Ghosts in the Machine: how technology haunts the screen | BFI In Dreams Are Monsters horror season

hi everyone I'd like to welcome you to today's uh ghosts in the machine panel which has been programmed as part of the bfi's in dreams and Monsters Series so my name is Chloe Leeson I am the editor-in-chief of screen queens and a freelance costume designer and we are joined here today by a great panel of a mixture of filmmakers academics and writers so people like to introduce themselves we'll start with Jan first and Jane Sean run I'm a writer director uh I made a film came out this year I got I don't know it came came out over the last few years called we're all going to the World's Fair um in post-production on another film that's not about the internet but I still think about the internet all the time Lenny Blake um Dr Lenny Blake I guess given that I'm here as one of the academics I founded the Manchester Center for Gothic studies at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2013 as a sort of center of studying General General weird stuff and what it does in in cultural and historical and and political terms from the 18th century to the present um so I write about monsters and um the the Terrors of contemporary life I guess and Serbia hi my name is Xavier aldana Reyes and I'm also an academic at Manchester Metropolitan University I co-lead the center that Lenny founded in 2013 at the moment and I have written on and off about digital horror and online um horror as well it's a it's an area of interest um for me ever since I watched The Blair Witch Project and then Rec in 2007 which to my mind is still one of the best horror films ever made fantastic well thank you all for being here today so we are here today to talk about technology and screen-based horror and how the anxieties and fears surrounding uses of technology and manifesting through filmmaking everybody here has at least once seen something on the Internet not a film something on the Internet that was horrific and that they shouldn't have seen that has probably shaped them in some way I know for me that was Marble Hornets was a big a big starting point for me but I think as it makes the most sense as technology changes for us to work um chronologically through I guess the history of screen based horror so I think we'll start in the 1980s when it started to kind of rise to prominence and this idea of a sub-genre called techno horror and I'm gonna come to June first about video drama David cronenberg's 1983 film and I'm wondering how you feel that that might have been a precursor to where We've Ended up we've started on with the the videos and the TV and how how has that shaped how the kind of sub-genre of techno horror has developed the video drum obviously not necessarily a film about the internet but certainly a film about technology and the relationship between technology and the body and society and identity and the way and reality in the way that um the screen is is changing our perceptions of ourselves I mean the film resonates with me for a number of of reasons um I think just Cronenberg as as um somebody interested in yeah the the evolution of of of body and identity in in a in a digital or you know post digital or pre-digital age whichever era decade you're looking at him uh in um it just has great great resonance and I don't know another filmmaker who's like project over the last 40 years has been so sort of clear and in that way I think video drone is an amazing one to look at and you could certainly point to films about culture or about um you know entertainment or or about our relationship to the screen made before video drone but um I I do think um you know as a as a movie about television and as a movie about a world increasingly mediated through screens of all sizes um it it is something of like a a Rosetta Stone for me or like a citizen zero or something you know it's it's an it's a wonderful place to start because when I was starting on on World's Fair and thinking about my own work you know as a young filmmaker you think um okay I don't have a lot of resources first of all um I want to make resident work but I I can't necessarily make um you know might make make my magnum opus as my first film and so you're looking for something to talk about that um you know that's that's down to earth and and um Chloe this this feeling you described of being scared on the Internet or or seeing something on the Internet that destabilizes your sense of self was definitely a founding idea for me with World's Fair um but I think that um there there was also this idea that you know people would always say I'm I'm you know I'm in my 30s so so going back to the 90s like the the adage about like representing the internet or screens on on film is always um that's not very visual that's not like an interesting thing to um to photograph and yet to me I felt that um it was this invisible thing that I didn't see movies talking about enough this invisible thing structuring like the majority of my day and my life honestly increasingly especially during um you know pandemic times and and and you know even before that with uh just like the dominance of social media and all of that like spending so much of my life mediating and narrativeizing myself through a screen and understanding myself through this box that reflects me back and shows me other pieces of reality um it felt like like the hidden thing that we don't talk about enough in our media in our movies um like like the sort of thing that's taken for granted right like sometimes you'll obviously like see characters text or see characters engage with screens in Broadway is um in movies but um but but exploring our relationship to the fact that we spend most of our time as human time as human beings right now like staring into a glowing box um I don't think we have art that's really like giving that the space that it deserves in terms of our our current sense of self and video drone to me is is a movie that's like hyper aware of that and and specifically engaged with this relationship of um how that relationship person and and Screen person and technology is changing our sense of ourselves um you know and I think it's like obviously a very dense Movie that that we you know we couldn't hope to unpack in the time we have here um but it really resonates yeah I think it's it's a good starting point as I say it it's not just the internet it's how we've progressed from uh from from TV to to the internet and then to to lit up best things and social media which we will get on to later um I will say uh we're all going to the World's Fair it gave me this feeling I just felt like wrong after watching it in the best possible way it gave me this like most unnerving feeling which I think yeah it's the idea of of being watched and how do how do we uh view