Guest post: ‘The Sound of Silence’ producer Ben Nabors on the SFFILM Dolby Fellowship experience

In 2018, SFFILM and the Dolby Institute partnered to create a new fellowship, supporting films from development through post-production. The SFFILM Dolby Fellowship provides an exciting opportunity rarely afforded to independent filmmakers — to thoughtfully elevate and deepen the role of sound and image in their finished films with advanced technology from Dolby Laboratories. SFFILM Makers, and the Dolby Institute offer the hand-picked recipients artistic and industry guidance, facilitate introductions, and provide a cash grant allowing them to begin work with a sound designer during the screenwriting stage. Fellows also gain post-production support, with comprehensive sound design, a Dolby Atmos mix, and Dolby Vision color correction and mastering support.

The Sound of Silence, co-written/directed by Michael Tyburski and co-written/produced by Ben Nabors, was the inaugural recipient project of the SFFILM Dolby Fellowship. On the occasion of the film’s theatrical opening in San Francisco, we asked Nabors to tell us a bit about their experience during the fellowship.

ROOM TONE, PLEASE
by Ben Nabors

Sound is not treated fairly in screenwriting. We have syntactical conventions for representing dialogue, character action, camera shots, and even props on the script page, but what about sound? It’s easily 50% of the moviegoer’s experience (many wise filmmakers would say that it represents even more), yet does it share half of the real estate on the screenwriter’s page? Does it receive a comparable line item in the budget to that of the camera department? Does sound get a fair share of a director’s prep time? And ask a sound recordist what response they hear when they sheepishly request “room tone, please.” Check your outtakes: they hear a collective groan.

Sound, both conceptually and narratively, is fundamental to our SFFILM-supported project The Sound of Silence. Sound is setting and character. In our case, it emerged naturally from the story — the film follows a house tuner named Peter Lucian who calibrates the subtle noises in people’s New York City apartments to adjust their moods. Though a fictional profession, the house tuner’s work is steeped in real science and musical theory. He understands the emotional influence of sound on his client’s lives so that he can tweak and adjust their sonic environments, all while inching closer to a grandiose theory about the impact of sound on the city as a whole. Peter Lucian (played expertly by Peter Sarsgaard) is a human antenna, personifying the power of sound through his own hypersensitivity and emotional exposure.

Myself and director/co-writer Michael Tyburski spent several years staring at our script pages and imagining the movie in our heads. When it came to what the movie would look like, we had New York City around us and an archive of past films that contained traces of our own. When it came to what the movie would sound like — what it had to sound like to tell our story well — there wasn’t much to reference. We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know how: technically, creatively, even financially.

Enter SFFILM and the Dolby Institute. SFFILM and Dolby literally made our movie possible. There, I said it. We would not be telling the same story without them. We had the intention to represent sound as an evolving character in our story, we hoped to invite the audience into a rare and empathetic sonic-point-of-view, and we imagined immersing viewers in the sonic textures of a vibrant city… But, we didn’t have the means or the technology to do any of this. Why? We were on a budget. To my opening questions about the diminutive role of sound in the preparation and production process, there’s one simple answer: resources.

It’s not a ground-breaking revelation but a common lament: independent filmmakers don’t have enough time or money to allocate to picture and sound equally. So, they must compromise. In a culture that has tricked itself into prioritizing “the look,” sound suffers. The SFFILM Dolby Fellowship allowed us the tremendous luxury of not compromising. From the pre-production stage, we engaged our sound design team to discuss the sonic atmosphere of each scene much as a director would discuss paint colors with their art department. Creative conversations with Dolby Labs’ Chief Scientist Poppy Crum enabled us to check the finer points of our script against the real research of sound and its effect on the mind and body. Extended time in the sound mix allowed us to overlap picture editorial, music composition, and sound design so as to better serve the story. Access to Dolby Atmos technology, an immersive object-based sound system, enabled us to swallow our audience in sound, very much akin to the experience of our main character. Michael and I had always hoped to accomplish these things as we were writing our story, but we had no means. SFFILM and Dolby made it possible.

The Sound of Silence is indebted to the Dolby Institute and SFFILM. For Michael and I, there are few things we can do to repay the gift these organizations have given to our movie, but hosting the surviving family members of the great Ray Dolby (no doubt a kindred spirit with our own Peter Lucian) at our film’s Sundance premiere was hopefully some small way of saying “thank you.”

