Sundance
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“The More Real We Could Make the Film, the More Unsettling It Would Feel”: Editor Benjamin Moses Smith on Spree
In Eugene Kotlyrenko’s Spree, a rideshare driver, Kurt (Joe Keery), dreams of social media fame—but he’ll settle for notoriety. He decks his car out with eight cameras and livestreams something called #TheLesson, which quickly results in carnage. Editor Benjamin Moses Smith talks about the editing of a “live stream” movie, the sensitive material integral to the film and his impending title as “the best “8 cameras mounted inside of a car editor in the world.” Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being […]
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“The Art Department Came Up to Me and Said ‘We’re Running Low on Ice Cream, Your Grandfather Is Eating It Too Fast'”: Michael Covino | The Climb
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? We decided to begin a scene with a shot of two old men sitting on a bench eating ice cream cones. One of them was my 90 year old grandfather, who took one screenwriting course in the 1940s, which he felt entitled him to give me lots of notes, sometimes in […]
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“I Wanted to Fight for the Pictures”: DP Jake Swantko on The Dissident
The global controversy—and subsequent cover-up—surrounding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the subject of Bryan Fogel’s documentary The Dissident. After the news broke about Khashoggi’s murder, Fogel reached out to DP Jake Swantko, and the two immediately began collaborating on the documentary, traveling to interview Khashoggi’s fianceé, close friend and insurgent Omar Abdulaziz and others. Swantko shares his experience with the often dangerous aspects of making a documentary about a highly politicized figure. 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 […]
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“Omission Is a Powerful Storytelling Tool”: Editor Sara Shaw on The Climb
Two best friends embark on an extensive bike ride in the south of France—one of the friends, Kyle (Kyle Marvin) is getting married to a French woman, and his best friend Mike (Michael Covino) is working up the guts to tell his friend he’s slept with the bride-to-be. Presented as one continual long shot, The Climb (also directed by Michael Covino) examines this codependent friendship in what appears to be real-time. Editor Sara Shaw takes Filmmaker through the challenges of editing continuous shots, figuring out the trajectory of a narrative and the power of what isn’t shown. Filmmaker: How and why […]
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“Editing Is a Process of Trial and Error and Personal Instincts”: Editor Jeff Gilbert on Boys State
Documentary filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine look to 1,000 17-year-old boys from across the state of Texas in order to examine the state of American democracy in Boys State. The film follows a cohort of teenagers tasked with building a representative government from the ground up, each boy vying for the top title at the Texas Boys State competition—governor. What seems almost too akin to Lord of the Flies to result in anything similar to a functioning government actually perfectly reflects the current state of American politics. Editor Jeff Gilbert shares his insight on what made the film so […]
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“The One Million Dollar Winning Game Piece From the Monopoly Game at McDonald’s”: James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte | McMillion$
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? The key prop for this project also happens to be the root source of the story. It was sought by most Americans during the 1990s, it caused a major corporation’s sales to increase by 30% to 40% and it helped spawn a decade-long fraud which ended in 53 people being indicted. […]
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“The Mystic, Magical Vibes of His Home”: Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch | Mucho Mucho Amor
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? Driving into the gated community in the San Juan, Puerto Rico suburbs where Walter Mercado lived, you hardly needed an address to find his house. The two-story Moroccan villa painted yellow with blue trim couldn’t help but stand out among the 1950’s tract homes that surrounded. With so much pizazz and […]
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“I Cried Many Times Watching Clare Dunne’s Powerful Performances”: Editor Rebecca Lloyd on Herself
In Phyllida Lloyd’s Herself, single mother Sandra (Clare Dunne) struggles to support and accommodate her two daughters in Dublin after leaving her abusive husband. Realizing that the system in place is not designed to provide any meaningful support, Sandra reaches the conclusion that she is the only one who is able (and willing) to affect any real change in her own life. She decides to build a house—literally from the ground up—in order to ensure that she and her daughters have stability and security in the future. Editor Rebecca Lloyd shares insight into her roots as an editor, what it […]
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Sundance 2020 Dispatch 1: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets; Epicentro; Olla
There will be time and occasion, I’m sure, during this year’s Sundance Film Festival to go big picture: to attempt to take the temperature of independent film in 2020, once again fuss over what that designation could possibly mean at this point and so on. But let’s skip that for now: for this year’s first dispatch, I have the rare of pleasure of leading with enthusiasm, and I’d like to lean into that. Barflies mistranslate William Blake’s exhortation to see the world in a grain of sand as “study the human condition through endless hours sitting at the bar”—if in […]
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Sundance 2020 Dispatch 2: Exil, The Earth is Blue as An Orange
In the very first scene of The Social Network, Rooney Mara tells Jesse Eisenberg that he may go through life thinking that girls don’t like him because he’s a nerd, but “that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” That line rang through my head all through Visar Morina’s Exil, Komplizen Films‘s first Sundance world premiere, and was directly echoed near its end by Sandra Hüller—star of Komplizen co-founder Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, here the long-suffering wife of Albanian immigrant Xhafer (Misel Maticevic), who’s convinced he’s being discriminated by German society. “Did it ever occur to you that it’s not because you’re […]
