Canadian-born Dara Bratt won the Imagine Science Film Festival’s People’s Choice award for In Vivid Detail (runtime 18 minutes). The short explores the impact on a budding romance of a man’s childhood brain injury, a disorder called prosopagnosia. The phenomenon prevents him from recognizing faces; features appear to be mere lines. At first his girlfriend is skeptical that he really has this neurological disorder, but then struggles to understand and accept it. After watching a street artist draw a portrait of a girl, the man, who is an architect, tries to get a sense of his girlfriend’s likeness. He asks her to come to his office and stand behind a glass wall with an embedded a grid. He traces her face, linking her features so that he can piece together the whole.

Among other things, we talked about how Dara came up with the idea for the film and the challenges of weaving science into a romantic comedy.

KAF: How and when did you decide to become a filmmaker?

DB: At university I was studying communication studies and philosophy, photography, sound design, and writing. I realized that film had all of these elements.
I have the habit of talking to myself and I realized that I think in dialogue. I was a daydreamer and always trying to record my thoughts. Also, I was interested in poetry and short stories and dabbled in journalism. I’m interested in documentaries, too, and I don’t think they and feature films are exclusive. Good feature films often are inspired by documentaries––it’s all about finding good characters and researching them.

KAF: I see that since you said “university” without an article that you are not American.

DB: I was born in Montreal. I moved to Toronto to work as a production assistant and in four years I became assistant director. It was all about being a fly on the wall and watching films in action. I felt after a while that I was only in production and I wanted creative control. A producer suggested applying to NYU’s film school. I applied only there. I’ve been in New York for seven years.

KAF: What was the inspiration for In Vivid Detail?

DB: I had a friend who was getting her PhD in education at Harvard. They have a center for prosopagnosia. She came to New York for a convention and showed me a photo online of a guy with the disorder. People who have it can’t watch films because they get characters confused. I read of a farmer who can’t tell people apart, but can differentiate his cows. Many articles were written since and the Queen of Sweden announced recently that she is face-blind.

It came to me quickly that the way I wanted to tell about this disorder, which is so complicated, was to structure it within the framework of a love story.

I followed the idea of breaking the whole into parts and putting a puzzle together again. That led to the idea that he could put her face back together. Often people misunderstand and think the syndrome is due to a visual problem. So I made him an architect because that is visual and people would know there was nothing wrong with his eyes so the problem had to be neurological.

In Old Montreal artists on the cobble stone streets are always drawing portraits. That was how I got the idea of him tracing her face. By tracing her face and breaking her down into small squares he could, in his own way, see her face––put it together.

KAF: How did the idea to integrate the disorder into a romantic comedy arise?

DB: Overall, I wanted to show two people trying to understand each other. The idea for a romantic comedy came into my head and I never felt that it should be something else. The only other work done about prosopagnosia was a murder mystery novel called Face Blind, which was a New York Times best-seller. I’m meeting with the author and a screenwriter. They’re interested in making the book into a feature.

KAF: Was it a challenge to find the right balance of emotional content with scientific content?

DB: The hardest part is how to include science and embed it so that it’s not exposition. We (she and husband co-writer Kieran Dick) wanted to plug in all the details so that everything would lead up to the big reveal of what he has.

We tried to be subtle. At first you think he’s a little odd, but a second time you see the film, you realize that he doesn’t make eye contact, the opening shot with him playing with a puzzle was a hint going back to the Descartes quote before the action: “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve.” Kieran knew the quote. On the girlfriend’s end, she tries to stop him at a red light because she doesn’t fully understand yet. Every scene had to incorporate the symptoms or the problems and challenges and about them reaching an understanding.

KAF: What was it like collaborating with your husband?

DB: It was good. We’ve done that before, Writing is our strongest way of collaborating. I tend to come up with an idea and go for it and he slows down and is patient and fleshes it out and thinks about the ideas. So together we complete a script. He has an engineering and art background.

I’m glad he had a moment in the spotlight when he received the award for me, although I was sad I couldn’t’ be there.

KAF: What are you working on now?

DB: Since making In Vivid Detail I have lots of ideas for more stories that weave science into the narrative. It’s a little like documentaries in that you have to explain accurately. I love that process.

We’ve completed another script called Myrabella’s Secret. It’s about an unusual friendship between a mechanical engineer and a musician who is on brink of success. The musician suffers from musical hallucinations.

KAF: Oliver Sacks has written about that, hasn’t he?

DB: He mentioned it, but his book came out after we started our script.

KAF: What does the award mean to you?

DB: I remember the day I got the Sloan grant. I was working on Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) in a field in the pouring rain. It was gross and disgusting. And I got the phone call congratulating me. I started jumping up and down. Steve Martin is in Cheaper by the Dozen and he was staring at me. But there is so much rejection in this industry and you have to take the time to celebrate what you’re doing. Even if you don’t get it, you have to more forward with your work. Sloan’s reputation helped with getting the high-caliber cast and locations, and equipment was donated. It was very helpful.

You can find out more about the film at http://www.Invividdetail.com
For information about me, please visit my website, www.KarenAFrenkel.com