Content is king. But should it be?
“CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man,” is a short film from directors Brian Lonano and Blake Myers that will be screening at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival and compete for the festival’s Georgia Short Film Award.
The film explores the ramifications of what the push for content without consideration for art could mean. Filmmaker Brian Lonano (played by Lonano himself) tries to make a video discussing a beloved cult film, 1975’s “Tetsuo: The Iron Man,” directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. When he’s suddenly replaced by The New and Improved Brian Lonano (Clarke Williams), he’s thrust into a post-apocalyptic landscape where renegade filmmakers fight against robotic content seekers for control. To beat them, The New and Improved Brian Lonano will have to become The Lo-Fi Man.
Lonano and Myers began collaborating together a decade ago and have made around 10 projects together, but this is the first time they have co-directed a film.
“This movie is like a culmination of all of our skills and all of our techniques that we’ve used over the past years,” Lonano said in an interview with Rough Draft Atlanta.
Ahead of the Atlanta Film Festival screening, which will take place on April 21 at the Plaza Theatre, Lonano and Myers spoke with Rough Draft Atlanta about the creation of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where did the idea for this film come from? I mean, it seems to me like you guys are pretty worried about the push towards content and away from cinema.
Brian Lonano: That’s 100% right. I’ve noticed over the years that the word content is being used instead of films or television shows, and they’re starting to be seen more as a commodity. I understand that from a corporation standpoint, but when it starts trickling down into hearing YouTubers call films “content,” or filmmakers calling their own work “content,” I find that a little distressing. It’s more than just content, what we’re doing.
The idea came a couple of years ago. We were originally commissioned to make a film for somebody, and then the budget fell out from under us like, one week before we were filming. So we decided, we’re in too deep already – we’re already a year into pre-production. Let’s just move forward and make this film, and it’ll be ours.
Blake Myers: The idea of content – it used to be called film and cinema, and used to be this thing that we would treasure. I’ve got to go to the movie theater because I really want to see this film, or I really want to go to the video store and seek out what kind of movie I’d like to see. [There] used to be this sort of adventure, and a quest involved in participating and watching a movie. But now when we come to the era where you sit on the couch and you have everything in front of you, it just kind of turns people’s consumption of media into this mindless, soft-serve, microwave dinner kind of thing, where it used to be the thing that you were really engaged with. I think that’s what our film really speaks to, is to try and get the viewer to think about what they’re watching, why they’re watching it, and really get impassioned about what they’re watching, and making as well.
Brian, you said you’ve noticed this sort of transition over the years, but was there some sort of turning point for you that sticks out in your mind?
Lonano: I think it was when Martin Scorsese wrote a letter about it. I forget what magazine it was or what newspaper it was. He was saying, how can films by [Federico] Fellini be called content in the same way that a cat video could? That really struck a fire in me.
When the opportunity arose, this company wanted us to make something for their streaming service. I said, well how about the idea of me talking about this cult movie, but then I get replaced by this hipper YouTube guy … and then he kind of has a short circuit in his brain and escapes and finds filmmakers from the “underground,” who are trying to battle this machine, these content seeking machines, and they thought that was a really great idea.
They agreed completely about not wanting to just be another service that uses an algorithm to help put media in front of people’s eyeballs. They like to curate. To Blake’s point earlier, the seeking out is such an important part of watching things.
Myers: It builds a community of people who want to engage with each other about what they love about cinema. And that’s the power of it all, that’s what’s enjoyable.
Lonano: I’m a huge fan and proponent of the movie going experience. I always want to go to the movies and see movies with people. Nowadays, everybody is so insulated. They can just put on YouTube and watch with their headphones on. And that could be good too – I’ve seen many films that way as well. But it definitely lacks the community experience. It’s a big difference watching a movie like the Japanese film “House,” which is a really wild, kaleidoscopic movie – it’s one thing to watch it by yourself, but then to watch it in a packed audience, on a big screen, it’s like a completely different experience. It’s like a religious experience.
I’m so glad you brought up that movie specifically. I watched it for the first time last year alone, and all I wanted to do when it was over was talk to somebody about it.
