Private Project

Night Birds & Ghost Crabs

In pairing experimental imagery with interviews in which people from all stages and walks of life discuss the gamut of that which keeps them awake at night, Night Birds and Ghost Crabs documents those lonely late night moments we share with so many others the world over.

  • Robert Sickels
    Director
    Molasses & Lemon, Seven Ways From Sunday, American Lawn, Sterling Hallard Bright Drake, Walla Walla Wiffle
  • Robert Sickels
    Producer
  • Michael Branch
    Key Cast
  • Anne Buchan
    Key Cast
  • Drew McDougal
    Key Cast
  • Rebecca Hanrahan
    Key Cast
  • Jim Buchan
    Key Cast
  • Michelle Janning
    Key Cast
  • Jackie Greisen
    Key Cast
  • Nathan Kruger
    Key Cast
  • Amara Garibyan
    Key Cast
  • Tim Coleman
    Key Cast
  • Jimmy Hough
    Key Cast
  • Tallulah Sickels
    Cinematography
  • Robert Sickels
    Cinematography
  • Tallulah Sickels
    Sound Recording
  • Robert Sickels
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    iPhone, GoPro
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Cinequest Film Festival
    San Jose, CA
    United States
    March 7, 2020
    North American Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Short. Sweet. Film Fest.
    Cleveland, OH
    United States
    March 1, 2020
    Honorable Mention, Experimental Film
  • Spokane International Film Festival
    Spokane, WA
    United States
    February 28, 2020
    Official Selection
  • Humboldt International Film Festival
    Arcate, CA
    United States
    April 24, 2020
    Finalist, Best Experimental Film
  • ReelHeART International Film and Screenplay Festival
    Toronto
    Canada
    July 6, 2020
    Canadian Premiere
    Honorable Mention, Experimental Film
  • Rochester International Film Festival
    Rochester, NY
    United States
    August 22, 2020
    Official Selection
  • New Jersey International Film Festival
    New Brunswick, NJ
    United States
    September 25, 2020
    Official Selection
  • Indie Memphis
    Memphis, TN
    United States
    October 21, 2020
    Official Selection
  • LA Underground Film Forum
    Los Angeles, CA
    United States
    July 10, 2021
    Official Selection
  • Seattle True Independent Film Festival
    Seattle, WA
    United States
    Official Selection
  • 32 Girona Film Festival GFF
    32 Girona Film Festival GFF
    Spain
    November 6, 2020
    European Premiere
  • Route 66 Film Festival
    Springfield, IL
    United States
    November 6, 2020
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Big Whiskey Studios/Robert Sickels
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Robert Sickels

Robert Sickels has been obsessed with movies since he saw Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at a Seattle drive-in when he was three years old. This fixation with all things cinematic ultimately led to his earning a PhD in film studies at the University of Nevada. He is a father, an independent filmmaker, a prolific writer & editor, a baseball junkie, a foodie, a semi-professional mixologist, hopelessly addicted to pop culture, and the founder of Big Whiskey Studios, which specializes in micro-documentary projects that emphasize engaging personal narratives.

Sickels' films have screened widely in the US and abroad, including on PBS and at the Ann Arbor, Cinequest, BFI London International, St. Louis International, Chicago International, New Orleans, and Sidewalk Film Festivals. He is also a Professor in and the Director of the Film & Media Studies Program at Whitman College, where he teaches Film History and Filmmaking classes.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

My father checked into a California hospital for elective back surgery in September of 2017. He never left the hospital, as everything that could go wrong did and he ultimately passed away in April of 2018. I live with my family in Washington state, almost a thousand miles away. It might as well have been a million. I saw him when I could, but it wasn’t nearly enough and I spent the nights of those long months wide awake, consumed by that which I couldn’t control or even much influence. As Kathy Hepinstall writes in her novel Blue Asylum, “Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legion of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn.” This perfectly describes my nights during that time. But not long before the end, something happened: while I was experiencing the loneliness that comes with being the only one in my house awake in the dead of night, it occurred to me that in fact I was not alone. I am a long-standing member of the world’s least exclusive club as at any given time millions of people are simultaneously experiencing the same recurring restlessness. And this got me thinking: what keeps so many of us up at night? What is it we can’t stop thinking about? Night Birds & Ghost Crabs was born out of these nocturnal questions and it panoramically reveals the kinds of things that keep so many of us awake late night, from seemingly innocuous thoughts to more profound musings on our pasts and futures, our lives and their meaning, and our inescapable mortality. And in the end, it doesn’t matter if what you’re mentally looping on seems inconsequential or meaningful; either way, the end result is the same as try as you might you just can’t shake it and sleep won’t come.

The images that accompany the interviews featured in Night Birds & Ghost Crabs were filmed over an eight-month period during which I filmed at least one shot a day. With the exception of a few GoPro shots, all of the footage was taken on an iPhone. No shot was staged. The idea was to capture what were often fleeting visual moments I came across in real time, which means the shots aren’t technically perfect, in that they shake or the focus varies or the framing isn’t what it would be were they traditionally orchestrated takes. But what they invariably all are is real. And they replicate that feeling you have when you’re in the grips of a bout of sleeplessness; you’re most certainly not asleep, but you’re not always 100% attuned either. There’s an almost hallucinatory quality to the experience, where your mental pictures don’t exactly line up with your thoughts, but are nevertheless impressionistically representative of what you’re thinking.

In pairing this experimental imagery with interviews in which people from all walks of life discuss the gamut of that which keeps them up at night, Night Birds & Ghost Crabs documents those lonely late night moments we share with so many others the world over. As it turns out, though we are physically alone during the wee dark hours, we are united in sleeplessness with untold millions, and there’s a kind of reassuring comfort in that realization.