our own relationships to being online the next one I was going to go on to was um Jay Horror's influence on on the genre specifically as kind of a Nation that's more technologically advanced than we were and the film pulse and how they log into the internet and the the opening clip of them dialing up and the whole process of that coming coming along I've rewatched it this morning and it's just got this like profoundly like really sad element to it um that I think really really comes across with this idea of of spectral beings being trapped inside some form of media or technology that's very prevalent throughout J horror um does anyone have any interesting thoughts on that um I I think the the the notion of the the the technological especially Electronic media as some sort of portal or something that that opens that connection with the dead goes back so long I mean to at least the 1840s and the creation of electromagnetic telegraphy I mean quite literally because I think it was Moore's that created it in 1844 and four years later we had the fox sisters doing the whole tapping um you know as a way of contacting the dead and I think it makes perfect sense doesn't it in terms of the way that we think about energy as a form of flow and the way that we think about Consciousness as a form of flow as well you know that sort of connection between liveness Consciousness and some sort of um Telly spectral other world makes perfect sense and so what what better way to open that um you know the gates to to the end that the internet what I think pulse does really well apart from capturing the uncanniness of media you were talking about that crucial scene where um he's setting up the internet you know apart from The Uncanny sounds of you know which um those of us of a certain generation will remember of the the dialogue modem making this Unholy sounds um it's just that the moment that which the internet Comes Alive of its own and you know the kind of that the moment where technology starts doing things of its own accord that don't um you know I mean technically computers the Internet it should be something that responds to commands right so when it has a live of its own it's just naturally and inherently uncanny but the film also has a deeper message as you were saying Chloe about um loneliness I think one of the ghosts says something like death was eternal loneliness um and I think at one point in the film there's this almost indeterminacy between ghosts and real people and one other character says ghosts wouldn't want to make more ghosts they would just want to trap you in their loneliness right they want to keep haunting you forever and I think that idea that the film also uses in a different scene you know when we see the dots coming across a screen not quite joining um is that idea that technology gives us the illusion of connection but it's a very superficial connection one that that it's quite really difficult to build meaningful relationships out of and I think I can't think of a film that's captured that better than than pulse yeah absolutely it's the bit that gets me it's kind of funny but also like I'm sure we can all recognize ourselves in it is when he's looking through the terms and conditions and he's just like what is this next that we've all been that we don't know what we're getting ourselves into we don't know what we're agreeing to whether that's sharing what we're about to look at um and I think that's even though it's a bit of like light-heartedness in that like pivotal scene I think it's it's something that we all recognize in ourselves and a kind of a warning sign and I'm sure we all click yes to all the terms and conditions when we logged on this Zoom today so yes any other thoughts yeah exactly they don't come after my firstborn but yeah it's absolutely the case isn't it it's like um it's one of these wonderful films that I've seen so many times and I'm still not sure that I like care about the narrative in the film I think it's also worth mentioning it's um it's like a film that favors mood and atmosphere and like the mentality is the word I think of when I think of pulse um and I I Adore the way that you know perhaps it's like my sort of um saturation of American Horror and and like the jump scare as as like this sort of um you know assumed uh structure of a horror movie but the way that pulse I think like anticipates this sort of um like cursed image idea that the internet will sort of attach itself to over the next 20 years and and really does mine it for like emotionality above all else like it's incredibly unnerving and filled with Dread but it's ultimately to me like an Express a visual expression of but yeah loneliness and depression and um and the way that the characters in the film sort of find themselves Crossing thresholds in a very liminal way rather than in a very binary way right it's not that like they look at the computer and then they're trapped in the computer but that they move through space until they're in a different kind of space um that really resonates with me as a way to use the language of filmmaking to talk about The Surreal experience of living in a world mediated by screens yeah absolutely so we'll lead on from that actually so now that we're we're sort of in the early 2000s we've obviously got a really pivotal um moment in time that kind of shaped our entire world not just a particular country we've uh 9 11 happens and that is something where people have never seen such levels of of just disaster and kind of Carnage unraveling in real time in front of them and yeah people's lives are becoming completely dominated by those screens um so Matt Reeves's Cloverfield um from 2008 somewhere around about there um yeah thank you yeah it's a really good example of how um post 911 fears can be communicated through horror Cinema um is it Lenny would you like to see yeah I I chose a bit from Cloverfield to talk about and and not because as you say um you know it was a it was a groundbreaking experience of you know unprecedented horror although you know it was it was a horrifying thing that happened what I was really interested in was Americans response to that horror um and yes it did it did emerge in real time and it was it was shown um you know globally in real time as it happened um but it became very rapidly the actual event was inextricable from the images of the event um and the replaying of those images again and again and again although many were censored you know the the the falling man for example you know disappeared until that documentary was made um is is very much in keeping with the ways in which traumatic memory functions you know you experience a horrific event you you remember it not in terms of a straightforward linear narrative but in terms of you know images and flashbacks and and strange stuff you may