Getting Hyperreal with... Emil Lozado

Hyperreal Film Club (HFC): One of the first things I noticed while watching this was the music and how well it matched with the subject matter. I saw you had a composer by the name of Graham Reynolds, so I wanted to ask you, as the director, how involved were you with Graham?

Emil Lozado (EL): Yeah, I got super lucky with Graham. He's actually scored some pretty big feature films for Richard Linklater, and some [other] pretty big names. I saw him at a festival called Buzz Fest out in Bee Cave. He was playing a set there. He played all the instruments himself and I think he had, at one point, like a bucket of something that he was just hitting. He made instruments out of stuff, and I was like, “This guy's wild.” Then I started checking out his music and I had seen some of these films he scored. A mutual friend knows Graham, and I asked him to ask Graham to see if he could suggest some local composers. But I sent Graham a cut of the film, and he loved it, and he knows Sam, he's seen him riding around town, so yeah, he was very generous with his time. He really wanted to work on the film, and I think he'd actually been part of another project that Sam was in as well and he just really wanted to support that art around the Austin natives.

HFC: Was the score something you always had in mind from the conception of this project? Or was that something that came after the footage?

EL: The way I usually edit, I have a huge playlist of music. As soon as I hear something that evokes some sort of emotion, angry, sad, anything, or [if] it's just a piece of music that I really liked that if I think it would work with the film, I would add it to this playlist. Then I'll just dig into the playlist while I'm editing and see what works. The video I sent Graham had just three or four guide tracks in it and the guides are more to kind of evoke emotion and less about the kind of instrumentation or genre of music. I kind of left it up to Graham. He understands film scores, so I kind of left it with him. He could see what I was trying to do with the music that was in the cut that he got and then I just left it with him and then he sent it back. He sent me back this cut and there was a couple of tiny notes that I had where I would say, “Oh, this could sound a little bit more inspiring…” That was pretty much it, and then he would send back some added instrumentation with the right chord progression. It didn't take long to get it to the perfect spot.

HFC: How long would you say it took you from conception to finalization in general for Grey Horse?

EL: The first shoot I did with Sam was, I think, September 2021. I met him about a month before we started shooting. Then I went riding with him. A lot of people reach out to him about doing stuff—they want to take his portraits or they want to ride horses with him—he has great energy, and people want to be a part of that. It definitely took a bit of convincing from me by sharing my story and my intentions for him to get on board, so I went riding with him and I spent time at his ranch and just spent time with the horses and he invited me to do sweat lodges with his Native American people. It took a little while to gain his trust but once he understood what I wanted to do with the film, he was on board. So, then we shot from September to probably May and then I put a rough edit together and then the editing was finished in July. The Austin Film Festival was when I set a deadline for, which was the beginning of July. I think if I hadn't had that in mind, I'd probably still be filming it now. There's just there's so many interesting things. Every time I meet with Sam, there's a new story or a new thing that's happened or something else that is worth filming so that deadline was good! I needed that. Thankfully, we did get it into the Austin Film Festival, so it was worth it.

HFC: Did you ever have a sort of idea related to this kind of subject matter prior to meeting Sam or did it just develop from a chance meeting?

EL: I moved here literally like a week before the pandemic started in February of 2020 from England, and before I moved, I said I was potentially going to be moving to Austin, and everyone was like, “Oh, my God, that's like one of the coolest cities in America! It’s got this Make Austin Weird Thing! It's all full of Austin characters and hippies and stuff!” I got here—and it is an incredible city and I love it—but I wasn't really seeing any of that. Then the pandemic happened, and everyone just kept talking about gentrification and how the city had changed and it wasn't what it used to be and it kind of lost that essence of what Austin is known for. So, I really wanted to make a film that kind of celebrated that “old Austin.” I didn't know whether that was going to be a character-led film or something that included a lot of different people talking about their experiences of the city. Then through a bit of research online, I came across this video of Sam on his mule, singing inside a bar. He just had the mic on the mule, and I was like, “Wow, this is something! He's pretty unique.” So, I reached out to him and then he invited me up to the ranch to meet the horses and that was how it was born.

HFC: What was the memorable challenge of making this particular project? Or was it a smooth process?

