2015 Sundance Trading Card Series: #1. Diego Ongaro (Bob and the Trees)

Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2014 discoveries”… Diego Ongaro: French singer Bertrand Belin, the town of Terlingua, Texas on the edge of Big Bend National Park, “Wrong Cops” by Quentin Dupieux.

Lavallee: Was the idea of the feature born from the short, or was the short an exploration of an eventual feature length film and what kind of work was involved in coming back to the character and story?
Ongaro: The idea of a feature film around the character of Bob sprouted as soon as I finished the short in 2010. The short already had a feature pace to it, despite being 28 minutes long. It already had the ambition to be a bigger film, I just didn’t know it yet. I was pleased with the very specific tone of the film and its unique setting and it was important to keep that style of storytelling, one that blends verité cinema with strong narrative elements. It took two years of writing and letting things mature, spending time in the woods with real life Bob logging, helping him at his farm, until we felt confident we had a solid and compelling story in our hands.

Lavallee: What parts/aspect was further developed? Were some narrative items restaged from the short, and if so, what strategies did you deploy in managing those scenes/sequences? Ongaro: In the feature, we dug into the dark side of Bob’s character, a proud and stubborn man who tries to solve every one of his problems on his own, never asking for help. When things go awry for him financially, he slowly spirals down a rabbit hole of desperation, isolating himself from his family and friends. We focused on the hardship of his day-to-day life, the mercilessness of the logging industry, the never-ending problems that arise in a farm and the difficulties of working in extremely harsh weather everyday but we also paired all this dark stuff with the joys that come from working with your hands outdoors and from having a strong family. There are two scenes that we restaged from the short film. A rowdy party scene that ends up in a drunk chaos and a scene of Bob rapping in his car. I’m very happy with how both of these scenes came out, but shooting something you’ve already done in a previous film isn’t something I would do again. It is more restrictive than constructive. You’re in a comparative mindset, trying to re-create as identical instead of creating something new. As good as they turned out to be, these were probably the most difficult scenes for me to shoot.

Lavallee: In terms of visual strategies, what ideas did you have for the feature?
Ongaro: Most of the film was shot outdoors. I imagined that there would be a lot of snow, two to three feet… Snow all around and bare trees that would make the image look almost black and white, with very few colors. It was important to capture the beautiful and haunting winter landscapes and the harshness of the weather. Nature was envisioned as a character and she dictates the pace of the story throughout the film.