When Peter McCaffrey left the processing lab at New Zealand’s National Film Unit in the early 1980s to become a freelance camera assistant, his bosses told him he’d be asking for his job back in two weeks. There was no such thing as a film industry in New Zealand, they warned. 35 years later, McCaffrey still hasn’t looked back. Climbing the ranks from clapper loader to focus puller to camera operator, McCaffrey has built an impressive resume of large-scale credits including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Thor: Ragnarok. Now, he has […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? One of our sets burned down the week before we were supposed to film there. It was a bar location at a theater warehouse. We were like, “Okay, what now? We don’t have a set.” It was also tricky because we were filming at another part of that location already, and another company move would have killed us that day. […]
Director Raine Allen Miller brings a fresh feeling to the traditional romcom with Rye Lane, her Sundance 2023-premiering film set to drop on Hulu later this year. Following accountant Dom (David Jonsson) as he spends a day walking-and-talking around south London, a la Before Sunrise, with free-spirited costumer designer Yas (Vivian Oparah). Below, editor Victoria Voydell discusses her work on the stylish feature debut. 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 hired for this job? Boydell: I had mentioned to my agent that I was […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? One of the obvious obstacles for us was lockdown. We are telling a mosaic story with different protagonists and, during the process, we found out that we couldn’t visit some of them because of COVID and really long quarantines in some countries. We asked our friends from the Film School in Łódź for help and built local teams to replace […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? We were on an extremely tight 19-day schedule with a large cast of children who had limited hours they could work. The cameras basically had to be constantly rolling to maximize every second. One day, there was a COVID scare that put a two-hour hole in our day. We spontaneously made up a scene where our characters are writing the […]
Among the changes Sundance filmmakers are encountering this year at the festival’s first in-person edition since 2020 is one playing out behind the scenes and before theater doors open. For the first time, Sundance is charging filmmakers for guaranteed tech checks before their screenings. Tech checks involve screening a DCP or print in a theater to check sound, picture, subtitling and other aspects of projection and audio before it is screened for an audience. The new policy was revealed in emails sent to film teams requesting tech checks and involves Sundance assigning “dedicated staff to facilitate.” Thirty-minute spot checks taking […]
The subject of a bidding war after its premiere before selling to Netflix for a reported $20 million, Chloe Domont’s twisty thriller Fair Play owes much to the work of editor Franklin Peterson in establishing the deliberate pace necessary to suck viewers in. Below, he offers (spoiler-free!) insights on his work on the film. 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 hired for this job? Peterson: I was offered an interview with Chloe, the writer-director, for the position, as she responded to my […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? For weeks before production, the film’s cinematographer Josée Deshaies and I begin a long process of creating a storyboard for the film. At some point, after we’ve established our own rhythm, we invite an illustrator—in this case, our production manager Marianne Germain’s brother Gabriel—to join us to translate our conversations into images. The work of the three of us then […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? When we started production on Fancy Dance, we had originally planned to shoot our powwow scene at a community powwow, but as the shoot dates got closer, Oklahoma hit a spike in COVID cases and we were forced to rethink our plan. With COVID protocols in place, the only way to safely shoot the scene was to throw our own […]
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? Our film was almost entirely shot in the Italian Alps and we knew this would be demanding. Because of the hard logistics of getting to our locations, the height at which we would be filming and because of the weather. The crew needed to be up for an adventure, and so did the cast. We only realized how true this […]