'Strad Style': This Slamdance Winner 'Broke the #1 Rule of Doc Filmmaking'

Winner of both the Documentary Grand Jury Prize and the Documentary Audience Award at Slamdance 2017, Strad Style follows the epic journey of Daniel Houck, who is determined to recreate one of the world's most famous violins, Il Cannone, for preeminent solo violinist Razvan Stoica. There are just a few catches: Houck has never actually seen Il Cannone in person. In fact, he's never left Ohio. And he's never met Stoica, either. Never mind that Houck is still learning how to make violins in his rural farmhouse without the best tools.

In Strad Style, director Stefan Avalos has captured this wonderful, against-all-odds story featuring a fascinating personality at the center of the film. No Film School had a chance to talk to Avalos about how he discovered Daniel Houck, why he discarded two years of documentary work to focus on this particular story, and the technical hazards and challenges that both he and his subject had to overcome during the making of Strad Style. 

"I broke the prime directive, the number one rule of documentary filmmaking, which is to not get involved."

No Film School: How did you first discover Daniel Houck and what drew you into his story?

Stefan Avalos: I was working on a larger, broader documentary about violins, essentially following these people that had worked with these great violins over the last three centuries, violin makers or players or scientists, magicians and thieves, counterfeiters. It was very broad, it was going to be kind of a highbrow, dry doc.

Through the violin grapevine, I heard of this guy in the middle of nowhere in Ohio, who was obsessed with violin-making and did candle magic, too. I thought it might be kind of a funny, maybe a five-minute side story. So I went out there to meet Danny and start shooting. Soon I realized, "Okay, I've got a whole different movie here."

So I set aside the project I was working on, and I had been shooting for two years all over the world. I had shot in Paris, I had shot in New York, I had shot with some of the great violinists of today and some of the great violins of today. I just knew we were making a different doc than I originally intended to make. It's still going to be about violins, but this is going to be a much different movie. We've gone from a PBS movie to a complete underground movie in a way, that I think has real general appeal.

"I really think that when you watch it, you root for him because you're like, 'These are my dreams, too.'"

NFS: What was it particularly about Daniel once you start following him that pulled you into the story and made you decide this was actually the film you wanted to make?

Avalos: Danny is incredibly entertaining. Visually, he's amazing, and his story was really appealing and intriguing. You are always trying to make a movie about the human condition, and I thought, "Boy, I've got it in spades here." Because even though this guy's specific journey is very peculiar and he's a very quirky guy, he is us. I really think that when you watch it, you root for him because you're like, "These are my dreams, too." There's that commonality, knowing we all have the same hopes and dreams, and Danny was certainly willing to put his all out there for us to see, which is wonderful.

Daniel Houck in 'Strad Style'

NFS: Daniel seems to be chasing the impossible. He's trying to recreate this priceless violin for one of the world's preeminent solo violinists, but he's completely self-taught and still very much on the learning curve. How did Daniel's story resonate with you in relationship to your own filmmaking endeavors?

Avalos: Actually somebody was saying, "Oh my God, this reminds me of when you tried to make your film against impossible odds." I was like, yeah, I completely understand it. That's something that any filmmaker, especially low-budget filmmakers, would totally appreciate, where you're trying to do the impossible with no money and not enough equipment and maybe not enough knowledge or education. All these things described and defined probably 95 percent of all filmmakers out there.

"That's something that any filmmaker would totally appreciate, where you're trying to do the impossible with no money and not enough equipment..."

That maker's spirit is also a fun aspect that anyone can relate to. When I talk about this movie, it didn't have to be about a violin. Even it was something other than making a violin, it still would have been the same movie. He could have told some high-performance race car driver, "Oh yeah, I could make you an F-5 race car, I can make you a super high-performance engine in my garage with my drills and my hacksaw." And it would be kind of the same movie, this impossible thing that you are saying you can do for somebody that requires making a very high-caliber machine. It's about a violin maker, but it's not about the violin necessarily.

NFS: I was definitely surprised to see Daniel incorporate magic into his violin making. Do you think there's a certain alchemy to his work?

Avalos: Definitely. He takes that very seriously. He studied candle magic for years. I think that anything that can be a positive influence on the way that you work is definitely aiding in some way. People have different ways of trying to manifest positive effects, positive vibes, whatever you want to call it. For Danny, the magic certainly worked.

Daniel Houck in 'Strad Style'

NFS: Daniel lives in this estate-like property in a cornfield with no heat. Watching the film, the house felt like an extension of Daniel's own mind. Then, late in the film, we learn it's not just Daniel's house. Talk to us about that house because it really becomes a character in the film.

Avalos: The farmhouse out there is the family's house, [Danny's mother] Meneva lives there. It's an enormous farmhouse, the house is like 4,300 square feet. It's really old, so there are no hallways. You have to go through rooms and I actually got lost in the house a couple of times.

They also don't have any money. Danny lives basically at the poverty line, so as things break, they try to keep things going. But the heating system, which was an old duct heating system, broke years ago and they just don't have the money to have it repaired. So they do the best they can.

"I don't think I could have shot this movie a few years ago because I don't think I could have powered the lights. I think I probably would have set all the electrical wiring on fire in that house if I had to use the old tungstens."