remember you know textures or or smells or or tiny details um so you know Cloverfield for me was a really significant piece of filmmaking because um you know and it was still that that excessive or continuous use of handheld camera was still you know fresh enough to to be very impactful um and and it was a film in which you know the very form of of the film therefore captured the national trauma um of the events of 9 11 which you know of course was was an International Trauma very rapidly with the with the coming of the war on terror um so yes it's it's a film that that functions you know fabulously as a as a melding of of um digital Stylistics and sort of national psychological trauma I think it's not as political a film as one may imagine you know it doesn't set out to do anything um other I think than than really capture traumatic memory um but that doesn't mean his critics you know that we then don't necessarily have a take on it because you know the 911 didn't come out of nowhere um and it didn't lead nowhere you know there was a hell of a lot of of trauma sandwiching that event but this captures a very insistently American um Vision thereof yeah I think it's a fantastic film it's this yeah it's the symbol of the the head of the Statue of Liberty I guess when that falls and then there's the scene where they're kind of out on the street and they see I can't remember if it's like the gap between the buildings and something falls down and they just see eat a smoke coming towards them yeah the Empire State goes yeah completely like replicates some like real footage um from 911 it was captured on people's handheld cameras where you just see the wall of smoke heading towards people as they run away and I think yeah that was a very significant image but yeah you're absolutely right I don't think it was necessarily like a politically intended film because it's a monster no you know it's impossible to escape the police exactly that representation you know why else would you have um you know the Empire State thrown up during the Great Depression creating work for America's disenfranchised and obviously the head of of um of Lady Liberty herself you know there's there's a lot of politics in there but it wears it sufficiently um lightly um to allow for a lot of different readings of the film I think it's it's quite similar to Georgia Romero's diary of the Dead in terms of the the political links that we can make and I'm wondering how you view maybe that film in terms of comparing it with how like the covid-19 pandemic was handled in terms of our news cycle and how we're witnessing these events unraveling in real time I mean I have to uh you know preface it with a statement of my love of Romero and the fact that Dawn of the Dead was the first scary movie that I went to see in the cinema uh pretending to be old enough to see it and it broke me I must have been about I don't know 14 at the time and uh you know it set me on a on a very dubious path ever since I think in terms of my interest in this stuff and it is very much A Romero film but it's very much A Romero film of the digital age in the you know having made you know very um you know predictable classical um you know style movies hitherto this is the point at which he picks up the camcorder through a cast of of young filmmakers who just happened to be making a a horror film out in the Pennsylvania woods when the zombie apocalypse happens and the whole conceit of the film you know because he doesn't go for the um cloverfield's uh style um found footage he does have a kind of frame where you know the filmmaker who who assembles what what becomes the body of the film explains why she did it and why she did it was essentially to hold the news media to account because the news media um uh lie astonishingly um and uh and in this film they they do they're kind of um it's a hoax style um claims about the the zombie apocalypse that you know a lot of people were putting forward subsequently about covert 19. so it's a it's a film that's very critical of the of the responsibilities of the news media globally not just in the United States um but I and as such you know it indicts the ways in which we're all creatures manipulated by what has now come to be termed the mainstream stream media uh into behaving in particular ways um the problem with doing that I think um you know and you know yay that's a that's a solidly um liberal position to take the problem with doing that of course is is any kind of undermining in the possibility of the truth being out there anyway and our Central filmmaker character doesn't mind the internet for um sort of sources of information that is actually telling the truth about what's happening um but but interestingly the film ends with two sort of plaid shirt wearing rednecks um getting their jollies on on uh destroying the bodies of the Dead you know with with large Weaponry Etc um so it seems to me you know not only does it critique the news media but it also sort of preempts or or looks forward to um that kind of alt-right questioning of any truth coming out of the mainstream media uh that would of course give us you know Trump's alternative truths alternative facts um and indeed calls to civil Insurrection on the streets of the capital so you know it's a it's a very very clever film and and uh a very engaging and intermittently very scary one I think I think it's interesting how you're just talking about uh like responsibilities of the filmmakers so whether that's whether we're talking about um news people in general and their responsibilities to document what is really happening are uh fictional filmmakers who are potentially maybe creating films that might be I'm trying to think of things like The Blair Witch Project that kind of had the um you know the magic around it surrounding um its production and the making out like these people had gone missing uh Jane I'll come to you as a filmmaker do you feel like any responsibility towards telling stories that could be spun up in the internet into these like uh Creepypasta conspiracy level or is that part of the fun no judgment because I would say it's part of the fun and I don't I don't think I think a ton about I think a lot about responsibility as a filmmaker I don't necessarily think a lot about um like what kind of Bad actors could do with work you know or I don't necessarily think about like my films as like intentional subterfuge except maybe in like a crude markety way like you know like oh like wow that you know like um I just saw this wonderful film I think everyone on this call should watch it if they haven't already this one skinamarink um that's sort of uh I've heard about it yes gone viral on the internet and um it really to me does it feels like the closest thing I've seen to like a true Creepypasta movie um you know and um and I I