Interviews
Interviews
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SXSW: Asperger’s Are Us Director/DP Alex Lehmann on Being “In It for the Story”
DP Alex Lehmann leaps to the director’s chair with Asperger’s Are Us, a documentary about an unusual comedy troupe. With one of its members soon leaving Boston to study abroad, the improv group consisting of four young men on the spectrum prepares for what may be its final performance. Executive produced by the Duplass brothers, the documentary was quickly purchased by Netflix for worldwide distribution. Ahead of Asperger’s Are Us‘s premiere at SXSW, Lehmann discussed acting as his own DP, scrounging for enough cameras to film the climax and following the story. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What […]
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SXSW: Tree of Life Plus the Doors — Rainbow Time DP Nathan M. Miller
In his follow-up to Manson Family Vacation, director Linas Phillips turns his attention to the troubled relationship between Todd (Timm Sharp) and his sex-obsessed, developmentally delayed older brother Shonzi (Phillips). A Duplass brothers production with Melanie Lynskey as Todd’s girlfriend, the film premiered this weekend at SXSW. Before, DP Nathan M. Miller spoke about using The Doors (not the movie!) as a reference point, working with a small crew and integrating VHS into the production. 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 […]
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SXSW: Hunter Gatherer DP Jon Aguirresarobe on Shooting Fast, Shooting Super 16mm Dissolves and Emulating Fuji Stocks
Ashley Douglas (Andre Royo) gets out of jail eager to start over, but nothing goes as planned; his girlfriend is now his ex, he’s living with his mother, and it’s hard to find work. Josh Locy’s feature debut Hunter Gatherer (we interviewed the director here) was shot by Jon Aguirresarobe, whose attentive eye brings south Los Angeles neighborhoods to life. Prior to the film’s SXSW premiere, Aguirresarobe discussed the difficulties of production on a tight schedule, shooting dissolves on Super 16mm and attempting to emulate Fuji film stock. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors […]
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SXSW: Five Questions for Boone Director Christopher LaMarca
Placing the viewer amidst the everyday workings of a goat farm in southern Oregon, Christopher LaMarca’s Boone represents a daring exercise in direct cinema filmmaking. Originally a photojournalist interested in environmental causes, LaMarca found the setting of the farm to be an ideal location for one of his two feature filmmaking debuts (The Pearl, which he co-directed, premiered recently at True/False). Boone immerses the viewer in the fields, barns and homes of the farm’s human and animal inhabitants. As discussed below, LaMarca spent much more time on the farm than originally planned, finding it necessary to fully immerse himself in the day-to-day experience of the strenuous grind. With […]
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SXSW: Five Questions for The Arbalest Writer-Director Adam Pinney
As part of the Atlanta-based film collective Fake Wood Wallpaper, Adam Pinney has accumulated credits as an actor, editor, cinematographer, camera operator, grip, producer and director on projects such as Joe Swanberg’s 24 Exposures and Alex Orr’s A Is for Alex. With his latest project, The Arbalest, which has its world premiere tonight in the narrative feature competition at SXSW, Pinney makes his feature debut as a writer-director with a distinct visual aesthetic. The Arbalest, which was selected for the 2015 IFP Narrative Lab, tells the story of Foster Kalt (Mike Brune), a famous and reclusive toy inventor, who reflects on his lifelong obsession with Sylvia Frank […]
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SXSW: Five Questions for The Bandit Director Jesse Moss
Jesse Moss’ documentaries often take on heavy material, and his last film — 2014’s The Overnighters — was no exception. The experience of profiling pastor Jay Reinke — a North Dakota minister whose decision to open up his congregation to homeless laborers seeking oil field work placed him at odds with his flock — took a heavy toll on Moss. His new documentary The Bandit is a completely different kind of movie, an archival-based profile of Burt Reynolds and his good friend Hal Needham. Moss examines their complicated relationship through the making of 1977’s Needham-directed Smokey and the Bandit, a film still in regular circulation […]
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SXSW: Five Questions for Claire in Motion Directors Lisa Robinson and Annie J. Howell
Five years after premiering their pregnancy road trip drama Small, Beautifully Moving Parts at SXSW, the writing/directing team of Lisa Robinson and Annie J. Howell return to Austin with their Competition entry Claire in Motion, a drama about a woman grappling with the disappearance of her husband — as well as the secrets of his life that disappearance has caused to surface. Below, we talk to the duo about the nature of their collaboration, being female directors working with female subject matter, and whether comparisons to Gone Girl are accurate or not. Filmmaker: It’s been five years since Small, Beautifully […]
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How They Pulled Off Creed’s Two Biggest Shots: A-Camera Operator Ben Semanoff
There are few moments in cinema as iconic as Rocky Balboa bounding up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown galloping alongside him off-screen. The technology for Brown’s camera stabilization system was new enough at the time that the seminal shot required a crew member to sprint behind Brown with two car batteries attached to the camera via jumper cables in order for the rig to function in the cold Philly winter. Creed, an expansion of the Rocky universe from Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, offers a barometer for the Steadicam’s evolution with its […]
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SXSW: Five Questions for Beware the Slenderman Director Irene Taylor Brodsky
An incident so horrific it could only be attributed to an otherworldly paranormal presence, the stabbing of a twelve-year-old girl by two of her friends in Waukesha, Wisconsin made national headlines in the spring of 2014. Lured into the woods, stabbed nineteen times and left for dead, the girl survived and her two assailants, also twelve years of age, were quickly apprehended. Claiming that they were carrying out the deadly attack in honor of the Slenderman, a fictional murderer whose mystique had been bolstered by rabid internet lore and perverse fascination, the girls’ reprehensible act was a unique case of the […]
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SXSW: Producer Dan Schoenbrun and Five Directors on their Dreamy Anthology Film, collective:unconscious
In November, 2014, Dan Schoenbrun threw down a provocative artistic challenge on Kickstarter. The former IFP-staffer, sometime Filmmaker writer, and current Film Partnerships lead at the crowdfunding platform conceived of an anthology film that would charge a stellar group of up-and-coming directors with adapting each other’s nocturnal visions. Each director would write down a dream and give it to Schoenbrun, who’d then assign it to another director. As you’ll read below, the pairings wound up being more natural and forced, with the intent being not a VHS-style horror anthology but rather a more diverse film unlocking all the meanings dreams, […]
