Blog Post #261: Gabriel Rhenals on 'Ask Delphi'!
- Gabriel Rhenals
- Nov 6
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 14
In concert with the limited online release of my 4th film Ask Delphi on YouTube (from 11/6/2025 to 11/16/2025 here), I offer the following essay about the conception, execution and theory of this latest feature film effort. Thanks for your interest and please enjoy!
FUNDING
The gathering of ideas for what would become the fourth feature film in my canon began well in advance of the completion of my preceding entry, 2023's Death Cleaning. This tendency to begin thinking about a following film while another is in-progress or concludingly so is typical in my experience. However, with my personal funds significantly depleted by the production of Death Cleaning, I would need to rely on a different tack than usual if I wanted to turn whatever coalesced during the scriptwriting process into reality with any speed. In February 2024, that scriptwriting process began in earnest and I completed the first draft of Ask Delphi in approximately two month's time - the fastest turnaround for a script in my entire feature filmmaking career!
With the script complete, I decided to devise a business plan in order to pitch my next film to potential investors. Querying Amazon, I immediately landed upon a reputable book about preparing business plans for indie films. However, after several months of following the book's instructions rather faithfully and attempting to build a solid case for my film to present to major financiers, my dad proposed simply involving family and family friends as investors with an incentivizing plan to apportion any income generated by the film based on their investment percentage. With that plan in place, I was able to secure a characteristically modest $6,500 for the budget of Ask Delphi from close relations (for an $8,000 budget in total) and production was soon underway!
GRIFFITH, DICKENS AND MONTAGE
Director D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) is famously regarded as the father of modern film grammar, having pioneered and popularized many of the basic features of narrative film language quintessential even to this day, such as close-ups, cross-cutting, fade-outs and continuity editing. However, not many know that Griffith's cinematic techniques were heavily inspired by the literary style of world-renowned author Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Dickens' highly visual prose involving mercurial shifts from exteriority to interiority, landscape to detail and vastness to intimacy appealed greatly to those exploring the potential of this newfangled art form of the early 20th century. However, on the other side of the Atlantic, a different approach to film language was concurrently evolving. Enter the montage theory of Soviet Russia, developed by filmmaker-theorists like Lev Khuleshov (1899-1970) and Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948). In comparison to Griffith's methods geared more toward entertainment and sentimentality, the practitioners of Soviet montage had a greater interest in social utility and emphasized the intellectual effects of editing over those of pictoriality. Yet, consummate montagists like Eisenstein greatly admired the popularity and effectiveness of Griffith's foundation-laying work. So, too, did Russian audiences, reportedly.
Now, what do these two storied filmmaking schools have to do with Ask Delphi? The design of my previous feature Death Cleaning was primarily motivated by an attempt to completely sever the notion of temporally, spatially and causally-bound editing in the Griffithian tradition. Every scene was one shot; no exceptions. For the succeeding film, I was similarly interested in retaining that earlier disavowal of traditional continuity-based construction while, at the same time, assenting to a linear, causal narrative scheme. As such, no shot in Ask Delphi follows from another in continuity. The editing constantly jumps ahead or away. In many ways, it's a far more montage-based formulation despite the otherwise conventional narrative trappings.
400+ SCENES
My previous film consisted of a total of 180 scenes with each scene lasting 4/8ths of a page or less (scripts are usually broken down in terms of 8ths). However, on Ask Delphi I wanted to economize the scene-long narrative beats throughout the film and thus allocated only 2/8ths per scene at most. In turn, the narrative design facilitated a total of approximately 415 scenes; more than double the amount of Death Cleaning! I regularly stress this quantity of scenes because I believe more scenes enhance the overall definition or sharpness of a given narrative. In other words, more visual and dramatic information equates to more sensory acuity enabled by the staged, recorded and edited proceedings. And for comparison purposes, an average 90 or 120-minute film in the mainstream film market typically consists of only about 40-50 scenes.
TECHNOLOGY AND AI
Ask Delphi is a fictional simulation of an alternate reality. This idea prompted itself because I was interested in exploring personally relevant themes of technology on this outing. I've long observed the intractability of our tools from our basic essences so I felt compelled to pose a narrative that captures technology's intimate permeation throughout our lives. And given our now firm understanding of artificial intelligence's interminable alliance with our species, presently and into the foreseeable future, framing the entire film as a product of AI's power made all the sense in the world to me.
