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Episode 111—The Empowering and Exciting Nature of Film with Emer Reynolds
129 Plays7 years ago
"You're really finding the film in editing the documentary," says Emer Reynolds. The brilliant filmmaker Emer Reynolds' documentary The Farthest chronicles the incredible story behind the Voyager Mission and the desire to seek out the unknowable while also seeking to be known. The Golden Record, Carl Sagan, the personification of this little spacecraft carrying with it everything that makes us human. My guest today is based in Ireland and talks about the craft of making doc film, her obsessiveness with research, and how exciting and empowering making a film is. If you love film and true stories, as well as the vast reaches of space, then you’re going to love this. If you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts and do so. And consider leaving a rating or a review to help with the show’s visibility. Also, head over to brendanomeara.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly newsletter where I send out my book picks and other goodies from the podcast. Please share this episode across your platforms if you dig it. Thanks to Hippocamp for the support. You only have this week to use that promo code CNFPOD, so get on it to save $50. Be sure to head over to brendanomeara.com to sign up for the monthly email newsletter. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by HippoCamp 2018, now in its fourth year. HippoCamp is a three day Creative Nonfiction writing conference that features 50 plus speakers, engaging sessions, and four tracks. Interactive all conference panels, author and attendee readings, social activities, networking opportunities, and optional intimate pre-conference workshops.
00:00:28
Speaker
The conference takes place in lovely Lancaster, Pennsylvania from August 24th through August 26th. Visit hippocampusmagazine.com and click the conference tab in the toolbar. And if you enter the keyword, CNF pod,
00:00:44
Speaker
At checkout, you will receive a $50 discount. This offer is only good until August 10th or until all those tickets are sold and they are selling. There are a limited number, so act now. Hippo Camp 2018, create, share, live.
00:01:04
Speaker
Ever catch yourself staring at the sky at night and being categorically floored? Hair blown back by the scope of it all? This happens to me almost nightly, and there's two distinct approaches you can take, and I've taken both of them, believe you and me.
00:01:22
Speaker
I look up and realize the lottery. We all as animals have won by being born in this little blue dot, the perfect distance away from the nearest star, and also how lucky we are that we aren't collectively born into one of the planet's ice ages.
00:01:39
Speaker
thinking like this makes fear seem so trivial. Like why not write that book or the essay or make that movie or start a podcast or hang up whatever shingle you like. You already won. Go cash your ticket. Go to the 7-Eleven. Go, go cash it. And he'll just say congratulations and you'll be on the news.
00:01:58
Speaker
The other approach is we are so insignificant, so alone, so tiny that quite literally none of this matters. It will all end up burned or underwater and when the sun reaches full maturity when we're all long gone our little blue dot probably won't be so blue anymore. Maybe not even a dot but dust wiped from the cosmic hard drive.
00:02:24
Speaker
So why do anything at all? I prefer Approach 1, frankly, but sometimes it's hard not to be hijacked by Approach 2.
Interview with Emer Reynolds
00:02:33
Speaker
Which brings me to my guest today, the brilliant filmmaker Emer Reynolds, whose documentary, The Farthest,
00:02:40
Speaker
chronicles the incredible story behind the Voyager mission and the desire to seek out the unknowable while also seeking to be known. The golden record, Carl Sagan, the personification of this little spacecraft carrying with it everything that makes us human. Look, it's all brand food. It's all creative food.
00:03:12
Speaker
Hey, this is my show where I talk to the best creators about the art and craft of telling true stories so you can apply those tools of the trade to get better at your own work. I'm Brendan O'Mara and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:03:29
Speaker
My guest today is based in Ireland and talks about the craft of making documentary film, her obsessiveness with research, and how exciting and empowering making a film is. If you love film and true story, as well as the vast reaches of outer space, then you're going to love this one. If you don't already subscribe to the podcast,
00:03:52
Speaker
, and
00:04:01
Speaker
and consider leaving a rating or a review. Ratings take like five seconds, review a little longer, but you know, good on ya if you can do either one. Helps with the show's visibility. Also head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly reading list newsletter. It's a fine piece of thing. Where I send out my book picks and other goodies from the podcast. Please share this episode across your platforms if you dig it and I don't think you won't dig it.
00:04:32
Speaker
Double negatives. Hashtag double negative. Why wait any longer? Here's Eamer Reynolds. If you want to tell true stories through a visual medium versus say, which a lot of people, they tend to approach it through a writing medium. Well, I came to it pretty circuitous route in fairness.
00:05:02
Speaker
I have been an editor of feature film editor for a long time, over 20 years. And in that time, I have edited an awful lot of feature drama, but I also edited a lot of feature documentaries. So in that period of my life, you know, in all those years, I was really enthralled and kind of lit up by editing documentary and you know, how
00:05:27
Speaker
you know, there's nothing more extraordinary than real life. And you know, had the opportunity to work on some beautiful and powerful and wonderful films with some great directors. And weirdly, even though I had, you know, taken to doing a bit of directing of drama, it had never, and strange to say, it had never really occurred to me to direct documentary, you know, I would seem to be, I hadn't really asked myself that question. So my first
00:05:52
Speaker
documentary to director I was on as a co-director. It was called Here Was Cuba. I co-directed with John Murray. And he had actually, he just actually asked me because we had worked as director and editor on a number of films, very, very happily, very happy collaboration. And he asked me would I consider co-directing Here Was Cuba, which is about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:06:14
Speaker
And, uh, you know, a little bit of boat from the blue. I was like, Oh yeah, I guess that sounds really interesting. You know, and I look back now, I can't even imagine that it didn't occur to me as being, you know, a job for me, but it hadn't. Then he gave me that opportunity and, uh, you know, a bit of duck to water and all that. I, from the day and hour I started, I was just like, Oh my God, why wasn't I doing this all the time? You know, it's, it's really, really suits.
