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The soundscape of the supernatural, with 'Rabbit Trap' director Bryn Chainey
Writer-director Bryn Chainey joins us to discuss 'Rabbit Trap,' his haunting exploration of how supernatural folklore mirrors our deepest human experiences. Bryn reveals his unique approach to using nature and the otherworldly as tools for confronting inner truths, tracing his thematic evolution from early work like 'Moritz and the Woodwose' to this latest feature.
Our conversation centers on Bryn's innovative integration of sound and visuals, where he treats audio not as an afterthought but as the film's heartbeat. He explains how blurring the lines between music, sound design, and visual storytelling creates an immersive experience that resonates on deeply personal levels, emphasizing the crucial synergy between all filmmaking departments.
(Photo: Courtesy of Magnet Releasing)
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast and this is a conversation with Bryn Chaney, writer, director of Rabbit Trap.
Speaker B:My view on the supernatural, at least in fiction, is that it's a wonderful way to mirror and manifest parts of what it means to be a person and let that mirror and manifest in nature.
Speaker B:Sound is very important to me always in films, so I would like to keep it more integrated, flow between departments rather than it being separate sound, picture, music.
Speaker A: I'd like to start is how your: Speaker A:Of course, you made other shorts in between, but these two seem to frame the period thanks to being so similar thematically.
Speaker A:How do you see the journey from making that short to recognizing the personal weight these themes might hold and to.
Speaker A:Yeah, finally bringing Rabbit Trap onto the big screen.
Speaker B:Yeah, wow, great question.
Speaker B:Thanks for like diving into my kind of filmography so thoroughly.
Speaker A:Of course, it's the least I could do.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I mean, Moritz and the wood woes, that felt.
Speaker B: That was the film I did in: Speaker B:And it was the most direct time I've worked with folklore and fairy tales, something I've always been interested in.
Speaker B:But it was the only film where I really made a contemporary fairy tale.
Speaker B:And I had such a great time making it.
Speaker B:It just felt really native to me to tell a story about a psychological journey that could only be solved through encounters with nature and encounters with the supernatural.
Speaker B:And my view on the supernatural, at least in fiction, is that it's a wonderful way to mirror and manifest parts of what it means to be a person and let that mirror and manifest in nature, to sort of obliterate the distance between the two.
Speaker B:So I don't really think of the supernatural as being above nature.
Speaker B:I just think of it as a more alive manifesting of it.
Speaker B:You know, it's a very woo woo kind of answer for that, like, why that kind of story?
Speaker B:So after Moritz, I. Yeah, after that I wanted to make a feature film and I, along the way I made music videos and things like that.
Speaker B:But I. I wrote a couple of different feature films before making Rabbit Trap and they all the two that I'd written, actually there were three feature films I wrote, partly wrote before making Rabbit Trap and they each took me along part of the way.
Speaker B:And writing a feature script is still a very different exercise to writing a short.
Speaker B:While writing a feature, I was learning my craft in A much more intensive way than writing a short.
Speaker B:It's hard to write a feature.
Speaker B:It's really hard.
Speaker B:And then it's really, really hard to get a feature made.
Speaker B: It was like around: Speaker B:And it was a great exercise in writing for me to do, but it didn't really feel.
Speaker B:When I really asked myself, what do I really want to be making as my first film?
Speaker B:What do I want to dedicate the next four or five years to?
Speaker B:I was longing to be back in like the woods, physically, metaphorically, like to be back with folklore and supernatural.
Speaker B:For me, it just feels the most at home for the way I can express things that are on the inside.
Speaker B:So I sat down, I thought, okay, I'm going to write, I'm going to do that.
Speaker B:I'm going to go back to what felt the most natural to me.
Speaker B:I'm going to unapologetically write my own favorite movie, which is what I did with Rabbit Trap.
Speaker B:I put my favorite things into a script, which was a.
Speaker B:Giving you a really long answer.
Speaker B:Is this too long?
Speaker B:I'll stop.
Speaker A:No, it's perfectly fine.
Speaker A:It's absolutely fascinating.
