Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see our work to completion but fully discover the meanings within it. What role does attention play in your work? Can you discuss an instance where you thought about some aspect of attention when it came to your film?

The Green Prince is a spy thriller; we want to grab the audience from first frame and never let go. So the filmmaking — the visuals, the cutting style, the music — is geared towards grabbing the attention of the audience and leading them deeper into the story with a sense of growing tension.

We have two POVs in this film, two protagonists, but also two different worlds of intelligence gathering. The world of technology — Visual Intelligence (“VizInt”), namely drones, satellites, observation devices — through which the human is perceived just as a function, a means to an end,  a blip on a screen, a silhouette in cross sights.  And then we have the world of the “source” — Human Intelligence (“HumInt”), which relies on humans and, as such, is  fragile, flawed and unpredictable at times. The visual treatment of these two distinct realms of the film focuses the viewer’s attention on the unfolding story in a completely immersive and sensory way.

 

[PREMIERE SCREENING: January 16 at 5:30 pm – The MARC, Park City]

Sundance 2014 Responses