5 Questions with Samuel Aaron Bennett ("Ancestors")
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
When I was about 9 years old, my dad got an analog camcorder for home videos. Once I opened the monitor and hit the zoom button, I was hooked. A little while after that I started making little films with my neighbors and friends. Skateboarding, sledding down stair sets, public pranks and little stop-motion animations. Then I started writing scenes and sketches, fake movie trailers and parodies. We all dressed up and played different characters.
When I was about 14, I was introduced to the Directors Label DVDs. That’s where I discovered Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and all of their music videos, commercials, short films. That boxset changed my life. Shortly after, I came across Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and that was it, I wanted to make movies forever.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
Ancestors came about out of impulse. I hadn’t made anything of my own in a while and I was really feeling restless. I had read about something called the ‘simulation argument’ in a paper written by Nick Bostrom and I loved it. It’s all about how the odds suggest we’re living in a simulation and it’s presented in a very mathematical and theoretical way. It feels like science fiction but then you realize it’s just science, and it got my imagination going. It’s the type of thing I love to think about. The idea of questioning your reality and discovering you can actually step outside of it and change the laws of physics you thought were unchangeable.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
The biggest challenge was probably the time constraint. We had to shoot most of it in one night and there were special effects, stunts, prosthetics and there were some extra scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut.
I also acted in the film and that was something I hadn’t done in a long time, so it was a learning curve to juggle between keeping track of the vision as a whole and also having to guess at whether or not my performance was feeling right. I remember wishing I could duplicate myself and be behind the camera at the same time. It became a trusting thing where I could lean on my friends and know when it was time to move on to the next scene.
The easiest part was working with people I love.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I was just watching Anima by PT Anderson and Thom Yorke. The cinematography and choreography really inspired me. I’ve been working a lot with choreography and dancing in music videos lately and I love the departure they took from what you’d typically associate with group dancing. And the production design almost reminds me of something out of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. There is something classic and reminiscent happening there. You can tell they care about old films.
I also watched Ratatouille on the plane the other day. I love that movie.
5) What’s next for you?
I have a feature film that’s in development and a music video coming out next month. I’ve been writing music and working on some cartoons too.
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