Speaker B:I'm like, bah, bah, bah.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker A:You're okay, you're okay.
Speaker A:And were these two or three screenplays in between Moritz and Rabbit Trap were all wildly different from what ended up Rabbit Trap to be?
Speaker A:Or did either, to a point, lead back to that?
Speaker B:Yeah, good question.
Speaker B:They all led to Rabbit Trap.
Speaker B:They were all about things.
Speaker B:All the features I was.
Speaker B:The features I'd written in between were still about people who were wrestling with their origin or parts of their origins, parts of their family history, parts of their childhood that they were struggling to assimilate with psychologically.
Speaker B:And that manifested in different ways.
Speaker B:One was a slightly magical, realist, dark comedy.
Speaker B:One was a straight kind of comedy drama coming of age.
Speaker B:But they were really about a youngish person wrestling with the thing that they've repressed.
Speaker B:And Rabbit Trap became the most.
Speaker B:In ways, it's the most indirect way of dealing with it because I'm working with folklore and magic and things like that, but I think it's actually the most direct way to deal with the unconscious.
Speaker B:I think if you've got things in the unconscious, the best tools to explore them are myth and fairy tale and folklore.
Speaker A:The story itself revolves around the two main characters, Daphne and Darcy, accidentally capturing what is described as a mystical Sound never heard before.
Speaker A:From a filmmaker's point of view, from your point of view, how did this theme elevate or scrutinize the already crucial role of your sound and music teams departments?
Speaker B:It's integrated on every level.
Speaker B:I mean, Welsh fairies and Welsh folklore is very linked to music.
Speaker B:It's quite particular to the fairies, that in historical accounts of encounters with the fairies, you'll often hear them rather than see them, and you'll hear the fairy music and it will be very beautiful, but impossible to remember.
Speaker B:And I found that a very interesting little detail.
Speaker B:I thought, well, back then, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, they didn't have recording devices like we do today.
Speaker B:So what if Noel remembered them, but you could record them?
Speaker B:And that.
Speaker B:That started to tie into the story I wanted to tell about what if there was a man who couldn't quite remember something from his past that was troubling him?
Speaker B:But what if there was a way to bring it up through recording?
Speaker B:You know, there's an early scene in the film where Darcy is in bed and he's having sleep paralysis and he's whimpering.
Speaker B:And Dev Patel, who plays the character, does a beautiful job of evoking the horror of what it's like to be trapped in a dream.
Speaker B:We don't know what he's dreaming of exactly, but we can hear it.
Speaker B:We can hear it in his struggling and his whimpering.
Speaker B:That character's wife records the sound of him whimpering in his sleep and murmuring, and she wants to play it back to him and say, hey, you should listen to this.
Speaker B:It might help you remember what's in your dreams.
Speaker B:And he says, no, why would I want to remember?
Speaker B:I don't want to touch that.
Speaker B:And I thought that would be a really interesting connecting point and parallel to the Welsh folklore of music that will lead you somewhere magical, but you can't remember it.
Speaker B:It will lead you into the unconscious realm if you could only remember it.
Speaker B:So that that was one of the ways it connects, and there are others.
Speaker B:But I think that's probably the most crucial one to do with memory and recording.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And on a more practical level.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:When it came to score sound design, where did you draw the line between sound and music?
Speaker A:And yet, what point does one bleed into the other for you?
Speaker B:Yeah, good question.
Speaker B:It was something that the editor, the sound designer and the composer all asked as well, all respectful of each other's work.
Speaker B:You know, the editor didn't want to encroach on the composer's work.
Speaker B:But sometimes he had ideas of what if we took this piece of music and we stretched it, or we just used that tone and we put that under this scene.
Speaker B:And luckily, my editor, Brett Bachman, is a very talented sound designer.
Speaker B:He can create soundscapes and manipulate things in ways that most picture editors can't.
Speaker B:So he brought his ideas.
Speaker B:But so early on, he was being connected with our composer, Lucrecia Dalt, in the edit.
Speaker B:He was sharing things with Lucrecia.
