By: Blake Simons
Teddy Williams
Eduardo ‘Teddy’ Williams is a filmmaker driven by connection and curiosity, exploring how we convene across borders and barriers geographical, linguistic and technological. His first feature, The Human Surge, linked three segments: the first in Buenos Aires, the second in Maputo, and the third in Bohol. In this intriguingly-titled sequel, The Human Surge 3, spanning Sri Lanka, Peru, and Taiwan, these separations are dissolved until we’re no longer entirely sure where or what we’re looking at.
But what we can see is spectacular: shot with a 360-degree camera, and ‘directed’ and edited in VR, The Human Surge 3 is a mesmeric and disorienting work that plays with cinematic form like putty until it reshapes into something entirely new.
With the film now on general release in the U.S. from Grasshopper Film, I spoke with Eduardo over Zoom, our conversation occasionally and appropriately interrupted by little glitches and technical hiccups. In what was a laidback but introspective discussion, we probed his expanding of the project outwards, the creation of an atypical queer space on screen, his experience directing through a VR headset, the future potentialities and current limitations of VR cinema, and his connection and disconnection from the contemporary Argentine cinema scene.
Blake Simons: You're venturing more into the outdoors here, out of confined spaces into the open air. The first Human Surge is a lot of corridors, crawl spaces, and interiors, whereas The Human Surge 3 feels wide, outdoors, and expansive. What compelled you to take things more fully outdoors this time?
Eduardo Williams: There wasn’t a conscious reason for being less inside, I think. I don't modify any place, inside or outside. Sometimes the person that we see is not the real person that lives there, but other people I meet that share their rooms or their houses with me.
A more obvious question perhaps, but why skip ‘The Human Surge 2’ and go straight to The Human Surge 3?
I thought a sequel would be interesting. All my films could be like a sequel of the other one in some way. But I thought leaving in an empty space was interesting. I thought also it's logical with the way I write and how my films are. They always leave empty spaces.
I thought it would be a bit maybe curious or funny to have a sequel for this type of film, which usually don't have sequels or at least are not labelled in this way, you know, as blockbusters do. And also nice to leave a space that can be filled in the future or not.
Still from The Human Surge 3 (2023)
You shot this film across multiple countries. You went to Sri Lanka, Peru, and Taiwan, and you brought your actors with you from place to place. I really like the effect that that creates of a kind of global decentralized space.
Yeah! It was for me a very important idea for this film, and a different one. One of the main differences maybe with my others, and with the previous film, was that I was the person traveling. I now wanted to share this experience with the people we see in the camera. Some of the technicians behind the camera also travelled, but I wanted the spectator to also see the people in one place and the other.
The main reason was that I was curious - you know, many of the things I do, I don't know exactly what the result will be - but I was curious of me not being the only one sharing this experience. I was so curious about what this combination of cultures and languages would give to the film. And I didn't know what would happen.
So that was a good reason to do it. We are more and more used to seeing filmmakers traveling, but not so much in this type of film to seeing the people in the image also traveling. I thought that was important.
And I think I also relate. For me, traveling is very special, as you see, and I started traveling thanks to cinema. Before, I didn't travel outside my country. So I also was curious about sharing this experience with people that also were traveling for the first time.
For me, my first trips were very important in understanding or experiencing a different thing, different languages, different air, different feeling of the air, you know, so many things that I wanted to share with other people. I thought it would be interesting because the structure of the film this time is not like in the previous one, like one country after the other. I didn't know from the beginning exactly what the structure was going to be, but I knew that where we are was not going to dictate the structure. I was thinking about other things, no matter where we were, and how to structure the film. I thought this traveling with the people would give me this opportunity of making the connection of the countries more fluid.
We have a scene with two Sri Lankan actors in Peru, and some people might notice we are in Peru, some others won't. Then we have actors from Taiwan and Peru interacting in Taiwan. Everything is more mixed and less clear. It is quite disorientating.
I like that about the film a lot. It feels in a way- do you know the website GeoGuessr, where you have a place and you don't know where exactly it is? It feels like a film version of that almost, in that you remove the clarity of the local aspect, but it’s also very much grounded in that local aspect. So it's a curious effect.