00:06:41
Speaker
My personality, you know, really suits what I'm interested in, you know, finding out about material, digging in, doing all the lovely research, meeting these amazing people and dreaming up a kind of a way to tell a story, you know, and it's so stimulating. It's so intriguing. You know, I loved it. So, you know, I couldn't wait. Once we made here with Cube, I couldn't wait to keep making more.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, did was it something of a challenge for you to be to have the boundaries of verifiable fact as a way for as your or to to then sort of mind that stuff to tell it to tell a true story like you'd like that challenge of having those boundaries? You know, I certainly didn't see it as any sort of limitation in a negative way. You know, it seemed like a very healthy boundary. Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
facts matter and to tell the story, you know, as well and as expansively and as creatively and as imaginatively as you can, while wondering between these kind of poles of, as you say, verifiable facts. And it really enjoyed the kind of the rigor of it, in fact, really enjoyed, you know, feeling that it was important to get it right, important to verify, let's say, for something like the here was Cuba, you know, the competing
00:08:06
Speaker
versions of events, you know, and to feel that one would be truthful in as far as one could and respectful of the interviewees and the research and also take a view of your own.
00:08:19
Speaker
You know, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed that rigor. And you said that the process and the craft of documentary filmmaking and that form of storytelling really resonated with your personality. And I wonder, in what way did that really resonate with your personality? For better, for worse. And in fact, a lot of the time, for worse, because I can't really sleep, because I have a, you know, I kind of
00:08:48
Speaker
my sister calls it a monkey mind, you know, like my brain, my brain is kind of jumping around, needs a lot of stimulation, needs a lot of brain food, you know, and, and it's a kind of a burden, because, you know, it's not really social media or reading newspapers into the night, it's just my mind, you know, jumping around looking for things to explore and consider and learn about. So it really, really suits that.
00:09:16
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that part of me that I can really dig in and swim around in a subject and really learn deeply. You become an expert for a few years about something, and then a year later, you've forgotten some basic information about it. So it's kind of strange, but it definitely suits my voracious appetite for intellectual stimulation.
00:09:46
Speaker
on a personal side or as a character, you know, interested in people, like meeting new people, like hearing deep stories, you know, like engaging with people at that level about their work, about their motivation. So on both films, really, really, really love and getting to meet the people central to these stories and draw them out, you know, and get to know them and draw out their stories in a very, you know, human and honest way.
00:10:16
Speaker
I think in those two ways in particular, I really enjoy the form. I also enjoy, you know, there's a freshness to it if you are given the opportunity to paint in a new way, you know, paint in a dream up a visual palette or, you know, a style that might be new to the subject or might be a fresh way of looking at a subject, you know, and that's really, really, really exciting and really aesthetically and
00:10:45
Speaker
Creatively very pleasing and as a teenager a young adult Did you were you always very if something interested you were you always very obsessive about it? And would go down the rabbit hole until it could not go any deeper. I Think so. Yeah, I might have to refer you to my sisters for that but we had a we had a my father was you know, a great intellectual sort of a
00:11:14
Speaker
had been cut short in his desire to explore his intellectual potential because his own father had died when he was young. So he'd had to kind of leave school early and go working to support his mother and family. But he was an amazing, sparky and impressive and inspirational kind of person. And it was everything in our house from
00:11:39
Speaker
He, you know, there's a whole, whole wall full of Reader's Digest books. He was really, really interested in, in writing and in literature and in facts to do with the first world war, second, you know, a real voracious reader to do with all of that. Mad about spelling and grammar and, but also mad about science and, and, um,
00:11:59
Speaker
maths and we do maths and physics puzzles just for fun. So I kind of grew up in a world where if that was your bag, if that was your thing, the height of it would be to just jump in and swim around and explore everything.
00:12:16
Speaker
you know we had a really really it was very fertile kind of way to grow up and have your mind just provoked and kind of prodded and I think I was like that from young although like for example with the Cuban missile crisis you know I wasn't particularly I wasn't a big history nerd I was much more of a science nerd you know so it's interesting now to see myself finding you know new subjects and new spheres that I might not be very well learned about but I'm really excited and
00:12:46
Speaker
you know, live up about learning about them. As a self-prescribed science nerd, what about that or what particular subjects really stuck in your brain from a young age that kind of, of course, will lead to a very deep scientific exploration in your later work?
00:13:10
Speaker
I, you know, I have actually tried to explore this in my mind the last year because I've been talking a bit about it, but I can't really recall where the, you know, the obsession came from. I was certainly very good at maths and physics in school and went on to study maths and physics in, in Trinity in Dublin. But, you know, really, really interested in space in particular from a very, very young age.
00:13:38
Speaker
and led on to being really interested in science fiction as an art form and wanted to be an astronaut. I don't know why I became so interested in space and physics, but I did. And it's been a great love affair through my life. And it's kind of bedtime reading for me to be reading about quantum physics. In fact, on my holidays recently, I was reading
00:14:03
Speaker
Um, the Carlo Rovelli new book about time on my holidays on the beach and, uh, you know, every, all my family were getting a great laugh as of, uh, you know, the, the complexity of our understanding of time being suitable reading for a beach doesn't seem to work for everybody, but it does for me. And so I don't really know where the love of her came from, but, uh, yeah, always physics, always, uh, just how those things work, you know, and, and, and deep space and, and, and.
00:14:33
Speaker
You know, the reality of space and the cosmos and how it all began and how it'll all end and, you know, lying there at night dreaming about in every expanding universe and, you know, sentences like, you know, at some distant point in the future, every atom in existence will be infinitely separated from every other atom currently in existence, you know, and that could keep me that can keep me awake for like three weeks, you know, so.
00:15:00
Speaker
I was going to say, in terms of being able to sleep at night, I was like, I know I love reading this stuff too, but I can't read stuff that's going to bend and break my brain before bed. It's amazing that you're able to digest that while you're at least trying to wind down from the day.
00:15:22
Speaker
No, I'm not able to. I mean, you know, that's basically the problem. I seem to, you know, I've got a some sort of fatal flaw that compels me to keep reading, even though it will keep me away. I wait till five in the morning. And who were some of the the science writers that were keeping you up at night that kind of just fed your scientific rigor and obsession? I can't recall.
