As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films?

The beautiful thing about chaos in film for me is the reminder of how much of a team sport it is. Right now, I am thinking of a particular moment in our shoot. There is a main sequence in the film that takes place in one house. As a kind of a road trip film, we were constantly on the move, everyday a new location, so this one sequence would give us four days in one location – a luxury we were looking forward to. Except the day before we were supposed to shoot there, the owners decided to pull out and we were location-less. All of a sudden, our meticulous planning went out the window and we were staring at a sea of four days that had to be filled, as going dark was not an option. We took one day down and everyone got in their cars and started scouting.

The producers, line producer, DP, production designer, crew members, husband, myself – everyone was already tired but we all just started knocking on doors to find our new (and as we decided, improved) main location. And because our production designer would need time to dress this new house (and redress the initial one that she painstakingly just spent days dressing!), we also needed new places to shoot the following days as we couldn’t afford to lose a second and third shooting day. We decided to move up the club scene, but that then required a new group of extras to shoot in a moment’s notice. Angelica, my co-writer, who founded the ShadeRoom, sounded the alarm there, and the Roommates came out to support! Everyone pulled together. And what was a feeling of dread at the top of the day, ended up being a testament to this beautiful and wild community that exists in film. Loving and generous with a nice dose of F-You to any external forces that wanted to mess with our movie.

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 19 at 9:30pm — Ray]

Sundance 2018 Responses