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? COVID had a deep impact on every aspect of film making during the production of Jamojaya. We couldn’t even get dry ice on Oahu, Hawaii because there were supply chain issues. The biggest issue we had was securing locations. Fears of lawsuits and/or liability made building owners very hesitant. We needed a conference room with windows. Ultimately, we repurposed a […]
The very real news story of tuba thefts occurring at a series of Southern California schools is the inspiration for The Tuba Thieves, visual artist Alison O’Daniel’s feature debut. Yet the film isn’t really about these odd crimes, focusing instead on abstract notions of sound and what is means to “listen,” particularly as it pertains to the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing experience, a theme that has fueled much of O’Daniel’s artistic output. The film’s cinematographer, Derek Howard, discusses how being an outsider to LA helped him capture the city more honestly, the benefits of his documentary background and the […]
Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling can’t help but feel out of place in her fundamentalist Christian community. The only person who seems to understand her is Owen (Lewis Pullman), her church’s youth pastor. He’s more than eager to get close to Jem (despite being a married man), making for a complicated relationship that will inevitably bear harsher consequences for Jem than her older male counterpart. Brian Lannin, the film’s cinematographer, discusses his collaboration with director Laurel Parmet (who also happens to be his fiancé), the Kentucky shoot’s unpredictable weather and the film’s most difficult scene to shoot. See all responses to our […]
Noah Cowan — a curator, critic, festival director and distributor — died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 55, and the cause was Glioblastoma multiforme. Over his more than 30-year career, Cowan brought his passion and erudition to a number of organizations and endeavors, beginning with the Toronto International Film Festival, where he began as an intern in 1981. After graduating with a philosophy degree at University of Toronto, Cowan in 1989 became a programmer at TIFF, curating films for the Midnight Madness and, later, the Vanguard sections. He would go on to program major national cinema retrospectives on India […]
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. […]
Founded in 1927, the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition provides the dramatic stage for Jakub Piątek’s Pianoforte. Tracking some of the talented performers from around the world entering the competition, Piątek’s crowdpleasing documentary, which premiered at Sundance 2023, is lensed by his longtime collaborator Filip Drożdż, who discusses his work on the project below. 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 hired for this job? Drożdż: I’ve known the director, Jakub Piątek, for a long time. We used to work on many different projects together […]
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 […]
Collateral meets The Desperate Hours against the backdrop of issues of Vietnamese immigration and assimilation in this Orange County-set thriller that marks the feature directorial debut of music video director Sing J. Lee. Below, cinematographer Michael Fernandez discusses his work in filming this Sundance 2023 premiering thriller, in which an elderly Vietnamese cab driver is taken hostage by three recently escaped prisoners. 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 hired for this job? Fernandez: I had a built a relationship with the director over the last […]
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 […]