Writer: Lv Junke 吕俊珂
Ghost Writer is a film that easily catches attention. Even in BISFF’s abudant program spanning almost 300 short films not lacking in experimentation, avant-garde, and exploration of visual media, it’s a very different piece. This seemingly cost-free film uses Google Maps street View images and first-person voice-over to tell a simple, mysterious story. Perhaps because of its simplicity, or perhaps because of its delicate balance between form and narrative, I couldn’t help but want to explore it further.
In this film, I see the gesture of director Abe Callard as a young film auteur. Curious about how Abe came to this unique gesture in a series of choices, I interviewed him at the Goethe-Institut, 798 during the BISFF after party, to learn about the story and choices behind Ghost Writer. We finished our interview in the corner of the Goethe-Institut with the music of the dinner party and the sound of conversation everywhere. The interview was very smooth and enjoyable, perhaps because we “got to know” Abe in advance in the gesture of the film. We had similar perspectives on many issues, and Abe also provided many interesting and special insight.
Q: Have you ever been to Grand Marais, the town in your film?
A: No. I wanna go.
Q: To which one?[1]
A: The one in my film.
Q: Was the story inspired entirely by the town, by the Grand Marais, or was it influenced by other things like real life, experience or other works of art or literature?
A: No. I think I just stared at the town until the story came to me.
A: I think I’m more influenced by novels than by films. Maybe like Murakami, the Japanese writer. I’m a big fan of his, and this kind of story where it’s like a boy and a girl meeting randomly and having this strange connection, and it’s kind of haunted and mysterious. It’s probably influenced by him. But I don’t think I’m very influenced by other movies. I don’t watch a lot of movies.
Q: Do you think the film needs a story? Or do you think a story needs a film to show it? Or how you think about the relation between film language and storytelling？
A: I think story comes first. I think a story can really be told in any way and I never start with a technique or a certain type of image or anything like that. I always care most about the characters and the story. And then I think I just let the story determine the image.
Q: So why you choose film but not other forms?
A: I have done storytelling in other forms. I’ve written books. And I’ve done plays and stuffs. I love every form. I want to make a video game.
Q: Why did you choose to shoot this film entirely with Google Maps?
A: Because I think that the images on Google Maps are not that different from my actual filming style. The way that the world looks in Google Maps, just like this kind of stable you might say wide shots of places, it’s kind of like how I would shoot a movie anyways. So it looks like how I imagine the world to look like.
Q: What role does the mouse cursor play in your short film?
A: It’s like that’s like the only representation of the protagonist. So you don’t see his body but you see that.
Q: How do you think of the relation or distance between you as a director, and the protagonist or the narrator in your short film? Because you use the first point of view and your own voice in the voice-over.
A: Let me think about that… I think I did write the protagonist in my own voice not just in the sense that I was speaking it, but in the sense that I wrote what I would say in that situation. Because I want the protagonist to feel neutral. I don’t want him to feel like a very strong character. I think the girl is the strong character to me, and the protagonist is like a blank canvas. So I just wrote him to have, in my view, the most average responses so that in a way there is no character. The audience member becomes the protagonist.
Q: I found the voice-over of the main character being you yourself. How do you consider the tone and rhythm of the voice-over？
A: When I’m directing actors, I always tell them act as little as possible, don’t give any emotion, just say the words on the page. So it was really nice when I was reading my own lines because I could do it exactly how I wanted which is monotone. I just try to read it like an AI voice reader.
Q: Can we say this is kind of minimalism?
A: Yeah. I think so.
Q: So how do the images and sounds work together in the film? I think the images are very minimalist, with no real characters appearing, yet the narration is very detailed—it describes perceptions of the environment, associations with the scenery, and even aspects of the body. How do you deal with that?