Speaker B:And Lucrecia would then send back bits of her tracks, kind of stems of the tracks that she'd written.
Speaker B:And she was very open to those being manipulated and changed because I was also in the room kind of overseeing it and making sure that it was on theme.
Speaker B:And there was just constant communication between those departments.
Speaker B:So there was no surprises.
Speaker B:It was all just collaborative.
Speaker B:And then when we got to sound design proper, which was like two months or more, that it kind of.
Speaker B:That whole process happened again, where the sound designer, Graham Resnick, received all the work that Brett had done in the edit and all the work Lucrecia had done with music.
Speaker B:And then he started to bend it and change it even more.
Speaker B:And there was back and forth between him and Lucrecia throughout that process as well.
Speaker B:So there was no line.
Speaker B:And I don't think for a movie like this, there can be a line.
Speaker B:I think picture and sound and music are all faces of the same being, you know, the same department.
Speaker B:So it was really fun actually doing it that way.
Speaker B:It was really intuitive, very creative in a like, proper, like, playful, fun way.
Speaker B:It was just great.
Speaker B:And I want to do that again, even if I do movies that aren't.
Speaker B:Aren't literally about sound.
Speaker B:Sound is very important to me, always in films.
Speaker B:So I would like to keep it a more integrated flow between departments, rather than it being separate.
Speaker B:Sound, picture, music.
Speaker A:Oh, it suits you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the characters themselves are consumed by the sounds.
Speaker A:Music in general.
Speaker A:It's pretty much their life.
Speaker A:As a filmmaker, is that kind of all consuming calling and obsession, whether with image or storytelling or the entire affair, something you find inspiring, something to thrive for?
Speaker A:Or is it rather something you'd be wary of?
Speaker B:To be honest, I think it depends on the stage of your career that you're in.
Speaker B:I think younger artists of any kind, you've got a certain amount of fuel when you're young that is all consuming and want to burn it and actually gives you life when you go all in.
Speaker B:And then there are times, I think, where that isn't healthy or nourishing because you actually have other fuels that require fire in your life.
Speaker B:Might be family or a day job.
Speaker B:It could be your health.
Speaker B:It could be your.
Speaker B:Be a number of things.
Speaker B:There were times in my life where really work became more consuming, but I find that only healthy in small bursts.
Speaker B:It is alluring when life gets complicated and I'm struggling for money because I've always had a hard time with basic practical things like how to make money and pay rent and that kind of thing.
Speaker B:It's tempting to just work and work and work and write and lose yourself in something creative.
Speaker B:But now that I've done a feature and it took up a lot of my energy and a lot of my attention over the last seven years, I would now like to have a more balanced set of fires that I'm fueling at different times, to be honest, and I hope that's possible.
Speaker B:I would like to make more films more quickly, and I would like more going on in my life than being obsessed on the movie.
Speaker B:So as best for me, that's my answer.
Speaker B:I don't want all of my worth wrapped up in my work.
Speaker B:I want to be wary of that from now on.
Speaker B:But it's very.
Speaker B:It's tempting and it's quite.
Speaker B:It can be quite a cozy place to be in.
Speaker B:Just close the windows and just do your work.
Speaker A:That's one hell of an answer.
Speaker A:And along with how general sound is, the film's visuals are equally, dare I say, striking.
Speaker A:The saturated lighting, distortions, bold colors all around.
Speaker A:How do you and cinematographer Andreas Johannesson go about crafting that visual language to serve the soundscape and maybe even vice versa?
Speaker B:Yeah, he came on the project probably about two years before we shot, partly because there were lots of delays in shooting before we started shooting, but also it felt right to get him on even before we budgeted the movie.
Speaker B:And while the script still being finalized, he was just an amazing partner.
Speaker B:Like when we first met over Zoom, we spent 90 minutes just talking about life and love and philosophy.
Speaker B:And by the end of it, we realized, oh, shit, we haven't actually spoken about the movie we're gonna make.
Speaker B:We just kind of, as people kind of fell in love in a way, you know, like, he's a brother of mine now forever.
