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| Kelsey Pribilski getting her make-up done on the set of Man Finds Tape |
Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall's directorial feature debut, the fictional horror documentary Man Finds Tape, revolves around documentarian Lynn Page (Kelsey Pribilski), who returns to her family home in Larkin, Texas after receiving a cryptic phone call from her brother Lucas (William Magnuson). The discovery of mysterious video footage, Lucas' viral web series Man Finds Tape and inexplicable questions about a tragic event recorded in the small community, thrusts the siblings down a rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the pair confront an evil that has been preying for decades on their small town.
Prior to writing Man Finds Tape, with the support of Rustic Films' Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead and David Lawson Jr, Gandersman and Hall published the horror novel The Dead Friends Society, about the victims of a masked killer whose spirits are trapped in a house, their presence sensed by the little girl of a family that moves in some years later. They've also collaborated on the short films Givertaker (2016) and No Signal (2019).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Gandersman and Hall discussed emotional world building and baiting the audience with a monster movie. They also reflected on the process of stripping the film back and treating the cutting room floor as a friend, trusting their actors and getting the fictional documentary out of their system.
Paul Risker: Having recently published the novel, The Dead Friends Society, are there things you can learn from the literary and carry over into cinema, and vice versa?
Paul Gandersman: From a big picture perspective, the literary part was more of a detour for us because we've been working in film as producers for close to fifteen years, maybe longer. We did the short film Givertaker together back in 2016, and then we've just been trying to push that boulder of our first feature up a mountain.
The Dead Friends Society actually started out as a screenplay. We were getting some momentum until the pandemic hit, and then we didn't know if anybody was ever going to make a movie again. So, we took a left turn, tried that, learned a lot writing the novel, and then found our way back into film. And that's how we got here.
Peter Hall: One of the things that we learned from writing the novel is how much fun it is to explore the interior of characters in a way that you can't do in film in quite the same way as writing a novel. With prose, you can just pop into someone's thoughts at any time, at least in the style of our book. So, that's very helpful. But doing that forced us to think about the interior of our characters even more. So, when it came back around to Man Finds Tape, we were thinking about the character a lot. And it's a very curious question that you asked, because I don't know that we would have necessarily thought about characters and arcs and themes in quite the same way had we not gone through the process of writing The Dead Friends Society.
PR: World building is not only physical, but an emotional concept that is created through character, music and cinematography. We can't talk about this film without considering the emotional side of the story, which is structured around memories and folklore.
PG: That's really how Peter and I think about things. We often come up with small ideas, and then they're brought to life by the characters. We force ourselves to let the characters and their choices lead the way. Anytime we're struggling to write, it's usually because we're trying to fit a character into a plot point instead of letting the character drive where it's from. And what you were talking about with the camera being part of the world building, some of my favourite moments shooting the film were working with our lead actress, Kelsey Pribilski, because her character is the lens we're seeing so much of the movie through.
What we really appreciated about working with her, and honestly, the reason we cast her, is because she challenged us. There were scenes where we were blocking it out with her, and it was not just about where is the character going, but where is the camera going? She would say, "I wouldn't go there" or "I wouldn't do that. I would be retreating in this moment."
We were working with her not only to develop what the character is doing, but what the camera is also doing. It was an incredible balance, and you really have to have performers that are in on that, and everybody was. Everybody understood the big picture that we were trying to do, and that was really fun.
PH: We definitely looked at the world building in the way that you are picking up on — the lore of it and the mechanical myth of nature. It is a very weird film and there are weird things happening. We essentially came up with answers for everything and there was a lot of exposition, discovery and questions that we stripped out of the film, until, in the edit, we reached the point where it was okay if the audience still had some questions, because we didn't want to spoon-feed them everything.
It was a nice balance because we, the filmmakers, knew the answers to things, and we knew what corners of the world we were showing and what corners we weren't. We had those discussions with the cast all the time, and we always aimed for the balance that the audience would hopefully have the sense that there is a world here and that you are discovering things without us having to run through a checklist. Hopefully we've supplied enough pieces throughout the film that people can put it together themselves.
