I now live in New York, but I lived in London for eight years. It is my second home now. I was doing music videos for British bands at the time, and I felt an affinity to the music and the scene London was having, so I moved. It was also an opportunity to change who I was. Becoming something else is an important thing to do in life at times, especially when you have a brain that is always searching.

Growing up, I never had the direction to go to film school. I’ve also worked in a more visual and abstract language, so the narrative discipline was something that, for a long time, I wasn’t sure on how to approach. But I’ve always wanted to make longer-form – most filmmakers do. So it wasn’t so much of a why now, but rather, it’s the path which led me and pushed me to it. I plan on doing this more.

Weightless is a story about connection and how hard it can be. 

It started with an abstract idea about a father living inside the belly of his child. Like a fetus, this father lived inside his obese kid. It is a metaphor for hereditary trauma. In psychology, it’s a phenomenon where traumatic experiences can be passed down from one generation to the next. How pain and suffering can be passed on, repeated, cyclical.

I never really wanted to define a condition because often, reality doesn’t define things. It’s what makes people frustrating, it’s what makes them enigmas. It’s why we have family members who don’t talk to each other. Put it this way: Joel is like a woodcutter. Think of objective skills and situations, like a woodcutter who cuts wood. When Joel sees the first tree, he hacks away; when he sees the next, he hacks away. But he refuses to spend twenty minutes each day to sharpen his ax. Every day, he wonders why he can’t cut as much wood as he should be able too. He wonders why it’s such hard work. Ultimately, never realizing he’s using a dull tool, a less than optimal tool. He’s in a cycle, unable to get out of it; he's stuck and doesn't know how to change. This is the general human condition if we look at the big picture.

Space and isolation. I grew up in nature, in a small valley in-between mountains where fifty per cent of the kids who I went to school with were bussed in from up to three hours away from different native reserves. I have always been into the harmonious perspective on violent and depressing realities alongside nature. Often, it’s hard to look outside your living conditions and notice the beauty. Kids used to huff glue on a rock behind the gas station, overlooking the most beautiful mountains you’ve ever seen. Having spent so much time living in bigger cities, it was something I wanted to return to. It’s these dichotomies that fascinate me and find familiar.

Vermont, but without the mountains. It was my original intent to shoot in the Thompson Okanagan, which is close to the interior of British Columbia. I sense it being similar to Vermont. However, we shot in upstate New York, in a small town called Johnstown, about two hours north of Albany. It made more practical sense for our budget and actors.

Thank you. Well, I wanted the music to highlight a contrast between the environment and the characters. 
To lift us out of the mundane, of what we were watching. At points meditative and hypnotic. This was a reference point for Barwick. When you watch that scene, there is actually a lot going on, the power line poles bend and warp. However, for the film score, we chose music that was more pared back – it is by an artist named Clem Leek who plays this beautiful piano.

Our camera Jammed when we lit the barn on fire. It lit up like a tinderbox. It was so cold, and we only had one go. Luckily, we got it working again before the whole barn had burnt down.

I’d say that I am drawn to a visual language, and that images stand out more than words at times. An image can inspire a complete story. I didn’t want the son, Will, to be moving. It was important for him to be static for the film. And if you notice, you only see him walking or moving a couple of times. Even then, my instinct was to cut them. In the end, we end up with a very sculptural character. Very beautiful to the film.

The title is a reference to the very last scene in the film. It’s a desire.

Definitely.