For those who have been following My Other Me, the cosplay documentary for the past few years, they're getting their premiere on Nov. 2nd 5 pm. in Vancouver at the Rio Grind Film Festival screening at the Rio Theate. More info here. Tickets available here.
Around March 2011, I had interviewed Josh Laner, the director of the documentary who was based in Vancouver, Canada about his film.
Read the interview after the jump
To start off, can you tell me a bit about "My Other Me: A Film About Cosplayers" and about yourself as well as how you got involved in this ?
"My Other Me: A film about cosplayers" is a year long look into the lives of 3 distinctly different cosplayers: a veteran cosplayer whom launched a career from cosplay, a young fourteen year old first timer, and a transgender whom found himself through cosplay. The documentary will cover everything from each different cosplayers home life, to their costume process, their journey through the convention circuit, and the profound effect cosplay is making on each of their lives as it grows with them.
I'm a film and television editor with over 12 years of experience working behind the scenes in a variety of roles. I moved from California to Vancouver, BC 3 years ago and shortly after arriving here I made my first feature documentary film "Wastings & Pain" about homeless drug addicts in the downtown east side of Vancouver. It has won a few awards including the "Royal Reel Award" from the Canada International Film Festival.
I first had the idea for this film back in the summer of 2009 when a convention centre near me was hosting an anime fest. I saw lots of people walking around near the convention centre dressed in costumes and immediately recognized some of the more popular video game characters. Having grown up playing D&D and video games and being a huge Star Wars fan I followed a few of them to see what they were doing. I was blown away by the creativity and dedication they all seemed to share and I thought it was really cool that this group of people could come together like this. I spent the rest of that weekend taking pictures of them awed by their friendliness and excitement. It was that weekend I knew I would make this my next documentary film project.
Once you had the idea in your head for the project, how did you come to the decision of following three cosplayers and structuring the framework of the documentary in that fashion ? What was the original thought process and how did you go about with pre-prod ?
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to follow 3-5 cosplayers to give a nice balanced look into the culture. The structural idea of spending a year with them was influenced by Lucas aka Twinfools our transgender cosplayer. He's undergoing so many physical and mental changes with his hormone therapy and chest surgery I saw it as a good way to show his progression. Just in the brief period of time that I've known him his voice has dropped at least 3 octaves and I think that's an exciting transformation to watch because it means so much to him.
Pre-production mostly focused on finding the right cosplayers to be our "main" 3. We totally lucked out when we found Danae aka Rifa, she was working as a costume designer on a small production with many members from the production company involved with this film: High Deaf Productions. Danae had won a scholarship to a design school based on one of her cosplay designs and knows a ton of amazing cosplayers. She introduced us to Lucas and we found Lilly aka SecretAttire our "newbie" because she's a big fan of Lucas's cosplay and DeviantArt page.
( Matthew Tingey and Josh Laner )
How long was the process to nail down the three ? It actually sounds like it went pretty fast ! And as for the actual filming, how was the logistics of the filming ? Following multiple people, having them miked, and especially if they are in a convention environment sounds so chaotic !
September 2010 is when I first met Danae, it was no more than a week or so later that I met Lucas. We didn't find Lilly until after Xmas time 2010. I was hoping we'd find the "newbie" a lot sooner because I went and filmed with our "main" characters to make a new teaser/trailer and had to leave her out of it to have it ready before our first fest just this past weekend. The teaser/trailer has been instrumental in helping us create a buzz within the cosplay community as well as the film community.
The logistics have been a bit tricky so far, Tsukino Con was our first fest and luckily it's smaller than your average con so we used it as an opportunity to work out some kinks.
We're using 2 one person camera teams. The A-roll camera is our Canon 5D being followed by our sound-man with a boom mic, we expect some noise in the convention halls. The B-roll camera is our Canon 7D and has a small video mic attached but is used more for "color" than sound. All the important interviews will be done with the A-roll camera. We made sure to try to have all our cosplayers stay in the same hotel so we could just go from room to room to watch them get ready. Our "newbie" who is accompanied by her Grandparents was in a much nicer hotel but we managed to get to her before she went out to the con the first day. It's a juggling act for sure but if Tsukino Con was any indicator then it's going to work pretty well and be a lot of fun to shoot.
Smaller cons are great to test out before hitting the bigger cons. I field tested my current photo booth concept at PMX and Katsucon before heading out to larger cons. I used to have to fly into a city and rent equipment from local camera houses but learn to condense everything to be more portable. Be prepare because you're jumping from Tsukino Con, a 1,000+ con to SakuraCon, an 18,000+ con ^^ Just thank your stars, you're not doing Anime Expo, a 40,000+ con or San Diego Comic Con, 130,000+ con.
What's the time frame for your documentary ? Do you have on gathering footage for the rest of the year and start editing in 2012 ?
I was actually at Comic-Con back in 1993 or 1994 I was playing drums in a band at the time and we were playing a big opening party with a few other bands and there were so many technical difficulties it was nearly impossible for us to even finish a song. The band after us was well known at San Diego University which is well known for lots of drinking and I was being threatened by their fans to get off the stage or risk bodily injury, while I was trying to play drums! LOL. I knew nothing about cosplay back then and couldn't wait to get out of San Diego.
We plan on shooting this entire year. We'll visit each of our main characters once every 1 or 2 months at their homes or work or school if possible. There is a cosplay birthday party at a local park next week, Danae turns 21 the night before SakuraCon, itself, Lucas is marrying his longtime girlfriend in the summer, Cos & Effect a brand new anime festival in the Vancouver area risen from the ashes of the recently defunct Anime Evolution in August, Lilly is leaving homeschooling to begin a "regular" school agenda... You get the idea.
I've always been a fan of surrealism and abstract art. Last year I went on an homage to visit the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, Spain so my film influences tend to be the more surreal filmmakers: Bunuel, Jodorowsky, Brakhage so I'm just waiting for 16mm film to be the hip media again. Don't get me wrong though, the quality of picture from a RED camera or even just a 5D is stunning and the fact that at the end of the day I can edit all of this and turn it into a movie watchable on the big screen from my home-office is pretty cool.
lol, I prefer film as a storage media - I'm not sure how stable digital files will be in 50 years time. Will Photoshop 29 open a Photoshop CS3 file ? I am also completely shocked at how the industry (photography) has changed in a decade's time. The world I started in doesn't exist anymore - I can't even remember the last time I shot film.
Anyways, enough of me rambling about the state of technology, let's talk about cosplay. Now that you've been in the trenches for a while, how do you describe cosplay to folks unaware of this culture ? And was there a moment that it really clicked in your head that such a creative world is right under our noses and some people just don't realized it.
I'm pretty sure my description is as generic as it can get about cosplay. I honestly still feel like an outsider to the scene, this past weekend was the first time I felt like people were warming up to us and we had some serious bro-bonding among the cast and crew, which was much needed. I tell people it's the ultimate form of fandom be it for anime, manga, video games or any pop-culture icon.
The light went on the first time I saw cosplayers walking down the street in my neighborhood back in 2009. It just reminded me of being a D&D fan and being told things like I was going to hell for playing the game and all I thought was I was just using my imagination and having fun. I could never make sense of the fear of reading or using your brain to create fantastic worlds to explore. I see cosplayers using that same sense of imagination and exploration.
Thanks a lot Josh !
Edit : Looks like they used my image for the basis of their flyer ! Yay !
