Sundance Responses
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“This Beautiful and Wild Community that Exists in Film”: Director Jordana Spiro | Night Comes On
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? The beautiful thing about chaos in film for me is the reminder of how much of a team sport it is. Right now, I am thinking of a particular moment in our shoot. There is a main sequence in the film that takes place in one house. As a kind of a road trip film, we […]
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“There’s an Old Saying that Restrictions are Needed to be Truly Creative. That’s Always Sounded like Stockholm Syndrome”: Director Panos Cosmatos | Mandy
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Thematically speaking, fittingly chaos and control are themes of my first film, Beyond The Black Rainbow, and Mandy. Creatively speaking; there’s an old saying that restrictions are needed to be truly creative. That’s always sounded like a form of Stockholm syndrome to me. I believe that given complete freedom, time and resources many artists would take their respective mediums in undreamed of directions and to incredible new heights. Pragmatically speaking; the […]
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“How Do You Give Meaning and Structure to Decades of a Person’s Life?”: Director David Wain | A Futile and Stupid Gesture
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? A Futile and Stupid Gesture was my first experience doing a biopic, which I learned is a daunting task. How do you give meaning and structure to decades of a person’s life, in the course of one movie? And Doug Kenney’s life was defined by chaos. So we knew that in shooting, it was important to […]
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“Chaos Has its Own Reward”: Directors David and Nathan Zellner | Damsel
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? With Damsel almost the entire film was shot outdoors, on location, in the wilderness. With every step of the filmmaking process we try to approach it knowing exactly what we want, but with the flexibility to adapt as needed. Dealing with animals, extreme shifts in weather and remote locations, adapting was essential. When a prop was […]
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“At a Certain Point You Have to Give in to that Insanity”: Director Kaitlin Fontana | Franchesca
As you made your series during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? Franchesca is a hybrid pilot – and my directorial debut. I was very cognizant of the fact that we were making this piece that was part scripted, part doc, part improv. We shot in one day and we had to keep that feeling of buoyancy and looseness even though were under a crunch. At a certain […]
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“If You’re Not Loving it, Then What’s the Point?”: Director Michael Walker | Paint
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Did you really get into making movies so that you could have order in your life? Making movies, at least low budget movies, is fucking crazy. It’s always wild and unpredictable. That’s the fun of it. When you do it with people you love and trust – which is nearly always – it’s the best party […]
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“An Endeavor of Structuring Chaos”: Director Cameron Yates | Chef Flynn
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Crafting a documentary that’s been filmed for over a decade by many different people with countless cameras was an endeavor of structuring chaos, and credit goes to our dauntless editor Hannah Buck. After staring glassy-eyed at our screens for hours one particularly distressing day in the fall of 2016, we canceled work for the rest of […]
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“Our Computers Were Crashing Roughly Six Times a Day”: Director Aneesh Chaganty | Search
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? Our movie was supposed to be completed on March 3, 2018. On February 28, five days away from our deadline, we didn’t have a single finished frame. CUE FLASHBACK. Search is a hyper-modern thriller that unfolds entirely on computer screens. We wanted it to be engaging, thrilling and most of all: cinematic. And we knew exactly […]
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“Unpredictable, Loud, Hot, and Dangerous”: Director Michael Dweck | The Last Race
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? The track where we shot The Last Race was a reflection of the speedway next to my childhood home where I would sneak under the fence to watch races on hot Saturday summer nights. Later, as an adult, I spent years creating still photographs there, and during that time, I lived and breathed the world of […]
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“The More I Pressured Him, the Worse He Performed”: Director Isabella Eklöf | Holiday
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? On the first day on set I realized I had an actor on my hands who hadn’t learnt his lines “because he didn’t think this was that kind of film.” The more I pressured him, the worse he performed. Our relationship deteriorated throughout the whole shoot as I kept pushing him. Not until in the edit […]
