Found footage films can accomplish so much with only a few actors on hand, especially when they’re produced with a low budget.
Man Finds Tape follows Lynn, who discovers that her brother, Lucas, and his YouTube channel are wrapped up in a mysterious murder and a string of cryptic phenomena. As the two siblings dig deeper into their family’s past, they find themselves in the sight of a dangerous monster.
I recently spoke with stars John Gholson, Brian Villalobos, and Nell Kessler about their characters in Man Finds Tape, how they perceived Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman’s supernatural world, and more!
Though Man Finds Tape centers around Lucas and Lynn, the film’s side characters round out the uniqueness that Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman have brought. Gholson, Villalobos, and Kessler recalled what made them fall in love with their respective characters.
“I’ve worked with Peter and Paul, and then I knew Kelsey and William worked with them as well, and I love all those people, and now I love these people,” Villalobos began.
“Digging into this story, I love the town. I love the world-building that exists here. I think the ultimate goal of a movie, maybe not the ultimate, but one of the main goals of a movie, is to try to create a world that feels like it exists when you turn it off.”
“Part of what made me really interested in being involved in this as well was that sense, getting to kind of have that happen for my character as well,” Kessler added. “The fact that I got to give this horror movie performance, but then to be this person reflecting on what had happened, I think about this all the time as an actor.”
“Getting to actually keep going past the credits, so to speak, and answer that question for myself and for Wendy, what happens to her when she has to keep going and has to keep living her life? That was what made me really want to hook into this.”
“I did know [Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman], it was still a process where I had to audition,” Gholson recalled. “They didn’t do me any favors other than they gave me the favor of allowing me to audition in the first place.”
“The part of the appeal was going like, ‘I may have a little bit of like whatever the opposite of imposter syndrome is.’ It was a matter of them going like, ‘Hey, we have the script. We have this interesting character,’ and that was catnip for me.”
Gholson also discussed his initial view of Man Finds Tape‘s narrative.”While [the town square video] kicks off the storyline and gets everybody sort of in orbit with each other, there were other priorities that the film had outside of just solving the mystery of the video itself,” he said.
“It was perhaps more character-driven as a final film than what I perceived it to be on the page, which was a little bit more about unraveling a mystery.”
Given how Man Finds Tape is also character-driven, the film’s characters go through an incredible amount of trouble. Gholson, Villalobos, and Kessler described how they saw their characters change from the script to when they went into filming.
“There was actually was quite a bit of change, even from versions of the script where they’re like the Stranger is a character who’s mysterious and we don’t get a lot about him,” Villalobos recalled. “There was more explanation of what he was doing. He had more expository dialogue and portions of the movie not in a heavy-handed way.”
“He was giving more light to how the cosmology works or what was at play. As we got closer to production, they were like shaving off more to the point where they were kind of like ‘less is more.’ They had this kind of letting him exist more in the shadows and be more of an impression of a person or a character.”
“The change for Endicott is one of desperation,” Gholson said. “He’s content and complacent. When things change for Endicott in the in the story, his change affects desperation.”
“Part of his desperation is like, ‘If I can, maybe I can have a son and I can show him the ways of living high on the hog and kick him back into what you want to do.'”
“Part of what is so fun and such an awesome challenge for an actor with found footage is that you are given the space to really fill in the blanks in such a huge way,” Kessler noted.
“For found footage, anything that you bring in can and might appear, whether it’s dialogue or physical choices or every part of the 360-degree person that you build may appear on the screen.”
“I don’t know if it was so much that Wendy super changed, but I think there were things that I know that Paul and Peter weren’t necessarily aiming for that,” Kessler added. “I made the decision like I think this is who this person is, and that’s why she behaves in a certain way.”
Man Finds Tape also has some heavy-handed moments, which are further elevated thanks to the use of its special effects. Gholson, Villalobos, and Kessler recalled their reactions to seeing all the practical effects being used.
“I thought it was hard to control those impulses in person — just being like, ‘Woah, that’s so gross and cool,” Kessler said. “It was definitely something I had to check in the moment of making sure that my character would not be like, ‘How are you doing that with that,’ because my character would be horrified!”
“It’s a really nice moment on a set,” Villalobos added. “That happening a number of times, like you’re demoing in effect and everyone just goes, ‘Oh man, this is good!'”
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Man Finds Tape is currently playing in theaters.
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