As a visual artist, Peter McLarnan was used to including cinematic themes and the imagery of movies in his projects. But the Minneapolis native dove into the world of feature filmmaking with “The Sound of Small Things,” which recently had its premiere at Slamdance, wanting to expand upon his ability to tell a story and even trying for a different audience experience.
The film tracks the lives of Sam (Sam Hoolihan) and Cara (Cara Krippner) and their new marriage, even as the relationship seems to be in its death throes. Cara is the survivor of a mysterious accident which has left her with hearing loss; Sam is a musician and copywriter who seems to be awkwardly navigating his own adulthood. Each one feels isolation in a different way, dealing with the secrets and the people who may or may not mean well in their lives.
McLarnan gave his cast the chance to improvise and expand upon the structure he had come up with. The film also depends heavily upon director of photography Brennan Vance, who uses lingering shots, interesting angles, and tight framing of the principals to give the audience the very real sense of being in the moment. The result is a nuanced film with depth, where the viewer has to pay attention to the little moments—because those are the ones that add up.
Film Slate Magazine caught up with McLarnan as Slamdance was wrapping up and he was getting ready to fly home and plan out his next move for “The Sound of Small Things,” and possibly even rest for the first time in several weeks.
Film Slate Magazine: How was Slamdance?
Peter McLarnan: It’s been amazing. It’s been a fantastic festival. We’re just a group of visual artists from Minneapolis, so we’ve been operating in a vacuum, so coming here and meeting all of these wonderful, like-minded people who are doing these exciting things and taking risks and…just having lots of great conversations, seeing some great films—it’s just been awesome.
FSM: This is your first feature. How did you build up to that? Were you making shorts before, or did you just dive right in and make a feature because you had this idea?
PM: So me and my director of photography met in the art department at the University of Minnesota about five years ago and we collaborated on a lot of much more gallery based work…in which we really tried to call attention to the language of cinema, really kind of self-reflexive things where the camera was really just very present, drawing attention to the structure and language of the films that we’ve been watching on Netflix and talking about for years.
So, all that work really kind of informed this by, to show these films and videos in a gallery or an installation context. You just never felt quite right, like you never had people’s full attention and you’re always thinking about bringing it to the next step of a feature length where for better or for worse someone’s just there for the whole time. So that’s what motivated me to get this project going.
FSM: And the idea for the film itself? Because you’ve got some interesting ideas running through this: the new marriage, the isolation of certain characters. So where did the idea for the feature itself come from?
PM: I think it came from the experiences I’ve gone through and I’ve seen my friends go through. Sort of transitioning from mid-twenties to late-twenties to early-thirties and struggling to be honest with yourself, and struggling to be honest with the people in your life. And thinking about subjectivity and that there’s a ceiling of knowledge, I guess that we all have, like you never really get the full privilege of a 360 degree panoramic view of your life. You just sort of have to move through it with blinders on to a certain extent. And there’s only so much we ever get to know.
FSM: When you were putting this thing together, how much time did you have in pre-production to figure out the look of the movie? The shots and the looks and the things that you wanted to get out of this?
PM: The look is just a result of, my director of photography Brennan Vance and I have been talking about what is right for us and what we respond to and what is a true shot or whatever. We used to be pretty idealistic about it. And we spent several years watching many flicks and just talking about movies and so when it came time to do this we had a real shorthand language that made not much pre-production necessary, actually.
We just worked with the architecture of the house and really tried to have the characters isolated within the frame. So we would just talk for five minutes before setting up the shot and take a look, adjust it and it was pretty much always exactly what I was looking for. We’ve been talking about this kind of movie indirectly for several years so it actually worked pretty well. The dialog wasn’t really scripted; we had major points that we would workshop around to try and kind of find a more natural way, certain nuances of conversation were super important to this project. I thought my actors did a super good job of trying to find those points, and without being explicit.
FSM: And I’m sure, even with the structure, it has to be hard to capture that natural way of how people actually talk as opposed to the sometimes stagey film dialog that finds its way into these things.
PM: Right, for me, especially because I wasn’t trained as a filmmaker, I don’t know if at that point--I think it would be different now--but I didn’t feel comfortable directing scripted dialog because it has to be really well written, you have to have really good actors, and you have to be really good at what you’re doing. And it was all a new experience for us, and we just tried to work within our strengths, and take risks with each other and kind of build a rhythm with each other, and I think it turned out very well.
FSM: You have a lot of lingering shots, and a lot of this movie is built on the small cracks in between. Did you see that developing during the shoot or was that something you always wanted to do?
PM: I think that was really important for us to create the mood of the relationship in decline. In my experience in relationships, or even just your life’s drama, it’s never really the moments of action that are the hardest to deal with. It’s always kind of the before and after and sort of the small subtext of everything. And the way that we really tried to achieve that was through duration: letting the shots really linger, letting the camera—you know asking the audience to stay there in that space with them. So yeah, those little nuances were important.
FSM: What did you shoot it with? The movie looks great.
PM: We shot it on the RED. That’s where the majority of our budget went to, was camera rental. Went on the weekends, and shot from Friday night to Monday morning.
FSM: Did you feel that the camera suited your space? I’ve talked to a lot of filmmakers who have favored smaller cameras, like a Canon 5D, just to get into smaller spaces. Was the RED what you wanted, and how does that affect a film set?
PM: We loved the authenticity of it. It’s a huge camera and it obviously produces a high quality image. For the people who were coming to our set who had never acted before would come there and see this legitimate piece of equipment helped them realize I was committed to this. Like I was really trying, and so that they would really try. And I think that really helped, actually. I never really thought about that before. But then also, it being a low budget film and a minimally told story, the authenticity of the image was super important. If nothing else, it’s going to look like a film.
FSM: Any final thoughts?
PM: I would like to say one more time about how much we really liked this festival. The programmers are outstanding; they’ve just been really kind. Yesterday we had this fantastic roundtable conversation with two of the other films that are kind of working with some of the same concerns as mine…It’s just been a fantastic vibe over here. I’ve really enjoyed myself so yeah…it’s been crazy.
