Sundance Responses
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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 […]
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“It’s the Moment of Spontaneity that We Remember”: Director Ethan Hawke | BLAZE
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? This is a phenomenal question. On my very first movie I learned incredibly quickly that the film loves spontaneity – it devours it. One of the things that made Marlon Brando’s career was the beauty everyone discovered in his spontaneity. Cinema is a little bit like jazz that way, where it needs a certain form or […]
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“How Are American Men Being Made?”: Director Bing Liu | Minding the Gap
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? It’s difficult to describe any part of the filmmaking process as not chaotic – Minding the Gap was by far the most difficult task I’d ever tried to take on. I was working on all these other projects and writing grants to fund the film and all the while my mom was fighting through a violent […]
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“The Film Needs a Scene of the Justice Lifting Weights”: Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen | RBG
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? West: It’s always a chaotic year when you’re making a film, but the backdrop of a chaotic and divisive political year actually had the opposite effect on our film about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At a time when political institutions were being denigrated, it was reassuring to be telling the story of someone who has devoted […]
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“She Has Endured So Many Tough Situations”: Director Heather Lenz | Kusama – Infinity
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? In my experience, there will always be unexpected situations that arise and create chaos. That said, some people enjoy creating chaotic situations. Personally, I prefer to avoid such people. I see the job of a producer as being a job of clearing obstacles and making it as easy as possible to focus on the work that […]
