After studying creative writing at a Missouri Bible Belt college, Tomah native Nathan Deming pulled a complete 180 and hiked off to film school in Europe. The resulting thesis project at the London Film School, “Dog Days” found Deming returning to his old stomping grounds to follow the afternoon of two brothers (real life siblings, Joran and Clayton Backes). When their family retriever goes missing, the pair set out with hatchet in hand and find more than they expect inside one lazy summer afternoon.
Starkly blunt in its cinema and yet elliptical in its conversations, “Dog Days” is all about boredom without being boring and marks a impressive turn from an up-and-coming director. I first saw “Dog Days” last fall, and so I was excited when it turned up as a “Wisconsin’s Own” selection in this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival. Before its festival premiere on Saturday Apr 11 in the rush-only Storytime program, I talked with Nathan Deming about weird aspect ratios, his obsession with The Master, and making stupid film school references.
You went to a top flight arts program in one of the biggest cities in Europe, yet go to farm country Wisconsin to shoot your thesis project. Um, why?
Nathan Deming: That’s one cool thing about the London Film School. For your thesis film, you get half of your tuition back for the start of your budget, which is a good chunk. Students go back to Taiwan or wherever to make their movie because they’re from all over. And I went back to Wisconsin. I had the idea for “Dog Days” for a while. I grew up making stupid videos on that farm, so it was cool to bring all these new friends and collaborators out to this old place where I used to mess around.
Was the idea for “Dog Days” directly born out of growing up in Tomah?
Nathan Deming: [Before the London Film School], I was a creative writing major and in a way, “Dog Days” was my thesis project. It was this story I did in an afternoon and then looked back at later and was like “Oh wait, that’s kinda cool.” I’d never written about my life before but I was trying to think about what it was like to be a teenager. We’re the most comfortable generation ever with so many things to distract us [laughs]. Part of growing up is realizing how unsafe your own backyard is.
Stephen and Isaac don’t seem to fully appreciate this beautiful farm country in their own backyard. One of them even says “Why don’t we come out here more?” Were you writing from that same state of regret?
Nathan Deming: I watched a ton of movies as a teenager in the summer and it was always so beautiful outside. My brother and I went out enough but when we went exploring it was like “Why don’t we do this more? It’s free. It’s right here. It’s where we live.” My youngest brother says that when he sees a nice day outside it just reminds him of playing videogames.
[laughs] That’s depressingly relatable. I love the acting style in this, but I know Joran and Clayton hadn’t acted before. Did you feed them lines on set?
Nathan Deming: I had a script I really liked but I found that when they would memorize lines it would sound really forced. My producer Aslak Danbolt said don’t even rehearse with non-actors. Give them direction for a scene and then just film it. The scene I was happiest with was where Isaac says that, and it wasn’t written at all.
There’s a nonchalance to them that works with that “dog days of summer” feeling. It’s hot outside and they’re bored, and you take that and escalate it as the afternoon intensifies.
Nathan Deming: That was both the idea and the challenge: How do you create a boring day you don’t lose interest in? How do you create a boring day that’s still unpredictable?
On the film’s web page, you write that you spent a lot of your budget on good equipment, but those expenses forced you to improvise in other areas.
Nathan Deming: This is really embarrassing but a lot of times when you make stuff, you have an idea that really inspires you that ultimately doesn’t end up in the final product. I was obsessed with the sun and had this intro that was so film school stupid where we started on the sun, where it’s a really violent, chaotic place. In my brain I was like “Oh yeah, from our perspective, the sun gives us warmth and life and it’s nice.” But up close, it’s a fiery ball of chaos – sort of how lots of nature seems safe and tame, but even your backyard is full of ants murdering each other. We shot a bonfire at multiple frame rates to try to do this and it became apparent fairly quickly that this wasn’t going to be good, that this was stupid.
Even without that intro, your camera has a fixation on the sun. You’re deliberately getting glare in the frame, both the first and last shots are skyward. There’s a day dreaming to it because your eye isn’t entirely invested in the diegesis.
Nathan Deming: Part of that came from the fact that I was writing the movie while I was in London so I was thinking about it from a far away place. That’s also good because you can zoom out and think “This is a story that’s happened so many times to so many people.” One of my favorite movies is The Tree of Life. I love what Malick does with nature and being removed from the drama.
Why did you shoot this in 4:3? You don’t see a lot of equilateral aspect ratios.
Nathan Deming: I thought switching up the canvas size would force us to think about things differently, and it made for some completely different shots.
Well, your frame is taller, which emphasizes the sky a lot more.
Nathan Deming: As a kid, you grow up wanting to make movies and the only cameras you have are 4:3, so I had to put tape on the lens to make it widescreen. So it’s funny that I always hated it only to end up going back to it. The way we experienced 4:3 was in videotapes, where they took something that wasn’t designed for 4:3 and chopped it. In “Dog Days,” instead of chopping off the frame you’re gaining space. The barn shot allowed us to fit the entire barn in the shot because we were using this format. I love what it does for closeups, too.
I was thrown for a loop when I watched “Dog Days” because you open with wind chimes and at first, you think it might be music. You return to the chimes at the end and by that point, you realize there’s no score to this.
Nathan Deming: I’m really weird. My first impulse is that I don’t want any music, but in “Dog Days” I realized not having music also fit the style, so the idea is that the wind chimes are the only music you hear. Music in movies bugs me sometimes. I want to figure out how to build a scene without it, which I tried on my first film [“Tongues”] and failed. [laughs]
What happened?
Nathan Deming: I was disappointed with securing music rights, which are super annoying when you’re poor. At this level of cheap filmmaking, you can’t afford the right music. “Tongues” was about my experiences in this megachurch, and the fun part was we tried to put in shitty Christian music, like the really, really out there stuff, and couldn’t get the rights.
What are you working on now?
Nathan Deming: Basically a full-length version of “Tongues.” With the short, I wanted to tell the story of why somebody would get obsessed with a religion and then why they would leave it, which is a lot for 16 minutes. I was obsessed with The Master because I saw it and it was a revelation for me. I didn’t live through anything that traumatic but that’s what it felt like. I was being controlled by people and told these crazy beliefs. Oh and in “Tongues,” there are all of these stupid film school references, too. “We’re going to put the pastor in front of big windows.” [laughs] Just like Philip Seymour Hoffman.
- Dog Days plays as part of the “Wisconsin’s Own: Storytime” program on Sat, Apr 11 at 3:45p in the Madison Museum