BYU student tackles immigration and practical effects in short film
by Diana Jones ksl tv, Kennedy Camarena ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- BYU student James Cutler's film explores immigration issues using practical effects.
- "Can I Put You On Hold?" highlights immigration bureaucracy via personal family story.
- The film, supported by a $5,000 grant, screens at FilmQuest on Oct. 26.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Brigham Young University student is using his passion for short films to take on the topic of immigration through practical effects, which can be seen in his latest short film showing at Utah's FilmQuest on Monday.
Writer, director and editor James Cutler is pursuing his PHD in engineering at BYU, where he began working with stop-motion animation and won some awards for his work. From there, James Cutler decided to start taking film work more seriously and started working with live action.
The inspiration for James Cutler's films? His family, who also appears in his films as themselves. James Cutler's most recent film, "Can I Put You On Hold?" was inspired by James Cutler's twin brother, Matthew Cutler and his wife Dangmo Kanyawee, and their struggles with immigration bureaucracy.
The Cutler twins had the idea for the film for years, before President Donald Trump was inaugurated and violence tied to immigration became such a hot topic in the public eye.
They debated rewriting the film to match current issues, but Cutler ultimately decided to keep the story the same. In his because while the violence towards immigrants is still a real issue, there are still other issues that are just as important, but are quieter.
"There's all these hurdles, all this immigration bureaucracy that keeps people from being together," James Cutler said. "These people loved each other and they just wanted to be together but there was all these sneaky rules, all these, like, walls of bureaucracy that kept them from each other and that shouldn't be what our system does. It should allow these people to be together more easily."
Cutler said he hopes that people who watch "Can I Put You On Hold?" will be able to see how complicated immigration bureaucracy can be.
The making of "Can I Put You On Hold?"
"Can I Put You On Hold?" is a short that will be shown during FilmQuest's Utah's Shortblock on Monday Oct. 26 at 5 p.m. at Velour, Downtown Provo at 135 North University Avenue. The event starts on Thursday and ends on Halloween.
A $5,000 grant from the Davey Foundation, which works to support emerging filmmakers, helped to kickstart the making of "Can I Put You On Hold?" The film is about a husband making a living in the U.S. while his wife attempts to join him from Thailand, but she's denied a visa.
Throughout the movie, James Cutler said all of the stunts and effects were created practically, with no green screens or CGI. He said his twin is very physically active and has a passion for rock climbing so Matthew Cutler was able to do his own stunt work for the film.
"It was nice to make a movie with him," James Cutler said. "We're very in synch"
For a film that constantly seems to be defying gravity, it wasn't necessarily easy to pull off, it often meant Cutler have to build his own sets and contraptions and hit certain cues perfectly during takes.
"That shot of (Matthew Cutler) dancing in the room, I'm just out of camera pulling fishing lines and string and tying it down just before the camera comes to me so I can run out of the scene and pull the next fishing line," James Cutler said. "That scene took a lot of takes."
Scenes showing James Cutler's twin flying in the air was created using a rope and a harness. After those scenes were filmed, James Cutler took the time to edit the rope out of each image frame by frame.
For the scenes with both Matthew Cutler and his wife flying through the air, the setup was a bit more complicated.
"We built a wooden rig on a trailer that my brother-in-law was driving," James Cutler explained. "We (were) going decently fast but at a safe speed and then we had a friend from high school, like, pulling Dangmo away on a slider thing."
All of the scenes were filmed in Utah with some of the audio recorded about two years ago in Thailand. James Cutler used the audio in shots where Matthew Cutler is on the phone with his wife, who is placed in Thailand in the short film.
"I was just going around recording sound from the street so that whenever the camera pans to (Kanyawee) or whenever it's like, (Matthew Cutler) talking on the phone with her, we can slowly transition to sounds from Thailand."
James Cutler said he attempted to keep the film as accurate as he could to his brother's real life story without making the film too long. Because Matthew Cutler and Kanyawee were not actors, they kept to a loose script written by the two brothers to hit on the points they wanted to hit.
The rest of the time, James Cutler said the acting was real, re-experienced emotions and intimate words spoken between a wife and her husband. There wasn't even a crew present for those more intimate scenes.
"We really tried to write the script and create it in a way that they could sort of reexperience these moments instead of try and hit specific lines," James Cutler said.
James Cutler also played an instrument called an omnichord at the beginning of the film. He said it sounded similar to "on-hold" music so he choose to use the instrument. The rest of the soundtrack was composed and produced by Michelle Cheuk.
As for Matthew Cutler and Kanyawee, the two remain married to this day. Both are U.S. citizens who live in Provo after getting married in Thailand. The couple lived there for about three years before they could finally get a visa.
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