Filmmaker Ryan Balas started off as a filmmaker like many others: he used an old VHS camera to record himself and his brothers, when they'd let him.
He graduated to the episodic web program "The Really Cool Show," then again to his first feature, the largely improvisde "Sandcastles."
Balas' latest film, "Everyone Says I Look Just Like Her," chronicles two sisters, one adopted, meeting on the anniversary of their mother's death. "Everyone Says" is playing at the Indianapolis International Film Festival Monday, July 19 and Thursday, July 22 (for more information visit the IIFF's listing for the film).
Balas talked to The Yap about making his second feature, becoming a filmmaker, and why he chose to make one sister black, and the other white without really making a big deal out of it.
The Yap: Let's start with "Everyone Says." What was the genesis of the film? What inspired you to tell this story?
RB: Honestly, a lot of the ideas for the film came from drinking mimosas and watching home video's from Deirdre Herlihy's childhood. During the winter her father came to New York and brought her several home videos, and we basically watched them straight through. I felt like I had learned something completely new about who she is and where she came from. It was sort of a religious experience, in a way. But what really struck me was the overwhelming feeling that though some of the people in the video were not longer living, the home movies and memories they evoked really brought them to life again. It was that energy that I wanted to capture, that celebration of someones life.
The Yap: Tell me about your lead characters, meeting on the anniversary of their mother's death. There are a lot of issues in there, between the boyfriends and their relationships with their parents.
RB: Every year in the spring, Deirdre, who is my longtime girlfriend in real life, celebrates the memory of her mother, and that month is always a strange and beautiful time. So my relationship with that experience is obviously a major influence in the thematic elements of the film. The most engaging aspect of this from a narrative aspect, is the way that different characters and their relationship to experience will vary and can be juxtaposed with each individuals personal celebration or mourning.
As for the relationship between the two sisters and their parents, the underlying conflict is identity. They are each struggling to be individuals apart from their upbringing. They both know where they came from and that they grew up privileged, and so there is an element of personal identity. They are also seeking acceptance and love from their famous father, who may have felt the need to overcompensate when it came to his relationship with the adopted daughter, to help keep the family balanced. When their mother died, I imagine it was hard to maintain that balance and that after a while a disconnect developed in the relationship between their father and his birth daughter.
The Yap: How about your choice to make the sisters different races?
RB: Well, I'd say that the idea was in various stages of evolution before it got to the most basic of the concepts, a black and a white sister. I usually begin with a concept, based on the people I want to work with. So in this case, I knew I wanted to put Deirdre and Jace together. They share a simple method to acting that I felt would work well together.they bring raw energy to the table and react with their hearts on their sleeves. At the same time, I was very interested in this taboo in indie film of middle-class white people making movies about middle class white people and rather than dismiss that completely, I would simply play on the taboo. It's not a race film. It's a film about four human beings’ relationship to each other. And being a human being is often as complex as it is absurd. Most importantly, I think it's funny. We've got this media culture obsessed with celebrities adopting from other countries, and I wanted to simply examine one of those families, all grown up. Their family problems probably look just like any other families. It's beautiful. In the end, it always seems to come back to identity and relationships.
The Yap: A lot of filmmakers want to make films, but have no idea how to actually make it happen. How did you get started making films.
RB: In 2007, I made two things that really gave me the backbone to keep working. The first thing was “The Really Cool Show,” a web series that I made with comedian Christi Chiello and Deirdre Herlihy. We shot it on a Macbook webcam in our apartment. At the time, we were creating, shooting, editing and releasing one episode a week for about 10 weeks. Working on that show gave me a safe place to make mistakes without affecting the overall integrity of the show.
My first feature was “Sandcastles,” which is all but lost at this point. I was working as the live-video/media editor for an off-Broadway show at the time, and had access to two Sony HDV cameras. They were kind enough to let me take out the equipment when the show was dark, and I managed to shoot the film over a few spread out weekends over a couple of months. I showed the film to an audience of about thirty, in a downtown NYC art space. I got the space for free, they kept the door. Indie film is all about favors from kind strangers. The film was improvised, it was raw, it was shaky and it was often too close for comfort, but I'm still very proud of it because of the many lessons it taught me. I learned a lot about directing actors. I didn't have a crew and everyone worked for free. This doesn't seem so unusual these days, but at the time, I felt like the art rebel in my crowd of filmmaking friends.
The Yap: For all intents and purposes your film has a cast of four people. How did you approach keeping the film moving and remain interesting when you were so limited in terms of what you could do?
RB: For this movie, I have to say I didn't really feel limited. If anything I felt completely liberated. We shot in Northern Michigan, in a beautiful place, with a house we were able to rent for two weeks. No one had to work day jobs during the shoot, everyone got paid and we didn't have any “money people” to answer to. Our budget was still incredibly small, even by indie movie standards, but honestly it was the most money I've worked with. We had a script but at least 75% of the dialogue is improvised and the scenes would unfold in a really organic, natural way.
The Yap: With that much improv, did you find the wheels spinning a lot? How did you keep the narrative going?
If you watched a scene naturally unfold, it would last 20 to 40 minutes, so when Darren Marshall, my coproducer, coeditor and a fellow filmmaker and I sat down to cut the movie, we had to sift through hours of improvised footage searching for the heart of the scenes. 90% of editing in this kind of style is finding ways to create coverage out of long, improvised takes. We initially cut long, information-filled scenes, then would break it down into the most important actions and reactions. Anything that didn't feel like a direct reaction to action was cut. We also developed the editing style of the film after the rough assembly. We looked at these long scenes, and knew that a lot of information was important but wanted the film the be more visual, so that’s where the jump-cut visuals came in, over lapping with a scenes dialogue. This was a simple technique, but felt like a total breakthrough at the time.
The Yap: You also acted. How did that work out for you? How do you direct yourself in the context of a specific scene, since you lack that detached perspective you would typically have working with another actor?
RB: It's completely exhausting but it also feels very natural and I enjoy doing it. I come from an acting background, but my interest has always been far more in the creative process of making a film. I always saw acting as a means to an end. I spent most of my childhood, setting up an old VHS camera on a rickety tripod, and swinging from trees in multicolored spandex, making ninja movies. This was only the case if I couldn't get one of my little brothers to either do it instead of me or at least with me. So I've always felt extremely comfortable going back and forth between roles. It sort of feels like it’s all part of the same process. Since the work is so improvised, I am able to do a lot of directing from within the scene.