If there's one documentary we recommend seeing during this year's Austin Film Festival, it's Eric Bricker's Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, a fascinating, beautifully realized portrait of famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman.

Now 98 years old (his birthday was this past Friday), Shulman was a key player in the Mid-Century modern movement. While Modernist architecture was already thriving in California, Shulman's stunningly precise, beautifully composed photographs helped spread the modern aesthetic throughout North America, popularizing the work of architects like Richard Neutra, Charles Eames, and Rudolph Schindler (to name just a few). The photos themselves eventually became recognized as works of art in their own right--they've since been featured as fine art in countless exhibitions, and Shulman's vast personal archive was recently moved to the Getty in Los Angeles. (Taschen has also published several books and photographic reprints, including this three-volume beauty.)

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics explores Shulman's life and work through interviews, animation, archival footage and heaps of gorgeous photographs. Featuring conversations with architect Frank Gehry, designer Tom Ford, artist Ed Ruscha, publisher Benedikt Taschen and a host of notable design-o-philes, the film is an intimate portrait of an extraordinary talent.

For anyone who's interested in design, photography, art or architecture, Visual Acoustics is a fantastic opening night alternative to the big W. Shulman himself will attend the Thursday night screening--an appearance we intend not to miss. But if you can't make it on Friday, you're in luck; there will be a second screening on Sunday at 7:15pm.

Last week, we caught up with director Eric Bricker--a recent Austin transplant and thoroughly awesome guy--to talk about the film.

You’ve known Julius for a long time. What made you decide to make a movie about him? Has this been a work in progress since you met, or was it a more recent thing?

Well, I met Julius in the spring of ’99, and we became friends. And for me, there were two elements: his photography, which I felt was extremely cinematic and worthy of big-screen real estate, and then there was… Julius himself. Even if you remove the [photo] archive from the picture—and, as you saw in the film, they’ve moved it to the Getty—Julius is worthy of documentation. He’s this free-spirited individual that’s led an exemplary life. I love his take on things, and I wanted people to know about him. I think he’s a national treasure. He’s about to turn 98 years old, and he’s still working!

Outside of Julius himself, were you personally more interested in the architecture or the photography?

You know what? All of it. Ultimately I think what interested me was the spirit of the modernist aesthetic… the design, the architecture and the philosophies behind those. But also Julius’ photography—and he seems to live that modernist philosophy. These days, modernist design is so popular (it’s kind of a chic, hip thing) and I wanted people to know the thought and intent behind the design. You know, besides just the beautiful Taschen book on the coffee table, or the Eames chair.

Most people who are attracted to [modernist design] seem to be very educated, and they know what’s behind it. But I wanted people to want to know more. To go out and buy books, or get on the internet, or go on the homes tour.

For me, one of the most interesting things was seeing the amount of work that goes into staging one of these photographs. When you see them, you assume that they represent exactly how these houses look, and how these people live. But then you see Julius placing furniture and getting things just right. Someone actually makes a comment along the way that the houses are rarely as beautiful in real life as they are in Julius’ photos.

Yeah, that was Tom Ford. And a lot of people have made that comment, actually. But I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Case Study House #22 many times, and I’ve been at the Kaufmann House twice, and I can tell you—I walked in, and it was like I was starstruck. They are absolutely incredible. Sure, there are other houses that you could go to and I’d see how the photograph might be more impactful. But also, you have to keep in mind that the photograph might have been taken 40 years ago. Certainly, though, Julius is the master at finding the right angle, and creating these impactful, powerful images.

Let’s talk about the title, Visual Acoustics. Because it’s something Julius says at one point during the film, and it’s an interesting phrase, but… what do you think it means?

It’s funny that you bring that up—because I constantly question the title. We worked on the title form maybe two years, and it kept coming back to that. Julius coined that term. He’s very opinionated, and he’s not afraid to offer his opinion, and 99% of the time he’s right. He kept saying, “Call it Visual Acoustics! Don’t question it…people will get it!” And we kept saying, “It’s too abstract, and it doesn’t really tell you what the film is.” I still question the title.

But he does say it in the film, and it’s a term he coined. You know the Bradbury Building in Blade Runner? It’s a late 19th century building in downtown Los Angeles, and they shot some scenes in the interior, I think where the elevators are. I can’t remember when Julius actually shot the building, but he came up with the term “visual acoustics” to describe it—when you can see the music in the building. There’s such a relationship between architecture and music because it’s all applied mathematics, and I think it alludes to that.

Are you originally from Los Angeles?

No, I’m originally from St. Louis, but I was in LA for 15 years. I just moved here [to Austin] in January.

What made you come to a point, career-wise, where you could move away from Los Angeles to Austin?

It’s funny that you should say that—I actually moved from Los Angeles to Austin so that I could keep making films. I’ll break that down: first, there’s affordability. And then, we have a four year-old son, so we needed to consider schools, and things like that.

To be honest, I love Los Angeles but I just can’t focus on my work there. I feel like so much of my energy is taken up just by what that city throws at me on a daily basis. The traffic is so bad, that I just stopped going places, because I was locked into my own little neighborhood. I’d have to leave at 4 o’clock to pick up my son at school, and then be somewhere for a 7 o’clock appointment, because of traffic. It just wasn’t working any more.

