Now the new documentary Tower recreates that 96-minute-long massacre in an original way, using archival film and new interviews with an animated portrayal of the events. Keith Maitland, who directed the film, interviewed hundreds of people who were on campus that day to learn more about the incident.

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The film takes a somewhat surprising and stylized approach to re-creating the shooting: Maitland hired younger actors to re-enact both the events of the day and interviews he had done with survivors. He then incorporated those with archival footage and animated nearly all of it. The result is a film that carefully switches between immediacy and reflection — placing us in the midst of this tragedy while also creating a dialogue with the past.

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The haunting documentary “Tower” revisits a 1966 mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin that shocked the country. It may be difficult to comprehend the reaction to the horror of Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old student who shot more than a dozen dead, wounding more than twice as many. A cover story in Life magazine suggested just how alien the carnage seemed at the time, noting that during the rampage Whitman’s actions were “so outrageous, so hard to grasp, that people could not believe it.” Many more mass shootings later, it’s now tragically easy to believe.

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Maitland peppers his movie with archival news footage and audio from the day, along with more modern interviews. He supplements these with animated reenactments, letting actors provide the voices for the victims’ younger selves.

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Animation seems an odd means of addressing such a grim tragedy, but it gives Maitland the creative freedom to effectively tell a suspenseful, harrowing and moving story. But Maitland follows the consequences to the present day. News footage of recent mass shootings makes a point that seems incredible after the sobering horror we have seen.

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The interweaving of animation and non-animated footage gives the picture a kind of surreal quality that befits the sense of the survivors of how unreal the event seemed to them. “What in the world has happened to my world?” one interviewee remembers thinking.

Read more at the Seattle Times

The remarkable new documentary Tower takes us back to a time before school shootings were a national epidemic, a time when America’s innocence could be blown to bits by a deranged citizen with a rifle. That was 50 years ago, when engineering student Charles Whitman perched atop the University of Texas Tower and unleashed 96 minutes of terror. By the time he was done, 16 were dead and 33 injured.

Read more at GuideLive.com

Keith Maitland’s powerful and emotional documentary “Tower” — easily one of the best films of the year — takes a novel approach for a nonfiction film:aAnimation. Specifically, he mixes rotoscope animation with archival footage and news reports to re-create the chilling 90 minutes of terror from the perspective of victims, witnesses and first responders.

Read more at SFGate.com

Today’s college-American has never known a time when campus and school shootings haven’t been a tragically consistent element in the fabric of society. It wasn’t always that way. There was a time, some 50 years ago, when such a thing was unthinkable — until the moment it wasn’t, and dozens of lives were forever impacted.

Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times

Animation has come to play a greater role in documentaries, and it dominates the action of Tower to powerful dramatic effect. Maitland interviewed surviving eyewitnesses, cast actors to read their words on the soundtrack, and brings those voices to life with clean, minimally drawn characters that are sometimes set against black-and-white archival footage from the 96-minute siege on the university mall.

Read more at the Chicago Reader