Noah Buschel

Overview: The Quiet American Experimentalist

Awards and Nominations

Noah Buschel looked at the city like someone studying a map of a country he’d never quite learned to read. The avenues folded into one another — familiar yet strange — and each corner seemed to remember a different version of him. He walked with the slow decisiveness of a man who had spent months imagining the next sentence of a story; when it didn’t come, he kept walking anyway.

• Cinematography: He works frequently with DP Ryan Samul. Their look is desaturated, often flat, favoring static medium shots and slow zooms. There is a deliberate “anti-style” style: no Dutch angles, no crash zooms, no steadicam heroics. The frame is often a cage. In Glass Chin (2014), a boxing drama, the ring is the only place where movement is fluid; outside it, the world is cramped apartments, fluorescent-lit diners, and long hallways.
• Sound Design: Buschel’s films are quiet—sometimes unnervingly so. Ambient noise (a refrigerator hum, distant traffic, footsteps on linoleum) is mixed high. Music is sparse, often diegetic (coming from a radio or jukebox). Silence is not emptiness; it’s pressure.
• Pacing: The cardinal rule: do not watch a Buschel film for plot propulsion. Scenes breathe, linger, and sometimes seem to stall. This is his greatest strength and his biggest commercial liability. A two-minute shot of a man staring at a glass of water is not filler; it’s the point.

casting choices

Are you interested in a deeper look at the in his films or his specific visual techniques ? Drew Taylor's Top Ten Favorite Films of 2012 - The Playlist noah buschel