PR: Human beings are driven by this compulsion to understand, but sometimes the best thing you can do as a filmmaker is push back and be provocative by not giving the audience answers or clarity. Often, I've found that lack of clarity makes for some of the most memorable moments in cinema, which David Fincher does masterfully in Zodiac. This lack of clarity can gnaw away at us and spark debate long after a film's release.
PG: We totally agree and that was one of the things that Benson, Moorhead and Lawson really helped us understand. I don't want to look back at our original screenplay, the shooting draft, because it spelled everything out. We actually asked some actors about this at one point. "For our next movie, should we strip some of that out?" They said no because it actually helped them understand having that context in there. But really, it was about just stripping out, stripping out and getting it down to the bone, where the questions left are good and intriguing ones. And Benson, Moorhead and Lawson really helped us dial that in.
The assembly cut of this movie was two hours; the final cut is 84-minutes when it hits credits, and we're very happy with that.
PH: We embraced what you were talking about, which are the things that the audience are gonna have questions about. We wanted it to be the same thing the characters would have questions about. There is a lot of thematic exploration of memories and what you inherit from your parents and why some events from your childhood might have cascading effects into adulthood. And in real life, you might be able to pinpoint certain things, but you still can't have a complete answer or explanation as to why this one thing happened. So, it was really cool to explore that sort of grey area.
PR: The interesting thing with cinema is the way it affects people differently based on their vulnerabilities and life experiences. For anyone who struggles to make eye contact or is autistic, for example, Lucas' violation of being filmed without his knowledge as a child will hit a raw nerve.
PH: I don't know that Paul and I had discussions entirely to the point of what you were getting at there, but it's one of those things that, in retrospect, yes, it's definitely a theme we were exploring. We did talk about the idea of how people live in a society where there is constant surveillance, and where there are memories being recorded from a childhood that you may or may not remember. With Lucas' character in particular, his life has so many different phases of his relationship to media, which mirror our own phases. As a child, your participation with media and what's being filmed of you really isn't up to you. Then, as an adult, Lucas doubles down on it. He has a YouTube channel, and he is trying to actively participate in it while unpacking and discovering the roots of horror that he didn't realise was there from his childhood.
PG: Jumping off that a little bit, early in the writing of the film, Peter and I were fascinated by the idea of how you tell this kind of story in the modern age with technology where it is. So, there were the complications of that, which gave us a lot of opportunity. But just the core question of how with cameras in everyone's pockets at all times, how do we not have defined proof of evil that's as clear as day? It boils down to either it doesn't exist or it's all around us, and we're just looking right through it.
PR: In the press notes I read that you wrote a draft of Man Finds Tape some years ago, and you put it to one side until the moment it felt right to make it. Why does it feel the right time now?
PH: There is a boring answer and a fun answer to that. The boring one is just the logistics of making an entirely fictional documentary was something that we leaned into because Paul has a background working in documentary films, and so, we wanted to embrace that. We knew what advantages we could have going into it, but we didn't want to just randomly make a film where the themes wouldn't also lean into that. So, the why now of it was thematic.
Paul and I were definitely exploring these ideas of what happens when stuff is captured on tape that people can't acknowledge. What happens when people are presented with evidence that something inside of them will fundamentally not let them acknowledge? And how can we tie that into a horror premise and create our own mythology around it?
The why now was twofold — it made sense production wise and then we found a way to have it make sense thematically.
PR: Man Finds Tape reckons with the toxic effect social media and technology have on our humanity and the perilous and addictive rabbit holes they lead many people down. In as much as Man Finds Tape is a creative and engaging fictional horror documentary, it has deeper thematic layers through an awareness of the wider political and cultural reality of the present day.
