Interview hosted by Lou
with Film Producer/Director Bear Damen

Welcome to my blog Bookmarks and Stages, Bear Damen to tell us about your latest short film, Synthesize Me. We also discuss, creating films, a music video, working with James Blake on Say What You Will, further films and more..

First of all, let’s find out about the film, Synthesize Me.

Violeta, the young daughter of a widowed electrical maintenance worker, retreats to her mother’s neglected music workshop to play music to remember her. When she causes a widespread power cut tensions rise between father and daughter bringing their grief to boiling point.

A teaser for the film can be found here.

Bear has said the following on the film:

““Synthesize Me” is a personal allegory. While traveling through a liminal town near Mexico City, I realized it was the missing piece of a story idea I had been struggling with for some time. The town’s “unstable currents” and distressed electrical system became the perfect metaphor for two people who rely on the same source yet create something entirely different from it, only to need it to break in order to finally understand each other, even just a little.”

Let’s now plunge into the interview:

1. You now have quite a body of work in films, such as Song and War Pony, you’re your latest being Synthesize Me.

What or who inspired you to write and direct films?

For the record, I produced War Pony together with friends who brought me on board, I didn’t direct it.
“Oh, wow, that’s still brilliant”.

I’ve been heavily inspired by 90s cinema. And eventually, like many, Paul Thomas Anderson being a very accessible gateway drug to many other movies in my late teens and early twenties. I remember vividly The Matrix really blowing my mind, aWer which I’ll forever be chasing a certain feeling of understanding a character even though the world they live in is fantastical and mysterious.

2. How did you start out creating films?

    

Music Videos, which I feel are common but for a reason. It’s small films that you can wrap your head around if you’ve never directed before. It’s a great start but you can get addicted to short form if you don’t watch out. If you want to make movies you should just start making shorts and write stuff.

3. You’ve worked with musician/singer/songwriter James Blake on the video, ‘Say What You Will’. How did that come about and what was it like to work with him?

    

James had seen some of my work and basically asked to jump on a zoom out of the blue. I’m a huge fan and of course said yes immediately. I think we both felt it was fun to work on something that was the opposite of what he’d done so far, which was more melancholic, heavy videos. But in fact, James is a super funny guy. As is his girlfriend Jameela, who co-wrote the video.

4. Where do you start to create a music video and are there any crossovers in how you go about creating a film?

    

No I think it’s different. You can of course go full narrative in a video, but I love how in a music video you can also play more with abtude and style, and jump into weird vortexes that don’t make sense real quick without anyone asking questions. You should definitely exploit that I feel when making a music video. It’s why the medium is so unique.

5. Synthesize Me is your latest short film. It tells the story of Violetta who retreats to her mother’s music workshop and plays music to remember her. How do you think music and life events correlate and was it a conscious decision to have the music she plays to be upbeat?

It has Ees to real life as it’s a story drawn from personal experience. And I think a lot of people relate to a parent that didn’t quite understand their world. This film is about how sometimes all has to break down in order to take one step towards understanding each other.

The music she plays is just what I love, poly-rhythmic synth music. Like Steve Reich inspired music for synths. It’s just what I heard in my head all the time.

6. In the screener I was privy to watch, there are quiet moments of scenic shots as well as when viewers see the actors. What are the challenges of filming such scenes to keep audiences engaged in the film?
   

Shooting with intention. Or at least that’s what I tried. So that you feel that the perspective of Eve and distance to the characters is deliberate and hopefully you feel you’re in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing.

7. When there’s a power-cut in the small town, the differences in how grief is handled by Violetta and her father are stark. What motivated you to show different ways people react and how important it is to show that one event, such as a power cut can have a knock-on effect in creating tensions?

Under pressure you see how buried emotions surface. The father shows clearly that he doesn’t want to deal with it and has some mental drawer he’d rather stuff it in. Just as he does with his tools. Violeta is a young girl that’s still clinging on, she’s a bit sloppy and irresponsible which I normally. They both needed this to happen to understand each other’s stakes better. Violeta seeing that her dad has a ‘boss’ that kind of decides both their fates, and how he’s struggling to make life work for her too. Quite literally as she depends on electricity for her art. He now sees how his daughter is an artist. Even if he takes everything away, she will always do that even without power. She’s more powerful than him in that way.

He realizes that before the light comes on. The light indicating they have to move on.

8. You’ve travelled around a fair bit of the How has this influenced the style in which you tell stories and what type of stories to tell?

I think it definitely made me feel more like a world person. I’m trying to avoid the word citizen as it sounds corny as hell.

What that does is that I don’t feel I have to tell ‘my life’ or ‘my country’ or ‘my people’ to the world. I feel I can belong everywhere when it comes to storytelling and chameleon my way through that. It has pros and cons.

In terms of type, I’m definitely a Spielberg devote in that I want to create a wide opening of my stories o that everything can latch on, and hopefully a film then takes them to a place they’ve never been or never dared to go before.

9. You are currently developing another short and also a feature film. Can you tell us a bit about those, the release dates and where people can view them?

Still have to shoot my new short, but the script is done. I have a feature in early development and I’m working on a comedy with a friend.

10. Apart from the difference between a short and feature film, what other differences do you have to navigate and how do you go about doing that, in the likes of the way you work, how you’re funded, how you pitch to have films released?

A short you can now do anywhere, if you can write compact. Which is hard. A feature will cost a lot of money, even if you do a micro budget. It’s not something coming out of most people’s pockets easily. And the latter only works with improvisation and locations that are accessible. Which requires good writing. All doable, not easy.

Funding in the Netherlands is all government funding based. Which can be a little problematic slow and makes people be good at writing for funds, which is not always a good thing…

Funding indie in the US is private funding mostly. Which hinges on the producer’s network. It’s just hard. And it’s not getting any easier.

11. Where can people follow you and your filming work?

Instagram @beardamen and I’m @beardamen everywhere including bluesky.

Thanks so much for this interview!