Ten percent more of 100 percent. [PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 8:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema II, Park City]
The obvious answer to that would be “cash flow.” But I would really like to combine it with organization. Our film Flow took us to many countries like India, South Africa and Bolivia… in the space of five years… I first started with a small crew for the first two trips abroad and before I knew it — and with the exception of the U.S., which I did with Yvette, our co-producer, it was a one-man show: me, the camera and the sound…. Basically it was either that or no film, so I tried to let go of the panic […]
It may be cliché to mention time as being something we’d all like more of, but it is a major factor once your film is up and running. It is also the one thing that is under relentless assault as you make your film. Every element of the process can benefit from more time, and every element can conspire to eat it up. Knowing this in advance is critical. The only guarantee is that time will go faster than you want it to. However you can make the most of your time on set by being as prepared as possible. […]
Easy enough: I definitely wished that I had 10 percent more head capacity. Call it intelligence, understanding, analytic ability, lateral thinking, insight into psychology or just mathematics. I felt a deficit. As a first-time feature director I went pretty fucking cockily into the process. I reckoned my vast experience in music videos, commercials and short films had prepared me for anything that would come my way, production-wise. I believed my life as a devoted reader had rendered me understanding about characters and stories and, finally, that my love for film had filled my mental archive to the brim of how […]
After spending a quarter of my life filming Patti Smith: Dream of Life, I can’t imagine what I would need 10 percent more of! [PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 20, 6:15 pm — Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City]
I wish I’d had a 10 percent better understanding and insight into the case when I started the movie. I say that because this has been the most complicated and difficult film I’ve ever made. The story was legally complex and took place 30 years ago. I am not a lawyer. Although my father was a politician and a judge, I do not know the inner workings of the DA’s office or how lawyers and judges behave or bargain with one another. What’s more, there were only a limited number of people I could talk to. These people were not […]
I don’t believe that you can look back and wish for 10 percent more of anything. Time and money are obviously things you want more of. However, the process of filmmaking is so much like life that the unexpected in life eliminates regret and lamenting what could have been. It doesn’t work that way. [PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, 3:15 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City]
I wished I had 10 percent more silence while making the film. [PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 11:30 am — Racquet Club, Park City]
I wish I had had 10 percent more shooting days. We shot Otto; or, Up with Dead People in 20 days, and that was almost consecutively. If you include the day I spent in a studio recording voiceovers, which had to be done then owing to the complicated availability of the actors, I worked on the film shoot 20 days in a row. My d.p. had one day off in 20. The days were extremely packed and long, so much so that we almost had a crew mutiny on our hands at one point. In the interests of sanity, there […]
In making an independent movie, you go into it understanding that you have certain limitations and therefore you have to find ways to compensate and not sacrifice content or the essence of what you are attempting to do. What Just Happened? was shot on a very lean 33-day schedule, and there were more than 80 locations. I shoot fast so it wasn’t a problem, but where I actually found myself constrained in terms of dollars was in the editing room when we were choosing the music for the film. There’s a good amount of source music, and you find yourself […]