Interview: Jane Castle – When the Camera Stopped Rolling
‘The shock of her death was one thing, but it was strange to realise overtime that I didn’t miss her. Just this slow-motion sorrow that seemed to go way back, that I’ve spent years trying to understand.’
Jane Castle’s documentary When the Camera Stopped Rolling appears at first as a biographical film about her mother, Lilias Fraser, a pioneer for Australian Women in cinematography, and the cultural impact she had. Upon closer inspection, the film is a meditative and deeply personal piece constructed of archival footage, photographs, and an original score tied together with voiceover that explores not only the life of a trailblazing female filmmaker but examines spirituality, family and identity, intergenerational trauma and creativity, and the joy of the filmmaking journey. Our Addy Fong spoke to director Jane Castle regarding her film…
So firstly, your documentary doesn’t use traditional talking head interviews but instead is composed of personal archival footage tied together with voice over. Can you talk about why you decided not to go with the traditional interview format?
We did try to integrate interviews in the beginning. I interviewed lots of people, probably about 20 people about my mum and there was this attempt to integrate those interviews into the more kind of poetic, contemplative material, but the film just kept spitting it out. We made the film without having this script that we then put into a film format, it was more like an art project where we built it up, bit by bit from the bottom, and it was a very iterative process. We were able to respond to the film, what the film was telling us all the way through, and it just so happened that those interviews didn’t work, and it helped me as the narrator to control the narrative more.
Oh, so are you going to repurpose those 20 interviews?
That yeah, we might. If we get some funding to do a kind of interactive website, it would be wonderful to have those interviews cause there’s some great material in them.
The film’s use of archival footage and photographs reminded me of something you find in an art gallery compared to your traditional cinema. I really needed to immerse myself in the film to understand it, but I felt it really linked to your poem about the train drivers driving over the woman and the use of birds. Could you talk about your creative practice in this film?
I think that I’m primarily an artist more than a cinematographer or film technician. I think that came out in the film. Although I was trained as a cinematographer and we’re always searching for these amazing, beautiful shots, I decided quite early in the film to prioritize the narrative. I wanted this to be not just a work of art, but also a story that really drew the audience along. I wanted it to be very engaging, so I think there’s this kind of nexus between my art practice and telling a story, a temporal story, in 75 minutes, and the film is the result of that intersection. I think you’re right; it is something about wanting to be really connected to the film, and that happens through this kind of creative authenticity that needs to come out and onto the screen.
The way that a lot of creatives process heavy emotions like grief or happiness is to create. Your mother had this urge to create, as a way of processing things she went through. There’s this personal family connection with filmmaking you both share when you followed her path to become a filmmaker. Is this how you connected with your mum, that shared creative connection?
Yes, cause along with intergenerational trauma, which the film is partly about, there’s also intergenerational creativity. I picked up unconsciously the way my mum made sense of the world which was by making films about it. Even though I swore I wouldn’t be a filmmaker when I was a kid, because I saw what a mess it put my parents in, I made my first film when I was 17. It was my first expression of making sense of the world. In the therapeutic world there’s this type of therapy called narrative therapy where you tell stories and you make art about your life in order to understand it. For me, making the film in one way, was about turning chaos into order because coming out of that family, I was generally in a state of overwhelm. And so making the film, putting it into a narrative form really helped me to feel much safer and in control, like putting all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. Mum’s last personal film Women of the Iron Frontier, she was doing that too in a way, but I think I’ve taken it a step further like this film is so much more, clearly, unambiguously, a personal film for me.
You talk about how you created your first film when you were 17 and then you decided to step away from filmmaking in your 30s. What made you decide to do that and then come back?
I made my first film when I was 17 and went to film school and then had this big career in the USA and Australia as a cinematographer. Then in my 30s, I don’t know if it was an early mid-life crisis, but I just hit a wall. A lot of the films I was working on were absolute crap like Leprechaun 2 and I shot some TV commercials which didn’t make me feel good about what I was doing, it didn’t really suit me. I also had a personal crisis at that time with a family member, we had a big falling out. I just got such a shock I thought ‘OK stop, I’ve been on this roller coaster since I was 17.’ I got straight into the film school after high school, and I was just like no, I want to start again. So, I came back to Australia from the US, and I started to study, and I decided I wanted to be an environmental activist. So, I did that and luckily, I earnt a bit of money in the US to support me through that, not earning great money working for a not-for-profit, but I did that for eight years and it was much closer to my personal ethics. The thing with the film industry is, most of the time it didn’t match my personal values, so I was kind of gradually finding my way, coming more into alignment with who I really was.
