenario you can still bring in those motifs to have the same meaning or to continue that underlining like you would with sound design or music; you would weave melodies or countermelodies throughout to add to the overall sense of what is going on as well as allow for improvisation.

VO: I have to ask, how did the musical number come about? It's so upbeat but creepy that it really does stick with you afterwards?

GR: Well I love, well I say I love because I also hate it since I’m an anxious person in a lot of ways, I’m interested in the experience of being dogged by an idea and not being able to let something go. It’s much easier to bury it or try to get it out of your head but then it can come back in the most brutal of ways and I think specifically in I Can See You when Doug disappears with Summer and Ben just is thinking the absolute worst. He knows that nothing good can be going on but he doesn’t want to think about it, he’s trying to put it out of his mind and it just comes back to haunt him in the most offensive way as an awful, sexual jealousy dream wrapped up in the obnoxious energy that when you’re down just really hurts. That’s where the impetus to do that type of dream sequence came from.

VO: One thing I thought of as I watched that sequence is that the overall musical genre has always been inherently surreal and a bit psychotic if you think about it from a certain perspective; not only do the participants are compelled to break out into song because the emotion is too strong to express normally with such enthusiasm that if they did that in a normal, real life situation they would be committed. So again your sequence reminded me once again of just how insane musicals really are if you view them through a certain prism.

GR: That’s absolutely true and I have a fascination with musicals but don’t really watch or enjoy most of them, they’re not something I seek out. But Ben Dickinson, who’s also the lead actor as well as a great filmmaker, introduced me to All That Jazz a million years ago and that’s one of my favorite films.

VO: Being a sound designer on previous films, how did you bring your experience to bear when working on the sound design for this film? Did you know exactly what you wanted to try out or were you looking to experiment?

GR: Well I don’t think so, I’m trying to remember how we planned out the specifics of the sound design because I think for me I was focusing mostly on the story. Whenever I think of story, sound, visuals and editing I think of them all sort of bearing equal weight in regards to the plotting and narrative ideas. So sound design didn’t really stick out more than the visuals or editing ideas did. A lot of it was preplanned but I actually shot I Can See You before most of the rest of my professional sound design work. The only other film I had worked on before then was The Roost. So I didn’t really think of myself as a sound designer but rather as just a filmmaker. I worked on I Can See You over two or three years after that while I was supporting myself doing sound design. In a weird way, I did end up trying things out in I Can See You that were not used in other films literally in that I would record things for other films and had a lot left on the cutting room floor, a lot of guitar drone and feedback and those kinds of stuff.

And then techniques that wouldn’t quite fit with other films I would see if I could work into I Can See You. Because it was shot in a modular fashion, it wasn’t all shot at once, I was always kind of thinking of new things to shoot and ways to progress the story. Actually a great example is the sequence where we end up back in Ben’s room in NYC and we’re seeing the shadow of a mask float across the wall there’s a horrifying, just modulated sounding scream accompanying it. That whole sequence was derived from the fact that I was working on something else, I don’t even remember the film, and came up with that sound which conjured that image up for me immediately. So we shot it later in the film and it made motif and symbolic sense to me in that point in the story. But there are a couple other sequences in the film that happened like that.

VO: The main character, Ben, goes through a complete psychic breakdown over the story's course, exacerbated by his visions as well as the disappearance of Summer Day. In your opinion, how much of this is really caused by the trip itself versus any underlying issues that the trip may have simply brought to the surface? In short, how much of what happens to him is a result of a preexisting condition within his own mind?

GR: That’s a good question. I definitely think it is partly a preexisting condition on Ben’s part. I’ve always thought of him as a person on the edge with a tenuous grasp of things already and I’m also fascinated with the idea of Prosopagnosia or facial blindness. It’s very, very obliquely tied into the film in a very abstract way with him trying to paint a portrait of his father but not being able to remember how his father’s face looked, and there’s also a lot of play with the condition of people’s faces throughout the film. So I see him as someone slowly losing his grasp already and the situation simply exacerbates it and pushes him over the edge.

VO: In terms of visual styling, what were your influences, if any specific ones at all, helped guide or inspire you as you were crafting the story and film itself? GR: Well I have quite a few obsessions with filmmakers I really love and could name them on and on and include people like David Lynch obviously, Ken Russell, Stan Brakhage, David Cronenberg, and all sorts of people. Even people like the Coen Brothers who give the camera a life of its own. That stuff is constantly running through my head so whenever I’m doing at the moment is inspired by things and people like that.

VO: In addition to I Can See You, you've also directed a 3D short called The Viewer; I'm curious to learn about the decision to tackle 3D as a visual medium?

GR: I was very excited in late 2008 or so when I found out theaters were being fitted with 3D projection systems which I had seen very infrequently growing up with the polarized 3D glasses and knew that it was usually better done at theme parks and stuff like that. Oddly enough I think Bolt, the Disney Pixar movie, was playing in Delaware where I was living with my parents at the time and I went to go see it in 3D and was blown away by how it looked as well as what potential 3D had for subjectivity in film. I think one thing 3D offers, that 2D offers as well but more so, is a heightened sense of reality. You can really palpably believe the world of the film and movies like Avatar obviously take advantage of this. And I think because of that you can show the audience something completely unbelievable or non-existent in life and the suspension of disbelief will be more easily conquered, which allows us filmmakers to do wilder and more interesting things to help add to the theatrical experience. Also, I’m working with producer Peter Phok on developing a new film called The Teleport which is essentially the feature-length adaptation of The Viewer about researchers in teleportation and mind-controlling aliens so that should be a lot of fun.

To learn more about the film and where you can view/purchase it, go to www.icanseeyoumovie.com