I didn't know.
How long was your shoot overall?
I went to each country one month and a half, which is the same time I did before. I always want to go for more time. I mean, as much time as I can be in each place the better, but money-wise it’s always a bit complicated. The shooting in each country was ten days. I go for one month and a half, and the last ten days, more or less, are the shooting days.
And how much of your dialogue was scripted and how much of it was improvised or devised?
There's a bit of everything. I don't know exactly how much, but there are scenes that are totally written, scenes that are totally improvised. Most of the scenes are a bit of a mixture between improvisation and written dialogues, and also transformed dialogues. Many of the written dialogues are transformed by each person who says them.
Translations transform dialogues a lot. Sometimes there's like four or five translations since I write it until it gets back to me in a language I can understand. And then there's different ways of improvising, different inclinations on when to say the text that is written.
Sometimes they can choose the moment to bring that phrase. Sometimes it's more like ‘when you are passing by this place, you have to say this’. It's different ways of coming in and out of inventing or not inventing or repeating or thinking or just being intuitive, etc.
I read that you focused on casting actors from LGBTQ communities globally. Could you elaborate on that decision? Because I thought that was particularly interesting.
Yes. I mean, first of all, I'm curious. I think it's interesting to share different ways of being queer and LGBT in different parts of the world. I think we are always used to looking at the same countries, not only LGBT-wise, but in every sense. And that's why I want to do films in countries that are not usually related. I also wanted to work in a queer environment as much as I could. Before when I travelled, I just did what I could when I was more in survival mode maybe, so I didn't focus on this.
But I realized if I didn't focus on this, then, in the end, I worked in a totally non-LGBT and queer environment. So I needed to look for this more actively. And in the film, I think it was interesting for me to create a bit this fantasy where being queer in many different ways is what just happens, you know, in a very organic way. Which is not the case in many places, you know. In some places, I don't know, in Sri Lanka, I think it's very different to be queer than in Iquitos in Peru.
And so that was interesting. The exchange would always also be touching on this. We are not speaking about this very directly in the film, but for me, this was because I just wanted to be the fantasy where being queer is just what it is, in a very organic way. And for me, the film tries to share this.
That's a very admirable goal. I think you execute that really beautifully.
I want to ask you on a very different note: You edited the film and you chose the camera turns and framing in VR after the shoot. How did it affect the shoot and your process to essentially defer the act of looking and the act of framing to post-production? Because I find that fascinating.
Yeah, for me, it's very interesting, too. I did this for my previous short film called Parsi, and I wanted to try it again for a feature film, for a more narrative film, for a different type of film.
And so, yeah, I mean it changes things in many ways. The main reason for me doing this, which I knew before, and then I discovered one thing during the film, was that framing is always important in a film. It shows how we observe and how we look at the others, how we spend time with the others and how we look at not only the other humans, but the places where we are.
For me, I was curious about what would happen for our feature film when we change the moment in which we think about framing. Usually, we think about framing during the shooting and our minds are occupied in many things. Now I could think about the framing afterwards in post-production, and all my mind is thinking about that.
And also the physical relation to framing, you know. It's very different what you look at, what you want to look at when it's just moving your head like this than when you have a camera in your hands and you are shooting and if you want to look there to take that decision, you have to like, you know, move the camera.
Something I didn't know before, but I thought about while I was doing this one is that I framed all the film in one take. So I didn't have to frame scene by scene. I edited the two hours of the film on the computer and then I saw them in the headset all together. So for me, it was interesting, first of all, to see what happened when we were framing in continuity one scene after the other. And also I think how I'm looking, how I'm framing and how I'm looking at what happens in the end is because I was watching the two hours as the spectators do. I think these changes of mental and physical relation to framing are interesting and can be done in many different ways.
Of course, this was my way of doing it. But for me, in the end, the important thing is like, I think the film in many ways tries to like look for different possibilities, let's say, and how we look at each other and how we spend time together. I think the film shows this in a very special way.
And I also don't make the film expecting anyone to be thinking about technical stuff. I don't make it for people who know what VR is, who know what a 360 camera is, but just to feel, to wonder why are we seeing each other in this way, why these glitches are happening. I also really liked how this 360 camera creates so many images that are very common for most of us nowadays, in video games or Google Maps or security cameras, depending on how they move.
