Gone

Bucks County, Pennsylvania has a beauty and bleakness to it.

After moving back to my childhood hometown for a period of time, I began to experience a hopelessness that landed me in a dangerous mindset of disassociation. This film is a representation of the mental psychosis I succumbed to while in deep isolation and the out of body feeling that takes hold when your depression talks to you. The ominous tone demonstrates the unpredictability of a mind on edge.

The initial intent of the film was to poke fun at the pretentious nature of “experimental” arthouse films through the lens of an unhinged recluse. What began as parody slowly evolved into a captivating yet disorienting depiction of a truly dark place.

Thematically, Gone explores the idea of spiritual death and agnosticism. It centers around a man whose brain is broken in ways beyond comprehension. Scenes of serenity and tranquility are undercut with a sharp feeling of loneliness mapped onto a twisting rural landscape. The endless commercials blaring from the car radio represent the unending mental noise that plagues us all when we cannot stay present. His inability to engage shows that if we are unreachable, life can pass us by.

While the tone of the film is dark, an undercurrent of satirization and aesthetic parody of arthouse remains present underneath the seriousness of this lost man. While his mind is arrested in a cesspool of indecision, the radio waves seek to subvert the mood with humorous nonsense. We hope the audience can empathize with a genre that mocks itself, as well as identify with the tragic feelings of a personal spiral.

All radio voiceovers for Gone are original content. Prior to filming, we reached out to friends and colleagues asking them to record something of their own creation. Once the footage was shot, we began synthesizing the voiceovers organically into the piece by matching dialogue with the tone of each moment. Since the premise for the voiceovers was open ended, there was a strong element of improvisation and experimentation throughout the editing process.