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Adam Rifkin Takes a Look
April 20, 2009

Writer/director Adam Rifkin’s Look has a high-concept production gimmick, yes, but it’s a goodie: A week or so in the lives of a broad canvass of characters in L.A. as seen through the roaming lenses of lenses of the city’s surveillance and security cameras. Oh yes, it’s pure voyeurism, and why not? As the film informs us in its opening, Americans are captured on some sort of camera approximately 170 times—certainly there are some stories to be found there with the simple touch of the “Play” button. Look is due out on DVD from Anchor Bay on May 5, a year-and-a-half after its limited theatrical release, and in an interview last week, Rifkin told me he was psyched for audiences  he couldn’t be happier.

 

“With everything seen through the “eyes” of a camera, I can say it’s the only movie I’ve ever made that I feel

perfectly comfortable with people watching on the home screen,” said Rifkin, who previous films include The Dark Backward, The Chase and Detroit Rock City. “I think this one works well sitting at home.”

 

Though the film has a very improvisational feel—particularly in scenes involving a pair of high school Lolitas (Heather Hogan, Spencer Radford)—Rifkin insists that virtually everything seen on the screen was scripted.

 

“None of the film was improvised--there was only one line improvised in the whole movie, which I kept in because it sounded good” said Rifkin. “I told everybody to feel free to improvise, but it didn’t happen. Everyone stuck to the script.”

 

As for the physical look of the film—98 minutes of narrative as seen through a battery of electronic surveillance cameras, complete with IDs and time codes—Rifkin is particularly pleased.

 

“We shot the whole movie in Sony F950s, the highest tech high-definition cameras that were available. It looked so good that it depressed me,” said Rifkin. We spent an enormous amount of time in post making it look the way it should through a surveillance camera--like shit.”

 

The onscreen time code graphics were equally challenging, but no less rewarding, according to Rifkin.

 

“That part was time-consuming but fun, he laughed. “If a person were to be so inclined, he could follow the different clocks at the corners of the screen, and see that it’s all chronologically correct. If was very important to me that we be extremely accurate.”—Laurence Lerman

Posted by Laurence Lerman on April 20, 2009 | Comments (0)