A: Every movie is like give-and-take where you want to give some things to the audience and take some things away. So I had to decide, for example, do I want to put in natural noises? Or do I want to just put silence and voice-over? And I thought if it’s just silent, it’s like I’m taking too much away and then the viewer is not immersed in the world shown in the film. Then that’s why I decided to include noises and music. I usually don’t put music into films. But I felt like in this case, because you’re just looking at a still photograph, if there’s no music it would be too desolate. So there needs to be some warmth. And also because the main character is so flat and effortless, I feel like I need to put in that music to give the sense of spirit. But the image is giving almost nothing.
Q: You mentioned the soundscape and the music, but also your writing is full of details. Why you choose this way? Sometimes you give a portrayal of the narrator’s inner world and sometimes you go into the description of the environment.
A: I think that’s just how I think about the world.
Q: I noticed that in the lines spoken by the female character you use a girl’s voice. But the other characters, they don’t have their own voice, instead you use your own voice to speak for them. So why you choose this way?
A: Because she stands apart from the world, from everybody else. And she’s an outsider even in her own town.
Q: Do you have a unique language for this film? Because you use Google Maps and I notice that you use close ups to some parts of the space and then zoom out to the whole environment.
A: I think I try to make the film as close as possible to how I see the world. A filmmaker who edits a lot and has a handheld camera and many different angles sees the world in that way. They see it in this kind of chaotic, exciting, vibrant way. And I think the way I see the world is like just a still image. Sometimes I notice a detail and it’s like zooming in on it. So that’s what I’m trying to depict.
Q: I noticed sometimes the camera goes to the sky and zooms in.
A: Just because I like to look at the sky.
Q: Why you keep the watermark of Google Maps?
A: Because I don’t know how to remove it.
Q: I think it’s kind of beautiful in the sky, like some stars.
A: I like it in the sky. Yeah, it does look like stars. But it was not an intentional choice. The thing is there are some people, when they watch my movie, they think it’s about digital images. Maybe it is. But I didn’t think about that when I was making it. I’m just interested in the story and the place. I thought this is the best way to express it through those images partially because they don’t have any people in them. And I like that. But I’m not trying to say anything about maps or anything like that. I don’t know.
Q: Did you adjust the light or the color of the scene during your post production?
A: No I didn’t. I thought about doing it. Because the black in the film is not very black. It’s very light. But when I color-corrected it, it just didn’t have the same magic as when I originally discovered the images. Because the first thing I discovered was the image of the lakeside, outside his hotel at night where the main character meets the girl for the first time. And I was so struck by that image because you never really see night images on Google Maps, they don’t take them at night. So that was like a rare instance, and then I started to explore the town, and the whole town was depicted at night. It had this very rich warm color. I don’t know what kind of camera was used to take it, but it’s very beautiful to me. When I dropped the black down to something darker, it took away those details.
Q: Did you ever think of including some people in your images? I noticed that there are some people in the Google Maps without face, with mosaics on their faces.
A: That’s just because Google blurs them out. I didn’t blur them out. It would be a little creepy if there were no people. But I didn’t want to show the characters because I felt like when you’re talking to somebody in real life, you don’t actually look at their face very much. Like I’m talking to you right now, but I might be looking at another thing. Maybe the best way to represent a conversation is just looking up at the sky or something like that.
Q: My last question is the one that you once asked another director[2], and now I want to ask you. This world around us, and the world in your film, which one do you think is more real?
A: The world in my film.
[1] (The following words reveal the plot) The protagonist of the film comes to the wrong place: there are two Grand Marais towns in the United States, and the punk singer’s hometown is in Michigan, but the protagonist comes to the Grand Marais in Minnesota. So the one Abe wanted to visit is Grand Marais, Minnesota, as shown in the Google Maps image in this film.
[2] During the post-screening sharing of the 3rd section of International competition at UCCA, Abe asked Eneos Carka, one of the directors of I Accidentally Stepped on a Flower (which digitally modeled an abandoned stadium after scanning it, then used more than a million point clouds to redraw it), the same question, and the latter replied “Both”.
sailuluo 赛璐珞 