On Committing Big Ideas to the Big Screen: Q&A with Filmmaker David Byars

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David Byars isn't afraid of hard work. That is to say he doesn't avoid the work of wrestling big ideas in an effort to contain them within the confines of a documentary. Byars gift for transmuting the abstract and making it digestible and narratively sound has served him well as a filmmaker, working both independently and with brands. His latest film for Patagonia, The Shitthropocene, puts a satirical spin on the anthropological documentary style in its examination of humanity's consumption habits, and works to answer the serious question of what we can do about it before our impulse for more destroys us all. The full film is currently available to view on YouTube.

BrandStorytelling caught up with Byars to learn more about how he discovered and honed his ability to communicate broad concepts through storytelling, what brands can do to tackle the challenge of telling 'bigger' stories, and the role documentary films play in the intersectional future of social issues and brand storytelling:

How did you first get into directing? What drew you to this career?

It's a bit of a roundabout story. I'm going to give you the whole thing. I grew up gorging on the nascent History Channel and was hooked on how a story about real things in real life could not only grab you by the guts and keep you entertained, but make you care.

But I grew up in Augusta, GA, and saying you wanted to be a filmmaker was akin to saying you wanted to grow up to be a firetruck. So I buried those ambitions in the backyard of my soul and studied business.

Flash forward to my early twenties (after a brief stint in finance), and I was living in Telluride, Colorado, working at a film festival. Documentaries had come a LONG way since I was a kid, and the bones of my youthful ambition began poking through the soil in the backyard of my soul.

Working at that film festival, I got to know a few filmmakers - turns out they were just smart people with a fair share of moxie who were able to stick with a story through the decidedly unsexy parts of filmmaking. Developing those qualities seemed more manageable than morphing into a firetruck. Armed with this knowledge, I set out to tell stories for a living. With a bootleg copy of Final Cut 7 and some white lies bolstered by a Lynda.com membership, I landed an internship of sorts at Reel Thing Productions working on their film Uranium Drive-In. After wrestling the film from technical purgatory due to idiosyncrasies that exist at the nexus of FC7, DSLR naming conventions, and transcoding issues, I landed a full time job editing, filming, and writing for the film.

The next few years constituted my dirtbag/ski-bum film school. I worked nights at a hotel and took whatever film work I could get - commercials, shorts, fiction, nonfiction, animation, live events, branded content, stop motion, et cetera et cetera. I was a sponge learning as much as I could (with the help of the internet and some other fellow travelers).

Finally, I landed my first big break. A film that I was directing, No Man’s Land, caught the attention of Morgan Spurlock, the man behind the smash hit Super Size Me. This opened the world to me, and my career as a storyteller finally became a realization.

What draws me to this every single day is simple: I love stories. I love the smorgasbord of formats and techniques accessible to us in this golden age of filmmaking. As a director and producer, I believe it is my job to understand how the soup-to-nuts production process fits together and use that knowledge to bring big ideas to the big and small screen. I truly believe that there is a deep alchemy between talented individuals that multiplies our efforts into something more than merely the sum of our activities. And when that process goes right, it's magical.

How did you begin working with brands, and what were some of your early projects like?

I first started working with brands when I was living in Telluride when, in true ski bum fashion, I convinced the ski resort to let me make videos for them in exchange for a ski pass. This eventually turned into a regular thing and I branched out into working with local businesses in exchange for used ski gear, food, and occasionally, money.

I would love to say that I nailed it right out of the gate, but it's probably accurate to say that many of us look back on our early projects with a bit of cringing fondness. I'm certainly no exception, but I do see in those early projects some kernels of the substance and style I've developed over the years, and it gives me a certain nostalgic pride.

When working with brands, how do you approach the task of turning an abstract idea or concept into a concrete film?

There's always a part of me that craves the simple, linear stories to bring to the screen. Woman climbs mountain, overcomes obstacles. Sports team goes for the championship. Etc etc. We are all familiar with the arcs and stakes of these films. And those stories are fantastic, but many times, brands don't have those stories on deck that jibe with their aspirations or values.

So we begin from a place of values or issues or topics, which means starting from a place of abstraction.

And while the absence of parameters is a bit terrifying, it's also thrilling. We're staring into a space of infinite possibility in terms of story, style, tone, etc, which is all bolstered by the absolute embarrassment of riches in terms of techniques that are available to us in the modern era of digital filmmaking.

A prime case study for this is a film I recently finished for Patagonia. The internal brand mandate was to talk about how the concept of quality is intrinsically linked to environmentalism.

We started small, teasing apart the idea of quality and doing a deep dive on why everything just seems kind of shitty these days. It led us down some interesting rabbit holes in terms of the evolution of the purpose of apparel, human decision making, and the psychology of acquiring things.

Six months from then we launched The Shitthropocene - a comedy doc that does a fairly thorough job of explaining not only why quality is important for the environment, but also why quality is linked to happiness. It's also wildly entertaining.

The fact that a swing this big and unconventional could exist is really a product not only of creative collaboration, but also of building consensus and shared vision.

I often hear the joke that the tagline of meetings should be “none of us is as dumb as all of us” but, appreciation for cynical humor aside, good faith collaboration is really special when you hit the creative stride. And it is a critical component of bringing abstract ideas to life.

In your experience, what are some common pitfalls brands should avoid when attempting to communicate abstract ideas through film?

Not necessarily a pitfall, but I'd encourage brands to run straight at the abstract ideas. And bring filmmakers on early. Harnessing the creative energies of those within the brand as well as those who have outside perspectives is critical, and no one party needs to set about reinventing the wheel by themselves. Just getting to a point where things are being written down is important - the abstraction will begin to resolve itself as ideas begin to stick or jolt loose other avenues of thought. Even if those rabbit holes don't connect to each other in the end, that process is crucial to finding your path forward.

How do you see the role of documentary filmmaking evolving in the context of brand storytelling and social issues?

Brands recognize that customers are savvy, and to connect with them, the stories they tell must simultaneously grab them by the eyeballs as well as strike them as authentic.

There's a time and a place for mono-directional films that are just one continuous celebratory upswing, and I love making those. But authenticity is created when your audience sees themselves in your characters, not necessarily in an aspirational sense, but because of their vulnerabilities, their foibles, their doubts, their struggles, etc. Those things are deeply human and connect us all, often when we don't expect it.

I think brands are already in this space - the area of nuance, where amazing characters come to life and connection is made. And pursuing this paradigm further is an opportunity for brands to have their cake and eat it too, in that brands can communicate their values as well as authentically connect with their audience.

Learn more about David Byars and his production company Black Mountain Film here.

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About David Byars

David Byars is an adult human being who lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina with his wife Stephanie, his child Dez, and dog, Pickle.

David made his directorial nonfiction debut in 2017 with the multiple award-winning film NO MAN’S LAND (Tribeca FF, Independent Lens), a documentary about the 2016 militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Byars also produced and lensed MASSACRE RIVER (Hot Docs 2019, ITVS, PBS) Suzan Beraza’s film about statelessness in the Dominican Republic. Byars then turned his eye to macro issues, producing, directing, and lensing PUBLIC TRUST the multiple award-winning epic about America’s Public Lands, and WE THE POWER, a film about energy mavericks in Europe that has been widely adopted as a model for community action to transform the energy grid in Europe.

Byars newest film is a comedy documentary called THE SHIT-THROPOCENE, a mock anthropological investigation into why everything has gone to shit.