It seems despite your successful film career it became almost purposeless and unsustainable, which is why you stepped away. That said, females in the film industry are rare, you touch on this in your film with your mom being one of the Pioneers of Australian Cinematography. Perhaps cause a lot of female filmmakers aren’t given enough opportunities, we say yes to anything because we don’t know when the next opportunity will come. Could you comment on this struggle, of female filmmakers saying yes to everything and then burning out creatively?
Yeah, that’s a great point. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it that way, but it feels true to me. I did feel like I had to take everything I was offered, whereas often men are able to choose and they’re getting offered more and better projects. Yeah, I did burn out after doing that. I’m also thinking of quite a few women camera assistants I know who have been working for decades and can’t breakthrough the glass ceiling to become cinematographers. The percentage of women cinematographers in Australia is still really low, I think it’s about 2 or 3%, and yet you can see that we’re overachieving. Ari Wagner got nominated for an Academy Award, so it’s not like we can’t do a great job. You know it’s interesting, I did find in the US that there was less, sexism, I just call it what it is. There was a lot more equal appreciation of women technicians for some reason, you got chosen more on the quality of your work rather than who you knew. I think because Australia is so small, it’s a lot about networks and being in the club and being out. The same thing happened with my mum, that’s why most of her films were industrial documentaries. She wrote a feature film script that is quite a decent story, it was a surfy rebellion movie she wrote that in the 60s but could never get it funded of course, cause she’s a woman. She ended up mostly making mining films just to pay the rent. So it is true, but my mom didn’t burn out like I did. I think my mum was less ambitious, I was really ambitious when I was young and that was to do with my self-esteem. As I sorted myself out, worked out those self-esteem issues, there was less of a need to perform in the industry, I could get myself worth from the inside rather than the outside I didn’t have to take so many crap jobs.
In the film there’s a story about your mother giving you a piece of red cellophane to teach you how to understand shape and light. I was wondering how that helps, like if I was to try that?
The first rolls of film I shot for the film were just terrible. They were boring subjects, and everything was really gray and monotone. So what mum did in giving me that piece of red cellophane is it took all the colour out of what I was seeing so all you saw was dark red, black red, or light red. It really taught me to notice contrast, cause that’s all you got. All you got was red through this red cellophane square and different tones of red. I got to recognize what was light and what was shade and to make sure that in every frame I had something really bright and something really dark regardless of what color things were. Does that make sense?
Ah yes! So was that red cellophane on the lens or behind the lens in front of the sensor? I’m just trying to understand its placement.
Yeah, no. She cut it out and I would go around looking at things for ages through it
Oh! like a monocle! I might try it. It’s an interesting way to see the world, making something black and white can change the mood of things
Yeah, yeah, like a monocle! You can use red filters on black and white, in fact they increase the contrast, especially when you’ve got dramatic clouds, it’s amazing, but I wasn’t that advanced at that stage. Yeah, if you want to make good black and white, I highly recommend that as a technique.
Amazing. Now I’d like to talk about the use of sound design in your film or the soundtrack because it really shaped the way that certain scenes were understood, like in the scene with Norman there is foreboding music that makes you feel uneasy about his character. How was the process of working with a composer to help you tie the film together?
Kyls Burtland was the composer for the film and she’s a genius basically. She worked so hard to create original pieces and with real instruments. I said it at the start, I’d prefer it if she didn’t use a laptop or a keyboard, so she got some of the best new musicians around town to play especially for the film and to create an authentic mood that matched the era and the emotional needs of the film because it’s a very big-time span that the film spans. It’s interesting you mentioned that scene with my dad (Norman) because she got Australia’s best double bass jazz player Jonathan Zwartz to play. He’s incredible and he performed especially for that scene, and I just love that, it’s that kind of low and foreboding sound that she creates. It was a huge job cause the range of musical genres that she captures is phenomenal, from pop and jazz to classical, single instrument solos, she basically covers every genre there is, her flexibility is off the charts. We also had Sam Petty who was the sound designer. He really pulled all that music and the sound effects together to make the film feel much more cohesive because there’s many different emotional states in the film, there’s many times, there’s different footage, there’s present day footage and there’s archival and stills and letters. Somehow, I think he’s a genius too, he just pulled it together in a very subtle way. The other thing I wanted to say about music, often when you see films and you hear the music, and the music is really composed, and it really stands out, it’s trying to draw attention to itself, and the composer is trying to say look what a great piece of music I’ve made. We really worked against that. I don’t know if that was frustrating for Kyls or not, but we really made the music work for the film rather than the film being a showcase for some amazing music and that takes a lot of humility to do that, to subjugate your talents for the betterment of the film. I was so pleased everyone working on the film was able to do that, no one used it as a platform to promote their work.
