Authors — Filmmaker Staff
-
“I Got to Have a Korean Wedding” | Andrew Ahn, The Wedding Banquet
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? I will always remember the morning of our first day filming the Korean wedding sequence of our movie. My parents were on set, stationed at video village with our producers. It was Youn Yuh-jung’s birthday (we surprised her with a cake at lunch). The set dec team and I fussed over the wedding altar, trying […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“I Looked Over and She Was Weeping” | Rachael Abigail Holder, Love, Brooklyn
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Ten years from now, the memory that will come to mind when I think of the making of Love, Brooklyn is in post production. I moved to LA to pursue this career back in 2011. I knew no one but my cousin Anakela who is not in the business. She lived in a beautiful […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“The Day Another Film Fell Apart” | Charlie Shackleton, Zodiac Killer Project
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The most significant day in the making of Zodiac Killer Project was the day another film fell apart. It was August 2022, and I was sitting in Maggie’s Diner in Vallejo, California, having spent the morning scouting locations for a true crime documentary about the Zodiac Killer. As I ordered my lunch, I received […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“We All Danced Together” | Laura Casabé, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? We had gone through some very difficult days during the shoot. The assistant director had to leave the production, and several other issues arose that made us, as a team, rethink how to organize ourselves. The day after the assistant director left went very poorly—we didn’t even manage to film a scene. That’s why […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2025 -
“For the First Time, I Could See the Film in Front of Me” | Joel Alfonso Vargas, Mad Bills to Pay
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? It would be hard to narrow it down to only one moment or day, as Mad Bills was a journey unlike any other. That we got through it was anything short of impressive considering the ambition of our story and our limited time and resources, however much a testament to the skill of the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2025 -
“Connect Images in the Edit Based on an Analysis of Characters”: Editor Cooper Raiff on Hal & Harper
Director Cooper Raiff returns to Sundance after his prize-winning Cha Cha Real Smooth with the episodic series Hal & Harper, about a pair of codependent siblings and their father. The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will screen as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Episodics section. Besides directing, Raiff also served as editor on the series. Below, he talks about his approach to editing as a writer-director and why editing the series transformed his understanding of its characters. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2025 -
“Something That Felt Unadorned and a Bit Raw”: DP Doug Emmett on Hal & Harper
Hal & Harper charts the development two codependent siblings with a lifetime of inside jokes and their father. The series is directed by Cooper Raiff (Cha Cha Real Smooth), who plays Hal; Lili Reinhart; and Mark Ruffalo. The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will screen as part of Sundance’s Episodics sidebar. Doug Emmett (The Edge of Seventeen, Sorry to Bother You) the series’ cinematographer, describes the show’s naturalistic and raw feel below. 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 26, 2025 -
“We Just Kept Bursting Out Laughing” | Cooper Raiff, Hal & Harper
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The most memorable day was the day Mark, Lili, Betty, the whole crew—especially the camera operators—and I started laughing and couldn’t stop during a random scene. In the scene my character, Hal, tells everyone he got a job at J. Crew and they all are like “okay,” “interesting decision,” “why?” etc. And it just […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2025 -
“Our Work is More Akin to Writing”: Editor Jeremy Stulberg on Move Ya Body: The Birth of House
The sounds from Chicago that would forever alter dance music get an overdue documentary treatment in Move Ya Body: The Birth of House. The film is directed by Elegance Bratton (The Inspection) and screens in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Premieres section. Jeremy Stulberg (Growing Up Coy) served as editor for Move Ya Body. Below, he discusses the process of finding the personal story within the raw material and explains why documentary editing is like writing, which necessitates a new way of thinking about the work. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2025 -
“There was Time to Know, Already, I’ll Remember This.” | Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Rebuilding was shot in the San Luis Valley, the oldest part of Colorado. It is a great desert plain cut through by the high Rio Grande. The San Juan Mountains mark it to the west. They are old, eroded, and gentle. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains line the Valley to the east. They are […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2025
