Flickfeast: Let me start by saying congratulations on another spectacular film. It’s been 20 years since Baraka, if nothing else you’ve shown us once again how amazing the world is. My first question is what drives men like you to do what you do?
Mark Magidson: Maybe an evolution from the other films and desire to take it further. I think Samsara is related, it’s similar in themes to Baraka, but it’s a little different in focus. There’s technical advances and we just wanted to move the state of the art forward, which you should do when you wait that long.
Ron Fricke: I was working on a project way back called Koyaanisqatsi, when Mark and I met, and we wanted to expand the “non-verbal” film on a global level and work on a higher resolution format which was 70mm.
FF:And what are the personal influences?
MM: Classic photography like a portraiture where you see the essence of what is really behind it. The artistry in photography. And some of the epic 70mm films, David Lean, Federico Fellini, Kubricks’s 2001. There is a 20 min non-verbal sequence in that film that just blew me away when I was a kid in school, oh my god, I didn’t realise you could do this. The 70mm component is a means to deliver an emotional impact to the imagery.
FF: Making your films sometimes require a Herculean effort. Travelling vast distances for sometimes only very few seconds of film. How do do it?
MM: We are only a crew of 4 or 5, so we are very light and small compared to many feature films. We use mostly natural light. It’s a big film done in a really manageable way, with equipment that we have refined over all these films into a tight tidy kit that travels that can do all these frame rates and camera moves. We got a really good set of tools. We do a lot of travelling with only a couple seconds ending up on screen. It’s a tapestry of images.
FF: How do you decide what to film?
RF: We do a lot of research. We’re not just out there. I think when Mark and I knew that we had the opening and closing of the film figured out it really directed the rest of the content. But we are going to locations that yield a lot of information of good imagery.
FF: You have some wonderful techniques that you have developed, like time lapses and slow motion, how do you decide when to use these?
RF:It all depends on the subject. Not everything time lapses well or looks good in slow mo. You just kind of know. Time lapse has this great ability to take ordinary things and show unordinary views and that’s why we use it, it heightens that essence of the subject you are looking at. You sort of know.
FF: And music becomes the final component in the puzzle?
RF: It is the kind of narrative of the film. The feelings are musically done, but we were not really trying to say it’s about this or that. It’s about the flow we are after.
MM: The musicians are interpreting the edit sequences. The sequences are 3 to 4 minutes, they become familiar with the images and they send us musical sketches and we respond. But they really end up riding those emotional feelings to the dialogue.
RF: We cut the whole thing without any sound or music.
MM: Michael and Lisa we’ve worked with before. It’s a very comfortable working situation.
FF: Digital vs Film?
MM: Technically, we have to think hard about going to a digital approach, it’s very hard to move film stock in and out of countries with x-ray concerns. It’s harder than it’s ever been, but when we started this film digital wasn’t ready at 2k. Digital is always being outdated really fast by something better, but it’s getting to a point where you really have to think hard about that, the film side of it..the practicalities. Even though we consider ourselves film purists, we have made three 70mm films.
RF: But in another year there are probably going to be 8k, 10k sensors out. It will be equal to 65 mm negative.
FF: Well we hope we don’t have to wait another 20 years. Gentleman, thank you very much for the magnificent images and your generous time and thoughts.
Samsara is in cinemas 31st August 2012.
