Otium is your first feature film. What inspired you to make this film? Can you tell us about how it came about?
Every job that Hanna works in the film is one that I did at some point or another in my twenties, and her struggles as an artist certainly mirrored my own. One of these many gigs was working as a photographer, taking photos of short-term rentals across Toronto. Many of the properties that I shot remained empty for a large part of the year, as they primarily served as a financial asset for the owner. I was often alone when photographing these spaces, and over time, I found it strange how they functioned as a worksite for me, a home for a privileged few, and an unattainable commodity for so many others my age. Before I had any conception of the premise or story, I was interested in the formal conceit of a camera that would continuously pan in a circle, indifferent to anyone passing in or out of the frame. Thinking about Hanna, the indifferent circular pans were a way to remove the notion of home from these spaces. The camera is more interested in Hanna’s surroundings than Hanna herself, and it’s able to see them for the commodities that they are.
You shoot on film. Why did you make that technical choice? What is your relationship to this medium, and what does it allow you to do?
I jokingly refer to myself as an aesthetic reactionary when it comes to shooting on film. If I’m not happy with the way things are going with the world, I can find some comfort in going back to older forms of image-making. I load the magazines myself, and I like that there’s a tangibility to the image, even if it’s ultimately transferred to digital. Aesthetically, there’s a flattened sense of time when you shoot on 16mm that makes everything feel of a different era, and I feel that lets me move away from strict realism. I’ve heard other filmmakers say that there’s pressure to working with film, but I don’t think that’s the case for the way that I work. Most of the actors have a theatre background, and almost every scene is framed in one wide master shot, so it’s just a matter of rehearsing until we can shoot a single take.
What were the stages of the writing process, and how did you approach this minimalist staging?
I had originally planned the film as a short, which was then interrupted by the pandemic, so I took the time to expand the script into a feature. There was an earlier draft of the script that was more explicitly political, with protests happening in the background, but eventually I felt that the state of the city itself was enough of a commentary. I already knew that Eliza Martin and Claire Shenstone-Harris would be playing Hanna and Greta, so I would send new iterations of the script to them, and we would workshop it together to expand their characters. I based a lot of Hanna on myself, but I struggled a bit with Greta, which is where this workshopping helped. I knew that I wanted them to be friends of two slightly different social strata, but it was kind of a collective realisation that Greta should be a bit of a clueless artist who gloms onto Hanna.
On several occasions, you include montages of home movie footage. Can you tell us about this documentary-style material that captures the social landscape of an era within the context of fiction? Where do these materials come from? Why did you choose to include them?
We shot the film in the house I grew up in, and so there were interesting opportunities to match certain moments in the same spaces they appear in my family’s home movies. Nostalgia has a kind of dangerous potency, and I wanted to take advantage of that. There’s also some 8mm footage that belonged to my grandparents, as well as another shot provided by my editor, Rick Bartram. Showing these successive generations was a way to demonstrate that now there’s a disconnect with the idea of prosperity that we once had.
How did you choose your actress, and how did you work with her?
I had worked with Eliza almost 10 years ago on a student project, and I had her in mind during the writing process. I struggle with casting, so I try to plan my projects around people that I’ve worked with before. Eliza and I had a lot of conversations before shooting about who Hanna is, how she dresses, what she eats, etc., and at a certain point, I was able to leave her with the character. Eliza has told me that she had a “Hanna playlist” that she would listen to each day on the way to the shoot, but she still hasn’t told me what the songs are!
Could you tell us about this repetitive sound composition? It conveys a sense of softness in the film’s hushed atmosphere while also creating an almost surreal, derealising effect. How did you approach its role, as well as that of the sound?
I feel like there’s an expectation for this type of film not to have a score, and I wanted to challenge that notion somewhat. On the one hand, there’s the realism of long static takes and slow dialogue, but elements like the score and the texture of 16mm push it into an altered territory. Visually, the film uses a lot of slow circular panning motions, and I think that’s where the repetition in the sound comes from. I don’t have much of a musical vocabulary, but I think I called them “undulations” when talking to my composer, Zack Bower.
Interviewed by Claire Lasolle
