Louie Psihoyos, the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, returns to the Sundance Film Festival with The Game Changers, his new documentary on the health and environmental impacts of plant-based diets. Psihoyos premiered his previous doc, Racing Extinction, at the festival in 2015. To edit Game Changers, Psihoyos hired seasoned doc editor Dan Swietlik (An Inconvenient Truth, Sick0) to cut the film. He soon brought on a second editor, Stephanie Mechura (The Price of Sex), to help finish the job. Below, Swietlik and Mechura share their experiences on cutting The Game Changers. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
In the past two years, Silas Howard has directed episodes of the TV series Transparent, This Is Us and The Fosters. He premiered his new feature, A Kid Like Jake, at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of a 2013 play by Daniel Pearle and stars Claire Danes, Jim Parsons and Octavia Spencer. Howard hired Steven Capitano Calitri – the DP on 30 episodes of Broad City – to shoot the film in New York. Below, Calitri speaks with Filmmaker about his experiences making the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
Abbi Jutkowitz has worked as an assistant editor on a number of films since 2004, including Super Size Me, The Darjeeling Limited and X-Men: First Class. In 2016 she edited As You Are, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and she returned to the festival this year with the in-competition drama Lizzie. The film tells the story of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman who was tried and acquitted of killing her parents in 1892, and stars Chloë Sevigny as Borden and Kristen Stewart as her live-in maid and confidante. Jutkowitz spoke with Filmmaker before the film’s premiere about how she got her […]
Mark Yoshikawa worked as an assistant editor for a decade before he began editing films and TV series full time. This decade he’s edited three films by Terrence Malick, the first two installments of the Hunger Games franchise and three episodes of HBO’s Westworld. His latest film, The Catcher Was a Spy, tells the real-life story of Moe Berg, a professional baseball player who became a spy for a U.S. intelligence agency during World War II. The film stars Paul Rudd, in a rare dramatic, along with cast of heavy hitters: Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce and Paul Giamatti. Below, Yoshikawa speaks with Filmmaker about […]
Michael Taylor has been editing the work of America’s independent filmmakers since 2004. Taylor has cut films for Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange), Rick Alverson (Entertainment) and Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet), to name a few. In 2017, he edited two films to appear at the Sundance Film Festival: Elvis & Nixon and Deidra & Laney Rob a Train. He returns to the festival this year having edited A Kid Like Jake, a New York-set drama starring Claire Danes, Jim Parsons and Octavia Spencer. In the interview below, Taylor goes in depth on how he broke into editing, his love of New […]
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? I was at the complete mercy of the story. There was no planning or control. I couldn’t go out and plan a shoot, or figure out when the story was over. I had absolutely no idea how long “production” was going to go for. While we battled a pipeline at camp, I shot for eight months […]
Louie Psihoyos, the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, returns to the Sundance Film Festival with The Game Changers, his new documentary on the health and environmental impacts of plant-based diets. Psihoyos premiered his previous doc, Racing Extinction, at the festival in 2015. John Behrens (The Mask You Live In) served as a cinematographer on that project, and he reunites with Psihoyos as the DP of The Game Changers. Below, Behrens speaks with Filmmaker about shooting in five different countries and the influence of Natural Born Killers (of all films) on the project. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? […]
The debut feature from writer/director Michael Pearce, Beast arrives at the Sundance Film Festival after having screened at festivals in Toronto, London, Thessaloniki, Stockholm and elsewhere. The film takes place on a small island in the English Channel and chronicles an intense relationship between between two outcasts: Moll (Jessie Buckley) and Pascal (Johnny Flynn). Pearce hired his longtime friend from film school Benjamin Kracun to shoot Beast. Below, Kracun shares his thoughts on filming this romantic psychological thriller. 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 […]
In 2017, cinematographer Ashley Connor had films she shot premiere at Tribeca, BAMcinemaFest and Sundance. She returns to the latter festival this year having shot two features. The first is The Miseducation of Cameron Post from director Desiree Akhavan, a ’90s-set teen movie starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Sasha Lane of American Honey. The film screens at the festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. The second film, from the NEXT lineup, is Madeline’s Madeline from writer/director Josephine Decker. Connor spoke with Filmmaker about filming both titles prior to their premieres at Sundance. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up […]
Chris Norr edited his first Sundance movie in 1996 with the feature Timeless. He has since lensed films to screen at the festival in 1998 (Franchesca Page), 2004 (Second Best) and 2010 (Sympathy for Delicious). He returns to the festival this year with Puzzle from director Marc Turtletaub (producer of Little Miss Sunshine and Safety Not Guaranteed) and writer Oren Moverman (Love & Mercy). Below, Norr discusses the influence of French painter Pierre Bonnard on the project and his visual goal to have his lead character “blend into her background and mirror her feeling of being lost and insignificant.” Filmmaker: How and why […]