00:15:51
Speaker
I can't recall that. I've probably, you know, painted it as though I was reading amazingly interesting physics textbooks, but I was more probably reading Larry Niven and Alfred Bester and Isaac Asimov, you know, you're probably finding, you know, I have rewritten the narrative to include some serious, seriously interesting books, whereas in fact, it was probably sci fi trash, mostly that was doing it.
00:16:18
Speaker
Were you reading any Carl Sagan? Sorry, I don't need to call it sci-fi trash. That was the wrong. Trashy type of sci-fi novel, but I would read anything in sci-fi, so I'm undercerning. Right, right. Were you reading any Carl Sagan at all in Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not Neil deGrasse, but certainly Carl Sagan, you know, a huge fan of his his writing, huge fan of his TV work. And, you know, he'd be
00:16:45
Speaker
I would be a big fan of his way of looking at the world. And in fact, you know, very openly understand it to be that, you know, the scene set for how the story of my film, The Fives came about in terms of how it told the story, you know, cause Carl Sagan was the first person who, you know, had the bravery and the vision and the, you know, the madness and the poetry just, you know, to unite,
00:17:15
Speaker
these big ideas that it wasn't just bold facts, that it was to do with spirituality or to do with ache. He was really talking about science and physics and the cosmos really in the space between science and art. And he was happily doing that. And he brought so many people along with his way of looking at existence. And I would have definitely been a huge fan of that.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah, there's a point in the farthest towards the end when they decided to turn Voyager.
Carl Sagan's Influence
00:17:52
Speaker
It would have been Voyager. It was a Voyager 1. It was, yeah. They turned Voyager 1 around to take the quote unquote family photo of the galaxy and the little pinprick of Earth and that sunbeam and then the way that
00:18:08
Speaker
is the one person you interviewed and said, I even pulled this out. So like in the hands of Carl, he turned it into an allegory on the human condition. And it was truly like a beautiful sentiment that he was able to share that that little pinprick of light is where everyone we've ever known and ever will know lived out their lives and everything. It was just really a beautiful sentiment that you're really alluding to by just the way you talk about them.
00:18:34
Speaker
Well, you know, and he now it seems like normal to us that, you know, he would speak about it that way and that we would reflect on the universe and the cosmos in that way. But in the 70s and 80s, you know, when he was starting to speak like that, there was kickback, you know, the scientific community didn't like that kind of popularizing of science or let's say that spiritualizing of science, you know, and but but, you know, he persisted and
00:19:03
Speaker
Look what he did, look what a kind of a university kicked off in terms of our understanding of our insignificance, but also our significance really.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah. He, of course, he inspires people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and so many others where it's almost the more popular scientists. It goes without saying that they're going to know the scientific, the mathematics behind the universe, which
00:19:38
Speaker
to even, even a math nerd will look kind of like hieroglyphics. And, but then it's, it's, it's kind of like an accepted thing now that you're going to have someone who can like pull it in and not dumb it down, but put it in term, in term so we can all kind of get our, get our head around it. And it really all kind of started with him, right? He really, really did. And, you know, he was,
00:20:00
Speaker
He was on the Voyager imaging team. He was an active member of that team while he was beginning. That was really at the beginning of his journey into TV and being the science communicator that he became, this world-beater science communicator that he became. So it's a really interesting start to the story that it wasn't
00:20:26
Speaker
It wasn't necessarily that popular. It was frowned upon in some ways at that time, but he led the way. And I benefited, we benefited in making the film because all the scientists and engineers from Voyager that spoke just so beautifully in the film, they were really on board with the idea of communication. They were really on board with the idea of telling this story to
00:20:55
Speaker
a broad audience, you know, that it isn't a conversation, it isn't a conversation to do with dumbing it down, it's a conversation to do with expressing it, you know, pull me into the joy of discovery, the joy of scientific method, you know, really give me an insight into what that was like to be there. And they will, from the start, you know, I think in America, you call it outreach, which I had never, I had never heard that word before. But you know, that idea of that actually
00:21:25
Speaker
It's incumbent upon these scientists and creatives and artists and engineers to reach out to the public, to children and express it and pull everyone into the vision.
00:21:41
Speaker
In your experience with interviewing countless scientists, who has inspired you in the way that they're able to communicate this wonderful material in such a way that you're able to shape it and tell a wonderful story? Well, all of the people, Claire Strong, one of my two producers along with John Murray and Claire and I went on a
00:22:10
Speaker
a very deep research trip to meet as many of the scientists and engineers that were involved with Voyager as we could and to try to get to know them and bring them on board with this idea of communicating to a wide audience, not just space geeks that we would communicate to everybody. And we ended up kind of like quittling it down into a cast of characters that would communicate.
00:22:36
Speaker
I think they're all spectacular at it. But it's actually funny because Claire often tells the story that before we, you know, when we were setting up the film and we were starting our research process, that I was asking the researchers to look for, you know, that we would need to talk to philosophers and writers and poets, as well as the scientists and engineers so that we could talk to those people about
00:23:04
Speaker
you know, the philosophical questions, the primal questions that this film was going to hopefully kick off. So we were actually we started off looking for, you know, philosophers and poets who could talk to this idea. And
Engaging Voyager Scientists
00:23:16
Speaker
then almost as soon as we, you know, started meeting the engineers and the scientists who were, you know, intrinsic and central to the actual story, the actual people who, who built it and flew the spacecraft,
00:23:29
Speaker
we realized we did not need these other kind of third-party voices commenting on the beauty of space or the reality of existence or existential questions, that these scientists and engineers were quite happy to go down that road with us. And when you see the film, they talk about, it's a story about longing, and they quite happily express the big cosmic questions.
00:23:58
Speaker
I'm dazzled by them all. I have every few weeks, I guess, I have a different favorite from the film, but when I watch it, I saw it again last week at this beautiful festival here in Dublin called the Festival of Curiosity. You should come over and interview people from that next year, but they showed it last week and I watch it and I'm like all these extraordinary people who did this extraordinary thing and they're not only amazing people who can actually pull this off, but they're
00:24:27
Speaker
They want to share their spirit. They want to share their spirit as creatives with the audience, with such honesty, such humanity. I'm dazzled by them all.