I just thought [Austin] was a better environment, for work and for my family. Which is why I chose to live a little bit [outside the city] right now. I’m trying to get away from density. Finding a parking spot… all of that stuff. But it’s great because it literally only takes about 25 minutes to get from my house to the 5th street exit. I can just drop in here, hang out and leave.

Well, you’ve come to a filmmaker-friendly town. And there are a surprising number of documentary filmmakers here.

That’s one of the reasons why Austin has always been number one on my radar as far as places to live. I’ve looked at other [filmmaker-friendly] cities, but in the end it had to do with weather, and with the filmmaking communities. And it’s such a strong community here. Julius is going to love this place—I don’t think he’s been here since he used to lecture at UT in the 60s. But it’s all about community, whether it’s children, or film, or music, and you can really feel that here.

Did you finish the film before you moved here?

Yeah, I started shooting it in February of 2004, and I didn’t finish it until May of ’08. I screened the film for Julius and maybe 35 other people in December, but it was a longer cut. Then I left LA, moved here, cut the film down and dealt with all the technical details—it was multi-format, and we had a lot of animation…it was crazy. We had a lot of technical tweaks to do. That took until May, and then we screened it at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, which was really the most appropriate festival for us to premiere at, for obvious reasons.

Yeah, I’d think that Californians are much more familiar with modernist architecture than the rest of the country. If only because California weather is more conducive to building those kinds of houses—where you don’t have to worry about weather and snow, those kinds of things.

Well, Southern California is certainly one of the mid-century modern Meccas of the world. But if you take a look around, the modern aesthetic is everywhere. I mean, there is modernist architecture in St. Louis. It really happened all over. What’s interesting about it is that it’s now growing in the United States. People are becoming more and more aware of it. Whereas if you go to Europe, the Scandinavian countries and Germany consider it, well, almost pop. It’s not just a small segment of the population that’s aware of it.

Is modernism your taste, in terms of places you choose to live?

Yes and no. But if I were to design and build something, I think it would definitely be in the modern vein. What I really appreciate about it is the attention to detail. Here, though, we built an all-stone house. Our builder calls it “Hill Country Traditional”.

I can picture it then.

Yeah, it’s a more traditional house. But if I were to design a house, it would be along [modernist] lines. But I wouldn’t have as much exposure, glass-wise. We would probably break it up so that only parts of walls were exposed. We just feel like we’d like a balance with the privacy aspect.

You certainly do sacrifice privacy with an all-glass or mostly-glass house. But one of the interesting things about many of the houses [showcased in the film] is that they’re beautiful largely because they’re invisible--they let you see the environment around them.

And that’s what I love about them. I think with any well designed house or any structure really, its relationship to the site is essential.

In fact, at the beginning of the film, we see Julius in his garden. He’s an Eagle Scout… an environmentalist. I always say that if you cut Julius, he’d bleed green. And the first thing he looks at [when photographing buildings] is exterior views. He’ll walk around and he’ll see the relationship of the house to the site.

Benedikt Taschen coined a phrase—he calls him “One Shot Shulman”. Julius will basically show up, check out the house, and say “this is a 2 o’clock shot… let’s go get lunch”. Then he’ll come back, set up, take the shot and he’s done. And it’s because of that understanding of the structure’s relationship to the surrounding environment.

For the film, you had to take Julius’ photographs and sort of re-present them. Were you concerned whether he would be happy with the way his photos were displayed?

Oh yes. I worked with this incredible company called Trollbäck, out of New York City. It’s owned by Jakob Trollbäck who’s a Swedish designer, and as soon as they heard about the project, they were fully on board. They were incredible to work with.

Our number one thing was to treat the photographs with the utmost respect and care. So we didn’t want to do too much. Of course, you can do a million different things a million different ways, so we had to come up with a visual language that was minimal. And that was our point of departure, whether it was implementing a simple photograph, or one of the other sequences, which I call visual symphonies—the really fast, Charlie Mingus kind of thing where you’re flying through the pages of a catalog. And that was probably the most extreme thing we did with one of his photographs. But for the most part, it was pretty minimalist.

Were you nervous about showing it to him?

God, I was so nervous. But he loves the film. He’s seen it four times. Last time he saw it, I turned to him and said, “are you tired of it yet?” And he said, “never”.

How did Dustin Hoffman become involved with the film? Did you have him in mind?

I didn’t really think of him initially—he wasn’t really one of the actors involved in the whole “LA architecture scene”. What happened was, the Santa Monica Community College was building a new performing arts center, and they brought Dustin on to the advisory board. He was out one day with a friend, looking at the steel structure, just the bones of the building, and he told his friend, “This is incredible! It’s like a piece of artwork. Somebody should photograph this.” And his friend said, “Well, you should have the architectural photographer come in and photograph it.” And Dustin didn’t know who that was, so his friend told him, “Julius Shulman”. Anyway, Dustin looked up Julius’ number, and called him.

So one day, I was talking to Julius, and he said “Dustin Hoffman wants me to photograph this performing arts center that he’s involved in”. So Julius went and photographed it. They developed a working relationship, and later on Dustin was presented the Julius Shulman Excellence in Communications Award through the Shulman institute. He graciously accepted and came to speak at the event, and I was in the audience. And while he was speaking, I thought, “this guy is the real deal”. He just exudes integrity. And from that, I thought he’d be a great narrator.