The house made for tricky shooting conditions, for sure, because the hot water wouldn't last, the electricity was very iffy. Luckily, in this day and age of equipment, I could use battery-powered LED panels for the lighting. I don't think I could have shot this movie a few years ago because I don't think I could have powered the lights. I think I probably would have set all the electrical wiring on fire in that house if I had to use the old tungstens.

I was a complete self-contained unit. It was a crew of one that made this movie and that crew was myself. I had a lavalier on Danny all the time, I had a Canon C100 with the external recorder and all the works. In one of the rooms, I set up my video area and I had electricity there, so that was good and solid, and I kept it as warm as possible. Luckily, because of the camera and because of the battery-powered lighting equipment, I was able to do this without requiring anything of the house.

The scariest thing was the staircase, which you see early on in the movie [has a loose step]. Actually, because I had to walk up and down that staircase to get where I was shooting, it got a lot worse than it was in the movie. I actually stopped shooting for the day and we repaired that staircase as best we could.

I rented a hammer drill, put a ladder underneath the staircase, and I rebuilt a portion of it because if we went through it, it wasn't like we were going to go through just the first floor, because the next level down was the basement and there was no floor, so we would have plummeted straight down to the basement. It would have been bad.

NFS: Who knew it was going to be "This Old House" at the same time as you are making your documentary?

Avalos: Totally. As I'm standing on this ladder precariously, over this hole that would lead down to the basement 10 feet below and I have this hammer drill and I'm drilling into this brick from this farmhouse that was built in 1853 and it's damp and cold and I was like, "I'm making a movie...I think."

NFS: I think you have truly taken DIY to a new level when it comes to making this movie.

Avalos: Yeah, definitely.

NFS: Did you ever have a moment during filming, while Daniel was making his version of the famous violin Il Cannone, when you thought, "This is never going to happen"?

Avalos: Yeah, I think that was probably more often than not the sense that I had. Because pretty much every step of the way it was giving him problems. The most intense and unnerving area was actually the last phase of the varnishing because some horrible stuff happened there. Actually, if anything, it was worse than you see in the movie. The movie does not play up what was going on, if anything.

Daniel Houck in 'Strad Style'

I broke the prime directive, the number one rule of documentary filmmaking, which is to not get involved. Toward the end there, I have to admit that I was actually putting down the camera and helping Danny to try to work out some problems there. I broke a big rule there in terms of just to try to be an observer. So the camera wasn't rolling for some stuff that was very, very stressful and intense. There was definitely fear that this thing wasn't going to happen.

NFS: What did you learn from Daniel after witnessing his journey to craft this violin?

Avalos: I learned a few things. It's really life-affirming to see somebody follow their hopes and dreams, and you're like,"That could be me," and then to see those dreams happen is really wonderful.

I think the thing I learned in a general sense is, "Wow, how many other Daniel Houcks are there in the world?" These fish that are completely out of water, they're completely in the wrong place. Because I think, given different circumstances, if Daniel were living somewhere else, he would be quite popular, he would be very successful and you are just like, "This poor guy is in the wrong place at the wrong time." Here's this wonderful guy trying to do this stuff that is so the antithesis of what you'd expect of a guy in rural Ohio, and you wonder how many others are there out there like that that you don't know about?

NFS: I usually ask filmmakers at the end of an interview about their biggest challenge, but it sounds like you had a number of challenges. So, what was your best happy accident on this film—something that fell into place for you that really made it work in a wholly unexpected way?

Avalos: I think that the entire plot point of Razvan Stoica, this world-famous violinist, being interested in Danny making this violin for him [was unexpected]. That was amazingly fortuitous because I had started shooting with Danny before that happened, and I had some ideas like, maybe Danny can make a violin and we'll try to find some violinist and then the violinist can assess the violin and that will be the movie. So when Daniel and Razvan started talking and Danny told me, "Hey, I told this guy I'm going to make him a violin," that was definitely the most fortuitous thing because I was like, "Holy mackerel, I've got a plot point here, I've got a storyline that's very real!"

"Danny told me, 'Hey, I told this guy I'm going to make him a violin,' that was definitely the most fortuitous thing because I was like, 'Holy mackerel, I've got a plot point here, I've got a storyline that's very real!'"

I think in terms of something very small that was lucky, like a single shot, was when Danny throws the violin mold into the fire in the opening scene of the movie. He had put a bunch of wax on it and the wax just heated up and melted down the plate—it looked like blood. I didn't plan that at all, it just happened. It's the sort of thing that, if I was doing special effects, which I did years ago, I couldn't have done it. I couldn't have predicted that. So when that happened, I was like, "I've got my opening shot." Right then and there I knew, this is the opening shot of the movie. That was just a complete happy accident while the camera was rolling.

NFS: That image and how we see it the first time does a great job of framing the story. To be honest, not knowing the story ahead of time, it looks like it's a moment of defeat, and it has a completely different meaning when we see it later in the film.

Avalos: Yep. Exactly right, and that, of course, is intentional. That was just one of those things and I was like, "Oh yes! I can do this nice red herring, dark foreshadowing opening shot that in the the end, we realize, 'Oh okay, it was actually different.'"