“Unlocking the Secrets of Interactive Storytelling: Gavin Michael Booth Reveals How to Captivate Audiences in Episode 533 of SYS Podcast!”
Gavin Michael Booth
I’m obsessed with single take films. I had loved what Mike Figgis did with Timecode, the movie Russian Arc, which is absolute insanity. That’s the first one to do a feature that way. Rope with Alfred Hitchcock, yes, there are hidden cuts just due to the limitation of film running out after 10 or 12 minutes in a film canister. I’ve done a bunch of single take music videos, but that’s more on the gimmick side of things. You hear the word gimmick used a lot when it comes to a technique like single take. To me, you can’t make a single take movie if it’s just going to be the gimmick of like, oh, we did it. Cause there’s no reason to do it for the gimmick because editing would give most movies a better finished version, a better polish. It has to be key to the story. The same with even if you just have like a Spielberg one or in a single scene, there’s got to be a reason that you want the camera to not stop, why you want to give the audience that tension. In terms of marketing it, we felt we had made a good film, but you don’t know what’s going to happen until you screen it for the public. Thankfully, the public embraced it. Our sort of first screening was at the Chinese theater, dances with film festival, sold out, tons of people sobbing. We got a standing ovation, like beyond our wildest dreams of the reception to the film. But marketing, it was tough. Cause you tell me like, oh, we have the split screen, one take movie, and everyone just kind of rolls their eyes and goes, oh, you did one of those, great. I was like, no, but the story’s really good. But until you get that first audience of those first reviews, it actually worked against us in terms of marketing.
