Peter Hall & Paul Gandersman on Building the Horror of MAN FINDS TAPE

Image courtesy of Rustic Films

By Shannon McGrew

In MAN FINDS TAPE, after receiving a cryptic call, documentarian Lynn Page returns to her small Texas hometown to investigate haunting footage of events no one can remember taking place. But her brother Lucas’s controversial past with a viral web series called ‘Man Finds Tape’ forces Lynn to question if he, or anyone in their town, can be trusted. When a stranger arrives with chaotic intentions, it forces Lynn to confront her family’s involvement with the deadly monster preying on Larkin, TX. 

For the World Premiere of MAN FINDS TAPE at the Tribeca Film Festival, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with writer/directors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman. During our chat, we discussed everything from the evolution of their concept and visual style to collaborating with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. 

Congratulations on your World Premiere at Tribeca! To kick things off, how did the concept for MAN FINDS TAPE come about? 

Peter Hall: It went through several different evolutions. It first started as an idea for a scripted podcast about an investigative journalist going to a small town to investigate a viral video that was going around. The writing only progressed to a fleshed-out treatment version. At one point, we wrote another version that was a more traditional narrative, and it honestly just wasn’t as exciting. It wasn’t until Paul and I decided that we wanted to make our first film together that we, as writers and directors, realized we could lean into some of our strengths. 

Paul has been a documentary producer for the past decade, and we kicked around what we could do with that and what we have access to. Paul has a great relationship with a documentary editor and documentary cinematographer, so why not do a fake documentary? Bringing back the podcaster and rewriting it for that worked. The reason it worked in this format but didn’t work as a traditional film is that we explore numerous different themes related to media itself, the consumption of media, and how ideas spread. I don’t think they really landed in the more traditional version of this film, whereas I think they do work in this version of it.  

Were there other films within the found footage/mockumentary subgenre that you turned to for inspiration? 

Paul Gandersman: We enjoy plenty of films in the genre, but I don’t think we are necessarily the found footage or mockumentary guys, or anything. Peter and I approach everything in filmmaking very practically. We’re very harsh on each other and on our own material. Once we determined the parameters for creating a fake documentary, we began discussing what we like and dislike in those types of movies, as well as the ones we enjoy. There are elements we don’t like, such as why they are still filming? That’s a thing that really bothers us, even in movies we love. So we decided from the beginning we did not want that moment to happen. That led us to have our main characters be documentarians, and we needed character, reason, and motivation for why they were doing this, so we built that into the characters and their arcs. You have one character who’s obsessed with filming everything and the other one who doesn’t want to, and then they kind of swap places. 

Peter Hall: Lake Mungo is the North Star that anyone working in this format is probably using as their beacon. The film that had the most influence on this is a documentary called Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley, which explores family secrets about her own family. It’s not a horror film, but it was a huge influence on us because it’s a movie that makes you question the reliability of the person telling the story. 

Paul Gandersman: It’s also extremely emotional and about a character interviewing her family, and is not sure what the truth is, and trying to find the truth within your family. We just really connected with that and said, 'What if we do that kind of story, but make it scary and weird?' 

I loved how you incorporated various visual media, such as security footage, CCTV, and Screenlife. How did you balance those different formats in telling the story while trying to keep everything inventive and engaging? 

Paul Gandersman: It was tricky. We figured that out on the page very early on that it needed all these different formats. There’s the technical aspect of it, but what matters is that the audience constantly understands what they’re looking at and also ensures that it visually feels fresh and doesn’t become tiring and repetitive throughout. 

We attempted to create a distinct look by using different aspect ratios for various time periods or by switching cameras. Approximately 20 to 30 minutes of the movie were shot on mini-DV, and then 4K Sony cameras were used. We spent a considerable amount of time fine-tuning the security camera's appearance. There’s the way it looks, and then there’s the way that feels satisfying to watch in a film. For me, a lot of times, the illusion can be broken with a really cheap security look. What we ended up with isn’t necessarily something that feels entirely real, but we wanted the audience to simply immerse themselves in the weirdness of it. 

