A few months after my son was born, I took my wife to see the Tommy Lee Jones western The Homesman. If you know that movie, then you know why it was a bad idea: minutes into the film, a woman driven mad by the harshness of pioneer life kills her infant child. My wife nearly walked out. I didn’t understand that impulse at the time, but as my kid has gotten older I’ve become equally squeamish toward onscreen violence directed at children. It’s not an uncommon sentiment for parents, which is why it’s a perilous choice to open the new horror […]

In Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson’s Japan-set return to the world of stop motion animation, there is a character with a face full of freckles. This seemingly incidental attribute required the film’s lead puppet painter Angela Kiely to place 297 freckles on each of the puppet’s many interchangeable faces. All told, she painted over 22,000 freckles for the film. That is the painstaking diligence required for the art of stop motion animation, a form demanding an obsessive attention to minutia perfectly suited to Anderson’s fastidiousness. In a Wes Anderson film, no detail – not even a single freckle – is […]

The Movie: The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter The Plot: Accompanied by his trusty cameraman (Danny McBride), the recently divorced host of a lo-fi hunting show (James Brolin) takes his son into the wilds of North Carolina to bag his first deer on camera. The Interviewee: Cinematographer Eric Treml. He previously collaborated with Whitetail director Jody Hill (Observe and Report, Eastbound & Down) on HBO’s Vice Principals. Filmmaker: Tell me a little bit about your background in production. You have early credits on some big movies as part of the underwater camera team. Treml: When I first moved to […]

Hélène Louvart, collaborating with Wim Wenders, Agnes Varda, Leos Carax, Larry Clark, et al., has shaped herself into a maven of cinematography and her name into a renown of its own. Shooting features since 1986 with, as of now, more than a hundred IMDB cinematographer credits, Louvart’s experience is ample and never slowed. Since Beach Rats, Louvart has shot five feature films: two in Italy, two in Spain, one in Argentina, and one, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Maya, that spanned France, Jordan, and India. During a brief break in Paris before a trip to India to shoot pickups for Maya, Louvart summoned the collaborative process […]

For Idris Elba’s feature directorial debut Yardie, cinematographer John Conroy was tasked with recreating a period environment in both England and Jamaica. Opening with a raucous party scene, Yardie travels through a world of Jamaican drug gangs over the ’70s and ’80s. DP John Conroy spoke with Filmmaker briefly about the challenges of filming this period piece. 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? Conroy: I had shot the last two series (3+4) of Luther with Idris and had developed a great working relationship […]

Amy Adion’s documentary debut is on a topical subject: what’s to account for the grossly small percentage of female film directors? DP Yamit Shimonovitz was one of two DPs working to capture insights from figures including Penelope Spheeris, Brave co-director Brenda Chapman, Gina Prince-Blythewood and many others. Below, she discusses the challenges of balancing intimacy when entering subjects’ spaces with practical lighting considerations. 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? Shiminovitz: I was introduced to Amy Adrion through a mutual friend. […]

To capture the story of a Hungarian woman acting as an unpaid servant in cruel captivity for over a decade, Bernadett Tuza-Ritter simply had no choice but to act as her own DP. A Woman Captured, which premiered at IDFA before making its international premiere at Sundance. Tuza-Ritter explains her approach to lighting and story construction under difficult circumstances. 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? Tuza-Ritter: I shot this film under dangerous circumstances. My access was built on trust, so […]

Winner of this year’s World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award, Gustav Möller’s The Guilty is a one-set thriller tracking a police emergency dispatcher (Jakob Cedergren) as he attempts to thwart a kidnapping in real time. A phone call from a woman being abducted by her husband sets the dispatcher on a quest to save her. Möller’s DP Jasper J. Spanning discussed the challenges of filming a one-set movie with three cameras in just 13 days. 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? […]

Expanding on the subject of his first feature, the both-sides-of-the-border drug wars documentary Cartel Land, director Matthew Heineman’s latest project is a five-part documentary series for Showtime. The first two hours premiered at Sundance. Prior to the screening, DP Matt Porwoll explained the difficulties of working on a project following both drug cartels in Mexico and stories of addiction and counter-law enforcement in the States in multiple cities. 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? Porwoll: When Matthew Heineman first […]

Cinematographer Michael McDonough met director Debra Granik in 1994, when they were both enrolled at the same NYU film studies class. Leave No Trace is their third collaboration, following Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone, and also marks Granik’s first narrative feature in the eight years following the latter. Leave No Trace follows father Will (Ben Foster) and 12-year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie), squatters secretly living in a forest in almost total isolation. When they’re spotted by a hiker, social workers get involved and Tom is torn from the woods, entering the social world and potential friendships for the first time. Prior to […]