EL: Oh, it was definitely not smooth! Sam is like this stream of consciousness and information and everything he says is profound, but it's not necessarily profound to him. That's just the way he is, that's the way that he kind of gets through this world, by understanding everything in the way that he does. I would start writing ideas for the structure of the film, and then something else would happen or someone else would tell me a story about Sam. I'd sometimes meet up with him just to hang out and chat about anything and then he would just start reeling off this amazing speech and I'm like, “Oh, we should be filming this!” It was really difficult. Now that I’ve watched the film, I'm like, “Oh, it all kind of slides together quite well,” but then I think about the editing process, and it was far from that! We shot a lot of footage. When I tell my other friends who make short documentaries about how much we shot, they're like “Wow!” [Laughs]. I think it's kind of a learning process for me. I'm working on a couple of other docs now and I think I've gotten better at kind of refining the story before shooting. But then it's hard, because with docs, you always want to have room to follow those little stories as they develop whilst you're shooting. So, yeah, the hardest thing was just honing in the wonderful world that is Sam Grey Horse.

HFC: Did you always intend for this to be a short documentary? Or did you at one point consider making it a feature?

EL: Yeah, for sure. There were so many things that we had to cut out and so many crazy things that [Sam]’s done that we shot and have the footage for, but it just didn't make it in. There's a lot of interviews with other people that know him that didn't make it into this. The first cut I did was probably like 40 minutes, which is the worst time because you're not quite long enough for a feature but you're twice or three times as long as a short, so trying to get that into a festival is near impossible unless it's absolutely amazing. We decided we'd make it a short and then see how things go and I think if his music career really takes off, then we'll pursue a feature. We've got the kind of backstory and we've got the groundwork for it, and I think it'd be exciting to follow him around the world with a camera and see what happens.

HFC: Were there any sort of inspirations operating in the front or back of your mind while making this?

EL: There's a really interesting filmmaker called Roberto Minervini and I think I watched almost all of his films prior to making this and I really wanted to kind of emulate that style a little bit. His films [are] technically documentaries, but he's using real people and not really giving them a script. It'll just be his DP [director of photography], then a sound guy, and he'll meet with his subject, and they'll arrange to shoot for like, a weekend or something. They'll get together and have a big dinner or lunch with the small crew that he's got and then they'll talk about what they're going to shoot and he'll just kind of not really give them too much direction, [he’ll] just tell them to be themselves and then they'll just film it and it comes together so beautifully! It feels like a kind of narrative film. The Other Side is the one that I would recommend the most, the cinematography is beautiful. I really wanted to try and film this documentary like that with no interviews. The first half of [Grey Horse], I was still not planning to do an interview and just kind of have the audience feel Sam through the things that he does every day through being on the horses, feeding the horses, kind of sharing his energy with people and then I started cutting scenes together and I was like, this is alright, but I think just having Sam talking in an interview is what's really going to tie this all together. And I'm glad that we did that in the end, because yeah, it probably wouldn't have been a great film if we just had footage of Sam! [Laughs].

HFC: I noticed one of the people you interviewed for this, they didn't show up on screen at all, it was just their voice. I believe it was one of his band members. But I was curious if that was intentional to not show them?

EL: The footage we shot for that interview was really great! We shot it in his recording studio, but it was really moody and dark and it just was quite jarring. That was a decision that came really late on after I got some feedback from a few friends. There's two guys he plays in a band with and I interviewed them both together and so [the scene] was like a two shot where they're both in it and the other guy doesn't talk. In the first 40 minute cut that I did it had both of them talking and there was quite a lot of their interview and then some other people as well but then when I really brought it down to 12 minutes, and it just had Andrew, it removed the audience from the story too much just kind of cutting into this well-lit beautiful shot in a studio at night almost. So yeah, I just decided to have his voice and have him talk while we see shots of Sam and I think that works a lot better.

HFC: Going back to Sam, obviously he was the subject of this, was Sam involved in any way outside of being on camera? Was he involved in the post-production process?

EL: Yeah, once I did pretty much everything, aside from the music, sound mix and the color grade, I did show him that cut just to kind of make sure that there was nothing that felt insincere or incorrect. I didn't want him to see it for the first time and be like, “Well, that's not right. That was taken out of context.” I showed him that cut, and he loved it, and I was like, “Okay, cool, we'll get Graham to work on the music and have the post production properly done.”

HFC: For the filmmaker, do you feel this sense of protecting your subject that you focus on? Did you feel that feeling of “What I'm making about Sam, it has to do right by him?”