I don't think of world's fair is that because I did build into World's Fair um as Lenny was talking about like a frame you know there is a third person camera in my film um it's not found footage it's not trying to convince you that it's real nor is skinamarink but it that that's a film that feels to me so exceptionally um cursed you know or or or or or tailor-made for the internet to debate I think in the way that you're asking about Chloe um in the way that when I was 12 and I'll age myself now and you know watch the blue Air Witch Project trailer on dial up um you know part of the fun was like this this myth that that maybe this could be real um and obviously I made an archival documentary that that's not currently in release but that um was a very important project to me about the Slenderman Mythos and the stabbing and um and a lot of the questions that that raised about sort of like um you know the the the bounds of Truth and fiction on the internet which um is something that my film is all of my work is really engaged with but I think I'd come down on the side of like the responsibility of the artist is you know in a world where where truth and fiction are are so easily manipulated and inevitably manipulated perhaps even given the structures of our uh you know of of the way in which we consume right now um I can't I don't think that the artist like should be striving for like disclaimers and and warnings and truth you know that that's the journalists responsibility I I think um and Doc even documentary is is not journalism that said I mean I I I think like what do I think my personal responsibility is as a filmmaker I I think it's too um be aware of the landscape that I'm working within and what that means as an American filmmaker primarily is is Art versus Commerce and um there's no such thing in this country uh that I'm in uh making movies freely right like there will always be I think there's probably no such thing as that anywhere but um but you know we don't have Government funding for movies so you have to engage with the commercial system and you have to engage with the system that um has a very different priority right like the priority of the Hollywood commercial system is to maximize eyeballs Money Entertainment which goal you know like usually mean making work that isn't truthful to my lived experience in a strange time in a bad place as a person you know who's not viewed as a full person because of my identity um and I think my experience is to uh or or my responsibility when I when I set it out to make work that will be shared with audiences is to the other audiences that I want to be talking to and talking to them in a way that will be resonant and also hold them like um you know there are a few oblique references to suicide in my first film and the new film I think talks about really painful things that for people who come from especially trans experiences will will be hard to watch um and so I think about my responsibility less as like one to like the the capital T truth um because art is an investigation and it's not it's not a it's it's not an explanation um and I think about my responsibility more as like an emotional one to sort of be um to be nurturing and and to think of art making as care work in some way ah I I meant I I I'm very interested in the in the ways in which are in general but horror movies in particular have the capacity to engage with trauma um you know and I I do think um that that our engagement with horror films uh can be profoundly healing in a way that engaging with other genre you know Cinema isn't you know because horror is out there it is on the edge it is you know the most censored of the movie genres and it does deal with material that you know is way out there so that was a heart of recognition and and entire agreement um with that um and it's it's something that people who aren't horror types simply fail to understand they don't understand what I have called healing through horror um I I think it's real and I think you know every time I do a film festival the topic seems to come up and and audiences are uh so remarkably open horror particularly horror festival audiences I think so engaging with precisely the kind of questions that that you were raising there in a very open and and kind of sorted way you know I think maybe we deal with a lot of our crap through horror um and it makes us you know uh an interesting community of producers in your case obviously critics and me and xavi's in but in all our cases fans as well yeah anyone else have anything to say on that one um I was uh the the whole sort of 9 11 trauma thing kept me thinking you were asking before Chloe what was that sort of screen moment for us and I think cinematically for me it was The Blair Witch Project because like Jane I was still of an age where I could almost believe in this urban legend that people really had gone missing and that um if you went and watched it at the cinema You Were Somehow going to be a a part of this terrible thing so that was for me the formative um filmic one but then of course um 911 as a real event was really I mean I still vividly remember the day it happened and how I was rushed to the the TV screen to get the images and the information and how was happening live that had never really you know happened in in my life before that moment you know you were kind of relying on on the TV for the indexicality of the truth weren't you and it was happening live as well um I think Cinema just couldn't be the same after I've after those events so if the Blair Witch Project was already suggesting that that Cinema was going to have to use different interfaces I think 911 just changed the narrative and The Stylistics of Cinema um and and I think hence the rise of found footage um from then onwards yeah I think I think you're always looking for like the next thing like what's what's the next hit that you can get that's going to be uh push further than the next thing and I think we find those things through the exploration of different mediums as mentioned Marble Hornets before that absolutely I didn't finish it that absolutely terrified me like I lived down a dark alley at the time and I would stand at the end of my road and cry and text my mom to come and get me because just the I the format in which it was presented was so believable um and I think I'd like to touch back on Slenderman actually because I think that's obviously a really important case with a real world problem that got attached to it um and obviously the film after the Creepypasta happened there was Marble Hornets and then there was the horrific film um with was it Joey King that was in in the movie I think some some girl does anybody have any thoughts on Slenderman and how how we kind of find that merge of the thing that's happened on screen that's been