For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Guest post: Impressions from SFFILM Education’s Workshop for Young Women: Science-Fiction Writing with Nicole Perlman

Earlier this summer, SFFILM Education hosted a youth screenwriting workshop led by Nicole Perlman, writer of Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel, crafted especially for young women interested in genre writing. During this interactive working session, Perlman detailed her creative process and covered the basic building blocks of a great science fiction story, while providing input and feedback on story drafts shared by the youth participants.

We asked Gabby Goss, a local high schooler who attended the workshop, to share a bit about her experience.

We Are Groot!
by Gabby Goss

I have a confession to make. The initial reason I was drawn to the screenwriting program with Nicole Perlman was because I am a big Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel fan. However, by the end of the program, I came home with a lot more than a signed poster!

I have had a strong appreciation for movies for as long as I can remember, but more recently I have been attempting to channel this appreciation into creating films and stories of my own. I thought that a science fiction writing course led by a woman who is as involved as she is in the world of aliens and cinema would help motivate me.

Ms. Perlman’s answers to the questions she was asked were realistic and candid; not surprisingly, being a successful female filmmaker in big-name Hollywood productions isn’t easy, she told us. But she also gave me the message loudly and clearly that perseverance and hard work can land you a rewarding career. I found it very encouraging when she told us that her career wasn’t always successful, and how sometimes she would write an entire screenplay only for it to be completely changed and re-written. This was helpful to hear because even a screenwriter as successful as she is has had numerous setbacks and still persevered.

When Ms. Perlman was asked about film courses she took in school, she said that in high school it was up to her to take the initiative. She approached her teacher and asked if she could create her own course in which she would read plays and get more experience with scripts. I am excited to seek out more options at school, or even outside of school, instead of waiting for opportunities to come to me.

It was a new experience for me to be surrounded by so many other girls who shared exact interests with me. Usually, I have trouble finding any young people who share any real interest in film at all.

Ms. Perlman also gave insight into the structure of a science fiction story. She talked about how characters have dark points and realizations, and she delved into how to properly convey a theme. I needed to hear about the basics of building a screenplay because often I have ideas for a story but struggle to get them out of my head and onto paper. She said that whenever we have an idea, whether it seems good or bad, we should write it down. I now have a notebook I have used to start writing these ideas down whenever creativity strikes!

Thank you for sharing your expertise and passion with us, Ms. Perlman. We are Groot!

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Gabby Goss is an aspiring filmmaker who lives in Alameda, California, with her parents and younger sister. She is a rising 10th grader at Bishop O’Dowd High School. In her free time, she enjoys playing water polo, reading, writing, acting, singing, and making films. She has made several films in the past and especially loves making films that relate to environmental issues. She is also a big fan of science fiction movies and books and hopes to pursue a career that entails screenwriting or movie directing.

For more information about SFFILM Education, visit sffilm.org/education.

Guest post: Asia Nichols on her SFFILM Djerassi Fellowship experience

Each year, the SFFILM Makers team selects a filmmaker from the pool of applicants for our Rainin and Westridge narrative feature grants to participate in a unique fellowship retreat in partnership with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. The SFFILM Djerassi Fellowship supports screenwriters in any stage of their career with a one-month writing retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains, providing uninterrupted time for work, reflection, and collegial interaction in a professionally supportive and inspirational environment.

Bay Area native screenwriter Asia Nichols was selected as the 2019 SFFILM Djerassi Fellow, to work on her project So Unfair. We asked her to tell us a bit about her experience during the retreat.

A DJERASSI ADVENTURE TALE: FOR THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM A TREE HOUSE
by Asia Nichols

There once was a girl who, at age seven, fell from her friend’s tree house, knocking her head good and hard on the bottom rung of the ladder. And when the other children asked if she was okay, the girl laid there feeling a warmness spread over her skin and said, “I’m fine. Totally fine. No pain whatsoever.” Thing is, the girl didn’t want to go home. She wanted to play. But that girl, like all girls, grew up.

Decades later, that little girl lives in me, urging me to fool around, take risks, wander off — all in the name of play. I’ve been living the nomadic life since 2011, writing stage plays and house sitting around the world. The day I received the invitation to be a resident writer at Djerassi for 30 days, that little girl jumped at the idea. “A new adventure!” But the grown-up me had loads of baggage, convinced it would be less like the fun of tree houses and overseas travel, and more like work. Work to impress people. Work to show I was literarily skilled. Work to prove I belonged there and didn’t just crash this perfectly respectable party of Real Artists.

