Interviews | Screenwriting

Visual Poetry

1 Apr , 2007  

Written by Nikki Chase | Posted by:

Director Robert Todd explains how he stumbled upon filmmaking and developed his unique style of visual expression with Interplay, screening at the MFA with the Black Maria Traveling Film Festival this month.

Robert Todd makes poetry. Not with words, but with images.

His latest film, Interplay, is a 6.5-minute expression of movement that he literally filmed in his backyard. Todd shows the joy of summer with a combination of horizontal and vertical movements as well as multiple exposures layered in different contradicting movements. "I don’t think of them as experimental films, I think of them as this sort of emotional poetry," he says. 

He never storyboards and instead creates his films from a library of footage, almost all of which he’s shot himself. "I shoot it in response to what’s in front of me," he says.  "I put myself in a location where I might get something, but I don’t know what."

This poetic mode of filmmaking evolved from experimenting with a Super 8 camera after college. "The way I started shooting was doing animation," he says. "When I moved out of that, I started doing dopey movies like everybody makes, drug deal, everybody dies.  Just funny movies." 

Film is not something Todd planned on. He studied painting as a graduate student at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and spent his free time with his band. While recording an album at a farm in upstate New York, he found out their lead singer had a brain tumor. "I freaked out, I was really distraught," he says. "There were these cows and I just started filming them and when I started shooting the cows, I was really upset and by the end, I was not upset and I realized something happened there." 

It was from there that this poetic style evolved. "I looked at the footage later and I realized, ‘Whoa, man, you were really aggressive,’ more aggressive than I ever was towards anything with a camera," he says. "I realized the manner you film in and the approach that you have has a lot to do with your emotions in a way that’s really expressive." 

In 1989, he made his first film in this style, Radio Therapy. It followed his band mate as he underwent radiation for his brain tumor. It consists of interviews with him and has poetry expressing his experience with the illness. "For me it’s always about the emotion of this inner life, bringing the inner life forward," Todd says. "The inner life of this guy who has a brain tumor and how screwed up that is for him, how stressful and how confusing, that was the intention of the movie. Almost every movie I’ve made since then has been about that kind of psychology. Even Interplay, which is about summer, is all about us dancing through summer and having a great time."   

Since Radio Therapy, Todd has made more than 28 films that range anywhere from 2.5 to 47 minutes long. He films almost everything himself and uses old and new footage to put together the final product. "I think of myself as a film librarian, but I make my own library," he says. 

Though he considers himself an efficient filmmaker, using a minimal amount of film to get his shots, he estimates his library contains about three solid weeks worth of footage.

Most of the time, he only has a vague awareness of how he wants a film to turn out and just lets the footage create the theme. "What I’m looking through in the camera will suggest a certain approach to the film," he says. "The next time I shoot I might get a different response or a similar response. I kind of never know." 

Since September, Todd has been working on a film set in his office at Emerson College where he teaches film. "It’s funny because it seems like my locations are becoming more and more localized," he says. "Even [my new] film is a celebration of my junky office but it’s also an illustration of my very cluttered mind, it’s all internal." 

He calls his latest project "mysterious and haunting." One aspect documents the life of a plant that sits on his office windowsill. "I just left it there to die and every now and then I’ll take my camera out and film it," he says. "I come in here on a Tuesday and if the light is right, I just shoot." 

Todd estimates the 15-minute film will cost about $1,500 out of his pocket, but most of the money comes back in grants and festival awards. "For me, instead of going to fancy dinners and smoking and drinking, stuff that other people do that I don’t do, I just don’t have much of a social life so that all ends up going into the films," he says.  

He expects to finish in April and submit the film to festivals around the country. Todd has already screened various films at over 100 festivals around the world, including the Media City festival in Windsor, Ontario, the Busan Asian Short Film Festival in Korea, and the XX International Film Festival of Uruguay.  

Being a teacher in the profession, he has a lot of knowledge to pass on to students and aspiring filmmakers. He insists the best way to learn is by experimentation and getting honest feedback. His advice: "Just take a camera and go out and do something with it."  

Interplay screens with nine other short films as part of The Black Maria Traveling Film Festival on April 5th at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Todd will be present to answer questions from the audience. See several of his films, including Interplay online at www.roberttoddfilms.com.

Nikki Chase is a freelance writer in Boston. She can be contacted at nikki_chase@emerson.edu.


Interplay screens with nine other short films as part of The Black Maria Traveling Film Festival on April 5th at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Todd will be present to answer questions from the audience. See several of his films, including Interplay online at www.roberttoddfilms.com. Nikki Chase is a freelance writer in Boston. She can be contacted at nikki_chase@emerson.edu.

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