Authors — Daniel Eagan
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“We Are Living Through a Transition from COVID to Consciousness”: DP Laura Merians-Gonçalves on Homebuilding During Quarantine, Safe Production and a Collective Future
Cinematographer Laura Merians-Gonçalves shot Pacified in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Directed by Paxton Winters, the film won awards at the 2019 San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Aruanda Film Festival in Brazil, and the Sao Paolo International Film Festival. Merians-Gonçalves received the Best Debut Cinematography at the 2019 Camerimage in Toruń. Merians-Gonçalves spoke to Filmmaker from Los Angeles in May. Filmmaker: Where were you when the lockdown began? Merians-Gonçalves: I was here in Los Angeles. I had just wrapped a project that I shot for writer/director John Ridley in March, while simultaneously prepping a new movie. We were […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jul 14, 2020 -
“It’ll Be as Accurate as a Viking Movie Can Be…”: DP Jarin Blaschke on Shooting Robert Eggers’s The Northman, Storyboarding During Lockdown, and Being Optimistic
DP Jarin Blaschke was a week away from the first day of shooting The Northman, directed and co-written by Robert Eggers, when the Covid-19 crisis shut down production. This is Blaschke’s third collaboration with Eggers, after The Witch and The Lighthouse, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for cinematography. Blaschke spoke with Filmmaker the day after learning that production on The Northman will resume at the end of summer. Filmmaker: Where were you when the lockdown began? Blaschke: I went to Belfast in November. We had five weeks of early prep work before the Christmas holiday break, then […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jul 14, 2020 -
“Traveling By Plane at the Moment is One of the Tricky Things…” DP Toby Oliver on Production Restarting and His Work on the Netflix Series Dead to Me
The second season of the Dead to Me marked cinematographer Toby Oliver’s first Netflix TV series production. The series has been ranked in the platform’s top ten since it was released in May, spending a week or so at number #1. Oliver, originally from Australia, has worked frequently with Blumhouse, including shooting the breakout hit Get Out. He spoke with Filmmaker from Los Angeles. Filmmaker: How were you hired for Dead to Me? Oliver: I was in Mexico working on a movie called Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar, which was written by and stars Kristen Wiig and […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jul 14, 2020 -
Hirokazu Kore-eda on the Lightness of Catherine Deneuve, Long Takes and Shooting The Truth
Hirokazu Kore-eda became one of world cinema’s leading directors in a series of films that over 20 years have examined family life with uncanny insight and sensitivity. After winning the Palme d’Or at the 71st Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda wrote, directed and edited The Truth (La Vérité), his first foreign-language feature. Starring Catherine Deneuve as Fabienne, a renowned French movie star, and Juliette Binoche as her daughter Lumir, a writer, the movie explores their relationship during the shooting of an art-house film. Ethan Hawke plays Hank, Lumir’s husband, an actor and recovering alcoholic. The Truth screened at the […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jul 3, 2020 -
“Rodeos are Incredibly Dangerous”: Annie Silverstein on Bull
In Annie Silverstein’s Bull, an at-risk teenage girl, Kris (by Amber Havard), is thrust into a relationship with neighbor Abe (Rob Morgan), a rodeo bullfighter nearing the end of his career. Silverstein’s feature debut builds out from her 2014 short Skunk, both set in a blue-collar part of Houston where rural and urban poverty collide. Most film productions drop in on locations, shoot what they need and depart. Silverstein and her husband and writing partner Johnny McAllister take a different approach, embedding themselves in communities for months and even years before filming. Bull has a documentary realism, but also a deep, […]
by Daniel Eagan on May 1, 2020 -
“I’m Going For, ‘Capture It Now, Use It Later'”: DP Danna Kinsky on Shooting Drone Stock Footage in a Pandemic
Based in Los Angeles, Danna Kinsky has worked in a wide range of genres and formats, from independent features and documentaries to music videos, concerts, commercials and aerial cinematography. She is affiliated with several groups: The International Female Collective of Cinematographers (ICFC), The American Society of Cinematographers’ Motion Imagine Technology Committee, and Women in Media. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, Kinsky has been shooting drone footage of a deserted Los Angeles. Filmmaker: How have you been coping with the lockdown? Kinsky: Generally, as a filmmaker, I always strive to keep costs low. Finances are a problem, just like they are for […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 29, 2020 -
“I Think We All Want to Know What the New Normal Looks Like…” Director and DP Rachel Morrison on Pausing Her Feature Directorial Debut
Over the past three years, cinematographer Rachel Morrison shot three features — Mudbound, Black Panther, and Seberg — along with commercials and shorts. She also directed the pilot and second episode of Hightown, a television series set in Cape Cod that premieres May 17 on Starz. This year Morrison started directing her first feature, Flint Strong, a biopic about Claressa Shields starring Ryan Destiny and Ice Cube, from a script by Barry Jenkins. On March 13, Morrison posted the following on Instagram: I started this morning scouting an amazing set by @keenkenzie that we were due to shoot next week. Then as […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 29, 2020 -
“It’s Very Interesting to Live Without This Adrenaline…”: DP Łukasz Żal on Slowing Down While in Quarantine
Cinematographer Łukasz Żal received an Oscar nomination for his first feature, Ida, and well as for his second collaboration with director Paweł Pawlikowski, Cold War. Last year he worked on his first US production, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and based on the novel by Iain Reid. Żal spoke with Filmmaker by phone from Poland. Filmmaker: How are you? Łukasz Żal: I’m good, I’m staying in my parents’ house by a lake. I don’t feel comfortable because the whole world is suffering. Hopefully it will end well. But this time honestly is not so […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 29, 2020 -
“There is a Lot of Necessary Nurturing to Be Found in the ‘Not Doing'”: DP Natasha Braier On Productivity Culture During Lockdown
Natasha Braier has worked on a wide variety of films, from Claudia Llosa’s intense 2009 drama The Milk of Sorrow / La Teta Asustada to Nicolas Winding Refn’s ice-cold 2016 feature The Neon Demon. In 2018 she shot Gloria Bell, Sebastián Lelio’s English-language remake of his earlier movie Gloria. Last year she was director of cinematography on Alma Har’el’s feature debut Honey Boy. Braier’s work is distinguished not only by her vivid imagery but also by her acute psychological insight into characters and narrative. Braier was in preproduction on Don’t Worry Darling, director Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to Booksmart, when the […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 29, 2020 -
“This is the Headline: ‘You Can’t Do It Alone. So Do It With People You Love'”: DP and Director Christopher Doyle on Filmmaking Amidst the Pandemic
Scheduled for this year’s Cannes Film Festival was a 20th-anniversary screening of Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. Along with awards for actor Tony Leung Chui-wai and editor, costume designer, and production designer William Chang Suk-ping, the film received the Grand Prize of the Superior Technical Commission for directors of photography Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bing. Doyle had hoped to present his latest films, including Love After Love, at the festival before it was postponed on April 14. Directed by Ann Hui, Love After Love is a period romance adapted from a work by writer Eileen Chang. […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 29, 2020