Yeah, I agree with the points you’ve raised. I feel like creatively sometimes there’s a lot of egos in the room, whether it be musicians or filmmakers. The fact that everyone was able to be humble and work together really helps with the process of creating. It’s also hard to find people you work well with…
Yeah, it is hard to find, but we were lucky to get that group of people. I guess the key, especially with Ray (editor), Sam and Kyls, is that they are very experienced and it’s not like they were starting out wanting to make a big mark, wanting to make a splash. They loved the film, and they loved Lilias, my mother, as a character. Often people in the industry are artists at heart but they end up in this kind of factory production system. They loved working on this film that was creative, artistic, and authentic, and that really helped all of us with making the film the priority. That was with me too, I kept having to put my preferences and fabulous ideas aside to go hmmm no, the film is saying do this instead. We were loyal in listening to what the film wanted rather than imposing our will on the film.
You’ve worked with a lot of people in industry who already have experience but for young creatives starting out what advice would you give?
It would be to be loyal to yourself and if you want to write a story or make a film, the best stories are the ones that are most honest. I think that’s the strength in our film is that it’s honest. I think the truth, and life, and reality is absolutely compelling. I just think we are the weirdest, most interesting, human beings; every single person is this bizarre mixture of parts. Every human being is really unpredictable, and you never know their potential, or their dark or their light. I just think the stories are here, you don’t have to go running out and trying to impress people with the shiniest, fanciest, smartest plot, it’s all just here. I would encourage people to just try to drop down into what’s true for them and the story will be there or around them in their in their life and their world.
The film speaks of your mother’s relationship with the church and her love of hymns like Hallelujah, I was wondering if you brought her to church in her later years or how she came to go there? Was this because of her Traditional Baptist upbringing or is it more a cultural thing? The credits say that the church is in Windsor, is that near Richmond NSW?
Yeah, oh, it’s actually in Brisbane. There’s another Windsor, Windsor Road Baptist Church in Brisbane. It’s a fascinating question. I’m amazed you picked that up.
I think it’s because I go to church and am religious. I’m assuming due to what I’ve read you don’t attend church yourself. To me, for your mum to attend church in her later years is interesting after she seemed to rebel against conservative tradition in her early life, like the fact you were conceived outside of marriage which goes against conservative religious tradition. I think music transforms people and can transport them to nice memories, like their childhood, especially when your mum became older. I understand her love of hymns, I too share this joy when I’m singing in church. I was wondering about your relationship with bringing your mom to church.
Now, you’ve picked up something pivotal. It’s only touched on in the film with hints. The story is Mum’s grandfather was a Baptist minister for over 50 years at that Windsor Road Church and her mum was very religious and so they were brought up religious. They would go to church; they would sing hymns as kids but then it was also in the 1950s it was also very repressive and conservative. So, mum and her sister rebelled strongly against that when they were in their 20s and mum threw in religion and then of course she got pregnant to my dad when abortion was illegal and she married him to please her mother, as to not embarrass her mother who was very conservative. Fast forward she did develop a spirituality in her later years before she got dementia, it was a personal spirituality but then when she got dementia, she would find her way to the local church every Sunday. I found out long after she started to do this and she would sit up at the front and, as it says in the film, she’d be singing the hymns at the top of her lungs. She was a regular there and at the church they just thought she was this little old lady who had no community or no family but when we held her funeral at that same church hundreds of people came because of her film history and her community and the church was shocked that she was this kind of pioneer Australian filmmaker.
