Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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“When You’re Telling a Story About the Future, the Conclusion is Itself Inconclusive”: Editor Conor McBride on Love Machina
Love Machina, the latest film by documentarian Peter Sillen (Benjamin Smoke) follows the couple Martine and Bina Rothblatt, who attempt to transfer Bina’s consciousness to a commissioned humanoid artificial intelligence to preserve their love for one another. The film is also the first feature film editor credit for Conor McBride who discusses the timeliness of the film and its subject matter, as well as how he balanced the need for the film to be simultaneously entertaining and touching. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“We Shot in Wildly Different Landscapes” | Sam and Andy Zuchero, Love Me
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Love Me takes place over Earth’s 10 billion year life, from its birth to its death when the sun becomes a red giant and consumes our solar system. From the beginning, we knew that we couldn’t rely on just VFX to show these […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“Love Machina Taps into the Lofty Idealism of the 1960s”: DP Peter Sillen on Love Machina
Martine Rothblatt and Bina Rothblatt are two futurists attempting to preserve their love forever with BINA48, a robotic face with chatbot capabilities to which the couple hopes to upload Bina’s consciousness. Their story is chronicled in director Peter Sillen’s Love Machina, a 2024 Sundance premiere. For this project, Sillen served as his own cinematographer. Below, he explains why he made that choice for the film and explains the film’s relationship to 1960s America. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“People Who Have Been Relegated to the Background Finally Stepping Forward” | Kobi Libii, The American Society of Magical Negroes
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Ninety percent of this film was shot in Downtown LA, specifically the Arts District. I love that part of town and think it’s singular and vibrant and beautiful. I also don’t think it’s photographed as much as some of the more “iconic” […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“You Live and Die by Your Crew”: DP Doug Emmett on The American Society of Magical Negroes
Riffing on the eponymous stock trope recognizable in so many American films, The American Society of Magical Negroes tells the story of Aren, the latest recruit to a secret society of magical Black people who use their powers to make the lives of white people easier. The Sundance 2024 premiere is the debut film for director Kobi Libii. The film’s cinematographer Doug Emmett has a number of recognizable credits under his belt, including The Edge of Seventeen and Sorry to Bother You. Below, he humorously recounts difficulties mounting a set three floors underground and details the inspirations behind the film’s look. See all responses to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“It Was All About Hanging On For Dear Life” | Ondi Timoner, Dig! XX
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? The answer is The Road. It was made on the road. My brother David and I shot Dig! in a rumble tumble of different locations, be they vans, tour buses, different cities and countries from Europe to Tokyo, all sorts of venues […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“We Tried to Look Behind All These Fantasies and Projections” | Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, Agent of Happiness
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Our film, Agent of Happiness, is a road movie about a happiness agent who travels door to door to measure the happiness index of the society. It’s a physical journey through the meandering roads of the Bhutanese Himalayas where he meets people from […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“We Were Very Fortunate to Be Allowed to Shoot There” | Astrid Rondero & Fernanda Valadez, Sujo
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? We think our most significant location was Nemesia’s house, the protagonist’s aunt. It’s the place where Sujo grows up, physically but also spiritually. We have scouted that area for years now: a rural community in the outskirts of Guanajuato, Mexico, Fernanda’s hometown. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“We Didn’t Want to Just Chuck in a Bunch of New Bits”: Editor David Timoner on Dig! XX
Winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize in 2004, Ondi Timoner’s DIG! used the developing careers of indie rock bands The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre to examine the complex, often incompatible relationship between art and commerce, as well as the one between the bands’ frontmen. Now, Dig! XX revisits the story, digitally remastered and enhanced and complete with an additional 35 minutes of footage. Below, Editor David Timoner, Ondi Timoner’s brother and frequent collaborator, discusses revisiting his first major project and how he sought to improve it for its twentieth anniversary. See all responses to our annual Sundance […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024 -
“The Images Mostly Emerged Intuitively”: DP Yunus Roy Imer on The Outrun
In The Outrun, a London woman’s return to Scotland’s Orkney Islands as she attempts to reconcile herself with the past and her drug addictions. Based on the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot and directed by Nora Fingscheidt (The Unforgivable, System Crasher), the film includes on-location shooting in both London and on Orkney. Below, cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer recounts the difficulty of shooting a harsh Orkney winter during the summer and explains the various cameras and lenses he used to make sure the look of the film was always perfect. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2024
