Alexander DeSouza is a Canadian-Indian filmmaker with numerous acclaimed short films under his belt, as well as a television show and a feature length debut out on the horizon. A graduate of York University’s film production program, as well as an alumni of the 2019 Reykjavik Film Festival Talent Lab, Alexander began his career in the film industry as an assistant editor and editor, his work premiering at the Edmonton International Film Festival and earning him the Assistant Editor Recognition Award from the Canadian Cinema Editors Association. His 2018 short film Mother’s Day was nominated for a Golden Sheaf, while his 2019 project Skin got featured in Film Shortage and debuted at the 23rd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. His work also extends to television, where he directed the pilot episode of Back To One in 2022 and short documentaries like Art of the Wild and Take a Hard Look that aired on CBC Arts. His newest film HOLO is a science-fiction short film set for a world premiere later this fall and stars Shane West, Morgan Kohan and Zelda Williams.
Growing up in Mississauga, Canada you made home videos and shorts with friends and family. What is your favorite one and why?
I think one of my favorite home movies was a 24 hour film challenge I did as part of the Nextwave Talent Lab which was hosted by the Toronto International Film Festival back when I was in high school. I had never participated in any sort of filmmaking challenge or event until then and being challenged to make a film in just 24 hours was stressful at first, but a lot of fun. I can’t honestly recall what the film was about in the end but I thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative process and being able to work with friends and family – which is one of the reasons I absolutely love filmmaking, it ends up being a creative team effort that you get to lead as a filmmaker or director.
As far as filmmaking is concerned, what lit the fuse for you to explore it as a passion and as a professional venture?
When I was in high school specifically in grade 7, I had a teacher that would often split us up into various groups for school projects and encouraged us to get creative in the ways we’d complete school projects for different subjects. Since I didn’t like writing essays or giving speeches, I would use my dad’s old camcorder to film school projects and eventually that process turned into my parents buying me my first camera and eventually my own handy-cam camcorder as my interest grew outside school to make films. While I started making films when I was just 12 years old, I don’t think I really started to take it seriously as a career until 2009 when I saw James Cameron’s Avatar in theatres. I was sitting at home one day and it was something about watching that film’s release that made me quickly realize that a job in the film industry was in fact possible. I originally didn’t know I wanted to become a director or editor, but I knew I wanted to be involved in the filmmaking process somehow.
What is the most valuable lesson you learned in the industry that newcomers and even veterans could take note of?
I think one of the most valuable lessons that I’ve learned over time of working in the industry is being able to have endurance. Endurance goes beyond having both talent and ambition. It’s no secret that the film industry is faced with constant rejection, and while you might say rejection is part of the process, it takes endurance to keep at it for some time before you reach some success. There will be long days where you hate making films as well as days you begin to question your career. Looking at your overall career in the long run and having the overall endurance to be able to achieve your goals is something that I think newcomers and even veterans should be reminded of from time to time.
Where do you draw inspiration from when conceptualizing a film? What artists and what kind of art inspires you?
Music has always played a huge role as one of the sources of inspiration for me when trying to conceptualize a new film. I try not to have any particular artists actually, as my list of artists and inspirations I have always changes between projects and throughout my career as a filmmaker. When I begin work on a new film, I usually go to various music websites and even YouTube to make playlists comprised of musical scores from similar films that I choose to take inspiration from. There is a direct connection between feeling the emotion and tone of such music and being able to draft up concepts for a film. If you were to watch me directing on film sets, it’s no secret that you’d likely spot me wearing headphones listening to my reference playlists for the film. That becomes my inspiration for making a film and helps get me in the right headspace even.
Likewise, when editing a film (whether you were an assistant or main editor), what are things you look for when making a cut? How do you process the screenplay and the overall story in the editing room?
As cliche as it may sound, cutting for performance and the emotional beats that exist within a scene are the first two elements that I look for as an editor – whether it’s cutting on the films I direct or for other filmmakers. I am a strong believer that an audience is more willing to forgive minor technical mistakes in an edit, such as not maintaining continuity than having a physically bad edit that makes a story confusing or lacks emotion. I view editing as basically the last re-write when making a film, with being provided a screenplay as the first time a film would have been “written”. I think when I make cuts in the editing room, having a deep sense of the overall story, importance of each scene and it’s tone is what informs my edits with how I cut films or work with editors.
Your latest short film HOLO evokes science fiction at its most intimate and effective. Black Mirror-esque in its provocative nature, but with more refined dystopian flourishes like the ones Alex Garland explores in his works like Annihilation and Ex Machina. How did you develop the story and its core themes?
