Join Us: Delving Into the Depths of the Cult Experience in America
There are approximately 5,000 cults in the U.S., and they - and their members - may be surprisingly close to home. This is the message behind the new documentary Join Us, which opened to rave reviews at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. The topic and the positive press are familiar territory for filmmaker Ondi Timoner, whose previous film DIG!, about rock groups and the individual's desire to be part of something larger than themselves, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Join Us follows four families attempting to rebuild their lives after leaving a South Carolina cult, Mountain Rock Church, led by Pastor Raimund Melz and his wife, Deborah. The documentary takes viewers directly into the only accredited residential treatment facility in the U.S. for cult victims, the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center in Albany, Ohio, where Timoner and her crew filmed and interviewed these families whose lives had been completely controlled by the church leaders. The film then follows them as they return to South Carolina to recover their lives and exact justice against the pastor. What emerges is both horrific and insightful.
"These people could be you or me, depending on the circumstances," says Timoner, reflecting on the film's central theme. "Their compound was a suburban subdivision." The main difference, however, was that their church was led by a delusional leader who dictated how the members should worship, work, build their homes, and even discipline their children. Woven into the families' testimonials is research on what constitutes a cult. These scenes help to dissolve long-held stereotypes, candidly delivering the frightening realization that anyone could be vulnerable.
"It was a huge challenge to balance the amount of information and the extreme emotion."
Ondi Timoner, Director/Editor/Producer, Join Us
Mixing Formats into a Cohesive Whole
Timoner and her crew, including editor Tim Rush, had more than 300 hours of source footage from which to craft the piece. Interviews and cinema verité moments were shot 24p on Mini-DV cameras. Additional B-roll and subject portraits were shot on Super-8 and transferred to DVCAM for digitizing. Archival footage from former cult members was shot in VHS, Hi-8, and Mini-DV tape. Digitizing was done mostly by assistant editors Meagan Keane and Jed Leckritz at Interloper Films, Timoner's Los Angeles-based production company, using one of two Macintosh-based Avid Xpress Pro systems - one of which was later upgraded to Media Composer (v. 2.7) software with Avid Mojo SDI hardware. Timoner and Rush then edited the material at Interloper's office and at their respective homes on their own Macintosh-based laptops equipped with Avid Xpress Pro software.
As the project progressed, the Media Composer setup became the focal point for the editing work, and the film became one of the first independent documentaries edited with Media Composer software. "[At first] we had media duplicated on the various Avid systems, and we'd pass cuts back and forth over AOL Instant Messenger," explains Rush. "We came up with a list of about 150 scenes from which the movie was then based. Once we had the movie in a 12-hour string out, it was too big to send over the Internet, so we kept it on the Media Composer system and did our onlining on that system as well. Then we went through everything together on that one system, pulling out the strongest storylines until we had a manageable cut at two-and-half hours, which was then edited down to 97 minutes for the final version."
The Media Composer software plus Avid Mojo hardware offered Timoner and her team the speed and flexibility needed to mix multiple formats and resolutions in the same timeline and keep the creativity flowing, even as scenes and cuts were being pared down. They particularly relied on the color-correction feature to balance the color among the various scenes shot in different locations and in varying conditions.
Considering that Timoner and her partners had financed the entire film themselves, the cost of the editing setup was also an important consideration. With the Media Composer software, they had the same creative toolset as the hardware-based system at a fraction of the cost, enabling them to produce top-quality cuts within the constraints of a limited indie budget.
"Media compatibility was just great between the Media Composer [software] and the Avid Xpress Pro systems."
- Tim Rush, Editor, Join Us
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Timoner's commitment to the film was beyond financial, though. Her intent was not just to delve into her characters' experiences, but to offer hope. She describes the documentary process as a combination of both looking back and looking forward.
She explains, "To tell the story, we had to describe what had happened in the past, which came naturally out of the material because the peoples' recovery process was about describing what had happened to them. So, the first half of the movie introduces these people and what they've been through. It's here that we explain the techniques of mind control and learn more about this particular cult. The second part of the movie was about looking forward, as we followed the families out of the recovery center, and they began to rebuild their lives."
Timoner wanted to avoid creating a black-and-white story with a protagonist and an antagonist. So, in addition to testimonials from the families, she interviewed Pastor Melz and his wife. This is where Timoner's skill as a documentary filmmaker shone through, allowing her to find a place of humanity - not only with the victims, but also with the cult leader. She deftly extracts information about the pastor's childhood and his own upbringing, presenting him as less of a monster and more as a human being with his own firm, though delusional, beliefs.
"It was a huge challenge to balance the amount of information and the extreme emotion," explains Timoner. "It was very dark at first for me to connect emotionally with these people and get to a place of empathy and lack of judgment, which is what's required to make any documentary, but when you're finally at that place, you just listen and receive what they have to say. I, as a new mother [of two-year-old Joaquim], realized that if I was told to beat my child it would go against every instinct I had. Yet once you've been convinced to do that, how can you ever trust your instincts again? How do you go back to a normal life – and how do you define what normal is? It's heartbreaking."
Human Connections
Finding the fine line between information and emotion, normality and delusion was a continual challenge for Timoner and her crew. After more than a year of editing, they became too close to the subject matter to have a sense of what was clear and what wasn't, so they began holding test screenings at Timoner's home for family and friends. These were done directly from Timoner's Avid Xpress Pro system, using the Avid Mojo SDI hardware to output cuts to her flat-screen television. Based on the feedback from these informal screenings, some elements of the film were restructured to allow the audience to connect more with certain characters.
"A lot of times our cut would fall into that [trap] of providing too much information versus allowing the emotions to come through or vice versa," says Timoner. One solution that she came up with was to focus on the children, interspersing testimonials with scenes of them in the woods or by a lake. "The children were so honest and able to say directly what had happened and how they felt," she says. "For example, the daughter of one of the more emotionally distraught women was so astute, saying, 'You know, when they say they beat children, that's what they call love.' It was crucial that we not be afraid to give the film time to breathe and offer the audience time to process and to feel."
"Not only did we have to present the stories that had the most impact, but we also had to allow the audience to form a human connection," adds Rush. "That way, they could digest it all without being overwhelmed. It was an achievement to edit it in a way that let the stories come alive, yet still integrate all the data about cults and deprogramming and keep it relatively short."
Something Old, Something New
Although managing the emotion and the information in Join Us proved challenging, handling the volume of material on different systems was a smooth process. "Media compatibility was just great between the Media Composer [software] and the Avid Xpress Pro systems," says Rush.
"We had different versions of [Avid] Xpress Pro at different times, but it still worked without a hitch. We just copied the bins over, and the OMF files and all the media would reconnect no matter what system we were working on. I even had an old G4, and I could put the most recent version of [Avid] Xpress Pro on my computer, and it worked really well."
With such intense subject matter, the ability to work seamlessly with the technology allowed Timoner and her crew to bring out the best in the material that they had. In the end, she's proud not just of what was created, but also of its potential to support and inform others.
"We each go through our experiences in life and everybody has times that they regret," she says. "The way to turn that regret around is to participate in something like this. The former cult members could feel gratified that their story could help or warn others, and we were able to provide them with a forum to do that. People need to know that something like this could happen to any of us. Like Rick A. Ross [considered an expert on destructive cults and a recognized intervention specialist] says in the movie, 'The mind is not as powerful as we would like to think.'"
* CREDITS: Courtesy of Interloper Films, LLC. Photos: Vasco Nunes and Kristy Sullivan.