The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams, 2023).
Following a run of inventive and playful short films, Argentine filmmaker Eduardo Williams won the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present section at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival for his first feature, The Human Surge. With its formal ingenuity, playful mixing of documentary and fiction modes, and perceptive depictions of contemporary global youth cultures, the film resonated with viewers eager for new forms of cinema. This year, he returned to Locarno with a sequel of sorts, The Human Surge 3 (there is no Human Surge 2; you can choose your own explanation as to why). The Human Surge 3 revisits similar territory to its predecessor, and although this risks turning something fresh into a formula, Williams fortunately makes a number of technological and thematic alterations to his model.
The original film follows groups of young people across Argentina, Mozambique, and the Philippines. Williams tracks their travels in long, mobile takes, and signals a transition to a new country by shifting film format. He shot the first third on 16mm film; then Super 16 to recapture footage shot on a pocket Blackmagic digital camera; then a professional-grade RED digital camera for the final third. For The Human Surge 3, he eschews this linearity by jumping back and forth between countries—this time, Sri Lanka, Peru, and Taiwan. Here, he mostly commits to a single camera: the Insta360 Titan, whose uniquely wide field-of-view is traditionally used for making panoramic, virtual-reality films. Walking alongside his actors with this camera, Williams then reviewed his 360-degree recordings in a VR headset, selecting a preferred perspective by turning his head to create real-time compositions, editing the film through the motion of his body and the craning of his neck. The result is something uncanny and corporeal: a novel kind of camera-eye that can create images in a style that resembles Google Street View.
In the new film, Williams deploys a static surveillance aesthetic to capture a series of enigmatic walk-and-talks. People pass through busy urban streets and vast rural landscapes, speaking to each other in banal and psychedelic terms about their life and work, their hopes and desires, and the nature of their dreams and imaginations. These dialogues veer between declaration and dialogue, statement and exchange, cumulatively making half-legible a series of codified ideas regarding work, leisure, capitalism, identity, and community. Characters talk about the “strange dreams” they've been having and the monotony of their day-to-day routines, referring as often to unexplained images, like people who want to sublimate into gas, as to how bored they are at work. At one point, a character casually states that they “see each layer of [their] body disappearing into the forest.” Another mentions that they have “saved every emoji I’ve ever used.” As they deliver their utterances, sometimes conversationally and sometimes entirely as non-sequiturs, Williams tails his characters patiently, playing with our sense of cinematic time and space by speeding up and slowing down sequences. Carefully controlling his camera, Williams locks onto focal points, lurches around environments, and surges and spirals, using jump-cuts to transport the groups of characters onto beaches and into lakes, through shops and restaurants, nightclubs and pool parties, into the jungle, and up and down mountains beneath dark cloudy skies, drifting between worlds that are both dreary and surreal.
In a demonstration of documentary hybridity, reality as we know becomes another element that can be manipulated. While the bodies and landscapes are recognizable and the language can be parsed, everything is estranged from normality ever so slightly: disjointed like a brain in which all synapses are constantly firing, but never quite connect how you’d expect. Abstracting everything, bending it into a shape that is bulging at its seams, Williams pursues the idea that science-fiction can be created through a reshaping of the existing world rather than through the invention of any alternative ones. Over the film’s gently progressive two hours, characters coalesce and come together in fluidly formed groups, moving forward toward an undefined destination that promises nothing but still seems hopeful despite this. Characters walk out of their work lives, bemoaning the billionaires who oppress them and their lack of freedom, to become the people they want to be: talking idly, laughing, joking, forging transient intimacies, and plotting utopian possibilities for a different tomorrow.
Notebook spoke with Eduardo (a.k.a. "Teddy") Williams in Locarno about how he made this cryptic film, hoping to gain some perspective on its technical choices and varying meanings.
The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: How do you think about composing these super wide, large images using 360-degree cameras, where sometimes it's 70 percent sky and 30 percent tiny people? I was fascinated by the distortions that you have where somebody's face won’t quite stitch properly and you get these weird aberrations that transform an ordinary scene into something stranger.
EDUARDO WILLIAMS: I'm always very interested in seeing people in the context of their surroundings, not only where they live, but the human figure within a context and not isolated. When we see the small people, we have a different idea of scale, and I like to play with this idea of scale in different ways. As for the glitches, or the deformations of the camera, in general, when I use a camera, I don't really research a lot about it.