So I thought it was interesting to take these types of images that are very common for many of us, but to a different context in cinema, in the big screen, in a narration that is very different from what we can see on the internet, etc. I thought this relation between common images taken to a new place would be interesting.
I want to pick up on what you said about the video game link, because in a way, the meandering and distracted gaze that you've got with your camera and the paths that it takes, it makes the film formally feel perhaps a bit akin to watching someone else play a video game. It's like watching someone else's playthrough. And in a sense, we are watching someone else's playthrough, because we're watching you direct and edit the footage in VR.
So what was the editing process like? Because in a way, you're playing your own film as an experience, which I find interesting.
Yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. That's why I do it. And it was interesting, of course.
Also, I have the mind, let's say, of a filmmaker, in the sense that I'm doing the experience, but I am also thinking I'm framing a film. So it's a very specific way of going through that.
I mean, of course, for some scenes, when I shot them, I had an idea more or less of where I wanted to look. And in some cases, it was a similar result in the end. But for others, it was different.
Sometimes I thought I didn't want to look at what I thought was the focus of the scene anymore. I started going around. Then this like circling movement of the camera started coming up when I was framing.
I think this is important because this circling movement goes like - it's more and more. In the end, we have this spiral that takes us out like of the image in some way and takes us to another place, a very different place. I realized I could look in other ways and do other movements. But I don't know if I'm answering your question, really.
Was it the post-production nature of the directing that led you to look in places you might not have looked at otherwise? Because while you’re there present in the space, you probably find your eye drawn to what action is happening. But given you'd already experienced that, perhaps you go, okay, let's look over here because I can, because I've seen that already. I didn't know if it was kind of like a secondary experience for you, the editing almost, because you didn't do that first time.
True, true. Yeah, there were some. I mean, in some scenes, for example, I was trying to not have one obvious focus point. I had different groups of people talking at the same time in different parts of the image. So I was trying also not to always have like one group of human characters in one place.
But then, for example, when we were walking in the streets, I discovered by seeing the images in this way, maybe I was more drawn sometimes to look at, say, the plants.
Which is what I do when I walk in the streets of places. You know, I'm curious about looking at the plants in different places. So maybe it took me more to the experience of walking there, you know. In the shooting, I'm walking there, but I'm in a shoot so I'm thinking about many things.
[The editing] took me to a mental state that was more relaxed and more similar to just when I walk in the street in a normal day and not so much in a shoot. And then there were some details like following a bird that was passing by that I didn't see in the moment or a flying insect that I could follow. There were a lot of insects, but I couldn't shoot them. But then I discovered one of them came close enough to the camera that I could see it. So I followed them.
Then in the jungle, I could focus much more on looking at the plants and connecting the different people we see through the plants, which for me was also very interesting. The spiral movement is something I didn't think up before, but it didn't come in the VR headset, it came before.
Then I added some movement in the VR headset, but this came in the computer more than in the headset. But yeah, it came from the 360 image and from thinking what could happen.
The first idea of the scene was leaving the camera alone in the jungle to see if maybe other animals would come closer. Because of course, when we are there, animals are intelligent enough not to want to come close to us. We went during two or three, when the sun comes up, and left the camera as long as the battery would last in the jungle. And one of those days, this monkey came and I thought this was interesting in many ways, but I don't want to spend so long on that. But yeah. I got lost.
No, which is good. I mean, your film is in many ways about getting lost, and I think it's cool that this conversation mirrors that.
I specialize in writing on queer cinemas, so I'm curious. I like what you're saying about the atypical approach to queer community in your film. But I'm also curious to whether you feel like your films are in some way queering the form because your film is unconventional in the way it refuses to map to conventional boundaries of filmmaking. And in a way, that's quite unconventionally queer. Other films like Trenque Lauquen have recently been noted as atypically queer. And I wanted your thoughts on whether you felt your films were queer not just in content but in form as well.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, being queer is like finding your own way to be, in many different ways, and not necessarily feel you have to ‘be’ in a way that is easy to label. I think of my films in the same way. I don't think of my films as being this or that or necessarily easy to describe, or even easy to explain how they are.
