Sydney Film Festival interview: Josef Gatti talks Phenomena

Josef Gatti talks to Something You Said’s Addy Fong about science, art, film-making and the beauty of experimentation:

You begin Phenomena saying you never understood or related to science, even though your dad’s a physics teacher. That stood out to me. Did making this film, help you understand or appreciate the art of science seeing the connections between science and filmmaking technically, artistically? 

Yeah, for sure. I certainly misunderstood science, growing up. Maybe this was just my experience, I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I felt like we were taught science was this gateway to technology and innovation. I didn’t fully grasp how beautiful or powerful it could be for connecting to people, to the world, and teaching us to be better people and understand the world better. That was a real light bulb moment for me when I had that realization, that came slightly before I started making films. I became obsessed with science, science communication, and watching amazing science documentaries in my early to mid-20s. I was on this wave of rediscovering the beauty of science, or for me discovering it for the first time. After that I got my hands on these experiments and started experimenting for myself. I was able to then take it to the next level, which I think you’re pointing to, which was discovering the connection between art, science, and experimentation.

I’m currently studying sound, and I guess my brain’s always been both creative and technical. Somehow with science, I’ve always felt stupid, unable to understand. Filmmaking is sort of this science, so I resonated with you. Filmmaking provides me this sense of play; did you feel that way when filming?

I think it was all play in the beginning. I was purely making these films for myself. I was playing in the studio in dad’s shed with cool things and pointing my camera at it for no other reason than to look at it myself and make cool images. That spontaneously turned into a short film, accidentally, and it was infectious. For me, some of the first short films I made became the seeds of this feature purely out of play. It was purely just this fun thing I was doing. I hope you can see it in the film as well that we tried to recapture that magic. I’ve been making this film for about 10 years now.

The film took 10 years to make?

Yes, the first short film that I made was around 2016. It started as a series of shorts, then turned into a web series for ABC, then it evolved into art installation and exhibition. So, it’s been alive in a few different iterations and each one just focused around these visuals that came out of this art-science process I developed. So yeah, it certainly has had a life of its own in that regard.

From what I know about film funding, it’s hard to get a feature funded unless you’ve got a strong concept and idea to show. Your stuff was shown in galleries, did you pivot because of circumstance, timing, and opportunity? Did you always want to make a feature?

I’ve always wanted to make a feature, always wanted to direct. I love the format of feature films. It’s my favourite. I think there’s nothing like watching an incredible film where you get the idea of the beginning, the middle, and the end all served up into one viewing. I just, I love having that. You being a young filmmaker too right, it’s like, where do you even begin getting a feature up? That’s where I felt like I was at. I had these ideas as you do, and I didn’t even know where to begin, to be honest. I tried a few different things, and it wasn’t really happening for me. I’d heard and read about filmmakers trying this approach, starting with a short and letting that evolve into something bigger. I’ve been trying different things over the years, and this was the one that really became clear to me. It was one where I really found my voice as a filmmaker, I think. 

Throughout the film there’s this deep pulsating sound that feels almost rhythmic. Was this intentional in structuring the film through its soundtrack?

So much of this film comes from sound and listening to music. Obviously, it’s a very visual film, but the visuals are very abstract and almost difficult to grasp sometimes, which is where science comes in to help you understand what you’re seeing. But from an emotional perspective, music really is what carries the film, I think.

My favourite part of the film was the chapter on waves; it talks about the visualisation of sound. I was like, ‘fuck yeah!’ You and your musician friend worked together on the sound experiment. Do you enjoy creating music or do you outsource sound stuff, like ‘I’m a camera artist, not a sound artist.’ 

I love music. Music is incredible. I love music just as much as film and I work in the music industry; I work with music artists a lot so it’s certainly part of the work I do. I played instruments growing up, I played violin, saxophone, dabbled keyboard for a little while, but all like pre-16, 17 I think, which is when the filmmaking thing took over. There’s part of me that would love to pick up an instrument again, but I don’t want the magic of music to go away for me. I don’t know about you, but when I first started watching films, it, for a moment, the illusion, the magic of film broke for me. It’s since come back a different way, understanding how films are put together for a little while broke it down for me and I couldn’t watch films the same anymore.

What’s your educational background? Did you go to film school?

Not really, no, I did a Bachelor of Arts, basically. I chose as many film courses as I possibly could. It wasn’t strictly a film school, it was just a broad arts degree, but I did as much film theory as I could. It was not a very hands-on course so I wouldn’t consider myself having gone to film school, I did a few classes where we looked at film studies.

When you said you don’t want the magic of music to go away, do you fear the magic and your love of music will be lost if you pursue its technicalities academically?

Exactly. I don’t want it to become this academic technical thing. For me, music is a pure emotional experience. When I listen to a song I’m listening to the lyrics, I’m listening to the artist, I’m feeling what the music is conveying without thinking about it, and I want to leave that as pure as possible. It really helps me as an artist. I’m able to play an album and let it take transport me to another dimension. It summons images in my mind and allows me to be creative and imagine in a way I want to preserve.