NOTEBOOK: About how it works?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I might learn the basics, but I like to learn from the camera by using it. Many times I have discovered these mistakes, and sometimes I like them and sometimes I don't. Many times, I wonder, what is this offering? But in the case of the deformations, I thought it was interesting. For example, in one scene, you have someone speaking with this deformed face, and the person they are speaking to doesn't address this at all. I could have fixed it afterwards, but I didn't want to. This made me think about the idea of having another scene in the film where you have this same deformation of the face but this time people address it, asking, “What's happening, what's wrong with your face?” I really liked this idea of not understanding what others are seeing, and wondering whether the characters are seeing the same thing as us or not, so I tried to do that in many different ways.
Another thing that I thought about was this digital world, in which we all live in different ways. In some moments in my life, I have communicated with people more [often] through the computer than in real life. When I'm in real life afterwards, I'm very transformed by the experience of the digital world. The way in which we speak is not the same; the way in which I see you is not the same. So I think this deformation of the image makes us think about this. It also relates to all of the different types of images that we are used to seeing. I think that by trying to use all of these types of images in a way that we are not used to seeing them, outside of their usual contexts and inside of a film, makes a viewer wonder: is this Google Maps, is this a security camera, or is this a video game? These are things I learned by using the camera rather than being told what it was for.
NOTEBOOK: You also used a 360-degree camera for Parsi (2018), right?
WILLIAMS: Yes, I used a GoPro 360-degree camera. I discovered in postproduction that I could view the footage I had shot in a virtual reality headset and then record my movement. So the frame that you see in the film is how I moved in the headset while watching the footage I had recorded earlier. The frame is decided at this stage, so it's a very different way of thinking about the frame, or choosing what to look at. Usually, when you are shooting you have the camera in your hands, so you're deciding the frame in the context of that shooting and the decisions that you make there in the moment dictate the frame. But here, you are in a totally different state of mind, in a room alone with a virtual reality headset. It's this fantasy that many of us have: how can I make a film that comes from the neck and that moves with the body?
I was moving around in the headset, and suddenly I found myself all wrapped up in cables. I really liked how the evolution of the movement was continuous. How I moved in the last scene came from my response to seeing everything in the film that preceded it. I didn’t frame this last scene separately from the others. For example, in one scene there is this thing with the camera turning around [in circles]; that for me was about charging up energy [throughout the film] that eventually goes crazy, spiraling up. So all of this evolution of movement was interesting to feel in one go.
As a director, you are used to being in the scene while it's being shot, but if you want to ultimately use all of the 360-degree images, you cannot be there, unless you want to see yourself. If you look for me, sometimes I am there, but in general I didn't want to be seen, so also this creates different strategies for shooting. In my films, I really like how different cameras generate different effects, not only the texture of the image, but also how the filmmaking team reacts [to it]. The actors’ reactions to a small digital camera or a big film camera are very different, especially when they are not professional actors. Or how we react as a technical team, when we have only two takes because we are using Super 16, or having many takes because it's a video camera. Or how people in the area react. I often shoot in open streets, and do not close anything off. It's not the same to be there with a huge camera as it is to be with a small camera that no one cares about.
Parsi (Eduardo Williams, 2018).
NOTEBOOK: Did you ever envision that this film would be presented inside a headset rather than in cinemas? You were talking about moving your head inside a headset to control the frame, and something I always find strange about filmmakers using VR is that, in a way, by using it you are surrendering control. VR lets viewers look where they want to, and they might miss whatever it is that you want them to look at because their head is pointing another way.
WILLIAMS: I thought about it. My main idea was doing the film for cinemas, but I thought I could create another part for virtual reality at the same time. But if I had, I think the shooting would have been very different, and in the moment I realized I couldn't do both. I’m curious about VR, but not for this film. Two hours in a headset, that’s impossible. When I attempted framing several times in a row, it was tiring. I could do that only once per day. It's not a pleasant experience.