Lonano: It’s an amazing movie. That movie was a huge turning point. I saw it in 2009, and I only made a couple of films at that point after college. I was like, I can’t believe movies can be like this – this unhinged and this creative. It really inspired me.
Myers: I wanted to add, when the first era of YouTube came out, and we could put our films on YouTube, it was mind blowing. I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter how many film festivals I submit to and get rejected from … Here’s an outlet where I can instantly show my movie to potentially millions of people all around the world automatically. That was amazing. But now, 20 years have gone by.
You know, there’s a reason, and an idea for every sort of movie experience, whether it’s watching it at home on my laptop – I might want to see a movie that way. But then, maybe the second or third time I watch it, maybe it might be great to see that in a theater with people, to see if they also share that experience.
Why did you decide to use “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” as the sort of anchor film that’s referenced throughout the movie?
Myers: Because it’s awesome.
Lonano: Well, yes. It’s awesome, number one. The main thing was, we were talking about content. In my mind I was thinking, what’s a film that cannot be put into that square peg that’s content? And I felt like “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” is such a unique film, that it can only be known as a film or cinema. It’s not content. So I just took that as a great example of a movie that is so bizarre, so handmade, so unique, that it defies the word content.
Speaking of content, I really liked the production design and costumes throughout. And I noticed that the guards at the content factory had what looked like the equivalent of Mickey Mouse ears on their heads. I was wondering if you could talk about the inspiration for some of the production design – and let me know if I missed the mark on the Mickey Mouse comparison.
Lonano: Yeah, with that specifically, I’m making a direct line at Disney. I was getting upset with their absorption of the 20th Century Fox catalogue, and then withholding theaters from [hosting] repertory screenings of movies like “Alien.”
They’ve got a whole plethora of wonderful films that 20th Century Fox had made, and they’re just holding it in their vaults. I just felt like they were being a little unfair.
Myers: The design of the underground hub area where you see the Mickey Mouse stormtrooper guy, that was my favorite set that we really had to put together. That was just a normal basement, and we were really trying to show the empty nakedness of where content is made and how there’s nothing there. They’re just making gray on gray. You may have seen in the background, there’s a sign that says, “Content is made out of 100% recycled content” in a gray frame, on a gray piece of paper, with gray letters. That was a really fun thing to try to convey, going from this bright, crazy, weird YouTube channel to where it’s actually being made.
Our post-apocalyptic world was the back of a prop house here in Atlanta called CAPS [Central Atlanta Props and Sets], who were generous enough to let us shoot there. We really were lucky to be able to use that space and that environment.
The costumes, like the robot – me and Brian talked about all of our favorite robots and robot costumes from movie history. We both love Mexican, wild bonkers cinema. We looked at tons of Mexican sci-fi horror films and their robots. That was a huge inspiration. The film monster, I was just like, more stuff. What can we do that incorporates everything that’s a tactical, physical media source, that we can just strap to his body? At one point we were putting so much stuff on him, someone was like, Blake – you’re going to hurt him. I turned to Clarke [Williams], who was a trooper, and I was like can you handle more? He’s like, oh yeah! Keep on! I just kept zip-tying cameras to him over and over and over again.
Lonano: To go back to the basement real quick, right next to the bleak dystopian gray room, we had Clarke and all of his blu-rays and stuff. Initially, he was just going to walk from that set to this dystopian room. I think at the last minute, we said you know what would be great is if we just put him in front of a green screen, and we allude to the fact that he doesn’t even own any of those movies. Because that’s another issue that I have lately. I’m a big proponent of buying physical media and buying movies on disk, especially more obscure things. Because every now and again, it’ll be available on a streaming service and then it won’t be available anymore. And if you don’t have a physical copy, then it’s like, well, you don’t own this.
We thought since people are shying away from physical media in lieu of digital downloads or streaming, I just thought the most extreme example is this guy who claims to be a cinephile on YouTube with all these movies, he doesn’t even own them, you know? It’s just an illusion.
Blake, I’m glad you brought up your inspirations, like Mexican science fiction and horror. I wanted to know if there were any movies specifically that gave you guys inspiration? I personally got a lot of “Evil Dead” vibes, particularly in that transformation sequence. But I would love to hear from you all.