Are there particular music artists you enjoy listening to? 

I like everything. Right now, shout out to Geese. They’re bit of the flavour of the month now. I got to see Geese and Cam Winter the frontman to do his solo show at the Forum this year. It was truly spectacular. I like all music, honestly. I listen to everything, every genre. As long as it’s good, I will enjoy it.

Did the process of making the movie in your dad’s shed, help your relationship with him? Did you have a wholesome father-son bonding moment?

I think so. Dad obviously, he’s a physics teacher so I think it was scary for him to see me, choose the arts over a path down science. To have that moment coming full circle, not only finding science in my own way, but for us to have this experience together, making something that’s brought us together of his science, my art, was special for both of us. For sure, it’s brought us closer. Dad and I had a great time growing up I’m very fortunate to say, great family, super loving. The extent of it, honestly, was I picked art and he wanted me to do science.

The weird thing about filmmaking is that it’s both an introverted and extroverted artform. Did it take a long time to film because you took time to perfect or you just like working alone?

I do like to work on my own where I can. Just like the film itself, it is a meditative, art practice for me. I will spend literal weeks working on just one of these experiments, listening to music, vibing out, trying things, experimenting, pulling these incredible images out. It was a very solitary meditative experience for me, certainly something we tried to capture in the making of the film. There are moments where I’m collaborating with, whether it’s dad or the artists like Emme or my friend JP who’s a musician, but even then, it was most of the time people who I’m close and comfortable with. Yeah, I guess the process itself was more like creating art than a traditional film or documentary perhaps. I do enjoy that way of working, for sure. I think it’s what empowered me to find these incredible images, it’s not something you can just whip together in one afternoon. Each one took weeks of work to put together, for sure.

You narrate the film. Was this cause of convenience, did you feel like you couldn’t ask anyone, or did you feel a sense of authenticity in narrating yourself?

It made sense to have me narrate it. Previously, there’d been versions where I haven’t narrated it, where it’s just pure texts and visuals. We tried a straight science narration for ABC Science, which worked well. But we felt for a narrative film of 90 minutes, an authored piece was the right way to go, particularly when the filmmaking component of it played such a strong part in this version because I’m the one who knows, builds these experiments, I’m the filmmaker that’s making all the camera choices and conducting the filmmaking and the experimentation. It made the most sense for this to come from me as the author of the piece.

You break the fourth floor and address the audience, but the film doesn’t feel like a traditional sit-down documentary.

Yeah. We wanted it to not feel like a traditional sort of interview style. What we were really going for was just, you’re in the room with me and I’m taking you, the audience through these experiments. You’re in the room with us and I’m showing you exactly what I’m doing and why. That was sort of creative intent for those decisions.

Technical question, what lens did you use? Was it a macro? How did you get those super detailed shots?

Let’s go deep for a second because I can talk technical forever. [I was] shooting on super 35 sensor using full frame macro stills lenses. So only the centre portion of the lens is being utilized for the sharpest portion of the lens.

So, there’d be vignetting on the side? 

We were overshooting. Essentially light being thrown away. The edges of the lenses weren’t being used, the sort of softest, most distorted parts. We’re using essentially more image circle than we need. The sensor is essentially only taking the best, sharpest light, coming from the very centre of the image circle. It was a combination of Canon stills lenses. It’s essentially like a microscope; it’s a five to one macro.

The microscope was just the camera lens itself? Like with a 35? In my head the cheap version would be getting the camera, pointing it in the microscope eyepiece, or those electronic USB microscopes and screen recording that.

Yeah, certainly not that. This is essentially putting a five to one microscope onto a red sensor. That was how we got some of those like ridiculous looking shots.

Was it hard to get focus because you’re going so close?

It was very difficult. You need so much light to get sharp, deep enough focus at that tiny scale, you need so much light that sometimes it would interfere with the experiment or it’s just blinding to work with.

I don’t know if I remember this correctly, but in the documentary, you waited till it was night to film. Why was this?

The nighttime thing partly because it’s easier to control the light at night and partly because I’m like a bit of a night owl. I like working through the night and being completely unbothered. The phone, the emails, everything is silent. I just focus, lock in, and work on that. But yeah, partly just for the controlling light and making sure lighting can be pristine without any, without any interference of any other external light. I know you can control light, you can work in the day, but it’s a lot of labour to fully black out a room that isn’t purpose-built.

Cause of the light leak from the garage windows and stuff? Control helps to create contrast? 

Yes, exactly. Contrast and complete control of the light so you can fine tune it as much as you need.

Some of the shots looks like you did some compositing? Layered? I was like, is this the actual way that this thing moves or is it something computer generated?

