“If you imagine yourself as other people, you can have all these experiences you wouldn’t have in real life,” says Deanna, a camp counselor at Wayfinder, ready to welcome a new batch of kids to the Hudson Valley retreat in “We Can Be Heroes.” Each summer for one week, the forests of upstate New York become truly enchanted when they are reimagined as the backdrop for a live-action role playing game designed by the teens and pre-teens who arrive at Wayfinder, who for various reasons may have trouble fitting in at their local school, yet find a sense of community as they put together a fantasy world to play out roles that seem out of reach in their lives back home.
In Carina Mia Wong and Alex Simmons’ disarming doc, the production of “The Last Green,” the LARP-ing scenario created by the campers, feels like a Hollywood epic on par with any entry in the “The Lord of the Rings” franchise, open to tender bonding around campfires and sprawling sparring on the battlefield. As the head counselor Judson says, “How to die is the most important part of our programming,” when being lanced with a foam sword offers those assembled the chance to let out all their emotions in a primal scream and to proceed without fear. A lack of inhibition seems like the very best thing that the camp could instill in its attendees whose distinct personalities make “We Can Be Heroes” so engaging, from Abby, a Sacramento-based 17-year-old with a passion for illustrative storytelling who is stymied by a rare digestive system issue, Cloud, an irascible swordsmith with enormous charm that hasn’t always been appreciated by his teachers, and Dexter Blick, who seems like an old soul in a young man’s body as a well-read Brit ex-pat in New York who enters Wayfinder on a quest for love.
When Wong and Simmons approach their subjects with sensitivity to a particularly formative time in their lives, they may depict how easily wounded they can be at their age, but also how even the slightest bit of reinforcement can have a profound impact on their self-confidence and the dragons they slay while playing the game may be imaginary, but the effect it has on them is quite real. Toggling between “Lawrence of Arabia”-esque cinemascope and Academy ratio, the crafty camerawork only adds to the sense of play involved and the co-directors draw on the spirit of the place for a grand adventure and with the film recently making its premiere at SXSW, the co-directors spoke about how they came to collaborate on the project, which stretched out well beyond the single week it documents in the film, as well as keeping up with their rambunctious subjects and showing their growth in any number of ways.
How did this come about?
Carina Mia Wong: I actually have a very good friend who went to the Wayfinder Experience growing up, and before I even knew that she went there, she was just one of the most uninhibited, fearless, incredibly creative people that I had ever met and I would grill her all the time about [how] did you get to be this way? I don’t like know other people who are so free.” And she’d say, “Maybe it’s because of this LARPing camp I went to growing up.” She told me about the Adventure Game and my first thought was, “Wow, these kids must play out their subconscious in the game.” But the moment I knew this was a really, really special place wasn’t until I talked to Judd, the director of the camp and how he would describe a kid crying on the battlefield after, seeing their comrades being slain by a dragon and all of that, and then later finding out that that kid’s grandmother actually just passed away and this is the first time that they’ve ever been able to grieve. Alex and I met working at Muck where he and his partner came on board and we started developing it together and shot the sizzle [reel]. It all just went from there.
You have a very memorable sequence about Dexter’s aversion to ticks in this, but I bring it up early since it seems like you were shooting footage for this a prior editions of Wayfinder than the one that’s primarily depicted. Did you actually go a year in advance to feel things out?
Alex Simmons: Yeah, most of the documentary takes place over one week at camp, but our filming process involved over three years of filming, so if you see those flashbacks, you can really see Dexter mature and get bigger and taller. From that first year we went, a through line for Dexter is this very warranted fear of ticks because it is a very tick-infested area and if you see the film, the flashbacks come with like a different aspect ratio and the present day is a normal aspect ratio and the fantasy becomes its whole other thing, so there’s this melding of all these different time periods.
It doesn’t only work to delineate time, but also a way to have fun with it when those earlier scenes look like the walls are closing in on him. Formally, in general, could you have fun, given the subject?
Carina Mia Wong: The beginning of Alex and I’s collaboration was being so excited about the visual opportunities. Obviously, LARP [has] the costumes and we’re really lucky that Wayfinders are very talented at [designing] the costumes and props, but my biggest question at the time was how do we let this fantasy really take place and have the audience buy in, so, Alex came up with the aspect ratio changes and we worked really a lot with our camera team to make all those visuals sing.
Alex Simmons: I really appreciate that you’re saying you thought it was funny, too because I think a lot of documentaries take themselves very seriously, treating younger folks like they’re younger, and the subjects of our film are really brilliant and hilarious people and we wanted to let like people like Dexter be the really funny and charming people that they are.
Beyond Dexter, how did you decide on who to follow?