Days leading up to the residency, I stuffed my backpack with Lion’s mane extract, passion flower pills and other nerve-calming supplements. I meditated the way a monk at a forested Buddhist temple in Thailand taught me. Focus on fallen tree leaves, he said. Leaves remind you of impermanence, he said. Okay, nothing ever lasts is basically the point, and one month in the Santa Cruz Mountains would be done before I had time to process all the things I didn’t get right.

“Yield to Whim” was Djerassi’s first prompt by way of an altered road sign I saw at the entrance. A little less terrified, I checked my insecurities at the door to my Middle Brook studio.

So, I get to the part where I meet the other ten residents — mind you, these were poets, puppeteers, filmmakers, painters, composers, playwrights — and felt no fear of being exposed as a fraud. Absolutely none. Or so I told myself as we hiked the Station trails, guided by the local environmentalist, who exposed nature’s secrets. Things like how webbing at the bottoms of tree trunks are like children passing notes in class. If one tree is sick, these cobwebs spread word to the collective. Or how, when exposed to high temperatures, pine cones crack open, exploding a new generation of trees on the forest floor.

Back in my private studio, I was feeling soothed in the awareness of Mother Earth at work and ready to work at my own creation: SO UNFAIR. This is an anthology film of five stories, inspired by fairytales, which show a black woman’s journey growing up in wildly absurd conditions a.k.a. Western culture. It mixes fantasy, satire and horror to explore everyday dealings with hair texture discrimination, colorism, addictions, religion, and body image.

With blacktail deer roaming the prairie outside my window and the Pacific on the horizon, the whole setup ASSURED me that things would just flow, you know, but nothing, I mean nothing, was coming out and seven suns later I was still studying a blank page —

Listen: I’m not used to this. I’m used to movement. When I’m not moving, I’m quiet. When I’m quiet, I feel. That studio got very hot. Stuffy. Claustrophobic. I tore the paper into squares and fanned them out on the desk, figuring if I pretend to work, maybe the magic of the mountains would spit out a crumb of compassion and not send me back on Bear Gulch Road empty-handed.

Whatever random images came to mind for my anthology stories, I drew…

• a dress shoe stuffed with a bird’s nest for “Elevator Shoes”
 • a mouth smoking a pine cone for “Pipe Dreams”
 • many faces in the shape of poison oak turning lighter in color for “Fade to White”

…and pinned this sad display of concept art on the wall — how the hell did I get here?

Moments later, a novelist knocked on my door. She invited me to her workspace, at which point I learned that sharing creative processes is a thing. Turns out, she was drawing, too. Visuals inspired by her book-in-progress. Others she drew for fun. This scenario recurred a few more times with different residents. Be it late-night karaoke and stargazing or day hikes to the Red Hot Salt Room, an interactive sauna-like sculpture using natural heat to inspire healing and written reflection. Whenever I felt stuck or unsure of myself, there was an invitation to come out and play. A call to partake in the enchantment and whimsy of this well-crafted creators playground.

In the 19th-century old barn, I played with shadows. Led by the brilliance of fellow Bay Arean Lisa Marie Rollins and the bewitching sculpture of Kathryn Cellerini Moore, we joined hands and forces to experiment with the many shapes of femininity. We laughed and cried and took up space on the wooden-planked walls with our silhouettes, altering frames and afros at whim and imagining what stories our shadows showed us. In the forest, I played a dancing Fool (for real). Face covered in moss, limbs casted in full cushion, I stood on a tree stump and swayed with the spirit of nature in a fantasy sketch conceptualized by performance and costume artist, Pat Oleszko, whose festive vision for a tribe borrowed our bodies and animations.

Over the next three weeks, as I feasted on the deliciousness of chef-made seafoods and chutneys, passing warm breads and wines down the dining table, I begun to understand something about myself: For the past seven years, I’d been immersed in so many countries and cultures, wandering on unmapped roads, taking “risks.” But in all of my traversing, I hadn’t dared plant my feet in a place long enough to feel what I was feeling in the company of these fantastically eclectic, imaginative — and rather human — beings: Community. Djerassi taught me to use the environment as a guide to creative friendships and sharing plates and processes is how we artists survive. It’s what keeps us from falling good and hard, and staying down.

And so that little girl, who was totally out of touch with pain or fear, passed the Yield to Whim road sign on departure day, no longer believing that outward vulnerability and adventure can’t coexist. Instead, she felt thrilled and exhilarated from me sharing honest emotions beyond the page, and celebrated how doing so has opened up a world of new ways to play as we journey on.

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To find out more about SFFILM’s artist development programs, visit sffilm.org/makers.