delivered via like blog post it's been in written form and then it's been kind of snowballed into this larger cultural myth I am the documentary that I made which actually started as a almost like a mood reel in early research on on World's Fair um and and ballooned into its own project um it's like an all-archival documentary uh entirely built out of footage from YouTube um sort of tracing the history of Slenderman but not really like interested in the actual content of it more interested anthropologically and sociologically in like the way that um this myth is created and and spread and um and ultimately the way that like truth and fiction continue to swallow each other right that um Creepypasta as a movement is a fascinating you know because like like folklore it's it's it's it's trying to convince you that it's real right and those the the the rule that the thing that I found so resonant on our slash No Sleep which is the um subreddit where um where where you know like Creepypasta currently lives on the internet one of their rules which says um everything is true here even if it's not and this um this call to um you know all playing this game of of of of of um perhaps not creation of reality but at the very least creating a space where um where fiction can be real um I found that complex um I found that disturbing you know and in in the documentary for instance you see footage about the Slenderman stabbing which is a very real thing that happened obviously and then you see footage from like YouTube denial of people telling you why that event never took place and it's a false flag um and then you know like in the same way that truth and fiction continues to reflectionalize itself and there is a lifetime original movie about this stabbing event which was inspired by fiction and then became reality and then is re-fictionalized and Rec modified um and that interaction is fascinating to me um and Slenderman certainly has like the the biggest export of this medium this I think new medium and a medium that could only exist on the internet um is uh yeah it's a really significant example of the ways in which our changing Technologies are changing are I think forms I think story forms yeah right like the the structures of the medium have have completely changed that something like that would not have been possible in the news media of like the 50s or something that's so interesting I'd love to I'd love to say that doco that you may jane is it is it um you know what I have I have a complicated relationship to it because it um I've never monetized it you know I released it for free on the internet and then when I started working on um World's Fair I just kind of pulled it down it played in some festivals I I pulled it down because I wanted World's Fair to be the thing that people saw first and I'll probably I kind of just want to like put it on the Pirate Bay honestly I um it feels complicated to try to to like sort of have out there because it's using a lot especially like Youtube footage of like underage kids talking about this yeah yeah but I do think anthropologically it's a significant moment that deserves to be reflected on absolutely I was really taken with what you do you that relationship that you drew between folklore and Creepypasta um because you know what is creepypasta but the kind of folklore of the new Flash it's uh it's exactly taking us into uh in it in the sort of historically very flat space that is the internet well you know where everything is simultaneity everything's happening at once um you know you you haven't got those sort of centuries of a creation of folkloric ideas um you you've got Slenderman which obviously draws on you know the scary man who takes away children which is as older you know a figure as folklore itself but it's done in such an insistently um you know internet age fashion it is it is the child of the internet but it is also profoundly folkloric it's really interesting comparison I think folklore of the new flesh Lenny that is Sensational I absolutely love that I'm gonna get that tattooed that's so good PhD student Leone who intermittently writes things like that down and when we're going to form a band but it might cause all of these things that's another band title for Leone fantastic so if you do have anything to add on Slender yeah I think sure I think Slenderman definitely is the digital horror par Excellence not just uh because of the way that it manifests and what it does to technology but that crowdsourcing element that we were talking about that is truly multimedia in the you know it starts in there's something awful forums with a couple of um you know portraits or pictures that have been digitally ordered and then people start writing backgrounds to it and retrojecting uh the monster back in time as Lenny was saying the problem with the Internet is history well you just invented don't you you sort of bring back the Slender Man back in time and then before you know it someone is making Marble Hornets and giving it an entirely different background story um so it's really interesting to see what what aspects of this Leatherman remain right and and why they do so um so I think yeah I find it fascinating we teach actually the Slender Man on our ma program and um students are always fascinated by it because it's a digital uh monster of their age and one that they thoroughly understand so yeah fantastic so I think as we're kind of getting into the 2010s now and we're starting to see real screen based uh laptop screen based uh horror movies like unfriended so I'm wondering so if you might have any any thoughts on where when did the shift happen when we started moving from the kind of VHS bound-footed shaky cam to the on screen and why you think that might have been so there's an early um sort of outlier the Collingswood story which is slightly earlier than this in the 2000s I can't remember the exact year now I think might be 2005 around then that sort of was suggesting the the potential for this but unfriended really captured this moment because it doesn't just use the desktop interface you know really really well live so to speak in a way that would be um replicated or you know um Changed by films like host but if you actually look at the film in a under a cold light it's almost like a cross-section of where technology was in 2014 the film uses Facebook YouTube uh but I made a list actually the Instagram Chat Roulette uh Skype live League Google Gmail like literally all of the apps it already feels like a little bit of a relic doesn't it like Skype what Skype we don't use that anymore I do I'm old I guess we um we chat World Fair like right before the pandemic and used Skype in it and then it instantly dated oh no that's always going to be the issue with found footage isn't it because it's so reliant on the technology