Interviews
Interviews
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One Brick at a Time: the Post-Production of A LEGO Brickumentary
A LEGO Brickumentary, a documentary that looks at the culture and appeal of the LEGO building block, opens July 31. Like many historical documentaries, this project involved working with a wide range of archival footage, but it also made use of footage shot with a wide range of modern cameras — in one case, all shooting the same event. Co-producer and post-production supervisor Chad Herschberger of Milkhaus talked to us about the work they did on this documentary and the ins and out of post-production work, including animating faces on LEGO bricks, moving media between Avid Media Composer and DaVinci […]
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“I Just Like Doing My Job”: DP Roger Deakins on Working with the Coens, Digital vs. Film and His Most Difficult Shots
It was fitting that, in the year that the Coen Brothers presided over the Cannes jury, lens makers Angénieux chose Roger Deakins as the subject of their tribute at the festival. Born in Torquay, England, Deakins is best known for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, having shot most of their movies since Palme d’Or winner Barton Fink. He’s also shot three films for Sam Mendes, including the blockbuster Skyfall. At Cannes, he also had a film in competition, Sicario, his second collaboration with Denis Villeneuve, and at the festival it was announced that they would team up again for […]
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“A Freudian Tale of the Boy, the Adult and the Old Man”: Stevan Riley on Listen to Me Marlon
Since his death, Marlon Brando has become a legend, but the actor and the man himself have gotten lost. British director Stevan Riley’s documentary Listen to Me, Marlon attempts to restore the person underneath the myth. To some extent, that’s an impossible task; even Brando himself, heard on self-recorded audio tape, talks about how movie audiences project themselves into actors. Drawing on hundreds of hours of tape recorded by Brando, as well as other audio and video sources, Riley assembles the autobiography the actor never gotten around to writing. Instead of interviewing other actors and directors about the Method, Elia […]
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Dukhtar Writer, Director, Producer, Editor Afia Nathaniel at the Munich International Film Festival
Released in Pakistan and set to open in New York and L.A. later this fall, Dukhtar tells the story of a mother and her ten-year-old daughter who flee from their home in the mountains of Pakistan. Below, first-time feature filmmaker, writer, co-producer and co-editor Afia Nathaniel speaks with me after the German premiere in Munich. Filmmaker: Did you always want to be a filmmaker? Nathaniel: I’m originally from a big city in Pakistan called Lahore, where I grew up and was educated. We didn’t have any film schools or film industry, but I always loved writing and storytelling. I never […]
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Rachel Morrison Talks Dope, Her Favorite Shot and Career as a Cinematographer
As the second largest film festival in Germany, Filmfest München programs a large German slate and a range of international titles. In addition to the Alexander Payne retrospective and homage to Andy Warhol’s cinematic experiments, this year’s festival highlighted an assortment of U.S. films. Picked up by Open Road Films and Sony Pictures at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope had its German premiere in Munich. Below is my conversation with cinematographer Rachel Morrison. Filmmaker: How did you decide to become a cinematographer? Morrison: I grew up with a still camera in my hand, determined I could freeze […]
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Meet Me in Montenegro at the Munich Film Festival
Meet Me in Montenegro is a romantic comedy about two lovers, a Norwegian dancer and an American filmmaker, who meet by chance during a visit to Berlin. The film is based on the real-life romance between co-writers, producers, and editors Linnea Saasen and Alex Holdridge, who both also star in the film as the fictional portrayals of their real-life characters. On the eve of the German premiere in Munich, I sat down with Saasen, her co-producer Ineke Hagedorn, and co-actress Jenny Ulrich. The Orchard has recently released the film in the U.S. and Canada, and it’s also available on digital […]
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“It’s Almost Impossible to Watch Something That was Shot on Film Projected on Film”: DP Jody Lee Lipes on Trainwreck
The Judd Apatow-directed Trainwreck is being hailed as a breakthrough for much of its cast. It’s turned Amy Schumer – who stars as a monogamy-challenged New York magazine writer — into a movie star, Bill Hader into a leading man and LeBron James into his generation’s Bruno Kirby. But the film is an equally big break for the man behind the camera – Trainwreck cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes. In the past, Apatow has opted for veteran d.p.’s with intimidating credits. Unforgiven’s Jack Green shot The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Schindler’s List’s Janusz Kaminski lensed Funny People. On Trainwreck, Apatow turned the camera over to […]
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Standing on Opposite Sides of the Road: Pedro Costa on Horse Money
Locating himself far from the mainstream of even international art cinema, Pedro Costa is widely regarded as one of the most important artists on the international film scene. Born in 1959, he was already a successful filmmaker when he began to feel, on the set of his third feature Ossos (1997), that something was wrong with the normal way of making films: “We should rethink all of it,” he thought. Jettisoning his professional crew, he made In Vanda’s Room (2000), shot by a one-person crew on a consumer mini-DV camera in Lisbon’s Fountainhas ghetto over the course a year. A […]
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The Anxiety of Influence: Director James Ponsoldt on The End of the Tour
“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?” – David Foster Wallace The new tagline for the James Ponsoldt movie The End of the Tour is, “Imagine the greatest conversation you’ve ever had.” I initially took issue with this tagline. Ponsoldt’s film is based on a book arranged around a transcript of an unpublished interview […]
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6 Years Writer/Director Hannah Fidell at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Following up her debut feature, A Teacher, Hannah Fidell premiered 6 Years at SXSW before traveling with it last month to the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. A relationship tale about two twenty-somethings navigating the complications of post-collegiate life, the film stars Taissa Farming and Ben Rosenfield. Filmmaker caught up with Fidell in Paris to learn about working without a script, returning to Austin for production and how film theory has affected her filmmaking. 6 Years will be released later this year by Netflix. Filmmaker: 6 Years is the second film in your Texas trilogy. Because the movie was improvised, did you ever […]