And that's maybe what I feel that being queer is, you know. It's not necessarily even being like one thing or the other - or if you want, yes - but it's being free to take a label if you need it or not take it if you don't need it or like, you know, defining yourself in one way if you need it and also being free not to define yourself if you feel that's the moment, you know. I think labels and not labels can be different in each moment for us. And that's good. Maybe I wish I would have understood this when I was younger, you know, when I thought I had to be all gay or not gay, etc, etc.
And so I think for my films, yeah - going through them, not experiencing them and thinking about them while I do them and not being limited by thinking they have to be one thing or the other, let's say.
There seems to be a real moment happening in Argentine cinema at the moment, or rather there has been for a while, but now the international audience is finally starting to take notice of it. I wondered how you feel you fit within this and what your thoughts are on the film landscape there at large.
I'm not very good at- I mean, I don't live in Argentina. So I’m still in my country and I'm still very connected. I'm still working with my Argentinian friends in my films, and this film was also produced by the Argentinian Cinema Institute. But well, there's something about living there that maybe I lose a little bit. And also, I'm not super, you know- as you see in my films. I love Argentina and I’m not against Argentina at all, but I'm very open to believing we are from the world, let's say. So I'm not super good at following or being able to describe, you know, Argentinian cinema or cinema moment. But I'm very happy if you say this, I'm like, I'm super happy to think Argentinian. Also, I haven't seen Trenque Lauquen, for example.
The thing is, lately, I'm almost only seeing things when I can see them in cinema. And sometimes I'm in places where there's not so many films in cinema. Now that I'm going to festivals to show my film, I'm seeing more things. But in the moments where I'm shooting, maybe or, you know, post-production, I don't see so much.
But I think Argentinian cinema is great. I don't know how I would be if I would have learned to do cinema in another place. I'm very happy of having learned and having started to make cinema in Argentina. For me, it was very useful. And I'm very grateful of how we do cinema there. Of course, there's always things that could be better and should be better in many ways.
I don't know. I'm not super good at categorizing. Sometimes people ask me how I see Latin American cinema or things like that. And I'm very bad at, you know, at having this type of mind.
But of course, the type of cinema I do is no doubt influenced by having started in Argentina. That's for sure. And now I'm very curious of like going everywhere, let's say, or as much as I can to different places and learning also on how to make cinema in different places and how people make cinema in different places also. And it's always very interesting how this may be. Sometimes it limits me and it doesn't let me do what I want, but it always gives me also other ways I didn't think about.
But yeah, all my love for Argentina and cinema.
I noticed that you released a trailer for The Human Surge 3 recently in VR format. And I was wondering if you might one day release the whole film in a VR format for viewers to experience.
You know, I saw that, but I didn't do that! And I didn't see it. So I don't know. What is this? Did you see it?
Yeah, it's on YouTube. It's kind of a 360 experience where if you've got a headset, I presume it moves with you. But if you don't, you can just turn your phone around. So it's got the 360 aspect to it.
Okay, Okay interesting. I should see now. But yeah, they don't have the real 360 image. But I imagine with the image they have, they can do some.
So I thought about this when I was starting to think up the film. I mean, always my main thing was doing the film for cinema. But I also thought about the possibility of also doing a VR version.
What I thought about this was if I was going to do a VR version, I should know it in the shoot or also shoot for this. You know, I didn't want to do just, you know, a VR version of the film done for the cinema. For me, it's a different way of thinking if you do it for the cinema or for a museum or for VR.
But the thing is, in the shoot, everything was very difficult. And sometimes I was overwhelmed by things. And I had to drop the idea of the VR version.
But then what I discovered also while I was framing the film is that watching two hours in a VR headset is not a very pleasant experience. I saw VR films, but shorter ones. And I realized if I did a VR version, it should be shorter for sure.
I also shot in 3D. So that was something I would have really liked to have, a 3D version for cinema. But then in post-production it was a whole new thing, and some people told me it was very difficult to show in 3D. It was going to be a lot of work, and money that I didn't know if we had and for maybe showing it very, very few times.
