A Psychological Experiment With A Twist: Péter Engelmann On His Short "Triangle"
Director/Producer/Editor/Writer Péter Engelmann is a Hungarian filmmaker with a background in Psychology. Engelmann made his first narrative short film, #HELP in 2015 — a 20-minutes satirical thriller about people living in pseudo-reality — which went on to receive several awards and nominations at international film festivals. His latest film, Triangle, focuses on a psychological experiment between 3 strangers with an unexpected twist.
The story follows three strangers who - based on a 1997 psychological experiment on the bonds of friendship - are about to become friends for life, separated only by 36 questions…
This powerful sci-fi pseudo-documentary drama recently had its North American and International premiere at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival: Heartland Film. We had the pleasure of chatting with Péter about the film, its origins, genre blending, creating a specific tone, and much much more!
How did the concept for Triangle originate?
I was really interested in the issue that the film is dealing with for a long time, and in 2018, when I was studying BA Psychology, I started to dive in deeper and decided on the foundation of the film’s psychology and my goal with the film — but not the story and the form. It was only just last year during my MA in the Arts University Bournemouth where I started to work on the idea as my graduation film, and I finally found the story and the form for it. During this process, when I decided that I would like my three characters sitting and talking in a documentary setting, a psychological experiment by Arthur Aron that I saw on the news in 2015 came to my mind, and after researching it, I found it to be a great starting point and setting for the film. However, I also realized that it wasn’t just a device but that it could also serve as a part of the solution for the film’s central issue.
The film is very playful in how it engages with genre (documentary, sci-fi). What were some of the challenges you faced blending these together, and how did you overcome them?
Well, if we are talking about experiments — this was my experiment. One of the biggest challenges was to find the right transitions from one genre to another without pushing the audience out or making it weird, which was particularly a bigger challenge with the sci-fi elements. For this, I had to make it right in the script, and I had to pay attention on set when directing the actors and working with them to make sure that the transitions weren’t visible in their performances. Then, of course, editing was also a key part of the blending. I had to pay close attention to the visual effects to keep the sci-fi elements from feeling out of place.
Another big challenge was to find the right pace between those two genres and to hold myself back with both the documentary and the sci-fi part and keep it as a short film. There were screenplay drafts where I had a whole documentary about Aron’s experiment with psychologists and B-rolls and a 4-minutes eye contact between one of the characters and the audience….
It was and still is pretty exciting because I didn’t really know how it would turn out until the end, but the reactions we got so far are very promising.
The film also a has a very specific tone, which is also playful — until it isn’t. Talk about how you approached both the dark and light tones that come to a head?
My approach for the different tones was in parallel with my approach for the naturalistic feel which was rooted in the idea of blending strictly written parts (mostly for the dark tone) with improvisations (mostly for the light tone) — but I couldn’t approach it without the brilliant actors I had the chance to work with.
Speaking of actors, the film really hinges on the performances of its actors to sell the documentary feeling. How did you find your cast, and what was your process of working with them to ensure their performances were as naturalistic as possible?
Lili Vetlényi (Vic) was introduced to me by our line producer, and she made a huge impact on me during the casting. She was also really invested in the character and that just really strengthened my belief that she was the one. It turned out she was also experienced with improvisations, which became an important part of the film.
With József S. Kovács (Perp) it was a bit different, as the first time I saw him was in 2016 in a Hungarian movie called Grey Nobodies, and I decided that I don’t know when and in what movie, but I need to work with him. Eventually, through the casting period for Triangle, he came to my mind, so I invited him to a casting. It wasn’t too long into the audition before I had a strong feeling that he was what I was looking for.
I also knew Dániel Gaál (ByStan) before from a film masterclass, and for this particular film I did what I always do: just scroll through my (somehow) 1,500 Facebook connects (it’s like a casting database…) with the characters in my mind to see if a face catches my eye. That’s how I found Dániel. From the videos I saw of him and his personality, I instantly felt he was a good fit with ByStan and my plans of adding improvisations to it. Due to schedule issues, we didn’t even have a casting with him, but in the rehearsal, he proved that casting him was the best decision I could have made for the role.
I decided to introduce improvisations after the first transition, and I asked them to carry out the whole experiment on set, which we recorded in real-time with three cameras. It was a 50-minutes take that we only did once. Their answers for the questions (which they saw for the first time only the night before the shooting to avoid knowing them too much) were made up from the life of the characters and the important information that needed to be said (that I provided, in some cases connected to a specific question, while in other cases I let them say it wherever they felt it right) and also made up from their own life. However, I didn’t let them know about each other’s characters before the experiment, so when one answered a question the others didn’t know if that was written or from his or her real life.
How did you and cinematographer Csaba Bántó nail down the film’s aesthetics?
We made up a great team with Csaba. We wanted to keep the documentary aesthetics as a basic, which then later were slightly blended into a bit more cinematic approach. The key points were the talk-show kind of lighting that changes in time, the framing that starts wider and brings us closer in time, fixed cameras on tripods when we are at the studio in the film’s present time and the aspect ratio which stays 16:9 towards the end.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
When I was younger, mostly in primary school I wrote several stories, we even tried to write a book with one of my friends, haha. But I recently realized that I also shot and edited (with Windows Movie Maker!) my first video when I was around 12, it was called My Day and, well, it was about my day… The funny thing is that I was probably motivated to do it from the acting side at that time, which I kept towards high school and then up through TV Studies courses in my first university thinking that I would like to be an actor. The truth was that I had this acting thing in me, but in a bigger picture my goal was to find something inside the film industry. Then, later on in that TV course, we had our first exercise to do a photo montage which I ended up doing with narration, music and sound effects as I couldn’t think about it as just photos; I instantly started to think about making it cinematic, something more. After I realized what I did, it all came together and formed into the need of creating moving images. I remade the photo montage the next week, but this time as a moving images, a film etude while I also adapted a short comedy novel of mine into a short film for a competition and planned out a docu-horror web-series with my classmates — and from that point, there was no turning back.
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
My biggest inspiration is Christopher Nolan. I remember watching his films and feeling the need of writing-directing and creating worlds became stronger and stronger in me. Right behind him comes Denis Villeneuve and David Fincher, but other individual films had also inspired me as a filmmaker such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir) or the Black Mirror series (Charlie Brooke). However, in connection with Triangle, I also need to mention Punishment Park (Peter Watkins), Le Jetée (Chris Marker) or Tales From The Loop series (Nathaniel Halpern), as well as the directorial approaches of both Peter Watkins and Mike Leigh.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I hope they will be aware more of the issue and consequences that the film is about, and hopefully remember it if they find themselves or people they know in a similar situation; they might find out a solution from the film, or, like my main goal I set up back in 2018, make a possible positive impact on similar ongoing real-life situations and its participants, those that are happening right now.
Do you have any future projects in the works that you can share with us?
Now in one hand, I’m thinking about my first feature; I just started to sort out some plans on that, and it would be a small budget sci-fi drama like The Vast of Night, or one that I’m planning from years now that based on true events I saw on the news, or something else…
On the other hand, I’m quite invested in an idea or series of ideas that involves very short stories or even just fractures of short stories from the Holocaust that I’ve collected for a short film and anthology miniseries.
You can now check out the film right now, for free!, on YouTube:
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!