In Martin Marko’s At Sea we witness a filmmaker’s journey of discovery that unfolded both on water and in the editing room. In 2019 Marko boarded a vessel with friends, soon to become narrative characters in his short, guided primarily by instinct rather than rigid structure – allowing the maritime adventure itself to become the first author of his narrative. The film’s ultimate rhythm emerged organically from the recordings as Marko blended footage across multiple formats, resolutions and years into a provocative narrative tapestry. This spontaneous approach to documenting resulted in a treasure trove of disparate moments that he would later assemble into a cohesive whole through meticulous post-production. At its core, At Sea aims to create an immersive sensory experience that acknowledges the audience’s presence and plays with their expectations – harsh cuts and dramatic sound design keep viewers engaged but never complacent, mirroring the unpredictable nature of the sea itself. One moment, we’re witnessing sailors battle overwhelming elements; the next, we’re following an ant struggling with a piece of wood, a jarring juxtaposition that somehow feels perfectly natural within the film’s established rhythm. Through a delicate balancing act of technical experimentation, narrative playfulness and sensory immersion, Marko delivers a cinematic experience that feels simultaneously raw and crafted, chaotic and rhythmic. Ahead of At Sea’s premiere on DN today, we spoke to Marko about the satisfying puzzle-like structure he constructed from the footage, his growth and evolution as a filmmaker from the initial ideation and filming through to the final cut, and the unifying role of his God-like narration.
Did you have an idea about the structure or flow At Sea was going to take when you boarded the boat with your equipment?
I had some idea of what to expect from a journey like this. I knew I wanted an adventurous sailing sequence. I knew I wanted to film a storm if there was one, but I had no idea how I would actually structure it or what the flow would be. It turned out pretty fast-paced, but had I gotten footage that suited a slower pace, I would’ve followed that instead. The adventure itself was the first writer and set the flow. At the time, I had no idea how I would structure it or what message it would carry. So the writing process happened in my head and started from the moment I boarded the ship in 2019 and lasted until this year when I pieced it all together in the edit, built a dramatic structure, created chapters, and came up with a few moments of comic relief.
During the trip it was really just about observing and filming whatever was happening or caught my interest, and then mentally building connections. If I caught something interesting, I’d think of a few more shots to go with it and film those too. It was very free and spontaneous. For example, we anchored in this bay, and I saw a cave. I put on my flippers, grabbed the camera, and swam over to get a shot of our boat from inside the cave. Only in the edit did I think, “Okay, that’s where they can hide from the sun.” Then, when I started playing with the sound, I thought, “Let’s have them scream or whistle with an echo.” It gives the impression of a group, even though it was really just me in the cave. Just me and a big wave that threw me off and I scratched my back against some rocks! The camera survived. Another time, on my way back to the boat from a viewpoint on an island, I stumbled upon some ants. I loved the way they contrasted the stone below them and wanted to see how close I could get to them with the lens I had. Then I saw one ant carrying a massive piece of wood and thought I should follow him. I didn’t know yet how it would fit, but we all know that classic joke of interrupting an intense sequence with a nature doc-style bit, I thought that could be fun. Eventually, I left the boat with all these pieces in my head, not quite sure how they would connect, but hopeful they would.
Putting together the story was like building a puzzle; I had all these great pieces but no reference image.
Everything else happened in the editing room. I’m a big cinema lover and also drew inspiration from what I’ve seen. For example, the ant sequence originally had a voiceover, a fun David Attenborough-style narration. But it didn’t feel right. It felt forced or maybe just too expected. Then I remembered the subtitled stones talking in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and once I tested out a similar approach, I realized that was the direction I wanted. Less is more sometimes. Less voiceover, more audience interaction. Putting together the story was like building a puzzle; I had all these great pieces but no reference image. So what I ended up doing was grouping the shots into chapters based on the weather conditions, and it kind of became the story of Sun, Storm, Rain, and so on. And finally, the narrator character became the glue. Since I wrote the narration in post, I could shape it to fit the shots I already had.
How did your growth as a filmmaker during the time you were making the film influence your approach to the material and what specific skills or perspectives gained from your commercial work allowed you to finally complete this personal project?
