Sam Levy
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“There Was a Lot of Important World Building To Be Done”: Editor Sam Levy on The Starling Girl
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is starting to feel out of place among her fundamentalist Christian community in The Starling Girl, writer-director Laurel Parmet’s debut feature. A 17-year-old girl living in rural Kentucky, the only person who Jem seems to relate to is youth pastor Owen (Lewis Pullman). However, as a married man, Owen’s “friendship” with Jem poses some serious problems—most of which will become the teenage girl’s burden to bear. Sam Levy, the film’s editor, tells Filmmaker about his industry origins and how he went about cutting Parmet’s relatively lean first feature. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2023 -
“It’s Not Funny if It’s Not Bright”: Greg Mottola on Confess, Fletch
I read Confess, Fletch for the first time in high school and, ever since, it’s remained a personal favorite. That often surprises people when I tell them that, not least because the name “Fletch” is less associated with Gregory Mcdonald’s genuinely funny novels than Chevy Chase’s considerably goofier incarnation of the journalist-sleuth in 1985’s Fletch and 1988’s Fletch Lives. The original Fletch adaptation essentially retains the structure and basics of Mcdonald’s original but changes the tone to better suit Chase. For better and worse, Mcdonald’s books string together often hilarious dialogue exchanges with aspirationally Hemingway-esque connective prose; they work better when the emphasis is on […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 14, 2022 -
“The Girls Ride Big Muscular Bikes and Look Tough as Nails”: DP Sam Levy on Mayday
Karen Cinnore’s Mayday is a new kind of action movie, devilishly blurring several genre conventions to produce a feminist war film. After getting swept up in a storm, Ana (Grace Van Patten) is whisked away to another world where she meets Marsha (Mia Goth), the leader of a platoon of female warriors trapped in an endless war. DP Sam Levy tells us of the inclement weather of Croatia and how they filmed Mayday‘s several motorcycle scenes. 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 […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 2, 2021 -
“If You Want That Melodramatic Shaft of Light, You’d Better Mean It”: DP Sam Levy on Shooting Lady Bird
There’s a tradition of young directors looking for inspiration in the bygone eras of their adolescence. For George Lucas in American Graffiti, it was the California car culture of the early ’60s. For Richard Linklater in Dazed and Confused, it was the Texas high school rituals of the ’70s. And for Greta Gerwig in Lady Bird, it’s Catholic school and the suburban doldrums of early-aughts Sacramento. Written and directed by Gerwig, Lady Bird follows the titular character (Saoirse Ronan) through her senior year of high school as she fights with her mom (Laurie Metcalf), pines for a philosophical dilettante from the […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 17, 2018 -
“To Remove What Feels Electronic in the Image”: While We’re Young DP Sam Levy
Early in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s latest effort While We’re Young, the film presents a montage of its 40-something protagonists (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) transfixed by the glowing screens of their digital devices, juxtaposed against a younger couple they’ve recently befriended (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) basking in the analog glory of board games, vinyl and VHS. To be a contemporary cinematographer is to embrace both worlds of this montage: the analog and the digital, the new and old, the 6K camera and the perfect imperfections of the vintage lens. While We’re Young cinematographer Sam Levy talked to Filmmaker about […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 27, 2015 -
D.P. Sam Levy on How Blocking Determines Lighting
Blocking is everything to Sam Levy, most recently the cinematographer of Noah Baumbach’s black-and-white feature Frances Ha. Levy talks about his approach to lighting – one that foregrounds blocking above all else. First comes the blocking of the actors in a scene, including their movements and pacing. Next comes the camera blocking which, according to Levy, works best if it’s responding to the setup of the actors. And finally, the lighting emerges as a natural consequence of these two things. As Levy says, “you block, you light, you shoot.” All of Levy’s interview with Craft Truck can be found here.
by Nadia Ismail on Dec 19, 2013 -
The Set Up: Three Pairs of DPs and Production Designers Reveal the Creative Synergies Between These Two Departments
Without an environment to shoot, cinematographers have nothing; without directors of photography to shoot their sets, production designers have no purpose. It takes a lot of people to build a world for the camera to film, and while the director may inspire and supervise its creation, it takes a production designer and a cinematographer to get it in front of the lens. The creative and practical collaboration between these two key crew members often gets personal. It is always co-dependent. We spoke to three such teams about their most recent projects together – Inbal Weinberg and Andrij Parekh of Blue […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 1, 2010
