Sundance
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“That’s a Wrap!” The 414s Director with a Sundance Post-Mortem
Well, that’s a wrap! The Sundance Film Festival came to a close this weekend, and my filmmaking partner, Chris James Thompson and I are already back with our families in Milwaukee. We attended three of the five scheduled screenings for our film, The 414s: The Original Teenage Hackers. The week was sometimes intense, sometimes boring and often enlightening. By our second day it became clear why people love the Sundance Film Festival; the film screening portion of the fest is pure cinema. The hot and sweaty pop-up theaters are always full as volunteers pack in human bodies like Tetris pieces, […]
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Cinematographer Martijn van Broekhuizen on Shooting Sundance Horror Drama, The Hallow
Among the positive qualities cited by Variety in their review of the Sundance-premiering horror film The Hallow was the cinematography of Marijn van Broekhuizen, with Geoff Berkshire writing that it “plays with shadow and light in eerie, evocative ways and beautifully embellishes the script’s fairy-tale quality.” Below, van Broekhuizen answers questions about being hired by director Corin Hardy, basing his lighting schemes around backlight and the challenges of night shooting. 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? Van […]
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Cinematographer Adam Hobbs on Shooting Sundance Competition Doc, Finders Keepers
Premiering this past week at the Sundance Film Festival was Finders Keepers, the tale of an eccentric Southern feud pitting two social outsiders against each other for the possession of a severed foot. Here, cinematographer Adam Hobbs discusses the challenges of mixed camera formats, long days and natural lighting, and choosing to shoot with prime lenses. 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? Hobbs: In 2010 I was working in commercial production, A close friend told me about […]
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Sundance 2015, Dispatch 5: The Chinese Mayor, Cartel Land and City of Gold
The vast world of Chinese independent documentaries was finally acknowledged by Sundance with the inclusion of Zhou Hao’s The Chinese Mayor. That’s not to bag on the festival for an anomalous oversight: this exciting and politically urgent strain of films has been happening for 15 years or so but not often acknowledged by U.S. festivals at large. This is a very good starting point. The mayor of Datong, Geng Yanbo, confesses that he’s happiest with communing with China’s past, so it makes sense that he plans to revitalize the country’s most polluted city by restoring its ancient wall, part of […]
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“Ideas Just Disappeared”: Cloro | Director Lamberto Sanfelice
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? The day before the first day of shooting I went with part of the crew to the location were we would start shooting the following day. It was in a rather desolated area with just a few big old trees, which in normal circumstances I would find fascinating. But on that day as I was looking around all of a sudden I could find nothing interesting to shoot there. […]
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“Intimacy: I Do Everything I Can to Avoid It in my Personal Life”: Sleeping with Other People | Director Leslye Headland
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? My fear of intimacy. I do everything I can to avoid it in my personal life and here I was making a movie that required intense intimacy. Not just intimacy between characters who fall in love onscreen but between myself and the actors, the crew, the audience and the rest of the world. I was terrified of being that vulnerable and it got messy at times. But the end […]
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“Pressure’s a Choice”: I’ll See You In My Dreams | Director Brett Haley
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? Making a film – especially an independent film – is full of constant fear: the fear that you won’t have all the money you need, the fear that something beyond your control will go wrong, the fear of making wrong decisions. And once you’ve made what you hope is a good film, you then have to wait to see what other people think of it. What will critics say? […]
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“We Were Going to Climb on Top of a 300-Foot, High Voltage Pylon”: The Summer of Sangaile | Director Alanté Kavaïté
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I was waiting with apprehension for the day we were going to climb on top of a 300-foot, high voltage pylon. With the actress, the DP and a stunt specialist, I did not feel very brave when we were approaching the top. From there, I was watching some painters working on a much higher power plant chimney and I thought that I was not tailored for that. But once […]
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“Big Names Add Value. I Can Dig That”: Fresh Dressed | Director Sasha Jenkins
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? With Fresh Dressed, I had the opportunity to talk to a wide cross section of folks who are, or have been involved with, hip hop culture in one way or another. We were able to strike a serious balance between talking to the folks who are known by the masses and the lesser known folks who had a heavy hand when it comes to the development of hip hop […]
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“You Will Come Through This”: Dreamcatcher | Director Kim Longinotto
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I’m always terrified before making a new film because so much of it’s down to chance…will I find a story? Will I be able to film it? Will I be able to get a beginning, middle and end? It always suddenly feels really daunting. The worst time was before Salma, as most of her story had happened in the past and I wasn’t sure how to make her life […]
