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PARK CITY, Utah – 52 Tuesdays wasn't shot like most films. Instead, as the title suggests, it was recorded every Tuesday for a whole year. The fictional story of one teenager's struggles with growing up – and one of her parents' transition from female to male – this incremental approach allowed the actors to age at the same rate as their characters. It's a neat twist on the typical race-to-finish method of moviemaking; and thanks to the movie's tie-in app, everyone else can measure the changes in their lives as well.
In 52 Tuesdays, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival this week, 16-year-old Billie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) plays a teenager whose mother (Del Herbert-Jane) comes out as transgender and begins transitioning to male and going by the name James. During the year of the transition, Billie lives with her father and agrees to meet with James every Tuesday. The changes in their relationship over the year are documented through dinners they have together, video confessionals, and other events in their lives – like James' struggles to get and stay on testosterone and Billie's troubles with friends and school.
The My 52 Tuesdays app on the other hand, asks participants to mark their personal transformations over a year by asking them a different question – "What Does It Feel Like to Kiss?" "How Would You Describe Your Mother?" – each Tuesday and then having them provide a photo response. Not only can you see how others across the globe answered the same question, but also keep track of your own responses and attitudes and how they change over the course of a year. It's a bit like Post Secret, or the new app Whisper, except that users can decide whether or not their responses are private and can only be seen by themselves or shareable with all of the app's users.
"Post Secret is something that we all love, but what I think is really interesting about this is that our film is about working out how to live authentically," said 52 Tuesdays co-writer/director/producer Sophie Hyde. "I think there's a lot of conversation about social media that you should be careful what you present but for us it's intriguing when you're not – when you just say who you are."
During post-production, Hyde decided to make the app with Closer Productions as a way to extend the film's message in a way that didn't just feel like marketing. It's been active since October with 104 questions – two years' worth – written by Hyde and her fellow producers Matthew Cormack (also co-writer) and Bryan Mason (cinematographer and editor).
It's a method that grew out of the concept of the film itself. Initially Hyde, Cormack, and Mason didn't even have a story or characters, they just had a concept: That they would film one day a week for a whole year. Eventually they came up with the story of a family going through a time of change after one member comes out as trans* and scripted the movie throughout the filming process. This approach not only allowed them to incrementally depict the visual changes in James' appearance, but also the incremental changes in the mental attitudes of the main characters.
"There is this idea of change, but for me that sort of transition of living as a man and presenting as a man is not just a physical change," said Hyde. "And I think that's what you're able to do when you're making a film over a section of time, [you can] really look at that."
Filming over long periods of time is far more common in documentaries than narrative features, although there are some exceptions; Richard Linklater's Boyhood, which debuted at Sundance this year, was shot over 12 years. When coupled with a multimedia tool like the My 52 Tuesdays app, this sense of cumulative change can integrate with the audience itself, creating two stories: one on a theater screen and one on a phone.