00:24:41
Speaker
And telling these kinds of stories, it's always, it's never enough that you want to tell a cool story. You have to get the people on board to help convey it. And like you were saying, you had to, you know, essentially you and your producers kind of lobby some of these people to come on film and to talk so candidly and beautifully about it. So what was that process like of courting the scientists and the engineers and then getting them to, um,
00:25:10
Speaker
you know, feel comfortable and to talk about, talk about their their mission and their work. You know, as I said, we went off and did a, you know, a kind of a two week 14 cities in 10 days, or something like that kind of a process or breakfast, lunch and dinner, we met and then to see people that were central to the stories. That was really out of born out of an instinct that we would get an opportunity to
00:25:36
Speaker
really expressed it in the sort of film we wanted to make, you know, that it wasn't, we weren't looking for, you know, a 40 year anniversary film about Voyager that would just be the facts, you know, come in and tell me what you discover on that moon or what did you learn at that flyby that we actually were interested in.
00:25:56
Speaker
the human heart of it. And so getting to meet them and getting to pitch that idea that we wanted to make an expansive, beautiful, epic cinematic film. I mean, this story, the story of Voyager, there's been fine TV documentaries made about it over the years, many fine films, but it had never been given the big screen treatment. It had never been given the big, epic cinematic Avenger treatment, which the story really deserved.
00:26:25
Speaker
The process really was meeting them, you know, getting to know them on the phone. Initially Claire had many long conversations with them about trying to tell them what we were doing. Then we went to meet them all and really just kind of, you know, got them excited about what we were trying to do. And they all bought into it as, as, as an idea. And we're really, we're so generous. We're so generous with their time and with their, with their
00:26:51
Speaker
stories and with their ability, with their instinct to trust us and be part of that type of storytelling.
00:27:01
Speaker
Well, the movie, what's so great about it was the mission itself structurally lent itself to have these moments of exposition that where you can talk about the moons of Uranus and Saturn, Jupiter, and you can get granular on the science and the facts and the atmospheric science and
00:27:25
Speaker
this that and the other. But then in the long beats between when Voyager is on its way from Jupiter to Saturn, then you can you're filling in some of those more cinematic and artful things. So as
Storytelling of 'The Farthest'
00:27:38
Speaker
you were structuring this movie, like, did it really feel like these these are our times to to be more artful? And these are our times to get really expositional. We often used to say at the very start, you know, that Voyager was just this it was a perfect
00:27:54
Speaker
spacecraft to which we could make this film because it has the golden record which is an attempt to talk to aliens. It is going to outlive humanity and circle the galaxy long after we're gone and it had this extraordinary early life of knocking it out of the park in terms of science. So it had all these pieces to its story
00:28:19
Speaker
It wasn't a metaphor, you know, it wasn't a kind of an imaginary space gift. It was a real spacecraft that actually has all these kind of attributes. So very, very early on, it was conceived that this spacecraft and this film could be told basically in kind of three intertwined stories, one being the spacecraft and the actual hard science of get to the planets, find out all this amazing shit, you know,
00:28:47
Speaker
look at these amazing images that we'd never seen before. And all the scientists dazzled by their findings and it happening over years and years and years. And then it knocks it out of the park, gets to interstellar space the first time we've ever done that. So it really was an amazing being, having this amazing scientific adventure story. And all of that was always going to be, as you say, granular, interesting science.
00:29:10
Speaker
And then it has the Golden Record, which is weaving around this core story, which, you know, is just this mind expanding adventure about how would we communicate to aliens? You know, what would we say about ourselves? What matters to us? Why does it matter to us to communicate? And is there anybody out there at all? And what would they know about us? What would we wish them to know about us? And also, is it, you know, given that there's probably no aliens that will ever find this craft?
00:29:35
Speaker
were really just talking to ourselves. So that was a second strand that was weaving around the hard science strand, which was a philosophical, creative, artistic, music, all those ideas strand. And then it absolutely lent itself to this third layer, which I was always most, not most interested in, but very, very, very keen to have in the film because I think
00:30:04
Speaker
I think the secret about why the farthest hopefully works and touches people is because it really reflects that feeling that I think space kind of kicks off in us all. You know, we look up at night and we wonder and we have those feelings of, you know, our consciousness expands for a moment. We feel these feelings to do with what's it all for. You know, when we look up at the moon or we look up at the stars and a dark night in our backyard, you know, we get these,
00:30:33
Speaker
frissons of knowing, you know, of self-knowing or of curiosity and profound kind of spiritual, you know, not in a religious way, in this moment of, you know, cosmic questioning of our own existence. And so the film also then had that third strand which would allow us to kind of, and the story of Voyager and the Golden Record allowed us to wander into those places because it is going to outlive humanity long after we're gone. You're able to talk about
00:31:03
Speaker
You know, why does that matter to us? Is it like a gravestone? Is it a marker? Why does it matter that we, you know, these very, very philosophical ideas about why legacy matters? You know, why does it matter when we're gone that somebody, anybody ever knew that we were here? And when you're talking about space and time and distance, how far a voyage is going, will it ever be found? You're able to consider those big picture ideas to do with
00:31:31
Speaker
the size of the universe, the beginning of time, the end of time. So yeah, not a metaphor, a real spacecraft that did this, a real little being that did this. And yeah, always conceived from the start as being a vehicle, literally a vehicle that would allow me and the team to wander down all those little back roads too. And of course, it was written like that and it was structured like that, but of course you get to the end and then things change as well.
00:32:01
Speaker
The amount of science we could take, you know, at each planet became, you know, became complex because, you know, the film is two hours long and, you know, it could have been six hours long or longer. You know, there was some amazing science that I would have loved to have included that really just, you know, the film couldn't tolerate in terms of, you know, time and story time.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the questions I had with respect to this too is how the how the project changed as as your as your in post production and editing and maybe like what a
00:32:44
Speaker
You know, what were those decisions like when you had to cut something that was, that you really, that you liked, but it's just like, uh, you know, if this had, you know, this, I love this, but it's gotta go because it's not in the, you know, it's not in the service of time and ultimately it might be a little repetitive or in the service of, uh, it doesn't move the story quite as forward as this other anecdote. Like what's that, what's that process like for you?
