Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Filmmaking Is a Series of Crushing Compromises”: DP Daniel Katz on Sidney Hall
Shawn Christensen’s second feature following his Oscar-winning short Curfew, Sidney Hall chronicles the tumultuous life of a writer at the ages of 18, 24 and 30. The film boasts an impressive cast (Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Monaghan, Nathan Lane) to supports its titular lead, played by Logan Lerman. Below, cinematographer Daniel Katz speaks to Filmmaker about the cameras, lenses and lighting approaches he used to distinguish each era of Sidney’s life. Sidney Hall held its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors […]
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Slamdance Notes: If Fitzcarraldo Made a Violin
Slamdance remains the little festival that could, a throwback to analog film festivals of the early 1980s, with their cinema-obsessed audiences and packed makeshift screening rooms. A halcyon age of innocence, before the onslaught of marketing, branding, corporate sponsorship, publicists, producer reps, agents, and social media. At Slamdance there’s still no red carpet and no one checks your bags or makes you open your coat for inspection before entering every screening. Nonetheless every year Slamdance, with its tiny slate, upstages Sundance with one or two films that soar. This year’s not-to-be-missed Slamdance film is Stefan Avalos’s Strad Style. Strad Style has […]
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Sundance: David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is a Major Achievement and A Curious NEXT Entry
It’s a rare privilege to see a contemporary American film as ambitious, emotionally honest, and just-plain-breathtaking as David Lowery’s Sundance entry A Ghost Story. Even from his microbudget beginnings, Lowery’s work has displayed a consistent fascination with American folklore and mythmaking. His films, whether big-budget Disney blockbusters like last year’s Pete’s Dragon, 2013’s love story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, or his masterful 2011 short Pioneer, concern themselves with the notion of storytelling, its allure and its limitations. With A Ghost Story, Lowery continues to explore this fascination, now through the lens of the haunting genre, a tradition that stretches from […]
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“We Never Wanted to Treat the Film as a Comedy”: DP Christian Sprenger on Brigsby Bear
In 2007 a group of four comics and creators joined to form Good Neighbor, a sketch comedy team that would go on to breach the ranks of Saturday Night Live. The group is known mostly for Kyle Mooney, a weirdo comic voice whose left-of-center SNL skits often get cut for time. Mooney stars in Good Neighbor’s feature film debut, Brigsby Bear, directed by fellow group member Dave McCary. The film tells the story of a secluded young man with an unhealthy obsession with a TV show literally no one has ever seen. Below, DP Christian Sprenger speaks to the film’s tricky tone, which eschews […]
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“The Grandeur of this Exceptional Human”: DP Alice Gu on Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
Among the world’s most well-known surfers, Laird Hamilton has surfed professionally since he was 17 years old. Now in his 50s, he’s the subject of a documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Rory Kennedy. Take Every Wave offers a profile of Hamilton as a surfing innovator, celebrity and family man. Below, DP Alice Gu discusses the challenges of shooting this fast-moving, larger-than-life figure. Gu, one of two DPs on the project, goes into detail on the cameras and lenses required for the project. Take Every Wave will screen four times during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind […]
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“A More Elegant and Softer Image Inspired by Turn of the Century Painters”: DP Kat Westergaard on Novitiate
Director Maggie Betts and DP Kat Westergaard became creative partners on The Carrier, a 2010 documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The two worked together again on a 2014 short (Engram) and again on Novitiate, which debuted at Sundance last week. The film marks Betts’ fiction feature debut and stars Margaret Qualley and Melissa Leo. Westergaard spoke with Filmmaker ahead of the festival about the film’s painterly aesthetic, lighting challenges and “ghostly intimacy.” Novitiate will screen in competition six times during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led […]
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“Like Nothing Else I Have Shot”: DP Sean Price Williams on Marjorie Prime
Sean Price Williams has become an indomitable force in American independent cinema. Filming regularly on Super 16mm, Williams has served as DP on the films of Alex Ross Perry (Queen of Earth, Listen Up Philip), Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine), Albert Maysles (Iris) and the Safdie brothers (Heaven Knows What). Williams sought to shoot something unlike any of his previous work for his latest feature, Marjorie Prime. With a cast that includes Jon Hamm, Geena Davis and Tim Robbins, Marjorie Prime is the latest film from writer/director Michael Almereyda. The film will have its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why […]
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Sundance Notes: The Nile Hilton Incident
Twice in a row the first film I’ve seen at Sundance is so brilliant, so accomplished that I start Sundance on a mountain high — and it’s not the thin air. I had to miss 2016 Sundance, but two years ago it was Tom Hardy in Steven Knight’s Locke, a tour de force of a one-hander that’s nonetheless a nail-biter — Hardy in close-up the entire film, speeding through the night in his car, his life crumbling in real time with each harrowing Bluetooth call. You learn a lot about concrete pours and the consequences of poor choices. But I […]
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DPs Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau on Big Game Hunting Doc Trophy
Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau are the cofounders of Reel Peak Media, a production company that prides itself on documentary work of both “journalistic integrity and cinematic quality.” Both filmmakers began as photojournalists before making the move to documentary cinema. On Trophy, Schwarz and Clusiau served as DPs with Schwarz acting as director. Their film explores the worlds of big game hunting, breeding, and wildlife conservation. Below, the two discuss these issues ahead of Trophy‘s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? Schwarz and Clusiau: Since we are directors who started as photojournalists, […]
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“A Traditionally Vérité Film but with a Contemporary Cinematic Lens”: DP Nadia Hallgren on Motherland
Nadia Hallgren’s career in documentary film began as a camera operator on Fahrenheit 9/11, still the highest grossing doc in America. In the 13 years since she has served as a camera operator on such films as Searching for Sugarman and as a DP on Citizen Koch and last year’s Trapped. Her latest feature as DP, Motherland, is a vérité portrait inside a maternity ward in the Philippines. The film, directed by Ramona Diaz, will premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Below, Hallgren talks about the emotional bond she formed with the women in the film, shooting in the summer heat of the […]
