Each year, Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see last year’s question and responses, click here.) We also send out cinematographer and editor questionnaires. This year’s question: 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? Below, find links to each director’s individual response to the prompt. Keep checking back here during the festival, as more responses will be posted daily! “A Rare […]
Each year, Filmmaker sends all Sundance feature film or series cinematographers a questionnaire to complete ahead of their film’s festival screening. We also send out editor questionnaires and a single question for feature directors to answer. Below, find links to individual cinematographer responses, which will be updated daily during the festival. “We Had To Capture Bioluminescence on Camera in the Most Organic Way”: DP PJ López on La Pecera “It Was -30 to -40 Degrees Celsius for Most of the Shoot”: DP Bryn McCashin on My Animal “You Hope the Work Can Play a Small Part in Moving the Needle […]
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? Mother Nature always likes to dip in and remind a filmmaking team that while they might be staging and capturing life, they cannot be fully in control of everything. When weather imposes itself, either in the moment or in a forecast, it’s not often been available to me to push production. Instead, I’ve had to embrace the unforeseen and innovate […]
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? Toward the end of our shoot, I was given the green light to conduct a 20 minute interview with astronaut Kayla Barron—one of our main subjects—while she was on the space station. I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous about an interview (also, it kinda felt like I was going to space). Following up on an interview I did […]
Daisy Ridley stars in Sometimes I Think About Dying, directed by Rachel Lambert and co-written by Kevin Armento, Stefanie Abel Horowitz and Katy Wright-Mead. Ridley plays Fran, an office worker who, as the film’s title suggests, is driven to such mind-numbing boredom that she often thinks about her own death to pass the time. That is, until a new employee named Robert (Dave Merheje) begins striking up conversation with her. Surprisingly, he manages to pique her interest, effectively breaking the monotony of her isolating office job. DP Dustin Lane tells Filmmaker how he crafted the visual language of the film […]
With NASA under “presidential orders” to land humans on Mars by 2033—and the industry titans of Silicon Valley rushing to make space exploration sexy again (not to mention cash in on that lucrative action)—it might be a good time to stop and ask not when our long-mission astronauts will launch, but rather who should be going and how they will survive. And not just physical survival, but mental and emotional, for even the Trekkiest among us may give pause before signing up for a years-long journey that requires relentless isolation, being stripped of any semblance of privacy and deprived of […]
The Sundance Film Festival is always the American independent scene’s bellwether. The festival’s curatorial decisions vault a select group of films — this year, 99 features out of 4,061 submitted — to the top tier of pictures receiving attention from distributors, critics, curators from other festivals and, through copious media coverage, audiences. And while longtime festival veterans — I’ve been attending since 1993 — are accustomed to the usual first-half rhythms (“the festival seems slow”; “the documentaries are stronger”; “did you hear Company X bought film Y for $Z million dollars!”), Sundance’s return to in-person combined with its first true hybrid […]
At the end of the recent Hawai’i International Film Festival, Filmmaker reached out to director Scott W. Kekama Amona to learn more about E Mãlama Pono, Willy Boy, which won the festival’s Audience Award for Best Short Film. An astonishingly assured, measured debut, Willy Boy is one of the more important Native Hawaiian and indigenous titles to come out in recent years, successfully addressing issues like land-rights injustice, political disenfranchisement, police overreach and native identity in a concise narrative framework that takes place in only one day, from one character’s awakening to their eventual “awakening.” Shot in a steely, timeless black-and-white […]
After premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, Italian director Emanuele Crialese’s latest feature L’Immensità makes its way Sundance in the festival’s “Spotlight” section. Co-written by Crialese alongside Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni, the film is a semi-autobiographical account of the director’s coming of age in Rome during the ’70s. Editor Clelio Benevento discusses how he came to work on the film, the differences between his and the director’s work styles and the gratitude he has for his film school professors. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
Finding your team and talent for a project is a lot like dating. Have you ever wondered why companies like match.com, eHarmony and, more recently, apps such as Tinder and Bumble are so good at finding matches? They use data and inputs from their users to put the right people in front of each other. ReelCall uses that same idea to help creatives match on projects, jobs and roles to help find the right fit for each person. Do you have an idea for a project but don’t have the network to find other creatives to make your film come […]