Atlanta’ Director Amy Seimetz on Creating Those ’Get Out’ Vibes in the Creepy Episode ‘Helen’
A couple who is dating drives to the girl’s hometown and is surprised by an encounter with a wild animal on the road. In town, the guy can’t seem to adjust to feeling scrutinized, is one of the few black people around, and finds the strange residents way too friendly and obsessed with him. Sound familiar?
It’s actually the premise of “Atlanta’s” Season 2 episode “Helen,” in which Earn (Donald Glover) and Van (Zazie Beetz) travel to Helen, Georgia to attend the Germanic festival celebration known as Fasnacht. But it’s probably not a coincidence that it bears a resemblance, especially stylistically and tonally, to Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning film “Get Out.” Indie darling
Amy Seimetz chatted with IndieWire about directing the episode, trying to capture Donald Glover’s version of the festival known as Fasnacht, and her odd connection to the story.
By nature, it kind of lends itself to that,” said Seimetz about the similarities to “Get Out.” “For the writer [Taofik Kolade] who wrote it, that maybe was an inspiration, but you’d have to talk to him about it. But I definitely think [it’s similar in] the difference in culture, the fear — especially when they’re playing that game and they start yelling his name. I find chanting and very white men frat-y things very terrifying. It feels like it can suddenly turn really violent very quickly, even when they’re overly excited. So a little bit in that vein.”
She also deliberately shot the scenes in a way to amp up the paranoia factor.
“When we shot it, Christian [Sprenger] the DP and I decided that it would be really fun to shoot this episode on 100mm,” she said. “Most of the episode is on a 100mm or 200mm lenses so it makes it feel like they’re being spied on the whole time. Very creepy like somebody’s watching them the whole time and we get that vibe of alienation like, ‘Oh wow, there are these two black people here,’ people just staring at them the whole time, so Earn can never quite feel it in his skin.”
For Georgia tourists looking to partake in Fasnacht, look beyond this country. The festival that’s depicted in the episode is inspired by but not remotely authentic to the ones celebrated in Europe.
“Fasnacht is a festival in Germany, but it doesn’t actually happen in Helen, Georgia,” said Seimetz. “That’s just something they made up. Half of that stuff in there, I have no idea. Donald was just saying, ‘I think it’s just stuff I read off the Internet,’ and they put it in. This feels very much like the show is anyway, taking these weird pieces of reality and making them part of the world.”
Van grew up attending Fasnacht and wants to share the experience with Earn, but the entire celebration is strange, confusing, and borderline scary. Someone wins a ball-tossing game by bypassing all the rules, everyone is wearing masks, and a dude called the Schanppviecher is running around stealing things while wearing a bizarre beast head.
“It’s nightmarish and very haunting, alienating in a way,” said Seimetz. “There’s no reason Earn would be there other than just to be there with Van. It’s a really alienating episode for both of them.
“All those masks are handmade,” she added. “We looked up different masks from the festivals and this guy that’s in Atlanta made all these creature masks. So we basically designed all of these masks so they felt nightmarish but still realistic.”
As for the Schanppviecher, Seimetz said that he actually did look
and sound as disturbing in real life as on screen. “The guy that was walking around in the puppet [head], without me saying anything, he started making this really ridiculous laughter,” she said. “I was like, ‘This is so creepy. Keep doing that.’ It just became a mix of funny and really disturbing.”
In real life, Beetz was born in Berlin to a German father and American mother, and is fluent in both German and English. In the episode, when Van hits it off with another character at Fasnacht, they begin speaking German, which leaves both Earn and the audience feeling left out, since there are no subtitles for the scene.
“They wanted us to feel Earn’s alienation, this part of Van that he doesn’t really know, that he’s not sure if he wants to know,” said Seimetz. “It’s a part of Van he can’t access. I don’t think most Americans speak German, so I wanted us to be in the dark too. You get a few words here and there to ground you. He’s so funny in that scene.”
https://www.google.com/amp/www.indi...2-episode-4-helen-amy-seimetz-1201943187/amp/