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Interview: Aneesh Chaganty Talks Screen Thriller ‘Searching’

This weekend marks the arrival of Sony Pictures’ thriller Searching, which tells its story of a father (Jon Cho) trying to find his missing daughter all through a computer screen in a similar narrative construction to Unfriended.

Ahead of the film’s release, I got to sit down with the film’s first-time director Aneesh Chaganty about just how the story came to be and what sort of challenges the point-of-view presented as well as what it was like working with this cast and more.

I just wanted to begin, Aneesh, by asking where the story came from and what it was about this particular concept that made you put pen to paper?

Absolutely. Yeah. So Sev Ohanian is the co-writer and producer on the film and he and I are writing partners and have been since we went to film school together. When we first graduated, we made a short video that took place on Google Glass and it went very viral and led to me getting a job at Google where I was writing and directing commercials for a year. At the same time, Sev was in L.A producing indie films and he took a meeting with an indie production company and he brought me in and they had made a hit movie called Unfriended which take place on a screen and they wanted to follow it up. But they wanted to follow it with a film that was not a feature film, traditionally, but rather a feature comprised of a bunch of short films. And their ask from us was to make a short film, not a feature. And, to me, that was more exciting than making a feature because we had seen all the other feature films and it wasn’t a good guiding tool for what direction we were going because a lot of them felt like gimmicks and I told Sev, “I promise you I’ll never do this”.

So about a month and a half later, Sev and I came up with the idea for this as a short film – an 8-minute short film called Searching. And we really liked that, most importantly, it was not a gimmick so we sent the production company a few pages about it and a few weeks later, I was in L.A for a Google photo shoot so they called us in and, suddenly, it was Sev and I sitting at this big table across a bunch of execs and financers and we were confused and they were like “listen, we like the short but we don’t want to make it” and we were kinda bummed but then they said “we want to turn it into a feature. We’ll pay you guys to write it; Sev can produce it; Aneesh, you can direct. We’ll finance the whole thing, what do you guys say?” And, in an instant, it was a crazy crazy moment, but my immediate answer was no. And Sev is kicking me under the table like “what are you doing? You’re throwing away your whole career” but, in that moment, and this is what I told them, it felt like we were taking a concept that we had found a way to not make into a gimmick in 8 minutes and stretching it into another gimmick again and that’s the last thing we ever wanted to do. So we left the room with a no. But, for a long time afterwards, we kept talking about it. Despite the parameters of what they were asking from us, this opportunity isn’t given to first-time directors. So, at the very least, we had to talk about it.

We kept talking about it and trying to find a way into the story that wasn’t a gimmick but we couldn’t do it until two months later, I text Sev with a weird idea for an opening scene and Sev text back saying that he had an idea for an opening scene. So we got on the phone and pitched each other the exact same idea and it was crazy and, to this day, it’s the opening sequence you see in the film. And, in that moment, we realised there was very high potential for this story in a way we felt hadn’t been accomplished by other films that took place on screens. All of a sudden we felt we could tell a story that was emotional, engaging and cinematic and will hopefully make you forget that you’re watching a screen. We thought, if we could do it in 90 minutes then why not have a swing at it and give audiences the feeling of watching something they’ve never seen before so we put together a longer pitch, went back to the company, they were on-board, I quit my job at Google and moved from L.A to New York and we started working on the movie.

That’s pretty cool. You mentioned you and Sev went to film school together and I’m a film student myself so I’m familiar with the co-writing procedure for short films. But I was wondering what it was like co-writing a feature and what that partnership and process was like?

Yeah, it’s funny because often people say you write with something but, to be honest, Sev and I would often say we were writing against each other in a weird way. Because, for us, the thing we value most in each other, as co-writers, is our shared understanding of story structure so, within that format, we’re always pitching ideas but always arguing for the logical reason as to why a certain decision is the right to make. We trust that our egos are out the way so, usually, the best argument tends to win. But we both have a similar story structure. I feel like I’m the ball that goes in every direction and Sev is the walls on the side that guide it where it needs to go. Together, as a team, we’re making things and moving in the right direction and individually, we’d be lacking some element.

The film has a very unique point of view in how it tells its story and I was just wondering what sort of challenges this narrative aspect presented as a writer and director.

As a writer and director, it was two separate challenges. As I’ve said, making this film was a huge complexity for us. Making this movie as a writer was challenging in its own way because what we basically wanted to do was tell a very conventional and traditional thriller with very classic, structural beats but just adapted to take place all on a screen. What I’m most proud of, as a writer, is that the story is not a gimmick but actually a story. It just takes place on a screen. As a director, to actually realise that, this movie, we made it with 5 people in a single edit room with two Macs that kept on crashing, we had very little money, we shot it in 13 days. We were basically making an animated movie and shooting a live-action film and putting the live-action movie inside the animated movie and constantly refining that. It took us two years to edit. To talk about it, it gives me anxiety because it was such a technically challenging process.

Yeah, I can imagine. And the film boasts a superb cast. You’ve got Michelle La, Jon Cho, so I imagine that, as a feature director, it must have been quite a dream to have such a cast come on-board?

Absolutely! A first film is obviously very important to any filmmaker’s career but, for us, to have the support of Jon and Debra, is immense. It speaks volumes about them, as artists. Because, at the end of the day, our objective was to make something new. And when you make something new, you don’t have precedence. And when you don’t have precedence, you can’t show them something to be like “this is what our movie will look like” so they just have to trust you and they’re taking a massive risk on a film that has more reasons to fail than not. If it takes place on a screen by a first-time filmmaker you’ve never heard of, it has the potential to be not cinematic – all these worries. But for them to jump on-board speaks volumes about them and I credit it as a major reason why the film has received the success it has done so far.

I think it’s a very challenging and complex drama and it takes that point-of view and does it well. Our press screening had a great reaction to it but I was wondering what you wanted audiences to take away from the experience of seeing Searching?

To be honest, we describe this movie as a thriller. So, first and foremost, we want audiences to feel like they’ve just seen something that was super engaging and had them on the edge of their seats and was keeping them guessing and they were entertained by the twists and turns. That is objective number one. We have to succeed there first. On a mackerel level, I think, technology has a bad rep in the media. People always shit on it and talk about how social media is bad. For us, that’s like saying a hammer is bad. So that view on technology, it hasn’t been done before and we’re wanting to really focus on that and how it’s portrayed – not if it’s bad but how it’s used.

And finally, I just wanted to ask, now that you’ve made your debut and done this big project, what’s next?

This is definitively the first and last thing we’ll do that takes place on screen. We’ll never do that again. But, our next film, that we’ve just set up at Lionsgate, it’s another thriller – a mum and her child – because somehow everything we’ve ever made ends up being about parents and their kids but this one is a little more twisted and dark a relationship and hopefully we get to continue to make things that are emotional and engaging and I’d be happy with that.

Well I wish you the very best of luck and congrats on the film, it’s incredible.

Thank you very much.

Searching is in U.K cinemas from August 31st, 2018.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a real passion for movies and for writing. I'm a superhero fanboy at heart; 'The Dark Knight' and 'Days of Future Past' are a couple of my favourites. I'm a big sci-fi fan too - 'Star Wars' has been my inspiration from the start; 'Super 8' is another personal favourite, close to my heart... I love movies. All kinds of movies. Lots of them too.

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