For us, oddly, our North Star was if it looks like a pre-rendered background in Resident Evil 1, then it’s right. We figured out these effects in Premiere that we could dial up, such as compression and distortion, and we were adjusting them point by point until the pixelization, blockiness, and splotchiness were just right. We liked it, and at the very least, we hoped it would be something unique for the audience. 

The ensemble of townsfolk was fantastic, and I especially loved seeing Graham Skipper, a familiar face in indie horror. What was your approach to casting such a unique group of characters?

Peter Hall: We didn’t put out a huge net necessarily. We wrote many of the roles with specific people in mind. I was very familiar with Graham’s work, but we didn’t really know Graham going into it, but he was good friends with the Rustic Films guys and lives in the Central Texas area. 

One of the major pieces of casting in the film came from an unexpected way for us, which is John Gholson as Reverend Endicott Carr. He’s a long-time friend of Paul and mine; he’s an actor and a great comedian. We had initially envisioned him for the role of Boone, which ended up going to Graham. We sent John the script, and he messaged us afterwards, saying, 'Hey, can I please read for Endicott?' He had grown up in that evangelical environment, and he was familiar with those kinds of televangelist preachers. The character was originally written to be a sort of Tom Noonan-esque tall, lanky, very elderly man, but John brings such warmth and approachability to it that it kind of puts you off guard. He absolutely crushed it. 

Paul Gandersman: The opening monologue, with John talking to the camera and praying, he improvised that. He understood the character so well that he could come up with that on the spot. 

I’m a massive fan of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s projects. What was it like to work with them on this film, and how did that collaboration come to be?

Peter Hall: It’s been a dream process for us. The way that it came out is really sort of a unicorn fluke scenario that I don’t expect ever to happen again [Laughs]. We wrote this film, designed to be something that Paul and I could do ourselves. It wasn’t something we ever planned to pitch to other producers and get a ton of people on board, nor did we expect huge backing in that regard. 

Then we saw Something in the Dirt, their most recent film, which features a mixed-media element and a faux documentary aspect. I had met David Lawson a couple of times at various film festivals, and I reached out to him cold, telling him that Paul and I are making this movie. We’d love to pick your brain about some of the challenges you guys faced with mixed media and all these different camera formats and whatnot. He was like, sure, and he very graciously read the script. He then set up a call with us and was very complimentary about it, saying that he would love to help out however he could. If we wanted him to produce in some ways, he’d be open to it. Paul asked if Justin and Aaron would also like to produce, and we could make this a full Rustic Film. David was like, well, it’s very rare that Justin, Aaron, and I all agree on one film that we want to make an actual Rustic Production, but he would send it to them. 

We didn’t hear anything for a couple of months, and then we received an unexpected email from Justin and Aaron, asking us to hop on a call.  About ten minutes into the call, Aaron said, 'By the way, we love this film and we want to make it.' From that point on, they were the ideal producers. Dave was the one on the ground here in Austin, while Justin and Aaron were off in New York filming “Daredevil: Born Again”; however, they came to set for the last couple of days. They were huge influences on the edit and in bouncing ideas off of them. 

Paul Gandersman: They were amazing to work with. I’m sure we’ll never have this experience again with producers. Every note they gave was absolutely right, but they would approach it with, It’s your film, so do whatever you want to do. It was incredible how supportive they were and how much they got the material. They were bouncing back and forth, doing a Marvel thing and then talking about our tiny little movie, but they both gave it the same level of importance. It was really special. 

Another thing I want to mention about them is that, although most people probably don’t know this, when we were wrapping up the scene at the BBQ restaurant, they were pulling gaff tape off the floor and taking the trash out. We literally said to ‘em, guys, you don’t have to do this, and they’re like, no, we came to help. In their minds, they do the big Marvel stuff and all that so that they can make the small indie movies. This is what they want to do, which is incredible.

MAN FINDS TAPE had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Festival on Sunday, June 8, 2025.