GREAT DOCUMENTARIES
Unlike a series about professional detectives tracking down a killer, the story of Deanna Thompson and John Green is perhaps more relatable for the viewer. “They are extraordinary and it’s impressive to watch them at work but there’s also an element of them which is us,” says Lewis. “We all know how to use Street View and Google mapping. These are all skills that we recognise. And that’s one of the main reasons I think it resonates,”
Life online But, says Lewis, the story resonates thematically too. Luka Magnotta is “somebody who tried and failed as an actor, and a model and so clearly turned to crime in a bid for celebrity. That is the most perverse, extreme example of something that we see a lot in ourselves, in the way that we use Instagram and the validation that we seek from the internet.”
It’s also a story where right from its very beginnings “everything pretty much played out on the internet.” There were CCTV images, the films posted by Magnotta himself, the Montreal Homicide Department’s interviews and, of course, interviews with the internet sleuths but, for the most part, the film had to be constructed from thousands and
IT WAS A REAL CHALLENGE TO MAKE AN INTERNET STORY INTERESTING
thousands of Facebook posts and messages. Lewis had a head start on energising what, on
paper, is far from thrilling material. A previous film, Silk Road, about the multibillion-dollar drug cartel that ran on the dark web, was perfect training. “It was a real challenge to make an internet story
interesting, And I think that we really successfully pulled off something fascinating with that.” Don’t F*ck With Cats built on that experience. “We had this incredible archive” of posts and messages from the Facebook groups investigating Magnotta, the trick was to not only “searching for the right things, but also about editing it in a really creative way and looking for the drama,” says Lewis. And the way in to that was “effectively playing the character of the person behind those comments” and animating the creation of those messages to show the emotion and intent behind them. “And so you can play that character when animating on the comments that John Green or Deanna Thompson actually posted. We were effectively screen recording or motion capturing ourselves as we did the internet searches as well. So it felt like a real experience that everyone recognised.”
Don’t Fuck With Cats, Netflix
Special Supplement Spring 2021
televisual.com
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