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Tribeca Buzz: A Talk with Summer Snapshot’s Ian McCluskey

Published on March 26, 2011

by Mary Iannone

“In her essay “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes: ‘It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.’ But I was having the exact opposite experience. I could not pinpoint a single starting point. How many sunny days had I spent by a river? Was I merging days together? Was I blending a story I had told to friends with stories friends had told me? Filtered through memory, trips to the river had taken on an amber hue.”

In 2009, when Polaroid and Kodachrome film nearly simultaneously disappeared from the market, filmmaker Ian McCluskey “suddenly missed” a technology he had never had a strong desire to experience. “[Those mediums] had nostalgia for a time of shaggy-haired kids in cut-off shorts and tube socks. A time in life, whether actual or idealized, where friends had nothing to do but hang out, nowhere to go but jump in a car (usually a big ugly “family” vehicle that could hold the whole group) and head for a nearby body of water.”

So, in a moment that “felt urgent”, McCluskey gathered friends and volunteer actors for his short documentary Summer Snapshot. While exploring the idea of the film, McCluskey found a recurring theme coming from friends - nearly everyone had a fond memory of those moments between youth and adulthood, which frequently included spending the day swimming (and often skinny-dipping) in a nearby lake or river. The purpose was not to cover the decline of Polaroid or Kodachrome, but to “make a film using the soon-to-be extinct media to tell a story of a fleeting moment.”

In order to achieve a super-saturated, vividly colored feel, McCluskey “broke cinematography rules” by deliberately shooting into the sun, or waiting to film until the light was barely available. Even the clothes were carefully selected to contrast with the natural background. The raw look of the Super-8 film was preserved through minimal color grading; the task of colorist John Davidson was to get “the blacks black, the blues blue, and [help] pull out the warm tones of the setting sun.”

McCluskey almost didn’t submit the final product to the Tribeca Film Festival. In fact, even after screening Summer Snapshot at the legendary Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand in France, he was shocked to get a phone call from Sharon Badal, Tribeca’s Head Programmer of Shorts, personally inviting him to participate.

But McCluskey is humble about these recent successes. “I think it would surprise people just how DIY the film is. All the swimmers were volunteers. The music, audio mixing, and color correction were also pro bono. At each step, everyone we knew gave something. It really became a shared effort.”

“If Summer Snapshot succeeds, its in creating a tableau of a summer day with friends by a river, where the audience can—if they want—go along for the ride, windows down, hair flipping in the breeze. It’s not to eulogize a youthful experience that is gone, but rather to recognize that the memory carries forward, becoming more meaningful (and more lovely) with age.”

Summer Snapshot screens as part of the “Shorts: One For All” Program at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

Follow the links for more information on Ian McCluskey’s nonprofit company NW Documentary or the band behind Summer Snapshot’s personally chosen soundtrack, The “nostalgic and appropriately retro” Dimes.

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