Ben walks the lake at Mueller with David Liu—director, editor, producer, composer, and until 2024, an AI engineer. Fifteen-plus years in hardware, software, product design and machine learning, and then generative AI showed up and he decided he didn't want his name on where it was going. So he went looking for the one medium the technology can't enter without destroying it… documentary filmmaking.

Here's the crazy part - he never wanted to be a filmmaker. He wanted to score films. A friend pointed out that nobody can stop you from composing your own movie, which meant he now had to go find a story worth telling. Enter Covid, four Austin restaurants and one pandemic. Seventeen shooting days spread across four years. Four years of grant pitches where everyone told him TO BE SEEN was impossible: four subjects, non-linear, no way.

He shot it with almost no lighting, no rehearsals, and a rule about never overstaying his welcome, because the second take is where the artifice creeps in. Fiore Tedesco of L'Oca d'Oro handed him the title in the first sit-down, "you don't need a restaurant to eat, you need a restaurant to be seen." Plus a three-hour interview that became the spine of the film. Then the assembly came back all talking heads, and he sat stuck for a full year, thinking he had made a huge mistake.

What unstuck him was filming chefs mushroom-hunting in the Pacific Northwest. That short—HIDDEN STORIES–FORAGED AND FOUND—went to DOC NYC, two hundred people went dead silent, and he had his formula.

Plus: cashing out the retirement account to finish, and finding out at the premiere— sitting next to chefs who had never seen a frame—that the thing is actually good.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Sync, sync—and a thesis: "my job is to discover the answers" 00:22 Your job as an artist is to pose the question 00:40 Fifteen, twenty years of engineering, and a pretty big gamble 01:00 Riley, cue the music — David Liu, ladies and gentlemen 01:30 Toasty and muggy: Mueller, the lake, and the ducks 02:00 To Be Seen, four Austin restaurants, and the AFS Cinema premiere 02:40 The Bullock on the 13th, Austin Public on the 14th 03:00 L'Oca d'Oro, Foreign & Domestic, LeRoy and Lewis, Pho Craft 03:30 "I never tried to get into filmmaking" 03:55 A terrible idea: just make your own film and score it 04:20 A calling card for a production company that didn't exist yet 05:00 Failing at pop songs, accidentally good at scoring to picture 05:45 Play every instrument badly — that's a composer 06:40 Hoping for narrative, and what the industry decided instead 07:15 Hardware to software to product design to AI 08:00 2018, and a career that started taking off 08:30 The gut says hedge: what if it goes wrong? 09:00 Looking for the most opposite thing, and finding documentary 09:40 Use AI in a doc and it's no longer a doc 10:20 What he didn't like about where doc was going 10:40 Too lit, too rehearsed, too formulaic 11:00 Chasing celebrity, crime, cults — the three Cs 11:20 Four years of grant pitches: "you're breaking all the rules" 11:45 No lighting, high verite, nothing rehearsed 11:55 Seventeen shooting days over four years 12:10 Don't overstay your welcome — the guttural first reaction 12:50 Quitting in 2024, and watching how people were using it 13:20 Conference talks, reputation, and a better use of storytelling 14:00 Deep fakes, meme manipulation, and the removal of autonomy 14:40 "I got into this for curing cancer and weather predictions" 15:00 Teach it to desalinate water, not to make our paintings 15:45 If it's automatable and nobody likes doing it — perfect 16:20 Cost, displacement, and who's to blame when it goes wrong 17:30 "We can save money by removing jobs." You're looking at it wrong 18:30 The layoffs start, and the writing was on the wall in early '23 19:00 Reading the 10-Ks: something ain't mathing 19:40 The better question — what would I regret not doing? 20:40 Burning the entire retirement account 20:55 Films will probably outlast every tech company 21:45 "Everybody says I'm wrong. What if I just try?" 22:00 Herzog, and the two volcano docs about the same subject 22:45 Stopping at the water — L'Oca d'Oro is right over there 23:00 The lockdown steps where he started writing music again 23:30 Fifteen years since he'd touched it. It's not great, but it's there 24:00 How do you shoot a documentary? YouTube 24:15 Cashing out in 2023, and never planning to direct this 24:50 Late '22: an LLC, some gear, and the pieces of a company 26:00 Product design, problem-solving, and "everybody says it's impossible" 26:35 What a restaurant symbolizes for a community 27:20 Non-linear time, the thing they said would never work 28:00 He thought it was a 30-minute episode 28:15 First interview you're wrong, second you're on a bigger story 29:00 If I don't tell it, this gets lost to time 29:30 An introvert asks why he even goes to a restaurant 29:50 Fiore's line: you need a restaurant to be seen 30:10 COVID takes the thing away — the existential test 31:00 Snowpocalypse, Valentine's Day, and what we've chosen to forget 32:40 Processing the collective trauma, and a worldwide audience 33:00 The real subject: how we, the patrons, changed 33:20 Less patient, less personal, more hyperindividual 33:50 Why nobody wants to go to a theater anymore 34:00 Thaison Nguyen of Pho Craft saw the insularity coming 35:45 Fine dining chefs, a precarious moment, and the ask 36:20 Authenticity goes both ways 36:50 No rehearsing, no fabricated emotional places 37:45 The interview style changes halfway through the film 38:00 Sitting down in 2020, standing in their space by 2022 38:30 An assembly of pure talking heads, and a full year stuck 39:00 A trip across the country, and matsutake in the snow 39:50 Accidentally handheld, the entire time 40:00 Mic'd under the vent hood in the loudest place possible 40:20 Hidden Stories–Foraged and Found goes to DOC NYC 40:40 Two hundred people, dead silent. That's the formula 41:10 And then the last two subjects said yes 42:00 Standing in front of L'Oca d'Oro 42:45 "Oh — you did that to make it through?" 42:50 Fiore Tedesco, and philosophy through restaurant ownership 43:50 A three-hour interview becomes the spine of the film 44:20 It's not what's on the plate, it's what's not on the plate 44:30 One restaurant wins a Michelin star. One goes out of business 45:00 Chef's Table, Bourdain, and the lens nobody else has used 45:30 Adam Orman, and a calling card for the working class 45:40 Brain drain: the institutional knowledge that walked out 46:30 The worst thing you can do — not showing them until the premiere 47:20 Restaurants play music, and restaurants are loud 47:40 Ninety percent of the sync audio, stripped 47:50 Rebuilding the entire kitchen with Soundcrafter, mixed in Atmos 48:40 Did you make the film you set out to make? 48:50 "If it's not good, I'll go back to tech." It's good 49:00 Now the distribution rules are being rewritten 49:50 Self-distributing, and selling the partnership instead of the film 50:10 Supper club screenings, and making it an event 50:30 The restaurants showed up, and got to be the heroes 50:55 Lightning round 51:00 The gateway drug was climbing films 51:15 Valley Uprising, Sender Films, and actually climbing in Yosemite 52:00 Chef's Table, Alinea, and eating at the restaurant afterward 52:50 Herzog, Ken Burns, and the rungs of documentary 53:40 You never hear his voice — but the editing changes 54:00 The Pho Craft reveal: the painting is in his apartment 55:20 Not everything lasts, and it still can be beautiful 56:00 Advice: do it, and don't follow the rules 56:30 Pathfinding, and why "nobody knows" is the right place to be 57:30 Documentary got too safe 58:00 What he can't stop thinking about: the new normal 58:30 No income, and an industry eating itself alive 59:00 Attention spans, plasticity, and how we adapt 59:50 Asking all the right questions 1:00:00 tobeseenfilm.com, @tobeseenfilm, and Narriforge