“I'm thinking all the time about the psychology of being occupied”
“I'm thinking all the time about the psychology of being occupied”
San Diego filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaker discusses the quixotic process of making his newest war film, Tiger Oak + Echo
As far as opening scenes go, Tiger Oak + Echo’s is a beauty.
The film starts with a black screen and sound of three people counting: 8... 9... 10. Their voices are strangely monotone, almost robotic. There’s a deliberate rhythm to their count, a march toward death.
The image cuts in. Three young men in midcentury rural clothing sit on a forest floor, watching each other with unwavering intensity. Two of the men hold single-shot, bolt-action rifles. The third man—a boy, really—holds a twig. The counting continues, but the men’s mouths don’t move, like they’re communicating telepathically.
As the numbers increase, the men’s synchronicity falters. The youngest of the three loses time. We’re not quite sure what is happening yet, but the mistake feels monumental. Who knew that three men counting could be so intense? We don’t need to be told that when one of them fails to keep time, there will be dire consequences.
Tiger Oak + Echo (now streaming for free on Amazon Prime) is a masterclass of sustained, economic tension—a tightness that does not let up. The film is layered, taut, and rhythmic, which isn’t surprising that it came from the mind of San Diego filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaker.
Kuckenbaker, a film teacher at San Diego City College, has spent the past decade producing short special effects films that have won the world over. His time-collapsed videos of traffic on Interstate 5 and airplanes landing at San Diego International Airport have garnered millions of views and praise from outlets like Atlantic, Variety and USA Today.
“I was absolutely shocked at the response,” Kuckenbaker says over the phone. “When I made the first airplane film, it truly was just an experiment. I didn't think it would be interesting to people. Actually, I showed an early version of it to a class at school, and they had no response. They were like, whatever.”
However, Tiger Oak + Echo marks Kuckenbaker’s foray into his first love: narrative filmmaking.
The short film is about three young Lithunaian freedom fighters who, during the years after World War II, launched guerilla attacks against the Soviet aggression that was spreading into Europe. When Tiger finally entrusts Echo with a small task, the young boy makes a mistake that puts them all in danger.
Kuckenbaker has been obsessed with narratives even before he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. After graduating from high school, Kuckenbaker had his sights set on becoming an engineer, and enrolled at a college in South Dakota on an ROTC scholarship.
“I hated it,” he says. “It was like my worst years of my life. And at the end of the year, I quit the scholarship and I got a job from the school. The only job they had left was in the dish room.”
Every morning, Kuckenbaker would wake at 5:30 a.m. and spend the first hours of his day washing dishes that would come through a hole in the wall on a conveyor belt. He began to use that time to think about movie scenes he liked and how they worked.
“I'd think of a scene, and just watch it in my head. Why is it so compelling to me? I was trying to understand it. and after a few weeks I realized that what I was doing was probably unusual. I don't think other people are thinking about movies as much. Maybe this is something I'm really interested in.”
Kuckenbaker then ditched South Dakota and moved to San Diego and got a film degree from SDSU.
“At San Diego State, I was a terrible student,” he says. “Their film program is very good, but I didn’t make anything. So there was this intense shame that I had this film degree and didn’t know how to do anything.”
To compensate for that shame, Kuckenbaker joined the Peace Corps and served in Eastern Europe. In Lithuania, he learned of the history of freedom fighters—the story that eventually became the script for Tiger Oak + Echo.
Kuckenbaker’s experience in the Peace Corps was ultimately an eye-opening experience that made him realize just how many opportunities he had in the states, and it reinvigorated his drive to become a filmmaker.
“I thought, ‘When I go back, I really have to try.’”
But it wasn’t until the 2016 Russian occupation of Crimea that forced Kuckenbaker to look at the imperativeness of his story.
“I'm thinking all the time about the psychology of being occupied. For Americans, it's impossible. I mean, we experienced it, you know, with the English, but that was 250 years ago. But the psychology of the occupied is very specific.”
With Tiger Oak + Echo, Kuckenbaker was also fascinated in exploring the indoctrination of young men into war.
“Here, a 17-year-old kid leaves and comes home two years later, and they're a quote ‘man’, right? But when we see it in other cultures, we’re completely freaked out by it. The Iranian army is indoctrinating youth. ISIS is turning 16-year-old boys into soldiers. We find it really repellent. My film is not a judgment on either point of view because it's just considering the case of one character. ‘I want to be a man, I want to be respected by my older brother.’”
As expected, organizing a film shoot in a foreign country with little-to-no contacts provided its own set of unique challenges, and in many ways became its own covert mission.
