Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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“These Girls Say So Much with their Faces”: Director/Editor Parker Hill on Cusp
Parker Hill and Isabel Bettencourt’s Cusp embeds itself with a trio of teenage girls, all sustaining best friends, over the course of a long, alcohol-sodden rural Texas summer. Relationships come and go, but cycles of systemic sexual abuse and misogyny structure the lives of its indefatigable protagonists. Hill, who also served as Cusp’s editor, discusses the project’s winnowing down, working with a consulting editor and learning to let go of footage. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hill: Impatience, stubbornness, and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“The Pandemic Meant There was Nothing to Do All Summer Except Sit at Home and Edit”: Directors Parker Hill & Isabel Bethancourt | Cusp
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? Making our first feature in 2020 was definitely a rollercoaster. In some ways the pandemic meant there was nothing to do all summer except sit at home and edit, which was a very intense process, but it was helpful to fully immerse ourselves in the footage day in and day out. We were definitely fortunate to have something to focus on at home. In post production, it was certainly challenging to work with so […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“The Subjects in Our Film Brought a Lot of Life Back to My World”: Editor Hannah Buck on Searchers
Dating’s complicated arc during the pandemic has been lovingly captured in Pacho Velez’s documentary Searchers. Whether on Grindr, Tinder, or any other app, the question “what are you looking for?” varies from person to person amid the chaos of mid-COVID New York City. Editor Hannah Buck addresses the challenge of introducing the director as a subject of the film and the value of mediated experiences. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Buck: In 2019 I was the consulting […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“You Can Feel the Operator Behind the Camera”: DP Corey Hughes on All Light, Everywhere
In the era of surveillance, what does it mean to be on camera? Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere investigates the nature of objectivity, physics, and policing from a scientific and sociological perspective, questioning much the way an essay might. DP Corey Hughes shares what he brought to the film from his experience with music videos and the physicality of image capturing devices. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hughes: I met Theo in Baltimore in 2017. At that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“There Were so Many Parallels and Contrasts”: Editor Jeppe Bødskov on President
Camilla Nielsson’s President tells the tumultuous story of Zimbabwe’s 2018 general election, the first since the country attained independence that Robert Mugabe was not a candidate. It is in many ways a follow-up to Nielsson’s 2014 film Democrats. Editor Jeppe Bødskov discusses his ongoing collaboration with Nielssoni. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Bødskov: I worked with Camilla Nielsson on her previous documentary Democrats. So, I knew her already. I know quite a lot about Zimbabwe and about […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“Without Realizing it, I Made a Movie That Obeyed the Rules of Social Distancing”: Director Jane Schoenbrun | We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? My film was shot just before the pandemic (wrapped March 1 2020—what luck!), which is a fact that the few people who have seen it so far sometimes find hard to believe. The movie is quite concerned with isolation. It is about characters who never leave the house, whose main form of social connection happens through screens, who exist in a virtual realm that is sort of real and sort of unreal. While writing […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“Organic Beauty and Inherent Quirks”: DP Nanu Segal on Marvelous and the Black Hole
Kate Tsang’s debut film Marvelous and the Black Hole follows thirteen-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech), who struggles with delinquency shortly after the death of her mother. After meeting Margot (Rhea Perlman), a magician dead set on taking Sammy as her assistant, Sammy reluctantly begins a friendship with her and learns to heal through the expressive art of sleight of hand. DP Nanu Segal explains how they captured the intimacy of a teenage girl’s internal and external worlds and the “meeting of the minds” between Kate Tsang’s script and her own visual approach. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“On the First Film We Had Been Arrested, so We Knew This Danger Was Real”: DP Henrik Bohn Ipsen on President
Camilla Nielsson’s President tells the tumultuous story of Zimbabwe’s 2018 general election, the first since the country attained independence that Robert Mugabe was not a candidate. It is in many ways a follow-up to Nielsson’s 2014 film Democrats. DP Henrik Bohn Ipsen discusses the film’s difficult and ephemeral subject matter, and the synergy between his camerawork and Nielsson’s direction. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Ipsen: I had worked with director Camilla Nielsson on her previous film Democrats, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“We Had Found Ourselves in the Fairytale”: Director Salomé Jashi | Taming the Garden
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? By the start of 2020 we had completed filming and had already started editing. Together with the editor Chris Wright, we were shaping a new world where nothing would be stable, nothing and no one could be trusted, where trees could move. We were half way through editing in Berlin, building this surrealistic world, an unreal world, when the pandemic struck. And suddenly, it was as if we were living in our film or our […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021 -
“I Drove Out to Texas Alone and Slept in My Car on the Way”: Director Manuel Crosby | First Date
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? We dodged the COVID bullet during production, as we had shot everything before 2020. However, we were halfway through post when everything hit. The majority of our post team lives in Texas, but I live up in Northern California. I needed to get down there to oversee finishing, and flying in a metal tube recirculating airborne viruses for several hours wasn’t going to work. In order to keep things safe and comfortable for the team […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2021