Myers: Of course, “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” was the major inspiration for the transformation sequence. But now you’re the second person to say “Evil Dead.” I don’t think we mentioned that one time.
Lonano: It’s not exactly one we were thinking of when we were making that, but “Tetsuo” obviously was at the forefront. And then, my brother Kevin, who edited the film, was heavily influenced by the editing style of movies by a Canadian filmmaker named Guy Maddin. He has a lot of quick editing and minimal set design and use of fog, and that’s in “Tetsuo” as well. That’s something I really love. I feel like the less you have in the background, and then you’re shooting in on film and you have fog – all of a sudden, the production value looks really, really good. It looks very theatrical, it’s very stylized. So yeah – “Tetsuo,” I would say “House” as well. “House” has a lot of elements that are pretty wild and unhinged, and they use every kind of trick there is to making a film.
Myers: When we were coming up with the characters of the three women filmmakers, we were talking to Toniet [Gallego] – our costume, make-up and hair person, who [we’ve] made tons of films with, she’s amazing. We were talking about the style that they would be.
[Filmmaker] Penelope Spheeris was one of our inspirations to draw on that, which led me to watching “Suburbia,” which I hadn’t watched in a long time. I was like, wow – this is a tough, rogue, kind of gritty film. The punk rock aspect of that film was something that I drew inspiration from. We had a little bit of a Spaghetti Western feel there too, for a second. And of course, Kaiju movies. We didn’t even mean to or plan for it to be like a Kaiju movie until we had both of our characters standing there ready to face off with each other – Content Seeker v. Lo-Fi Man.
Lonano: One other little detail about the costumes of the three filmmaker characters is their color schemes. They’re red, blue and green, which are the colors of three-strip technicolor film.
Myers: Kino, Wild Track, and B-Roll.
Lonano: Yeah, their names are Kino, Wild Track and B-Roll.
How long did it take to film in general, and specifically how long did it take to film that final confrontation?
Myers: I laugh, because me and Brian worked through this whole breakdown. We’re like, yeah we can get this done in like, three weekends! Right, Brian?
Lonano: Yeah, right.
Myers: Wrong.
Lonano: I think, if everything was put together, it may have taken us like a week. But it’s a week span over two years, technically. We had one day in December of 2021, then we had two days in April, a day in May, two days in June, a day in July, a day in August, a day in September. And one time, it’s just to get one shot. Like, when we got the shot of the robot melting, we actually had to go all the way out to – where were we, again? Douglasville?
Myers: No, farther. I wanted to mention, we were thinking about doing it at my house. I live in Roswell in a neighborhood. And then I thought about, hmm – setting it on fire in my neighborhood? No. So we had to go to McDonough, to Nik Morgan, the [set] decorator’s house, because he lives pretty far out there and he has a big piece of land we could do this on. First day we were there? It’s pouring down rain. We were dedicated to getting this done, and we even got it all set up. We’re like, well, we can kind of do it right on the edge of the house, and film it from the carport. We’re getting ready to set up, I’m starting to pack it up – just about to start putting the flammable stuff. And I was like, we need to not do this [laughs]. This is breaking rule number one, safety to people. So we stopped everything, packed it up, called it a day. We came back, I think it was two weeks later on a beautiful day.
Lonano: There were some concentrated weekends, where we were getting a lot of filming done. But then there was like, we have to go here for this afternoon to get this hot, or we need to get some of this stop motion and animation done, and then there was this pick-up that we needed. There was some stuff where we were putting it together in the edit, and we were like, we need a shot here to connect these two shots. So there was a lot of going back and reshooting some stuff, but also getting some other angles that we didn’t necessarily have or would help make the edit go smoother.
We planned a whole year before that, so the whole thing was storyboarded and planned out before we even shot anything. That’s a good thing to have handy, in case you have to throw it out and kind of think on your feet. At least you have a sort of foundation of, well these are the shots we need to convey.
“CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man” will play at the Plaza Theatre on April 21. You can purchase tickets here.
