This thought process defined the look and feel of the film. When selecting locations for backgrounds for our character to walk through, I thought back to places or things that had an impact on my childhood: places that left me full of wonder, scared me, or piqued my curiosity. In the flashback sequences, everything from the sheets on the bed, to the Oregon Trail type computer game, to the rotary phone with a Mr. Yuck sticker were all directly taken from my adolescence.

 

To further visually separate the characters current reality versus the warm flashback sequences, I photographed the two situations with very different lens systems - a modern, very sharp, photography zoom lens was used to create a harsher, grittier 'now' as opposed to manual focus cinema prime lenses to create a softer vintage aesthetic. 

 

This film was shot in a way that I could assemble the journey based on feel - what feels right, what flows, what works together. Though all of them didn't make the final cut, "909" was filmed at almost 50 different locations. It rained every outdoor shoot day. Ignoring the obvious visual effects, by and large we filmed this practically. That is to say, when we needed a couch in the middle of a huge field, we had to carry it out into the middle of a huge field. When we wanted a train, we had to wait for a train. When we shattered a picture frame, we really broke the glass. While we digitally created the visuals for the video games, I actually filmed them on the old CRT screens. We just wanted this to feel as authentic and honest as we could make it.