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 […]

Greek director Babis Makridis premiered his debut feature L at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. He returned to the festival this year for his follow-up, the dark comedy Pity co-written by the co-writer of Yorgos Lanthimos’s films. The film stars Yannis Drakopoulos as a self-absorbed sad-sack addicted to the pity of others. Pity was shot by Konstantinos Koukoulios, here making his debut as a DP of features. Koukoulios spoke with Filmmaker about the influence of Edward Hopper on the movie, lighting a forest at night and his primary aesthetic goal: to make a film about sadness that doesn’t look sad. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

Actor and filmmaker Augustine Frizzell made her debut as a feature director at Sundance this year with Never Goin’ Back, the shaggy-dog story of two teenage friends played by Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone. Frizzell has appeared as an actor in the films of David Lowery (her husband) in addition to Krisha and a number of shorts. She tapped DP Greta Zozula to shoot the script, which she also wrote. Filmmaker spoke with Zozula ahead of the film’s premiere in the Midnight lineup about the perils of shifting daylight, the influence of Paul Thomas Anderson and the film’s strategic use of handheld camerawork. Filmmaker: […]

In the past two years, Silas Howard has directed episodes of the TV series Transparent, This Is Us and The Fosters. He premiered his new feature, A Kid Like Jake, at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of a 2013 play by Daniel Pearle and stars Claire Danes, Jim Parsons and Octavia Spencer. Howard hired Steven Capitano Calitri – the DP on 30 episodes of Broad City – to shoot the film in New York. Below, Calitri speaks with Filmmaker about his experiences making the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]

Louie Psihoyos, the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, returns to the Sundance Film Festival with The Game Changers, his new documentary on the health and environmental impacts of plant-based diets. Psihoyos premiered his previous doc, Racing Extinction, at the festival in 2015. John Behrens (The Mask You Live In) served as a cinematographer on that project, and he reunites with Psihoyos as the DP of The Game Changers. Below, Behrens speaks with Filmmaker about shooting in five different countries and the influence of Natural Born Killers (of all films) on the project. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? […]