So yeah, I would take her up there sometimes I’d go with her, but she would not miss church. It would be like the highlight of her week, and I think with dementia music is one of the last things that goes. I think that was part of it, but she went up and got communion and I think there was a genuine connection with I don’t know God or Christ or something at the end maybe it was because it was planted early on. Because of her rebellion against religion, I was brought up as an atheist. My parents were almost like evangelical atheists and my dad even more so, he would ridicule any spiritual tradition and we would just taught, ‘that’s a load of crap, it’s just for weak people, it’s a crutch.’
In one way I’m kind of grateful because I’ve had a blank slate. I didn’t have anything pushed onto me and so over my lifetime I have developed my own spiritual connection. I started off with Buddhism and I did a lot of that for decades, a lot of meditating and now I’m kind of drifting more towards a kind of mystical Christianity type of practice and I do daily meditation. I’m in a particular spiritual path, I don’t even know how to answer this in a really cohesive way. But you know, maybe like the intergenerational creativity the intergenerational spirituality has kind of been passed down the generations at different times and it’s a big part of my life now. My aunt, my mum’s sister, has been a big influence on me and she rejected religion in her 20s but she came back to it very strongly. She was like a fourth order Franciscan and she was a Baptist deaconess at one point and deeply more Mystic Christianity, she was like a mystic herself. She has really influenced me. I don’t know if this answers it for you.
I understand because with religion and identity you need to go on your own journey to truly understand yourself. It’s hard to put a timeline on that sort of stuff. I think everybody needs make their own decision on the matter and whether you realise this in your early 20s, late 50s or 70s. I personally believe in God and in his timing and our own freewill as to what happens, but I don’t know. Honestly, I found it hard to ask you this question, because it felt too personal and almost taboo as people often don’t want to talk about religion. But then again, we talked about your mother’s death so that is also something deep and personal and makes you question your existence or your understanding of the world.
Totally. No, you’re right. I talk about family violence in the film, and that’s taboo but I think spirituality is even more taboo because it’s just so uncool or something today. I agree that it’s a deeply personal process and path.
That said, I feel it naturally comes out of me because of the joy I have from my faith as a Christian. I always struggle because I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable. Especially when, I guess in the arts more generally these days, religion is something that is almost kept separate. Obviously, we have creatives in church like musicians, filmmakers, artists, etc but there’s this criticism of religion which makes me feel uncomfortable but I’m always thinking about how those two worlds merge together when people tend to separate them
Yeah, out in the world they’re treated very separately but the reality is, they’re very much intermingled. It tends to be to need to become personal, the spirituality. I think when we make it too literal that’s when it kind of loses its energy and life force. I think that’s one of the problems with religion and with talking about spirituality. It’s very difficult because it transforms from the spiritual to the very incarnated and everyday. Words can’t convey the experience and it all becomes very clunky. For me, my spirituality is a personal thing and I think as you can see in the film, it comes through naturally. I didn’t have to try to make a film about spirituality, I mean, I originally wanted to make a film about death, and it was about what happens when you die. I made a whole trailer and I interviewed nuns and monks and people who had had died and come back and people who were dying. I was interested, I was bit like you, it’s a real passion for me this whole spirituality thing but my producer said why don’t you go off and do some writing? I did and this story of mum’s death fell onto the page. Then when we went to the funding bodies to pitch the film, they were much more interested in the story of mum’s death than all this philosophical stuff. So, the film came to be, it was a no brainer cause also she was a pioneer, and I was a cinematographer was like duh that’s where the film needs to go. I didn’t actually want to make a film about my mother when I started, but anyway, that’s where the film took us. You know, it hasn’t ended up also being about death and about what happens when you die cause in that final scene there’s all those words about how I feel more connected to her in her death and when she was alive and there is that kind of spiritual element. I think the film works by not being really concrete, by allowing the spirituality to just bubble up naturally rather than being really overt about it.
Well, I really appreciate your time with me today. Our chat has really helped provide insight into the film’s depth and understanding its context which I couldn’t have gotten watching it as a standalone piece. I’m grateful we got to talk.
Yes, it’s very layered the film and your questions are very interesting compared to most of the questions I usually get asked in interviews. I’m really grateful for the nuances you picked up on. Thank you for those.
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When the Camera Stopped Rolling is in Aus cinemas on April 21st.
Interview by Addy Fong.