What you said is interesting though, because in my films, I always try to create a type of image where it is not so obvious where you are supposed to look. Of course, you have the rectangle of the frame, but a good thing about having wide images where people are very far apart is that you're not focused on one face. As you don’t have a clear focal point, my idea is that a viewer’s eye can wander around the screen. So that relates with the idea of virtual reality, which offers the freedom of choosing. I haven't seen many virtual reality films, but what I didn't like about the ones I saw relates to what you were saying. All of them had this one point where it was obvious that my attention should be directed. Of course, I could look elsewhere, but it was obvious where the filmmaker wanted me to look. Why even have a 360-degree image?
For this film, I tried to use 360-degree cameras to create parallel situations in different locations and then display them both at the same time. Sometimes we also had overlapping dialogues. So I am curious about VR, but I think it would have to be conceived with a very different shooting approach. It would be boring just to make a VR film where you know where to look.
NOTEBOOK: Following your point about guiding the eye, I wanted to ask about the film’s sound. How did you think about creating the soundscapes? For me, sometimes the sound felt like a texture and sometimes a mood, but other times it almost felt like a narrative cue or a moment of drama inside an otherwise still image.
WILLIAMS: When I first started traveling to make films, sometimes I worked with people on sound postproduction who felt that it would be the same to use library sound. I’m not traveling to a place to only capture the image there, I’m also going there because of the sounds. Now, when I'm seeing the images, I feel more transported to that place because of the sound, even if it's a very simple sound. There is this documentary part of sound, trying to get the sound of each place, but also another side to it, which is about feeling free to play with it and create something new. We are not used to thinking about the ambient sound when we are watching a scene, but I like to create different moments with the ambient sound. It's not a conscious thing, but we feel the rhythm, or even the drama, of the scene changing a little bit because of this. I also play a lot with a mix of the real dialogues that were happening in the scene, or other ones that came from an outtake and were then mixed in.
For me, the most impressive experience of this film was being in the Amazon jungle in Peru. It's crazy hearing all these layers of sound and all the beings that are present in the sound. I enjoyed taking this experience and then creating something different. Sometimes, we had the insects mixed very loud, overlapping with the voices of the people. Sometimes, I create this different kind of music with the sound of the different insects or animals from the jungle. In general, I always like to have people’s voices lower than normal, so they are more stuck to the ambient sound. I don't want them to be so separate: I want to see people in their environment, but also [hear them] in the sound environment.
NOTEBOOK: When a film’s sound is off, it throws you out of it very quickly. You don’t want to be taken out, you want to be drawn in by the sound.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, the image creates more of an impression on you if you have sound that is more immersive. The other thing I like about sound is how it can connect or disconnect different scenes, or to pass the energy of one scene into the next scene.
The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: About this energy, I wanted to ask about the editing. If The Human Surge is about portals, going through something to come somewhere else, then The Human Surge 3 seemed to me to be about teleporting.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, suddenly you are there.
NOTEBOOK: Right. There’s a cut, then you are somewhere else… There’s a cut, then you are somewhere else. The film is nonlinear, there's no strict narrative, but it has a forward motion. You feel like people are constantly marching, and each cut sends you somewhere new. But as the places are unlabeled, unless you are very familiar with the details in the image, you don’t necessarily know where you are. So I wanted to ask about this idea of editing as teleportation.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, it's true. In previous short films I made, I also had this thing of “cut, and we are there.” I knew that for this film, I didn't want the structure to be like The Human Surge, moving from one country at a time. I want to mix it up, and it was also very important for me to travel with some of the actors from one place to the other so that it would make everything more confusing with regards to knowing where we are. But then, I also worked on the structure while I was editing, or making, the film. All the shoots were fairly far apart in time, so I had time to edit a little and make changes before the next shoot. As you said, while it's not exactly linear, there's some kind of energy that starts organizing and flowing things in some way. I think that's what drives the film forward, as well as this idea of getting together. I think the film constantly shifts between being chaotic and more organized.
For me, it's always interesting to think about the energy of a film, because here there is this energy that advances and goes up, up, up, up, up until that moment where the camera rotates, and then we move to the images of the black water, and the boat comes from one corner to the other. I feel that this is the only moment in the film when the image is right, in a classical way. But then there is also the other aspect of energy, which is about trying to deal with the attention of the spectator. Each spectator has their own way of watching the film, but I know there are some moments where most spectators will be more attracted by what is happening, because it's surprising or because it offers something different. But I also wanted to include moments where there's more slowness and there's not so much happening. In those moments, people will go back into their heads and not be so attentive. Maybe they will forget about the film or think about something that doesn't have anything to do with it. I like this because it's also how I watch films. I think it's interesting to see films that are not always capturing [your attention], but moving between capturing you and letting you go, capturing you and letting you go. It plays better within your own mind.