that that creates it but I think what I really like about it is not just how it uses this interface but how it suggests because obviously the horror of the film is there's this spectral hacker this troll that's going to suddenly uh reveal of your dirty secrets because we all have them and where are they stored nowadays they're stored on your laptop they're stored on your um history on your you know your browser history so I think it really captures those concerns really well but it also captures where we live our lives currently um I was digging for some facts and and data and it's actually really scary the average person spends seven hours a day online and spent two and a half hours on social media every day and I'm pretty sure that's actually higher for the younger Generations than it is for the older Generations so it does make sense doesn't it that horror starts telling its stories through that interface if we're living Our Lives digitally um and not just literally so by you know Banking and shopping online but storing it curating it online in social media that that is what comes uh you know that's what that's what's under pressure and under thread of being invaded at those properties that that becomes a property and of course the other thing as well is that in the digital age our most um precious asset is our personal data so maybe that's me being excessively kind to unfriend it because it doesn't necessarily hint at this but I see in it a covert critique of surveillance capitalism and the way that you know there are just very physical data um trails that our computers leave behind and that they that are marketable um and and um sellable to companies um and I think unfriended sort of captures that really really well as well as things like um digital attacks you know like revenge porn because uh the the film is pretty much about that as well isn't it Laura Barnes getting back getting her own back for the things that she was done the humiliation that she suffered so yeah from the interface to its message to um what it says about um how our lives are stored I think it's the most fantastic film about desktop horror about online horror as we might call it yeah the surveillance idea I think is something that is is very prominent in unfriended and I wonder Jen as someone that has made a film that is partially screen based and how do you think the experience translates when it's because you had a theatrical run for World's Fair didn't you uh it did come to my local Cinema so how do you think that experience of of the screen based film translates to the theatrical experience as opposed to watching it on your laptop at home it was really important to me to and it was honestly like one of the founding sort of ideas with World's Fair was to um think really deeply about this question of like how to represent um the the internet and this and not just the internet literally but like the how it feels to use the internet in in cinematic language um and so I I you know I the film as much as it's influenced by like something like pulse um you know it takes a lot from slow Cinema it takes a lot from you know like signing Lang is a big influence a peach pong is a big influence and um wanting to definitely a goal was to make something that that that could be enjoyed or should be enjoyed in in a theater and with the lights down and like the the the the the experience the dreamlike experience of like being surrounded by by Cinema um that that was a goal and um you know and thinking just a lot about like how to merge the art Cinema that I love with the Creepypasta like Dread 2 A.M thing that the film is discussing and um and and to me that was like a lot of grain a lot of um a lot of like um compression you know I I'm fascinated by in the same way that filmmakers have um like a relationship to VHS in the Contemporary times like the buffering of a early YouTube video as like something that can be dreamlike and hunting and beautiful and the way we move through space was a big thing right like the sort of pulling in and out of screens in this very fluid way similar to what I was talking about with pulse um I I really like the film is designed as a as a cinematic experience and then the pandemic happened and we premiered virtually at Sundance um you know and and literally everyone was like this is the perfect film to watch on a laptop and um and it's not I don't have I'm not oppositional to that idea um but I do think my film is one that um doesn't reward casual viewing you know or like it's there's a certain there's a language I think that we have now which is like Netflix language of um you know like I'm going to sit down and check Twitter while having a horror film on in the background and it will please me by like letting me half watch it and um and and this is perhaps like the way that a lot of people are watching films now entirely um like you know I think that the population that engages with Cinemas and art form is maybe not extensive at this point and and people are much more used to this sort of passive watching experience um half-watching experience and and I just don't know a way to work in that Medium as an artist that is going to let me speak in a complex language or like a language that will be able to say something complex um and so this is why I think I I make a film that can't that that like I am drawing a line of like if you're gonna half watch this you're not gonna have an experience with it very engaged in my work with um you know I'm in the right place uh no one knows who this is in in the US but perhaps on this call if Mark Fisher's work and um the idea the idea of ontology um is is something that like I describe my work as hauntological and in a lot of ways and and to me it's a useful idea because I don't know that it's Nostalgia that I'm trying to um conjure always um you know I think Nostalgia is very powerful but I think it's more um I think there are political implications to it and and something sinister right about um the longing for or like what you can represent with that kind of like digital noise or VHS um fuzz um like what what are we trying to conjure backwards um with that is is I think and it's a big part of um what what I go looking for when I'm like talking about media in films and I think it has a lot to do with um like the liminality of being raised in a way where like I like I think a lot in my work about yeah this real this psychic relationship between oneself and the screen and like when you're a young person like you were talking about Lenny coming up in a world where that's a given yeah so much of your experiences are being like um like I like the new movies about television um and it's uh it's all about the experience of being like a young person growing up in the suburbs here in in New York and um and seeing the suburbs