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The Sundance Question: What Prop or Piece of Set Decoration is Particularly Integral to Your Film?
Photo: Kelsey Doyle, courtesy Sundance Institute. Each year Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see past years’ questions and responses, click here.)
This year’s question: Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell?
(Check back daily during the festival — new answers are uploaded each day throughout the festival.)
“It is An Object That Should Not Belong to That World”: Maite Alberdi |The Mole Agent
“Turquoise’s Old Pageant Crown”: Channing Godfrey Peoples | Miss Juneteenth
“The Moon”: Natalie Johns | Max Richter’s Sleep
“A Simple Jog by the Water”: Writer Craig Borten | Sergio
“The Shrine Serves as a Powerful Locus of Non-Forgetting”: Patricia Vidal Delgado | La Leyenda Negra
“The Objects of a Time Passed”: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw | The Truffle Hunters
“Walls are Used to Separate the ‘Normal’ From the ‘Different'”: Radu Ciorniciuc | Acasa, My Home
“The Semicircle of Empty Chairs Being Set Up and Attended To”: James D. Stern | Giving Voice
“A Handwritten Sign That Says: ‘Fearless, Revolutionary, Optimism'”: Fernando Villena | Giving Voice
“I Wanted to Subtly Evoke Biosphere 2 in My Interview Shots”: Matt Wolf | Spaceship Earth
“An Emotional Language Emerged Within the Textured Universe of Glitches”: Matt Yoka | Whirlybird
“A Dream Refusing Deferment”: Garrett Bradley | Time
“Linus Has His Blanket. Radha Has Her Head Wrap”: Radha Blank | The 40-Year-Old Version
“Each of the Remembered Hoovers Made a Different Sound”: Jerry Rothwell | The Reason I Jump
“You Can Ride Poison to its Possibilities”: Josephine Decker | Shirley
“A Celebration of the Pure-Hearted Passion of Amateurs”: Euros Lyn | Dream Horse
“The Mystic, Magical Vibes of His Home”: Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch | Mucho Mucho Amor
“Not Your Regular Scented Candles”: Natalie Erika James | Relic
“Water Is the Source of Life, Cleansing Element, Purifier, Serene”: Jayro Bustamante | La Llorona
“This Log Cabin Is the Fifth Cast Member”: Josh Ruben | Scare Me
“A Metaphor for a Woman’s Rebuilding of Her Broken Life”: Phyllida Lloyd | Herself
“No Object is More Important Than People, Artists, Community and Love”: Catherine Gund | Aggie
“Objects Are Her Entire World”: Zoé Wittock | Jumbo
“The Main Painting That Is Stolen Is of a Dead Swan”: Benjamin Ree | The Painter and the Thief