00:33:11
Speaker
It was excruciating, if truth were told. There was a fantastic sequence. I know you love Cassini. So, you know, Linda Spilker, who's the project scientist on Cassini, she was a, you know, a junior member of the Voyager imaging, no, the Voyager team. And she talks about, she had a beautiful sequence about that she used to go into a corridor and roll out this kind of like printout
00:33:41
Speaker
that she would have gotten in this long roll of information that was on Saturn's rings. And she talked about that she would wander alone along this corridor, looking at this graph paper with all this information about the rings and imagined herself actually walking on Saturn's rings. And we had this most beautiful sequence about a young woman in LA imagining herself
00:34:07
Speaker
you know, on Saturn's rings and learning all the science and it was really, really stunning. And yet, you know, hit the editing floor tragically because of, you know, we were by then an hour in and we knew we still had two more planets to get to and we had interstellar space to get to and, you know, a real feeling of, a really tough feeling of leaving stuff out because they didn't
00:34:36
Speaker
even though they were magnificent, they couldn't, the film couldn't take the, you know, the intensity of all that detail at certain points, you know, that you understand that your audience have a desire to keep moving and, you know, as you say, repetition, you know, you want to keep, we needed each planet to have, almost to have a different identity, you know, so there were various, various
00:35:04
Speaker
restrictions like that and various brilliant scenes that hit the ground. In fact, often when I look at the film, I think now when I look at it, I think, you know, if it was a narrative film, you would have finished it at the pale blue dot with, you know, with Carl Sagan talking about, you know, we look back at this speck of humanity and we reflect on everyone we ever loved and everyone we ever knew. You know, it's a beautiful moment where you realize
00:35:30
Speaker
what does Nick call it, this motive does floating in a cosmic night. And it was a narrative feature, you had to finish the film there, but in the documentary, we were doing the 40 year story. It still had to, Voyager still went on and reaches interstellar space. And so there was a whole other chapter still to go after that. So all of those, they were tough. I had a brilliant editor and a brilliant team who were,
00:35:59
Speaker
He would allow me to spend a day crying over a scene and then pick myself up and agree to a pinko.
00:36:08
Speaker
I suspect that throughout the process of packaging the movie that you could have chosen any kind of music you wanted, ethereal music that seems to play well with space, but a lot of what you chose was, and I love this because I'm a rock and heavy metal guy,
00:36:29
Speaker
not that you use heavy metal but i love rock and roll and you went with you guys went with a lot of classic rock some harder rock and i love what was the decision to use a lot of that kind of music to make all voyager like a rock star in this film looked at you know the i the music in the film has kind of
00:36:52
Speaker
I must be some, some, some way obsessed with trees at the moment, but it had kind of like the score written by our composer, which was, you know, we chose not to go for that kind of pink Floyd dreamy, spacey feel. And for some reason, I can't really remember the conversations, but I know that we wanted to do something maybe more acoustic, more human, more
00:37:16
Speaker
more delicate, more modern than that. So he was off on one track doing the score, then we had all the little beats that came out of the Golden Record and little, you know, little snatches of Louis Armstrong and Bach and Peruvian panpipes, you know, so they were all going to get peppered through the film. And then the third element as you're talking about is the kind of the commercial tracks and
00:37:42
Speaker
So I started from the idea that Voyager left in 1977. So that Voyager, Voyager itself had never updated her record collection. You know, she was out there dreaming of an earth pre 1977. So we, we decided to only use tracks pre 1977 with one exception, which is the final song in the film is a song called the race by Archer Pruitt. And that's 2002, I think.
00:38:11
Speaker
And that was the only exception we made. And that was that was because, you know, it was part of the inception for the decision to make the film. I heard it when I was driving, you know, years and years ago, I heard it. And I was thinking it's such a beautiful song about, you know,
00:38:28
Speaker
The lyrics go, we've won the race. We've claimed our place forever cold and lost in space. You know, I remember hearing it on the radio and thinking, if I ever make that film, if we ever get to make that film, I'm going to use this song. So that was the only notable exception. All the other tracks from Pink Floyd, the Carpenters to Galerin Lyle,
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah, they were all pre-1977. And in fact, I'm not sure they were, no, they definitely weren't chosen to give it a more rocky feel. They were all chosen to push forward the narrative. So at every point, they're used, like, you know, break away the gathering of a live track that's used when Voyager is launched, you know, that was, that was a fun, we were looking for songs from the 70s, pre-1977, who would give you that feeling of,
00:39:18
Speaker
this little being that you've created, you're now sending it off out into outer space. You'll never see it again. So we're looking for the feeling, the feeling that would give you that ache of the emotional jolt of it gone. And the carpenters when he was calling occupants, that was to kick off a section to do with our aliens out there. Could we ever meet them? How would we communicate? So they were all really chosen for
00:39:46
Speaker
Probably emotional truth and a little bit of a narrative bounce.
Voyager Documentary Timing
00:39:52
Speaker
So when did the kernel of the idea of a documentary on the Voyager mission, when did that kind of just stick in your brain and you're like, this is something I'd like to do someday. And then when the idea, when you had the opportunity, you were able to sort of fall on that ball.
00:40:12
Speaker
John Murray, who, as I said, co-directed here with Cuba with me, when we had finished making that film, we were sitting down to try to imagine what film we'd make next. And space was an absolute natural fit for both of us, both of us mad space nuts, and both of us kind of discovered in each other a bit of an obsession with Voyager. So we kind of talked about Voyager, and as I said, this classic, you know,
00:40:41
Speaker
not a metaphor film that allows you to do art and science and all these big ideas. And as we were discussing, literally the very weekend, we were like, hey, what about Voyager? Voyager would be an amazing film. And it had never been done before. Literally that very weekend, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had broken free the solar system and entered interstellar space. So it was like a really brilliant moment of serendipity. We were like,
00:41:10
Speaker
This film now can be made, you know, it's Voyager's back in the news, you know, it's back relevant, you know, it's not this dusty old spacecraft off there, gone out there since the seventies. It's actually doing something humans have never done before, right today. So that was the spur. That was the moment it was, we thought, you know, so we went out to, you know, funders and interested parties immediately with, you know,
00:41:36
Speaker
making it through the prism of it, having reached the interstellar space. Everybody was delighted and very interested straight away. That was how it became an idea and into a film, luckily. Yeah. Because Voyager became, I believe it was about 2012, was that when it entered interstellar space?