reflected back to me on a screen in a romanticized way and and want and and the the way that reality and that reflection merge um in one's memory and in one's values and and way of walking through the world and and I think that's this is like a fascinating thing about screens is that relationship that we have where it creates us right it's a technology that we created that creates us certainly and and one that affects uh the language of Cinema because um Jane your film is really interesting in that it's very slow um you know it's deliberately slow whilst we find that a lot of these digital um Horrors are the complete opposite I was talking to Lenny recently about this 2016 film called sick house which was allegedly entirely shot through snapchat videos which of course are limited to 10 seconds so like the entire film is made of this short up to 10 second scenes um that are then you know brought together for the the official release that you can buy and and watch and it creates a very different type of narrative experience when your concentration is switching you know from one moment to another every 10 seconds I think it does speak to that uh to what we were mentioning before about our attention spans and how um you know if something lasts longer than 10 or 15 seconds if the camera stays static for longer than that we switch to our phones that second um interface to give us that other um yeah I think what I'm trying to say is I think technology is not changing just the way we communicate but and the way that we consume things but also the way that we make them and I think what makes um um we're all going to the World's Fair so interesting is that it doesn't it sort of um goes for a much slower much more ponderous um you know look at that technology yeah I think it's hypnotic personally that was just like transfixed one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated right now it's this film skinamarink which I think you guys will will really be interested in because it it's so so it's punishingly slow it's so much slower than my phone my phone has narrative and um and yet like in the last two weeks you know it's like really taking like the letterbox like when I when I watched it it had maybe like 700 logs and it's like pushing 10 000 now it's it's it's really taking off and um and it's not even released is it it's just is that correct being pirated um and um and it's so slow you know but I watched it like my partner was fell asleep 10 minutes in and I turned off all the lights and sat there on the couch and made this like creepypasta-esque ritual of it and um and it was honestly the most scared I've been in my adult life watching a movie because it it it totally foregoes anything except for that feeling of of dread um that and if you watch you know like what if you watch Marble Hornets or if you watch like a lot of um internet work is incredibly slow it's it's so arduous on purpose um and to me there is this really interesting relationship of like like 20 years ago an experimental slow film would have been received in a very different way than it is now or like our relationship to slowness like we're willing to slow down if it's like a challenge or something you know if it's like an internet challenge we'll slow down it's just really interesting strange that is absolutely true um yeah it's interesting that you talk about salonis actually because I was just thinking about uh just the instant gratification of of the social media and especially the use of Technology on our phones and kind of moving into the the more recent um screen based technology-based horror films I'm thinking things like nerve which is obviously like an app is it at best of them asking them to do challenges and things like countdown which was a horrible film but the app that was released that was attached to it um where you could log on and find when you were gonna die 10 out of 10. so so

where do we think that things are developing now because we've just talked about host previously that kind of used the zoom call and obviously utilized the situation that we're in in the pandemic to create something honestly terrifying and so short I love a short movie uh so where do we think we're going because we're we haven't really delved too much into the idea of like app based horror that's that's being created by an app rather than just a phone in general or just people know of any that I don't know about um the one I was familiar with was was sick house as a as a film told through snapchat I haven't seen I must confess nerve or countdown but I will seek them out immediately because I'm really interested in all of this I think um what creates a different I think is whether you truly are shooting those films on the app or whether you're replicating the app I mean I this I don't know about even unfriended whether unfriended replicate all of those interfaces or whether it's truly told through them and whether it's it's stored in live time because allegedly that's what made sick cows so interesting again the blurring of the urban legend is this really happening because um the main character is an actual influencer using their account to tell the story so of course if you follow this person and you suddenly notice that the posts are heading somewhere really dark and you don't know it's a film then that completely changes the dynamic doesn't it that turns the app into the you know the answer to the question whilst if it's just something that's woven into the narrative as part of a bigger frame I think that that does something completely different yeah there was something on Tick Tock a while ago this was maybe last year and I'm not sure what it was called but it was some kind of app that was telling people to go to a specific location and they would find something strange there and I ended up in this lockdown rabbit hole and it was horrible I don't I don't know how much of it was faked or if people were reading into it but people were going to this location and they were finding you know abandoned cars um broken dolls and like all the classic horror trops that you want to see and I was just on this tag searching and searching and searching for more stuff so where do we think it's gonna head I'd like an opinion from everyone where do you think that screen-based horror is going to go in the future I reckon interaction I reckon interaction I think we saw an example of what that can look like with things like Black Mirror bandersnatch you know it's very limited and it Choose Your Own Adventure but that idea of putting you in the place um surely that you know I've seen lots of um development is being made with VR horror as well but um you know the the capacity to sort of um generate movement for example is still quite limited because it's just so labor intensive just to create that that you know