EL: Yeah, yeah totally. For me, there's kind of two approaches to documentary filmmaking. The kind of observational documentaries where you're much more subjective as a filmmaker; I love those films, but I don't really want to make things like that. I want to make films that celebrate people or things. Although there might be negative things to say about a person or negative things that are said about a person, I do always feel like they can be said as long as there's something that kind of counters that. So with Sam, although there was some dark times that he went through, I think I really wanted to be aware of not dwelling on that aspect too much. [I wanted to] kind of celebrate the positives that came out of his accident and everything that he's been through.

HFC: I guess this comes down to a personal approach as a filmmaker, but would you say there are subjects who 100% of the time deserved that sort of protective gaze or protective look from the filmmaker? Or would you say everything is open to criticism in terms of the subject matter?

EL: I'd say it's dependent on the story, for sure. I think with Sam, he opened up to me and in such a deep way that I have a huge amount of respect for [that]. Like he invited me to do sweat lodges with his Native American friends which was such a powerful experience for me, and I felt like if he had put that amount of trust in me to tell his story and kind of given me his all then I really wanted to reciprocate that in a way that felt fair to him. Ask me the same question after a few more projects and I might have a different answer for this one! [Laughs].

HFC: What gravitates you towards the documentary genre?

EL: I wish I knew the answer! [Laughs]. I'm working on my first short narrative for the moment and it's just a completely different process. It's much more inward, I think. I'm reading a lot of books on screenwriting and stuff and I'm working with a couple of friends on it, but it's just us meeting and talking. Whereas for this film, it was me out all the time. Like, “Sam, let me know when you're doing something! Oh, it's snowing, like, damn, the horses! Alright, I'm gonna go over and film the horses, even though like I should not be driving on the roads right now!” I don't know, I find it exciting. Just being with people and having experiences that I would never normally have. You've probably heard this before but a camera is a passport to places that you would never often be able to go just as a kind of regular person. A lot of my work has been with kind of wildlife NGOs and I managed to go to some incredible places that you just can't go to without having a camera! [Laughs]. With Sam, I could have probably messaged him and talked about just hanging out and maybe that would have happened, maybe it wouldn't have, but the experience that I got through this project of being a guy who moved here from England and then riding horses just through a city in Texas just seems so incredible to me! I don't think I get a chance to do that without making a film. It's been like that with everything I've worked on. I'm working now with a trans drag queen activist in Austin, and just some of the places and things that I've gotten to do with her have just been phenomenal and I just wouldn't be there without a camera so yeah, it is a very different style of learning to narrative filmmaking. But narrative filmmaking is really exciting as well because you’re kind of constructing this poetic narrative from your laptop with writing. So yeah, they're two very different things and I think I'm pretty drawn to both of them right now.

HFC: You bring up an interesting point. You worked with Sam, who's this Indigenous equestrian rider, he's in a band, all this stuff, and then the next film you're working on is centered around this trans activist. Two different people living two different lives. How do you dig into these subjects? How are you able to get them to tell their story to you?

EL: Building trust from the beginning is probably the most important thing and kind of just relating to people on a human level is what I found to be the best way to kind of get people to open up. With Sam, I spent awhile kind of getting to know him and just showing him that I was willing to show up and kind of just be there and learn about him and listen. Then with Ray, this trans drag queen, I was just talking to her at shows, I genuinely enjoy going to drag shows and she could see that it was something I was interested in and passionate about and again, I felt like I got her trust because I was genuine about that. It’s difficult because you always want to be objective, I guess. I don't know, I think through spending time with subjects with the camera turned off, that's what works best for me.

HFC: Do you ever feel that that tension of relating to a subject, getting to know them without the camera, but then also trying to make sure you're getting stuff on camera to tell their story at the same time? Is that a thought that ever crossed your mind?

EL: For sure! There's been a number of times where they've said something in conversation and I've had the camera just kind of in my lap while we're chatting and I’m like, “Oh, my God, that was amazing! Say that again!” And then I'll film it and they’ll say it again and it just doesn't sound good. So when I hear great things off camera and I don't catch them, I just have to remind myself that by not filming, and just listening, that’s just strengthening that relationship between me and the subject. That's just going to be a good thing for the whole film moving forward. So yeah, I think taking time to listen is one of the most important things as well.

HFC: In your experience, would you say the camera has made your subjects more open to talking or less?

EL: I'd say more likely [they’ll be] less open to talking. I'm exactly the same way! I hate having a camera pointed at me; it makes me kind of seize up and just feel very uncomfortable. I will quite often start with that when I'm interviewing someone who might not necessarily feel super comfortable on camera, I'll just let them know that I feel the same. It's a normal human thing to feel, to feel weird about someone putting a camera and recording everything you're saying and knowing that it could be used out of context, and it could be used against you. There are all these different things that kind of come up with filming. But saying that, for the documentaries that I've been working on, I have found subjects who are just very open and very willing to talk, and they have a story that they want to tell. So, it's generally been pretty easy to have them talk about it.