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, they entered the interstellar space in 2012, but it wasn't announced until 2013. They took them a whole year to kind of validate the information and to feel confident that they could announce that it had actually reached interstellar space. So our journey started in 2013.
00:42:19
Speaker
All right. So with that knowledge, then, of course, then Voyager kind of comes back to the top of the story pile for probably a lot of people across the world. Did you feel any pressure to like, well, we're probably not the only ones thinking about making a movie about this or a book or anything. So were you was there a feeling of urgency that you're like, all right, this is our time. Let's we got to do this now in pronto. I don't remember. Maybe I maybe
00:42:49
Speaker
I was very innocent then and I'm less innocent now. So for example, recently over the last year or two, we've been looking at making a film of Mars and it's like, Oh, get to the end of the queue. Everyone's making a film about Mars or making a film about the moon landings next year. It's the same thing. So I've become more aware about that idea now, you know, that feeling now that you've probably, you know, everybody has probably had the thought at the same time. I, I,
00:43:17
Speaker
I was possibly more, more, more, um, innocent then. And I had no sense that we were, uh, you know, competing with other people. I just thought, this is a great idea. We should do this. Then we went out and started looking for partners to do it with.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's great that the timing couldn't have worked out any better. And in the in the making of of this film, or, or any, you know, or here was Cuba, or that nature, what, like, what is your favorite aspect or of the process? Or where do you feel most alive and engaged in the in the process of, you know, making a film?
00:44:00
Speaker
I told you I started life as an editor. So I certainly love the editing process. You know, I didn't cut the farthest myself. Fantastic BAFTA and ace winning editor Tony Cranston cut it. And I really, really enjoyed that process, you know, because you're definitely redrafting the story, you know, really finding the film in the editor in a documentary. But
00:44:27
Speaker
No, butt and, butt slash and, possibly because, you know, I've been locked away in dark rooms for 20 years and now I've been liberated. I'm out on the floor, I'm out shooting, I'm out meeting people and all that. The shoot, the visual shoot and the, you know, the meeting, the interviewees meeting all the amazing characters, both on here with Cuba and on the farthest
00:44:57
Speaker
was my favorite part. Don't tell the editor I said that, because I absolutely loved, I absolutely loved, in some ways, throwing off the editor in me and saying, we'll figure that out later. For now, I'm just going to just dive in and explore this world and see what comes out of this process. And I'm about to, in fact, I'm starting
00:45:22
Speaker
pre-production on my new documentary next week. And we're not shooting now till October, November, but, you know, I have a real excitement about doing the research, finding out where to go, how to shoot is how am I tell it. And then like literally can't wait for the shoot. I mean, it's insane. It's long, long days and, you know, long, long nights preparing for the next day and the next interview. But it's so exciting and it's so, um,
00:45:52
Speaker
empowering and what is the word? It just fills you with so much energy, learning new stuff.
00:46:01
Speaker
Right. Right. And you're kind of alluding to it there as you're starting a new film. I always love talking about daily rituals for an artist, how we go about setting up our day so we feel like it's going to be accomplished. And then even towards the end of the day where you're sort of setting up the next day, I call it setting up the bowling pins so the next day you can start knocking them down.
00:46:26
Speaker
And so as you're kind of with respect to the movies you've made and also the movies going forward, how do you set up your days from when you wake up until the end of the day so you can feel like you've attacked that particular day with a certain sense of accomplishment? You know, it's kind of different in all the phases.
00:46:52
Speaker
first phase being kind of pre-production and research and then second phase being shoot and the third phase being the edit and that end of things. I probably approach all three very differently or maybe not so differently but you know I have when I'm in pre-production I get up very early, I work very late at night and I do a huge amount of
00:47:18
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe it is a bowling pin setting up, which, you know, I do an awful lot of lists. I do an awful lot of, you know, trying to deconstruct all the ideas, the visual ideas, the story ideas, all the people that I want to talk to, you know, so there's endless refining and it's an awful lot of, uh, desk work. It's an awful lot of reading and writing. It's an awful lot of going out and taking millions of photos, you know, so there's a real, um,
00:47:48
Speaker
almost like gathering the information, you know, like sucking in loads and loads of stuff. So it's quite a, it's a very, very intense phase. Then when I get to shooting, you know, even I'm working very, very hard and it's very, very focused. It feels much more like my open, you know, that you open the doors of your mind and of your process to, to, to, to stay alert and to stay alive for all the potential.
00:48:18
Speaker
And, uh, you know, uh, some of the days on the farthest, I felt like I was running a marathon, you know, like you're, you're absolutely on, on, you know, on, on duty. When you're turned on in every way, all your senses, all your emotions, all your, your eyes, your nose, you know, everything is like your, your, your, your nerve endings are very, very alert all the time.
00:48:44
Speaker
And then I got to the edit and perhaps because I had such a wonderful editor or perhaps because I'd been an editor before, it felt like a much more organic and settled place where story was really rising to the top at a very coherent and solid rate. You know, it didn't have the nerve ending, jangling feeling of the shoot. You know, it had a very, very powerful,
00:49:13
Speaker
really, really working the material at a very, you know, in a very, in a dignified way, very, very structured way. So I don't know if I've answered your question there particularly, but you know, I don't know what what routines I have apart from, they seem to have all three phases seem to have a different identity for me.
00:49:35
Speaker
let's see, primarily being an editor at first, how were you able to learn to divorce your editor brain from the generative phase to, you know, let's just try to, let's shoot everything and then worry about editing later. Sometimes there's a gap there where the editor brain gets in the way of the information gathering. So how have you learned to divorce those two?
