5 Questions with Tynan Delong

The extraordinarily emotional and highly personal story of “Vonnie” is a drastic shift from director Tynan DeLong, known for his goofy comedy vids. Here he tells the tale of his mother, and her struggles with tragedies and loneliness. We asked DeLong how the project started, the biggest challenge of telling such a personal story, and what’s next for him…

1) We’ve covered some of this before (in our podcast and elsewhere) but for the uninitiated: can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I started making movies in high school, took a fifteen year hiatus, came to NYC and fell in love with it all over again!

2) I’d love to hear when this idea first came to you, and how did it start forming? I imagine it was a difficult path to go down in deciding to tackle this story.

Yeah, the idea came to me just during my phone conversations with my mom. She's a very eloquent speaker and the way she'd talk about things really effected me. I wanted to capture it somehow. I had also recently bought a Hi-8 camera. It was the first camera I had as a teenager and so I got one off eBay in 2017 to try and make shorts that captured that same "anything goes" spirit of the videos I made as a teen. While I was making these shorts, it all kinda clicked: I really wanted to create a character sketch of my mother using that same Hi-8 camera. I would juxtapose archival footage I had shot as a teen with footage shot present day. The reason for this was threefold: 1) This lo-fi aesthetic was integral to the story, as I wanted to create something homemade and intimate. I felt the best way to accomplish telling a story so personal was through a Hi-8 camera and what could be more personal than the camera that was such a big part of my life growing up? Also, a lot of the film deals with memory and I felt like the look of this camera - fractured, messy, blurry, imperfect - was able to succinctly comment on the disjointed and flawed nature of our memories.  2) It's a raw look and I felt like the portrait I was trying to make was raw and unvarnished, just putting it all out there and not holding back, trying to burrow into some of the more painful and challenging aspects of both the past and the present. This wouldn't have made sense if it were shot on an ARRI - the Hi-8 look lent itself to the vulnerability of the story I was telling. 3) I wanted to create an anachronistic aesthetic as a way to showcase the effects of the past on the present. I felt like our family has been haunted by the ghosts of the past and this disorienting nature of shooting my mother in present day using an artifact from my childhood accomplished that. Lastly, above all, it just felt right on an intuitive level. I had the idea and I knew I had to make it. My mom is a big part of my life and it was a subject I needed to explore. I visited my mother in 2017 and 2018 and whittled down the footage from there into the final short. 

3) What was the biggest challenge in terms of finding the right tone for the film? And what were some of the hardest choices to make, either in terms of the structure of it, or in terms of the very personal nature of it?

Biggest challenge was being fair to my mom, not being exploitative, not being melodramatic, just being honest and truthful in the way I see her and our family now. And I really made a conscious effort to avoid being emotionally manipulative with the viewer. It's really tricky because some of things in here inherently feel like they run the risk of doing that. For example, I really struggled with including the centerpiece story of the film - should I chop it up? should I include it at all? It's a 15 minute story! How can I include a 15 minute story in this? And I had to watch it a million times and wrestle with how I was going to present this, if I wanted to include it all. I tried a few different things during the edit, playing around - I was really sweating it. And every time I watched it, it tore me apart, so this got to be a pretty emotionally exhausting experience, which I anticipated. Ultimately I decided I had to include the whole thing because it was so gripping and touching and honest and captivating and raw and most importantly, I think my mom wanted to share it. I trimmed it slightly for momentum and time's sake but otherwise, that's the whole thing in all it's unvarnished detail. 

Also, I made a decision early on that I didn't want to use music because I thought that would be too manipulative, but when it came time for the end of the film, I realized I needed it because the piece needed some warmth after such a crushing story. It just felt so cold and bare. So I struggled with that inclusion, but feel like it was for the best. Plus it was a song that I recorded on my old ass crappy Zoom, so it kept the homemade spirit and aesthetic of the film intact. 

4) For those who don’t know, you’re known for your goofy comedy vids. This film is quite the unexpected turn. Was this a case of wanting to do something completely different, or just something you had to do on a personal level?  Do you have other ideas for non-comedies?

Yeah, I'm actively trying to explore territory that isn't necessarily solely in the comedy realm and this was my first big swing in that department. This was partially motivated by a concerted effort to be more vulnerable in my work, to reveal more of myself and my life. There are traces of vulnerability in my comedic stuff if you look close enough, but I really wanted to dig a little deeper. This is a huge part of my life and I wanted to allow myself the freedom to share an intensely personal experience, so it felt good to open up about that. I needed to do it, so I did it.

I do have ideas for stuff that's less comedic, but my aim is to create stuff that blends both elements. There are a lot of funny moments in this doc I think, so I always want to include a few laughs and never swing too far in either direction. Ideally, future works can find a nice balance between the tender and the lolz.

5) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

Well, very much related to what I've talked about here, I saw Streetwise recently and loved it. Homeless street kids can turn into some real poverty porn, but they treat their subjects with such care and I was in love with every minute. It's never pandering, it's warm and cold, desolate and loving, honest and sad, bleak and heartfelt. They just walk the tightrope and make it look easy. Also MY GOD that opening sequence is my favorite opening to any documentary. Man, what a fucking great monologue, I've been in love with that one since I heard it on the Avalanches album. Yeah, an absolutely brutal and beautiful film.

Bonus Question) What’s next for you?

I'm working on a documentary about a guy who bounces a ball really high. You should see how high this guy can bounce a ball. It's really, really high. We're talking 15, 16 feet. Straight up in the air. Hoping it will inspire other people who bounce balls. Dropping early 2020!

Contact Info:

Website: http://www.tynandelong.com/

IG and Twitter: @tynandelong