So in the end, I also dropped that, but it could be possible because the original footage is in 3D. So that's something I’m curious about. And a VR version now, I mean, not of the film, but there's sometimes I think about, you know, like, I don't know, not a VR version of the film, but how could I use the VR footage to do something else. I'm curious about that. And some of the scenes I shot, like thinking they could work in VR. It's mainly, as I was telling you, when I have like different focus, you know, different possible points of attention in the film.
What I don't like of the VR films I saw, which are not many really, is that there's always one very clear focus point, you know. Of course, you are free to look to other places, but there's one place in the image where it's very clear that the film is saying ‘you should look here’. And if I'm doing something 360, I would like to not be sure where I should look and be able to decide, you know, I'm feeling like my decision is changing the film and it's not just an accidental or just a curiosity, you know, a technological curiosity.
Do you think that's a symptom of it being quite a young medium then? Because, you know, with more frame, you'd expect that we'd have more places for eyes to be drawn. But if there's only a single point, we've learned how to draw the spectator's eye in a flat screen mode, but maybe we haven't quite got the hang of it in VR yet?
Maybe yes. I mean, I have to say I'm not a super experienced in VR and I haven't seen a lot of films, so I can't really like judge how's the VR scene or whatever. But what I felt of what I saw is just like, you know, it doesn't matter which tool you use. If you're drawn to make films in a classical way, you will do them with even with a super new technology.
And I felt that a lot of the films I saw, they are using a new tool, but not really thinking why.
That's why I think also when I use new and old tools, you know, even when I use film, I'm also thinking about how to use it, and how is using film today when small video cameras are always present and are part of our lives, when YouTube and, you know, let's say low quality video is much more common for us than film, etc. I'm always thinking how to use it when it's new and when it's old.
What I felt of these VR films I saw is that I don't feel they were really thinking how to use it or why to use this or how it would be different. I don't know. But yeah, it's true that being a young, let's say, media or technique or whatever, there's less examples and less people using it and less people that maybe are thinking on how to use it.
Again, maybe there's people that are really doing it in a very interesting way, and I haven't seen. I'm not trying to say this doesn't exist. But for me, the important thing is how to use the tools, you know. I'm really curious about using different tools, and also very curious of always asking myself how to use them, you know, and why.
Speaking of those tools and VR or not then, to wrap up, where do you think your cinema might take us and you next? When the group reach the top at the end of The Human Surge 3, there is a little tower there, which has a ‘4’ on it a couple of times over. Is ‘The Human Surge 4’ where we’re going? And what might that look like?
Yeah, it's true. The ‘4’ was an accident, but I thought it was interesting, because we were in Taiwan, because of the famous 3. In Taiwan and I think also in mainland China, the 4 is set in a very similar way as death. Even in the buildings, they don't have the fourth floor, and things like this. So there was something with the 4 and death. It was an accident, but I thought about it when we were there.
I don't know really now. I'm still showing this film a lot and I'm still talking about it, and I'm still very attached to it. I have some small notes and ideas for the next one, but usually I start the films by details, you know, and not by ideas. And then these details start developing and then you realize the ideas that are connecting the details.
What can I say? I don't know. I hope there's not another Human Surge. [laughs] I'm already a bit tired of the title, so I don't think I will do a ‘The Human Surge something’ the next time.
But- I don't know. Sometimes I'm feeling I have to change everything, well not everything but, you know, change a bit more. But sometimes then I feel I still have something to develop in that sense.
Production structure sometimes I would like to be smaller. I hoped [this film] was going to make some things easier, but ultimately it was quite difficult, and also traveling with people, as we were saying in the beginning, was very difficult. I mean, I still think it was worth it. No doubts. But sometimes, yeah, I don't know. Things like this of production also make me think what type of film I will do. I don't know, maybe it's not very interesting.
The Human Surge 3 is in cinemas now from Grasshopper Film in the U.S. and will receive a home media release later this year. With thanks to Grasshopper Film and Cinema Tropical for organising and facilitating this interview, and to Eduardo Williams for his time.
Blake Simons is a freelance film journalist and studied Film at KCL. They have written for EasternKicks, The Film Stage, Movie Marker and others, and ramble regularly on Twitter @blakethinks