Carina Mia Wong: The casting process took a few years, and we found them all at different times, but they all speak for themselves. They’re all so intelligent and so knowledgeable about the world, first of all, but not only that, so self-aware and have an acute emotional intelligence that I think a lot of grown adults are still learning to curate for themselves. We were just so impressed by all of them across the board and other things that we looked for was, obviously, what are they going through? Do we think there’s going to be transformation? And because of the way the camp is set up, it really is just geared towards that journey for all of them, even though it’s just over the course of seven days.
A big thing for us was also looking for participants who could really lead with that main character energy, but also put down boundaries with us, and tell us what they felt comfortable with and what they didn’t, and could handle having a camera crew around like that. But they all are so unique in their own little ways.
It must be a real challenge on this to honor the experience the kids are having while remaining unobtrusive. Was that tricky to work out?
Alex Simmons: Yeah, as filmmakers, we’re really used to working 12-hour days or longer and just going and going. But we had to check ourselves a little bit with our schedule and how that meshed with a 15-year-old trying to actually enjoy a week at camp. On top of that, it can be overwhelming having someone asking you questions or following you around for a long period of time, so we really did try consciously to film with them when we needed to and be there for really important moments, but also have parts of the day where they were just getting to be teenagers at camp, having fun, and we’re not around.
Carina Mia Wong: Yeah, and so much of the film is about seeing the world through their eyes, but also letting them lead, so we really let go in our process. The camp itself is also so good at creating a safe space and a true foundation of trust, so we really just listened to the kids and gave them mechanisms of like, “You can throw up a hand signal to tell us to stop.” You could be in it for one minute but then the next day you’re not feeling it and all of that change in your mind is totally okay.” Alex and I come from backgrounds where we’re really used to having small teams, which actually really benefited us for this because with the expanse of this film, we got to play with a lot of cool cameras and have a lot of folks on board, but we know how to work with smaller crews to get the most out of it and we were able to have a big crew with the small footprint.
I also noticed Alex has more narrative filmmaking in his background while Carina works more in nonfiction. Was that an interesting combination?
Alex Simmons: Yeah, when Carina first told me about the idea of making a documentary about this, one of the most exciting things was that it could be a bit of a hybrid documentary where there are elements of fantasy that you can really lean into. There are parts of this that feel like a little indie horror film that these kids are writing themselves and you normally don’t get to use that [visual] language in a documentary, and interviewing kids in character was just so fun and so different. That was one of the most exciting things was to blend all these different visual looks and genres, and the lines between fiction and nonfiction. That made it really singular as far as anything I’ve ever worked on.
Carina Mia Wong: Yeah, and Alex and I talked a lot about the blending of tones in the film and we both knew exactly what we were trying to hit, but it was such a small needle to thread, so [we were trying to] respect and honor the real pain and the tough transformation that these kids are going through and be sensitive to that, but then mix it with humor and make sure we’re not making fun of them, but we’re laughing along with them. Alex and I both have those sensibilities, and in different ways, so it was nice to have both of us on it to keep the other one in check. That was a huge thing that we collaborated on, and it was really nice to have a partner on it.
Is there anything that happens that changes your ideas of what this could be or takes it in a direction you might not have expected when you first set out on it?
Alex Simmons: The first thing that comes to mind is just meeting the kids and really getting to know them. As with every human being we meet, we have a certain perception of them when we meet them, but as time went on and just understanding what their sensitive parts were and what they’re really proud of, the kids obviously made it their own in so many ways. And of course, the journeys that they take we didn’t know.
Carina Mia Wong: The whole thing about filming a LARP is you don’t know what’s going to happen, even the people writing the storyline. So our cameraman would be like, “Should I be on this side? Where should I put the light?” And everybody was saying, we have literally no idea where the characters are going to go. They could run into the middle of the woods, they could jump into the lake. It’s just all completely unpredictable. So it was a total experiment to see like where the storyline would go, what characters would decide to do, and then on top of that, how that would actually affect the real campers after it was all said and done. It made planning really difficult, but all very exciting because it was not predictable at all.
What’s it like to start getting this out into the world?
Alex Simmons: Carina and I have been watching this movie over and over again in small edit bays and we’ve just now started to let other people see it, so it’s really exciting that people are laughing when the characters make jokes and crying when they go through emotional things and actually getting to experience the film for a new time for me is so rewarding and necessary. Everyone keeps saying South By is the perfect audience for this film because they embrace nerds in like the best way, and I can say that as a aspirational nerd.
Carina Mia Wong: Filmmaking is obviously such a collaborative process and it’s not like we were alone in that process, but it’s also very isolating. We just sit in a room staring at the same footage from one week again and again, so similar to Alex, I’m just so excited to like show the world the inside of our minds the last few years and for people to get to know the kids in the film and to get to know the camp because it’s such a unique space that I think is so needed in this day and age. I’m just really excited for that ethos to be out there.
“We Can Be Heroes” will screen again at SXSW on March 13th at 3:15 pm at Alamo Lamar 9 and 3:45 pm at Alamo Lamar 3.