I’ve grown so much as a filmmaker since I started this project, both technically and as a storyteller. I was just starting out in the commercial world back then, and now I’ve been lucky enough to direct spots for Ford, Zalando, Sleep Country, and others. That growth has really reflected on At Sea, and honestly, the other way around too. I don’t think there’s a single project I’ve done over the past few years that wasn’t influenced by At Sea. Even though it wasn’t released until now, I used it as a reference for editors or pulled little bits from it for treatments and pitches. Where that growth really shows in At Sea is in my understanding of editing, sound design, and dramatic structure.
Not sticking to one aspect ratio or one format felt like a little eureka moment in the edit.
All of that ties into one main skill at the heart of the film: storytelling techniques. I see the whole film as an experiment in different storytelling tools. What I mean by that is using editing, sound, and image to create mood and atmosphere. For example, cutting between harsh ambient noise and very calm ambient sound, going back and forth, creates this rhythm where you can feel both the power and the serenity of the sea. Or take something like cutting from black screen to water foam, paired with heavy sea wash sound, when you cut that in and out rapidly, it becomes almost an action sequence or builds suspense. Or building up a fast-paced montage and then cutting to a wide, calm shot with a deep booming sound. It’s a fun and effective way to slow things down, create a comedic moment, and play with audience expectations.
All these little audiovisual tricks I’ve experimented with are where my growth really shows. Creating a playful,dramatic structure, playing with expectations and keeping the viewer engaged are all what kept me motivated. I think the filmmaking world in general has opened up more to mixed-format storytelling. Not sticking to one aspect ratio or one format felt like a little eureka moment in the edit. It gave me permission to just go wild, mixing new footage with old, not worrying if one shot is grainy and the next is sharp, or if one’s 1080p and another is 6K. Good old Canon 7D from the DSLR revolution got another chance to shine here, haha.
The whole project ended up carrying this theme of brutal cutting between beautiful and low-res footage, loud and quiet sounds, I think there’s poetry in that.
What technical and aesthetic challenges did you face when integrating footage of varying quality, resolutions and aspect ratios into a cohesive whole?
There were two main challenges. One was color grading. For example, I shot the turtle on my iPhone while in Hawaii, years after the voyage. But since Greece is also known for turtles, I used it in the film. To make it feel seamless, I had to apply the same harsh color grade I used on the rest of the sequence. The other aspect was not matching them, just letting them be, or even screwing them up more. During the storm sequence, most of the shots are on a GoPro4. I found a cool technique that let me stretch the image to a 2.39:1 aspect ratio without losing resolution in the center, only the edges were stretched, which created this interesting effect and actually gave me some resolution back.
I also added a film look and heavy grain, thinking: since it’s already low-res, I might as well push it further and own that low-res feel. That decision led me to keep the sequence more documentary style, more raw and real, less stylized. So I tried to honor the low-res by using a storytelling language that did it justice. For other moments, I had fun cutting 4:3 8mm-style shots with clean 6K footage. It makes the good shots look even better by contrast. The whole project ended up carrying this theme of brutal cutting between beautiful and low-res footage, loud and quiet sounds, I think there’s poetry in that. It’s like a wave rising and falling. Maybe there’s something about life that feels brutal and abrupt to me. But this style felt right for this project. I even used a similar approach in a mini-doc I shot last year for charity, where we mixed Alexa 35 with iPhone footage, and it worked great.
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How did you balance this jarring editing and harsh cuts with maintaining narrative coherence and what specific editing techniques did you employ to ensure these transitions enhanced rather than detracted from the viewing experience?
The jarring editing is a theme in itself. It’s visceral. It communicates on a gut level. Like Kubrick said, “The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.” I think the truth of this piece is in the feel, and the editing and sound design are a big part of that. I think audio is a giant narrative workhorse that’s often an afterthought. I used it, hopefully, to enhance the story, smooth out the editing, and guide attention to the right subject in the frame. Sometimes it’s loud, other times soft. When I want you to look at the torn flag, I use the sound of a tearing flag, and so on. When I wanted a fast sequence to feel natural, I used little clicking sounds, as if you were scrolling through the shots, it made it kind of organic.
Some shots are even from different days, different boats, even different years, sometimes even different people but when they’re cut together right, you read it as something happening in the moment.
I wanted the first minute or two to be a wild ride, something that grabs your attention. Some of my favorite moments are in those first two minutes. And it is fast and fun, you are not expected to follow everything that is happening, you are supposed to just enjoy it. It’s okay to miss a thing or two. Once I felt I had the viewer’s attention, then I allowed it to slow down a bit and go deeper. Whether it worked that’s up to everyone to judge subjectively. It might not seem that way at first but everything’s connected, and there’s even a classic narrative structure underneath. If you really wanted to, you could probably map the Save the Cat beat sheet onto it. But what I love about At Sea is how unpredictable it feels. Some shots are even from different days, different boats, even different years, sometimes even different people but when they’re cut together right, you read it as something happening in the moment. Classic Kuleshov effect.
