This film was equal parts wonderful, technically challenging and completely sleep deprived. I couldn’t resist the temptation to work with We Go Way Back‘s director Lynn Shelton, despite the fact that I knew the film would have to be shot during the two days I had off right in the middle of a feature I was shooting. Lynn had delicately crafted the look of the film with some great designers which entailed custom costume designs, intricate sand drawings and constructing an on-set forest floor, all tied together with a concise pallet and tone.

Art aside, a large part of the film was also to be executed both in reverse and shot high-speed, with the resulting image defying the laws of physics in a completely smooth and lyrical way. This proved to be exceptionally challenging for us as technicians, but also for the talent, who had to perform the lyrics live, in sync, to the final reverse/slo-mo footage. I remember talking with Lynn at one of our first conceptual meetings about overcoming the challenge of lip-sync and I had recalled another film which had faced a similar problem. They ended up hiring a linguist to construct nonsense words which, when articulated, made the appropriate mouth movements which would correspond correctly to the lyrics once the footage was reversed. It was a crazy idea, but its exactly what we did. On top of that, Lynn had specific camera movements meticulously cued throughout the piece that had to be executed also in sync, and also reversed. This was a unique challenge for us both – thinking about what the shot wanted to be, what that shot would look like in reverse, and then how to execute the reverse, hi-speed version of that shot to get the final result we were after.

Again, with some great planning on Lynn’s part we showed up on set with several versions of the song prepared for playback. Some hi-speed forward, some hi-speed reverse, some standard speed reverse, etc. For each sequence she cued up the appropriate version which included additional audio cues for synching the motion of the camera. All of us felt we were charting new territory (at least to us) and there was that nervous energy in the air: is this really going to work? When I saw the finished product, I was so pleased with the outcome because the song and the mood and the art completely strip away the ridiculous engineering behind the piece and you are simply engulfed in this strange but lyrical world. The science felt completely absent.

My favorite moment was during the long dolly shot of the dance trio running past Laura. At first the gaffer, Ryan Middleton, and I discussed constructing three pools of light that the dancers would move in and out as they made their way down-stage. We ended up not having the right light available achieve the shot in one move, so I suggested we rig the 1200 HMI to the dolly and let the light move with the action. Ryan took the idea one step further; rigging a giant “bounce box” out of a 4×4 bboard and duvatene which was then mounted to a high-roller he was able to swing and roll the giant soft overhead source wherever we needed it and he was literally able to dance with the both the dolly and the dancers as we all made our way down the stage. We would have never envisioned such a solution had we access to every tool, and the effect was breathtaking. Or maybe it was the sleep deprivation after all…