Creating images from audio: Catalina Alvarez's ‘Sound Spring'

Yahoo

02-04-2025

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — Catalina Alvarez spoke with WDTN.com to discuss her experimental documentary, 'Sound Spring,' ahead of it's premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival.
Yellow Springs documentary to debut at long-running festival
In 'Sound Spring,' Catalina Alvarez explores the sources and casualties of sound and speech. Characters lip-sync or speak alongside recorded versions of their stories. Some mouth the speech of other people. Some speak over playback of their own voices. Some lip-sync to loops of themselves speaking.
The filmmakers behind 'Sound Spring,' via press release.
For Alvarez, 'Sound Spring,' is an exploration of how people tell stories.
'I like the sound of how people tell you a story. And so I had a concept,' Alvarez says. 'I knew that first I was going to record audio only interviews and then these interviews would record people telling a historical story that was personal to them, that had some — that they were personally connected to and that how they told it would become part of the experience of the story, their unique telling of it.'
The film is also an ode to Yellow Springs.
Just as quickly as she discovered the concept for the film, Alvarez knew that the documentary would feature history from the village.
'This is not a film that tries to be in any in any way comprehensive about its history. It's an experimental film. It's a film depicting some people's histories of Yellow Springs. But I think it's my ode to the village. My portrait of this incredible village.'
How the project would add images to its audio-only stories; however, would happen much later, in post-production.
Initially, Alvarez considered having the interviewees lip sync their audio alongside their on-screen performance.
'I thought there was a lot of potential for playing creatively with dividing the sound from the image. But in this case, people would just tell their stories and and then I would add the image, rather than the other way around, as it's done in Hollywood. And the other thing about my technique was that I wanted to get to know Yellow Springer's, people from yellow Springs, and I wanted to work with them.'
Alvarez conducted nearly all of the interviews herself, which were done between January and March 2019. This work saw her speak with several residents including Karen McKee, Paul Graham, Rose Pelzl, Charles Arthur Williams, Shane Creepingbear, Anne Bohlen, Donna Denman, Jalyn Roe and Talon Silverhorn.
After the interviews were completed, Alvarez wrote a script for the visual component of the film. One of the interviewees, Jalyn Roe, didn't want to film her portion of the film, so Alvarez searched for young women who could embody the ages described in her stories.
One of those residents was Sumayah Chappelle, the niece of Dave Chappelle.
'I found Sumayah because Jayln Roe had done her audio interview and was not — not thinking she was up to doing, staging a visual scene after that, but was like, you can do whatever you want with the audio interview.'
Sumayah's aunt recommended her for the opportunity. Rukiya Robertson also participated in the scenes based off Roe's audio stories. The other interviewees partook in filming the audio stories.
Filming took place between May and June of 2019.
After the cameras rolled, there was a bit of a lull period, thanks in part to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, Alvarez took part in a residency with the Wexner Center for the Arts. It was here where the scope of the film was enhanced.
'They would spend like 3 hours with me just on one meeting, talking about a cut. And through my conversation with them, I started to think maybe I did need more footage,' Alvarez says. 'A lot of the footage that I'd gotten was in people's homes and didn't show Yellow Springs, the village, enough.'
Filming restarted in 2021. From that point, she obtained more stories and footage that expressed Yellow Springs history, as well as the stories of the indigenous peoples who lived in the village before the Ohio Trail of Tears. That history was available thanks to Antioch professor Richard Kraince, who put her in contact with Talon Silverhorn.
Silverhorn is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and is also the Cultural Programs Manager at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. He's been an interpreter since 2007.
In early 2022, Alvarez was close to giving birth to her child and was away from Yellow Springs. She still needed to film Silverhorn's stories for the documentary, which is when Sumayah stepped up to the director's chair, coordinating with Alvarez to capture the scenes.
All of the work to capture the film in this way was worth it for Alvarez though, as she wanted to present an authentic portrait of the village.
'One of the interesting challenges in filmmaking, especially fictional filmmaking, if speaking of fiction and documentary is getting realistic performance from actors. So in a way, by recording real audio interviews, I was ensuring that there was no stagenous in the acting, because it's not acting. So, even if they are performing in a very performative way, everything they're saying is real.'
'Sound Spring,' is premiering on Saturday, April 5 at 5:10 p.m. The film will be available for Ohio viewers to purchase and watch via CIFF Streams. The purchase window opens on April 6 and closes April 13.
Click here to learn more about the film, to see it's full list of contributors and to even see its trailer.
Catalina Alvarez is a professor at Fordham University. She teaches in the Art and Engagement program.
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