If you look closely, the sail sometimes changes color, sometimes it’s red, sometimes gray, because it’s a different boat, a different year. There were some shots I loved but couldn’t use because the differences were too jarring. But I tried to craft it all into one cohesive journey, one boat, one crew. I think I’ve also developed a good instinct for when a scene needs a little extra, some dramatic punctuation. A little ‘dot’ you know? Something to keep the story pushing forward. One example: the phone falling into the sea. At first, I didn’t have that moment in there, and the whole Serenity sequence felt unfinished. Adding the phone falling, almost like it was thrown out of her hands by the narrator, gave that part the needed story beat. But above all, it’s fun.
There is a beautiful sequence with photos layered together which flash through creating an almost stop-motion like feel.
There was a storm we experienced in 2018, and the photos are from that storm. I didn’t shoot much video on that trip. I was really into photography back then, so I ended up with tons of photos from the storm but no video. The actual storm footage in the film is from a different storm in 2019. I really wanted to use those 2018 photos, but I didn’t want it to feel like a boring slideshow. I think I started with the music which had this fast tempo that I loved, so I began editing to that rhythm. I guess I’m lucky that back in 2018 my photography style was very… abundant. I used to shoot in burst mode a lot, even when I only wanted one photo. So I ended up with enough frames to create a sort of stop-motion sequence.
I figured, why not just turn this part into its own little experimental film?
The challenge was that the compositions were a bit all over the place, so I started layering them in After Effects, aligning the subject so it stayed in roughly the same position across frames. That helped create a more cohesive feel. Then I pulled in an AcidBite After Effects project I had lying around from a commercial gig. I tweaked it to fit this project better. The cut-photo look in the sequence comes from masking out parts of the image in AE. Later on, I found this software that could animate still photos to give them a kind of parallax motion. I used it to create a few 3D shots and dropped those in toward the end of the photo montage. Finally, I used Procreate on my iPad to apply this effect that turned an image into an infinite tunnel of lines. I recorded my screen and used that footage in the sequence too. At this point, I kind of felt like a crazy person. I was throwing all these techniques at one sequence, but it was fun. I figured, why not just turn this part into its own little experimental film? Once I had all these assets, I went back into the editing room and started building the sequence you see in the film now. I didn’t follow any rules. It’s experimental in the truest sense.
I wanted the narrator to feel a bit like God, and the ship crew like small pawns. That’s how it feels when you’re in the middle of the sea.
How did you develop the narrator device and what effect were you aiming to achieve by creating this ambiguity between remembered experience and potentially fabricated details? Was it difficult to find the right voice to pull this off?
Having a self-aware narrator is a device I really like and always enjoy when I see it executed well. I have this internal struggle as a storyteller: I love dealing with deep themes, but I can’t help introducing comedy into it. So I guess the narrator became a way to bring that in, it gave the film a rhythm, where spoken word and visceral sequences take turns. I wanted the narrator to feel a bit like God and the ship crew like small pawns. That’s how it feels when you’re in the middle of the sea.
Finding the right voice for this, I have to say, was the biggest challenge. It was really hard to explain this character to voice actors, to help them understand that even though it rhymes, it’s not meant to be poetry, and even though they’re sailors, they’re not caricatures of sailors. It’s one of those roles you either get or you don’t. It’s dry, ironic, poetic, immersive… You just have to get who he is. It was difficult. I went through a lot of voice actors, and while I don’t think I found exactly the perfect voice I’d dreamt up in my head, I found something close enough to pass for what I needed. As for the accent it kind of sounds Transatlantic. An accent that only exists in the movies. It adds another layer that reminds you: this is a story.
What has this inspired in you as a filmmaker and what are you working on now?
It was an amazing journey to take on. It helped me become a better director and storyteller. I’m encouraged to make the next one. A bigger one. Right now, I’m working on a Toronto-based narrative short film and also preparing two spec commercials with local Canadian talent that I hope to shoot this summer. But if the right adventure comes along, I wouldn’t mind doing another fiction-documentary blend in the future exploring a new theme. Outdoing myself.