HFC: If there's one piece of key advice you would want to tell someone that's making a documentary film, what would that be?

EL: I think if there was if there was one thing I would say, do it with a friend. Because having someone not only to bounce ideas off of and kind of discuss where things could go, but just having someone to kind of hold you accountable [is nice]. It's quite easy to be like, “We could go film, or we could just not,” but if you've got someone and you've made plans and you've kind of decided that’s what you’re going to be doing that day, it’s easier. I've got one of my really close friends who I used to live with in London who had started making short documentaries and it was just fun. He'd be like, “Just come with me and sometimes you'll shoot, sometimes I'll shoot, sometimes you'll do sound, sometimes I'll do the interviews,” and we're just kind of messing around. That's why we do creative stuff, isn't it? It's enjoyable! And if you can share that joy and fun with someone, I just think it's going to be a better time. That's coming from now, with Grey Horse I did purely by myself and afterwards I said I won't do another film by myself! And now the one I’m doing again is by myself, so uhh [laughs] I'm not doing very well at taking my own advice!

HFC: If you had to pick a documentary out of every documentary you've ever seen in your life so far, what's your favorite?

Big River Man

EL: Oh, man! [Laughs]. I can tell you my favorite documentary is Big River Man. It's a story about this Slovenian alcoholic endurance swimmer who tries to be the first man to swim the length of the Amazon and it is the most bizarre film! It's completely mad. John Maringouin directed it, I haven't seen any of his other work. I think it won the Jury Award at Sundance—it definitely won something at Sundance. But yeah, the actual film itself just gets completely bizarre; like, the guy starts going off the rails and then I think the filmmaker probably started going off the rails as well and it gets a bit kind of Apocalypse Now. If you want to watch it, it’s on YouTube!

HFC: This is a question I like to ask every filmmaker I get the chance to talk to: If people were head over heels for Grey Horse, what would be the other pieces of art you would offer to them to say, “If you liked Grey Horse, you would like _______.”

EL: Big River Man definitely. It's a story about an individual person who's slightly different than the rest of us, but still living an inspiring life. The Greyhounds are the band that [Sam] plays with, I would definitely recommend checking out their music; they’re a local Austin band and they're awesome.

HFC: What's the movie that you're looking forward to catching this year, whether it's a new one or just something you've never seen?

EL: Oh, man, I've not been great at seeing films recently. I'm actually going to the movie theaters tomorrow to watch Renfield, the Nic Cage Dracula film. I think Nic Cage is one of the most interesting actors out there! I don't even mind if the film's not great, but I just think Nic Cage is just this bizarre entity of an actor. I don't know, everything I watch, no matter how good or bad it is, if he's in it, it's just entertaining! [Laughs]. He's so different to anyone else that I'm used to seeing on screen. There's a really interesting Nic Cage piece, I guess it's like a video essay, that goes into some of the inspirations on where he gets his acting from. But yeah, I'm excited about watching [Renfield]! I'm trying to think if there's anything else coming out, though…There's so many things that have already been out that I haven't seen yet…

HFC: Do you have a favorite Nic Cage movie? Or maybe just a specific performance that you just love of his?

EL: Yeah, so there's a film called Vampire’s Kiss, which is one of his earlier films, and there's this scene where he's going through the alphabet, and it is fucking brilliant! I think you could probably find it on YouTube but yeah, that's my favorite Nic Cage performance! [Laughs].

HFC: Last question: what's your favorite thing about Austin?

EL: I would say the film community here! I was very apprehensive about moving to America and even more apprehensive about moving to Texas. I think the stereotypes that come with Texas, particularly for someone coming from Europe, I was like, “Whoa, I don't know if I can handle that just yet,” but then getting here and just discovering this thriving film scene was incredible! People are so open! Like going to any Hyperreal night, I always meet interesting people. People are collaborating all the time, helping each other out with films. Yeah, I feel very lucky and very fortunate to be here and be surrounded by so many great minds and some of the films that I see that local filmmakers are making, I'm like, “Damn, you're going to be like the next big Hollywood director in like, 10 or 15 years time!” You got people in their early 20s making unbelievably good short films here and I feel very lucky to be around that.