The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: Maybe we can also talk about the scripting of the film and the casting. I remember you talking about using the internet to cast strangers in The Human Surge. How did you meet the people who appear in this film, and how did you work with them to build out these conversations between characters?
WILLIAMS: I met people in many different ways. In each place, I'll do some [scouting on] social media; I try local papers, and I put up notices in the streets and give them to people I see. In each place, different methods have more success than others. For The Human Surge, in Mozambique, 400 people came from a notice in the local paper, which was incredible. In Vietnam, I did the same thing and only one person came. In Peru, we did something similar and 20 people came. When I don't speak the local language, social media is better because I can post a bad translation.
I always talk about this casting method, but I don't say what happens afterwards, which is also interesting: how I decide who will be in the film. It's not that I'm looking for very specific things, so in general, it is very intuitive. It’s who I felt good with, who I felt comfortable with, where the energy was more flowing, because then we have to share a lot of time together. Or at least, I want a share of their time, because they also have their lives. They are not professional actors, so even if they're curious about doing the film, they have jobs, or studying, or whatever, so you have to also see how you can deal with that. I’m there, and all my time is for the film, but the same is not true for them. So when I sense that they feel better about me, it's more probable that as we advance, the relationship will be successful.
It's difficult to explain the film at that point. It’s easier now, but, before making it, it is much more difficult, and I also feel that every explanation could be closing the film [off] to be only one thing. When I speak now, even if it's not very precise, I’m much more precise than I can be in the field. So I try not to close the film off when I'm shooting it, even if afterwards it starts closing a bit. I discovered that the way of having them understand me, and me understand them, is describing it as spending time together; that’s how I tried to work with people.
As for writing the dialogues, as with my other films, we have scenes that are totally written and scenes that are totally improvised, but most are in the middle. Sometimes it's a lot of writing and a little bit of improvisation, and sometimes it's all improvised, but I give them some phrases to say whenever they find the right moment, and they can choose when they feel like they want to say it. Sometimes they will speak about whatever they want, but when they pass by a certain object, they are asked to say a certain line. I like to create this relationship between improvisation and what we call reality, or close to reality, even if that improvisation could be totally fake. I don't tell them that they have to talk about their lives. They can invent whatever they want. This clashes with the idea that they have to act, and say certain things. In the film, we can see them changing from one code to the other, and I really liked this. There's a lot of movement in and out of fiction and documentary. When we are in the streets, there is all of this documentary action happening that I can’t control, and then we have a fictional scene of two people walking and talking, and then we have the characters improvising, and then acting, and then improvising again.
The interesting thing for me is the way that ideas are taken by other people. The reality that they bring [to my films] is something I cannot invent, but I'm not idealizing the reality because it will always be a reality that is transformed by many other elements of the film. So I like to play with this by having them feel free to say whatever they want, but then suddenly have to say something I’ve written that is not something they would say. After this idea has entered the scene and they have to improvise again, it is about seeing how that idea affects what they then say.
NOTEBOOK: You were talking about how the actors have lives to go back to outside of the film. One of the themes in the film that really interested me was this idea of work-life balance, free time and leisure time, having your day job and then carving out a second life around it.
WILLIAMS: That's the reason why I make cinema. Cinema is me trying to have a job that is interesting. When I finished school, I realized that it was very difficult to have a job that seems interesting to you. We all relate to that in different ways, but it was clear that the people I knew didn't have interesting jobs. That was terrifying, but even more terrifying was how difficult it is to escape that. When I started traveling to make my films, to Vietnam, to Sierra Leone, to the Philippines, I discovered that every young person—before they are totally taken in by the working system—feels the same. It was exactly the same everywhere. I would like to be this, but I'm going to be that, because this is the thing that provides money, so most people are not even trying to be what they want. I think there is a lot of this in the film, and also maybe the idea of not knowing how to solve it or what to do, but thinking: let's just try. Sometimes the only answer is changing how you observe the world, changing the logic of your life.