5 Questions with Brandon Winters
With “The Noodle Effect,” director Brandon Winters, offers a quiet reflection on the private, everyday moments of ordinary people, doing so with a vivid photographic sense. We asked Winters about the origins of the project, the connections between the vignettes, and what’s next for him…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in movies?
I always had an infatuation with movies growing up, and would make home movies with my brother from time to time. I don't think I really viewed it as my chosen career path until late high school and early college. At that time I was maybe more interested in studying photography, but started juggling the idea of studying film until that became the best option.
2) What was the initial inspiration for this project? What came first, and how did you start building up your elements?
This project was mostly born out of observation. The first spark of an idea came when I was playing tennis with a friend and on the court next to us was a frail old man training boxing. I became enamored with the site, and contemplated those tender moments of other people's lives that we can sometimes observe in public. I eventually mostly dropped the public aspect of this idea considering that the viewer would serve that purpose. People in these scenarios are often unaware they are being watched anyway. Once I had the first vignette, I started piecing together other scenes I either witnessed or fabricated. I sort of slowly collected the puzzle pieces and tried to fit them together and make sense of them. The woman in her house was built off of me observing my girlfriend constantly feeling a need to fiddle with the arrangement of her belongings. The diner scene was actually the vignette that I did the least amount of reworking to. That was just straight up something I saw and couldn't look away from, so that scene was more about properly recreating that moment and letting it live subtly rather than exaggerating any element of it. Those three were the main ones I had for awhile, but I knew I wanted one more just to fill it out a bit more. I originally wrote a scene that involved a lot of dialogue but it never felt totally right so I waited on making the film until I had that last scene. I've been interested in the calmness that you feel or witness immediately after any big traumatic event, before any pain or repercussions set in, which was the base of the idea for the final scene.
3) I’d love to hear you speak more about the connections between the vignettes. How did you envision them playing off each other? How far did your intent take you vs allowing the connections to be more vague? I think each vignette could stand alone, but there’s something interesting that happens with them together.
The title, The Noodle Effect, refers to the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field; it is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components. I felt like this phenomena was a good analogy. These characters are all astronauts entering the voids of their day to day lives, but in these particular moments, gravity is shifting them, altering their perception of themselves, their loved ones, and their surroundings. On a more literal level I decided to connect the vignettes visually by having the characters from the next scene appear in the background of the one before them. I figured this would maybe help the viewer feel a greater relation to these scenes. It's easy to forget that we all play the background characters in other people's lives. Other than that the only other important subtle connection I wanted was to have the film flow from morning to night naturally. The scenes can all live on their own, but I feel that those two additions subconsciously help draw more thematic connections in the scenes.
4) What’s your favorite film, new or old, that you’ve seen so far this year?
I saw "The Fabulous Baron Munchausen" (1962) a couple months back and it was just such delight.
5) What’s next for you?
I'm currently in post on another short film called "We," which is about a codependent couple who wakes up one morning physically conjoined, forcing them to face issues in their relationship. It's very different from this film.
Contact Info:
Website: http://www.brandonawinters.com/
IG: @winters_brandon