“I wrote cold emails to random production companies, saying "Is there a producer?”’ Kukenbaker says. “Only one guy responded.”
Despite the guy’s tepid response, Kuckenbaker flew out to Lithuania to meet him—a meeting that did not go well.
“I knew instantly that it wasn’t going to work. He was looking for bigger projects. But he drove me to a casting agency and dropped me off. There, I said ‘I’m going to be honest with you. The guy that dropped me off, I’m not making this film with him, and I need somebody to tell me who is the producer for this.’ And the guy working there kind of swore me to secrecy and said, ‘You need this person, her name is Asta [Liukaityte].’”
Liukaityte took on the project and gave Kuckenbaker a budget that allowed him to focus on the minute details of filmmaking that he’s never had to consider before.
“The thing I tell my students over and over is that when you're doing super low-budget filmmaking, you're rich in a way you're not aware of. And that is, you get time. If things get weird or didn't work out today, you can come back next Saturday. But as soon as the film is budgeted all those people who are there, they're only there because it's their job. If they're not getting paid, they leave. It means the director's prep is really intensive. Like you have to know everything before you start shooting. The makeup artists asked me, “How do you get their hair cut?” You've got to have an answer.”
(BTW, the answer was that their hair should look like it was cut at home—something many of us have had experience with over the past year).
They shot the film in four days in 2016, a period in which Kuckenbaker had to pretend to be more experienced than he was as a way to put his Lithuanian crew at ease.
“I'm an imposter,” he says. “People don't know if I'm super experienced. They don't know if I don't know anything.”
Kuckenbaker brings up a moment when he had to keep his cool in the face of pure artistic validation.
“So we go out to the location the day before we're going to shoot with the art director. There's a moment where the older brother climbs a tree and you can see him grab a branch with his right hand. But the problem is that tree didn't have any branches at the bottom. So the art director put a branch in the tree. I walked out there with him and he showed me the branch, and I cannot tell you the pride I felt,” Kuckenbaker says, laughing.
“I was like, ‘I can't believe I'm part of the movie with an art director good enough to put branches on trees. But I had to hide my excitement. Inside, I'm like, ‘This is the most beautiful tree branch I've ever seen.’”
Watch Tiger Oak + Echo for free on Amazon Prime.
THE WEEKLY GOODS
Listen to this
Alexandra Pratt is one of those artists who can jump from medium to medium and always produce something cool (longtime readers might remember the rad Cheetos art show she curated). Her newest music project, ALX, is no different—a haunting blend of psychedelic electro-pop and soulful vocals, with just enough experimentation to keep things interesting. It’s good stuff, to say the least. Today, ALX released two songs from her forthcoming EP, as well as the accompanying music videos (shot and directed by Megan O'Flaherty) on her Youtube channel. This Saturday, you can catch ALX performing live as part of ListenSD’s Charity Show. Hell yeah to squeezing a little more awesome music into this cursed year.
Watch this
Every Monday night, I take part in a live uh... Youtube show? Podcast? I don’t really know what to call it. But the show’s called Polyester Blend, hosted by Ryen Schlegel (my BFF since seventh grade) and Clayton Scrivner. We have a lot of fun, and I highly recommend you tune in, especially if you’re into listening to three schlubby white guys talk about hyper local Utah stuff. It may sound esoteric, but we also play really good music. Anyway, being on the show has become one of my weekly highlights during this pandemic, and I’m constantly awed by how much work Schlegel puts into it. A few weeks ago, he made this promo video—a parody of the Masterclass commercials—and it’s very, very funny. You should watch it. Or maybe don’t, because I’m probably going to steal the idea to make an AWKSD promo in the next few weeks.
Watch this
I kinda regret putting out my Best of 2020 list last week, because since then I watched The Wolf of Snow Hollow. Easily one of the best movies of the year, the film’s about a mountain-town cop investigating a series of gruesome murders while trying to convince the townsfolk and his own squad there’s not a werewolf committing them. Written and directed by Jim Cummings (who also plays the main character), the film balances horror, drama and dead-pan comedy in a way that I really haven’t seen before. The tone of the film is like if an R-rated Napoleon Dynamite and Zodiac had a werewolf baby. Plus, it’s sort of a Christmas movie. It’s so good.
Got a tip or wanna say hi? Email me at ryancraigbradford@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter @theryanbradford. And if you like what you’ve just read, please hit that little heart icon at the end of the post.
Julia Dixon Evans edited this post. Thanks, Julia. Go follow her on Twitter.