Journalism takes a strange turn in Sound of My Voice, a thriller directed by Zal Batmanglij (yes, Rostam's brother). The film focuses on a journalist and his girlfriend who investigates a cult led by a figure who claims she is from the future (they don't teach you that in 201-1).
The film, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, received a wide release on April 27. While in anticipation of the film, distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures created an innovative preview experience on the film's website, which included the first 12 minutes of the film along with interactive annotations.
North by Northwestern sat down with actress and co-writer Brit Marling to discuss director Batmanglij's vision and the film's out-of-the-box marketing campaign.
North by Northwestern: What aesthetically inspires this movie the most, the look of it and the really distinct colors?
Brit Marling: Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. Zal’s an incredible director, incredible filmmaker. And even from his earliest shorts that he was making, or photographs, or websites, it doesn’t matter, his name doesn’t need to be on it. Like you can look at it and you’re like, "Oh, that’s a Zal film." Or that is a Zal image. And in this movie, it’s fascinating.
His tone is particularly potent, and I think it’s something about the basement imagery. He was very obsessed with things being tea colored, and everything had a very deliberate color palette. Like the cult wears all white and he wanted it to feel this like sort of oppressive white-on-white, but instead of everything being dark, and darkness being thrilling or scary, that you’re actually in this space where things are like white and light colored. But it’s eerie and unsettling in the way that all these sort of suburban cookie-cutter houses with their like wall-to-wall white carpeting and white walls and electrical outlets are sort of terrifying.
So he worked really closely with the DP and with the production designer and with the costume designer on making sure that nothing enters the frame that’s outside of that tea-colored palette, with the exception of Abigail’s red hat and, of course, that’s deliberate.
NBN: When you write, do you focus more on dialogue and action or is there any thought of putting visuals into writing and setting themes that way?
BM: That’s interesting. I mean, screenwriting reminds me of writing poetry, you know? Everything is part for the whole. Unlike a novel where you can sort of wind your way through it, and you can be describing something and you can, you know, wax on for a page about the condensation on a glass in the summertime.
With screenwriting, everything has to be brief, and you’re looking to say one or two things about a character and get at the heart of them, and you’re doing that with the dialogue, and you’re doing that with the scene description and then you’re ultimately doing that with what scenes are in the film and what images you choose.
I think Zal and I, when we’re writing together, do think that way. We do think in terms of this idea of a car cutting through these ink-blank streets and the street lamps casting these orange cones of light down the car, and that’s sort of the beginning feeling of the film, the eeriness of suburbia at night, you know? Like, what can potentially be within one of these basements of these many houses that look the same?
So yes, I think imagery does play a big part of the writing and then, of course, I think Zal takes over as a director and I disappear into actor-land, and what he is able to realize and achieve is always wildly beyond whatever we collectively were dreaming of in the writing room. And that’s his insanely talented gift as a director.
NBN: Who devised the idea of having the website (which showcases the first 12 minutes of the film) be interactive and stopping it at certain points and to note important things?
BM: Yes, you know, we loved that too. That was Searchlight, and [Creative Director] Graham Retzik and his group at Searchlight. I mean, the marketing is amazing. They really have a way of taking on stories that are sometimes complicated, you know, not easily sellable stories and figuring out a way to like get to the truth of them in the marketing, and so they get an audience to connect with them.
I mean, they did that incredibly well with Little Miss Sunshine or Black Swan. I mean, anything that – all these movies are not obvious movies to market. And the same is true with Sound of My Voice. I mean, Sound of My Voice is, you know, is sort of a mystery/thriller with a bit of sci-fi, you know? It’s a lot of genres in one.
And I think that Graham and the team there really understood the tone of the film. It’s like an exploration, that Peter and Lorna are boy and girl detectives. It’s like a young couple on this like journey together, and the marketing in the first 12 minutes sort of feels like that. You’re allowed, as the viewer, to explore yourself and if something interests you, you can go deeper. And I think the idea that you can go through all these portals into this different world – listen to Dr. Bronner’s speech about soap or follow one of the cult members to revisiting Maggie’s bathroom – it’s the kind of stuff that I would like to see more of. I want to get involved in the narrative. And I don’t know, hopefully other people sort of got into it and thought it was a cool way to do something beyond just a trailer.