I will say, first, literally zero generative AI or no digital, like artificial creation of imagery whatsoever in this film. We gave ourselves permission to mask in a few moments, in a few key moments, like putting some of those soap bubbles next to each other so you can see the differences between them. So merely all we’ve done is we’ve just cropped on the party image we want you to look at. We’ve put two side by side or three side by side or sometimes, spoiler alert, sometimes 60 side by side. That’s as much permission as we gave ourselves. Nothing is created digitally. Everything’s captured by camera. Sometimes we gave ourselves permission to put things next to each other to create contrast or show you symmetries that exist between things as a way to give some correlation understanding that the way images connect.

That makes me happy to hear 

It’s difficult to make a film like this without any computer graphics or animation. To describe these very difficult concepts is an enormous challenge. Naively, I thought wouldn’t be so difficult.

You thought that ten years ago 

I was like, yeah, this will be fun. Some of these images are tiled or mosaiced, but you could film them. There’s nothing inherently fake about them.  The images could have been captured exactly that way. That was another little sort of asterisk we gave ourselves. There’s only maybe like two or three moments in the film that we employ like some sort of split screen.

When watching your film, it was giving Voyage of Time IMAX energies and that documentary made a few years ago about the volcano lover people.

Fire of love.

Fire of Love, yeah. It was giving me that.

Sandbox films, our executive producers; they made Fire of Love.

The producers for this film made Fire of Love? I didn’t know that. That’s cool.

That is cool. I’m glad you made that connection. Sandbox Films and particularly Jess Harrop, the EP on Fire of Love, she’s been pivotal in helping us get this project from pitching development to getting development funding for the feature, through to making the film. She’s been on it through this whole process, she’s fantastic. I think we met in 2023, so about three years ago now, and she’s a fantastic executive producer and her fingerprints are all over this. She played a big part in Fire of Love and this film also. That film is a fantastic documentary and was an amazing inspiration for this film. One of the films that gets often referenced with this film and caught my attention when I was younger is Koyaanisqatsi. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it.

Koyaanisqatsi. Oh, I saw it at school. That’s the one with the repetitive soundtrack. My teacher showed it to us. I put on my Spotify playlist.  

Phillip Glass. He’s iconic.

Yeah, it was four of us in a theatre and it was a meditative experience. I didn’t understand what I watched but I liked it. It was three first years and one composing student from the cohort above.

That’s so dope. It’s such a trip, that film. I didn’t even know documentaries could be that way when I watched that film. It totally shattered my understanding of what documentary filmmaking could be. It totally opened my mind. It was like, there are no rules. You can do anything.

Did you want to be a documentary filmmaker growing up or you kind of fell into it? You said you wanted to make a feature. 

That was the original train of thought. I think it sort of matured over the years when I learned, in part due to films like Koyaanisqatsi, I just love the art form. It’s not necessarily about it being drama or narrative but just the artistry of filmmaking and that’s something that I love. To see a documentary with such a high level of artistry was something that really captured me. To flip that, films like 2001: Space Odyssey, blew me away in terms of structurally and artistically, how far you can push traditional film as well, that was a big influence. The epic themes and scope of that film were transcendent to me. Final big shout out to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series and the recent one with Neil deGrasse Tyson as well, to me, they were, I would say, pivotal in the genre of science storytelling and science documentary, as to how amazing science can be, not just as a way to understand the world and ourselves. The Cosmos series was pivotal and important in its influence on me.

You like science fiction, as a genre?

Yeah, I mean, this [film] is like trippy science nonfiction, I would almost describe. Like, you can hear it in the score as well. There are so many Blade Runner influences running through this film. Aesthetically, I very much love sci-fi.

The film’s soundtrack felt rhythmic and pulsating. It reminded me of electrical hum like TV cycles or buzz. Perhaps heartbeats, rhythms of nature or stuff like that. Was this accidental or intentional in paralleling to the science world?

I’m glad you said that because that’s 100% what we’re going for. The film is very much this merging of science and nature, of classical and contemporary, this sci-fi and naturalistic aesthetic. We wanted the score to reflect that very much. These classical influences merged with a more electronic score. I think there’s no one better than Nils Frahm, who combines the two aesthetics together with such harmony. Rival Consoles, did the original composition for our film, he’s such an amazing, amazing producer. He was able to tie the whole thing together with a sci-fi referential soundscape.

You mentioned at the start of our chat you’ve just come back from overseas, where’d you come back from? Is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up?

I’ve just come back from the Czech Republic which was incredible. We won the Audience Award and the Best Science Communication Award at AFA, one of the longest running science film festivals in the world. It was amazing. We’ve been everywhere, we’ve been showing this film all over the world in the last, three months or so. People are really enjoying it. I’m so excited to share it with an Australian audience, finally.

Phenomena is playing at Sydney Film Festival 7th June, Event George St and 9th June, Palace Central. Details here: Phenomena – Sydney Film Festival.

Interview by Addy Fong.