Michael Tyburski, the director of “Turn Me On” on the set with the cinematographer.
Michael Tyburski is premiering his 99 minute feature, “Turn Me On” at the Alexandria Film Festival on Friday, Nov. 7 at the American History Museum at the Lyceum. His first feature premiered at Sundance in 2019. “Turn Me On,” Tyburski’s second feature, takes place in a world that feels like a Utopia, where everyone is comfortable with no positive or negative feelings due to a pill they take by choice every day.
Then one day Joy doesn’t take the “vitamin” and discovers a whole range of feelings. When she shares this with her partner William and the others in her group, it causes major disruption in their lives.
“Like most satires this shines a light on our own society, taking pills to avoid feeling things, exploring the over-medication in our society.” He says, “When Angela wrote the script, it was during the pandemic, and she was looking at the idea of how young people don’t connect physically anymore. She took it to the extreme, and I could project some of my feelings when everyone was isolated during Covid.”
Tyburski says, “You have to be creative to translate a script to the screen and on a budget. With a screenplay maybe there are no limits. It took place in a cosmopolitan future city. But,” he says, “We wanted to make it a little more original, and we didn’t have the budget to fabricate a city so we adapted it to rural community in the wilderness. We don’t know where it is but they speak English, and we wanted to place them in nature.”
He says it took about a month to shoot the film. “The actual making of the movie took about a year’s worth of time for me — work on the script, develop for the screen, find the cast, many months of post production, sound mix and color.” He says, “You have to be quick on your feet. The biggest challenge was creating a lot of problems you have to solve. It takes a lot to make a movie.”
As the director he was involved in all the steps. “Finding the cast, working with the wonderful cast. They are very talented. I live in New York, the leading actress in London, the other lead in LA.”
And in this case it was shot during Covid and there were the extra restrictions mandated by Covid with required medical staff on set and distancing. “Filmmaking is very intimate with close conversations in small environments but with the extra restrictions mandated it was more hurdle to work around.”
He says he grew up in rural Vermont, and it was not a path everyone was doing. “But I had an interest in how things work and when I got into movies as a kid, I started experimenting with my own.” Then he studied film in Santa Fe. “I worked directing commercials and short films for 15 years.”
He is currently in the early phases of writing his third film. Tyburski thinks film has become easier technically today. “It is certainly competitive but talent does prevail and good stories find their way to the top.”
He adds, “I have a lot of tenacity, And I don't want to stop. It’s what I love to do.”