RADAR
then you can blur it and just see what happens.” And then ultimately it did work out that well.
And how did you think about the music? Cabral: Throughout the whole film David and I were concerned with having a sparse presence. We only wanted to be there to add a little context and push back against the unreliability of Saeed. And so in that sparsity, we knew that the environmental sounds of the investigation would be very important to the veracity of the world that we were creating onscreen. And so to that effect, in trying to minimize our presence, we didn’t really want music that was going to be driving a scene. So that’s how we approached it, sort of very sparse. And then beyond the music [to] the sound … the fact that the FBI text messages and communications are a rich part of the story, it took a long time to come up with the sounds for the text messaging and how the text messages would appear on the screen. The sound of the texts was critical because there are other episodic TV series and films that have used text messages, and making that sound unique to our film, that took a long time for designing the sound.
How do you two think of yourselves? Do you think of yourselves as artists or journalists or storytellers or documentary makers? What is your identity? There is such blurring of borders at the moment. Sutcliffe: Before this film, I don’t think the word “journalist” would have come into my head in terms of what I thought of myself as doing. But pretty quickly I realized that having that label was protective and also it was critical in order to make sure that I think a larger audience understood our intention and that we didn’t want this dismissed as something that was factually flimsy. We wanted to present this as a piece of journalism, as a piece of artful journalism. But we knew that there was going to be criticism and skepticism about what was occurring and taking place on screen because the incompetency that you witness through the story is pretty unbelievable as well as just the circumstances under which we’re filming. A lot of people [are saying], “How can this be true, how can this be real, how can we be seeing this?” which is great. But then you don’t want them to dismiss it as, “I don’t know where that came from or what that was,
and so I’m going to overlook or sweep aside whatever conclusion the film is making.” From here on out I would love to be able to preserve fluidity. I want to be able to move between [roles] as artist, as filmmaker, as journalist. But I think ultimately in terms of my long-term goals, I want to continue making work that addresses deeper political issues. And if presenting those works under the banner of journalism is going to be the most effective way of reaching people and penetrating and effecting conversations and dialogue, then so be it. Cabral: I consider myself to be a visual journalist just because that encompasses all the documentary work that I engage in on a practical level, from producing it to photojournalism to directing. I agree with David that the term “journalism” is powerful, because people necessarily equate that with truth or with fact-finding. But within that and in my future work, I do want to continue to push the boundaries of “journalism.” Robert Greene is a filmmaker that described (T)ERROR as a piece of “cinematic nonfiction.” And I think that is a great term for what we created. And so I want to continue to push those boundaries in my work. And also with journalism, I’m very interested in including more subject collaborations. So, what does it mean when you actually collaborate with a subject as a director? So these are things I want to explore in future work in questioning who has the right to tell the story? What does truth look like? Do I even need to be there if you do have the capability and want to tell your story – which David expressed wanting to do in the case of Adama; what happens when someone feels as though they are capable but just simply need a little bit of help? So in terms of journalism, I want to continue to push those boundaries as far as what happens when the subject becomes an agent in the journalism. So that’s why I say visual journalism, because to me it encompasses that sort of range. l
“‘HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE, HOW CAN THIS BE REAL, HOW CAN WE BE SEEING THIS?’” – David Felix Sutcliffe
In 2013, Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe received a Sundance Documentary Fund Grant for their debut feature (T)ERROR, which they went on to develop at the 2014 Documentary Edit and Story Lab and the 2014 Creative Producing Lab and Summit. (T)ERROR premiered as part of the U.S. Competition of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Break Out First Feature.
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