FAMILY AND LOVE
Central to Ask Delphi are sentimental relationships; namely, between Alma/Zooey and Zooey/Lo. I was drawn to basing this narrative on such primal human activity on account of the otherwise overwhelming presence of wholly inhuman elements as generative AI simulations, massive corporate presence and personal computing technology. I also see myself as completing a symphonic cycle where each feature film I've made represents a part among parts in a manner akin to the alluded to musical form. In symphonies, the fourth movement usually represents a restatement or reprisal of musical ideas from the first movement. So, I'm deliberately repeating some ideas from my 1st film For My Sister, which was also heavily steeped in familial bonds, in this 4th entry. But there are a few other subtle callbacks or nods to my debut feature in Ask Delphi.
MAKING THE FILM
A doctor once told me the story of the stone soup. Essentially, the parable goes like this: Some famished visitors to a small village are scarce of resources for a meal and the villagers are reluctant to help them out. So, they decide to use what little they have (stones, if I recall correctly) to initiate the cooking of a fake soup with all the sincerity of a real one. When the curious villagers see how much effort they're putting into their deceptively humble culinary confection, the village inhabitants begin to contribute actual edible ingredients to the effort. And in the end, the visitors' soup is made properly filling and nutritious because they were able to inspire contributions through proactivity and hard work. A similar principle has guided the start of all of my feature film productions. I commence these projects with the most concentrated work required of the principal actors in an amply controlled setting and use that early, visible momentum to garner the trust and involvement of others moving forward. Works every time!
Throughout the 32 days of production over the course of six months, I did not detect the slightest hint of fatigue among any of the actors employed - even on days as long as 10+ hours. I surmise that the reason for this may have had to do with the "one scene, one shot" construction of the film which meant that every 5-10 minutes our outfit changed up what we had to accomplish. Without the slightest regard for continuity-based matching or deliberation over different types of coverage, we were able to accomplish tens of setups per day and meet daily requirements without fail. We always moved briskly!
Another recurring feature of my productions up to this point was a minimal footprint. As a one-man crew, the only crew presence on the production was myself wielding a small, mirrorless, 4K-capable camera mounted on a single-shoulder rig (on quite a few occasions I even operated the camera without the rig) with an attached, serviceable unidirectional microphone. This allowed the production to move blazingly fast! Although some may criticize the shortcomings in exposure and focus (both were set to automatic throughout the entirety of production), as my analog in the film Adriel Reynolds says, "I like to shoot fast." With a guiding ethos rooted in speed and efficiency, we were able to complete the production on-budget and on-schedule. So, stay quick and nimble, friends!
CRITICISMS
You don't enter feature films of any scale into the public square without having a fair quantity of criticism levied back at you. Some of the most common lashings against Ask Delphi have dealt with the uneven technical presentation of audio and video; the inconsistencies of time and car logo displays; the simplistic spareness of the plot; the emotional dissonance caused by the regularly alternating "threads" in the second section of the film; and the less than ideal placement of the camera in certain instances. To be sure, I'm rarely emotionally affected by such responses to my films because after 23+ years of this work, your skin tends to callous and grow thick. And after spending 6+ months with my footage and edits (even longer with the written content), I am well aware of the kinds of faults identified while, admittedly, also being blind to others for reasons of proximity and authorial pride. But I offer these criticisms to the light in the spirit of transparency and a measure of journalistic integrity. My hope is that you can see through the seams and blemishes to appreciate the broader abstraction that makes engagement with mimetic construction as satisfying, beguiling and preoccupying in the magical way it can often be.
In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to read these myriad thoughts on the process, ideas, form and content of my 4th film Ask Delphi! And if you're viewing the film for the first time on the occasion of its limited online release, thank you for sharing your precious time with one of my films! This work represents the union of seismic talent on account of the actors, immense strategic coordination on my part and the inordinate mercy of the fates which allowed all of our schedules and other conditions for filming to continuously line up at the right moment over the months it took to produce the film.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this post to those many fine actors who populate this film; chief among them, Florencia Barletta, Karina Cancio, Nick Rubertone and Shaun Grant! I am little more than a neurotic weirdo without you all joining me in my little, cinematic playground! So, much love!
