Elliot (2017) Craig Jacobson

We’re leading up to talking about Elliot, the pair’s most ambitious project to date. But first I ask them about the medium they shot it in: VHS. Jacobson explains why the pair chose that format: “We got into VHS for Cassandra’s most ambitious short, Wireboy, because it provided the look we were going for in that movie. It was important to have a dirty image due to the subject matter and it became a bit of a production element too. Elliot was kind of a further exploration of some of the same themes, but it was very different in what it dealt with exactly. Again, VHS seemed most appropriate for the story because this was another grimy world, and because the sets in Elliot were all made by hand rather cheaply; shooting the movie in HD wouldn’t have done it any favors. With VHS you don’t have a pristine image, and the medium basically becomes an extension of the organic nastiness of Elliot’s world. As far as the costs go, VHS is actually relatively cheap when compared to other formats. The hard part is finding cameras that still work. The other important thing is to get a decent digital converter that maintains the analog fidelity of VHS.”