Sundance Film Festival 2018
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“The First Assembly Had Two Major Editing Flaws”: Editors Greg Finton & Poppy Das on Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
Perhaps best known for her biographical documentaries (including two on Roman Polanski and one on Richard Pryor), Marina Zenovich’s latest film Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is an intimate look at the late comic and actor. Set to air later this year on HBO, the film draws upon a vast assembly of archival materials, many previously unknown to the public, to cover Williams’s extensive career. Editors Greg Finton and Poppy Das discuss the challenges of crafting a portrait that focused on the comedy rather than the tragedy of Williams’s life. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“As the World Around Me Fell Apart this Year… I Shifted My Focus Beyond Our Earth to the Darkest Edges of the Universe”: Eliza McNitt | SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime
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? Both in life on Earth — and the birth of black holes from the violent death of supermassive stars — order appears out of chaos. SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime is an interactive VR experience where you dive into the heart of a black hole to uncover the hidden songs of the cosmos. Space is not silent. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“Maybe When We’re Performing We Feel More like Ourselves than We Do in the ‘Real World'”: Josephine Decker on her Sundance Hit, Madeline’s Madeline
Three fascinating but very different actresses star in Josephine Decker’s exhilarating Sundance feature, Madeline’s Madeline. There’s Molly Parker, the exceptional film and television actress currently seen in Wormwood, who plays Evangeline, an experimental theater director who develops her work out of immersive performance workshops, challenging her company to mine their own feelings and experiences while creating new ones through the sometimes cringe-inducing exercises that can be the stuff of the improvisatory creation. Miranda July, an artist, writer, director and one of the most significant performance artists of the last 20 years, plays Regina, the frazzled single mother of a teenage […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2018 -
“The Solution Was to Re-edit the Scene Like a Hundred Times”: Editor Rikard Strømsodd on Lords of Chaos
Jonas Åkerlund (still possibly best known for his “Smack My Bitch Up” video, whose feature directorial debut was Spun) dives into the pioneering Norwegian black metal scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Anchored by Euronymous (Rory Culkin) and the infamous Varg Vikarnes (Emory Cohen), Åkerlund taps into a scene whose music resonates — even as Vikarnes is now known as a murderer who still produces music from prison. The story was well-told in Audrey Ewell and the late Aaron Aites’ documentary Until the Light Takes Us; here, editor Rikard Strømsodd discusses the challenges of taking on this dramatized version. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“Filming a Period Piece in London is Difficult”: DP John Conroy on Yardie
For Idris Elba’s feature directorial debut Yardie, cinematographer John Conroy was tasked with recreating a period environment in both England and Jamaica. Opening with a raucous party scene, Yardie travels through a world of Jamaican drug gangs over the ’70s and ’80s. DP John Conroy spoke with Filmmaker briefly about the challenges of filming this period piece. 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? Conroy: I had shot the last two series (3+4) of Luther with Idris and had developed a great working relationship […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“The Edit Room Became a Kind of Experimental Laboratory”: Editor Nyneve Laura Minnear on 306 Hollywood
As Scott Macaulay wrote in our 25 New Faces profile of 306 Hollywood directors Elan and Jonathan Bogarin last year, “In 2001, the pair — who together run the production house El Tigre Productions — began shooting their grandmother, Annette Ontell, in the Hillside, New Jersey house she resided in for 71 years. When she died in 2011, the Bogaríns decided, says Jonathan, ‘to keep the house and transform everything there into a film.’ The result is the beautifully strange 306 Hollywood, ‘a kooky, imaginative film,’ he says, that uses ‘a maximalist language of fiction film, art, dance and myth in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“Getting Five Different Looks From One Room”: DP Yamit Shimonovitz on Half the Picture
Amy Adion’s documentary debut is on a topical subject: what’s to account for the grossly small percentage of female film directors? DP Yamit Shimonovitz was one of two DPs working to capture insights from figures including Penelope Spheeris, Brave co-director Brenda Chapman, Gina Prince-Blythewood and many others. Below, she discusses the challenges of balancing intimacy when entering subjects’ spaces with practical lighting considerations. 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? Shiminovitz: I was introduced to Amy Adrion through a mutual friend. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2018 -
“Poetry Sometimes Obscures the Narrative Arc”: Editor Keiko Deguchi on We The Animals
Though Jeremiah Zagar has been directing shorts and documentaries since 2004, We The Animals marks his first feature narrative film. Adapted from Justin Torres’s novel, Animals gives a name to the source text’s unnamed narrator: Jonah (Evan Rosado), a young boy growing up in ’80s upstate NYC against the background of his parents’ unstable marriage and growing awareness of his own queerness. Editor Keiko Deguchi spoke to Filmmaker about her work on the film, which split the NEXT Innovator Award (chosen by a single juror, RuPaul) with Jordana Spiro’s Night Comes On. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2018 -
“As a Young Filmmaker You Discover Editing Only by Accident”: Editor Yannis Chalkiadakis on Pity
Yannis Chalkiadakis has been an editor of advertisements, shorts and feature films since 1993. His recent credits include Interruption (2015, Venice), A Woman’s Way (2009, Berlin) and L (2012, Sundance). He edited that last film for Babis Makridis, who returned to Sundance this year for his dark comedy Pity. Chalkiadakis speaks with Filmmaker below on the parallels between editing and sculpture, the influence of Hitchcock on his work and why, when it comes to editing, “it’s not the software that counts.” Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2018 -
“I Shot This Film Under Dangerous Circumstances”: DP Bernadett Tuza-Ritter on A Woman Captured
To capture the story of a Hungarian woman acting as an unpaid servant in cruel captivity for over a decade, Bernadett Tuza-Ritter simply had no choice but to act as her own DP. A Woman Captured, which premiered at IDFA before making its international premiere at Sundance. Tuza-Ritter explains her approach to lighting and story construction under difficult circumstances. 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? Tuza-Ritter: I shot this film under dangerous circumstances. My access was built on trust, so […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2018