PG: With the complexities of writing and shooting a film like this in the modern age, what started as how we get around this problem became a theme that we embraced. Peter and I talked about films like Lake Mungo and Noroi: The Curse, a Japanese film from 20 years ago. And The Blair Witch Project was before that. Those films really pushed the medium forward but were limited to their time, right? So, we can't just make a movie set in that time, where it's all a handheld mini DV camera. You don't have those same tricks because we all know what footage looks like and how technology works. So, it really forced us to commit to telling this story in 2024 and ask what we have to say about that. For us, it's not just enough that it takes place now. Instead, how does the time it takes place support the themes and message of what we're trying to get across?
PH: What you're picking up on is all in there. It's the fear of social media, the fear of falling down rabbit holes, the fear of being manipulated by people around you that you don't realise you're being manipulated by. All of that is very present, but at the same time, Paul and I always wanted it to be fun. The idea was to bait the hook like a monster movie and make people want to find out what's going on. And if someone is into it purely for the ride, they might not even pick up on any of the thematic stuff that's going on. They'll probably think that was a cool and weird movie that felt like going down a rabbit hole on Reddit. And if that's the only reaction anyone ever has, then great. If someone like yourself starts to pick up on some of the deeper resonance that's going on in it, then that's the cherry on top for us.
PG: With social media, technology, and all this other stuff, when Peter and I started working together, the ideas we were putting together were not thematically as rich. It was more about a certain kind of horror cinema that we liked.
I'm proud of our short film, Givertaker, but it's not as thematically deep, and as we get older, our worldview has changed. I'm someone who grew up with technology and learning about all this stuff and being obsessed with it. Now I'm like, "Oh, it's all very bad for the world."
So, this movie and our perspective on the world kind of required us to grow up a bit and have more of an expanded worldview in order to tell this story. I shudder to think what we would have made if we were 22. I'm sure it would have been cool, but I don't think it would have had much to say — I didn't have anything to say then.
PH: We actually had more on the nose social media stuff in it at one point. There were lots more social media videos being recorded and the search for characters. We left a lot of that on the cutting room floor because it was going back to what were talking about earlier — it was saying too much and answering too many questions. It was underlining the things that didn't need to be underlined. So, I'm glad that it still comes through even with us having stripped back what was originally intended to be there. But the reason it does come through is that we originally had a bunch of connective tissue, and you can take out the end points, but people still pick up on that connective tissue.
PR: One observation I intended to make was that Kelsey's performance felt very traditional and yet there was something fresh about the way she played the character.
PH: A lot of that does come down to her. We wrote the character and had our own thoughts about what her motivations and fears are. But as Paul was saying earlier, Kelsey brought such reality to the character. We would adjust scenes and moments based on what Kelsey felt the character would be doing. If we walked onto a set that we hadn't filmed on yet, we would redesign our shot list based on what she and William and the other actors thought made sense to be doing now that we were physically in the space. The realism all comes from Kelsey and her performance, and I'm really glad you picked up on that.
PG: And the dialogue, too. We told her and all the actors what the intent was, but take it wherever you need it to go. And we think that made those performances feel real, because when you're doing this faux documentary style, there's an expectation from the audience of a certain type of performance, and it's hard to get that right. We're really proud of what our actors did, and again, especially what Kelsey did there and what you picked up on.
Honestly, it was so much fun working with the actors and just cutting and rewriting lines on the fly. We were doing a really complicated scene where we had the whole thing scheduled for a day and a half to shoot. We were getting to lunchtime and everybody was on the same page that it was not working, right? And Peter and I said for everyone to just go and take an hour while we basically rewrote the scene. We then shot the entire new version in the second half of the day and were back ahead of schedule. But it was because we trusted the actors, and they trusted us — we all worked together to shape it.
I don't think we're necessarily going to do a fake documentary again — we got that out of our system. We learned a lot, and we're going to take a lot of those lessons into the next movie, which will ideally be done more traditionally. But we can certainly pull a lot of what we learned about dialogue, writing and performance into that.
Man Finds Tape premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