00:50:00
Speaker
I tried really, really, I mean, I made it a kind of, I actually had a sticker up over my desk, you know, and it was basically that idea that I'm going to, I'm going to trust my instincts on the shoot. I'm going to shoot what I feel like, even if the editor brain inside my head is going, we'll never use that. There's no role for that. How will that fit in? You know, I was really silencing that part of my mind when I was shooting. Cause I wanted to get the benefit of being free.
00:50:29
Speaker
And knowing that, you know, at some other point later, somebody else in collaboration with me will either figure it out or find a way to use it. And that actually the madness and the instinct and the stuff that you can't prepare for or you don't know how it'll work is somewhere where all the magic comes. So I was really, really consciously turning those dials off.
00:50:54
Speaker
But I was also keeping some of them on because my editor brain was really helping me in terms of the storytelling and how to stay on track in terms of what story beats I need, what story ideas I needed to try to find visual language for or find a way to communicate. So it was a little bit schizophrenic and kind of continues to be. I have a desire to
00:51:23
Speaker
throw it off and yet keep it closed all at the same time. So I've actually edited, you know, I haven't edited now for over a year. And so it's slightly easier on my new film going forward. You know, I kind of feel like I'm a little bit less, you know, less aware of that part of my brain now, but I'm sure she'll come back out to give out to me for shooting stuff that I won't need.
00:51:50
Speaker
He used a great term of deconstructing your days a little while ago and using parlaying that term forward. What are some documentaries that you've watched or even feature films that help inform your documentaries?
00:52:10
Speaker
that you watch over and over again, and you do try to work backwards and deconstruct how the filmmaker made it so then it can help you tell the stories you want to tell. If there are any that come to mind, that'd be great to hear your insights on those. You know, probably, I watched the film last night, for example, and not a significant film. I featured a Norwegian drama, but I watched it for the second time.
00:52:37
Speaker
because I had watched it the night before and then my husband wanted to watch it with me again. I wanted to watch it, so I watched it again. And it was an example of me in deconstruction mode. I just watched it from the point of view of a filmmaker, the visual style, the structure, all the beats had to use music. But of course, like all humans, if I'm enthralled by a film,
00:53:05
Speaker
a documentary or a narrative film. If I'm actually sucked in by it, I don't see anything. I don't see the editing, the music, the performances. I just see what's really happening. So I do watch some films a few times. So for example, I've watched, I don't know if you've seen the documentary, the Fire at Sea from last year or two ago. I think it's perfection.
00:53:30
Speaker
in every way. And, you know, I would watch something like that, even though it possibly hasn't a lot to say to me about the style of film I make, or I'm certainly the next one I'm making. But material like that, or, you know, a film like The Possibilities are Endless, which is a beautiful documentary, Scottish documentary, about a singer who had a brain aneurysm, you know, and these kind of fragmentary memories.
00:53:59
Speaker
I love Errol Morris. I'd watch Errol Morris all day and all night. You know, see, you're looking for other artists who may even not be in the same wheelhouse as you, but who are teaching you something about how you might put two or four ideas of your own that are fragments together, you know? So yeah, just look, it's all brain food. It's all creative food.
00:54:27
Speaker
It's all a way of trying to articulate and deconstruct instincts that are kind of writhing around, trying to find form and trying to find an outlet for them. I watched Walls with Bashir there a few weeks ago and it's a kind of a, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's like a documentary crossed with an animated film.
00:54:54
Speaker
There's so many films and so many documentaries, so many artists who are pushing boundaries. And even if they're not literally talking to you at where you are, you're going to learn stuff. And as I said, it'll find something in your own mind that's bubbling or trying to find form will find expression.
00:55:15
Speaker
In terms of your filmmaking, is there anything that you wish you knew that you know now that you wish you knew 15, 20 years ago? Oh, I don't know if there is. I don't know if I want to know stuff that, you know, I think I think it's OK to make mistakes. I think it's OK to to
00:55:45
Speaker
you know, realise later what you should have done before. I certainly couldn't have made the farthest 20 years ago. I wouldn't have had the emotional maturity, you know, to understand how to communicate, how an audience wants to communicate, want you to communicate with them, want to be allowed in.
00:56:12
Speaker
So no, I'm not sure there is anything that I wish I knew then. I'm quite happy to keep blundering on.
00:56:18
Speaker
Emotional maturity is something that takes a lot of patience and it's something I think a lot of any artist and anything, sometimes cultivating that sense of patience is hard because you want the work to be recognized. You don't want to wallow in obscurity and sometimes in that time that it
00:56:46
Speaker
And then you are kind of obscure and wallowing and making work that doesn't seem to be getting sticky. It can be very easy to maybe get jealous or feel competitive with peers and you wonder why maybe someone who's like 10 years younger than you, they seem to be on a track that's going far ahead of you and you're like,
00:57:05
Speaker
Why? What am I doing wrong? I'm a hard worker. I have talent, but it's not sticking. And I wonder, maybe with your work, do you have any instances of dealing with jealousy and competitive feelings? And how did you maybe endure those feelings? You know, it's a very, very interesting question because, you know,
00:57:31
Speaker
by its nature, when you make a film, it's competing with other films, for the audience's attention, for the critics' attention, for the festivals' thoughts. And that's a really unhappy or unfortunate part of it. Certainly, when we were getting the farthest out there, there was a feeling of
00:57:54
Speaker
You know, why didn't we get selected for that festival? And why did this other film get there? You know, and, but in a very short while, I, I very quickly into that feelings, I thought, what did this, this film, this journey, this, this instinct to create something and communicate, you know, shouldn't be poisoned by those ideas. It's a terrible shame if it is. Um, so very, very quickly, I think we found this place where we were like, look, we've made a film.
