Tastemaker
Written & Directed by Eli Speigel
Produced by Joshua Rosen, Dan Feldman Green, & Conrad Osei-Bonsu
When apps use human spies to generate suggested content, one data analyst struggles with matters of taste.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Eli Speigel is a freelance director, editor, and shooter based in Toronto.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH ELI
Welcome back! Other than making Tastemaker, what have you been up to since we featured your short The Jokes?
Woo! In between The Jokes and Tastemaker, I made another short called Gone Fishin' which is available online in a few places. I didn't send it around too much but I really like it!
Tell us about the origins of Tastemaker. What inspired the story and what are your personal feelings about Tim Buckley and Scott Walker?
Tastemaker originated as a sketch idea based on people saying, “Our phones are listening to us.”
I had just been complaining about how Spotify constantly recommends Scott Walker to me, despite the fact that I’ve never actively sought out his music or even talked about him in my life. It got me thinking about how these algorithms essentially function like curators: they listen to our behaviour, collect information about our tastes, and make suggestions based on what they think we might like. And if that algorithmic curator were an actual person and were actually listening to us through our phones, then maybe I’d be hurting their feelings by complaining about their recommendations.
For the record, I actually like Scott Walker. I just don’t necessarily think I should be listening to him simply because I happened to listen to Tim Buckley.
At the same time, I had been receiving a consistent stream of spam calls from a call centre offering air-duct cleaning services. These two things started to bleed together in my mind.
I had also just rewatched Mulholland Drive, and I began thinking about what a call-centre employee might dream about. Ie, what does someone dream about when their entire job consists of recommending things people don’t necessarily want or need? Would they ever fantasize about spying on people? Not to exploit them, but to understand what they actually want? Would they dream of becoming a respected curator/tastemaker/selector whose recommendations people genuinely value, rather than a nuisance whose calls everyone wants to avoid?
From there, the idea started to warp, much like when you become aware that you’re dreaming and are starting to wake up. What does it look like when the reality of your everyday life starts seeping into your dreams? What happens when the facade begins to wear away? And ultimately, when are we actually our most real? I don’t know XD!
I love the desperation of the personified algorithm. It really illustrates how invasive algorithm based marketing is. How much do you want your film to speak for itself vs how much do you want to use this film to engage in a conversation about the strange brave new world we live in?
Ideally, the film should always be able to speak for itself.
That said, I recognize that my shorts often do not have an easily traceable narrative.
There is a lot to be said about the role online algorithms play in our lives, but I’m more interested in the absurdity of it all. It feels like magic realism to be living alongside systems that are constantly trying to predict, and influence us to... shape us! That sounds scary but there’s humour in that absurdity. And if we can find a way to laugh at these things, they don’t necessarily have to dominate our lives. Or, if they inevitably dominate our practical lives, they don’t necessarily have to weigh on us emotionally.
Tell us a bit about this film's journey.
Any interesting hurdles you needed to overcome during pre-production, production, post-production?
Making a movie of any size will break your heart in ways you didn’t even think were possible. Thankfully, nothing too outrageous happened on this one, but there were still plenty of bumps along the way: an actor dropping out at the last second; a DoP having a scheduling conflict, which meant we ended up having two different DoPs shoot on different days (I wouldn’t recommend it, but they were both excellent); and never quite having enough time in each location, which meant fewer takes and setups than I would have liked.
The most stressful was the night of the outdoor scene at the music venue with all the extras. It started to very lightly drizzle, but the rain wasn't enough to actually register on camera, only enough to make everyone look wet. I had to hand out a collection of umbrellas from my closet to everyone, emphasising the drizzle as actual rain and an intentional visual choice rather than pretending it wasn’t happening... and also I wanted to keep my friends dry.
Where are you at in getting this film in front of audiences? Any festival highlights, etc.
I had high hopes for this short, but the festival circuit is a cruel one. One highlight would be Low Budge No Budge in Portland, Maine. They gave me a beautiful ceramic trophy. They rock. Getting to be a part of Bleeding Edge Fest here in Toronto is always a treat; a fun summit of local filmmakers and foreign. Getting to be a part of NoBudge's online collection is a point of pride, and so is getting to talk about my shorts with Kino!
What are you working on next?
Since finishing Tastemaker, I made a short documentary called Tasty Morsels, which is about a music label of the same name. I'm currently wrapping up post for a feature length documentary about an amateur entering the world of professional Elvis Tribute Artists, and have just started post for another comedic short with Joel Edmiston called Bongo Laundromat.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist? Give us both a short and a feature.
Toronto Apartment by Tristan Wheeler, Taxi Drivers by Sacha Kingston-Wayne
