| By Jeff Nichols After our film Shotgun Stories premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, a German radio show host told me he enjoyed the film, but at times had "trouble understanding the Arkansas." I told him, "That's perfect." Shotgun Stories, set in a small town in southeast Arkansas, tracks a summer-long feud that erupts between two sets of half-brothers after the death of their father. I know the radio show host was referring to the strong dialects used by the actors, but what I liked about his comment was that it immediately tied the characters to a place. In my opinion, stories should come from a specific place. I think regional storytelling forces the creative process in a very honest direction. As a filmmaker, I like the notion of being accountable for an accurate representation of dialect, dress, behavior and, ultimately, a sense of place. It affects how I write, how I talk about the material with actors, how the production design comes together, and especially how we shoot. I grew up in Arkansas in a family with two older brothers, and spent a considerable amount of time around the places and people that Shotgun Stories attempts to portray. From these experiences, I knew I wanted certain things included in my first film: an open landscape shot in an anamorphic aspect ratio, characters that kept their sentences brief and their emotions guarded, a story about the unique relationships found between brothers, and a fish farm. All of these were very specific things I'd observed growing up, and it was important that they be represented appropriately in the film. Before production, I had a script that I felt was pretty honest. The trick was making a film that felt that way. Gary Hawkins, a professor of mine and friend who helped on Shotgun Stories, said it was the job of documentary filmmakers to structure their films as closely to narrative films as possible, but that it was the job of narrative filmmakers to bring as much realism into their work as you find in documentaries. It sounds simple enough, but narrative film production isn't particularly suited to realism (especially when actually shooting on film). Between script re-writes, actor schedules, budget crunches and fading daylight, the external pressures placed on narrative film production make the ability to mingle real people and places with fictional worlds a difficult task at best. Low-budget, independent films actually have, at times, an advantage in this area. When we were filming Shotgun Stories in the small town of England, Arkansas, the people there, although immensely supportive, really didn't waste much energy on us. We shot one scene at a burger stand that never closed for business. We shot another in the middle of town at a busy car wash that remained open the entire time we filmed. Trucks and cars continually pulled in to wash the mud off their tires. People didn't spend much time looking at the camera because they had quarters in the spray wash they needed to use up. Without question, this activity adds both energy and production value to these scenes. You feel that the circumstances the characters on screen are dealing with are happening in and amongst a very real place. For larger productions, this anonymity may have been harder to achieve. The most interesting thing to me about regional storytelling is that it can happen anywhere. It's films that don't take advantage of the details in their surroundings that tend to bother me. The plot points that make up Shotgun Stories could take place anywhere, but if it were made in a different place the result would be a totally different film. Southeast Arkansas is a slow burn kind of place. The people move at a steady pace against a backdrop of vast farmland. For me, this meant a 2:35 aspect ratio. It meant shooting in tableau rather than using a lot of handheld camera. It meant pregnant pauses in dialogue and not letting my actresses put on too much makeup. It meant the camera wouldn't move unless absolutely necessary. This is not a film that could be made anywhere else, and that's why I took the German radio show host's comment as a compliment. The Arkansas is the film. |
