One Day One Month One Year Film Spotlight
Today’s film spotlight focuses on the short film One Day One Month One Year directed by Nik Fackler.
What is the title of your film and what inspired said title?
The title of the Series is HIDDEN PLACES, but Episode 1 is titled “One Day, One Month, One Year”. This title was inspired by the format of the film’s three act structure. I wanted to create a story where each act was a different moment in person’s life after dealing with a non specific trauma. It could be a break up. A death. Whatever the audience wanted to project onto it. Act one is one day after the event, act 2 is one month after, and act 3 is a year after.
Tell us a little bit about the story and origins of your film.
In September of 2014 I got married. At that time, I had zero understanding of contemporary and modern dance, but I married a dancer. (It’s worth noting that my wife, Kat, is also the lead in the film). Kat challenged me to work in a new medium she was calling Screendance – where I would film a piece of choreography of the Dance Collective she helped to create and edit it in a completely different way. It was really fun and exciting to basically create new choreography through editing. This collaboration continued until I finally started getting a hang of working with and filming dance in way to kind of tell a story. The first official short film we created together was this one.
Any films or filmmakers that inspired this film?
From a dancing perspective, I don’t have much that was inspired this film. But watching this film back, I can really see the Terrence Malick inspiration. The focus on moments in nature in order to tell an emotional story.
What is the goal of the film for you?
The goal of this film was to explore the relationship between movement and storytelling, as well as work with my wife and the dance collective she works with, tbd. Dance Collective (tbddancecollective.org). (They will be the first to tell you, I am their biggest fan.)
I had spent a lot of time away from filmmaking and this short was a way for me to get back into the medium. So it was a two part goal – Throw myself back into filmmaking after taking a 6 year break and to learn a new style of filmmaking through dance.
What has the journey been like getting the film into production?
This was a low budget film. I think the end budget was about 3k. So the journey to production was one of asking for favors and creating a team of people, mostly the dancers themselves to help design the end product. It was a two person crew, the DP Ben Dricky the DP and his AC Logan. Ben put in a lot of man hours and did an amazing job. But every other role was tbd. Dance Collective. They was were not only the stars, choreographers, and producers. They were also the costume designers, production designers, and PAs. It really was a team effort that all started with this film and lead to the three following in the series.
One thing you learned from this project?
I learned through this project, that there is a lot of power in keeping a story vague. Keeping things simple can help open the doors of imagination within the audience. When we premiered this film live (alongside a live dance performance), audience members would come up to me and each one would have a different interpretation of the story. The most powerful being someone who just had lost their husband and had a truly cathartic experience watching the film.
How can folks find you and your film online?
Currently, this episode can be viewed online on ALTRD.TV. After signing up for ALTRD (a truly interesting and unique streaming platform that started as a platform for drug culture and is slowly turning into a great outlet for experimental and psychedelic cinema).
Episode 2 will release the following Sunday (July 17th). The final episode will air the Sunday after that (July 24th)
Any last pieces of advice for fellow filmmakers?
Make film not content.
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