00:58:23
Speaker
that we love and it's about the process and it's about the work and it's about making something you feel happy with and I moved very quickly because I was quite new to it last year with the farthest that feeling of oh wow you are actually out there in the world with other films and I think that that feeling of fear or jealousy or
00:58:47
Speaker
competitiveness. I didn't like it at all. And I didn't like it even surfacing. And I wasn't really prepared for it. And when it did, I kind of moved very quickly to either shut it down or just accommodate it in the sense of, okay, if this is what the industry needs, if this is normal part of this, I need to just accept that and move into the place where I want to be, which is
00:59:13
Speaker
Did we make a film that we can stand over, that we love, that we want to show? Did the process suit me? Did it work? Did I learn stuff? Did my colleagues and my team learn stuff? If all else failed and it was only ever shown to our families, would we still feel proud of the work and proud of the process? And when the answer is we're yes or resounding yes to all of those,
00:59:42
Speaker
I made a very concerted effort and I think I was, I think I hope I was successful at it just to feel, to focus on the work and let the business side of it, all the distributors, all the festivals, all that stuff just fade away into some other place. Because it's nothing to do with the work. It's nothing to do with the artistic instinct, the creative instinct, the documentarian's instinct to tell a story and reach people. It's all separate to us.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah, I had a small, a small, uh, you know, bump off it and I didn't like it at all. And I just thought it was really, really unhelpful and toxic, you know, toxic to the work and, uh, you know, have made, have made a concerted effort to, uh, turn it all back, turn it all off. And really, if that means you have to not read reviews or not go on Twitter, you know, I think that's what you have to do. You have to protect yourself and, and.
01:00:41
Speaker
the piece and John Murray, you know, who was my co-director on here was Cuba became my producer on the farthest. He always says, look, if, you know, if you drop the DCP down a manhole or into the sea, you know, on your way to the premiere, you know, you have to feel that the work had value. It had value outside of what other people say about it, whatever, what the experience of showing it is, you know, and I think he's right. Although I think if it went down a manhole, I would jump down after his
01:01:11
Speaker
That being said, I think he's right. The feeling is the work itself, because we spend so much of our lives, so much time, so much emotional and creative energy making these films, making these works of art, these expressive pieces, trying to talk to something. Really, we just have to protect that above all else.
01:01:38
Speaker
And maybe in the spirit of Carl Sagan, when you, throughout the production and the packaging and the making of Voyager and your own personal study of the cosmos and learning about how simultaneously significant and insignificant we are,
Voyager Mission's Significance
01:02:02
Speaker
I wonder like how is your, what have been your takeaways like when you turn your head, turn your eyes to the sky and maybe your approach to your approach to fear and insecurity when you realize, you know, after what you've been able to do and you see the scope of the universe. I wonder like what you've, what your big takeaway and what you've learned in the process of sort of studying the universe. I think you're right. Like, I think, you know,
01:02:31
Speaker
that that's that recognition through the film and through Carl Sagan and through Voyager, it's very self had actually, it probably got into me on a very cellular level, that idea of, you know, we're all so insignificant, and yet, you know, not to each other, you know, in our own lives, we're, you know, and the film was a really, you know, a very serious and
01:03:00
Speaker
honest and emotional attempt to travel between those binaries, you know, these huge ideas of we're nothing, we're just this little dot in this back end of this one universe, possibly among billions of universes. And yet here and now to each other and in in real life, we really matter and our relationships really matter and that we do right really matters and that we tell the truth really matters. You know, so it definitely
01:03:28
Speaker
has gotten into my cells and maybe has helped me with those ideas of fear and what does it matter if the film gets a bad review or somebody doesn't like it. I haven't been wounded or crushed. I'm genuinely extremely interested in how people respond to the film on all levels, like it or hate it. And so it has been a really interesting kind of emotional journey.
01:03:57
Speaker
making it and seeing people responding to it. The last year of showing it, I've had some extraordinarily profound moments. A woman came up to me in New York and said that the film, first time since the presidential election that she felt hope. And stuff like that will really, that's the stuff that I'm taking at night rather than the
01:04:25
Speaker
what festival it didn't get into. That's the stuff that I keep coming back to. We talked to people where they live, about hope, about meaning, and got an opportunity to celebrate science, to celebrate existence, to celebrate all these big ideas. Somebody said to me at one festival, you know, that the film
01:04:56
Speaker
It was kind of half about the desire to know that we were sending Voyager out there to discover things. But it was half about the desire to be known. And I think that's true. I think that's true possibly about our lives as well. It's not this idea that we want to do stuff, but we also were these huge, big bags of water having emotional journeys and philosophical journeys through our lives.
01:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, the film and the whole experience of making it has taught me a lot about, you know, it's much more than a film about space, you know, it's a film about being human, about the mysteries that define our lives.
01:05:40
Speaker
Well,
Where to Find 'The Farthest'
01:05:41
Speaker
with respect to your time, of course, this has been a lovely conversation getting to know you a little bit more in your approach to the work and, of course, your wonderful film. Where can people maybe get more familiar with you and your work, find you online, and where can people find the movie if they haven't seen it already?
01:06:03
Speaker
Well, I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the farthest film, and myself personally, so they can track us down there. The film can be downloaded and bought, I believe, on Amazon. On Netflix, there is a version of it, a TV version of the film. And keep an eye out for us in, yeah, you know, it's frequently popping up in all sorts of curious little festivals still, you know, still traveling the world.
01:06:31
Speaker
year and a half after it's launched. Park it down there. Very voyager-like that it's still just kind of out there traveling. Wandering on. My next film, I can't really say what it's about, Brendan, but it's a film about a rock star. You might well talk to me about that one if you're a rock
01:06:54
Speaker
You're a rock interest. Oh yes, please and thank you. You'll have to come back on for a second trip. It'll be your Voyager 2 trip to the podcast. Exactly. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for the time. This was, like I said, great getting to talk to you and get to know you and your approach to the work. So we will certainly be in touch down the road, Emer. Thanks again, and we'll be talking. Thanks so much, Brendan. Let me talk to you. You too. Take care.
01:07:25
Speaker
Well, that was nice, wasn't it? Thanks again to Hippo Camp for the support you only have this week to use that CNF pod promo code to get $50 off your registration fee. Be sure to head over to BrendanOmero.com to sign up for the monthly email newsletter once a month. No spam. Can't beat it.
01:07:51
Speaker
I think that's it CNF'ers. Thanks for listening. Let the rock and roll just take you away. I'm gonna go for a walk and think about some things. See ya!