From Innocence to Experience: A Conversation with Charles Williams

It was never a dogmatic thing for me. I’ve shot a lot on film over the years, but I’ve also shot digitally. That decision just evolved out of conversations with my cinematographer.

I wanted the images to reflect a sort of organic erosion, and how imperfect our memories can be, and that lent itself to the randomness and beauty of film. Also, because the film is about someone looking back in time, the nostalgic nature of 16 mm felt right.

My cast was largely young and nonprofessional, and that always pushes you toward shooting digitally, so you can shoot faster and keep rolling. But I wanted the film to feel really considered and precise visually.

There was a mix of imagery I tried to build into the script, particularly in the first half. Visualizing these elements—like the feeling of being underwater, and the smoke that haunts his memories—were important for me.

A lot of this was achieved by finding abandoned locations and working with my cinematographer and production designer to incorporate sickly greens and browns into the palette.

For reference points, we used some photographs, but most of the inspiration came from a pretty diverse collection of other films: everything from Tarkovsky to Cassavetes to the Safdies to Justin Kurzel and Harmony Korine.

This was something I thought about when writing. I tried to incorporate elements that would give me things to work with in the sound design—things like the cicadas, the bubbling coffee pot, the plastic flapping in the pool and over the broken window. I’ve been working with my sound designers for a long time now, and they’re really creative and generous. 

The music was also transformative. My composer, Chiara Costanza, worked on many, many drafts and added a lot to the film. It was difficult to get exactly right because we were trying to push into areas you usually wouldn’t with a film like this, using synths and a kind of techno sound. We wanted to avoid playing to sentimentality and instead made the film sound cosmic.

This was one of the first ideas I had about how to make the film, dividing it in two so the first half would be almost philosophical and dreamlike before you’re suddenly forced to sit with the repercussions in the moment.

I wanted to show both sides of what this experience is like so the audience could have compassion for the father but also feel the threat of the situation.

My memories usually linger on the small details and are often more centered on the aftermath of something dramatic rather than the incidents themselves, and I wanted these fragments in the first half to feel like this. I developed these more traditionally dramatic “scenes” before each of these moments, and we would play these out on set, but we’d only roll camera once these were over, so we were kind of catching the emotional residue left behind.

I was really lucky to work with him. He was in a different city from me most of the time, and we would both cut separately and share scenes. Sometimes he would focus on the macro and I’d be working on the micro, and then we’d switch. It was a fluid process, and I think that could have been frustrating for a lot of editors, but Dan really helped make the film what it is.

It was a very difficult edit. We had limited footage because we shot on film, under fluctuating weather conditions, with nonprofessional actors and the usual problems that come with no-budget filmmaking. But the real complexity was in keeping the film flowing, particularly in the first half, where there’s no dialogue and the scenes are less traditionally structured. Juxtapositions between scenes were sometimes more important than the placement of the scene within the narrative. So there was a lot of rearranging, and the smallest changes could throw the rhythm off. We just kept working it until it got there.

Mostly I just pulled from my understanding of my own life and some people close to me. However, I engaged with a lot of research too, consulting with a psychiatrist and also with these two mental-health bodies in Australia, Sane and Mindframe. They read the script and were very encouraging about the depiction.

I worked a lot with Mandela too. He’s nothing like the character, so we spent a lot of time getting him into the right headspace so he could connect to Mal’s experience.

I’m writing a feature called Inside, which is in some ways an extension of All These Creatures in terms of the themes and tone, explored through a different story. More than anything, this short was a way of being dogged about how I want to work, even if, as with the casting, that’s not the way things are traditionally done.

It’s been rewarding, letting go of those expectations and my own desires, and just listening to the film and adapting the process to serve it. I’m not sure that’s a process, but it’s definitely a lesson.