With both his shorts Orphans and 27,000 Days, Naveen Singh plays with the experimental narrative, molding it this way and that to settle in some raw emotion, a conceit that pulls him as far away from the intellectual as his work is inherently that. Where in Orphans Singh explores morality and survival, his masked soldiers predators of vulnerable men, women and children, in 27,000 Days Singh sets his gaze on one father and husband struggling with his memory, his familial bonds and the deterioration of both. However often labeled an experimental filmmaker though, Singh doesn't consider himself one among that class.

"27,000 Days, for example, which has been screened at many festivals as an experimental film, I see more as an innovative narrative that’s fragmented, and I cherry-picked certain techniques, either overtly or just through subconscious osmosis, that I find effective," he explains. "With respect to Orphans, I find that movie even more narrative in that it’s a chase movie."

Why the emphasis on abstractions, obscurity and experimental juxtapositions though, even within a coherent narrative flow? "It was just something that interested me internally, less so intellectually," he says.

So, it's instinct perhaps? We'll take that.

SM: How did you first conceive the narrative and then work with the editing to explain that narrative? In my mind, I can’t dissociate the two from one another.

NS: I knew at least instinctually, if not intellectually, that the script was going to be a template. You get that old cliché about the script being a blueprint, and that was true more so for this short than any other short that I’ve worked on.

The film, as you can imagine, really came to life in the editing. A lot of things that I thought were going to work, either on set or conceptually in my mind’s eye when I was writing, turned out not to be the case. Sometimes that’s debilitating and depressing, but many times it’s just happy accidents that occur. It actually becomes a really good thing, and I think 27,000 Days benefited from many, many, many happy accidents.

SM: Being outside a linear structure, the relationship with time in the short is interesting in the sense that we don’t always know when or where we are. What was the relationship with time that you and (editor Jeremy Phillips) had to form to edit this piece together?

NS: (Jeremy and I) had a conceit, which was that (the father) was dying of a terminal disease which was affecting his brain and therefore, in affecting his brain, we would have creative leeway to jump around in time more freely than we would otherwise. So, it became a device—I hate to use the term—to get us to and fro in time. Really what we were playing against was the element of the past encroaching upon the present and what we, as viewers, believe is the present, but even what (the father)’s writing is sort of a memory. It’s like we’re viewing it just moments after it occurs. So, it was simply juxtaposing some moment in the past that was gnawing at him that he kept buried and submerged and this present looming future, and this future, of course, was death.

SM: (The editing) felt rhythmic, not that it was perfectly timed like, “Oh, we’ve got thirty seconds, throw that beach shot in…,” but I was trying to figure out what that rhythm was.

NS: We achieved it organically but methodically through a lot of trial and error, and really what it came down to was, “What moment felt right emotionally more than intellectually?” We had an intellectual set-up with respect to the conceit of his disease, which we use to set up the movie, but afterwards it became an establishment of pacing that was at once organic and simulated someone having a rash of memories, and hence a lot of the faster cutting, but at the same time having critical memories occur at more strategic places. For instance, the image of his wife in the sari in black-and-white, which occurs early on in the movie—that’s simply designed to do two things. One, it’s a beautiful image, and two, it’s designed so that it sticks out in your mind as a viewer for when it comes back as slightly decayed—there’s a bit of superimposition with other materials on it—and is a very brief precursor to his mind collapsing in on itself, which is why it’s so chaotic and Stan Brakhage-like toward the end.

SM: I was wondering if I should bring up Stan Brakhage.

NS: Oh, you have to! You have to. As you can probably tell, he was an incredible influence, especially in the year preceding the film. What someone calls an homage, I call just a rip-off of Stan Brakhage.

SM: It’s that piece that makes you aware that this is all memory, a science that you’re manipulating in a way…

You were talking about the image of the wife in the sari, and by no means did I want to skip over (cinematographer Bryon Cunningham)’s work. So, I was hoping that you could talk about how you guys worked on shot design and figured out what was important for coverage.

NS: Many experimental films are usually very small scale in crew, and it’s usually the filmmaker doing a lot if not everything. So, opening up to many other people, I had to narrativize a few things which were maybe more oblique or abstract. But, when talking with Brian, we would talk like many other directors and DPs would talk. We would talk about emotionally what the mood was, what we wanted the viewer to feel, and in general, in the black-and-white scenes especially, the scenes where he’s writing, it’s just meant to convey a sense of—intimate loneliness, I suppose, is one way to put it. The protagonist is obviously alone in his own world not only physically alone but also psychologically and emotionally alone. So, those scenes are lit that way.

For example, I had Brian look at a critical scene towards the end of Schlinder’s List, where Schlinder is bribing an SS official. It takes place in the SS officer’s office at night, and it’s noir-like. This film doesn’t have too many noir elements persay, but that type of black-and-white was meant to be clean and pristine so that when you juxtapose it with Super 8, the memories were rougher and raw. Also, the separation between the two was more apparent.

Singh later in the interview mentions the importance of sound design for 27,000 Days as well. Following are his thoughts on that aspect of the film.

NS: 27,000 Days was a unique experience, and the reason that I wanted to do the sound design was—obviously the film was personal for me—but it also represented to me a unique sound designing opportunity that’s not in your run of the mill film. For example, a car drives by, see the car, hear the car. This was very subjective, and although I’ve never composed anything, I’d imagine it’s similar to arranging music in that you create different layers of sound, foreground sound and background sound, to get what creates the best atmosphere and subconscious mood for the viewer.

