Teller Story

A narrator decides he is not needed in his film and tries to abandon it.

When narrating a nature documentary, a narrator decides that the film would be better off without his narration. After attempting to leave the film he encounters trouble with a voice from the void of the narrator. The two argue over his leaving of the film until he finds the one thing that makes him certain about his choice. That thing is you, the audience. Literally.

Teller Story is a unique film in the fact that it was developed more as a stunt rather than a true cinematic experience. While the majority of my radical cinema workshop class in college focused on far more literal interpretations of experimental cinema, I chose to focus more on the medium of film as a whole. I wanted to push the boundaries of audience and film connection. In Teller Story, the narrator finds the audience as a light in the void of the purposeless narrator. The pivotal point in his arc comes when he sees the audience he's narrating to. The audience influences his decision and changes the course of his journey. This level of audience integration is largely absent in most media today. I saw my college screening as a unique opportunity to explore this more. While the film is still viewable and replayable today, the experience of being in the cinema and watching yourself in the film is one that is truly unique and largely something that I won't be able to replicate again.