Pacho Velez discusses Searchers, his documentary about online dating, which draws us into a series of intimate interviews with New Yorkers searching for love or a hookup. Check out all our Sundance coverage. Click here to sign up for the Seventh Row Newsletter. S earchers is a documentary about online dating in New York, made during COVID, although the pandemic is barely brought up, and only noticeable because of shots of New Yorkers on the street wearing masks.
The obstacles are different, but the search is pretty much the same. Velez shoots each interview in the same way: in a closeup and with the subject looking directly into the lens over which Velez fitted a teleprompter with the app screen on it. We have some idea of what the subject is looking at, but our focus is on their face.
Velez presents each interview in a single, unedited take, so we get to watch them thinking, and observe how long they take to consider before deciding to swipe left or right. In between these interviews, Velez includes B-rolls of couples walking the streets of New York, holding hands, making out, and even getting married.
Just a few minutes in, he includes a shot of a crew member carrying the boom around the streets of New York. About a third of the way into the film, he includes his own voice explaining the filming process to a subject.
Then Velez himself, who is also online dating, appears on camera as one of the subjects, and later, he even includes an interview with himself and his mother. Before the Sundance virtual premiere of Searchers , I spoke with Velez over Zoom about picking his subjects, documentary ethics, and choosing the visual style of Searchers.
