Since I like to start at the tail end of narratives, I'll discuss the sound design in 11:11 first, because in the end, it's the crucial element that makes the whole movie work.

Backwards imagery has universal appeal but reversing sound creates aural fatigue in the listener. Not only that, the presence of sound before an event takes the viewer right out of a story. It reverses that old standby, cause and effect, and belies the impossibility of a backwards universe. Getting the soundtrack to work was going to be the biggest challenge, that is, after successfully completing the script.

Since I took on film's own idioms when I decided to write, direct and edit 11:11, every part of the process had inherent difficulty so it was just another problem to be solved.

I made the decision early on that 11:11 should have a forwards score that included some backwards elements in the music. Eckart Seeber, the movie’s talented composer, did a great job with the score. In fact, if one listens to the totality of 11:11's soundtrack, it is, in some ways, a conventional sounding film—if you can get past the weird language. This treatment of sound is the movie’s biggest cheat. And probably the one element that made the movie bearable to listen to and believable as an alternate universe. In addition to the forwards music score, production sound effects were minimized to begin with, first by shooting in a controlled atmosphere. Then any production sound effects were stripped away and replaced with manipulated (foleyed) sound effects by my genius sound designer, Paul Ottosson. His biggest feat was taking backwards dialogue and minimizing the satanic slur that always accompanies the end of a word when it is reversed, a result of normal speech and breathing patterns.

I won’t bore you with too many post-production stories, but suffice it to say, I provided Paul O. with an OMF of the cut dialogue tracks. By the way, creating original backwards sound takes in the AVID and laying them off to DAT and then re-inputting them into the AVID for syncing was the most tedious part of the whole process. Obviously, since we shot the film backwards with reversing mags, no syncing happened in telecine. But we did get a frantic late night call from a telecine operator telling us all our film was running backwards. My response to him: “Great. That’s how it should be.” By the way, since I did my own assistant editing I want to single out Gretchen Hatz, our second assistant camera, who tail slated every single take religiously during the shoot.

Concerning the shooting of the film, it's true that we shot the film through the camera’s gate backwards. As the film editor and screenwriter of the film, it was important to me that every take loaded into the AVID appeared in the right order, reflecting the action in the screenplay.

To this end, I created a shooting script, which reflected how the actors really performed the screenplay, in real time, or forwards. We ended up shooting 28 scenes for 11:11, so page one of the shooting script starts with scene 28.

I ended up having to number the shooting script for the 1st AD and I also had to carefully plan every shot of the film, including every single transition from scene to scene. This made all the difference when it came to editing. It also made for a small shooting ratio. Also, I knew when the actors and crew had nailed the take backwards. Luckily, my DP really got what I was doing, and we were able to collaborate seamlessly.

I de-emphasized the technical aspects of what we were doing with the actors, as I wanted them to stay focused on the real life drama in front of them, rather than worrying over whether what they were doing was working backwards. My careful casting and expertise with technical issues let them focus on their acting. Doug Bennett is a consummate professional, and Mataji’s background as a dancer really helped with the physicality of the performance.

Meanwhile, the other aspect of shooting concerned the frame rate at which we were shooting. By shooting through the camera backwards, and as well as by shooting at a higher frame rate that 24 fps whenever possible we were able to create a more graceful feel to the original footage. Again, creating all of our special effects in camera gave the film a wonderful look.

Finally, I have found that left-handed people have an easier time understanding 11:11 after only one viewing. I’m very curious to know what you thought of our film so please do give us feedback at -

esther@backwardsmovie.com.