Intensity is the name of the game for brothers/co-directors Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz. Their previous short Flounder, which we featured on Directors Notes last year, was about a toxic initiation process for a male swimming team that takes a dark turn. The plot mixed with the filmmakers’ immersive cinematic style bred a highly compelling short that captured the charged nature of hazing rituals. This formula is carried over into their latest work A Lien, about a young family going through a dangerous immigration process. Whilst the characters and circumstances are completely different from Flounder, the heart-racing intensity of a vicious system’s impact on the individual remains the same. The filmmaking duo return to DN today for a discussion about their attraction to these extreme scenarios, the methodology and practicality of their kinetic camerawork, and the value they place in taking the time with each part of the filmmaking process.
Do you remember when you first learned of marriage entrapment and what it was about that process which motivated you to make a short about it?
We stumbled across the marriage entrapment process in 2018 and immediately felt that we had to do something. The idea that this twisting of immigration rules happens right now, in states across the US, massively damaging the lives of families, sparked our desire to advocate against this practice. As filmmakers we feel the most impactful thing we can do is call attention to this insane process and intertwine it with a story that shows the real impact it has. At its heart this is a story about New Yorkers and their desire for family unity and identity, but we hope it resonates to a larger swath of Americans who, like ourselves, are oftentimes only one generation away from the immigration process.
What was the biggest hurdle to overcome during the preparation for this film?
We’ve found that if we can identify the largest challenge, the ‘crux’ of the project if you will, early and work towards that as hard as possible, many of the other pieces of the puzzle fall into place around it. For this film we knew that the biggest challenge would be the location, a USCIS building and a convincing pair of actors to play Sophie and Oscar. Both of those things were going to take a lot of time so we started about six months in advance. We spent days contacting every college in NJ and NY, anything within a two hour radius of NYC. We looked at courthouses, city halls and any public building we could get a hold of. Eventually after months of searching and scouting we were about two weeks from shooting and we still didn’t have a location. We ended up going back to a NJ college campus we had scouted previously and by a stroke of luck were shown a building we hadn’t seen before. It was perfect and that became the main location for the film.
We’ve found that if we can identify the largest challenge, the ‘crux’ of the project if you will, early and work towards that as hard as possible, many of the other pieces of the puzzle fall into place around it.
On the casting side, things were similarly dogged. We worked through almost 3000 actors slowly whittling down the selections through multiple rounds of self tapes and then in person auditions, chemistry reads and finally in person chemistry tests. Will Martinez and Victoria Ratermanis ended up being such an incredible match. They were so willing to put in the work together and alone to really bring their ‘family’ to life. We really tried to fill their heads with so much background information that they would be able to actually pass the green card interview in character.
The frantic, handheld cinematography echoes the tension felt by the characters, what tech did you use to achieve that look and feel?
The film was shot mostly handheld with the Arri Alexa HS and Zeiss Super Speed lenses. We had a very minimal lighting package and our DP Andrea Gavazzi pulled amazing images together with almost nothing.
How did this compare to Flounder and the other work you’ve made in terms of its length as a project?
We wrote the film on and off from 2018 till 2021 when we finally had the script in the right place. Pre-production took about six months and then shooting was four days. Post took another year or so. All in all it was a pretty long process as compared to a lot of other shorts, but we really believe in not short changing any part of the process and this often leads us towards a longer timeline for our films.
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You mentioned giving your actors exhaustive background information about their characters, what type of things does that comprise?
For us it was about giving them a sense of their entire lives up until this moment, where they were born, went to high school, who their parents and siblings are, how they met each other, everything from the mundane to the dramatic. We wrote out an entire timeline for each of the characters’ lives and then the actors fleshed it out more themselves once they got the roles. We spent time together creating family photos and trying to gather all the evidence the government requires for an actual green card marriage interview.
The shooting style of the short is fast and kinetic, did you rehearse or block heavily to achieve that heart pounding sense of urgency?
For this shoot we tried to create scenes that felt alive, and then shoot the coverage while it was happening. We had a very detailed shotlist and set of storyboards, and we spent a lot of time with Andrea, our DP going over what the entire coverage for the scene would be. Then we would get the scene moving and once the ‘machine’ was sort of up and running and feeling alive, we would roll the camera and Andrea would go in and pick off as many shots as he could get. Then we would look through our storyboards, cross off the shots we felt like we’d gotten and then do it again. There was definitely blocking and rehearsals, but we had almost 60 people sometimes so there is only so much blocking you can do, without stifling a scene. I think we had ten hours of footage for a fifteen minute movie at the end.
It was a pretty long process as compared to a lot of other shorts, but we really believe in not short changing any part of the process.
Both Flounder and A Lien deal with highly intense processes and their impact on the individual, what is it that attracts you both to telling stories about these scenarios?
We strongly believe that art is political in nature and that you can read the cultural zeitgeist of the moment through the art of that time. So for us it’s about trying to engage with the cultural themes of our time and finding ways as directors to soak up the zeitgeist and reform or crystalize it and give it back to the viewer in a form they can understand. Oftentimes that comes down to trying to bring these large and convoluted themes down to the individual level and look at the impact on families or single people. Strangely the most hyper-specific is often the most universal.
Going back to the casting, you mentioned going through almost 3000 actors, what was it about Will and Victoria that ultimately led you to go with them?
It’s going to sound sort of lame, but it really comes down to two things for me. One, does it feel real? Can you, through the massive machine of casting and self tapes and all the fluff, believe that the person on screen or in front of you isn’t faking it, that the words coming out of their mouth aren’t lines you wrote but something they are actually saying? Secondly, is the way they are saying the dialogue matching what you had in your head?
We strongly believe that art is political in nature and that you can read the cultural zeitgeist of the moment through the art of that time.
So much of directing for us is just making the thing in the monitor match how we hear and see it in our heads. We’ve spent months working on the script, listening to the dialogue in our brains, and picturing the scenes, so it’s a process of getting to that as closely as we can, while obviously being open to changes or surprises when they come. An interesting example of this is the elevator scene, which only lasts about 30 seconds in the film, but we basically put them in an elevator for two hours and rolled on the lines we had written, but also a ton of improv based on the background we’d created with them. The lines in the film I think are not ones we had in the script.
Practical question, what’s the funding process for your shorts? What advice would you give a filmmaker looking to get their work off the ground?
Eat a lot of instant ramen, haha.
What’s next for you both?
We’re hard at work on our first feature film!
