IN SEARCH OF LOST CONTINENTS
Directorial notes · May 2020
We filmed this project in the summer of 2019. Looking back now on those humid summer days exploring the forests and swamps of east Texas feels like a dream from a lifetime ago. We could never have anticipated the pandemic that would sweep across the world, the summer of cultural reckoning, and the constant era of heartbreak we have since lived through.
Watching this film now, two years after it was filmed and five years after it was written, I can’t believe how devastatingly relevant and true to our present reality the world we created feels. When we set out to make this film we wanted to explore a world that was fragile, dangerous, transformed, hostile and beautiful - over the last year, we have all lived through an experience of a world that is all those things and more.
I have always believed that the pursuit of cinema is a kind of spiritual seeking - a search for truth beneath the surface of reality through stories and images. In making this film, we challenged ourselves to build a new world out of infrared light, and to go deeper into the subjective realities of our characters.
It took years for us to untangle this film from the webs of infrared light we captured, but I think in doing so we were gifted the challenge of digging far deeper beneath the spectrum of the visible. It was a process that I can only describe as discovering a new way of seeing. I believe that if you stare at any image long enough, it can begin to transform the world outside the frame. Soon, it spills over and across your whole reality.
As we spent years reckoning ourselves against the veil of invisible light, we found our story deepening. Our grasp on cinema, it seemed, was changing. For us, it became a journey that will inform all other journeys.
When I look back now and think about Lost Continents I think about a famous proverb from philosopher Zhuangzi:
I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
Zhuangzi
Cast
- Vashti
- Jariah Johnson
- Isabella
- Alexandria Payne
- Faceless Man
- Mike Scarlett
- River Beings
- Joella Phillips, Toni House, Ramryn Williams, Jade Ngure
Crew
- Production company
- Movement House
- Written & directed by
- Travis Lee Ratcliff
- Cinematography
- Brody Carmichael
- Produced by
- Katherine Heim, Brody Carmichael, Travis Lee Ratcliff
- Creative producer
- Emily Basma
- Casting
- Michael Druck
- Additional casting
- Roni Hummel & Kina Bale-Reed
- Edited by
- Travis Lee Ratcliff
- Sound design & mixing
- Johnny Marshall
- Color
- Brandon Thomas & TBD Post
- Original score
- Sam Greene
- 1st AD
- Travis Petosa
- Production coordinators
- Raven Bosch, Tanner Goheen
- Script supervisor
- Paul Vance
- Location manager
- Ron Hollomon
- 1st AC
- Emily Basma
- 2nd AC
- Sarah Jones, Erin Maynwaring
- Key grip
- Tanner Goheen
- Additional grip
- Nick Harral & Stephen Laughrun
- Swing
- Evan Papadakis
- Gaffer
- Eric Dickinson
- Location sound mixer
- Robbie Cluck
- Set dresser
- Rachel Immaraj
- Art department assistants
- Rachel Immaraj, Erin O’Brien, Emily Basma, Kathryn Bailey, Sean Muldrow
- Costumers
- Adrienne Greenblat, Emily Basma
- Make-up artists
- Brooke Wilson, Jason Vines
- On-set photographer
- Peyton Frank
- Production assistants
- Carol Murrah, Alejandro Rios, Austin Waybright, Alex Curnutt
Shot on
- Format
- Optical infrared
- Camera
- Varicam LT
- Lens
- Angenieux Optimo Ultra 12x zoom
- Where
- East Texas, summer 2019
Special thanks
- Northeast Texas Film Commission
- Ron Hollomon
- Katie Heim
- Diamond Don
- Louis Hardt
- Peyton Anne Frank
- Kathryn Bailey
- Sean Muldrow
- Emily Basma
- Erin O’Brien
- Eric Dickinson
- Susan Ratcliff & Diana Hickman
- Ebony Brown
- McGarity’s Restaurant and Saloon
- Auntie Skinner’s Riverboat Club
- MPS
- Aduro
- Austin Film Society
- New Republic Studios