maybe a five minute um film so I reckon bit by bit it will be more interactive we're always constantly on on the search for um total immersion aren't we so I reckon it'll be something like that you won't see me play in those apps though I'm not going on the hunt for creepy dolls thank you very much yeah I'll stay on my couch was Eli Roth that just did the VR horror thing at Halloween I think he did some kind of VR experience with um Vanessa Hudgens and she was like the the main character if you could call it that in a VR experience uh so yeah that is very interesting Lenny what do you have to say I don't know um I'm not necessarily interested in digital horror per se I'm interested in what digital horror gives us the ability to think about and talk about and feel um you know and a lot of the films that you know we've all mentioned you know from videodrome in particular um which I also saw in the cinema um when it came out and have never been the same since um from video from video drone you know through to to a lot of the movies that we've talked about all of these films you know make phenomenal formal usage of the possibilities offered by new technologies you know whether that be you know light handheld video cameras or or um you know the internet itself surveillance footage um and the like but they do so uh to say things you know to say things about the horror of the world that we inhabit you know whether that's as as you know Global subjects or as or as sub Jets of capitalist realism if you're a Mark Fisher fan as I to um um you know it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism you know whether to say something about you know our existence as um you know sexual beings or as gendered beings um so in a way I hope that there will be a a sort of resurgence of of the politics of digital filmmaking um because you know we do since 9 11 live in a world that is incredibly surveilled you know in which are are you know we're not only physically watched and in the UK in particular you can't go outside the house without something physically watching you or whether we're surveilled in terms of our internet usage you know and our search histories or or you know our Twitter histories or or whatever so I don't know I don't know what's coming next but I hope it's going to be more sort of overtly politically engaged you know I think the whole Trump phenomenon and the ways in which digital Technologies you know brought about you know an attempted coup on the streets of Washington um offers phenomenal material for for digital horror filmmakers and for digital filmmakers but you know the the horror of of what's been going on in the in the US since 2016 you know is is as the perch franchise you know a lot of which makes use of digital um techniques you know the horror of what's actually happening there is is is beyond anything that you know can has been imagined in in popular Cinema so you know I hope the the effects of that is a and sort of I don't know a radical digital filmmaking that that you know um not only analyzes what's what's going on but you know offers offers a critique of it and a root map out hopefully I know that's a lot delay on the filmmaking show us where to go but you know the best films do kind of do that in ways I think and the best horror definitely does doesn't yeah I think I think we're getting the the societal uh messages are are coming through in the kind of prestige horror Elevate is horror I love that uh all that nonsense um but yeah it would be really nice to see it be brought through into into digital forms Jen I mean I want to just uh what what Lenny said I I think that that feels exactly right to me um I think I would share that like when I was when I was trying to figure out how to make we're all going to the World's Fair and it's part of why I made like an archival film I was I was like I I was really struggling with this question of like the logic of found footage and how the logic of found footage really bumps up against I think it's a very conservative form in its way I think it um I think there are amazing things you can do with it but the the rules of logic um that it that it dictates to you are incredibly limiting like um I remember at one point I was like okay I'll make the whole film like sort of like the algorithm right like the whole film is sort of um like like a stream of videos and this searching for the like the justification on top of what I was creating felt um I ultimately was like I won't be able to speak a language that will let me say the things that I want to say if I if I create a logic of found footage like if I create a logic of a first person camera that can all be traced back to like someone's videos or something recorded on a desktop or a stream of videos like I needed a third person camera I needed an omniscient filmic narrator um because I think that um it allowed me poetry and like you know the fact that like I could go and wander and dream in the way that I wanted to dream without like setting rules for myself and the film is still like incredibly structured but just in a different way in a non-first-person way and I if I had to like labor I guess I would say that um the like what a post-found footage horror landscape could look like isn't like a reversion to where we were before found footage but it's sort of like found footage becomes um like taken for granted almost right it's like um like uh we we understand that most of what we watch is on screen so we don't need to be told that we're watching tick tocks you know um and and thus like the artist is liberated a little bit to speak in that language and have a shorthand with the an audience who's hyper familiar with uh you know like consuming art in or or media um via first person sources but that the the artist isn't beholden to that um and I think once you once you sort of like free the artist from that like very um very like logic based way of making work I think it opens like a lot of extraordinary possibilities to like dig into deaths um is this sort of like a heady answer but I I think that um cursed image Cinema is what I would call it right like Cinema that like isn't like and here's a cursed image and here's where it came from and here was the investigation that happened afterwards but that is like more interested in the emotional weight of that without being sort of weighed down by Logic who needs logic absolutely I think that is an absolutely fantastic answer that we should probably end on because that is the end of my questions for you so thank you very much to all three of you for your wonderful insights today it has been an absolute joy to listen to and Jane I will absolutely be watching your documentary as soon as we've hung up this call thank you guys thank you

2023-01-29 19:29

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