That is an interesting comparison. The tone of shows like Black Mirror, Loki and Severance were all references during my conceptualization of HOLO. The story of HOLO was written by Alexander Hernandez-Maxwell. My main task was bringing it to life for the screen rather than developing the story directly. In dissecting HOLO, the characters and developing the human psychology of such characters was a key aspect I wanted to bring out. During pre-production I had a lot of great calls with Maxwell and we talked a lot about the larger themes that existed in HOLO, some of which involved the influence that big tech has over the world, as well as the scary direction artificial interactions is heading towards and if such technology can bring real closure to those seeking it. Through these discussions and my own personal interpretation of the script, I began to extract the themes that I felt were important which proved to be invaluable when working with my cast and key creative team.
The production design and locations is also striking, particularly the Looking Glass Technologies headquarters with all its tastefully positioned plants and minimalist architecture. How did you choose your locations, talk us through the planning phase of the short.
Getting the correct location, especially for the first scene you see in the film, was quite important for me to get right. It was quite a challenge to search for. During the pre-production phase of the film, I put together a mood-board that featured images of locations that took inspiration from architects like Frank Lloyd Wright who advocated for a more organic architecture in his work fusing various biophilic designs. Building upon this, I felt a more retrofuturism look with an overall mid-century modern vibe would perfectly fit the more warm “living room” tone I was going for when crafting the overall world. Building upon this mood-board I put together, my team and I began a search for locations that would fit this concept and it proved quite difficult to find these types of locations in Toronto, especially one that had a large panel of glass in the center. I looked at various locations including art galleries, museums, cultural centers and even hotels. We scouted a few, but I happened to find at the last minute a private high school that would allow us to film the intro scene that you see. The remainder of the film I decided to work with a concept artist to build a custom set which I felt the film called for. Combined with specific use of VFX and production design, the world of HOLO came to life.
Conceptually speaking it has many layers, but the tech on display in your film certainly taps into our human condition at a primal level. Do you think this technology (theoretically of course) could be a viable approach heading into the future?
At a certain point the technology that is present in the film can in fact (or will) get to a point where we cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not. Like Claire in the film, here is a point where our natural instincts take over and we force ourselves to believe in things that are synthetic or do not exist. However, the question if it is a viable approach is another debate. HOLO is a disturbing and extreme example of where this technology could go if someone like Claire were to abuse it, and our film explores this for more of a tense dramatic effect. Though I do think there are a lot of great use cases for realistic real-time rendering technology that could benefit from it’s use. One example that comes to mind could be in medicine or educational fields, so the viability of such technology is a complex one even if theoretical currently. We should take caution with how this technology develops and the safeguards we put around it.
Did you encounter any obstacles or difficulties during filming? How did you overcome these?
One of the main obstacles in the making of HOLO is rehearsing with both Shane (Jared) and Zelda (Grey) who both portrayed essentially what can be thought of as the same person. This was my first film where one character’s blocking needed match exactly of that another character. One of the methods I used to overcome this was to embark on detailed rehearsal sessions where we could work out, in advance, which actor would be driving the scene at any given moment as it related to the blocking. This allowed us to minimize wasted time on set while also giving us flexibility in the edit to match the blocking and movements between both characters.
HOLO isn’t just a short film, it’s a setup for a television show currently in development. What can you tell us about the show’s current state of development and how the narrative will expand with the episodic format?
So the short film serves as both a standalone short film that will be premiering soon on the festival circuit as well as a proof of concept short film for an eight episode mini series that is currently in development. While I can’t publicly say too much on the development of the larger series, I can say that we are in the early development stages of adapting the short into a larger narrative with a few production companies and networks who are interested, which is exciting. While the short focuses on the impact of the technology and a single “holo” session, the series will expand with a larger more ensemble cast of characters with both Grey and Claire becoming main characters. The series will also see more of the inner workings of how the Looking Glass Technologies company operates and more of the larger secretive world of the company.
You’re also working on your feature debut right now, an exciting prospect for any filmmaker with so much experience. Anything you can tell us about it and what we can look forward to?
I’m actually working on a couple of features at the moment, but what will eventually become my first feature debut at the moment is a film that is a loose adaptation based on a short documentary I made nearly ten years ago when I was back in film school. It is based on my grandparents upbringing in Uganda in the 1960s and 70s when Idi Amin took over and started to force out the South Asians living in Uganda. While the story is more historical fiction than anything, it is a very personal story for me and one that I’m exited to bring to the big screen very soon. You’ll be hearing more public news about my feature debut very soon along with casting and crew details!