Speaker B:So the relationship started with finding an understanding about how we saw the world and what principles we want to bring in our work.
Speaker B:And then over the process, it was.
Speaker B:We would share lots of references.
Speaker B:We have mood boards, lots and lots and lots of mood boards and collections of images that we would share.
Speaker B:We looked at different Movies as reference points for the way they made us feel and the way that the texture of different film stocks what that means for color and what that means for landscapes.
Speaker B:You know, to create feeling we wanted, and it was just all the way down.
Speaker B:We're just both very detailed people.
Speaker B:Feelings come first, but we also love detail and there being intention behind all of our decisions.
Speaker B:So, for example, we chose this quite wide format aspect ratio so that close ups would have negative space for sound to live in, whereas if we'd had more of like a 16 by 9 or 4 by 3, you'd be looking at a face and there'd be no negative space.
Speaker B:And whenever we framed profile shots, usually people frame profiles.
Speaker B:So the eyes are in the center of the frame, but we frame them so the ear was always the center of the frame.
Speaker B:Like little details across the movie which center the experience of listening and sound.
Speaker B:It was just conscious intention throughout everything.
Speaker B:It sounds like it's, like, obsessive, but it's actually just nerd stuff.
Speaker B:Like, okay, how can we make this even more about sound while being beautiful?
Speaker A:Another thing I'd really like to ask you about is an aspect of you working with Dev, which is especially now, you mentioning the multiple delays in filming.
Speaker A:Correct me if I'm wrong, but by the time you got to filming Rabbit Trap, he had directed Monkey Man.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:He was deep in post production.
Speaker B:It was finished.
Speaker B:Actually, by the time we shot Rabbit Trap, he had finished the film.
Speaker B:And it was in that window where it moved over to Universal, where Jordan Peele, he actually one day came to set and said, I was up late on Skype with Jordan Peele.
Speaker B:And he told me the whole story about Jordan coming in, and I want to do some changes and I want to take it to Universal.
Speaker B:So I think that was quite widely publicized.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that happened on set for us.
Speaker B:And so Dev was right in the thick of it.
Speaker A:But actors who also direct aren't by any means rare sight.
Speaker A:But thanks to his experience being so fresh, looking back now, did this mean anything for your collaboration or create any particular shorthand between the two of you?
Speaker B:Hmm.
Speaker B:What struck me from the very beginning with Dev, from our very first meeting, was that he can view the film in a holistic way, that we would talk about the character, but he was able to talk about the character within the context of the images and the locations and the intention behind all the choices.
Speaker B:I think he's very natively a director.
Speaker B:It's not just an actor who got frustrated and wanted more control.
Speaker B:I don't think it's that with Dev, I think it's that he has all of the tools of a director.
Speaker B:He loves music and he loves visual art and he's got great aesthetic taste.
Speaker B:All his clothes are terrific.
Speaker B:I've seen his apartment that he had redesigned himself.
Speaker B:Like, he has bring it all together.
Speaker B:So that was a joy to kind of during pre production and development, talk with him about any aspect of the film and it be holistic.
Speaker B:And then when we're shooting, he was.
Speaker B:He also didn't impose.
Speaker B:He was very comfortable being the actor and he would give suggestions and we would talk about like, okay, well, this choice.
Speaker B:Does that affect this later?
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:But overall, I think he was happy to be on set, at least, you know, the actor.
Speaker B:And he had to keep up with Rosie and Jade, who were both acting their absolute hearts out.
Speaker B:I mean, the performances of those two are, I think, incredibly detailed and textured and powerful.
Speaker B:And Dev was just like, I got to keep up with these guys.
Speaker B:These, they're amazing.
Speaker B:So hopefully that answers a bit.
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker A:And yeah, Bryn, once again, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:It was great talking to you.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah, you too, mate.
Speaker B:Is it over?
Speaker B:Are we out of time?
Speaker A:We are, but this was lovely.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:Thank you for such thoughtful questions.
Speaker B:I really do appreciate it.
