{"id":118004,"date":"2021-01-29T15:41:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T15:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=118004"},"modified":"2023-08-01T07:08:58","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T06:08:58","slug":"synchronic-just-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/synchronic-just-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Synchronic: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead on working with Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe were having coffee one time and Justin\u2019s like: \u2018Hey I had this\u00a0 weird idea, it\u2019s about a pill\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/span>says Aaron Moorhead when explaining the inception of his new movie <\/span>Synchronic<\/i><\/b>. We\u2019re speaking to him and filmmaking partner Justin Benson via the magic of Zoom one early morning. \u201cAfter that came the idea of the paramedics.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Set in New Orleans, <\/span>Synchronic<\/i><\/b> follows paramedics Dennis (Jamie Dornan) and Steve (Anthony Mackie) who witness the effects a new legal drug, named Synchronic, has on the victims who take it. When Dennis\u2019 daughter ends up being one of those victims, it\u2019s down to the duo to investigate the drug.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted someone who could investigate it, but not cops,\u201d says Aaron on the reasoning behind the paramedic choice. \u201cWe almost always make a movie that\u2019s about two people. The more characters that you involve as central characters, the less time you have to explore it. We wanted to explore a friendship and we wanted people to investigate this pill. We then kind of took tiny pieces of emotions we\u2019d felt before, filtered them into the characters and blew them up so they would be personal and that\u2019s how we arrived at Steve and Dennis.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Synchronic explores the friendship between Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) after the latter’s daughter goes missing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is Justin and Aaron\u2019s fourth film together (they previously collaborated on <\/span>Resolution, Wrecked, Spring<\/i><\/b> and the more recent, <\/span>The Endless<\/i><\/b>) and they have got their filmmaking process down to fine art: \u201cIt\u2019s very all hands on deck with me and Justin,\u201d Aaron explains. \u201cIt\u2019s very collaborative. No one takes a wildly different idea on how to do something. You\u2019re just spending weeks or months talking through what you think prior to a movie, then when you get to the location there\u2019s usually one pretty obvious way forward. But I can imagine (not just co-directing but filmmaking in general), if you don\u2019t spend months prior preparing and locking in a plan, you\u2019ll probably have a lot of conflicts. I think some people work really well in that kind of chaos and prefer it. We just prefer to talk through our movies extensively. Get them on paper. Even sometimes shoot it on an iPhone and show it to people. There\u2019s a whole Blu-ray featurette of our low-budget iPhone versions of scenes and then the actual scene later over it. With [Justin] playing the Anthony Mackie [role]!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anthony plays laid-back singleton Steve, to Jamie\u2019s family man Dennis. The duo plays off brilliantly together. \u201cJamie came first,\u201d Aaron says when we ask how the two actors came on board. \u201cWe\u2019ve wanted to work with [Jamie] since The Fal<\/strong><\/em>l and then once Jamie was attached, the movie became a sort of \u2018go\u2019. It\u2019s funny, we said [to Jamie\u2019s agent], who else do you guys have? And they said \u2018Anthony Mackie\u2019. So we got Anthony on board. It\u2019s funny though, because he lives and is from New Orleans where the movie takes place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Luckily Anthony Mackie lives in New Orleans where Synchronic<\/strong><\/em> was filmed…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Orleans isn\u2019t the futuristic cityscape location one would normally associate with\u00a0<\/span>a sci-fi movie. But this is no ordinary futuristic sci-fi movie. In fact, it\u2019s firmly rooted in today\u2019s society and society\u2019s relationship with synthetic analogue drugs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHere in America we have lots of synthetic analogues,\u201d Justin explains. \u201cAnd the way these things go on the market is that molecularly, chemically they are just barely different enough to sell over the counter. And you have to label the packaging \u2018for experimental purposes only\u2019 or something like that. It\u2019s all very legally muddy. When the FDA cracks down on one of those, they [can] change the chemical, the molecule, just enough and put it back out into the marketplace. So you end up with these really reckless drugs that no one really knows what they do. They\u2019ve never been tested in any kind of formal setting at all. So it was a fascination with that kind of idea of \u2018Okay so if these mysterious drugs are going out to the world, in the realm of a science fiction story, isn\u2019t it just likely enough that one of these drugs could accidentally make a human being\u2019s brain see time as Einstein claims it was? Where our perception is everything is happening in a linear way but in actuality, everything\u2019s happening simultaneously\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The synthetic drug analogue isn\u2019t the only thing that plays around with views on time. The movie itself is non-linear, drawing viewers into the same trippy feeling that the characters experience \u2013 though that wasn\u2019t always the case. \u201cThe cut [of the movie] that had its world premiere in Toronto last September was much more linear,\u201d Aaron tells us. \u201cAnd after being able to sit on it for a little bit and realise nobody was having any trouble tracking the basics, we were able to bring in some more of the emotional elements of the film by making it non-linear.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Both the story and the film itself plays with time…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the cult-based alien movie, <\/span>The Endless<\/i><\/b>, to <\/span>Synchronic<\/i><\/b>, a time-playing thriller with grounded roots and a non-linear plot, Aaron and Justin keep the sci-fi goodies a-coming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what do our dynamic duo have coming up next? Aaron is rightfully keeping those cards close to his chest: \u201cWhat we can say is that it is another independent feature film that is just as scary as it is heart-breaking…\u201d Well, we can\u2019t say no to that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Synchronic will be released on digital (premium video on demand<\/a>) on 29 January, read our review here<\/a>. Main image shows Justin Benson\u00a0 (left) and Aaron Moorhead (right), image credit: Sela Shiloni.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We speak to filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead about their mind-bending time-hopping sci-fi drug drama, Synchronic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":118005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1718,7,6955],"tags":[6269],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Justin_Benson_LEFT_Aaron_Moorhead_RIGHT.-PIC-CREDIT-Sela_Shiloni.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129848,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118004\/revisions\/129848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}