SM: I also don’t want to skip over talking about Orphans... The interesting thing for me about that film was that you literally had to create all of the emotion through the editing. We got some emotion through the shot design, but because so many of the characters wear (non-descript) masks, it’s very difficult to deal with any ideas of their emotion visually…How did you go about editing that piece as well and dealing with the emotionality of that piece?

NS: This was a few years ago now, but finding those masks at the time was really difficult. Since then I’ve seen those masks in other TV shows and an indie movie here or there, which sort of makes me laugh. But, we needed to find specific masks because they needed to be placid, but the viewer needed to be able to project their own thoughts or feelings about what was going on beneath the mask so to speak.

In terms of editing on Orphans,...the general feel of that movie was to start slow, amp up and then release. It’s a general and simplistic way to look at it, but we simply wanted to use the editing as a means to convey menace. You don’t see the soldiers, for instance, for quite a while in that movie, and when they show up, it’s as if they emerge out of the fog in the forest. By the end, the soldiers are silently conferring with one another about what to do, and they go about and perform their task.

SM: Another interesting thing for me about the film is that the chase scene is fast, but it also seemed so slow. In my head, I imagine that’s what a chase scene would actually be like.

NS: With respect to the chase, for the person running away, it may seem endless in a way, it may seem slow. For the people hunting, the prey is moving quickly, and in order for them to get a proper shot off, they need a moment to ready themselves. They’re not armed with automatics but bolt action riffles, so it’s difficult for them to shot on the run, which is why when they do shoot, it’s at moments where they’ve set themselves and can be still, especially just before that wide shot when the main protagonist is gunned down.

The difference between speed and slowness in the chase, or the perception of slowness, sort of became a subconscious choice where on the one hand, there were soldiers chasing something quickly but, on the other hand, the person running from them can’t get away fast enough.

SM: You’ve brought this idea up twice, of something being instinctual or unconscious. Do you feel as if a lot of your filmmaking comes out of that gut reaction, that even as much as you try to intellectualize, you have to depend on that gut instinct?

NS: Absolutely. If I intellectualize something, it becomes sometimes very crippling because you start to analyze even before you do anything. Then not only do you second guess yourself but you start to deconstruct yourself and your ideas. I don’t think that’s particularly healthy for a filmmaker. I think it’s better to go in on your own instincts and subconscious and see what develops from that rather than trying to pre-construct something overtly. Obviously, it’s not that you don’t plan anything. It’s analogous to a writer constructing some scene and then writing as opposed to writing and then eliciting a scene from the writing. I think the latter is far more productive at least for me.

SM: So, eliciting the scene from the writing?

NS: Absolutely, after the fact as opposed to perhaps pigeonholing something into a scene where it often yields something didactic or cliché.

SM: What is your relationship with writing? When an idea comes, or when you begin to conceive of something, where does that come from?

NS: I don’t know if I have an overt writing process. I find influences or kernels of ideas from just a myriad of sources—obviously, from movies, from other forms of art, painting, music, reading. Since I’d been in film school, my reading had plummeted if you could graph it. Now that I’m out, I’ve rediscovered the lost joy of reading.

I often find that when I’m trying to write things, it’s much more productive when you’re reading. The two are both imaginative. On the one hand, when you’re writing, you’re imagining new worlds and situations, and when you’re reading, you’re imagining what someone else has written. The two become very visual in that sense. They inform one another, and they feed each other, even if what you’re reading is entirely different from what you’re writing.

For me, I collect scattered thoughts that occur to me, even when I’m not writing. Mostly you’re in the shower, you’re driving or doing something completely unrelated to writing. You get an idea, and you jot it down wherever you can. Then you see if that idea works for you after a few days, after you sleep on it, and you’re like, “That’s a lousy idea. I’m not going to worry about that.” But, the best ones are the ones you keep coming back to, you keep regurgitating in some way, shape or form.

SM: Based of that, I have to ask you what you’re reading right now.

NS: Right now, I’m reading Herzog on Herzog, edited by Paul Kronin. Werner Herzog became a late influence on 27,000 Days. I loved his approach and some of his philosophy on filmmaking, life and, just his demeanor, the guy is hilarious.

…He came to the New Beverly in Los Angeles here, and one of the kids had asked him, and I was just eavesdropping, listening to hear what he would say, about moviemaking and how you get funding. I’m just paraphrasing and paraphrasing badly, but he was just saying that it doesn’t matter what you do, how you get the money, start a brothel, steal something, do anything, get the money to get a camera and make the movie. It was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s the Werner Herzog way.

SM: It’s good to jump off that comment to talk about low-budget, DIY filmmaking and film school. I know you’d gone to USC. What is that space for you now being out of school? Do you miss it at all?

NS: Once you get out of school, it feels like a massive burden has been lifted. I felt revitalized in a way because I felt like I was entering something new. It’s a little scary being out of school, but I was entering something new because that part of my life was over with. I’ll always be a film student, but it just won’t be formally at school.

I do miss being around a lot of people who are just obsessed with talking about movies at all times. I’m still in touch with (27,000 Days editor Jeremy Phillips) a lot and a few other people, but it’s not the same environment where you’re surrounded by it all the time. You sort of have to do the work yourself, watch movies, etcetera. There were some critical faculty members who were critical in helping me throughout school and on 27,000 Days. I regret not being able to be around them as often. But, overall I feel ready to move on to doing features. I’ll always probably make short films here and there, but I feel that natural progression to go on to bigger and better things.

For more information, visit www.27000daysfilm.com.

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